Fear is Your Path to a Life Fully Expressed with Farnoosh Torabi

What if I tell you that fear, yes, fear, can be your compass to a life fully unleashed and lived out loud?

In today's fascinating chat with Farnoosh Torabi, we're cutting through the noise of financial fears and biases that hold us back.

Farnoosh isn't just talking the talk; she's walked the walk, turning her fear into a blueprint for a fulfilled life with her book, A Healthy State of Panic. We're diving deep into her journey, from overcoming debt to embracing the role of being a financially successful woman in a relationship. 

Don't let another day slip by ruled by doubt. Tune in now, and let's conquer those fears together – it's your first step to freedom.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS: 

• Financial biases and personal narratives around money
• The interconnection of money, life, and overcoming fears
• Strategies for embracing fear and uncertainty in personal and financial growth

CONNECT WITH FARNOOSH TORABI
Get to know more about Farnoosh Torabi: https://farnoosh.tv
Follow Farnoosh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farnooshtorabi
Get her book, A Healthy State of Panic : https://ahealthystateofpanic.com
Subscribe to So Money podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/so-money-with-farnoosh-torabi/id955939085

RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU
If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:

• Protecting What Matters with Trent Shelton
• Getting What You Really Want with Cayla Craft
• Are You Really Living a Rich Life or a Bankrupt One?
• How to Do Money Right As a Family

TAKE THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM QUIZ:
Take this free quiz to see where you are on the path to financial freedom and what your next steps are to move you to a new financial destiny at http://www.YourFinancialFreedomQuiz.com 

OTHER RESOURCES:
7-Day Money Plan Workshop: https://www.TheMoneyPlanWorkshop.com
Affluent Entrepreneurs Private Facebook Group https://www.melabraham.com/group/

CONNECT WITH ME:
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Transcript

Mel Abraham [00:00:00]:
When you have a chance to talk to someone that you've always looked forward.

Mel Abraham [00:00:05]:
To having a conversation with, well, that's.

Mel Abraham [00:00:07]:
What just happened in the affluent entrepreneur show. This episode is pure gold. It is with now my friend Farnouj Tarabi. She is the author of a healthy state of panic.

Mel Abraham [00:00:19]:
It is an amazing book, and she.

Mel Abraham [00:00:22]:
Completely turns the concept of ear on its head. And as an entrepreneur, as someone that's.

Mel Abraham [00:00:27]:
Trying to live an affluent life, fear creeps up.

Mel Abraham [00:00:30]:
Whether it's uncertainty, whether it's exposure, whether it's money, whether it's FoMO. She talks about all of that. We talk about all of that and how to navigate it, because if fear becomes the carrier pigeon of the message, you need to live the life you were meant to live. This is the book for you.

Mel Abraham [00:00:46]:
All right, jump in the episode.

Mel Abraham [00:00:48]:
Let me know what you think.

Mel Abraham [00:00:49]:
All right?

Mel Abraham [00:00:50]:
And I look forward to seeing you in the episode. Cheers.

Mel Abraham [00:00:52]:
This is the Affluent Entrepreneur Show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an athlete entrepreneur.

Mel Abraham [00:01:28]:
Oh, my God. Parnuch, so good to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:01:34]:
My pleasure. Thank you, Mel. Anything for you. You're such a nice.

Mel Abraham [00:01:40]:
That. Thank you so much. It's been such a journey. You might say that.

Mel Abraham [00:01:47]:
I've been a lurker for years in.

Mel Abraham [00:01:49]:
The background, and you and I just.

Mel Abraham [00:01:51]:
Had a chance to meet as a result of your new book.

Mel Abraham [00:01:54]:
Now, this is the advanced copy. I got my other copy that you.

Mel Abraham [00:01:57]:
Signed, but I don't want to mess it up because it's signed.

Mel Abraham [00:02:03]:
We have a rule in our house, my wife, because I have so many.

Mel Abraham [00:02:06]:
Books, and she says, just get rid of them.

Mel Abraham [00:02:08]:
I said, no, they're signed. So our rule is if it's signed, I don't have to get rid of it.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:02:12]:
Oh, yeah, that's special.

Mel Abraham [00:02:14]:
Yeah.

Mel Abraham [00:02:16]:
And for those of the folks that don't know you, and Lord knows why they wouldn't, because you've got one of the most popular money podcasts. So money out there. You've been on a lot of the airwaves. This is not your first book. It's your fourth book. That you've done. But this is a book, and why I think this was so important for me to get you on here that I think is going to resonate for people because it's a healthy state of panic. It's about fear.

Mel Abraham [00:02:45]:
It's about how do you use fear to a benefit? Because too often we think that fear is a negative.

Mel Abraham [00:02:53]:
It's something that holds us back.

Mel Abraham [00:02:55]:
But the way you frame it in.

Mel Abraham [00:02:56]:
This book and the way you present it in this book starts to change that.

Mel Abraham [00:03:00]:
But before I get into the book.

Mel Abraham [00:03:03]:
Let me ask you this, if you would just really quickly, for those that.

Mel Abraham [00:03:06]:
Maybe don't know, you just tell them who Farnouche is.

Mel Abraham [00:03:09]:
If they really want to know, they need to read the book because you put a lot of you in there.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:03:13]:
Well, professionally, Farnosh is a financial educator whose advice is rooted in journalism and truth seeking and her own journey. As I was somebody who came out of college and grad school with $30,000 in debt and making $18 an hour living in New York City, you can do the math. And as a result, I needed financial advice. I was also working as a financial journalist at the time and began to share that with my peers. At the time, nobody was caring about a 20 something in the early two thousand s and her money. Everybody was focused on those who had already made money and they could sell more fancy products to them. And so I found this niche pretty quickly where I was able to serve a very underserved and underappreciated market, myself included, young adults. And that was, as I said about 20 years ago.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:04:15]:
And I've since continued that. And my work has spanned writing podcasts, television, the stage, and my new book, a healthy state of panic, which is about money, yes, but also about so many other things, as I find that when we talk about money, we're talking about life. We're talking about how we were raised and our feelings and our goals and our businesses. And so for me, I'd like to.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:04:44]:
Position this book as a way to.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:04:47]:
Expand the conversations that I've really been having with people for over 20 years, but just to more intentionally go into those other pockets of life.

Mel Abraham [00:04:55]:
And I love the way you do it, because you do really clearly say.

Mel Abraham [00:05:00]:
You can't separate money from life. They're two sides of the same coin if you truly want to live that fulfilled life.

Mel Abraham [00:05:09]:
And I think it's really important. Now you say something in the book.

Mel Abraham [00:05:13]:
That just caught me, and if we.

Mel Abraham [00:05:16]:
Get a chance, we'll talk about the.

Mel Abraham [00:05:17]:
Whole dropping the kids off at the wrong birthday party.

Mel Abraham [00:05:23]:
Let me tell you, when I read it, it was funny.

Mel Abraham [00:05:25]:
When I listened to the audiobook, I.

Mel Abraham [00:05:28]:
Was in tears because I could only imagine.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:05:33]:
I actually have the video of the hour afterwards where I'm putting it all.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:05:39]:
Together and I'm like, oh, my God.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:05:41]:
I actually dropped my kids off at the wrong birthday party and nothing bad happened. So I think I probably landed on the best mom idea of the year. And I filmed my son, who was, I think, four or five at the time, and I was like, tell everybody what we just did or what I did. My kids know I'm a little off. You don't know that about me.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:06:04]:
They haven't experienced the real mate.

Mel Abraham [00:06:07]:
Well, to get the whole story, you're going to have to get the book because it is funny, it's exposing, it just allows you to relate to it.

Mel Abraham [00:06:15]:
But you also say something about the road to riches is paved with weirdos and misfits. This whole idea of fitting in and.

Mel Abraham [00:06:31]:
The fear of not fitting in and.

Mel Abraham [00:06:32]:
The fear of how to navigate that.

Mel Abraham [00:06:37]:
You bring that up in the book.

Mel Abraham [00:06:38]:
And I'd love to just kind of.

Mel Abraham [00:06:40]:
Explore that process and where that came.

Mel Abraham [00:06:43]:
From and why that seems to be something that is so important, especially in.

Mel Abraham [00:06:49]:
Our total social media world and everyone allowing everyone on the outside to say who you are.

Mel Abraham [00:06:56]:
So how you show up, and I.

Mel Abraham [00:06:58]:
Think it's a really important conversation for us to have.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:07:01]:
Yeah, I consider myself a misfit and a weirdo, and now I wear those titles with badges of honor. As a kid, you can only imagine the devastation of being a farnoughe in a classroom full of Christina's and Ashley's and Jennifer's. And so the reason I think that being an outlier, let's just say, is.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:07:24]:
It as far as those who I.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:07:27]:
Have seen, and I think you can probably relate to this, who have really created exceptional lives, they've created really interesting things, they've made impacts.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:07:36]:
And I think it's because.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:07:40]:
At a very early onset, we are forced to sort of deal with rejection and failure and insecurities and loneliness. And while it's hard, and I don't want for this, for anybody, I don't wish that people go through this, but it is life, and it is what happens. But if we could just sort of appreciate that going through that and coming out on the other side of that and getting up, the world is still tilting on its access. Life goes on. And you choosing to still participate and show up, I feel like that is the sort of strength and muster that is unmatched. And people who are different and unique, who initially aren't understood and they're not accepted, and they are rejected. And they do fail perhaps more than others, because they're forced to fail. They're led to failure.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:08:31]:
I think we're still here and we're.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:08:35]:
Still making things happen. Let's explore that, because I think there's a lot to appreciate again and learn from that process.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:08:44]:
Again, as a mom, do I want.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:08:47]:
For my kids to fail and be rejected?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:08:50]:
I mean, yeah, kind of, a little bit.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:08:52]:
But I want them to, like, failure is the best teacher.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:08:56]:
So to create those artificial boundaries to.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:09:02]:
Encourage them to fail, to allow them to fail, that's something that I have to get better at doing. But it's so important for them to experience at home so that when they go out into the real world, they're more equipped. So that's what I mean.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:09:14]:
I think that entrepreneurs, by inherently, we're.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:09:19]:
A little risk friendlier than others. And I think it's because we have had a very deep relationship with risk. We know the risk of being rejected and isolation and exposing ourselves, and yet we get on the other side of that. And so with all of that and all those tools and all those learnings, we can, I think, make amazing things in this world. And I think it was Chris Rock who said, again, I don't want this to happen to my kids or other kids, but bullying, being bullied, he was like, for me, and this is just his stories, that was, for me, the impetus to success, because I wanted to.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:10:01]:
Prove those jerks wrong. And we all need a light, right?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:10:07]:
A fire. We all need a motivation. And sometimes it comes from.

Mel Abraham [00:10:13]:
Yeah, so, well, you grew up with.

Mel Abraham [00:10:16]:
A name like Farnouch. I grew up with a name like Melvin, and I was an identical twin, so we were just such an oddity.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:10:21]:
What's your brother's name?

Mel Abraham [00:10:23]:
Jeffrey. So I don't know how they got that.

Mel Abraham [00:10:25]:
Now.

Mel Abraham [00:10:26]:
My dad wanted to name us Melvin and Calvin, and my mom put her foot down, and I said, you put your foot down.

Mel Abraham [00:10:31]:
One name too late.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:10:34]:
So you wanted to be Jeffrey. Well, or something like Jeffrey.

Mel Abraham [00:10:39]:
And the only reason I go by Mel now, this is not me on the interview, but the only reason I go by Mel is right after high call, I met a girl.

Mel Abraham [00:10:49]:
I called her up.

Mel Abraham [00:10:51]:
Her sister answers the phone, and I said, who's calling? And she says, who's calling? And I said, melvin. And she says, no, seriously, who's calling?

Mel Abraham [00:10:59]:
I go to pick her up, and.

Mel Abraham [00:11:01]:
Her mom is know and says she's just finishing getting ready. Go ahead and sit down. Make yourself comfortable. And I hear her mom go down.

Mel Abraham [00:11:09]:
The hall talking to her daughter that.

Mel Abraham [00:11:12]:
I'm supposed to take out on a.

Mel Abraham [00:11:13]:
Date, saying, you're right, he doesn't look like a Melvin.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:11:18]:
And I go, well, there's this whole section in a healthy state of panic about the dorian gray effect. And this is exactly as, for whatever reason, we have in our minds an image of what a Melvin, a Jeffrey, a farnough would look like. The thing about being a farnought, though, is that there's no precedents, there's no know which. It's almost worse because people have all the imagination to work with. And usually it's not a friendly imagination, but then also it gives you kind of a canvas to become whoever you want to be without bias, necessarily, although people did still have bias, but it became content for me. I mean, I wrote my college essay on the impact of having a name like mine and walking through life with that and all that comes with it, and ultimately the acceptance that comes with it.

Mel Abraham [00:12:16]:
But it took you a while to.

Mel Abraham [00:12:17]:
Accept and to sit back and stand in it and say, hey, this is who I am.

Mel Abraham [00:12:21]:
And I think that everyone listening, everyone watching, we're going to find that moment.

Mel Abraham [00:12:28]:
In our life where we're going to.

Mel Abraham [00:12:29]:
Have to do it somehow. We're going to have to allow our real selves to expose ourselves somehow.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:12:37]:
I think being able to know who you are and have that sense of awareness, that self awareness. A lot of people don't have that. You have that guy or woman in your life who says the wrong things at the wrong time, doesn't have a filter after a meeting. They think it went great. It was awful. And I just always, never want to be that person. So I spent a lot of time being intuitive and careful about myself. Not in a way to restrict myself, but because I think it is really important to know yourself first.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:13:16]:
Growing up, I always wanted to know what other people thought of me.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:13:20]:
And that's a shortcut, I guess, but.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:13:22]:
It'S not really getting to the bottom of things. It's like, well, who are you? Who do you think you are? That's what's really important.

Mel Abraham [00:13:30]:
And you kind of looked at this.

Mel Abraham [00:13:33]:
Whole idea of this fear and those elements as not something, at least in the book you did, as not something.

Mel Abraham [00:13:45]:
To move away from, but something to highlight a journey towards, highlight a need to prepare.

Mel Abraham [00:13:54]:
I think the words were that you used.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:13:56]:
I think that when fear arrives in our lives. We've been conditioned to see and experience it as a weakness, as a negative. Well, my thesis is, what if we accept fear as another part of who we are, where this is an emotion that's carrying a story about who we are, and more importantly, what we want to protect. At its core, fear is a defense mechanism. You and I would not be here if it weren't for fear. There's a lot to appreciate when it comes to fear.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:14:34]:
But especially in the entrepreneur space and.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:14:37]:
In the leadership space, there is this negative association with fear. There are so many books about how to be fearless. Just drop the fear because it's not doing you any good.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:14:50]:
But to say that we can just be fearless without the prescription, without the.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:14:55]:
How to I think, is wrong and.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:15:00]:
It'S not actually right.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:15:02]:
I think that as humans, we should be allowed to feel all the things and to trust that when we feel.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:15:08]:
Something, trust that maybe it's there to give you an important message, a deliverance.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:15:15]:
Of something, especially, and I talk about in the book about fear as it presents in these big crossroads in our lives when the stakes are high. I'm not talking about when you're feeling fear and you're in an alleyway and it's midnight and you hear some weird noises like, trust the fear and leave, run, call 911, something.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:15:36]:
But when you're in the crossroads of.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:15:39]:
A big career decision, a professional move, a relationship that you're thinking about taking to the next level or exiting, I think it's important to take a minute or two, a beat, really, with the fear, to not be so reactionary, impulsively reactionary, but to say, okay, why has this fear shown up? What is it telling me about what I need to protect? Usually, fear arrives when there is a.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:16:06]:
Gap of knowledge, of certainty.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:16:10]:
And so the work then begins. And the book is where I guide.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:16:15]:
Folks through recognizing the different kinds of.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:16:19]:
Fears that show up, too. Like, it's not just fear, this monolith, but fear of loneliness, of rejection, of my favorite chapter, exposure. The fear of losing your freedom, the fear of money, and how that, first of all, manifests, how it presents, usually, and then what to do with it, how to actually use it as a tool to go get the information, the confidence, the understanding, the context that you need to decide what to do next.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:16:48]:
And maybe the decision is to abort, but maybe it means to walk with.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:16:54]:
More of that knowledge so that you can mitigate for risk. I feel in my life, fear has always been a tool. Not always. I mean, of course, as a young kid growing up as the daughter of iranian immigrants in Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester, a scary place at the time.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:17:12]:
For a lot of reasons, I overreacted to fear.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:17:16]:
I was raised to be fearful, but only to kind of see experience fear as a one trick pony. Like, when you feel fear, run, hide, make noise.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:17:27]:
And that was my six year old brain dealing with fear.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:17:31]:
As I've evolved and I've experienced life, I've learned to appreciate fear also as this evolutionary experience, what you really are.

Mel Abraham [00:17:40]:
Doing in the book.

Mel Abraham [00:17:41]:
And the nice thing is that at the end of every chapter, you walk.

Mel Abraham [00:17:46]:
Through some things to do to navigate through that type of fear, whether it's rejection, whether it's uncertainty, whether it's exposure and FOMO and all those things, which.

Mel Abraham [00:17:59]:
Makes it not only theoretical, but tactical.

Mel Abraham [00:18:05]:
It allows people to move through it. And I think that the general message across all of it is fear is the carrier pigeon for a message you need to receive.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:18:14]:
Right.

Mel Abraham [00:18:16]:
I think that that's really a powerful way to look at it. Obviously, putting fear of bodily harm aside.

Mel Abraham [00:18:25]:
That kind of stuff is a different kind of fear. But so many of us, like, I.

Mel Abraham [00:18:31]:
Left a big consulting job in downtown.

Mel Abraham [00:18:34]:
Los Angeles because I realized I wasn't living my life.

Mel Abraham [00:18:41]:
I got my accounting degree, and here I am for one of the big firms in downtown, and I'm working late.

Mel Abraham [00:18:47]:
And I finally just kind of walked.

Mel Abraham [00:18:49]:
In, and it was one of those.

Mel Abraham [00:18:50]:
Things that I just inhaled, walked in.

Mel Abraham [00:18:52]:
And said, I quit. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it.

Mel Abraham [00:18:58]:
I probably could have been a little.

Mel Abraham [00:19:00]:
More methodical with it, thinking back on it, but this was obviously, I was, I don't know, 20 something years old.

Mel Abraham [00:19:06]:
And a little more spontaneous.

Mel Abraham [00:19:11]:
I quit, and then a week later, I was in Japan for four months.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:19:15]:
Wow.

Mel Abraham [00:19:16]:
With no plan.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:19:18]:
Well, I think if it was Mel two years ago, maybe the calculus would have been different. I think that's okay. I think that's part of the risk assessment with fear, is that I'm feeling this fear.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:19:29]:
There's all these potential consequences, but, all.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:19:32]:
Right, let's actually worst case scenario, this. And that's part of one of the things I talk about in the book, is, like, when fear arrives, sometimes the next step is to map out what.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:19:44]:
Would happen if you did nothing or.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:19:48]:
You did something that scares you. But let's foresee this. And I think back in your 20s, you didn't have maybe a mortgage or dependence or anything that was keeping you tethered to that life and weighing you down. So the risk analysis came out positive. Like, go do this. You don't have a lot to lose. You have more to lose if you stay. You have unactualized dreams, and your health could also suffer, whereas fast forward to maybe two years in present time.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:20:25]:
You might still leave, but you might do it again, to your point, more methodically. You wouldn't walk in and just say, I quit.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:20:32]:
You would create a plan you talk about.

Mel Abraham [00:20:35]:
And this kind of leads into one of the fears that you talk about.

Mel Abraham [00:20:38]:
In the book, the fear of uncertainty. That uncertainty is all around us.

Mel Abraham [00:20:47]:
Stock markets up, stock markets down. Business is up, business is down. But this idea of playing what you.

Mel Abraham [00:20:57]:
Just talked about, this what ifs scenario.

Mel Abraham [00:21:00]:
As the vehicle to start navigating through that, you actually give the recipe on.

Mel Abraham [00:21:07]:
How to kind of walk through those.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:21:09]:
Yeah, I write the book in a chronological way, not my life chronologically, but I think how fear sometimes works through our bodies and through our lives as we age. And the fear of failure and the fear of uncertainty are sort of dovetailed chapters, because while we fear failure, what we really fear is the uncertainty that is attached to that potential failure. It's not that we don't know whether or not we're going to fail. Like, failure is part of the journey. We can almost always expect some kind of misstep or regret. But it's like, how bad is it going to be?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:21:44]:
Will I be equipped?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:21:46]:
Will I recover? Is this going to cancel me out forever?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:21:50]:
And so with uncertainty, I think part.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:21:53]:
Of the, when that fear arrives, I think that what it wants us to protect, again, because fear is a mechanism.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:02]:
To show us what it is that.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:05]:
We care about, what our values are, what we want to protect. So it's like, okay, step one, identify what it is in this uncertain time, in this guaranteed uncertainty, like, what you want the outcome to be. You can't control for everything, but what.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:25]:
Is most sacred to you.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:26]:
You want to be able to walk out of this situation with what in hand.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:32]:
Could it be your money?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:35]:
Could it be your integrity?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:38]:
Could it be your title?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:40]:
Whatever it is? I think we all source some sense.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:44]:
Of.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:22:47]:
We attach our sense of self worth to something, and that's part of the exercise. Then it's remembering that while you can't control for the uncertainties, you can control for what is certain. And this is what we always skip, because we think when life is uncertain, we have nothing that is in our domain and in our control. We just assume we have to give it all up or we have to relinquish to the unknowns. And I say, no. There are so many things that are certain about your life, that are assets that you can leverage, especially in times of uncertainty. So let's just make this really concrete. If you're about to start a business and you don't know if it's going to succeed or fail, maybe it's a restaurant, so it probably is going to fail.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:23:33]:
But maybe you're starting this business not.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:23:36]:
In your 20s, not even in your 30s, but maybe in your forty s and your fifty s. And you've started a lot of things. And you know, what it takes to sort of get through the murkiness.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:23:46]:
And you're coming to this project with.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:23:50]:
Your body of work, your resources, your connections, your network. Maybe you do have a financial Runway. So if it doesn't make money right away, you're going to be okay. These are real concrete certainties that very important to take inventory of this, because this is the sort of stuff, when you look at this and reflect on this, you'll be more likely to approach that uncertain thing with more confidence and a plan. Whereas you went from feeling completely despondent and completely vulnerable to failure and uncertainty, but you walked yourself through these exercises, through these reflections, through these inventories, and now you're like, oh, actually, I can do it. I mean, for me, I just launched an investing class earlier this year, and to my surprise, hundreds of people signed up. It was so far, so good.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:24:45]:
I felt really inspired.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:24:47]:
And I'm a producer by trade. I'm a financial journalist. I worked in broadcast. So I'm trained to always think three steps ahead. And I thought I had done all of the sort of, like, troubleshooting ahead of time for this live workshop and then come to find out that I didn't know that my Zoom account only allowed for 100 people to watch this.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:11]:
Seminar live when multiple hundreds of people.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:16]:
Had signed up to watch the seminar live. So you can imagine the aftermath of that. So I had to clean up a huge, giant mess and give refunds and.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:28]:
All the things, but I got through it.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:30]:
And, you know, how I got through it is like I went into immediate action mode.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:35]:
I could not reverse time.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:37]:
I could not undo the mistake, but I wanted to protect my integrity and my brand, which is always at the top of my to do list.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:46]:
I am resourceful.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:48]:
I reached out to people who I trusted, who I was like, what do I do? How do I clean this up?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:52]:
And also not just refund people, but.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:25:55]:
I want to make people like me again. This isn't just transactional for me. And so I went through some really fast coaching within a span of a couple of hours. And then I also decided to admit my mistake publicly, which I hemmed and hot about.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:11]:
But I was like, I think that's what's.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:12]:
Because I'm also the person that I want to be known as someone you.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:16]:
Can trust and who is transparent and.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:21]:
Admits her failures, because I'm a human. And I think that's part of why people are drawn to me. Like, I'm not just this robot online giving you financial advice. And so I thought it was on brand to do that, and it ended.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:35]:
Up being such, in the end, in.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:40]:
Hindsight, what a great outcome. I wouldn't have liked to have gone.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:45]:
Through it the way I did, but it's like, again, and I wrote about.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:50]:
This, it's like, we don't know what the uncertainty is going to be. We know that things are going to fail. We don't know how bad it's going to be.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:26:56]:
But remember a few things. Which one is that you are enough.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:27:02]:
To get through this, because you've been through already so much like I've been through worse things. This was not the worst of my mistakes. And so I was able to bring all that learning to this moment and rise from the ashes. And so we forget about this, about ourselves. So often. We are the first to undercut ourselves. We are the first to underestimate our capabilities.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:27:27]:
And why?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:27:28]:
Because we're humans, we tend to have a bias towards recent events. And so if recently you have failed, you forget that. Well, actually, over the last 20 years, your chart has been on the up and up like the stock market. If you zoom in, there's zigzags. But when you zoom out, it's a nice, beautiful upswing. And we don't give ourselves enough credit, and we don't take the inventory. So I think that's really what the fear wants you to do. When uncertainty knocks.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:27:57]:
When the fear of uncertainty knocks is like, okay, this is my call. This is my nudge to identify what.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:28:05]:
Is certain in my life that I.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:28:07]:
Can leverage, that are tools, that no matter what happens, I'm going to be able to walk through it. And if you don't feel like you have those certainties, then the fear is telling you to get to work, because maybe what you need to ride out the uncertainty, especially as entrepreneurs, is financial Runway. I would never tell somebody, quit your job and just go start the business. You need to have a plan. You need to have savings.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:28:32]:
You need to make sure you're not.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:28:34]:
Too indebted with credit cards, because starting a business has a lot of liability. So you have insurance.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:28:41]:
So that's the stuff.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:28:43]:
And if you fear uncertainty, maybe it's because there's legit stuff that you need to take care of to get to create those assets for yourself.

Mel Abraham [00:28:51]:
I couldn't agree more.

Mel Abraham [00:28:52]:
I mean, like, you sit back and.

Mel Abraham [00:28:54]:
Go, do not confuse what you think.

Mel Abraham [00:28:58]:
Is committed when it's really reckless. Don't burn the boats.

Mel Abraham [00:29:01]:
Plan for it.

Mel Abraham [00:29:02]:
I know you just had Noah Kagan on your show, and he kind of talked about this, how not burning the boats and everything, too.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:29:12]:
And I really appreciated it coming from a serial entrepreneur where if you just read the headlines, you think, oh, this person just took chances and struck gold and risked a lot. And I always tell people the reason those stories might make the news are because those are weird stories. The news doesn't report the ordinary, unusual and the normal. They report the outlier stuff. So when there is an entrepreneur who kind of, like, sold all, liquidated his life and started an $8 billion company, what seems to be in six months, that is not how, first of all, it should happen, not how it does happen. It's not advised the entrepreneur who slept in their car for three months and was homeless. And then I want to write that story. That's a really interesting story, because that's unusual and not to be mistaken with.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:30:13]:
How businesses, great businesses, are built.

Mel Abraham [00:30:16]:
So, good. Now, it wouldn't be a conversation with you if we didn't talk on money.

Mel Abraham [00:30:22]:
Because I want to hit on the.

Mel Abraham [00:30:24]:
Fear of money, and there's a specific.

Mel Abraham [00:30:27]:
Area and a specific story you tell. And I think it's really important because I tend to agree with you 100%.

Mel Abraham [00:30:34]:
On your perspective of a couple being together on this money journey and not.

Mel Abraham [00:30:41]:
One sided versus the other sided.

Mel Abraham [00:30:43]:
And you came from a very traditional.

Mel Abraham [00:30:45]:
Household where your father was the one.

Mel Abraham [00:30:49]:
That was kind of running the money and mom wasn't. I had the same upbringing. But I know for me, what got.

Mel Abraham [00:30:58]:
Me to start saying, hey, we've got to do this together, is watching. After my father passed away, my wife's father passed away, watching the fear in.

Mel Abraham [00:31:05]:
Both our mother's lives of sitting back.

Mel Abraham [00:31:09]:
Saying, can I keep the house? What am I going to do? I don't know anything. And all of this stuff, it was hugely impactful. And I just don't think that it's a siloed journey. And you had a situation where, as a child, kind of got put in between. I mean, it was like a precursor.

Mel Abraham [00:31:25]:
To what you do now.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:31:27]:
Right? No, you're right.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:31:28]:
It's an interesting. I never put those two together, but, yeah, it's like I've been basically a financial mediator for my entire life. My parents got married young.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:31:42]:
My mother especially, she was 19 when.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:31:45]:
She had me and didn't came to America. Both of them came to America. My dad was here to get educated and got his phd. That was his track. My mother's track was not so defined. And she came here not speaking the language, no plan, just like, okay, got to raise me.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:01]:
And in Worcester, no less, where she.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:05]:
Didn'T feel like, she wasn't feeling, she didn't have a community where she could connect with people in her life stage and going with, through what she was going. She had a language barrier, a license barrier, all sorts of barriers. And so all this to say that the landscape for my parents marriage was sort of built on a lot of rickety wood and the cement wasn't firm.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:32]:
And I think my mom, I always.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:34]:
Say she did her best.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:35]:
And I used to feel very sad.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:38]:
Personally about this, like, oh, I was the wedge between her and her freedoms.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:43]:
And that's a terrible thing for a.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:45]:
Kid to feel, but it's just because I don't think a 19 year old.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:49]:
Young woman wants to be sort of.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:32:52]:
Like, who wants that for themselves most? Not my mom, at least. And I wouldn't want that for me or my daughter. And so I can understand now, years later, I can objectively feel sad for her and go, oh, my God, that was hard. But the arguments that she and my.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:33:10]:
Dad had more often than not centered.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:33:12]:
Around money, my dad making it and controlling it, my mother making none of it, and always asking for it and feeling like a child.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:33:20]:
And so I witnessed a lot of the arguing.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:33:24]:
I was an only child for the first eleven years until my brother was born. And so I had to grow up pretty quickly. I had a lot of adult influence. I didn't have a lot of kids to talk to at home or in the neighborhood. And so I had to get very acclimated to adult concerns quickly. And my parents, my mom would tell me to go, tell your dad this, that they would have silent treatments all the time. And I was basically like her pr person, going to my dad being like.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:33:56]:
This is what we want.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:01]:
And so. But really, Mel, the takeaway for me.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:05]:
Experiencing all of that, so many things I experienced and benefited from, probably, but.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:14]:
Really the takeaway was that for me.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:17]:
As an adult woman, I was going.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:20]:
To make my own money.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:21]:
Come hell or high water, I was.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:22]:
Going to make my own money. No one's going to tell me what to do.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:26]:
And I needed to be in charge.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:28]:
Of my financial freedom. So as soon as I could get a job, I got a job. And as soon as I could invest, I started investing. As soon as I could buy a house, I bought a house. As soon as I could start a business, I did. And it was this drive in me that from the outside was just like.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:44]:
Wow, she's an ambitious woman. But on the inside, I was terrified.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:49]:
It was the fear that was fueling.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:50]:
Me to get my financial life in order, and it still is, but I.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:34:57]:
Have a healthy way of relating to it. It's like, okay, I fear, what if.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:35:02]:
This year isn't a good revenue year?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:35:05]:
Or what if my husband loses his job? Or what if something happens and we have a huge expense and we don't have enough in savings? So I do a lot of these worst case scenarios often, and it's been good for me because it doesn't create anxiety for me.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:35:20]:
For me, it just puts me in solution.

Mel Abraham [00:35:24]:
Good. So good. Now.

Mel Abraham [00:35:27]:
Your husband, Tim, and you, you wrote a prior book.

Mel Abraham [00:35:34]:
About this, and I know this isn't this book, but.

Mel Abraham [00:35:37]:
When she makes more, and I think.

Mel Abraham [00:35:39]:
It'S a really interesting. And I'm going to speak as a.

Mel Abraham [00:35:41]:
Dude, as a guy, okay. Because I think there's a lot of men out there that will feel threatened by someone like you or like my.

Mel Abraham [00:35:51]:
Wife, who's amazing at what she does. I didn't. I actually found that I needed that to hold me to a standard, to challenge me. But navigating that dynamic and not allowing.

Mel Abraham [00:36:05]:
You to put the wedge in a.

Mel Abraham [00:36:08]:
Relationship and keep you guys close and.

Mel Abraham [00:36:10]:
Everything, it's a challenging thing.

Mel Abraham [00:36:13]:
I'm guessing at first, most of my relationships prior to my wife, and we'll be married now, 13 years this year wasn't necessarily that way. But when I met her, we were even playing field, and there was just none of that. And I didn't feel threatened by it. And it might have been just the way she approached it too.

Mel Abraham [00:36:36]:
I got a great life partner.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:36:40]:
Well, it's so complex, Mel, and we could do a whole other episode on this. Actually, this is the 10th anniversary of when she makes more. I'm thinking about coming out with an audiobook who knows about. That's sort of tangential to it. I feel like there's so much more still to explore. I thought by ten years we would be like, okay, problem solved, complexities resolved. All women who make more than men are finding love, and men are rising to the occasion. It's still a problem area, and that's why I wanted to write it.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:10]:
I felt as though this was such a taboo topic. I was experiencing this in my own relationship at the time. And as a financial expert who had.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:19]:
Felt like she had talked about everything about money with people, this was one.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:23]:
Corner of the financial conversation world that.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:27]:
I was getting zipped lips, like, nobody.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:30]:
Wanted to talk to me about this. I also didn't feel like it was.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:34]:
Appropriate or it was socially acceptable to.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:39]:
Say out loud, even in front of just a few people, that I made more than my husband, then boyfriend, that.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:47]:
It would sort of, I don't know.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:37:49]:
Make people very uncomfortable. And so then I knew I had a great idea to write about. I was like, oh, this is the stuff that makes for books, the things that people don't want to talk about. And as I started to explore it, I realized not only are the men.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:05]:
Generally discomforted by it, and again, we've.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:09]:
Just not been conditioned for this. Just like the fear. We're not conditioned to accept it as a healthy tool.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:15]:
We're not conditioned to see financially strong women, period.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:22]:
But also in relationships with men as something to aspire to and something to revere in a patriarchy still, that is.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:32]:
Very much attaching gender roles to what.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:36]:
You do in a marriage and what you do in a relationship, that if.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:39]:
You'Re the wife, you are the provider.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:42]:
In sort of the caregiving department and the domestic department. If you're the man, you are the provider when it comes to money.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:52]:
And.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:38:55]:
Those roles were very divided and very strict for many generations.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:39:00]:
And for modern men today, who are.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:39:03]:
Again, modern, they consider probably themselves feminists, they probably still, part of them is like, well, what's uncomfortable with this? Just because of the way they were raised, what was modeled for them? We're human creatures. I mean, we gravitate towards what we know. And so this paradigm shift, really, with money and marriage that I'm seeing, and now it's like one in four women are the breadwinners or the primary financial providers in their households. So we've come a very long way.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:39:33]:
And yet we are still, because of.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:39:35]:
The way that we've been conditioned. It's new to us, to a lot of us. And so with that comes requires a little bit of learning and acceptance and reflection and honesty, communication, which is hard enough as it is in a marriage. And then you add to it this layer of financial complexity. It gets real spicy.

Mel Abraham [00:39:55]:
It does.

Mel Abraham [00:39:56]:
Look, our first year, year and a half of a marriage, Stephanie, she would.

Mel Abraham [00:39:59]:
Tell you, we didn't think we were going to make it. I mean, I got married late.

Mel Abraham [00:40:03]:
I was 50 when we got married.

Mel Abraham [00:40:04]:
So there was a lot of learning.

Mel Abraham [00:40:06]:
There was a lot of life behind us that set some things in stone.

Mel Abraham [00:40:10]:
But ultimately, one, I adored her.

Mel Abraham [00:40:13]:
Two, I respected her.

Mel Abraham [00:40:14]:
Three, I trusted her. And four of the biggest thing was.

Mel Abraham [00:40:18]:
What you just said is we needed to figure out how to communicate.

Mel Abraham [00:40:22]:
We just needed to figure out what that was like.

Mel Abraham [00:40:25]:
But I can say as a man.

Mel Abraham [00:40:31]:
Who does well with a woman who does well.

Mel Abraham [00:40:37]:
It'S a very fulfilling relationship. And I think that it is not binary, either one or the other. There is no reason that.

Mel Abraham [00:40:48]:
A woman.

Mel Abraham [00:40:49]:
Can'T be the breadwinner, can't make money, and be in a loving, caring relationship.

Mel Abraham [00:40:55]:
At the same time.

Mel Abraham [00:40:57]:
It doesn't have to be binary.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:40:59]:
Right? And my book explores all the different reasons why, and it's different for every couple, why it can present as a challenge. One is the couple might be cool with it. My husband and I were not bothered by it. I think partly because it was always understood that I'm the entrepreneur. I have no income ceiling. My husband's a software developer. He likes to work for startups, and he's going to have his own financial trajectory, which is probably not as sort of like open ended as mine. And it's more difficult for couples where, let's say, the husband is making more, and then it flips.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:41:44]:
And there was always this expectation that it was going to go in one direction, then it doesn't. And that's a little bit harder or a lot harder. But the book explores all the different reasons why couples may be challenged by it. It could just be, again, like, you're okay with it, but your mother in law is not, society's not. Your friends at work are weirded out by it. I remember going in for a job.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:42:07]:
Interview, and it was to be a.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:42:11]:
Correspondent at a network, and so it was really a public facing job.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:42:17]:
The person interviewing me had read my.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:42:20]:
Bio, had known I had written books on, I'd written this book about women, breadwinners. And he said, not in a nice way. He said, well, what does your husband do? As if I'm making more. My husband's just sitting at home cracking peanuts.

Mel Abraham [00:42:34]:
Oh, my God.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:42:35]:
That there is no world where a woman could make more than her husband and her husband could have a meaningful.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:42:42]:
Job and contributes, whether he works from.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:42:45]:
Inside the home or outside the home, that it was such a zero sum game for this person. And I was like, you're going to be my boss. And this is already how you're perceiving me. And I remember going to. I was at another job, and I was writing the book at the time, and it was no secret to my colleagues and the person who was in charge of my timesheet. And I had to put in my invoices to this person. He would see how much. And I was making quite a bit of money at the time.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:11]:
I was working again on camera, and I was freelancing.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:15]:
So anyway, not to brag, but the.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:18]:
Point at that is that he would see my weekly invoices, and he'd look.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:23]:
At me and he'd go, your husband's a lucky man.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:27]:
And again, this wasn't to be nice. This was to be sort of, like, dismissed over my husband.

Mel Abraham [00:43:31]:
He is, but not for the reason.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:33]:
He said, yeah, it was like the.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:35]:
Men being threatened by it more than the women.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:43:41]:
It's like you're not even in my relationship, and you're bothered by the fact that I make more than my husband, and you're not even bothered by me. You're mad at my husband for not stepping it up more than another story. I remember I was in a newsroom. Again, it's always in the newsrooms, which I read about in a healthy state of panic. It's always like, yes, you did. Drama in the newsrooms. So much inappropriateness. But this one guy, we're sitting around chatting, and one of my colleagues, I had just started working at this network.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:13]:
And I said, oh, I was living.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:16]:
In New York at the time, and I had seen a celebrity in my building, and apparently the celebrity lived in the building, in the penthouse. And this person couldn't believe. And I wasn't making a lot of money at this job. This job did not pay well.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:29]:
It paid like peanuts.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:31]:
But I needed the job to sort.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:32]:
Of get the experience that I needed.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:35]:
To be on camera.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:36]:
And he's like, how much?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:40]:
What did he say?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:40]:
He goes, you live where so and.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:44:43]:
So lives, in your building? What does your boyfriend do for a living? Because there's in no world could I have been the one paying the rent. And so it's so funny. I find myself in all these awkward financial discussions usually thwarted at me. And it's like people are clueless. They have absolutely no. And they just make all these assumptions.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:45:05]:
About what I must make and what.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:45:08]:
My boyfriend or husband must make because I'm a woman and he's a.

Mel Abraham [00:45:14]:
Like, stephanie had to deal with it in corporate. So we met six weeks later. She moved to the east coast for her company.

Mel Abraham [00:45:21]:
So we had this long distance relationship.

Mel Abraham [00:45:23]:
I would fly back and forth, and four months after we met, we got engaged.

Mel Abraham [00:45:27]:
I gave her a nice ring, and.

Mel Abraham [00:45:30]:
She had a one year contract there. And she basically went in and basically told them, hey, once this one year contract's up, I want to get back to the west coast. And she was excited about being engaged. She walked in on folks after that.

Mel Abraham [00:45:44]:
Saying, well, Stephanie may not need the job much longer.

Mel Abraham [00:45:49]:
Have you seen the ring? And someone put their iPhone on their hand because it was a big ring, and she called me. They all of a sudden devalued me.

Mel Abraham [00:46:00]:
Because I have a ring on my finger and it's crazy.

Mel Abraham [00:46:07]:
This was not the topic of the show today, but I think it's an important thing for us to have a.

Mel Abraham [00:46:13]:
Conversation around because those stereotypes are not going to move us ahead financially, and.

Mel Abraham [00:46:22]:
They'Re not going to move us ahead societally, and they're not going to move us ahead in how we experience life.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:46:26]:
Yeah, I mean, it just really illustrates the biases that we have around money and the fears that we have tied to the realities of money that I.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:46:38]:
Often say, and I think this is.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:46:40]:
The chapter in the book on the fear of. I think it's the fear of exposure. You're afraid to maybe, like your wife was afraid maybe to, after that, share her ring. I could see a world where somebody wouldn't wear their ring to work. My father wouldn't drive his german car to work because he didn't want his colleagues to judge him. It's not that he was making more than them.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:47:06]:
It was just that he felt like.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:47:08]:
He'D be rejected because everybody else was driving japanese toyotas and he wanted to finally buy himself a Mercedes. And he's like, no, I can't be seen at work. It's like when you're 15 or, I never wanted to be seen with my parents at Walmart because then the kids would know that, a, I hang out with my parents, but also my clothes are from Walmart. So that was a little thing when I was a teen. Fast forward to as an adult. We have all of these insecurities and these fears of exposure, but when it comes to money and financial status, it really shows up. And that's when you really have to question your own financial biases, your own personal narratives around money. Are they doing you any good? And also, who are you hanging out with? That's what fear also tells you.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:47:54]:
Sometimes maybe you're not in a good place, and it's not your fault. It's because the people around you are.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:48:00]:
Just being ignorant and creating this artificial fear.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:48:05]:
Like, you shouldn't be afraid of wearing.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:48:07]:
A beautiful ring to work.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:48:11]:
Maybe don't wear it in the ocean, but don't bring. You can do that at work, it's fine.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:48:17]:
So it's not you, it's them.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:48:19]:
I always say, sometimes that's what the fear is sometimes pointing you at.

Mel Abraham [00:48:23]:
So, good God.

Mel Abraham [00:48:24]:
And we've been going a little bit.

Mel Abraham [00:48:26]:
I got one last thing, and then.

Mel Abraham [00:48:28]:
I want to make sure everyone knows where to get a hold of you, where they can start to get in your world, because hopefully you've seen and you've listened and you hear that. I want you all to get the healthy state of paddock. And I'm actually going to ask you to do two things.

Mel Abraham [00:48:47]:
I never do this, but it's because.

Mel Abraham [00:48:49]:
Of the way I experienced it.

Mel Abraham [00:48:50]:
I want you to buy the book, either kindle or hard copy, but I want you to get the audiobook at the same time.

Mel Abraham [00:48:57]:
Because I read the book, and Farnuch was gracious enough to send me an advanced copy, but I also have the final copy and everything.

Mel Abraham [00:49:07]:
And I read the book, and then.

Mel Abraham [00:49:10]:
Preparing for this, I actually downloaded the.

Mel Abraham [00:49:12]:
Audiobook and listened to it. And when you hear the book in her voice and in the little things.

Mel Abraham [00:49:22]:
The accent with her mother and all that stuff, it comes to life in.

Mel Abraham [00:49:26]:
A completely different way.

Mel Abraham [00:49:29]:
I don't often say that, but I actually think that you want to have.

Mel Abraham [00:49:32]:
Both and go through it, because one of the fears, more of the fears.

Mel Abraham [00:49:40]:
Are in your life. And when you understand the recipe to navigate through them, to work through them, they no longer control you. They fuel you to where you're supposed to be. And that's really the message of this, financially, relationally, health, all of that stuff.

Mel Abraham [00:49:58]:
So the one thing at the very.

Mel Abraham [00:50:01]:
End, you saved till the end, the last chapter. And I think that it's an important thing, this idea of getting clear on the fear of freedom, the non negotiables, and how to get clear on that.

Mel Abraham [00:50:16]:
Because too often we have fuzzy standards.

Mel Abraham [00:50:21]:
And we allow them to be flexed.

Mel Abraham [00:50:25]:
And then we don't know why we're.

Mel Abraham [00:50:26]:
Not happy, we don't know why we're struggling. Or you sit back, and from the.

Mel Abraham [00:50:31]:
Outside, maybe I have everything, but why am I not happy? And I think some of it is.

Mel Abraham [00:50:37]:
Because of what you talk about in that final chapter.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:50:39]:
That last chapter is, again, intentionally the final chapter, because what could be more important than our desire to protect our freedoms, our personal freedoms? And I very early on. Disclaim in that chapter. This isn't about how to go prevent a war or this isn't about geopolitical freedoms. It's more about your own personal boundaries and what you are going to fight for in your life because it defines your happiness. And of course, freedoms that laws support that in many cases, so be sure to vote. But in the meantime, until the world figures itself out and laws figure themselves out, we have to fend for ourselves at work and in our relationships, and.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:51:29]:
We'Re out in society. And so it's really important to, this.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:51:35]:
Is really the chapter that's asking you to use your fears to create the.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:51:39]:
Blueprint for your life. That is your blueprint. And again, blueprints, it's going to work for you for ten years and then you redesign it.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:51:48]:
You should. I think it's always important to commit to revisiting the blueprint.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:51:54]:
But for now, where do you want to be this time next year?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:51:59]:
What are the things that you need to have happen? Because these are the things that are most important to you, that fuel you, that make you feel most alive, that make you feel most empowered and having agency in your life.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:52:10]:
And for me, in the book, I.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:52:13]:
Start out with one blueprint I had to write because the blueprint, I say you have to design it because it's not like it's a given. You can't just go to a store and buy this blueprint. You can't download it off the Internet. You can't copy paste it from somebody else because it's your life. And truth is, life is on a straight path. So you have to kind of create the rooms and the pathways and the tunnels and the pipelines and all the things yourself. And so when I was in my twenty s, I was like, I really wanted to work and have a career.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:52:45]:
That was meaningful and have a family.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:52:48]:
And I just didn't want to compromise on that. And yet I saw so many women compromise on that or try to do both unsuccessfully and eventually having to give something up, usually the career. And I thought, well, okay, there's just no one's going to hand this to me. There's no pathway for this. There's no paved road for this. My companies typically don't give a lot of paid leave for families. I'm not making enough to support myself, let alone a family. There's the pay gap, there's all these things.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:53:18]:
So what am I going to do?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:53:20]:
And that became a fear of losing my freedom in that way, which essentially fueled the blueprint that I created, which was that I'm going to work my tail off in my 20s, someday, open.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:53:34]:
A business or be freelance to a point where I don't have to ask.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:53:40]:
For time off, and I'm going to save a lot of money before I have that first kid. And you know what my blueprint didn't include, like, getting married. I was just like, I want to be a mom. And so I had to allow myself to say marriage might not be in my cards. I just saw someone talk about that the other day, a woman who was like, I've had to relinquish control over that because I feel like finding true love. It's not like you can spreadsheet, that you can go out there and it's maybe a batting average sort of thing, but at the end of the day, it might not happen for you. Does that mean that you're not going to be able to live life to its fullest? You better find a way to do.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:54:23]:
It on your own. And maybe that means just, like, being.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:54:27]:
Really solid with yourself and still having that child, if you want, or finding other people to care for. Maybe it's like you become an incredible godmother. Maybe it's that you marry your career, whatever it is. But I think having these thought processes and creating these blueprints, early on, for me, it was all fueled by fear.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:54:54]:
And allowed me to again.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:54:57]:
I had failure. I had uncertainty. There are a lot of things I.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:54:59]:
Couldn'T control, but at least I always.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:55:00]:
Knew at the core what it was that I wanted to protect. And that was my financial livelihood, my career livelihood, and my ability to parent.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:55:08]:
One day without rejection from a boss, from my profession.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:55:16]:
Someone telling me, like, you can't have.

Mel Abraham [00:55:17]:
It all, basically, I love this. And I think that that is a.

Mel Abraham [00:55:22]:
Great place for us to kind of.

Mel Abraham [00:55:24]:
Put the cap on this.

Mel Abraham [00:55:25]:
It's what ended the book. You ended the book with. But I think that's the core of it.

Mel Abraham [00:55:29]:
Are we living our life?

Mel Abraham [00:55:32]:
Are we living it our way? Are we living by our rules? Do we even know what the rules are? And this concept of the fear being the messenger to us, understanding more about what's important to us to live truly into what we were meant to be. I always said that I think that we were all given a unique gift and that we have been tasked to give that gift to the world. And the only way we're going to give the gift to the world is to be fully expressed.

Mel Abraham [00:55:59]:
And this book is a recipe to.

Mel Abraham [00:56:02]:
Allow people to step into that role. Your journey into this was huge.

Mel Abraham [00:56:09]:
Totally frank.

Mel Abraham [00:56:10]:
When I got to go, what is she right? In healthy state of panic, like you said, the money.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:56:14]:
Yeah.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:56:14]:
And I knew you weren't going to be alone in that confusion. So I wrote about that very early on where you're probably wondering what is up her sleeve? Like, what is going on here?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:56:27]:
And.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:56:29]:
It'S not a far bridge.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:56:31]:
I've been talking about money, and fear.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:56:34]:
Is the underpinning emotion of all of the money questions I've been navigating my entire career. So let's talk about fear, because I've got a lot to bring to the table, not just professionally, but also personally.

Mel Abraham [00:56:46]:
Well, Farnush, you did it.

Mel Abraham [00:56:48]:
You did it well. You did it in story. You did it powerfully. And I think this, this book will change lives.

Mel Abraham [00:56:57]:
It should be something that is read.

Mel Abraham [00:57:00]:
Regularly and used when you start to feel that uncertainty or you start to feel fear welling up, to go back.

Mel Abraham [00:57:07]:
And say, which one is it?

Mel Abraham [00:57:09]:
And walk through the recipe, walk through the process, because that's what's going to keep you on the path that you.

Mel Abraham [00:57:15]:
Were meant to be on.

Mel Abraham [00:57:16]:
So, Pranush, where can we send people to get all the goodness that is you?

Farnoosh Torabi [00:57:23]:
Thanks, Mel. Well, I have a podcast. It's called so money. You can listen to it, subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And I have a membership where if you go to somoneymembers.com, you can get a lot of the great behind the scenes of working with me, learning together. There's a really robust community. Pretty soon we're going to have commercial free podcasts available to members. So it's a lot of exciting stuff.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:57:54]:
It's newly launched, so the benefit of being a founding member is that you get all these incentives. You get to grow with the community and get in as an early, was it early adapter, early adopter.

Mel Abraham [00:58:10]:
Yeah.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:58:10]:
Thank you.

Mel Abraham [00:58:10]:
So good. So we'll make sure that we have that in the description, the show notes and all the links to get there. So for me, just from the bottom of my heart, this was an interview that I've been looking forward to for a while. And it's been a joy watching this book launch journey and how you've navigated it and getting a chance to know you better. I appreciate you for being willing to come on and share with our audience.

Farnoosh Torabi [00:58:37]:
Thank you, Mel. I really appreciate you. Thank you.

Mel Abraham [00:58:41]:
Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneurship. With me, your host, Melee Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur facebook group now by going to melabraham.com/group, and I'll see you there.