Making Money and Financial Empowerment

Financial freedom is something that we all want, but might not know how to get. In this episode we’re talking to Melissa Rogers from Self-Made Mama about how to make work fit the lifestyle we want after having kids. It can be really hard to step out of the caregiving roles we feel like we need to be in, but doing something we love and being able to make our own income with the flexibility we want can be really empowering!

Throughout this chat, we’ll talk about the taboos around money and childcare, and the super important shifts in our mindset that can help us to grow and succeed. Financial empowerment isn’t just about money- it’s about us having the power to do what we want, and make money the way we want to. Melissa is not only a business owner, she’s also a mom, and she gets the struggles we often face. This was such an interesting and informative chat, so make sure to go give it a read and listen, and I’ll see you over at the UM Club Facebook page after to discuss!

Think this sounds like something you want to read and listen to? Make sure to sign up for the UM Club! There’s new topics every week and so many great guest speakers. Also check out our 7 Day Free Trial to really sample all the things we talk about!

Guest Expert – Melissa Rogers

Melissa from Self-Made Mama is here to show busy moms like you how to start and grow an incredible online business that allows you to live life on your own terms- without all the tone deaf “girl boss” advice that completely ignores the practical responsibilities and mental load you’re already carrying. She’s an entrepreneur and online business coach, that brings weekly deep dives into the marketing strategy, money-making mindset, and simplified business management that will unlock the business you want, and the life you’re dreaming about.

In This Episode We Talk About

00:20 – Who is Melissa?
07:54 – What challenges are women facing right now in terms of money and money mindset?
14:11 – What options and encouragement can we give new moms who are going back to work?
19:07 – Our mindset around childcare and how to change it.
27:30 – The taboo around money.
31:20 – Changing our mindset on money.
39:28 – Where to find Melissa!

Watch the Video

Listen to the Audio

Resource Links

Join the UM Club!
UM Club Facebook page
Melissa’s Instagram: @SelfMadeMama_

Self-Made Mama
The Self-Made Mamas Podcast
Work Less, Make More – A Chat With Laura from @bsquared.social
Making A Living Out of What Life Throws At You with Andrea Galbreath
Body Image and Business
Stay Woke Not Broke with Alison Tedford

Read the Full Conversation

Hello and welcome to another episode inside the Unapologetic Moms club. I’m your host Jannine MacKinnon, and I’m very excited to be welcoming Melissa Rogers from @SelfMadeMama_ to talk all about making money and financial freedom. So welcome, Melissa.

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks. Melissa has been my business coach for well over a year now. She’s amazing in so many ways. And so I’m just excited to have her here to share her knowledge, and just encouragement and empowerment around women making money. So Melissa, why don’t you share a little bit about who you are, what you do, and why you’re so passionate about this topic!

Well, thanks for having me here. It’s kind of a full circle moment, it’s pretty cool. It’s been really amazing to watch you grow this and pivot and develop this brand. So very proud of you, very excited to be here. 

So a little bit about me, my name is Melissa, obviously. I am from kind of the same region as Janine. So I’m from just outside of Vancouver, that’s where I live right now. And I started my business after having my first son. So I worked in corporate project management before then, which was a very high demand, long hours, kind of very as we perceive corporate America – it was actually an American corporation operating in Canada. And so I had my son, and the plan was always for me to go back to work. So put him in daycare and go back to work. And at the time, I was on a junior salary. So like most people in our part of the world, that would have been a large portion of my salary going to childcare, which wasn’t ideal, but you know, it would have worked. 

And then what happened a few months after I had my son is that due to a really significant family crisis on my side, we ended up having my three teenage siblings move in with us. So we had a four month old, four- or five-month-old, a 10-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old, basically overnight. And within a couple months, Child Services let us know that they would be staying with us permanently if we would have them. And that’s when everything changed. Because they had come partway through the school year, they all had to be in different schools, we were trying to maintain their activities to give them more normalcy, obviously, you know, this is quite a traumatic time. 

