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Time To Come Alive: Transforming Your Relationship With Money With Catherine Bell, Entrepreneur
One of the things I'm committed to in these conversations is that you start to reflect on what you need to become even more conscious about your life. Also, as you become more conscious, you learn and find ways to connect with other people in meaningful ways, and ultimately give you access to create something you're passionate about or something that you're proud of.
I'm always so excited to have new people with whom I can have a conversation that will drive all those three points; be more conscious, connected, and creative. Before we get started with our conversation, I thought it would be interesting to start by having a conversation with yourself. We'll take a moment of mindfulness. I found some affirmations that I thought would be helpful to start the day with.
These affirmations all have to do with the topic of money, abundance, or wealth. The intention is not necessarily that you feel a certain way as we're going through the affirmation. What I invite you to do is pay attention to how your mind or your body reacts when you hear the phrases that I'm going to share with you. If there's any resistance, excitement, or apprehension, whatever comes up for you is great. I would invite you to pay attention to that because if we have our conversation with our guests, you'll notice maybe some of those same emotions or feelings coming up throughout the conversation.
We'll start by getting grounded. When you're sitting down, make sure that you're seated firmly in your chair and your seat. If you're standing, make sure that you're in a place that's safe or stable. take a couple of deep cleansing breaths. You might choose to close your eyes or soften your gaze, but you can pay closer attention to your internal reaction. I invite you to let go of any expectations about how to feel but focus internally.
I am worthy of a wealthy life. Money comes to me in miraculous ways. I am deserving of abundance in my life. I am open to receiving wealth in many ways. I love my positive, happy, and abundant life. The more I give, the more I receive. The more I received, the more I gave. Lastly, life is abundant and I am safe. I invite you to take a couple of deep cleansing breaths again. Energize and charge those thoughts and those reflections. You may open or refocus your gaze.
You might want to jot down for yourself or track someplace if any thoughts or resistance, or you found yourself in gratitude, or you found yourself in some fear-based thought. Something to explore and pay attention to as we have our conversation with our esteemed guests to see if any of those things come back up for you. I am excited to introduce you to someone that I think I had the fortune of meeting a few months ago.
Catherine, you and I connected back in November of 2018. That's been very long. When I first saw you was on a different podcast with my buddy, Teresa Snyder. I remember the questions she was asking and the comments you were making about money. I was taken by how free and intentional you sounded in the conversation about money, where I've known, met, and experienced many conversations that didn't feel that empowering, so much so that after the podcast, I went to your website and looked through it and said, “Who is this lady? Why is she talking this way?”
I reached out. I did your quiz and had an opportunity to set up a time to chat with you. I remember at the beginning of the conversation, I did feel a little bit stilted. I was playing my cards close to the vest, which I think we all tend to do when it comes to talking about money. As the conversation went on, I found myself feeling more and more open and generous with the information I was giving you.
I was so excited about that conversation. I thought, “This is a special person. We need to bring her on.” Since I've learned more about you and your story, I thought this is the person who would revolutionize something about your feelings or your ideas or thoughts about how you interact with money or how you look at money. Catherine, welcome.
Thank you. I'm excited to be here with you and your community. This is beautiful. I love how you created it.
I'm excited to have you and accept my invitation. I want to start off by giving people a sense of who you are. When you and I first spoke, I called you an entrepreneur, but you're so much more than an entrepreneur. Of everything that you're doing in your life at this point in time, what are some of the roles that you hold that are most notable to you and you're most proud of that you could share with us?
I'm a mom of twins. That's probably my most challenging challenge. My twins are teenagers, they're fourteen. Stereo twins are fun. There are so many. I'm an entrepreneur, business owner, investor, Girl Scout leader, community leader, mentor, and coach. I used to be a wife. Unfortunately, now I'm a widow dealing with that. My husband passed away recently unexpectedly. I’m a friend, sister, and butt-kicker. Anybody who knows me knows pretty well that if you're coming to me looking for advice, coaching, or anything, you better be prepared. I will hold you accountable with love, but I will tell you the truth and if you're not ready for it, it's interesting.
