Invest in You #alittleQC

Good morning, good morning, good morning! Make sure you can hear me. Here we go. I think you can hear me now. Good morning on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube this morning. Make sure y'all can hear me. There we go. Good morning. Oh, so many things on my computer screen this morning. Oh my goodness, where is that? Can y'all tell that I'm still recovering from the Sister Circle event? Hmm, this is interesting. Y'all on Instagram, I have something on my screen. On Facebook and YouTube, I can't figure out how to turn off Where is it? Y'all give me one second. There it is. Goodness. Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning. I see you all from all over the place tuning in. Good morning, good morning. Ohio in the house, I see you. Good morning, good morning, Michigan. Hi, Amy Stockwell. Oh, good morning Connecticut! Hi Jesse J. Hurst. So that means I have to watch what I say this morning. Hi Alabama! Hi Debbie! Oh Jesse, you're commenting this morning. Windcrest, Texas. New Jersey. London. Hi Nadine! Good morning, good morning, good morning! Hi Shri Baltimore. Okay, so I wanted to talk a little bit this morning about a couple of things that I am thinking about given this weekend's event. So we hosted the Sister Circle online event this weekend and were online with a group, hundreds of women, from Friday morning to Saturday night. Hearing great teaching and great practical information. I had so much fun hopping around from session to session and learning a little bit more, hai satelia, about business and about my emotional well-being. Also hearing based on God's word how God wants me to look at my engagement in relationship and engagement with other people. Um, but there was so much practical how-to, and I literally have been sitting here, uh, in the closet on my little stool with my computer thinking, hmm, what do I want to talk about this morning? Because I usually like my talks in the morning to be an overflow of what's in my head and in my heart, and there was so much in my head and in my heart. I wasn't quite sure, so I sat here for a second and, um, did the, did the search for the selfie picture. Because every time I do these, I go live on YouTube and Facebook with a cover photo, Instagram, and on that cover photo there's a picture of me or me and somebody else. And so looking for one of those, because I don't take as many selfies as maybe people think I do. So I was in there looking for that And I was just sitting here thinking, what do I want to tell them? Um, I can tell you that next Monday I'll be going live to do my Christmas collection in, on, in the morning. So I'm looking forward to that, and we'll see if I can't rope Charis in. We've been looking for some Christmas pajamas that we can wear and be online. So if you're looking for some ideas of what to get for Christmas, I always really struggle with ideas for Christmas. Gift giving is not my, is not my natural lane. I'm a great gift giver, which means I'm a terrible gift giver. I like to give gifts that are meaningful, and if they're not meaningful, I don't want to waste money just because it's a time to give somebody a gift and they can't use it or they can't, they don't love it. I like giving gifts that people will love, which a lot of times means I'm very stressed out because to do that on demand is stressful. Like, it's one thing to give somebody a gift because you saw something or you thought of something and, um, then you give it to them. It's a whole nother thing because the clock says it's time and you gotta, you know, you've gotta manufacture an idea of what might be a meaningful gift this year. So I'm always thinking about it, but I probably will give some of these. This is our new shirt. Faith in God Changes Everything. And do you want to know why I'm wearing it? It's actually not because I wanted to promote it today. It's because I was wearing it Saturday and it was just laying there at the end of the bed, so I just threw it on this morning. Can somebody say, I wore this yesterday, or the day before, or both? Anyway, um, that is the new shirt, so, you know, That will help me. I'll give some people some shirts. But, um, the holidays are stressful. So the reason why we started doing the Christmas collection is because as I think about what gifts to give, I wanted to share that with you. Normally we come on and we ask like, what are your favorite gift ideas? Or what vendors do you know of, small businesses that we can support? This year there was so much on our plate, we did not do that, but Everybody and their mother has become really good friends with Amazon. If you weren't before, you really are good friends now. So we just went shopping on Amazon to find some favorites, and we are excited about sharing those, um, sharing those with you. Okay. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about investing in you and how to do that, why you should do that, um, the principles of doing that. And, um, because I find that while we know that we should invest in ourselves, Our time is our greatest gift and our greatest commodity. We also have no control over anyone else truly but ourselves. And we have the opportunity to be lifelong learners. There's no reason, no reason whatsoever that with the internet that we shouldn't effectively and ongoingly be investing in ourselves. So right off the bat, I want to just make sure that you know who I am, because every time I do these, I always discover that there's somebody new that's here. So my name is Chrystal Hurst. I've been going live since on YouTube and Facebook. I was doing Twitter and then I think I stopped, but anyway, um, and Instagram, I mean, yeah, and Instagram, um, since the beginning of the pandemic. And I went live every day for a matter of weeks, like 8 to 10, something like that. And then pulled back a little bit and then y'all wanted me back. So I came back once a week. And so I've been doing that because I think