Show notes –
Join Shannon & Christine for a chat about Financial Wellness with their Special Guest, Laurie Johnson, REvision Financial Solutions.
This week’s resources and references:
Give-a-way from Laurie for Small Business owners and/or solopreneurs:
Make $10k More Money in 10 Minutes pdf download available here
Second Chance by Robert Kiyosaki
Submit your Shearo Nominations with subject My Shearo to shealoglo@gmail.com
Article about race disparities
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Be Well. Be Wise. Be Whole.
Show Transcript –
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
Christine Gautreaux 0:08
Let’s do this.
Shannon M. 0:08
Okay, ladies, welcome to our podcast. I am Shannon Mitchell, a black female, millennial entrepreneur, the founder of shallow glow, a handmade shea butter company. I am a champion for your self care, business care and intentional wellness.
Christine Gautreaux 0:25
And I am Christine Gautreaux, a white social justice advocate, an international speaker, coach and published author who helps you upgrade yourself in community care.
Shannon M. 0:35
Yes. And together, we are women connected in wisdom, a podcast grounded in the eight dimensions of wellness. Welcome, welcome to our show,
Christine Gautreaux 0:44
where we get together every week and have intentional conversations about how to be wise in business and relationships and wellness. And we invite on these amazing guests that just always are so much fun. And today’s guest is no exception. I can’t wait to introduce her to y’all in a little bit. It’s going to be a treat. So absolutely. Well, we’re what are we talking about today? Shame.
Shannon M. 1:09
Today? I mean, we’re talking about wellness. But as we know, there is a lot of different details we could talk about. So specifically financial wellness, and this is one of my new favorites. It really is.
Christine Gautreaux 1:21
It is it is I don’t use it new because like you love it every time we do a show. Bring it, bring it Bring it.
Shannon M. 1:31
Bring me the money. I feel like Jerry Maguire, okay, show me the money. And it’s so interesting, because I feel like during quarantine, I just found out that all that people really have a sense of feeling like they shouldn’t have anything. I don’t feel like I have that, you know that. But that comes it also comes from my spiritual wellness. I know whose daughter is talking about riches in heaven. So what is it? Oh, all you have to do is make sure you discipline enough to stick to a budget and stay committed to some things, okay, and then compound interest will make you wealthy. Let’s see where we’re at in 20 years. But if I didn’t know that before, I wouldn’t have I don’t even know where to start. So I love being able to help the ladies and talk about financial wellness.
Christine Gautreaux 2:18
Right? What definition are we going off of?
Shannon M. 2:21
So today we’re going to try to capture a complete definition of financial wellness. But it’s tricky, right? Because it means different things to different people. Let me scroll back up the scroll too far down. At its most basic level, financial wellness is a holistic approach to counter financial illness. This holistic approach includes a combination of factors such as satisfaction with current finances, increasing positive financial behaviors like saving, reducing debt and budgeting, financial knowledge that helps to change your behavior, reduce financial stress and creation of a financial plan to reach desired financial goals.
Christine Gautreaux 3:07
Yes. Yeah, that’s a big one. And it is like there’s a lot that goes into it. Right? I know, we’re different generations and different races in different ways we’ve been taught about it. We’ve had this conversation on the show before, you know, we didn’t really talk about money and my family growing up. And in fact, we were taught not to talk about it. And so I am still learning. Like, it’s our guest today. Y’all have full transparency. I hired her as my money coach, because I’m like, I gotta figure this out. I like
Shannon M. 3:42
she was your money coach, I wonder if
Christine Gautreaux 3:46
we had this conversation, go see why she’s my money coach, because I was like, oh, I need some help. Because, you know, I was always like, Oh, you’ll figure it out. Or, but I got to thinking, like, people hire me. Because they struggle with their self care, their community care, they’re looking for a new job and need a new career. And like, I have skills to help them. But I’m not an expert in money. And I’m not an expert in finances. And I was like expecting myself to be and not really doing a good job at it really. And you know, I didn’t have the they don’t teach it in school. We didn’t talk about it in my family. I’ve taken a few programs here and there. But I’m still like, how do I do this? And you know, I’m halfway through my life. Like if I live to be 100 I’m halfway through my life. So I’m like, I should figure this out in the second half of my life. Absolutely. And I love that you’re starting earlier.
Shannon M. 4:38
Yes. And I love what you know, I’m a huge Robert Kiyosaki fan he is I feel like the foundation of a lot of my financial literacy for the stage that I’m at right now. And he has this book titled second chance. And I think especially after this book, I understand midlife crisis a little more and not that it was about men. I have crisis, but it is about situations that happen. And you’re in, oh my goodness, what am I what am I about to do? situation and that was a lot of us and is a lot of us after quarantine and with life in general. So you know, with my mom passing away again, if you guys don’t know the story, you ladies don’t know. That’s why we have a podcast. But I was a salaried manager, right? If the general manager was not there, this is my restaurant. And I ran it like it was mine, because I love doing a good job, right? But occupational wellness wasn’t there. My financial wellness wasn’t there. And I was looking at how much time I was working, and what my life looked like. And with not knowing my mom for 12 years, I said, You know what, let me step down and spend time with my mom, while she said, if I know that, I don’t want to keep moving up this ladder that I’m climbing up. So I stepped down. And then a year later, Corona happened and shut the restaurant down. But I said I wasn’t supposed to be there for more than a year anyways. So now I’ve taken opportunity to start this podcast and talk with you ladies every Wednesday at five and to start shallow blow. And that’s what I’ve been working on, and side gigs and stuff, right. But in order to know that I need side gigs and know what the plan is. That’s why the financial wellness is so important. You know, I would have loved to take care of my mom in a different way. The culture of silence in America with the history. We don’t even talk about burial cost and how Trump traumatizing that is on top of losing people. So I can’t even imagine what it’s been like for the black community during Corona, people passing away, you can’t see them. You don’t have the money to bury them. It’s like that’s the whole thing. So I really look forward to us getting away from feeling like we shouldn’t ask for more and into okay, if you should tell your dollars what to do with without a job. Should I get my dollars and we could start talking about that with our guests. I
Christine Gautreaux 6:55
can’t wait to talk about it with Laurie. Yeah, you saying that about Coronavirus and hitting the black community especially because we know more black and brown bodies have been affected than anybody. I saw the statistic this week that 600,000 People have died from Coronavirus in the United States. And that that number just came up this week. And yeah, that’s huge.
Shannon M. 7:20
I mean, we should just like take a second. Yeah. So for the people who lost their family members this year that didn’t get to see them and whatever that means. You know, let’s talk about our wellness. And I’ll give it a second. So we could take a moment of silence and then we can bring our guests on. All right, let’s do it.
Okay, I think we should keep going. Because, of course, we got to you know, get reverence and celebrate life but be honest about what’s going on. So robots are plugged into some financial resources to make sure that we get that that part of the story a little more tied to
Christine Gautreaux 8:04
I was so excited to introduce our guests this week. Y’all know I get excited every week and because if I don’t know him before they come on our podcast, which this guest I do, but we get to know him in the pre interview and then it’s like, wow, I can’t wait to hear. So, Lori Johnson’s background includes over 25 years of experience in personal and business finances, financial counseling, the psychology of money, financial therapy, tax strategy and tax preparation. Laurie is an accredited financial counselor, a registered tax return prepare a certified cognitive behavioral group facilitator, a top corporate trainer for Fortune 500 companies, a professional speaker and author Laurie is approachable, non judgmental and loves making money fun and I can give a testimony to that. Fun fact Laurie has more than 5000 continuing education hours. Let me say that again. 5000 continuing education hours in the areas of personal and small business finance so truly an expert and an amazing human being. I want to welcome to our stage Lori Johnson Laurie
thank you for being here today.
Laurie Johnson 9:27
Thank Thank you for having me. I’m excited. I love talking about money.
Christine Gautreaux 9:31
Right about you. And you really are when it says you are non judgmental and love making money fun that has been my personal experience with you. And girl I got some blocks about it. So I am really excited that that you’re just talking those blocks down and so why do we have blocks especially as women like what have you what in your experience with all these hundreds of women’s and companies that you’ve worked with? Like why Do we have such Why are we so tied in knots around money?
Laurie Johnson 10:03
Yeah, so money blocks actually come from the nurture parts of money. It is all about the it’s what I call your money baggage, your experiences, your observations, the thing people say to you about money, the things that you even done nonverbal communications that people have around money that create blocks, right. And so key is just being aware that you probably have some, I think, yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it’s, it could be from traumas. Like if you lost a job, or if you lost, you know, a house or a car, those can cause money blocks. Or it could be because when you were on your mom was hip when you were young enough to point something at something at the store and say, I wanted that, that whatever answer she gave you, like, cause some love fuzziness in your little brain that stayed with you.
Christine Gautreaux 11:12
Right, like you even talking about this, the here’s the story that’s bubbling up for me, and then I’m gonna pass to Shannon and see if she has any stories. But oh, I don’t even know how old that was. I had to be old enough to go to the skating rink by myself. But I wasn’t. So I was probably 10, maybe around that age. And I remember, my mom given me a $20 bill, which was huge back then. Right. So she gave me a $20 bill to go to the skating rink. And I think it was probably $5 or two, you know, I don’t know what it was to get in. But I remember getting there and they had these gorgeous POM shall remember. I’m older than y’all. But you know, those fuzzy pom poms that go on the top of your skates. They were gorgeous. I had them in Burgundy and white, which was our school colors too. And I was like, Oh, I have enough money to buy them. And so I bought them. And I got in so much trouble. Because I was supposed to bring home change. Didn’t know I was supposed to bring home change that expectation hadn’t been set ahead of time. So I just, even as you talked about it, like I went right back to that little girl who was taught, oh, you’re not allowed to do that. You’re not like, even if you have money, you’re not allowed to get what you want. So group therapy for Christine, today, I’m passing
Laurie Johnson 12:37
that you should pay attention to what you just said. Even when you have money, you’re not allowed to get what you want. Like usually, it’s the the things that we say as an aside kind of those throwaway comments that we make, that we have to like, bring back and focus on so that we can like, kind of break them apart and figure out what part of those things were playing into, or what part of those things were rebelling against.
