Bobbi Rebell:
I know the holidays are a time we're all supposed to get excited about, but sometimes it just feels like I can't celebrate until I get through my never ending to-do list, that includes gifts. It's exhausting. I mean, I love the smile on people's faces when I get them something that's going to be meaningful and that they love. But the truth is it's also really hard and I'm really getting tired of giving people the same old, same old. I mean, I feel like we're finally emerging from this pandemic and I just want something that will get them to smile.
Bobbi Rebell:
So, my team and I have been working really hard to up the ante over at Grownup Gear with some super fun new stuff. My personal favorite, the baby bibs and the onesies with phrases like, "I can't believe you're the grownup either." And new colors and designs of our top selling Generosity line. And, for the holidays, if you spend just $50 on any of the items from our Generosity collection, then we'll gift you a $10 gift certificate that you can spend on something to be generous to, well, yourself. Just use code HOLIDAY, H-O-L-I-D-A-Y. And thanks again to everyone supporting Grownup Gear. Your business helps support projects like this podcast, which remain free for all of you. Happy holidays, guys.
Kathleen Celmins:
So, what are the problems that you can solve? Not what are the problems you can solve better than anyone else in the world, but what are some of the problems that people come to you with and leave with a resolution?
Bobbi Rebell:
You are listening to Money Tips for Financial Grownups, with me certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebel author of how to be a financial grownup. And you know what? When it comes to money, being a grownup is hard, but together we've got this
Bobbi Rebell:
Welcome everyone to a episode of the money tips for financial grown ups podcast. I'm your host, Bobbi Rebell. Let's start today with a question, do you ever stop and think what if I could make money not doing my job, but doing something I love? Really, stop running around and focus. Are you thinking that now? I'm not going to tell you to just go for it. In fact, in many cases, you should not go do what you love for money. That is the advice from this week's grownup guest, Amplify Now's Kathleen Celmins.
Bobbi Rebell:
Her new book, MINDSTORMS: 25 Exercises to Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur has a lot of what to do, but just as importantly has some very big don'ts. And, trust me, I've done the don'ts, it's not good. You got to listen to Kathleen. There were so many incredible nuggets of wisdom in her book we raced through about 11, but we just barely touched the surface. So, don't worry about taking notes. As a reminder, everything is on my website, bobbirebell.com just go to the Podcast tab, show notes, you'll get the full transcript. But meanwhile, listen up. She's really good. Here is Kathleen Celmins.
Bobbi Rebell:
Kathleen Celmins, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.
Kathleen Celmins:
Thank you so much, Bobbi. I'm so happy to be here.
Bobbi Rebell:
I'm happy to have you. You've given me so much informal advice over the years about how I can monetize various business ventures of mine. I've taken some of your advice, I probably should take all of your advice because I'd be a lot wealthier by now, but I'm excited that you're going to your wisdom with all of our listeners.
Kathleen Celmins:
Well, thank you so much.
Bobbi Rebell:
And to that point, you wrote a book that is going to be very helpful to our listeners called MINDSTORMS: 25 Exercises to Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur. This book sort of echoes the kinds of things that you do with your in-person clients. So everyone can it at their own pace at home. I have 11 tips that I took away from this book. We're going to try to plow through them as quickly as possible to get them all into the show.
Bobbi Rebell:
The first one... And, by the way, you say that you should do these a little bit sleepy. I want you to explain why, while you answer the first one, which is that you're going to drill down to find your expertise. So, you're going to do this while you're sleepy. Tell us about that.
Kathleen Celmins:
Yeah. Especially this first one, because if you do it first thing in the morning, you think, "Well, I don't even know how I brushed my teeth this morning. Like I don't know anything about anything. I'll never figure it out." But if you take your whole day and you do a bunch throughout the day and you get out of your desk, you get out of your office, you go out into the world, and somebody asks you for advice and you come back and you think, "Well, I did give somebody advice today. And I actually last week I give somebody advice too." By the end of the day, when you're tired is when you are the most creative. It's not when you should balance your checkbook, or do anything mathematic, but it's when you can really think about your ideas.
