Is Your Dream Life Costing You Too Much?

What happens when the life you worked so hard to build starts feeling too busy to enjoy? In this episode, Chris and I share how a simple decision to start reading again led to an unexpected encounter with a neighbor who handed us a book that spoke directly to what we’d been asking for. We talk about why your goals, priorities, and definition of your dream life can change, and how Chris’s Dream Life Budget helps you figure out what needs to shift to create more space, freedom, and fulfillment. Because your dream life isn't something you set once and forget. It's something you keep resetting as you grow. Check out our Sponsors: Shopify - Launch your business before Black Friday, go to http://shopify.com/happy to start your free trial. Monarch Money - Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at http://Monarch.com with code EYH. Northwest Registered Agent - Visit http://northwestregisteredagent.com/EarnFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Fabric - Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at http://meetfabric.com/EARN. Meetfabric.com/EARN. Quince - Find the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Quince. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns and when Quince asked how you heard about them, let them know it was here on Earn Your Happy. Gloss Genius - Run a business that takes appointments? Use code HAPPY at https://glossgenius.com/earnyourhappy for 50% off your first two months of a premium plan. Faire - Sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order, up to $100 at http://faire.com/happy50. Terms may apply. Life at the Speed of Play - Go to http://getmarksbook.com/earn to get two copies for the price of one—one for you and one for a friend. HIGHLIGHTS Why Chris and I realized our busy lives were costing us the peace we wanted. The unexpected book our neighbor gave us when we were asking for more peace and simplicity. What helped us rethink our priorities and find more peace. How to use the Dream Life Budget to identify what you want more of and what you can let go of. Why earning more money doesn't always mean you're living your dream life. The “Goldilocks Budget” and finding the sweet spot between too much and too little. RESOURCES Learn how to turn podcast guesting into massive sales, ⁠⁠save your spot for the free live training HERE⁠⁠! Learn about the Dream Life Budget by messaging Chris on Instagram: @chriswharder Make your own ⁠Million Dollar Media Kit HERE! Try glōci for 40% off your first order with code HAPPY at checkout - head to getgloci.com FOLLOW Follow me: @loriharder Follow Chris: @chriswharder Follow glōci: @getgloci

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Okay, whenever I'm traveling, I love to skip like the main mall of the town. And I like to hunt down all of those little shops on the corner where the locals love to go, where all the good stuff is. So candles made by local people, a sweatshirt with the town's name on it, hot sauce made 20 minutes away, and the owner knows everybody's name. And I've also been on the other side of that shelf because I built a product from scratch. And I'll never forget, the first independent store who believed in it enough to put it on their shelves. Big box stores sell stuff, but small shops tell a story about people. So if you own one of those shops, you need to know about FAIRE.

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• 1:27Speaker 00

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• 2:10Speaker 00

  They're giving Earn Your Happy a $75 sponsored job credit. Go to Indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Life at the Speed of Play. Mark is offering our listeners two books for the price of one. Go to GetMark'sBook.com/earn. Sequencing. Sequencing.com is offering our listeners up to 10% off your full genome test plus free shipping. Go to sequencing.com and use promo code EARN for 10% off. We're actually very philosophical. We love to be able to sit and think and be in our own thoughts and read and have deep conversations and our life is not allowing that right now.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Too many moving parts, too many team members, too many companies, too many everything.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Yes. So you and I this morning said, okay, how can we start really getting back to what we want? Like, what does peace look like?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  And we're back.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  With another episode of He Said, She Said.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Before we get started, guys, Lori is doing another round of Get Booked, Get Paid. How to get paid by being guests on other people's podcasts. Tell them, Lori.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  This is a live training where I am going to show you why going on other people's podcasts is one of the biggest opportunities to find new customers and make sales. So you're going to come on live, you are going to learn how to get booked, whether you have never been on a podcast before, or whether you've been on 20 podcasts before, and you just want to be able to go on more shows, bigger shows, but also how to monetize once you're on the show. Because most people don't even realize that this is a big part of a lot of very successful entrepreneurs' plans out there, is they go on podcasts not just to be seen, but to actually make money.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  So if you want to join me live, it's going to blow your mind, the opportunity and the people who have made a lot of money off of my podcast, I'm actually going to show testimonials and the data of the opportunity and work through those real numbers, one by one, people who have had very small followings, people who were no name people, all the way up to people who you probably know. And you can go back and listen to those episodes after we look at this and you'll be able to kind of like see all of the different things that I'm teaching you. But I would love to have you on live because if you are struggling with social media right now, if you are feeling like no matter what you say on there, it is not being seen or heard. If you know that you have experience in your field, if you are an expert in your area,

• 4:50Speaker 00

  if you've gotten results for people, you need to learn how to yap long form. It's so incredibly important, you guys, to learn how to be able to strategically position yourself, be able to pitch yourself on a podcast, which translates into real life, and also how to storytell around the offer that you have. Because the only thing that makes your offer matter is your ability to storytell and the stories that support that. And that is what I'm going to be showing you. There's an entire formula. People are making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars off of this. And so I'm going to pull back the curtain to show you who's using this, how much they're making, and it's going to rock your world. And I think it's going to give you a lot of hope right now

• 5:32Speaker 00

  to understand that there's a world that you have not tapped into in order to make money. So you can go to milliondollarguest.com/training and join me live. There's plenty of spots to sign up for, but come on live because committed people who really want to learn, who really want to do this, who actually want to change their life and get a new sales channel, that is the person that comes on live and really implements this.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Well, there's three things that stand out to me really quick, and then we're going to get into the storytelling that I want to do. But thing number one, it's free, like totally, totally free, no catch free. But when they leave, this is thing number two, they leave with enough value to start getting booked on other people's podcasts and getting money from other people's audiences. And that brings me to realization number three. Other people's audiences should be your number one or your number two sales channel. What's a sales channel? It's where you get your sales from, right? Like Facebook ads is a sales channel. Social media is a sales channel. Well, getting in front of other people's audiences should be your number one. I'm not kidding. Your number one, or at worst, your number two sales channel. And this is what Lori is teaching how to do for free. So where do they go again?

• 6:40Speaker 00

  They can go to milliondollarguest.com/training or just scroll down the show notes.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  All right. I want to talk about life and I want to, more importantly, tell a story about life. And I want to use our example of life and just kind of a cool story that happened today. I want you to tee it up. And just for context, what I'm talking about is our walk today and how we ended up with this book that's in my hand right now. So why don't you kind of set the scene?

• 7:05Speaker 00

  So recently, Chris and I have really been feeling a lot of stress and maybe you guys have too. Whether it is things in your life that are changing, whether you've realized that the old dream that you have built your life around no longer actually is the one that you want. And I know that a lot of times, you know, dreams and the life that you build, that can be three years, five years, seven years, and all of a sudden you wake up and you go, maybe I didn't need that. Maybe I don't want this. Maybe I don't want to be doing five things. Maybe I really only want to be doing one thing. Maybe I don't want to be traveling as much, or maybe I want to be traveling more. Like, there's so many things that we are both realizing in our life that all of a sudden

• 7:46Speaker 00

  isn't feeling the way that we had hoped, or isn't as, you know, it's not giving us as much fulfillment as we thought it was going to give us. And so we have been really, really, the word that we have been desiring the most is peace. We just want more peace. We want more space. And from that peace and space, it's going to give the things that I think we are craving deeply, which is creativity, connectedness, more time with friends, more time with family, more time that, you know, you and I are both, like, we're actually very philosophical. We love to be able to sit and think and be in our own thoughts and read and have deep conversations and our life is not allowing that right now.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Too many moving parts, too many team members, too many companies, too many everything.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Yes. So you and I this morning said, okay, how can we start really getting back to what we want? Like, what does peace look like?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  And I want to frame it. This is on the walk. It's like, this is a very important piece. We're on our walk that we take, you know, especially on weekend mornings together, Lori and I and the dogs. And it's going to be a long walk. This is over an hour sometimes. And the conversation on the walk was what you were saying. How can we bring more peace into our lives?

• 9:01Speaker 00

  And so this was the conversation that, you know, started in the beginning of the walk. And I had said something, I'm like, you know, when we were really, I feel like at this place of super hopeful all the time and excited all the time, we were reading every single day together. And I was like, maybe we just need to, I know that we're like, you know, by the time nighttime comes, you and I love to put on a show or two and just veg out because our brains are so fried. But I'm like, maybe we really, really need to commit to reading again. And so by, you know, mid-walk, you were like, absolutely. Okay, let's do it. Let's commit. Let's start tonight. Let's start reading again. Now, we hadn't talked about the books. I was like, maybe we read a manifesting book, or I'm not sure where we're going to start.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  But on the walk, and we say prayers all the time, whether it's at night or on the walk, we were truly saying like, okay, God, we surrender, guide us on, you know, where we should go next. Like, I fully just hand over my life to you and show me what more peace looks like. Like, help us feel more peace in our life and our hearts.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Okay, so let me take over here because this is crazy. Not more than 15 minutes further into the walk after we determine that and ask for that and say that this is what we want. We run into what I would call a mysterious neighbor. Now, we love this guy, but we don't know much about him. We see him at least every other day, if not every day on the walks. He's got one of these mysterious, wonderful, like scholar type personalities. You could tell he used to be a professor.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  He's gotta be a professor.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Or something like that. He's clearly retired now. He's got this long, white flowing hair in a ponytail and was always in bare feet. And is just, if you've ever met someone and you're like, that's one of the smartest, interesting people I've ever met in my life and they're mysterious, it's this guy. And what makes it even more mysterious is when you look inside his home, he has floor to ceiling, walls of books. I mean, he has made like a maze out of books. He has made like walls that aren't real walls out of books being stacked together. And this is a, by the way, a prime piece of property.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  So not only is he a scholar, he must've done something really successful in life. Cause this property by itself is probably 10 million bucks. So why, why do I share all this? We've always wondered what he's done and does he read all those books and, you know, where does he get all his knowledge from, et cetera? So we ran into him today like we always do and we always exchange nice pleasantries. And I asked him today, I said, Rob, what is your favorite book? Of all those books, which looks to be tens of thousands of books in your house, what is the one book we should read in life? And at first he was very puzzled, not puzzled by the question. He's like, it's an impossible to answer question.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  He said.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  I get asked this all the time.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  I get asked this all the time. And he said, asking what the best book is, is like asking somebody what their best breath was. And that made sense to me. Okay, I get that. Cause people ask me back from when I read 30 books in 30 days. Hey man, what's the best book I should read? And same thing, I'm always like, well, that kind of depends on where you're at in life. There's not like one best book in the world. And he kind of reiterated that. But then he got kind of a puzzled or paused look on his face. And he said, you know what kids? That's what he calls us.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  He goes, you know what kids? Stay right here. Bananas bonkers, you guys watch over your mom and dad. And he goes running into the house, bare feet and all, and comes out about a minute later with a very specific book in his hand. And he said, I think this is the book that you guys are called to read right now. Now remember, he's got tens of thousands of books in his house. And he doesn't know that earlier in the walk, we're like, let's get back to reading, we're praying for peace, simplicity, all this. He runs in the house, he comes back out, he says, I think this is the book that you guys are supposed to read right now. And it is the thinnest, tiniest book.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  This thing might be 25 pages. It looks like a child illustrated it. I didn't know if he was joking around or not. When you open it up, it's like a pencil sketch picture that doesn't, you know, looks like a fifth grader did, no worse, like a first grader did it. Like kindergarten pictures. And then just one line below on each page.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  One sentence.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  One sentence. And so I said, okay, thanks man, I appreciate it. We'll go home and read it. The book is called Desiderata. I'll spell it for you. D E S I D E R A T A. Desiderata. And it's written by a guy named Max Airman from 1927. That's when this book was written. We come home with the dogs and we sit down and Lori reads it first and she says, oh my God. And by the way, you read it in like 15 minutes.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Five, I think.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Five. Says, oh my God, I want you to read this. You need to read this right now. And so I read it and it took me, you know, five or 15 minutes. And then we read it together again, page by page, taking the time to look up the meaning of each one of these poetic sentences on the bottom of each page, each page built on the other. And the book was profound life advice is how I would classify it, but not just profound life advice, like the blueprint of reminders to what Lori and I were just wishing for. Now the fact that we ran into Rob and he ran in the house and he pulled out this book out of tens of thousands of books and said, this is the book I think you're called to read right now. Without knowing any context, we didn't share any of our day with him.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  We haven't shared any of our life with him really. We're a mystery to him. He's a mystery to us, even though we see each other damn near every single day and exchange pleasantries. The fact that this is the book you went and pulled out, this child's looking book changed our life is no accident. So here's what we went on to do. After dissecting this book together for like another hour, we started to have better conversations around what would bring more peace? What kind of radical changes could we and should we make? What should the next year and the year after that look like? And I said, you know what we haven't done in a while? We haven't dusted off our dream life budget. And if you guys have been following for a while, or if you haven't, the dream life

• 15:47Speaker 01

  budget is something I created years ago for a friend of mine and turned into something that we then use for ourselves and what my clients, you can't be a client of mine without doing a dream life budget. And it's incredible because it's this very scientific way that looks at what you're spending right now. And then takes a line item by line item, look at what is missing from your life. What do you want to add or subtract? It figures out the new budget needed for that. It then calculates in, or we together calculate in, what changes would you have to make in your business, your team and all this in order to support this number, whether it went up or whether it went down. And we're able to dial in exactly what your dream life budget is to lead your dream life. And this is the important piece.

• 16:32Speaker 00

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• 17:16Speaker 00

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• 19:15Speaker 00

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• 19:58Speaker 00

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• 20:38Speaker 01

  Not a life where you're exchanging more life than you have to, to get more money than you needed, to live in the sweet spot. And that's what I think it's all about, is how do you dial in the sweet spot? Because that's where the peace comes from.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Something that I loved about the end of the book is that it said, never forget, no matter where your life is at, essentially right now, no matter how you're feeling, no matter if you feel like this is a bad point or a great point, that the universe is always conspiring essentially in your favor. And Chris literally has that tattooed on his arm. And we can get so far from the beliefs that actually got us to the point that we're at. I think sometimes you can get to a place where you have manifested and created, and you've created this life that whether you wake up in it and you're like, you know, you think it's great, or you think that it's not exactly what you want.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  You have to remember that it's really important to get back to the things that we're building it. And so, and maybe you'll be building in a different, you'll be building in a different way for the next season. But life is never like a set and forget, ever. It is never set and forget. It's like set and reset, set and reset, set and reset. And I hope that this podcast really helps you realize that even if you're in a spot that you don't love, it's just because you forgot to go back and reset. And it's an eternal repeated pattern of that. So I hope you go check out the dream life budget that Chris is talking about.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you guys want to do one, this is an incredibly important exercise, especially as we're wrapping up the year, going into the next, where you're starting to plan your next year. It doesn't matter if you overshot the moon a little bit and woke up too busy. It doesn't matter if you undershot your goals a little bit and said, oh, gosh, I never considered or calculated this in. This is where we right the ship. This is literally where we turn this ship towards the destination of perfect, of the sweet spot, of peace, like we were talking about. Not too little, not too much, but just right. Hell, I should call it the Goldilocks budget. Isn't that the one where the porridge was like, right? I should literally call it the Goldilocks budget exercise, because that's what we determine.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  What is your just right? So if you guys want to do one, reach out on DMs. No fancy sales page, nothing, but I love doing these. They're moderately affordable, but they will change your life forever. Reach out to me at ChrisWHard on Instagram. I will do it with any one of you, because it's one of my favorite things to do, is to watch the reaction of other people when they realize, wait, my dream life is within reach, or I'm already making enough for my dream life, I just have to make these changes. Like you and I realized, we already make enough without working, without doing these extra businesses or anything, to actually pay for our core dream life. We've just overshot the moon. So we've got some unwinding to do.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  So it's a really powerful exercise to do, and we'd love to do it with you guys. All right, guys, thanks for listening. We love and appreciate you.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  We'll see you next week.