Speaker 1: 0:05

Debra, daniel, thank you so much for joining me on. We Woke Up Like this today and I'm so excited to talk to you because, well, can I just call you the money? Goddess Take that, I'll take that. So we're talking about liberation, embodiment, freedom, what it means to fully step into who you are and show up and make the impact you want to make in the world, and I know that this is something really near and dear to your heart. So let's dive in. And what is liberation and freedom and all those good things mean to you? Oh, gosh.

Speaker 2: 0:37

It means really living the life that you want to live, doing the things that you're supposed to do. I mean, I've kind of embodied that whole thought into something I call the wealth pyramid, basically Money being the base we got to have money. Life isn't about money, but the reality is everything important is impacted by money. So let's start out, get that part strong. I think there's another level of wealth relationships having the right people in your life, who you surround yourself with, having the right resources. Personally, I think, surround yourself with having the right resources. Personally, I think a fulfilled life is not going to be, you're not going to have it, if you're not a lifetime learner, if you're not constantly building your knowledge. Wealth, whatever that means to you, and then at the very pinnacle to me, is what I call spiritual wealth, and I'm not talking God or source or whatever people believe from a religious standpoint, but from a spiritual purpose. Freedom this is where I'm supposed knowing where you're supposed to be, and if you get all that in order, to me that's freedom.

Speaker 1: 1:32

That's completely freedom. Oh my gosh, that's. That is an amazing pyramid. Let's start at the bottom. Let's start at that base foundation of financial wealth and for so many people, myself included, overcoming money blocks was such a big issue, is a big issue. Where do money blocks come from?

Speaker 2: 1:50

You know it's so crazy. I mean I'm a money person, a numbers person, a really kind of almost scientific how does this all work, kind of thing. But I also am very much a woo-woo kind of person too and I do think there's an energy to it. I think some of this money stuff is actually kind of genetically passed down to us a little bit. We come into this world with a little bit of our attitudes towards money based on our ancestors a little bit, and we know for a fact scientifically that our money attitudes are very much formed in the first seven years of our life, something that we heard. The environment around us shapes us for our whole life. I mean that's kind of a lot of reasons why people that win the lottery never, I mean, they're broke very soon after that because they don't have this connection between having earned it or where their money story really was and all of a sudden they have this windfall. They don't know how to really process that.

Speaker 2: 2:46

So the blocks really, I think come from internally and externally. I mean I remember growing up. You know rich people do this, or da da da. You know there's so many stories out there, even the Bible. You know money is the root of all evil. That's actually a huge misquote from the Bible. It's the love of money is the root of all evil. So I think we have a lot of messaging that is really kind of bad. And I don't think that the current, you know, mainstream makes it any better, because it kind of pit the money levels against each other, which I don't think really is the right way to go. I mean, there's an it's not for me to win, you have to lose, right? It's not like I really feel like that as we all grow, everybody does better, right? And I think that's where we've got to get to that attitude that for me to have money, somebody else has to give it up. And I think that's where a lot of the blocks come from.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Yeah, like there's a finite amount of something and these people have it and I don't and I never will and I never can, because there's not enough to go around. Popular story.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Exactly. Well, I mean, honestly I'm kind of I've got a lot of weird Deborah-isms, but to me, you know, the currency is, when I think of money, it's supposed to flow. Right, even our forefathers called the highest. You know, level of the money. People in government are the comptroller of the currency and people are like what does that mean? You know level of the money. People in government are the controller of the currency and people are like what does that mean? Because it's supposed to flow.

Speaker 2: 4:07

I remember the last speaking engagement I had before the pandemic was to a bunch of social entrepreneurs and we were talking about the impact of entrepreneurship and I just back of the envelope, just said, okay, over 30, at that time it had been about 28, 29, 30 years or whatever oh, maybe 50 employees. And I just calculated in. You know, roughly probably I'd spent $4 million over that amount of time on payroll for people. Well, that $4 million went out into the community for somebody to pay for their daughter's dance lessons, for them to pay for their mortgage, for them to go to the dentist. I mean, it's all circling around.

Speaker 2: 4:40

The money I gave them went to other people to spend. If we've got that flow going, that's really what we can't have stop is people hoarding it or for whatever reason, feeling like I have to hold on to it and I don't know to me. Sometimes people are so scared to spend money they're holding onto it so tight their money can't come into it. Right, you've got to really have the right attitude about it. But I don't think it's intuitive and I don't think it's really messaged by the mainstream for us to feel that way about it.

Speaker 1: 5:09

It's not intuitive. Say more about that. That's interesting.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Well, because again, I remember being a little kid, my parents talking about money. I mean, I've always been someone that was incented by reward. I mean and some people are not my grandparents used to give me a dollar every of course it was a long time ago a dollar every time I made an A. I very quickly was incented by that, but I don't know that that was intuitive to me. My grandparents had grown up in the Depression. We came from a little bit a sense of lack a little bit. Anybody who's been, anybody who's ever been connected to anyone that lived through the depression, obviously it comes down to you. You hear those stories like my grandparents didn't borrow money for anything. You know that was just like kind of taboo a little bit. And so learning to go past that like I have to have every little save so much, I think is really something we all have to struggle with a little bit.

Speaker 1: 6:03

So interesting that it's so conditioned. And my money story was super hard to get over because, like all the money coaches I worked with and people I talked to about it, and I would say my money block is that I really believe you don't need money to be happy. And so they're like I don't know how to work with that one, I don't know. But then what I've come to rectify is that you know, because I am happy, and I am a happy person and a joyful person that I use my money in joyful and positive ways, because I really saw that it's just, it's neutral, right, it's neutral. It has no meaning except for what you assign to it.

Speaker 2: 6:38

Exactly, but to your point, you cannot pour from an empty cup. So I think it's our moral obligation almost to earn as much as we possibly can, so that we have as much as we possibly can to give. Now, reality check, it's very different from a male perspective versus a female perspective. I mean, I do taxes for people, so I'm dealing mostly with couples, a lot with couples, a lot with men. But when women prosper, their whole community prospers. They just tend to do that. When men prosper, they tend to keep it a little closer to home. Yes, their family, their tribe, you know, very, very tight. I mean, for some reason, women have a little bit more expansive sense of spreading the wealth. It's just. I mean I've seen example of it over example of it.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Yeah, and I totally agree with that and you know my audience and the women that I work with are the way showers, the light workers, the people who are in this, you know, have a real heart and compassion for helping and healing humanity. And what comes with that do you think so much guilt about charging for their services?

Speaker 2: 7:46

Oh my gosh, I know I've said that before. I mean because you know I've led several communities of women and one thing that I've run into a lot is oh, I just want to serve, I don't really need to charge, or you know, I feel funny charging or whatever. But the reality is you can't serve anyone if you can't keep your lights on. So again it's you can't pour from an empty cup. You know you can't save yourself on an airplane if you're not breathing. You have to take care of yourself first, financially, before you can help others. The fact that you give free services to 10 people or low cost services to 10 people is way less impactful than charging what you should and being able to help a thousand people in your community.

Speaker 1: 8:25

And then you have the funds to contribute to your favorite nonprofits or to help your anybody who's in need that you happen to come upon that your heart feels like a home, your own foundation, which is so I mean.

Speaker 2: 8:35

So so many of my clients are at that point in their. I mean, I've just kind of grown 33 years in. A lot of us are getting older. Yeah, unfortunately, actually, fortunately, we're starting to think a little bit more about legacy, we're starting to think a little bit more about passing it on, and it's really not that hard to set up your own personal foundation, and there's a lot of financial benefits to it as well, because you can deduct things now and have an impact beyond even your life.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Do you have to be a millionaire to set up a foundation? I?

Speaker 2: 9:03

don't. It's a lot less expensive and a lot less cumbersome to do than you would think. We're even looking at doing some of these things now. A scholarship at my kid's old school, you know the Daniel Family Foundation. That sounds really cool to me, that's a legacy right.

Speaker 1: 9:19

That's a legacy right there.

Speaker 2: 9:21

Yeah, because, you think about it, we only have. I mean, I personally am on the 100-year plan. I'm hoping I'm going to be here a little bit longer than I am right now, but beyond that, what's left behind? I mean I want it somehow to be remembered.

Speaker 1: 9:53

Yeah, when it's like your children and then your grandchildren, and then your great-grandchildren and your great-great-grandchildren, it's like, oh wow, I get to do this because my great-great, great grandmother was quite the impactful woman, she was a smarty and quite the impactful woman in her time.

Speaker 2: 9:57

If money is neutral and money is a reflection of the person who has it, okay, well, it is neutral, but I think it has an energy like anything else, and so, again, there's a difference, and I just think women in general are not like this. You can tell the energy of a scroogey kind of person versus the energy of a person like me. You would not ever expect someone with my attitude, personality, whatever, to be a Scrooge, and so I think the money follows the personality of the person that has it, and money has an energy.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Can you just and I've heard somebody else say this too. So I have a friend who described well, she is a money magnet, she is just everything, she does everything. She's like queen Midas and she says money has an energy and she is in vibrational resonance with the frequency of money. So can you explain that? Because she certainly could not.

Speaker 2: 10:41

Well, I do think it has an energy and this is how I'll explain it. I tell my clients I don't like barter, I love to do business with other people that I know. But like if I have a landscaper doing my lawn and I'm doing his bookkeeping, even if we charge exactly the same amount, we need to actually physically exchange. Well, now, nobody who exchanges checks anymore, but we need to. He needs to send money to my account and I need to send money to his account or her account or whatever, because if not, it's almost like an open electrical circuit. It's like the contract the emotional contract hasn't been completed because the passing of the money hasn't happened. That's where I see that money has energy. It's gotta like close the gap. It's like if you didn't have all the wires connected in your house, there'd be no power. When you don't close that gap, there's no. That energy is something's wrong with it in the money. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 11:33

It does. So this is like we're in relationship with everything in our life, and money is a massive relationship that's in our life that so many people don't look at, they neglect it, they just don't want to deal with it. How do we heal that relationship if we have a painful relationship with our money?

Speaker 2: 11:52

Well, I think, just like anything else, the more where you put your attention, things are going to grow, and so you almost have to force yourself. Just like I don't like to go to the gym and work out. But every time I pass by it I'm like, oh hi, gym. But the thing is, then you start going to the gym workout. But every time I pass by it I'm like, oh hi, jim. But the thing is, then you start going to the gym. Then you're like, okay, wow, I'm getting into this, I'm going to get a personal trainer. Okay, wow, I got to go to the gym because she's expecting me to be there. Because then you start having this you have a money date once a week and you look at what you spent your money on. Then you say, be like, expecting you to be there, just like you're, you know, my trainer's expecting me to be at the gym.

Speaker 2: 12:27

I think that that you really have to face it. We've been talking to our kids about money since they were very little. I remember someone stopped me in the grocery store Gosh, I think it was my son, he was maybe two or three years old and a guy stopped me in the grocery store and he's like you are talking to your child like he is an adult. I'm like the thing is, if we talk to them like babies, they're going to act like babies, and we were talking about why something was more expensive than something else, and so we've always given them a sense of value. This is what it costs, this is what you get, and always trying to strive for understanding that and not expecting a windfall from somewhere that you didn't work for it or whatever.

Speaker 1: 13:07

You just hit on something so important and you talked about it in the beginning about, like, even if you did have that windfall and you're in a dysfunctional relationship with your finances, then you're going to chase it away.

Speaker 2: 13:14

I definitely think there are people that repel it Because you're like it's just woman's business is so amazing. Why is she struggling all the time financially? And 100% of the time it's something to do with her ability to have a good relationship with money. Because the reality is, if you don't have a good relationship with money, you're not going to ask for the sale, you're not going to ask for it confidently. You're going to end up like, oh well, no, not $3,000. I mean only $1,000. Oh wait, I'll just do it for $50,000.

Speaker 2: 13:52

A connection I think a lot of people do have. That I definitely think the more money you have in the bank, the more comfort, more security, the more sense of freedom that you have. So that has to have a residual impact on your own self-worth a little bit, because you're not worried about your lights being turned off or being kicked out or whatever. But I think too, as long as you link it to you, understand that it's not the physical, like Midas bar. You know, it's not that I have a bunch of it built up, it's the things that I can do with it. I think that's okay and that does very much impact your self-worth and your self. You know, feeling of self.

Speaker 1: 14:26

For people in the healing modality like these I don't know, for lack of a better word softer businesses. I just dropped it. It's a softer way of doing business. How do you tell your women that you work with and you coach if they're not charging what they're worth? You work with and you coach. If they're not charging what they're worth, how do they determine what they're worth? And then how do they have the courage or what in them needs to ask for the sale and charge what they're worth? How can someone go about doing that?

Speaker 2: 14:54

So so hard to me. I mean, got all the MBA and finance, blah, blah, blah. They would tell you okay to check what your competitors are doing and charge based on that. Honestly, especially in the softer things, you're selling something kind of totally unique and most of the time you're coaching your modality, your system. How do you compare that to something else? So you have to kind of get around that. But I will tell you one thing, joya, that's really super, super important If you've never paid someone $20,000, you're never going to get pay me $20,000 coming out of your mouth. You can't do it. It's just, it's almost impossible. If you have not paid more or the same as you were asking someone to pay you, you will have a really hard time asking someone else to pay you that.

Speaker 1: 15:39

Oh, I love that because you can see when you invest in a coach and the more you invest in that coach, the more you're personally invested in getting and learning and listening and taking and doing everything that that coach tells you to do. Well, because the thing is really.

Speaker 2: 15:52

if somebody says to me okay, deborah, this program is going to be $20,000. And I balk at that and I can't get myself to write a check for $20,000. How are you going to have energetically going to be able to ask somebody else to give you $20,000? Love that.

Speaker 1: 16:07

So making your money for a date, let's go. I love this idea and I'm thinking of, like lighting some candles and getting some flowers and spreading some money on the table. How do you guide people to have a date with money? What does this look like?

Speaker 2: 16:27

Something I did recently was actually have someone write almost like a love letter to their money, and at first it was kind of like what you would expect. I love that you can buy me the things that I want to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I said, okay, let's try this again. And the second pass was really more about the feeling of security, the feeling of freedom, the feeling of you know, I mean, I'm certainly no Warren Buffett, but it is nice to not have to worry, like back when I was in college and four of my tires need to be replaced and I just got out of college. I mean it was literally like devastating for me. It was like one month's salary to have to get some new tires.

Speaker 2: 17:02

It's been a long time since I've had to worry about the car repair. They're like, okay, what's the car repair? I gotta pay for it, whatever. That is a nice way to live. That I mean short of my house burning down. I mean it's, it's not gonna be devastating today, right, that just takes. That makes you be able to decide what you're gonna spend your time on, decide what you want to do, because you're not like, oh my gosh, I better be careful in case something happens, and so you've got to really give money its props. Thank you, money that you give me this ability to be able to really go out and do whatever I want to all day.

Speaker 1: 17:34

Thank you, money that you give me the ability to buy a plane ticket and fly somewhere in the world that I want to go see. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:40

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 17:42

It would take me a long time to row there in my boat. So it would take me a long time to row there in my boat.

Speaker 2: 17:45

So I'm very grateful that I have the money to be able to do it. You know there is a lot of energetic stuff to it, but the thing is there also is a lot of mechanical stuff that I think people skip the steps on. They want it to be right away. They don't realize that small amounts over a long period of time make a huge difference. It's not like when I get some, I'll do this. When I do this, it's literally. I have a client who started putting into two little mutual funds $300 a month back in the 90s or whatever. I think it was late 90s. $600, that's a car payment. I don't know, we usually pay for our cars in cash, but I mean a car payment. Probably a little bit less for a car payment now, but they have been doing that. $600, $600, $600, $600. Stock market up, stock market down, stock market up, it doesn't matter. $600 per month. For now, almost 30 years, that account is over a million dollars.

Speaker 1: 18:38

I mean I could spend $600 eating out in a month and going out with friends Exactly, Especially eating out in a month and going out with friends Exactly.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Especially if you get into Starbucks every day. That's probably $300 right there.

Speaker 1: 18:52

For sure it really is. It's such a reframe because I think that there's also a lack of a concept of just the value of money, that people don't realize that, putting away that little amount, the attitude is like, oh well, what does that matter, what difference does that make? I need a million dollars. I need millions of dollars to be able to do the things that I want to do, and that's actually not true.

Speaker 2: 19:10

It's really not, because really time is your friend when it comes to this, because you've got some kind of return. Even interest in the bank is a little bit better than it used to be, but it's really the time value of money and compound it, especially like we already have. Our kids are only in their twenties and they already have Roth IRA accounts. As soon as they started making money, we were funding them, putting it in there. They'll be millionaires for sure Just probably in their forties with with those accounts, never having done anything themselves. Because you can't wait until there's a good time, you have to just go ahead and start doing it.

Speaker 1: 19:44

Yeah, I told my daughter she's 22. We opened up an account and I said just put $50. She works in Starbucks, she's a student, she's going to school and I said put $50 a month in there, no matter what. Just put 50 bucks, 50 bucks, 50 bucks, and when you can have a little bit more, put that in there. So she started doing that. I'm like, oh, I wish I would have known to do that when I was younger and I always had this attitude around money, of what it could buy me. So as soon as I had money, it was being spit instantly on crap. I thought I wanted.

Speaker 2: 20:13

I think we have a really in our society warped sense of want versus needs a little bit too Delayed gratification is not part of our current psyche, yeah, and I think that that's where the spiritual coaching comes in, the spiritual aspect of it.

Speaker 1: 20:29

And actually it's funny because I posted on Instagram yesterday a meme and I think I wrote something along the lines of people who don't know what they need want what they want right now. It's like they can't wait, they got to have it now.

Speaker 2: 20:43

Exactly. Well, I was on a radio show the other day actually talking about they asked me to speak to the subject that there's now some millennials are turning into 401k millionaires or whatever, and so they've already accumulated that much in their retirement account. But the reality is, to me, freedom of money isn't about a number like what number do I need to get to to retire or what number do I need to have enough. It really is back to that currency and the flow. If you've got your money set up where it's kicking off returns to you, you can have a much smaller nest egg versus someone that has to have a lump, and I think people don't think in that terms of how not only am I saving it or what am I doing with it, but what is it going to create for me down the way?

Speaker 2: 21:28

Is it buying another business? Is it buying a rental property, is it having an Airbnb or something else other than just depending on what your main gig is, right, I mean, I personally think being an entrepreneur, owning your own business, is the number one way to create that flow. I don't know that I'll ever retire. I'll always do something you know either business coaching for women, money coaching, financial stuff. Maybe you can even do taxes on the side when I'm 99.

Speaker 1: 21:58

Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. Yeah, I would hire you to do my taxes when you're anytime. And I love on your website you have so many free gifts on here, so much information on here. I was looking through here. It's like dang, you have so much information to help people and you're just such a remarkable woman. And I remember when we were talking and you were saying I'm in the world of the finance and the world of the woo. Then I was like, oh, we definitely have to talk and everything is energy. So that just makes sense, that money is also energy.

Speaker 2: 22:31

It just happens to be the energy we use to transfer goods and services between each other.

Speaker 1: 22:37

Yeah, there you go, exactly. So let's talk about the second level of your pyramid relationships.

Speaker 2: 22:42

That to me one. You know they always say you're the five people around you or you are some of all of those people, so you have to be really careful who you spend time with, obviously, but it's also about having the right resources, having the right. I mean, I'm an expert in a lot of things not nearly as most things, but I'm saying other things I know a lot about just not as much as I do about money, but I'm not the answer for everything. So when a client needs something, I want to have a resource for them. I want to have a resource when I need somebody and build relationships.

Speaker 2: 23:10

Plus, it's also about we have to have people in our lives, especially again, because I don't know if everybody that's listening is entrepreneurial or what, but it's a lonely road really. I mean, when it comes down to it, we're in business for ourselves, but to it, we're in business for ourselves, but it's also very much by ourselves, and I'm a little bigger than a lot of them. I have a lot of employees not a lot, I mean almost 10 sometimes but I still can't go to them and run a lot of my ideas by them. To me, that's wealth to have girls or men that you can call hey, I'm having this problem, business, personal, whatever. My kid is doing this, my business is doing this. That's wealth to know that you could pick up multiple people to help you right this second versus like I'm stuck, I do not know what to do, because I think that feeling of not having someone to talk to is probably a lot more prevalent than you would think on a lot of issues for a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 24:04

And do you find that, especially when it comes to finances and money, it's something that people carry shame around or they're embarrassed about.

Speaker 2: 24:10

I can't remember what he came in here for, but I had a client that came in and oh yeah, it was a past divorce situation and I was dealing with both spouses. And after he left he says he's like I feel like you're giving me counseling other than money. I said, well, the problem is money impacts so many other things. People open up to me about stuff that is not really money related. So I kid around and say that the P in CPA sometimes stands for psychiatrist.

Speaker 1: 24:38

You need that little Lucy peanut sign on your door. The doctor is in.

Speaker 2: 24:44

Because it does impact everything Again. It impacts the ability to easily take care of your kids in a divorce situation. I mean it impacts where they're going to go to school. It impacts how you guys are going to live. I mean it impacts everything.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Then spiritual wealth.

Speaker 2: 24:59

What does that look like? So spiritual wealth to me is the feeling that most of the time not all the time, most of the time you're doing the right stuff with the right people. Does that make sense, that you are on the path that you're supposed to be on. That, to me, is feeling purpose. That sounds kind of really super woo woo, but you're doing the right thing, that this is where you're supposed to be.

Speaker 2: 25:23

It's kind of like I was actually talking to another friend, I think someone that you probably know too, but I had a call with her and I was much sicker than I am. I'm kind of getting over a call right now and she's like well, you know, that usually means you're doing something, you're spending time doing something you shouldn't be doing, and I do think that our body tells us that a little bit when you're not spending time on the right stuff. But our money also rewards us to do the right thing. And I think that's when we're in spiritual, when we have got that spiritual wealth, when we are everything's kind of come into place the way it's supposed to be.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Oh, I love that In that alignment and I can feel that and see that in your purpose right, we all feel a sense of inner fulfillment that we know. We feel this inner satisfaction and an inner fulfillment when we know that we're making an impact, we're living our purpose, we're doing what we love to do and then to be paid for it and then to have a community around you with it is doing the right thing in that too.

Speaker 2: 26:18

I mean because, like I mean I could get. I could bang out the mechanics of a tax return faster than anybody in this office, probably. But that's not where my time is best spent. Obviously, I'm still very involved with all that. But me keying it in, even though I'm better than anybody else in the office, it's like using a diamond chisel to engrave something instead of just a chisel. You need to be where your diamond is, not where it shouldn't be right. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 26:46

It does. Where is your diamond these days? Where is your diamond these days, Debra?

Speaker 2: 26:50

Well, I will tell you I've got a couple of cool things going on. I actually have just recently started a local in-person community. I'm calling it True Networking. We had a wonderful, awesome event. People loved it. We're going to really integrate something kind of different.

Speaker 2: 27:07

Since the pandemic has happened, there's just we've had a lot less in-person events. There's a lot of virtual stuff that you can do, a lot of conferences you can go to, there's just not a lot of let's have a coffee, let's do a wine event in the evening or whatever, and so we've just gathered some people. They loved it and we're going to incorporate some social into it as well, not just about let's build our business, go to like a Topgolf place or we've got this really cool speakeasy place that people go to. We're going to try to make that part of the group too, because, again, being in business is a very lonely thing to do and it's probably different now.

Speaker 2: 27:38

But when my children were very little 30, you know, a while ago, we won't say how long ago I was like one of 10% of women that were really working. Now it's probably not as much, but I 100% applaud someone that wants to stay at home with their kids. I was at every kid activity that there was. I feel like I had the best of, or only staying at home. I applaud people if that's what they want to do, but I didn't have anyone to do social stuff with. Most of the kids that my kids were friends with, their parents were stay-at-home moms, and so I feel like it's important for us to build those not just business but social relationships away and so kind of embodying that really right now, but then so many other things. But that's just that. I just had this big launch of that this week, so I'm pretty happy about that.

Speaker 1: 28:31

Congratulations. I love that and I love the name True Networking. And where? Where are you at? Where are you located?

Speaker 2: 28:35

I'm in Atlanta, the suburbs of Atlanta.

Speaker 2: 28:43

Okay, so anybody in Atlanta who's listening, can look you up and maybe go to this event Exactly. We'd love to have you. We're actually going to do like a quarterly like business expo kind of thing, like business, and I mean I'm not going to try to do monthly lunches because I just don't have time for that, but so we're going to do that. But then I mean we are going to I do have a lot of friends around the country like you, and so we will do some virtual stuff as well, just some virtual. But it's primarily an in-person group kind of serving folks, folks that are just like I have nowhere to go.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Well, and like you said, to be able to bounce ideas off of people who are in the same realm as you, or, and as you know, you know, business is all about relationships. You don't work and live in a vacuum. It's all about relationships, no matter what business.

Speaker 2: 29:20

It's really funny how value you don't realize how valuable those relationships are. I was looking back over because it's, you know, the beginning of the year. Look at it. Who's going to come back, who's not going to come back? I have some clients. I've been in business. This will be my 33rd year. I have four clients from my original first year and the funny thing is they were the only ones that I would call for real clients because I had set up a retail kind of like sign come do taxes or whatever income tax, and most of those people were just apartment people that lived around the shopping center where I had my business. The only four real businesses, real people not real people I don't want to say it like that, but real, real tax returns that were actually a little harder. They are still with me 33 years later.

Speaker 1: 30:03

It's so crazy that says a lot about you.

Speaker 2: 30:08

Yeah, that says a lot about you. Well, I'm hopefully. I mean, I feel like I take a very what can be intimidating and scary subject and break it down to a very not warm, because I don't know that the tax man's ever warm, but to a much more. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, and I kind of break it down into bites that are easier for clients to deal with, I think.

Speaker 1: 30:31

You are just such a wealth of information and so knowledgeable. Obviously you have so many years of experience and you're not going anywhere. You're expanding, you're exploding with what you're doing and your passion projects, and I'm going to put the links where everybody can find you. But why don't you share you have an amazing freebie gift for anybody listening and where people can find you and also how they can find your networking group, Sure sure, sure?

Speaker 2: 30:59

Well, truenetworkingcom is the website that's coming up. Now they are. I do have it on Facebook as a group, true Networking, I think. I put a freebie at moneyreimaginedcom, just written out moneyreimaginedcom has, I think, currently 10 things you could do before the end of the year for taxes, but I'm always putting new stuff in there, so once you get that one, it basically will update you with new things that are going on On all the socials DebraDanielCBA, so it's easy to find me there, and, of course, always charteraccountingcom. I always pop up pretty easily because I'm I mean, I'm dating myself, but I've had one. I've had my website since they started having websites, so it's been around for a while.

Speaker 1: 31:40

When you somebody Googles accounting, you probably come up first. Well, deborah, I so appreciate your time and for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge, and I think we could even have a part two to this conversation, because I have so many more deep questions. I want to ask you, but I don't want to keep you Anytime, anytime.

Speaker 2: 31:57

I mean this is kind of. I mean I'm kind of at a place in my career Obviously you don't want to give all of your time away because if not I'll just stay at home with my old dog, who's actually down here on the floor. But this is to me, this is a little bit kind of my, a little bit part of my. Purpose is I really feel I don't know, almost I have to help people understand this a little bit more. The whole financial literacy thing is kind of a passion project for me, because there's not a mechanism in our educational system. They don't teach it in high school.

Speaker 2: 32:26

I have a corporate finance degree. I didn't learn about personal finance in college. We're just not taught the things that we need to. And if we started out younger, like you said, if somebody would have told me when I was 22 that putting $300, $600 away, I'd be a millionaire by the time I was 50, I would have done it. Nobody is telling people this stuff, and so I feel like that's kind of where a lot of my time is going to start, skewing to more to that making everybody have the tools they need to be able to succeed.

Speaker 1: 32:57

And I love that. And you know, I'm 53, I'll be 54 in May and this is the first year that I discovered that the money I have investing it in other areas is making money. So I'm living off of the profits of my investments and not even touching any of my actual money and I'm like why not know that this is a thing? How do I not? Why did I not know that you could do this and and still have your nest egg and be living off of the profit that you're making from your investments? So I just applaud you, I thank you. This is very important work that you're making from your investments. So I just applaud you, I thank you. This is very important work that you're doing and this is such an area of neglect, shame, fear, I mean. It's just so many things. So I'm so happy that you're in the world doing this.

Speaker 2: 33:37

Awesome. Glad to share it. I'm glad to especially hopefully gave a few nuggets that are worthwhile to everybody out there.

Speaker 1: 33:44

You definitely did, and I'm going to put a date on my calendar to have a date with my money and I'm going to start seeing what happens just from starting that process. So thank you for that. Yeah, beautiful Thanks, debra. Have a wonderful day.

Speaker 3: 33:56

Thank you for listening to we Woke Up Like this. Your likes, comments, shares and subscribes help this content reach new listeners, and I so appreciate you. And remember, Luminous One, that your radiant and magnetic presence changes the world.