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Tools mentioned in this episode:
https://amberdugger.com/ – Profitability Calculator
https://www.facebook.com/groups/sweetlifepurposefulmoney/ – Facebook
I Will Teach You to be Rich – Ramit Sethi
Tapping Into Wealth – Margaret Lynch
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself – Joe Dispenza
About Amber Dugger:
Amber Dugger is the founder of Budget Alchemy, a system developed for health coaches to end the stress and anxiety around numbers. It is a holistic system combining personal finance and business cash flow strategies using Profit First and YNAB (You Need a Budget). She has helped dozens of coaches implement this system and helped hundreds more calculate revenue goals that actually make sense! She is a certified health coach from IIN and worked in corporate finance for 15 years before venturing out on her own in 2015 and thrives on being location independent. She loves traveling, wine, bicycles, knitting and a good cup of tea (in England) and coffee (in Italy).
Contact Brendan Vermiere:
https://amberdugger.com/contact/
Transcript:
Christine H.: Hey everyone, and welcome to this episode of the 360 Health Biz podcast. And today, its me! Your host, Christine Hansen and the adorable, wonderfully beautiful partner of mine Kendra Perry! At 6:00 AM and still she looks beautiful. Kendra Perry: Oh my god, it’s the zoom filter that’s making me look good right now.Christine H.: And, we also have a very special guest today who saved my life Amber Dugger. So I’m really excited because we’re going to talk hardcore money today. It’s a topic that makes us shiver, shake in our boots, but it is actually something that we need to get a grip on. Now before we do that, if you love the topic, if you think we’re cute and funny and intelligent and smart and everything, then obviously please leave us a review on Itunes. A five star review would be amazing. And as a thank you, you can head over to our website 360healthbizpodcast.com and you can get a free gift which is a complete tool kit full of [stuff] that we love to use, online tools, you name it, everything is in there with an explanation and sometimes coupon codes. So go and check it out, it’s entirely free. Now, to introduce you to Amber. So Amber is the founder of Budget Alchemy a system developed for health coaches to end the stress and anxiety around numbers. Amen. And I will tell you a story about that. It is a [holistic] system combining personal finance and business cash flow strategies using profit first and YNAB which stands for You Need a Budget. She has helped dozens of coaches, including myself, implement this system and helped hundreds more calculate revenue goals, that actually make sense. She’s a certified health coach from IIN and worked for corporate finance for 15 years before venturing out on her own in 2015, and she thrives on being location independent. She loves traveling, wine, I like that, bicycles, mixing and a good cup of tea in England and coffee in Italy. I love that.Kendra Perry: Great bio! Christine H.: Absolutely it is [inaudible]. Amber and I met because I hired her. Basically I saw her because a friend of mine, [Meryl] was talking about how she was actually getting a grip of her money, was able to calculate, predict, how much money she needed and then things really started to happen much easier. It was much easier to plan, to manifest, whatever you want to call it. And at the time, I think I felt like a lot of us do, I was in my business, I knew that I had money in the bank account but I never really knew how much. I refused to look at my bank statements, I just ignored looking into my bank account unless I needed to wire money and had to take a look at it. And it was just a scary thing, right. Especially at the beginning of your business when things are not as rosy, and when it’s tough. Sometimes, we can be very good at ignoring our numbers. So I reached out to Amber because I knew we have to get a grip on this right, because also our personal finances, everything was okay, we had savings. But I remember that my husband at that time he had paid our bills first and our mortgage was supposed to go out afterwards, and usually it was the other way around, mortgage would always go out and we would pay the bills with whatever was left over. So this time, he had already paid the bills, which meant the bank couldn’t take out all of our mortgage because we didn’t have enough money in that bank account and that freaked me out. I was like, “There’s no way, the mortgage is the holy thing. There’s no way that we cannot pay the mortgage.” And we could, but we had to dip into savings. So that was the point where I was like I need to become an adult and actually know how much money do I need to make. How can I prepare myself for tax seasons? How can I not stress about this thing? And so I reached out to Amber and she completely changed my world. So Amber tell us a little bit about… I think I’m a typical story of people that you work with, I imagine, but tell me, the people who are listening, a little bit about how people start off with you and what you do in order for us to get to where you actually have a plan and feel comfortable with money, kind of thingAmber Dugger: Sure, well first of all I wanna just thank you both for having me on. This is just such an honor to be here. I’m really excited to talk with your listeners and learn more about what it is that they may be getting stuck with as well. This is such a common topic and it’s a topic that hasn’t been spoken about been spoken about for a very