[00:00:00] Tiffany: You’re a real inspiration around actually having a well-rounded life. And I literally come to you… this because we talk, and say, how do you do that? How do you have time to serve on the board? How do you have the internal energy to have this garden in your backyard?

[00:00:15] And then I take it, and I test it out. Yeah. So, thank you for being a model. Your parents, I think, were a model to you of what it could look like, and now you’re a model to me of what a well rounded life can look like.

[00:00:24] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money, shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:49] Hello and welcome to the 100th episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. I’m very excited that we’ve hit this milestone in the podcast: 100 episodes. It’s hard to believe, but, to celebrate today, I’m really excited to share with you a conversation between myself, Tiffany McLain and Maegan Megginson.

[00:01:10] So Tiffany and Maegan are two of my business besties. They are the folks that I talk to all the time who have been walking this path with me for quite a while. Tiffany McLain is the creator of Lean In. MAKE BANK., and Maegan Megginson coaches entrepreneurs and therapists with building burnout proof businesses, integrating rest into their businesses.

[00:01:30] They’ve both been on the podcast before. And today we are having a conversation about our early beliefs around money and business. We discovered… As I was putting together this episode, I realized I should say that all three of us had entrepreneurial fathers growing up. And I was thinking about how so often we talk about our general money beliefs, and this is like work that I’m doing with folks in Money Skills for Therapists often is what are your earliest memories around money?

[00:01:55] Right? And what did you believe about money as a kid? But there’s this other very specific layer that’s relevant to all of us as well, which is business. What do you believe about business? What did you believe about business? What did you witness about business when you were a kid? Today Tiffany and Maegan and I take turns talking about our own experiences growing up with entrepreneurial fathers, kind of the lessons that we took from that, the things that we observed. We talked about how that shows up in our businesses now, and then we also talk about what we are trying to model, in Tiffany and I’s cases to our kids, and for all of us as well to the people around us, what are we now trying to show other people about business and money? I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want my son’s experience of money to be? What are the stories that I want him to carry into his adulthood? Because all of us who are parents are shaping our kids’ stories about money every single day in the way that we talk about it, the way we show up, the way we talk about our business.

[00:02:50] So we cover a lot of grounds today. We probably could have done a 12 part series on this. Of course, when you get three therapists talking about their families of origin… Here is my conversation with Maegan Megginson and Tiffany McLain for our 100th episode of Money Skills for Therapists podcast.

[00:03:06] You

[00:03:21] Linzy: So Tiffany and Maegan, welcome to the 100th episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast.

[00:03:27] Tiffany: Woohoo!

[00:03:29] Linzy: I am very honoured to have you both here. And I will say too, trying to get the three of us into one space is like a miracle. And also Steph Claremont was supposed to join us on this call, and she ended up not being able to make it in the end because of the eclipse that’s happening right now and trying to make sure her children don’t burn their eyeballs out.

[00:03:44] Trying to get four online business entrepreneur health practitioner folks in the same space. It’s difficult. So thank you very much, both of you, for being here.

[00:03:54] Maegan: Today I wanted to dig into our own stories, not just about money, because I talk about money stories a lot with folks, right? About the beliefs that we carry into business and the beliefs that we carry into money and how much that impacts our ability to manage it, our ability to learn about it… And this is definitely what I’ve seen over the last few years of doing this work is more than I ever imagined when I started this work. Those stories shape so much of how folks actually experience money and experience their business, right?

[00:04:25] Linzy: Like those beliefs and those somatic experiences and the emotions. But something that I was thinking about with the three of us, as I was thinking about this opportunity that I have today, talking to the two of you, is also beliefs about business, because there’s like a subtle difference there, between, you know, like beliefs about business that we have and money, and how those things go together.

[00:04:44] And with the two of you as well, something that I realized preparing for this call, is we all have dads who were entrepreneurs growing up, which I think is a very interesting parallel. So I wanted to dig into that. Let’s start at the beginning, with our own memories about business and money from those early memories. Tiffany, could I start with you? Thinking back to your earliest memories about business, and money, and what you absorbed, what do you remember believing about these things when you were growing up?

[00:05:20] Tiffany: I love this topic and also, whoa, what a big topic. I’ll do my best to be brief, and then we’ll see where it goes. For me, money, business, entrepreneurship, it can’t be separated from race. My mom is white. My dad is Black. They were married back in the day. They’re married to this day.

[00:05:41] Often people are surprised, by the way, when I say my parents are still married. I don’t know if that’s a race thing or just a generational thing. My mom always worked a stable nine to five job where you have a pension in the government, making your way up over time. My dad was in and out of entrepreneurship.

[00:05:57] He was always trying things, but always going back to a stable base of working for a car and… actually a used car salesman. My dad was a used car salesman. Cue all of the jokes. So going back and forth between that, trying to get out and do his own thing was a constant occurrence in my family as we were growing up.

[00:06:14] So I had, on one side, my white, stable mother, working consistently, making her way up. And on the other side, my Black father, who truly didn’t believe that he would ever be able to be taken care of and do well, working for somebody else, especially in a white town, a white city. His belief was if he was ever going to make it, he had to make it independently, and on his own, without relying on anybody.

[00:06:39] And in some ways that really served him. And in many ways that really got in the way of him actually becoming an entrepreneur who reached the level of success he wanted.

[00:06:48] Linzy: Yeah, and I do have to say, just when you say that people are surprised that your parents are still together, I feel like I was also surprised when I learned your parents are still together. But the reason, I think the reason that I think that is, you talk about them being so different, like your narrative about them, you’re like, two opposite worlds come together, and you’re like, well, two opposite worlds couldn’t possibly stay together… Yeah, but like huge

[00:07:09] contrast there between your two parents. and I’m curious, Tiffany, like with that, do you remember having specific ideas or beliefs about the way that your dad was operating versus the way that your mom was operating? Like, how did you experience the different ways that they were approaching trying to create stability and yeah, build that for your family.

[00:07:31] Tiffany: The idea of creating stability. So in reality, my mom had the stable ongoing job. My dad was trying to create a bigger sense of stability. And actually over time we really did move up the socioeconomic ladder due to his efforts. He grew up very impoverished in the worst projects in Chicago, and then back when he was growing up… Violence, you know, what he saw was just beyond what… I didn’t learn about it till I was much older, what his experience was like.

[00:07:56] So from where he came from to where he went was profound. He also had to bring a lot of bravado… He had to have a huge narcissistic kind of energy to actually be able to bust out of where he started from, and to go where he was going. But what that did in my mind was create a setup where I looked down on… Two things, both look down on a consistent, reliable position where you’re working for somebody, was devalued, and the idea of going after your own thing, charting your own path, was very much valued.

[00:08:25] However, in reality, my mom’s stability is what actually allowed the family to stay afloat through his ups and downs. So I think in one way, idealizing this doing it on your own, but also for me, there was no other option. I could, I literally thought as a Black person, as a Black woman, who’s quirky or out of the box, I’m not going to ever be able to work for someone else.

[00:08:44] I just couldn’t imagine ever working for anybody who would ever actually let me grow or see my potential. I just imagined that wasn’t a possibility for me. So going off and doing my own thing was literally the only option I could have conceived of in my mind, and yet I saw the disruptions it created in my upbringing.

[00:09:02] My dad was gone a lot of the time, our income would be up where we’re on top of the world. We’re rich people, by the way, not rich people… But in my mind, we’re rich people. and then on the other side, suddenly things were taken away. Or we were in a ton of stress because we suddenly didn’t have any money.

[00:09:15] Didn’t know where it was coming from. So it was this constant rollercoaster and insecurity. On my dad’s end, and also there was a, any day now I’m going to be a millionaire… Any day now the millions are coming. So there was also created in me this idea of relationally, we can put that aside, but even in terms of socioeconomic status, riches come when you just do the one right thing.

[00:09:36] And then in a year, you become rich. So there was this idea of richness as being rich is just around the corner. Having everything you want is just around the corner because you just got to find the secret key. Not like hard work over years and self growth. That doesn’t lead to riches. Those are the suckers.

