How Your Emotions Can Effect Your Money w/ Shani Curry

It's hard to get advice from people who don't understand what you got going on and don't understand the lifestyle. If you don't show up today, you're not going to eat. They're not in the thick of it with you or haven't at least been through the thick of entrepreneurship. It's hard for people to really talk about how to get you from point A to point B if they never took the journey themselves.

The journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it? When walk to wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now. This is Walk To Wealth with your host, John Mendez.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Walk To Wealth podcast. If you're tuning in on YouTube or any of the podcast directories, make sure to do yourself one teeny, tiny little favor and make sure to give us a follow, because I don't want you to miss out on any of the amazing guests we have. Coming on Without further ado. I have amazing guests. I was able to go to Fincon in October in New Orleans and I got to meet a ton of amazing people. Honestly, in terms of the people that I've met, hands down, the best conference bar none. It wasn't even close to the amount of amazing people I got to meet this one lady named Shani that I'm super excited to bring to you guys today. Shani, for anyone who hasn't had the opportunity yet, the pleasure to get to know you, to get to meet you, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?

I assist my clients with what I would call money therapy, in terms of always being able to connect your emotions back to your money habits Things that you haven't accomplished yet, things that you have already accomplished. What does that teach you about your emotional health and where you are at this time?

That's amazing. Now, Shani, before we get into all the amazing good stuff you got going on, take us back in a time machine a little bit. What was Little Shani like growing up?

Little Shani grew up very economically pampered. I would say I've had a really, really good childhood. As we reach to the access that I have to financial resources, the access that I have to education, the access that I have to a balanced emotional environment to be raised in was really, really good. That was Little Girl Shani world. Then I transitioned into what would be my princess era that I would call, when I was in, actually, my princess Deep Rony. Once I got to college I realized that, oh my gosh, money really doesn't grow on trees. It does, but not that kind. Most of the I've been working myself backwards to get myself back to the amount of financial, emotional stability I felt as a child. Most because I feel that just largely American families really don't know how to transition their children from being children into being adulthood. I don't think that it's specifically my parents. I just think that it's a larger challenge about being able to get your children to move through the sequence of adolescents being a teenager, being a young adult, getting into full-on adulthood. I don't think that we always do a good job of that. Because of it, I would call that particular time period as being like the financial deep droning of what I would consider to be my princess era, while I'm in church college.

Let me ask you something. Let's take you back a little bit Before college. At any point in time, like middle school, elementary or high school, were you ever interested in money at all? Was money or something that you liked talking about, or did you take an entrepreneurship class in high school or something like that? When did that ever come into?

play. I got my first job when I was a sport team. I was a candy striper. I also worked for the movie theaters. I would be the person who used to pack the nachos. At that time I had the opportunity to experience what it was like to control my own money. The money really didn't have an assignment, it was just extra. I didn't really have to do anything with the money. There wasn't anything like that. In high school, I spent my time working for the newspaper, being a part of the radio station, being a part of TV. Those were the experiences that I had, not so much in what it is that you would be describing. Oh, wait a minute. I did have one ballot of entrepreneurship. Now that I think about it, I would always be the person selling the most Krispy Kreme donuts. I one time would have different type of competitions for selling different things. I would be the person that would win the competition because I was not afraid to sell that chocolate candy or go knock on doors, any of those things like that. That experience is not foreign to me in terms of delving into entrepreneurship.

That's amazing. That's pretty much like door to door sales 101 right there.

Oh man, that was like the ultimate crash course, but it wasn't so hard, I guess, because I was a child. Most children would do that. Then the other part of entrepreneurship. So now that you're getting me to jog my memory, I wasn't really thinking about it. I also grew up in a hair salon. One of my biggest entrepreneurial influences would be my grandmother. My grandmother was a cosmetologist and that's really where I learned entrepreneurship. One on one. She was able to. She had her own business and then she used that business to. She had like what's called. I come from the banking world, so she had what's called sticky products right. So in the bank, if you're a banker like when you come to the bank they don't just want you to get a checking account. They want you to get your debit card there. They want you to get your mortgage there. They want you to have your savings account there. They want you to have your online banking there. They want you to get your car loans there, because the more that you have there, the more likely that you're not going to advance in the bank and get your new one right. They call those sticky products. So my grandmother aside from her having a cosmetologist business, she also used to sell fake and then she would sell like sodas, and then she would also sell stuff for the women to be able to take care of their hair when they went home, you know. So she had all of these different ways of being able to connect with her clients on multiple levels. She also was the kind of person that would really like emotionally get to know her clients. So I guess that's why I don't just deal with the money aspects of people. I deal with the relational aspect of people. That would be something that I learned with my grandmother in terms of knowing that whatever service that the person is coming to you for is not actually just that service. You know, it's just two layers where it's also a bonding experience that they're connecting with you for. So they know, trust and like you by some degree, and then they're also coming to you for that service per se. So now that you're talking my memory, I'm thinking of all the entrepreneurial experiences that I've had, coming into the breaking and the dethroning of what would be considered my princess.

Yeah, so it's funny that you mentioned that. I feel like, for whatever reason and I'm not sure like how this came together or why this came together, but like, hair salons and barber shops are like the ultimate, you know, like environment, just to talk about life and connect with people. For whatever reason, I don't know, I go in my barber shop and I go. I mean I've been going to my barber now for almost five years. It's been a while. Every time, you know, you catch up and there's a point, once he brings a razor out, I start, I stop talking like that. That's like, hey, alright, you focus up, do your job. Like when he just like give me, like you know, my my little taper on the side. You know he was just chopping up about life and it's one of those situations I you know you really get to connect with the people that you're working with and get cut. You know it's like my barber knows more about my life than I'd say some of my friends. Sometimes I go barber shop maybe like once a month and some friends, you know I especially like the low maintenance friends that you know you're still cool and locked in but you haven't seen in a while. It's like Barbara knows more about me than they do and what I got going on. So, but to fast forward the story a little bit, you said you got dethroned in college. That's when you realize money didn't grow on trees. Well, it did, but not in the way that you thought it did when you were younger, right?

No, what was that?

culture shock like because I was just I was talking to another guy, I'm at that Fincon and we were talking about how college like being that broke college student Now you got to find ways to be scrappy and make ends meet. So what was that kind of culture shock like? And I never you heard the term economically pampered. It makes Cold for disfoil.

I Was also the only child for ten years, so I didn't get a sibling until I was ten. So I didn't have to share anything and after sharing toys, I'm sure, anything. So I kind of really have like a very exclusive, independent space to grow up in, on top of being surrounded by lots of adults who were, you know, mid-age, so they have a lot of spare change to support my projects and my ideas and to give me conversation. You know, it was just like this lap of luxury, both economically and emotionally. So when I got to college it was a lot different in terms of it became apparent that the resources that my Parents had access to well, specifically my grandmother, because she was the one who was mostly doting on me the most Largely was in credit. Was it necessarily in dollars, you know? So it wasn't really cash. So obviously, when I got to college, she was it that freedom that I once had in terms of having access to her credit card. So it felt like this endless amount of money. When I got to college that was no longer available to me. She was a lot more on restrictive on my access to the cards, obviously because I was no longer living in the home, so she needed to be able to have a little bit more control, so that my ability to go into the store and just not think about what something costs was no longer available to me. You know, I could go in rack up a $500 tab and not even think about it. You know, and that's when I was like 12, 13 that's like how I spit my teen years I just never thought about it. You know, about a pair of two, three hundred dollar jeans, never thought about it. When I got to college, I literally had to think about every single thing because I didn't have access to this endless amount of money anymore. You know, um a lot of my the individuals that I went to college with, some of their parents, they have access to different levels of resources. So I didn't have a car my first year of college, but a lot of my roommates and people that I was connecting with online, they already had a car. You know, they have like BMW, they would have, you know. So I was like, oh, wow, yeah, these are real princesses. I don't know what that was I had before. So then the law, comparison starts to come into play and that place, you know, begins to play a role. Um, the next year I was able to get a car, though. The very next year my parents was able to go ahead and give me a car. I had to help out with the penis, but that was fine, I still had a car. The way how, um? So I still went through a bit of bitterness and, just like you know, just it's like a baby having a pacifier ripped out of their hand without anybody actually, you know, telling you about this. You know, right, a passage that, for undergoing, I just felt like so alone and my independence was very overwhelming. You know, like I like the independence and the freedom of being able to come in whenever I wanted, not to have to have any accountability, but I didn't necessarily particularly care for, um, the lack of financial resources that I had access to. So, um, at that time, um, I developed like another syndrome that I'm often not proud of, but sometimes it does serve me Uh, being a penny pincher. During that period of time, I no longer had the luxury of just being mindless about picking up things in the, in the store, so I became very Cheap right when I looked at things. Now, I have to look at the price, I have to look at the cost. I never had to do that before um, so I went through that process and then, um I, because I felt so alone, you know, and so overwhelmed by being responsible. I then, um, I, started working endlessly. So I was a ra on college, so I never had to worry about Staying on campus. You know where would I go? I worked at the bookstore, so I would get this, this count when it came to my books. I was a part of student government and my student government job actually paid um, so I didn't really have to go off campus a whole lot because I would go to the different departments on the campus and just become employed through all of those different um departments. Um, on top of being ra, you get free housing. But not only getting free housing, I also got like a financial staff stipend for, you know, actually being there. So so at that time, when I went from the pinning penny pincher, I became someone who like, kind of like overworked and used work as a way to kind of like avoid my family, because I just didn't like that transition. Now, as an adult, I realized that they had their own responsibilities at their own life. They really wasn't thinking about my right passage and how to transition me from being a spoiled brad to being, you know, a young adult, like they weren't really thinking about. It's not something they do intentional. It's just that largely Americans are just not intentional about that process, you know, in terms of just weaning their children off from one financial resource to another. So, um, I've used work to kind of avoid that. I never want to come home. I just feel, um, I just felt overwhelmed by my independence, so yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean For better or for worse.

I mean at least it was like a productive and at least in some case, hobby that you picked up, right working as I are, you know. I'm overwhelmed and responsibilities. I might as well just work and make some money.

To escape.

It was like the root of it but like at least you were getting paid to escape. A lot of people find refuge and in you know addictions that aren't as productive For their well-being or the health or you know, both mentally and physically.

Yeah, yeah, thank you that. Thanks for pointing that out. So that does have something to do with the support of, just like the endless amount of support that I felt. So I never really, you know, got into, um, any types of addictions that would, you know, have any immediate consequences, you know, like drinking, or, you know, dancing, or getting into relationships with men solely for money. Um, you know, those types of addictions to kind of go from being one princess to being another type of princess, I didn't really get into that. I became my own princess to myself. I would, you know, work and you know, find ways to be, you know, economically sound. Yeah, yeah.

And so you said in high school to bring it back a little bit that you were doing like newspaper, radio, tv, local tv stuff. And then in college you said you're at bookstore. Um, student gov. What were you studying in school? Was it more so on like the media, press side of things?

Yeah, financial money, mm-hmm. So I also, I didn't. I don't have a finance degree, so I also, when I went to college, I um, I also worked on the schools news. That's one of my other jobs. Like I had so many jobs, that was one of my other jobs. I also worked for the tv station. So I got paid from the tv station the on campus tv station. That was one of my jobs. To cover events and get paid for that. Yeah, like literally. I also worked at a call center. Like I had so many jobs, like so many jobs, and I wasn't afraid. Like I, I was able to balance my classes and going to work. So, plus, because I was an ra, I got a free lunch plan. I didn't have to pay for food. Like I've been like this for a long time.

You're so up in good positions.

Yeah, I did. I've been like this for a long time and then. So I didn't have a finance degree. Um, my degree is in communications and tv. But money, that whole idea, like when you don't begin to really be dealing with the root of you know why do you make chances like still to this day, Sometimes I don't always feel like, I don't feel like underwhelmed by my financial responsibilities, Like I still sometimes can really relate to that place of just having like the road ripped from underneath me and sometimes that causes me to shrink right. So I'm always like, okay, if I don't go too far, you know, I have this level of comfort that I can maintain. Well, whereas I have accomplished a lot of things that you know a lot of people be like oh, that's great, that's really good, and you know that's great that you've done that. But I still have that internal feeling of like, okay, the work could get ripped under me again. So because of that, when I graduated from school, I most people, if you really want to become a journalist, you have to go and work in like a smaller city where you can basically make your mistakes, Like I'm from Miami who don't want to be a young news reporter on the seven o'clock news here in Miami, because if you make a mistake, everybody over the entire world is gonna know. But, like if you're like in this very small city, plant city, somewhere that nobody really knows about, you have the opportunity to reveal your reputation. You know, make a few mistakes, you know. You know grow, you know. But so the salary at that particular time, starting out, was like $16,000. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, there's no way. Like I'm not gonna be able to survive on my own doing it. I'm not gonna make it, I'm not gonna be able to take care of myself, I'm not gonna do that. So I cheated myself out of the opportunity of going and becoming a news reporter, just because I really didn't feel like I would be able to financially support myself, Whereas in I had already did so many things to prove to myself that I can't take care of myself but because the wound of feeling like I can't do this caused me to shrink and not make the, you know, the best decisions. I made good decisions, but not the best decisions. So the first job that I was offered when I graduated from school was a job working for Home Depot, the marketing department. It was for $45,000. I got paid $600 every single week. I bought my first home by the time I was 22. I used my severance check to do it, took some money out of them. 401k without any penalties Like this is the life that Shawnee can relate to right. It was a very comfortable life. I understood it, it was clear and I could travel on that money. I didn't have many expenses. It was just great for me. But now, as a full-on adult, I'm well aware on how that process of transitioning from you know, you know teenager until young adult and just not really feeling financially confident, I definitely made a lot of decisions that supported my comfort as a force to my confidence.

That's good, that's deep yeah, I feel like when it comes to and not just money, but I feel like that's what a lot of things in life a lot of people tend to do that, whether it's dreams, whether it's, you know, whether it's aspirations, business ideas, whatever asking for a raise or promotion, like. I feel like a lot of people tend to make that habit of making decisions based off where they're at right now and not where they know they should or could be. And whether it's imposter syndrome or whatever it may be, there's a bunch of different things that could probably be. You know the fact of it but it's like I think we're all guilty of like kind of selling ourselves short a little bit in one way or another. Now we're gonna say it too. It's like I remember me like when I first originally got into real estate, right, I was asked to teach social media classes, right, and that's what kind of led to AI eventually. But before, like the person who asked me, my first response when they asked me originally was, instead of saying yeah, like was I never taught a class before, right, and they weren't coming to me on how to sell houses, right, they were coming to me for social media help, because I'm about a third of the age of most realtors, and so it was just like a situation where had they not said, john, like that, there's no one you want to scheduled. I could have fumbled a massive opportunity right there, because at that point in time I ain't sell a house. I was like I got no business teaching y'all about anything, even though it wasn't my idea, it was their idea. They were coming to me asking me for something and I was fumbling the bag because I wasn't confident enough in myself. I was more comfortable not teaching the class because it's not something I've done before. So I definitely resonate with that, and that's just one example. So then let me ask you to keep the kind of the story going a little bit so for me and there's a lot of men that listen to the podcast, so when you start talking about emotions, a little bit right, we got simplified, we got dumbed down a little bit so for me, my first time ever really getting into emotional intelligence and just understanding why I feel was in junior year high school, about ish. My best friend told me about attachment styles and that was my first time ever looking into why I ticked or why I did certain things or why I operated the way I did and maneuvered the way I did when certain situations happened. And I started doing a lot of reflection and as I started learning more and more about like the emotional attachment styles and I'm a little rusty now but I started became pretty good at pattern recognition I mean, humans are naturally pretty good at pattern recognition but I started to become really aware of like all the bad habits and tendencies that I had that I built. Don't know when I built them or how they were built, but they were just almost like pre-built, I guess you could say, into me and it took me a lot and I know you say you do a lot with the emotional side of things. It's like when do you start getting into learning more about your emotional side and when did you make the tie to your finances? Because I feel like most people never at least make that second step of like okay, maybe my emotions are driving how I spend. Most people understand like their emotions control you a little bit, but no one ever tends to tie it to money. So two part question what kind of got you more into like learning about that emotional side and how to attach it to money?

Okay. So the way how I started focusing in on there has to be something to how people emotionally relate to money, because when I was a banker, so eventually I worked for Home Depot and then I went to go and sell cars for a little bit and after I sold cars for maybe about two years, I then became a banker and as a banker I had the opportunity to work in a very wealthy neighborhood as well as a very a neighborhood where the income was minimum wage, right. So I worked in afterloads and then I worked in a space where it's like minimum wage and largely in the community of people who English was not their first language, and I would just look at how much they work and how little they were compensated for what it is that they did, versus those that were more professional nurses, doctors, attorneys, all of these different spaces of financial producers and I would observe what those demographics would come to the bank floor, so largely those that had economics at the minimum wage. I would look in their accounts and they would have 40, 50, $60,000 in liquidity in their bank accounts and I would always wonder how is it that you make $8, $10 an hour and you're able to put this amount of liquid aside versus in the more affluent neighborhood. Why is it that the majority of the people came in arguing about taking over drafts in y'all? They were getting denied for loans. They wanted to prematurely apply for personal loans in order to get themselves out of some type of financial orange rut that they had gotten themselves into. So I started to look at hey, why are people at this level saving so much more money in? These people are such a deficit-based on education and employment. And that's when I started emotionalizing money. Those that didn't find money easy to come by. They just had a different relationship with money. They were more likely to hoard things and to hold on to them. They rarely overdraft their accounts simply because they weren't living some grand lifestyle there wasn't tons of dining out and came splitting the field of under the friends. That just wasn't data versus those that had a job that suggested that they should have a level of lifestyle. They were putting themselves in these financial bonds. So that's when I began to kind of like emotionalize it For my own self. I think I started to be able to do that for others before I began to do it for myself, before I started having that connection with myself. The connection that I was beginning to emotionally relate to money is once I had my first son, because I didn't move from being a banker into being an entrepreneur, which means that I had the opportunity to really spend way more time with myself. Entrepreneurship is a deep dive into self-development because in entrepreneurship you're going to fail a whole lot more versus when you are working. When you're a full-time employee, even if you are failing, you may not hit those commissions, but you're not going to not be able to eat because you're going to get paid. You're going to get that check versus when you're an entrepreneur, you have to create value and present the value that you create and people have to want to exchange with the value that you're putting in front of them. So there's a few different layers of that and sometimes you can get yourself stuck in whichever of those particular cycles about your production and things like that. And because I was then again, as an entrepreneur, taking myself back to that spot where I felt the most financially vulnerable, when I had just gotten to college and changing up the way that I had access to money because my parents were no longer affording it, I began to relate entrepreneurship back to when I felt unstable and just not in control of my resources again. And then I was able to connect those stories to see like, ok, why are you feeling so financially vulnerable? What do we need to do to answer this call again to get yourself up to speed with the goals that you're setting versus the goals that you're actually accomplishing? So that's when the conversation began to start happening more on an internal level. One because that's entrepreneurial you spend way more time by yourself and your failure is way more apparent, so you have to interface with it more often. You can't just bat it off because it's like right in your face.

No, 100%. I like to keep going like that. That bat analogy. You're like to bat it off right, maybe? Think of like for entrepreneurship. You're going to strike out a lot more in life when you're an entrepreneur, but you're also going to hit a whole lot more home runs if you stick with it.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, For sure.

And to say and then home runs. Eventually they become grand slams and I don't take too many grand slams before, like your name, start popping off real. But it's like it's that rich reward, right, the valleys are deeper right. And the peaks are higher right. And so taking that run and the thing was starting off too is that you mentioned. It's like a deep dive into self-reflection and personal development. It's like, when you're starting off, usually most people are in your circle, especially like, statistically speaking, the majority of the world are employees. So it's hard as, unless you start going to masterminds very early on and stuff like that which most entrepreneurs don't even found out about, like masterminds and conferences, until, like, they start growing a little bit more as an entrepreneur. So usually them earlier days are spent with just you in the mirror and that's it, and you questioning why nothing is working.

Yeah, why are you telling me? And?

you trying to figure out everything?

Yeah, so that internal process gave me the opportunity to start plugging into this, you know, looking at some of my own dysfunctional habits and just going and allowing myself to grow. You know I've been an entrepreneur for the last four years, so I've seen a lot of phases. You know I've seen a lot of failures. I've seen a lot of successes. I've seen a lot of miracles. I've seen a lot of deficits. I've seen almost every type of you know weather of a financial, I mean of a entrepreneur. You know, like, I've seen almost every client. You know I've seen every cash client. You know, and I know that miracles do happen. You know, I know that deficits happen because I live them. So during those different phases of who I was financially, I had the opportunity to go through all of those phases. But what I noticed from even new financial level that I have the opportunity to go through, I wouldn't call it little girl Shawnee, I would call it two-naked Shawnee. It's always there to meet me and to question me about stability. You know, little girl Shawnee really doesn't have a whole lot of questions about money because she grew up in a lack of luxury. You know she really didn't have any. You know frustrations. You know Versus when I became, you know, a young adult in college. That's the woman that I often have to interface with about you know, what are you willing to do to get to your next level? Are you going to shrink or are you going to swim, you know? So that's the girl that I have to go back to to kind of challenge myself with. You know, learn a lot from her as we age to you know, shrinking as we learn to expanding, taking risks. You know, sometimes like, okay, do you want to not take a risk again? Because, remember, you never did become that news reporter? You know, never did because you're so afraid and you're just so afraid of business and that. Do you want to have that conversation about? You know your 30-year-old self? You know your 35-year-old self, do you want to have that conversation? So oftentimes I have to push that person to. You know, go forward in that way. So I learn a lot from that version of Shani in terms of her capacity to level up as well as her capacity to kind of just like you know, bearing grant and just, you know, fill her little stuff.

Yeah, you remind me of. You know, what you said reminded me of this lady I interviewed on a podcast a few a little while, a few months ago. It was named Shrmitria. She's really a nice lady and she was talking about, like how, an entrepreneurship and just in life in general, how, pretty much how, there's so many times where we, like, we get in these situations where times start getting tough, as you mentioned, like you know, the financial distress that comes to entrepreneurship, and that's when a lot of like the stuff that we did know that was deep inside starts to pop out. And so I kind of wanted to ask you a little bit it's like when you were going through those times, especially because, you know, emotions tended to, like, control us a lot of times, and a lot of times it's not until it hits the fan that things start coming to the surface that we didn't know we had deep down. So it's like times like that, you know, how are you able to? You know, keep your, you know your money habits and your financial habits in at least where they needed to be? Or, if they even got off course, how do you get them back on track to where they needed to be so you didn't catch yourself, you know, reverting back to old habits for a long period of time.

So was I able to? So then there's your. So there's the your actual physical financial habits and then your mental financial habits that you have to be aware of. So you could be doing something with your physical habits that are not really that. There's for mental to you. You know, like you can just be saving all of your money and just putting it to the side, you know. But mentally you're also not doing anything to move yourself forward, like you're not investing, you're not learning any new skills, you're just sort of just holding on to the money and sitting in the same spot, not taking any risks, not doing anything. So meant. So physically you look like someone who is doing the right thing by just putting money to the side. Well, inflation is going to play a large role in that. What you can get for $40,000 today will not be what you can get for $40,000 in three years, right, it definitely wasn't what you can get with $40,000 five years ago, right, it's just a different world. So you have to be aware of both of your dynamics. Have to be aware of your physical dynamics as well as your mental dynamics, and your mental dynamics matter way more. So I, the way, how I pull myself out of like different levels is I have accountability, so I have to meet with my accountant, right, I have assistance on my team. I have to meet with them, and those conversations are not always. You know, hey, this is really great. You know it's like, okay, this is how you've been underperforming. You know what type of habits, what type of plan, what type of behaviors do you now want to put in place so that you can ascertain the new level that you want. Do you want to stay where you are or do you want to move forward? So one of the biggest things for me is allowing myself to have that financial vulnerability with people that you know like they're my friend and a way, but not so much. They're more so there for the accountability. So the friendship is not really the biggest aspect of it, the accountability in the mirror that they reflect back to me to show me hey, shawnee, this is where you are and this is where you've been for a while. And then there's some other partnerships that I have that you know I also have like publicist and things like that. So they send me checks, you know they pick up my brand sponsorships and you know so I may be filling a certain kind of way about one aspect of my business. But I can have a meeting with them and they'll be like, oh well, you picked up an extra $30,000 this year doing this. And then they'll be like, oh well, this part of my business may not be working, but this part of my business is working. So I would say, having accountability and relationships that will allow you to be vulnerable has played a very large role in my ability to move through some of those different levels of my entrepreneurship.

Yeah, I love that there's one of those things where, when it comes to, like you said, like the accountability piece so that's part of the reason why I started joining a couple masterminds- and as to talk about what we talked about earlier, about like entrepreneurship and starting off and it being kind of a little lonely and a journey into personal development. It's hard to get advice from people who don't understand what you got going on. Understand the lifestyle of if you don't show up today, you're not going to eat, you're not going to have nothing to you know, come back to. So it's like most people, as you said, show up and they're good, whether they give it 150% or to give it 50% or less than 50% and it's like the check cut is coming in and it's not until and a lot of people give advice on theory and a lot of ideas sound good, but it's like man, if they're not in the thick of it with you or haven't at least been through the thick of, you know, of entrepreneurship, it's hard for people to really talk about how to get you from point A to point B if they never took the journey themselves or experience.

Well, you know what I like both you know. I like having people that are in entrepreneurship share guidance. You know different experiences with me and I also like to work with because, like my team is made up of, you know, in my group of people. So I have an accountant, I have an assistant. I have a movie about four assistants that work with like different aspects and they're all at different financial levels of themselves. So what they share with me is from you know different aspects. You know some of them have not been in different years, like myself, right, so they may be first or second or third year entrepreneurs. So they're hungry, you know they have a different hunger. They're not jaded. They haven't experienced so much failure that you know maybe I'm thinking about giving up. And then there's some that I communicate with that just have like an amazing work ethic and then some just are able to really like. When I work with the individuals that work on my branding team, they have a way of, like you know, getting money with the ease. You know like they work with $100,000 contracts. You know $50,000 contract. That's their world, that's where they communicate. So I like interfacing with people from varied financial experiences as well as varied levels of entrepreneurship because, depending on the time and within this, that person is going to come in and feel, you know, one of my assistants exclusively works with me only on like take off and she's young I think she's 21 years old, but he's young and sometimes she'll just like like well, you got to just do it like this and I'm just thinking to myself about the amount of experience and how things should be done. But it should come in and shatter those thoughts because he's young, you know, he has like a different perspective. You know like she isn't as far on her thoughts and things like that so she can offer something. You know new to me that you know that I may just be missing out just because I've been doing something a certain kind of way for so long and just rigid on my ideas. So I welcome the entrepreneurial advice from you know, any level. I like to speak with people who have struggled and those who have it, you know, because you have struggled, remind me of you know young Shawnee, you know. And then those who aren't struggling, reminds me, you know, puts me in perspective of one when I'm not struggling, you know like okay, I can see a little over the riverband, or they put me in touch with success that I have accomplished before, and it can be a reminder. So it really depends on the day and time, so the right people always show up, though, so 100%, and the people that want you to show up more in their life.

How can we connect with you, shawnee? How can we find you? How can we keep up with all the amazing things you have going on on all the social media platforms and all the channels and everywhere?

So I am her empowerment on all social spaces. So you can always find me there I do offer was called a financial wellness score, where you have the opportunity to kind of look at your score. You can also help you be able to see your reluctancies, your stagnations if you're more interested in the money, the money therapy aspect, whereas in we can find your you know, young Shawnee, because I'm sure everyone has a young Donnie, a young Marquise, a young whatever your name is, fill in the blank. That person is there and you have to make sure that you're not only learning from the parts of yourself that that is successful but also can take lessons from the parts of yourself that failed. You know both of them are your friends and together you guys are able to learn to do life in a way that you're really proud of. So we can find you on anything. Person empowerment. I have a 15 million money pair concession where in there we can kind of like find your trigger space real quickly and I work with groups as well as individuals. So I look forward to helping you transcend and transmute whatever stage and level that you might be in to get to your next level.

Amazing and that's going to be in the show notes for anyone that is interested. Make sure to take her up on that. She is got to eat lunch for Shawnee and a couple other people over at Fincon and had a amazing time chatting with her, so definitely go check out the show notes. And now it's time for our famous five questions. Okay, question number one what is the most impactful lesson you've learned in life?

I was going to share one, but I wasn't money. What is the most impactful lesson? Showing up. I think showing up is really, really, really important. Like I've had the opportunity to win. I've gone to certain workshops and I could be answering questions in the audience and lay in one TV within the next 2 weeks. Right, that's actually how I got my most consistent news contribution On Sending on CBS just by showing up. I've also been in a space where that time I think I'm going to have 400 followers on on YouTube and I landed my first farm for $10,000. Sometimes I do videos. I can do 4 videos and I'll get paid $15,000. So I just say, no matter if you are entrepreneur or if you are employed, that by showing up to your next phase, oftentimes you will be seeing different scenes that you torture next level. So that would be one of my biggest lessons. Like show up. The one that I was going to share that has nothing to do with money is like don't internet dude. Like I think that's the one I didn't want to say that did I mean you do it, but I just found like, for instance, the. It is actually like everything is economics. For me, everything is economics. Like it all comes down to the bottom line. So oftentimes, like a lot of times, a lot of people will like be flirting with me and my DMs and you know they get wrapped into the fantasy or whatever they take me and I just think it's just a really, really poor use of your time. I think that for the most part, if you don't have a lot of financial wherewithal, it's better for you to date local, because what it takes to really build a solid connection with the person requires that you are, you know, interfacing with that person in the physical aspect. And if you're just not financially sound, you just don't have the financial resources to be. You know flying back and forth, you know paying for dinners and arguing about 5050 or whatever it is that you have going on. It's just not financially savvy. I think that people should really date local and oftentimes if you show up in my DMs, I always point them back like it's more sensible and more affordable for you to date a woman in your city, in your town. That's just a better use of your time. So that was the first answer, but that was like that's not how we think we do with people.

I think that's valid advice because I feel like a lot of people like Tinder and stuff like that it's starting to become more and more just like hook up apps and stuff and people get caught up in a fantasy of like, oh, it looks good, it feels good, but it's not real. It's not. It could be real, but it's like it's not real, as I said, in the physical sense. It's through a phone or whatever. So I definitely agree with that.

Yeah, and if you're going to be able to actually build a sustainable relationship, it requires some physical interaction. We're not just talking about sexual intimacy. We're talking about you know, going to the grocery store, sitting in a line together, you know, getting annoyed, you know like you need that in real time. So, yeah, that's what it's going to say.

No, 100%, All right. So next topic or next question is what is the most admirable trait a person can have the most who Not for dating Most admirable?

Oh, the most admirable. I think self reflection is the most admirable part of who a person is. So it doesn't matter so much what you have done. It matters Do you have the capacity to course correct. That's what matters more than anything, because I'm not a 10 year probably going to do something financially, you're probably going to do something humanly. That is just from an outdated version of yourself. You know your money habits, your thinking habits, your conflict resolution habits. There's this out of date. So if you have the capacity to self reflect, self reflecting, have the capacity to grow and that's financially, you know, in almost in category, just if you can self reflect.

If you had to change someone's life but you only had one book, which book would you recommend?

Thinking World Rich by Colleen Hill.

What is the legacy that you're working on leaving behind?

Oh true, so I own quite a bit of financial real estate, so I spend a lot of time with my children in helping them understand financial wealth. I feel that it's not something that they fumble. And then I also do a lot of self reflection on myself to make sure that I'm not just passing them money, but I'm also passing them emotional health in hopes of there, when they themselves are in control of the financial resources that I've been able to accumulate up until this point, that hopefully they'll have the emotional intelligence to grow them, as opposed to just wonder.

And final question for anyone that wants to embark on their walk 12 today what is the first step you recommend they take?

if they want to walk to a, to start walking right, to just start hitting that actual pain. One of the things that I've done after you and I've met is that it's a goal for me to get 10,000 steps every day, and for the most part I do. Sometimes I come like right at 8,000 on the weekend specifically, but walking and being outdoors is huge for your emotional well being and if something's very emotional well being, it won't be long before it catches up to your physical well being. On the root word and wealthy is well, so it begins to embrace wellness within your physicality Then you're going to catch up. So take a walk.

Amazing Shawnee. It was amazing having you on the podcast. I'm so glad we were able to connect that thin con and I'm so excited to continue into collab and grow with each other. Thanks again for having on.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I always enjoy speaking with you.