75 : Enough & The Risk of Being Too Frugal with Sarah McCrum - Part 2

[00:00:00] Intro

Adam Coelho: Welcome to the mindful fire podcast where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond I'm your host, Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here.

[00:00:16] Inset

Adam Coelho: On today's episode of the podcast, I'm excited to bring you part two of my conversation with sarah McCrum. Sarah was introduced to me by a former guest Morgan Bricca.

She is an author educator and business innovator. 

Sarah believes in a society that is fundamentally based in love generosity, and a deep understanding of the essence of being human. Her purpose is to contribute, to creating a world that works for a hundred percent of humans.

She is the creator of the innovative program. Thank you. Money based on the principles of her book, Love Money, Money Loves You. over 10,000 people have completed courses with Sarah, building a relationship with money That's founded in love, abundance, generosity, and nature. She's also the co originator of love to a group of mutual companies that have created new financial products backed by the regeneration and protection of nature and human quality of life. Love To, has been built from the ground up on the principles of Sarah's book and work.

It's an example of what's possible when we build businesses based in the spirit of generosity.

Today in part two of my conversation with Sarah. Sarah. We discuss how we can use money to unlock our full potential and why dreaming. Coming and enjoyment are critical to living in this way. 

We also talk about the flip side, how frugality and being afraid to engage with money actually cuts off our creative energy and prevents us from reaching our full potential. 

And things get pretty personal. I share a lot with Sarah about my own struggles, including how I've recently realized that I'm hesitant to invest in my own projects and in myself in general. 

Sarah share some really good advice with me. And I learned a ton about how I can evolve, how I think about money and investing in myself and my projects. 

 I absolutely love this conversation with Sarah and I'm so excited to share with you.

You can find the full show notes for today's episode, including any links, books, or resources we mentioned in the episode at mindfulfire.org/75.

Sarah was also kind enough to share with our audience. One of her money activations focused on enjoyment and money. 

This activation is a meditation of sorts, and I released it on the podcast last week as episode 74. you can find that wherever you're listening to this. 

Let's jump into today's episode . 

[00:02:48] Interview - Part 2

Adam Coelho: Sarah, welcome 

 Back

Adam Coelho: to the mindful fire podcast. I'm so glad to have you here. 

Sarah McCrum: Thank you very much. And I'm really delighted to be here. 

[00:02:55] What are your thoughts on enough?

Adam Coelho: So Sarah, on part, one of our conversation, we discussed how we can evolve our relationship with money, be more open to receiving it and using it to achieve our full potential.

I'd love to start part two of our conversation by explor. The topic of enough. What is enough? Your book speaks about the energy of increase in expansion.

Reading that had me wondering about the role of feeling like I have enough. To be honest before reading your book, I was thinking. Feeling I had enough was the way to find contentment, but it sounds like being open to more is important in your approach to money.

So what are your thoughts on enough?

Sarah McCrum: Very much understand your question. Yeah. So let me first ask you one question. So you like to teach mindfulness, would you like more people in the world to experience mindfulness? I would. Would you like personally to be responsible for more people learning and becoming more mindful?

I would. Yeah. So that's expansion, that's the most natural thing in the world. yes. Okay. With your podcast, you can reach a lot of people and probably spend very little bit more money. You might need a little bit more money to have more bandwidth or more people or whatever but generally, if you do a fantastic job of teaching and sharing your thoughts and ideas about mindfulness on your podcast, people are going to want to learn from you.

In other ways, you're going to have to engage with more. And that is the natural expression of your soul that has a gift to share with the world. So when we say the reason why this financial independence thing has become so important is because money is seen fundamentally to be a kind of necessary evil.

And so I need to get to grips with it, fulfill my responsibilities but if you see that money is this incredibly beautiful energy that you want to have more of in your life, not so that you can have bigger and bigger houses. Like I can also say to you enough for what but you're what might be different from mine.

So the business that I'm creating, which is love too, I have to talk about huge numbers because otherwise it doesn't fulfill its purpose. That's going to mean that I make a lot of money. It's inevitable if I'm working that way. So do I say, oh no, that's too much. That's enough. I'm just going to keep, I'm just going to keep small.