We realized that I was going to have a hard time going back to my corporate job. My husband worked in a law enforcement position with the government at the time doing shift work, so there was very little flexibility on his part. And so I was going to have to be the one to flex. And I went back to my employer – and this is a role that I could do mostly from home – and so I kind of pitched that and said, “hey, could I have some flexibility? This is what’s happened in my life. This is obviously an unforeseen crisis, did not plan to have four children by the time I came back from maternity – like what, what can we do?” 

And they basically told me to get bent, they were like, “if you can’t do the job the way you did it before you left, then you cannot have the job,” which was a really big wake up call for me. I’m someone that has always, or up to that point, had always kind of thought like, you know, sexism in the workplace is only an issue if you make it an issue. And I had really put my head in the sand because I was determined to have that corporate career, and not to let that kind of misogyny stop me. And as soon as I became a mom, it was immediately apparent that that wasn’t going to be possible anymore. 

And so these kind of work policies – obviously I expected to have to do my job in full. I wasn’t expecting accommodations in that way. But just the kind of brick wall that I came up against – a lot of conversations happened with HR, and with my director, that kind of made it very clear that they valued me significantly less now that I had so many caregiving responsibilities, and that they consider me a liability and not an asset. Whereas prior to getting pregnant, I was an asset because I was young, and on my way working up the chain, right?

And so that was a really harsh realization for me, that I’m literally just a tool for this corporation. And when I’m not as useful anymore, I’m completely expendable. And do I want to spend the rest of my working life like this? And is it even possible at this juncture, right? We’ve got three teenagers that we’ve got to get to all different places, a one-year-old has got to go to daycare. 

And that’s when I decided I was going to work for myself. And so I started doing a little bit of copywriting, I knew how to build websites from doing blogging for years. Started out doing copywriting, realized I really didn’t like doing that for other people, Self-Made Mama and pivoted to doing websites and branding. And from there, it kind of just took off. I had a really good understanding of how to build a professional looking brand and how to conduct business. And so I was able to replace my corporate income almost immediately from my business. 

And very shortly thereafter, people started asking me, “how are you doing this?” And people started coming to me and saying, “I’m freelancing, I’m copywriting, I’m a graphic designer, I’m a virtual assistant, I’m all these different things.” And this was in 2016/2017, so the online business space was not what it is now, back then. 

But you know, a lot of other moms were really struggling. So I started a Facebook group, and I literally would go live every Thursday night with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. And I would say, “this is what I’m learning this week,” or “this is what I’ve learned in the last couple months. And this is what’s working for me. And here’s what I recommend for you to grow your business.” 

And it was totally free, I had no intention of doing anything with it at that time, other than offering community and support because I knew I was kind of struggling as a mom, doing this, running this business, and running my family. And I could see everybody else struggling as well. So I thought, well, I’ll just make a place for us to all come together. Fast forward a couple years after that, and it had totally overtaken my Done For You business. 

And so for the last two years – I probably should have gotten clear on those dates beforehand – for the last two years I’ve basically been a business educator full time. And Self-Made Mama is now a multi six figure brand. And you know, we have hundreds and hundreds of clients all over the world. And they’re all people like you, they’re all hard working moms who have a dream, have an ambition, and are wanting support to make it happen in a realistic way that really takes into account the struggles that we are going through uniquely as working moms.

And that’s what I love about a lot of your content and everything too, is how real it is and understanding of the unique challenges that moms face. Because there’s lots of business people out there where it’s really clear that they’re not necessarily the primary caregiver, and they don’t understand those unique challenges that come along with it. It’s like, “why don’t you just work more?” Well, at the end of the day, after the kids go to bed, my brain is mush, and I’m just not as productive. And so you do a lot to help women really understand those and give them tools to help with that, too. 

So I know you’re really passionate about it, let’s talk about the challenges women are facing right now, around making money, money mindset, all that stuff.

How many hours do you have?  

Yeah! We’ll try to keep it under one haha.

