Let's Make Money, Honey!

Hello, hello. This is Mary Schiller, author and coach at MarySchiller.com. I want to welcome you to this presentation called Let's Make Money Honey. And if you are joining me live, thank you so much for being here. If you are watching this on the recording, I appreciate your interest and time and I hope to make it worthwhile. So before we jump in, I would love to see who is here. Please feel free to say hello in the chat box and let me know where you are joining us from. And also let me know if you can hear me and see me okay. I'm using a new webinar platform and this is my first time using it. So I wanna make sure that everything is coming through loud and clear. So if you can just take a second to type a note to me in the chat, that would be amazing. Hey, Anne, nice to see you. Thank you for joining. Glad I'm coming through. You know, you never know with these things. You cross your fingers and hope for the best. So thanks for being here. As you may know, I am in Paris, France, and it is definitely becoming more fall-like around here. The temperatures are getting down near freezing at night, so cool pulling off. Hi, Verena. Hi, Annalise. Kathy. Let's see, Bob, Caroline. Oh, this is great. Thank you so much. I'm glad you're all here. Scotland from Reno, Nevada. Isn't it amazing? I, you know, I feel like a little kid every time I use one of these tools because I remember in the old days, you know, when we had actual phones with cords on them that we had to hang up and no answering machines. That's how ancient I am. You know, I'm just amazed that we can connect so easily across the globe now like this. It's just incredible to me, and I'm very grateful for it. So thank you all for being here. I really, really appreciate it. As you know, the topic of this presentation is Let's Make Money, Honey. I have just, as of today, which is November 6th, 2017, I have just released the book on Amazon worldwide, and I bought it myself and put it on my phone. I also am the creator of a coaching program of the same name to support you if you want to have a very, very different and new and positive experience around money and make more of it in a way that is fun for you. So, um, I'd like to just do a quick introduction of why I wrote the book, and then I'm going to ask you a few questions. So if you are on this call live, you can type your answers in the chat box. If you're writing— if you're watching, excuse me, watching this presentation on the replay, you'll see that there is a box there that you can type into and send me an email. So you can answer the questions that way if you like, and I will respond to you there. So brief introduction. I used to stress over money like you wouldn't believe. It was an absolutely ridiculous way of living. When I look back on it now, I'm somewhat horrified and embarrassed, to tell you the truth, about how much I used to obsess over money. And it was about almost 2 years ago now that I had a major insight into money that completely changed not only how I see money, but basically how I see my life. And so ever since then, I've done a lot of new things in my career and professionally and creatively. And just recently, I've realized what a powerful tool money is in terms of helping gain insights into life as a whole. So I wrote the book, and I'm continuing to work on new programming related to money because it's one of these these things that we all seem to have a really strong feeling about one way or another. And for me, that makes it a really nice place to play, a good playground, and also a good place to discover new things about ourselves and how we see our life and how we live. And so that's really the impetus for me to write the book and create the program is to really help people to experience money in a new way that is way less stressful and allows them to be more creative in their life in general. So let me go over to my notes here because I want to ask you a couple of really interesting questions. So I hope you'll play along. So in the chat box, I'd love for you to answer this question. If you never had to work, ever again, you never had to do a job ever again, what would you do with your time? So I'll give you a moment to consider that, and then I would love for you to type something into the chat. If you never had to work again, what would you want to do with your time? Pretty interesting question, isn't it? I'm looking for responses. Let's see, what you're doing now, Birdie. Well, aren't you lucky? That's wonderful. What are you doing now, Birdie? Maybe you can share that with us. Ah, doing art in residence all over the world, creating art projects about perception. That sounds really cool. I love that. You never had to work again, what would you want to do with your time? How would you want to spend your days? You know, I used to resist answering questions like this, and you want to know why? Travel, Bob says travel. Caroline says travel. I used to resist these questions because They used to, I used to get very upset when I would hear questions like this because anything that I thought that I wanted to do with my time looked so far out of reach to me that I didn't even want to go there. Vivian, write and have conversations in beautiful places. Ooh, that sounds nice. Can you relate to what I'm saying a little bit about being a little bit nervous about going there? Bertie says she's coaching and helping out with children, family. Kathy, if you had money, you'd travel, work out, coach, connect with friends, dance. Sounds good. Verena, oops, horses, reading, being out in nature. Claire, hi Claire from Scotland. Um, uh, all right, stay with us if you can. Annalise, learn to paint, take more walks in nature, do more coaching. Bertie also would love to travel. Cathy, I'd love to spend time in the woods alone creating art and writing. I guess the reason why I asked that question is because that to me seems like the