006. Be The CEO Of Your Life - Systems for Success
How can you become the CEO of your life?
Through systems and automation. We only have so much energy and willpower. Finding where you can allow parts of your life to run in the background is going to lower your cortisol levels. Remember: old money is effortless. In today's episode, Amber dives into the world of automation and creating effective systems that support your financial and energetic well-being. She also shares her strategies for automating investments, managing her inbox, and synchronizing schedules with their partner.
Let's embrace the CEO mindset together.
In today's episode, we cover the following:
Amber's birdie and bogie of the week (1:14)
Amber's Life Improvement System (6:21)
Tasks she has in her Google Calendar (7:49)
Setting up a "second brain" (14:10)
Automating your finances (16:28)
Managing your inbox with the 3 D's (19:13)
Outsourcing to give you energy back (21:47)
Improving your day-to-day for less friction (26:39)
Stock tip: Get a Timeqube (30:16)
TRANSCRIPT
Amber F. (00:00)
Welcome to Old Money, a show dedicated to helping you build the trust fund you wish you were born with. Ladies who lunch, listen up. Life is not about looking rich. I want you to build a life and a legacy that feels rich in every sense of the word. If you're ready to stack cash, talk shop, and trade insider secrets, you're in the right place. These are the new rules to Old Money, so let's get out for it. Hello, and welcome back to The Old Money Podcast. I am your host, Amber Frankhuizen. And I'm coming to you live... Well, not live because I'm recording this now, and you'll hear it later from Palm Springs. I am currently in bed at the Parker Hotel, enjoying my CEO retreat. And this episode is all about being the CEO of your life and the systems that I have put in place one time, set it and forget it, and they have completely changed my stress level. That's what this is all about today, talking about easy things you can do to automate your life and just make things easier. But before we get into that, let me give you a quick update with a birdie and a bogey.
Amber F. (01:14)
Obviously, the birdie is being at the park or I have a hot tip. The desert gets hot in the summer. Duh. The park is my favorite hotel in Palm Springs. I have stayed at the mall, but this one just never fails to deliver. The detail is impeccable. Jonathan Adler, everything. The way that I smell right now from the soaps and all of the lotions, first of all, they give you Lay Labo, Santol, shampoo and conditioner. I have Bulgari body wash and lotion. There's the Hermes hand soap, no big deal. Just everything about this place is so nice, and it's all kitschy and surprising. And that surprise and delight always makes me really happy. But I came out here on a little solo trip just for two nights while my boyfriend is taking care of our pup at home and giving me the space to decompress after the podcast launch and catching up on work and just having a moment to figure out how I feel about everything. A lot of energy has been swirling around me, been coming at me. It's all been positive. Not all of it, but that's the life of an entrepreneur.
Amber F. (02:23)
Some things have been challenging. My point is that when I am so busy, and this is my bogey, I'm so busy, I don't even allow myself the time to feel any feelings. Because when you're going from one meeting to the next and you've got commitments and a team that's looking up to you or clients that you need to serve, it's often very inconvenient to lean into any feelings, especially if they're negative, because who has time for that? I need to pull myself together and get onto the next thing. I'm a cancer. I have all the feelings in the world. I'm a big crier. Sometimes I just need a moment to actually figure out how I feel and register what's going on in my body, what's going on in my mind. That's what this trip is for. One of the things for me is I felt like I've been going through a very big, energetic upgrade. That's normal. I'm trying on a new identity, a new project as a podcaster of being somebody who's sharing their thoughts when I'm typically more reserved. But doing this behind a microphone makes it easier for me. But it's all to say that I've been having a lot of feelings of imposter syndrome.
Amber F. (03:29)
I'm like, Who am I to do this? I'm going to get... Before I even pressed record on the very first episode, I knew I was going to get negative feedback, and I've been bracing myself for it. Of course, it's coming and it's going to continue, but we just have to move on and continue to create. I'm stretching myself in my capacity and the growth, and it's pushing me to the leading edge of my abilities, and it's uncomfortable. And for that, we need to rest. And for that, we need to turn down the volume and all the noise in our lives. And so for me to come out to the desert for a couple of days every once in a while, I've been doing this for years since 2014, I think, so almost 10 years. I've been coming out here regularly a couple of times a year just to get away and to reset. And there's something about coming out into the heat and almost burning away that old version of yourself, whatever that looks like for you. The desert is my thing. So I love it here. I feel very safe behind the cascade of mountains, that spine of mountains that goes across all of Palm Springs.
Amber F. (04:29)
For me, this place feels very grounding. And this is the practice that I need to do so that when I go back to work, when I go back to my relationship, I'm the better version of myself. And the really nice thing, and what we're going to talk about today is that all of these systems are running in the background of my life to support me doing things like this monetarily, energetically, even in my business or my home life. And I have set up so many systems in the last few years that make things so easy for me to pivot or to rest or to go on a quick trip when I need to. My friend, Seth O'Burn, hey, Seth. I saw this quote on his Instagram recently, and it said, You do not rise to the level of your goals, but you fall to the level of your systems. And I think that is so right on. Willpower is something that we exhaust. We only have so much energy to force ourselves to do things or remember all of these tasks. And the systems that I've set up in my life, for me, it was all about reducing stress because I run hot.
Amber F. (05:33)
I run stressed all the time. My cortisol levels are incredibly high. My testosterone is out of control. I had a blood panel done recently, and we will talk about this whole health situation. But oh, my gosh, all I need to do is keep my stress low and my life becomes so much easier. And besides, an old money lifestyle is supposed to be effortless. Old money is effortless. How are you going to find time to play croquet if you're busy balancing your checkbook all the time? When I started taking myself seriously, that's when things changed for me both monetarily and also stress level. I want to walk you through some of my top tips, and these are all life improvement things. We talked a little bit about setting up savings and some automation there, but I want to take you through my life improvement system. And it's based on a couple of philosophies that I have. And we've talked about this already, which number one, it's the guardrails. I need tripwires in my life because I forget everything and I don't want to have to remember everything. The guardrail system that I have in my life that works really well is Google Calendar.
Amber F. (06:42)
And you're like, Yes, bitch, we know we're supposed to use Google Calendar, but let me tell you something that you're probably not doing, and this is the thing that really changed for me. It's the tasks. In Google Calendar, you can create an event. It's an event, it's on 1:00 to 2:00 PM or whatever it might be, but there's another tab in there. When you create an event, if you click over to the second option, you can make a task. And a task is a little blue thing where you can check it as complete or you have to go through an annoying process to delete it. And the tasks, they don't go away. So if you have a calendar event that's scheduled from 1:00 to 2:00 and you say on there, I'm going to go to the gym for 1:00 to 2:00, but you don't go, well, what happens is that the time passes and your calendar thinks you just went, and so it grays out and you never really pay attention to it again. But if you have a task on your calendar, Google will tell you how many outstanding tasks you have open before you can really get on with your day.
Amber F. (07:37)
And the tasks for me, the things that I have to check out, these are, or check off rather, these are my habits. These are my monthly, weekly, recurring things. Let me walk you through what tasks I have in my Google Calendar. They're all set up as recurring, and I have daily ones, weekly ones, monthly ones, and quarterly ones. So daily goals, daily checklists, I have my habits that I'm trying to build. On my habit list, and these are just at the bottom of my Google Calendar, I'm literally opening my phone right now, I have a few of them. Number one is that I have taken all of my supplements. Number two is that my eating window closes at 8:00 PM because I'm experimenting with intermittent fasting. It's not something that I do regularly, so I tend to forget. So having these two things on my calendar as tasks at the end of the day means that I'm conscious of it every single day. So these are just two little things that I have on there at the end of the day. And then every single morning I have one for meditation. My meditation doesn't have to take 30 minutes.
Amber F. (08:35)
It could be a five minute, it could be a walking meditation. But I need to do it because I feel so much better when I do. And I don't want to forget this task that's a recurring task every day holds me accountable. On weekly reminders, I set one up for Friday and I set one up for Sunday. Two very different little things. I have a weekly task, and the weekly task is on Friday. It's the last thing I do Friday at 4:00 or if we're doing summer, Fridays, at noon before I Slam Laptop shut till Monday. And it's me planning my next week. There's a couple of things that I do in my weekly tasks. It's one task, but I have in the description all the stuff I need to get done. Number one, I plan all of my workouts in my calendar for the next week. The second thing is if I have to do any beauty maintenance like nails or hair, or even if I have to deep condition at home, I put it in my calendar so I don't forget. The other thing that I do is the social calendar. If I don't have anything on the calendar with my friends or my boyfriend or something that I'm looking forward to, I plan it and I get it on the calendar.