You're spending your time and energy doing a lot of things. It sounds like everything that you shared has high value, not only for you but for the kids and the community that you serve. Where did you become interested in sharing that message, talents, and gifts? How did that all start?
In first grade. There are those defining moments in our lives. I was in foster care., I went to thirteen different schools. I was the new kid all the time and hated it. There were moments in all of those years that solidified or changed the trajectory of whatever was happening in my life at that time. I can remember my first-grade teacher. She posed a question to the whole class. The question was, “When you grow up, what are you going to be?”
As we went on the class, everybody was saying whatever they were going to be. She came to me and I remember looking at her and saying, “I don't know what I'm going to be, but I'm going to make a difference in the world.” She looked at me, rolled her eyes, and then kept on. I thought, “My God, I got the answer wrong.” First of all, who is she? I knew at the core of my being that whatever I did, I was going to make a difference. I don't know where that came from. I have no idea. Is it a God thing? I don't know. That was my first moment of making a choice inside of the trajectory of my life.
As my life went forward, the probable predictable future of growing up in the foster care system and hopping from family to family was not good. I ended up getting adopted by an extraordinary family when I was sixteen. You hear the nightmares of adopting teenagers and stuff. We adopted our twins. Our twins were adopted when they were babies, but this family that chose to take me in, I'm clear that they changed the trajectory of my life forever from that day forward.
What I was clear about was after I graduated high school, I had this ability to look around and see that just because you're born into a situation or you grow up in a situation doesn't mean that you're stuck there for life. There's this whole world out there if we tapped into it and explored what would happen.
I learned that human beings use less than 10% of their brains. My brain speaks in numbers, by the way. If we look at numbers and we thought if I could tap into that other 90%, what could we do? What could we create? I wanted this whole journey of personal development and everything to try and figure out how to tap into that other 90%.
This whole world opened up inside of that, which gave me access to create an extraordinary life for my kids, me, and my husband when he was here, but for all of us. We all continue to co-create together every day with each other, with my clients, with guests, and with whoever. We get to choose to create an extraordinary life. It's a choice every moment.
We get to choose to create an extraordinary life.
When you were in the midst of all that transition when you were in the foster care system, what was the conversation in those different schools and those different homes that you're in that helped focus your resolve that you were going to use this other part of your life to create something meaningful. What was happening back then?
There's a non-politically correct answer. What I observed was adults making stupid choices that impacted myself and my brothers in negative ways. It caused us a lot of pain and them. I remember thinking as a child that we grow up, we get older and we get stupider. I remember thinking that. As a child, I could see the choices that were being made I had no control over as a child but was directly impacted by. I think it straight-up didn't work.
Having that experience of not having any control over the decisions that adults were making in my life impacted me forever. I grew up like I was never going to get married. I was never going to have kids because all I saw was these grownups or these adults making choices that hurt each other, hurt themselves, and hurt children.
That's all I understood that growing up was going to be. I made the choice, “If getting married and having kids or getting in a relationship and having kids is what causes this damage, then I'm not going to do that.” That was my little kid's brain. As I grew up and did a bunch of personal development work and got to, “Hold on.” There are actual tools that I could learn and gain access to so that I could make better choices, have extraordinary relationships, and create an extraordinary life for myself and those around me.
All of a sudden, it opened up now the possibility of someday getting married and maybe having kids. Of course, that's what ended up happening. I met my husband and we had an extraordinary relationship for 19 years. We were married for 17 years. We created several companies. My husband had a dream when we first got married and we turned his dream into a multimillion-dollar company which later we sold and we adopted our twins.
We've lived in California and Washington, now we're in Arizona, and we've traveled the world. We created extraordinary communities, relationships, and an extraordinary marriage out of doing the internal work that we needed to do so that we could create the life that we wanted versus the probable predictable future of the patterns that we were taught as children that weren't necessarily the healthiest.
