221 | Step Into Your Abundance with Cathy Heller

Hilary Hendershott: Welcome back to the Love, your Money podcast with your host, me, Hilary Hendershott. Today, I’m so excited to bring to you a conversation between me and an amazing woman who is also a friend of mine named Cathy Heller. Cathy is a spiritual teacher who runs an eight-figure business. So, she’s a coach, she’s a podcaster, and she’s an author. She helps women align with their abundance, which is what we’re talking about today on her podcast, which is called The Cathy Heller Show, used to be called Don’t Keep Your Day Job, which has 40 million downloads, by the way, has been featured by Forbes, Huffington Post, the Inc. Magazine, and all the places.

Listen to this list of former guests, among others, Deepak Chopra, Malcolm Gladwell, Matthew McConaughey, Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Harry Connick Jr., Jason Mraz, Rachael Ray, and Barbara Corcoran and Daymond John from Shark Tank. So, clearly, the woman has got the podcasting thing down. She’s just an amazing light. I’m proud to call her a friend, and we’re talking about my absolute favorite topic, which is how you can do the inner work to step into the wealthy and abundant life you want. Without further ado, here’s Cathy Heller.

[INTERVIEW]

Hilary Hendershott: Welcome to Love, your Money, Cathy.

Cathy Heller: It’s so nice to be with you. Thanks for making the time.

Hilary Hendershott: Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. So, let’s start from the beginning, and I think it really was the matchstick that lit this whole thing for you. You went to Jerusalem for a two-week trip. You stayed three years and studied mysticism and ignited this spark of spirituality. You became a spiritual teacher. Can you talk about that?

Cathy Heller: Oh, my God. I mean, it’s so true. And it sounds crazy, like when you say that back to me, I’m like, that actually did happen. The best laid plans, right? We have our ideas, and then the river takes us on a certain path. Yeah, when I went to Israel and I started to study, I started to realize how much I don’t know about the way the universe works. And I realize the first big, sort of mic drop in my life was this rabbi that I met who still lives in the Old City of Jerusalem. And I remember him saying to me, “We are each a masterpiece, a piece of the master,” and that everything is oneness, everything is oneness. And that the same way you would look out at the ocean, you would never make the mistake of trying to separate one wave from another wave. Each wave is connected and every wave is the ocean itself. That is the universe that each of us is a wave that’s connected to one another and connected to the source of all.

And so, if something in the garden in this corner is rotting, it affects everything eventually, right? And so, we felt that during COVID. We saw during the pandemic how quickly we are literally passing from one person to another and how things affect. If the shipping has a problem, all the way over in the Red Sea, it affects, like we’re all connected. And so, we can tap into so much when we start to understand the oneness of reality, and also, what is powerful about our own energy.

Hilary Hendershott: I don’t want to skip over the years in between. You’ve evolved a lot, and you’ve accomplished a lot. So, I think it’s in conflict for some people to hear about your spiritual journey and the beautiful poetry of what you just said and, of course, the truth of the universe that that is. And then say, well, how did you end up teaching about money? Because money is so tertiary, so man-made, and like teaching a man-made thing to women, right? Can you help me do the Reader’s Digest version?

Cathy Heller: Yeah. So, really, what I teach people is the pathway to abundance, right? And money is a piece of that. But really, what people are seeking is never outside of themselves. What we’re really looking for is that higher love. We’re looking to feel connected. Because whether you live in Costa Rica or you live in New York City, where do you really live? In your head.

Hilary Hendershott: All the time.

Cathy Heller: Where do you live? Inside yourself. And so, we think that we’ve come to this world to sort of have a big pile of things that we’re on this chase for stuff. We’re really on the chase for the energy within us that is connected to an expansion. Now, money is interesting because the reason that winds up coming up is because people have so much around money, right? You cannot have more of something you have a bad relationship with. There are so many women who will say, like, I want to be in a relationship, I want to get married, but then they don’t actually date. And the reason being is subconsciously, they’re holding on to a lot of pain and fear about relationships, right?

