Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / From Reactor to Creator: Money, Mindset, and Personal Growth with Ly Smith
Transcript
- Marci Grossman (01:00) Hello, I am MoneyMarci. Welcome. I am so happy to welcome today's guest, Ly Smith. Ly is an inspirational speaker, multi-international bestseller author and founder of G3 Mastermind, an online community for high achieving women to move from Reactor to Creator in life by rewriting their self-talk. With over 30 years in personal growth and positive psychology, Ly helps women entrepreneurs quiet the inner critic, amplify confidence, and step into bold leadership. Welcome, Ly. Ly Smith (01:36) Thank you so much, Marci, so happy and excited to be here with you. Marci Grossman (01:39) So tell me how you ended up as a speaker with Mastermind, all the things that you do. How did you get here? Ly Smith (01:48) ⁓ gosh, I think my favorite point to begin in the story is and it's hard to believe it'll be 10 years this December, where I was on a holiday vacation with my family in Hawaii. And this was not just your typical five day vacation. No, I had 23 days in Hawaii across... all the four major islands. And it was with my husband, my young teenage daughter, and my son who was grown and out of the house at the time. And he came along with his girlfriend. So this was definitely a once in a lifetime trip that we had. And so with 23 days, that meant we had 22 sunsets. And if you've ever had the privilege to go to Hawaii, oh my gosh, the sunsets are just the most incredible sunsets you could ever see. And so there was one particular sunset where we're standing out on the lava beach and I'm looking out and I'm just feeling the breeze caress my face and I'm looking out and the colors of the sky are painted bright pinks and yellows and the golden orb is setting on that sapphire horizon and I'm witnessing my family around me and my senses are taking in everything that I'm seeing and feeling and hearing and smelling. And I'm thinking about all of these things. And I'm thinking I'm doing something that most people don't get to do even once in a lifetime on one island. And I kept thinking and thinking. And then I caught myself thinking that I'm only thinking I wasn't feeling that moment. And if If you're thinking some human beings standing on paradise with their family and it's the Christmas holiday and all that, how could you not feel that? And it was, an amazing awareness. And I thought, this is not me. This is not who I am. What is happening right now? And I'm not saying anything to, my family at all. This is a whole conversation going on in my head. And I, thought, what is happening? Who am I right now? And. I saw myself up in that moment, Marci, as someone covered in what I call 'just'. Think of little dust particles, but then think of the word just. I was just a mom. I was just a stay-at-home mom. I was just a stepmom. I was just a wife. I was just a homemaker. I was just a daughter. I just kept going through that and I thought, but who is Ly? Who is Ly right now? And I came up with a one more just if I'm just this empty shell of a woman right now standing on this shore. And I thought, no, this is not cool. And I don't want to do this anymore. And I drew the line in the proverbial sand and I said, okay, we're at the end of one year, a new year's coming around the corner. I don't know what's happening right now, but I need to figure out who I am. Who is Ly? And I made a commitment to myself that I was going to go on a quest to figure out who she is. And I thought it was I needed to discover, and it actually became a remembering. And when I thought about it, I thought, well, in this journey, I want to. I want a word to anchor myself. I had heard of friends using a word of the year and I thought, well, I've never really done that before. So why don't I grab grab a word for myself? What word would I choose? And the word that came to me was laugh. I thought, how appropriate because I'm standing here not feeling anything. And you know what? I cannot remember when was the last time I laughed. And upon coming home, and doing further reflection, I realized standing there on that beach, it was part of a depression that I had been carrying with me for over two years. And I was just so good at putting a smile on my face and, making sure everybody else was taken care of that I masked that depression from myself. And I thought, OK, getting out of this depression. Great. I'm using the word laugh to get out of it and I did three big activities to get laughter going on for me. Number one, I was making it barely out of bed, onto the corner of couch, and I was watching reruns of Friends, because that's my favorite sitcom. And no matter how many times I've seen the episodes, I know the lines, I know what's coming, those six characters would always make me laugh. And I thought, okay, that's a start. And then I was very fortunate that there was a local comedy troupe who would put on an improv show and it was only the first three months of the year. So it was perfect timing for me. And I was down front and center getting my laugh on almost every weekend. And