Salome Schillack (00:00):
Hello and welcome to episode number 175 of the Shine Show. Today's episode, I'm going to share some thoughts on making lots and lots of money with you.

(00:17):
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, than tune in because you are ready to shine and this is the Shine Show.

(00:50):
Hello, I'm so glad that you're here. I'm recording this on Thursday the 8th of September and 24 hours from now I will be in the swimming pool and I will have been swimming for about three hours at this point. Yeah, I'll be three hours into a four hour swim. When you hear this, send me love and energy, even if you hear it afterwards, send me over love and energy. I don't know what I was thinking when I signed up to swim 100 meters in the swimming pool. But you know what? What's the worst that can happen? I can fail. And who cares about failing at swimming when you're 42? Really? That is exactly why I'm doing it, is to give my brain this exercise in overcoming perfectionism and overcoming the need to be anything other than saying yes and doing an adventure and seeing where it leads. So we'll see how that goes. I will report back to you.

(02:14):
Today's episode is about my thoughts on money, particularly my thoughts on making lots and lots of money. I started planning this episode using my little reMarkable, which is a nifty little tool that I have where I can hand write my thoughts. And I have handwritten 24 pages. 24 pages of notes that I want to share with you because once I started writing, I couldn't stop. It just flowed. Does that ever happen to you? I love it when that happens. It just flowed out of me. So here goes.

(03:13):
I love money. I love money, I love money. I love the thrill of making money. I love seeing it come into my bank account and I love everything that it can do for me. I love that I don't have to look at the price of groceries or petrol or gas or energy bills and worry. I love that for the most part, when I want to learn a new skill, I can buy a course that teaches me that skill. I love that I can afford to break away for a weekend every now and then and take two big holidays every year. I love that I can go to the GP when I don't feel well, and I can go to the dentist twice a year, and I can pay to see my therapist every other week. And I can go to the physio and the chiropractor when my neck and my back hurts, probably because I'm sitting behind my computer too long.

(04:34):
I love that I can have a massage now and then and I can pay for a facial that makes my skin feel great. I can have my hair colored when I need to. I love money and I love what it gets me. And I do not feel guilty or bad sharing this with you because I want you to love money too. Money is awesome. What sucks about money is how we think about it. And what I hope you'll see at the end of this episode is that money is just money. Money cannot corrupt you if you're not already corrupt. Money cannot make you greedy if you're not already greedy. Money cannot make you less worthy or more worthy if you don't already believe that you are more or less worthy. Money cannot make you anymore happy or sad than you already are. Money itself is not the cause of your stress, your fear and anxiety or your depression.

(05:59):
Having money will not prevent you from also having the full experience of being a human who is alive and experiences their humanness. Happiness, sadness, joy, fear, anger, love, you will feel all the feels with and without money. So where does this nonsense come from that we believe about money? I looked up the definition of a false dichotomy, and basically a false dichotomy means two things that are compared to one another but that are not mutually exclusive. And when you think about false dichotomies, it's pretty much everywhere. It's in our governments where we have this two party system, where we basically, if you live in a democracy, you can only choose between idiot number one and idiot number two, when you vote.

(07:17):
It exists in masculine and feminine, male and female. We are becoming more aware that life and human bodies are not just masculine and feminine or male and female. There's a whole range in between. It exists in Hollywood where we are fed the stories of good guys and bad guys. And it exists very, very, very deep in our psyche where we're always looking for heroes like us and victims that we can save. And when we are the heroes, that means there has to be villains as well. And when there are victims, then there are villains. And we tend to see ourselves either as the heroes or as the villains.

(08:25):
But life is just not that black and white. We know that. So this false dichotomy around money, when someone says, "Well money can't buy you happiness." Well, who says the two things are even related to one another? I mean, think about it for a second. It's the most ridiculous comparison. Money and happiness. What does the one thing have to with the other? Absolutely nothing. You ask any rich person whether they have the full range of emotions and they will say yes. You ask any poor person whether they have a full range of emotion and they will say yes. Money and happiness is a full stock dichotomy. They do not exist mutually exclusive of one another. The same with money and spirituality. Having money is not going to make you less spiritual.

