The Truth About Wealth Nobody Tells You...

Your wealth isn't the money you earn, it's who you become in the process. Most people think making a 6-figure side hustle means chasing money first, but that's exactly why you stay stuck. If you get this wrong, you risk staying broke, frustrated, and stuck forever. In this episode of 6-Figure Side Hustle, Roger Hamilton reveals that true wealth comes from building knowledge and connections, not chasing cash. To succeed, start small and commit fully. Don't wait for certainty. You get clarity only by doing. Your real job as an entrepreneur is to create opportunities, not just for yourself, but for others too. Stop chasing the money and start becoming the person money naturally flows to. Special thanks to Jeff Hays for partnering with us to release this content exclusively here on my YouTube channel. And if you've been here before, drop the hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time.

One of the most impressive entrepreneurs I've ever met in my life, and believe me, I've met a lot of them, is Roger Hamilton. And in this interview, you're going to see why I'm so impressed with Roger—his visionary skills, his creativity, his ability to understand and know systems. If you're somebody who's looking to become an entrepreneur, to create a side hustle and grow it into something that can become your entire career, this is maybe one of the first people I'd recommend you listen to. Enjoy this interview with Roger Hamilton. Roger, it's great to see you, and I really appreciate you taking the time to sit with us today. Let's start with your background, your history. How did you get to be doing what you're doing now?

Well, it really started, I would guess, when I was at Cambridge University where I was studying architecture. And to begin with, I thought my whole life was gonna be being an architect and going out and building buildings. And I happened to be inspired by someone called Buckminster Fuller, who had this whole vision of the future of the world where it was up to us to decide whether or not we're going to actually make that big difference in the world and the future that we wanted to create for ourselves. And being an entrepreneur allows you to be able to actually create the future that you want for yourself. And I went from a switch from building businesses, building buildings, to building businesses, and from there creating the future. And I started my first business when I was like 21 years old. Uh, I went from one business to another, failing along the way, taking the scenic route, and then eventually figuring out some key principles which has enabled me to now have a number of companies. We have a listed company called Entrepreneur Resorts, which has got resorts for entrepreneurs in a number of places around the world, like in a safari, on a ski resort. And then we also have a network which has now got 1.5 million entrepreneurs around the world which are spread across 200 countries, where we are out really doing everything we can to unite and collectively support the 17 United Nations Global Goals to really make a difference in the world in all the areas where the world really needs it right now.

Wow, that's amazing. Tell us your economic philosophy.

Well, I think that there's a really interesting concept around, or at least belief around, how wealth is directly related to money. And what I say is actually the opposite, that wealth isn't how much money you have, wealth is what you're left with if you lose all your money. You know, that there's actually a whole number of things that we could all be doing on a day-by-day basis which actually is creating wealth for others, creating value for others, which just naturally then has wealth come back to us as well. So there's really like 3 types of capital in the world. There is the one that we tend to see, which is financial capital, where we kind of think it's this fixed thing which is made of money and properties and businesses, but there's two others which are much more important, and they're actually almost invisible, but we see them in those who actually are growing those two, and it's almost like in an iceberg where these are the two that actually raise up the financial capital, and one of them is our intellectual capital, which is what we know, and every day we can invest our time in the things that we need to know, and the second one is social capital, which is the people we know, and if we actually start really investing every time in the people that are going to really support us, or the ones that we can support, If every day we're also thinking about our knowledge and how we can grow our knowledge, then like I said, if you actually were to lose all your money, you still have those two things, and that always allows you to actually be one step ahead. What is so important today is that we are living in a time when there's probably more fear than ever in terms of whether or not we have control on the capital that we have. You have no control on financial capital, right? Markets are going to rise and they're going to fall, but you always have got full control over your own knowledge and your own connections and the trust you can build between those two as well.

That was great, I love that. Tell me in a broad sense, what do entrepreneurs need to know to create success?

When I first decided to be an entrepreneur, there was no manual. In fact, you could actually argue there's still no manual today. There was no manual or any place to go, and especially if you're coming out of like academia, and we all have gone through some kind of education system where we actually realize almost the opposite of what you need to do to be an entrepreneur. So for example, an academic needs to know in order to do, right? You've got to like say, okay, I'm actually really clear on what I need to do before I actually do it. And you wouldn't want to take the exam unless you've studied for it. Whereas an entrepreneur does the opposite. They need to do in order to know, which means that if they don't know how to do something, they don't stop themselves from doing it. They say, well, I better get into action because all the learning is going to come from the actual action itself, which is, which which is really interesting as a concept because most people are saying, well, I'm not really sure if I can even be an entrepreneur, if I can go out there and find the answers for myself, and so I'll kind of wait until I feel confident enough. And of course, that means you never get started. So the moment you actually see the opposite, which is that an entrepreneur says, okay, I wanna actually get going, I'm gonna give it a go, I'm gonna try something out, and more importantly, they're actually working with others, ideally, that already have had that experience as well, so you're not trying to just figure it out for yourself, I mean, I still remember my first mentor when I was like 21 years old, I started my business, and he was like saying, hey, why don't you contact, you know, this person here because they're already doing something similar to what you're doing but much better. Why don't you contact this person over here because they're going to be able to give you advice in this particular area? And I still remember I was like this, you know, young know-it-all, was like, no, I think I'm going to figure it out for myself. And then a couple of months later he came back and he's like, you contacted any of those people I mentioned, have you? And I go, no. And he says, what are you trying to do, go out there and create like an original mistake. Like you think there's a mistake you're going to make that other people haven't made already. And it really is so, so key when you realize that all the knowledge is already there. Every one of us can go out there and we can actually make a life for ourselves. I think probably one of the biggest misnomers is that for many people, they think they're actually more secure having a job than actually going out there and creating a job. And really, that's the big difference that I see between an employee and an entrepreneur. An employee needs to get a job And which means if there isn't a job there, then you're in trouble. And especially with the amount of technology that's growing, AI, robotics, like they're like, the technological unemployment is a real thing where we are actually training kids today for jobs which aren't gonna even be there when they actually graduate. So if you're actually out there like just trying to figure out, do I have the skill set to get a job, that's not gonna be enough in the new economy. However, if your skill set is to create a job, which is what an entrepreneur does, then that's a totally different thing because if you can create a job for yourself, out of nowhere you can deliver value, someone sees enough value, they want to pay you money for that. And if you can create a job for yourself, it means you can create a job for others as well, right? And that's really the biggest, for me, the biggest key to what an entrepreneur is, is that ability to actually be able to pass on your value to others and never be living in lack where you're worried that you're not going to have enough, but always be in a place of abundance where there's always a way to actually create more.

So you mentioned when you were 19 that you had gotten some advice to go out and seek advice from people who knew. Isn't it a common trait amongst entrepreneurs that they know what to do no matter what?

I think one of the myths almost of entrepreneurs is that we think they're these like almighty, fearless, you know, like individuals that are gonna go out and risk everything. The reality is, it's actually the opposite, right? If you actually look at the story of someone like a Warren Buffett, who's now one of the wealthiest people in the world, you know, when he started, he didn't start by saying, I'm just gonna go out and take lots of risks. He said, well, Who could I really learn from? Like, who's a mentor who would be someone that I would love to actually be like? And Benjamin Graham, who was the number one investor in all of America at the time, he was the guy that, you know, Warren Buffett went to and said, look, I'll come work for you even for free, right? Just so I can learn from you. When you look at the story of someone like Bill Gates, when Bill Gates didn't start by saying, I'm just going to risk it all and go out there and put lots of money into like PCs, he didn't have money at the time. You know, he started by saying, well, who there really has a need, right? And IBM had this need need for an operating system, and he says, well, okay, if you do a deal with me where you are willing to pay me for it, I'll go and I'll deliver for you that operating system. And then he went off to Canada and bought the operating system that became MS-DOS. So in every one of these cases, there's an element of how do you make a commitment towards something, but not at the point where you're making it a crazy commitment or you're risking everything. And that's one of the biggest myths that I see is that people think they have to risk it all to make it happen. Without realizing there's actually some easy, simple steps you can take to actually get started in the first place. I think the biggest thing is getting started. So there are these 3 C's which are the opposite way around. It's like the whole world has to be turned on its head to use these 3 C's from what we learn at school compared to what happens when we actually become an entrepreneur. And these 3 C's are, first of all, clarity, and then certainty, and then commitment. And what tends to happen for most of us is like, I can't really commit to something yet until I really get like certainty that this is the right thing. And I can't really get to certainty, I've got clarity. So I better go out and just wait for the clarity. And when we get to school, this is exactly what happens. Like, okay, like we need a teacher to give us clarity. Like, you know, what's in the textbook? What are the things I need to know? And if I know those things and I've revised it enough, then I can get certainty that I actually know this information. And when I've got certainty, then I can commit to the exam. I can say, yes, I can do this exam now. And the problem with entrepreneurship is that that commitment can't be the last thing that happens, because you can't get clarity from nowhere. You can't just immediately know how to do something. We all know it's like whether you want to play guitar or whether you want to fly an airplane, right? Anything that has a degree of complexity to it, we know that to actually have any kind of clarity on it requires lots of practice. And with entrepreneurship, it's exactly the same. So what you'll notice about a lot of the top entrepreneurs, the kind of people we hear of today, like Richard Branson, Elon Musk, these are all people who actually started by saying, well, I'm gonna start with commitment, I'm gonna reverse it around, I'm just gonna say I'm 100% committed to making this happen. You know, like Richard Branson said for a long time, I'm just committed to being that maverick entrepreneur, and now he's committed to going to space. Elon Musk even more so, I'm gonna go to Mars. And when he makes that commitment, says that's what I'm gonna do, that then leads to the next step, which is say, well, like, how certain am I gonna happen? I'm 100% certain it's gonna happen, A lot of people think that perseverance is something that you need to have to be an entrepreneur, but perseverance isn't like a quality that you have. It's the result of committing to something and being certain it's going to happen. Because of course, if you're committed to it and you know it's going to happen and you try something that doesn't work, you don't give up because you still know it's going to happen. You just try something different. That's what perseverance is. So what you see when you see perseverance is someone already saying, I'm certain it's going to happen. I don't know how, I just know it's going to happen. and then continually trying new ways to do it, and eventually the clarity comes from the fact that they actually are on this pathway, and they keep on trying different things to get there. And that's why I think it's possible that anyone today, whether they are just coming out of school, whether they've been in a job all their life, whether they're 60 years old, can be an entrepreneur today, because all it takes is that commitment to actually a higher level of lifestyle, a higher level of impact that you want to make, and then knowing that we're living in a world today where every one of us can go out there and make that big difference if we choose.

We make documentary films and documentary series, and often in the film business you have people, young people who are coming in and trying to make their way in it, and they get knocked down and they have to get up and dust themselves off and keep trying and get knocked down again until they find a crack in the door and they try to go through it. Often tenacity plays a role in success, so can you talk about that a bit?

So just on that point about, uh, like trying something out and giving it a go, we are living in a world today where it's easier than ever to actually get that feedback. You know, it takes something like filmmaking, right? Like with filmmaking in the past, the only way to even have a shot at filmmaking is that you actually had to be accepted by some kind of studio because the only way someone was even going to see a film was to go to the cinema. And there was only so much screen time in the cinema. So you had to be one of the, like the, top 1% to even be able to be there. Today we have YouTube. I mean, today anyone can be a filmmaker and actually give it a go, and people will immediately say whether they like what you have or not. And if they do like it, they'll share it, and if they share it, other people will then see it. And so we have more filmmakers in the world today that are actually out there giving it a go and actually seeing the result of that. And then the real key thing is how do you actually go from trying something out and seeing there's value to it to making sure it has monetary value, which means you can actually put money in your pocket as a result of doing that as well. And that's that next step, which is what a lot of entrepreneurs really get challenged by until they realize the whole nature of money in the first place.

You talk about the workshop meditation you do and how it perplexed you. Talk to me about what the workshop is, what it does.

So the way that we support entrepreneurs at the moment through our community— so we have, first of all, a platform which is called Genius U, and Genius U, uh, has got every single day about 5,000 new entrepreneurs that are actually joining us. So it's a huge entrepreneur movement that's taking place around the world. There's actually statistics now, the studies that show that the gig economy— like, the gig economy is like someone who's got a second job or someone who has got something outside of a full-time employment at work— that the economy is actually going to make up over 50% of the entire US workforce within the next 5 years, which is phenomenal. And so because you have so many different people that even if they have a full-time job, they're trying something on the side So many people are actually already freelancers, you know, everyone who actually drives an Uber, everyone who's already basically like putting themselves on Upwork, every one of them is finding simple, easy ways for them to actually generate income. The real key is how do they actually connect with others to really be able to evolve and grow what they're doing. And so GeniusU supports all of those entrepreneurs. We have all these people coming on board who then have the ability to learn from each other. We have micro degrees on there, we have events taking place around the world, So this next year we have over 500 events that entrepreneurs are coming to, and every one of them, we call them Entrepreneur Socials because they're for social entrepreneurs, they're for making an impact and a difference in the world. And then we, as a result of people coming and wanting to learn what's the best way to be entrepreneurs, we have our resorts and our safari in South Africa, in Bali, Indonesia, you know, in Europe we have a ski resort, where in each one of these places we have entrepreneurs who show up and redesign their life and actually create the life they want to live and the impact that they want to have as well. And that's where the real power in everything we do is, is that it enables everyone out there to have a second education, which is not an education to be an employee, it's an education to be an entrepreneur. And from that, we just hear the most incredible stories of people that start from scratch and are able to then actually go out there and provide not just for themselves, but for the family, for the community, and for the bigger purpose that they have in the world as well.

