112. Wanna Get Wealthy? Buy New Underwear!

We need to have a conversation about your underwear.

I bet that's not something you're expecting to hear on this podcast today.

I'm shocked.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach.

And welcome to the Weenie Cast.

If you're wanting to make more money in your business, if you're really wanting to build serious wealth for yourself and your descendants, then you need to get more serious about your abundance, hygiene, about your wealth hygiene.

And no, I'm not telling you you need to change your underwear because it's dirty.

People generally keep underwear for too long.

If you're in your home right now, I challenge you to go to your underwear drawer and pull out every single pair of underwear that you have that has a hole in it, that has elastic showing that maybe, like, the fabric has gotten really worn.

So it's kind of see through.

The reason I'm telling you to do this is because you need to throw that underwear out.

You need to get rid of it.

You need to go and buy new underwear.

It's one of those expenses that because people in your everyday life probably aren't seeing your underwear, you don't replace them.

You don't prioritize having quality, not damaged underwear.

You make yourself suffer through it because it's an expense that you don't necessarily need to make right now.

But it's incredibly unhealthy for your wealth mindset because basically every single day, you have this whole routine built in where you tell yourself, for whatever reason, that you're not worth spending the money on, and maybe money's tight, and you're telling yourself, oh, you know, I just can't afford to replace this right now.

And I want you to think about what that does to your subconscious, what you're actually training your subconscious brain to believe about the world around you, to believe about your own worth.

Our subconscious designs the world around us.

It dictates the opportunities that we are clued into noticing.

It informs how we decide on our pricing or the programs that we design in our business or the types of clients that we go after.

And if your subconscious is being told every single morning as you get dressed, money's tight.

You know, you're not worth spending the money on.

No one needs to see this.

What's that going to do to your business?

Probably going to tell you, okay, well, money's tight, so let's settle for the cheaper clients.

Let's accept a client who's not our ideal, who's kind of a pain in the Ass.

But they will pay their bills.

And no matter how much you actually want to make more money, your subconscious can be like, well, what you want doesn't matter.

You're not worth that.

We've decided every single morning.

You're not worth that.

You're not even worth new underwear.

I talk with clients every single day on how we can improve their money mindset, how we can work on their manifestation skills to bring in more money.

Where a lot of people miss some foundational steps is they don't look at the inputs they're actually giving themselves every single day about what they're worth and the resources that they have at their disposal.

And there are four big areas where this is really going to impact you.

Because it's stuff that we do every single day that teaches our subconscious what's available to us right off the bat.

You have homework.

You're going to go and throw out all of your old holey underwear.

You're just going to get rid of it, and you're going to go and buy new underwear.

You don't have to spend a ton of money on new underwear.

You're going to make the conscious decision from this day forward to honor yourself enough to wear underwear that isn't falling apart.

Deal.

It's the smallest thing that you can do to help shift your mindset to make more money.

Once you do this, you're then going to look at the different areas of your home, of your daily routine, where you cut corners on yourself, where you settle for less.

And I want you to have a really real conversation with yourself around.

What is this teaching my subconscious when I have this interaction every single day?

You know, it could be that you have a doorknob to the bathroom that jiggles and, like, the lock gets stuck and it drives you insane.

But it's just like, oh, what is a new doorknob?

50 bucks.

That seems like an expense that we don't need to make since the door still works.

But every single time you use that door and you turn that doorknob and you try to use the lock and it's not working properly, you're telling your subconscious you can't afford it, that you're not worth spending the money on.

Most people will never look at these things.

Most people will just live their life without questioning it, constantly giving them themselves this input that they cannot spend the money for whatever reason.

So there are a few other areas in which if you want to make more money, you need to become impeccable with the input you're giving yourself.

And Let me tell you, this is going to involve saying goodbye to some things, not just your underwear.

This is going to require you to have some uncomfortable conversations where you have to set some boundaries.

