Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - INCREASE Your Wealth & Embrace The Money Mindset With Heather! Episode 310

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Have you been wanting to work with Heather? Her annual elite mastermind is open NOW!   She is only accepting 20 participants this year! Click the link below to learn more and apply now if you are ready to go to the next level! https://heathermonahan.com/the-elite-mastermind/ In This Episode You Will Learn About:  Channeling your inner strength to get through tough times  Living through discomfort in order to reach your DREAMS    Where to discover your greatest resource  Shifting your perspective to FOREVER change your financial circumstances     Resources: Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Visit Indeed.com/monahan to start hiring now Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order only when you order through DrinkLMNT.com/CreatingConfidence Show Notes:  You are NOT the only one struggling right now! With so much going on in the world, I want to give you a compilation of the BEST tips and tricks for getting through difficult times and overcoming ANY financial obstacles you’re facing. Tune in to discover the money mindset you NEED to start embracing, and the financial rules to LIVE by!    -00:59 Ep 201 Let Go of Scarcity & Let In Abundance With Cathy Heller  -12:36 Ep. 203 The Key to Attracting More Money Into Your Life with Chris Harder  -22:02 Ep. 219 The Money Making Formula That Will SURPRISE you with Derrick Kinney  -31:57 Ep. 275 The Simple Steps That Lead To Extraordinary Wealth Candy Valentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Okay, so I know everyone's talking about how it's so hard out there right now, and there's a lot of negative things happening. There's layoffs, real estates out of control. There's no certainty, but there is always a way to be the exception to the rule. So I've put together the best tips and the best cuts of our episodes talking about money mindset, about how to create wealth, and to help you get through whatever challenge it is you're going through. Remember, if you need support, we've got you, my mastermind, we've got a couple of seats left. Go to the link below in the show notes, and you can apply there.

If you don't need all the support, then this episode right here, it's gonna give you just what you need to overcome these financial challenges. Get your mindset right, and be the exception to the rule. I know you can do it. I'm on this journey with me, with me, with me.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was 23. I wanted to get a record deal. And that's a whole fun journey. I did get a record deal. I was signed to Interscope. I got dropped from Interscope. I got signed to Atlantic. I got dropped from Atlantic. I wound up writing music for TV shows and films for 10 years, like pretty little liars and criminal minds and switch to birth and McDonald's commercials. And I made a career out of that. And that was what I thought was going to be like it for me. And I had a couple of my two first daughters at the time. And then I wanted to actually continuing to follow the breadcrumbs.

And my whole world opened up so much more than I ever thought. And I started a podcast and wrote books and all that stuff. But when I was first in L.A., I didn't have a trust fund. My parents are divorced. My mom was a single mom. We lived in an apartment growing up with very, very little. I slept in the living room and had to work a couple jobs just to kind of have enough money to pay for lunch in school.

You know, that kind of a thing. No big deal, but like it wasn't a silver spoon kind of a life. And when I was in LA, I got my, you know, whatever job I could get to pay my bills and I had my roommate and everything. And I would take $200. That's a lot of money for me when I was 24 years old. And I would take $200 and I would spend it to go to the peninsula and go to the spa

at this beautiful five star hotel in Beverly Hills. And I knew that if you bought this massage, you had access to the spa for as much as long as you wanted. So I was like, you know what, that's such a great way to spend the day because I'll go get a massage. And then I'll spend an hour like in the steam room and then afterwards I'll go in the sauna and I'll use those lavender icy towels with the eucalyptus. And my friends would say to me, you should be careful, like that's so much money, you can't really afford that. And I would say, like, I can't afford not to do that. That day would give me so much, the way I would expand, the way I would feel, the way I would start to allow more of what's possible to seep in, the way I would start to align with, that the amount of things that would happen afterwards were just giant

and it's always been that way. Like you always go first, right? We go first. We co-sign scarcity or possibility. And so I was always like, I would go first when it came to abundance, when I started my podcast, like I didn't think what's going to be the ROI, how fast are people gonna listen? It was just like I'm doing this, end of story. So it will be. And then yeah, for every 16 people in the beginning I asked to be on, there will only be one person who said yes. But it didn't matter.

And it was the same thing with writing music. When I got dropped from the label, I had a day job for a couple of years. And I thought, oh, this is what I have to do because my dream didn't work out and I have to be practical and get a job. But I was so unhappy. And finally one day I was looking at myself in the elevator doors.

