S2 Ep16 ProjectME: Rebuilding Worth, Wealth, and Hope with Tiffany Carter (Ep 59)

Content note: This episode includes conversation about childhood trauma, sex trafficking, suicidal ideation, abuse, and recovery.

In this powerful episode of Hope Comes to Visit, I'm privileged to sit down with Tiffany Carter — money attachment expert, business mentor, host of the ProjectME with Tiffany Carter podcast, and a multi-millionaire entrepreneur whose story is rooted in survival, healing, and radical self-rescue.

Tiffany shares how childhood trauma, people-pleasing, false identity, and self-abandonment shaped her relationship with herself, success, money, and visibility. Together, we talk about what it means to rebuild from the inside out, why self-worth affects what we allow ourselves to receive, and how money can become a mirror for deeper healing.

This conversation is about so much more than wealth. It’s about identity, safety, visibility, recovery, resilience, and the brave work of choosing yourself.

Tiffany’s words are raw, direct, and deeply hopeful: “There’s always a way. And if you don’t know the way, we can invent the way.”

{FREE} Walk into Wealth: Guided Walking Meditation
Instagram: ProjectMe with Tiffany
TikTok: ProjectMe with Tiffany
ProjectME with Tiffany Carter the Podcast

Thank you for listening to Hope Comes to Visit. If this conversation helps, follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope today, and leave a review - it helps others find their way to these conversations.

New episodes drop every Monday, so you can begin your week with a little light and a lot of hope.

For more stories, reflections, and ways to connect, visit www.DanielleElliottSmith.com or follow along on Instagram @daniellesmithtv and @HopeComestoVisit

Transcript

Opening Quote And Sponsor

Tiffany Carter 0:00

I really felt from a divine source that all of this happened to me, all the trauma from childhood, because I'm supposed to be a guiding light for people who are still in the dark, who need to see that there's hope, that it's worth it going through all of this and doing all of this work because it's no joke.

Why Money Feels So Personal

Danielle Elliott Smith 0:31

Let's take a quick moment to thank the people that support and sponsor the podcast. When life takes an unexpected turn, you deserve someone who will stand beside you. St. Louis attorney Chris Duly offers experienced one-on-one legal defense. Call 314-384-4000 or 314-DUI HELP. Or you can visit Dulilawfirm.com. That's D-U-L-L-E Law Firm.com for a free consultation. This is a space for stories that matter, stories of resilience, reinvention, and real human connection. I'm Danielle Elliott Smith, and this is Hope Comes to Visit, and I'm so grateful you're here. This is where we say the hard things, we feel the big feelings, and we remember we're not alone. Today's conversation is about something that touches every part of our lives, but isn't always easy to talk about money, worth, and what it means to allow ourselves to receive. I'm joined today by Tiffany Carter, a money attachment expert, business mentor, and host of the Project Me with Tiffany Carter podcast, one of the top money and entrepreneurship podcasts in 57 countries. What makes Tiffany's work so powerful isn't just the success she's created, it's the path she took to get there. She's a multimillionaire entrepreneur who rebuilt her life from a place of deep challenges and now helps women not only create wealth, but understand their relationship with it. Because as Tiffany says, when your self-worth is low, success can feel out of reach. Money slips through your hands, and being seen can feel unsafe. But when that begins to shift, everything changes. This is about more than money. This conversation is about identity, visibility, and finally believing you're worthy of what you've been working towards. Tiffany, thank you so much for being here and spending time with me today.

Tiffany Carter 2:21

Of course. Happy to be here.

Danielle Elliott Smith 2:23

I'm really excited to start this conversation with you. As we were saying before the show started, I there are so many layers to who you are and the road you took to get there. Uh I almost want to start with. Let's start with Project Me and why you wanted to have this connection with women.

Project Me And Self-Abandonment

Tiffany Carter 2:50

So Project Me was born out of me being a codependent people pleaser, putting everyone before myself and everything before myself, and just self-abandonment and self-neglect without me truly realizing I was doing it, even though I had a million years of therapy. So hence why it's the podcast, the business coaching academy is Project Me were the most exceptional projects of our lives. And I promised myself doing the grueling, as you know, healing work, reparenting work, inner child work, somatic work, all of the stuff that I had to do in order for me to truly still be alive and functioning to this day. My whole vision for it that kept me going is that I really felt from a divine source that all of this happened to me, all the trauma from childhood, because I'm supposed to be a guiding light for people who are still in the dark, who need to see that there's hope, that it's worth it going through all of this and doing all of this work because it's no joke.

Danielle Elliott Smith 4:13

It is challenging. So it's interesting. I said challenges in the intro, talking about where you have come from and part of what your journey has been, but your challenges have been extraordinary. I think is even putting it lightly. Are you comfortable sharing a little bit of what you've worked through to get to where you are now? Because I think sometimes the hope is in the dark details of what you've actually pushed yourself through.

