Wealthy Ones I’m all booked for the Thai retreat in September. Buying the first plane ticket now (probably tomorrow cos I just want to sleep).
No one is more shocked than me at how this just came together.
What To Do When You Tire Of Doing The Inner Work & Being Financially Responsible
One of the Money Magic students recently asked if I don't I get tired of doing the inner work and the money work.
Of course, I get tired!
Inner work is hard on most days.
I don’t always want to meditate or look at my finances or show up for Wealthy Money work.
Sometimes I want to stay and in bed and do nothing.
And to be honest, when I feel like that I do stay in bed or I hop on a plane or a scooter and go on an epic adventure.
But, as the saying goes - I always take myself on all those adventures and my problems follow me, so at some point I get back to doing the inner work.
I realized when I was heavily in debt that I could do all the practical money stuff and see some shifts, but if I wanted the major shifts, I needed to commit to the inner work and that nothing would change until I changed whatever was blocking me internally,
And this is one of the reasons I keep doing the inner work.
Why We Block Ourselves From Receiving or Making Money
I worked 3 jobs to pay for my undergrad at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
My mom was unemployed and had no money and my uncle was going through financial difficulties.
My dad could have helped me pay for university but we’d had a fight about something (can’t remember what) in my first year and I was proving a point that I didn’t need him in my life.
And since he was the only adult who could help me; I ended up working 3 jobs to pay my bills.
I won’t lie, times were hard - I barely had money for food (I would skip meals to save money for rent and transport) and was always sleep deprived.
At some point, one of my friends forced me to go to the financial aid office to ask for help and it turned out that I was on the Dean’s List and was able to get a little bit of funding for my studies.
My friends had to beg me to take money from my mother and to apply for a student loan.
I only took the money from my mom because I was at the end of my tether; I remember feeling so ashamed that I took money from my mom, like I’d failed in some way.
Even in all my financial struggles, I had a very hard time receiving money.
This inability to receive money and allow money into my life has been one of my greatest entrepreneurial challenges.
It was a huge contributor to the collapse of my first business because it’s not enough to ask for money from clients and the universe, you also need to be energetically open to receive the money you asked for.
When Your Financial Baggage Is Inherited and Is Not Your Own
When I was struggling with depression; a friend of mine asked me a very interesting question:
“How do you know that the depression you’re struggling with is your own?”
He explained that since traditional therapy hadn’t worked for me, it was possible that my depression could be from my ancestors and from 400 years of oppression.
He advised me to start connecting with my ancestors and to consider ways of healing my ancestors, at the same time I was healing myself.
It would take me years to fully grasp the power of that conversation. That conversation opened up a whole new way of healing for me and got me to start exploring inherited financial trauma.
How To Build An Authentic Brand
I often get people asking me how I was able to build a company that allows me to travel.
I think the real question people are asking is: how did I build a company where people pay me for huge ticket items like retreats and coaching without ever having met me in person?
The short answer is: branding and having a really good brand manager.
My sister, Honey Makwakwa, the founder of Sangoma Society, is my branding manager and she was one of the first people to teach me about the importance of an authentic brand when it comes to building a company.
So I invited her onto a Facebook live to share her knowledge with us.
Here are 7 powerful lessons that she shared with us about building an authentic brand:
Your Energy Is Your Currency
A few months ago, my friend Wanda, the founder of the Black Women Travel Podcast, said something interesting to me, “We can mirror a successful person and take the exact actions that they take, but that doesn't mean that we're going to get the same results that they get.”
I've been thinking about this lately, because I spent the first 28 years of my life doing what I was told would make me successful and it didn’t work for me.
I went to university, got a finance degree, got an MBA, studied entrepreneurship, wrote the 30 page business plan, got an A in the business planning class, got a board of directors and my business still failed.
In fact, I was a mess from running that business. I was stressed and had daily panic attacks.
When the business failed, I tried to get an investment banking job with all my qualifications and still couldn’t get a foot in the door.
When I decided to follow my passion and be a writer (ironically the failed business was a writing and spoken word business), I was told that it would be easier to get a publishing deal if I was a successful blogger.
So I did what all smart people do - I followed all the successful bloggers who wrote about being a successful blogger and copied all they told me to do.
I read tons of blog posts, I did exactly what the top bloggers said I should do - I studied Search Engine Optimization, signed up for blogging courses, learned how to write the right eye catching headlines, but I still couldn’t get the same results.
I’d talk about the same things they did, I even tried to write the same way they wrote and it just didn’t work.
I couldn’t grow my blog traffic beyond a certain point. I was stuck.
I felt cursed!
It took me a while to realize that people respond to our energy not our actions.