And I saw myself wearing high heels and like a double breasted pants suit. I just started to cry because I was like, you came out here with this like authentic, alive spirit and now you're like, you don't even recognize yourself. I quit and I didn't have anything to fall back on.

And now I don't tell people that they should quit. I say, hey, use your job as your investor and build the bridge and let's work together to figure out what you're gonna do instead of scrolling your phone, because everyone's on their phone at least six to 10 hours, at least a week, not 40. I was like, let's use those hours to build your side hustle. And then in like three to six, nine months,

you'll quit your job and people, they do. And they're very successful that way. I didn't know that. I didn't have a coach. So I just quit, but I had to because I knew I was, I didn't have any other possibility. It wasn't clear and I was like, I gotta get out of here. And when I did, I started looking around and I was like, who says that I can't do music? Just because I didn't actually get to tour the world like Rihanna or Taylor Swift, like there must be something here because I got so close.

So I started to ask a different question. If you ask a new question, you'll get different answers. And I was like, is there any other way for me to do music? And I started to google how do other people do this? And I saw there were artists doing this thing called licensing their songs. And I was like, what does it mean to license your song? And why is Dawson's Creek and One Tree Hill and Grey's Anatomy? Why are they using all these indie artists like Ingrid Michelson and why is Jossins Creek and One Tree Hill and Grey's Anatomy? Why are they using all these indie artists, like Ingrid Michael-San and why are they using all these people? Christina Perry's song was licensed to, so you think you could dance, and the next night, she had 200,000 downloads of this song,

and she was a waitress, like, I was like, oh my God, I never even thought of it. So I was like, that's what I'm gonna do. And I started to reach out to all of these people at Netflix NBC Paramount and I was nervous. I felt crazy. Of course I did. I was like, I don't even know what I'm asking for.

I don't know what I'm, I was like, so you'll be uncomfortable. So what? And I was. And then I learned, okay, that doesn't get you past the front desk, ask it a different way. And then I learned, oh, the name of the person who chooses the music is called a music supervisor. So then when I would call a network,

or I would call a movie studio, or I would call an ad agency, because they have them too, I would say, can I talk to the music supervisor. Then I got smarter. And I would look up who the name of the music supervisor is. I would Google, do a job advertising or ABC family music. And I'm going, oh, can I speak to someone? And then I got better at having the conversations. And my is, like, my friends would be like, that's insane. You should have an agent. Aren't there people who do that? And I said, look, no agent is going to wake up and think about me as much as I'm going to think about me. So I'm going to do it. What's the difference? I can figure it out. And I wound up figuring out that it's about having empathy and asking people questions and not saying, let me pitch you and be impressive.

It's like, no, let me make a relationship with you. Oh, hey, Scott at Leo, I'm making this up. Leo Burnett, Chicago. I know you're doing McDonald's. I saw your last ad. I love that song by Spencer Ludwig. How do you like living in Chicago, PS? Oh, you like it?

What's your favorite pizza place? Me, me too. I've actually been there. Oh, do you like Uno's East? Bob, Bob, Bob. By the way, are you working on anything new? And if you are, what's the storyline? Oh, you know, it's a McDonald's ad about best friends. We're going to need something that's like Edward Sharp in Magnet, Navig Zero's meets Bob, Bob, Bob and I would be like, you know what? What if I wrote you something and I'll send it to you and he'd be like, cool. Yeah,

I don't have any guarantees, but go for it. I'd be like, cool. I'll reach out. I'll reach out when it's done. Then I would go to a producer in LA and I would say, hey, I don't have any guarantees, but go for it. I'll be like, cool, I'll reach out. I'll reach out when it's done. Then I would go to a producer in LA and I would say, hey, I can't pay you for this track up front, but I just spoke to this guy who works on blah, blah, and is it worth your time to give me studio time with you two hours in the evening when you're done with whatever you're doing?

And I'll cut you in on the back end. And it's like, be resourceful. Like your greatest resource is not any resource is your resourcefulness. But do you see Heather what I mean? Like it was always like a fate of complete. It's like, I'm doing this. It's like, I'm doing this. We'll figure it out. It's not landing on the moon. And even that, we figured out how to do. So then it would work out. And then sometimes it would work out in the sense that the guy at the ad

agency or NBC or Netflix would say, you know what, that song doesn't work. But let me tell you this, there's something else we're doing. Would you write a song about, you know, home or sisters or, you know, brand new day? I'll be like, yeah, so then I would get in the pipeline because I wasn't again looking for the ROI. I was like, I need it to work out. Why didn't I was not, this is the energy, right? I was always in this energy of like, this is so fun. I'm anticipating how cool this is going to be and I wound up making about 400 grand a year writing music for film and TV and sitting over there on my shelf I could grab them right now but I

was featured in billboard and variety not like a blurb in billboard magazine like they did a full page spread with a picture of me like who is this girl making this money without a label, without an agent, then the same thing happened in Variety Magazine, full page. My cousin was at the news stand in New York City, and he's like, is this real? There's a full page spread on you, and I was like, I actually said to the editor of Billboard

when we sat down to do the interview. I'm like, is this really newsworthy? And he's like, Kathy, note to sell. Like, don't ask me, you know, because it makes, why would you want me to sit? And I was like, you're right, you're right, you're right. But I was just kind of doing my own thing. And then, oh my God, I saw the next possibility and next possibility. And I wound up long story short being featured on like six or seven music podcasts. I never thought I'd have a podcast. And people who had music podcasts would say, let's talk about the business of music

and how you did it in blah, blah, blah. And then one of the girls, there were so many emails that would come in from artists saying, I heard your interview, oh my God, can you coach me? And I was like, no, no, I don't coach. What are you talking about? I don't do anything like that. And this is 2016.

And one of the girls wrote me an email and she's like, you should start an online class, because there's so many songwriters around, and I was like, what's an online class? What are you talking about? And she's like, yeah, people do this stuff online. I'm like, I don't even have an Instagram account. I don't even have a Twitter.

I'm not on my, I never was an online person. I said, you know what? I was pregnant with my third daughter. I was like, what do I have to lose? I guess I could teach an online class to songwriters. I didn't have a podcast yet. Still an evidence from no email list. And I just decided, okay.

And so I did a webinar, but it wasn't a webinar. Like, I didn't make a slideshow. I don't know how to make a slideshow. So was it a webinar? I don't know. I was live for an hour. And it was the first time I had ever even used the software. It was like a Google Hangouts.

Or I don't even know what I used. But I figured it out. It was nothing fancy. There was no funnel. And for three weeks leading up to it, I posted it in different songwriting groups. Like, hey, I'm going to do this thing. And you can tell from the way I wrote it,

like there was no cool, polished. Like it was just like, I'm doing this. People didn't even know who I was. It was like, okay, come to it. And we did this Google Hangouts webinar. I guess you could call that. I was pregnant. I was just myself.

And at the end of it, I was like, I'm gonna teach a class. It's a thousand dollars. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, well, figured out together. I'll answer your questions. Maybe I'll bring in some music supervisors here and there to answer questions for you that what they look for and

147 people signed up that night and I got off and I was like this is crazy like yes I was already making four hundred thousand dollars a year something like that We had already bought our first cute Spanish like style house and LA and we were able to afford the kids to go to a good school But that was crazy. I was like 147 grand. It was on for an hour. Like, that's crazy. And now I'm just going to talk to these people once a week. And I loved it. And then three months, four months later, one of our students, Amy, she said to me, this has to be a podcast. And I was like, what's what what does that even look like? Like, I don't listen to any pie. I think I've been on a few. She's like, just start one. And so I said, okay, I'm so busy.

Now I have three kids. The youngest one was like a month old. And I was like, well, no time like the president. I'm not gonna get any less busy. I have three little kids under five and I have a career. So I said, final, start a podcast. I was like, I'm just gonna do it. It wasn't like, I'll do it until I have a thousand down.

I'll just do it. And I started the podcast. and as the podcast was growing, I was like, I'm not going to be doing music much longer. I could just feel like this is what I came for. This is really what I like to do. I loved it. I didn't care if I was interviewing someone early on who just owned their own bakery. I didn't care if I was interviewing, like, because in the beginning, it wasn't famous. People, I just loved that. Here's what I started with, and here's where I landed,

and I get to do something I love, and I'm making 10,000 croissants a month, and I can't believe like I went from dropping at high school to doing this, or whatever people said. And then it just, it really grew. National security experts are warning. Our aging power grid is more vulnerable than ever.

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You name, I had to break the news, so to speak. And I remember Laurie looked at me and she was calm and she paused and she could have been mean, she could have been angry, she could have been all those things But she wasn't she looked at me and she said I will never Let this happen again And that became the birth of Laurie how people know Laurie today because until that moment She never had an opportunity really or the urgency to go and develop her skills that she was meant to go and develop So that's one of the positive things that came out of it. So step one was breaking the news.

