Money Stories

Hello, hello! We are about to go live with the masterclass for the month. Just let me know that the audio is coming through clearly, and I look forward to chatting to you in just a couple of minutes. Hello, hello everyone. It is October and it is time for our end of month masterclass, and I am so excited to be able to talk to you today about money stories and how they may be holding you back from your abundance that you want to create in your life. So it's lovely to have people here live. I know that it's not always the most convenient time for everyone, and some of you are going to be watching this on replay. So please let me know, are you watching on replay or are you on live? Drop the notes in the comments. I'd love to see who's here. I'd love to see your names pop up as well so that I know that, uh, who I'm talking to. As you know, every month I tackle a topic that I see that there's a lot of conversations around, and this month is all around the money stories that we tell ourselves. And it's an interesting topic to look at. Now, you may have been following some of my posts during the month, and you know, just recently I posted some of the stories that we hear from the actual songs that we listen to every single day. We put together a bit of a playlist on Spotify. I'll drop those in the notes of a bit later. But gee, you know, there are so many songs that have money as a concept, everything from Pet Shop Boys to Dire Straits to Kenny Rogers. And it's interesting, you know, these are the songs that we grew up with, these are the songs that we sing, these are the songs and the messages that our subconscious is getting. So what if I told you that there was something always listening something that was taking notice of us and what we were saying. And I have to tell you, it is not Siri. Hello, Siri. Uh-huh. She's listening. She is here to help us, but that's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about our subconscious. Now, what is our subconscious? Well, essentially, it's a way that we orientate and how we turn up in the world. And we're getting all of these messages. We're getting all of these stories all the time. That are actually going to tell us, hey Amanda, lovely to see you. They're all the stories that we are telling ourselves and that we're coming up with. Now what just blows my mind is that by the time we are 35, 95% of our routine, our beliefs, the stories that we tell ourselves and how we orientate ourselves in the world are already fixed. Now you think about it, you get up in the morning, You may have a morning routine that you do, and you're doing a lot of that just unconsciously. You're cleaning your teeth, you know, you're making breakfast, you're getting the kids to school, you're getting yourself ready for work, you're getting yourself to turn up. A lot of the things that we do, we're not even conscious that we're doing. And that is actually how a lot of the money stories that we have programmed into our mind actually happen as well. What's happening is we actually have this orientation and how we're turning up that we're not even conscious of because it is so ingrained in the way that we are. Now, I'm 53 next month, and just to think that there has been so many messages that I've been getting over the years and so many messages about money and how I turn up that have actually become the way that dictates how I turn up in the world. You know, I'd like to think that I was the true captain of my own ship, but the reality is that more and more I look into some of the ways that I turn my relationship to money and with wealth and my career and my companies, it makes me more and more, I guess, aware that there is so many different stories that we have, that we have playing out, that if we just let them go and we're not aware of them, then they're going to dictate the way that we can have an awareness of how we can reorientate to get what we want. Because we're not getting what we want then it's obviously an indicator that we're doing things wrong, but we don't always work that out. Now, I've been watching the SAS show on TV, and basically it's a show, it's like the Green Berets, the Navy SEALs. They've grabbed a group of celebrities and they're putting them through a really, really hard workout. And you know, they're doing the shooting people and they're pushed to the limits. But what's interesting, they take them into the interrogation and they put a, you know, a bag over their head, whip off the bag, and, you know, they've got the, the senior instructors there, and they talk about shame, or they talk about, you know, why they're on the actual show. And what's really interesting is the senior instructor always says, tell me a little bit about your childhood, and he pulls out the most incredible information that says, ah, so isn't that interesting how that message that you got in childhood about who you were or how you turned up, that belief that you have is now actually still persistent right now. And it gave me this awareness that, you know, no matter how many personal transformational courses that you've done or, you know, creative orientation books that you've read, the reality is, you know, even in the military, there's an awareness that way back in childhood, we were actually given messages that may not have served us, that may have been turning up and telling us things that aren't actually allowing us now to actually create the world that we want to have, the abundance that we have. Maybe we have money stories. Maybe we have these stories that, you know, we are continually reliving. And I'm really interested, if you have a money story, regardless if you're watching this on replay or live, Tell me the money stories that you have, or some of the money stories that have come up for you in the past. Now, I posed this question recently— I'm just gonna pull up my notes— in a Facebook group. There's like 300 people that actually shared these money stories. And these are some of the ones that I heard. Money doesn't grow on trees. What about the poor pay for everything twice? Parents— someone said their parents were fond of the saying, "That person has more money than sense," which kind of gives you a bit of an indication they don't really think that rich people were that clever. What about, "A fool and his money are often parted"? "It's easier to enter the kingdom of heaven than a rich man to actually—" sorry, "It's easier for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven." Now, there's all of these stories that are going on. And these stories are stories that our parents possibly threw out, you know, at one time or other, but they're