195. The Money Block I Didn't Realize I Had

Money can be a sensitive topic for many of us, and it's not uncommon to feel embarrassed or ashamed when discussing finances– business, personal or otherwise. But did you know that these feelings can actually be a block to your next business breakthrough?

On today's episode, we're taking a deep dive into the world of money mindset and exploring how our beliefs about money can impact our ability to earn and grow our wealth. I’ll be sharing with you my super raw and personal experience attending a 2 day “money mindset” workshop last week and exactly what I uncovered about my own relationship with money (hint: it was NOT what I expected!)

Through our raw and unfiltered conversation (wait, can I call it that if I’m the only one talking? Oh well, I just did), I hope to inspire you to become more conscious of your own money mindset, so that you can start generating more revenue for your business and transforming the lives of those around you.

In this episode, we'll cover:

• How the money stories and beliefs we adopted as kids can impact our ability to achieve success in business and in life.
• How to uncover your own relationship with money and spending, and identify the limiting beliefs that may be holding you back.
• How to choose which story is going to be true for you, and start questioning the narratives that we run in our mind.
• The three key aspects to look at when it comes to money, so that you can gain clarity and improve your relationship with money.

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

https://heathersager.com/episode195/

📣 WORK WITH HEATHER  → https://heathersager.com/

📧  Get the Hint of Heather NEWSLETTER → https://heathersager.com/newsletter

Connect on Social:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheathersager/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermsager/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HeatherSager

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

If this episode hit home, I'd be so grateful if you took a second to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.  Thanks for tuning in to the Hint of Hustle podcast! See you next week!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

[00:01:35] Well, hey friend, welcome back to another episode. It has been a couple weeks since we've done a solo show and I'm very excited because the next six weeks we're gonna get a lot of solo shows. 

I'm gonna be giving you a peek behind the scenes in my business and we're gonna be exploring, we're gonna be exploring business essentially and I want to help you design a business that you actually enjoy, one that makes you money, one that doesn't bring a lot of additional stress and really exemplifies what this show is about, which is all about hint of hustle and just kind of revisit what the intention of this show is, is I believe that business is a marathon, but sometimes you have to sprint. 

The problem for most online entrepreneurs is we are so used to sprinting and hustling so much for those of us who are from corporate or we've built other maybe brick and mortar businesses or professional services businesses.

[00:02:34] We've really been paid and rewarded for hustling our asses off and we know that it works. However, if you're like me at this stage in your life, you don't want to hustle all the time and I don't know about you, but there comes this moment when you're building an online business where you really ask the question is the whole, is the, is it really possible to create a business that actually continues to pay you even when you're not working your ass off?

[00:03:02] And the answer is yes, and also it's going to require you to operate in a different way. It is gonna operate or it's gonna require you to think differently. It's gonna require you to physically do different things. There's that common saying around that if you wanna get a different result, you have to act differently.

[00:03:27] You have to do different things, and that's why I'm dedicating the next six weeks to exploring the behind the scenes of your business and mind so that you can enter this summer actually excited about what you are creating without the burnout and without, I don't know, maybe if you've been wondering like, are you headed down the right path, or is this really gonna work for you, or like, when are you finally gonna get the kind of traction you're after? 

Whether you are still at the point where you're trying to figure out how to make money online, or maybe you've plateaued at that a hundred thousand mark where you're just like, ah, I figured it out but maybe it's from services and you're trying to figure out how to scale it with more digital products. It's gonna require thinking differently, and that's just a little context here.

[00:04:12] That's my intention for these next six weeks is to share with you some real kind of behind the scenes, but also just how I think and operate and some of the things that I've had to change over the last five years that have allowed me to show up in the way that I do and to have the business that I have.

[00:04:33] Now, full disclaimer, do I have a giant ass business? Have I figured it all out? Oh, hell no. But one of the things that I really respect and love about myself, yep. I'm gonna say I have a ridiculously high degree of humility. 

That's funny after I said, one thing I love about myself, I have a high humility but what I mean by that is I am willing to try new things and I'm willing to pivot often and quickly without a lot of emotional struggle in it, right?

[00:05:11] It's not that I'm not emotional. In fact for me, I've talked about this before on the show. I got really into human design last year when I had brought on a business partner which since didn't work out but human design helped me really understand a lot of things about myself and how I interact with others.

