Hey, b a fam, It's Friday. Y'all know what time it is. It's time for the b a qa a, the b a q a What you say the v a q a with Manda, the b a q a the b a q a A b a fam Happy Friday. I'm kind of getting used to singing that song. I kind of like it. I might need to lay down a track like I might just need to like you know, get in the booth, you know what I mean, Like get in the studio, do my man in the garden
like Kendrick Well, b a fam. I am thrilled because I don't know about y'all, but when I do ba QA solo, I just miss Tiffany so much because talking to myself and answering questions, I just miss having another perspective because I know for a fact I do not know everything. So I'm excited. I feel like in this new chapter of ba I want to do more guests on QA days, just like another brain partner. And I could not feel luckier than to have and more excited
for you guys than to have my pal. The new author s of her book Baby Crush Your Money Goals, We have Bernadette Joy in the house. Welcome to the show again. Is this your first time?
I can't remember my first.
Time because we've talked. I mean, shoot, I can't even I'm like when it's all blurred. But welcome to the BA Studio. Bernadette.
Thank you.
I know it feels weird to say it's the first time because you and I feel like every time we talk it could be a good podcast episode.
So right, that's when you know you got a good vie. That's when you know you got a good vibe going. It's like, let's get the core.
This is juicy.
I know.
I love that.
I will tell you that my be a success story is one of my longtime clients messaged me two years ago and she was just like, I heard Mandy mentioned your name on the podcast you have made it. I was like, oh my god, I have made That was after finn Con in twenty twenty two, and so've you said my name that time before, But this is the first time I'm here.
In the flesh. Oh that was such a special fin Con for me. It was my first it was my first big outing after having a kid, professionally and starting my business. So yeah, me, you all the like Jeanie Nace. Yeah,
everyone hanging out. It was amazing. But I've just really loved to be like a fan of yours and love to watch sort of your journey professionally, and it just doesn't strike me that you're afraid to try anything and to like, you know, even this whole era you're having as the hostess with the mostess and hosting all the finn Con events and really becoming like almost a legend or just like a leader in the fin Con financial educator community, and I just think it's awesome. In the book,
you guys, Crush Your Money Goals, what's our subtitle? Twenty five smart money Habits to save invest in fast track your financial freedom. Thanks for coming burnand out. Okay, So for people who are not have not been your fan for as long as I have, give us a quick recap. How come you wrote a Crush your Money Goals book? What's your story?
So? How come I wrote the book was because I got lucky that someone found me, a publisher found.
Me to write the book.
But I have been writing this content for the past eight years now, in twenty sixteen, so I am burned at joy. I am the founder of Crush your Money Goals,
so the same name as the book. And I started my personal finance journey in wanting to pay off my student loans, and it led my husband and I to pay off three hundred thousand dollars of debt and become completely debt free now for the past five year years and building our first one point eight I looked it up this morning, one point eight million dollars of net
worth invested and having a chunk of savings. Where my next chapter, alongside being an author, is I want to work on becoming an angel investor, specifically in communities of color and for women, because we already know this that we're not getting enough investment, and I want to be able to pay it forward to all of the women who have helped support like you support this this.
Growth for my personal journey and my professional journey.
That's amazing. You're not the first person I've heard who's like and my next act, my third act or you know, after I've sort of become a seasoned entrepreneur is to become an investor. I've heard Tiffany talk about it. I I've heard Less from Pounds Black Girl talk about that, and I love that you guys have given me something to think about too. I'm like, oh, okay, so let's just skip past the part where I become incredibly well
health and just consider it inevitability and that's come. Yeah, that you'll be able to turn around and pour in so great. I love that you're ahead of me in that regard and I'm just excited to follow you there. You don't just have the book, though, you also have the Crush Money Crush Club. Yes, the Crush Club. Okay, so how can people find out about that? And like, what do you get from that community? Yeah?
So the Crush Club, if you decide to pick up the book. In there, you'll see multiple success stories and it's from the initial part of the Crush Club, which is what we call the Crush boot Camp. So we have an intensive ninety days where I walk people through the five steps of Crush and actually get their plans together.
And I am one of what I learned is I'm one of a.
Few financial coaches that will actually sit down with you one on one and walk through your entire financial picture and make sure that you're doing the things that you need to be doing and come up with a plan. And then people who end up wanting to stay beyond the ninety days. Join the Crush Club, where we meet every Sunday morning nine to ten am Eastern time, and we practice our habits, we hash out our challenges, and this year with.
The book, we're going to be going through the book together habit by habit.
So I'm really looking forward to that next chapter of Crush Club because all of these different habits that are mentioned in the book were actually informed not just by my own experience, but by all of these people who I've coached now over the last five years.
That's incredible and what a great like, what a great way to go ahead and do the thing like start coaching, start working with clients, and then I feel the same way, you're like collecting the case studies, you're collecting the feedback, and you're you know, really shaping the I guess you can call it curriculum or like the syllabus for your your book. And then now the goal the challenges that you're doing through Crush Club, and it just it just
makes so much sense. So that's something that I also really admire. So with the Crush Club, you're meeting every week and then you have to enroll in the ninety Day Challenge basically the ninety day like work through the Crusher Money Goals book. So who's the perfect person to join this community?
Yes, selfishly, you know, anyone who listens to this podcast would be a great candidate because you're already looking for thought leadership, You're looking for a really practical, tangible money advice. You are ambitious, and I think, what is really interesting to me, and you know what has attracted me to following you and Tiffany for a long time is this this word of ambition of where there are a lot of you and I were even just talking about this
right before we got on this. There are a lot of women that I work with who are highly ambitious, but maybe sometimes sometimes to a fault where we don't ask for help. And so a lot of the clients who have come through the Crush boot Camp have been really successful in their own right in some shape or form.
Maybe they've had really good career success or they have already started investing, or they've started a business, but then they've kind of hit this plateau where Okay, my ambition has gotten me this far, but now I need a next level of mentorship and resources.
That are going to get me to that wealth standing point.
And so it's been really fun because the Crush Club we seem to have attracted right now, there's about fifty members, and we intentionally keep it small. This is not one of those memberships that it's like, oh, you come in and like there's a.
Thousand people in there.
I'm an introvert, so I can't do that, So we keep it intentionally small around fifty people. And the ideas that you continuously roll people in and out until they got what they needed. It's not intended for someone to be there for the rest of their life because the ideas, if I did my job, then I would have helped you at this level and then there might be other
resources for you to get to that next point. So I really specifically also found that there's a lot of folks who had made good money, so like, you're so great at helping people with the negotiation tips and building
those those book strategies around growing your income. And I think where we can we are complimentary is that we provide, you know, the habits and the tools and the resources on like how to make sure that the money that you've already made is being deployed the way that you want to and beyond just kind of the traditional advice you get of like oh, put into the s and p.
Five hundred.
We actually work with people and aligning their investments with what they care about IEME with Angel investing.
Yeah, that's amazing. I'm such a good book promoter. Don't you think like you have a publicist like this is what they dream of. Show the book, talk about the book. We're getting all that out of the way first because I want people to get to know you better. Yeah, so, BA fan, you got to check out the book. We are here for the BA fan and I'm so excited that Burnett is here to help me answer y'all's questions. So just we're going to do our disclaimer. Okay, me
and Bernadette are not your financial advisor. We are not your financial planners. We're not your stockbroker. We're not your doctor, your lawyer, your therapist. We're none of those things. We are just two beautiful ladies on the Internet who have a little bit of knowledge to share. So this is all for entertainment purposes. Please don't sue me. You can try to don't see her. Yeah, yeah, this disclaimer just completely, you know, like it fixes everything I've been told, full protection,
full amnesty. All right, we've got a couple of great questions from IG, y'all. I have told y'all before that in twenty twenty five, I am going to be purging the inbox, purging the spreadsheet where we track all these questions. There's like a couple hundred, and I want y'all to submit new ones. So you got to go to Brown Ambition Podcast dot com and click con or submit your question, or you can ig on ig slide into our DMS.
We love getting a DM it's so simple. We're at Brand Ambition Podcast where you can email directly Bronambition Podcast at gmail dot com. Give me some incredible, juicy questions for the new year's from debt to investing, to career, negotiating, relationships, health, whatever, let's get you know, let's tackle these together. So today, Miss Bernadette, we're gonna start with a question from IG. This question comes from listener dart Nishe okay, Dernisia says,
oh nope, I just read that wrong. This question comes. Our first question is going to come from a listener from IG called a Gile and Gile we'll go with that pronunciation. Okay. So Angile's in a tricky spot, Bernadette, she says, I need help. I don't know where to start. I just started listening to your podcast. The backstory is that I was homeless in twenty sixteen with a teenage daughter. I lived off of two credit cards that had a total three thousand dollars credit line, and I put everything
from groceries to gas on my cards. And when I got paid my entire track, my entire check went to paying them down. My credit score actually increased. Then I switched careers and I graduated nursing school in twenty nineteen. Amazing. The pandemic hit and I went from being broke to making six figures as a travel nurse. My daughter entered her dream school in twenty twenty, and since then I've
acquired more credit cards. Now I have about seventy thousand dollars of credit card debt that includes leisure spending, from paying for college housing to some medical care. I have put it all on my cards. Now I'm dealing with the situation where the rates for travel nurses are lower. I'm currently making sixty two dollars an hour and working thirty six hours per week. My daughter's graduated and luckily she has no college debt and a seven to fifty
credit score. Meanwhile, I have parent plus loans on top of my credit cards. My score has taken a drastic hit. I would love any guidance in education on how to start paying down this debt and rehabilitating my credit score and gile woo. So that's a lot.
That's a lot.
It's and you know what, honestly, I was thinking while you were talking about crush club and like the twenty five you cover twenty five habits to start to crush your goals, And I was like, is one of them just don't have children? Because I can just the way that these kids, the way that these kids will come for your coins and will have you doing things like take out lots of debt to give them the life that you imagine for them, the life that you want
for them. It's so heartbreaking sometimes because I'm like, I can see why you made these choices. It feels like an investment. Do you have people in your crush club who, like you know, who have kids and have found themselves in like a similar situation to Angile, And like what would you say to them.
Yes, I've had.
Interestingly, I've had a couple of different cases that sound a lot like angile. One is Okay, first thing is I'm Filipino. So everyone in my family is a nurse.
Okay, I didn't know that.
Yeah, Philippin we are the large largest exporter of nurses in the world. So here's a fun thing for y'all. If you visit your local hospital.
Count how many of the nurses are Filipino. It's probably half.
So that being said, so, my my mother in law was a traveling nurse, traveling physical therapist, and my father in law is a nurse.
Uh.
And it is a very challenging especially once you said traveling nurse. It is a very challenging type of role because imagine that you're dealing with, you know, people who are not healthy, uh, sometimes in the last stages of life. For all these things, and traveling nurses, the reason they make more money is because they will often go to other hospitals that are low low in staff.
To basically fill in slots that aren't filled.
So now imagine that you're going into an understaffed place right where they needed people so bad that they're they're paying a little bit more money to people will come in from the outside, so you have that. Then what I heard from the story was she started off with I was homeless, right, and I think in twenty sixteen, which was not that long ago, which was eight years ago.
And and you know now that she's had all of these different things happening, things are actually in her put in her path to help her get out of this.
But what I heard though, is that.
She has continued to prioritize one particular thing which she mentioned it two or three times in that which was the credit score.
Right. Yeah. I'm almost like, is that the goal? Just a good end score?
And the answer, in my opinion is no, right.
Uh.
The you know, she's like, she said, I had a terrible credit score.
I had a bad I still have a bad puss with my daughter has a great credit score, but I have a bad credit score. I'm like, that's actually not the concern, that's the that's the least of your worries. And I think that is something that I've also found with a lot of communities, particularly I've noticed this in
the Filipino community. So I can't speak, uh, you you can tell me what you've heard kind of in like the the black and brown communities, right of, Like this credit score thing is like where people pay so much attention to and I have to unlearn help people unlearn
that that is not a measure of wealth. And so just as a reminder to this person in particular, a credit score does not take into account what your income is, It doesn't take into account what your education level is, It doesn't take into account how much money you have in the bank, all it all. But it measures is how good you are at paying back your debt, which now we understand why the credit score is really low in this case because she has seventy thousand dollars worth.
Of credit card debt.
So the crazy thing, and this is something that I think a lot of people don't understand, is that for me, there was from twenty twenty to like twenty twenty two, I was not getting I could not.
Get approved for a loan.
Even though I had paid off three hundred thousand dollars of debt and was approaching a million dollars of net worth because I didn't have a credit score at the time, because.
I had paid off all my debt and I didn't have at the time. Yeah, and I didn't have.
All my credit history went away when I paid off all of those things and closed all those accounts. So that just goes to show you that this credit card, the credit system is does not care if you're good with money.
