“Double down on your strengths!”
In this episode of Marketing Tips With Meliss, Meliss interviews Hay House four-time published author, Denise Duffield-Thomas:
- Breaking the generational cycle when it comes to money matters
- Having neutrality around money and how we approach it with our children is important
- Don’t be a jack of all trades, stick to what you know and can do best
- What happens when you upgrade your money mindset
- The questions to ask yourself about your money mindset
- Denise reads an excerpt from her new book “Chill and Prosper”
You don’t have to revamp everything in your life to reach your money mindset goals. You can stair-step it up with small changes now. Denise Duffield-Thomas’ wise advice gives you the motivation to step into the money mindset you need in order to find abundance and prosperity as a spiritual entrepreneur.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Connect with Denise Duffield-Thomas:
👉 Pre-order Denise’s new book “Chill and Prosper” and grab your bonuses at denisedt.com/prosper
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/denisedt
Follow Denise: @denisedt www.instagram.com/denisedt
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@deniseduffieldthomas
Learn more about your money mindset so you can uplevel your business and life at denisedt.com
Connect with Meliss Jakubovic:
👉 Get Clients Sales Sprint abundantstrategy.com/get-clients-sales-sprint
Join the free community: Spiritual Women Entrepreneurs spiritualwomenentrepreneurs.com
The Spiritual Entrepreneur’s Affirmation Deck go.melissmarketing.com/affirm-deck
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meliss.jakubovic
Follow Meliss: @meliss_marketing www.instagram.com/meliss_marketingLearn more about how Meliss helps Coaches and Healers add $10K+ to their monthly revenue at melissmarketing.com
Transcript:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
money, denise duffield-thomas, meliss jakubovic, mindset, women entrepreneurs, online entrepreneurs, business, creates, mickey mouse, book, clients, affirmation, chill, prosper, sales, sprint, coaches, healers
SPEAKERS
Denise Duffield-Thomas, Meliss Jakubovic
Meliss Jakubovic 00:00
Hello, hello, everybody. I am so excited for our special guest. I know you’ve heard me talking about this moment right now for so long. I’m so excited. What an honor to have with me here today. Author Denise Duffield-Thomas, thank you so much for being here today.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 00:19
Meliss, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it because I heard that you don’t have guests a lot on your podcast. So that makes it even more special for me.
Meliss Jakubovic 00:27
It is true. My podcast rarely has guests. It’s only for special occasions. And then also I will share this with my Spiritual Women Entrepreneurs community. But having you here is truly an honor. Not only am I a huge fan, but I use your books as part of the marketing material, the teaching material inside of my marketing with intention program. All of my students have read all of your books, we have discussions on them. So it is truly truly an honor to have you here with me today.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 00:58
Wow, I’m honored. Thank you.
Meliss Jakubovic 01:01
It’s so exciting. Before we get started, I would like to pull a card from my affirmation deck. Because I think it’s a very special moment. And we can reset. I know you have one too.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 01:13
I should do one as well. Right?
Meliss Jakubovic 01:15
You do have one too. Yeah, let’s do it together!
Denise Duffield-Thomas 01:16
Yeah, I’ll do it too. I was gonna ask you, if you wanted me to pull a card during this, so you tell me what I do with this, how many cards should I pick?
Meliss Jakubovic 01:21
So you open up your deck, there is one card in there, which is just the instruction so you can get rid of that for now. And then
Denise Duffield-Thomas 01:29
These are brand new, I just got them from the post office from you.
Meliss Jakubovic 01:32
Then we’re gonna shuffle, which might be a little loud, but that’s totally fine.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 01:36
Okay, these are so pretty – your cards. They are the perfect size, I really struggle with affirmation cards when they’re too big to handle. And I don’t have like, massive or small hands. But they’re a perfect size.
Meliss Jakubovic 01:52
Thank you. I picked this size specifically, because when they’re too small, they’re just not as special in my mind. And when they’re too big, you can’t shuffle, you can’t hold them. So what I like to do is close my eyes and just take a deep breath and kind of set an intention or what it is I might be struggling with that I want to overcome. And I just take a deep breath. And then while I’m thinking about it, I pull a card. Right? Do you have your card?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 02:19
Yes,
Meliss Jakubovic 02:20
you want to go first?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 02:22
Mine says I listen to my intuition and do what feels right.
Meliss Jakubovic 02:26
Amazing.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 02:28
Isn’t it beautiful? I love the blue on it too.
Meliss Jakubovic 02:30
This one says I’m ready to keep moving forward. I have a plan of action for the year and the tools to make it happen.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 02:38
Yes, beautiful.
Meliss Jakubovic 02:30
Yeah. And then what I like to do is I got this, this picture frame from like the drugstore. And then I put my card in here. And I let it sit by me all day long.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 02:50
That’s a genius idea. That’s a great idea.
Meliss Jakubovic 02:54
So yay, thanks for pulling a card with me.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 02:56
Oh my gosh, no, thank you. I love this so much. It’s so pretty. They can live in my desk.