[00:05:27] And what I learned about myself is I am a highly emotional person which was not new information by any means, but the reason why I am very proud of the way that I operate is I do not let emotions prevent me make from making the decisions that need to be made for my business to continue to grow and work for me, versus me being kind of like enthralled in my business all the time. I'm always adapting my business to make it work into my life and I hope by sharing some of these things that'll work for you too.

[00:06:00] So this today's episode is totally unscripted as literally all of my episodes are, but I just got back from Sunny Phoenix in Sedona. I had a five day trip in Arizona this last week and I just got back and I wanted to share with you a little bit about what I was doing and more importantly Some insights that I had about myself, because I think they might serve you. I know they're going to serve you very, very well today.

[00:06:30] Today we're gonna talk about money and money mindset. So let me back you up here for a moment. So last week's episode, I had my friend Scarlet Cochran on and we talked about money, and we talked about the cross-section between personal finance and business finance and that was like, really awesome conversation. I got a lot of really great messages for that. 

So, by the way, if you sent me a message on Instagram or replied back to one of my emails, thank you. I always, always love your feedback, but what, the timing of when that episode released this actually, I didn't have this intention in mind but the timing was it released the same day that I headed into my coach's event. 

So my business coach is James Wedmore. I'm gonna be talking a lot about him over the next few weeks and his program. He had a live event. I'm in his coaching program, next level, and we had a live event in Phoenix last Thursday and Friday.

[00:07:25] So when that episode came out, we had this live event and the theme, this is where the serendipity comes in. The theme of that event was Money Mindset as an entrepreneur, and if I'm being like totally freaking real with you, which, I mean, come on, I always am. I, oh, this is embarrassing to say. I don't really have a lot of money mindset issues and I'm gonna explain what I mean by that.

[00:07:55] I'm also gonna explain how I kind of flipped that on its as a little bit last week but I went in like excited, right? I am really excited to learn, be able to open up a gateway for more abundance, as cheesy as that sounds. I knew that something had to be getting in the way. I've been hitting a plateau in my business at a specific revenue threshold for the last two years, and I'm like, there's something going on.

[00:08:19] But I didn't believe that I had money mindset issues because get this, you're gonna see this right away. I have no problem making money. I have no problem making money. I have had, I've talked about this before, I have very small but very mighty launches. 

My launches convert really well. I teach sales. I've been teaching sales from stages for the last, now 15 years. I have no qualms at coaching other business owners, especially women, around how to ask for the sale and how to unapologetically get paid for the value they create for other organizations and individuals. 

So I'm like, you know, I teach people how to make money. I'm really good at it. In fact, one of my most popular workshops is the Five Figure Speaker Workshop where I teach you how to negotiate a five figure speaking deal for one gig. You get paid 10 grand or more like, I, this is so embarrassing to say, but I'm like, I don't have money issues. I can make money all the time.

[00:09:25] And in this, within the first hour of the session, James pointed out James again, James Wedmore, business coach. I'm gonna refer to him as James throughout the episode, not to be confused with my husband James. If I talk about husband James, I will mention that. 

But in the first hour of the seminar from the stage, he goes, let's just break down what I'm talking about when it comes to money. And he defined this I'm gonna use my own language for this, not his, because I'm a big fan of making my own frameworks.

[00:09:59] So he talked about money isn't just thinking about like, Ooh, making money. There's actually three aspects that we have to look at when it comes to money which I'm gonna say this, and you're gonna roll your eyes and be like, duh, Heather. And I had that same duh Heather happen in my head, but for some reason compartmentalizing money in these three columns, I started becoming really clear around a few things so let me hit it for you.

[00:10:21] So when it comes to money, when it comes to attracting money into your business and generating money, if you are sitting here and you're going, okay, Heather, I am excited to hear about money. I'm a little uncomfortable about it today, but I wanna make more money. 

There are three different areas that we have to look at for money in our business, and I mean, we can apply this for our personal lives too, but I'm talking about business today.

[00:10:44] So there's making money aka a generating money. Two, there's managing your money, which is your expenses and how you're actually managing the money that's coming in. What are you doing with it? And the third one is, what do I call more? So making, managing and more. More is what do you do with it to help it generate more for you? So investing diversification. Those types of things.

