622 Aurora Winter:

Storytelling is the DNA of humanity’s expertise and wisdom…and what connects us to each other, so … that’s why when we listen to a story or watch it on video, it engages our whole being. And yet a lot of entrepreneurs truly struggle to share their stories in a way that makes them stand out and reach the people who need to hear them.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is helping business owners turn their words into wealth.

Aurora Winter combines the best of Silicon Valley with the best of Hollywood. Using her expertise in film and neuroscience, she helps people tell memorable stories that build brands, books, and businesses.

I can’t wait to introduce you to Aurora! First…

We all love a great story. It’s what connects us, uplifts us, engages us … and ultimately leads us to buy a product or service. We all want to feel an emotional connection, which is why storytelling is the secret to great branding and marketing.

Aurora Winter left her lucrative career as a TV executive decades ago to become a full-time bestselling author, trainer, and serial entrepreneur. Using storytelling for business, she created a life of freedom, creativity, and contribution. She helps her clients turn their words into wealth, wisdom, and wonder.

Aurora has helped her clients win hearts and minds with their communication skills. They have started new chapters in their lives, escaped 9 to 5, and made a difference with their growing businesses. They have written bestselling books, given TEDx talks, appeared on TV, raised venture capital, and won awards.

Why not you?

Today we talk about the science behind storytelling, and how to cut through the information overload to deliver your message to your audience.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Aurora Winter.

Melinda Wittstock:

Aurora, welcome to Wings.

Aurora Winter:

So great to be here with you, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

Me too. I love your intersection between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the common thread, of course, that combines creativity with data, neuroscience and whatnot, is just really good storytelling because it connects us together. What’s the role of storytelling in business?

Aurora Winter:

Well, I’m so glad that you’re asking about storytelling and you and I share a background in film and TV, so I think we’re both sold on this concept. But I want to emphasize that storytelling is not the icing on top of the cake of communication, it is the cake. Storytelling is the DNA of humanity’s expertise and wisdom. Storytelling is essential to how humanity has survived and thrived over generations, over millennia. When we are ignoring storytelling, we are really missing out on the most fundamental and important way that human beings can communicate and connect.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s true. It’s like when we find something, when we tell a story, it just that it engages our right brain, it just makes us think in a different way. It opens us up?

Aurora Winter:

It’s so much more than that, but yeah, let’s dive into the neuroscience of it for just a moment. Actually stories appeal to our whole brain, the right brain and the left brain, and they trigger so much. It’s like listening to a song. When you listen to a song, you can be transported in a moment to another space and time. It evokes all of these things.

Aurora Winter:

When you listen to a moving story or watch it on video, or listen to it on a podcast, it can engage your whole, all of your systems, all of your senses, all of your memories. Let’s contrast it to what we are thinking nowadays, those of us who’ve been educated in university as I have been, I’ve got an MBA. Which is we think that we are a brain on a stick. We’re not a brain on a stick.

Aurora Winter:

People make a really big mistake in communication when they imagine that the message sent is the message received. That is simply not true. I have just recently been based in Silicon Valley. There’s a lot of super smart, analytical people there. Engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators. I love these people. But one mistake that really smart people make is they imagine that if they send the Excel equivalent of a spreadsheet to somebody else, that the other person who is smart will open that Excel spreadsheet of information and data and receive it.

Aurora Winter:

That’s just not how it happens whatsoever. If you’d like, we can talk about the three steps of neuroscience but that is a fundamental mistake people make. But when we tell stories, stories are ideas wrapped in emotion. We both hit the idea, or the best stories do hit the fundamental idea as well as wrap it in an emotion, and stories are viral. It’s stories that repeat. It’s stories that are memorable, so story is where it at and I can… If you’d like to talk through the three steps of the neuroscience of fundamental communication.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, please, let’s do that. I wanted to get to that point though, that you made about emotion, because we absolutely make buying decisions based on emotion, whether we admit that to ourselves or not. From a business standpoint, if we can’t connect on an emotional level to our customers, our chances of success are less.

Aurora Winter:

Exactly. Well, good marketing is like empathy at scale. Stories scale beautifully because you can put it in a book, you can put it in a video, you can put it in a podcast, and people can share the story. Like you say, we don’t make buying decisions intellectually, although we like to fool ourselves that we do.

