Starting a new business looks different for everyone. For Whitney Popa, a life-altering event led her to take the leap of leaving her demanding corporate job, and she hasn’t looked back since. Annie and Whitney discuss the power of intention, valuable money hacks for business owners, and how sometimes the most challenging experiences can lead to the most rewarding outcomes.
Creating a Meaningful Business
[00:18:35] I do believe that it starts with that intention, like I mentioned the five years prior of knowing this is my path, but releasing the how of getting there.”
[00:34:01] I had to figure out and think about how am I defining my worth, and how am I making money? What are my streams of income? How am I managing my money after I get it and ensuring that I'm articulating my value to clients?
[00:43:05] I have a high yield savings account that I put all of my money for taxes for our best friends at the IRS into, and then allow that to make extra money while it's sitting in there. And it has been the best thing for me and my business.
Mentioned in this episode:
Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, by Leidy Klotz: https://www.amazon.com/Subtract-Untapped-Science-Leidy-Klotz/dp/1250249864
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0:00:04 - Annie
Hello there, I'm Annie Dickerson and I wanted to welcome you to this episode of the Life and Money Show brought to you by Good Egg Investments. This episode is a very special conversation indeed. If you've ever been on the hamster wheel of working long hours with a long commute on top of that, while craving more time with your family, this is the conversation for you. Maybe you wanted to quit your job and start your own thing, but it's scary. Maybe you're not sure exactly how those pieces will fall into play or even where you're trying to get to in the first place. In this conversation I sit down with Whitney Popa. She's the founder of Popa and Associates, a Seattle-based copywriting agency, where she and her team help to tell the story of businesses and what they're trying to accomplish and help them to build a community of people around them.
But in this conversation, whitney starts by telling the story of a huge and unexpected occurrence in her overall journey, something that really shook the foundation of what she thought that she wanted and where she thought she was going. And this was very early on in her career. And we're going to start off with that story and then we're going to dive into how it then shaped her perspectives on her career and climbing the corporate ladder, and then later with motherhood and how she started Popa and Associates and the transition from being a W-2 employee to striking out on her own, starting this business and seeing the success that she has over the last several years. And then we're also going to get into her thoughts around money mindset as a business owner, because it's not always easy. There's a lot of fears, a lot of doubts, a lot of anxieties that come along the way when you're owning and operating your own business. We'll get into all of that. So if you are thinking about maybe quitting your job and starting your own thing, you're definitely going to want to stick around, especially till the very end. Whitney shares a really simple but profound hack that she uses in her own business that has really transformed the energy around the money in her business. But first, before we dive in, I talked a little bit about how Whitney and her team are helping businesses to create these communities, because that's really where it's at.
Whether you're a writer or you are working a W-2 job or you are starting your own business or you're looking into real estate investing, it's important to have a community of people around you people to support you, people who have gone before you and can share their tips, and people you can use as a sounding board and ask questions to keep you going, keep you motivated and inspired to continue to take action. And our version of that is the Good Egg Investor Club. It's a community of like-minded people who are all about creating wealth through investing in real estate. So to join the Good Egg Investor Club, you can go to goodegginvestmentscom. Slash invest. We can't wait to see you in there.
All right, with that, let's dive into our conversation with Whitney Popa. Whitney, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Oh, my goodness, I'm so glad to have you here. I've been looking forward to this conversation. You know one mom to another and one business owner to another. I think there's so many things that I want to say. Normal people may not understand that when you have a child and you're trying to start a business, it's a lot. You go through a lot of transformation all at once. So I'm excited to dive in and to hear more of your story. But to start, I know that there was a pivotal moment in your journey, even before you had your child, that really shaped the trajectory of your journey. So would you take us into that moment in your timeline, sure.
0:04:32 - Whitney Popa
We were connected through a mutual friend, kim Knievel, who I worked with in my first PR job, and I was there at this big global agency for about five years. That's longer than a lot of people stay at these agencies just because it's such hard work for so little pay at first. Quite honestly, we're both really hard workers and we were in our early 20s, both working on behalf of Microsoft, and I was at work when I got the phone call that my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer and that he had to be driven over the mountains, like that day, to come to the hospital. I'm in Seattle, so he was across the state and thankfully they came to where I was for him to have emergency brain surgery. And that's kind of when everything shifted for me, where I had this whole series.
In Seattle, just like in the Bay Area, there's a lot of sexy companies to work for Probably any name that you can think of that you would associate with Seattle. I worked on behalf of them. That was the moment where everything clued into me. My dad was a parks director, so his whole life was designed around play, his whole career. Then here I was just very externally validated, very into getting that next A and not really sure how to get it in the real world quote unquote in these jobs where I was working 80 hours a week and getting feedback on comma placement and things like that, which is important. I think I had it right. I mean, I have an English degree. Everybody's got their own comma rules. Yeah yeah, I love an Oxford comma, so there's that.
But in that moment and how my team at work and HR and everything handled the next year of my life, what's really eye-opening for me as to what I wanted in my life and my business. And I always kind of went back to my dad. In his job he was the director of parks for the city of Richland in Washington state. He had a cute little house. Down the street. From his office he rode his bike to work. He came home for lunch, made himself a bratwurst, rode his bike back home and I always thought that was cute and idyllic and I thought that would be cool for me too. But I didn't necessarily believe it could be for me. And it wasn't until five years later, when I was pregnant with our first child and still working for all these sexy companies doing PR and social media, that finally an opportunity was presented to me to just quit my corporate career and start that life.
So I always say that my dad's situation, my dad's cancer, started the journey for me like the intention in my brain in a very real way. And then my son kicked me in the uterus to make it happen and I showed up. So the client that started my business is Sur La Table, which is a really cool cookware company that's based in Seattle. And if they hadn't invited me to their office like 37 weeks pregnant and fully aware of my big belly, and asking me like when can you start? Where can you sign, what's your LLC, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have had a business plan, I wouldn't have taken the steps to really thoughtfully quit my job. That's just not how my brain works, but that's a lot of how society told me I needed to be. So I would have been stunted in creating a business had it not been presented to me in the way that it was.
And I do believe that that process of me being pregnant, having this corporate job that I was commuting an hour each way to and visiting daycares on my lunch break and hearing that they had more time off than I did it just wasn't making any sense. Then the stars kind of all aligned, starting with that intention when he was diagnosed, to just be like I don't want to have my life be so hard in this way and be unfulfilling. I want to be with my kids. I want to show them a life that, like my dad showed me, of riding his bike to work and back and having that flexibility and that beauty which you can do working for someone else. For me it had to be not working for somebody else, but it can look all sorts of different ways. So those two things were really in parallel, on the same path to getting me where I am today. And now I have a communications consultancy, a small boutique copywriting agency in the Seattle area, and then I also started an independent press for West Coast writers and artists.
0:09:21 - Annie
Wow. Well, there's so much to unpack there and we're definitely going to get into the different parts of your story. But first off, when you were talking about the 80 plus hours a week working on behalf of these companies, I can definitely relate. I worked at an instructional design agency many years ago and I remember there was one point I was so busy, my workload was so heavy, that I had to go out at one point to buy myself like a cup with a straw, just like the one that you're drinking from now. I had to buy myself one of those because my water bottle, which was one that you had to unscrew the top for and drink and put your head back to drink I wasn't drinking out of it all day because it would take too long for me to take my eyes away from the screen, take my hands off the keyboard to take a drink of water. That's how dire it was.
Yeah, rough, yeah, and you'd think that that would be my wake up call. But I kept going and you mentioned chasing that next A or trying to figure out how to get that A in the real world. It sounds like you were probably pretty successful, pretty on top of things growing up, and you had a vision for this career that you wanted to build. Would you say that's true?
0:10:36 - Whitney Popa
Yes, I had a Pinterest board called Corner Office. I got two Bs report card Bs in my entire academic career and I am talking about them now.
0:10:46 - Annie
They're still like in my brain of things that I don't like Yep, the one C plus I ever got is always stuck up here, yep. So you were on this track, you had been brought up. You were like, okay, I'm going to make a big name for myself, I'm going to get that corner office, I'm going to do all the things right. And it sounds like that unfortunate situation with your father was almost a gift in hindsight, even though it must have been very, very difficult to go through that, to watch him go through that, the pain of it. But, like you said, it set this intention, it planted the seed in your mind that, wait a second, is this really the track I want to be on, or do I want a different life?
And on our previous episode we actually talked about this concept of subtracting from your life, because we're so ingrained to keep adding, adding, adding. You know, when you have a challenge it's like what new tool, what new app do I need to add into my life? And sometimes it's about taking away. And it sounds like, maybe not immediately, but in the years following your father's passing and with the birth of your child, you started to kind of whittle away at the essence of what you truly wanted, and that took you then to that first client. So I wanna hear about that story because I know that that journey to go from quitting your job to getting your first client is huge and I'm sure if the listener has a job right now and is thinking about quitting, that's a huge leap. It feels like you're gonna walk off a cliff and never make money again. You gotta figure out your own health insurance, you gotta buy your own computer. There's so many things. So tell us a little bit about how you navigated that transition.
0:12:34 - Whitney Popa
For me one of the things I always knew, so even at that first cubicle, and I'm very blue. So I sat at my cubicle once in the beginning of my career and I felt like I just had this channeled message of where my career was going to go and I wrote it down on a sticky note and it said agency in-house, which is essentially I was at a PR agency working on behalf of clients in-house meant that I was going to become the client. I did that at Nordstrom, so that was my next job. Once my dad got sick, I was just like I'm out of here. They treated me really poorly. They were very awkward and clunky and a lot of people and things are. It's not specific necessarily to them, but it was time for me to go. So I took a year applying and finally getting my dream job at the time, which was at Nordstrom. I spent two years at Nordstrom. So on that list I had agency in-house, startup consulting and after Nordstrom, one of my former managers at that first PR agency told me about a job at a startup. That was not necessarily a whole tech startup, it was more consumer tech and cooking and at Pike Place Market. It was very exciting. So I took that job.
Then I got laid off and you would think that that would be the time where it's like the universe is putting these things in front of you. And this is all after my dad got sick, where it all gets kind of muddy. I was in this position of you could start your business now or become the consultant, like on my list. That wasn't really like me planning. It really felt very like this is your path, this is just a channel thing, like you were being led, yeah, and it felt like this would make the most sense as like the space is open for you to. But my ego said no, you need another job. And I just really had to prove to myself that I was hireable. Took me six months to find my last corporate job. In that time I was trying to get pregnant too. I found out that I was pregnant on the first day of a contract job that I had for Amazon and then everything got pretty wild. So even in that gap time of those six months where I could have started something, I didn't because I needed it to happen backwards, I guess.
And your question about the listener, I do believe that it starts with that intention. Like I mentioned, the five years prior of knowing this is my path, but releasing the how of getting there of here's the obvious gap where you can write your business plan. You have time to do that. I just am not built that way. I had to have it be really hard, I guess, and have the client present. I'd always dabbled I call it cheating on my boyfriend. Client present, I'd always dabbled I call it cheating on my boyfriend. So I'd be cheating on my boyfriend with, like these side clients, these side projects, to really show myself, not only creatively, that I could do things. I would write video scripts for videographers or do some tweeting on behalf of an executive, little things like that. That really showed me this is possible for you.
But it wasn't until Sur La Table called me into their office and the advice that I could give to people is find a few safe people that you're willing to say hey, I'm seeing that I can do this job in a bigger way from home or whatever your goal is Like. I can see that I create something out of these skills and gifts that I have that is less contained and confined by somebody else's expectations. Then they're going to go out and share the message for you, because people really do want to champion you and help you get there. So the reason Sur La Table called me was one of my good friend's boyfriends. My good friend had told his boyfriend. Then he worked at Sur La Table and told a girl who worked there. So if you have those really close friends and I hadn't even remembered that, I had said, hey, I think I can do this outside of this formal capacity. And I just got an email one day of, hey, we're looking for this exact thing that you do, and it has to be paid to an LLC, not to a person who's a contractor.
So I had to spend the weekend figuring out how to set up an LLC. For me, it had to be that way. It could not be planned and I'm so grateful it couldn't be planned in the sitting down and writing the plan sense. It had to present itself and then I had to figure out how to make it happen and I really want people to hear that and be open to how it presents. If you are a business plan person, do that.
I do feel like that creates the intention and helps you put together your idea. For some of us, we're like more broad manifestors, where it's like unspecific. I know that this is meant for me and sometimes I get neurotic about it and then I forget about it and I release the how and it eventually presents. But it's also finding those safe places to share your dreams and know that they will be held and taken to places that you could never even imagine. So it feels kind of magical. But at the same time it had a lot of planning behind it, just not the type that we're really served in the world of. This is how you start a business.
0:17:56 - Annie
It sounds like your journey. It's such a great example of manifestation in progress, because it's like you held this loose intention of this vision of what you wanted, but you didn't get stuck on the details. You didn't say this is how I want to do it, this is when I want to do it, this is where I want to do it. You just said you know, I think I kind of want to go in this direction, and you kind of let it go. You were neutral about it and, by the way, you're in great company with the Wu here, because I fully believe when you release it and you let the forces come in, that's when the magic happens. And it sounds like that's exactly what happened with this Sur Latop client who kind of fell into your lap through these mysterious forces. That kind of put it all together. So the timing was interesting, though, because this was when you were very pregnant. How did that go? So were you about to go out on maternity leave, or yes, okay, and I didn't even have maternity leave.
0:18:56 - Whitney Popa
So the way that my last few jobs worked is I had that unemployment gap. Then I actually got a contract job at Amazon, filling in for somebody else's maternity leave. I found out I was pregnant on the first day of that job and I was freaking out. It was a six month contract that I knew would end. I had some conversations with recruiters there about getting hired on, but of course I was miserable there already, so it didn't feel like a long-term solution for me. I had had that background at Nordstrom more consumer-driven things that's more of my passion anyway. So I started applying pregnant to full-time jobs and got one at a big salon and spa chain in the area and hid my pregnancy from them until I couldn't anymore. I was told in their HR office that I got six weeks unpaid. This was before in Washington.
We now have, like, more motherhood benefits, which I'm grateful for, but I never qualified for any of them. So I had six weeks unpaid leave, and that was in the back of my mind too. So I had six weeks unpaid leave, and that was in the back of my mind too, as all of these things were happening, and it was great that I was pregnant because my boss was very stringent as far as butt in seat and it happened to be a day where she was out of town, so I was able to go to the Sur La Table offices in the middle of the day to meet with them. Otherwise she totally would have been onto me and it would have been very weird. Thankfully, because I was pregnant, I probably could have said I had a doctor's appointment, but I'm a radically honest person too, so it would have been like I would have just felt so awful.
But yeah, I think I was 36 or 37 weeks pregnant. I even said to them because we're very used to being discriminated against as pregnant people for so many different ways and I was like you see my belly here they were completely unfazed. It was so beautiful, like even kind of makes me feel emotional now just in the fact that like they knew that if I was capable, we were going to figure it out and we did. And I was with them for two years as I was building my business and had other clients too, until I had my next child, where I was like this is kind of at a good place, where it's more than I want to take on in my business right now, and so I handed it to the next person. But in those two years they just were like when can you start?
0:21:14 - Annie
And isn't it interesting, even the piece about your boss being out of the office. It's like the timing is always so perfect when you're following the breadcrumbs of what you're meant to do and where you're meant to be. I find that so fascinating. So it sounds like your transition from a W-2 job to then contracts and then building your own business was more or less kind of organic. You kind of went from one to the next. Was there ever a moment when you were like I'm quitting my job, I'm never going back? Or was it kind of like I think I'm going to try this for a while, see where it takes me?