answers that you came up with seem like the things that are calling to you to do. And I, as I was saying a moment ago, I used to resist going there because I felt like the things that were calling to me were not practical. You know, they weren't going to help me fulfill my responsibilities in terms of making a living and taking care of my family and all of those things. Julie says she would write, paint, sing, dance, educate my kids outside more. That sounds like fun. And I would just kind of not allow myself to even go towards those dreams or those ideas. So I don't know, can you relate to that at all? Give me a yes or a no in the chat if sometimes allowing yourself to think about how you would really want to spend your time has a sense of like, oh my gosh, you know, that would be really cool, but I couldn't because, or maybe later I could do that, but not now, you know. Not now because now I have all of these other things that I have to do. And so I can't even really think about what I would really like to be doing with my time. Can anybody relate to that? Oh, great, Caroline. Verena, you can absolutely relate to not wanting to answer the question. Yeah, it was sort of a pain point with me really. It felt dangerous or scary to look in that direction because it just didn't seem realistic. And, you know, if you can relate to that, I want to assure you that you're not alone. You're absolutely not alone. So you used to feel like that too, Birdie. Julie, yeah, a big— there's always a big but after it, right? Yes, like, I would love to fill my time doing XYZ, but I have to, or I can't because does, or all of these other things. And at one point, I asked the question even more pointedly, and I'm going to ask this of you now. So here comes another zinger. Are you ready? And I know you probably heard this question before, but I'd like you to just consider it again because this one used to really get to me. If you only had a year to live, If you only had, if you knew you only had 12 months left, what would you do and what would you stop doing? What would you like start doing or keep doing and what would you stop doing? That question used to really provoke a tremendous amount of emotion for me. Because I would imagine myself only having that limited time, and I would think, you know, what could I fill that 12 months with that would not only be wonderful for me but actually might be wonderful for other people? You said you were— stop your day job. Yeah, I think there are a lot of people probably either watching this live or watching the replay who can relate to that. For sure. What would you start doing? If you can think of things that you would stop doing, what would you start doing? Spend more time with your family, reduce or stop working, stop reading the feed on Facebook, wasting time there. Caroline, I hear you, I hear you. Yeah, exactly. Uh, Kathy, I'm so worried about money that I want to say I'd immediately quit my job and visit every friend and family member, but then I'd worry I'd run out of money in a minute. Gotcha. And Elise, do spend more time with husband, daughters, parents. I think I would work a lot less. Birdie, stop procrastinating, travel, spend lots of time with family, creating even more memories. That's nice. Claire, can someone write the question as I'm getting sound bite? Okay. Yeah, the first question was, what was it exactly? Let me look at my notes here. Um, let me just copy it and see if I can copy and paste it here. So that was the first question. And then the second question was, if you only had a year to live, what would you do and what would you stop doing? There we go. That helps. So this is a really interesting question, and you're probably wondering a little bit about what this has to do with the topic of this presentation. But for me, it is the only kind of question that actually really matters when it comes to money or life in general. Because the truth of the matter is, it used to look kind of frivolous to me to even ponder the answers to these questions because that didn't look like my life. My life looked like a lot of responsibilities. It looked like a lot of shoulds and have-tos and not a lot of options. And so to even consider what I might actually want to be doing with my time, and I don't mean just like parts of my time, like the weekends, I mean like my, all my waking hours and even my sleeping hours, you know, where did I want to be when I was sleeping? What did I want to be doing? And where did I want to be when I was awake? Those kinds of questions just didn't seem like they were even something that I should answer or even look at seriously. Stop looking at the computer, Claire says. Yeah, except for webinars like this. And so, so many years ago when I was really, really in the throes of money stress, and really feeling under the gun with, with money problems, I was really not looking in this direction at all. It never even occurred to me to sit down and examine what it was that I wanted to be doing. Instead, I was coming at this from this angle of, well, I want to do something to make more money to keep my family secure and safe. and I want to be responsible in that way. So what can I do to go make money? It was always that sequence. What could I do to go make more money or go make any money? And so the things that I ended up doing to that end were things that I was skilled in but didn't really love all that much, but they paid something, so I did them. Or they were things that I didn't know if I was skilled in, but they looked like they could be lucrative. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like, when I think back to all of the infomercials that I got sucked in by, I mean, I kid you not, I have spent, uh, I don't know, I can't even really hazard a guess on the tens of thousands of dollars, ironically, that I spent trying to make money. I bought programs in how to buy and sell real estate. I bought programs in, 'cause I was a professional copywriter, on how to become like a sales copywriter and make millions of dollars doing that. I bought programs about how to become a graphic designer. I bought, even though I didn't really like it all that much. I bought, this one really gets me. I bought a program, you too, Ann? Okay, thank God I'm not in this alone. The one that really gets to me is I bought a program on how to run a hot dog cart. Okay, that's a pretty funny one when I think back. I'm like, what? I bought another one on, and this one is one that I write about in the new book, Let's Make Money, Honey, where I was going to be a retailer, a wholesaler, retailer, I don't know what it was, for these little objects, like little things. In the book, I call them tchotchkes, you know, this little figurines and things that were made overseas. And, you know, I was going to sell them to unsuspecting, mostly elderly people, I think. I have no idea what in the world I was thinking at that time, except that it looked like a way I could make money. And I wasn't coming from like a bad place in all of this. I was coming from a place of really wanting to do something to help my family out more. And, and this particular period of time, uh, we were facing— my husband and I were facing some major, major, uh, bills that were unanticipated and gigantic. They were some legal bills. If anyone has ever dealt with, uh, lawyers, you'll know what I mean by large legal bills. So, you know, I was kind of desperate. I really had this sense of desperation going on, like, all the time. And it was a horrible feeling to have. It was stressful. And it was just awful, just terrible. And as I spent money on these programs, of course, then I felt guilty because I couldn't seem to make any of them work. I couldn't actually follow all the steps. So on top of feeling like I didn't know how to make money, I then felt bad because I felt like I couldn't follow all the steps. I must be stupid or something. I mean, this is really how money looked to me for a long time. I mean, I'm talking probably— how long was I like that? Maybe 15, 20 years. I don't know, a long time. There was this particular period that was probably about 7 or 8 years that was really intense like that. And so, I'd love to know if you can relate to any aspect of this, maybe not to the absolute nuttiness that I had of, you know, buying this and that program to try to teach me, you know, something, a way to make money, but that's how I saw things. And then when those didn't work, the next phase of all of this was, okay, well, I must have some kind of money issue. I must have some, what, you know, in the terminology, they call them limiting beliefs around money, or I must be, another term that I've heard is, you know, blocking money from coming into my life somehow, or I'm not attracting money. I went through more programs like that, more, you know, money spent to try to help me sort out all this money stuff. And the kicker one of that was in— what year was that? I think it was around 2012 or 2013, so not that long ago. This was supposed to be the be-all end-all program that was going to help me sort out all my money stuff. It's going to help me sort it all out, and I was going to start making money. And I went through this program, and, uh, oh, Dale, I'm so glad you can relate in a way. I mean, I'm sorry that you can, but it makes me feel like I'm not totally out there. So I went through this money program and I felt awful. I mean, every day I would follow the steps and I would do all the stuff that this person was telling me that I had to do. And I would watch the videos and I would keep track of things. And I just felt terrible. And not only that, but I was going further in the hole. Oh, I'm glad to hear that, Claire. It sounds like you have some nice things that you would rather be doing, what you feel like doing. Excellent. Well, as you can tell, through all of that, I was definitely not doing anything like Claire said that I felt like doing. I was trying to, to create more money in my life. But I was going about it in this way that now makes absolutely no sense to me. Like even recounting these stories, it's hard for me to put myself back into that headspace because it seems so turned around upside down backwards. From the way that I experience life and money now. So to kind of wrap up this story and move into like the happy ending portion, I was still really struggling with money up until and through 2015. At the end of 2015, My husband and I had been doing okay, but we had some things happen in our family. Okay, thank you, Claire. Sorry about that. We had a lot of things happening in our family. My husband had to leave his job to go help with his ailing father who was in the last stages of his life at that time. And And then we got socked with some more unexpected bills that basically drained our savings account. And as some of you may know, if you've heard me talk about this before, in January of 2016, as the sole breadwinner and kind of just barely hanging on, I got fired from my job. So I had left a job that I'd been in for many, many years to go work at a startup. And I was at the startup for 6 months. And after a little while, it was very evident to me that this was not the place for me. And then a lot of things occurred. And I unfortunately got let go, which was not great because I was hoping to quit on my own terms after I had lined something else up. But it didn't work out that way. So there I was. At the end of January in 2016, I got 1 month severance from the company, which was generous of them, I thought at the time. And I had about 2 to 3 months maximum, maximum of enough money to cover just the basic bills. And at that point, we had started going into credit card debt because by that point my husband hadn't been working for several months as well. And like I said, we had all these bills and things, so I felt like when I