Episode 70: Honoring Motherhood, Money & Business with Amber Lilyestrom

 

Amber Lilyestrom is a business mentor, branding expert, author and speaker. Her work has been featured by Forbes, Entrepreneur, Mind Valley and Working Mother Magazine. She is the host of The Amber Lilyestrom Show podcast and author of Master Your Money Mind and Paddle Home.

Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/3rbn9mk

Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3SrCKcW

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HjJBYeisLRI

Connect with Amber:

https://www.amberlilyestrom.com/offer

https://www.instagram.com/amberlilyestrom/

 

Work with Emily:

Join the waitlist for the Spring 2023 Retreat: https://www.emilywilcox.com/retreats 

Website: https://www.emilywilcox.com/work-with-me

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emilyjwilcox1/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/em.makes.money

Money Wounds Quiz: https://www.emilywilcox.com/quiz

Send a DM to inquire about open coaching & masterminds or go to https://www.emilywilcox.com/products

Join our free Telegram Community, The Money Club: https://t.me/+JkOcBKu82KIyOWRh

Transcript

 

Amber: What is sufficient? What is enough, what is necessary? When we think about the, I get the visual of the scales and the balancing for how I wanna do life and how I wanna operate and function in this business that is constructed with the model. Like the one I have in this moment, right? And also balancing out, you know, my motherhood and my health and my marriage and my, the needs that I have for spacious with model the business that I have. And so it's really, truly, I think our work gets to be about figuring out what that equation looks like. 

Emily: I actually, it's something that I've really seen you embody, which is like, what feels good to me and my family. And sure I could throw all of my energy into doubling my business.

And at what cost can I be the mom that I want to be while doubling my business?

Hello, beautiful souls. Today's episode is so, so good. And before we jump in, I have some exciting views 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 more money.

Just go to mone woundsquiz.com and answer six quick questions to get your insanely accurate and potent result. And if you're loving my vibe and wanting 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 emilywilcox.com to learn more.

Hello and welcome back to the EM Makes Money Show. I am so, so, so excited to share today's episode with you. This is probably one of the most meaningful podcast episodes I've recorded because it was such a full-circle moment for me to be interviewing one of my past mentors, who, by the way, has a super successful podcast.

And at the time that I worked with her, this podcast didn't exist. I didn't have a coaching business, I didn't think I ever wanted one, and it's so wild to sit down with her and just interview her for my show, but also just reflect on the time that we worked together and just how beautiful these full circle moments are.

So I cannot wait to introduce today's guest, but I just also wanna share a little bit of what's on top for me. So I also today did two one-on-one calls with clients that are inside of Emerge, which is my popup Mastermind right now through the rest of the year. By the time you listen to this, the container will be closed, but if you're not following me on social media, I highly recommend it because that's where you get the pulse of what's happening in the moment.

You can also join my email list and I try to let you know what's going on there as well. I've got some beautiful retreat offerings. I've got one spot left in the RISE retreat, which is happening in Palm Springs in October, and it's a wealth activation retreat. I've got so many incredible things planned so that all the women that are there will be stepping into and meeting themselves at this next level version of the wealthy woman that lives inside of them. So it's gonna be really, really exciting. I know this last spot is gonna go, so if you know that it's for you, definitely shoot me a DM right away to claim it. The next retreat will be in spring of 2023, so if you know you wanna go on a retreat, but fall is not the right time for you, also send me a DM and I can put you on a waitlist so you can be the first to get details about that spring.

If you couldn't tell, I'm loving in-person, client experiences, and one of my favorite things to do are luxury VIP days. I did one with one of my clients recently at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Los Angeles, and it was just such a special day and she had so many aha moments and things that we never could have planned for, but that really helped connect the dots on just wealthy version of herself and the next moves to make in her business and her life to really be building her fempire and doing it in very balanced, masculine-feminine energy. So I've been wanting to explore the Ritz Carlton in Marina Delray, and also the one that's in Laguna Beach. So if you've been craving an in-person experience and you want a beautiful mix of spa and strategy, the woo woo and the business coaching, let me plan for you. The investment is 5,555, and that includes a night of luxury accommodation. It includes all of our meals and experiences while we're together and the days are truly transformative. Again, send me a DM if that's something that you're interested in. Without further ado, I wanna introduce my guest for today, Amber Lilyestrom.

Amber, as I mentioned, is not only a mentor of mine, but she's an incredible author, poet, speaker, teacher, coach, human being, and mama. She has been in the coaching game, I think eight years at this point. She's got two beautiful children, and one of the reasons that I was drawn to working with her was how balanced she was in her motherhood and in her business.

And so it was clear that she was building a business and making a lot of money, but doing it in a way that didn't sacrifice her mental health, her time freedom, and her family was number one. So she is an absolutely incredible person, and we go so deep together on just what it looks like to honor your core values and to put yourself in spaces where that is honored as well, and what it looks like to come home in your body and honor your inner authority and so many juicy topics.

So without further ado, let's dive in. Amber, welcome to the show.

Amber: I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you, my dear. 

Emily: It feels like such a wild moment for me if I'm just observing myself because you were my coach. We worked together for probably about a year and a half, and at that time you had the podcast and the big social media following, and like all of these different things.

I actually never thought pertained to me or that I wanted or any of that. And now here I am interviewing you on my podcast and it's just one of those like haha, universe moments where it all comes full circle in ways that we could never imagine.

Amber: I mean, it's so cool, right, that we magnetize mentors and teachers on our journeys are inhabiting some of the things that maybe we don't even recognize is like subconsciously there's a desire there, and so then we get to be in community with them and we get to sort of normalize it and then reate our version, you know, of what it is that we want to express and what our signature in the world is meant to be.