Melinda Wittstock:

We like to think we do but we don’t.

Aurora Winter:

Exactly right, exactly right, Melinda. We actually make the decision emotionally and then very quickly, we justify it logically. I know that because I used to sell yachts as tax shelter investments. The boats were between 100,000 to $250,000, and what I noticed is that people, they really just wanted an excuse to buy the boat. That shelter was the excuse.

Melinda Wittstock:

Of course. Because the boat is not exactly a profitable thing to… a profitable asset, really.

Aurora Winter:

No, not exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

People sink a lot of money into those things.

Aurora Winter:

For sure.

Aurora Winter:

Back to the neuroscience of communication. All right, so there’s three elements to communication and everybody listening can use this right away. I’m going to tell it in a story, so I will be modeling what I am showcasing. Because I can tell it to you intellectually, but then it wouldn’t stick.

There’s three steps to communication. First is the croc brain. Imagine a crocodile in a moat. The moat is around this beautiful castle and inside the castle are the king and queen, or the decision makers. Both the rational and the emotional decision makers that you wanted reach. You are this beautiful damsel/messenger on a beautiful white horse, and you gallop up to give your message to the king and queen and persuade them to take action or buy what it is that you have to offer. But wait a minute, you have this crocodile.

Aurora Winter:

First, you have to get past the crocodile or the ancient croc brain. It just requires a very simple communication but it needs to know, is this something good? Is this something sexy? Is this bright and shiny? Is this something I can eat? Is this something I can make with? It’s operating on a very primal level, so that in the worst case is called clickbait, but it’s grabbing the attention as the interrupt.

It’s like, “Okay, I’m going to tell you three steps to communicating so that your message is memorable.” Something like that. If you succeed, then the crocodile is satisfied and the drawbridge comes down. If you don’t succeed, then the crocodile eats you and you never get your message any farther. It is a privilege. It is an honor for somebody to pay attention to you. Attention is our most limited resource.

You’ve managed to get past the croc brain with your sexy, flashy something good for you soundbite. The drawbridge comes down and you try to cross on your beautiful horse. But wait a minute, you’re still not talking to the king and queen. You’re not addressing the emotional or the rational decision maker that you want to reach. What’s inside the castle though, are the nobles and they greet you.

They look you up and down, they check you out, they say, “What’s Melinda wearing? Is she dressed really nicely? Is she gorgeous? Is she healthy? Who sent her? Is she from somebody that we know?” In other words, what is your status and what is your social capital in the group? You need to pass the social sniff test. An example of passing the social sniff test is my most recent book, for example, has won five awards.

Okay, so that’s a social. Other people think this book is good. Other people come on Melinda’s podcast and think that she’s great. Okay, once you pass that social sniff test, which is the midbrain, then and only then will the nobles escort you into the throne room where you have the opportunity to address the king and queen. This is the cerebral cortex in our story. This is the part of the brain that you want to be talking to, but it’s way too expensive for that brain to process, so there’s a filtering mechanism and we’ve seen two of them, the croc brain and the midbrain.

Now you’re in the throne room, imagine Game of Thrones. You’re in the Iron Throne and Cersei Lannister is there with Joffrey, her eldest son. Now you have some time, a moment to address the queen and to address the king. To oversimplify let’s just assume that you want to address this statistical or analytical or mathematical part and the emotional part. Do that in a couple of sound bites and then get permission to continue with your story.

That is the way to get through the gauntlet of defenses that human beings have to incoming messages, because attention is our most precious resource. If you’ve watched the Game of Thrones, you know that you don’t get unlimited time to talk to Cersei or Joffrey, things can go terribly wrong. So do your best to alternate between a story or emotion and mathematical or intellectual or reasons why this will benefit the business or the person that you’re talking to. Does that make sense, Melinda?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it does. Basically what you’re talking about is a really nice right and left brain balance.

Aurora Winter:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Where you have to be able to leverage both. It’s getting harder and harder in our world right now where just the pace is so quick. The information overload, I like to call it infobesity.

Aurora Winter:

I love that.

Melinda Wittstock:

So much.

Aurora Winter:

Infobesity.

Melinda Wittstock:

How do you even absorb all that information, let alone cuts through all that noise, find signal in the noise and connect with the people that you need to connect with. It’s so vital.

Melinda Wittstock:

Aurora, just drawing on your experience as a TV executive to a full-time author, entrepreneur, you’ve used storytelling at every step of the way of your business. What was the first aha that made you actually understand this and leverage it in your own business?

Aurora Winter:

Well, the first aha, Melinda, was when 20 minutes absolutely changed my life. I didn’t realize before then that 20 minutes could change the trajectory of your life and career and could produce massive results. To back up and just tell that story, my husband had died suddenly when he was only 33 and I was 31, and we had a four-year-old son. Completely blindsided by that experience, I suddenly found myself without a business partner, without a husband, without a job, without any source of income, without anybody having my back, but a four-year-old that I needed to provide for.

At the time I was a fledgling screenwriter. Just to cut the story short, I got an opportunity to pitch my movie idea at the Banff Media Festival. I was freaked out, because I really needed this to work. I really needed some way to make a living, and I really wanted to be in the film business and to be a screenwriter. I practiced my pitch forever. I practiced for weeks.

Then when I got on stage, I was like, “Okay, there’s 600 people in the audience, movers and shakers from Hollywood, from Canada, from around the world, and I had an opportunity to pitch my movie idea.” And if people missed it, it was going to be televised and aired on national television. It was a little bit apprehensive because I thought, “Okay, this will either work. Or in one fell swoop, I can destroy my career in film and television forever.”

Fortunately, the pitch went well and my agent ended up fielding offers on my behalf. It was turned into a documentary feature film called The Big Break, which was later used to teach the art of pitching for film and television. What I learned in that moment as my agent was feeling offers and it turned into a six-figure deal and a new career as an executive in film and television and going to the con television festival, and all of this fancy life from nothing, was that 20 minutes can change your life if you have the right message and you deliver it the right way to the right audience.

What shattered my longstanding belief that it was all about hard work and putting in the long hours. It also shattered the belief that it’s all about the final product. No, it’s about how you talk about the final product, which in this case was a screenplay, and how the audience can respond to the messenger with emotion and then they want, they want that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely. So, so true. I love how you combined all of this though, with entrepreneurship. I’m fascinated by your journey. Maybe it’s because it’s a little bit similar to mine. Really being on the creative side, but then also being on the tech side, leveraging all these different points.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think listening to your story, it resonates so much with me personally. As you have these different experiences that don’t necessarily connect as you’re living them. But you maybe, I don’t know, my perspective is you get old enough where you see how all these things do connect and they become your secret sauce.

Now where you are and helping entrepreneurs and business owners, either with their books or tell great stories or whatever, I guess when did you feel that all these disparate parts of the things that you’ve done came together in what you’re doing now?

Aurora Winter:

Well, I think we do have a lot in common, Melinda, that creative side, the expressive side, the interviewer side, and the entrepreneur side. The way my brain works is just always creating stuff. It’s always creating books or movies or businesses, so I’m that weird overlap of… I really am a career entrepreneur. I’ve had multiple businesses in completely different industries that have reached seven figures each, and I have written six books that have been published and a bunch more that I haven’t published yet. I’m an award-winning screenwriter.

I have this interesting background, but what I find is I’m always restlessly looking for, well, what are problems that people have that I would like to solve? That’s the entrepreneur part of me. What was very heavy on my heart is I saw that many people wanted to write a book and many people actually have some really amazing life experiences or business breakthroughs. They have something to offer and it would be great to put it in a book or a video or a podcast or a pitch, and yet they were stumbling all over themselves because they couldn’t find the right words. Mostly they were being too intellectual and too academic because that’s what happens when you get a university education.

Every time I launch a new business, I’m always thinking, “What problem can I solve for others?” My current business, I’m the founder of Same Page Publishing, is I solve for leaders and experts and entrepreneurs, people like you, Melinda, people who already have something great to offer the world but are way too busy running their business, I help them create a book by interviewing them on a podcast-like episode and then my team and I take that messy first draft that’s created by people talking. Because everybody can talk, has got something to share. Then we turn that a polished published, hopefully award-winning book. With the benefit that you also need a whole bunch of media in order to launch your brand or your business or your book.

