Patty interviews Cassie Parks, author and coach. She shares her purpose which is helping others re-write their money story. It’s not just dreaming about what could be. To start, she asks, “what is the title that drives the rest of your life?”
Cassie shares the 4 most common types of money stories. Listen to find out which one fits you. It’s likely that you default to one of these because of your lived experience based on what you learned at an early age.
They break down why we get stuck in our old stories and more importantly, how can we change the script? Cassie and Patty break down how to understand the way to change your beliefs.
Bonus: It isn’t about doing more, or a magic formula. It’s about learning how to allow.
Cassie Parks Bio
Cassie Parks loves the ocean, dancing for no reason and the power of possibility. Her best-selling books include the topics of money, business and lifestyle design. She is a mentor for those who want to turn their wildest dreams into their dreams come true. Manifest $10,000 hits bookstores in May of 2017.
Identify Your Money Story Guide (handout)
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Transcript
Welcome to the wealth and purpose podcast where people who are led by their hearts come to learn the secrets to creating wealth in a way that feels really good and live their purpose fully in the process. I’m your host, Patty Lennon. I’m an X type-A corporate banker, turned intuitive business coach. I’m also a wife, a mom to two preteens, a professor, girl scout leader and well – Hey, you get it like you, I wear a lot of hats, whether you’re looking for inspiration to get started or strategies to get growing. I am here to help you create abundance in every area of your life in business. Welcome.
Patty: Hey, everyone. I am so excited to be back with an interview for you. We have not had a guest on the show in a while, and there was a few reasons for that. I only like to have guests that I actually know, so that when I’m talking about things, especially around money creation, you know that I personally trust them or I wouldn’t introduce them to you.
Patty: So our guest today is Cassie Parks. Now I met Cassie years and years and years ago. When she was starting out, at least I think she was starting out. I know I was starting out, and she just had this big beautiful energy about her, and there’s no shock that she’s super successful now, has tons of books she’s written. Just having the best life ever, and we’ll talk more about that. But the reason I’m having her on is because she really is a manifesting wizard, and I do talk a little bit about manifesting. You know, I have some beliefs that the law of attraction world can sometimes make it seem like manifesting is this magic wand, and you don’t really have to do anything but create a really good vision board. I don’t believe any of that. Cassie is much more about actual processes to follow, what to do, what not to do.
So I think you’re really going to enjoy her. Here’s the bio she gave me, that’s my bio for you, but here’s the one she gave me. Cassie loves the ocean, dancing for no reason and the power of possibility. Her superpower is helping her clients attract more money and manifest their dream lives. She’s the author of seven nonfiction books on the topic of money mindset, business, and lifestyle design. In addition, she has two fiction books. So just that alone, you probably want to check her out because if you’ve ever tried to write a book, you know how hard that is. So welcome. Welcome, welcome, Cassie.
Cassie: Thank you for having me, and thank you for that awesome introduction. Like that’s the way intro’s should be always.
Patty: You can take that clip and send it to other podcasts where you’re going to be a guest and tell them to be like me.
Cassie: that’s what I’m going to do. I love it.
Patty: So the very first question I always start with is, what’s your definition of wealth? And you know, I actually haven’t visited this question in a while, but you know, for the context of this podcast, wealth is really – in this context – is about more than just money. It’s having money in a context that makes sense for you. So for you, what do you think it is?
Cassie: For me and I will start by saying I would probably use the term that would be synonymous with this is abundance. And I think I use it in the same way that you use wealth. Wealth and abundance is having more than enough time, money, and energy, right? And more than enough in what feels good and being inside yourself and connected to yourself and having that more than enough. For you more than enough time that you have the space. More than enough energy that you feel like you’re creating and bubbling, and you have momentum in your life and money as well. Having more than enough to take care of so that you’re also investing in your happiness in what you love. And I don’t think it has to mean like gold toilet seats and all of that. It’s really about how you feel in your life.
Patty: Beautiful. So I know that for you, helping people attract more money is your purpose. But since I do ask the question, I will just put it out there. What is your purpose?
Cassie: to help people write powerful money stories, which includes attracting money but to really write the money story that drives their life. That is their choice. That doesn’t come from a default story that they pick up along the way. And I say money story because I always say when you change your money story, everything changes. So that goes with my definition of abundance, you know, time, money, and energy. The same when you write a new money story, it affects the energy, it affects the time you have in your life. It affects who you’re being. And so just to help people write the most powerful money story that they can.
