207: Achieving The Lucrative Life

This is The Intentional Advantage podcast with your host, Tanya Dalton,
entrepreneur best-selling author, nationally recognized productivity expert, and a
mom of two. On Season 16, Tanya is taking real to another level, sharing more of her
story and opinions and engaging in conscious conversations to start bringing more
women together. Are you ready? Here’s your host, Tanya Dalton.
Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to The Intentional Advantage podcast. I’m your host,
Tanya Dalton, and this is Episode 207. This has been an incredible season. I really
have enjoyed talking about conscious conversations. And as I’ve been thinking about
it, we’re getting close to the end of this amazing season. I’ve been thinking a lot
about these conscious conversations that we need to have with ourselves, really
diving into who you are, who you want to be, how you feel about your lifestyle.
Do you feel satisfied with how you are living or are you always thinking you should
be doing more, which is basically the opposite of satisfied? Here’s the truth. The
lucrative life that you want is within reach. You just have to choose to achieve it. And
it takes some conscious thought.
It takes really thinking about it, but it also requires getting rid of balance. Now, if
you’ve listened to me for any stretch of time, you know that I believe that balance is
totally bogus. That if we want to choose the direction we go in our life, we have to let
go of balance. And in my book, The Joy of Missing Out, we talk about this concept or
this idea of balance, like when you’re riding a bike; balance is fabulous, fabulous
riding a bike, but it’s not so great for how we want to live.
You see if you’re on a bike and you’re perfectly balanced. You can keep going
straight ahead as long as you want to stay on that same path, but you can’t really
choose to be your left or right. If you want to go left, you have to change your center
of balance. You have to lean over to the side and lean to the left and then turn, you
can’t lean too long, or else you’ll fall. You’ll hurt yourself. You have to counter-balance.
And then if you want to turn right, you want to choose to go on the right-hand path,
you gotta lean over to the right. You have to go out of perfect balance. But here’s the
thing: balance is this, like, huge buzzword we hear again and again and again about
living a balanced life. And I think we have to start off by just throwing that

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completely out the window, because truly most of the time when we talk about
balance, we’re focused a hundred percent on what that looks like for work.
And I don’t think you are just about work. You know, I really believe in the holistic
version of you, the whole, the W-H-O-L-E version of that; you are more than just who
you show up as Monday through Friday from nine o’clock to five o’clock.
You are a whole person, maybe you’re a wife or a mother or a friend or an aunt, and
all these other roles in your life that you truly play outside of who you are with
business or with your career. So I want to encourage you to really think about your
life as a whole, because I want to get into this idea of having a lucrative life.
And this is a term that I’ve just come up with because I truly believe abundance is
around us everywhere. And it’s not just in the form of money and abundance of deep
relationships and abundance of happiness and abundance of joy in the things that
we’re doing each and every day, that abundance is everywhere. That is what it
means to have a lucrative life.
It’s not just who you are at work or who you are at home, even; it’s who you show up
as everywhere you go. And that means living fully, truly, to who it is you want to be.
It’s time to step authentically into who you are and to feel comfortable and confident
doing that because you are amazing. So let’s have an amazing life to go along with it.
You know, a lot of times when I’m sitting down and I’m looking at all the different
things I have going on, because obviously just like you, I have a lot of things that
happened in my life because I’ve got two kids who are active; you know, Kate plays
volleyball and Jack has been applying to colleges. We’ve got a business that I run.
I have a podcast. I’m working, right now, on the edits for my next book that’s coming
out with Harper Collins in October. There’s a lot of things going on. So when I sit
down with John, I always say to him, let’s talk about the rhythm of the week. What
does the rhythm of the week look like? And for me, what that means is where are we
going to push a little bit harder?
Where are we going to lift up, maybe on the gas a little bit? What does the rhythm
of my week look like? But I feel like this idea, this concept of rhythm goes even
further. There’s a rhythm to your life, you know, finding a rhythm in a way so it
unfolds just like your favorite song does. Think about a song that you love on the
radio.
Like this song comes on, you turn the volume up, and maybe you’re singing way too
loud, way too off-key right alongside it. Okay? It’s not perfectly balanced, meaning

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it’s not, you know, all the instruments playing exactly the same tone or exactly at the
same speed. It’s all very different than all playing the same note or at the same level.
Sometimes there’s a lot more drum in there. Sometimes there’s more guitar or
maybe there’s no guitar at all. Sometimes it’s all piano. Sometimes it’s someone
singing along while instruments play quietly in the background. And that’s what life
is like. Sometimes it’s the percussions, it’s the drums. Then, you know, some of that
deep bass rhythm. And sometimes we need to have the triangle and a little bit of
tambourine time, super easy and light.
And it’s–that’s the rhythm that we’re looking for in our life. That is what we’re
looking for; that harmony, where all of this comes together and plays beautifully as
one. So we got to let go. We have to throw balance out the window because we’re
looking for harmony. We want to find a rhythm in our lives, no matter how crazy
things seem sometimes.
And sometimes it does feel crazy. Sometimes the bass is a little too loud. We can find
harmony and happiness in our life. We can find success and that’s really what’s
going to allow us to flourish. It’s so important for everything in life that truly this
concept, this idea of harmony is everything that I teach when it comes to
productivity.
You know, we need to stop the focus on balance when really it’s the harmony that
we truly want. When I talk about productivity, whether it’s productivity at work or
productivity at home or any other place you are, it’s about living that lucrative life. It’s
about you as a whole, having a fulfilling life at work and outside of work. You know,
not that long ago, we did an episode where we talked about redefining success, that
success doesn’t just have to happen where we do our work.
It needs to happen everywhere else as well. You’re more than a worker bee. Like we
just said about that holistic life, let’s stop acting like success can only be gained in
the revenue that we generate or the paycheck we bring home, or the number of
sales that we close, or the way that our business looks. A lucrative life is about having
both a bountiful business that is flourishing and growing and scaling or focusing in
on our personal life as well.
Nurturing those relationships, not going wide, going deep. That’s really what a
lucrative life is. Having this abundance outside of wealth. Let’s talk about abundance
with wealth. We want that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of
money with wanting to have a business that grows and scales wanting to bring
home a big paycheck. Let’s also talk about abundance in other places as well.

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And this is because you play so many roles in your life. You’re the CEO of the office,
perhaps, and you’re the CEO of the home. So you are running life at your office.
Maybe you are managing a team. Maybe you’re not, you know, using the CEO title,
but you’re managing people. You’re managing projects, you’re running the
day-to-day operations.
And then you go home, you take off your CEO of the office hat you put on your CEO
of the home hat, and then you’re running things there as well. Now I have an
amazing husband, John, who is very hands-on and he is fabulous. And yet I am still
CEO of the home. I’m still doing most of the running of the show. I’m directing
things at home.
So work and home need to live in harmony. This is that lucrative life, the bountiful
business, and thriving personal life because here’s the truth. We cannot go to work
and just kill it and feel like we’re doing amazing things. If life is falling apart behind
the scenes, if we’re worried about what’s happening in our home lives; in the book,
the joy of missing out, I give that quote: We can bring home the bacon. We can fry it
up in a pan, but it does us no good if the kitchen is burning down around us. We
need to let out that fire. We need home life to feel good and at ease and feel like a
good solid foundation so when we are at work, we can focus fully a hundred percent
at work.
And when we come home and we close out our business day, we can focus fully a
hundred percent going deep with those relationships, with the people that we love.
That is truly what the lucrative life is. And so when it comes down to is our
boundaries and our mindsets, you know, that term close of business day, that’s
become this antiquated term.
No one seems to have a close of business. We’re always on and we’re expected to be
everywhere. I know this because people want to message me on like 50 different
platforms. And I’m like, I cannot be everywhere at once. Let me rephrase that. I could
try to be everywhere at once, but I’m going to be spread really thin.
And I’m not going to be giving you the best version of me if I do that, right? We need
to focus in on where we want to be and how we want to show up in an online world.
We fall asleep, believe there’s no close of the business day. And I want that to change
because here’s the truth. When we lose our boundaries, we lose ourselves.
That sense of who we are and who we want to be in order to become the best
version of you. You need to really define your boundaries and choose how you want
to live. And that is absolutely a choice. It is a choice that you can make. We can
choose to close that door to our business so that when we go home,

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we’re giving ourselves 100% to the people we love. And when we go back to
business, we close that door and we open up the work door. So we’re working,
guilt-free excited and on fire for what it is we’re creating and really what this comes
down to is a mindset. Having a mindset for the lucrative life, really understanding
what that means. And I was thinking about this the other day,
because I was making a batch of tortilla soup. I know you’re like, where are we going
with this story? But I was making tortilla soup, which is one of my family’s favorite
soups; they love tortilla. And every time I make it, I think about where I got the recipe
from. I got the recipe from, we went to a party that one of John’s friends had had.
This was way back. I think we might’ve still been in dating mode at this point. So like
over 20 years ago, we go to this party and I have this tortilla soup. And it’s amazing.
So I asked the woman who made it, I’m like, Can I have the recipe? Because that’s
the kind of person I am. I’m very food motivated.
I see food I like, and I want to make it at home. So I asked her, you know, can I get
the recipe? And she’s like, I’ll give it to you, but I tell you what, I would never make it
again. It’s a nightmare because you have to chop up all these vegetables. And she
starts going into this whole spiel about how terrible it was to make this tortilla soup.
But I like the soup. So I was like, give the recipe. So every time I sit down and make
this tortilla soup, I think about how much I actually enjoy making this tortilla soup. I
love chopping vegetables. I love the process of getting all of my [indistinguishable] in
place. I chop up the carrots and the onions and the celery,
and I get the tomatoes ready. And I find that to be incredibly enjoyable. Now, this
woman, I got the recipe from, she hated that that was not appealing to her at all. But
for me, this whole process is so enjoyable because I love chopping vegetables. I love
working on my knife skills. I love every aspect of cooking for me at the end of the
day,
when I come home and I make a meal for my family, that’s relaxing, which you
might think is crazy if you don’t like cooking, but here’s the thing. I love cooking.
That’s enjoyable for me. So what is difficult for someone else? I have flipped on its
head and I look forward to it. And I thought to myself, years ago,
I thought to myself, what if I look at all of my chores like I look at cooking? What if I
treated all the things that I don’t like about what I have to do at home to keep things
running, what if I looked at them as cooking as well? What if I chose to look forward
to them instead of dreading them? What if I shifted how that looked?

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You know, with the tortilla soup, even I’ve taken that recipe, and I’ve simplified it. And
a thousand different ways, the first recipe was, you know, taking strips of corn
tortillas and frying them up in shortening. And I’m like, screw that. Why don’t I just
get tortilla chips? Right? I made it into a system. I went to the store and bought
tortilla chips instead. And it tastes exactly the same as the woman’s I got the recipe
from.
You buy pre-chopped vegetables in the produce section. How can you make it
easier? You know, if you want tortilla soup, how can you make it, so you can have the
tortilla soup, how can you make it easier for you? So it really is about the mindset.
Change how you’re looking at the tasks that need to get done.
You decide how you want to live your life. That is a choice. You decide whether it’s
something you dread or something you get excited about. You decide, if this is
something I dread, how do I make it easier? There’s this whole concept out there of
the life of ease.
And I feel like everyone is selling this line of bullshit about working by the pool. No
one starts off working by the pool. Can you get there? Yes, you can. But it takes some
work. The life of ease isn’t easy; that is just a tagline someone gives you so you’ll buy
their–whatever it is they’re hocking to you.
You can get there. Absolutely. But you have to do the work to get there. You have to
put the systems in place. You have to put the mindset in place. You have to decide
how you want to approach life. That’s what ease is. It’s not setting some easy buttons
on your desk and all of a sudden life comes easily. We have to decide what that looks
like.
We have to decide to approach the things that are a little more difficult or the things
we don’t want to do with that mindset of ease. It takes time to get there. You need to
get the systems in place. You need to scale. You need to strategize; you need to
simplify.
Right now, for me, I’m working four-day workweeks. Every week I work Monday
through Thursday. I don’t work Fridays. My team does not work Fridays, which
means they get 52 days off. That’s almost eight weeks of vacation days for me and
my team. Eight weeks, because we’ve created a lifestyle for ourselves. Plus we take
unplugged vacations. Every year I go on vacation. I am out of touch with my team.
They do not contact me.
I go, and I don’t worry about work. I focus on what I want to do on my vacation. We
have to have the mindset to get there. It’s absolutely achievable, but here’s the thing.
Ease is not a destination. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a choice. Choosing ease takes some work.
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It takes changing the way that you’re looking at things. And that’s what I want to talk
about as we get into the next half of the show here in just a few minutes. But before
we do that, I have something really big to announce that I’m really excited about. As
part of our mid-episode break.
You know, that life of ease, we were talking about how I work four-day workweeks
and have lots of vacation days every year. That’s what I want for you. And as we kick
off 2021, I want to help give you the tools and the mindset that allowed me to scale
to seven figures in my own business.
You know, right now there are some incredible shifts happening in our world. If you
pay attention to any of the planetary stuff, you know what I’m talking about. We just
had the great conjunction that just happened last month. Energies are shifting.
Roles are shifting and here’s, to me, what’s most exciting: there are no more rules.
The rule book has absolutely changed, which means it’s wide open and ready for you
to create your own rules.
Right now, we have entered the Age of Aquarius and that actually means the rise of
the divine feminine. And what that tells me is that women are ready to step fully into
their businesses and achieve that lucrative life that we’ve been talking about here on
the show today. I want you to feel good about the work you’re creating, just like I do.
I want you to have the four-day workweeks and the unplugged vacation days. And I
want to show you how I’ve done it myself. So I’m offering a free Masterclass called
Mastering the CEO Mindset. You’ve probably noticed mindset’s been a big word, not
just in this episode, but all season long because you get the right mindset in place
and everything does become easier.
It’s making that choice of how you want to move forward. So head to
Tanyadalton.com/masterclass. It’s an hour-long training. You’re going to want to
show up live, because if you’ve shown up for one of my masterclasses before, you
know, it’s super interactive; we have a lot of fun. I want you to make plans to join me.
If you feel like it’s time for you to rise up in your business and rise up in your personal
life, I want you to push pause on the podcast right now and go sign up.
Don’t wait until after the show. Don’t make excuses about why it’s not the right time
for you right now. If you feel it in your gut, that 2021 could possibly be your year, then
do what it takes to make it happen. Don’t give your subconscious a chance to
undermine you or sabotage you go and sign up. Push pause right now, go to
Tanyadalton.com/masterclass. It’s free. I want to see you there!
Okay. I’m hoping that you pressed pause and you went and signed up for the
masterclass because I want to see you there with me. I always look forward to seeing
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names that I recognize showing up. I love interacting. I love connecting with you,
and I love seeing you making a decision to bet on yourself, to invest in yourself, and
to really make a difference in your life.
So if you didn’t go and sign up, I want you to think about why you’re not signing up.
And maybe think about that as we get into this last half of the show. We’re going to
be diving into the four different categories of lifestyles and which one you really feel
fits how you are right now. And the four categories we’re going to be talking about
our dreamer, hobbyist, workaholic, and thriver.
This is a hundred percent about how you feel about the harmony in your life.
Achieving that lucrative life, it’s how you’re focusing on your personal life and your
work life. Not about balance at all, but how you feel about your life as a whole.
Because the truth is no one joins a big corporation because they want to be chained
to their desk.
No one decides I’m going to start my own business like working 80 hour weeks. No
one does that. You do it because want the lifestyle, it affords the hard work pays off,
and you have the ability to enjoy the fruits of that labor in your personal life and in
your personal time. But here’s the big question. Are you actually doing that?
Are you actually living a life that feels lucrative at work and feels lucrative at home as
well? Let’s dive into these four categories as I’m going through these. I want you to
think about which one of these really defines you and your life right now. First up, we
have the dreamer, meaning you feel like the good life is out there. It’s somewhere
out there, but it’s not quite where you are right now.
It’s not really happening at work or at home. Maybe you want to start a business or
accomplish big things in your career, but it always seems out of reach. Mainly
because home life feels like a disaster right now. You can’t focus at work. You can’t
focus at home. You see other people doing it and you feel like there’s got to be more
out of life, but you’re just not there right now. That’s the first category.
The second one is the hobbyist. Are you more of a hobbyist? Meaning your home life
feels great. You feel like you have good, meaningful relationships with friends and
family, but work never seems to take off. You have big dreams of how you could
grow a business or achieve greatness, but there never seems to be enough time,
mainly because you’re focused a hundred percent on home life and not really able to
focus on work at all.
And let’s be real here: your home life definitely needs your attention, but you can’t
expect work to really do anything if you’re not watering that grass. You got to pay
attention to work and you gotta pay attention to home. And if you’re only focusing
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on home life, you’re a hobbyist because nothing’s really gonna happen unless you
make it happen. Okay?
The next one is on the complete opposite end of the scale: the workaholic. Your
business or your career is like the worst three-year-old toddler, constantly throwing
tantrums. It’s the brattiest kid. And it’s the kid who gets the biggest amount of your
attention. Maybe people even look at you and think, Wow, their business is
successful. Or, Wow – Look at their career, it’s amazing.
And they think that you feel successful, and that feels good, but home life is
anything but. Honestly, this is probably the easiest category to fall into, especially if
you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur. And a lot of times it’s because we lack
certain boundaries. You know, just like we talked about at the start of the show
when it’s time to shut off work mode and jump into our home mode, it’s just not
happening. So right now you probably feel like you’re too tired to really be the mom,
the wife, the friend, whatever it is you want to be in your personal life. You’re too tired
for it.
And sometimes you may even ask yourself, is this really worth it? And then just
being exhausted at the end of the day. If so, you’re falling into that workaholic
category. And then our fourth category is my personal favorite, the thriver, which
means work and home life are humming like a well-oiled machine.
You go to work, you do amazing things and you don’t feel guilty about doing it
because you know, home life is solid. You have a good foundation for a happy home,
so you can go and you can crush it with your business or career. And you let go of
the guilt because, you know, work is going well. When you leave it behind at the end
of the day, the people and the projects that you love, are what gets your full
attention. So you have a really happy home life and a thriving flourishing business
life.
So which one do you want to be? The dreamer, the hobbyist, the workaholic, or the
thrive? I mean, you want the full story? I’ve lived all four. I’ve been in all four roles in
my lifetime. I’ve been the dreamer who felt a little bit lost and uncertain. I’ve been
the hobbyist. You might remember, I started my very first business with $50 and
zero business experience. And then I’ve been to the opposite end: I’ve been the
workaholic where I had seasons, where I sacrificed way too much of what was really
important to me in the name of success.
And now I’m a thriver. My kids and my husband, they get a hundred percent of me
when I’m at home. And when I’m at work, my team, my clients, they get the best
version of Tanya too, which means I drop a lot of that whole baggage. I had guilt
stress, utter exhaustion; I’m not saying life is perfect because it’s not.

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Life is still life, but it sure feels like a life of ease, but it took some work to get here.
Achieving that thriver status is absolutely possible. You just gotta do what you need
to do to set it up and get it running. So let’s give you some momentum builders. As
we close out today, I want to take some time to really give you some steps.
So you can find that lucrative life that you’re looking for. So let’s start with the first
one momentum builder. Number one, if you’re a business owner looking to take
your business or your life to the next level, go and sign up for that masterclass
mastering the CEO mindset. Truly. I know this is going to jumpstart your 2021. I want
you to reserve your spot.
Go to Tanyadalton.com/masterclass and sign up. I want you to consider this the very
first step into becoming the thriver that I know you want to be in moving forward. All
right. And momentum builder number two, I want you to hit reply to the email that I
sent out with this episode. This week, I’ll have a video I’m sending out as well.
So hit reply to one of those that I send this week, and I want you to answer these
questions: Which role are you playing right now? Are you a dreamer? Are you a
hobbyist? Are you a workaholic, or a thriver? If you’re a thriver right now, amazing. I
want to hear from you. Share with me your story. Tell me what’s happening.
How are you maintaining your harmony? And if you’re not a thriver, Okay, tell me
what would help you get to that thriving status? I mean, other than signing up for
my masterclass, what do you need help with? Is it boundary issues? Is it
understanding systems? What is it that you need help with? Because I’m going to
listen to that and think about what we can offer for upcoming shows and upcoming
seasons.
And trust me, I have a really great season coming up next. I would absolutely love to
hear from you because truly when I hear from you and I see what you want, I try to
deliver. I try to give it to you. I’m a thriver. So when I go to work, I’m giving a hundred
percent to my clients, my podcast, listeners, my customers, my team, and I want to
be able to serve you better.
So hit reply. Let me know where you fall under those different categories and let’s
figure out how we can move forward together. Okay? Here’s what I want you to
remember. As we close out today’s show, remember life doesn’t need to be a
constant struggle. It really doesn’t.
The life of ease can be yours. It does take work, but I’m here for you. And that’s what
we’re going to be working on together. Really creating that lucrative life for you,
creating and seeking harmony, working to infuse it in all the areas of your life. That is

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when we open the doors to becoming the Thrivers that I know we all can be, and
that is when you know you have the intentional advantage.