The podcast that we record in order to brainstorm their book and come up with their contact, their content, that can be sliced and diced into maybe 200 pieces of social media content. And not only that, they also get comfortable talking on podcasts, radio and TV, because they’ve been used to talking about their content with me and I’m a media trainer, so I help them get it down so it’s clear, concise, compact, and that they can share their message.

Many people spend three and a half years writing their first book, and then they publish it, they press publish on Amazon, nothing happens. Because they haven’t put any thought into marketing the book or they haven’t put any expertise into getting media trained so that they can be on podcasts or radio or TV. Then they’re really disappointed.

The book could be great. It could be groundbreaking. It could be super helpful. But if it’s hidden and nobody hears about it, it will tragically not be read. I help solve all of these problems because, hey, I’ve made a lot of mistakes myself launching my own books. I started publishing in 2005, and I figure once I’ve learned how to do something and I’ve solved the problems for myself, if I can help others solve that same problem, well, I’d like to.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s so wonderful. It’s interesting you talking about books in that way. I have the same issue. I help a lot of people launch podcasts. They come to me with questions like, “What kind of mic should I get?” I’m like, “No, no, that’s the least of your worries. It’s like what’s your why? Who’s your audience? Who are you trying to reach? What transformation do you want to see in them? And what’s your monetization and marketing strategies?” Very few have thought about that and there’re so many podcasts that launch that are great that no one ever discovers for the exact same reason you’re talking about in the context of books. It’s very, very similar.

Aurora Winter:

Yeah Melinda, and you add so much value by asking people these questions that are obvious to you, but not obvious to them.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m shocked actually. I’m continually shocked that it’s not obvious. Because it’s something that I see also in the tech space, because I’m a tech entrepreneur as well, is that this idea that if you build it, they’ll come.

Aurora Winter:

Right. But we need to bust that myth. Well, I think that podcasts and books really go beautifully hand in hand. Podcasts I would say are a little bit like a magazine. They’re not like the newspaper, like if it’s yesterday’s newspaper, nobody listens to it or reads it. Podcasts have a good shelf life like a good magazine. But books are a different kind of shelf life, but I think the two go beautifully to gather.

My gosh, people do not think about the monetization model for their book, and that’s tragic. Because again, if they haven’t thought it through, they’ve left money on the table and if they’ve left money on the table and their book is only a hobby or their podcast is only a hobby, they’re going to run out of steam and run out of money.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, run out of money and also get burnt out and frustrated and something that could be really good and could really transform a lot of lives or really fulfill whatever mission they had, whatever that spark was to begin with.

Aurora Winter:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Talk to me about some of the ways that you can make money from a book.

Aurora Winter:

Well, that’s one of the things I talk about in depth in my newest book, Turn Words Into Wealth: Blueprint for Your Business, Brand, and Book. Because like you helping your clients with podcasts, I got so frustrated that nobody thought about the monetization model. I walked through seven different successful monetization models in my new book, Turn Words Into Wealth. And I give stories of myself, my clients, but also heavy hitters that most people have heard about, like Mel Robbins, yay, Mel Robbins, or Tim Ferriss or Arianna Huffington, how they monetize their book.

One of the ways, there’re seven ways. I can go through them really quickly. One is to attract premium clients and premium prices. Another way is to attract investors and launch your startup. A TV or movie deal is the third way. You and I both know that’s very lucrative. Fourth way of monetizing your book is the free book plus upsell model, which Jeff Walker was launched popularized, but I’ve done that numerous times. Speaking is the fifth way. Speaking is the highest paid profession. Some people like Hillary Clinton get a quarter million dollars per talk. That’s not a bad return on a 90 minutes of time.

A sixth way is training and certification. I’ve done that numerous times, and provide other surprising examples like Marie Kondo, who would know that somebody who is tidying things up the Japanese way could have a training and certification program that’s making over seven figures. Then my favorite is the evergreen bestseller. One of the things I love most about books is that they’re like a time capsule.

