#310: INCREASE Your Wealth & Embrace The Money Mindset With Heather!

Welcome back. Okay, so I know everyone's talking about how it's so hard out there right now, and there's a lot of negative things happening. There's layoffs, real estate's out of control. There's no certainty. But there is always a way to be the exception to the rule. So I've put together the best tips and the best cuts of our episodes. Talking about money, mindset, about how to create wealth, and to help you get. Get through whatever challenge it is you're going through. Remember, if you need support, we've got you, my mastermind. We've got a couple of seats left. Go to the link below in the show notes and you can apply there. If you don't need all the support, then this episode right here, it's gonna give you just what you need to overcome these financial challenges, get your mindset right, and be the exception to the rule. I know you can do it on this journey. With me. With me, with me.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was 23. I wanted to get a record deal, and that's a whole fun journey. I did get a record deal. I was signed to Interscope. I got dropped from Interscope. I got signed to Atlantic. I got dropped from Atlantic. I wound up writing music for TV shows and films for 10 years, like Pretty Little Liars and Criminal Minds and Switched at birth and McDonald's commercials. And I made a career out of that, and that was what I thought was gonna be like it for me. And I had a couple, my two first daughters at the time, and then I wound up actually continuing to follow the breadcrumbs, and my whole world opened up so much more than I ever thought. And I started a podcast and wrote books and all that stuff. But when I was first in la, I didn't have a trust fund. My parents are divorced. My mom was a single mom. We lived in an apartment growing up with very, very little. I slept in the living room and had to work a couple jobs just to kind of have enough money to pay for lunch and school, you know, that kind of a thing. No big deal. But, like, it wasn't a silver spoon kind of a life. And when I was in la, I got my, you know, whatever job I could get to pay my bills. And I had my roommate and everything. And I would take $200. That's a lot of money for me when I was 24 years old, and I would take $200 and I would spend it to go to the Peninsula and go to the spa at this Beautiful five star hotel in Beverly Hills. And I knew that if you bought this massage, you had access to the spa for as many as long as you wanted.

So.

So I was like, you know what, that's such a great way to spend the day because I'll go get a massage and then I'll spend an hour, like in the steam room and then afterwards I'll go in the sauna and I'll use those lavender icy towels with the eucalyptus. And my friends would say to me, you should be careful. Like that's so much money, you can't really afford that. And I would say, like, I can't afford not to do that. That day would give me so much. The way I would expand, the way I would feel, the. The way I would start to allow more of what's possible to seep in, the way I would start to align with that. The amount of things that would happen afterwards were just giant. And it's always been that way. Like you always go first, right? We go first, we co sign scarcity or possibility. And so I was always like, I would go first when it came to abundance. When I started my podcast, like, I didn't think, what's going to be the roi? How fast are people going to listen? It was just like, I'm doing this, end of story. So it will be. And then, yeah, for every 16 people in the beginning I asked to be on, there will only be one person who said yes. But it didn't matter. And it was the same thing with writing music. When I got dropped from the label, I had a day job for a couple of years and I thought, oh, this is what I have to do because my dream didn't work out and I have to be practical and get a job. But I was so unhappy. And finally one day I was looking at myself in the elevator doors and I saw myself wearing high heels and like a double breasted pantsuit. I just started to cry because I was like, you came out here with this like authentic, alive spirit and now you're like, you don't even recognize yourself. I quit and I didn't have anything to fall back on. And now I don't tell people that they should quit. I say, hey, use your job as your investor and build the bridge and let's work together to figure out what you're going to do instead of scrolling your phone because everyone's on their phone at least six to 10 hours, at least a week, if not 40. It's like, let's use those hours to build your Side hustle. And then in like three to six, nine months, you'll quit your job. And people, they do, and they're very successful that way. I didn't know that. I didn't have a coach, so I just quit. But I had to, because I knew I was. I didn't have any other possibility. It wasn't clear. And I was like, I gotta get out of here. And when I did, I started looking around and I was like, who says that I can't do music just because I didn't actually get to tour the world, like Rihanna or Taylor Swift? Like, there must be something here because I got so close. So I started to ask a different question. If you ask a new question, you'll get different answers. And I was like, is there any other way for me to do music? And I started to Google, how do other people do this? And I saw there were artists doing this thing called licensing their songs. And I was like, what does it mean to license your song? And why is Dawson's Creek and One Tree Hill and Grey's Anatomy? Why are they using all these indie artists like Ingrid Michelson? And why are they using all these people? Christina Perry's song was licensed to so youo Think youk Can Dance. And the next night, she had 200,000 downloads of this song. And she was a waitress. Like, I was like, oh, my God, I never even thought of it. So I was like, that's what I'm going to do. And I started to reach out to all of these people at Netflix, NBC, Paramount, And I was nervous. I felt crazy. Of course I did. I was like, I don't even know who I'm asking for. I don't know what I'm. But I was like, so you'll be uncomfortable. So what? And I was. And then I learned, okay, that doesn't get you past the front desk. Ask it a different way. And then I learned, oh, the name of the person who chooses the music is called a music supervisor. So then when I would call a network, or I would call a movie studio, or I would call an ad agency, because they have them too, I would say, can I talk to the music supervisor? Then I got smarter, and I would look up who the name of the music supervisor is. I would Google Deutsch Advertising or ABC Family Music, and I'd be like, oh, can I speak to so and so? And then I got better at having the conversations. And my point is, like, my friends would be like, that's insane. You should have an agent. Aren't there People who do that. And I said, look, no agent is going to wake up and think about me as much as I'm gonna think about me. So I'm gonna do it. What's the difference? I can figure it out. And I wound up figuring out that it's about having empathy and asking people questions and not saying, let me pitch you and be impressive. It's like, no, let me make a relationship with you. Oh, hey, Scott. @ Leo. I'm making this up. Leo Burnett, Chicago. I know you're doing McDonald's. I saw your last ad. I love that song by Spencer Ludwig. How do you like living in Chicago? P.S. oh, you like it? What's your favorite pizza place?