Shannon M. 13:07
Yeah, I love that. And what I was gonna say is deconstructed. Yeah, and a lot of times it’s this simple stuff. Like, oh, no, that sounds regular. But that’s actually the root of what we’re talking about. You know.
I have a couple of different stories. Let’s do let’s do two quick ones. So one, I think I had gotten second place at the Science Fair in middle school, right? At the time I was the oldest shout out to lovey and secure my brother my sister today is actually his birthday. So that’s perfect.
Christine Gautreaux 13:41
Brother,
Shannon M. 13:43
attorney, lovey Goleman shout out to you happy birthday. Well, it was like regret to growing up now. Right. But um, I’m at the store where Michaels again, and I got in second place in the science fair. And I wanted to give my little brother and sister a gift with my card, right part of my money I was going to spend on them. That was a lesson I had learned for trying not to be selfish with my money, is what I was doing. But it’s interesting, because when I was picking between the two different designs, and I’ll leave it at this store, and we’ll keep going, I was picking between two different designs. And the first one was the same design as the first place card. I thought that it had the same amount of money as the first place card, then there was mine. I said no, I don’t want them to have the same amount, then I’m not gonna have any money left or right. So I wanted to get them the third design of the car, which was one I hadn’t seen and so I assumed to have less or I could just put however much of course that’s not how your cards work. You pick a design and you put however much money on it. But me seeing that how I give gifts. You know why do you want you don’t want them to have more than you but it’s Why do you give that way right? And then it was not understanding money and thinking that because I saw it and it was worth this much that this piece The plastic every single time as that amount of money. And so translating now to Bitcoin and all this other stuff, it’s like, wait a minute, if you don’t understand in the world
value of stuff, anything that costs $15, like some kids do to pay for a mortgage, we got to make sure we fix that at some point, but it wasn’t fixed. So I think that’s a story that I think about that bubbles up. I hadn’t thought about it for a while.
Laurie Johnson 15:28
Oh, my goodness, so many different aspects to that story. Yeah. Fascinating. But yeah, no, I totally agree that that, that one of the number one things that we have to start doing with our children is teaching them young, I started teaching each of my children about money when they were three, if you’re long, old enough to learn how to read, then you’re learning or old enough to learn about money, right? You just get started simple with them.
Christine Gautreaux 16:01
Give us some examples, like what did you do? Like some examples or courses that parents could use?
Laurie Johnson 16:08
Oh, so I love three, three is for me, always magic numbers. So three, I would give them $3 a week, and I gave them their age per week, until they were both 80. Actually, my son was 19 when I started stopped giving him $90 A week. He’s like, seriously, I was like, Are you saying no, I’m not saying no. But one is, if your kids never have money to spend, they will never learn how to spend it. So you have to give them give it to them. Right. And then three is a perfect amount of dollars so that you can share, spend and save, right and it teaches them to have money so that they can make decisions about what they want to purchase. And then it gives them the experience of savings so that they can have bigger chunks. And it gives them you know, the thrill of knowing that when that Santa is ringing that bell that you can go give him money or if a friend has a birthday, that they are personally purchasing something for their friend and teaches them lots of different lessons.
Christine Gautreaux 17:27
I love that. I love it. I needed thank Laurie so it’s also I have a curiosity because I have two daughters 923 And they’re very different money personalities. So different people have different money personalities like one daughter is very definitely a saver like it is her nature to save. I think in her current jobs. She put 70% in savings and 30% in her checking so because she’s saving for college, and then one daughter is probably the opposite she if she saves 30% Like she is a spender she like and and it’s for good thing like it’s for saving the whales or saving the end it was she was my kid that when Jack Hanna was on TV, she was packing her bag because he said he needed help. And she was going to go to the rainforest and help. I was like maybe donation he really doesn’t want you to show up at three years old. So money personalities. Yes,
Laurie Johnson 18:26
absolutely. Money personalities. Saber spinder is completely, um, nature. So it’s completely you were born that way. It’s like being right handed or left handed. And it’s just as hard to change. And so a natural spender is a natural spender, my 23 year old daughter, she is a spender, she will spend every free dollar that she can. And so I’m very happy that I taught her very young to automatically save and to have money that she wants to share. So she is a very good saver. But every penny that’s not saved is spent. And she is a she is what I would call a spontaneous spender. So she wants to be able she’s not like a spender that plans she wants to be able to spend it. Like whenever were my son. He’s 20 and he is a saver down to mero mean he wants to say like everybody you know I actually I had I was saying once that he purchased something and he was like well no, I don’t I don’t want to spend my money on that I want to save to know if you wanted to buy stocks or or a particular stock or something. Like yeah, I’m saving up for that like okay. It doesn’t want like a new Lego set or something but you It’s like, Nope, never mind. Yeah, it’s something that is, in your nature, the things that are more easily changed are the nurture things, the what I call your money baggage, those are the things that you can change more easily.
Christine Gautreaux 20:18
I love that. I love that. I mean, that makes sense to me. And it also makes sense that we can learn no matter how old we are, we can learn how to have mastery over our money. So like, tell us about what you do with clients and how you help them to do that, like how do you help them to shift mindset or get or gain mastery? Like, what what do you do with folks?
Laurie Johnson 20:40
Well, I have two sets of clients, I work with individuals. So when I’m working with individuals around money, I really do want to get a strong understanding of like, what their money personality is, what their money baggage is, what they are, why it is that they do what they do with money. And that really is the first part of the solution. Because what do you do with money has nothing to do with money. So If money had something to do with how well you did with money, then every time you got a raise, you do a little bit better. But that really just isn’t a fact. So and money also isn’t why we are satisfied or dissatisfied with our lives. Right? So that all has to do with how with our relationship with money, how we spend money and how we think about money, right? So if money is a good thing in a certain circumstance, or if it’s a bad thing, you know, if it can bring lawn chaos, or if it can bring on peace, all of those things are set up in our mind in our mindsets. And so first, it’s discovering, you know, what our beliefs are around money, and how we think about money. And I’m a very left brain person. And so I want a tool, a strategy, a tip, you know, I want a technique for like everything, right? I’m like, you know, if you’re like spontaneous rafter card, because sometimes they call them car condoms, like rabbits, protect yourself from overspending. Or, if it is that you’re having a bad day, or you’re overly emotional, there are some words that are very detrimental to your money, fear, shame, regret, those are like those can devastate your finances. And so figuring out what they are, I am I am in favor of meditation, especially guided meditations around money, but also a version
Christine Gautreaux 23:13
of Do you provide guided meditations around money? Are you get a hold of that? Oh,
Laurie Johnson 23:23
you know what, actually, I haven’t I usually do them with my one on one clients. And so as I’m working with them as I am preparing them for each step of our journey, there is a guided meditation meditation that goes along with that stuff. So that it did I call it like, when I’m getting ready to download information, I just want to wipe them clean a little bit so that they can, like absorb.
Christine Gautreaux 23:51
Do you know about Insight Timer, Laurie? The show before Insight Timer is a meditation app that has 1000s of meditation instructors. You’d be a great meditation instructor on there. Oh, God, I’ll send you a link to check it out. And I’ll put a link in our show notes for our listeners to check out all the meditations. But it would be a great place for that to be saying because I’m a user and I would love to be able to pop in your meditation.
Laurie Johnson 24:25
Absolutely, I think, I don’t know, I just think that getting your brain Street is important. It’s an important part of getting your mind straight. But then what I do with my business clients, by my small business clients, is I give them financial knowledge, right? Teaching them about their business finances, giving them the rules of business finances, and usually their fears are a little bit different. Their money blocks are are a little bit different than in personal finance, they’re more like imposter syndrome, or kind of a little bit of fear of moving from maybe employee to you’re the top dog. And now you have to take responsibility and or another big one is having fear of debt. And you cannot be afraid of debt and be in business. Debt is which leverage to get the skills and the information that you need to grow your business. And so it is, it’s the same thing, if I’m working with a person, for their personal finances, or if I’m with a small business owner, it’s knocking down those blocks, getting them information that they need, and creating a plan.
Shannon M. 25:48
I love it. And especially from a finance standpoint, and a time standpoint, again, going back to Robert Kiyosaki, he’s taught, he’s the one who taught me, if you don’t have time, and financial freedom, you really don’t have complete freedom. So quarentine gave me 100% time freedom, okay? Do you have financial freedom? Or are you going to sit down in the house somewhere with a banana like, that’s what I did. Not going anywhere, okay. But I love what you said about the different hesitations or barriers that people have. And when you talk about cleaning the energy, it reminds me of you actually, Christina reminds me of the point. And the story in the book where they were hearing a difficult story emotionally, right, the support group that was talking, and the survivor of the Holocaust started sharing his story. He had a back pain in his back. And he had been filling it for a decade since the war. And it was really because fast forward to the end of the story. He only thought about his family in the concentration camps. He wasn’t thinking about the happy memories before that, and of course, was grieving the happy memories and his family members and was physically holding on to that pain. Now, of course, that’s a lot. Right. So how do we process a lot, they were moving the energy around, and one of the characters in the book, one of the speakers was saying, how she was physically moving the energy up into the, to the roof into the sky for positivity, and the ways that you could kind of wipe it off, you know, and as a Christian, this is not necessarily something that we usually talk about, we don’t talk about how to clean the energy in the room. And it almost seems like it might be witchcraft, who knows how far lifted goes or where that starts. That’s not how I feel about it. I think that he live in air and energy between people, you can physically feel it. And so if there’s a way to clean that off, and have a healthy environment, when I’ve done it, it’s always helped me and I pray during it and I feel great about it. So I love doing that before looking at finances and learning new financial information, because it can be very overwhelming. When and I went through the transition, right? As soon as I got unemployment last year, I was okay, let me call somebody and help me with the strategy from that. I already knew Robert Kiyosaki, don’t buy a liability. If you win the lottery, there was a case that he won the lottery, he bought a $20,000 chain, the listeners probably know what I’m talking about. There was a video of his man getting robbed at the gas station, you should have bought an asset okay, and that saying that there’s ever reasons to attack anybody. I hope he’s okay. But also, I wish he would invest the money and that’s how we can make it flip. So again, I know it’s overwhelming for me going from being salary to the unemployed and knowing that I should get an asset. So now I have to manage my personal finances wisely, right because we’re women connected in wisdom. But now I need to also separate my accounts for my business. And so that’s what I want to talk about next is Profit First, because I think even as women we might be less inclined to want to try this this system right and listening to it after all the studying that I’ve been doing on this topic. It makes so much sense. Yes, Mike McCalla wits, I have changed my accounts, but I still need to set up the to no temptation accounts. So I want to talk about specifically here so that we’re really given the ladies what they need, right and what is not other places. So correct me if I’m wrong, Laurie, because I know you’re the expert. But in puppet First, there’s five different accounts. And I also know that there’s profit first, like experts. I don’t know if you’re on that list, Laurie. So if the listeners are listening, and they’re very interested, I want to make sure that I say that just for clarification for everybody. But, again, this is what I just did that I think has really helped me and I changed it to operations. op x, which is operation expenses, Profit First, right? Because we’re going to make sure that our businesses are thriving on healthy margins. And we’re spending like we should we’re using our money how we should, then there’s taxes, because if you’re selling stuff, if you’re selling services, we got to make sure that our businesses are not going to get shut down by the government, and we’re not taking money that we shouldn’t use. Then we have what is the next one? So I said profit. First, I said operations. I said, Now, the next one is owner’s compensation, right? Because as an owner that’s in the business, you should be compensated. So that’s every two weeks, that’s an account. And then you have your fifth one. That is what am I missing? Lord? Do you remember?
Laurie Johnson 30:42
So I don’t do Profit First? Exactly. What you’re thinking of is, gosh, what are the I think that they are profit owners paying operating expenses, taxes, and I know that there’s a fifth one? Oh, the money in?
Shannon M. 31:07
Yes, the income. And so I love it, because this pulls everything into one place. Right? And you’re not just spending all that you have, like Laurie said, I think he said that before the call we were talking about different ways actually wasn’t on the call, we were talking about six different ways that people spend money, and some will just spend all that they had. Was that on the caller before? Yeah, it was on the call. Okay, perfect. So the listeners know what I’m talking about. But that’s definitely me. So the income helps me with that it comes into this account, and then I disperse it from there. So as somebody who helps people with their business, finance accounts, Lori and their personal ones, what would you say? I know, especially with you doing you’re different? How do they balance both of them? Should they have multiple accounts on their personal side as well? Or should they? I don’t even know what the different systems are?
Laurie Johnson 32:03
Oh, my goodness, for personal. All right. So this is typically how so you have to realize that when clients come to me, they have a personal account, right? And so what I’m trying to do is get them to get them to stop interfering commingling funds, right. And I’m also trying to come up with a system that’s easiest for them, because the only system that surely works is the one that you’ll use appropriately. Right. And so for some people I had, they have a personal account, they have a business account, and then they’re, they’re doing everything else on spreadsheets. But if you want to do it by true accounts, I usually have them have four, four accounts. So they have, they have their main account where the money comes in. And that’s actually where their profits sits. So it’s their money and account in their profit account. And then there is their tax account. And I’m usually working with solopreneurs. And so that tax account, I don’t, I don’t care if that’s a personal tax account, or if it’s a business account, because as a solopreneur, you pay taxes on your business income as an individual, not as a business, they go on your on your personal tax returns. The third is your your your owner’s pay. And the fourth is your operating expenses. And usually I go in that order because I have a suggested recommendation for percentages for when people first start working with me, and they don’t know what those percentages should be. And it’s 1020 3040. So 10% profit 20% taxes 30% owners pay, and 40% operating expenses. And that 40% operating expenses gives you a defined number that you can use for budgeting for your operating expenses.
Shannon M. 34:20
I really like that because it makes it simple. I think I would still need to split the profit and the other money just because I know it’s gonna be gone. I’m gonna I’m gonna spend it. But I love that. Well, you’re
Laurie Johnson 34:38
not. So here’s the thing that I tell people all the time. The money that is that in that money in account, that is the net profit account. That money don’t belong to you. It’s not your money. It belongs to your business. A receptionist couldn’t sit at the receptionist desk someone bring her pet petty cash and She decided to spend it. Because if not, they have like, not nice words for that, right? So you have to realize that the money in your business until you take it out and you pay yourself, that is the business’s money. And I think that small business owners get a little confused.
Shannon M. 35:20
What I mean is, what I’ve seen with myself as a new small business owner is spending for the business. Because if I’m the type of person that spend for myself, now I’m spending for the business to and now my operating expenses is higher than the percentage that it should be, because I’m just that type of person that spend the money. So absolutely. For both. Yeah. Yeah,
Laurie Johnson 35:43
I mean, but so here’s the nice thing about the operating expense, and it being its own account. Yeah, you can spend what’s not there. Right. And if you if you are spinning, what’s not there. And so like I said, I, I’m, I am pro, I’ll call it credit, in your business, I pro access to capital in your business, that is what you need. And so if you are running your business on a shoe, screech, shoestring and you never, you don’t understand your business, finances, and you’ve never paid someone to help you understand your business finances, if you don’t understand sales, and you’ve never paid for someone to help you understand sales in your business, you’re not going to be profitable. Those are two key things that you have to understand in your business. You know, 82% of businesses go out of business due to lack of cash flow, understanding your business finances, not making the sales, those are those two things. 82%. So big number,
Shannon M. 36:51
Whoa, big numbers, numbers.
Christine Gautreaux 36:53
And y’all for our listeners who are listening to this, if you are a solopreneur entrepreneur, Lori can fix that for you. Yes, she can. She can tell you like don’t do this or do this or you know, I that’s what I love about you and being an expert in this because it is scary. If finances aren’t your background or money is not your thing, or you know, and I think there’s such shame around money, sometimes not that needs to be there. But you know, years ago, and I probably said it on another episode when we’re talking about finances. But, you know, years ago, I was a foster care and adoption worker, and would do home studies where literally, I would have a 10 to 20 page document about everything in a couple’s life. Right. And I was young, I was a green social worker, and it blew me away. But people were so much more willing to talk to me about their sex life than they were about their finances, I think. I mean, they were completely like, I mean, it was a little awkward. But once they got started, they were fine. Right? And they’re like, Christine, why do you need to know about their sex life? Well, it was a part of How’s their marriage functioning? And how’s their relationship going? But they would go off on that, but finances or, you know, and we had to because that was part of the deal. But that was my end. And then that was norm for me, because we were taught not to talk about vitamins. So it was like, it’s so confusing sometimes when we’re raised in that culture, when we’re raised not to talk about it.
Shannon M. 38:26
Well, and
Laurie Johnson 38:28
go ahead, right ahead, you can go right ahead.
Shannon M. 38:31
And I would love your opinion on this too, Laurie, because I know that people talk about playing the race card. Right. But they both started with are and is definitely relevant. Okay. Straight off the dome, you know, but they it’s definitely relevant, because I just saw the post about changing was allowed to be taught out in schools. So we’re talking about psychology, Laurie, I love that you know about financial psychology, the intersection of those two things is very important. And if we’re not going to talk about how disproportionate incarceration changes the generational lifespan of the family, if we’re not going to talk about how going into people’s homes and raiding their furniture and burning it down how that might affect the standing of that family, much less a whole community of 10,000 in Oklahoma 100 years ago, and how what type of message that sends you know, so I think that it’s interesting we talk about, again, why do some people have hangups? Well, I think that that’s why certain people have hangups with even learning about it if we weren’t supposed to be reading and writing and social is just one category of wellness. Financial is a whole nother category. So after emancipation, the it wasn’t like oh, here’s the whole you know, know all these resources that we have now for you to understand what’s going on. So that and trauma and people passing away because of sickness and bad habits, not taking care of ourselves in any of the eight dimensions, it makes sense why we have people asking questions, you know, so Laurie, so one, I’m trying to figure out how to ask you specifically to give the most direct help, cuz I know that I’m great at being internally motivated. But some people might not be right. So I love what you do. I love that you’re a woman doing it, being able to help people with both their business and their personal finances is so big, so of you ladies are having hang ups on what to do and kicking yourself because you’re by yourself. That’s why we have this podcast to be connected. There’s generations of stuff, no matter who you are, you know why you might think the way that you do so having somebody to help you split it up, and just walk through, you know, walk with you through stuff, I think is great. But what was my question, Laurie? I had one specifically based
Christine Gautreaux 41:11
question I want to pop in here, and about what you were saying, as there was just an article on NPR, it may 21 2021, y’all. So this is still happening, talking about race, that a black woman had to hide her race to get a fair home appraisal. So she’s in a, she was in a historic black neighborhood in Indianapolis, it been completely renovated. And she wanted to get an appraisal to refi her house, right. And when she popped in Zillow, or whatever she popped in for figuring it out. It said it was estimated at 187. But when she had her first appraisal, it came back at 125. And this time, it was 15,000, lower. And then what she did is she had a friend, a white male call in stand in for her at the appraisal. And it came back at $259,000. So people that say that that doesn’t exist or not paying attention, like that is happening right here. And today. Yeah,
Laurie Johnson 42:22
that doesn’t surprise me at all. So I sold my home just this past November. And I was instructed by my real estate agent to take all pictures off the wall. All pictures out of drawers. Like there had to be no pictures anywhere of my family. And before my appraisal, I was instructed to leave my home. And our because sometimes they show up early. And because I was I was it was made very clear to me that it was because I was black. Yeah, I mean that in, in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. So yeah, no, it’s it’s just it’s not surprising to me at all.