[00:09:51] The real richness comes from Cryptocurrency or whatever it is that’s going to just unlock the key for us.

[00:09:57] Linzy: Yeah. It’s kind of that magical thinking, but it also makes me think of this other thing that I remember you saying that your dad said, where there’s sheep and there’s wolves? Can you remind me? The sheep get…?

[00:10:07] Tiffany: The sheep get sheared. A constant… That was a constant mantra in my mind. The sheep get sheared, Tiffany. So he was a salesman in all kinds of ways, probably relationally, but also in his professional life. But for him, sales was tied to one person is the sucker and one person is taking advantage of.

[00:10:23] So that really made it difficult when I was going off into my own business to think about sales as a different kind of relationship, or engaging with our team members who we ultimately had to build a team, or a client. I was really resistant to going into business at all because I didn’t want to live in this paradigm of suckers and people taking advantage of.

[00:10:43] And so I had to do a lot of work internally to move away from that as a paradigm for what business actually is and what it needs to be to have ultimate success. And I don’t mean just monetary success, but actually personal and interpersonal success.

[00:10:57] Linzy: I feel like we could just talk, Tiffany, about your story for the next hour.There’s so much here. But yeah, what I really hear there is there’s this real winners, losers, narrative. It’s either you’re winning or you’re losing. this kind of predatory, but you want to be the predator, right?

[00:11:10] If there’s winners or losers, you don’t want to be the loser. That’s not the right side to be on. you need to be on top.

[00:11:16] Maegan: Can I add something, or ask a question? Yeah. Okay. Maegan Megginson here.

[00:11:19] Linzy: Hello, Maegan Megginson.

[00:11:22] Maegan: Buckle up, Tiffany! I’m just kidding. No, I, so I’m still thinking about the sheep and the wolves and how interesting, but also that like, when you said that, what I heard was lone wolf… Not like the wolf as part of the pack, but You’re a sheep, and you get sheared, or you’re a lone wolf, and I’m curious for your dad, how did that translate in terms of community?

[00:11:41] Did he have community as an entrepreneur, or did he live most of his working life as this lone wolf? And what did you learn from that?

[00:11:51] Tiffany: Tiffany getting analyzed by two very good therapists. The hundredth episode. Here’s what I’ll say. Great question.

[00:11:59] Maegan: Don’t worry, my turn’s next.

[00:12:00] Tiffany: We’re waiting for you, Maegan Megginson.I can’t help but come back to race. When we think about the poverty he grew up in, and what it means to be in America and the structural system, a Black man in America, especially one without ties and without financial stability, you’re in trouble if you trust anyone.

[00:12:20] You’re in trouble if you are emotionally vulnerable. And where my dad came from, I mean, you will literally get killed. There are many examples he has of literally having dead bodies in front of him. This is his day to day growing up. So for him, it was absolutely lone wolf. You cannot rely on anyone because everybody, ultimately, all the way up to our very biggest systems of the government, are going to take advantage of you if they can.

[00:12:46] So that really has been something and continues to be something that I’m working on, is how to actually build community. How to build… How to collaborate within business, both within a team, but also within, relating to other businesses without this continual fear of, wait, am I being a sucker right now?

[00:13:06] If I’m open and vulnerable, are they actually going to take advantage? And I think actually our business has grown slower because I have entered into things where I actually wasn’t advocating for myself or the business because I really wanted to be on the other side of… if anyone’s going to be taken advantage of, I’d rather it be me so that I’m not the one, the perpetrator.

[00:13:24] I’d rather be the victim. And so trying to work on… actually we also can move forward and be strong and take up space has been something throughout our business and something we teach I think that’s probably the genesis of the Lean In. MAKE BANK. Academy is helping therapists actually understand their own needs as well, and not simply focusing on the needs of the other, their clients.

[00:13:46] Linzy: Tiffany McLain. Thank you. This has been the hundredth episode of… So much there. Yeah, what I’m hearing there is like, when there’s this model that you absorbed from your dad, because it sounds like your mom’s doing this whole other thing, right? She’s like creating the stability in your family, right?

[00:14:03] But that’s not taking the spotlight. That’s not interesting. That’s not magical. That’s not just wait till next month. Yeah, what I’m hearing is like, when there’s this narrative of good guy, bad guy, you don’t have friends, right? And when you grow up in systemic racism, where systems are set up to treat you disfavorably, and there are so many examples everywhere of the banking system and mortgage system, discriminating against Black people, yeah, it’s just you. Like, where’s the room in there to have an actual community or even have a healthy, positive relationship with the folks you’re doing business with, like with your customers when it’s every man out for himself?

[00:14:40] Tiffany: Absolutely.

[00:14:42] Linzy: Huh. Okay. Maegan Megginson, it’s your turn.

[00:14:45] I’ve got to give Tiffany a break.

[00:14:46] Maegan: Okay. Just gotta take a sharp left turn. I have so many questions, but I… I’m just going to stuff them deep down inside…

[00:14:54] Linzy: That’s very healthy. Just do that.

[00:14:55] Maegan: Next time we’re hanging out, Tiffany. Yeah.

[00:14:58] Tiffany: That’s where they belong.

[00:14:59] Maegan: Stuff my questions deep down inside. Okay. Can you just remind me: what’s the question?

[00:15:02] Linzy: Yes, where we started. Yes. Yes. The question is about your early memories about your beliefs and like interpretations about business and money.

[00:15:11] Maegan: Yeah. Yeah. It’s such a big question.

[00:15:14] Linzy: I know. Thank you.

[00:15:16] Maegan: Tiffany, I see why you made a face at the beginning. Yeah, it’s like my mind is racing with the ways in which, Tiffany, our stories are similar. There are some ways our dads were so similar, and then other ways they are so different. And that is fascinating to me.

[00:15:32] So, yes, I’ll start with a disclaimer. I really do love my dad. So just so everyone knows, I do, I love him. I’m figuring it out. We’re figuring it out. But like my early childhood, the season of my life when my dad was creating his business, was the most complicated part of our relationship.

[00:15:51] And I learned a lot of things that I do not want to replicate as a business owner. And I’m also extremely grateful for the financial privilege his success gifted me and created for me. So it’s really complex. It’s really nuanced, like the origin story of my life with my entrepreneurial father.

[00:16:13] So I’ll say just high level overview that my dad is a hundred percent a white man. So let’s just be very clear about that. He’s just as white as they come. And he grew up pretty poor and his success is quote self made. He considers himself like a self made success. I’m using air quotes because those of us who understand white privilege

[00:16:31] know that there’s no such thing as a white person being self made. But, what I will say about my dad is that he was extremely persistent and extremely driven to create a path for himself that was different than the path his ancestors had followed up to that point. My dad was the first person in his family to go to college.

[00:16:49] He had got an associate’s degree, and then he really worked his way up in his industry from being a salesperson. So it’s boring, but he worked in sandblasting and painting, which is very specific. I grew up in Baytown, Texas, which is where Exxon lives, ExxonMobil Gas. So I grew up around a lot of refineries, and all of those big machines and refineries have to be painted, inside and out.

[00:17:14] So my dad was in sales for the company that would sandblast those machines. So he worked his way up as a salesman and eventually opened his own sandblasting and painting company, and grew that company to the point where he was able to sell it for a lot of money when I was in very early high school.

[00:17:32] And it really changed the financial trajectory for my family at this kind of pivotal early adolescent season of my life. So I feel like my development as a child, an adolescent, followed the rollercoaster of an entrepreneur who started from scratch and took it all the way to the end.

[00:17:55] What did I learn from that experience? So, I’ll say, like, my most predominant memories are really when I was in junior high. And what I witnessed in junior high was someone who really believed he had to sacrifice everything in order to be successful, including his family. I didn’t see my dad much.