Me. Me too.

I've actually been there. Oh, do you like Uno's East? Blah, blah, blah. By the way, are you working on anything new? And if you are, what's the storyline? Oh, you know, it's a McDonald's ad about best friends. We're gonna need something that's like, Edward Sharp and Magnetic Zeros meets blah, blah, blah. And I would be like, you know what? What if I wrote you something and I'll send it to you? And he'd be like, cool. Yeah. I don't have any guarantees, but go for it. I'd be like, cool. I'll reach out. I'll reach out when it's done. Then I would go to a producer in LA and I would say, hey, I can't pay you for this track up front, but I just spoke to this guy who works on blah, blah, blah. And is it worth your time to, like, give me studio time with you two hours in the evening when you're done with whatever you're doing, and I'll cut you in on the back end. And it's like, be resourceful. Like, your greatest resource is not any resources, your resourcefulness. But do you see, Heather, what I mean, like, it was always like a fait accompli. It was like, I'm doing this. It's like, I'm doing this. We'll figure it out. It's not landing on the moon. And even that we figured out how to do. So then it would work out. And then sometimes it would work out in the sense that the guy at the ad agency or NBC or Netflix would say, you know what? That song doesn't work. But let me tell you this, there's something else we're doing. Would you write a song about home or Sisters or Brand New Day? I'd be like, yeah. So then I would get in the pipeline Because I wasn't, again, looking for the roi. It's like, I need it to work out. And why didn't. I was. This is the energy, right? I was always in this energy of like, this is so fun. I'm anticipating how cool this is going to be. And I wound up making about 400 grand a year writing music for film and TV and sitting over there on my shelf. I could grab them right now. But I was featured in Billboard and Variety. Not like a blurb in Billboard magazine. Like they did a full page spread with a picture of me. Like, who is this girl making this money without a label, without an agent? Then the same thing happened in Variety magazine, full page. My cousin was at the newsstand in New York City and he's like, is this real? Like, there's a full page spread on you? And I was like, I actually said to the editor of Billboard when we sat down to do the interview, I'm like, is this really newsworthy? And he's like, kathy, note to self. Like, don't ask me, you know? Cause it makes. Why would you want me to say. And I was like, you're right, you're right, you're right. But I was just kind of doing my own thing. And then, oh my God. I saw the next possibility and next possibility. And I wound up, long story short, being featured on like six or seven music podcasts. I never thought I'd have a podcast. And people who had music podcasts would say, let's talk about the business of music and how you did it and blah, blah, blah. And then one of the girls, there were so many emails that would come in from artists saying, I heard your interview. Oh my God, can you coach me? And I was like, no, no, I don't coach. What are you talking about? Like, I don't do anything like that. And this is 2016. And one of the girls wrote me an email and she's like, you should start an online class. Cause there's so many songwriters around. And I was like, what's an online class? What? What are you talking about? And she's like, yeah, people do this stuff online. I'm like, I don't even have an Instagram account. I don't even have a Twitter. I'm not on my. I never was an online person. I said, you know what? I was pregnant with my third daughter. I was like, what do I have to lose? I guess I could teach an online class to songwriters. I didn't have a podcast yet. Still didn't have an Instagram. No Email list. And I just decided, okay. And so I did a webinar, but it wasn't a webinar. Like, I didn't make a slideshow. I don't know how to make a slideshow. So was it a webinar? I don't know. I was live for an hour. And it was the first time I had ever even used the software. It was like a Google Hangouts or. I don't even know what I used. But I figured it out was nothing fancy. There was no funnel. And for three weeks leading up to it, I posted it in different songwriting groups. Like, hey, I'm gonna do this thing. And you can tell from the way I wrote it, there was no cool, polished. Like, it was just like, I'm doing this. People didn't even know who I was. It was like, okay, come to it. And we did this Google Hangouts webinar. I guess you could call it that. I was pregnant. I was just myself. And at the end of it, I was like, I'm going to teach a class. It's $1,000. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, we'll figure it out together. I'll answer your questions. Maybe I'll bring in some music supervisors here and there to answer questions for you about what they look for. And 147 people signed up that night. And I got off and I was like, this is crazy. Like, yes, I was already making $400,000 a year, something like that. We had already bought our first cute, six Spanish, like, style house in la, and we were able to afford the kids to go to a good school. But that was crazy. I was like, 147 grand. I was on for an hour. Like, that's crazy. And now I'm just going to talk to these people once a week. And I loved it. And then three months, four months later, one of our students, Amy, she said to me, this has to be a podcast. And I was like, what does that even look like? Like, I don't listen to anybody. I think I've been on a few. She said, just start one. And so I said, okay. I'm so busy now. I had three kids. The youngest one was like a month old. And I was like, well, no time. Like the president. I'm not going to get any less busy. I have three little kids under five, and I have a career. So I said, fine, I'll start a podcast. I was like, I'm just going to do it. It wasn't like, I'll do it until I have a thousand down. It was I'll just do it. And it started the podcast and as the podcast was growing, I was like, I'm not going to be doing music much longer. I could just feel like this is what I came for. This is really what I like to do. I loved it. I didn't care if I was interviewing someone early on who just owned their own bakery. I didn't care if I was interviewed because in the beginning it wasn't famous people. I just loved that. Here's what I started with and here's where I landed and I get to do something I love. And I'm making 10,000 croissants a month. And I can't believe like I went from dropping out of high school to doing this or whatever people said. And then it just, it really grew.

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I'm on this journey with me, with me, with me, with me.

Boy, the first step was grueling. I had to come home and tell Lori, babe, listen, lost my job today and we're going to have to, you know, sell matter of fact short sell this great big home that we just built. We have to sell or walk away from the rental properties. We have to get rid of all these cars, you name it. I had to break the news, so to speak. And I remember Lori looked at me and she was calm and she paused and she could have been mean, she could have been angry. She could have been all those things, but she wasn't. She looked at me and she said, I will never let this happen again. And that became the birth of Lori. How people know Lori today. Because until that moment, she never had an opportunity really, or the urgency to go and develop her skills that she was meant to go and develop. So that's one of the positive things that came out of it. So step one was breaking the news. Step two was swallowing and accepting this opportunity at reinvention. Listen, I could have looked at it and said, poor us, or this happened to us or any of those things. And I didn't. Of course, I had some anger, I had a lot of insecurity, I had plenty of fear. But I saw it as a bit of relief. I didn't have to play this role anymore. And I got to choose again. And I'm telling you, the best thing that you can control is perspective. You're either going to have a negative set of lenses on or an opportunistic set of lenses on. And I've always been pretty opportunistic. So I chose the opportunistic set of lenses and I put those on and I said, what could life look like going forward? And that's really where our entrepreneurial journey kind of started. Matter of fact, I always had that entrepreneurial bug in me. There were a few things I tried kind of half heartedly in the past. So that seed was always there. This was just the first opening for it to really grow into something. And I'll tell you what the third step was, was accepting reality and making the best out of it. In other words, we sold everything, or short sold everything, or walked away from everything in order to have a clean slate. And started out in a tiny little 900 square foot loft apartment in downtown Minneapolis and built from there. Instead of trying to somehow string this out or drag it on, we just said, you know what, let's tear off the band aid, let's start fresh, and then let's build something great going forward with these new lessons that we have in life. And that really was what gave us the trajectory, those few steps of launching us, so to speak.

