She Built a Business After Being Stood Up Abroad with Ally Pintucci
What if the trip you keep waiting to take is exactly what you need?
We are all guilty of it. Waiting for the right timing, the right stage of life, the right circle of friends, while the months quietly pass and the vaca never leaves the group chat.
In this episode, we haveAlly Pintucci, founder ofThe Girls Trip Series, a community of 37,000-plus women built on small, curated trips for women who hate tours. After nearly a decade in travel sales and operations, a layoff at 23, and being stood up in Portugal, Ally landed in a surf town that changed everything and launched her first trip, which sold out in 24 hours. She joins us to talk about the real cost of running trips, where pricing meets integrity, and why you should stop waiting to go.
What does it actually cost to run a group trip? More than people assume. Between scouting a destination and running it, Ally can spend 10 to 15,000 dollars of her own money before a single traveler pays. The margin is not in packing people in, it is in the experience, which is why she keeps her groups small on purpose.
Where does pricing meet integrity in the travel world? Ally is candid that the industry is murky. Some influencers white-label a trip that costs 2,500 to run and resell it for 6,800. She prices to reflect real value and real community, not to become the biggest travel company in the room.
What money decisions do women forget when booking a trip? The ones that hit late: visas, vaccinations, currency conversion, and tipping the local team. Ally sets those expectations up front, often a year out, so there are no painful surprises at the destination.
Should you wait for friends before you travel? No. 99% of the women who come do not book with a friend, and they arrive just as nervous as you would. As Ally says, not all friends are compatible to travel, and time stops for no one.
00:00 An anxious start and nearly a decade in travel.
10:30 Everything happens for a reason.
13:00 The real cost of getting a trip off the ground.
19:00 The application form that turns people away.
32:30 Scouting a brand-new destination.
36:30 The money decisions women forget.
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Barbara Provost, EdD and Maggie Nielsen, MBA are the co-founders of Purse Strings, a national platform helping women make confident financial decisions by connecting them with vetted financial professionals who truly understand women’s lives and money needs. Purse Strings connects women across the U.S. with vetted financial professionals who specialize in supporting women through divorce, money transitions, and financial independence.
Full Episode Transcript
(This transcript was generated using AI, so please excuse any misspellings or errors)
PS: Ally (Girls Trip Series) MP3
[00:00:00] I don’t know about my listeners, but I am personally loving these conversations about travel. We’ve had conversations about solo travel. We’ve had them about having a travel planner. And this one I was just most excited about because there’s so many places in the world that I wanna go see, and it’s kinda like, I’m gonna be honest, I don’t wanna go alone.
I don’t wanna go alone. It’s not just like sitting out at a cafe. It’s really just exploring these towns. Whether this is in Egypt or it’s going, to a, a [00:00:30] desert or it’s going somewhere in India. I mean, Whatever it may be. It’s just something like sometimes you’re at a place and you’re like, “Wow, I’d really love to be here with a really good friend or a partner,” and something like that.
And making all those timelines work together can stop us from traveling, and I don’t like that. I don’t wanna wait on somebody else to hold me back. So I’m excited to share Ally with all of you guys today because she really sets up the Girls Trip series. And so a group of women can go on these amazing [00:01:00] trips that she curates to go see some different amazing parts of the world and really connect with other women who have that value of traveling, want to go now.
And even like we talk about in this podcast, sometimes if you could get all your friends or whoever it may be, on the timeline with the budget, the time off, the childcare taken care of, not all of your friends are friends you wanna travel with and that’s okay too. And so really having that community around you who wants to do those similar things is so important, especially when you’re [00:01:30] spending that money to go on a great vacation.
The last thing you wanna do is, just do things that you don’t wanna do after spending all that money. So I’m so excited to have Ally on for this conversation and would love to hear from you guys what kind of trips you have planned soon or where you would love to go or how this podcast resonates with you.
So we do have a new feature. If you look on our podcast show notes, there’s a way that you can send in a voice note. So if you wanna share what your thoughts are, what questions you might [00:02:00] have, what you wanna talk about we might feature some of those voice notes if you allow it on our podcast as well ’cause we would love to hear from the community.
So send in your notes after you listen and I will see you on the other side of the episode.
[00:02:30]
Maggie: Welcome to Women & Money, the sh*t we don’t talk about. I am so excited to have Ally Pintucci on today, and she runs many things, but what we’re gonna talk about today is the Girl Trip [00:03:00] series. So before we dive into all of that, Ally, can you share a little bit about who you are and what you do and kind of how you got to building this community specifically about women traveling together?
Ally: Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for having me on. I haven’t been on a podcast in a while, and I’m excited to feel like I’m back. This is gonna be a bit of a long-winded story, so bear with me, and I promise I’ll bring you back to how the Girls Trip series started. But going back to when I left high school, I was one of those people that wanted to do so many [00:03:30] different things, and it made me very anxious to choose one specific thing going into university, ’cause I was like, “What if I choose the wrong thing?”
Ally: And it was like international development and relations, and like physical therapy, and working with athletes, and marketing, and I’m like, “I genuinely don’t know how to pick.” So I decided to take a stereotypical eye roll gap year. And then just as I was about to book a trip, I got contacted from a student travel company that was based in Toronto at the time, and I was like, [00:04:00] “Well, this is kinda cool.
Ally: Like, what if I just worked for a year, and worked in travel, and Figure it out from there. That gap year turned into the first almost 10 years of my career. I ended up landing in the travel industry doing sales and operations for almost four companies, like three and a half companies. I had a couple contracts.
Ally: And it was incredible because never in a million years did I think that was the industry that I would land in. I think a lot of people [00:04:30] think like, “Oh, how can I work and travel?” And you think travel agent. And that’s not really anything I ever wanted to be at the time. But it was so cool because I got to live and work and travel and experience all of these incredible countries at such a young age.
Ally: And then on my time off or during my time off, I would also use that time to travel on my own. So from like 18 to 23, 24, I got to work in the travel industry, and I got to experience a lot of countries on my own. [00:05:00] And to be honest, towards the end of it, I realized I hated working in sales. I, you know, at a young age, got into a really cool role of being director of sales and operations, and when you’re 23, like, that’s pretty exciting.
Ally: But I got put into that role when I was very sick of being in sales. It was … And anyone who’s in sales knows that you’re chasing money in a cycle, and you can’t really leave because when you think, “Okay, I’m [00:05:30] gonna quit now,” well, then I don’t get my back end commission. And so you wait for your back end commission, and then you’re like, “Well, I just sold the front end of this, so if I wait for that,” and, you know, you’re in these cycles just constantly chasing money.
Ally: And I had been mentally checked out for, you know, a couple years at that point, and I got fired from my job. And at the time, you know, 23, it’s very devastating, and looking back at it now, it makes so much sense. But, you know, when you’re a director, you don’t [00:06:00] really have room for mediocrity. You have to lead and plan, and you can’t coast.
Ally: And I was kind of I guess at the time, if I’m being honest now and taking accountability I didn’t, my heart wasn’t fully in it. And that firing was probably one of the best things that happened to me. I was 23, living in a brand-new city across the country at the time, and I had to decide what I was going to do from there.
Ally: The side stories of when that was all happening was like, I call it the good old [00:06:30] days of Instagram. You know, when you could like post at 7:30 PM with three hashtags, and then boom, like you’d get like 3,000 likes. And I was new to Vancouver in the Pacific Northwest, and new to hiking, and spent so much time outdoors, and started a personal Instagram page that got a lot of traction.
Ally: And at the time, like there weren’t social media managers at companies. There were no such thing as influencers. You were just genuinely posting about doing things and building community, and like meeting [00:07:00] other people doing the same thing and having so much fun. So I guess, you know, at that time in 2013, 2014, I understood Instagram very well, and I moved into the creative industry and social media marketing industry. And I worked on freelance projects. I worked on brand teams. I was taking courses. And I did this whole shift of now working in the creative industry, and I loved it until I didn’t, and I realized that the common- denominator in a lot [00:07:30] of these things was maybe I don’t want a boss.
Maggie: Vibes. I get it. I hear you
Ally: And keep in mind, like now I’m 28, so like I’m still a baby. Now in the story 28, not 28 talking to you now, I wish. And so I left that industry. So I left the creative industry to to basically go freelance. After I worked in an agency, I was like, “Agency life was not for me.” But everything I had done at that point was such a massive stepping stone and a, a very important [00:08:00] part to who I am today and how I got here today, because I don’t think I could be here if I didn’t have sales.
Ally: I don’t think I could manage clients the way I did without working at an agency, and it helped me with pitching. Like, every single role that I had really became like an integral part of who I am today. So I started freelancing, and anyone listening to this that freelances knows, you’re like, “I’m gonna be my own boss.”
Ally: Congratulations, you now have 25 [00:08:30] bosses. And freelancing was amazing. I focused a lot on doing commercial photography, and I was very blessed and grateful to travel the world and work for incredible brands like Air Canada, and The Four Seasons, and tourism boards. And I also shoot a lot of portraits and brand photos here for like entrepreneurs, and lifestyle brands, and people who need content for website.
Ally: And so, All while freelancing, I was still traveling quite a bit, and I would always continue to post about my travel even though my page wasn’t very active [00:09:00] as like a quote-unquote “influencer page.” And back in 2023 I had been dating someone in Europe for a few years. At that point, I was doing like a cute long-distance relationship.
Ally: It did not end cute, by the way. Basically it ended up with me being stood up in Portugal at like two and a half years into my relationship, and I mean, it was super traumatic, but you’re right. I was in Portugal, and it happened very close to the beginning of my three months that I was spending there.
Ally: And I couldn’t leave [00:09:30] because I was, like, shooting something for the Four Seasons. I had a wedding, so I was kinda trapped, and I’m like, “Okay, what am I gonna do?” So I heard of this small surf town called Ericeira, and I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna go to Ericeira. I’m gonna just, like, hang out here, and while I’m in Ericeira for a few days, I’m going to plan a trip to Italy because, like, Italy’s gonna make everyone feel better.”
Ally: And I always wanted to learn how to surf, so I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna book a surf camp, and for three days, and then I’ll get the hell out of here.” And so I get to Ericeira. [00:10:00] Again, everyone raves about this town. And I get there and I’m like, “This place fucking sucks.”
Ally: And I think after realizing, you know, after a few days of being there, it, the place didn’t suck. It was just so quiet that I actually had to sit with everything going on in my life at the time. And the reality was I was going through a breakup. I was on the other side of the world. I was alone. A lot of things that I had been void- avoiding talking about in therapy [00:10:30] were coming up for me.
Ally: I wasn’t feeling fulfilled in my business, and it just kinda realized, “Okay, I’m at this crossroad, and now I’m in a very quiet place that’s very confronting, and now I have to feel it.” And I started connecting and working with an energy coach there that was recommended to me through a friend, and after my session with her, I felt like there was a weight lifted off of my chest, and I was sitting on my surfboard one day, and I’m looking at this coastline, and I’m like, from the water, I’m like, “This is [00:11:00] one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.”
Ally: And I’m like, “Wait, I love this place.” And my three days in Ericeira turned into five days, turned into seven days, turned into nine days. And as I was posting authentically about this experience, even though I had posted about hundreds of trips prior to this, the amount of women that started messaging me saying like, “I don’t know what it is that you’re doing on this trip, but I’m into it.
Ally: Can you share the details?” And back [00:11:30] in the original influencer days, I had an old blog called The Staycation Series, where I worked with clients to visit their tourism– like work with their tourism board to put together a staycation itinerary for people to experience here in BC. And then it spun off into the Girls Trip series, where I would go to cities and create like girls trips itineraries for people to do with their friends.
Ally: So my brain started like you know, swirling a little bit, and I was like… It was the first time in my life that I ever heard my intuition [00:12:00] say, “Go home.” And I didn’t go to Italy. I went home. I built a webpage, and I launched a 10-day trip back to Ericeira, Portugal, that was gonna take place a couple months later, and I was gonna call it the Girls Trip series.
Ally: It was going to be a series of trips that women could connect with like-minded women on and really just take time for themselves to experience travel in a different way than they– the different way that they haven’t experienced before, maybe that they were craving. [00:12:30] And so I just went for it. I launched it.
Ally: The trip sold out in 24 hours. That was September 2023, and we… And I say we, but it’s me. But it’s also we, ’cause like the girls that come on the trip, I– now I have women coming on their third, fourth trip with me. Yeah, I’ve done 11 trips so far. I have five upcoming. We’re– I’m launching so many more. And that was my 27-minute introduction of how I got to the Girls Trip series.
Ally: But [00:13:00] yeah, it has been the most fulfilling thing I have ever done, and it was just a very big lesson that everything does happen for a reason, and to really take advantage of the skill set that you have in front of you, because everything in your life, whether you realize it or not, really does play an important role for building your toolbox.
Maggie: There’s so much I wanna say to all of this.
Ally: I know. Sorry, I might derail this whole episode now.
Maggie: It’s okay. I mean, it’s just like clearly everything always happens for [00:13:30] a reason. And in that time we never know why, but it’s almost like thank you for firing me. Thank you for this not working out. And it’s funny how you still did all these different kind of categories of work without getting a degree or going back to school or all this stuff.
Maggie: You still were able to do all that and get to travel, which I feel like is every woman’s dream, especially while we’re younger, while we’re single. You know, it’s this newer thing of like, we’re not waiting until we’re 65 and retired. Like, I can’t learn how to surf then, you know? I’m gonna learn how to surf now when I’m physically capable, all these different things.
Maggie:[00:14:00] I also feel like I should go to an energy coach. I could really use that right now.
Ally: I can give you guys a plug for one that changed my life, but
Maggie: Yeah, I’m gonna need that name. Does she work?
Ally: She works virtually and she has containers for women from all over the world can work with her, and it’s fantastic.
Maggie: Yeah, when I came across your page and saw… Well, first let me throw it back and say I used to love the old Instagram days when things were so much simpler, and now it’s not the same. It’s just not the same. That’s all I have to say about it.
Ally: Yeah, it’s really not
Maggie: but there’s so much, I think, you [00:14:30] know, women, we are kind of afraid.
Maggie: Some of these places, you know, oh, it’s not safe to go as a single woman by yourself. You know, you wanna have these different things. We’ve had a couple other podcasters on share about how to do these solo trips and how to travel the world alone, which is fabulous. We’ve had travel planners so you can help and do some creative and unique things, and that’s what I was afraid you were gonna say about at your trip at first.
Maggie: It was just like an Instagram famous place, and that’s why it wasn’t as exciting. But it’s amazing to have these other women to connect with because sometimes, like, your friends don’t either have the budget, have the [00:15:00] time, they have kids. You know, like, we’re all in different stages of life, and so it is that commonality to really pull together, which is exciting.
Maggie: I saw your trip about Egypt and I was, like, checking my budget to see how I get on that one. But so you’ve now built this community that’s, you know, over 37,000 followers on socials. But I just kinda wanna talk behind the scenes. You got this calling to go home and to kind of start building this.
Maggie: What did it kind of cost you, like financially, logistically, emotionally to get this off the ground?
Ally:[00:15:30] Yeah. Well, the one thing I think that sparked it all, also just to note, is I built something for me. And I don’t mean for me to make money. I don’t mean to fulfill me. I built something for me, Ally, the consumer, the traveler. And I think going into that with that mindset really helped with problem-solving to understand who I [00:16:00] was actually looking for and who I was building for.
Ally: And I think that really helped me make decisions early on. Financially It’s different for every trip, ’cause at the beginning I, I looked at doing it, what is the least risk possible? So I look at accommodation first. I have to build my trip out of like, what’s it gonna be for the net cost per person to run this trip? And I have to look at things where it’s like, how do I do this in the [00:16:30] least risk possible?
Ally: Okay, I’m gonna find a hotel that it can allow me to make a reservation where I don’t have to pay until I get there. So right away now I’m putting something on hold, but I’m not spending $17,000 to hold that in case that trip doesn’t run. So for me at the beginning as this, that first trial trip, my upfront cost was actually quite low.
Ally: If anything minimal, because I built my website myself, I did my branding myself. I didn’t [00:17:00] actually have to hire anyone until it came to the actual trip of like, who are the suppliers that I wanted to hire to be a part of the trip that would feel like family and really make that trip very special.
Ally: And that’s an integral part of every trip that we run, and we can talk about that later. But things that you definitely have to look into is like, aside from what the net cost is per person and how much you as a business want to make, there’s a fine line of like making money and being in integrity.
Ally: I know that this industry is very murky. I see a lot of [00:17:30] influencers running influencer trips where they’re just white labeling an existing trip that costs, let’s say, 2500 USD to run, and then they’ll put their price of 6800 USD. And they can do whatever they want and that’s fine. I mean, is it? But,
Maggie: That’s a different conversation
Ally: That’s a different conversation. But no, for me it was like I didn’t have to put a lot of investment in at the beginning, but I did look into when building on top of my net price, what my cost would be to actually be there to run the trip. So if I’m there for two weeks, [00:18:00] outside from my flight, what are my food expenses?
Ally: What are additional expenses that I have to take on? If I’m there for two weeks and I’m literally on running this trip, well, I’m not working with any clients back home. I can’t take on any photo shoot gigs because I’m a commercial photographer on the side of this, or I should say simultaneously. So it just came down to, as any freelancer would kind of quote their business and their time, what is the cost of my time to be there?
Ally: And also where does that meet integrity, [00:18:30] where I feel like I’m charging a very fair price because I want people to actually see the value in traveling with me and build a community out of this. And this might sound like make me a horrible business person. I’m not looking to be the largest female travel company in the world.
Ally: I’m not. I set out with a mission and that was to build community and offer experiences to women and, yeah, trying to have fun doing it
Maggie: And there’s a point where it’s like, well, really in life I kinda wanna travel, and so if I get to [00:19:00] travel and make some money and, you know, pay my rent I feel pretty satisfied, you know? Do you feel like you’re still a, a traveler when you’re hosting these, or do you feel like I’m really on and this is, like, a lot of work?
Maggie: I mean, I know we enjoy our work, but Cause I know, like, hosting an event, they’re fun, but, like, events by the end I just need to, like, lay down and breathe, you know? And so I can see how it is not as just relaxing as maybe, like, oh, well Ally, you get to go on the trip. It’s like, yes, [00:19:30] and you know, I’m taking care of everyone, I’m making sure every, all I’s are dotted, T’s are crossed, all the things, so it can be exhausting as well
Ally: Totally. I think You nailed it in the sense where when you’re hosting something, you are always on. So like energetically, when that trip leaves Some- I will even go as far as to say sometimes I’m, like, depleted energetically. And, but at the same time, I’m so overwhelmed with, like, happiness and gratitude because the women [00:20:00] that come on these trips are unbelievable.
Ally: But you’re always… Like, we joke because I feel like when I come on the trip, I participate as a traveler because I never wanted to be like, “I’m your tour guide.”
Maggie: Right. Follow my flag
Ally: yeah, like we’re anti-tour. Like, my brand statement is, like, small curated experiences for women who hate tours. So I’m not like, “Hey, I’m your tour guide.
Ally: I’m the boss.” I try and simultaneously put myself as a traveler where I’m connecting with all of the [00:20:30] women and participating in everything I possibly can, while also making it very known, “Hey I’m here working. I’m here to serve you. I’m here to make this the absolute best experience I can for you.
Ally: So whatever you need and however I can do that on top of what’s laid out, you just let me know.” So yeah. Is it a dream? Absolutely. Am, am I tired after the trip when you’re just like, “Okay, now I have a chance to, like, breathe?” Yeah, because, like, you’re always the first one up. You’re the last one to go to bed.
Ally: You’re checking on it. And I become such good friends with the women [00:21:00] that come on each of the trips, and they always jo- I have this, like, joke where I’m like, “Are you guys mad at me?” Like, when I can see everyone’s, like, tired, I’m like, “Are you guys mad? We have, like, a long drive today.” And they’re like, “No.”
Ally: But everyone that’s come on the trip’s been amazing. And I think, too, having an application form is such an important part just to ensure the right women are coming on this trip. And speaking about money, travel is a massive investment. So, like, forget my business. Again, it’s like me, let’s put my consumer hat on.
Ally:[00:21:30]It is such an investment to decide to take a trip. And so it is… You need to make a decision on, like, am I choosing the best trip and the best experience for me? And I know I’m offering something and creating something that’s very different from a lot of other experiences out there. So I don’t wanna take someone and essentially take their money if I don’t think, like, energetically they’re gonna be a good fit for this type of travel.
Ally: That doesn’t mean, like, sign up this form. I wanna, like, see your Instagram and make sure you’re cool. Like, we don’t, I don’t run [00:22:00] influencer trips. It’s just, like, I look for the people that have traveled really well solo. And we talked about solo travel a little bit at the beginning. But when you’re younger, solo travel was so much fun because you would just meet people in hostels, and you would go to bars, and we’re not staying in hostels anymore.
Ally: Like, at least I’m not. I’m not as social as I used to be, and I’ve built something for women, I, I say, like, 30-somethings to 50-ish because it is energetic. But I want the girls that, like, when I [00:22:30] go on solo trips now, I’m kinda sad. Like, I wanna go to nicer places, and, like, I’m not meeting people the same way.
Ally: And I’m, like, experiencing these beautiful things wishing that I was experiencing it- Like, doing it with other people. So to find those women that are also, like, very self-sufficient and enjoy free time and want the ability to kinda wander off, but always knowing that, like, the activities we do are very intentional and, like, knowing that there’s always someone to have, like, dinner and drinks with or coffee with.
Ally: Like, that’s really special. Whereas, like, other travelers might [00:23:00] want, like, a crazy strict itinerary, a bit more hand-holding guidance, and that’s okay. But I wanna make sure that, like, you’re investing in the, the travel that’s going to change your life versus just taking anyone’s money
Maggie: And that’s what drew me in too. It’s like, it’s not all these tours, but it’s also not like, yeah, this full agenda. And as much as I love group things, like I need that introvert time to just be me, do me whether that’s just like walking by myself or whatever. So it’s not like you have to be with a group for 11 days straight.
Maggie: Like, absolutely [00:23:30] not. You don’t want me with a group for 11 days straight. Like, that’s not gonna happen. And so like, yeah, and you mentioned it is a big financial thing. So for women listening who wanna say yes but keep talking themselves out of it, what’s typically stopping them and what do you tell them?
Maggie: Do you find that’s usually like the money aspect, or is it more of like a, a fear or tell us what you get from the community. Yeah
Ally: I think a fear when you see a price tag is always scary. Like, let’s keep it real. Even if you weren’t coming on a trip with me and you wanted to [00:24:00] have a Euro summer, you’re spending thousands of dollars. It is a luxury and a privilege to be able to travel these days, so let’s just be transparent and, like, acknowledge that.
Ally: So is the price tag a, an issue or a hurdle or a, a sticker shock for some people? Absolutely. It’s gonna be with a lot of trips. So I think, like, one, finding something, knowing your budget for travel and finding something that’s going to fulfill you in that budget. Anything is possible. [00:24:30] And I’m taking off my girls trip series hat, and I’m coming to you from, like, a travel planner now, ’cause I, I have so many people come to me, men and women, families, corporate, and they’re like, “Hey, we wanna do a safari,” or like, “We wanna go to Europe.”
Ally: I can plan individual trips for people, and that’s the first thing. What’s your top? Like, what’s your line?
Maggie: Because it all adds up, those little things. I mean, I think about like, ” Oh, we got the flight and the hotels.” I’m like, great, that’s… Yeah, it’s a good chunk of it, but like all those excursions, all those meals, all the wine, all the [00:25:00] everything
Ally: I’m assuming majority of your listeners are American. I’m Canadian. I don’t know if you guys have ever converted to the Canadian dollar, but you, when you convert to the Canadian dollars you must be like, “Oh my God, that’s so cheap.”
Maggie: That’s exactly what I did when I looked at that on that trip. I was like, “Oh, 6,000 Canadian, that’s 4,700
Ally: Hair flip. Yeah. I need to find more Americans and Europeans to come on our trips because I– that was a [00:25:30] big thing for me when doing my girls trips.
Ally: Again, put on my consumer hat. As a Canadian, I cannot stand looking at like, “Oh, I’m gonna work with this coach. I’m gonna go to this retreat. It’s in USD. It’s 5,000 USD.” Great, that’s 8,500 Canadian. I’m out. So for me, I’m like, I’m gonna always price myself in Canadian, even if I have to pay suppliers in euros, in Moroccan dirhams, in USD.
Ally: I take all my pricing, and it’s usually USD around the world. [00:26:00] I take all my pricing, I put it together, I convert it to Canadian, and then I work in Canadian dollars. So yeah, pricing was like a big… I think like, I mean, it could be a hurdle for people, absolutely. It’s travel. Think another thing is like, yeah, how am I gonna…
Ally: Like, what’s the group gonna be like? How am I gonna be on this group? This is scary. What are the what are they like? What if we don’t get along? Girls always think too like, “Oh, girls trips, like they’re, it’s dramatic. Girls are gonna fight.” [00:26:30] And when I built this, I’m like, I wanna take the best parts on girls trips and put it into one.
Ally: Because when you talk about let’s go like to the drama of girls trips, well, let’s go to the root of that. Not all friends are compatible to travel And that’s not, like, a bad thing to say. That’s not subject to just women. That’s literally everyone. Not all friends are compatible to travel. I have friends that I would consider some of my best friends.
Ally: I love you. I’m not going on [00:27:00] a trip with you. I’m not doing it. We do completely different things. You’re gonna get mad at me if I don’t wanna do everything with you, and I’m telling you right now, if I’m spending $8,000 to go to Mexico, I’m not sitting on a resort. I’m renting a car. I’m driving around. I want to experience where I’m going.
Ally: So I think, you know, when people look at like, “Oh my God, what’s it gonna be like traveling with 12 other women? This must be the worst,” again, that’s why we have the application form. [00:27:30] 99% of women that come on this trip do not book with a friend, and they’re coming in feeling the exact same way that you are, scared sh*tless.
Ally: But I’ve tailored the application form to turn people away, if that makes sense. If you’re getting anxiety answering these questions of like, what would you do in situation X, awesome. Don’t come. There’s so many other tour companies out there that I think would be better suited to you, and I want you to be happy.
Ally: So yeah, I would say the [00:28:00] hurdle for people would definitely, one, be like, what is the price tag, and two, what am I getting myself into by signing up for a trip in like Morocco with 15
Maggie: And I think, you know, when you know somebody right away, you can’t start a fight with them that much. Like, what is there to fight about, right? But you all are all coming from this like, “I don’t know. Let’s see. I wanna have the best trip I can.” And so if everyone’s coming like, “I wanna make the best out of it,” it seems like all boats then will go in the same direction of just trying to make the [00:28:30] best, wanna have a good time, wanna travel and explore.
Maggie: I mean, it is pulling those like-mindedness together,
Ally: Yeah. And like when you’re on a safari in the Serengeti, how are you having a bad time? You’re experiencing very wow moments. You’re bonding people. And let me tell you, like I think at the beginning you asked something, you asked a question, something about like how grateful do I feel that this is my job or I was gonna say something at the time.