got fired, like I was staring into the abyss. I was really upset, first of all, and I just didn't know what to do. I was sitting there in our apartment in the Bronx, New York. My husband was not there at the time. He was in California with his dad. And I just sobbed. I just cried. I was like, oh my God, what Am I going to do now? What am I going to do? And I spent the next month just sort of in a zone of like shock, I think, and a little bit of denial, watching my bank account kind of slowly disintegrate and really not knowing what to do. I thought about going back to doing things that I had done before for money. But this time there was something different in me. I just couldn't make myself do those things anymore, things that I really didn't want to do. And so this one day, I'll never forget it, it was in early March of 2016. I woke up one day and I said to myself, you know what, I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do anymore. Ever, starting right now. I don't care if that means that we lose every cent we have and we have to go live in my sister's cabin in the woods. She would have been fine with us doing that. But I was like, I don't care. I am not going to do anything, any work that I don't enjoy. I am not going to— I'm just not going to sacrifice any more of my precious time and my precious life towards making the almighty dollar, as it's called. I just wasn't going to do it anymore. And it was a really powerful, powerful realization for me. It was one of those moments that you just don't forget. And at that time, I have to be straight with you, I didn't know where the money was going to come from. I had been doing some free coaching on the side, um, just for anybody who wanted to talk to me basically, but I was not charging for it. I had an email list at that time from some previous stuff that had nothing to do with what I do now of maybe 200 people, I don't know, and I hadn't emailed them in a while. I had started a daily audio blog that had about, I think at that point, maybe 50 followers. So it wasn't like I had some built-in audience that I could just go to and say, hey, you know, I'm starting a new business, will you pay me? You know, it wasn't really like that at all. And I thought to myself, you know what, I don't care what this looks like. I don't care if my lifestyle completely changes. I'm done with doing things I don't want to do. And that includes how I make my living. And that was a big one for me. I gave myself permission to do what I want. And here is where this is going to be hard for me to say without getting really emotional with you guys, so pardon me, but my life has changed immeasurably for the better ever since then. It wasn't like I suddenly didn't have any debt or I suddenly had, you know, millions of dollars pouring into my bank account immediately upon making that decision. But what did happen was that every time I had some inspiration come through of what I really wanted to be doing, I paused and I listened to it. I paused and I listened and I didn't dismiss it. That was so big. I didn't say, oh, I'll do that later, or oh, maybe I can do that 5 years from now. I didn't do that. It was, okay, that sounds really cool, I'm going to do that. So one of the things that I did was I started writing these books. That was an early thing that I did. I put a coaching offer on my website that had almost no visitors, you know, like just a handful every day. And believe it or not, a couple of people responded. So that was really exciting. And then probably the biggest decision that my husband and I made was that we didn't want to live in the United States anymore. For a long time, we had dreamed of moving to Europe. And so we just said, okay, it's time to do that. Why wait? This is something we both want to do. So let's figure out how to do it. And in the past, I would have just completely dismissed that. And said, there's no way in the world that that's going to happen right now, not with our finances and the mess that they are. You're not working, I would have said to him, and I'm barely earning anything. And I would have— on paper, it just looked like completely the wrong time to listen to that kind of inspiration. But in fact, what has happened over this last period of 18 months or so is that we did move to Paris as we had envisioned. That was lovely. Unfortunately, we did lose my father-in-law along the way. We are both, my husband and I are both now doing quote unquote work that we really enjoy, that does not feel like work. We're both making a good living doing that. We have straightened up our finances fairly quickly. And I think the most important thing for me in relation to money is that now when I think about it, it seems really fun and creative. It does not seem like this big scary monster that I had to keep trying to slay every time I turned around, because that's how it used to be. Now it seems very light and airy and creative. And fun. So, um, I would love to, um, oh, Joanne says she must have moved to the mountains. Yeah, my sister's cabin is in a very nice spot, I will say, in California, in the mountains in California, but it wouldn't be my dream home. But I was willing to, you know, do whatever was necessary in order to continue following what was inspiring to me. If it meant that I had to make some lifestyle changes, I was totally willing to do that. So I would love to just pause there and see if any of this is connecting with you, or how is it landing for you? Does it seem as though this notion of giving yourself permission to follow your inspiration Does that seem like something doable or not? Kathy says, I want to follow your path. I'm done with doing what I've always done, selling my soul to an ill-fitting corporate job. I thank you for saying that, Kathy. And I want to make something really clear here. Another reason why I'm so passionate about this topic in particular of money is because I see a lot