Interview: Christine Hansen, Sleep Like a Boss
Christine’s Bio
Her approach involves no pharmaceuticals, and addresses the whole picture not just one piece of the puzzle.
Her Business
What she’s working on right now
Her first money memory
Her worst money memory
Her best money memory
One thing she does daily to build wealth consciousness
Contact Christine

Transcript for Episode 15 – Interview: Christine Hansen
Speaker 1: | This is episode fifteen of the Prosper and Profit Podcast. This is the Prosper and Profit Podcast, where women talk about money and transformations, because being independent with money is sexy and profitable and money transformations are how you prosper with your money daily. Now for your host, Clarissa Wilson.
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Clarissa: | Christine wasn’t one that really thought about money much, but she decided to take a big risk financially a little while ago and quit her secure teaching job to become an entrepreneur. While this was a risk it actually paid off big time and Christine loves what she does and she is a really amazing sleep coach. Christine Hansen is a sleep boss and coaches successful and legacy driven women and inspiring men on how to welcome sleep again, allowing them to wake up stronger with more healthier and happier, ready to tackle their legacy and personal life.
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Her approach involves no pharmaceuticals and addresses the whole picture, not just one piece of the puzzle. As an international sleep expert, Christine’s work has been featured in numerous publications, including being a regular contributor for Huffington Post and Elite Daily and she has been interviewed on prestigious podcasts, such as Being Boss and So Money by Farnoosh Torabi. Hi Christine, thank you for joining me today to share more about your money story, how it began and what you have done to change it over the years. We’ve now heard your professional bio, so can you break it down for us a little bit more, tell us more about you, your business and what’s one big thing that you’re working on right now.
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Christine: | Sure. In general I’d say I’m a sleep coach, so that’s in a nutshell. I did start out as pediatric sleep coach, so working with babies. Now I really shifted and am working with adults as an adult integrative sleep coach. What that means is that I really focus on every aspect of sleep, so really looking at nutrition, hydration, movement. I’m a sleep specialist, but not someone who’s very narrow minded about sleep, in a way, you know? I think that’s what makes me very interesting, because I don’t want to go too pharmaceutical or supplements unless I really think, okay, there’s something dodgy going on there. In general, I think that if we look at whole picture we will be able, with body and mind, to figure out what’s going on. I love that. I’m very passionate about that.
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I work with amazing and adorable people who inspire me every day in return too, because we do so much work with the mind, so that’s incredible. At the moment I’m really working on building those connection, expanding everything. I do have, to some extent, I work in corporate, so I teach there, basically. I give seminars there, but the real heart, like my real passion and the people I really care most about, are really individuals who I know, who have such a big legacy hiding there and who can, really once we dig that up, everything, every lifestyle change is just so easy and they just run for it. Yeah, that’s lots to do, but I think I just … I always say like I feel like I’ve come home. Everything is just fits nicely together.
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Clarissa: | That is so awesome, but something else that came up, have you noticed anything with the way that someone does has sleep gets their sleep versus how much money they make?
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Christine: | Yeah, I think very often things that are supposed to be positive can be quite stressful and obviously stress is very difficult and I think we all react differently to stress. You can have two people having exactly the same job and being promoted exactly the same way and one of them sleeps great and the other one just suddenly starts to have all of these thoughts rummaging in their heads and just because they just divide their day up differently and because their bodies and minds work differently. I definitely have made the observation that those people they have so much responsibilities, not just for themselves, but they have teams or they have employees or they have people who really rely on them and doing their job great.
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It’s a lot of pressure, so we do work on that a lot to make sure that they don’t forget what they want and where they want to go. That helps so much, it really does, but it’s true. Sometimes it’s something that’s supposed to be positive, like a promotion that you’ve always wanted and then you get it and it’s affecting you in a very different way than you thought, you know? Those are all things that we’re working on, but they’re beautiful, because once you know how to deal with them you can really blossom in them and that’s when beautiful things happen.
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Clarissa: | Yes, I completely agree. I mean I don’t even work on the sleep part. I’m pretty sure I have really good sleep, but I just teach on the money part and I’ve seen that too, the more stress you have the less money you make.
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Christine: | I agree. I really agree and sometimes it’s tough to trust in whatever or whoever you want to trust. It can be yourself, it can be higher power, it can be the theory of abundance, it can be all kinds of things that are out there. It’s hard not to trust, but once you do it it just works out. You obviously have to do the work too, but I think it’s you cannot think, you cannot really go to the core of what you’re good at it if you are too stressed about it. It’s just reducing everything. Yeah, it’s tricky, but it’s a great and beautiful thing to do.