that now if not ever, is a great time for us to really think about our lives, to have some fun, to have some levity, and also make some decisions. Because 2020 is a year that none of us have ever experienced, and hopefully as we leave 2020, it'll be a year that we never experience again in our lifetime. That's what I think it would be awesome, is if we never have to go through a worldwide pandemic again. But that said, we don't get to control often the external resources that come our way. But what we do get to control is what we look like when we come out of them, who we are. Many of us had grandparents or great-grandparents who were alive during the Great Depression. And what we know is that that significant season in their lives shaped them. It made them, um, cost-conscious. It made them frugal. It made them innovative. It made them understand the value of a dollar. And because of that, it forever changed the way they looked at money in a good way, in a good way. They learned how to stretch a dollar. They learned what was really important. And that is the value of coming through difficult times is it can crystallize for you what really matters. And so if you have not decided that 2020 is gonna be the year that you grow, that you learn, that you change, it's not too late. It's not too late for you to do the work. I want to tell you about a couple of things. Um, so yeah, I'm Chrystal Hurst, and if you, um, like what you see and if you've never actually made sure that on Facebook you have, um, uh, hit the link so that you can get notifications, hit the little button, or on YouTube, if you haven't subscribed, I want to encourage you to do that. And I also want to encourage you if today's, um, live is useful to you for you to share it. Because, um, often Facebook and YouTube, if it's not shared, people don't see it. So that's the way for you to help me make sure that this, if it's useful, gets out to people in your circle. Now, I did write a book on prayer, and I want to make sure that if you haven't read it, if you don't have it, that you get it. ChrystalEvansHurst.com/pray. Because God is there, and he created an opportunity for us to talk to him. And why aren't we using that tool? It's just not— it doesn't make sense to have the opportunity to talk to the God of the universe who knows times past and times coming, and for you not to have insight because he has appreci— given you the opportunity, and you should appreciate the opportunity that you have to talk to God. So check that out, chrystalhurtz.com/pray. The other thing that I want to tell you about before I jump into what I want to talk to you about today is the Inner Circle. Now here's the deal, we have the Inner Circle with multiple levels. Um, the beginning level, the entry level is always open. And what that gives you is the opportunity to get bonus content, behind the scenes photos, me jumping in and giving you a little quick hello, um, little downloads, a little, little special insights. We save that for the Inner Circle for those people that are like, appreciate what you do, Chrystal. Let me just say thank you by supporting you. Um, now the other levels are closed right now and they're closed because we are in the middle of a 21-day journey. It's awesome. Hundreds of women doing the work, doing the work to finish this year strong, looking back at the year, what they've learned, and then looking forward. But we open this periodically, um, because we like to do these experiences in these journeys because I want to help you do the work. I understand that 2020 has been a rough year and I understand that I'm saying invest in you, but here's the a reality. Many of us don't do what we should do unless we're doing it in community and with guidance. How do I know that? Because I have teenage boys right now that are taking community college classes virtually, and the way they perform when they have a teacher and they get to show up to class is different than the way they perform when they're totally on their own. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Some of us know that we do better When we have a teacher, we do better. When we have community, we do better. When we have a train, train to run on, we don't have to figure it out ourselves. We do better when something drops into our inbox every day. And so that's the goal is to provide those experiences that help you to do the work. So here's what you need to do. You need to know that on January 1st, we will open for 3 days and then we will close again until I believe the end of March or early April. Because in January, we know what happens. We say we're going to do the work. We say we're going to, you know, set our new goals. We're going to, you know, we're going to decide what we're going to do. And we all get excited. And in a non-pandemic situation, we join the gym, we make our resolutions. And then by March, we realized that we did made the same resolution that we've made for the last 5 years. And then we still didn't do it. And why didn't we do it? It's the same reason why people pay a trainer, you know, or they go to Camp Gladiator. It's because somebody encouraging you and somebody doing it with you can be a game changer for many of us. Now, you don't have to have it. It just helps. It just helps. Okay, now I know you may be saying, Chrystal Hurst, times are lean right now and I don't have the money to buy your book. I would love to know how to pray. I don't have the money to join the circle now or in January. Okay. I understand that. I understand that. And the reason why I'm out here, um, doing what I do is because I understand that we are all in different places trying to get the information that we need. So here's what you can do. You can go to chrystalevanshurst.com/facebookgroup. So there's no excuse. So the Sister Circle Facebook group is free and I, we drop in the girls on my team, either I or them or both. Drop in to give you something to think about and to give other women