[00:11:10] Now, as I mentioned in last week's episode, my husband is a certified financial planner, so on that last column side, we have our money working for us here in the Sager house, like my husband's got that unlocked. We talk about our investments, we talk about our diversification. We both have really great retirement accounts. 

Shout out to my last job, which paid me very well, and I got a great investing happening there. So that one, I'm like, check, that one's happening. Yes, there are other things that I would like to do. I would love to invest in real estate and diversifying some other things. 

That's on my list for later, but looking at the other buckets, I'm like, okay, well, making money, I can make it, but still I'm sitting here going, ha. If I haven't reached the next level, which there's all these, I'm not even gonna use numbers today of like actual numbers for business cuz I don't, I don't know about you, but there's this interesting thing in online business that it's like this coveted make 10K months and then it's this coveted which that if you view the math equates to 120 grand a year. 

So people just generalize and say six figure year, which is hit a 100K. But then that gap between, I talked about this last week with Scarlet, is that gap. It's like from a 100K a year to a million, that's the next goal which is just, I've mean that's a big, that's a big gap, y'all like. That's a huge gap between there.

[00:12:27] Anyways, so I'm in the middle right between the a 100K and the million mark. I've been in there and I've been at the same level for the last two years as I mentioned. And so I'm sitting there going, okay, something is happening which is preventing me from breaking through. 

Now I can justify the crap out of this and say, okay, well Heather, you had a very wild year last year. You brought on a business partner and had a ton of investments going into that company and then dissolved that company. 

So of course it didn't like take off and grow or thinking, I say this all the time, like my focus has been working less hours. I could have worked a ton more hours and probably made a lot more, but I consciously chose not to.

[00:13:08] So I can justify all day long the where I'm at with revenue and I'm proud with where I'm at with revenue. However, I do know that there is this limit that I have hit and trying to figure out, okay, what is that limit? 

So coming back to it, making money, I can make it, right? But then the other piece, I'm like, hold on, I'm not bad at managing money.

[00:13:27] I'm not like a ridiculous overs spender, which my bookkeeper who's listening to this probably gonna disagree with that statement very firmly. I have no problem spending money on investments, I think about like the ROI on it. But anyway, so I sat here going, all right, so, which bucket am I struggling with?

[00:13:48] And I realized it's probably a little bit of all of them. But what I realized was there was a few things that I had some insights on out of the conference that had this eye-opening effect for me that I'm still processing. Okay. Let me switch gears here real quick and I'll explain this a little bit more.

[00:14:14] One of the things that we went into at the conference is we dug into, each of us has our own money stories and I got really excited talking about this because last week's episode with Scarlet, we talked about, her book literally talks about the different money stories that we adopt and that the beliefs that we have about money, how they hold true and they impact, how we show up with our money and where our money goes or where it comes in or doesn't come in.

[00:14:40] So the idea of money stories, I'm like, okay, great. But what we explored at this event was we started looking at the money stories that we adopted as kids and here. Okay, so here's what's fascinating. I'd always associated my childhood with a really positive money story, [00:15:00] and here, so here's why. 

For those of you who have been around for a while some of these things are gonna be familiar for you. Some of this might be new information. So for me, I'm the youngest of six children. Yes, six. Our house was a circus growing up. There is a 12 year age gap between my oldest sister and I. 

And so growing up as a kid, money was pretty tight. My dad was a truck driver for FritoLay. My mom was a stay-at-home mom slash seamstress. And what that meant is I remember when I was in preschool and kindergarten, kindergarten when I was back in my day. 

When I was in kindergarten which was probably 1988 or 89, I don't know. It was half day. It wasn't full day kindergarten, it was half day and then I would go with my mom to work.

[00:15:51] She worked at a dress alterations shop and I very remember that period in my life where I would watched Sleeping Beauty every single morning while she was getting ready for work. 

This is probably preschool that it happened. Sleeping Beauty, this was back when Disney kept their movies in the vault and I watched Sleeping Beauty every single morning. I would dance around my living room to the opening song from Sleeping Beauty with this gray, tufted pillow from our couch, like dance around with my prince pillow and I watched that movie so many times that I, the VCR broke. It like turned to snow on the screen. It didn't work anymore. And I was, I remember the day that that thing broke. I was so freaking sad and of course it was in the vault, so we couldn't access it. 