So, same thing with money. Well, women will come to me and say, I wish I had more money, but underneath it, there is so much heaviness that they carry and so they sabotage it because they don’t really want to be conscious of what they believe. But when I actually look under the hood and we talk about what do they believe, they believe that money is the root of all evil. And it’s interesting because I think it comes from the New Testament. And I think, people think the line is that money is the root of all evil. It’s actually not the verse. The verse says, the love of money is the root of all evil, which is really different because the Talmud is really helpful in sharing that money is a neutral tool, and it’s a great energizer, which means they compare it in the Talmud that money is like rain falling in a garden. If rain falls on weeds, weeds grow. If rain falls on roses, roses grow. Money is like that. So, whatever you are intrinsically, money will bring that out of you.

So, if you’re a person who has a lot of alignment and integrity and good character and you have more resources, you will do good with that. But if you’re a person sort of like the weeds who’s out of alignment, doesn’t have good character, and is intrinsically sort of off, the more resources you have, the worse you’ll do with them. But people don’t really get that. And so, they make these sweeping judgments. And we see it in movies with Scrooge. And we don’t really realize how that sort of– we’re buying into that. And because we don’t see the world as being one, which I said before, we think that if I have more, you have less, but it’s not true, right?

If the oysters are doing their job, I won’t die, because if the oysters dried up, there’d be red tide. I don’t even think about oysters, but we are all connected. So, if one woman down the street from me paints her house and fixes it up, my house just went up in value, literally, right? Abundance creates abundance.

Hilary Hendershott: Rising tides.

Cathy Heller: So, it’s a rising tide. Exactly. So, the reason I started with the oneness piece is because if you really get that everything is one, then when you are in a high vibe, when you have more love, when you have more oxygen, when you have more money, you just breathe that into the whole ecosystem, number one. Number two, we have to understand that most people have this very warped idea of what money is. I don’t think you or I walk around loving money. We love what money can do. It’s a tool. I love the fact that I can talk to you, but I don’t walk around saying I love Wi-Fi. I just really value what it can do. It’s a tool, right? Oxygen and oil and fire, all of these things are amazing. I like to cook dinner, so I need fire, but I don’t walk around going, “I love fire, I live for fire.” It’s like, that would be weird. But if I couldn’t use the fire to make dinner, that would be a problem.

Hilary Hendershott: If it were gone, I would miss it.

Cathy Heller: Yeah, I would miss it. So, it’s like, I wind up talking to women about money because once I remove the blocks they have around money, everything actually shifts in their life because it’s such a clear way of establishing all these spiritual principles. So, for me, when I left Jerusalem after a few years, I had completely rewritten the software program in my mind about the way I see the world. And so, I could just be a vessel to receive. And I’ll say one more thing, which is that the word Kabbalah is the Hebrew word, the cabal, which means to receive.

And so, the idea is that each one of us, every human being is built with the same capacity to be a receiver, like a radio. A radio if I had one right here, I could tune it this way or that way, and depending on where I tune the radio, it determines what music will play, right? And where is that music? It’s literally here, hidden in plain sight. But you and I can’t hear it unless we have a receiver that’s tuned to it a certain way. That’s life. And so, all of it is hidden in plain sight. All the Wi-Fi, all the money, all the abundance, it’s already existed. It’s in the way the universe is built.

But we, as receivers, need to be tuned to a place where we can hear the music we want to hear. And how does that work? It’s about energy, right? The most impressive thing that each of us has to offer the world is our vibration. It’s our energy. It’s our love. It’s our passion. It’s our compassion. It’s the space we hold for other people. It’s how open our heart is. When you get into that, when you start to move the energy, you start to move into that abundance that it’s already within you, which is why I said I like to teach women about abundance. You can receive endless amounts of love, of opportunities, of money.

And here’s the thing. Then you don’t even need it because you already are whole. You’re not looking for it from a place of lack. And so, it’s amazing how the girl you know, let’s say you’re going with a bunch of girlfriends out to an event, the girl that gets hit on is the one who’s already having a good experience, right? She is loved, so she gets hit on because she is a magnet for more of what she is. The girl who’s saying, “I hope they notice me,” she’s coming from lack and that energy is actually driving everything away, right?

And so, it’s like, it’s interesting because, again, why do I teach women about abundance and why do we work on the money piece is because if you’re constantly telling yourself that the thing you need is outside of you and that thing that is outside of you that you need is money, you are just going to be operating from this place of lack, which is so unnecessary because, like I say, every day when you wake up, the way you select your clothes, you can select how you want to feel. You don’t have to leave it to chance that you feel whole or you feel connected or you feel energized. All of that is something we can tap into. And when we learn how to meditate, we learn how to tap into our spiritual force within, all of the things that you could possibly want are just coming in plentiful doses. And that’s just how I see the world.

