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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
This book is working me in some kind of mysterious way that is unexpected. And it is changing me, and it is working me, and it's surprising me, and it's making me grow up in all these ways, and it is such a profound ego death. Welcome to Plenty, a weekly recalibration of power, money, and safety for high capacity humans. I'm Kate Northrup, best selling author and creator of Relaxed Money, and this is where neuroscience meets ancient wisdom meets real wealth strategy. This is the sacred conversation at the intersection of money, the body, and the life you're truly here to live.
Kate Northrup:If you're ready to reimagine what's possible for yourself and for the world, you're in the right place. Let's go. So I'm writing a new book. I have been writing this book for probably three years. I feel like I should have written it and published it by now.
Kate Northrup:In full transparency, this book is working me in some kind of mysterious way that is unexpected. I wrote two previous books in a very different way. So my first book, Money, a Love Story, came out in 2013, and I got that book deal completely by accident. I had gotten invited to be part of a, you would call it, a think tank or a a gathering for the next generation of voices in spirituality and personal development, and it was a gathering put together by Louise Hay at Hay House and some other leaders at Hay House at the time. It's where I met my dear friends, the Ortners, who have a brand new book out called Rewired.
Kate Northrup:It's become a New York Times bestseller. They're the founders of the tapping solution three, siblings, Jessica Ortner, Alex Ortner, and Nick Ortner. They've become phenomenal dear friends. It's where I met Latham Thomas and so many other incredible souls who remain dear people in my life. And after that gathering, I got an email from Reed Tracy, who remains the CEO of Hay House, and he said, hey.
Kate Northrup:We'd like to publish your book. And I said, what book? And he said, well, tell me what ideas you have. And so I I emailed him. I could probably find the email, but I emailed him back a whole list of ideas.
Kate Northrup:And one of them was called I don't know what I'm doing, and you probably don't either, which I still may write that book. This is essentially a book about the fact that every single human being is winging it, and no matter how, quote, unquote, successful they look, and no matter how many status mark markers, and no matter how much they look like they have it together on the outside, every single human being is this tender, precious hearted person who is just figuring it out every day. So someday, maybe I'll write that. But anyway, then I said, or there's this other money book, and I described the money book. And he said, write the money book.
Kate Northrup:And so I did. So I got a book deal for Money, a Love Story, and I wrote Money, a Love Story in the six weeks before it was due. And I wrote it one hour in the morning, 8AM to 9AM. Every morning, would wake up. Now this is before kids and before Mike and I were married.
Kate Northrup:I actually wrote the book in 2011, 2012, and then it came out in 2013. And so I would wake up every morning, and I would do I would make my protein shake, and I would make my coffee, and I would go into my office and do a headstand first, which was my way of getting all the energy into my brain and also changing my perspective. And then I would go to my desk, and I would write for one hour. I would set a timer. I would say a prayer at the beginning of the session that I said, May I write what somebody needs to hear?
Kate Northrup:And I would just trust. And so I wrote the book in one hour a day in six weeks. Then do less came out in 2019, and the process was somewhat similar. Money, a love story sold really well. It continues to sell really well.
Kate Northrup:I get royalties every you know, twice a year. And that's honestly quite remarkable because I don't know the stat, but it's a unbelievably high percentage of books where the author never earns out their advance and where the book never sells more than 500 copies. And, Money, A Love Story has sold tens of thousands of copies. I then was asked by Hay House to write another book after Money, a Love Story, but I didn't really feel like I had anything further to say about money. And I just never wanted to be one of those authors who pumps out more books which are essentially the same book as the first book, but just wrapped up in a slightly different wrapping paper.
Kate Northrup:And so I said no. And then finally, in 2017, after I had launched my membership, the Origin membership, I realized I now had something new to say. So I pitched Hay House, do less. I was pregnant with Ruby, my second, and I had already shifted my messaging. So instead of talking about money primarily, I was talking about cyclical alignment and having more by doing less and making more by doing less.
Kate Northrup:And I had this whole membership of thousands of people that was centered around growing your business while doing less. And the book was called do less. Funny, synchronistic, magical story about that. I was a year postpartum with Penelope, thirteen months. And I flew to San Francisco to surprise my friend, Nisha Moodley, for her baby shower.
Kate Northrup:Or it was a a mother's blessing, like a blessing way. And I was staying with my friend Sarah Jenks, and it was one of my first trips without Penelope. It was like, I think I was gone for three nights pumping the whole time. And Penelope is my first daughter. And I was thinking about my next book at that time.
Kate Northrup:So it was 2016 or 2017. You know what? Now that I'm telling this story, I think I have some of the details wrong. Doesn't matter. The timeline is a bit jumbled.
