TedX speaker Carrie Koh’s first son was born with a rare muscle condition that would ultimately cause him to pass away before the age of 1. Carrie shares the lessons she learned from losing him and how that’s changed her approach to life, including money mindset. In this episode, she helps us understand what money mindset is, where it comes from and how it could be holding us back from being present in every moment in our lives.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Lauren Chante 0:53
Hello, everyone, I’m so excited to have you back for another awesome episode, because we have a really great topic and a really great guest today. And I am excited about this topic because it’s really been a huge catalyst in my life, for getting me to a really incredible place not just with my wellness, but with my parenting with my relationship with my husband with even showing up as a friend to support my other friends. And it’s money mindset that we’re going to be talking about today. And I’ve got to tell you guys, I had the worst money mindset for years, I remember the very first time I invested in myself $120 To buy a course that I wanted to take and I literally felt like I was going to throw up when I pressed the button to charge the credit card. And ever since then my investments have gotten a little larger and a little larger, but every single time it still was a little difficult for me. And so I’ve always had to work on my money mindset. I’ve had to learn about it. I’ve had to work through things I’ve had to journal, but it is really an ongoing thing. And I think that so many of us when we think about getting to where we want to be in our lives, we focus on things like wellness, on parenting, on relationships, and this can be kind of a black hole, where nobody is really shining light on the fact that we oftentimes especially as women need to work on that. And even though I’ve had my own experiences with it, I don’t feel like I’m particularly articulate on it. So I’ve invited somebody with a lot of experience on to help us with this. Her name is Carrie Co. She is a business coach, not just any business coach. She’s actually one of my business coaches, but the one who I primarily work with right now. And she specializes in showing female entrepreneurs how to monetize their unique authority without paid advertising or cold outreach. Using her organic growth strategies. Her clients have been able to build multi six figure businesses after leaving full time jobs, triple prices for their services, earn 50k in a day and more. Carrie brings to her clients two decades of experience as an executive in the healthcare industry, as well as years spent consulting and working as a leadership coach for physicians. Her expertise has been featured on ted.com where her TED talk has garnered 1000s of views. You guys should go check it out after this because it’s awesome. And she’s the founder of the profitable happy female entrepreneur, entrepreneur community on Facebook. She has 1000s of followers seeking her advice for good reason. She lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband, son and their Labrador retriever, who was a major star on her social media. We all love seeing her Labrador on there. And her new book, The profitable, happy SEO and entrepreneurial success journal was released this year. So all that to say Carrie is a badass, and she’s a badass who has really helped me out with my money mindset. And I know whether you guys are an entrepreneur or not, she’s gonna have a lot to really help you up level in your life. So welcome Carrie to the show.
Carrie Koh
I’m so excited to be here, Lauren. Fun, it’s gonna be so fun. I can tell already. This episode’s gonna be fired, assaulted this morning. So kind of I gave everybody like your professional biography, but let them know a little bit more about you personally, I know you have a really amazing story and just so much to talk about. So what do you want people to know, before you start talking about money mindset? Yeah, you know, I think probably the most important thing to know is that I had no idea money mindset was a thing. It was just going through my life. I was, as you mentioned, healthcare executive I had, I’ve always had a great salary, a great career. And then everything changed when my first son was born. And he was born with a rare muscle disease. And we spent five months with him in the NICU, and finally got him home for a few months. And unfortunately, he passed away before his first birthday. And obviously an experience like that shapes us in so many ways. And one of those ways was to really examine all of the decisions and choices I was making in my life. And so when I had the opportunity to create my own business, I was clueless, like
Carrie Koh 5:00
I’m clueless. And I always call myself a reluctant entrepreneur, because I never like, dreamed of being an entrepreneur, I was all about safety and security and that paycheck and benefits. But when you have an event that happens in your life, or even circumstances like we all do, we’re busy driven women, things happen. We know what adversity is.
5:23
It allows us the opportunity to look at the reality that we’ve created for ourselves. And so I was first confronted with my own money mindset in my very first investment in a coach. And that was a 10k investment. And to this day, I look back and like, I cannot believe my very first investment was 10. Gay, but I had no clue I was like, well, that’s just what it takes. And 10k is a pretty average investment for for business coaching, and for for a lot of different types of coaching, actually. But I remember sitting on the bed with my one year old, my husband was kind of listening, and I was having this conversation with this coach, I had no business starting my own business, I was still in massive grief from the loss of my son I was had sleepless, you know, a one year old, they don’t sleep. And I just remember saying yes. And my husband nodding his head. Yes. And that was that feeling of support, that feeling of like, I’m not doing this alone. And that fear of like, Oh, my God, now I have to do it.
