Author: Krystal

It’s Sunday night, and my wife and I are laughing SO HARD at ourselves. We had the sudden realization that we completely missed the boat on a school thing–I’m not sure which one of us realized it first, but here we are on a Sunday night doing some parenting clean up.

The short story is that we both work full-time and we’re just not that on top of some of the school stuff. We’re not the parents who are able to volunteer to be library assistants every Thursday at 12:15 or go on every field trip or chair the annual bake sale.
(Edit: The wife did chaperone one field trip this year, and then came home and slept for approximately three days. She loved it, obvs.)

Frankly, we’re the parents who miss their required volunteer hours and donate money instead (hello, leverage!).

We love, love, love our daughter. We also love our work. And we can’t do it all, and do it all well. Most of the time that’s perfectly fine with us. That’s the letting go part.

And here’s the avoidance part…

We’ve both been getting emails about this school thing for weeks. I saw the words “tree trot” and immediately sorted those emails into the junk folder of my mind, right along with anything resembling “5K” or “marathon” or “run.”

I also assume that anything discussing “trotting” or “running” or “5K” in any manner is completely voluntary, because RUNNING.

Since my wife and I avoided reading those emails, what we did not realize is that this tree trot is a ✨THING✨ at Z’s school. Like a big deal kind of thing, that’s all about raising money for the school. Apparently there’s trotting, yes, amongst the trees–AND parents show up to cheer them on and the families raise money for the school.

Oops.

It’s fine, we’re on it now, so what if we missed avoided the memo and it’s three weeks later. WE SHOWED UP.

Which brings me to…what’s the difference between letting go and avoidance?

To let it go, you have to look it in the face, my friends. What I’ve looked at head on and chosen to let go of in my life has to number in the hundreds if not thousands. And sometimes (many times?) I have to do it over, and over, and over again.

I’m looking at YOU, perfectionism. You too, comparison. And I see you over there, “right way”–GET IN LINE because you are next on my list. 

We can’t do a damn thing about what we refuse to see.  It’s not letting go if you won’t look it in the face–it’s avoidance.

So how about you…what are YOU avoiding and telling yourself that you’re just “letting it go”? What life emails are going straight to the junk mail before you even open them?

We love hearing from you, so if this resonates with you–let us know!

How many times have you joked about winning the lottery? The ultimate fantasy…being handed piles of money for no reason other than a $3 ticket and a random number. Suddenly life is good, and you never have to worry about money again–talk about living the dream!

You know there’s a catch, right? Ever heard of the so-called “lottery curse”? 

Many people who win the lottery end up squandering all that money, they get depressed, their marriages end–and some winners meet a tragic end.

There are countless stories of people wishing they had never won. (Seriously.)

The National Endowment for Financial Education estimates that around 70% of people who receive a large cash windfall will lose it within a few years.

WHAT IN THE WORLD?  So money…DOESN’T buy happiness after all?

It’s complicated. Sudden windfalls of that kind of money is a fantasy that the vast majority of people will never experience. If you DO experience it–and you’ve never had money before–your entire life changes in one second. As amazing as that is, it’s also something you couldn’t possibly prepare for. And while money solves some problems, it can also CREATE other problems.

Money buys freedom, which is an essential part of happiness–but it doesn’t buy a whole lot of other things that we tend to value in our lives. Money won’t buy love, it won’t buy a sense of purpose. 

Many lottery winners tend to spend big and lavishly, quit their jobs, and buy expensive homes. They start looking around at all the parts of their lives and wonder–do they measure up? Maybe the loyal spouse you’ve been with for 30 years isn’t looking so good anymore, now that you have money and you’re suddenly more “attractive.” Family members come out of the woodwork, wanting more and more from you. 

This is the most extreme example we can think of when it comes to the psychology of money– and what happens when someone has not done the emotional work to have a healthy relationship with their finances. 

