After a little hiatus of being a podcast host and focusing more on being an editor, saleswoman, CEO, and most importantly a mom, I'm back and ready to start sharing again. Ready to start giving you as much value as I possibly can each and every week. So, in this episode, I wanted to share a memo I found that I recorded back in May of 2020. You see, this story is not about all the success that my company has had over the last 12 months; instead, it is about where I was back then. It is real and raw and I just had to share it with you. "I was living according to American standards, right at, or below the poverty line as I learned how to build a business. And that year--2020--I built a six-figure business. Now, I didn't take home six figures. I built a business that generated six figures." Things were not easy as I began my journey. Like the widow in scripture (2 Kings 4, NIV), I learned to "go and sell." Here's the full story: "The wife of the man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha your servant. My husband is dead and you know that he revered the Lord, but now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves, Elisha replied to her, how can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house? Your servant has nothing there at all." She said, except a small jar of olive oil. Elijah said, go around and ask all of your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few, then go inside and shut the door behind you and your. Pour oil into all the jars. And as each is filled, put it to one side. She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring when all the jars were full, she said to her son, bring me another one. But he replied, there is not a jar left. Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God and he said, "Sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left." There is hope in this story for all of us and I know that I can sell and I know that those of you listening have the power to sell and that we can all live the way we are meant to. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you on the next episode!
Angered by Donald Miller and Fueled by the Widow
After a little hiatus of being a podcast host and focusing more on being an editor, saleswoman, CEO, and most importantly a mom, I'm back and ready to start sharing again. Ready to start giving you as much value as I possibly can each and every week.
So, in this episode, I wanted to share a memo I found that I recorded back in May of 2020. You see, this story is not about all the success that my company has had over the last 12 months; instead, it is about where I was back then. It is real and raw and I just had to share it with you.
"I was living according to American standards, right at, or below the poverty line as I learned how to build a business. And that year--2020--I built a six-figure business. Now, I didn't take home six figures. I built a business that generated six figures."
Things were not easy as I began my journey. Like the widow in scripture (2 Kings 4, NIV), I learned to "go and sell."
Here's the full story:
"The wife of the man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha your servant. My husband is dead and you know that he revered the Lord, but now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves, Elisha replied to her, how can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house? Your servant has nothing there at all."
She said, except a small jar of olive oil. Elijah said, go around and ask all of your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few, then go inside and shut the door behind you and your. Pour oil into all the jars. And as each is filled, put it to one side. She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons.
They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring when all the jars were full, she said to her son, bring me another one. But he replied, there is not a jar left. Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God and he said, "Sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left."
There is hope in this story for all of us and I know that I can sell and I know that those of you listening have the power to sell and that we can all live the way we are meant to.
Thank you so much for listening and I will see you on the next episode!
TEASER:
This one is a little bit different. I found this memo that I had sent to myself in May of 2020, and I almost didn't listen to it. And then after I did, I thought, you know, I should publish that on my podcast, but then I was a little embarrassed by where I was during that time. And I thought, you know what? I need to publish it anyway because someone is probably in a similar situation and needs hope. So I went from living according to American standards, right at, or below the poverty line, as I learned how to build a business. And that year 2020, I built a six-figure business. Now I didn't take home six figures. I built a business that generated six figures, and I paid a lot of people to help me build that business. And I paid for services that helped me build that business, but I did it. And I just want to share where I was in that process and take the heat. So here we go.
Podcast Intro:
You are not here by accident. You are here by design and you are here to find courage in the face of fear, to replace isolation, with connection, to push back that feeling of overwhelm and to start feeling confident and you know how you're going to do it by listening to other people's stories. There's no better way to feed your soul and raise your vibration and shift your mindset than to hear the stories of those who have gone before you. I'm your host. Lori Lynn also known as Her Royal Excitedness, and I invite you to rise and climb.