Is there a follow-up experience that you guys do, like when somebody has a great experience, you know, at a ski resort? What kind of follow-up do you do in the work that you do?

I find what's really interesting is that within the whole entrepreneurial journey, uh, there will be those who get started at the beginning and they're just not even sure exactly which way to go or how they even start their own business. So we have groups in cities all over the world. Uh, so for example, you know, here we are right now today in Austin, and we have a group in Austin that actually meets every single month and gives everyone a chance to get that support from each other. And then if they want to get connected to people in Mumbai in India, or in Tokyo in Japan, or someone in Brisbane in Australia, they can immediately connect to one of our other communities, and everyone is then connected to each other and finding all the very best ways to work with each other. And then we actually run larger events where people can come to those events. There's one event called the Global Entrepreneur Summit where we have every single year thousands of people that come to those events and then connect with each other and hear from the top entrepreneurs in the world. And then we also have got the ability for people to actually mentor and train each other, or even to have someone come in and train in their business. Because over time, it's become more and more clear that there is a pathway or a, a roadmap to how an entrepreneur can be successful, regardless of what your interests are or the key things that you actually want to develop for yourself. And that's really because of these 3 things that actually make up what it takes to be a great entrepreneur. That's cool.

Great. Talk about now money management, the 5 lanes and the wealth lane.

So the 3 things that you actually need to have to be an entrepreneur, uh, this goes right back to the Renaissance where if you actually take education today and say, well, what are the 3 things that we tend to learn in education? They're really memorization, calculation, literacy. And these are 3 things that already computers do way better than us. They're going to calculate much more effectively than us. They're going to be able to memorize way, way better than we can forever. Even literacy, you can Google anything and you're going to get the information. So, so effectively having an education system which is teaching us to be better computers is never going to work. But if you go back to the Renaissance, which is like, you know, like now within 1500, 500 years ago, in the Renaissance, the 3 big things, something called the Trivium, were first of all, self-awareness. We don't really learn that much about that at school, but as an entrepreneur, it's something you have to have. If you're gonna be looking to build your wealth, you have to have self-awareness as to who you are. You have to have, secondly, self-mastery, and self-mastery is all about the extent to which you're becoming the better version of yourself. And the third one is self-expression, and self-expression is how you then express yourself in its purest form. Entrepreneurship is self-expression. All the best entrepreneurs in the world, they've actually found a way to express themselves through their business, and through the enterprise and the difference they're making in the world. And the biggest challenge is that for many people, they think a job is paid productivity. Like, as long as I'm being productive, then great, it means I'm going to be making money. The problem is that always computers and AI will be more productive, cheaper than you, which means you're always going to be out of a job if you think a job is paid productivity. But if you think a job is paid self-expression, which means it's about how you express yourself in the purest form, you're always going to be able to evolve and grow with, even with AI, it will actually help you be a better version of yourself as well. So what we teach and what we've seen so many people go through and the process they go through is first of all self-awareness using tools like in Japan they have a concept called ikigai. So ikigai is your reason for being, like why you're here on the planet. So anyone who's watching this, they could be there thinking, geez, I just need to do something that's going to make me money, without realizing you can actually make money on anything. But if you're doing something that's unique to you, you're you're much more likely to make money than chasing someone else's formula. So the 4 things that make up ikigai is number 1, what you love, which is your passions. Number 2, what the world needs, which is your purpose. Number 3, what you're good at or great at, which is your talents. And number 4, what you can make money at, which is your business model. And what most people haven't really ever assessed is, well, what really do I love, and what is my purpose, and what am I talented at? So what's happened over time is that we have evolved within our platform all of these different tools, which means for free, because we have schools using this, we have kids using this, we have teenagers, and then of course like people coming out of work or someone who's either retired and wants to come and start another business, or even someone starting their own business, they can find out what their passions are by taking the passion test, what their purpose is by taking the purpose test. And these, we've done these with the top people in the world. So someone like Chris and Janet Arwood, who have written The Passion Test as a book, it's a best-selling book, we've worked with them to actually put this Passion Test together. With the United Nations, who have the 17 Global Goals, we now have got the Purpose Test, which shows which of those 17 Global Goals is your number 1 goal. So mine, for example, is quality education, and the great thing is when I take that test and I find that's my answer, I can then connect to all the other people that have taken the test around the world who also have education as their number 1 thing. and then that allows me to then collaborate with them, all for the greater cause of improving education. And so the power in all of this is that at every level we can actually find out exactly what the steps are that enable us to actually then have that self-awareness and then to grow that as well. I think one of the biggest things that for a lot of people when it comes to money, uh, and trying to manage money is that they're actually out there almost chasing the money without realizing that if you let the money get attracted to you by actually being the right person that is working in the right way to be of value to those who have the money, you're much, much more likely to get to success. In the same way that if you go on a football pitch and you go chasing the ball, you know, good luck to you because like everyone's going to be passing it to other people, especially if you're not part of the team. But the moment you actually join a team and you actually go to where you're needed, you go to where the ball should be, then people start passing it to you all the time. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges for people. They think they need to go chasing without realizing it can all come their way, right? And that's where, like, we have a system which is called the Wealth Lighthouse, and that's where we have 9 levels. And these 9 levels are levels of consciousness, really, which allow you to actually lift yourself to a higher level. And if you get stuck at a level, don't expect the money to ever come, because it's about your own consciousness and awareness of basically how you're delivering value, which is going to either limit the money that comes your way, or it's going to actually enable you to actually step yourself up next level. Where the money itself will then grow to the next level as well.

When you're talking about the soccer ball, it reminded me of that great quote from Wayne Gretzky. When they asked the key of his success, he said, "I don't skate to where the puck is, I skate to where the puck is going to be." So when we look at technology and how it might cost jobs or technology will replace jobs, how does this relate to your lighthouse model?

So one of the big things that for me is the driver for everything that I do really comes from really the person who inspired me to go way beyond just the architecture I was learning at Cambridge, and that was Buckminster Fuller. And Buckminster Fuller, who is himself a futurist, he created the geodesic dome. He was the one who talked about this concept that we're all on a spaceship, Spaceship Earth, and we're all crew on Spaceship Earth. He talks about how we're in something right now called the final exam. He said the final exam is this exam on humanity, that we are living at a time where this acceleration of technology that's taking place. He said all the world's challenges are all distribution challenges. So for example, when we say there's poverty, we're not saying there isn't like enough money. There's plenty of money, it's just not distributed effectively, which is why some people have none of it. Or when we say there's hunger, we're not saying there's not enough food, there's food mountains out there, but we still have people who are in hunger because it's not distributed effectively. So technology allows us to solve all those problems, right? Because technology allows us to to be able to distribute more effectively. So why then already are these problems not solved? And he said, even back in the 1980s, he said the reason they're not solved is not because of the technology, it's because of human consciousness. He said that with human consciousness, if we're constantly fighting each other, if we're constantly thinking there's not enough, we're not even going to try and use technology to actually solve these global problems. And he said this is the final exam, because we're either going to pass the exam, which we know we'll pass it because we've accelerated our consciousness enough that we now are able to harness the technology, and we'll know that because we would have solved these problems. But there's also the alternative, which is that we don't end up accelerating to catch up with the technology. It keeps on accelerating beyond our ability to be able to capture it. It actually ends up destroying us. And that's why this really is now not just another exam, it's the final exam. When I heard that, I was like a teenager when I heard that, and it just brought such shivers up my spine where I'm like, I'm going to be alive at a time when my great-great-great-grandchildren will look back and say this was the moment in time when this guy Roger Hamilton, our ancestor, could have done something which would have changed the course of destiny. He was in the generation where every one of us could do something when we're aware that actually it's up to us right now. You know, we see, you know, the environmentalists and the crisis that's taking place within the environment. We see, you know, what's happening right now in terms of leadership and the challenges that are happening in equality. We see just all the issues happening around poverty. All of these different things are things that we can actually solve, and the real question is whether or not we're up for actually making it happen. So it all starts with ourselves. Gandhi says, you know, be the change you want to see in the world. And so it starts by saying, well, if we can't raise our own consciousness up, how on earth are we going to actually raise the consciousness of others up as well. We're seeing today that the people who are the most vocal about really making a difference in the world, they're not the politicians, they're not the large corporations, they're not even necessarily even the charities, they're the top entrepreneurs in the world. You know, the people like Bill Gates, who already has made his money, is spending all his time right now on the Gates Foundation. Jack Ma from Alibaba has actually retired from Alibaba in order to support the entire revolution happening in education. And all the people, the younger entrepreneurs, people like Elon Musk are spending all their time talking about how we can actually go about there and save the environment by how we can be using electric cars, using solar panels, and all of this is about the fact that every one of us has got the ability not just to talk about making a difference but actually to make it as well.

Wow, inspiring, especially in this day and age. Let's talk about the I Ching model personalities.

So when you look at the idea that we have different levels of consciousness, let me just take you very briefly through what the levels are and how they work. And how all of this links to ancient models that already exist. So the Lighthouse model has been around now for, I would say, maybe 5, 6 years. We've had somewhere in the region of about half a million people who have actually gone through this model. And this is also linked to a second model, which is called Wealth Dynamics, which I created about 12 years ago. And that program has already been now used by about a million entrepreneurs around the world. So what are these two and how do they work together? Well, first of all, just think for a moment about a lighthouse, the fact that you You need to go through different levels to get up to the top of the lighthouse. And think of that lighthouse being what Carl Jung calls collective unconscious, that each of us have got a little voice in our head, and that voice in our head is determining whether or not we decide to be an entrepreneur, whether or not we go and build our wealth, whether or not we complain about things. Like, that little voice is doing all this work. And think about that little voice a little bit like if you were a pilot on a plane and The pilot's flying around and he has no idea where this voice is coming from, but there's a voice in the cockpit which is saying, go up to 40,000 feet, uh, turn 5 degrees north-northwest. And so he's doing all these different things, and then at some point he's like, wait, hang on a minute, where's this voice coming from? Like, there's a voice in my cockpit. And so he starts deciding that he's going to go look for this voice, and he goes looking for this little man. He's like, where is this guy? And there's no one there. And he's like, this is a bit strange, right? And like, where's that voice coming from? So he decides to call a friend. So he calls another pilot who's a bit more self-aware. And he says, do you have a voice in your cockpit? And the pilot goes, yeah, sure I do. Yeah, he's like telling me where to go. And he goes, yeah, yeah, where is he? Like, where is this guy? He goes, no, no, he's not in the cockpit. He's out somewhere else. Like, where? He's in the control tower. In the control tower? Yeah, there's a control tower, and that's where the voice is coming from. Wow. Well, is that where my guy is as well? He goes, well, not only is your guy also there, your guy is the same as my guy. It's the same guy. It's like, what do you mean it's the same guy? It's like, is it not my voice? No, it's not only your voice, it's the same guy that's my voice. A lot of, like Carl Jung, when he talks about collective unconscious, he's like saying that the voice that's in your mind is actually the same voice that others are getting in the same mind as well. And that's what the lighthouse is all about. It's like the control tower. And in this control tower, depending on where we're at, we're hearing a different voice. So most of us in our lives have had some time in our life when everything was just going great and fabulous, and no matter what we did, nothing went wrong. And at that time, like, the little voice is invincible. It's like saying you can do so many amazing things. But a lot of times we've had like a life where nothing works, where everything's going wrong. And at that time you've got a voice saying you're a failure, right? Like nothing's working. Uh, but if you actually realize you can actually switch that voice to it, you can tune into a different radio station because it's all out there already and your greatest self is out there as well. What happens within the Lighthouse is that we break it into different prisms and someone can go and just take the test. It's a free test and it shows you which of these levels you're at. And for some people they're trying to build a business. Business, but they're in one of the first 3 levels, which is what we call the foundation prism. And the foundation prism has nothing to do with the flow in your business or in your investments. It has everything to do with the flow in your own personal life. So this is called the foundation prism because it's about personal flow. And the base level, infrared level, which is in the basement, is what we call the victim. And it's someone who, no matter what else is happening, every single month without fail, they go more and more in debt. So if any viewers watching this and they're like, Uh, that's me, right? And we— I have lots of people who come to me saying, help me with my business, but I'm looking at their personal finances and they're going negative. I'm saying, if you can't take a dollar and make more than a dollar from that yourself personally, how on earth can you do that in the business? Your business is always going to be a reflection of yourself. So the moment they change themselves and they start valuing themselves and they start paying themselves more, suddenly the business also takes care of itself as well. So that first basic level, infrared level, then leads to the second level, which is red level, which actually is more dangerous than infrared, because red level is where you now are making just enough money to have nothing. So this is where you can go your whole— like, the bottom line, it's not sustainable if you keep on going more in debt. At some point you're going to go bankrupt or you're going to have to refinance. But at the next level up, you can be there forever. And there's a huge, like, massive, massive, uh, Americans— in fact, not just America, in Europe and other Western developing countries— that are at red level, which means they go their whole life, no matter what they're doing, No matter how hard they turn the tap on and make more money, it all just disappears again, right? And if you haven't yet learned how to turn your time into more money, there's no way you can figure out how to turn your money into more money, because this is all about your value, your how much you value value. But if you actually figure this second one out and you go, oh, you know what, I, I don't want to be at this stage, I actually want to know that I'm a positive contribution to the planet, and you go to this third level— third level is orange level— this is where you now are called the worker. Which is where you actually earn the right to actually even start a business. So in the same way that a lot of people say, I don't need to learn how to swim, I just want to get on a boat and go across the ocean, so I don't need to swim to do that, without realizing no captain will ever take someone onto their crew who doesn't know how to swim. So you need to earn the right to get into the crew before you get into the crew. So if you get to that third level, which is orange level, where you have positive cash flow, um, you've now bought your time. You're in a position where you actually know how to turn money into more money And there's actually some very simple steps you can take to make that happen. The good news is some people might have been in one of these first three, wow, for like decades, if not their whole life. And then the moment they get this, they can switch out of it within months, if not weeks. And the moment that changes, suddenly their whole business turns around and investments come their way and attraction comes their way as well. And I've just seen this again and again for everyone who decides, right, I'm going to actually focus on myself and improving where I'm at. Now if you do that and you can go to the next level up, the next 3 are called the enterprise prism, and the enterprise prism are all about the flow of the markets. So the money will always flow in the markets to these next 3. They will never flow to the ones at the bottom. In fact, if anything, the ones at the bottom are like the rocks in the river, like the flow's flowing around you and you're wondering where the money is. But the moment you lift yourself to a higher level, above worker is the opposite of that, which is, which is the player. The player is the yellow level, and if you think about these like chakras, The first person to really, like, you know, bring chakras to the West was Isaac Newton. And Isaac Newton has a book which is called Optics, which he wrote before Principia, which was where we know him for Newton's Laws. And he was the first person to take white light and turn it into the rainbow using prisms. And he wrote about that in Optics, and he decided to actually, like, decode the rainbow as the colors of the chakras because he knew all about the chakras and about how the levels of consciousness And the reason we have these 9 levels is below the red of the rainbow is infrared, and above the violet of the rainbow is ultraviolet. So we've got the whole electromagnetic spectrum within this. And so when he actually went through these, he was very aware of what these different levels are. So when you're at yellow level, this is— Stephen Covey talks about dependence, which is at the foundation level where you're depending on others for money. At yellow level is independence, which is you can now make the money yourself. And then green level is interdependence, which is where you're actually not asking, how do I make money? You're asking, how do I help other people make money? And it lifts to the next level as well, and that's heart chakra. So if you're a yellow level, this is where you've got like the, the player is like playing the guitar. Great, you've got solopreneur, you figured out how to make some money. The problem is that if you were to actually stop playing the guitar, the music stops. So people who are in that situation, they're like, geez, I gotta keep on showing up for my business every day. The next step up from that is going from, okay, yellow level is where I'm the one saying, how do I make it happen, to green level, which is how I help other people make it happen. And that's where you now have got what we call a performer, which is a high-performing team, and that allows you to actually free yourself up from the business, and the business is now working on its own. And then the next step above that, which is blue level, people think that's called multiple streams of income, but it's not. It's multiple teams of income. This is the conductor, where the conductor makes all the music, it's the investor, but he only makes the music because he's attracted so many performers who want to play for him in his orchestra. So when I look at all of the streams that I have, every one of them has got a team that looks after that stream, and so they've been attracted to me because of what we can actually achieve together. And this is where all the flow of the markets takes place within these three. And so if you actually really see, wow, at each and every level you're stuck until you move to the next level up. If you really get that, you say, then I'm going to work on myself to move to that next level. Above those 3, we have the final 3, which is called the Alchemy Prism, and that's where you can change the world. And so the likes of the top entrepreneurs already, they've gone up to Indigo level, that's the trustee, you know, someone like Richard Branson. He can make millions of dollars as a trustee by people just saying, I'll pay you millions to have a Virgin company. So trust is now so high that people are actually willing to now come on board and actually then use part of that trust as well for themselves, and most of them are a trustee of a particular movement or a particular way of doing business. Someone like Warren Buffett's a trustee. People will pay him millions just to have lunch with him. One level above that then is now the violet level, which is a composer, who's the person who makes all the music. All of the broken compositions in the world today are why we have the challenges. Poverty is just a broken composition because there's a way for us to create a new composition which doesn't require poverty. The problem we have today is that the people that we put in the place of being the composers, they tend to be yellow-level politicians who are very good at getting elected, but it doesn't mean they understand the complexities of the markets or how we go about designing the taxes and designing the money system in a way that works for everybody. And so because of that, it's actually now entrepreneurs saying, well, I think there's a better way to do this. We have people going out creating cryptocurrencies today. We have people going out creating entire entirely new communities that are actually working in very different ways from the past. And that's what it is to be a composer at that high level. And people like Bill Gates and people like, you know, Jeff Bezos are now thinking in that way. How do we actually change the way society itself is working? And then the final one is Legend. And Legend is now the Steve Jobs, it's Nelson Mandela's. It's where you're actually a legend on the map, a symbol on the map, where basically now you're going to leave a legacy way beyond your own lifetime. We can all get up to Legend level. The challenge is too many people want to leapfrog their way to the top, and that's like the trampoline way to success. You jump up, you come back down, you jump up, you come back down, rather than actually realize we can take the ladder, and if we just took it one step at a time, we can all get to that point where we can make a lasting difference in the world as well. This lighthouse is one that when someone takes it and you realize where you're at in it, you very, very quickly realize what the steps are to take you to another level. And most— we never learned this at school, It's not something which is there even in like, you know, a day-to-day looking at the media or in books that are out there. But this is exactly the same system that was used by our ancestors over many, many years and that we can actually use today to really navigate through the big waves that are coming to us from the future.

Well, that's certainly a lot to think about.

Is there anything new that has your attention? If someone says, well, where do I start with all of this? If I, if I just want to make sure that I'm actually in a place where I'm ready to go out there and invest, uh, to actually use all these different tools. Uh, the biggest challenge is that for a lot of people, the way they treat money, uh, is already where the challenge begins. So for example, if I was to go to someone who was maybe a chef or a cook who was going to cook a meal, and I was to give them all the ingredients that they needed and even the recipe, if that person went out to get all those ingredients and brought them back to the kitchen, put out the recipe, but then took all of the ingredients and put them in a big bucket like the dessert, like the soup, like the main course, and it was all now in this big bucket, and then looked at the recipe and then tried to pull all the food back out of the bucket to then make the meal, the meal's already ruined. The number of people who try and manage their money with just one bank account, which is just like one big bucket, and they put it all in there and then they're trying to then create some masterpiece of wealth and they're wondering why they can't do it, it's because they themselves have already messed up the ingredients before they got started. Now the good news today is that there's some really super simple ways that it's possible for you to actually already create the flow that enables you to be able to now expand and grow your wealth and use all the amazing tools that are coming out of this whole documentary and this whole series that enables you to actually then use them. And how does it work? Well, very simple. If you actually were to start by going to your bank manager, saying to your bank manager, I need to set up a number of different bank accounts tell the bank manager there's a lot of money coming your way, right? Which is true, you're going to be making a lot of money. They're going to do this for free, it doesn't cost you anything. And you say, right, the first thing that I need is I need to have a clearing account. My clearing account is where I'm going to put the money that I get every single month into this clearing account, and then it's automatically going to go to all the places it needs to go to. And that clearing account, let's imagine you're earning $5,000, right? Well, that $5,000 goes in here, and as you start earning money from a second job, or you start earning money from from your wealth creation, your new business, it also goes in here as well, and your goal is to increase that on a monthly basis. So if you have that, first of all, the clearing account, why would you do that? Well, because if you were to use that clearing account for all of your payments, for going to the ATM, before you know it, all the money disappears. But if that clearing account has got a second account, which is called your checking account, and your checking account is where you say, hey, the things that I know I need to pay, I gotta pay my rent, I gotta pay for the car, I gotta pay these bills, it just automatically just goes out and you can just set it up to go out. You always cover those bills, not a problem. When that happens, then you set up a third account, which is your cash account, and that's where you actually put a certain amount and no more, which is going to be what you can actually get from the ATM. And once it's gone, it's gone. And we all know what it feels like when the money's gone. It's like, right, I'm going to budget better when that happens. Because most of us don't do these first three accounts, what almost always happens is whatever money goes in disappears. and if we end up making double as much money, guess what? That disappears as well. But this way it doesn't. It means that you're actually already in a place where everything is now organized so that it's like a lane into the highway, and then it's basically two lanes out of the highway. The problem is this: for most people, when they get the extra $10 or the extra $100, it disappears out the highway instead of it going into the middle lane. So the next thing that you create is your wealth account. Your wealth account now is like a savings account, but it's not where the savings are going to be just like stuck there. It's where they're going to go go somewhere. And what you do is every time you bring in an extra $100, for example, you say, right, that money is going to go into the middle lane, it's going to go into my investment account. And you're going to see very quickly by just doing this very simple thing that month after month you went from $100 to $200, now you've got $500, now you've got $1,000. And as that's going into the middle lane, the objective is to get it to the outside lane. And the whole wealth building that you do doesn't happen by what goes into your first account, it's what happens, what goes into your wealth account. And if you then said, right, I've got $1,000 to now invest, what can I do to put it into the third lane, which is your assets? Maybe I'll put that into some shares in the stock market of shares that I want to be investing in. Maybe I'll put that into some investments that I heard about during this docu-series. Maybe I'll put that into the first step towards, you know, some cryptocurrency or, you know, a deposit on my house. But as you actually go to that third step, The whole key is, is my money turning to more money? If I have $10,000 in there, am I getting $100 back? Am I getting $1,000 back? And if I am, don't just put it back into your clearing account, put it basically back in your wealth account, right? And then from there, reinvest it again. And as you start doing this, I have seen so many people go from a place where they say, I can never create any wealth, to suddenly, just because they've got lanes in the highway, the whole thing now just growing, just like a beautiful garden where everything now is flourishing. And when that happens, you get to financial freedom much, much, much, much faster by using all the same tools that we've been talking about here, but doing it in a way where it's organized and where it's automatic. And this first key step is what most people miss, which, like I said earlier, is like putting everything in a big bucket and wondering why you can't then sort it out afterwards.

So the meal is ruined, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. One final thing, is there anything new that's exciting you these days?

I think that one of the most amazing things that are taking place in the world at the moment is that we are going through a revolution in how people are thinking about their own lives. I think that we have gone through a period of time over the last 20 years, because now here we are stepping into 2020, and I remember this amazing optimism when we're getting to new millennium. We're like, wow, we're in like year 2000. That was 20 years ago. And we've gone through a whole period of time where there has been a huge loss of hope, a huge loss of trust, a lot of people who are thinking, well, I can't just rely on the government or on large organizations or on the media or anyone else to look after me anymore, or even tell me what's the truth anymore. And so because there's been this big breakdown in trust, trust has had to be rebuilt in a new way. I really believe there's a trust revolution that's taking place right now, and the trust revolution comes by realizing that trust has it's got 3 elements to it. It has internal trust, so if you think about it like a triangle, internal trust is called confidence. And we had a massive crisis of confidence with many people over the last 10, 15 years, which is now coming back in new ways. I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs that are really building confidence with their communities. There are a lot of kids at school that are actually finding new confidence through the programs that they're actually joining and through the people that they're now working with, right? Faith-based communities have got confidence that are now growing as well. As well. And from that confidence, you then have got the second thing, which is super important, which is external trust, which is credibility. Is that we're now saying, well, what is most credible? There is a trust index, which is called the Edelman Trust Index, which shows that there are certain things like the government itself, which is very low in the trust of millennials. But there's other things that are actually very high, including small business, which actually millennials actually do trust, along with things like the special forces, like, you know, people who, like the police that actually we do trust more. But the most important thing about this is when we actually realize that the third type of trust, which is the one which actually comes up above the iceberg, is all about future trust, which is predictability, which is people saying, well, you know, I can't predict the future without creating it for myself, so what is this future I want to create? So we're seeing an education revolution taking place right now, we're seeing personalized health and wellness taking place, we're seeing these new movements of equality, of people coming together and deciding to make a difference with the environment. So I'm very optimistic about the next 10, 20 years. By the way, the Japanese have a concept which is called Society 5.0, which actually explains this whole concept. And what they say is that they say that every single massive disruption in the way we do things, in the way we're doing things, actually changes the way we're being. And so the very first one, which was 1.0, was the hunter-gatherer society. Where they said, just because we actually figured out how to actually use weapons to actually get our food, we all started actually showing up in tribes, and that was a whole social structure which we never had before. Then 2.0 was when we actually learned about farming, and we realized we don't have to be in a tribe, we can be in a village, and we actually had villages all over the world start up. And then the third one, the third step was the Industrial Revolution. 3.0 is when we said, hey, we're even better in cities where we can actually have lots of people together, and we can have factories, And then that all then broke down with 4.0, which was the information revolution, where we realized we could be anywhere in the world and we can get connected with each other. That's when we started creating a global culture, but with that came all sorts of challenges as well. And now 5.0 is when we realize, look, we've got this like connected global community that is actually connected to the heart, not just to the technology, that we actually are in a place where we can actually now collaborate and work with each other. Entrepreneur 5.0 is not about the Industrial Revolution or the Information Revolution, it's about the Impact Revolution, that we all can go out there and make that big difference today. In fact, if anything, someone who's there thinking, "Well, should I, should I not?" It's really not a matter of this being an opportunity, which is a maybe, it really is an obligation. It's turned into a must, because if we don't go out there and make that difference, then the kind of world we're going to be living in, in 20, 30, 40 years' time, the legacy we leave, it's not going to be the legacy we want to leave. We're going to leave a legacy one way or the other. It's just whether or not we leave one which is accidental, which is the one that we didn't want to have, or is deliberate, which is the one we actually designed to make sure that we're leaving this place a better place for our children and the next generation.

Roger, I just love the way that your brilliance shines and, and how you can bring concepts to life and put them on the ground and make them very valuable for people. So thank you so much for coming here and sharing all this.

Thank you very much.