So I love it so much. I've loved obviously getting to support you and then watching the trajectory and watching the unfolding and watching you just step into this work. It's been so beautiful. 

Emily: Thank you so much Yeah, and it really speaks to, I think, how mentorship is such a lifelong thing and the lessons just exist so far beyond the bounds of the container.

Amber: Yes. 

Emily: I'm so grateful for that because it's like nice for me as a client, but then also as a coach and a mentor. It's a helpful reminder too that like, oh, the transformation really extends so much further beyond this space and in ways that we just can't even fathom in this moment.

Amber: It's so true. I mean, can you think back to any point of a learning opportunity, even like back in college or in your first job where you were being guided to learn something?

And you maybe got it kind of conceptually, but you didn't understand it from an integration standpoint. And I think that's how it goes with our coaches and our mentors. And when we're part of masterminds and things like this, it's like we do get an enormous amount of value, but it's the gift that keeps on giving because it in perpetuity, It gets to continue to open and blossom and support us. And that's why supporting yourself through investing in mentorship, coaching events, like going places where you can learn and have relational support opportunities. I just, it's the gift that keeps on giving forever. Truly. You know, it is. It is this amazing choice because you are the asset and you will never depreciate and that is the coolest thing ever. 

Emily: It really is. So I feel like in some respects you're gonna OG in the coaching industry, and I'm just curious from your sort of zoomed-out perspective, what you see for this industry, any ways that you've seen it change, any trends that you predict are coming up?

Amber: So I've been doing this work for eight and a half years in terms of being a coach, but certainly was plugged in before I launched my business and learning and connecting and taking notes and testing my little wet wings. But I think that what has just been really cool is just witnessing everybody in their own evolution.

And so it's like seeing clients that I've had the opportunity to support and serve on their journeys. I really stepping into their dharma, right? Stepping into what they're meant to do on their path and spreading their wet wings to the point where they're really blossoming, they're really flying and they're really serving.

You know this about me, and I'm a former division one athlete, but in the context of this coaching world, I just don't believe in competition at all. I just don't think it's a thing. When I get it on a questionnaire, I write like, not applicable, not interested in that conversation. Not helpful.

There's enough room for all of us. There's so many people on this planet, and I think there's this wave of evolution happening where consciousness is the new edge, right? And people stepping into new realms of consciousness and understanding of themselves and doing their deep healing work and freeing themselves.

It's just amazing to see the coaching industry continuing to grow and spread out in a bigger way. And then also, there are lots of folks who maybe were OG OGs who are doing different things. They're scaling in different ways. They're creating technology experiences to just diversify how they're helping and what they're doing.

That's what I love to watch is the innovation and the ways that we're sharing ideas and connecting with each other. It's actually a good example, my husband Ben, just got home literally like right now from this event called Hell on The Hill, which is put on by All Day Running company, which is founded by Jesse. Sarah Blake's husband. It was just this amazing experience. It was right in our backyard here on in New England, and Ben just did this half marathon on this like Hellacious Hill, literally. But it was this community of all these different types of people who wanted to go push themselves. But the way Jesse organized it was doing the cold plunging and the saunas and having those on-site and then having Olympians and you know, speakers and elite athletes and trainers coming in, doing personal development talks for the people there.

It was an overnight event, and I can just tell like Ben has just gone through this huge shift and I said to him like, “So what's coming up for you on the other side of this, beside your legs being almost dead?” And you're wondering how you're gonna be able to walk for the next couple days. Yeah. And he's like, “I don't know. And I can tell something huge opened. Mm-hmm. something big is here” And in his way I really wanna process. I'm like, I'm excited to see what comes through for you. 

And so I think that's an example of innovation, right? It's like taking a race experience and then creating personal development and growth and coaching opportunities in the container of that being together.

And I also think, um, like being connected to the other side of the pandemic. Everything. We've all been turned inside out and so we're all in this place of, okay, there's more discernment. I think there's a lot more clarity about what's right for us and what's not. I do feel people kind of really coming out, again out of the woodwork and being bold, but I feel like they're making choices from a place with a lot more, as I said, discernment before they're gonna make the investment or like get on the plane or come into the room.

And that's because the motivation is coming from a different. Whereas it used to be coming from this place of like, I need to keep up fomo. Let me really, truly scarcity energy. Let me make sure I keep up with what the Kardashians, the Jones is like inserted here. And I see now, at least with the people that I'm serving, when there's a decision to enroll in a program to take that, it's like there's a much deeper drop happen.

And so I think the transformations here are so much richer and it's really cool to see. And I just think this really, there are no limits on what we can create as coaches and teachers and mentors and innovators in this season to really serve people from the deepest part of ourselves. 

Emily: Like tapping into new levels of creativity and being like, “Oh, I love horses and I love coaching and I love this. Like, how do I put together an event where it all gets to exist together?” That's so beautiful and I love what you said about this shift from the pandemic. I'm in a mastermind and one of my mastermind sisters has really been talking about this word sufficiency, and my first experience with that word felt a little bit lack so we really just want it to be sufficient. But she was like, No. The true richness of sufficiency and just how held and supported we are in so many ways, and as I've let myself play with that word, it really does resonate that I feel so much sufficiency in my life that if I am going to say to a retreat or a new coaching experience or whatever, it really is from a place of desire, not from a place of, “I need this thing because I'm insufficient or I'm lacking. It's like from this place of sufficiency, it actually creates this beautiful foundation so that I can just lean more into desire.

Amber: Totally. I love that expression and I think I see like a cork just rising with the level of the water, right? And just rising up because you can't hold the cork down for long.

