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After those runs, the conversations keep going.
That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about.
It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.
Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
A sincere welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are on this world, on this planet, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we break down the psychology of our 20s.
There are some people out there who we can just all agree we basically aspire to be.
The people who have it all.
They're intelligent.
They're business minded.
They take care of themselves and their relationships.
They are kind. They are confident.
They are hot, smart, and rich.
To use the catchphrase of our guests today, I think we can learn a lot from these kinds of individuals and the mindset that they have cultivated for themselves.
I don't talk about entrepreneurship or business a lot on this podcast because it is a psychology podcast.
But when we get down to it, there is a lot of psychology involved.
And I do get so many questions about it revolving around how you can take risks on yourself, how you can find your niche, what is the secret to being successful and creative in your 20s and how can we balance all of that ambition whilst also having a fierce, confident aura cultivating wealth in our
life in whatever form.
And I was lucky enough to find someone who has discovered that very formula.
Today, we have on a special guest the founder of Hot, Smart and Rich, Maggie Sellars.
Maggie, can you introduce yourself?
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me.
I'm truly honored. It's also so interesting hearing your voice over Zoom because I feel like I've heard it in my ears for so long and I'm just so grateful to be here.
But, yeah, I'm Maggie Sellars.
I'm also from a Commonwealth country, Canada.
I emigrated to the U .S.
almost seven years ago to work in really high -growth startups.
I was in high -growth startups for a super long time.
And then I ended up really having this light bulb moment where I realized celebrities were the future of distribution to reach a new audience at a super inexpensive way.
So I ended up working for some of the biggest celebrities in the world at a management company.
I helped build some brands for them.
I did brand partnerships, creative strategy.
And then I fell in love with early stage investing when a lot of young brands would come to us in exchange for equity, ownership in the brand, versus cash.
Ended up launching a corporate venture arms record label or record labels corporate venture arm.
And then I've spent the last two years really building HSR as a media company, media investment holding company to empower women to become their hottest, smartest, richest self.
We started with short form content.
We're very quickly expanding into long form content.
And I'm just so grateful every single day to be helping make an impact in so many incredible women's lives to just be authentically themselves.
Oh, my goodness. I love that.
I love everything that it stands for, especially since you know your shit.
Like you are you embody the hot, smart, hot, smart rich ethos and not in the way that I think people typically think.
Like it's such a mindset thing for you.
And just I think an incredible, an incredible mission to just be like women can have a space in like male dominated spaces.
They can do it all.
Like they are smart.
They can be wealthy.
They can be like this attractive, confident force.
What was like you kind of explained how you came to develop hot, smart rich.
What was like your motivation?
Was there like a light bulb moment for you where you were like people kind of need this like we need like a finance broke community for women.
Yeah, so badly. I think it's like a lot of little moments in my life that ladder it up to finally being able to take the plunge of just people thinking one thing about me or these kind of passive aggressive compliments or backhanded compliments of like, oh, you're so much nicer than I thought you were.
You're actually really smart.
And I think I just over time felt really worn down by those small things.
But then there were obviously a lot of like bigger moments in people's lives that just make you realize that you want to make a change.
And there's one story in particular that always comes back to me where I was working at a startup and I was taking on so much responsibility and just like doing what I did at every startup, which was acting as if it was my own working crazy hours, more responsibility, no more money.
And I had been negotiating back and forth with my male boss at the time trying to just like advocate for myself and be taken seriously.
And there was just this moment where he was like, I just don't think that you're worth it.
And I was like, well, then I'm going to leave.
And I never thought that he would let me leave.
I thought ultimately it was going to be like, of course, I would never let you leave.
And I left and I had no idea what I was going to do.
I had 60 days to get deported back to Canada because of my visa status.
And I just had to figure it out.
And it was this really interesting moment where everything I had known kind of melted away.
And it was just like I bet 100 percent on myself.
And I think it was through the last three or four years of working mostly for men, mostly for men talent, mostly just around men in this space where I didn't have the same credentials that a lot of them had.
I didn't go to an Ivy League school.
I didn't go to investment banking.
I didn't have any connections.
Like I've built my entire network myself for seven years since I got here.
And I just realized how lonely I felt, but how much I loved what I was doing.
And I was like, I wish there was just more people that I could do this with that I related to.
And then there was this other lightbulb moment where I saw a lot of deals and it was often geared towards selling to women and women control.
Eighty five percent of consumers spend in the U .S., yet we get two percent of venture dollars.
And it was often men that were getting the deals, going to their wives, their girlfriends, their friends and asking for, like, do you use this or what products compute this?
And I'm like, women are literally giving away the secrets to make men wealthy because we control the spend.
We know what people are buying.
So if I can help tell women that what actually makes them good consumers is what would make you a good investor, then I'm actually going to teach the fishermen to fish, not just give him the fish.
And so that's kind of what started and I think just has spiraled from there to be so much like of a mission for me.
But it's been really fun along the way, which I honestly haven't been able to say.
I've had a lot of excitement in my career, but I haven't had fun like every single day because I really am like the own writer of my destiny now.
Honestly, like hearing you talk about this, I'm getting so inspired.
Yeah, I have like no interest in like investing or in venture capital.
And I'm like, what am I going to invest in next?
Like, like my money is my power.
I've never really considered it, which is probably not a great thing to own up to.
I think I think that's part of the problem is that we are not encouraged to even think about the little things that we can do.
And I think that is where the way that women think about money is just so fundamentally different than the way that men think about money, that it's almost just changing the perception of how hard it is to even think about it.