Next up, Christy interviews Alison Prince, and this is a mom who's also a CEO who built an extraordinarily impressive business through Etsy. I didn't even know these types of opportunities existed, but when you hear Alison Prince talk about them, I think it's going to open up a whole new world of possibilities for you that you're not considering right now. Let's dive into it. Hi, Allison.

It's so nice to see you here. Thank you so much for coming.

I am so excited to be here. I'm so excited you're here.

I can't even explain how excited.

Um, so let's start off. Tell me about you. Tell me your journey.

All right, you ready for this? Yes. Because if I didn't live it, I don't know if I would believe it. So I started off as a junior high school teacher. Yay! School teachers, teachers. I know, I have so much, so much love and respect for school teachers everywhere. And I worked super hard, worked my first month, they handed me my first paycheck. And I also saw that I qualified for government assistance. And I was like, wait, what? No. I was told that if I went to college, got a degree, I would have financial security. And government assistance?

—having security. Yeah. And I needed government assistance.

Yes. It just— I'm like, wait, I've been lied to. I've been lied to. This is crazy. So I started another job at night. I started a tutoring business. And about 2 months into it, I looked at my life and I said, I don't want to live like this. I have a baby at home. My husband was going to school full-time. And I was working 10, 12, 15 hours a day to be able to just put food on our table because we were poor college kids, right? And I just right out of college and I said, "This isn't it." And so I went to the local library because I didn't even have a phone and I checked out like the entrepreneur magazines and the business magazines and I found out that people could pay for food, their mortgage, their cars. So becoming an entrepreneur, and I'm like, "All right, I gotta figure this out." And I didn't know how to spell it, so every time I had to spell check the dang word. And so I dug in and I started playing around with it and something clicked. So a few years later, I had 4 kids at my feet and I'm like, "All right, I've gotta figure something out, but what can I do with 4 kids?" 'Cause 4 kids is a lot, right? And something about an online store, setting up an online store, e-commerce. Now when I first started, I didn't even know what e-commerce was. I thought that word was so ugly. I'm just gonna put it up over here and totally ignore that word 'cause that's ugly. I wanted to start an online store. But everything I read said that you had to have a lot of inventory and a lot of money, and I didn't have either. And so I looked around my house and I found something that was headed to the trash can, and I said, I'm gonna try and sell this. I'm gonna see if this will work. So I put it up online, And I remember I was down in my office, which is like a bedroom, right? And a little tiny computer in the side. Office. Yeah. And I'm nursing my baby, typing one-handed, and I hit publish. And I'm like, "All right, we'll see what happens." And it's— the first product was vinyl lettering. And do you know what that is? Ever heard of that stuff? Tell me what it is. It's like black sticky paper that you can cut out. I didn't even have a cutter to cut it out. So I just cut it into strips. So it was basically a large piece of tape is what I was selling. And I walk upstairs because I hear the rumbling of my toddler to start the whole breakfast routine. And my husband comes around the corner and he's like, "What is that dinging sound?" And I'm like, "I don't know. They're boys. Some toy malfunctioning, right?" So he goes off to investigate, and he comes whipping around the corner and he's like, Allison, those dings are you making sales online. And it was at that moment, I clearly remember it, that my body experienced every single emotion possible because I had just proved that it worked. All these stories that I've heard about people making money online, I just did it.

Wait, wait, I have chills. That is so big.

It is. It is so huge. And then I went from, oh my gosh, this works, to I'm so mad. Why didn't I do this sooner? What was my holdup? Why was I waiting for so long to do this? And so I grabbed the baby, grabbed the toddler. We have this huge dance party in the kitchen. You know I'm a big fan of dance parties, especially in the kitchen. We're screaming around the house. The other 2 girls wake up out of bed and they're like, What is going on? And I made $200 to $300 that very first sale. And to me, that was like I had won the lottery. It was better than winning the lottery because I just realized that I could make money. I didn't have to have a boss telling me, "You have to be there from 9 to 5. You have to wear this. You have to do this." No. I figured— I proved to myself that I could do this. And it was so empowering. And it was only $200 to $300. But to And to me, that just opened up the window. And then I realized I sold out, 'cause it was literally like trash. I didn't have any more. So the next day I'm like, oh shoot, I gotta go find another product. So I went downstairs to the birthday bin of leftover birthday shenanigans, right? And I found these gable boxes. And gable boxes, they hold cookies for like little treats. And so I put those up online and I didn't sell any. And then the third day I put up another thing and I didn't sell. And I was like, "All right, that was fun. I made $200, $300. I guess that was it." And I remember we— I was sitting in the garage with my husband unpacking the car and I had the most clear thought come into my head and it said, "Alison, I just showed you how to do it. How dare you quit?" And it was at that point, and I believe it was God, and so whether you believe in God, universe, higher power, whatever it is, someone looking out for you. God spoke so clear to my heart and said, you can't stop. I just showed you it works. Don't stop. Don't stop. And so that next day I got up super early again because I had to get up early because I had kids, school, breakfast routine, everything. My husband was going to school or going to work at this point. Um, and that fourth day, I sold out again. And so it was like God, universe, whatever you believe in is like, here's a little glitter. Go get the glitter. It's there. It's there. And I've learned that God wants us to have money because he knows we're going to do good things with it. He knows we're going to give money to our neighbors that are sick. And like at the time, it wasn't like it was poverty. Like we had enough food to put on our table. But we didn't have enough money to put food on other people's table. And as human beings, we want to give. We're supposed to serve. And you have to have money to serve. Because if you've been to the grocery store lately, you know making dinner for your sick neighbor costs a lot of money. And so I believe God's like, please, we've given you— you've got phones, you've got stuff in your house that you can sell. You don't have to have these complicated things to make money. So that you can serve. And even if it's serving by going to the local shelter, you have to have transportation to get there. That's gasoline, that's car, that's bus pass. It takes money. And so God is just like, please make money, because he trusts us to do such good things with it.

What you're saying is so big for us to know and talk about. And it sounds like you were shown the way and that like this opening that you just kept stepping through and money is here to support you and God is here to support you and you just kept doing it. Were you afraid though?

Were you scared? Still today, even before this interview, I'm in the bathroom saying a prayer because at that time when he was like, Alison, I just showed you this. I just showed you it's possible. I decided at that moment to make him my business partner. Because I need him. I, I feel I'm a mom of 4. I'm lucky to put on makeup, do my hair, running around, right? I was a junior high school teacher. I don't feel super brilliant, but with God by my side, he shows me things that I wouldn't have ever thought of. And the, the best thing is he knows me so much that he'll only give me a half a step at a time. So when I started 10 years ago, if he would have said, this is what your vision is in 10 years, I would have said, no thanks. I just want to eat chocolate and go watch Netflix. I'm done.

It's really scary out there.

It is. And so he's like, all you have to do is hit the publish button, Alison. All you have to do is sell trash. All you have to do is just one little thing, and then I'm going to open up another another half step for you. He doesn't even trust me with a full step, and that's okay because he knows me better than I do. And like I said, the universe, like whatever you believe in, they guide you and they help you to get to your goals because they know our heart of service. They know our heart of we are human beings and we see people in need, and in the back of our minds we're like, what can we do to help, right? And if we have money to be able to create the help to lighten someone's load. I remember my husband this summer— we live in Puerto Rico, which is really fun, and a big hurricane came through and destroyed the islands, the Bahamas, just took everything out in the Bahamas. And my husband comes and he's like, hey Allison, I just bought a bunch of mattresses, so if you see it on the credit card, you'll know what it is. And I'm like, mattress? We have mattresses. What do you— what? And he said, there's a family out there of 6. Their house is completely gone, and they've been sleeping on the concrete slabs. There's a boat going over. I just heard about it. And so I just hurried and got mattresses on that. And I was like, that's so cool. First off, that he found that, right? And the second, that we were able to provide mattresses for that, especially that mom who's had 4 babies. If I slept on the concrete floor, I wouldn't be able to walk for 3 days. And I didn't have to go say, okay, wait, we need to arrange the budget. All right, we need to eat beans and rice this week so that we can do that. It was like, okay, we got it. We budget out a certain amount to be able to give for things like that because everybody has crap time. Everybody has junk time where they just need a little bit of help. And I just look at like these little small things that are there and Entrepreneurship, starting that, being able to start your own business and having control and saying, you know what, I'm going to do this with my money. I'm going to impact this woman's life so that she can get a good night's sleep so she can be a better mom. Like, to me, that's what it's all about. It doesn't need to be glitz and glamour and big huge things. It's the little tiny things that can add up. And when you have a business, yay, you can control that.

Thank you for sharing that. I think it's a lesson women need to hear more and more, that it's beautiful to step into owning your own business and being an entrepreneur. It's beautiful. It is. It's to serve, it's to love, it's to share, it's to make money and celebrate yourself and grow. And as you said, having the trust and knowing that you are being supported and being called called. That is— to something bigger.

Yes, bigger. The word. Word of the year.

I could talk to you for days because what you're saying is so special and so needed, but I want to know a little more about your journey. When you said you stepped into it and God said, "Please do not quit," what happened and where did you grow your business? And I want to hear a little more about that.

Okay, so I brought some show and tell. Are you okay with that? Yes. Okay, a block of wood right here. So this represents so much about business building. This was one of the products that I sold. So I found this long stick of wood back behind the shed of our home, which a future owner had put it there and just left it there. And I went and I grabbed it and I chopped it into these little tiny blocks of wood. And I'm taking pictures of them to post online and my neighbor comes around the corner and he's like, Alison, what are you doing? And I was like, "I'm gonna sell blocks of wood!" I was so excited. Wait, wait, I have to stop you.

Where did this idea— do you get these downloads of like, "This sounds good"?

I'll tell you where. Yeah, okay. Because you don't have to be creative. Yeah, just hang on. Okay, good. 'Cause it's so good, 'cause it's provided for everybody. You don't have to be creative. So anyways, I'm cutting up these blocks of wood and he comes over And he looks at me and he's like, "You're gonna sell trash?" And I was like, "Oh, wait, is this product idea good enough?" And then tons of self-doubt start coming into your head, right? "Oh my gosh, maybe this is trash. Nobody's gonna buy it. It's stupid." Yeah. And I said, "You know what? I don't have time for those thoughts. Just go sit over in timeout for a second." I gotta hurry and get a product up. Put the product up. We ended up selling enough to pay off my entire minivan at the time in naked blocks of wood. And that people are like, how did you do that? I'm not creative. I'm not either. We have Pinterest. God gave us Pinterest. So we go over there and I literally sold these blocks of wood and then I showed what you can do with the blocks of wood. So one of the things was imagine making a countdown, a little advent calendar, and chubby little toddler fingers like turning down in anticipation for Santa Claus to arrive. Or you take a set of 9 and you glue the kids' pictures on them, wrap it up in a bow, they present it to mom, grandma for Mother's Day, and the grandma's like, "This is the best gift ever!" And so you start pulling in those emotions. Right? That's what sales is, you're serving. So the mom with all the little kids doesn't have to go find a saw and cut down blocks of wood. She doesn't wanna do that, right? She's cleaning up lunch or whatever. And you're like, here are these blocks of wood, let's make this project super simple for you so that your mom, the grandma will absolutely love it. And so I think when, when we learn that sales is not sales, sales is service. How do we serve people? Then it takes like the, oh, I don't want to be a salesperson, like it takes it away and allows us to step in to who we need to be. And that's serving human beings. We were meant to serve. And when we do that, when we put the value out into the world, then we get this stuff with this paper with a guy's face on it, right? That rewards us because we're going out there and we're serving people at the highest level. We're doing it because we care, not because of the paper with a guy's face on it.

I see your vision, and you kept stepping into, look at what I get to present to other moms. They're giving gifts from their children to Grandma, and I get to provide this. And that unique way of looking at sales, not, you know, I'm trying to make money, yeah, but I'm get— I'm getting to give Grandma this "Beautiful gift from my kids." Yes, yes.

Thank you. And I love— so starting an online store, start— can we please change the word e-commerce to something pretty? Yes, let's do it. Let's start a trend. I don't know the word yet. We gotta start a trend that calls it something else. But when you can step in there and give, improve people's lives with something that doesn't have to have a trademark, doesn't have to have a patent, doesn't need to be complex, Because like get on any magazine or read anything about starting an e-commerce store, they say you've gotta have a brilliant idea. No, you don't. I sold blocks of wood when I first got started. I've sold cupcake liners, I've sold straws, I've sold necklaces. Just very ordinary things sell because people are already buying them. So after we started that store, We grew it to a multi-million by year 2, which when I say that, I still kind of like, wow, that's such a big number because I started out as a school teacher. And so to say that, it's very, very humbling to me that I didn't even take a business class. I didn't know how to import, export. I didn't even know the difference between the two when I first got started. I just sold stuff from around, around my house. And that's what started. Something so ordinary and it led to something so extraordinary. But the creep thought of this was a one-hit wonder, Alison, you're not good enough, kept coming back into my head. And so I'm like, all right, I'm gonna start another business. So I started selling pillowcases, which— do you have a pillowcase? Yes. Yes, everybody has pillowcases, right? And so I was like, if everybody's buying pillowcases, why don't I just sell pillowcases? Instead of coming up with this new invention that I had to go pay a lawyer to get a patent, trademark on, all the snazzy things, get a prototype, and then maybe 2 years later I'd finally have a product to sell, but then it would take me 6 months to convince the world that they would need this product, or I could sell pillowcases that people are already buying. So I just started with pillowcase. We built that to a multimillion-dollar brand too. Just a simple pillowcase. Was there anything We did quotes on it and pictures, and then we had some with names on it, but it was a pillowcase. People are like, yeah, I need a pillowcase. That's an easy buy, right? Versus this fancy thing that they don't even know what it is yet. All right, I've done this twice. I'm gonna see if my daughters can do it. This is my favorite part. My favorite part of the story. I think this is my greatest accomplishment because it showed possibilities. So you have a teenager. Do you remember when he was a tweenager? Yes. So many ideas, so creative. Yes. So free. Yes. But they also slept in till 10 and they wouldn't do their chores. Oh yes. That part too. Yes. So that's where our girls were going. They were 10 and 13 at the time, sleeping in till noon. And my husband and I were like, We gotta do something. So we went down one morning at 10 o'clock and we said, all right, it's 10 o'clock. We're gonna do something. You got 3 choices. You can, number 1, you can do more chores. Number 2, you can start a business. Or number 3, you're gonna move out of the house. They didn't like the third option. Number 1's not good. No, they hated it. And anyways, they chose business, which now they're like, Mom, That was so sneaky. You knew we were gonna choose a business. I'm like, that's just good parenting, honey.