[00:18:17] Everything that he did was in service of making more money. All of the conversations in our house were about success and hard work and work ethic, and you can sleep when you’re dead, and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

[00:18:29] And, to be successful means making a lot of money early in your life so that you can retire early. This was my dad’s dream was to be able to retire early. And he did. And he is retired now when many of his friends and colleagues are still working, and the way he lives his life is not anything like how I want to live my life when I’m in my sixties.

[00:18:52] So I feel like I’ve just grown up with this entrepreneurial figure who was very successful, but had to sacrifice so many parts of himself and his relationship with me along the way.

[00:19:03] When you were growing up, do you remember at that time feeling critical or questioning his approach or was that just how it… How it had to be, how it was?

[00:19:14] Well, I think by nature I’m a person who is critical and questioning of most things, and that has always been true. And I think it’s actually… It was the origin of a lot of conflict that I had with my dad for the first few decades of my life is that I wasn’t afraid to say, “Hey, this thing you’re doing is really messed up,” or like, “Why are you doing this?”

[00:19:35] Or “This isn’t right.” And so we fought a lot. We had a lot of conflict in our relationship. I doubt I was able to say it this succinctly, but I think what I knew in my body was that he was treating his body like a machine, and he was treating his family as expendable.

[00:19:53] And, yeah, we had a lot of conversations about the things that didn’t feel quite right, but also I was 12, so I wasn’t able to… to say clearly, oh, I think you’re giving too much to your business, or I think you’re a workaholic, or whatever the case may be, I was just able to say, you’re being really mean,or mom is really sad when you don’t come home, or why can’t we spend more time together, or whatever was clear to me then, I would say it, but I don’t know that it was clear to any of us at the time that the missing piece of the puzzle was connection.

[00:20:25] And so I think Tiffany, it’s why I was so interested in what you were saying about your dad around the sheep and the wolves, because my dad, too, really similarly, there was always the sense of

[00:20:35] I’ve got to do it on my own. And I think it’s… it really showed, as a kid, that you didn’t get to have success and community.You didn’t get to have success and family, there’s just such this deep internalized capitalism that was reinforced in my upbringing that wealth, financial wealth, is the only type of wealth that matters, and I’ve had to do a ton of work in deconstructing as an adult to say, oh wait, no, no, no. Actually, financial wealth is one small piece of the pie, I want wealth in all areas, in relationships, in love, in time, in freedom, in travel, in creativity.

[00:21:13] But I grew up in a house where success was financial wealth, and the price that we paid for financial wealth was pretty profound.

[00:21:24] Linzy: Yeah, and I mean, it’s kind of like your dad did the American Dream.

[00:21:28] Maegan: He did the American Dream. 100%. And he would say he’s still doing the American Dream.

[00:21:34] Linzy: And it does make you think about the limitations of the American Dream narrative. Because in the American Dream, you never talk about, but then you also balance it with this thing. And there’s… like, yeah, there’s just no nuance there. And I think that I still see so many folks that I know, especially men who have this narrative of I’m going to do this, and then I’m going to retire, and then life is going to begin.

[00:21:56] But it’s But you’re really damaging your marriage right now. And you’re not actually having time with your kid. And I feel like your dad is on the other end of that spectrum. Like he did it. He checked all the boxes. He sold the company. Isn’t that the dream, right? You build the company, you sell the company, you have all the money.

[00:22:08] But yeah, there’s all these other, I love what you’re saying about like these other types of wealth, that you’ve had to learn to expand your

[00:22:15] Maegan: Well, and it’s still to be clear, it’s still a challenge between me and my dad. So my parents did get divorced. My parents are definitely no longer married. They got divorced when I was a senior in high school, and I absolutely see the stress that this business caused as a primary factor. I mean, it probably would’ve happened

[00:22:34] in a dozen other scenarios, too, but the way that his identity became wrapped up in the business, and the way that pulled him away from the family, I have no doubt contributed to my parents splitting and divorcing. The other thing I was just going to say, Linzy, is, so obviously, I’m an entrepreneur now, and this is a major connection point between me and my dad.

[00:22:57] We’re not super close, you know, we have a fine relationship. It’s just it’s totally fine, and I love him, and I hope that we grow closer as the years go on. But really the only thing we have in common in our lives is that I also own businesses. And it’s really hard to talk to him about it because we do have such different values about what it means to be successful,

[00:23:19] the choices that I’m making as I work to sell one of my businesses are very different choices than he made to sell his. And I can experience now as an adult, the projections that he puts on to me based on his understanding of what it means to be successful, what it means to run a business, and it’s really sticky.

[00:23:39] It takes me… I have to stop and pause and breathe all the time to really untangle what’s Dad’s belief and what’s my belief, and how do I create a tapestry where, like, all of that can be true, and we can be in community, and we can talk about this. But I don’t lose myself in the process. Because how I want to be in the world is very different from how he was in the world.

[00:24:02] I would love to also have his success, but I’m not willing to give up what he gave up in order to have it.

[00:24:09] Tiffany: Yeah. Which is a very important distinction. Tiffany, I’m curious what your reflections are with Maegan, what’s coming up for you? I muted myself so that I’m not jumping in and interrupting every 30 seconds!

[00:24:21] Maegan: It’s hard, isn’t it?

[00:24:21] Tiffany: Yeah! So I’m listening from the perspective of the American Dream, and all the people… I know a lot of people who have that idea: if I just build the business, sell it, then I’m free to retire. So can you talk to us a little bit about what doesn’t work for you post?

[00:24:37] So the making his American dream, as being his child didn’t work out for you, but now you’re looking at this person who has achieved the American Dream. And you’re saying, that’s not my American Dream. Can you talk about what you don’t love about the idea of suddenly being free, having time, ultimate time and money freedom?

[00:24:55] Yeah, I mean, I see a person that acquired all of these resources, and now all of a sudden has all of this time, and it’s well, what do I do? Where’s my community? In what ways am I growing?

[00:25:08] Am I healing? Am I becoming more of who I’m meant to be? I think, when you are deeply committed to the American Dream and then you achieve the American Dream, it’s like, “Well, I guess I’m done.” Existentially speaking, I guess I am done. I was here to achieve the American Dream.

[00:25:25] I was here to create something, and sell something, and then have enough money that I could just chill out for the rest of my life. And you finish that, and then what? You just, fuck around all day for the rest of your life? What do you care about? How do you want to contribute to the planet?

[00:25:41] I want to live a life with depth and texture and nuance and questions and exploration. AndI don’t ever want to be finished working. I think that’s the other thing that’s a big difference between us is that my work is my life.

[00:25:55] My work is what I believe in. I feel called to do my work in the world, and I don’t ever want it to be over. And when I see people who achieve the American Dream, and they finish working. It’s just they’re just waiting for the end. And there’s something really depressing about that to me.

[00:26:14] Linzy: Yeah, the phrase that one of my friends uses is talking about people who hit the retire early, sell the business, is that you’re the dog who caught the car. And you catch the car and you’re like, Oh shit, now what do I do with the car? I’ve got a car in my mouth. Yeah. And part of what I’m hearing here, and I think your dad, who is a rich and complex human, who we don’t know everything about, to be clear, but it’s what I’m thinking about partially is projects and energy, right?

[00:26:36] And we only have so much bandwidth for projects and energy and focus. And it’s like your dad put his focus here, and he did this thing really well, right? But when you’re focused all here, you’re not doing all these other things, right? Like you’re not cultivating that relationship with yourself. You’re not exploring, I don’t know, your interest in like Russian literature that you’ve always had. You’re not like building deep relationships with your family, right?

[00:26:59] There’s just so many ways that you can’t be when you’re putting all of your energy into this one project that, as you say, like when you accomplish the project, then it’s yeah, now what?

[00:27:08] Now what do you do? Because I think often, too, like when we spend so much focus on this metric, this number you’re going to hit, you’re not spending time cultivating all these other types of like skills,

[00:27:17] and ways of being, and, I don’t know, challenging yourself, connecting. Because like I think something that we all have in common is our appreciation for richness and texture and meaning, right, and like depth. And I think yeah, if you’re really going hard at being yourself. Business, I’m going to put a Z in there, Bizness…

[00:27:34] There can’t be depth there because if there was depth there, I think you would have to treat people well. You’d have to consider relationships, you’d have to slow down… you’d have to make different decisions that would be contrary to this kind of narcissism that I think helps people win at that traditional business game.