Hilary Hendershott: Well, there’s a lot there. And I’ve been watching you talk more and more about money, and I’m really excited about it. And let me just ask you, as an individual, as a woman, because I don’t think you grew up rich. So, all of what you just said, yes to all of that. But as a woman, as an individual, what has it been like? What have you had to grapple with or deal with? But your current financial numbers look much different than they did. Have there been bright lines that were hard to cross? Have there been times you wanted to get rid of it all? What was it like?

Cathy Heller: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I grew up, we didn’t have much. My dad was working two jobs to try to pay the bills when I was growing up. And my mom says, the famous quote is, we would go to a toy store and I would yell out from the back of the store, “Mom, is this cheap? Can I get this? Is this cheap?”

Hilary Hendershott: Is it on sale?

Cathy Heller: Is it on sale? I remember going to lunch with my mom, and she would take out all of the money she had and put it down and say to the waitress, “All of it.” She’d say, “I have $11.98. What can we both buy? What can we eat?” And it was embarrassing because I knew that that wasn’t such a cool thing to do. So, we didn’t have… And then my parents got divorced, so my mom and I moved into a small little apartment, and at one point, we didn’t even have electricity because my dad wasn’t helping to pay bills.

Hilary Hendershott: Really?

Cathy Heller: Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, once I remember my mom and I driving to drop my sister off at college, and I was younger, and we were in the car and we pulled over on the side of the road because we ran out of gas, and we didn’t have the money to fill the gas tank up, like I remember those moments. So, I definitely didn’t have the silver spoon sort of life.

And once I started living into a spiritual sort of reality, money came really easy to me. It just wasn’t. I moved to Los Angeles, right away met this guy. He was standing in line waiting for a table at The Cheesecake Factory. He’s like, “You have great energy. You want to come work for me?” I’m like, “Sure,” right? So, all of that energy. I go work for him. He owns $1 billion in shopping centers and he’s like, “Just come with me on meetings and I’ll throw you bonuses.” So, I learned a lot about money. People just making huge deals on golf courses. Had some money coming in. And then I wanted to go into music. And I went into the music world that just money was kind of– it was never really the struggle once I started operating from these spiritual principles because the energy really becomes like such a magnet that you can’t even imagine.

But then when my husband and I got married, I remember thinking in the back of my head, and this is so funny because it’s weird what gets implanted, but I remember thinking, I can’t make more money than him. Like, just in the back of my mind, as if he was emasculated or whatever, and so, he was making a certain amount as a lawyer. And I for years sort of kept myself consciously or unconsciously, like underneath it.

Then one year I made more, and then actually, there was a little bit of like an upset and he was like, “Okay, well, what does that even mean?” And I was like, “Well, now that I’m making more, maybe you have to take the kids to the dentist, or maybe you have to make dinner.” And it was a little bit interesting. And then I made twice as much, and then that was even harder. And then I started to get really confused about what the dynamics of our relationship were. And there was a moment where I did want to throw it all away. I was like, wait, was I actually happier when he was feeling really good about who he was and he felt like he added a lot. And at a certain point, we didn’t need him to work anymore.

When I started making a million, $2 million, $3 million, $4 million, it was like– and then I wasn’t very nice. I actually started being very demeaning. I was like, “What does it even matter if you make that much money? Just be home and help me pick up the kids.” But then he was pretty unfulfilled not using his gifts. And so, I actually decided to say, “Go back to work. I don’t care what money you make, please go back to work.” So, that took four years of him being home for me to realize that was really painful.

There was another issue where, when I started to make about $5 million, I started to gain weight, and I had a conversation with someone and she said to me, “Do you know what you just said?” And I’m like, “No.” She goes, “You just said, without knowing you said it, that if you have this much money, you have to feel relatable to people. And so, you don’t want to be feeling the most beautiful.” And I was like, “Whoa.” It was so weird. But you don’t realize the unconscious sh*t that we have in our head.

And when I was in sixth and seventh grade, I had a really hard time with some of the girls. And so, I remember having this moment, I was like, “Oh, my God, I put on 10 pounds, I don’t need this. This is–” and then I started to cry and I realized two things. One, I was afraid of people not liking me because all of a sudden, I had money. And would they judge me? And also, I think I was afraid that if I really felt my best physically and had all of this going on financially, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to control myself and I would leave my marriage.