stories that we heard. And it's like the money stories or songs that we're hearing, the words that we're hearing in the money songs. There's all of these constant messages that we're getting. So just being observant of those and just being mindful of the fact that, you know, we're actually putting some meaning on this. And if 95% of how we actually orientate and how we turn up in the world is actually dictated to us by the time we're 35, then there has to be a lot of impressionable years from our youth and our young adulthood that are actually, you know, when we're not cognitively really got capacity to process this information, but we're actually defining our stories. Now, you know, I have a course, Renovate Yourself, Renovate Your Wealth, and the participants who went through that first course, and you can see this in the course recordings, and you know, their observations about the money stories that they had, there was one in particular where this lady had a money story around rich people being evil. And in actual fact, driving down the streets of Sydney, suburbs where beautiful big homes and rich people were, actually had her, you know, feeling really quite resentful and angry towards them. Now, life worked out quite well for her. She had an amazing career and had the opportunity to buy one of these beautiful homes that she really desired, really wanted this home. And she bought this home and went completely into a funk, pretty much didn't leave the home for a number of months, got quite depressed and upset, and she couldn't work out why. And And it wasn't until we were going through the course, she was like, gosh, I had always resented and hated the people who were in those big houses. And then I became one. So as you can see, you know, these kind of stories that you're playing out are stories that can perpetuate. And until you actually step back and go, hmm, what were the stories that we told ourselves? Can we actually have an understanding of how we are orientating? Now, I wouldn't say that I grew up poor. Because when I think of poor people, I think, you know, they don't have home security, you know, they really, you know, they're moving to place to place, you know, they can't make rent, it's really difficult, or they can't put food on the table and things are really hard and harsh for them. And I guess, you know, by definition, that definition that I placed there, I don't have think that I was poor. My father was a farm laborer, and as a part of being a farm laborer, they gave you a home and you got meat. You know, we had lamb, we had roast lamb 3 nights a week and lamb chops 4 nights a week. We were good. But he never actually got paid more than minimum. He just worked for existence, worked for accommodation, and worked for food. So never really got ahead. And you know what's really interesting is that although I never considered myself poor, I never saw myself as poor. Well, I didn't really even compare myself to my friends. They had homes, I had a home. Their dad and mum might have paid it off and had no loan against it. We had a home. I didn't really know the difference. I grew up in a country town in Dubbo. No one went on overseas trips. It was a big deal if you went to Sydney, which was 600 kilometers away. Like, so there wasn't that comparison that I had. We grew up in a very happy home. We may not have had a lot, we just weren't aware of it. But one of the things that I was aware of was that money didn't, we didn't really have a lot of money. And if we did have money, we spent it. Now, to be able to actually create a little bit of income, my dad created a market garden. So we were out every Sunday. He worked 6.5 days a week on the farm. For the half day he had off, he had his market garden. And we'd stand there and we'd catch rockmelons and we'd catch cucumbers and we'd catch pumpkins and watermelons when we got a bit bigger. They were pretty big, and he'd sell them, and they'd have a little bit of money. And sometimes my sister and I, we would get some of these vegetables, and when we were living not on the farm but in a house provided for us in town, we had this little garden, um, market stall, and people would come and buy them. But what's really interesting was this perpetuating, um, notion of money wasn't what we really had. You know, when we had money, we spent it, because, you know, let's face it, my parents probably had to spend it because they didn't have a lot. As soon as we would sell a, you know, a pumpkin or a rockmelon and we'd get our 30 cents, we would run next door to the chemist and we'd buy lollies. Now this wasn't just a once-off, you know, we're having, you know, parents gave us a couple of vegetables to sell so we could have some pocket money to get lollies. This was like insistent. So when mum used to give me 50 cents to go down, and we're talking the '70s here, to go down and get milk, they used to— I used to get like my 5 or 10 cents in change. Now I felt that I could not leave the supermarket unless I had spent that. And not only had I spent it, but I had got a bargain and I'd come home with half-dead tomato plants and, you know, day-old bread or something going, "Oh, look what I've done. I've spent all the money that you gave me." And so growing up with savings was just not— was something that was completely foreign to me. And you can imagine my very first day of my very first job, and I got this pay— they gave me a company credit card and they told me they were going to pay me in 2 weeks. And I went down to the shops underneath where I was working and I bought myself an Auriton handbag. Now it was like $300 back in like the, in the, in the late '80s. Oh my God, early '90s. That was just extraordinary. And I couldn't believe it. I didn't have to give money All I had to do is like give them this card and they did it and, and I had this handbag and it was so exciting. I had 2 weeks of the most amazing shopping spree and because I was like, I didn't even have to have money to spend it. This was like so foreign to me. There I was, 2 weeks later, you know, I get money in my, my pay gets paid into my account. I've got money now that I can also spend. So I'll go and spend that because, you know, don't really want to be able to save things. And so I went and go and spend that. Month later, credit card bill. I was like, oh, wait a second, I have to pay for this? But I've just spent all my saving, all the money that I've earned. What am I going to do? And then there was this amazing thing at the bottom that said, by the way, you don't have to pay the $300, you just have to pay like $30. They didn't at that stage tell me it would take me 30 