It's always gonna come back up and that's us. And so I love thinking of it from that visual standpoint of there's enough in the jar, right? There's enough and there's just more to come. And if we move from that place of sufficiency.  I was really thinking about that in the context of income and I'm sure we'll probably get to talking about that topic just sort of surface globally 

From my perspective, I think it's also given me the opportunity to look at what is sufficient, what is enough, what is necessary when we think about the, I get the visual of the scales and the balancing for how I wanna do life and how I wanna operate and function in this business that is constructed with the model, like the one I have in this moment. Right? And also balancing out, you know, my motherhood and my health, and my marriage and my, the needs that I have for spacious would model the business that I have. And so it's really truly, I think our work gets to be about figuring out what that equation looks like and then helping people develop the skill of making money in their businesses and understanding that it is actually a skill.

Learning how to make money is something we can help teach people how to do. Yeah, and it kind of takes, certainly there's like energetics and there's all this mystical, magical stuff that can go into it, but at the end of the day, it's also as business people, we have to learn the basics and the mechanics of how to do those things.

And then getting to that place. I've been talking a lot about layer cakes lately with my clients. What's on the menu? What are the layers? How do you create this experience for people to come in and just eat what they wanna eat and be part of your containers in a way that really feels right size for where they are.

That you also have the sufficiency, the capacity to actually hold. And as I speak about this, I can see you smiling. It just feels so abundant. It feels so good to just create from this place and then to make choices around. Oh, and see there is a direct correlation to this approach and this energetic and this commitment and the income that I'm allowing myself to receive. And these things are just, it is quite simple when you really talk about it from this vantage point. 

Emily: A hundred percent. And going back to this concept of sufficiency, because I actually, it's something that I've really seen you embody, which is like, what feels good to me and my family? And sure, I could throw all of my energy into doubling my business. And at what cost can I be the mom that I wanna be while doubling my business? 

And just allowing the sufficiency to give you the freedom of cultivating and crafting the life that you want. And then as you talk about that in terms of an offer suite and what's on the menu, it's fine for the restaurant to charge a lot for the bottle of wine that comes from the year when the grapes were amazing, but they also weren't as plentiful, right? And so like the restaurant only has four bottles. Just naturally the price is gonna be higher for that. Not because there's FOMO, not because there's this fake scarcity of we only have four bottles, so you've gotta get it at this price.

But if I look at my life and it feels more one-on-one clients is what fits perfectly on the menu then there's a price for that, and there's a different price. If you wanna be in a group program or you wanna buy something that's self. And when it is energetically coming from this really beautifully aligned place, I think people can feel that. They can really feel the authenticity in the pricing, in the offer and the way that it fits your menu.

Amber: Totally. Nailed it. That's it. And I think that I see this a lot with my clients. They have learned a lot tactics and strategies that have come from scarcity, that really have come from the root of scarcity and from just a different motivation essentially.

I always think about, okay, it's amazing that you're making millions of dollars. That's wonderful, but can you connect the dots on why that's important to you? Why, like let's just talk about why not that there's anything wrong with it. Because at the end of the day, it's really pretty neutral. Money is just a tool. It really is. It's just like a part. It's one of the things that's required in this human existence, and so it's like, Okay, great. Same with food. I could eat the same thing every day for the rest of my life. I could eat gourmet things for the rest of my life. I could just eat McDonald's for the rest of my life.

Right? It's like we get to express in that way. And money is the same thing. It's just a tool that helps us to function in this existence that we are living in. And so I think there's a great unlearning that is happening. I'm noticing it a lot with women. I'm noticing it in this, I have some interesting perspectives on some of these things.

There is like this divine feminine thing that to me, I'm sometimes, “is that divine feminine or is it just bro marketing that looks just like sexy and pretty?” Are they actually the same thing? And can we just talk about it? And where does the motivation come from? Because you can smell scarcity from a million miles away.

What you said, like the false deadlines, the sort of pressury push stuff into me, that goes back to the kind of unsafe culture that women have been trying to protect themselves from for lifetimes. 

So it's like we really have to be discerning and the best exercise we can do is really look at ourselves hello and say, “Why do I want this?”

I had so many women come in and say, I wanna make a million dollars, or I wanna have whatever number, figure months, and it's always like, Great. Awesome. Cool. We can make a plan for that. We can work on that, but just we need to talk about why. Why does that matter to you? And it's not to poke holes in to make it wrong, but let's supercharge it.

Yeah. So we can really believe in the foundation of why this matters to. So that's a topic I could go on and on and on about, but I just think that's the introspection that needs to happen because the reality is, and you know this from your own experience, and I know this from my own experience, we didn't get to this money conversation totally clean and supported energetically and not a healthy topic for most of us coming into entrepreneurship.

Emily: Absolutely and I'm nodding my head as you're talking about the bro marketing and the scarcity tactics because you know better than anyone. I had this funny experience of being in your mastermind at the same time that I was in a bro marketing mastermind. I really tried to straddle those two worlds for a while and try to figure out whatever my own reconciliation was, and I've come to it now, at least I think I have.

Often we think like we check the box and it's done and then it comes back around. But I was so drawn to you as a coach because I was the lifestyle it was, you really were showing how motherhood was such an important piece and the business was an important piece, and how they really both got a lot of air time and it just felt like, “Oh, I want that.” And then there was also a piece of me that really was a match for someone else's 10-step framework on how to do it. And this is the way and whether it feels good or not, you just follow steps one through 10 in order to get there. And so part of me gets frustrated and wants demonize that industry, but really it's the part of me that gets to forgive myself that's and everybody else because I was a match for that.

Amber:  Yeah, that's it. And it's like, again, everything can have neutrality in it. I mean that's really, to me, one of the most. The easiest places to go was not, and hasn't been easy. Right. It's okay. Maybe I'm not being judgemental because I think that's a place where we can judge ourselves for being judgemental.

And we get to this certain point of, But it's like, But maybe you're actually just being discerning. Yeah. And in this season you're looking at it and saying, I see how that works there. And that doesn't resonate for me and that doesn't line up with my values of what it is I wanna create. And I realize, like I was working with all these male mentors.

Again, no problem with men. Love men, Right, Of course. But I was noticing, oh, the core values, even though we have very similar core values, the way we activate them is extremely different. And I seem, it feels to me like I always come out at the end of the conversation feeling like I'm doing it wrong because I can't subscribe to their process and their pathway of doing these things.

Because at the end of the, I'm a mother and. My children, my family is always gonna be the number one thing and the demands of a mother. If you haven't done that, with all due respect, if you haven't operated in a role of primary guardian for another being, for a child, whether you birth them or not, you just can't understand. You just can't. You haven't had the experience.

 And so that Ben is right now picking Annie up from school. Alex was still napping. We have a five-and-a-half-month-old. We have a nine-year-old. And Ben, he said to me, “Alex, like, it's like tight rope. He could continue to sleep. But I'm like, “I can't, I won't be able to go down to him right now while I'm in my interview.”

And he's like, Right. He's like, I would never leave him like that. A and then also B, like the pressure you would feel. Yeah. And I can't hear my child crying. It's primal. And so I think that goes so deep. I love that we have that. It's such a privilege. It's such a gift. It's such an honor to have motherhood because it just makes things so simple, even though they are incredibly complex.

And when it comes to my business, It is not number one and it really never will be. And I also love my work and it's important. It is an important part of my life. My children understand it's an important part of my life. I'm very supported but like you said earlier, I so appreciate that kind, reflection and observation.

I don't wanna miss certain aspects of my children's lives. And so I'm not the nanny person right now. I'm not by working less time though I'm spreading it out intelligently and Ben and I have a whole strategy and system with how we do it as a team. But I wanna be there to go take that walk when he is awake in the middle of the day. I wanna be there for putting him down for the nap. I wanna be there for pick up and drop off. And that's just how it's gonna be. And so then that impacts capacity and it requires me to scale differently and it requires me to design my business differently or not. But the reality is, I get to decide. And that's the magic right there.

Emily: And the claiming of the power in that deciding. Yeah, and I think that can be the tricky part when we put ourselves in male-dominated spaces is that decision can be framed in a disempowering way or like an excuse or almost a gas lighting type of experience. Instead of really anchoring into the power of that. I choose family. And I choose to build my business in a way that really allows me to give my family what they need and what I want to be participating in.

Amber: And also, it can happen in female spaces and places w here the motherhood is not centered as a value. And I've had a lot of different seasons where I was a mastermind with a bunch of people who don't have children, and it's okay.

Again, no judgment, it's just discernment of realiz. This doesn't make sense that I'm leaving this thing early to go make the dance recital, cuz I can't, I'm not gonna miss my kids' first dance recital. So I'll fly across the country for like a day and a half and I'll leave early to go watch her and her tutu on the stage.

It just, that's what we're doing. Yeah. And like no replay, no redos. The video doesn't count. I'm gonna be there. And then there are sometimes where it's like you do make the decision that you're gonna go to the. And Right. But it's just you guys, you understand. You understand what we're saying. And I just wanna encourage, I think that one of my sort of patterns that I've struggled with over time, and of course most of my clients do because we are so similar in many ways, is the binary of the right and the wrong.

Yeah. And in getting into the place of really claiming and deciding and creating and designing what right is for. And that's an easy one for us to get really hooked in. And we're trained from day one to get stuck in that. But it feels so right. You know, the way that everything is unfolding and the work is so much fun and supporting women the way that I get to where I can just be myself all the way and even more is just, it's the best.

I love it so much.

Emily: So. So I wanna pick up on the thread of money, and I'm curious if you can just share at a high level sort of what the highs and lows of money have looked like during this entrepreneurial journey and then, Where you've arrived at in terms of sufficiency and balancing the business and the money with the lifestyle that you want?

Amber: That's a great question. So growing up, I think that's the launching pad, if you will, right? For all of us. It's like that's where we start got our idea of what money is, what wealth means, what it means about the people who have the wealth, right? So there've just been a lot of things for me to have to address.

Meet head on and heal and forgive and release and overcome. And shame's a big theme in there, really looking at that. And so I always knew from a young age that I was going to be financially, Wealthy, successful. I always knew that I would be someone who was gonna make more money than I had experienced in my childhood.

My family of origin. My parents never talked about money, but they any other way than it was stressful and people who had, it was like, must be nice kind of storylines. So that was really the identity that I. Saw when it came to people who had resource and who had nice things and where it was like obvious that they were wealthy, right?

In some way, shape or form. There you could connect those dots. And as a kid I would be at soccer practice and I'd notice, you know, the parents who pulled up in the new Explorer and I'd notice what they were wearing and try to surmise what kind of job they had and what time they got there and how they interfaced with their kid.

And I was like taking all of these notes and it was always in relationship to their career. Their income. What I knew, like I knew M was I wanted to have a different reality for my family, and I didn't want my children to have to bear the burden of feeling that scarcity, poverty mindset and feel the weight and anxiety of that.

So as you can imagine, I did. And so when I became an entrepreneur, it was definitely one of those triggers and it has been that I've had to really. Examine and look at and watch the cyclicality of it and watch the triggers. One huge trigger was taxes, right? The government, irs, and even though I, every single time I always enlisted.

People, professionals to help me. I all along was like one of the first things I did in my business. Cause I was like, I'm not having the experiences that I watched my parents have when it came to the irs. I would still have the full body felt like blood draining from my body going to the mailbox and having a letter from the IRS not even knowing it was in it.

But like that terrible feeling. And I can think of a couple instances where it was just like, felt like I was gonna die. And I remember feeling that exact experience as a kid when I watched my mom come down the driveway with the male and then walk in the house and be freaking out about something. So it's interesting cause I was like, how am I playing this pattern out?

Like how am I reliving this pattern and I need to really look at. And then we were able to create incredible manifestation. I mean, this house I'm sitting in right now, you know, we bought our dream house here on the lake, and then we paid cash, which was over $300,000 to build this addition. And when I think about that, it was, there was such a charge on the vision and what it was that we were feeling called to create.

And my business hadn't been in the place and space to manifest that, to create that. But I scaled and I created a different model and I had different things happening and we did it. But I will say throughout the whole process, it wasn't like, Oh yeah, this is so easy. It was on few. Here's my $50,000 check.

Here's a $90,000 check. Here's the 60. It was like writing these checks over to the builder and like having heart palpitations in between. And working with my mentor to really alchemize this old patterning and really realizing you just wrote a hundred thousand dollars check. Like you can do it. You're doing it.

But there was like a part of me that hadn't caught up with me. So I think that I see it in my head like this. It's that like catching up to one's self when you have this whole timeline that you spent a lot more time in. That was the story of scarcity and not enoughness and insufficiency as a foundation and a way you relate to yourself.

And then put a little cherry on the top of the identity of if I'm now a wealthy person, and of course I cannot control anyone else's definition of what that means, but they're gonna have reactions. To what I have, my things building. I mean, this wasn't, I couldn't really hide this right? Building a $300,000 edition on my already over $300,000 house.

That was a big move. And everybody on the pond is driving their boats around the next summer, coming back and seeing it for the first time. And I remember just feeling all the projections and all the, And it was great. It was like, it was so gruesome and it was so awesome because I got to work. And I got to look at it and I got to identify what was happening inside of me.

And so the normalization of all that has settled in, and it's not that I don't get excited about money anymore, but I understand it differently. And I see money now as a tool that helps me to accomplish the specific goals that I have for my life, for my family, for my business, beyond, for my philanthropy, like whatever it is.

And. The way I do it is I get on the wave, you know, I get on the wave of the thing that I am wanting the money for because there always is a thing that you want money for. The place where I found myself trip up, and I'm wondering if you can relate to the listeners can too, is when I would wanna have some arbitrary amount of money in the account to make me feel safe.

And the reality is it never works for me because money can't keep me safe in the way that I wanna feel. And this is the thing that it really took me a long time to get to that, but the reality is it just never would work. Their money needed to have a purpose. It had to have an assignment, it had to have a heartbeat for what it was going for, and spontaneous manifestation.

Once I plug these things in together, once I get into that formula, It's incredible how quickly these things materialize. I was just talking to my team about it the other day and they're like, Wait a minute. You made your list of like the things you wanted to manifest in August and you literally, half of those things you just like banged out super easily.

There were things that had been there for a while, but I hadn't committed them to the page. Yeah, that right? Cuz that's how it works. And I just like laughed at myself. Remember? That's how it works. So that's my high level, quick version of it. This has been such important work to me that I wrote a book about it.

So I wrote Master Money Mind and put it up on Amazon and I wrote it and it's helped other people, but I wrote it for myself. 

Emily: Would you consider baby Alex your biggest manifestation?

Amber: My mentor will say that I struggle a little bit with just not wanting to objectify my child. 

Emily: But I guess if I put him in a hierarchy when you've got another child, 

Amber: This is actually something, So recently someone was asking me about getting pregnant and how they were, It was really easy for us to manifest this baby to get pregnant.

And I paused in it cause it kind of felt weird. It felt kind of like, I don't know how I wanna counsel that. So what I said was, I just think that and I guess everything can be a miracle, but I think when it comes to other souls specifically, there's a sole contract that's in flow and I think it's about divine timing and I also think there's no way I could have messed it up.

And so that's how I feel. Also, what I advised my friend when I said to her was just like, when it comes to these kinds of miracles, I'm not like trying to market that. It just is. There's an Inness to it and it's miraculous and it's incredible, but there's reverence. There's like this incredible honor to it that is, I didn't do it.

I was being it and I made the decision in March of 2022, really like end of February, that I was just gonna believe in our baby. I just decided to like full body, go there and believe without any fear or. No matter what. And just to keep saying yes, and we adopted our son in March of 2022 and it was pretty fast that timing of that unfolded.

Yeah. But again, that's a God thing to me, not an ego-like me thing. So, but I love that question cuz I really had to think about that in terms of like, how do I wanna speak to that? Because Yeah, he could say it and there, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It's just so profound. And even with our daughter, we conceived Annie, I was 31 and our first attempt at iui, we were conceived and.

I didn't think anything of it. I was just, yeah, I decided we were having a baby and then we went in and had the procedure and I just thought, I didn't know, I didn't have the story of in fertility yet. Yeah. So I just thought it was like how it worked and so it was like, Oh yeah, and then we just had our baby and we did, But then we tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and we didn't have a second child.

And what I really think is, I was just talking about this with somebody earlier today. I think all of it was leading to the ultimate outcome. Of course it was, but I couldn't have known it, right? Like I couldn't have known during those failed IVF cycles and the pain and the healing, and the deep grief of being complete with my fertility at 39.

That it was all leading me to Alex and to my motherhood journey moving in that direction. So the big thing is, is whatever it is, you just have to stay with it and you have to believe in it, you know, with every cell in your body. And I just don't, you know, I always say, if the dream is in you, it's for you.

I honestly sat in 2021 and the question of that, you know, like, do I think that's actually true? And I reckon with it deeply and blessedly, I believe it even more. 

Emily: I love the nuance of this conversation. And I think for me, perhaps the terminology that would feel more accurate is co-creation rather than manifestation.

Yeah, I like that. And it reminds me of what Abraham Hicks talks about, which is appreciation is the frequency that's closest to source frequency, but not just any appreciation, it's actually appreciation of self. Yes. And our part of the co-creation with source. Love it a hundred percent and it's like that feels so beautiful appreciating you and the ways that you showed up for this co-creation and appreciating Alex and the way that he showed up for the co-creation and his birth mama, and the way that she showed up for the co-creation and just every little piece of it.

In deep reverence.

Amber: Yeah, it's so good. I just see like this sort of like charismatic form of all this coming together. It's so beautiful and that really is how it went. And there's just so many next pages in the book that just kept turning and it was just from the birth name. She named him the name. That was our baby boy's name.

It just couldn't. Oh my God. Of course. Exactly.

Emily: I know. I just love it so much and it's been so fun to just celebrate you along the journey and just be cheering your family on as well. So you recently celebrated your birthday and I saw that you kind of wrote a post about it, and one of your intentions that you said for this next year was to really be kind to yourself always, and.

I know that you're a Virgo and we just a few weeks ago had the New Moon in Virgo, and that is often the shadow side of that astrology, yes, you have your shit together and also you can be really hard on yourself. So I'm very curious when you set an intention like that, what does it look like to put that into practice?

Amber: Such a great question and I was very conscious of it when I wrote that on the page, on the email you're owning. But I will say I've been doing it for a while, so it felt really good to put it on the page to say, I'm gonna really sign, seal, deliver this. I think truly the arrival of Alex has been the most humbling moment because all the fear and all the worry and all the pain, and I will say that the culmination of all of that, it was really a crescendo in 2021.

It was one of the hardest years of my life and. I was really down. I was really sad. I was in grief in a profound way with just, again, a layer cake of things happening. I mean, the pandemic and then my dad's Parkinson's diagnosis, and watching those symptoms continued to progress. My fertility being complete without any preparation or knowledge that that was gonna happen.

Almost like just being knocked over by it. The loss of the pregnancy when we did conceive right, it was just. And I was just contracting my way through it, truly like birthing the next version of myself. But contractions are very painful and so I

Emily: think that, especially when you don't know what you're birthing like it's hard enough when you're birthing a baby and you're like, Okay, this is horrible and I get to meet my baby on the other side of it, right? This is what's gonna happen and who knows what's on the other side

Amber: Yeah. I'm like, “am I gonna lose my whole business? Is everything just gonna fall apart? I had to let myself go to full surrender of every single possibility are we not gonna act, have another child. And I really went into the valley with myself, with all of these questions and with no answers and just deep pain and grief and sorrow.

And I had to walk with it and still be a coach and still show up. And frankly, it was my salvation in many ways. I could just put my stuff aside and then show up for these women that I adore and that I believe in and that I'm with, and like their questions were medicine for me to do my own work. So it was such a blessing to have this profession, to have this career, to have this community to walk with throughout the year and the business.

It was one of our lower years in the last few years, but it was still remarkable income. That certainly more than supported my family and our goals and all the things we needed to do. So like that again is also still humbling to look at that. Yeah. We're still making over a half a million dollars in a year when I'm on my knees and that is.

I have so much gratitude for that I have just, wow. That is beyond words. And every one of those dollars is the promise of somebody's dream. That is the exchange of somebody investing in their dream. Like that's really what my business is. And so, yeah, I have just reverence for that. But. What I really got to because it was almost like the culmination of that, even though most of the time I was kind to myself, compassionate myself, there was still that hypercriticism that was available.

There was still those standards that I set for myself that were sucked all the air out of the room. At times there were. Those stories I had to meet and I had to allow them to really, I had to walk through the whole story and look at like, Well, why do you have to make a certain amount of money and why do you have the goals that you have?

And can you forgive yourself for not being able to show up for this thing because you just can't. What if what you're doing was enough? And you don't have to push beyond that. It's just like so many amazing questions. I'm such a question person. I mean, that's how I coach. I'll just keep asking you questions.

Uh, because I don't have your answers. You do. And my job is just to create the mirror reflection of that and to help you walk to your answers, into your discoveries. And so I got to this place. I really, I'm always doing my best. I really am. And I just have this compassion for her in this really warm, loving way.

Wow, I could just cry. You've come so far and I, while I say that, I feel like I'm speaking to every woman. Like, I just wanna hold your face. And you have come so far. Look what you've accomplished. Look what you've survived through. And still you've got smile on your face while you're making the pancakes.

When you're like on your knees and you don't know how you're gonna do it. Yeah. But somehow you find a way and it's because of your heart. It's because of your faith. And I'm on my own team. I need me. I've really had to do a lot of healing work with my body. My body has been a. Where she's been like the whipping girl.

For most of my life. I'm so good at disassociating from pain, From sensation, yes, from emotion though this work has helped me really spend a lot of time in what I'm feeling and working on that. But I was a division one athlete, so I could be an enormous amounts of pain and literally not even know it. I had an eating disorder.

I could not even eat for like half a day and not even understand or feel hunger pain. That part of me has been very interesting to explore the disassociation and what that's actually about and what I'm avoiding and how that connects back to the abuse that I survived as a child and what that's really about.

