Permission to Heal Episode #57 - A Conversation with Virginia Baker Woolf - Your Financial Mindset

Knowing your worth affects every aspect of your life.

Virginia Baker Woolf is a money mindset coach. Her passion is empowerment for women, self-esteem and shame recovery,  improving women's self-knowledge, self-image, deservingness, deprivation, and self-worth that are contingent on normalization and validation of the structural, societal issues women are dealing with regarding money.

Virginia's two money mindset courses

The Money Project: 8 modules + live coaching
Money Mindset Momentum: 6 modules: Launching at a giveaway price

Money Personality Quiz - Get to Know Your Money Type - Unlock Your Money Magic

Connect with Virginia
Her Money Coaching website,  Her art website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram,  Virginia's Blog

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello everyone. And welcome to permission to heal. I am Marci Brockman, and I am thrilled that you are here today. Today's episode is a conversation with a wonderfully lovely woman from. Sydney, Australia named Virginia Baker Wolf. She is just she's brilliant. She spent about 20 years or so of her life as an educator, as a, a foreign language Spanish educator. 

[00:00:30] She is trilingual in French, Spanish and English. and after spending so many years in the educational sphere decided To challenge herself and she became a coach. She has more certifications. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, certifications as a coach from all sorts of. Coaching schools and institutions and federations and so on. 

[00:00:56] And so what she does, what Virginia specialty is, is a money mindset, empowerment coach for women. And, you know, I think that we need that. This is the first episode of permission to heal where we're talking about financial wellness and the link between. Our financial health and our thought process about our financial health and money and how connected that is to our self-worth our self-esteem shame, recovery, self knowledge, self image our deserving, this, deprivation self-worth together with a normalization and validation of of structural and societal issues that we're all dealing with with patriarchal control of money versus an egalitarian control of money. 

[00:01:48] And she has a very. Laser-focused clear, compassionate way of explaining how our self-worth our feeling of enoughness our feeling of our own validity and our own agency directly translates into how we think about money. And she said something that was really. You know, true and, and shocking that we would all rather talk about death than talk about money. 

[00:02:23] We would rather talk about anything else except money, because it's so uncomfortable. And so emotionally charged with things that we don't necessarily want to deal with. But as we all know, or as we, we should know. That, that things that involve shame and things that we're embarrassed about, things that we are uncomfortable with. 

[00:02:47] And that cause us trauma really only gain power when we keep them in the dark, when we keep them hidden, when we don't talk about them and Virginia, and I agree as well as many, many other people that when you shine a light on these things, You take away their power. 

[00:03:06] You take away the shame you take away, the embarrassment you take away, the pain you take away, all of the suffering and the struggle. And you start to see something as maybe not benign, but as a normalized challenge. And she has. Wonderful clear steps and strategies that we all can take to take little steps, which would amount over time to larger steps to take control. 

[00:03:34] So she offers on her website, a money mindset, momentum, six module course that she's launching at a giveaway price of 75. Dollars or 97 Australian dollars. the link is in the show notes. You can also get the link from her website, which is also in the show notes. The money project.net is the website. 

[00:03:57] She has a larger course that is all-encompassing and facts. Called the money project, which has eight modules plus live coaching. That's a little bit more of a financial outlay, but you're also getting live coaching sessions with her weekly over the course of the over the course of the course. Two quizzes on her website, unlock your personality quiz, and getting to know your op modus operandi about money. 

[00:04:26] And I took them both and they were very. Enlightening. There were things about my attitude toward money that was also reflective of my attitude towards myself, my own self-concept, and the way that I deal with my own life, that I was only partially aware of. So I strongly suggest that you take those things. 

[00:04:48] This was just a really much-needed conversation. She's not a financial advisor. She's not telling us where to invest our money or how to play the stock market or what cryptocurrency is. But she is telling us what we really need to hear about our relationship with our money and our earnings. 

[00:05:12] So, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being faithful listeners. Thank you so much for all of the amazing reviews and comments that you've made on the various social media platforms and on the various, podcast platforms. I am grateful for this amazing community, this permission to heal community. 

[00:05:35] So please continue to reach out. Please continue to leave. Comments and leave us reviews and share podcast episodes with, your friends, your family, your coworkers, with your children, with your parents, with your aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone. I think we all need to give ourselves permission to live our best lives and it all starts with us. 

[00:05:58] No, one's coming to rescue us. No, one's, there's going to be no Knight in shining armor. It's. It's all about our own agency and what we are willing to do for our own lives.  

[00:06:09] Just to tell a little side note, I, was thinking about a memory of my own from when I was little. My grandmother used to make me oatmeal with honey and as she fed it to me in her kitchen, she would tell me the story of Rapunzel, the fairytale, Rapunzel, the princess who was kept captive in the tower. And when her handsome prince was coming to rescue her, she let her long, long, long, long, long hair out the window of the tower so that he could climb up and rescue her. 

[00:06:40] And as I was having this memory just yesterday morning, actually, I was thinking. If she had the ability and this long hair that would reach all the way to the bottom of the tower. Why not use it as a rope and save herself? She could have climbed down, you know, even cut her hair off, secure it, like a rope to something inside, and climbed down. 

[00:07:05] You know, it was that whole patriarchal damsel in distress kind of thing. But you know, it's 2022 and I don't think that any of us should be waiting around to be rescued. No, one's coming. You know, I'm sorry to be the person to tell you this, but the handsome prince or handsome princess, or, you know the rich multibillionaire with the jet isn't coming to rescue you. 

[00:07:28] You have to do it yourself. You're the one that has to shine the light and all the dark corners and heal yourself from trauma and give yourself permission. To go for your dreams. Give yourself permission to do the work, to love yourself, to be compassionate, to practice, self-care, to do the small and large and beautiful things to live your best life to help you live your unabashedly. Fabulous, glorious, authentic, beautiful self. Thank you so much for being here. I love you all very much. I appreciate you, and now here's the episode.

Virginia Baker Woolf interview 
 

[00:00:00] Good afternoon, Virginia. How are you? I'm so excited that you're here. Yeah. Make truth. Yes, matron. Now see, I'm very happy to be here and to work with you and to meet. It's very exciting. So our permission to heal audience here has never we've never approached the concept of wellness or health or healing from a financial standpoint before. 

[00:00:25] And I think that it's about damn time. We did. I think that this is something that most women including me could use a little coaching on. I agree. I remember very early on in my career journey, I was 23 maybe. And I had just gotten the public relations job on the east side of Manhattan that I had coveted for quite a while. 

[00:00:54] And I walked in there and in my head I was saying, right, I'm not going to accept any salary below whatever the number was that I could live. And then I walk in there and then I find that I want the job so much, and there are all these really intimidating middle-aged men. And I accepted the first crappy offer. They gave me. And at first I was like, yay, I got the job. And then I was like, Ugh, I'm doing all this work for that money. And I had no one to blame, but myself and it wasn't until I didn't know why I felt so crappy about it really. I mean, I knew like financially why I felt so crappy about it, but I didn't know emotionally why I felt so crappy about it. 

[00:01:40] And it wasn't until I sort of unpacked that in therapy. A while later that I realized that I was not confident in my own worth and in my own value and in what I could bring to their company. And I'd sold myself short and mouse. You are part of the majority I've done the same thing. And I would say that the majority of women have done the same thing. 

[00:02:10] So we end up in a position of under earning. Yeah. So, and then I was always resentful and I had no one to blame, but myself. Yeah. So there are two parts. The one part is the confidence, the self-confidence, and that self-confidence is doesn't only color the world of money in our life. It colors every part of our lives that, that self-confidence. 

[00:02:39] Yeah. And we don't feel in control enough to say, no, no, this is what I want. And I'm going to stand my ground and we don't understand our own value because mainly we, we haven't even really thought about it. Right. Absolutely. And the majority there, the majority of women are under earning and they are not earning what they are worth. 