then I was doing some networking within the community, getting to know the people in my area. And I knew the people who had a wonderful sense of humor. And I thought if I can just get in that space, get in some of their energy, maybe some of that will rub off on me. And after several months of doing that, Marci, I found my joy. And the remembering of me came right in that moment because joy felt like this warmth in my heart. I felt it move across me and it kind of came by my ear and it whispered to me, now that I'm here, what do you want to do with me? And it was like, my goodness, this is amazing. And right behind that question, I heard this like little light skipping in my mind and this little girl's laughter. And I thought, okay, what is happening now? It was my eight year old inner child. And she showed up because I was eight years old when I first got introduced to public speaking. fell in love with it. And it wasn't about being the center of attention or anything like that. It was this feeling of looking out in the audience and watching them nod their heads and seeing some smiles. And I remember that moment and thinking, what is that feeling and how do I get more of it? So in that moment, when my joy came back and whispered, what do you want to do with me? and she whispered to me as well and she said, remember that feeling that we get from public speaking, let's go chasing that feeling. So everything that I do now is fulfilling the joy and the happiness and the excitement of that eight year old inner child. Marci Grossman (08:28) So Ly Smith (08:29) yes, so yes. Marci Grossman (08:28) your eight year old inner child finds joy in something that most people, it brings on the fear. Ly Smith (08:34) Yes. Yes, Marci Grossman (08:38) Let's pause for a quick break. Ly Smith (09:19) people would rather face death than an audience. And yes, for me, it's a thrill. It's so fulfilling because it's an opportunity to share wisdom, to share my experience. And we hear so many times that your story, your challenges, your adversities can be seeds of hope for others. And I, as you mentioned in my introduction, yes, I've studied positive psychology and personal development for over 30 years. It began with Tony Robbins way back in the day of infomercials and cassette tapes. And I got introduced to Tony and I remember when I got those tapes and I listened to Personal Power and I thought, who is this guy? What is he doing? And how do I get to do what he is doing? And then my time has shown up where I can take my personal adversities and challenges and look at how I took my resilience. And it was looking and reviewing through those things that I realized when I was standing on that beach that day, wondering who I was, I was coming to this crux of recognizing I had been reacting to my life. And what was I reacting to? I was reacting to the needs of taking care of my family. I was reacting to society's view of how I should be showing up as a mother. I was reacting to my expectations of myself. I was reacting to the never-ending cycles of laundry and dishes and cooking dinner and cleaning the house. And it was in all of that, living through all of that again and again and again, I got lost in that mundane, if you will, and reacting and reacting and reacting. And I stopped being fully present to that and creating the experiences that I wanted. It was out of that reflection and going, ⁓ wait a minute, there's a real concept here. Because when I looked at the personal growth leaders from Tony Robbins, like I mentioned, to John Maxwell, to Brendan Burchard and the ladies that I follow today, know, Brene Brown and Mel Robbins and Marie Forleo. They all talk about the one common thing that we humans have a choice in our lives. And it's a choice to react to whatever comes at us that we see happening in our lives and how we choose to respond. And I've been able to put that into a simple reframe. And this is why I say that I help women move from reactor to creator. And I'm going to show you a visual here, Marci, with letters that they're Scrabble letters. But for our audience members who are listening, I invite you, if you're safe to do so, please don't do this while you're driving. write down on a scrap piece of paper this word and the word is reactor. And the reactor they're reacting to whatever is happening either internally or externally and they may be the people who think that life is happening to them. ⁓ this is the way it always works out for me it is what it is there's nothing I can do I can't change it or at any given moment, whether it's a good thing or a frustrating thing, their emotions are always firing and reacting. They may have goals, they may have dreams, and they may be busy chasing after that or doing all the things. And like the letter C in reactor, they're overwhelmed and they're tired and they feel like they're stuck in the middle of all the things. So the C in reactor gets lost and that's how the reactor feels. But what if you could, like I did when I became aware of it, take yourself out. So now I'm taking the letter C out from the middle of the other Scrabble letters. And if you're writing