And it's going to require you to dig into how you were trained to talk about money and your own worth and the things that you want versus the things that you need.

Because if you want to make more money in your business and in your life, you will not be able to do that if you don't do this foundational work.

So the first step is all the personal stuff.

Your underwear, doorknobs, various things around your home that drive you nuts that you've been putting off investing in.

Start making a list.

And every week or every month, I want you to upgrade that thing.

Prioritize it.

If money's tight, make it a personal goal of yours to make enough extra money that month to be able to invest in fixing that thing, because you deserve it.

You are worth it.

And these little upgrades will make a massive difference in the amount of money you make at the end of the year.

So first and foremost, you need to make some personal upgrades.

Next, we need to look at the different inputs you're giving yourself for information every single day.

I'm talking TV shows, books, movies, the advertisements you're putting yourself in front of.

A lot of my clients struggle with something that I call poverty pride.

And this is a natural thing that happens when your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents, your great great grandparents had to make things work with the least amount of money.

And you might be able to guess my Last name is McManus, come from Irish descent.

A lot of my ancestors, you know, had to emigrate from Ireland to the new world with very little money in their pocket.

And because they were Irish, they were also Catholic, didn't believe in family planning.

They had a lot of children.

And what do you do when you're the parents of a lot of children?

You don't have a whole lot of money.

You have to make the little money you have, stretch a real long way to keep everyone clothed and fed and housed.

You have to work really, really, really hard and long hours.

Here's the thing about the human spirit.

The human spirit cannot exist when it believes that it is not thriving, when it doesn't have something to be proud of.

So most families have some kind of drum they beat about being proud that they made it work on just $10 a week, that they sent their kids to college making minimum wage, whatever.

You know, that whole game we play with our friends, we're like, oh, my God, guess where I got this.

Look at this bag.

Guess how much I paid for it?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's a fun game to go and see if you can get quality stuff for very little money.

And yet oftentimes you have to seek out quality for the least amount of money possible.

It's tied to that poverty pride that's been passed down through the generations.

And this isn't going away until we stop paying attention to other people who have poverty pride.

And it's rife in television, some sitcoms that I can think of right off the bat.

Two and a Half Men.

The brother Allen, who's as cheap as cheap can be.

Do you have any money?

No, I.

I left my wallet at home.

You mean this wallet that is not good for your money Hygiene.

Seeing that mentality and then seeing the juxtaposition of his brother, who's this gross, awful human being who has a lot of money.

That's not going to be good for your money hygiene.

The sitcom Two Broke Girls.

In the title, you have poverty pride.

Two broke girls, Two girls who have to make it work, making no money.

I grew up with my family watching Roseanne.

It's a great example of a working class family in the United States, but it also has a great deal of poverty pride.

They're constantly struggling with money.

And the real problem with these shows, with movies that glorify struggling with money, as the viewer, we're always empathizing with the characters.

We're always imagining, oh, my God, what if that were me?

Oh, God, that would be awful to struggle like that.

And consciously, we understand that this is a show.

We understand that this is not us, that this is not our lives.

And yet subconsciously, our subconscious can't tell the difference.

There's a reason why your chest gets tight and your heart rate goes up when you watch a horror movie.

There's a reason why when we see someone get kicked in the shins, I just literally flinched before I was able to get that out of my mouth.

When we see someone getting kicked in the shins, we react physically because we have empathy.

Our subconscious doesn't know the difference between someone else experiencing that and us experiencing that.

There's so much out there that's training your subconscious to believe in a scarcity mindset and a big part of catching it.

And I'm not necessarily saying that you have to cut all these things out, but I want you to notice when you're watching an episode of when they're really struggling financially and the Desperation they get backed into a corner with.

And then how they make it work.

Notice what it does to your nervous system.

Notice, oh, wow.

This is the narrative my subconscious is taking in right now.

I need to now feed my subconscious something abundant.