So compassion at every stage, spending time in inner child, inner adolescent, inner 20-year-old, 30-year-old, like looking along the timeline and each one of us. And just seeing that she was always doing the best she could and I'm so damn grateful for her.

Emily: The inner child work always brings me to tears. Oh my God, I love her so much.

I know, and I'm still aware of like I'm working with the therapist right now and it's also like the work that I hate and avoid and feels so hard. 

Amber: So hard.

Emily: I know, and it's, I'm recognizing how much of her feels to me because she's not well packaged up and she has big feelings and they just want air time.

And I'm like the mom. That's like setting a five-minute timer and being okay, you get this much time and then we gotta saddle up girlfriend, we gotta get back to. And I don't wanna be that mom. I wanna be the mom that's like, You take as long as you need baby because I'm here for you.

Amber:  Exactly. And that's it right there. And it just, again, it's discernment to get to that place and we can ask ourselves when we're in the former, why am I being so intolerant of myself right now? Like, what's that really about? That's a question I'm asking on the regular, when I can feel myself freshing or if I go to a scarce thought. It's like, wait what?

Hold up. And so I've given myself a lot. Space for those invitations to pause and really look in a very intentional way, and to know that there's nothing she can say that is gonna make me abandon her, that's gonna make me turn right back on her. That's gonna make me flee. And I think I really had to do a lot of work with my adolescent because she went through an enormous amount of pain and she had nobody emotionally available for her.

And it's, My mother heard me say that. Well, she would say, I guess I'm a terrible mother. That's a whole nother thing. But she would have a hard time hearing that, and that's okay. We've had the conversation, but the reality was was her world was falling. And she didn't have the bandwidth right back then to be able to tend to her 13, 14, 15-year-old daughter who was just completely traumatized and trying to figure her own stuff out and was just going deeper, deeper, deeper into herself.

But fortunately, I had soccer as my outlet. It really was. I was talking to my coach about this recently. It was my therapist. It was, it really saved me in many ways. It gave me something to really know myself through. . And it's interesting, as a 40-year-old, I still play and it's joyful for me, but I, now that I have that identification, it's almost like I don't need it as much because I realize what its role was and now I can just give myself that medicine in any moment and I just, I don't need the game to be that for me anymore.

And that's been a really interesting transformation. 

Emily: Those identity shifts are wild. Turns out I may be more complete with this than I ever thought. Wait, what?

Amber: Right, exactly. Like with my fertility, now I'm, whenever I think about getting pregnant, this body, I'm just like, Nope, nope, nope. Let, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

It's just. My body has a voice now. Yeah. I listen to her now. Yeah. She says, No, thank you. And I respect her response, and I love her for exactly where she is and what she gives to me

Emily: constantly. Yes. And like so beautiful that you're able to do that. And also it's maybe she was saying that a lot of the time.

Amber: Yeah, she definitely was.

Emily: She was like, Are we sure? Are we sure? Because I'm not feeling very sure.

Amber: I took IVF, like I was a division one athlete and I went at it like that and it was, and I knew, but after we lost the pregnancy in the second round when they said like, we could do another round. I really listened to my body and it was like this voice came up and it was almost like cackling laughing like, "Are you effing kidding me?"

That is the craziest thing I've ever heard, that you would ask me to endure this again? And I was like,” Whoa.” That was like such a strong voice and I was okay. And I felt like my body said to me in January of 2020, We'll give it a go so you can get this lesson, but no guarantees here. We're gonna do the best we can.

And it did. And so I feel like even that was, that experience with my body, it sounds so weird, like it's like two different entities, but it really is, I've lived like that and now I'm in a much deeper sense of integration with this body. And I feel more energized. I feel healthier, I feel happier. I, I just feel so different in this body of mine.

Mm-hmm. . And I just accept her. I love how you are. I love your curves. I love that you tell me when you don't like something. Yeah. I love when you gimme that feedback. Okay. I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna slow down. I'm not gonna tell you to be quiet anymore because you've always been, First of all, you made my whole life possible, Part one and B, you've always been telling me and I'm sorry that I didn't understand, but I do now.

Yeah. And thank you for your messages and you're never giving up,

Emily: Totally. It reminds me so much my friend Kimberly Rose Pendleton, who's an intimacy coach, and she wrote something recently about how as women and as a society, we focus so much on these external measures of safety and things that you can do as a woman to be safe.

Dress a certain way or never, don't go out alone, and all of this stuff that's trying to control the environment. And it's the thing that we weren't taught is our internal guidance system. And our body is talking to us all the time and all the time she knows whether we're safe or not. She knows whether it's a situation that we should get ourselves into like she freaking knows.

And the biggest disservice is that we're not taught how to listen to.

Amber: No. We're taught to turn and tune her out. Yeah. Into disassociate. 

Emily: It's so in convenient. It's no, we can just push through.

Amber: Right. It's like even when we get our periods, all of the marketing messaging that you see out there is like, What an inconvenience.

This is so annoying. Like let's keep it discreet. Let's, And it's just, excuse me. This is a natural process that is actually super sacred. and it's always been here to invite us into slowing down into our cycle and connecting to the wisdom within us. And we just, that has not been part of the curriculum at all, but that's what my daughter's gonna learn and that's how I talk about my period now, even though it's not comfortable always in the first couple days, but it's, there are ways to support myself and it doesn't include hitting the gas and trying to go faster, which is what we were taught to do.

Emily:  Yeah. And I think you mentioned. As part of your birthday intentions too, really embracing winter and yes. The actual winter, but more so the symbolic winter. Yeah. Which is the part that's not as comfortable where it looks like everything's dying and all of the joy in life is getting sucked out of the world.

