Welcome to Sis Mind Your Money. I'm Bridgett Dickey, wealth educator and strategist. Today, we're kicking off the three M's, a three-part finale series, mindset, money, and movement. Episode one is all about mindset because your money will never outgrow your mind. Before we dive in, I'm hosting a Women, Wealth, and Wine Sis Mind Your Money on August 26th in Houston, Texas. This is an intimate event. It is limited seating, so go to dickeyfinancialfirm.com and get your ticket today. Now let's get into it So, I talked about mindset, and it is one of those things people say, "Oh, your mindset, you need to think differently." And you're like, "Does that really work?" Yes, it does. It works. It's what you believe. Sometime, I was listening to a gentleman, and he said, "The perception is more important than the reality." It's what people perceive. So it's what do you perceive about yourself? Even though the reality may be, I'm afraid, I'm scared, I'm nervous, I don't know what to do. The reality is I'm sitting in anxiety and depression. But the perception is that, okay, what I, I perceive I'm going to do this. Even though the reality may be dark, the reality may not be what you ideally want right now, but it's the perception. It's what other perceive. So what do you perceive about yourself? How do you look at yourself? And one thing I always tell my ladies is that, are you willing to keep the promise to yourself? This is nobody else. You're not keeping a promise to your husband, your kids, the community, the church, the job. Can you keep the promise to yourself? Can you show up for you? If you will not show up for you, who will show up for you? If you're not gonna take care of you, who will take care of you? Because we are dealing with flawed people. You're flawed, I'm flawed. We will let people down. That's natural, so don't... And a lot of time women wanna, I wanna help and do and I don't wanna let anybody down. But you must save yourself first. Put your oxygen mask on first and save yourself. And that is a mindset. So one of the things I do now, and I was having a conversation with one of my clients in her sessions, and she's a business owner, so I'm helping her guide her through building some things in the business and what she should do. But I always incorporate the mindset. And so I told her, we got on a conversation about not parking at the airport anymore. I take a Uber. So I take a Uber there and I take a Uber going, you know, from and to, right? And so That she was like, "Oh my God, that costs more money. Just... You can just park at the airport for three or four days and pay $30." Well, that hadn't been my lane of seeing that. But what I've learned is that I have to get there so much early, wait on the shuttle. If there's no parking spaces, you gotta go to all these different levels. If you can't get VIP at the bottom level, if that's sold out, then you have to... So it's all these things you have to do. Then you gotta wait on the shuttle. The shuttle drops you off, and then you gotta go through the airport. So what I learned was, let me just do an Uber. Uber picks me up, or Lyft, whomever you use, and it picks me up, takes me to the airport, right? I get up, go right into, departure, and I'm done. It's time for me to come back from my trip. I get... Uber is there. I get in the car and I go, and I have... 'cause it normally takes about an hour, no matter which airport here in Houston. And I said, it's a peace of mind. I don't have to worry about driving. If I need to check emails, if I just wanna debrief and just breathe, someone else is driving me, getting me to my destination. It's not about the money. It's about the small, simple things that I am willing to do for me to help me. So now going forward, my team knows, book me Uber, picking me up, bringing me back home. It just gives a peace of mi- not even renting a car, 'cause you gotta go rent the car, extend all of that, gotta turn it back in, all the things. And I imagine, it may probably cost a little less versus renting a car and doing all these thi- like, I don't know. I'm not even really caught up on the cost of it, and it's a write-off 'cause I'm a business owner. But it's just the peace of mind that there's some little part of me is taking care of me, that I can Uber, Lyft. I have people in my life that I know that do Lyft and Uber. "Hey, are you available this day? Hey, I'll give you the money. You pick me up, take me to the airport." Why not? It's just a different air, and it's the mindset. What's holding you back? And she-- What was holding her back, talking to her was like, "Oh, well, that, that's just gonna cost more money." What's holding her back from doing it? She liked the idea, but she like, "That's gonna cost more money. Well, I'm gonna have to do some research on that." And so she, in her mind, gotta get comfortable with it. And I'm like, "No, I'm good. I'm... This is my lane. This is where I'm staying." One of my coaches told me, "Instead of buying the economy ticket, always buy first class no matter what." It's a mindset. Is it a scarcity mindset? You feel like you don't have enough or you ashamed? Is there fear? You don't feel that you're worthy. I've mentioned before, my father always said, when you go to the restaurant and he would tell my mom, "Order what you want. Stop looking on the right side of the menu." The right side of the menu is where the cost is. But she ordered according at that time, she felt what she could afford or what she felt that she was worth And she didn't feel that she was worth a $100 meal. Even though she had the $100, she didn't feel she was worth it. So it was growing up I saw the battle even with my parents. My father, we would go to a restaurant. My father is going to order what he wants to eat. My mother is gonna order according to, in her mind, "I'm only worth this $20 meal," even though she had more money to pay for what she wanted. She didn't think... He told her one day, he said, "You don't think you're worth it, so you won't do it." And it's the mindset to go through life to feel that you're not worth $80 if it's an Uber ride one way. What if it cost you $100 to get there? What if you say, I want a personal chauffeur service"? Do you feel that you're worth it? That's the mindset. It's childhood trauma. I grew up seeing the scarcity mindset growing up. I heard the money don't grow on trees. One common thing I would always hear, "We don't have money for that. We don't have money for that. We don't..." I'm like, "We don't have money for nothing?" Like, it's nothing we have money for? That's what I heard so much, but I had two parents. I had one parent, my dad, who was like, "No, babe, you work hard. You're worth it. Save, make sure you have another source of income." He browbeat that into me. "Have another source of income. Don't rely on one source of income." My mother taught the scarcity. She was afraid. She was we don't have money for that. We can't do that." And she's at no fault, like not mad at her or my parents. Neither one of them taught me about investing and none of that. They didn't do any of that. But it's things that they taught me good and bad of things, right? But my father was that he was an entrepreneur. My daddy always had multiple sources of income. He did not just rely on his job. And so even when my father, he was a welder and he cut off almost two of his fingers, and he had to go through physical therapy, surgery, all of these things. And during the time, he wasn't working. My father was-- he could barbecue very well. And he always wanted to have a barbecue business. So my father started selling barbecue. At that time, we were living in a two-bedroom apartment. Never forget it. I was in high school, so I handled the money and the sides, but my dad handled cutting the meat, the whole barbecue process. But he always, even when he was I guess you could say hurt, he wasn't hurt enough. The fingers didn't hurt him enough to say, "I need to-- I gotta take care of my family. I gotta have another way of bringing in money, 'cause the money I have right now is not enough." They cutting it, right? I'm only getting a certain percentage. But he always had something going on, but he taught me that. Never just rely on one thing. But my mom was that one thing. She was scared. She was afraid. It was a mindset. I imagine it was the shame, the fear mindset. She bled, I'm not worthy. And so when I look at my grandmother, she didn't work. Her mother, she didn't work. My grandfather took care of her. She didn't have anything of her own. She had to rely on a man. This is a time in the world where this was normal. But I imagine if I could talk to her today, would she wanted to have a job or work or have a business? What did she want? She just wasn't the mom, the wife to nine kids. She was a woman. I'm sure she had desires and dreams, right? And she wanted to go after them, but it's a mindset. In the community, especially the Black community, women are taught to take care of everyone else Women are not taught to be a stay-at-home mom and don't work or marry a man to the point where you don't have to work and take care of your children. We are taught to work, So we don't know anything else. We're taught to be hard. You can't cry. You can't get upset. If you do this, you're gonna be labeled the, quote-unquote, "angry Black woman." So the trauma, when we show up in who we are and our natural being, now we're a threat. You're intimidated just by my presence. We're labeled this negative person But we were raised to always your hair must be together. Have your Sunday best on. You help everyone else. You give everything, but when it comes to you, n-no, you can't do that. If you decide to do something for you, oh my God you can't do that. That's wrong. You must give, and then now you're depleted, you're angry, you're mad because you see your life, your dreams, your goals are just passing away because you have depleted yourself. So I'm gonna tell you, I'll give you some examples of what it looks like. I deal with all walks of life. What I see when I deal with women and the mindset, women, these are my children, I have to take care of them at all costs. Mothers will go into large amounts of debt for their children, but fathers do not. I deal with men and women. I deal with Black, white, green, purple, everyone. But women will go broke. Take out $50,000 loans, $100,000. They will do it all. Men do not do that won't work, figure it out, pay for it yourself. But it's that shame, that insecurity. What are people gonna think if I don't do this for my kid? And then they get older. I get it. They get older now, and they're talking to me, "I owe $100,000 in student loans that I took out for my child." Now you 65 trying to pay this back. Has the child graduated? How much money is the child making? Where are they in life? And they haven't, they have not made a plan for themselves. So now they find themselves working beyond 65 because now they have all this debt. Because they've been told the mindset, "I gotta take care of everybody. I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about the kids." But then when they wake up and they say the kids are grown, grandkids, and now they're looking at themselves and they like, "I don't wanna work." But because they didn't plan, it's the mindset. So, it looks like stress, anxiety, depression. Nobody wants to work past 65 and it's mandatory. You want it to be optional. But it's the mindset of your financial life, the way you look at yourself, just everything. How you eat. Are you gonna exercise? Are you gonna drink a gallon of water or half a gallon of water? I'm going to eat three meals a day. It's sometimes it's the simple things. It's nothing major But one of the lies that we hear all the time, right? Let's talk about it. I need you to start replacing the conversations you have with yourself, and I know everybody knows this one. Money's the root of all evil. Your truth is money is the tool, and I decide how I use it. You start deciding how you use your money. Are you gonna use your money-- Are you gonna use the money to build wealth or to buy your wealth versus being a consumer and buying goods and services that's not serving you, that's not giving you a return on your investment? The lie, I'll never get ahead. The truth is I can build wealth on any income with the right plan. Key word, right plan. We feel that, "Oh, I need two hundred, half a million, thousand dollars." No. If you had five thousand dollars or thousand dollars, could you take that with the right plan and invest it properly? Because if you can do it with a thousand, you can do it with ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million Surround yourself with women who are moving and growing, who have a mindset of growth, abundance, giving back, helping others, building community, building wealth. That will get you out your comfort zone. When you hang around people with money, all they do is talk about the next deal, the opportunity. They're preparing, "Hey, I got this coming up. I'm preparing because I know this is a opportunity that's gonna equal success." So your formula is preparation plus opportunity equals success. There's always gonna be opportunities. You need to align where your preparation is. What do you need to prepare for? So when the opportunity comes, that's where your success will come. You can't get to success just with opportunity. You gotta be prepared for it and the opportunity. Okay? Your mindset determines your financial ceiling. Shift the ceiling My challenge to you is this. Write down some of the money beliefs that you've been told, that the lies you tell yourself, things that you heard growing up, and I want you to rewrite it for yourself. Ask yourself, "What is true? What's true for me? What do I want?" Wealth affirmations. There's a young lady that I listen to all the time, and I will give you her name. Affirmations for the Grown Ass Woman, Toni Jones. I listen to Apple Music. I'm sure she's on Spotify. I want you to listen to that because I listen to her all the time. Even when I'm working out and doing my hot works and I'm in that sauna, I'm listening to that. What are you feeding your mind? What are you feeding yourself? Three mindset shifts that You need to work three. Three things you need to change. I want you to focus on that. Just three things. Okay? Three. That's episode one of the three M's, and I hope you're walking away with knowing that mindset is where it all starts. Your action steps, write down one money belief you inherit and no longer is serving you. Name it and release it. Women, Wealth, and Wine is coming August 26, Houston, Texas. Go to dickeyfinancialfirm.com to register. And if you're ready for your finances for that one-on-one, book your free 30-minute clarity call with me at dickeyfinancialfirm.com. Now mind your money, sis