Okay, what happened? Tell me.

So they started their business and this is so crazy. Like I said at the beginning, if I didn't live this, it's almost, it's almost too good to believe, but I lived it. Like I was there. But at 10 and 13, they started this online business and I'll tell you what they sold in just a second. But they've hit their first 6 figures before they stepped foot into high school. Oh my. They sold over 21,000— you ready for it?— scarves. Oh. The things that you put around your neck, the things that have been selling for centuries, that everybody sells, scarves. But there was a need and they stepped into it and they filled that need. And so when people are like, I just don't know what to sell online, I'm like, You're overthinking it. Look around your house. Sell what you've got in your house first. Learn how to be messy. Learn how to practice. I mean, Christmas stuff, you always get presents that you don't want anyway, right? Just go resell those. Learn how to, um, write a description, take a picture. Like, be okay with being messy. And then you're like, oh, okay, I love selling this. I hate I hated selling this. And then the path gets clearer of where you want to go. So anyways, I taught my daughters and then my sister said, hey, you want to teach me? And I'm like, yeah. So taught her, she ended up beating my daughters. I don't know if it was a competition, but she did it. And then I had friends started coming because they were hearing the story. And then people online were messaging me, hey Alison, can I pick your brain? And I was like, okay, this is getting, How do I serve more people? 'Cause I know this process works. I've done it twice. I've showed my daughters who were in junior high and elementary.

Showed my sister, showed my friends.

Yeah, yeah. And so I set up this community and we call it the Because I Can Life. And we get to step into what I termed Because I Can Life because we can determine our financial future because we can give. And we say these statements like our manifesto. Because I can live in happiness. Because I know there— because I can accept that success doesn't happen overnight. And being okay with selling stuff in your home today doesn't mean that's the thing you're going to be doing the rest of your life. It just gives you permission to be okay with maybe a C+. Because I know we're all like, we've got to be the best, we've got to be the best. If I don't do it the first time the best, it's just awful. No, just be okay with a C+. Come in, test, work it out, and then you're gonna get better, and then you're gonna get better. And so now I teach thousands of women how to start their own online store. And I'll tell you what, that has been the most humbling experience because when I felt that I should start teaching about 4 years ago, I was like, uh, no, I'm out. I'm out. Let me just sit behind my computer. I'll sell my cupcake liners. I'll sell my straws. I'm good at that. Don't make me get in front of people. Like, the online world's scary. What if they make fun of my eyebrows that I drew on crooked? All the things that go in your head. And it was so strong. Alison, you need to teach. I gave you this journey to teach other people. And I'm like, OK. OK. You got to help me. You got to help me. Put me in touch with people that can help me to know how to do this. And so of course, I met amazing people along the way. You wanna hear a trick that I did for Facebook Lives? Like, okay, social media, going on lives, like who invented that? That's just not cool. Think of the raw, there's no editing, there's no filter, right? So the first few times I took a sticky note, like a just a little Post-it note. Post-it, yeah. I put it over my phone so I couldn't look at my face and I just talked into the little camera lens and I didn't have that second voice saying, Alison, you got wrinkles.

Alison, you're not saying the right thing. Yeah, you're gonna screw up. Yes.

And it went away. And so I gave myself permission to not look at myself so I could truly focus on the message. And then it helped gain that self-confidence. But like in every step of the journey, when it was selling my very first product, when I was so scared, I had to realize, okay, that's normal. And this means that I'm growing. So you know what? Just like I told that guy who said, "You're selling trash with those blocks of wood," I tell my thoughts, "Go sit in timeout. I got something to do. I'll come back to you in a minute." Like, I got stuff to do. I need to change lives. If it's my physical products or if it's my coaching, I have to change lives. This is why we're put on this earth, to serve others, to help others. And so those thoughts just sit over there and I'll address them when I get to you.

I'm wondering, do you think fear— it sounds like you see fear and you're saying, that's where I need to go. Is it that you put it off to the side, or is it an indication of I need to jump in?

Oh, that's such a good question. Um, I think as humans we avoid fear, right? It's so much easier to sit and watch Netflix and eat Cheetos than to get out there and do a Facebook Live or to get out there and, I mean, even if you hide, one thing I love about e-commerce, you can actually hide behind your product and you can put your product out there. But it's still hard no matter what. But that's where you grow, right? When you're uncomfortable, that's when you move. And when you move into that uncomfortable, into the unknown, of course fear's gonna follow 'cause you've never done it and your brain is wigging out saying, Oh no, no, no, go back, go back to Netflix, that's comfortable. Yeah. Go back to watching whatever, that's comfortable. And we're supposed to grow. And then here's another thing, when we're serving, that makes Satan, the dark, whatever you believe in, really mad at you. He doesn't like us. He doesn't want the world to be good. Wow. He's trying to destroy people left and right. And so when we step into something that's gonna help someone, If you don't have those self-doubts, it's probably not good enough because Satan's like, "Oh, it's not gonna change anybody's life. It's okay." But when it does change someone's life, he's getting scared. He is taking all his minions and putting them on you to throw you off. I have this gal who came in, Mariana. It took her 9 years to launch her business 'cause she was so scared to do it. So stuck in fear. And she's like, "No more. No more. I'm gonna do it." She launched her first business. I think she made around $500 with her first launch. And she was so excited, right? She just proved that she could do it. She made money. And then icing on the cake was her husband was like, "Babe, I knew you could do this. I knew you could do this." And like that part's cool, right? But there's another part of the story. So 2 weeks later, she gets an email from her customer. And her customer bought a necklace from her, sent it to his wife who lived— they've been separated, living on opposite ends of the country. And as soon as she opened that necklace, she called him and said, "We need to— let's work this out. Let's work this out." I know, I get the chills every time I tell that story. I get the chills. It took her 9 years because Satan did not want them to get back together. He didn't. He hates us so bad that he was putting so much fear in her. And the moment that she turned it on, She just changed life for these two. They stay together, we're talking generations, right? Satan's like, "I hate you." Stop, stop, stop. Yeah, so those feelings of "I can't do this," of inadequacy, of overwhelm, I think they're from Satan or the dark because he knows we're on the right path. And then we watch for, I call it God's glitter, the little sparkles. And that's the path to go on to serve people. It was a necklace. It wasn't a patent complex anything. It was a necklace. It's there for us. We've got phones. We've got computers. We can get stuff. We can get product easy. And we turn it around and we serve our people. And then the money comes.

You're creating this community of women who naturally love to connect and share and share their their ups and their downs, their fears and like, I can't do this and I'm scared, but I'm seeing you do it, so it gives me hope. And it gives me, if you could do it and you were scared, then I can do it, 'cause I'm scared and I need somebody to show me the way. And you're doing that for us.

And it's because when I started, I started down in this little makeshift office by myself and I was alone for a long time. And I thought those fears of inadequacy, The fears of overwhelm, the fears of I'm not good enough. I thought I was the only one that thought those things. And as I learned that everybody has those thoughts, I've learned that starting a business alone, don't do that. You don't need to. There's people out there, communities out there that are wanting to say, go, go, go do this. There's plenty of space. There's plenty of room. And now with e-commerce booming, everybody's shopping online. And we, okay, really, we are needed so much in life right now to step up and serve than ever before. I've got people that will send, they'll send 2 necklaces or 2 earrings, and it's 1 for the person that buys it and then 1 to an extroverted friend who hasn't been able to get out for a while. 'Cause have you ever just gotten a random package in the mail? And you're like, who's this from? You open it up, you weren't even expecting it, and it was from a friend. What do you do? You call them. I love you, thank you so much for thinking about me. And it lifts their spirits up. And we need that right now. We're all in this like funky space in our life where we need more human connection. And just these little things. And it's like the business owner who's like, I'm gonna step up and I'm gonna provide these opportunities. For connection. Do you feel— I have lots of feels.

I just have this instinct that you feel that it's our job as women to step into it.

Oh my gosh, yes.

That it's time for us to stop hiding and step more into this thing that I'm feeling, my girlfriends are feeling, you're feeling, that I'm hearing from you. That's so universal. It's time for us to step out and not be afraid and to do what we're supposed to do and what we're meant to do.

It's our moral obligation to do it. We as women— Why? Yes. We as women were meant to serve. We have this desire to take care of people. We have this desire to improve other people's lives. And if you can provide another mom with cupcake liners so she's not spending 3 hours scrubbing out the cupcake cake pan from burnt cupcake stuff on her pan, serve her. You're helping. Serve her. If you've got leftover books laying around, get on Pinterest, figure out what you can do with books, right? Or bundle them up, put them in a marketplace, sell them so a mom doesn't have to get, okay, 2 years of book finds from the library.

Googling, going out, finding them, paying brand new books. Are you kidding me? If someone gave me the books, that is a huge service. That would save me hours and weeks and months of time.

Yeah, if you're like, here are the best books for a 5-year-old, wrap it up, put a little bow around, I don't even know, right? It's gonna save a mom so many hours and that mom's gonna be so grateful. But I think as women, we get into our head of, oh, I can't charge them anything. I don't have value. I just need to give it to them for free. No, because if you give it to them for free, think about what happens at parades. You go to a parade and they're throwing out free t-shirts, right? People are super excited to get the free thing. I mean, there's like grown men like punching babies in the face trying to get that free t-shirt, right? Then they get home and it's 10 sizes too big or it's 10 sizes too small and just goes in the trash. And so if you give stuff away for free, people don't put value on it because they don't— it's not the right fit for them. But when they pull money out, it puts value on it and and it balances it out. And so they take what you are giving them, they put more value on it, they take better care of it, they use it more, and then you get the money. So if you are giving stuff away for free, let's say you're an artist and you handcraft earrings and you are charging $2 for an earring that takes you 10 hours to make, you are doing a complete disservice to the person that's buying them from you, because they'll treat them like dollar store trash, and they're not. At all.

How do you see money?

How do I see money? Yeah, there's something—

you see it as beautiful. And it is. I want to hear how you see money.

I see money as a tool, and I heard this from a sweet friend named Kathy Heller. It's a resource. So like a flower, if you put more water on a flower, what does a flower do? It grows. Yeah. If you have a giving heart and you put more, if you put money into it, what happens to it? It grows. It grows. Yeah, money is a resource for us to become more of who we are. So if we're service-based, if we are, I mean, of course, if we're evil-based, then that, if you're evil, don't start a business. Let's just lay that here. Okay, good. Evil, no. No, but if you want to go out there and help people to live a beautiful life— like, have you ever given money? It's this feeling of, "I want to do that again. I want to do that again." And so for me, I see money as a means to do good in the world. And it's not necessarily like just giving out like, "Oh, here's $10," right? No, not like lottery style. I'm talking about microloans. Here's a sewing machine. Let's go do this. Let's build a business together. Let me show you the way, right? Because then she can afford to put her kids in school or food on the— whatever it is, right? And then she has a more stable environment to make the decisions to put with her money, right? And then her kids are gonna learn. So can I tell you another story? Yeah, I'm so full of stories. I love it. They're so good.

I love it. I love it.

So I have a gal come in and She wanted to make money. She has 3 kids, single mom, and she's like, I don't know what to sell. And I'm like, you can fit. You got this. You got this. So I do a little thing with her, with all my students, of how they can find their perfect product to sell. And she decided that she wanted to sell t-shirts. And she comes to me and she's like, I want to sell t-shirts, but I kind of feel like they're saturated. And I'm like, so? No one has your story. No one has your voice. No one has your art. Do this, do this. So she dives into it. Then she starts seeing the success over and over and over again. And when she started, she didn't have anything. I'm talking nothing. Within a year, she had a million-dollar business selling t-shirts. That's been— and she's right.

It's a crowded space. I have chills.

It gets better. You ready for the next step? Yes. Yes. She's teaching her daughter how to do it. Now her daughter has her own business, and I think she's 17 or 18. And then this goes back to even my girl's story too. We're showing our daughters, our future generation, that they have options now. You don't have to go to college and get these huge student loan debts and then figure out that's not even what you want to do in life. But you can create something that makes you happy. This daughter Izzy, she's an artist. Now she creates designs. I got one on today. It's so cute. Sunshine State of Mind. Isn't that the cutest shirt ever?

It's so full of hope and confidence. What do you see when you teach a woman, one of your students, and you see them before and how they are to when they accomplish something big like that? What do you see the growth and how do they change?