Kate Northrup:But here's what happened. I was away on a trip. I call Mike up, and I said, I think I know what my next book is gonna be. And that felt like a big deal because since money a love story came out in 2013, which was at least three to four years earlier, depending on where this timeline actually falls, Hay House had been asking me for another book, and I kept just telling them no. And then there it was, the book came to me.
Kate Northrup:And I didn't tell Mike what the title was. And then I came home, and he was all excited because he had gotten himself a new vanity plate for the Toyota four Runner that he he drove at the time. Mike loves vanity plates. He pulled out the vanity plate that had just come in the mail, and it literally said, do less. So completely separate from me and my ideation about the book and completely separate from any of it, Mike had it had occurred to him to order a vanity plate for his car that said do less.
Kate Northrup:And when I came home, my jaw dropped, and I was like, honey, my next book is going to be called do less. How crazy is that? So, anyway, we knew we were on the right track. So I wrote that book in the two months before it was due in one hour a day while Penelope was napping, and I was pregnant with Ruby. I turned in that manuscript on 12/24/2017, the final manuscript, you know, final final.
Kate Northrup:And then, I gave birth to Ruby on 04/08/2018, and then Duless came out on 04/02/2019, while Penelope was three and a half, and Ruby was one. Ruby was just a few days from her first birthday. And that was do less, and that was 2019. It is now 2026. It has been seven years since I've published a book, almost to the day, like a month off, and I still haven't written another one.
Kate Northrup:And I just wanna say I am a writer. I love writing. It's one of the things I love doing the most. And many of my friends who I've come up alongside, have written a book every year since 2013. And so there is a part of me when I get caught up in my ego and the illusion of timelines and, quote, unquote, you know, competing and keeping up with people, there's a part of me that feels like I'm behind.
Kate Northrup:And I'm like, what am I doing? What have I been doing? Meanwhile, there's a much wiser part of me that is really trusting the process. So I wanted to share the answers to three questions that I think are going to help give the behind the scenes of this project, and I am reporting to you from the messy middle. This is not a clean story.
Kate Northrup:This story does not have a bow tied up around it. I'm just reporting in, hey. This book is working me in ways I cannot understand yet. This book wants to be something that is very different than my previous books, and it is changing me, and it is working me, and it's surprising me, and it's making me grow up in all these ways, and it is such a profound ego death. So if you have unwritten books sitting on your Google Drive or desktop or inside your brain and heart, if you have unfinished projects, if you have dreams that have yet to be birthed and you are in a season of resistance, procrastination, wrestling with things, if you're in the part where the item that you want to birth is still unmanifest, this episode is for you.
Kate Northrup:And I hope that me sharing the behind the scenes that feels messy and hard about this particular piece of creation is helpful in some way for you. So the first question is, what was the moment that I knew I could not not write this book? So what was the moment that I knew that this book had to be written by me, and why has it taken so long? So my answer to that question is I think the moment I knew was actually in 2023, January 2023. Mike had gotten hit by a car in October 2022.
Kate Northrup:It was 10/25/2022. It was an eclipse. And he was bicycling to his office, and he got hit by a car in Downtown Miami. It was very scary. Luckily, his brain and his spine were okay, but his leg was not.
Kate Northrup:And he still that knee still does not quite work right. And there's a whole story of that, which I'm going to abbreviate and just say him going through that accident after that was four years after he had broken out in a full body rash the moment Ruby was born, and we had been dealing with off and on chronic illness with him and accidents. He had broken this same knee a year and a half before falling off a bike. So he gets hit by a car. We had been in the run up to our first ever launch of Relaxed Money, to our first ever enrollment of Relaxed Money.
Kate Northrup:And we're, of course, shocked because when somebody in the family gets hit by a car, it's very discombobulating. We were working with a very minimal team at the time. We had done some shedding, and our team was super minimal, very scrappy. And we paused, which was a huge win, honestly, for our family because we have my my granny, Edna Northrup, who is now deceased, when she was alive, her life motto was don't ask for a lighter pack, ask for a stronger back. So in times of intensity, my family's default programming has always been to be stronger and push harder as opposed to take a break and rest.
Kate Northrup:But finally during this time when Mike got hit by a car, I had done enough nervous system healing work to rewire myself so my default response was not to buck up and just push through. I actually gave myself permission to meet the moment in a new way, in a much more sane way, and that saner way was to actually pause the launch, cancel my mastermind calls, and tend to my family's system, Tend to Mike in the hospital. Tend to my kids. Tend to myself. And I really, really trusted that even though we were on the brink of a launch and cash flow like, we needed this launch to keep things going, I also trusted that if we healed first and really practiced body first, business second, really practiced body first, bank account second, that everything would be okay.
Kate Northrup:And I had done enough nervous system healing using the very same tools that I teach inside Relax Money to be able to fully embody Relaxed Money in a time of unbelievable stress and disorientation with Mike in the hospital. It was a traumatic injury, and he had to be in the hospital for a week and get two surgeries, and the recovery was really intense. After he got home and after we got ourselves somewhat stabilized, we went into our first ever launch of Relax Money. And I have never experienced anything so easy in terms of how magnetic the launch was. We had no affiliates.
Kate Northrup:We had no ads. And just from our own organic audience, we had something like over 10 or 14,000 people join the free workshop, which at that first time, the free workshop for Relaxed Money was called money love the revival. And I did this whole photo shoot that was, like, kind of themed, like, Chicago. I played Roxy Hart, and it was like this kind of speakeasy nineteen twenties glamour Broadway revival vibe for the campaign. It was very fun.
Kate Northrup:And it was an ode to my first program, money a love story I'm sorry, the money love course, which was based on my first book, Money, a love story. And everything about that enrollment was so magnetic and so deeply aligned. And then the rollout of the program was so profound, the first cohort of Relax Money, that I knew I needed to write my next book about money. I knew that now, this was in the winter of twenty twenty three was when I was delivering Relaxed Money, I really got it. Ten years later, I finally had something further to say about money ten years after the publication of Money, A Love Story.
Kate Northrup:So I have been, quote, unquote, trying to write this book since 2023. Now we're six cohorts deep into Relax Money. This material has been refined and beautifully marinated and architected in a way. I'm so proud of this body of work, and I know it needs to become a book. But it has taken so long because I needed to become the person who could actually live this work in a new way, and I needed to have my own development and maturation around this material so that it was fully in integrity and fully aligned.
Kate Northrup:And I'm very proud of the woman I have become. I'm very proud of the way I I move in the world with money, the way Mike and I are creating our life with money, the way we've built assets for our family, and the way we do that in total alignment within the bumpers and guardrails of protecting that which matters most, which is our relationship with each other, our relationship with our children, our relationship with our bodies, and our relationship with God and the earth. So the moment that I also knew that I really needed to write this book was when I was being interviewed by my dear friend and mentor, Barbara Hewson. And she is someone who changed my life when it came to money. Her program, Overcoming Underearning, was absolutely essential for my own development, as well as her retreat, her sacred success retreat, and the book by the same title.
Kate Northrup:And so Barbara was interviewing me, and I for her membership, I think it's called the wealth connection. And I was explaining about the body, women and the body and money and the nervous system. And Barbara said, this is so good. When are you writing this book? You must write this book.
Kate Northrup:And she started following up with me quite a bit about it because in that mentor way, she just knew that I needed to do it. And I was really squirrelly about it. I was so resistant, And I just you know, I would write here and there. I would write in fits and starts, and then I just wouldn't stick with it. So that was really 2023.
Kate Northrup:And this book, I have written here and there. I've put stuff in my notes app. I've whatever. Then there's so much more to the story, and I don't wanna tell all of it. There I'm sure I'll do a part two to this, but I basically had it in my head that I wanted to go get a big fancy New York agent and get a big book deal with the top five publishers.
Kate Northrup:And so I did the steps, and I got myself the big fancy agent. And I got to feel that ego rush of of feeling chosen by, you know, someone who represents authors that are, like, you know, household names, world famous types of people. And then it didn't feel right. So I dissolved the contract with that agent, and I I went within, and I got really clear that this book wants to come into the world in a different kind of way. And I'm still not sure what that way is, but I am 99% sure that traditional publishing is not the way.
Kate Northrup:So the second question I'm gonna answer is what have you had to stop performing in order to write this book honestly? And that's really this conversation around traditional publishing versus self publishing or hybrid publishing. And this episode is not it it's not an expose on the publishing world by any means, but just high level traditional publishing is when you get an agent, and then your agent sells your book to a publishing house, and they pay you an advance in order to write the book. And then from there, they take care of the design, the editing, and the distribution. They often will do some PR and marketing.
Kate Northrup:But for 99% of authors, the PR and marketing is still gonna be up to them. A lot of authors still need to hire their own external editor because the publishing house wants a totally clean manuscript. So so it costs money to hire that external editor, and a lot of, authors also end up hiring an external publicist. So that ends up costing quite a bit of money as well. So for most authors, between getting the advance and then paying for all these other things, and then also the fact that the vast majority of the books don't even sell more than 500 copies, Writing books is not exactly a direct moneymaker.
Kate Northrup:But for me, I am a writer. More than anything else in the world, I am a writer. It is who I am. When I write when I fill in one of those forms when it says occupation, I put author. And that is the truest thing I know.
Kate Northrup:For me, I know that writing books matters. It is a timeless way to share ideas that are transformational that will stick beyond my lifetime. And I love that my books sell. I love that, you know, tens of thousands of people are walking around listening to them or holding them, they may never do my programs. You know, I don't even though having a book in the world is is great for a marketing funnel, because a lot of people who do take our programs have heard about me through my books.
Kate Northrup:The truth is the intimacy that's created when someone is reading your book or listening to your book, it changes lives. My life has been changed by many books that I have read that I I I'm not gonna sign up for that author's programs. They may not even have them. Right? So for me, writing a book is so much bigger than marketing.
Kate Northrup:It's not explicitly a marketing tool. It's a thought leadership, timeless body of work that lives beyond me. That being said, the truth is that traditional publishing is not the best way to make money as an author like myself. And so I've been looking at self publishing or hybrid publishing. Self publishing is when you just do everything yourself.
Kate Northrup:The printing, the editing, the da da da, and then you, you know, you can upload it and do print on demand with Amazon. You could do all these different self publishing things. And then hybrid is where you actually pay a hybrid publisher for a package that includes editing, design, sometimes marketing and PR, distribution, printing, all of that stuff. And they do those things, but you have much more creative control. And you also, depending on what the package is and what the agreement is, you also earn a much higher percentage of the ongoing book sales.
Kate Northrup:And in many cases, you actually can receive the buyer data so those people could join your email list and become a more intimate part of your ecosystem and and perhaps do your program. So I've been really looking at self publishing or hybrid publishing. And so to answer the question, what have you had to stop performing in order to write this book honestly? The truth is I've had to stop performing the, quote, unquote, smart, successful, upper echelon snob part of myself. I'm just being really transparent right now.
Kate Northrup:It is hard for me as someone who grew up in a publishing family. My mom has multiple New York Times bestsellers who grew up you know, my dad has an English degree from Harvard. I grew up in this family of New England academic, many letters after your name ivory tower success. And it has required a deep unraveling for me personally of my own internal programming around what authority looks like, who gets to be an authority, who gets to hold and share wisdom, and why. A little while back, I pitched an article to a very highly respected publication that I have written for in the past several times, and it was about achievement and money and the nervous system and the way our nervous system holds us back from having the kind of financial success we desire and how we can overcome that.
Kate Northrup:And this publication wrote me back and said, you we do not publish people who are not PhDs having anything to do with the nervous system or neural repatterning. And it was this moment for me of reflecting on, well, should I go get a PhD? Then I realized, no. There is nothing that I'm going to learn in a PhD program that I cannot understand through my own certifications that I've participated in, the extensive reading and continuing education that I do personally, because so many therapists, so many PhDs come through my programs and say, I was never taught what you are teaching about the nervous system and the body and the way our body impacts our behavior. So why would I go and get some piece of paper from some ivory tower to give me a stamp of approval to say you get to now know this stuff when the people who already have that piece of paper and stamp of approval pay me to take to learn the things that they did not learn in that program.
Kate Northrup:Like, it makes no sense. So it's required me to unravel the performer part that was conditioned to believe that the only thing that makes your knowledge valid is a stamp of approval from people who have decided what is valid and what is authentic information. And so I've been in this personal tug of war of do I, as someone who holds a bachelor of arts in art history right? I'm not. I have taken many certifications, including I'm trained with the Neurosomatic Intelligence.
Kate Northrup:I am trained with the Embodies, the I think it's called the Embodied Lab with many of their certifications. So I have continued my education and practice, but I haven't gone back to school to get, like, a master's or a PhD. And I don't think that I need that in order to know what I know, but I have had to wrestle, and I continue to do so with the conditioning around who gets to hold the authority. And the very system that I am calling into question, which is the system that champions the intellect over the body, is the system that's conditioned me to believe that I need some sort of intellectual stamp of approval from people who hold up the ivory tower and hold the keys and say only certain people can get in here. And yet, the very topic that I write about is about dissolving the illusions of the intellect being superior over the wisdom of the body.
Kate Northrup:And so the wisdom of my body keeps telling me, and the wisdom of this book keeps telling me this book needs to be birthed through a different way outside the ivory tower, outside the systems that have upheld this illusion of only these people and only in this way do we decide that this information is credible or valuable or of validity. And yet I know that I have to write this book and do it in a different way if it's going to fully stand for what I want the book to stand for. Thank you for listening as I externally process this process. I hope this is making sense. But, essentially, the book is about breaking free of the very illusions about the the sanctity of the intellect over everything.
Kate Northrup:And so therefore, I can't publish this book within the systems and the structures that uphold the very thing that the book is about dissolving. It's been tricky. It's been a real just a lot of grappling with it. And I'll be perfectly honest, the ego in me, the ego part of me wants to totally have the big five publishing deal, and have that stamp of approval, and have somebody in a big tall fancy New York office with fancy shoes and a fancy suit look at me and say, oh, you're good enough for this. But I also know that that's exactly what this book is helping all of us to heal from.
Kate Northrup:The idea that our power lies somewhere outside of ourselves. It's never been true. It's never going to be true. And so I continue to come back and allow the voice of my soul, as my friend Megan Waterson calls it, to speak louder or it's not even louder, but just to listen to the voice of my soul over the voice of my ego even when the voice of my ego is louder. So that's what has required me to not only write it honestly, but more importantly, to bring it into the world in the way that this particular book is asking to be brought into the world.
Kate Northrup:And then number three, what does this book know that I thought I knew already, and what did I not know that I now know when I started it? So I'll just say this, what I now know that I didn't know when I started it is that this book wants to be something different. And the book is about women, money, and the body. And it is taking so much longer than I ever would have expected. And part of that is because and I've said this a million times.
Kate Northrup:I've known it for years, but I now know it on a different level. The book is actually about power because anytime we're having a conversation about money and any time we're having a conversation about the body, we're also having a conversation about power. And so it's required many, many revelations about the nature of power and how we hold power in our bodies and how our bodies are conduits for life force, aka power, the very thing that animates us. And there's a lot of metaphor that I've needed to learn. There's an entire methodology that's been birthed that I taught at Relaxed Money Live, our live event.
Kate Northrup:I also taught it in a keynote at BBD Live, which is a conference that my friend James Wedmore puts on once a year, Business by Design Live. So those are the only places you could get this material so far, but there's a whole body of work that downloaded for me when I went to Egypt back in October around our bodies as power conductors and how that relates to our ability to actually tap into abundance and ex not only receive money, but also to experience the very things that we think having money are going to allow us to experience, which are feeling safe and feeling free. And in order to feel safe and to feel free, we have to know how to work with the technology of our bodies to plug back into source. So ultimately, this book is about women, money, and the body, but it's also about power, and it's also about God, and it's actually also about electricity, believe it or not. And it there the concepts are big.
Kate Northrup:Some of it's metaphorical. Some of it's literal. Some of it's based in physics. And then it's also personal finance, and it's also mysticism, and it's big. It's answering a lot of the biggest questions I've ever asked in my life, which is really what are we doing here and why.
Kate Northrup:So more to come, but all that to say, I'm writing a new book. I've been writing it for three years. It is working me in a way that nothing else has worked me before. I'm taking this book's lead, and I am letting my soul voice lead. I'm allowing my ego to take a backseat, and I hope that I will finish it this year.
Kate Northrup:And I hope that it'll be published in 2027. But rest assured that when there is more to tell, you will be the first to know. Thank you so much for listening. And if you're writing a book, if you're working on a big project, I hope that this helps you to know that no matter who you are, creation is intense. And while it can feel so delicious, there are some mornings when I sit in the coffee shop and I am just absolutely in flow, showing up for the muse, getting my butt in that seat, allowing me to receive the ideas, I am also struggling with a lot of resistance.
Kate Northrup:And this book is requiring me to unravel things in myself that are uncomfortable to unravel. So if you're in that same place, you're not alone. I see you. Send me a DM if you listened to this and it was helpful, and I'll keep you posted as the book continues to be written. Thanks for listening.
Kate Northrup:Talk to you next time. If you've been feeling called to write a book but just haven't got around to it yet, can't find the time to prioritize it, or just aren't doing it for whatever reason, I have something for you. Keira Brinton, who was a sponsor of our most recent Relaxed Money Live, has an incredible program called the author threshold. What I appreciate about the way Kira works is that she doesn't just talk about writing. She actually integrates the nervous system in the process because writing a book is way beyond authorship.
Kate Northrup:It's about being able to have the alignment and the expansion and the capacity to be with the expansion that comes from getting your work out into the world in a bigger way through a book. If there's a message within you that just won't leave you alone, this could be your next step. You can join Kira's free workshop at katenorthrup.com/kira, which is spelled keira. Katenorthrup.com/kira. The link is also in the show notes.