[00:14] Rachel: Hey, writers.
[00:14] Emily: Welcome back to story magic, the podcast.
[00:16] Rachel: That will help you write a book.
[00:17] Emily: You'Re damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:20] Rachel: And today we want to talk about money mindset with our very special guest, nicole store kestad. And nicole is a business coach of ours. We are so excited to have her here on the podcast today. We met nicole a year and a half ago now. Long time. Is that it? It feels like forever. But we met nicole when we were searching for kind of like a jug to our business, a jump up to golden may. Like, what was going to be the next steps for golden may long term, where are we going to take the business? And we were searching for a professional who could really help us think long term, break through some of the barriers that we felt like were holding us back and show us what our blind spots were. And we found nicole. And nicole is a money coach, which I'll let you, nicole, tell people about that in just a second. But we've been working with her for a year and a half. It's done wonders for our business, but it also has taught us a lot about money, and there is a lot to do with money mindset and writing. So I'm really excited to talk about this today. Nicole, could you introduce yourself, tell us about you, what it is that you do?
[01:32] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah.
[01:32] Emily: Welcome.
[01:33] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Hi. So excited to be here. I'm nicole starkestead, owner and founder of NSH money coaching. And the thing that I do is that I help people get over their trauma and drama with money so that they can start making decisions with their money that they love and feel completely confident in, so that they can use their money to buy the life and or business that they want to be living or running or operating in.
[02:04] Rachel: Yeah, I can 100% confirm that's what nicole does, that is what she did for us.
[02:13] Emily: Absolutely. And I think I love all of your Instagram posts and all of the ways that you talk to women, especially about money mindset, because I think I know from our experience that that is something that women, I mean, everybody, I think, struggles with it. But it's such a powerful thing to be able to let go of that trauma and drama and really embrace it. It's been transformative for our business, but also for my life. So thank you.
[02:50] Rachel: There's a lot of overlap between money mindset and writing and that's we're going to talk about today. So if you're thinking like, should I listen to this episode? I don't really have problems with money. Number one, you probably do. And number two, yes, you should listen to this episode. It's going to be super helpful, just for creative life in general. But also if you plan to make writing an eventual dream, something that you want to do for a full time job or run a business out of. We're going to be talking with Nicole a lot about that in multiple episodes. So hang around for those. But Nicole, what's money mindset?
[03:27] Nicole Stork-Hestad: So money mindset at its very core is the way that you think about money and then the way you think about yourself in relationship to money. So it's always twofold whenever we're talking about money mindset and when you're unaware of one or both of those separate pieces of money mindset, you are acting from a place within money management that probably is causing a lot of cyclical drama in your life when it comes to the use of your money or the money circumstances that you've gotten yourself in. So when we think about a money mindset in relationship to your writing, for example, if you're thinking about money the way that you think about the use of money or how you're supposed to spend money, you may not invest in tools that you need to accomplish writing, for example. And then if you're thinking about yourself in relationship to money, that piece of money mindset, you may be thinking, I'm not worth, or unconsciously thinking. It's probably not a conscious thought, really, but there's a tie to worth and the amount of money you're allowed to invest in something that may seem at the beginning like frivolous or a hobby or like you could DIY it and it would be fine, right? You kind of cheapen the experience that you have with something that should be a full blown, bold way of experiencing writing and becoming a writer and putting your story into the world. You may be cheapening that experience just because of the way you think about the use of money or the way you think about yourself in relationship to money. And so that's something that we're going to be breaking down a little bit more probably throughout the episode. But that's what I think of when I think about money mindset.
[05:31] Rachel: Yeah, I think where I started with this when we first met, or if I think about the writer that I was three or four years ago, five or six years ago, it always felt there was a lot of guilt attached to purchasing things for writing. And some of that was, should I be spending money on this when I don't, number one, don't like quotes. I have lots of air quotes. Have to. And then number two, is it a waste of time if I never make any money out of this project or out of this experience of writing. And that made me hesitate a lot on taking my writing seriously, on taking up space, on choosing things that I felt like would long term benefit me. It's very easy, or it was at least to me, to buy like a $7 book off Amazon. But the big programs or the big classes that I really wanted to take always felt so scary. It was very scary to choose something like that for this creative hobby that I really wasn't sure if I was good enough at to deserve it.