Oh my god, I was just ranting about this on the last BAQA. I'm like, it's all a scam. And you asked about what sort of the black and brown community my own dad he became. You know, my dad went through oh so many financial struggles. I ain't trying to put all his business out there. I'm sorry, Alton Woodruff, I've been talking about your shit for so long. But
he's so proud of his high credit score. Now he was able to get a mortgage and he got into his house and like all that, and he's very proud of it and very like people get emotionally attached to it. And I think it's because when you're a grown up, there's not really many grades we get anymore. There's not like very many like measurements that tell us how good we're doing, and so credit score becomes like a proxy for a GPA or a final exam. And yeah, so
I get that. I think that's not the biggest issue here either. It's that seventy thousand dollars of debt and parent plus loans. So she's basically she's given her daughter a clean slate, like seven fifty credit score, no college debt. Fly, baby girl, Fly. And now I am carrying the burden of this seventy thousand dollars on my back into a challenging season in my career. Like she said her, the rates for travel nurses have gone down. It was popping
after the recession. Everyone wanted to be a travel nurse. They let me pack the bag real quick. Yes, And so for that, I'm just like paying down parent plus loans. The only thing that I can kind of find some comfort in for her is that it's a federal it's a federal loan. It's a federal student loan, which means that there should be income repayment plans that you can contact your loan servicer and get on top of. But as a parent, you are on the hook for that debt.
It's all on your shoulders. And so I would say, run, don't walk, to the to call your loan servicer and get enrolled in one of those repayment plans. I was looking. I pulled up a little was on my phone. I was going to pull up the types they have. There's a standard plan, which is like ten years, but then you can do like a graduated plan, which is smaller payments and then they gradually increase. You can extend it.
There's an extended payment plan. Now these probably I'll have like requirements and eligibility requirements and things like that to look into. But there's one that's extended for twenty five years. There's one that can reduce your monthly payment to twenty percent of your income based on a twelve year plan. Then there's just the various income driven repayment plans. So there's some options here, but like expecting them to go away like that is not just going to happen quickly overnight.
It's just a lot of debt.
Yes, it's a lot of debt. Realistically speaking as someone who had seventy.
Two thousand dollars of student loan debt, which is what kickstarted also in twenty sixteen. So you know, I will tell you that I am definitely feeling your pain on that. Here is what I would tactically speaking suggest without having seen the ins and outs of this person's full financial picture is you need to take In the book, I talk about curating your accounts, and so what that means is that you literally need to pull every single account that you have that is a loan, any sort of
credit card, You're checking your savings, your investments. I'm hoping that you may have been putting something in investments as a nurse, because you have access to that a lot of times, and pull it all into one place. I like to use Monarch Money, not a sponsored thing or anything. I just really like their tool, and so you can actually see what your true financial picture is. Because she's saying that she has this amountain of debt, but have no I have no idea how much she has in assets.
It could be zero, it could be she could have at home, she could not, I don't know.
We don't know yet, right.
So, once you pull all that stuff into one place, two track, so you actually have an accurate picture of what your finances are truly and your net worth, then I would look at the debt side and I would break out each of those parent plus loans into the specific loans, so you know, five thousand dollars, five percent, ten thousand dollars, ten percent, whatever it is.
That's what I did with my student loans.
I had seventy two thousand dollars of student loans, but it was actually made up of six different loans. And then I would look at all of the credit cards and you're not gonna like my answer, friend, but you're gonna need to cut up those credit cards. And she probably hasn't because she was concerned about the credit score more than she was concerned about racking up the debt. And I have a very hard and fast role with
all of my clients. If you even have like ten dollars worth of debt on the credit card, you don't keep putting more money. You don't keep putting more transactions through that credit card until you clear it out. So what ends up happening with a lot of my clients.
And this has been really rough in the last two years, specifically because interest rates when we're going up that it was manageable at one point, but now they're snowballing because the credit card interest rates are like twenty three twenty four percent on average right now, I'm seen as high as thirty percent.
On credit card period.
Right They're like a payday loan at this point, right, So, so.
You're not gonna love this answer, but you're gonna have to.
