🪐 How to Trust Yourself — Cosmic Business & Money Karma with Paula Crossfield

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about running a thriving creative business with no or minimal social media presence. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio, the co-founder of the Lifestyle Business League. And on this show, I am your fellow traveler and guide on our path of doing business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia Hruby [00:00:51]:
Before we dive into today's amazing conversation, I do wanna remind you that this show is paired with a super supportive free resource. It's called the Leaving Social Media Toolkit, and it includes three things. A five step plan for leaving any social platform, a list of 100 ways to share your work off social media, and a creative marketing ideas database. You can get it for free at offthegrid.fun/toolkit or just head to the show notes to grab it today.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:21]:
Now that you've got the goods, I wanna introduce you to today's guest. Paula Crossfield is a Vedic astrologer and business strategist dedicated to helping spirit led entrepreneurs make more money and impact so they can bankroll the change they want to see in the world without burning out. I love this last parenthetical in her bio because we do not wanna burn out. So Paula is here today because she invited me to be a speaker at the upcoming Cosmic Business Salon, and I invited her to be on this podcast.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:56]:
So as we're diving in, I just wanna make sure that all of you lovely listeners know that you can head to cosmicbusinesssalon.com right now to get a free ticket to the Salon. And once you do that, settle in to enjoy this conversation all about Cosmic Business. So welcome, Paula. I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for joining me.

Paula Crossfield [00:02:19]:
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I did a big binge listen of the first, like, 20 or 30 episodes because I was like, this is so magnetic. So I'm really grateful to be here.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:33]:
Well, thank you. I feel like the podcast actually relates to what we're talking about today because Off the Grid is really where so much of my personal and spiritual and business purpose comes to life, which to me is a lot of what makes up Cosmic Business. So I wanted to start there with kind of this big picture question to you, what is a cosmic business? What does that mean to you?

Paula Crossfield [00:03:00]:
Yeah. So it's something that I thought a lot about. There's a lot of people who have different aspects of the cosmic business that they really put forward, but what I'm trying to offer is a complete new paradigm and totally new way of thinking about business so that we don't have to kind of work within this late capitalistic structure breakdown that we're seeing in the way things are done. It's not healthy. It doesn't support us. So what a cosmic business is to me is first of all leading with our values. It's really understanding that values are important when we're making buying

Paula Crossfield [00:03:41]:
Secondly, it's about doing work that's in line with our purpose. There are many different cultures who talk about purpose. There's Ikigai in Japan. There's dharma in India. There's many ways of thinking about this, but we all crave that. It's what we're here to do. And so understanding that, you know, the tool that I use is Vedic astrology. We can talk more about that, but that kind of helps us understand more what we're here to do, but there's also our intuition. There's other things that can teach us that, but our business should be built around that, I believe.

Paula Crossfield [00:04:11]:
The third piece is that health is centered in a cosmic business. And what does that look like? Our health, the health of the planet, the health of our clients that we're really honoring them as beings, we're showing up to serve, we're thinking about our offers as really helping them to transform and step into the next level of themselves, and we're not harming in the midst of all of that, ourselves or them. Right?

Paula Crossfield [00:04:34]:
The fourth piece is connection and collaboration, that there is no such thing as competition, that we're all actually here to help lift each other up. And connection and relationships have always been the center of business. This is why I was really drawn to your work because people always come to me and they say, do I have to do social media? In the past, I thought, well, it's kind of a necessary evil that you can set it up where you don't have to do as much or you can create a pulse that feels okay for you, or you can find other ways like podcasting or YouTube or whatever else. But connection is what underlies all of it. How are you forming relationships? That's really the question. And then how are you nurturing those relationships?

Paula Crossfield [00:05:14]:
And then for me, the icing on the cake is that we are so wildly successful that we are able to give back and actually make change in this world. We don't have to wait for billionaires. We don't have to wait for governments because that's really not going anywhere. And so my vision is that thousands of conscious entrepreneurs are actually giving back and making a change that they wanna see in the world. So I call that bankrolling the change.

Amelia Hruby [00:05:40]:
One of my favorite things about your work is that cosmic business isn't just some vague concept or a marketing message for you. As you said, it is a framework. It is a new paradigm for businesses and that those of us business owners in the group can really take part in. And just to recap for listeners, I love all the pieces of it you mentioned, values, purpose, health of ourselves, our community, and the planet, connection and collaboration, and giving back or generosity or redistribution. There are so many ways.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:16]:
We can bring in that piece for me that's all about the reciprocal flow and redistribution of resources that, as you grow your business, can become a really powerful part of what you're doing. And I really enjoy the way that this paradigm can reshape businesses. Even my own. Learning about your work, it's been an invitation to think about these different aspects and how I can embed and embody them in my business.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:44]:
So I'm curious, maybe if you could share a bit about your business journey and how have you, I wanna say, come to be a cosmic business owner? I'm not sure about the languaging around it, but I think that your story does show a lot of this, sort of the way these pieces of the paradigm fell into place. So could you take us on that path with you?

Paula Crossfield [00:07:07]:
Absolutely. So where do I even begin? So I'm in my forties. So let's go back to my twenties when I was really determined to write a book. And I was pushing, pushing, pushing, trying to make it happen. And I think of myself as a pretty good writer, but I was editing and writing at the same time. So those of you out there who know

Amelia Hruby [00:07:28]:
Yes.

Paula Crossfield [00:07:28]:
You know what I'm talking about. If you're trying to write a book, it's very devastating work when you're doing that. I also didn't have the perspective I needed to have. At the end of my twenties, my life fell apart. I was living in New York City. I was doing yoga, but it was really yoga was basically keeping me sane, and I didn't realize it. But it was keeping me sane. I went through a divorce, and I lost everything. Like, my community in New York, I had to move, I had so many I got rid of, most of my belongings, I lost my cat, like, all these different things. Right? Move across the country, and I had basically a spiritual awakening in the the rift of that, like, in the end of that. I got to see who I really was.

Paula Crossfield [00:08:10]:
I had my first experience with Vedic astrology and literally, it blew my mind. I literally was like, what is this? I will follow this to the end of the Earth. This is my my path. But it was an unfolding. I had to kind of ground within that. I had to really listen to my intuition and I did some traveling in India. I spent a lot of time up in the Himalaya meditating. It sounds really romantic, but I was in a little cottage there and spent a lot of time with myself. I hadn't done that. And I really got to look at some of the the demons and the things that were holding me back.

Paula Crossfield [00:08:45]:
And I realized that at the end of that the scariest thing I could actually do would be to go back into the world and acknowledge that I have these really strong desires to have a farm, and also to be financially sound, to really show my parents that I am committed to my own success in life and I'm not gonna rely on anyone else to have financial success. That was the scariest thing I could possibly do is take what I've learned in the spiritual path and not just go off and join an ashram, which is what I thought I was gonna do. And instead, like, go into the world and integrate this work into the world.

Paula Crossfield [00:09:21]:
So all of this comes from me thinking of business as a spiritual practice. And the cosmic business idea really emerged from me just trusting the unfolding of my intuition and trusting this path that was forged around what is my purpose, which is both understanding the cosmic blueprint and looking at the astrology and really being able to work with the system. But also, I grew up with entrepreneurial parents, and I have always been an entrepreneur. And so my dad was telling me about business deals when I was like eight years old and I loved it. So I have always had that mind and so bringing those two things together and understanding that that was really what I was here to do.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:03]:
Something I'll talk about on this show is sort of finding the places where our creative artist journey meets our business journey. And I think that the intersection is where our work is of service. So I love that in your story, you're on this like deeply personal spiritual journey, you had to find what was true for you after this, for my tarot reference, kind of tower moments of everything falling down. And then you're able to bring it to a business community to merge the integrate these different parts of yourself and and offer so many different things that are of service to people who want to create businesses that are embedded in their purpose.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:42]:
I feel like often when we tell stories like this, when you share your story, when I've shared my story, we can talk about like taking the leap and we talk about the fear and then the radical alignment we find on the other side, but it can often be really hard to even hear that call. It can be really hard to know what is our intuition telling us. I see the question a lot, like, is it intuition? Is it anxiety? How do I know? Could you talk a little bit about how you cultivate your intuition and connect with it in your business and maybe offer some advice for how other people can do the same in their life or in their work?

Paula Crossfield [00:11:21]:
Absolutely. I will say too, I suffered from debilitating anxiety. As a teen and in my twenties, I really, really had, so many voices in my head that were keeping me from really shining and being who I was here to be. So I'm very deeply familiar with the anxious voice. And it's not like it's completely dead. It comes up in certain times, but I'm able to recognize it. And what I like to refer to it as is like a jagged voice. For me, the intuitive is like a soft straight line. It's very grounding. And when I hear it, I may be triggered because it's, like, asking me to do something. I'm like, are you serious? Usually, it's something where you have to trust because you really don't understand why you're being told that.

Paula Crossfield [00:12:07]:
And I always use the example of this farm. We used to live in Oregon. Now, we live in Maine. And we got a clear knowing that we weren't gonna find what we were looking for in Oregon, and we both were just like Maine, right? And we put a circle on Zillow around the coast of Maine, inland, about 40 minutes. This house had just come up. It was the exact same price as the one we had just bid on and lost in Oregon. It had a 160 acres. It had twice as many bedrooms, and it was exactly what we had pictured in our mind. It's white with a red door, and it has a wrap around porch. And we were just like, well, we have to go see it. So, this gets back to my process, which is you gotta make space. You have to make space because there's so much that wants to take up space.

Paula Crossfield [00:12:53]:
And in creating the space, you can start to observe. And for me, observing is like those signs that I just said, the red door, the fact that it was the same price, the fact that we both said, where would we live if we didn't live here, and we both said Maine even though my partner had never been to Maine. Right? Like, these kinds of things, it was noticing those things, but there had to be the space. So I create the space by having a morning practice.

Paula Crossfield [00:13:19]:
Even if it's 20 minutes, it's like I'm connecting with myself and something greater. I'm sort of tuning myself in, and that sets the tone where I have space where I'm like, "Okay, what's happening?" And I'm making my transition into my day. And so then I try to create space in my day, and it may not look like me sitting down to meditate or doing chanting or anything like that, but it's like moments where I go outside, I'm walking my dog or whatever, and I'm just reflecting. I don't have noise going on all the time. I have, like, a moment.

Paula Crossfield [00:13:50]:
So that that space, that noticing, and then the third thing is taking an aligned action to show your intuition that you're listening and to build your trust muscle around it. So sometimes it may be a little challenging, and so you can ask for a sign to show you that this is actually truly what you believe is, like, am I really seeing this? Or you can just do a Google search or do something that's showing the universe, that's how I refer to it, as like, "Hey, I'm paying attention, I'm listening." And I feel like the more you do that, the bigger the intuitive hits get.

Paula Crossfield [00:14:26]:
And so for me as an entrepreneur, I use this all the time in my business. I'll get a hit, like, okay. This program, even though it's working for people, it's it needs to be retired or it needs to be rolled into something else. And so I'm curious. Does that happen for you too? Are you listening to your intuition when you're making decisions about your business?

Amelia Hruby [00:14:46]:
Yeah. I think it does. I mean, I've never thought of it as a process before. I've never tried to reflect exactly on what I'm doing. So I love this process of make space, practice observing, take aligned action. The way I think of it tends to be saying yes to myself. I think that personally and culturally, I was really trained to deny myself things constantly, whether that be through the lens of patriarchy, through the lens of diet culture, through the lens of capitalism, just through so many of these over culture paradigms. I was really trained into self restriction and denial. And so for me, tapping into my intuition started by getting quiet enough, making that space to actually hear what I even wanted, to be able to surface my desires.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:42]:
And I always have a funny example of this, which is that a few summers ago, I noticed myself just craving a frozen Coke. And for days and days and days, I just said no to myself. I was like, why would I want this? I know that Coca Cola is an evil corporation. I know that it's bad for me. And I also had this voice that was like, well, if I just let myself have it, I might just have, like, 10 of them. That's like the diet culture stuff, really sneaking up, not trusting myself. So after like days and days of saying no, I just finally went and got one and it was great. And I had the one and it was like, wonderful. And that was the whole experience.

Amelia Hruby [00:16:18]:
And I just learning to say yes to myself then taught me I could trust myself. And that is then the practice I've carried into my business to respond more directly to your question. I will often have impulses that feel counter to my strategy, counter to popular narratives. For instance, there are things that I've had many business advisors or coaches tell me I should do in my business that are just noes for me. I've definitely gotten people that say I should be working on corporate podcasts, that all of the money is in these institutions, and that's just like a hard no. Is that true? Probably. I don't book 10 or $20,000 podcast projects with my clientele, but I don't care because that's just not something I'm interested in doing. And that's me trusting my intuition over other people's noise.

Paula Crossfield [00:17:14]:
Yeah. And I also was thinking, wow, when you went to go get the Coke, like, what happened? Because for me, also, sometimes with intuition, you get a hit to do something, like, to call someone you haven't talked to in a long time. And if you just do it, sometimes interesting things unfold that you weren't expecting. And that for me is what I'm usually thinking when something feels really non sequitur. This must be an intuitive pit because this is really weird. I don't know what this is about. And I actually love to laugh at situations like that and just be like, okay, this is happening. I don't know why the universe is asking me to do this, but I'm gonna try it.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:50]:
Absolutely. And I cannot point to any one specific thing that happened from the Coke icey, but I did find pleasure in it. And I think that was the purpose. The purpose was just to allow myself that pleasure during a time when I was being pretty demanding of myself in other areas of my life. And that was just the medicine I needed. And I didn't know the Coke icey was that medicine, but it was.

Paula Crossfield [00:18:13]:
I think also for people who are listening, it's important to know how your intuition shows up, because it could be like you get goosebumps on your arm, or you feel something in your stomach, or you have a twitch that happens in your eye. There could be a physical manifestation, or like a smell that you smell. I've heard all kinds of things from people, so just notice that as well. Like for me, it's an inner knowing, but other people have different ways of feeling their intuition, and just getting to know that will also help you really discern whether it's anxiety or intuition.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:47]:
Yeah. I think for me, I can really feel this energy surge that really comes from my roots. That to me taps back into what I know about human design and being a generator with sacral authority. But what's funny is also I can produce that energy surge by just having too much caffeine, and so I have to pay attention. Like, am I really feeling an intuitive hit, or am I just over caffeinated today? Because I've committed to some things or said yes to some things that I thought were deep true yeses for me that actually were just, like, oh, I pumped my body full of this artificial energy, and that's what said yes to this.

Amelia Hruby [00:19:25]:
And I think that goes back to where you started with this making space and observing. And I know this now, so I know, okay, I had an extra coffee this morning, and that's what's replying to this email for me, instead of actually me replying to, like, do I have time for that call next week? But I think what's coming up for me as we unpack this is it is about knowing how those intuitive messages come through for your body, observing not only what's arriving in the world, but also your own inner patterns and how things work for you, and then really attuning your life to yourself in decisions big and small, whether that be getting a Coke icey, which is apparently now a major theme of this conversation, or moving from one coast to another. If you're practiced in listening to and trusting your intuition, you can make decisions with it across that huge spectrum of the decisions we make in a day or in a lifetime.

Paula Crossfield [00:20:32]:
Yeah. And what you focus on expands. Right? When we focus on our intuition, we start to really get to know it deeply, and we can trust ourselves even more and more. Right? And there's so much we can say that we need to trust as entrepreneurs. We need to trust in our vision. We need to be able to trust in our support. We need to be able to trust in our offerings. Right? And all of that kind of comes out of our own creative energy. And so focusing on that will give us the the trust, and it will strengthen that that relationship of trust.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:06]:
Yeah. I love this refocusing on trust again here. And I think that that's something that for me as a business owner, it comes up in my self trust. Right? All of these practices we're talking about to cultivate our connection with our intuition and cultivate self trust hopefully as a response. And, also, it comes up in me trusting my clients, trusting my customers, trusting my listeners, the lovely people tune in to this podcast. This is the energetic sovereignty piece of Off the Grid where if I am really standing in my self trust, and as a result, reflecting that out and asking people to stand in theirs, I am trusting that they're making the decisions that are right for them. And this comes up a lot, I just think, in all of our work. And, it comes up in the collaboration part of cosmic business. Like, how does self trust and then trusting others kind of work for you and and your work?

Paula Crossfield [00:22:05]:
Yeah. I think it's natural for us to all have self doubt. If we were to flip it on its head, people talk about imposter syndrome. We're really in a culture that it primes us to have self doubt because it's not good, quote, unquote, for the late capitalistic system if we are all individual powerhouses leading our own businesses. You know what I mean? Like, they want they want many of us to just, like, buckle down and do the work. And so it's something we have to deprogram ourselves from. And if you weren't feeling impostor syndrome, I'd be like, "Okay. What's that about?" Like, it's totally normal to feel.

Paula Crossfield [00:22:42]:
And so cultivating self trust is looking at these examples, the real examples of how things are working, and celebrating those examples and reminding yourself of your credibility, reminding yourself that you're a vessel, you're bringing something through you, you're a conduit, you're cocreating something. You are in a dance. It's not just you doing a, b, and c. And if you truly believe that, then you can trust this thing that's much greater than you that is guiding you in some way. We call that guru or spirit or the universe. I've been more of an Indian lineage, so we use that languaging. But, if you can trust that, that you're a conduit, and you can remind yourself, like, what you've already achieved, that's where I really draw on to help me. And then, of course, using my intuition to guide me. Like, okay. This is feeling really true right now. Let's observe it. Let's see what happens, and let's take a next aligned action and see what happens next.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:44]:
Yeah. What this is bringing up for me, it's actually taking me back to social media and to the word influencer because I think that one of the problematic and harmful cycles we see on social media is that social media users, and I've done this, so I'm not judging other people. I have totally done this. We project ourselves onto influencers, and then we outsource our agency and our trust to them. And so it produces this cycle of imposter syndrome and of self doubt where because we are always looking outside of ourselves for answers, we start with the tiny questions of what's a good thing to put in my smoothies for breakfast? And we end up on this path of outsourcing major questions, like, what should I do with my life after grad school or something.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:39]:
And I think that that cycle is just really it has been mastered by these social media platforms and by the rise of the influencer. And this isn't, again, to critique social media users or influencers specifically, but just to comment on why that first step you gave us, making space, is so important. And I think making space from social media, away from social media is so important because it is a place where we are inundated with external voices that seed self doubt through the aspirational imaging that is pumped into those platforms. And if it's already really hard in our society to cultivate self trust, but to do it while you're immersed in social media, I mean, that just felt impossible to me.

Paula Crossfield [00:25:26]:
Yeah. It's so interesting because I'm living the question of, like, what should my relationship to social media be? And listening to your podcast has been hugely influential to me as well. I've learned a lot. I try to teach people how to use social media in a way that's gonna be helpful for them to convert leads and is going to be healthful for them and their their body, their mind. And so I'm a big proponent of guardrails. I'm a big proponent of taking breaks. And, also, I notice that I justify getting caught in a scroll, like, "Oh, I'm doing research" or something like that. So getting real with yourself about what's happening and even muting several people or starring the people who you actually want to be in your feed or unfollowing people that are distracting you from your goals.

Paula Crossfield [00:26:17]:
Because you can waste lifetimes on this app not doing the creative work that you're here to do, not bringing forward your vision. So how do we do that? I'm living that question right now. I definitely wanna take more breaks. I'm really intrigued by this process of optimizing Instagram so that people can get to know you there. They can come and, like, sniff around and get to know what you do and get a sense of your vision and they know what to do next. And so you don't always have to be holding their hand with new content. I'm really curious about that process. And using social media as a way to get people on my list and get new listeners to my podcast because that's where my heart is. That's where I'm giving the most heartfelt content. Yeah, I'm really curious how this is gonna unfold.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:03]:
No. I appreciate you sharing all of that. And I think a couple things that I heard in what you were sharing, like, definitely the distracting nature of social media, the way it pulls our attention in so many directions. And I think as a result, just pulls it farther and farther away from ourself. Even the concept of like going down a rabbit hole on social media, like we just get pulled deep into these things that perhaps by the end, we can't even remember why we cared about it to begin with or how we got there. That's still like a very common experience.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:35]:
And I think the other thing you're pointing to that I've been thinking a lot about lately is more like the content cycle and how can we show up and create these opportunities for people to get to know us and to feel drawn in and magnetically attracted to our work without getting ourselves locked into so many places where we're constantly creating or performing over and over and over again for attention. And I have noticed, putting on my podcast studio owner hat for a moment, that I'm seeing more people who are interested in creating private podcasts or limited series as a way to help people get to know them in a sort of bite sized one time opportunity. And they're less interested in creating a podcast where they're publishing every week into perpetuity.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:28]:
Because I think we're all so exhausted by content marketing, which when we really unpack it, is the marketing strategy that was not built for the solopreneur. Right? That's not how it started, and I'm not sure it works super well for us unless we're really using an influencer model. So just hearing all of those threads, I'm excited to see where you take your work next.

Paula Crossfield [00:28:52]:
Absolutely. I've been doing a weekly podcast for at least two years now. And then, originally, it was biweekly, every other week. And I will say that I'm only doing that as long as I still have these creative ideas. I don't wanna do it when it becomes like, oh, god. Now I have an episode to record. For me, it's only gonna work as long as I'm excited about it. And so that's what I teach my clients inside of my programs.

Paula Crossfield [00:29:15]:
I want them to be aligned with what it is they're doing in their marketing strategy so they feel excited to do it and not be doing it just because they feel like they should do it. A lot of people come to me and they're like, I don't wanna do Instagram. Don't do Instagram then. You don't have to. You can do YouTube. You can do a podcast. You can do any other thing. You can do LinkedIn. Maybe your ideal clients are on LinkedIn. You know? It's kinda interesting how we all have this sense that we have to be on Instagram, and we really don't.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:42]:
Absolutely. As you know, that's my whole shtick. You don't have to be on Instagram if you don't want to or any social media if you don't want to.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:52]:
Are you feeling fed up, burned out, or totally sick of social media? Are you wondering if your business might be able to be successful without it, or if your creative work would still find its way out in the world without you posting it on Instagram or TikTok every 10 minutes? If you can relate to any of these musings of mine, I wanna invite you to join me in the Interweb. The Interweb is an annual membership for creatives, artists, small business owners, freelancers, influencers, entrepreneurs and creators who want support sharing their work and making money without social media.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:30]:
When you join, you get access to on demand courses taught by biz friends across the Internet and quarterly live events with me, Amelia. If you love this podcast, I hope that you'll head to the show notes to learn more and sign up so that I really can see you off the grid and on the Interweb. Now let's get back into today's episode.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:56]:
I want to take us in a related but different direction and talk about money. So I started season three of the show with an episode about overcoming under earning and kind of sharing my money journey and how starting a business helped me completely shift my relationship to money and really helped me empower myself in relationship to money and believe for the first time that I could earn and steward money. I think similar perhaps to some of the things you were sharing earlier about wanting to prove to your parents that you could do this. I definitely had all of that in my story.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:36]:
And I know that within your work as both a Vedic astrologer and a business strategist, you talk and teach a lot about money karma, which is something I'm not super familiar with. And, also, I think a concept and practice that a lot of Off the Grid listeners would find supportive because when I shared my money story, what everyone wanted was energetic and spiritual and emotional resources to shift their relationship with money. I feel like a lot of people I heard from were kind of like, "Yeah, I have an app, I look at the money, I do the numbers stuff, but there's so much more underneath that that we have to do as well." So with all of that sort of framing, I'm curious if you could kinda take us into this concept of money karma. What is it and how do we work with it?

Paula Crossfield [00:32:29]:
I love this question and I love this topic because this is foundational work that I do with all my clients. And I just found again and again that even if we're looking at the numbers, there's so much involved. And it is so important that we know what our number is, what we need to be making each month in order to understand how we create offers and price them and all of that. We've gotta understand this first. And, also, it it helps us to understand where our mind is at around money when we actually look at our numbers, because a lot of stories come to the surface.

Paula Crossfield [00:33:02]:
So let's back up and just talk karma for a moment. That is a concept in the Indian worldview of action/reaction, essentially, but it's not something that you can look. It's over lifetimes, so you gotta believe that we've been here before. Maybe you've had some experiences that make you think that. But essentially, there are these ripple effects, and you never really understand fully when something's gonna come back around. But karma is something you can read in a Vedic astrology chart. A good astrologer can look and start to pull out karmic themes in the chart. So that could be around your work, your relationships, your home, your family. There's all these different karmic themes.

Paula Crossfield [00:33:49]:
And so money karma is how money flows in and out of our life, how it's saved, and the kind of success potential there is in a chart, especially if you're an entrepreneur. There are certain ways of looking at that to see how we can be successful on our own or if we should be working for someone else, for example.

Paula Crossfield [00:34:08]:
And so it's a way of looking at this. And then there are so many tools we can use to heal our money karma, specifically around the practical, like getting to know our numbers, understanding, like, what every dollar's doing. I like to use an envelope system called YNAB. That's what I teach my folks cause it's empowering you. It's not about you helping your bookkeeper do their job, or your accountant do their job, or you're talking to the government. It's literally you with yourself. Like, I'm spending this money on Netflix, not like on continuing education or whatever you would file that as. Not that anyone should file Netflix as continuing education. But anyway, you know what I mean? Like, it gets real with yourself.

Paula Crossfield [00:34:51]:
You can really see where your money's going. And as a result, you can plan. You can start to create envelopes, is what they're called, for where you want your money to go, and you can start to save towards things that you're really dreaming to have. And so what happens is as you do this process, inevitably, there's gonna be stories. I'm not good enough. Oh my gosh. How am I getting by? There's so much more that I need to be making. Oh my gosh. Like, I'm tired. How am I ever gonna come up with this much money? There's all these stories. Right? And so I teach a process called word spells, where we actually look at the words we're telling ourselves, and then we work on rewriting those stories in a more productive way that is believable, and we work with those in a particular way.

Paula Crossfield [00:35:34]:
And also, I help people using these tools from India, Yoga Nidra and mantra practice. My teacher teaches a mantra for the goddess Lakshmi that she recites for a 108 times, which is a a number that's very significant in India, and you can recite that with her. And these are ways to kind of break up the energy, and it allows you to kind of heal in a non-direct way of healing these stories and the places we get stuck and actually inviting more to come into our lives, more wealth, more abundance to come in. So it's a practice of healing these things at a very deep level.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:15]:
I love this so much, and I think that there are definitely analogous points in kind of the work I did around money, which wasn't based in, you know, a Vedic or Indian or even astrological methodology, and perhaps had more it was more in a shadow work and energetic realm. But just the act of witnessing, observing the stories, the narratives that are coming up, and finding whatever way works for you to interrupt them so that you can, like, shift to a different narrative. And that is what I'm hearing in sort of the word spell work and the mantra work that you're talking about. And I know you teach a course on money karma, and so all of this is being wrapped into that.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:01]:
And I think that it's just so important that we have to do all the stages of that process. We have to observe, interrupt, and shift or heal so that we can have a different relationship to money. That's how we change our relationships is by becoming aware of them and then pausing and then taking a different, hopefully, more aligned action around it. Taking it back to the personal place, I'd love to hear again a little bit more about your money journey, which has really transformed over the course of your business. So I'm just curious, how has working with money karma supported you personally that then led you to develop and teach this to hundreds of students over time?

Paula Crossfield [00:37:41]:
Yeah. So when I returned from India, I'd just been traveling living on, like, $12,000 a year, basically, for four years. And most of my time was spent in India, like, six months out of the year. I could live on two dollars a day. My biggest expense was plane tickets. And so I had felt like I found a way where I didn't have to deal with this reality, where I didn't really have to think about it that much because I had ended up working for my main friend and teacher, doctor Robert Svoboda, who's an Ayurvedic physician and a specialist in Indian sciences. And I was just working 20 hours a week, kind of helping him manage his online presence and advising him about his business. We ended up building a whole business for him.

Paula Crossfield [00:38:29]:
And so it was actually really scary when I came back because I had expenses and I had bills. And so I ended up with four different jobs. And one of them was cleaning Airbnbs. And I remember listening to podcasts of people that I really admired, doing really good work in the world, things that were really inspiring. And I was, like, cleaning toilets. Right? And this was, like, 2017. And I look back, we gave away more money last year, $37,000 than I made in 2017 working four jobs.

Paula Crossfield [00:39:06]:
And so I went from that to running a half a million dollar business in about three years time, and it's really due to this work. I was moving my body, doing my word spells. I was looking at my numbers, getting really real with myself. What do I have? What needs to be coming in? If we're gonna buy a farm, what does that look like? How do how much do we need to save? Which, of course, I underestimated because a farm is really expensive, and if you ever wanna talk about that, just, hit me up. I feel like I need to have a whole conversation about that because so many of my clients are like, I wanna farm. And I'm like, I love you, and I would love to help you not make any of the mistakes I did. So, that's kind of a tangent.

Paula Crossfield [00:39:49]:
But I had to look really at the numbers and get clear and have a hard, cold, truth moment with myself, and then actually be like, okay. This is what's real. And at the time, my partner was working as a CNA, which is a nursing assistant at a a retirement home, and it was very laborious. He was 59 when I met him. So it's a lot of work for a body that's older. He wanted to farm, and I wanted to farm. And so it was just like clearly this is the trajectory. How are we gonna make this happen? So it was like having those really frank conversations with myself and noticing all of the horrific stories that emerged out of me having that kind of cold hard look at reality. The fear, will I ever be able to do this?

Paula Crossfield [00:40:38]:
I dreamed of having, you know, $10,000 months. That's all I wanted. I felt like that would change everything. And it did. It literally did. It calmed my nervous system in a way I've never experienced before. But it took me some time to really get to that space through doing this work. I think it was, like, six months after that I had a 5k month, which was twice what I had made. And then another six months, I hit my first 10k month, and then it just never stopped after that. Like, after doing this work, I've literally had a 10k month every month since. And that's through proven offers. That's through really thinking strategically about my business and my offerings and making sure I'm nurturing people and keeping them in my ecosystem. There's other pieces to it, but the money karma work was foundational.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:28]:
I feel like you have one foot in Vedic astrology and one foot in business strategy. And it helps me, when I approach your work on money karma, feel like I'm not just in the realm of pure manifestation internet culture, where if I dream it, it will happen for me. I know that work is powerful for some people, but I am such an earth ruled person, and I've seen it be really harmful to listeners and clients. It's just sort of, like, we have to do the spiritual energetic work and pair it with really powerful business strategies. Like you said, the proven offers, the other things. And it's like the proven offers won't work if you haven't unlocked the money karma piece. But if you are only doing the very personal private practice stuff, then perhaps also, you still gotta sell things to make the money in the business too. And I really appreciate how you bring both together.

Paula Crossfield [00:42:27]:
Thank you. I feel so seen. Because, that does feel so true for me, and my teachers are that way too. They've taught me a lot about the practical ways that we manage money and we invest and build a business. But they are way spiritual and way out there in a lot of ways too. Like, if somebody just heard them talking about astrology, they'd be like, woah, who's this weirdo? And I love that. I love to ride that line, like be a little queer and weird and do my thing, but I also really love the grounded nature. Like, we're in a body. We live in this reality, in this plane, and we're not going to escape it. So how do we deal with it, and how do we invite it into our practice instead of trying to push away from it?

Amelia Hruby [00:43:10]:
And that's where I think that starting with the money karma work, the rewriting relationship to money work can be a really helpful starting point. Because I think that often, if we're struggling with money, it can be really tempting to go just get a business coach and think that all the answers are gonna come through outsourcing your business knowledge. And I just think that often, what actually needs to happen first is figuring out your relationship to money, And then you'll be in a much better place to discern the type of business support that you need and not simply go follow every 10 step plan to have 10k months that you see out there, which in my experience, never work anyway.

Paula Crossfield [00:43:54]:
No. This brings us back to intuition too. It's like really knowing that this is a yes for you or this is not a yes. There are so many ways to get to 10k months. Like, literally, there are infinite ways. You just have to do it in your way, but also have to do this work. This work helps you unlock the ability to see, I think. That's how I would put it. Like, it it kind of calms your nervous system in a way because you're living with reality. You actually know what's going on. And so then you're like, okay. Now instead of just deluding ourselves and putting it on our credit card, we're actually like, okay. Like, I have this set aside for this thing.

Paula Crossfield [00:44:32]:
I always use the haircut example. If I if I put away $25 every six months, I end up getting this haircut for a $100 and I always give her $25 as a tip. And it's really nice that it's just there. And I'm not just like popping it on my credit card. I know the money's there. And then I feel really generous and happy. And I've been able to interact with my hairstylist who's amazing, and I get to support her. Right? And so there's all these ripple effects when we actually know what's going on that make our nervous system calm so that we're not just throwing spaghetti. And then from there, so much generative energy comes, so much creative energy comes. Because we do spend a lot of our creative energy in fear, in worry, whether or not we're paying attention to the numbers or not, I find.

Amelia Hruby [00:45:19]:
Ugh. Yes. You could say that again. If I could have back all the energy that had been leached out of my life from just stressing about money, I could, like, be a superhuman. I feel like all of that also circles back to what I was sharing earlier about my practice of saying yes to myself. And part of that practice is getting super clear on what I actually desire. I really desired the Coke icey, so I got that specifically. I didn't want a diet Coke. I didn't want a milkshake. Like, I wanted this specific thing. And when I was able to give myself that, I could experience the pleasure and step through that portal into whatever was next for me even with this simple example. But what's been coming up for me, kind of, as you've been sharing about money and talking about your journey and we're talking about business is so often we are oriented toward the things that we're supposed to want, and we steer our businesses in those directions as well. And I think that it doesn't work.

Amelia Hruby [00:46:30]:
Like, I don't wanna farm. Dear god, please. No. Like, absolutely not for me. I don't really like to be outside that much. Farm is not a direction I'm headed. But something that happened for me when I did all the money work and Softer Sounds started working and I had a surplus of money, it opened the space for me to be really clear. I can ask myself, like, oh, wow. I'm finally resourced. In my thirties, I found myself in a place where I'm finally a little resourced, and my nervous system is calm. And now what do I want? And I got a lot of advice that was like, you should immediately be investing this money in retirement funds, and, like, it all needs to go in the market. And I was like, that's just so not what I wanna do.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:16]:
And I got other advice that was around, like, oh, now is your time to spend 10k on a business coach, take your business to the next level. And when I really got grounded in what I wanted, it was pretty simple. I wanted to buy the house that I live in right now, and I wanted to start planning a trip with my partner. And that's kind of it. And it was really these simple things. Like, those are not revelatory desires, but they were my desires. And I got still enough and clear enough and calm enough that I could actually finally see them.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:50]:
And in the past, I would just get so pulled. My attention would be so triggered on social media or on television into being like, well, I want the Malibu mansion. I want the private jet. All these narratives we have around wealth that actually when it came down to it, I was like, I don't wanna live in California. I don't want any of those things. They're just what I've been told to want. And so I think, really, like, all of this work comes together in connecting with your intuition, saying yes to yourself, learning what you actually desire, doing the money karma work so that you can calm your nervous system, so you can find that, like, energetic sovereignty in your business in relationship to money, and then articulating your actual dreams and orienting your business and your work toward that.

Paula Crossfield [00:48:43]:
Yeah. And so you are more authentic. Right? And so then you're able to really live the life that you're supposed to live. And I believe that our sincere desires are indications of the karma that we're here to experience, but often those sincere desires, the sincere ones, so the ones that aren't making us crazy. Maybe we're hungry to make them happen, but they're coming from that intuitive place. Those sincere desires are like the positive karmas that we're here to experience. They're leading us towards our our dharma or our purpose. They're helping us to understand what it is that we're here to do, that, like, hunger.

Paula Crossfield [00:49:20]:
So, I will go full circle here, I wanted to write a book. I still wanna write a book. That hasn't gone away. I haven't done it. But now it's a priority, and I'm making space for it, and I'm empowering my team to help me do that. And it's like a whole other experience to see this this thing starting to come to fruition that I've always wanted. You know? And it coming from that authentic place, it coming from a place of me really knowing what it is I wanna talk about and help people, and it's being of service. That was a sincere desire, but it was masked by a bunch of crap.

Amelia Hruby [00:49:56]:
One hundred percent. That sort of like, do you want a book, or do you just want a book deal? Is it actually that you want to write the book, or is it just that you want this sort of perfect picture of fame and success that comes with this book deal and image you have of yourself as an author? I love that that desire has come full circle for you, and now you're actually tapped into the aligned action to really bring it to life. And so I just think it's fun and powerful to think about the ways that sometimes we do have desires that are so clear across a lifetime.

Amelia Hruby [00:50:32]:
Other times, what we think we want and what we actually want seem contrary to each other, and we have to uncover that. So I really appreciate that you've shared your story and your many different paradigm shifts for us. It just feels like we've had such a powerful conversation. I wanted to just wrap up by giving you an opportunity to tell people about the Cosmic Business Salon and how they can be a participant or learn from you and all of the other speakers, including myself.

Paula Crossfield [00:51:04]:
Yeah. Sure. So the Cosmic Business Salon is a gathering of the minds. It's really a place where we're talking about these different aspects of the cosmic business, values, collaboration, how we center our purpose, and just align into the greater space. There's just so many conversations that if you like this conversation that you'll enjoy. It's totally free. So you can sign up at cosmicbusinesssalon.com. And once you go there and you sign up, there will be an opportunity to upgrade, in which case it's $27, and one hundred percent of that goes to an organization called Saving Wild Tigers. So this give back last year we were able to give $6,000 and I'm aiming for $10,000 this year, and giving back is obviously a big part of what I do.

Paula Crossfield [00:51:49]:
So this program allows us to bring together these awesome thinkers and really kind of work together to kind of rethink the paradigm and come up with a new way that also helps us to give back too. So that's my invitation to you is to come and join us and listen in on these awesome conversations.

Amelia Hruby [00:52:07]:
And I will just cosign the invitation and share that I've been approached by quite a few sort of summit salon situations, and this was the first time it really just felt deeply integrated and aligned. It felt like a cosmic yes for me. So I really wanna invite everybody listening to sign up and experience all of the wonderful talks. And then I also wanted to shout out if anyone listening is feeling really called by the sorts of redistribution and giving and bankrolling the change you want to see in the world, aspects of this conversation that Paula has a giving pledge on your website. Could you kinda tell listeners what that's about and how they can take part? Softer Sounds has signed on, so I invite others to join us.

Paula Crossfield [00:52:57]:
Thank you. Yeah. So it's called the 2K for Change Pledge, and it basically states that you are going to give back $2,000 US in cash or kind, so it could be in services, this year. And so how you do that is up to you. It could be through scholarships, it could be actual giving. It could be through a fundraiser, whatever it is. But what we're doing this for is if 5,000 people sign this pledge, that means we're giving $10,000,000 back as a community of conscious entrepreneurs. And to me, that's like I'm doing, like, the mind blown emoji right now because that's a lot of money. That's not nothing. And it's 5,000 of us.

Paula Crossfield [00:53:36]:
And so I'm also doing research. Like, when you sign on, you'll get an email from me. One email. You're not being put on my list, by the way, when you sign up for this. You have to sign up separately to be on my list, but you get one email that requests if you would fill out a survey. And that survey actually, I'm finding that a lot of people are giving a lot more money away, so we might get to that $10,000,000 faster. So it's pretty exciting, and I would love for you to be a part of it and and join us.

Paula Crossfield [00:54:01]:
And also if you're like, oh my gosh, I don't even know how I would give that much away. This is something that I teach. Like inside of my programs, I'm really teaching you how to have an aligned offer, how to really niche and understand your ideal client and how to market with ease. So that means whether or not you're on social media, like, how to market in alignment with you. And if you do that, then you should be able to make enough money and then you can use some of my techniques for creating smaller ticket offerings.

Paula Crossfield [00:54:31]:
I mean, the summit is a lot of work, but there are other ways. I have like a low cost product called the Astrology Guidebook that I put out every year, and that goes a one hundred percent to a school in Varanasi, India. So I teach people like how you can do these smaller ticket items and donate those as well. Thanks for talking about the pledge. That's really exciting.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:52]:
Yeah. I just think it's such a cool initiative and way of harnessing the work, the giving that people are already doing into more of like a community effort, which I think as business owners often we're just like in our corner doing our thing, and it can be so nice to feel connected through these sorts of things. So, you know, Softer Sounds, I've been redistributing at least one percent of our revenue since I launched the business. And so it felt like an easy yes to be like, great. I'll sign on for the 2K. Maybe that'll be 1% this year. Maybe it'll be more or less, and I'll adjust accordingly. But it just felt like a cool way to be more tapped in with other people who are doing this instead of just feeling like I'm doing it, and who knows if it's having an impact.

Paula Crossfield [00:55:37]:
I would just love to say too, like, when we're talking about money karma, giving is one of the quickest ways that you can expand what's possible for you and for and to heal your money karma because what you're doing is you're signaling the universe that when you give, that you're combining your karma with those who are receiving and you're making yourself a conduit. And so what you give usually comes back in powerful ways, if not exponentially. That's been my how I've experienced it. My business has grown pretty quickly, and I think it has to do with this giving back. It's also just goodwill. Like, people love being a part of these things. We all get dopamine hits from giving. It's a really great way to engage your audience too.

Amelia Hruby [00:56:22]:
So much so. And I have not taken your money karma course, so I cannot speak personally to what is inside of it. But I do want to just direct listeners there, if anything that Paula has shared that we've talked about today is resonating with you, especially all of the money work, if you're one of the people who emailed me and was like, wait, how actually did you do all of that shifting your relationship to money? I do think this could be a really supportive resource for you.

Amelia Hruby [00:56:50]:
So we'll link that in the show notes. Check it out. Learn more. There's a nice little free training that Paula has that's a precursor into the course. So definitely go grab that, get to know her work even more, and then discern if she is the right guide for you. Tap into your intuition and let it tell you if this is what you need, and who knows what will follow. So thank you so much, Paula, for joining me.

Paula Crossfield [00:57:16]:
Such a fan of your podcast. It's really been an honor to be here and just to have this conversation with you. I love having these kinds of conversations, so I'm just grateful that you opened the space and brought me in.

Amelia Hruby [00:57:15]:
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the invitation to the salon and for joining me here. Thanks to listeners for listening, and until next time, we will see you off the grid and on the Interweb.

Amelia Hruby [00:57:43]:
Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.