So we’re at a really unique time in history, right? We have a time of unprecedented opportunity. So basically, if you have an internet connection right now, you can make money, from wherever you are. And that’s not to say that it’s easy, it’s not to say that it’s simple or that every every venture, every idea, is going to work. But it is possible. 

So we have this kind of opportunity that women in previous generations just did not have access to, particularly women with children and women with caregiving responsibilities. So we have this opportunity. But with that has come this kind of overload of responsibility as well. So I believe, prior to the pandemic, that we were in a place as a society, particularly in North America – I find this very different in Europe, in most European countries at least, they have a very different approach to all of this. But here in North America, our economy relies very, very heavily on unpaid labor from women, particularly women with caregiving responsibilities, and on small businesses. 

I don’t want to get into all the economics of that today, because I’ll probably get it wrong, it’s been a while since I did my degree! But you know, we relied very heavily on those two things. And in the last couple of years, because of the pandemic, those two demographics, who often overlap as well, have been so severely impacted. The pandemic has really – the burden of carrying our society and our economy through this pandemic has been placed on working mothers, and it’s too great. The systems and the supports were not in place, prior to this happening, for us. 

And so what we’ve seen is a mass exodus from the workforce. This crisis has – there was a crisis before, I think that’s the wrong language. But this pandemic has put wedges into those cracks that were already there and split them wide open. And you know, we’ve seen over 2 million women leave the workforce just in the US – we don’t even have that data in Canada, right now. But over 2 million women, that’s insane. And I believe the statistics are showing that like 90, 95% of them are women with children, right? Why would you need to otherwise, right? 

So if you have a caregiving responsibility – and again, if we look at that through an intersectional lens, it is affecting heavily your white suburban women with high household incomes, but even more so it is affecting anyone that has any kind of a barrier, anyone that’s facing a systemic barrier, anyone that’s facing a racial inequity, anyone that’s facing systemic poverty, cyclical poverty, generational poverty. All those things make it so much harder for those women to reenter the workforce. And again, our governments and our society are doing almost nothing to support those women in reentering the workforce. 

So then, how do they create financial autonomy? How do they become financially self-sufficient and contribute to their households? You know, we’re in a place now where in most places in North America, a single income is not quite enough. With inflation, with the rising cost of living, obviously, where you and I live, it is astronomically expensive to live here, and most families cannot survive on one income.

So what is the solution there? Right? How do we bridge that gap? Women with caregiving responsibilities want and need to create financial abundance, or even just to survive in some cases, but the workplace still in 2022 is not set up to support that. Quite the opposite, in fact, in most cases. 

So I think that’s where entrepreneurship comes in. Because for me, it was the only viable option, we absolutely needed two incomes. I don’t come from a family where there was any sort of support to fall back on in that regard, and my brand, Self-Made Mama – a lot of people don’t like the term self-made, because it can be misleading, right? Obviously none of us is entirely self-made, we do have different supports, and different things that impact us, throughout our journeys, that get us to the results that we’ve created. But when I say self-made, I mean there’s no backup plan, there is no safety net, like we got to do this. And most of the women that I work with are in a similar position, where they have to make it work. 

And so they’re going to. But entrepreneurship is how we have been able to do that, you know, whether that’s just freelancing, doing little bits of work here and there, or whether it’s actually building a brand and a company. Entrepreneurship has been sort of the plan c, it’s not viable for us to be working mothers in a labor force that doesn’t value our caregiving responsibilities, and expects us to work as though we don’t have any. And it’s not viable for most of us to be just caregivers, financially. And for many of us, we don’t want to. For me, if it was viable financially, I wouldn’t want to just stay home, I would want something else as well. And that’s true again of the majority of women that I work with. And I think that we deserve both. So society at large, and our governmental structures, are not able to give us both. To me entrepreneurship is how we get that, that’s how we have our cake and eat it too. 

Yeah, that’s how we have the flexibility. That’s how we have the control to be able to create what we want, both with making money and our lifestyle that we want as well. And like you said, we should be able to have our cake and eat it too, in this day and age. 

So how about for women who are maybe in their early days of motherhood and feeling disempowered in those different work situations, deciding whether or not they should go back? What kind of encouragement can we offer them, what kind of options?

I think it’s important to note that first of all, starting your own business is not the only option. Right now, we actually have a labor shortage. So if you are a skilled worker, the world is your oyster, you can shop around for the kind of employment that best suits you. So I think first of all, understanding the power that you already have, is really important. If you are a highly skilled person, particularly if you have skills in the tech sector of any kind. But really, if this is across the board right now, like we are experiencing a major labor crisis in North America. 

So any kind of professional skill or higher level skill is going to be really sought after in the workplace, and you are in a position to shop around, and you’re in a position to negotiate the terms of your employment and the compensation for your employment as well. So I’m not an expert in that, that’s not what I do in my business. But that’s really important to note as well. If you want to have a job, you want to have a career where you’re working for someone else, right now you’re in the driver’s seat. So shop around and play hardball and get what you need out of your employment, whether that’s working from home some of the time or all of the time, you know, whether that’s you need more compensation, and to work less hours. Employers are not in the power position anymore, you are. So be really cognizant of that, if that’s the path that you want to go down. 

And then, I think, if you’re looking to generate your own income, if you’ve decided that you don’t want to go back to a workplace, then I think it’s really important to start thinking about it, if you can, start thinking about it and start planning before it becomes a financial requirement. Because the reality is that when you first start out, most people do not generate a full time income right away. Like that’s definitely an exception to the rule. So I think it’s really important to plan ahead and think about what it is that you are going to be able to bring to the marketplace. And where you can source those first kind of contracts, right? And the easiest place to start is to look at what you were doing for your employment and find people that are looking for that on a contract basis, because you will get paid more.

And it’s an easy way to get your foot into entrepreneurship and freelancing without all the friction of coming up with a brand and getting a website and all this kind of stuff. So you can literally search for remote contracts, you can search for short term contracts, you can look for people that are just looking for kind of hourly, or package work. And that’s how you can cut your teeth a little bit, doing it for yourself and generate a bit of income that way. And figure out if that’s even something that you want to be doing. Maybe you really like doing that, you just like doing it on your own terms. And that’s perfect. Now you have a business. 

But maybe you absolutely hate doing it, and you need to pivot, but at least you’ll have the cash flow coming in to give you that flexibility. So I would say that’s kind of your early stage task, is to figure out how you can do what you already know how to do for financial compensation.

Okay, how about the mindset stuff around all this? Because that can be a really tricky thing, too. I know what comes up a lot is childcare costs. And oftentimes, we as women and mothers think our income that we’re bringing in needs to cover the childcare costs. And so what’s the point? And I know you’ve got lots to say about that!

Yeah, so I believed this too, I operated on that basis. And I think it’s really important to understand that that perspective, this idea that, as a woman, it is your job to either make enough to cover the cost or make it worth it for your children to be cared for by someone other than you, or to do the caregiving if it’s not, that is rooted in some like serious patriarchal bullshit. And it’s hard to recognize that at first, because it just naturally feels like it’s your responsibility. And especially if you are starting a business, it naturally feels like it’s your business’s responsibility because you’re not yet generating income to cover that, to justify the childcare that you need. 

But the reality is that your partner, if they are going out into the workforce and making money by being employed, or you know, maybe they have their own business or whatever. The only reason they’re able to do that is because of your unpaid labor and caregiving. And I think, as a society, we deeply devalue caregiving. And the thing that shifted my mindset the most was employing nannies. So nannies are not cheap, you know, you have to pay them above a living wage in order to get someone good. And obviously, in our case, we really valued having someone that we can sort of add to our family, essentially, and make sure that all of their needs are met and that they feel valued, and that they’re not getting burnt out and all that kind of stuff. 

But I realized that while I was essentially hiring someone to replace me in the hours that I needed to work, I realized how much, as a society and as individuals, we have undervalued caregiving work. And it’s because we undervalue women’s work, we undervalue women’s labor. And these are obviously like staying home and caregiving, which are traditionally – not in all cases, but traditionally, that’s what women have taken on the majority of. 

21:35 – 24:10 were cut, picked back up at 24:10

So when we were looking into hiring a nanny, that’s when I really realized how much as a society and as individuals and women that we undervalue our own labor, right? Like we consider caregiving this kind of default thing. And even if you look at the childcare crisis that we’re experiencing in many parts of North America right now, a large part of that is because ECE’s, early childhood educators, are underpaid. They’re making $15 or $16 an hour where we live, that’s not a livable wage here. It’s absolutely not enough to live on. And so we are making even these women who are professional caregivers financially dependent on somebody else. 

And so, this is all part of this overarching issue where we undervalue caregiving, and therefore when we need caregiving, in order to do things that are not caregiving as women, we feel that responsibility to just absorb that labor. Because in our minds, it’s not paid labor. 

Yeah, absolutely. 

And it creates a real disconnect. I remember having a coaching call with you about this. And kind of saying to you, “you don’t have to make the money first. The only reason your spouse is able to go out and make money is because you are providing unpaid labor to facilitate that.”

Yeah, and we’ve had lots of conversations about this. And I think it probably took me more than a year, and we had a really great society coaching call. And that’s where I really had an aha moment. And that this really is a shared responsibility. And the big shift for me in that mindset is, yes, we may not be in a place where we feel comfortable paying for childcare. But we can still approach this in a teamwork way. 

Yes. 

And if we want to have the expectation that I am bringing in X amount of income, I want the expectation that I have set work hours, just as any other job. And so we’ve shared that responsibility, we’ve identified what are my office hours, and he is the childcare provider during those times, full out. And he comes from a very traditional family, he didn’t learn how to cook. And so it’s taken me to step back and be okay with the imperfectness of it as well. And when he’s on, I’m not taking it on to prep dinner for him and all these things, which I know can be really common too. It’s on him, and if it’s Kraft dinner, or peanut butter and jam sandwiches, that’s totally okay, too.

And that’s a big thing too, and that’s a different conversation, but in order to take on the role of someone who is financially providing as well, you can’t gatekeep the caregiving stuff at the same time. That was really hard for me as well. I’m definitely that type A personality, I want it done the way I want it done. And I’ve just had to stop. And that has been so freeing, and I think all of my clients go through that roller coaster as well, right? And the ones who grow their businesses the fastest, the ones that make the most money in the shortest amount of time, are the ones that are able to secure reliable part-time or full-time childcare first. 

Yeah, that was a big reflection with the society call. So let’s kind of flip gears into the making money. And we want to be making money, some women are the breadwinners for their family within this community. But there can also be a lot of taboo and kind of judgments and inner turmoil mindset work that we need to overcome to feel confident in making that money. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. 

Yeah. I think so – again, this is all rooted in the same stuff. So the wiring and subconscious belief system that makes you believe that you have to be the one to either provide childcare, or cover the cost of childcare, with your work, is the same one that makes you uncomfortable with the idea of making tons and tons of money. 

So first of all, I think it’s important work to do right from the get-go. It’s really important to work on your money mindset before you think you need to, before you’re starting to come up against those money ceilings, right? So you may find that you have no problem making the amount of money that you made in your job, or making a little bit more and being really excited about that. But in entrepreneurship, your income is uncapped, you can make an astronomical amount of money that you could never have conceived up before. 

At this stage of my business, I’m often having months where I make more in top line revenue – obviously, that’s not cash in pocket – but more in top line revenue than I earned annually when I was employed. And that took a huge amount of mindset work to become comfortable with. And what happens when you don’t do that work first is that you will kind of undermine yourself and self sabotage yourself. That can look like underpricing, that can look like getting revenue in and then blowing it, that can look like paying off your credit cards and then immediately racking them up again, because you’re only comfortable being in debt. 

And I actually just had a one-on-one client call this morning, we were talking about that. This client has grown her business hugely in the last couple years and her and her husband have found themselves, despite the huge increase in income, back in the same position financially that they were in when they had a third of that income. And it’s because subconsciously, they didn’t know what to do with the excess, they didn’t know how to be comfortable with the excess. And so they almost forced themselves back into the position where they were most comfortable. 

And it’s just kind of defaulting into those old habits. 

Yes, exactly. So it’s just like anything else, the mindset around making money and making more money than you could ever make in a job, that is a habit that you have to form, that comfort level and that work around it. And again, working on all the subconscious beliefs that you have around money that come from the way money was handled, and the way money was available to you as a child – if you come from an environment where things were very scarce, and money was a big issue, a big source of stress, that’s going to impact how you make and spend money as an adult. If you came from an environment where money was in excess, and you never learned to manage it properly, because everything was always provided to you, that’s going to impact how you make it as an adult. You might make it very easily, but you also might spend it irresponsibly, or out of alignment, right? So you have to understand your own money wiring so that you can address it, and align it with the goals that you have. 

Mm hmm. So how can we do some of that? So really just identifying kind of with our past where that mindset comes from and rescripting it?

Yeah, I think it’s a lot of going back and looking at, you know, how does money make you feel, what are the emotions that come up for you when you think about money, when you think about having money? If you got a check tomorrow for $50,000, how would you feel? What would you do with it? Would you tell everybody in your life, the people that are in close proximity to you? How would they feel about it? That kind of thing, that’s really important, because there’s a lot of shame around money, especially if you’re someone that has debt. 

Yeah, it’s good to just take that time and really work through it. And I think that’s what’s so great in having community and friends that you can have these discussions with too, to have that sounding board. And also see what’s kind of within the normal range for other people too. I recently shared within the UM Club a video I came across of Mel Robbins, talking about pricing yourself appropriately. And how many women, similar to what you’ve touched on, can be underpricing ourselves. And it takes a nudge to really push past and ask for more. But sometimes that comes from lack of knowledge too. And we don’t know what other people are charging. And we’re ripping ourselves off of potential double or even triple of what we’re taking in.

And I think that’s part of it, too, is the comfort level with talking about money. Most of us were raised – like if you’re a millennial, you were raised not to talk about money, that it was impolite, uncouth, to speak about salary, and to talk about debt and all those kinds of things. And I’ve really pushed back on that since becoming an entrepreneur, because I think it’s really important for women to have transparent conversations about money, so that you can be exposed not only to what you could be charging, what you could be making, but also because we tend to project our own money shit onto other people. 

So I know for me, in the first few years of my business – I grew up, not in poverty, but on the line, I would say. So everything looked fine on the outside, it looked like we had a nice house, it looked like everything was fine. But you know my parents were in crippling debt all the time, money was a constant source of stress, there were full blown fights about it. It was always a negative thing. 

And so my understanding of what a lot of money was, was very different from what a lot of money actually is. That’s totally subjective, right? So I remember charging $500 for a whole website when I first started, because I was like “nobody’s gonna pay more than that, oh my God,” you know? And fast forward a few years, I now have people that are like, “can I pay you $15,000 to talk to you every other week?” It’s a totally different world. And everybody’s perception of what a lot of money is, or what the value of something is, is totally different. So I think having open conversations about money, particularly for women, is so important so that we can stop being in this little blinder bubble of our own perceptions. And get exposed to all that subjectivity.

Absolutely. And that’s an area we can dig into more, I know you’d mentioned touching on the perception of wealth, and how it can be for different people. I think a lot of us have this perception that money is bad, it can be really stressful, and shameful. And then also rich people with a lot of money, they’re greedy and treat people badly, and just want to make more money.