Yeah, that was the beginning of my money mindset. And I just went deeper and deeper. And and it’s one of my favorite topics to talk about. So I’m excited.
Lauren:
Yeah. And what I love about this story, Carrie, is, wouldn’t it be amazing if we didn’t have to go through a moment of adversity to realize that we need to work on our money mindset. And that’s something where I’m really passionate about with this podcast, like, let’s learn from the experiences of other people so that we don’t waste valuable moments. I mean, I’m sure like, everything happens for a reason. And your story is your story, but wouldn’t have been so cool. If somebody could have come in and filled that gap for you earlier before this event even happened in your life.
Carrie:
Absolutely. I think so many of us are on autopilot, whether you’re a stay at home, mom, whether you’re a professional mom, whether you’re an entrepreneur, we tend to be on autopilot until there is an external kind of influence. But you’re right, like, what if we took the reins? What if we just decided that there are areas in our lives that are worthy of change? And then we are worthy of change? And we do the work? Because we all know the real work is the internal work, right? Yes, I have to do that internal work so that we can get the life we would love so that we can get the health that we want so that we can get those relationships connected and like on fire? Because that’s what we all want. Right? At the end of the day. That connection. Yeah.
Lauren:
And I know this is hitting a lot of listeners right now. They’re like, Oh my gosh, like, I’m sure there are people who are hearing themselves both in my story with my $120 terror investing, and then you’re like, oh, 10k Let’s, let’s go for it. Right? So if somebody is feeling that right now that like feeling in their chest, or in the pit of their stomach that like, oh my gosh, they’re talking about me?
What’s the first step that they should take in improving their money mindset and their relationship with us?
Carrie:
Well, I think the first step is to really recognize in fact, let me back up a second and just talk about what is money mindset, because most of your listeners are probably familiar. But for those who aren’t, I think it’s important to just kind of normalize that we all have money stories, right? We all have certain thoughts and stories that we think about around the subject of money, and those thoughts create some type of emotion.
And then in that emotion is when we take that action, or we don’t take that action, and we create our results. And so when we can look at all of those money influences. So when, as you said, when we’re like, oh my gosh, do I do this investment and you’re like, have those sweaty palms, like I can’t do it, I can’t do it.
What can you make? What choice can you make instead? In that moment? And I always recommend we ask ourselves, What is this about? How do I view money? What is my story? What were my influences around money? Like for example, my dad always said, you have to spend money to make money right? He was a serial entrepreneur. That nothing ever went like
Carrie Koh 9:37
never like took off right? He just love the like, I think he loved the startup of it. Right? Right. So I on the one hand, I was hearing you got to spend money to make money right? Which is probably why I made that initial 10k investment but on the other hand, he was always always worried and complaining about money always always asking my mom who was a stay at home mom, you know, how much does that cost?
Just honey, you can’t spend that much how much does that, you know? And so I have these conflicting messages. Meanwhile, my mom was so empowered around money, because she valued the experiences. She have these, like brainstorms. And we loved when my mom had brainstorms, because they always meant like, Oh, we’re gonna go to, you know, an amusement park today, and we’re gonna do something fun. So when my mom said,
Oh, I have a brainstorm, my dad would shrink, and the kids would be like, yeah. So I would, I would really ask your listeners to think about, we’re whose money story is this? Right? What are those stories that we have made our own that aren’t our own? And how do we want to view our money, and recognizing that it is so much easier to invest in ourselves, when we feel worthy of investment, when we don’t think that our desires are bad or wrong, or will hurt anyone.
And I think that the most important thing here is owning our desires, and attaching to that identity of who we are when we get those results. Because when you are attached to that new identity of I am the person who has generational wellness, or generational wealth, right? Then you do what it takes you feel that worthiness and that worthiness becomes your new story around money.
Lauren Chante:
Oh, that’s so true. And I almost feel like sometimes when we don’t take the moment to make the choice to see things differently, we get so caught up in what could happen from spending that money, like all the bad things, that we never make any space in our heads to consider all the good bits gonna come out of it. And it’s almost like not resolving our traumas around money. And our money mindsets, literally steals our mental space for considering any other possibility.