Amber: It's so interesting, right, that we can think about everybody here knowing that we make jokes about winter. And I will say like, I'm looking out at these leaves and I'm just gotta be gone. But the reality is, is that winter is a cyclical and an vital part of the whole thing. Just like we have to have rest in our life and our bodies and all these things.

And so I really wanna understand the wisdom of winter and also look at it as an invitation to explore. And this is something I've been talking about a lot with clients lately, where scarcity comes up as a response to a winter. and how we can peel that idea out because it's actually a very fruitful time.

That is a necessary part of the Four Seasons. And these leaves wouldn't exist if it were not for winter. 

Emily: Yeah absolutely. Just like the cyclicality in our body. That's right. But same for me, like it's not the most comfortable time of the month and not even because of cramps or whatever, my body. Really gracious to me in that respect, but more just because of the invitation to rest and slow down, and I'm the harvest girl.

I wanna be out there picking all the fruit and be, Oh my God, we filled 80 bushels.

Amber:  I wonder if we can fill 100 and we all have it our own way. We all have our own way of doing that, but I think that's an inroad. For anybody listening to this to explore, like what is your natural response when you know that it's coming, You know that it, like what, how do you feel about that part of yourself?

Because when you turn your back on it, it, that's still part of me. Right? And if I can't be kind and compassionate and welcoming. To that aspect of myself, that's an opportunity for growth. That's an opportunity for more compassion. And I think compassion, like that button, to me, that's the answer. That's the solve of the soul, compassion and love, like being compassionate with self, being compassionate with others.

Anytime my daughter is having a hard time with something, she's getting all upset. Coming back her with force is never solves the problem, but saying to her, What do you need right now? And that every single time she says, I need a. It's okay to have your period. It's okay to feel like you're not running a hundred miles per hour.

It's okay to have a month where you don't make as much as you did the month before. It's okay to slow down and to take, and so perfect example, talking my walking, my talk. I had Masterclass that I was gonna do today. It's called magnetic. So excited about it. And just the way things bounced for the week. I, Ben was doing his race and I realized if I do it at that time, he will have to rush to come home.

And I don't wanna take away from the experience that he's having and this transformation. And also I just feel like there's actually more. And then I got this amazing tagline that came through and. There's more that I'm meant to teach on this and I'm not as prepared as I wanna be on this day. Yeah. So I'm just gonna move it and I just moved it to next Wednesday and now it's, I just feel so supported and I'm supporting myself.

Like that's a compassionate choice. Yeah. There's no scarcity in that. It's making the decision to be in full support of the transmission of what I'm meant to share and to teach. And it's so important to me that I wanna get. I'm not gonna say, right. I wanna get that in alignment with the truth of why I conceive this thing in the first place, and why I'm bringing this thing forward in the first place.

I'm excited about that. It's gonna be so much fun. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to teach. I love teaching so much.

Emily: Oh, you're an incredible teacher. So I think this is a perfect moment for you to share all the places that people can connect with you and the different ways they can connect with you. Right? Like you're an author, you're a poet, you're a speaker, you're a teacher, you have an incredible podcast.

So thank you. What are some of the ways that you would love for people to connect?

Amber: Yeah, so I'm over @ambelilyesstrom.com and I know for your people, like they are feelers, so they. Go get the vibe. Go feel into it. Go check it out. Go see what's going on. Over there is a lifetime's worth of blog probably, I think 400 podcast episodes at this point.

I've been doing this podcast since 2016. It's called the Amber Lilyestrom Show. So all of that stuff you can go learn and plugin. I have some master classes over there as well that you can sign up for. You can purchase Just easy breezy. And I'm on Instagram. I love Instagram so much. It's a place where I've been really cultivating a body of work over the last however many years.

I love connecting in stories and I love connecting in DMS. I just love that platform so much. And then, yeah, I've written a couple books. Mastery Money Mine, as I mentioned earlier, Paddle Home, which is my poetry book. And then I also co-wrote a book with my friend Adrian Peters called Quantum Wealth and called Factoring in Abundance.

So you can get any of those books on Amazon. It's like just choose your own adventure. Guys. Whatever you feel I think is amazing, and I hope that there was some little nugget of something today that felt abundant and helpful to you on your journey. Amber,

Emily: You are such a gift to me. I love you so much.

Amber: Yeah, I love you. 

Emily: Thank you for being on the show. 

Amber: You're welcome. 

Emily: Ugh, don't you just love Amber? 

Here are my key takeaways. 

Number one, mentorship is a gift that keeps giving far beyond the confines of the container that you invested in. 

Number two, know your core values and honor them. 

Number three, get on the wave of the thing you want rather than just focusing on the money.

Number four, we can use discernment without judgment to put ourselves into the right spaces. 

Number five, the inner child healing is such an important part of our ongoing healing and upleveling. 

Number six, honor and give reverence to cyclicality. Our menstrual cycles and the cycles of nature, including winter, are here to serve us.

And number seven, appreciation is the frequency closest to love, especially appreciation of self and our role in the co-creation. 

Thank you so much for listening. You being here and tuning into the show is such a gift to me and to the guests that are on this show, so I very much appreciate it. All of the letters that you guys send, every time you slide into my arms and tell me what this show means to you, it is just so life-giving.

I also wanna invite you to subscribe to the show and to leave a review. It’s Absolutely free, and it helps us so much. Thank you for being here, and I'll talk to you soon. 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 m makes money, and to jump into my free Telegram community, The Money Club, which is linked in the show notes. Until next time, I'm sending you all the magic money vibes.