033: Melissa Giller - Manifestation, Breadcrumbs & Intentionally Focusing on the Good

Jonathan DeYoe: Hello. Welcome back. On this episode of the Mindful Money Podcast, I’m chatting with Melissa Giller. Melissa is a certified life coach, an MBA, educated business consultant, a podcast host, and a mentor to millennial women. She’s a. And I love this. She’s a self proclaimed spiritual junkie, bringing deep introspection, compassion, and non judgment to client work right alongside things like strategic, results oriented action. Melissa, welcome to the Mindful Money podcast.

Melissa Giller: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’m excited to have you. So, uh, where do you call home? And where are you connecting from right now?

Melissa Giller: So, I live in called Headingley, Manitoba, small little town right outside of Winnipeg, which is the heart of Canada. So we are right in central prairies. Before we hit record, I was letting you know that I saw snow here this week, and pretty soon I’ll be blanketed under many inches and -50 temperatures. We did reach as cold as Mars one year. Yeah, it’s awesome.

Jonathan DeYoe: You can move. That’s always awesome. Property.

Melissa Giller: Yes. Well, we have a family business here that’s a local manufacturer, so we’d have to earth our whole plant and move. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. We’ve definitely talked about it.

Jonathan DeYoe: So, literally as cold as Mars. I mean, I’ve never heard of that.

Melissa Giller: -50 celsius with the windshield. I don’t know the conversion rate to fahrenheit. I’m pretty sure once you get kind of minus temperatures, they’re the same somehow in, uh, Fahrenheit and Celsius. But it’s cold. Cold. Insert your choice of language.

Jonathan DeYoe: So I had a budy who went to school in northern Minnesota, which isn’t as far north as where you are.

Melissa Giller: It’s very close, though.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, he parked his car one night, uh, this is 25, 30 years ago. He parked his car one night and he was backing out the next morning, and the rubber on the tires, the rubber froze to the ground. When he backed out, it ripped the tires in half. And I was like, that’s insane cold. That’s crazy cold.

Melissa Giller: That’s crazy cold. Yeah, that’s not out of the realm of normal. We have actual snow tires here, right? Correct.

Jonathan DeYoe: Did you grow up there?

Melissa Giller: I did, born and raised. Yeah. I’ve been lucky to have traveled extensively, but I always keep coming back. And so, to your point, will I ever actually move? I don’t know. There’s just something that keeps me here. Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: Oh, family for sure.

Melissa Giller: Yeah, for sure.

Jonathan DeYoe: What did you learn about money? Entrepreneurship. Growing up there in that very cold, cold?

Melissa Giller: Well, investing in quality materials is very important. Like you need quality footwear and clothing and all the way to. Obviously, as a homeowner, how you set up your. We’re lucky with geothermal heat, so should our heat ever crap out for whatever reason, we get heat, uh, out of the earn, but that’s not entirely common. But what did I learn about money? I grew up with a father who was a baker for his entire life and eventually became the chief operations officer of a major credit union. So I grew up with money and also involved in risk management. So a lot of kind of fear based money mentality. But also I was financially literate. I always knew my way around how to balance a book. I didn’t even remember opening my first bank account when I was, I think, five, and getting back at that, ah, time we had the book that you got and the teller stamped it, right? And so I would play banker and I had this kind of interest in finance, although I guess by the time I got into high school, I completely flipped that and had that story. I’m bad at math, right? And so I never really pursued math and finance as an interest. And it wasn’t until long after, when I was in the MBA program and struggling my way through Corp Phi, because I didn’t take that sort of stuff. In my undergrad, I was a psych major, religion. It came full circle for me, but I knew more than I thought I did, and I surprised myself in my MBA when I was able to actually get through those accounting classes without actually rather unscathed, I guess is the word. And now as a business owner, I know bookkeeping and I don’t do my own accounting, but I do do my own bookkeeping. I know it’s something that you can outsource, obviously, but it’s one thing I’ve just chosen to maintain because I can do it quickly, easily. I understand it and I’ve always kind of prided myself as a small business owner and a woman, I have to say, like being able to actually understand the financial, working behind the scenes of my business and what that kind of has meant for me as a business owner.

Jonathan DeYoe: Can you point to one of the experiences you had as a kid playing banker? And then what sort of lesson did that teach you and how did you carry that lesson forward? I realized you just said you kind of forgot it all for a time, but there must be nuggets that hold on.

Melissa Giller: Well, I just always remember the balancing side and the credits and the debits and making sure that uh, there’s one that should outweigh the other really, I guess is the point, but just really understanding how that works and then you can translate that many years forward, as in, I’m not one of those people who spends more than they make. I’m quite aware of how much I have coming in and with that I use every dollar like every dollar has a job and I stretch that out. But I’ve never been one to, again, spend blindly or not be aware that you need the receivable coming in.

Jonathan DeYoe: So tell us a little bit about the professional journey. So I know I read your bio, right, uh, not the bio that we did to introduce the show, but your complete sort of history. I know you spent some time in corporate, so what did you do before? What did you do when you were a corporate and then how did that sort of lead you to starting your own enterprise? Private coaching, consulting.

. My son was born in November: 2016

Jonathan DeYoe: Business coaching that day. It sounds like a singular event. So that event put that in the timeline. When did that happen?

Giller: That was September of: 2019

Jonathan DeYoe:: 2019

d our business in December of: 2019

Jonathan DeYoe: You talk about, and I read this about you, about being an old soul, being sensitive, thinking deeply, feeling in a big way. I’m assuming that’s kind of always been the case, but how was that accepted at the big four firm and before, and then sort of the follow up to that is, how has going independent allowed you to be more of yourself?

Melissa Giller: Yeah, well, I’ll say. I mean, I felt like such an OD bird in the MBA program, this traditional, lots of not to be, like, surrounded by male engineers, um, the standard students. I think there was, in the three and a half years of my program, three courses that I took that were actually in alignment with my career path. The rest were supply chain marketing, finance. There was not a lot of leadership development. There was a little bit, and there was a little bit of word theory behavior, right. But all the soft skill that I felt were really important, that I shone in, I did not see reflected in the educational content. So actually what I did was I requested to create my own course. So I approached a professor who taught in organizational behavior and approached him about doing basically a half term course on positive psychology in the workplace and in transformational leadership. So I wrote my own thesis on it. I did my own kind of, and I made something that didn’t exist out of what I felt was important, basically. So, as an entrepreneur, then, and to your point, sorry about being in a big firm, um, and being in these other corporate roles, I had so much self doubt, I didn’t speak up. I had a lot of fear about how I would be perceived or because of the lived experience of speaking up and people kind of thinking it wasn’t important or something to focus on and being dismissed. And I always just kind of felt like I wasn’t heard right. And so, for me, being able to create a business literally around hearing my own message, getting my own message out in the world, it felt very free, and it felt, to be honest, obviously, it’s come at a lot of times with self doubt and impostor syndrome, like, who am I to even think that I have sort of an expertise here, or, uh, to think, like, my observations alone and musings are enough to inform a body of work, right? But then when I start to realize, well, why not me? What makes me different than anybody else? I’ve studied these things. I’m passionate about these things. Is that not where knowledge comes from? And it’s more like leaning into the gifts and stopping the fear. Loving yourself, love over fear. Right.

Jonathan DeYoe: I definitely want to get to fear in just a minute, but just before then, you’ve learned some lessons, you had the MBA, you’re going forward, starting your own thing. What kind of preparations did you have to go through to say, yeah, I am worthy for that first client? And how did you find, uh, that first client?

Melissa Giller: Well, I was lucky that I had to ask three people to be practice clients during my coaching practicum. So I had some experience in coaching one total stranger because they got referred to me by somebody else and two friends. So I had both experiences where I could kind of see even how my own, how do you want to call it? Proclivities, perceptions, experiences of almost judgment, like knowing a person as a friend and then being their coach. Right. Versus coaching a stranger, and how, uh, I would come at it from a place of non judgment. And so that really helped enforce that non judgment side to really shine. I feel like during that time, because I realized that maybe I can’t coach people that I’m friends with and not that I’m not judgmental, but it’s a bias. Right. And so I kind of went at it with the fact of, like, I can’t rely on my personal network. I need to start with people that I don’t have any kind of knowledge of or they know me or whatever like that. And so because of the mom event business that I’d been involved in, I had a whole target client audience to really pull from. And with a couple kind of free offerings. At first, I just brought some people into my world and began building from there, offering free sessions, doing giveaways. I would give away a discovery session, someone would do it, and then they’d like it and want to continue. So that’s how I just slowly started building.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’m sure systems and processes change over time, but are you still doing that sort of free, let’s have a session, let’s talk it through and then see.

