Episode 281 with Amy Kemp: The Art of Money Movement

Join me on this episode of the Ready Yet podcast as I chat with Amy Kemp about the movement of money and how to keep it flowing. Amy shares her journey of accidentally starting businesses, her passion for developing people, and the importance of not letting money define your self-worth. We dive into practical tips on maintaining financial stability, staying open to opportunities, and connecting authentically with others. Don't miss out on Amy's valuable insights and check out her new book, 'I See You,' for more on achieving influence, impact, and income without burning out.

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Amy Kemp, CEO of Amy Kemp, Inc., helps leaders identify and change subconscious habits that hinder them. As a certified Habit Finder coach, she's guided hundreds of women leaders and teams through this process, culminating in her book "I See You," empowering women to achieve more without extra effort.

Take the Habit Finder Assessment for FREE: https://amykemp.com/habit-finder-assessment

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amykempinc

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Transcript

Episode 281 with Amy Kemp: The Art of Money Movement

Transcribed by Descript

Erin Marcus: All right hello, and welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast. I'm excited because my guest today, Amy Kemp, we were chatting before we got started about what would be a good topic to share, and she has one that is near and dear to my heart. I believe in it so strongly, this whole idea of the movement of money.

Erin Marcus: How do you keep money Flowing through you. How do you do what you need to do at your level and also understand what's happening on a bigger level, whether it's the local economy, whether it's the national economy, whether it's the global economy, how this all comes to play together. So I can't wait to dive into that with you.

Erin Marcus: But before we do that, why don't you tell everyone a little bit 

Amy Kemp: who you are and what you do. I would love to. Thank you for having me. I live just an hour south of Chicago and accidentally started a business eight years ago. I know a few people who accidentally started a business. That's, I love it.

Amy Kemp: I love it. Hilariously, this is not the first accidental business I've started in my profession. Apparently I have a knack for it. Actually, what I think happens is that I see a need. I create something to solve the need and it becomes a business. And more 

Erin Marcus: people want it. Crazy how that happens.

Erin Marcus: That's the point, right? That's the right way. By the way, that's the right way to start a bit. Oh, look, that's a problem I can solve. Not a problem I created. So 

Amy Kemp: I worked professionally in sales, but largely in the leadership of people who were in sales for over 20 years and really fell in love with the development of people this business and how it started was more on a personal level where I continued to have conversations with women in my life who were accomplished and successful and had these.

Amy Kemp: Continuous themes of exhaustion and isolation and overwhelm combined with. A deep ambition to have more influence and more income and more impact, but just not sure like saying, I can't work anymore, but I really do want to create more and serve more fully. And long story short, I met, I was speaking at an event out in Salt Lake City and had a business coach that I had worked with who used a curriculum called the Habit Finder and we met for dinner because we had just maintained a great friendship.

Amy Kemp: And I said, I keep having these conversations with all of these women. Something going on here. And he said, I really think you need to take action and do something. And he said, I don't know if you've ever considered it, but we are starting a new training for habit finder coaches on Monday. This was a Thursday.

Amy Kemp: And when I tell you, I had never thought of it. It was so far from my thinking, but at the same time, it just felt like. Okay, there wasn't any hesitation. I didn't orchestrate it. I didn't, have some strategic long term plan. 

Erin Marcus: Truthfully, it's so interesting that you say that because the topic we were going to talk about with money and we'll get there.

Erin Marcus: People think is so rigid and it's not true because what you're talking about is an opportunity that you said yes to, right? You stay staying open it what you know, it might not have been exactly what you were planning on doing, but it surely wasn't So far out of left field that it made no sense. You had the skills to do it.

Erin Marcus: You had experience to do it. 

Amy Kemp: I've been doing it for 25 years. You 

Erin Marcus: just called it something else. That was how I became a coach. I finally stopped doing all the other things. 

Amy Kemp: Yeah, it was just a stripped down version. Correct. And but I do think it has to do with the movement of money because I think when you are open and available it was an investment of money to become certified money goes out, money comes back.

Amy Kemp: I write about this actually in my book, there's a chapter called money is a mirror. Yes, I'm gonna Oh, this is like a left term, but I it fits this story in that the way that I used to. Interact with my money was that I was the money was the ocean and I was in it like riding the waves. So when things were good with business and commission checks were high, I was like confident and happy and feeling successful and showing up at my best.

Amy Kemp: But then when things would take a turn as they do, because I've never yet. Experienced a business that doesn't. Or a world, right? Ebbs and flows of rhythm. And it is what it is. I would crash under the waves, sputtering, gasping for air, panicked, terrified, and just really experience every dip and every rise.

Amy Kemp: Fully as if it was me in the water. What I've learned to do over years of business ownership is basically to swim to the shore, go to the store and buy one of those cute little beach chairs and then wait it out, stick it in the sand and to observe the money from a distance to let the money move.

Amy Kemp: That sometimes there are storms. We just had a global pandemic, right? There are, we just had a hurricane also, right? There are literally storms that caused the water to change. But they're temporary also. 100%. 

Erin Marcus: And you know who if you read her book Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima, I think one of the things that you're describing a little bit and she talks about is this difference between self confidence and self worth.

Erin Marcus: Totally. And it sounded so right. It's when you make money for anything. But in this case, we're talking about money. When you make money bigger than you more important than you, then you become susceptible to how you feel based on that external circumstance. You don't feel in control of it, right? Even your visualization that you offered it's the ocean. It's the control, right? It's in control. Nobody else is in control. You're completely at its mercy. 

Amy Kemp: Yeah, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Also, there's no shortage. There's no shortage of money from the beach, right? When you're observing it, there's no shortage in the world.

Amy Kemp: But when you're 

Erin Marcus: In it, you can feel like you're drowning, or you can feel panicked, or you can feel on top of the world, but you can also feel like you have the scary part of that version of the story is, even in the moments that you feel amazing, you still don't feel in control of it. 

Amy Kemp: No, and that's an illusion, that you're in control, or that you actually are being successful.

Amy Kemp: It's just the money's moving in that way right now, and you've attached meaning to it. So it's We give our power away to the money by allowing it to make us feel certain things. And my highest risk isn't when I'm struggling, my highest risk is when things are going really well, that I give my power away to that, to make me feel like now I'm successful.

Amy Kemp: Now I'm safe. Now I'm secure. Now I'm, but all of those things are accessible to me. As a feeling, as an experience, as a way of showing up in the world, regardless of what's happening with the money, I get to choose what I allow to make me feel that way. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. And I love it because I think one of the challenges that we have.

Erin Marcus: And we were talking about, the changes that I'm making. One of the challenges that we have is we have this story because we've been told this story that money is the only, if. Practically only definition of success as opposed to any of the other definitions that you might want to choose for the life that you want to have.

Erin Marcus: And to your point, if you make the money bigger than what it is that you want, then the life it is that you want. Once again, you're susceptible to the crashes, to all those external factors, deciding how you feel. 

Amy Kemp: The interesting piece is the less attached to money you are, and the less power you give it, the more it tends to move toward you.

Amy Kemp: Isn't that crazy? It's so 

Erin Marcus: easy to say and so hard to do. I get it, and I agree with it, and I will tell you, in the moments of challenge, it's very hard to read. It's very hard to separate that. It feels 

Amy Kemp: like a frustrating message in the moments of challenge. Exactly. It feels 

Erin Marcus: like, yeah, easy for you to say from over there, right?

Amy Kemp: Totally. And so I do think there is an element of I say it with like a cautious spirit, however, I, I have experienced. I can either be in a place of financial struggle and choose to feel safe and secure, therefore showing up in spaces fully present, fully aware, ready to absorb opportunities that show up, or I can show up in those same spaces scared, feeling less than, just distracted by my fear and which is going to give me a better outcome in surviving the storm.

Amy Kemp: Which is going to move me out of the storm more quickly without question. It's choosing to not have attachment to that as my safety and security. But there's something energetic about money also where it flees from fear and it just flees. And it also flees. Flees is a good word. Like it can 

Erin Marcus: feel like it.

Erin Marcus: Gone that fast. Wait, what? Yeah. And it flees from pursuit. Yes. I say that when I, so I used to teach sales and still do. I would, my closing statement was always, What happens when we chase things? They run away, right? So if you ever feel, and you know that feeling, you know it when you're at a networking event, you know it on a sales call, you know it with your money, you can feel when you're chasing something.