Ally: Like I’ve been traveling [00:29:00] for work, for pleasure for more than 50% of my life. And I have, like my first trip I ever did solo, I was 18. I bush camped in six countries in Southern Africa. And that, like we had a truck, and then our hotels at night were like the side of the road. We would put our tents up. And I was 18 or 19 when I did that trip.
Ally: That trip changed my life. That was the trip where I’m like, “Yeah, [00:29:30] I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life.” And being able to share so many of those moments with other people, like it’s incredible. The downside of it, and I try and like pinch myself a little bit to be like, “Hey, snap, like change your mindset.”
Ally: Do you remember how excited you were when you, like, went on your first solo trip or your first big trip, and like a week before you’re like, “Should I start packing?” And then you’re so excited to go to the airport, and everything is wowing you because you’re seeing [00:30:00] something for the first time. That novelty, sadly, I catch myself wearing off.
Ally: And I hate that. I hate that I catch myself, like, not being, like, blown away sometimes, and I’m like, “No, you have to reel that back in,” because that is the magic of being out there. So going… Like, putting together these trips for women I feel like has energized me, because to see those moments, going back to, like, what you said of, like, we don’t wanna wait for [00:30:30] other people to travel anymore.
Ally: And women are coming on these trips single, women are coming on these trips married, in committed relationships. Women are coming on these trips as moms. I’m telling you, the 30-somethings to 50-ish, it is the best group because you’re either going through something in your life that someone is simultaneously going through it with you, they’ve either just gone through it, or they went through it 15 years ago, and let me tell you, they have some advice for you.
Ally: And when you’re pulling together this [00:31:00] magical age range of women, and some people are like, “Well, how are you excluding everyone?” It’s like, I’m not excluding. There’s trips for 18 to 30s. There’s trips for seniors. It is actually okay to offer someone something exactly, like, that they’re looking for, that I felt was missing.
Ally: And to get this magical group of women together in, in such an important age, yeah, are we seeing incredible things? For sure. But, like, the bonding’s happening when people are in the kitchen at night, like, drinking wine. [00:31:30] Or when, like, the three girls that are up super early in the morning are having their morning coffee together in Portugal, like, sitting in the Atlantic, like at, looking at the sun come over the Atlantic Ocean.
Ally: Or when we’re in the middle of the fucking Sahara Desert, and, like, we’re in luxury tents in this, like, glamping thing, and there’s, like, these soaring dunes around you, and people are just, like, crying because they’re just like, “Where the fuck am I?” And we hit this age group, [00:32:00] and you said it yourself people are moms, people have careers, people are freelancing, people can’t.
Ally: PTO, vacation time, children. How do you get your friends together to do these adventures?
Maggie: Much less all those friends that you could travel with, you know? Then it just keeps getting smaller.
Ally: Totally. So that’s exactly what it is. You’ve hit this point in your life where you’re it’s… No, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I think it’s more common than not for women to be like, “I don’t [00:32:30] have the friends that wanna do this.”
Ally: And even if you do, then you’re getting into, again, time of year, budget, can’t get the… It’s like there’s memes about it. Can’t get the trip out of the group chat. That is, is so common. Or like for me, you know, I just came out of a relationship. Like, I loved my boyfriend, my ex-partner to death, but like, we couldn’t get experiences together.
Ally: And like, that was such a big thing for me, is like I still want to experience things and I’m not [00:33:00] gonna not go. Why, I’m just gonna not experience my life because like I can’t find someone else to go with? And so like, fuck it, we’re going. I’m gonna plan the trip for us and I’m gonna find the girls that are like, “Yeah, I don’t wanna wait anymore.
Ally: I do wanna do this. I’m not getting any younger.” Time literally stops for no one. Okay, I’m gonna go on the trip. And so my trips kind of have transformed. They were very like loosey-goosey at the beginning in terms of like flow of the trip. Lot, not a lot of [00:33:30] structure. As the trips became a bit more bucket list, they became…
Ally: I don’t like to call them tours, ’cause I was like anti-tours, but I call them my more structured trips. So like those are the overland trips when you’re going through Egypt or Morocco or like I’m about to launch a Sri Lanka Maldives trip
Maggie: I need a tour if I’m going through Egypt. I can’t lead myself through the dunes.
Ally: But we can like make it a cool like a cool tour, you know? But yeah, I call them my structured trips. And strangely enough, but not so strangely, those are the ones that have been the absolute [00:34:00] bestsellers. And because they are at a higher price point, I just launch them earlier in advance and give women the opportunity to do a payment plan to make it more accessible, and launch it without, “Hey, we’re going to the Maldives in three months.”
Ally: It’s like, “No, we’re gonna go next year. So take the year to save and pay it off.”
Maggie: Yeah. And I mean, you’re also paying for, like, you to curate the whole trip and plan the whole trip. I mean, that’s half the battle, right? And so having someone do that, do the research, do the stuff for you, I mean,
Ally: And people don’t realize what it costs for [00:34:30] me to run these trips. We touched on it a little bit, but like, yeah, it’s fine when I’m running them in a, in Portugal or my costs are pretty low. I have a flight and, like, my time and my you know, spending while I’m there. But, like, let’s look at developing a new destination.
Ally: Okay. Well, I launched a Tanzania trip two months ago. At the end, prior to me going, I went to Tanzania
Maggie: Oh, so do you always go before you host a trip?
Ally: Usually, so at the beginning, all of these trips [00:35:00] were based off of my favorite solo travel experiences. So I knew a destination really well. But I can only do the same trip so much.
Ally: And there are some trips that, like, I’m not going to be… Like, respectfully, I’m not gonna be like a white girl taking a bunch of girls to Morocco being like, “I’m the expert.” I’m not. What makes my trips so special is the local team that I hire that become our family. Like, we call… it’s all, I try and hire women where I can, but for the most part, when I’m abroad, a lot of these, in some of these countries the teams are men.
Ally:[00:35:30] And like, I call them, we call them our trip dads. And like, when I talk about Yusuf in Morocco, I, he feels like family to me. And like the best part about Morocco is like Yusuf showing us his home. And we’re, us getting to see a different part of Morocco that you wouldn’t see if you were just flying to Marrakech and like taking a bus to the Agafay desert to ATV.
Ally: Great. If you have seven days and that’s all you can do, fine. But like the magic is like meeting a local family and going to a market with them and cooking dinner in their home. And [00:36:00] you know, hearing stories that, you know, from locals when we’re doing experiences and not booking through like a third-party DMC that like has their office in London, England.
Ally: So when I talk about the cost of running these trips, I had been to Tanzania before, but I also can’t just go to these trips and open a business there. Like there’s visas, you have to, like I have to hire a local company. So it’s like who is that company? And what are they about? And who am I supporting?
Ally: And I wanna make sure I’m [00:36:30] grassroots and as local as possible when I’m building these trips. So I got contacted by a guy who owns a safari company in Tanzania, and he was absolutely incredible. And he’s young as well, and he’s out there doing what I’m trying to do and build an incredible business.
Ally: And yeah, I went over to… we spent time on Zoom and built this incredible trip together and then he was like, “Okay, I’ll host you. Come, come run through the itinerary. We’ll we’ll make sure it’s good.” But like it still cost [00:37:00] me 6,000 to fly there. It still was two weeks that I couldn’t work and take on photo shoots.
Ally: It was still all my spending money while I was there. So let’s say that trip cost me $8,500. That’s $8,500 before that trip even runs next year. So that comes out of your profit. And like not to mention it’s gonna cost me another 5,000 to like fly back out there. So just for that trip alone people are like, “Oh, you must make so much money.”
Ally: Well [00:37:30] no, I’m gonna spend between the scouting and running it 10 to $15,000 just my expenses. So it’s not like… Trust me, if I was a millionaire doing these trips
Maggie: Life
Ally: wouldn’t be selling for what they’re selling.
Maggie: And you keep them small, which is great, but some of those prices can only be divided so far between, you know, it’s not being divided between 45 people. Thank God, ’cause I wouldn’t wanna come with 45 people.
Ally: You… when you see [00:38:00] these other tour groups where it’s like, “Yeah, you’ll be with 25 to 30 people,” it’s like, well, that’s why you’re making money because your money is in the volume. And same with the trips, the other travel companies that I worked with.
Ally: All of our money came through volume. And again, there’s nothing wrong with it, but I just didn’t wanna be what was already out there
Maggie: Yeah. No, that makes a ton of sense. Putting on more of your, like, consumer hat, when women come to these trips that you plan, are there, like, financial decisions most of them are not thinking about until it’s too late? Do you find [00:38:30] anything similar come up there?
Ally: Yes and no. I think I try and get ahead of that where because they are booking a year in advance, I kinda just say like, “Here’s what to expect. Here’s when…” You know, if you’re booking, for example, our Tanzania trip for 2027, travels end of May 2027. I launched it two months ago, so they have one full year until departure.
Ally: That’s a really long time. So the benefit to it is if you don’t wanna pay in full, that’s great. There’s a payment plan that allows them to [00:39:00] slowly pay their trip off. And then I kinda just say, “Here are other things you can expect while you’re on the trip. You know, this trip is great because you have your room and board included.
Ally: You’re really not spending a lot of money on the ground there unless you’re gonna add an extra excursion,” and I can list those out for them in advance, so they’re like, “Okay, I wanna do that.” If they don’t book an upgraded photo package, but, like, I’m a photographer, so that’s amazing thing is that I can offer photos to the women on the trip.
Ally: If they don’t wanna book a full upgraded package, I’m like, “Okay, if last minute you [00:39:30] wanna book a photo package as, like, memories, this is what it will cost you.” Other things, you’re gonna need to do a visa. You’re gonna probably have to go to a travel clinic to get your shots. You know, I recommend setting aside 20 to 30 US dollar per day, and if you’re there for nine days, that’s 30 times nine.
Ally: Like, that should be your tip that you’re giving at the end. Not to me. I never take tips from any of my travelers. That’s to, like, the local team. And your driver’s with you literally 24/7. Unless you’re at the lodge, like, [00:40:00] they’re just taking care of you, and our driver and our guide, I couldn’t imagine our trip without him.
Ally: Again, these people become family to us, so that’s what I… I try and list everything that I can in advance so there’s no surprises last minute where women are like, “Oh, fuck I shouldn’t have…” You know? And that’s, that is a big thing. You spend so much money when doing any trip that you think, “Okay, so many of my costs are up front,” which they are.
Ally: But, like, again, what are you what’s the cur- currency conversion for [00:40:30] you? How much are you gonna wanna spend? What activities are you doing when you get there? Are you a partier? Are you a drinker? Are you… Again, these are to generic to all travels, not just my trip. What excursions are you gonna do?
Ally: Do you like to shop? Like, these are all kind of things that are like, what am I going to want to do when I travel, and how much should I set as- should I be setting aside for that as well?
Maggie: Yeah, I think all those great things are, yeah, they’re easy to forget and then later, yeah, you need that cash, which none of it [00:41:00] adds up to as much as you probably paid for the trip. But like those people who you are with every day, who are the boots on the ground people, I mean, those are the ones you want to ensure that you’re tipping, that, you know, are really seen and valued.
Maggie: I mean, yeah, the flight’s the flight and it’s the cost of the flight, but like these people who you’re with who are making and breaking your trip, like you want to make sure that they feel seen as well, which is really important. And then, yeah, those visas, which is a great thing about you booking those out a bit more in advance is that time to file for those visas, passports, shots, all those things, [00:41:30] because not every place is just like going to Portugal for 10 days or something where it’s not as necessary, and changing political climates, you never know what you’ll need these days, so just kinda being prepared there.
Maggie: Before we ask our final question, do you wanna share like some trips that you have coming up that maybe people in our community can join or where they can learn more about it?
Ally: Yeah. So again, the company is called The Girls Trip Series, and I’m sure you’ll link all of the stuff for people to follow. I won’t spell it out. But yeah, for [00:42:00] 2026, for the rest of this year aside from Egypt, all of our trips are sold out, which is sad for new listeners, but also exciting for me. So if you do have some time and you wanna travel at the end of November this year, we have two spots available for Egypt.
Ally: And then in 2027, I’m going to be launching a bunch of new trips. So all of our current 2027 trips are sold out, but at the end of September, I’m gonna be launching a Sri Lanka Maldives experience, which I’m very excited for because Sri Lanka [00:42:30] is just a beautiful country with so much to offer from small surf towns and incredible coastline to safaris to see elephants and leopards to, like, tea farms and misty mountains and train rides and incredible food and people.
Ally: It’s such an amazing destination, and the fact that it’s only an hour-and-a-half flight from the Maldives, I think, like, most women listening probably think, like… I know it’s the same. Like, Maldives to me is, like, romantic, so unless I’m going on some, like, honeymoon with a cute boy, like, probably not ever gonna go.
Ally:[00:43:00] And again, same mentality. I’ll plan it for us. The girls are going to the Maldives. So that’s actually gonna launch at the end of September, early October for 2027, if women are interested in learning more about that. And then we’ll also probably relaunch trips for, like, the gorilla… hiking to see the gorillas, another Morocco adventure.
Ally: Yeah, there’s so much coming up in the pipeline, and I just kind of, like, post as we go. So if you check out our Instagram, and obviously the link in our bio will kinda show what’s available and what’s coming [00:43:30] up.
Maggie: Yeah I love going through your Instagram. I mean, of course it helps that you’re a photographer, but everything is so great and just like, I’m like, “Oh, wow, these trips just look fabulous.” So Ally, there is a question we like to ask all of our guests on here, and with all of your experience from your different jobs, traveling the world, what does financial freedom look like to you?
Ally: You know, that’s a really hard question because I feel like that answer evolves so much over time. And I think when I was younger, I’m like, “I wanna be rich enough to do anything.” But I think [00:44:00] the older I get, it means freedom. And I think I like the answer freedom because freedom can mean something completely different to anybody.
Ally: And, you know, freedom could be like, I’d love to pay all my bills and not feel, like, strapped about it. I’d love to, like, be able to pick up the dinner tab for my girlfriends when we’re out and not sweat about it. I’d like to be able to take a few days off and, like, do a trip when I want to be able to do a trip.
Ally: And [00:44:30] yeah, so I think for me, like, financial, like, being able to breathe, you know, and not feel stressed when making decisions in my wallet
Maggie: I love it. I love it. Well, I thank you for coming on, sharing your expertise, making this amazing community so the girls can get out there and get traveling. I hope to see you on one of your trips soon. And until next time, be financially fearless.
You spent your whole career building someone else’s brand. What happens when the title, the salary, and the identity get taken away overnight?
In this episode, we have Jess Lane, founder of The Full Cup Co., the career design company for the future of work. After twenty years in marketing and advertising for names like Procter and Gamble, Porsche, and The RealReal, Jess was laid off at forty in a mass reduction and applied to 496 jobs before deciding to build something no employer could take away. She joins us to talk about designing your next chapter, future-proofing your career in the age of AI, and why your worth was never tied to that spreadsheet.
Is the 9-to-5 really going away? It is changing fast. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has said the 9-to-5 could be extinct within a decade. The takeaway is not panic, it is that work is being redefined, and there are real ways to future-proof yourself for what comes next.
How do you future-proof your career against AI? Lean into what is most human. Strategy, intuition, creativity, and human storytelling are becoming the most valuable skills. Use AI as a tool, but do not try to sound like it. The more human you are, the harder you are to replace.
What is career design, and how is it different from a side hustle? Career design starts with your unique blueprint, your motivators of autonomy, connectedness, and competence, then builds a sustainable path around your life. A side hustle is usually just extra income without that foundation. As Jess puts it, side hustles are often “hustley,” while career design builds the career meant for you.
How do you financially prepare to leave a stable job? Do not leap and hope. Leaping is not a strategy, an exit plan is. Look at ROI and risk differently, turn the unknowns into knowns, and build a plan with real timelines and numbers. Investing in yourself is what makes the leap sustainable instead of scary.
Ready to design your next chapter? Join us for the next Money Talks. Click here to registerfor FREE and bring your questions!
Have questions? Click this to check out our expert Q&A for tips from industry experts, tailored to help women address their most common financial concerns.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive financial tips delivered weekly here!
Barbara Provost, EdD and Maggie Nielsen, MBA are the co-founders of Purse Strings, a national platform helping women make confident financial decisions by connecting them with vetted financial professionals who truly understand women’s lives and money needs. Purse Strings connects women across the U.S. with vetted financial professionals who specialize in supporting women through divorce, money transitions, and financial independence.
Full Episode Transcript
(This transcript was generated using AI, so please excuse any misspellings or errors)
[00:00:00] So when I got out of school, or maybe I was still in school, and they tell you to do these like informational job interviews with people, and I talked to this neighbor who I knew worked at one of the Big Four. I think it’s a Big Four. And I was like, I knew this place had like intense job interviews, all this stuff.
And this man was like, “Oh when I went to school, they just gave my resume to this company. The company called [00:00:30] me, hired me, and I haven’t been anywhere else since. So I don’t have an updated resume, and I honestly don’t think I could get the job now if I had to go through the interview process that they have right now.
But I would recommend you just apply.” And I don’t know if it was ’cause he was just an older white man or what, but I was like, “This is insane.” Because now it was like a five-part interview, and this man has been [00:01:00] at this job forever. And I knew then that times were changing. And I’m still just astounded.
I think about him more than I should. But all that to say, times are changing. We don’t have to be loyal to these companies forever because we know we can be fired in a matter of minutes. Just let go because of downsizing, AI, all these different things. And so we wanna be prepared for that next step.
And that’s not hoping for the worst, but it’s planning for what’s next and what fits [00:01:30] our life and what we wanna do. And so I am so excited to have Jess on today as she helps people build this plan for the next step, whether that’s, preparing to leave a company, maybe start a new company, find a job that resonates more, whatever it may be.
But we know nine-to-fives are not as secure as they used to be. We don’t stay at these companies until we die anymore. And so it’s really having that next step, especially if you’re in that mid-career, like 40 to 60. So I think this is gonna be a really exciting [00:02:00] episode, and she’s full of facts and stats and all of that good stuff, which we love.
So tune in, and I can’t wait for you guys to meet Jess.
[00:02:30]
Maggie: Jess, welcome to Women and Money: The Sh*t We Don’t Talk About. And today we are gonna be talking about some sh*t I don’t think we’ve talked about before. So before we dive into all that fun, can you share with our audience who you are, what you do, and what led you to build The Full Cup Co.?
Jess: thank you for having me. My name is Jess Lane. I’m [00:03:00] founder of The Full Cup Co. I call it the career design company for the future of work, and I work with executives who are ready to design their next chapter. So I have a program called the Strategic Executive Exit. That’s a ninety-day program, and basically that is both your landing and your launch pad to design your future of work, and we look at all of your different options, including what’s possible for you outside of a nine-to-five.
Jess: And then I also have a smaller ninety-minute sprint version of that called the Career Design Clarity Session. But all are based in my framework, which is the Full [00:03:30] Cup Method. And that really sits at the intersection of my work of psychology and my marketing background. So the CliffsNotes on how I arrived here are really, I had twenty years in marketing and advertising, and I went from big to small.
Jess: So I started off on Procter & Gamble, Porsche, MillerCoors, and then I went to The RealReal, where we went IPO. The last company I worked for, we reached billion-dollar unicorn status. I led the brand launch for that, and then I was laid off in late 2022 in a mass reduction. So I really rode the high highs and the low [00:04:00] lows, especially at the end with tech.
Jess: I was forty when I got laid off, so between our reflective moments as we get, into that generativity versus stagnation stage, just as humans and human development, plus the market being what it was, I’d applied to four hundred and ninety-six jobs, yeah, when I was let go. And so I was noticing the trends and the data, which I had done for my whole career on behalf of other products, and I was just making the product myself, and I was [00:04:30] looking around and thinking, “Wow, the market has really changed.”
Jess: So I decided personally to get my master’s degree in psychology. It was a life bucket list item for me. And then I founded The Full Cup Co. And like I said, my work is really grounded in the intersection of my background of psychology and marketing to help design that framework to help people design their next chapters.
Maggie: I love it. Yeah, there’s so much to dive into here. I am still, like, just stuck on you applying to all those jobs. I mean, I know even when I got out of school, I, like, went back to the career [00:05:00] company. I think I told you this before, and I was like so I applied to like 100 jobs and didn’t get any yet.”
Maggie: She’s like, “That’s a great start.” And I was like, ” Oh,
Maggie: okay.
Maggie: Not the answer I thought you were gonna give me.” So whoever’s looking for a job out there, keep your head up
Jess: Yeah, well, I think it’s because those numbers look so different than they used to. Yeah. You know? And especially from how our, we grew up just seeing our parents and all of the things, you know? So it’s just it’s the t- change is happening at this sort of like [00:05:30] expedited speed, if you will
Maggie: Right. And so I wanna dive into all of this. So you’ve built, like you said, at the highest levels, Fortune 500, IPO, unicorn companies. What was that moment that you realized that the traditional career path was not gonna be enough for you? Or is that kinda when you were let go and then you’re like, “Wait a minute”?
Jess: I always think everything’s sort of a combination of factors, and I think we’re at this unique moment in time, which it is, and I think everything’s related, which I know you and I have had separate exchanges on careers and finances, of course. But nonetheless, [00:06:00] yeah, it was the market, it was the four hundred and ninety-six jobs moment.
Jess: And as I started to get multiple hundreds into my little job tracker spreadsheet, and I know this is the number because I went back into the spreadsheet. But as I started to get further down that list and just sit with the facts as well as listen. And like I mentioned, so we have the market, we have the human development stage.
Jess: So I was about forty, forty-one when I got let go. When we hit about forty to about age sixty-five, actually, we call that the [00:06:30] generativity versus stagnation stage. That’s based on Erik Erikson’s human development stages. So it’s basically natural human development outside of AI, outside of the current job market.
Jess: So again, you have this layered effect, especially for folks now in midlife. And for me, I also knew it was when I listened to myself and I reclaimed that worth. That would’ve been the third thing, is just really listening. Every cell in my body was saying, ” Don’t go back,” like, “You’re worth more than this spreadsheet is indicating.”
Jess: And we need to maybe pull back [00:07:00] from just the resume, pull back from that identity a little bit, as difficult as that is, and pay attention to what the numbers are telling us. So truthfully, when I got really real with the numbers
Maggie: what did you feel like kind of in your body or, like, how’d you keep going? I mean, h- like, I feel like a lot of people look at that and feel deflated of, like, ” People don’t want me. I’m not worthy,” like these different things when you’ve done all this amazing work.
Maggie: I mean, how’d you not feel down and out?
Jess: Yeah, I think a lot [00:07:30] of it is in the reflection, not only of those experiences and what they meant to you, but also understanding the role that you played in them. And then also a fun little career psychology tactic is you can look at each of those roles and experiences and think about like the micro narrative, like the little story.
Jess: Each of our job roles, right? Like even when we were a barista when we were 16 or whatever we did, right? Like has a little story and has a little ditty about what we loved, hated, what we learned, what have you, what we took away from [00:08:00] it. And I think once I started to do that and realized certainly I’d always worked on teams, and so I never did anything alone-alone, but realized the critical role that I had played and all the value that I’d not only taken away from that, but then also applied in other environments, my themes, what was true for me in every role and in those specific roles and looking at those results, ’cause again, the numbers don’t lie.
Jess: So taking that worth back I think is the biggest thing, and realizing they can take away a title, and yes, they [00:08:30] can take away a salary, but a lot of that value is a lot of commercial value people are sitting on that they don’t realize
Maggie: In c- to kinda know like, well, this is what worked for these big companies, I mean, to hire somebody who’s also been in those companies is like great for that next person ’cause you kinda know the ins and out, what works, what doesn’t, how to test it.
Maggie: I mean, that is so much value there where I’d be like, “Ooh, let’s hire her ’cause she’s worked with these big names. Like she knows what’s going on.”
Jess: You would think definitely some of the brands that I had worked on would have helped me in the next chapter, but I think you’re dealing with a lot [00:09:00] of talented people on the market, and that’s kind of what struck me the most was I was let go with 150 talented peers.
Jess: There are thousands of amazing talented people on the market right now that have decades of experience. And I think some of the irony of this, not to go on a tangent, and you, you drive the bus. But what I will say is I think I sent you that Financial Times article that was all about sort of especially midlifers and there is this associated shame with not being what was used in quotes as unemployable in [00:09:30] midlife.
Jess: And what I think the irony there is, is these folks have the most employable skills in the age of AI because technology is evolving at such rapid speeds, we actually don’t need to be all that technical anymore. We just need to know how to use AI, and we can be trained on how to do that. Our strategy, our intuition, our decades of experience and analyzing and creativity and shaping all of– and telling stories, human stories those are [00:10:00] gonna be the most valuable skills.
Jess: So it’s almost sort of like we’re letting go of the most valuable people, and I think those people are gonna go on to realize their value, just like I did, and go on to create more and different value in the world and figure out how to commercialize that in different ways.
Maggie: Yeah, and part of this article that you were sending that we both read was that about women or, but just people in general, like kind of 40 and over were kind of through AI getting kicked out of the job search, you know. So they weren’t [00:10:30] hiring people older, which I was thinking the same thing of like these are people who have been in business, who know how to talk to others, who’ve like had the experience, and part of me is like, well, maybe they’re worth more and they’re just trying to get a lower price range.
Maggie: But I was just so shocked by that and you know, some of these people were then looking for jobs, blowing through their finances and different things, so kind of had to think about a different way to go about it because it’s like they’re hitting their end of the rope on their savings and that’s unexpected and really the time where we want to keep those [00:11:00] investments invested so we can definitely get out of work by 65 or 70.
Jess: Right. and I think one of the key takeaways to all of that was we have to think differently both about how we plan for our finances and our careers, and they’re intertwined, and we’ve known that. But I think the difference is societally, societally, systemically, we’ve grown up relying on a nine-to-five for that.
Jess: So we’ve sort of outsourced that without even knowing it. I didn’t realize or ever think I’m outsourcing my [00:11:30] worth, I’m outsourcing being the CEO of my business because I’m capping my salary, and I’m putting my faith in someone else. But I should say and when you’re young, it’s wonderful to get experience.
Jess: We need experience, so I don’t regret anything, and I still think it’s wonderful for young people. But yes, specifically this midlife stage we have to think differently, and that’s part of why I think the exit plan is a really good solution and just in general, considering how do I future-proof myself in [00:12:00] a way that doesn’t allow an employer to take everything away from me.
Maggie: It’s definitely not the you stay with a company until you retire anymore, and that loyalty pays off, and all of that stuff that our parents experienced. You know, it’s so different from that. And I know this Reid Hoffman, he said, I don’t know if you guys know him, but the 9:00 to 5:00 will be extinct by 2034, which it’s 2026, so less than 10 years.
Maggie: So for women who have built their whole identity around the corporate career, what does that actually [00:12:30] mean? And should they be scared or excited? ‘Cause I could see a lot of people being like, ” Crap,” or a lot of people thinking this is opportunity, you know. And it’s a little bit more than glass half full or glass empty.