If you don't know what I'm talking about here, maybe you're in your twenties and you don't know what I'm like, you don't know a world before streaming or before like Blockbuster and movie rental, whatever places. 

Disney used to not release their videos, like you had to buy them on VHS tapes and they didn't have all Disney movies out at once, like they would have this, what they called the vault and they kept them and they only released certain movies at certain times. 

Anyways, this is like not relevant to the story. I'm just having a little like childhood reminiscent moment, so eighties babies you will love for this little site tangent.

[00:17:13] Anyways, I remember, so growing up my mom had to work a little bit part-time and that was how we got by. And when I was really little, money was tight, but I obviously didn't know any different. 

What had happened is we had this culture in my family that if you wanted fun money, you had to go out and earn it. So many of my brothers and sisters had paper routes and when they were in high school, they got jobs. 

And that was just a very normal thing that if you wanted, like fun money, if you wanted to go to the movie theater or the mall or any of those things, my parents didn't have money for that, so you had to go and earn it yourself and that was just very normal.

[00:17:50] And so when I was in the fifth grade, I remember inheriting one of my brother's paper routes and then in the sixth grade I acquired my sisters so I was hustling. I had two paper routes. 

And y'all, let me tell you, in middle school I was balling at the snack bar every day. I had cash. In fact, I got really good part of being in a paper route. In the nineties is I had to do something every week that was called, or every month I would have to go collect which meant that I would walk house to house in the neighborhood of all the houses that I delivered, and I had my little bill book and I would walk up at the front porch. 

Can you imagine this like an 11, 12 year old little girl? Like, hi, I'm here to collect this month's dues for the newspaper. And I, so I would do that every month and they would write me checks or they'd give me cash. And I had this little leather pouch from First Independent Bank, and that was the bank back.

[00:18:43] So when I would go home with all the money, I had a bill from the newspaper to tell me how much I needed to deposit at First Independent Bank. I had to go make my deposit for how much? 

All of my account was so essentially it was like a little tiny business I didn't know at the time, but the newspaper company would give me the bill around how much it would be and then I had to go deposit the money to cover that bill.

[00:19:08] Now, they didn't write checks to me. Of course, they wrote checks to the newspaper company but what would happen is anything extra, I got to keep as tips and that is what I got paid. So the better service I delivered, the more charming I was to my customers, the more money that I made. 

And so I know a lot of other people who newspaper house routes, they hated collections, like they freaking hated it. But I loved it because I had all this money rolling in and it was really interesting for me to take the checks or the cash deposit it to the bank. 

My mom would drive me down to the bank. I would make my deposit and then I would have all the leftovers, which was, didn't know this word at the time, but it was my profit and that was really cool.

[00:19:49] What was even cooler was when I got old enough, maybe 13. It was probably 12 or 13. I got to do, gosh, I don't remember what it was called, but they would do, oh, it was called Crew. I think it was called Crew where they would have somebody who was in charge of the district, they would rally up a crew of kids and we'd all jump in a van. That sounds super sketchy, but again, it was the nineties. 

We'd jump in a van and go to a neighborhood and all get outta the van and go door to door and knock and essentially selling the newspaper so this was a sales job. It was like above and beyond that we could have like the option to do this. We can go door to door to try to sell subscriptions to the newspaper.

[00:20:29] And as I remember, 12, 13 years old, like I developed a sales pitch for it and I got really good at it. And I think it was right around that time, 12 or 13, I ended up winning the paper carrier of the year. I was like in the newspaper. I got an award, I got a savings bond. It was pretty freaking cool. Okay, why do I share this with you?

[00:20:50] Okay. Growing up we didn't have a lot of money and everything under the sun between us not having money, between us having we went through faces of food stamps. I remember when I was really young, one year we were on food stamps. 

One year we had did our back to school clothes shopping at Value Village. My clothes smelled terrible and I fricking hated it. And I remember there were phases where, oh, we went through a phase where my mom bought powdered milk which was like the worst thing on the planet. 