And how many years? Because you and I were just talking before we turned the recording on about you're now closing on your third home and you have a different home for every season, and you're living that proverbial American dream now that we all want to live. How long did it take from that rock bottom? You had to go home and tell Lori that, you know, you had to start over to saying, you know what? I think this is working a long time.

See, that was about 12 years ago, as you and I sit here and record today, I guess almost 13 years ago. Right. So that felt like a short journey, but it's technically a long time. 13 years is a long time. And what happened was we became so gun shy. You know, the pendulum always swings too far one way or the other. So in losing everything, we became so afraid to spend again, we became so afraid to part with our money again that we really had to. And that's a lot of where what I talk about today comes from. We really had to set out to learn what do smart people do with their money? What do the people who have the life that we eventually want, what do they do with their money? How do they behave? How do they think? And it was in accumulating all that information and being willing to trust the information that you're accumulating and start to put it into practice a little bit and let that practice turn into small muscles and small muscles turn into large muscles that here we are 13 years later and these homes, we're getting these all in basically a one year period. And so it's not like it happens overnight by any stretch of the imagination. But I'll tell you, Lori and I made a couple of financial rules for ourselves that I would love to share. One of them in order to protect ourselves was that we will never ever have less than multiple income sources. And the rule that we live by is if any one income source went away today, we would not have to change anything about our lifestyle tomorrow. So this is the ultimate goal, Heather. This is what people should work towards. We live in a time multiple income sources is not a luxury, it's a, it's a must have because the world is changing so quickly, so dynamically. So you want to work towards building enough income sources so that even if your biggest one, even if your best one went away today, you wouldn't have to change your lifestyle tomorrow because the others could support you. That's rule number one. Rule number two was we decided we weren't going to buy anything that's a luxury. Now I don't mean the home over your head, I don't mean the car that gets you to and from work. I mean the extras, for example, these extra homes or a motorhome or a boat or something like that. We weren't going to buy any of that stuff unless we could pay cash for it. Now it doesn't mean we do pay cash for it because that would be wasting the chance at leveraging money right now at 3%, which is basically free money. But we will not buy something unless we can pay cash for it without changing our future lifestyle. So that's rule number two that we live by. And then rule number three is just that we try and pause and we really try and ask ourselves, is this just something we want for instant gratification or is this something that in two or three years we really see playing a significant role? So let's talk about this lake home that we're going to close on soon. This is not instant gratification. We already get to go up to Wisconsin every summer. My mom has a lake home there. We already keep our boat up there. So this is not an instant gratification of, oh, it'd be nice to have this. This is a legacy piece of property that became available. And Lori and I can't wait to bring our kids that we don't have yet to bring our kids up and make memories and friends and have this be in the family for a long time. So it's a long term play. And instead of an instant gratification play.

Oh, that's so, so good. And I love that you're both so on the same page about everything. What role does it play who you chose as your spouse in your entrepreneurial journey?

That's such a great question. So Lori and I met when she was 21 and I was 24. Friends first, then became lovers. I wanted to be hooked up right away, immediately. She had a different agenda, different timeline than me. And so I was willing to work through that patient, work through being able to, quote, earn her. But when we met at 21, 24, that's young. And you're very different people than you are today as I'm 44 and she's 41. And so over that 20 years, you become at least three or four different people each, right? Your likes, your interests, what drives you, everything. It changes radically. As a matter of fact, we should be changing. It's so unfair for people to expect the person they met 10, 15, 20 years ago to be the same person they met. That would be a nightmare. Lori would be so boring to me if she was the same Lori when she was 21. And I would be so boring to her if I was the same Chris that I was when I was 24. So what's really made it work was a couple of things. One, we've always said we're willing to try it on for size. So just like when you go in the dressing room, you try an outfit on for size, is it a fit for me? Is it not? Instead of saying that's a dumb idea or why would you want to do that? We've made an agreement that we always try each other's ideas on for size. And part of the rule is it doesn't have to be a fit. There is no obligation for it to be a fit. When somebody brings up, hey, I would love to try this or I want to switch careers, or you know what, if we could start experimenting with X, Y and Z. If you shoot it down right away instead of trying it on for size or considering it, that makes the other person feel bad and then they stop bringing exciting ideas to you and then that dooms the relationship. So you want to create an atmosphere where it's absolutely okay to reinvent yourself or bring new ideas into the relationship and know that the other person isn't going to embarrass you or shoot it down, but instead they're going to try it on for size. So that's been one great rule that's kind of helped us morph into who we are today. I think the other thing is we have. You're going to laugh at this, but we've always been walkers. Like we walk three to six miles a day every single day. It's a non negotiable for us. If it's pouring rain out, we'll still be out walking. Because when we've got that guaranteed container to physically remove ourselves from the place where we've done battle all day and change our state a little bit, and we know that we're going to have that chance to connect first thing in the morning and then at the end of our workday, that's a really important container to be able to talk through anything that would otherwise be put on the back burner. And I'll tell you what, we've done a great job of putting things out when there's smoke instead of letting them turn into a fire and trying to put it out then. And we're able to do that because we've got this daily container where we're willing to address anything that we have to address. So those are just a couple of ways that we've kind of grown into the people that, you know, they look at us today and they might say, oh, must be nice to have found another entrepreneur that understands how you tick and all that. We were not those people. We grew into those people together.

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I'm on this journey with me, with me, with me.

When I launched my own podcast about two years ago, the World Series was coming to Arlington. It was the first time that they'd had a neutral site because of COVID So my daughter is a huge baseball fan, Heather. So I bought a ticket for my daughter, myself and her boyfriend. But then I said, you know what? I'm going to back myself against the wall here and say, I'm not going to allow myself to go to the World Series until I get a certain number of downloads on the podcast. I wanted to go all in. And so I came up with a variety of ways to do that. And it was amazing how when I put myself in a situation of I'm going to lose something valuable, my brain went into overdrive. It was like ideas began to fire back and forth because there was a purpose, there was a cause, I had to do it. So the day before the World Series, we hit the goal. But I say all that because for people who are thinking about their money as if I go to a job, I come back home, I press repeat and do it again the next day. And then Sunday, about 4 o', clock, that icky feeling settles in that says, oh, I got to start this all over again on Monday. This message is for you. And I want to tell you, if you're working in a job right now, where your feet are today is where you can have the most impact. And if you can find a way to increase business, reduce costs, and grow the bottom line where you're at right now in a job, you can make more money, which means you can then give more money to the causes you care about. And I want to dispel something real quick, Heather. This was a problem I had to work through myself many years ago. And that was when I would give to an organization I believed in. I was giving money. So therefore, I was losing money for them to gain the money. Okay, so get this. It was lose, win, which is never a good scenario. And what I realized when I came upon this generosity purpose, this is a way for you to make more money, do more good. And because you're doing more good, more people typically want to work with you. And you are driven to make the business successful, which means you keep making even more money to do more good. And the cycle just keeps repeating itself. And so no Longer is it lose, win, it's almost win, win, and the charity gets one win. You're almost winning more than the charity is because it changes your mindset to have a fulfillment mentality and you're helping your customers. And I think you're helping your business, Heather, because you're decommoditizing the product or service you've got. There's so many things right now people can work with. Any cpa, realtor, attorney, salesperson, it all looks the same. Sorry to say to the audience, to the outside person, but when you raise your flag up and say, you know what, we provide great service, but what helps us stand out is we help make our community better. People want to work with that person and research tells us, surprisingly, they're willing to pay more money to do it because they're part of a thicker story. So when the competitors come knocking, they may be teased with a price reduction from the competitors, but they won't change because the bigger story of how you're helping make the world better and helping their community really is what hooked them in the first place.

Oh, it's so powerful.

And I'm telling you it works. I'm living proof. Please raise your hand at work. Make this change in your business. You will be thankful for it.

Okay.

People listening right now are thinking, oh, well, this guy grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. His dad handed him his financial advisor business. I know that's not true, but I'm hoping you could share with them a little bit about the truth behind how you came to be the person you are today.

Well, I wasn't that kid where I had to walk uphill in the snow both ways of school. And I carried a warm baked potato to keep my hands warm. I ate that potato at lunch. It's not a story like that, but I grew up lower middle class and what I didn't have going for me was I didn't see my parents take any risk. My dad was a metallurgical engineer, so he was very math oriented by nature. And he would always get to the precipice, Heather, of wanting to a risk of wanting to launch a business and do something more. But he couldn't quite get there. So I grew up liking money and I began to connect at an early age. The more money I made, the more I could give away. I remember writing even like in my left hand to make it look anonymous to give a cash donation to our church and the food bank so it wouldn't get traced back to me. There was something about that, that just drove me, you know, even as a kid, I kept track of every dime I found on the ground, every quarter of my first paycheck. So I didn't grow up in utter poverty, but I would say I had sort of a poverty mindset mentally when it came to my money, because I didn't see my parents have a plan or an ability to work themselves out of the bubble that they were in. It wasn't until my first job out of college that I reached a very important fork in the road. And what it looked like was I got passed over for a raise, which really bothered me. The boss would routinely say on Fridays, hey, by the way, Saturday is a workday. I need you to come at 8 o' clock tomorrow. I have to call my wife and cancel our plans. And then get this back. When people wrote checks, he actually bounced two of our paychecks. So imagine this. I give a tithing check to my church and my pastor calls and says, hey, Derek, don't know how to tell you this, but your tithing check bounced. Which meant the business didn't have money to pay us. So I quickly saw the writing on the wall and I reached this moment and I thought, I can either stay at this job or a salaried job like this. But someone would always be telling me what I'm worth based on the salary that they're giving me right then, that's what they're saying, here's how much I'm worth to the company. Or I can take a risk. I can put the chips on Derek, I can bet on myself, and go into a financial planning business, which I've always wanted to do. And that's the path I chose. So I continued working full time for three more months, got licensed in the evenings, into studying on the weekends and so forth, and eventually made that break. And people told me, derek, you're going to fail. You don't have enough money in cash reserves. You're not smart enough. You don't have a financial background. But what I had in my heart, Heather, was I recognized I was sort of a nobody. But it was with the heart and a desire of a somebody. And I recognize, even in high school when I ran for office and won because I brought people together, is if you can help people feel important and heard and appreciated, regardless of their age, regardless of their net worth, they will have an affinity toward you because you are endearing yourself toward them and making them feel an important part of your life.

Oh, that is so powerful. You brought up this poverty mindset what are some of the strategies that you can share with people listening right now, how to switch that mindset?

Well, let me ask our listeners this. Did any of you grow up with this scenario where you might have seen mom or dad or grandma and grandpa hit their fist on the kitchen table while you were a kid and they'd say, if only we had more money, then we could fill in the blank?

Okay, Absolutely.

So, Heather, I mean, when you see that as a kid, you can't help but begin to believe that. Well, I guess that's just how money works. The lack of it causes pain, and because we can't get more of it, we live with the pain. Or you might have heard someone say to you, you know, in life, there are the haves and the have nots, and we are in the have not category. Well, those, those beliefs. I just wish I could just punch my fist through some glass right now and say, look, stop that thinking. I mean, we get one shot on this earth. And whether you've made bad decisions in the past, or people have told you you are not worth what you're making right now, or you'll never get paid more than that, or you've made some really bum decisions, you can and change that. Let me tell you a quick story to illustrate this. So there was a woman who I was in the office on a Saturday morning, and my voicemail, I was blinking and I pressed it and a woman's voice came on, and she was scared beyond belief. She said, derek, you've got to call me back right away. I balanced a check and I'm going to go to jail.

My gosh.

What?

