Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode number 105 and today’s guest is a wonderful Diane Forster.

Diane Forster [0:09]
I this is Diane Forster, you are listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:17]
Well, I can’t wait today to talk to the wonderful Diane Forster, she’s really multi-talented. Before we dive in, hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab and dive into the episodes, find the show notes, the transcript, the key points, and all the resources we are talking about. And while you’re over there, make sure you download your special gift the anniversary issue, which is a collection of all the first 100 podcast titles, including the guest’s names, as well as the three key points that each and every single podcast revealed. So you want to make sure you hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Go to the podcast tab and download your free anniversary issue. And also once you’re there, you might discover a special gift and surprise. So hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ podcast tab and download your personal anniversary issue. I’m so excited to have Diane on the show today. She is an award-winning inventor, a best selling author, a TEDx speaker, a TV host, a podcaster, an international living expert and every invention specialist. She works with clients privately and helps them to clear away mindset blocks and limiting beliefs that can actually block every single one of us from reaching our full potential in business, life, and relationships. She has a huge mission. Her mission is to see that 1 billion people who don’t know their self worth discover that true divinity, power, and purpose. Diane is also the CEO and founder of, I HAVE TODAY. She is the best selling author of, I Have Today: Find Your Passion, Purpose and Smile…Finally! and Reach Your Greatness…Top Thought-Leaders Share Their Secrets for Living an Extraordinary Life! Her life TV show along with her podcast, I HAVE TODAY with Diane Forster, and all her other products and programs how people live enriched, empowered, inspiring lives, through their transitions, their reinvent themselves. I’m so super excited to have Diane on the show. So let’s dive right in. I am so so excited to have you here, Diane, and I can’t wait to share your awesome message with the audience. Because you have this mantra or message of, “I have today.” I’m so passionate about using your time wisely following your heart to stop just dreaming and act now. Because now is all we have. So can you give us a little bit of a background, how it came that you chose that message?

Diane Forster [3:32]
Hmm, well, I’m so excited to be here, Christine, I love this. I love this forum. And I love this conversation. So, “I have today”, came about from my personal journey in my life and I had a — what looks and appeared to the outside world, like a have it all life where I was married, I had the children and the home and the dogs and the career and you know, in all of those, you know, material things, those external things that we all dream about, you know, we think that are going to make us happy. And what happened for me was, I was in a very unhappy marriage for over 20 years. And it was a secret that I kept hidden to the outside world. And while my former husband and I loved each other, we were not in love with each other. And the lack of passion and connection really took a toll on me, you know, day after day, week after week, year after year, until I finally almost knocked me down and out. And I attempted suicide in June of 2011. And it wasn’t anything that was premeditated. It was just one of those breaking moments. And so what happened is, we got home from a barbecue with some friends. And when we got in the car to go home, the fighting started. And when I got home in the house, I went upstairs and I locked myself in the bathroom. And I took out two full bottles of prescription pain medication I had sitting in there from a surgery I had the year before and I couldn’t take them because they made me so sick. But for some reason I had them. And as I had them in my hand, a force greater than me, like a karate chop my arm and knock them out of my hands all over the floor. And I heard a voice scream in my ear, “Diane, you are not ending your life this way. You need to go get help so that you can tell your story and you can help others.” And it was my awakening moment for a lack of a better word. And so I threw my hands up and I said, “Well, you need to show me the way because I don’t know how, I don’t know what to do.” And the next day I reached out for help from a therapist and said, I need help. I’m changing my life. It sent me down this path. And this quest of personal development, self-help spiritual awakening, I started really opening up to my intuitive gifts, and all of these gifts and information started getting channeled and downloaded to me. And I was healing in a really profound way. And it also opened up my creativity, which I’m already a very creative person, but really dialed about where I was writing. And I was writing poetry and stories and coming up with ideas. And I would wake up in the middle of the night with these bursts of inspiration and then have to write them down. And I woke up in August of 2013 with a poem in my head called, I Have Today. In fact, it sits in my office right there. So I see it every day. And it was, I have today to love and be loved. I have today to start fresh and new. I have today to be gentle and kind. I have today to nurture my spirit, mind and body. I have today to see things with new eyes. And it just went on and on and on like that. And when I finished writing that particular poem, I stood there, I looked at it, read it. And I said, “This is way more than upon. This is a movement. Because if I was living in this quiet hell, how many other millions of women are living this way as well?” It flashes me back to that bathroom moment and I said, “Oh, wow, this is what God was talking about in the bathroom that night.” I am supposed to go out and tell my story and empower women and have them be living their truth truly. And at the core of it all, what I discovered was, I did not love myself, not truly. And so what was missing for me was lack of self-love, and, and lack of self-worth. When I had that, aha moment, realizing that the poem was way more than a poem, and it was actually a movement, I could see, I Have Today, in my mind. I could see the whole brand, I could see the network and production. It really started anchoring in with me that I only have today. And if today is the last day of my life, when I lay my head on the pillow, if I don’t wake up tomorrow, how do I want to look back on this day, and my life in general and feel about it. I don’t want to waste a single moment. That’s what really started the whole intentional living movement for me and really living deliberately, setting intentions all day, every day, being able to create from a place of feeling fear, but doing it anyway and going after my dreams. Having that mantra every day of waking up. I have a mantra every morning that I say, which is, “I have today to love my life. Something really good is going to happen to me today. I can feel it miracles big and small. I noticed them all. Yes, yes. Yes, thank you”, and so we set the intention of this day to love my life and be open to miracles and they keep showing up. It’s just been an extraordinary, extraordinary way to live.

Christine Schlonski [9:12]
Yeah, I just love it. I did a couple of weeks ago, I did a, “Why”, video on Facebook. I talked about like my, Why. One was that one of my friends committed suicide and nobody knows why. So I don’t want to die with some music inside of me and other things happen. But it all, it’s kind of the same message that you receive in a different way. I think it’s so, so important, especially for women, and I see that over and over and over again, that they do have challenges with self-love. Because they have challenges for self-love, often they can’t show up in an authentic way that they are not really daring to show up, that if they have a business that really has an impact on the business, they as wise, a message wise, impact wise, and they’re not really sharing their beautiful gifts with the world. I think us having the conversation today is such a gift. It’s a gift for me to be able to share such a strong story with the audience. How did you then create your business, was it you had that idea, you saw the production you saw everything that goes with it, and you just started?

Diane Forster [10:37]
Well now, it was a journey. My background is, I spent 32 years working in the advertising industry and the TV sales industry. I was living in Chicago at the time. That moment of writing the poem was in August of 2013. My twins graduated high school and in the spring of 2015, so two years later. While that time was going on, I was just developing more, I was creating more, I was becoming more intuitive and more creative. The ideas, I was just really noodling with everything and writing down, I knew I wanted to write a book, I knew I wanted to speak, I knew I wanted to create my own legacy and wanted to leave corporate America at some point. I’m also an inventor. I created a kitchen product, that was just one of those things. It was just an idea that came in my mind, it’s called the Spifter. It’s the sifting spoon that you use for decorating your foods and beverages with your sugars and spices. Because I went through that process of inventing, I opened my eyes entrepreneurship. I had this experience in this background in advertising and media. Then I had this experience in inventing and bringing a product to market. Then I had this idea for what I wanted, my passion work to be. It’s sort of a combination of all of those pieces put together, which the message for everyone is there are no wasted moments, everything is teaching you clarity about something. When my twins graduated high school, I made a bold decision. I said, “I need to live the, I have today way. If I don’t go after what it is I want now, when will I do it?” Because time is never ever perfect. It’s not, we have to make it the perfect time. My bold decision was, I quit my corporate job at ABC and I walked away with no net, I sold my house. That was — we were living there for 20 years, it was my children’s childhood home, I sold everything in it, literally everything in it. I got them off to college and then I moved from Chicago to San Diego, because that’s where I wanted to be. I wanted to be at the beach, I wanted to be in California and I really wanted to change and completely start over. It was a building process, a two-year building process to do that. There was some planning in there. I knew it was coming. My mantra was, “I just want to see where this goes”, but I didn’t really know how. Like I did with the Spifter, of inventing that. I would take one step then the next step and the next step, and each day followed that guidance. It started out with hiring a business coach and getting my book written. Then creating the business of, I Have Today, and then starting started coaching and then I started speaking. It’s been an evolution and spin one thing, one step after the other to get to where I am now, which is, it’s been three and a half years since I did my reinvention and it’s extraordinary. Now the momentum is really going. I’m lucky enough to be with you today doing interviews like this, I host a TV show myself. I have a podcast as well. Both of those are called, I Have Today with Diane Forster. I’m really living very intentionally, to get the message out to the masses, about what I have today life is, what a habit all life looks like, how to live intentionally and truly, to help and support women who don’t know their self worth, discover their true divinity, power and purpose. We wake up every day and some days are more enthusiastic than others, but the ultimate, “Why, like you just said is that I have a vision and a mission. My mission statement is to see that a billion women who don’t know their self worth discover their true divinity, power, and purpose, which is huge, right?

Christine Schlonski [15:13]
Yeah.

Diane Forster [15:13]
So every day if I impact one life, or 100 lives or 1000 lives, I feel on purpose. I feel on a point that I’m moving closer towards that North Star, that I’ve got basically was downloaded to me. I mean, it was totally given to me. It’s way bigger than I am. But I move forward knowing one person can make a difference. So why not me?

Christine Schlonski [15:40]
Exactly, exactly and I just I love that. At the beginning of May, I saw an advertisement for Robert Kiyosaki event in London. I love Robert Kiyosaki. I love the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It really changed my mindset about money, about investing in your own property. But the point I want to make it, I saw the banner and it was only guys. I felt like it was so disturbing. I thought like there are so many gifted, talented women, successful entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs, and on that banner, talking about money and investing and just guys like, “What’s wrong? Where are we hiding as females on this planet?” Like, why are they at least two or three, I think it was like seven or eight people on there, but all men. I see the power of your message. I love that huge goal, and yeah, the question is, “Why not you?”

Diane Forster [16:58]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [16:59]
It’s a question for each and every other woman. Why not you with what you want to do, with following your heart and creating the lifestyle, the business that you truly, truly love? Why not you and why not now because we know that there might not be later?

Diane Forster [17:20]
Right. I speak a lot and I was just speaking the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of speaking opportunities, which I love to do because I love to be in front of a room of a lot of women who are seeking this higher purpose that they know is inside of them. They feel that pole and that calling to do more, to be more, to live at a higher level. What I tell them is, like you just said, a lot of these speaking panels are filled with men. Where are the women? Only 22% of books are written by women. Ladies, we are being called to share our story and to speak up. I think the difference between men and women is they grow up believing that they’re going to have a career, so much of their self worth is equated to their net worth and while we’re nurturers women are more nurturing in our way, we’re such givers, and we give away our power and we don’t really feel worthy for it. I know, I’ve certainly been guilty of this and still am guilty of this, that I can be giving away my value in my worth for free and not really getting the value of what I should be getting. Obviously, it’s a work in progress. I do a lot of mindset work around all of this. But so women are, my description and analogy is, we

Diane Forster [18:59]
are all beautiful, multifaceted diamonds, and so talented in so many ways. What we need to do is take all the facets of the diamond, that we are all the things that we’re good at, and skill that and love to do, and are so good at, and bring all of that forward. The old model of the way of running a business, money, mindset, creation, invention, innovation is shifting with a lot of feminine energy now that it’s not that cookie-cutter way. You can express yourself and live in a way and design your life, both personally and professionally to be anything that you want it to be. That’s so much of the work that I do, with the women that I work with, they can’t even believe. I create businesses for women all the time and earnings potential and revenue streams that they just never even thought of because they’re just not used to thinking that way, where men are more prone and opt to think that way.

Christine Schlonski [20:01]
Yeah, yeah. I love what you said earlier, I don’t know if the audience has caught on to this tiny detail, which is not tiny, which is huge. You mentioned that the first thing you did, you got yourself a business coach.

Diane Forster [20:19]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [20:20]
What I would love to point out and get your opinion on as well is, you did not feel like you need to do it by yourself.

Diane Forster [20:29]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [20:30]
And lots of women feel they have to do it by themselves. The journey takes so much longer and they get might get discouraged or frustrated. On the path of entrepreneurship, there’s enough frustration and discouragement. If you do it all yourself, are you just making it so much harder? Investing in a business coach or life coach or money coach or sales coach or whatever coach, just having somebody on your side. That is where you want to be. Then can show you what you need to do, to kind of take a shortcut, I mean, you still have to do the work. What kind of value do you see in that?

Diane Forster [21:18]
I can’t express this enough. The value of having a coach or coaches, I have multiple coaches, actually, because here’s what — my philosophy is this, “You can crawl or you can soar”, and it’s going to take the same amount of effort and that any money or time that you invest in yourself, it’s not an expense or a cost, it is an investment, is going to catapult the trajectory of your life far beyond what you can see right now at the moment. Learn from people who’ve done what you want to do, who can bypass a lot of that learning curve for you. You don’t have to figure it all out yourself. Why would you? You wouldn’t tackle on repairing the refrigerator if your refrigerator broke. If you don’t know anything about refrigerators you hire the professionals to do that because that’s what they’re skilled inverse that. It’s no different than that. Definitely, I wanted that for me, because I had never written a book before. I had never coached before. I had never done any speaking on stage before. I surrounded myself with people who have been in that industry and done it so that — and this is what happened for me. I mean, I did a TEDx talk last year, and I’m getting booked all the time to speak. I’m constantly being interviewed like I am with you today. Because I did that initial investment in myself, I will always have a coach, there’s a reason why it’s an $18 billion industry because I can’t read the label from inside my bottle. I can’t see what other people can see for me. Again, with a lot of the mindset work that I do, we all have to work on our mindset, and especially mindset coaches. Because of those negative thoughts, limiting beliefs will come back, 70% of our thoughts are negative. No matter who you are, everyone does mindset work. Tony Robbins does mindset work. Robert Kiyosaki does mindset work. Oprah Winfrey does mindset work because we’ve got to be able to tap into keeping that mindset positive. A coach will also do that for you, too. When you are having a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month, the evolution of your business, whatever the businesses are, is going to go up and down and you are going to experience entropy, it doesn’t matter what industry it is. When you hit those lows, you’ve got to have the support there to say, “Hey, let’s take a look at this. How do we want to reposition this?” I know personally, for my business, I’ve reinvented it and changed it at least four times already, just redone systems, change the operations, change the model because it keeps evolving. So you need a coach to help you, be by your side, stand there, hold you up and hold you accountable.

Christine Schlonski [24:31]
Yeah, 100%. Also, I think like, even when your business goes well, somebody was challenging you how it could even go better.

Diane Forster [24:44]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [24:45]
Because we will never catch ourselves and thinking not big enough.

Diane Forster [24:50]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [24:51]
Which I see a lot of women, they think like in a very modest way. I don’t, by modest I don’t mean like you don’t need to desire the Ferrari or the Lamborghini, that’s totally fine. But thinking like how can you impact and support more people. I mean, your way is definitely very inspiring, like 1 billion. That’s a huge number. That’s really, really amazing. I would love for people to step up even more.

Diane Forster [25:23]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [25:24]
Before we are finishing this episode, I would love to invite people to check out your website because you are sharing four amazing gifts.

Diane Forster [25:34]
Yes, I am.

Christine Schlonski [25:37]
Tell us really quickly how people can find you and what to expect when they sign up for the gift basket.

Diane Forster [25:45]
Okay, well, they can find me at https://dianeforster.com and the four free gifts. The reason why I wanted because I’m a giver. I believe that if you really want to get to know me, experience these gifts. One is a complimentary session with me that I’d love to have a conversation with you and just assess where you are and see if we’re a fit. There are three tips to get everything you want, which is a powerful, powerful piece, The 30 Day Challenge on How to Have a Better Today, which is going to reprogram your mindset for 30 days straight, it’s three-minute inspirational videos. Then the last one is a webinar I did call, The Attitude Determines the Outcome. All of these, Christine, is based on mindset practices and manifestation and that you are truly responsible for everything that’s showing up in your life. All of those are focused on language. It’s thoughts and its feelings, but it’s mostly language because our words matter so much and people have no idea what the story is that they’re telling themselves and telling others about themselves. That’s why I wanted to give so much.

Christine Schlonski [27:06]
I love it. Well, thank you so, so much. Thank you, time just flies. But I’m glad that we will have a second interview so I can get deeper with you on to your sales mindset. We can give people maybe some practical tips on how to ask for money, or how to feel amazing doing though or what might be blocking them. I can’t wait to get to the second interview with you.

Diane Forster [27:33]
Great.

Christine Schlonski [27:34]
Thank you so much for having been on Heart Sells! and I’m looking forward to continuing the interview.

Diane Forster [27:41]
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Diane Forster [27:43]
I just love Diane’s message, “I have today.” I hope you are inspired and empowered by it. Ask yourself, “Well, if I had today, what do I need to do to put a smile on my face? What do I need to do to make my heart sing? What do I need to do to give more value? What do I need to do to allow myself, to receive in return?” Hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab and tune into Diane’s episode with the show notes, the transcripts, the key points, all the resources we’re talking about, as well as all her social media links, it’s only one click away. Once you’re over there, you can also get your free download of the anniversary issue, which has the first 100 podcast episodes in it, with the titles, the name of the guests and the three key points so you can use it as a directory to really find either a special guest or a special topic so that you can tune into that episode right away and know the number and where to look for it. Thank you so, so much for being here. Make sure you tune in for the next episode because we will have Diane back on the show and we will be talking about the gift that you already have that comes to you with basically no effort. How you can set yourself up in your own life that you saw instead of crawling? Thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.