long time. We’ve been very silent about our personal anxieties, struggles, shame, guilt around money and that time has come to an end. It is time for us to start speaking openly about this so that we can move past it. We have the most amazing talents and abilities. We are motivated and we are ready to just take on the world, right. We have these awesome businesses. We can make great money and now its time to figure out exactly how to start keeping some of it. Budget Alchemy was the original name; it’s now Profit For Keeps. So anyone that’s looking for it, just make sure to look for Profit For Keeps. I named it that for a reason and that is because we wanna be able to actually see some evidence of the success in our business and we also then wanna move to something called Profit For Joy. Money is truly just a resource and we have all of these thoughts about it being very complicated and there’s a reason for that. It’s not because in the last 40 years we became completely illiterate about money. It’s the environment that has changed. So in the past we would have cash. Everyone had cash and it was very easy to determine if we could afford something, because if we didn’t have enough cash, we wouldn’t pay for it right? [crosstalk] And of course in some ways it allowed us to not get into debt, but at the same time, it also allowed us to know exactly where we were all the time with money. And there’s a psychological exchange when you hand over money and then you receive something back, you have exchanged value in tangible terms. It makes sense right? But if you hand over a card, and then you buy the thing, and then they give you back your card and the thing, you’ve now just rewarded yourself.Kendra Perry: YeahAmber Dugger: Right, because it’s a little switch Kendra Perry: Its true. Amber Dugger: And since we’ve started using electronic payments, consumer debt has skyrocketed and its because we don’t see it. Paying 25$ on card seems very different than paying 25$ in cash. Kendra Perry: Yes.Amber Dugger: And the creditors know this, they use psychology. Their main goal is to rack up as much balances as possible, so they can then get the interest. So you have this whole industry against the consumer, wanting to make money off of them. At the same time we now have this new way of paying for things, like our phone, where we just wave a magic wand, or use our watch and wave that right. So now we’re not even giving anything away and we’re still receiving stuff. So for any of you listening that you’re feeling like, “Oh I’m so guilt… I feel so much shame around the debt that I carry.” I want you to first remind yourself that you’re in an environment where it is absolutely normal to have debt, and an industry that wants and encourages it. So that’s the first thing, the second thing is it’s really important to refrain the debt that you currently have; if you have any. And the reason for that is, it has gotten you to this exact point right now. So to change the attitude around it and look at it with gratitude and say, “This has gotten me my education, this has gotten me exactly where I am right now and it has leveraged me to allow myself to be here and I’m not ready to take the next step forward to create my own leverage for myself.” And there’s just some small tweaks to make that happen and everyone, I truly believe everyone is good with money they just haven’t found a system, possibly, that helps them feel empowered with the numbers. So I’m all about just making numbers super approachable simple, and tied directly to what it is that really brings you and those that love joy. Kendra Perry: Oh wow, I love that. And it’s so true, I never even thought of that exchange of energy because I’m pretty bad for buying everything on Amazon prime. I’m just like, “Ooh that, that, I need that, I need this, I need this!” And then I look at my credit and I’m like what the hell did I buy this month? There’s Amazon prime 30 times. [crosstalk]Christine H.: You just see Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. What was it [crosstalk] I don’t even remember. Kendra Perry: I like blacked out and now I have hundreds of different types of paperclips.Amber Dugger: The same goes for Target. For a lot of people Target can be that black hole of just amazing stuff, but like what did I buy at Target that’s 300$. Yeah, so to answer your question about where people start, I think it’s important regardless of where you are in business. If you’re making your first thousand a month or your making 100 thousand a month. Its important to take a step back and first ask yourself, “Why did I go into business for myself? What is it that I truly wanna do with the money that comes into my business?” Assume you’re paying your bills, assume that you have no debt, assume that you have savings. These are all possible things. But once you get to that point, what is it that you want to accomplish, what is it that you want to experience, what is it that you want to change, to impact? These core things can happen, they can be realized, and the only way it will happen is to get really clear on that. A lot of times when I speak to people for the first time, they’re so focused on the idea that it’s not actually possible to move forward, that it’s not possible to get out of debt. That’s a very real, normal feeling. So if you’re feeling those things don’t think that you’re the only one, there are so many people out there feeling that and silently suffering. I want you to know that you’re not alone and the best way to move forward out of that is to recognize, first of all that yes, I