“There’s only a few things that we can control. We can only control our own thoughts. And the best place to start is to control your own thoughts about yourself.”
Denise Duffield Thomas
Author of Get Rich Lucky Bitch
Welcome to The Mortgage Mum Podcast with me, Sarah Tucker, Founder of The Mortgage Mum, where we believe mortgages are about more than just money. Join us every week where we will share with you bite-sized tips, interviews with inspiring people inside and outside of our industry and tools to help you achieve balance in every area of your life.
Hello, and welcome to Series 2 of The Mortgage Mum Podcast. I’m so happy to be back and what a way to kick off this series! This guest is somebody I am so excited about. She lives in Australia and as a result I had to do the interview at midnight during the summer holidays, I actually went to bed I think at 2:30am having got up at 5:30am that morning, that was not the best idea! There are very few people who I would do a midnight podcast interview for but Denise Duffield Thomas is one of them. I discovered Denise in 2018 when I read her book, Get Rich, Lucky Bitch. It was recommended to me and there were a few of us reading it at the time and all of us were getting incredible results from it. That was the year I went on The Voice and manifested so many big moments in my life. I also completely changed my relationship with money that year and it’s been different ever since.
I really believe that is down to the work I put in having read this book. What Denise is brilliant at is giving practical steps, she is a big believer in the law of attraction and she is a powerful manifestor. Some of the stories that she has managed to manifest over the years are incredible and I would really recommend listening to the book on Audible because the way Denise tells the stories is fantastic. She has applied the law of attraction to money to enable people to earn the money that they want and deserve to make. She wants every woman to live a first-class life to release their fear of money and to charge premium prices. She is described now as the money mentor for the new wave of online entrepreneurs who want to make money and change the world. What I love about her is she is fresh, funny, down to earth, real and she gives a really good guide to how you can apply the principles of the law of attraction in the modern world.
She has helped over 6,000 students globally using her money bootcamp, she is a Hay House author, an un-busy mother of three, she owns a rose farm (how amazing). She lives by the beach in sunny Australia in a $7 million house that she has manifested for the last, I don’t know how many years. It’s incredible to talk to somebody so openly about money and who is living their best life, but is still just like you or me. So I really think you’re going to love this interview. I would really recommend that you read her books; Chillpreneur, Lucky Bitch and Get Rich Lucky Bitch are all slightly different, all amazing. So I will hand over to the interview with Denise and hopefully you’re going to have some real light bulb moments of your own. So grab yourself a cuppa and a notepad as you’re going to want to make notes for this one. Enjoy!
So thank you so much Denise for joining us today, I’m absolutely thrilled that you’re here.
Thanks Sarah. Thanks for having me. We are like literally opposite ends of the planet.
You can tell very clearly from our images, yours is bright and sunny and mine is very dark. Very dark and late.
So I’ve been a huge, huge fan of your work for years, you helped me with more than just money when I read your book Get Rich Lucky Bitch and actually followed it up with Lucky Bitch, even though I have since realised it’s the other way around. So what I really wanted to do today is introduce our listeners to you if they don’t already know who you are, although we have referenced your work before, and one of the main things I want to talk about is people’s relationships with money, money blocks, law of attraction, how it all works and how you’ve manifested and created this amazing life for yourself.
You talk a lot in your books about money blocks and I know you’ve said before that 80% of the work to raise people’s income is money blocks, so could you just tell people a little bit about what that means? What is a money block? Because for some people that’s a language they don’t quite understand.
First of all I just want to say thank you for introducing me to your audience, I really appreciate that. Secondly, I think this is why I always want to preface at the start whenever I talk about this stuff. So I’m a self-made millionaire. I love even saying that, but money itself doesn’t cure money blocks and so there’s never really a cure where you’re going to be completely free from thinking about money and sometimes that’s what people say, right? They say ‘I just never want to think about money again’ or ‘I want peace of mind around money’ and when we look at that from a law of attraction point of view there is never a time that you don’t have to think about money so what are we really trying to achieve? We want to make money doing things that we love and to not have the stresses and the friction that a lack of money creates.
So when we think about what’s in the way of that, what’s in the path of that? I’ll tell you what’s not, let’s start there. So I hear people that say ‘I really want to get started on my business but I’m not ready’ or ‘I have to wait until I have another certificate’ or ‘I have to wait until I’ve lost a dress size and then I’ll get on camera, then I’ll feel confident’. The truth is you’re never really going to feel 100% ready so all the things that are in your way are things like imposter syndrome, making up stories about what you believe that you have to be doing in order to make money. When the truth is however you are today, the Sarah today will be exactly the same with more money but we can’t reconcile that in our heads so we’re actually just pushing it further and further away because we’re waiting for this magical moment where we’re perfect… perfect weight, perfect age, feeling 100% ready and none of that is true. So our money blocks are really that gap between where we are now and where we want to be and that is our stories and beliefs about our ability to make money, our stories and beliefs from our family, from our industry, from the country that we live in, from the messages that you see every day and from something that your third grade teacher said to you. All of that stuff is an accumulation of gunk that is in our way between us and where we want to be and you don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to clear all of that for abundance to come to you and so I want everyone to think of standing on a bridge and you’re looking at a river….
But in the river is a whole bunch of junk, so think of the most polluted messy river that you can think of. There’s a shopping trolley in there, there could be an old car in it, there’s garbage bags of stuff, there’s all logs, and with all that stuff in the river it is going to be muddy and dirty and there’s going to be a little trickle. What happens is when we do this money work, we’re literally just taking things out of our river of abundance. Everyone has the same river, everyone has the same capacity for abundance – it’s just sometimes we have more junk than other people.
Now the cool thing is you don’t have to get rid of everything in order to have more money come to you and this is what happens sometimes when someone might read my book for example and they go ‘oh my gosh I’ve got this story about what my family said to me’ …. something then gets taken out of your river.
So abundance will come to you, sometimes though, and this is where we start to talk about the law of attraction and this is super fun… someone listening has experienced exactly this scenario where you’re doing the work and want money to come to you and your partner gets a pay increase or you get something out of the blue and you go “well that doesn’t count.” That is literally your river trying to find a little sideways route to get to you.
Have you experienced that yourself Sarah? Where something comes in and you go, but that’s not what I asked?!
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Yes, you are thinking ‘that’s not what I meant, I didn’t mean that… I meant something else’.
Exactly, but the thing is that is proof that the Universe wants you to be successful, wants you to be happy and it’s trying to find literally any literal space it can go to flow to you. That’s why your partner gets a pay increase or even your best friend might get something that you want or I even had someone in my money bootcamp today say ‘oh, I got this government grant, but it’s not real money and I feel really bad about it’. The Universe is trying to get it to you however it can right now.
If you want to control the flow of abundance you have to look at your own river, put your blinkers on and not look at other people’s stuff and work on your own stuff. And all these things, you can see them as really great signs that there is a massive flow of abundance just waiting and it’s just trying to find its way to you in any way, shape or form. So then you can examine your stories, examine your beliefs, look at your sabotaging behaviours, look at the action that you’re taking. When people say ‘I just want to manifest clients’ I say that marketing IS manifesting clients. Make sure you’re doing the work to open up the channels of abundance. Make sure that it’s obvious how people can give you money and so you think your river can be teeny tiny and very thin and a little trickle where you can widen your river by all the things that you have control over.
So that’s the work of money blocks, that’s the work I do in my books and my courses and we are looking for all of those ways that we are blocking that flow, and I still haven’t run out of different ways that we’re blocking our flow by the way, I see things all the time.
I’ll give you an example, each month in my money boot camp we talk about a particular topic and I thought wouldn’t it be fun to talk about pocket money and allowance. I thought that was one agenda point and our calls go for about 90 minutes and I thought that will be a five minute conversation. The stories that came up ‘my dad stole my pocket money; my brother took my pocket money; my sibling got more than me’. There was so much stuff there just around one topic of pocket money! And on another call we talked about weddings and I said for them to come to the call even if they’ve never been married, because we’ve all got collective stuff around weddings. There were so many stories about “did you get married? Did you not get married? How many strings were attached to people giving you money for your wedding?”. There is so much and then you could go through all the major gift giving holidays; Christmas and birthdays and you will find so much good stuff to clear.
My mind is fizzing already just thinking about the wedding aspect as I’ve never really sat with that as a topic, and I guess you just need to be willing to sit and to actually dive into that because not everyone is willing to do that. It’s personal work that people have got to be willing to do to get resolved.
Yes, but it doesn’t have to be hard. You can come at it from a place of curiosity.
And that’s where I come from with it now, because I love hearing people’s stories and I love finding the nuances with stuff. Let’s take the wedding stuff, a lot of people talk about inner child work but what about inner bride work? How does that relate to your money?
So I always look at things like what’s the situation, and then how does it relate to how money is showing up for you now? So if we take inner bride work, were you always the bridesmaid never the bride in your business? That could be one angle and that’s from a place of curiosity not from a place of “there’s something wrong with you, and you suck, and you’re never going to be rich unless you do this work”. You said your mind is fizzing, I would love to hear something that’s come up for you just from this last 10 minutes.
From the wedding point of view, I would love to work on my own personal money blocks. The Mortgage Mum are mortgage brokers, we are a team of women trying to grow as many women across the country as we can and empower them to become mortgage brokers on their own terms, funding it online, which is very in alignment with your values and what you’re trying to do which is great. For me I think when people think about financial advisors or mortgage brokers you think we’ve got it all figured out, no no…we still have our money blocks.
To the wedding point, my favourite film growing up (and actually still is my favourite) is Father of the Bride which had the most amazing wedding and I’m sure in real life that wedding would have cost thousands upon thousands, but that was my standard. So when I became a bride-to-be there wasn’t a question mark as to if, it was more ‘how is that going to happen?’ Because that was the only standard I wanted at that time and the statement you say there always the bridesmaid never the bride – definitely in school that was the role I played, the best friend to the bride. So it’s not even necessarily purely financial because I actually think it’s all intertwined isn’t it? The emotions and the money is tied into self-worth. That is what actually comes up for me there, it was really important to me on that one day that I could control, that I had everything I wanted, that I was the Bride, and then it went how I wanted it to go. So a lot of pressure wrapped up in that day.
Definitely a lot of pressure for it to be the greatest day of your life.
So that’s great, that’s one example and I think anyone listening to reflect on one of those experiences and for me I didn’t try on any wedding dresses, I bought one off eBay for 150 pounds. I got married in the UK and because I didn’t believe I was worthy of it I had massive imposter syndrome around going into a shop, having the spotlight on me. Whatever the experience is for some people, for some it was the greatest day of their life and so now their story is ‘well my best days are behind me; it’s not about me anymore; it’s about my kids; it’s about other people; I have to let other people shine’ and for some people there’s resentments around the day itself. And again, it’s not about weddings it’s about finding those little stories, those little pockets of gunk that you’re holding onto and you take them out bit by bit and sometimes it’s a pebble – I didn’t even realize until this year that I had inner bride work to do, but sometimes it’s a boulder and it’s something as big as realising that your family has an unofficial motto around money that you are living with without even realising.