I get that. I'm sure that I, along with everybody here know that, as an adult, we probably do get. I don't know if stupider or either way, but we do make some poor choices. I'm curious about what were the poor choices that you saw, especially around the area of money. What were some of the poor choices that you noticed in your youth? Let's start with that and then I want to talk about what personal growth you did to evolve from that.
One of the choices that I watched over and over again was adult smoking. Again, my brain works in numbers. Apparently, it always has. I remember being in the third grade and not having any food on the table. However, there was always money for cigarettes and then I started calculating. As kids or as children, we were sent to the store to buy cigarettes for the adults. The adults wouldn't even get off their butts to go buy their cigarettes. They sent the kids to the store to do it.
Of course, having the money and understanding the calculations and then watching every day how much money was going into buying these cigarettes, and what that would have put food on our table. I couldn't understand the logic around that. How is that more important than food on the table for the children? I couldn't understand it.
What was the leap that you took or what was it that you did to not follow those steps? Especially with children, we were so impressionable that we might pick up some of those same ideas or beliefs and then transform them into our own lives. What did you do that not only did you question it, but what did you do to then take action and move in a different direction? How did that start?
I remember watching how miserable the adults were. I wanted no part of it. That was the first piece. I wanted no part of the misery that they continued to perpetuate and create for themselves. It's just, “No, thanks.” I had little glimpses of what love was and what family was. By going to friend's houses, I got to experience what a healthy family looked like.
I have aunts and uncles that I lived with when I was little who were extraordinary. I loved them to death. They showed me what love was and what a healthy family looked like. It was having the opportunity to step out of that nuclear, whatever you want to call it, and experience how different families expressed themselves and took care of each other, and experience love inside of those different homes.
By having the opportunity of being able to see what arises from different homes and different families and different experiences, that's when I got that it happens to be this way here, but it doesn't mean it has to be this way. This isn't what every family experiences. Being in different homes and living with different families gave me the ability to wake up and say, “Wait a minute, I can have this different life. If all these other people can have a different life, why could I not?” That’s the spark that started all of it.
What were some of the examples of that loving family relationship that you crave so much? What stuck with you? What did you see?
I think the earliest one was my Auntie Barb and Uncle Harvey. All their love. Ask anybody in our family, my cousins, everybody, they're love. It's who they are. They're extraordinary. I feel very blessed to have them. Auntie Barb is the typical aunt who pinches your cheeks, squishes you, hugs you, and completely wraps herself around you.
Uncle Harvey is the jokester. Everything was family from creating big meals to playing games together as a family. It was always very inclusive, loving, and connected. You certainly didn't cross my Auntie Barb because she would not take any of it. She and Uncle Harvey were foster parents and they took in all these kids all the time. There were always new kids there, but it was always fun, loving, and strict because you got to have rules inside of having a healthy family.
Just the love, even today. When we adopted our twins, my aunt flew down to California. I'm from Canada, she flew from Northern Canada down to California to help us deal with some stuff in the very first year that we had them and their older brother. It was an extraordinary amount of love. I feel forever grateful for these people.
That's amazing. I can hear also how you've taken all of that love, all of that care, and also made that part of who you are with your kids and who you are with people in your community. I'm curious and I think about my family, we all have three brothers. My parents are both hardworking and responsible people.
There was no cigarette buying in my house. They were all responsible and I remember that whenever it came to talking about money for us, it was either some conflict between how it should be spent and how much was spent and why it should be spent, or simply that there was not enough or spending too much. We didn't talk about it in what I thought was a productive way. I shared with some people that I didn't have any way of articulating my values around money until probably ten years ago.
It’s super recent and it was as an adult on my own, already living and working for many years, I finally had someone confront or rub against some of my own values where I realized, “I've articulated this. I'm not sure how to articulate it.” I'm curious about you. How do you go about having an empowering conversation around money? You grew up in a situation where there was not enough of it or there's mismanagement of it and all the other things in between. How do you go about having an empowering context and conversation?
Lots of personal development. Just like what you were saying at the beginning, how you started this call was brilliant. If we check in with ourselves and see, “What is this experience for us? What is the experience physically? What is the experience mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?” Money is energy but the reality is until we get responsible and deal with ourselves internally, we're going to continue to perpetuate those ongoing conversations about money that are disempowering.
