718. How Chris Told Me We Had to Start Over

There's a part of us that doesn't want to know and doesn't want to look. And we know that it could be bad, but we're just avoiding it. And avoidance is where the problems start to begin.

And that goes for those who are on my side. There's many of you listening right now. You're like, I don't want to break the news. I don't want to trouble her or him with this. You know, I mean, there's beauty in breaking the news and facing the music because then you get to choose again.

Welcome to the earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself, to later becoming a multimillionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I development and learned everything I could about business. Not by choice, but because I realized no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not.

Alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing.

We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform. I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started.

And we're back.

We are back with another he said, she said.

I'm so excited to sit down and chat with you guys today.

Well, I don't know if I'm as excited as you because we have to relive when I came home and Told you, hey, babe, lost my job and we are losing everything. It wasn't those words. We'll go through what the words were, but really, this is an episode. Lori and I were literally just on a walk. We're like, oh, we got to share that moment with them again. This is an episode on really how to break tough news to your partner. And what it was like when I had to come home 12 years ago or whatever it was, and tell you, babe, I'm sorry, but one, I lost my job. I was laid off today. And two, we haven't been taking care of our finances. I should say I haven't been taking care of our finances. And we have to sell this house that we just bought and we have to sell the cars and we have to walk away from the rental properties and we gotta go find a place to live. And it's gonna have to be a tiny little apartment, probably an eighth of the size of the house that we now have to sell. And I remember, like, it was yesterday, to be honest with you, hun, because it's one of those moments that gets, like, stained in your DNA. And I remember driving home, literally remembering, like, I was relieved to be out of that job, but so scared to actually break the news to you. Not as scared to say, hey, babe, I took a severance package today because you knew I was flying around laying people off for a year, right?

Yeah.

But to say I haven't been taking care of the finances, we've been living beyond our means and we have to get rid of everything. Do you remember how you felt when I said that?

Yeah, I do. And I think, first of all, I want to say this podcast is maybe less about breaking the tough news and almost just actually assessing where you're at and then what you're going to do with the info of what you find.

Oh, yes, because what you did with it was pretty remarkable.

Yes.

So really, because wherever you guys are.

At, I just want you to put yourself in the story, whether it's similar to ours or totally opposite of ours. Like, looking at it, right? Like, oh, God, what's that thing you haven't been looking at? Or what's that possible future that you haven't been acknowledging that's coming for you if you don't make changes? And then what are you going to do with that information once we look at it? Because, Chris, a lot of people right now don't want to actually look at what information they have in front of them on what their future is gonna look like. So this was, you Being forced into it on that drive home, like, oh my God, maybe I'm less afraid about saying, babe, this was it, this is the time I lost my job. Because honestly we were kind of like working up to it and seeing this, we were starting to see this trend. He obviously was flying around, firing, having to let people let go of hundreds.

Of people, close down branches.

If you guys haven't seen up in the Air, that's exactly what his job was for a year. So when this started to happen, it was like, ok. And this was so. It was the hardest year of our life. You put on a ton of weight, you were so stressed out, you were drinking, eating bad food. Our marriage was not in a good place because he was going and flying around. This is what I remember. So I have to share this memory with them for them to understand how I actually felt when this moment happened. So he was flying around, having to let go of all these people. He would leave sometimes at four in the morning, five in the morning, give me a kiss on the cheek and be like, bye babe, I'll maybe see.

You tonight while you're still in bed.

While I'm still in bed in the morning. And I'm just like, oh my God, there he goes to have to go and shut down another branch. And I'd always call him after, it'd be like, you know, 7pm And I'd be like, how'd your day go? And he'd say, well, another guy cried today and it was horrible and it was awful having this, you know, 50 year old man swear at me and tell me that I'm a little jerk and about his kids. And then I, now I'm having a big steak because I'm depressed and a bunch of drinks.

Well, I sat in a hotel room by myself.