For some people it could be that in our family we work hard and we never complain, but yet we live in 2021 where you don’t have to work as hard because we have tools and technology to help us. But our brains are still living in this pre internet space where working hard meant going to a job that you didn’t like and putting in that desk time and yes, of course I still work, your listeners still work, we still do things in our business, but we’re sometimes living old stories and that’s holding us back. What I find fascinating too about this work is that people sometimes try and tell me that their industry is exempt from this money work.
They say things like ‘that’s all very well and good Denise, but we’re allowed to have money blocks because of X, Y, Z’, and so a project I’m working on at the moment is a series of money guides for different industries. Because I want everyone to see that you have to do money work as well and so anyone who is in the financial services industry and I’m talking about mortgage brokers, financial advisors, accountants, bookkeepers, there’s this extra layer of perfectionism that comes into place. The thinking that ‘I’m not allowed to do this unless I’ve achieved X, Y, Z’. This in the real estate industry as well right, people who are selling real estate, it’s the same amount of work to sell a small house as a big house and actually sometimes it’s easier to sell a bigger house. So what’s the difference? Sometimes it’s that imposter syndrome that comes into place and it’s the same with brokers. It’s probably the same amount of paperwork to do a small mortgage as a big mortgage.
And what holds people back from doing that? It’s their perception of themselves and their ability to make money and for some people they have a perception about their weight, their appearance, their accent, their age, both ways, too young, too old, I’m a mom, it’s not my time, mercury’s in retrograde, I don’t dress fancy enough, people are going to see through me, I have to make more money than the people I serve, I can’t service rich people because rich people are evil… there could be so many things in there that are holding people back.
And I’ve got a friend who is a real estate agent and about two years ago decided to take a break from her career and travel around Australia for a year and a half in an RV with her three kids
When she came back she thought ‘oh my God, you know I’m really going to have to hustle to get back into the groove of work’ and then the Corona hit! People started leaving the industry and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well, people start to go ‘I’m out’. Although, I don’t know what it’s like in the UK, but we’ve actually had one of the best years for real estate in the last 18 months.
She fell back on her mindset of going ‘I’m just going to make it happen no matter what’ when all around her people were just leaving the industry in droves. But she always says to me though ‘anyone can make money in good times, it’s the mindset that makes the difference in the slower times’ and nobody can take that away from you ever, ever, ever.’
So what I’m hearing is it’s all about the mindset, what everything comes down to is mindset. It is something I do prescribe to but I fall off the wagon and I jump back on, and I’ll be doing my affirmations for months on end, and then I’ll fall off that wagon with the thinking that “I haven’t got time to do an affirmation, I’m too busy.” Then, when I get back on the wagon I think to myself “why did I ever fall off? Because I’m so much happier and it’s so much better”, but it’s like a lot of things that are good for us, it doesn’t mean we always do them because sometimes we get in our own way like you say, and I don’t know why we do it.
I do as well and so let me tell you my secret to this because this works so great for the law of attraction as well as just keeping you in a great place. I automate as much as possible when it comes to my manifesting because we’re humans and because stuff gets in the way, life gets in the way. One of the things that I make sure that I do is my screensaver on my phone and my computer is related to my goal. So I can show you mine… it says “200 new money bootcampers every month”. How many times a day do you pick up your phone? Mine is probably like 200 and now Apple has a way to track and show you that stat. You can find that in your settings in your phone to show you how many times a day you pick up your phone.
Just that alone if you did nothing else but you had your affirmation on your phone instead of a picture of the kids which is great, love your kids. You can put affirmations over your kid’s faces, that’s valuable real estate through your brain training.
That’s super value. Same with your screensaver so my screensaver on my computer, let me just check, it says “create every day and sell more boot camps”, so every time I log into my computer I see that. That is just two examples that everybody can do today to make sure that there’s just a little spark in your day and then you can go nuts on this. So I like having my passwords as my income goal, as you’re typing your passwords multiple times a day, they may as well be useful from a manifesting point of view. So my current password is easy 10 million. I want to make 10 million and I want it to be easy, and it has some symbols and stuff on it so don’t worry you can’t hack into anything!
So that’s three examples that are super easy. The other thing that I do with my phone and people have probably heard these tips before – I’ve been sharing them for years – at 6:00pm I get a reminder from my calendar saying “easy $10 million”. Okay that’s great and then I get a reminder at 6:45 saying “New York times bestselling author”. That’s just using my gmail calendar – I just put them in as a recurring event.
I put them in a different colour so I know that it’s not an appointment and so at least four times a day I’ll get some reminder of my goal, and it’s just super, super easy. Then think about your commute time so whether you’re commuting on public transport or you’re in your car, what are you listening to? Are you listening to the news, which obviously we know is doom and gloom. I like to keep myself informed but I do it on my own terms and so I will go and catch up in one go so that I don’t get the same snippets over and over again throughout the whole day. So at the moment one of my goals is to do more writing, so in my car I listen to podcasts about writing.
So what are you listening to? And it’s totally okay to also listen to things for your mental space and whatever, it doesn’t always have to be about work and money. But again that is valuable time in your day without really thinking about it too much because the problem that I had when I first learned about the law of attraction, it seems like a lot to do! Am I just going to have to sit and just meditate all day, and like just do good deeds. I just couldn’t figure it out because it honestly seemed to be exhausting.
So already I’ve given you just four examples of
1) your phone screensaver
2) your computer screen saver
3) the calendar thing, and
4) your passwords
that you can do without even thinking about it. It’s just about crowding out some of the negativity, not being pure, not being perfect in every way, and then you can layer in little nuances around that. When I’m really manifesting something big I will use Pinterest as a dream board, I will pin stuff and spend time looking at things and even enroll other people in my dreams by sending them pictures.
I’ll go ‘oh wow look at this house that I’m currently manifesting’ or I’ll send it to my partner. I live in my dream house now but I used to be like ‘Hey babe, how amazing is it going to be when we have an ocean view?’
I mean I can see the ocean’s right there right now but it took 10, no probably more as we have been together for 19 years, but that took years and years of us going ‘Hey babe, look how amazing this house will be, how amazing will it be when we live together?’
So there’s those little things that you can do. When I worked in a job, I would print out my dream board and I would put it in my desk drawer. So a couple of times during the day I would just open my desk drawer and so it would just look like I was just getting something out of my desk drawer, but I’d go, oh, that’s right that’s my real life, this is only temporary, that’s where I’m heading towards. Does that make sense? I think that it takes effort, but it all adds up and accumulates during the day
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We will work at times that suit you and your family, carrying out appointments via video call, telephone or email, giving you the benefit of first class service, around your own schedule, and in the comfort of your own home. So let us handle your mortgage today and find out how well we can look after you, The Mortgage Mum way!
That makes total sense! A couple of years ago when I read “Get Rich Lucky Bitch” my mind was blown, and I started making a list of all the things that started coming to me since reading that book and I was like ‘wow this cannot be ignored’. It was actually a group of us all doing it at the same time and there was momentum. When I told them I was interviewing you now years later they couldn’t believe it. At the time I was doing The Voice and I had on my phone those reminders you speak of in the book, reminders that said “four turns” and it would pop up with things like “I can’t believe I got four turns on The Voice”. I was really putting your tips into practice and more stuff happened than just the four turns, the four turns happened and then I got to tick it off on my reminder list.
Absolutely, you totally can and while you’re listening to this call you can just grab a picture, use a free app to write some words it doesn’t have to be perfect, it can just be a placeholder. Don’t underestimate the power of seeing those things over and over again and having that repetition because the truth is we have a lot of repetition in our daily life that is negative and we often have negative thoughts that are just running in the background of our brain, and so we use those things to crowd out that negativity, not to be perfect. Then you can take it as far as you like, so when I was manifesting something really big, like a house for example, I would look at the real estate listing every single night before I go to bed.
I would drive to the house when we bought our rose farm and I would drive out there and just be like, well we’re coming now, we’re coming home, we’re coming home. I want to stand on this land and claim it as mine. I watched the YouTube video every single day. You can put little affirmations around your whole house, on your ceiling, when you wake up beside your bed, on your visor in your car, you can write on mirrors. All of those things take effort to do one time and they don’t require you to sit and like, you know become a six hour a day meditator. They’re all things that are all automatic.
Affirmation jewelry is something else to try, I used to wear a necklace that said yes on it and now this current necklace that I wear, it’s a gold coin from like the 1600s, it’s an antique coin that they’ve just like covered in gold and so I love wearing that because I am abundant and there’s always more money.
People have got affirmation tattoos, bracelets and bangles etc.
There are so many things you can do and I do take this really far, if I’m just putting on a bra in the morning and,I don’t buy million dollar bras, but I’m putting on my bra and I say ‘this is my million dollar bra’.
You live and breathe it.
I do, I put on my undies ‘these are my million dollar undies’. I come into my office and go ‘this is my billion dollar office’.
I’ve been like that forever and that’s what made the shift, actually I wasn’t like that in my twenties. It made the shift for me and this is when I started making money, when I just went ‘I’m just going to go all in! It costs you nothing to ask’.
It costs you nothing to be – they call it reverse paranoia, Pronoia maybe. You just believe that the Universe is conspiring in your favour and that good things are coming and good things are happening. It does mean though, and I need somebody to hear this really badly, it means that when good things happen don’t discount them, don’t say ‘oh, well it’s not as big as that person’ or ‘it was only a government grant’ or ‘you know it’s not that great’. You have to celebrate all of those things because it is proof that it’s working and each time it just opens up your channels just a little bit more and I know that sounds really woo woo but there is something to it. Another example is you want a particular car and you see that car everywhere.
That’s what it is like there’s scientific explanations for why our brains think that way and so when you wire yourself for positivity this is what happens and this is where it goes from woo woo to reality right? You believe that you’re worthy so you’re probably more likely to see opportunities. You believe that you’re worthy so you’re more likely to take action towards them. You believe that you’re worthy so then you push forward when those inevitable things come up like annoying tech adverts, or you know, a client – you don’t have a good client experience. Each of those paths is where it’s really easy to quit and when you have that inner work, your mindset creates your habits, creates your actions, and that’s what creates your results. You are a co-creator in this, it’s not that the Universe is just going to drop something into your lap – it’s you moving forward and meeting the Universe halfway. That’s when the magic starts to happen and that’s why I say it is kind of that 80% mindset but that you still have to do some actions.
You can’t just sit going ‘It’s going to come, it’s going to come, It’s going to come’ while not following the little pathway that the Universe is creating.
Denise how did you find the law of attraction? What made you discover it?
I loved reading as a kid. Like I really loved reading and so after school I used to go to this secondhand bookshop near my house. I have ADHD and I would forget my keys pretty much every day so I would often go to the bookshop until my mom came home. I’d forget my keys and the options were either sit outside my house or go to this second-hand book shop, and I never had any money to buy books so I would just stand in the aisle and read them. I found this little red book called The Magic of Believing by Claude M Bristol and it’s one of those – it’s kind of in the same vein as “Think and Grow Rich” and those kinds of books about the law of attraction. I was 14 when I read that and it was just like really mind blowing to me that you could change your thoughts.
You can change your thoughts and I loved it from that day on. I decided that I wanted to be successful and I wanted to break the cycle of what was happening in my family of poverty and dysfunction.