Kathleen Celmins:
And so, when you're drilling down on your expertise, there's a lot of different ways to come about it. It's what do you love doing? I don't start with that, but what do people ask you about? What are you the go-to expert in at work? What do your friends ask you about? What section of the bookstore or the library do you head toward every time without fail? That's different for everybody. What are the ordinary things that you find yourself explaining frequently that come really easy to you, but you see people taking a bunch of notes on? That's a good starting point for people who think, "Man, there's a lot of money out there to be made. I don't know how to get a piece of it." To me, that's a really good place to start.
Bobbi Rebell:
And, like you said, when you're at the end of the day, you sort of have this cumulative knowledge of all the things that you've been saying all day, and maybe some of those ideas will bubble to the top and be top of mind. And, hopefully, you'll smile at all of the topics.
Bobbi Rebell:
All right number two, it is the small ideas that make a lot of money. That's kind of counterintuitive because I always think like we're waiting for the big idea. It's the small ideas you say.
Kathleen Celmins:
Maybe small ideas, isn't the right word. But it's the most simple, the thing you could put on a bumper sticker. There's a lot of profound wisdom to be found in the smallest thing.
Bobbi Rebell:
All right number three, not all hobbies and interests are meant to be monetized.
Kathleen Celmins:
That's kind of a note to myself or even all of the entrepreneur friends that I have. My example was a friend of mine asked me to photograph her wedding. And I thought, "Oh, that'd be really fun. I really like her. I love her fiance. I have a fun camera. I need a new light. Okay, whatever. That sounds fun." And I had a great time. We did an engagement session. I did wedding photos and it was really, really fun. And I came home and I thought, "I'm keeping that as a hobby because I don't want to take away the joy of just grabbing my camera and going out and photographing the sunset." If everything can be monetized, and everything, can you have to keep something sacred. And you have to kind of test to see where that line is. It's really hard to do, but it's the sort of thing where you want to keep your beginner's mindset, your amateur's mentality. It helps a lot.
Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah. And I think that's really important to remember in this age where everyone says, "Follow your passion for your career," but maybe your passion should just be your passion. That's okay too. That's really important to remember that sometimes work can be work depending on it shouldn't be miserable, but it's okay for work to be work.
Bobbi Rebell:
Number four, find your overarching topic, idea, and word. So this is sort of an exercise that people go through.
Kathleen Celmins:
Right so in one of the MINDSTORMS, we talk about expertise and you come up with a whole bunch of lists. And then one of the things you do is you highlight, and circle, and underline or whatever the things that show up on more than one list. Those are the kinds of things that you think about. Like you putting your ideas, you're downloading your brain into folders those are the titles on the outside of your folders.
Bobbi Rebell:
All right number five, this is something that I think a lot of your students kind of were hesitant about, but it is record yourself on video talking about your idea, and then watch it. The second part being even harder, I think. I have trouble watching myself and I make a living doing video content basically.
Kathleen Celmins:
Me too, and me too.
Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah.
Kathleen Celmins:
It is hard. You will find though, where you stumble. And the more you practice, and the more you dig into why you're stumbling, the better you can be about articulating your ideas in the future.
Bobbi Rebell:
And what do you say to people that just are so hesitant?
Kathleen Celmins:
Don't publish it anywhere. Don't do it on YouTube Live. Just put it on your phone and watch it yourself. To your same point about not every hobby needs to be monetized, not everything you do on your phone, or on your computer needs to be public.
Bobbi Rebell:
That's such a good reminder.
Bobbi Rebell:
All right, the next one is people are willing to pay to solve problems. So, come up with a list of problems you can solve. This, I think, is so important because there's so many products out there and ideas that may sound like a great idea, but if it doesn't solve a problem it's really hard to monetize sometimes.
Kathleen Celmins:
It's also really hard to talk about complicated solutions. And so, the more complex your solution, the more likely you are, as a person, as a business owner, to really talk about the details of the solution. But remembering that people do pay to solve problems period. And that's another way to get at what your expertise is. So, what are the problems that you can solve? Not what are the problems you can solve better than anyone else in the world, but what are some of the problems that people come to you with, and leave with a resolution?
Kathleen Celmins:
The more you can drill down on that, the easier it is to sell. If the problem you're solving is how to look good on your Instagram feed all day, every day. Great. That is a very specific problem you can solve. That's not mine, but...
Bobbi Rebell:
But it does sell. I mean people will absolutely pay to have someone help them with their social media.
Bobbi Rebell:
All right number seven, very near and dear to my heart and to yours, write a book and step on a stage.
Kathleen Celmins:
Yeah. And those are hard as I have just recently found out.
Bobbi Rebell:
Yes.
Kathleen Celmins:
But it's a really good way to package up a lot of the things that you know. And writing a book is really challenging for the simple reason that you think you have to distill all of the knowledge you've ever gained into one book. And so, one of the things I say in the book is no, write your first of 10 books. Commit to writing 10 books. Then, that first one is nowhere near the mountain it was when you thought you had to write your odyssey, basically, on that. And stepping on a stage is hard also but, depending on who you are, it's nowhere near as hard as writing a book.
Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, I agree with that. And stepping on stage, once you're on stage, it's much easier. It's the moment before you go on that's really the hardest.
Bobbi Rebell:
Number eight, create digital products. This is something I have really struggled with. You've urged me to do a video course and I am pushing back on you. I'm a bad student. All right, create digital products. Tell us more about that.
Kathleen Celmins:
Yeah so, let's take the how to look good on your Instagram feed all day, every day. That's a very specific problem that you can solve. And it's probably not one you can just say, "Be yourself and smile more." One of the things you want to do is really show people exactly the step by step process. And, in order to do that, you give them the steps they need. And so, that can take a lot of different forms.
Kathleen Celmins:
Digital courses are really popular right now. Independent one on one coaching can be something you do. In fact, I say to lead with that because if you're coaching somebody through it, take notes, tell them, "First thing you need to do is make sure you have good lighting." Oh, good. Okay so, step one, lighting. So, then you're building out your digital product as you're getting paid to.
Bobbi Rebell:
So smart.
Bobbi Rebell:
Number nine, every 90 days find a new income stream to build. So, you're doing that. Are you keeping the old ones, or you're sort of dropping the ones that weren't working every 90 days?
Kathleen Celmins:
Yeah so, it totally depends.
Bobbi Rebell:
Okay.
Kathleen Celmins:
So 90 days, to me, I think of that meme, the diamond mine, one where the person turns around right before they get the big diamond. You want to make sure you give it a full 90 days and, again, a lot of this is notes to myself, or my past self. That got to a point where I was convinced that people didn't need marketing help at one point, because I had not asked more than a handful of people, if they needed marketing help. And if I had not given it that full 90 days, spoiler alert, they do. Everybody needs marketing. But if you don't give it the full effort, if you don't decide to commit to something for an entire quarter, you're going to give up before you hit that diamond.
Kathleen Celmins:
And, to your point, not every one of them is going to hit. Maybe this market isn't interested in that solution. You're not going to know that until you've had conversations for three months. And so, giving yourself permission to change every three months, but also give yourself permission to stay the course for three months. Because every 90 days sounds, when we're talking about it, sounds like no time at all. But, when you're in the middle of it, feels like forever. The consistency will pay off down the line.
Bobbi Rebell:
The next one is build content on what you own not rent because the rules can change.
Kathleen Celmins:
Yes. So, you only own two things, and you don't even really because you're renewing your domain, but the two things you own are your website content and your email list. Everything else is at the mercy of somebody else's algorithm. And the algorithm is set up to make the people stay on that platform. Not to help individual business owners grow their own businesses on their platform. That's true across the board. So that's true with all social media platforms. It's true with course platforms. It's true with email lists that get your content.
Kathleen Celmins:
So if you have a newsletter, keep it on something that you can always access. If you have a course, make sure you know the rules of who owns your content. For a lot of times, the content is owned by, or kept hostage by the course platform. I have a former client who had a course that was selling really well, and then had six chargebacks in three weeks. And the platform locked her out of the content that she created. She could not communicate with. So, there's a lot of things that seem really easy are really... To me it's like building a house on rented land. "Okay, you can have this house. You live in it as long as you want. I'll never charge you rent," until they do right?
Bobbi Rebell:
Right.
Kathleen Celmins:
Then you've got something you did not anticipate.
Bobbi Rebell:
The final thing I want to have you talk about is that commercial success is not passive. There are so many people out there talk about digital courses, on all this passive income tell us the deal.
Kathleen Celmins:
Okay, the only passive income are investments where your money is making money on its money. That's it.
Bobbi Rebell:
Like stocks, you're talking about stocks, things like that.
Kathleen Celmins:
Yeah. Anything like that, where you put money in the market and you decide to take it out another time. That's it, that's the long and short of passive income. The rest of it takes a lot of work, which is why it's worth thinking about in terms of, yes, there's so much money to be made on the internet where, at the very beginning of it, you can have your piece of it, but it's not something where you can just set up a sales page and then get your Lamborghini tomorrow.
Bobbi Rebell:
No. And even people talk about real estate is passive income. It's not passive because you're either managing it yourself, dealing with tenants, or whatever, the electricity is out, or you're paying a management company. Someone has to be in charge. And so, therefore it's never passive.
Kathleen Celmins:
Right. Really, honestly, the only passive income is when your money is making money on itself in the stock market in general. So, thinking about that in terms of you're going to build this, you're going to build something, you're going to download ideas from your brain you can't just sit back and wait for something to happen. You got to work toward it and it's worth it.
Bobbi Rebell:
Well, I think your book MINDSTORMS is definitely going to help a lot of people that can't get to you. Personally, reading really feels like you're there with you in a session with your three or four, a tight group going through these exercises. I particularly loved the back half of the book because you're very specific about exactly what to do and the steps to take. It's not one of these sort of just thoughtful books where you're just thinking about things. There's actual steps of specific things that people should be doing.
Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about where we can find the book and where we can learn more about you and all of your stuff going on, all of your products.
Kathleen Celmins:
Sure. Thank you for saying that the book has its own URL. It's mindstormsbook.com and then I am, myself, on all of my social media. So I'm @KathleenCelmins on Instagram and Twitter, I have a lower presence on Facebook. But my business website is amplified, past tense, now.com.
Bobbi Rebell:
I love that name.
Kathleen Celmins:
Thanks.
Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you so much for being here.
Kathleen Celmins:
Thank you so much, Bobbi. This was wonderful.
Bobbi Rebell:
So, much great advice from Kathleen. I've gotten a lot, as I said, behind the scenes over the years. And I'm really glad that I was able to share some of her experience, and her guidance with all of you. So, definitely check out the book because there's a lot more there.
Bobbi Rebell:
And I related to so much of what we went over, especially the idea of not just speaking on video, I don't have so much trouble speaking on video, but watching myself back, that is really hard for me. It's part of why I'm bad about posting my appearances on TV, and the quotes in the press on my social media. I post a small fraction and I really should be better at that because do get a lot of nice feedback, and support from you guys when I do do that. So, hopefully, I'm sort of manifesting it by staying out loud. Hopefully, some of you will hold me accountable to it and I'll start posting a little bit more of those to share with you guys because they are kind of fun and I do enjoy it when I get the feedback from all of you. So thank you for that.
Bobbi Rebell:
And thank you also for listening and supporting this podcast. If you're any value out of this, please consider giving back by sharing on social media. Tag me, of course. Or write a review, or even just make sure that you're subscribed. It's now called follow on some platforms. So, this podcast, I do it for you guys. I don't make any money on this podcast. I don't take outside advertisers. I just share with you my Grownup Gear, which I hope you do support grownupgear.com. So, helping me grow the show is really all that I ask in return.
Bobbi Rebell:
Please make sure to check out Kathleen's book, MINDSTORMS: 25 Exercises to Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur. And, of course, big thanks to Kathleen Celmins for helping us all be financial grownups.
Bobbi Rebell:
Money Tips for Financial Grownups is a production of BRK media LLC. Editing and production by Steve Stewart. Guest coordination, content creation, social media support and show notes by Ashley Wall. You can find the podcast show notes, which include links to resources mentioned in the show as well as show transcripts by going to my website, bobbirebell.com. You can also find an incredible library of hundreds of previous episodes to help you on your journey as a financial grownup.
Bobbi Rebell:
The podcast and tons of complimentary resources associated with the podcast is brought to you for free, but I need to have your support in return. Here's how you can do that. First, connect with me on social media @BobbiRebell1 on Instagram and BobbiRebell on both Twitter and on Clubhouse where you can join my Money Tips for Grownups club.
Bobbi Rebell:
Second, share this podcast on social media and tag me so I can thank you. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reading each one means the world to me. And you know what? It really motivates others to subscribe. You can also support our merch shop grownupgear.com by picking up fun gifts for your grownup friends, and treating yourself as well. And, most of all, help your friends on their journey to being financial grownups by encouraging them to subscribe to the podcast. Together, we got this.
Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you for your time and for the kind words so many of you send my way. See you next time and thank you for supporting Money Tips for Financial Grownups.