Well, he sat in a hotel room by himself and this was his day in and day out for a year. So with that said, we kind of knew what was coming because once his job switched from what he was doing, which was building branches and building morale and leading teams, which was just the most epic time for him ever to this we knew that after a year of this that if he was doing it, it had to be coming for us because he was watching it come for everybody else. So when it finally came, because we had been talking about it, we were like, we don't, we didn't have a plan.

Nope.

We didn't know what you were going to do because you were a one trick pony. And so was I. I was the.

Primary breadwinner at the time, yeah. And I was, you know, someone who had been kicked out of college. I was lucky enough to, you know, negotiate my way into this banking career and just happened to fly up through the ranks and caught a couple of really good breaks. And I thought I was going to be there forever. I literally was young enough and arrogant enough to think I was going to continue to fly up through the ranks like this forever.

I remember thinking that.

Yep. And we thought we had it made.

Like, this company's the best.

We're going to be here till you retire, just like these guys.

And yep. Oh my gosh.

And then we weren't. And so I came home and I'm like, hun, finally happened. Lost my job today. And the worst news is I haven't been taking care of the finances. We've been living beyond our means. We have to sell this house that we had just finished building and get rid of the cars and watch as the neighbors like, remember Greg the asshole neighborhood come over and be like, what are you doing? Why are you short selling this house? You're going to ruin the values in the neighborhood. While we're going through this. Right. We had to endure a handful of really humiliating moments like that. But the reason we're telling the story is there's a very special moment. Do you remember what your response was to me when I sat there and told you that this was the situation?

Yes, I do. And I remember this response because my brain quickly threw together what my options were and I took the best option and decided on the best option. So Chris, I know that you remember the wording more clearly because I'm like drawing.

Yeah. You said two things. First thing is you kind of paused and it was probably just seconds, but it felt like minutes. And you looked at me and you said, well then that's what we have to do. And it was the most emotionless matter of fact statement ever. And I was expecting blowing up or yelling or crying or freaking out and it was just very matter of factly saying, well then that's just what we have to do with like a tone of, an underlying tone of disappointment. But you were just very matter of fact about it. And then the second thing you said is the thing that really struck me. Do you remember that one?

Well, I had watched my parents go through bankruptcy and that was disastrous. And watching how they fought and how it really drove a wedge in their marriage for a little while and just resentment on, I think both sides because you don't know what to do. There's maybe potentially at the time, no tools to work through things. No. Nobody wants to take ownership of the things. And you think you only have one thing to rely on. So I just flash back to that. In the way that I grew up and what I thought that my future could be or the path that I had seen in the future that I did not want. I certainly knew the future I did not want and the struggle that I did not want to sign up for for the rest of my life until I die. And I said, okay, this will never happen to us again.

Yep. I remember, like, it was yesterday.

I was like, I refuse to ever be in this situation where I feel like someone else is controlling my life and I have no say. And that was it. It was a cellular. It was a complete cellular, like, vibration through my body. And I was willing to put all ego aside and do whatever the f it took to change that, to never be in that position again because it hurt so bad.

This is why I remember it so well. It's. I was expecting crying or freaking out or whatever. And first you just had that very matter of fact response of, well, then that's what we're going to do. And then you paused again. You said, this will never happen again. And so you became a different person in that second and had this different stance and this different tone, and I could tell you meant it. And this became literally the beginning of Lori Harder, as we know today. Because before that, you were just kind of working some occasional retail jobs because I moved you around all the time. And this was the moment that you stuck your stake in the ground. You took control and you said, never again.

And that was where the other statement was born. We went on walks right after that. We went on a walk, remember? I remember we were on that far side or that close side of the lake that was closest to our home. We had done, like, a long walk. We were turning onto 117th Avenue back to our house, and we were still just right on the tip of that pond. And we came up with the mantra, we get bigger than the problem.

Yep.

And we never let the problem overtake us, and we never back down on it. We never say, well, how can we ratchet back? How can we get rid of everything? Which we had to do at the time. But we're like, from now on, our mantra is, we get bigger than the problem. The problem doesn't outdo us, and we don't shrink back. We get bigger than the problem. So what does that look like?

And that's when we started to build out Our entrepreneurship journey.

And.

And really, that's when. So, you know, we fast forward. We got rid of the house, got rid of everything. We set up shop in this tiny little 900, less than 900 square foot apartment in uptown Minneapolis. And I remember as a Sunday night, and I was miserable. I had the Sunday scaries. I hated the partnership that I was in, and I took it because I. I had no other options, Right. Banking background in a banking recession, booted out of college, not a lot of options. And so I remember sitting there on Sunday night, I'm like, babe, there's gotta be a better way. Like, how do we reach more people? How do we make more money and stop trading your time for money at the gym and, you know, me being in this miserable partnership. And we started to brainstorm that night. We started to think about, like, okay, how could it be better? And that was the night that we took our first step into what now everyone calls it, the knowledge industry. And you said, let's take my workouts online. And do you remember our first goal? It was just to reach a hundred women. See if we could find a hundred women that would pay $89 a month, because that would be a hundred grand a year. And that would allow me to come home from my partnership. Do you remember that?

Oh, my God. I mean, that was. I mean, I know that's a lot of money to so many people. And that was so much. That was. You have guys. That was baller status to me. If I. I mean, I had only made max, maybe 30,000 at this point in a year. At that time.

If that.

Yeah, if that. And so this, to me, was like, life changing. And that goal in and of itself, I was just like, okay, I on the prize. And we went for it. It was so messy, and there's so many tools now that are just insane. And I think that's the thing that we want to get across is, like, it doesn't have to look good and it doesn't. You don't have to have a big audience. I did not at the time. This was before I won anything. This was before I won any fitness competition. This was before I was in any fitness magazine. This was just Lori in Minneapolis who worked out and had some fitness clients, like maybe 10.

Yep. Yeah, you took it online. Our first goal was 100 women. We reached it. It turned into thousands of women. The very next thing you created was the Bliss Project. You're like, wait, all these women have something in common. They want to find their purpose. They want to get together they need like minded women. And we created the. You created the Bliss Project. And the Bliss Project led into what?

The Bliss Habit.

And the Bliss Habit sold thousands and thousands and thousands. It was a course.

I want to say what that is. Yeah, the Bliss Habit was. I was like, wait, not everyone can make it to the Bliss Project. So maybe you guys have something that not everyone can make it to. Maybe it's a eyelash course, you know, to help teach people how to do lashes. Maybe it's a personal development meetup event where you teach people how to break through their fears. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter, like insert blank. Whatever it is that you have done in person or you're good at, or that you've taught in person where you're trading time for money. And I essentially said, how can I turn this into an online course? And that's what I did with the Bliss Project. I said, how can I take all of these lessons that I'm teaching and just put them in modules so that people can still access something like the Bliss Project and get it online?

Yep. And then after the Bliss Project, you know, or sorry, Bliss Habit sold thousands, I mean thousands of those. You and I did one together called Aligned. And Aligned was just helping people aligned their, their goals with their mindset and their habits. And that thing was awesome. And then I finally did my own course called the Money Principles. And that was just helping, you know, repair people's relationship with their finances and teach them what to do. And that went on to change thousands of lives. And I look back and it all started with one me having to come home and face the music. But more importantly, you having the reaction of I'm going to take things into my own hands instead of the reaction of fu or, or you're a loser or I'm leaving or anything like that. Step one was, your reaction was, damn it, I'm going to control my fate.

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Yeah, and I just want to say like whether it's the ownership part, and I think that's so important for everybody. You're not going to get anywhere if you're going to blame somebody else. For what? For the reason why you're where you are. And if you're looking right now like, yeah, well, they don't have this person who's being a total narcissist asshole in their life. Okay, well, it's kind of like, yes, I can understand that there's parts where maybe you didn't bring certain things on you, but you have to take ownership for the parts that you're in. So maybe if you've been tolerating and you're still around or you're still putting up with things, there is an ownership piece that we all have to take a part in. And for me, I had to take an ownership piece of, hey, I never asked about where we were with the finances. I never said, hey, how can I really do my part in making sure that you're not stressed or we're not overspending. There was a part of me that was like, I almost wanted to stay oblivious to it. And I want to know if there is that part for you. You might even be acknowledging it right now. There is a part of us that does not want to know and does not want to look, and we know that it could be just avoiding it. And avoidance is where the problems start to begin.