(09:29):
The same with money and being a good person. Having money is not going to corrupt your soul. Just like not having money doesn't make you more holy. Our brains, this primitive part of our brains loves making sense of the world when we are presented with things in contrast, because it's simple, we understand black and white. We understand up and down, we understand right and wrong. We understand good and bad. But money is never part of any contrast. Cannot be part of a contrast. Because the only thing money is an agreed upon value that we exchange. It's not even in 2022 a real thing anymore, it's just numbers on a computer screen. An imaginary coin that is locked up in an imaginary bank where they invest it in imaginary stocks and the value of those stocks are imaginary.

(10:52):
It really is quite bizarre when you start unpacking it. So to show you how bizarre this is, I'm going to replace the word money with lipstick for a second. I have a whole bunch of lipsticks on my desk. A whole tri full of lipsticks because when I go onto Zoom, I often find that I feel a little bit more confident when I have a little red lippy on. So I have a whole range of lipsticks on my desk. So let's replace the word money with lipstick in some of the false beliefs we have about money or lipstick.

(11:39):
Having lipstick won't make you a better person. Or we can say having lipstick won't make me a better person. I won't be a better person when I have more lipstick. I also won't be a bad person when I have more lipstick. I will not be less spiritual when I have a lot of lipstick. Lipstick cannot take away my spirituality. Lipstick won't make you happy. I'm not going to go after lipstick because I know that it won't make me happy. Lipstick is not going to solve all of my problems or I can't solve every problem by throwing lipstick at it. You think you're better than me because you have more lipstick? Or maybe I don't want a more lipstick because I don't want to think I'm better than you. What about, I'll be successful the day I have a million lipsticks? Or I'll really feel worthy when I hit my lipstick goal. My business is successful when I make lots of lipsticks. I know I've finally made it when I hit that lipstick goal.

(13:23):
Do you hear how ridiculous that is? I mean, I wonder if you can come up with some other ones. I would actually love to hear your lipsticks. Lipstick lies, let's call it lipstick lies. And it's can kind of be our inside joke. You can send me your lipstick lies and I'll know you're talking about money. But from now on, when you hear someone else say something like, "Money can't buy you happiness." Just go lipstick can't buy you happiness. And just for a second, pause and think how ridiculous that is, because who says it has anything to do with that? It has nothing to do with that. So where does all this bull shit come from? I asked myself that. Where did we get this burden that we carry with us? That money is so bad because, damn, I love it.

(14:26):
So where does money come from? I did a whole thing on this, I researched it. There's a documentary, I think it's on Netflix called Capitalism or Capital. Capital. Capital in the 21st Century. Maybe that's what it's called. Watch that. Watch that movie. I watched it maybe a year ago And it has stuck with me. I've even bought the book that it's based on. The book is called Capital by Thomas Piketty. I think that's how you say his surname. It's originally translated from French. And if you're not a big reader, don't get the book because it's the very like, you can kill someone with that book. Maybe get the audio book. But it's an enlightening read. But definitely start with the movie.

(15:17):
So I'm going to give you a little bit of a short history of where money comes from so you can see I did like, "Oh, this is why we've inherited all this nonsense." Okay. So way, way, way back in the day, mama and papa had their little block of land and they worked the land and the land provided them with everything they needed. Until they realized that Joe Blogs over there has pumpkins and we have chickens and we would really like some pumpkins so maybe we can go and trade our pumpkins for their chickens. And so people started trading their makings. They started trading whatever they were producing and there was no production line. It was just mama and papa and the kids. It's probably a lot of child labor, the kids and whatever they could create together. And that got traded.