Christine Gautreaux 43:14
Yeah, it’s real, the disparities that are still happening in 2021.
Laurie Johnson 43:18
Yeah, I am always aware that I am in business while being black. Yeah.
Shannon M. 43:25
Business while being black. Yes. Yeah. And that’s, I think that’s my question is when things like that happen, right, you talked about cleaning off the energy. And, of course, there’s everyday there’s still more to learn. So when everyday situations are happening like this, because again, we’re just talking about race, we’re not even talking about gender and everything else that adds on to that intersection. How you maintain your personal financial wellness, and your healthy mindset, your mindset of mastery over the finances with situations like this still persisting.
Laurie Johnson 44:03
You know, there are things that you so I think that a lot of African Americans have lifelong experience trying to get the best outcome. Right. And, and I would assume that that’s true for most minorities. Is that you? I mean, I was someone asked me about it in an interview recently, and they were saying, What have you done recently? That would be surprising. And I was saying that I was getting a book edited. And it was it was at it was through a portal where I could put my picture and I was like, No way I’m not putting my picture up there until my book gets added. You know, it’s purely because I want to make sure that the best job was done in for my book, Look, because I’m black, you know, I mean, it’s the first thing that you notice about me other than my big old hips
Christine Gautreaux 45:11
sharp lip and your hair,
Shannon M. 45:14
hair and the smile on the picture is good. Okay, so when I see the picture, I should be happy to but
Christine Gautreaux 45:23
I want we have said what your book is, well, you know what your book is. And
Laurie Johnson 45:28
my latest book is a personal finance book and it’s called you bought what? How to Create a spending plan that works. Okay. Yeah. So it goes through some, some money personalities, it goes through, you know, some financial literacy, that also talks about some financial wellness topics, I talk a little bit about being living in intentional ease, which is kind of my version of financial wellness, it’s, and again, it doesn’t matter how much money you make, you can live an intentional ease and have financial wellness in your life. Yeah.
Christine Gautreaux 46:15
I love that. Laurie, where can folks find find your book
Laurie Johnson 46:18
so they can find my book at my website, it’s www dot revision. That’s our e vi es IO in financial solutions.com www dot revisione financial solutions.com.
Christine Gautreaux 46:32
And we will put a link to that in our show notes so folks can find that also, I am aware that we are almost out of time this has gone by so quick. But before we pop you back to the green room, we always do a wisdom in action every week that we tagged on social media. So if you were to say if you were to hashtag something, your wisdom and action around financial wellness, what would that little blurb be?
Laurie Johnson 47:03
No your numbers writing down. Yep, personal business doesn’t matter you you have to in there’s something magical about taking pin to paper that really allows your numbers to sink into your brain. So you can just know your numbers on a computer. Write them down.
Christine Gautreaux 47:26
Love them. Yep. I love that. Thanks so much for being here with us today. This was delightful. And I’m pretty sure I owe you a questionnaire so that would be coming soon.
Laurie Johnson 47:39
Yes, get that done. Thank you so much for having me.
Christine Gautreaux 47:48
Oh my gosh, so much to unpack there.
Shannon M. 47:51
so good.
Christine Gautreaux 47:53
What are you thinking?
Shannon M. 47:58
Hmm. So much. You want me to be honest. I’m thinking about Mike McCalla wits and how I should have let Laurie have his time talking about his accounts. We should have been talking about her is this women connected in wisdom? Sorry, Mike, but not sorry. And I loved every part of it. I love the institutionality I’m looking forward to using her but I think I will put it on my list of wisdoms that think wisdom is a wisdom. So I don’t think that’s a word. But I’m gonna put it on my wisdom and action to do this. After I get done with this financial peace, but yeah, I think you know, you definitely need to go in. And I love that she has multiple books.
Christine Gautreaux 48:41
I mean, I from what she said about know your numbers, like I’ve been looking at my numbers since working with her more than ever, but I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve done the pen to paper thing yet. So that’ll be my action this week is to write because there is something magical about that. I agree with her 100% on that. There’s some like that brain connection of writing it down. And one thing she said to me recently in a session that I’ll share is that you can’t help but do better with your money when you start putting intention towards it. And when you start looking at it. And that really resonated with me about you know, we can have all these blocks and make it hard, make it scary, or we can make it fun. And we can be like, if we pay attention to this, this can be fun, and we can have a good time. And we can give each other high fives. And you know, I know we often talk about it on manifesting Monday in our mastermind group. We give each other support around this because we need to normalize it. We need to normalize, especially women, talking about money and being comfortable with it. So So I love that.
Shannon M. 49:51
Yeah. My wisdom and action is to change my API. So I take inventory manually, right I will change my code. Yeah, for my business to manual as well, because I know that goes into everything else that you need for your number. So I like that idea. And I definitely love even the electronic notebooks we talked about the rocket book, Christine before, right? And I love that but it doesn’t feel like normal paper and pen and so I still love it over everything else. But that’s what I’ll be doing myself as an action item.
Christine Gautreaux 50:25
I may have to art journal with money, too. I’m just putting a side note out there because you know, I’m an artist doodler. And I mean, that might be fun, because kind of how we do our vision boards, like, like doing that around but adding the numbers in to somebody play like, create, play with it writing
Shannon M. 50:47
is really on my vision board. Like this year’s vision board has word money on it has Janelle Monae sitting in the grass. She’s just the ease that Laurie was talking about. You know, that’s definitely what I’m looking for myself. And one more point that I wanted to make, too, about women. Just to wrap up this show with everything I’ve been thinking about this week is the Book about secrets of six figure women. You know, I love that book, how it talks about community and the goals that you should have financially, Prince Charming isn’t coming, and you got to figure it out yourself.
I love that I read this book, because before I hadn’t thought about how different money really makes people feel about themselves. You know, it was really interesting in the restaurant, if I went up to a table, and I had my chef coat, with my name sewn on it and zipper all up all black people, it didn’t matter who they were, they would pay more attention, they interrupted me less when I spoke, they stopped their conversation when I came up to the table. But if I had on my server uniform, they acted different, right? If I had on a white shift code, they would act different. And so based on who they thought I was, their response was completely different. But also, how I felt about myself when I was the kitchen manager was different than when I was a server even when I was a server before and after was different. And so because I was reading this book, I was able to articulate, okay, your value is not has not changed, even though your financial situation is changed. If you know that you should be making more money than this, then let’s put a plan together and see what that looks like. And that’s what I’m excited to do.
Christine Gautreaux 52:30
Right? Oh, some of the good things to talk about. I know we’re really out of time. So we should wrap up with a little talk about self and community care and our sponsor before we go. So why don’t you wrap the self care and Shayla glue together for us today? Does that work?
Shannon M. 52:47
Oh, yes, yes. And I know I added this right before the show. But ladies, we want to make sure that we are giving you all the resources we can and tying in the dimension to, again, how you take care of yourself and how you take care of your community. So this week for self care, self care, it’s up from Shiloh is to moisturize twice a day. Okay, in the morning and at night. I think it should be easier with these extra showers. But what I find out, at least out here in Atlanta is that when we’re getting out the shower, we are not putting anything on our skin. So no more ladies, okay, we had to take care of ourselves. And for self care more stress twice a day that will help your moisture barrier on your skin when you do it with shallow. But when you do it with shallow glow and shea butter, it’s a whole extra coat on your skin. That’s not only going to help you heal faster condition your skin minimize. So you like help with elasticity. But again, it’s going to make sure that it takes this taking care of the biggest organ on your body, your skin. So we’re talking about all this stuff that we do do to be well, we want to make sure we’re taking care of that.
Christine Gautreaux 53:56
Right and I got into financial wellness. Don’t we have a coupon code for folks for Shiloh?
Shannon M. 54:05
Yes, we do. So ladies, if you’re listening and you know, man, Joe, if you want some shallow glow, you can get to and the code is wise by minus five. And you’re going to get 5% off your order. I say local.com
Christine Gautreaux 54:20
Well, and thank you for Shayla for being our sponsor, and we will put that in the show notes. And as always, the link to nominating your Shea row is in there too. For community care, because we like to celebrate amazing women in our communities. So you can put your nomination in there too. You can find that on the show. So well as always my friend incredible conversation. I know we could just keep going but we got to stop at some point. So I think we’re almost done.
Shannon M. 54:54
Yes. And don’t forget, be well be wise
Unknown Speaker 55:08
thanks for listening, this has been the women connected and wisdom podcast on-air live on Wednesdays at 5 pm. Eastern via Facebook and YouTube. Be sure to like, share and subscribe be part of the conversation and get connected at women connected in wisdom.com.
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