Have you found yourself in dire circumstances and wondered what might come out of it? Our guest today is Michelle Campbell, who shares how her resilience and perseverance can forge a new direction to help others through similar challenges.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
It is never too late to choose a better path.
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https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/ - You can visit our guest’s website at:
- Connect with our guest on social:
- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561259970143
- https://www.instagram.com/bluebirdmemoir/
- https://www.tiktok.com/@taxshell
- https://x.com/tax_shell
- https://www.youtube.com/@taxshell6072
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-c-1a697b318
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Michelle Campbell was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and began her educational journey in South Dakota before relocating to Atlanta, Georgia, to continue her studies. During her academic pursuits, she launched a real estate investment firm, marking the beginning of her entrepreneurial path. Over the years, Michelle expanded her ventures into various industries, including horticulture, where she founded an interiorscape company, and logistics, where she established a commercial trucking business. Drawing on the insights and expertise gained across these diverse fields, she transitioned into a career in the financial services industry. Michelle is also the author of Bluebird, a memoir that candidly explores themes of trauma, heartbreak, and the resilience found in life’s struggles.er cultures. She’s also the host of the Have Good Ripple Effect podcast.
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TRANSCRIPT
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[00:00:01] Tom DuFore: Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. As we open today, I’m wondering have you ever found yourself in dire circumstances and wondered what might come of it? What might be the outcome? During those situations, finding maybe the opportunity or a way to be thankful or grateful, with Thanksgiving fast upon us, it’s my favorite holiday and a way to find and give thanks. Our guest today is Michelle Campbell, and she shares with us how her resilience and perseverance through really difficult situations helped her forge a new direction to help others through similar kinds of challenges.
Now, Michelle was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and began her journey in South Dakota before relocating to Atlanta. During her academic pursuits, she launched a real estate investment firm and other entrepreneurial journeys, including businesses in horticulture, interior scape, and logistics companies, and even commercial trucking. She’s the author of the book Bluebird, a memoir that candidly explores themes of trauma, heartbreak, and resilience found in life’s struggles. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
[00:01:26] Michelle Campbell: Thank you so much, Tom, for having me. My name is Michelle Campbell. Professionally, I am an enrolled agent credentialed with the IRS, and so I am that tax nerd that will not shut up. I am all over this Big, Beautiful Bill. I cannot wait to educate it to everyone. I also have a nonprofit, Hashtag Stability, and we empower through financial stability. Merging my tax knowledge and financial background with just wanting to give back and educate, that’s me in a nutshell.
[00:02:01] Tom: That’s fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing that. I love your nonprofit and the work you’re doing there, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is to talk a little bit about this. How’d you end up starting this nonprofit? What led you to get into this?
[00:02:16] Michelle: I recently wrote and published a book, and it’s titled Bluebird. The book, pretty much, is the story behind the cause. This book, I put 21 years of journal entries in a book for the whole world to judge, but it, seriously, is what set me free, and then that’s when I just took off. I was like, “Oh, this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.” Everything made sense.
In the book, I talk about experiencing five evictions, four repossessions, three bankruptcies, a sexual assault, and $500,000 in debt, but by the end of the book, I discovered how all of that was purposed to get me to where I am today. Really what it was, was about being able to connect with other people. I take people along the journey.
The nonprofit, it just fell in my lap.
I started doing this on my own in 2017, my own money, my own efforts, random acts of kindness, helping complete strangers, being the angel that I wish that I would have had. I always promised myself that when I got everything together in my life, that I was going to do it on a larger level, and I just had no idea that it was going to come together like
this.
I am, indeed, a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business when I was 21, and that was in real estate investments and development. Had a bunch of little small businesses, then moved on to commercial trucking, and then finally landed in the financial services industry. It’s funny how sometimes when you’re going through it, you don’t think about the path that you’re on, the journey that you’re on, and how they’re all going to work together. You’re just like thinking, “Oh, it’s just a job,” or, “I’m doing this,” or, “This is fun for the moment.”
Then I was able to see that, first of all, what I went to school for was not what I ended up doing, [laughs] how being an entrepreneur and not having the money and the means to hire somebody like me, not having the money to hire an attorney or a tax professional or an accountant, that being self-taught and teaching me those things would eventually start earning me certifications and then credentials, and then now preaching to the world, whoever will listen to me about US tax law. [chuckles]
[00:04:49] Tom: Oh, wow. Well, one of the things we were talking about was how you help folks with financial literacy and helping work through that, having lived through on one
side of it and then coming around now to the other side, the different things you’ve learned. One phrase you use that stood out was this idea of just life transparency or present life transparency. I’d love for you just to talk about that. What do you mean by that? How does it work?
[00:05:17] Michelle: One of my aha moments– there’s been, of course, several. Now I purposely look for aha moments, I’m like addicted to it. One of the biggest aha moments was when I put everything together because the question always was, “Why is this happening to me?” I wasn’t always being reckless with money. I know how to budget. I had a budget, and I had four and five jobs sometimes. It just did not make sense.
When I put everything together and I had just that aha moment, I felt like, “I need to tell people this,” because during all that, I felt so alone. The one thing that connects us, to me the most, is the one thing that we don’t talk about. We don’t talk about money. You’re not sitting at lunch with your friends saying, “What’s your credit score?” I feel like we should, because it’s nothing to be embarrassed about and shameful about. Who knows? If you both have low credit scores, then you can do the journey together. If one has a higher score than the other, then you can help. It’s real life transparency that we need to be the most transparent about, not this mask that we put on for the world.
Last week, I think I just explained how we’re all wearing a mask all day with what you wear, where you go, and what you’re interested in. What about the internal insecurities and things that you’re embarrassed and shameful about? What about those?
Once I had that aha moment and brought it all together, I’m just like, “I have to tell the world.” That was very hard. It’s not easy being that honest, but once I put it out there, I felt years and years of just stress, weight, shame lift off in me. I just decided, “I think that’s what I’m going to do. Everybody’s saying that they’re keeping it 100 and they’re really not. I’m going to do my best to try to really keep it 100 and in present life, let people know, just because I got through this doesn’t mean that I’m never ever going to have
any problems with anything ever again. That’s just life.”
It does connect us because then whoever’s on the other end listening is like, “Oh, well, I don’t feel so alone because she’s openly admitting it. We’re on the world wide web. [chuckles] We don’t know who’s going to listen to this, but she’s openly admitting these things, so I don’t feel so bad. I don’t feel so alone. It’s not something to be so shameful and embarrassed about.”
[00:07:59] Tom: It makes me think, as well, not only feeling that you’re not alone, but that person you may be sharing that with, they might have a solution potentially that you hadn’t thought about or a connection to someone, for example, like you. They hear someone’s story and say, “You got to talk to Michelle and see what her company might be able to assist you with.” It’s just these connection points. I think that’s very, very well said.
[00:08:22] Michelle: Absolutely. I’ve, somehow, always been a connector of people. I used to get really offended because I would have different friends that didn’t know each other, but I would introduce everybody and somehow I get kicked out of the clique. [laughs] Maybe that was just where my journey with them was supposed to stop. I was supposed to introduce them for whatever reason. We’re all here to share something that we have, only compassion, honestly.
[00:08:54] Tom: One of these things you were talking about, and we had spoken about earlier, was this idea of people’s general relationship with money. And I’d love for you maybe to expand on that.
[00:09:05] Michelle: Sure. First of all, I did not pay $500,000 in debt. By the time I went through everything and called places, some places had written it off as bad debt. I only ended up paying around $100,000, but I wanted to hold myself accountable for everything that I had accumulated in this 21-year period that I wrote about. When I had to face it, because I always say that that’s the first step, just get out of denial, get your head out of the sand, and face it, that’s when I basically was like, “Wow.”
It wasn’t necessarily that I wasn’t earning enough or that my budget wasn’t working. It was my relationship with money that stemmed all the way back to being a little four-year-old preschooler that couldn’t make a friend on the first day of school. All of my mistakes, all of my habits, good and bad, all related to her, and that was that connection. It was almost like I was trying to buy friendships and buy relationships and show money. That was my relationship with money. It was sliding through my fingers when I’m thinking that I’m doing something really productive or something that I needed to do, whereas, no.
When I saw that connection and worked on fixing my relationship with money, my whole financial situation changed, because then I wasn’t going to lunch when I couldn’t afford it and maxing out a credit card, and I wasn’t going on a trip that I really couldn’t afford, to impress somebody that I probably don’t even talk to anymore. [laughs]
[00:10:53] Tom: As you help people start going through this process of understanding their own relationship and developing this transparency to say, “What is my situation for real?
What does this thing look like?” can you share a few steps or a few things you go through to help someone start down that pathway?
[00:11:13] Michelle: First is just that moment of honesty. Look your situation in the face and just being honest, admitting that you need help, that you’re in trouble, that you don’t know it all, and that that’s all okay. For me, my first step, that step of honesty, meant opening mail that I hadn’t opened in years because it was a credit card bill that I knew I couldn’t pay. I’m thinking I’m trying to, “I’m barely surviving, so everything that I’m paying for is survival-related. It’s shelter, food, gas, utilities.” I didn’t have time to pay a credit card that was already turned off or didn’t have access to.
That was my moment of honesty, just knowing that there was a problem, opening all that mail, making a spreadsheet. That’s the hardest step, honestly, because it’s a step that sometimes we’re not willing to take. It’s easier to not check your finances on a weekly basis and see where you are, not write a budget and just try to do it in your head, not think about emergency savings. When you get honest, you have to face those things. The numbers don’t lie. That’s why I love numbers so much, it’s black and white.
[00:12:29] Tom: That makes a ton of sense. It’s funny that you say the numbers don’t lie. It always reminds me of my wife. Her favorite subject has always been math, because you can get to an answer. There’s a solution, and the numbers add up, and either it’s right or wrong, and you can figure it out. You had mentioned writing a book that you’ve put together. I’d love for you to share, how can someone get a copy of your book? How can they reach out to you if they say, “Well, I like what she’s saying, I’d like to learn more, get on your newsletter for this new news you’re going to be sharing about what in the world’s in the Big Beautiful Bill”?
[00:13:01] Michelle: I have a personal website that is bymichellecampbell.com, and that’s B-Y, Michelle with two L’s and Campbell spelled like the [unintelligible 00:13:08], dot com, and everything is on there. My financial services company, Tax Shell, and the nonprofit, Hashtag Stability, access to the book link, Bluebird, which can also be bought on Barnes and Noble and Amazon site, but that is on there in addition to everything else that I’m working on. I have my hands in lots of different things.
[00:13:31] Tom: Perfect. Well, we’ll make sure we include that in the show notes here for people to connect with and learn a little bit more about what you’re doing as well. This is a great time in the show, Michelle. We make a transition. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go. The first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey? Something you learned from it.
[00:13:50] Michelle: To me, the miss was believing other people’s opinions at a early age that changed how I thought about everything. I wish that I would have known that I had a voice and that I could speak up. I wish I could talk to four-year-old me and tell her, “Never silence yourself for anybody. If you believe in it, you can achieve it. Who cares what anybody else thinks? Do what you got to do, do what you want to do. Live for yourself and not for the approval of others.”
To me, that was the miss. When you’re presented with the question, “Do you have any regrets? Was there anything that you would do differently?” part of me wants to say yes, but then part of me wants to say no, because I wouldn’t be here, or I might have been, it just might have been a different route. I don’t really have any regrets, and I don’t really feel like those are misses. I just wish that I would have had more self-love and self-awareness while I was going through everything that I was going through, because that was the hardest part. I think that that’s what made me feel more alone than the actual devastation of some of the circumstances that I was in.
[00:15:10] Tom: Thank you for sharing that. I agree. That’s why I always love asking the miss question because we all have misses. We learn from those lessons, of course, which leads to the next question, which is the other side of this, a make or a highlight or two you’d like to share.
[00:15:24] Michelle: This is the morning of my fourth repossession. I was on my way to work. I knew that they were coming to get the car eventually. I didn’t know which day they were coming. They don’t tell you. I was literally on my way out the door, and I’m like, “Okay, my car’s gone.” I was forced to stay at home. I could not go anywhere.
I immediately, cold turkey, put myself on this spiritual fast because I just didn’t know what else to do. I’m like, “I’ve been trying to manifest, I’ve been saying prayers, I’ve been writing positive statements.” I had post-it notes all over my house, mirrors, I’m trying to do anything, get inspiration from– I was just like, “Okay, this has to stop,” because I was on this hamster wheel of ups and downs, constantly in and out of this cycle of debt.
Put myself on this fast. I started making this timeline, and for the first 13 days, just with making that timeline, trying to figure out, “Where did this start? How did I really get here?” and writing down dates and times and what I was doing, that’s when it all started started coming together. By the last day is when I was like, “Oh, I was supposed to go through this for a reason, because the thing that I really want to do is help other people. What’s more transparent than having experienced the same thing that the very people that I want to help may be experiencing or will experience or trying to get out of?”
It all came together. It felt like I went to sleep, and when I woke up, everything was different. It was almost like a bad dream for 21 years. I think that to sum that up, the highlight is just really defining my purpose. I feel very fortunate for my age. I’m 45, which I’m young, but it’s not that old. I feel really blessed that I know that I am doing what I’m purposed to do.
I would hate to be way older and have not figured it out. It would have been great if I could have figured it out earlier, because then I’d be a lot further ahead in wanting to successfully help everybody, but everything happens when it’s supposed to. Apparently, there were things that I needed to experience first. Probably had a lot to do with maturity. [chuckles] That’s my highlight is just knowing that I’m living and doing what I know that I’m purposed to do, and that I found that out in the midst of my rock bottom.
[00:18:17] Tom: Thank you for sharing that. Let’s talk about a multiplier you’ve used to multiply yourself personally, professionally, or organizations you’ve been a part of.
[00:18:27] Michelle: I’m part of a ton of organizations. I don’t want to individually name them because I don’t want to forget anybody. What I do to multiply myself or to duplicate myself is I like to teach. When I started college, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, which explained my bad grades elementary school through high school, but then all of a sudden I’m earning A’s.
The way that I’m forced to learn has me understand even the most complex things like [unintelligible 00:19:00] tax law, to where the average person can understand them. That’s how I’m duplicating myself, by implanting my knowledge into somebody else that I know is repeating it. It’s almost like I’m creating my own chain reaction from the conversations that I have.
I’m putting everything in writing. I have a blog, but I am in the middle of creating newsletters and e-books. I always say I’m adding people to the team. When I was talking to this recruiter that’s helping with the hiring process, I said, “I don’t care what skills somebody has. I can teach them what they need to know.” That is my multiplier, is just being able to– Most things, especially finance, I think that that’s why we shy away from it, seem so complex and they’re so intimidating. They use all these big words that no one understands. It’s not that hard, a lot of it.
I think that, like I said, the way that I learn has given me the advantage of being able to explain it in a simpler context. I know that the way that I’m explaining things, other people are repeating because it’s sticking in your head. It’s almost like that song that you can’t get out of your head.
[00:20:24] Tom: Thank you for sharing. The final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
[00:20:30] Michelle: I always talk about stay in your lane. We hear that constantly. I know that a lot of us have fallen in, at one point or another, with keeping up with the Joneses, but stay in your lane, whatever that is. Find out what it is that you like and what you love on your level. “Why would you want $1 million if you really didn’t need $1 million?” type of mindset. What makes you happy? Having stability around it.
I really feel like financial stability is everybody’s foundation, no matter if you make $10 a year, $10 million a year, $100 million a year. If you aren’t financially literate, you do not have that financial stability. That can make or break you. When you don’t feel like you can pay your bills or that you’re earning enough to live the life that makes you happy, where you’re not competing with anybody, that causes depression. You don’t talk to anybody about it because you don’t want anybody to know. I really feel like that’s what success is, is living your life on your level that makes you happy and being financially stable within it.
[00:21:46] Tom: Michelle, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
[00:21:52] Michelle: I am super excited about our new tax law. It intimidates a lot of people, but I find it absolutely fascinating. If anything that you’ve heard on the news seems too complex or you do not understand it, my financial services company, we are in the process of putting out newsletters and e-books that totally explain everything. Consultations with me for now are free. They won’t be like that forever. [laughs] To talk to me for 30 minutes, even if you don’t know what you want to talk about, that is finance-related, it’s free on my website on taxshell.com. I would be happy to talk to anybody, especially about the new tax bill.
What I’m more excited about is explaining the comparison. Before getting credentialed and getting all the certifications that I have, I was self-educating myself, so I am able to follow tax laws back for 20 years and compare, “Remember in 1998 when we were doing this, and then it changed in 2000, and then it changed.” I am a wealth of knowledge to talk to if that is of interest of anyone, and we would probably exceed my free 30-minute consultation because if we’re talking about tax, I don’t care how long it takes. [chuckles] That’s just one thing that I want to throw in.
We’re a really small community, but we’re out there. If you find somebody that loves tax, even if they’re not the ones that help you during the tax season, be their friend.
[music]
[00:23:39] Tom: Michelle, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. Let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when she talked about being more than $500,000 in debt that she had accumulated over 20 plus years and found a way to pay it all back or work out an arrangement. She said the thing that she had to do was just face it. Even though it was the harder way to approach it, it was still the right thing to do, so I love how she chose to approach that.
Takeaway number two is, now through those struggles, she is able to help others with financial literacy. I thought that was great. Takeaway number three is when she said she learned to stay in your lane. She said, “Find out what you like, what you don’t like, what makes you happy. What are you interested in?” She found that for herself and has pursued that. Now it’s time for today’s win-win.
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[00:24:40] Tom: Today’s win-win is a lesson that I took from the interview with Michelle. It’s really that it’s never too late to choose a better path. That’s really what I take from that. It’s never too late to choose a better path, to learn from decisions that you’ve made in the past, and to really think about how your struggles and the perseverance that you have to go through is really a great learning lesson and things that you can take from that. I thought that was a great lesson.
That’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. Remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise your business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com where you can schedule your free, no-obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