Maggie: But give me your insights here.
Jess: well, if you don’t know who Reid Hoffman is, I didn’t actually be- like, before I started doing deeper research into the field. He’s the co-founder of LinkedIn, so he’s sitting on a ton of data, and I think that’s why we care who he is. You know? He just– He’s sitting on, like, more job data than most humans.
Jess:[00:13:00] And if he says the nine-to-five is gonna be extinct in less than ten years, that’s an interesting statement to me. So it means that work is changing. I think the overall takeaway is that the glass is half full here, right? It certainly depends on how you look at it. It doesn’t always feel that way, and it’s a little bit of both.
Jess: It’s scary. You know, I don’t have a glass ball to predict for you, but if you really sit down and you really look at transferable skills and what we’re looking at in terms of future-proofing ourselves, there are [00:13:30] definite avenues that each and every one of us can take to future-proof ourself, and that looks totally different for everyone.
Jess: So for executives who have built their entire identity around their corporate career, you actually kind of have to flip the script, and step number one is just ditch your resume. That’s really uncomfortable for a lot of people who have especially associated theirselves with their titles and the companies they’ve worked for.
Jess: Instead, you need to start with your unique human blueprint and everything that makes [00:14:00] you, and there’s two reasons why we do this. Number one, following our intrinsic motivators, which we uncover through this unique blueprint, and there’s a process for that is based on decades of research to lead us to more success, longer-term success, and well-being over time.
Jess: Our intrinsic motivators are autonomy, connectedness, and competence. So do we have a choice in it? Does it mean something to us? And are we good at it? Those are [00:14:30] intrinsic motivators. That’s why we start with our unique blueprint. We’re not starting with what company is offering what title or what salary.
Jess: The second reason we do this is monetary, because it’s the best way to differentiate ourselves in the future of work. We do not want to sound like AI. It’s the best way to future-proof yourself. The more human, the better. You can use AI as a tool, but we really have to change the way that we think. So I think the overall takeaway here is flip the script and actually start with yourself versus the [00:15:00] market.
Jess: You can figure the market out, but that is, I think, the key differentiator, and it goes along with the financial planning advice that we’re talking about too, which is start with yourself, don’t outsource it.
Maggie: Yeah, definitely. And it seems like so often people are like, “Well, what jobs are out there? How can I make my resume fit that?” But it’s really doing that backwards of like, “What do I wanna do? What makes me happy?” Because I think there’s sometimes where we work so hard to find a job, and we finally get in there.
Maggie: We’ve been working so hard, we took whatever is available, and then we get that job, and [00:15:30] it’s like, it’s horrible, you know? And it’s like we put in all this energy to find this position that really isn’t a fit because we didn’t look at ourselves first. We just kinda said, “What slots are open, and where could I kinda fit in?”
Jess: Right, and you’re limiting yourself. You know, I kind of use this idea of like why default when you can design? So it’s a yes and. You’re not throwing anything away. You’re just thinking about how do I build something for myself that an employer cannot take away? Risk and ROI look a lot different these days, right?
Jess: It’s like putting your whole pot into a 9 [00:16:00] to 5 that you probably know is not gonna last you your entire career. Now, okay, that changes the game. I think we slowly started to see that as I didn’t take a job for 20 years. I took more jobs like a couple years, five years here, you know. So not not couple month stints, but you know, choppier than say previous generations.
Jess: Like my grandfather worked at a bank for decades and that’s just how it went. And so, yeah, it’s sort of slowly evolved, but now AI is really sort of just expediting that. But yeah, [00:16:30] it’s just a totally different approach.
Maggie: And so how is this kind of like unique blueprint and designing your career based on your unique blueprint different than just starting a side hustle or doing something of that? ‘Cause I feel like there is some differentiation there, and people can kind of mush those together in a way that’s not quite it.
Jess: Yeah, for sure. I think there’s a lot of people and a lot of discussion, and rightfully so, around, like, doing your own thing and just, like exiting corporate or tech and sure, but to your point, [00:17:00] there’s differentiation in a ton of different ways that you can actually do that. I think there’s also a lot of different definitions of side hustles, but usually those are more passions or income streams, and by definition, maybe that someone doesn’t truly have enough time for, or probably rarely has gone through more of this holistic filter of laying that proper foundation for career decision-making, aligning that with the future of work, and designing a sustainable business model against it that also fits around your lifestyle and wellbeing.
Jess: Career design is more [00:17:30] that, you know. Side hustles are usually side hustley. They’re hustley. And they don’t have as much of that thoughtful and purposeful end and therefore aren’t as sustainable, right? But career design looks to design the career that was meant for you because it can only come from you.
Jess: So it’s just a more purposeful and holistic approach that’s meant to last for longer.
Maggie: Well, we’d like something that’s sustainable. You know, that’s always the goal. And so there is a real financial fear, of course, financial podcast, that comes with leaving that stable income, right? [00:18:00] So how do you help women kind of think through this money side of that transition without panicking?
Maggie: I mean, everyone always called them the golden handcuffs, right? But you got that income, you got that insurance, you got the match, you got … I mean, even as an entrepreneur, I’m like, “God, I have to pay my personal into Social Security and then what the company would pay into Social Security when usually the company’s paying that.”
Maggie: So it’s just a lot more things that add up, which makes people fearful reasonably
Jess: Oh my gosh. Well, obviously this is a crux of the conversation and a crux of many [00:18:30] conversations, and most, to be honest, because when we’re thinking about our careers, it’s like our careers are not just our careers. They’re a central pillar, if not the central pillar of our lives just because they dictate so many other things.
Jess: All the things. So I think honoring the fear and knowing that usually fear is the unkn- it lurks in the unknown, and when we move the unknown to the known, that’s helpful, and just kind of acknowledging that is really helpful and having a place for that. [00:19:00] So we use a few different strategies, but I think the first thing goes back to what we mentioned before, which is you have to look at ROI, risk and investment differently than we did before.
Jess: And leaping isn’t a strategy, so I’d never tell you to quit and hope for the best or just go follow your passions. We’re taking a look at, yes, alignment, but then we are taking absolutely a look at the market, and ideally we’re building an exit plan. However, if you don’t have that luxury, we’re getting it done quickly enough that we’re compressing that messy middle [00:19:30] anyway.
Jess: So number one is mindset, looking at ROI, risk, investment differently. And number two is that building an exit plan because that is a strategy, not just leaping or quitting. And I think this idea of investment in yourself before it’s too late is really just important for folks to consider.
Jess: It looks different for everyone. But we oftentimes are giving so much to others that we really need to just think about, okay what is the best [00:20:00] way for me forward and what does the investment in myself look like? And so sometimes that takes a look at looking at our lifestyle and prioritizing or working with a financial planner in more depth to say, “I do wanna go out on my own, and what’s a smart way to approach this while I’m planning my exit strategy?”
Jess: But in short, we open with the five key pillars of wellness to my program, which include financial, and it’s less of a how much money do you have in your bank account, and [00:20:30] it’s more like, how are you feeling about where you are at, and what needs to be true in order for you to move forward? So having folks like you in my back pocket’s really important as well experts to help.
Jess: I think honestly the biggest thing, Maggie, is first thing ROI, risk, and investment look a lot different these days.
Maggie: And so kind of going into business, was there a money belief that you had to completely unlearn to kind of make your leap?
Jess: Yes I think I had to understand that both things could be true at once. [00:21:00] that there was no, no investment lost on the p- on the first 20 years, that we could create value out of that still. It wasn’t taken away with the job title. And I had to look at that investment strategy differently moving forward.
Jess: That was tough. No, I was just… That was tough after 20 years of doing it one way to just really have to look at the reality of things and be like, “I actually [00:21:30] think it’s time to change strategies, and I actually think even though it seems a little wild right now, the numbers are saying that’s actually probably a better strategy.”
Jess: Again, given my specific situation
Maggie: What’s coming up for me is like we make this huge investment in ourselves, like 18 to 21 with college, right? I mean, this could be 50 to $100,000 we invest in ourselves, and then from there on, we just like ride the train until the train kind of pushes us off, [00:22:00] right? And what you’re saying is like redo this investment at 40.
Maggie: I’m not saying maybe $100,000, but like you have to like re-up and re-skill, and we are not the people that we are at 18, and the path might look different and the, the twists and turns might not have led us to where we thought we might be at this time because is anyone where they thought they would be when they were 18 and making those decisions and never worked?
Maggie: Like, it’s so different, and we have no question about making that big investment. But then sometimes people look at us like we’re crazy, older, [00:22:30] taking this turn, doing different education, hiring someone, or we feel guilty about investing that money when to me, that’s the time it makes much more sense.
Maggie: You understand how the world works, what bills are, what income we’re looking for, what we like to do. I mean, there’s so much more grounding there, but no one questions you as much when you’re 18. It’s just this funny dynamic, and so I like when you say investing in yourself. It’s like, let’s do this now again when we understand the world and we’re not just babies.
Jess: Ugh, [00:23:00] I love that, like, comparison to college because, yeah, I, One of the very first podcasts I appeared on, Dr. Matt Markley we talked about, like, some people will spend the equivalent on, like, a winter vacation, and we love a vacation. But it’s interesting when it comes to, yeah, personal or career development or like you’re saying, versus riding the train, and that kind of comes back to some of the, like, defaulting to designing- Yeah
Jess: and just some of, again, where we’re at and how the world of work is changing. But I totally… I couldn’t agree more, and [00:23:30] I think w- what we’re going to probably see is this idea of as people also continue to live longer, I think the idea of a linear career will potentially phase out or just look very different.
Jess: And the way that people go about work is just gonna change drastically. So I think you get to lean into your weird and be a little bit more creative, ’cause that’s what the future of work will reward, and I think that’s freeing. But it does take a lot of like, “Oh, I used to have to be fit into this resume and fit [00:24:00] this,” ba da.
Jess: And it’s like, “No, now we need you to be different.” And so again that, the mindset piece is sort of a weird experience for a lot of people at first, and it sort of takes people a second, I think, who are thrust into it via a layoff, a minute to be like, “Oh,” shake it off a little bit- … and shake it out and get out of the snow globe or whatever the analogy is and be like, “Oh,” you know, kind of look up and think, “Oh, there’s a lot more going on in the world.
Jess: There’s a lot more options than I used to have.” The barrier to entry’s a lot lower to do some other [00:24:30] things, but it does, again, require support and looking at… and different strategies.
Maggie: And so tell us a bit more about how you work with people. Is this to help people, like, launch their own companies, to get into new careers, just kind of have this backup just in case they do get fired? Like, give us a little bit more grounding on, like, really what it is that you help people do
Jess: Well, it’s all of the above because basically it’s your next chapter designed for you by you. I give you a framework that’s based in the best of psychology [00:25:00] and decades of marketing and go-to-market experience. So, basically the framework helps you, again, to identify that unique blueprint and then we go figure out how to wrap it.
Jess: So what makes sense, everything from how we position whatever you wanna offer to what is the actual offering. We hold hands, we prototype it together, we dip our toe in, and then we create that transition architecture, which is part of what we’re talking about, which is financially what needs to happen, time-wise what needs to happen.
Jess: Where are you in the world? Are you still working? You [00:25:30] know, are you laid off and you can start right away? That looks a lot different for a lot of people. And then what are those next steps? So, that’s what that framework looks like. You can do that in 90 days and go from start to finish in 90 days with that.
Jess: Or you can get the preview, because what a lot of people like is, “Hey, I just want my options.” And you can do a career design clarity session, which is more of like a sprint. That’s a 90-minute session. So you have about an hour of pre-work. You go through some of the same upfront, and then you get a future [00:26:00] of work forecast, which is basically like, “Hey, here are some really unique, distinct paths you could take.
Jess: If you wanna move forward and do the full 90 days, great. If not, you have a great idea of actionable next steps you could take to future-proof yourself.” And that’s, again, a 90-minute commitment, which is awesome for people at a much lower price point. And those are the two core components of how I work with folks now.
Jess: And then for folks that are ready to do like a brand build and really wanna go out and like launch their brand into the world, great. There’s a little launchpad that we can do that uses some of my [00:26:30] marketing and really builds that out. But the career design components are really the 90-day and the 90-minute program.
Maggie: And who do you find is like the majority of kind of people taking this? Women similar to you kind of in their 40s trying to figure out what’s next?
Jess: Yeah I’ve been surprised at how many males have been interested as well. But definitely the old Jess for sure has been the majority of folks that I work with. So, I’ve gotten a lot of old coworkers as clients, and I have also found a lot of [00:27:00] clients on LinkedIn that just resonate with the content and me sharing my story.
Jess: So yeah, usually folks that have worked in corporate or tech and are directors, VPs, and have accomplished quite a bit, but they’re looking at the future of work and wondering about that investment and ROI piece and thinking they’ve built a lot and that maybe they could look at what’s next for them but they’re not sure where to start.
Maggie: I was only in corporate for a little bit, but my favorite thing was just to get rid of all the corporate clothes. All the button-down shirts that weren’t me, all these, like, dress pants [00:27:30] that I would never wear. I was just like, this was just a person they wanted me to fit into, and that’s not me.
Maggie: And it was just like com- coming out of there, I was like, “Actually, if I run my own business, I can wear whatever I want, and it’s not gonna be these gross dress pants.”
Jess: freeing things. When I think about peace and freedom, I’m like, “You know what? I just don’t wanna be rushed to walk my dog.” You know, and that reminds me, I’m like, yeah, like I don’t need the, the dress pants are not necessary. I love the dress pants thing too, because that’s such a real thing. The other thing you just being free, I think, to make your impact.
Jess: You know, [00:28:00] like I’m able to say what I wanna say on LinkedIn because I think it helps a lot of people. And another thing that you just said too was like, this is just it. Like that reminded me is like, this is just an act, and when you think about the idea of like performance leadership or performance reviews, it’s like a performance is a performance. It’s an act.
Maggie: no actor. That’s not
Jess: Yeah. You’re wearing dress pants because you’re acting in a role, you know? And so, yeah, it is. It’s like, it’s interesting ’cause we’re [00:28:30] showing up playing these roles, and to a certain extent we’re filling a job description, but with it comes all of this other stuff and then we become this person that we’re like, “Wait a minute.
Jess: What?” So you can see how that happens because we’re using terminology that like encourages it almost.
Maggie: Definitely. And so for a little like action step for those listening right now who know something needs to change but doesn’t know where to start, what are like one, two, maybe three steps they could take this week to start moving forward?
Jess: Yeah, I think definitely get [00:29:00] in touch with your values and then I think do a little bit of that career narrative exercise just to reflect on meaningful experiences that you’ve had. Think about also life experiences, because the biggest way that you can differentiate yourself in the future of work is going to be that unique blueprint times a human problem that you can solve.
Jess: So I think if you do the values, the unique blueprint, and thinking about what types of problems you care about solving those are some really good things to get in touch with, as well [00:29:30] as looking at some of the practical nature of where are you with your finances and just your overall well-being and doing a little bit of a energy check as well as reality check there.
Jess: Because if you combine both sort of how you’re feeling with the realities of what are in front of you, those are uncovering some things that we don’t think about every day and allowing you the freedom to go from there. Acceptance and understanding where we’re at is a first step to move forward, and I [00:30:00] think that sometimes can remove some of the barriers to even taking the best next step, which is to just understand where we’re at honestly.
Maggie: That’s a big one. I mean, just knowing where you are. Some people, I mean, we always talk about this, like even on your money and your income, people are like, “I actually don’t wanna look in my bank account.” And I’m like, “Well, I can’t say you’re gonna improve if we don’t have a measuring goal of where we started, and maybe the number’s low, so we could easily boost it up.
Maggie: Like, who knows what it is?” Or maybe you’re pleasantly surprised is also, I’m like, it could be way better than you [00:30:30] imagine. You just never know.
Jess: Yeah. But you have to start somewhere. So yeah, I think it, it sounds very basic, but sometimes with busy professionals and life gets busy, It’s harder to make the time to just listen and kinda check in on where we’re at. But then at least you know where you are, and you can go from there
Maggie: So Jess, there is a question we like to ask all our guests before we wrap up. And now with everything that you’ve been through and now being an entrepreneur, what does financial freedom look like to you?
Jess: I think it’s the [00:31:00] ability to be able to take control of your livelihood and your wellbeing and not have to default or outsource that
Maggie: I love it. Nice and simple. I love that. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your expertise. Of course, we’ll have links to all your information in the chat so people can connect with you just follow you on LinkedIn, have those 90-minute sessions or do that 90-day program.
Maggie: And yeah, we appreciate you, yeah, coming on and doing all the work that you’re doing as it is a changing world, especially with AI, and so we are [00:31:30] excited to have someone who can help us stay on top of it
Jess: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been awesome.
Maggie: Of course. And until next time, listeners, be financially fearless
Moving abroad after 30 is not the reckless, blow-up-your-whole-life fantasy everyone assumes it is. Done right, it might be one of the smartest money moves you ever make.
In this episode, we have Cepee Tabibian. At the age of 35, Cepee upended her entire life by selling her belongings and moving to Europe and since then, has never looked back. Now, she teaches other women how to do it too, through her community-based business, She Hit Refresh: a global community of over 100,000 women age 30+ who want to move abroad. She has even turned her overseas expertise into the digital book “I’m Outta Here! An American’s Ultimate Visa Guide to Living in Europe” which was featured in Forbes (spoiler alert: it’s easier than you think).
She’s the proud daughter of Colombian and Iranian immigrants and grew up in Houston, Texas before becoming an immigrant herself in Spain.
We get into the real financials of moving abroad: the savings cushion you need before you go, the taxes nobody warns you about, the hidden costs, and the surprising expenses that actually disappear. Cepee also gets honest about safety as a woman living abroad alone, how to pick your country, why a scouting trip matters, and what financial freedom looks like once you finally build the life you want.
Taxes are only one piece of an international move. If you’re still building the overall plan, start with our financial checklist for moving abroad, including healthcare, banking, Social Security, housing, visas and exchange rates.
How much money do I need saved before I move abroad? Minimum six to twelve months of your actual cost of living there, not what you spend in the US. Use Numbeo or Expatistan to get real numbers for the city you are considering before you set a savings goal.
What do women forget to plan for financially? Taxes. The US taxes citizens on worldwide income no matter where they live. Get an expat tax professional before you go, not after. Health insurance is also required for most visas and runs roughly $80 to $500 a month depending on the country.
What costs actually go away? Your car and everything that comes with it. Renters insurance is largely not a thing in Europe. And your overall cost of living often drops significantly, which is exactly why knowing your real numbers changes everything.
How do you pick where to move? Take a scouting trip, not a vacation. Walk neighborhoods, meet a real estate agent, go to local meetups. Then filter through three things: is there a viable visa for you, does the culture match how you live, and does this place support your long-term goals.
What is the first step in moving abroad if it feels overwhelming? Know your number. Research the real cost of living where you want to go and find the gap between that and your current income. That one number makes the whole thing feel like a plan. Then find community. Talking to women who have already done it changes everything.
Cepee’s closing line says it all: “you’re never too old and it’s never too late to hit refresh or to change your life.” The dream is real. The logistics are where most people get stuck. We’re breaking down the actual financial moves you need to make before you relocate, so you land ready instead of scrambling. Join us for the next Money Talks “Your Move Abroad Financial Checklist: What to Do Before You Go”. Click here to registerfor FREE and bring your questions!
Ready to turn “someday” into an actual plan? Start with our financial checklist for moving abroad to think through your budget, healthcare, banking, Social Security, taxes, and the other financial decisions that come with the move.
Already getting serious about the numbers? Read ourU.S. taxes abroad guidefor a deeper look at cross-border taxes, FBAR and foreign account reporting.
Continue Planning Your Life Abroad
What Is It Really Like to Move Abroad?
Hear Cepee’s experience with starting over overseas and the personal questions women should consider before taking the leap.
Learn how Foreign Tax Credits, the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, FBAR, FATCA, and other cross-border tax rules may affect Americans living overseas.
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Barbara Provost, EdD and Maggie Nielsen, MBA are the co-founders of Purse Strings, a national platform helping women make confident financial decisions by connecting them with vetted financial professionals who truly understand women’s lives and money needs. Purse Strings connects women across the U.S. with vetted financial professionals who specialize in supporting women through divorce, money transitions, and financial independence.
Full Episode Transcript
(This transcript was generated using AI, so please excuse any misspellings or errors)
[00:00:00] This podcast today is all about moving abroad, and I couldn’t be more tempted now more than ever. It’s something that I feel like everybody’s talking about, but so many people, think it would never happen for them for whatever reason. And of course, it’s not just gonna happen for you or to you.
It’s something you have to go make happen. But really, how do we get off the mark and not be so scared and actually do it? And of course, I was down a rabbit, hole and reading about people and their experiences moving abroad, [00:00:30] and nearly everyone was like, ” Would do it again a thousand times over.
Wish I did it sooner,” all the different things. And so I was so excited to have this conversation as I feel like as a woman in her 30s when everyone else is, getting married, buying houses, having kids, and that’s just not your path, it’s maybe just traveling and getting out and going to a new place might be the best option just because it’s always been something I wanna do, and there’s really no reason why to stay.
Yeah. So I’d love to hear kinda where people are going on their [00:01:00] experiences in this because there’s so many people that we work with at Purse Strings who are living abroad for many different reasons, and it just seems so amazing. But as we talk about in this podcast, of course, it’s, you’re still life-ing, so there’s not always rainbows and sunshine.
There still are things to overcome. You still might have, anxiety or whatever that may be. You still have to work. It’s not just travel like your vacation. And you have to learn the language. So taking language classes, practicing that, still [00:01:30] feeling like a fish out of water.
But it’s possible, and I think it’s a huge mark of growth for people. So I’m excited to have Cepee on the podcast today to share her expertise, what her experience has been, and how she’s helping women move abroad and start those lives. So I’m excited for you guys to hear this episode and would love to hear when we’re finished where you guys are gonna move to, what’s on the vision board, where we’d love to be and maybe we’ll meet up there.
So listen in, and we’ll [00:02:00] talk soon.
[00:02:30]
Maggie: Cepee, welcome to the podcast today. I am thrilled to have this discussion. Everything about it is resonating with me right now. So before we dive in, can you share with our audience who you are and what you do?
Cepee: Yes. Thank you so much, Maggie, for having me on. Excited to be here. My name is Cepee, rhymes with Peppi, and I’m the founder and CEO of a company called She Hit Refresh. And what we do is we help women age 30 and over from the [00:03:00] US figure out and fast-track their move abroad, typically to Europe. So we’re helping American women who wanna move to Europe, and we just help them to stop stressing about the logistics and the overwhelm, and finally create that dream life that they have in a country that feels like home
Maggie: I love it. It’s on my vision board, so I was like, “Oh, this conversation is gonna be great.” I don’t think it even matters when we’re recording this because, man, I know everybody is trying to move the heck out of America right now, who doesn’t have like, [00:03:30] families and kids making them stay here. so I think this is gonna resonate with a lot of our community. I’m even seeing this in kind of like an older retirement kind of, maybe I’ll just retire somewhere else as well. So lot of different travel opportunities. But I know you moved abroad and kind of stayed abroad at 35, and that really changed your life.
Maggie: So what was going through… Give me kind of the details, also the finances at the time, because this is a financial pod. Would love to hear the deets.
Cepee: For sure. So yeah, so I moved to Spain in 2015. I was [00:04:00] 35 years young, and it wasn’t my first time moving abroad.
Cepee: Actually, in my 20s I had tried and failed multiple times, and that’s because every path led me to teaching English, and from a financial standpoint, that just wasn’t the path I wanted to take because earnings were very limited. So I kept coming back to the US to get a, “real job” like my dad would say
Cepee: Like, “Just come back and get a real job.” But at 35 I had a real job. I was living in Austin, Texas, working for a tech company, making good money, had a [00:04:30] condo, living like the conventional American life, single and child-free. But I just felt like something was still missing in my life, and I still had this dream of wanting to move abroad.
Cepee: I had checked all the boxes that you’re supposed to for a successful life, but was feeling unfulfilled. But at that time, which is much different than now, to really to move abroad you had to quit your job and kinda go teach English or figure it out. The remote work wasn’t really a thing. So financially where I was is, like, I was leaving a good job to go teach English [00:05:00] for about 1,000 euros a month which is very unsecure.
Cepee: I didn’t know what I was gonna be doing after that. Honestly, it felt irresponsible, because in your 30s, like, everyone is trying to settle down and here I was trying to shake things up. So I was a little bit, worried if this was a smart decision and if I would be able to figure out how to make a, good living abroad by making kind of this risky choice.
Maggie: And so did you leave that tech job or did you find a different job? What’s the job situation? [00:05:30]
Cepee: Yeah, so I had to quit that tech job I got basically a visa to teach English in Spain for a year. And that was kind of for me, you know, everybody’s different. I know myself. I knew, like, if I can just get my foot in the door back to Spain, I’ll figure out what’s next.
Cepee: Teaching English, again, wasn’t my long-term plan, but I was like, “Let me just get there.” So I got to Spain, and I actually taught myself skills in social media, blogging, writing, and I was able to get out of teaching and actually get a work visa sponsorship with a Spanish company working on [00:06:00] their marketing team.
Cepee: So that was a big pivotal point, but salaries in Spain are low, so I was making, let’s say, like $22,000 as a 36-year-old now with experience under my belt. So that was not really a long-term viable solution either. So with time, I was able to hone my skills and really just pivot into online work in social media and community, and I started working for other people, making more money, and then [00:06:30] that led to starting my own business.
Maggie: I love that. Yeah, it’s, 2015, like we didn’t have our COVID hit yet. Not everyone knew how to work from Zoom, and there were so many people who were just… I mean, I hear that all the time, “I’m just gonna go teach English in another country.” And as somebody, like I don’t love, love children, so I’m like, “Eh, I don’t know.
Maggie: Like, can I teach adults?” Like, it’s not really for me. So often I think you go abroad and all your problems go away, and I know in one of your social media posts you’re like, you still have your stress, you still have your anxiety. But the other part is like you’re also [00:07:00] still working.
Maggie: You’re not like traveling like you travel, when you have all day. Like, how do you kind of learn to plan your schedule and get in your work and still have fun and, still make it everyday life? ‘Cause I think sometimes the picture we have in our head is not quite like reality. What else is new?
Cepee: yeah, great question. Well, yeah, because a lot of people when they’re experiencing a foreign country, they are on vacation, and they’re like, “Wow, I’m so relaxed, and everything’s so great, and look, everyone’s at a café at 2:00 PM.” But when you move somewhere, you’re not on vacation anymore. I [00:07:30] like to say a life abroad is still life.
Cepee: So yes, like many people now that are moving abroad are still working. Before, people who moved abroad were, like, gap year college students or retirees, not the in-betweeners like us that have real, you know, that gotta pay the bills, gotta keep working. And so I think you balance it, one, by, you know, you still have to work, so that’s gonna be factored into your day-to-day life.
Cepee: But a big thing that changes is, I think, at least here in Spain and a lot of countries in Europe, people are [00:08:00] social during the week. So I know in the US, it can be kinda tricky to make plans with people post-work ’cause people have, like, their workouts, and they gotta go home and make dinner and if they have families.
Cepee: But in Spain, life is very spontaneous, so you can meet up. You can call someone and say, “Hey, do you wanna meet up for a drink tonight, or you wanna go for a walk?” And it’s fairly easy to make those things happen on the fly, even when people have children. I think there’s a lot of creators now who live abroad and in Spain with children, and they show that, like, the playground is right next to, like, a [00:08:30] café bar, so you can, like, be social with your friends and keep an eye on your kids.
Cepee: So I think just naturally how society is set up here, you’re able to balance, like, the fun and the work. And on top of that, at least here in Europe, it’s really easy to just take a city break for the weekend. It’s inexpensive. it’s a short flight, so, you can easily, you know, be in Paris for the weekend and just kinda build that into your life.
Cepee: It doesn’t have to be kind of the big once-a-year vacation anymore.
Maggie: I mean, yeah, you think about America and it’s so [00:09:00] big that everything else is like a three-hour flight by the time you get to the airport. Like, everything’s a big haul, where it’s like there’s so much more public transit, things are a lot closer, it’s a lot more dense in a way that’s like we could just walk there, or we could just a quick flight, and just be there so fast
Cepee: Yeah it’s so much more accessible
Maggie: And so what are women not thinking about that they should be financially before they make a transition like this?
Cepee: Yeah, I think, I mean, because we’re talking about money here, that’s the key. That’s where I see people’s moves abroad really can, where they make or break those [00:09:30] moves abroad. So number one is crunching the numbers. So instead of having, like, a nebulous idea of what you need, like really sit down and know your numbers so you have a real pulse on what your cost of living abroad is gonna be.
Cepee: ‘Cause I see sometimes people think, like, what they’re spending now or what their costs are in the US is kind of what, roughly what it’s gonna be abroad, and I think a lot of people would be surprised at how much that goes down. But you can’t make a wise decision without [00:10:00] knowing the facts. So I would say, there’s a website called Numbeo.
Cepee: There’s a website called Expatistan. And these are great websites to get to understand the cost of living in certain cities. So if you want to move to Berlin, then I would say go to one of these websites, look at housing costs, look at groceries. Just understand the averages to give you a ballpark figure.
Cepee: On top of that, you need to know your cost abroad, but also, like I said, we’re moving abroad with responsibilities, so you may still have some ongoing costs [00:10:30] back in the US. So be sure to include if you have a mortgage that you’re still gonna have to pay, property taxes, student loans, anything like that.
Cepee: You just don’t wanna let any expense get overlooked. And then I would add two things real quick. So you gotta know your numbers of your costs, but also savings is a big one. And people always ask me, like, “What is the magic number? How much do I need to have saved?” And unfortunately, there is no one number, but I say at the minimum to have six to twelve months of your cost of living in savings before [00:11:00] you go.
Cepee: And some people may hear that, and they’re like, “Oh my God,” like, “I that’s so little,” right? And some people may hear that and be like, “Wow, that’s gonna take me a while to save that.” So it really depends on what you’re comfortable with also, but that’s a good cushion to tide you over if you have any unexpected expenses come up. And last, I think one of the most important is taxes. That gets overlooked. Understanding your tax obligations abroad. As US citizens, we’re still on the hook for taxes in the US, but it’s really important to know what [00:11:30] you may owe or what you may be obligated to pay where you’re moving to as well.
Maggie: All great tips. I mean, yeah, having that emergency fund, that’s kind of the same amount we’d have in your emergency fund, that six to 12 months. But having that just in case, because much harder if you’re in a different place, don’t speak different language.
Maggie: You wanna have that prepared. But those taxes, we just did have a money talks about this, and we have some of our purse strings approved professionals who focus on like, people who live abroad and how to kind of save on taxes, ’cause America is one of the only two places where you do have to still pay taxes when you don’t live here.
Maggie: And [00:12:00] so having sometimes a professional to help with that is super important. But I’m thinking like, wow, I wouldn’t have to pay for, like I’d probably sell my car, wouldn’t have car insurance, different things like that. But do you have like, still renter’s insurance? Do you get a different kind of health insurance?
Maggie: Do you get like a travel insurance? What are some of those other things, that you might add to that, you know, bill? ‘Cause they’re not all just removing, but there are some things that we have to add back in that mix.
Cepee: For sure. So health insurance, I’m so glad you brought that up. That’s a must. Also, wherever you’re moving to, [00:12:30] your visa, you’re gonna need a visa, and one of the visa requirements is to have private health insurance. But I wouldn’t let that scare you because the plans are going to be less expensive than what people are paying back in the US.
Cepee: So for me, for example, for Spain, I mean, I’m 46, I’m healthy. I have a plan that covers me, but it’s nothing, you know, too extensive. It allows me to go to the doctor when I need to and get checkups, and I pay roughly about, let’s say, $80 a month for that. So I would say health insurance, factor [00:13:00] in, depending where you’re moving to, anywhere from 100 to 500 a month.
Cepee: That 500 is probably gonna be maybe places like Switzerland or Germany but you’re really looking somewhere in between that more as an average. Other than that, I would say, yeah, like you said, you don’t need the car expense, so that’s great. Renters insurance really isn’t a thing here so much.
Cepee: But any other expenses would be… I mean, housing is the number one, but I just say, just wanna kind of highlight this because housing, just like in the US, housing prices [00:13:30] have gone up all over the world. So when you look at housing, it may just be a little bit more expensive than you thought. Will be less than the US, but that’s just something to really keep an eye on. And I think the only thing out of that maybe people should plan for is the travel, travel expenses. Once you move, you’re gonna wanna travel, and that can add up really quickly in terms of just, yeah, accommodation, flights, enjoying your life when you’re in another city. So those would be the things.
Cepee: Oh, and one more, language classes.
Cepee: you’re going [00:14:00] and that’s gonna be an ongoing expense because you probably won’t be fluent in a year, so this is gonna be something that’s gonna baked into at least a few years of living abroad
Maggie: How is your Spanish?
Cepee: It’s really good. I mean, I’ve been here 10 years, so hopefully it should be right?
Cepee: So yeah, I speak Spanish, I’ve worked in Spanish, but I would say even after 10 years, I still in some ways don’t feel 100% myself in Spanish the way I do in English. So I still like have touch-up classes and it’s still, an expense for me [00:14:30] language classes from time to time.
Maggie: I think this is just so interesting ’cause, I’m kind of at that age where all my friends are getting engaged, getting married, having kids, and it’s like I just don’t see that at this point, and so it’s so opposite, like going a different direction, just getting the heck out of dodge, trying something new. so it’s really interesting. But as like a single woman, I was reading one of your Instagram posts, and it was kind of talking about like having an emergency contact still back home and having those connections because your post was like, even if you died here, like , no one would know. You know what I mean?
Maggie: Which was [00:15:00] interesting because it’s so true. Here it’s like Life360 all these people have or, you know, Find My Friends, and it’s just not quite the same as someone can’t just call them up. So what are some tips you kind of have about that, just kind of for some safety for women or anybody traveling abroad?
Cepee: Yes Another great question. I mean, you, like me, like I was single, child-free when I moved abroad. I’m still child-free, but I have a partner now. But a lot of the women I work with are moving abroad alone, and so that is so empowering and inspiring and, I’m all for that, and that’s what we [00:15:30] support at She Hit Refresh.
Cepee: But when you’re going alone, like you still need to let people know where you are and how you can be found. So some of those tips are, and these are things that I didn’t even do in the beginning, but now are like, “Wow, it’s so basic. I should’ve known that.” But one, as you’re making friends abroad, like let someone know who your emergency contact back in the US is.
Cepee: Even if you don’t know someone well, just know like, If something happens to me, this is my mom’s number. This is my mom’s name,” right? Like just so somebody that you’re in [00:16:00] contact with can relay that information. On the flip side, your family back in the US or a friend, it doesn’t have to be family, just let someone know not only just your phone number, but your address.
Cepee: That’s often something we don’t really share, ’cause I don’t know if people are sending packages anymore, but ‘ you just need to know how to be found as well. So that’s really important. And then, I mean, this is a bigger conversation to have, but it is true, like this is life and I wanna prepare people for real life abroad.
Cepee: If something happens to you, like worst case [00:16:30] scenario that you do pass away, like at some point you should be vocalizing to somebody what, just what your wishes are, right? If do you want your body to go back to the US? Do you want something to be done with you in the country that, that you passed away in, and what are those wishes that you have?
Cepee: I know it’s uncomfortable and it is a morbid conversation, but it’s actually a conversation that, you know, really protects your loved ones from making some really tough decisions that they won’t know how to navigate if they haven’t heard what you wanted them to do.
Maggie:[00:17:00] Yeah, we talk a lot about, having your estate plan and having these conversations early. we always talk about the average age of a widow is 59, which is a lot younger than people expect. Yeah, but you know, anything can happen anywhere. Life is lifing, right? And so we just wanna be prepared, and I always joke, I feel like a lot of people, they think they’re gonna talk about it, and then they’re just gonna fall dead once they, like, express it, you know?
Cepee: That’s so true.
Maggie: which is not how it works. Like, you don’t have to be scared about it like that. so yeah, I appreciate just kind of talking about that, as when you’re single, you do need to [00:17:30] have those people around you to kind of support you. And I always think, like, if it was somebody else going, I would wanna know.
Maggie: Like, please tell people my number and have me be that call person. I would love to be there for you.
Maggie: so if someone is dreaming about, like, moving abroad and kind of feels overwhelmed, what are a couple practical tips you would, start saying we could start doing this week to, to move forward?
Cepee: Yeah. Well, I would say number one, going back to the numbers. So just know your numbers. I think knowing that number will give you a lot of confidence.
Cepee: So I think having that [00:18:00] number is important because then you can reverse engineer, like, how to get there, right? If you know, like, my living expenses are gonna be 5,000 a month in, I don’t know, in Barcelona, then you can start figuring out, like, where is the gap? Is there a gap? What is that? How can I bridge that gap, right?
Cepee: And that, that can help you make some decisions right now. So I think that’s number one, knowing your numbers that you’re gonna make an educated choice. And I think number two is to find community. You don’t have to navigate this alone, and I [00:18:30] think community allows you to talk to people who have already done the thing you wanna do.
Cepee: You can ask them questions, and I think it also just gives you examples of what’s possible. Because if you don’t have those examples, it can really feel like this is a crazy idea, you could never do this. But once you start seeing women just like you who are doing this, then you’re like, “Oh, okay. Well, if she’s done it, then I can do it, and now I just have to make my plan to get there.”
Maggie: Right. It’s great when you see somebody in that similar situation like, great, they didn’t know [00:19:00] the language either, they haven’t lived abroad before, they still did it with this virtual job. I think I can do that too. How did you pick Spain? ‘Cause I feel like my biggest thing is, like, picking where to live.
Maggie: There’s so many amazing places. It’s like,
Maggie: just one? just one?
Cepee: I know it’s hard. I mean, that is kind of the privilege that you have as a US citizen right now, ’cause there’s so many places that it’s relatively easy to get a visa for. So, I would say, for me, picking Spain, I kinda had my Goldilocks moment here in my 20s where I had been to different countries, and when I got [00:19:30] to Madrid and Spain, it just felt right, right?
Cepee: That was that Goldilocks moment. And some people have those, and some people are still chasing those. I talked to, you know, my refreshers as we call them, and some are still trying to find their place. I think some tips to help people narrow it down, ’cause maybe, you have a short list of places, your Goldilocks places.
Cepee: But just understanding, one, what your long-term goals are. I mean, for me, Spain offered me a path to citizenship, and that’s something that I wanted. So that made sense, but not every country does that. So is it a long-term goal? [00:20:00] What kinda weather do you like? I need warm weather, so Spain made sense to me.
Cepee: You’re not gonna find me living in Norway ever. And then I think another thing is there a visa that’s viable for you? The UK doesn’t have many viable visas, and I know a lot of people wanna move there, so I tell them, you know, “If that’s your dream country, you may have to look for an alternative because it’s not likely going to happen So I would say those three things, and maybe a fourth one is just knowing your preferences from a [00:20:30] cultural standpoint because if we’re talking about Europe, Southern Europe is very different than Northern Europe. And for me I thrive more in the timetable, the lifestyle, the slower pace of life of Southern Europe, and I know that’s not for everybody
Maggie: Yeah, and that’s really awesome that you moved there after you visited it a couple times. And I feel like that is important because as much as we think it might be great just doing as much research as you can, it’s never like boots on the ground
Cepee: For sure. I cannot stress enough how important a taking a scouting trip [00:21:00] is. Again, we were talking about like vacationing abroad is great. Of course, it’s gonna be great ’cause you’re on vacation. But I think if you have the means to do a scouting trip and that’s just a trip where you’re kind of giving a test run to where you wanna move to, and you kind of use your time there to look at it from that perspective.
Cepee: So you are meeting with real estate agents, walking around different neighborhoods you could live in, going to meetups and talking to people who have made the move before going to pharmacies to see if you can get the medication you need. Just kind of, [00:21:30] living a day-to-day life there and gathering information.
Cepee: I think a scouting trip can help you understand if a place or places you’re interested in are a good fit or not
Maggie: And so your partner, did you meet them in Spain?
Cepee: I did. So my partner is Spanish, and I met him after living here for five years. So, five years I was building my best life, and then we met
Maggie: So how is the dating scene in Spain? I mean, like everyone here in America just uses the apps.
Maggie: Is that a
Cepee: Yes. Yes. I mean, I love talking about dating. Yes, so apps are [00:22:00] so popular here, and that’s actually how we met. We met on an app. So apps are very popular. Same thing, I think people sometimes romanticize, like, dating in Europe.
Maggie: Of course. We’ve all seen those movies like Lizzie McGuire or something, you know? Like
Cepee: Yes. And
Cepee: honestly, it can feel like that at times when you’re, like, on a date in, you know…
Cepee: I remember one date many years ago, I was on the back of a Vespa going around the Colosseum in Rome, so I’m like, “This is straight out of a movie.” But of course, dating is dating anywhere, so you’re gonna meet duds, you’re gonna get ghosted, [00:22:30] like, all the things can happen. But I think, understanding that it’s a different culture, there’s gonna be, cultural misunderstandings.
Cepee: I think dating is tough anywhere, so I’m not gonna paint it with a brush that makes it sound very easy abroad. But I think it can be really fun and I think, it’s something that a lot of people are interested in doing. When you move to a country, you’re not just dating people from that country, but you have the opportunity to date people from many different places.
Cepee: When I was single while I was living in Spain, I went on dates with, you know, Irish men, Swedish men, all different nationalities, which was also really fun
Maggie:[00:23:00] Yeah, I mean, everyone else is also, like, on their own kind of moving adventure, and so it’s fun to see, yeah, it’s not just, “Oh, I’m in Spain. It’s gonna be Spanish people.” It could be people from all over. So yeah, you get to run the gamut and see what you like.
Cepee: Yeah it’s a lot of fun, and you learn a lot of things. And also, the best way to learn a local language is by dating. So, if you can also date some guys who don’t speak English, you’re gonna be learning a language very quickly. I
Maggie: I love it. I love it. And so tell us a little bit more about like how people can work with you. I think you have a book as well. give us [00:23:30] the commercial of you.
Cepee: Yeah. So for any women over 30 who wanna move abroad you can check us out on Instagram, website. Everything is She Hit Refresh. I do have two programs that we support women with. I have a master class, which is kind of a DIY if you just wanna get a plan to move abroad and wanna execute that on your own.
Cepee: You can grab my master class, which is on my website at shehitrefresh.com. But I know not everybody wants to do it alone, so we have a lovely membership where we support women as they’re [00:24:00] working on their move abroad, and these are women who have timelines from anywhere from three months to two years and wanna do it in community and want help finding solutions to their biggest challenges, which is like, “What am I gonna do for work?
Cepee: What visa can I get? What do I do with my stuff?” Basically, any question you have, we are there to hold your hand along the way. So you can find all that on my website and Instagram at She Hit Refresh.
Maggie: I love that. It’s, there’s so much information out there. It’s like I need someone to pre-sort that information for me ’cause everyone’s like, “Oh, it’s [00:24:30] just online.” And you’re like, “Yeah, so is everything.” Like, I mean, it’s so much information. Have you had people who’ve taken your program, like, meet up once they moved?
Cepee: like the Oh my God, yes. Not only meet up, I’ve had people become roommates, move in together, travel together. So definitely friendships have been fostered.
Cepee: And I do meetups too when I’m traveling, so I’ve got to meet a lot of the people in my masterclass or in my membership too, which is really fun to see them like pre-move in the US and then meet them post-move after they make that leap.
Maggie: I [00:25:00] love that.
Maggie: And so our last question we like to ask all of our guests is, what does financial freedom look like for you now kind of living this way?
Cepee: Oh, yes.
Cepee: Financial freedom. Oh my gosh. I would say freedom in general is something I’ve been chasing since I was 17, and I think, right now financial freedom is really about, having choices. And so my younger self would be so in awe of what I’ve been able to do. I think, that people say like freedom really is being able to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, [00:25:30] and I feel like I’m there, and every year I kind of, am able to expand on what that really means for me.
Cepee: So really financial freedom is me allowing myself to run this business that I love, doing work that I love, being able to work from Spain, from the US, when I’m traveling, and not really feel trapped anymore like, like I felt for so many years in those nine to fives.
Cepee: So, yeah, that’s what
Cepee: financial freedom means to me
Cepee: right now.
Maggie: How often do you come back to the
Maggie: US?
Cepee: Often. Actually, the longer I’m in… Yeah, so I would say the [00:26:00] first maybe seven years I would just go back for Christmas really and visit family. But the last few years I’ve actually picked up a more, semi-nomadic life, so I’m actually in the US maybe anywhere from two to three months a year.
Maggie: Oh, wow
Cepee: yeah, not all at the same time.
Cepee: I kind of go to the US two or three times a year and visit family, see friends enjoy what I miss about the US, and then I’m ready to come back.
Maggie: You must be racking up the points.
Cepee: I am, yes.
Maggie: Good. Good.
Cepee: I am which is, [00:26:30] yeah, which is something that I can, yeah, really do now that I am on the go so much more than I was
Maggie: Well, I appreciate you coming on, sharing your expertise, and really just empowering us to, move if we wanna move or just live that best life for ourselves because I think so often we just sit in that wanting to and sit in that fear. And we just need to make the jump. It’s not that scary, and if anything, we could always move back.
Maggie: And so I’m so glad you’re out here supporting women. You’ve tried it a couple times. You’ve done it now. And yeah, I’m excited that everyone else can go and adventure [00:27:00] the world. So thanks for sharing it, and thanks for doing what you do.
Cepee: Thank you so much Maggie Thanks for having me on, and just last words for women, like, you’re never too old and it’s never too late to hit refresh or to change your life.
Maggie: Love it. We’ll talk to everyone soon. Until then, be financially fearless.
How to Spot Financial Abuse (And How to Get Out) with Joleen Fuller and Heather Wiese
When we think about abuse, we picture bruises and broken doors. But there is a form of abuse that leaves no marks, traps 99% of survivors, and follows women long after they have left. Almost no one is talking about it, and it might be the biggest reason so many women feel like they can’t get out.
In this episode we sit down with Joleen Fuller and Heather Wiese. Joleen has called Portland home for more than 20 years. A Lewis & Clark College graduate, she has built her career around supporting survivors of domestic violence and trauma serving as an advocate, volunteer, and program coordinator to help individuals find safety, stability, and empowerment. Joleen currently serves as Director of Programs at FinAbility, where she champions survivors and fights for those too often pushed to the margins.
Heather has been in the role of Family Services Advocate for the Shelter Stability Program at Raphael House since September 2020. She currently provides one-one-one advocacy, facilitates multiple support groups, and provides educational workshops for DV survivors and training workshops for fellow advocates. With over 22 years of experience working with families experiencing homelessness, Heather has worked in a wide range of roles including case management, program management, development, volunteer management, crisis intervention, and housing. Her primary passion in her work is economic empowerment and how to navigate complicated emotions surrounding personal finances while building skills and confidence towards financial health.
Why do 99 percent of domestic violence survivors experience financial abuse? Because financial control is one of the most effective tools of power and control. It is not a side effect of abuse. It is a strategy. Keeping her broke, in debt, and financially dependent is exactly how an abuser makes sure she cannot leave.
What are the three forms of financial abuse? Financial exploitation is identity theft, coerced debt, and accounts opened in her name without permission. Financial control is withholding her ID, monitoring every transaction, and keeping her on an impossible allowance. Financial sabotage is destroying her credit, her rental history, her job, and manipulating child support and legal systems after she leaves.
Does the financial abuse stop when she leaves? Often it gets worse. Retaliation is immediate. Accounts get drained, money moves offshore, property gets destroyed. Child support evasion by switching jobs every few months is financial abuse that continues for years. Safety planning is not one and done. It is ongoing.
Why are survivors more afraid to look at their credit report than they were to leave their abuser? Because the credit report is concrete evidence of everything that was done to them. It is an on-paper reminder every time they try to move forward. And for many survivors, the credit report is also a safety risk because soft pulls from housing or credit applications show their new location to anyone who knows how to look.
What can a survivor do right now if she does not know where to start? One call. The National Domestic Violence Hotline. You do not need a plan. You just need to ask what resources exist near you. That call leads to the next one. The My Plan app is there for anyone who is not ready to pick up the phone.
What do you need people who are not survivors to understand right now? The safety net survivors rely on is being cut. Support your local domestic violence shelter. Volunteer, donate, show up. And say it out loud: I believe survivors. In this moment those three words matter more than most people realize.
Wherever you are on your journey, you are not alone, and there is help. Join us for next week’s Money Talks, “Financial Recovery After Abuse: The Step-by-Step Path to Stability”. Leaving is just the beginning. For many survivors, the financial damage lasts years after the relationship ends. This session is about what comes next. Click here to registerfor FREE and bring your questions!
Have questions? Click this to check out our expert Q&A for tips from industry experts, tailored to help women address their most common financial concerns.
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Barbara Provost, EdD and Maggie Nielsen, MBA are the co-founders of Purse Strings, a national platform helping women make confident financial decisions by connecting them with vetted financial professionals who truly understand women’s lives and money needs. Purse Strings connects women across the U.S. with vetted financial professionals who specialize in supporting women through divorce, money transitions, and financial independence.
Full Episode Transcript
(This transcript was generated using AI, so please excuse any misspellings or errors)
PS: Joleen & Heather (MP3)
[00:00:00] So I have been on this total deep hole of cults recently, and there’s this podcast called Trust Me, where these two women interview these different people who have been in different cults or have written about cults and how, a cult could be two people, it could be a bunch of people, all these different things.
And in this one episode, this woman was sharing how, to be closer to her savior, she had to, which was coming [00:00:30] through her partner she had to sell everything she owned. She had to give up her job. She had to make sure, she had no money. It all had to go to this
“organization” that was helping others which was really her partner’s pocket full circle. And all I could think about when I was walking and listened to this and I was like, “This is financial abuse.” She was definitely going through verbal abuse. She was going through all these different things, but financial abuse was a big one.
[00:01:00] And It’s so often we see this, financial abuse. And it’s not just in cults, but that was the hole I was in deep diving. And so I was excited to have our two guests on today because I think financial abuse is something that we don’t talk about enough. I think it’s something that people don’t realize that they’re a victim of.
And it’s not about identifying that I am a victim or I’m not a victim, but more of [00:01:30] the fact of we need to stop blaming ourselves so often of how’d I get myself in this situation, how’d this happen to me. I should’ve, shoulda, coulda, woulda. But it’s not all of our fault. We are a victim.
And so we are gonna dive into this episode today. It is gonna be about financial abuse, domestic abuse and technology abuse. So A, trigger warning but B, look around. See what [00:02:00] woman you need to send this to make them more aware. Because as we know, women and money, the sh*t we don’t talk about.
This is sh*t we don’t talk about. There’s a reason why people don’t want us talking about this, and I think this is something we have to be knowledgeable around as other women. We have to be there to support other women in this situation. And women who have gone through this, we need to work on making them feel more comfortable sharing their stories, hearing their stories, and letting them know that their stories are valid.
We’re not [00:02:30] gonna dismiss them. And so with that, let’s get started.
[00:03:00]
Maggie: Hello. Welcome to another episode of Women and Money: The Sh*t We Don’t Talk About. I am so excited to dive into this topic today, which is not always the most exciting topic, but it’s something that needs to be talked about. And every time we’ve done an episode relating to this topic, the feedback that we get, the ahas people get, the realization, I just know it’s something we [00:03:30] need to keep talking about.
Maggie: So with that, Joleen and Heather, before we get into the heavy stuff, let’s start with who you are, what you do, and why you got into this work
Joleen: Awesome. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Joleen. I am a mom. I live in Portland, Oregon. I am also a survivor of domestic violence. I currently work at FinAbility. We are an, a 501[c][3] nonprofit, and we work with survivors of domestic violence and [00:04:00] stalking, and our focus is really on supporting survivors through their financial journeys.
Joleen: We know that 99% of survivors experience financial abuse as part of the abuse they suffer, and so we are lucky enough to get to work with survivors as they take on their financial journeys, deal with the fallout of financial abuse, and get to see them with a lot of wins and a lot of joys as well through a lot of hardship.
Joleen: I never intended to be doing this work. I was [00:04:30] sure that I was gonna be a journalist but I just kept being drawn to this type of work. I volunteered at a shelter in college and then my first job out of college was as an advocate. So I have helped survivors with, a myriad of things that advocates do.
Joleen: So I’ve helped folks find housing, helped folks get restraining orders, attended court hearings really such a gamut of things. And what I really love about the work that I do now, which I kinda said before, but I get to [00:05:00] work with folks as they find a lot of resilience and a lot of strength through a lot of hardship and I get to witness a lot of joy when they reach their financial goals.
Joleen: We also work with a lot of amazing volunteers who support survivors, so that gives me a lot of hope in the world that there’s a lot of people who want to support survivors in this work.
Heather: Yeah, my name’s Heather Wiese. I’m also in Portland, Oregon. I am a domestic violence survivor advocate for an organization called Raphael [00:05:30] House, and we’re a emergency shelter for domestic violence survivors and a prevention program. We have a lot of different parts of what we do. My program in particular is called Shelter to Stability, and I have the privilege of helping survivors succeed after they go to their own homes and they exit shelter.
Heather: So I get to be in relationship with them one-on-one advocacy. We run support groups and I’ve been doing that for the last six years. [00:06:00] And how I got into this is actually my first part of my career was at family homeless shelters and I you know, one of the leading causes of homelessness is domestic violence, so I was constantly working with survivors for years.
Heather: And I was really impressed and excited when we got to do things that help people change their relationship with money to give them like financial literacy skills. So as I was doing my work, I was seeing just like light bulbs come on, like how they could [00:06:30] finally learn how to save, how they could, even in extreme poverty, how they could change that relationship with money, how they could make their credit score go up.