It's like getting people excited to talk about it is part of what the purpose is.
Like I will come on record and say I know what I'm going to I know what I'm not.
If you want to be a, you know, Wall Street guru ninja, I'm probably not the person that's going to teach you how to do that, but I will teach you how to change your your mindset towards money, your mindset towards how you think about yourself, your mindset towards how you think about collaboration.
And there will be tips and tricks along the way and a community to help you build whatever your dream is, whether it's starting a company, investing in a company, being the head of marketing or whatever your career ambition is for you.
What I found really interesting about what you just said was how we think about money.
And what's really interesting is that my mom is actually an economist, which a lot of people don't know.
And so you would think that I have this attitude towards money that would be very different and very rational and very kind of accumulative.
But I just feel like I was then socialized, like, at school and at university to see this group of people who cared about, you know, wealth management and wealth growth and investing and all those things.
And I was like, I don't I don't see myself represented there.
Like I see myself in this more emotional side of things.
I see that myself in this more like psychological side.
So the fact that you have come up with essentially what is like a coaching brand almost like this whole brand.
And the primary thing I think for you is how do we get strong, independent women over their imposter syndrome?
And how do we make it so that you see yourself represented in a space that previously you thought you didn't deserve to be in or whether that's launching your own business, whether that's in like your dream career, whether that's like dating the people you want to date, like speaking your opinion in like
a crowded room. One of my favorite taglines that you have is like you are the CEO of a slow life in a fast world.
Now, I think that's really important to pull out here because you know, I love the slow life, you know, I love the softer life, the gentle life where it's not all focused on like productivity and like doing as much as you can.
And you kind of spoke about how when you were doing that you were so burnt out and you still had people, your boss say to you like, well, you're still not worth it.
What does it mean to you now having started your own company?
How do you embody this like slow life in a fast world or in the fast lane, I guess?
It's such a great question.
And it's something that I feel so passionate about because I think that we have totally just gone down the wrong way of productivity.
People think busyness is productivity and it is so not.
Am I busy? Of course I am.
But I'll give you a great example and a great story.
I have been traveling a lot more than normal.
I just got back on Monday.
It's Wednesday. I'm leaving again on Saturday for two weeks to go to India.
I have so many things going on in my life this week.
I've injured my back.
So I have a spine, a specialist appointment, have all these doctors appointments.
I have all these commitments that I've made.
And I could start to feel myself just be like, how am I going to do this?
And the old me would have been like, wake up at 6 a .m.
Go to bed at 12, like coffee, coffee, like skip my workout, skip my mental health.
And that is just so detrimental to the longevity of building a marathon versus a sprint of a business that I sat down with myself and I was like, what are the three most important things of the business?
Okay. What are the three most important things underneath that?
And then I wrote down, is there anything that I can delegate?
Is there anything that I can take off of my calendar to be able to accomplish everything?
And once you break things down very easily, you're able to understand how yes, there are things that are really important that people are relying on you for, but there's something that, uh, my boyfriend recently just taught me that I ask myself every single day when I'm feeling overwhelmed is, is this urgent
or is this important because urgency is typically somebody else's to -do list.
And it is not your job to do somebody else's to -do list.
It is your job to do what is important for you, your business, your company that you work for or your career.
And so instead of tackling somebody else's urgent to -do list, it is the most important for you to do what's important for you and everybody else can wait.
And so there's like little tips and tricks that you can do where, you know, you can just do different time blocking, day blocking.
Sometimes I even put it an out of office, just saying, I'm going to be slow to respond because of X, Y, and Z.
And yes, if you work at a big corporation, there might be things you have to work through with your manager, but I do think that if you are really transparent and you have great communication and you explain what you are doing, you should all be working towards the same goal.
It is easier for people now to be able to work together when you still have boundaries.
I absolutely, 100 % agree.
And also something that we say a lot on the podcast, right?
Boundaries are a sign of respect.
Boundaries are a sign of dedication, loyalty, and love, because the time that I have had the least amount of boundaries has actually been when I've disappointed the most people, because totally, right?
Like you over -commit, you say you can do something because you don't want to let them down, whereas if you had the boundary of saying, I'm sorry, I'm clocking off at six and that's that, you know, you don't impress upon someone that you can do more than you can do.
And I remember being like, when I was at my corporate job like working as a management consultant, I was in Melbourne.
I'm, I live in Sydney now and my family all live in Melbourne and it was my grandma's birthday and I had promised to go to her birthday dinner and I'm at my job and I'm in a team of five men and it's not a gendered thing, but this is, it was gendered for me and that I didn't feel like I could say, Hey
guys, like I'm going to go to my grandma's birthday.
Like it was just like emotional thing.
Um, and I'm in this team of five men and we're doing a productivity report for a huge, like a huge consumer industry body in Australia and my boss is like, sorry guys, I'm going to need you all to stay till nine and I ended up, you know, still leaving, you know, I was like, yeah, yeah, sure.
I can do that. But then I ended up leaving at eight instead of nine and then everyone was pissed at me and I was still late for like my grandma's birthday and she was, I could see like quite upset.
So if I just had the boundary of like, no, I'm sorry.
I'm happy to start earlier tomorrow, but I, this is a hard stop for me.
It's like, no one would have been hurt.
Yes. Maybe they would have been initially disappointed, but there's a respect there of like, I respect you enough to be open about what I'm doing and what I needed outside of work and you better kind of respect me enough to say something.
But because it was like this senior male figure in the organization and there were all these guys and like none of them really had like partners, like a lot, a lot of them were like quite younger.
None of them really like had these family commitments.