Until we get responsible and deal with ourselves internally, we're going to continue to perpetuate disempowering conversations about money.
I had to become self-aware of what the conversation was and how it was impacting my experience of money. Again, it started with me. What's going on here and then how is it impacting here? From there, now I could deal with it and address it. It was a lot of personal development work and getting responsible. I had to be responsible. What's going on here?
Give us an example. You mentioned you've done a lot of work. All the work that you've done. What's something that you did that was particularly impactful?
I got a business coach.
At what point in your life did you find this business coach? What was the moment that you thought, “I’ll hire somebody for this.”
It came from my husband. It's all the personal development work. I did the Sterling Woman's Weekend when I was 23 years old. The Sterling Woman's Weekend gave me the tools to have successful relationships in every area of my life.
What is Sterling Woman's Weekend?
The Sterling Woman's Weekend is a brilliant program. It's a three-day weekend where you get all these tools to be able to have successful relationships in every area of your life, from intimate relationships to business to children, every relationship that you have, but the most important relationship is with yourself. Inside of that getting the tools that I needed opened up the door for the possibility for me to maybe get married one day. That's where I met my husband.
I met my husband and he had done the Sterling Men's Weekend. Now we have this common language that we come together to create this extraordinary relationship. One of the things I was clear about instead of choosing the man I wanted to marry was I chose a man who was very much involved in personal development and continuing that road. He was very open to continuing to explore and to grow and not like we were broken. That's not it, but it was the commitment to continue to grow who we are and the capacity and what we were capable of as human beings.
We went on and we did landmark education and we did all their courses. Through there, because of the man that I chose, my husband and him being open and coachable, the thing we're both clear about is that we don't know everything and we don't need to know everything, but we need to have the smartest people on our team that know everything. By getting a business coach that knew exactly what steps we needed to take and would kick our butts and hold us accountable to take us to the next level in front of our business, that's where we chose to go.
Continuing down that road and having a business coach who pushed in and had us transform our relationship around numbers in the world of business. That's where things became exciting. That's where my genius is. I believe that everybody has a genius. If it's a genius, it's your job. I'm not marketing. I'm not words. I am numbers. I am spreadsheets. It was from there that this whole world opened up to realizing.
This came from other work that I did, but numbers tell stories. When we can tap into those numbers and then rework those numbers so that we can see what the numbers are telling us, then we know exactly what to do to impact those numbers and to get out in front of them versus being at the impact of them. Let me say how that works. Most people in business create a budget. You create a budget and then you look at it once and that's about it, “How did that work for you?” You're like, “I didn't stay on budget. That didn't work.” That's how most people function in life and their business.
What I do is create what we call cashflow projections so we can see what's going to happen in the next few weeks. We know we have to pay our mortgages, rent, and utilities. There are things we know. We're able to put those into the future. Now, what are the things we don't know? We don't know how many sales we're going to make because we don't have a crystal ball, but if we can re-engineer our income-producing activity, we have a way of not only predicting but being in the driver's seat and knowing exactly how much income-producing activity we need to do to generate this amount of income in week 3, 4, 5 ahead when you know your numbers.
To me, that was exciting. I love that it's like a game. My best friend and I always joke about this. We love to play games. I grew up playing games. Every single time, she and I would sit down with a new group of people and play a new game. We'll start playing the game and figure out the rules and stuff as we go. About halfway through the game, I'll say, “Wait a minute, how do you win this game?” They'll say, “You do this, this, and this,” and then I won every single time.
That's like in life too because I turn all of my businesses into games. We can turn our business. It's just a game. It's just for fun. It happens to allow us to pay bills and have extraordinary lives and do all that. As long as it's fun and it's just a game, now it's a game worth playing versus, “My God, it's Monday morning, I got to go to work, this sucks.” I'm not willing to live a life like that.