who want community the opportunity to converse about a topic. So we decide on the topic, we ask the question, um, we, we hear from you all the time, so we kind of know what you want to know. We put it out there and then we let you as a part of the Sister Circle online community help each other. So if you want to do the work, um, and really dig in, you can join the Inner Circle. If you're like, I can't dig in, but I do want some community and I want to hear from other women, join the Facebook group or both or both. Okay. So what I'm telling you is this, before I even start talking to you about what to do to invest in you, I want you to know that you have no excuse. That's what I want you to know. We are in a season, right? We are in a season where if it's not Chrystal's book or Chrystal's inner circle community or Chrystal's Facebook group, if it's not that, They're Suzie Ann's. There's a million people on YouTube that have put up millions of episodes of things for you to watch. There is no reason. I told my son the other day, I handed him a doorknob and I said, put this on the door over there. I needed to put a lock on one of the doors in the house and I handed the doorknob to my son. I've never put a doorknob on a door. He never has either. So he kind of looked at me quizzically and he said, Mom, I don't know how to put a doorknob on. I said, guess what? Me neither, but thank God for YouTube. Go figure it out. You live in a season where you have absolutely no stinking excuse, no stinking excuse, no excuse whatsoever to say that you cannot figure it out. There are people on Instagram that put their recipes up for free. Don't know how to cook? Figure it out. There are people that are on Instagram or on Facebook that will join on every, uh, every, every week and talk to you about food and talk to you about getting healthy. You have no excuse. There are people on social media who are talking about the Bible that are walking you through their, their learning journey, who are showing you what they do on Instagram to mark their Bibles up and study God's word. You have no excuse. Don't know what to do with your hair? Oh my goodness, please put on a YouTube video that teaches you how to keep that moisture in and how seal it and how not to mess up your natural curls? No excuse. You want to learn how to start a business? No excuse. Like my friend Allie Worthington said, and as she taught us so well, she was 10 years ago without— with a total disaster financially and decided with God and Google she could do anything. And at McDonald's while she let her kids play, and then while she, you know, drank a dollar drink, she got on her internet and figured out how to keep her family afloat. You have No excuse. So I'm creating an environment. The Sister Circle is an idea. Find your own sister circle. Walk with friends in your neighborhood so that you can get some exercise. Start a recipe, recipe club where y'all share recipes. Start a Zoom group where you study the Bible together. No excuse. If I was really spiritual, I would tell you about the scripture that says that one day the word of God will go to the ends of the earth so that people have no excuse for not saying they haven't had access to God's word. Y'all are spiritual. Somebody will put it in the comments in just a minute. Listen, you have no excuse. Here's what this means. This means that in January 2021, when you open your eyes and you realize that 2020, you had more disposable time— not all of us, but a lot of us had more disposable time than what we have had ever had in our whole lives— that you had the opportunity to pivot and share. Listen, and here's why I'm telling you this, because I was talking to Ali Worthington and she said to go on Udemy, and she said she gave me this great tip. I was like, oh my God, I've never thought about that. But it involved Udemy, Udemy, Skillshare. I see you all sharing in the comments. Of course there's YouTube, there's CreativeLive. Let me tell you what's about to happen. Everybody and their mother in the next 2 weeks is going to be vying for your dollars and they're going to say, buy me. And educational forums online are no different. They're going to say, buy me, support me, fund me, come learn here, buy this, invest in this. And you're going to have all of these opportunities to invest in you. Okay. So I want you not to pass that up. Up because you're buying a new TV, because they're also going to be vying for your dollars. I don't want you to pass that up because you are also spending your money on the Sonicare toothbrush. I know it's important that you brush your teeth, I understand that. I brush my teeth for y'all before I got on this morning. But what I'm trying to tell you is don't get confused with where to spend your dollars when it's just as important to invest in you. You've been complaining about your job probably for the last 6 months a year, 3 years, 5 years. Well, instead of buying that TV, maybe you need to invest in a class or an education. Yes, Microsoft offers courses. Thank you, Kendria. Great courses, great courses online. You can learn anything, like not from just this YouTube random person, but from people who have degrees. Like when my sons need help with biology, I don't do— I don't do that. I don't like sciences. I have outsourced sciences ever since we've homeschooled. But you want to know what I will do? I'll go online and pay for somebody's class. And if there's not a class, you want to know what I'll do? I will go to, uh, Great Courses, to a professor who's taught the class, and say, watch this, watch that. The reason why I produced, um, the Sister Circle online event this weekend is because I have been able to curate out of doing podcasts and having really smart friends and experiences over the years, women who know their stuff. Like, I was watching one of the girls talk about branding products and like creating products and doing business in the US versus doing business