Step two was swallowing and accepting this opportunity at reinvention. Listen, I could have looked at it and said, poor us or this happened to us or any of those things. And I didn't. Of course, I had some anger. I had a lot of insecurity. I had plenty of fear. But I saw it as a bit of relief. I didn't have to play this role anymore and I got to choose again.

And I'm telling you, the best thing that you can control is perspective. You're either gonna have a negative set of lenses on or an opportunistic set of lenses on. And I've always been pretty opportunistic. So I chose the opportunistic set of lenses. And I put those on and I said, you know, what could life look like going forward?

And that's really where our entrepreneurial journey kind of started. In my fact, I always had that entrepreneurial bug in me. There were a few things I tried kind of half-heartedly in the past. So that seed was always there. This was just the first opening for it to really grow into something.

And I'll tell you what the third step was, was accepting reality and making the best out of it. In other words, we sold everything or short sold everything or walked away from everything in order to have a clean slate and started out in a tiny little 900 square foot loft department in downtown Minneapolis and built from there. Instead of trying to somehow string this out or drag it on, we just said, you know what, let's tear off the bandaid, let's start fresh, and then let's build something great going forward

with these new lessons that we have in life. And that really was what gave us the trajectory those few steps of launching us, so to speak. And how many years, you and I were just talking before we turned the recording on about you're now closing on your third home and you have a different home for every season. And you're living that proverbial American dream

now that we all want to live. How long did it take from that rock bottom? You had to go home and tell Lori that you had to start over to say, you know what, I think this is working. A long time. See, that was about 12 years ago, as you and I sit here and record it.

I guess almost 13 years ago, right? So that felt like a short journey, but it's technically a long time. 13 years is a long time. And what happened was we became so gunshot. You know, the pendulum always swings too far, one way or the other. So in losing everything, we became so afraid to spend again.

We became so afraid to, you know, part with our money again, that we really had to, and that's a lot of where what I talked about today it comes from, we really had to set out to learn what do smart people do with their money. What do the people who have the life that we eventually want? What do they do with their money? How we eventually want? What do they do with their money? How do they behave? How do they think? And it was in accumulating all that information. And being willing to trust the information that you're accumulating and start to put it in a practice a little bit and let that practice turn into small muscles, the small muscles turn into

large muscles. That here we are 13 years later, and these homes were getting these all in basically a one year period. And so it's not like it happens overnight by any stretch of the imagination. But I'll tell you, Lauren, I made a couple of financial rules for ourselves that I would love to share. One of them in order to protect ourselves was that we will never, ever have less than multiple income sources. And the rule that we live by is, if any one income source went away today, we would not have to change anything about our lifestyle tomorrow. So this is the ultimate goal.

Heather, this is what people should work towards. We live in a time, multiple income sources is not luxury. It's a must have because the world is changing so quickly, so dynamically. So you want to work towards building enough income sources so that even if you're biggest one, even if you're best one went away today, you wouldn't have to change your lifestyle tomorrow

because the others could support you. That's rule number one. Rule number two was we decided we weren't going to buy anything that's a luxury. Now, I don't mean the home over your head. I don't mean the car that gets you to and from work. I mean the extras, for example, these extra homes or a motor home or a boat or something like it. We weren't going to buy any of that stuff unless we could pay cash for it. Now, it doesn't mean we do pay cash

for it because that would be wasting the chance at leveraging money right now at, you know, 3% which is basically free money. But we will not buy something unless we can pay cash for it without changing our future lifestyle. So that's rule number two that we live by. And then rule number three is just that we try and pause and we really try and ask ourselves, is this just something we want for instant gratification or is this something that in two or three years, we really see playing a significant role. So let's talk about this lake home that we're going to close on soon. This is not instant gratification. We already get to go up to Wisconsin every summer.

My mom has a lake home there. We already keep our boat up there. So this is not an instant gratification. Oh, it'd be nice to have this. This is a legacy piece of property that became available and Lori and I can't wait to bring our kids that we don't have yet, to bring our kids up and make memories and friends and have this be

in the family for a long time. So it's a long-term play instead of an instant gratification play. Oh, it's so, so good. And I love that you're both so on the same page about everything. What role does it play who you chose as your spouse in your entrepreneurial journey? That's such a great question.