[00:03:09] And I was most certainly in that position. Yeah. And it plays to the same emotional, I don't know what the word is that I'm looking for the same emotional metaphor about that, that I think is the same thing with our relationship boundaries. You know, that we're not really sure about what's okay. And what's not okay in our lives, within our relationships with our family, our friends, our boyfriends, our relationship partners, whoever. 

[00:03:39] And because we're not clear on that, we're also not clear on the money part. I think it's cool. The same thing. Yes exactly. The money is not just about the money. The money is a symbol. The money is a metaphor. And when you start to work on the money, you will find that a whole load of other issues in your life get worked on. 

[00:04:06] Yeah. If you know your worth, if you are really conscious of your worth, you are not going to put up with crappy relationships. Right. You know, and if you're self confident in yourself, you know that you have the resources to leave a relationship. That's not making you happy. That's not acceptable. And you have the confidence to say, well, this isn't working for me and I'm going to go and find something better. 

[00:04:37] That does work for me. So these issues of self-confidence self-esteem self-empowerment they are all. Mirrored in what we do with money. And it's interesting because with money, the rubber meets the road money is we are so deeply connected to the money stuff that once you scratch on the surface, a whole lot of more stuff becomes obvious. 

[00:05:09] So if you're doing for example, executive or life coaching, the coachee pen, choose not to talk about something. They can choose not to have something on the table. Right. And the rule of thumb in coaching is that if you ask the question three times in different ways, And you're not getting an answer. 

[00:05:29] It's time to let it go because the coachee has, they have the, they carry the agenda. And if they don't want to talk about something, then the coach has to have some respect for that. Now, what happens with money is money is a hot mix. 

[00:05:48] So the stuff about money just falls out, just falls out onto the table. We, we can't really even help it falling out onto the table. And once we, once it falls out onto the table, then we're really vulnerable. And we're also very transparent. And, and that is when real transformation takes place. And not just with your bank balance in your life, because I mean, just as you started saying, Marcy, if you are being paid properly for what you're worth and you feel good about it, You are doing better in every single part of your life, because you're not resentful. 

[00:06:32] Right. And you're happy with how things are for you. And you're happy with how you stood up for yourself. Yeah. And you know, the thing is that when there's more money in the hands of women, a whole load of good things happen like women. So first of all, there's enormous stress. Yes, there's enormous. There's an inordinate amount of stress for women about money. 

[00:06:58] And that has various components and, and various reasons. But when we are stressed, it has a really negative impact on our health and wellbeing, mental and physical and emotional. And when a woman is in a situation that she's suffering from that much stress, it's not easy for her to be truly present as a mother. 

[00:07:22] Right. So that means those children are missing. And if we have a woman who's well-rounded and she's earning what she's worth, and she has some self-confidence and self-esteem and some boundaries, she makes a much better mother and she can have a so first of all, is the relationship to self. So first of all, she's much happier in itself. 

[00:07:45] And then after that, that ripples out to being a better mother, a better partner and much happier in your life up is already full. So she can feed everyone else with the over full she's not an empty cup, trying to fill everyone else's cup. That's exactly right. She's not running on empty. Right, right. 

[00:08:07] Amazing. And that has an enormous impact on her actually her health. And when I say health, I'm not just saying whether you feel tired or not, I'm saying it has an impact on your immune system. It has an impact on your blood work. So it's not just, it's not just that you will being suffering a little bit, so maybe we just need to have a day off or we need to sleep longer. 

[00:08:32] Now this is more important. This is more important than that because there's so much unsureness, there's so much uncertainty about not having enough money or about things being short or not being able to give your family what they need or consistent you know, money for rent and food and other things. 

[00:08:51] You know, when there's, when there's a deficit of any kind, I think it's felt, especially with women, it's felt everywhere. That's right. Exactly. And you know, the, the name of your podcast is very interesting permission to heal and with money, we actually need to give ourselves permission permission to, to work on it. 

[00:09:14] Permission in the first instance, You know what this isn't great. And I would like it to be better. So I'm going to give myself some permission to make it better. Right? Women are, women are locked into this money thing by many things, many social constructs. So we have, we, we have concerns that if we're empowered and we have money that people won't like us and possibly, if our partner isn't is a man we'll have issues about, will you still love me? 

[00:09:55] You know, will he still love me if I'm really successful and earning a lot of money, will he still love me if I'm doing better than him now? I mean, another issue is whatever the relationship was in the family, particularly with the father. Right. And. In many families, not all of course, but in many families, more than 50%, the man is still the head of the household and the children pick that up. 

[00:10:26] I mean, the children just, they just absorb it. So if your father was you know, pretty much the head of the household and he ran the money, then the little girl sees that as that's not her mother's business. Right. And we need to give women permission to move out of that. Yeah. I find it surprising how many women intergenerationally, like not even like, you know, generations ahead of mine, of me or, or, I mean, it doesn't really matter. 

[00:10:59] So many households have the husbands or the fathers or the men of the household controlling all the purse strings, even if both the husband and. I mean, assuming we're talking about heterosexual couples, but even if both, both cut, both people in the couple are working, the man seems to take care of the money. 

[00:11:24] If not, maybe the day-to-day stuff might be in the hands of the, of the, the, the wife let's say, but the big picture money tends to be in the hands of the men. Yes. And you're absolutely right. It's intergenerational and you're absolutely right in the way. You've just spoken about women's relationship to their male partner, you know, in the 1950s, Women could not get a movie. 

[00:11:53] I mean, in the 1970s, a woman couldn't get in this country, Australia and we're pretty forward in the world. A woman couldn't get a mortgage without her husband without a male male partner, 76 or 1977 in the United States before a woman could get her own credit card. That's it? That's exactly right. Yeah. 

[00:12:13] So it was the credit card, a mortgage, a finance plan to buy a car, just very many everyday things, less than 15 minutes to have permission to have in 1980. Yeah. So scary. I, I, when I looked up those statistics, I was absolutely shocked. 

[00:12:39] The the suffragette movement seems like it was a very long time ago, a hundred years ago. It was only a hundred years ago. It's only a hundred years ago and the a hundred years is not very much. And they fought tooth and nail to get the right to vote. And then they fought tooth and nail to be allowed to attend a university. 

[00:13:04] So we've fought tooth and nail for significant things. So that was the right to vote the right to get the same education as a man. And then we had the sexual revolution that women have a right to have a sexual life. They don't, you know, good girls don't have to be virgins and they add the right to plan their family. 

[00:13:28] They don't have to be at the whim of their male counterparts, sexual prowess. But I'm trying to say that in a way that was, I'm talking more about women who haven't made a definite partner choice that they haven't. Oh, absolutely. You might be having a few relationships before you get married. Now, once upon a time in the 1950s, if you did that, you were a slut, right? 

[00:13:55] These days we accept that as being quite normal. Right? It's same with living with your partner before marriage you know, in Australia that started in the 1970s, but it was like, you couldn't tell your parents that's what you were doing now. Absolutely. And to hide it, but these days, the normal thing, the regular thing is that you live with your partner before you married them, to make sure that this is going to be okay. 

[00:14:24] I did that with both my first and second husband. I did it. I did it with my husband. My daughter did it with her husband. And when she did it with her husband, nobody, nobody flecked an it nobody. Right. But where I had a sister that did this in the, the late seventies and she didn't tell my father now that's 40 years ago. 

[00:14:49] That's not very many years ago. No, not very, not at all. In the, in the, in the present day, women would rather talk about this sex and drugs than money. And as a society, we don't have permission to talk about money, but women, I mean, men don't have permission. Well, they talk about money with each other more than women. 

[00:15:15] Do they have a bit more permission than women? So this is actually a revolution. So we've got the right to vote. We've got the sexual revolution, we've got women's financial independence revolution. And even though we've gone through that revolution, we're still not equal about money and we're still not in a position where we have complete power and control over our own lives. 

[00:15:45] And this becomes very, very, very important in regards to financial abuse and domestic violence. And I'd say that they often go hand in hand and this is why as. We need to stand up now and change things. And in that, in that family where there's financial abuse and, and maybe even domestic violence, there, there are girl children in that family, and they're learning that this is how it is for women. 

[00:16:19] And this is also intergenerational. Yeah. And it can take, can we take a step back for one second? How would you define financial abuse? I never heard that as a phrase before. I think I intuitively know what you mean, but how would you, but that'll be where the husband holds the purse strings. The woman has to account for every single penny that she spends. 

[00:16:42] She's not allowed to spend money on that. She's not allowed to spend money on that. He makes all the financial decisions. She has no right to have a voice. If she clocks up money on a credit card, she's going to be in trouble. Okay. It's a bit like the woman is the naughty child. Yeah. Putting it up in a very punitive way. 

[00:17:06] That's not cool. Childish. She doesn't have full power of her self or her life and that, and that kind of financial abuse then feeds into coercive control. Right. So, whereas if control is where the man wants to know where you are every single second of the day, and you are not allowed to do anything that he doesn't know about. 

[00:17:32] And if he catches you out, you're in big trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Now for women to leave those sorts of situations, we need for women to have a lot more permission around money than we currently have. Definitely. Okay, let's take a step back a slight bit and let's talk I launched into this very quickly and let's get the focus back on you for a minute. 

[00:17:58] I would love you to tell us who you are and what, who, how you became to be who you are. As a life coach, as a financial coach, as a what, what's the, what's the Virginia Baker Wolf story? The story is that I did my university work in foreign languages, and I studied at the Sorbonne and I studied at the university of Sylvia in spoon. 

[00:18:23] Wow. Did a double degree in Spanish. And I taught Spanish at university level for many, many, many years. I also taught English as a second language for many years, and eventually I got bored. You know, it was like conjugate verbs. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I'm really good at. Mine didn't just conjugate verbs. 

[00:18:46] Mine would, mine were made to speak. Oh, of college level. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got good. You know, like I did that for more than 20 years, I got bored. And so I looked around for something else to do. And I took a job because I came from an academic background. I took a job in an, in an education institution and department of education here in a type of corporate role. 

[00:19:16] And I just, I hate, I lost it. I lost the job. And when I look back now, I should've left earlier. Because that, that job was beneath my capacities. Like I could do that job with my eyes closed, you know, facing towards the wall, you know? 

[00:19:40] So I was bored Witless, but not only was I bored Witless people who were less intelligent than me were in more senior positions to me, and this is what can happen in government. So I ended up feeling like I was worth working for people. I was junior to people who were brainless and there was a lot of gossip, gossip, and bullying. 

[00:20:09] It was a very, very toxic workplace. And so before I took that job, I had been, I was, you know, I was looking around for what to do. So we had a big broadsheet newspaper. Called the Herald. And on the weekend, the hero was huge. Right? So I had the Herald laid out on the table and I'm looking at everything. 

[00:20:35] And there was an ad in the bottom, like they'd run an ad on the bottom bit of the page. And there was this thing for something called coaching. I didn't know what coaching was. Nobody knew what coaching was. So I ran up and I talked to the people and I thought, yay, I'm going to do this. So off I went to do the coaching and I thought it was, I thought it was fantastic. 

[00:21:02] And then I realized that I needed to do this work properly. I needed an awful lot more training than what I'd just done. Okay. So I look around and I found, I went to an international coach Federation conference. And that was like going to a conference where you, where you realized that you have met your. 

[00:21:22] Nice. So this was my tribe. So I started doing more training and then I'd taken the job in the education department and I went to learning and development, and I said to them, can you loan me out to people to be a coach? So whilst I was in that boring job, I did a lot of coaching practice, you know, and I got to a point I, I was also, I also got trained as a facilitator in a manager as coach program. 

[00:21:56] And this was a fantastic, fabulous program that I did. And I, I ran that program a lot and then some other organization asked me to come and do it for them. So I was really excited about this because I was on a mission. This managers coach program was all about creating a good culture. A culture of trust and decency rather than a culture of command and control, which is what the organization was. 

[00:22:26] So I felt like there, there were real possibilities where organizations could improve and they wouldn't let me do it. They told me I had to write a submission, had to write a submission about why would I go and do that? So I said, well, you know what, I'm not writing a submission and I am going to do it. I said, why can't I do it? 

[00:22:50] Oh, you can't do that. You'd have to resign. I said, you'd put a, where's the paperwork I'm outta here. I'm outta here. And so then I started coaching in corporate coaching coaching in organizations, leadership practice. And I did that for quite a number of years as well. And then in about 2015, I got very sick, you know, in, in between this, I got, I was very ill. 

[00:23:19] So when you have a situation where you've been very ill, that focuses your attention. Yeah. It focuses your attention on what's important. Yeah. Crisis tends to open a new door for you. Absolutely. So in around 2015, I decided that I was stumbling around in the dark about money. I had taken no responsibility for money. 

[00:23:48] I had left it all up to my husband and my husband is not the head of the household type. My husband is a really lovely, decent, good, good man. And he's only too happy for me to do anything I want. Right. But I had left everything to him because I thought money was terrible. 

[00:24:11] But that didn't change. The fact that really did. I feel it was boring because I was anxious about it. Or did I feel it was boring because it really is boring. Well, I think there's a bit of both in there. Sure. I decided as a coach, I decided that this was a ridiculous situation that I should feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark. 

[00:24:32] And if you approach me to talk about our finances, I get into an anxiety. I go into an anxiety attack. So I decided I was going to put an end to this. So this is what I always do with anything, any topic in my life, I go and do the research on the books. Then I get the books and I read them and then I do more research. 

[00:24:54] And then I read some more. So I did this with money and at the same time, I also got an EFT tapping money. Correct. So, this is a wonderful, wonderful woman in the UK and Sarah Marshall and she's moved on from this word now, but at the time this was her full-time work. And I did a lot of work with her. 

[00:25:17] And then I thought I would do, I would find if there was a money coaching course, like as a student. And I would do that course, I found an excellent course in Australia. And I did that. The only problem with that course was that it, it, it didn't validate what I was feeling and I could go through the steps of that course and look, the steps were good. 

[00:25:44] You know, the steps were really good, but it didn't validate where I was coming from. And I really believe that women need to be able to validate their experience before they can really do anything about it. So. I did a number of online courses. There's a woman in the states by the name of Marie Forleo. I know her. 

[00:26:08] Okay. So I signed up, I did her course and I signed up for the one in Australia that was also online. And I did her course and I mean, I'm a teacher, I've been a teacher for many, many, many years. Right. And not like teaching up the front of the room, but teaching in the middle of the circle and facilitating large groups. 

[00:26:30] So this is something that I have a high degree of skill in. So I decided that if these women could be doing this, I could be doing my own as well. Right. And then I decided that if I was going to do that, I needed to have some type of certification in money because people appreciate credibility. Yeah. 

[00:26:53] People appreciate the fact that you can say that. Done in some type of a predicate accreditation or certification. So I did the money coaching course with the money coaching Institute in California. And this is not a weekend course. This is a court. This is a real course with practice feedback, homework. 

[00:27:15] And so I got certified in that. And then I decided I was going to write my own course. So I started and that's how it started. And as I was doing that, I kept talking to more and more people. I became aware that there were more and more issues. I also looked at the statistics. 61% of women would rather talk about death than money. 

[00:27:38] Right? The true a majority of women are walking around with the bag lady taking up space in their heads. Rent-free now I had the image of the bad lady and I found it very disconcerting that I had this lady in. So I had a chat about it with somebody, and I felt really ashamed that I had this very negative in which, you know, the bag lady. 