Amy Kemp: Yes. This, I do this in my work. We talk a lot about mirror neurons. Where we're hardwired to survive. So when someone approaches us subconsciously, we're sizing up whether they're dangerous because we needed to do that. We were cave people. Our brains 

Erin Marcus: do it right. That's how brains work. 

Amy Kemp: Yeah.

Amy Kemp: That's how our brains work. We're, it's like the animal brain in us, the instinct to survive is so strong. And so when you interact with someone. One of the things that I'll always work with people on is looking people in their eyes and saying not out loud, but silently, I love you.

Amy Kemp: If you say I love you to people when you meet them and you mean it sincerely, like you feel that their mirror neurons. And they will be more open to even just taking their wall down. That doesn't even mean that you engage or have any sort of question or exchange, but just if the goal in every interaction is to bring down someone's wall of resistance and just to step into their world and connect one step closer.

Amy Kemp: Your attention. 

Erin Marcus: I think that's so hard. It's very interesting to me, and it might just be because of who I spend my time with and what I choose to study. And I see this dichotomy happening at the same time, where, in my opinion, and again, it might be where I choose to spend my time. I think there is an increasing number of people who understand that.

Erin Marcus: And yet, there seems to be an increasing number of people who choose. To blame everyone else. There is a societal acceptance of it's all someone else's fault. It's all someone else, others are bad. Others are wrong. Others have caused all the problems in the universe. 

Amy Kemp: Okay. 

Erin Marcus: And 

Amy Kemp: there's this connection between that and then stepping into someone's world with curiosity.

Erin Marcus: Because I think if you come from that mindset of the world is out to get me. Oh, okay. Yep. I don't want to open myself up with love because that makes me vulnerable. It makes me, right? Like how you have to have a certain worldview in order to be willing to try that. 

Amy Kemp: I agree. You have to believe people are doing the best they can.

Erin Marcus: And you have to believe that the universe works for you, not against you. Just Basic. 

Amy Kemp: Yeah. And I've just found that life is better when you do. I agree. 

Erin Marcus: I agree. I watch some people that I know, some people that I love choose repeatedly to think that the world is a terrible, scary, horrible place.

Erin Marcus: And by the way, this is not like Pollyanna where we don't understand that bad things actually happen. Sure. But imagine going, whether it's about money, whether it's about anything, like, how do you want to move through the day? And I've learned to just have empathy for the people. Cause could you imagine being that miserable all the time?

Amy Kemp: Yeah. Yeah. I always think it's like, you want to be able to look straight ahead and see the potential risks and the potential gains of the corners of your eye in any. Situation right, but to be able to see the full picture requires that you do have a level of vulnerability and openness. I actually think this is the most valuable currency of our economy moving forward is the ability to connect with people authentically and genuinely because people have such high and thick walls of resistance.

Erin Marcus: I agree. 

Amy Kemp: Those people who can break through or bring down, maybe is a better word, because breakthrough feels a little attacky. 

Erin Marcus: If you can get someone to soften, even if you can soften somebody else, your own essence, right? This is not something you, what I love about what you're saying is when you said, just tell the other person in your mind that you love them.

Erin Marcus: What you're doing is you're softening yourself. Yes, allowing them to show up differently. We're not trying to force them or change them because it really goes with that story. The only thing you can control is yourself. 

Amy Kemp: Yes, we're also doing a lot of systemic thinking all or nothing black or white, right or wrong.

Amy Kemp: In relational spaces and when you apply systemic thoughts to people and interactions with people that are very nuanced and very complicated and very, it's not all or nothing there's a breakdown of relationships. So we're doing that, I think, because some of our mediums that we're communicating through encourage that language and thinking.

Amy Kemp: But I also think, again, What we're looking for, even in a business environment is what is the unique thing that is creating value that is rare in our marketplace that will never go away and I've yet to see an economy where people who are really good at connecting with other people don't succeed.

Erin Marcus: 100%. If you even bring it down to teachers, bring it down to waiters bring it down to any level, the public transportation bus driver that takes you to work every morning Can change the complete trajectory of your day. 

Amy Kemp: I was watching, have you seen the Netflix show? It's called seven days out, I think.

Amy Kemp: But so they do seven days before a major world event. So they do the Westminster dog show. They do the grand opening of this gourmet restaurant. The dog lover in me is very, that 

Erin Marcus: was your first example. My head went in a different direction. I'm like, yeah, that's a total major. 

