How To Make More Money Online With the Host of the Money Magic Podcast

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Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin Wilson, Host:    00:01:13    Hey there, Kristin, from Traveling with Kristin here and welcome to episode 178 of Badass Digital Nomads. Today's episode is part two of my conversation with self-made entrepreneur, Vangile Makwakwa, who is also the host of two podcasts, the Money Magic Podcast and the Property Magician Podcast. In case you missed it, last week during part one of our conversation, we dove deep into the cost of living in Mexico and how her cost of living in Mexico compares to the cost of living in her home country of South Africa. And today we're talking more about money. We're talking about how to make money online, habits that you should adopt and discard from your money habits. And we're also talking about how to build wealth, get out of debt, and some of the mindset blocks and limitations that tend to hold us back. Earning an online income is really the foundation of being able to have freedom in your life, especially location freedom.  

Kristin:    00:02:23    And so I think this is a very important topic and something that you know, we can always improve our mindset around. And so this is a topic that is very important and I think that everyone can resonate with and learn something new and take some tips that you can implement in your own financial habits and life. And it's always good to get more ideas about different ways that you can generate revenue online, build different revenue streams and make sure that you're earning your worth, especially if you are transitioning from a salary job into a role as an independent contractor or online business owner. There's a lot of skills that aren't necessarily taught in school but can serve you well, especially during the time we live in with the access to technology that we have. So I was very inspired by her story and found her tips quite useful and practical and I hope you do too. Enjoy. 

Podcast Interview:

Kristin: That's a great opportunity for us to rewind a little bit as to how you got started in business. So can you bring us back to what you were doing more than 10 years ago before you started traveling and what was your career then? And then when did you have the idea to go into business for yourself and when was that?  

Vangile:    00:03:48    I was running my first business 10 years ago. I had just finished my MBA at the Simmons School of Management in Boston, Massachusetts. And I was running my own business, the first ever business, it was called Speak to Be Free. And I was trying to represent poets and performance artists and be an agent to them, right? Because I was like, oh, this could be so good. Having poets write - ran stories and a poem, people would pay for that, all that. And then the prisoners went under, right? Because I was having panic attacks with money. I couldn't invoice people. It was so scary. Managing money was freaking me out and I was having panic attacks then I was also not able to draft up a budget, by the way, my background is in finance, right? So I went on this journey cuz I was like, not even 38, how is this my life?  

Vangile:    00:04:43    You know? Like am I gonna get to 30 and this is gonna be my life that I'm gonna be like scared to work with money, to manage money, to talk about money, to charge for my products and services, you know? So I decided I'm gonna go on a journey around understanding what's happening with my panic attacks, with my depression. Started writing books about working with money and using emotional intelligence for financial success. It was just an incredible experience. The book did well, I started coaching and then I started building this business because at first I was like Ah, I'm not interested. I got a part-time job. I also had $60,000 in debt. I moved back to South Africa to publish the book. I got a part-time job and I started building this business on the side as a side hustle. Never ever aiming to make it be what it is.  

Vangile:    00:05:38    And then I paid off my debt. So my debt was denominated in US dollars, everything was happening in South African rans. But I managed to live and pay off all my debt in three and a half years, three and a half to four years. I became debt free -- Bid them farewell,  was like, thank you you US student loans, like I'm done with you, <laugh>, all that stuff. And this is how I came to then do my business because before then I was always traveling. That's how I ended up doing my MBA in the US because on my travels I was like in the Baha, no, I was in living in Trinidad and Tobago. I was actually in Tobago and I was like, I should go do an MBA. And that's how I ended up applying to the Simmons School of Management and doing an MBA. Cause I felt like I was in a weird phase of my life where I was drifting as a traveler, you can definitely drift.  

Vangile:    00:06:30    So there was no purpose to my travels and I was like, I don't see this being my life forever. Like I wanna keep traveling. But yeah, I guess it's enough of a purpose to see countries and to enjoy them. And I was like, don't I wanna have kids one day? Don't I want this option? I want more purpose in my life. So, hmm young me thought that purpose came with more degrees. So student loans were gotten <laugh>. I moved to the US as I started doing all that. And then when I paid off the student loans, I said to myself, I'm gonna go back to traveling. I'm gonna build the business and I will do something that I've never done before, which I'm still doing. I never travel with credit cards. Everything I do is I do with cash. If I can't afford it, then I have to sit down and figure out how I can make that money.  

Vangile:    00:07:20    I also don't believe that it's the end of the world if you can't afford a thing, you can sit down and say, what is it in my business that I need to do to be able to make this money? And then like I work with my coaches and I figure that out. You know, I work on it. Which is actually, it's funny because I think that if I wasn't traveling, my business wouldn't be constantly expanding. But because I'm traveling, expenses are constantly moving, all these things, I'm hiring new people so my fixed expenses in the business go up. I'm constantly having to rethink the way that I do business, see business the way I service people in my community. It's very, very interesting.  

Kristin:    00:07:59    Wow. So you just covered a lot right there. <laugh>, what is your book called?  

Vangile:    00:08:03    <laugh> Hot Mind and Money: Using Emotional Intelligence for Financial Success. Then I also have a woman money journal where I teach women people with wombs, should I say, how to make decisions, business decisions and financial decisions by connecting to your womb and talking to your womb and really being in alignment on a womb level. And how do you work in such a way that like when you're on your period, you're not exhausting yourself, right? You are honoring your womb. Because the truth is that like you are on your period, your body's asking you to behave in a particular way. So I also teach people what does that mean? Like the journal also covers how that looks like in terms of exercise. Cause when I started doing tant yoga, so on my journey to understanding ancestral trauma in the body, part of what has driven my travels as well has also been about understanding how different communities around the world have been healing and working with different healers in the world to understand healing. And then also working with that for my own lineage. Cuz I come from a family of shamans, right? So also integrating that into indigenous African, or should I say rather South African healing practices and understanding how that could even work with the modern world and how do you work with your ancestors as well to tap into that ancestral wisdom but to also give them this knowledge. So that's what I've been doing.  

Kristin:    00:09:33    Interesting. So I think what you've portrayed to me and that answer is how first the multifaceted sides and interests of humans, of being able to have this track and this aspect of your personality to be focused on finance and getting an MBA and entrepreneurship and things like that. But then to also be interested on the side, as you mentioned, doing side hustles and researching ancestry, spirituality, health and populations of people in these different countries. And so I think that's very interesting as well as how you were drawn to having a financial background and getting an MBA, but yet that which you were studying was a big block for you. And the only way through that block was to work through it. So to be attracted to finance but then scared of it at the same time I think is something that a lot of people can relate to.  

Kristin:    00:10:33    And I think it's very key that you didn't just run away and say, okay, I'm scared of making money and like I guess I'll just do something else. But you worked on it for a few years until you came up with a solution. And then that in turn, that solution has become the foundation for your business, which is now allowing you to have this location, independent lifestyle to travel the world and helping other people find financial freedom at the same time. So kudos for that. I do have a question though, as to how you were traveling while you had the $60,000 in debt, especially if you weren't using credit cards and you didn't have your business yet. How did you make that work?  

Vangile:    00:11:14    Oh, the reason why I got into $60,000 in debt was, apart from the student loans, was I was using credit cards  

Kristin:    00:11:21    To  travel

Vangile:    00:11:21     when I was traveling the first time.

Vangile:    00:11:24    Yeah. And then remember I took that little hiatus to go back to South Africa. Yeah. And I went and I then did, got a part-time job, started working, building my business. And what I did was I used my salary to live off of basic life ex uh, just life, right? To start investing, building an emergency savings account. All that was with my salary. But everything from the business I was using it to to pay down debt. So it was like I was having two incomes, but one income was just dedicated to paying off debt. And then by the time I went back to traveling, cause I wasn't a hundred percent sure of how the business was gonna look like, cause I was traveling, I had saved about 50,000 US dollars. I had 50,000 US dollars in my bank account. So I could go traveling for about a year, a year and a half until I truly figured myself out and figured out what this business was going to look like  

Kristin:    00:12:22    And what does your business look like now. So what was your part-time job? First, because I think a lot of people can relate to having to get a job that they don't necessarily love to be able to give themselves the time and the financial runway to start a business on the side that then gives them that freedom and location independence. So what was your job then? And then what is your job now?  