[00:28:08] She's the homeless lady with the shopping trolley. Yes. That's how I imagined it then. So the question to ask myself was, and this is the same question that we all need to be asking ourselves all the time about lots of things. So I asked myself, is there evidence for this? So here I say, I'm going to end up as a bad lady. 

[00:28:33] And then step number two. Is, is there any evidence for this? So is there evidence in my life that I'm going to end up homeless? No, there's no evidence of any kind. Then why do I have this bag lady in my head? So the first thing to do is to, to flip the belief. I'm going to end up as a, of. And we need to flip it to, I'm going to end up being named woman in retirement, who has a means and is safe and fine. 

[00:29:06] We need to flip it to that. But the interesting thing was that I discovered that the majority of women have the bag lady and we have the bag lady in our head because we stumble around in the dark about money and we might be able to manage stumbling around in the dark now. But when we get old and we can't work anymore, what's going to happen then because we're stumbling around in the dark and stumbling around in the dark includes not having a plan, not having a plan for retirement. 

[00:29:46] Now I know that the younger women of 30 and 40 are going to say that's years away. But the realities, the years fly by very fast, fast. If I remember anything, my dad before he retired was an insurance salesman and a financial planner. And the one thing that he hammered into my head was the time value of money that you invest smaller amounts at a younger age consistently you'll have more money at the end than if you invest large amounts of money toward the end. 

[00:30:19] And that is absolutely right. So if, if this is a problem, then the way to manage that is to actually have a plan for retirement. And to have a plan for retirement, you need to take some steps. Now they don't have to be huge financial planning steps. You can start in a simple way just by doing a, an automatic savings transfer. 

[00:30:49] Just doing that, that it's really metaphorical and it's really symbolic. And it doesn't matter if it's not much money. The point is that you're thinking about this and now you've gone ahead and you've set up a savings account and you've set up an automatic transfer from your regular account to your savings account. 

[00:31:10] And it doesn't have to be a lot of money because the, the lesson that you're going to internalize is that you can take some steps to help yourself, and that's going to help you feel much better about yourself. And that bag lady won't be as large in your head because you've taken a few steps to mitigate the bad lady and to take control over that, which you had not previously controlled. 

[00:31:40] Exactly. It's huge. And then the other thing we need is to have an emergency fund. We need to have three to six months of money living money on hand in case something happens, I've never been able to manage, you know, a lot of people will say, oh my God, Virginia, really get realistic. I don't own enough money for that. 

[00:32:10] And two that I would say, I understand that. And you know what that is. Okay. You start with where you are with what you've got. But if you start something with a $10, a $10 contribution that will have an enormous impact on your money will be over time. The other thing that becomes important so that we don't feel like we're stumbling around in the dark is to have a budget now. 

[00:32:42] The budget is a very dirty word. Oh no budget. And the hair on the back of my neck stands up. That's right. And, and, and you are not alone. That is the majority of women because in the main we feel like that budget is going to be deprivational. We're going to be deprived of what we want. And this is another beliefs that we can see. 

[00:33:13] So instead of looking at it as deprivation, we can look at it as being now able to make choices, because when you list out that money and you see what you spending it on and you become conscious of what you're spending it on, you can become conscious about whether you want to keep spending that money, or maybe you even want to spend more on that particular line item. 

[00:33:38] So for example, before COVID, I liked to work in a cafe and I felt sort of closed in at home. You know, it's like, I want, I needed to get out. So I go sit in the cafe now because I sat in the cafe and I took up a seat. That's the seat that they need to bring in income. Right. So I would always buy, I buy, I get a pot of tea and then I'd have some lunch and then I might even have another pot of tea. 

[00:34:04] Now, if you. Compare the cost of that to what it would cost me to rent a rent office space. Well, I'm paying much less going to the cafe than I am. If I have space and painful, right? If I spend $30 every day for four days a week, $120 a week, that's that becomes $500 a month right now. Do I choose to keep spending that $500 a month or would I prefer to put at least half of that towards a savings account or towards a financial goal that I've got, like going on a holiday, right? 

[00:34:49] And when you can see what you're doing and you become conscious of it, you can make new choices and. The fact that we stumbling around in the dark and we feel quite anxious about all of this means that we don't want to be conscious of it. That's why we're stumbling around in the dark because we don't feel safe. 

[00:35:09] So the way out of a lot of this is look small steps. One of one, one of the best ways out is to accept the fact that you're not alone and you're not peculiar. You're not now you have a lot of the majority, but we don't talk to each other about it because money is taboo. Now we talk to each other about all sorts of other things, women talking with women, we talk about a heap of things, you know, but money is still taboo. 

[00:35:47] And you know, when you are ashamed about something, when you're carrying shame about something. And you don't speak about it. The shame gets to grow shame. Can't survive, being spoken about right. You can't survive. So if you say to me, you're all very well-deserving, I don't feel comfortable to speak to my friends or my circle or whatever about money or my family. 

[00:36:21] I mean, we don't even talk to our families about money. So it's usually the subject that's very taboo. You know, we don't talk to each other about how much money we spend on houses, you know, or how much money we make, what our salaries are. We don't talk about anything. No, we don't. It's usually like, even worse to talk about than how you voted, like your political belief, you know, relate. 

[00:36:44] Right, right. Don't talk about politics or money, but everything else is all right. I. So we need to start talking about it so that we can support each other because we all feel the same. So it's like, you know, she looks okay. You don't know what's going on behind the scenes that no. And if payment the same way, I've always looked. 

[00:37:08] But since the pandemic started, my husband's been mostly out of work and we're managing on my income, which so far is fine, but the credit card debt is building up and you can't tell that I look exactly the same from the outside, but in the side, half the half, the nights of my life, I'm going to bed worried about how those bills are getting paid. 

[00:37:26] Yeah. Well, mostly you are not alone. The majority of women are going to bed at night, not knowing how that they're going to pay the bills. And in Australia, 63% of women have a problem at the end of the month, 63%. So that's 63% of women who have a problem, but we don't talk to each other. So when people say. 

[00:37:50] I can't talk about it. I say, good. Why don't you, why don't you stop talking about, by going into the bank, the banks offer, you know, they offer courtesy courtesy consultation. Sure. About money and planning. Give yourself the exercise of going to the bank, just front, up front up and have a chat. Make sure you get a woman to talk to. 

[00:38:18] Not a man. Yeah. Okay. Because when it's, when, when we're talking to a woman about our stuff and we know that she also has some stuff, the conversation is going to be a whole lot more open and transparent and nobody's going to try to mansplain us. Yes. How do I hate that? Yes. Yeah. And the other thing, as well as the banks, you know, financial. 

[00:38:47] You know, they all offer a free consultation to have a check. And once again, choose a woman and financial planner. Who's a man. Adore him. I trust him. He's wonderful. No, no, no, I'm not. I know you're not disparaging a disparaging men, but I'm saying that that consulting with somebody whose job it is to help people understand finance, to understand investing, to discover. 

[00:39:17] I mean, he gave me a whole quiz about what my risk tolerance was, you know, like how much, how much time I had to save what my priorities were, you know, how, how I could have what my fear level was about. Let's say losing my principal or whatever. And I just found the whole process really, really comforting demystified, a whole lot of stuff for me. 

[00:39:41] And I felt like I was in control. Yes. Yeah. And when you're in that position, you are no longer, so anxious going to bed at night about money. Yeah. So. Look, there are a whole load of good men out there who do good work, but when you go into the bank and you don't know who these people are. Yes. I absolutely think another woman would be much more compassionate. 

[00:40:08] And do that identification thing that you were talking about before that women didn't feel seen. You know, I think that that emotional connection of being seen and understood like implicitly by another woman, who's likely in a similar situation there it's invaluable. Yeah, that's right. And then in regards to financial planners, it's best to choose even to talk to it's best to choose a planner who you pay as a fee for service, rather than a planner, who's earning money off what you've invested as, as a sidekick, because that's how a lot of them earn their money. 