We have to see money as a TOOL rather than a SOLUTION. A huge windfall, turns out, doesn’t solve all your problems, and it can even create some brand new ones. 

Your money mindset is running the show, not the money itself. When you have a healthy mindset around money, it becomes the tool you need it to be. You can stop placing these broad, unrealistic expectations on money and instead use it to create and live the life you truly want to live.

We’d like to believe we’d handle a large windfall better than most (and please, Universe, give us a chance to try!). In the meantime, we’ll be over here building wealth the old fashioned way 😂

I was 18 years old when I got my first credit card. A company set up tables on our college campus and gave away free t-shirts to anyone who applied for a card. I’ve always loved a free…well, anything…so of course I applied. Within a week, a shiny new card arrived in my mailbox with a $500 limit. 

Of course, I didn’t register a “limit”…all I saw was FREE MONEY.

I was a poor kid from middle of nowhere Alabama, and at that point in my life $500 might as well have been $100,000. 

It was a fluke that I even ended up going to college–no one in my family did. I can’t remember what I thought I would do after graduating high school (maybe continue waitressing at JR’s Wings and Things?), but what I CAN tell you is that I went into utter shock when I got a letter in the mail offering me a full scholarship to my university.

My test scores apparently put me in a range where some schools were offering me money to come there before I even applied. Which was a good thing–because I didn’t know the first thing about applying to college!

And this, my friends, is how I accidentally ended up going to college AND how I ended up in major credit card debt before I hit the age of 21.

No one in my family talked about money, unless it was about not having any. My brother and I used to joke that our family motto is “Expect the worst, and don’t you dare hope for the best.”

The first part of my childhood was spent in a single wide trailer, then later in a small home on a piece of my grandparent’s land. We struggled, to say the least. 

I had no clue–ZERO idea–how to handle money, and this landed me in a world of trouble several times before I finally taught myself to manage money in responsible ways.

I not only completed that four-year degree, I went on to receive a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. Once I moved away from Alabama and began working in the professional world, I dug myself out of the hole I was in through sheer will and a determination to learn as much as I possibly could about debt, savings and investing. I read every personal finance book I could get my hands on. 

And still, STILL, I made major mistakes. I was in a cycle of accruing debt, paying it off, and doing it all over again.

I could have read every personal finance book in the world, but until I dealt with my emotional spending, the psychology of money and the beliefs that were handed down to me from my own family of origin–I was doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m PASSIONATE about money, for one reason and one reason only–MONEY BUYS FREEDOM.

Money is just a tool–and like any tool, it can be used to build something sturdy and secure, or it can be used to destroy.

Having money–for me–isn’t about accumulating stuff, or taking big fancy trips. It’s about the freedom of CHOICE, the ability to make the most important decisions in my life based on my own best interests rather than fear and scarcity. And it’s about having the ability to be generous with others, taking care of my community. 

I’ve spent much of my adult life yo-yoing between extreme deprivation and reckless spending. I am so incredibly thankful that I did the work I did to find more balance in my financial life, to make money a useful tool that works FOR me and not AGAINST me.

If I can support you in creating a healthier relationship with money, it’s my favorite thing to so…so please reach out!

–Amy

Here’s a subject that’s come up a lot for me and Jen lately in our deep-dive inner world conversations  business meetings. What does it mean to be a seeker?

For those of you who listen to Glennon Doyle’s podcast, she talks about being a seeker–and that the nature of a seeker is to always be seeking, but not really finding.  In fact, there’s danger in a seeker “finding” something, because the attachment to that spiritual paradigm, or personality type, or whatever it is can become too extreme and then block the seeker’s own inner knowing.

If you’ve ever wondered how people become enmeshed in high-control groups (“cults”), it starts with being a seeker. (I confess that “cults” are my current hyper-fixation/obsession)

Every wonderful quality has a shadow side. Seekers are curious, open, see beauty and wonder in the world, and teach those of us who are NOT seekers about the magic of being a human being in this wild world.

The shadow side can look a couple of different ways. Seekers can seem fickle, not grounded in reality, and flaky. 

Seekers can also be more susceptible to a phenomenon I like to call, in all caps, THE WAY. They can so desperately want to make sense of the world within and around them that they can give too much of their inner knowing and authority away to some force outside of them, and then it becomes not “a way” but THE WAY.

Finders look for what is already there. They often say things like “the research says…” or ask questions like “what’s the evidence for that?” They’re more logical, more reality-based. They find INFORMATION, check the source, and that’s that. They are our truth-sayers, our grounding rods, the steady hands that guide us. 

And the shadow side? Certainty and rigidity…which then blocks curiosity, personal growth and magical mystery.

Isn’t that interesting? The shadow side for seekers AND finders can involve certainty, knowing THE WAY.

Most of us are going to lean one way or the other on the Seeker/Finder spectrum. But here’s the really cool thing–we can consciously grow that more underdeveloped part! We can practice tapping into the part that is less accessible, and over time it becomes MORE accessible and available to us.

And bringing this back around to your business (I do eventually get there 😉)…

Your business needs the seeker AND the finder. The balance is essential for the gifts that each of these types bring to the table. 

We need the grounding and the dreaming, the security and the risk, the logic and the magic. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a business partner or a team that brings all of these qualities into your business (this is probably the most amazing thing we discovered during our NLW planning retreat).

Or maybe you’re a solopreneur, and you can do more work within yourself to access both your inner seeker and your finder.

Either way, recognizing the value in both of these types and bringing their best qualities into your business could be the missing piece when it comes to growing your business.

Which type do YOU lean towards?

♥️, 
Amy (85% Finder, 15% Seeker)
Next Level Wealth Coaching 

Okay, stay with us…

To imply that you can just “follow your passion” is a bit misleading. It’s not like it’s the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and if you just follow the trail you’ll magically find it.

Instead, let’s talk about it this way–we need to find ways to cultivate our passions. To cultivate means to develop, to prepare for. 

So cultivating our passions is an active process, one that doesn’t ever stop. If you found what you were passionate about and felt like you were done–well, that would imply that Amy is still obsessed with Barbie, and believe us, this is not the case 😂

If we see finding our passions as being a process, then we remain open and curious to whatever we discover, and we leave room to evolve and change over time.

And because we like tangible steps here at Next Level Wealth, here’s a process you can use to cultivate YOUR passions 💫

1. Take care of your basic needs.
   You won’t have room to explore what you’re passionate about unless your basic needs are met. Nutrition, water, sleep, movement, safe and loving connections…those basic physical and mental health needs that are the essential foundation for reaching those higher level desires. Your car won’t drive unless it has gas (unless it’s electric, but you know what we mean). So fill up that tank!
   
   
2. Create space.
   Where’s that white space on your calendar, hmmm? If your entire day, every day, is filled with “to do’s”…how can you even figure out what you want to move towards, what lights you up? Passion requires SPACE, and it wants us to be creative and playful. Whether all you can manage is an hour or two at a time, or a solo weekend away, you need space to access passion.
   
   
3. Be curious.
   You never know what might light you up and inspire you. What would happen if you let go of your assumptions, of the stories you’ve always told yourself? We are all (yes, ALL) creative beings. Practice curiosity, explore new activities and ways of being, let go and HAVE FUN, with no other agenda! You’ll be amazed at what you learn about yourself and what you love.
   

Do you know what your passions are, in life and in business? 

♥️, 

Jen and Amy (PASSIONATE Business Coaches)

You used to feel it with your business–that fire, the passion and excitement, the motivation to achieve goals that once felt impossible. You were so pumped up about what you did that you talked to anyone who would listen, not to SELL to them but because you believed in it so deeply. And people were drawn to you like a magnet. 

Now you’re tired, bored and uninspired. You go through the motions, but your heart’s not in it. There are few, if any, deals on the table. You wonder, what’s the point? Maybe you’re in the wrong business. 