of people who are in jobs that aren't suited to them. They're not essentially getting paid for being themselves. They're trying to fit themselves into some mold, some money-making mold. That's what I was trying to do with all of those funky programs I was buying, like trying to be a hot dog salesman. Like I was trying to fit myself into something that looked like it would be potentially lucrative rather than seeing, oh, wait a second, like I have my own set of skills and talents that I can explore and get paid for. They don't necessarily even look like anything that exists right now. Perhaps I will figure out something completely new to do with them, but that's not how I was seeing it before. Anne says, oh, thank you, Bertie. I know it's worked for me every time I've done it. I just didn't realize what was working. So I went back to what I thought I should do once I had the money. Oh, that's interesting. So yeah, so that's a really interesting point too, because what has happened to me along the way here is that I have seen that every single time, this is really important, so I'm gonna highlight this. Every single time I have gone toward what has been inspiring to me and sort of turned my back on those things that look sort of like, you know, shiny object— oh, look over here, Mary, you know, this is the thing that's going to make you rich— or whatever, you know, that kind of thing. Every time I said, you know, that's cool for you, but that's not me, and I've gone in this direction, the money has appeared. It's almost like I started to call it the money faucet in my head. It's like, go towards the inspiration and you turn on the money faucet. You go towards inspiration and towards something that you can create and have fun with that helps someone else, and it's like a money faucet. That's really as simple a way as I can describe it. Um, there's also, uh, let me go back to my notes because I wanted to make another point here. Hold on one second. Um, oh yes, whenever I start to feel like I'm pushing, you know, whenever I start to feel like, oh, you know, I really should do this to build up my business, or I really should, you know, whenever I have that sense of pushing or like something's getting hard, I stop. And I know this is so the opposite of what we are taught, but I kid you not that if you start to feel this sense of urgency and this sense of, oh my gosh, I have to fill in the blank, just stop because you don't have to go in that direction. Joanne says, I get overwhelmed with all that I need to learn in order to follow my inspiration to turn it into reality. Oh, that's interesting, Joanne. Um, I think that one thing I can say about that is when you just keep taking the next step in front of you instead of trying to see what they all are, it gets a lot easier. You know, I know that especially when people are trying to create their own business, which a lot of my clients are trying to do, they can start looking— in my mind, Big picture is okay to a point, but we can't even really see the big picture, so I don't even really know why we try because we can only see what's right in front of us to do. You know, when I was thinking about how to engage people with this book, the idea came to me, oh, I'll do a webinar. Okay, I didn't project past that. I didn't say, oh well, I need to do a webinar because then after I do a webinar, 'cause I'll have the recording and I can share the recording around here and then I could maybe get more people to my list. I mean, I wasn't doing that. I was really like, I just want to have a nice conversation with people and show them something different about money and how it can come from a different place within us instead of having us having the need to chase it down all the time. That we can simply take the step that's right in front of us and not worry about what the next one is after that, and certainly not the next 10 or 20 after that. So I don't know if that's helpful, Joanne. Let me know. But I want to reiterate this, these couple of points here, that when we start to really listen to those dreams that you all shared at the beginning of ways that you would spend your time if you only had a year to live, or if you could design your your day and what would you do and what would you not do. If we can start to listen to that and then act from it, even in just small ways, and then not get, um, kind of sucked into this notion that there is some way we are supposed to be living and that we are supposed to be earning money, because those rules don't really exist. As far as I can tell— excuse me— as far as I can tell, life is supposed to be easy, not hard. And that includes making money. Making money is supposed to be easy, not hard. So what if it actually is easy? What if it actually is easy to do all of the things you enjoy doing and make money at the same time. If you had told me this 2 years ago, I would have said you were full of you know what. But I can honestly say, I don't know why I am so emotional tonight, but today and these past few months have been a time in my life, the only time in my life, and I'm now 56 years old, that my days are filled with doing exactly what I want to do. I am living in the place I want to be living, in this gorgeous city of Paris where I have dreamed of living since I was 20 years old. I am doing what I want to do. I'm writing books and I'm working with wonderful people like you. And creating some coaching programs and having such a joyous time with everything that is involved in that. I am meeting amazing people. I am eating great food. I get up when I want to get up. I go to bed when I want to get up and go to bed. I set my own schedule. I take days off whenever I feel like it. And when I'm on, quote unquote, I don't feel like I'm working. And I really do feel sometimes like, how the heck did this happen? And the answer that I keep coming back to— oh, thank you, Kathy. No problem, Joanne. I, I hope that this is inspiring for you because, you know, I— if you don't know that much about me, you know, you may not realize that my life looked very different from this for a very long time, in that I struggled for 30 years with post-traumatic stress disorder, and adding on top of that all the anxiety and worry that I shared earlier about money. You know, my life did not look anything like it does now. And I really owe it to this very simple, really, idea, which is that we have been given this feeling of inspiration for a reason. And as I was talking with somebody in one of my Facebook groups today, I used to see those kinds of things as frivolous and irresponsible. Well, sure, I'd go live in Paris and write books. Yeah, if I could afford to, you know, that seems like a pipe dream. Give me a break. No, to me, it seems irresponsible not to listen to that and follow that. That inspiration is there for a reason. I believe it's a way that we have been gifted with bringing out the uniqueness that's in us and drawing other people in to that gift. And part of that can be an exchange of energy and money, however it might look. You know, to me, that's kind of a beautiful expression of who we are, is the money that gets created along with it. Birdie, oh, I'm glad you can relate to that. So I don't see— oh, it's live, Mimi. So I don't see money as anything other than another creative expression of who we are. It doesn't seem like anything separate from me anymore or from you. It seems like it's just part of this beautiful exchange that we're all involved in every day. And so I see it as a very fun aspect of life. You know, the more value I create, the more money that gets created. And so I'm really excited to create more value because it feels like I'm making more of an impact on people that way. So it's kind of all tied in together. So Kathy says she's scared to follow your inspiration. All I can say about that, Kathy, is that if you feel inspired to do something and you feel some nerves around that, I'm going to give you permission to ignore the nerves and just do the thing anyway. Just try something. I don't mean this to sound like I haven't had any moments of stress or frustration or anxiety or nervousness in this last year and a half. I certainly have. I just don't care anymore. I don't care that I do. I just keep going because I so understand and appreciate that this is a beautiful gift that we have been given to listen to these dreams that we have of things that we want to create in the world. And I don't see any reason at all to not pursue them, no matter what kind of thinking and feelings we have at the same time. Uh, Joanne, sometimes when I watch a video of someone who's doing something similar I'd like to do, I get really emotional, a yearning, not sure how to describe. Yeah, exactly. So when I was talking about this earlier, Joanne, those are the feelings that I used to have, like, oh really, I wish I could do that, like, if only I could do that, but I can't because, you know, fill in the blank with a string of quote-unquote reasons why. Now I just, I don't have anything, I don't have a but blank anymore. It's just, oh, I really want to try that thing. And I just try it. I don't care anymore if I have nerves or if I have fear, I don't care. They don't matter to me because something is speaking more loudly within us than that. And so that's what I'm trying to get at. Here in this conversation and in the book and everything that I'm doing related to this particular topic is just to help you to see that you don't have to do things just because you think you have to in order to make money. There's like so many of these strings we have attached to, to things, and it's so much simpler. Simpler than that. It's so much simpler than that. It's simply about giving ourselves permission to do what we're inspired to do, to create the life that we want. And I have yet in this, this time since I started doing this at the end of January, February, March, around there of 2016, I have not had one experience where it has not worked, where I have listened to inspiration and I've created something that I felt inspired to create that I thought would help someone else, and they have paid me. It has worked every single time. So yes, absolutely, Joanne, the craft sale is a small step. It's not a small step even. You know, that's putting your, your works of art in front of people and seeing how they respond. And that's part of it too, is, you know, kind of not really worrying about how people respond, but just sort of taking it in as information. And just not being afraid to see what happens if you take that, that next step. So I think what I'd like to do now is just mention a couple of things, and then I will have some Q&A time. So I want to for sure mention that the book is available now on Amazon worldwide, so I hope that you take advantage of that. It's a Kindle book, but you don't need a Kindle to read it. I read it on my phone and on my Amazon account. I'll answer that one second. I mean, that's a great question. So I hope that you enjoy the book, and I would love to hear from you after you've read it. Let me know what you think or post a review. I also want to mention that if you haven't joined, I'm running a challenge right now in a private Facebook group, the Making Money Challenge. It starts officially on November 10th and runs for 5 days plus a bonus day. But we've been having a great conversation in there, and you can find out more at maryschiller.com/money, where you can also read about the program Let's Make Money Honey, which reopens on November 15th for registration. And if you have any questions about any of that, please feel free to email me. I'm happy to answer. So let's go to your questions. Sure, Joanne. So Mimi, what do you do when you're nervous about asking for money? When you feel like you just, they just, oh, when you feel like they think you just want their