Walk Diva Walk
Walk Diva Walk
EP 28: Breaking Free: A Seven Step Plan Towards Financial Independence
What if you found a map to navigate the way out of your money struggles? Would you dare follow the path that leads to the life you always dreamed of? Today I'll be revealing my own journey, how I overcame my money hurdles, and how I learned to view money as a tool. I'll be shining light on the stark disparities in student loan repayment between black and white college graduates and asking some hard-hitting questions about the root of these differences. Remember, you're not alone in this struggle. Here's my gift to you - a comprehensive roadmap; seven steps that every black woman must embrace this year to break free and live her dreams. Together, we'll explore how a deeper understanding of money can propel us towards financial success.
Hey, y'all. Hey, it's your girl, dr Mary L Boy, the reposition specialist. You are listening to the Walk Deva Walk podcast. This podcast is for you, the woman, specifically the black woman, who's had enough. Enough of saying no to your kids because you can't afford it. How about robbing Peter to pay Paul, working two or three jobs just to make ends meet? Enough of running from your God-given purpose and enough of just being sick and tired of being sick and tired On this journey. With the Walk Deva Walk podcast, I will help you overcome your past, face your present and walk into your God-given, purposed future, so you can support your family the way that you desire, live in abundance and overflow. Live birth to that God-given purpose, giving birth to your dreams and desires. How about travel and experience the world in ways that you and your family will never forget? Have joy and peace so you can live. Are you ready? Let's walk. Hey, deva, hey, what is going on? Y'all Listen, I'm coming to you today to talk a little bit about me.
Speaker 1:I know sometimes you like who are you and how are you the expert, what you know about this thing? Right, let me tell you. I want to talk to you about how I built my business. Oh my goodness, it's different than a lot of people have built businesses. It's funny because when I started this journey on building my business, it wasn't quite what I had in mind that I was going to build. I had my own idea of what I was going to do at that season of my life and God just had a different plan. I built it honestly, by serving. I built it by serving. I know you like Mary. What do you mean? It wasn't about me. I built my business because I wanted to see other people succeed and win. That came across in my delivery.
Speaker 1:I built a business around money and finances and financial literacy. I built that business because I knew I struggled in it. I didn't know a lot about it. I was good with numbers and math but I had debt and my credit score was bad and all the things I said when I learned about it. Number one I wanted to come out of that space. I started learning about it and implementing things myself and I realized what wasn't told to me, what wasn't taught to me all the years of school, the years in college like nobody told me the true nature of money right, if you will.
Speaker 1:And everybody talked about having relationships with money, but when I learned that money is just a tool like a hammer or a screwdriver or drill. It's a tool. It's something that you use to receive the services, the products, the things that you need. It's an exchange. And so when you need to put a nail in the wall, you use the tool of a hammer and you bang the nail in the wall to achieve the result. If you need to screw something in, you use a screwdriver, a flathead or Phillips, depending on the type of screw. If you don't want to do it manually, you may use a drill to get it into the wall to achieve the results that you need. It's a tool.
Speaker 1:Well, when you want to purchase groceries, you need a tool called money to purchase groceries. When you want to pay your rent or your mortgage, you need a tool. When you want to buy anything, you need a tool. So it's the tool that you use, that you exchange for a product or a service. Everything is a product or a service. It falls in one of those two categories and when I stopped trying to have a relationship because I don't have a relationship with a hammer, I'm not like, oh, this is my hammer and I have this relationship with this hammer.
Speaker 1:I don't have a relationship with the screwdriver, the drill, the saw or anything. So why do I have to have a relationship with money? Once I understood what money is used for and that's all it is, it made it easier for me to exchange money for services, right? And so when I learned a lot of this, and I learned the difference between saving and investing, the differences between money management and budgeting, have all the different ways to make money and the difference between making some quick money in a season versus creating a business, a side hustle versus being the CEO of your last name, like there's so many differences and so many different components. And when I learned this and understood that, honestly, it's all God's principles right, there's all God's principles.
Speaker 1:And I looked at wealthy people and wealthy names and the wealth came from knowledge, not the things. Wealth comes from knowledge I'm going to say that again and not things, right. That's why wealthy people like he and the world are troubled now. But like good old Donald Trump Okay, back before he was president, he had been in bankruptcy. How many times he still came up and make money. Any wealthy person will tell you you can take all of the money that I have and I will have it again. It's like how? Because they have the knowledge of how to gain wealth. So so many people are chasing that bag right that they are looking for the quick fix that they are not realizing it's not the money that makes you wealthy, it's the knowledge. So once I got it, I said, oh my God, I have to tell the world, I have to tell everybody I know that we have, we have been taught lies right, that things have been kept from us.
Speaker 1:I looked up a statistic when it came to education and student loans and this is straight from the Department of Education. You can Google it and look it up yourself and it says that black students, graduates from colleges that have student loans, pays over 6 percent more of their student loans than their white counterparts, and their white counterparts pay 10 percent less. I'm like say what now? What's that number? Yeah, and that black college graduates take longer to pay off their student loans than their white counterparts. And I'm like, okay, why? What is it that they know that? We don't know. How is it that they're paying 10 percent less than what they received in loans and we're paying 6 percent more than what we had in loans. How is that possible? It's because they don't manage money, utilize money. They make money just the same.
Speaker 1:Some people work for it, like some people do stocks and bonds and all of that, and we can too, but we don't. We don't invest it. And they have learned how to do this and they have taught it to their children and their children did it. And then they taught it to their children and their children did it and they have taught it to their children. And so the generational wealth is not just that. He was a multimillionaire and he left us a gazillion dollars in a trust and we got all the money and now we're rich. See, that don't work, because when you, you know that lotto mentality. So people who get all the money and they win millions in a lottery and you follow them in the next, they do those, those recap or where are they now? Shows and they back in the project. So back in the trailer, they're broke, they're destitute. All of this Because it doesn't matter how much money you have.
Speaker 1:It matters how much money you keep, and if you don't know how to keep the money that you're making, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you have a million dollars. If you're going to have a dollar the next year, it doesn't matter. So when I learned these things, I said I want to teach other people, specifically the black community, and I created my organization and we say we're rebuilding Black Wall Street, not across city blocks, but across nations. It's an amazing organization and I just started sharing what I knew and how we can do it. And then those that I shared it with were on board and they shared it, and then they shared it, and then they shared it and, before you knew it, we had a community of over 25,000 people, men and women, 25,000 people that was getting this knowledge and understanding. Right now, every did, everybody utilize it. Everybody do what they're supposed to do. Everybody know, you know we do what we do. Okay, but it didn't matter, because for me, as long as I could serve one person, I did my job and so I needed to serve my community. I needed, I needed you all to know that it's better ways. There are better ways. There are many things that we can do and especially if we come together collectively to do it.
Speaker 1:Was it easy? Is it always easy? Ha, it is not. I'm not telling you that it is easy. I had to learn to become a CEO right, because I've never been one, so I had to learn to be one. I had to learn to rely on other people when a lot of times we, especially as women, we have that mindset of I'll just do it myself, nobody's going to do it like me, they're not going to get it right, it's not going to turn out like me, so I can just do it. When I tell you if, if you take on that mindset, you are going to be burnt out and you won't have anything. So I had to learn how to, as I say, get out the weeds and delegate and stay out the weeds in the delegation and trust those that I had around me. And I have an amazing team. I have an amazing, amazing, amazing team and so my organization is amazing and but I built it by first serving.
Speaker 1:If you've heard one of my episodes about making money and I talked about heavily hands, catering and bakery and how, when I started that I gave away cupcakes, I didn't charge for it or anything, I just gave it away and at two, three weeks after me giving constantly giving it away the order starting to come in because I had proof of concept, my food was good and they knew it was good and so now they were ready to buy. If you've ever walked through like the mall and sometimes people there and they they're giving away samples because they want you to taste the food, so you can taste them be like, oh, that's good, and they're coming back. That's what I did. I gave it away for months for free All the information, the tools, tips, tricks. I did it for free for a few months and then I created my business plan and my business model and the skies, the limit.