Amber F. (09:36)
I send the text, I make the plans. It has to happen in my calendar that way or I will never see anybody because I will just continue to work. There's another bullet point on there for house stuff. If we need to book a housekeeper, if I need to do any deep cleaning, anything like that. I also have something in there for me to check in with Justin on his next week. So understanding when he's going to the gym, when he needs the car, if there's any special errands we need to do. If he's traveling for work, if I'm traveling for work, I'm syncing with him on Friday for the following week so that I have his stuff in my calendar and vice versa. If we have any plans together, we know what we're doing, where it's going, but it's already thought of the week before it happens. That's been a really big game-changer for us as well. The other thing that I do at this time is I block my calendar and give myself work blocks based on big projects that are coming up, meetings I need to prep for. I make sure to block that time in my calendar so that it gets done, and I'll put a task at the top of each of those work blocks with all of the major things that I need to accomplish.
Amber F. (10:34)
Again, tasks are saving my whole life during each day and once a week. Then there's one other thing that I do on Sunday nights that is so important for me, and this is a major CEO hack. I have already set my schedule on Friday, so on Sunday night, I'm relaxing. I'm not a meal prepper. It's not going to happen for me. But what I am is a wardrobe prepper. Based on where I'm going and what I'm doing for the week on Sunday night, I lay out my outfits for the entire week, Monday through Friday. And sometimes it's just athleisure, but at least it's done and it's hanging. So I don't lay them anywhere. I just hang them on hangers in my closet. I have them set up Monday through Friday like a little rolling rack right there in a special section. And then I do not have to think about what I'm wearing every single day. And I know that the Steve Jobs hack is to wear the same thing every day. And I wear a variation of the same thing every day. But I'm sorry I'm not going to be walking around in a black turtle neck in San Diego.
Amber F. (11:31)
It's just not happening for me. So this allows me to get ahead of the game. And then at the same time, I also refill my supplement holder from Amazon. It's very grandma. It has morning, noon, and evening, and I have to refill it on Sunday so that I make sure that I take my supplements every day because, again, that's one of my daily goals that I'm trying to build. The monthly task that I have, again, I think it's the fifth of the month, the seventh of the month, or something like that, I have a work one. And my work one has stuff like run payroll, pull hours, send invoices, review any content missions or big projects that we have. Very straightforward. It would be determined on what your monthly goals are. But you also know that I have a monthly finance date, a money date in my calendar on the seventh of every month. That's my personal time. It is on a recurring task, and I make sure that it gets done and that I don't skip it because sometimes it's uncomfortable to get down and dirty with your money. So after that, we have quarterly reminders.
Amber F. (12:29)
And this is my favorite one because it's more about big picture planning. And in my quarterly reminders or my quarterly tasks, rather, my reminders are the things that are written in that description are identify blackout dates for myself six months out. So travel dates, travel dates, things that I want to do, vacations, et cetera. I do a quarterly review with my team. I review my strategy, my tactics. I do a little journal on what worked, what didn't. I think about who I need to be connected to and who will mentor me. From a business perspective on the quarterly update, I do a website review and any updates. I clean out my files on my computer. I ask myself how I'm going to get in front of more potential clients in the next three months. I check my leads and referrals to see if there is any major thoroughfare. No, that's the wrong word. Throughline, if there's any major throughline. And then I'm also going through our SOPs. I'm setting up any quarterly meetings that I need to do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then the last things on the Google Calendar, and then I'll shut up about it, I promise, but birthdays go in Google Calendar as soon as I know about them on a recurring task.
Amber F. (13:38)
Because if they're just in the calendar, I will overlook them if it's a daily event. So it's a task, it goes every single year. And then the last hack is that whenever I sign up for Hulu to watch one episode of The Kardashians, or I get a new app that I'm going to delete in seven days, I put that reminder in my calendar straight away as a task a couple of days before that subscription is going to renew so that I don't get charged for it. There are so many other things you can set up. That's what I do. Tasks have saved my life. But the second thing, the guardrail, the second thing that saved my life is setting up a second brain. That's correct, a second brain that's outside of my head. Because when I do this, this helps me not need to think about when I should do something or never forget if I have done something or what I need to remember. And setting up a second brain is just about record keeping. I used to use Evernote, but Evernote and I had a bad breakup because they had so many pop-ups for me to try to buy their subscription.
Amber F. (14:39)
So I switched over to Notion. Notion is very straightforward. It's very easy to use. Essentially, you're just making a chapter book of all of the stuff in your life you need to remember. For example, I have a section called Resources or Reference. And in that reference, I have the dates of my car maintenance. I have addresses of my friends. I have my health records. I have my journal, for goodness sakes. Remember when I was talking about making a wish list of all of the items that I want to buy? That lives for me in Notion. And the biggest thing for me on this is that my memory is going to fail me, and I know that, and I'd rather just have a one-stop shop where I know I can count on finding all of the information that I need. This is just a great list keeping, record keeping system. And the other thing to minimize what I need to think about, I'm terrible at grocery shopping. If you put me in a grocery store, I'm lost. I don't know what I need. I just buy a bottle of water and get out of there because I get stressed.
Amber F. (15:42)
But what I like to do instead now is I have this recurring grocery list. I know what we eat in the house. We eat eggs, we eat almond milk, whatever it is. And I put these things in categories. And that way I can go through the refrigerator or the pantry before I go to the store, use the same list every time and check off what we have, and then leave the stuff unchecked that I need to get, and then I just clear it each time. For me, that's been a really big game-changer. I also use that on Costco stuff that we buy in bulk. I make a list of the favorite restaurants we like to go to so that we can say, Where do you want to go for dinner? I don't know. Let me look at the list of the place we always go so I can think of what sounds good based on what we know we like, things like that, so I don't have to think about it. That is my second brain. The next set of systems that have completely lowered my stress are automations in finances. The number one thing we talked about this on the last episode is the savings accounts and making sure that my money gets to a safe place so it's away from my checking account and I do not spend it unintentionally.
Amber F. (16:47)
The other thing is automations on my investing. I have automatic debits from my checking account into my investing account every single month. This is crazy to me, but I've seen a lot of this on Reddit recently of people who think they're putting money into an investment account and that it's going to grow. But what happens when you put cash into an investment or brokerage account is that it sits there in a money market account until you buy something with it, until you invest with it. So my money gets transferred from my checking account into my investment account. And then in that system, you can do this in vanguard, you can do this in Charles Schwab, you can set up so that it automatically takes a set amount of money from that money market account and invests it into the funds that you choose. You can do percentage-based or dollar-based, and it's all automatic. And it happens every single month because this is something we're going to talk so much about, dollar cost averaging. I'll go into this a lot later. But essentially, as the market or as stocks or bonds or funds or whatever, go up and down, up and down.
Amber F. (17:55)
As long as you purchase every single month, sometimes you're going to buy high, sometimes you're going to buy low, sometimes you're going to buy in the middle. And over time, as you continue to do that, you're essentially going to purchase at the average of the stock price. And so obviously, that's very good to make sure that you're not just buying high and selling really low. It helps dollar cost averaging, make sure that you are buying the average market price of whatever it is you're doing. That helps me not forget. It helps me just automatically do it. And then I'm continuing to invest month over month. The other thing blows my mind that people don't have a bill pay set up for things like their water, electricity, mortgage, et cetera. I recommend that you do that from your bank account, not in each of the individual SDG and E or SMUD or whatever. So do it from your bank account as bill pay. It's much easier to manage that way. And the other thing that I'll say too, is people like to automatically pay off their credit card. That's one thing I don't automate because I review every single credit card purchase every month during my money date.
Amber F. (19:02)
It only takes me about 10 minutes, but then I can look at everything, make sure it looks good and everything. True Wealth is not about owning things, it's about owning your time. And what if I told you you could save one day every week? Because I do. Today's show is sponsored by ClickUp, the app that runs my whole company and this podcast. It's an online productivity and project management tool that's so easy to use. We use it in AF marketing to plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources. We collaborate internally on projects. We also loop in outside vendors or contractors, anyone who helps keep project management super streamlined. This is a hot tip. I have a full Wikipedia of standard operating procedures for every single client for AF marketing for this podcast, all set up in ClickUp, and it makes our lives so much easier by staying organized, delegating tasks, and keeping notes straight. Clickup is built for teams of all sizes and industries and can be used at work or in your personal life to help you get more done in less time. It replaces all of your unorganized work apps and brings your tasks, docs, goals, chats, and more into a single shared workspace.