Vangile:    00:12:43    I worked for Stellenbosch University. So this is the university where the thesis apartheid was written. And where every single apartheid president had to come from there. And this is important because the work that I was then hired to do was to get more sponsors, more funders, more scholarships started for students of color to get more student and color to come into the university because the university was saying it has changed its image, all that. So I was working in academia, but they allowed me to make my role part-time and they actually paid me a decent amount of money, I guess because it's academia, right? So they're not about to try to get caught up in a scandal or whatever. Yeah. So I got paid decently. I did actually enjoy my job because the job itself actually allowed me to travel all over South Africa cuz I had to identify really gifted students.  

Vangile:    00:13:42    And I got to do things like argue that grades are not the way that you choose if someone is gonna have a scholarship because everyone has a different background. So if we are matching by grades, if someone has more support than another, they will always have their grades will be higher. It's not that they're more intelligent. So started looking like advocating for scholarship committees to look at the background of the person because the character of the person and what it's taken for them to get here is so, so valuable because you're probably able to decide who the student is and where they'll be going. So it was a very, like, I really, really did enjoy my time then. I'm not gonna lie, because it was a lot to do with diversity, with equity. There were a lot of debates around patriarchy, racism, what is equity?  

Vangile:    00:14:33    What does it look like? So it gave me so much of the language that I actually use in my work around money because I explained that we can't talk about ancestral trauma without talking about systemic oppression because generational wealth literally is about generations. So let's talk about what that looks like because most people are starting from zero or from negative and that is gonna impact you and even impact the way that you see yourself when you're comparing to someone on Instagram or whatever, right? Because you're starting from a different standpoint. So like, I don't know then. But that job <laugh> was super, super important to the work that I do now cuz I talk a lot about ancestral trauma, racism, patriarchy, classism, the intersectionality. How does that look like? How would you think if you are the first in your family to make money, how would that impact you? How would you behave in certain environments? All that. Like all that needs to be taken into account and it has such an emotional impact on us because we live in a society that just tells us, oh, you just need to up level and be good enough and pull yourself up by your boots. But it's like, how does that even work? There's so many things that a human being doesn't know if they're coming from a particular background. Yeah.  

Vangile:    00:15:50    So it's like small, small things. How you write a CV. Like I would work with people in the villages, like a lot of students coming from the villages, they've never written a CV, they've never understood certain things and the university would be asking for an application fee. Not understanding that a $20 application fee for some families is literally the difference between groceries today and groceries tomorrow. And this person getting into the university is the difference between changing an entire generational lineage money story.  

Kristin:    00:16:25    Yeah.  

Vangile:    00:16:26    So we got to have those conversations. So yeah, I did kind of love my part-time job. It was stressful as-- how bout, I was happy to leave  

Kristin:    00:16:33    <laugh>. Right. Well actually I just did an interview with my friend Patrick Farrell and in it we were talking about how in the moment you don't necessarily know what you're doing is going to lead you. Like you couldn't foresee that taking that job was going to help start this business and pay debt and everything like that. But it can be so enlightening to look back and connect the dots and see how everything came together. And I always find it so fascinating to observe those dots and those steps in other people's lives and see how it led them to where they are today. So thanks for sharing that. And I did, when you mentioned Instagram, I saw so many interesting posts on your Instagram, especially around how to create consistent income as an entrepreneur or a freelancer or an artist or how to start your business with zero money, like how to start from scratch and also how to create your first revenue stream of a thousand dollars per month or $2,000 per month.  

Kristin:    00:17:33    And that seems to be a lot of the people that you're helping. And also a lot of the listeners of the podcast, I think can relate to being able to have a consistent income when working for themselves and even people who are retired or have a nest egg. There's a lot of lack of clarity and confusion around how people can start a business for the first time and start an online income stream for the first time when they might be used to getting a salary or even if they're living on a pension or something like that. So can you provide some guidance as to what you observe with your clients where they're blocked with taking that first step and making like their first thousand dollars online and some of the strategies that people can use to get around that.  