(16:34):
But that didn't work very well for a long time. So money was invented to make it easier for people to trade things. And this was specifically in the context of farming. So I have a chicken and I want a pumpkin. We can decide that one chicken is worth two pumpkins and then we can trade. But what happens if I have chickens and you have pumpkins and I want a pumpkin, but you don't want chickens, you want a tractor? I don't have a tractor. I have chickens. I farm with chickens. Where are you going to get a tractor? You're not going to give me a pumpkin because I don't have tractor to trade? Plus a tractor is probably worth thousands of pumpkins. So what are we going to do? You're going to give me 1,000 pumpkins? You see the dilemma?

(17:24):
So money comes along and makes that process a lot easier and standardizes it. So if my chicken is worth 10 units of money and your pumpkin is worth five units of money, if I want a pumpkin, but you don't want a chicken, that makes it easy because I give you five units of money in exchange for the pumpkin and I've got my pumpkin and you've got money that you can then go and spend on your tractor. And now that we have money that we can trade for goods, we're discovering that we can also trade our labor in exchange for money.

(18:14):
So if I can help you do something, you can pay me. And that removes me, creates a degree of separation from my intimacy with that trading relationship. So now that I'm selling my intangible invisible value to you, my woman power, my muscle power or my help, my time, I have removed myself one degree of separation from the intimacy that I used to have with that agreed upon value exchange we had when it was chickens and pumpkins. Does that make sense? Do you understand that? It's labor and the trading of money in exchange for labor and the subsequent relationship that the person who labors has with the person who buys the labor, that removes the laborer from their intimacy with money and this was the invention of work.

(19:49):
And I believe today in 2022, we are only starting to scratch the surface on how broken work is. It's incredibly broken, but this starts the journey of men going out of the home. So mama and papa used to work on the farm, but now because papa is stronger than mama, papa can go out and sell his labor outside of the homestead or the farm. And mama stays home and does all the labor on the farm, takes care of the kids, but she doesn't get paid for it. And so that's the start of women doing unpaid labor in the house while men go out into the labor force and get paid for their labor.

(20:54):
And some of those lucky men build wealth. And some of those lucky men use their wealth to buy more land. And the more land they buy, the richer they become. And some of those men become landlords. And the landlord has power over the person who rents the land. And the landlord can evict the renter, the worker. And the landlord can fire the worker, the laborer. And the relationship between landlords and renters are established and the relationship between laborers and bosses are established. And the bosses and the landlords start increasing their wealth because of the increase in value of the capital that they have. The collective value of the land or the business that they own. Whereas the laborer can only sell more of their time, more of their energy, and they're always reliant on the goodwill of the landlord or the business owner.

(22:30):
And rich families start marrying their children to one another to strengthen their riches and keep the money circulating amongst themselves. And the rich gets richer, because the capital grows in value and they put their money together and the next generation is even richer because now they inherit mommy's family's money and daddy's family's money. But the money there really is only so much to go around and so scarcity is born. And scarcity is a real thing because when you're a laborer and you are reliant on a landlord and a boss for your income and the roof over your head and they get richer and richer, but you don't have the ability to work harder and harder, then you see the gap.

(23:38):
And it's okay to go, "Well hang on. If he's the have and I'm the have not, then something must be off here." And if there's poor relationships between landlords and people working the land or bosses and laborers, then it almost takes on this caricature negative picture of Scrooge. I think you can see that caricature in your mind. And that's where our beliefs about money come from because the landlord was the rich one, because the business owner was the rich one. And for centuries they were bad to their people and governments didn't protect them. And then it took on a whole nother dimension when the rich climbed into boats and traveled around the world and started taking land from people who never agreed to their value of money, who never agreed to surrender their land.