I get to choose what my Monday mornings look like. I love Monday mornings because I get to get back to playing my game again because it's fun. When we know it's just a game, how we play the game, and what the rules of the games are, all of a sudden, you're like, “Let's play, game on.” This whole extraordinary life comes out of it.
Treat your business like a game. Just have fun and let this whole extraordinary life come out of it.
What's changed? All of us work, I work, we all work. The difference is how I choose to see my work versus how other people choose to see their work. People choose to see their work as work. I choose to see my work as a game. I have all these scoreboards and all these spreadsheets and it's totally fun. All the teams play and then these extraordinary results show up out of it.
Last question and I'm going to open up to the group that's with us so they can interact with us too. How do you then take that same mentality? You're talking about games and having fun and being engaged and numbers telling a story. How do you take that point of view or that philosophy, and teach your children or teach those young people around us so that they're not making the choices or mistakes that adults have made in your life? What do you do?
The first thing is we don't give our children allowance, we give them commissions. Commissions are earned. If you have an allowance, an allowance is like welfare. It's given to you. You breathe and you get it. That’s not how an empowered life works.
Give an example of what would be considered a commission-earning activity.
My kids are fourteen. I have a bunch of Airbnb's and they're at the age where they want to start getting jobs or whatever. Inside of choosing not to give them everything that they want, they are wanting-machines from the time they popped into this world, we always say it's good to want. That is good. What are you going to do about it? We have them earn their commission so that they can pay for whatever. My daughter happens to help clean our Airbnbs, and my son helps do all the landscaping for all of our Airbnbs.
There are particular chores inside of the house because we're a family that they don't get paid for because it's part of being a family, your laundry, the dishes, and things like that. You're not going to get paid for that. That's a courtesy of being a part of the family. This is what we do. There are extra things. They could go wash the vehicles for extra commissions. The commissions are based on how well of a job they did and whether did it with a happy heart.
Say more about that.
We've taught our kids since the time they were little that their job is to do whatever they're asked to do, to do it all the way, right away, and with a happy heart. This is the beginning of teaching them a good work ethic, having a good heart, and a right spirit inside of their motivation for whatever they're doing. If they do the job completely versus the equivalent of my son taking out the trash but not putting the trash bag back in the can. That's not all the way. Let's go back and put the trash bag in there. Now you've done it all the way.
Now, have you done it with a happy heart or did you grumble the whole time? If you grumble, you're not getting paid for it. I think that’s a huge problem inside our workforce. People have been trained to grumble and hate their jobs versus doing it with a happy heart. You said yes to this job. You said yes to this business. Do it with a happy heart. Why not? Who is it going to hurt?
There's all the right away. That's another one when you're asked to do something, and this comes from the Bible. Jonah, God asked him to go and he was given a mission. He said, “No.” He went in the other direction. Eventually, God got his attention by swallowing him by a whale and having the whale take him all the way up and vomit him out and say, “No, this is what you're going to do.” There's wisdom inside of us doing something right away.
When we are asked to do something and stop procrastinating and get it done, a space frees up inside of us. I talked to my children about when you’re asked to do something and you procrastinate and you've spent all this time, 6 or 8 hours grumbling about the whole thing, you've wasted all this energy, where if you had done it, you'd be done in 15 minutes and then have 6 to 8 hours to play. The energy that we waste inside of procrastinating is ridiculous. If we got it done, now we're free up and we can create whatever it is that we're committed to creating. That's the all the way, right away, and with a happy heart.
I love that. I don't have’t have kids but I'm ready to have them so I could teach them this.
We need to teach adults this.
Speaking of teaching adults, we have others who have joined us. I want to allow them to weigh in to share whatever comments or questions they might have about the subject so far. I love to hear from Heather. Heather, would you like to share?
Catherine, how do you distinguish between procrastinating and taking time to have downtime and rest? There's an infinite amount of things to be done and if we're all doing them right away, how do you determine when it's time to stop and purposefully rest?
That's a brilliant question. I learned years ago to calendar block. Everything that I have to get done, including my time and taking care of me is all blocked out in my calendar. I honor each one of those times that I blocked out for that particular exercise or activity to only do that activity, like going to a dentist appointment or a doctor's appointment.
When I go to the dentist, I can't multitask. All I can do is lay there and wait for them to finish their thing. It's the same thing with every single activity that I do. I don't multitask. I just do that particular thing during that particular time. Something pops into my head like say, I'm out having family time, and all of a sudden, something pops into my head that I have to get done.
I simply go onto my phone and I find a time when it would work to get that done. I schedule it on my calendar. Now, I've essentially let it go because I know there's a time and a space that's going to get done so that I can be 100% present with my family. Now we move forward and that time happens, all of a sudden, now is the time to handle that thing, so that I have the freedom and I give myself full permission to handle that thing during that time.
That must bring into when you have to say no to things and say, “I'm not going to do that.”
Yes. In my calendar, I have it blocked off when I sleep. I have it blocked off when dinner time and family time. It makes it clear what my priorities are. My family is my number one priority, so all that time goes in first, and then everything else fits in around it. That's a great question.
Thank you, Heather. Following up on what Heather said, does prosperity and abundance require sacrifice in your world?
I don't see it as a sacrifice. I'm sure some people would. I see it as a choice. Everything is a choice.
Say more about that.
Sacrifice to me means I'm giving up something. For me, there are my commitments and what I'm out to accomplish. That becomes the precedent for what I'm going to commit to. Given that pretty much everything in my world, I do my best to turn it into a game and make it fun. Nothing occurs as a sacrifice to me because it's all a game. Let's play.
Just play. I get that. Some sense of lightness and freedom goes along with thinking of things as games. Meg, anything that pops into your mind about what Catherine has shared so far?
Thank you. I was thinking about when my kids were little and I was newly divorced and trying to take care of three kids on my own and working 2 or 3 jobs. I would end up with no money between paychecks. I'd have to borrow $20 from a friend frequently. I came to a point where I said, “You know what? I need to stop this. I need to sit back and think about what this is.”
It was at that time that I decided that I was going to turn it over and let the spirit handle stuff. I didn't even have to borrow $20 anymore. I never got what I call the wealth that we're talking about, the abundance. That's something that has come from time to time throughout the years, I hit a snag when I became disabled and had to quit working. It was, “Oh no. I'm faced again with this.”
I know a gal who says that it's a four-letter word that ends in CK and it's called lack. That's been a recurring theme that I have to struggle against for it not to be an operative theme in my life. I guess, that is what I'm trying to say. To me, it's interesting to think about whether or not I deserve to have wealth and abundance because it's not something that I've ever had, although I have been able to use tools to the point of not feeling a constant struggle some of the time. It's interesting.
Thank you for sharing Meg. It sounds like it's about challenging those self-limiting beliefs. You mentioned lack, taking a look at where that's coming from and why. How it's tripping you up? How it's getting in the way of what you're out to come. Catherine, what would you say about that?
Meg, you bring up a great point. The same with you, Heather. One of the tools that I've been using for decades is the book by Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. He doesn't say do and grow rich or get educated and grow rich. He says, “Think and grow rich.” There's the Think and Grow Rich for Women. Have you read that one?
No.
It's a newer one that's recently come out. I teach a mastermind with women and we dig into the concepts of this book and implement them into our lives. I love all the exercises at the end of each chapter. I've been doing this book for years. The reason I do it is because every single millionaire, and actually, one of my friends is a billionaire, all of those millionaires, what they all have in common is every single one of them does that book once a year.
I like to say success leaves clues. If we could re-engineer successful people and their habits and repeat their habits, then something should come from that. That is my thinking. If one of their habits is to dig into and study and do the exercises in that book at least once a year, then something is going to shift for me, possibly, maybe, hopefully, up here. That's exactly what's happened. Every single time I go through and do the book, I'm at a different stage in my life, a different chapter of my life, and all the answers end up being a little bit different and get me a little bit closer to where it is that I'm going.
Success leaves clues. If we can re-engineer successful people’s habits and repeat them, then something should come from that.
I love that you said that, Catherine, because one of the things you shared with me is that you're doing this every year for all these years, that you always get something out of it. What's the latest discovery? I think you're in the middle of it right now or done.
We're almost done. We've got a couple of more chapters at the latest. There are a-has every single week. He talks about the five people you spend the most amount of time with and if you take their net worth, add it all up, and then divide it by five, that's pretty much what your net worth is going to be. If you want to raise your net worth, shift who you're spending the most time with because when you spend time with those people, I promise you, you're thinking will shift and expand to a whole new level that you never imagined possible.
How are you shifting that now? How do you go about shifting your neighborhood or your network?
For me, given that my husband recently died, it's figuring out what it is that I'm going to create for my children and me now that I'm a widow and having to do it all by myself, not having him, my partner there, my best friend with me the entire time. What does that look like for my kids and me because that wasn't a part of our dream boards, that wasn't a part of our vision? It's thrown me a curveball inside of having to surround myself with extraordinary women who have created extraordinary lives for themselves and their kids without their husbands right there. That's a challenge because it flipped my whole world upside down.
When you think about the focus that you have to have, and I've spoken to you a few times about this ever since you lost your husband, and now have to create something different and something new. What are the criteria when we think about who you're going to allow into your life now to create this next chapter? The kind of people you want to surround yourself with, it sounds like you're mindful about that. What are you looking for? What should one look for to know that this is the right thing for their heart and the right thing for their next level?
As a woman, I look for different qualities in women that I want to eventually completely embrace or embody that I feel like I haven't quite embodied. There's not going to be one woman that has everything. Different women have different qualities and different aspects that I want to eventually grow up and be like.
Heather or Meg, any other questions for Catherine before we begin to wrap up here? One of the things that I committed to, Catherine, is that you also have an opportunity to share with people. They want to continue this conversation with you. Where could they find you? How do they get involved in your mastermind, for example, or have a conversation about their business that might make a difference?
There are multiple things that I do. I'm a partner in a hedge fund as well and my time is taken up with. I own a bunch of Airbnbs, but I teach a course called The Numbers Don't Lie, Do The Numbers, Numbers Tell You What To Do. You had talked about the quiz and anybody can go to it. It's www.NumbersTellYouWhatToDo.com. It's long. It's a fun little quiz that lets you understand more about where you are with your numbers and be able to take your numbers to the next level.
That's for entrepreneurs and business owners who can generate revenue and do income-producing activities. We break it down so that they know exactly what they need to do and it gives them the ability to get out in front of their numbers all the time so that they can create and start building their network. That's a lot of fun for me.
For all women, on Facebook, I've got a group called Mastermind for Extraordinary Women. Type in that little Mastermind for Extraordinary Women, and it'll pop up. You ask to join the group. We go through and dig into particular books that are going to take us to the next level. We create accountability partners. We have weekly calls and homework to help take us to the next level. Once a year, we do the Think and Grow Rich for Women because success leaves clues. Ladies, that's one of the books that leaves a lot of clues.
It does. I haven't read the one for women, but I did read the one by Napoleon Hill, the original.
You'd love the one for women. If you're like me. I'm so busy that I only listen to it on Audible. That's the only way I can get through all these books. I love to read but with my very limited time, I turn all my driving time into automobile university because I get to listen and soak up all these extraordinary books.
I love that. Maybe you have another business idea through the automobile university. You mentioned this quiz that you have for people who are entrepreneurs or business owners, what resources or recommendations do you have for people who do not have their own business or are working for another organization?
Some of a couple of books that do a great job explaining what you can do to move from employee to entrepreneur or business owner investor that impacted my life, the first one is Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, and then the second one that I highly recommend is the Cashflow Quadrant.
The first one talks about what you were taught as a kid which is pretty cool. The second one teaches you how to shift from what you were taught as a kid to get a good education, get a good job, and they'll take care of you, which we all know is not true, to shifting over to being a business owner and investor and what needs to happen to make that happen.