All these things when I was super, super young, and the overall mindset in our house was when you turn 18, you have to be self-sufficient, like there's no room in the end for you. So once you go, like go forth and live.

[00:21:31] Now, I'm sure my parents took care of my older siblings as needed, but that was kind of the culture in the house. So I want you to imagine this, it was kind of like a conveyor belt. 

As in, I was, again, my oldest was, my oldest sister was 12. So think about the conveyor belt moving that when she turned 18 and left the home. It eased up the financial stress and as my brother left, it eased up. 

So as I got older, money was less and less stressful and] so I started noticing my parents' relationships with money. But I just had this mantra around like, you have to be self-sufficient. You have to know how to make money which is why I had this belief that I had a really positive money mindset.

[00:22:13] Again, thinking that most people who grow up without a lot of money, and here, let me just say this. If any of you're thinking like, oh, I had it, I had it worse, or, oh, it is not a comparison, right? 

We all have our own stories and I think it's really important that we all respect have like great respect that each of us have our own unique experiences and is mine worse than others or better than others? It's really not, not the point here. 

The point is we all develop our own relationship with money and it starts when we are kids. And for me, looking back, I could have had a really negative relationship with money, but I instead chose to see it as, oh, I can create it which is why as an adult I'm like, I'm so glad. I am so thankful for my experience because I know how to generate money and that has served me really, really well. 

I think it's a big source of my intense drive to succeed. Now, we could probably unpack some other childhood issues that I probably need to address later, but that's not for today's episode.

[00:23:14] So coming back to the conference this week, I'm like, I have like all these other people were sharing kind of negative money stories, like there's never enough or that was a big theme that had happened, but I had, I'm like, I have a really positive, even though money was hard growing up. 

I attribute how I was raised to giving me this mindset that money, I can generate. It was up to me. This, this unwavering self-confidence that I can do it and it was up to me. 

Well, here's what's fascinating, as I explored that story even more and I thought about that idea of when you turn 18, you're on your own and that conveyor belt was moving and how has my brothers and sisters started moving outta the house? I remember having a little more discretionary income. Well, here's the left left turn where it gets a little dark here for a moment.

[00:24:04] So as that conveyor belt's happening, right, more and more kids are leaving the home. I'm approaching 18. Well, curve ball happens. My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was 14, and all of a sudden the medical bills started coming in. 

And then fast forward five days before my 18th birthday, my mom died. So that moment, right, where I'm taught that when you're 18, you're on your own. When I was 18, I was quite literally on my own. Well, granted, I had my whole family there, right? But my mom, my number one influence in my life wasn't there. 

So as I'm writing out this money story last week, I wrote out, I had never actually considered this thing before of this when you're you're 18, you're on your own. When I was 18, that was on my own. That was, that was a really interesting thing for me to reflect on and it's not new information. I've talked about the loss of my mom. I've talked about how that's really impacted my story tremendously and a big part of why I do what I do.

[00:25:05] But I really started exploring last week, okay, how does that actually show up in how I think about money? How does that, how does that show up for me? 

And quite frankly, I don't have an answer for that yet. I'm still unpacking that, but it was just, it was interesting for me to explore, and the reason why I'm sharing this with you is I think a lot of times when we think back to our money stories and this episode isn't about to get into any trauma I've had as a kid or you as a kid. 

It's to think about some of the common occurrences we've had in our lives and how they've shaped our view of making money or spending money. And it was just a really interesting exercise for me to write down some of these experiences and memories that I have.

[00:25:50] And so as I was thinking about this, of going, okay, I have a healthy relationship with making money, but I'm wondering like, what's the other thing? What's the other thing? What's my relationship with spending money? And I couldn't really, I couldn't really name it. 

I really couldn't think of scenarios or I couldn't think about memories that really would give me some reason for why I was in a money plateau. It sounds so silly. Okay, so then at this conference, I, we went on a break like coffee break, not like Rachel, Rachel and Ross style break. We went on a coffee break and I was chatting with another attendee. This is so freaking silly.

[00:26:36] Okay, so here's what happened. She commented on my shirt. She complimented me on my shirt and I like giggled and I said thank you. Giggled, I don't know why I just said that but I said thank you and I, thanks for the compliment, and we had like a similar pattern happening here, and then I said something along the lines of, yeah, actually, I hired a stylist last fall to come in and help me kind of clean up my wardrobe so I felt a little bit more on brand and felt more like me so when I'm traveling at conferences or I'm on video, I I feel better about myself and I kind of laughed about it. I was like, I know it's silly.

[00:27:15] And then she's like, no, I think it's awesome. And I was like, yeah, you know, actually I shared it with my audience and they thought so too and then I said something like this. I was like, yeah, I actually ended up doing a series of Instagram stories from my closet during that whole stylist phase and I was really embarrassed because, okay, here's the thing, y'all.

In my house right now when we bought this house. My husband and I were actually pretty embarrassed because the master bedroom closet is like the size of a guest room like it is. So, I mean, it's freaking epic, but it's kind of embarrassing. It's so huge. And so we don't really, like, we don't show people when they come over. I don't know if you do house tours and you show everything in your house, that's the kind of people we are, but I don't really take people in the master bedroom cuz it's kind of like ostentatious and anyways, so I like, I made the comment around that of how it was like kind of embarrassing.

[00:28:11] And I had the biggest mother freaking aha of my life. As I'm staring having this conversation with peer at this event last week, I was like, oh my gosh. I just like, said I was embarrassed like four times around getting a stylist, having a really large closet, and there was a couple other things that we talked about, and I realized I was doing self-deprecation on the front end of sharing these ways that I've spent my money and then all the sudden the floodgates of validation opened, and by validation I don't mean validation, that it was right. 

Validation of all these other experiences, all of a sudden came to mind of all these other instances where I am ashamed or embarrassed about talking about expenses.

[00:29:04] All right, here's we're gonna go in the little vulnerable piece here. This is what I wanted to share with you today because I think this might resonate for you too, if you're trying to figure out your relationship with money. 

Have you ever had a moment where you are embarrassed about spending money on something that seems frivolous or maybe you're embarrassed to show your parents or your brother and sisters this like boujee thing that you bought because it was boujee and not practical? Have you ever shied away from sharing something online because you didn't want people to like comment of that was a ridiculous purchase or thing?

I've done all of these things by the way. I, It's this weird dynamic because with selling, with teaching people how to sell online, teaching people to be unapologetic with delivering value and being paid for that value they create, there is this dichotomy where I will spend my money on things that I know might not be the same as others, but there's this weird embarrassment or shame or this need to okay, this is a weird way to phrase it. I was trying to figure out a way to phrase it, but it's the, in our deep desire to be more relatable or more quote unquote authentic, I feel sometimes we hide parts about ourselves because we don't want to be judged and maybe that's just me, but I'll give you a really specific example here that I never really wanted to share because I was like, this is so, this is like so unrelatable, but it is true for me. Okay.

[00:30:39] So I'm not a person who typically spends a lot of money on shoes and purses. I do like those things, like I'll go to Nordstroms and buy shoes. I do have a couple like purses, but I'm not, I'm not a big purse and shoe person. I thought I was going to be years ago. I thought I would be, but it's just not, it's just not, not a big deal to me but I do appreciate nice purses and shoes. 

So years and years ago, my old company I was at, I've talked about before, I was a higher up in the company. I was a VP. I was on an enterprise leadership group in that organization which means that I had a leadership role in actually multiple companies that we had. And when we sold our organization there was a huge ass equity payout and I got a nice big fat check for when that company sold. 

And so what did I do with the money? Well, I paid off my, the rest of my student loans. I paid off my husband's car. Mine was already paid off. And the rest of it we put into savings and then, when I was in, where are we at? I flew to London for a speaking gig years ago. 

This is probably 20, maybe 2017, 2018, 2017 cuz I was pregnant with Levi, flew to London for a speaking gig. I was able to bring James, my husband with me and we decided to take a train to Paris for the weekend which sounded super freaking boujee, and we're like, hell yeah, we're doing it.

[00:32:07] So we took a train to Paris for the weekend and while we were in Paris walking around, I came across a Prada store. And I'm like, it's Prada. We have to go in. So we went into Prada and they have in Prada, they have like the main showroom floor and then they have a specialty room in the basement so we made our way down to the basement. 

I looked around and I found this handbag that I freaking loved, and again, I'm not a huge handbag person, but it was this beautiful like bucket style tote, that was taupe. I dunno, it was just so beautiful, so classic. I'm like, oh, I wanna have it. Pretty confident that bag was $3,700 and I bought it. 

I bought it. It was the most expensive thing besides a car or an education or at home that I'd ever purchased. And I bought it and I had total under boob sweat as I handed the woman my credit card, like this was a very like visceral, physical reaction as I'm making this purchase, but I had the money. 

I more than had the money and I hadn't really bought anything for myself to celebrate all the success that I'd had in my promotions, at the old company in the sale of the company. So I'm like, hell yeah, I'm doing this and I was proud of it. I was still sweating my ass off, but I was proud of it. 

So I like looked this bag, lusted over this bag, love this bag. We get home and then stuff started creeping in my head. I was like, I can't take this bag to work. I don't want my employees looking at me like, look at us with our sack lunches and whatever cars and you boozy bitch, like with your fancy pants. Isn't it nice? 

And I, who knows if these people would think this, but I didn't want to create a separation between me and my team. I didn't want people to look at me like I thought I was better than them or that I had all of this money  and that was a weirdness. 

So, or, and I didn't wanna take it out cuz I didn't wanna be judged at the movie theater or at a restaurant as like, oh, look at that girl that has a Prada purse. She thinks she's still fancy. And I, I don't know that I was consciously think these things, but that bag sat on the shelf of my ridiculously large closet, and I didn't use that bag until four months later. How really morbid is this? But I used it at my husband's grandmother's funeral. That was the first time I pulled that bag out. 

I don't know why that was the instance that I thought it was one appropriate and two somehow socially acceptable but that's the first time I used it and later my husband commented on that. Oh, I hadn't really thought about these things before up until the conference, when I became acutely aware that I was downplaying, apologizing, excusing away, like saying I was embarrassed. 

These little statements that set up the thing I was about to say, instead of owning that I'm a grown ass woman, I could spend the money however a hell I want, and that was just fascinating to me. And then here's the bomb drop friend. What I realized was, oh my gosh, is the plateau in my business, so thinking about, remember I said I have no problem making money. I'm fine with the spending it, but yet here I'll, here I am still at this like quote unquote plateau as I think many people are in their business. 

I thought, oh my gosh, is my subconscious mind actually preventing me from generating more money, even though I easily could, because if I had this excess in discretionary income, would my subconscious mind be like, Ooh, she doesn't like having extra money. Ooh, she doesn't want the attention. Ooh, she doesn't want to spend it on things or have this lux whatever life because she doesn't want to feel embarrassed or ashamed or separated or whatever, and so we're just gonna protect her by always keeping it at this one level where right now it feels safe.

[00:36:14] I don't know if this has resonating for you or not, but this was on my heart. I'm like, I just, whoa. There's something really, really profound about that thought. There's also something really empowering about knowing that could be true. I don't even care if this is true or not true, but I think, here's the thing, we all have money stories, so we can choose to have the narratives work for us or we can have them choose to work against us.

[00:36:39] And that narrative, when I said it out loud, actually when I wrote it in my journal, I was like, whoa because the reason why I feel it's so empowering is because if I can choose that narrative, I can choose another one.

[00:36:56] So I'm sharing all of this kind of raw, unfiltered, me working through my own mind shit today with you because all of us have this complex, an interesting relationship with money and here's the interesting thing.

The day that you chose to open a business is the day that you chose to prioritize money and not in a bad way, but in a good way. And if you want your business to thrive and survive, and if you want to be able to help more people, you have a duty to figure out how to generate more money so you can do more of what you do.

[00:37:33] Money both represents the impact that you make on others, ie., the more revenue you generate, the the bigger the impact, and that might make you feel a little uncomfortable when I say that. And what I mean by that is more money typically represents bigger transformations and more people helped. 

So when we can start associating money with impact and start removing the emotions around it or really unpacking what I talked about today, the the, the insecurity or the doubt or the what will people think of us or any of those things. I didn't realize I had any of that baggage, y'all. I have a healthy relationship with money, but even still, we all have some kind of baggage, especially if you're sitting here and you're not hitting your financial goals.

[00:38:21] So where do we, where do we go from here? What's the takeaway from this? I really encourage you to ask yourself the question, what is your relationship with money? Because we all have a relationship with money. Think about you generating money, think about you spending money, and think about in the investment and the diversification of your money.

[00:38:42] Where are you at in each of those and is there an opportunity for you to grow? Are there any money stories that you're holding onto that are sabotaging, maybe silently your business and your success? And if you can start unpacking these and start changing the narratives, or at least at a minimum, start questioning them, the power that you will feel on making different choices feels so much lighter. 

Do I have a solution for you? No, because I don't know what your money story is. Do I have a solution for my money story? No. But I can tell you how much lighter and more empowered that I feel knowing something more about myself, knowing something more about me and my relationship with money. And I am excited to explore even further because I haven't made able to make this impact so far with this narrative. I'm excited for once I address it how much farther I can go and friend, I think the same is true for you. 

So again, whether you are just getting started in your online journey, you're just trying to figure out how do I make my first dollar or my first $10,000 online or you've been at a plateau, whatever that level is, maybe your plateau is you haven't been able to switch from service-based businesses and digital products, or maybe you can't get traction beyond where you've been sitting, whatever that looks like for you, just know we have to start asking ourselves higher quality questions so we can start exploring what's underneath because I think it's so easy to say, what is the tactic? How do I change my launch mechanism? How do I package my program? How do, like we look externally on the surface of what are all these things that we could do to generate money? But chances are it's actually what's happening between your ears, in your head and how you see, perceive and experience money that can make the biggest difference.

[00:40:38] And I get it this sounds a little fluffy, and it's not the tactical like go do X, Y, and Z but I can tell you the businesses who thrive, the businesses who continually show up and are able to innovate through challenging times, that are able to pivot and not be stressed and working all the hours are the ones who have learned to think differently, and that's gonna be a big theme that we talk about here over the next six weeks and I'm excited to dive that, into that with you.

[00:41:09] I wanted to share with you a resource today if this would serve you even better. I mentioned before that the conference I went to this last week was with my coach, James Wedmore. He is the creator of Business by Design. 

I am in his coaching program Next Level and I have the honor of spending some time with him and a small team of other business owners this last weekend in Sedona. 

After that conference and we're mapping out his program, Business by Design, which is what I took back in 2019, that helped me shift from being a paid speaker on stages and just doing consulting to actually creating digital products online, launching this podcast and creating a more scalable program that doesn't require just me showing up with my time. 

And over these next six weeks, I'll be sharing with you how I did that, what I've learned from James and in June, he'll be open the door to that program and I am proudly an affiliate for Business by Design and will have a full bonus package available if you choose to enroll through me but we'll get to that later. We'll talk about it later.

[00:42:08] But over these next six weeks, I'm gonna be sharing with you way more about how I've created with intentional my Business by Design and a resource that I wanted to share with you. James, he showed me this weekend. He just rewrote a ebook that he had created.

It actually, the reason why I wanted to share this, this was the first download I got from James back in late 2018, early 2019, and it was his book called Hardwired for Entrepreneurship, and he just rewrote it and just re-released it here this month. I was flipping through it this week and I'm like, oh, this shit is so good and it speaks exactly to what I was just saying here today, is that we have to start with our thinking, not with the tactics and strategies in our business. 

So I wanna give you a copy here of that book, Hardwired for Entrepreneurship. If you click the link right where you're watching this in the show  notes, I'll send you the direct link to that page and you can grab that ebook. It is a breeze. It's like, I don't know, less than 50 pages. 

It's a pdf but that was the very first thing that I downloaded and read. This version is much better than the one that I had five years ago. But that was the start of helping me start shifting into the thinking of an entrepreneur and get out of the employee mindset to get out of that whole trading time for money piece. The way we think will determine our success in entrepreneurship, and I hope that you love that ebook. Be sure to let me know how you like it.

[00:43:34] Friend, I hope this episode met you exactly where you were today and it resonated with you in all the right ways. I can't wait to hear what you think. As always, take a screenshot of this episode. Tell me what you loved about it. You can tag me @theheathersager. You can tag the show @hintofhustle on Instagram. I hope to hear from you real soon and I'll. See you in the next episode. Bye, friend.