overseas, and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I'm gonna watch that again. Jamila Jackson of Love Bless Box, I'm gonna watch that again because I don't know these things. Okay, so I look at what I want to learn and then I produce an event. So yes, QuickBooks, Absolutely. So what I'm telling you is you have to decide what you're going to invest in, and everything that you do with your dollars is an investment. So, excuse me, now, I mean, now that I think about it, you know, when Thanksgiving week comes along, we will have all of these courses that we are going to make available, um, that have been in the online events to you. But it, what I'm telling you isn't even about that. I'm saying decide in advance. You know, remember how you used to go shopping? So when we were little, we got the Sears catalogs, you know, they were books that were this thick and my mother would hand them to us and we would go through with our pen and we would circle what we wanted and we would dog ear the page because we wanted to make it clear to our parents when they went shopping what we wanted. We decided in advance. What we were interested in. Okay, now some of y'all shop like that. You decide before you go to the store what's going to be on your grocery list. You make a menu and you decide, I'm going to cook based on my menu. By the way, that's the way to save money, is to cook based on what you're going to eat, not cook based on what you feel like when you're in the store. Especially don't go to the store hungry, right? What happens with Thanksgiving, y'all, Black Friday sales, is that we wait and then we're hungry and we don't decide in advance So then we just start seeing the sales and we just start popping off and spending money. Then we end up with stuff hidden in our closet that we forgot to give away for Christmas because we were just buying stuff. Okay, so here's what you need to do. I mean, yes, I saw you say that you invested in laptop. So one of the girls this weekend, I'm gonna put you on the screen, Tippies. One of the girls this weekend, she that was working on the event, Alexis, uh, who is awesome. Hi, Catherine. Yes, I'm back in the closet. Uh, she was working this weekend and she has been for weeks coming over to work on the event, and her laptop wasn't working and it was freezing, and then her speaker wasn't working. So when she came in this time, she came in with a new laptop, and I said, did you do a new laptop? She said yes. I said, I thought you said it wasn't an investment you were going to make— not make right now. She said yes, but I had to do it because, um, because it was an event and I couldn't go into an event with a laptop that wasn't going to carry me through it. And listen, you cannot go into 2021 with the same set of tools that, that you need to refresh. It might be time for you to level up. It might be time for you to level up. It's time for you to level up. Now, what does that mean for you? I do not know. What I do know is you cannot go in without planning in advance. Focus, focus. Okay. You cannot go into 2021 without planning in advance what you're going to do. Okay. All Oligar and Rosie Cornelia, you said, I need to replace my laptop, waiting for Black Friday deals, waiting out for a good price on a Mac. Okay. Just sidebar because I just did this. So I bought my first official piece of equipment that's not for me. So I bought a MacBook for the office, okay, for somebody that's working in the office. I wanted to pee on myself because— ah, but the lady that was working on it was working on two 10-year-old computers. Miss Sonia, she was working on a 10-year-old PC and a 10-year-old MacBook. The PC, because of Quicken, and the MacBook because we are all on Mac. And I sat down to help her with something one day and we just sat there just waiting for everything to boot up. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense. So I was like, Chrystal, just do it. But I think it's called backmarket.com. One of the girls on our team had told me she just bought a computer from backmarket.com. So I bought a 5-year-old computer, 5-year-old Mac, and, um, you know, spent the money on it. But that was a huge investment for me. It was an investment so that she could work smarter and not harder. And so that we have now a laptop that's available for the team that when she's not here, somebody else can use. Okay. It was like, it was like hard is what I'm trying to tell you. It was hard. I was, I was, I hit purchase and like my heart dropped to my toe. Now I'm not saying buy everything, every course, You know, all that. I'm saying do your homework, just like you would do your homework for your Sears catalog when you were little, if some of y'all are even old enough to remember that. You, you have to think about what is it that I need. So I want you to pause and say, what do I need the most in 2021? So let me give you some ideas. If you know that 2021, you've got to get your health under control, okay, you've got to, all right, so maybe you invest in a cookbook. Cookbook for healthy eating. And pick it, pick it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If you quit driving through McDonald's and do Whole30, you'll be better. If you quit driving through McDonald's and do some vegan thing, you'll be better. If you keep— quit driving through McDonald's and get a Weight Watchers cookbook, you'll get better. It doesn't even matter. Just do better, right? So maybe it's a cookbook. A cookbook is not a big investment, it's $15. Or maybe you want to invest, in, in, um, like a masterclass where somebody is teaching you, um, the, the nuances of great cuisine, because that's where you want to level up. Okay. Buy yourself a masterclass. Okay. You want to learn how to write better? Oh my goodness. Go to Udemy and take a class and stop writing run-on sentences and get your spelling life together because you cannot level up in your career unless you can hire a writer or unless you can write. Okay. Yes. MS