It’s like your brain can only think so many things at once. And if you’re constantly saying all of this, the story about money that, like you said, isn’t even your story. There’s no room for change. So I love that about just like quieting your head and making a different choice. So that’s really amazing. And then
Lauren Chante 12:15
I know that like, some women are like, cool. This is probably easy, because you’re all about like entrepreneurs and about business and like those people can always make their investments back. But like, what about the woman who has no desire to ever be an entrepreneur who like the paycheck that they get every month? Is the paycheck that they get, like, how is there a different approach? Or is it just believing in your worth more? What would you say to them?
Carrie Koh: I think that’s such a good question. As the result doesn’t matter, right? Like people invest in, in my programs, yes, to make more money, but the reason they really invest is to increase their self assurance to change their life to change their relationships. And so when you look at something like your health, right, you can have all the money in the world. But if you don’t have health, nothing matters. And I learned that the hard way, when my son was born, I had, I had all the safeties, the security, the money, I had an excellent career, my husband had a career and everything went away when we sat in that NICU room for five months, day at night, and nothing mattered, no amount of money could fix that. And so what I would say is, it’s not, it’s not
13:30
let me back up. It is about investment and not buying. So let me explain what I mean by that. When you invest in yourself, whether it’s in your health, whether it’s in a therapist, whether it’s in a trainer, whatever that is, you are opening up the door for further growth, you’re opening up the door for additional good things coming in your life. Sometimes that’s money, sometimes that’s relationship connection, sometimes that’s being a better parent, sometimes that’s better health. And so recognize that every time you invest, you’re opening up the door, people who view money as like buying, putting it’s out the door I’d never to be seen again are in the scarcity mindset, right? And in that scarcity mindset, we think that money has a limit. We think that that even those that are getting regular paychecks right that this is the amount of money that comes in and and if you take that portion of the money instead of buying your kids new shoes, or that camp or or whatever, if you invested in yourself, and you created the results that you desired. How would you show up differently? What would that afford your kids? What would that afford? Your family? What would that afford? Your neighbors your community? So it’s really looking at the benefit extension of everything that we do and honestly that comes down to owning
15:00
Our powerful, powerful position in this world.
Lauren Chante:
Hmm, that’s so beautiful. And I think it matches up so well to like we’re seeing a big shift in the last 20 years between being a consumerism focused society where it’s all about what you own and the things that you give your kids and shifting now and to being a more experienced based society, it’s kind of like a big move in I’m seeing across the board. And this is so much part of that like, as we become more awake to the importance of giving our kids and our families experiences, and even having the mundane experiences being meaningful and grounding in their lives like this is all part of that. And I know a lot of the ladies who are listening, they’ve been kind of on that journey of anti consumerism and growing more into experiences. And guys, this I just want to emphasize this is the ground floor. This is the ground floor work of giving that to your family. And you said something that touched on a memory I had Carrie, I remember, my husband at one point got out of the military, and he’s now back in it’s like a super long story too long for now. But transitioning to the civilian world, we had two kids at the time. And we went through a really hard time where we were for the first time living paycheck to paycheck, and my husband and I had never, ever lived paycheck to paycheck in our lives. And I remember texting my best friend about it, and just kind of like needing to vent and it was very vulnerable to open up about my financial situation with someone, but she’s my bestie. So I did and she just had such wisdom. For me, she was like, you know, I just always try to remember that we’re young. And we have years and years and years ahead of us to bring money in years and years and years. And in that moment, she just gave me so much peace. I think that something that you said in there just reminded me of that story and, and how if we are going to say that we’re people that want to bring the best experiences into our family and really master sort of being like the artists of the energy in our family and in our homes that it has to start here has to start here because that clock starts ticking now. Right?
Carrie Koh 17:01
Absolutely. And and what you’re describing too, is not only seeing the potential for the future, but also being so present in the moment that each moment counts, right? So regardless of your circumstance, those moment to moment choices are what allows you to appreciate what you have a right to to really reflect on, on on those decisions you’ve made and want to make, and be present in those moments with your family with your loved ones. And then you feel better, right? When you’re present. Remember I said those thoughts, those positive thoughts, those thoughts about potential instead of pain, possibility over, you know, oh, woe is me create this emotion. And truly it is in that emotional state, that we have so much control, we have so much control over how we feel by the thoughts that we think about a situation if you’re like, you know, oh, my gosh, we’re never gonna have enough money, we’re never gonna, I’m never gonna be able to do this or in my health are so far to go, how am I going to do this?