[06:45] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Wow. Yeah. How interesting too, that we have these thoughts about like, okay, well, I'm not good enough yet to pay for something. And I'm like, but how do you get wait a minute, we get better at stuff. Oh, that's right. We pay for help in it, right? We pay for that education that we need. We pay for the mentorship that we need. We pay for the tools and supplemental materials that we need in order to get better. And somehow, for some reason, when it comes to the things that we're passionate about or that we get a lot of joy from or that we really feel a strong pull to put out into the world our brain lies to us and tells us no. You should do that as free as possible, as cheaply as possible, or as little resource investment as possible. And it makes no sense to me as a person who loves money, especially spending it, I'm like, what else was the money for?
[07:48] Emily: I used to pride myself on being a jack of all trades, DIY kind of person. Yeah, I could spend a bunch of money for that training, but if I do it myself, it's like, worth more somehow. And I feel like that was one of the biggest things that you helped us work through with our business early on, was just investing in you was, like, our first step towards, okay, we're going all in because we like it was a big chunk of change for us at that point in time, and it was 100,000 times worth it. But that set us on a path of saying, okay, where are the other places that we can invest in our business and grow our business? And now we just have this very abundant mindset of we save resources so that we can invest in ourselves at a business level and also, I think, in our private lives at a writing level. And that's just been just huge because it seems obvious, like, oh yeah, invest in yourself and you'll grow faster. But people have so many mental blocks for me, the pride struggle thing, but there's so many other reasons to not.
[09:13] Rachel: Do that very simple thing.
[09:16] Nicole Stork-Hestad: And it's really interesting to me too, who taught us those things. If you think about it, it's not natural or normal to not invest resources in your growth. If you just look at a plant, right, take a basic plant, they they have a couple of resources that are imperative and they're always seeking them out and maximizing them within their photosynthesis and watering and then nutrients from soil, right? Like, they're constantly extending their roots past the barriers and breaking through even the toughest of soil so they can get nutrients that they need. They're always soaking up and storing water. And plants literally turn towards the sunlight and lean towards sunlight in order to get what they need. And so when you just look at natural processes, this idea of like, I can go without, like, oh, I don't need water, I don't need water, forget that. Or like, I don't need nutrients. I should definitely stay where I am in this dry, dirty, dusty soil and just not seek out the things that I need. Nothing in nature does that. And so the fact that we as humans have been doing it tells me that it's a conditioning and not a natural state. And so whenever someone denies themselves the investments, denies themselves using their own resources, their time, their energy, and their money. And the side note, we'll come back. But like, the three resources available to us when we talk about money mindset, when somebody denies themselves use of any of those to create betterment in their life and joy in their life and ease in their life, it makes me question, like, why are you doing the unnatural? Like, who can defend you for this? And those thoughts probably aren't really theirs. Just nobody's ever called it into question before. And it's the most noticeable in things that are considered optional. Like writing is kind of like optional. It's not necessarily thought of as a real profession on the ground level. I mean, we look at authors now that they're popular, and we're like, oh, that's a writer. And we forget that they were waitressing at one point and their parents didn't believe in them either. Start somewhere, right? I don't know. I'm always like, man, check in with that conditioning because these are how resources were meant to be used. It's for this one precious life that you get. Why are you denying yourself, going after the thing that makes your heart swell so big just because somebody else's message said you shouldn't behind that, that you were taught that's not real? Yeah.
[12:07] Rachel: What are some of those? I feel like I said one earlier of not feeling good enough, not feeling deserving. Emily said one earlier of feeling like your struggle makes it more valuable or more valiant, more worth it. So what are some other sneaky little thoughts that you see people have where they don't? They choose not to invest in themselves.
[12:28] Emily: Like some of those big common blockers.
[12:31] Nicole Stork-Hestad: I mean, the biggest one is what other people will think, right? When you strip a lot of the objections to using your resources for the area that you want to fund, you see a fear based objection at the very bottom. And it's almost always around rejection. And so especially with creative types, this rejection sensitivity tends to be even higher. So if you are in the book creation business, right, you have stories inside you that you need to get out that rejection sensitivity, that baseline of like, what will everyone think? What if no one likes it? What if I'm not good at this? What if I get feedback that I can't handle? What if I fail? What if I disappoint myself and others? Those fears of it's painful, that painfulness that they might experience is really the reason why they don't want to invest. And so they tend to use surface ones, like, I don't have time, I don't have the money, I don't have the energy. It's better if I do it myself. No, I'm not good enough yet to deserve that kind of investment. They're like the surface level, but when you really break it down, it comes into like, I'm going to use this and I'm going to put myself out there and I'm going to spend resources and rejection is going to happen and that's going to really suck. And so just that understanding that you're keeping yourself from being disappointed and feeling that suck ahead of time, it's like going ahead and failing without trying. Right. Like you're ending the story before it ever begins all because you're scared, and that comes into money mindset is just like that fear of using capital to actually beat the fear rather than allowing the fear to keep you from using your capital.
[14:37] Emily: Yeah, I loved when we were talking about I did not read look at the notes, so I can't remember exactly what it was. But when Rachel and I were dealing with our fears around money and investment.
[14:50] Rachel: And prices, money trauma and drama.
[14:54] Emily: Yeah. It seemed to like we were both very fearful of different things. I feel like that fear of failure can have many different roots.
[15:05] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Like a spectrum.
[15:06] Emily: Yeah, I don't know if that's a question.
[15:10] Nicole Stork-Hestad: It sounded like very much like just so you know, it's on a spectrum, everyone and you will probably fall somewhere on it.
[15:18] Emily: Because I feel like a lot of people can be like, yeah, of course I'm afraid. Of course I'm afraid. But there's something deeper going on for every person that's individual. It's like, what are you actually afraid of? And I think investigating that and naming it can be really helpful because I know it was helpful for Rachel and I to figure out as business partners to figure out, like, okay, we're each individually fearful of slightly different things. And so when we know that about each other, we were able to stop you to kind of break some of the cycles we were having that were stopping us from moving forward because our fears were not the same, even though we probably were assuming that they were.
[15:58] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, go ahead.
[16:02] Rachel: I can remember a big one for me that I want to eventually lead to talking about. So this will always stick in my head and I think you and I talked about it, too. I worked with Nicole individually as well as working in our business relationship, and it frequently came back to this idea that if I spent money, imagine like a spiral with all sorts of fields attached to it. But at the bottom of the spiral was I would die.
[16:28] Nicole Stork-Hestad: It was really fair. We're going to end up under a bridge dying.
[16:34] Rachel: Yes, I know it sounds dramatic because it was. But that was the fear. If I spent money, then I'd run out of money. And if I ran out of money, then I would not buy food. And if I didn't get to buy food, I couldn't provide for my family. If I didn't buy for my family, et cetera. And it wildly to like, I would die. I know that seems like really drawn out, but that was kind of the.
[16:52] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Root of it for me.
[16:53] Rachel: And it led me to thinking a lot about the difference between abundant thinking and scarcity thinking. And I'd love to explore that because I think a lot of those fears, regardless of what they are, are the scarcity based fears. As if you're going to run out. This was something I was thinking earlier, is what if you invest and it's not, quote unquote, worth it? What does that mean? What does it mean to be worth it? What are you looking for in a return? And I had to do a lot of thinking of, well, I'm approaching this from already an expectation that I'm going to run out versus an expectation that investing into myself will open up 1000 doors that give me so much abundance I can't even handle anymore. That's the attitude that I had to work through to stop fearing scarcity.
[17:45] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah. I always tell my clients, and I'm pretty sure we have some version of this in our history, is this idea that you're only ever solving for one or two problems, whether you are going to not have enough money or how to always have enough money. And I say that you can't solve for both problems at the same time. So if you're solving for restriction and scarcity and you're always solving for like, what happens if I spend it and I don't get it back? Or what happens if I spend it and I fail? Or what happens if I spend my time, energy or dollars and I end up living under a bridge. Right. Like you can always be going down that path in your brain. But what's fun to know about the human brain is that all it wants, all your brain wants is a problem to solve. And so you actually get to pick the problem. It's just we're very used to, because of our messaging, wherever it comes from, family messaging, generational, poverty, scarcity training, social, cultural, emotional training, right? We get these trainings in different places of like, there's not enough, there's not enough and you don't have enough. And we believe that. And so we're always solving for the problem of not having enough. But what's interesting is you can actually give your brain a different problem. You can give it the problem of solving for always having enough. And figuring out how to always have enough and what you want to do to always have enough, whether you're spending the money or not. Once my clients realize that, oh, wait, the problem to solve for is optional and I can actually go in this other direction, it's like magic happens. They're like, oh, money can be made. It's like you can make it. Like you can go out into the world today, right now and make money if you are just allowing yourself to solve creatively for that problem. And most people forget that. They're like, oh, I can't make money today. Sure you can. I've given plenty of clients the challenge of, like, if you had to make money today, what would you do? And they come up with all kinds of crazy things. They forget that bad ideas are allowed first, just like in writing, right? Like, you're allowed to have a bad first draft. You can have a shitty first draft. I'm allowed to curse.
[20:01] Rachel: Yeah, please.
[20:05] Emily: Your face.
[20:09] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Anyway. But you're allowed to have that shitty first draft in writing, and it's encouraged because you get the story out of you. It's the same thing with ideas for making money and creating more money and opening the doors for money in your life.
[20:22] Rachel: You're allowed to have shitty bad ideas.
[20:24] Nicole Stork-Hestad: For how to make that happen. But it starts a creative process of solving for the problem that is far more, I think, far more useful for this one precious life that we get to live than solving and constantly living in that state of anxiety. And fear and that you're going to die or you're going to run out or whatever that story is you tell yourself for solving, for not having money.
[20:50] Emily: Yeah, this is reminding me I'm still coming back to I don't even know when that conversation was.
[20:57] Rachel: It was probably really early, a year and a half ago.
[20:59] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah.
[21:00] Emily: But the two different things, because for you, Rachel, if I'm remembering correctly, and forgive me if I'm not, but yours was more like security and safety based. Mine were very relational, shame based fears. And so we were both being driven by fear that just felt like fear when we were interacting with each other. But it was very different. So I want to talk about that in terms of writing, because we talked about the safety, the security piece of it. But there's also this very real.
[21:30] Rachel: But.
[21:31] Emily: Also, like, what if I spend all this money and then I'm rejected, and then I am the worst person in the world. I'm the most selfish because I was.
[21:39] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Going to say, Emily, I believe yours was an agreed, selfishness thing. That's something too. When we think about who taught you to feel selfish for spending your money on what you want, where did we get that? Where did we get this idea that we were selfish for using our time, our energy and our hardearned dollars on ourselves?
[22:07] Emily: Women we're talking to you. I know.
[22:10] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Have you women and women identifying individuals.
[22:14] Rachel: This is for you, Nicole. Have you read Burnout, this book that I'm now holding up to our camera that no one else can in the zoom?
[22:24] Nicole Stork-Hestad: I've not yet read this. It's on my list. Okay?
[22:26] Rachel: I've talked about it on the podcast before. It's called burnout. The secret to unlocking the stress cycle. And it's by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. They're sisters. But one of the major concepts in this book is that there are two types of humans a human being who is allowed to be and a human giver, who they are only allowed to give themselves. And I think that's when this is where I'm hearkening back to this book of, like, so often, women identifying people caregivers, these people that are in charge of taking care of other people, they are human givers, and it is selfish for them to take care of themselves. It is selfish for them to invest in themselves. The whole concept is this is how we've gotten into Burnout, is that we have a whole piece of our society that is only treated as if they can be human givers instead of human beings. It leads to Burnout, but this is such a huge aspect of it of you are expected to give. You are not expected to, quote, unquote, take. And really what that reality is, is show up as a normal human being who gets to live their life with dreams and expectations and rest and do what they want to do without fear of guilt or shame. Like, no, you're just expected to give.
[23:40] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah, you exist to be a shell of a person, especially if you have a female body. And there's a lot about that that goes into money, too, because what's interesting is that, especially with women, they make 80% to 90% of the financial decisions in the world on a daily basis. Badass, right? Like when you're like, hold it. Women actually control trillions of dollars literally every day, and they are making the majority of decisions surrounding money. We've been taught that we have a threshold for the amount of money that we are allowed to make decisions about without guilt, unless that amount of money is spent on someone else. And I think that this is a part of a societal conditioning, and that's based in a very patriarchal society, in my opinion. So this is all informal opinion of the Nicole, but very welcome in my research and in my observations. The feelings that we have of shame and guilt, they're actually feelings we're taught to have and not feelings that we actually have. What we actually have are anger and resentment and desire to be like, this is mine, but we don't because we're conditioned into this. Give. Give selfish. Don't be selfish. Don't be selfish. Don't be selfish. Don't be selfish. That's greedy. You don't want to be greedy. You don't want to be greedy. And one of my favorite things to.
[25:19] Emily: Do, you will die or be cast out.
[25:23] Nicole Stork-Hestad: And one of my favorite things to do with clients, as you guys know, is like, let's just feel greedy. Let's just feel like we're selfish. Let's just feel like we're being irresponsible. Let's just allow those feelings and then make decisions based on like, yeah, okay, so I'm going to be irresponsible. Now what? Yeah, okay, so I am going to be greedy. Somebody in the world is probably going to think I'm greedy for this decision. So now what do I want to do? And just really sitting with the fact that does that emotion actually bother you? And can you actually turn it into a compass of like, actually when I feel greedy, it's probably the right decision for me to make because I'm probably never myself.
[26:02] Emily: I will never forget. On our very first call, a few things happened. First, Rachel and I were like, you were referred to us by another very lovely person, but we thought we needed marketing help and we were like, she's a money mind, money coach. We don't need that. Like an hour and a half later, we texted like we hung up with you and we texted each other. We're like, I just feel like I got hit by a train we have to hire.
[26:29] Rachel: I felt so tired. Oh, my God.
[26:35] Emily: It was amazing. Cracked us open so we could rebuild ourselves. It was amazing. But I will never forget that we had a conversation about how Rachel and I needed to have conversations with our significant others who we manage money with, about whether or not we were going to move forward. And you were like, you are going to pitch it to them. You are not going to ask for permission. And I literally just got shivers. I just will never forget that because I think so often I still think about that all the time when I'm going to my husband and I'm like.
[27:13] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Can I have this?
[27:14] Emily: And I'm like, just kidding, I'm going to have it.
[27:15] Rachel: Anyway, we were just talking about that literally right before this call, like not even 30 minutes ago, you were telling me how you were pitching to David something that you wanted and you were like slowly working it on him.
[27:27] Emily: Slowly.
[27:29] Rachel: You use that exact language. I've been pitching it to him because.
[27:34] Nicole Stork-Hestad: We are either permission seeking or we are pitching. Like you may be in an instance where you are moneying with someone else. You have a money partner, whether it's like a marriage or whether it's a business or a roommate or something like that. But when you have joint resources that you have to make decisions about, especially as women, we tend to go with permission seeking. And my, again, informal theory that's pretty well founded, but anyway, it's still informal is that we permission seek because we'd actually rather hear no because hearing yes would scare us. And if we get told no, then we can blame somebody else. We can actually be like, oh, well, they told me no, so of course I can't do it. Right? And then if they do tell you yes, you get to share that. You'd be like, if it fails, then you have this safety net of like, well, you said I could, right? And so there's something about permission that gives us a false sense of security when really we should be pitching. We should be saying, this is what I want to do. This is why I want to do it. This is how it's going to benefit me and whoever else I am having to pitch to. And these are the returns that I expect. So that is all right. But for you, too, what was interesting is that you needed to ask permission for money that wasn't your husband's at all, because this is a business which was interesting too. We forget that not all aspects are shared. And so sometimes I think we deny ourselves that spending of resources just because we don't understand that joint money is still individual money at some level and that everybody should have. If you do not have access to resources within your relationship, what does that say about your relationship? And why is there so much power imbalance in that space? I guess trigger warnings should probably have come up.
[29:22] Rachel: Money is a tough conversation. I mean, it really does get to a lot of the heart of a lot of people's insecurities, I would say in the 30 or so calls more greater than that that I've had with you individually, probably at least half of them. I have a great emotional reaction to that I have to work through. Like, why am I feeling so strongly about this? Where does it come from? And why do I feel like I'm going to die? It's hard. And then there's so much circling with that where people have got to learn how to work through it. Women have got to learn how to work through it and not shy away from those feelings too, because we worked a lot about that.
[30:09] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Of.
[30:11] Rachel: You can't make these go away just by burying them.
[30:17] Nicole Stork-Hestad: They're going to explode eventually, right back. It's going to always circle back. And money is something that you can't avoid. We try to avoid it, and then it causes even bigger feelings, right? And so when you think about it, it's going to suck whether you're looking at your money, whether you're using your money in a way that delights your life or not, it's going to suck to do the work. And you're either doing the work of living completely in that cycle of avoid permission, selfish, greedy, fear of death, like scarcity mindset. It sucks in that cycle, or it's going to suck to break it. So in my opinion, I'm like, listen, if it's going to suck either way. You might as well do the thing that moves you forward towards the life that you want to be buying. And I think as women in particular, we're not used to hearing that message. It's a very mind bending message that a lot of people have resistance to the first time they hear it. So hint, hint, listen to this twice. But it's important for us to know that you can come out of it if you're just willing to be uncomfortable, really is what it comes down to, which I think fits into the writing process of, like, you have to be uncomfortable to put your story on paper and to give your character's voice and describe different things. Right? And so if you can learn to be uncomfortable in one space that you have to use daily anyway, like money, you will be already prepped to be uncomfortable becoming the author that you want to be in your writing space.
[31:56] Emily: Yeah, absolutely.
[31:58] Rachel: One of the things I'd like to relate this back to writing with these decisions we still use this technique that you taught us when we're making decisions of a decision that comes from fear or a decision that comes from faith and are we choosing it goes back to what you were saying of are you solving? Which problem are you solving for? Are you solving for scarcity or are you solving for abundance? And we always think about that. Is this a fear decision or a faith decision? So why don't we talk about that for a little bit of what does it look like to make a faith based writing investment decision? What is that?
[32:33] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Well, just to clarify, too, we used fear and faith because of the alliteration, I think. But the faith based decision, what we mean by that is faith in yourself to get the return on investment, whether it's a financial return or if a social capital return or an emotional return, we are getting in a return on that investment. And we believe in that ability. We believe in this decision. And so that's what we mean when we say a faith based investment decision. And when we were working through that, we had like a little protocol sheet that we created where it was like the number one question is it was basically like, what is the fear here? Why would we not do this investment that we're considering doing? And if it was like all fear decisions, it was probably not the right call. It's all based in fear versus something that was a legitimate reason not to invest in something. So you have a bigger yes that you'd rather wait for. So not investing in TWS, for example, because really you want a one on one spot, which, by the way, that's not a thing. You should really do both. But maybe your brain is telling you that you can only afford one, but really you want the one on one. And so you're like that's the higher ticket item. So I'm not going to put dollars towards this intermediate space or this space here. I'm going to save for the one on one space. I want one of those individualized six month spaces with either Rachel or Emily, and I'm going to put all of my dollars to it and I'm going to get on the waitlist and put my deposit down so that way I can guarantee my spot in August. But that's like a decision process, right, where you're like, actually, I want this other thing, and so I'm going to say no to something else that I kind of want, but really it's going to get in the way or it's going to subtract from my timeline of getting the thing that I really want. And so that's a faith based decision, believing in the thing that you really want, even though it might be higher priced or it might feel like you have to take a little longer to get there, or it's just scary because the investments, the return on that investment is really all dependent on what you put in. Right? Yeah. And so just having that faith that you're going to get what you came for creates the faith based decision versus all of the excuses that we normally run through to keep ourselves from making investments like that, which would be a fear based decision.
[35:11] Rachel: That makes sense. I love, though, too, how you've just presented it as like, you're not saying no to investing yourself. You're saying, in what ways am I going to choose to invest in myself?
[35:23] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Correct. Yes. Excellent way to highlight because sometimes I think that we end up in the place where we don't invest. And actually that is not the correct decision ever. Like, if you are not actively investing in yourself in some way, either a continuing education, a passion, a hobby, physical activity, your health, your wellness, your well being, this life being this life being easier for you, you are using your money wrong. Yeah. We should not be saying no to investments in ourselves at all. We should be trying actively to figure out how to do it all the time.
[36:04] Emily: Yeah. And I want to point out, too, that a lot of writers will say, like, the delay tactic, I want this, but I'm not ready for it, or I want this, but I don't deserve it yet, or I want this, but I'm not going to make the most of it right now. I would say, like, would you say that 90% of the time that's not true?
[36:26] Nicole Stork-Hestad: That's 100% not true. They're actually not delaying at all. I have an entire thing that I wrote on what I call either we say that we're delaying, but really we're just saying no. It's an easy way and acceptable way of pacifying ourselves into believing that tomorrow, the version of you that exists tomorrow is going to be more capable and better able to make the investment. But what's funny is that version of you doesn't exist unless you create that person today. And so every time you push something down the line to your future self as far as an investment goes, you're not delaying, you're actually creating the space where it's never going to happen, because the person that can make it happen is the person that's here right now, because you're not guaranteed that future self that's capable. You have to build her like, you have to build the capable version of yourself that can handle investments. And you do that by doing the scary thing today of making an investment. But a lot of us have this logic of like, no, next month is going to be easier. There'll be more time. The kids will be out of school. I'll have less responsibilities.
[37:36] Emily: I'll have a finished draft.
[37:38] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah, I could do it on my own. I'm going to get so much further by myself right now and finish my revision first.
[37:45] Emily: We hear that all the time.
[37:47] Nicole Stork-Hestad: No, that's not true. What you're doing is pacifying yourself so that you don't have to do something scary right now. And I have allowance for that with my clients, as you guys actually know. I have a breathing period, right, where you're allowed to be like, yeah, you have to have of course you can take your time. You have three days. Absolutely. Take all the time you need, as long as it's done in 72 hours. Right. And we're not used to that sense of commitment to something either like, oh, my gosh, it's either yes or no.
[38:14] Emily: By somebody, because we were 100% yes the moment before we got off the call. We were 100% yes. And we took all three days to be like, what are all the possible ways this could go wrong?
[38:26] Rachel: Yeah.
[38:27] Emily: And eventually we got that. And talking to our husband business decisions they shouldn't have had opinions on and, like, all the things right, but you allowed us to do that, which was a learning opportunity, really, because then we got to come back together and talk about how unnecessary that three days of stress was. But yeah, when you're a yes, you know you're a yes, you know you're a yes.
[38:49] Nicole Stork-Hestad: I am. Of the opinion that you decide immediately, everybody and I think actually, you guys may have had this one of you, you were like, I need to take time to decide. And I was like, no, you've already decided. You just want to take time to talk yourself out of it. You literally how most people's brains work, right, where you have already decided, and it scared you. And so the time you're going to take is actually to walk yourself back. But if you were to actually do it right now, you would be a clear yes or a clear no. And we're looking at investments. Like, that's what we want. It's always okay with me if somebody's on a consultation, call with me for my services if they are a no, like if they are an immediate no, great. I'm so glad you know that. Let's run with it. Here are other resources for you. Best of luck. Have a great life. If you need me, you know where to find me. Absolutely no love if you ever want to come. I mean, absolutely no hate if you ever want to come back, right?
[39:42] Rachel: No love.
[39:43] Nicole Stork-Hestad: No love. You're dead to me. But I'd rather you be clear now because you already are and the time you are taking only delays the progress you could be making. And why are we doing that?
[40:01] Emily: Yeah, we get that a lot with coaching clients. I was just thinking that tenacious writing folks who are thinking about joining the community or working with us one on one and you know right away whether it's a fit for you or not.
[40:16] Nicole Stork-Hestad: And just do it because you're just suffering unnecessarily. Like you're creating a space where you are creating more evidence that you are untrustworthy and honestly, especially if you're a woman, men, I know you do this too, but I see it a lot with women. We create a dissonance within ourselves when we make decisions this way, rather than exercising our natural born agency, our right to our own agency, over our lives, over our bodies, over our resources, when we just make a decision. And PS, the research is very clear that women 80% to 90% of the time make the correct decision on gut instinct. And if they would just follow it, rather than doing all the delays or the overthinking, they would get better results for themselves. And so when you hear that information, you're like, oh God, the only reason I end up with poor results most of the time is because I didn't do what I should have done when I knew I should have done it.
[41:18] Rachel: Yeah.
[41:19] Nicole Stork-Hestad: And you're like, oh, whoa. If that didn't open up somebody's mind to be like, oh, I'm going to have to start doing scary things. It's going to be scary. And believing that fear won't be there, that you're going to feel 100% confident in a decision. No. You're going to feel incredibly uncomfortable. There's going to be a shit ton of resistance and you're not going to want to do it. So that's probably the thing you should do.
[41:44] Rachel: There's just like so much here of man. It's always like, this is applicable to writing. This is applicable to money. But this is applicable to every decision in your life that you're just like, you know what you want to do and yet you continue to find reasons not to do it. Or all of you're going to pick it apart from every angle to make sure that this is the right thing where just commit. I think we worked on that with you too, of how much better it feels to commit to the decision, follow through with it and learn from it versus waffle on it. Be uncommitted when you make the choice you wanted to make the whole time, second guess yourself, not feel good about it, worry about it the whole time, versus, like, just say yes, do it, learn so simple.
[42:38] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Which is so funny too, because the way that we're trained to do it is actually the least cost effective. Right. Like, that overthinking and that spending and delay is actually more expensive in the long run because of the energy you put in the time that you spend and the money that you're either losing. You could be losing money, you're not making money, or the money that you are, like, unintentionally spending because you feel bad. You're probably doing feeling spending during that time because you have so much exhaustion and so much spending that you're spending your money in a way that you never would have if you just would have done the scary thing, committed and moved forward to learn from the experience. Because once you get to the place where you're like, I don't lose, money can always be made, and I don't lose. I'm either winning or I'm learning. And because of that process, I'm constantly making money, saving time, and conserving my energy in ways that I want. You get to open yourself up to an entirely different way of showing up to the world every day, including being the author that you want. If you can jump onto this dark side train of like, oh, my God, I can do whatever I want. There are no rules, and I can do whatever I want. Yeah.