Amber F. (20:09)
We are obsessed, if you can't tell. And if you are ready to upgrade your life and business, ClickUp is the tool you need. To support the show, please use the link in the episode notes or on our website under Special Offers, and it's going to take you right to a to-do list template so you can play around with ClickUp. All you need to do is set up a free workspace. Just confirm your email, try it out. Make one task and see how it feels to be on the road to organization. There are a ton of free templates for your personal life, your side hustle, or your business. Or if you're employed by someone who doesn't use ClickUp, take ownership of your own career and use it to get yourself ahead and get that raise baby. And here's the best part, ClickUp is free forever. So just use that link in the podcast notes or on our website to set up a free account, verify your email, create one task, and if companies like Uber, Google, and AF Marketing are using it, you'll be in good company. If you do move forward and upgrade to a paid plan, use the code, Old Money to get 20 % off unlimited and business plans for the first year.
Amber F. (21:04)
That's code old money at checkout. All one word, old money to save 20 %. Save one day every week and get more done with ClickUp. ClickUp is closure and approved by me. As a CEO, the next thing on my list for you today to consider is inbox management. So I used to work for the CEO, and he was so busy always on his phone, always pacing around the building, having some huge deal on his hands. He was so brilliant. And I always thought it was really weird because I would take a lot of time writing really detailed, very long emails to him about what I was doing in sales and marketing department. And he would either write back cool or yes or no or sounds good or talk later or some two-word answer. Now I completely get it because my capacity for email is at an all-time low. And I treat my inbox as a to-do list and I am always going after inbox zero. The other thing that I learned from the CEO was that if something sits on his desk long enough, there is a reason why he hasn't touched it. And at one point at the year, he would take his arm and he would shove everything on the top of his desk into the trash can.
Amber F. (22:19)
And he would say, if it's really important, it will show up again. And that's something you can do when you're in a position of leadership, maybe a little bit more risky at your own job. But in your personal life, that's my rule of thumb as well. So if you have an inbox with 15,000 emails in it, I'm going to hazard a guess that any of them in there are not going to stand out to you amongst the others, and you should just start from zero and delete it all. Treat it like a to-do list moving forward. Number one, I've given you this tip before, go to your Google search bar, write the word, Unsubscribe, and then any marketing email will come up in your feed and you should unsubscribe from them all. Start again. Like I said, my inbox is my to-do list, and there's a rule of three Ds. Every single inbox message that I touch, I either do, delegate, or delete. Do, delegate, delete. I have to respond to it. It's a to-do, and it stays in my inbox until it's done, or I delegate it to a team member, a vendor, etc., or I delete it.
Amber F. (23:22)
I'll say this, not every single email deserves a response or warrants a response, but if it's a quick thank you, that's really easy. I'm now spending no more than 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon on my inbox. Granted, as a company, we use Slack a lot. And again, I do check in periodically on the day on those as well. But those uninterrupted work blocks that are on my calendar, those are there for a reason so I can get deep work done and not be bugged by notifications all day long. The next topic on the list is a real CEO mindset, and it's about outsourcing. Because if you are the CEO of a company, you are responsible for making sure that you create profit so that you can pay your employees and your shareholders and do right by the company. You have a fiduciary duty to the company to make sure that it's going to grow. I think you should look at your own life that way as well. Whether you have creative projects, business projects you're going after, you need to look very, very carefully at how you spend your time and decide if it's worth it for you to invest your time and energy into something that you might not want to do because it's going to have a trade-off cost of something else that you can't do.
