She Hit Rock Bottom and Still Built a Six-Figure Life. Here's How. (With Rebecca Whitman)

0:00A lot of people go out there and they chase money thinking it is going to fix everything else. When does that backfire? We can look to the example of celebrities who have money, power, and fame, yet so many of them are ODing and dying or suicidal or having really dysfunctional relationships. We think our society tells us that money, power, and fame are the three things to constantly be striving for and that they're going to fix us. We're looking for outside validation to fill a God-sized hole in our heart, and it starts from within. Happiness is a decision, not an acquisition. It was 2016. It was the hardest year of my life because as my marriage was slowly and painfully unraveling, my dad was slowly and painfully dying.

0:45And I never knew when the divorce would end or when my dad would die, and it just so happened they culminated in the same week. My dad was buried on a Wednesday and my divorce was finalized on a Friday. A few months later, I was sitting across the desk from my financial planner and he said, Rebecca, you lost your dad. You lost your marriage, but you're having your best fiscal year ever. You've actually become a self-made millionaire. I'll get happy when I get over there. But guess what? Over there never comes. She lost her father in her marriage in the same week. And most people would have fallen apart.

1:20Most people would have let everything burn, including their finances. Rebecca Whitman didn't. And when I sat down with her, I wanted to know why. Because what she figured out is it isn't about money. It's about why the people who grind the hardest are often the ones building the least. Why high achievers who look successful on the outside are secretly burned out and broke in ways that don't show up on payment. And a lot of them are chasing a version of freedom that they'll never actually reach. Rebecca has worked with thousands of people who, by every external measure, have made it. They have a good income, they have a busy calendar, and they look successful.

1:55But she keeps seeing the same blind spot. And over and over again, it is quietly destroying their wealth. Now, she built a framework around the pillars of abundance. Not because it sounds good, but because she learned the hard way that when one collapses, they are all going to collapse. Including your money. So in this episode, we get behind the real psychology of lifestyle inflation. why most side hustles fail before they even get started, and what it actually takes to build a six-figure income from scratch. The one thing that the personal finance world doesn't talk enough about and is not honest enough about.

2:27This episode is going to shift the way you think about money entirely. So without further ado, let's welcome Rebecca to the Personal Finance Podcast. So Rebecca, welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here, Andrew. Drew? So you've built this really cool framework around abundance. And I want to talk about financial abundance a lot because the psychology behind money is one of the things that we love to talk about. And I say this all the time, 90 % of money is your psychology and only 10 % is kind of your know-how. And I love kind of how you think about this and how you think through abundance overall.

3:02So you've talked about financial abundance and how it can't exist in isolation. And you talk through these six different pillars. So I want you to kind of introduce those six pillars to our audience, and then we can kind of dive into this. Well, thank you so much. It's actually seven pillars, so your audience gets a bonus pillar that you don't even know about. So the first pillar is spirituality, and they are in order of importance according to my experience. So having a relationship with a power greater than yourself, I choose to call that power God. You can choose to call it whatever you want.

3:33The second pillar is fitness, body before business, And if you're strong and healthy, then you can go out and build a great business. If you're sick and have to stay in bed, then you can't do anything. So health is wealth. The third pillar is emotions. I believe all emotions come from scarcity or abundance. You're in a conversation of not enough time, not enough energy, not enough money, or more than enough time, more than enough energy, more than enough money. I mean, you, for example, have all these different businesses as I do. And a lot of people like I'm overwhelmed with just one. Well, it's just, it's just a mindset that we have enough time and we have enough energy to do all these different businesses.

4:12And it's a lot of fun. We can get into that. After emotions, it is romance. And romance affects all the other areas. If you're in a healthy, loving relationship or even happily single, you can keep everything going with a high vibe and a good attitude. After romance is mental and that's listening to shows like this awesome show top five percent in the world the personal finance podcast working on your mind and learning things all the time it could be creativity it could be travel it could be learning a new recipe learning to play pickleball after mental is social and that is having a community and having mentors and mentees and finally it's financial and i believe all of these things affect your finances a lot of people think abundance is just financial.

5:04I'll go out, make a ton of money. I'll hire a personal trainer. I'll look totally hot. I'll manifest my soulmate and we'll travel and go on spiritual retreats and work on our mindset. But in my experience, money is the last thing that comes into play. And this is something that I love because I think really when you have a wealthy life and an abundant life, overall, you need to have a balance in all these different areas. And so that's why I love that you kind of talk through this stuff because it is very, very important. And overall, I know for me specifically, a lot of times I can feel like, hey, I'm doing really well in some of these areas.

5:37And in some of these areas, I feel completely out of whack or I feel like I'm just completely lacking. So for someone out there who is kind of working really hard, maybe they're working really hard on their finances, but they feel out of balance kind of everywhere else. Where would you tell them to start? I say to start with your morning ritual have a connection with a power greater than yourself whether you call that you know God Jesus Allah nature Buddha your coffee anything to start your morning off having a great mindset and when I was 20 years old I met someone who changed my life she gave me some journal prompts that helped me create an abundance mindset to go from negative critical fear-based thinking to positive thinking.

6:21And these journal prompts are a gift I'm going to give you guys at the end of the interview. So make sure you stay tuned until the end. But these journal prompts, I've been writing them every morning for 30 years and they've completely changed my thinking. And it just has given me a way to process what I'm learning and what I'm going through and then spin it to the positive. So having that journal practice, just having some quiet time in the morning. I think that is the first foundational thing. The second thing is to have some exercise in your life, whether you can do it in the morning, afternoon, evening, even if it's just walking, even if it's just doing some gentle stretching in between Zoom calls, having movement in your life is so important.

7:03And just, I call a fitness H &M, not the discount store, but hydration, nutrition, and movement. And those are the two things that I think are the foundation for everything else. And then you can work on your finances, work on your love life, you know, work on getting a more expansive social life. But having the spirituality and the fitness, I feel, are essentials. And those you can work on, if you can, every single day. And the cool thing about this is you're kind of talking through, hey, first, let's get our mind right. Let's make sure our mind is, you know, in the right spot. And then in addition, let's make sure that our body is in the right spot.

7:39And if you do those two things alone, you're going to feel a lot better in your situation where especially you really want to be working on this stuff, even when life is going good. When you feel like things are going well, it is really important to make sure that you maintain a lot of these different habits to ensure that when life gets tougher or when life gets harder, you can actually overcome some of these things. Workplace chaos. You know the feeling. Deadlines are stacking up, emails are flying, and then someone on your team gives notice. That's when you think this is a job for sponsored jobs.

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10:37Yeah, it was 2016. It was the hardest year of my life because as my marriage was slowly and painfully unraveling, my dad was slowly and painfully dying. And I never knew when the divorce would end or when my dad would die. And it just so happened they culminated in the same week. My dad was buried on a Wednesday and my divorce was finalized on a Friday. and a few months later I was sitting across the desk from my financial planner and he said Rebecca you lost your dad you lost your marriage but you're having your best fiscal year ever you've actually become a self-made millionaire and I think you should inspire people to be resilient because it's usually when you go through these life-changing tragedies that things are going downhill financially but because of the seven pillars they went uphill because I had the daily morning practice with the abundance journaling because I poured all my anger and sadness and angst into my workouts because I shared with my community all the uncertainty and insecurity I was feeling about not knowing how much the divorce would cost me or where it would end and I was working on my mindset constantly if I was awake I was listening to positive podcasts or YouTube videos or audibles constantly just pouring into myself and the mental pillar that I was able to get out.

11:58And even though I had a bad romantic year, all the other areas either stayed the same or leveled up because I knew that it was going to make or break me that year. And I did not want to let it break me. I almost think about it in terms of a lot of folks out there know that we talk here about investing a lot in this podcast. And one of the things we talk about a lot is the kind of S &P 500, where you have this diversified group of stocks that you can buy all in one stock or investment, where you're buying basically a ton of different stocks all at one time. And the beautiful thing about this is, is because you're diversified across all these different companies, a lot of times if one of those companies starts to struggle, it doesn't hurt you as bad because you have all these other companies that you're diversified into.

12:40And this is almost a way, what you're talking about here, is to make sure you're diversified in life, where you are covering all the major areas of your life and you're consistently making sure that you are kind of doing the things that are going to help you, the habits, put those habits into place that are going to help you moving forward, even when you don't need them. So that when one area, just like what you had to go through, when one or two areas starts to really become painful, you have those other areas that are gonna help lift you up in life. And I think that's a really cool way to kind of think about this in the way that your pillars are kind of working, where a lot of people go out there and they chase money, thinking it is gonna fix everything else.

13:15When does that backfire? And what would you tell them to do if that's something that they do do? Well, I think we can look to the example of celebrities who have money, power, and fame, yet so many of them are ODing and dying or suicidal or having really dysfunctional relationships or end up checking themselves into a psych ward. We think our society tells us that money, power, and fame are the three things to constantly be striving for and that they're going to fix us. And we spend our life like the donkey chasing the carrot. And I used to say, well, I know they're not going to fix me, but I still want and get them and then I'll decide on my own.

13:56But I will tell you, we can learn through the power of example. And we're looking for outside validation to fill a God-sized hole in our heart. And it starts from within. Happiness is a decision, not an acquisition. And happiness is a choice that you get to make every day. And when you choose to prioritize your happiness, you are going to become and magnetic to more business opportunities. For example, you found me through the law of attraction, the law of magnetism. I didn't go out seeking you and now we're doing a great collaboration. We're going to do a podcast swap, but it was through the magnetism.

14:33That's why my nickname is the Magnetic Abundance Mentor, because when you have these areas in place and you have a full life, and I don't call it, even though my podcast is the Balance, Beautiful, and Abundant show. It's more like a symphony. You know, different areas take different precedents and different seasons. I know you have young kids, you know, they're going to take more time and more of a precedence now than when they, you know, go off and leave the nest. So it's, there's reasons and seasons for different things. I'm not saying you can have all these seven areas perfectly balanced every single day, but my intention when I teach my clients is just to touch them at least once a week, like have one date night a week, go to one social event a week.

15:18But the other things you can do more of like the morning practice and the fitness, but just knowing that there's all these instruments of life. And if you don't get hyper-focused on money, you can actually be happy while you're making money instead of put your happiness over there. I call it over there-ism. Like I'll get happy when I get over there, but guess what? Over there never comes. Exactly. And I think, you know, a lot of people are looking to the future. They're going to do that someday. They're going to get, they're going to get healthy someday. One day they'll kind of get to that point in time where they're going to have enough money and they'll have a little more time and then they're going to get there.

15:51But what I find a lot of times with most people is that the goalpost continues to move. And when that goalpost continues to move and your goals just become, you know, greater and greater and greater, they never actually get to the point in time where they prioritize these areas. So it's so important to make sure that you stay balanced and you prioritize other areas, even as you're working on building wealth. Now, one of the things that we talk about a lot here is that income is the number one lever that you can pull in order to fix a lot of areas of your financial situation. You can only cut back so much, but you can earn infinitely more.

16:21And I think you and I talk about, you know, building businesses and side hustle so much that I think this is something that you can really, really help a lot of our listeners when we go through this. So you have an entire program built around this and how to kind of build your income up over six figures. But what is the number one reason that people who start a side hustle don't actually turn it into meaningful income? Because one of the things we want them to do when we talk about side hustles is we talk about side hustles that can become a full-time income. That's the overall goal that I'm looking for a lot of times when people are building businesses.

16:50So why do you think that people who start a side hustle usually don't turn it into something meaningful? Well, if you treat your side hustle like a hobby, you're going to make hobby income. If you treat your side hustle like a serious business that you could make six figures or more on, then you're going to make six figures or more. And it's not the time. You can create a successful business with one dedicated power hour a day, five days a week. It's not the amount of time. It's doing income producing activities versus busy work. There's so much busy work to do as an entrepreneur that you can get caught up in the weeds and never actually ask people if they're going to pay you.

17:34Ask people if they're open to taking a look at your product, good, or service. Unless you're doing the ask, you are just getting caught up in the busy work. And I like to tell my clients, dedicate one power hour a week and make that hour just as important as any doctor's appointment or any other appointment you would have. Put boundaries around that hour and really focus and put your pedal to the metal and do some income producing activities to move your business forward. One of the things that I do is a lot of times in my business is when I feel like I'm getting out of whack and I'm doing too much of that busy work, I will literally take out a spreadsheet and I will go and track every 15 minutes of what I am doing for an entire year.

18:15And when I go through this, all of a sudden identify, oh my goodness, I am spending 15 hours a week just on busy work, stuff that really doesn't matter. And or if it is something that needs to get done, but it is not highly important, You can either, you know, if your business is making enough money, you could hire someone to kind of solve those problems for you so that you're not continuing to do the non-income producing activities. And I think that's what the most powerful word that you said there was the income producing activities. You must focus on those. And that should be what propels your business forward is making sure that you do that so that you can generate revenue, so you can grow your business, so you can hire people and do all these other things if you want to.

18:49And that, I think, is a really, really important thing there that you said. You teach people coming from contribution rather than desperation when they're building a side business. Why does that mindset shift matter financially and how does it actually change the outcomes that people get? Well, a lot of business coaches tell you to sign up for their high ticket coaching program, spend$25 ,000,$30 ,000, max out your credit cards, quit your job. And they say you got to burn the boats to take the island. and that puts you in a do or die situation where when you have your business set up and you finally get to talk to the prospect, you're like, oh my God, I'm in credit card debt and my kids don't have health insurance and I've got to make this sale and people can pick that up.

19:33So I tell them, keep your job, keep your health benefits, keep the money rolling in so you can feel secure and also reinvest into your own business and come from contribution. Don't be a go-getter, be a go-giver. And I was just at a conference this weekend and they said, don't get yourself rich, give yourself rich. And when people feel that you're coming from contribution, not desperation, they're going to want to give you their business. We're in a trust recession right now. There's so many entrepreneurs and so many people are selling stuff online. People are like sales averse and they're like, Oh, God, every time you say hi to someone, like I'm doing the same thing.

20:13Oh, somebody says hi to me. What do they want? What are you trying to sell me? And so it's so important to learn how to build relationships and truly come from contribution. I agree. And I think that's one where I know a lot of people out there who are even looking for folks who say that, for example, they wanted to do business with them or they wanted to partner with them or they wanted to do all these other things. And a lot of times they go first and they ask them for something. They ask, you know, hey, can I have some of your time for, you know, 30 minutes of coffee? That is one of the worst things that you can ask a busy entrepreneur because their time is their most valuable asset.

20:45And so a lot of times, if you can come up with ways to help contribute, just like Rebecca's talking about, and come up with ways to find ways to actually help them, find ways to contribute with them, to collaborate with them, to make their lives better, I think that is such a powerful message for a lot of people out there. If you've ever felt like your bank is working against you instead of for you, you're not alone. Between overdraft fees, monthly fees, and just trying to access your own money, it all adds up fast. That's why Chime is changing the way people think. Chime offers fee-free banking built for you, not the bank.

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23:32So your own story started with you wrote a book and then you turned that into coaching, which I think is absolutely fantastic. For someone who doesn't see themselves as an entrepreneur, what's the first signal that they might have something worth monetizing? If they're thinking through, okay, I wanna do something as a side hustle and I wanna try to turn it into a full-time business. Is there a signal out there that may say to them, hey, this is worth pursuing? Well, I like to ask them, what is your superpower? What could you give a TED Talk on right now? Speak for 20 minutes without checking your notes.

24:06What is something that people come to you and ask your advice in? What is something you were always good at as a kid? What is something you're constantly Googling or listening to podcasts about? What is something that you could do like blindfolded? that would be a great place to start as a side hustle. And then you can expand from there. But my goal is to help take people's passion to a profitable business. For example, I had this young woman, she was in her twenties. She's working as a vet tech. And she's like, I don't see myself as a vet tech. I want to start a side hustle. I'm like, well, what brings you the most joy in your vet tech job?

24:44And she said, it's helping people find their perfect soulmate pet. And I helped her create a brand called the Furry Godmother. And her business was connecting people to their soulmate pet and doing the search for them. And that business is very profitable. And she's still doing the vet tech, but now she's taking her passion of matching people to their soulmate pet, and she's making a great side income. And eventually it'll be her full-time income. I think that's a really cool way to think about it. Because for most people out there, you need to realize that if you're going to turn this into a side hustle, you really do need to have that passion in place because a lot of times when it gets tough or when you hit a wall, you need to find a way to push through that.