I have subscribed to a lot of lists recently, and one of those lists comes from Donald Miller who wrote Blue Like Jazz. I heard Donald Miller speak at WDS in Portland, Oregon, a few years ago. And I know that he is quite the storyteller today. I began to think about how much content I'm consuming and how little I'm creating. So I thought I would begin to cut away at the content that I've been when Donald Miller's most recent email popped up. I thought, you know, I don't know that I'm getting a lot out of his content. I should unsubscribe. Well, the next thing you know, I'm standing at the end of the hallway waiting for one of my girls to finish whatever it is that they're doing. I spend so much of my time waiting (cue Sarah McLaughlin), and I look up and at the top of my bookshelf, about 10 books in, I see Donald Miller.
I had no idea that his book was sitting on my bookshelf, the book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I pulled off the shelf and started to read. He sounds like my childhood friend only more prolific in his adult life as a writer and also melancholy teetering on depressed. But I don't want to put the book down because I feel like I need to read it, even though it's kind of a downer. So I get to the section where he talks about how there aren't really any men in his life when he lost his uncle art. And I just want to read this out loud. My uncle art died this year and he was a good man. And we didn't have a lot of good men in my family. Not because we had bad ones, but because we didn't have men, my grandfather died when I was a kid and my dad's split about the same time.
So did my other uncle. So the only man around the table at Thanksgiving was uncle art. Uncle art was in his early sixties. When he died, my mother called and asked me to pray because he'd had a heart attack. He had just been taken to the hospital and his heart was barely pumping and they were going to do surgery. At first. I only prayed a little because I found it hard to believe my uncle would die. He was the only man in our family for so long that he was like, God, and God doesn't die. Okay. So moving on, I got to this section where it says, when I was a kid, my uncle had a 57 Chevy truck that ran only half the time we'd ride in the back of the truck, out in back of my grandmother's property. Before my grandfather died, my grandparents had a homestead.
It was a piece of land with a creek running through it. And on the other side of the creek, there was a track where a man trained horses for racing. That was when my family had some money when there were men and I had to stop, I had to stop reading because I was really mad and it was easy to be mad at Donald Miller and blame him for saying that. But he's just the reporter, right? I realized that what he's saying has truth and merit, but also as the mother of three children and the sole income provider going forward, since my divorce two years ago, I cannot afford myself the luxury of believing that I will not have money because there are no men in the house. Now I started out two years ago with almost no income to speak of. And I have lived almost exclusively on child support and alimony for the past two years.
As I have learned how to be a businesswoman, grow a business and manage a business and manage my finances and actually have finances. So when I see stories, when I am reminded that the message is a woman without a man has no money. It angers me. I am ready to cry. I feel like someone is putting their hands around my throat. My throat is constricting and I'm so angry because I hate that message. And I recently read, and I'll have to look it up, but the scripture about the woman whose sons, (I'll have to look it up). I should probably stop and mention here that the Donald Miller book that I quoted is A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, copyright 2009, page 33, the Bible story I'm about to quote. I first had highlighted to me by Myron Golden in the book from The Trash Man to the Cash Man: How Anyone Can Get Rich Starting from Anywhere.
He also has a podcast called Bible Success Secrets, and I have listened to one of those episodes over and over and over again. As I have retrained my brain around money and the concepts of money and sales. So in 2nd Kings 4 in the New International Version, we find the story of the widow's olive oil. Says Chapter 4, verse 1, the wife of the man from the company of the prophets, cried out to Elisha your servant. My husband is dead and you know that he revered the Lord, but now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves, Elisha replied to her, how can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house? Your servant has nothing there at all, she said, except a small jar of olive oil. Elijah said, go around and ask all of your neighbors for empty jars.
Don't ask for just a few, then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons pour oil into all the jars. And as each is filled, put it to one side. She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son bring me another one. But he replied, there is not a jar left. Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God. And he said, go sell the oil and to pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left. I have chills as I read that out loud because I know in that story, there is hope. And I know that as a woman with children, I can go and I can sell and I can live. And I am only limited by the number of jars I'm willing to fill.
Podcast Outro:
Hey, thanks for listening. If you thought of someone while you're listening to this episode, would you send it to them? Just let them know you were thinking about them or that they came to mind and make that connection. If you would take a minute to rate and review my show, that would mean the world to me. And let me know about topics that you want us to cover in future episodes. Oh, and don't forget to subscribe. What are you waiting for? Go hit the subscribe button right now. I'll see you next time.