I also used to watch Oprah every day after school and so she would sometimes bring in those concepts too. I don’t think that he called it the law of attraction in that book, I can’t remember, it’s been a long time since I read it. It was just that concept of ‘wow you can think about things and you can control your thoughts and it will have a positive impact in your life’. Then like a lot of people I read The Secret and I got really disillusioned because I didn’t understand what to do, I understood it but what do I do about this? And that’s what my career has been about, it’s those practical actions you can take today.
You are bringing it into the modern world as well because The Secret’s quite old now and it’s still fantastic and really powerful but it’s now about bringing it into the world that we know and understand, the digital world largely isn’t it.
Absolutely and the world where stuff happens! You’ve got illness, kids, family, and a global pandemic, there’s a lot going on for all of us and yet there’s still things that are within our control. We can’t control everything and this is where people kind of start to go ‘Yeah but it is true that my family have got this and yes, it’s true that you know there’s systemic racism in the world and inequality and women don’t make as much money as men in almost every single profession’. We know this, this is the reality that we live in and so I think we have to be super careful not to do the spiritual bypassing. That happens a lot in the law of attraction where it’s like ‘Hey Babe, just think about it and all that will be great’. We live in a real place that has real things going on. There’s only a few things that we can control, we can only control our own thoughts and the best place to start is to control your own thoughts about yourself, because why not you?
And so you discovered the law of attraction in the book, which I absolutely love. But I also think that with everybody that finds it there’s a moment where you go ‘ah I 100% believe this now’ because you can’t ignore what’s just happened. Your first massive manifestation and you think, ‘oh my God, I’ve just done that’ and it rocks your world and shakes it up quite a bit… What was that moment for you?
I was living in London and I was on a student visa because I did my working holiday visa and then I had a student visa and I didn’t have enough money for my tuition.
I’d paid the first lot of it and the second one was due and it was about £5,000 and I was doing all the laws of attraction stuff and my hubby (fiancé at the time) kept on just saying ‘what are you going to do, what are you going to do, what are you going to do’. I was like ‘I think it’s just all going to work out I think it’s going to be fine.’ So I didn’t do all the things I probably do now that are so layered into my life that I don’t even realize I’m doing them, but I was journalling “I’m open to receiving money from the Universe”. I was taking little actions to receive little bits of money so I would find 5p in the street and I’d pick it up and go ‘oh my God, I’m so lucky this is amazing’. It got to the Friday and I was still thinking ‘it’s just going to work out’. On that day I got a £5,000 bank error in my favour! It was just like ‘what the heck?’ I said to Mark ‘oh there’s £5000 in my bank account – see I told you it was gonna work out’ and so I quickly paid my tuition because I didn’t care where this came from. I paid my tuition and then the next week I called the bank and I said ‘Hey, can you just let me know what went on with that?’ And they said ‘oh yeah, that’s totally our mistake’ and I was like ‘oh, so I can keep it’ and they said ‘oh no, you can’t keep it, but we’ll convert it into a loan for you’. Brilliant right? So this is the thing, some people might say that doesn’t count but what they don’t know is that I had been knocked back for a loan!
It definitely counts right. It’s just a really good example of the Universe trying to find those backdoor channels. I didn’t have a business, or channels, or any wealthy relatives to leave to give me money. So the Universe was like, don’t worry we’re going to find a channel to you – we will, even though I had to pay it back. An example of this that happened recently, a couple of weeks ago I said, ‘Hey, Universe, send me a million dollars’. I was like just ‘I’m just going to hold it lightly for no particular reason. Just send me a million dollars’. The next day…honestly, this literally just happened – our mortgage broker was like ‘Hey guys, money is really cheap at the moment. Do you want to get your houses re-evaluated to see if you want to pull out some money to buy some investment properties’….a million dollars.
Right then I went ‘oh I should have asked for a million dollars free and clear that I don’t have to pay back’ but it still was just a fun experiment and this is where I see people they get really stuck. They think that they aren’t even allowed to ask.
I’m not even allowed to ask and I just go, “why not ask?” Remember when you were a kid and you would write a letter for your birthday or for Christmas and you would just go ‘yeah I want a pony.’
We’ve lost that ability, and then you go back to your river and see that your family told you that money doesn’t grow on trees, or because of this reason, or because I feel like an imposter, or I don’t like myself.
Well that’s the work – you have to go and do that – and so, why not ask? But here’s the thing though, is sometimes people then go ‘well fine I’ll ask for a million dollars Denise and then …see it didn’t work’. And you go ‘because you don’t even believe that’s possible, you don’t even believe that you’re worthy of finding $5’. So sometimes you have to work your way up to the big manifestation. Sometimes you just can ask and just go ‘Hey Universe……’ and the Universe might be like “we’re trying to find a back channel, it’s going to take 10 years”. But then you’ve given up after a day and you go ‘see the Universe doesn’t like me’.
So this is a perfect example… I live near the beach. I can point to it right now and when Mark and I first moved back to Australia from the UK we would come to this beach every single day and because we’d come from the UK, like we could swim every day.
Now we are like ‘oh, it’s so cold’ but when we first got back it felt so warm and amazing and we would walk up and down the street and we’d say ‘we’re going to live here one day, one of these houses is going to be ours, I don’t know which one, but it is’ and I even made the street that we live on my password for a long time.
We would come and visit this neighborhood all the time and it took doing that almost every day for about 10 years. Now I live in a $7 million house in front of the beach literally on that street so sometimes the Universe is working behind the scenes.
Some things do take time.
