What's up everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I thought it would be fun to kind of make an audiobook version of Quiet Wealth, the book that I published last year. And so I decided, what better place to make an audiobook than my podcast for my amazing podcast listeners. And so you can access it anytime. I probably won't create a genuine audiobook, maybe one day. And so this was kind of a fun idea, just like put it out there on the internet for free, because it's my book and I can do whatever I want. So without further ado, let's jump into Quiet Wealth.
Quiet Wealth, Creating What You Want Without Sacrificing What You Have, by Amber Smith. Copyright 2024 by Amber Smith. For more information, visit www.itsambersmith.com. To my girls, Tegan, Riley, and Lainey, thank you for inspiring me to be the best I can be every single day. I love you. Success occurs in the privacy of the soul. Rick Rubin.
Chapter 1. The Hamster Wheel of Success. There is a pandemic happening in hearts and homes across the world, but it especially plagues ambitious, high-achieving women and men with families. The seduction of images, lifestyles, success stories, overnight quantum leaps, and screenshots of Stripe accounts is plastered all over the internet. And even if some of these stories and screenshots are fake, it still has a similar effect. Feeling like you're behind, feeling like you have to do something bigger, or feeling like no matter how much you create or how much you give, there is always more required from you.
The impact of this never-ending hamster wheel of success costs us big. Before I figured this out, I was distracted with my girls on my good days and on my bad days. It felt like my girls were an obstacle that I needed to overcome in order to achieve my dreams. Yuck. But that was my inner reality when I first found entrepreneurship in 2018. I was hungry for success, finances were tight, and I just wanted to make progress. As I'll share in this book, that mentality cost me precious moments with my girls and haunting choices I still feel guilty about.
Making money is only one dimension of success. The other three dimensions—spirituality, health, and relationships—all add up to the success we ultimately want. When we trade the other three dimensions of success for financial success, our lives might look good from the outside, but we feel despair, emptiness, disappointment, and anxiety on the inside. I had traded other aspects of success, mostly in parenthood and my own inner peace, for the sake of building my business. Six years ago, I felt trapped.
I loved my girls, but I secretly felt limited by them because they needed so much from me, and my ambitions were so big, it felt like I was constantly behind. This sent me on a journey to discover how to truly have it all, first with outward success, aka money, but then what opened up, I realized I wanted so much more. I wanted four-dimensional success across the domains that matter to me—business, relationships, spirituality, and my body.
I've read hundreds of books, taken dozens of courses, worked with coaches and mentors in groups and privately, and devoured information across different methodologies and modalities in order to answer the question for myself—how do I achieve total success, success in all domains of life? To me, answering this question is not just how my life looks on the outside, but it absolutely must feel great on the inside, when no one is watching. I have to be at peace in my own soul. So now, I'm writing this as a mom, wife, entrepreneur, coach, podcaster, and business owner who has cultivated four-dimensional success, the inner peace and joy, a marriage full of passion, intimacy, partnership, and love.
I have deep bonds with my three daughters and can spend all the time I truly want with them. I wake up energized and strong. I have a full client roster, a team to support my business vision, and deep faith in God that fuels me beyond anything I could imagine just a few years ago. I'm writing this book because I know what it's like to be on the hamster wheel of success, what it feels like to discover you're chasing the wrong dream, and what it feels like to exit that hamster wheel and act in total faith, creating something you've never created before.
I know what it's like to speed towards goals and milestones that blow your mind, and I know what it's like to intentionally slow down, say no, and reconfigure your life so you have time to think and space to actually hear your own voice, and to hear your own voice speak about what you really want in life. I know what it's like to create soulful success. I've watched dozens of my private clients create the same thing. The term quiet wealth came to me when I was trying to write about how I was feeling in my life.
I was aligned with my values, my business was booming, my family life was incredible, and I felt a deep sense of purpose and meaning on a daily basis. Now I didn't become a monk and swear off money or business to do this. Just the opposite, actually. I figured out a way to do life that meant I could have it all. The peace and prosperity, money and meaning, financial freedom, and family life all at the same time. The frameworks and ideas are what I've poured into the pages that follow, helping you define and create a life of quiet wealth. Ready to get off the hamster wheel you never wanted to be on? Let's dive in.
Chapter 1 Reflection Questions: When have you found yourself on the hamster wheel of success? What does it mean to you to have it all? How do you want to feel about your life? What is a time you remember being full of purpose and the feeling of success to you?
Chapter 2. You Can Quantify Your Money, But You Can't Quantify Your Happiness. It's easy to get lost in the game of external success because, let's face it, tracking progress and collecting wins is addicting. Followers on social media, the number in our bank accounts, the number of clients we serve, we can quantify these things. But it's a lot harder to quantify our own experience of life. Meaning, it's easy to say I have more money than I did last year, or even more insidious, I have more money than Sally from Instagram.
These are things we can actually track with numbers and data trends. But it's harder to measure things like the amount of joy you feel on a given day, or how grateful you feel, or how deep your love is for your spouse. It's hard to find concrete data about how aligned you feel with your purpose or how you feel God's presence in your life. The trap of external success is what we can see and we measure it, so we tend to use that as our mark of success. And yet, the world is more anxious than ever.
There is more internal chaos and struggle, even though there is more financial abundance than any other time in history. So how do you actually define success? Is it external? Is it the number in your bank account? Is it how many vacation days you take? Is it the car you drive or the clothes you wear? I won't answer that for you, but this is our work together. The hardest thing you will do is define what success means to you. Because you can't Google it, you can't search on Pinterest for it, and you can't check it against other accounts on social media.
You have to go within and be radically honest with yourself about the way you are experiencing life, internal results, and the way you are creating or achieving your goals, external results. Which is why I love the framework of Quiet Wealth, because it's both the inner experience and the outer results happening at the same time. Quiet Wealth is a mentality and a lifestyle. It's a way of seeing the world and a way of creating in the world. It isn't what it seems. When I was a new life coach, I was hungry for success, the kind of success other people could see and the kind I could quantify, clients and money.