(25:02):
And so colonialism is born from greed to obtain more land and the natural riches of land that did not belong to these people. And out of that comes slavery. And slavery makes everything worse and worse and worse. And meanwhile, the ones who own the buildings and the banks and the businesses hoarded more and more. And the poor are stuck in the labor if they can find a job. And labor develops to what it is today where we clock into our nine to fives and we are so far removed from the value of what we bring to these businesses, to the companies, that we just keep clocking in and out, in and out, in and out. And we are all too grateful for our one or a 2% increase every year.

(26:18):
And among it all, we are all raised with a picture of the rich is bad, the greedy people who hoard money that is scarce and in short supply. And we start to rely on our jobs to provide us with stability, with money and with security, so long as we show up every day from nine to five. We completely lose touch with our relationship with money. We fall out of intimacy with money and instead we replace it with a steady paycheck in an exchange for showing up.

(27:02):
And enter the internet and entrepreneurship. And suddenly we all have a little device in our pockets that connects us with the world. We suddenly have a little device in our pockets that can take payment. And we are given this power without restoring our relationship to this invisible agreed upon value. The lipstick, the coin, the thing that we are given in exchange for value provided. Now money is no longer an actual thing. It's not a gold coin anymore, it's just numbers on a computer screen or on an Apple watch, if you've got one. Sure you need to balance it, but there is literally no limit to how much money can be generated today. There's literally no limit.

(28:13):
When you sell your ideas and you use the internet to reach millions of people to sell your ideas to, there is no limit as to how much of your ideas you can sell. As long as you can reach more people and you are skilled at getting them to agree that the information you sell is worth the money they give you in exchange, you're good. Money is back to just being money. The playing field is somewhat, not entirely, definitely not entirely, but the playing field is somewhat evened out. And for anyone in the middle class, the playing field is right open. Open for the taking. And I want to say, the playing field for the middle class is so open that we have to restore our relationship with money because we have a social responsibility to earn money and change the way that it gets distributed. Change the way that the half of the world's population who lives off of the 5% lowest amount of money can change that.

(29:59):
It is the job of us, the middle class, the middle class, and upper middle class, it is our job. It is our responsibility to restore our relationship with money because we are privileged to have devices in our pockets, to have our ideas in our heads, to be able to add value to millions of other people and create wealth beyond our dreams and change the way that wealth gets distributed in the world. Work made us forget that we are in relationship with money. Work told us that we earn money by working for a selected handful of owners of the workplaces who got to reap most of the benefits. And in mythology we only see those people represented as bad people.

(31:19):
But, today money may as well be lipstick. It has no meaning. Having it has no meaning and not having it has no meaning. Having money makes no one more worthy and not having money makes no one less worthy. We are all souls playing in a physical realm. We are not defined by the physical realm. The physical realm is just decorations. Ru Paul said, "We are all born naked and everything else is drag." Money is drag. Not having money is drag, having lots of it is drag. It's all bells and whistles. So why don't we all go and live in monasteries then and forget about money if it doesn't matter and it's not even a real thing? Because even the Dalai Lama's cloak has to be paid for by someone.

(32:40):
Because we are creative beings put here on earth to give expression to our creative desires, to make things and connect with each other, to serve each other and to see what our limits are. To taste things and grow from experiences. To build things together. Money does that. It gives us creative outlets for our talents and our desires. It lets us build things and play with what's possible. When you're an entrepreneur and you know how to create value from your own mind, you become unstoppable in how much money you can create. Money is what buys good healthcare when you need it. Money buys experiences. Money can buy beauty. It can buy fun. Money buys luxury and it buys comfort. Money solves problems. Problems like a burst tire on your car or something broke.

(34:01):
We need to heal our relationship with money. The wound is centuries old, but we can do it for the sake of our communities and for the sake of our children. My dear online course creator, listener, friend, I want to invite you on this journey with me to rediscover our intimacy with money again. To get back to loving money, irrespective of whether we have a little bit of it or a lot. I want to invite you to start loving money unconditionally and sit back and watch as money loves you back. Have a great day.

(35:03):
Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a thing.