Heather: And I was just kind of learning as I went. I was very young when I started, and so I actually learned by teaching people alongside them and was just really encouraged by the small things we could do with financial literacy to help people really find their footing again after experiencing abuse or addiction or houselessness.
Heather: And so [00:07:00] I switched over into domestic violence work kind of on a personal journey because I’m not a survivor myself, but it has touched every single relationship in my extended family and me very personally. And so I really still ask that question even after like 16 years of working in shelters, like, “Why don’t they just leave?”
Heather: And so when I had the opportunity to shift into this work it was really partly because I wanted to understand that and see, you know, what was behind this and how could we support these people who are you [00:07:30] know, forced into making these decisions that, you know, seem to hurt them. And so, I love my work. I love to get to be that cheerleader with people and, you know, whether it’s saving that first $10 they’ve never saved in their life you know, or seeing them, you know, pay off a debt that they’ve had over their heads for years it’s kind of my passion and something I’m really excited to talk about.
Maggie: Yeah, Thank you both for coming on and doing the amazing work that you’re doing. It’s not going unnoticed. And so we appreciate that. so I know [00:08:00] you guys on your website talk about the survivor-led approach, and I think it’s interesting that you offer or you honor every definition of survivorship, supporting those impacted by intimate partner violence, which I think is what we think of all the time, but also child abuse, elder abuse, and stalking.
Maggie: And so these are all different forms which I think are really interesting. Do you guys find that you support all these pretty equally, or is there definitely, like, one more dominant than the other?
Joleen: Yeah, that’s a great question. I [00:08:30] think at FinAbility, our definition of domestic violence and stalking is pretty broad for a reason, and we really do wanna support folks who are in relationship with other people who are being harmed who you know, the definition really of domestic violence is around one person gaining and maintaining power and control over another person, and that can happen in all kinds of different relationships.
Joleen: Speaking from my experience at FinAbility, I would say a majority of [00:09:00] the folks we support are folks who are in intimate partner relationships who are experiencing domestic violence or the children of those who grew up in a home with domestic violence happening. Even adult children who are you know, continuing to support a parent who are going through a lot themselves because of living in a home with violence.
Joleen: We certainly have also worked with folks, especially elderly folks, who are being harmed by a younger family member as well. But I would say [00:09:30] in large part, we are working primarily with adult survivors who are in unsafe or have been in unsafe relationships with an intimate partner.
Joleen: How about you, Heather?
Heather: Yeah, our program at Raphael House is primarily for intimate partner violence. So, we do have multi-generational though families in our shelter. So, we have had adult children with their parents. We’ve had grandparents with their children. We’ve had, child survivors come back after experiencing [00:10:00] abuse before.
Heather: So, but what our main population is for the domestic violence
Maggie: Yeah, that makes sense. It leaks over to all these different relationships, anybody in the house. I mean, it’s not self-contained in any way. And so for this podcast, we are gonna be diving into financial abuse but there is something else that is on your website that I really wanna bring top of mind because I think, like, domestic abuse people hear about and are more familiar with.
Maggie: But you guys have something called [00:10:30] technology abuse, which, of course, you know, now that we’re on social media and technology is in our hands, living on our phones. I wanna talk more about this and how you’re seeing this because, you know, we hear about kids and maybe some cyberbullying, which is still very bad but different than kind of technology abuse.
Maggie: So I’d love to hear kind of what this is, what you’re kind of seeing out there and how we can start, you know, being more aware?
Joleen: Yeah, this is something that is becoming more and more prevalent and used again as another [00:11:00] tactic of power and control. we work with survivors at kind of any point along their journey. We’ve primarily work with folks who are in a little bit of a place of more stability.
Joleen: So, usually after they have left an abusive situation and are in a place where they can start thinking about their financial goals and kind of where they want to head in the future. And we’ll talk about this more, but, financial abuse continues, can often continue long after someone has left an abusive [00:11:30] relationship, and I think technology is a tool that is being used to continue that type of abuse.
Joleen: If you think about how often you know, in an intimate relationship, if you’re married to someone, you have a lot of their information, right? So being able to use technology to access you know, logins to you know, access to bank accounts. There’s a lot of tracking devices these days so folks are being stalked using technology.
Joleen: So it’s a really [00:12:00] ever-changing field, and it’s a lot to keep up with. But I think that this field is really starting to understand how it’s being used so much and are really trying to respond to that. Yeah, I’d love to hear. I know Heather and I have talked about this and I know I feel overwhelmed with it often.
Joleen: And luckily we have some resources that we call on quite often.
Heather: Yeah. This is something it’s hard to keep your head above water with, and i’ve been recently seeing it play out quite a [00:12:30] lot. And like she mentioned, it could be AirTags, you know, even putting it in a kid’s backpack so you can figure out what school they’re at now if you have shared custody.
Heather: There’s so much technology that, like, you don’t actually have to know that much about to get an app or get, you know, download something that can get into people’s emails. We have Ring cameras. Ring cameras are really a common thing to have now. Lots of people have them.
Heather: Survivors really like them to be able to see what’s going on outside their apartments. There’s ways to [00:13:00] tap into those so that you can then see the survivor coming and going and manage what they’re doing through that technology. There’s selling information on the dark web.
Heather: I mean, it’s just like the things, it’s like you can’t even imagine sometimes the lengths and also the ease that it is to especially for stalking get access to somebody. So, like she said, we have some resources. It’s not our forte, I think with what we do.
Heather:[00:13:30] But the National Network to End Domestic Violence has a really great support called Safety Net, and that’s a key one that I’ll send people to and connect them with when they’re having things that are really shutting down their ability to live their normal life.
Joleen: One thing that I thought of while Heather was talking is something that we’re seeing a lot more of that has felt like a surprise to me is the use of banking apps and cash apps like Venmo and Zelle to send threatening or demeaning messages. And this can be long after someone has [00:14:00] left an abusive relationship and they’re still, having contact with an abusive partner in this way.
Joleen: So there’s a lot of insidious ways that technology is being used. And grateful that we have partners like the National Network to End Domestic Violence, their Safety Net program to help us and survivors sort of navigate those really complicated topics.
Maggie: Yeah, it’s so hard ’cause you wanna stay connected. you know, I mean, I’ve had stories where, you know, people post on Instagram and then their partner shows, or you know, their ex-partner shows up there after they, like, posted that [00:14:30] location or yeah, you know. There’s so many different things, like you said with the Air Tags, and I know we’re trying to implement some new things of, like, if You’re around an Air Tag that’s following you, it will start beeping.
Maggie: But sometimes it’s pretty faint. I’ve heard it. Like, it’s also hard to hear. So I’m glad we’re just talking about that and bringing some light to it because as great as this technology can be, it can also be really dangerous, and I think, yeah, just having someone… You know, it used to be at least when I’m home I feel safe.
Maggie: I have maybe my camera on the front [00:15:00] door, but I know I’m safe inside my home. But when someone’s on your phone, then kind of blowing you up from that standpoint, you never feel like
Maggie: you can be off and in that safe place, which is really hard, especially when someone is trying to heal.
Maggie: And so let’s kinda move into financial abuse.
Maggie: And so when most people hear about financial abuse, I feel like they think, you know, someone’s hiding money or controlling credit cards. But it’s something way bigger than that. So how does financial abuse actually look in, in real life?
Joleen: I think something that [00:15:30] people are always really surprised about when I talk about what I do and our work at FinAbility is that 99% of survivors of domestic violence experience financial abuse as part of the abuse that they suffer. So it’s incredibly common. It’s a primary tool of control that is a leading reason that survivors either stay in an abusive relationship or remain trapped in an abusive relationship or return to an abusive relationship.
Joleen: So on average, it takes about seven times for a survivor to successfully leave a harm doer[00:16:00] and finances are a huge, huge, huge part of that. I think the average amount of money that a survivor has when they leave is $250. So I think about trying to rebuild my life with $250, and that feels impossible.
Joleen: And so I think to Heather’s point about saying, you know, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” I think we often will cite that statistic to folks who feel really floored by that as well. So yeah, the [00:16:30] ways that we kind of talk about financial abuse again, like you said, Maggie, that you know, people think about it in a really certain way, and I think it’s important to also understand that financial abuse has a lot of crossovers into other types of abuse.
Joleen: And again, it’s really a tool a method of gaining and maintaining power and control and really eclipses someone’s safety and independence. So we like to kind of think about this in three sort of main pillars. The first is financial [00:17:00] exploitation.
Joleen: So this can look like things like identity theft creating fraudulent accounts and credit card applications. This can be direct theft from an account, a paycheck, or even benefits. We’re talking a lot about coerced debt these days, so this is where a survivor is forced into taking out loans that benefit a harm doer.
Joleen: And then we talked about the digital harassment piece as well, so using those banking systems and banking apps and cash apps to harass somebody. [00:17:30] So, you know, survivors often then are bearing full responsibility of debt and credit damage that has lifelong effects. You know, there’s loss of financial resources with that obviously prevent access to safety access to housing often means that folks feel like returning to an abusive situation is their better option.
Joleen: And then I would say that there’s also a lot of fear and shame around even accessing financial products banking [00:18:00] systems, because they themselves can sometimes feel unsafe. So, sometimes, you know, you get the letter in the mail From your banking institution that says, “Oh, you’ve changed your address.”
Joleen: Sometimes that can go to a former address, so the address of a harm doer, and can then identify the new address of a survivor. So, sometimes we see folks who are really fearful of accessing those systems, which can also impede independence, impede options for safety. [00:18:30] And then we talk about financial control, which is what you sort of, talked about as well.
Joleen: So, this is, you know, restricting or controlling access to income or savings either joint and independent accounts. This also can look like withholding documents needed to create a new account. So, if someone is making a plan to leave or is just trying to have a little bit of independence making sure that they can’t do that because they can’t, they don’t have their ID, they don’t have their passport, that sort of thing.
Joleen:[00:19:00] Obviously technology is very involved in this, so, messing with passwords monitoring transactions monitoring ATM transactions. And then of course there’s a lot of surveillance and then punishment within those relationships. So, I’ve worked with folks who’ve been kept on a really unrealistic allowance essentially, and there’s punishment for not sort of meeting the needs of the entire family on a really unrealistic budget. So folks are going with their [00:19:30] basic needs being unmet safety options are completely out of reach. And again, that, like, really deep fear and shame and confusion around financial institutions, financial decisions. We see this play out in our financial mentorship program where some of our mentees come into the program and are, say things like, ” I am so overwhelmed.
Joleen: I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not where I should be, and I just don’t even wanna open my bank account and look at what I have. I don’t wanna open [00:20:00] my mail because there, there will be bills in there, let alone trying to look at my credit report and understand what that is and, or kind of dive into what that could mean for my life.”
Joleen: So a lot of disconnection from, you know, their personal finances which can lead to more long-term financial instability. And then finally, the third sort of pillar that we talk about is financial sabotage. So this looks like intentionally damaging credit. Also can be intentionally [00:20:30] damaging personal property.
Joleen: So, I’ve worked with someone who whose harm doer intentionally after they had separated created a lot of damage to their rental apartment and the apartment was fully in her name and then that was a really dark mark on her rental history, therefore making it really hard for her to find housing in the future.
Joleen: So again, undermining that housing stability or rental history. Something we hear about a lot that’s maybe not talked about [00:21:00] as much is interfering with work or education or caregiving responsibilities. So, we… a lot of stalking behaviors happening. So someone goes to work abusive partner or ex-partner is calling all the time, showing up all the time.
Joleen: Maybe that’s preventing someone from going to work, either physically doing so refusing to take on childcare responsibilities so it makes it impossible to go to work or school and then on the other side of that a much, you know, another [00:21:30] pretty dark side is that we’ve also worked with folks who have been forced into sex work or prostitution to you know, to ruin a reputation, but also to you know, really benefit the harm doer.
Joleen: And yeah intentionally sabotaging accounts, freezing funds totally draining an account. I feel like we hear that a lot. And then manipulating legal or child welfare systems to really maintain financial dependence. We hear about that a lot [00:22:00] post-separation. But I’d love, too, to hear from Heather.
Joleen: I know you probably have some experience and stories around that as well.
Heather: Yes, unfortunately I do. But most of the work that I’m doing now is with folks after they leave the abuse and they’re, you know, in safety, like I said, they’re in their own homes. And it continues after leaving, unfortunately. And so the impact is very long-term and you know, it can really make and [00:22:30] trigger a person, When they’re trying to move forward in their life, any time, like she said, opening that, you know, bank account or looking at your credit report, it’s an on-paper reminder of what happened to them.
Heather: And so it’s really overwhelming. And I’ll start by, you know, safety planning we’re trying to untangle those accounts because the first thing sometimes is retaliation once they leave. And I have permission to share this from a survivor, but there was a person that I am working with right now who has was married for forty years.
Heather: She was married to a [00:23:00] firefighter, someone who was very upstanding in the community, had a lot of connections. They had a huge pension. And she was being physically and sexually abused within her marriage. And she finally left, and the retaliation was to drain all of her life savings, including her own parents’ inheritance from that account.
Heather: And then because they’re gonna go through divorce proceedings, put it into an offshore account, so it was no longer even visible. And she said that that experience was as violating [00:23:30] and impactful as the sexual assault that she experienced in her marriage. And so these are like, you know, this is our, their lives.
Heather: It’s not just about money. It’s not just about our credit score. This is making it so people can’t actually, you know, thrive and take care of themselves. Another thing that we mentioned the credit report, that is anecdotally I’ve been told by people that they are more anxious and afraid to [00:24:00] access and look at their credit report than they were to leave their abuser because of that long-term impact, because it’s concrete, it’s something there.
Heather: And they feel also like because they maybe don’t have always the knowledge or the financial empowerment that others have to know what to do with it. So, you know, it’s very overwhelming. It’s very overwhelming to look at that. Also, you know, this is my PSA. I just have to throw this out there because so many people don’t realize this.
Heather: But the credit report [00:24:30] itself is really like a point of safety for people. She mentioned, you know, like a bank account, you change your address, the abuser might get the address sent to them. But if you have been in a long-term relationship with someone, they’re probably gonna know your Social Security number, your birth date.
Heather: They may be able to answer basic security questions about, you know, your mother’s maiden name, what, where you lived before, things like that. And so they can get access to that credit report. Well, now, when you apply for any kind of credit, you have a soft pull on your report, right? So it [00:25:00] shows I went to AT&T in Oregon.
Heather: I’ve applied for a place to live in, at this address, and it will show up on those credit reports. So then we have another point of access for abusers to find someone and locate them. So that’s some… It’s like my PSA. A lot, even advocates don’t even realize that, that’s like a little, like, loophole.
Heather: So then we have to get really creative with that. We maybe have to run our credit through a different way, like out of state at a different bank. We wanna create [00:25:30] maybe different pathways for survivors to, to get to their credit without it causing harm. The good news is that I do see people get out of this.
Heather: You know, once they’re walking alongside someone, whether it’s a FinAbility mentor, financial mentor, in their local coalition, domestic violence coalition, there’s, you know, they can connect to financial empowerment programs. But walking alongside the advocate, you can start to look at those long-term effects of what’s going on, and you can sit with someone and say, “Hey, I’m here with [00:26:00] you, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna do this step by step together.”
Heather: So, but yeah, it’s very long-term and very impactful beyond leaving the harm doer.
Maggie: I think these were so many great examples just to bring to light. I mean, I could say so many different things right now.
Maggie: It’s just, it gets you fired up but it also
Maggie: really, you know, makes you think about how on guard the survivor needs to be. Because these systems are not made, you know, for a survivor, right?
Maggie: And so, of course, somebody you’ve [00:26:30] been married to for 40 years knows your Social Security number. I mean, that’d be crazy for them not to, right? And so it’s just, of course, they have this access. It’s being followed around, and so being anxious about that mail being sent and these different things, I mean, it’s always on edge and it’s hard to listen to ’cause I know so many women who have, are not being abused or in these situations don’t wanna look at their credit score anyways.
Maggie: Much less seeing, you know, what this relationship has done and, you know, the creditors, they don’t care. [00:27:00] They really don’t. They want their money, and so it’s hard to reason with that and share your story again and again of, you know, this is why I shouldn’t have to pay this and these different things.
Maggie: I mean, you can put up the fight but that’s also so, taxing on that person as well. So it’s so challenging and I’m glad you guys are here to support women and have some resources and some workarounds to do these things because it does seem like it’s coming at every point and turn which is really difficult.
Maggie: Yeah, especially if you’re on the allowance, if they’re watching all your spending all these different [00:27:30] things. I mean, it’s just, it’s a lot. It’s a lot and I appreciate you being able to support women through this. And so I know we’ve talked about this a little bit, but like it doesn’t stop when the survivor leaves.
Maggie: Sometimes it gets worse and so I know you guys talked about some of those examples of the mail and people still being able to follow you and still hack into any of your accounts. Is there anything else that you kinda wanna share of what is actually happening to women after they’ve already gotten out?
Maggie: Any other ways that you’ve seen it almost get worse that people should know [00:28:00] about almost to protect themselves?
Heather: I’m just thinking about how the, she mentioned work and how it can prevent people from being able to get jobs, promotions, things like that. The fallout of that is, like, a spotty work history. So I went to a conference, and a nurse was sharing about how she would go to… She was a fantastic nurse, and she would get a job, and every time she would get a job, she would get fired because the, you know, she either have to call out because she had visible [00:28:30] bruises all over herself, or she had to you know, avoid whatever was going on at home where he’d find her again.
Heather: So then we get this shoddy works history that then impacts, you know, someone’s career. I just wanna mention child support because this is, like, one of the main things that abusers will… And we don’t think of it as financial abuse, but it is. Not paying your child support by changing your job every few months because they will then catch up with [00:29:00] you, and they’ll start garnishing your check is financial abuse.
Heather: And so that is something that, you know, has to be fought in court again, like we’re back into systems that maybe they don’t trust. And when I tell people, you know, a participant, “You know, that’s a form of financial abuse,” it’s like, “What?” Like, that is. You know, even the participants don’t have the language for it.
Heather: And we’ll do these, you know, educational things, and they’ll be like, ” I knew about emotional abuse. I knew about physical abuse. I knew about those things, but I didn’t know there was something called [00:29:30] financial abuse.” And then those light bulbs go on. And then, like again, we’re just trying to, like, break down, like, I’m constantly safety planning with people, so it’s not a one and done thing.
Heather: It’s not like, ” Oh, you’re out. We’re safety planning. The safety plan is ready. It’s set.” We’re doing that. I’ve been working with people, the same people sometimes for five years or more now. This is my program. I get to stay with people long-term. And I get to not only see them thrive and grow but also see when the abuser comes back into the picture.
Heather: And so we have to just keep looking at things. I [00:30:00] think that’s maybe to take away from, like, the ongoing is, like, it’s not a one and done. You have to keep checking your credit report. We have a thing called the Address Confidentiality Program where they can put their, and this is offered at many state, in many different states, but they can make it so their mail’s actually forwarded through the the capital and goes to a PO box, and then it’s mailed to them, so they don’t have to put their names in systems that will, are easy to then find, like the DMV or DHS or being a [00:30:30] voter registration is very easily to access where you live.
Heather: So things like that just constantly kind of having to check in with people and see, like, how are we doing? Like, do you have points of, you know, maybe access that you haven’t thought of? So I think that’s just something to take away is, like, it’s just not ever maybe over, which is really sad.
Maggie: I mean, it is, you think, “Oh, they got out,” and you’re like, “Yes, and they’re still fighting all these other [00:31:00] things,” right? It’s still, you’re still fighting up against this, they still don’t feel that safe and secure yet, which understandably so.
Maggie: I think it’s when women learn about financial abuse, it’s not to be like, Oh, well now I, know I’m a victim,” but I we hear so many women say, I should have known, I should have done this, I should have done that.”
Maggie: And it’s not for you to blame yourself, you know? It’s outside of your control, which I think especially, I mean, we work with so many women. I, you know, I’m only a woman, So, I can only [00:31:30] share our perspective. But it’s always the shame of I should have known, I should have done this it’s me, it’s my fault, it’s these different things where it’s not.
Maggie: You have to look outside of that and it’s not in your control. And Heather, kinda like you were saying, you know, they keep going back to court. Sometimes I know people who are
Maggie: like, “Well, paying for the attorney, paying for the time out of work, is it worth that fight?” Which is again, kind of letting them win.
Maggie: Is it going through the system that I don’t trust, you know? And so it’s just always this pigeonholed corner [00:32:00] of, you know, what should I do because, you know, by the end of the day, all the money’s gonna end up going to the lawyer, Right Like, it’s this whole process that’s just So difficult to navigate.
Maggie: And, you know, now 2026, economic pressure, inflation, housing costs. I mean, Joleen, I think about the $250, which, you know, 10 years ago might have got you a little farther, but today, I mean, That might get you a hotel room for one night. Like,
Maggie: maybe.
Maggie: And so, you know, [00:32:30] what’s the current landscape looking like for survivors who are trying to get financially stable?
Maggie: Is it… I mean, I’m assuming it’s harder than what it used to be. But what do you need people to know about what’s really going on out there?
Heather: So I’ve been in this field for so long, and I actually started in 2003 just working with people in, you know, shelters. And so it’s funny because when you say is it worse now, it it’s actually, we were on a upward trajectory I felt like for a while.
Heather: We were you [00:33:00] know, 2003-2020 we were doing better with, you know, awareness with tenant education and tenant rights, rent control. There was more assistance. There’s a more conversation about affordable housing, things like this. And so, and then, you know, COVID hit, and we actually ran into a lot of money, you know, that was given to nonprofits to further people forward.
Heather: And so we kind of had this moment of like, “Oh, I think things are going [00:33:30] better,” you know, in general. We’re going at least this way. I think that right now is what we’re experiencing is just a lot of fear. It hasn’t necessarily played out in front of my eyes in the impacts yet, but we know that these impacts are coming.
Heather: We know that funding is being cut. We are, you know, the budgets of our state, and we talk particularly about Oregon and Portland in general, but, you know, there’s a lot of budget deficits. There’s a lot of things on the chopping block right now. There’s been a lot of [00:34:00] fight behind that, so we haven’t seen it necessarily what the impact is yet.
Heather: we have a program called the Emergency Housing Voucher Program. These are basically like a Section 8 voucher given with permanent supportive housing, so they are given with some client assistance and some case management, and these are for the most vulnerable survivors who cannot work or have disabilities.
Heather: For whatever reason, they’re unable to sustain themselves long-term, so they need these. This is a need. And those have [00:34:30] been told that they are no longer permanent, and they will be being taken away in November. This is hundreds of families in Portland that will be essentially homeless because they have no other options.
Heather: So that I think once that, you know, if that actually plays out, I mean, we’re doing the best we can to fight it in legislation and like going to, you know, the local meetings and things like that. But I mean, that is where I feel like, wow, I mean, I have not seen that kind of impact in such a drastic way since I started this work.
Heather: But we definitely [00:35:00] have seen, you know, when they’ve said there’s been some funding that said, “We’re gonna cut it,” and then we’ve pushed back, and we’ve gotten that funding still. So using our voices is still effective and important. We can’t just roll over.
Heather: But but yes, there’s just, I think in general, there’s just a lot of fear from survivors who are relying on those kind of supports.
Joleen: agree. I I think since January of 2025, the landscape has continued to change, and there’s a lot of unknowns and things that have really shifted, and cuts [00:35:30] and promises to cut, things changing. And I think on the ground, survivors feel that. And survivors are sort of saying, “Oh, this net, this system of support that has been there for a long time that is part of my safety plan, is changing and shifting.”
Joleen: And so that does cause a lot of anxiety and fear. And so I guess I would say to folks who are able support your local domestic violence shelter, support your local domestic violence programs, whether [00:36:00] that’s, you know, volunteering or if you can give funds, go to their galas, those sorts of things.
Joleen: We just really need that type of support. We don’t know what is ahead. And you know, I think we’re all feeling like, for example, like I filled up my car yesterday and I was like, “Holy moly, this is crazy.” So imagine if part of your safety plan is driving somewhere to a safe family or friend and your limited $250 is now gonna have to stretch [00:36:30] much farther.
Joleen: So, supporting organizations that support survivors, I think can be really powerful. And just one more soapbox that I’ll stand on is that we’re in a time where there’s a lot of talk about survivors and trying not to get too political, but I think survivors right now are feeling like people don’t believe survivors.
Joleen: And I think just standing up forward and saying, “I support, I trust, and I [00:37:00] believe survivors,” is incredibly powerful. I hear from participants in our program all the time about how this time, this day and age just feels– they feel really invisible. And so I think stepping forward and using your voice, like Heather said, in all these ways can be really powerful, so
Maggie: Yeah I’m glad you mentioned that because we have to be heard, we have to be believed. Otherwise people are gonna be like, “Why didn’t you say anything?” It’s like, what difference would that make. But let’s talk about resources before we ask our last question. [00:37:30] What resources are out there? Tell me about, you know, what you guys are doing.
Maggie: I know you’re more Portland specific, so what other resources might you know about across the nation? Because we’ve talked a lot about a lot of bad situations, but we wanna help women get out of them. So how can we help there?
Joleen: Yeah, the thing I say generally are there’s two two things that I kind of say about folks who I maybe don’t know where you are. You might not be in Portland, you might not be in Oregon. So there’s the National Domestic Violence Hotline. That’s a great place to start. You can call and you can ask about what your local [00:38:00] resources are and know that’s just your starting point.
Joleen: And then I would call that
Joleen: local resource and really understand what the programs are on the ground. There’s all kinds of innovative programs happening right now. So, for example Raphael House where Heather works it’s not just a shelter program. They have all kinds of incredible support to survivors and I think that’s a really wonderful thing to know that maybe
Joleen: you’re, you know, looking for you know, just support, someone to talk [00:38:30] to.
Joleen: Calling, knowing your local resources is really helpful. The other thing that I’ll mention is an app called My Plan. This is an online decision-making and safety planning tool. This is for the folks, often myself included, who doesn’t feel comfortable picking up a phone and making that phone call and, like, having to talk.
Joleen: This is a really great tool. It’s personalized so you can put in what your situation is, what you hope your situation will be. It’s [00:39:00] also a great tool for friends and family members who know survivors. It has a whole side of it that is for how to support how to be a supportive person to a survivor and I think that…
Joleen: I have learned a ton from it being, you know, in this field for a really long time. So I would say that those are two really great places to start. In particular, thinking about financial abuse, I think the National Network to End Domestic Violence they have several programs focused on financial empowerment and financial and economic justice [00:39:30] and they’re also a great place to start.
Joleen: But Heather, I’d love to hear your thoughts about resources as well.
Heather: Yeah, you stole one of mine. I already plugged the NNEDV, the they, with the safety net for their tech support. But they do have really some really innovative programs. There’s some programs that are doing really amazing things with matching savings. You may have heard of IDAs and these, but these are for, like specific for survivors.