[43:56] Emily: That energy shift from the overthinking, finding the perfect answer, that space, to I'm just going to trust myself and own decisions and move forward is like, the most magical shift in the world because it's so, like, as you're talking, I'm thinking about all the ways that it's applicable. It's not just applicable to money, it's applicable to Rachel. And I had a huge sort of complete shift in how we do our marketing, where it's like ten minute drafts. Don't overthink it. Just put it out. Trust yourself. Trust it's going to be valuable.
[44:33] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Right.
[44:33] Emily: So, like, other social media aspect, but also in writing, then the amount of overthinking and fear and looking for the right answer that people put in. We've talked about this in a previous episode, but that energy is just keeping you from making decisions that are going to get you to the end of a book that's like the vision that you have for it. Yeah, I love it. It's so powerful. The money mindset stuff is it just seeps into everything it does.
[44:59] Nicole Stork-Hestad: It goes everywhere. Transferable skills, it's like a way of.
[45:03] Emily: Being, like a way of living. Are you living in fear or are you living in faith? It's so powerful.
[45:12] Rachel: All right. Wow. So we have a lot to talk about with you, but we're going to go ahead and wrap up this first episode. Nicole, before we close out this one, head into our next one, do you have any other closing thoughts for us about money, mindset and writing?
[45:28] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah, you're definitely going to want to come back for the next one because we're going to be talking about investing in writing specifically and then making money from a passion if you want to. And so I think when it comes to writing in particular one, writing is a marketable skill. So even if you are thinking like, oh, being a published author full time isn't necessarily something that is on my vision board right now. Learning to be the best possible writer you can be and putting yourself in that situation where you can craft story is a highly marketable, highly lucrative skill. So as a client of mine, I would be like, hey, we need to be using that. That's a second source of income for little to no effort on your part because you've invested so much in yourself and being good at this. Other people struggle and they will pay you to do it for them or they will pay you to edit for them. You can make money in other ways other than putting story out. And I think we forget that sometimes that this has multiple writing. Being good at writing, feeling confident in your ability to craft story on any level has potential to bring money into your life in ways that you never would have imagined. And so denying yourself an investment that you feel called to maybe just check in with that. Yes, we just questioned that a little bit.
[46:58] Emily: Okay, given the episode that we've just recorded and knowing where we're headed with the future ones, if you were to give folks that are listening, like some action steps to take after listening to this one, what would you tell them to do? Number one, Nicole gives us homework all the time.
[47:16] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Listeners homework wrapping for homework, listener homework. Thing number one, check in with your fear versus faith based decision making. Because however you're making money with your decisions, you're probably making it's the same way with your time and with your energy. So if you are fear based with money, you are probably fear based with your time, and you are fear based with your energy. And you're probably horrifying to me trading your time and energy to save money. And I have got to tell you, out of these three things, money is the most renewable. You can make money at any time, all day, any day, doing something. But if you are constantly giving away your time, you're not protecting your time and you're not protecting your energy, you are going to be too tired to make wise investment decisions, and they will constantly be based in the fear of you're going to have to use more time and more energy to create more money. And so just check in. How are you making these resource decisions? Is it based on I don't have enough, I'm never going to have enough, and it can run out and I'm greedy for even thinking about investing in myself? Or is it based in the fact that you're a badass who is capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for? And you will not, under any circumstances, invest your time, effort, or energy or dollars into something that you will not guarantee yourself a return on? And you're going to show up as one of those two people. So just like, pick one. And I recommend one. Strongly recommend picking one over the other. But check in with that and just really call yourself out. Don't be afraid to get called out by your own self right now because honestly, it could change your whole life.
[49:05] Rachel: Yeah.
[49:06] Emily: Love it.
[49:07] Rachel: Love it. So where can folks find you?
[49:09] Nicole Stork-Hestad: At NSH money coaching.
[49:11] Emily: At NSH.
[49:12] Nicole Stork-Hestad: Money coaching everywhere. The Facebook. The Instagrams. I have a table. Do you have a hit TikTok? I'm just letting you know. But I am on there.
[49:25] Rachel: Go follow you.
[49:26] Nicole Stork-Hestad: The creatives and I love the ADHDs and the neurodivergent folks are my main population, but we love the typicals, so bring them in. We love the typicals. They have space here. But yeah, at Nshmoney Coaching is pretty much you'll get me anywhere, including my Janet. It's my Gmail. Email me. NSH [email protected]. So just yeah, say hi. Awesome.
[49:51] Rachel: Fantastic. All right, nicole so much.
[49:56] Emily: We will see her in the next episode.
[49:59] Rachel: All right.
[50:00] Emily: If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[50:06] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Drugs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[50:15] Emily: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
