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Podcast

The Financial Freedom Formula with Penelope Jane Smith

 

Break Free to Brilliance Ep. 60: The Financial Freedom Formula

Tune into this week’s episode of Break Free to Brilliance for wisdom on how to live your life by design and achieving financial freedom.

Penelope Jane Smith is the premier financial freedom coach for women entrepreneurs and the go-to expert for some of the biggest names in the conscious business industry. She is an acclaimed international speaker and certified trainer with over 20 years of teaching experience, and the author of the Little Book of Prosperity. Through her signature programs, like Financial Freedom 101, she has helped thousands of entrepreneurs from all over the world to create more ease, peace and freedom around money.

Grounding Meditation:

After a quick grounding meditation, Caterina shared that it is her first time to experience starting a podcast interview with a meditation and it felt wonderful.

Additional Insight to Financial Freedom

  1. Can you share how you decided to become an expert in your particular area?

Freedom is one of my highest values, which is why I’m passionate about supporting people to create financial freedom (where the income from your investments pays for your lifestyle) so they can make choices from a place of freedom and joy, instead of debt and obligation.  

I specialize in working with women entrepreneurs because they’re tragically underserved by our current financial industry.  Most financial products and services out there are designed by men for other men and don’t take into account the longer life spans or differences in career paths of women entrepreneurs, which means that we end up with much less money at retirement, but it has to last us longer.

 

  1. What three strengths do you think has helped you with your success today?

The first key is increasing my own financial education.  Like most of the people I work with, I didn’t learn how to manage and invest money wisely when I was growing up, either at home or at school.  Like most of the people I work with, I didn’t learn about this as part of my early professional education either.  Now, I’m always growing and learning and sharing my latest and greatest insights with my clients and community.  

The second key is mindset.  This is the “inner game” of money, the emotional, psychological, and spiritual side.  I make it an ongoing practice to expand my prosperity consciousness.

The third key is systems.  My motto is “systems will set you free.”  Every system I create in my life and in my business, gives me more freedom.  I love it!

 

  1. Can you share a specific example that reflects what you do?

I specialize in supporting women entrepreneurs to become financially free in 5 years or less with $10,000 or more per month in passive income.

I do this through my Wealth Accelerator System, which has 4 parts: Mindset, Education, Systems and Strategy.  I like to joke that the acronym is M.E.S.S. because most of us are a “hot mess” when it comes to money!

When Laura Cornell signed up to work with me, she didn’t really know what to expect, but she knew there HAD to be a better way to manage and invest her money.

Laura was craving the freedom to travel the world and work on passion projects, like writing her next book, but her husband was working WAY too hard six days a week to take a break from his practice, and they didn’t see any alternative.

Her relationship with investing felt like a necessary evil.  They hoped to have enough money to retire someday, but they didn’t know how or if they’d be able to make that happen.

I showed Laura how she could be financially free right away, just by changing her investment strategy and moving some assets around.

So instead of “maybe someday,” she and her husband were able to retire in a matter of months!

Now, Laura feels good about investing. She understands it.  She likes it.

She and her husband started off with a mini-retirement in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, she DID write her next book, and then they moved on to explore Sedona, Arizona next.

  1. What has been the most profound thing you have learned since you become the expert in your field?

So many entrepreneurs are focused on MAKING more money and attracting more clients, and that’s great, but then they ignore the GROWING money part, and that sets them up to work a lot harder than they have to.

Your money can work WAY harder FOR you than you can work for it! For example, if you invested just $50 a month from the time you were 25 years old until you were 65 years old, you would have invested a total of $24,000.  If you could average a 15% return on your money, you’d have $1,571,188.  The vast majority of that is your money growing FOR you!

 

  1. What 3 tips would you give to our readers?

Focus on PROFIT and not just revenue.  A good rule of thumb is to keep your profit margin above 50% for each of your offerings so you have room for fixed expenses, overhead, and net profit.

Set up a system for you to create and follow a unique Cashflow Plan each month for your business.  Without a Cashflow Plan, it’s almost impossible to make any real progress towards your financial goals, which will leave you feeling stuck and frustrated like you’re running on a financial hamster wheel.  When you have a Cashflow Plan, you’re telling your money where to go, instead of wondering where it went.

Strike a balance between investing back IN your business and investing OUTSIDE of your business for long-term wealth building so your business becomes a vehicle for creating wealth and financial freedom.

 

Connect with Penelope

Download your free copy of The Financial Freedom Formula eBook, where you’ll discover exactly what it will take for you to become financially free, the two types of passive income, and how to get more of each! 

