Episode 51: The Courage to Fail Faster with Helen M. Ryan

Helen is an author, lifestyle coach, and entrepreneur who runs a digital marketing studio.

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Transcript

Emily: There's people that feel like failure is the opposite of success. And I don't really look at that way in entrepreneurship.

Helen: The more you do something, the more times you fail at something, eventually you're going to succeed with it. You just have to figure out what didn't work, find out what works. And so I try new things and I'll do more things.

Emily: Hello, beautiful souls. Today's episode is so, so good. And before we jump in, I have some exciting news to share. If you've ever wondered where you're blocking money, this is for you. I've created a free quiz to diagnose your money wounds so you can heal them and unblock yourself to receive warm money.

Just go to money wounds, quiz.com and answer six quick questions to get your insanely accurate and potent results. And if you're loving my vibe and want to work one-on-one to call in more feminine energy wealth, I would love to hear from you. You can shoot me a DM on social media or go to Emily Willcox.com to learn more.

Hello, and welcome back to The Em Makes Money Show. I am still excited to be here and be joined by Helen M. Ryan, she is a woman that never gives up. She loves to try new things. She fails faster. She runs a marketing studio, is the author of three books, has a walk-in podcast and her passions are traveling. She's a digital nomad, her cats, purr kids and chocolate. So, Helen, I know we're gonna have such a fun conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show. 

Helen: Well, thank you for having me.

Emily: So you are someone so interesting. One of the things I love about running our digital businesses is the people that we get to connect to. And I find social media so interesting because I just trust that the algorithm and our energies and such will all combine in a way that it shows me amazing women that need to be in my life. And you are definitely one of those. You've got such an interesting story. I feel like you've lived 20 lifetime in one. So I would love for my listeners to just hear a little bit about that story. Since we like talking about things through the lens of money. Talk to me about what money was like for you as a kid. 

Helen: Well, my mother was a single mom, but she was also an alcoholic and had a mental illness. So money was scarce a lot of the time she worked, but then for a long time, she didn't work. And so I was just used to growing up without any. For me, it was like normal to not have money and to wear like the same clothes every day. And it wasn't important to me, but I remember I grew up in Norway, but I was here in the US for six months, when I was I digress now.

I went to high school for six months here and I wore the same pair of pants, like jeans with tassels on the side that don't ask me why we're those, but then one day so much shouted at me, like, "change your pants". Because I wear the same pants almost every day. Because it didn't bother me because money wasn't important to me. And when there were times like I didn't have food and that's been periodically throughout my life, when there's been times I've been so broke, I couldn't eat. And so that's why I can't fast.

For example, because fasting reminds me of starving against my will. Even if it was my will, you know what I mean? It's just, it gets me back into that time period. And it was just, so I was used to not having money. I started working babysitting when I was 12 and I started working a cleaning job when I was 15 or 16. And so I just always worked and just basically got by. I was never an extravagant spender. I'm not interested in material things I would watch sometimes where people in my family, like someone would like, get abused in a way, like spanked or whatever. And then like later on, they like their parents would buy them something to make up for it.

So I had this bad feeling sometimes about money. It's like money is like an apology that shouldn't have been. And it was like, I felt a lot of times that money was the root of all evil. And if I could survive without money, then more, the happier I thought the happier I would be. 

Emily: I think you bring up such a good point. So many of our first experiences of money and how we feel about it. Our shape by our childhood and by the adults around us. Right? And how they behave with money and whether it's there, it's not there. And then there is this idea, right? That we can either chase after money and let it control us, or just decide that screw money.

I don't need it. I'm gonna be happy without it. I can be humble. I don't care about material things. And there's like this wholesale rejection of it, but both are sort of a trauma response. They're not coming from the most independent sovereign place, right? It's either like I'm gonna rebel against you or I'm going to chase after you either way. It's not because the adult healed version of me is choosing that. It's more because of the relationship that I had with you as a kid. 

Helen: It was interesting. What you said is like my ex-husband, we were together for 20 years. He also grew up without money. He, his mom, was a single mom with six kids, but he's very much. He likes material things and that's very important to him.

So two people who grew up without money have two completely different outlook. So you can imagine that was fun. He didn't want to buy something. I'm like, no, no, we don't need that. So that was a little bit more difficult because I was always putting the brakes on the spending. 

Emily: I think that often happens in relationships where it's like one person's the gas and one person's the brakes. And like the person who's the brakes, so to speak, is kind of attracted to, the spontaneity and the freewill. Willingness to spend and just live life of the partner. And the other partner is attracted to the stability and the safety and the one, that's the race. Right? Okay. So there was no money growing up. It'll sounds like a bit of a tumultuous childhood. And so when you kind of like, I don't know. Did you have a point where you decided what you wanted to do with your life and was money in any way a part of that equation? 

Helen: No. I fell into everything. I started doing graphic design when I was probably about 20, 21 and I just kind of fell into that and it turns out I was good at it. And so I just did it. And then I started my own business. I got pregnant with my son. So I wanted to stay at home and run my business, which was a struggle.

It was hard because of the whole money situation and Southern California is very expensive. And so I just kind of fell into web development and marketing, you know, many, many, many, many, many years ago. And I've just been improving my skills since then. But again, money wasn't really important to me because I would prefer to travel or something rather than spend a lot of money where I'm living. And I did travel for a while as a digital nomad, which was really fun.

Emily: I love that. And again, like thank God for the internet, but now we can do that. We can work from anywhere. Right? We can create these businesses out of thin air. Did you find that in your work like, kind of agency work, that you're feeling about, like yourself or your worthiness or your feeling about money and your ability to charge prices and receive money for something? Tell me how that felt for you and how that played out through your business.

Helen: I think it's been like a little bit of a challenge. A lot of my clients, even some of the ones I have now, I just doubled my rate for new clients because of my background and because of my skills, but I've had clients for years and years, and years and years, and they're always like, "be gentle on me. Don't charge me so much. What is this on the invoice"? And I'm charging my old clients I've had for well over 10 years, less than my handyman charges me to hang things on the wall. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm like, you've got the same price and discount for like 12, 13 years. And then I get when they start nickel and diming me to death and I get resentful. Resentful I made you so much money and I should be able to make a living without you always nickel and diming me to death.

When I worked for bigger companies, I worked for a big food conglomerate as one of my clients. And they paid me a lot of money. They never questioned anything. There was a whole different environment than working with the smaller businesses who want to control everything. And I keep costs low with my clients in general. I always recommend things that are within budgets for them, but I've always charged too little. And so just recently, I've just doubled my rates and I'm just going on there. 

Emily: Good for you. I think that's particularly for women entrepreneurs. We often take our own feelings about our own worthiness or lack thereof, and we project it into our business and into our client relationships and into our pricing. And I'm glad that you brought up about feeling resentful because that is something that happens. When we don't have boundaries when we're not the first ones to value ourselves. And our time and have boundaries for the way that we interact with our clients. Then ultimately we get resentful of our clients, but it's like we were an energetic match for that.

There's a reason that they treat us this way. And it's because that's how we've decided that we're willing to be treated. Right? So it's like people don't go to their mortgage company and say, like " go easy on me this month". They say it to you because they think that you actually alter your business practices for them and probably you have.

Helen: I have in the past, cause I'm a bleeding heart. If someone needs help, I'm like, let me help you all the time. And this, I see everybody I've been in the past. I've been really working on changing it. I see all my clients as a lens through my life and my experience and having struggled for so long as a single mom. And now my businesses, pretty successful, but I see everybody through that lens of people who can't afford things, so that is not always the case. If I have a client who nickel and dime me to death, and yet they spend money on an extravagant trip or extravagant car, and I'm like, well, you can afford that, but you can't afford to pay for the thing that actually helps your business grow.

Emily: Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. So I love that. You're seeing it through the lens of like, okay, where can I clean up something energetically? Right? Because it is true, like we're available for a certain type of client. And I know one of my businesses is that I'm a co-founder and help operate an agency and we help brands sell more on Amazon in same, kind of deal where used to attract a lot of owner operator types. And there was so much scarcity mindset that it was really difficult for us to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish with them.

It was like, we'd see this incredible opportunity, but they were already pulling the plug or thinking about flying the plug or energetically pulling the plug. Before they could have the success, cause they just didn't have the stomach to invest what was needed to make it happen. And now that we work with brands that are anywhere from 10 million to several hundred million, it's just such a different mindset. It's like, well, of course, we're gonna spend this money. Of course, we're gonna work with an agency to help us. And we've got somebody on our team that will work with you directly.

I always have a heart for the little guys. And at the same time, it's really tough because a lot of the little guys they're just not yet ready. I want to talk to you a little bit about failure because that's something that, that you brought up that you like to fail faster. And I love this topic, cause I think it's not talked about enough. And there's people that feel like failure is the opposite of success. And I don't really look at that in that way in entrepreneurship, but I really would like to hear what your take is on failure. 

Helen: But I look at it like, I don't know if they're amazing or like those glasshouses that you walk in and then you walk this direction and you bump into that wall that doesn't work. So then you go this path and that doesn't work. And then finally you find the right path out. And that's kind of what I look at it. I read years and years ago, I read the book, Rich dad, Poor dad. I didn't really take that much away from it except fail faster. And that's true because the more you do something, the more times you fail at something, eventually, you're going to succeed with it.

You just have to figure out what didn't work, what didn't work, and find out what works. And so I try new things and I'll do more things. And like, I don't like really being on camera, but I'm doing more of these, all the work. We're just talking to each other, but I've done different things. I've done YouTube lives.

I'm not comfortable with, it because I'll just feel faster or do more of it. I'll do more and more and more of it. Until It's a success until I can feel really comfortable with it. And that's what I do with my business. I try things that didn't work. Try that, that didn't work. Okay, this is working. 

Emily: So talk to me about some of the failures that have been present on your path to success.

Helen: I've tried different, so my main businesses having like a marketing communications type little tiny studio. Now, my son is working for me. He's grown. He's 25. He's not 12. He does, now the web development part because I'm 56 years old, I'm tired. It was hard to always to be a woman in a man's world because web development was always a man's world. So he's in development, I'm doing the other parts of the business and the customer interaction, but some side hustles that I've had in the past. 

For example, I started a line of motivational t-shirts years ago just to, to, I had many side hustles. Years ago I lost over 80 pounds. And then, so, I became a personal trainer on this side hustle, spinning instructor as a side hustle. And then I wrote a couple of two books, three books now on the subject of healthy weight loss and eating chocolate where you're doing it and things like that. So I decided to come out with a line of t-shirts, actually, two lines of t-shirts that were for, like motivation for, like health and fitness and people might spend class bought it. And I tried to sell it. But it's really hard when you don't have a marketing budget to try to sell, like, especially apparel, like at a bunch of them printing them with t-shirts, you have to print all different sizes. 

You have to create different sizes. So you have that stock and then if they don't sell, then you're stuck with t-shirts. So that didn't work too. Well, then later, I also try to line of motivational bracelets with my slogan from my book tomorrow starts today. And again, like my spinners and my friends bought it, but I didn't have any success marketing it outside because I didn't have the money for proper marketing. I could do the website and all of that, but still, it's still hard to be heard through all the noise of what's out there.

So those were two of my bigger failures, not in terms of money, but in terms of, I mean, I didn't make much money on it, but in terms of just time and investment and thought, and I learned later on that apparel, like that, is really hard to break into. And it's really hard to do it on your own. You have backers and things like that. So those were two of my big failures in terms of something I wanted to accomplish and I didn't know. 

Emily: Thank you so much for sharing that. So openly in a gosh, I totally get it between my coaching that I do for women entrepreneurs and the Amazon sales agency. It's like all sales still comes down to traffic and conversions and it's like, no matter how we try to complicate things.

It always still comes back to the fundamentals and it's like, you can have a great product. I'm sure all of those products were incredible and they probably converted really well. You just didn't have an audience already built or an easy means to get a ton of traffic to that. Right?  

Helen: Right. 

Emily: And it's often the same thing when I'm working with women's service providers that are wanting to grow their coaching practice. And it's like, they've got an incredible offer, an amazing background. They're really good at what they do. And it's just, it's the audience building because they need more traffic. They just need more eyeballs on what they're doing. They need to build more relationships, connections, and conversation.

Helen: Which ultimately will ruin the results and a certain percentage of those people hiring them as a client. 

Emily: So I love that you share that because I think those are lessons that most people learn in one way or another, but they don't know how to extract the right lesson from it. Right? Often it's like, well I guess I just shouldn't do apparel, or I just shouldn't do this, that or I shouldn't do that. And it's like, well, maybe, but also are we possibly just missing the point, which is focused on growing your audience.

Helen: Right. Exactly without an audience.

Emily: You had a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. You to sold all your books, you to sold all your t-shirts, you'd have sold all your bracelet. Right? Cause they still with the women in your spin club, the women that knew your story

they sold. Just needed more women like that, that knew you in your story.

Helen: And that's a problem for a lot of businesses is getting the audience be. And coaching and course creation like last year, another failure kind of, but I spent a lot of money on, like courses and, and some coaching last year. And of course, the bottleneck was, again me trying to be successful with it. But I learned what I was trying to do is, I was trying to, I didn't have anything to sell.

You know, because I was trying to break out more into more digital type of, not with design, but with selling courses and things like that. And so, and I didn't, I was trying to build an audience and I went around about it the wrong way.  I do digital marketing, but I do public relations things like that for clients and for myself, but I don't like to hang out on social media drives me nuts. 

So I didn't build a big enough audience for that. That I didn't really have my eyes, what it is. I'm trying to not quote unquote sell, but I had a program that could help people and I didn't know how to get enough people, enough followers. So that was another thing that I spent too much money on courses and everything thinking that that would magically fix everything when it did not. So I learned that I have to actually buckle down. I have to figure out what I want to do when I have to create something that people want.

Emily: And building these relationships, you know? You're here on my show. I'm sure you're doing other podcasts as well. And so that's the more people know about you. More people that know about you. The more you're starting to build that audience, that at some point will want to buy something. So I'm curious about the author piece, of your story, because it's no small feat to write a book and you've done it multiple times. And it sounds like maybe on a variety of topics as well. What made you feel drawn to becoming an author? 

Helen: Well, I started to write my first book when I was nine and it was a piece of crap, you know, I didn't get that far. I maybe wrote, like four or five chapters and I didn't know, but I was nine years old, but I always wanted to be an author. And so, but I put all that on hold because I had my life in the business and then I had kids and then I just well, I don't know. I just, I don't think I can write, so I kind of brushed that whole thing off yet. That was the thing that had been part of me for my whole life and that dream. It's kind of like, if you have a dream your whole life, but you don't actually go for that dream, you can't fail at that dream because you didn't try and fail.

So I, in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, I want to be an author, but I, I just, because I didn't try, I couldn't fail at it because if I failed at it, that was like my whole inside identity. And so I didn't want to lose that part of me cause what else? That was my dream. I didn't have any other. So like, what else, if I didn't do it, then I would, then I be safe because I was an author who hadn't written a book. But now for now I see, I forgot the question. 

Emily: Well, I was asking you what drew you to become an author? It sounds like it's always been a dream. You've been as a child. 

Hele: It always was. And then when I, after I lost weight and I became a certified personal trainer and spinning instructor is, my side hustles. I thought, let me write a book for people who, who don't like all the rules and who can't like no carbs and everything. Let me write a book because I lost 80 pounds over 80 pounds in 10 months. And I still eat chocolate. I still like to live a life. And so I thought, well, it's not really the book I wanna write, but it's a book. And if it can help people. 

So I wrote a very simple, easy to follow book that was my first one. And it was just helping people and telling them that they're not wrong, they're not bad. And this is how you can do it and start really important. Stop beating yourself up for your perceived failures. And so that actually went pretty well. I was making some money on it for a long time every month. So that was really cool. And then I.

Emily: Did you self publish or did you work for a publisher?

Helen: I self published and I would get emails from people like this book has changed my life. Not enough now it's changed their life. Now it's been years, but it was so good to just know that strangers, your friends and family are always gonna pat you on the back. But when strangers, like, reach out to you and say, "This is amazing, this really helped me". To me that was, point of writing the book is to reach more people other than like my training clients. And then I did a very short book afterwards. 

It's like a little motivational book with, like the concepts from the first book, like a pocket guide that people could just take with them. And the third one is actually coming out now and it's again, it's health, wellness, weight loss, but it's more of musing. So it's a collection of like just different kinds of musings on it. But this is the last book I'm doing on this. I'm moving more tours. I've been doing marketing and designing MPRs. That was my early twenties. So it's time for me to move forward with that I think. 

Emily: Do you feel like you're getting braver with each book? Are you more willing to share your truth and really kind of get to the heart of the little girl inside of you that always wanted to be an author. What did she wanna say?

Helen: I think with this latest book in the forward or the introduction, I should say, I'm really giving more details about my life.

I've always kept everything about my previous life, my childhood, everything private. But I'm finding that people want to know because you look on Instagram, you look on Facebook everybody's lives look so great. Everybody's lives look so perfect. You don't know what they've been through and where they're from. And for them to be able to, now I'm starting to share more because I realized that it's helping people understand that they can overcome trauma. 

They can overcome their past and they can move forward. And so I'm putting that more in this book. But hopefully my next book actually will be a travel book about my days as a digital nomad, and then hopefully go more towards business, but motivating people. That's what I like to do. I like, cause it's hard, no matter what we're doing, whether it's losing weight or getting fit or building a business, it's hard to stay motivated.

Emily: Well, I love that. I think writing a book is something that's like on so many people's bucket lists and so few people do it. So I just honor your courage and commitment to actually do it and get out there and serve people. So I'm curious, like, based on our discussion thus far, I wonder if there's a little feeling around that it's hard to make money or that if you want to make more money, you have to work harder for it. Do you think that's been like a present theme in your life?

Helen: Well, I work really hard. I work a lot of hours because I do my own things. I'm not afraid of hard work. For me, It's more of asking people for money is still hard. Considering that I have so many years of experience and I'm still not asking the amount of money that I should be asking. Now I am with my new plans. That's, I think I'm stuck there a lot. Just always doing favors and really asking people. 

My aunt told me, and you've heard this before that my grandfather always said my grandfather ran several businesses. He was very successful. He always told her, "If someone doesn't have a shirt, you have two shirts you'd give him, one shirt. If you only have one shirt, you keep your shirt". But I'm the kind of person over here. Let me give you my shirt. I'll figure out what to do without a shirt, because I'm always looking. I always like challenges too, but, it's sometimes it gets hard when you face those challenges all the time, but I have to learn that. What I need to keep a shirt for myself. And that's what I'm working on now. 

Emily: I love that you shared that because like for women there's so much good girl coding. There's so much motherhood and, and just being female, right? There's kind of this like servitude that you should be the one taking care of everyone else. And if it's at your own expense, then you just get pats on the back for that.

But pats on the back necessarily make us feel fulfilled in life. And that whole phrase of can't give from an empty cup or you can't pour from an empty cup is very valid. And as women, the better we take care of ourselves, actually the better we can take care of everyone around us. And that, and again, that shows up in our business too.

And so as you clean up those boundaries, as you start stepping into higher pricing, it's like, you're just gonna find the clients that like, feel really, really good at that pricing and are so grateful for your work. 

Has your boundaries last. 

Helen: And people like who pay more, are more, they're more ready to make change and we're ready to listen. They're more ready to take those steps. And so I always want to help people who are, or starting and struggling, but I wanna do that more with, like courses like lower cost courses or things that are maybe a group that's affordable, but then really work with people who really want to go to the next level and who want me to help them. For example, getting noticed, getting in the media who want to learn also how to do stuff itself.

Emily: Exactly. There's a resource or something for everyone at every level. And I'm so grateful for YouTube and Google and how much access to information we have now, because it doesn't matter if you can't pay a dollar, like you can get so much information for free to get you started on your way. And then when you're ready to pay for an expert to help me or hold your hand or do it for you, then that's available to you as well. 

Helen: Somebody asked me, like, "What do I think of Canva"? Now I use Adobe creative suite, Photoshop, illustrator. InDesign I've been doing that for years. I was like, yes, for sure, do it.

Cause I've used Canva for social media. Graphics is so easy to resize and make you don't have to invest the time and energy in Adobe creative suite. Well, if Canva is what you can afford, Canva is better than nothing. Absolutely. I don't, there's something for everyone in every stage.

Emily: Amen. As a Canva user over here, not because of price, but it's just like, I just want something that's easy that can do the basics. Because beyond that, I need to just hire someone. I'm not gonna invest the time to learn it. Right? I love that. So I'm curious, would the stage that you're at in your business now, how much are you making and do you have any little financial goal that you'd like to share with us that you're working toward?

Helen: For my new clients rate is for design and marketing is $95 an hour. Some of my old clients are still on $40 an hour. That's my nonprofit price. I do work for nonprofits because I know that they struggle. And these nonprofits that I do work with, I've done free work for nonprofits as well and volunteer because it's really important to me that they get help have no problem working for free or low cost for nonprofits, but for profit companies like my smaller clients, they need to pay more than $40 an hour when my handyman charges me 60, you know? And so it's, and it's all my experience. And I do a lot of consulting with them.

So I'm gonna  start having them book appointments now, like the ones who call me and message me every five minutes for something that's not paid, they can book on Calendly and they can prepay for series. I mean, I wanna go to more packages, but really what I want to do is do masterclasses, paid masterclasses and training. Because I think that, especially for that starting out to middle ground, you know, people, public relations is easily five to $10,000 a month.

Well, not everybody can afford that so I can teach them how to do it themselves. It's not that hard. It just requires elbow grease, like bikes, social media, and everything else. And I wanted to reach more people and not just do the done for you. I want to teach them how to do it themselves and then reserve the done for you for my other plans. So, like my new clients who are paying more for that work. 

Emily: I love that. And for everyone listening, Helen's not wrong. I hired the first PR person I hired was $4,000 a month and I had to commit to six months and that was at least six years ago. So it is, it's a very significant financial commitment. And you don't really know what you're getting out of it, which can be hard on both sides of things. Right? Because as a client, I wanted to sort of have an idea of how much my sales would grow from PR. And my PR person was like, I can answer that question for you. 

Helen: No, you can't because you can't guarantee they're gonna be picked up or like I've noticed some people have been paying for PR. I mean, there are some very good PR people in agencies out there. I'm not a PR agency. I do as part of my marketing, but I've been in Mashable. 

I've been in shape online. I've been very well fit, puffing posts. I've been to all these publications, so I know how to do it, but it's just getting it out there, getting it done. And then just doing the best you can researching authors. I mean, office researching writers, emailing them. But It's hard you can't predict if you are a PR agency, you can't predict how many pickups are going to get, you can guess, but it's, it's, there's no guarantee just like with social media, are you gonna go viral?

Maybe, maybe not. 

Emily: Right. And we got the most PR for our baby clothing company. And so we, you know, we were featured in people magazine multiple times. You know, we had celebrities share pictures of their kids, wearing our stuff. And a lot of times it didn't really result in any sales. Probably our biggest sales lift ever was like a Buzzfeed article and it had a link directly to our product on Amazon. And we were like, why are sales going crazy? I'll never forget. 

We were in Hawaii on vacation with some friends and we're, like checking our sales, like something must be going on. And then we found out that we were in Buzzfeed, but it's interesting because this actually. To what we were talking about earlier, which is visibility. And it's like just trusting that there are so many things that are building your audience, and some of them are gonna turn into sales right away. And some of them aren't and who the heck knows whether they will or they won't, but it's like just trusting that with each thing you put out there that like it is building momentum. 

Helen: Right. Exactly. And the thing that we're, I really like about doing PR and things like that are the back links back to your website and high domain authority backlinks. It'll help with search engines, but getting a link to your sites is really key. 

Emily: Absolutely. That's probably why people would hire someone like you, right?

Because you're helping to shape the type of media that they're getting. So I love the idea of getting masterclasses and making that more, your knowledge, more accessible to other people. 

Helen: I think that's my thing. I like to help people. And the more people the better. And, but, I do have to keep some high ticket clients, but I really like to work with people who not, not so much individual, but teaching them how they can do their own fishing.

Emily: Absolutely. And as you and I were talking before we started recording this and you were also just talking about. Just seeing people in other countries, right? That have nothing, but they're so happy. And how, what an impression that made on you. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Helen: So I traveled for quite a while as a digital nomad, I've gone without my kids.

And then when my daughter graduated high school, my youngest, I took them and we traveled for a while. Then after they went back, I went ahead and, and traveled on my own as well. It was really freeing. 

We put everything in storage. I could only take stuff that was fit in my backpack or in my suitcase, depending on what I had at the time. And so it was freeing for me to, if I wanted to buy something new, something else had to go. And it's like, it's amazing that you can survive on so little, but I've traveled to some Cambodia, Bosnia side from all the other places that are more, more touristy, but the, just the kindest people in Thailand and they don't have much. And they're always happy. And they're always willing to help you. I mean, I've had people who don't have any money offer here. You want this and I'm like, no, but thank you. 

They're just so kind. And they they're just happy that their kids run the family business with them. They start when they're young and is focused on family and they don't care about material things. And it's really nice and really just amazing that these people are just so happy with it because here we're so materialistic. I mean, there's a good balance. I like air conditioning. So when I travel, I do stay on Airbed with air conditioning, a place that has air conditioning. So that is my guilty pleasure, but it's just amazing that I've met so many, the super kind people who are just happy with everything, they whatever little that they have.

Emily: Absolutely. Happiness is an inside job. That's for sure. And I've had similar experiences traveling in India and just seeing women by the side of the road. Making cow pie patties that would then be burned to cook the food and whatever. And it's like that such a humble way of living, but I've learned the hard way that all of the financial goals don't make you feel safe.

They don't make you feel happy. They don't make you feel successful. They don't make you feel worthy. All of that needs to be done on the inside, but then I've also experienced the fact that once you do all of that on the inside, and then you add money to your situation, life does get a lot better.

Helen: Exactly.

Emily: So it's the both, and for sure. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been such a fun discussion, and I would love for you to share the places that you hang out. I know you said you don't like social media, but where, I don't know. Are you reluctant there? Where can people follow you? Right?

Helen: It's not that I don't like it. I just, I have so many, I have so much to do. It's like, and I have to put something on social media. I'm on Instagram @ Real Helen M. Ryan. And I do have my trouble Instagram that I haven't updated. Cause I've been traveling, which has midlife crisis traveler with two L's. If somebody wants to see some of the pictures and amazing places, budget places that I've been.

I have my walking podcasts, which is walking and talking on show and I have a blog, but it's not, I mean, it's a, it's a healthy lifestyle, weight loss blog. But I just feel like I'd love to connect with people. I love to hear what other people, what their experiences. That's the part I like about social media. I love Facebook groups. I'm on Facebook a lot. Instagram is just harder because I can't feel that same connection as account on Facebook.

Emily: I know it's so interesting how we all have our little places on the internet that feel cozy. And then the other places that don't feel good at all. So we'll make sure to drop some of those links in the show notes so that people can stay connected with you as you publish your next book. As you start traveling again, as you start launching your masterclasses and all of the things. So, Helen, thank you so much for joining. Would you like to leave any final words of wisdom with our audience?

Helen: I think that just, don't be afraid to try things. Don't be afraid if something feels like a failure and just learn from it because, the more, I've lost everything several times. And the more times you lose and you rebuild, you realize that you're so strong inside. And if you only live, like you get a paycheck, if something happens to your job, you're lost. But when you create your own business or you know how to rebuild, then you're a lot more secure because you know that even if you lose everything tomorrow, you can rebuild it again.

Emily: I love that. Well, thank you so much and thank you to all of you listening, and I'll see you again soon on another episode. Take care, bye. Thank you so much for tuning into today's show. Before you go. I have something fun to share. Now, when you leave a review of the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, take a quick screenshot and send it to hi@emilywilcox.com.

You'll be entered into a drawing to win a free one-on-one Voxer coaching day with me and you help the show reach more new listeners, such a win-win. I also invite you to follow me on Instagram at Em Makes Money and to jump into my free Facebook group, the money club, which is linked in the show notes until next time I'm sending you all the magic money vibes.