Okay, so I teach women, mainly women, how to make money online. That's like the thing, that's the tangible thing, but what is delivered is self-confidence. Then, okay, so to make the first dollar online, it's not easy. I'm just gonna put it out there. And it's not hard because you're like, oh, all the technology and the glitz and all that stuff. No, it's 'cause you gotta get through here. Like, this is the hardest part. You have to tell your brain, okay, I'm going to start a business. And your brain's like, oh no, you're not an entrepreneur, you're not a businesswoman, what are you doing? No, go back and do what you want to do. It's trying to keep you safe, right? And so you have to tell your brain just little baby steps, and you have to prove to your brain, all right, I'm going to make this first dollar. Don't tell your brain you're going to make a million dollars, your brain's going to call you a liar. But you say, you know what, I'm going to "Make my first dollar." Your brain can say, "Okay, I've seen you make a dollar before. You can do this." And then you make your first dollar. And then when you make your first dollar, you have to be surrounded with people that will celebrate the heck out of you. Your first dollar!

Yes!

You have to be celebrated for that in a community that understands it. Because if you go out into the world and you're like, "I just made a dollar online," they're gonna say, Okay, that's lame.

How much time did you spend making a dollar?

Yes. No. But the entrepreneur world gets it. And so we celebrate the heck out of these women that make their first dollar because if you think about it, women, they probably haven't been celebrated since junior high when they made the cheerleading team, right? Or whatever, softball or whatever it was. And to be celebrated as an adult instead of being screamed at from your kids, It helps build their self-confidence. And these women, we can feel what people need. And we can see a product and say, you know what, those straws would help a mom. Or those straws, let's make them paper and not plastic so we don't bugger up Mother Earth, right? We can see that. That's who we are. And we can get those products out there. I think it just comes the whole insecurity starts beating us down. Satan beating us down, 'cause he knows our power. He knows what we can do. He knows a simple block of wood can change a family dynamic, or a necklace can change future generations. And so we have to work through these thoughts. And by doing it, it's let's make the first dollar. Tell your brain, yes, you can make the first dollar. Make the first dollar, great, let's double it. Let's go to $2. Great. Let's go to $5,000. Let's go to $10,000. Let's go to $100,000. And you start telling your brain, I can do this. When I made my first $200 online, back of my mind was like, how cool would it be to make a million dollars? But my brain was like, oh no, you got a long way to go. And I said, great, let me just get my first $5,000. And my brain said, okay, I bet you can get to $5,000, right? But if I kept saying $1,000, it was such a lie, I couldn't get there. And I think a lot of people online are like, "Go get your million overnight." No, don't do that. You're not ready for it yet. Just start. The first thing, gain that confidence, and that confidence is what you need to go to the next step. So yeah, money is the thing that's fun, right? Money's always fun. Self-confidence is delivered. And I'm seeing these moms after I've taught them and they've become successful and they're teaching their kids, I've seen these kids completely blossom. They're now becoming leaders in their community. They're now standing on stages speaking to other kids about, "Hey guys, we don't have to go to college. We can run a business that we're passionate about, that we're an artist or we're a musician or we're passionate about sports, we can create a lifestyle that we actually love living. I know, it is so, so, so fun.

It's huge. Two questions. Okay. Are you still scared? And the second one is, what's your mission? What's next?

What are you called to do? Okay, number one, still scared? Always. I think if I'm not scared, I'm not going in the right direction. Right? Every time, I'm not kidding, every time I launch a product, I will go to my family. I'm not strong. I will tell you that. I'm not strong. And I will go to my family and I say, "I need you to hold my fear. I can't do it." I had to speak in front of a huge audience and I was like, "Why am I doing this? Why did I say yes? Why am I not just sitting at home?" but I can feel that I need to do it. And so I looked, I went to my family and I looked at them all and I had some of my team members there too and I said, I'm scared. And this was like 2 years ago, this wasn't when I first started. And I said, can you hold my fear for me? I need to step into who God needs me to be, but this fear is crushing me right now. They all came up, they gave me a hug and then right before I stood on stage, someone took a picture of my husband holding me. And my kids wrapped around my legs saying, "Mom, you got this. We have your fear. We have your fear, Mom." And I said, "Thank you. Now I can go step into it." I had an interview, oh, like a month ago, and my little guy in— he's doing homeschool right now, doing homeschool at home. He knows he's watching the clock 'cause he knows what's coming up 'cause I've been talking about it. We talk about business, we talk about stuff all the time. And he puts his camera on no camera, leaves school, comes over to me. He's like, "Mom, I know you got this interview. I'm holding your fear." He's 11 years old. And he's like, "Go, Mom. Be who you need to be." And then even this morning before this interview, he's like, "Mom, you better come down 'cause I left the house at 4:30." So why is 4:30 in the morning even invented? I don't even know. I don't even know. He's like, "Mom, you have to come wake me up because I got to hold your fear." And so for that, like, you can't do business alone. You can't. You'll get swallowed up in those thoughts because you're supposed— you're meant to do something grand, even if it feels so tiny. That lady selling the necklace, she didn't know that she was going to impact lives, right? We're not meant to do this alone. You've got to have a community. You've got to have people that understand business, it's more than just sales. It will always be. And that's the basis of it. And when you learn that principle, it takes off the, "I'm not, I can't charge money." No, it puts in the value to where you're like, "I have to charge you money because I know this product. I know these earrings. I know these shoes. I know these pants are gonna change your life." How many times have you put on a pair of pants and you're like, Oh my gosh, my butt looks big. That inventor, the designer, they should be so rewarded because they just made our butt look big. And if you would have charged like $2, we wouldn't have ever put them on. So we have to charge the money so that people will value the product. And yes, money's good. Money is good. Money is so good. Okay, so what was the second question? Sorry, I forgot.

Well, you live it. What's your, what's your mission?

What's the next thing? So this is so fun. Are you ready for this? So I've been through this journey and it's been such a blessing. And then now I get to watch these other women completely change their lives. Like one gal, she started, she launched her business in March. She had to have surgery and was like, I don't want to stop. So her husband built her this desk, because she had to lay flat for an entire week after the surgery, built this desk where she literally had to— would type upside down to keep her business going. It's like the most beautiful story of, of it. And I get to live these stories. And this lady went on, she's on home decor, nothing fancy. It's like 3-tiered trays and wood bowls, nothing fancy, right? Um, she went on, broke well over $1 million her first year. Like, these are the stories that I get to live. And I get to see them, and I get to be a part of them. And it's such a fulfilling thing for me. And I'm like, that's kind of selfish. I don't— yeah, I get to show people, but I want other people to live it too. And so what we've done is our goal now is to give microloans to women. About 95% women, where they don't have the opportunity to start a business, where a sewing machine can actually put food on the table, where 2 goats can help a kid go to school. And so last year we were able to give out 2,000 microloans. I think it was 2,300 microloans. And so now our goal is to give out 10,000 microloans. But it's not in my name. It's in the name of my students. And I want my students to feel what I get to feel. So as they're going through this process, they know that they're helping another mom somewhere else in the world to be able to be successful too. And so it's like a twofold thing, right? They're getting the money, they're gaining that self-confidence, and then they're also knowing that there's another woman who literally had nothing, nothing, but now she has a sewing machine or goats or whatever it is in her area that will provide for her family and change future generations. So that's my main goal right now is how can I give more microloans in my students' names? Not in my name, in their name, because I want them to embrace it. It's so powerful. When I go in and I present that to my community and I'm like, all right, we just gave this many awards, look at all of your names. My name's not on there. This is you. You are doing— you're showing up for you. And because of that, you get to see this blessing. And it just builds us together and it builds our community stronger to go out there and fight and put on— maybe brush our— no, not even brush our— put our hair in a messy bun. Yes. Get it out of our face and go out there and serve the world the best that we know how. It's not about perfection. It's just about doing. Thank you for who you are.

Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for bringing us all with you and creating this community of women that we're all in this together. And yes, I honor and am so appreciative of what you're doing. And thank you so much for sharing. There is, uh, there's a big spotlight on you, and we need to hear more of what you teach and share with us. No, we need, we need, we need you.

So thank you. But it really, it's these women, it's these women's stories. And I— that's the cool part. Like, you are opening up this opportunity for women to see the possibility. And I love what you said, it's always about come with me. It's not, hey, look at me, I got a jacket on. I'll tell you the truth, I still have the tag on it because I haven't had a chance to take it off because I was I have 3 kids, 4 kids, one going to college, we just got a puppy, the tag is still on this and I'm okay with it.

Wait, pull the tag out and you're getting on an airplane in an hour and you said yes and you did it because you're serving. You wanted your story, you wanted to make sure we did a prayer before this to have every woman who needs to hear your message hear what she needs to hear because it's possible.

It changed my life completely, completely. Knowing that when we go to like a restaurant, our goal now is to, we can't double. We found like when we get the bill, it's like $60 or $80, whatever it is. We always said we wanna double and give like $160 to the waitress, but it kicks it back and it says error. So we always go like a dollar underneath what the bill was. We've had so many waitresses cry on us. That is what money is for. It's to give. It's to give that waitress who, and I was a waitress once, so I know it, her sore feet, she's been working all day, she's tired. And when you just put a little extra in and you can see that emotion, how much she means to the world, how grateful I am that she brought me food with a mask on that she's been wearing for 8 hours. I am so grateful for that woman showing up for me. So how can I show up for her? So it's my job to figure out how to make money so that I can bless more lives. And if you're listening right now, like, it is your job, your moral obligation to get out there, learn how to make money. It's not complicated. Like, uncomplicate it. Sell the trash in your home, make the money. There's plenty of marketplace you can sell on to get started So that first you can take care of your family, take care of you, take care of your family. Then you can start taking care of your friends, your neighbors. And that's the ripple effect that's going to change the world.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. And we want more of you and keep, keep, keep singing, your everything. We need you. Thank you so much.

Let's do it. Let's change the world.

Let's do it. Thank you so much, Allison.

Thank you.

Well, by now you're in the rhythm and the pattern. You know what's next. Elliott Roe, again, our wild card. This is the first time we've, we've done this in any series that we presented. I'm excited for you to experience Elliott Roe over and over again throughout the series. Let's dive in.

Hey everyone, my name's Elliot Rowe. I'm a mindset and performance coach. I work with top performers in different industries to help them overcome mindset issues that are holding them back. One of the modalities I use and that we're going to play with today is called hypnotherapy, and we're going to do an exercise on imposter syndrome. So it's going to be a short state change exercise to help you release imposter syndrome and make the most of your time in your business. So if you'd like to join into the exercise, please make sure that you're not driving a car or operating machinery, that you're just sitting somewhere comfortable and relaxed. So everyone who's joining in, just close your eyes for me now, and you'll keep them closed for the rest of the exercise. And then take in a deep breath, and as you exhale, just allowing yourself to relax. Take another deep breath now. Slowly exhale, releasing any stress, any tension from your body, just relaxing completely as you focus in on the sound of my voice. Notice the top of your head and use the power of your mind to relax and release any tension that's stored there. See that relaxation as a color, or feeling it as a warmth, allowing it to slowly spread down now through your forehead and eyelids and down through your cheeks, just smoothing the skin of your face as it goes, relaxing your mouth and jaw, your neck and shoulders, through your arms to the tips of your fingers and thumbs. Relaxing your chest now, and as you relax your chest, allowing your breathing to slow, your heart rate to slow, down your back and spine, thighs and knees, through your shins to the tips of your toes. Just so comfortable, just so relaxed. And now start counting backwards in your mind from 300. 300, relax. 299, relax. 298, relax. Just counting these numbers down, each number that passes sinking heavier, sinking deeper. Now taking control and slowing that count. As you slow this count, your breathing can slow, your body can slow, ticking over like a perfectly maintained machine. So calm, relaxed, and tranquil that you can stop this count completely and enjoy this time that's just for you. And I'm going to count you down from 10 to 0. With each number I count, just picturing those numbers vividly in your mind's eye. I don't know what color or font they'll be, but the 10 will be enormous, each number getting smaller and smaller till the 0 is so tiny you can hardly see it at all. With each number that passes, is sinking further, deeper, relaxed. 10, so big, so bold. 9, 8, just seeing these numbers now. 7, 6, getting smaller and smaller. 5, 4, really focusing in now. 3, 2, smaller still. 1 and 0. Totally relaxed and totally calm. Now just seeing a door in your mind's eye, and behind that door is the most beautiful beach you could ever imagine. I'd like you to step through that door and onto that beach, feeling that warm sun on your skin. The soft sand beneath your feet, just allowing yourself to relax there completely, releasing any stress, any tension from your body, just feeling so comfortable, calm, and relaxed. And from this place, just allowing your mind to drift now. Drifting to those recent moments, or moments in your life you felt like an imposter. You felt like you didn't deserve to be there. What did that feel like to you? What's the sensation in your body? And I'd like you to focus in on that sensation now. Focusing in on that sensation. I don't know if it'd be in your stomach, your chest, your face, however this feels to you, but there will be a sensation when you really question if you deserve this, if you're good enough. And I'd like you to start now to look at these situations from the outside. As if this was a friend of yours in your situation, looking in from the outside at your friend who's putting themselves in awkward, difficult situations, who's testing themselves. And what advice would you have for your friend? How would you help them through this? Start understanding you'd be telling the truth. And from the outside now, just giving yourself a hug, telling yourself how proud you are of yourself for testing yourself this way, that this discomfort is a sign that you're pushing yourself, that you're progressing. We don't progress in our comfort zones. We progress at the edges. And anytime you've felt imposter syndrome, it's evidence that you're testing yourself, that you're pushing the edge, that that boundary is starting to expand. And giving yourself a hug and saying, I'm just so proud of you for making this happen. And as you give yourself that hug, Just feel that pressure, that emotion release. Just letting it go, starting to see that this is your opportunity to grow. That anytime you feel that way, you can smile because it means you're making the choice to improve. Just smiling and seeing any of those moments, you're pushing yourself, you're moving the needle, you're upgrading yourself those moments when you're feeling tested. Each time feeling that confidence grow, understanding you're becoming a better and better business person, really understanding and feeling this. And just smile as your confidence grows in each of those moments, as you can leave those feelings behind. Because anytime you feel that way, you understand you're challenging yourself, you're growing, that this is a sign you you're moving in the right direction. And just understanding that shift, that change of mindset every time, it's just a sign you're moving in the right direction. So you can smile and you can feel your confidence grow and grow now. And bring that new confidence back with you as I count you up from 1 to 5 now. 1, 2 coming up now, 3, 4 and 5. Open your eyes feeling great. So I hope you enjoyed that short introduction to hypnosis and the power it can have on state changes. If you'd like to learn more about this, you can check out my app on iPhone or Android. It's called Prime Mind, and there's a large number of these types of primers available to you. I'll talk to you soon.

