My Money Mindset Journey
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I talk about money, a lot. You may think I’ve always been like this, but I can promise you that could not be further from the truth! About three years ago I had said a prayer and asked for God to increase my comfort in talking publicly about money.
At the time, I was deep in money mindset work and a part of that work was being proximate to seeing other people hitting money milestones that I had trouble conceptualizing for myself. I was struggling with some belief issues of, "Is it possible for me? Could I do that? Could I make it happen?", and so I prayed.
A lot of my intentionality in speaking about money comes from my belief that first off, you can't change what you don't talk about. Secondly, one of the ways oppression works is it will suppress examples of success so that we normalize struggle. Yeah. Yikes. Struggle becomes normalized when you don't see examples of success. And the way oppression will suppress those examples. It will try to keep them hidden. That’s the only way it works!
When I got into the entrepreneurship space I noted how often the examples of success are white men. That even for me early on in my entrepreneurship journey, I struggled so much with claiming the title of entrepreneur, because there weren’t examples of black women entrepreneurs being lifted up. Oppression suppresses the examples of black women and the historical stories of entrepreneurship within our community, because if those stories were to be elevated, they would create belief and oppression would be threatened. It would compromise the cycle of oppression being able to continue.
So I became very diligent and intentional about sharing my money wins, because I believe black women deserve to flex because there's a lot of people flexing with fluff. I don't flex with fluff. That's why I show screenshots of, "Let me share a receipt." To be really clear, this is revenue, cash in hand. We're not talking about sales, because sales is money promised, it's not always money in hand (no judgment either way!).
And here is what I knew from my own journey and it is confirmed 300 times over that I can give you all the tools to build your business, but if your mindset is raggedy, you will self-sabotage, you will get in your own way, you will undercharge and continue to overwork.
You will be tired in your business. You will build an invisible ceiling that will keep you from, whether it's a six-figure year, a six-figure quarter, or a six-figure month. Low key, the six-figure year feels hard right now and I'm speaking this from a place of, I've been there, I know what it feels like. It feels hard because some of our mindsets and beliefs around money and the fact that we're scared to charge a certain amount are holding us back. So, we're charging $50-$100 for a consultation, when our knowledge and expertise are worth so much more. That's why six-figures feels hard, because there's still mindset work left to do.
That need for mindset work shows up every time I hear someone say "Well, what if people think I'm too salesy?" That tells me that you're afraid of what people are going to think. You're afraid of failing, or you're trying to be perfect. So, you're wasting all your time on these details that don't really matter. Meanwhile, someone is out there mediocre, making more money than you when what you really need to focus on is your mindset, your offer, and your impact.
After that prayer three years ago, I decided that I would become one of those examples of black women entrepreneurs that would help threaten oppression. That’s why you always hear me talking about money and what kind of milestones my business has hit. It’s not bragging, it’s affirmation. It’s a reminder that if I can make five, six, seven-figures in my business, you can too.
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