So Lori and I met when she was 21 and I was 24. Friends first then became lovers. I wanted to be hooked up right away immediately. She had a different agenda, a different timeline than me. So as well as working through that, be patient, work through, being able to quote, earn her. But when we met at 21, 24, that's young. And you're very different people than you are today as I'm 44 and she's 41. And so over that 20 years, you become at least three or four different people each, right? Your likes, your interests, what drives you, everything. It changes

radically. So in fact, we should be changing. It's so unfair for people to expect the person they met, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, to be the same person they met. That would be a nightmare. Laurie would be so boring to me if she was the same Laurie when she was 21. And I would be so boring to her if I was the same Chris, you know, that I was when I was 24. So what's really made it work was a couple of things. One, we've always said we're willing to try it on for size. So just like when you go in the dressing room, you try an outfit on for size, is it a fit for me? Is it not?

Instead of saying, that's a dumb idea. Or why would you want to do that? We've made an agreement that we always try each other's ideas on for size. And part of the rule is it doesn't have to be a fit. There is no obligation for it to be a fit. When somebody brings up, hey, I would love to try this or I want to switch careers, or what

if we could start experimenting with X, Y, and Z, if you shoot it down right away, instead of trying it on for size or considering it, that makes the other person feel bad. And then they stop bringing exciting ideas to you, and then that dooms the relationship. So you want to create an atmosphere where it's absolutely okay to reinvent yourself, or bring new ideas into the relationship and know that the other person isn't gonna embarrass you or shoot it down, but instead they're gonna try it on for size. So that's been one great rule that's kind of helped us

morph into who we are today. I think the other thing is we have, you're gonna laugh at this, but we've always been walkers. Like we walk three to six miles a day, every single day, it's a non-negotiable for us. If it's a pouring rain out, we'll still be out walking. Because when we've got that guaranteed container to physically remove ourselves from the place where we've done battle all day and change our state a little bit, and we know that we're going to have that chance to connect to first thing in the morning and then at the end of our work day, that's

a really important container to be able to talk through anything that would otherwise be put on the back burner. And I'll tell you what, we've done a great job of putting things out when they're smoke instead of letting them turn into a fire and trying to put it out then. And we're able to do that because we've got this daily container where we're willing to address anything that we have to address. So those are just a couple of ways that we've kind of grown into the people that, you know, they look at us today and they might say, oh, must be nice to have found another entrepreneur that understands how you're taking all that. We were not those people. We grew into

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So my daughter is a huge baseball fan, Heather, so I bought a ticket for my daughter, my self-hunter boyfriend. But then I said, you know what? I'm going to back myself against the wall here and say, I'm not going to allow myself to go to the world series until I get a certain number of downloads on the podcast. And I wanted to go all in. And so I came up with a variety of ways to do that. And it was amazing how when I put myself in a situation of, I'm going to lose something

valuable. My brain went into overdrive. It was like ideas began to fire back and forth because there was a purpose, there was a cause I had to do it. So the day before the World Series, we hit the goal. But I say all that because for people who are thinking about their money as if I go to a job, I come back home, I press, repeat and do it again the next day.

And then Sunday about four o'clock, that Iki, Phelian, settles in that says, oh, I gotta start this all over again on Monday. This message is for you. And I wanna tell you, if you're working in a job right now, where your feet are today is where you can have the most impact. And if you can find a way to increase business, reduce costs, and grow the bottom line,

where you're at right now in a job, you can make more money, which means you can then give more money to the causes you care about. And I wanted to spell something real quick, Heather. This was a problem I had to work through myself many years ago. And that was when I would give to an organization I believed in, I was giving money. So therefore, I was losing money for them to gain the money. Okay, so get this, it was lose win,

which is never a good scenario. And what I realized when I came up on this generosity purpose, this is a way for you to make more money, do more good. And because you're doing more good, more people typically want to work with you, and you are driven to make the business successful, which means you keep making even more money to do more good. And the cycle just keeps repeating itself.

And so no longer is it lose win, it's almost win-win, and the charity gets won-win. You're almost winning more than the charity is, because it changes your mindset to have a fulfillment mentality. And you're helping your customers, and I think you're helping your business Heather, because you're decommoditizing the product or service you've got. There's so many things right now.

People can work with any CPA, Relator, Attorney, Salesperson. It all looks the same, sorry to say to the audience, to the outside person. But when you raise your flag up and say, you know what, we provide great service. But what helps us stand out is we help make our community better. People want to work with that person, and research tells us, surprisingly, they're willing to pay more money to do it, because they're part of a thicker story.

