Podcast Episode: Dr Darla Bishop Guiding Personal Finance - Away from Sarcity and Towards Ease

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:00)

Dr Adala Bishop, welcome to the Motivate Collective podcast. How are you doing today?

Dr Darla Bishop (00:06)

I'm excellent. Thank you so much for having me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:10)

Any time. For those who don't know who you are and what you do, would you like to introduce yourself?

Dr Darla Bishop (00:16)

Yes, hi, I'm Dr Darla Bishop. I currently reside in the US in a state of Michigan, beautiful Lansing, Michigan. We've gotten our first snow for the season. And so I'm looking out and seeing that. And I am, among many things, a military spouse. I am a public health scientist. And what I really love spending my time on is financial education. Growing up, we went through a lot of things in my family that I recognise could have just been easier or different if we had a different financial situation. So when I got to college on a prayer and a scholarship, one of the things I did was study money. I wanted to understand money better. And I don't mean like I took a bunch of classes. I mean, I literally went to the library and took out books about financial literacy and how to use credit cards because I knew that if I could figure that piece out, plus my education, plus my new friends at the university, that I would be okay. And so that's what I spend a lot of my time doing now, is educating people about how to use the money that comes into their life to make their life feel really good most of the time.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:34)

most of the time. That's amazing. So there's doctor in your name as well. How, what sort are you?

Dr Darla Bishop (01:45)

Yes, so I'm a book doctor. So I am a specialist in Medicaid, which is a government insurance program here in the US. And so I can tell you why or why not your insurance covered your knee surgery, right? But I can't do the knee surgery.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:02)

Okay, that's

a great way to explain it. And so you really do understand health finance, and that is really crucial. I will later share how, I'll say it now, anecdotally, years ago, 2017, I got a tibial plateau fracture, and I realised that the money that you put into fixing yourself can influence how quickly you get fixed and how people care for you. Have you seen issues like that in America, where different types of money can get a different service when someone gets sick or injured?

Dr Darla Bishop (02:41)

Absolutely, depending on whether or not you have insurance in the first place. Even where you live has an impact because if you have fantastic insurance, but you live in an area where there just aren't great facilities, and you need to travel a long way, that makes a difference. And then also, how much money you have in your life before an injury or an illness can impact how you heal from that, right? We know that people who live in areas who have high credit rating, meaning that everyone's able to pay their bills even if they have debt, they're managing it well versus people who live in areas with low credit ratings are more likely to die 10 years younger. So that means that all the things that come with having money difficulties, it all adds up, right? So that means you probably live in an area that maybe isn't as safe or clean or maybe has more environmental toxins like pollution or not safe water, right?

And then on top of that, you might not have free and easy opportunities to be physically active, right? You don't have a lot of green space and parks to play in. It may also mean that you're relying on public transportation to get to the areas of the city or the state to work, which means you may not be able to work in as lucrative as an environment that if you lived in different part of the area, that also means that your schools might be overcrowded, underfunded, or a little bit of both.

So even if you are smart, you are able to reach your full potential so that you could go to university and potentially change your fortune when it comes to money. So all of those things add up. And so over the course of your life, they add up to taking away 10 years of your life because you haven't had all of those various opportunities to be healthy, to get healthy, to be surrounded in being in healthy environment.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:30)

This is going to be... pardon me, sorry.

This is going to be such a jam-packed chat because we can unpack so much of this, and we'll explore other things as well. Firstly, the idea that where you live can influence your quality of life. We need to look at that from so many angles because the reality is that it will cost a different amount of money to live in a different area, to some extent.

I had a moment of living in a tiny, tiny apartment in a great street in a different state. But when you need more space or more facilities, then it's going to cost more to be in some areas. And have you seen that some people need to overcome the belief of whether they even need more money, and they need to be convinced? Okay.

I need to go somewhere else to have what I need.

Dr Darla Bishop (05:36)

Well, the convincing isn't usually hard. People often understand that if they had more money or if they knew different ways to manage the money they do have, that things could be smoother or easier or they'd have something that was different and likely labelled as better. So it's not so much that people have to be convinced that they need more money, but it's about overcoming that heaviness of, what if I don't know how to get it or what if once I do get more money, I get a better job, I'm able to move to a different part of the city or state, what will that change in my life that I actually don't want to change, right? Like, there's this phenomenon against the kind of the first person in the family to have some sort of success, right? The first person in the family to go away to college, to get a big job, to live in a certain area, right, are all of these things that they didn't put on, but sometimes the people around them add some distance. Like, well, since you've got that fancy job or that fancy degree, and there's a lot of fear and real consequences to being the first to have some success in that way and not wanting to lose the family connection or the community connection, because needing to physically or geographically move means you get access to a different set of resources that would change your life for the better.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (07:07)

Have you seen some people needing to just accept that their families won't understand what they are becoming? Or have you seen some situations where everybody can journey towards understanding and growing together eventually, at least from certain areas?

Dr Darla Bishop (07:21)

Yeah,

I've seen both. I've seen it where, as the person who's kind of blazing the trail, you do have to do the work, and it is work of understanding that what you are doing is for the good of not only you, but for the people in your life, right? And having to kind of reinforce that with yourself. And sometimes that's through journaling, sometimes it's through self-talk, sometimes it's through therapy, and then there's also, you have to get to an understanding that not everyone can come with you at the timeline that you want, right? Like maybe they need to see that you have had the success and that that success and whatever price they have perceived you've paid for that success has paid off and has been worth it before they can say, ⁓ do you mind showing me now? I'm ready. I didn't know if it was possible, but now that I see that you're doing it, I know it's possible, so can you help me? And so even in my own life, I have family members who, when I told them, Hey, I'm making my budget or would you like to learn more about this? They'd be like, you don't know anything. I'm like, okay. And working to be totally neutral about their response. And now a decade later, they're like, hey, I saw you on TV. I saw you wrote a book. Can I get a copy of that book? Absolutely. I'm so happy to share it with you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:46)

They understood once he reached a particular level. Did you? I'm curious about the TV appearance; we'll get to that for sure. Did you have a phase of being in the building stage where you were still setting everything up, you knew where the destination is, but you were trying to gradually sacrifice a lot to get there and...

Perhaps that could have been more difficult for people to understand because they couldn't see the destination yet.

Dr. Darla Bishop (09:21)

And I'm so glad you said the word sacrifice, because I want to talk about that. I think one of the things that happens when we talk about financial wellness is that often there's a lot of value placed on the temporary sacrifice. And if I'm honest, I think I really approached my own money journey because I had been without for so long as a child and as a teenager and as a young adult.

that I wasn't going to deprive myself on purpose. I wasn't going to eat only rice and beans or only oodles of noodles because it turns out that I'd grown up in situations where that was the only choice. And so now as an adult that is working, that has the ability to expand and contract my income, expand and contract my spending, I am not going to impose artificial suffering on myself. And so I actually feel like I didn't sacrifice anything. I made a lot of specific choices, and I knew why I was making those choices, and I was so thankful to have those choices to make because I saw the women who came before me, my foremothers, my mom, my aunt, that they were so skilful at managing their money that they just didn't have enough of it, right? And so they were oftentimes given a menu of choices where they really had to choose the least bad choice, right, the least bad choice. They didn't have a lot of good choices on the menu. So as someone who was in the place where I was in a university setting, there were lots of job opportunities, lots of ways to find the resources I needed, even if they were money or not, that I was happy to make those choices and to have the choices available for me. And so I really did build in small joys the whole time, right? Like, where I realised I was in the grocery store.

And there's one particular apple that I like. Now I'm from Michigan. We grow like 15 varieties of apples in this state. And there's one that is my favourite. And that week that I was grocery shopping, my favourite style was not on sale. So I was going to get the other one that was on sale. And I remember like stopping myself in the grocery store and being like Darla, like actually talking to myself, get the apple you like, get the apple

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:38)

It's an apple.

Dr. Darla Bishop (11:41)

It's like 10 cents more, you're not buying 10 pounds of them. Like you're going to get three or five apples to put into your lunch. And when you open your lunch, because I'm packing my lunch, because I've made the choice that I don't want to spend money on lunch, you're going to be happy to bite into the apple that you love the way it tastes. Why yourself of that little tiny piece of joy for what? A dollar to save a dollar. And so like having to kind of talk myself through moments like that all the time.

Because I also recognised along the way that, because I was dealing with my past, my present, and my future of my money at the same time, if I didn't build joy into the present, all those things I was doing to have a bright future might be for naught. Because if my body did not trust that working the long hours and only eating food that I cooked or prepared, and saying no to friends or saying not this week but next week, because I'll have extra cash, right? If my body didn't trust that all those choices we were making were gonna get us to that beautiful future that we had planned, it would give out on me. I would never make it, right? And so I had to be very intentional about building the joy and the good into my life now, and frankly, to practice the good.

Right? To practice having a little money saved that it's okay. You don't have to send the money away. It's not going anywhere. It can stay there. Can, it's good. So if something comes up as an emergency or unexpected, it's there, but you don't have to push it away. Right? Like having to practice the goodness of life because I had had a lot of practice with it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:32)

You hadn't had practice letting money sit there, but also you are letting yourself enjoy the small treats. But this is really important. I'm wondering if you agree that everybody will have a different definition of a treat, and we need to draw the line somewhere. So my version of that is I love to buy occasionally good quality clothes, secondhand, saving a lot of money, but it's good quality.

And it's a treat. But then, for someone else, you know, one of the big debates will be the takeaway coffee.

Dr Darla Bishop (14:09)

Yeah, and so one of the things that I think about is I think about the three currencies because I think in financial talk, right, the financial experts, the people you see on social media talking about how to become a millionaire and budget your money, I think they focus a lot on money as the currency. But we actually have three that we're working with. We have time. Time is absolutely a currency. We trade our time for all types of things, right?

Energy. We trade our energy for all types of

and money. And the cool thing about those three currencies is that they interact and ebb and flow. And so that when you have a low amount of one, you might have a higher tank of the other one or two that can help you bridge that gap. One of the examples I'd love to give is when I was early in my career and I was working in an office with women who had already been professionals for 10 or 15 years.

So they had these beautiful wardrobes just because they literally had been working for 10 or 15 years longer. So they had time to build up a wardrobe. And here I am, a recent graduate, mostly with the free t-shirts and sweatshirts that came, you know, from being a college student and wanting to look nice because I thought I was also doing a great job, but I wanted to look the part. And I didn't have a ton of money at that time, but you know what I did have? I had time and energy because I wasn't parenting. I wasn't married. So my weekends were pretty much whatever I wanted to do.

