The money you're losing without realizing it

0:00Start your business for the freedom of time. Now you're tired of the hustle and grind. There's gotta be a better way. It's time to listen to chill and prosper. Welcome to chill and prosper. You're ready to chill and prosper with Denise Delfield Thomas. Hey hey friend, it's Denise here. And on this episode of chill and prosper, we're talking about these hidden money blocks behind some of your money leaks. Now some of you are super organized. You don't have money leaks as totally fine. But it could be energy leaks. It could be things that are taking up bandwidth for you that are still kind of creating the same money block. So keep listening even if you're kind of an accumulator personality and you're quite good with the money leaks. But often the things that don't feel worth fixing, they really really do add up. So one of the most common money leaks that I see

1:00is the subscription kind of leaks, right? And some of them it's just like, okay, I can't be bothered. It's small, it's whatever. But there could be some really interesting money blocks behind some of them. So the first one is guilt. Now if you're a bit more of a like a kind of a nurturing kind of personality or a connect to kind of personality, sometimes you sign up for things out of guilt. You want to help people, you want to support somebody and you might not even be getting the thing. But you signed up for it. But the idea of seeing your name come up as a cancelled subscription impossible. Okay, so think about that. It could be gym memberships that you never go to, but you feel bad. It could be like a craft box that you signed up for that you never used. And I mean, I think we all did this during the pandemic, right? I called it stimulus pickles. And it was because every time I went to a shop during those COVID years,

2:01if they had anything for sale like pickles or girkins or jam or socks, I felt obligated to stimulate the economy. And then of course I bought online things because there were so many businesses offering like you're at home. So get a subscription box. And I remember I got like a witchy kind of box and it was so beautiful. It was so over delivered. Oh my god, it was amazing. But it would be like candles and little jewelry and little spells that you could do and all these things. And I'm like, it so wasn't me, but I felt so guilty about letting it go. Maybe yours is a book club that you're a part of. You never read the book for. Or in my case, I noticed I had quite a few Patreon things that I was supporting and they never, ever delivered what they were supposed to deliver. Maybe it was a Kickstarter and it was a one-off and you can go, okay, that's fine. But if there are those ongoing money leaks that are also tied to one of your money blocks,

3:02that my feelings don't matter. I don't deserve to get what I paid for. I just have to give and I'm not, I don't deserve to receive anything in return. That is a really big money block that is probably showing up in lots of different areas of your life too. So this is the beauty of doing this work. You sometimes you take care of the small things and it does then up level you to take care of the bigger things. Okay, so that's my first question for you. What subscriptions, like money leaks that you are paying out of guilt and obligation? Okay, and what is the lowest hanging fruit that you could take care of right now? Sometimes it just requires you to log in and cancel something and just breathe through the feelings of like they're gonna judge me. They're gonna feel like it's like, I have to support these people forever even if they're not doing anything return. It's like, okay, sometimes it's an email. Sometimes it's a phone conversation. Sometimes it is, you have to go in,

4:02like a lot of gyms and places you have to go into cancel, right? There's sometimes things, magical things that happen with this. I noticed when Mark was gonna cancel something and they were like, okay, we'll give you three months free. And he was like, okay. And then the next time he was like, okay, now I'm really gonna cancel them. They're like, I will give you another month free. He was like, oh, fine. So nothing bad can necessarily come from that just that there will be some money blocks there that will feel scary quite frankly, but they're probably something that you need to pay attention to. Okay, the next layer of that too is that feeling over-responsible for something, feeling responsible for other people's money. And maybe it's feeling responsible for their success, feeling responsible for them paying their bills and their rent. This could actually be a little bit more complicated than the subscription. This might be an employee or a contractor

5:02that you work with who you no longer need for whatever reason, or they're not adding value to your business. And it's not saying that person themselves is a money like, because that sounds a bit horrible, but it's like the energy that you expand and the value that you're getting back might be misaligned. And again, it's related to a bigger money block. My feelings don't matter. I am responsible for everyone else. I have to work harder to make sure over-nilce is okay. And again, it's a very nurturing type personality that will suffer themselves or work harder just to not inconvenience other people. Okay, so think about that. Also, again, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Maybe it is a different time in your business or a different time in your life where you don't need somebody full time. You might decide to go casual or contract with some of your team. And that's totally okay as well.

6:05Okay. So where else though are these money leaks coming into your life? Maybe there's things that are kind of redundant for what you need in this next phase of life. So it could be a service that you no longer want to provide. Maybe you want to change the way you offer things. And I've seen this a lot over the last couple of years too where people decide that they no longer need physical offer space, that it's fine to work from home or it's fine to just work with clients online from now on. People have given up leases or physical locations or decided to not offer big conferences anymore or things like that. This is particularly important if they've become really stressful for you or they've kind of grown bigger than what you intended it to be. And definitely for things like events, things like that can very easily slip. I've noticed that a lot of people now who offer masterminds they might not have as many in-person events anymore

7:06because people don't want to travel or the costs of kind of got out of control. Some people have instead of a five-day event they might make it a three-day event. It's okay for you to choose and to grow into change and to learn from the experience as well but also to see again what the underlying money block is. And maybe it's that thing of like, oh, but that's what I'm known for. That's what people want. Even if you no longer want to offer it. Even if it's something that doesn't necessarily cost you money but it costs you time and energy, that's okay to let that go as well. On that like topic of time and energy, see where there are leaks around that. So it could be that you have free groups that you can let go of, free like Facebook groups for example, maybe social media accounts or you decide to close comments on something so you no longer have to administer that. Maybe you no longer offer out of hours support

8:09or 24 hour support. Maybe you shift and change the way people can contact you. So instead of texting you, they have to book online. All of those things are huge energy leaks that just take just a teeny tiny little bit of your bandwidth but just could make you just feel really burdened. All of the time. And it's okay to make things easier for yourself. You're allowed to do that. Okay, so don't forget we do have a free ebook this month as well. Good time to remind you about it. It's called the Virgo's Guide to Getting Organized with Your Money and Your Mindset. It's good it's going to have some really simple tips in there. But I'm just going to take a break and I want to talk a little bit about this idea of a keyless life that I talk about in my book and how we can implement that a little bit more in your business for the rest of the year. Okay, see you in a sec. Off to its break. Hey there, Jody Silverman here from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I'm a mindset and happiness coach for emptiness moms and midlife women and host of Beyond Enteness Podcasts.

9:12I was stressed, overwhelmed and ready to walk away from a business I loved when a friend suggested Denise's book, Chill Penoir. The title alone hit me someplace deep. Through this book I've gotten clear on embracing a business model that has allowed me to have more ease and flow in my business and life overall. Reading Chill Penoir renewed my excitement for my business and led me on to the next part of my journey which was saying yes to her money boot camp. More on that next time. Until then, get the book and dare on. Okay, so keyless life is what I want to talk about. In my book, Chill and Prosper, there's a whole chapter on keyless life. Keyless, just in case my accent's going to keyless life. And the reason why I called it that is I actually wrote the book pre-ADHD diagnosis. I didn't know I had ADHD when I wrote the first edition. Second edition I did know. And I realized that so many things in the book were ADHD friendly because I used to lose my keys all the time.

10:12All the time and my bus pass and my wallet and whatever else. My pens and my calculator. And so I created like a lot of systems in my life to not forget those things. And I'd be like, okay, keys wallet phone, keys wallet phone. And I would still lose them. So as soon as we bought our first house, I put an electronic keypad on the front door. So I never had to think about it. And I try and create as many systems in my life as possible to avoid the human behavior mistakes. Because all of those things are energy leaks as well. So it could be that, you know, automation around how my time is scheduled. Okay, so you can only book in for a certain amount of times. You get reminders. You get follow-ups, automatic follow-ups, all of those things. They're just easily done. Having systems in my business for my team of what to say yes to, what to say no to, when I speak,

11:13what things I need to be able to thrive as a speaker. Even to the point of like, what's my preferred seat when I fly one day? That's my preferred seat. I like to be aisle front row aisle. So a lot of times systems like this can really help with recurring issues, recurring problems that show up again and again. If you are constantly having the same issues with your clients, you can't expect other people to change. That might be something that you need to put in your terms and conditions. You need to put on your booking form. You need to shift and change your marketing to avoid certain clients and to attract different clients. Okay, so a good example of that is if you don't like working with beginners, because you need to, whatever work that you do, they need to have a team, they need to have resources. Be like honest and open about that. If you're someone who likes working with beginners, because you love the energy and excitement, be honest about that.

12:14Because wrong fit clients, wrong business model, wrong delivery method, all of that stuff is a huge energy leak. And it just feels yuck to do that. Things around payments especially, if you're like, oh, God, I have to remember to like send that invoice. There are systems that can help you to do that, where invoices get sent automatically. The follow-ups get sent automatically. They take like, they do their card. Don't always rely on you to remember things. One thing that I do, which is so simple to set up, if you ever do any Zoom calls and you think, oh, I have to remember to hit record, you can do it in your settings that it will automatically record every single meeting. I needed to do that because it was an energy leak for me to have to remember every time. And then I'd be like, oh, shit, did I remember to do it? I'd always remember, but it was just another thing for me to think about. So I love now it will record it no matter what.

13:16And if I don't want to record it, I have to turn, I have to actually press stop. And before we go on the call, I'm like, okay, I'm going to pause the recording because otherwise it's all me, like getting ready and like, sniffing and all that kind of stuff. But I love that I don't have to think about that. That is just a system. Now, too, depending on how geeky you want to get, with AI and Claude and all that kind of stuff, Mark is set up like some sort of Claude thing because we have pizza every Friday night where it will order the pizza for us. I don't even understand how this works. This sounds like absolute magic to me, but I'm like, we don't have to remember. We have systems around like medications. So we don't have to remember, has this person had their meds? It's simple, simple systems. So if you constantly attracting the same stuff, there are usually lessons in this. Okay? So as I said, the lessons of, I'm not worthy, my time is not important. But there could be other things that come up again and again.

14:17One thing that happened for me is that every couple of years I would be friends with someone who would like rip me off. And it was just like, what's the lesson here? And the lesson for me is always that over responsibility and wanting people to like me, that was the recurring pattern that would happen again and again. Some people, you see this in relationships, they're attracting the same person again and again until they learn the lesson. And I think sometimes you have to be so obvious to the University but like, I'm handing in my shovel, no more. This is the last one. I'm not going to do this again. And it's like an energetic decision around it of like, no, no more. Other times that there are the practical considerations, right? So if you're constantly attracting clients who are doing scope creep, always asking for more, what can you put into place for that? So it might be your onboarding form. It's having your terms and conditions really, really clear all the time. But it's also then you having that conversation just to say to someone,

15:17hey, that's great, that's out of scope. Let's park that. Or let's make that an add-on. And having that ready to go as an add-on thing of going, okay, let's make this lemonade, right? Instead of always going, I'm always attracting this. This really sucks. What in your systems and processes are creating that again and again? So if you're like, oh my god, my website always breaks. The most important times when I'm launching. And it's like, well, yeah, because you don't have the capacity to be able to have more clients or more traffic. So before launches, we would always go, okay, cool. Do we need more Zoom participants? Do we need to make sure that our bank knows we're about to get a whole lot of influx of money? Or that do we have team in place to be able to help us do that? And kind of building that capacity instead of always feeling like life is happening to you. And just being like, I can't get any help, I can't do it. I also think sometimes really acknowledging the pain.

16:17So this happened recently. My oldest daughter, Willow. All like both girls dance and I dance too, right? So I'm a pretty good dance mom. I try and be really quite organized. And it was the night before their media concert. And she was like, I only have one jar show. And I'm like, what am I going to do? Okay, cool. Solve that problem. And then when she was on stage, she didn't have the proper types. And it was like a media concert. It wasn't super serious. But I was like, I put those types in. Why didn't she wear them? And so after the show. And she does this a lot. She forgets things, right? And so I've said to her, why aren't you wearing the types? Because, oh, I couldn't find them. We didn't pack them. And I'm like, open your suitcase right now. So we opened the suitcase. And I was like, the types were just in there. Not hidden. They were just in there. And I was like, we're going to go tell your dance teacher and apologize. And she's like, I don't want it. And I was like, no, no, no, no, you need to fill the pain of this. So you don't do it again. And you need to be so embarrassed. And like, I didn't make it a big thing. But I was like, Ms. Tizzy Willow has something to tell you.