I was like, who goes to jail because they bounce a check? So I quickly called her back. I knew this message wouldn't wait until Monday. And I said, tell me what happened. She said, derek, I feel so stupid. I didn't move money from my savings to check in. I wrote a check. I got this letter in the mail. It bounced, and now I'm going to go to jail. I said, okay, let me press pause. We can call the bank on Monday. We'll take care of the bank and so forth. And to cash the check, the balance. But why do you think you're going to go to jail? So she began to tell me a story. And when she was 7 years old, she's 55 right now, 7 years old, she overheard her dad receive a call from a store owner that he had just bought some school supplies for and some clothing for her and her siblings, and he accidentally bounced a check as well. And the store owner said, because you bounced a check, I'm going to send the police over there and we're going to send you to jail. So this seven year old girl thought that if you bounce a check or even more if you make a bad financial mistake, you go to jail. So now Fast forward, she's 55 years old. And what that did for me, Heather, is it gave me this entire epiphany of. For the past 10 years, as we worked together, she was always hesitant to take risk. She wouldn't take advantage of investment options I gave to her that would have made her quite a bit more money. And she was underpaid for the position that she had. Once we began to talk about this and she began to realize the false money belief was not just false, it was actually costing her money and opportunity. She actually got another job, was making more money, her life dramatically changed. And so what I want people to hear is don't just think when you say money beliefs, it is just this abstract thought. Your money beliefs can actually change the course of your family and your family's generation for generations to come. And it all starts with you having the courage to bet on yourself.

I'm on this journey with me, with me.

I feel for me a lot of my, my life up until even when I started the first business, I was running from that pain, that life. Like, you know, I didn't want, I wanted to make money because I didn't ever want to have to depend on anyone. Like I wanted to be successful so that I had power and control over my decisions and my autonomy of my life. So that's I was running from. The interesting thing was I even once I got longer on my journey, I never chose what to run towards because I was running so hard, so long from things. Now if we talk specifically about the abuse, I never talked about it other than when it first happened. I literally bottled it up, stuck it down inside and for 20 years never uttered a word. And looking back, it's interesting how our survival mechanisms that are so strong in us will kick in and will really get us through whatever we need. So for me it was about just always grinding, always focusing because I didn't realize then that I got so caught up into who I wanted to become and how much, how far I wanted to get away from all this situation that I was really just trying to create the life that I wanted because I didn't want to acknowledge what was and I didn't probably address it. I think I was close to 30 before I ever really talked about it and really have only opened up to talk about it publicly in the last couple years is for me, it was one of those things where everything started to connect. My life started to. To be so much clearer when I started to open up, because I think that we are. We have as much pain as great as our secrets. And I think when we're hiding from something and we're trying to minimize something, or we're trying to just completely compartmentalize something, no matter how hard you try or how good you are at it, which I was really damn good at it, it will surface in other ways. It will surface in choosing the wrong partner next. It'll surface in making a bad choice and hiring someone or having you know who you're going to sleep with or who you're going to marry or. I think that you choose. You choose bad decisions when you aren't really healing what you've already gone through. And so, you know, it was definitely a journey that then took me to, like, really talk about it and open it up. But the interesting thing was when right before I probably talked about it for the first time. I had bought a building because I was investing in real estate, commercial building, and had no idea what I was going to do with it. But I just loved commercial real estate at the time. So I would buy any deal that I could find. And I bought this building. It was sitting there vacant, and I was driving, leaving the business. You know, I'm, like, rushing and pushing, and I'm, like, climbing so many mountains and. And I made this, like, Mecca little place that, like, everyone wanted to come to, and we were really known to, a pioneer in the space on the east coast and, like, all this stuff. And yet I felt so freaking empty. I felt so unfulfilled. I accomplished every one of those goals on my list when I was 15. And yet I still was driving by that building and thinking, is this it? Like, did I. Did I do all of that that I get out of all of this abuse for this. For this feeling? And it was like in that moment, the best way to describe it, Heather, is like, I. I recognized everything that I've done and then everything that I still didn't have. And at that moment, I was driving by this building, and I thought, what am I going to do with this building? Like, this has been sitting here for a year. I got to do something with it. And it was like a voice like, we're talking, said, put your animal shelter there. And I was like, I never wanted to open an animal shelter. I never wanted to have a nonprofit. Like, those weren't things that were ever a conscious decision for me. And. But I did. It was like a gut. It was like a gut check. And it was something that I immediately did. And of course, because everything else I figured out, like, why can't I figure this out too? So figured out how to start a 501C3 and, you know, turn that building into a kennel and everything that we needed it to be to house animals. And it was through that. It's interesting, I built a nonprofit to save animals, but in the process, they saved me. I didn't realize that throughout life because I felt so alone that I turned to animals to heal my dog, that I would see, you know, the. The rabbits or cats that I would save and want to bring every stray, stray animal home. And so I. I look back and think, if I didn't have all of that happen to me, I wouldn't have the heart that I have now to help end suffering and to not want to see other people go through. It was really through a very unconventional way that I truly healed. And it was through pure contribution. It wasn't the achievement of my goals. It was through giving and being in service to others.