Heather: There are so many good I’ve gone to the [00:40:00] NNEDV Financial Empowerment Conference for a couple of years and hearing from different states, those coalitions are being really creative in how they give resources to survivors. One that I would say from that website would be the Independence Project, and this is just a really basic way to start building your credit.
Heather: I’ve referred this out several times even the last month. For people who are like, “I can’t approach that debt. I don’t have the ability to, you know, take [00:40:30] on debt repayment,” or, “It’s too scary or emotional,” the capacity isn’t there. But they can have a microloan through the Independence Program and it’s $100.
Heather: You take out a loan, it’s zero interest and they pay it back over 10 months, $10 a month and it helps their credit score go up. So it’s just something like that where it can give just a little bit of glimmer of hope in those situations can really change someone’s agency. They can feel like there’s something I can do.
Heather:[00:41:00] I’m not completely helpless and it can, you know, just one degree off the track we’re heading in a totally different direction than we were. You know, we are not heading off a cliff. We’re gonna go somewhere. Nationwide it’s really looking at what’s in your state, what’s in your city, what are your local empowerment programs for survivors that are accessible.
Maggie: Yeah, those sound like a lot of great resources. I’m excited to get all those in the show notes and all that stuff so people can have those resources to reach out to as you’re not alone. There are so many people in every [00:41:30] city doing this great work, and so we wanna make sure if you need the resources, you can get your hands on those for sure.
Maggie: There is a question we like to ask all of our guests, so I’d like both of you guys to answer. We ask every guest this. because we think it matters. And so what? does financial freedom mean to you personally?
Joleen: I would say for me, if I were to distill it down, it is choice and options. And that can be so many different things. You know, we can talk about it in terms of safety. We can talk about it in terms of how you want your family to, to [00:42:00] look.
Joleen: How, what kind of, like, career and job you want. And I think just being able to have choice and options as a woman in this world right now, I think those things are incredibly important. So, yeah, wonderful question.
Heather: I think for me, it’s not about having all the money in the world, but it’s about having the power of knowledge in the choices I get to make, and also having peace [00:42:30] in those choices. Like, having that I really do… We have to do a lot of healing from money trauma and our relationship with money to even interact with it.
Heather: And so for me, having that freedom to not be afraid of money and looking at it, but being able to have peace around it, knowledge around the choices I make, and not live out those with shame and regret. That feels like freedom to me
Maggie: I love it. It’s awesome
Maggie: well, I [00:43:00] appreciate you both for all the work that you’re doing, coming on and sharing this, sharing these stories because it- we need to keep talking about this sh*t. We really do. We need to bring light to it and make it less taboo. I don’t want any more women sitting in shame or in these relationships where they feel like they can’t get out.
Maggie: There are resources out there. We want to support you. So I appreciate, you know, you sharing this message today. I encourage any listeners to, you know, take an action, to share this with a friend, to keep the conversation going as we just have to keep talking about it. [00:43:30] So thank you, Heather. Thank you, Joleen, and until next time, be financially fearless.
Net Worth Is Not Self Worth with Elizabeth Husserl
You can look successful on paper and still feel like it is never enough.
In this episode, we have Elizabeth Husserl, a sought-out speaker, entrepreneur, registered investment advisor, mother and cofounder of Peak360, a boutique wealth planning firm. She expertly guides people to a deeper understanding of their relationship to money and wealth. But more than anything, she is a thought leader at the intersection of psychology and money. Her debut book, The Power of Enough: Finding Joy in Your Relationship with Money, is a paradigm- shifting exploration that invites readers to redefine success, loosen the emotional grip of traditional financial beliefs, and build a more joyful, self-aligned relationship with wealth.
Why do so many women feel financially insecure even when the numbers look good on paper? Because we measure wealth mentally but experience it physically. We hit the metrics and the goalpost moves. The missing piece is learning to actually feel wealthy in your body, not just know it in your head.
What is the wealth mandala and how do you use it? It is a circle with twelve human needs like health, connection, freedom, and purpose. You rate each one from one to ten and color it in. Then you look at your whole life like a flower and see where your time and resources actually need to go.
What is the difference between money, wealth, and power? Money is a tool. Wealth is a state of wellbeing where your human needs are being met. Power is the agency to design your own life. None of them are the same thing and only one of them lives in your bank account.
What is satiation and why does it matter more than gratitude? Gratitude is a heart experience. Satiation is a body experience. It is that feeling when a meal truly hits the spot. Elizabeth says we need to bring that same felt sense of enough into our financial lives, not just think it, feel it.
How do you define enough when the world keeps telling you it is never enough? Start by feeling what enough actually feels like before you take it to a spreadsheet. Then do the math in five-year segments. And compound your moments of meaning the same way you compound interest.
Join us for next week’s Money Talks, “Your Complete Financial Protection Plan: Estate, Insurance & Investments Simplified” Most women have one of the three dialed in. Fewer have all of them. We’re laying out exactly what you need to protect what you’ve built, grow it intentionally, and make sure it goes where you want it to go. Click here to registerfor FREE and bring your questions!
Have questions? Click this to check out our expert Q&A for tips from industry experts, tailored to help women address their most common financial concerns.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive financial tips delivered weekly here!
Barbara Provost, EdD and Maggie Nielsen, MBA are the co-founders of Purse Strings, a national platform helping women make confident financial decisions by connecting them with vetted financial professionals who truly understand women’s lives and money needs. Purse Strings connects women across the U.S. with vetted financial professionals who specialize in supporting women through divorce, money transitions, and financial independence.
Full Episode Transcript
(This transcript was generated using AI, so please excuse any misspellings or errors)
PS: Elizabeth Husserl (MP3)
Maggie:[00:00:00] I was having a conversation with somebody this morning who was talking about how they’re gonna do the Coast FIRE movement, which I have to look into a bit more. I think it’s more on you have enough money for retirement, and so all your retirement is funded, and so then you are just making money to live your everyday life.
Maggie: So it’s less about having those investments now. It’s all your investments are made. But you know, FIRE is financial independence, retire early. And, there’s always a number you wanna get to and all of these different [00:00:30] things, which is really great for some people and quite an accomplishment. But it’s a lot of pressure, and I think, if you’re not in that bucket, then it’s kind of like, ah, well, it’s you’re not doing enough or, or being enough and all these different things.
Maggie: And so I’m excited about this conversation and to share it with the audience today, just because our author wrote a book about, called The Power of Enough, and really how money is, is one tool but there are so many other things in [00:01:00] life. And so she has this wealth mandala that is really, a framework of ways we can start kind of looking at our wealth.
Maggie: And yes, our money bucket might be doing really good, but how is, our touch? How is our connection? How is our health? How are these different things that all tie in? And I think this is such an important view to take as we’re so just told, retirement, investments doing these FIRE movements of retiring early and not having to think about our money again.
Maggie:[00:01:30] But wealth is so much more than that. And it’s one of those things, we focus so much on wealth until we don’t have our health, and then health becomes everything. And so how do we look at this as a holistic picture of all these moving parts together and hit success? is it gonna be, by the time we’re 35?
Maggie: Maybe, maybe not, but it’s something that’s ever-moving. And so I just love the view that it’s not about retiring and hitting that goal right away as fast as we can, but really having this holistic experience and being [00:02:00] satiated in all these ways. So here’s the podcast we have for today with Elizabeth, and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts, so let’s get started.
[00:02:30]
Maggie: Elizabeth, we are so excited to have you on the podcast today. I don’t know if you know that we saw you speak at the keynote speaker at the WIFS conference. and I got your book and read it, and so I was so excited to have you on the podcast today and introduce you to our audience.
Maggie: So before we dive into this great [00:03:00] conversation, can you share a little bit of who you are and what you do?
Elizabeth: Yes, of course, Maggie. I’m so touched that you all saw me at WIFS. So my name is Elizabeth Hustrul. I am a wealth advisor. I’m a co-founder of a boutique firm here in the Bay Area called Peak 360 Wealth Management, but author, mom ritualist. I mean, I feel like I live life to the fullest, but I’ve been exploring the intersection of money, finance, psychology, and spirituality since I was 18 years old.
Elizabeth: So this is my passion and my path
Maggie:[00:03:30] I love it. Yeah, and there’s so much goodness to share here because I love how you really work on kind of separating, like, wealth and, and having enough, and really your book of The Power of Enough. So kind of to start out, so many women look successful on paper but still feel insecure. Why do you think this is happening?
Maggie: I mean, the numbers add up, so why aren’t we feeling, good? Isn’t hasn’t that been our goal?
Elizabeth: Well, so I think it’s really, you know, I actually, I feel chills when you ask that question, Maggie, ’cause I think it really comes to the core of the fact [00:04:00] that I think we experience wealth differently than men. And I use that word intentionally, experience, ’cause part of why I wrote the book is because in my decades of working with people, I realized that we don’t talk enough about the somatic component of wealth, right?
Elizabeth: Where it’s like, do I feel wealthy? Am I experiencing wealth, right? Do I feel enough? All these things. I look at my body as I even say that, right? I’m like, ” Do I feel big in myself?” And I think that’s the, the issue is that money feels so abstract, and [00:04:30] it’s so mental that I think it’s really important that we do the analysis around the money game.
Elizabeth: There are studies out there that say women have less in retirement ’cause we don’t take enough risk. All of that is valid, and the financial literacy is widely important. I think equally important is as we accumulate financial resources, are we doing the important work of understanding what it means to feel wealthy? And that’s why there’s a big component in the book around satiation and [00:05:00] feeling satisfied and the somatic and visceral component of like, “Oh my gosh, can I pause for a moment? Can I literally consume a moment of meaning and a moment of celebration and a moment of success that I personally identify as successful,” right?
Elizabeth: Not that someone tells me, “Hey, you met this metrics. Amazing. Good job.” But it’s more like, “No, I rocked it. I felt that moment of success. Can I just pause for a second, close my eyes, and let every cell in my body feel wealthy?” And if we start to do that more, [00:05:30] Maggie, alongside looking at our statements and looking at our investments and savings, we would start to shift our experience of wealth.
Elizabeth: It’s kinda like we would go to the money gym and build these muscles where I know I’m worthy. I know I’m wealthy. I know I’m enough. And I’m like, “Oh my God,” it just makes me excited because I’m like, the world would be so different if we lived from that place
Maggie: It really would. And it’s funny that you use the word, like, satiated. Like, I’ve never heard that used really outside of, like, a meal. You know what I [00:06:00] mean? Of, like, feeling satiated. it is kind of that same feeling. And every time, I mean, I feel like a lot of women can relate to this, of, like, you do something and you’ve, you’ve wanted it, you’ve worked for it, you’ve envisioned it, and once you have it, you’re like, “Okay, onto the next.” You know? And it’s, and you didn’t take that moment.
Elizabeth: Yes, ’cause that, I mean, there’s like, there’s a whole book, there’s so many books written about that. The other one that I really love, The Psychology of Money, right, is he talks about that, that the goalpost keeps on moving. And whose fault is that? Ours. Right?
Elizabeth: And I think this is a really [00:06:30] important piece, Maggie. I think women understand relationships, right? And our relationship to money is a relationship, right? And a lot of times we scapegoat money for things that aren’t going right in our lives. And I’m the first one to say, “Hey, we need to take responsibility for how we’re creating those patterns.”
Elizabeth: So literally, I mean, if you were just like… if you’re listening to this, just stop for a second and be like, “Huh, what’s the last goalpost that I actually stopped and celebrated?” Right? And so that I actually took in and [00:07:00] celebrated with my community, whatever that looks like. Because those are the moments, I mean, again, I’m not 90, but I can imagine those are the moments that I wanna review when I’m older to be like, “Huh, did I actually pause and smell the roses?”
Elizabeth: That what, that’s what we’re talking about. And it’s funny that you love the word satiation, ’cause I went back and forth with my husband on it. He’s like, “Elizabeth, why this word?” I’m like, “Why are you hanging your shingle on this word?” I’m like, “Babe, because it really brings home this, this visceral experience of wealth that we don’t talk [00:07:30] about.”
Elizabeth: We talk about gratitude, right? And gratitude is an antidote to scarcity. It’s really important to be grateful. But for me, gratitude is a heart experience. Satiation is a body experience. And a lot of what I talk about in the book is how do we make wealth, not just in our mental sphere, because it feels too abstract, like let’s do the analysis, let’s make sure we’re looking, but how do we bring it to the heart through gratitude and how do we bring it to the body through satiation?
Elizabeth: And to your point, Maggie, a meal is the best metaphor because, like, we all know [00:08:00] what it feels like when that meal hit the spot. Like it was nourishing, it was warm, or, I mean, we’re, it’s cold. It’s been raining here, so for me a, a warm meal today is like amazing. But it just hits the spot and like time stops and you’re like, ” I didn’t count calories.
Elizabeth: I didn’t… like, I just enjoyed it.” And so that’s the same concept to bring to your money life. What are those moments that you just enjoyed the success? Sometimes it means doing the hard thing, writing the hard email, firing the client, hiring the client. Whatever [00:08:30] it is, take the moment to recognize that just like as if you’re tracking a spreadsheet.
Maggie: Yeah. And, and what came up for me is when you were saying that is like, when you really stopped, enjoyed it with your community, we do that at these milestones that I don’t always love, which is like a bachelorette party, a wedding, a baby shower, and a funeral, but we do so many more things in our lives than just those where we get our community together and celebrate.
Maggie: And so I think we need to bring that into, our financial [00:09:00] goals, our business goals, our health goals, and really bring the community around too
Elizabeth: Yeah, and if I were to give you a very specific example, right? I published my book a year ago, and I remember my book coach, before the book came out, and she asked me, “What are your metrics of success?” Which I was like, “Oh, I’m so glad she asked me,” right? ‘Cause, you know, I can’t tell you how many people are like, “Oh, the box of books arrives, you do the unveiling video for Instagram, and then it’s anticlimactic.”
Elizabeth: And I’m like, “Okay, I don’t wanna do that,” even though I did do my video [00:09:30] ’cause it was fun. But I was like, “Huh, for me, the metrics of success is to throw a dance party where I celebrate with my loved ones who have seen me work really hard writing this book.” And she’s like, “Do it.” I’m like, “Really? It doesn’t have to be in a bookstore?”
Elizabeth: She’s like, “No, throw the dance party.” I was like, “Okay.” And so I threw… So it’s ki- so imagine kinda wedding style, like, I did a buy-out at a local restaurant. I invited 160 people, clients, friends book coaches, like, whoever helped [00:10:00] me along. It was gonna be expensive, so I sold tickets on Eventbrite ’cause I was like, “I financed half of it.”
Elizabeth: I’m like, “People want to celebrate and support me,” so they bought a ticket. And it was so freaking fun, Maggie, that that is the highlight. When I look back at my publishing moment, that was the highlight because I felt supported, seen, and celebrated, right? And so, and, that was kind of one of the last times that I saw my dad before he passed, and I’m so grateful that I got to create that experience that he got to [00:10:30] participate in.
Elizabeth: So that’s just one example where it’s out of the box, right? I don’t know many authors who throw celebratory dance parties. That’s what I wanted to do, and so it’s more like that. What are those milestones that are so important to you? How do you take the moment to celebrate the wins and embody the wins?
Maggie: I love that, and I love a dance party, and it’s like, it’s not like, “Oh, I threw a dance party in my kitchen.” You know what I mean? Like no, we’re going all out. We’re doing the thing.
Elizabeth: DJ.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Maggie: and you know everybody else remembers that too, so it’s a [00:11:00] great experience for everyone. So you talk about this idea that money, wealth, and power are not the same.
Maggie: Can you kind of break down your definition for these for us?
Elizabeth: Yeah. so, money is a tool, and we’ve heard that a lot, right? And it’s talked about on this podcast a lot. Money is a tool. It’s a resource that we can use to satisfy different needs. Wealth is a state of wellbeing, right? So I th- I’m gonna start with those two first, right? So wealth is much more broader, and the way that I define wealth [00:11:30]in my book is it’s a state of wellbeing where our human needs are being met, and this is really important.
Elizabeth: Our human needs are universal, and so I like to tell people, “Throw this idea of neediness out the window.” We have needs, and the way we satisfy our needs is unique and personal. So that’s really key because if you’re thinking through these human needs, which is financial stability, safety, physical health, freedom, purpose, understanding, participation, connection, curiosity, leisure, touch, right?
Elizabeth:And I [00:12:00]leave a space on the wealth mandala to add to that maybe I didn’t say, but get clear on what your needs are. Get clear on how you satisfy them, and I like to tell people each need should be satisfied with both monetary and non-monetary ways. And that’s where then money has a role. It’s a tool that if you’re satisfying a need, for example, a need for connection, monetary is like, I like to go have dinner with my friends once a month.
Elizabeth:I spend money. But a non-monetary strategy for connection is like, but guess what? I also [00:12:30]like to take hikes. That doesn’t cost anything. So I meet a friend for a hike, and I connect that way. And so notice how then money takes a I don’t wanna say smaller, but, like, it’s a more specific role in how we create wealth.
Elizabeth: Wealth is a state of wellbeing that comes out in our ability to satisfy our needs. So let me just pause there before I add in power. Like, any questions there?
Maggie: It just makes a lot of sense and it kinda reminds me of, like everyone’s working towards money until you don’t have your health, and then you’re like, “Damn, I need to [00:13:00] go get my health back.” And, and it’s these, you know, until you’re alone, and then you’re like, “I need community.” And so it is kinda, then those are the times when you don’t have ’em, you kinda see how that whole picture works together
Elizabeth: Totally. And we live in a culture that we’re so freaking focused on the financial stability slice of the pie. and don’t get me wrong, if that financial slice of the pie is on fire, right, we gotta address it. Like, I live in California. Literally, I’ve had clients whose house has gotten burned down, right?
Elizabeth: Like, that house can be on fire, when things [00:13:30] happen to our home, when we lose our job, if there’s a death. And even if we have a baby, we’re like, “Ah!” Like, that’s changing, right? So my job as a wealth and financial advisor is to help clients keep this house in check and to be nimble when change happens.
Elizabeth: but I tell all my clients, my job is only half done with that. My job as a wealth advisor is to make sure we’re having conversations simultaneously in all of these other areas, ‘ cause if we’re not being mindful in how we address these other areas, we’re actually not building a true [00:14:00] wealth portfolio.
Elizabeth: And so I think, I wrote the book and I, I feel like I have something to contribute to my field, is because I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice when we keep the, the vision of wealth so narrowly focused to financial stability. I think if we raise our gaze and be like, “Oh my gosh, wealth is so many more things,” then we start to feel wealthier without needing to add a dime to our bank account, and that is empowering.
Elizabeth: So let’s go to the empowering question. Like, what is power, [00:14:30] right? Power, for me, is, is vitality, is our ability to be connected to that source of life, right? To feel agency in how we design our lives, right? To feel agency in how I engage in relationships. And so if I detach and decouple power from money, I can start to experience different sources of power as I satisfy my needs, maybe in my relationships, maybe in my understanding of the world, maybe my creative contributions.
Elizabeth:[00:15:00] I can feel powerful even as money fluctuates. ‘Cause the reality is that anyone who tracks the stock market, some days it’s up, some days it’s down. And so I need to decouple my experience of power from money’s cyclical nature, right? And I think that is just kind of Relationships 101. I gotta break that codependency of money defining my sense of wealth or money defining my sense of power
Maggie: Yeah, I love that. And I, [00:15:30] I kinda wanna go into that, that wealth mandala because I find the, a lot of advisors that we work with here at Purse Strings do have more of that holistic view. And there’s a lot of advisors who say, like, “I do holistic planning,” which is different than what we’re talking about here, which is really this holistic view.
Maggie: And I think a lot of clients are like, “Well, no, I talk to them about insurance and 401s. That’s what they’re there for.” But this position is really changing of yes, and we talk about all these other things. And I know when you were [00:16:00] presenting, you had the story, and we don’t have to go through the whole story, but, like, one of the takeaways was, like, he should probably get back into therapy for trauma, and, like, they need to go on dates more, and this is how money should be spent, is on those two things, like, to deepen that wealth.
Maggie: And so, I would love to dive more into this because your role as an advisor is so much bigger now than just stocks and bonds and insurance,
Elizabeth: oh, 100%, and I love that you bring this up, Maggie, ’cause I also cringe. Like, I can’t tell you how many presentations I sit through, and everyone’s like, “Holistic wealth plan.” [00:16:30] And I’m like, “What are they gonna show me,” right? And to your point, we’re like, “In addition to our brokerage accounts, we do do 401s, and insurance, and estate planning, and TPA.”
Elizabeth: For me, all of that still fits within the financial stability slice of the pie, and so I’m glad that there’s diversification in the financial stability slice of the pie. But for me, the holistic view is like, what? Like, it’s like, let’s just take the time to talk about as a culture, what is wealth, right?
Elizabeth: And I’m like, if, if that’s what the listeners walk away with, like, huh, like, am I drinking [00:17:00] the Kool-Aid of what the external world defines wealth compared to what my experience of wealth is? Like, just start to question that. So what you’re making reference to is that I sit down, and I use this wealth mandala tool, which is free on my website.
Elizabeth: Go to my website afterwards and download it, right? You don’t even have to read the book, although the book help, helps to kinda understand how to use it. But it’s totally free. I work with all my clients, this is our Q1 meeting, right? Before we jump into cash flow or tax planning or anything, I always say, “I need to know what your wealth mandala looks like for the year.”
Elizabeth:[00:17:30] It changes every year, much like a wealth, an investment statement changes every year. So think of asset diversification, right? When I’m in– creating an investment for a client, I’m thinking of asset classes, right? Stocks, bonds, small, large, mid-cap, da, da, da, da, da, international. And so the same thing is the wealth mandala.
Elizabeth: It is literally a circle with the 12 needs and a space for you to add a need if I didn’t, if you’re like, “Oh, I’m not feeling fully reflected.” Great, add yours. Like, be co-creative. And then what I tell people is that on a [00:18:00] scale of one to ten, how fulfilled are you feeling in this need, right? And so for, for example, financial stability.
Elizabeth: I feel gainfully employed, I can pay my bills, I’m saving, no big issues there. Maybe it’s a nine out of ten, or like, “Oh my God, I just lost my job.” It might be a two. So you do that for each need. At phys– in physical health, right? Oh my gosh, I’m working too much, never working out. Mm, maybe if I’m honest, it’s a three, right?
Elizabeth: Or connection. I haven’t seen my friends in forever. Or understanding. [00:18:30] What the hell is happening with politics today, right? Like, you can go through all of the different needs, put the number, and literally I have people color it in, right? And so you color it all the way to the edge if it’s fully satisfied.
Elizabeth: You color just a little bit if it’s a one, two, or a three. And then I tell people, “Maggie, take a step back and just look at your wealth portfolio as if it were a flower.” And I always tell people, try to be non-judgmental when you look at it, right? [00:19:00] Because a flower’s never fully in bloom. Like, some petals are out, some petals…
Elizabeth: But we love flowers. We think they’re beautiful in their organic state. So look at your wealth mandala in its organic state, and just start to see what reflections you see. You’re like, “Huh, I didn’t think that need was so under-met.” That is fascin I’ve been putting off physical health too long or connection or curiosity too long.
Elizabeth: And guess what? My financial stability slice of the pie actually feels pretty full. How about I [00:19:30] focus attention, time, and resources towards the other needs I need to meet? And when I do this with clients, especially clients who are financially stable and have a high level of assets, right? And r- this is really important.
Elizabeth: I try to steer away from the word net worth because I wanna decouple net worth and self-worth. So high level of assets in the financial stability slice of the pie, and I do this exercise, I’m often surprised where the 2s and the 3s slice. And [00:20:00] so the example I gave at the keynote talk was of a client who’s an executive C-suite at a pretty major tech company.
Elizabeth: We did this exercise. They do not need more salary, more RSU, more stock. But he was, I wanna say, a four or a five in touch, and they were expecting their second child, and his, like, face went white, and he’s like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t like to be touched, and that’s an issue when I have newborns, and I know where that’s coming from, right?
Elizabeth: It’s [00:20:30] coming from being raised with a, a mom who was emotionally unavailable, and I would cringe every time she’d walk into the room, and I wanna be a different parent. I don’t wanna cringe when my girls reach out for me.” And we just like, mic drop. We just pause for a second, recognize how vulnerable that was, and be like, “Okay, great.
Elizabeth: This year we’re going to channel resources towards working either with a grief group, with a therapeutic group, with a men’s group, whatever you need. I’m not going [00:21:00] to be the person who facilitates that, but I can be a guide in helping you make the connection so that resources go towards what will actually address scarcity and that will actually add an enhanced sense of wealth.”
Maggie: Yeah. I mean, every time I hear that, I get goosebumps, and it’s so not a conversation you’d expect to have with your financial advisor. But when we’re so focused on money all the time, that connection with your children, I mean, I don’t have children, but I even know that’s like, [00:21:30] it’s priceless. like, oh my God, holding a newborn, like, there’s nothing I would love to do more.
Maggie: Like, and so you know how important that connection is and it’s something money, can’t buy, but we can buy the resources to help us get there. And so I just think that’s so impactful because it’s, it’s, we’ve gotta change the focus sometimes of more, more, more money when, that’s not really what’s depleting us right now.
Maggie: It shouldn’t be our focus
Elizabeth: No, and, and I think like, ’cause I can imagine lots of financial advisors listen to [00:22:00] this podcast. I know I do. I think it’s such a great one. ‘ Is like there’s a lot of financial advisors who use values exercises, right? or what I’m wanting to contribute to my field, and I’m like, “Oh, maybe I’ll record a little video on how to use this for financial advisors,” is this is a much more concrete way to talk about values and talk about the impact of living or not living into the values, right?
Elizabeth: ‘Cause sometimes, I mean, I’ve gone through my own values exercise, [00:22:30] and it still feels abstract unless I bring it to, well, how am I implementing strategies in my life, practices in my life? And so that’s where I was hoping that the wealth mandala exercise for people who just do it for themselves or financial advisors who use it for clients to really dig deep into how are we channeling resources to things that make us feel wealthier.
Maggie: Yeah, I think it’s a great tool for everyone just to kind of sit down and look at and just like you said, look at it non-judgmentally and see where you can even just boost things by [00:23:00] like one point. What would that look like if it’s hitting the gym or, or starting therapy or, meeting a girlfriend out for a hike?
Maggie: I mean, it can be really low-hanging fruit. We just have to make time for those things that get, we’re so good at laters. But sometimes, later’s too late
Elizabeth: Yeah, exactly. And it helps us take responsibility and be like, “Okay, maybe I don’t have money to put towards these needs, but it’s my responsibility as a human to figure out how to satisfy these needs in non-monetary ways.” Okay, that might be a little bit of a, [00:23:30] oddest pill to swallow, but once you do, that’s where you find agency, and that is how you build power.
Elizabeth: And I would say the other thing too, Maggie, like I use this with my family, like my family knows, my husband and my daughter, that every Valentine’s, this is the exercise we do. We have Valentine’s brunch. I cook them brunch, and I sit them down to do this exercise because, and we do it once a year, because I’ve learned so much about my teen, right?