I need to go and remind my subconscious that that is not our reality.

I need to now seek out a story where people aren't having to struggle with the bare minimum.

So we need to be impeccable with our input, the input that we're giving our subconscious every single day.

Now, the next one that we need to look at is social, how we talk about money with our friends and family.

And this is honestly the hardest one, because oftentimes, like, you'll be the first one who starts to work on their money mindset in your group.

Not a lot of people actually work on this area of their life to improve it.

And a lot of people are so attached to the narrative of, well, life is hard and you have to struggle and all this stuff.

But, like, if you make it work, then you get to be proud at the end of the day because that's been their identity and the identity of their parents and their grandparents and the great, great grandparents.

And when you say, hey, listen, I don't want to hear that anymore, they're going to get a little defensive.

And here's what I want you to be prepared for, is you're not trying to change how they talk about money.

You can't.

Unless they're wanting to work on their relationship with money and improve it, they're never going to change how they talk about money.

But if you have people in your life who are very immersed in a poverty pride mindset, the boundary you get to set is, hey, I want to create a boundary here where you and I don't discuss our beliefs around money anymore.

I'm personally trying to change the things that I believe about money.

And part of the work I'm doing is stopping the conversations that I've been having up to this point in my life.

And it's not a judgment on you.

It's not a judgment on how we have been talking about money in the past.

It's simply that I need to start having new conversations about money.

If you want to come along for that ride, then please do.

But for the time being, like, that's a topic that's going to be off limits for us.

And where this is going to come up, it's going to come up when you have family dinners where someone's talking about how hard the economy is, you're Going to be hearing a friend talking about how they had to take a pay cut to get a job at a company that they wanted to work for.

You know, this is not easy.

It's not easy to do because these are people that you care about and you love, and this is the conversation that's very real for their lives.

And also, if you want to improve your money mindset, you need to stop incorporating how they speak about money into your awareness field, because all it does is teach your subconscious that money is scarce.

And lastly, you need to work on your own language around money, not just in how you talk about money with other people, but how you talk about money with yourself.

If I were to tell you to go and check your bank balance right now, what's the immediate thought that comes to mind?

For a lot of people, it's, oh, my God, I don't want to.

Like, what if there's not a lot of money in there?

God, what if I accidentally went in the red?

If I were to ask you what you want more than anything, many people will think back.

A big house or a boat or a $10,000 knitting machine that'll make knitting sweaters really, really fast.

Something that I want, although I haven't gotten it for myself, because A, where the fuck would I put it?

And B, let's be real.

I will buy it, I will use it for a day, and I will get bored.

But oftentimes, when we think about the thing that we really want, our next thought is, oh, well, I can't afford it right now, rather than, oh, my God, I want it so much.

Let's get really excited about figuring out a way I can get it.

Your relationship with money is designed in the way you interact with it energetically, and the way you treat your own needs and wants.

Most people can justify spending money on things that they need, which is why underwear usually goes unreplaced for a very, very long time.

Because for a lot of people, if you have underwear, even if it has holes in it, at least you have underwear.

It's not something that you need to replace unless it goes missing for some reason, which, I mean, that would be a very odd occurrence.

I hope that doesn't happen to you.

You might want to move at that point.

But if you want something, you know, what's the conversation you have with yourself about that?

I recently had this conversation with one of my clients in BYOB Advanced, and I had them go through this exercise where they had to list out, you know, what are the quality qualifiers for buying something that they want versus something that they need.

And this particular client I was so impressed with, because I know they've been working on their relationship with money with me for about six months now.

And the answer that they would have given me about six months ago was totally different from the answer they gave me in this conversation where they realize, okay, well, when I think about something that I want, I think about what is the ROI for happiness, for enjoyment.

And they held up this beautiful mug that had a candle in it.

And they said, you know, I spent something like $30 on this mug with a candle in it because it's fall scented.

I love the smell of fall.

