also see the the flip side of that with my dad, who was an entrepreneur and approached money very differently. You know, money was a tool. He knew that if he needed to, he could go out and make more. He felt more in control. He made it a little bit more lighthearted, where my mom, being an employee, she didn’t have the same opportunities to go out and truly do something that would have the immediate and direct result of more income coming into the house. So I learned very quickly that being an employee and very budgeted was more stressful, and being an entrepreneur and having the ability to go out and create more opportunity seemed like the natural path to a little bit more of a stress free life. And you know, looking at it through that young girl’s eyes, I realize now being an entrepreneur myself, how it’s quite the opposite actually being an entrepreneur very stressful. But I think it just speaks to and leans into the fact that regardless of what you’re doing in your life, making sure that stress is limited at all costs, is truly the way to build health and wealth in a life of longevity, hopefully.

Manon Bolliger  07:11

Well, it’s interesting. The you know that that statement, it kind of a turnaround there, because a lot of entrepreneurs realize that there is definitely a stressful aspect to it. I mean, part of it sure you you control your schedule. So, yes, you can work 160 hour if you want. You know, you can travel sure, like you know, nobody really tells you what to do. I mean, you can have great relationships with your team, but you don’t have to be, you know, that terrible boss. I mean, you know, whatever. So yeah, lots of that, but it’s like you make it what you want it to be, right? And so I think part of the lesson, at least, that I can see in it is that you, you learn to be flexible and innovative and creative, right and and you, I think, you have a more sovereign self approach to living life,

Michelle Taylor  08:15

absolutely. And that’s one thing you know in that I learned that you can’t worry about the things that you can’t control, and it was a valuable lesson at 17 to realize so much of this life we can’t control. It’s how we approach it, and that’s a hard thing to learn, even as an adult. So I talk to people about it, you know, I often say it’s one of the best and worst things that ever happened to me, because You quickly learn how to pivot face a problem head on, focus on a solution and how important true health really is to the big picture. You know, health does not discriminate, and there are things that we can do to set ourselves up for success. But again, I feel like that goes back to the Money Story. Having a freedom of income allows people to pursue health in ways that feel authentic to them. So it always comes back to, how do you set someone up with the proper resources to be able to live their most healthy life, with or without? A focus on, on just the financials, you know? And when I first found out I was sick, one of the things I did learn, but through another family member that was an entrepreneur, was my uncle. We wanted to get a second opinion, because it was very early on, and so there were some question marks of what we were really dealing with. And my uncle was very successful entrepreneur, and he had relationships with doctors at Mayo Clinic, and so we had. To get in. We could not but my uncle made a few phone calls, and I had an appointment at Mayo Clinic with the best doctors, and went right up there. And I was very aware of the fact that that happened because of his connections. And so again, it was another kind of check on the box of okay, building something where you have impact and are kind of in charge of your own destiny in a way, right? Not only gives you opportunity, but opens up doors because of connection, and that’s sometimes limited as well when it comes to what you’re doing in your life?

Manon Bolliger  10:41

Yeah, no. And I think that’s a great point, because it’s true. When you’re an employee, you’ve got your boss and and then you’ve got the whole, you know, infrastructure, the the government, the taxes, the you know, all that, whatever. There are words for it, but I won’t use them on my own podcast. But you know, when you’re an entrepreneur, I mean, sure you have to deal with some of that, but so much more flexibility. But it’s true, it’s it’s human connections, it’s you happen to meet this person who happens to know this, whether it’s in your field or not, it’s just because it’s, it’s much larger and expanse, right? You’re growing yourself as a person, right? Which has, you know, in this current system, financial advantages, but it’s just advantages of, of meeting more people, more exposure, more more of that, right? So, yeah, very interesting. So, what was it like being 17 and being told by the medical people that be that this is a stress related condition, like, what like? Where did you go with that?

Michelle Taylor  12:00

Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s wild, because at that age, you know, you think that there wouldn’t be that much stress, but especially in this day and age, I mean, what we’re doing with how we’re how the growing up experience has changed, even since I was little, has placed a ton of stress on parents and kiddos in a way that we’ve never seen before, and so for me, I remember being really surprised by that and thinking, How do I approach now the rest of my Life with as little stress as possible, and one of the things that I focused on is looking at a solution instead of a problem. So there’s somebody that I’ve heard speak many times and gotten the pleasure to work with over the years. His name is Dr, Jason Selk, and he talks a lot about being relentless, solution, focused, and I felt that I was doing that before I even knew what it was. So, you know, I was also taught that as growing up in a household, we’re Christian and believe that if, if you have a worry, you are supposed to give it to God and let it kind of work itself out. And so I thought, How do I do this? How do I take something that would be stressful and give it away, and then focus on what I can control, and I put it into practice then, because it was very scary when you hear a diagnosis like that, and you realize that it could have been a direct result of something that I did. How do I undo that? So something like this never happens again, and a lot of it was internalized. I didn’t talk about it with my parents. We didn’t have the same access to resources that we do now. So I really did just think, what can I control? Let me focus on that. So as the lead up to the diagnosis, was extremely stressful. I was most afraid at a 17 year old girl of losing my hair. You know, I never thought about the option of I could pass away from it. I always just thought, I’m in my senior year of high school. I’m captain of our cheerleading team. I don’t want to lose my hair once I knew what the diagnosis was, that’s when the people around me, my family and friends, that’s when they got very emotional and upset. But for me, it was something strange where I immediately thought, okay, there’s nothing that I can worry about that’s going to change this. So now let’s just get started on treatment, because I can put all of my energy and focus on getting through it so I can get back to being a normal teenager again. And I wish I could tell you how I knew to do that at 17. That I still to this day, don’t know, but I’m so thankful that I did.

Manon Bolliger  15:04

Yeah, and you like, you didn’t go through the blame like, Oh, it’s my mom’s this, or it’s my dad’s this, or it’s because they’re divorcing. You just focus on, what can I do?

Michelle Taylor  15:16

Basically, what can I do to impact this journey moving forward, yeah, pouring your energy into that, instead of playing the should have, could have, would have, I think, was something that I held on to very tightly. Wow.

Manon Bolliger  15:34

It’s amazing. I mean, just, I don’t want to take your interview time, but I do want to share a little bit my story, because there’s some similarities to it. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was like, okay, you know, I actually I’m going to figure out what to do about it and get myself into a position where I’m not living stressfully, but one of the choices was not to tell anybody, because I had realized, and I was, I was older than you, not 17. But at that point, I had realized that if I told my parents, if I told you know, that, like the people who love me, you know, their their love would have come in. Like, did you try this? Do you do this or don’t that? Because how do you know that works? And and I realized, like, No, I this. I need to focus 100% on me and getting through this without other people’s care. But you know, which comes often in the form of well meaning judgment, right? And and recommendations that you know, like, if it’s not resonating, it’s not going to be right for me, right? So then avoid them, all the pain and all the tragedy, and then I’ll, I’ll see them when I’m on the other side and I’m fine, and that’s exactly what happened, right? So, yeah, it’s interesting.

Michelle Taylor  17:07

It is. It really is. And I think that, you know, for me, something else that I really grasped onto, and I don’t know if this is what you how you ended up, where you’re at, is, I tell people all the time. I recognize that traditional medicine saved my life at that point, but it actually pushed me in a totally different direction when it came to health and wellness. Moving forward as an adult, I seek out anything I can that is more natural, I go to a functional medicine doctor. I, you know, I’ve been in remission and considered cured now for, you know, 2020, 25, years. So I don’t, I don’t go to get those things checked. I don’t have to anymore, but I really do just focus on the here and now, listening to my body, understanding that the things I can control, the quality of the food that I eat, what I put into my body, what kind of sleep I’m getting. I wear an aura ring. You know, I do all of those things because they feel like things I can control, versus going to a doctor once a year and them putting me on a prescription, and it feels a little bit out of my control. So again, it kind of held on to the control and recognized, if you break your arm, you go to the emergency room. If you have a cough, you don’t go get on a Z pack, you chew up garlic or take honey and elderberry or your vitamins. And again, I think it’s because I could, I could control and understand that

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Michelle Taylor  19:59

Yeah, and that was important, yeah?

Manon Bolliger  20:03

No, I think we did choose different choices at that moment, but I had a much earlier lesson in life where that made it clear that it really was about taking charge, you know, of of your health, which also means your environment, but also your emotional environment, you know? So it really is, for me, it was like, Okay, this is now the new lesson I’m getting to learn through this one. So it’s like, okay, you know? So, and it’s been also 27 years now that I’ve been completely clear, and I don’t get checked because I don’t. I don’t associate myself to a so called survivor. It’s like, no, no, this, this went through me, served its purpose for me and and I’m ready to learn, you know, new things

Michelle Taylor  20:58

a girl after my own heart. It is not part of what we identify with. No Exactly. And you know, going through this again, tying it back to what the financial impact can be, I’m sure that the choices that you’ve made, you recognize that really good health and wellness is much more expensive than doing things in the traditional way. And so, you know, I encourage everybody to think through what is most important to you. I talk about health all the time, and how do you make sure that you’re planning and building a life that will allow you to, you know, buy organic food and shop at a farm and know where your food is coming from. And, you know, look into things like Infrared Saunas or all of these things. And it goes back to how do you become the architect of a life that will allow you to focus on the things that are important, and it comes back to financial capability. So how do we make sure that women all over this country are having the same conversations and access to the same resources, mentorship material to truly be in a place of power and make the best decisions for themselves and their future.

Manon Bolliger  22:28

Yeah, no. And I think, I mean, now we’re, you know, we’re seeing it big time, you know, all this sort of financial entrapment, and you see it in the educational system, you know, just creating followers that listen, that don’t question, that go with some people call it the flow, the prism. But anyway, you know, but it’s, it’s, how do you get to the the mind? You know, like when you said to yourself, you don’t know how you knew I have the same kind of thing. It was like a knowing and a deep knowing, and then it was a trust and and then I spent years perfecting my intuition, because when it came to money, you know, I would say, Oh, I’m so lucky because, you know, I, let’s say I would, I would live in a house, and then I would need to move, but it was in the right direction at the right time, and then, boom, the asset grew, right but it’s not because I spent, I mean, I’ve spent hours and hours and hours and hours on, on my Passion and on, you know, medicine and on, you know, helping people get better. On real estate, I spend no time but, boom, it’s like, you know? So I keep saying, Oh, I’m so lucky, you know. But the thing is, how do you get to the into the mind that knows, like, you know, I in health, I’m I’m so lucky, not because I knew all this knowledge, but because something told me, you know, follow your your intuition. And, sorry, it’s a very long question, but I, you know, I tend to explain it all out, cushion it with everything so that we can get to the point. But anyway, I’ll try and, you know, get clear here. But in finances, how do you know, like this, intuition, you know? Because you could say, Oh yeah, you could put your money in a bank, in a savings account. Well, today, that would be very risky, right? You talk to some people in the banking industry, and you tell them, you know, what? About silver? And they look, oh, nothing will ever happen. It’s like, Aha. It’s like, not exactly what’s happening. You know, or you you you know. Like people will say, Oh, you gamble if I take risks, but they’re not. Risks. You know, it’s, it’s, what do you call it? It’s, well, it is a risk. Life is a risk, I mean, but that doesn’t mean that, that, you know, you win some and you lose some, it’s, and how do you get to that place in finance where you know like you do in health, that’s my question. I think

Michelle Taylor  25:27

it again, is doing your own due diligence, understanding the tools that are part of the game, so finding people that seem to have done what you would like to do, and asking questions, having the conversations. And I think that a lot of our intuition and our gut feelings on things really come down to trusting yourself. And it’s hard to trust yourself on financial decisions if you don’t understand the game that you’re playing. And so it’s starts as simply as knowing what your money is doing for you, knowing what you’re spending, what you need to bring in, understanding that it doesn’t have to be a big choice. It has to be a choice, a choice to move forward so small intentional steps create a financial snowball that will change your life. And it’s very intimidating for somebody who’s never understood like the world that you’re living in to say, I’m not going to trust what I’ve been told to trust blindly, dive in and learn about health and truly understand what’s out there. It’s the same thing with finances. If you understand that your money needs to grow for you, but you don’t understand how the stock market works, that could be very intimidating and really difficult to trust your gut. So I say that in finances, just like in health, you’ve got to start by asking the questions and understanding the game pieces that are on the board. Once you do that small right, next steps change the outcome of the game.

Manon Bolliger  27:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, step by step, yeah, yeah.

Michelle Taylor  27:23

Further you go down the ladder, the more and more you learn it, just like with health. What starts out is saying, well, maybe I want to look into different vitamins,

Manon Bolliger  27:33

right

Michelle Taylor  27:35

to, you know, further and further down, and before you know it, you have a podcast talking about true health and how to get there,

Manon Bolliger  27:43

yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it’s, it’s very interesting. So do you do you? I mean, you do it step by step, but how do you deal with, like, what some people, there are no mistakes. It’s always experiences and opportunities. But you know, when you when you feel that you made, on some level, a mistake in the present moment where you’re going, oh my god, you know, I had a feeling, but you know, I didn’t pay attention, or I, you know, I really trusted them, because blah, blah, blah, you know, usually that’s where we go wrong, right? It’s, it’s usually it involves more than yourself, right? How do, how have you learned to deal with that?

Michelle Taylor  28:38

Just like with health, focus on what you can control. So with money and with health decisions, once the decision is made, oftentimes you can’t unwind what’s been done right. Can’t put toothpaste back in the tube. So when you make a financial decision that doesn’t go the way that you hoped it would, or that you feel that you were taken advantage of. I would encourage anybody to not get stuck in the should have, could have, would have, it’s now okay. How do I how do I correct this? How do I course correct? So for example, if someone is listening to advice and some and they’re hearing only focus on paying down any kind of consumer debt that should be your number one focus, but they aren’t building an emergency savings account at the same time, if something happens, they’ve paid down so much of this debt, but then something unexpected happens, and now they have to go back to putting it on a credit card. They may feel like, what was it all for? So the next best step is to figure out how to tweak what you’re doing and avoid that the next time talk to people. So in that case, I tell everyone, live in an and universe. If you have $100 $1,000 $10,000 a month to do something with, don’t do everything to one pay. Down your debt and invest and save so that no matter what happens, you have got a lever to pull and you can’t predict the future. So how do you prepare for the future and not worry about the things that you can’t control? Yeah?

Manon Bolliger  30:22

Yeah. I mean, it’s very similar, right? It seems simple,

Michelle Taylor  30:27

but so if you are somebody you know that did a financial, I mean, I’m sorry, a medical procedure or got treatment that afterward, you say, Oh, wow. Like I could have done this right with the leukemia at 17. It because of that. I had to go through IVF to have my children, which was my number one goal in life, was to be a mom. And it was very easy for me to say in that moment, that decision I made led to this because of the drugs and the poison that it was being in my system. I can’t undo it, but I can make better decisions moving forward. Of learning what side effects are, learning how to treat things holistically that aren’t going to affect me in the same way, God forbid anything else happen. Same thing with finances, yeah, yeah. Learn from the past, self correct a little bit, and lean on people who have learned the same or similar lessons ahead of you. We all know those people.

Manon Bolliger  31:33

Yeah, no, I think it’s true. And what about the the box that often exists with and I brought it up as if it was a valid box. But the idea of the employee mentality compared to the entrepreneur mentality in that so called Box of the employee first of all, is it really a box, or is it just looking at, you know, you meet other people and they’re doing it differently. And then you say, hey, you know what? Maybe I’ll put some of them funds into this. That’s not very employee, like, you know, gosh, maybe I’m not in that mentality fully. Or, you know,

Michelle Taylor  32:17

not everybody is meant to be an entrepreneur. So it’s not trying to emulate someone in a way that is uncomfortable for you. It’s a way of saying, again, taking control of the situation. So if you are an employee, and you enjoy being an employee, you don’t want to take the risk of being an entrepreneur, but you want to improve what tools you have in your toolbox to live a life that may look a little different, ask the questions to stay in your comfort zone, but again, we have so many resources available to us. How do I increase my income without becoming a business owner, how do I increase what’s coming into my home? Well, maybe it is evaluating what you’re spending in areas that don’t resonate with you anymore or aren’t as important to you, and how do you maybe take a little bit less of or how take more of your money home by putting a little bit less in a retirement account that you can’t touch until you’re 59 and a half and you’re 30 and you have this big dream, but you’re over funding or maximizing a retirement account, maybe that’s not in alignment with your goals. So again, it all comes back to resources and conversation and not trying to do something that feels uncomfortable, but getting comfortable, understanding the players, understanding what resources you have at your fingertips to go after, what’s important to you. And I think that on the outside, being an entrepreneur feels a lot more like a freedom. But there’s also the consideration of, you know, your business is never turned off. I have phone calls or text messages very late at night or on the weekends and and then I have to make the choice. Is this a fire that I have to address now for my own well being? Or can I wait until Monday? So life is full of these choices, whichever path we’re on. So I think it’s just important to find the the path that feels the best, to keep your health and wellness at the forefront and stay focused on always having conversations with people that seem to have learned lessons you may have not learned.

Manon Bolliger  34:52

Yeah, I think that’s exactly it I was gonna say. I’ll leave the last words to you. The those are perfect. But. Our time is up, but thank you so much for spending the time and having this conversation.

Michelle Taylor  35:05

It was my absolute pleasure to be here. Well, I

Manon Bolliger  35:08

guess when it comes to finance, money or health and well being probably the biggest lesson, and I think that was very well addressed, is the here and now, the you know, work with the things you can control and the things you can’t, don’t put them in your stressor zone. What if? What if I could? What if this? What if that, you know, a lot of people spend time in that which is a stressor. It doesn’t matter, you know, in what domain you you do that in, but it definitely has an impact on your health. So I loved just simply, you know, control the things you can, and then obviously, you know, it’s an attitude thing. And you know, life is happening for you. It’s for us to learn. You know, from we’re not presented things that we can’t incorporate and learn from if we choose to. And you know, we’re not necessarily supposed to be here past the time that we’re not so it’s about just relaxing into what is so anyways, a very light conversation given the health implications.

ENDING: 

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