can do this and secondly there has to be a bigger reason why. Otherwise, we will stay in this cycle because it’s comfortable. It may not be fun, but it’s comfortable. So that’s the first thing, second thing is really gaining awareness about your situation. Are you making enough money to cover your bills? Are you making enough money to be profitable? And I think that’s the single most important thing, besides the why, because you can have all these dreams, but if you don’t have a business that’s generating a profit, it will not get you there. The profit carries you forward to allow you to realize those things. So we calculate a revenue goal, we get profit first percentages which are really simply just percentages of your money going to specific things. So its certain amount going directly to profit, so its like a savings account. A certain amount going to your personal pay so that you can pay the bills that you wanna pay for your lifestyle, your lifestyle’s gonna be different from the next entrepreneur and the next coach, and that’s fine. Some of us live in New York City, some of us live in Kansas City. The cost of living is gonna be different, therefore your personal needs are gonna be different. So having a generic revenue goal is a detriment to everyone because it doesn’t make any sense. It used to drive me crazy when I would see those Facebook adds, “Make 5K as a health coach!” That may work for someone but I know for sure, for me, when I was starting out as a health coach, I needed to make 8K to meet my goals. So it just always frustrated me thinking, “Well, I would always be behind or be going into debt making 5K a month.” Whereas someone who needs 3K will be like, “Woo, 5K’s amazing!” Christine H.: That was brutal, like brutal, brutal, to actually look at how much we needed to make even as a family, right, at the time. Even with my husbands salary and mine, actually looking at our subscriptions, our insurances, our monthly bills, our yearly bills, which we tend to forget, and then I’m like oops, okay savings. That was brutal. That was super hard for me, because I was not making enough money at the time to pay fat taxes, plus living expenses and paying myself was just not in the cards, right [inaudible]. So, knowing that, I think a lot of people have no clue, like they literally don’t know. I didn’t know how much money I needed to set aside each month to actually just cover my basic expenses without any luxury items or anything on top of that, or any of my business expenses. I think that’s the exercise I would ask that I would ask everyone to start doing. Look in that folder where you have your annual bills and when you do the calculation, its very enlightening in a positive way. I don’t know if I found it enlightening, I found it [crosstalk]Kendra Perry: Shocking. Amber Dugger: That’s probably the most emotional point and it also takes the most courage. I’m so inspired by everyone that sits in front of me ready to do that work, because it is a point in time where you’ve decided enough is enough, I’m ready to get clarity and I’m ready to have a tangible goal to hit. The reason I believe so many have not done this in the past is no one has ever really talked about how to do it before. Going through health coaching school, I was shocked. People were talking about how much percentage of your income you should put to investing and they aren’t even talking about how much money you should be making as a health coach and suggesting that we start of at like 200$ a client per month. And I was doing the calculations, I was like, I’m gonna need like 55 clients. So I encourage all of you to go to my website and download a free calculator. Its called the revenue profitability calculator. I offer that as gift to everyone, because it is the single most important thing and if you do that you now have a tangible goal. You don’t need a lot of information, you just need to know roughly how much you want to pay yourself each month and how much your monthly expenses are. That’s really it. You put those two things in and you get a number. There’s more to it after that, but getting that number is powerful, because now you can look at seeing, okay, “if I need to make 12000$ a month to live this ideal life that I’ve put together here, how many spaces do I have available for clients? How much am I currently charging?” If I have 10 spaces and I need 12000$, okay well that’s 1200 a month on average I need to charge my clients. How can I create a package that would allow for that. Or what other revenue strings can go into that so then I need 6000$. There’s so many different ways you can start playing. But it’s a simple thing. It’s like taking a piece of paper and saying okay, 12000 at the top. Alright how are different ways that I can make this happen and it’s a really exciting thing because now you have a real thing to go after and its not like shooting in the dark. Which is amazing that so many of us can continue to run a business without having that number, so just imagine once you do. Its like this, okay watch out world, I’m driven now, I’m getting this number now. Kendra Perry: Yeah, that’s awesome and where does all this fear around money stem from? Because I remember when I… I had a look at my finances, a few years ago and I read that book called, I think its called I Can Make You Rich, I can’t remember the authors name, but it’s a pretty popular book.Amber Dugger: Ramit SethiKendra Perry: Yeah Ramit Sethi. I looked in my finances and then I remember crying to my boyfriend in the [inaudible] meeting, like “I’m unsuccessful! I don’t know what I’m doing! Oh my god! What happening.” We had just started dating so he was like oh god. I had this fear of even looking at my bank account and where do you think that stems from?Amber Dugger: Well that’s a great question. I think it can really depend from person to person. Well first of all, I just want to share that money is 99% behavioral and emotional [crosstalk]. So there can be 1001 reasons why it might instill fear, but I would believe, one of the most common ones that I see, is that we simply fear what we don’t understand. We may not admit that out loud, but I know that for my own situation thinking about when I first started out as a health coach, I was scared of marketing. I just didn’t understand it, I don’t really know how to do it, I didn’t really understand the ideal client. So I was always scared to market myself. With money a lot of are expected, somehow, out of thin air to understand money. This is a generational problem I would say, because back in the 30’s and 40’s we had the Great Depression, [inaudible] so then the way to manage money was just don’t spend it ever. So that generation had money because they simply lived a really simple life with really not enjoying very much. Even to the point, I remember my grand-mother telling me… she gave me a silver platter when I graduated college and she said, “this is the silver platter that we used and just a trick, when you are starting out and you don’t have a lot of money, buy a really small roast but then fill it with potatoes and root vegetables to make it look like its bigger.” And this was a reality for that generation.So we have that. Then we go into more of the baby boomer phase where this is so much opportunity and people are making a really great living with pension. So then they’ve learned from their parents to not spend a lot of money and to just work and be able to have that pension and that retirement. Now were getting to a point where things are so different from what our parents, our grand-parents experiences and there’s so many different types of loans I didn’t even know existed until I started working with the clients that I work with now. There are loans on every possible way that you could bring in money. There’s loans on your pay pass settlements, there’s loans on your stripes settlements, there’s loans on your house, your car. You can pretty much get a loan on anything. This is causing a problem where people tend to … if they get into this cycle, more than half of their expenses are now being paid on interest. So you can get to a point where just almost all of your payments are going to debt repayments. This is a timing thing now, because if we can live below our needs and at the same time pay down our debt, then we’re creating our own loans to ourselves. Because if we have our own savings than we can borrow from ourselves without paying any money. So these loans are just costing us so much money. But, to get back to your question about where it stems from, I think it can be the fear of the unknown, it can also be experiences that we also had as children. So there are people who actually stress more about money and have a lot of savings because they saw their parents never have any money. And then you have some people that are scared that it will be taken away or be used as power against them. That has happened with different family structures and things like that. So its a really good thing and a really form of self-care to explore this with yourself and see where does this stem from. I know that Christine knows that I just love this book, I talk about it all the time, I always have it here.Christine H.: I recommend it to everyone. It changed my life. I’m not kidding you. That’s when I went from charging 800$ to 10000$. That book. That was it.Kendra Perry: Who writes it? Tapping Into Wealth.Christine H.: Tapping Into Wealth by Margaret M. Lynch. It uses EFT.-Kendra Perry: I’m going on Amazon prime right now to buy it.Amber Dugger: Don’t wait, just kidding. But what’s so amazing about this book is every time I read it I learn something new about my relationship with money. Because we never get over money blocks, we always will have different … because we continue to have experiences. So those experiences will allow us to continue to add to our relationship but I find that as I continue to explore my own relationship with money, it becomes less and less part. It’s not a good thing, it’s not a bad thing. Money is simply a resource to allow me to do the things that I wanna do. Its meant to flow. it’s not meant to just stay there and not doing anything right. I mean if all hung out in a room and never left and we had 3 million dollars sitting there, it would be a pretty boring life, if we couldn’t do anything with it. We’d be like, okay maybe we need to burn this so we can have some meat. So it was really just a reflection or representation of the ability to then exchange that value for something else. So yeahAnd, money, you want to have enough so that its aging to about maybe 100 days, but then after that you want it to move in and out so that it can flow. Water gets toxic and [murky] if it just stays in one place. But if water’s moving, its so beautiful, and pristine and fresh. And it’s the same thing with money. If that is something that resonates with you, I highly recommend, I’m a book nerd, its called The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist. She describes this beautifully. I’ve learned so much from her on really understanding what money really is. Christine H.: I love that. I also have to say, the good thing