[00:40:49] You don't want that because. A lot of the decisions are made on the basis of what will give them the biggest sidekick, not what's going to be necessarily the best for you. Right. You gotta make sure you know where their motives are. Yes, yes. And fee for service is generally a better idea. So we can shift out of this, but it's another revolution. 

[00:41:16] It's another revolution for women to get on top of. And a lot of the problems that we currently face as women would be much better handled. If we dealt with the money. I agree. I'm not suggesting that anybody become an investor overnight. I'm not saying that I'm saying in the first instance, get clear, get compassionate, feel safe, make a plan. 

[00:41:50] Now is this all kinds of stuff that you talk about in your courses? I know you've got a couple of courses on a brand new one called money mindset, momentum, money mindset. Momentum is, look, I'm biased, of course, but I think it's an excellent course. I'm sure it is Virginia. We, we go through the money story. 

[00:42:11] So we, we get a handle on getting clear about the money, beliefs, patterns, paradigms that we're living with money. And we look at a family background, particularly a mother, father, and grandparents, to see how they were like, what were they like with money? What did money mean to them? Then we see which of those patterns we've also taken on. 

[00:42:41] And then we, we re we flip out before. Like we ask ourselves questions. Like, is there evidence for thinking this? So if there's no evidence for thinking that belief, then can we flip that belief? And then we wrote a new story. We do the money architect. There's a money quiz on my website and we do the money archetype, which is very, very simple, but very accurate. 

[00:43:10] And it will tell you what your personality with money is like. So I took your money quiz a couple of hours ago. Did you I don't know how to interpret the results. Really. I got, I got active twice as an answer and passive for six things. Okay. So what we active for twice innocent and martyr that's. 

[00:43:38] Okay. So again with. The idea is to learn about ourselves and learn where we are. The idea is not to beat ourselves up. Now I would go so far as to say a majority of women have the innocent. I have some of the innocent and the innocent is the one who wants to keep her head stuck in the sand. And she wants to remain in the dark because it's not safe. 

[00:44:09] And it's true. The innocent is a bit childlike, so you can have a woman who's unbelievably competent and capable earning in excess of $200,000 a year. And she could be an innocent . So that tells her that even though she has achieved a whole lot of success, she's still not clear. So there's still work. 

[00:44:36] And the mater a lot, look, a lot of women have mattered because of the positions that we take on as caregivers. Yeah. I spent, most of my life is a people pleaser and I, I, I know that I reap a whole lot of meaning and a whole lot of my own value from taking care of other people. Okay. And you, and a lot of other women, Marci. 

[00:44:59] Yes. But what happens of course with it is that inside they can be some resentment and, and martyr feelings. And the idea with the money archetypes is to discover yours and you can have more than one that's active. And then if you go through the other archetypes, the idea is where would you like to be? 

[00:45:25] So with each archetype, there is strategies for moving. For which to progressing to a more positive architect. And it's an eye-opener not it's very accurate, even though it's very simple. Yeah. It's very thorough too. You talk about a lot of things in the, in the results. I'm going to link this quiz and all of her on all of Virginia's courses. 

[00:45:48] And so on. I'm going to list in the show notes, but you really should. If, if nothing else take this personality quiz and read through the results, because it'll tell you a ton of stuff about yourself. There's another quiz on the website, which is your modus operandi about money. Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah. 

[00:46:05] That's a fun quiz. And it tells you what your. Tells you, how you normally operate what your modus operandi is with money and it's a fun quiz. I think it's a good quiz. I think that the money archetypes tells us more, but I think the modus operandi also feeds into that. It also feeds in, and then in money mindset momentum, we do we do a module on blocks. 

[00:46:34] How do overcome blocks, how you can use various modalities about blocks? We do a module on practicalities. There are nine practicalities that I go through and I am not a financial coach. I can't, I'm not a financial planner, so I can't give any kind of plenty advice because I'm not licensed to do that, but I can coach on basic issues. 

[00:47:01] And so the. Practicalities, like one of them is set up a savings account, an automatic savings account. So I go through nine things that most of which women are involved with, then I do it. There's a module on the three steps circuit breaker, because we suffer from a great deal of anxiety and the best way to manage that is to say, this makes me bloody uncomfortable. 

[00:47:29] And how can I manage that? You can manage that with your breath, with meditation, with panoramic vision there. So I go through three, the three techniques, how you can suit yourself and they're not difficult and they're not complicated. And they don't take a lot of time and they don't cost any money. 

[00:47:50] And then in module six, we wrap everything up and have a plan to go forward. Now in the eight week course that's a cost that does go through all of the things that we've been talking about, what the hot mess is. How did we end up in these hot mess? There's valid money, validating ourselves in each other for where we are and making it public. 

[00:48:17] Because what that does is it says to the woman, gee, you know what? I'm not, I'm not odd. There's not, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm part of a tribe. We're all affected by this in the same way. Right? So when people get validated for uncomfortable, vulnerable, shameful feelings, and they realized that a whole load of other people have these same feelings, they can start to talk about it. 

[00:48:48] And I think they feel less shame about it. You know, like you said, before, shame can't exist in when you shine a light on it. So let's shine some light. That is exactly right. So we shine a big light on it so that you can, so that the woman can let go of the shame. But we also go into other things like three syndromes, the bag lady syndrome, prince charming syndrome, imposter syndrome. 

[00:49:12] You can have all sorts of women suffering from imposter syndrome, where they feel like they're frauds in the work they're doing. And of course this ties into the income and, and this is why women will remain in positions where they're under earning. We talk about enoughness enoughness is a really, really big issue because in Western society, and this goes for the men as well. 

[00:49:45] This is not just women in Western society. We wake up in the morning and we say, oh, gee, I didn't get enough. Oh, gee, I don't have enough time for that meeting today. Oh, gee. I didn't have time to buy the biscuits that I like. We constantly tell ourselves that we don't have enough and we need, this is another thing we could have a look at. 

[00:50:09] Because if it's not enough notes, we'll feel this with our money as well. That there's not enough. And the stumbling around in the dark is often about, there's not enough. And if there's not enough, then the conversation is what can we do so that there is enough so that you don't have to carry this anxiety about not enoughness with your money. 

[00:50:33] The prince charming syndrome is still alive and well, we're waiting for a handsome guy to turn up with a carriage full of care. And I would like to interrupt right here with this particular sentiment and tell all of our listeners right now that you have my permission. And I would like you to give yourselves your own permission to be your own rescuer. 

[00:50:57] Be your own handsome prince. Don't wait for someone else because guess what? No, one's coming. You do it yourself. That's right. Prince chummy is not coming. He's coming. I mean, if you're lucky enough to have some hot guy sweep you off your feet, he's still not going to rescue you in the way that you need to be rescued only you, we don't want to be rescued because when you get rescued like that, you give up power. 

[00:51:21] Yes. Oh, absolutely. You'd give up self agency. This is not a good thing. You know, it's not going to end well, no, and not talk. We talk about things like overstepping. Under earning. So there's a whole lot more stuff about your self-concept, your self esteem, your self care. I tend to overspend when it comes to my own health care or my own self care or my own mental health care. 

[00:51:53] Like I feel like I want to try all these new things and maybe this thing will help me feel better about X, Y, and Z. And so I sign up for all the stuff that I may do. I may like, I may finish, I might not finish, but it's, there's too much. I'm doing too much of it. And I don't think what I'm getting from it emotionally is worth the amount of stress financially. 

[00:52:22] Okay. So that's what's happening. I just gotta tailor it back. Yeah. Okay. But I would suggest Massey that you have a list. I mean, I should put this list together. I have a list like this. You need a list of a hundred things you can do to take care of yourself that don't cost any money. Yeah. Because there are lots of things we can do and overspending on self care or mental health or, or those sorts of things. 

