Salome Schillack (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to episode number 89 of the Shine Show. Today we're going to talk about unlocking abundance to create more profit and more freedom in your business and in your life. So stay tuned.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host, Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram Ads, so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in, because you are ready to shine. And this is the Shine Show.

Somebody inside the Shine Show podcast posse Facebook group recently asked me what were the books I recommended on abundance. And I had to sit back and think about it for a moment because off ... I mean, I can think about so many books off the top of my head about marketing, that I can just literally run them off one by one if you asked me. Or mindset or business thinking or productivity, I can literally list them off the top of my head. But when she said which books do I recommend on abundance, I was a little bit, like, had to think about it. So today on the show, I want to share with you guys some of my favorite books on abundance. I have gone back to my library and took out some of the books. And I realized that I hadn't read about this in a while.

I don't know if this is true for you, but this is definitely true for me. I go through phases where I dive in to some area of obsession, and I become completely engulfed and immersed in this obsession. And at the moment I'm learning a lot about being ADD leaning, because my brain certainly is ADD leaning. For the first time somebody has helped me understand why I think the way I do. So I'm learning a lot about that. But then I was like, "Oh, abundance. I have not thought about this in a while." And so I went back and thought about the time in my journey with building a business when abundance was my obsession, and what I was learning then. And I remembered it was around 2014, 2015. So in 2004, I started my very first business on the 1st of July, 2014. It was a coaching business and it was a sales coaching business.

And I remember getting up early every morning and going for a walk. And every morning while I was walking, I was listening to audio books about abundance. And the reason I was listening to audio books about abundance is, I think you can guess it, is because I wanted money. The desire for me. Because every time you hear someone talk about abundance, you always link it to money. And at that stage, I was desperate for money. I had heard that there's this thing called money blocks, money mindset blocks. I understood that, as a part of my entrepreneurial journey, I'm going to have to retrain my brain about how I was thinking about money. And so my obsession with abundance started with a desire to make more money.

And I think that's one of the reasons I struggled for so long to become financially successful in my business, is because every association I had with abundance was always, actually ironically, born from a lack of abundance, born from a ... it's kind of like when you go, "Well, I want to learn abundance because I want to scrape in more of that resource that everyone else seems to have, but it keeps being outside of my reach." And I remember back then just the stress that I was feeling about my business not getting off the ground. And I knew that I need to be disciplined. I have always been a very hard worker. I can hustle anyone under the table easily, which is not something to be proud of, but it comes from my South African culture. I grew up in a culture where we were taught to work really hard. And the other day I actually saw an article that said South Africans are some of the hardest working people in the world.

So here I was, I would also say that, at the time, I think my ego was so out of check, because the way accomplishment works in the world out there is you just have to do better than the person next to you in order to feel good about your accomplishment. I was a very successful pharmaceutical rep. I won the awards, every award. I left my competitors in the dust. And it was kind of that way for a lot of things that I would get into is I can take a lot of action really fast. So I usually very quickly got results in whatever undertaking it was, whatever new thing it was that I was doing. So I was kind of cocky and arrogant. And I thought, "Well, this business thing, how hard can it be?" That one knocked me down very quickly. And it took me, goodness, I launched my first online course in 2016, two years after starting.

I did make a little bit of money as a coach, but overall, every year I had to do my taxes, my accountant would give me the negative number that I lost. I think the first year I lost $40,000. The second year I lost $20,000. And by the third year I broke even, but that was also the year that I decided to just pack it all up and go back to my day job. And something shifted in my head in terms of my abundance mindset when I did go back to my job, because all of a sudden my psyche could relax because I wasn't constantly chasing money and constantly trying to create money in my business so that I don't have to feel like I failed. Because now I'm back in my job, I've already defined that as failure. That was failure in my eyes. But now I suddenly, I had a steady income, so my bills were paid. We were paying off $40,000 of debt that I racked up in the process of trying to get this business off the ground.

And all of a sudden I embraced abundance and I could feel it, because that absolute death grip that I had on succeeding, and what that meant for my ego, as well as just the death grip that I had on the absolute need for everything I do to have to work because I have to make money, those things released because I had a little bit more money from my job. And I had already hit rock bottom in terms of what my ego could handle, and in terms of being a failure, as I would have defined it, definitely defined it at that stage in my business. And so that just left time. And luckily, being a pharmaceutical rep, you spend about six hours a day in your car. So I had six hours a day to absorb as much learning. That was, I think at that stage, my obsession became Facebook ads and it became online marketing, online course creation and marketing of online courses. And in that time that I was back at my job I worked through multiple online courses, multiple, multiple, multiple online courses.

But I want to jump back a little bit to 2014 when I just started. And I was in this phase of obsession about abundance, but ironically it was coming from a place of lack. One of the books that I read back then, that was one of the first books that helped me understand gratitude and appreciation, were the two books by Pam Grout. The first one is Thank And Grow Rich. And the second one is E-Squared. And if you haven't read either of those two books, and you want to get an understanding of the way that gratitude works in terms of multiplying the things that we have appreciation for. You know the old saying, "What you appreciate appreciates?" If you want to understand how that works, then go and read Pam Grout's books. And she's also ridiculously funny. She's hilarious. Very tongue in the cheek.

And I listened to those books, and they were like, "Oh, hang on. Hold on. Maybe this whole abundance thing has to do with a state that is inside me, rather than with where can I get more money and how can I make more money?" So what I started to realize was that abundance had to do, first of all, with my own worthiness. Remember how I had to keep my ego in check? My ego was out of control. And it was out of control because I did not feel worthy. I felt that, before I make a success of this business, I will not be good enough in my own eyes. And because I had been quick to have success in other areas in my life, the feeling of not being able to succeed at something straight out of the gate floored me and took a piece of my identity with it. And I felt completely and utterly unworthy in how I was struggling to get this business up.

And when I look back at it now, I wish I could go back and say to that lady, that girl, I feel like she was a girl, I wish I could go back to her and say how much the success or the lack of success in figuring this thing out has absolutely no, no, no relationship to your worthiness as a human. But I measured my worthiness on my external successes. And a part of that for me was money, money showing up, and feeling like I was good enough. So as long as I was failing, I wasn't measuring up. I was in some way not good enough. And that showed up in my worthiness. It showed up in a huge part in how I spent my time. I was never focused on where I was at at the time. And at the time I had a baby and a toddler. And I know that I was very often not present for them, just because when I was at work, I wouldn't be focused because I feel bad, because my children are in daycare. And when I was with them, I feel bad because I'm not working.

And I just remember, I remember this massive amount of work, but I have no idea what I actually did. I can't remember what I did, but there was just massive amounts of work. And it kind of kick-started this inability to relax, because in some way I always felt that there isn't enough time. There's not enough time in the day to get everything done. I don't have enough time, as a part time, building this part time I just don't have enough time to do that. And then of course there's no money. So this lack of abundance showed up in my worthiness, it showed up in my time, and it showed up in my money. And it was all born from a place of fear. And fear is the absolute birthplace of scarcity, because fear starts with us striving to have more than what we have right now because we fear there isn't enough. I am not enough. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money. Maybe this sounds familiar to you.

So I want you to think of this in terms of how scarcity shows up in your time and in your money. But most of all, how it shows up in your own worth. Not ever feeling good enough. Does scarcity ever show up for you that way? It definitely, definitely showed up for me that way. And so then the question becomes, "How do we create abundance? And what does abundance actually have to do with money?" And I think our thoughts around lack of abundance and fear, that's caused by our own scarcity thoughts, just shows up and manifests in our money. So it is the inner state of fear and not having enough-ness, not being enough-ness, that purely just manifests in money as well as other areas. And so if we experience our own lack of having money, it's like that's what you put the bandaid on, but that's not what is going to cure it. That is just the symptom of the real problem.