Does any of this sound familiar?

Before you get to the point where you throw it all away, let’s talk about burnout.

Burnout is caused by PROLONGED STRESS with LACK OF SELF CARE. 

And we’ve been there. It’s a terrible feeling and it distorts your view of everything. Many amazing profitable businesses have shut their doors due to burnout.

It’s important to catch what’s going on early enough to do something about it. Look for these signs if you’re wondering about burnout:
Unexplainable health issues
Sleep issues
Appetite and weight changes
Extreme exhaustion
Depression symptoms (irritability, apathy, difficulty concentrating, etc)
Feeling stuck and hopeless

Here’s the thing–you won’t get clarity about your business in a place of burnout. The burnout HAS to be addressed first. 

If you’re struggling with burnout, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are there ways to reduce the stressors?
   Often we’re doing more than we need to with tasks that either aren’t that important or that someone else could be doing. Focus your energy on the tasks that produce the highest return on your investment of time and energy, and let go of the rest. 
   
   
2. Can you have healthier boundaries? Do you allow yourself to say “no” even if it makes you uncomfortable and disappoints someone?
   A lack of healthy boundaries is a recipe for burnout. Have you ever seen a lifeguard head out into the ocean to rescue a drowning person? You know what they always, ALWAYS bring? A good flotation device. It doesn’t do any good to attempt to save someone else’s if you’re not well resourced yourself.
   
   
3. Are you spending time doing things you love and are passionate about? Are you prioritizing yourself? Have you told yourself a story about how “I don’t have time,” “I’m too busy,” “Everything will fall apart if I take time off?”
   Hard truth: if your business is set up in such a way that you can’t take time for yourself, then your business needs to fail–or it needs to get a DRAMATIC makeover. A key factor in making a business sustainable over the long term is a culture where self care is encouraged and prioritized.
   
   
4. What support do you need that you don’t currently have in place?
   Examples of support could be therapy, coaching, mentorship, a consultant, hiring the right people (which might mean letting go of others), time off…to name a few!
   And ASK FOR HELP if you need it. Put your ego aside and reach out.
   

Let’s get you back to a place of passion, creativity and inspiration! If you address the burnout and you still aren’t satisfied with your business, then okay–maybe it’s time to let it go. Nine times out of ten, that won’t be the case. 

The vast majority of the time, you can fall back in love with your business! And if we can support you in getting there, let us know ✨

♥️, 
Jen and Amy

Before there was Tina Turner, there was Anna Mae Bullock, a girl born to share-cropper parents in 1939. Her parents abandoned her and her sister at a young age, leaving them with their strict conservative grandmother.

Tina has shared many times that she never felt loved by her parents. It was with this difficult childhood history that she met and fell in love with Ike Turner, a talented and charismatic musician. She married him at the age of 22 and for years endured horrific physical, emotional and financial abuse. Their success in the music world belied the terror behind closed doors. 

When Tina finally left Ike, she did so with just 36 cents to her name. She worked any job she could find and lived in poverty, forced to start her music career all over again.

Tina performed whenever and wherever she could. Music was her passion, the one thing she loved that ever loved her back, the one thing that gave as much as it took. Though she struggled to get anyone to take her seriously without Ike by her side, she never gave up. 

And finally, in 1983, she signed with Capitol Records. 

Tina catapulted to a kind of fame she never had with Ike, had never dreamed of having before.  All those years of never giving up and following her passion had paid off.

In 1985 Tina found real love with a man named Erwin Bach. They’ve been together for over three decades now. It seems no coincidence that finding love with a partner coincided with loving herself enough to save her own life.

Tina is quoted as saying “My legacy is that I stayed on course…from the beginning to the end, because I believed in something inside of me.”   

How beautiful is that?  She didn’t say “my legacy is my music” or “my legacy is my talent.” Her legacy is that she never deviated from what she loved the most, and she was able to do that because she believed in herself against all odds.