Amber F. (24:36)
So a way to think about this is how much money you make an hour. If you can create revenue in an hour that outweighs the cost of you hiring somebody to do something for you, your time is better spent creating revenue. So there's two ways to think about this. If you're self-employed, that's very easy. You know what your hourly rate is if you're a freelancer or even if pay yourself or you give yourself a salary, you know how much your time is worth. Let's say you charge $100 an hour, but you are going to hire somebody for $20 an hour to run errands for you, it's probably better that you spend your time making $100 versus running errands that you could find somebody to do for you for way less money. Or cooking, for example. This is something that we've outsourced in our home, and quite frankly, it's the most old money thing that we do. While I wish that we had a private chef, we don't, but we have the next best thing, and it's cook unity. We have done so many different meal prep services before. This one, I think, is the best one that we've done.
Amber F. (25:42)
It's not so fitness-focused, but the meal quality is very good. And I will put a link in the show notes to Cook Unity to give you a discount code. I think you get $50 off. And I'll also put it on the website. But I will say that this has saved me because like I told you, I do not like going to the grocery store. I also don't like doing dishes and I don't like to cook. And Cook Unity gives you pre-portioned meals. They're really, really good. And they get delivered every Sunday. And all I do each week is go in and pick the meals that we want. That's the thing I like, is that we can pick the meals. So we're paying about $11 per meal. I think we get 14 of them a week, so it covers us for some lunches and dinners, but it really takes the pressure off. And for me, outsourcing that really has improved my quality of life because I'm not scrambling to find food, and I'm also not running out of food because I'm the type of person that if I don't eat lunch, I am a disaster by three o'clock.
Amber F. (26:37)
So this makes sure I have enough protein in my diet, I'm eating a well-balanced meal. It's been so good for us. The other thing to think about, too, let me go back to this whole equation of how much money do you make per hour. If you're a salaried employee and somebody is paying you a rate, like a salary per year, what you would look at is your take-home pay and then divide that by 2,080 to get your hourly rate. That is how many working hours are in a year. And the thing is when you're not self-employed, because when you're self-employed, you work 24/7, or you can work or create revenue at any time, but you have to value your rest time and your family time as well. I think the same rule applies for what you're... And this is not for everything in your life. You're not old money yet, so pick and choose what it is you're going to have somebody help you with. Maybe you have a housekeeper come once a month for a deep scrub, and then the rest of the month you're doing a quick 15-minute clean or you're buying a Roomba.
Amber F. (27:36)
Or maybe you're hiring a virtual assistant to help you with some things or a task rabbit to help you run the house, something that you really want to outsource that's going to give you energy back. This is not about avoiding responsibility. This is not about outsourcing your child rearing to somebody else. This is about the things that really drain your energy, really bum you out, and zap you basically for the rest of your day. I'd look at identifying those and seeing if you can outsource some of those things. Because I think, and I saw this quote on Instagram the other night, and it said, most of our modern-day problems are based on the fact that we're trying to do things alone that we should be doing as a village, like raising children or living in a neighborhood or getting food or whatever. I couldn't agree with that more. The more that I lean into getting support and paying for it, by the way, I love to pay people. I love to circulate money. I love to make people feel good. I love to pay them well. I love to support women, especially in my business.
Amber F. (28:35)
I don't have a problem paying for things that I don't want to do if somebody else is interested in doing them. Anyway, the last thing on the list is improving your day-to-day experience by noticing the things that are causing friction. So again, if you're the CEO of a company, maybe you're an old money person, maybe you're the type of person that's automated their whole house so that the blinds roll up at 06:00 am. And your coffee pot starts automatically, that's full-on automation. And that's not helpful to me right now. It's not where I'm at either because I can spare the energy for rolling the shades up in the morning in my home. However, the things that have improved my experience are improving the things that I touch 10,000 times a day. They should all be frictionless. I'm talking about your phone, your computer, your wallet, your keys. For us, we have a chow-chow. The vacuum I use three times a day, I need it to be perfect and it needs to be the most powerful, Dyson. I just upgraded. I'm so obsessed. My point is the things that I'm touching every single day better be frictionless because my expectation is that as I go through my life, I shouldn't be having problems with every little thing.