[00:27:50] Maegan: Right. And similar to Tiffany, the only reason my dad was able to create the huge success that he had so quickly in his life, (1) the narcissism and the willingness to sacrifice depth and family and et cetera, but also because he had a wife at home caring for his kids. My mom always worked.

[00:28:10] My mom loves to work. Actually, there came a point after my dad sold his company when I was in high school that my mom was like, “I don’t have to work anymore.” So she took a year off and then she was like, “This is terrible. I’m going back to work. I never want to stay home ever again.”

[00:28:22] But yeah, the reason he was able to do it was, yeah, because she was home. She was cooking meals. She was doing the laundry. She was taking me to play rehearsal. Like she was doing everything that he wasn’t present to do. So I think,isn’t it interesting that here we are, three women who had three entrepreneurial dads, and there’s something really cool here about the generational reversal of gender roles and the claiming of things that maybe our moms weren’t allowed to do or didn’t feel that they had access to.

[00:28:52] So that’s a part of this story that I really appreciate, too.

[00:28:55] Linzy: Mmm hmm.

[00:28:57] Maegan: One quick thing that I do want to give my dad credit for. Again, complicated relationship, but so many gifts. My dad taught me money skills from a very early age in my life. And I am so grateful to him for this. Like he took me to the bank in elementary school.

[00:29:12] He taught me how to open my own savings account. He taught me how to save. We had agreements, where I had to, starting in the third grade, I had to put 50 percent of anything that I got into the bank. If it was birthday money, if I babysat, 50 percent of it had to go into the bank.

[00:29:28] And he taught me how to save money so that I could buy a car when I turned 16. And then he went to the car dealership, and he helped me negotiate. And I’m so grateful to have financial literacy because I was raised by someone who values financial literacy. So I just wanted to say that. And I feel like that foundation of financial literacy helped me to go into business for myself at a very young age as an adult because I did understand the financial workings of the world.

[00:29:56] And I also knew what I wasn’t willing to spend money on, what I wasn’t willing to spend resources on. So I did learn so much from him and will continue unpacking all of this in therapy for the rest of my life, like the rest of us.

[00:30:11] Linzy: Thank goodness for therapy. We can all agree.

[00:30:14] Maegan: Thank God for therapy. Yeah.

[00:30:16] Okay. I’m going to jump in with my dad’s story. We have so many questions for you.

[00:30:20] Linzy: Do you?

[00:30:20] Maegan: So something that is interesting to me thinking about my entrepreneurial father, that’s really different from

[00:30:27] Linzy: your entrepreneurial fathers, is my dad loves people, and he loves community, and he wants to be liked and he really cares what people think about him. And that I think really shaped his relationship to business in a really different way. So my dad, when I was, like a baby, he was a snap on tools dealer. I don’t know… Does Snap on Tools exist in the United States? Is that a thing? I don’t know.

[00:30:48] No idea. He was like a tool dealer, and he had a truck, and he would drive the truck to different zones and sell tools out of the truck. So it’s like you had your own like areas, and when he was away and missed my first steps,

[00:31:01] he decided, okay, I’m going to take my entrepreneurship closer to home, and he started running a retail store. So when I was a kid, my dad ran a retail store still very much in the working class, like blue collar area. He sold work clothes to construction dudes. And he had a lot of Harley Davidson belt buckles.

[00:31:15] I remember lots of those being around. Levi jeans. I had a source when I was a kid, lots of Levi jeans in my life. So he ran that business, but my dad, I think, had, like, all the heart… This is what I witnessed, he had all the heart, he cared so much, but it’s just, he could never get it to work. So one of my earliest money and business memories is, I remember, it was, like, the house that we grew up in, I grew up in the country until I was, like, 12, and then we moved into town, so it’s the house that I grew up in, so I was probably, I don’t know, 8, 7, and I remember my mom crying and running up the stairs because she was so mad at my dad because he was never home.

[00:31:49] And I just understood that he was never home because the business wasn’t working, right? There was this constant kind of cloud hanging over us when I was a child of the business isn’t working, but it’s going to work. I’m going to run these ads. This thing’s going to happen. It’s always very similar to your narrative, Tiffany, of like, it’s just about to work.

[00:32:05] And my dad still, when he talks about his business now, decades later, talks about that. It was always just about to work and then this… then something would happen, right? So there was always this sense of it could work, but it didn’t. Meanwhile, my mom was an accountant. She worked for a corporation.

[00:32:19] She was the highest in that company that any woman had ever been. So she had to deal with this bullshit all day from these misogynists. Right? And she did the heels and the perfume and the eighties, So she would work full time all day. Pick us up at the babysitter’s, come home, make us dinner, like at 5:30 at night, out in the country. So she was really carrying us, is how it felt. Financially, she was the earner in our family, but also she was like creating that stability while my dad was like figuring this thing out. But yeah, I really learned that business is hard.You fail at it.

[00:32:49] Ultimately, my dad’s business did not work, and my parents, thankfully, were able to get a loan from my mom’s parents, who had been, like, farmers, who were very, financially conservative and savvy. My grandmother was very smart about money. So they were actually able to lend my parents $100, 000 to cover off the business debts.

[00:33:06] And this would have been in the nineties. That’s a lot of money in today’s dollars. It was probably more like $300, 000. So there was like this cloud hanging over my parents. Cause it was like, really cool that my grandparents could do this for them. But also there was like this debt that was owed.

[00:33:19] And I remember we would go have dinner with my grandparents on a set schedule and there’d be like a check passed to pay it off. So it was very much this thing of like my dad had lost the business, and my mom’s family had bailed us out. So it always felt like, yeah, with my dad, like it was like so much heart, but not a lot of like strategy and skill.

[00:33:37] And I asked my mom once, like when did you know that dad’s business wasn’t going to work? And she was like, Oh, years before he called it. She could just see; she’s an accountant. She’s very financially savvy, right? She could just see that the numbers weren’t working. The strategy wasn’t there.

[00:33:52] but I definitely, Yeah, I saw a lot of what not to do. Yeah, and I will say, Meg, even though my dad has the experience of being an entrepreneur, we don’t talk about business at all now. He’s never tried to give me business advice, which is really interesting to me. He’s just kind of like, you got this.

[00:34:10] He doesn’t even step in. and I think he’s very impressed with my success, and has said kind things about me, behind my back and in front of my face, about the business, but I think he’s… Now he’s taking this attitude that like, I have done something that he couldn’t do.

[00:34:23] And he ended up having a second career, working for other folks, salesman. My dad’s a salesman, to his core, Tiffany, same thing, and Meg, all salesmen. Which also I have to say, in terms of business beliefs, I really looked down on that when I was a teenager, I thought being a salesman was skeezy. And the fact that my dad was a Canadian who did business in the U S? I thought he was a trader. Right. So so interesting now, cause here I am. Hello. I’m…

[00:34:48] Maegan: Making your money off of us Americans.

[00:34:50] Linzy: Making off of Americans. but like now it’s yeah, now I sell to Americans, and sometimes I have Canadians who get mad at me that like I operate in US dollars, but it’s like, well, there’s 10 times more Americans than there are Canadians.

[00:35:00] I’ve ended up really doing what my dad was doing, but it is that whole like coming… I’m coming full circle or eating my words, I really had a lot of judgments that my dad, sold in the States, would be happy if the Canadian dollar was, like, going down because then he’d make more money, and now, I’m in the exact same boat.

[00:35:16] So here we are.

[00:35:17] Maegan: Oh, it always ends up that way.

[00:35:20] Linzy: I know. Be humble.

[00:35:21] Maegan: Alright, I have a question right out of the gate. I’m really curious about this part of the story when your dad took a loan from your mom’s family. And am I hearing correctly that he paid it back? So your dad took… and you were how old when this happened?

[00:35:40] Linzy: I would have been, when my dad’s business closed, I’m going to say I was probably in grade five or grade six. So, ten.

[00:35:46] Maegan: It’s always grade five, isn’t it?

[00:35:46] Linzy: I know. Isn’t it?

[00:35:48] Maegan: Something so pivotal about those years. Well, I’m just really… I mean, obviously, I’m curious about this because of the work that you do now and the way that I know you now to be this very financially responsible person. So I’m curious about what you felt as a fifth grader, sixth grader… What was it like for you to witness your dad, quote, failing and then having to go to your mom to take all of this money that he then paid back over years and years, the check sliding…

[00:36:18] Linzy: Yeah. And it wasn’t really between my dad and my mom’s parents. It was between my parents and my mom’s parents. So my mom stepped in, really, was the feeling. It’s my mom’s got this now, right? My mom is the financial manager in my parents’ relationship, and in my household when I was a kid, that was very clear.

[00:36:35] There were always checks on the table. Lots of checks on the table. Never in envelopes, always on the table. So I remember the kitchen table, like we’d come down for breakfast. My dad would always get ready for work earlier and leave for work like before my brother and mom and I came down in the morning.

[00:36:48] And there’d be a check on the table like every two weeks. It’s like when he got his paycheck, he would cut my mom a check for his portion of the household expenses,, like he would pay, but she managed all the money. She still does to this day. My mom is very financially competent. So yeah, it really felt more just like my mom had taken it over, and she was now managing this debt between my family and my grandparents, which, to be clear, my grandparents were phenomenal people, and in no way held this over my parents’ head. There was no shame, there was no guilt, it was just this thing that they were able to do, and so they did it, and it was, like, added into, this relational piece of, come have dinner, and just pay us back, it was probably quarterly or something, I don’t know what the frequency was, but it was built into kind of like the relational fiber of the family.

[00:37:32] Yeah, so it wasn’t a burden, but it was just very much Mom’s got this now.

[00:37:37] Maegan: But Dad wrote the checks.

[00:37:40] Linzy: No, Mom wrote the checks.

[00:37:42] Maegan: Mom wrote the checks, too. Did you have a feeling about this as a kid, or was it so well integrated into your family that it didn’t even seem like a big deal?

[00:37:49] Linzy: It just seemed like how it was. Like, yeah… no, I didn’t have feelings about that. I think I feltMeg, you’re not a Dr. Becky person because you don’t have a child that you’re trying not to fuck up. But Tiffany and I have children that we’re trying not to fuck up. So, Dr.

[00:38:01] Becky talks about this… thank you so much… talks about this concept of being a sturdy pilot. And my mom was very much a sturdy pilot. She’s just like, yep, this is what we’re doing. This is how we’re managing it. Like she had this real, like sturdiness to her. And so I do think I felt safe when I knew my mom was managing money. It was like, she’s got it.

[00:38:21] Maegan: Wow. It’s so interesting to me how a core part of the mission of each of our businesses, of our work in the world, is so closely connected to this maybe like small t trauma, complicated thing, that happened around business and around money. I mean, here’s Linzy helping people understand money and make smart financial decisions so that they don’t get into the position where everything fails and they have to take out a loan.

[00:38:54] And here’s me having learned that wealth is about more than money and that we have to slow down and really make space for the things that matter. And then Tiffany, what you were sharing about Lean In. MAKE BANK., and how you feel so, so drawn to support people in really tending to themselves and to creating community and not being the sheep and not being the wolf.

[00:39:17] It’s really inspiring to see. How we can take these places that we grew up in, these lessons that we learned, and turn them into really meaningful work in the world.

[00:39:29] Tiffany: I think that I’m hearing… I don’t quite know how this works with your dad, Linzy. So I’m curious if he fits into this paradigm. I hear the two different options of binary, if there are any, of using a business defensively to avoid introspection and growth, and using a business to lean into self understanding and growth.

[00:39:50] My sense from all three of us is that we actually use our business to understand ourselves better, and to grow as people, both for ourselves but for those around us. And I’m curious, Linzy, if you also felt like your dad was using the business defensively, or if he was actually using it to learn and grow and become a more integrated person, become more conscious.

[00:40:11] Linzy: Yeah, I think my dad… That’s a good question. I mean, I think that kind of language would obviously never be on my dad’s tongue, to learn and grow and become more conscious, but certainly learn and grow. But I think my dad is like a true extrovert. And part of what I see is like for him, his business was all about creating connections.

[00:40:29] Like he’s like our… the folks that we support so often who are just like, they just want to help other people. They just want to take care of people. And my dad, I remember, years ago when I started doing my therapy business, he was like, well, what you and I do is very similar. Sales and therapy are very similar.

[00:40:42] And I was like, like hell they are. And now I’m like, Oh, damn it. Bob Bonham was right again. Because like in the Myers Briggs as well, right? Like the INFJ is only one letter off from the ENFJ, INFJ is the therapist, ENFJ is the salesperson. They’re both about helping, right? They’re about helping somebody like to do the thing that’s going to change.

[00:41:02] And whether that’s like having a quiet, introspective conversation, which is a therapist role or whether that’s sales and being like, look, I know that this sandblasting technology is going to change everything for your company. And I’m totally convinced of that. And I’m going to stick by my guns until you buy it.

[00:41:15] They’re both about helping people, right, in different functions. But I think what my dad didn’t have, and still doesn’t have, is he didn’t have the strategy, right? He didn’t have the balance of… I really love people. I want to make people happy. And also I need to be paying attention to there being enough money in the bank.

[00:41:31] And also I need to be making sure that I’m setting boundaries. And also I need to be strategic about when I’m spending money and how, or making sure that the numbers actually work. I don’t know if my dad’s ever used a spreadsheet before. That’s not true. I’m sure. Bob Bonham, if you’re listening, I’m so sorry.

[00:41:44] I’m sure you’ve used this spreadsheet before. But that’s not his world, right? And I noticed this myself, too, when my spouse, when Rodrigo started a boardroom cafe with some guys, they didn’t read a single fucking business book. I was like, have you heard of books before? Cause for me,the way that I think about business in the world is like, there’s all these really smart people who have walked the path before us, who have figured things out, who have wise things to say, who have strategies and tools we can use.

[00:42:06] And we shouldn’t just be sitting by ourselves trying to reinvent the wheel. We should be tapping into this incredible knowledge that’s out there. But my dad didn’t do that, doesn’t do that. And I think that was really kind of his downfall was he just wanted to make money for his family and everything to be wonderful, and make his customers happy, and take care of his staff.

[00:42:25] And he loved his staff so much. He still talks about his staff with fondness, like years later. But to his own detriment, because there was no bigger plan that actually made it sustainable.

[00:42:34] Tiffany: I might be jumping the gun here, but I’m so curious. We all have beliefs about what our… we saw our fathers doing that put us off certain aspects of entrepreneurship, or we developed very strong beliefs about we’re not going to do it, or we’re not going to do it that way.I’m curious about the ways that has actually limited your growth at times, as you look back over your entrepreneurial journey, have these internal nos actually held you back in terms of how your business has grown, or what you’ve been able to accomplish that you’ve wanted to accomplish.

[00:43:09] Maegan: Yeah, I would say, for me, this is a theme I’ve really been exploring in my personal work the last year, and it’s my tendency to overcorrect. And I think this comes straight from my reactions to my dad in business, and in life, and in general. So overcorrecting, meaning like I see that, I see something that’s bad or wrong.

[00:43:29] So I just want to go in the polar opposite direction and do the total opposite. So if I see someone selling in a sleazy way, I’m just like, I’m just not going to sell. How about that? Oh, if I see someone do, manipulate or cause harm, I just want to go and do the opposite thing. And I think that I’m actively really teasing apart how I’m overcorrecting in my own business even still today because there are these shadow parts of me that don’t want to do it the way that my dad did it. And I think that I really, in my own work, I’m opening up space to say okay, I think we’ve overcorrected.