Surviving Abuse And The False Self

Tiffany Carter 4:46

Yeah, I I agree. Something that helped me, and it was very difficult to find, are the few people who have books at the time and who shared their story in detail so that I could go, okay, not to compare traumas, but more like, okay, they went through some heavy shit. And if they're on the other side, okay, I can I can make it, or I can even hang on, you know, for a day longer. So my story is like I tell people, it's like a lifetime movie. My mom sex trafficked me from ages 11 to 21 years old. So she had her own business and leveraged me to either employees, potential clients, or current clients. And it was on repeat. It was pretty much being abused daily. She is a narcissist and is very sick. I'm no contact with her, which that took a lot to be able to do that because she's my only living relative. And so all of those pieces together, all built up, led me to be this teen and adult that had zero self-worth. But on the outside, I knew how to fake it. I had a mask because I I had to to survive.

Danielle Elliott Smith 6:12

To survive in order to get up every day, in order to live through the experiences that were being dealt your way each and every day.

Tiffany Carter 6:22

Yeah. And when being raised by a narcissist, if I didn't shine bright enough to make her look good, then there would be more abuse. So I had to have a mask and I had to achieve. That's in the show. Yeah. And yeah, I had to achieve a certain amount. It was always a moving target. I couldn't outshine her because you outshine a narcissist, they don't like that. But I had to shine just enough, and I had to constantly be doing this dance of hyper-vigilance to try to find this. And so that false self of mine, so to speak, was so ingrained that I thought that was me. So I had really true no sense of self. Only thing I had was this really developed false self. I didn't even have a favorite color. I didn't know truly like what I enjoyed to do, what really were my favorite foods, or what were my favorite foods because she wanted those to be my favorite foods. There were so many layers that I had to untangle. So in my 20s, all of my 20s, I was operating in the corporate world when I was a TV newscaster. It was all my false self. It was not really me, but I didn't know that. Untangled. You wouldn't know that.

Danielle Elliott Smith 7:52

I mean, it's because that's the you that's been created to please, right? And and to survive. It's it's interesting because as I'm listening to you, I can hear the healing you've done. And I also recognize the pieces that that feel like recovery. Um, I am coming up on seven years sober. And so I hear some of the some of the pieces that that help in that recovery piece, whether it's recognizing your story in some, like hearing your story coming out of someone else's mouth is so incredibly powerful. Um, it was during my early recovery that I decided I wanted to do this podcast because that was so powerful for me when I was first struggling. I thought I am the only person that blacks out, right? This is, I'm the only one that has had this experience. And realizing that other people had also had that experience was so eye-opening for me. And I think that's what you're saying with with the books. But in finding yourself, when when we talk about that recovery work, there's a piece of us that people say, like, you need to, you need to get back to who you were. You didn't know who you were.

Tiffany Carter 9:05

So Yeah, it'd be very shaming for me when I would hear people giving that advice. It felt very shaming, even when even well-intended people. I have therapists who would say that who just were not, I mean, they should be trauma-informed, but were not trauma-informed. And then I was embarrassed. So then I learned socially acceptable answers to questions that I really didn't have the answers to because it made other people so uncomfortable. The truth made them uncomfortable. So then I just had all of these canned answers for people.

Danielle Elliott Smith 9:46

What was it that gave you the opportunity to break through the false self to discover that there was additional work to be done? Because I imagine it wasn't the moment that you stepped into any type of therapy and out of the abusive environment.

Tiffany Carter 10:03

No, and I was in, I was in full outpatient therapy. I've done equine therapy, group therapy, art therapy all this whole time. And I'm not saying therapy isn't great. I think the therapy kept me alive, okay, and it like taught me stuff intellectually, but it did not do it. Unfortunately for me, because my false self was so developed and I'm I'm I'm that like fighter. I'm scrappy, you know, or I mean it's something that I don't know if God gave it to me. It's something in me where I just am a fighter. And so I can also be very stubborn, and that can work against me and then a lot of self-will. I had to hit a rock bottom in every area of my life, financially, relationship-wise, physically and emotionally, all at the same time, in order for me to truly wake up and be like on my knees and going, I need like another level of help here. Like this isn't cutting it, and I'm willing, I'm humble enough now that I'll do whatever the hell it takes. Before I I kind of look like I was humble. It's like, oh, you know, you're doing all this therapy. I really wasn't because how can you be humble when you're you're operating out of your false self, which is all ego.

Danielle Elliott Smith 11:30

What's so interesting to me though is listening to how much work and how much humility you had to possess when so much of this trauma was done to you, right? So and I think that's where a lot of people get caught up is it's not my fault. Like you weren't, you did not choose that environment for yourself. You were the victim of a very narcissist mother who put you in that position. And so so many people find themselves saying, I I shouldn't have to do this hard work. And you find yourself at a bottom type of place where you have to say, Okay, now I need to do the work.

Tiffany Carter 12:20

Yeah. I mean, what I still have that anger to this day, by the way. It still comes up where I'm, you know, it this doesn't go away. I just have more tools to manage it. Where it's, you know, at the time of this recording, we're coming up on Mother's Day. Okay, that can be that's very activating for me. I don't like that it's activating. I'm pissed that it even bothers me. And then I can start shooting myself, right? But the bottom line is how couldn't it be? That's such a core wound, right? And so, but I still have that, and I appreciate you like acknowledging that that I stayed a lot in the anger. And guess what? When you're a survivor of some heavy shit, everyone will give you a pass. It can become the ultimate pass for everything. It could be like, oh, I see why you don't work, I see why you don't take care of yourself, I can see why you can't do this, I can't do that. Like you can get away with a lot because it's like, well, God, I I totally understand, but on at some point, no one's no one's coming to save me, unfortunately. And believe me, I looked, I looked in the source of men to be saved. Okay, like I I wanted to be saved and rescued. I had to save myself and rescue myself. If I wanted to actually on this earth have a life and have joy and have serenity and freedom, it had to all be me.

Danielle Elliott Smith 14:00

It had to be you, hence Project Me. So, at what point in your humility therapy, working on yourself journey did you say I feel strong enough, well enough, beautiful enough in this place that I need other people to figure this shit out as well.

Suicidal Ideation And Finding Community

Tiffany Carter 14:28

Well, my story is ugly. So I went to off myself about 11 and a half years ago on my actual birthday, and I think it's an important part of the story, and it's a reminder to check on the people in your life who are who never who never seem like anything's wrong and they have their most shit together. And and on the outside, no one would have known. In fact, I had a um calm resolve about it. My nails were done, my eyebrows were waxed, you know. I'm I lived in a luxury townhouse in Los Angeles at a BMW, right? So it looked, it looked pretty on the outside. Because I was chasing everything. Yeah, and I was chasing everything external in order to to feel good internally. Uh innocently, I didn't know. So I was chasing success and accolades and and money and relationships and being skinny. I mean, it was just it was constant. And when none of it worked, even to the best of me trying all of the things, my brain told me you're not meant to be here. And so I went to take myself out. But because of the power of the divine, the universe, my spiritual committee, someone planted a seed, thank God, and told me about a group to go to. It's 12-step, but it's not addiction 12-step. It's for adult children of dysfunctional families. Okay. And this person gave me a slip of paper when they heard my story in a casual conversation of, oh, like, have you ever heard of this? And I said, No, that's weird. I haven't because I've had all this therapy. Oh, well, you might want to check this out. There was some divine intervention, and this happened to be a mile from where I was living.

Danielle Elliott Smith 16:31

Really?

Tiffany Carter 16:32

And I knew exactly where it was at because it was right by me. And I ended up in a room that day, and I was like, I can still off myself later, of other people for the first time in my life that had insane stories like me. And that's what saved my life, truly, because I was like, oh my, I thought it's a disease of being feeling like you're the only one and no one gets it because I had no one around me who got it, because I was surrounded by toxic people, because that's what I allowed in my life.

Danielle Elliott Smith 17:08

Right. The power of, and I've said this before, the power of hearing your story or something similar coming out of someone else's mouth to allow the seed of I'm not alone to bloom is so incredibly powerful. And to me, that's that's where hope blooms, right? That's that little piece that says, wait, okay, maybe I can keep going. Maybe I can wake up tomorrow. So you sat in that room, and then what?

Tiffany Carter 17:52

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe all these years there were people getting together about all of the stuff and the way I would think and operate that I really thought was only just for like really fucked up people, and there weren't that many people like this. I couldn't believe I didn't know about it. I was actually mad I didn't know about it. And I said to myself, okay, like maybe I won't untake myself out tonight. Untapped. But I had the concoction of pills to do it, and I kept them on my counter. I lived alone and they stayed out untanked. And then I and then the next day I did the same thing. Okay, I still have the option. My therapist now says something really interesting about that because I still get suicidal ideation, which is very common for people with complex PTSD. It's not like I'm gonna do it until it's an escape hatch. It it's like I don't ever want to be trapped, hence a lot of what I teach about with financial empowerment. I don't want to be dependent on any person, place, thing, job, institution for money or for my safety or well-being ever again. And that escape hatch, it's like, okay, I still have some kind of control. I still have an option.

Danielle Elliott Smith 19:18

Yep. The control, the control is incredibly powerful because as you're telling that story, um, I had a similar experience with medications and and a low time. And my thought process was maybe I'm not supposed to be here. I mean, maybe I'm done. Right. And it's I had a little bit of divine intervention as well, and thought, okay, I guess it's not supposed to be today. And I eventually just hung around until I stopped thinking. Maybe not today, until it was no longer a thought process and things I was actively improving upon myself.

Tiffany Carter 20:02

Yeah, it was months for me, but I still think months is a pretty short time, right? That it's months for that for those thoughts to go away. It was months, and then I got rid of the pills.

Danielle Elliott Smith 20:16

Good for you.

