It’s Evolution, Baby! How to Adapt to a 2020 World

And I just drove up seven hours, looked, drove home, and we put in the offer before I even left our house to drive up here because I love the neighborhood in town so, so much. So that is the story. And yes, that is possible because of what I do. And my husband, being retired, said, no mortgages. We're done with mortgages. Our other house was paid off. We're not going there. We're going to live a very simple life. Yes, we are. But we're gonna do big things. So I said, I'll make it happen. And I'm making it happen, which is exciting. And Amber brings it up because I said at our retreat, my goal is to pay it off in one to two years.

Yeah.

And that feels really exciting.

And speaking offers social media strategy and implementation with a focus on Pinterest and Instagram content, repurposing podcast promo to increase your presence and profit for creative online entrepreneurs. And she's a mama to four and an army wife of 22 years whose husband just retired. There are lots of stories in here that we're gonna unpack today. But, Missy, I am so grateful to you for being here and carving out some time with. Welcome to the Right On Time podcast.

Thank you, Amber. I'm excited, too.

You know, Missy and I have been talking, I mean, since the moment I met Missy. It was not. Not quite a year ago, six months.

Seven months ago, let's say end of.

Last year, last year, officially introduced. I knew that I wanted to introduce. Introduce you to this community because of the mindfulness. Actually, at one of our retreats, one of the names that came up for Missy was Mindful Missy. And it is so true. You're so intentional. You are so mindful. You bring such a calming presence to everything and throughout everything you do, there is so much beauty in simplicity, what you are doing. I know there is debate on that with you and your husband, but there is so much simplicity. And if ever there were a time that the need for simplicity was right on time, it is now. So we are going to dive into that today. Just to dive in. I mean, let's talk about it. There is a video podcast with this, and we are recording this on audio as well. And so just to give everyone a sense, I am sitting in a bathroom right now because I'm in Chicago. We just moved into a house, and my girls and I are home alone today. And I don't have. We don't have any of our things. They're all still in Ethiopia. And they're like, where are you gonna. Where Are you gonna do that, Mom? I'm like, well, I was gonna sit in the living room, but they're in the living room. They're like, why don't you go to your bathroom? You have a desk in there. So that might explain the echo. If you're listening, I'm leaning in. I've got towels around me. But missy, where are you today?

I am in my office and you just heard my dog eating outside the door. And I am sure one of my kids will walk in in just a minute. So that is simplicity for me.

I love it. You're in your office. You bought this house how long ago?

A year ago. At the beginning of July. July 1st. It was a year.

A year ago. Congratulations. And I'm bringing up your house so specifically because there are some cool stories wrapped around your house and your business and the way that you structure your life. So who pays the bills at your house?

I pay the mortgage.

Okay.

Yes. We had been looking for a whole year for a place, and I always envisioned a place where I could do retreats. I wanted to have, like an Airbnb that I could also use as a place to do retreats when I wanted to for really intentional business owners. And we looked for about a year, actually, in four states. And I drove to Pennsylvania, which is where we are, it's where my husband's from, and I'm from upstate New York, so I'm close to my family, too. I drove up here to look at houses, and we actually looked at the house across the street from the one we bought during that time. I drove back home having found nothing. I get home and a few days later my husband says, what about this one? And I kind of went into this quiet time where I stopped looking because I was a little disappointed that it had taken this big, long three day trip to look at houses and came home. And this one had come on the market about two days after I was here, and I had missed when it came on. And I used to look every single day. And so my husband's like, what about this one? And I said, I'm going this weekend. And I just drove up seven hours, looked, drove home, and we put in the offer before I even left our house to drive up here because I love the neighborhood in town so, so much. So that is the story. And yes, that is possible because of what I do. And my husband, being retired, said, no mortgages. We're done with mortgages. Our other house is paid off. We're not going there. We're going to live A very simple life. Yes, we are, but we're going to do big things. So I said, I'll make it happen. And I'm making it happen, which is exciting. And Amber brings it up because I said at our retreat, my goal is to pay it off in one to two years. And that feels really exciting and doable to me and a little bit scary. But I'm making it happen.

You are making it happen. It's on track, you're moving towards it. And you have this incredible track record, right? You set goals and you reach them, you manifest them, you set. You're very intentional and focused in going after them. You create a plan, you redesign plans, right? I think every time we have a conversation and we have a good bit of them, there is a tweak happening to the plan. And it is intentional, it is strategic, it is not willy nilly, right? There is always, there is a focus behind it. So as you think through this plan, actually we got to tell one more, one more, one more cool story on this intention setting that we'll go deep. I'm just going, I'm going straight to the good stuff. Then we're going to peel back the layers here. One example of like Missy's mind blowing intention setting and focus and power of manifesting. We were on another call and you said, I need, I want three clients. Three new clients. And what happened?

Yes, so I said I wanted three new clients. I sent out three emails and in three days I received three responses with yeses. And it's funny because I have a client who's a little woo and she's always like, your number is three. And then that happened. And Amber and I were joking about it.

Yes.

And it's funny, you know, talking about manifesting. I didn't really know what manifesting was officially until a few years ago. You know, Denise Duffield Thomas and I have always manifested. I always would decide to do something with no real plans for how to make it happen, just that it was happening and then it would just happen. And it was the step. Steps logically seem impossible, like something costs X number of dollars or the timing of it or whatever. And then even in high school, it's like, I'm going to go to Ecuador for the summer right after I graduate. How am I going to go to Ecuador in the summer? I mean, I was poor. I who am I going to stay with? How's this going to work? And I just decided. And then I met somebody, a couple. My local Spanish teacher and his wife were going to go and they said I could go with them and live with her family. Family. And it just all happened. And it was amazing. And so many times things like that have happened for me and my daughters just say, you just decide and then it happens. That's how things work for you.