Mom, Mom 044. It's not about starting a business, getting another degree, losing all the weight, but doing better, taking the next step and leveling up. Hey, Millie Delaney. Uh, leveling up doesn't mean that you change your whole course of action. It just means you do something different than what you did last year. You should change you should change a little bit. Maybe, maybe you're not changing a whole lot. Maybe instead of getting to the end of the year and saying, what did I do this year? Maybe you should invest in a photo book because you don't print your photos anymore, but you want your children to see it. And all you need to do is just make sure that when you go into 2021, you've got a photo book for your kids to look at so they remember that they were alive. Like, maybe that's it. What are the things that you think if you go into 2021 not doing it or not working on it, right, that you'll be like, I can't believe another year has passed and I didn't do it. And sometimes, very often— hi, Christy Harper— it requires investing in you. Okay. Now, so let me give you some examples. So I talked about Udemy. I talked about CreativeLive. There's Skillshare. There's greatcourses.com. Of course there are degrees, there's community college. Everybody's community college is online right now. So do, you know, register for a class. Those are very, very reasonable. Um, join BSF if you need to study the Bible. Uh, yes, of course we're here, you know, the inner circle when we open up on January 1st. So put it on your calendar, 90 days, here we come. And we're so excited about how we're going to make that better. I was on the phone this morning, y'all, at 6:15. Thinking about you because we are trying— let me tell you something, what we're trying to figure out. We are trying to figure out how to, because Facebook is great, but we're trying to figure out how to take our Facebook inner circle group to the next level, like to take the Sister Circle to the next level. Because one of the things that we— okay, here's what we do. Okay, let me just give you an example about how I'm trying to level up, and it costs money. Okay, it costs money. Oh my goodness. Let me, well, let me, yeah, let me tell you about that. And then I'll tell you about this weekend's event and how he leveled up and how I was like, oh my gosh. Okay. So we have courses on Teachable. They'll be on sale next week. Um, we have courses on Teachable, like my speaking and writing course or my Living a Life You Love or my Mom School series. And then I've got 40 other, at least 40 other courses that are available. From our Sister Circle, women who are a part of our collective group who want to teach you. Okay, now that's in Teachable because everybody always wants to know the tech. So here we go, that's in Teachable. Then we have our Facebook group, chrystalhurtz.com/facebookgroup, in Facebook. We have our Sister Circle— our Inner Circle group rather— in Facebook. Then we have, um, I stream live on Ecamm Live. Okay. Then we have our membership on Patreon. Mm-hmm. Then what else? Then we do coaching calls in Zoom. Mm-hmm. What else do we use? I mean, we have all of these different things. And one of the things that we are trying to figure out is putting all those things in one place to make it less confusing. This time we did our Sister Circle event, the last time we used a conglomeration of Teachable and Zoom and Crowdcast. This time we moved to Brushfire and then we had to use it. Like we are all over the place with technology. And I looked at the girls this weekend, both the girls that are, who are interns and the girls who are, who are part of our staff team. I looked at all of them and said, we have to figure this out, but we're making it work. Right. And we, every time, we do something new, we are leveling up in what we know and what we can use. Now, here's the great thing. I looked at Monique this year and, you know, she always says sometimes, you know, poor thing, I just take her for a wild ride. She's just, you know, holding on for dear life while I just run my race. And she said, but here's the thing, and this is what people will ask Monique when we're hiring, she'll say, She'll say, they ask her, so, you know, what, you know, what is the thing that you like about your job? She said, well, it's a good and a bad thing. I'm never bored, which means that I'm always learning something new and I'm always learning something new. And sometimes it would, it would be nice if we could just settle in and not. And here's the thing, y'all, because we've grown so much, I mean, there are almost 1,500 women in the Inner Circle. So we keep having to figure out how to do it differently. Okay. And so, there ought to be something about your life that's changing, even if a lot of things are staying the same. And if there's nothing that you can change in your whole life, you can always level up on you. There ought to be some incremental change for you. Now, it doesn't mean you learn 5 things a year, but, um, that thing is we're always learning and growing. And we use a platform this time we'd never used before. We're trying something new. But now here's what we're trying to do. I'm trying to figure out— there were platforms that I looked at a year ago 2 years ago, 3 years ago, and they were too expensive. They would allow us to customize, have our own app, um, you know, have our own membership site so we don't have to be, you know, have the limitations of Facebook. Even though Facebook can be great, a lot of people don't want to do it. Um, you know, we've been looking at texting, you know, how can we do that? How can I send y'all text of encouragements every day? In case you didn't know, texting, uh, is expensive. Like if I say, hey, I want your phone number so I can text you every day. You know how Oprah's been texting everybody? Mel Robbins been texting everybody. What's the girl from Scandal? What's her name? Um, y'all know who I'm talking about. She's been texting