is that your money blocks, once you know them, they’re not gone as you said, but you can detect them, right. So, I think for me, the main money block was, like, I was always bad at math. So for me money equals math. [inaudible] it’s the same thing, hence I’m bad at it. I never had to worry about money in my life, in a way. So I never really bothered to deal with it. so the other thing is that, you know, once I worked with you Amber, I kind of understood that it’s not the easiest thing for me. I think other people just get things much quicker and but its doable and it gives me a lot of power. The other thing is that I gave emotions to money. Even now, you know when I had savings that came from my family, it was bad money for me. I didn’t want to use it because it wasn’t the money that I actually made in my business. And I had to understand that actually no it’s not good or it’s bad, it’s a resource that I have for a reason. I just went to do some major life changes and needed my savings to start fresh and I’ve had really bad in the beginning because it was from my business, but I had to use it from my savings. But in the end, who cares, you know. It is allowing me to start something new and since then, my business has taken off so much more than ever before. So I think I still know when I sabotage myself and I actually reached out to Amber recently because I was like, “okay I’m starting to do it again.” But at least I know. I know and I’m like, “okay, this weekend, its big girl panties on and let’s sit down and do the money thing.” Because once you set it up, its so easy. It’s so so easy, you know. Its just taking that step and doing it, I think is the biggest one. Whether you think you’re bad with money, like the cliché sentence, or whether you think its super scary to look at that bank account, I think its always worth it and I really really, especially in the health coach business, where people want to help other people, you cannot do that, if you cannot pay your bills. Its just not doable. You are also running a business. Money and business is just a thing that goes together. Amber Dugger: As your speaking, its coming to mind for me, I’m just envisioning someone listening to this for the first time and I’m guessing that there might be a question of, “Yes, this all sound amazing, and yes I really wanna do this but how do I do this? What do I do first?” And so would you guys like me to just explain a little more about what I think would be the three most important things to do.Christine H.: Yes, please do.Amber Dugger: So if you’re listening to this and you’re feeling a little overwhelmed or maybe you’re feeling inspired or maybe a little bit of both, the first thing that I would suggest that you do is just take a moment and close your eyes and just take a deep breathe. And thank yourself for having these feelings and for listening to this and wanting to take action. This is a beautiful form of self-care and as you promote that to your clients as health coaches it’s also important, as you know, to do this for yourself. And the next thing I want you to just think about is what does your ideal life look like? What are the feelings that you want to feel in this ideal life? And just sit with that for a couple of minutes and really feel the things around you in that ideal life and the people and the images and the smells. This is something that you can do every morning and visualizing what it is that you are wanting to achieve. And it will also help you gain clarity over what it is that you truly want to do with the resources that come into your business. so there are two things that I see most people, especially when their starting out as a health coach, that’s blocking themselves from money. If you do not have a very easy way for people to pay you, I want you to do that first, and that can be as easy as getting a stripe account and using Acuity Scheduling. That’s my favorite one, but I’m sure you guys have your own favorite ones. The second thing that I would suggest is that you get a way for to book in. If there’s not a place or space for people to book in, then you won’t be able to have the calls, and you won’t be able to ask for the money. So those are the two most common things I see block, and don’t make it really complicated, make it an easy way for them to pay. The second thing is if you’ve done that or you’ve got, “yep, check, check”. The second thing is, sit down and do one of two things. If you wanna do it very simply, just write down a number that you wanna pay yourself every month. Very simple. Second thing, just quickly tally up your business expenses that you currently have and write that number down. Then go and get that revenue calculator and put those two things in, and once you get your number put it on a post-it note and stick it up next to your desk and then maybe put one in your wallet, put one on your bathroom mirror, put one, if you can, put it all around your house. This is definitely something that the Tapping Into Wealth girl talked about and I did it. Every time I change this number, I hit that number. So its a very powerful thing. Just putting it out into the universe.If you decide that you wanna go a little bit deeper than just writing down the numbers, which is totally fine if that’s what you do. If you wanna have another step, than go to your bank account and print off your last statement, and just take a highlighter and mark anything that you feel like you weren’t using. Because there’s a difference between spending on luxury and over consumption. Over consumption could be- Christine H.: Kendra!Kendra Perry: I think I over consume! Oh my god! I think I spend too much money on random shit! Oh my goshChristine H.: [crosstalk]Kendra Perry: This is hitting my soul right now.Amber Dugger: Heres where you can determine if it is or not. Kendra Perry: Okay. Amber Dugger: This hand cream that I don’t really use, it was a gift actually, but if I had purchased this and it sat here never used. I never used it because I didn’t like the ingredients in it, this would be over consumption. Because I bought it but don’t use it, don’t care about it, don’t prioritize it. Now if I have a 30$ german notebook that has fancy paper in it, and it feels amazing and it works really well with my 100$ fountain pen. But if I use it and it brings me joy and I hear the scratch of the golden nib onto this beautiful linen paper, and it gives me that spark, that gratitude, that feeling of heart coherence, then it’s absolutely not over consumption, it’s luxury. Over consumption can be a three dollar tube of cream and 130$ worth of stationary can be luxury. So just ask yourself before you purchase your next item, will I prioritize the use of this item, will I enjoy this item, is this something that I will want to have in my life, do I have the space for it? If any of those are no, ask yourself if you really need it. Because there’s no reason spending money on something you don’t care about, but it is important to spend on the things that you do. Kendra Perry: You just made me feel really good for buying a 6000$ infrared sauna. Amber Dugger: Good.Kendra Perry: That’s not over consumption that is luxury [crosstalk]Christine H.: I have so much space in my bedroom, I’m like it would be super nice to have that sauna in there. Kendra Perry: It’s the best thing ever.Christine H.: But for example, like just a silly example, and people probably aren’t gonna understand, but I got a pair of underwear. It just had the top was available here in Luxembourg, but the bottom was nowhere to be found in my size, so I had to order it from [inaudible]. So the bottom alone is 56 pounds and then the shipping was 27. So in the end I spent 80 pounds, I don’t even wanna know what that is in dollars on a thong. And I’m like, “should I do this?” In the end it looks gorgeous and when I wear it [inaudible] its amazing. Its super amazing and when I wear it, obviously I’m not only wearing that, like I wear clothes. But I wear it when-Amber Dugger: But do you see this glowing emitting from you, and this energy and just this like lightness and like it just brings you up. And that’s so important for us to give ourselves these things.Christine H.: And when I do a deal, when I know that I go to a meeting that I have to close a deal, you can bet that’s what I wear. Because it just uplifts everything for me. Everyone has their thing whether it’s a family pen, whether it is a infrared sauna, whether it is, well anyway it doesn’t matter. You’re completely right that, you know, spend your money there instead of cheaper stuff that doesn’t make you happy actually. Amber Dugger: Yeah or expensive stuff that doesn’t make you happy-Christine H.: YeahAmber Dugger: And cheap old stuff can make you very happy. Christine H.: True true.Amber Dugger: Like this ruler, I love this ruler. [inaudible] but I have it on my desk [crosstalk].Kendra Perry: I love that you made that distinction because I was actually thinking the other day, I’m like, “man, I spend a lot of money”. But I spend a lot of money on my health, you know, my health is really important to me. I buy high quality supplements, I buy crazy light machines, I buy all kinds of stuff, but I use it all and in the end it helps me feel good energy wise and so now I feel a little bit better about spending money on that stuff. Christine H.: But you also have a budget on your supplements, I don’t know, right.Amber Dugger: Sure, so the other component of this is also recognizing that these things require resources. So this is where it goes back to looking and assessing what is it that I really need to be my best self, to be energized, to have that ability to wake up in the morning and feel ready to tackle the day ahead of me. As you get more clear on that, then writing it down, assessing how much it will cost, is important because then you can put it into the revenue calculator, you can see how much you wanna make and then you can start making plans to hit and exceed that number. We all have the ability to do this and every single person can do this. Its just a matter of us taking this into our own hands and stop being bullied by an industry and also by this perception that we’re not good with money. I just have to touch on this because this always bothered me when I was in college. I was one of the only girls in my finance major, and I was surrounded by a lot of really big egos. They all wanted wall street investors. I had no desire to be a wall street investor. I saw it as a big hoax and really you can put your money in index funds and beat most of the investors 99% of the time. So the professor walked in one day and said, “Alright this is the advanced level investing course”, there’s all these guys that are getting ready to take there series 7. And he said, “okay, half of you in this room is gonna fail before mid-term, so I’m gonna share the most important thing you need to know to accumulate wealth in about five minutes before we move on to the other areas that will not help you nearly as much as this one tip.” And I’m looking around and guys are just like whatever. I’m thinking, “did I hear this right? Why is not everyone taking out their