They’re like telepathy, and I’ve been mentored by people who are long dead like Ralph Waldo Emerson. But a book is like so magical. It’s like a seed that another person can open decades later or hundreds of years later and have an intimate connection with the author. It transcends time and because the person could be many, many miles away. A book is a really great way to leverage your time and have intimate, in-depth conversations with your ideal client or prospect thousands of times a day while you are sleeping or while you’re having a barefoot five-star experience in Costa Rica. Because of course they can be reading your book while you are doing something else. Did you want to dive deeper into any of those?

Melinda Wittstock:

I love this. I’ve always thought that a book is almost like a business card in a way. It gives you so much authority, just like a podcast, it grows your thought leadership. And it can be used that way as a giveaway in a way, depending on your business model, to give you the, I don’t know, the kudos, the domain leadership or whatever that folks will trust you and you’ll get more customers.

The thing that’s interesting though, as I find, is that it used to be that everybody needed to be or wanted to be on the New York Times bestseller list. That’s so hard to do, and I don’t even know now what the benefit of that actually is.

Aurora Winter:

I think people should feel their bank account and not their ego. Even highly respected authors who are New York Times Best Sellers such as Seth Godin, they’re really quite critical of the New York Times Best Seller list. For one thing it’s not unbiased and for another thing, many people have just spent millions of dollars to get on it. Because it’s a certain number of book sales. But you can also be snubbed by the New York Times Best Seller list, even if you have met the criteria, which is about 20,000 books sold per week.

I am an entrepreneur at heart, so I’m less interested in ego than in making a difference. My first published book, From Heartbreak to Happiness, was endorsed by Dr. Wayne Dyer and it was my diary of healing after my husband died and honestly, I organized over that book because it’s my frigging diary and I’m a Leo, so I’m proud. But I thought, if this book helps one other young widow with a young child who suddenly finds herself in grief and at a loss and it helps her not take her own life, it’s worth it.

In fact, that book was endorsed by Dr. Wayne Dyer and actually has changed many people’s lives and given them hope when they were despairing. And you know what can happen to people who are despairing, they can commit suicide either the fast way, like Anthony Bourdain, or slow way, with alcohol or drugs or other self-sabotaging behaviors.

Melinda Wittstock:

One of the things that’s so interesting just about the entrepreneurial journey, is that it can spark growing consciousness. I don’t know how many times… Apologies in advance to all my listeners who’ve heard me say this so many times, but if you want therapy, become an entrepreneur.

Aurora Winter:

Yeah, we’re on the same page there. That’s for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because if you get confronted with all these things you can’t control. To succeed you really have to get out of the way of your own ego. I like that you raised that, because actually the end of the day, it’s not really about you.

Aurora Winter:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s about the value you’re creating for other people and hopefully the social impact. The fact that you’re improving the lives of your team and your customers, all those sorts of things. After a while, it’s you’re… I don’t know, I feel like I’m an instrument.

Aurora Winter:

I feel like I’m an instrument too. In fact, I pray every day to be a catalyst for a miracles.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh God, I do that too. I actually, in my morning meditation, this is my whole… I don’t even have a to-do list anymore. It’s more like an inspiration list and it really comes from connection.

Aurora Winter:

Well, that’s why I think that if we focus on being of service with our books, our podcasts, our products our services, our businesses, we can’t really go wrong. But if we want it all to be about us like filling our ego, then we can definitely go wrong. You can also use a book to pivot. In 2014 I had a business that I didn’t want to run anymore. I wanted something new, so I went away to Italy and I got my MBA and graduated in 2015. Then I’m like, “Okay, now what? I’ve got an MBA, I’ve got all of these skills, but what do I want to do?” Of course I’m completely unhireable because I’m another thing [crosstalk 00:28:36]-

Melinda Wittstock:

I don’t think I’ve had a job since I was in my early ’20s. I have no idea.

Aurora Winter:

Exactly. I thought, “Okay, well I need to pivot from what I’m doing. How about if I just use a little short book as a lead magnet in order to claim this space?” I published a book that was actually based on a one-hour audio interview. Took about a weekend to make a quick little book. First it was a PDF, and only based on the PDF of a book that was coming out soon, I got two national TV interviews, so that was good.

Then I shared the PDF with my rather small list, but about 12,000 at that time, and it immediately produced revenue. Then when I actually turned it into a print book… It’s not even been on ebook yet. I never marketed on Amazon at this point. This was 2015 when I wasn’t thinking about that, and I just offered the little book, Marketing Fast Track, to my list with the free book plus upsell.

That’s where people pay for the shipping and handling, which covers the cost of printing and shipping. Then they got a sequence of five videos adding more value about how I could help them with their marketing, giving marketing tips and media tips. Then immediately that produced revenue. In fact it attracted $250,000 of new business in 90 days.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. There’s so many things about that story that I love, but one of them is that you never made perfect the enemy of the good. You integrated. It was a PDF.

Aurora Winter:

Exactly. It was a PDF.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think often people overthink things, and especially women because we think it all has to be perfect. It has to be not only perfect but it has to be wrapped up perfectly in a nice bow. It’s got to be complete, like complete. No actually, it doesn’t. In fact, if you’re co-creating with your customers very, very early on when it’s not a complete thought, you’re going to ultimately do much better. You’re going to create something that’s more relevant and whether that’s a book, an app, a product, some consumer goods, whatever it is, right?

Aurora Winter:

Exactly. Well I am a recovering perfectionist so I can relate to that. As an entrepreneur, we need to make sure we have product market fit before we go crazy. That little book, Marketing Fast Track, enabled me to see that I did have product market fit, $250,000 of new business in 90 days blew me away.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s great.

Aurora Winter:

Then you can expand, like what you’re saying, Melinda, is so why? Like, we want to have a minimum viable product, whether it is a book or some other product, in order to get the response of the marketplace, and then tailor our final offering or our ever-evolving offering in my case, because there’s no such thing as final in my world, to what the market needs and what the market wants. The minimum viable product, MVP is well-known in Silicon Valley, but not many people think of using a book as an MVP.

But if you’re pivoting your business or your product or service, you could use a book as I did, to make sure that you’re on the right track. In this case it was a book plus a couple of videos to add value and make sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, it obviously resonated because when you’re able to write something like that and immediately get the validation of major media. That earned media is a huge propellant.

Aurora Winter:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

So smart.

Aurora Winter:

But I want to add about the perfectionism, the good thing about being an entrepreneur and how it gives us therapy, is necessity is the mother of invention. I needed to make sure I had something to do after I got my MBA. I was going for it because I’m like, “Okay, I really want to know if this works and I need to know now.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. But that’s how we should always be. I think Google was the first to say it, just fail fast.

Aurora Winter:

Well, they famously launched Gmail with only three features. Then they added features based on customer demand. They could have added 100s of features which engineers would have gladly come up with, but it was much smarter to just launch a minimum viable product, the [crosstalk 00:33:14].

Melinda Wittstock:

We’ve done that with Podopolo, which is now a private early customer release as a podcasting app with almost four million podcasts and personalized user journeys. The beginnings of social, but we have this long feature list, but we want to see how people are using it. Because how people are using it is going to really indicate, which is the thing? Is it audio commenting? Is it social audio? What are the things that are actually going to be the killer features to add onto a really strong foundation? It’s a very similar thing and it is tempting because you’ve got all these ideas, but you don’t actually really know until you know what people are going to love.

Aurora Winter:

That’s when you’ve got real data from feedback [inaudible 00:34:05].

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely right. Absolutely right. You have three things that you say you do that takes less than 15 minutes every day and can transform your life. What are those three things?

Aurora Winter:

Okay, here’s the challenge for everyone. This will transform your life in 90 days or less if you do it. I call it the radical reading, radical writing and radical review process. I challenge you, every day write in your journal. It could be as little as five minutes and it doesn’t matter what you write. You could be complaining that it’s too hot or it’s too cold or whatever. It’s not for anybody else to read, but five-minutes journal.

Then five minutes each day, read, read something. Doesn’t even matter what it is. It will gradually shift you. Then five minutes or maybe a little bit longer once a week, do the radical review. Once a week, just take stock, glance at your journal, what were you writing about each day? What notes did you make in the margin of the books that you’re reading? What actions are inspired, or what turns a phrase did you really like if it was a fiction book?