everybody. That's an app. That's an app. But what I'm telling you is that app is expensive. That's what I'm trying to say. It's expensive. But guess what? When you know, you grow. Hey, Gay. When you know you grow and as you level up, then you are challenged in the next season. Now, what are you going to do this year? So last year it was like, oh, can we, can we grow the inner circle? And then it grew like crazy. And then it's become, okay, so now what are we going to do this year to serve that inner circle better? How can we? Yeah, there you go. Kerry Washington. Thanks, Tiffany. So how can you do that? So we're constantly looking and constantly growing and then investing in new technology. So this weekend, if you were a part of the Sister Circle event, you saw that I had a little set. Or if you look on Instagram, you can see I had a little set because I have a closet, but we're also working on developing a set so that I can do live video and not be in the closet. Now, I know y'all like the closet, but when I do special stuff like paid stuff or like official stuff, or like I'm recording courses, that I can actually go somewhere and, and it looked like Chrystal Hurst has some, like, you know, okay. And then, because even though I have a camera, I have a DSLR, it is like 7 years, 7 years old. I bet nobody on our team is a camera crew, but you bet, you bet. We've learned how to work it. Got a few lights. But because there were so many different things going on, it wasn't just me sitting in front of my closet door doing an event. There were 3 or 4 of us. In the little office space working on the event. And I was just sitting around thinking, we've leveled up, you know. My guy David— hey, uh-huh. Oh, I have a plan for you. Give me a sec. Good morning. Good morning. So my guy David was there because we were going live with these encouragers and like making sure that everybody was where they were supposed to be. Like, it required a team. And I was sitting there thinking— can I just keep it real? I was sitting there thinking, I have to pay everybody. But guess what? Investment. So I'm reading this business book called Traction, and one of the things it talks about is setting goals. We all know about setting goals. I mean, or at least we know the— about the concept of it. But I'm investing in me because I'm reading a book on business. I actually called one of my friends and asked her, very smart girl, Laura Casey, cultivatewhatmatters.com. And I asked her, so I asked her some very specific questions about hiring people and growing and, you know, just all these kinds of things. And she, she gave me, she answered my questions. And then she said, but then you need to read these books. And so one of the books that she gave me, recommended to me was Traction. So I've been reading that. I sat down yesterday, went over to see my dad. He had his book. I had my book. He's like, what are you doing over here? I said, you reading? I'm reading. So we just sat there and just read together. And he was like, what are you reading? And y'all, at any time I've got books in my purse. So I, you know, I pulled out my Traction book and he said, so that's what you're focusing on right now? I said, well, no, I'm not really focusing. And then I pulled out another book, The Gift of Being Yourself. And then I pulled out another book, uh, Healing Shame or something like that. And then I pulled out another book, The Courts of Heaven. And he was like, he said, what are you doing? I said, I'm growing. I'm investing in me, and these are all the areas in which I need to grow. And so I kind of keep it interesting by changing up what I read. And yes, Christy, the library is free. Absolutely. And if you don't even want to get a book, you can listen to it with OverDrive. It's awesome. Okay, so I'm always reading. And so for me right now, it's like, okay, I was never— I wasn't planning on building a business. I wasn't planning on figuring out how to organize a ministry. So guess what I'm gonna do? I'mma learn. I'mma learn. And there are too many people out here. There are too many people out here who have courses that you can buy, but bump that. There are too many people out here who have YouTube channels. Now, the benefit of spending your money on a course, and I would vet the course because everybody that's driving a nice car, that's charging $1,000 for their course, that's not— that the car does not equal a good course. Just so you, just so you know. The, the shiny thing, the shiny situation does not necessarily equal spend your money here. Like, vet them. Find somebody else who's taken a course or taken a class or vet them. But here's what I'm saying. You, you have no excuse. The benefit of taking a course is that it's usually— okay, let me back up. You can find anything on Google. Let's just establish that. What it costs you is your time. Okay, you got to figure out and sift through what is the good class and what is the bad class. So that's why I subscribe to certain people on YouTube. Um, we had Heather Torres from Think Media, she works with Sean Cannell, teach about building your online presence and making money online. She taught a class on that at the Sister Circle event. Okay, so I— and the reason why I've ran into her is because I called Sean Cannell. He's been on my podcast and I said, hey, Can I have you come speak at the event? He's like, I'm still on paternity leave because they just had a baby. Congratulations, Sean. But he said, do you know Heather? So I was like, sure, I'll talk to Heather. So Heather came on, but I'm, I'm subscribed to Sean Cannell. Why? Because he is the business on YouTube, the business. And I love how he teaches. I connect with him and he offers courses, and I bought one of his courses before. So you can figure it out yourself on YouTube Okay, you can do that. What it costs you is your time. Everything has a cost. So let's establish that. What you do by buying a course or taking a class or going to school is you