They really do. I never gave up that belief and what actually happened when we bought like three houses in between moving here and one of them was a compromise house that was 20 minutes inland. While we were waiting for that house to close we stayed in an Airbnb on this street and one morning we walked up and down this street and I said to Mark ‘we’ve made a huge mistake, we’re not meant to live out there we’re meant to live here’. Mark was just like ‘what are you saying?’ and I said ‘we’ve got to sell that house’. We owned that house for six weeks and we lost about $50,000 on that house, but I just thought ‘why am I compromising?’. We stayed in that Airbnb for two weeks and everyday I was thinking to myself ‘how am I going to tell Mark?’ I kept on saying to myself that I would do my time in the suburbs and then move. How many times have you told yourself that, just do your time?
I was thinking these people are going to think I’m such an impostor because I was looking at all our neighbours and they were all in their 60s and 70s and they’ve worked hard their whole lives to live here. Who am I to live here? How outrageous? Everyday I was walking up and down the street and I was just going through each layer one by one. I’m not allowed to live here because they’re going to think that I’m such a fake and a phony, my accent isn’t right or I don’t dress well enough. I was working through all these layers and by the end of the two weeks that’s when I was like ‘oh babe no, we’re just going to go for it’.
And of course the money wasn’t just right there, I had to go and see our broker and this is where I think as brokers you are a co-creation to someone’s dreams and so many people are intimidated by going to see their broker because they feel like they’re going to be judged. Of course you can pay for your broker’s time which is cool, so they’re happy, but there’s lifetime value in customers. My broker now we’ve bought about eight houses through him but yet I was still intimidated to go see him and to tell him ‘Hey, I want to live by the beach’ because I thought he was going to laugh me out of his office.
Instead what he said was ‘okay so you’re self-employed, banks will require two years’ worth of books for you. So I really recommend that you up your salary on your books right now and you do these things, these things, these things, and then come and see me in two years’ time’. That’s the magic that you can create because I was like, holy shit, this is real he believes me that I’m going to live there and he’s just working out the logistics now and telling me what X percent deposit and what else I would need. There was practicality there rather than just going ‘I want to live by the beach’, and I am a Virgo so I need that practicality of knowing how much I’m going to need. And then when it came to working in my business and doing my launches I knew I needed 400 people to join my launch because that’s going to help me buy the house.
Yes, you work backwards don’t you.
So many people have vague goals in just ‘wanting to make more money’ but how much more do you need? If you want your dream house, what’s the deposit you’re going to need? What paperwork are you going to need? How much do you think the purchase price is going to be? Because people say they can’t buy a $2 million house but they don’t need 2 million, they need a deposit. What is that deposit? Get your information straight because no one buys a house outright (or hardly any people do) but it’s that perfectionism that’s coming into play. Everyone who works in that financial services industry – so much of your work is permission. It’s permission in giving people permission to dream but also reminding them that there’s some practical stuff.
I think it’s so valid and so valuable and it’s so lovely to hear it from somebody who’s outside of the industry – and we’re not paying you to say that. This is the stuff we believe in and this is why we love what we do because you can tie in that stuff and teach people that don’t know anything about goal-setting or manifestation just a little bit through the work that we do, and that’s the bit I personally love. Which is why it’s so nice that you’ve just organically mentioned this and it happened in this conversation because it is so true. The facilitator of dreams is a nice little job title there for our team because property is such a big part of what people aspire to have or to live in, especially right now when we’re in lockdown, it’s everything, isn’t it?
It really is and that’s why so many industries did so well in the last year and a half because people want to improve their houses. They know how important it is to have a beautiful home and comfort. You know, we might not be able to travel as much as we did before in the future and that might be part of it all.
You probably have restrictions around your marketing but how can you make it so it’s not intimidating to come and speak to you? “A practical step in manifesting your dream is knowing information and we’re not going to judge you and we’re just here to help you achieve that dream if it’s a year from now or 10 years from now we’re here planting seeds with you.”
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Exactly, and I think it’s for women, and I know you do a lot of work for women that’s why we are here too. The whole company is made up of women because there’s so many men in our industry and there needs to be more women, not to elbow them out the way but to stand next to them and to fill the room with all of us. I know you talk a lot about women as well and I do feel like there’s more work to be done for women to do that kind of work and to feel comfortable having those conversations talking about money and know it’s okay to want more. I can’t help but feel like that’s a lot to do with the media, and the subliminal messages that we get. So I’ve really loved the work that you’re doing specifically for women, is your bootcamp just for women in case there are any men listening?
I would say most of my work is about 97% women and I say that exact number because I was looking at my stats yesterday on Instagram and it was like 97% women. We’re inclusive as well, so we have non-binary people, we have trans people in our money bootcamp. We’ve got I reckon about 5 men out of around 7,000, and I love men so all good. What I find really fascinating when I tell people that I write business books for women, they respond with ‘but what about men?’ And I explain that there’s so many business books for men, there are so many. I even get the suggestion that I should put on my book covers ‘for women’ so people know. But that’s what women had to do for a long time is read these business books and apply it to how we think and feel. How many business books are written for non-binary people? For queer people who feel like they don’t fit in those spaces? And so the more we can share our experiences and this is where I think I want to blow out of the water the imposter syndrome that so many of us face, because someone might not have ever seen someone looking like you stand up and be successful or sounding like you. It’s scary to be the first or to be among the first but it really is part of this new world that we’re building and inclusivity and representation are really important so whatever you fear about yourself is probably something that somebody is really going to love to see. Think about those little girls that are watching (and boys too). Sometimes we watch movies as a family and we just watched the new one with The Rock, the Jungle Cruise, and it’s set around the First World War so there’s a whole big deal about how Emily Blunt is not allowed as a woman into these spaces, and she’s not allowed to wear pants etc. It was a very weird experience watching it with my seven year old because I actually don’t even want her to see that. I was like ‘oh yeah, women used to not be able to wear pants’ and she’s like ‘what!?’ She just didn’t get it, let alone the fact that my grandma probably didn’t have a credit card in her own name or a separate bank account, and she had to stay in a bad marriage because she couldn’t really get a job.