pen and paper and writing this down?” It was that, it was to put your money in index funds, because as history states, the market continues to grow and unless we have a huge crash, which if we have a huge crash everything will crash not just certain things, everything is gonna crash.so by putting it into something that you know is increasing in value steadily over time, why wouldn’t you do that, right? And you don’t have to do anything. Its super cheap, you don’t have to pay for someone to do that. So I knew that there was something bigger that I wanted to do with my education. But I saw these, mostly guys, want to show how smart they were. Now this is just my perception, but from my experience this is what was happening. And so they would go around and even in corporate, when I was in corporate, I would see the whole picture, I’d be like okay “we just need to spend less money or we need to make more money”. That’s really as simple as it gets here, right? Instead, they would be like, “oh well we have to look at this ratio, we have to look at this and we have to look at this performance index and all this stuff.” And its like okay, but you’re not actually doing anything to fix the big problem which is we have no cash. So I say all this because if you feel confused about money, or you feel like when someone talks about money that their talking about all these really big things and confusing what’s shorts and stocks and puts and all this stuff. I’m not speaking for the person talking about this, however, in general, my experience has been that this is to show how smart they are about it and how dumb you are. You’re not. Money is very simple. If you have money, and you want to spend less than you have, and if you something cost more than you have, don’t spend it. That’s as simple as it gets. I say this because its become more and more evident to me that the deepest reason people don’t look at it is they don’t wanna appear stupid, they don’t wanna appear like they don’t know what they’re talking about. I encourage you to start educating yourself and just looking and reading blog articles and possibly picking up this book and Ramit Sethi’s book is hands down one of my favorite personal finance books, I’ll Teach You To Be Rich. That’s why I have not written a book, because he wrote it. Everything he wrote I’m like, “Yes! Yes!” I had a chance to meet him last year and I told him, I was like, “I love what you wrote. If everyone would read that book they would be in such a better state of mind about money, because you make it so approachable.”Kendra Perry: Yeah, and one of the first things I did after reading this book was set up index funds. My boyfriend loved that you said that because I think people think investing is really complicated. And I know people are paying really high management fees to get a person to manage their investments when really that person is gonna lose against the computer algorithm every time. So, I think [inaudible] is really important, its really affordable and over the long term it makes you significantly more money. Amber Dugger: Heck yes sister! Kendra Perry: Yeah![crosstalk]Christine H.: Amazing! So I can, just personally again, we emphasize and totally vouch for Amber and her service. Its been a game changer for me, I think it was literally the first step that changed everything, myself included because then I read the Margaret Lynch book and then I read Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. When channel all of these together it changes you as a person and you know what to do, you’re not afraid of money which is helpful if you want to make money. Its life changing. So I highly, highly suggest having just a chat with Amber if you are feeling like I did in the beginning or like any of the scenarios that we discussed today. So Amber just quickly let us know if we have people who are like “okay, I am ready, I want to face this, I want to be happy, I really want to know what to do.” How can they get in touch with you?Amber Dugger: Oh well first of all thank you for saying that, I really do appreciate it. My mission is really to make my business [inaudible]. I want this to not be an issue. The best way to get a hold of me is first to download the calculator, you’ll get lots of information on how to take that further.Christine H.: [crosstalk]Where can people find it?Amber Dugger: Yes, it’s just my website amberdugger.com. The other place to go would be my free community in Facebook, its called Sweet Life Purpose for Money. In there, there’s all sort of resources and you can ask questions there and then there’s a way to book a call on my website as well and its just amberdugger.com/workwithme.Kendra Perry: Awesome. That’s the first thing I’m gonna do after this call is I’m gonna go download your probability calculator and I’m like, “okay I gotta get more organized, I need to know my numbers, I love this.” I actually love numbers. I never thought I did, but they kind of tingle me a little bit. Christine H.: They turn me on when I get them in my bank account.Kendra Perry: Oh yeah! Amber Dugger: Well ladies, thank you so much for having me. Its been such a pleasure. Christine H.: Absolutely Kendra Perry: Thank you so muchChristine H.: Thank you so much. And you guys don’t forget to leave us a five star review on Itunes. And-Kendra Perry: Five star!Christine H.: We will talk to you in two weeks. So thanks for coming and listening and watching and keep doing this.Kendra Perry: Good words of advice.Christine H.: Alright. [crosstalk] alright you guys thanks for listening and talk to you soon! Bye!
