Conversation #134 | I'm Back After A Pause With a Hard Money Truth

After two years away from the microphone, I'm back, and not because I ran out of things to teach, but because I had something deeper to say.

When I launched The Mindfully Rich Podcast in March 2020, I didn't have fancy equipment, a big production team, or any idea that one simple "yes" would lead to 133 episodes that continue to impact you, my listeners today. 

Along the way, I spent nearly 20 years helping people build wealth, organizations grow their money, and communities create financial opportunity.

But somewhere in that journey, I realized something.

Being rich has very little to do with how much money you have.

This first episode back begins a new season, sharing why I stepped away, what I've learned during the silence, and why Mindfully Rich is evolving into something bigger than personal finance. 

We'll still talk about money, but we'll also explore the things that truly create a rich life: purpose, faith, relationships, personal leadership, health, and legacy.

If you've ever wondered whether success is about more than your bank account, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Why I started the Mindfully Rich Podcast in 2020
• What 133 episodes taught me about money and people
• Why I paused the podcast and what changed
• My new definition of what it truly means to be rich
• What you can expect from this next season of Mindfully Rich

If this episode encouraged you, be sure to follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone ready to redefine what it means to live a rich life.

Connect with me:
Instagram: @mindfully_rich_podcast

Transcript

Welcome Back And New Season

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Mindfully Rich Podcast, your weekly look at life, money, and everything in between, where we're redefining what it truly means to be rich. On each episode, we'll have an honest conversation about building wealth, renewing your mindset, growing your career, and truly living a life of purpose. So whether you're listening on your morning commute or your evening walk or somewhere in between all of that, I'm so glad that you're here and listening. I'm your host, the Gina Richie Richardson. Now, let's jump into today's conversation. Oh my God, y'all, I'm back. So for all my listeners, my listeners, listeners, you probably getting a notification today, like, she bringing this thing back. I sure am. Okay. I got you, what was that? Was that Andre when he was on the Source Awards? He said the South got something to say. Your girl got something to say now, okay? The last episode of the podcast was in September of 2024. And y'all, I needed a pause. I needed a big pause because I didn't have anything else to deliver or say, or that I could teach at that moment. I had done 133 episodes, giving lessons, giving step by step how-tos, all of those things. And I started going through some situations that were a little bit more for me to bear while trying to come on a podcast and give y'all guidance. So I wasn't able to do that. So I needed to get myself together. Thank God I took that time to get myself together. And that journey has been something that I'm definitely going to talk about here on the podcast as we come closer to uh newer episodes. I'm

Why I Stepped Away To Reset

SPEAKER_00 1:50

going to talk a little bit more about what I went through. But what I want to do now on the podcast, because I've grown, is redefine rich and talk about what it really means to live a rich life. So this first episode back, I want to begin this new season by just going into the journey that I've been on in personal finance as a whole. It's been 20 years that I've been in the banking industry, something that I absolutely love dealing with personal finance. But now I want to talk about how I've been living a rich life and kind of go over what's been going on since I've been gone. So let's go ahead and jump into that a little bit. And so I started this podcast. For those of you that are new, I started this back in March of 2020, right before the pandemic started. I wasn't aware of where the world was about to go. I just knew I had something to say. I had a message. I feel like God has blessed my voice. God has blessed me in the financial industry to know a lot. And I'm a person, I know my stuff. Okay. That's one thing I'm gonna tell you. I know my stuff. And so I felt like I needed to take the knowledge that I had and give that to everyone. So this podcast has truly been a love letter to everyone because everybody listens to this podcast. Like, even though I've been gone, episodes have still been downloaded. There have been new people discovering the podcast all over the world. I ain't got the stats in front of me, but your girl is all over the world. Do you hear me? Okay, and so that has made me smile. And that was another reason why I said, all right, we gotta, we gotta still come back with something. But I wanted to find a new way to deliver my message just because I had delivered the message a certain way for 133 episodes. Y'all, that's a lot of episodes. I'm a one-woman show. I think I may have two or three episodes that I added, some folks, but that's it. So it's like that's a lot, and I and I'm very proud of what I've been able to do. But with having that pause, some things change inside of me. I started going on a new journey. I turned 40. There's a lot, there's a lot that happened. I started this podcast when I was 35, y'all. So I've turned 40. I'm now 41.

Leaving The Job And Going Solo

SPEAKER_00 4:15

So it's just been a lot that has been going on. And so I'll start with transition. I want to say it was somewhere in between, I want to say, like maybe episode like 120 something, where I started going through transition. Life started life, y'all. I'm just I'm just gonna be completely honest. Life started lifeing, and so I've always had a big girl job, and I want to say it was somewhere 2021 and 2024 that I no longer had that big girl job anymore. I was just out on my own. And that was a scary time. That was a real scary time. It was a time that I took a bet on myself. The one thing that I can say is I set myself up so good because I had a pretty good savings at that time. And I set myself up well enough where I was like, you know what? I know enough about money, I know enough about business. You know, I study business in school. I think that I can do this. And for a while, I was doing it. For a while I did well. But what I realized is when you go out on your own, you need more than just, I think I can do it, right? You need more than just my plan, right? You need real life customers, real life people who support you and not only support you with their mouth by giving you praises, but can support you monetarily, right? I realized that the business that I was in wasn't something that was monetarily going to help me sustain. And I think that that is very important when it comes to going out on your own, doing your own business, having your own business. Like everybody's an entrepreneur nowadays, right? Everybody out on their own, everybody got a business. Everybody ain't making money, okay? And I can admit to you, in my journey out, in my entrepreneurial journey, it's cute, but it wasn't making me the money that I needed to sustain. So that's my truth. Everyone won't be able to admit that. In not being able to sustain, that makes you gotta rob Peter to pay Paul. I ended up going into credit card debt. I ended up having to make some really big decisions

When The Business Cannot Sustain

SPEAKER_00 6:45

on how I was going to continue to live my life. Just because, yes, it was cute to say I had my business, it was cute to say I'm on my own. It was cute, right? All of those things was just cute, it wasn't sustainable. So I had to be very honest in what my next steps needed to look like. And the one thing about me, I trust in God. I'm also gonna listen to God. I also heard God tell me, all right, this ain't this ain't for you. This ain't for you, and that's okay because sometimes that can feel like it's failure. Like, oh my God, I failed. I failed, I couldn't do it. No, it's just maybe this isn't the way that you're doing it in the way that you're doing it, maybe that part isn't for you. But I'm not gonna go so deep down into a hole. I'm not gonna dig. That's just like if I'm digging a hole and I think I'm looking for the place to get out. At some point, if I'm not seeing the, if I'm not seeing um the the light on the other side of the tunnel, like if I'm not digging and there's some sunlight, I'm gonna have to start over again. I'm gonna have to go back because now I'm just digging, digging, digging. And I don't know when I'm gonna get my next meal. I could just, I could be down there forever, right? And I'm gonna use that in the form of business. That's what I was doing. I felt like I was just digging, digging, digging, digging, digging, and I wasn't going anywhere. And I wasn't, I wasn't going anywhere. So I had to rethink. So I did some things uh during that time. Legal things. Oh my goodness. When I said that, I'm like, oh my god, girl. I did some things. I worked some contract jobs. Let's say that. I worked some contract jobs to sustain so I can get some real money that was coming in. And so that had me to just thinking, just because I know that there's a lot of people who are on this journey. We see people online all the time talking about I quit my job, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's like if you're going to do these things, right? And if we're talking about redefining having a rich life, everyone always talks about a business plan. Business plans are cool. Who is going to buy? Who is going to be the people who are going to sustain you? So the one thing that I'll say, so let's say, let's look at consulting business, right? I'm gonna just use a consulting business as an example. If you're someone who currently works a job and you're doing something off to the side, and you wanna consult on the side, right? It's gonna be wise for you to make sure that if you're taking whatever your consultant is that you're gonna be doing outside of the job that you currently do, and finding out how are you going to get contracts? How are you going to get people who are gonna pay you the amount of money that you need to live on, right? And that's the amount of money you need to live on after taxes. Because being self-employed,

Taxes Saving Percentages And Cash Flow

SPEAKER_00 9:55

when you pay taxes, because I'm I'm a person who pays taxes, okay? I pay taxes, uh, self-employment taxes can get pretty expensive, okay? They're gonna they're gonna get their money off the top. And if you're not, so what happens is when you're not making enough money as a self-employed person, they're gonna get it on the back end. So if you're not saving that money, so like normally for each, like when I coach people who are in, and this is the thing, I know this. When I coach people who are self-employed, I tell them, hey, from the money that you get, make sure you put a percentage to the side. We determine what that percentage is. If that's gonna be 20%, is it 30%? Is it 16%? What does that percentage look like of all of the monies that you're earning for each deal or customer that you have, whomever those people may be, right? I wasn't making enough to be able to sustain by putting that money up. So I'm thinking at the end of the year, I'm gonna be fine. Nope, uh-uh. At the end of the year, they're gonna take that money, especially when you found taxes. If you haven't been putting that money up because you really do need to sustain. And I want to make sure that I'm not talking in circles, but my journey was filled with me understanding who I am and what sustainability is going to look like for me. How much money I need to sustain to live the lifestyle that I need to live. And so, if you're someone who's like that, right? Currently you're self-employed, or you're thinking about self-employment, I would encourage you taking a look at the lifestyle that you're currently in. Is it going to be sustainable for you? Because only you will know that, right? We all make choices, right? Everybody got choices. That's a song. He40 made it, right? What's going to be your choice? Do you continue in that way? Meaning, if you're already self-employed, do you continue in that way the way that you're doing it, or is there a change that you can make? Are there some mentors or some people that's in that field that you could talk to so you can see how soon it is for you to get to sustainability? And if that's something that's not gonna be valuable for you, then figuring out how do I how do I do something else? What does that look like? Do I go back to W-2 income? Do I go back to a life that would be more sustainable? Whatever that looks like for you. And somebody that's working a job, because I know a lot of people that say, I want to be at this job, I want to be my own boss, I want to do this, I want to do that. Yes, yes.

Choosing W2 Stability Without Shame

SPEAKER_00 12:25

We some of us thought that way, some of us think that way. I'm gonna tell you what, I'm good getting my good old W 2. I'm just gonna be completely honest. I love my big girl job, okay? I'm I'm I'm back, I'm back on the W-2, and thank the Lord for it. I love what it is that I do. That may not be the case for everyone, but being able to prove sustainability before you leave that good old W-2 is probably gonna be your best bet. Because if you're trying to, like I said, we're trying to grow, we trying to live rich lives. And the one thing I could tell you, being broke ain't gonna help you live a rich life. Not even just because of the money. Okay? I promise you, you would rather cry with money than without. I promise you that. You would rather cry knowing when your next paycheck is than crying not knowing where your next dollar is. That's just a real thing. So I just want to make sure, and I just want to challenge you just to think about those things because I told you about the journey that I had, right? And that journey um sucked. That journey sucked. Um, I'm gonna go a little bit more in detail as we go on and continue, but I just wanted to give you just a little bit of what that looked like for me. But I want you to think about that and really be intentional when it comes to what your next moves are if you are someone who is in that position. And so I think I didn't get enough talking for the first episode. I'm back. I plan on being back weekly. I know, right? Crazy weekly, very ambitious over here. And so I got a lot to talk about just because we're gonna be talking about building foundation, what that looks like when it comes to money and wealth. Also, I want to talk a little bit about leadership and influence, right? What that looks like in building your rich life, along with I'm a mother and I'm on a different journey now in motherhood. Both my kids are grown. So, what that looks like in building um a rich life, um, along with faith and personal growth and how that makes us rich. And it's

What’s Next And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 14:35

like, I just love this new journey. I just love this new journey of what mindfully rich is gonna look like. And so I'm really, really excited. And so hopefully y'all stay alone for the ride. And so that's it, y'all. That's that's all I got. And so please make sure you go check me out um online, Instagram at mindfully rich. What is it? Nope, it's at mindfully underscore rich underscore podcast. I ain't said it in like, but oh my goodness. And so what else? Oh, you can also support the podcast. So I gotta figure out how to tell y'all about that. Matter of fact, if you're listening on like one of the streaming platforms, so like if you're on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, wherever it is that you're listening, I'll have in there in the description how you can support the podcast if that's something you would like to do. Um, but that's all I got, y'all. I ain't got no more. Hopefully, you could take what I just said, analyze your own life, make some switches so that you're able to build a rich life. So thank y'all for tuning in, and until next time, when I hit y'all with another one.