Meliss Jakubovic 03:05
Perfect. And they’re great to pull out every day or when you’re feeling stressed. Or when you’re like, Oh, I just need to come back. So great. Thanks for doing that with me. So I wanted to ask you some questions just to kind of learn who Denise is. So can you tell me a little bit about your childhood or your family life? You know, growing up did you have siblings or what was the the feeling in your family?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 03:31
So I was born. My mom was 17 when she had me and she was very much a single parent for my whole life. So I would say my mom’s kind of like a cross between Deborah Harry and Goldie Hawn. And so she’s very kind of a bit flighty. You know, doesn’t like rules, and we’ve moved around a lot. And she was just kind of a youngf fun mom in lots of ways. So it was me and my brother. And then later on, when I was a teenager, my mom had two more kids. And so I’m the oldest of four. And I really think that is such a huge part of my identity. I was very old for my age, because I felt like I had a lot of responsibility. And it’s only now that I feel like I’m coming more into myself of being able to let out some more of my fun lighthearted side, because I didn’t feel like I could do that as a kid. And money was pretty scarce. But actually I didn’t really know it was for a long time until my mum married someone who was quite wealthy when I was about 11. And that’s when I really saw the power disparity come around money. And I think that’s where I really made that decision of like the men have all the power and men have all the money. So I really made a decision at that young age that I would make my own money, somehow. And that led me on a journey of discovery through entrepreneurship, to coaching. And I started my business for me, really, for my own personal freedom. But now, I have such a bigger purpose for my business, because I see now full circle, how much my work impacts women, and has that ripple effect throughout the world, where we have our own choices around money, whether that’s from a relationship or from a boss, who doesn’t take care of you, or an industry that doesn’t appreciate you to be able to have that freedom and power to be able to make our own decisions. It’s something that really drives me now as you know, as an adult, but for a long time, it was just like, How can I just have my own money? How can I have my freedom? How can I never have to be beholden on someone like my mom was?
Meliss Jakubovic 06:00
I love that, and I’m a single mom, too. So I really do get it. I wonder if that you know, your trigger rippling that over to all the women and all over the world? What about to your kids, you know, like breaking the cycle? How does that work? Or how does that feel?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 06:17
You know what being a cycle breaker is, it’s hard work, right? I see this in so many of the beautiful people in my community, it’s, it’s a heavy burden to be the first whether it’s the first person to go to university, the first person to have a business or the first woman in your family, which so many of us are just because of the age really been right my mom didn’t have choices, because she was it was the time there was no opportunity for her my grandmother, even fewer opportunities, right. So I, I know the burden of that quite well. And then I’m aware of how I speak to my kids about money. And but I don’t try and go overboard with it, I think what we can aim for with our children is neutrality around money. Because we were taught money is a scary taboo thing. And you have to work really hard, or you have to do something really hard or something you don’t like for money. But now we’re the in-between generation, we can see that you can have leverage, you can do things that you love for money, and our kids are growing up taking that for granted. Really, you know, like most kids today, they understand that kids have YouTube channels, or they, you know, they, they do things and they can make money from it. But we can also try not to pass on some of those lessons that we learned around money. Because so for so many of us, our first interaction with money was a traumatic one , a little traumatic one, because most of us went to put money in our mouth at some point in our childhood. And our family members were like, don’t put that in your money, like in your mouth money is dirty. And we have this memory of just this Oh, scary thing more than pretty much anything else. And that’s something that we can not pass on to our kids. But also just talking about money and talking about work in a way that, that creates a neutrality because they live in a completely different world than we do, they’ll work in a completely different way. So I’ll give you an example. Instead of saying, To put that in your mouth, I say to my kids, I say, Hey, don’t put that in your mouth, we take care of money in our family. Because I don’t want it to be a horrible memory. And I’m not sitting down doing a lecture about money to them. I just want to be like, hey, you know our family, we take care of money and making it. Ah, it’s okay, you’re allowed to touch money. You’re allowed to play with money. It’s totally okay. But we don’t put it in our mouth. And just neutrality, neutrality, neutrality,
Meliss Jakubovic 08:52
Good way to reframe it too. I love it. And I bet you think about that in so many different areas. Because that’s just one example that I actually never even thought of. And I’ve thought of so many examples where it’s like money doesn’t grow on trees or all the other things, but even just from infancy when you’re grabbing it and putting it in, don’t touch it. It’s dirty. So I’m sure this is coming up throughout all of our childhood and we don’t even think about it till it’s too late.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 09:18
Well, we do and that’s the thing. Kids are listening all the time. So they’re listening to how we talk about money, how we talk about people with more or less money than we do. And my oldest who’s eight, I’ve never really sat down and like, let’s have a talk about money. I just really make sure that we’re saying either neutral or good things about it. But she was telling me that one of her friends was saying rich people are really bad and greedy. And, you know, I’ll say, Money doesn’t make you good. It doesn’t make you bad. You know, like, and not even to say, Oh, if you work really hard. You’ll have heaps of money because that’s not true. right in our society, you know, who works harder than a nurse who works harder than a school teacher. So I try and say things like, you know, if you have a dream, and you’re persistent, you can do anything you like, rather than if you work hard, it’s just those little things I think can be really subtle. And, and always, always just saying, you know, now she’s getting, she can see the contrast sometimes, because we have a really big house, you know, we have an abundant house, and they started talking about things like that, you know, and so I just say, Hey, we’re not better than anyone else. And everyone, you know, everyone lives. Everyone’s a nice person. Everyone’s a kind person. But it’s tricky, right? It’s tricky, because we just sometimes repeat things that we’ve heard from our own family. And we don’t want our kids to be entitled, of course we don’t, we don’t want them to be lazy. We want them to have a good work ethic. But our version of a work ethic comes from a completely different era. And it’s not necessarily useful for them.
Meliss Jakubovic 11:04
Yeah, I love that. And I think, you know, the work ethic, we think it’s like nine to five, grind every day, work as hard as you can. And those people are not multimillionaires. And I think just having the money makes you more of whatever you were already. So if you’re a good person, you’re going to be a better person. And if you were a bad person, you have more money to unfortunately do bad things with, but the money itself is neutral.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 11:31
It can be and that’s where I think one of my jobs is to reframe it. Because with all of my girlfriends, with my clients, with people I meet on masterminds, we have these really intimate conversations about our lives. But for some reason, money still feels like a taboo topic. And if we can just talk about money, like we talk about anything, it, I think it’s just gonna give us so much power collectively, as women, but also as a community of people who really care about each other and care about the planet, we can just mutually talk about the role that it plays in the world and what we what we can do with it. And a quote that I’ve been sharing a lot recently is from Sara Blakely. And she says money is fun to make, fun to spend, and fun to give away. And I think sometimes, we, depending on what circles were a part of, it’s like, well, you can earn it, but you should give it all the way. And it can be imbalanced. It’s okay to love what you do, and make money and have fun with it. And also, you know, give some of it away without any of those being out of balance.
Meliss Jakubovic 12:40
Yeah, I think the very first time my business started making lots of money, and it was just like life changing compared to what it was before. One of my most favorite things to do was buy gifts for everyone in my family and all my friends, my team, it was like, I want to give it away. It’s so fun. So I love that mantra. It’s I love that way to reframe it. I wanted to know, though, what was your first job? And does it have anything to do with what you do now.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 13:08
First first job was when I was 12. So I, you know, I had a very unstable childhood in a lot of ways. But I started dance classes when I was 8, and I just immediately loved it. And it was stability for me because ballet is the same pretty much wherever you go. So it didn’t matter if we moved house or moved school, it was always a dance school. But it was always a source of stress in our family of my dance classes. And so I remember, my dance teacher was quite aware of that, I think, the stress that it was creating my family. So she asked me to be her assistant dance teacher. And I got paid, I don’t know, $4 an hour or something like that. But it pretty much paid for my lessons with her and dancing for me was, as I said it was stability, but it does have implications for where I am now. I always say to my mom, like you should write letters to my dance teacher because I am successful because of that. I really am because it was a safe, safe space. It kept me out of trouble. I always had rehearsal, I always had dancing. But it also gave me an amazing work ethic. The show must go on, you know, kind of work ethic. It also, I did work for a while as a children’s performer after school and I really do think it gave me confidence to you know, to have a forward facing kind of business. And yeah, and I love going in talking to the dance industry actually, I do it quite a bit to talk about money mindset for dance teachers. Because I think it’s such a brilliant industry. But you know, you think of most industries where it’s like, oh, I have to do it for the love of it. Dance teachers get that guilt trip like 50 times over. And I see that in, you know, health industries and teaching and all these different industries where it’s like, you should be doing it for the love of it, not for the money. But yeah, that was my first, my first job.
Meliss Jakubovic 15:17
I love that. And I love knowing that you’re a dancer, because I’m a dancer as well.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 15:22
Love talking with a fellow dancers, because you totally get the show must go on.
Meliss Jakubovic 15:26
Absolutely. I led a performing group for 10 years of high school students, and I’m a folk dancer. But it’s been my passion since I’m seven. And you’re right, the show must go on. And I lead, you know, dance workshops sometimes. And if people don’t show up, you’re not making a lot of money, but you’re still doing it. And it is an industry where you’re using your body and your mind, and you have to be very meticulous and structured. And then you might not make a lot of money at the end for it. So I love that you talk to dancers and just like, do some little work on their mindset. It’s amazing.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 15:59
Oh, absolutely. And it’s so important. But even on the flip side, I actually felt that I had to unlearn some of the show must go on mentality, because I never allowed myself to take a sick day, I would, you know, show up no matter what I would, I would work really, really long hours. And I think that was the lesson for me that I put into the book, Chilean prosper, is that sometimes the show can be canceled, and nobody’s going to die. You know, it was a, it was a big lesson for me. And actually, there’s a couple of, there’s a couple of lessons in the book about being a dancer.
Meliss Jakubovic 16:34
That’s amazing. And I think it comes back to the balance of it. You know, it’s like, same with business, you’re in Launch Mode, and you’re getting your email set up and you’re ready to go. But what happens if you fall sick? Well, you could take a day off, it’s okay. This will be here.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 16:49
It wasn’t. That’s the thing. It wasn’t for me for such a long time. And it wasn’t until I had to reframe that and go, that served me well. But that doesn’t mean I can’t ever take a day off.