are paying for the curated information. You are paying somebody who knows what they're talking about to whittle all the extraneous information down and give you what you need to know in a very streamlined fashion. So you are paying to save time, but you're always paying. So let's establish that you're always paying. And for some of us, our time is our greatest commodity. So I— so for me right now, I want to read what somebody else has told me is a good read. I don't want to waste my time trying to read books and figure it out if they're good or not. So the way I save time is I ask people who are smarter than me, who have gone further than me, who have more experience than me, what have you read that I should read? Okay. Um, but another thing that I do is I invest in courses. I invest. So this morning I was, I was saying, and then I got distracted. I was on the phone at 6:15 in the morning. Talking to a salesperson for an online, um, an online gathering spot that costs a lot of money that hopefully we'll find out will save us a lot of time in putting together all of these platforms so that we can have the Sister Circle and the Inner Circle in one place. Okay. That my investment in you was getting up at 6 o'clock this morning for a phone call with a business that I can see, will this be a good investment of our resources? For the Sister Circle, for the Inner Circle. I had a conversation with my web designer 2 weeks ago to say, what can we do to level up the website? Because if you go to my website and look for podcast, there is nothing on my homepage that says podcast. That's dumb. I podcast every week. There is nothing on my homepage that says YouTube. That's dumb. I've been YouTubing all year long. So I went to my web designer. Now I could sit there and take some classes on web designing. I've decided that that's not an investment I wanna make.. I want to invest in getting it done. I don't want to invest in being a web designer because my best investment is in me creating content for you. And nobody else besides me could create content for you. So I'm constantly looking, am I investing my time, read a book? Am I investing my time, talk to somebody wise? Am I investing my time, research things on YouTube? Or am I investing my money? Cause time is money. Am I going to take the class? Am I going to buy the Udemy course? Am I going to subscribe to CreativeLive? Am I going to take take a course offered by somebody else who knows what they're doing in business and money? Am I going to invest my time in calling somebody that I know? I talked to somebody else in leadership the other day in ministry who has online courses, and I said, can I, can I pay you for your time to walk me through the nuances of what you do? And she said, actually, there's some stuff that I want to learn from you. Can we just trade? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yes, I saw your comment, Delissa. Some of us just need to finish the courses we've already bought. Some of you need to read the books you've already read because you, you, you, you ingested it the first time, but you didn't act on it the first time. And so now you need to read it again. Howard Hendricks at Dallas Theological Seminary said that we have Uh, we, we have, we have more information than we've ever known what to do with. And if we would just read and execute on the stuff we already read and reread the stuff that resonated with us to make sure it's sunk in deep. Haven't you ever thought that going to church, you've heard that before? Now some of us, you know, we became Christians later in life, but a lot of times we heard it before, but then this pastor said it this different way and it was like the light went on a different way. It wasn't a new scripture, it was new revelation. It's new revelation. So what you're looking for in your life is where you need to get new revelation that you can act on. What you're looking on in life is where you can get new encouragement, uh, new coaching, new motivation, new accountability to act on what you already know, or where to go to grab it. But the investment in you, whether this is time or money, is needed for you to level up. Okay, I was showing my kids about annotating a book. I'm about to have my older boys read a book called How to Read a Book, uh, where it talks about engaging with the text, where you underline or star or you highlight or you take notes. But whenever I'm reading a book and the book is good to me, I write in my book. And one of the reasons why I do that is because I want to remember what I was thinking when I read the book, which means when I come back and see what I was thinking when I read the book, then I will see, did— okay, this is what resonated with me. Did it take When you plant seed, you water it, you do what you need to nurture it, but then you got— you check on that seed. You understand what I'm saying? You put the seed in the ground, but then you check on that seed. You come back and you see, does it need more? Does it need more nutrients in the ground? Does it need more water in the ground? Is what I planted growing? And if it's growing, I should see evidence of that growth. If it's not growing and I don't see evidence of that growth, I'm going to figure out what to do because I spent my money already on the seed. Investing is not just to spend on the seed. Investing is the coming back to check on it and finding out what it needs. In Texas, I grew tomatoes in my backyard once and they grew, but that was after I had bought some books and I had taken some classes online and I had done the work to figure out how to create a square foot garden. And then because Texas clay, Texas ground where I am is like clay, it's like hard. Then I learned I had to build a raised bed garden. And so I did that and hogged in. Go ahead and come in. I know you want to say hello. Just go ahead and do it. Hello. Mm-hmm. Let me finish so I can make you breakfast. Can we check my lunch? Can you what? Because