Melissa Giller: Oh, always, for sure. Yeah. It’s a two way street. A, uh, coaching relationship is very sacred in my mind. Right. And I want to make sure that we’re both primed and ready for that, because there’s definitely people I’ve said no, thank you to. Right. And there’s just who I don’t feel would be a good fit. So I do always offer that. And for me, I’ve had calls and decided, yeah, I don’t want to work with that person. It’s putting, obviously that choice in someone’s hands because I would never want to just sign on. And you get what you get and you don’t get upset.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s what we tell our kids, though, for sure.

Melissa Giller: Yes, exactly.

Jonathan DeYoe: When you talk about the impact you have on somebody’s life, how do you talk about that impact? And then how has it changed since you started till today?

Melissa Giller: I really think the impact I’m leaving people with is that ability to trust themselves more fully. And in that self trust is inner confidence and self esteem. And when both of those things start to rise, you’re unstoppable. You can get through anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s parenting, if it’s work, if it’s your marriage, your negative thoughts, whatever it is. When you have that heightened self confidence and self esteem, because inherently you trust, you’re capable, you know what you want, even if you maybe don’t fully know what you want, you know, you can figure it out. Just having that faith in yourself as a starting point, I think, is the greatest gift you could give anybody, and it’s certainly one I want to give my kids.

Jonathan DeYoe: We just dipped the toe in this moments ago. But let’s talk about fear. Uh, I think that that’s something that gets in all of our way all the time. So why do we feel the fear? And then where do you see it come up for folks?

Melissa Giller: Why do we feel the fear? Because we’re biologically, universally created to feel the fear. I think that our whole life is a practice of choice between love and fear from the start to the end. Not to simplify everything so much, but I really do think you can pretty much simplify most things to a choice over love and fear. And so you can choose that. And as I said in the example of myself, I could choose to give into the spheres of self doubt or the impostor syndrome, or I can choose to love the passions that I have, the education that I pursue, the strengths that I feel like I have, and trust on that. And when you’re trusting on that, you’re making things happen and you’re changing your reality. It’s the same as your perspective on somebody else. So I’ve been married now for five and a half years. Not very long, right? I’ve learned a lot in those five and a half years. And what I see, uh, is every moment with a spouse is a choice of love or fear. I could fear that you’re going to leave me and therefore act this way. Or I could fear what I’m going to say will hurt you, but also, if I don’t say it, I’m hurting myself. So I’m going to choose love. Like, every single interaction, you can boil it down.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. I’m going to replay that part over and over as I chat with my wife. Is it just fear, or have you categorized different kinds of fears? Is there a genus species of fear? And what kind of fears do you run into?

Melissa Giller: Yeah, you know what? A lot of the fears that I see are generally about ourselves, other people, or the world around us. I feel like you can kind of categorize them if you’re going to into that. So we carry, again, all the fear that I touched on about ourselves. We have fear about others or how we might be treated. I mean, I gave the marriage example, but it’s in every interaction, right? We fear looking silly to somebody else or what they might be thinking of us when we meet somebody new, how we’re coming across, and fears of the world around us are more societal and systemic. As a female entrepreneur, I have fears around how the economic environment will subvert me as a woman in business. I have fear around that because I’ve seen what’s limited, right. So I have fear around personal safety because of issues in our world, right. I have fear for my children’s safety. I find choosing love in those big picture things, that’s, uh, the hardest one. It’s easier to love ourselves. Even so, starting there is often the best practice, because that’s a lot easier when you can choose to love yourself. And then it’s like that saying, little people, little problems. Do you know that? So it’s like, just start small, because as you get bigger, that fear gets bigger. And fearing for personal safety, fearing your children’s personal safety is one of the scariest things you could ever imagine. So that imposter syndrome doesn’t look so big now, does it? Right? Like, I’ll just start the damn course. I’ll just try, right?