I'm sure they did just not at that time.
Like it was so much harder to do it.
And I think, you know, it's so funny.
I always say like words matter and language matters.
And you said, I'm sorry a lot.
And coming from a Canadian, it comes out of my mouth a lot, but I think you said something really great where it's like you say, I actually thank you for your understanding.
I need to leave at 6pm for my grandmother's birthday, which is a previous commitment, which I told you about.
Thank you for your understanding.
I will be in the office tomorrow at 7am, three hours earlier than when everybody else is getting in to finish my part of the work.
And I'm happy to review it at a time that's like beneficial for both of us.
And yes, there are some bosses that will not respect that and want you to be this like scared person of like, I'm so sorry, but that's also not an environment that you should want to work in long -term because it's not fostering your success and development.
And so I think it's things like of just even again, like this is hot smart, rich as a mindset.
It's like, how do we change people's language and change collaboration?
And so it's using language like, thank you for your understanding versus I'm sorry, because we shouldn't be sorry that we have a life outside of work.
It's such people, please a behavior on my part as well.
Also, the I'm sorry thing is something that I find myself doing.
Is it a commonwealth thing?
I think it must be.
Yeah, it is a really good habit to learn of switching the.
Switching from being apologetic for taking up space and for standing up for yourself.
That's not something that you need to feel sorry for to being like, thank you for respecting that, like thank you for respecting my boundaries and my autonomy and actually just like respecting me as a person who is nuanced and who is not just their job, who is not just a partner, who is not just anything.
Exactly. I want to move into our first topic of the day, which is how to be hot.
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Use as directed. How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance?
It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself just one more day until Friday.
But then somebody in the elevator says, happy Friday.
Then you check your phone quickly and discover today's actually Friday.
So yes, happy Friday, random stranger in the elevator.
Happy Friday indeed.
Yep. Switching and saving with Geico feels just like that.
Get more with Geico.
After those runs, the conversations keep going.
That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about.
It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys and the thoughts that arise once we hit the pavement together.
You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?
Well, that's when the real magic happens.
So if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people you know, follow and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.
It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all.
It's lighthearted, pretty crazy and very fun.
Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, this podcast might be keeping you from being distracted.
Here's something to level up your focus.
I'm Amouthe Imba, host of the podcast How I Work.
It's a show where I interview some of the world's most successful people and uncover how exactly they can strap their days.
From how to combat a scrolling addiction to morning rituals and productivity hacks, we explore how some of the best stay disciplined and manage their time effectively.
Where ambition meets inspiration, search for How I Work on the free iHeart app or in whatever podcast app you're listening to.
OK, Maggie. Hot, smart, rich.
Hot is the first word in this in the sequence of beautiful words.
What does it actually take to be quote unquote hot?
Because I think we know it's not all physical.
We all know that. We want to be someone who is perceived as attractive, but it is actually more psychological than it is physical.
It is a mental mindset.
How do we kind of activate that hot mindset for ourselves?
Yeah, I love this question.
And I think, you know, it's so funny because people are always like so thrown off when they hear I'm a hot, smart, rich girl.
But I think to your point, exactly being hot is such a state of mind.
And it really starts with confidence because being your most confident self in whatever that is for you is what is true hotness to me.
I think, you know, even for me, coming in and feeling hot is being powerful in my words and my intentions and how I make people feel that is hot like there is it's going to be different for everybody.
But for me, being hot is feeling like I can walk into a room where I don't know anybody, not on my phone and feel hot and confident that like I am that girl, like I am that girl that's walking in no matter what I'm wearing, no matter what I'm looking like that day and no matter what stage of my cycle
I'm in. It's just a confidence and an attitude that I think we as women, to your point earlier, like feel so much impostor syndrome.
We feel like do we deserve to be there?
And I think like being hot is also just in the way that for me and for you and how everybody else that's listening to this takes care of themselves.
Like, what does your self -care routine look like?
Is that affirmations?
Is that journaling?
Is that walking? Is that a crazy boxing workout?
Is that bicycling, cycling?
It's just what makes you feel fulfilled and makes you feel happy outside of what you do for your job.
And I think the words I get hesitant to like break each down so much because actually where it came from was this idea that I kept seeing on TikTok.
Hot girls do this, hot girls do that.
And it was this like a hot girl walk.
And I'm like, but I want to be more than just being hot.
Like I want to be smart.
I want to be happy.
I want to be healthy.
I want to be abundant.
Well, what are the three most catchy words that are clickbait, hot, smart, and rich?
Of course, I want people to be happy and healthy.
But I wanted to embody things that weren't just fixating on one thing because we are so much.
And that's the whole purpose of Hot Smart Rich.
We are so much more than just one aspect of how we are defined or how we define ourselves.
We are multifunctional, amazing creatures that have interests and hobbies and things that we are good at that we want to learn more about.
So hot is one aspect of it, but it's also so much more than that.
I absolutely love how you put that.
You know, I also love the like behind the scenes acknowledgement that it is still a marketing.
You are still running a business.
Totally. I mean, I think that's what the best the best business is.
And this is something that often because I am so collaborative and I'm giving so many tidbits away and I'm like crying on the Internet and going through breakups on the Internet and all the while joining a $75 million venture fund and investing, like that is the realness and vulnerability that I think
is missing from the workforce.
That is why women don't see other women at the top like we do men.
That is why we don't see women getting the same amount of dollars invested into them because we have to shy away from anything that makes us look emotional or that makes us look like we have a life outside of our jobs.
And so for me, it's like I want women to embrace all aspects of them.