We're going to have to get your alliance off of these credit cards, which is very very easy for me to say, but harder to do if you're someone who's come from a background of having been homeless, right and saying, now, I'm going to cut off this thing that probably got me out of some of buyings in the past. But the same mechanisms that you used to use to, you know, get through three thousand dollars, it's not the same mechanisms you're going to use to get out of seventy thousand
dollars now. And so I would say, once you have an idea of what each of these credit cards and how much the interest rates are and how much you have in each of those, is you tackle the credit cards first, a credit card by credit card. And I am a big proponent of doing the snowball, because in
your case, it sounds like you're very overwhelmed. And when I have clients who are overwhelmed, we're not trying to do math right now, We're just trying to We're just trying to like get momentum and work on just paying that lowest credit card first to start building some momentum around there and then having you know, again having this having had a lot of nurses in my life, I hear you on the rates on average being maybe lower, But that doesn't mean that you can't get your bag.
That doesn't mean that you can't go and talk to some of these other organizations that might be willing to pay more. Yeah, you might have to travel a little bit farther out, or yeah, yeah you might have to pick up some like overnight shifts or something that.
Might not be ideal. But there are certain people who I know.
For example, I have a friend who's a physical a traveling physical therapist. He gets paid, you know, fifty dollars more than other people because he's willing to go to some of the places that people are not willing to travel to.
So if you're willing to have.
Some flexibility, now that I know that your your kid is out of college and probably doing their own thing, and you have a little time on your hands, you might have to change your change your schedule to accommodate some of these higher paying gigs.
Yeah, and just kind of forget about the credit score is a tool for like when you need to get debt. So final thoughts for Angile, I was thinking about the and what you said. I mean, I definitely agree with like you have to get all the numbers in front of you. You mentioned a tool called monarch. I hadn't heard of that. I've been using Rocket Money, which I kind of I've been enjoying Rocket Money so far. I don't love that they charge. I'm on their free plan,
but you know, it is what it is. So getting all those numbers in front of you and like your true assets. For someone in her case, like we don't know how old she is, but she has a daughter or I think she said she was a single mom from sixteen, so she's young. She's in probably in her thirties.
And you mentioned like having access to investments. Is do you see a world in which she can continue to save and invest while paying down this debt or are you more on the side of like, let's just get the debt out of the way and then we'll get to the other stuff later.
And my personal opinion, and a lot of financial advisors will fight me on this because of course they want you to invest because they get.
Their get their piece of it.
I am of the mindset and I've done this personally where I will pause investing, and I suggest this to all my clients to pause. And I say pause specifically because that word is more powerful to people than saying you just have to stop investing.
People get heart palpitations about that.
Pausing your investments until minimally the credit card debt is cleared, because there is no investment as a traveling nurse that you're going to be getting that kind of return on your investments putting. You know, if I'm going to guess that this person is putting like maybe one hundred bucks, even if even on like the higher and five hundred one thousand dollars in investments per month, which most people are not doing, it is totally being canceled out by
seventy thousand dollars at twenty three percent. Yeah, you know, so, even if we are aside from the emotional aspect of it is better to focus on one thing at a time. The one thing I learned from my psychology degree is that no human is actually a good multitasker.
We just do multiple things in rapid succession.
We only can do one thing at a time, So focusing on the debt first and then clearing that out would make smare space for you to be able to invest down the road. And since this person is relatively young, if we can guess, even if in your fifties, you'll still have time. You'll still have time to catch that up.
All right, be a fan. Thank you for your question on Jile. We're going to take a quick break and be right back with our next question. It's a juicy one. Okay. I am in the studio with my beloved guest, Bernadette Joy. Also is Joy your real last name?
That Bernett Joy is actually my first name.
Oh that's such a cute, little combo. Did they call you BJ growing up or no?
They did?
And so you met my husband his name is AJ. Yeah, and I'm BJ. That's so cute. We had an ice sculpture at our wedding. That's aid AJ and BJ and everyone. I kept asking us when is CJ coming? Who never came?
Yeah? Well CJ happening right. That's because you want to be rich, girl, Keep running, keep running right past the biological earth to have them babies.
Just keep Oh you don't.
Look at we run way past at your sexy office. You got the nice pink I see that pink like velvety chair behind you. Your skin is glowing like I bet you showered this morning. And tell me again how incredibly wealthy you are and how you're gonna just like take the year off. Listen, having kids is not and having two of them. I'm never gonna tell anyone what to do in that regard other than you know, being rich really helps. You should be rich, and you should
be rich. If you're not going to be rich and have kids, you know you're in for a challenge. Is it rewarding? Sure, but it's a challenge. Oh okay, let me get off of that soapbox, all right, I want to get to this. What's that?
No?
I love I love the soapbox.
But also, you know, I follow you religiously on Instagram, and so whenever you do post pictures of your kids, I'm like, my my ovaries do like ache a little bit.
So yeah, but you know, Auntie, you can come play whatever, get your little fill, and then you just keep on moving to your to your your originals. Okay, that's what I do, all right. So we've we've got an interesting question, Burnette. This is like part personal finance, part entrepreneurship. And I'm actually stealing this question from one that I got from my group coaching last night because it's so it was challenging for me to answer, and so I really want
to get your take. So this is an anonymous keep her anonymous, but this is the situation. So basically, she says, I have a business that I started last summer after I was laid off from my job. I had a good time. I went on sort of an eat prey love trip, and I was saying yes to all the things. I really at the time was living off of unemployment benefits. I thought I would have time to extend those benefits, but I found out a month or two ago that
they are done, and that's all I'm getting. Now I'm looking at I've got thirty to sixty days worth of savings in the or what I thought was sixty days became thirty because I have an income property and the person stopped paying last month. So now that sixty has become a thirty day supply of savings that I've taken out of my four to one K. So I'm at this point where I'm looking that I'm looking at either getting a new job or sticking it out and continuing
to grow the business which I started last summer. Should I just find another job, which honestly makes me want to vomit just thinking about it. Or should I keep dipping into my four to one k to make ends meet while I work on my business? Help? Does that all make sense? This is tricky?
Yeah, yeah, no, it made sense, and my wheels are churning. I have a couple of follow up questions and you may not have the answer to it. But since this was someone in the coaching maybe they shared with this what were they doing before?
I don't want to give too much away just to like keep her anonymous, but like, yeah, just like yeah, like broadly working at a corporation, working for a big corporation, kind of regular nine regular, nine to five. It wasn't like a traveling nurse, no, no, no, regular nine to five with the benefits and all of that. And was let go. So you know, when you're let go, you
get those unemployment checks if you're not giving severance. And had launched the business around the same time, and it's like an online sort of course type of business, but had just started, like just started, had the had the content out there, was just building a community, had a couple of sales and had and then over that time, you know, in that launch, had realized like, I don't really love doing this. So the business itself is not
super mature. It's very like much in its infancy. Okay, that was my next question.
And then my other question would be did she give.
Any uh specifics on this income property, like it is it something that she's had for a long time or.
Is it something that's new that I don't know?
Okay, all right, anonymous friend, you and I have a lot in common. You sound like me in twenty when was it twenty fifteen? So I similarly decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I also had an income property that I was dealing with, and I had started a not this business, interestingly, but a retail business that actually required me to physically be present. And so I feel
a lot of what you're here, what I'm hearing. Also did the eat, pray love thing for a bit, I was just like, oh my gosh, I'm out of corporate whoa like, let me go to all the things?
You know, went to Mexico like three times during that during that time. You know, we had a good time.
So but what I'm hearing, and this may sound and everyone can have a different opinion about this, I think this is what I love about what you're doing and having different perspectives. My opinion, again not knowing, just based off what you said, is I think you do need to go back and get a job at least in.
The interim to stabilize.
Your financial situation here, because what I'm hearing is that there is some risk with the income like it's happening right now.
This is exactly what I tell a lot of income real estate investors, me having been one before.
If you don't have the backup savings to assume some level of vacancy, then either we don't have we have to focus on building up those savings, or we don't. We shouldn't be in this business because that's inevitable. People are like, oh, I'll just always have it rented out all the time. I have a client right now who's just like, bought a new investment property and she hasn't been able to get it rented out for three months
and is just carrying the mortgage for it. Right So, from that perspective, knowing that you have this income property. It doesn't sound like the online course business is going the way that we had initially thought. And don't get me wrong, I love online course businesses. That's essentially the business that I run, which next year will cross over its first.
Million dollars of revenue.
But the bulk of where I've made the money has been in the last three years. And I've been doing this like since twenty sixteen, so that's a long runway. You'll hear a lot of stories of people who are like, oh, I'm making like twenty K, fifty K, one hundred K a month and like this online course and you can do it too, which is great, but that's not the vast majority of people.
And is it consistent? Is it fifty thousand dollars every month? Yes?
Like I see a lot of people are like, oh, I just had a seventy two K month, but it was the only seventy two K month they've ever had, and the other months were like two hundred dollars. So I've only myself personally have gotten into a consistent cadence of twenty K a month in the last eighteen months.
Right, So.
What I also want to say, though, in this I hope this is very clear to people. There is no shame, there is no guilt, there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, I try this thing, and good for you, Like, I'm so proud of you that you tried this thing. You did your eprey love, you did all the things that
people told you that would help you become wealthy. But I'm gonna guess that if the business hasn't taken off the way that we thought, that it's going to either take more time or it's going to have to take more effort from you. And that's just that's a privilege that we might not have if we only have thirty.
Days of savings left in the bank.
Whoo well, I kind of I set you up there because I didn't want I didn't tell you what I had told her during coaching because I found it really challenging because i'm you know, obviously you're in my community. It's Mandy money makers, and I am and I think you too, Like I want women to think that they can accomplish anything, and that if you have this dream to start a business, like you can do it. But when I heard and I have been hearing about her situation,
I had to do. I had to tell her the same thing you did, which was, you know, I think this may not be what you want to hear, but a bridge job sounds like something right now because even and I just I love that you have, you know, been transparent and candidate enough to tell the truth. Like eight years of work and three of those have been like, yes,
we're turning a profit. Yes, I'm a badass, like and then eighteen months, twenty k month solid like it, especially when you're doing that type of business whereas you're a solo preneur, you're not selling a product or you know, starting a big firm that's going to sell a product. You know, like, there's there's an element to this solopreneurial journey that is slow and you need time to iterate like I, and it's it's not like she failed. Like you started a business and you found out, oh I
don't love the way I set that up. So then you have time and you keep changing it until it becomes something that you do enjoy or maybe you love it. But your community didn't need it, you know, it wasn't the product that they were looking for, the service. They were looking for. And I had the reason I was able to build the Mandy money Maker from twenty twenty one to now is because I had you know, like six figures in the bank where I could like float myself.
That's all I played and figured it out, and that was a huge privilege for me. And I just don't want to I don't I don't want anyone to get the impression that like this is an overnight thing, or I can just take this course or you know, put the put the put one step in the right direction and like things will start to flow there. There's time.
You need time and patience and grit to get through those lean months and nine to five entrepreneurial at the same time, nine to five entrepreneurs out there, you're not failing. You're not you know, you're not scared, You're not like lacking any courage by continuing to work nine to five. You're effing smart, and you live in the real fucking world.
Like them bills, them tenants, you're not paying like real just doesn't always align with what we need to get things done unless you've got outside financing investors, you know, loans, grants, that type of thing, which, like you mentioned before, it's really hard for women of color to acquire sometimes absolutely.
And you know, there's two things that I that is coming up for me on this conversation.
Also, is I.
Did that I had to take a bridge job because I've been doing this since twenty sixteen. So for a couple of years, I was working as a contract recruiter on the side while I was building these businesses so that I could have the stable income to at least make sure that my mortgage was paid and that my food was paid and all that stuff, so I would have the actual creative energy to go and figure out how to iterate on what is now you know, Crush
your Money Goals. And the beginning Crush your Money Goals wasn't Crush your Money Goals. It was actually called the Debt Crushers, and it was a completely different program than what it is now.
Crushers, you know exactly.
That was you know, that was one of those things that we like, we changed our branding right because we figured out that was it the best.
Was the the brand like a mallet or like a some weapon.
It was like a punch in the face. It was it was literally like a little.
Fist and look at you, like with the pigtails I'm like, there's no way, come on now.
Yeah, it just was.
It wasn't it, right, So so having a bridge job and it's not to say you're going to be in it forever. So I did that for two years and then was able to really leap into my business full time. So that was how I decided to do it. But there's two other things that I think is worth noting in this particular case study. Is not to say, because
I really do believe there is opportunity. I have clients who are also building coaching businesses and courses and all the other stuff, but I will say it is more saturated than it was when Mandy and I started in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one.
There are just a lot more people.
So not only do you have to put in the grit and all of the other stuff, but there is just truthfully, there's just.
More competition right now than there was.
There wasn't a lot of There wasn't as many, like and if you think about Mandy and like when starting Brown Ambition, like years and years and years ago, right like, look how many podcasts there are now, But Mandy is in the top of the podcasters because she's been at it for several years now.
There's very few podcasts that just started a year ago and then completely blew up and monetized.
And unless you're Travis Kelsey's sister in law or whatever she is, that lady, she's.
Doing great, exactly Like, unless you're that person.
Yeah, the rest of us have to work for.
Years in years and build that credibility with our audience.
That is the not the norm. It's an exception. It's tough sometimes to give that grounded real It's like the challenge all the time is like how much am I there to like champion and cheer on and how much am I there to also give a dose of like reality. And you know, and thanks for mentioning the contract position that you had. You know, Brown Ambition has been my my like secure in terms of like when that when
I was done, you know, with the savings. Then luckily that was coinciding with Brand Ambition making really good money to where I'm like, okay, well this is diversified income streams and now it's not all on the business. I also had this podcast brand. And that's not to say go start a podcast and it can be your passive income because that shit takes time too, So I'm saying, like we started the podcast in twenty fifteen, we didn't
start making money making money until twenty eighteen. And even then it would be like we would not accrue, we wouldn't cash any of our money in. At the end of the year, we'd each have like twenty k, you know, and it'd be like, Yay, happy Christmas. Here's twenty k from the BA bank account. And that was how it was for you know, even a few years, I would say, until twenty twenty one or so when we could actually
start like doing monthly draws and all of that. So, yes, it's not a fun answer, but it also is I hope it gives hope too, because it's like, if you work hard and long and consistently, you can see success, but it may be a little bit of like every thing everywhere all at once where you're doing. I know, you said we're bad at multitasking, but you know, sometimes for survival's sake, a little nine to five or contract
work here, little passive income from an income property there. Yeah, and then trying out of business and just like giving
your space to try things. And you also mentioned the creative energy right, Like, when you're so stressed by financial situation, speaking from experience as your husband, it's so hard to then just like sit down and just like dream and IV eight and like you need that, like you need that mental space and mental flexibility that you've Like, it's becomes really challenging when you're so stressed about money.
That's exactly right.
And in this particular case, the other thought that came into my mind was, you know, you need at least one stable source of income right now that will at least cover your basic bills. And between this baby business, this income property and get going back to a bridge shop.
I love that you called it a bridge shop. Is the bridge job is probably.
The fastest path to that, because I'm going to even guess on the investment property that it's not going to cover.
Your mortgage and their mortgage and.
Your other bills and stuff. It might just be paying for itself in a little bit of extra unless you tell me. It's just like you somehow beat the rest of the market.
On that right now.
And so for myself, I said, I'm very similar to you, is that I also had an investment property, and when I decided that I was going to put a lot of time and energy and to crush your money goals, I decided to sell that property.
So if you are.
Saying, you know, I know, I really don't want to go back into whatever I was doing because I don't know what you were doing before. It sounds like you have an asset that you could potentially sell if you really believe that this is the business that you want to go into.
And that's the route that I took too.
Was like I took the bridge shop and then I still needed more capital to be able to grow crush your money goals to what it is now, and I sold my real estate investment. I sold that position and use that money as the investment into this amazing business owned by a woman of color. That business just happened to be mine. Yeah, And so that's another option to think about.
Absolutely, like whether it's savings or for one K loan, it's like, this is the seed money for your business to like take it seriously and actually use it to invest. And thank you for that perspective. I yeah, I love doing these with another point of view. I just feel
like it's better. It Also it also takes the pressure off because it just like takes away that illusion that any one person can have the answer, and how you have to kind of listen to different perspectives and then at the end of the day, you have to do what's best for you. And you know, if you can tolerate a lot of stress, and you know, maybe that's a cool story someday I lived off my four one K for a year and then my business blew up, and like, that's an incredible story. But yeah, it's also
good to get these other povs. So Bernadette joy full name stop. Thank you for joining me on the BA Thanks for listening to BA FAM's questions. Congratulations on the book you guys again. It's called Crush Your Money Goals, twenty five smart habits to save, invest and fast track your financial freedom. Bernadette, Where can people find you so they can get the book and sign up for Crush Club and all that fun stuff.
Thank you so much for having me.
This was so much fun. I loved hearing these specific examples. You can find me at Crush your Money Goals dot com. That's where the book and our boot camp is coming up. We also host investing classes if you're interested in learning about how to invest with integrity and if you want to hang out with me on social media, I'm primarily on Instagram at Bernadette Joyce spelled with the word debt and then on YouTube with the same handle.
Yay, all right, BA fam, Fine Bernadette, let her know that we sent you, let her know you're part of the BA fam. And happy Almost Christmas, Happy holidays. I hope you guys are well. I hope you have some rest and recharging on the calendar for yourself in this season. And I guess I'll see y'all next year. Iba vam