Episode 485: How To Take Control Of Your Life, Make Big Changes & Reset Your Money With Jill Schlesinger REWIND

Jill Schlesinger 0:02

Be careful about the partner you take on, be careful about that, because partnership is very different than sole proprietorship, and employees are really hard to manage, and all those things are incredibly important things that you learn about yourself as you go on the journey that would it for wherever your career takes you,

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Intro 0:23

Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host, Jamila Souffrant. As a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the Journey to Launch to financial freedom in

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Jamila Souffrant 0:50

If you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to Journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. In the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned, and so much more. Also, whether you are an OG journeyer or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free Jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to, stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources, and so much more. You can go to Journey to launch.com/jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode. Hey, journeyers, I'm so excited and honored to have Jill Schlesinger on the podcast. Jill is a CFP and Emmy Award, Gracie Award-winning business analyst for CBS News, where she translates complicated business and economic news into understandable, relatable topics for every day viewers. She covers the economy, markets, investing, and anything else with $1 sign on TV on the Jill on Money podcast. She also won the 2018 and 2021 Gracie Award for best national talk show, talk about goals, and has a web and blog, Paul Jill on money. She is here to, I hope, enlighten us, which I know she will, and talk about her newest book, The Great Money Reset, which was just published. So you're gonna know why she has won awards and does so great at what she does, and want to pick that book up. So, welcome to the podcast, Jill.

Jill Schlesinger 2:24

First of all, thank you for having me. No, nobody knows is the technological leaps and bounds that we have taken to get you this fine content. So, I appreciate this, and it's great to be with you, and you know, I must like you already, because I'm agreeing to have my face put out there, and I am certainly not camera ready. I have a rule, and here's the rule: you ready? If you don't have to be on television, do not wear makeup, that is my rule. And, of course, this makes my mother very sad. She would like me to wear makeup every day.

Jamila Souffrant 2:55

Well, you look great to me, and my audience, we're pretty down to earth, like real people, so they'll love you just the way you are. So I'm excited to jump in. Oh, thanks. Okay, one of the things I was listening to one of your latest podcasts, and something stood out to me that you said, you said, you know, really Jill on Money, which is the name of your podcast, should be called Jill on Life, because money is a little piece of what we do, and you know, really fuels our lives, and I just love that, because really, while this is a show about money that I talk about money, it's bigger than that. It's about our lives, and in your new book, you talk about how we can take control of our lives, make big changes, and so I'd love for you to share a little bit about why this was so important. This message was to share now, and then we can hop into some strategies for people to start changing our lives,

Jill Schlesinger 3:42

you know, it's so weird, because I've had this very strange journey in my own career, so just like going back in time, grew up a rich kid outside of New York, my dad was a trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange before traders made a ton of money, so it was a different time, but you know, I grew up not wanting for anything, and thinking essentially that my path was that I was going to go join my father eventually in his business, so he was a trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange. My first job out of college was I was a trader on the floor of the Commodities Exchange in New York, and I traded options, I was a math head. It's just like trading something that's like a mathematical equation, if you're listening, you really don't need more, no more than that. I thought I was going to love it. I hated it, and, and that was like my first reset. That was the first time where it was like, oh, I kind of thought of my journey was going to be this way, and maybe it's not going to be, and maybe it's going to be that way. And so I kind of wound up going back to the place where I went to college and joining a firm that gave financial advice to people, financial planning firm, that's where I got my CFP, and I was the money, I was the chief investment officer of the firm, so I ran the money, I had relationships, I gave financial advice, did that for 14 years, and one of the ways that we grew the business is that I co-hosted a radio show. An old time call on radio show, and it was really fun. I liked it. That's how we grew the business. We sold the company, and then I wanted to move back to New York, and there's a whole relationship part of this, but I'm going to do that when we have drinks. Okay, not here, because you can't sometimes reset when you have a relationship blow up too.