There’s so many things that are just embedded for us that it’s so important for the next generation, with my son, and he’s five, because I’m constantly talking about women and money, he’s like ‘boys can make money too, you know!’ And I’m like ‘yes, that’s right’ but because he hears so much about women he’s always sticking up for his dad because we’re just such a feminist house. He will say ‘Daddy’s can be the boss too’ and we are like ‘oh yeah that’s true’, it’s so funny.
It’s true, my son’s five as well and it’s an impressionable age, especially with money, as they really listen and really take in everything you’re saying. You have to be mindful about what you say.
With my three-year-old we do affirmations before bed every night and I’ve been doing that since before she could talk, and now what I love about it is we started just doing body parts, I love my tummy, I love my arms, I love my lips etc. I realised when I started doing that self-love work that I had a negative thought about every single part of my body, every single part. I will say things like ‘I love my eyeballs’ and no matter what my daughter would always start with ‘I love myself’.
She just goes ‘I love myself’ and I just think if that’s all we teach our kids – just to love themselves they’re going to grow up in a completely different world to us. If we can just teach them that inner self-love then the details and logistics of how they make money will probably take care of themselves.
I love that – it’s really beautiful. I could talk to you endlessly but I do want to ask you a couple of questions before we leave and one of them is the question I like to ask everybody that we interview. One thing I really want to know from you, because I think your energy by the way is amazing, even across the globe and across the internet – every time I listen to your podcast, and by the way the podcast is brilliant, I am addicted to it – I love the content but the actual length of the episodes is great as well because for a Mum it’s a perfect 20-25 minutes and I can fit that in while I’m getting ready or into my evening. So your energy is incredible and you’ve obviously got a lot of passion still, even though you’re where you want to be – you’re in your dream house etc. My question is what is your legacy, what do you want your legacy to be? What’s the dream for Denise to be known for? Other than what you’ve done already.
There’s so much work to do and this is what keeps me going is that sometimes I realise it’s not known for everybody, it’s new information for so many people. Every time I have those thoughts of ‘everyone’s seen it and everyone’s had this – what’s the point?’ I then remember that it’s brand new for somebody every single day and that’s the person that I’m aiming my work at, it’s that person who’s hearing it for the first time.
I’m not creating new things for my current clients to be entertained by if that makes sense. That’s been a big mindset shift for me because I used to think ‘it has to be new and sexy’ whereas now I recognise ‘no, no, no, those people if they need to get a reminder they know where I am’ and some people need those reminders all the time but I’m always looking for that person who’s just hearing it for the first time. I probably won’t run out of any of those people anytime soon so that’s my work legacy and I take it very seriously. I also have learnt to separate that business from me as a person and seeing what me as a person needs, and having boundaries and structure around that giving, because otherwise when you’re in business, I’m sure you understand, it never feels enough.
There is always more you can do and more you should do.
Exactly and especially if you’re creative as well. I write books and so you can always write more books, books are never done. So that’s been a massive learning for sustainable growth and then that really relates to the legacy piece from my family because I come from a long line of dysfunction and I don’t want to be one of those families that is feast or famine. So I’ve made a great amount of money but I don’t want it to be that my kids are spoiled and then they go back into that cycle. So I’m looking at how can I create longevity in the success of my family and so that means, yes we’ve got a big fancy house but I’m really mindful of not spoiling them and I’m trying to have them be down to earth and resilient despite the fact that they are growing up very privileged kids. And again it’s practical steps and structures. For example, we have a family trust and we’ve got a charitable foundation that we put money into that eventually will be self-sustaining. So then our great, great, great grandchildren will be part of how that money gets dispersed. That’s around property and real estate and assets, and there’s a real fine line, and I’m trying to still figure that out as a first-generation wealthy person. What does that look like to have a family that is strong and future generations grow but not necessarily because they want 50 yachts but to grow it in a sustainable way that’s responsible and self perpetuating.
I’m learning and I am new money, and learning how you transition from new money to old money, but in a new way, not in a way that it’s exploitative to the planet, people, energy or values. When I lived in London one of my jobs was a climate change consultant and so I’m really passionate about that but not as a consultant, but how do I fund green technologies? How do I be the person behind the scenes? Because there’s been money behind the scenes in every major transition, good and bad, and so it’s figuring out who am I as a wealthy philanthropist who wants to do good in the world for a long time?
It’s almost like what you said about writing books, it’s never done and similarly charitable work is never done either. There’s always more stuff, like you say, more that you can give back. But I have to say I think for your children what strikes me is you know the tools to teach them and it’s not about the money, well it is about the money, but it’s also about so much more than that. I think that’s the value that you can’t measure that your gifting to them with the affirmation work or just in talking about what you do and them seeing what you do. There’s a phrase I love which is ‘our children become who we are and not who we want them to be’ and it’s exciting to see. One of the things you say is we haven’t got many examples of wealthy women other than celebrities and I do think we need more of those. We need more of you guys being public about the fact you are millionaires or billionaires and it being okay. So that it isn’t turning into ‘who does she think she is?’ or ‘she’s a bit this or a bit that’, we need to make that not a thing. Instead we should love who she is and celebrate more people like that. I think you are doing more than you can see. The impact you are making – you can’t measure it.
I want to ask you a really quick question about books, did you always know you were going to write a book?