[00:44:07] How about we spend some time looking at the good things that he did, too. He was incredibly successful. What did he do that worked? What can you take? What can you learn from him? Take the good and leave the bad. So yeah, I think that’s a really great question, Tiffany. And I would say for me, it’s because I saw the ways that he made decisions that felt exploitative to me or decisions that devalued community and connection and family,

[00:44:33] I have slowed down my own growth by maybe not putting fuel on the fire. And in moments when showing up a little bit more, being a little bit more present, could move my business forward, but I’m so afraid of sacrificing the things that I witnessed him sacrifice that I hold back. And I want to let some of that wounding go so that I can more easily step on the gas when the time is right. Yeah. Thanks for that question. That feels really important.

[00:44:59] Linzy: Mhm. Yeah, and like, when I think about that question, Tiffany, I feel like my answer is almost no. As strange as that sounds, but by the time I came into building my own business, my dad’s business that didn’t work was so far in the past that I didn’t look to him for advice. And actually I had to draw a really clear boundary with my dad, which is not something I’ve had to do very often in my life, where when I first started my therapy practice, I was so excited.

[00:45:23] I just was elated, over the moon, that I was building this thing that I got to do on my own terms. And I remember having a conversation with my dad and I was like, it’s been quiet. Like I haven’t got as many phone calls as I wanted and he was like, it could be like this forever. This might just be how it is.

[00:45:38] And I was like, whoa.

[00:45:39] Maegan: Oh God.

[00:45:40] Linzy: And so I actually had to say to him like, Okay, I want to talk to you about this. But if you keep bringing that kind of stress and fear, I’m actually not going to be able to share this part of my life with you because basically, get your bad vibes out of here. Because it was his trauma.

[00:45:55] It’s his, he has business trauma, a hundred percent. My dad, when he drives by like a closed storefront, I remember driving by a closed storefront with him once, and he was like, every time you see a closed storefront, that’s somebody who’s hurting. It’s like his heart just aches for people like, for his story that he’s made up, which often is true, right?

[00:46:13] Like families do lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially on storefronts and restaurants. And my dad feels for every single one of those people. So I had to kind of almost put that to the side. And then for me, it was like, it’s always about bringing in that other balance and that skill set that I get from my mom, which my dad, I don’t think ever invited into his business, which is that strategy and groundedness and that accounting.

[00:46:33] My mom is not a people person. Like she likes people, but she’s not like my dad and I, like my dad and I love people. Like I’m like, I love the humans. They’re so interesting. They’re so cute. They’re so fun. We spend a lot of time in my business talking about how cute everybody that we work with is. We just love our students.

[00:46:46] We love each other. We’re like, they’re so cute. That’s my dad. My mom doesn’t feel like that about humans, but if I bring in like her kind of like spreadsheety groundedness with my dad’s love of humans, which I very much have, I feel like I do get this beautiful blend. So I just need to keep that balance of not falling totally into like… I just, especially now with my team, I’m like, I just want to give them all $100, 000 a year, and like they can work one day a week, and take 17 weeks off.

[00:47:11] I want to give them the world and I have to like balance… If we make sales, these things can happen. And that’s very much my mom coming in, right? That like groundedness that then allows me to continue to have jobs for my team, who I want them to have jobs for the long term. So that’s, yeah, I don’t know.

[00:47:26] Do you think… Tiffany, call me out. Do you think that I’m a… am I ignoring my shadow parts? Do you see Bob Bonham’s legacy in me?

[00:47:34] Tiffany: I’m leaving this conversation, like I leave so many of these conversations, which is, Wow, your family was so functional and healthy and stable.

[00:47:41] Maegan: I’ve said this to Linzy times, too.

[00:47:43] Linzy: Sorry.

[00:47:45] Maegan: One of the most functional families I’ve ever known.

[00:47:46] Linzy: I know. I remember once when the two of us were away with Annie Wright and it was revealed in a conversation that my family used to have dinner together, and you all looked at me like I was like an alien, like your family had dinner together? I was like, your family did not have dinner together!

[00:47:58] Okay. Yeah. I mean, I do have the gift of not having a huge amount that I have to undo from my parents. My parents, I mean, speaking, Maegan, about wealth, my parents are incredibly wealthy people. They’ve ended up being financially wealthy. They sold… They bought a house in the right place. They sold it.

[00:48:15] They’ve moved to the city that I live in, but they are also very wealthy relationally. They have a lot of interests. They have so many friends. They have so many hobbies. It’s like a joke when I call them, which of their 18 hobbies are they engaged in right now? So they’re not going to answer my phone call.

[00:48:30] Like they just have really built wealth on so many fronts, and it’s nice to have somebody to look up to and not have to just always be like, I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that, which is often…

[00:48:39] Maegan: So, a quick side story. I met Linzy’s family this summer. I visited Linzy in Canada where she lives. And I was giving her a hard time leading up to it. And I was like, I just, I can’t wait to see that, you’ve been bullshitting me the whole time, and your family is so dysfunctional, and it’s just going to be like the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. And then it wasn’t. We had a barbecue at her parents’ house and I was like, Oh, you literally just have the most, like the sweetest, most well adjusted family.

[00:49:04] This all makes sense. You make so much more sense to me now that I have spent the afternoon with your family, and Linzy, we’re happy for you.

[00:49:11] Linzy: Thank you. So much. Yes, there’s always a part of me that needs to tell you about my other traumas I’ve experienced, but I’m going to hold that back. My life has not been perfect…

[00:49:18] Maegan: Save that for later.

[00:49:19] Linzy: But my parents are great. Yes.

[00:49:21] Maegan: Your life hasn’t been perfect, but entrepreneurially speaking, you just, you’re…

[00:49:26] Linzy: I’m doing great. Okay, Tiffany.

[00:49:28] Maegan: I’m really, yeah, I’m really curious, Tiffany, to hear your answer to your question.

[00:49:32] Tiffany: I was asking the question. I wasn’t intending to answer the question. Holy mackerel.

[00:49:36] Maegan: Good. Yeah, try again.

[00:49:37] Tiffany: How the tables have turned. Shoot. In many ways, I’ll say in the question being, How I’m seeing various aspects of my parents, how they’ve navigated the world… I do feel now driven to give the same caveat you’ve given Maegan over and over again.

[00:49:53] My parents are wonderful. They gave me so much. If it weren’t for them, where would I be? What a delight. We’re continuing to work on our relationship, and it’s wonderful to have them in San Francisco where we could be spending a lot of time together. Okay out of the way, Disclaimer, We’re all growing and changing.

[00:50:12] I think that I’m really aware of the way trauma, I’ll say unconscious patterns, impacted my dad’s ability to be successful. Of course. And to be fair, he was actually, again, given where he came from, incredibly successful. They put me through college undergrad, like what? Somehow they found a way to do that.

[00:50:31] They also later subsequently went bankrupt at least once. So again, ups and downs. He was so… you said earlier Maegan, something about disentangling your mind from your father’s. And I think that’s been a huge factor in my own business. My mind quickly gets co-opted by others, and I lose my own ability to think clearly.

[00:50:49] I get confused because I don’t want to be the one who knows everything and is exactly clear about my path. My dad knew exactly what to do, exactly where to go. Nobody else had feedback because he knew, but ultimately he didn’t know, and it got in his way. And so I’m constantly wondering what is unconscious?

[00:51:06] What actions am I taking that are unconsciously sabotaging my business?I’m working through that now. I have an analyst who I see twice a week. You all hear about her all the time and it’s really been helpful, but before that really feeling like, to collaborate with people in a way that actually works…

[00:51:21] that’s been difficult for me. Finding mentorship or people to learn from has been difficult. I often struggle with wondering what I have a value to offer. Ooh, what do I actually have a value? So these little, probably all the tiny ways trauma makes its way into business has come into my business.

[00:51:39] But maybe the biggest thing, thinking about watching my dad’s trajectory, is how is he so certain that in six months we were all going to be millionaires, and then suddenly six months later we were bankrupt. So constantly makes me vigilant about what am I not seeing here that I need to know? And it’s been helpful over time to find people like you ladies, to be able to give me honest feedback, or point out the things I can’t see, and learning to find people who can do that for me.