Vangile:    00:18:26    So one of the things that I realize right is also for most people, so I have this free training where I'm like, I teach people about tapping into ancestral wisdom. So one of the easiest things I always say, the easiest low hanging fruit is figure out what is it that you like, feels good to you? And then look at your ancestral lineage. And it doesn't mean that because everyone's a mechanic, you're gonna be a mechanic, right? It can be that like, oh wow, people in my family are really great at strategy. People in my family just have this gift where people come to us and ask for guidance people in my family. We just have a way of simplifying complex systems, right? It can help you figure out where you are, what is your natural gift, and then pay attention to the natural gift. The reason why I say this is that most people are doing things just because it's for the money, et cetera.  

Vangile:    00:19:21    And when it comes to entrepreneurship, you guys, yes, it will start off wow because you're making lots of money, but when the hard times come, the things that do sustain you is your why and your passion. You know when things are falling apart, that is the thing that gets you through the hard times. So find something that you already like that already feels like it's tapped into you. And then here's the thing, it's not about that. Oh, you do what you like, you do something that you're naturally good at in your business and then everything falls into place. That's not true. Then work on a business model. So your first thing is to decide the kind of business model that makes sense for the kind of lifestyle that you have. So I always say to my clients, I have built my business to foolproof me, to foolproof my need to travel, my personality. The people I've hired are hired because I know my blind spots, my weaknesses, and even the business models, how I make money, the kind of coaching packages I sell, the way that I host my retreats, all that is both to foolproof me and my personality. And because I know my blind spots, right? So find the business model that is in alignment with you.  

Kristin:    00:20:34    Hey there, Kristin here. Did you know that I have a weekly newsletter? You can stay in touch and receive an email from me every Friday by going to travelingwithKristin.com/subscribe. You'll be the first to know about new projects, videos, and opportunities for attending meetups live streams and more. You'll also get a lot of travel and remote work tips, insights, and thoughts that I don't share anywhere else. Sign up today at travelingwithKristin.com/subscribe. And now back to the show.

Kristin:  Once people decide, okay, I want to work for myself, what do I charge? You've written a lot about how to overcome the struggle of asking for money for your services and charging for your services. Why do you think it's so difficult for people to make that shift from getting a salary to charging for themselves and overcoming that glass ceiling of how much they made in their salary job versus working for themselves? And what are some ways that they can come up with a way to charge for those services and charge a fair amount?  

Vangile:    00:21:49    So the one way that I teach people why I think people have a hard time charging is because we've tended to equate how much we earn with our worth. And people say things like that. I also started off like that charge my worth, charge my worth. But if you've got deep issues and deep trauma where you've been told certain things about yourself where or where you've come to certain conclusions because you've dated certain men or whatever and that's affected the way that you see yourself, then your worth is already compromised right now. It's become so personal, it's not about the business. And so everything to do with pricing becomes about you and your worth. So when you send an invoice and they don't, and people don't pay for it, your first thing is they don't like me. That's what I used to believe. I would put out products and services and when people didn't sign up, I'd quickly give up because I'm like, they are rejecting me.  

Vangile:    00:22:42    It was never, maybe the offer needs tweaking, maybe there's something up with this offer. Maybe if I offered a payment plan, maybe if I had conversations with people that are on the fence about this, something would start to shift so it becomes inevitable. We personalize money, right? So first things first is to divorce yourself from what you're offering. It's like, yes, I love my business. Yes, I'm holding space for my people. But one of the things that helps me with underpricing is that I sit down and I calculate who are the people that are gonna be on this team that make this product and service to the market? How am much time am I charging to make this a reality? How much of my time the pre-planning to get before I get on a call with a client, how much is that worth the post high where I get off a call with a client and I get to hold myself and reflect?  

Vangile:    00:23:35    That's something that wouldn't happen if I wasn't coaching that client, right? So I'm putting in all those costs and then I'm charging appropriately so that I don't undercharge. And here's the thing. So the danger with overcharging, we all know you overcharge and then you underdeliver and your brand goes through the pits and you probably have to shut down your business or deal with like horrible comments, right? But remember, when you're doing this, you're also looking at what are you truly going to offer and can you offer what you say you're going to offer? So that's the first thing. So when I've written all that down, I'm also like writing all that I'm charging because the danger with undercharging is that if I say I'm going to offer what I'm going to offer and I'm already undercharging, and then because I'm undercharging, I can't pay my team, you know?  

Vangile:    00:24:23    So one of the things that happens when people sign up for my Money Magic Course is they have two free coaching sessions with one of my in-house coaches, right? So if I cannot pay her for the coach, if I cannot pay her for those two free sessions that she offers, then I haven't delivered. But it's highly likely that I won't be able to pay for that if I haven't build it into my pricing. And then in the long run it's going to affect my p roduct and services and my business and my brand. Cause what are people going to say, Ooh, she takes forever to deliver. She at this pricing, she couldn't even offer us something decent. Now she wants to double or triple the pricing, it's gonna be worse. No, it's worse because you are undercharging and so you couldn't pay the right people, you couldn't have the right people on your team, you couldn't buy the right software, all this. So I feel like undercharging is actually more dangerous to a business in the long run than overcharging because with overcharging you can give refunds, right? And say, I am so sorry, but with undercharging, how do you rectify that? Because every bit of the money, if the service is trash, is already locked into trying to deliver the service.  

Kristin:    00:25:30    Yeah, I agree. Because with undercharging, when you can't deliver the service, you have a problem before you've even started the service. But with overcharging or not overcharging, I mean it's really actually quite hard to overcharge for what you do. I think unless you're charging a hundred dollars for a hotdog or something like that, I think that people air so much on the side of undercharging that if they feel that they're overcharging, it could be actually just right. But if you charge a fair value for your service and other people decide not to purchase that service, then that's fine. That saves you the time and the energy to work with the clients that do value what you're providing to them. In the past, I've gotten into issues where I was undercharging for my services and I had a lot of clients and I just was overworking myself to death because I had to provide the services for them.  

Kristin:    00:26:27    But you know, there weren't enough hours in the day. And as I've grown with my YouTube channel and things and getting so many offers from companies and sponsorships and things like that, I've decided, you know, I'd rather just work with a handful of companies that I, I actually use their products, I trust their products, I believe in what they're doing. And other than like taking sponsorships that are lower paying that I don't believe in what they're doing. And so for me it's better to have that free time to reinvest in rest and self-care or creativity or time off or in your current clients in doing a really good job for them than it is to just take extra work. Because you can. And I've seen that trap with freelancers where they're basically only exchanging their time for money and they're doing it based on maybe what other people are charging or what they made in their job. 

Kristin:    00:27:27    And they're not taking into consideration their costs of doing the business. So let's say it's a graphic designer and they charge an amount of money per hour and they think, okay, it's gonna take me three hours to do this graphic design project, so I'll multiply my hourly rate of what I made in my salary times the number of hours it takes me to do this project. And then that's that. But then you have to work in the cost of the administration of the business, the cost of using the software and the, the tools and the overhead that you have in your business. Also the percentage of time that projects go over budget or over time, or you have extra customer service to deal with or the client asks for multiple reviews of the project. You know, like there's so many other things that go into it.  

Kristin:    00:28:14    Uh, the cost of your accounting software and your overhead from your co-working space or your internet, I mean all these other things. I think that sometimes when people start working for themselves and start freelancing, they're only looking at what they're used to doing their entire career previously or what they were taught in the traditional education system, which is to exchange your time for money for a fixed salary every year that if you're lucky it can go up or it can be adjusted for inflation or you can get bonuses through commissions or things like that. So what are your thoughts on that? Because you've also talked about a lot about changing your mindset around not just exchanging your time for money and for people who work for themselves, like how they can make this a consistent thing and not have to quit after a couple years and go back to like the quote unquote regular job.  

Vangile:    00:29:05    Oh wow. I feel like you've said it all. Hey, like I really, really agree with everything that you've said, what you've said about that because it is about swapping time for money. And a lot of clients think like that. So I always say to people, you're gonna have to educate your client. How as well do you have to educate them about your pricing? But what you said about mindset is spot on. If my clients can feel that I'm not a hundred percent energetically behind my pricing because it's freaking me out, guess what? They're gonna energetically react to that and it's gonna be very, very hard for them to sign up for things. And it's gonna be hard for me to sell things. But if I'm saying this and it feels congruent in my body, it feels good in my body, I know exactly why I'm charging the price that I'm charging.  

Vangile:    00:29:53    Well, it's gonna be easier to sell that price, right? Even if clients go, this is so expensive, you can be like, yeah, well because of the work that I'm constantly doing and myself and because I'm constantly taking time off, I'm able to then hold space so fiercely for clients, you're not getting an exhausted money coach, you're getting a money coach that is doing her work in her off days because she really, really believes in what she's teaching about ease and relaxation. So when I'm doing the work, I'm showing up so fully and what is that worth? The other option is to have a coach who, when she's with you, is already thinking, who I've got exactly an hour. Like we need to finish this. She's not fully engaged, she's not fully hearing you because she needs to make the money because she's got the next client not servicing. That makes it hard to service any client fully, you know?  

Kristin:    00:30:47    Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. And having a coach also is something that can help people level up. I've been working with coaches ever since, believe 2008, where I met a coach at a health retreat when I was in Atlanta of all places. And she was my first coach, I think it was within one month of working with her. We met in 2008. I didn't actually work up the courage to hire her as my coach until 2011. And within one month of working for her, I got the idea for my first business, which was this relocation company called Poker Refugees. And I launched the business I think April, may, June, July three or four months later. And in the first month I quadrupled my income from Real Estate <laugh> and it was like, oh, so, and I think I was paying her maybe like $200 or $300 per hour. And ever since then I've had this shift where it's almost like, like they say you need to have money to make money, but, which I don't believe.  

Kristin:    00:31:55    But I do think that when you invest in yourself, you get that return. And one of my friends is selling a course on how to make money on Medium. And even though I've already made a lot of money on Medium, like tens of thousands of dollars, I sent him an email like, Hey, I wanna buy your course. Which I think it's like $500 or something like that, because it's not just the time that he spent to make that course and the value of the information that's in the course, which the value in the course of that info is worth six figures easily. But it's also the value that it is to the people who take the course. So like when freelancers are wrapping their heads around how to charge for their services, I think it's definitely not just your time for money and not just your overhead and your other administrative expenses, but it's also like the value and the years of your expertise that go into delivering that service.  

Kristin:    00:32:53    The value of your student loans, your MBA, all of the time that you spent watching tutorials on how to do the thing that you're doing. And then it's also the benefit to the person that's receiving the service. And so that's kind of the way I look at it. Like I spend tens of thousands of dollars on coaching and masterminds and things like that each year, but it always pays off. And I now have friends that sell like $30,000 course. So she's like, yeah, I'm selling $30,000 courses. And I'm like, wow, it, there's really like no limit to what you can charge when the value that you're providing is congruent with what you're charging. Because their Facebook advertising budget for the day might be $30,000. So like if somebody's helping them with their Facebook ads and that's going to direct, you know, that's like a drop in the bucket. 

Kristin:    00:33:49    So for them, the $30,000 for that product is like me looking at this $500 course of writing on medium, which even though I've already made all that money writing on Medium, I still know that there's more that I can learn. And I know that in one month or in one article, like my highest earning article was almost $10,000. So it's like, what if you take a course on how to do something and like you could get that money back times thousands in one result from what you did. It's like of course you would do it. But sometimes there's this block around money where people are afraid to spend money on something. Can you like kind of explain where that comes from? Like I sometimes get really annoyed with my own spending because I'm like, wow, I just spent 50 or a hundred dollars on this mediocre lunch or dinner.

Kristin:    00:34:46    Like I should have just put a hundred dollars an ETF <laugh> or into crypto or something instead of going out to eat. So it's like sometimes we waste money on the, the most trite sort of stuff, like parking. Like I might spend in a day like $30 on parking in Miami and I'm like, for every time that I spend, you know, $3 an hour or $16 for a parking, you know, whatever it is, it's depends on where you go. I'm like, I should put $3 into my savings account or I should put, you know, that $20 into stocks. I don't know like where is this incongruence between the way that we kind of waste money or spend frivolously in some ways. But then when it comes to our self-improvement, leveling up, learning new skills, a saving for retirement, why do humans not do it? And I don't wanna say everybody, but you know, when you look at the statistics of savings rates and what people have in retirement, it's pretty clear that like a lot of people are not able to save or, or that they didn't save or that they started late. So why is it that we as human beings, we tend to spend what we earn or spend over our means and kind of waste money on stuff, but then we don't spend it on the important things that are going to create more wealth in our lives. Have you have any insight on that? 