And that goes for those who are on my side. There's many of you listening right now. You're like, I don't want to break the news. I don't want to trouble her or him with this. You know what I mean? And what Lori just said, there's beauty in breaking the news and facing the music, because then you get to choose again.

Choose again. So that's what this is about.

It's choosing again. And now. So when Lori and I quote, chose again and we created the membership and then created the courses, we didn't have a set of guidelines. We just figured it out. I mean, there weren't online fitness courses back then. We were figuring it out and making mistake after mistake after mistake. Remember staying up all night on the 31st of every month charging, like, 100 credit cards manually?

I know we just talked about this, but I don't think we can say it enough. I don't think we can say enough how many years we did stuff like this.

So we had to figure out ourselves. This challenge coming up with Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi. It's literally, if you're listening to this on the day it came out, it starts today. If you're listening to this a day or two after it came out, it starts. It started a couple days ago, but you can get the replays. This five day own your future training challenge teaches you everything that nobody was around to teach us. It teaches you everything to speed up the journey. If you want to launch a course, if you want to launch a membership, if you want to digitize your knowledge in any form and help other people while you make money, that's what this free five day own your future challenge does. So whether we're day one, right now, day two, day three, you've got to go to ownit64.com and join us because we're teaching you how to do this. And Lori and I are going to have a special bonus at the end of this five day challenge where not only do we do a little bit more teaching, but we put you in a very special group if you want to take action.

And I just want to say, I don't care who you are listening to this. I don't care if you're far along in your journey. I don't care if you're one of our friends. I don't care if you are somebody who is brand new. You guys, this tool is like, this five day challenge is literally going to change your life. Tony Robbins has changed our life and rocked our world and completely helped us with our limiting beliefs in so many different occasions along with all of these different speakers. You guys, it is going to rock your world. If you think you don't have time, then you're literally saying no to something that potentially could open up and completely change your life, make it better, get your vision out there, make you incredible income that can so support your vision and then fill your cup and support other people. So what would it hurt to even just find out what five days with some of the best minds out there.

Who each individually charged thousands for this, right? And they're all coming together for an act of generosity, to teach it for free. Day one, imagine Tony Robbins and Dean Graciosi teaching you how to become the person you need to become to do this, you know. Day two, a couple more people teaching you how to think of what your idea is going to be, what knowledge you have to share and how to create that. Day three, how to package it. Day four, how to market it. Day five, how to sell it and serve it. Like, by the end of this thing, you can be like Lori and I on that Sunday night, putting her first membership out there and getting your first hundred people, times whatever dollars, that's what we want for you. Whether you're starting over, whether you want a better life. It's given us an absolute freaking dream life of choice and of abundance and of impact. And so if you want to join us on this, even if you're thinking about joining on this, I at least want you to go to Ownit64.com right now and I want you to check it out and say, why don't I just give it a shot? Why isn't this for me? Because I promise it's gonna change your life. Our goal is to change 1 million lives with this free training and I want you to be one of them.

So you guys, if you have not done this yet, Definitely go to ownit64.com what a lot of people have been doing. It's a five day challenge. You still have time to join. There have been so many people who have tagged us and tagged five friends who they want to join in on this challenge because you actually get to share this knowledge and potentially change someone else's life. So we would love to see who you're joining with, we would love to reshare your stories and we would love to have you in on some of the possible bonuses that Chris and I are going to be doing after this. But you can only do that if you join the challenge.

So we'll see you guys in a challenge. Ownit64.com and no matter where you're at in your journey, just know that we're always sharing ours and cheering you on.

Bye, everyone.