So when the competitors come knocking, they may be teased with a price reduction from the competitor, but they won't change because the bigger story of how you're helping make the world better and helping their community really is what hooked them in the first place. Oh, it's so powerful. And I'm telling you, it works. I'm living proof. Please raise your hand at work. Make this change in your business. You will be thankful for it. Okay, people listening

right now are thinking, Oh, well, this guy grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. His dad handed him his financial advisor business. I know that's not true, but I'm hoping you could share with them a little bit about the truth behind how you came to be the person you are today. Well, I wasn't that kid where I had to walk up and the snow both ways to school

and I carried a warm big potato to get my hands warm, I had that potato to a lunch. It's not a story like that, but I grew up lower middle class. And what I didn't have going for me was, I didn't see my parents take any risk. My dad was a metallurgical engineer,

so he was very math oriented by nature. And he would always get to the precipice, Heather, of wanting to take a risk, of wanting to launch a business, to do something more, but he couldn't quite get there. So I grew up liking money and I began to connect at an early age. The more money I made, the more I could give away. I remember riding even like in my left hand to make a look anonymous to give a cast donation

to our church in the food bank, so it wouldn't get traced back to me. There was something about that that just drove me. You know, even as a kid, I kept track of every dime I found on the ground every quarter in my first paycheck. So I didn't grow up in utter poverty, but I would say I had sort of a poverty mindset mentally when it came to my money because I didn't see my parents have a plan or an ability

to work themselves out of the bubble that they were in. It wasn't until my first job out of college that I reached a very important fork in the road. And what it looked like was I got passed over for a raise, which really bothered me. The boss would routinely say on Friday, say, by the way, Saturday is a work day. I need you to come in 8 o'clock tomorrow. I have to call my wife and cancel our plans and then get this. Back when people wrote checks, he actually bounced two of our paychecks. So imagine this, I give a tithing check to my church and my pastor calls and says, Derek, don't know how to tell you this, but you're tithing check bounced, which meant the business

didn't have money to pay us. So I quickly saw the writing on the wall and I reached this moment and I thought, I can either stay at this job or a salary job like this, but someone would always be telling me what I'm worth based on the salary that they're giving me right then that's what they're saying. Here's how much I'm worth to the company or I can take a risk. I can put the chips on Derek. I can bet on myself and go into a financial planning business, which I've always wanted to do. And that's the path I chose. So I continue working full time for three more months, got licensed in the evenings, and the study, another weekends and so forth. And eventually made that break. And people told me, Derek,

you're going to fail. You don't have enough money and cash reserves, you're not smart enough. You don't have a financial background. But what I had in my heart, Heather, was I recognized I was sort of a nobody, but it was with the heart and a desire of somebody. And I recognized even in high school when I ran for office and won because I brought people together, is if you can help people feel important and heard and appreciated regardless of their age, regardless of their net worth, they will have an affinity toward you because you're endearing yourself toward them

and making them feel an important part of your life. Oh, that's so powerful. You brought up this poverty mindset. What are some of the strategies that you can share with people listening right now? How to switch that mindset? Well, let me ask our listeners this. Did any of you grow up with this scenario

where you might have seen mom or dad or grandma and grandpa hit their fist on the kitchen table while you were a kid and they'd say, if only we had more money, then we could fill in the blank. Okay? Absolutely. So Heather, I mean, when you see that as a kid,

you can't help but begin to believe that, well, I guess that's just how money works. The lack of it causes pain. And because we can't get more of it, we live with the pain. Or you might have heard someone say, you know, in life, there's the halves and the have-nots. And we're in the have-not category.

Well, those beliefs, I just wish I could just punch my fist through someone glass right now and say, look, stop that thinking. I mean, we get one shot on this earth. And whether you've made bad decisions in the past or people have told you you're not worth what you're making right now or you'll never get paid more than that or you've made some really bum decisions, you can rule the head today and change. And let me tell you a quick story to illustrate this.

So there was a woman who I was in the office on a Saturday morning, and my voice now I was blinking and I pressed it. And a woman's voice came on and she was scared beyond belief. She said, Derek, you've got to call me back right away. I bounced a check and I'm going to go to jail. Oh my gosh, what?

I was like, who goes to jail because they announced a check? So I quickly called her back. I knew this message wouldn't wait until Monday. And I said, tell me what happened. She said, Derek, I feel so stupid. I didn't move money from my savings to check in. I wrote a check. I got this letter in the mail. It bounced. And now I'm going to go to jail. I said, okay, let me press pause. We can call the bank on Monday. We'll take care of the bank and so forth and we can catch the check the bounds. But why do you think you're gonna go to jail?