I'll get a mug out of it.

I get so much enjoyment from lighting it.

And I knew this would give me $30 worth of enjoyment.

That's not how most people see it.

Most people see it as, oh, well, if I just want something, it's not necessarily a good enough reason for me to buy it.

And a step further, they may even see buying stuff that they want just for the sake of wanting it as an extravagance, as something that's irresponsible.

And of course, there is a fine line of being responsible with the money you do have and spending recklessly.

But it's the conversation you have with yourself when you're deciding what you want to buy, what you're wanting to spend your money on, that teaches your subconscious what to be open to, what to expect of money in the future.

One of my best friends I met during my.

One of my first sales roles, and I will never forget her saying, when we were talking about money and how a lot of people think that, you know, if you have a lot of money, you're evil.

I will never forget her saying that money makes you more of who you are, right?

So if you're a good person who wants to do good work in the world, who wants to have impact and help the less fortunate and really make a difference within some cause that matters to you, having more money will make you more able to be that badass person who's doing good.

If you're an asshole who, like, wants to pollute the planet and do all that stuff, money will make you more able to do that.

But if you want to make more money to be the good person that you are and to have a greater impact, this work cannot be jumped over.

This is not a step that you can skip.

This is like one of those disappearing steps in Harry Potter where if you forget that it's there and you step on it like Your foot sinks through it, and then you're trapped until someone comes along and helps you get out.

This is like a monopoly where you can't go and you can't collect $200 because your subconscious, what it believes about money and what it believes about what you deserve when it comes to money and the things that you want, your subconscious will create the reality around you because your subconscious is always looking for evidence that what you believe is true.

And if you believe that money is scarce, it's going to show you a ton of evidence that money is very scarce.

It's not going to bring you a lot of money.

It's not going to bring you a lot of opportunities.

But if you start training your subconscious to look for how money is everywhere, how it's abundant, how it's available, how opportunities are just coming to you at every step, then guess what your subconscious is going to start looking for?

It's going to start looking for evidence that that is true.

So here's the homework that I want you to take away.

1.

You're buying new underwear.

I know it's weird to hear that from a podcast.

If your spouse or roommate's like, what are you doing?

You can say, katie told me to buy new underwear.

They won't know who I am.

It's fine.

If you want to share with me what that conversation turns into, please do.

I'd be very entertained to hear it.

2.

You're going to look at the shows that you're watching, and you're either going to nix them from your viewing schedule or you're going to be very conscious while you're watching them that this is not a money story that you want to take on.

You're going to go and set boundaries with the people in your life who have relationships with money, and you're going to discontinue having those conversations with them.

And to start fixing your language around money, you're going to do this very simple exercise where you are going to log into your bank account once a week, once a day, whatever is emotionally doable for you without you getting too activated with stress.

And before you log in, I want you to start thinking, I am so grateful for whatever money is in my account.

I'm so grateful for what this account has been able to do for me.

This account has allowed for me to pay rent, to buy food, to pay bills.

I'm so grateful.

Even if I'm a little in the red, I'm grateful that I have something set up that will hold my money when it comes in And I want you to continue to say that to yourself until you check your balance and whatever is in there, even if it's just 2 cents.

I want you to be so grateful for those 2 cents that are in your bank account.

And as you feel that gratitude, I want you to also feel gratitude for the money that's coming and the excitement for the good that you'll be able to do both for yourself and for the world when it does.

Maybe you have a squirrel in your attic and you're used to the sounds and you kind of think, okay, well, I know it's creating some damage, but I haven't noticed the damage yet.

And, you know, bringing in an exterminator or someone to, you know, relocate the squirrel to another person's attic, because that's how that works, obviously, you can't just evict a squirrel without providing other housing for them.

Obviously, the squirrel housing committee would have some serious words for you.

You're not only telling yourself that you can't afford the person to come in and deal with it, you're actually creating a more expensive problem for yourself down the line.