years to pay it off with all the interest. So I was just like, this is the best thing ever. All I need to do is use the credit card, use all my savings, have a really good time. Everything was great. These are the stories that were running in my mind. Now they came, I mentioned when I was like, you know, 5, how old was I? Probably 9 or 10 selling these things. This perpetuated all the way back to even earlier. Now my parents, you know, my dad was living on a farm, managing a farm, and you know, he used to get his little pay packet with like $20, $30 in it, whatever it was, with these $2 notes. And on the $2 note, there was John MacArthur brought the Merino sheep to Australia, and a sheep. And we had at the end of our bath this great big heater that heated the hot water. And Mum walked in one day and I had Dad's pay packet and I had the $2 notes and I was putting them into the heater, burning them, going, bye-bye, babas. So even when there was like a really junior, early type of memory for me, the first memory was me actually going, oh, we have money, let's burn it. So, you know, these kind of memories, these money stories, they come, you know, we We are bombarded with messages from our youth. Ah, hey Lisa, hey, good to see you there too. But you know, we have these stories, right? We have all of these stories that we are hearing all the time. And if you think, by the time we're 35, we actually are orientated into pretty much 95% of the way we're going to operate. It makes it really, really hard to A, be aware of that, But B, to actually break that money story and start creating that life of abundance, that life that we really want. Because that ultimately, you know, is what this group's about, creating the abundance in your life. And not just financial, but it helps to start with financial because everyone wants to, to have enough money to do what they want, when they want, with whom they want, the freedom of choice. But also, you know, to have that abundance of love, of travel, of connection. You have that abundance that allows you to actually create what you want in the world. So the first thing, you know, I think we really need to be aware of is the stories. And I'm really keen to hear about the money stories that you may have playing out in your head, or the money stories that your family used to tell you. Because I know, you know, for me, the money story I had was if you had money, you had to spend it. And geez, you know, having a credit card meant I could spend it twice. It did take me a while to pay off that credit card, and it wasn't really until I was probably 28 that I had a real moment of reflection and that gave me kind of the concept or the orientation that allowed me to see where these stories were coming from. And I was sitting, you know, I'd gone to visit a friend who was working in New Zealand. I'm sitting in this beautiful park, picked up this book book at the airport, Rich Dad Poor Dad. I'm reading it and there was this question. And the question was, do you work for your money or does your money work for you? I have to say that, that completely changed my whole orientation. And I sat there under this tree for hours, as my friend would say, with my self-help book. And I just sat there going, oh my God, I work for money. And by the time the next paycheck comes in, and I was earning very good money at this stage as a mining engineer in the mining industry out on mine sites, I spent it all. There were paycheck to paycheck. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to turn up the next day to earn even more money. And, you know, I had seen my parents work so hard. I'd seen my dad work so hard. No holidays, 6.5 days a week, and then in the market garden for the other half a day. I started work and they said, "Oh, by the way, you get 4 weeks holidays and we're going to give you a loading. We're gonna pay you more when you're on holidays." Like I had no concept of how this money thing worked. 4-week holidays and I get 20% more when I'm not at work? I was like, "This whole money thing, I don't understand it. This is just mad." And so, I really sat there and I was like, Well, if I'm just working for my money, how do I make my money work for me? How do I understand, you know, what is an opportunity for me to actually understand, A, how I make money, but B, how I can actually save that money and not spend it and hide it away from myself so I don't see it. But also, you know, how else have I got stories or things that I'm doing that aren't consistent of me actually creating a life of abundance that I want, but having to live for existence to the rest of, you know, till I retire and then hope. Hope is not a strategy, financial strategy, by the way. Hope that the government's going to give me some type of superannuation or 401k or whatever that allows me to, to actually live life. Because I think the biggest elephant in the room is that, you know, we work for 40 hours a week for 40 years to then retire on 40% of what we were earning before. And if we don't actually take control of our own abundance and understand how we can create that financial abundance for ourselves, we are neglected, neglecting the opportunity to actually live fully and even not have to work for 40 years. Let's face it, you know, some people love their job, but other people are like, they love the job, but they'd like to actually do some other things too. Maybe work 2, 3 days a week. Maybe create a business. And, you know, in my Business Accelerator mentoring container, I've just run a masterclass for my clients this morning. And, you know, they're all creating these extraordinary businesses that have legacy, that have impact. You know, these are their heart's desires that they're only just admitting to themselves that is where they want to orientate themselves for the next 10, 20, 30 years. Being able to see what you want to create and not have that limitation of money holding you back. What a gift is that? So, you know, one of the things that, you know, we've talked about just now is the money stories and the beliefs that we have, you know, the meanings and concepts and limitations and conditions that we put on ourselves. But, you know, we just need to have an understanding of, you know, how, how we are doing that, you know, what are we doing? And, you know, I know as a child we were moving house and for— and this is completely irrational, but my parents decided to sell this china cabinet that we had. Completely irrational breakdown that I had. I was like clinging to this china cabinet. And a china cabinet is basically this glass cabinet where you put, you know, all of your goodies in. So, you know, Dad had these silver plates that he had won from the Kolarinabri show for the best sheep's fleece, and, and Mum had, you know, her beautiful crystal that they got for their engagement and wedding present. It was like, you know, all of our family worth was actually associated with this china cabinet, and they decided that they didn't need it. We didn't need to move with it. And I just had this irrational breakdown. And it's interesting, you know, they decided to keep the cabinet. And this has only just recently come up because they've just moved to this beautiful retirement village. And they're like, you know, we've been carting around now. So that was when I was 7. I'm now almost 53, carting around this china cabinet because I had a breakdown about it for all of these years. They're like, Jane, would you like the cabinet? And I was like, no, I don't need the cabinet now. And I had to work out why did I need that cabinet. And the reality was that was the only indication in our whole home of something that showed that we had worth. Yeah, we were worthy. Someone came into our home, there's the china cabinet with all of our special things in it that showed us that we were worthy, we should belong. And I had this childlike assumption that I would be acceptable and I would belong if people came into our home and could see that we had these really special things. And the things were defining worth, not me or how I turned up, but things were defining worth. And that took me like 40 years to realize this is only a recent observation, but that china cabinet, every time I walked into my parents' home over the last 40-plus years, I see the china cabinet and I see the china and I see this 1956 silver plates in there, and I had the sense of, oh, you know, that's our special things. And these china, these glass crystal glasses, you know, we use them 2 to 3 times a year because they were so special. And it's interesting now, you know, I had created and had wanted my own china cabinet you know, when my husband and I had a home. And he was like, yeah, what are you going to put in the china cabinet? I was like, my beautiful Waterford glasses that I have that I got for my wedding. And I could see I was actually perpetuating this. And he's like, well, why are you going to put them in the cabinet? Why wouldn't we just put them in the cupboard? I was like, well, then people can't see them. He said, oh, okay, so people see them. Did you want to use them? It's like, oh no, no, they're too special to use. And he's like, I don't understand this. And I was here with this being dogged in absolutely standing by this theory that I needed, A, to have a china cabinet to put my china in so people could see my special things that I wasn't going to use. And it's funny, his questions allowed me to see this kind of dysfunction of these indications of wealth that I had around this Waterford crystal. And it's funny, every single night now we have the Waterford Crystal in our normal pantry cupboard. I pull it out and I have a drink with my glass, my beautiful glass. And if it gets damaged, it gets damaged, you know. And if it breaks, it breaks. But I had the joy of drinking out of a beautiful glass every night. And this is just one way of, you know, being able to see, you know, these kinds of stories and how you turn up and what does worth mean. Because I think it's really interesting that, you know, it wasn't until he kind of took me through these kind of like, why is that important to you? And what's that mean about you? And who are you trying to impress? That I actually got this observation and went, oh, okay, I actually don't need to impress anyone. Like, I don't need that validation. But I still was going to the familiar, to, you know, the, the comfortable. And that's what we do. As we said at the top of this, you know, 95% of what you do, you learn by the time you're 35. So what are the messages? What are the money stories? What are the, the symbols of wealth or symbols of affluence that you associate? And it's, you know, I read, gosh, over 120 books on property investing and on wealth, etc. And I was just recently reading a book that is incredible for a number of reasons. And Napoleon Hill wrote a book in 1937 called Think and Grow Rich. And at the time I read it and he had, you know, worked with or interviewed like top 100 businessmen. I don't think there was any businesswomen back then that were worthy of his book, but businessmen. And he interviewed them all and he had this sensational, you know, book that he created. And in 1938, he wrote another book that was called Outwitting the Devil. And this is an interesting book. And if you have an opportunity, I'll drop you a link, get it on Audible, because the voice actors are incredible. And you have him who's apparently captured the devil, and the devil has to tell all truths. And he's asking and interviewing the devil. It's like, so Why do we have a dysfunctional relationship with ourself and seek validation? He's like, oh, this is, this is my way of controlling you and how I've used, you know, churches and schools to actually, you know, create people who are going to follow the rules. Because if I give them rules, I give them discipline. I say they're going to get in trouble if they think for themselves, then they're not going to think for themselves. And I get to constantly have these little words in their head going, you're not enough, you're not worthy. You should be actually conforming and doing what I want you to do. And what's interesting is, you know, having gone through a number of, you know, creative orientation type modalities, you know, people who create a vision and hold a vision of what they want to create rather than trying to fix themselves or, you know, relate to their identity or get validation or belonging. You know, these are the ones who escape the words of the devil in this instance. But And it's actually interestingly parallel to a lot of the studies that I've done around, you know, looking at people who are successful and looking at why people get it and some people don't. But what's really interesting about this book was that when he wrote it, his wife said, you're going to be vilified. The churches and the schools are going to come after you. You cannot publish this until I die. And when she finally died in the '80s, the nephew who took over the Napoleon Hill Institute and family, his wife said, this is still going to be just so inflammatory as a conversation piece. You can't publish it till I die. So this book that was written in 1938 was published in 2011. And I'm listening to this stuff going, this is incredible. This is— they've