[00:52:05] Tell me the things, whether I end up agreeing or not agreeing, at least I’m soliciting all as much feedback from others as I can possibly get without also losing my mind in that. It’s a complicated answer, but there you go.

[00:52:17] Maegan: Oh, no, that really resonates for me, Tiffany, both this thread of, I learned from my dad that I can’t trust myself, which is what I’m hearing, it’s like I learned I can’t trust myself, but also because there was no model for healthy community. I didn’t have anybody to help reflect me back to me. And it’s really inspiring the way you’ve, and continue to, change that in your life by being in community with me and Linzy and the way you show up and share and talk about your story, like this is such a powerful lesson for all of us.

[00:52:55] Tiffany: I want to put you in my pocket and have you just say what I said, but so much more clearly and articulately that I could ever say it. That’s going to be my new app. Maegan Megginson app.

[00:53:06] Maegan: Hey, maybe that’ll make me, maybe that’ll make me rich so I can stop working…

[00:53:09] Linzy: That’s it, Maegan!

[00:53:11] Maegan: And live the American dream forever.

[00:53:12] Linzy: A million dollar idea. You two are so inspiring to me.

[00:53:14] Linzy: I was going to say, I love you guys. I had that moment. I love you guys. Okay, so, starting to wrap it up. Let’s end on not a muddily trauma point, boo. Let’s end on a where are we going point. So, I was thinking about this, because we’re talking about parents.

[00:53:32] Mostly we’ve talked about our dads. Our moms could get a whole bunch of episodes to themselves as well. Especially Karen Bonham, lots to say. But, I was thinking, Tiffany, for you and I, we have kids, so we’re also modeling. Every day, we’re modeling to our own little humans who are absorbing all the stuff, what business means, and what money is.

[00:53:51] And then all of us are trying to put messages out into the world about what business can be, right? And what this life can look like, what these relationships can look like. So I was wondering, what is it that you are trying to put out in the world now? What are you trying to show yourself? The people closest to you? Tiffany, what are you thinking about with your kids? What do you want them to believe about business and money?

[00:54:16] Tiffany: Holy mackerel. For probably the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about three resources. This is something we’re talking about with our student body, too. Time, money, and emotional and psychological bandwidth. I think we can add relationships in there one day, but for now, we’ll stick with these.

[00:54:33] And I think about business as a tool to continue to increase each of these resources, so we can continue to show up how we want to in our lives. So how can we leverage our time to make more money? How can we leverage our money to get more emotional and psychological bandwidth? So to that end, when I’m thinking about how I incorporate business, and how I want my kids to think about business, my whole entire business is set up so that I can be present for my kids and, on some level, hopefully for myself too, to so I can show up personally for the relationships that matter.

[00:55:05] Business is a tool to do that. Business is a tool to understand more about myself. I would love my kids to take away the idea that, Man, holy mackerel, business… I’m thinking about you, Maegan, with capitalism. I’m like, Oh no, I don’t know how Maegan is going to think about this, but I think about business as a tool to make money.

[00:55:21] We can make money that way, and money can increase our emotional, psychic bandwidth, our ability to be free and present in our relationships. It’s just a tool. And it’s fun to think about also a tool for self growth. So I’d love my kids to be able to imagine… They can add value to the world that people pay them for.

[00:55:38] And in order to do that, they must know themselves, really know who they are in their gut, know what they want for themselves, and clear thinking. And if people are clear thinking, and they want to put that towards money, create a business, they can make an impact, help other people, employ folks, continue to grow and learn themselves.

[00:55:54] That’s really muddled, but I want them to… I want them to understand that business is simply a tool that they can use to create these other aspects of their lives, but mostly I don’t want them to think about business. I just want them to have a mom who’s present. I’m going to work. When are you going to work? I say, “I’m playing.”

[00:56:07] I’m going up to play and make money for us. That’s how I want them to think about their creative lives.

[00:56:12] Maegan: I’ll ask my Maegan app later to translate that for me.

[00:56:15] Linzy: It’ll be so concise, you’re going to love it.

[00:56:17] Maegan: You’re making

[00:56:18] Linzy: Maegan, you’re Maegan, no, I would like that. I would pay for that. Okay, Maegan, you’re up next.

[00:56:22] Maegan: Well, Tiffany, I think you nailed it, and I think that what makes capitalism exploitative is the focus on making money above all other things in the world. Making money to the detriment of the well being of the earth, of our bodies, of our relationships. That’s what makes exploitative capitalism a problem.

[00:56:44] Money isn’t the enemy here. Like money is a tool, just like you said, and I do think that dismantling capitalism requires small business owners like us having conversations like this saying, how can I remove myself from oppressive systems that harm people, right? How can I make changes in my business so that no one’s being harmed and we’re actually funneling our energy and our resources into the people, places, and things that matter to us you the most, and that requires saying no to a lot of like ways of doing business that people like my dad tell us are the only ways to do business successfully.

[00:57:26] So I just want to piggyback on what you said, Tiffany, because I think you actually said it really beautifully. Like, how can I show my nieces and my nephews and my friends and my community that business can be playful, it can be joyful, and most importantly it can support me in making my life so rich in all of the ways that matter, and then by extension I get to make the lives of everyone around me better, and then by extension they get to make the lives of everybody around them better. And it’s just this infinite ripple effect of goodness that all starts with the business that makes money for me day to day.

[00:58:04] Tiffany: Can you say, Tiffany, to answer this question and then can you just plug in Maegan’s answer and I’ll move my mouth and it’ll look like I said all of that so gloriously?

[00:58:14] Linzy: No, we like your answer. We like your answer a lot.

[00:58:16] Maegan: Yeah, and I only arrived at my answer because of your answer. So I feel like this just takes us back to the beginning of… we need each other. We need to be in community. Like when we’re operating like lone wolves, like my dad did, like your dad did, Tiffany, like we, of course, will continue perpetuating the harmful ways of operating because they thrive on us being isolated.

[00:58:37] It’s by being in dialogue about this together, we get to expand the way we think about all of this, and that’s the power. The power is in the community conversation. So, yeah. I’m just like, Linzy, I’m so glad that you did this. Okay, Linzy, we, but obviously we really want to know your answer, too.

[00:58:54] Linzy: Building on your answers, which were both brilliant, especially Tiffany’s, the words that come to mind for me, and this is possibly partially it’s I want to show my child what I didn’t experience, right? Like I feel like for me as a child, business was heavy. It was foreboding. It was like this dark cloud of Eugh, it’s maybe going to work, but it’s not working.

[00:59:14] I don’t think I ever really believed that it was going to be this magical thing. It always did feel like this kind of burden. And when I think about what I want to be modeling to my son, is expansiveness, lightness. This is also about my own personal growth, right? Because so much of my coping and like my nervous system response when I’m under stress is to go small, fade out, quiet, heavy.

[00:59:37] And so, so much for me about the business has been about, as you said Meg, like when you really own your… yourself, your gifts, you can find ways to make that your living, and you can find ways to even make that living for other people. If I think about my business now, it’s not just my living.

[00:59:55] I have two full time people who work for me. I have three contractors who have fairly significant contracts with me that’s probably 30 to 50 percent of their income comes from me showing up, and like doing my thing and I have noticed like that’s been really good for my self esteem. Maybe my self esteem has had to grow in order to keep that going, but I notice now my son is five, and sometimes he tries to be like a little asshole. It’s like a game that he plays where he tries to upset me so he’ll call me like Mummy Dummy and… I know! Mean, right? Ouch. It rhymes,

[01:00:24] so it’s true? So I will counter him with oh, you mean Mummy Beautiful, Mummy Intelligent, Mummy Compassionate, Mummy Kind. And I can say those things about myself and actually mean them. And I was noticing that just yesterday when I was in a little bit of a back and forth with my son where I was countering something unkind he had said.

