Speaker 1: Welcome to Getting Rich Together. I’m your host, Shama Bunton. This show was born for my own journey. Coming out of a divorce, I reached out to 50 women to talk to them about money.

95% of them did not want to go there. That’s when I realized we need spaces where wealth isn’t hidden in silence but shared in possibilities. Here, you’ll meet women from all backgrounds, trailblazers, risk takers, visionaries, each expanding what wealth can look like. This is your place to be inspired to discover new pathways and to remember that we rise by building wealth together. Getting Rich Together is a wealth catalyst production. At Wealth Catalyst, we bring together education, networks, and great opportunities for women to build wealth and change the world. Now, on to today’s show.

Speaker 2: I am here today with Erin Gallagher, America’s number one hype woman. Erin, you have taken stages across the country to rally women around their power. And you are the author of the upcoming incredible book, Hype Women Breaking Free from Mean Girls, Patriarchy, and Systems that are silencing all of us. You are a force multiplier, your conviction, your energy. You are inspiring women everywhere to rise together, break rules, and build new ones. Thank you for being here today on Getting Rich Together. Okay.

Speaker 3: So, Shama, you need to start my mornings and just give me a little hype me up speech like that because I’m like, damn, who is that? Who is that woman? Thank you. You are unbelievably incredible. It is my honor and privilege to be here talking with you today in awe of what you have built and continue to build the empathetic and heart led way you do it where so many of us women are learning that our feminine intuition doesn’t make us weak, but actually is our super power. And so, witnessing the way that you are doing that in industries that have not been kind to that truth or kind to women, period, I’m honored to be in your orbit.

Speaker 2: Well, let’s just hype women all over each other then because that’s right.

Speaker 3: It’s like, it’s like move over the term Google. We’re just going to hype women all over each other.

Speaker 2: That’s how we’re going to use that. It’s an adjective. It’s a dance move.

Speaker 3: It’s all of it. It’s all of it. So now it’s really it’s the whole fucking thing. It’s the whole package, the whole package.

Speaker 2: Well, before we dive into all the incredible magic that’s happening in your life today and stepping into the glory of the greatness that it continues to unfold, I always like to start from a little girl who was maybe in pigtails or ponytails. Maybe she was a tomboy. Maybe she liked dresses. Maybe she liked both.

But take me back, Erin, to a young girl somewhere between the ages of eight and 12 years old on this planet. Where were you? What was life like around you? And what was money like?

Speaker 3: So between the ages of eight and 12, I was living in two different states because my mom is a retired captain in the United States Coast Guard. She was in the Coast Guard for 25 years. So we moved every two to four years my whole life. And so the age of six, I was moving to Hawaii, right? So I was in Hawaii between the ages of six and 10. And then I was living in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, between the ages of 10 and 12.

So very different worlds, those two places on opposite sides of America. When I think back to that time, there’s the things that rise to the top for me that I think about are my parents were going through a divorce. And I was starting to take on my role as a caretaker in my family unit because I am a deep empath. And so I saw what my mom was navigating and I emotionally took on a lot of the responsibility. I feel like I really started to lose my childhood during that period of time. I went immediately into I’m a person that needs to be paying attention to what’s happening around me.

Yes, it is my responsibility to navigate everything, but it’s also probably my reason for existing. I’m here to make sure that this doesn’t break any further. It feels heavy to me when I think back to that time.

I just I look at it and it feels heavy. You know, it’s interesting, there’s actually a part in my book that is right around this time. I was recently given a handwritten note that I wrote to my aunt when I was 10 years old that she saved and she put back in my hands like 35 years later because she saved pretty much everything I ever gave her. But I think she just this one was like, she couldn’t believe that I had the like knowing to be able to say this as a 10 year old and then the bravado to actually put it in front of an adult. When I read it, I was brought immediately back to that time and I thought, oh my god, I have spent the rest of my life trying to get back to her.

Can I read it to you really quickly? Please. Okay. June 1st, Dear Roseanne, you like others are always making and telling me to do things for others. I am making my sandwich and my snack while you sit, relax and say, Erin, cut Megan’s sandwich in half. That’s my sister. She doesn’t want it cut in half.

Why don’t you ask her? I’m sick and tired of doing things for others and giving myself nothing. My mother and sister are constantly blaming and putting me in the position of guilt. I haven’t done anything. I’m sorry if I had said anything rude, but I’m so frustrated at everybody. I think you also owe me some sorry’s.

