Cultivate Financial Abundance with Guest Expert Joyce Marter

Ep: 177

Do you feel like your relationship with money is a source of stress or anxiety in your life?

We all have a money story. It’s the story you tell yourself about your relationship with money and whether or not you have enough of it. The problem is that the story you’ve been telling yourself could be just that…a story.

What if the story you’re telling yourself is false? 

Our money story begins with the experiences that we had in our childhood. If you lived a life of scarcity, you’re likely carrying those same fears and uncertainties into adulthood. But, that past experience doesn’t have to be your lifelong narrative about money.

What if you had the power to change it? 

Today on The Bridge to Fulfillment, Blake welcomes Joyce Marter, a licensed psychotherapist, entrepreneur, national public speaker, and mental health thought leader. She is the founder of Urban Balance (a national outpatient mental health company) and the author of The Financial Mindset Fix: A Mental Fitness Program for an Abundant Life.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to identify the money story that you grew up with in order to help you understand how you think about money. You’ll hear some tried and true principles that you can use to change your money story, offering you a new money mindset that can actually change your perspectives. You’ll also hear personal experiences about the value of investing in yourself, how it can help you gain an appreciation and understanding of who you are, and how you can translate your skillset into more financial abundance and greater fulfillment in your life.

Your beliefs about money may very well be what’s keeping you from the abundant, happy, fulfilling life that you’re looking for.

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • The connection between money and mental health (7:30)
  • How asking for help when you need it can lead to more prosperity (10:26)
  • Breaking the cycle of post-traumatic financial trauma (17:33)
  • Understanding the “flow” of money (23:36)
  • How to create your own financial advisory board (32:38)
  • Why fulfilling your responsibility to yourself also benefits your children (46:36)

 

Favorite Quotes:

  1. I saw early on in my practice that as my clients were making progress in therapy, they started to earn more money. And I was like, why is this happening? We’re not even talking about money. And it didn’t matter if we were working on depression, anxiety, addictions, stress or relationship issues. They were coming in reporting raises and promotions and starting their own businesses. And I realized it’s because we’re always working on underlying self worth in therapy. – Joyce
  2. As we embrace our worth, we put ourselves out in the world differently, with more confidence, a willingness to fail, a willingness to expand our comfort zones, and to negotiate. And that has a financial return. -Joyce
  3. We unconsciously recreate what’s familiar until we become aware and we choose something better. -Joyce
  4. When we’re looking at our careers and our lives, we’re looking at it from a very black and white limited perspective. We research online and we go, ‘oh, that thing doesn’t work for me’ instead of actually saying who am I? What am I gifted at? What am I passionate about doing in the world? And then how do I figure out how to make money at it? -Blake
  5. Our personal and professional success are two sides of the same coin. And as we work on ourselves, it can transform our life holistically, not only professionally, or financially, but spiritually and relationally as well. -Joyce
  6. Anybody who has a successful career has coaches, participates in courses or trainings and advances themselves. Joyce

 


Connect with Joyce:

Joyce Marter’s website: www.joycemarter.com

Learn more about the book: www.financialmindsetfix.com

Buy the book on Amazon HERE

Exclusive offers for The Bridge to Fulfillment listeners HERE


Additional Resources:

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We can help you do just that. 

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Transcript

Joyce Marter 0:04 Money has flow. Like breath or love, it flows in and it flows out. And we don’t want to hold on to it and be miserly. And we also don’t want to overspend, and put ourselves in a state where we’re depleted. So it’s about managing that flow. And understanding that money is a resource. When we don’t allow money to flow there stagnation, and it’s a form of fear, and there’s a lack of expansion. And when we allow it to flow by investing in something new, maybe it’s a side hustle, maybe it’s having an Airbnb, maybe it’s taking a new course, maybe it’s having career counseling, or coaching about making a big transition. We can’t just look at what we’re spending, we need to really look at the possibility of the return, and to trust in that and have faith in that.

Blake Schofield 1:10 Hi, I’m Blake Schofield, founder, and CEO of The Bridge to Fulfillment, mom to three, USA Today top 10 professional coach, and former corporate executive who got tired of sacrificing my life for a comfortable paycheck. My mission is to expand women’s perspectives and empower them to achieve greater impact at home and work without sacrifice. This is The Bridge to Fulfillment.

Blake Schofield 1:44  Today I’m excited to share with you a expert guest Joyce Marter. She’s a licensed psychotherapist, entrepreneur, national public speaker and a mental health thought leader, the founder of urban balance, which is a national outpatient mental health company, and she’s the author of the financial mindset fix a mental fitness program for an abundant life. You know, when I first connected with Joyce, I saw a lot of similarities in our views and perspectives and our value systems around balance and family. And really aligning your life, the work that you do with your passions, your skills, your gifts. But what I couldn’t have imagined was the amazing experience that we had together. In our time together recording this podcast, we talked about really helping you think about and understand how you think about money. What’s the money story that you grew up with that you’re telling yourself, we identified some areas where perspectives on money, may very well be the thing that’s actually keeping you from the abundant, happy, fulfilling life that you’re looking for. And we ended up sharing some tried and trued principles that both of us have really learned about the value of investing in yourself the value of really gaining an appreciation and understanding of who you are, and how often that translates into more financial abundance and more abundance in your life in general. So I’m really excited to share this episode with you, I could not be more happy that Joyce came and shared her time and her perspective and her experience with me and with you today. And I hope that you get just as much from this interview as I did. And with that said, I’ll turn it over to the interview now. Hello, Joyce, welcome, welcome. I’m so excited to have you at The Bridge to Fulfillment today.

Joyce Marter 3:42 Thank you, Blake, I’m so honored and excited to talk with you.

Blake Schofield 3:45 You know, we were just talking a couple minutes before getting started. And one of the things I shared with you as one of the reasons I really felt like it would be such a great fit for this podcast as we share a lot of shared values, you know, values around looking at life from a holistic standpoint, balanced with family, the importance of aligning your life and your skills and your gifts really is a way to lead a more fulfilling life. And ultimately, probably the largest reason I have you here is your discovery around financial abundance being linked to alignment and self worth and a lot of the work that I do, right really does that my work is focused on really aligning women’s work with their strengths, skills and passions and as a result of that work, and we do a lot of work that’s related. I think my clients describe a lot of times the work we do as a mix of counseling, career and life coaching, removing a lot of the limiting beliefs or patterns or things that have been standing in their way. And as a result, my clients on average are getting more than a 20% pay increase moving into a new role or a new industry or you know, a new path. And often I think people look at that and say I don’t know that I really believe that’s possible, even though I have story after story after story. So when we Aren’t you right that oh my goodness, here’s somebody who’s found the same exact pattern, the same exact experience, and will be able to come and share with the audience some of these critical things that I think we’ve probably both learned to really enable more freedom in women’s lives. So I’m excited to have you today. And are you just share your experience. And I’d love to just start our time together today with allowing you the opportunity to share a little bit with the audience about who you are and what you do.

Joyce Marter 5:28 Absolutely. Well, I completely agree with you that we’re very much aligned. And I’ve been a therapist for 25 years. I’m an entrepreneur that built and sold a multimillion dollar company. I’m an author, and most importantly, I’m a mom. I have two daughters who are 17 and 20. And I have two beautiful stepchildren who are 23 and 26. We’re a blended family. And I have found my work as a therapist to be emotionally relationally and spiritually rewarding. It is such high honor to guide women and men in their journeys of healing and recovery and discovery of themselves. And I love to mirror back to my clients, their strengths and everything that is beautiful and unique and amazing about them, and empowering them to align their unique gifts with a need in the world, to the greatest extent possible. And just like you said, moving through self limiting beliefs and self sabotage. And of course, as a coach or a counselor, we are our own tool. And I’ve had to do a tremendous amount of work on myself, I came into the work because I really care about our emotional connections to one another, the deeper aspects of life and relationships. I also have two older sisters who are 10 and 14 years older than me. And I saw my sister who’s 10 years older than me, Teresa had a very big career right out of the gate and her 20s and early 30s. And my sister Paula, who’s a brilliant woman, sacrificed her career to be a stay at home mom, which is such an important and high honor and role. But I saw that they each made sacrifices. And I really wanted to honor my highest role as a mom, but also enjoy the intellectual stimulation of my career. And I needed to support my family, I needed an earning. And I saw early on in my practice that as my clients were making progress in therapy, they started to earn more money. And I was like, why is this happening? We’re not even talking about money. And it didn’t matter if we were working on depression, anxiety, addictions, stress or relationship issues. They were coming in reporting raises and promotions and starting their own businesses. And I realized it’s because we’re always working on underlying self worth in therapy. And as we embrace our worth, we put ourselves out in the world differently, with more confidence, a willingness to fail, a willingness to expand our comfort zones, and to negotiate. And that has a financial return. And I very much learned that my entrepreneurial journey after making 1000 mistakes. So I wrote my book to share with other people, the lessons that I’ve learned from my clients as well as my own journey.

Blake Schofield 8:27 Wonderful. I read some about a little bit about your background and some of the challenges you went through that led you into psychology and led you into this direction. I grew up with a dad who has a PhD in psychology. Oh, my sister got her master’s degree in psychology. I also got my degree in psychology I knew really early on, I was interested in people. Actually, when I went to college, my goal was to become a marriage and family psychologist. Oh, that’s amazing. And I think those of us that see these things, find them early, and then we figure out how we navigate our way towards them. But I think what I often find interesting, right is there’s always those connections. So as you went through this for you, it sounds like a huge part of it was removing stigmatism behind mental health helping people build deeper connections through that you discovered this whole thing about self worth and money. Did you find yourself going through a transformational experience with regard to how you looked at money as well?

Joyce Marter 9:25 Very much so. So I believe that we’re all shaped and molded by our earlier life experiences. And we unconsciously recreate what’s familiar until we become aware and we choose something better. And my father was born during the Great Depression and was unemployed during much of my adolescence. He had tremendous success as an executive, but he lost his job in the automotive recession and for a lot of my young adolescents, he was unemployed and there was a lot of financial anxiety in the household a lot of stress and relationship conflict and fear and uncertainty. And I recreated that in my adult life. I recreated that in my business where things looked good on the outside, much like in my family growing up, we lived in a nice house, it looked like everything was okay. But there was a lot of shame and worry on the inside. And similarly, with my business, urban balance, it looked like it was successful. I had all these locations and employees, but I couldn’t make my payroll or my rent because I hadn’t thought proper business or financial consultation, the larger our company got, the more money was outstanding from insurance companies. And we were in a cashflow pickle. And it wasn’t until I really hit rock bottom, I lost my business partner, she left because of the stress, I really thought I was going to have to file business bankruptcy was the hardest time in my life. Many of our clients left many of our staff left, and it broke me open. And the biggest lessons that it taught me was the importance of vulnerability, and sharing with people when we’re struggling and asking for help. And once I asked for help, the help came out of the woodwork. And so with the help of so many people, I was then able to really look at my own psychology of my money, my own thoughts, emotions and behaviors that were keeping financial prosperity away from me. In my own therapy, my therapist asked me Joyce, what does money mean to you? What do you think of when I say the word money? And I said, Ah, gosh, I think of stress. And she said, Well, no wonder you make it go away. So I had to really reexamined that a lot of it came from people pleasing. I wanted to take care of my kids, my family, my clients, my staff before myself. And my CPA said you’re not running a charity to employ a therapist, and you deserve to make an income. And so it really, I had to do a lot of work on my own worth and what was keeping me from having a more profitable business. And within a handful of years, we were able to radically turn the ship around, I was able to sell it for a multimillion dollar mount. And the exit ended up being an eight figure amount that that I earned from that buyout. So more money than I would have ever imagined making. When I started as a therapist in Chicago, the starting salary was 18 to $25,000 a year. So I believe in transformation, I’ve transformed my life personally and professionally. And I love to support others and doing the same.

Blake Schofield 12:49 I love that so much. There’s so many things there that I like are populating my brain to say I will start maybe go backwards, which is I love this, right, the starting salary for therapists is very low. The women that we help and the average citizen, some and often are looking at doing something different, right? They’re unfulfilled and what they’re doing. And often there’s this limiting belief of well, I look at this job or this role, and I’ll never make enough money. We’re always seeing that as a very black and white perspective, instead of understanding the gray. And I just will say if somebody’s listening to this, right, an eight figure exit on something that fundamentally looks like you would not make enough money. And I see that all of the time. So sometimes we have to be able to expand our mind. The problem is is women I often see when we’re looking at our careers in our lives. We’re looking at it from a very black and white limited perspective research online, and we go, oh, that thing doesn’t work for me. Instead of actually saying who am I? What am I gifted at? What am I passionate about doing in the world? And then how do I figure out how to make money at it? And that’s what you did. You figured out what you were passionate about, and you figured out how to make money at it. And you did the work. You did the work to remove the barriers that sat in your way to create that abundance. So I just love that in so many ways. The other thing that you shared about your journey is really interesting, because, you know, my parents divorced when I was six and a half, seven years old. And my mom was a single mom with two young girls. And from about seven to me in my early high school years. I knew that there was financial stress in my home. My mom was a single mom, originally we moved into an apartment, it turned out to be disastrous, to say the least. Like we ended up having to get out of the lease. My mom ended up almost having to go to court because they wouldn’t let us out of the lease, like the entire apartment complex was riddled with roaches. I mean, it was just you couldn’t even sleep at night. It was the most disgusting experience. And my mom had to fight to get out of the lease because it was an unsanitary place to live. And then she bought a home in a really small city like I remember when our first grocery store went in and our first 711 went in and And I will also remember the first year that property taxes hid, and how she was not prepared for that. And she told me the other day that it was something like $500 more a month, and this was in the 80s. Wow. So if you can imagine what a $500 payment in the 80s was to what that is today, I bet it’s probably $2,000 equivalent. Yeah, see, I remember the stress and anxiety of the things she went through, we didn’t have a garage, we parked outside of our house, and we were right in front of one of those gutters. Twice, our car completely flooded, smelled like mold. I remember the stress and anxiety for trying to pay for it the first time and it would have happened the second time, she couldn’t afford to pay for it. So we drove around on this car that’s not like mold for months, those moments right in brain on you as a child, and create a perception about money. And about never been in a circumstance where you have no control of money. And I share that because it seems like there are similarities with experiences that you had, I have found very similar similarities with a lot of my clients that are incredibly responsible, successful, make a lot of money, but they’re still living from a scarcity standpoint in terms of money because of the experiences that they had as children. And part of why they’re so successful is that drive, but also the fear of lacking or being in a circumstance. And often I think that creates a life that is led from fear. And the fear then projects out these things that are never going to be reality, but they stop us from doing the right things in our life, to create what we want. And so I imagined when you went through that with your business, and you felt like everything was falling apart, you must have been extremely emotionally triggered trying to work through that, because it brought up everything that you had experienced as a child, right. And I often say, and I’m sure you see the same right that our human instincts of survival are the strongest things that we have. And so if we feel like we aren’t going to survive, we’re going to immediately it will immediately take over everything that we think do act behave. So when I kind of share that, and we think about your story, I’d love to hear your perspective. Because often I would imagine you probably see the same pattern with your clients. What are some pieces of advice or some thoughts that you have around helping people when they get in those moments where they do feel emotionally triggered about money? How can they step back and step out of fear and get into a place that is more thoughtful and more strategic.

Joyce Marter 17:28 Thank you for sharing your story is that you went through financial trauma and financial trauma can lead to financially triggered post traumatic stress disorder. And so for people who grew up with challenges like that, early on, when maybe they lose their job or go through other another financial trauma, maybe unexpected health costs or a divorce or something like that, it can trigger the feelings from the past and be very overwhelming. I had a client that I worked with that grew up in the projects of Chicago and she was had sometimes not enough food to eat and not deodorant or toilet paper even. And even though she had pulled herself up by her bootstraps and had her MBA and was an executive. She was obese because she was hungry her whole life. So she over ate out of fear that it would go away. And she had gastric bypass surgery before she and I worked together. And she replaced the overeating with overspending. And she started hoarding toilet paper and, and the items that she didn’t have. So my book is a program with exercises, where I help people number one change their thinking, because according to cognitive behavioral therapy, our thoughts precede our emotions and behaviors. So if we tell ourselves, I can’t, I won’t, I don’t, I’m not that’s become self fulfilling prophecy becomes part of our money story. And so we need to shift those beliefs. And if we have statements like I am poor, I am broke. You are identifying with your money. When I was going through that crisis for myself, the thing that helped me the most was a mindfulness strategy called detachment. And I meditate I do yoga, which is meditation with movement. And in that those practices, you begin to realize we’re not our egos. We’re not our minds understanding of ourselves. We’re not our bodies. We’re not our bank accounts or our job titles. We are the unique light with him. We are that deeper, higher spirit that is always worthy, and uniquely and innately talented. And for me, even though that was the scariest and most difficult time in my life, it was very freeing, because I was able to detach, I kind of compartmentalize all the financial stress and just did that next right thing I got up every day I faced my staff, I faced my clients, I faced my creditors who I owed. And I just continued to show up and do the next right thing and ask for help. And over a long time, it got better. I remember my internal accountant saying, yay, we were able to pay the phone bill today, baby steps. And it taught me how strong I was, which was not something I had felt previously, I thought I couldn’t run a business without a business partner. And it turned out that that really gave me a lot more confidence. And interestingly, that whole transformation, also really was the beginning of me looking at my 18 year marriage that I’d been in for 25 years, that relationship, and really reevaluating that for myself and making a difficult decision to leave that marriage. And it ended up. That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. It was like taking a swan dive off a cliff. But we’re all better, my ex husband is remarried to somebody who is much better suited to and I am really married to the love of my life. And my kids are thriving, they’ve said that they have more support than they’ve ever had. So I think sometimes, you know, our personal and professional success are two sides of the same coin. And as we work on ourselves, it can transform our life holistically, not only professionally, or financially, but spiritually and relationally as well.

Blake Schofield 21:39 100%, the work I do is a very holistic approach, it’s very different than standard career coaching. And that’s because I came to the same conclusion, which is how we do one thing is how we do everything. If you’re unfulfilled in one part of your life, it bleeds into the other. And to truly lead a fulfilled life, you have to look at all of the elements, how they come together and have the right balance and harmony for you removing the shoulds and the expectations, and limiting beliefs and the patterns and all of the things that are actually the real reason you’re unhappy because I see so many people changing jobs, only to find more of the same or worse when they go somewhere else, because they’re not actually solving the thing. That is the problem. So I love hearing you say that. And it’s a very interesting thing. You know, I’ve been through a lot of work myself. And I think that our society places so much value on money, almost as if it has its own personality, but money has no positive or negative money is ubiquitous. It’s really what you choose to do with that money. That then is where the value is placed. And I see so often people who are incredibly successful, but they’re unwilling to use the money that they have to actually generate the life they want. So I’ll give you an example. I was talking to a woman recently very high credit score very responsible, pays credit card off every month, makes $200,000 a year absolutely miserable in her job, but terrified to spend any money to invest in herself. Because she doesn’t want to hurt a credit score, or she doesn’t want to have credit card balance. Do you see this? Yeah, what are your thoughts about that? Because this is a very common pattern I see. And I think we have to shift how we see money and how we’re using credit and how we’re using the things that we have to actually like they should enable us to create what we want as opposed to be the thing that we hoard hold on to are used as a safety net.

Joyce Marter 23:36 Yes hoarding and holding on to as part of a scarcity mindset. And money has flow, like the breath or love, it flows in and it flows out. And we don’t want to hold on to it and be miserly. And we also don’t want to overspend and put ourselves in a state where we’re depleted. So it’s about managing that flow. And understanding that money is a resource. When I said that money represented stress to me, I changed that to a resource, and one of which I was deserving. And so being willing to spend on yourself and invest in yourself is critical. Anybody who has a successful career has coaches, participates in courses or trainings and advances themselves and that just like you said, it pays for itself in the results. And so some of the techniques that I suggest is to just imagining your financial life as if it were a person and imagining how you treat that person. So in my 30s, my financial life would have been named Penny, and I was ashamed of her and I was abusive. I didn’t nurture her at all. I didn’t introduce her to anyone and I expected a whole lot out of her. And she was exhausted and depleted, and basically on life support. And now I think about my financial life as part asperity and she’s a direct reflection of myself and my self worth and having money is not selfish or greedy. I think for a lot of women especially, we’re taught to be caretakers and people pleasers. But when we have more, we can help more. We can help our families, we can help our communities. We can be philanthropists, it’s not selfish. And so in one of my speaking engagements, I suggested naming your financial life and a woman came up to me and she said Mine would be named tightwad Teresa. She said she’d have a tight bun and big glasses and a bad suit and cheap shoes. One of my clients told me that she realized that she had ugly shoes because of her mother’s financial beliefs. And I said, What do you mean it is that my mom was so frugal that she told us not to spend a lot of money on clothes. And even though she had a successful career, she had a closet full of cheap, ugly shoes that she hated. And her 10 year old daughter did an intervention and said, Mom, why don’t you just buy fewer cute shoes that you feel good about yourself. And so sometimes we have these old money, beliefs that come from our culture, religion, our families, and we need to reevaluate them and work through them so that we can invest in ourselves.

Blake Schofield 26:23 I love this idea of naming, seeing how you treat money and naming it as a person, because I think it’s very rare that we actually stop and question what are our beliefs about money? What was it like growing up? You know, what were the stories we learned from our parents about money? And then how are we using money? Because to your point, I often see and I experienced this myself. So you know, I spent 18 years in corporate, I went through what I call the roller coaster of, you know, fulfillment until I finally hit the breakdown moment, which often, right is what I say is when we get to the place where we’re either severe emotional or physical burnout, or we end up on a performance planar layoff. It’s just one or the other. I’ve seen it hundreds of times personally experienced it. And I found myself, you’re living in Minneapolis, I had moved cross country, the first year and a half, really finally had work life balance and thought, Okay, this is great, and then found myself back in the same place. And I said to my husband, this just doesn’t feel right. And I didn’t know what the right thing was. But I started to look at my money habits, because I believed that there was no way I would be able to replace my income. So I thought, well, the best thing I can do is just start saving. And I started looking at where we were spending our money. And I started to realize because I grew up in the South. So moving up north, where it’s winter, seven months out of the year in Minneapolis, if people don’t tell you that they’re like, Oh, it’s just extreme weather like it is in Texas, well, extreme weather in Texas for two months. It’s extreme weather in Minneapolis for many, many, many, many months. And I started looking and I was spending money, trying to make myself feel better, because I felt trapped in my house and trapped in the cold weather and unhappy. So when I started looking at where we’re spending money, it was actually fairly easy to cut back and go, Oh, I’m spending money on vacations or taking my kids to Nickelodeon experience or doing all of these things in the attempt to make myself feel happy. When I’m not fulfilled doing what I’m doing. So we just started saving without any understanding of where that was gonna go or what that was going to do. And certainly that was the money story. For me, I was always the saver in the family, my sister would come borrow money from me, I would charge her interest, I was always the responsible one. And to your point, when I got to a place where I left my corporate job, I had a year’s worth of income saved, amazing. And but I spent five months trying to figure everything out on my own. And so by the time that I realized I need a mentor or a coach, I’m lost almost everything online is contradictory. I was then faced with a decision, the first I think really, personally, emotionally challenging beyond deciding to leave my corporate job and transition into something else. Which was do you invest money in yourself to get help? Or do you keep going the path that you can see is not getting you where you want to go. And that first investment was a $10,000 investment for an eight week program. And at the time, it was probably 20% of the money I had left me. And in much the same way as you I was forced with actually looking at why did I have the habits that I had around money my whole life? And was I actually using the money to benefit or create the life I want? Or was I just using it as a safety net? Was I using the credit score that I had as a safety net? And why does a great credit score even matter? Right? This was drilled into me all the time as a child about how important was that you had a great credit score, but often we don’t stop and think why is that important? It’s important because in the moments when you need to invest in things Do you have the resources and ability to do it, it’s not just to have this great score that never changes and is always there. It’s about the ability to leverage resources. And I had never in my entire life done that. My parents taught me you pay off your credit card every single month. Right? That’s the responsible thing to do. You don’t spend money you don’t have. And I realized in that moment, I think that many of us are taught these same lessons without actually stopping and understanding the why behind them, or the context behind them. To your point. Did my parents or grandparents go through the Great Depression? Did they experience this? But that’s not real life today? Were they teach me tenants about credit without actually helping me understand why does that matter? And that, by the way, if you use your credit, and you pay it off, your credit will go back up, right? That like your credit score is also not indicative of your value or indicative of your safety. And I think many times we’ve come up with these belief systems because of how we’ve been taught. And so I had to work through a lot of that. And I’ll never forget the thing that my husband said to me, because ultimately, he supported me and making the decision that felt so scary in that moment for me, because it definitely brought up survival instincts and everything else, which was we invest in things all the time, we just don’t think about it. We invest our money in the stocks, stock markets with a hope of an eight or 10% return with absolutely zero control over the outcome of anything that’s going to happen. We invest in college, and it’s probably the only time we think about investing in ourselves, because it’s been so ingrained in us to invest in college spend this money to get x result. But I think for most people, that’s the only place it’s been ingrained to invest in themselves. And beyond that, everything else we look at as a cost without understanding the implication of what that actually means. And so he said to me, I know and believe, and I’ve seen that when you commit to something, you’ll succeed. And so I know if you invest in yourself, it will yield the greatest ROI that we’ll ever get far greater than putting the money in the stock market and something else. And so he has supported me enabled me to take the step forward to invest in myself, that that initial investment ended up turning into at this point well over $350,000 that I’ve invested in myself in the last four and a half years. And I continue to reap such amazing rewards that I talk all the time about the value and importance of investing in yourself. And so I love what you’re doing, because I think that these conversations need to be had people aren’t talking about this. And they don’t even understand that they’re their own limits.

Joyce Marter 32:31 Yes, we set our own ceilings with self limiting beliefs and self sabotage. And so I believe it’s so important to have a personal and professional advisory board, you know, five or so people personally and professionally that you turn to for support and guidance. And your personal advisory board might be your best friends, your family, your therapist or coach. Your professional advisory board might also include coaches, or mentors or supervisors or bosses or professional heroes. And like you I have really worked on investing in myself and I encourage my clients to do the same. Even things like investing in personal training. When we feel physically fit and strong. We present ourselves differently with more confidence. And that actually has a financial return. This might sound superficial, but I think even investing in a stylist, or having a little makeover. It’s such a connection to your self esteem. And if you put yourself together in a way where you feel beautiful, you feel comfortable, you feel confident people respond to you differently. I continue to hire coaches. When I did the narration of my audible book, I hired a narration coach. I’ve hired writing coaches, I continue to seek support and guidance as I grow and develop. And that’s important for all of us. We deserve that support. I give a lot of corporate trainings and corporate keynotes. And when I ask people about support 95% of attendees who have polled say they need more emotional support. So we need to get better about asking for the support that we need. And again, looking at money as having flow when you invest in it. There is a huge return. I love Jen scenarios. You are badass at making money. I think she’s hilarious and she’s got some really great concepts. I think as women were told we’re not good at math growing up in my practice, I see very highly educated, very successful women who are not financially literate who are disempowered in their marriages where the their partner runs the financial show and they don’t even know what’s going on and that creates power and control imbalance in the relationship so I really love sharing with women resources on it empowering their financial literacy, reflecting on those earlier belief systems and how there may be causing some self limitation and bursting through that with confidence and courage. And knowing that when you do so you’re setting the example for young women and maybe your children or nieces or whomever is watching you, your mentees. And that’s so so important.

Blake Schofield 35:26 100%, you said a couple of times money has flow. And I have found that to be true as well. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about that what your experience has been about the flow or when people don’t allow money to flow? What does that actually mean and look like?

Joyce Marter 35:42 When we don’t allow money to flow there stagnation, and it’s a form of fear. And there’s a lack of expansion. And when we allow it to flow by investing in something new, maybe it’s a side hustle, maybe it’s having an Airbnb, maybe it’s taking a new course, maybe it’s having career counseling, or coaching about making a big transition, we can’t just look at what we’re spending, we need to really look at the possibility of the return. And to trust in that and have faith in that I think for me, as an entrepreneur, I have learned that detachment is again, a really helpful skill that sometimes I’ve spent money on something and there hasn’t been a financial reward on that. And then it comes back at from another place unexpectedly. And so I just kind of trust in the balance the universal order. I believe in using our intuition trusting that in a spiritual web of connectedness of people like how you found me and saw alignment, when I believe that that’s meaningful, that we’re meant to have this conversation. And so when you listen, and you hop off of the gerbil wheel of work and household responsibilities, and you step back, and you allow yourself to look within at those deeper parts of you, and to have the courage to change your life, you and I both did that. And it’s scary. And it requires some vulnerability and some trust. But when you access support, and you believe in yourself, you have to believe something’s possible in order for it not to be impossible. I had people tell me, I was too young to start a practice in Chicago. When I was a young mom, I said, I only wanted to work school hours from nine to three, I had older psychologists say to me, Oh, honey, that’s not possible because the clients want to come in the evenings and weekends. And I chose to politely disagree and hold my ground. And my practice was full with self employed people and people who parents who are working from home students, etc. So we have to keep a positive mindset and know that we are worthy and deserving. And I do believe that we can be successful in any career. I think we’re all sitting on a golden bench. I’ve had clients who have screenplays, they’ve never showed anyone artwork, they’ve never shown anyone a business plan. They’ve never put into place. And they haven’t cashed in on these gifts that they have. And what keeps us from doing that is fear, self doubt. We’re writing a negative narrative. I once saw a monk for consultation about why my book wasn’t getting published for 10 years. And he listened to me he was a brilliant man. And he said, I have your answer. And he handed me a little piece of paper and it said w t f. And I was like, Oh my gosh, are you serious right now? What are you talking about? He said, absolutely weaken the fiction, weaken the fiction that you’re telling yourself and get out of your own way. And so I used in the Adlerian technique, Alfred Adler as a founder of psychology, it called acting as if and I acted as if I had already published my book, I walked around my house saying, I’m like my hero, Brene Brown. I’m an international author and speaker and my best friend who’s a therapist accused me of psychotic optimism. But you know, what I called my agent, I put my foot down, said if I didn’t get a deal, in three months, I would Self Publish. And she got me the publisher of Brene Brown.

Blake Schofield 39:29 Oh, my gosh, I love that. It’s amazing. There’s so much of what you said. That is exactly what I have come to know to be true. That I guess I’m the shortest sense to be able to explain it. I used to live my life very much as if it was black and white. Things are linear. I’m able to see if I do this thing that I can control the outcome and understand each step and be able to make it happen. And I think most of the world has been taught that especially See if you’re high performing, you want to be successful. And you’ve been taught, create this big, hairy, audacious goal, build each one of the steps and go after and get it. And what I have come to learn and really understand in these last several years is that we are all spiritual beings live in living a human existence, that there are second, third and fourth order consequences of what you cannot see through the actions that you’re taking. That being so set on the outcome is actually why we don’t get the things that we want, and in fact, often why we get far less than we deserve, because we aren’t open to abundance in our life. Everything is about scarcity, and hoarding and fear and holding on to what we have, instead of actually being able to surrender and trust and lean into the gifts that we’ve been given the purpose that we’ve been given the people around us that are there to help support us. This week, I have been talking a lot about synchronicity, and I’m gonna pull this up because I was listening to my idol, Oprah Winfrey, and I found her when I was 10. And I think in that moment, I recognized Wait a second, this woman in which she’s talking about really resonate. And so I was listening to one of her podcasts and talked about synchronicity. And synchronicity was introduced by Carl Jung is a psychologist to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection. And it says here, spiritual Synchronicities are strategically orchestrated and perfectly aligned to deliver a message, provide guidance, or provide reassurance that we’re on the right path. And I would say, you know, to what you share Joyce, the more I have done this personal work, the more I have learned, how to let go of the conventional wisdom way of telling me how to be successful and how I have to live my life. And I have enabled myself to be receptive to what comes my way to allow that flow to happen in my life. The more synchronicities continue to show up, the more I see the opportunities, the guidance, the things that are telling me to just keep going. And when you said, I removed myself from having to have the outcome and I just focused on the next one to two things that need to go right. That is the entire philosophy that I utilize. I work with an amazing coach who was an Olympian. He’s coached over 40, gold medal Olympians. He’s coached Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, like some of the most prolific achievers out there. And fundamentally, that’s the same lesson that he came to to understand. So when we talk about all today’s really about money, I think there’s an underlying theme of releasing the need to control everything, and allowing the money to flow. And allowing yourself the opportunity to not have to know exactly how everything’s going to go but have more trust in that process and more trust in yourself. That through investing or through following your instincts or through doing the things you know, you need to do, that you only enable that abundance to come your way.

Joyce Marter 43:12 Beautiful, I love it. I love synchronicity and Carl Jung and think very similarly. And yes, it’s our ego that tries to control and our essence is our deeper self. And when we live our life from a place of essence, we cultivate abundance. And we we think differently, we operate differently and we are more intuitive and listen to that synchronicity. As I’ve had the opportunity of counseling now 1000s of clients from many different walks of life, I’ve identified 12 universal truths that lead to holistic success, then that to me is having mental well being happiness, connected relationships, work life, balance, and financial prosperity and living with purpose. And they include many things that we’ve talked about today. Self awareness, detachment from ego and connection to essence, having compassion, accessing support, practicing self love, fostering resilience, and so we can continue to work on ourselves. It’s a practice it’s a psycho spiritual journey and practice. We’re not perfect. We’re human. We’re meant to make mistakes and have lessons to learn. But I think that’s the purpose. The purpose is the journey, not the achievement, and we are not our achievements. We are not our bank accounts. We are our essence. We’re how we treat ourselves and others and how we help and how we’re a force of good in the world. And that’s maybe more important than ever now.

Blake Schofield 44:56 Yeah, I could not agree more. It’s just so wonderful when I guess Do you, to your point, right, there was something about what you were sharing that resonated. And then we get in this conversation and like it’s the same lessons, we see the same way we’ve lived the same thing. And I find that to be true. And so for those of you guys listening right this stuff five years ago, for me, I would have been like, that sounds crazy woowoo. I don’t know about that. And I think it’s important to begin to expand our minds about how the world works about our belief systems. Because years ago, I would have said, I don’t believe in energy, I don’t believe in some of those things. And today, I have fundamentally seen over and over and over again, how those are true. And I see how some of the most successful people not just financially successful, but personally successful, they’re living lives of purpose, fulfillment, peace, joy, all of the things that I think we really want, have found the same truths to be, right. And we are sharing them because I just think we are at a time in place in society where we need to elevate our consciousness. So when you start shifting how we’ve lived before, we are in a place of more abundance, especially for women than has ever existed. And yet, as women, we’ve got to change the narratives, the things we’ve been taught culturally, the things our parents and our grandparents had to go through, right, that aren’t relevant anymore, in order to truly step into the future and step into abundance and step into what we really deserve. Because I think our mothers and our grandmothers had to fight so hard just to have a job, just to have an opportunity. And that’s not the case anymore. But as women, I think often we’re still behaving that way, because we have this old ingrained belief systems. And so we’re sacrificing and we’re trying to be successful in our jobs and do everything at home and make sure we’re the best mom. And we’re literally creating an entire generation of just complete and utter burnout and sacrifices, teaching our children the wrong lessons that they will continue to perpetuate. And so it’s our opportunity to recognize when we look at these places in our life that were unfulfilled or unhappy where we thought there should be more, that is not just about investing in ourselves. It’s not just about using our resources to improve ourselves. It’s about improving everyone around us to because they’re watching, they’re listening, and they’re taking their views and their lessons from us to our joy. Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. I feel like I can continue to talk to you for hours, but we don’t, we don’t have enough time. With that said I would love to open it up so you can share if there are people listening to this podcast are like, Oh my gosh, I love what Joyce has to share. I would love to connect with her or learn more about her work. How could they do that?

Joyce Marter 47:37 So my website is JoyceMarter.com. I’m on all the social media. My book is called The Financial Mindset Fix. It’s on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Kindle, audible. And I would love direct messages. I’d love to connect with folks answer any questions. I have shared with you all a landing page with a discount to my new digital e-course and some other downloadable links to help you negotiate, talk to your partner about money and establish work life balance. So I look forward to supporting you any way I can.

Blake Schofield 48:19 Awesome. Thank you so much. Joyce has been such a pleasure to connect with you this morning. And I just have to say I really appreciate the work that you’re doing in the world. There’s so much opportunity in this space. And I think, like I said, I just really feel like we’re at a place in time, and culture and society where we’re ripe to really be able to make some huge leaps forward. And certainly we have the technology, we have all of the opportunities. It’s about being able to help people step more into their purpose and step into more fulfilling lives and get rid of the garbage and the junk and the things that are actually keeping them back from living the lives that they’re meant to live.

Joyce Marter 48:54 Awesome. I’ve had a great time talking with you, Blake. Thank you for having me.

Blake Schofield 48:58 Absolutely. And thank you guys for listening. Until next time, have a great one. Thanks for joining me today. Rather than hope the grass will be greener identify what the right next step is. We can help you do just that. Get clarity on where you are in your journey to career fulfillment, where you’re headed, optimal paths to get there, and the right next step to take. Start your complimentary personalized career fulfillment plan at www.thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan Again, you can get your personalized career fulfillment plan at www.thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan. Thanks again for joining and have a great week ahead.