Amber F. (29:50)
I have got to focus my energy on the bigger picture, the energy to create, to problem-solve, to support, to be emotionally available for my business, my clients, my relationship. I can't have my coffee machine be a piece of shit that just spits out at me every single time. It gets replaced immediately. So for me, really understanding the things that bother me, whether it's a slow computer or bad internet, I will invest time in getting those things fixed so that I have less friction in my life. That goes for clothing, shoes, face wash, anything that you use all of the time that doesn't feel great, be ruthless about it. Be the CEO of your own life and decide what your standards are and stick to them. So my last question for you, I guess this is the only question I've asked you, but I guess my question for you is, does this sound rigid to you? Does this sound like a lot of setup? What does this feel like? What is coming up for you? Are you so resistant to this? You're like, Bitch, I don't have time to set all these things up. Or that might sound nice, but I want to share something with you because I used to also think that this was very rigid, and now I couldn't live any other way.
Amber F. (31:01)
And the structure, this very systemized way that I have everything running in the background of my life, it really allows me to lean into the rest, the recovery, the feminine side of me, the partner in my relationship that I want to be, as opposed to task-mastering everything that I have going on with my boyfriend or my dog or our home. Things are just running seamlessly in the background, and it does take a bit of intention. I hope this outline guides you to what would be helpful or what might serve you. But I know that sometimes systems and new systems can be overwhelming. There's a learning curve, change is hard. But I'm telling you now that setting up the systems allows you to actually be more free. And like I said at the top of the show, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the... I don't know what the quote is. What did I say? You fall to the system. No, let me look. Hold on. Okay, I'm back. It says you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And thank you, Seth, for putting that on your Instagram because I think it is so very true.
Amber F. (32:11)
And if you have big, audacious goals, you're going to need to support yourself both emotionally, financially, systematically, so that you can get shit done. So before I let you go today, one stock tip for you. One hot tip, something to trade on, something to put your money into. And I was thinking about this. I could say a million things. I could say you need to start taking yourself seriously, taking your goal seriously, putting yourself first, stopping a people pleaser. But I have some episodes coming up about boundaries and how to have boundaries in your life and talking about how to say it, how to script it when you don't want to go to a meeting or you actually don't want to get coffee with that friend or this mastermind is actually sucking the life out of you, how to get out of it. So we'll get back to all of that stuff. But for now, I'm going to give you, you're going to make fun of me for this, the one thing that I love for being the CEO of my life, and it's a time cube. It is this shitty little toy. It's like an egg Timer from Amazon, and it's a cube.
Amber F. (33:12)
On each side, it has five, 15, 30, and 60. And you put this time cube on like an egg Timer you would in your kitchen, and you set it, and then you go and do the thing that you do. Completely focused, completely uninterrupted. I use this time cube all the time. In fact, the 15-minute clean, I do that all the time. I'll set the Timer on the stove of my kitchen, and I will clean furiously for 15 minutes, and time goes by in a flash. It's insane. Or if I need to get some work done for a client, I put the Timer on for an hour, and then I do it for an hour, and then I'm done with it. And I look at it the next day or I just end it. Whatever needs to happen, it helps me manage my time. And as a CEO, the most valuable thing that I can own is my time, my freedom, my schedule, how things should be for me. So stuff still has to get done. And this helps me just manage it and make sure that I don't go overboard. So time cube is it.
Amber F. (34:10)
I love it. It's loud and scary when it goes off, so don't be afraid. And let me know how it goes for you setting up these systems. If you want any of this written out, let me know. I can put this in Instagram stories or a post or whatever if you want to see some of the monthly, daily, quarterly tasks that I have set up. Hope you guys are doing well. Thank you so much for sticking around on this episode to be the CEO of your life. Let me know how it goes for you and I will talk to you on the next show. Bye-bye. Feeling rich? I hope so. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Old Money. If you have questions you want answered, email me at oldmoneypodcast@gmail. Com or hit us up on social. We are at Old Money Podcast and I am at your service. If this episode spoke to you, inspired you, helped you, if you took a single note, it would mean the world to me if you could please just take a minute to write and review the podcast. And if you're not doing so already, subscribe.
Amber F. (35:05)
And if you have friends who like getting rich, please share this episode with them, even if it's just on your Instagram story. And I'd love you more than Jeff Bezos loves Amazon Prime. Thank you so much and I will talk to you on the next episode. Remember, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your tax professional, and I'm not your financial advisor. The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire, and support listeners and their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. In addition to that, this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services.
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© Old Money 2023.
The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire and support listeners in their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services for which individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services related to the episode.
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