Episode #25: Money Trauma & Business: How Your Past Shapes Your Financial Future

This podcast episode elucidates the intricate relationship between one's past financial experiences and future monetary outcomes, emphasizing the significance of addressing financial trauma. I share my personal journey of having built a multimillion-dollar business in my twenties, only to face devastating bankruptcy shortly thereafter. Through this narrative, I explore the profound impact of my financial history on my current mindset and entrepreneurial endeavors. I delve into the necessity of fostering a healthy relationship with money, underscoring that past failures do not dictate future success. Ultimately, we advocate for a persistent, proactive approach to financial management, encouraging listeners to embrace their unique journeys towards financial resilience and mastery.

The exploration of money, its intricacies, and its psychological implications forms the crux of this enlightening podcast episode. I share my personal narrative of entrepreneurial success followed by a significant financial downfall that led to personal bankruptcy. Through this lens, I aim to elucidate the profound ways in which our past financial experiences shape our current mindset and approach to business. The discussion navigates through the labyrinth of financial trauma, self-doubt, and the arduous journey toward financial recovery and empowerment.

I delve into the pivotal role that resilience plays in overcoming setbacks, emphasizing that one's financial history need not be a determinant of future success. I advocate for a transformative approach to one's relationship with money, encouraging listeners to reframe their narratives and to embrace their financial realities with a sense of agency. By sharing practical strategies and mindset shifts, I provide a roadmap for listeners to cultivate a healthier relationship with money, thereby enabling them to pursue their entrepreneurial aspirations with renewed vigor and clarity.

Additionally, the episode addresses the necessity for sound financial practices and the importance of strategic planning in business. I urge entrepreneurs to adopt a proactive approach to money management, highlighting the significance of budgeting and revenue goal setting as essential components of sustainable growth. The overarching message of the episode is one of empowerment, underscoring that regardless of past mistakes, it is entirely possible to rebuild and thrive in the world of business.

Takeaways:

• In this episode, we explore how personal experiences with financial trauma can significantly shape one's approach to money management and business success.

• The journey of entrepreneurship often entails overcoming past failures, where resilience and determination become essential attributes for future growth.

• It is vital to cultivate a positive relationship with money, as one's mindset directly influences financial outcomes and overall business performance.

• We emphasize the importance of strategic financial planning and accountability in ensuring sustainable business practices and personal wealth.

• Through sharing personal anecdotes, we illustrate that bankruptcy and financial hardships do not define one's future potential for success.

• The podcast highlights the necessity of continuous learning and adaptation in business, underscoring the importance of reevaluating strategies when faced with challenges.

Link notes: https://cart.kreativedigitalmediainc.com/ai-work-week-slayer/

TRANSCRIPT:

I'm Kara and this is Design your Dream Life, the podcast for high achieving women who are ready to grow with intention, lead with clarity, and create success that feels as good on the inside as it looks from the outside. Here we build freedom first, businesses designed around your values, your vision, and your actual life.

Each week I'll bring you practical strategies, mindset shifts, and creative tools that will help you simplify, systemize and scale in a way that feels aligned and sustainable. We do purpose, we do clarity, and we do strategy that supports your life, not consume it.

Your dream life isn't just a possibility, it's a framework and you get to build it. Are you ready? Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of the Design your Dream Life podcast. My name is Kara.

I am so excited you're here today. Today I'm doing off scripted. I love playing with the podcast of like scripting myself and not scripting myself.

And today I just felt like when I was mapping out all of the topics, today we're talking about money, drama and business. So how your past shapes your financial future. And I was like, you know what?

I feel like I have so much financial trauma that I could just go and just download all the things that have happened to me, how I work through them, where I am today based on all of it. So for those of you who do not know, my story is I created my first multi million dollar business in my 20s and I lost it all before 30.

And so I created that my first wealth bucket in real estate investing and I lost it all in a horrific, traumatic way, which I don't need to go into a ton of detail, but it dragged me into personal bankruptcy. And I remember at the time just thinking like this, this was the end. And I was definitely wounded.

Like, I definitely had the mark of like, maybe I'm not supposed to be an entrepreneur, maybe like, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough. All of the things that played into my head.

And I played small for a while after the bankruptcy, like even trying to, it's really interesting because I did learn the skills.

So back in 2008 when I lost everything and I was in bankruptcy, I couldn't make any money because my husband had already was already making more than what we were allowed to make living in bankruptcy as a family of four. And so his wages were already being garnished. So that's when I really dove into more digital marketing.

I had a background in website design and multimedia design, but I really dug into like website forums and just learning Digital marketing.

And so here's what's crazy is that even though I had done a whole lot of personal development, I really just found myself in a rut and I knew that I had to fix my relationship with money. Like, and so it's so interesting because when people are like, oh my gosh, she went bankrupt. I'm like, I went bankrupt.

Not because I, you know, went and bought things that I couldn't afford. I went bankrupt because I invested everything in a business. And the business, it didn't pan out, it didn't turn out.

But then what that made me think is, is that I am not a good entrepreneur or I'm not good with money or I don't know how to invest properly. And what is crazy to me is like, even with my real estate background, like I invested a ton of money, you guys.

Like, I remember when we were at the seminar, the real estate sales seminar, I think we held the record for the amount of credit cards we used, which was seven, I'm seven credit cards, by the way. And we spent over $30,000 in our 20s. Had no clue. Like, it was just so crazy.

I wish going back, I would have taken that money and invested it in property instead. Because I think you would. I think there's, there's something to be said for having a mentor for sure.

But when they're so high ticket, like sometimes you should just invest and start going, like, start investing into things and start, you know, there's a lot of free or, you know, free resources by going to the library, buying books, buying more affordable things. I think sometimes people can sell you on this result that you get so wrapped up around.

And then at the end of the day, I've just been with so many high ticket people who have not delivered.

And what is crazy is in that scenario, from that real estate training, almost everyone I had kept in contact with lost all their money, actually all went bankrupt. So here's what is crazy and I really want to tell this story because I'm like, here you are thinking, I'm going to invest in a mentor.

I'm going to invest in my knowledge and in my education. I've been sold this, you know, bag of goods and you go and you do it and you learn all the things and you think, okay, this is amazing.

And then you get through the next mindset hurdle and you actually start taking action, like fearless action, even though you're so scared. And you take action, you take action and then all these fires happen and all of this stuff happens.

And this is Also, by the way, why I love digital business, because, like, I lost millions of dollars and in digital real estate, that just. That's not going to happen to you. You know what I mean? That's why I love digital business.

I'll say it over and over again, like, so what if you have to pump in $5,000 for X amount of funnels before you finally find the funnel?

That is way cheaper than trying to open a McDonald's franchise or any other type of franchise or any type of physical business or any kind of real estate. Think of a down payment, a 20% down payment on anything, right?

And so anyway, so here we were and we soaked up all of the knowledge we did, and so many people lost all their life. And for us, we felt grateful. So this is also silver lining. Where is the gratitude in all of this? We were in our twenties. We could rebuild.

I know people back then who lost all of their retirement, and I just felt so sorry for them because they were in a spot where it's just like they waited so long in their life to finally invest and they took a huge risk and the risk didn't pay off and it really crippled them. So that's the one thing that I was super grateful for. But here is what is crazy. Two of the instructors even had gone bankrupt within a decade.

Within a decade of us taking the classes. One of them, I think, well, I know my personal mentor who I fell in, like, he was just.

I loved him and we were so, like, we did have a friendship, but he ended up dying of a heart attack.

And I actually think it was because of stress, because of the financial stress that he was under because he got a whole bunch of investors and it just, it all went really, really bad. And so I will say, like, after all of that, I was just really. It opened my eyes to really investigate, like, my internal beliefs.

And also through all of that, not only did we invest in real estate, we invested a lot into personal development.

And I think it was the personal development tools that allowed my marriage to thrive during that time, allowed us to survive everything and come out stronger. But I will say, even with that, it took me a long time to recover, you guys.

And sometimes it will take you a little bit to recover if you have trauma. But I will say this, I think determination is the key.

And I think what you need to understand is, like, we weren't taught money, Nobody was taught money. And so you have to go and navigate this journey and be committed to it. And I wanted to be better with money. I over Leveraged.

Like, the reason we went bankrupt is because we used stupid investment tactics that allowed us to over leverage. And then when hit the fan, we were so leveraged we couldn't do anything about it except collapse. And I'll tell you, you'll go down like dominoes.

Like, it goes down super fast when you over leverage. And for us, we had to rebuild in bankruptcy. And so I had to even learn, like, how are we going to rebuild our credit?

And you know, we took one person at a time. I did my husband first because he was the primary breadwinner at the time, and just we had to do a lot of.

Well, I did a lot of research, a lot of reading, and, and I will tell you that my relationship with money is so much stronger now. And. But even now, like, sometimes I fall into patterns, old patterns.

So I think even when you're working on your money beliefs, when you are working on growing your wealth, there is still old patterns that will creep up into your life and just kind of bring you back down. And you have to have an awareness around it. It's something that I'm consistently working on.

The people in my circle, we're always consistently working on.

You know, when we talk about growing our business, when we talk about our profit and our revenue, we also talk about like our personal wealth and also our personal beliefs around money. You know, if. If you are constantly saying, and. And I hear this from a few people I was talking with recently that like, it's really hard right now.

Business is really hard. This is really hard. And I'm like, yep, yeah, it is. And in my opinion, you have two options.

You either lay down and die or you keep going as an entrepreneur, that those are our options. And I think one of the reasons why I'm so resilient is that I've just been knocked down a lot. And that is just so embedded in who I am now.

And it wasn't naturally, like, embedded in me. Like, I literally had to work on it and I literally had to.

So if things are hard for you right now, if money is a struggle, if the business isn't generating the revenue or your ads have tanked or all of like any of those things, being able to get a new perspective and pull back and be like, okay, how do I look at this with fresh eyes? How do I come back and do something different? How do I repackage an offer or redo the messaging?

I literally just did this with an offer myself that was tanked. It had completely tanked and I completely gave it A new angle, a new hook, all of this stuff. And, and then it went from. And it was a one time offer.

So that means it was in a funnel that was like after they purchased, it's like, hey, you get the special offer. So it was converting at like before 1% maybe. It was so bad, you guys. And I was like, okay, we need to repackage this.

And so we repackaged it and then now it is crushing it at 33% conversion. And so why am I sharing this with you when we're talking about money? Because it's all part of the mindset, right? It's all part of all of this.

All of this is the resilience and also the openness to be able to think about money in a different way. To be able to say like, okay, money might not be great right now, but I'm going to keep working at here. What are my goals?

And revisiting my goals, revisiting my belief that money flows to me all the time. Like money is constantly coming to me and I firmly believe that. And magically it does.

And so even in those hard times, being able to hold the faith and hold the vision that I know I am a creator of money. I am making money and my past, my past does not dictate my future. My past is not a dictation of my future.

And being able to also be responsible with your money, you know what I mean?

There are so many business owners I know that just blow through their money and I am, I budget in my personal life and I have an allocation calculator that I have personally for me, I've never sold it, I've never given away. Actually that's not true. I did give it away a few years ago to when I had a small group, like an inner circle type.

And I did, the first time ever, I did give it away to them. And I remember getting a voxer from one of my students that was like, dude, this is mind, like this is just so game changing for me.

It's mind blowing. I'm like, yeah, this is what I personally use. Like I have an allocation. So like I have.

This is what I'm expecting my revenue and it calculates percentages. Like this is how much tax should be paid on a corporate side, this is how much personal tax should be paid.

This is how much my operating cost should be. Like all of these things and it kind of breaks down, it breaks down my owner, like the owner pay and all of that stuff.

And so I think being able to expect money plan Money and like, be a good steward of it is something that is so important.

I think if you are just flying blind and you're not really aware of the money, you're just like kind of showing up in your business and you're like, oh, the numbers are the numbers. And like, I really want to encourage you to slow down and start planning your months and forecasting them.

And of course they're not going to be consistent, but like, depending on you get a rough gauge, you know what I'm saying? Like, you can, you can get a rough estimate in which you play with. And then you, you.

What I do with my numbers is like, I have a rough estimate and then I adjust as the month goes on, right? And so I want to encourage you guys to embrace it all. I want you to embrace the messy, the messy money. I want you to embrace the messy thoughts.

I want you to be able to look at money and say, you know what? I am a good steward of this. Like, I, I do deserve money and I deserve a lot of money. Like, I deserve this.

And I want you to rework your mindset around money and do whatever it is that feels good to you. What is your minimum, what is that minimum goal you want to hit of your daily revenue or monthly revenue or weekly revenue?

And hold that in your, like, hold that in your head. Like, I do. I have income goals in which I'm just like, yeah, this is like my daily revenue.

Like, and even when I'm launching a new project, I'm like, okay, like, I want this funnel to hit, you know, a thousand dollars a day or $2,000 a day or $4,000 a day. And this might be, you know, a client funnel or my.

Like, I set these goals and I really hold those intentions and I keep working until I can hit there. And once you do get there, you also need to know that money comes and flow. Like, I'm gonna say this again.

So money comes and goes and it ebbs and it flows. And I feel like I have become a MA of the ups and downs of money, you know what I mean?

Of being able to ride the waves and being able to know that no matter what, I am a master at money, I can create money. And I think those are the things that you need to remind yourself.

No matter the trauma, no matter the past, I don't care what has happened to you in your life.

If I can come from bankruptcy and come back and create multi seven figure businesses for other people, create multi seven figure business for myself, like you can too.

There is to me, honestly, I feel like when I listen to people talk, it's like one of the things that make people more successful than others is, honestly, number one, your ability to show up, to have your own back, to keep going no matter what. And working on that mindset of being like, listen, I. And having that belief in faith and just knowing, and keep taking consistent, persistent action.

And when you do, when you keep showing up and you keep doing that persistent action, you will turn a corner. You will. I promise you. And so whether you're trying to break through to your next income level or whether you are in a.

In a season where money sucks for you right now, either or. I want to encourage you.

I really, really want to encourage you to just stay the course and pull back and think, what can I do to repackage something or re look at something that's not working to maybe fix it? Right? And when we start asking ourselves those questions on what can I do to turn this around? What can I do to fix it? That is when magic can happen.

All right, my friends, I hope you have enjoyed this episode today. I hope you have a magical week, and I hope that I have inspired you just a little to focus on your money mindset.