Hilary Hendershott: Oh, wow.

Cathy Heller: And I was sabotaging myself. And so, I realized that I was going to just live my best life. And I realized that it’s ridiculous to think that people wouldn’t like me because (a) you have no control over who likes you, and (b) the thing that makes us relatable or not relatable is never what we’re wearing or where we went to college or how much money we have. Again, it goes back to our energy. If you have a beautiful heart, whether you have no money or you have lots of money, people can feel that.

And for anyone who doesn’t get that, well, that’s their choice, right? There’s nothing you can do to control that anyway. And with my marriage, I realize I’m just going to be my biggest self. But I was afraid and I said to him, “If I fully embrace everything that’s happening for me in my life, do you think I’ll outgrow you?” I said to him. And he said something so interesting to me. He said, “You already have.” And I started to cry. This is a few years ago. I said, “So what are we going to do?” And he said, “Just keep going because I’m trying to catch up.” And I realized that I could stop being afraid. I could stop holding myself back because (a) we were at a place where financially, he just wasn’t going to be able to catch up. And it’s okay to accept that.

And he knew that he had been stuck. And he decided that he was going to find out who he really is and what he really wanted to give. And what’s really cool is he started doing stand-up comedy. He got up on stage a bunch of times. He was actually just on the CBS Mornings show because Adam Carolla saw him do a set and loved him. That took two years of him going up on stage being terrified. And it doesn’t have anything to do with money, has to do with him showing up for himself.

And then he wound up getting a really cool new job that was something he really wanted to do that, again, it helps him to feel like he’s growing. So, there’s a lot when it comes to money. So, yeah, it’s a really good question. No one’s ever asked me that before, but I’m happy we could talk about it.

Hilary Hendershott: Thank you. I do find that some people, as you kind of took your rocket ship to the moon, I wouldn’t have been shocked if you had just spent it all or blown it all or invested in something and lost it all, because I’ve seen it happen so many times. Like, women, people, but women with a set point beyond which they just can’t or won’t go, right? And I relate to it like it’s the misogyny or patriarchy we’ve internalized and insist on foisting on ourselves and other women. We’re like the perpetrators of it inside and externally. I wonder what you would say to someone who finds herself in that position, like I want to be up there. I’m down here. I can see the path, but I think it’s wrong or it doesn’t seem right or they’ll hate me or I won’t fit in with my family or all of this.

Cathy Heller: Yeah. So, this is part of why I moved to Los Angeles, 2004. And 2007, I started to take classes at UCLA Mindfulness Center and I wound up meeting this amazing woman who trained me to become a meditation teacher. And I thought that was just really good stuff for me to do. But it wound up being key to answer the question that you just asked. And I’ve been using it and I teach it, and here’s what it is. The mind is not a very good place to be. People talk about fake news. The real fake news is in your head. Okay? Yeah.

People actually think that the point of meditation is to stop your thoughts. It’s not. The point of meditation is to start to observe your thoughts. And it’s about observing your thoughts and starting to connect to the part of you that’s bigger than your mind. And that’s where all the answers actually are. The answers are inside of the center of you. They’re actually the wisdom. Even Malcolm Gladwell talks about blink. He talks about the gut. The brain, the intuition is actually down here. It’s not in the head. I say this to answer your question because from the place of the spinning mind, you are locked into an unconscious software program of fear and all of those thoughts.

And this is what I’ve learned about the mind. All of those thoughts come with a chemical, so mostly cortisol. So, your cells actually start to feel physically like, oh my God, I can’t make that phone call. Oh my God, I can’t start that thing. Oh my gosh. It’s not just in your head. It becomes physically scary when you drop into, whether you’re in a Kundalini yoga class or you’re doing breathing meditation or breathwork or you’re dancing or you’re walking on the beach, you move out of the head and you move into this higher self. That part of us is always in this place called equanimity. There’s just an okayness in that part. I mean, you’ve been through hell and back in the last few years.

That part of you is the part of you that carried you through what is impossible. There is a part of us that has this capacity to be with what is, no matter what it is, that is innate inside of us. And it’s something that is connected to something so much bigger than our minds, so much bigger than a reactive nervous system. There’s just this beingness inside.

And that is why when people really start to meditate and they find that higher love, that self, there’s a calmness there because you know what’s in that? Just love. That’s all that’s there. My father, right now, he’s really sick. And it’s interesting. My dad has leukemia, but my dad is 77. So, totally different story. Different but same. There’s no way to even compare it. But the point is that when I’m sitting in the hospital with him, no matter what happened in my childhood, my parents’ divorce, whatever, it’s like a bath bomb where everything melts away except for what is, which is love. That’s all that’s in that room. That’s it.

When we are connected to that, we realize how powerful we are. Love. The person in the room who is the most loving is always the most powerful. It doesn’t matter how much money they have, it doesn’t matter how many degrees they have. The most loving person is the most powerful. Why do I say that? Because when we drop into who we really are, we’re not scared to do things. We’re not scared to receive. We’re not scared to take a chance. We kind of feel like, of course, that’s alignment becomes obvious. It becomes so obvious what we need to say, what we need to do, and we have the courage to do it.

Hilary Hendershott: Is that what you mean by alignment?

Cathy Heller: Yeah, coming from our truth. Yeah. The part of us that’s not just this 12-year-old girl that’s reactive in our head all the time. There’s no answers in there. There’s no courage in there.

Hilary Hendershott: But there’s so many people teaching meditation. How do you know if it’s the right one?

Cathy Heller: I mean, that’s a really good question. I really love that question because when you go to Alaska, they have so many words for snow, right? Because it’s snowing all the time, they don’t just say it’s snowing. They’re like, “What kind of snow is it,” right? It’s always snowing. So, is it thick? Is it this? We just say snow because we don’t have snow to that degree. I think it’s important because people mean different things on meditation. Some people, meditation is walking meditation. Some people, it’s mantras. You’re right. I mean, I think for me, it’s as simple as– my mindfulness teacher used to say that we are like the ocean. And I love this metaphor because she would say, if you look out at the ocean because you’re standing on the shore, you would say to someone, oh, if I’m going to describe the ocean, I would say it’s like very choppy because it’s reactive to the wind and the moon, right? So, it has waves.

She said, “But if you actually spend any time in the ocean, if you ask a marine biologist to describe the ocean, they would use the word still, stillness, because if you go into the ocean 5 feet, 10 feet, 50 feet, it’s so still that it’s like deafeningly still and water is so heavy, so it’s so heavy and it’s so still.” And she said to me, “That is a great metaphor for us because we relate to ourself in the mind, which is like the choppy, frenetic, reactive part of us. But that’s the smallest, most superficial part of the human being.” She said, “What we really are mostly, is this wholeness within, but we have to find our way to that,” right? Like, you’re going down into the ocean, looking up at the waves.

And so, whatever can help a person do that, there’s so many different kinds of meditation practice, but to me, it’s about dropping into that centered part of yourself. And just like Martha Beck said, she said, “Instead of being in the blizzard, you’re looking out at the blizzard. You are coming from that part of you that is bigger than that. It’s the witness to all of that.” And so many different people teach that kind of meditation, and I think it’s just a matter of which one feels like it works for you the best.

Hilary Hendershott: So, the self-test.

Cathy Heller: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: You said before we started recording that you recently realized that women need, like yesterday, access to permission, energy of money, permission to build it, permission to earn it, permission to keep it. And I’m so excited about that because I’ve been out here with a broken heart for years now, and I’m teaching the logistics and the practicality of money. And I think what you’re doing is really the gateway that I watch people not be able to walk through. Will you talk a little bit about how that evolved and what you’re teaching now?

Cathy Heller: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I’m so grateful that you exist because there are not enough people. Not only that, do what you do, but who embody it the way you embody it, like you are both fierce and lovable at the same time and brilliant, and you also break it down in such an easy to do way. And it’s so important that everybody should have you in their pocket in their ears.

Hilary Hendershott: Thank you.

Cathy Heller: I really mean that. So, yes, I think like yesterday, I think about how if you look out at the world, even though women are more or less half the population, we don’t make up half the leadership. We don’t make up half the CEOs. We don’t make up half the wealth. We make up like a tiny, tiny fraction of it. In fact, if you look at most countries, not only did they not have female leaders, they never have. You know what I mean? It’s like, when you look at the world and you look at whatever the problems are with the world, I asked myself, how would the world be different if we blinked our eyes and every leader was a woman? Like, how much war do you think there would be, like in the animal kingdom, like, let’s not even– in the animal kingdom, the females, they will go without food. So, their babies have and they don’t. The females in the animal kingdom have to surround the babies because the males will eat the food of their own babies. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. We’re talking about lions right now and tigers and panda bears. They’re not bad. It’s instinct. I’m not saying it’s bad. There’s also a reason why they show up and they protect their cubs. The males do amazing things. I’m not saying they don’t. I’m just saying think about it.