Obviously, again, with our own boundaries, like you can't go into your job every day crying, of course not.
But I just want to create a space and the best businesses are built off of business meets mission.
Like if you do not have a why, whether you want to be a content creator, you want to start a business, you want to be an investor, your why is what will carry you through.
If you don't have that when things get hard, you will quit.
There are days where I just want to stop what I'm doing.
And then I'm like, but what about the girl today that messaged me saying that I helped her raise her first three hundred thousand dollars?
Like, how could I stop if she doesn't have my content?
And so I think, yes, of course, it's marketing, but the best businesses actually have a true mission and a true why.
And so I think it's it's both like I don't think you can have one without the other.
And the little tangent I was going on was like, people often forget that at the end of the day, I am an investor.
I am a businesswoman.
I have done amazing things in my career because it is a business and it is as much coaching, but the currency that the world runs on, like I'm still a big part of that.
We buy into that when we join society.
So it's it's not a non -for -profit.
It is a mission driven business to do good and give back in a way that still is keeping us into the economic center of how the world works.
Does that make sense?
It absolutely does.
It totally does where it's like.
It totally does in the sense that you cannot do everything for free.
It's something that I come across a lot.
You would like to. That's the ideal world, a collaborative, purely collaborative, purely like barter system where it's like, I need this information from you and you can give me this information I need from you, like all these kinds of things.
But it is important to be realistic.
And I want to focus in on what you said about your why, because if we're returning to this like over branching original theme of hot, I think that you can you need to have a why and you need to have a mission when it comes to business.
The people who I see are the most attractive, most confident people have a why when it comes to themselves and their purpose.
And they walk into spaces and then they're almost like, I know why I'm here.
I know why I deserve to be here.
I have purpose. I have a mission.
I have something that I care about that is untouchable regardless of like what else happens in my personal life, in this room, outside of this room, whatever anybody says to me at my core, I have something I care about, which no one else can emulate and which no one else can touch.
And I think just to give the listeners a piece of advice and a habit if you want to feel more attractive in yourself and feel more attractive in front of others, finding time to really sit in that space of what do I actually care about?
What actually means something to me is honestly a form of emotional armor.
It is a form of emotional armor to walk into a new relationship, a new friendship, a room of investors, whoever it is, and be like, okay, win or lose.
This is all part of this story for me.
Have you kind of found that as well with yourself?
Totally. I think I can think of so many different stories I could say, but I'll focus maybe on two.
When I, and this is a horrible habit that I used to have, I used to vape smoke and I found it very, very, very hard to quit.
And it was because it was just like, it was not intentional.
I didn't sit with anything.
I didn't have any armor, as you said, and going kind of tying everything back into, you know, what we first talked about with slow living is I watched this Ted talk from this doctor and it was like, instead of just trying to quit cold Turkey, which is just going to make you feel bad about yourself because you're
going to be like, I have to have it.
And then you've relapsed and you've done these things.
Actually, I want you to take what your advice is and I want you to engage in the activity.
And when you're doing it, I want you to think about how you feel.
How do you feel when you do it?
And I would feel horrible.
I felt nauseous. My fingers smelled.
I would get a headache.
I would then feel like I was out of breath.
And so once I actually slowed down, instead of just using my own mental toughness, like how can I quit so easily?
What's my leg? And then be hard on myself.
I was able to be like, okay, this doesn't feel good.
I don't look good. I'm not happy.
Like it's not making my life better.
And it was so much easier for me to quit something when I was able to ladder it up to like being intentional, slowing down.
How did I feel? And I think about the, those are, that's obviously a small example, but on a big scale, I called off my engagement and I think without a mission, without HSR, without a purpose, it would have been life altering hard because I didn't have a place to live.
I had to put all my stuff in storage.
I was already 30 when people say that your thirties, you have everything figured out and your twenties are for being lost and confused.
And I was like, wait, I just gave up a big house in the Hills.
I don't have anywhere to live.
All my friends are in relationships.
I'm not getting invited to parties anymore that are couple things.
And I don't know what I'm doing.
But all I knew in that moment was I had a purpose and a why of helping other women.
And initially it started as business.
And then when I was going through what I went through, as soon as I talked about it online and opened up about the struggles that I was going through, I not only felt like I was helping disseminate information, I was getting a lot back.
I was getting stories of women who had gone through something similar.
And that was the moment where I realized like, yes, HSR is business and finance, but it's so much more than that, because like I said, we're such multi -hyphenate creatures and we're going to go through so much in our lives that it's hard to just focus on one aspect.
And that's kind of the moment that I realized too, it's like it's not just Business 101, it's like life upgrade, glow up, hot, smart, rich life 101.
Doing what is best for you even when it's hot, that's pretty hot.
So hard. I can imagine that must have been that just must have been excruciating having to sit in that decision and knowing that either one was going to be difficult.
There was not a single easy option out of that.
And sometimes in both of those examples, I do think that one of the best things that you can do for yourself in your life at any point is to do the thing that is incredibly scary and that you have absolutely no certainty is going to work out because I honestly believe that it's in those risks where the most
potential is held and the reason that a lot of people don't find their potential is because the fear kind of holds them back as naturally as it would.
And when you kind of walk past that, it's such a visual thing for me.
But I think of it as like this big dome, this big like iridescent dome or like iridescent like kind of like shield or like curtain.
And when you step through it, it's suddenly like a whole new world, suddenly like, oh, I just did that really, really scary, really hard thing.
What's next? If that was like calling off an engagement that there are so many people who I can imagine had the desire to do that and didn't do it and now are in relationships that are not right for them 10, 20, 30 years down the line.