just gone through at that time a major economic change. So they had the Great Depression. And when this was actually came out in 2011, the lady who helped Robert Kiyosaki write Rich Dad Poor Dad, she actually butts in and goes, isn't it interesting? Because we've just had, you know, this major, you know, worldwide global financial crisis. But it's interesting reading it now, just after, you know, the COVID kind of crisis that we had as well as saying these major you know, worldwide events are actually awakening people to the fact that there's maybe stories going on that aren't serving them. So this is really interesting. This is not a new concept. We know even the Eastern philosophies, you know, have come up with the fact that, you know, you need to know who you are and where you're coming from to create what you want. But there's all of these kind of messages that we've been getting for so long that it's hard to escape. And you know, when I was a child growing up on this farm in Dubbo, you know, when we got from the main gate down to our house, there was probably about a kilometer of dirt track. And we would just go around the trees and, you know, take the familiar path, go the normal way. And it got to the point where you unconsciously could pretty much drive that and go, oh, home already. Miss that. You could do it at 60 kilometres an hour around these great big 10-foot river gum trees without even thinking about it because essentially as soon as your wheels got into the wheel ruts they had been worn down so much you couldn't get out. It was just like being on a roller coaster, you know, you're off and you're on the right path. But sometimes there were some environmental issues that created some angst that we couldn't take the familiar path, like there might be major rains, so these big ruts became muddy, so we couldn't go the familiar way. We had to go the other way. Now when you go the other way, you know, the path isn't as defined. You have to be very aware and observant of every move you're making. You didn't want to fall in the old way because you could get bogged, so you had to be very— you slow down, you're taking it and using, you know, every kind of conscious way to get around because it's not familiar. And that's often what happens to us if we're working on what our old patterns are. They're familiar, they're addictive, they're easy. And in moments of stress and trouble when we're coming up against, you know, not just money crisis, but, you know, or money tension around anything, it's easy to fall into the familiar and you go down this old way, this old route of getting what you've always got rather than being conscious and taking a conscious effort and creating what you may not have had before. And you know, if you're struggling with your money stories or you're struggling with the way that you, you are getting the results that you're getting with your relationship to money, finance, wealth, or careers, it may not be that you're actually coming from a place that is going to be able to assist you to create what you want to create. You're coming from all of these things that are, you know, insidious stories that are familiar and easy that you're not even aware of. So what I really want to share with you today is just that awareness that you need to have around what is the stories, what are the influences that turn up every day when you're making a decision, just like I did. You know, if I had money, I had to spend it. And it took a conscious will to not do that. To the extent I had to get my— all my pay out and I put everything into tiny little envelopes and hid it away. Thank goodness no one, you know, robbed my house, but put it away to go, okay, this is what I'm putting aside for vet bills if I need them. This is what I'm putting aside for food. This is to pay off the credit card debt. So, you know, this is for savings. And, you know, I, I had, you know, that relationship with money that everything that came in would go out, would get spent. And I had to consciously not do that. And to do that, I had to kind of hide the money away and I had to allocate the money. And if I didn't have, you know, money for fun and entertainment and I'd spent that up, well, I had to wait till the next pay packet. And, you know, so there's there's techniques that you can choose to do this. And you know, a lot of people have fantastic budgeting and techniques to, and courses to assist you doing that. And you know, I've taken a lot of them and really it's just about, you know, what I found, and especially in teaching the course, Renovate Yourself, Renovate Your Wealth, you know, is that it's just about being very vigilant of where these stories are turning up. And then the opportunities that you have to actually take those stories within, go, okay, so that's interesting. That's a story I have, throw that in the backpack. But what is it that I want to create? What is it that I, I really want to, um, you know, do in life? And, you know, that kind of brought me to where I've been in the last 20 years. You know, I created a mortgage broking business in Australia. I created a property education business. And I've taught tens of thousands of people around, you know, strategic property investment and, you know, how to create value and how to, you know, use equity to, you know, purchase other properties. And I came up with a framework and this Trident strategy, you know, it served me very well. It served so many of my clients so well in helping them create multimillion-dollar property investments that have the basis and foundation in properties that people want to live in, where they want to live, and the ideal property. So that, you know, you really don't have vacancies and the property goes up in value. You have capacity to add value. So I had kind of like a Plan A, B, and C just in case you screwed it up because, you know, I wanted to have the backup in place. So, you know, kind of worked out the system, taught other people how to work out the system. And the thing is that it was interesting to see that some people really got it. You know, I think of one of my— oh gosh, I can think of lots of them actually. But I think of one of my clients who had talked about buying an investment property for so many years and he's His daughter bought him the course. So he's like, Dad, you've been talking about property investing, like, come on, I'm going to make you make the first effort. And this guy, he'd turn up and he'd go, you know, so he's bought the online course and we'd have these like monthly kind of Q&A calls. And he turned up and he'd say, I'm not a clever guy. I worked for council. I'm not going to try to work it out. I'm not going to try to change your system. I'm just going to do what you say to do. And you know, he took, he bought this property and we showed him how to buy a property in an area that people wanted, yada yada, how to do a strategic renovation. He did this renovation in 10 days and the valuation came back adding $80,000 straight up and the renovation had cost him $15,000. So he was like, this is extraordinary. But he was in this growth area that, you know, allowed him then within 3 years to have that property worth $300,000 more so he could pull money out and do the next one. So, you know, he got it. There was a system, there was structure. You follow it. It was predictable. You know, if you follow the structure— and I'm not trying to sell the course, I don't have those courses available anymore— but I'm just saying there was a structure and he followed it. But so many other people would buy this $3,000 course and they wouldn't do it, or they'd try to manipulate things. So it's like, oh, I want to put, you know, my parents lost all of their money, and so, you know, I want to buy the course because I want to make money, but I'm not actually going to do anything because I'm too scared because I saw my parents lose their money. Or my father used to say, you know, never a borrower be. So I have to save all of this money before I can buy something. And so there was all of these stories and I was hearing people telling me these stories. I said, well, you know, there is a way, you know, you put key conditions on what you need to do. You don't need a 20% deposit. You can do this with a 5% deposit. Or you can use equity in a property you already have. You don't have to pay off the first property to buy the second one. And these kind of concepts were completely foreign. And I'd have people on these Q&A calls going, what? Are you serious? You could do this like with a 5% deposit? I'm like, well, you know, you have all these other bank criteria. You need a job, you know, low credit, you have to be able to afford the loan, you know, all of these other things. But yeah, and buy a property that's not so unusual so that if the bank has to take it off you, that, you know, they can sell in the future. There's some, you know, conditions they put on you, but this condition you're putting on yourself is not relevant. And so, you know, we had all of— I was seeing all of these stories that people were playing out, and then they'd— and someone would say, you know, um, it's fine, I, I, I can do this, you know, I, I really want to create this, I'm going to make this investment in the course, I'm going go through and do it and they'd do all the research that I'd show them about where to buy and at the last minute they'd buy something completely irrelevant to everything that we'd learnt. And I said, why did you do that? And they said, well, the salesperson in the end told me that this is the right property. It's like, but you've just bought a 1-bedroom unit in a tiny little regional town where there's no other 1-bedroom units and no one wants to rent that. It's a family, the census tells us that families want to live there. Like, why have you done this? The authority told me to do it. Okay, have you ever had this situation happen to you before where you, you know, you were going through a whole process and you really were on track and then an authority came in and told you to do this? Like, oh yeah, absolutely. Like, I so wanted to be a dentist. And then, you know, the school counselor came in and said, well, in actual fact, you know, everyone hates dentists. Why don't you go and be a lawyer? Because you've got really good marks. And I've hated my job ever since. And it was interesting. So I'm starting hearing these stories. I thought, gosh, maybe there's something else that's going on here. So maybe there's another story that's happening here that I'm thinking it's around money, but there's something else going on. So I became a student of success. I went to Estonia Mindvalley University, you know, for 2 weeks to see what people were doing to get into flow. I was a volunteer on a, um, Southern Cross University study on nasal breathing to see if it could give clarity, et cetera. Like I was like, if I could learn this, I could teach people. And what became really obvious to me was that when I was talking to some of these people, they were saying all of these stories. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to have to get to the bottom of this myself. I'm going to take on 10 mentoring clients and I'm going to be there every step of the way, course correcting and just seeing what is coming up. That stops them. And you know, I had a methodology, get from 16,500 suburbs in Australia down to 3 suburbs using census, getting down to the streets in the suburb that the renters wanted to live in, understanding what the typical property is. So I knew it was a 3-bedroom house on 600 square meters in this suburb on these streets, put in an alert. When the alerts come up, it's like, let's go and make sure that the value is there and there's an opportunity to add value through renovation, granny flats, to something to add extra value and manufacture that value. So let's go. And these opportunities are coming up and these people are going, mm, you know what? No, no, not gonna buy. It's like, why not? We've just done, you've spent like $20,000 a year mentoring with me. So, and I wouldn't take anyone on that I couldn't see that we could do a 10x on that. They could make $200,000 out of this purchase. But I was like, you know, I'm backing myself on, on this and I'm, I'm here and here it is. I've done, you know, a whole comparison on this property against other properties that have recently sold. We've looked at negotiation strategy, we'll get pricing strategy, like what am I missing here? And they're like, nah, it doesn't feel right. I was like, okay, is there anything else not feeling right? It's like, oh yeah, you know, offered my dream job, but you know, there's something about it not quite right. It's like, oh, okay. So I started hearing these stories of people. I was like, is there something else not kind of happening for you? And, uh, oh my gosh, she's Amanda. Amanda's saying, hey, I was a real estate agent. I have heard this all the time. These are the things. It's just like, wait a second, there's some dots here. That I'm missing. And it wasn't until recently when I heard this quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu that it all kind of started aligning. And he said, you know, I was pulling drowning people out of the river. And then I realized if I went upstream, I