Yeah. So, I mean, that could be a whole topic in itself. But I think that’s just something that you have to work on for yourself. And you have to – there’s so many podcasts about it, I have podcast episodes about it. And you know, I’ll be releasing more as well, because it’s just such a big hot button topic. But you really just have to expose yourself to the idea that wealth is not bad, money is neutral. Money is just a tool. Whether you have lots of it or not very much of it, is entirely up to – not up to you, there are many, many factors that go into whether or not somebody has money. But the money itself is not the negative or positive thing in that situation.

Mm hmm. And I think that’s where women making money have these conversations. And it touches on things you talk about a lot, we can really change the world through women making money. We see these billionaires racing off to space, and women are a lot less likely to be doing ridiculous shit like that when the earth is where it’s at. And when we can make more, we can pour back into our communities.

Yeah, absolutely.  

Yeah, sorry. Lost my train of thought.

I really apologize for my super unprofessional background, by the way, for everybody watching this. My internet is having some major issues, so I had to come sit in the playroom. So enjoy the total chaos of my children’s toys.

No worries, I think it makes it so much more approachable. And that goes to touch on that same thing too, say being successful in business, can look so different for so many people. Some people might expect you to show up in a suit and a nice professional office. But success looks different for everyone. 

Yeah, I’m in a hoodie on my kid’s playroom floor. So that’s, you know, I think that is important too. I think, especially with social media, we have this perception of wealth. And people that have been born into wealth or born into successful families, or have access to wealth and affluence through other means, are able to kind of flash that all over social media. And we see this in MLM a lot actually, like people that have absolutely not accumulated that wealth through the multi level marketing company that they sell for, and using their lifestyle and their affluence to market the “opportunity” of multilevel marketing to other people, who do not have the affluence and want it. 

Yeah.

So we see a lot of that. And I think it’s really, really important for us to, again, be exposed to all different kinds of wealth, and be exposed to all different kinds of money perspectives, so that we can approach it with more objectivity and understand that everybody’s definition is different. 

For me, I’m not a flashy person, I’m not someone that’s really – I probably won’t buy a designer purse or something like that, you know, the things that I want out of my life are more so location and time freedom. I want to be able to live wherever I want to live in the world, and not worry about that. I want to pay for my kids’ schooling in full, I would like for them to go to private schools or Montessori schools – there’s different things that I do value. But you know, having a Gucci purse is not one of those things for me personally. 

Having a really amazing vehicle is not really one of those things, for me personally; we have really standard family vehicles, and we own them outright. They’re kind of old, they’re not very flashy. You would never know what kind of revenue my business turns from meeting me at school pickup or something like that. And I’m totally okay with that. I don’t think that’s how we should be approaching wealth. And I don’t think that’s how you truly build financial autonomy. Like for me, financial autonomy is the knowledge that not only do I have access to money because of what my business has generated, but I can always make more. That’s freedom, right?

Absolutely. That’s the mindset piece right there, is that you have the ability to make what you want, to live the way that you want, and that’s going to look different for everybody. 

So where are more resources and where people can find you? Your podcast is amazing. If you have specific episodes that you think run in line with this that people should check out, let us know and we’ll make sure to like them for everyone.

I can’t think of a specific episode right off the top of my head. But the podcast is fairly new, so there’s only about 25 episodes, so it’s very bingeable right now. So you can search Self-Made Mamas anywhere that you listen to podcasts on Spotify, Google, Apple.

And then if you want to get connected and kind of get more free content, the best place to find me is on Instagram. That’s where I hang out most of the time. I am creating a lot of my content on Tik Tok but I have like five followers on Tik Tok, so I’m not very cool there. And I don’t know how to work the messaging on Tik Tok. Come find me on Instagram because I’m a millennial and that’s what I know how to work.

Sounds good. We’ll make sure to link all of that. So thank you again for coming to chat with us. And thank you for everyone for listening in. We’ll continue this conversation in the Facebook group, group chat, and our Zoom Hangouts!

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me!

Thanks for listening this week! If you want to chat about this episode with me and other moms, check out the exclusive UM Club Facebook page! Thanks again, and we’ll see you next week!