0:21:47 - Whitney Popa
I started my business while I was on my six weeks of maternity leave. Then I went in to tell them that I wasn't coming back and part of me didn't like that. I was a statistic and it wasn't a burn all ships sort of situation for me until probably the second year of my business, because if I got nervous about money or clients or anything then sometimes I would scroll for jobs. But as a writer I have this weird thing about cover letters, so anytime I would see a job I would be like oh too much work with the cover letter, like even applying notes. Thank you, they're making me do so much work to even get there. At a certain point I started really believing this is it for me. It became a burn all ships thing. I will do whatever it takes. I will sell things from the garage so that I do not have to go back into somebody else's rules office etc. Because even as a little girl I was always built that way.
I always knew that I needed to work for myself. And then I got incongruent in the sense that I listened to other people's advice and well-intentioned desires for my life and what I always believed was my path. So I needed to get back to that. I needed to get back to myself and I started doing a lot of inner soul work and becoming more internally validated. Because I realized how externally validated I was and I know we'll talk about money too, but in that way as well, like I externalized a lot of money decisions, so went on this whole like back to self journey in having my business, which is a very vulnerable thing to like.
You are so much more your business is you. When you are a freelancer, a person who is literally building a business on your name, you have to be like solid inside. So I started doing that work in parallel again, kind of more organically. But yeah, the transition it almost felt like, kind of if you give birth without drugs, like it's just what my body knows to do this, there was no way that it could have made sense for me to go back to the office. It just was not built for me to be successful and I knew that there wasn't an option at that time for me to go back and be able to have a child. Where would I have put him? He was six weeks old.
0:24:10 - Annie
Yeah, let's switch gears and do dig into the money side of things a little bit, as you hinted at there, because from starting a business myself. It's funny. When I first quit my job to start a business, I told all my friends and family I was like, don't worry, I'm going to have plenty of time to hang out with you. Now I'm starting my own business, I'll have all the freedom and flexibility over my own time and my own schedule. That's cute, cute, right, I know, but it's like you mentioned your business is you and you are your business.
And when you're working a W-2 job, it's almost like when you work more you're making less, because per hour you're making less overall. But when you're creating your own business, it's like there's no ceiling and so every moment that you put into your business increases the earning potential for yourself and your business. But at the same time there's two sides of the coin, because then you have to wrestle with your own money mindset. To wrestle with your own money mindset, your own money fears A lot of that comes up, especially as a woman in the business, a mom, you've got responsibilities, you have things that you want to do for your child, for your future. So talk to us a little bit about what were some of those money fears or money mindset? What were you thinking about as you were building this business and trying to get it to a place of stabilization?
0:25:34 - Whitney Popa
What's interesting about that for me is I didn't think of myself as super money driven at first. I knew, like in the marketplace, what I thought my value was. I still thought it was too low and so I would always advocate for raises and for more money up front. But I had two goals when I started my business. One was to be able to spend some time with my son and kill the Camille like those things go hand in hand. And the second one was to make half my salary, because that's what I would have been giving to the daycare or the nanny who got more time off than I did and that felt very reasonable to me. It felt like a goal that I could achieve, like I could pin the feather in my cap of like no problem. And I think, because I made myself some achievable goals, they were easy to blow out of the water, because that first year of my business I made more money than I had ever made in a corporate career and that really showed me that this is possible for me. I actually just did the math on it I made 133% of my salary my first full year in business. Wow, and just me running my business, with those conversations and those like cornerstone clients who really floated me to get into the next and a newborn yeah, and thankfully he was very yeah, and thankfully he was very easy. I mean, I would be on calls and he would be nursing. He would nurse and sleep for hours. Oh, what a dream. Yeah, newborns they are difficult in their own ways but, like, if you have a busy brain, they're very under stimulating. So I knew that I couldn't just like have a maternity leave where you go from 100 to zero. I mean I still watched all Friday Night Lights all the way through, but I still also needed to use my brain. And my husband went back to work a couple of days after my son was born because he was new in his job. So we were very isolated and if I hadn't had my business I wouldn't have survived that because I needed my brain to be working on some other problems other than, like, my body's, not mine anymore. What are my boobs doing? The next feeding, all of that it just is a little too rote for me and I do believe I'm built to be a mother, but I also need to use my brain and contribute to my family in ways that are financially successful. So that first year of being in business really gave me motivation to know you're onto something, this is good for you.
And then during COVID, my income was slashed because all of my clients, which are more consumer lifestyle driven, were tightening up budgets. So then I had to figure out new ways of bringing in income and how I defined abundance. And that's kind of where my journey to redefining abundance and selling things out of the garage literally so that I could not take on another job because I knew that wouldn't be good for me in any sense I had to redefine my relationship there and that's when I started my money work too, because after that, when my income came back, it kind of plateaued at that same level and I had to figure out and think about how am I defining my worth and how am I making money, what are my streams of income, how am I managing my money after I get it and ensuring that I'm articulating my value to clients, like all sorts of different levels of that and knowing that I can, like you said, always increase, always work harder to make more and give back and create the cycle of abundance and not hoard and just so many things. So then I spent probably the past three years I've been really studying money and my relationship to money, which kind of ladders on top of that soul work, internalization and then I had to add the money part on top of it once I was ready, and not force that learning either.
That's been a whole part of it too, because I would think, okay, I had a $10,000 a month, now let me have a $20,000 a month. It doesn't really work that way. You have to like energetically calibrate to that on top of the reality of the clients. But I wasn't there yet. You can't just decide. I've made a lot of decisions that have come to fruition, but it doesn't just change that quickly unless you have mechanisms in place like that, energetics ready to receive that amount of money and know what to do with it. So I don't know if that answered your question, but I kind of went around about money.
0:30:02 - Annie
Yeah, it sounds like you've been on this whole journey to excavate, and that's the beauty of owning and building a business is it brings up all of this stuff that you've been carrying around.
Often, when you're working a corporate job, it's easy to put blinders on and just clock in, clock out and keep going day after day, year after year.
But when you're faced with building your own business, you have to examine every corner and look at everything, no matter how hard it is. And it sounds like you've really been doing that work. And I think one of the hardest things is to separate your idea of how much money you're making with your worth as a human being, as a person, as a mom, and there's so much baggage that so many of us carry around that I'm curious, before we kind of move into the final part of our conversation, to bring it back to where we started with this journey, I've heard many times, and I've experienced this myself, that business is a spiritual journey. I know it's been a big part everything that you've experienced, but how big of a part do you think that your father has played in all of this? I mean, I can imagine him up there riding his little bike and watching you going through all these things, but I imagine you must feel his presence as you're navigating these different challenges.
0:31:28 - Whitney Popa
Oh, hugely. Yeah, I ask for it too. So even on the way to my first appointment of the day today, I asked him out loud my sign for him is an Eagle. So I asked him okay, show me. I'm doing some really big soul work this week. So I asked him for an Eagle to show me that I'm on the right path and that he's with me. And that's fun. Sometimes I need it because my brain gets so full where I just need that visual. But I do feel all the time that he's with me. I do feel like that was totally guided. My son is very much like him. So my son kicking me in the uterus is essentially my dad being like, okay, it's time now.
Before he died he told me to never lose my writing and of course I promised him that, but I didn't know what that would look like and how I would make him, but mostly me, proud and I've studied death and dying and spirituality behind that as well in this whole process.
And, like the souls of the people that you love, they don't want a specific thing, for example. It's not like he's up there being mad at me if I'm not preparing my relationship with my sister, for example. It's more about they want you to be happy and that makes them proud by making yourself proud, not your idea of what you think they want for you. Specifically, it's more are you happy, are you content, are you fulfilled, are you purposeful, are you of service in your work and your life versus? Oh, I have to go do this family obligation that I don't want to do because my dad would want me to. That's not it. It's me living in congruence and authentic life that makes him proud and happy all the time. So that's where I think about it and where I take it, and every day I feel him with me and know that he is guiding it.
0:33:13 - Annie
And when I need extra support I ask for it. I love that. An eagle, that's such a great sign and it's the same. My father passed about 10 years ago now and you know same I have felt. First of all, his passing was as painful as it was. It was a huge gift in my journey, feeling his presence and feeling him orchestrate a lot of these things, quite frankly, behind the scenes and sensing his sense of humor through it all as well, even in the really tough times. But nothing's an accident, everything's on purpose. It's very interesting to see how these things unfold and the pieces that they play in our overall journey, and it sounds like you've had an incredible, incredible journey so far. So with that, we're going to transition to the final part of our show, the Life and Money Show Spotlight Round. We're going to ask you three questions. We ask all our guests Are you ready? I'm ready, All right. First question is about your life and money. So share with us one thing that you're doing to live a meaningful and intentional life by design.
0:34:19 - Whitney Popa
When you first asked that question, the first thing that came to mind for me is every morning I sit with myself, so it kind of goes back to that internalization of everything coming back to me. So I have a few minutes every morning where it's kind of a meditation, but more so I listen to these Abraham videos and check in with that, just making sure that I am living in authenticity to me and what I want my day to look like and I set the stage for that. And then I do kind of a short meditation before I make my coffee and start my day, so that I know that I'm setting the stage for something to be a strong foundation for my family and my business and that has ultimately made me more calm, grounded and, I think, made me more money, quite frankly.
0:35:07 - Annie
That's such a great and a profound but simple practice. Just to rather than rolling out of bed and picking up your phone is the first thing, but really giving that first priority, those first precious moments of the day to yourself and really creating that space for yourself. I know that that's probably one of the hardest things Client work easy, You're fulfilling things for other people, but fulfilling something for yourself can often be the hardest. So I love that. I'm definitely gonna take a version of that into my practice too.
0:35:40 - Whitney Popa
Yeah, I always like to remind people that so much meditation feels so big and scary to people and it really can be as simple as breathing and sitting. I do like two journal pages every day of what is my sole intention of the day, what am I prioritizing and what messages, if anything, are coming through, and letting that be enough, because even for high performers we want to get the A and there's no way to like get an A on meditation. It really is like can I go on a walk and take a few breaths and let my mind quiet for a minute? So start anywhere.
0:36:14 - Annie
I love that. Second question is about others life and money. So share with us a life or money hack, a tool, a tip, a resource, a book, anything that's really helped you on your journey, that you think might help the listener as well.
0:36:26 - Whitney Popa
I have so many things that I can share, but the thing that I'm most excited about and this is probably more specific to business owners is I have a high yield savings account that I put all of my money for taxes for our best friends at the IRS into and then allow that to make extra money while it's sitting in there, and it has been the best thing for me and my business. The app that I use it's a fintech company called Wealthfront. They're actually backed by a bank right behind me here where I'm sitting, so I knew that they were legit and it's an easy swipe right from my main bank account and you can automate it. But I sometimes have projects where I make more money, so I take 30% of any check automatic deposit that I get and put it straight into that high yield savings account, which I have a 5.5% APY on right now, which is really good for the market, and I just love watching that money grow.
I'm already allocating the stuff that's not going to the IRS. I'm like all right. Here's where I'm taking my best friend for our 40th birthday part. You know 40th birthday is in a couple of years because I'm building up that egg and it's so easy to see right there in that account and I just love that they've made it so easy. I'm in year seven of my business. I just had it sitting in my business checking account but it wasn't making me any money and now it is and that's really exciting for me to see and to be like in that power with the swipe.
0:37:53 - Annie
Yeah, the power of the swipe. I love that it's. Sometimes it's just the simplest changes, just a small thing that will make such a huge difference, so I'm so glad that you shared that. That's a really great hack, all right. Third question is about life and money in the world. So share with us how you're helping to make the world a better place, whatever that means to you.
0:38:18 - Whitney Popa
I briefly mentioned my independent press that I started and again, another channeled message. My dad told me to never lose my writing and I kind of channeled this small booklet that makes a big difference. I don't want to call it a small thing. It's physically small. It makes a big difference and I wrote a little book called A Wave Called Grief. It's what I needed when I was going through everything with my dad.
When I sell a copy on Amazon for anywhere that's a big bookseller I make $2.78 per book.
I am not making a ton of money on it and the intention is that all of that money goes back to buying more books and going to more places to help more people, because I love the idea of thinking of how money can really be a tool and serve so many people. And even when it's little bits, I'm hoping for volume at some point. Maybe Oprah will put me on her list, but in the meantime I'm seeing grief groups and I'm going out in the community and giving it to gift shops to sell on consignment and using every single penny to pump back into doing more of that to help more people. So it's probably not an answer that you were expecting, but I've been thinking a lot about this little booklet and how it's meant to serve people, and that every amount of money that I make from it just goes directly back into helping more people. And whenever I discover other businesses like that, I'm so eager to support them because I know how it feels that's the key, right.
0:39:52 - Annie
You've been through this experience. You know how it feels, and this channeled booklet came through your experience at a time that was really raw for you, and it's your effort to give this back to the world. I think that's such a beautiful thing. So I'm going to ask you in a minute how people can get a hold of that. But before we do that, the final piece I wanted to ask you was not only how can people get in touch with you, but we talked about a little bit of your writing, but I know you do even more than that. So share with us a little bit about what you do at your company, popa Associates, and how you can help people and then tell them where they can go, not only to get in touch with you there, but also get a copy of your booklet.
0:40:34 - Whitney Popa
Sure. Thank you for asking. My copywriting agency, pope and Associates, is popeandassociatescom. We focus on West Coast and Pacific Northwest lifestyle businesses and writing for them my life mission, which goes into these two companies. The thing that we do at Pope and Associates for businesses is help them tell their story and then we put it in these places where it matters. So we rewrite websites, we write websites from scratch, then we take that content and ongoing content, make it into blogs, newsletters, we write social media captions so all that high touchpoint writing for people.
And the ones who come to us the most are very heart-centered, consumer-driven businesses hospitality, food, lifestyle and I've had all sorts of things from baby deals companies, where they share daily deals for kids items, to resorts in the San Juan Islands and everything in between. We first start with identifying your voice and then building stories around that that really resonate with people, so that they want to know, like and trust you and purchase from you, whether that's come and stay at your facilities or buy your products. And it's really a matchmaking process too, where, if you're not the right match for us or vice versa, then we want to make sure that we're really the right people for each other, and I've expanded my agency from being just me to now four writers who really understand how to tell stories well, and we're very driven in that way. So if anybody listening has stories that they want to tell and they feel like I just don't know how to help people understand what I do and how I do it in my voice, if writing is just not your forte, then come to us at pobinassociatescom and we will help you.
Then the other arm of my business, the independent press, is for me to not only tell my stories in a more creative way but to provide a platform for others to do the same, and that is where you can find the booklet. The company is rwestpresscom. Slash books is where you can find the book. All of that is in all of my links on everywhere and I'm just at WIPOPA, everywhere, every social platform, because I am a recovering social media manager, which is why I don't do social media management. I do. We write captions. So we just keep it into that. We keep it in the storytelling fold, but I still keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on in social media and how we can get your story out, whether that's through influencers and very localized PR and mostly that story driven content on your website through the landing pages and blogs.
0:43:21 - Annie
Amazing. Well, Whitney Popa, mom, writer, entrepreneur, founder and business owner at Popa and Associates. Whitney, thank you so much for being here with us and our listener today.
0:43:35 - Whitney Popa
Thank you, annie. This has been so awesome and I really appreciate you sharing about your dad too. It's a club that really sucks to be in but is also comforting in finding others, so whenever I feel a connection with somebody else, it's always like, oh, you get it because you've been there too, and that's tough and also awesome. Yeah, I agree. Thanks for creating this platform too.
0:44:00 - Annie
All right, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening to the Life and Money Show. The show all about helping you to create a meaningful and intentional life by design. Till next time, remember that your financial journey is a lifelong adventure and we're here with you every step of the way. Thanks for listening.