[01:00:41] And I was like, yeah, I could probably say 20 kind things about myself confidently in a list. And I think so much of that has been about owning my gifts and just letting myself be seen, and attracting the folks who want those gifts, which is not everybody, but attracting folks and like having folks come into the course and like them just being like, I’m so happy to be here.

[01:00:59] And I’m like, I’m so happy you’re here. And it just feels so generative and connective that it’s it’s just all good stuff. So that’s kind of the feeling I want him to have is like this sense of possibility. And then when I think about, too, like money as a tool, it’s we’re building out our backyard this summer.

[01:01:13] I’m going to do these big planting beds, there’s going to be apple trees and birches, and I just got the list this morning from our landscape designer, who I love, of these plants, and it just made my heart sing… This list of like 40 plants that we’re going to plant in the backyard and like I love that I get to pay him to be in his zone of genius and design this incredible thing that I could never do and we’re going to create that in the world and we’re going to share that with our tenants like it does feel like this gorgeous ripple effect when you have the tool that is money to like make cool shit happen and support other people in their own like gifts and livelihoods. So that’s… it.

[01:01:44] Yeah, that’s what I want my son to be absorbing about business and money.

[01:01:47] Tiffany: Beautiful. Mommy Beautiful. Beautiful.

[01:01:50] Maegan: Mummy Beautiful.

[01:01:52] Tiffany: Mommy Smart. Mommy Smart.

[01:01:54] Maegan: Linzy, while we’re on the compliment train, can Tiffany and I just say a couple nice things to you because it is your 100th podcast episode? Are you open to that?

[01:02:03] Linzy: I, yeah. I wouldn’t be upset if you did that. Yeah.

[01:02:05] Maegan: I mean, I’m just so proud of you, Linzy. Track us back in time to, when was it? 2016? 2017? I always forget which year it was.

[01:02:14] Whatever. It was way back then. We were in a mastermind group hosted by Tiffany, and we were in San Francisco, and we met each other, and we were both just these little therapists who had dreams of, doing other things, and, here we are on your freaking 100th episode of this podcast, which Linzy told us before we recorded is in the top 2.5% of podcasts on the entire planet Earth, which is amazing! And Linzy, it’s just what you’re talking about, you want to teach Auggie, you are. Every single day. But you’re not only teaching it to him, you’re teaching it to all of us, so, I’m so proud of you, and I’m so grateful to be your friend.

[01:02:53] Linzy: Thanks,

[01:02:53] Tiffany: Yeah. First of all, you were never a baby therapist, Maegan. When you and Linzy showed up back in whenever that was, 2016, you were already baller. So I was like, what am I going to possibly be able to help these two with? Likewise, Linzy, you were… I don’t know if I can tell you this. I’m so inspired by you.

[01:03:09] We even just two weeks ago, put a little garden bed in our backyard because Linzy is somebody who you have rich relationships, you’re involved with the school, you’re building things in your backyard, and you’re running a business, and you’re hiring people, and you’re having these huge successes like being in the top 2.5% of podcasts. You’re a real inspiration around actually having the well rounded life. And I literally come to you… you know this because we talk, and say, how do you do that? How do you have time to serve on the board? How do you have the internal energy to have this garden in your backyard?

[01:03:40] And then I take it and I test it out. Yeah. So, thank you for being a model. Your parents, I think, were a model to you of what it could look like, and now you’re a model to me of what a well rounded life can look like. I’ve actually been able to implement friendships now. I have friends that I go out on walks with, or at this garden that I’m now doing with my kids in the backyard, because I’m paying attention to and learning from how you live your life.

[01:04:02] Linzy: Thanks, friends. This is so nice. And it does make me excited because we’re going to be together for my 40th birthday. Because that’s another expansive thing that I’m doing where I turned 40, and I’m going to make a big fucking deal out of it. So we’re going to be together in London, going to high tea, and going to bookstores.

[01:04:18] And I’m so excited because I find with you two as well… I’m going to keep the love fest short enough, but, every time I spend time with the two of you in person, too, I feel like my cup fills right back up. Like it’s like I’ve been high for a long time and, Yeah. I think for a little while there, I had the challenge of like, how do I find friends in town that I like as much as Tiffany and Maegan who live on the other side of the continent? You set the bar high! You are hard to beat.

[01:04:44] You truly are. So I feel really blessed to have both of you in my life. It’s been a huge gift. Tiffany, you changed everybody’s life when you did Next in 2016 slash 17, whatever year it was in San Francisco. That was for me, like when I pushed go on the business, but it’s also, I think when I pushed go on No, I am going to take myself seriously, and I am going to, think about what I actually want life to look like, and, it’s really happening, and that’s, an immense gift, and you two are a huge part of that, so thank you. Thank you to both of you for coming on the 100th episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast.

[01:05:14] Maegan: Such an honor!

[01:05:15] Linzy: Yeah, I’m so glad. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so excited to share this.

[01:05:18] Maegan: But I would love you both to plug yourselves, so folks can find you and follow you if they want to get further into your world, Tiffany McLain will start with you.

[01:05:28] Tiffany: I would say go to leaninmakebank. com. That’s the best place to go to get started, and get our fun with fees calculator.

[01:05:34] Linzy: That calculator is amazing.

[01:05:35] Maegan: Your fun with feet calculator is so great. I’ve given it to so many people. I’ve used it so many times. It’s just great. Shameless plug for Tiffany. Okay. Hi. Yes. you can find me at Maeganmegginson.Com. Linzy will tell you how to spell my name in the show notes, and I would love for you to join my Deeply Rested newsletter.

[01:05:52] Linzy: Do it. All right. Thank you, friends. This was really fun.

[01:05:57] Tiffany: Thanks, Linzy.

[01:05:57] Maegan: Thanks, Linzy.

[01:06:13] Linzy: Coming to the end of this conversation, I feel immense gratitude for my friends.I’m very blessed. And I really encourage folks who are listening, if you do not have folks in your own world who are also walking the same path that you’re walking, whether that’s solo practice, or group practice, or looking to expand into larger kind of coaching offers or courses like Maegan and Tiffany and I do, get those people in your world.

[01:06:40] It really does change everything. And I think that the pieces that Tiffany and Maegan were talking about today, like what they witnessed with their own fathers and this kind of lone wolf version of business, this kind of like predatory capitalism where there’s winners and losers and it’s cutthroat, it really can be different.

[01:06:56] And part of it being different is having folks around you who you trust, who have values that align with your values, who can call you out. If you’re doing something that doesn’t align with your values, who you can talk through about the challenges that are coming up, have those deeper conversations.

[01:07:12] I think having that support, for me at least, has been such a huge part of being able to actually grow a business that I’m proud of that actually reflects my values, where I feel like I’m not like, saying one thing and doing another. Having the right people is so, so, so important. I think especially for therapists and health practitioners where it’s so easy to be isolated in private practice and be by yourself, and not have those sounding boards to talk things through, and really be clear on what you’re doing and why and where you want to be going.

[01:07:38] If you don’t have business besties, get business besties. It is a very worthwhile thing to put your energy into. So, Maegan and Tiffany, you can find the links for them in the show notes. As Maegan said, you’ll see the spelling of Maegan’s name in the show notes as well, because it’s not your typical Maegan Megginson.

[01:07:53] But just so, so grateful to Tiffany and Maegan for coming on the podcast today. You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts. And if you’ve been thinking about leaving a review for the podcast, and every time you’re like, next time I’ll do it. This is what I’m asking you for my 100th podcast birthday.

[01:08:12] Let’s just say this is my birthday. Let’s say this was my 100th birthday podcast. I would so appreciate it if you could take 30 seconds to commemorate the 100th episode of the podcast to go over and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It really does make a huge difference. It lets folks see that people are listening to the podcast.

[01:08:30] It lets Apple know that people are interested. It helps people to find us. It helps people to understand what to expect, to know if the podcast is going to be for them. It would be a beautiful gift that you could give me if you can leave a review for the podcast today. Thank you so much for listening.