Jamila Souffrant 5:17

Listen, yeah,

Jill Schlesinger 5:18

you know it happens. So, anyway, I found myself giving advice and really liking that, but you know, something was missing, and then I started deciding that I thought maybe the part of my job that I really did love was this idea of being on the radio and being on TV and writing, and so I tried to kind of use that as an exploration, well, maybe I could do that, and so that's what I did. And in 2009 in April 2009 I joined CBS News. We launched a website called Money Watch, and my career just kind of went from there, and on and off. Basically, throughout my career, I have been giving advice to people, let's call for, you know, 30 years or 35 years now, and when I decided I wanted to have a radio show and then launch a podcast, I really wanted to be about real people, and I wanted to hear from, like, hey, what's happening for real people, because, as you know, when you talk to real people, it's a lot different than going on CBS Evening News and talking about the jobs report, right? It's just like a total different animal, and so you know, what I found was, I was hearing from people, and they would tell me these stories, but in the pandemic, the world really blew apart, and everybody was freaking out, and we had a twice a week podcast, where we had sometimes had like fancy guests, but mostly we just, you know, kind of just dropped it, that was a very normal talkie podcast, we moved it to a seven day a week podcast, where all we did was take questions from people, and so they would either connect with us through email or we got them on the air, and we kind of knew how to do that, and I just started to realize there were so many different kinds of questions that are being asked, it was so different, it was, it was like maybe every now and again, pre-pandemic, I'd get a call from someone who'd be like, you know, my husband just died and blowing up my life, or, you know, my kid just got a horrible diagnosis and I'm going to blow up my life, but this was like person after person after person was like, I am not happy with the way I am living, how do I blow up my life responsibly, and so that is where the idea for the great money reset came to me, which was, you know, you're I'm very lucky, I have like a book agent, I had written another book, and he's like, can't you write a book? And I'm like, I don't have anything to say. And he goes, What's jazzing you now? I'm like, you know what's jazzing me? These people who are calling up the show and blowing up their lives like to an extent that I'd never imagined. He goes, there's your book, and that's really what happened, was that I realized if you wanted to do something really different, if you wanted to live your real life, the money was a component, it wasn't everything, and these people were not calling me to get permission to do something different, they said, here's what I want to do, how can I do this responsibly, and that to me was the real spark of, hey, wait a minute, this is not about the money, this is about your life. And so I have this great friend, Raul, who listens to the podcast very religiously, and he said to me, when I, while I was writing the book, he goes, you know, you should really change the money, this show is not Jill on money, it should be Jill on life, because you're really talking to people about their lives, and so that's that's why I really, I love this book, because it's people's lives, and they sort of entrust me to help them create the framework to change their lives,

Jamila Souffrant 8:33

and you have a great framework, or way that people can start to plan out that big change, and so I'd love for you to just quickly go over the five steps, or the fabulous five, that you call it, that someone can make changes.

Jill Schlesinger 8:45

So this was important to me, because it's something I do with every single person who comes on the air with me, and I take them through these steps. But I realized when I started to write the book, I had to quantify what the steps were, what you were trying to do, and basically the Fab Five is essentially a way for me to put a beautiful wrapper on the fact that you've got to actually figure out what is going on in your life. You have to figure out where you are today. So, step one is you have to consider your resources, what are your assets, what do you own, and that means everything, whatever it is, just list it out. I'm not saying you're closed, unless you have, like, couture, and that's cool, like you do that, but you know your bank accounts and your retirement accounts and your car and anything else that's out there. And then part of resources is your income. What are you making now? And also, what are the benefits that you receive? You know, it's so weird in the US, like very different than around the world, but in the US, so much of our financial security is associated with employment, and you don't realize that until you don't have that anymore. So that's part of resources. The second part is everyone's favorite. Well, what's your debt? What are your liabilities? That's easy, actually, because you just list it, even if you're, if you're like, oh, I. Hate that I have to do. Just list it. I don't care. There's no judgment. I'm not judging. I'm not one of those people. Third thing is considering your housing situation. This is important, most more for older people, in fact, than younger people in many respects, but older people who realize, like, hey, I have all this equity in my house, or gosh, I own this house in this place that I don't really want to be anymore. How do I get rid of it? But if you're younger, maybe where actually do you want to live? Did you find that being far away from your family during the pandemic completely sucked? Like, is that was too much for you? Do you want to actually physically be closer to the people you love? And just consider what is your situation right now? You don't have to do anything with it, right? The fourth aspect is everybody's favorite. How much are you spending? How do you do with that? I know people hate this so much. The reason they hate it is that, you know, what it's not because I think that you know I'm talking to you, it's a week before Valentine's Day, but you know, we always have all the couples, they don't, they is financial infidelity. It's really that we're tough on ourselves. I really think that's true, that we make terrible judgments of ourselves. So, what I'm asking you to do is that as you consider the money you spend, you don't have to fudge around, and it doesn't really matter what the numbers are, it's just matters that we get them down on paper, because we can address them after. So, when you look at this, don't be feeling like, oh, I really don't, maybe I shouldn't go to the gym, or gosh, I did go out for drinks too much with my friends, you know, all those things are real, but you don't have to touch that right now, just list it. The last thing that I think is important in the Fab Five is to really consider obligations you've made to other people. What do I mean by that? Let's say you and I are married, and we have, like, the pinky square, like, "Hey, we're going to have babies, and that's going to be awesome, great, and I decide, like, I need to go through this big.. I hate what I'm doing, I want to do something different, and I want to wait to have kids for five years.

Jill Schlesinger 12:02

Now this is a big change, right? I cannot make that change unilaterally, and the same goes that if you have an agreement with your siblings that your parents are getting older, you're all going to chip in and take care of your parents. Well, you can't just bail on that obligation, so you really need to be careful about the obligations that you've made to others, and those are your Fab Five resources, debt, housing, spending, and the obligations

Jamila Souffrant 12:32

with all of the questions you've answered over the years, or the advice you've given. What has been, you know, I know there's probably not a complete universal thing that stops people from making a change, but what have you seen come up a lot for people while they're afraid to make the career transition or move and make these big resets that you're talking about.

Jill Schlesinger 12:52

Well, I think a couple of things that can happen. First, it is the difference between a dreamer and a doer, because you can dream about something but not want to commit to a process. So, I think the first step is, and part of the whole reason I wrote the book is that because I got so many of these calls from folks, and like basically lifelines, like, please help me. I realized that people were dreaming, but didn't know how to put that dream into an active plan. So, you have to decide, am I going to go through a process to try to figure out where I stand. I think the other part is that we often would make, I think, in the past what I've seen is that people have made these binary choices, right? Either I have to stay a certified financial planner for the rest of my life, or I will be a full-time media maven, like those are not the only two choices. You can create different plans where parts of you are really excited and activated, and do a partial reset. You don't have to change everything. And by the way, you might go through a whole process and be like, you know what, where I am, it's okay. I thought that, like, I really wanted a reset, but I actually think that maybe I need to do something slightly differently, but not radical. Give yourself permission, it's okay. You don't have to go through an entire process to get to someplace else. Actually, sometimes the most valuable resets that I've been talking about with people are people who just say I'm staying where I am, and, but I'm happier where I am.

Jamila Souffrant 14:26

Yeah, so it's essentially going through the exercises and finding out that actually this is not too bad after all.

Jill Schlesinger 14:33

Absolutely, I don't know if you ever have this, like with friends, but I am a woman of a certain age, and you know, sometimes I'll, someone will say to me, you know, I want to get a new job. You know, you should go interview, you should go talk and find out what's out there. And then you should talk to a lot of other people doing the things that you think you want to do, and you should find out about it. Then you should commit some time, and you may come back and say, you know, if. I were going to switch my job right now, like I had a friend who took a very big job overseas, like I want to live overseas. It was a disaster. It was an absolute freaking disaster. And you know, he, why do you want to go overseas? Whatever, it was just different, and he was kind of bored with his life. He had three different bosses in 10 months, and he ended up.. it was just awful. And so, you know, sometimes you think that thing, I'm not a shrink, although I'd love to be one, just to be, but not the kind that tells you I don't want to, like, work hard with you, and you get to the answer, I just want to tell you what to do. No, I'm just, I'm kidding. But you know, sometimes you have to ask yourself certain questions that are really hard, and it ties up these feelings, these emotions. Sometimes I think what is disastrous in the moment can really save someone long term, so what I think is important is if you're, if you are considering something like this, if you are, I don't know, maybe you're just feeling like a little, like, I feel unhappy, or it's like it's been a hard three years for everybody, are we sure we've isolated what is really making you unhappy? That's, that's a real question. And I even say this in the book, like I presume once you get to the point where you're going through the money part of this, you've already answered that question.

Jamila Souffrant 16:12

Yes, it's it's funny when you're talking about kind of mentally going through it, you know, the show back in the day, wife swap, they changed lives for a little bit, some people can benefit from a life swap for with someone like you think you want this life, but let's try it out, you know, for a week or a month, and let's see how you feel afterward.

Jill Schlesinger 16:30

Yeah, and talk to people. I mean, I remember when my nephew was in college, and he was at a school that had like an undergraduate business program, and so all these dopey kids were all like, "Oh, I can only be an investment banker, a high-powered consultant, and this or that. And then I said to my nephew, "Could talk to the people who do that job, just see what they, how they feel. They're, you know, you're 20 and they're 20-five, just talk to them. And he was, he literally came back and he goes, "Oh my god, it sounds like the worst job in the world. I said, I know, like, don't just go do something, do a little work.

Jamila Souffrant 17:08

Hey, journeyers, if you are loving this podcast, then you will love my book, Your Journey to Financial Freedom, a step-by-step guide to achieving wealth and happiness. I wrote this book for you. This book is for you, if you want a clear and enjoyable path to having more money, options, and a rich life. This book is for you, if you hate your commute and the fact that you need to seek approval or permission from a boss. I hated that when I worked. This book is for you, if you weren't born into wealth, you didn't marry rich or win the lottery, but you still want freedom. This book is for you if you're at a crossroads. A major decision or event is imminent, maybe a career change, marriage, starting a family. Pressures are reaching a tipping point, and the discomfort and the desire for more can no longer be ignored. And this book is for you if you find yourself zoned out at meetings, looking out the window, or daydreaming about the life you truly want. So, go pick up your Journey to financialfreedom.com so I can show you how to map out how to get from where you are today to where you ultimately want to be, and enjoy the journey while you're on the path. Head over to Your Journey to financialfreedom.com to see where you can pick the book up. It's available on Amazon, bookshop.org Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore, everywhere. Go to your journey to financialfreedom.com to get the book now. You know, one of the things I love that when we got on here, you were just pretty upfront about your background, and that you grew up privileged, and you wanted for nothing, and I think it's really powerful to own that. And then, looking at your trajectory of your career, going from the CFP, which you know is very analytical and you know numbers based, to what you're doing now, which is in front of the camera, you know, behind the microphone, very creative, and the confidence that comes with that, and sometimes you don't equate, like you said, like it's binary, you think that those two things would not exist within the same person, but obviously we have Jill, so it does, you know, was there something even when you were just doing CFP work, or you weren't in front of the camera, or behind the microphone, even as a kid growing up with whatever expectations that maybe you had for what you would do with your life, did you have this already inside of you, or did this unfold like this career path just unfold as things made more sense