Meliss Jakubovic 17:00
Right? You don’t have to be burnt out type A Go, go go hustle types all the time. That’s what I love about your philosophy. Can you tell me a little bit about your unbusy philosophy that you talk about when you say you’re an unbusy mother of three?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 17:15
Yes. So I’m a big believer in letting go things that don’t serve you or make you feel stressed or inconvenienced to whatever budget you have at the time. And so I remember, years ago, no kids in my early 20s, I just hired someone to come twice a month to clean the bathrooms. Because Mark and I would spend the weekends arguing it’s your turn to clean it. And so I was like, why don’t we just eliminate this problem altogether. And so as our income has increased, I find more and more of those things to say, well, let’s eliminate the problem of the laundry. Even, I used to lose my keys everywhere. So I was like, let’s eliminate that problem and put the leg electronic keypads on our doors so I never have to worry about losing my keys. So I still do a lot in my business. But it’s not. It’s not anything that makes me feel resentful. Because time is so elastic, right? If you’re doing something you love, it doesn’t ever feel like you’re busy. And that’s why I think there’s sometimes that misconception when people go, Oh, you must be so busy. And I go, Well, I do a lot of stuff. But I’m none of it makes me feel bad. So I wouldn’t consider myself a busy person. And I think there’s something there too, about doing it incrementally, you know, whatever help you can get. But it’s systematically looking and going what in my life is causing me stress? What’s causing the friction? And what can I do to just shift that a little bit. Sometimes it’s decluttering things, eliminating things altogether. Sometimes it’s getting help. Sometimes it’s creating a system and allowing yourself to make it easy, because I find it’s not always about the money and the lack of money to do it. It’s the mindset that things are allowed to be easier. We don’t have to suffer. We’re allowed to find shortcuts, we’re allowed to use whatever we have available to us to make things easier.
Meliss Jakubovic 19:17
I love that. And it’s like reaching for a better thought instead of stressing out about this long list of things we have to do. How can we breathe and make this more fun? I always say it’s about feeding your strengths and outsourcing your weaknesses. And so I get excited to find weaknesses that I can just pass on off to somebody else to do.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 19:39
But I think this is great, right? Because I spent my 20s in the personal development world trying to overcome my weaknesses by being better at them.
Meliss Jakubovic 19:50
Right.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 19:54
Why? Like, just don’t just let it just let them go and just double down on your strengths. Yeah, I think that is probably the Jack of all trades kind of mentality of going blind, I am a little bit good at lots of things. So I’ll just keep on getting better at all of them.
Meliss Jakubovic 20:07
Yeah. And when we start out in our businesses, sometimes we are the only person and we have to know a lot of things. But as soon as you have just a little bit of money to pass out to other people, get it off your plate. And I even think sometimes getting it off your plate creates the money to allow you to be able to do that and to get it off your plate first, just to alleviate things, amazing.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 20:32
I agree. It’s sometimes the chicken or egg thing of going on, when my business is doing better, then I’ll get some more childcare. And sometimes you have to do the leap of faith first, even if it means temporarily, you might have to sacrifice in other areas, because you need space. And you need time. And I hate that advice. When people just go, well just get up before the kids get up and do your work then
Meliss Jakubovic 20:56
No, never doing that.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 20:59
No, we are also sleep deprived anyway, you can only do that for such a short period of time. And sometimes if you can just sacrifice whatever. And I know it’s hard. It sounds like a place of privilege, especially for single moms. But it’s like it’s worth it. Because then you can create such abundance for yourself and your family. And but you have to do what you can with what you’ve got right now.
Meliss Jakubovic 21:23
Absolutely. And I am not a morning person. So to wake up before the kids sounds awful. So I think it also matters, who you are, your lifestyle, what feels good for you. So I love that, that fits really nicely into our entrepreneur lifestyle philosophy. So can you walk through in just one sentence, what that really means we will go deeper into it. But just what is chillpreneur actually mean?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 21:48
A chillpreneur is about finding the path of least resistance. So, and it is not being like, I have to work in a hammock. and you know, it’s not about that at all. I always tell people, know thyself and prosper. Because if you can understand what makes you tick, what your sabotages are, even what you’re saying, You’re not a morning person. How many articles do you see that’s like, five things that successful people have to do you have to get up at 5am. And we’re so indoctrinated that there’s one way to success and a chillpreneur is like, oh, I’ll just find my way to float downstream and make things easier. So if you work best at night, and you can set your business up to that, do that without apology. But when we start putting barriers into place of well, this person said to do it like this, and this person do this. But the mindset is, am I allowed to choose? Am I allowed to make it easy? Am I allowed to design it for myself? And you are because otherwise, you won’t have the longevity in your business because you’ll get burnt out, you’ll get stressed, you’ll get resentful of your clients, or you’ll just run out of steam. And so it’s always just about how can I float downstream. Not in a not perfectionist, you’ll never get to a point where you’re just like, Oh God, I’m so good at every, you’ll always find new little barriers and then you can adjust and tweak again. Sometimes that is a change of lifestyle. You know what was chill for me pre kids, different now post kids, I’ve got three of them. When you go through different phases of life like menopause, that will require new thought processes, what do I need now? So there’s never any one concrete thing it’s it’s always a flow and a dance. But always with you in mind, you in mind, not the customer’s always right, you are the non, the only non-renewable resource in your family, in your, in your life, and your business.