Oh, my gosh. That's so beautiful. You can make me cry. I love that story. I love that you have turned such a horrible situation into such a gift, and I'm just so proud of you.

That's such a beautiful story.

Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so back to business. Because this was something, you know, looking through all of your content, looking at your book, one of the things that you talked about that was helpful to me, incredibly, as someone who's on this journey now, working, you know, 25 plus years in corporate America, which I know like the back of my hand, I don't know, this new entrepreneurial. I'm only a few years in, so I'm a rookie. And learning as you go, which is exactly what you did. Figure it out along the way, which is fine. However, it's helpful sometimes when someone's ahead of you and they give you some tips and, you know, hearing you explain the difference between someone who's working alone, like your father did, versus someone who becomes an entrepreneur like you did. What are some of those hacks and differentiators that you can share with us?

So the biggest. The biggest thing to remember is oftentimes people think they're becoming an entrepreneur. They think that they're building a business, but really what they do is they end up building themselves a job because they didn't build the business with intentionality of how they want their life to look if they're ever going to exit this company. Because, you know, and it's fine if somebody wants to be a self employed person. Nothing wrong with that. Some people love what they do and they want to continue to be the artist or the talent, but they never sat down to identify, are you really the entrepreneur or are you really great with managing people or are you the talent artist within your business and you're the one that should be front stage, as we call it, as opposed to building the business and directing the growth. So it's really key. You can build anything you want. But what I see most people do is they don't recognize the difference. So social media has glamorized being an entrepreneur. I have no idea why when I came out of my ex, I didn't even have an Instagram profile. Like, so when I came out of my exit and like saw this, I'm like, why is all of this being glamorized? Like I've been pulling my hair out for 20 years. I'm dealing with employees, lawsuits, like you name like all the things, business structure, you know, I mean, it's just been nuts. So I was like, I don't understand. And then I really started diving in and that's when I was like, oh, okay. Well, most of these people actually haven't built a business, so that's why they're glamorizing it. Because they can take a laptop to the beach and that's supposed to be some fun thing until they realize that they have to take the laptop to the beach because they have to run the webinar, they have to do the thing, they have to have the workshop, they have to connect with the team. So if you're not intentionally scaling and growing a business, if you're not intentionally building systems and having efficiency in the business that other people can run, you will always be tied to it. And that's a job. And actually it's harder than just having a job because people think, oh, I want time. I want to be able to do what I want with my time. When you're an entrepreneur, oftentimes you have no control of your time because if your team, someone calls off, you have to step in. If all of a sudden the event's not going as well as you want, you got to jump in and handle things or this ball was dropped and you got to jump in. It's actually, maybe you actually just want A job, and then you can take your money and build assets so that then you can do whatever you want. The difference between building a business and a job is a job. You always are going to trade time for money. A business, you build a machine that generates revenue, generates wealth, so that you can invest it and do anything you want. If I did anything right, it was by reading books in the beginning that taught me that. And then I've always been able to. If I do anything that I'm good at, it's identifying patterns, which is why I can jump into someone's business and like, really see things or jump into someone's investment and be like, oh, that's because this, this, this, and this is wrong. Based off of two and a half years or two and a half decades of seeing different patterns. If you want to build a business, it is a totally different skill set than just being really good at something that you do. Another is right or wrong. Neither is bad or worse. But just make sure you know what you're building so that you don't end. Golden handcuffs. I see a lot of times people end up in these golden handcuffs.

They.

They think, oh, yeah, they look like they're doing great. But really you just had to sit on back to back this, or you had to go do all these coaching calls, or you had to do all like. And yes, it's nice that you can do it from anywhere. But you know what's even nicer? To be able to do it from anywhere and not have to drag your laptop around unless you really want to. Like, that is really what building a business is all about. You want it to build wealth so that you're not constantly trading time for money.

I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while.

You could miss it.

Come on this journey with.