money. Well, first of all, I don't think that's where most of us are coming from, especially the people watching this. I have the sense that this audience is a particularly giving and caring group of people. And you're not in it just for the money. And so if you're coming from a place of, of really genuinely wanting to do something for other people, you know, it's not really our job to manage other people's responses. We can only do what we are inspired to do. And if somebody has that response, that's kind of on them. It's not really on us. I don't really want to get into their stuff. I only know that I can act from my, my own, um, my own, uh, what do I want to say, my own sense of what is valuable to somebody. And if they, if they accept that and pay me for it, great. If they don't, that's okay too. So I don't know if that helps, Mimi, but I just try to keep it pretty simple. I also don't really have any problem asking for money anymore. Um, I should also mention, which I forgot, that if you are in the challenge, you will get a discount on the Let's Make Money Honey program if you decide to join. So that's another impetus to join the challenge if you'd like to get a slight break on the price for the membership. It's $297 for the year, but I will knock $50 off of that if you are part of the challenge group, and it's $29 a month if you would prefer to do just a monthly membership type of thing. I just recently changed it to that format because I've enjoyed the community so much that I wanted a way for us to keep that going. So I hope you will consider it because I think It's just a wonderful group of people in there. We're having so much fun talking about money and earning money and sharing our money successes and life insights in there. It's great fun. Okay, cool, Mimi. So what other questions can I answer? Or what other thoughts have come up for you? Hey, Kathy says she's in. Great, great, great. Excellent, Kathy. That's exciting. Oh, Birdie, thanks for signing up for the challenge. Yeah, we have a lot of really fun people in there as well, and we're having a really good conversation in there already. And, you know, just to give you some perspective on this too, is that, you know, I know my husband was asking me recently, it was like, Why do you think that money is such a— yes, it is recorded, Mimi. Why do you think money is such a hot topic for people? And I said to him, and I wrote this in the book, that I think it's such a charged topic because we literally conflate money with our survival. We see the two things as completely and totally intertwined. And what I try to show through the book and through everything that I teach people is that it really isn't that way, that we have everything we need and we're just fine whether we're making X amount of money or not. And once we can sort of separate ourselves from that whole weird idea that we have, I think it's a cultural thing, it becomes a lot easier to make money. That's the irony of it. It's like once you see that your life doesn't depend on it, which is how I used to see it and why it used to be such a struggle, it's like, wow, now I have all this creative space in my head because I'm not worrying all the time. And Caroline, I just love hearing from you, a great sense of fun, adventure, and creativity around money. Thank you, Caroline. You know, the fact that you say that is just like, I can't even really believe that that's the experience that I have of it now. Considering how I used to be. And I think I wrote this in the book. I can't remember right offhand, but that, you know, one of the reasons why this came to my attention was because my daughter mentioned it to me. You know, she said, Mom, do you realize how much you talk about money? You talk about it more than anybody I know, and I'm sick of it. And I didn't realize how much of my life was consumed by listening to all this stressed-out thinking about money. Once all of that just sort of went off to the side, you know, once I realized that, oh yeah, like, I don't really have to listen to that, I can listen to something else, I can listen to this inspiration that we've been talking about, and I can take actions from there, and I can give myself permission to live my life the way that I really want to live it because that seems like how I'm designed. It was like, I hardly even think about it anymore. I certainly don't pay attention to any stressful thinking I have about money because it's been shown to me over and over again that A, it's not helpful to listen to that. And B, it's not even telling me anything true. It used to look so factual to me. Like I said, like my actual survival depended on it. And now those two things just have no correlation with one another. And it's really, like I said before, more of a creative expression of my kind of output as a human being more than anything else. I can totally see that thinking my life depends on making money is not a great place to be thinking creatively from. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I make a big point about this in the book, big point, and I'm actually working on another book about this thing itself, which is this whole money mindset thing, and that we don't have to worry about any of this thinking that we have about money. We don't have to try to change it. You know, we don't have to, like I said earlier, we don't have to try to do anything about these limiting beliefs or whatever they are. All we have to really see is that we have thinking. Sometimes it's about money. Sometimes that thinking about money creates some worry and stress. But that doesn't have to mean anything. It certainly doesn't have to be the thing that we're listening to. It can sort of be there in the background. That's going to happen probably. But we have this whole other life that we can be living from that is 100% creative and 100% possibility and 100%, you know, life with a capital L. Instead of the little