And it's so much more scary to sit in a life that you didn't actively choose.
And know that you have to make peace with it rather than take the risk earlier on.
If that makes sense.
It's like every big moment in my life that has unlocked opportunity has come right after those terrifying, scary moments.
And for me, like you've envisioned a dome.
I envision a wall that you like walk through, kick down, whatever it is that you have to get through to get to the other side and even moving from Canada to the States, like I knew nobody.
I had to sell my house in Canada and I had to deal with visa issues and like, it was, it was horrible.
Like my visas, when I first moved here, they were a year long.
So think about signing a car lease.
Think about signing an apartment.
You're like, am I going to be here in a year?
I don't know. And so everything that has unlocked the next step of my life and the next, the place that I'm at today is exactly where I dreamt of five years ago.
And guess what? The goalpost keeps moving.
But to get to this place that I once dreamt up, it was literally walking down and kicking down and busting down walls, like relationships where I live, my job, my career, nothing that you want is ever when it's comfortable.
Like if things are comfortable, you are not growing.
You are not learning.
And to your point earlier, I love when people say it's part of your story.
We live in a world of storytelling now.
We have so much information.
It's about curation.
It's about, it's about being able to capture somebody's attention, whether you are a podcaster, a creator, a brand as a storyteller.
So if all you've had your whole life is an easy story, who are you going to inspire?
Who was going to rally around you?
So there is a level of needing to go through hardship, needing to go through loss, experience grief, experience these things that we so often shy away from.
And we want to bury down inside of us.
But those are the unlocks to find a real connection in this life, real community, real stories.
So I think anybody that's going through something that right now that feels like it's unfair or it's, you know, it's so hard that is going to make you successful one day and that is what's going to be something that will inspire somebody else.
So it's just about having to go through things instead of just trying to get through something.
Like go through it and feel it because that is what will fuel you.
And your next phase of being able to inspire somebody.
Hmm. Also, that is what is going to create better relationships for you, better everything, better habits, better relationships.
I don't know. Everybody has to have an origin story.
I truly believe it.
Everyone has like two to three moments that they're like, that was really difficult and I came out of it.
And for the listeners right now, I want you to think about what those moments are.
Two to three moments of hardship where things were really, really difficult that were actually also a point of like a pivot point in your life that took you on a new path.
So we're going to take a short break, but when we return, I want to talk about how to be smart and how to be rich.
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Use as directed. How do you feel when you switch to GEICO and save on your car insurance?
It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself just one more day until Friday, but then somebody in the elevator says happy Friday.
Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday.
So yes, happy Friday.
Random stranger in the elevator.
Happy Friday indeed.
Yep. Switching and saving with GEICO feels just like that.
Get more with GEICO.
Hey guys, I'm Kate Maxx.
You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.
After those runs, the conversations keep going.
That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about.
It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.
You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?
Well, that's when the real magic happens.
So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.
It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all.
It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun.
Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Need something to level up while you juggle work and life?
I'm Dr. Amatha Imba, an organisational psychologist and the host of the podcast, How I Work.
It's a show where I interview some of the world's most successful people who share their unique tactics, routines and strategies for balancing work, family and personal growth.
How I Work will give you practical tips to turbo charge your career and your life.
Search for how I work on the free iHeart app or in whatever podcast app you're listening to.
Welcome back, Maggie.
My favourite part of this of the hotspot rich equation is the the smart element.
I think because when I was a kid, that was kind of all I had, like I was not a cute hot teenager.
I was not a wealthy teenager.
But when I was like in my hometown, like home city, the one thing I had was brains and I knew how to work really hard.
And I think that that has been something that has activated a lot of my a lot of what my life is now was having that element of me.
And one of the big things that I love about the podcast is that it does make people more educated.
It really makes them more knowledgeable about themselves as like that huge element of psychoeducation.
I think that is just so, so important.
How do you go about expanding your kind of intellect and your IQ and your IQ?
Because you are a highly knowledgeable individual.
You have your hands in a lot of different parts in terms of like the content you consume, the papers you read, like where you get inspiration.
So give the listeners your formula, if you will.
I love this question.
So I think it comes down to your diet, which seems counterintuitive for the smart pillar.
But what I mean by that is your information diet is so important.
And what you consume and who you surround yourself with is truly what they say is like you are the byproduct of the five closest people to you or the people you surround yourself with the most.
And I think I've gone through this a lot when you're in your 20s, you really are focused on being invited to the right things and being around this vast amount of people and being seen at the right spots.
And when you do go through this like end of 20s, early 30s, you kind of you realize that it's really around the quality of people that you're around, the quality of events, the quality of conversations that you're having.
And so I think as it relates to kind of how I absorb information, I like to surround myself with people that talk about ideas.
They don't talk about other people.
And if I am around people that I feel are constantly talking about people, like, listen, we're all human, it is human nature.
It is one of the sins that was put on this earth that, yes, some people are going to gossip.
So I'm not saying as soon as you hear somebody, but for any listeners that feel like their conversations with the people in their lives are always about other people, that's a really bad sign that you are not on a path of increasing your intellect.
So as hard and scary as it is, it's about kind of shrinking your circle down and finding the moments and the conversations and the people that make your world bigger and brighter and not darker and shallower.
So I think that's the first thing.
And then again, your information diet.
So like, what are you spending time on?
Do you subscribe to newsletters that challenge a point of thinking?
Do you, are you able to read and have conversations with people that think differently than you?
In terms of like what I'm consuming on a daily basis, I used to wake up every single day, check social media and actually scroll social media for hours or too long.
Now, okay, maybe I check it for five minutes and then I immediately go to my email and I'm going through the newsletters of what I have subscribed to and that I want to actually like think about for the day.
So that can range from things that are pop culture, like future party is one that I love to something like Axios, which is where I get venture capital and finance news.
I subscribe and pay for everything from BOF, Business of Fashion, WWD to get the beauty and fashion side to like New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
I love reading different people's POVs and instead of just believing it to be true is really like sitting with and again, slowing down and being mindful about what's their public, what's their opinion?
How do I think about it?
What would I think differently about and do I have any resources to back up why my opinion might be different?
So that's kind of my way that I expand.
I listened to so many podcasts.
You are literally my favorite podcast.
Even though I'm not in my twenties, I live for it.
Um, and then I read books and I go out in the world and I, instead of when I'm at Sephora and I am like, oh God, am I going to spend $30 on this eyebrow pencil?
I'm studying people.
I'm watching what people, what brands are people going towards?
What? How are they doing their marketing at Summer Fridays now?
That to me is all increasing my intellect and taking inventory because I'm being mindful about what I can learn other than just being passively going through life.
That is the way that you don't grow your intellect.
You just let the world lead you instead of being your own CEO of your life.
Something that I was thinking the other day was when was the last time that you learned something new and truly learned something new?
The way that you would learn something new at school, you think about all those early years.
We are just a sponge for new information.
We are a sponge for opinions, for history, for grammar, literature.
Then it all becomes centered mainly on what we do for work.
I've typically found that there is this weird lull between our late 20s, early 30s, even like early 20s where we feel very boring and we feel a lot less interested in our lives.
You have these conversations with people sometimes where you're like, what are we even talking about?
We can't talk about this for the third, fifth, seventh time.
Because of, I think, an educational and informational deficit.
I'm going to pull something that you said from before about when you used to be addicted to smoking and vaping.
Notice how that makes you feel and the same thing here.
Notice how not providing yourself with stimulation and information and a real juicy form of entertainment.
That is the news and that is articles and that is other people's knowledge.
How does that make you feel?
Do you feel a bit more shallow?
Do you feel like you could do with something more interesting in your life?
I love your formula for what newsletters you subscribe to.
Substack also amazing.
I really enjoyed starting my day listening to The Daily.
Or we have The Daily Oz.
The Daily Australian, which is like it's so Australian.
So listen to it if you're Australian, because if you're not, it's like crocodile attack.
What does that mean for like what does that mean for politics?
Because yeah, those two things are linked and even doing small things.
And I know everyone's obsessed with like the New York Times, like whirling connections.
I love doing that. One more thing.
This is something that I should have said right at the beginning when I was giving my own personal formula.
The Good Weekend Quiz.
So fun. Me and my partner do it every single Saturday morning.
We get our coffee. We sit down.
All our friends do it as well.
And it is so much fun because then we can like compare answers.
Even my family does it.
They have it on Instagram.
It's called The Good Weekend Quiz.
And it's such a great way to just be like, OK, I'm not immediately waking up and then scrolling my phone for the next eight hours.
Like there is some diversity in what I am feeding my brain, my informational diet as you called it.
It is so critical. And I love that you said your partner and you do that because we spend so much time with our partner.
And if you look at your relationship and you don't have those healthy habits and rituals and routines, like that is a sign that it will be harder in the future.
I think that was one of the things that made me really take a very hard look at my life when I was thinking 20 years down the line, like what is going to bind us and bond us.
And it's those little rituals.
Like my partner and I now we we do and we send each other on news that are back and forth every single Sunday when it comes out of our favorite motivational quotes for the week, what we want to take with us.
And it's like these little things that it's not the big things.
What I've learned in all my failures is it's not the big moments that really change your life.
It's the small things that you do every single day.
The rituals you have to make you feel hot, make you smarter, make you have more financial abundance.
And if you don't take inventory of the small things, how much time are you spending on social media?
Your life will go so fast and you will not know where you went with it.
So I think it's just being really cognizant of those little things like what you guys do every single week together is so important.
Also, novelty makes time literally feel longer.
There was this amazing study about it a couple of years ago.
The older we get, the reason why it feels like time is going faster and faster and faster is because we have fewer novel experiences.
So if you want to feel like your year is two years, three years long, give yourself more novelty.
Scrolling on your phone, we all do it, not novelty.
Doing the same, you know, watching the same thing every single night, same routine, eating in the same places, not novelty.
New experiences literally give time.
I actually heard one thing that's changed my life actually this year on that is if you want to increase your brain elasticity, you need to do things out of routine.
So even if you want to go to the same grocery store, walk the path differently than you usually do.
If you want to do the same hike every single day, do it the opposite way down, because that will actually help create new brain structures.
And it won't just give you the same thing every single day, which will make not only time feel longer, but also will actually increase your neuroplasticity.
It's a hundred percent true kind of test.
There are the sciences there, the way that I always you're like, yes, I got it right.
The way I the way I always explain it is a big imagine like a big field at a public park.
And, you know, of course, there is like the path around and that's the path that you're walking every day.
But then you start walking off the path and you start creating these little paths through the grass that are actually making like the circuit faster or giving like giving nuance.
That's how I always like to think of it is like these little runoff paths and you're absolutely totally right.
Neuroplasticity as we get older, your brain is still rewiring.
Your brain is still growing.
I know there is this saying that, you know, our brain only fully develops, matures at 25.
Not correct. Not correct.
Our life is a constant pattern of neuroplasticity, synaptic pruning, growing like new connections, long term potentiation.
It's absolutely wild.
So you can completely reprogram, restructure how your brain thinks about something at 35, at 40, at 50.
Wait, I love that so much.
And also just like, again, you're using words that I don't understand yet, but I'm so excited about that.
And I'm going to like write them down and go and look at that because that's just a way where instead of feeling stupid or feeling like I don't know that I will on a podcast that I'm sure a lot of people listen to be like, I actually don't know the words that you just said.
And that's OK, because it means I'm going to learn something new.
And so I think it's just about like being open for the journey and being honest.
Like, I will remember diligenceing one of the hardest deals I've ever diligence.
I called my sister, who's now my business partner and I was like, hey, I have no clue what any of this means.
It doesn't mean that I don't belong in the room.
I just don't know how to do a model like this.
Can you please help me?
And I think it's just being able to have even that level of awareness where it's like it doesn't make me not able or deserving to do this, but I actually need your help.
You will be surprised how far that will take you in your life.
One hundred percent.
Finally, let's turn to how to be richer in our 20s, in our life.
And kind of the habits that build that financial foundation.
And I'm going to rest very, very heavily on your knowledge here because I know the psychology behind money.
I don't know the nuances and the details.
But right off the bat, I do want to ask, because this is probably one of our biggest influences on how we see money in adulthood.
How did you grow up seeing money in your family in Canada?
Yeah, I grew up really like privileged in a lot of ways where I never had to worry about putting food on the table.
I never had to worry about certain things.
And I feel so lucky because of that.
I grew up with a really interesting dynamic between my mom and dad with money, which has created my own trauma and being, I think, so driven.
I watched, you know, my mom, she was a waitress and my dad was a taxi driver and they both put my dad through law school equally.
And, you know, they, without telling too much of their story, I grew up just knowing and witnessing that I wanted to have my own financial security because my mom ended up being an amazing stay at home mom.
She went back to school and got her master's and she's now a Pilates instructor and she's done incredible things.
But, you know, we grew up primarily with my dad who was the primary breadwinner.
And I just remember growing up thinking, like, I need to have my own financial money.
I need to be able to make my own decisions.
I need to be able to not marry somebody and have to make all my decisions together with that person.
I need to be able to be financially independent.
And so I thought about money in a lot of ways where I knew it was abundant.
I knew if I thought about money, like a currency, it comes and it goes that I wouldn't feel like so attached when I would lose money.
And I think that's really shaped a lot of the decisions where I was okay putting money at risk when I think a lot of other people maybe weren't because I did grow up with an abundance mindset towards money.
So I'll give you an example.
I met the woman who was the first actually female fundraiser for Harvard's Endowment Fund and she was telling me the most interesting thing she noticed when she worked on the Goldman Sachs floor when she was first starting her career is when somebody would leave Goldman and it was a man and they were starting
a business. All the guys would easily without asking, without even knowing the business would be like, here's 10k to get started.
And she noticed the women were like, but it's 10K.
Like what if you lose the 10K?
Instead of what could I get if I give you the 10K?
And they thought of money so finitely, they didn't think about it as an infinite currency.
Like there's more of where that came from.
The only currency that we don't have more of is time.
And so I think it's interesting now when she went over and she was fundraising for Harvard on how you even get women to talk and open up their pocketbooks about money.
I would say I have leaned a little bit more towards men where I think about it of like, what could this do for me?
Money is a tool that I can utilize to get where I want to go.
But of course I have to put it at risk or put it to work first because it's not just going to grow inherently just because it's money.
It doesn't grow on trees.
So I don't know if that fully answers your question.
But I think the way I've thought about money is in one way very abundantly and in the other way very much knowing that I needed to make money myself that I never needed to rely on somebody else to help me make decisions for me.
I think that's an absolutely beautiful philosophy to have.
And it definitely answered my question.
Most certainly. It definitely did.
And I don't blame women for being a lot tighter without cash.
Right. Because for a lot of us and you know, I have no excuse because my mom was the breadwinner and my dad was a stay at home dad.
So I have no excuse for having this belief.
But I think for a lot of us, we do see those situations where our mothers don't have as much financial.
Perhaps freedom or literacy.
And the only thing we know is to save.
That is like the golden rule.
Right. We're all taught to save money.
And it's incredibly smart and wise to do that.
But then I think that there is this element of like you can save money for your entire life.
But sometimes risking.
Some of the extra cash that you have means that you are going to be better off.
And it is all about how we think about risk.
Right. Men have been taught to be a lot more risk positive, which means that you think even about us is when we were children.
And again, not to make it a gendered thing, but it's just like an easy way to split this up as children.
You know, young boys are encouraged to go and go and do the adventurous stuff, to go and be quite physical, to trust their own intuition.
Girls are taught to be a lot more careful, cautious, you know, just to kind of stay back.
And you might not think that's important, but it does actually create your approach to risk.
So you can be risk positive.
You embrace risk. You are not too concerned about the loss.
It can be risk neutral where you're kind of like on the fence and then risk averse, which is even when an investment, a risk, anything has the potential to have an incredible upside, you will still hold back because the uncertainty of what could happen is so much more cognitively and mentally powerful
to you. And you give that example of people on the floor at Goldman Sachs, right?
Those men giving out 10K.
And I really did think you were going to be like, and then the women would leave and they wouldn't give them any money, which I'm sure also that did happen.
Yeah, really, I can imagine.
But it's interesting seeing that example of like women have been taught to be so much more risk adverse than in those situations where they could have done really, really well, perhaps almost how they were socialized and mentally like they weren't afforded the same opportunity or they didn't have the same
mindset to embrace that risk, which is just so interesting.
Applying that to the literal example you just gave me.
It's also challenging because, you know, I'm in my 30s now and you think about babies and families and you think about taking time off, right?
And in Canada, we're so lucky to have a year mat leave.
But that does a lot for your career if you're out of the workforce for a year.
And so there inherently is a conversation that needs to be had around the way that money and financial independence and being able to really have women work together with men, but also just to be able to make sure that, like, we are going to have different systems if you are taking time off to have a child
because it inherently will just affect your potential if you are taking out a year, two years, three years family, children that you have from the workforce.
And that is something that is, I don't think talked about enough.
And that and that's the really fun thing about building HSR as a brand.
But having me really be able to talk about my own experiences, because that is something, you know, in my early 30s, I am starting to think about, and it is scary.
And so being able to have that conversation is something that feels like you're not alone when you go through those big life decisions that will change the course of your life.
It gives you freedom.
And I think freedom is valuable, whoever you are, whatever age, any gender, whoever, you want the freedom to have the life you want.
I'm going to give you two final rapid fire questions, because we have been talking for almost an hour.
Has it really? And I was like, yeah.
And I was like, oh, we're not even halfway through, but I've got two more rapid fire questions for you.
The first one is what is one money lesson that you think we should all be learning earlier in our early 20s, in our 20s in general?
I think especially in your 20s, don't be afraid to take risks.
Like if you want to know the secret of the Brows Club, it is that they bet on themselves.
And I was if I hadn't been forced to leave my job, I don't think I ever would have.
Like, I honestly don't think I would have bet on myself.
But I really think and there's different seasons of life.
And like I said, as you get into your 30s and your 40s, you're in the phase of life of like taking care of other people.
Dependence. Your 20s are for failing and having nothing and figuring it out and being like, what am I going to do next?
So especially in your 20s, I'm not going to tell you like, don't buy that latte like don't do this.
No, like just take more risks like and whether that's starting a side hustle, starting a business.
Like I have failed so many times in every aspect of my life.
And I wish I had started earlier.
I wish I had started failing earlier.
I was so afraid to fail.
And I wish I had just done.
I wish I had taken more risks in every aspect of my life.
But also the more important lesson is this idea that like life is about getting rejected.
It's about failing.
And the more that you like get comfortable with that and really small, like not high risk situations, the more it will pay off when you actually have something that you need to go and ask for.
And that as a especially when you're young and you're afraid of ruffling feathers or your woman is just uncomfortable to do.
So if you can just start doing that tomorrow, I don't do it every single day, but I do it pretty often.
And it honestly helps build my confidence.
My final question, if you had to add one more word to hot, smart, rich, what would it be?
Happy. Oh, I love that.
Hot, smart, rich, happy.
I was thinking even like, is she going to stay kind?
Is she going to say abundant?
Is she going to say lucky?
I was thinking about it earlier.
I was like, I wonder what she's going to say and happy.
I think like we are so blessed to be on this earth.
I just can't even believe it sometimes.
And I'm like, if you're not happy and you're not having fun, then you need to reconsider stuff because it should be fun.
Not always, but if you're not having fun and you're not happy, like there's no point in having everything in the world.
So definitely I would say it would be like happy, hot, smart, rich.
I like it. I love how she's already like, where does that fit?
Yeah, the true business mind.
Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for giving us like a little bit of like different advice.
Like I don't always talk.
I rarely talk business on the show, but it's so valuable to think about the mindset hacks and the psychology and yeah, the whole perspective that we can have towards being successful in this decade and beyond.
So where can they find you if they want more of your content?
Maggie Sellers on Instagram and on TikTok.
Just put an underscore at the end.
And then if you just search up hot, smart, rich on Google, hopefully it comes up because we're trying to take over the Internet.
Yeah. And honestly, I cannot recommend it more.
You also have a newsletter, is that correct?
Yes, it drops every single Sunday.
It's honestly like a very cult like readership, which has been so cool and fun.
And I do a little bit of mix of like personal stuff, consumer news.
We do business breakdowns.
And then we have our podcast launching very shortly.
Yes, I was going to say keep your eye out for that.
We will definitely let the listeners know when it's time to tune in.
But again, thank you so much to Maggie.
And until next time, you guys, if you did enjoy this episode, make sure to leave a five star review on Apple podcast, Spotify, the IHOT radio app, whether you are listening and follow us on Instagram at that psychology podcast.
If you want to see behind the scenes content, if you want to know who our next December guest is.
And if you want to see more of what we're doing until next time, stay safe, be kind, please be gentle to yourself.
And we will talk very, very soon.
How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance?
It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself just one more day until Friday.
But then somebody in the elevator says, happy Friday.
Then you check your phone quickly and discover today's actually Friday.
So yes, happy Friday.
Random stranger in the elevator.
Happy Friday, indeed.
Yep, switching and saving with Geico feels just like that.
Get more with Geico.
Hey, guys, I'm Kate Max.
You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs and more.
After those runs, the conversations keep going.
That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about.
It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.
Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Need something to level up while you juggle work and life?
I'm Dr. Amatha Imba, an organizational psychologist and the host of the podcast, How I Work.
It's a show where I interview some of the world's most successful people who share their unique tactics, routines and strategies for balancing work, family and personal growth.
How I Work will give you practical tips to turbocharge your career and your life.
Search for How I Work on the free iHeart app or in whatever podcast app you're listening to.