Meliss Jakubovic 23:49
I love that because we’re building a personal brand. So we know we have to show up and be personal, but we also have to take care of our person. We come first, which is great. Amazing. So we’re gonna take a quick break right now. And when we return in just a minute, we’ll find out what happens when you upgrade your money mindset. So stick around.
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Meliss Jakubovic 24:57
All right, we’re back with my very special guest, money mindset mentor and online entrepreneur and Hay House four times published author Denise Duffield-Thomas, she just released her new book called Chill and Prosper. It’s coming out very soon. And I’m just so grateful to be here and have the privilege to sit with you today, I totally manifested this. So thank you for being here with us.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 25:21
Love it. Thank you.
Meliss Jakubovic 25:23
Amazing. All right, you know, one of the things that you teach that really resonates with me is that there’s always enough, I really, really love that when I’m feeling stuck, or grumpy, or ungrateful or nervous, or whatever it is, I always repeat this mantra, and there’s always enough at the beginning of the mantra, and then I insert whatever goes in at the end there, whether it’s money or time or opportunity. And it makes me feel really happy and excited. And it recenters me. So thank you for bringing that up. And I think I’ve taught that to so many of my clients who just like a light bulb goes off, you can actually see, I know in one of your books, you sa, you can only be in one phase of pregnancy at a time. And we have a discussion on that. And everyone’s just like, wow, yeah, you can. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 26:09
Yes, well, the pregnancy thing came up for me because my husband came into the business. And you know, he brought a little bit more of a masculine energy. And I was feeling like I was just chilling, you know, I was making over a million dollars in revenue. And so he was like, well, look what you’re doing just half assing this, what can we do if we really made things like super professional. And so instead of doing like, one launch year, we did two and then three, and then four. And then what happens with a launch is it’s not just a sales event, right? It’s, there’s all the pre launch, there’s actually the launch part, and then you have to deliver it. So there’s like, really three big chunks to it. And so when we were doing four a year, I personally was in all of those trimesters of pregnancy all at the same time, because I would be delivering, and he’d be like, oh, I need you to approve the emails for the next launch, because he was already in the next launch. And so I was like gestating this baby, delivering it at the same time and breastfeeding all these people at the same time. I know, it’s graphic to think about it. But I really was trying to do all of those things all at the same time. And it was so incredibly hard. And it was just the burden of it was a lot. So we had to have a lot of discussion. I had to pull back my power and say, You know what, people that people like my imperfect style, and that’s what works for you, not for me. And I was really trying to take on a lot of his work. So I was like, he would even do things like Oh, my God, you’re talking to someone today, like, what are you going to talk about? And I was like, Oh, shit, I’ve never thought about that before I just, I just opened my mouth and downloads come from the universe. And he was just like, why? And so he would be freaking out. So then I would start to freak out and go, Oh, my God, I need to prepare for things. And then I had, and this is a story iin the book, too. I read this story about Billy Wilder, who is a director who directed Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot and The Seven Year Itch. And someone said to him, Why do you put up with Marilyn turning up late? And sometimes she doesn’t know her lines, like, why do you put up with it? And he said, like, my Aunt Minnie would turn up every day on time, she would know every single one of her lines. But no one would pay to come and see my Aunt Minnie in one of my movies. And I, I read that and I went, Oh my God. And I had to say to Mark, people like my style, because I they can tell that I like myself in this style. And I’m sorry that you are going to be, you’re going to have better slides than me if you’ve had a business, you would be way more prepared. But, but my people aren’t going to come and see you. They’re coming to see me and it was just a massive big shift for me to go. When I give myself permission to be myself, that’s when things are going to be the most profitable. And that that’s been the case, every single time. Every time I’ve tried to do it like someone else doesn’t work for me because they can they can feel it. They can hear it in my voice. So my only personal development that I do these days is self love and self like because like sometimes is important too. And I just I do EFT because I just want to just tell my little nervous system. I deeply and completely love and accept you. Even if other people don’t like whatever you’re putting out. I do. I’m in your corner. And that’s what I teach my kids too because I think they’ll figure out what they want to do. I can’t reverse engineer their life. But if I teach them self love and inner acceptance, they’ll do, they’ll be fine. With whatever they want to do.