So, why does that relate to money? Because here’s the thing. We vote with a checkbook. Okay, we vote with checkbooks and, at the end of the day, you can talk all you want. And women have such a hard time fully standing for how much they deserve and being paid, like “Just get paid, girl. Just go get paid.” We have such a hard time with it. And meanwhile, while we’re shrinking over here and we’re afraid to charge, afraid to raise our rates, afraid to let go right into understanding money, men are making money, by and large, and voting all their policies in with those checkbooks.

And where is our voice? Where is it? Well, at the end of the day, Mother Teresa herself said it takes a checkbook to change the world. And so, why? Well, tell me what the good reason is for women to not have fat checkbooks. Well, in 2024, I’m out of reasons why she shouldn’t. And so, I feel like it is important for every woman to understand money and to get your head out of the sand and stop saying, “Well, that’s not really something I know anything about.” No, the time’s up. You need to know everything about it, right? You know more about your iPhone than you know about money. That’s a problem. Money is something you need to spend time with every single day.

Hilary Hendershott: So, let’s talk a little bit about, you’ve got something really exciting happening this week as we air this episode. You’re doing a thing. You’re letting me play with you.

Cathy Heller: I’m so excited. That’s such a highlight.

Hilary Hendershott: So, what is it that people can join you in this week?

Cathy Heller: Since January 22nd, we’ve been doing this free workshop, which, if you’ve missed any of it, all the replays are available. And we’re continuing to do more of these days where we’re just sort of opening our doors to answer questions and to teach people sort of a pathway to abundance and for women to become the wealthy women that they actually are. I often say that, and I’ve heard this said that becoming who you are is about unbecoming what you’re not. I feel like each of us inherently knows we’re playing small because there’s a part of us that knows that we are meant to be playing bigger games. So, that’s what we’re teaching.

And you’re going to come in and be an expert, and I can’t wait for you to share some of the knowledge and wisdom that are, you make it, like I said, so easy tactical pieces that people could all start to implement right away. The things that you teach, this isn’t something that you have to wait five years to do something about. So, that’s what we’re doing.

And then all of that, at the end of the free workshop, there’s an invitation for those people who want to do that work with me over the course of 12 weeks. We have this incredible experience called Boldly Abundant, which is sort of the hybrid of both the spiritual, change your energy, change your life work, meditation work with the practical tools to actually advance your wealth no matter what path you’re on, whether you’re on the entrepreneur path, you’re on the career path, or you’re just somebody who needs a better relationship with money the way that you teach every woman. So, that’s what we’re doing with that.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. So, it’s for both. It’s for entrepreneurs, it’s for people who are wage earners, people who aren’t either of those. It’s for everybody.

Cathy Heller: It’s for women to become wealthier and give them the tools, regardless of which path they’re on. And the more universal tools have to do with really creating the vessel to receive and understanding how our own energy and the way we have that meeting with ourself every day is what gives us the capacity to stand in our power and to elevate our worth. Because so often, when I meet with women, their net worth is reflected in their self-worth, right? And so, when we come from a place of strength, real strength, and we come from a place of understanding how we can be in our flow state, then when I tell you and you come in to share what are the tactical moves, we make those moves with so much ease.

But if we’re coming from a place where we’re really diminished and we don’t have any reciprocity and any boundaries and any expectations with anyone in our life, how are we going to raise the bar on the money we receive? I meet women who have no reciprocity in their life. They are depleted and exhausted. They over-give and over-function, and then they wonder why they’re also not making the money they want to make. I tell them there are women with less skill, less talent, less heart making more money than you in this moment already, simply because their self-worth demands it. And that isn’t even something you have to scream. It just exudes from the place of feeling whole and not feeling like you have to be stretching yourself too thin.