Jill Schlesinger 19:30

in your life? You and your generation are amazing, because I learn every day from people who are younger than I am, and I learned a lot of very important things, one is that we were kind of lucky, because not just that I grew up with a few bucks, but I graduated in a very strong economy, and it was like sort of I graduated 1987 which meant that the economy was still strong, the stock market. Did crash, but then it was like this extended period of very high powered growth in the economy, and what's really important about that is sometimes you can be lucky about when you graduate, and then, like, kind of whatever you do, you're going to be okay, because the economy is growing, it's such a weird thing, and so there's a randomness to that, as opposed to many millennials and Gen Zers who basically can graduate and be unlucky about when you graduate, and so there were certain things that were available to me on my career journey that, first of all, just like saying yes to it was going to make you succeed, and that's a weird thing for me to say, because I know that so many want to, like, be calculating, and this sometimes it's random, and you get, like, you're you get the good fortune. I'm sure you're familiar with all the studies that show that you know when people graduate into a recession, it kind of, they're like 10 years behind their cohort who graduate into a good economy, that's luck, that's not like your skill level. Okay, so I want to put out there that there's two bits of luck that I've had: one, I grew up with some money; two, I graduated at a time when the economy was growing. In terms of, like, my interior, like the way I'm programmed, the more important part of my upbringing is probably for me to tell you that I was a collegiate athlete, and so as a result I was hard working, very achievement oriented. The score was the score, and that helped me in whatever I was doing. I cannot, I cannot explain to you more than just to say that being a student athlete forces you to really hyper focus on your studies, your working out, your balance, and how you do that. It also makes you realize that you're not the best at anything anymore, because you go to that level and it's like, oh, everyone's a lot better than I'm, and so there's a humility factor. So the long story of this is that I am a numbers person, but I've always been very emotional, and I've also been.. when I was a financial planner, once I got to that place, what I did love was really talking to people. I'm also a voyeur, like I want to ask you 1000 questions right now, but I'm the interviewee, it's not fair. So, you come on my podcast, and I get to do it to you. But you know, the fascinating thing to me is human beings are fascinating. The numbers behind those human beings are not that fascinating, they're just not. So, it's kind of like the difference between being a surgeon and a medical doctor, like a surgeon might be a technician and a medical doctor as a diagnostician, maybe. Oh, I'm going to piss off every surgeon out there. Sorry, but there is something in me that always felt connected to people, and that I really, I took it seriously that people thought that that my brains were sufficient enough that they would share their innermost issues with me and help me use their money to help solve some of the problems, and at least I could. So, what I would say, that's a long, terrible answer to a good question, which is there's a part of me that likes the numbers, and there's a part of me that understands that we are so much more than our numbers.

Jill Schlesinger 23:15

And you know, I have a good friend who's a Peloton instructor, and she loves to say you're bigger than a smaller pair of pants, like you don't get on a bicycle, and you don't work out to, you shouldn't, to just to get skinny, you do it because you like how you feel, and I would say the same thing about all the financial planning in the world, which is not about how do you accumulate the most, it's like what do you want to do, how can we get you there? That's really what I like to do, and I like taking complicated, seemingly complicated things, boiling them down, and being able to tell 4 million people in the morning, you know, this is what you need to worry about. You don't have to worry about that. Calm down, that's out of your control. You can't control, and that's the other thing. As you know, people really think they can control things like markets, and you can't.

Jamila Souffrant 24:03

You can't something you just said, you know? You like to be able to share your message, this expertise, this passion, this gift that you have with almost 4 million people, right, which is incredible that you have the platform to be able to do that. Now, for someone listening, and, like selfishly, for myself, who doesn't have as big as a platform, but would love the honor to, like, be able to grow into a career that you've had. What advice would you give a person who's either maybe they're just starting, but just in general, the way you've grown your career, and it seems to, from the outside looking in, check the boxes of the like your inner workings, right, the mat side, but the personal side, and finding something where you just, your natural, it seems on camera behind them. What advice do you give to someone who maybe has that within them, and it doesn't have to be specifically a pod, they want to have a podcast or be on TV, but they have something and they want to share it, but it's just them, or maybe it's just, you know, five people reading their blog, or you. Watching what they do on Instagram, how do they grow or become their own version of Jill?

Jill Schlesinger 25:06

Well, thank you, that's such a nice compliment. Or you, okay? So, like, if they wanted to be you, so look, there are so many different ways to get to where you are in a career. I think it's unbelievable. And by the way, you see these Emmy Awards behind my back over there, I keep them out all the time, because I cannot believe that I was lucky enough to win these things. I'm not saying like I'm bragging, I'm just saying if I told you, if who I was 15 years ago when I entered CBS News was somebody who was a financial planner who they hired because it was the middle of a financial crisis, and they were trying to launch a money website, and nobody was going, nobody was willing to take a chance to do that, because everyone was freaking out. So, a few things that I feel like I've done decently in my career, and a few things that I really screwed up. I'm always, I have always been a person who is willing to try something brand new, that is not most people, that is, there is a comfort zone, and most of most, like normal human beings, I might be abnormal, really do like being in a groove and getting into something, I get really jazzed by something new and something interesting, and I usually curse it in the beginning, and then adopt it soon after. So, what I think was important for me is that I had the ability to actually try something and do that, and jump in. Now, you know, in my book, I taught, I just like, I have to just put this out there, because it's not like I could do it alone. I had a lot of people who were helping me through processes, so when I was like, I don't want to be a trader anymore, and I had to tell my father that I didn't want to be a trader, he could have been like furious and weird, and he was like, "Oh my god, then don't do it. I didn't tell you to do it. I thought you wanted to do it. Like, so I've had support my whole life. I've also always.. I never, you know, if I came out of school and I had $80,000 of debt, maybe I wouldn't have jumped around, maybe I would have had to take a job. So, you know, one of the things that I try to tell parents when they're talking about assuming loans for their kids, or they want to do that, said, "You know, sometimes those loans will rob your kids of opportunities later. Sometimes having the weight of that debt will prevent you from saying yes to something that's really cool, and you might like your 18 year old brain won't process this, but if you can hear that, even if you have young parents there, that all the things that you think you should be doing, you might be surprised to learn that, like, really, the gift you can ever give your kid is like just coming out of school and not having boatloads of debt for you to manage, for them to manage, because I think that's a real career killer in a lot of ways. So I think saying yes and working hard, and you know, I'm a little bit of a beast, like I will do whatever it takes, and when people say no, I don't always take no for an answer. We just, not, don't take that the wrong way. Can I tell you a great story? Yeah, I love it. I won't drop names, except I will. So, when I was a financial advisor, I would appear on sometimes news programs, and I first started appearing in Providence Rodin, which is where I grew in my little firm, and they put me on the NBC affiliate, and then someone knew somebody in New York, and I was traveling back and forth, so I got on some national news stuff, and I started.. don't judge.. I don't.. before I say this, don't judge me, I was a guest on Fox News, okay? Let me just say this.. it wasn't the same place it is now. It was a little bit more normal, I swear. And I appeared a lot. I was with Neil Cavuto and Shep Smith. I was on their shows a lot.

Jill Schlesinger 28:51

They liked that I could, like, do straight talk and stuff. So, when I was thinking about, you know, when I was selling my firm and moving back to New York, I went and talked to somebody at Fox News, who was a high-up person there, who I knew, and I said, "You know, I host this radio show. I'm wondering if you think that there's an opportunity for me to do some radio work at Fox, because they had a radio network at that time. Send me your stuff. So I send him my stuff, and so here's what he said to me: "No word of a lie, verbatim. You'll never make it in radio. You have the timbre of your voice is off, so I was like pissed, and I called my parents up, and they're like, "What happened? I was like, "Oh my god, it's terrible meeting, I'm never gonna make it. And my father said, "You know, my mother's very conservative. She's like, "Well, maybe you should just be a financial planner, it's a good living, you can make a good living. And my father's like, screw him, that's one person, it's so subjective. Why are you? Who cares? Go to the next one. And sometimes that is very good advice, because don't you hear those stories all the time about people who are like the nose, the nose really sound very loud, and you just go on to the next one. So you know, I think that sometimes in your. Life, and in your career, you're given like these negative messages, some of the real, not a concert pianist might find out and be like, you're not a concert pianist, okay, but something that is subjective, or if you feel like someone else has told you, like you're good at this, and another person says no, you're not, you know, go with yes, go with yes, you can, and maybe you should try it. So, if you're looking at expanding your footprint, and I did it in a way that I think was easier for my personality, which is I like to grow things with other people's money. So, I grew my brand under the CBS News umbrella, and I still do. And so, if I were you, I think are a much gutsier way of doing it, so I came into CBS News, and I had created, then I created this show called Jill on Money, which they were very nice and let me own separately, so it was a very different time, so I was able to create a bunch of stuff on the side that was my own, and that was great, and that I love working there, like I have the most amazing colleagues, they're so smart, they're so great, but I don't think I would be where I am today without CBS News, that brand behind me,

Jamila Souffrant 31:11

right, and so many amazing points, you know, but you were able to do it in a time and in a way where you owned ownership to your brand separately, which is amazing,

Jill Schlesinger 31:21

yeah, I mean, look, there are so many great examples of this, like the intellectual property or the IP of, like, what you create is incredibly important. And so I, I had this idea about something I wanted to do. I wanted to do it for CBS News, and they're like, nobody cares about weekend radio, so you want to do it on your own? Sure, I could do it on my own, and they help pay for a producer for me part time, I paid the other credit, so I, what I always was willing to do was spend money out of my own pocket to grow my brand, but not spend so much that I would put my whole financial life at risk, and that is part of the reset. There's an old story about Spike Lee, when he made She's Gotta Have, and he like maxed out his credit card to make the movie, and you're like, I would be like, oh my god, I could not live like that, like that would freak me out so much. I cannot even tell you, but the idea that he did that, I mean, I don't think that most people would grow a business that way, but I also would be very careful, like, be careful about the partner you take on, be careful about that, because partnership is very different than sole proprietorship, and employees are really hard to manage, and all those things are incredibly important things that you learn about yourself as you go on the journey that would, it for wherever your career takes you.

Jamila Souffrant 32:34

Yeah, and you know it's important to be creative with perspectives, because while you worked with CBS to build your brand, I worked in corporate America, also, for a while before I quit to do what I'm doing, full-time journey to launch, and at the end I viewed my, my corporate job as almost, you know, the investor, they didn't know that, right, but you know what I use from the paychecks or the money I save help fund this life that I'm currently living, so maybe if you also are listening, there's, you don't have like a corporation to help you build your business, but if you're working full time and have aspirations outside of that to do something else, you can begin to look at that. Okay, how much can I actually take for my paycheck to help invest in this this new pathway that I'm about to embark upon?

Jill Schlesinger 33:15

And you know what else is kind of cool, like this idea of the side hustle. I don't know if you've ever interviewed Chris Guillebeau, who wrote the book side hustle. He's a buddy of mine.

Jamila Souffrant 33:22

I have. Yes.

Jill Schlesinger 33:23

And I loved when he said to me, we were talking about side hustles early on when he first wrote the book, and I thought, what was interesting about him is that, you know, he was like an accidental entrepreneur, right? And one of the things that's interesting that he's always said to me is sometimes you do a side hustle to test out a small business, but sometimes actually having a side hustle is just your creative outlet in and of itself. Like I was just talking to a woman today, and she's got a big corporate job, and she lives in Houston. She probably works for a big energy company, right? And on the side, she is a real estate agent, and she sells a few houses, and she says, I'm like, but you're working like seven days a week, realtors work on the weekend. She's like, I know, but I really like it, and it's an extra 50 grand a year that comes in, and I like that now, and maybe I'll do that full time, maybe I won't, I don't know. So I think the idea of a side hustle as a creative outlet, maybe it's writing, but maybe it's doing, maybe you're the person in your organization that, like, really helps people build PowerPoints, and my friend Maureen was like the most unbelievable PowerPoint queen, and I would say to her, "This is your side hustle, you should like actually do this for people, it's so amazing. Can I get like a little bit gooey with you for a second? Yes, yes. Okay, so in the beginning of the book I talk about my dear friend Maureen, and Maureen's like one of my besties. I didn't know her through this channel, but it ends up we work at the same company because she works at Black Entertainment Television. I work. At CBS News, they're both owned by the same parent, but when I was thinking about making my transition and say I want to get out of financial planning, I want to go into media. She said to me, "You need a pink notebook. I'm like, "What are you talking about? She goes, "You need a pink notebook. You want to see the pink notebook? Yes. Okay, pink notebook. Okay, tabs, all that nonsense, right? So I said, what's going on in the pink notebook? She says, this is what I do when I'm doing something big, a big project. When I'm talking about, she used to acquire a lot of properties for for BET and for other Viacom companies, so she, she would go through and create different tabs, and then she'd do this for her life, and she'd have like different big things, and she'd use that notebook to organize her, and even despite there being a digital world, there's something about tactile object that is good for me. So we, she said, okay, you're gonna do number one, the first tab is like your financial stuff, she's like, I'm not dealing with that. You'll deal with that. The second tab is like, what are the parts of your job right now as a financial planner you love? What don't you not like? What are the parts of when the guest appearances? Where did you go? Where did you have a good segment? Where was not a good segment? Who are the people associated with it? Who are the people that you think could help you in this journey? Write their names down. Start building, and so, like, it was like the plan, it was like my great money reset plan, but it was like life plan, right? And she really encouraged me to do that, and she was such, like, a really, like, this like huge cheerleader for me in my life. So the reason why it's, it's so weird for me that this book is coming out right now, and I opened the whole book with her. Her wife is in the book, her wife is in the book about opening, about changing course in a business. Is that Maureen, who was all about planning, was also very much about living today and living her life and doing the stuff she really wanted to do. So it's quite bittersweet for me, because I don't feel the book is written without her, and she died on november 30, and she died of, like, an unbelievably aggressive cancer.