So when I, to make up for my lack of money, I did something similar. I used my time to go search the thrift stores and the secondhand stores. Then I used my energy to make repairs and clean the stains and like get it really nice and clean and iron it so that it's so smooth so that it looks like a very beautiful piece of clothing. Even though I didn't spend a lot of money on it, but I had to spend some time and some energy. And so, in thinking about how to build that joy, that pleasure, that treat in, if you're low on one of them, can you use money to increase your energy? Can you use time to increase your money? Can you use your energy to increase your time, right? Like, can you do something that will set you up for the week, like meal prep? Meal prep is a great example where you've gotta put a lot of energy into it once or twice a week, but then throughout the week, you'll have something nutritious and on budget to eat, right? So how can you play with all three of those currencies to build that joy and that pleasure and the things that make you happy in?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:45)

Yes, definitely. I'm wondering, when people are starting out and trying to rebuild themselves, do you recommend the strict rule of zero takeout? Or would you go with a 10 % to 90 % rule for some people? Does it depend on the individual?

Dr Darla Bishop (17:05)

It does depend on the individual a bit, but one of the very first step I actually have people do when they say, I need to reset. I need to, I'm starting out, I'm starting over. As I say, okay, well, what's really important to you in your life right now? Okay, thank you for telling me that. And then let's look at how your money flowed in and out of your life for the last three, you know, did, where did you make money? How, how are you paid? You know, will that change soon? And then where did you spend your money?

And based on what you told me a little bit ago about what's important to you and you're spending your money, do they match or are there areas where we need to make adjustments? Because if you told me this was important, but your money's going here, then that seems like an opportunity for us to readjust. If you said this was important and you're not spending any money towards that because maybe you think you don't have any, maybe because other things have taken priority, well, how do we make some room in your budget for that thing that's really important to you?

Right? And so we're actually going to look to see where the money is coming from and going. And if it turns out that where it's going and where it's coming from, there's that gap, then knowing that exact number of what that difference is means we can do something about it. You know, if I ask someone, How much more money do you need? They say, I don't know a lot more. I say, well, a lot isn't a number. Right? So let's actually, how much does it cost you to live your life? Let's look at the last 90 days. What money was spent? What money had to go out of your life in order to allow you to live. Okay, great, we have that number. Now, if you were living your best week, your best month, the time where all of your bills have been paid, you were able to put a bit of money away for the future, whether that means it's a savings account or even for a really old you with silver hair, right? And maybe something unexpected, but it doesn't always have to be a bad unexpected. Maybe something great unexpected.

A friend you haven't seen in 15 years had to come to town for something, but they didn't really want to tell anyone so they didn't put it on social media. But they called you and said, Hey, I'm in town. Can we have lunch? And you say, yes, let's have lunch. And you buy the lunch. And you're so happy to see your friend, right? And you were able to do that without the stress of spending that extra money that was unplanned, right? So, how much would that cost you? OK, so now we have that number. I call it the magic number, the number where your life just flows. And I mean, we all have our problems.

But when they come up, they're inconvenient, right? They're not life-changing. So that magic number, okay, so we have your magic number, and then we know how much you have as income. If there's a difference, then we need to figure out exactly the difference and make a plan to close that gap. If there isn't a difference, it means we just gotta shift how you're spending the money so that you can be in that magical space more often.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:57)

amazing. I'm curious, can people easily grow their income to then make it easier to afford these other things that will make life flow? Or do you think they need to? How do you balance cutting back and growing?

Dr Darla Bishop (20:17)

I'm so glad you asked. So there are really two ways to change your money story. One is to decrease how much you spend, and the other is to increase your income. Now I myself have a very well calibrated budget and so I don't have a lot of room to even cut because every month I'm recalibrating it to make sure that it, that is what we're spending on childcare and that's what we're spending on food and that's what we're spending on sports for the kids and that's what we're spending for our housing, right?

So I don't have a whole lot of wiggle room to be cutting things, right? And many of the people I meet, if they are tight, they don't have room to cut either. And so the answer is, we've got to go increase our income. Now, so much of this is dependent on, again, your environment. Where do you live? Is it easy for you to go and get a side job, whether it's a temporary delivery job, whether it's a call center at night or early in the morning?

Is it that you could babysit or do house cleanings on the weekends or clean businesses on the weekends? Do you work in an environment where it'd be easy for you to kind of pick up a temporary side job for three or six months? Now, if you don't live in a place where that's easy, then that means we gotta do a couple of things. We gotta figure out is there a training program or education that we can get you so that you can get a better-paying job in the field you're already in?

Is there something you can do online so that even though you can't physically get to a place to work that will pay you differently, maybe you can sell a service or a product online so that you can get a bit of money in. Are you in the position to move? And not today, but maybe we can make a six month plan to what it might look like so that you could move to a different city. Do you have a friend? Do you have a relative? Do you have an old coworker or classmate who might allow you to live with them for 30 or 60 days so that you can get to the new place, get a better income, and then get on your feet? And so it's about understanding where you are and where you wanna go, and then almost like working backwards. So how do I get there?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:20)

Okay, the 30-day plan, the six-month plan. It sounds like that's a crucial part of this. Think ahead. And it seems obvious, but some people don't think about the long term. And in my experience during, for example, the pandemic, things were changing so often that I didn't think that I could plan ahead. I didn't want to guess what the next month or a year was going to look like because we didn't know. Do you think now we're at a point in history where people need to ask themselves, what is my life going to look like a year from now and even a decade from now?

Dr Darla Bishop (23:02)

It is, and I want to be really sensitive here because I know that if you have been in the survival game for any amount of time, if you have really been taking it day by day, week by week, that this is such a hard thing to shift. Such a hard thing to shift because you've been so focused on surviving that you might not have that hope in the same way. You might not have that drive, that belief that things could be different or better. And so I want you to know that I hear that and that one of the best things you could do is that if you are in a situation that is not ideal, to start paying attention and shifting how you talk. Because one of the most powerful ways we can change our brain is by changing our language. And sometimes it's hard to change our brain, but it's easier to change our language. The way that I saw this play out for me early in my journey, I was still in college, and I was working extra. think I was working probably three jobs, maybe four, depending on the semester. All part-time, like five hours a week here, 10 hours a week here, because these are on-campus jobs. So the professor or the front desk doesn't need a lot of hours for you, and they know you're a student. So they're only gonna schedule you for five or 10 hours anyway. So I've pieced together a bunch of jobs to make sure that I have enough money to pay on my responsibilities and save because I really wanted to leave college with some money in the bank because I knew that if I wanted to move to a new city, if I ⁓ wanted to go to a different place, I would probably need at least rent for the first month or two because my family loved me but wouldn't be able to support me financially. So I needed to have the money saved so that when I graduated, I could move without issue. And so as I was working, now, my friends would be like, Are you going to come to the party tonight or Are you going to come to the thing? And I'd be like, well, what time does it end? They're like, all right, right, right. You've got to work. Right. So does it, will it be over before 11? Cause I get off at 11. All right. Because you'd rather be tired than broke. That's one of the things I used to say. People would be like, Well, why are you so tired? Why are you working so much? And I say, because honestly, I'd rather be tired than broke in this stage of my life. I'd rather be tired than broke. And apparently, I said it so much that my friend would start to say it back to me, and they'd kind of say it with an eye roll. Or they'd kind of say it in a way where they were like making fun of me. But every time someone else said those words to me, it was like an affirmation and a reminder, that's right, right now I'd rather be tired than broke. So keep going, go to work, go to the party after, ask for the pictures, ask for the story. When you're walking to class, like it was a wonderful reminder that I was working towards something and that I had been so clear about what I was working towards that even the people around me knew it.

Right? And so that's the super powerful thing about paying attention to your language. So if you're in a place right now and you utter the words, I'll be broke forever. Well, yeah, you will be because you just said that. And so if you're starting out shifting that to, you know what? I'm learning more about money every day, or I'm seeing that things are shifting. I don't know how fast, I don't know how big, but I can feel that something is changing, or I learned something, and I put it into action, to like actually talk really positively about those things because then when those words hit your brain from the outside, you start to get a different neural connection. And then a few weeks in, a few months in, all of a sudden, you will be talking and thinking really positively about your situation.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:42)

You would rather be tired than broke. Let's unpack that. This will be the big quote of the episode because there's so much going on there. I have seen multiple guests on this show becoming burned out and then journeying to recover from their burnout. But then also there are the ones who also will work hard and the burned out ones work hard still, but in different ways and they recover. I'm guessing you would have found a balance. You weren't wrecking yourself. You were just managing your time and your energy differently and you're willing to do extra. And that's, I think we need to bust myths. This is just a whole lot of myth-busting. Okay. Because I feel inspired by a few people online who are saying, You don't need to not work on a weekend. I love that. Have the sort of, if anyone has the creative mind where you always want to be doing something, then it's a joy, and it can be great fun to create, to serve, to do either of those forms of work. And so if you can find the joy in that, it will help, but also, you're willing to be doing extra, but you're not ruining yourself, right?

Dr Darla Bishop (28:12)

Yeah, and I think one, this was when I was in my 20s. And so again, the energy bank and the demands on my time were completely different than they are now that I have young children and a family, right? Like, and so I want to put that into context, that one, I was in my 20s. And so the energy was also just more plentiful. And I didn't have that many demands on my time as a college student, right? Like, if you're enrolled in 18 credits, that means that you're sitting in class 18 hours a week and maybe have 20 to 30 hours of homework if you're doing it, which, hey, I graduated, so we're not gonna talk about that, right? But there are 168 hours in a week. And so that means that if I'm dedicating about 40 to school, that I've got another 128 to work with for sleeping, feeding myself, physical activity, recreation and work.

And so I used all 168 hours of my week to the full advantage because I knew that I could work hard at that time in my life without it hurting anyone except myself. Maybe, maybe I'd be tired, but I wasn't neglecting a child or a spouse. I wasn't, you know, doing something that would be harmful to my community by working extra. So heck yeah, I'm going to work extra. And I think the other piece, too, is I knew that putting in that work for a year or two. Because I think when I sat down at that time and mapped out, okay, I want to graduate with this amount of money in the bank. I have this much time until I graduate. I knew that I'd be doing this for about 18 months or two years, right? And I was like, well, two years, if two years can completely change my financial trajectory from this and for audio-only listeners, I'm taking my hand and pointing it down versus taking my hand and making it a hockey stick up, then that sounds like it's something that's worth it. And so a few of those actions that I took as a 20-something, as a young 20-something, opening a retirement account, putting money in a savings account, paying attention to credit card debt and making a plan to pay it down as a new graduate has set me up to where as a 40-year-old, I have lots of money in my retirement account, like more money than I think I ever imagined I'd ever have. But all because I put $5 in every few weeks or $20 in every few weeks as a 20-year-old, right? And so it's one of those things where if you know that that temporary squeeze, and again, I don't like to talk about it as a sacrifice because it was an active choice.

It was an active choice to work at Chris. It was an active choice to take those jobs and to do them. It was an active choice. So it wasn't about sacrificing. It was an active choice because I knew I wanted something different and that because I was working already at a disadvantage, right, that I needed to kind of overdrive to both overcome the disadvantage I started with and get ahead. And that doing that for two years was going to absolutely be worth it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:25)

This is fun.

If you feel disadvantaged, then you can just do extra to compensate for a while and rebuild. And if you keep that momentum, then you can grow even more than the people who are not doing extra.

Dr. Darla Bishop (31:47)

Absolutely. And then, like, my capacity is huge. People ask me all the time, Well, how do you get so much done? And I'm like, well, if I'm honest, since I was 20, I've always worked a lot of different jobs. And like the three or four jobs I had were all different. And so that means that my brain has actually gotten really good at changing between different things, but also finding ways to connect them. And so that means that I've got 20 years of experience working a whole lot taking things that don't seem like they make sense and helping them make sense to the other people. And so I've got 20 years of experience over someone who hasn't done this. And because...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:24)

Okay.

A couple of things we need to look at, because in a moment, I want to hear about how you manage your workload now that you have a family, that will be informative to the audience a lot. But you said that you find a common thread between the work that you do. And I'm curious about what that looks like for you, because for me, I look, I still love to volunteer a little bit, even though I need to work for money more. But both of those things might be Canva stuff or Adobe stuff. And although I'm not doing both of those things at the same time, you serve one master in a moment, but your brain can just see that common thread, and you feel the continuity. But how does that common thread look like in your work?

Dr. Darla Bishop (33:09)

So what I've figured out is there are a few things that really matter to me in the work that I do, whether it's paid or volunteer, I need to be working on things and with people and with organisations that will help me to improve the health of communities. Now, the great thing about that is, you know, how many ways you can improve the health of communities? Shoot, being friendly and kind and thoughtful improves the health of a community. Providing services can improve the health of the community.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:25)

Not

Dr Darla Bishop (33:39)

Working on policies that shift how this environment works can improve the health of community. So, the way that that looks, I'm actually pretty open to it as long as I can see a way that what I am doing is improving the health of this community. Cool, great. The other thing that matters to me is I have to work in spaces that trust that they have hired or accepted smart people because I need to have a little bit of flexibility because of the brain, the way my brain works. You know, you can tell me that this is due by two o'clock, no problem. But you can't tell me I have to work on it between 10 and two. My brain will revolt. But as long as I know that it's done by this time and however, which way I got there, as long as I got there, you don't have a problem with that, that I can work in that environment. But working in very strict time bound like production environments just doesn't work for the brain the way that my brain works. It just doesn't. So I avoid spaces like that. And the last thing, yes, yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:43)

Totally.

What, what sort of brain do you think you have? And I'm not insisting that you identify with any labels, but some people sort of see traits of ADHD in them, even if they don't think they could, could totally be that, or it could be something else. So, what do you think your quirky brain is, and how is that helping you in your success?

Dr Darla Bishop (35:11)

I absolutely have suspected ADHD. My therapist had suggested I get tested. Well, no, no, I said, should I get tested? She said, Well, you use it as a superpower. like, if you like, you're okay, like are any of these things troubling you? was like, the only thing that's starting to get harder as I'm now over 40 is the insomnia that can come with ADHD. But other than the insomnia, like this is a superpower. The fact that I can switch between things and get hyper focused, but then also come up and be like in the clouds has really worked in my advantage as my life. So I'm just going to keep rolling with it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:50)

Definitely. There's a sort of hyper energy that a lot of us can get. And I sort of wonder if the people who are more open to alternative aspirational paths. I don't like to use just the word entrepreneurialism because I wanted to really respect that there are people who are growing businesses well, and there are very official CEOs, things like that. And then there are people who are just starting from scratch and saying, I'm the CEO of the name that I wrote down yesterday. I want to really differentiate that. And I also think that you can pursue a lot of success without being entrepreneurial necessarily. Sheryl Sandberg is the classic example. But wherever we are looking to live a different life, I just keep saying that so many of those people have a very quirky mind. Do you think that it really helps us?

Dr Darla Bishop (36:51)

Absolutely, and it's another term that I've heard for it is like What is it, a multi-hyphenate or a multi-potential light? Someone who's like, when someone tells you Well, you got a niche down and we're like No, I refuse to niche down. I can't, do not put me in a box.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:09)

Okay, let's explore that.

We need to, we need to reference this. I don't know if you were thinking of Marie Forleo, but she calls it multi-passionate, I think. But okay, I got that right. Here's my take on that. If you find a common purpose and there's that thread going through things, then that's the difference. So my version was when I was in my twenties, I tried various forms of marketing content. As a Korean, some people occasionally would say, You are a writer and I was thinking, seriously, did you see my school reports back in the day? You've got to be kidding. But it's boxed in, then don't try visuals, you are a writer, that sort of thing, but even as a speaker, now, I, earlier in the year, frankly, for a while at the start of this year, I thought that to be a speaker, I would just talk to small community groups. That was the thing that I knew. And the podcast just popped up out of nowhere. And we need to see our skills as transferable. You are seeing a version of that where you are educating people with finance and growing themselves through your independent work. And you're probably using that in your jobs in other ways as well. And even because you are doing things independently and showing up on a podcast, you have that personal branding element to what you're doing. And even you talk quite confidently, you do need to bring in extra skills to then do one unified purpose. Do you think so?

Dr Darla Bishop (38:51)

absolutely.

And they all feed each other, like all the different things I'm doing feed each other in some way. In fact, some of the most kind of random jobs that I've had in my long career of many, many jobs are the ones that serve me the most. Like one of the best employment opportunities I had was as a waiter in a popular restaurant on my college campus. And what was so great about being a waiter in that particular restaurant is we had a full range of clientele. We had the broke students who were coming on Monday night for $1 burgers. They're like, okay, I want the $1 burger and the $1 fries and a cup of water, right? And then on parents' weekends or graduation, we had the parents who you could tell were just so happy that their child was graduating, and they're spending hundreds of dollars on a meal, ordering wine, ordering dessert and everyone in between.

And so that meant that in the moment when I'd get to a table, I had to be able to quickly kind of read what kind of table this is. Do they want me to be involved and to explain the wine and to suggest meals? Are they there because they're having a conversation, and this is the place that they had it, and they just want me to be seen but not heard? Are they on a budget and so they want to have a good time, but they also don't want me to spend too much time with them because they don't want to feel badly if they couldn't tip me big, right?

I needed to be able to kind of quickly assess what type of experience that table needed to have and then provide that to them, right? That helps me so much in podcasts, episodes, in sales calls, in interviews, because I can pretty quickly assess, ⁓ this is the speed, this is the vibe we're going for, cool, I'll match your energy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:37)

Yes, yes, and I love what you were saying. It's really interesting. We're talking about the past years so much, but we can translate that to our 30s and 40s as well. You learned about people waitressing and I wanted to share with you the example that came to me for a little while, more than a decade ago, about 11 or 12 years ago, I was at the front desk at the smallest school you could imagine. There were 70 kids on the books, and there were less showing up. But I learned everything and I wanted to give this lesson to anyone who is working for someone else. Because at that time I was responsible for the records. was doing what I can as a clueless person.

I was responsible for the records for international students, and their visas would be cancelled if they're not complying with requirements. But I was also responsible for checking on the welfare, and there was an elevator, and a friend who was teaching on the floor below knew if I was coming downstairs, something was going on. Someone needs something checked. And my nickname was Daph.

A dear friend called me Darth, and it was both affectionate and accurate, but it teaches your professionalism. And the reason I'm sharing that with you is because as the front desk, I could have sat there and said, the front desk. No. And I think that a lot more, more bosses would have greater workers or greater results from their workers, if we can let anyone be Darth when they need to, to really achieve something or let people read the room with all of those families and groups of people and say, okay, what can everybody learn from this person who is visiting this place? And what can everybody learn about what others need? Because then you have that effect, kind of like Disneyland, where the whole environment is set up to help the person who's stepping in.

Dr Darla Bishop (43:07)

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:11)

So I wanted to ask about now because you mentioned that you have a family, and your time and energy is very different now. There are two things I wanted to look at with that. I feel like it's so cliched to ask, How do you juggle your time as a mother? So I wanted to do it that way, but I'm curious about the differences and how it sounds like. So do you work for other people and also work for yourself now?

Dr Darla Bishop (43:36)

Yeah, so all of the above. So I work, I do still have a full-time job that's about 40 hours a week. ⁓ And I have a business that I run. That's the financial education business on nights of weekends. And I teach for a university, but usually just one class per semester. And oftentimes it's an online class. So when the class meets is either flexible or I just post the videos and respond to chat. So I don't have to be at the location at a specific time. You might have seen a theme here that, like, I need that flow because sometimes my brain is in teacher mode, and so I need to be able to grade papers if my brain is telling me we're in grade paper mode. And I need to work on a report when my brain tells me we're working on a report. And so having the ability to flex and move things around is what helps me be successful. And really that's why I'm able to do those multiple things is because each of those setups has that flexibility built in, that it doesn't so much matter, as long as I've met the deadline for grading, as long as I've met the deadline for the reports at work, as long as I'm showing up to meetings on time, then all that stuff in between isn't as important because I'm also going to deliver or over deliver on what I'm required to do, right? And so one, I've built a lot of flexibility in my life. The other piece that helps is I have gotten very good, like so good, like,

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:52)

Absolutely.

Dr Darla Bishop (45:02)

a master at asking for help. And so I'm an I think I mentioned very briefly that I'm a military spouse. So what that means in my real life is that the army actually moves me every 2.7 years on average. So every two totally different cities or states, totally different cities or states. Sometimes we get a few months’ notice, you know, three months, two months. Sometimes it's like, hey, we're cutting your orders next week.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:18)

to a totally different city or state, a totally different place.

