65: The Transformative Power of Giving Back: How to Cultivate the Habit of Generosity

It's a mindset that views giving as a practice. It says, I will give when I have a little and I will give when I have a lot. I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. Success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. Today I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart. And it's the idea of giving. Giving back even when it doesn't seem possible. I believe that giving and giving back is just really, really powerful. Setting a habit of generosity from the very beginning has been a priority for us for many, many years. And I've learned a lot through it. And so I'm going to share some of my journey with you today in hopes that it might inspire you to do the same. Giving, even when it doesn't seem possible, can truly open up so many doors that you've never even imagined. It builds itself into your purpose and your bigger why. And so I want to delve into a little bit of my personal journey and then kind of explore the ripple effects that can come from being generous. So a bit of my backstory is, you know that in 2009 I quit my day job. It was tough. It was a tough time financially, but I made the conscious decision to do something that I loved more than I prioritized. Just making consistent income. We for a couple of years there, between 2009 and 2011, my husband and I made between 15 and $17,000 a year. And we started giving. It seemed daunting. It seemed like we didn't have enough ever. But we stuck to it, truly believing in the power of generosity. By 2012, we were giving regularly and my personal business income hit around $19,000 for the year. And since then, it has just about doubled every year since. This journey has taught me about two fundamental mindsets. The difference between fear Based giving and abundance based giving around our money. Because a fear based mindset is one that tells you that there is not enough. It says, I'll give when I have more or I'm not good with money and so I can't give. Right. It's a mindset of scarcity and it truly hinders us from embracing the fullness of life and giving to others. Because in contrast, an abundance based mindset around giving brings so much positivity. It tells us that there will always be enough if I give away first. It's a mindset that views giving as a practice. It says I will give when I have a little and I will give when I have a lot. It affirms that I'm a good student steward of money. And I believe that money flows through me and helps me impact the world in a greater way. So what did this really look like at the beginning? What we did was, you've heard me say a few times, give first. And I talk about giving first because if we give last, meaning we pay all our bills and then see what's left over. There's really nothing ever left over, especially when you're struggling to make ends meet. And so what we did was at the very beginning, so we get paid or we get some money from a project, typically we take 10% off of the top and we give it, we give it to our community, our church, a project or a charity that we're really passionate about, but we give it back in a way that we feel makes a big impact. And so oftentimes this is kind of the same way that we do saving money. We save money off of the top as well, or at the very beginning. And a lot of times it's done best through automatic withdrawals. Right? And it also makes it a bit less painful if it's just automatically withdrawn. So you can set this kind of thing up with your bank or oftentimes charities or churches will let you schedule to give back on a regular basis if you are making income at a regular basis. And so that's how it's been really easy for us. When you embody an abundance based mindset, I think that you'll find that when you steward money well, money knows that it can trust you and more of it will come your way because more money allows you to make a more impact, a greater impact. I learned this from my mentor, Stu McLaren. He always says, more money, more impact, and it provides you with the resources to just change more people's lives and to be more generous and just Refresh the people that are around you. So very practically, let me tell you a couple of ways that we prioritize giving in my business. The first is that we give 10% off of the top at the very beginning of from our gross revenue. Now, oftentimes people take this after expenses. We decided just early on, from the very beginning, to take it off of the top. So before expenses and from our gross revenue. And I just have used this as such a practice throughout my business growth because I truly believe if you cannot give a dollar from $10, you won't be able to give $10,000 from $100,000. We think that it's going to get easier the more money we make, but it actually gets harder to give it away. And so just from the very beginning, we set this as a priority that this money is not ours. It came to us, we are a vessel. We are returning it to make a bigger impact. So we give 10% off of the top at the very beginning from all gross revenue. We distribute it among a bunch of different places and then we hold some back for like, spur of the moment needs. And so one way that we make this just really easy is that we use a company called ncf. I will link this in today's show notes, but what it allows you to do is immediately draft the amount that you want to give, but then it's like a holding tank and you can distribute it later. So, so sometimes it's time to give, like I want to take 10% off of some income that we have, but I'm not sure where I want to place it yet. And though I want to take it off of the top at the beginning. Do you know what I mean? So NCF has been a great company to partner with because we get to transfer right away. And then it buys us a little bit of time to decide where we're going to place that money. And then you can just distribute it to any charity directly through ncf. And they don't take any percentage or anything like that. So we're big fans of them. Okay, picture this. Have you ever spent hours scouring through your video or maybe your podcast content trying to find that one place that you said that one thing, or if you've forgotten or never found it and you had to rerecord everything. I've been there and it's so frustrating and honestly a huge waste of time. But. But it hasn't happened to me ever since I started using Searchie. Searchie is the software that I use for all of my videos and all of my podcast content because it not only transcribes it, but it makes it searchable by keyword. And so for you to see this in action, I have an example set up for you over on BonnieChristine.com resources. Again, that's BonnieChristine.com resources and you can actually play with Searchy and see how it looks on one of our videos. Because once you understand what it does, it's a game changer. I also host all of my workshop and my class, my membership and course material through Searchie as well. So students can search for any question that they have and go to the exact time in place where I talked about that one thing. And just imagine this, if ever do a Q and A and they want to know if I answered their question. All they have to do is search for their name and see if I did or not. It's literally like having your very own personal search engine for your content. So no more wasting time scrubbing through your video or audio to find that one golden nugget. With Searchie, you can easily find what you're looking for in seconds. Just type in a keyword or phrase and Searchie will pull up all the relevant content. It's a game changer for anyone who create audio or video content. But honestly, that's not all. Searches new AI powered transcription and captioning tool makes it easy to create accessible content that everyone can get access to. And with their customizable player, you can embed your videos and your podcasts on your website or social media channels in a way that looks and feels so professional. So if you are ready to take your video or your podcast content to the next level, head on over to BonnieCristine.com resources and just give Searchie a try. It's incredible. I think you're going to love it and I can't wait to see how it revolutionizes the way you create content. Another way that we have prioritized giving is that a couple of times when I have opened my membership called flourish, we've donated 100% of proceeds to a charity. The last few times we've done this, it's been for Healing Waters. And Healing Waters is a company that really helps give water to communities around the world that don't have clean water. And so they get 100% of everyone's first month when joining the membership. And then we kind of turn it into a thing where everyone in the community can really understand that they were able to impact something specific and significant. Another way that we do this is through team giving. And so every year for the last few years, and we'll do this forever. Now, everyone on the team gets to present a charity that is meaningful to them. And then we go into like an anonymous voting, and one person gets $10,000 donated to their charity in their name, and then everyone else gets a thousand dollars donated to the charity that they brought to the, you know, voting or the meeting as well in their name. And so that's such a fun way for the team to just understand that they are able to impact things in their life that are really meaning meaningful to them and we get to all have a part in it. You know, I think a lot of us, when we're just starting out, we are focused on taking care of our family as we should be, right? Focused on taking care of our family and yet still giving all the while. But then once your family's taken care of, right, you can begin to make a bigger impact. You can start spilling over into the people in your lives and your community and bigger projects that are based all around the world. And this is such a beautiful way to view your business because as it grows, you can grow your impact as well. I also think it's been a really beneficial, like, personal development tool because it keeps you really grounded. Even when money is coming in and out of your business. There's just the sense that you're a vessel in which it flows through, meaning this money is here, but it's not mine. I'm not going to cling to it. Rather, I'm going to pour it back into places that, that really I want to impact. You know, I think many of us struggle with the idea of making money or making a lot of money. It's this money mindset thing because we're afraid of what more money will do to us. Like, we don't want to be greedy. We don't want money to change us or change our priorities, and rightfully so. And so I think that giving and being generous is the number one cure for greed. You cannot give and be generous and be greedy at the same time. And so it's just a beautiful way, a beautiful practice to keep inside your business. Can we also just talk about how fun it is? It is so fun to be able to see a need and meet it right away. And I mean, there were many, many years where we couldn't afford to make a real impact. Even if we saw someone who really needed something or a charity that really we wanted to pour into, and we just couldn't afford to do it and today it is really a great honor to be able to be the person who can just help different organizations in the community and around the world and different individuals in our community in different ways. And it's fun to be able to meet their need. And it brings again, just real incredible purpose to what we're doing. When your heart is focused on giving, you shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance based mindset. It opens up space for receiving more because you're not attached to holding on to everything that comes in the door. And it shows you that money is a tool, not necessarily a goal. And when you use that tool to help others, you invite more positivity and prosperity into your life. So I encourage you to find a place to just start giving. Don't wait for the perfect time or the perfect circumstance or the perfect amount of money to come in. Just go for it. If you have $100, try giving 10 of it away. Embrace this practice of generosity and just sit back and see how it absolutely transforms your life and your business. There's a verse from Proverbs that says the generous will prosper and those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed. It's a powerful truth and one that I have absolutely experienced on my own journey. And I would love to invite you to simply test it and do it yourself. Start giving to an organization or a charity or you're back to your community or your church and just see how it affects the way that you show up in your own life and in your own business. We are here to do good in this world. We're here to add beauty to this world. We're here to make an impact. And the more money that you make, the more impact you can have. So get after it, my dear friends. Create the beauty that you want to see. Come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you. Until next time, keep giving, keep creating, and let's make the most of our days. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.