I’ve always dreamed of a place in the mountains under water falls where I can be alone. Please appreciate me as if I were an adult. I’m 10, Erin Turner. P.S. Try to be nice. Okay.

So I like read that and I was like, oh my god, I fucking love her. Yes. Right? Like, oh my god, I get it.

That is the period of time for young girls where we are starting to feel the pressure of society to adhere to gendered norms. So I was saying, I’m a fucking kid. Why am I having to make lunch for other people and do all this shit?

What about me? I watched my mom and my aunts be the drivers of all things, yes professionally, but also domestically. And so there was this anger inside of me. And then we’re told, especially at that age, why are you so angry? Stop being angry. Be grateful. You have a good life. How could you say that you don’t like that? And so Shama, that is what we carry with us over the next decades until we decide to put it down.

Speaker 2: So when you had found yourself then in high school, obviously already with this deep sense of awareness of injustices, even on a core level, I mean, I think this, you know, this idea of I need to bear the burden of responsibility. I don’t necessarily want to, but I have to. This is unfair, but I can’t do anything about this, because I’m a young person and some people don’t take you as seriously.

Your feelings are under mind. How did you start to express yourself then in high school in terms of like early independence and this early sort of sense of figuring out who you are? What did that look like?

Speaker 3: Sports was a huge outlet for me. I played soccer from the age of six all the way through my senior year of high school. I didn’t try to play in college, but I played like in a mural, and then I played on the Michigan alumni team in Chicago until I realized I am too old to try to play soccer anymore.

I cannot bounce back from this the way I used to. But in high school, having that outlet of sports allowed me to do a couple of things. One, I wasn’t alone in an endeavor, so I didn’t feel the weight of carrying something by myself. It was a team effort. We all won together. We all lost together.

So that sisterhood of the women on my team was a salve to a younger version that had felt like I had carried a lot alone. That was one part of it. The other part was, God, I got to be angry. You get to be so angry and intense and competitive without judgment through sport. Today, as a 43-year-old woman who was screaming at my TV last night watching the WNBA semifinals, the playoffs season is like, I mean, listen, the whole thing is amazing, but playoffs are so exciting. I am so jealous of these adult women that get to be guttural in their responses, that get to let it all hang out. In corporate America, in society, women have to keep it so tight, and we can’t falter and we can’t let people see how we’re really feeling, and we sure as fuck can’t be angry, because as soon as that happens, we are under attack. I am saying this as a straight white cisgendered woman who has a significant amount of power and privilege in this world, because the white supremacist patriarchy we live in has decided that this archetype gets a pass. I didn’t earn this. I don’t deserve this, but it is the fucking truth.

I get away with it more than women of color get away with it, but I still don’t do it very often, because I see the reaction that happens when you are an angry woman at something that is deserving of anger. Sports allowed me to move that through my body and out. I think that we don’t recognize that power and importance enough, and then we don’t coach young girls and women on what to do when they leave that container and go into a world that doesn’t give them that mechanism anymore.

Speaker 2: Wow, that is definitely powerful and so worth exploring, because as you went into university and then started to express yourself into the world back then, and I’m sure now, I mean, now we talk about girls and women’s sports in a different lens, but we’re still so far behind.

You know, we’re all catching up and we’re all getting excited, but even back then, right, going into university, I’m sure it wasn’t like, I’m going to go and become a professional women’s soccer player. You know, you had to sort of at one point say, what the hell am I doing? What is going to be the way in which I take my beautiful, wild, carefree, driven self and start to put myself in a box? And so when you’re in university, how did you decide on, okay, this is the direction or here’s how I’m going to start to conform to what society is asking of me to do?

Speaker 3: I continued to seek out women because I wasn’t on a team as I entered University of Michigan as a freshman and an 18 year old. It was the first time in my life since I was six that I wasn’t on a team. And I didn’t know what to do with that. So a couple of things were happening. I didn’t have that infrastructure again of the camaraderie of other women, the joint mission, the collective power. And I knew I wasn’t going to get it in the same way because this wasn’t high school sports anymore. So I actually rushed a sorority. And I thought before I rushed sororities are full of bitches.

There’s no way I’m going to do this. I’m not one of those women. Those are the women that are mean girls like not into it.

But I thought I’m at least going to rush so I can have some like good stories and I can have some actual anecdotes to talk shit about the women who are the shit talkers. Okay. So that was the plan.

That was the absolute plan. And I fell in love with the women inside of the sorority at Michigan. And they were not mean. And they were, they were for, right?