the word down, you can scratch out the letter C so that you are doing this in a way that you're taking yourself out from the middle of all of it. And what if you could see yourself for your amazingness and your brilliance. And I like to call it the three Gs because I believe that you have genius and you have gifts and you have greatness inside of you. And it's a combination that's unique to you and it makes you you. The genius, gifts and greatness inside of Marci are gonna be different from the genius, gifts and greatness inside of me. And we get to do our different things where we send out our positive impact out into the world. And so when you see yourself for who you really are or remembering the truth of yourself, like I do when my little eight-year-old self came back me, like, when you see yourself first and you put yourself first, now on your piece of paper, write the letter C in front of all the other letters. That's where the magic happens, the transformation, that now instead of being a reactor, you are the creator. You are creating the best version of yourself in any given moment. And so when adversity hits or a distraction comes or a disruption happens, we can't control everything, but we can control our response. And so in that sense of control, we are creating the best moment of ourselves. Instead of being a reactor to the day, you are now creating the day, the week, the year, the life that you truly want. This is the message, Marci, that I realized, I wanted to create that quest to figure out who is Ly. And now I'm creating how does Ly get to show up in the world? And I get to create the morning when I first wake up, is it dreading like, ⁓ another day, here we go. Or is it, I get to show up today. I get to be on an interview with Marci and take my message and story out to the world. I get to show up and serve. And this is where I get to best do this inside of my G3 Mastermind. Like I said, that's for your genius, your gifts and your greatness and help those women. They're high achievers or they're go-getters like myself. Yet things come up where they feel resistance or they feel imposter syndrome. And they're am I not where I think I should be in life? And it's like, okay, let's talk about that. What's the conversation? I've had plenty of those conversations. I've shared a few already, right? What are those conversations happening inside of your head? And are they serving you or are they sabotaging you and holding you back? And that's where I feel so blessed to be able to make that move from reactor to creator. And then together we get to create these positive impacts and ripples out in the world. Marci Grossman (16:06) And that's so important. Women with financial literacy, it's so much breaking through your mindset of who you are, how you define yourself. And here you are, you had had 30 years with the personal growth, positive psychology, and yet you still fell into a depression and hadn't even realized it. Ly Smith (16:23) Yes. Marci Grossman (16:27) It's important to take that step back and evaluate where you are. So in your mastermind community, do you deal with financial literacy? that part of your conversation? Ly Smith (16:40) It hasn't been yet, I personally value financial literacy because I think back in high school when we first learned about the magic, if you will, of compounding, and I thought, okay, well, how does that work? like, okay, compound interest. that means that money is working for you. And all right, well, how do I make that happen in the world? And I knew going into college, I didn't want to get caught up in any type of student loan debt, just hearing some of the numbers, and this is way back several decades ago, even then, that I'm like, I don't want to start my life off with so much debt. I want to either break even and everything is OK or get ahead of the game to where I can use that compound interest principle and make that work for me and ease some of that because I watched my family where we came through poverty into the middle class and where things were okay. My first encounter with dealing with financial literacy, because I don't think I learned financial literacy in school. And trying to figure some of that out. Well, I made the mistake of when I was going into the work world that I got the credit card and I would put some things on the credit card, putting faith that I was going to have my paycheck to pay it off. I didn't carry debt over, but I would like do that. Well, I didn't plan for the car accident that was going to happen and the car accident that would then consequently mean I would have to leave the job because I couldn't work because of my injuries. Well, then how was I going to pay for the credit card? And here comes debt. And I thought, ⁓ I don't like this at all. And then figuring my way out of that and blessings to my mom for this, she wanted to dig me out of the hole. And I said, no, mom, I did this. These were my choices that I made. So these are the consequences and you know what? I'm going to figure it out. And if it meant I lived on ramen noodles at the time, know, or pizza from friends or what have you, I found a way. And I'm so glad I made that decision for myself. And then I climbed out of that. And then I've been through trial and error, working through, how do you budget and how do you plan ahead? And then it wasn't until, gosh, after I got married and a little bit later in adult life that I learned the concept of pay yourself first and then pay your bills. And if there is debt, the different ways that you can do that. And I haven't been perfect at it, but I have gone through my ebbs and flows of doing it again and again where I would get ahead. A disruption in life would happen. It would drain the savings and then I would climb back out of it again. And this happened even in building my business, Marci where I was gaining momentum prior to the COVID shutdown and getting cash flow going in my business. And that was great. But when COVID happened and things changed, the money stopped too. And I thought, OK, well, while I'm putting a little bit of a pause in my business, I'm going to go invest in myself in some coaching and courses and programs. ⁓ well, I got caught up in shiny object syndrome. So there was way more money going out than money coming in. And it was to the tune of over a hundred thousand dollars across multiple credit cards. And it was also a communication that I did not have with my husband. The truth did come out and he saw that and he thought, what is happening right now? And he said, babe, I love you after he got through the anger and frustration and rightfully so. He said, babe, I love you and I 100 % believe in you. He said, but I need you to put a pause. He says, you don't have any clients right now. So you know, put a pause on getting more clients. I need you to go trade hours for dollars. And whew. Marci talk about some challenges. I thought I haven't been in the workforce. I've been a stay at home mom. I've haven't been in the workforce in over 20 years, which means I'm 20 years older. Who is going to want me? What skills can I give an employer? And it took a few months, but I finally found a place. It was a pretty good fit. I was there for 15 months. And because my money didn't need to go towards the bills, it went towards that. well, you can call it debt or you can call it investment. I was investing in myself, my husband, he's like, you know, that's debt on the credit card. And so we threw my employment paycheck there and his overtime, because he partnered with me and we got through that. And with solid discipline, we weren't going out to eat, except very rare times, we cut back on our entertainment, things that we were doing. And we just made the decision, did the discipline, and it took us what? Somewhere between eight and nine months. No longer than nine months. We knocked out the 100K. Marci Grossman (22:08) And you bring up some of the things, some of my favorite topics to discuss, which is communication and working as a team and discipline. And so many times you hear people talking negatively about hours for dollars and there's nothing negative about it. You don't need to be an entrepreneur to be successful. You don't need to work for yourself to be successful. You need to have your goals. You need to have a plan. Ly Smith (22:28) No. Marci Grossman (22:37) You need to have focus. All these things are so important, but really yours, I think, after we get past the shiny object syndrome and how much you can afford to invest in yourself when you're not bringing it in is just the communication and working with your spouse because that could have gone really badly. Ly Smith (22:58) ⁓ yes, yes. I was at a speaking event in New Orleans at the time when he discovered the debt situation. And Marci, I was afraid to come home, truth be told. And I have a very loving husband. He's not a rager person like that, but I thought, my gosh, I'm like. I think this might do a lot of damage here and I'm really afraid to come home and I am so grateful. And I think that's part of why I didn't communicate with him before too, you know, as the process of, I was accruing more investment slash debt type of thing that I didn't keep that communication open because I was afraid of his response. And you would think after. 15, 17, 18 years of marriage, you know wouldn't I know my husband better and it was how I operated. again, another reaction to a situation, right? Instead of creating that best scenario for myself. And when I came home, I think because of the travel time, he had enough to vent himself, whatever anger he had with me. And so when I came home, he physically put his arms around me and he said, No, I'm not happy, but I'm not going anywhere. We are. , going to get through this. We're going to get through this. It was a challenge because it was an impact on his trust with me. It was an impact on our communication. It also allowed him to look at himself and say, I know you have tried to have money conversations with me many times and I kept brushing you off and brushing you off. He's like, this is partly my fault too, because I wouldn't have those conversations with you. So seeing how individually we played a part in this and then how do we repair that together? And thankfully it has become a beautiful thing. But yes, I will be fully honest. I was very afraid of like, I am not doing this with you anymore. It was going to be worst case scenario. thankfully that wasn't. it and that we got through that one step at a time. Marci Grossman (25:11) Had you been aware of how high the debt had gotten or because it was on multiple cards you didn't really think to put it together and see what the numbers were? Ly Smith (25:19) Oh no, I was aware I just had a stronger belief in myself that through the coaching because the coaches were talking about, your high ticket offer, you know, five clients at a ticket offer would have knocked it out. And I thought, I believe in myself. I know the value I can bring into the world and in the transformations I can create for these clients. I just got to get better at my marketing. I just got to get better at closing the sale. And then when I have the clients, then yeah, I can get that return on investment, right? And then I was way slower at that process than the money was going out. And so I just fully believed in myself, but the turning it around didn't happen as quickly. And I wanna touch back. Like I said, there are different ways of making money, right? And if you are an entrepreneur and you get caught up in a situation it's like, okay, well, maybe the only way out for that immediate cash flow is trading hours for dollars, but there's no shame in that. No shame whatsoever. I knew I went in with the mindset that this is temporary. And then I will be able to get back to how I feel called and how I feel meant to show up in the world. And I thought, okay, and I just kept my eye on the goal because I will say that being in that corporate environment of having to clock in and clock out and I was in a call center. And so it was even an environment of like, I had to announce when I was going to the bathroom or almost asking permission and I'm like. my gosh, and that was probably one of the most frustrating things. Like the job itself was fine, but that corporate structure of can I go to the bathroom? Can I take a break? But overall, there was no shame in doing the job. It's like, you know what? This is what I need to do to take care of this situation. And coming back to my G3 mastermind, I would love to have women in there who do talk on financial literacy, because it's not my zone of genius. I only know the experiences I've had with myself. But I certainly invite those women into my community because we need a little bit of everybody in there to make it all work. Marci Grossman (27:46) Fair enough, fair enough. So one of the things you put on your sheet, because I have guests kind of fill out a sheet to help me get to know them, is that you play solitaire to reset. Now, I gotta say, when I was in college, if I was stuck on anything, I played so many games of solitaire, it was my way to just step back from everything because it gives you a place to reset your mind. It's not like reading a book where you then get invested in characters. Solitaire games are reasonably time controllable. I can have 10 minutes to play. I can have a half hour to play to just totally get away from things. Our phones don't do that because our phones suck us down. And the next thing you know you've watched 800 cat videos or whatever. Ly Smith (28:29) Well, Marci Grossman (28:35) But there's a limit to that. I think that's so brilliant. I saw that, and I was just like, ⁓ I hear you. Ly Smith (28:44) Yes, yes. Our brain needs that little bit of variety, right? But like you said, it's like, yeah, let's not do it on our phones because we get so sucked in and then 45 minutes, 90 minutes goes by. And the hard thing about that is we can't get that time back. And it's like, wait a minute, what has just happened here? And I like knowing that I'm creating results and outcomes instead of consuming. As of late I came across a dominoes game that challenges me in a different way. And then another favorite that I like to go to is Sudoku. I like playing with numbers and I like solving the puzzle and yeah, and it's just a quick 10 minute break. And sometimes it's all you need to just go OK. And the brain is like 'oh' and it's amazing you can do those little games and puzzles. And out of that, when you get back to the task at hand, a new revelation shows up and so it opens up that creativity. So it's a powerful way to give yourself a break and yet open up the creativity to move forward. It's wonderful. Marci Grossman (29:54) Right? And you said earlier that you really didn't learn any financial literacy growing up. Have you changed that with your children? Do you talk about money or your journeys and your lessons and mistakes? Ly Smith (30:08) Yes, definitely. My daughter is 23 years old now, so going through college, even when she first moved out of the house, she would talk to me about like, Mom, how do you budget? And I told her, well, when you get your paycheck, pay yourself first. I don't care if it's one dollar or 10 percent of your paycheck, pay yourself first and this is how you do it. I tried to have better money conversations while the kids were growing up. My son, I wish I could take the financial literacy class that he took because he had a really fantastic class in high school. He's 30 now and he's married. He's been married for a little over a year now. But. What since 2014? Yeah, so since his first year out of high school, he has been able to manage his money in such a way that his lifestyle, he is taking anywhere from a week to two weeks, and he is traveling the world. And so since 2014 through now, so we're talking 12 years, he has over 70 countries under his belt. His goal is to hit every country he can legally, you know, adventure and safely get into. I love that for him because I get to live a little vicariously through him because he is living the life that like, my gosh, I wanted that, but I didn't think about it enough to make it happen for myself. But watching you go through, and he lives in New York, which is, know, he's got an apartment in New York. You know, that's not cheap by any means. He has his career. He's married now, taking care of his wife. She doesn't always travel with him. But then he gets to go to these various places and he doesn't do things like stay in a five-star hotel and eat all the fancy things. No, he wants to experience what's local culture and things like that. So it's so fascinating to see him do that. And he wouldn't be able to do that if he didn't have the financial literacy to manage his money to be able to live that lifestyle. And then now my daughter is figuring that out. The money conversation, we do try to have them a little bit more open. I'm actually trying to ask my son, can you give me some of the things that you've learned because I want to do what you're doing. It's amazing. It's so fantastic. And I would love to be part of the shift of having more open conversations about money instead of it being so taboo. That's the environment I grew up in, that neither of my parents, even almost to this day, they still won't have the money conversations. It's just don't worry about it. It's none of your business. And I'm thinking, why can't we talk about these things? I feel so blessed with what knowledge I know. And I know there's plenty that I don't know, but what knowledge that I know that I'm able to take care of the finances here around our house. We do have our emergency fund, our investments are growing and getting more diversified. And as we get closer to the retirement age, I'm actually trying to close that gap instead of we won't be able to retire until our later 60s, well, why don't we keep working with the money principles now so that it's not a matter of waiting till a certain age is because, hey, now the money is there. We get to retire now. And so I have a three year plan and that's what I'm taking action in doing with my business and with the way that we are managing our money so that I can retire my husband because his mindset, he's like, I'm just gonna work until the day I die. And I'm like, no, cause that's not fun. I want our life to be more fun. Let's see if I can do a three year plan and then we can retire you and then we can do the fun things, you know, because as our kids are getting older, we're hoping for grandkids in the future. But because they don't live here in the same city with us, that means we're going to need to travel to be closer to visiting the grandkids. So that's part of my life goals there. And but I do I do want to be part of that. there shouldn't be any shame in talking about money either, you know, in talking about the creative ways or the intelligent ways that we can, we could help have our money work for us. Marci Grossman (34:34) Fair enough. Ly, do you have anything else you'd like to mention that maybe we haven't covered? Ly Smith (34:39) I've so enjoyed our conversation Marci and I would love to extend a free gift to our listeners here because the core of what I do where reactor to creator is the foundation, but I do that with our self talk and if you go to rewriteyourselftalk.com I have a free gift there and it's a simple PDF. So many things that we say to ourselves, if we don't become aware of it, we keep repeating those patterns and then we might consciously wonder why is this always happening to me? Well, it might be the way that you're speaking to yourself and you speak that into being. So I put together this sheet of the most common phrases that we tend to say to ourselves that might be a little bit more on the self-sabotage or negative side and what you can say instead. I call it the "Don't say this say that" PDF. And so I hope it helps at least create awareness and see how it impacts your Marci Grossman (35:44) Great, Ly Smith, thank you so much for being my guest today. We appreciate you taking the time to join us here. Ly Smith (35:50) Thank you so much, Marci. It's been a pleasure. Marci Grossman (35:51) And to my listeners, I will be sharing a link to Ly's information and her generous offer in the show notes. Please check her out. She shares a lot of interesting information. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and stay tuned. I'll see you next time. This has been Money Marci on Marci Talks Money (and Life). You got this.