Patty: Hmm. Okay. Interesting. So I’ve heard the term money story thrown around many times. I’ve been in conferences where we rewrite our money story. What’s your definition of money story when you’re talking about that, what is that?
Cassie: It’s the title that all the chapters of your money come under. And it doesn’t have to be the whole story. So I picked up on the word rewrite, right? So my clients know, we don’t rewrite your story. You pull out a blank page. We identify your old stories so that you can see where that’s coming to fruition in your life, where it’s impacting your life. And you can catch it along the way as we write a new story. But we’re never trying to edit that story. We’re not trying to write against that. We’re pulling out that blank page and writing a whole new story. And so my definition is what’s the title that drives the rest of your life that says what’s being created and how you’re living your life when it comes to money?
Patty: I love that because one of the things I think can get really confusing for people around law of attraction and manifesting is you can be doing the technical things that people teach around attraction. But if you don’t rewire your brain to actually allow in the stuff you brought to your front door, you’re never going to actually experience it in your reality. So what I’m hearing you say is that a piece of the puzzle is that you can attract all this money, but it’s going to stay just outside your reality unless your money story allows it in. Is that it do you think?
Cassie: Yeah, absolutely. And so often that comes true. There’s a client this morning. We were talking on our call, and she’s like, I saw the evidence. I saw this big money conversation with my new clients and they have this business that is just, I don’t know, it’s grown so much, and it’s all over the world. And she goes, a year ago I wouldn’t, I couldn’t have even heard the story. I couldn’t have seen any parts of it or seen any possibilities.
It would have just been like words. And while that was just evidence, it’s the same thing that you’re talking about. Like, yes, if it’s not at our door, if we don’t have a story that supports having money and keeping money, it can just stay as that package, you know, on the doorstep that no one ever picks up.
Patty: good stuff. So what are the different money stories?
Cassie: So there’s “survival”, which is always in that survival mode. It’s, it’s all or nothing basically. There’s “just enough” where there’s just enough. So this is the “survival” and “just enough” are very similar. The differences, “survival” has that adrenaline, and it’s very stressful. Whereas “just enough”, it’s like, well, it’ll work out but nothing ever grows. So it’s like $300 shows up, and you know, the fridge is going to break, right? But if the brakes go out on the car, you know, $500 bucks is going to show up. But it’s always even, and so it’s less stressful, but it’s also stressful in that you don’t feel like you can go for those big things, those big dreams. You can’t save for that big trip because things, something’s gonna come up as soon as you get $1,000 saved to wipe that out.
And there is somebody who’s “chasing money”, right? They always have the new business idea, their family’s tired of hearing about their business idea that they probably have been in three MLMs. That type of thing. They’re willing to spend whatever money to try and make money, but often don’t get past that idea, that excitement phase. And then there’s the “hot mess”, which was named after I heard that story. All of these were, and it’s just the person who’s never really had to pay that much attention. And so it’s not that there’s a lot of stress around money. They just do it, and they’re in the flow. But what happens is one day they wake up, and they’re like, I should have more to show for this. And then there’s “hold tights”, which again, is pretty self-explanatory. It’s that person that can’t let go of money, right? That person that will sleep on the floor for six months to wait for that mattress sale and get that 20% off. Or that person who just never, ever wants to let go of money and the thing that I hear from these people is that what they see is that they miss opportunities because they’re unwilling to let go of money. So that’s just kind of a brief introduction.
Patty: I love that. And where do you think money stories start?
Cassie: By default, I think we pick them up either from the things we hear in general society about money. We pick them up from what we hear and what we see our parents experience and also our interpretation of what’s going on, which often as we get older and we see what we thought was happening isn’t always what’s happening. But it’s the story we make up, right? We even talked about that a little bit before the show, just seeing something and kind of running with it. And that happens. We we see an incident with money that happens at a critical time or has high emotion. And we start writing that money story. And what I’ve found is that most people, if they don’t choose them, they default to one of these. So whether they’re trying to be the opposite of their parents or they’re trying to be better than their parents or you know, they’re just trying to do it their way. These happen to be defaults, that, until you write your own story, you end up living.
Patty: I love that. So tell me a little bit more about what life was like for you when you were a money chaser.
Cassie: Oh, man. I always had a business idea. And some of them started to be successful at different times. I did resale jewelry at one time for short period. I had a machine that detoxed you. I still have it. I still love it. I got busy in my corporate job. I always had an idea. I was always trying to build my coaching practice. And this spanned a while, right? So I always had an idea. I always wanted to do something. Here’s the big clue of money chasers. They have a thousand domains. I would sometimes buy three domains a day. This is a good keyword, and I’m gonna just set up a quick passive income site for this.