Hilary Hendershott: Well, and as you’re saying this, I mean, I feel like you’re re-narrating my own journey because coming from the place where I am and there have been many stops and starts for me financially. But as the things started to mushroom and I started to command and demand more money into my life, the experience of being aligned, the experience of demanding reciprocity, for the first time, I saw it as a matter of physics. It could go no other way, right? This is how it has to go kind of a thing and embodying that energy. I didn’t have this energy yesterday and I found that I had it today. And I just thank you for giving words to that. And I’m so excited for what you’re teaching because it has real possibility.

And you and I think the same thing about what money enables for women. I say to people when I meet them in person, when they come to me, I don’t really care about your money. I care about what it enables for you. And it’s everything. It’s everything. It’s dignity. It’s choice. It’s freedom. It’s adventure. It’s family. It’s love. It’s vacation. It’s all those things. So, thank you. I’m excited to join you. We’ll put the links to join you in the event this week for Boldly Abundant in the show notes below this show in your podcast player or on YouTube. Thank you for being with me, Cathy.

Cathy Heller: Oh my gosh, you’re such an extraordinary bright light and you’re just such an impressive person. It’s like a solid, grounded, good person. And what you have to give, I so receive it. And I’m so grateful that you’re in my life and that you are showing up for this event because people, they really feel blessed by you. There’s nothing inauthentic about you. And I think that’s why people can take the ride to get on board, and I think that that’s unique to you. I don’t think everybody is that authentic and I think that that’s an amazing gift.

Hilary Hendershott: Thank you. Thank you. Coming from someone who’s interviewed my celebrity crush, which is Harry Connick, Jr., I take that as a deep compliment.

Cathy Heller: He’s so, so hot. It’s unbelievable. How much do you love the movie, Hope Floats?

Hilary Hendershott: His name is the only way I can get in trouble in my marriage, I swear. I feel actually at risk even saying this.

Cathy Heller: You know what’s interesting? And I’m going to say this to you, and you’re going to say either, I know or no, there is a similarity in your face and his wife’s face.

Hilary Hendershott: Oh, do you know I used to say the worst day in my life was the day Harry Connick met Jill? It was a joke. It’s a joke. They’re 20 out of 10. They’re the most.

Cathy Heller: How gorgeous. And how much do you admire the way they love each other? And their daughters, oh my God.

Hilary Hendershott: I follow his Instagram. It’s almost unbearable. And there’s two people in this world who have led me to vibe in a way that went on for hours and hours and days and days. And one is you and the other is him. I saw him at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. I was out of my head. I was in the stratosphere. I was on Mars.

Cathy Heller: That is such an incredible compliment. And he’s such an amazing human being. And the most amazing thing he said to me is that he had such a close relationship with his mother, who passed away when he was 13, and his father, he’s still very, very close to. And his parents raised him to treat everyone with so much dignity that one day, he would come home and they would say, “Say yes, sir and yes, ma’am. And offer the person a drink.” And like five days later, after meeting this one person, this person was pumping their gas and he said to his dad, who was some famous judge, “Dad, wasn’t that the guy you told me to like–” he was like, “That’s right. That’s correct.”

And he told me once, I’ll tell you this one last thing, he told me that when he once came home, he was like a big shot already making all this money, went back to New Orleans, and he drove underneath this overpass and he saw a few homeless people. So, he went to McDonald’s to get breakfast for them. And so, he went back, gave them breakfast, and then he got home. And he told his dad because he thought his dad would think that was really admirable. So, he said, “Dad, you know, I gave these homeless people breakfast under the overpass.” And he said, “But you know what? They didn’t say anything. They didn’t say, oh my God.” And his dad goes, “Oh, that’s because I fed them breakfast this morning an hour before. And I’ve been doing that for 25 years.”

And in that moment, Harry says to me, “Cathy, that is humility. Here I was thinking I was a big shot, I mentioned it to him the day I first did it. He never told me it until then, he’d been doing it for 20 years.” He goes, “That’s who my father is.” And so, what I love about what you’re saying is you’re talking about someone who’s truly good and that’s why he moves people. He’s such an incredible human.

Hilary Hendershott: Musician.

Cathy Heller: Oh, my God, his music is amazing.

Hilary Hendershott: It’s beyond. Does it make you nervous to interview people that are that attractive?

Cathy Heller: So nervous that you have no idea how I want to say, like, I’m not doing it, and then I just force myself.

Hilary Hendershott: Good for you.

Cathy Heller: Thank you.

Hilary Hendershott: Thank you for being here.

Cathy Heller: Thank you.