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Clarissa: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yup, so can you tell us more about your money story and what it is your first money memory that you can remember?
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Christine: | I was adopted when I was four months old. I am originally Colombian and I came to Luxembourg, in Europe, when I was four months old, so tiny. I’m not a born and bred Luxembourger, but the bred is definitely true. My family is of, I don’t know, a well off middle class family coming from old Luxembourg-ish money, I’d say it that way. I never had money struggles. For me, I think, one of the first memories that I have is actually a frustration with money and not getting it, in a literal sense. I got one of those money boxes that you get with like a little key, that sometimes you see it like when you have an association doing a baking sale or whatever, and I got one of those, because for me that was like, I go, “There’s money in there.”
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I got one of those and with a key, which I loved, and I put my money in there and I remember I lost the key and I freaked out and I was so angry and I yelled at my dad and everything, created a havoc. I was like, “I have so much money in there.” I think I was convinced I had put a lot of money in there and I was convinced and I remember my dad had to go and get like one of those tire irons that you could break doors with and he had to break the damn thing open and there was like twenty cents in there or something like that. I was just like, “I didn’t remember it that way.”
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That’s like one of the things though that I remember and it happens to me over and over again when I go and check my bank account. I’ve got so much money in there. No, I’m kidding. Yeah, but I never had money struggles. I do remember though that in high school I had a friend who came from a similar background and we were really, really good friends and I told my mom once that she was very similar to her mom and my mom was like, “Oh no.” I said, “We’re not?” It was like we’re not as, today I’d say, “As bling as they are.” We don’t show off our money as much as they are. We’re a lot humbler.
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That really got me thinking and I think that’s really how our parents raised me and my sister, that we just never thought or I never thought about money. It was just there. Obviously I wasn’t spoiled crazy, like I would have very clear limits, but I never had anything, any one thing, like I could travel, I could study abroad for four years, all of this like great things. I could never blame them, but at the same time when I came back after university I went got a government job as a teacher and in Luxembourg it’s you earn around 6K a month as a teacher, which is very different from a lot of countries. For me I wasn’t in love with it, but it was easy for me, teaching was always easy for me, it was good money, and we had lots of holidays.
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I remember that the day when I was accepted for teacher training, because you have to kind of qualify for that, my dad, he came up to me and he hugged me so hard, because for him it was the biggest relief in terms of, okay, she has a government job now, we’d done it, we’ve got her in safety, so to speak, you know? That’s a little bit how they worked, you know? You get that job, you get that firm income and that’s what you need to do. For them, me deciding to go the entrepreneurial route was very tough. For me it was too, because suddenly it’s the first time in my life that I don’t have a current stream income or not a current.
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I don’t have this predictable stream of income, but at the same time it’s always working out and it’s I don’t know if I manifested everything or if it’s just great timing. I love to think it’s a little bit of everything, having an open mind and open heart and working and coincidence maybe at the same time. I love doing a little bit of everything, but it definitely is different and I think value money a lot more, but my goals are much bigger. The impact that I want to make is much bigger than I ever thought I ever would when I had my other job. It’s a little bit, I think it’s you need to be in that place, where nothing is secure in order to really know where you want to go and even a hundred fold that.
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Clarissa: | Yes, I completely agree. Did your parents ever really talk about money? Were there any specific lessons that they taught you and your sister when you were growing up?
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Christine: | If they did it wasn’t an open … Like we’d never discuss it over a dinner table. It would come up, especially if they had conversations with their friends, and I would always listen, but if it did come up it was always that we’d have to be cautious, it wouldn’t necessarily stay. Let’s say, for example, my mother’s family, who has a big insurance company, like her great granddad was a co-founder of that, so now obviously that it’s you have shareholders, a lot of income for all of my family comes from that. Obviously they all work, but it’s something that definitely helped over the years, but it’s something that we have never talked about, like it would just happen.
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We never talked about where that would come from, if that would stay that way, but I do remember that she said, very recently even, when I knew, for example, that okay that is going to come in this year as we had annual assembly, then she was like, “You don’t know what would happen.” My grandmother is still alive, so when she passes away lots of shares are going to be redivided and they have to stay in the family and then so she was like, “Well you don’t know what’s going to happen. We have no idea, so don’t rely on it.” I loved her for that, because I didn’t feel patronized, but it’s like it was a message you have to make sure that you can do this on your own, don’t rely on that, you know?
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She was also like, “If really something happens come to your family and we will help you out. We would probably give you a hard time about it, but don’t go and do anything stupid, like getting a loan for a gazillion billion percentage of interest. We will help you out.” Yeah, that’s something that I kept in mind though. I cherish that a lot. Yeah.
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Clarissa: | That’s a really good advice to take from someone. I mean even if they’re much older, but I mean they’re family and they’re like, “Always come to us, we’ll help you.” I mean that’s something that more people need to hear, that you can come to us, we’ll help you, because it’s not something that a lot of people hear.
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Christine: | No and I think it’s, I don’t know, maybe some families wouldn’t do it. For us, I wasn’t surprised, but it’s as you say, it’s very different to hear it. It’s true. Very different. It also made me feel a little bit like now I’m definitely don’t want to need the help, but it’s, yeah, I know that they are there and so that takes a lot of pressure off, even though I really want to succeed. It’s not like I’m saying, “Oh, if it doesn’t work I know that I can go there.” Absolutely not, but it does mean that, okay, I won’t have to worry or at least not have to visualize myself under the bridge, let’s put it that way.
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I don’t know if that’s the case for everyone. I am very lucky and I really know that, which is also telling me though, which has also given me the energy to really do most of this, you know? I mean like I’m here in Luxembourg, I’ve had all of this education, I have this amazing family, amazing life and also my own family, like my husband, my daughter, a beautiful house and everything. Because all of this has happened and because I wasn’t destined, necessarily, to do so, like I wasn’t born into that family. I came here. For me, I take that energy and say, “Okay, that wasn’t coincidence.” I was meant to grow up here, to get that education that was then to really kick ass and do something really amazing.
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Clarissa: | Yes, so you mentioned that you were making six-thousand dollars a month teaching and then you went into entrepreneurship to have your own business. Was there any like big obstacles that you had to overcome around money when you started your own business?
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Christine: | Yeah, like my expectations weren’t matched at all at the beginning, you know? I was convinced that this is going to be genius. I was the first baby sleep consultant in Luxembourg. I think there are maybe five or ten or from all the research I did in Europe, so I thought this is the best niche ever and I had a very specific clientele in mind and it didn’t work out that way at all. I have to say I had a lot of success and it’s still, looking at what I’ve achieved, it’s incredible, like lots of free publicity as well, like newspaper and all of these articles.
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It’s been good and I’ve been offered to work with pediatricians, which was unheard of, like you don’t do that in Luxembourg. I mean even in the U.K. or in the U.S. and in Canada not many, if any, actually work in a pediatrician’s office. Things were great, but it still didn’t … My expectations of how much income I would make were like, okay, I had to get a reality check very, very quickly. Five months after I started I had a really … I just dug myself into a hole. I was very low on mindset and freaking out and the money that I still had stashed, let’s put it that way, was completely run out, so I was like, okay, I was in really not a good place.
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That’s when I decided, okay, you just have to turn it around. You just have to work and I also took some time off and that was at a time when I think my mind or my logic would have said, “You cannot take off.” We went snowboarding in the mountains and it was the best thing I did, because literally on the top of that mountain I had to think about something else so that I wouldn’t die snowboarding down. It was the first time in ages that my mind could actually stop, because if you’re on top of that mountain there’s nothing you can do anyway, you know? It took two days and then it was such a freedom and relief and after that, coming back home, it was just everything shifted.
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That’s also when I decided that I had to change direction, because the calling wasn’t quite right. Sleep was right, but the niche or the target, the people that I worked with wasn’t quite right. I went into adult sleep because of demand, like I was asked by people, “Do you do this for adults?” That’s why I decided, okay, I have to listen to this and also listen to the people that I love working or would love to work with, who asked me to work with them, and that’s how everything fell into place. There were ups and downs, definitely. I’m convinced there will still be downs, but it’s knowing that there will be ups again that makes it so much easier to get through them.
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Clarissa: | Yes, I completely agree. Your path is always going to have ups and downs, even when you do have a really good relationship with your money.
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Christine: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, absolutely.
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Clarissa: | Can you tell us what your worst money memory is and why?
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Christine: | My worst money memory. I think it’s actually a recent one. Let’s think. Yeah, I think it’s actually a recent one where I just, where everything kind of ran drought, so it’s not that recent. It’s around the time when literally that everything just collapsed in a way, not really, but in my head, and that was because I had not made as much money, my bills were still running and that was the first time that I was really scared, because my husband, he’s working, so we managed through his salary. That was the first time that I thought, okay, we might have to sell his car in order to pay my bills and that was I couldn’t handle that at all, like that was too far, that was just too far. If it’s mine I don’t care, you know?
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I had to do what I had to do, like if I have to sell one of my Gucci bags, because I have those because I used to have just that income and I didn’t put anything, like I didn’t save up nothing. I just lived, so I have beautiful stuff, but it’s like I wish maybe I would have put something aside. It’s just because I always thought, no, nothing’s going to change. I mean I always and I still live in the moment. It’s a little bit different because of my daughter, so we do have a constant savings account for her. That was really the moment when I … That was the first time I really had a negative occur with money, because I never did. I never did. I never worried about it or I loved it. I loved to spend it, let’s put it that way.
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It was never my enemy and this time there was such a lack that I felt negative about it and I had to change that. I just really had to change it and it was actually Lynn Grabhorn’s book, “Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting,” it’s called. You can get it. It’s a very older book, which you can find on YouTube, and it’s basically the theory of abundance, but it’s her, she’s like in her seventies when she’s talking and she’s telling you. The way that she does it I really got it and that changed a lot, like a whole lot in my mindset and that gave me the energy to move, yeah, to just move, let’s put it that way, to just move. Yeah, that was the first time that money was something that made my whole heart like contract in a way that I never thought it would. Yeah.
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Clarissa: | We talked about your worst, now let’s talk about your best money memory.
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Christine: | That was done really the first time I received my first adult sleep client, which was amazing. I had read “The Prosperous Coach,” by Rich Litvin, previously and when I started my adult coaching business I went to an entrepreneur, a woman who is also the president of an association of female entrepreneurs and we had gotten along very well. I’m member of the association and we had gotten along very well the first time I met her and it’s always once that I met her before. I was just like we had to do some market research and so I was just, “Okay, I’m just going to ask her. I want to know if she thinks, because she’s my ideal client, if she thinks that this is something that could take off.”
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I asked if I could ask a couple of questions and she goes, “Okay, come to my office and we’ll talk about it,” which I already thought was amazing. Like, okay, I got an appointment to go straight to your office and I was okay. I went there and we talked and I mean we talked for an hour and we didn’t even, we did talk about sleep a little bit, but we talked about all kinds of stuff and it was just really fun. When we were done she’s was like, “Okay, so when do we start?” I hadn’t expected that at all and I was like, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “I don’t sleep well and I have started to really take care of myself. I need to sleep.” She’s fifty-six, she has this huge business and I’m like, “Oh, hi.”
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I was like, “Okay.” I had just before looked at my pricing, what I wanted to do, so I had my dream price in my head and she goes, “It’s good.” I was like, “Okay, so if you’re interested this is how much it would be.” I told her my pricing and she was like, “Okay” and I was just like, “It’s working.” That changed everything in that direction, because and it’s just, yeah, something I had never had. Another first. I think when you’re an entrepreneur you have a gazillion firsts, this is one that made it very, very, very high my list of firsts hall of fame. That was the best moment ever.
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I’m absolutely sure that I will have a lot more of those as I do different things, but to do with money, like ultimately at some point I really want to be in philanthropy and asking people for donations for the charities I want to create. Again, not today or tomorrow, but it’s what I want to do and I can see and feel those moments happening over and over again, which is what I really want to, which I’m sticking to what I find at that moment.
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Clarissa: | When you were talking about your worst money memory you talked about stuff that you started doing to work on your mindset, is there one specific thing that you do on a regular basis to help you create more wealth in your business?
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Christine: | Yes. I go and have my nails done every three weeks and when I do that it’s for me, I’m just saying this is not an expense, this is what you do and it’s just my very casual, little dah, dah, dah [inaudible 00:25:10] dah, dah, and every time I go there I very often connect it with going to having your hair made and just that [inaudible 00:25:20], not thinking you should avoid any extraordinary, any costs, any further costs. That’s not how I think. I think this is what you’re just destined to be like. This is what you’re destined to do. Also, something that I learned, really I’m very unapologetic about pretty things.
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I love pretty things. I love luxury things and for a long time I was like, “Oh, that’s so shallow.” I dropped that. It’s just who I am and what I want. When I do it now I’m just like, “Okay, this is just a preview of what will be the norm again” and for me that really helps me. It makes me feel that because it feels so right it is, you know? That’s what I do every three weeks. Every day I look at something positive, like I really try not to be negative and try to open my heart and Lynn Grabhorn says, “You open your valve to the universe.” Everyday I try to do that at least once.
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Clarissa: | Okay. I like that and just like doing something for you, like where you get your nails done, just doing something for you. I mean that really does help you really create more wealth and we don’t always notice that until someone else points it out.
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Christine: | Yeah, I agree. Agree, having, whether it’s the nails done or a new dress that you can wear for something and it’s going to make a massive difference. You’re going to show up differently and it’s just you’re going to show up as what you are going to be in the future. It’s a little bit weird and maybe too whoo-whoo, but for me it works.
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Clarissa: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that I should have?
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Christine: | Oh. No, apart, maybe, from how are you today.
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Clarissa: | I forgot that. Okay.
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Christine: | I think I’m good, but yeah those were very, very interesting questions. It’s I don’t have the rags to riches story, which sometimes makes me feel at a disadvantage, especially in entrepreneurial, it’s like I went from living in my car to six, seven, eight kind of figures and it’s like, “Okay, I was never that horribly off,” but now I see it as a strength. There are many of us who come from that place and it doesn’t mean that you are any less valuable as an entrepreneur on your journey.
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Clarissa: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). You may not have that actual rags to riches story, like how you see what it is, where someone was living in their car and then they started making six, seven figures a month or a year or however they see it, but you did, when you even brought up your worst money memory, you did have something there, where you got to a point where you almost had to sell your husband’s car just to pay your bills. In a way that is along the lines of that rags to riches story. There really is no set in stone what that rags to riches story really is.
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Christine: | Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. I think you also have to be there at least once to really appreciate it and also to figure out if you’re there the chances are that something’s not really right in what you’re doing.
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Clarissa: | Yes. Let’s finish out the interview with a few fun questions. Everyone gets these questions, but there is a bank of questions and you don’t know which ones you’re getting. Who would you most like to be stuck in an elevator with for fifteen minutes and what would you talk about?
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Christine: | Would I have to talk? Okay, let’s go very shallow. I do love the singer of Franz Ferdinand, like that was during my uni times. I don’t know if I could talk. I would probably be like, “Hi, I like your hair.” I would love to be stuck in an elevator with him.
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Clarissa: | Okay. I mean you’re stuck in an elevator and the elevator is not moving, you’re going to end up talking to people.
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Christine: | Most likely, but you never know, people can be very awkward at times.
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Clarissa: | Yes.
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Christine: | Yeah, I don’t have an inspiring answer to that. It’s just like first comes to mind, yeah, that.
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Clarissa: | Yup. If you woke up tomorrow morning and everything that you have right now, your belongings and your money was all gone, what would you do?
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Christine: | Everything gone, I’d go and look at my husband and my daughter and take them into my arms and have a good cry and be grateful that I have them.
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Clarissa: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you could bring any character from your favorite book to life right now who would it be and why?
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Christine: | It would be Atticus of the “To Kill a Mockingbird,” especially at the moment with all of the racial issues going on. I love that character in the first book. I haven’t read the one that recently came out by Harper Lee, but “To Kill a Mockingbird” is one my very favorites, also one that I read a lot. Most students think an Atticus Finch would be really great right now.
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Clarissa: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). Thank you so much for joining me here today, Christine. It has been really great to learn more about you and your money story and just figure out more of how money really does affect each person, because every single one of us has our own money story and no two ones are the same.
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Christine: | I agree. Thank you so much for having you, having me, sorry, and your awesome questions. I’m sweating a little bit, but of course-
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Clarissa: | It’s okay. It just helps you to see more where you might need to make a change or even just maybe remember things that you really didn’t remember before.
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Christine: | It’s true. Absolutely. I love these things. Whenever it’s uncomfortable it’s good.
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Clarissa: | Uh-huh (affirmative).
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Christine: | Thank you. Thank you so much, it was a pleasure.
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Clarissa: | Yes.
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Speaker 1: | The show notes for this episode and all other episodes can be found on ProsperProfitPodcast.com. I hope you would leave a comment on the show notes page for this episode and let us know what your biggest takeaway was for today. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you never miss an episode.
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About the Author
Clarissa Wilson
Clarissa Wilson is a financial strategist and online educator who holds two master’s degrees in Forensic Accounting. Also creative and spiritual, she is an intuitive empath and introvert. Clarissa is the host of The Prosper + Profit Podcast, where money conversations occur on a daily basis -- as she believes that money shouldn’t be a taboo subject. After growing up on a dairy farm and learning to work hard for money, Clarissa awakened to a path that allowed wealth to flow easily to her. Clarissa currently lives in Pennsylvania with her two cats.