If you have a brilliant idea or something you want to do, my other favorite is the E Myth. It talks about what you need to do if you're going to start a business. There are lots of businesses to start. One of the things that I love is the concept of network marketing companies. I don't happen to be in any of them. That's not my thing. I blaze my own trail.
For women who are looking or anybody who's looking to generate more revenue, one of the things I love about great network marketing companies is that they teach you entrepreneurial skills. It gives you some additional income. It gives you some ability to have tax write-offs that you otherwise wouldn't have, which another series of the book, the Rich Dad series is Tax Loopholes for the Rich. Read that. That'll give you some great ideas of what you can do for business so that you can be doing things to generate more revenue and have more tax write-offs in this fabulous country.
The network marketing company. If you're going to look for a network marketing company to give you that ability to have that entrepreneurial experience, but within the safety of it, one of the things you want to look for is you want to interview the leadership of that particular line or downline, whatever you want to call it and find out what systems and structures they have in place so that you can continue to grow your business without being part of the NFL club, the No Friends Left.
The last thing we want is to be bugging our friends and family to be buying this. That's not building a true business. There are companies out there that will teach you how to go and get legitimate customers and be of service. They are an amazing support system for each other. I've seen that happen and it's been amazing, and then of course, the revenue that's generated. When people come to me with these opportunities, I always ask a couple of questions. I say I want to talk to three people who are doing this right now and who have comments in their bank accounts because of it.
If they can't have three people who are doing it right now that have had real-world results comments in their bank account, then it's not probably a legit thing to do because inside of those conversations. That's when I can find out what kind of support, training, and ongoing nurturing happens to help us grow into being great entrepreneurs and eventually businesses in other areas. I've done a lot of network marketing companies. Robert Kiyosaki talks about it too.
It's a brilliant training ground that gives you this safe space to be an entrepreneur to get that training to shift your mindset, take it to the next level, and potentially create your own company in the world. My husband and I created our own company, several of them, and now I'm a partner in a real estate investment hedge fund. All of that came from getting myself educated through different opportunities that eventually were a stepping stone to the next thing. I was always growing. It was never a traditional education.
Sometimes that's not always the way for our minds to engage in things that we're doing. It sounds like what you've done, Catherine, is create a spark for yourself and those around you to take on a lot of different actions. I love what you talked about it's not about doing and growing rich, it's about thinking.
I think if nothing else, what I've gotten from our conversation is how much you honor the brain capacity that you have and the potential that your brain has to create more, better, and bigger, and how disciplined you are about looking at your thinking first to determine what actions you should take. That's one of the things that I'm taking away from our conversation. I want to thank you so much, Catherine, for being a part of our conversation.
For those of you who were able to join us, I'm excited about any conversation that opened up for yourself or those conversations that you'll start to have in your community or with your family or your kids about getting commission versus allowance, for example. I encourage you all to go to the Facebook page, Connect to Joy, and comment about this talk. I'll post it there in the next couple of days. We have an opportunity to watch it and share it and make sure that you start these conversations. We want to make a difference in the quality of life that you lead and find a way to come alive around money. Fabulous. Thank you so much, everybody. Have a wonderful day.
Thank you. Another extraordinary day, ladies. Bye.
Important Links
Snoop Dogg: “My mind on my money, and my money on my mind.”
It’s not always easy to pinpoint the moment we change our thoughts and uncover how our thoughts have influenced our behavior. This week on our "Time to Come Alive" coaching session, we welcomed Catherine Bell, a businesswoman who values challenging her thinking and the thinking of others to build prosperity and abundance.
As a child, Catherine observed adults making poor decisions about how to spend money. That was the kickstart to her transformation. She now nurtures gratitude versus entitlement in her own children as well as models her commitment to self-development in a variety of ways. Check out the reading list she shared with us!
Highlights:
Revolutionize your relationship with work by doing things: all the way, right away and with a Happy Heart.
Redefine your idea of what is possible by surrounding yourself with the right people.
Playing a game around making and managing money keeps one free to win in different ways.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel and access new and past episodes! To receive episodes in your inbox, subscribe at www.TimeToComeAlive.com.
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