You will find if you do this for 90 days, it will transform your life. Because most of us fail to have conversations with the most important person in the world, which is ourselves. When I did this, I still do it, but when I did this, I was floored by how many times my prayers had actually been answered in 90 days, but I failed to be appropriately grateful because my mind is so fast. I’d forgotten I’d prayed for it 90 days ago.

That helped me feel more grateful and realize that I do live in a supportive universe, even though sometimes it doesn’t look like it on the surface. Then the writing every day, you will get tired of reading. Again, you were complaining about the equivalent of the dripping tap in the kitchen and you’ll do something about it. Because you’ll just be like, “I can’t believe I’m still complaining about this 60 days later.” And you will take action, which will be wonderful.

Whereas when we live just day to day, we sometimes just tolerate things, so it helps you stop tolerating things. Then as you read every day, and I think you should read widely and read both within your area of expertise and outside of it. You will start to realize how much of an impact you can make, and you’ll play a bigger game. That’s my challenge, 90-day challenge. You probably already do some of this, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

I do a lot of this. Journaling was really, really a big part of my, I guess, personal growth. The more I grew personally, or on this conscious journey, the easier and the more success I’ve had in business. That’s just been true through my life, so for me it is a combination of pretty radical, deep dive gratitude work, journaling.

Like you said, the most important person really is you and we can easily lose track of ourselves. We’re not talking to ourselves. Journaling and meditation are the two that go hand in hand for me, just staying in touch. To me at the end of the day, it just comes down with being in the present moment. Just being conscious, being aware, being a witness to yourself.

Aurora Winter:

Journaling also helped me really understand that my primary value is meaning, not money.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, exactly. [crosstalk 00:37:44].

Aurora Winter:

That’s important because-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my God, are we sisters? Because you say something and I’m like, “I was going to say that.”

Aurora Winter:

Well tell me more about you and meaning versus money.

Melinda Wittstock:

… I realized actually looking back, every single business that I’ve ever launched, even as a kid, was all about mission. Every single one of them, and the money followed. I actually realized that I’ve never launched a business just for the pure intent of making money. Of course I want to make money, but it’s not the number one. It never has been for me.

Aurora Winter:

I think it’s really great when we have the right priorities, and if meaning is first, then the money will follow. But when we get the golden calf as the number one thing to worship, things can go terribly wrong.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think that’s true. Well also, if you’re motivated only by money, you get to the destination you wanted on money and you get to that destination and you don’t feel any different.

Aurora Winter:

You could feel worse.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you’ll never have enough.

Aurora Winter:

You’ll never have enough. I know some extremely wealthy people and they’re not the happiest. By and large, once we’re making enough to meet our fundamental needs, in the U.S. it’s about $70,000 a year, there’s not a strong correlation with increased money and increased happiness. In fact, besides meaning, the other thing I really go for is freedom. I like to have freedom of time, freedom to say yes to a client that I’m all excited about their message, and freedom to say no to a client or a prospect who just wants to make money and has really nothing to add to the world is not my ideal client. Maybe somebody else’s ideal client.

I think that journaling, reading and reviewing will really help you sort out your top values and help everyone continue to evolve. I think we were taught a myth in university, or at least I was. It was like, “Okay, you’re going to have a career and then you’re going to be done. You’re going to have a business and then you’re going to be done.” No, we’re always evolving and growing and changing and that’s the fun part.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, so true. Oh my goodness. Anybody out there who needs a book written, how is the best way, Aurora, that they should contact you and find out about your programs and work with you?

Aurora Winter:

Well, the first thing they should do is read my book, Turn Words Into Wealth: Blueprint for Your Business, Brand, and Book, and you can get it on Amazon or Apple Books or Kobo or wherever you like to get your books. That way they’ll know if they’re on the same page as I am.

Then the second thing to do is they can go to my website, which is my name, aurorawinter.com. A-U-R-O-R-A W-I-N-T-E-R.com, and they can get some gifts, including some videos, audios, audio books, this and that, so they can learn more and they can sign up there if they would like to get a one-on-one session with myself or somebody on my team and we can explore the book that they have in their heart and mind, and if we can help them, we certainly will.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with me today.

Aurora Winter:

You’re welcome.