FinancialFreedomGift.com

In just 3 days, get the tools to become financially free forever at Financial Freedom 101: GiftFromPenelope.com

Business Name:  Real Prosperity, Inc

E-mail               :  pj@realprosperityinc.com      

Website            : https://realprosperityinc.com

LinkedIn           :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/penelopejanesmith/

Facebook.        : https://www.facebook.com/penelopejanesmithbusinesspage/

 

Connect with Host Seema Giri:

Podcast

Serving Women on a Mission with Caterina Rando

 

Break Free to Brilliance Ep. 58: Serving Women on a Mission with Caterina Rando

Tune into this week’s episode of Break Free to Brilliance for wisdom on how to live your life by design and staying true to your mission of serving others.

Caterina Rando is an award-winning woman entrepreneur and business coach. She is on a mission to teach, mentor, and support women to be themselves, do their thing, serve their people and massively monetize their mastery. She is the founder of Thriving Women in Business Community and Thriving Women in Business Center and the author of internationally renowned book such as Learn to Think Differently, The ABCs of Public Speaking, and A Woman’s Giving Circle Guide. 

Caterina and her team conduct a variety of programs designed to provide skills, support, and an environment for breakthroughs for women to succeed who want to catapult their businesses to the next level. 

Serving Women on a Mission with Caterina Rando

Award-winning woman entrepreneur, business coach, author, and mentor Caterina Rando joins Seema Giri for another inspiring episode of Break Free to Brilliance Podcast. In this episode, we learn all about the importance of “blissing in your business” and being your authentic self in whatever you do. Caterina shares her secret for her longevity in business and how to deal with doubts and disappointment. She also shares how crucial cultivating a community can be for entrepreneurs.

Grounding Meditation:

After a quick grounding meditation, Caterina shared that it is her first time to experience starting a podcast interview with a meditation and it felt wonderful.

Setting Yourself Apart

Caterina and Seema go a long way back as Caterina is one of Seema’s mentors in business. They have been working together for two to three years now and have a close relationship.

Caterina herself has been a business coach for women for 29 years. After running a cafe and catering business, she slowly realized what it was about running the business that she loved. She loved the community and people aspect but not the cooking and the catering. And so one day, when a woman came over and thanked for an advice she gave about growing a business, Caterina took the message to heart, embraced it, and decided that that was her path — business coaching.

What makes Caterina different from other business coaches is that is that she places a real premium on the importance of a community. “Providing a community for women on a mission, to support and connect, share resources and ideas, make friends, build opportunities — that’s something that some coaches don’t focus on. They don’t focus on cultivating community as part of an essential ingredient to support your clients to thrive,” she shares.

She counts herself lucky as she knew pretty early on what she wanted to do with her life and her purpose: uplifting women. “In business, it’s really about uplifting women economically so that we can uplift each other. A rising woman lifts all the women around her,” she says. Her core statement has always been,  “I want more women get that they matter, that they have massive value to bring, that their voice is important and their contribution is important.” 

How to Keep Doing What You’re Doing

While some people feel the need to jump from one project to another after doing one for so many years, Caterina has continuously worked at coaching women entrepreneurs for close to thirty years. And that is because she is able to fulfill her core mission of helping women thrive by doing different things. When things simply stop being fun, she stops doing them and leans more towards what she enjoys.

“That’s one of the things that’s important to me. I’m all about blissing in your business. When I was doing video days, yeah I was making a lot of money but it wasn’t fun for me. It was in the beginning, but it wasn’t fun. And as I said, I used to publish books, which I loved to do, but then I realized I’m really more in love with the speaking part and the group programs and the retreats. And that’s why I shifted over to there.  You can keep serving as long as you’re happy and as long as you think you’re helping people. Keep doing your thing but you can find new ways to keep doing it. ”

Lost Your Job? Congratulations!

With the pandemic, many women felt stuck in their jobs while some lost them. To this, Caterina says, “Congratulations!” Because she feels that losing one’s job is an opportunity to check in with oneself and see what they really want to do with their lives.  

Her advice? The first would be to take some time to reflect. “Who are you called to serve? When we are of service in our life, we have a fulfilling life. I do believe that we are here to support and serve each other, to uplift each other. That’s the purpose of a good life.”

Her next advice would be “Don’t let your fear get in the way. Sometimes we feel like – ‘Well, I don’t really know what I want to do.’ The truth is, they usually know what they want to do, they’re just afraid to do it or pursue it. But we have to be willing to feel the fear and do it anyway as Susan Jeffers said in her book many years ago. But the beautiful thing is the more we do our thing, the more the fear dissipates.”

She also says that the beautiful thing about having your own business is that it can be your path to personal development and growth. Whatever it is that you’re struggling with in life, you will be forced to confront and solve in your business.

Dealing with Doubts and Disappointments

Apart from encouraging women to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, Caterina also gets real by saying that there are going to be discouragements and self-doubt along the way. The way to deal with it, she says, is to turn these thoughts and feelings into determination. “That is one of the qualities that I believe we don’t talk about enough that is essential for thriving in business,” she says.