Tiffany Carter 20:17

And so that it's not years. And I thought that in order to fix me, I mean, I researched things like having like being up. Is there someone who can operate on my brain? I mean, I wasn't afraid of trying. I obviously wanted help, or I wouldn't be going to therapy and trying all these things. And I even did like some floating thing where someone held me like a baby. You know, in Los Angeles, there's all sorts of interesting healing things you can do. I mean, I had the crystals, I mean, I had a whole shelf shelf help section in my house. I I didn't I wanted to be better, but that's what started working against me and being so depleting and defeating because I wasn't getting better. Untanked until until I got in a community where I realized, oh, there's there are other people who think like me and operate like me and react like me. I'm not alone.

Danielle Elliott Smith 21:28

That becomes the beginning of your true healing. How long ago was that?

Tiffany Carter 21:34

Eleven years ago.

Danielle Elliott Smith 21:36

Eleven years ago. That's amazing.

Tiffany Carter 21:39

Which is crazy when I say it because I remember listening to other people who had a version of my story, crazier story, whatever, who would say, like, yeah, you know, this is what I went through, and it was even five years ago. I go, Five years, wow, I can't even comprehend. Five years and like, but then I would hear them, you know, talk about like areas they're flourishing, or I could just tell even more not so much like accomplishments, someone's energy being light, you know, being sincere and light. I was always so jealous of people who were just like laughing and unlike laissez faire, and you know, I was so wound tight and I was so rigid, and everything was so heavy, and I wanted to be like those other people so badly, and I didn't know how to access it, and it wasn't for lack of trying, right? And I feel like it's so important, shows like yours, shows like mine, where you know, let's people know like this really is available to you, and there is another way, and the way actually does work, it's just not cute until it is.

Money As Safety And The Scam

Danielle Elliott Smith 23:02

And it's not easy, right? It requires work, it requires commitment, it requires standing up when you get knocked down. Um but I think that knowing that you are not alone, knowing that there are other people who have gone before you um is so incredibly powerful. And that sounds like that was the beginning for you. How did you translate that to the money piece? You started to touch on it in terms of control. Was that the essence of that for you?

Tiffany Carter 23:39

That's where my relationship with money started. Was I didn't want to be ever in a position to be dependent on anybody for money, for my livelihood, for anything like that ever. And so then part of my fixation to dissociate, I became a workaholic. I was really fixated on as long as I have a certain amount of money, I'm safe. As long, you know, I'll be then I'll be feel-free, then I'll be this, right? That was my whole fixation. And my goal was to have a million dollars by the time I was 30. Okay. And I I hit that goal, and I remember seeing that in my bank account, and I had a probably a few seconds of, oh, that's pretty cool. And then nothing. And I went, I hear I thought, you know, the C would part and lightness would come in because that's what I believed in society, also kind of teaches us some of this stuff, right? And when that didn't happen, and then very quickly it turned into who am I to have all this money? What I don't even, I don't, I'm not even that smart because that's stuff my mom said to me. My mom went to Harvard, so she liked really, you know, shoving that down my throat. And so I was like, I'm not even that smart, and I'm not good at math, and who am I to have this? And it's selfish for me to have this, and lo and behold, all those toxic people in my life all came out of the woodwork asking for money, and I just start I was writing checks, left and right, and then I fell for a financial scam untanked because all because I didn't think I knew any better, and I went against my gut instinct, because as someone who's a survivor of severe abuse, we're taught to not trust our instincts. And so I didn't have any of that developed within me, like, oh, someone who like you know knows how to talk the jargon and like has a suit, like they're you know, they they know something. Right. And I signed all the papers, so I take full accountability and I lost almost all of it.

Danielle Elliott Smith 26:01

Did you really in three months?

Tiffany Carter 26:03

Yep. And so that was a that was a rattling, rattling wake up where I went, okay, that's wild. I obviously have some kind of weird thing going on here with relationship with with money that I need to look at. So that was actually studied and looked at, and I got help for that way before I got the deeper level help. Okay. Because money's that powerful energy. I mean, you want someone to wake up, they are they're worried about paying their mortgage or their car payment, you know, or their bills. It'll wake, it'll wake someone up real quick, right? So that was like a pressing thing.

Danielle Elliott Smith 26:51

I would like to say, yes. I've encountered people in my life, especially recently, who somehow like you try to help, and it like even the thought of being on the cusp of nothing doesn't necessarily wake them up until you finally have to walk away.

Tiffany Carter 27:14

That's true. There are people who go into that freeze state, and they're in such a level of denial that it's easier to have um that's part of a false self, too. Kind of like money's not important. I don't care about money. There's things more important than money and not and not really being motivated by it. To in my experience with working over 150,000 people, those are the people who are frozen on a much, much, much deeper level because that is a form of self-abandonment and self-neglect to not be financially sound. You don't have to be someone who desires to be wealthy, but to not be financially sound is it's a form of self-abandonment. They just don't see it yet.