life up here in my head. So how do I see the bill survival side now? That's interesting because, um, like if I get an unexpected bill, let's say, and now to me it's more like, oh, that's cool, somebody thinks I've got this money, so how can I create the, the cash to pay for it? What could I create for somebody that would be so valuable they would pay me for it? Let's see. And I play a game. It's like a big game to me now. It doesn't look serious. It just doesn't look serious. I don't see my survival as dependent on money at all. I know that if I lost this home, if I lost everything, I would still be fine. I know that I would figure out a way to be fine. I've done it before. With a whole lot less. And I just don't see any kind of attachment within me anymore to this idea of money equaling survival. It just doesn't look that way to me. And the other thing I've seen too is that by, by using money as an example of this, I've seen that just as you and I have an infinite capacity for new creative ideas and ways to create beauty and value in the world. Well, there's an infinite amount of money available to us as well. There's no cap on that. So it kind of looks all like this beautiful interconnected stream, if you will, of creative thoughts and inspiration and actions that we take, and then people appreciating that and money coming in. And then, you know, we breathe out the money to pay other people and we inhale some more because, you know, that's how it works. And it's just kind of this really beautiful symbiotic— is that the word— system that we're in. And it's not all like— I don't want to sound too kind of airy-fairy or however you want to think about it, but it just seems like this is the natural system that we're all in, and money is simply part of that. It's simply another expression of what we really are and what we are capable of doing and a way to easily show that to other people through this medium of exchange. So, yeah, so it seems very creative and fun. Absolutely. Doesn't look so serious to me anymore. So I think I will wrap this up. Is there anybody else who has a comment or question? Question before we close out this talk. I've really appreciated your thoughtful comments and responses. It means a lot to me that you have taken the time to be here, or if you're watching the replay, thank you so much. Um, hi Dale, I haven't paid for numerous money-making programs. Uh, yes, Please share how what I offer will be a benefit. Ah, yes, thank you for asking that, Dale. So if you have enjoyed this conversation, if this has kind of helped you to start seeing money in a new way, the program that I run is what I feel very reasonably priced for what people receive, which is they, they receive continual support from me. It really is a very, very different way of looking at this whole topic of money. I include a 4-week online course in the program that's got several videos and some fun money-making assignments in there. I have a Facebook group where I do Facebook Lives very much like this, and I facilitate the conversation. And essentially what I am attempting to do with the book and the program and everything else is to help people lighten up on this topic and lighten up their lives in general. One person who gave me a testimonial said that if you're, if you're looking for a program that's just about making money, this isn't it. But if you're looking for a program that will help you see life differently, this is it. And so I'm using money as the medium, if you will, because I find it to be, like I said, a very charged and emotional topic. And therefore, it's a very good place to help people have insights into themselves and into how they really want to be spending their precious time and their precious life. So I don't know if that helps, Dale. If not, let me know, and I'm happy to follow up. If you want to email me, mary@maryschiller.com, I'm happy to, to give you some more insights into the program. Oh, hey Monica, no problem, it's gonna be replayed. And thanks again for asking that question, Dale, because I think it is important to mention that, you know, there's so many programs out there about make money in, you know, 30 days by doing XYZ. Well, that's not what this is. This is really a— oh good, Dale— this is really an exploration of what's going on behind behind the scenes, and seeing how all of this can help us live better in all aspects of life, not just about our financial, the financial part of life, because it's all interconnected. Danielle, you lighten up every topic you discuss. Oh, thanks, Danielle. I appreciate that. Yeah, you know, again, I wish in some ways I wish you guys could have seen me the before version of Mary, you know, I did write another book called I Am Just a Woman that chronicles my, my earlier life with post-traumatic stress disorder and all kinds of things like that. And I really do feel very much like a new person. Like I woke up in a new world one day. And certainly this money piece was a big part of what has helped me to experience life in a new way. And so it's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about it. All right. Well, thanks everybody for being here. We will sign off. And if you have any questions about the book or comments or about the program, Let's Make Money, Honey, please feel free to reach out to me. And I hope to see you in the challenge group. We're having a great time in there. So I love you all very much. Thank you so much for being here, and I will talk to you all again soon. All right. Oh, good. Thanks, Birdie. I'm glad to hear that. Kathy, we can fix that. We really can. You don't have to be living that before Mary anymore. All right, Joanne, thanks for being here. All right. It was so lovely having you all join. Thank you so much. All right, I will talk to you again soon. And again, feel free to email me anytime, mary@maryschiller.com. Thanks, Caroline. Thank you, Annalise. All right, bye-bye now.