Now we have Christie's interview with Liz Germain, who is the CEO of Vidfluence. Vidfluence is what it sounds like. How can you influence your business through video? There's a lot of ways to use video into leveraging a side hustle that brings in cash and can be very successful, and that's what she specializes in.

So let's jump in. Hi Liz, thank you so much for coming. Thanks for having me. So tell me about you and how you started your business.

Well, I kind of accidentally fell into the internet marketing world. My sister and I grew up in Michigan and we were not healthy very at all and had a really transformational life experience that completely changed my life. I lost a close friend to suicide and it was a really eye-opening experience where I realized he was 19 years old. And I realized that we could all, at any point, this could be it. And so I decided to start making some radical changes in my life, including moving from Michigan to California. Got really healthy, wanted to master my mind, my body, my spirit. And in that process, learned how to become a personal trainer and get healthy and fit and all the things. And my little sister followed me along that path. And we had seen other bloggers and YouTubers and things like that out there sharing that information with other women. In the world. We thought, well, if they can do it, why can't we? We might as well try. And so we started a little blog, didn't know what we were doing at all, started an Instagram account, started our YouTube. Still were at that point, you know, I was a group fitness instructor and personal trainer. And so a lot of the intention was just to be able to help the students that we were working with in person remember what we did in the workouts that day, remember, you know, how to, how to eat healthier, how to replace unhealthy foods with healthier alternatives, and So we started sharing all that information. And I think the first product that we ever sold was a group workout challenge. We were hoping to get 10 women enrolled. We sold it for $20, which at the time was like, oh, this will be so great. We can get a couple hundred bucks and we'll help people. And that first challenge that we ran ended up having 350 women enroll from countries all over the world. And we looked at each other. We were like, wow. We were not expecting that. And it was really an eye-opener is almost like realizing, hey, if I turn the water on in this faucet, there's actually water coming out. Maybe we just adjust the pipes a little bit and we could do this full-time. And so over the next couple years, we invested in a lot of mentorship with a lot of amazing women entrepreneurs and really learned how to successfully run an online business. And we did that for about 5 years together. And after a couple years ago, she got married and decided to start a new business with everything that we had learned running a health and fitness business for women for 5 years. She started a new business with her husband, and in that time period, I took about a year off. I had all this, you know, automated revenue coming in, passive income, YouTube income. And over that time, I traveled the world, and I was like, oh, this is really cool, but I don't really know what I want to do next. And in that time period, I probably had a couple dozen people ask me like, what do you do? Why are you always traveling to these cool places? Like, do you, do you have a job? And I'm like, "Well, I have a lot of— we make a lot of money from YouTube." And the second follow-up question was always, "Well, how do you grow a YouTube channel? How do you make money from YouTube?" And it became very clear to me that it was a market need. And so I started shifting to teaching other entrepreneurs and experts and influencers how to really grow and monetize YouTube channels. So that's how I got in.

Well, natural question, how do you grow and monetize a YouTube channel?

This is a great question. It's kind of complex. I think the first thing that someone who's interested interested in wanting to do YouTube or make money from YouTube is to get really clear on who will be watching your videos. I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make is just putting out content that they think is a good idea without doing the research around what is the marketplace actually looking for. So the first step would be to get really clear on, well, who are these videos for? And how can I help support that person on the other side of the screen? There was a process throughout our journey where we did kind of fall into the obsession with the numbers and the metrics. I went through this leadership program and realized, "Oh, wow, every single number, every single subscriber, those are real human beings on the other side of the screen." And so as long as you're able to stay really connected to that, the fact that they're human beings that have problems, challenges, wishes, goals, all those things, you can help support other people on their journey. And the better that you do that, the more successful you will be on YouTube.

You mentioned ask them what they want. How do you do that? How do you know instead of guessing what what they are looking for. How do you find that?

Yeah, so YouTube is actually a search engine. This is something I learned along my journey. I had no idea. At first I thought, "Oh, it's just cool videos you put out there." But it's owned by Google, which is the largest search engine in the world, and YouTube's the second largest search engine in the world. So there are tools and resources that you can use to actually do the keyword research to figure out what people are typing into those search bars, both on Google and YouTube. A couple of my favorite ones are TubeBuddy, VidIQ and Keywords Everywhere. They'll show you how many people per month on average are searching for specific terms, specific questions, trying to solve certain problems. And then also you want to make sure you're looking at what's called the search pool, which is how many videos already exist for that topic. Because if you're a brand new channel, you don't want to step into a space where you're going to be competing with millions and millions of videos from creators that have over 100,000 subscribers, sometimes 500,000 subscribers. You as a new channel need to really get clear on where are those niche topics where I can fill those content gaps where there hasn't been a whole lot of content yet created for it.

Can you give me an example? Let's say I'm new to— is fitness and marketing, you know, is that too big of a space? Let's take an example of somebody who wants to create their own channel. What should we do?

Yeah, so let's take marketing for example. A new app on the scene is Clubhouse. We were just chatting about that. So Clubhouse is an audio-only app. There's really not a whole lot content yet about how to use Clubhouse, Clubhouse tutorials, things like that. So you could go that route instead of just saying how to grow a business online, because how to grow a business online, that's going to be way more competitive. There's, there's been, you know, decades of creators that are really good with huge channels making content around that. So you can look for new softwares, new apps, things that are more trending and on the rise, or breaking news stories to try to get in front of that curve of those trended in search, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So you would do short, what's the perfect amount of time, little mini videos teaching, let's use the example Clubhouse tools and tricks?

Yeah, so the average length of time of the videos that land on the front page of YouTube search is 14 minutes and 40 seconds. So we always instruct people to aim for that 7 to 15 minute time range, at least to start. And then what you can do is look at your analytics and see how are people engaging because watch time is the most important metric on YouTube. It's the thing that makes them money, right? So YouTube's also an advertising platform. They make their money in their business by having people stay on the YouTube platform. So the higher your watch time as a channel, especially as a new creator, the, the better chance you have of the algorithm picking that up and wanting to push your content to more people. And we call that the YouTube tipping point, where it's like you're no longer sending people to YouTube, YouTube is sending traffic to you. So to get to that point, you want to really pay attention to your watch time analytics. Start with that 7 to 15 minute time range and then look at your engagement analytics to see your audience retention. How are people actually making it through to the end of the video? And if not, you can use that data and information to readjust your strategy on how long your future videos will be.

Any tricks into how do I get them to stay watching?

Yeah, there's a lot of tricks. Number 1, be entertaining. Number 2, be educational. If you can do a combination of the two, that's even better. Another thing that we always teach is pacing and pattern interrupts. So you want to have something be happening on the screen every 3 to 5 seconds, whether that's a graphic pops up or a sound effect goes off or a cut to B-roll or a secondary camera angle. All of those different types of pattern interrupts help to keep the viewer's attention. So that's a couple, you know, beginner tricks that you can instill. Every 3 to 5 seconds?

Wow. Yeah. And do you teach people how to edit their own videos, how to add the 3 to 5 second interruptions?

Yeah, so to be clear, every 3 to 5 seconds, especially in the post-production process when you're editing the videos, if you're a brand new beginner, that's gonna be quite a challenge for you. So do your best. Just try to have at least every once in a while something is happening on the screen, whether it's a transition or whatever. When it comes to the editing process, of course when you're brand new, you're not an editor, right? Unless you went to film school, but most people haven't, and that's okay. We have a few different resources that we use inside of Vidfluence, my company, where we help people with that editing process and matchmaking them to an editor overseas that can actually help them for an affordable cost. That was one of the biggest mistakes I think I made in the beginning of my YouTube channel was we hired a US-based editor that was $50 an hour. And so every single video, it was about an average 1 to 3 hour turnaround for the editing, which adds up. Every single month we were paying hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get our videos edited at a once-a-week publishing rate. So what I, what I learned, I did a little digging, found some people overseas, and we've got a really great roster of editors now that will do it for $50 per video, which is super, super cool and helpful.

So tell me more about Vidfluence.

So Vidfluence is a video marketing agency where we essentially help experts and influencers grow and monetize their YouTube channels. Vidfluence is a shortened version of video influencer, right? That's what we help create. Um, and we work with all different types of people from beginners all the way up to established 7 and 8-figure businesses. So really, the, the journey of a successful YouTube channel for each of those types of people is going to be drastically different. If you're a beginner, you still have to figure out again, who, who are these videos for? Who do we help? What result do we help them get? And what are they searching for? How can we create content around that? How do I master, you know, my on-camera presence? A lot of the One of the things we talk about is pull your shoulders back and down, smile while you talk.

Speaking of, let's do that.

Smile while you talk. I know it feels awkward, but it looks great on camera. So we'll work a lot with the beginners on that type of stuff, really just mastering their on-camera presence. And then for more established businesses, obviously they have whole teams of people, so they need help with training their team on how to implement the strategies they're creating. Also keyword research, doing SEO writing for their titles, their tags, their descriptions. All of that kind of stuff. So the needs there are slightly different, obviously, because they're usually years ahead of the beginner. But I really have a soft spot in my heart for the beginners because I remember what it was like to be the underdog. And so that's really where my passion is. But the analytics side of things and the higher level, more advanced stuff is also super valuable for more established businesses.

So if someone wants to come work with you, do they do it online? Is it a coaching program? Do they come in person? Tell me more about that.

Yeah, so like I said, we have two tracks. So for beginners, we have two options. I have a YouTube growth course that is, you know, DIY. You can do it on your own, learn anytime, anywhere. You get lifetime access to that and we have a private Facebook group. So as questions come up, you know, me or someone on the team will be able to help them with that. The alternative is a 90-day Vidfluence Academy, which is basically like a YouTube and business accelerator. So if someone's brand new to the coaching world, brand new to being a consultant, Maybe they've made a couple sales, but they have not yet hit $10K months in their business yet. That's really what that 90-day accelerator is for, and we take them through a process called the GROW method. So we go through the groundwork of the business on the backend of YouTube, 'cause it doesn't make sense to grow a YouTube channel when you don't have a way to monetize on the backend. So we work on that first, then we go into the reach phase, which is all about YouTube organic strategy as well as a little bit of YouTube advertising, and then the last two phases are optimization and workflow. Getting your team in order, creating SOPs, getting your KPI tracking all in line so that you actually can run a data-driven decision-based business instead of just guessing what you think might work. And then for the more established businesses, usually depending on the size of the channel, if they have 1,000 subscribers or less, we do a YouTube Launchpad service where we help them launch the channel. We give them strategies for their playlists. We give them the video titles, tags of descriptions, we create thumbnails for them, we do their channel banners, we make sure that everything's linking up correctly. If they're over 1,000 subscribers, a little bit more established channels, we do a YouTube channel audit process. So we go in the backend of their analytics, we look at all the different settings that maybe they got wrong, which might be stunting their growth. We look at cleaning up the SEO in all the areas that it can be, making sure all their conversion links, which are like info cards, end screens, links in the description, links on the channel itself, all of those need to be embedded properly in order to not only rank the channel but also make sure they can take the viewers and turn them into buyers on the backend. So, once they go through one of those two processes, then we usually end up enrolling them into a 6 or 12-month channel management contract where we just continue to do that work and help their team.

Tell me some of your favorite success stories. Maybe someone just starting out.

Tell me some stories.

Right away, I just think of— Melanie, who went through our YouTube Growth Course, she, one of the things that we teach is the different types of content that you can create on a channel. So YouTube did a study years ago where they looked at thousands and thousands of YouTube channels and were trying to figure out what makes some channels grow faster and get better engagement than others. And what they found was a pattern in the types of content that those channels were putting out. They found that the really fast, high-engaged channels had hub content, Hub content and hero content. So I'll give you a quick breakdown of that and then I'll share Melanie's story. Hub content is where most people start, but hub content is really designed for people who already know who you are. So it's like the things you're best known for, the techniques, the methods, the things that you can really teach and instruct someone on. This could also be repurposed podcasts or Facebook Live videos that your audience is, once they know who you are, they wanna go deeper with you. I don't recommend starting with hub content 'cause on YouTube again, it's a search engine. So we need to get people in the door. So instead, help content is really the way to get people in the door. It's searchable and discoverable. These are like how-tos, tutorials, demonstrations, etc. And those are what you can really SEO, which means search engine optimization. You do the keyword research and figure out what people are actually looking for. And then the last type of content they found on these really good channels is called hero content. So these are the emotional storytelling-based videos. Videos where you're taking a stand on either a controversial issue or telling the, the origin story of the brand. Like, why— what is the why behind the brand? So we taught this to Melanie, and she decided to do a hero video, but she was kind of struggling with that, right? So she came to me and she's like, Liz, I don't really know what to put in this. And I asked her, well, you know, you're a mom. She's a vegan mom. Um, you can find her online at FitMama with an O. Um, and What are moms struggling with? And she's like, well, honestly, I'm always tired. Like, it's even hard for me to get through the course content because I'm just exhausted. My kids keep me up all night. They're coming in and out of the bed. And I'm like, why don't you create a video on that? It was the most low-budget video ever. She put a GoPro camera over her bed, like in night mode, right? Black and white, when her husband was out of town. And it shows her 3-year-old boy climbing in and out, right? Having nightmares, waking up, coming in, and her baby rolling rolling next to her on the bed. And the video was just titled "Why Moms Are Tired." And it went absolutely bananas viral all over the place because it's something that women, especially mothers and parents in general, can really identify with. So that's the whole point of a hero video is you wanna give a visual representation of what is it that is really affecting your ideal clients or your ideal viewers. She did it flawlessly. It was about a 3-minute video, so super short. Very low budget. Like I said, she just tacked a camera onto the ceiling and it ended up bringing in, I believe within that first week, $30,000 of program sales. She also landed her highest paying brand deals from that video because the brands found her and were like, "Wow, you're the perfect person. We want you to represent our brand." She also ended up going internationally viral. She got on international news stations. It was just a whole fiasco and it completely changed her life and business forever. Honestly, to this day, one of my favorite success stories.