Meliss Jakubovic 30:01
I love that. I teach about the balance between masculine and feminine energy and how it’s good to have both perspectives. Good on Mark for, you know, backing off a little bit and letting you say this is my way. And this is the way we’re going to do it, because that’s the way that your audience receives it. So it’s perfect, it’s beautiful.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 30:20
And you know, I know he’s really good at some of the launch things that I wouldn’t be good at. So we had to learn to find out each our own flow. And so when it comes to creativity of the business, and anything to do with me, of like, I will show up and I will download. But I love the fact that with launches, like he’ll make sure that all of those last minute emails go out to remind people otherwise, I’d probably forget. And
Meliss Jakubovic 30:48
Yeah, that’s what I say, when you need the balance of the feminine and the masculine. It’s true, you don’t necessarily need to be the one that has both of those. But your business needs to have both of those who have you don’t have that masculine energy, bring someone else in to get it in there.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 31:02
Exactly. And I think every creative needs a finisher, a completer, finisher, behind them, because I know even with like the wealth that we’re building at the moment, I can create the money, no problem. But I need him to like call the broker, do the contract. Like all those boring things that I can’t do. You know, we need that, because I see a lot of real creative people, they beat themselves up that they can’t finish things right to the end. But Mark can’t come up with the ideas, he doesn’t have the vision to see the possibilities that I do. So as you said, if you don’t have someone like that in your life, you have to have someone in your business, who will be like, Oh, it’s really important that we, you know, do all the bits, but you can’t cross the lines. And that’s what we were trying to do. Because he was just he was just killing my mojo. And I was creating anxiety for him because he was like, I would never just turn up without like, you know, handwritten notes and all these things. And I was like, Well, okay, because I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust the divine download that I have. So yeah, you’re right. It’s totally, it’s finding that balance.
Meliss Jakubovic 32:10
Yeah. And following your intuition, knowing what you feel is good for you and doing that. Yeah, no, I’m curious about the culture of your company. I know, as a successful entrepreneur, you don’t do things alone, you have a team backing you up and supporting you. What is the culture like at your company,
Denise Duffield-Thomas 32:27
um, we have a culture of finding people who are very self reliant and don’t need a lot of hand holding. So then that means that we, you know, we’re not outsourcing very cheap rates, we find people who are really good at what they do. And like, even, I’ve never been someone who’s even in work culture, I’ve always tried to find the role in the company that has no one around them. That was always my thing. I’m like, How can I find that one job where I never have to talk to anybody. And so I would hire people like that. Who I you know, they don’t need the Denise I did. They don’t need me to be their best friend. And I remember with, even with our assistant, who lives in a different state was never spoken to her on the phone. Never. Never met her in person. I was like, Do you want to come up and we can have a team retreat? And she was like, not really, I’ve got cuz she’s got kids, she’s got her own thing. She just wants to do her job. And I think everyone we hire is always someone who’s just really good at their job. And they don’t need that for me, either. I’ve got this social media girl who creates Tiktoks and reels for me. And all I do is I just, I make a little video, I pop it in a folder, and then she just goes and just creates cool magic stuff with it. And she was like, Do you have any feedback for me? And I’m like, No, like just this one little word. Don’t use that because I wouldn’t use it. But thank you for being so self reliant and not any hand holding. I have fired someone once because I realized the first rule of Denise Club is always make sure that you’re not, you’re making it easier for Denise and I had an employee who I would think about at night and just go, you’re stressing me out. And she just completely misinterpreted her role of sorry, in Denise land, it is all about making Denise chill. And that’s if you create stress for me, you’re in the wrong job, and you’re in the wrong company. So it’s a yeah, I like to think it’s an enjoyable but low drama place to work.
Meliss Jakubovic 34:30
I love that. I always say that the culture of your company is your internal brand, and that it directly correlates to the external brand that everybody else sees. Do you agree that to be the case within your company?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 34:45
Absolutely. It really is just like, do your thing, do it joyfully. Do it with ease. I don’t want anyone in the company who is doing something against their ease either. You know, and so that’s why I find people who looks like they’ve got longevity in that space. The mistake that I made actually in the first year was hiring people like me because they would just, I’d have them on for an onboarding session and go, Oh, my God, I’ve got so many exciting ideas. All right, I’m sorry, Denise, I can’t work with you. And I’d be like, Oh, my God, I literally just gave you a two hour free coaching session. And then you’re not even gonna write with me. So I had to find, like people who are opposite, but also, I really love people who are low drama, predictable, because I didn’t have that in my childhood. And I think that’s what I really crave. I like people who are just like, they would be happy doing that job, you know, with a pay increase every year, forever. Not someone who’s just like, Oh, I’m doing 50,000 things. And I’ll do this for you for now. Because that’s me. And I’m right. I always quit my jobs.
Meliss Jakubovic 35:52
You need the support around you.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 35:54
Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Meliss Jakubovic 35:57
Like, the proactive support.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 36:00
Yes, exactly. But I realized recently, my like, assistant is really Mark’s assistant. I realized that and so I just hired someone just to help me with some of my little side projects that crop up. Like, you know, little books or things I’m working on, like the retreats that I run occasionally, they were kind of outside of that. And every time I kind of approached Mark to say, why don’t we do this? I could see him just go. No, so I went, I’m gonna hire my own little side assistant. And talk to her once a week. And she can, she and I can go through my, because I’ve just got a random tasks, I just chuck things in one day, I’ll do that. But I can’t be bothered asking the team because they’ve got their own, you know, they’ve got their own thing that they have to work on. And I just want a little side project person now.