Seema adds that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in business or how experienced you are. Feeling self-doubt is part of the process. Caterina agrees and says that it is especially true when you’re starting something new. It’s natural to ask yourself “Am I going to be good at this thing?” But there’s no way to know unless you do it. And the more you do it, the better you get.

Another thing she wants to underline is that apart from acknowledging your strengths, it’s important to be authentic. “Your authenticity, your uniqueness, that will be alluring to your clients. So never feel like you have to be Mary Jane or Sheila. Be you and if you’re confident at being you, your people will come to you.”

To this, Seema notes to her listeners: “I want our listeners to think about where they’re holding themselves back. Where are you having doubts at taking a step forward? Get answers, ask questions. Reach out to the people around you, reach out to us here, and just keep moving forward, taking small steps. Don’t listen to anyone else except your heart. Because there are going to be people who are going to say, ‘You know what? Maybe you shouldn’t do this.’ But they’re not on your path or on your journey. They might be saying it from a very loving place but it’s still important to check in with yourself.

A Message to Your Younger Self

If Caterina could talk to her younger self, she would tell her, “It’s all going to be awesome. In my 20s, I had a lot of fear about my future.  I had a lot of fear, thinking, ‘Is this the right thing to do?’ I wish I could tell myself, ‘Caterina, it’s all going to be okay.’ My dad’s a big worrier, so I think some of us are more predisposed to worry. But all that worry was unnecessary.”

“The other thing I would tell myself is that I’m super smart, I can figure it out, I have massive value to bring, there’s a lifetime supply of people to serve. It took me a while to figure that out. (I also want to tell myself) that who I am is awesome and amazing. I don’t like to use the word ‘perfect’ because I don’t think it’s necessary or required. It’s not encouraged. I do want my younger self and every woman to know that she’s someone amazing and has massive value to bring. The more we remind ourselves of that, the better. “

Seema shares her own message to her younger self. “Have compassion for yourself, just like you would for anyone else, and time will reveal, along with you connecting to your inner wisdom, what your massive value is and the gift you have to bring to the world.”

The Brighter Side of the Pandemic

In keeping with the upcoming anthology The Brighter Side of the Pandemic, Caterina talks about the brighter side of the pandemic for her own business. 

Because she had done a lot of community cultivating, it was easy for Caterina to get into action to support her women community at the start of the pandemic. She embraced the situation right away and started holding virtual gatherings monthly, following the calendar they’d already set for networking and moving it online. Since the pandemic started, her business grew 30% in 2020 and 20% in 2021. She anticipates good growth as well coming into 2022.

But what she’s more excited about, apart from the financial growth, is the global expansion of her reach. Now she has clients all over the US and the world.

“Action is the antidote to whatever challenge you are having,” she says. “It’s in the action we figure things out. It’s in the action that we see what works and what doesn’t. It’s not in the getting ready to get ready which so many people spend way too much time in.”

Seema concurs, adding “There’s only so much you can do in your head. You need to get it implemented and see how it plays out. It’s in the doing that you find all the answers.”

Another brighter side to the pandemic that she’s found is that she has been able to take her work all over the world. She was able to conduct her classes while she was in Italy and while she went on a 2-week cruise. Seema says that this is a pure example of “living life by design”. “It’s not an ‘or’ thing but an ‘and’ thing,” she remarks. 

Final Words

As a closing, Seema compels her listeners to check in with themselves. “See where you are holding yourself back. Know that you have the wisdom now from the life you’ve lived so far. Remember to be in action and show more of our massive value and unique gifts to the world.”

Caterina emphasizes that importance of amplifying and cultivating a community, saying “This is something that will not only bring value to your clients, but will also bring you a lot of personal fulfillment.” To this end, she invites the listeners to join her retreats for women entrepreneurs, and as a closing remark, encourages everyone to take action based on what they’ve heard in the podcast and seek support.


Connect with Caterina

LINK to many FREE RESOURCES
https://www.caterinarando.com/links

LINK to my next FREE Business Building Workshop
https://www.caterinarando.com/events

LISTEN to Caterina’s Expand Your Fempire Podcast
https://www.caterinarando.com/podcast

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DOWNLOAD the Expand Your Fempire APP
https://www.caterinarando.com/app

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On CLUBHOUSE Connect @caterinarando,
Join our Thriving Women in Biz Club
Mondays at 3pmPT Bliss in Your Business
Fridays at 3pmPT Weekly Wrap Up and Networking
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JOIN her Thriving Women in Business Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ThrivingBusinessGroupforWomen

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VISIT Caterina’s website at https://caterinarando.com
REACHOUT to Caterina via Facebook Messenger
or via email at cat@caterinarando.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/caterinarando
https://www.instagram.com/caterina_rando

 

Connect with Host Seema Giri: