Financial Fluency: How Women Thrive Outside of the 9 to 5

I can’t help getting a little excited when I meet another mom of a child with severe allergies. Not that I am every pleased to hear that anyone has severe allergies. It’s just that we immediately have a certain understanding of how your plans on any given day can be completely derailed by a call from school or summer camp or gymnastics saying that your child needs immediate medical attention and you have to drop whatever it is you are doing, hop in the car and go! I actually met today’s guest Ashleigh Blatt at the 90 Day Year Live Event in San Diego in April which she ended up arriving to a day late because her daughter had a reaction the day before and had to be temporarily hospitalized. Such is the life for allergy families.

In the traditional corporate world, needing this kind of flexibility can be tough. It can be tough to talk a boss into getting it, and it can be tough taking it because colleagues might see you as a liability to the team and grumble, even though they know you have a very good reason for leaving work suddenly. Luckily Ashleigh realized before having kids that she wanted the kind of freedom and flexibility that self-employment affords. Ashleigh left her consulting and software implementation company with the plan of staying home with her babies while they were small. In today’s episode we talk about not only the work she does for her clients today, but also her own podcast Mompreneur on Fire and her latest project The Power Squad.

Why did Ashleigh create the power squad? Because she felt like so many of the entrepreneur communities online focus on the dude side of entrepreneurship. These are the communities that focus on hustle above all else and tell entrepreneurs to get up, eat protein and sit down and work for three hours before checking email or doing anything else. Or maybe they tout the incredible effects of microdosing LSD on your creativity and productivity. The people suggesting these kinds of things obviously either don’t have small children or leave care and feeding of their kids up to their spouses. The Power Squad Project is different. It is built for women, by women, and does not leave out things like needing to feed and care for children, have a social life and a bit of me-time now and then.

Ashleigh wants women to know that not only can we do it all, we ARE doing it all. As women we can (and ARE) coming together to support one another in the business world. We need real-life solutions, real-life strategies and resources for women who have 1001 things going on and are DOING IT. We run circles around the men in our lives. Now's the time to celebrate and support that.

You can connect with Ashleigh Blatt via her website at www.thepowersquadproject.com or follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

Resources:

Stealing Fire

The Power Squad Project

90 Day Year

Amplify Tour

Dr. Sunder Brain Spa

Part motivator, part organizational engineer, as an OBM (online business manager) Ashleigh Blatt is quick to grasp and effectively assess the entrepreneur's vision and opportunity ahead. This has been paramount to her success in driving revenue for celebrities, experts & traditional businesses. Ashleigh also is the Chief Curator at The Power Squad Project, an email community for women entrepreneurs by women entrepreneurs.

As moms, daughters, friends, and wives, sometimes we all get pulled in so many directions by all of our different relationships that we can lose sight of ourselves and what we really want, both in the moment and in long game of our lives. This can look like everything from chronically saying "I don't know, whatever everyone else wants is fine with me" to looking around at your life one day and realizing that you aren't anywhere you ever really wanted to be. Your emotions, your reactions, your anxiety, your jealousy, your feelings about the things you encounter, these are clues you can use to find your way back to you so you can start to honor all of the relationships in your life by honoring the one you have with yourself first. This is the kind of work that Hilary Silver does. Hilary transitioned from brick and mortar counseling work to working online as a relationship expert and empowerment coach, both one on one and with groups, so she could reach more people who struggle both with their relationships with others and their relationship with themselves.

Here are a few tips from Hilary.

1. You can't have what you want in your life and your relationships if you don't know what that is and how to go after it and get it. A lot of people (moms anyone?) spend so much time taking care of everyone else around them that they lose touch with themselves so much that they don't actually know what they want anymore. So tip one is to figure out what you want. Need help? Go on to tip 2.

To find out more about Hilary visit her website at www.hilarysilver.com or follow her on social media

• Facebook

Bio

Hilary is a Relationship & Intimacy Expert and Master Coach. She is the founder of Hilary Silver Coaching & Consulting, and the creator of lifestyle brand Hot, Healthy Happy, which teaches LOVERS how to have more intimacy, connection and satisfaction in their relationships so they can keep their love and passion alive for the long term.

With 15 years of experience as a licensed couples therapist, she has worked with thousands of clients on issues such as launching healthy relationships, communication and conflict, infidelity, intimacy, sex and lasting passion.

Hilary has been featured on Steve Harvey, Men’s Fitness, Women’s Health, Martha Stewart Weddings, Cosmopolitan and Womanista to name a few.

She holds a master’s degree in social work and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.  Above all of that, she uses her personal journey from isolation and pain to joy and fulfillment as inspiration to help others find meaning and purpose in their lives. Married to her husband for 11 years, and together for 17, they have 2 spirited children.  She knows exactly what it takes to keep the love and passion alive!

Resources:

5 Love Languages of Children

Do you love the idea of educational travel, but resist plonking down the money to actually book one of those awesome sounding trips your college sponsors for alumni or that you see advertised for groups? I do too. I love the idea of traveling somewhere cool, drinking fine wines and learning about something that interests me, but I always feel like if it is just for recreation, I should spend that money on a trip that includes my kids, and if it is for my own edification, then I should invest in a conference or something that will move me forward in my career or help me add income to my finances. Which is exactly why I am so excited to introduce you to Alyson Kilday and her company Damesly. Alyson combines the best of these two worlds by offering career focused learning opportunities for women in fantastic locations around the country and around the world.

Alyson says of herself and her partner Kelly, “We believe that investing in yourself returns exponential dividends, and that for women especially, connecting with peers and mentors is more important than ever. We’re not your typical “tour” company, we bring together workshops and learning opportunities from amazing women in the field with people who share a similar passion or interest. We just happen to do it in epic locations, because what better way to form lasting friendships and connections than by sharing an adventure together?”

You can connect with Alyson Kilday via her website at damesly.com or on social media.

• Twitter

Resources:

Alyson is excited to have just launched "Damesly Minis" which are weekend workshops and retreats to amazing locations around the country. From learning how to become your own PR agent while cruising on a boat in Lake Powell, learning how unleash and harness your creativity from successful makers and artists in New Orleans to upping your Photography skills while hiking in the Grand Canyon with a NatGeo pro we'll be rolling out even more Minis over the next year.

Alyson Kilday is the CEO of Hop & Jaunt, a creative agency based in New Orleans as well as the co-founder of Damesly. She launched her first company while backpacking and sailing across the Caribbean to Colombia and now calls New Orleans homebase. Having grown up in over a dozen countries she speaks Japanese and Spanish fluently and is currently on passport number 5. She’s excited to be able to bring together her love of travel and connecting people from around the world.

Have you ever felt afraid to tap into your own creative potential? Today on Financial Fluency, I’m pleased to welcome Phoenix Muranetz. Phoenix is a unification architect, sacred ceremony designer, performer, and writer. Phoenix helps women awaken their leadership by tapping into their innate brilliance, sensuality, and power.

As the co-founder of the Awakened Woman Convergence, Phoenix welcomes men and women of all orientations to this conference. Her goal is to create a safe space where people can feel safe, heard, seen, and come closer to understanding their purpose.

Phoenix explains her current path in life wasn’t something she chose years ago. Originally, she wanted to be involved in the arts and visual arts. But after high school, Phoenix was confused because the message she got from society was that it was “too hard” to be an artist and that not a profession real adults take part in. Phoenix tells me It wasn’t until she went to Burning Man that she had her spiritual awakening and discovered her purpose—unifying people together by transformative experiences.

On the show, Phoenix tells me this is the first year they’re opening up the conference to men, and the conference will have workshops for couples to explore their sexuality and creative genius. In addition, there will be workshops focused on healing and harmony to help women grow in their business and in their personal development.

Wise Words from Phoenix

“If you’re finding blocks in your business, or you’re not finding the flow, connect with a spirit and ask: How is my work connected with the great directive of the planet? Once you know, figure out how you can align with that more.”

From Oct 12th-15th, 2017 in Arizona, Phoenix is hosting the annual Awakened Woman Convergence Leadership Conference. The workshops in the Awakened Woman Convergence are designed to allow you to express yourself radically. Phoenix also notes she is able to speak to the connection between 'Pussy' + Profit. She says, as women, when we open up our Sacral Chakra, we release the shame we've carried around our sexuality, and begin to honour our wombs with more presence, profit and prosperity increases exponentially. Phoenix highlights the three main philosophies of Pussy Wisdom so women can reconnect with the flow of abundance and prosperity in their lives in opening up to:

• Presence vs. Hustle

To learn more about Phoenix and the Awakened Woman Convergence, visit her website: awconvergence.com, pussy-wisdom.com, or follow her on social media:

• Facebook

Resources

Tickets are still available for the annual Awakened Woman Convergence Leadership Conference in Arizona Oct 12th-15th.

• Use promo code: jenturrell to receive a $500 discount off your ticket.

Pussy Wisdom Tour: Radical Conversations on Pussy Wisdom, Sisterhood and Feminine Leadership.

• Live Events will be taking place in Scottsdale, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and New York

Bio

Phoenix Muranetz explores the soul’s capacity for love, expression and expansion through her work as a Unification Architect, Sacred Ceremony Designer, Performer & Writer.

Founder of the Awakened Woman Convergence, an annual global gathering of visionaries & leaders with ambassadors in over nine countries, she builds empowered communities who together support one another in exploring their authentic desire, creative expression and awakened selves.

What would happen if you turned off the world and looked inward? Today on Financial Fluency, my guest is best-selling author Suzanne Adams. Suzanne is a speaker, life purpose consult, and the author of Musings of an Earth Angel. On the show, Suzanne speaks about learning to love yourself, how to flip negativity into positivity, and how to connect with a greater power.

Early on, Suzanne lived the  life she thought she was supposed to live. She called this “surface-level happiness” on the show. Suzanne said it was like putting on a front pretending to be happy. She didn’t understand true fulfillment, and it felt like she was going through the motions.

This way of life got to a point where she felt a pit in her stomach, and was constantly saying there has to be more. Suzanne shared that during this time, she was chasing fulfillment through her career, shopping, and other’s opinions. Suzanne realized she couldn’t pretend everything was ok anymore. She didn't want to numb the pain anymore.

That tumultuous period forced Suzanne to take inventory of the important things in her life. This mindset catapulted her to her mission. Suzanne allowed her body to heal and it brought her into alignment with her purpose. Suzanne says “My life purpose is to teach people how to reach their highest level of potential.”

Suzanne’s book, Musings of an Earth Angel, is about understanding divine communication and self-love. In a way, the book mirrors the struggles she faced when experiencing her spiritual awakening. Suzanne mentions the intention of her book is to awaken people to a higher meaning and deeper purpose with a story that’s relatable.

Self-Love Explained by Suzanne

• The first step to self-love is to look at your thoughts and think about the things you tell yourself every single day. Everything is energy. If you think and treat yourself negatively, that’s what you’ll attract.

Suzanne Shares Her Personal Message Here

“I teach people how to live a life of fulfillment and happiness. My top tips are to always trust your heart, do what scares you, and find like minded people that inspire you and surround yourself with them. My big why is to help to make the planet a happier place.”

To learn more about Suzanne visit her website suzanneadamsinc.com, or follow her on social media.

• Instagram

Resources

Empowerment Retreat in Sedona, AZ from September 28, 2017 to October 2, 2017. This retreat will help let go of what’s in your way so you can step into the next level of leadership and deepen your intuition.

Musings of an Earth Angel book trailer: https://youtu.be/cySSO56MLKc

Free Guided Meditation: http://suzanneadamsinc.com/meditations/

Bio

Suzanne Adams is a bestselling Author, Motivational Speaker, and Life Purpose Consultant that is sharing her zest for life with audiences around the globe. She believes that having fun and following your passion are the keys to finding true happiness and living a life of fulfillment and joy!

Suzanne was a Speaker at the 2016 Hay House World Summit and is so excited to share with you her secrets to attracting happiness and freedom into your life! Suzanne is thrilled to be leading workshops and retreats around the world. She also loves to share her secrets to success with you through her books, digital courses, and inspirational talks.

Where do you get started with Instagram? Does your photo feed get lost with other accounts on the platform? Today on Financial Fluency, I’m excited to have Rachel Bell with me. Rachel is an Instagram influencer and co-founder of Trill Media. Trill Media is an Instagram marketing agency helping brands grow large, organic followings.

On the show, Rachel shares how to use Instagram to drive business growth. She goes in-depth and explains why Instagram is the top social media platform for businesses today and how you can replicate those results. Rachel says 2017 is the year for Instagram because of the new business features they’ve added.

Influencer marketing is huge. Thousands of people successfully monetize their Instagram accounts every day, sometimes with a single post. And well-known brands have the budget to spent $5,000 - $25,000 for a sponsored post. Rachel says if you’re a model, live in LA, or have a large following, paid sponsorship is great way to monetize your account. If you have a smaller following, you can run targeted ads to help boost your page.

With her own Instagram feed, @drivenyounglady, Rachel aims to connect with millennial women. She wants to give her followers inspiration and advice from her entrepreneurial journey. As a social media strategist who helps make her clients go viral, she’s rediscovering what it means to have her brand on the social media platform.

Rachel mentions the shelf life for content on Instagram is short. Thousands of people are posting and using hashtags every second, and it’s easy to get lost in the noise. If you want to gain new followers, Rachel shares that you have to post 1-3 tailored photos on Instagram daily. Continuous posting will help you build and gain trust with your audience. She mentions it can be a lot of work to keep posts engaging, relevant, and likable. Her strategy? Leverage viral content.

Rachel’s Tips to Boost Your Instagram Account

If you want to have authentic followers, you have to nurture your Instagram. Follow these tips to help get your account off the ground:

• Write good content—but know that’s not all. You need to engage with followers and other people’s followers to get more visibility on your account.

• Cross-pollinate with another account. Feature someone else’s photo with a photo credit, or take part in a shout-for-shout with a handle that has a similar account following

People naturally want to be brand ambassadors for brands they know and trust. It’s about creating shareable photos.

You can connect with Rachel via her company's website at www.trillmediateam.com.

Resources

If you want to learn the basic principles to grow your Instagram account, check out Rachel’s in-depth ebook, Instagram Secrets: Get your first 100,000 followers on Instagram with our proven method.

You can also join Rachel’s free Facebook group, Become a Social Media Manager.

Bio

Rachel is an Instagram influencer and co-founder of Trill Media, an Instagram marketing agency focused on helping brands grow a large, 100% organic following so that they can boost influence and go viral. After testing all the typical strategies on Instagram, she has found ways to crack the code and gain a massive following - without using any automation or bots. Now, Rachel has used these tactics to form partnerships with other influencers, create a network of over 25 million users, and amassed a total following of over 450,000 across different accounts.

Do you know what, how, and when to measure and track key performance indicators (KPIs) in your business? Today on Financial Fluency, I’m excited to have Jennifer Love with me. Jennifer is an entrepreneur, advisor, and CEO and founder of One More Woman. Jennifer has advised Fortune 200 businesses, celebrities, and high-performing entrepreneurs. She’s even helped raise over $100 million in venture capital funding.  

On the show, Jennifer tells me how her entrepreneurial career began. She was in graduate school studying to be CIA/FBI strategist when she received an interesting project: write a business plan for a casino. Jennifer admits she had no clue how to write a business plan. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t much available at her fingertips online. So she turned to books and working with the casino to understand the mindset of the customers. After Jennifer had submitted her proposal, the casino funded it.

Today, Jennifer strives to make sure women entrepreneurs do not feel alone. When women lack confidence or devalue themselves in business, it translates into how much money they make. So Jennifer created what she wished she had back in the day, One More Woman. One More Woman is an accelerator for female entrepreneurs who want to grow their revenue 10x and master financial literacy.

Her vision is to create an army of women entrepreneurs who move into successful businesses. She sees women redistributing their wealth around the world and making the impact they were born to make. Jennifer wants women to break through everything that’s holding them back in an environment that’s supportive and helpful.

Jennifer is hosting a 3-day Money Activation event in NYC that will help you understand your business and make numbers fun, so you feel empowered to make decisions. At the end of the course, you will:

• Eliminate the stress that’s keeping you stuck when you are in your business.

 To learn more about Jennifer, visit her website jenniferlove.com or follow her on social media:

• Facebook

Resources

If you can’t make the Money Activation event happening July 17th - 19th in NYC, visit Jennifer’s website: jenniferlove.com for two programs to keep up with:

• Money Talks

Bio

Award winning, Shark Tank conquering, $100M+ raising, 17+ years under her high heels as a 5x serial entrepreneur, whose international wholesale chocolate company, NibMor, was named amongst the top US food and beverage companies of 2016. Jennifer Love is a trailblazer with a heart that matches her name. She’s an Agent of Abundance and the visionary CEO of One More Woman, the movement leading high-impact women entrepreneurs in 2 – 10xing revenue annually and becoming masterful with finances. She’s an eternal optimist grounded in hard analytics and believes ANYTHING is possible. In her words, “It’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of how.”

Do you find yourself making excuses for not writing? Today on Financial Fluency, I’m thrilled to have Jeanette LeBlanc with me. Jeanette is a writer and photographer who founded peace.love.free, a transformational writing workshop that helps writers find freedom in their words.  On the show, we talk about Jeanette’s struggles, truth-telling, and making a mark with your words.

In November 2015, Jeanette was working in a corporate position specializing in content marketing. The marketing department made cuts during the holiday season and let Jeanette go. The layoff turned her life upside down, and pushed her to pursue her creative passion—writing. She remembered there was a great sense of panic after getting laid off because she was a single mom raising two children.

About three weeks later, Jeanette realized she didn’t want another job, she wanted to go all in with her writing and created Wild Heart Workshop: 30 Questions To Bring You Closer To Your Wild Heart, which was a precursor to Unleashed. Jeanette tells me the idea was inspired by her own feelings of being lost.  She was without a job, and coping with her failed relationship. So Jeanette decided to write a few prompts to help rediscover herself. She kept writing and 40,000 words later, Jeanette realized she had course content, and wanted to share it with others.

Jeanette believes writing can heal, make sense of our world, and understand what’s happened to us. All it takes is one person who understands or knows what you’ve experienced to help you feel like you are not alone.

When Jeanette wrote about coming out and leaving her then-husband, she had a friend who lost her son at 40 weeks. Her friend was able to talk to her without diminishing Jeanette’s grief, which brought them together. This interaction was the most profound lesson Jeanette learned, to use the power of language.

Jeanette Shares Her Message

“There’s a way to tell stories that invite other people into the narrative who haven’t  experienced life the way you have. When someone sits down to explain their story in a way that allows me to access their experience, my compassion grows, and my understanding of the world grows. It’s a tremendous gift for the writer and anyone who comes across it.”

Unleashed is a 12-week journey with different themes each week; the final week explores universality in writing. Jeanette says this helps writers think past their own experience to connect and help someone else.

For more information about Jeanette visit her website peacelovefree.com or follow her on social media.

• Facebook

Resources

Sign up for the next Unleashed Workshop here. The workshop starts gathering on July 5th and officially begins on July 10th.

Bio

Jeanette LeBlanc helps writers, would be writers and ‘but-I'm-not-a-writers' unleash their voice, tell their stories, and create compelling content that resonates. Jeanette is the creator of peace.love.free, a transformational writing workshop that aims to help writers unleash their courage to stand in their power. In addition to being a writing coach, Jeanette is a photographer, poet, and feminist. She currently lives in Phoenix, AZ with her two daughters.

Have you ever thought about your life’s calling to do the work you were meant to do? Today on Financial Fluency, I am pleased to have Shirley Harvey with me. Shirley is a writer, illustrator, and artist from the UK now living in Montreal, Canada. For Shirley, drawing and writing were always passions of hers as a child.

On this episode, Shirley shared how disappointed and disillusioned she felt after graduating university. She stopped creating and trained to become a homeopath. For her, becoming a homeopath opened her up to a whole new world of working with energy and spirituality. When her husband was offered a job abroad, she knew it was her calling to move and start over.

In 2013, Shirley moved to Montreal with her husband and son. When she realized she was unable to practice homeopathic medicine in Canada, she started to draw and write again as a way to discover herself. It was during this time Shirley recounts her marriage was falling apart, and Shirley and her husband decided to divorce. She was a single mom living in the inner-city with no car during the harsh winter months with her son. Shirley had no job and didn’t speak French. She tells me “It was like I was standing on the edge of the cliff, and all my monsters were behind me yelling to jump off.”

That moment in her life led her to open her Etsy shop selling prints and self-publishing her books. Shirley has six books out and is currently working on a seventh. She describes her books as children’s books for adults. The books helped her to express and explore her own feelings about her divorce and isolation, but they also helped her connect with her son and his feelings at the time. Shirley plans to ramp up her marketing message and take her books to a book fair in Toronto. Ultimately, Her goal is to get her books into the right hands of the right people. Shirley says she has a gift that allows her to see life in the bigger perspective; she can bring the obscure into layman’s terms with beautiful pictures and poems.

Shirley’s Message

For so many people, we see the overnight success—not the years of struggle. Follow your dreams, be creative, and come back into alignment with your soul's true purpose.

Resources

To find out more about Shirley and her books visit her website shirleyharvey.com or you can follow her on social media:

• Facebook

Bio

Shirley writes and illustrates children's books that help connect families. Her work is a mixture of rhyming verse and adorable animal pictures that explore emotions and life circumstances, opening up conversations about more difficult topics while providing comfort and humour parents can share with their children. Although her books are perfect for children aged 6 and up, they are a must for the whole family who want to reconnect with their inner child.  

British born and raised, she now lives in Montreal with her son and two cats, Bruce and MissFits.