Episode 1: From $0 to 7-Figures: My Money Story
In this inaugural episode, we explore all the juicy details of my journey with money. From growing up in blue-collar, rural Michigan and believing “money is the root of all conflict” to launching and growing multiple 6 and 7-figure businesses. I talk money mindset, actual numbers, and more!
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Transcript
Hi, I'm Emily Wilcox. I'm a crystal-loving, coffee-drinking, money magnetizer, and business coach. My mission is to help female entrepreneurs uncover their money wounds and heal them in community so that more money flows to embodied women and collectively up levels the planet. After I built two seven-figure businesses in the masculine energy of hustle and grind, I decided to ditch the belief that it had to be hard. I put those businesses in the hands of my capable team so that I could dive deeper and amplify what I truly love-the inner work.
I use energetics woo-hoo and a sprinkle of strategy to help women call in more money, joy, ease in play and I'm the host of the eM Makes Money podcast. In this inaugural episode, I'm going to be sharing the vision for the podcast and how it was born. I'm also going to dive deep into my own story. Let's jump right in.
Why did I start this podcast? Historically, money has been such a taboo topic. It's something that we have questions inside of our head about, but we don't feel like we can ask about it. We might be curious how much someone is making. We might want to know how much their investments are, what their net worth is, but we don't feel like we can ask those questions and that information isn't being freely discussed. So there's tons of taboo and stigma about it. Even if someone felt comfortable discussing, they probably wouldn't because they wouldn't want to be seen as bragging or being totally rich and out of touch and that kind of thing. So what I've observed in the entrepreneurial community particularly is that often money isn't discussed, but when it is talked about it's being talked about in this really like highlight real kind of a way, So in the same way that social media is kind of this curated experience where people just share a little highlights of their life when business owners decide to talk about money in the entrepreneurial community is that I run in again very much a highlight reel like we had our first 100k a month. We had a $25,000 sales day. So it's just these little blips that talk really high level and don't really get into the nitty-gritty of what does that actually mean.
If you had a $25,000 sales day, amazing, was that revenue or was that cash? Oh, you only collected $10,000. Okay. Did you have to do any advertising to make that sale? Oh yeah. We spent $10,000 on ads. Well, all of a sudden, a $25,000 sales day turns out to actually be $0 in net profit. And those are just made up numbers. So it may actually be an incredible day that they sold $25,000. But without those details, and without that context, we really can't interpret what it means. And what I've experienced is that we interpret money, talk through the lens of our own limiting beliefs, our own kind of personal money stories. So, if your story is like, “man, I'm not worth the way that other people are,” you might use that to say, “oh, so-and-so just had a twenty-five thousand dollar day. I can't even make $10,000 a month in my business. I'm just not cut out for this.” And we, you use it as evidence against your own self-worth. And again, you have no idea the context, if that $25,000 in a day was actually $0 in net profit boy, wouldn't it be nice to know that? Not because it means that the other person is bad or they suck as a business owner, but because it would give you additional context that would actually be useful for you as a business owner and might prevent you from weaponizing that information as a tool against your own self-worth so I'm here for more talk about money, more transparency around money, more depth around money. And I'm just not seeing a lot of that being talked about. So either money is not talked about at all, or it's talked about in this very highlight real kind of way. And I want to dig a little bit more into my own experiences with that over the last year and a half. So about a year and a half ago, I made a significant five-figure investment into a business mastermind. It costs $24,000 for six months inside of this mastermind where I would receive group coaching. Access to a private Facebook community and the opportunity to go to live gatherings every quarter.
And there were several hundred people in this mastermind and it was founded by two guys that are one is in his early thirties. One is in his early forties, five years ago. They didn't even have a business. And now they're on track to have net worth in the billions. So they've done incredibly well. And what was amazing about being plugged into this community is that entrepreneurs inside of this community we're talking about money in a way that I had never experienced before. So they would talk about what their monthly revenue goals were, what they actually achieved last month, how much cash they collected. It was so interesting to just see numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, all around everywhere from all different types of businesses, all different sizes of businesses. So people were sharing their numbers when they were collecting $4,000 cash in a month, people were sharing their numbers when they collected $900,000 cash in a month and everything in between. And I really saw the value in having conversations about numbers. Why? because I was able to experience my own limiting beliefs and my own personal bias and my own triggers in a way that otherwise would not have come up.
So I'll give you an example, like someone in this community, their business was helping veterinary offices get more. So in my mind, if you had asked me how successful is that business? Does that sound like a good business model? My limited belief was like how many vet offices really need leads and how much are they really willing to pay for that?
That sounds like a really niche industry. I don't know how scalable it is. I would have had a lot of beliefs around just like scarcity in the last. But then seeing this guy's numbers and he was like, “oh yeah, I just collected $250,000 last month.” I was like, “oh, damn.”
Apparently in the business of providing leads to veterinarians is actually pretty lucrative.
So one thing that it did for me was it helped me see that there's actually abundance everywhere in all of these niches and all of these businesses that in my mind wouldn't have made sense or would be too small, or would it be difficult to scale? People were making really significant amounts of money or at least collecting significant amounts of revenue. So that really opened my eyes to the places where I was adding on my own personal. And considering them to be limited or scarce when that wasn't at all the case. At the same time, I joined a very intimate women's mastermind and that was a $20,000 investment for the year. So, if you can't already tell, I was really doing a lot of pretty significant investing in my own inner work and my own personal growth. The reason I was doing that is because I understood that it was really the inner game that was keeping me from having the money that I wanted to make the impact that I wanted to make and really the lifestyle that I wanted to have. And so it wasn't just about learning the five steps for running profitable Facebook ads. I really had to get into a different mindset about money, about abundance, about opportunity, about what a big business was and a small business, and really just kind of retune and rewire myself. So inside of this intimate women's mastermind money really was not discussed regularly. It certainly was not taboo but I think because money is taboo in general in society unless we create spaces like this kind of bro mastermind that I just mentioned where it's expected that you're going to talk about money and it becomes. A safe place to talk about it and you see other people talking about it. And if you raise your hand for coaching, they're going to ask you how much money you made. And it just becomes part of the culture. We tend to default to the overarching culture that we have at least here in the United States, where it's taboo to talk about money. So even though it wasn't technically taboo inside of this women's mastermind, it just was not discussed regularly.
The sense that I really got is that these are women entrepreneurs who had varying degrees of success, and that really desired to make more money and desire to grow their business and desire to grow their impact. Um, so I do believe that that was a primary, like driving purpose in women investing 20,000 to be in that mastermind and yet they weren't able to fully own it within the container, within the group discussions in group coaching. So what ended up happening is that although these women wanted to make more money, the discussions would typically revolve around what I would consider to be surrogate markers.
So they would talk about things. I'm attracting more clients. I'm feeling more embodied in my business. I'm feeling aligned, feeling easier. There's less resistance. And by the way, all of these are really good things. So there is zero judgment about that, right? We want alignment.
We want joy. We want to attract clients. All of that is wonderful. But why do we want that? And can we allow money to be part of that discussion? Right. So what I'm not suggesting that money be the beginning, the middle and the end of every conversation, not at all, but if money is at the core of something and we're dancing around it.
So if we really deeply desire to say, “man, I would love to put an extra $10,000 in my pocket this month.” That would really make a difference. That would feel so wonderful if that's how we're truly feeling, but we don't feel like we can express it. What are the chances of it actually happening because I really believe that part of what we need to do is own our desires so that we can get in alignment with the universe who will be delivering on those. So talking about the surrogate markers is wonderful, but can we also create a space to talk about money and own that and not feel guilty about that or not make that mean something negative about us.
Because I think often the reason that we're not talking about the money is because we still have some shame. We still have some guilt. We still have some unprocessed limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging stories around what it means to desire. And until we reconcile those, we will be capping ourselves. We'll be capping our earning potential and we'll be capping our impact because we have an internal resistance and that push pull of oh, I want money, but I don't want to talk about it. I want money, but I don't want to say I want money. And that sends really mixed messages to the universe. I'm here to change. I'm really here to change that. That is my deepest desire with this podcast is that we can blend these two energies and we can hold space for conversations around money with radical transparency. We can expose our money wounds and our money triggers and our self-limiting beliefs around money. We can heal them and community, and we can create space for the divine feminine in these conversations around money as well. So I'll get into that more in a bit. But I just want to share in talking about the vision for this podcast, also just how it was inspired. So I talked a little bit about what my experiences with talking or not talking about money and I had never had the idea of starting a podcast.
Although I've been guests on many podcasts before, and one morning the thought was put into my brain. And I use those words very intentionally because it really felt like spirit, God universe putting that thought in and it felt foreign as I was thinking it and experiencing it. And in that moment I remember feeling like I think a seed just got planted. Isn't that interesting? And I looked at myself in the mirror and I was kind of moving my head around and just looking at my reflection and just like trying it on for size. Am I a podcast host? Is that what we're going to do here? And two hours later, I received a text from someone that I don't text.
And the very beginning said, I could listen to your voice all day. I hope you start a podcast. My mind was blown and I really felt that that text was divine confirmation that yes, indeed a seed was planted and that this is part of what I am supposed to be doing in this. As I began having some tender little first conversations with some women entrepreneurs that I feel very close to and whose opinion I value. I just got the most resounding yeses. These women were like, “we need this. This is not happening. We don't hear anything like this. We don't see anything like this. Yes, please.” And so that was further confirmation and the energy inside me started very rapidly building, which told me that this was not a seed that might harvest in 18 months.
This was something that we were going to move quickly on because the energy was here and this is what the world needs. So because a big part of this podcast is going to be talking very openly about money, not just top-line revenue, but also cash collected about profit margins about how much you're actually paying yourself, not just what your business is collecting.
What are your money wounds? What are you making your salary mean about you? What are some goals that you have for your next level of income, how are you creating space for the divine feminine energy and for magic and miracles to come through those manifestations of money? Because I'm creating space for all of that energetically, I felt as though I needed to go from. It's all out of integrity for me to bring on a guest and ask them to share how much they're making, how much they pay themselves, what are their profit margins to sort of open the kimono, so to speak if I hadn't gone first. Right?
This next part is going to be just kind of a deep dive into who I am specifically through the lens of money because I really want to share my money story and how, the way that I was raised and some of the first jobs that I have really played into, um, the belief system that I created around money. I grew up in a very rural town in Southwest Michigan. It was very blue-collar and very working-class. We were middle-class. And so compared to, I guess, kind of the average in our small town. My family did okay financially. However, the way that I experienced money in my household growing up is that money was the root of all disagreements. There was really a lot of conflict around money. Typically, when my parents would argue it was about money and so I definitely developed as a child, the sort of core belief that money causes disagreements, money causes friction, causes arguments. And so when you think about that, as long as you have that as a belief, right, that money causes arguments, even though my conscious mind might desire more than my subconscious mind is going to say, hold on, let's pump the brakes. Because if you get more money, that means you're going to have more arguments, more disagreements, more conflict in your life. It might drive a wedge between you and the people that you love. We don't want to do that.
So growing up in my household, my interpretation was that money was the root of all disagreements and the way that I've sort of analyzed it now with an adult brain is that there was definitely some generational trauma around that. My grandparents lived through the great depression and at least on my dad's side of the family, that idea of being frugal and being very careful with money and resources, um, With something that they kept with them even after the great depression. And so there used to be jokes in the family about when you'd go over to grandma and grandpa's house for dinner, because they would, uh, not really serve the right quantity of food. And that really just came from their conditioning around the scarcity of resources. And I think my dad really felt that and because that was the household that he grew up in. These are my interpretations, of course, but I think his coping mechanism was to be controlling about money to really keep a watchful eye on it, make sure that he was in charge, that he knew what was going on with money and that he was making the decisions around what was being spent and what wasn't being spent.
My mom, the way that the money was perceived in her household growing up is that her father, I think tended to be pretty controlling figure in general. They did pretty well financially. So I think in some respects, there was some free-flowing of money. Um, but also my mom's mother, my grandmother used money in shopping and gift as a way to show love and affection to her kids and so so there was these different money stories that came into my parents' relationship and the way that they manifested in their relationship was that, you know, my. My dad wanted to be in control of the money and my mom sort of rebelled against that.
And she wanted to use money for gifting and spoiling her kids. And so there was this real push-pull, where the predominant storyline that I interpreted was that my mom is you're responsible with money that she would just spend it all if she had a chance. And so my dad had to be the one keeping us safe and keeping a roof over our head and making sure that the money was actually being held onto because otherwise there wasn't going to be any.
So the really interesting thing as you examine your own money story is that you're going to have predominant feelings and you're going to have like a few memories that sort of play into this overall story and feeling, I don't know that I actually even have all of these facts. So, if my parents were to listen to this, they may fact check some of it. But what I know that I have right is the way that I felt. And the messages that I carried forward that does not, that's not the same thing as accuracy. And so what's actually really helpful for us is to focus more on what was the feeling? How did we interpret it as five, six, and seven year olds when we didn't have all of the facts, but we created a story and then we've carried that story into adulthood.
And if I had to characterize the story in a very simplified way, I would say there's not enough. There is not enough. That's definitely the energetic signature that I felt from my childhood. I deeply felt the lack in the scarcity. Now I remember. At one time only having two pairs of jeans that fit and just wearing them every other day to school. And I wanted new clothing so badly, and I wanted some of the styles that the more popular kids were wearing, but I, because money was the root of conflict. I hesitated to ask my parents for those things. Maybe I did ask them sometimes and I got to, but the way that I felt was that money wasn't available.
There wasn't enough. If I were to ask for it, there might be a disagreement. And so the easier way to keep the peace was to suppress my own desires.
I remember, I think I was in fourth grade and there was going to be a solar eclipse. And so, the moon is that where the moon covers the sun, the sun covers the moon, whatever it was, you had to get these special glasses in order to be able to watch the eclipse. And so one of those forums went home from school where, you know, you either needed to check the box. Yes. I want clear glasses and I'm going to pay the $5 or whatever it was or no, I'm not. And I don't even know if I asked my mom I may have just made that decision on my own behalf to not ask them, but I remember not having eclipse glasses.’
All of us had to go out on the playground on the day where we got to watch the eclipse and those of us who didn't have eclipse glasses, basically had to walk with our heads down, just looking at the ground and we didn't get to look up at the sky unless we were able to borrow a pair of glasses from a friend and that we could put them on and take a look. And it's funny that I remember that even now. And to me, that's part of this story that my little child mind built around lack and scarcity. Another example, I never had a varsity jacket. I never had a class ring. I just remember when those things came home, even though I deeply desired them. It was like I would look at the price and just decide that it wasn't even going to happen. And so then I tried to convince myself that I didn't really want the thing, but deep down, of course I did. I just did not want to start art. So I learned how to suppress my wants and desires in order to keep the peace and into adulthood. That was my pattern and really focusing on delayed gratification.
Now, everything that I've shared thus far was all in my subconscious mind. I wasn't even aware of this undercurrent of there's not enough until probably about two years ago. And the reason that came into my awareness is because I became a full-time entrepreneur, um, three years ago. And I built my businesses in a lot of masculine energy, wounded, masculine energy, really struggling, hustling, making it hard. I had to work hard for the money and we grew to a certain level, for sure like you can work hard and more money will come to you, but it was a difficult, difficult way to go. And I started digging into why what's going on. How come I feel like I'm meant for this big thing. I feel like I'm meant for more money. I desire more money. Why is it so hard? I could feel resistance in my body and I could feel almost a fear of money. And this inner knowing came to. And it was like, you're the problem. You're the reason you're limiting your business's success. So I'll pick up on that story in a minute, but I'd love to just rewind a little further so that we can like really talk about some numbers and just kind of connect the whole history here.
I always worked part-time in high school for extra money in college, I worked at a high-end restaurant as a waitress and made pretty good money. It was cash tips. And the arrangement that I had with my parents is that they were going to pay for my college and I needed to pay them a thousand dollars per academic year as my share of that. It was amazing, but at the time, a thousand dollars felt like a lot of money, particularly just working part-time, being in school full-time. And so, I really just focused on that. I was already good at suppressing my desires at that point and focusing on delayed gratification.
And so, I worked hard for money. I made money and was able to make good on that thousand dollar per year obligation to my parents. When I graduated college, I came out to California and was working as a horse trainer of all things. So if you don't know that about me, I am a very, very accomplished equestrian.
And I came out to work on an Arabian horse farm, and that was like my first experience being around people that had a lot more wealth because I had grown up in a very blue-collar area. The rich people in my little town of 5,000 people in Southwest Michigan was very different than even just your average person, much less your wealthy person in Southern California.
So the clients that I was working with at the horse ranch. It was really interesting to be around people where buying a horse for $10,000 was no big deal, paying seven or $800 a month for your horse to be boarded and trained by someone else. So it was no big deal paying 2 to $3,000 for a weekend horse show with no big deal paying thousands of dollars to buy the saddle and all of the equipment. And the horse show outfits was no big deal. And so that helped sort of opened my eyes to different levels of wealth. And at that time I was making $18 an hour. I had asked for $15 an hour or no, I'd asked for $18 an hour thinking that we would negotiate down to 15. And they accepted at 18. So I was like, yes, this is amazing.
I also worked six days a week, so I got eight hours of overtime every week, which was time and a half. So I really felt super happy with the amount of money that I was making at that time. The next job that I had was a small little startup where I was selling in-home tutoring and my salary was pretty small. In hindsight, I think like 30,000, maybe $36,000 salary. And I was supposed to get bonuses on top of that, but the bonus system never really ended up panning out and I found out pretty quickly that I just could not survive on so little in Southern California where rent was, $1,600 a month and there were just a lot of expenses.
I owned a condo at that time and the market crash, I ended up having to foreclose on it. It was not a pretty picture financially. And I went into a lot of debt because I was trying to avoid the foreclosure. And I thought about money a lot and it was a major stress point in my life.
And so I really needed to start looking at careers that would bring in more significant income. And I arrived at the idea of doing pharmaceutical sales. And so I interviewed, and I got a job doing specialty pharmaceutical sales, and I was offered $66,000 as a base salary. And I just remember being blown away by that offer. I did not negotiate. As soon as I hung up the phone, I was like cheering and like doing a little dance and just honestly couldn't believe that someone was going to pay me that much money. Of course, there would be bonus on top of it because it was a sales job. So when I was at that little startup and I was very stressed about that,
I remember writing on a post-it note, a hundred thousand dollars a year, a hundred thousand dollars a year, a hundred thousand dollars a year, a hundred thousand dollars a year. And I had that post-it up next to my desk and I would look at it every day because in my mind, if I could make a hundred thousand dollars a year, that would be the pinnacle and I would be totally set for money.
And my first year, my first full year in pharmaceuticals, I made like 98,000 or something like that. So that was the beginning of me really earning six-figure salaries. The funny thing is that my manager, her name was Megan. She wasn't the one who put together the offer of 66,000 that was done by HR. And the first time that she and I sat down and had a performance review and she saw that I was making $66,000, She she could not believe it. She was insulted on my behalf and was like, we are going to get you raises. This is not okay. I can't believe they offered you such a small amount of money. So it was really, really funny because there was this huge dichotomy between how I felt about the 66,000 and then someone who had a really different money mindset and who understood the industry standards much better, who just felt like that was ridiculously low. So I really had other people advocating on my behalf because I had a pretty, I guess, low self-worth around money or just coming from a really rural area. I just didn't have ideas of the market rate and what a lot of money truly was. So I had a long career in pharmaceutical sales and I think kind of at the peak, I maybe made about $150,000 a year.
And on top of that, we got a company car. We got 401k match. We got even like a divine contribution where they would put like 4% of our salary into a 401k, health insurance, trips and all that kind of stuff. So, maybe all in, if you were to add the additional value of all that, it was like 175,000, maybe $200,000 worth of full benefits package. But it was about $150,000 per year in actual gross income on my W2.
So then I went into business as for myself as a full-time entrepreneur. Um, and this was about three years ago and it was really driven by motherhood. I'd always see myself staying in corporate America. When I was in corporate America, I never thought about money mindset.
It just wasn't even a thing because the way that I looked at it was that my salary was determined by the industry. That I would just get these little raises every year, that I could get promotions every few years and that I would grow money. That's very traditional way. My salary would slowly increase over time and I would be contributing to my 401k so tha, by the end of my career, I would be able to retire comfortably.
I never attached my self-worth to my income. It felt like that was that my income was determined by the market, that it was determined by external forces. And I was just playing within that system. Once I became an entrepreneur, everything changed. And I truly believe and have had contact with so many entrepreneurs now that if you want a fast track in personal growth and development become an entrepreneur because it exposes so much.
That can otherwise just remain in the subconscious. So what happens often when you become an entrepreneur, is all of a sudden you attach all of your self-worth to the performance of your business. This is especially true if you were in a service business. So if you are a coach or a consultant where you are the business, your delivering the service, maybe.
It's really, um, such an easy trap to fall into. And so pretty soon you're getting on sales calls. And if people say, no, you feel like they're saying nobody used. And you're making that mean something about you and the way that you're pricing, you're making that mean something about you like, oh, can I really charge $1,500 a month?
That was what we started. When we were starting our Amazon agency, we started charging $1,500 a month. Now we're at like $5,000 a month. So you can see the evolution there, but it's because there was this whole game around. Right. And what comes easy to us, we tend to undervalue and we want people to say yes to us.
We want people to like us. And so it just all gets tied up in this emotional knot. And it becomes this emotional rollercoaster, honestly, where there are high highs and low lows. And it's a really, really difficult ride when your self-worth is online. When every sales call is going to mean something about you personally, where when every month is over and how much the business made or didn't make mean something about you personally.
Ooh. It really starts to wear on you. And when I had that aha moment that I mentioned earlier, where I realized I kind of asked myself the question, why is this so hard? And the inner knowing came through that. It's hard because you have this fear around money, you’re the problem, you're capping yourself.
I went to a women's business conference and a woman there was speaking on manifestation and she offered a free consultation afterwards. And so I got on this 20-minute pre-consultation zoom call with her. And she wasn't, as I found out later was an intuitive life coach. So she used her intuitive abilities to just kind of read my energy speak a lot to me. And she was like, “you know, I really get the sense that you're spending too much time in the masculine energy and you really want to let go of control, but you don't know how to do.” And I just started crying. I was like, you have this. And so I hired her and I told her that I wanted to work with her specifically on money manifestation.
Now that investment was $3,600 for 12 weeks. And that felt like a huge investment in my personal growth at the time, it was definitely the biggest investment that I had made to date. And I actually kind of asked Jeff for permission because I was so used to suppressing my own desires and I felt so unsafe spending money. I had all of this hoarder energy around money that I felt much more comfortable with it than spending it that I almost, I needed him to say yes or no. I just didn't trust myself, even though I desired it. And of course, Jeff, who's much more free-flowing with that stuff was like, yeah, of course do it.
And it's funny because I have all of these judgments about Sabrina for who does she think she is to be charging $3,600? I did the math on how much she was making per session. I think it was like $200 per session or something. And I just had this whole story around that. And it's hilarious to me now because I look back on that and I'm like, man, $3,600 to change my whole freaking life. It was a pretty good deal. So she just started digging in with me on what was it like to be me as a child? What was my relationship like with my dad? What was my relationship like with my mom and all of these questions were so interesting to me because I didn't really think there was a lot there. I grew up in a two-parent household. I didn't have like what you would consider any capital T traumas. Like I was never sexually abused. There was no divorce. There weren't any loss of close loved ones. But as we started digging into it, like all of this stuff came up because there were all of these beliefs swirling around in my subconscious around like there's not enough. I feel abandoned. I don't feel safe. I'm on my own.
All of these things that I interpreted as a four or 5, 6, 7-year old that I never reconciled. They just lived in my subconscious mind. And so there was a lot of healing to be. And I really learned with her all of these triggers that I had around money and in other things as well.
But I'll give you an example of one. My husband, Jeff, he loves looking at real estate. So he'll just for fun get on Trulia or Zillow or Redfin, and look at these like two to $3 million homes and. He loves them because he wants to like visualize and manifest, but we could live in a place like that. And so he would then send them to me, like “check out this cool house.” And what it triggered for me was there's not enough and I'm on my own. So the way that subconscious wiring worked well, there's not enough. How could we ever afford a two to $3 million home? And so then I was playing out this same dynamic that my parents had, where I felt like the responsible one. I was like playing the role of my dad and I was typecasting Jeff in the role of my mom. It was being irresponsible with money and rebellious and we'd just spend it all and have to be very careful. So the way that my brain interpreted that was, Jeff is irresponsible. He obviously doesn't understand money. He obviously would just spend it all and make very rash financial decisions if left to his own devices. And so therefore I'm on my own. It's up to me to keep our entire family safe and I have to be in control of the finances, or it's not going to work. So it felt really heavy and it also kept me in the masculine energy of needing to have control of it all who can you just feel the heaviness and that
The beautiful thing is that when we expose all of these subconscious beliefs, we can reparent our own inner child and we can release what's no longer serving us. So fast forward to two and a half years, I'm in a completely different place with money where the flow of money. I trust the circulation of money. I can spend it and believe that it will come back to be multiplied. I can receive money from many different sources. I don't believe that I have to work hard for it in the way that I did before. So there are so many ways that my relationship with money has completely changed and it's really due to all of this inner work.
Some of them was facilitated by a coach and then a lot of it has been self-lead now that I really understand what's going on.
So why do I love money? Why do I want to be having this conversation? The thing I love about money is that this tangible measure, right? It's very easy for us to count or see on a digital screen, but in my mind, it's honestly a measure of personal growth, particularly for entrepreneurs because when we want to be an energetic match for more money, the things that we have to do, the inner work, the uncovering of all these subconscious beliefs, the releasing of what no longer serves us, the installation of healthier, more abundant belief systems.
The ways that we can step into impact, the ways we can step into our define divine, feminine energy of receiving all of these things allow us to become an energetic match for wealth, for lots and lots of money, not just enough money to get by, but the kind of overflow and abundance that I personally desire and that I know many other people desire as well.
I love money because it's this easy character. And in order for us to pursue it, we get to do all of the inner work, which is what I really love. I absolutely love the inner work. I love doing it. I love talking about it. I love facilitating it. I love mentoring my clients through it. And one of my core values in fact, my number one core value is freedom. I desire freedom. And when you think about freedom, If I have to check with my money, if I want to do something and I have to check with my money to see if I can do it, I'm not really free. So the interesting thing about money is that in order to be kind of like almost free of money beyond money, you have to have a lot.
When you get to the point where you have an overflow of money, then the focus almost isn't so much on money because you don't have to check with it. You can be free to do the things that you want to do, to have the impact that you want to have, and not constantly be checking with your bank account.
So I'm here for my own self-liberation, and I'm here to take women with me that want to be on their own path of self-liberation. I also firmly believe that. We've been in this paradigm where the masculine energy, particularly the wounded masculine energy has been predominant on the planet. And in order to uplevel the planet and for us to really grow and evolve as a species, we need more divine feminine so that ultimately we can come into balance.
So let me talk more about divine, feminine and masculine energy for just a moment. So the masculine energy, when it's wounded, it has nothing to do with being a man or a woman. Let's just put that out there. It has nothing to do with your actual anatomy. Every man, and every woman has both energies available and inside. But the wounded masculine energy is very competitive, very forceful. I'm going to just push my way through it and make this happen. The divine masculine energy has structure instability. The divine feminine energy is very flowy, creative, inspired, magical. So if you think about a glass of water, the divine feminine is the water and the divine masculine is the glass. So we need both. We need the container, we need the structure and then we need the free-flowing energy within that as well. So the interesting thing about money is that we often have questions about it, but we don't feel like we can ask those questions because it's so taboo. So if we could ask all the questions we would want, we would want to know how much money people make. And we would want to know, you know, all kinds of things, how much money is in their bank account, how much they have invested, how much generational wealth have they created, but we don't feel like we can do that.
In my world, we are going to ask the questions that we secretly have around money. And so I'm going to share with transparency, what my world looks like from a money perspective. We have multiple businesses. I'll start with our e-commerce baby clothing company. That company brings in about $700,000 in gross revenue per year. We've been in business six years. So the business has done multi-millions and sales over the years. Our profit margins are around 30%. So obviously, $700,000 in gross does not mean $700,000 flows into our personal bank account because we have to produce the goods that are being sold. Amazon takes a commission,
we pay for advertising. We have all of these expenses that go against that. So our profit margins are about 30% which means we would take home a couple of hundred thousand, maybe $250,000 a year from that business.
We also run a lot of expenses through our businesses as well, so that makes the math a little bit harder to just say we earn x, faith there. The great thing about it is that we don't work hard on it. So we do about five hours of work per month. So could it be bigger than 700k a year. Would it require more of our time and focus? Yes. And right now it's just not something that we're interested in. Then we have elevated, which is our Amazon sales agency. That business is about two and a half years old from when we really like got our first client started making money. We did around 800k last year again in gross revenue. It will for sure be a million dollar plus business this year. We've collected multi-millions over the years, but we'll do a million in a single calendar year.
This year it's been about four or five months in a row that we've collected over a hundred thousand dollars cash every month. And actually, we've been over a hundred thousand dollars in cash collected. The failure of business as well. So that's pretty cool. I know for a lot of people that six-figure month milestone is an important one, and it's really neat that we've been able to hit that in two different businesses in the same year.
Elevate historically has had pretty low-profit margins because we have a big team, We employ, now almost 20 people. And so the margins are about 15% that's at, after owner's compensation as well. Most of last year we paid ourselves $6,000 per month and that was for Jeff and I both. So it did not feel like a lot of money.
And there were definitely times when I made that mean something about me like maybe I'm not a very good entrepreneur or maybe I'm not a very good business owner., What's going on with me? How come I can bring money in, but I can't keep it et cetera. And there was a time when I was like this is silly, like if we can't get beyond $6,000 per month, we should just burn down the whole business. We'll just keep two clients, serve them ourselves and make more money. But that was actually really a pivotal moment to recommit to the vision because we really believed in the vision of something so much bigger and being able to help so many other entrepreneurs sell their products on Amazon. And we really believed in the team like it still is incredible to me how many incomes we're responsible for how many jobs we've created, how many families rely on our business for their income. It's incredible. So towards the end of last year, we were able to give ourselves a raise to $12,000 per month.
And that is net. So it's kind of like the equivalent of paying ourselves 20 or $30,000 per month. And then having taxes taken out because the business actually sets aside money and pays for our taxes. We also have ownership in a software start-up. We don't take any money out of that yet. In fact, we invested in like 20 K and then we've done a venture capital raise.
So at the time of this recording, we've raised, I think about $275,000. So that's one of those companies where you have to lose money in the beginning. And that's why you take on venture capital, but the goal is to turn it into a company that's a hundred million dollar company. That one is pretty exciting. It doesn't require much in the way of effort on my part. And then I have this, uh, coaching business as well, which is really new. So the income is about, uh, $10,000 is what I have out in invoices that I should be getting paid for it in the next few days actually. So I feel super good about that, but I'll continue transparently sharing my numbers as we go.
Because this is something that I'm going to be asking guests about. I want to make, be really clear about like, what was I making it mean? Or what am I making it mean about me? This amount of money and how much we make. One example was the first time that we hit 100k per month for elevate.
It had been gold for a long time and we finally hit it. And frankly, I felt like kind of bad actually afterwards, we forced ourselves to celebrate., we did like a fancy dinner with our business partner who was in another state at the time. So we all got fancy food and met up on zoom and that kind of thing. But to me, it was a testament of needing to do more inner work because I think a lot of times we do this, we have this idea of how we're going to feel when our business hits a certain amount. When I get to 10k a month, when I get to a hundred K a month, when I get to a million in a year, whatever it is, we think that we're going to feel differently.
And of course, that's circumstantial, right? We're hoping that changing our environment, our outer environment will change our inner environment. And that's very rarely the case. So when I kind of felt bad after hitting a hundred thousand dollars in cash collected in a single. I had to do a little more inner work around what am I making this mean.
Are there other ways that I can just allow myself to feel that and have that disconnected from the amount of money that we're making? So. I've definitely weaponized my income against myself as an entrepreneur where I felt like I wasn't good enough. And the money was proof of that. Now I feel really, really good about where we're at, particularly with the amount of effort that is required. So I feel like we're finally at this stage where I'm experiencing the payoff of the work of building a machine. And so now I've got two different companies that are very much machines. They run, they have an incredible team helping to make sure that they run and my involvement gets to be more minimal. That feels so good to me because I desire freedom. And because I really believe that this coaching, this podcast, this message is really the impact that I'm supposed to be making. And so now I have the freedom of time to really pursue that more. So in future episodes, I would be happy to talk about, um, the ways that we're not just making money, but also keeping it, multiplying it, creating generational wealth. But I think I've kind of covered enough of the overall financial picture in my household for now.
So what to expect from the Em Makes Money podcast, as I mentioned, I'm going to be holding space for divine feminine energy while we radically talk about money. We're going to be using so much transparency. I'll be asking guests how much they make, but not just top-line revenue.
Also owner's compensation, profit margins. What some of their big goals are, what their limiting beliefs were around money, how they worked through them. So I really believe that by you tuning in, it will expose your own limiting beliefs around money and allow you to heal them more rapidly so that you can quantum leap in your relationship with money and your impact in the world and the income that you're making from your job or your business.
So thank you for tuning in. I am wishing you health, happiness, and boatloads of money.