Danielle Elliott Smith 28:06

Well, I think that it also comes from in this particular situation, it also comes from an I deserve, I I am entitlement. Yes, like so. Anytime money shows up, it's being spent on whatever I want, whatever I deserve, and people will just have to wait. My bills will just have to wait. People will have to work with me.

Tiffany Carter 28:27

Like this is these are people I stay very far away from and will not work with. Yeah, well, that is not that is not a that is definitely not approved what whatsoever.

Danielle Elliott Smith 28:42

Yeah, no, that is it, yeah. It um part of my personal part of my journey has been recognizing a savior complex and wanting to always help and save. And sometimes you have to say, Yeah, I this is one I can't do.

Tiffany Carter 28:59

Yeah, I used I used to do a lot of that. I mean, listen, I used to pay for guys' rent. I would, I mean, I I've I did a lot of that. I would be, I would see someone's potential, but it was just a form of me avoiding my dealing with my own stuff by being immersed in someone else's. Correct. It's not it's not attractive to admit these things, but no, it's really not.

Danielle Elliott Smith 29:26

I mean, it's it's true. My I and it's funny because my therapist said to me at one point, she said, okay, so this is where we talk about your savior complex. And I said, Okay, so that sounds a little bit insulting and not so fun, potentially accurate. However, I don't feel good about it. So, and but she was right. And it's something that I have deconstructed and worked on. And right when I think that I have it tackled, the universe says, Are you sure? and throws someone else in my path. And then I have to go through it all again and make sure that I that I am locked down and that I am not out to save again.

Tiffany Carter 30:09

That is such an important point because that's exactly what happens is well, wait, I've worked on all of this and I've released this, and now it's showing up in even more of a cunning way, like where you don't see it coming. And I don't know about you. Mine is like when someone is a narcissist in hiding, right? Like, listen, I I can see them coming, or I tell my ego tells me that. And I recently just fired one who I was paying that I did not see coming, but when I look back, the signs were there, and then I'm getting mad at myself. Tiff, how do you not you know this? You know, you know, and then how did you not see it? And it's like I can go into a lot of like blame and self-judgment, and then when I get out of that zone, because we know that's that doesn't help us whatsoever. I went, well, you know what? There's gotta be some self-compassion there because my system will forever be wired where what would be an obvious red flag to some people, it might be like a yellow flag to me now, and it's and it's hardwired. And so it's more of how can I help protect myself knowing this? And so now we have additional like layers of people that have to enter in this case have to interview, have to interview. I cannot, I can't, I don't hire anyone by myself. I can't.

Danielle Elliott Smith 31:41

Good for you. I see look at you put boundaries in place, you put like stop gaps in place to prevent yourself, right? But you're doing it to prevent yourself from ignoring a yellow flag that is really a red flag.

Tiffany Carter 31:55

Talk about work. I really don't, I really don't see it. I I genuinely don't, but part of why I feel so many of us don't see some of obvious toxic things is because we're not toxic. We would never fucking do that to somebody. Correct. So it doesn't come to my mind that someone would be able to pull off acting one way for the full 90-day a 90-day period, correct, and then all of a sudden turn and do all the shady stuff. Like it doesn't even it doesn't even cross my mind to do something like that. Yep. So therefore, right? Why would I why would I be able to see it?

Danielle Elliott Smith 32:42

Our inner talk track is very similar. It's funny because the phrase that comes to mind is one that I heard in in one of the 12-step programs years ago. You spot it, you got it. And I recognize that in all of the people who ultimately jumped to all of the projection type behavior, right? All of the behavior where they instantly assumed the worst, and that behavior wouldn't even occur to me. It wouldn't occur to me that someone would do X, Y, and Z. And the reason it occurred to them is because that's the exact behavior they would do. They would create the fake accounts on social media to stalk someone, they would set up cameras in the house to try to figure out where you were and what you were doing. Like they would do all this underhanded behavior, and it wouldn't even occur to me that people are out there manipulating that way. But you spot it, you got it.

People Pleasing As Lying To Yourself

Tiffany Carter 33:40

So you know, and that line can really bother people because it's like, well, wait, are you saying like I'm a narcissist? And so I just want to I want to say this because that that one you that line hearing that used to really bother me because of course the last thing I wanted to be with was a narcissist, right? I agree, and but if we're being real, right, and and there's no psychologist who wouldn't agree with me on this, we all have narcissistic qualities in us. That doesn't mean we're like diagnosed by the DSM 5 as being, you know, a narcissist, but here's where my quote unquote narcissism showed up as a people pleaser. You want to know what a people fucking pleaser is? A liar. And that was the thing that really shook me to the core and woke me up because I pride myself on integrity and my actions and words match because of I grew up in an environment where it was all the house of cards, a house of lies. And I didn't realize when you're an extreme people pleaser, I was constantly lying. I mean, I was full of shit. I mean, all the time. Like, I mean, I'm talking about stupid shit. Like, oh, do you want to get Indian food tonight? Oh, that sounds great. And I didn't want Indian food. Right.

Danielle Elliott Smith 35:13

Someone would say, Oh my gosh, have you seen this movie or read this book? And I would say, Yes, it was so I've done that.

Tiffany Carter 35:19

I've done that, and I and I hadn't even like maybe heard of it.

Danielle Elliott Smith 35:22

Right, correct. And it it's the it's the exact same people pleasing, and it's interesting because it I had also always prided myself on honesty being such a core value, right? Like I was raised. I mean, we got into journalism probably because it we wanted to be truth tellers, wanted to be truth tellers and wanted to vet out what was really happening, right? And when I was deeply struggling with alcohol, I had this moment where I recognized that I could lie really well. And it was deeply disturbing to me. And I remember slamming a glass of warm leftover wine in the bathroom just to get it into my system from a red solo cup. And I had always been the girl that drank really good wine out of really nice wine glasses, and I had just devolved. And I looked in the mirror and I thought, who are you? Like, what has happened? What has happened? But so much of that was the lying to myself, right? Because I wasn't willing to recognize how bad things had become. And uh the lying was such a huge part of it because I had started to lie about stupid bullshit items, because it just was just flowing.

Tiffany Carter 36:53

Wow, you make such a great point because the lies aren't necessarily always lying to others, it's the lies that we're telling to ourselves, like, oh, it's not that bad, or you know, oh, I'll or even like not following through with commitments to oneself. I'll do this on Monday, you know, I'll follow up with this, I'll get this done, and then not doing it. That's that's lying to ourselves and not following through on commitments we've made to ourselves.

Danielle Elliott Smith 37:25

So, how long has Project Me been your baby? How long have you been working on this and had the several iterations between the podcast and the coaching and the different programs?

Tiffany Carter 37:38

I started Project Me at the end of 2018, but I had the idea, the logo, knowing I wanted to do a podcast for 10 years. And it was all lies and excuses of why I couldn't. And this was coming from someone, by the way, who I have another business. I have a digital marketing and branding agency. I've had 18 years. It's an eight-figure business, so it's not like I didn't know at this point, right, how to run a business. I didn't know how to have a personal brand or have a podcast or anything, but I had a I had even money to invest in the business. It had nothing to do with that. It was who's gonna listen to me? I was afraid it was narcissistic because obviously this is a personal brand. It's like the Tiffany show, right? Well, that sounds like mommy dearest, that's gross. Is there something wrong with me for doing this? Someone's just gonna like I'm talking about money and business growth. Like, they would just hire Tony Robbins. I'm not famous. Who the hell am I? And one year of that bullshit to myself turned to three, turned to five until I hit my 40th birthday, and I went, oh my god, I have been preventing myself from doing this and holding back for 10 years. I would say, once I have X amount in the bank, once I'm not as busy. It was always kicking the can down the road, and I finally reached a point where I went, you know what? Fuck it. I'll give it a year. Because I'm realistic. I'm not I'm not someone who's like, oh, I should have instant success. Like, right, that's not how life works. So I I'll give it a year and I can change my mind, you know, and we can, and if there's no growth or I hate it, I can stop it, but I at least owe it to myself. If you have a dream on your heart, a book, a podcast, you want to create journals, whatever the hell it is, and you have it, and it's not just like a fleeting moment on a Friday night. Oh, it makes me want to cry. That's there for a reason. Oh, Tiffany, yeah. Well, it is, it's there for a reason. It's not, this is not like the easiest path, you know. Like, it's there for a reason. You're supposed to do something with it, otherwise, you wouldn't have the thought. Go and talk to people at an airport. Most people, and I'm not putting them down at all, but most people have zero thought of having a business or doing having a show like yours. No, that that's not even a thought. I know. So it's obviously supposed to happen, and it's not and this is not gonna be some like Hollywood story of, and then in three weeks, I'm a famous podcaster. No, that's not that's not how it worked. God went God when we're gonna see how bad you want it and make this like slow as molasses, absolutely, and see how humble you really are.

Danielle Elliott Smith 40:49

Absolutely. I mean, it's this this journey for me has been really interesting. It's it's it's really uh, I mean, I I keep feeling like I'm I keep saying how parallel our paths are, minus you you having your extraordinary challenging childhood. Um, but I own the domain for Hope Comes to Visit from the moment I was six months sober. And this podcast has only been on the air for the last year, and I'm almost seven years old. I kept kicking it down the road. I kept kicking it down the road. And and the title of the podcast comes from I went to treatment in Florida and then I went back to celebrate all of my milestones, you know, like three months, six months back down to Florida. And I walked into the room at one point, and one of the guys looked at me and said, Danielle, you have no idea what a big deal it is that you come back. That people see that that it worked, that it can work, that you're doing it, that that you are thriving. Every time you walk into the room, I get chills every time I say it. Every time you walk into the room, it's like hope comes to visit. And I instantly thought, there's the name of the podcast. I bought the domain that day, and I kept kicking it down the road, down the road, like, you know what, I'll do it on my on my one-year sobriety. I'll do it on my two years, I'll do it on my three years. And I was getting ready, like I was starting to work on it and getting ready to launch it. And um, the gentleman that I was dating passed away. And it was a very traumatic experience. And I was in the hospital with him for 17 days, and then he, and then he ultimately passed. And my grief was so deep that I couldn't function. And after moving out of that phase, I recognized that because I felt truly hopeless in that grief time frame, that uh for whatever reason the universe wanted me to experience what it feels like to be truly hopeless before I started the podcast so that I could talk to people more deeply about their stories. And so then I, you know, three years later, two years later, I started the podcast. I'm like, okay, so here we are. And I I think that it I started it at the right time. And it feels right. So and this is.

Tiffany Carter 43:06

Yeah, and at the right time because you are being divinely positioned, like you said. When we go through that dark night of the soul like that, that's how we can connect and people can hear us and they feel seen, heard, and understood. Because we actually really get it. We're not just like surfacey talking about it. We can get into the weeds with it. Wow.

Money Skills And Healing Patterns

Danielle Elliott Smith 43:36

Well, so I think, but I think like that's exactly how you have been led through your entire journey has led you to where you are right now to have the podcast, to have the coaching, to be able to guide people to a place where they can recognize their own worth and take control, feel control, have control. So, where did the Money knowledge come from for you? Research, experience?

Tiffany Carter 44:07

Well, all of it, but it started when I lost all of it. So I I know I know girl knows how to make money. Okay. Like there's no uh no higher income skill that you can learn than sales, and in in in my case, sales done ethically, not in a manipulative fashion, which we know a lot of people do that. So I have learned that skill and honed that skill and used that skill. I mean, this is how I raise so much money for my charities is using that skill, right? It's a very important skill. And now I teach people how to use that skill. But I went through heavy, heavy money healing through the realm of the law of attraction, manifestation world. And so I had private coaches, a lot of self-study and work that I've done on myself and then practiced and then worked with a lot of other people over and over and over again and refined and refined and refined it. And what are the common themes and what works and what doesn't, and what it all boils down to. And this is like many, many years of studying, just like what anyone studies, right? You do that long enough, there's patterns. And because of being a trauma survivor, my hyper-vigilance, I've turned it into a great asset of mine. So I'm also a hardcore Virgo, which means, you know, I'm always analyzing, assessing, gathering data, putting it into categories. And so that's what I've done when it comes to healing relationships with money. And everyone has a relationship with money. Even if someone says, I don't care about money, well, that's your relationship with money.

Danielle Elliott Smith 46:02

But you have one. My relationship with money was very traumatic. Growing up, I was in a house that was very feast or famine. Very like my parents, if they had it, they spent it. And it was always like, the sky is falling, we don't have any money, we don't have any money, we don't have any money. And then all of a sudden everything would be fine. Like the check is in the mail, the check is in the mail. My dad was a serial entrepreneur, so he was always jumping from one thing to the next. And my mom, who never wanted to work, wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, was the one who had to go to work to make sure our bills were paid. And while my dad was jumping from different things, I spent all of my time thinking, like, please let something work for him, please let something work for him. And sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't. But then there was a very thin line between need and want, right? So we would need lawn furniture for the backyard. And then we would get lawn furniture for the backyard, but it wasn't a need, right? So I grew up not understanding that that was not a need, right? So need to me was like, I I need, I want that, I need that, right? So having to go through processes to heal that has been very challenging.

Tiffany Carter 47:12

Very that causes that anxious attachment with money, the feast or famine, because your nervous system was taught like I can't trust money because it's here sometimes, it's not here sometimes. Right, you know, and and then you had that reflected back to you day after day after day after day. For instance. So that is one of that is one of the more tough ones to heal, which you can, but it's definitely a loud one.

Danielle Elliott Smith 47:42

Yeah, no, it it definitely is. And then I the guy I married, Jeff, that I mentioned divorced, and but good friend of mine, he was raised in an environment where they did not do anything on credit. His dad worked on the line at General Motors, his mom was a loan officer at a bank, and they legitimately paid cash for everything. Jeff had never, like still to this day, has never paid interest on anything other than a home loan or a student loan. That's it. He doesn't do interest, which is amazing. But put him and me together into a marriage, and there are stressful issues that come from that because we were raised so differently.

Tiffany Carter 48:25

Like, yeah, and even when someone has, even though, right, someone could say on paper his way is the more responsible way or smarter way, but there's rigidity rooted into it, there's still fear rooted in there. Oh, we can't do this, like there's still like a a line there, so that's not like a secure money relationship, that's also out of fear.

Danielle Elliott Smith 48:53

Yep. It's it was very, very challenging, and it's funny because in our in our aging wisdom, um, we have both come to a better central place, but um, you know, it's that independence in me is very I struggle because the wanting to make sure that I am safe and okay and not dependent on anyone is that is a struggle. Like I it's very important to me.

Safe Houses, Hope, And Closing

Tiffany Carter 49:26

Oh, I mean, this will always be important to me. It is it's not an option. That doesn't mean I can't um lean on someone, but I I will not ever be. It's not happening, dependent on someone in that area of my life. Um, that's that's not happening. Like there's certain things for me that because of what I've survived, in order for me to function and operate in the way I do, I do have to have some safety measures in place, even though we could say safety is an illusion because I'm not really in charge. There's like a higher power in charge. But I talk about things rooted in reality. There's certain things I I need to have that help me feel safe enough to function when I don't have a family. You know, I don't have a lot of these things, and that's one of them, and I'm an acceptance about it. Talk to me about your charities. So I help build safe houses for women and children who've been sex trafficked. What's interesting, I feel, to a lot of people, I didn't know this either until I started getting involved, is these safe houses have to be in more suburban areas. They need to actually be in more remote areas per se. So you can be in like a cul-de-sac neighborhood and there's a safe house there. Because if they're too close in proximity to a city or even like a bus stop, the girls will try to escape to go back to their pemp or to their family that was doing that because they've been that conditioned. And so, therefore, because of where they need to be located, you know, it costs more money. And so, and you can't you can't exactly use like social media or the press to say, look, we've built this house. Here's the address, and you can come, right? Because that's not a safe house now, right? So you have some some reasons why, you know, you can't use traditional things for like publicity to raise funds. Um, and what I really donate more than even money, because there are a lot of people who donate money. I mean, you get a tax break donating money, it's the time. Correct, it's the time with the girls, um, it's giving consistent time and attention, and that's truly what I feel matters most in what I donate. I mean, I yes, I donate and I help them raise funds with my skill sets that I have. But I can just think of myself. If there was someone who was safe who understood what I was going through, who could have spent time with me, oh my god. It would have changed my entire life. Right.

Danielle Elliott Smith 52:23

That's extraordinary. Tiffany, how do you define hope?

Tiffany Carter 52:30

I would say where I'm at at this point, hope to me knows that better is available and better's coming.

Danielle Elliott Smith 52:43

I love that. I love that. How can people find you and work with you?

Tiffany Carter 52:49

Best ways to reach out on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook at Project Me with Tiffany. You can just start typing it in Project Me OneWord, and I'll come up. And my podcast is on every single platform. You type in my name or you type in Project Me, it'll pop right up. You can watch or listen to the show and like let me know that you came from here. And it's really me on Instagram specifically in my DMs. You know, if you have a story, sometimes people want to share something that came up with them. It's me, it's not a bot that's in my DMs responding to you. I don't cold message anyone. There's about a hundred fake accounts of me. So I always say, if I'm like randomly reaching out to you, that is that's not me. I don't do that. But I do respond when people reach out because I know sometimes how far that can go in sending someone a DM or an email saying what they've been through or what they're going through. Just to know someone who fucking gets it hears them, I can't. It goes a long way.

Danielle Elliott Smith 53:52

It absolutely does. I have loved this conversation with you. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you want to share?

Tiffany Carter 54:02

I think it's important that I know there's people listening where it feels like there's no way out. And a line that I've developed, and now it's the line that I use behind the scenes in my company is there's always a fucking way. And if you don't know the way, we can invent the way. There really is always a way. And especially if you've gone through trauma and some heavy stuff, I promise you, you're the most equipped to find a way because you survived to this point. We just have to use that to rescue yourself. We have to flip it. But you're resourceful, there's always a damn way.

Danielle Elliott Smith 54:47

I love that so much. You know, it's interesting. I've always said that I would rather sit in a room full of people who are beautifully broken in some way uh than people who consider themselves normal because we've had to fight to get where we are. We're more patient, we are more self-aware, we have more courage and more strength and more resilience than the average person. And it makes it more interesting. So it has been so delightful having you on the podcast today.

Tiffany Carter 55:16

Thank you for trusting me with your people.

Danielle Elliott Smith 55:19

Thank you for trusting me with your story and with your hope and with all of the good you're doing in the world. I'm so grateful you're here. Friends, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Hope Comes to Visit. As always, it is an honor to be here with you. And it was truly an honor to have this conversation with Tiffany. Please, I know that you know someone who needs to hear so many aspects of Tiffany's story. So please take the time to share this episode with someone you know and love. Take some time to rate and review the podcast because that helps this get to more people who need to hear these stories. It is so good, and I am so grateful to have you here. And until we spend time together, please take very good care of you. Naturally, it's important to thank the people who support and sponsor the podcast. This episode is supported by Chris Dulley, a trusted criminal defense attorney and friend of mine here in St. Louis, who believes in second chances and solid representation. Whether you're facing a DWI, felony, or traffic issue, Chris handles your case personally with clarity, compassion, and over 15 years of experience. When things feel uncertain, it helps to have someone steady in your corner. Call 314 384 4000 or 314 DUI Help, or you can visit Dulilawfirm.com to schedule your free consultation.