I had just created my highest paying client, which at the time was $3,000, and I was excited to serve her and feel like a legitimate coach. At this time in my entrepreneur journey, I didn't have child care support for my young kids, but I was scrappy. I was a new mom, a new coach, and a new entrepreneur, and I had no idea how to create what I actually wanted, so I winged it a lot. This particular client felt like a stretch for me. She was successful, smart, and everything I wanted in a client, so I felt a strong desire to impress her. I would take client sessions when my baby girl would nap. On this particular day, she didn't stay asleep. I had a choice to make.
Do I tell my client I need to reschedule and end our session right then, or do I power through? Unfortunately, I chose wrong, and it still haunts me to this day. I powered through the session. My baby girl, Riley, had started to cry about 15 minutes into our 60-minute session. I could hear her, but I was paralyzed on the inside because I didn't want to disappoint my client, so I kept coaching, trying not to be distracted or give any sign that something was wrong to my client. I felt an ache deep in my chest the entire time, and my palms were sweaty because I was suppressing my stress while I coached.
When the session wrapped up, I felt the tension from the back of my throat into my belly. Shame. Devastation. Judgment. I already knew I made the wrong choice. I walked in my baby girl's nursery, and she was panting from crying so hard. Her body was red and sweaty. She was exhausted because her cries for me grew in intensity that entire session, until they became whimpers because she had cried for so long. One thought popped into my mind as I tearfully picked my daughter up and held her close, both of us sobbing now.
This can't really be what success is. The client. The money. The feeling of progress in business. It was so seductive until it wasn't. Until I did something I will regret for the rest of my life. Choose my business over my daughter. This was not success to me. I made the wrong choice, and I couldn't deny it. That moment in my life and career was pivotal for me because it woke me up. Success was not the number in my bank account, the client I worked with, or how others perceived me as a coach. It was absolutely my experience of my life and business, and at the time of that story I didn't know it, but the idea for Quiet Wealth was forming in my mind.
I didn't just want business success at the expense of my family life. I wanted success in all domains of life. I wanted to create a harmony between the money I made, the people I helped, and the purpose I pursued in business while being the mother and wife that I wanted to be. I wanted holistic success, and I wanted to live a life of four-dimensional success, spiritual, physical, mental, and financial. I want that for you, too. That moment looking into my baby girl's eyes still haunts me.
It wakes me up to the harsh reality that entrepreneurs and high achievers often find themselves living, going against our highest values for the hope that financial success will make it worth it. The Quiet Wealth mentality doesn't mean you forsake making money. It means you learn how to create it within the constraints you choose for yourself so you can live in integrity. It means you do things differently and trust that the right constraints actually create room for your ultimate creativity and expansion. From that moment in the nursery, I became a sort of evangelist for the Quiet Wealth mentality in business.
I learned to make powerful decisions about how much I worked, when I worked, who I worked with, the kind of work I did, the kind of pricing I do for the work, to support the life I wanted for me and my family. I also learned to prioritize the inner work, because no monetary number can compensate for living a life out of integrity with your soul. And that's what we are up to, you and I, right here, right now. Creating financial success while staying in integrity with the values across the board. Three inner empires of Quiet Wealth. Integrity, gratitude, vision are the foundations of everything else we will talk about together.
Integrity, living according to your values. Gratitude, appreciating what you already have in life and choosing to cultivate a feeling of awe, reverence, and peace, because there are many things in your current life that you used to wish or pray for. I call this being in the miracle. Vision, being willing to articulate and cultivate a desire for a better future for yourself, family, clients, community, and world. The three of these things work together in tandem as the foundation of Quiet Wealth. You can have gratitude for what is already working in your life, vision for what you want but don't yet have, and choose integrity as the glue that keeps everything together.
Integrity answers the question, how do I achieve my vision without sabotaging what I already have? Integrity is choosing your values even if it means your success is slower or less sexy than people around you. Integrity is about being who you want to be, both in the public eye and at home or in private, when no one necessarily knows what choices you are making. When we build from integrity there is a deep sense of peace and soulfulness because you have nothing to prove to anyone. You are building on solid ground.
A few years ago when I was still learning how to create Quiet Wealth, I got mono. I was very sick. I was exhausted and in pain, and I was caught off guard because I was in build mode for my business. Feeling torn because I didn't want to cancel my client call, I sent a message to my coach who helped me see how backwards my priorities were. I was worried about canceling even though I could barely drink water without crying, and I was more exhausted than I ever had been in my entire life. I needed to rest, not to build. Integrity was choosing myself, choosing to rest, and canceling my calls.
It seems so obvious now, but it was a big deal for me at the time because I was so used to putting my business first, it felt weird to put myself first. That story, and others I will share throughout this book, helped me see that success can be defined in many ways. For me, when I got mono, Quiet Wealth was being able to cancel calls and choose myself. As you'll discover for yourself, using discernment is a key component of this game. Discernment will help you know which inner empire to prioritize. Ideally, we have all three working together, integrity, gratitude, and vision. The reality is, sometimes you will need to choose to prioritize one over the other to succeed in the long term.
There will be seasons where your vision is big and you'll need to push more in one area of life in order to excel. There will be seasons of gratitude where you slow things down and just soak it all in. There will be seasons of hard decisions where you choose the integrity of your own values, which may mean progress in business slows down for a season. Your discernment is the key to making the foundation strong and for creating a sustainable way of being while you achieve your bigger goals. Discernment means you trust yourself to make the call that keeps you aligned with who you want to be and to create what you want to create in the long term.
Chapter 2 Reflection Questions: What does the foundation of integrity, vision, and gratitude mean to you? What are your top five values? What does being in integrity with those five values look like in your life? What season do you feel like you're in right now? Are you in a season of pursuing a massive vision? Are you in a season of gratitude, soaking it all in? Or are you in a season of establishing your values and prioritizing next level integrity?
Chapter 3. This Again? Why We Bump Into the Same Problems. “Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.” - Napoleon Hill.
Self-aware people often weaponize the very tools meant to be used to create a better life. One way I've seen this play out is when people bump into a similar problem from their past, even though they have done a lot of deep work around it, and they judge themselves. They believe they should be past it. You may even be experiencing it right now. Maybe you've done work like this before, and yet you picked up this book because there are still aspects of success you haven't unlocked yet.