I didn't pack my lunch yet. Well, why are you looking at me if you didn't pack your lunch? Go pack your lunch. Go pack your lunch. We don't have time to eat breakfast. We're about to— Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Watch. Why? Okay. Okay. Just, I'm coming. Pack your lunch. Okay, so what I was saying is about the seed. You always have to check on your seed. So my raised bed garden— hold on, I got a plan, I got a plan. Raised bed garden, I had to learn how to do that because Texas clay doesn't do well with seed. So I figured out, I taught, I learned how to create a raised bed garden, and then I learned how to buy the soil that was going to be the best soil for those tomato plants to grow in. Now I could have planted it in the ground, but I would not have gotten much response out of that ground. So I had to do the work to figure out what ground was the right nutrient. And then I went out and checked on it. Let me tell you what happened when I didn't check on it. The tomatoes were finally coming up out of the ground. I had staked them. My first tomato had turned red. I ate it. And then I understand why fresh from the garden makes a difference. And then all of a sudden we had to go out of town 36 hours. It was a quick turnaround trip. Over those 36 hours, more, if not most, of my tomatoes turned red. And guess who else checked on my tomatoes? The birds. And by the time I got back 36 hours later, the birds had pecked out my tomatoes. My tomatoes were ruined. What happened? For 36 hours, I wasn't checking on it. I wasn't checking on my investment. And so somebody else came along and ruined it. Now I can invest again, but see, here's what happens. You will make the investment, you buy the course or you make a decision or you buy the book or you take the class, and then you don't keep it in the front of your mind. And then it just lays there and the course expires. The course expires, right? Or you can't find the book or you made an F in the class or whatever. When all the while, all it needed was for you to make that initial investment and then keep coming back to it so that it would grow. Keep coming back to it so that it would flourish, and keep coming back to it so that you could reap the fruit of your investment. So yes to investing in you, yes to buying the book, yes to taking the class, yes to YouTube, yes to, um, investing in the course, yes to getting the classes, uh, yes to, to, to— but I'm saying decide this in advance. And if you've invested in stuff that you have not yet checked on and done the work for, then decide to make it a priority going out of 2020, if the course expires for sure, or going into 2021. Invest in you. Okay? Because you are a growing living thing, just like my seeds, just like my tomatoes, just like my plants. And without watering, without nutrients, without checking on you, you can grow, but you may lean too far to the left, lean too far to the right, or something else will peck you out before you're ready. Okay, so what I'm telling you this morning is invest in you. Now, yes, we do have, uh, an inner circle— I mean, uh, the Sister Circle courses, and they'll be on sale, but you don't have to buy mine. You don't have to. The ladies who have their courses in the Sister Circle, they make money too, so it's a blessing to all of us when you purchase, but it doesn't have to be that. YouTube is free, and I have lots of people that I've paid for their courses or their books or that kind of thing. So it's not a plug for Chrystal Hurst's courses, it's a plug for doing whatever you need to do to grow. That's what I'm saying. And then when you make the investment, don't just plant the seed and walk away. Keep checking on it over and over and over again, because checking on your investment is how you make sure that you not only grow but that you also grow right, grow straight, and that you don't get messed over. Hi, Miss Gail Maddox. Jackie Henry, you are worth the investment. So before you blow your money on a bunch of stuff, like I saw somebody say, um, the Black Friday sales have already started. Yeah, they have, because they're trying to get you gradually. But let's not be fools. They know we are all conditioned to the Friday after Thanksgiving. You're still going to have a bunch of Black Friday sales that go nuts that weekend, and you'll be sitting at home in your pajamas hitting purchase, purchase, go, go, pay, pay, yes, yes, confirm. That's what you're going to be doing all next week. So in all the spending of all the money, of all the things, and then I would say, um, look at the same thing for your family, like for people, invest in things that help them to grow. My kids get a book every year whether they like it or not, and then I make them read it, and I make them read it. Okay, so anyway, do you have content agreements with your speakers for your events? I do, I do. What are some of the courses you offer? I offer a speaking and writing course, a figure out what your passions are course called Live a Life You Love, a course for moms, Mom School. And then everybody else's I share too. Yeah. Hey, Blessed Home and Body, thanks for joining me today. Y'all should check out Blessed Home and Body. She has great stuff. She's one of our sponsors for the event. All right, I got to see my kids off. Got to make sure they do their thing. Um, I see all your questions. I'm sorry, I gotta go. Lisa Johnston said, my issue is I don't know where I need to grow. Pick something. Pick something. If you start somewhere, if you start somewhere and move forward, you'll get more light as you go. That's what I know. That's what I know. Have a great day. Start poking around and thinking about what you need to do to invest in you. And then when next week comes along and everybody's throwing everything on sale, Make some decisions, and if you know you don't have no money to spend, get your library card, start YouTubing. All right, y'all, I will talk to you later. Have a great day.