Meliss Jakubovic 36:51
Someone just to brainstorm off of, like, discuss ideas?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 36:55
Yes, but I hire people for that, actually. So even people who are my friends who are consultants, or whatever, I’ll just sometimes I’ll just hire them for a couple of sessions. Because I, Mark can’t, because he’s not an ideas person. If I share my ideas with him, he starts to go. And I just go, no, see you. Yeah, so I’ll hire my friends who were creatives. And I’ll just, I’ll just be like, I know what I want. But I need an hour of solid time. So I’m basically buying an accountability space for them. Yeah.
Meliss Jakubovic 37:33
I have someone on my team also when I have an idea, I’m like, can we just talk about this, there’s no one else in my life that will get this, you know, you like run to your, your spouse or your friends. Like, I’m so excited about this thing. And they’re not really in it. And they’re like, Oh, good job, honey, you know, you need someone who’s like, let’s talk about it. Love that?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 37:51
Yes. And because Mark doesn’t have ADHD like I do. He doesn’t understand that time is just a meaningless construct to my brain. And so he’ll be like, When can you do that? I’m just like, don’t ask. Don’t ask linear questions like that. It doesn’t matter if I decide to do it, it will just manifest and he’s just like. And so yeah, I sometimes need to leave him out of that from both of our sakes, because he’ll he gets freaked out. And then he stops sleep, it impacts his sleep, because everything that I randomly say to him creates this open loop in his brain. And I’ve just gone Oh, I didn’t mean that. Random thought. And he’s like, I have to make this work for Denise, because he’s such a beautiful like, servant leadership guy. He’s just like, I just want to support you and be here for you. But I can’t put that on him. Because it will just stressing out too much. Bless him.
Meliss Jakubovic 38:46
I love it. It sounds like you really understand each other and how you fit into this together, which is great. Can you tell me what happens when you upgrade your money mindset, like what magical things take place?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 38:59
Well, even that itself sounds a bit. How do you even make that happen? Yeah, it does. So I like to think of it as incrementally upgrading everything around you. And also at the same time, excavating all of our gunk that has accumulated over decades for most of us. And so it really is this ongoing process and curiosity. You never get to a point where you just perfect, have perfect money mindset. It doesn’t matter how much money you make, you always have money stuff to deal with. And so you’re constantly just excavating, and you’re creating a new foundation. And so a really good example of this is I just got incremental upgrades. And so you might think, Oh, if I want to upgrade my mindset, I have to like, meditate everyday and it’s all up here. It’s all like, but actually, it’s bringing it into the real world. And so if you look around and think, Okay, what are some things in my life that make me feel poor? Or inconvenience? Or even just a symbol of this the low standards I have for myself? How can I upgrade it just a little bit at a time. And so the way you do this is what one it puts your money where your mouth is, because we’ve all been to conferences where up here, we’re just like, and then you’re, you’re back in your reality, and you just can’t figure out how to bridge the gap between where you see your beautiful life being in like, but I’m in this reality right now. So you become that, well, you already are that person, but you, you have everything else in your life match that vibration. And you can do it like, one thing Mark and I used to fight about every day is someone stole my headphones, who took my headphones, I’m about to do a call, where am I headphones. And so we just bought extra headphones we bought, we used to steal each other’s phone chargers, you know, and it’s like, I’m gonna put a label on this. So you know, it’s my phone charger, and you can’t steal it. And then I was like, we could just buy multiple versions of them. So we bought multiple versions for the cars, my office has its own, his office as its own, we have them all over the house, it didn’t cost very much money. But suddenly it took out a ton of stress
Meliss Jakubovic 41:20
and did you have a chapstick.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 41:24
You can never have enough chapstick, they’re everywhere, everywhere. And that’s just one small example. But you think of all the things that you’re putting up with. And sometimes you don’t even see it because you’ve, you’ve forgotten the mental energy that it’s taken for you. And it could be habits from your family, like my mom will always park really far away, because she’s always scared about paying parking. And I used to do that to thinking up, you just live in that place of I’m always having to be inconvenienced, I’m not allowed to have, you know, convenience. And I remember the first time I paid for valet parking, I was just like, oh my god, this is so stressful. I can’t believe I’m doing this. But it’s little things like that, that you don’t even know you’re not even aware of and it takes so much energy, all of those things you have to watch and make sure you’re doing. So what, what can you do one at a time. And if you don’t have a lot of money at the moment, you start with the little things that can make you feel really good that can be instead of your oh my god, one day, it becomes your new normal. Like my favorite perfume, wearing nice underwear, making yourself feel good using your special cup that you only use for good. When you make all of that your new normal, it suddenly raises your vibration. And then of course, you know that good things can come with that, right? When you have better standards for yourself. Even it leads to better boundaries, you become more attractive to opportunities, good things seem to be attracted to you. But it starts with those little, little little things one by one. And for some people, that means actually decluttering the stuff rather than going oh, wait for the money to come in. And then I’ll replace it. It’s like creating a vacuum and going I will not put up with this anymore. And the cool thing is because there’s so many different things in our life, you don’t have to do it in in the way of fake it till you make it or buying things before you’re ready. You literally start with the path of least resistance, or the thing that’s the most obvious the thing that’s the tiniest, and I hear stories from people all the time they go, Oh my god, I had this leaky thing. And it just took like $1 washer from Home Depot and it fix it. And it’s like, but what’s that? What was the symbolism of having to put up with that forever? You know, or getting an extra glass of water? Yeah, the small things are so symbolic.