People could control her, abuse her, abandon her and manipulate her–but she would not allow them to destroy her belief in herself and her drive to pursue her passion.

This is what ultimately got her out of that horrific marriage and allowed her to become the woman and artist she knew she could be.

Passion is defined as ‘powerful and compelling emotion.’ It’s the kind of strong and sustained feeling that just can’t be ignored.

Passion doesn’t necessarily correlate with money, or fame, or a career. It can involve those things, sure…yet it often doesn’t.

You might be most passionate about raising your children, or volunteering with animals. Maybe you live for horse riding, and your day job–though enjoyable–is more about funding that passion than anything else.

Passion may not directly make you money (or maybe it does)–but what passion DOES give to us is inspiration, meaning and motivation. In that way, passion feeds all the parts of our lives, including our businesses. Passion makes the hard parts more tolerable and the good parts more joyful.

Take a minute and consider what you’re most passionate about. What lights you up? What brings you the most joy and satisfaction in your life? What is the one thing you would continue to do against any odds? 

If you’re here on this earth, with a capacity to think and feel and act, then you’re passionate about something.  Perhaps you’re struggling to know what it is, or how to put it into words.  But trust us, it’s there 🙂

My 5 year old daughter is at an incredible school and we feel so lucky–we literally won the lottery to get her in there. 

One of the things about her class and school that I’m especially loving right now is their focus on perseverance. 

Maybe this is most kids (I have no clue, since I only have the one), but Z has a tendency to give up right away if she doesn’t do it well the first time trying. I mean, where does she get that from?? It’s not like I’m a recovering perfectionist 👀 😬

Anyway, we have been watching this trait shift so much from being in this class: she’s gone from a child who avoids failure to a child who’s willing to try harder and more consistently. We’re watching her develop some frustration tolerance.

Last night I was watching her practice writing her letters on a whiteboard in her room, and I remembered this story from Stephen King’s memoir On Writing…

Before Stephen King made it in the writing world, he and his family had very little money. They lived in a trailer with their young children and worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. King would work all day, come home and help take care of the kids, and then write well into the night.  At this point, he had already racked up numerous rejections–in fact, he received 60 rejections before he ever got his first short story published! 

King was working on a novel but had little hope that it would be published. At one point he threw the pages of the manuscript in the trash–luckily his wife Tabitha fished them out, read the pages and urged King to go on with the story.  She saw something in those pages and knew he needed to see it through.

And so in spite of his serious doubts (and his exhaustion!), King finished the novel and submitted it to Doubleday. 

One month later, Doubleday decided to purchase the novel. They had to send King a telegram because he couldn’t afford to keep up with the phone payment!

The advance amount wasn’t life changing–King kept his job–but it was enough to take a little pressure off financially. He hoped the paperback rights would sell for enough to quit his job and keep the household going for a few years, if they were very, very frugal.

When those paperback rights sold, they sold for $200,000–nearly 2 million dollars in today’s money 🤯

And that, my friends, is the story of Carrie, Stephen King’s first published novel. This novel set him up on the path to becoming a successful and wealthy novelist.  And all of this from some discarded pages in the trash can and a supportive partner who saw what he could not 🌟 

When I think about my daughter and this Stephen King story, two things stand out to me:

1. Perseverance is a character trait that can be learned with willingness and practice.
   It’s one of the most crucial traits in long-term, SUSTAINABLE success. It’s not enough to believe in what you’re doing–you have to find a way to persevere when it feels like all you’re doing is running into obstacles.
   
2. We need other people to believe in us when we’re struggling to believe in ourselves.
   We need honest feedback and support from people we trust if we’re going to make it to the next level. We don’t need cheerleaders or “yes” people–we need RADICAL honesty, we need to be challenged, AND we need the right kind of support!  

How do YOU deal with frustration and lack of motivation? How do you keep going when you’re exhausted and ready to quit?  And WHO in your life gives you that radical honesty and support?