Elizabeth: Like she did it, I was tickled to be like, “Okay, her financial stability and slice of– and safety slice of the pie are full.” I feel [00:24:00] very grateful. I don’t take that for granted. But her freedom was like a two, and I’m like, “Huh.” I’m like, “I don’t feel like I’m a strict parent. What’s this about?”
Elizabeth: And she’s like, “I wanna drive. I wanna go explore.” And I’m like– So she told me that when she was 14. I’m like, “Well, I can’t change the law. You’re not gonna get your license at 14. But I can teach you how to use public transportation,” right? “I can teach you how to get to a friend’s house without us.” And now that she’s– we’re literally a month away from her getting her license, [00:24:30] we just celebrate that freedom is around the corner.
Elizabeth: But it opened up a conversation that I would never have known, and I understand how that’s been impacting her experience of wealth. Fascinating.
Maggie: Yeah. I mean, that’s something I would have not even expected from a 14-year-old, but it makes so much sense, ’cause when you have to rely on someone to come home from work to drive you there, all the things, it’s, it’s frustrating.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Maggie: And so I know you talk a bit about, like, resources and widening those resources and how they’re wider than wealth.
Maggie: Can you kind of talk a little bit more [00:25:00] about that?
Elizabeth: Yeah, and maybe my origin story I think is important to name is that when I graduated from my bachelor in economics, I went and lived and worked in Oaxaca, Mexico, for two years doing community economics program and teaching indigenous women how to create savings and loan cooperatives, which was an amazing project.
Elizabeth: But I think what was most impactful for me was just experiencing another experience of wealth, right? And so I would go to these indigenous villages thinking, “Okay, [00:25:30] I’m gonna be bringing and imparting all this knowledge and my tools,” et cetera. And I did, and they were super appreciative, but I was like, “Oh my gosh, they feel different than a textbook definition of what poverty looks like,” right?
Elizabeth: And I was like, “Yes,” maybe we got dirt floors going on, and yes, there could certainly be more financial resources that can support the community, but they felt wealthy. And I was like, “Oh my God, I’m twenty-four years old. This doesn’t make sense compared to what I was taught [00:26:00] economics and finance to be,” right?
Elizabeth: And I, and I’m Latina, and I’ve, traveled many countries in Latin America, so this wasn’t new, but I don’t think I had lived and experienced, I mean, a, an extended period of time. And I just started asking people, “How do you define wealth or riqueza in Spanish?” And their responses were immediate.
Elizabeth: Riqueza or wealth is health. It’s community. It’s our connection to spirit. It is are we celebrating with each other? Are we taking care of nature? [00:26:30] And again and again and again, and so for two years, I just kept having these conversations, Maggie. I was like, “Huh They define wealth and resources so differently, right?
Elizabeth: I was taught that economics was the allocation of scarce resources, right? So scarcity is embedded in the definition of economics. I remember that at 16, my first economics course. I was like, “Okay.” And I was like, “Huh, they don’t define it that way,” right? Your relationship to spirit, whatever that means to you, is not scarce, right?
Elizabeth: Your relationship to nature, yes, some natural [00:27:00] resources might be scarce. And so I think what it just helped me understand, Maggie, is that there are scarce resources, and there are not scarce resources or abundant resources. And we have to learn how to recognize the difference. We also have to learn to break our dependency on monetary resources and to recognize that there’s other resources like time, like creativity like friendships.
Elizabeth: There’s just so many, like resiliency, generosity, that we can use to [00:27:30] create our experience of wealth. So I would say for people just to pay attention of what are… maybe even stop for a second and ask yourself, “What are the resources outside of money that I have access to?” And I think when you start recognizing and making lists, you’re like, “Huh.
Elizabeth: Okay, let me be more aware of how I employ, utilize, save, give, receive, earn all these different resources.” And we start to widen our language and our concepts around economics and finance.
Maggie: When [00:28:00] you think that way, you feel so much lighter, I can just, like, feel it
Maggie: in my body, feeling lighter. I can feel in that community, like, it’s not, there’s not, like, the social media and all the things that I need to order these new leggings or this new brand or the stay in the latest and greatest.
Maggie: Like, that’s not the wealth, and that’s, it has, doesn’t have the value that we put on it, which is so a sigh of a relief almost, but having, that spiritual value, that community value, being on nature, touching grass, like, that’s what’s really important
Elizabeth: Yeah, and I would say to, [00:28:30] especially to our culture that is structured differently, we have immediate gratification. That’s okay. It’s like the therapist that says, “There’s the hole. You keep falling in the hole, one day you’ll walk around the hole.” So whatever, we keep falling in the hole. We keep ordering on Amazon.
Elizabeth: We keep ordering on Zappos. But beauty is that there’s also free returns, and so I tell people, even if you are in a pattern of ordering, and maybe you can’t stop that muscle ’cause it’s so ingrained, when you receive the package, pause for a second and be like, “Hmm, is this really gonna satiate me? Is it really gonna satisfy a need?
Elizabeth: Which need is it [00:29:00] gonna satisfy?” And you might be like, “Oh my God, amazing. It’s gonna satisfy my need for…” I’m trying to look at the needs. I’m like, physical health, right? I needed those weights or whatever. And if you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t quite see what need it’s gonna satisfy, hmm, maybe I’m gonna just get in the car, go to UPS, and return it,” right?
Elizabeth: Give yourself grace to explore without judgment because these are new, new muscles that we’re building
Maggie: And that’s always the key, right? Is without judgment. It’s much easier said than done, but we say that a [00:29:30] lot, and it’s important just to talk to yourself like you talk to a friend, right? You would not say these things to her, so don’t say them to yourself.
Elizabeth: So two things, when you said that all of this conversation makes you feel lighter, like, I put the subtitle Finding Joy in Your Relationship to Money on purpose. I do believe we can find joy here, right? We can make it fun and lighter.
Elizabeth: But the other thing too is that I wrote the book without any mathematical equation, right? Some people are like, “Is it a finance book?” I’m like, “Yes, but it’s a financial inquiry book.” And so and I say that because there’s a ton of little [00:30:00] mini moments and questions where I like to tell people, like, grab three friends and read the book together.
Elizabeth: And on my website, there’s a discussion guide. Because I think that the more that we talk about money and our money stories, and we hold ourselves accountable to how we’re satisfying our needs, A, the more fun it gets, and B, the lighter it feels. Like, our powers hold story, especially when they’re secretive, and money is still a taboo in our culture, and we don’t talk enough about it.
Elizabeth: So the more we start to talk [00:30:30] about it, which is why I freaking love your podcast. I mean, like, I’m like you, I love talking about money. I get to talk about money every
Elizabeth: day, right? It is so much fun. Exactly. And so and I think that’s why people listen to your podcast, Maggie, because we’re so curious. And, and so but to take it to the next step, instead of just listening, start talking about it, right?
Elizabeth: Take a question from today’s conversation, call a friend and be like, “Hey, have you ever thought about wealth this way?” Have conversations.
Maggie: I think it’s, yeah, and they should be easier because they’re not like, ” So [00:31:00] what’s your salary? How much did you invest this year?” It’s like, that’s not what I’m asking you at all. You know? It’s what are your feelings, how’d you grow up? I know your mom. How’d she talk about this with you?
Maggie: And I think that, I know you mentioned, like, The Psychology of Money before, and that’s what I love about that book is like, oh, like, every chapter is a different kind of perspective you might have on money, which some I’m like, “Oh, I could see why you would think that,” but like, that’s not how I grew up. And then you see another one and you’re like, “Wow, that’s me on the spot.”
Maggie: You know? So it’s just interesting to get all those viewpoints
Elizabeth: Yeah, [00:31:30] exactly. I mean, I think the easiest one is, like, just call someone up and be like, “Hey, what was your first money memory?” Right? Like that just it’s a, it’s a neutral question, and we get some great stories with their first money memory, so
Maggie: There al- there’s always a good laugh in there too. And so looking at, where we’re at right now with everything shifting economically, how can women define enough when the world keeps telling them it’s never enough?
Elizabeth: Yes. And so it’s defining enough is, I’ll start by saying it’s a revolutionary act, right? And I [00:32:00] think this is really important because in my industry, and I can imagine yours, Maggie, we talk about the great wealth transfer that is gonna be happening in the next, 10 to 15 years, and that basically means trillions of dollars that are gonna pass on to the hands of women ’cause we’re outliving our spouses, right?
Elizabeth: Because we’re inheriting and also ’cause we’re earning it, right? And so I am so freaking excited about the great wealth transfer because I think there’s gonna be more and more space in our conversations in economics and finance to, to start to push back at some of the metrics [00:32:30] that we think are defined, that we think are rigid and actually can be fluid and redefined.
Elizabeth: And so, and so what I would say is that why it’s, for me, it’s a revolutionary act, is that the more we start to experience and embody wealth, right? I practice it every single day, Maggie. I wake up, the first thing I do is have my coffee, and I pull my journal, and I write my three things that satisfied me the day before, right?
Elizabeth: It’s my everyday practice before I look at email, before I do anything. It’s like I’m connected to my experience of [00:33:00] enough because I wanna practice what I preach. And the more that we start to be like, I actually know what enough looks like in strategy and in practice. I do the math and I know what enough looks like financially and basically from a financial independence standpoint that is like, okay, this is the lifestyle that am living and inspired to.
Elizabeth: This is how much I need to support that if I wanna be fully financially independent, meaning not working, or in my case, I’m an entrepreneur. Like, I will never [00:33:30] retire from being an entrepreneur. Maybe I’ll do less and more of things. I mean, as long as I’m able-bodied, I will be creatively involved in life, right?
Elizabeth: And I think that’s a healthy component as well, is because a lot of time this idea of retirement is like, yes, a lot of people wanna retire from a W2, right? Working for someone else. But if you also start to be creative and find, sources of income that come from your creativity, the reality is that you’ll never retire from that in some capacity as long as, knock on wood, you’re able to perform what you wanna [00:34:00] do.
Elizabeth: But I think I digress. What, what I wanna say about that is that, enough is individual So maybe spend some time thinking what does enough feel like, and then you can take that experience to the spreadsheet to be like, “Okay, let me map out phase one of enough.” Then phase two. We don’t have to map it out until age 95.
Elizabeth: That is extremely overwhelming. So when I work with clients, and I do do the plan to 95, I then break it down in five-year segments because life [00:34:30] changes. That’s the only constant is change. And but if we experience and literally consume those moments enough, what I tell clients is that you’re then compounding the experience of meaning in your life, right?
Elizabeth: ‘Cause we compound interest in our accounts, so make sure you’ve got your savings automated. But equally important, compound those moments of meaning, and then you just start to walk in the world differently
Maggie: Mm-hmm. I’m so glad we had this conversation today. I think there’s [00:35:00] so many good takeaways for our community and just a whole new way to look at things, from this actual true holistic standpoint, not just, investments and your estate plan, but really your health, your wealth, all of the different things.
Maggie: There is a question we like to ask all of our guests on the podcast, and I’m excited to hear your answer on this one, and that is: what does financial freedom mean to you?
Elizabeth: Financial freedom is the, the ability to have agency in how I design my life, right? So I [00:35:30] don’t aspire, as I was saying before, to be retired in the conventional sense of the word. So financial freedom isn’t never earning, right? Or I have clients who tell me, ” Having enough money I never have to think about.”
Elizabeth: I’m like, “Wait, wait a second. I am in relationship with money. I need to think, talk, and be with it every day.” So I don’t, I don’t aspire that. I aspire, and I feel like I’m already in financial freedom because as an entrepreneur, I get to design how I work, with whom I work, what I say yes to, what are my services.
Elizabeth: And [00:36:00] so for me, that element of design and agency is what financial freedom is in connection to your relationship to money
Maggie: Of course, of course. Well, Elizabeth, I appreciate you just sharing your knowledge with the world, putting your book out there, putting this mandala out there because I think it’s so needed in this industry to bring it to, the 21st century or wherever we’re at right now. Because money can do so much for us, but there’s also so much more to the equation.
Maggie: So I wanna make sure we have your [00:36:30] link to your book in the show notes and to the mandala so people can get started with that. Anything else that we didn’t touch on that you wanna make sure to share before we sign off today?
Elizabeth: You know, we didn’t touch upon just literally sitting down and having a conversation with money. I describe how to do that in my book. I share my own conversation with money ’cause I think that’s the big piece. Again, as women, we like to be in a relationship, we like to talk. So sit down, talk to money.
Elizabeth: You’d be so surprised at what it wants to say. And so, the book is just chock-full of exercises and questions. And so, yeah, That’s the [00:37:00] revolution is let’s redefine our relationship to wealth. Let’s redefine our relationship to money. Let’s start there.
Maggie: And I know some people are gonna read it and think, “This girl’s crazy if she wants me to sit in one chair and talk to money and want to be in the other chair and be money.” But the messages come out and it works.
Elizabeth: Totally. It’s like, it so works, and I went first. You can read my super vulnerable conversation with money in the book. And there’s also– I need to add this to my website. I will actually after this podcast, is that I’ve [00:37:30] created a GPT on ChatGPT called Conversations with Money. So if you’re like, “Oh, it’s not flowing, but I still wanna talk to money,” go to my website.
Elizabeth: I’ll actually add the link today, and then you can use ChatGPT. It has all of my principles, all of my book, all of the money archetypes, and sit down and have a conversation with money that way. That actually might be easier, Maggie, so thanks for the prompt.
Maggie: Of course, of course. I think that’s gonna be great. So yeah, thanks for sharing all these resources. Thanks for sharing your expertise. I can’t wait for our community to grab your book, and until next [00:38:00] time, be financially fearless.
How to Turn Your Passion into a Six Figure Side Hustle with Ashley Neidert
Most women start a side hustle to make a little extra money. Ashley Neidert started posting videos and built a six-figure business. She is here to tell you exactly how she did it and what nobody else is going to tell you before you start.
Meet Ashley Neidert, full-time cat content creator, pediatric doctor of physical therapy, and the world’s only pet content creator coach. Through her brand Petfluencer Secrets, she helps aspiring and growing pet creators turn their pages into real income through brand deals, YouTube, and scalable online revenue streams. Known for its honest, no fluff approach, Petfluencer Secrets focuses on strategy, storytelling, and sustainable growth, giving creators the tools and confidence to build a profitable pet brand without relying on viral moments.
In this episode, we pull back the curtain on what it actually looks like to make real money as a pet content creator. This is not the highlight reel. This is the 4:00 AM Starbucks run, the algorithm shifts, the taxes nobody warned you about, and the real income timelines you need to hear before you start.
You will walk away with a clear-eyed, no-fluff picture of the pet influencer world, plus practical steps to start building your own channel the right way.
Want to start a side hustle? Join us for next week’s Money Talks “The Tax and Money Moves You Need to Make Now” Let’s talk about the financial side of actually running it. From estimated taxes to business structure to keeping your books right, we’re covering what every woman building a side income needs to know. Click here to registerfor FREE and bring your questions!
Have questions? Click this to check out our expert Q&A for tips from industry experts, tailored to help women address their most common financial concerns.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive financial tips delivered weekly here!
Barbara Provost, EdD and Maggie Nielsen, MBA are the co-founders of Purse Strings, a national platform helping women make confident financial decisions by connecting them with vetted financial professionals who truly understand women’s lives and money needs. Purse Strings connects women across the U.S. with vetted financial professionals who specialize in supporting women through divorce, money transitions, and financial independence.
Full Episode Transcript
(This transcript was generated using AI, so please excuse any misspellings or errors)
PS: Ashley Neidert (MP3)
[00:00:00] Social media is like the life these days, right? Everyone’s on it, and so many people talk about being an influencer and how much money you can make off of there, which great, we love it. But I wanted to really dive into how easy is it? I mean, I’ll be transparent. The dog content goes over much better than any financial content.
People love to go on Instagram or TikTok to get the drama, to get the pets, to get the cooking, maybe a workout. [00:00:30] The funnies, really. Nobody really wants to get financial information. But what does it look like to actually post your pet and make money on there? I did make an account for my dog, Sparky which was short-lived, and I realized how much dedication you need.
And after doing all of Purr Strength, I realized what dedication is really needed to maintain any social media account. So when Ashley reached out and she helps people be pet [00:01:00] influencers, I was like, ” We’ve got to get this on the podcast,” because it can be a great opportunity for those who don’t wanna show their face on social media.
It can also be a great opportunity just to have your pets fund themselves. We know they can be expensive. I’ve been to the vet where it is five grand, and so man, if the pet could just pay that themselves, that would be really fantastic. So I’m excited to have Ashley on, share her expertise of what is all included in being a pet [00:01:30] influencer and how we can make money doing it.
So let’s dive in.
[00:02:00]
Maggie: Ashley, welcome to Women and Money: The Sh*t We Don’t Talk About. This is gonna be a great one because I am a sucker for pets. So before we dive in, let’s share with the audience who you are and what you’re up to
Ashley: Okay, there’s a lot to this. So in general, I am a full-time cat content creator, and I am the essentially [00:02:30] the world’s only pet content creator coach. So I do both of those things, but by trade I’m a pediatric doctor of physical therapy and with all that, my life is super chaotic.
Ashley: But it is so fun because I get to not only literally make a full-time income off of my cats, but I get to literally work with hundreds of content creators who are, you know, trying to figure out this world of side hustles. So yeah, it is so fun.
Maggie: Okay, so like how many cats do [00:03:00] you have?
Ashley: So I have two cats,
Maggie: that’s a good limit
Ashley: Yeah, so one is Chip. We call him the famous one. He’s the one who started all of this. He’s Chip the Manx, so he’s technically the world’s most famous Manx cat. And it’s Manx. It’s M-A-N-X. A lot of people get confused with Minx, M-I-N-X. And then we have Biscuit. She’s our second cat, and I’ve had a lot of people joke.
Ashley: They’ve asked they’re like, “Did you just get a second cat so you can make twice as much money?” I was like, “No, no, no, our cat Chip needed a friend.” But she does have her own channels and [00:03:30] her own socials as well.
Maggie: Of course, of course. And so let’s kinda start from the beginning. When did you go from, like, posting cute videos of, “I got this amazing cat,” to, like, “This could be real money, actually”?
Ashley: Yes. So I actually am going to take a few steps back before the cute videos. So I uh, was in therapy schools years ago, and if you’re familiar with how expensive graduate school is, it was about $100,000 for just in-state tuition. [00:04:00] And at the time, about two years in, I started freaking out because I actually did the calculations, unlike a lot of people in school.
Ashley: I actually did the calculations and started freaking out about how much it was gonna actually cost after graduation. And with graduate student loans, they start accumulating interest the moment you take them compared to the undergrad loans. So that was also terrifying watching that grow really fast. So I actually at the time had started a finance blog.
Ashley: So I was blogging about money and just my journey of [00:04:30] learning about money, how I was working. I made some YouTube videos. You can’t look it up anymore. I deleted everything. But I know, it was so amateur back then. Nevertheless so yeah. So it was my journey for about two and a half years of this blog of learning literally the absolute basics.
Ashley: What on earth is active income versus passive income? You know, like, what on earth is stock investing? Like, the basics that I just didn’t know. So I was doing all that and learning how to make a little bit of money off of it from, like, the YouTube Partner Program and from affiliate links and stuff.
Ashley: So at the time, [00:05:00] I was like, “Oh my gosh, I can actually make money online. This is really cool.” So then, okay, so like I said, I did that for about two and a half years, and at the end of my school by graduation, I had gotten this cat. And I was like, “Okay I’ve learned how to make posts by now. I know how to do basic stuff.
Ashley: Let me start making videos of my cat.” So I started posting about him, and very quickly I learned that people love cat videos. And so I started posting more and more. Very quickly, again, I realized [00:05:30] that you could actually monetize from it. Now, there was a point where I had a mental shift, and I decided that this was going to be something that I was actually going to pursue, and that was literally…
Ashley: I was going through orientation at a job, so again, like, right after school. And I was… I remember this was orientation week, and I was sitting by myself eating lunch, and I was on my phone. I got accepted into the TikTok, like, Creator Fund. And I saw immediately that first day how much money that I made.
Ashley: It was around, like, $90 [00:06:00] in a day just from my cat videos. And I just stared at my phone, and I was like, “How on earth? Like, how is this reality? So at that time, I, again, I had this mental shift where I decided I’m going to actually pursue learning this, figuring this out, understanding marketing and sales and copywriting.
Ashley: Oh my gosh, so many things that I’ve had to learn over the years. I’ve been a content creator for seven and a half years now. Over time, I’ve learned all these things and figured out how to turn it into a [00:06:30] six-figure income.
Ashley: And then not just that, but then turn into a coaching business as well
Maggie: That’s amazing. And so I, this was a question I wanted to ask is, like, is there opportunity to really make that six-figure income for most people without… Like, I know you have the coaching, which is, like, an additional thing, but just kind of with their pet you still made six figures
Ashley: So thankfully, I actually have, like, multiple examples of, I guess, proof of individuals that I have coached. I can’t just say, “Oh, yeah, it’s just myself if you do just exactly what I do.” Like, there are multiple ways. [00:07:00] So the answer is yes, but also one thing I actually really appreciate about your podcast is you guys do talk about, like, the very real, like, we’re not sugarcoating stuff here, and I don’t wanna sugarcoat the reality of what it’s like being a content crea- like a full-time content creator because it’s extremely hard.
Ashley: I’d say what’s most challenging about it is a lot of people get into it like I did with a full-time job, and you’re trying to do it in the evenings and in the weekends. And the problem with content creating is it is a nonstop job. You [00:07:30] cannot stop. In fact, one thing that I teach is that if you don’t post for about three days, all of a sudden you are going to be demoted in the algorithm, essentially.
Ashley: And so no matter what you have going on in life, you have to be proactive, you have to be scheduling content, you have to be learning. And the world of influencing is ever-changing. Another thing I tell my clients is the reality that What you do today is going to be absolutely different in six months from now, like the way you target, the way the platform is, and [00:08:00] that’s just hard.
Ashley: So going back to your question of is it really possible? Yes, you just have to be hyper strategic. So excellent example of a girl who told me just recently, she actually is an Amazon influencer with pet products. So she has two cats, and what she has done is she… Okay, this is really cool how she does it.
Ashley: So she gets free samples on TikTok Shop of expensive pet products, such as automatic litter boxes, pet cages, things that cost hundreds of dollars. And then what she does is she makes [00:08:30] videos on TikTok Shop, and the product, like the brands, will pay to push the videos, so then she gets commission off those videos.
Ashley: Then she takes that product and she posts it on Amazon, and she gets about 10 different pieces of content per product, photos, videos, et cetera. And through just those, she only has around like 12,000 followers but through just those, she makes 10 to $12,000 a month. So that alone, it is wild.
Ashley: And then there’s another girl who I’ve recently talked to ’cause she just had a…
Ashley: we call them [00:09:00] our wins, so we talk about our wins in our group coaching, and she recently talked about her win of, it was purely through brand deals. So, without really getting into how all sponsored and brand deals work what I advocate for is when you do have a lot more followers to do longer term partnerships that are three to six months long versus doing just like one video here and there.
Ashley: And with those I always structure them to be like a $10,000 plus package, essentially. And she was so excited to be able to announce [00:09:30] that she had just hit six figures just doing a few of those $10,000 packages throughout the past year. And so is it reality? Again, yes, but it’s not the reality for everyone because if it was, everyone would be doing it.
Ashley: I know like everyone and their mother’s trying to be a content creator, but not everyone is a six-figure content creator
Maggie: And I appreciate, like, that transparency. I mean, you c- you shared about how, you know, you learned more marketing. You looked, you learned like copywriting, you know, all the things. It’s not just like, “Wow, [00:10:00] I love this video. Let’s post it,” and, you know, this pet product is gonna reach out to me. Like, it’s not A to B to B to C.
Maggie: Like, it’s also not one income stream. Like, yes, it’s influencing all at once, but it sounds like you’ve done TikTok, TikTok Shop, which may be different, I’m not clear, Amazon. I know you have, like, Instagram, then there’s YouTube. So it’s like multiple streams that add up, but it’s still, like, diversifying, like, like investing.
Maggie: But yeah it’s never just one thing, one platform, just a [00:10:30] post. And like you said, my God, you have to keep posting. And I know batch your content, do the thing, but, like, man, if you get sick, if you wanna go on vacation, like, you can’t take a step back. And a lot of people are like, “Oh my God, it’s just posting a video,” you know?
Maggie: And you’re like, “It is so much more, though.”
Ashley: Yes. I feel like it is so much more. It, there truly is so much to it. There is. Yes. So a lot of times, and I get this very often especially when people are like, “Mm, do I actually need coaching?” Or, “Oh, do I actually need to, like, take a course to learn this?” And I’m like, [00:11:00] “Okay, you definitely can spend one to two years figuring this out, learning it all.”
Ashley: But through my lens of how much I’ve had to learn to get to the point to now where I can just watch a video and know exactly what to change, exactly what needs to be fixed, exactly your target audience, like, all those things, it takes so much time. Because it’s not just, it’s not just learning the platform, and it’s not just creating the content, posting the content.
Ashley: There is, you have to learn how the algorithm works, how your target audience works. You have to [00:11:30] think and learn so much of, like, the psychological basis of things compared to just the basic technical aspects of clicking the buttons, videotaping your pet, and posting it.
Maggie: You have to learn to keep up with it as well. Like you said, everything changes every six months, so you have to either have a coach who’s paying attention to that, or you have to pay attention to that of like, ooh, we’re changing from reels to carousels, to longer videos, to shorter videos, to trending audios.
Maggie: Like, who knows what, you know? It’s always something else.
Ashley: there’s actually right now a big shift happening [00:12:00] between, So there was a big shift when we went from TikTok to Instagram, and now there’s a big shift happening from Instagram over to YouTube. I’m seeing this with brands, collaborations, I’m seeing this with creators talking about their frustration with meta platforms.
Ashley: So yeah, it’s never ending. It is never ending, and that’s hard because a lot of things, a lot of times what happens is you spend all this time learning, learning, learning. You’re experimenting, you’re trial and error, and then you finally think you figured it out, and then all of a sudden things are shifting on you again, which again, it’s one of those realities of like, do you have the mental [00:12:30] and emotional capacity to take on this side hustle where you know you can’t just like, almost like hit repeat and just be able to, you know, keep getting, say, the passive income or something.
Ashley: Like, you actually have to actively be involved of it, in it constantly
Maggie: Yeah it’s really crazy. And so were you, like, recommend kind of chasing just best videos to go viral? Or, like, is there more of a method to the madness that, like, you know, slow and consistent is better? What are you seeing out there?
Ashley: I’ve [00:13:00] learned after actually myself going through, like, different coaching programs and courses, I’ve learned that my niche is just different, so I will just share about my experience. And so when it comes to the pet niche, posting about our dogs and cats and birds and turtles and stuff, it is actually a very emotional and relational niche.