[00:52:52] It's a symptom that there's something that's bothering you. And so to get clear on, if you can get clear on what's bothering you, you you'll be more likely to get clear on how you employ self-care techniques. And I would go so far as to say that there are great many women who. Feel empty. There's a lot of emptiness, you know, and I'm not suggesting that that's you, but there can be a lot of emptiness. 

[00:53:25] And so we try to fill the emptiness and often people, not just women, I mean, men, some men do this too, but we feel empty. So we go on a shopping spree know, and we get a lot of joy from our shopping spree until it gets to the end of the month. And it's on a credit card. Right. So the real question there is, what are you longing for? 

[00:53:53] Is it really a new dress? What, what really is it that you're longing for? 'cause I bet you, my bottom dollar that it's not the new dress. No. I mean, people are longing for love and acceptance and support compassionate. Purpose in their life, purpose and passion. You know, if you have, if you have a woman who's, for example, very talented and she's doing some good work, but that's not really the work she's she wants to be doing. 

[00:54:33] And she doesn't have real purpose. She doesn't feel she's not really involved. She's not really caught up in that work. Right. And she's going to feel empty. Or if you have a woman whose relationship whose main relationship is not satisfying, her, she's going to feel empty, but we don't want to feel empty. 

[00:54:55] Feeling empty is very uncomfortable and saying to ourselves, why am I empty? That's also very uncomfortable because we might have to deal with something that's not pleasant. It's much easier to go out and have a shopping beach. Yeah. Yeah. And I grew up seeing my mother do that. She lived a very empty life and you know, how to sort of catastrophic life in, in a lot of respects. 

[00:55:22] And she would go shopping and buy things with money that she didn't have, but she'd also buy things that she didn't need. And then they would sit in shopping bags. She wouldn't even open the bags. She wouldn't even unpack the bags. Most of the time, she just liked the rush of buying the thing, you know, it made it for the moment feel better. 

[00:55:43] That's right. And she's part of a tribe. Yeah. So in the, in the money project, the big course, there's also weekly live coaching with me. So you're off doing the four main processes of money coaching, but you get to come every week and discuss what you found or what what's happening for you, or how do you get some support here? 

[00:56:06] So the eight week has a lot more in it. And that's, but it's, it that's reflected in the price. The money I mentioned is priced at 75, us dollars, 97 Australian dollars so that no woman is locked out on the basis of price, because the reasonable for what you get, it's, it's a, it's a very good value program for what you get. 

[00:56:31] And we all need to do this. And in everything I say, I include myself. Absolutely. And that's part of the connection it's part of being seen. Yes. And for me it was the stumbling in the dark that eventually I got titled because it's very uncomfortable and. You know, you have to weigh up with how uncomfortable do you want to feel? 

[00:56:57] Do you want to feel uncomfortable about knowing nothing or do you want to feel uncomfortable about knowing something and diagnosing the problem and doing something about it? Because if the reason for, for not knowing and remaining in the dark is that you're so frightened that there won't be enough. 

[00:57:15] That's the diagnosis is diagnosis. There's not enough income here. Okay. What can we do with that? Okay. So is this, is this woman under earning maybe yes. Maybe no, if it's yes. What can she do about that? So she needs to go and ask for more money. How would she do that? She needs to become very clear on what she's achieved in the organization in the last 12 months. 

[00:57:44] And she needs to be very clear about the skills and talents that she brings to the position. And then you can use to pee. And then very importantly, she needs to practice that conversation half a dozen times, at least. Yes. And, and be able to tell her superior in the company, what she's already doing that is deserving of more money. 

[00:58:10] I remember my dad telling me years ago that he had a secretary who didn't do all that much. He felt that she wasn't working hard enough. And yet she came into his office and asked for more money and said that she would only do a better job if he gave her more money. So he fired her cause it was, yeah, it was a bad way of doing it. 

[00:58:34] And so he said that the better way of doing it was, was, is to do the job. To do a better job and then say, look, I'm already doing what somebody in the next step is doing. So I deserve more money. I mean, yeah. And, and the achievements of the past 12 months. Exactly. And then maybe this is a mom at home with little kids. 

[00:59:00] There's not enough income. She's not working. I mean, women can end up in a terrible bind about children and work. You know, people think that these days we can send children to childcare so on and so forth. Many women don't want to send their kids to child care. You it's like it costs another mortgage payment. 

[00:59:20] It's a very expensive proposition. That's right. It's expensive. And so is it really worth the mother feeling torn between the job and the children when the childcare is so expensive and personally. You know, I'm a very competent woman nobody's ever tried to keep me barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but I didn't, I wanted to be with my children. 

[00:59:47] Yeah. I think it's an extremely valid choice if you do want to be with your children. So the same thing, I mean, I've been a teacher for 27 years, but when my children were very tiny we managed on one income, which was very hard, but I felt like being home for them for the first couple of years, at least was what I wanted to do. 

[01:00:08] You know, I, felt compelled as a mom to make that choice for my own family. But on the side I was like selling cosmetics. I tried selling cookware all those like home selling kind of things where I could do the outside of the house, part of the job when my husband was home,  

[01:00:27] yeah. And that's exactly where I'm going to the side hustle. Yeah. Oh yeah. The side hustle. Yeah. It's very important. My whole life has been that's what you did. Right? What I did, you know, like I took some, I took casual teaching. Like I could go and teach at the at an Institute of language from the university. 

[01:00:46] I could go and teach two nights a week. Right. You know the stop gap, it just was a way to make the ends meet closer together to, to pay for my son's karate class when I couldn't have otherwise afforded it or, you know, something like that. Yeah, exactly. So what we need mums in that position to be able to do is a side hustle and doing a side hustle is about knowing your worth, your value, your skills and your talents. 

[01:01:20] And what is it that you do? What is your genius zone? What is it that you do that somebody else might like to learn? How. And then teach it and charge for it and it, you know, it, you can do some really creative things. You know, you can be the expert souffle maker. I mean, if cooking's your thing, there's loads of things that you can do with that. 

[01:01:49] If you're into vintage clothing, there's a whole load of stuff you can do with that, where you go to all of the you know, like some, well, we have some Vincent DePaul and the, the various op shops you go to all of them, you do really good searches. You bring the stuff home, you sell it online, on places like Poshmark and so on. 

[01:02:10] Yeah. Yeah. There are lots of things. There are things that we can do. I mean, if you've been a teacher and you can do some part-time teaching at night, I also, when mine would it look, I did a, I did a mornings teaching at the university on a Saturday, and I got paid as a full university lecturer, which was a lot of money for a mum to be earning on Saturday. 

[01:02:34] No. Nice, nice. There's a company called teachers pay teachers where I take the assignments, projects, unit plans, all sorts of things that I design on my own for my own ingenuity and creativity for my high school classes. And I repackage them and sell them online to other teachers. And, and I it's really very little extra work for stuff that I own the intellectual property of. 

[01:03:03] And then I could turn around and sell to other teachers for them to save time in their own lives. And I made consistent, you know, consistently inconsistent money every month for close to 10 years, then. Well, that's, that's fabulous. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. Exactly. Yeah. Finding something that you do, you know, that these days there's a thing called paella privately licensed resources. 

[01:03:30] And there are lots of companies through this where you can where a coach for example, can buy content. So somebody had a great idea to do that. I mean, there's a business, you know, on pod match. There's a business out there, all online about matching podcasters, exactly. Companies like Fiverr, where you can sign up as a freelancer and people will pay you a certain dollar amount to do a thing for them, whatever that is, make appointments does do graphic design, whatever. 

[01:04:02] Yeah, absolutely. What have you do some there's somebody who's interested to be able to access your genius zone? I mean, I have a. I had a virtual assistant. She's in India and I'm still, I'm going to keep working with her. How does that work? I've been curious about that. That's you? What does she do for you? 

[01:04:28] Okay, so she's so on my website, my courses are in a portal that's managed by a platform called learn. Dash dash is seen as being the best. Now you can have all your course material and then you have to figure out how you're going to get it online. So you need a platform. Okay. Okay. But for somebody like me to load all of that course up into the platform, I have to learn how to manage this platform. 

[01:05:01] Okay. So that required her to manage the platform, complete waste of my time and a lot of frustration. So I thought I'm going to find a learn dash consultant who can do this for me. Brilliant. So I went, I did, you know, I posted a job on, you know, like fiber Hubstaff Upwork. I posted my job and I just waited to see what came in. 

[01:05:27] And there weren't many that came in, which told me that this was a very specialized skill. And I found a young woman in India who was charging me 30 us dollars. Now, for those who do know about virtual assistance, you can find a virtual assistant to do jobs for you for as little as three American dollars an hour. 

[01:05:48] And it goes from three American dollars up. And there are a lot of people who, a lot of people in the Philippines and India and Pakistan, and there are only 10 to 12 us dollars and it. And then the next, the next jump is the twenties. The next jump is the 30. So she told me she was charging $30 an hour and she was not going to be negotiated, which she was very firm on that. 

[01:06:11] Good for her. Now $30 American is for me like $38 Australian. And the virtual assistant I'd had before was $10 us. So like $13 Australian. So this was a big jump for me and I toyed with it and I thought, well, let's just give it a go and see if she's worth the $30 $30 UX. Right. So I did that. Well, she's turned out to be wonderful, wonderful, very honest. 

[01:06:44] I don't even question her, her, like she builds me for hours and they get paid automatically. In Upwork and questioned, heard a little bit, the first time, what did, what did you do in this time and what did you get managed to do in that time? And, and then I overtime, I realized that she was being completely honest. 

[01:07:06] He would do anything I wanted if I asked for something to be done three times, because I didn't like it. Not that I didn't like what she did. I didn't like the result of what I told her to do. Right. Well, that's not her fault. So she was patient. I mean, she was, she, this girl was wonderful. So she, she uploaded the money mindset momentum for me, and I will be running more courses and I'll go back to her to, you know, again, she was, she was fabulous and for the money spent in comparison to my frustration and time it's money well spent. 

[01:07:49] There are so many women out there who could be, you know, you said graphic design, graphic design is another one. Yeah. Doing peoples. I also have a young woman working for me, Eva, who does my, a lot of my socials. She does a great job. Is it treat? No, it's not cheap, but it's time intensive. It's labor intensive, it's time and labor intensive. 

[01:08:15] And it can be quite frustrating. And she's a wizard 

[01:08:23] and she's a mum. She's exactly who we're talking about. He's a mom in her thirties with two children and in COVID they've been at home. Yeah. And she could have this from home. Yeah. Every now and again, she'll send me an email saying Virginia. One of my kids has been sick. I haven't been so good myself. 

[01:08:45] I'll get this done by such and such. I never, I never fast. Cause if people are not well or the kids not, well, what can they do? Right. But he's only good money. She's set herself up as a digital marketing agency or professional consultant. And she has really good ideas. She puts things together really well. 

[01:09:08] And she's a mum at home and I don't know how many clients she's got, but she's doing quite nicely. Thank you. Because she does a great job. That's great. I don't take up her time on for example on zoom or we, you know, if we needed to talk, we would, but we do everything by email and, and she can do the work at home and she can create her own timetable, which means that she might be doing this work at eight o'clock at night for an hour or two, when the kids are finally in bed. 

[01:09:43] So she can schedule it the way she likes that's flexible with children. And so that's what I do to the ones. So again, stumbling around in the dark, we're worried that there's not enough. Why is there not enough? The diagnosis is there's not enough income. And then the question is, what can we do about that? 

[01:10:06] What can we do about that? We don't want anything to be overwhelming. We don't want to be taken away from our children. Fine. What can you do within those boundaries? Yeah. It's a lot of creative things to think about when you start, when you start seeing that you're not as boxed in, as you thought you were that's right. 

[01:10:26] And you know, I say it in the money mindset moment and there are no. Non practicalities. I deal with one of the practicalities is what is your time worth? What should you be charging for your time? Because a lot of freelances let's say that somebody is a freelance coach and they're charging $150 an hour and they think that's a pretty good rate. 

[01:10:51] Well, my question is, have they taken into account? Well, first of all, they need to add up the number of hours they want to work and they have to know how much income they want to generate per month. So then they need to figure out how many hours of work per week will that be? Then we need to divide the desired income by the desired number of hours to see what, what, what that is. 

[01:11:18] And it won't be $150. It will be more. And then after we've done that, we then need to look at essential, essential costs and essential costs will be your domain name your website, maintenance, your insurances, your professional development. It will include a whole load of other things, your tax. Yeah. And when you start adding all of those things in, and then you go back and you do the summer again, I think I've found that depending on, and there's an admin charge, right? 

[01:11:56] You got to do the admin work. And I found that really the person who wanted to earn $150 per hour, $15,000 a month, they needed to charge between 234 and 284. And. Wow. That is a big jump from $150. And the side hustlers need to become very aware that this income, I mean, the text men would consider this to be income. 

[01:12:30] And so they need to have some systems in place and they need to predict the tax rates. So if they knew what their tax rate is, you know, certain, a certain income per year gets texted this percentage. They need to be charging every client for that taxation. Exactly. Or it's going to come out of their end. 

[01:12:52] That's right. And I mean, they can be so excited. A mompreneur can be so excited going from nothing to $150 an hour, but then she realizes that she's got all these other costs and really she's only owning a hundred dollars. And that's not going to add up to the 15,000 and working on the calculation of 150 per hour by 64 hours a month, the income was 9,600, not 15,000. 

[01:13:27] So, so this is in the money monster momentum. And this is really important for people who start doing side hustles. It's interesting to way to think about it. I don't think that I thought about it that way before I was just looking right. I was just thinking, oh, well that would be a nice hourly rate for that, for that amount of work. 

[01:13:48] But if I have all those other costs in getting that job and in maintaining it, then my original dollar figure is not enough. That is correct. And I would really guarantee you. A lot of side hustlers go through this, and then they realize in 3, 4, 5, 6 months the sun was on working out. Right. We need to do something different. 

[01:14:17] I'm just a bit, yeah. Yeah. Very good advice, Virginia. Okay. So I like to end the interviews. Well, we'll end the interview the way I normally begin the interview with the six quick questions and then you up for that. Okay. So what six words would you use to describe yourself? Quirky, creative, persistent, insightful, resourceful, intelligent. 

[01:14:54] Excellent. I might choose the same words about. Actually maybe, number two, what is your favorite way to spend a day? My favorite way to spend a day? 

[01:15:11] Well, I'm an artist. So a favorite way to spend time is to paint. And then my favorite way at the moment to spend a day is doing this work. Yeah. This real mission and purpose in, and another favorite way is just to go out for lunch with some friends. Sounds great. I'm an artist too. So I know what you mean about painting. 

[01:15:36] It's just behind here. I did. I did the, the diptych that I split from side to side here and this neuro graphic piece that I did in the middle. Yeah. I I'm mostly abstract some landscape. Stuff like that. I don't know. It brings me such then and such peace and such meditative mindfulness and flow. And so on. 

[01:16:05] I agree with you a hundred percent. There's a flow in painting, but I don't get anywhere else because that painting nothing else exists. Yeah. So it's very mindful. I would breakfast brain. Yeah. I, I think on, I, I've done a very significant percentage of my own mental health healing just through painting that I'm not even consciously trying to think about those things, but it teaches me all sorts of stuff. 

[01:16:40] Like the most basic thing that I've learned from painting is patience. You know, you rush a painting, you wind up with. Just just, you could ruin the whole thing. You got to wait and let it speak to you and see how it comes out. You know, that's exactly right. I'm the same. And somebody said to me, the other day I was in a painting class and I was during, I was doing dots. 