Right? So that was one of them, but I was running around, and I was tired because I wasn’t doing one thing in my coaching business. First of all, I didn’t know how to build my coaching business at that time, but I was chasing that dream of having this business. And so I did everything, and I was spending all of my energy on that. And the cool thing about being a “money chaser” is that you do have ideas, a lot of them, it’s just learning to navigate and write a story where you pick the one that feels best to you, and that’s your passion and your purpose and that you want to do versus just anyone that you think will make money.
Patty: Okay. So I have two places I want to go with this now. So I’m going to give you both of them, and then you tell me which one to do next. So the two questions are popping into my head are – How did you rewrite your story, or what was the new story you wrote? But then I’m also so curious, you said you were in corporate, how did you stop being in corporate i.e. was it a leap of faith? Did you actually accumulate enough money in your side hustle? What happened?
Cassie: I love this. I love talking about this.
Okay, let’s start with writing the new money story. You know, one of the beliefs that I had was that you had to work really hard for money. And again, when I talked a little bit about how we interpret things that our parents do. I think my dad did work really hard to get where he was, and my parents sort of had a situation where it was the equivalent of winning a small lottery after I graduated high school. And so I saw that happen to my dad, but I had all these beliefs about how hard you had to work to make that happen. And then you had to get lucky as well. And that’s the part, I was like, I don’t want to work that hard, but I could, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have that lucky moment. And my dad was very clear that he thought that was luck. Right? He attributes a lot to luck instead of hard work, even though he works very hard. And that’s what it was. So I always came up against this belief when I was trying to build my business and do all these things that, you know, money was hard. And what I realized one time is I’m always trying to shift this same belief. Like this isn’t working. This comes up all the time, and I do whatever the thing is, you know, in that moment to shift it, and it’s not working. It’s not sticking. And what I realized is, it’s because you can’t edit an old story. You can’t rewrite it. You have to pull out that blank page. And so that’s what I started doing with my money story is I pulled out that blank page and I started writing a story. That money could be easier, money could be more fun, money could come easily without working hard and all of the things that I wanted to be true in my story.
And I started to live that story out, and my new money story, (it evolves every now and then) is big money finds me because it does, you know, opportunities and things show up. Before, it was money finds me, and it’s upgraded to big money finds me. And I just did that by constantly asking instead of what’s wrong with my money beliefs and what do I need to fix? I just constantly asked, what do I want to be true in my story? What are the beliefs that I want to have? And I did a lot of other things that work on your brain and prepare it to have more money and all of those things as well. But what it comes down to a lot is just choosing this is what I want, right? I don’t want money to be so hard. Okay, what do I want it to be? What’s the belief? I want it to be easy. And then you have to act as if you believe that as well. So you have to take the easier path. You have to start choosing that. If that’s the belief that you want to be true, you have to reinforce it, and you have to behave like somebody who has that belief.
Patty: And that’s the kicker, right? I mean, that’s the part that everyone can write a new money story and so listeners, if you were thinking, okay, I’m whipping out my white piece of paper, the key there is, you got to do things that people with that money story would do.
Cassie: Exactly. You have to do the things you have to. Practice behaving like that person. That is the kicker. That’s the magic. And that’s why a lot of times I think, you know, you mentioned in the intro the law of attraction work doesn’t go anywhere because it’s not just saying this is what I want. You have to change your beingness to behave like that person that you’re wanting to be – like I’ll say the character in your story. What would he or she do if they were in this situation? You know, they choose easy or hard. Well, somebody who believes money can be easy. He’s going to choose the easier path.
Patty: And you know, as you’re talking, the thing that is so interesting to me or it’s just reminding me when I read one of your books. It was when you had already had a couple of books out. It was when I happened to grab it was “Manifest $10,000,” or was it “Manifest Your First 10”?
Cassie: “Manifest 10,000”. But yeah.
Patty: And I would give it to people because back then I hadn’t really kind of distanced myself from the law of attraction world. I was still technically doing a lot of law of attraction teaching and workshops and stuff. And the place I had gotten to was so many of the teachers out there created this. What felt like you were asking people to spin plates while dancing, play the symbols. That’s what it felt like to me. What was being taught. It was like, that’s how you manifest shit, right? Become the dancing monkey with the symbols. I mean, it was just absurd, right? What people were doing. And I think it was that book or double your business where you directly address that, don’t you?