17:17And Willow's like, I'm sorry, the tights through my bag. And Ms. Tizzy was like, yeah, that's really, that really sucks. That you didn't, didn't wear them. And I'm like, yep, remember this. So then I was like, okay, what's the system going forward to make sure that we're not sabotaging ourselves? So I was like, we have to pack three days before the event. Because then if you're missing something, we've got time to get it. We've got time. So that's the new system. So we, and because I will say to her, what do you need to do? Because I've got a list on my phone. I'm like, no, no, no, from now on, paper list, paper list. And we check it off. And we check it off. As we're packing it, we check it off on the day. And then when you're at the venue, you check it off as well. And even like when we get home, we check it off. I know it sounds really full on. But I'm like, the recurring thing is, we're stressed, we're late, we're fighting, because we don't have the thing. And I'm like, rather than us doing this again and again and experiencing this pain, what can we put in place so we don't have this pain anymore?

18:19And that's what I want you to think of like in your business. It's like, we have to be able to feel the pain of that. And sometimes we think, but I'm too busy to fix it. I'm too busy making money to get the help to make me make more money. Or I'm too busy doing the thing badly to create the system to make it run easily. Sometimes we just have to feel the pain and just be like, no, I'm not doing this ever again. What are we going to put into place? And sometimes that requires behavior change. Sometimes it requires money. Sometimes it's a system thing and it doesn't take that long to do it. Okay. All right, I've got one final thought for you after this break. Don't go away. And remember, you can get that free ebook at Denise.t.com slash burgo. Hi, Denise. I am Celeste. I am one of your massive fans. I was the first to come across your book, Get Rich Lucky Bitch. And then, uh, Chulprinor. And then I joined Moneyboat Camp last year. And it has been a massive eye-opener for me because I didn't even realize that

19:25there are origin stories and all the conditioning that I received early in my life that has been playing up in my life and to some extent still does. So I just want to say thank you for that. It has been absolutely wonderful. And then to gain access via Moneyboat Camp to the Sacred Bunny Archetypes and being in the same room as other people on Zoom, Breakout rooms, who have the same Sacred Bunny Archetypes as me, that was mind-blowing. And I felt seen and heard for the first time in my life. So that was just like finding my own tribe in a way. So thank you so much for that. I really appreciate all the work that you do in the world. Keep it up. You beautiful, wonderful, amazing soul. Thank you. Okay, my final thoughts are in my book, Chill and Prosper.

20:27Before we organize things, we eliminate. Okay, so sometimes you look at it and go, nobody should be doing this. So sometimes those recurring annoyances assigns, I should not be doing this anymore. This is not my job, this is not my expertise, this is not what I business should be doing. And the reason why it's going wrong each and every time is because the universe is trying to get my attention and say no more, I'm not doing this ever again. So always eliminate before you organize things that you don't even want to do. In the first place, right? So eliminate, then you can batch things up. You can automate things and you can systemize them. You can use computer software and automation to be able to do it. You can use delegation as well. So if you know that you always say yes to something, you can have a gatekeeper. You can have an assistant say no and be your bad cop for you. But always eliminate first. So eliminate, automate, batch, delegate, outsource, whatever it is.

21:31But don't keep on just doing the same thing over and over again because those things are trying to get your attention. And it's okay to learn and grow. And it's okay for things to be easier. It doesn't have to be hard. You're allowed to chill and prosper. It doesn't have to be hard. Okay, you can do it. All right, chill and prosper. All right, so remember that free ebook about helping you to organize and create some really, really simple systems. It's at DeniseDT.com slash Virgo. It's Virgo season. And we want to get organized and simple. And enjoy. And I will see you on next week, never so chill, but take care. You