You just decide and then it happens. I think that's so beautiful because however someone feels about manifesting or if you don't know anything about it, even backing it up, right, if you're intentional and you know that you want something to happen so badly, like, or you don't even. You're not even that attached to it that you want it to happen so badly, you just know that this is meant for you. And that was me in the move to Africa. I don't know for how long of my life. I just knew that I was meant to be in Africa. And I know, like, now I'm temporarily back in Chicago. I know I'm. I will get back to Africa. Like, it's all just aligned in what's meant to be. And when you make that decision and when you have that knowing to, things start to align. But I also agree, and you use this word very specifically. I think you are intentional about it. And then you start to put plans and step into action around some of these things as well. So can you speak to some of that intention and that planning and that mindfulness that you wrap around that decision?

Yeah, I would say the first thing, intention is exactly the word. And it's just you envision, that's where you want to be kind of your future self. Like, yes, I want to be there. And then you just start. You just take a step toward it. And like, in my mind, and I hear this all the time, it's like, once you take the first step, it's. It's that you're there, you're there, you're already walking toward it, and it's there. And so that is now that I understand manifesting, I can see it in that way. Before, I didn't know the steps, but now I see, yes, set the intention. It's out there. Picture your future self in that place and take the first step. And you're already walking toward it, and it exists. And so that is. I think intention is the perfect, perfect word. That's one of my favorite words. And I think another thing is as you're taking the steps, because there's always that messy middle where it's a little bit of doubt and do I actually want this? I think the word I would use for that piece of it is sustainable. And it's like, how can I take one step every day and move toward the thing without feeling overwhelmed? Because we reach a point where we want to get there too fast. We want to push it when it's not ready. And I think sustainable is the word I keep in my mind.

Yes.

How can I get there? And when it doesn't feel sexy anymore and it feels a little bit too hard. So, yes, one step every day, and you get there, you get there. If you take a step every day, at some point you get there, you.

Get there, you take that forward, focused action. And I love that you brought up the push because so often throughout our lives, like, I was walking by very distanced from a T ball field the other day and I heard the parents yelling, right, Hustle, hustle, hustle. I'm like, oh, I get it. Like, I get the context. But I also process that we are learning so early on in our lives to push and to go and to get in there and make it happen, right? And yes, we want to make it happen, but it doesn't always have to come from that place of push. And if you. What is one step? What are two steps? What is a baby? A couple of baby steps I can take every day. They add up. And I, like, I think of it a little bit as what I call the genie effect. I literally wrote about this in my master's program. Like, it's the genie effect. When you're trying to create change in your life, it doesn't necessarily happen overnight. When it's happening overnight, there's probably a good bit of push and struggle and a little bit of pain to make it happen. And sometimes there are things that we need to happen, like now and it's going to hurt, but it is so important or it's so urgent that, yes, we're going to do this, but other times it's going to take time. And it is so important and it's so necessary and it's so deep and embedded in our learning over 20, 40, however many years, it is a lifetime. It's a big year for me that it's going to take more time to unpack these things or it's going to. It's a big project. We're starting a new business, right? We're growing our business. We're 5Xing our business. Well, that doesn't happen overnight, right? It might happen in a month, it might happen in 12 months, but baby step it. And you, you sit with things, right? You look at the big picture. You sit with it. And then you pull things through one of the other things at our, at our accelerate retreat in Tampa before we had to distance that we all were in awe of. Missy was your paper planner. I didn't tell her I was gonna call this out. If you're watching, if you're listening, she just pulled up the visual so you could see the visual on YouTube. But she's got a massive planner that takes up the whole screen and it's just white pages with lines. It's lines, right? Not dots.

It has dots, but I draw lines on it.

Oh, it has dots, but she draws. So it's both. That's right. That's why I had the dots in the memory and everything that you're processing not only for yourself, but for other people. Like as I was talking as well, you were coming up with ideas. And a couple months later, like, oh, yes, I've got those ideas right here. You flip back to them. You're writing, you're collecting, you're processing. So many times. People are like, I'm not well organized. I need a project management system. ClickUp Trello Asana Monday. Like, there are a lot of great options out there, but you opened this work of art on a piece of paper. So I want to talk about how you organize and get things done simply in your day to day life. Because not only do you have four kids, you are homeschooling these four children in a beautiful way and they are doing incredible things. And you have been homeschooling for a while. It is not just because of the current state of affairs.

Always.

They've all always been homeschooled. Oh, my goodness. So tell us more about how you pull all of that together with simplicity in mind.

Yeah, I would say, you know, back to the planner, that all has been an evolution. And that is another word for me. And even like in manifesting as you set your intention and you sustainably take steps, there's an evolution where maybe that thing you're walking toward changes. And I think so much of my planning has been. It is literally an evolution. Every few weeks I feel like some new thing is simplified in a different way. A new process that works a little bit better for me. So really that big planner, it's like a two week spread and it helps me see the big picture and not get tangled up in every little tiny detail. Yes, there are little details and 10 things I need to check off every day, but it lets me see that big picture all at once and I need that. I've tried.