Yes, because I got a typewriter for my 9th birthday. My mum bought me a little typewriter. So when people say ‘when did you decide to be an author?’ I was writing books at 9 and I see my daughter do it too, it’s just great. When I go into a bookstore if my book’s on the shelf I will be like ‘whose book is that?’ And they go ‘oh, it’s yours’ but I also know this person, this person, this person, this person, this person, this person, they’re all my friends, they’ve written books too. So I think for Willow when she wrote her first little book she said ‘can you just like give this to the lady at the shop now?’ When are we going to make this into a real book?’ And I was just like, ‘oh my God, that is amazing’.
So I’ve got three traditionally published books with Hay House but I’ve written so many books over the years and what I can say is no one’s ever going to choose you, and there’s no certificate to be a writer. You can literally just write, you’re allowed to write and you’re allowed to self-publish and that’s totally valid. I’ll probably self-publish heaps more books in my life and I’m about to self-publish something soon. Just write if you want to write.
I just wondered if you always knew and is it just another case of you just have to get it done – just do it.
You just have to do it and there will be a book on money mindset for mortgage brokers in the future, there absolutely will. I might put it together with the real estate industry. This year we’ve got a money mindset for health practitioners coming, money mindset for writers, money mindset for dance teachers. There’s another one we’re doing which is money mindset for bodyworkers, people who work in massage and things like that. Because again, everyone thinks they’re exempt from money blocks and it’s pretty much what’s really fun about it, it’s like 70% the same book plus 30% examples for that industry and it’s super fun to write that. I will definitely do one for brokers. To anyone listening if you want to write a book, write a book, it could be something related to your industry or unrelated. It’s a really cool thing to do and it will bring up some stuff but it’s great. No one can stop you from writing a book.
Hopefully that’ll be the next thing… Denise helped me write my first book, it has inspired me too. The last question we ask everybody is, what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned in your life so far?
That’s really simple and it’s the one that I teach to everyone else is that self-love is literally the only thing you need to master. I’ve got a money bootcamp but I’ve had other courses as well, I had a soulmate course early on. I had a wedding weight loss course, like 15 years ago or whatever, and the funny thing is even if I changed topics and did something else almost every lesson in money bootcamp really comes down to a secret message which is, you’re enough, you’re okay, all is well, you are loved.
Because it’s really the only thing and it’s the biggest boulder in your path to abundance is self-love and it’s something we can all practice more of. It’s ongoing and everything else kind of falls in line with that. You give yourself permission to receive, you give yourself permission to rest and prosper, you give yourself permission to take action out of your comfort zone. To like yourself and being in your own corner is the most important thing you can do for yourself and for your kids too, if you role model that and teach them that, but you have to role model it because you can’t just tell them to love themselves and not love yourself. You’re not going to be perfect at it but you know – crowd out the negativity with some self-love.
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I love that! Denise, where can people find you and how can they work with you if they’re totally addicted after this episode?
Thank you. So I’m so easy to find everywhere, my website is Denisedt.com, that’s also my social handle everywhere; Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Denise DT. If you go to Denise dt.com/blocks there is a free workshop and it’s seven money blocks that you need to work on, that’s a really great place to start.
I loved it, just so you know I highly recommend it and the e-book that comes with it’s great as well.
Okay that’s perfect. See, I didn’t even know there was an e-book with it now – that’s so great.
It’s really good and really insightful, even just that as a free bit of content.
It is a good place to start and I always love hearing from people too so feel free to send me a DM, tell us what your ah-ha moment is. I think it’s really fun if you share the podcast or share the podcast image and tag myself and Sarah and tell us your ah-ha moment or a practical action that you’re going to take away. Again, like a Virgo I love being of service and I love to hear the practical stuff that really makes my day.
Amazing. Thank you so, so much! I really appreciate it and I’ve loved chatting to you – thank you so much.
Me too, thanks for staying awake so late Sarah!
You’re very welcome. Thank you!
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of The Mortgage Mum Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed recording it, even in the early hours of the morning. I personally got so many light bulb moments from it and actually those light bulb moments came a couple of days later. They would just pop in my head and I would have a real inner discovery of something we spoke about, so watch out for that because sometimes when you hear something that impacts you it ripples out over the course of the weeks to come. So do revisit the episode if parts resonate with you and make notes – use it to help enhance your relationship with money or inspire you to work more closely with Denise by getting her book or working in her boot camp. The stories are amazing from these people that she’s worked with.
If you enjoyed this episode and I know I always say it but please do the usual, like it, share it, review it, subscribe. It makes such a difference to us and it helps us to get seen and heard. Social media is a wonderful tool and stories particularly because you can tag Denise and you can tag myself in and let us know what came up for you and if you discovered anything about yourself while listening. This is the stuff that makes me super excited and this is the reason I do this podcast to really try and share the things that have made a difference to my life and potentially will make a difference to yours. So I hope you’ve enjoyed, and thank you so much for your support as always – see you next week.
Thank you so much for listening to The Mortgage Mum Podcast. And I hope you learned something new today and felt inspired in some way here at the mortgage mum. We really believe in people supporting people. So if you’ve enjoyed this episode of the mortgage mum podcast, please share and subscribe and rate and review this podcast and let’s keep supporting each other. And of course, if you would like help with your mortgage or your insurance head over to https://themortgagemum.co.uk/or contact any one of the team on social media, we would love to help you. Thank you for listening.
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DDT links (have used Amazon for the books as that is what her website does, takes you to Amazon):
Website – https://www.denisedt.com/
Get Rich Lucky Bitch – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Get-Rich-Lucky-Bitch-First-Class/dp/B07C7S5Z73/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2X90K055GR8TV&dchild=1&keywords=denise+duffield-thomas&qid=1628962136&s=audible&sprefix=Denise%2Caudible%2C170&sr=1-1