So how do we get to abundance? One of my other favorite books that absolutely shifted my thinking around abundance is a book by Lynne Twist called The Soul Of Money. And what I love about this book is it's kind of written from a very different angle than the usual, "I will teach you to be rich abundance," message. Lynne's message says that she's a philanthropist who has made like bazillions of money, but she's also really putting a lot of money back into communities and people who need it. And she teaches that the root of abundance is sufficiency. I'm going to say that again. The root of abundance is sufficiency. And she teaches us that we feel a lack of abundance because we haven't yet even reached the point of sufficiency. Now there's a difference between sufficiency and abundance. Sufficiency is I have just enough of what I need. I have everything I need right now. All of my needs are met. There's enough food, enough clothes, enough money to meet my immediate needs.

Abundance, on the other hand, is an overflow. There's an overflow. There's more than what I can handle. And what Lynne says is the root of abundance is sufficiency. So that line in that book, I remember exactly where I was. I was listening to this book on audio. I was in South Africa at the time visiting my parents. My dad was ill. He was in hospital, and I remember exactly where, on which freeway I was driving when I heard her say, "The root of abundancy is sufficiency." And it kind of shocked me to my core because I was like, "Oh, hang on. So if I want this overflowing, I have to first get myself to a place where I am sufficient just the way I am. I don't have to change anything about myself. I don't have to be skinnier. I don't have to be better at maths. I don't have to be better at spelling and grammar. I don't have to change my accent. I don't have to do any of the bullshit things we tell ourselves that we need to change."
That's sufficiency. It's kind of a smaller step. It's a smaller step that helps me wrap my brain around something I can kind of understand, before I try to wrap my brain about something that is so big that I can't even fathom it. Sufficiency, the root of abundance is sufficiency. So what does it look like for me when I am sufficient? What does it look like for me when the time I have available to myself in which to do my work is completely sufficient? What does it look like when I'm spending time with my family, and the time I have with them is completely sufficient? What does it look like when my marketing budget is completely sufficient? Whether it allows me to run ads or not, whether it allows me to buy this new software thing that I think is going to be a great tool, that's going to be the secret to solving all of my project management problems I've done that. What does it look like to be sufficient?

And once I kind of did that exercise I realized, "Oh, hang on. Maybe I can let go of the meaning that I have given success, and stop believing that I will be good enough once I can prove to everyone that I can make this business work. And that I will have enough time when I have more hours in the day to work. Or when I stop believing that there's not enough money to get a business off the ground." What does that look like? Because now, once you accept that you are sufficient, that you have sufficient time and that you have sufficient money, kind of the only thing that's left is to take responsibility and rely on your resourcefulness, not on your resources. And that brought me, from that sufficiency place, I discovered that I can from there think about gratitude and appreciation. And gratitude and appreciation is not something that I would say was drilled into me as a child. We were not taught ... There's a saying in Afrikaans, which is my first language, "[foreign language 00:19:52]." It literally means, "Don't complain. Just be grateful, and don't ask for anything more."

And I think I internalized back to such an extent that I always just accepted what was given to me, and believed that being grateful was just accepting the hand that I was dealt, and never asking for more. And once I did this exercise on sufficiency I kind of realized that gratitude and appreciation has nothing to do with accepting where you're at and not asking for more. Gratitude and appreciation is about looking at what you have right now, and feeling a deep sense of appreciation for that. Looking at things that hurt you in the past, judgments that hurt you, identities that were given to you that was untrue, failures you had. Maybe Facebook shut down your account. How can you be grateful and appreciate that, because what does it show you about yourself?

And so from this place of sufficiency and understanding that I then need to take responsibility to create my bigger dreams, my bigger reality, I can then express appreciation for perceived failures or setbacks, for things that are unfair, like getting ad accounts shut down, or spending my last money on a webinar and then it didn't bring in the money that I wanted. If I can bring myself to a point of appreciation for that result, then I can again turn inside and go, "Okay, well, what am I going to do with this? What does this mean?" And if I already accept that I am completely worthy, that no failure, no result from a launch, no result from a Facebook ad, no setbacks I have because I lost my job or my partner lost his or her job, or anything that happens to me in life can affect my worthiness. And I can take responsibility for everything.

There was a, back in the day when I was in my early 20s, I did musical theater. And for a while I was in a performing arts company that was a Christian ministry. And we toured around the country. And one year, one of my roles was in a production that we did for children aged between kind of five and maybe 10, 11. And I used to dress up five or six times a week as Peanut the Parrot. And Peanut the Parrot had this message for the kids that has stayed with me forever. Peanut the Parrot's message was, "God loves you no matter what. There's nothing you can do that can make God love you less. And there's nothing you can do that can make God love you more. You are already, by birthright, worthy." And what I love so much about that today is that I can see that I am part of an abundant universe. I am part of a system that is designed to create and to restore and to bring forth new life.

And that system, this universe, the way that this universe works, is completely an utterly abundant and worthy of abundance by absolute nature. There's nothing you can do to be more worthy, and there's nothing you have done that makes you less worthy of the abundance that is there right now. Abundance is your birthright. And if you think about it, our incredible brains have been built in a way to work the same way as this abundance in nature, this abundance of the universe, the way that God created. This abundance is, at the heart of it, creation. Creation is the highest form of life. And our creativity is exactly the thing that enables us to add value to other people, to sell things to people that add value to their lives and have them pay us for it. And the more value we can add to other people, the more they pay us. So, as this beautiful system that we're a part of, this system that is based on creation and abundance, and we have creative brains, we are creative entrepreneurs.

We have no limit on the amount of ideas we have or the amount of value we can add to other people. All we have to do is believe that we are worthy, relax about time and money, believe that you are sufficient in how much time and money you have, and start testing offers. So wide jump from abundance to testing offers, but I think you can see how I got here. When you're sufficient in yourself, when you know you're worthy, and you know that you have sufficiency in terms of what you have in front of you today, and you know that you have unlimited creativity, how many things can you test in the next week? How many offers can you test? How many offers can you make to other people to have them pay you for your talent, your knowledge, your passion? Anything from playing the cello to just creating a group where mums can come and relax and laugh about themselves and about the hands that life deals them as mothers. There's a way that you can add value.

And the opposite of this looks like this: it looks like you're making desperate decisions, you are overstretching yourself, you're second guessing yourself. We place ourselves in financial positions where we absolutely cannot afford to make mistakes. I see this with clients all the time. They take their last little bit of money and put it all on this hope for this launch. And when things don't go the way they hoped, it is devastating. Abundance is a state of being, and it is your birthright. You're already, in every single way, abundant. And when you live fully abundantly, you don't want for more money or more possessions, because true abundance is having a real appreciation for what you have right now, where you are now, who you work with now, how many students you have right now, how much money you make now. Gratitude and the appreciation of the here and now allows you to let go of the grip of scarcity on your mind and on your soul. It releases you from feeling less than, or from feeling like there's some external thing that can save you from where you are now.

And the beauty is, that's when money starts to flow, unblocked, and in a constant and consistent stream. The best part is you almost don't even notice it, because you've become the person you should be before the taps opened up and you were able to see the external evidence of the abundance that has already begun inside you. If you want more abundance in your life, ask yourself, in what way do you not yet to feel worthy? What is lacking in your life? What achievement or what external circumstance? Maybe it's something that happened to you in the past, or maybe it's a judgment that was laid upon you as a child that you still carry shame about. Where do you feel unworthy, and what do you need to heal and forgive in order to fully realize your worth right now in this moment with everything you have, and with all your dreams still stretched out in front of you? We shame people when they openly admit that they want to make more money.

We assume that it's born from a place of greed. So we don't want to desire it too much, otherwise we might also fall prey to greed. But greed only exists if we subscribe to the idea that, in order for me to make more, I have to take from you, or I have to have more and you're going to have less. And that only leads to rich people hoarding money and poor people dying, because with the money didn't have abundance mindset. My challenge to you today is how can you make, commit to making as much money as possible in this beautiful opportunity that we've been given with online marketing, and build your abundance mindset so that you can have a positive impact on the world? So that you can use the money that is abundant, so you can live sufficiently and take your abundance and share it with people who do not have the same privilege and the same opportunities as us?

You are worthy, you have time, you are creative beyond limits. You have the means to add value to people. You have it all inside you right now. Start believing it, and watch as the money starts to flow to you. If you want to learn more about this I have made a list of all of my favorite abundance books, and they are listed for you in the show notes. Have a wonderful week. See you later. Bye.
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