Vangile:    00:36:12    Yeah,  I think as human beings often it's not even about the spending of money itself. It's about why we are spending money on anything. Most of us are trying to get rid of money, not actually spend money because money doesn't feel safe. Every time we manage money, we are triggered to see money in a particular light. So a part of us gets triggered and gets to see money in a particular light. And that just triggers a bunch of things in future that then makes us feel unsafe in that moment. So for example, with my panic attacks, every time I had money I was actually earning $8,000 a month at one time, just working 40 hours a week in Boston. And I could never pay even a single penny off my debt. A lot of that was every time I got the money, my inner child in my inner teen would hijack me and I would go into the parts of me. 

Vangile:    00:37:08    These are the parts of me that were deeply deadly traumatized around money, saw family dynamics around money. Saw how when someone has money they lose their family members, they end up having fights with family members, all these things. So every time I would handle money, I don't want that conflict. I was avoiding conflict by getting rid of money. So for me to start changing my spending habits with money and I teach people how to change their spending habits in five days, it's crazy cuz I give them techniques and things that they can do that are all about the body. They barely even look at their bank accounts and their budget. They, they look at that very, very closely on the last day or fall in love with your bank account challenge. And a lot of that is just understanding the parts of us that are deeply, deeply triggered and are invested in getting you in, hijacking you so that you can constantly spend money, get rid of money.  

Vangile:    00:38:00    Cuz sometimes it can feel like a high, you're like, where did my money go? Because you weren't fully present. The other parts of your psyche, sub-personalities that were invested in keeping you safe, were taking over so that you could get rid of money and that could feel safe. Because having more money, at least in my case, meant having no money meant that I didn't have to deal with family dynamics around money. I didn't have to deal with envy, with jealousy, with people asking me for money, with me having to say no with me having to prove that I'm not selfish. So it just meant that, oh, I never have money. Right? It helped a lot.  

Kristin:    00:38:37    Yeah, there's all these subconscious things going on. We'll definitely link to your five day course here, fall in love with your bank account. And you just reminded me of something else. That's a pattern that I see a lot with people. Let's say people come from, as you mentioned, earning $8,000 per month in a salary job and then they say, I wanna work for myself. And I ask them, what is their income goal to work for themselves? And they say $2,000 per month. Why is it that people who earn $8,000 in a salary job set a goal that's much lower when they consider their bare minimum of what they wanna make if they were to work for themselves?  

Vangile:    00:39:23    So a lot of that has to do with what you saw growing up with entrepreneurship and what we've heard about entrepreneurship, right? So even though I was in the MBA program, learning about entrepreneurship, doing entire business plans, writing all the stuff, cuz my focus was mainly entrepreneurship and strategy. It was really, really hard for me to dream bigger because I hadn't seen anyone around me make that kind of money, right? So it's easier to dream in terms of making millions and billions in a business if there are people in your country, in your community, just around you that you have seen do that because it's about possibility, right? It's about just making this a possibility and making it real.  

Kristin:    00:40:10    Yeah. So it's almost like your network is your net worth.  

Vangile:    00:40:14    Yeah. So it's something along those lines. It's also about what you grew up seeing around entrepreneurship. So I say to people like, I grew up seeing my mom and my dad take me through to private schools and pay for things on a business. So even though I was having these issues with money and freaking out setting income goals and constantly allowing myself to increase them, an idea that like I could run a business that sustains me as I travel made sense because I had seen that happening in my family because I had some kind of reference point. When you don't have a reference point, you are often going to make decisions based on what you are being told by those around you and what you have seen in your life. 

Kristin:    00:40:56    Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I think that's why so many people listen to podcasts, <laugh> and and watch videos from people that inspire them, myself included. I feel like I'm always brainwashing myself with positive information that's going to help expand my worldview and my mindset. And you can just kind of hit the nail on the head there because getting those examples from other people, plants, seeds, and mirrors your own potential I think. And you pick up what is relevant to you and your life at that time. And that's why I also like re-reading books because let's say reading a book on money reading, think and Grow Rich or Rich Dad, poor Dad. It's like if you read it once when you're 18 years old, I sometimes think I haven't read it that many times, but like what if you read that book once per year your entire life? I think every time you read that book, you will learn something new and you would be able to apply something in another way.

Kristin:    00:41:58    So in that sense, just like anything, making money and increasing your wealth and creating generational wealth is something that is a journey of a lifetime. And it's better for us all to work on that rather than to not do it. And hopefully through practicing what we learn, you start to realize like, okay, maybe I can increase my standards, maybe I can make more than $2,000 a month. It's not just about making $2,000 a month and going to live in a place that costs $1,000 a month, but it's recognizing that what if I could make $10,000 per month or $100,000 per month or $1 million per month? It still starts with a one <laugh>. You know, it's all numbers and it can be magnified. So to bring this back down to Earth and to the practical level, what are a couple tips that people can start doing today? Let's say one or two money habits that are having a negative impact that they can stop doing and one or two things that they can start doing instead that can shift them in a more abundant direction.  

Vangile:    00:43:07    So the tips that people can utilize, one of the things that I say to people is, look at your bank. Spend five minutes a day, print out your bank account or bring it up on a screen and look at your bank account for five minutes a day, then shut down the computer screen, take away the physical copy of the bank statement and then just start seeing how your breathing changes. Notice what's happening in your body by just looking at the bank statement, what's happening in your body. And then without trying to change anything, keep doing this every single day you are training your amygdala, the reptilian part of the brain, not to react emotionally to money and whatever comes up with money in your bank account, you can do the same with your income statement, with your income goals. Sit and feel into your body and feel what that feels like. And then you can ask, where do I feel this block in my body? Who is the version of me? And then ask to see the version of you that is blocking the income goal. And then have a conversation with them to ask them what is it that they scared of? What are they hoping to gain by blocking this money? All that.  

Kristin:    00:44:15    Okay. And then what are money habit that people can focus to stop doing.  

Vangile:    00:44:21    Well, I guess one of the things that I always say to people is, as soon as money comes into your bank account, stop feeling the need to spend at asap. Give yourself like three days to have like a a chunk of money sitting in your bank account. And as you do that, just observe how that feels in your body, feel what that feels like in your body so that you can start to see your behavioral patterns, your emotional responses, your mental blocks to having money in your bank account.  

Kristin:    00:44:49    Hmm. So it's kind of that money burning a hole in your pocket sort of saying is to not just let it burn right through. Yeah. But just keep it there. And then if you are going to have it an outflow, make sure it's an automated outflow to some wealth building account. Either a savings account or a CD or some investment account where it's going to be automated towards building wealth rather than automated to a monthly subscription or a Starbucks recharging your app every day or every week or every month with coffee purchases. Something like that. So Vangile, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about all of these money tips with us and with your cost of living in Mexico and South Africa, you've left us so many resources. So I'll make sure to link to everything in the show notes. And then where can people follow you on your podcast or your website or social media? Uh, give us all of the locations where they can find you.  

Vangile:    00:45:50    Okay. I run two podcasts. The first one is the Money Magic Podcast. So just search on iTunes, pod Beans, Spotify and YouTube Money Magic podcast. And then you can also search on those same platforms, Property Magicians podcast and on Instagram and all the platforms, search Vangile Makwakwa on Facebook. I have a Facebook group where I do a lot of cool stuff. Look for Wealthy Money, and then join the Facebook group, Wealthy Money, Personal Finance and Property Investing. So look for that group, and if you are looking to find out more about my courses and wanting to take my courses, I really recommend going to wealthy-money.com/academy. Again, wealthy-money.com/academy. And then also look for wealthy-money.com/training. It's a three seven day training to tap into your ancestral money wisdom.  

Kristin:    00:46:47    Okay, well thank you so much. I hope you enjoy your day and your weekend in beautiful Porto Escondido, Mexico, and hope to connect with you again soon.  

Vangile:    00:46:58    Thank you so much, Kristin. Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in and listened in. I look forward to connecting with you guys on the socials.  

Kristin:    00:47:06    Thanks everyone and see you again next week. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, why not share the Love? You can support the show by leaving us a five star review wherever you listen or by sharing today's episode on social media or with a friend, coworker, or family member, you can also make a contribution to the show at www.badassdigitalnomads.com/support. There you'll find links to donate on PayPal, buy me a coffee, or by joining my Patreon, where for $5 per month, you get to preview my videos before they're published on YouTube and also participate in monthly private zoom hangouts with myself and other patrons. That's at badassdigitalnomads.com/support. Thank you so much and see you again next week.