Speaker 1:My first year made almost $750,000.
Speaker 1:Like, who does that? Amazing right. But I gave it away first proof of concept and so it was an amazing build. I'm so proud of it. I am proud of where I am now and everything else that I'm building right now. It let me know that I could do it right, because I know you see me and you see me all confident in everything now.
Speaker 1:But I think we all go through. I don't care how confident you feel you are, how bold you feel you are or how much you feel you know, there's still sometimes that little girl in you that wants validation, that wants to know that it's okay, that wants to pat on the back and somebody else to tell you that you did good and it was good. And so when I needed that too, and on the journey, I was like who's going to listen to me? Who's going to know me? All of the doubt, all of the thinking, thinking, all of that that I know that you've gone through yourself and you could still be going through, but I'm here to tell you if I can do it, you can do it. You can't. Nobody do it like you. There's only one, mary Can't. Nobody do this like me. Nobody talks like me, nobody laughs like me, nobody does any of that like me. It's only one me. As I like to say, I'm just Mary, just Mary, just Mary. It is just me.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so I had to gain the confidence in what I knew, I knew and what I knew I could do, and how I knew I could serve, and that God put the seed in me to do this. As I like to say, I'm made for this and you are made for what it is that you have to do. So do the dog on thing, just get up and do it. And that's how I built my business Putting one foot in front of the other. Did I make all the right decisions? No, I did not get everything right. I did not make all the right decisions. I waited too late to make some decisions, I missed out on some opportunities. All the wrong, all the wrong things, anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. It didn't matter, because my success is still there. We're still here, we're still in business and more and more is being developed and coming.
Speaker 1:And so if you in this part of your life, if you think about serving who you are to serve, whatever your customer or client tell is if you do hair, do a couple of heads free so people can see your work, take pictures of it, post it, people like wow, and then here come your customers. If you can sew, if you do t-shirts, if you teach teach something free, do a free webinar, something to let people know who you are and that you have a voice and that you are an expert in your own right and you know what you're talking about. This ain't your first rodeo. Get it done and watch your business flourish and shine. And so, in simple form, I built my business through serving, and that's how every business should be built, because if you're in business just for you.
Speaker 1:You're in business for the wrong reason. The business that you're supposed to be in is what God called you to do, and he didn't call you for you. He called you for that person that is waiting on you, waiting on your product, waiting on your service, waiting on you to get your butt out your seat and walk into your calling purpose. It took me a minute to do it, but I did it and I'm glad I did, and I'm here to share it all with you. So, yeah, it's amazing. You see the smile on my face. I hope you can see it. It's a journey. It's not always easy, but it's so worth it. And my freedom, the freedom that I have, that's my result. That's for me, the freedom to be free. My, my, my. This is your girl, mary Boyd. Business, business, business. I love it, I love you and I want to do business with you. Come on, let's get it done. I love you. Ain't nothing you can do about it. Be blessed, live on purpose and let's walk All right.
Speaker 1:Divas, what an episode. Did I hit you in the head with one of those bricks? Did you go out? Did you have the ducking cover? I know you weren't running around the house checking for cameras, looking under the bed, looking out the window to see if I was watching, because I was all in your business. I was on your street and in your lane. It's okay, though. It lets you know that you're not alone. I hope that something that you heard resonated with you and, as a result, you are starting to reposition your mind so you can have the life that you want to live Now. That's not all I have for you, guys. Not just what was in the podcast, but now I want to give you a gift. Go to wwwstopdrowningandwincom. Wwwstopdrowningandwincom. To receive the seven steps every Black woman must take this year to break free and live her dreams once and for all. You will also have an opportunity to connect with our community. Again, you are not alone. The work is just beginning. Are you ready? Let's walk.