What is your mission? I, I feel this like passion inside you. Like, what, what is— like, you're helping women and people find their story and their business. Like, what is it for you? What fires you up?

Honestly, I want to be a permission slip for people to be able to get paid for who they really are. I think that's one of the most beautiful things about YouTube is that you don't have to hide the messy moments. You can speak into them like what Melanie did. You can, you you can talk about your problems and challenges, especially if you've already figured out how to solve them, at least in some small way. When my sister and I were first starting on YouTube, there were some really embarrassing videos that we put out. Some of the first ones are super cringy, right? And every time we did it, especially if it was vulnerable, we always looked at each other and we said, if this helps just one person, it will be worth it. And I think as long as people really hold on to that and recognize that we're all on this human journey together, Why don't we just actually— why do we hide how we really feel? You know? Why are we doing that? Why should we have to do that? And I think YouTube really unlocks the space to be able to be a multifaceted, multi-talented, and even, you know, normal human being where you have highs, you have lows, and we all get to talk about it and be real people together. I think if I were to really tap into what my why is, it's to be able to give people permission to be who they really are.

Well, that is so fascinating because social media is almost this whole portrayal of how perfect your life is. So I love that you're flipping that on its head and saying, no, it's opposite. Like, let's be real. Let's show the human. Let's show our bad, our good, all of it.

Yeah, to an extent, you know. We've got to also remember human psychology, right? Like, we're not going to necessarily go all the way down the deep end with someone who the themselves seems kind of like their life is in chaos, right? So I always warn people against being too vulnerable. You have to do it in a tasteful and tactful way. You wanna make sure that you are not sharing content when you're in the mess. Maybe record it when you're in the mess 'cause you may be able to use that as B-roll and stuff like that later. But you wanna make sure that you're at least on the other side of it before you share it with the world to show the journey of, hey, I went through this thing, I figured it out, I allowed myself to feel my feelings and my emotions. I didn't stuff them down. I figured it out and now I wanna share the answer with you, if that makes sense.

It totally makes sense. So let's say I have this draw and I feel like I wanna do something on YouTube, but I'm not sure of the business. Do a lot of people come to you first with the YouTube idea and then they go through the business course and that solves it? Or should we come to you first with a business idea and then add YouTube to it?

Yeah, I think obviously you're gonna have a lot more faster success if you have some idea or you've already worked with a couple people before or sold a couple programs. But at the end of the day, it's important to understand there's 4 main ways that you can monetize a YouTube channel. Number 1 is to sell your own programs, products, and services on the backend. So that's kind of what the Vidfluencers Academy is designed for, is to help people get those programs up and running. Number 2 is affiliate marketing. So even if you don't have your own thing or you're not really sure, you can start creating content around a similar topic and then feature other people's programs, products, and services as an affiliate using their links. 'Cause every time somebody sees your video, they click on your link 'cause you're referring them to something, then you get a commission on the backend for that referral. The third way is brand deals and sponsorships. That takes a little bit of time to build towards 'cause you do need some level of influence. But luckily we live in a world where there's now such a thing as micro-influencers. So you don't have to be, you know, 100,000 subscriber channel to be able to work with really good, high quality brands and get paid well for it. And then the last way is through AdSense revenue. And this is, funny enough, this is where most people think people are making the most money from YouTube. But the thing about AdSense revenue, and this is the commission that you get for being able, for allowing YouTube to run advertisements on your content that you created. You get a little kickback for that. The thing about AdSense revenue though is it's very up and down and it's very very unpredictable. We don't know if it's— it should not be the foundation of the business strategy. So it should more like be the cherry on top of what you're already doing with affiliate marketing, brand deals, and selling your own stuff. So I think as long as people have an understanding of that's the main way that you can monetize a YouTube channel, then it becomes a lot easier to figure out, okay, well, which one of those do I want to aim for? Because the strategy is going to be slightly different based on, you know, if somebody just wants to be an influencer and only work with brands. They have no interest of creating a course or anything like that, they don't wanna do coaching, they don't wanna do consulting, then that's gonna be a very different strategy. We wanna grow the audience as fast as possible versus someone who's just getting started and they have an idea and they have a skill that will actually help other people, that's gonna be a very different journey for them. They could be having a 6-figure YouTube channel with less than 1,000 subscribers. I've seen it happen. So different strategies. I think the first step is get really clear on which ones are most relevant to me, me? And second, what can I actually provide when it comes to value for other people on the internet? So you've created quite a business.

Looking back where you were, what would you like to share with someone at home who's saying, wow, what do you want to tell them you've learned?

Honestly, you have to value yourself before other people in the world will. All the way back to our very first digital product that we ever sold, we only charged $20 for it. That, you know, I was 24 years old at the time, so I didn't really understand my own inherent value and worth and all the education that I had gotten up to that point and how valuable that would be for other people. So don't undercharge, but at the same time, you also have to know what the market is actually willing to pay. One of the things that I wish I had done back in the beginning was get mentorship faster. There were so many things to consider and so many options of what we could do, that I think we spent a lot of time going down not necessarily the most profitable or impactful paths. And I think if I had invested sooner, like in the first couple years, in a mentor, we would have gotten to where I am now so much faster. So when I look back, it was really scary though to make that decision to try to invest money that I didn't have into someone that's like, well, am I gonna get the results, am I not? But if there's one thing that I've learned, it's that I'm always willing to bet on myself. Yourself. So as long as you have that relationship with yourself and you know no matter what, even if this goes terribly wrong, I'm still going to figure it out, then you'll be okay.

How do we pick a mentor? That's a great question.

I think the— for me, what's always worked— I can only speak for myself, but for me what's always worked is I like to find people that have already mastered or achieved something that I'm looking to master and achieve. For me, results don't lie. So when I am choosing new mentors, I will do extensive research. I'll let everybody know that, hey, I'm I'm looking for this specific type of mentor. I want to master, you know, my finances this year. I want to master, you know, video production skills this year. And then I'll let everybody know that that's what I'm looking for. So then they all, like little worker bees, will have me in the back of their mind. And if they meet someone, they'll connect me. In addition to that, I'll also be doing my own research on, you know, who are the top influencers in the space? Who are the most successful people that have, you know, really mastered this skill? And then from there, I usually go based on intuition. Intuition and my feelings. So depending on, you know, their enrollment processes, how I feel in those processes, which one I'm most drawn to, I usually just listen to that because I've never been steered wrong by, you know, the God, universe, source, whatever you want to call it. And so really staying connected to my intuition, my gut feelings, has, has always put me on a positive path.

This is awesome because you're so technical and then you brought that in. How do you manage your left brain and getting and staying grounded? And do you have any specific tips that you do every day?

Yeah, this is really, um, this is really, uh, an interesting question. Yeah, I didn't know I was gonna ask you. I am a very naturally creative person. It's actually quite hard for me to be very organized and systems and process-based. So that's something that— it's a skill, right? Number one, recognize that that's a skill that you can learn. Any skill can be learned and improved. Improved. So I had to really stretch in the beginning to go from more creative, like flowy in the moment, to, okay, let's get structured, let me get some mentorship and figure this out. But when it comes to now where I'm at with the day-to-day, cold plunges, amazing, love them, do them every day. They help wake me up. It's better than coffee. Try it if you haven't.

Okay, wait, but how do you do it in your bathtub? Ice? Tell me, tell me how.

I got a chest freezer from Home Depot. They were out of stock for like a year, so I had to wait for a long time, but we got a little chest freezer, right? And then we just cocked the inside and we fill it up with, with water and it stays cold because I live in Idaho now, so it's always kind of cold. But if it were like summer or whatever, you can crank the, crank the temperatures and do temperature control that way. But cold, cold plunges, eating super, super well. And then I have a pretty— I don't like to say strict because I like to also listen to my body, but I'm pretty religious about my, my fitness and my workouts because I know when I invest in my health and my body, I'm able to show up sharper and actually do the things that are challenging and hard for me. So learning things like, how do I track KPIs in spreadsheets? Like, that is not exciting to me at all. But to be able to have a sharp brain and a healthy body to show up to the task at hand is really important. And then I would say the last super secret hidden weapon, I guess, would be a really powerful network of people that are on the same journey, that understand the challenges that come up, as a female entrepreneur and can really support me through that in the behind the scenes.

Wow, thank you. I think women, especially a couple of things you said, taking care of yourself because we take care of so many things and allowing yourself that you need to take care of yourself first.

100%, yeah, that was the whole mission and purpose of the first company I ran, Super Sister Fitness, was helping to teach women how to be strong from the inside out. I think a lot of times we're, especially in the social media age, we're always looking at these external factors and comparing their externals to our externals, but really the source of happiness and joy and fulfillment and success is within. So if we can really be in close relationship with that inner part of ourselves and honor that and take care of the temple in which we live, our bodies, then it has drastic effects on everything else because when you show up for yourself first, it becomes 100 times easier to show up for everyone else.

Thank you for the reminder. The second thing I think that's huge with women, we need our sisters, we need our network, we need to share and communicate and to talk and talk about what's working and what's not. And that's really a huge key to your success.

Huge key. And I have different pockets of women for different purposes and needs. I have, you know, my close girlfriends. And for me, I really didn't— I was never like cliquey in high school. I was always kind of like a lone wolf. Like I popped around and just, you know, I've never really had best girlfriends. But that was something that a few years ago I really set an intention for. I wanted to have powerful, strong, supportive, loving, compassionate women in my life who could be there for me in some of the dark moments, right? The moments that you don't see on the Instagram feed or on the YouTube video. And so I have different pockets of women. The women in business that we have, you know, group chats going on of, "Hey guys, I need a new virtual assistant. Can anyone help?" "Oh yeah, we have 17 different options. We even have spreadsheets for that now too." And then I have the, you know, the personal friends that are like more life and relationship type support and also just fun. And I think ever since I made that intention and that choice to really invite and attract powerful women into my circle, into my space, it has been life-changing. I know it can be hard, especially if you're not, you know, in these— am I allowed to talk about COVID times?

Yeah, no, bring it. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

In these COVID times, we are all very disconnected and it can feel very isolating. So one of the beauties of social media platforms and things like Facebook groups and all of that is you can connect with people around common interests. I've met a lot of my friends through the internet, which is a really cool thing that we have at our fingertips. So even if you're stuck at home, even if you feel like, oh, there's no one in my local community, I promise you there are communities online that are ready, willing, and able to support you on your journey. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's something I've been feeling as we're— I'm meeting so many incredible women and we're all joining together and it's been such a huge life-changing benefit. I mean, I feel like I have— 40 new best friends and it's growing and it's changed my life.

Yeah. I genuinely feel women do business differently in that way. That's something that, you know, I've been in groups with a lot of male entrepreneurs and I've been in groups with a lot of female entrepreneurs and there's always something with relationships and emotions in the female-based entrepreneur groups that, you know, it provides a— I don't even know what to describe it as. It's like a special— it feels almost more like family. It's like, "Yay! All my friends are here!

Yes!" And we'll share not only business, but we'll share relationships, our kids, our families. It's all connected.

I heard an analogy about the male brain versus the female brain once, and they described the male brain as like a waffle. It has all these different compartments, and the compartments don't cross over into each other. And then a female brain is more like spaghetti. Everything's interconnected all the time, and it's happening all at once. That is so So perfect.

When women get together, they talk over each other and they're messy. And when you do that with a man, he looks at you like, why are you stepping on what I'm saying? So it makes so much sense.

So thank you for that. We all have the capacity to really be successful in this world. It doesn't always have to be necessarily with money and finances, but money is a tool. And the more money you have, the more people you can help. I think that it's really important to stop demonizing money and demonizing success. It's really easy when you don't have money to be like, yeah, well, they have all this money, so they must be evil. That's not always the case. I think it's what we're exactly talking about, being in touch with the person, the version of you inside of you that is capable of overcoming these challenges, capable of building something that's long-lasting and successful both financially and from an impact perspective. And I think it's really important not to forget that it— If all these other people can do it, why can't you? She's in you. Say that again. If all these other people can do it, why can't you? Why? There's no gates anymore. We have the internet. You can Google whatever you need to know. You can figure it out. You can do it.

She's in you. She's in you. Thank you so much for coming today. You're such an inspiration. Thank you for having me.

I got chills on that last part.

I know. It was really awesome.

Thank you. Keep doing it. Right back at you.

For some more incredible 6-figure side hustle episodes, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.

So not only do we have inflation happening, not only do we have potentially the demise of the dollar, the economy is faltering, but we're having to adapt so quickly. Like people haven't seen yet how fast things are going to move.