Jill Schlesinger 37:08

She was diagnosed to the day she died was four months, and throughout her illness, where you know we were there with her all the time, she would say to, she would turn around and say to me, like, How's work going? What are you doing next? How's the pink notebook? What's happening? And if I could, like, stress anything to anybody listening, it is that when you see one of your best friends die before your eyes, you start to realize that life is freaking short, and if you're waiting to do something, I encourage you to do it now. I, if you're waiting for the right time, maybe you're waiting for the right time to have a kid, maybe you're waiting for the right time to get married, maybe you're waiting for the right time to make your career leap. Do it responsibly, but strange comets come out of the sky, strange once in a century pandemics come and rob you of opportunity. Strange diagnoses come and rob you of your life. And now is the time that we should all come out of this horrible pandemic and say to ourselves, is this the way I want to live? And if the answer is yes, great. And if it's no, then go get yourself a pink notebook and buy the book.

Jamila Souffrant 38:24

Ah, Jill, that was amazing. And it sounds like your next book should be the pink notebook. That's amazing. We

Jill Schlesinger 38:30

thought about calling it the pink this one, the pink notebook. I'm actually glad I didn't, since Maureen's not here for that, because that would have been too weird.

Jamila Souffrant 38:38

Oh, okay. Jill, please let everyone know where they can find you, your podcast, and most importantly, your new book.

Jill Schlesinger 38:43

So, the everything lives on my website, Jill on money.com I have a podcast called Jill on Money, but you know, I have a radio show. Some people still listen to the radio, it's called Jill on Money, and everything is on the website. You can have a link to The Great Money reset, you can buy wherever you buy books, I did read the audio version, but you know it's just, it's, it's sort of me, but not quite me. If you like audio books, you're gonna be fine. If you like, like this kind of like down and dirty talk, it doesn't, it doesn't come off that way, because they make you sit still and read the book. So, anyway, I'm so appreciative of you and of your audience, and for bringing me on today. It's really been a delight. You were, you are delighted, obviously. If there's anything that we're gonna get you on my podcast, yeah,

Jamila Souffrant 39:30

I'd love that. Let's make it happen.

Jill Schlesinger 39:32

Tables are gonna turn, tables are gonna turn, you're gonna be all, it's gonna be all. Hell is gonna come loose right now.

Jamila Souffrant 39:38

Well, thank you so much, Jill.

Jill Schlesinger 39:40

Thank you.

Jamila Souffrant 39:41

Don't forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to Journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this, and you can still grab your Jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to Journey to launch.com/jumpstart you. If you want to support me and the podcast, and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple Podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe, so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this in Apple Podcasts, rate, review, and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at Journey to Launch on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I love, love, love interacting with journeyers there. Three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here, so show them some love for supporting your girl. Four, and last but not least, share this episode, this podcast with a friend or family member or coworker, so that we can spread the message of Journey to launch. All right, that's it until next week. Keep on journeying, journeyers,

Unknown Speaker 41:05

you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai