The 5 money blocks I overcame to achieve financial freedom.

Part of the reason why I became an entrepreneur is because I wanted to have total control and total expansion over my financial future. Even though the definition of an entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so, I knew that great risk can equal great reward. Now, was my financial situation always great? Absolutely not. I really know that everybody on the planet, you and me, we all have money stories.

And I had five very destructive money blocks that really kept me stuck for a long time, and ultimately led me into some really vulnerable and some really bad positions. And something I haven’t really dove into too, too much is these money blocks and how they kept me stuck and hopefully how you can avoid them.

The first one is that you have to work really hard in order to be successful in the long run. And that’s just not true.

I wanted to explain this concept of diminishing returns, because it’s really important to know and it’s something that took me way too long to figure out, and ultimately led me to a really severe burnout. 

At the beginning, of course, as an entrepreneur, you have to put in a lot of work in order to get any sort of output and return from your activities. This is when you’re really productive. Your output, your input are pretty even, but you can’t keep up that pace forever. One of the things that I had to overcome was realizing that hard work isn’t necessary and the same level of work isn’t necessary for sustained long-term financial freedom and success.

And it actually hinders you, because I really believed that I was the only one who could bring in clients, make money for my business, and I had to do all of the work myself, which ultimately led me to negative returns. I was putting in the equal amount of output and getting a negative return on what I was doing. My work, my hard work, my constant hustle and grind started to actually lead to poor quality in what I was creating. It was leading to burnout for me. I was exhausted all the time.

And then the example that I gave the last time when I talked about this is if you lift weights 24 hours a day, you’re going to get injured and it’s just not healthy. That money block for me played big role in staying very small and stuck for a long time in my business, and I had to flip it and understand that at a certain time quaint, you have to get help. You have to bring on a team. You have to focus on only the things that are actually pushing the needle in your business.

You’re not meant to be doing everything, and you’re not meant to be working at the same pace every single day, because ultimately it hurts you more than it helps you. The next thing kind of goes hand in hand with that. It’s also a little bit embarrassing, but I actually think a lot of people struggle with this, control and scarcity. I definitely had an issue with being a total control freak in my business and truthfully in my life for a long time.

And it definitely hindered me in a lot of ways, because having that level of control and feeling like I had to do everything myself kept me with like this strangle hold on every activity I was doing. I couldn’t fathom how somebody else could do it or take it over from me. And a lot of the times when you’re new in a business, it’s hard to get to a place where you can accept that other people are more than capable of being better than you at those things.

I really had to get to a place where I understood that no matter what position I was in, I had enough and I was going to be okay. I had to stop operating from a place of running to get another client and feeling like I was in a place of lack all the time and feeling like I just couldn’t make enough money, and I couldn’t have enough clients. That kept me in that hamster wheel cycle of constantly burning myself out.

I had to get to a place of letting go of control so I wasn’t doing absolutely everything and also getting to a place where no matter what I was making… When I was making $26,000 a year, I needed to really accept and know and be grateful for what I did have, not focused on what I didn’t have. And that simple shift made a massive difference because then I was really honing in on the things that were good in my life, that created good energy, and also the clients I did have so that I could do an amazing job for them in my business.

And when I did, that led to more clients ultimately, and that led me to be able to grow, outsource, and release control. Now, the next thing which I will also bring up here is knowing your numbers. I was the queen of saying, “I’m just not good with numbers,” and I hear this all the time and it pains me because I was that person. And honestly, I will say that knowing your numbers is an act of self-care and knowing your numbers allows you to live from a place not of scarcity, but from abundance.

Because for me, it’s really important I live well below my means. Financial freedom doesn’t mean that you have all of the money in the world. It really means that you are good with what you do have. I really had to get to a place where I was super aware of what I needed to function in my life and live from a place of mental freedom. That for me was financial freedom. I always live below my means. But in order to do that, you have to know your numbers.

And if you’re sitting there going, “Ugh, I don’t want to,” I’m telling you, the moment I did this, everything changed. I’ve talked about this in other videos, particularly in this video about financial freedom, where the importance of runway comes in. Runway basically means that you have money in the bank so that if everything were to stop today, your business could still operate and you could pay for your expenses personally and professionally.

This is a really simple spreadsheet that I’ve used as an example before, but it’s going through things like rent, food, groceries, meal delivery, if you do meal delivery, or just groceries and prep, entertainment, obviously that’s been lacking, but anything that you’re doing in terms of fun for yourself, making sure you have a budget for that, insurance, gym, phone, emergency fund, student loans, car debt.

Anything that is a debt in your life, because we all have that. Accounting for all of it, adding up the amounts, setting a goal date for when you want to pay off any debts that you have, and also entering that into the total of what you need to be making on a monthly basis to get by. So for me, that looked like $3,000 a month. So I knew that if I could start storing and saving some money… At the time that I realized I needed runway, I had none.

That was going month to month living under constant stress and pressure, which really never leads to that sense of financial freedom. So knowing what I needed to make to get by and to pay for my bills and to pay for the things that I had to use to function in my life allowed me to kind of free up space mentally for myself to not try and just chase after getting more clients and working myself into the ground.

But knowing the baseline of what I needed to achieve and then storing it so I had a couple of months where I knew that if everything stopped or I got hurt or injured or sick or anything like that, God forbid, that I could chill and relax and know I had that money in the bank. It starts with little things. How much can you start putting away on a monthly basis? Just start accumulating that level of runway, that safety net. That for me alone truly is financial freedom.

To know that you have a security blanket is financial freedom. That could be when you’re making $20,000 a year, $26,000 a year like I was at the beginning of my business, and it goes all the way up until you’re where you’re at financially making the money you want to make, but still knowing you have the security blanket that if everything’s stopped tomorrow, you’re okay. Really important to understand that.

The next thing is truthfully, I thought deep down, I don’t think I knew this consciously, but it’s something I’ve talked to a lot of my clients about and friends as well is that I really thought that rich people were inherently evil and bad. And I kind of believed that money was bad. I think it’s a lot because of what we see in society and how people operate sometimes with money and it can lead to this level of greed.

But what I realized was if I continue to live below my means, which makes me feel most comfortable and it really is a personal choice for you, and if I can continue to create a security and safety blanket with runway and I can come from a place of constant abundance, money is actually an incredible vehicle and tool to do good and to give back and to create a positive impact on your own terms, and to be able to do the things that you truly care about and the things that mean a lot to you.

And that’s something in the last year that I’ve really tried to do on this channel with this video, where we surprised Aman, and then this video where we surprised Alicia and just giving back and helping out where I can, because I was very fortunate to have people in my life who were able to support, help me, and guide me early on in my entrepreneurial journey. And that’s what I want to do moving forward, and I’m at a place now where I’m able to do it. So I had to flip my mindset and that money block from money as bad.

Because if I’m saying that and believing that, I’m blocking it from ever coming to me, and thinking about it as really just a tool to be able to do a lot of good. The final thing truthfully was that I had tied my self-worth to my net worth. And that’s a dangerous game to play in, and it’s a big mistake I see a lot of new entrepreneurs make, because it puts you in the position, going back to what I talked about in the first place, of you have to work really, really hard in order to be financially free.

The people I look up to, the mentors, the guidance that I’ve gotten is that the people who are the most successful and most financially free really aren’t working harder. They’re working smarter. And more than anything, they don’t associate their self-worth with their net worth, because that comes from a place of ego. You keep thinking to yourself, “I need more, more, more, more, more. I have to get more clients. I have to be bigger. I have to hire more people. I have to do all of these things.

I have to have this big, huge business. I got to have a studio. I got to have an office. I got to have all these things.” I realized through trial and error, I really didn’t need much to achieve the impact and the income that I envisioned for myself and being more minimal in my approach. And truthfully, I feel like I’ve become kind of a minimalist all over my life. I’m curious, if you want me to make a video on that, I will. But that has helped me understand that I don’t need much to be happy and I don’t need much to feel free.

The most important thing for me is that what I’m working on has true value behind it, and it’s making a difference in creating a result. Once I understood the value of the work I was doing and the outcome of the work that I was doing and that value, that’s truly when I achieved financial freedom, because I was no longer tying myself to my work. I was no longer charging for my time. I was charging for the value of the outcome of what I was doing.

And I was ensuring that with the money that I was bringing in, I was also putting it to work for me. I wasn’t just relying on I have to work to make money and trade time for money. I also can start doing things like investing, and I can create compound interest, and all of these things that seemed so overwhelming when I didn’t know my numbers and got past that money block started to happen. And instead of me working to generate income, my money started working for me.

This is a topic I’m really passionate about because I see how it negatively affects people when they are stuck in those money blocks and a lot of these are super common. It’s important to know the root of them and what your own personal money story is and how it is potentially blocking. Because you could work super hard, you could be the smartest person in the room, but until you move past those things, it’s really hard to achieve that level of freedom that you’re probably looking for.

I actually have a free training about how I was able to get out of the cycle of sprinting and trying to work myself into the ground and built a business that actually works for me. Be sure to check that out. 

Thanks so much for reading and watching!