[01:17:01] So I get the, I get a like a bamboo skewer. Yeah. Because it's the right size at the end, a little bit of paint. And then I go over here and I do dots. So somebody stood next to me the other day and said, oh my God, what patients? And I said, I'm not patient in any other part of my life, but with the art, I am unbelievably patient. 

[01:17:31] Yeah, because you have this vision, what you think you want it to look like, or even if you don't have there's sometimes I have no idea what I'm going to do. I just have a feeling like, I feel like fuchsia today. I don't know. And so that's what I start with, but you never know where that's going to go, but I'm patient enough to listen to the painting as it talks to me, what does it want? 

[01:17:54] That's it. Absolutely. I have one idea and I do that. So it'll be one idea and one color and I'll do that. And then I'll say, and now what? Right. And, and then after I've done the next bit, I say, and now it's a lot. Yeah. And if it doesn't come out the way you like. So what, that's a minute paint over it and start again. 

[01:18:23] Exactly, exactly. I mean, that was a huge lesson for me. You know, you just paint over it, start over again. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Nobody. Exactly, exactly fabulous. Okay. What is your favorite childhood memory? Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, a favorite childhood memory was my father and I winning the father daughter relate. 

[01:18:55] So, you know, this was a swimming pool. It was a long story, but 55 yards. Anyway, it's a long story. So what happened was that the fathers would swim first and they had to do a whole. And then when the father touched down there, the daughter would dive in and she would then do her lap. Now I was only about 12. 

[01:19:23] Okay. All right. All the other girls would be girls, but my father was a champion swimmer. You had a ringer. Yeah. So, so he did his lap. And when he was at the end of the pool, the other fathers were back in the middle of the pool. And the funniest thing was, my father started to lose his swimming costume. Oh. 

[01:19:55] So he sort of stopped to pull it up and my mother was on the sideline and she said, forget your trans and swim. Nice. 

[01:20:08] And we won now, the girls were not far behind me, so they caught up, but my father had given me such a, such a lucky start and I knew that that was what would happen. Nice. So I feel quite confident, even though I was little, I felt confident that we would win because of, because of the lead. And it was a very sweet moment, you know? 

[01:20:33] That's very cool. I like that. Very visual. Let's try the next one. What is your favorite meal? My favorite meal is, or he comes to my house. My husband's just over there. Come and say hello to Massey. My favorite. One of my favorite Dennis is my husband's roast chicken. 

[01:20:59] We have Virginia's husband here. How are you this morning? Yeah. 

[01:21:11] Where are you? I'm in New York. 

[01:21:16] Oh, cool. You say for two weeks where? In New York and in New York city in Manhattan. Nice. He doesn't move outside Manhattan unless he's going, you know where you have the nice beach houses. Ah, okay. Yeah. I'm just saying the suburbs. Okay. That makes piss off. That means 

[01:21:41] Gordon makes the best roast chicken dinner. Yes. For Friday night in the world, he makes the best rice vegetables in the world. Nobody. Wow. That's what he does. I can follow all of, exactly the same. But it doesn't come out the same. Doesn't come out the same. He puts in it. Gordon puts love in it. And the other thing is the other one is we, you know, in Australia we have the best Asian food that would make sense because of your proximity to Asia. 

[01:22:16] That's what makes sense. We have the absolute best. So some delicious, spicy Asian food is my favorite team after the roast chicken dinner. Nice. It sounds heavenly. Now I'm getting hungry. Okay. Number five. What one piece of advice would you like to give your younger self? 

[01:22:44] I would say to her that you are a whole lot more than you realize. And you are a lot more than you think you are brilliant. You think you would've listened to yourself if you probably, probably not 

[01:23:08] to deal with. So, you know, when I was studying and going into what, you know, paid employment, I had a whole load of other issues. So I did the best that I could with studies. I mean, I did well, but I would have done better and made better choices if I had not been dealing with a whole load of trauma. 

[01:23:32] I think that's a lot of our stories. Yeah. Yeah. Our younger lives are fraught with challenges and difficulties that we could all have done without. 

[01:23:44] Yeah. Yeah. And that impairs our ability to be our best selves, to focus on the things that we want to focus on, because we're so busy with all that other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's life though. And you know, the best thing for me was finding Gordon because he's so calm and you know, he's so he's just so good at apple. 

[01:24:11] She stood up and said her father was the most compassionate man. She knew beautiful. How long have you been married? We've been married three lifetimes. We have been together since 1983. Wow. That's a long time. I wasn't even out of high school yet. Yeah. That's a long time. That's a long. Yeah. I was with my first husband for about 12 years, and then I was single for 10 and now I'm with my current husband for our fifth anniversary will be January, but we've known each other since 1987. 

[01:24:46] So it wasn't a long time, long time, but good, but good. Okay.  

[01:24:52] Last question. What is one thing you would most like to change about the world? 

[01:25:02] Not a tiny question. That's a big question. Isn't it? 

[01:25:09] One thing I would like to change about the world that we live in peace and harmony, and we don't have wars. Yeah. That's a good one. You know, that we accept each other and accept the fact that there are going to be differences and we don't need to have wars. And that what goes hand in hand with that is that a lot of wars are about authoritarian regime. 

[01:25:34] So, you know, we need to have, from where I stand, we need liberal democracy and every country. And if we had, if we had good functioning, liberal democracies, we would not need to have wars. Right. And we would get rid of all of those people who feel like they have to control everyone. Else's every single mode. 

[01:25:57] That's right. Yeah. I mean like that like the Chinese, I mean, I'm not, I'm not disparaging Chinese people, but the reality is for us here in Australia, China is our neighbor and they have a population of billions of people. Right. And he didn't pin lately in the last 12 months has been a lot more authoritarian and unaccepting. 

[01:26:24] I mean, look at the stuff that's gone on in Hong Kong. And I don't think it takes much to realize that China is out to change Hong Kong and they're out to get Taiwan back as Chinese territory. So if they weren't, so I don't know, greedy or rapacious or they have to have their, you know, they have to control these other two territories. 

[01:26:52] And, you know, we saw last year, all of the demonstrations in, in Hong Kong and, and, you know, quite a lot of violence against the citizens. I mean, looking Spain, I mean, it's in Spain, not now, but a few years ago and a few years ago, and I'm not up to date with where it is now, but the whole business that took place in Barcelona of the police coming in and bashing up purchased us. 

[01:27:20] Yeah. What kind of country does. Yeah. Yeah. My, my son's very good friend. In the summer of 2020 in the United States, when the whole black, black lives matter thing was starting to really come to a head during the lockdown part of COVID, she happened to be in Florida, protesting on her knees no weapons with a whole bunch of other people. 

[01:27:44] And the police department trying to quell this protest, but it was a peaceful protest shot, like water cannons or whatever you want to call them at her and at all of them. And she lost her whole of her front teeth or some of her front teeth and gashed open her face the pressure of the water. And she was just peacefully, peacefully protesting that people of color should be treated with respect and shouldn't have to fear for their lives. 

[01:28:13] Just walking down the road. She wasn't armed. She wasn't an insurgent. She wasn't hurting anyone and our, our right to, to voice our opinion as supposed to be a constitutional right in the United States, as well as a lot of other places in the world. And she should, that shouldn't have happened, you know, and that kind of thing was happening all over the place. 

[01:28:35] And there's no reason, every single one of us wants the same damn thing for ourselves, for our children, for our futures. 

[01:28:43] We all want love. We all need to feel love. We want to give love and we need shelter, and to feel safe and have community and empathy. And that's it. That's right. That's it. Well, that's what I have liked for the world. Massey you and me. Both Virginia. Yeah, definitely. Yikes. Well, this has been fabulous. 

[01:29:07] I've enjoyed this conversation immensely. It's a good way to end my day. I hope this is a good way to begin your day for you. 

[01:29:14] That's amazing. Awesome.