I was working with a client who wanted to build a business on what she had learned from studying yoga. She wanted to help others live more mindful lives. The money part of the business felt sticky to her. She felt uncomfortable asking for a lot of money for her services and felt stressed whenever she tried to pick a money goal to work toward. The interesting thing was that even though she felt uncomfortable asking for money, she loved studying wealth consciousness, marketing, business, and prosperity. One session she was talking about how she wanted to create more money, but she felt stuck about what content to create and what kind of niche she really wanted to serve.
It seems to me like you're supposed to be teaching and leading about money, I said. She just looked at me. I've been thinking about that. I really want to, but it just feels weird to me, she replied. Maybe your struggle with making money is meant for you to overcome, so you can teach them the process from a place of empathy and mastery. Lightbulb moment for her. The 5D success loop is a tool I share with clients who feel like they're doing something wrong. It is useful to identify where you're at in a particular phase of your idea so you can reaffirm yourself that what you're experiencing is normal and it truly is just part of the process of developing mastery over a struggle.
Desire. Doubt. Despair. Decide. Drive. The 5D success loop. We have the desire and we begin in taking action. Action presents new problems and possibilities for us. We begin to doubt ourselves. We begin to despair that we aren't better than we are or that we haven't achieved what we wanted to achieve yet, but we stick with it. We have a spark of hope and a vision of what is possible. We decide to be fully committed despite it being harder than we thought. Fueled by our own experience and commitment, we drive to the next level of success with wisdom and strategic action.
The 5D success loop is an inevitable part of our growth and an important aspect of self-mastery. It is our opportunity to lean in and transcend the problems that keep showing up at increasing levels of mastery and wisdom. When we judge ourselves with thoughts like, I shouldn't have to deal with this again, or I've already learned this lesson, why is it showing up again? Or am I doing something wrong? I should be past this. We block our ability to be humble and let the lesson propel us to our next level. When we acknowledge our weaknesses and trouble spots without judgment, we access one of my favorite aspects of quiet wealth.
Wisdom. It's not about being so amazing and enlightened that you never experience problem spots. It's not about doing the inner work so you are always one step ahead of the problem. And it's definitely not about conquering old habit patterns and problems so you never bump into it again. It's not about perfection. The 5D success loop helps us contextualize our growth and what we are on this planet to do. The loops we go through in life are our opportunity to deepen our understanding and more fully embody the lesson the hardships are here to teach us, so we can help others rise above them too.
When we are busy judging ourselves, we miss opportunities to deepen our wisdom, refine our craft, and grow the skills, knowledge, and perspective that will allow us to achieve what we want to achieve and help other people do the same. You will go through many 5D success loops in your life because there are necessary experiences for us to propel us to our next level of success. So lean in. It's part of the journey to open ourselves up to, not something to try to avoid. Life looks like this. In the book I share a picture of little loops that kind of move you forward. I call it the process. So the next time you think to yourself, I should be past this, come back to this principle.
You are probably discovering a huge aspect of your own life's work and what you're meant to teach others. You might have heard, your mess becomes your message, and that is exactly what this 5D success loop points to. You must keep learning the lesson in more profound ways so you can teach the principles you learn from a place of embodiment and mastery. As you do the inner work and take aligned action, you will develop mastery around this topic as you transcend the problem at higher and higher levels. As you go through the 5D success loop, you create depth and collect experience that will be invaluable to you in the future.
Chapter 3 Reflection Questions: What lessons do you seem to repeat? Why is it actually an opportunity for you? How can you bless the world because of this success loop? Once understood and solved for, how will you use this experience and lesson to teach your clients, co-workers, team, family, or community?
Chapter 4. To Create What You Want, Stop Caring So Much. “In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty. In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.” - Deepak Chopra.
I've noticed something interesting as I've worked with high-performing entrepreneurs. They get a lot done, but they often have a problem, control issues. On the one hand, I believe in radical responsibility, taking massive action and controlling the controllable. But I've had many conversations with clients who become anxious and attached to results, burning themselves and others out in the process. By trying to control things, we also block the creative solutions that can come from the field of infinite possibilities. When we try to control, we look to what's predictable and proven.
Like anything in life, a certain focus on controlling the controllable is useful. Doing what you know to do is an essential part of personal power. But when it becomes unbalanced, we suffer. We try to control other people and outcomes that are usually not ours to control. In business, this looks like trying to control people saying yes to an offer, or control the outcome of a launch, or control how fast our audience grows. In our personal lives, this might look like feeling frustrated when our loved one makes choices we don't like. I believe in a spiritual level of detachment, not detachment in the sense that you don't care.
Detachment in the sense that you can relax and let go because you know deep down you will be okay no matter what. Your desires are a preference, not an addiction. The magical and tactical aspect of not needing. The healthy balance of knowing exactly what you want, but practicing the art of detachment unlocks power in your life. Every conversation you have, including sales conversations, will lean in your favor because the person who needs less gets the final say. Think about how this has been true in your life. When I was in college, I took a marriage class and one of my professors said something I'll never forget.
He called it the principle of least interest. The person who needs the least has the most power in a relationship. He was saying it in the context of marriage, but it stuck with me in entrepreneurship too. This kind of power isn't about dominating anyone else. This is the power that David R. Hawkins, PhD and MD, talks about in his book Power vs Force. Force is rooted in fear, while power stems from love. True power is never coercive. It arises from inner strength and wisdom. Force can only dominate, while power has the capacity to unite. When we live the art of detachment, we are talking about living in the energy of love.
You can't need something from someone when you are in the energy of love for them. Creating what you want without anxiously trying to control an outcome is an art. You can be specific about what you want without needing that outcome to work. You want the outcome, but you are open to many different possibilities of how that outcome can come to be. It is the most powerful stance you can take for conscious creation. The conscious creation matrix. Clear desires and detachment. Conscious creation. Unclear desires and detachment. Chill chaos. Clear desires and attachment. Obsess and control. Attachment and unclear desires. Compare and despair.
The zone you want to be in. Clear desire. Detachment equals conscious creation. A couple years ago, I was coaching my client who really wanted to increase her revenue in business and she was exploring how to create more money without working harder. One of my favorite things to create with clients. She had young kids, so to her this was an important part of the puzzle, learning to create more money without sacrificing what mattered most. On our call, I could tell she had moved from detachment to attachment.
She wanted to control who said yes to her offers, when she would get paid, and how it would happen. Taking massive action isn't something I'm opposed to, but as a coach I'm always listening for the meaning behind my client's words. So when she kept asking what she needed to do to create the clients in cash, I saw the opportunity for her to shift back into detachment. In that moment, more action would actually increase her feeling of attachment. I said, are you ready for a counterintuitive challenge? Of course, I think. She smiled.
I encouraged her to do nothing after our session. She had already sent the emails, made the posts, had the conversations. She had taken action. She knew what she wanted, but she had energetically become attached to the results. Doing nothing was going to be the hardest thing for her to do at this moment, but I knew it would help her let go, trust, move into conscious creation instead of obsess and control. She told me she wouldn't take a nap or just write in her journal. She was up for the challenge. Later that day, I got a message from her.
You'll never believe this, or maybe you can totally believe this, lol. I fell asleep after our call because I committed to doing nothing like we talked about, and my client paid the invoice I sent last week while I was sleeping. Holy crap, this worked. It doesn't always happen that fast, but it's a pattern I've seen over and over again. After we've done all we can do, there has to be an energetic surrender, a detachment, so the result can flow in. Conscious creation feels like flow. Action is required, of course, but so is leaning back and trusting.
Once you've done all you can do, the only thing left is to let go and witness the unfolding. You can see in the conscious creation matrix that there are other problems that arise if we aren't detached and know what we want. My default mode is often chill chaos. I live the art of detachment, but I don't have clear desires, so everything is like a fuzzy mist of feeling good but not making any meaningful progress. I'm not stressed, but I'm also not really creating what I want, either. So I use this conscious creation matrix to remind myself to get clear about what I want.
Wherever you identify on the matrix, ask yourself what you need more of in order to create what you want. If you're taking attentive action and getting anxious or obsessive, let go. Meditate, go on a hike, turn your phone off, or take a nap. If you're so chill that you have neglected all of your meaningful goals, get clear about what you want. If you're constantly comparing yourself, spend time on the inside figuring out what you really want. You can use this matrix whenever you feel off, unclear, stressed out, or uneasy about your progress.
Chapter 4 Reflection Questions: What do you really, really want? Fill a full page with specific details. Notice if this is difficult for you and commit to it no matter what. When you notice something you really want, how do you feel? Does it feel like a fun, exciting thing to pursue or does it feel intense or heavy? What is your default creation zone? What do you need to get out of the default zone and into conscious creation? Equipped with the three inner empires of quiet wealth, the conscious creation matrix, and the 5D success loop, we can move to creating the freedom five. The abundance money can't buy, achieving meaningful milestones, elemental productivity, living your ideal calendar, and increasing financial freedom. Let's dive in.
Chapter 5. The Abundance Money Can't Buy: The Quiet Wealth Mentality. “A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought, they must be earned.” - Naval Ravikant.
There are a lot of things money can do and there are many things money cannot do. The quiet wealth we seek is often both. Increasing our financial freedom, which I'll talk about in chapter nine, is an important aspect of our ultimate success. But the foundation of abundance in our lives does not start with money. Money is an expression of abundance, but this chapter is about becoming the creator of abundance. The first time I really saw how money does not create abundance, I was on a call with a longtime client.
My throat felt tight sitting in my IKEA chair staring at my screen. My client had just done what used to be impossible. She had collected $50,000 in coaching fees in a week, but she was in a Zoom room crying and they weren't happy tears. We had been working on creating high ticket ideal clients for months. Her launch had exceeded her own expectations. How did we get here? I was shocked on the inside because this was what she kept saying she wanted. Why was she sad? Throughout the session, we dug deep and we found the root of it.
She was having problems that money couldn't fix. She was constantly stressed, her relationships were failing, her faith was crumbling, and her happiness and joy felt elusive. So she got to work making money thinking it would help her live her dream life. But when she had made the money, all the other stuff was still there. The other stuff, stuff I like to call the inner work, is a completely different game. Many high achieving people come to this realization on their own. Money only solves money problems. It can be disappointing to find that out, especially if you've sacrificed a lot for that money. Maybe you're there now and it got you to pick up this book. Now don't get me wrong, I want you to make big money.
When my client created the cash, we celebrated. The outer game of success comes in the form of financial increase, but like my client, financial increase cannot compensate or cover up the other areas of life that are failing. Sometimes making money highlights all the other problems because even though you have financial resources, financial resources aren't what those problems need. Like Tony Robbins says, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. The solution is not to forsake the pursuit of money and live like a monk. Please keep pursuing increasing financial freedom and increased resources.
We need more good people with more money. The solution is to create success based on what is meaningful to you and to consider the milestones in the four dimensions of life, business and career or money, relationships, spirituality, and body, which we will talk about in the next chapter. But it all starts on the inside. The abundance money can't buy is about the inner game, your perception of life, the abundance frame of mind, faith, it's always working, gratitude for what is, awakened presence, practicing non-judgment. If you want to experience what abundance money can't buy, these four tools will amplify your joy and appreciation you feel in life. Like anything, nothing will change just reading these words.
The transformation is in the application of these ideas. Gratitude for what is, appreciating and savoring a sunrise, listening to a little deeper to the sound of your kids laugh, feeling the breeze on your skin when you take a walk outside, noticing how your spouse looks at you from across the room, acknowledging the miracles of technology, your phone, wi-fi, door dash, facetime, a body that can lift, walk, write, play, play sports, drive a car. Gratitude is a declaration that everything in your whole life is perfect. It is a moment by moment choice, declaring that what you are perceiving in your life is good and you are thankful for it.
Awakened presence, feeling your feet grounded on the floor during a zoom call, monomaniacal focus on the task in front of you, deep listening to a loved one, listening to the sizzle on the stove while you cook, hearing how the trees rustle in the wind. Awakened presence is slowing down in our day-to-day. It means your mind is where your body is. If you want to give the biggest gift to your loved ones, give them this, your awakened presence. People can feel when your body is present. Give them your mind and energy too.
Practicing non-judgment, letting go of your need to be right, allowing more and forcing less, choosing to be curious instead of frustrated, asking questions instead of making assumptions, questioning your unhelpful thoughts. Practicing non-judgment is a gift we give ourselves and works in tandem with awakened presence. You cannot be fully present while you are also judging the people and circumstances around you. One of my favorite questions to ponder that has helped me practice non-judgment is, how would I be if I didn't have any thoughts about what should or shouldn't be happening right now?
Faith is always working. Believing before there is evidence, trusting other people's timing, being open to creative and spiritual solutions, listening for divine inspiration and ideas from the divine, building up resilience in spite of setbacks, choosing positivity regardless of circumstances. Having faith that it's always working is a choice in perception. People are not born with faith, they cultivate it by choosing it.
Faith is like a muscle and we choose to flex it when circumstances are hard, not when everything is working. If you can learn to train your mind to see how things are always working out, you will have peace of mind and increase personal power through the storms of life. It's easy to cultivate the spirit of abundance when everything is working out for you, but when you can cultivate the spirit of abundance when it feels like nothing is working, you become an unshakable creator.
Chapter 5 Reflection Questions: What does the abundance money can't buy mean to you? How can you develop your abundance framework of mind? What else stood out to you during this chapter?
Chapter 6. The Meaningful Milestone Framework, The Compelling Future. “A compelling future is the food on which our souls thrive.” - Tony Robbins
When I work with clients, we strip away the goals and milestones that have no personal meaning. Depending on your industry, there are certain achievements that become standard. If we aren't careful, we can adopt the standardized goals as our own without conscious thought about it. If you're a life coach, it could be hitting 100k in a year or a month. If you're an online course creator, it could be a 7-figure lunch. If you're a business owner, it might be hiring someone to run operations for you. All of these goals can be meaningful and inspiring, and for some people, these goals aren't inspiring at all. Knowing what you really want is key because it unlocks potential creative energy because it is aligned with what you actually want.
Standardized Goals vs Meaningful Milestones. You can break down this distinction of meaningful vs standardized goals for yourself by getting honest about what you really want and how you really feel when you're in pursuit. Don't weigh your goals against your friends' goals, your peers' goals, or even your mentors' goals. You may actually want bigger things and dream bigger dreams than almost all of your friends and peers. On the flip side, you may have found yourself in a group where certain goals are common and celebrated, but you never asked yourself if you even wanted or cared about those goals.
Pursuing goals that don't align with your deepest desires never work out long term. The meaningful milestone trifecta is where your goals are personal, inspirational, and impactful. Personal. It matters to you. It may or may not be similar to your peers. It might be more ambitious. It might be less ambitious. Either way, you have an emotional experience when you think about it. I have a saying with my clients, keep your blinders on, and it applies here because it is so easy to get caught up with what other people are up to. These become the standardized goals that everyone is chasing. If they light you up, great. But if they don't, it's time to hear your own voice again.
Keep Your Blinders On Challenge. Go a week without listening to a podcast, reading a book, or consuming in-depth content. Spend time journaling, making a vision board, and listening to your own inner voice, God, the Spirit, your higher self, so you can discover what is actually meaningful to you. Inspirational. You haven't achieved it before. You should pick something that feels like a stretch that isn't something you have created before but is a future result you want to create. This is about progress and evolution over a lifetime. Impactful. When you achieve what you want, other people benefit.
One of the beliefs I have shared with my clients that continues to help them achieve greatness and feel great about their success is, it's good for the world when I get what I want. When we have the trifecta, meaningful milestones that are personal, inspirational, and impactful, the game becomes very fun. We aren't constantly comparing ourselves to strangers on the internet. We are in our own video game of life where we measure our progress against who we used to be, we are inspired by the vision we have for the future, and we know when we get what we want, the world gets better, which just adds fuel to the fire.
It's important to choose meaningful milestones in the four dimensions of your life. Don't just skip to the next section of the book. The point of this book is not just for more information in your brain. It's for you to experience transformation. Consider this my personal invitation to you. Stop reading or listening and actually write out what you want your meaningful milestones to be in the four dimensions of your life using the questions below. What do you want for your relationships that matter most? Your spouse, partner, kids, parents, siblings. What do you want for your body? What do you want spiritually? What do you want for your career or business?
Constraints create space for creativity. The other way meaningful milestones work to help you create quiet wealth is it gives life to how to achieve your dreams. As an example, when I first started my business, I had two baby girls ages two and about three months. I was breastfeeding full-time, had a busy toddler, and decided to start an LLC and do the online business thing. Easy, right? Definitely not easy, but I learned an extremely valuable lesson as I committed to figuring out how to make it work. My constraints forced me to access my highest levels of creativity, and my creativity led me to solutions that were unique, efficient, and worked for my meaningful milestones.
I didn't have a ton of time on my hands, so I learned how to do marketing where I got the biggest bang for my buck. As a new life coach, I learned that this meant initiating conversations with people I knew I could help. Every day for 15 minutes, I would start conversations on Instagram and Facebook with friends, colleagues, followers, and even strangers. Those 15 minutes compounded into powerful conversations that led to consultations about my services that led to paying clients. My constraints led me to being innovative, and it allowed me to have the best of both worlds. I could build my business in simple ways while I spent the majority of my time with my girls being a mom. Win-win.
Quiet Wealth is about creating meaningful milestones in a triple-win context. Good for me, good for you, good for us. I don't believe you have to give up what you have in order to get what you want. I believe you can keep what you have while you create what you want. This is fueled by the abundance you can't buy. You have to earn it by expanding your consciousness and taking aligned action. One of the unique ways I help my clients achieve their meaningful milestones is by prioritizing the four-dimensional success and looking at constraints as a way to access more creativity and customized solutions to create what they want.
My client, who had created a lot of money but saw that her life was falling apart behind the scenes, didn't approach her business with a four-dimensional success in mind. Instead of working on her marriage, she invested more time and money into her business, and even though her business was working, her personal life was not. Knowing what you want, your meaningful milestones, helps you pave your own path. You won't be seduced by the standardized goals that really resonated with you in the first place. When your goals are personal, inspirational, and impactful, you will feel a sense of purpose and alignment with your progress every day.
Chapter 6 Reflection Questions: If all things were really possible, what would you love? If no one would find out about your success, what successful results would you choose? What would you pursue even if you knew you would fail just because you like it? What would you pursue even if you knew it would take you 10 years? How would you live your life if no one found out about it or judged you for it? What do you actually want? What else? What else?
Chapter 7. Elemental Productivity, The Daily Win. “As you craft your days, so you live your life.” - Robin Sharma
Anyone can sacrifice for a season of growth in business. It's easy to do when you're building something you care about. But it's a lot harder to create success across multiple domains of life all at the same time. It's one thing to work 15-hour days fueled by caffeine and not spending time with family and basically dropping everything else for a few months to create a software product or launch a business. History is full of these kinds of feats from entrepreneurs who grinded with their time until they achieved something that used to seem impossible.
The problem with productivity, the only focus on output in one area of life, is that it comes literally at the expense of other meaningful aspects of our lives. Of course, there are times and seasons for everything, when you have to work more than usual to get a big project done, or times when you need to put work on hold so you can take care of a sick kid, or times when you just need to care for your soul and spend time unplugged and off-grid. This chapter isn't about seasons, it's about mastering one thing, your day.
When you treat your day like a microcosm of your life, things start working and the quiet wealth of your life is amplified. Days are like the pearl beads on the string of the necklace of your life. As we prioritize creating our days the way we want to, they begin to stack together into something beautiful. This isn't a game of perfection, but it is a game of consistency. The consistency of owning your days begins to compound into something powerful. You stop winging it, and you begin reaping the rewards of mastery.
Bruce Lee said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” That's the idea here. When we practice owning our days, we begin to create a power within ourselves that is developed through integrity, focus, and commitment. When integrity, focus, and commitment is compounded, you can become unrecognizable. This is a micro move for a long game. When you have a daily protocol that works for you, you'll be excited to work on your meaningful projects every day. You will enjoy making progress.
“I always tell people if you want to know the secret to happiness, I can give it to you in one word, progress.” Tony Robbins. You will feel more ownership about your days. You will feel an integrity with your highest values because you'll be devoting time and energy to your goals in all four domains. You'll avoid feeling burned out, mom guilt, or behind at work because you're moving the needle on what matters to you every single day. The framework. This is about mastering your days and creating success in the four domains of life at the same time, not just an intense season of business growth or an intense season of physical fitness.
This is blending health, spirituality, family, and productivity in career or business so you create the rarer form of success, which I refer to as four-dimensional success or holistic success. Fire. Productivity in business, career, or finances. Water. Balance in relationships. Earth. Grounded and energized in body. Air. Connected spiritually. Every day you will focus on each of the four elements as part of your day and make a conscious choice to move the needle forward. The elemental productivity framework goes hand-in-hand with your meaningful milestones.
What you do day-to-day should be getting you closer to your meaningful milestones, period. If they don't move you towards your meaningful milestones, toss them. Choose daily protocols to get you moving the needle so you can actually benefit from the compound effect of this work. Principles to make the elemental productivity framework work for you. Play the game of addition, subtraction. This is a game of abundance. We are consciously adding things into our day, not taking things away. For example, instead of stop eating junk food in your earth or grounded body element, you might add green juice and supplements.
Another example. Instead of stop scrolling Instagram when kids get home from school for water or relationships element, you would add something like go on a 15-minute walk outside with my kids after dinner. Pick two things to do for each element each day. Pro tip. Balance creation and consumption for the fire, earth, and air elements. Examples. Fire. Reading a marketing book and writing a LinkedIn article. Earth. Drink a green smoothie and do a HIIT workout. Air. Read a spiritual text and meditate for 10 minutes. For the water element, relationships, pick two people. If you're married with kids, you can pick your spouse and one kid. If you're not married, you can pick a partner, a roommate, a parent, or a friend.
Every day, choose to intentionally pour into these two people. Reflect weekly. Are your daily elements working? What is not working? What will you do differently in the week to come? A word of caution. It can be easy to discount this framework because the results don't happen overnight. But if you can commence the activities instead of the results, you will see miracles in your life. The elemental productivity framework is like planting seeds of faith every day. If you plant every day for a long enough time period, there will come a day where you are harvesting every day too. It is law. To use an example of something I talked about in the Meaningful Milestones chapter, I started creating conversations every day for 15 minutes.
This began to compound into deep relationships with people who started as strangers on the internet. Many of those conversations turned into clients and many of them stayed clients for years. The key here is that I did this as a daily output for my business and I committed to it even when it didn't seem like it was working. This daily practice led me to getting fully booked as a life coach, building my first six figure year, and eventually filling groups, masterminds, high level one-on-one clients, retreats, mentorship offers, etc. The compound effect of one simple daily task becomes exceptional. You just can't stop planting. Even when it seems like nothing is working, even though it seems like nothing, you do make a difference. Keep planting in faith and expect miracles.
Chapter 7 Reflection Questions: What are your two focuses for each element this week? What is your biggest takeaway after learning the Elemental Productivity Framework? Why is it important that you win daily?
Chapter 8. Your Ideal Calendar. The Weekly Win. “Live your life in the way you wish to remember it in hindsight.” - Melanie Ann Layer.
There is one word that I cautiously keep in mind when I'm working on creating something. Entropy. What is entropy? Didn't know we were going into physics, did you? Entropy is a gradual decline into disorder. The second law in thermodynamics says that entropy increases with time, which basically means that when left unattended, things have a tendency to increase in chaos. For example, if I do nothing in my living room and simply observe my daughter's husband, friends, etc. live, work, and play in my house, I will absolutely see the trend of entropy show up. Toys will pile up, crumbs will take over, random books, crafts, blankets, shoes, and a whole assortment of items will collect in the room. This is entropy in action.
It takes a conscious effort to manage a household of items, or applied consciousness, to combat entropy. When we apply a level of consciousness to any situation, we have the power to create beyond entropy. Our calendars are the same. If we don't consciously choose how to structure our calendars, we end up in a situation where we don't want to be. Constantly putting out fires for our client's team or boss. Not creating time or space for our kids. Scrolling our phone when we don't want to be. Saying yes to things we want to say no to. Feeling like you're burning the candle on both ends. Wondering where the time has gone.
Calendars are a microcosm of our life. When we create beyond entropy in our calendar, we begin to create beyond entropy in our life. When I work with my high-level clients, we talk about creating an ideal calendar as an essential part of increasing freedom and quiet wealth in their life. If you love your life and your calendar is working phenomenally, already you can skip this chapter. But if you ever feel overwhelmed, behind on to-dos, or like you can't get stuff that matters done, this is for you. The ideal calendar is a tool to use, not a perfectionist standard to use against yourself. We are always approaching our ideal calendar.
We never arrive at an ideal calendar. Read that line again, because it will be important as you implement these ideas. I'll read it again. We are always approaching our ideal calendar. We never arrive at an ideal calendar. An ideal calendar is just that, an ideal. It's something we move toward. But the reality is, life happens. Kids get sick. We get stuck in traffic. Surprise visits from family happen. Tasks take longer than we expected, etc. The ideal calendar is like a north star. It keeps you focused on a direction and helps inform your decision-making as you work towards your meaningful milestones. Create an ideal weekly calendar for yourself.
The point of this exercise is not to beat yourself up for not living your ideal calendar. The point is to create a vision of possibility and move closer to it every day, every week, every month, and every year. The ideal calendar is just that, an ideal. Truth be told, you probably won't get to the point where you live your ideal calendar 100% of the time. But I promise you this. If you actually write out your ideal calendar, you actually spend time thinking about what you would like your days to look and feel like, and you define it for yourself, you will begin to make new decisions about how you spend your time, what you say yes to, and more importantly, what you say no to.
Some questions to get you started. How many days do you want to work on a typical work week? What time would you like to wake up? What time would you like to start working? What time would you like your earliest client or meetings to be? What time would you like your last meeting to end? How much self-care do you want to build in? Appointments? Reading? Exercise? Professional services? Time alone? Get clear about your ideal calendar and be honest with yourself. You don't win any prizes for being the busiest person, but you will know when you're unhappy with your day-to-day.
My life won't change whether you do this exercise or not, but I promise your life will if you get honest with yourself about what you want. Don't just believe me. Try me. Once you've got your ideal calendar down on a paper, on a separate Google calendar, look at your current calendar. What can be changed to get you 1% closer to the ideal calendar today or this week? What can be changed in your current calendar in the next month to get you closer to your ideal calendar? Revisit this exercise and these questions as often as you want to get closer to living your ideal calendar.
Chapter 8 Reflection Questions: What is your ideal calendar in a typical work week? Who do you need to say no to in order to make that calendar work? What is the first action you can take to get you closer to your ideal calendar? What support do you need to make this happen?
Chapter 9. Increasing Financial Freedom. “You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive or sick enough to help sick people get well. You only ever uplift from your position of strength and clarity and alignment.” - Abraham Hicks.
We've been building the foundation of Quiet Wealth. As you can tell, a lot of this work is about what happens on the inside. Your values, your decisions about how you spend your time, your perspective about life as it is, your commitment to creating something you want. One important aspect of Quiet Wealth is actually accumulating the physical representation of wealth, money, assets, investments, financial resources. Increasing financial freedom comes because of two commitments. Your commitment to expand your wealth consciousness. Your commitment to becoming exceptional at creating, keeping, and investing money.
I started my business when my little family was not doing great financially. We had young kids and my husband and I both dropped out of our master's programs because we realized they wouldn't help us progress the way we wanted to. What we didn't realize when we dropped out is that student loans would immediately become due. All of the sudden, we were strapped for cash, too prideful to ask for help, and we were scared. I was studying personal finance books long before I found entrepreneurship because I was searching for any answer that would help us. One of the best things I've done to help me become a rainmaker, someone who creates a lot of money, is to study wealth consciousness books and get around people who are making a lot of money.
The first book I read that drastically changed my mind about money was Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. He taught me concepts I didn't learn growing up or even in my personal finance classes in college. I started to devour money mindset, business, entrepreneurship, and marketing books because I could see the ROI they helped me create. Early in my journey as an entrepreneur, I read the book You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero, and it expanded my mind to new possibilities for me in ways that I never even imagined. I realized that what I believed about money had literally been the cause of our financial stress.
I believed money was scarce, hard to make, hard to keep, and that I had to be really smart to make a lot of it. As I expanded my mind, I started to choose new conscious thoughts about money that began a ripple effect in my life and business that dramatically changed my family's financial circumstances. More on that in a bit. I started writing down thoughts about money and wealth on sticky notes. I taped money to my bathroom mirror. I knew if I wanted to create more money, I had to radically change my beliefs about money and my ability to create it.
I began to believe that money was abundant, that it was easy to make, that it was fun to make, keep, and spend. I began to believe that money was good for me and available for me. By expanding my wealth consciousness, aka my thoughts about money, I started to see different opportunities for creating it, which is why at the beginning of this chapter, I said that commitment number one is expanding your wealth consciousness. It all starts there. You can't even see opportunities for making more money if you are stuck with the same beliefs about it that got you into financial turmoil in the first place. Wealth consciousness beliefs.
Money comes from places known and unknown. I'm great at making money. There are infinite possibilities available to me as I create more financial resources. Money is always making its way toward me. I am great at handling money. People love to pay me for my high quality service. It's good for the world when I make more money. As you read that list, just notice what comes up for you. You can disagree with or hate the beliefs, or you might agree with them and like them. I will say this. It is hard to make a lot of money without changing your thoughts about it. The other aspect of increasing your financial freedom is skill set, the physical nature of making, keeping, and investing money. Financial freedom skills.
Create more money by adding more value. I love Bob Proctor's framework called law of compensation. He says, the amount of money you will earn will always be an exact ratio to three things. The need for what you do, your ability to do it, and the difficulty there is in replacing you. You can create more value in your current job or business by solving problems. If you want to make more money, consider these ideas. Solve more problems for more people or companies. Solve more expensive problems for richer people or companies. Solve more painful problems for people or companies.
What I discovered is that the more problems I help people solve, it just introduced them to new problems. If I could solve those problems too, I would create so much value for my clients, they would stay in my world for a long time and become more valuable financially to me and my company. This is true for entrepreneurs in their own companies as well as employees or leaders in other companies. If you want to make more money, get better at solving problems and creating value for others. Operate like an investor. I'm not even talking about investing in the stock market, although that obviously works too. It's beyond the scope of this book.
This conversation is about putting money into assets. Your assets include yourself, your mind, your health, your time, and your skills. Invest in making your mind more valuable. Get coaching, mentorship, training, and support for your mindset. Read books about your industry, leadership, and development. Invest in getting your time back. Hire help in your home. Child care, house cleaning, yard work, etc. so you can focus on your zone of genius and so you can enjoy the abundance money can't buy. Like more time with your spouse, partner, or kids. Pay mentors so you can learn from their mistakes and achieve goals faster. Other things I do to get my time back. Grocery delivery, hallelujah.
Hiring contractors to do things in my business that are not my zone of genius. Paying for software to make things run as smoothly as possible. Invest in your health because your body is the vessel that carries you through life. Investing in your health is non-negotiable for high-achieving people because it is the foundation of all other success. Invest in resources, knowledge, tools, tracking, nutrients, and support to help you increase your longevity and well-being. Invest in your skills. Whatever you do in your work, commit to evolution and growth over a lifetime. Learn evergreen skills like communication, leadership, and productivity. Learn skills that hone your craft.
As you increase your skill set, your demand goes up, which makes you more valuable in the marketplace. Good for now and good for later. One quick question I ask myself when I'm making any financial move is, is this good for now and good for later? Wealthy people use longer time horizons for their decision-making progress. I heard Alex Hermosi say, “Money loves speed, but wealth loves time.” And it always stuck with me. Wealth is about asset building, which is a long game. No matter where you're at in your journey, remember you are building assets. You are your first, always, and best asset, so act accordingly.
As you expand your wealth consciousness and skills, you will make money and be able to invest in other financial assets like the business profits, promotions, stock market, real estate, business acquisition, etc., which are outside the scope of this book, but I wanted to mention them so you can begin to see possibilities for you. Increasing financial freedom is a natural byproduct of practicing the other principles we discussed previously in this book. As you choose the abundance room of mind to see the abundance money can't buy, as you pursue meaningful milestones, as you own your day with elemental productivity, and you live your ideal calendar, you will have unmatched energy and commitment as you take on the financial aspect of this game. Money is a byproduct of who you become.
The other four aspects of the Freedom Five are engineered for you to become who you are meant to become. Becoming that person is how you unlock the drive, skills, patience, and capacity to create financial winds that stack into freedom and options that will blow your mind. Increasing financial freedom is not retiring early, selling your business for a million bucks, living on the beach with a laptop lifestyle business, or anything like that. It's about increasing your options and choices, period. Keep your blinders on, celebrate your progress, and be honest with yourself about what you really want. Increasing financial freedom is about you becoming a great creator and a great steward of money.
Chapter 9 Reflection Questions: How do you think and feel about money right now? How do you want to think and feel about money? What choices would be available if you made more money? What does it mean to you to be a great creator of money? What does it mean to you to be a great steward of money?
Chapter 10. The Quiet Wealth System, The Mental Foundation. Develop the three inner empires. The spirit of abundance will flood your life when you expand your vision with more possibilities. Live with deep gratitude and awe for what's already great in your life. Live in integrity with your highest values. The three inner empires are not something you achieve. They are a constant work in progress because they don't include an end destination. Some tips. Find little moments throughout your day that make you smile and savor it just a little longer. Example, if your kid is making you laugh, just simmer in that feeling a bit longer and let it fill you up.
Nurture your beliefs on purpose. Your beliefs are like a garden. Tend to the thoughts you want to develop like you would tend to a seed you want to grow. Remove the thoughts that are not helpful like you would pull a weed. Checking in with your thoughts and being conscious about your thoughts will be paramount as you create and expand your quiet wealth. Check out one of my most popular podcast episodes, The Conscious Coach, episode number 136, now Abundant Heart. Consciously creating, thinking, and speaking your desires into existence. So episode number 136 on Abundant Heart. Practice the abundance room of mind daily.
Awakened presence, gratitude for what is, faith it's always working, and practicing non-judgment will set you free. Every day, run the elemental productivity protocol. Choose a training, piece of content, book, etc. to listen or read to and in an action that will support the results you want like publishing a piece of content, making 10 reach-outs, or making a marketing call to action for fire, your business, career, or project. Choose the fuel, input, and movement, output, you will do for earth, your body. Choose an input and an output for spirituality. Input ideas, reading a spiritual text, listening to a devotional, listening to a worship song, etc.
Output ideas, meditation, journaling, or prayer. Choose how to pour into two relationships that matter most to you. You can send a text of appreciation, spend intentional time with them, call them on the phone, or anything else you want to consciously create in order to have a deeper relationship with the people who matter most. Every week, identify how you can more closely live your ideal calendar. Take an audit of what is working on a weekly basis and what is not working on a weekly basis. I use Sundays to reflect on the previous week and prepare for the week ahead. The ideal calendar is my north star for the decisions I make.
It will also help you begin to create clearer boundaries about your work hours, what you can say yes to, what you need to say no to, and what values will be reflected in your calendar. Every month, take time to write about and explore your meaningful milestones. I love to begin the journal prompt, if all things were possible what would I love? Think about what worked in your life and work. What needs to change? What do you want to do more of? What do you want to do less of? What gave you energy? What sucked away your energy? What do you really, really want? The more often you write about your meaningful milestones, the more certain goals will really stand out to you and because you'll be writing about them every month.
Pay attention to what your soul is letting you know during this reflection session. The application of these ideas will create room for miracles. Test the ideas out and make them your own. Knowledge is not power. Implementation is. Your invitation. I want more good people living the way of quiet wealth, creating and experiencing four-dimensional success in their life at higher levels as they evolve and grow. This book is the framework of everything I teach my clients and I deeply hope it serves you well. If you want my help in taking this concept of quiet wealth to the next level in your life at work, check out the Quiet Wealth Membership, my coaching community.
We consciously create your optimal life together and you join a group of people who are living these principles too. If it's aligned, I would love to have you join us.
Check it out at www.itsambersmith.com forward slash member. Thank you for the time and attention you devoted to reading and listening to this book. I do not take it lightly and I appreciate you being here to increasing your quiet wealth. Amber Lee Smith. About the author. Amber Smith is the founder of Quiet Wealth and the creator of the Quiet Wealth Membership, which helps ambitious women reach their next level in fulfillment, success, and happiness. She has coached hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners individually and in groups to grow their business, create deeper relationships, and experience more personal fulfillment. She lives in Utah with her husband and three daughters. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