Amy Kemp: No, they do. Cassini was like this spacecraft launched to Saturn and they had to crash the aircraft because there's running out of fuel into the surface of Saturn to burn up But anyhow, I was watching it last night and this engineer there was an engineer and a scientist both women who were in charge of this mission 14 years they manned this craft and studied Saturn, but there's this constant tension between the science and what they want and then the engineering, the like.

Amy Kemp: Black or white, right or wrong. And these two women so beautifully modeled how to honor each other in that tension. And there, there was also a leader in between them, but yes, we need some guidelines and some structures in our world. Cause I want there to be stoplights. And if you're doing brain surgery, please do it.

Amy Kemp: I'm not the right person. Exactly. Back to the topic of money. I call it bumpers in my gutters. What I want are bumpers in my gutters. I want To embrace the concepts of flow and not be too attached to the outcome and allow for the ebb and flow without it meaning anything about me. And at the same time, my QuickBooks is up to date.

Erin Marcus: That 

Amy Kemp: was the tension. Yes. So it's both right. It's the bigger flow, creative, whatever. And same My QuickBooks is up to date. My QuickBooks is up to date. In fact, we were just commenting yesterday. My accountant makes sure it's very up to date. I 

Erin Marcus: freak out. I have to tell you because you'll laugh. If disk analysis I'm sure you won't be shocked.

Erin Marcus: I'm High 80s, 90s in a high D, slightly less than a high I interpersonal, right? So goal driven people. I, in the compliance category for follow the rules, I'm almost negligible. Nothing shows up. I don't do anything three times in a row, but I will tell you every point I have is for accounting because I'm out of a public company.

Erin Marcus: So every ducks in a row piece of my world is accounting. 

Amy Kemp: Yes. But you can choose to embrace those structures. You can choose them and they will give you a lot of freedom, right? For money to flow. 

Erin Marcus: Yes. I had to learn that. I did a video some time ago called a love letter. I never thought I'd write.

Erin Marcus: And it was to processes. I never would, the spontaneous intuitive in me was thinking that was bad, but then learning how, and I think with money, it's just important learning how a structured foundation is what allows you the freedom. 

Amy Kemp: Yes. It's the path to freedom. Yes. It's really funny. I worked with almost all people with your personality combination.

Amy Kemp: You were in sales. Yes. And I am a C And D almost Oh, goal driven, but there's 

Erin Marcus: only one way to get there. But please 

Amy Kemp: do it perfectly. Please 

Erin Marcus: do it perfectly. Oh, and by the way, that'd be my way.

Erin Marcus: Yeah, we used to make people like you crazy because we're gonna reach the goal, but you're gonna have no idea what's going on until it happens. 

Amy Kemp: I can see you coming a mile away. I know exactly. 

Erin Marcus: God only knows what's going to happen between now and then, but we will always hit the goal. Yeah. 

Amy Kemp: No, 

Erin Marcus: I love it.

Erin Marcus: If people want to continue this conversation, learn more about how you can help them and learn all the cool things that you do. What is the best way for them to get ahold of you? 

Amy Kemp: Yeah. My new front door that I just launched is my book. It's called, I see you, and it's written for women who want more influence, impact and income without more work.

Amy Kemp: I would invite you to come in and look around the foyer, an audible, or you can read it, but I'm proud of what I've created. And I created it same as I created my business really in service of the reader. I really wanted to serve the people that were going to open its pages. So I also would invite you to my website, Amy Kemp dot com.

Amy Kemp: There's a whole cool section on the book there. There's actually a video you can watch. It's me and Sarah. Seven of the most amazing women I know in our, Chicagoland area had, they were the first readers of the book. And so we did an Oprah style conversation in my living room and had a videographer there.

Amy Kemp: You can watch that there too. It's really cool. And then Instagram is a fun place to follow me just at Amy Kemp Inc. Just, I love to interact with people there in that space and it feels like a good one in which. 

Erin Marcus: Have a conversation. Love it. And we'll make sure all of the links are in the show notes so that you are just one click away from everybody.

Erin Marcus: Thank you for hanging out with me today. I more valuable than money is people's time. So thank you for sharing some of yours with me. Thanks so much.