Amy Worthy
COO and High Performance Business Coach

Do you know who you are?  Do you know who you want to be?  And the really big question–are you ALREADY who you want to be? 

January is the time to get very, very real with ourselves. Many of us have an idea of who we are, and oftentimes that idea we have of ourselves is part reality and part hopeful fantasy.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about building identity-based habits.  According to Clear, there are three levels where change can happen–changing outcomes (what you get), changing your process (what you do), and the deepest layer–changing your identity (what you believe).  They’re all important, but the recipe for sustained success is starting with identity and working outward.    

First step–decide the type of person you want to be.  What do you want to stand for? What are your values? Who do you want to become?

Clear encourages us to ask ourselves this powerful question: Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?

He names a simple two-step recipe for sustained success:

1.  Decide the type of person you want to be.
   
2.  Prove it to yourself with small wins.

Let’s look at a revenue goal, as an example.  We work with a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, and there’s always a revenue goal. So the outcome you would ultimately want is to make X percentage more in revenue this year.

If you ask yourself, who is the type of person that could get this outcome–you might decide it’s someone who consistently and meaningfully makes contact with colleagues, referral sources and past clients. 

You would focus on proving to yourself that you ARE this person, before you really start focusing on the revenue results. The small wins that reinforce this might be: blocking one hour a day to reach out to people, and having one coffee date per week.

Focusing on identity-based habits means that you can rely LESS on motivation (which is important but fluctuates), and MORE on identity. 

The way you become the person you want to be is to EMBODY that person, right now.  Say to yourself and others–out loud–”I am the type of person who…” Take action today that is EXACTLY what that person would do.

Interested in knowing more about our coaching services?  Reach out to us through the contact form on our website, or email us at info@nextlevelwealthcoach.com.

Here we are! The new year has begun! The fresh start we’ve all been dreaming of 🤩

The slate is metaphorically wiped clean. Nothing can stop us now! We’re bright-eyed, excited, full of hopes and plans and energy and vision boards and goals and…

Now what? 😳

Here’s what we humans tend to do:

• Get super excited and inspired thinking about the new year
• Vision and create lots of goals
• Make plans and create “to do” lists
• Set ourselves up with big expectations about how things will be different THIS year 
• Lose steam, become discouraged, lack motivation and then at some point in the middle of the year realize we haven’t looked at those goals and lists in months 😑
  

Here’s what we want you to do instead…Plan to fail.

Yes, you read that correctly. Go ahead and plan on failing. You might think, But what about visualizing success? Manifesting your dreams?  Yes, do that too!  One does not negate the other, and here’s what we mean…

Let’s assume there will be challenges along the way, maybe big ones. At some point this year, you will likely ask yourself (maybe multiple times)–Is this worth it? Do I even know what I’m doing? Should it be so hard if I’m good at what I do?

This is so normal! We just want to PLAN for it. If you want extraordinary success, like you’ve never seen before, then please–for the love of all that’s good in the world–DON’T just do what you’ve done in the past. Do what you know WORKS, and commit to letting go of what doesn’t!  Innovate. Learn. Take risks. And set yourself up for success by planning for failure. 

So here’s our new blueprint for the year:

• Get super excited and inspired thinking about the new year
• Create SMART goals–dream big with a dose of realism
• Be willing to shift gears–don’t get so attached to a plan that you lose flexibility 
• Decide that every challenge will be an invaluable learning and growth opportunity 
• Get support and accountability!  A mentor, a coach, an accountability partner or mastermind group. Be willing to be vulnerable, practice asking for support.
• Schedule time in your calendar to evaluate your goals–ideally monthly, but at least quarterly. Share this with your accountability team!
• Take responsibility for your actions (or lack thereof). Get real with yourself. We create our own motivation and inspiration, and when that fails, we need habits, strategies and accountability to fall back on.

So friends, keep dreaming big–your potential for success and fulfillment is limitless! In fact, the only limit is YOU.