Meliss Jakubovic 43:53
I like that. Stair stepping it also makes it less overwhelming. Instead of like, I have to revamp everything in my life. It’s like, I’m just gonna buy more chapsticks. We’ll start there.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 44:03
We’ll start there. And I’ve noticed to a couple of years ago, how much advertising talks about self care, especially for women as being luxurious, you know, and even looking at those things of going, wow, like the best chocolate bar and like cheap chocolate bar. It’s not like there’s 1000s of dollars of difference between like the least and the most expensive. It’s literally just a tiny bit. But we’ve kind of been taught that, you know, even just having washing your hair is a luxurious experience instead of just being normal self care. So we’ve got to unlearn some of those things around what we’re allowed to have and how much pleasure we’re allowed to have.
Meliss Jakubovic 44:45
I love it. We’re going to take a short break and when we come back, I’ll ask Denise about her new book, Chill and Prosper and you’ll get to hear an excerpt.
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Meliss Jakubovic 45:45
And now let’s get back with my guest today. Author and money mindset mentor. She’s just released her fourth book, Chill and Prosper. Denise Duffield-Thomas, I’m really excited to read your new book that’s coming out. Would you be willing to read an excerpt from the new book Chill and prosper?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 46:03
Yes. Okay, cool. So I’ve got just a couple of minutes. This is, we already talked about us being dancers so alright. Alright, so I was being taken for granted. For years. I’ve been smug about having one program, but it was still the Denise show. I answered every question myself in the online forum. And it was my fault. I was being taken for granted in the business that I had been, I’d created. People would tag me day, night, weekends, Christmas Day, and I would answer one day it hit me. I’m trying to be their mom, the unappreciated martyred mother who was always there without complaint. The combination of my desire to serve my performance stamina, and my inability to say no was a perfect storm. So here’s the change I made. I summoned my inner performer and I decided to become Mickey Mouse at Disneyland and it shows like Disney on Ice, they always treat Mickey Mouse like the star. He opens and closes the parades and the shows and when he enters the stage, the lights dim the music fanfares and all the other performers turn and look at him. Everything is about Mickey Mouse. Now Mickey Mouse doesn’t also moonlight on Main Street picking up trash between the shows. He doesn’t play second fiddle, fiddle to anyone and he wouldn’t put Mickey in the corner, he gets the respect he deserves. And with all Mickey Mouse and things like that, so I said to channel Mickey Mouse, I needed to hire some more cast members. And it was utterly transformational. Once I got over myself and became Mickey Mouse in my business, I love to stand as a performer of just it really hit me that I was like, on I just don’t my, my clients don’t see me as special because I’m so available to them. And you know, there’s only one Mickey at any time at Disneyland and they really just an even my kids, we’ve never really watched Mickey Mouse growing up like I did. I’m like he must be special. And I needed to do that in my business for them for then my clients would go oh, well, Denise is here instead of going. Sure.
Meliss Jakubovic 48:13
Yeah. Amazing. I love it. Thank you. So where can we go to preorder your book and grab all of our awesome, yummy bonuses.
Denise Duffield-Thomas 48:22
Oh, yay. So if you go to denisedt.com/prosper, you will get the links for where you can buy it in all the different formats all around the world. And you just pop in your receipt number, and get all those pre launch bonuses. So we’ve got a ton of tools, we’ve got meditations and visualizations, which are amazing. And then we’re doing a live book club in July as well. So even if you are listening to this after the launch date, I think it’s like 20th of July, you can still get all of those bonuses, too. So that’s denisedt.com/prosper.
Meliss Jakubovic 48:57
Amazing. And if my listeners wanted to learn more about their money mindset, they can uplevel their business and their life, where could they go?
Denise Duffield-Thomas 49:04
Yes, I’ve got tons of resources on my website, denisedt.com. And I’d love for everybody to follow me on social media. I’m @denisedt everywhere, super easy to find. And I just, I love hearing from people. I love hearing your heart, if you’re a dancer, so definitely tell me your stories. But I actually love hearing stories from all different industries because, you know, the nuances. You know, 80% of our mindset work is the same and it’s just those little nuances sometimes that we think we’re the only ones who have that problem. But no, every industry can work on your money mindset.
Meliss Jakubovic 49:38
Denise, this has been an absolute honor. There’s millions of other questions I could have asked you. So I hope one day we get to have this experience again. But it has been so wonderful to have you here. If you are listening in on the podcast and you wanted to watch the video, you can hop into the Spiritual Women Entrepreneurs at spiritualwomenentrepreneurs.com and watch this video interview. Thank you so much for being here I’m so happy that we got to make it work
Denise Duffield-Thomas 50:04
Thanks, Meliss.
Meliss Jakubovic 50:05
Thank you so much everyone, go buy Denise Duffield-Thomas new book Chill and Prosper all of them are amazing and we’ll talk to you soon.
Get more leads. Make more sales. | May 13-17, 2024 | 1-2PM Eastern