Jonathan DeYoe: Because I do a curated list of five readings every Monday as part of our mindful money weekly. And one of the things I just curated and put out there was somebody was talking about how the environment kids are growing up in today with constantly negative news around inequality, global warming, just how expensive it is to go to college, debt, especially in the US. Do you think that we sort of build up the fear for kids, and then we have to come up with a way to reduce it at some point and say, hey, you can handle this? Because I think that’s what gets lost in that.

Melissa Giller: Well, if I think about my generation and just even the people that I know, we’ve been bred as high performers, high anxiety folk, because we grew up in this era, too, of, like, got to get a good education. You got to go to school. You got to go to school twice, get this job right away, perform. Oh, also be an athlete. And also, if you’re a parent, be that best parent you could ever possibly be. Don’t ever send your kid to school with chips. There’s so much pressure. Right. And I do see that, obviously, my children’s generation now, too, who are just entering school and everything like we are, said, stay safe wherever you go. Uh uh. It’s unsettling when people say that to me, to be honest, because that makes me feel like anxious lookout. I was just walking down the street out for walking my dog, but stay safe. So, yeah, I think it’s priming our nervous systems, quite frankly, for overload. And it’s not getting better, because I do see so much of this coming down from the big mainstream news that people follow and trickling down into the educational system and pervasive. So how do we curb that? I think, like I said to me, and just my approach is it always starts within and it always starts really small. And so one line that we have in our house is, listen to your body. And just if I can ingrain that in my kids, that trickles out into so many different aspects that one day they think, and remember, what’s your body say? Listen to my body. Right. So I think as parents, there’s little practices of, uh, teaching that self trust and self love that will help build more self compassionate first people. That extends to others. I also think that choosing to look for good news stories, I mean, we practice gratitude as a family. Every night at dinner, what was a great thing from your day to day? What made you smile? What are you excited about? Focusing on the good intentionally, and you will see more good.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I totally agree that I think that there’s this phrase that I hear that if you’re not terrified, you’re not paying attention. And I think we have to sort of counter that phrase with, there’s also good things in the world. Uh, pay attention to the good things. There’s plenty of good things. Like you said, you got to look out for them.

Melissa Giller: One of my core desired feelings, and I do this work with my clients, is I have them identify how is it you want to feel in your life or in your work, whatever kind of we’re specifically focused on. And for me it’s called feeling alive. And when I kind of dug what that meant, it’s presence. Like, I love to sit and watch the sunset. I love to just go for a walk. No music, just listening to the crunch of, uh, the leaves. I can sit. I mean, I am a meditator, so I have that ability to sit and meditate, which I love. And so that makes me feel alive. Like that is what. Not fear, not this rush of adrenaline, not this which has its time and place. I’ve skydived before, but I think the smallest sort of reminders of being alive and what that means and enjoying the most simple of things. That’s the point.

Jonathan DeYoe: I think we must listen to a similar meditation teacher on insight timer because somebody actually talks about how humans aren’t so much looking for the meaning of life as they are looking for the experience of being alive. So what is that little thing, the sunset? And how does that feel? How does watching the sunset feel in my body? How does this comment that I’ve heard from somebody else, how does that feel in my body? And that’s that experience of being alive? And I think that’s what you, just as people, love it.

Melissa Giller: Thank you.

Jonathan DeYoe: I kind of hesitate to go here because I’m very literal and concrete in my own processes. But you mentioned manifestation in one of our prior emails. I’m always intrigued, but ultimately sort of disappointed by manifestation techniques. So anything that suggests that believing, purely believing, without a nod to, uh, doing the work, feels like an empty promise to me. So I apologize for the skeptical backdrop, but what is it you talk about when you talk about manifestation?

Melissa Giller: Yeah. And this is exactly, I think the misconception about manifestation is that it’s not just sitting and wishing or meditating and looking in your third eye and seeing yourself accepting the $100,000 check, which that.

Jonathan DeYoe: Sums up my entire experience of manifestation.

Melissa Giller: Yeah. But that little vision of yourself accepting the $100,000 check, it’s a bright crown. And I used that word before, right? It’s a spark, it’s a desire. And so you get the desire as a hit or it’s always been there, or it’s something that, um, unfolds over time. But eventually you clue in that you have this desire. I want a new house. I want more money. I want to become a different kind of parrot. I desire something. And so what I believe is that when you have that spark, you both act on it and you grow it inside of you. And so you act on it by making it an actual structurable goal. A smart goal, right? Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely. So I’m manifesting to make a million dollars in five years, right. This isn’t a real example, but it could be. So you know what? I don’t even want to use that as a real example because it’s not really something I’m truly manifesting. So I won’t really be able to speak to that in relevance. But let’s just take something like, I want to renovate my ensuite. I want to change something about my house. Uh, this worked for us because we literally did manifest our dream house. So I could tell you that story too. But, uh, you have to actually get it on paper. You have to actually see what it looks like, because from then you can reverse engineer it. Right. So if I want to do this, then that means I’m going to have to save this amount of money. I’m going to have to find a design that speaks to me. I’m going to have to maybe hire a designer. Well, then I’m going to need that amount of money because I don’t have capacity to take that on right now. You reverse engineer, wouldn’t it be nice if, uh. Right, like if I had all these things kind of line up for me? So now you’ve got the pathway forward, right? And from then, that’s when, okay, I see the steps to take there, but that’s when our fear will hold us back. Anyone can have a strategy, just like anyone can sit and meditate. It’s blending the two together, right? And so when you’re actually starting to take action, that’s when you need to start working on your beliefs and become the person who has what you desire, right. And that’s changing thoughts, changing your mindset, changing. Like, if I wanted to have this, I would need to believe this on a regular basis. So that’s more of the strategy piece to it. The aligned action and also personal development work to shift some of the things that are holding you back from achieving that. And then you bring in the woo, you sit and you visualize. And this is really powerful because it is actually that feeling of immersion. And the keyword is feeling. What is the feeling you hope to gain from this desire? Because the universe works in energetics. It picks up on frequency, on vibration. And when you can fully immerse yourself in the vibration of what you want, you become a magnet for it and you attract it in.

Jonathan DeYoe: I love the sort of you manifest it, you have the inkling, you’ve got the spark. You reverse engineer, you do the personal development, and that’s the whole process of manifestation. It’s not just the spark. It’s the reverse engineering, planning. It’s the, uh, personal development and then the action. That’s all four, right?

Melissa Giller: And the feeling. And it’s not something you maybe need to do every day. But I find it especially helpful as kind of this, like a cornerstone to what you’re doing. Uh, a practice to keep going back to, especially when you do feel yourself maybe farther away from that goal than you wish, or it’s feeling difficult, or you’re working through this block and you’re in the messy middle. Right. Sitting in that feeling and truly vibrating, resonating with what that outcome would feel like, is a very powerful practice because it’s that body reminder. When I say, again, what does your body want? What does your body say? What does your body tell you? When you really do stop and look inwards and you think about what you want, it feels differently. You can try this as a test. Think about something you’re desiring and think about something you know you don’t want. Just get to know the familiarity of those different sensations of, ah, feeling. Like, I would feel my stomach closed. I feel like it closed off. It’s a very distinct feeling.

Jonathan DeYoe: Do you ever run into people that just have no. They cannot connect with what their body is feeling? I think I’ve run into a few people like that, but it takes time. So how do you develop that ability to know what your body is feeling?

Melissa Giller: Yeah, I think that sometimes we have to be careful. I think sometimes with people with traumatic experiences, feeling into your body doesn’t feel safe. Right. And so if I knew, for instance, if I was working with someone like that, I wouldn’t maybe bring that up as a practice, but I think it is just practice. It’s like, start with the most simple. Think of food. Food I love and food I hate. What would it feel like to eat a, uh, warm, cheesy slice of pepperoni pizza right now versus sardine? Visualize that and feel it in your stomach.

Jonathan DeYoe: I happen to like sardines. That’s not going to work for me. So just real quick, I want to make it. One of the things I try to do here on the podcast is try to really simplify the success process. So I just want to an exercise. If a new client came to you and you knew that there was one thing that you said to them, hey, if you follow this thing religiously, it’ll lead to more personal and financial success. What is the one thing. And then a second question is, we all swim in this soup of ideas, and there’s so many ideas, and there’s so much stuff to pay attention to that we’re all on overwhelm. So what’s one thing that one should do? And then what’s one thing that we hear about that is not helpful at all that we’re better off ignoring or just letting go of?

Melissa Giller: Okay, you’re going to need to break these questions down because my memory sucks.

Jonathan DeYoe: First one, what’s one thing. Someone, um, just starting off with you, what’s the one thing you say? Focus on this.

Melissa Giller: That’s a great question. And I think for me it would be, how do you want to feel? How do you want to feel? And make that a daily question. You can have it an hourly question, to be honest, because if you know how you want to feel, you can do one small thing that helps elicit that response. So sometimes I make this, um, my morning routine. I’m planning out my day, and while my day is relatively already planned, for the most part, I still like to have white space here and there. So how do I want to feel? If I want to feel connected in my relationships, I might call them something writing in my book, if I want to. I’m working towards. I want to feel abundant financially. I might make an offer today. Right. If I want to feel calm, um, and relaxed, schedule in a bath tonight. Right. How do I want to feel today and just trust and follow through.

Jonathan DeYoe: And then what is one thing that we all hear that we can just let go of? That it’s not helpful news, not helpful information, not going to help us get better. But everyone else is saying, do this, do this, do this.

Melissa Giller: Whenever you hear the should word in your mind, just instant cue, you hear yourself thinking, should I? Really? Should. I ought to. Also, I need to should ask where it comes from.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve never heard that one. That’s a really good idea. Thank you. Bringing a little bit back to personal. What was the last thing you changed your mind about?

Melissa Giller: The last thing I changed my mind about has been my Instagram strategy. Uh, I have been on Instagram since it came out, essentially since I got an iPhone, which I think was in well for me, something like that. I’ve been on Instagram, I’ve used it in my business. And just within more or less the last month, I’ve slowly been not as into it, and, uh, I’m not incorporating it into my marketing strategy really at all. Cool.

Jonathan DeYoe: I wonder how many people are leaving social media platforms because we don’t track them or don’t like them anymore, whatever the reason is. Right?

Melissa Giller: Yeah. And for me, it’s like, it’s a great landing page I’ll post when I want to because I still feel like that kind of creative desire sometimes can be there. Desire for connection, but it’s not a part of my strategic action anymore.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

Melissa Giller: Ah.

Jonathan DeYoe: Is there anything that you hesitate to share sometimes, but people don’t know about you, but you really wish that people knew about you or question that you really wish people asked?

Melissa Giller: I think what I wish people would know is just like, you don’t need a lot to feel good, and I’ve really come to believe that about myself. And I can make myself feel good wherever I am in whatever season I am. And I’ve been in many seasons where I did not feel good, but I know how to get out of that. Including I just tore my ACL this summer, but I had the opportunity to practice. I actually think that was divine orchestration because I’ve been coaching since my dark time. Coaching, coaching, coaching building. And then I was faced with it again and I was able to get through it with so much more ease and grace and self compassion than I feel like I would have in the past.

Jonathan DeYoe: So your practice has been bookended by a broken foot and now a torn ACL. So hopefully there’s nothing else that’s like, pending.

Melissa Giller: I really hope so because I don’t have a lot left. Uh uh.

Jonathan DeYoe: How do people connect with you? Where do they find you? People are interested in working with you. How do they find you?

Melissa Giller: Yeah, I would say go find me on Instagram, but I’m not going to. So you can find me online at, ah, melissagillard.com. From there you can access my podcast, you can access my social media, you’ll be on my newsletter. However else you’d like to connect with me, there’s a free call option as well.

Jonathan DeYoe: Sounds good. Melissa, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a sincere pleasure and we’ll put all that stuff in the show notes.

Melissa Giller: Great. Thanks so much for having me. I really love this conversation.

Jonathan DeYoe: Great.