I'm not going to do any of that. I can't do that. So I say, okay, I'll accept more. What does that do to me? It makes me think, oh my goodness, I've got to go and learn. Like I made some money a few years ago, a whole lot more than I had before. And that enabled me to invest in buying a farm. And I, my farm wants to eat up any extra money that I get.

So there's plenty to invest in for the time being, but I felt happy doing that because at many different levels, it satisfied a lot of good things for me. But I know that the next stage for me is not just learning how to expand the business, but learning how to invest a whole lot more money in things that are really meaningful for me.

And I don't have those skills yet. I need to learn that so I can say, oh enough, or I can say. I want to contribute more. No, it doesn't always have to be through business, but in my case, it is. So I want more, I'm going to need to deal with a lot more money, a lot more than I need for myself.

if you see where I live at the moment, we just have two rooms, it's tiny on our farm. But with that more, what could I do if I'm clear in my values and if I really care about the world, I think that I'm willing to have more of this flow of beautiful energy coming through my life. That value that we talked about earlier, and to make some wise responsible decisions about what to do with that, that enables other people to experience.

Sarah McCrum: So more is not evil. It's not going to destroy the world. It's not, we're not going to consume everything and cover everything with plastic. What this book does is it brings us in touch with love and with who we are. And when we're in touch with that, we don't need to consume massive amounts of plastic, or we don't go binge shopping.

Like so many people do to fill up the hole that we're feeling inside ourselves, because we are doing things in a more purposeful way. We're actually a much more civilized society.

[00:07:07] Brining Purpose and Money Together

Adam Coelho: Interesting. So again, it gets back to bringing the purpose and the money together, right? Because in the shopping example, there's just a focus on money and kind of buying and buying to fill the need because there's not a purpose to direct it towards

Sarah McCrum: exactly. Exactly. Yes. And then when you've got a purpose, you can direct your energy towards that and that nourishes you, that gives you energy. So it's really different. So I think we can say enough for what, like you can say, my house is big enough for me and my family. I don't need a bigger house. I don't want a bigger house also, you can say, but, and that's really legitimate.

And I have enough money for my family needs. Now I don't need more income in order to live the lifestyle that I want. But maybe there's more that I want to contribute and that will involve. There's always more somewhere. And my sense is that when people die, there's more even that they want there, but it's just like, oh, and this creaky old body, I can't do it anymore.

You can often get a new one and start again and, go off on another life adventure. And then there's a whole lot more that I'm going to experience. So I always have this feeling that like, there's this little thing in me that's really hungering for more life. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah. feel that too. I relate to that.

And it's helpful to hear you talk about it because most people certainly in the financial independence space, don't talk about it because they look at the, in America, everything's about more bigger, faster, better, like, and that's not necessarily the best in most cases big, probably because it's missing the intentionality and the purpose behind it.

But hearing you talk about it it does feel better, right? It feels like, yes, there's more calling you to to create more, to connect more, to contribute more. And that is not a bad thing. yes. look, this is not an invitation to burn out or to work like crazy.

Sarah McCrum: Like people often do. This is an invitation really into a more spacious life. I think we have to work out how to do that, but I want to make that point because in that more bigger, better, faster thing, we also work more and more like desperately. And that's not what I'm talking about.

We're talking about more wellbeing, more life, more alive, and it's more of what's fulfilling. Right.

Adam Coelho: Otherwise it's just the achievement or the work becomes the money. the house, the car, the promotion the whatever,

Yeah. That's interesting. When I think about enough in the context of financial independence, for me, the question becomes, at what point do I truly feel I have enough to.

Retire early, or, as I think about it reprioritize early to move more into that purpose filled work. 

My father-in-law has his expression. If the faucet is flowing, grab a bucket. I'm very fortunate that I have a wonderful job. I make good money and I'm able to pursue my purposefull things, mindfulness, the podcast, I teach mindfulness and envisioning at Google where I work.

[00:10:15] Where I struggle with enough

Adam Coelho: And so it's like, yes, part of me feels that call to contribute more and to do it full time. But I'm making great money so that's where I struggle with enough. You know

Sarah McCrum: What I mean, many people struggle with that question. I met many people who slate, when could I stop doing the thing that, that makes me that money and then transition into the thing that I love.

And you are lucky and you've made some very wise decisions to already be doing what you love as a part of making that money. And since you're already doing it, you might not need to stop for quite a while, but because perhaps you absolutely love what you do. And it's very fulfilling for you, but for somebody else might not have quite as much of that.

But the main thing that I see, the main mistake that people make and perhaps less where people are very focused on financial independence is that they leave too early and then they have some savings and they're trying to start a business and they see their savings go down and down and down because they're not really independent, they've just got some savings and that gives them a sense of security.

And when they see the money going down, it just freaks them out. It takes much longer usually to start a business than you think most people earn much less money than they think they're going to in their imagination or on their spreadsheets. Often for a long time. In many cases, probably in the majority of cases of people who go into this kind of work forever And they don't really calculate that out.

And then they hit 50 or 60. It's like, Ooh, this is really hard. And that is hard because there isn't much of a safety net. So I think the very good side of what you do is you do actually calculate it out. You do think about it and think about money and think about what it costs to live. There's probably a lot that we don't really know about the future.

So that throws a kind of spanner in the works that life is not controllable. And it's going to be different for each person because each person has different claims of enough's like, we have lots of enough's. We have not just one, but enough of this enough for that different aspects of our life.

But it's a very important question to ask, because if you don't ask it, I would say you're almost for sure going to leave at the wrong time. 

But any advice on how to actually. figure out like what's enough, I wouldn't look at it that way I would make sure that how money works so that if you get it wrong, you can always make some money.

the tension I feel, it's like, yeah, I have enough, but, I also love money and I love making money. Like, I really love making money. 

Sarah McCrum: whatever you do learn how to do it really successfully. Yeah. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah. actually with Morgan asked me on the podcast episode six, it was one of my first conversations.

And she said, so you talk all about financial independence. What do you actually want to do when you stop working? And I was like that's a good question. And I basically said I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had a startup before Google and I want to create a business and be an entrepreneur.

And she's like, so you want to stop working to start working? And I was like, I guess so. Yeah. So it's not that I don't want to work. It's just that I want to work more aligned and I'm very fortunate to have some alignment in what I'm able to do while getting paid. But I want more of that but I don't need to force it either.

 yes. I think that's actually a really good answer because it's tricky cause at one level, sometimes life does it for us. Like. Creates a circumstance where we have to move. Especially, I've seen that with some people who just delay it and delay it. Sometimes you just, you feel the nudge, like it's time I'm done and it may be a bit hard for a while, but you deal with that and you make it, like I made it from absolutely zero and yes, it was hard for a while.

Sarah McCrum: And yes, I was constantly looking for the cheapest things in the supermarket because I really didn't have any like $20 in my bank account to spare was the most I could rely on everything else was accounted for. So it was very tight, but I was okay. I didn't have kids. So it was different. If you've got kids, you've got to be more responsible in that kind of way.

I don't think anyone can tell you, when is the right time. What I feel is important is that, you know, From your experience that if you needed to make more money and you couldn't get a job, you would find a way I've known for a long time. I learned certain skills from my Chinese masters, I learned how to heal people.

And it was really interesting. Cause I knew from that moment on that, whether the world went completely crazy and we all ended up living on the land and nobody had any money or I lost everything. I knew that I had a skill that was so valuable that in any situation, in any community, somebody who knows how to heal people.

It's going to be valuable. And whether people just gave me food or gave me a place to stay in their house because I was helping grandma or whatever, I just knew I would be okay. that's been a real gift for me. You're doing it a different way in a way, but mindfulness probably gives you some of that too, but you're also doing exactly the right thing.

You're doing your podcast now, while you're still working you're building the foundation of your business before you actually need to do it. That's a very wise thing to do. I think we can't be naive and we don't control life and life could throw some really interesting spanners. It looks like it's going to do that in the coming years.

We're going to need to rely on our humanity, our innate ability to contribute and to help each other our generosity. Those kinds of things. I think the real human values are going to come to the fore now. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah, absolutely. And I relate a lot with what you're saying around, you knowing how to heal people, right?

That confidence that comes from knowing that you can always make money or always attract money to you. I do feel that to some degree. And that gives me a lot of ease, in how I navigate working and just life in general. Some people I work with are so high strung, they act like it's life or death every day.

And I feel like I've been at this for 11 years at the same company. So I've relaxed into kind of flowing with it a little bit more and not getting so stressed out about every little thing. 

Sarah McCrum: Yes. 

Because really that kind of stressed approach to living. There's a fairly fundamental misunderstanding of life in there which is nobody's fault.

That's just the environment that people have grown up in. But that's why the kind of work that you do is so important because life does actually work better when you're more relaxed. And when you have more perspective on it, it just does work better. But if you don't know that you might be really highly strung and you might really think it's life or death, and very often it's not until life or death actually happens.

Some maybe in your family or something, you start to realize, oh my goodness, so it takes sometimes a tragedy to wake people up and that's it's sad that it's like that. It would be nice if people could realize that life does actually work without them trying to force everything and control everything.

It actually works better., 

Adam Coelho: Absolutely. It's certainly been the case in my life, which I've had to learn again and again. We do exactly. I always joke. I have to learn lessons like 10 times, at least probably more than that. 

[00:17:38] How does it affect us when we're too frugal or too unwilling to spend on things that might benefit us or expand, allow us to expand

Adam Coelho: So Sarah, I want to get into something that has been a realization of mine recently, and it came about from a good friend of mine at Google. He's been on the podcast as well. His name is Nicholas Whittaker, and he was helping me think about the podcast and kind of focusing on the things I enjoy more, which is this connecting with people and less on like the editing.

And I had tried to hire editors in the past and I was always unwilling to spend too much on it too much, whatever that means. And through that conversation, I really came to an understanding that I'm either afraid of or unwilling to invest in myself. 

Like, I'll go take my family out to dinner or whatever, spend $150, whatever don't even think about it.

But if I'm talking about spending a hundred dollars on getting a podcast episode edited or going and investing in a course or a coach or something that's going to help me level up my impact and my ability to contribute. I don't do it. I try to spend as little money as possible in general, but I've found that on my own projects, it's even more pronounced.

I don't know if it's, I don't believe in myself or I don't trust myself in some respects, but it is an issue. 

Adam Coelho: And in the book you've talked about how. when we spend money, in fact, we're actually considering how much we value ourselves.

And you've also talked about how, being frugal or unwilling to spend money in certain ways, cuts us off from our own creativity and our own potential, which we talked about earlier. And so we, we're talking about the flip side here of, how does it affect us when we're too frugal or too unwilling to spend on things that might benefit us or allow us to expand.

Sarah McCrum: Let's start with quite a simple and obvious example. And then maybe we'll unravel it from there. Most of us, I think as human beings, Like the idea of being generous. It's a very positive energy. Isn't it to feel that I'm a generous person. If you want to be generous to others, you must be generous to yourself.

You must actually allow yourself to receive. And as we've talked about throughout this conversation, that's not just money. It's money is not the only thing it's in everything else. So it's about being generous to yourself in knowledge, if there's knowledge that you need and you could get by doing a course, that's part of the generosity.

If you want to share, let's say you could learn something about doing business better. That enables you to reach more people with your experience and what you want to share with them effectively. When you say no, I'm going to, I'm not going to spend the money on. If like, if you can't, that's one thing, but that's clearly not the case with you.

You can, you're really cutting off the flow that enables you to be more generous. And people often don't think like that. There's such a kind of Christian ethic in our culture about being generous and not receiving anything for yourself because that's selfish and it's actually, it's like literally cutting yourself off from the source.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever when you start to unpack it. 

Another way of looking at it is, and it's, this is slightly different, but it has the same root. If you want to give to people, what does it feel like when people don't receive? Or when people say, oh no, not, that's not for me.

What's what kind of energy is that? That's not what. Whether it's, I don't deserve her. It I'm not worthy or I'm too small, or I want to be frugal or I don't, it doesn't really matter, but that energy is a defensive closed energy. It doesn't feel good. So what I found is that when I'm more generous to myself, which means I value myself, everything works better.

Okay. I receive more. I have more to give. I'm able to create more, I'm able to contribute more, which means that I received more than it's just that, the flow expands. So whether you look at it as you're going to get to financial independence more quickly, if you open up the flow of course, you've got to do your calculations in there to make sure you pass your milestone when you went to.

But difficulty around that very frugal thing is, and I've seen this in that, funnily enough, 

I was at wisdom 2.0 some years ago with a friend of mine who was really into the, exactly the same thing as you are this financial independence. But what I saw was that he'd reached it. So he wasn't working.

He was able to do the things he wanted to do. He wasn't actually able to invest in it. He wasn't able to invest in anything that he wanted to do. Cause he had to be frugal all the time. And it was such a pity because he was brilliant, could do amazing things and was hampered actually by his financial independence, ironically.

And just felt like a little more generosity in the system. More abundance in the system. That's not just live in sufficiency. Let's express the abundance that all of us know inside ourselves. We know that abundance is like nature is abundant nature. Isn't living in just enough and no more nature can be very efficient with its resources.

But there's a sense of abundance all the time as well. And I think we resonate as human beings more with abundance than we do with scarcity, frugality, thrift, and all of those things. And I think we need to find a way to express that. 

[00:23:15] How being frugal can lead to you being selfish and lose of the bigger picture

Adam Coelho: Yes, very interesting. So it seems like what I'm hearing you say is that by my unwillingness to invest in myself, in my projects and to be generous with myself by investing in those things that I feel will help me do more good.

I'm essentially hampering my ability to be creative and to do that. Good. 

Sarah McCrum: Yeah. So essentially you'll be selfish.

Adam Coelho: Unpack that for me, 

Sarah McCrum: you were saying, I'm not going to invest myself. That means I'm not going to give myself the chance to contribute a whole lot more. So I'm going to deny all those people who I could work with, because I could do better business, cause I did that course or whatever it is, I'm going to deny them the opportunity to work with me for the sake of a hundred dollars or a thousand or $2,000 here, which could bring tens of thousands, hundreds, millions here, but far more significant is the value that it creates real value of peace in people's minds and hearts.

You're saying for the sake of a thousand or $2,000 here, I'm going to withhold all of that. Now spending money on every course that comes along just because it's a course, of course. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about making wise decisions, but to, with hold from yourself, the means that you need to be the greatest person that you can be, or that you aspire to be.

And I can be at any level, you don't have to be something huge. It's like, whatever's right for you. But to withhold that is really pure selfishness. And small-mindedness, I'm being very brutal here, but no, you're 

Adam Coelho: absolutely. It's true. I'm letting my own BS stop me. I'm getting hung up in thinking only about my self in spending that a hundred dollars.

And my wife always says I can't imagine the amount of mental energies spend thinking about this and all the while denying all the people that would benefit from me having that enhanced capacity to deliver. My gifts to the world. 

Sarah McCrum: Exactly. And with that goes, all those thoughts about, whether it's, I'm not worthy or I'm not deserving, which I don't get a sense of with you, but many people have it or, I'm not good enough or I'm not ready or I'm not creative enough.

Or I don't know how to do it. All of those things. They're all ways that keep us small. and Whenever we think those things I'm just thinking about myself. It's like, I am not good enough. I'm not this. I'm not that. But what about all those people who haven't even started to experience any kind of peace of mind and a desperately anxious.

Now, somebody else will probably come and teach them, but you could have the pleasure. And this is where generosity comes in. Do you want to give yourself the pleasure of doing that work or you happy to just leave it for somebody else? To me. So this comes back to generosity, to yourself, the generosity to give yourself the pleasure of really living.

Adam Coelho: Yeah. Very cool. You're absolutely right. And so would you recommend, I explore the aspect of myself that doesn't want to invest or just like switch gears and just practicing, being open to receiving and just undamaged the river and just allowing the flow to happen.

Say, oh, I need to invest in this. Okay. Just invest. Do it, see what 

Sarah McCrum: happens. You don't really have a problem with receiving actually because you all very well paid from what you told me, that's receiving, 

Adam Coelho: I guess. 

Sarah McCrum: Yeah, you'll receive. Pretty well, so it's very interesting. You're very generous to yourself there, but you're not generous to yourself in the other dimensions.

Adam Coelho: Yeah, I had this thing where it's like a dollar I spend now is $10 in retirement. And so I just funnel everything to investments. So it's flowing in that way but also it's the investing in myself that 

Sarah McCrum: is lacking. I think so, which really goes back to where we were earlier.

It's this, are you going to really live and fill out your life now? Or are you going to put everything aside so that it's just there for later? And then when later comes, you won't have the business that you could have had, or the, whatever it is that you could have had because you actually failed to do the investment earlier.

So this is about us having more of an integral view of investing, investing. Isn't only about money, there's knowledge, there's technology there's all kinds of different things that we can invest in, which are equally valid. 

And I'll tell you a little story because I as I mentioned, I inherited money when I was 28, I think, and it was quite a lot and it was several hundreds of thousands of pounds.

And in the end by a series of decisions, I basically every single penny of that ended up going into my learning and training. And so I didn't invest anything. I started off with it all invested and it all came out and it all went into investing in what health and wellbeing and teaching, learning how to do what I do.

And I experienced quite a lot of years, as a result were actually had really no money at all. And there's a story to that, which I'm not going to go into. So I could say I made a real mistake and at one level I did, I could have done it more wisely. And at the same time that investment in myself, I was really clear that I was investing in the most valuable thing to me.

I'd seen my sister die when I was 30. So I knew, what it means to lose your health and wellbeing. I knew that was precious beyond. Anything in life and I invested in it and now I'm able to bring all of these things together and create wealth around it. It's like I had to learn because I had got myself into such a hole, but I did because I'm a human being and that's what we do.

We find a way. You could say, I made a massive mistake. You could say I made a really wise decision. Like both the true, I'm here, I'm living and breathing and I'm okay. Very much more than, okay. So first of all, I think fear is a really big thing. Just try doing it and just don't dance so much with.

And get a more expanded view of yourself. It's not just about money. The funny thing is you're falling into the very thing that you're trying to pick, teach people not to do, which is what we tend to do. You've somehow made it all about the money. 

Adam Coelho: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why I'm doing this right.

Because I'm trying to sort my own stuff out, so yeah. You're absolutely right. 

[00:29:43] Can you talk a little about Love To and how that financial product works?

Sarah McCrum: All right, Sarah let's switch gears. You mentioned you're involved in a new business called Love To. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how love too works as a financial product?Yes. If you think about the way we view things, typically the moment, if you look at a tree, that tree is valuable when you cut it down and you turn it into lumber, you turn it into paper or furniture or something.

But while it's standing alive, contributing fresh air habitat, shade, cooling, all kinds of extraordinarily valuable things to us and to the whole ecosystem of earth, it has no financial value. That's really interesting. So some people are trying to put a value on trees and say the tree's worth a thousand dollars or $5,000 because this is, these are the ecosystem services it provides.

But we looked at that and said, hold on a moment that doesn't make sense because that tree is part of an ecosystem and its value is part of the living system. that it's in. And also in a way, nature is sacred. It's not something that you go and chop up into parts and put numbers on and say, that belongs to me and that belongs to you.

It doesn't make any sense, but we knew that something had to be done because if we valued dead trees and not alive trees, we cut down trees and We then have to grow them because it's the right thing to do and it's heavy and it's difficult. So what we did my business partner and I, which has been work, that's been happening over the last five and a half years was really looking at how do we balance.

Things. And what do we value? And we developed an algorithm, a system for valuing what's valuable for life. So it's valuing what enables us to have fresh air, clean water, living, soils, biodiversity, healthy ecosystems, and healthy human beings. Because in our view, those are the most valuable assets on the planet.

They're more valuable than gold, more valuable than diamonds. And they contribute to our environment rather than destroying the environment. Those other things that extractive and they destroy to get the gold and the diamonds. But if people produce better soil and cleaner air, that's generative in every way.

So fundamentally what we found a way to do is package up lots of value. Farmers have created by investing their time and energy. They put their hard work in to improving the environment. Some of them, the regenerative farmers and we've packaged that in a way that meets the requirements of the financial markets, which means it has things like governance, gold standard governance that you have to have.

It has auditability and verifiability that we've, de-risked it we've done the things that speak the financial language, the mainstream financial language for people who would traditionally never be able to get that type of investment. so we re-imagined value in a way. And we created a new type of product and we sell it.

We basically have shares and options. But they're backed by something that is not just our company. They're backed by the work that these people have put in to produce that clean air and fresh water and living soil and all of those other things. So they're based on real value. We talk a lot about real value.

That's valuable for life. So it's valuable for all of us. It's actually essential and it allows us to realign the markets with that kind of real value.

Adam Coelho: So glad I asked. So glad I asked. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. 

[00:33:16] Is that expected to produce a return? 

Adam Coelho: And is that expected to produce a return? if I invest a hundred dollars in that. Will it stay a hundred dollars? Will it grow? Will it shrink? 

Sarah McCrum: So we have two different types. We have these options and we have shares the options or options over the shares.

We're in very early days, but the F the first person who invested is a good example, and he bought options. He wasn't planning to turn them into shares. He bought them on the expectation based on our plans and other things that those options will grow in value. And that at a certain point, he'll be able to solve them.

If he wants to, if you get shares, then they produce a dividends. So there are two different ways of doing it. 

Okay. So it's like you're buying a share in those farms or businesses that are producing life essentially,No, it's a little bit different from that. We actually talk about it as a financial product, because you're not buying a share in the farm.

The farm belongs to the. cause we look at things retrospectively. So we look at what they've done because there's that de-risks, if you put money into somebody who says, oh, I promise I'm going to plant a forest here, but they're basically in it for the money and the forest may or may not work.

And they may or may not have good advisors and it's hugely risky. But we say the best people to invest in the world are the people who've already done it and proven it. And the only thing they want to do is do more of it. So we turned what they've already done into a product essentially. And you're buying that product, but what I find really interesting about it, so in one way, you're investing in the work they have already done that is constantly producing more fresh air or clean water because the rivers don't stop flowing.

At any particular, they keep flowing. And as long as they keep regenerating their land, that cleaner water is there. The air is being produced, the trees are growing and they're producing more and more. So you're investing in that. So you get this, like we're investing in the past that they've done, that enables them to do more in the future because that's all they care about.

And it enables the environment to keep on producing more value for all of us. So it's a little bit of a different way of thinking. And we see more that what we've done is really they're producing a product, which is an environmental or ecological product alongside their flopping or their grazing or whatever they do.

So they have a new product. Now we add value by packaging that product and presenting it to the financial markets and we sell it, so it is, it's more of a product mentality than an I'm investing in this company. Or I'm going to take a piece of ownership of this, somebody else's asset.

It's all I can investment in life that produces, but it's an asset. 

Adam Coelho: And it produces a dividend if you have, and it, 

Sarah McCrum: if you buy the share, it produces a dividend. If you buy an option, hoping it's going to increase in value or you can convert it to a share when you want to write. 

Adam Coelho: Okay. Very cool.

Thank you so much for going into that. 

[00:36:08] Conlsusion & Connect with Sarah

Adam Coelho: All right, Sarah, as we wrap up, I'd love for you to share with the audience, how they can connect with you online and learn more about all the things you're working on.

Sarah McCrum: The best place to go is my website, which is liberate humanity.com.

Also have a website, my name's Sarah McCrum.com and you'll be able to find the book there. I'm very lucky that I have an unusual name, so you can look me up on Google. Sarah McCrum you'll find. 

Adam Coelho: Very good. I will link all of that up in the show notes so you can check it out. 

Thank you, Sarah.

This has been absolutely wonderful. this is by far one of the best podcast conversations I've had so far, so I'm really grateful for you to take the time and to share all of your wisdom with us. 

Sarah McCrum: Thank you. It's been really fascinating. I've never talked to this audience before around this theme of financial independence.

So it's been really fascinating for me to have that experience. 

[00:36:57] Outro

Adam Coelho: Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the mindful fire podcast. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sarah mcCrum as much as I did

if you're getting value from these episodes, I invite you to please hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this, this just lets the platforms know you're getting value from the episodes and you want to be here when I produce additional content.

And I'd love to invite you to join our mindful fire community. each Friday, we joined together to meditate at 2:30 PM Eastern time. It's totally free and I'd love for you to join.

You can sign up at mindful fire.org/meditate. 

As a reminder, you can find the full show notes for today's episode mindfulfire.org/75.

Sarah was also kind enough to share with our audience. One of her money activations focused on enjoyment and money. 

 This activation is a meditation of sorts, and I released it on the podcast last week as episode 74. you can find that wherever you're listening to this. 

Thanks again, and I'll catch you next time on the mindful fire podcast.