So she began to tell me a story. And when she was seven years old, she's 55 right now. Seven years old, she overheard her dad receive a call from a store owner that he had just bought some school supplies for and some clothing for her and her siblings, and he accidentally bounced a check as well. And the store owner said, because you bounced a check, I'm going to send the police over

there, and we're going to send you to jail. So this seven-year-old girl thought that if you bounced a check or even more, if you make a bad financial mistake, you go to jail. So now fast-forward, she's 55 years old. And what that did for me, Heather, is it gave me this entire epiphany of, for the past 10 years as we worked together, she was always hesitant to take risk. She wouldn't take advantage of investment options I gave to her that would have made her quite a bit more money. And she was underpaid

for the position that she had. Once we began to talk about this, and she began to realize the false money belief was not just false, it was actually costing her money and opportunity, she actually got another job, was making more money, her life dramatically changed. And so what I want people to hear is, don't just think when you say money beliefs, it's just this abstract thought, your money believes

can actually change the course of your family and your family's generation for generations to come and it all starts with you having the courage to bet on yourself. When you listen to music, you have choices. All to hip hop, rock, or country. The same goes for the Toyota Corolla family. You can choose the versatile Corolla Cross SUV or the fun to drive Corolla sedan. You also have the choice of gas or hybrid and options on stylish trims as well. For those who like choices, Corolla is music to your ears.

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ever want to have to depend on anyone. I wanted to be successful so that I had power and control over my decisions and my autonomy of my life. I was running from. The interesting thing was that even once I got longer on my journey, I never chose what to run towards because I was running so hard, so long from things. Now, if we talk specifically about the abuse, I never talked about it other than when it first happened, I literally bottled it up, stuck it down inside, and for 20 years, never uttered a word.

And looking back, it's interesting how our survival mechanisms that are so strong in us will kick in and will really get us through whatever we need. So for me, it was about just always grinding, always focusing because I didn't realize then that I got so caught up into who I wanted to become and how far I wanted to get away from all this situation, that I was really just trying to create the life that I wanted because I didn't want to acknowledge what was. And I didn't probably address it.

I think I was close to 30 before I ever really talked about it and really I've only opened up to talk about it publicly in the last couple years is for me it was one of those things where everything started to connect. My life started to be so much clearer when I started to open up because I think that we are, we have as much pain as great as our secrets. And I think when we're hiding from something and we're trying to minimize something and we're trying to just completely compartmentalize something, no matter how hard you try or how good you are at it,

which I was really damn good at it, it will surface in other ways. It will surface in choosing the wrong partner next. It'll surface in making a bad choice and hiring someone or having, you know, who you're going to sleep with or who you're going to marry or I think that you choose you choose bad decisions when you aren't really healing what you've already gone through.

And so, you know, it was definitely a journey that then took me to like really talk about it and open it up. But the interesting thing was when right before I probably talked about it for the first time, I had bought a building because I was investing in real estate, commercial building, and had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I just loved commercial real estate at the time. So I would buy any deal that I could find. And I bought this building. It was sitting there vacant, and I was driving, leaving the business. You know, I'm like rushing and pushing, and I'm like climbing so many mountains, and I made this like mech a little place that like everyone wanted to come to. And we were really known to be like a pioneer in the space on these coasts and like all this stuff. And yet I felt so freaking empty.

I felt so unfulfilled. I accomplished every one of those goals on my list when I was 15. And yet I still was driving by that building and thinking is this it? Like that I do all of that, that I get out of all of this abuse for this, for this feeling. And it was like in that moment, the best way to describe it. Heather is like, I recognized everything that I've done

and then everything that I still didn't have. And at that moment, I was driving by this building and I thought, what am I was driving by this building and I thought, what am I gonna do with this building? Like, this has been sitting here for a year, I gotta do something with it. And it was like a voice like we're talking said, put your animal shelter there.

And I was like, I never wanted to open an animal shelter. I never wanted to have an on profit. Like those weren't things that were ever a conscious decision for me. And, but I did. It was like a gut. It was like a gut check. It was something that I immediately did. Of course, because everything also figured out, why can't I figure this out too?

So figured out how to start a 501c3 and turn that building into a kennel and everything that we needed to speed it to, how's animals. It was through that. It's interesting. I built a nonprofit to save animals, but in the process, they saved me. I didn't realize that throughout life, because I felt so alone, that I turned to animals to heal my dog that I would see, you know, the rabbits or dog that I would see. The rabbits or cats that I would save and want to bring every stray animal home. And so I look back and think,

if I didn't have all of that happened to me, I wouldn't have the heart that I have now to help end suffering and to not want to see other people go through it. And so it was really through a very unconventional way that I truly healed. And it was through pure contribution. Wasn't the achievement of my goals. It was through giving and being in service to others.

Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful. You can make me cry. I love that story. I love that you have turned such an horrible situation into such a gift and I'm just so proud of you. That's such a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so back to business because this was something, you know, looking through all of your content, looking at your book, one of the things that you talked about that was helpful to me incredibly as someone who's on this journey now working, you know, 25 plus years in corporate America, which I know like the back of my hand. I don't know this new entrepreneurial. I'm only a few years in, so I'm a rookie and learning as you go, which is exactly what you did, figure it out a long way, which is fine. However, it's helpful sometimes when

someone's ahead of you and they give you some tips. And, you know, hearing you explain the difference between someone who's working alone like your father did versus someone who becomes an entrepreneur like you did. What are some of those hacks and differentiators that you can share with us? So the biggest thing to remember is oftentimes people think they're becoming an entrepreneur. They think that they're building a business, but really what they do is they end up building themselves a job because they didn't build the business with intentionality of how they want their life to look if they're ever going to exit this company because, you know, and it's fine if somebody wants to be a self-employed person,

nothing wrong with that. Some people love what they do and they want to continue to be the artist or the talent, but they never sat down to identify, are you really the entrepreneur or are you really great with managing people, or are you the talent artist within your business, and you're the one that should be front stage as we call it as opposed to building the business and directing the growth. So it's really key. You can build anything you want, but what I see most people do is they don't recognize the difference. So social media has glamorized being an entrepreneur. I have no idea why.

When I came out of my ex, I didn't even have an Instagram profile. So when I came out of my exit and saw this, I'm like, why is all of this being glamorized? Like I've been pulling my hair out for 20 years. I've dealing with employees, loss, it's like you, Nate, like all of the things, business structure, and you know what I mean,

it's just been nuts. So I was like, I don't understand. And then I really, it's just been not so, I was like, I don't understand. And then I really started diving in. And that's when I was like, oh, okay, well, most of these people actually haven't built a business. So that's why they're glamorizing it because they can take a laptop to the beach. And that's supposed to be some fun thing until they realize that they have to take the laptop to the beach because they have to run the webinar. They have to do the thing. They have to have the workshop. They have to take the laptop to the beach because they have to run the webinar. They have to do the thing. They have to have the workshop.

They have to connect with the team. So if you're not intentionally scaling and growing a business, if you're not intentionally building systems and having efficiency in the business that other people can run, you will always be tied to it. And that's a job. And actually, it's harder than just having a job because people think, oh, I want time. I want to be able to do what I want with my time. you're an entrepreneur. Oftentimes you have no control of your time because if your team, someone calls off, you have to step in. If all of a sudden the event's not going as well

as you want, you got to jump in and handle things or this ball was dropped and you got to jump in. It's actually, maybe you actually just want a job and then you can take your money and build assets so that then you can do whatever you want. The difference between building a just want a job, and then you can take your money and build assets so that then you can do whatever you want. The difference between building a business and a job is a job you always are going to trade time for money. A business you build a machine that generates revenue, generates wealth, so that you can invest it and do anything you want.

If I did anything right, it was by reading books in the beginning that taught me that, and I've always been able to, if I do anything that I'm anything right, it was by reading books in the beginning that taught me that. And I've always been able to, if I do anything that I'm good at, it's identifying patterns, which is why I can jump into someone's business and like really see things or jump into someone's investment and be like, oh, that's because this, this, this is wrong. Based off of two and a half years or two and a half decades of seeing different patterns. If you want to build a business, it is a totally different skill set than just being really good at something that you do. Another is right or wrong, neither is bad

or worse, but just make sure you know what you're building so that you don't end up in golden handcuffs. I see a lot of times people end up in these golden handcuffs. They think, oh yeah, they look like they're doing great, but really, you just had to sit on back-to-back this or you had to go do all these coaching calls or you had to do all like, and yes, it's nice that you can do it from anywhere, but you know what's even nicer? To be able to do it from anywhere and not have to drag your laptop around unless you really want to. Like, that is really what building a business is all about. You want it to and look around once in a while. You can miss it.

I'm on this journey with me. At a time when change is constant, and we are pulled in far too many directions, we need a way to stay present to life and to increase our ability to remain calm, think clearly, and maintain our well-being. Many studies indicate mindfulness improves our mental, emotional, and physical health. On a mindful moment with Theresa McKee, you can learn how to practice mindfulness

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