They were former athletes and they were like into sports and they were also into like having a few drinks and dancing and like being creative and all kinds of stuff. And so I inadvertently started to go down that path without that being what I thought was planned. Some women go into college and they know that’s what they want. They’re either doing it because they’re a legacy, their mother or aunt was a part of it. I was like, I had, my mom wasn’t in a sorority.

I knew nothing about them. And this ended up becoming a new home for me. So again, when I look at it, it’s that desire to be surrounded by women who had my back and who were going to help me get through this totally uncharted territory of college. These are the most important women in my life to this day. These are women who have been with me in the darkest of times and the most celebratory and who have been with me at every phase of my metamorphosis. Where we end up sometimes doesn’t make sense in the moment. But guiding principle was I need women to become who I’m supposed to be.

Speaker 2: And as you’re talking, I’m like, man, you were America’s OG high woman back at six years old, you know, in your high school routine. And it’s like, yeah, like we got we got to go and and it’s beautiful to hear this carry through of being the girl’s girl and showing up and finding your people. And not only what I think is beautiful is supporting others, but also receiving support. I think one of the big things, especially when you think have divorce early in life or need to be on your own, this, this desire to ultimately inside want to be loved and received and to feel that as something that is so beautiful to hear reflected in your university experience with these like amazing bad us women. Okay, so here you are graduating college, you’re launching yourself into the world. Who do you want to be in the world at that time? How are you thinking about living money? What is Aaron Gallagher like upon graduation? Oh my goodness.

Speaker 3: I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I so my undergraduate degree is English, but I took a ton of polyps, I classes and social classes. And I thought that was what I was going to do. I took the LSAT, I was really tracking towards that. The reason I wanted to be a lawyer is because I believe so deeply in justice and fairness and fighting for people that deserve to be heard and aren’t for a variety of reasons. When we don’t see women and people of color and positions of power and influence, it has nothing to do with ambition or ability or aspiration.

It has everything to do with access. And so I wanted to be on the front lines addressing that. That was the plan. All of my friends who were a year or two older that had gone directly to law school said, so this is not what we thought it was going to be. Not all of them, right? Some of them were like, this is great. And they have stayed the course and they’re lawyers today and they love it. But there were people that knew me really well and who knew what my ambition was in this field and who had gone straight to law school.

And they said, here’s the advice I would give you. Work at a law firm before you even go to law school. Just see what it’s like. See if this is the thing that you want to invest the next three years of your life in the furthering of debt before you then have to crawl back out under that. Because I had undergraduate debt. I was not one of these kids who had this two-parent household that had been saving up for a college fund and handed it to me and it was all good. I was a FAFSA kid and I had student loans and my mom had student loans.

That’s how it went down. And so the thought of then taking on additional student loans for a secondary degree, it was enough to pause. I went straight from graduating to working at a nonprofit legal aid watchdog in DC. And threw yourself right into the fire.

Speaker 2: Right into the fire. I wasn’t like, I’m going to intern in a patent attorney office. I was like, no, let’s go to fucking K Street in DC and let’s get at it.

Let’s get at it. And so I worked at Service Members Legal Defense Network. Our entire mission was to lift the ban on gays in the military. I was the intake person where service members who were in distress, whose lives were being threatened or careers were being threatened, I was the first person they spoke to. This was a matter of literally answering the phone and the first question you ask is, are you in a safe place? Because in some cases, they’re being pressured to make this phone call in front of someone. And so having to navigate truly physical and psychological threat. And so that was why like kicked out of the gate job.

I wasn’t doing a simple kind of paper pushing internship. This was really intense, emotional, gut-wrenching work. Over the course of the year and a half that I was there, I learned a couple of things.

And the lawyers that I worked with came to this conclusion with me. I love mission-driven work. There is nothing like being in community with people who are working towards something together that they care about. There’s nothing like it.

There’s nothing like it. It is a very confusing thing to work inside of an organization where your main goal is to cease to exist. That is what true mission-driven work is. I loved the people that I worked with. These were people who cared so deeply about others and a cause that they were willing to take a cut financially. They were willing to make sacrifices to work here. They could be working at a law firm and making 10 times as much money. But they were at a nonprofit because they believed that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ban was unethical, unjust, unfair, and should be illegal. So those things were true and that’s what I was learning.

And I was also learning I didn’t want to be a lawyer. No fucking way. And they were like, yeah, this is not. They’re like, Aaron, here’s the deal. The law is storied.

Historic has so many rules. You are not good at that. You will be miserable because you do have to follow protocol in order to affect change inside of this particular line of work. And as my mom always said when I was younger, and she was like, maybe if you want to go to law school, you could go to, you could become a jack and then they’ll give us some money to do that. And she said, but you also have no military discipline. And right, she’s, and I was like, oh, absolutely not. I would be court-martialed on day one because I’d be like, I’m not fucking doing that.

Are you kidding me? So all of these things were showing themselves to me. And I was getting the message that, okay, this isn’t how I’m going to do the thing that I want to do. But what am I loving about this? And what am I, what have I always loved? And it was writing. It was creativity. It was storytelling. And so I pivoted and went towards a career path that was in marketing and communications and PR because I felt that if I could start to work with the biggest brands and companies in the world to use their power and influence to inspire action and affect change, maybe we could get this done faster.

Speaker 2: Or love that. So that’s where I went. I’ll also say, Shama, that ultimately years after I left SLDN, they achieved their goal and the ban on gays and military was lifted. I wouldn’t choose any other path than the one that I was on, even though it wasn’t a direct line to what I ended up doing because I learned so much about the world. To find yourself, insert to see these moments where all of a sudden these through lines all compound. But yeah, but of course, this had to be this way. And of course, I had to come up against edges to realize, I don’t know who I am, but who I am not. And I think that is such a powerful, these are powerful experiences to have as a young person launching into the world. Now, obviously, you are incredible at communications, at rallying, at, I would say, gay-hendrix zone of genius being magical when it comes to inspiring others. Talk to me a little bit about this career progression after you started to find yourself into this realm of communications and then back into honing in on these mission-driven ways of being able to catalyze change in these realms of service. Often we are giving of service, but sometimes we’re also not giving to ourselves. How have you navigated through this beautiful career progression of being an advocate, speaking for others, honing in on marketing and PR skills and learning what lands with others, and then also navigating, giving back to yourself and what it’s like to come back to the well from which it’s all coming from?

Speaker 3: Yeah, the service piece has been a big journey for me because I always tied my value and my worth to my service to others. If I wasn’t doing something for someone else, making them look good, making them money, making something that they care about, be cared about by others, what was I even doing? What was I worth? What did I matter? Inherently being worthy was not something that I believed. I believed it was earned. So I was a perfect person for corporate America.

Ambitious, people-pleasing, parent-ified child, unhealed trauma, perfect. I was like around, threw myself in front of whatever needed to be thrown in front of in order for someone to step on my back to take themselves higher. That is what I was there to do. I never asked if I wanted to do it or if there was another way.

I only asked where and when and for how long. So that was going from SLDN and then going into kind of the crawl of agencies. I lost myself. I lost myself deeply. I was identified by very manipulative people as a person who could help them go very far. I was taken under the wing of a lot of women who manipulated me, used my people-pleasing empathetic modus operandi against me.

So that was the path. The thing that I think started to break open that shell that had blocked my view from reality was becoming a mother. Because when I birthed my first child into the world, I had so much less room for bullshit than I did before. I physically didn’t have the energy or the time to let stuff roll off or to run around in the performative way that I had before. That began a bit of a chipping away of showing up fully for everyone.

I started to kind of fuck up. That’s right. Right? Shit started to fall through the cracks. Like when you are a person that thinks that your life will end when you let something fall through the cracks, you never let it happen.

But then when you get to a point where you start to give less of a shit, when stuff starts to fall through, you’re like, yeah, they’re pissed, but I feel better. This is interesting. This is interesting. Like I slept last night. Huh.

Okay. So that started to happen to me. And then 2018 comes around, 2016 comes around, excuse me, and sociopathic, you know who takes the White House. And I was just like, what the fuck is happening?

All of these things that I’ve been able to just push to the side and especially didn’t impact me as much as a white woman. I was just like, we are so far behind. We’re so far behind. That began to be so illuminated inside of the agency that I worked in. And like, Shama, I look back at these emails that I sent and I have them.

And I actually, I put one in the book called it my manifesto. I was like dipping my toe in this not good girl accommodating deep end, not sure what I was going to do, but like waiting to see how they reacted. And they didn’t know what to do with me anymore, because they were like, why isn’t she just doing what we told her to do? Why is she asking so many questions?

That was the feedback I kept getting. You know what? I just feel like you’re making this harder than it has to be. That’s not what he meant. Wow.

You need to pick your battles, right? And I just like, I kept hearing it and instead of going, oh, okay, sorry, I was like, I don’t fucking think so. And so that began again, this sort of waking up to myself. And it led to me exiting corporate America and starting my first company with two other women, really trying to now take what I began my career loving and feeling was my reason for being and melding it with the 15 years of experience that I had in this modicum of communications. And how could I bring that together to focus on making women’s lives better? Wow.

Speaker 2: That’s how it went down. And so many things here, but spending, you know, 15 years in something that’s quote unquote safe, right, working in a corporate job is no matter how much it kills you, we’re always marketed that it’s safe that we all know nothing is safe. But we get to hold it safe. And And there are systems that come with that and the 401ks and the ecosystem that makes you feel like your bubble is untouchable. And as long as you follow the path, you’ll get the small raise and all of that. Had you exercised any of your voice around salary negotiations in corporate America? Did you sort of think about your financial ecosystem or was it, I’m a good girl and I do my job and I sort of get what’s needed for me? How did you end up exiting this career in corporate and what was the financial journey like for you?

Speaker 3: You know, I realized that at each of these milestone life stages that you asked me questions about, you also asked me to talk about money and I didn’t talk about money for any of them. And it wasn’t intentional, but it is indicative of the fact that I didn’t know what to do with money.

I didn’t understand it. I grew up with enough and my mom made a great salary and she gave us honestly everything we wanted. So money was never a conversation.

There was no discussion around budgeting or what things cost. It was just, it was a very abundance mindset vibe, which I think there is a lot of merit to that, but there was no container or structure or education. And so I went through life thinking it’ll always be there, figure it out. And I can always just ask my mom, right?

My mom is super generous and she like, you know, we’ve been through some hard shit. So I kind of feel like quick pro quo here. Right. And so like that was kind of it. So I just didn’t learn any hygiene around finances.

None. And I know that the 20 years of my career took an absolute hit because I wasn’t knowledgeable about how to save money, how to budget, how to invest, what I should be making. I know that. And so it is painful to think about, to look at the lot of my half of my life and realize the compounding interest I’ve lost out on because I didn’t understand the value of a dollar and the value of my time, experience, expertise, energy, but I’m here now. And so I…

Speaker 2: You’re not behind. You’re right on track. It’s risking to go from a corporate job and then say, hey, I’m going to join a company that doesn’t exist before we decided it’s going to exist. And certainly walking into a startup environment where I imagine that you’re hustle and grit and selflessness are needed because all startups require you to bleed some more than others, but they all require some bloodshed. And then there’s the uncertainty of, what the hell is the money coming from?

And how are we going to survive? So how did you sort of ensure or prepare yourself or did you as you were transitioning into really what I would say is sort of this next, not even next chapter, but next volume of your life? It feels like there’s like a corporate wildlife and this sort of various stages of becoming and this chrysalis.

And then there’s like, boom, the next volume rolls out and Aaron Gallagher is out there discovering the world and combining a passion, a mission and skill sets to go out there and change things. But it’s certainly scary. So how did you start to navigate and how did you prepare yourself if at all for what the hell was in front of you?

Speaker 3: It was very scary and foreign. No one in my family is an entrepreneur. Generations of people. No one has ever started their own company. I had very little experience being around anyone that had lived that life. I was starting to befriend a lot of women who were founders and entrepreneurs. And I was witnessing their experience and I was learning from them and I was listening to the hardships and all of that. What’s interesting about my first endeavor into entrepreneurship, this first company I founded is we actually set ourselves up quite well because we got an investment from the holding company that we worked for inside of our agency to essentially take this mission that we had created and been marketing and growing for the past year and turn it into its own company. That was the path that we set ourselves on. So we received a significant investment to start that first company, which meant that we were quite comfortable. What a blessing. In theory, in theory, we were quite comfortable.

Although my co-founders, we all held the same title of founding partners. Literally, this is, I do have to be careful about what I’m saying because like my lawyer made me take a lot of stuff out. Here is what I will say. Here is what I will say.

I will frame this like this. When you start a company, you have to be incredibly clear about the roles, the responsibilities, the pay, what it means. You have to be aligned on your mission and your vision.

You cannot leave any of those things for later because if you do, they will destroy you. Remember we talked about what a great target I was for corporate America as an ambitious, empathic, driven person who is a people pleaser? That also makes me a very good person to start a company with. It makes me a very good person to start a company with. I did not demand my value and my worth inside of the company that I fucking owned. And I don’t blame myself because I was still so damaged and still healing and still so unaware of what I was worth.

But that was my journey for the next two and a half years. And so you want to talk about leaving a quote unquote safe environment for a unsafe environment. Both were unsafe for a variety of reasons. And the world tells us that safety is about money and what the check that comes into our account every two weeks. First of all, that is not guaranteed.

So that’s just one piece of it. Safety is about so much more than your financial independence and strength. It is also about what is happening for you in terms of your psychological well-being, your mental health, all of those things.

Those impact whatever that number is. So this kind of comes back to what you were talking about early, Shama, when we were talking about service. When I turned 40, which was two and a half years into the company that I had founded, I had this phrase that kept coming to me that refused to leave until I paid it the respect it was due.

And the phrase was, I will no longer abandon myself in service to others. Like it just hit me. It hit me.

It was like, it was like a big sister just saying, hey, you’re 40 now. How much longer are we going to do this? You’ve started your own company. You’ve got kids. What’s up?

How much longer? I would like you to take this phrase. I would like this to be your mantra. And I kind of was like, yeah, that would be lovely to change my life up so that that was something I could do. And I had to get to a really dark place before I finally wave the white flag.

But I did. I extricated myself and again took the next unsafe risk of leaving the company that I co-founded without a plan. But my soul at that point, saving that, saving myself was worth so much more than what my ego said, which was, do you want people to see that you fucking quit and walked away? Do you want this to be a failure? Do you want them to say, we knew she couldn’t do it? And at that point, my ego just wasn’t winning anymore.

Speaker 2: Hey, that’s so powerful. And, you know, the business divorces can often be even more devastating than romantic divorces. And I know because I’ve had both. I will say that going through a business divorce or going through a romantic divorce, I didn’t feel like I had lost an identity in so much as in a business divorce. When I felt like as a woman, you know, I fought hard to, to have the things and the identity of this title and the identity of the work and this idea that, you know, you would choose to walk away, which I did in both instances, but this idea that, wow, I no longer have that attribution.

Who am I? Right? If I’m not the head of this company or I’m not leading this thing, the business divorces, I think, can really shake us, especially when we’re so ambitious and driven and work so hard for the opportunity to be like, I did it. I did the thing. And now I’m going to have to do something for myself that’s greater than this accomplishment, which is leaving it so I can do the right thing for myself. Choosing yourself is one of the hardest things to do on this planet,

Speaker 3: especially if you’re a woman, because we are taught that selflessness is the ultimate argument that that, that is to be celebrated. So you’re exactly right. To choose yourself. Oh my God. How could you? How could you? And the other thing that you just said, which is the piece that can’t be ignored is, and to have all of that happen and be a woman, what does that story look like?

And what is the backlash there? I will tell you that when I was starting to share behind the scenes, what was happening to me with people that I felt were safe and confident that were very, very powerful women in corporate America. The message to me was just don’t tell anyone that that’s what happened.

Because if, if they know that it’s already bad enough that you’re leaving, but if they know that, that like this is happening, they’re just never going to believe that women can do this. And so like, I can’t. Sorry. I mean, fuck.

Right. Like, it’s so awful. Like that confusion of like, hold on. I did this happen to me because now I’m, now I’m getting confused again. I’m telling what I’m telling the truth and I’m telling my experience, but I’m, but I’m being told that I didn’t interpret it correctly.

I misinterpreted it. And I’m also being told that I shouldn’t tell the truth. So this is how we continue to have these experiences because we’re shamed into silence. So we don’t tell each other and then we become shells of ourselves. And then other people don’t learn from our mistakes. So they make them too. And the cycle continues indefinitely.

Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that I love about the work that you’re up to today is it’s not just about hyping women. It’s also saying we can’t handle mean girls anymore.

And, and there is no space for that. That is something that resonates so deeply because I believe that the women’s efforts, movements, like how we’ve been moving forward together, there’s underlying feeling that, well, we should support everybody, right? Every, every single person should be supported. Or why would you not?

I especially see this in politics. You know, why would you not? She’s a woman. What? You’re a woman. Like you should support the woman. It’s like, actually, no. She’s a mean ass motherfucker.

Speaker 3: And we don’t like it’s like actually, Marjorie Taylor Greene is a fucking sociopath. So no, she’s not on my team. She’s not on my team.

Speaker 2: And I think that it’s so important to highlight this because as we move forward and break down silos, and I want to talk more now about sort of everything that’s unfolding today and now and this momentum and legacy and what you’re building, because there is no space and the future of the collective is not in fiefdoms. And it’s not in laying ground and putting up your flags and creating a castle.

It’s actually around with carving each other’s torches up and moving together and sharing light and being open. And honestly, I feel like I’ve seen and I think this will become more evident over time, but there are women who are just like Trump and just like, you know, some of these other people and they’re like, wait a second, like we’re not all after the same outcomes, right? And so leveraging sort of the women’s leadership branding, right, or whatever the branding is around that needs to be.

And I think we all sort of find these places on our own eventually, hopefully, but the spirit of love and generosity and the collective consciousness, I think is so ripe for where we are today and why your messaging is being so well received all around the country, around the world as America’s number one hype woman. You also stand for being a good fucking person. So let’s talk about that.

Speaker 3: I mean, at the core, that really has to be table stakes. And there are so many women who are not good people. This has been very confusing for people when interacting with me and when witnessing kind of how I, how I operate. The response is often, how could you say that about her? Like, how can you not support her? How can you call that out?

Like, when I will say, Hey, this, this behavior is unacceptable. It’s like, what she, that’s not really very hype woman of you. And so let me be clear, not all women deserve hype. They don’t because there are a significant number of women, especially in this country, who are foot soldiers to the patriarchy. They are there to do the bidding of a centuries old system that is intent on keeping women down.

They are there to do the bidding. And guess what? A lot of them look like me. Straight white cisgendered women voted that motherfucker into office twice. White women are the largest voting block in America. And 52% of white women voters voted for Trump in his second term.

They put him in office. So don’t be confused when you have interactions in your office online at your kids school pickup, in your social circles, in your community with women who do not actually seem to have your back. They have a very different agenda. And so so much of my work and so much of this book is about identifying the difference and then protecting your peace, retaining your time and your energy and not spending it on women who do not deserve your hype. And who are actually actively working against you.

So that’s what’s going on here. And I think the easiest way to do it is how does someone make you feel? You absolutely know women’s intuition is the strongest energy and instinct on the planet. It’s why it’s why they’re so afraid. They’re so afraid because we have so much power in our bodies.

Yeah. We are told that our intuition is wrong. We are told our experience didn’t happen. We are told that we misunderstood. We were told that we are too sensitive. All of those messages are meant to keep us from trusting ourselves. And I lost trust in myself over my 20 years in corporate America and in my first company.

And I regained it as I exited and really did the work to heal and find myself again. So I can immediately now know in one interaction with a person and specifically with women, whether or not they’re safe. And I am not spending any more energy on the women who are not safe.

Speaker 2: That has been an interesting realization in my life in the last few years as I’ve gone through my own people pleasing journey and the desire to be loved and the desire to be liked. And there is nothing quite as satisfying as looking at yourself in the mirror and realizing that you haven’t self-betrayed.

It is such a gift. Yeah. You know, my husband, John and I were talking about how when you look at yourself in the mirror and you extend your hands out to give, you’re actually holding yourself, right? You’re putting your hands out and the person on the other side in that mirror is also putting their hands out. And there is this beautiful feeling of giving and receiving to oneself, right?

And it stands so different from standing in the mirror and saying, well, what about me? Right. And putting your hands back and holding it, holding back. And then guess what?

The person in the mirror holds back too. Right. And so this idea of giving and loving generously to oneself is so reflected in these really basic ways. It’s like in your mirror. In the bathroom.

Speaker 3: In your mirror. I mean, literal metaphorical. And it’s a physical mirror is a moment of reflection where you really are saying, do I like what I see? And I think that we cannot stop loathing and lusting after other women’s lives until we start loving our own.

That’s right. So we will continue to feel that way. We will continue to judge and to be jealous and envious and hate. And we will continue to want and desire and feel scarcity and less than until we deal with our own shit.

Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh. OK, so I want to talk about what’s coming up near future, but then also what’s coming up in terms of just legacy and like the unfolding of this beautiful life, Erin. So my gosh, a hype women is in the book, the movement, you are catalyzing something in this world that is that is fiercely loving and fiercely kind.

And I think that those words belong together. You can be fierce in your generosity and your love and how you show up. What is your wish for this book being birthed into the world? What is it you’re hoping to see as a result? What is the vision?

Speaker 3: Everything you just said actually culminates in one of my chapters, The Goddess of Your Dualities. And that has been the biggest coming home to myself in the past year and especially in the process of writing this book was finally accepting the duality in every facet of my life, where I can be a devoted mother and a selfish woman. I’m both.

And when I made to pick one and to ignore the other or to pretend that I don’t want one or that I only want the other, that is the disappearing that we continue to do to ourselves where we start to turn into dust in the ether. And so what I want women to feel when they read this book, I want them to feel seen. I want them to feel validated.

I want them to feel invited to make a different decision. Because the most important question that I’ve asked myself in the past year has been, is it still working? And this was big and small things from daily habits, been routines to decades long friendships and relationships and ways of working and growing my business. And in every case where the answer was no, I started to make a different choice. I love that. And I don’t think we always give ourselves the permission to consider that the thing that we’ve always done may not be the thing that we want to keep doing.

Speaker 2: That’s really, that is so powerful. And as you sit back sort of thinking about a young Aaron, maybe 103 years old, who is now at this point, likely published many books and possibly has a bronze statue somewhere with a flag, with a Hyperman flag. Oh, I love that. Yeah, I have all sorts of visions here. When you look back on this legacy, both the life you’ve created, but truly the one, the greatness that is unfolding, that is you on a consistent basis. What does that body of work taste like and feel like?

Speaker 3: First of all, the statue is not of me. Right? The statue, the statue is like, the statue is like a gaggle of women who are all like, like embracing each other. That to me is kind of, that’s what we’re going for here is this collective, this collective soft place to land for women who have needed to be so hard hitting.

To survive their careers and their lives. So what I envision and what I believe will continue to come from this book, this movement is honestly what has been inside of me for a very long time. It is this idea that we are creating an entirely new ecosystem. That’s what we’re doing.

We’re creating an entirely new ecosystem. Yes, it has to interface with the existing one because we’re here on planet Earth, gravity, all of those things. But it is not dependent on fitting into it.

It is not attempting to take it over. I’m done with that. I’m done with that work. The new ecosystem says that in this hype women economy, karma is our currency and hype is our capital. And that capital is across our human capital, our social capital, our financial capital, our political capital. And we have the ability, the permission, the responsibility, the opportunity to deploy that capital daily.

We have the ability to make deposits into one another and to make withdrawals. It is both. It is both. And when we start doing that in a more free flowing way, we are going to stratospherically, which I don’t know if that’s a word, but I just said it.

I think so. We’re going to stratospherically usurp this centuries long slog that we have been asked to wait our turn for. We’re done. We’re not doing it anymore. We are doing it on our terms, our own way, new game, new rules.

Speaker 2: I love this. All right. My final question, Erin, is this incredible community of women and also men, you know, 80% of our listeners are women. But we’ve got this hardcore 20% of dudes who are listening, which is so great. We love you, allies. What can we do to rally around you, the book, the mission, where can we find you? How can we step up to hype this shit out of you?

Speaker 3: Yes, Queen. So to your 20% of listeners who are men, thank you. We need you. We need you. Hype women is a noun and a verb. So yes, you and I are hype women and we have hype women in our lives, but anyone can hype women. So that is the responsibility of everyone is to think about shifting the spend, whether it’s time, energy, money, whatever that capital is. We need to start shifting it because it has been in the wrong hands for far too long. So that is what I want people to do is I want you to take an audit of where you are investing your time and your energy and to decide if this is really fulfilling and energizing or if it’s depleting because one is not sustainable.

To hype me to be a part of this movement, it’s really about understanding that hype is active. Silent passive support, sitting in your house going, good for her. So great.

So great for her. Right. And doing nothing, making no transfer capital, not buying my book, not making a financial, not transferring your social capital to me, introducing me to people that I should know, not using your platform to hype the work that we’re doing. That’s your political capital, human capital, not coming to me and saying, hey, I see what you’re doing. Here’s how I can help. This is what I think you should know. This is what I’ve learned. That is how we are going to make this shift together. It’s how you can hype me buying the book is going to send a message because if enough of us are doing that and we can show that this is a new way forward. OK, now we start to open doors. And whenever a door is open for me, I open 10 for other women.

Speaker 2: I love that. Erin Gallagher, you are magic and your life has unfolded in the most incredible ways to bring you here to me, to us, to this planet so that you can double down and continue to be exactly who you are. And we see you, all that you are, all that you have been, and we’re here for all that you are becoming. Thank you for being here today.

Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, for creating this beautiful community, for listening to your intuition and following the pull to bring you into the work that you were meant to do.

You are a part of creating this new transformative ecosystem, and it is not for the faint of heart. I have your back. I’m here to hype you and to continue to support all of your endeavors. And thank you for witnessing me. There is something so innately powerful and a human need to be validated and witnessed. And so I’m grateful for you.

Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Getting Rich Together. My hope is that you leave every episode feeling more inspired, more powerful and more connected. Until next time, remember you have everything it takes to create wealth on your terms.