Ashley: So it’s not just about, you know, people posting about their fitness stuff or their health stuff and their cooking videos. Like, ours is just about creating emotional connection [00:13:30] with your audience. And storytelling, being able to get someone to actually not only emotionally connect with you, but think about your channel and share your channel and actually be invested into your story is the biggest skill that anyone can learn or try to figure out when it comes to being a content creator.
Ashley: Because nowadays, people just want to feel good. We’re actually entering into what is being termed the cozy content phase or the cozy content [00:14:00] era, where as content creators and influencers, we unfortunately actually need to shift away from highly edited content very structured, voice-overed, you know, content, and actually shift into very hyper-authentic content, original audio.
Ashley: And that’s the type of content that’s actually right now doing better than the, like, heavily edited content.
Ashley: So the days of hypervirality of what I would call, like, 2020 to 2023 are behind us. [00:14:30] So nowadays what, and especially, like, this is literally what Meta has even just put out and told us, and what YouTube has told us too, is that virality is an entirely different game now. It is about your channel engagement.
Ashley: So thankfully, I do have examples of pet content creators who do this, they’re not huge content creators. Like, I would call them, like, a 10,000 to 40,000 follower range, and yet they have insane engagement with their viewers. Versus honestly, my channel, one of my channels that has, like, 125,000 [00:15:00] followers, unfortunately, because he’s been around for so long and a lot of my chunks of followers, they are gone.
Ashley: They’re not engaged. So when it comes to, like, chasing viral trends, that is behind us. Those days are over. And in fact, it’s all about, again, building that emotional connection and trying to get every person who subscribes to you actually watching your content Because what happens is after about three times they’re shown your content, if they do not engage with your content, they’re not going to be shown your content almost ever again[00:15:30]
Maggie: It’s crazy. Like, I know those people on my feed. I’m like, “Didn’t I follow them? Like, why don’t I see anything from them anymore?”
Ashley: Yes
Maggie: It’s a lot. It’s a lot. So if someone wants to start making money from content but feels stuck, like, what are a couple, you know, one or two simple actions they can take to kind of get that momentum going?
Ashley: Being in the space of influencing, there are so many ways to make money. And it gets extremely exciting but extremely overwhelming when you try to figure out where to start. And I’m gonna actually split [00:16:00] this into two different categories of your active income opportunities and your passive income opportunities, because again, totally different avenues and totally different outcomes.
Ashley: So your biggest active income opportunity is through brand collaborations and sponsorships. This is not just obviously in the pet niche, but this is, you know, across any influencer niche. And that’s just because brands will pay hundreds to thousands of dollars for one video. It’s wild, and it’s still a very big reality.
Ashley: But you do have to at least have a higher follower count. You at least [00:16:30] need, I would say to even make $100 on a video, probably about 10 to 20,000 followers. So that is hard if you’re brand new, for example. So that is like the biggest way to make active income.
Ashley: From there, you have other active income opportunities through like meta bonuses things that are like you do one time and you get that money. But a lot of the ways to make money are actually passive income opportunities. So I mentioned TikTok, TikTok Shop. TikTok does have a way for you to make money off your content if it’s one minute or above [00:17:00] which is kind of challenging.
Ashley: There’s TikTok Shop, which was very, very popular for about a year, year and a half, and actually is getting a lot less popular mostly because the problem with TikTok is it is such a shoppable platform that it actually annoys a lot of people. Like, you want to research or learn something, and all you see are ads, ads, ads, ads, ads.
Maggie: Well, And so many people’s content is an ad, which I get you guys are getting paid for, but I was like, “I just wanted to follow her,” and now it’s like a food
Maggie: ad, you know?
Ashley: Yeah, no, it is the [00:17:30] consumers, the general people, and even me, we all can tell if a video’s an ad very, very fast. But yeah, so there are things like the TikTok Shop. There’s Amazon Influencing, which is one of my favorites because no one really talks about it, but it’s a super easy way to, like, reuse your own content.
Ashley: From there, one thing that I actually remind a lot of people is that when you as a consumer see those videos that are, like, hyperviral, like on Instagram. Let’s say it has a million views. The content creator’s actually not making money off of that, which is crazy because [00:18:00] I think we’re conditioned to think from, like, 10 years ago where if a video went viral, they would make, you know, let’s say thousands of thousands of dollars.
Ashley: Then there’s a YouTube Partner Program, which of any of the passive income opportunities is my favorite because it is more predictable, and it’s been around the longest. So you know that you can predict the, in the future that you’ll be able to earn that money.
Ashley: But yeah. So those are kind of, I’d say, like, the biggest ways to make money and where people would start. I right now am a huge proponent, like, just right now since we are shifting [00:18:30] from Instagram to YouTube, I’m the biggest proponent for being a YouTube content creator and making money through the YouTube Partner Program and doing brand deals over there if, again, someone were interested in actually getting into this and trying to make money off of it
Maggie: I’ve heard a lot of great things about YouTube, and I think people like that it’s not connected to the Meta platform. They’ve also been around for a while, so I feel like they’ve got most of their things down pat, like their processes and stuff like that. But you see, I mean, I see so many people who get a pet and wanna start making videos, and [00:19:00] sometimes those pets no longer are puppies, and they might stop or…
Maggie: But, like, to have something that pays just to cover your pet bills can be amazing. Like, dogs, oh my God, they eat something, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a two grand surgery right there.” You know? So I’m like, God, even if you could just pay for your own bills, that would be amazing
Ashley: I essentially guarantee people that if they at least follow the process, which I can definitely give a little bit of a tidbit of how not to start a pet channel.
Maggie: Yeah, give [00:19:30] us what not to do
Ashley: I can essentially guarantee that not only would it at least just pay for those bills, but it will pay for their food, maybe their litter, like at least maintaining.
Ashley: And some people are like, “No, I wanna like go part-time. I wanna go full-time doing this.” And again, we can definitely like go into the realities of what that can look like and timelines and all that, because I’ve seen it. But I did mention just a little ago, so if you want, I can go into like the things…
Ashley: Like, if anyone were actually interested in becoming a pet content creator, like what not [00:20:00] to do. Like what not to do, because There is something that I continue to see people do over and over and over again that just, I don’t know, it just kills me.
Maggie: Let’s hear it. Come on
Ashley: Okay, so there is like a community.
Ashley: And again, all I have is my experience with the pet niche, so I don’t know if this exists outside my niche, but it is very prevalent within the pet niche. So first off, the majority of people who I have found who become pet content creators are actually this like, [00:20:30] let’s say 30 to 50-year-old crowd. Mostly it’s these individuals who have…
Ashley: You know, they’re struggling with the career that they’ve chosen. They want, they need, let’s be honest, they need extra income. And they’re just trying to find something where they’re, don’t have to participate in social videos like the Gen Z’s are.
Maggie: I was gonna say that’s the generation that does not wanna show their
Maggie: face.
Maggie: They
Maggie: think it’s cringe
Ashley: Exactly. So that is truly… That is, like, the majority of, like, the age and the group of the people that I [00:21:00] work with. And the problem is there is this community, and I call them the pet newbies or the newbie creators, who all they do is follow each other. So they just go and follow tons of other small pet content creators, and then what they see is each other’s content.
Ashley: So what I always tell people is if you’re going to start one of these new channels, the first thing you do is just go and follow the people you are inspired to be or you aspire to be, and that way on your [00:21:30] own feed, Instagram will feed you, or TikTok, whatever, it will start feeding you the best content from those creators, and then you will start seeing what works really, really well for the people who know how to do it well.
Ashley: But unfortunately, again, what I see with this newbie creator community is they follow each other, and then all they see is the same type of content, and they literally, like, post the same stuff over and over and over again, and this type of content is like, “Oh, please follow me.” I’m like, a brand won’t [00:22:00] ever look at this and say, “Oh, I wanna be associated with this channel.” So this is, like, the number one thing I always tell creators. I’m like, “Go unfollow all those channels with 200 subscribers. You’re not learning from them. If you wanna follow that- with them on your personal channels, go ahead.
Ashley: But you’re starting a business, and you need to aspire to be the big content creators. You’re not here just to have fun.” It is fun. But again, like, this is a business, and this is not you just supporting other small creators. Like, you need to set a foundation of [00:22:30] knowing what you aspire to be.
Ashley: So that’s just, like, my first little tip because I see it all the time
Maggie: I mean, it’s like any business. If you wanna be a millionaire, you gotta play in the realm of people who are millionaires. You can’t be in the small business networking group where everyone’s earning, you know, 100,000 a year. Like, you’ve got to, you’ve gotta play up. I can definitely see that, like, on my feed or see… Yeah, I’ve seen those go around where it’s, I get all boats rise together, but it’s also like, mm-mm, we [00:23:00] gotta get some tips from the big
Ashley: Right. And I guess one thing that has helped me when it comes to giving that type of advice is I have personally talked to a handful of, like, marketing… they’re like the third-party marketing individuals who, like, work for brands. Anyway and so I’ve personally asked them because it actually is common, just FYI, of how this works.
Ashley: So when you do collaborate with a big brand such as like I have with Amazon PetSmart, and brands like that, they work with a third party. Like, [00:23:30] they don’t just use their in-house marketing. They work with a third-party marketing agency, and usually do, like, a Zoom with them to know that, you know, it’s a legitimate thing.
Ashley: I straight-up ask them now every single time. I say, “How did you find my channel? Why did you decide on my channel, and how do you vet other channels?” And I have heard over and over and over again, the biggest things that brands care about looking for is good storytelling, so that understandably is good engagement.
Ashley: You’re showcasing the relationship between, like, human and pet, and they do not like… And I’ve heard this thankfully s- and [00:24:00] I say thankfully so many times ’cause I educate people, like, “Don’t do this,” but they do not like those types of videos that tries to call out, “Please subscribe. Please subscribe.”
Ashley: Kind of throwaway content where you just make something and just to thr- just to post it. They just really want intentional storytelling, intentional content on your channel
Maggie: It looks a little desperate
Ashley: It does. It does. And I completely understand it. Like, there have been phases in my life where, whether it was when I had my daughter or when moving where I’m like, “I don’t have time to create [00:24:30] content.
Ashley: I can’t. It’s 9:00 PM, and I’m sitting in bed, and oh my gosh, I have to create a video today.” And I’ve been there. Like, I completely understand. But when it comes to, like, looking desperate to please subscribe and stuff, it is just a whole nother type of category of content that I just never advocate for
Maggie: And it’s kind of that learning curve of like they always say like, “Have a call to action,” you know? And so you’re like, “Great, that’s my call to action.” You know what I mean? Like, I get the learning curve ’cause there’s so much noise around how to be a content creator and different coaching programs for either different [00:25:00] niches or whatever it may be.
Maggie: And so how did you translate then from, “Great, my content’s going well, I should maybe teach others how to do this as well too,”
Ashley: Okay. So this was about two years into Chips’ channel, and at that point, I had experimented with enough of diverse monetization opportunities. I was making enough to actually go part-time in my job at the time. And I was like, yeah, it was a huge milestone. I almost had a ton of guilt.
Ashley: Like, I felt a lot of guilt going [00:25:30] down to part-time just because, like, I had to convince my husband that this could last a while, that, you know, it was worthwhile. Nevertheless so yes, there was a point where I was like, “Okay, I have enough income predictably every month coming in.” But I had gone through both coaching and courses trying to learn the nuances of how to grow bigger, how to make this a big, legitimate thing.
Ashley: But there were no resources for pet content creators. And I knew… Like, I tried a lot of [00:26:00] the different methods, strategies that I learned on YouTube. They were like, “How to blow up overnight,” and all those things. I watched countless videos. I tried, but there was a lot that just didn’t work for my niche.
Ashley: So I was like, “Okay, I have my experience from my blog where I learned a lot of graphic design and copywriting and sales and affiliate marketing. I learned all that. I even learned, like, how to literally build website and all that stuff.” I was like, “Why don’t I translate that into a business, into a space, a niche that [00:26:30] literally there is a hole that needs filled?”
Ashley: So, I started Petfluencer Secrets, and it by now has grown a lot, which is so exciting, but it still is a very, very small niche out there because it’s like a person who, again, my target audience being more of that, like, 30 to 50-year-old. But I have learned that, oh my gosh, there is that need. There is a need because, again, taking the advice of how to, you know, blow up overnight of, like MrBeast style videos, like it just [00:27:00] doesn’t translate to our niche.
Ashley: So yeah, so it was about, you know, two, two and a half years in, and it is a huge passion of mine because again, there are more resources now that I know a lot of content creators have been like, “Ooh, let’s make money off of this.” But still, it’s still such a small niche, but I love
Ashley: it. I love it so much.
Maggie: I mean, a small niche is great, right? Like, you don’t have as many competitors, which is awesome. But I appreciate you bringing, like, the truth on all these things, ’cause I think so many people, they’re like, “We have a lot of dog videos. Just post them, and people will reach [00:27:30] out.” And like, it is more than that, and I think we also gotta give people like you who are the influencers, like, props, you know?
Maggie: It’s not just like this hoity-toity thing. Like, no it’s work, but I’m making money for it, so don’t feel guilty
Maggie: about going part-time.
Maggie: I’ve gotta ask, do you have, like, insurance on your pet?
Ashley: So, I’ve actually been asked that a lot. I have influencer insurance, Yes, there’s a thing. In fact, I learned it was a thing when I got into a, my largest brand deal ever about a year and a half ago, [00:28:00] and on the contract it said I needed influencer insurance. I said, “What?” I didn’t know this existed, but this, there is influencer insurance where it, no, it does not cover like my vet bills and like my pet stuff, but it does make it so that if I post, let’s say, controversial content or I post content about a product that someone claims that they watched my video, they bought the product, and then it, you know, like killed their dog or something, that they could not sue me, right?
Ashley: Like, it’s insurance against that. [00:28:30] It’s crazy. So yeah. So I do have ins- influencer insurance. No, I don’t have… I did for a while have insurance on my pets because I did a collaboration with an insurance brand, and I was offered insurance for a while. But right now I don’t, which to be honest, I had quite one of m- my non, my less famous cat we had massive bills ’cause we had to have a surgery this past year, and at that time I thought, “Darn it.
Ashley: I should have them under insurance.”
Maggie: It always happens once you need something, which I know, like, some people just carry pet insurance. I know it’s a great [00:29:00] idea. My dog’s 14 and a half. We don’t qualify. But that’s interesting that there’s influencer insurance. I’ve never heard of that, but it makes sense. People are… When people have a bad mood, they’re out to get you these days.
Ashley: Oh. People are mean online. Oh my gosh. And I tell people, “So you are more likely to have hater comments if you, if a human is on your video compared to your pet.” But one of my cats, so my famous cat, Chip, the Manx breed for those of you who are unfamiliar, they are born with either a half tail or no tail, and that’s [00:29:30] just like a distincting, distinctive thing about their breed.
Ashley: And I… It is almost daily where people comment hate comments about the fact that I cut off my cat’s tail, which again, is not true. He was born that way. But people, and especially on YouTube, I don’t know, a lot of people on YouTube, for whatever reason they’re just posting hater comments all the time.
Ashley: And especially like people… I’ve had people talk about my voice, like they don’t like my voice. They don’t like what I wear. I mean, people are so mean online. But at least I at least tell my clients, I’m like, “You know what? In the [00:30:00] pet niche, what’s really nice is we have less hater comments,” but you are not exempt from hater comments even though it’s just your dog on there.
Ashley: People will hate
Ashley: on your dog.
Maggie: It’s rough out there, but you gotta remember, like, engagement’s engagement, right?
Ashley: I know, I know. That’s why I say I tell people, I’m like, “If it truly, truly makes you feel uncomfortable, just block them and move on. But if they’re saying something just a little bit mean, comment back.” And always, I always say, “Always comment with a question, [00:30:30] because that way they’ll feel prompted to engage back, and then all of a sudden you have twice as many comments.”
Ashley: So yeah, it is it’s engagement, just may not feel too good. And so what I’ve done, thankfully, at this point with my business, I’ve been able to hire a virtual assistant to manage a lot of my cat side of things, my cat businesses, whatever we wanna call it. And so whenever there’s hater comments, I just let her do it and I don’t have to take on that emotional, mental toll of seeing negative comments anymore
Maggie: It’s so much better to outsource. Like, anything that I don’t like to [00:31:00] do, it’s like there’s some weird emotional attachment, you know? But I like, if I was commenting back for you, I’d be like, “Okay, I could do that for Ashley,” and go stick up for her, you know? Like, but like, if they were commenting on my voice, I’d be like, “Oh, well,
Maggie: okay then.”
Ashley: Exactly. Yeah, for sure
Maggie: This has been so much information. Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that, like, you feel the audience needs to know about pet influencer secrets or just being an influencer at all?
Ashley: Yeah. So I do wanna [00:31:30] touch on just the reality of the income. So I know a lot of your audience is obviously, like, learning about money and trying to just try to make it through this world. And especially because we’re women, like, the way that we have to approach everything is just different.
Ashley: I just wanted to touch on the absolute reality of how much money you can make, and I definitely, again, don’t wanna sugarcoat it because, yeah. So when it comes to being a content creator in general, and I’ve seen this cross [00:32:00] platforms because I thankfully have actually had the opportunity to coach people outside of the pet niche, so I’ve seen it a little bit in other niches. You have to mentally prepare yourself for at least a minimum of six months to, up to, like, 24 months of consistent effort before you can, be able to go part-time on a job. Six months is very, very unlikely. In fact, it still takes anywhere from, about a year to a year and a half to even get into that YouTube Partner Program.
Ashley: There’s one gal who thankfully she was [00:32:30] like, she has like the record in my group coaching where she got it in four months. But still that’s not going to pay your mortgage. I always say, if you wanna be a content creator, don’t bet on it being a full-time job. Almost like don’t ever bet on it being a full-time job just because again, the moment, like I’ve experienced it being a full-time job, it can get extremely isolating.
Ashley: So, because you’re by yourself, no one can do it for you.
Ashley: so it’s isolating. It is mentally challenging ’cause again, even like negative [00:33:00] comments and whatnot. And you have to just, before you get into it, brace yourself in knowing that this can be like an emotionally taxing thing mentally taxing, and to be honest, really time-consuming to where it’s taking away from your precious weekends.
Ashley: Okay, I have a routine. On Saturday mornings, I wake up at 4:00 in the morning, and I try to go through emails. I go to my local Starbucks, and I spend three hours every single Saturday before my kids wake up, before my husband wakes up, just trying to get extra work [00:33:30] done so that I can spend time with my family.
Ashley: So there is so much sacrifice that comes with, if and when you get to that point to where it is a legitimate full-time job, and I know that I run like multiple channels and my coaching business, like I know I’m a little… I have a little bit more on my plate than what would be the average just pet content creator.
Ashley: But there’s a lot of sacrifice to it, and I think just a lot of people think that you can just start posting, start making money, and although there’s a very, very small, small reality [00:34:00] to that, the biggest reality is that you likely are unable to sustain. So a big problem that I tend to see are when people casually post, and then all of a sudden they go viral, or all of a sudden they have content where their followers are skyrocketing, and they’re unable to sustain that.
Ashley: That’s usually when people reach out to me. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, I had a few videos go viral. This is so exciting. How do I make money off of this?” But people’s lifestyles, you have to know that you have to [00:34:30] alter your lifestyle to be able to sustain this level of virality, this level of engagement, and the the maintenance of your channel.
Ashley: And that’s where I see, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the biggest statistic with longevity of content creators is that a solid half of content creators won’t even make it past the first year of being a content creator. But then a huge chunk of even 50%, they won’t even make it past the first 90 days because it’s habit building, right?
Ashley: It’s habit building, and that’s [00:35:00] where the, you know, first 90 days comes from. And then after a year, just people realize that it is just unsustainable or not worth the time investment into it.
Maggie: I appreciate the transparency. There’s so much online where you just do these two things, and in, in 90 days you’re earning six figures or, you know, all these things, which man, they are great clickbait. But we have to be honest about it, and I think sometimes so many women are like, I mean, and men too, are just feel that shame of like, “I’m doing something wrong.
Maggie: I’m not good enough. It’s all on me.” Where it’s like, no, no, no. This is [00:35:30] fake advertising, and it’s not as, like, fluffy and effortless as it looks. Like, the video’s supposed to make you feel like that, yes. But it didn’t show Ashley at 4:00 in the morning at the Starbucks.
Ashley: Exactly. Yes, the Starbucks knows me very well. But I will say, even just to give, like, true transparency, okay, so out of the multiple hundreds of people who I’ve had, like, true one-on-one work with, so this guy, he has had the best and highest success, and it took him eight months, and he was able to make $80,000 through his dog. But he’s, like, the [00:36:00] one person who actually, like, had that, like, true viral wild success that people talk about in the ads and in those YouTube videos.
Ashley: Everyone else, everyone else has been slow and steady wins the race. Everyone. And even my story. Yes, I’ve had countless videos that get millions or tens of millions of views, but even that doesn’t show, you know, seven and a half years of all the stuff that I’ve gone through to get to where I’m at.
Ashley: A lot of people, when I say, “Oh, yeah, I’m a full-time cat influencer and [00:36:30] content coach,” they’re just How can I do that?” I’m like, “No, you can’t.” Like, do you want to invest seven years of your life and all your weekends and every evening of your life into this for seven years? I don’t think you do.
Maggie: It doesn’t sound much different from you going to grad school, committing that time to get your undergrad and your graduate degree to go get a job. Like, it’s very in sync, you know? There’s no magic quick win, do this, you’ll earn $100,000
Ashley: just hope that story of just one person actually was able to, like, [00:37:00] make good money in a shorter period of time. Everyone else, it’s slow and steady. And because most of it you have to learn in trial and error and experiment over such a long period of time and things are ever-changing.
Ashley: It’s frustrating, it’s overwhelming. You’re doing it in your evenings. Like, it just takes time. But I don’t wanna discourage anyone as well, because it is a super fun side hustle. Like, it is a very real reality for every- I say, like, everyday people, because I haven’t… There’s only been one person. So aside from this one other guy [00:37:30] ’cause I primarily, I’d say it’s like 95% of the people I work with are women.
Ashley: But aside from another guy, everyone, like, their jobs are super traditional jobs. I mean, like, teachers, and there’s like, all these, like, clerical workers. Like, people who just want to earn some extra money. And so it is an absolute reality. It just takes extreme intentionality
Maggie: Yeah, I love that. And so are you still a physical therapist as well?
Ashley: So just because I spent $100,000 on it, I could not emotionally [00:38:00] truly give it up. so I do work two mornings a week, and I do it purely out of passion and not out of, like, a need for income. And I did it at a c- clinic that’s four minutes from my house. So yeah. So I do it as my way to get out of the house, socialize and I love it.
Ashley: So yes I do still do physical therapy. But again, it is by no means, like, because I need to, I guess.
Maggie: Yeah. No, I mean, it all comes together and, I mean, the other thing I like to remind people is, like, that $80,000, you’re still paying taxes on [00:38:30] too. So it’s not just $80,000 in your pocket. That’s 1099 work.
Ashley: That, oh my gosh.
Maggie: goodbye to a third of it.
Ashley: See, and yes, yes, yes, yes. In fact, oh, we talk about this a lot with my group coaching clients where they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I just, you know, landed $100 deal.” I’m like, “Let’s translate that. That’s actually not $100.” Or even those big ones, like $5,000 deals, $10,000 deals. Like, yeah, you have…
Ashley: Like, the self-employment taxes here in the States, like, it surprises many, many people. I heard [00:39:00] a story from a friend who, this guy became a big YouTuber. So this was a local guy where I live. He became a big YouTuber last year, and made enough… He made about half a million dollars off of the YouTube Partner Program, which again, super cool, but spent all of his money.
Ashley: And then was just recently got his tax bill, and it has been quite a problem. But yeah you almost think, like, when you receive this money, like, into your PayPal account, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. Like, I’m $100 richer.” But then you’re like, [00:39:30] “I have to pay taxes.” And that is a scary amount of money to have to just fork back away when you’re not used to doing that
Maggie: Yeah, when it’s 1099 work and you go independent, that’s your own insurance coming out of there, that’s your own, you’re matching your own 401, like, all the things. And you’re like, “Wow, maybe I’m not charging enough,” because there’s no money left.
Ashley: Exactly.
Maggie: no, this has been great, and I appreciate, again, like, that honesty.
Maggie: Just so when people go out there and try it, ’cause I’m not saying don’t do it. I love your pet [00:40:00] videos. Please produce them, because I wanna watch them. But it’s hard work, and so we gotta be honest about that, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation, is there’s so much influencers, so much ways to make money out there.
Maggie: People wanna know the quick ways. And so this is another opportunity. There’s always different ways to do it, it’s just what you’re willing to do, the time you’re willing to commit, what you enjoy to do. So Ashley, after all of these adventures, what does financial freedom look like for you?
Ashley: Yep. [00:40:30] So the biggest thing to me… Because actually, if you remember, so I was writing a finance blog, and I talked about financial freedom all the time. And to me, financial freedom is equivalent to time freedom. So because I’ve spent so much time in school and sacrificing my time, time freedom is the biggest thing for me.
Ashley: And I have gotten to the point where I know I’ve kind of made it sound like I have no time at all but I have structured my schedule to where I do have a lot of time. I have a daughter. I love family time. I love friend time. And so [00:41:00] time to me is the biggest thing. I will say, have I achieved true, like, financial time freedom?
Ashley: No, because I am super, you know, heads in deep with my businesses and everything. But I have at least achieved a point in my life now, thankfully, that I love everything that I do. And I know a lot of people can’t say that. Like, you know, they’re stuck at a job where they’re just, you know, making it by every day, and it’s hard emotionally.
Ashley: But I love, genuinely love everything I do. So for me, financial freedom, I envision [00:41:30] one day will be passive income coming in that I’m able to… Like, I’m really big, I know we haven’t talked about this, and I don’t want to go into it necessarily, but I have, like, rental investing and into, like, different investments.
Ashley: And so getting to the point to where I do have a diverse portfolio to be able to pay for my op- ability to just do a little bit of everything that I love. ‘Cause right now I’m doing a lot a bit of everything that I love.
Maggie: And I think the biggest thing I wanna highlight from this whole episode is so many women say, “I don’t know much about money. I don’t know. [00:42:00] I should know this.” You started off not knowing anything and doing a little bit of research and a little bit of blogs. Now you’re a graduate running this business, running these accounts, having investment properties.
Maggie: Like,
Maggie: look
Maggie: at that growth. That’s
Ashley: truly, like the past seven years of my life I’ve thought multiple times, if I, when I look back at who I was, what I knew, it is insane. And all it took was just personal drive.
Maggie: And just getting started,
Ashley: Yes, and I started at the absolute [00:42:30] bare minimum of like the super basics of learning what even is money, and it’s taken a long time.
Ashley: And I think a lot of people want to just, boom, know everything right now or know everything in the next three months. But it has taken years, and I’m still not perfect.
Maggie: Well, congratulations on all your success. Thank you for coming and sharing your expertise. We’re gonna have the Pet Influencer Secrets linked below as well as your social posts so we can check out more of your cats. And so until next time, be financially fearless.
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