Dr. Darla Bishop (45:30)

And so what that taught me to do is that as soon as I know where we're moving to, I start to build my helpers because I don't need the helpers all the time, but when I need them, I need them. Right. And so as soon as I know what city we're going to, I joined the moms of city Facebook group. I joined the business owners of city Facebook group. I joined the parenting magazine of cities Facebook group, because then that helps me find the babysitters, the doctors, the laundry service, the meal prep and so that as we're moving, I'm already building my list of helpers so that by the time we arrive, I at least have the dry cleaner that can do dry cleaning and laundry if I need the laundry done. The restaurant that offers dinner delivery that won't be too unhealthy because my husband's in the military, so he has to keep a certain weight, right? So I can eat whatever I want, but I try to be mindful because I like him being employed. A place where I can take the kids so that I can either drop them or make sure that they're supervised in case I need an hour or two to work without them jumping all over me or where I can find the babysitters so that if my husband is away but I need the coverage, I can say, hey, I know we talked like a few months ago when we first moved here, can you come babysit this week? Because I already talked with them a few months ago, right? So I'm doing the work of setting up my list of helpers, even if I never use them, so that when I need them, I'm not also having to search for the helper. I just have to go to my list and activate the helper instead of finding the helper, vetting the helper, and activating the helper. And so that's one of the things that I recommend to women, especially anytime they have a life change on their horizon, whether it's a move, a job change, going back to school or graduating from school, I say, Hey, what are all the things in your life that take your time or energy? Make a list of those things, and once you're done being pissed off, take a deep breath and think about who could help you with those things if you needed the help. I'm not saying you need the help today. I'm not saying you ever need the help, but if you have a list or an idea of who could help you when these things come up, it'll be a lot less overwhelming to activate the help versus looking for the help, vetting the help, and then also having to activate it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:44)

Definitely don't wait until you are in a crisis or desperate or something happens, and it could be anything. The thing that I'm inspired by and what you are saying is look for multiple groups, look for multiple types of people. And there are so many ways to do this. The Facebook groups are great. The community groups are crucial, and you don't have to join everything, but visit people, get to know people. And I don't know if you saw this in any of the cities you lived in, but I found in a few of the cities I lived in, everybody is a friend of a friend. So you can normally say, Do you know someone who or Do you know someone who knows this person? And even when I was in Sydney, it's a bit more spread out.

So not everybody will instantly know you, perhaps, but the degrees of separation are always more minimal than you think they are. So if you even need to find someone for anything, have you done things like the, do you know someone who can do this?

Dr Darla Bishop (48:57)

absolutely. I am the one, so in our neighbourhood, we have a neighbourhood group, and I always start my post, hi, me again, here to ask who you know who can help with this? Because I'm like, hey, just because I don't know, and Google and search engines take you far, but sometimes it's nice to know that this is a person who's worked in our neighbourhood. Like we needed a plumber and I was like, yeah, I can look in the internet, but maybe.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:06)

us.

Dr Darla Bishop (49:24)

My neighbor knows a plumber that they love and they use all the time, right? Well, hopefully not using all the time because that's unfortunate. But I got some great recommendations. So, yeah, I am so good to be like, hey, me again. Anybody know someone who can do this? Or one thing that I've been doing as a business owner is because I am working really hard to keep the business expenses low while we're growing. And so I gotten really good at trading things. For instance, like I'm super good at writing copy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:36)

Yeah.

Dr Darla Bishop (49:53)

I am very good at writing copy, especially because I use AI to help me do things faster and to organise my thoughts so that I can really get the writing done easily. But I'm not so good at creating graphics like in Canva. It takes me forever because I look at all the templates and I love them all and I start one, say, no, this isn't exactly right. Then I start another, and no, that's not exactly right. Then all of a sudden, I've spent an hour and I haven't actually built the graphic, and I just needed one graphic.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:15)

and decisive.

Dr. Darla Bishop (50:21)

And so just this week, or it must've been Thursday. So a few days ago, I put a note in the business community and said, Hey, is there anybody who's super good at Canva? need like five Canva images for my Black Friday sale. And, but I am not so good at it. So, if you need a website refresh, if you need some marketing emails written, I could write those for you in a couple of days. Anybody wants to trade? And I got a fantastic trade of someone who made me beautiful, beautiful, beautiful graphics and turn them around to me in like a day. I'm working on their website copy and I'm having a delight. I got to interview them about their business. I got to ask them what they want people to experience when they come to the website. I'm working on the copy, and I'm loving working on the copy for this website and would have just dreaded the Canva process.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (51:18)

Absolutely. You need to find people who can help with the things that you are struggling with. And that could be anything. And also photographers, anyone who is starting a personal brand or growing it, there will be someone, I learned this way too late. There is always someone who is a new photographer needing to build up their portfolio, doing some discounts or a few freebies.

Find someone who is willing to do a deal or just totally trade, even for testimonials. Have you seen a lot of people will give you bit of something in exchange for testimonials?

Dr. Darla Bishop (52:00)

haven't used that, but I will start now that you've reminded me. Thank you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (52:04)

It happens, but the trade feels inspired by what you were doing because I don't know if people do that enough. And although we do need to have money and grow money, you can find, you can find things that don't cost anything in all sorts of ways. Even sometimes on Facebook Marketplace, people are giving away something for free. They just want to get rid of it. That happens. There is so many ways to save money as you are building yourself up and

So what exactly do you do within your business, and how did you go from just working for other people to then also working in your own business? Because I think everybody needs to learn this now.

Dr Darla Bishop (52:48)

Yeah, so what it was is I read more than a hundred books about money and was constantly frustrated about a couple of things that were left out. And so I talked for years about I'm going to write a book about money. I'm going to write the book about money that I wish I had so I didn't have to read so many to feel like I understood money. Right. And so as I was starting to write the book, I was like, all right, well, I want to actually sell it. So I probably have to start a business so that I can sell it, take care of the taxes, and be legitimate. And then once the book was finished and people bought it, I said, Well, whoa, people bought it. Maybe they want to hear me talk. And so then I was able to get a few speaking engagements, and some money came in that way. And I said, well, darn, the only thing about speaking engagements is I have to physically be there. And so, because I've got these kids, I can't always travel. But what's a way that I could reach people even without having to physically travel? Well, of course, there's social media.

But maybe I need to put together a digital course for people who want this information, who want more customised and more detailed, like a process without needing to go to physically train them. And so it's just kind of like, I took one step and then the next and then the next. And that was, actually, had to be very purposeful about that because of the suspected ADHD. I'm often playing out scenarios up until stage 10. And, but then the drop back is yes, I've, played out the scenarios to stage 10, but then I also maybe have a little anxiety because I'm thinking about all 10 of the scenarios, right? And so with this project that started really as a project, like I was like, nope, people say, well, what do you want to do when your book's I said, I'm focused on getting the book done. And then once the book was done, well, now that your book is done, I'm focused on telling people about the book. Okay, well, now that people are starting to know about the book, I'm focused on getting some money for telling people about the book. So, like, really kind of forcing myself.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (54:21)

Right.

Dr Darla Bishop (54:44)

to stay maybe only two steps ahead because sometimes knowing the second and third step changes how you do the first step, right? But only staying two steps ahead instead of 10. And that's how I've been running the business. And it's been really beautiful for two years. The business has been running for about two years. Thank you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:05)

Congratulations.

The two steps ahead that is sinking in for me so much because I saw the cost of things like housing around here. And I saw the cost of even maintaining a small business, things like that. And the cost of supporting a family. And I thought, okay, I have to become like Oprah. That's a big jump. And that's too many steps ahead. So we absolutely need to look at the steps right in front of us. I think he might've just guided what a lot of us need to hear. Look at what's right in front of you and just a step ahead.

Dr Darla Bishop (55:45)

Don't good.

I hope that helps someone. Really has helped me quite a bit. Like, quite a bit.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:56)

So what do you think your grand purpose is in the long term? Are you going to be growing something beyond how your business is now?

Dr Darla Bishop (56:10)

Yeah, I would because of my husband's military service. It's possible that we may need to move to a place where it will be harder for me to work. Like if we're living in a very rural area or even internationally away from the US because my expertise is in a very specific US healthcare product. I don't know that it will translate the same if I'm somewhere that has a national health service, perhaps.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (56:33)

think it will. I think it will. But the reason is because you are educating people on basic financial well-being. That, I mean, I'm in Australia, and I feel like I'm inspired by so much of what you were saying. And I think you will find a common thread, even if your main day job specialty is in America. And there could be a way to learn how similar systems work in other countries.

Dr Darla Bishop (56:59)

That's true. So part of it is I'm kind of like, I'm open to being pleasantly delighted, right? Like, I don't have any big plans other than I did take a little bit of business debt to take care of the first year of our expenses because it costs money to start a business and to pay people to do things for the business, especially because I am at work most of the day. And so needing people to kind of respond to emails and to keep things moving so that my business runs even if I have to be at my day job. And so the next thing is I'm working to make sure we have enough income in the business so that the business can be self-sufficient because one, I've taken a bit of debt, and I've given the business a lot of money. So the business needs to pay me back. And then to have enough income coming in that if I'm working not at all or part-time for someone else, that it's okay because the business has enough money coming in that I don't have to change our lifestyle too much because I worked really hard to have this ease. I have so much ease in my life, and I just really just wish that my mom had had this type of ease because, like yes, being a mother is hard, being a working mother is hard, being a military wife is hard, but it's really easy compared to some of the things that my mom had to deal with raising us, and so I'm so thankful about the ease that I have and I also am not interested in letting that ease go.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (58:30)

amazing. Yes, you don't have to sacrifice comfort, and you deserve to live well. I invite my guests often to recommend at the end three actions that anyone can take, three things that in some way could empower anyone to live

Dr Darla Bishop (58:55)

The three things I would recommend that anyone could do this week, right? It might not be today because, like, you know, I don't know what your plans are today, but you could do it this week. First of all, spend a little bit of time, and you might have to carve out the right environment. It might need to be when you're on a drive or on a walk or when you're kind of in that quiet moment of the day, whether that's having a coffee or a tea, where you can kind of be really thoughtful. And it's like, if you knew that you could design the most beautiful day of your life, the most beautiful week of your life, what would you include in that day? How would you spend your time? Who would you be with? What would you eat? What would you do? What wouldn't you do?

Who would you call or message? What would you watch or read? Really, like get really into the visioning of what a beautiful day in your life looks like. That's the first thing. So once you have that picture in your head, maybe take a piece of paper, because there's really something important about that body-brain connection when you physically write something, it's not the same as texting or typing. So, like getting a piece of paper and writing down all those beautiful things you imagined, are there any that you could put into your life today? And I bet, I bet that at least three or four of those things you could put into your life today without even changing anything. It's just about making a decision to put it on your calendar or changing the order that you're doing certain things so that that part of your day could be part of it. And then the third thing is to decide over and over again that you deserve to have that beautiful life and that as long as you're making choices that get you a little closer to it each day that you'll get there sooner than you think.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:00:59)

Amazing. Dr Darla, thank you so much for being on the show.

Dr Darla Bishop (1:01:06)

Thank you so much for having me.