Your behaviors are going to reflect those thoughts. And it’s so easy to own that power, when you realize it’s just the voice in your head.
And in that presence, you can create space for that. And you can look at your patterns of spending or holding on to money so tightly that you can’t give it up. And that’s when we uncover those gifts.
Yeah, that’s so awesome. Carrie, I love that. And something that you said in your own story was how your husband just kind of looked at you and said, Yes. And I know there’s a lot of people listening who maybe don’t feel like the support system in their lives would look at them and say yes, and it’s not just about husbands like maybe they’re questioning like, what if? What if my friends ever found out that I spent this amount of money on myself or if my sister if my mom like, and I know from wellness, when you start doing things that are counterculture, it’s you start to get backlash from people around you. And I always tell my people that one of the most important things to have its community and to create your support system, which obviously working with a coach is super helpful for but what do you tell people who are worried about that? All the other people? Okay, I love this question, Lauren. Because Can’t we all relate? Can’t we all relate to the judgment of others to the I need permission from my partner versus I’ve decided, right. And so one thing I want to clarify is yes, that moment on the bed that day, he was nodding yes. Right. But we had many, many, many more moments in some of my investments, that he was not so supportive. He was like, where’s the money? Right and, and the way I dealt with this at first of all, and
Carrie Koh 20:00
Every relationship is different. And we have to honor those relationships, we have to honor you know, those boundaries that that two people have set up with how they function and make decisions. But one of the things I truly think is game changing, especially for women, is we have to step into the identity of someone who goes after their desires and feels worthy of those desires, because our identity and confidence is linked. And when we let our partner, our neighbor, our friends, define our limits, define who we’re meant to be our purpose than our confidence takes a hit. And then we have those conversations from a disempowered place from a place of honey, should i What do you think? And of course, they’re gonna say, No, you know why? They’re gonna say no, because they have their own money stories. And they’re like, Well, no, we can spend that money over here and over here, and they are fearful. What happens when you change? What does that mean about me? And so the most important thing that I can say to anyone who wants to invest in their future, because they want to create a new life, is to first be so clear in who you are, be so clear in your decision, before you have that conversation. So you know, what questions are going to ask, and you are so self assured in how this will change your relationship for the better. Because recognize your partner’s fear is not your fear it you don’t have to take that on. And when you show up in that confidence in that self assurance in that decision making powerhouse, woman that you are
21:40
there, like I see that. Okay. All right. Right. And, you know, it’s, it takes practice, it takes doing your own work before you bring in somebody else and have those conversations, quite honestly.
Lauren Chante:
Yeah, it sure does. And I only know that because I’ve been there, you know, I’ve been there, Carrie, because this is for me, when it came to investing in myself at a higher level, my biggest challenge was, you know, talking to my husband about it, what are other people in my life gonna think so I like totally relate to this. And you’re so right. But I’m curious if you’ve had this experience carry because since I have moved into being an investor, one of the reasons that I really started investing in myself is because I recognized the all the women I looked up to, were investing in themselves too. And it was kinda like, I knew they were where I wanted to be. And it’s sort of like that little kid that’s putting on their mommy’s makeup and trying on all of her clothes and stuff, like I was kind of doing that, where it’s like, I’m gonna wear, I’m gonna do whatever they’re doing, because obviously, it’s like, if that’s where I want to be, that seems like the best way to do it. So that’s how investing started for me. But as I’ve spent more time investing, and I’ve done more and more investment in myself, I’m kind of starting to see that there’s like, this whole world out there that I didn’t know about, where suddenly when you start to unlock it, and you invest in yourself at a higher level, you meet all these other women who are doing it. And it’s like, your whole vibration of your social circle gets raised, where it’s like everybody on my newsfeed. Now everybody I talked to, there’s just bad asses, like everybody is, and I’m kind of recognizing that, like, there’s probably even a higher level out there that I don’t even know about, do you do a lot of your students find that where they’re like, Wow, the world is a different place than I thought it was. Now that I’ve made this choice, totally, totally, you attract that when you raise your vibration, when you elevate your mindset, you absolutely attract like minded people. And here’s the thing, here’s the thing, when you invest in a coach, a therapist, a trainer, whoever you’re investing in, right, you’re actually not investing in them, you’re investing in yourself. And the way you invest in yourself is you trust and believe yourself a little bit each and every day. And as you allow that trust and belief to grow every single day, then you start to realize the results. And so when you mentioned your news feed, those are full of people who actually just trust and believe in themselves, right? And imagine how inspiring that is to be surrounded by people who know their worth, who know they are capable of more and who are going for it. Because don’t we all love to be inspired? Yeah, that’s so true, Carrie, and I was kind of like, had a mind blowing moment as you’re talking. Because I recognize that. Sometimes when you look at people who invest in themselves, do you think wow, that’s just a person who’s always been confident in themselves, that’s just a person who knew that if they made the investment, that they were going to rock it and it wasn’t a big deal to them. But what I’m really recognizing now through what you’re saying, I’m through kind of like flashing back through my own experience as you’re talking is that every investment you make in yourself, it’s like another stone on the pile, right? It’s like another stone of rebuilding your belief because most of us arrive at adulthood with wounds, right? It’s not just money wounds. It’s a lot of things having to do with
25:00
If I’m not enough, I’m not worthy. And like you don’t just fix that overnight. It’s something where you have to put a stone on the pile until one day you look at yourself and you’re like, Wow, I’m a woman with an unshakable belief in myself and an unshakable vision for my life. So if there’s anyone out there who feels like, Yes, I am totally listening to this episode, I understand all of it, it just sounds like it’s not me, I want you to to, like rewind that part. And listen to that a little bit, because it probably is for you like this work is for you investing in yourself is for you, you’re just probably earlier on in your journey right now of having to put those stones of belief back on your own personal pile to just kind of rebuild that. So I don’t know where to land the plane on that one.
Carrie Koh 25:44
I love that. I love that. And what I would recommend for your listeners is, you know, oftentimes we go back to our past to be like, see, this didn’t work out. I’ve tried everything, and it didn’t work. But I want to challenge you all to look at your past. For those moments, when you did trust yourself. Those moments when you believed in yourself, what happened in those moments? What decisions did you make, who was around you, in those moments, really look at your past for evidence of your capability of truly, that you are capable of believing in yourself. And it may be that you’re surrounded by people that don’t don’t have the language we’re saying today, right? Like, I certainly didn’t have this language when I was just, you know, climbing the ladder in my traditional career, and that’s okay. But when you allow yourself the open mind to say, Hmm, what if what might be possible for me if I start to explore this side of the stories that I hold?
Lauren Chante:
I love that Carrie, this has been so good. Thank you for sharing this is there is there anything final that you want to say or any anything you want to leave our listeners with? Before we close up?
Carrie Koh:
You know, one of the things that I would suggest is to truly own your desires. So a little exercise that everyone can do is the question that I love. If your desires were not bad, if your desires would not hurt anyone, write down everything that you want, like set a timer for 20 minutes and write down I want I want I want I desire, I desire I desire, and then look at that list and say who else benefits from my desires? So really looking at the possibility because I think there’s moments in our lives where we let that fear. And this big, what if hold us back. It’s like, I know you’re a skier. So it’s like going down, you know, skiing through the trees, right? It’s like, there’s a lot of risking through the trees, you have to make quick turns, you know, you can hit a tree. But in those moments of taking that risk, I’ll never forget this run I did with my then five year old right and the trees and daddy wasn’t there. Daddy’s a better skier than I went down the trees. And at the end of that run, my son looked me in the eye and he was like, Oh my gosh, mom, skiing is totally my thing that was so awesome. And it was this moment where I was like, Thank God, I didn’t allow my own hesitation to hold me back that moment of connection. And there is times in all of our lives where we want the thing. And we have a decision that moment choice to make. Are we going to allow the judgment or the fear or the big whatever to hold us back? Or are we just going to go for it and just do the damn thing? Just do it. Do the damn thing. Just do it.
Lauren Chante:
I love that Carrie, thank you so much for coming on. For those of you guys who want to keep up with Carrie you can find her at CarrieKoh.com That’s koH I also highly recommend if you’re an entrepreneur joining her profitable happy female entrepreneurs group on Facebook, you will see me in there it is a rockin place to connect with other entrepreneurs who are at a high vibration sort of like we were talking about and she’s also on LinkedIn so you can look up Carrie on there. So thank you so much, Carrie. Oh my pleasure. It was so great. So fun.