Cassie: All this stuff that you do. And it could be either, cause I’m now remembering. I feel like we had a conversation about double your business, which might’ve been about this, but yeah, we think we have to do all these things, and we have to juggle all of these, I call it the manifesting list. Right? And often, when people come to me, their manifesting list is 30 things long. They’re not enjoying their life because they’re just trying to get their manifesting lists done. And then if they don’t get it done, they’re beating themselves up about it because it’s never going to happen. And it’s just what’s missing. Right? And you’re right, juggling all the things and doing all the things.
Patty: Yeah. And maybe it’s not everyone now, even as we’re talking about it, I’m realizing, it’s probably part of people’s money story that you have to work hard to have money. That was part of my money story for sure. And so I just moved the hard work out of my corporate job and then out of my business into manifesting, I just made manifesting my hard frickin job.
Cassie: Yes. I love that you caught that because so many people do. When that is your money story, you’ll put it on whatever you’re doing, whether you’re manifesting or whether you’re trying to build a business or whether you’re babysitting, right. You’ll make it all hard.
Patty: Yeah. Yes. Okay. So now tell me me how you got from the Corporate life to the entrepreneurial life. And I will say something about you, Cassie, is I remember when I first encountered you and I can’t remember how we met, but I remember thinking this girl’s a natural entrepreneur. I am not, I always loved Corporate, but I loved doing, I loved helping people more than I loved being in corporate and corporate just went and paid me to do just that. So I was forced to become an entrepreneur. So tell me what’s your journey?
Cassie: I love, I love hearing that. I like the backstory. So it was my only corporate job. I’d had jobs previously, but it was supposed to be a six-month gig, and it turned into nine years. And the whole time, I was wanting to build my own coaching practice. And at first, I thought it would be a counseling practice. I started right when I started getting my master’s in counseling, and I started working in counseling and going through my master’s, and I completed it. But there was a point very early on where I was like, this is not fast enough for me. There has to be a better way. And so I sort of, I found some energy techniques, and I got like a little introduction to coaching, and I was like, this is it. And so I wanted to build that business. And I studied the law of attraction, and that was part of changing your thoughts and beliefs was part of the energy work that I was doing. And I worked on myself a lot, and I came up with my own practice to constantly shift my beliefs to be aware to just choose the better belief, you know, like this is hard. Okay, I want it to be easy. And so I just kept doing that and writing a new money story. As I was doing that and I had a lot of success, I could see the success of my corporate job, you know, I’d get 20% raises, I get bonuses that worked out that I wasn’t necessarily supposed to get, but they work out. I get promotions that I wasn’t technically qualified for yet.
And so that was all going on. And then I was trying to build my business. Then I had a moment, which I tell people to come back to you, and I asked myself, I was doing the crazy thing I was chasing, and I was not enjoying my life. I was exhausted because that’s what happens to many chasers. And it just was this moment, and I was like, I’m not doing this anymore. And I just asked myself, what is it that you really want? And I went back to the intention I had set when I was 19, which was to be financially independent. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to choose whether I wanted to go to work. And I was trying to manifest my business. I was using my business as the how trying to manifest my business to get out of my corporate job. And once I got clear – what you want is the time to build your business, and you don’t want to have to go to work.
All the pieces of my real estate as an investor started to fall into place, and I was able to pay my bills. I stayed for two years, but within about a year, I was able to pay my bills with my passive income from my real estate, and I stayed for two years cause I wanted to have a certain amount in the bank as well. And then I left my corporate job, and I could pay, it wasn’t what I was making, but it was enough to cover my bills. And so I was free to go be me and build my business.
Patty: That’s Awesome. Thank you. I Love that. That’s a way better story than what I did, which was I manifested a full year salary, and I left with it and, but I still had to work hard for money. So I just worked really hard and made no money in that first year, and then I went back to zero. Yeah. And then I had to figure out how to make money.
Cassie: That’s pretty common, I think. Yeah.
Patty: So listeners do what Cassie did, don’t do what I did. That way sounds a lot nicer than the way I did it. So, you know, my kind of my passion around helping people make money isn’t like a thing that brings me passion in and of itself. But one of the reasons I love it as a teacher on our planet at this time is that there’s all these beliefs about money, right? But we all chose to incarnate at this moment in time. And this moment in time on the planet, money holds a lot of power. So simply choosing to incarnate at this time means you wanted to learn to work with a very tangible manipulator of power. Right? It was a conscious decision before you became a human and then you got here, and you found out what that’s like and you were like, crap, why did I do that? Why didn’t I wait until everyone trades on love, but so be it. You’re here. And so when money shows up in anyone’s life, every interaction with it is, in my opinion, is an interaction with your soul. And it’s how much you’re willing to trust it and honor it and surrender to a journey.
And the more open you are to trusting that the more you aren’t tight-fisted or fear-based and you can, and that freedom ends up bringing lots and lots more money into your life. At least that’s been my experience of it. I’m curious how you feel about it.
Cassie: I think money is sacred, and it’s one of the greatest spiritual gifts that we have. And I love your intro to that and about it being a choice. I haven’t thought about it in that way, but it makes 100% sense to me because I see money as so sacred because it’s just energy. And so often we let it, the sacredness of the journey is, it helps us define our worth. It helps us define it like allowing money in; we have to open up to more and more worthiness. And I watch it happen with my clients all day, every day. We had a discussion about it today, which was, which was beautiful, you know, it’s like somebody could only allow $500 to be in their account, you know, a year ago and now there’s $5,000 extra in two accounts.
And we had this talk about what it means to open up and what it means to allow and how much you have to love yourself even more. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe that you’re worthy of that more and more, you know, it seems easy to just say, yeah, I want more money and write it down on a piece of paper or put some pictures of money on a vision board and the things you want to do. But the work is soul work. It is building that, like you said, that trust, we call it the trust muscle. It’s building up trust muscle all the time that it will come and that you’re worthy. And it’s really what I see as this dance of your soul of trusting more and believing more of what you’re worthy, and trusting more and believing more and, and opening up and allowing all of that.
Patty: That worthiness. You’re right. That’s such a good, important piece of that puzzle. We’re almost at the end of the time. So before I ask my last question, I do want to mention Cassie has two podcasts. You can check her out at the More Money podcast, and The Manifest It Now podcast. And like I said, she’s got amazing books. You can get all of them on Amazon. I’ll put a link in the show notes to your books. Oh, you also had a download for the list.
Cassie: You can go to identifyyourmoneystory.com you can download the guide. You don’t even have to put in your email address. You can just download the guide, and if you want a recap of what your money story is or you heard two of them, which happens a lot and you’re like, I think I’m a little bit of both. You can use that guide that will really highlight which one you are, which is again, just a tool to help you become aware so that you can start to change that and you get to let go of that story as soon as you figure out what it is like, that’s the moment we start letting go of it.
Patty: that’s beautiful. I love the fact that your download doesn’t require an email. I mean – I don’t have any of those. I would happily, I just haven’t done it. I think that just embodies the energy of what’s meant to come to me will come and what isn’t, won’t. If you’re listening and you love Cassie’s stuff you’re obviously you’re going to track her down and, and beg her to let you be a client. Well, you don’t have to beg, I mean, Cassie likes clients, so you know, you just have to like set up a call. Okay. So last question is for our listeners, if they are on their path of creating wealth with purpose, right? They’re really following their purpose in the world. What’s the one piece of advice you believe is most important for them right now?
Cassie: Oh, to trust and not get caught up in the way that money has to come. So when you’re doing your purpose, often there’s some work to do behind the scenes. We’ve talked about the beingness of it, and there’s some growing in from what I’ve seen to being the person who does your purpose. So my best advice is to stay open and allow money to come from whatever channel it’s going to come. I have an actor and we just, we just keep saying the Universe is serving money up to her on a silver platter until her breakout role comes. And if you’re willing to open to that, which a lot of people aren’t because we connect, the money has to come with our sole purpose, or it somehow means we’re not doing our purpose right or something else, right. It somehow means something if it doesn’t come together right away. And my best advice, and I think the thing that lets your soul relax is just be open to however, the money comes, and it will start to come through your soul purpose.
Patty: Oh, I love that. Love that. Love that. Love that. Go back, rewind. Please listen to that again. O M. G., yes. I see that so often when someone’s building some really strong sales and marketing and then all of a sudden they get a windfall because their partner gets a bonus through work or they get a gift from someone, or suddenly a large bill that they’ve been used to paying is removed from their life, and they don’t see the connection. Yeah. Yes. Love that. Yes. Awesome. Okay, well, Cassie, is there any last words of wisdom you want to offer the listeners?
Cassie: Let money be sacred and let it into your life as you would anything else that’s sacred.
Patty: Beautiful. Well everyone, I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing more of what Cassie has to share such a wise, wise soul. Check her out. We’ll put the links in the show notes.
Cassie: Amazing. Thank you for having me so much fun.
Patty: Bye, everyone.
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