could stop them jumping in. And I realized I'd created this entire business around helping people get over their money worries so they could spend more time at home You know, the number one reason for divorce is financial discontent. And I was like, if more parents spend more time with their kids and, you know, their kids can see them creating this wealth so that they can then maybe give up their job or work 2 or 3 days a week or follow a side hustle or just create their own destiny financially with abundance, you know, this will create intergenerational change. But what I realized, a lot of the people who were buying property were buying property because they felt poor or unresolved in other areas. And it was not going to actually assist them in all aspects of their lives. You know, there was this underlying kind of negative goal or negative vision that was, well, if I have enough property, then I, you know, will have enough money to ask the girl to marry me, you know, be able to give up my job, go for the job that I really want, create the business that I want. In actual fact, understanding these stories is stopping them jumping in. It's like, well, what's the story you're telling yourself? If I do this, I can have what I want. So I think it's so important that, you know, when we, we take on this topic of abundance and we take on this, this topic of how do we create true wealth in our life and, and really, you know, where I want to lead you in this journey is it's not just about financial wealth. It's about how you do anything. It's how you do everything. And the stories that may be going on in your head and the influences you may have from just even something as simple as songs or what your parents have told you or how you've been conditioned. You know, if I do well at school, I get to go to uni. If I get to go to uni, I get the job that I want. If I get the job that I want, then I can marry the guy and have the house and then have the kids. And then one day, maybe I'll have enough to live out the dreams that I have. And we've got— society has these conditions. And like, you know, in the book Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill, he's like, you know, they created schools so that there was a credit system. People had to like feel that they had to do something to get to something else. And there was a rote memory. All they do is, you know, memorize something. And, you know, we had this conversation with my son who's in year 10. Just recently, and my husband and I were trying to help him come up with these topics for Year 11 and 12, which is the final year of study that then they go to university. And, you know, I said, what are you interested in? He's like, nothing, like a typical teenage boy, I guess. It's like, well, what subjects do you think you'll do? He's like, well, you know, I'm pretty good at maths, so I think I might do 2 lots of maths. I'm like, oh, okay. So, you know, they never listen to your parents, so we We found his maths tutor who's, you know, cheats in all these other different subjects and he's, you know, very successful in business and successful in his own education and, you know, studying medicine, all these kind of things. And I said, well, have a chat to him. And he's like, oh yeah, if you do maths and you do all these topics, then you'll have selection of doing anything that you want. You could get into any degree. And, you know, if you don't know what you want now, give yourself the flexibility. And we were sitting there going, gosh, you know, a lot of these topics, he just, he doesn't enjoy them. And the school counsellor came in and said, you know, if you're turning up every day doing something that you're not enjoying, it just becomes really difficult. Imagine doing 8 1-hour sessions of math a week. Would you look forward to the week ahead? And he's like, no. He said, well, your art teacher has actually dragged you up to have a look at the art department because they personally invited you to do art. 'cause they would love, they see your potential, they know that you love it. And I know you haven't done it this year, but would you consider that? He said, no, I look at everyone else's art, it's so much better than mine. I said, but do you love it? Are you creating something that you really love? He's like, yeah. And so we had to have that come to Jesus kind of talk with him. And we sat down and I said, well, you know, for me to go to university, I needed to have a scholarship. I really wanted to do public relations and media and marketing, but, you know, my mom had found 120 companies that had scholarship offerings, and she wrote— and dad and her wrote letters to all of them. I remember licking the stamps, putting them on, because, you know, we couldn't afford to go to university, and sending them all off. And I got a scholarship to study mining engineering because I had good maths, and turns out they just wanted more girls in the mining industry. It was some kind of affirmative action thing, which I didn't know at the time was playing out. Fool me. And so I spent 18 years as a mining engineer. I didn't really want to be a mining engineer, but I knew, you know, my dad had told me, just, you know, do whatever you want. If you want to be a garbage man, be a garbage man, just be the best garbage man on the block. So I was like, well, I just need to get to university to learn how to learn, and I'll give it my best crack. And, you know, I did pretty well. And so I studied money and Jane Slack-Smith. My husband loved art. Once again, he'd had the art teacher come and grab him and go like, we really want you to do art. It's like, no, I can't make money out of art. And, you know, condition society has is that I have to make money. So I will go into economics and IT and all these other things. He spent 18 years doing that. And so we had to sit down and say, look, Max, I love teaching. I love seeing those aha moments with people. I love marketing and getting an understanding of the behavioral things of how people operate. But I spent 20 years before I started doing that. And your father loves art. He's now a well-renowned, award-winning international artist. And he spent 20 years waiting to do that. You know, do what you love. What would you really, really love? It's like, I'd love to do art. Like, do that. We'll work out the rest later. If you don't go to university, you don't go to university. And so, you know, we have these conditions, we have these stories around what you have to do. You have to do the subjects you don't really like because you have to get into university and the things that pay the most are this and therefore you should do that. And even that math tutor that my son has, he's from an Indian background. Basically, you do 3 things: you're a doctor, lawyer, or nothing. He went for the doctor. He became a dux of his school, loved doing tutoring, loved doing tutoring, but followed the family story. 2 years into medicine, he was like, you know what, I, this 'This is not me. I don't love this.' So he stopped and he became a tutor and he's got 10 people working for him. He's got an incredible business that he runs. So yeah, like this is good, right? This is great. This is kind of like this awareness that we have and we get into society's expectations of what we have to do. What are the conditions? You know, my husband and I, we didn't really do it like we were supposed to do it. We lived together before we were married, we bought a house together, then we had a baby, and then we're like, hmm, maybe we should get married, much to my Catholic mother's relief. But, you know, we didn't do things that, um, that were the norm. There was no, you know, hand of God that came down and whacked us around the head for it. There was no one's permission that we needed to get for that. It is what was right for us. And, you know, if we think about the conditions that we put on, you know, what we need to create wealth or what we need to have our heart's desire fulfilled, you know, often we do put wealth there. And when we look at our relationship with wealth, you know, we have this, this kind of experience that comes up that says, you know, well, if you're not worthy, then you have an underlying belief that might be, you know, I'm not worthy or I'm not enough. And you write I'm enough on my mirror every day, then your subconscious is sitting there going, why are they saying that? Are they saying they're not enough because, you know, they don't have the wealth, the relationship, the career, the ideal weight, and they're kind of like moving away from something, which is which is what I saw a lot of my property education clients doing, or are they someone who's sitting here with this vision, this goal that says, you know, I want to be able to create a business that has a worldwide impact and creates a legacy not just for me and my family and community, but for future generations. You know, I want to have a beautiful relationship that allows me to not just be my best self, but to actually show up in the world and how I want to show up. And be completely validated by myself, not by someone else. You know, what is that vision? And the I'm not enough or I'm enough being written on the mirror, you know, it is two different things. Your subconscious, you know, what's watching all the time, the Siri that's there listening all the time is picking up messages. And your message might be you're trying to move away from something. Or you're trying to move towards something and standing in that full vision of what you're trying to create. So, you know, this, this whole group that I've established here is really around, you know, helping you identify the abundance that you want to create in your life and supporting you on that journey. And, and maybe that little God wink that you get every now and then that says, oh, there's something there that I need to to pursue or look at, or maybe that little feeling of tension that comes up and you're thinking, I'm really uncomfortable about this. And, you know, remember me driving down that dirt path. When you're comfortable and you're unconsciously on the journey, you end up at the destination. But is it really the destination you want to be on? Or do you get to follow a different path? You get to stay awake, you get to be conscious, you get to actually design where you want to go. And that's what, you know, I would really love for everyone within this group and for you to pass on to your friends and families is that awareness. It all starts with awareness. What are the stories that you're telling yourself? What are the influences that have influenced you in the, in the past? You know, how do you turn up with your relationship, not just to money, career, or wealth, but to everything? Because, you know, what I've seen of, you know, working with 20,000+ people in, in that property wealth education spot is that some people get it and some people don't. And no matter what precise kind of step-by-step path that you can create for someone, they won't take it if there's an underlying story that's going on that is perpetuated and validated because it's always been the way that they've operated. It. So I really encourage you to, you know, just become aware of the money stories that you have. Just become aware of the influences that you have. If you would like to really delve deeper into this and really get a full understanding of that, I encourage you— oh, I think I've even got a slide here— I encourage you to go over to yoursuccessclub.com.au, check out the Renovate Yourself, Renovate Your Wealth course, you know, I've got it there and I've got it. It's not a $3,000 course by any means, $397. But, you know, by being in the Your Success Club Facebook group, you've got that first module. And as a gift from me to you, because I really want you to understand what the stories are. And if you don't have those access to that yet, you know, please DM me. Or put a comment underneath this video because we want to get you that first module for free so you can take a taste tester of that entire course. But so that you can have some guidance and some awareness of the stories that you're telling yourself, because they may not just be holding you back in your relationship to money, could be holding you back in your relationship to everything. Anyhow, as always, you know, I really, uh, love having you guys here. Love presenting on the last Thursday of the month at 10 AM Australian Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time, i.e., Melbourne time. We will be here every month tackling some of the big questions and helping you create the life that you desire and you frankly deserve, and making you aware of things that may be holding you back in the future and, or creating what you would like in the future. So To everyone here, thank you. For those who've managed to turn up live, for you watching it on the replay, sending you lots of information and thoughts as well, please, you know, get involved. Put your money story down below, and I will drop that Spotify list of music in the notes here as well, because sometimes it's interesting. You're just not aware of how many stories that you are being bombarded with that are probably separating you from the life that you would like. And as always, here is to your success.