ABOUT ELLE
How long have you been doing what you do, and how did you become a Money Coach?
To answer this question, it’s probably best that I share with you a defining moment, and a resulting compelling story, that brought me to where I am today – coaching people just like you on exactly what to do to level up their money, and live life on their own terms. That defining moment in my life happened in the summer of 2012.
I was 25 years old. I had just purchased my first home two years prior, I had completed my undergraduate degree in Arts and Technology from the University of Texas at Dallas, and I was now graduating with my Masters in Business Administration from Texas Woman's University. By this time I’d been in the corporate world for about 3 years, and had been promoted several times. Yet even with each promotion, I still felt unappreciated, under-compensated, and completely unfulfilled.
On the outside looking in, everything in my life was going right. But on the inside, I was just going through the motions of what I thought was the recipe for success.
I grew up in a household where money was a hot topic. My father was a banker, and my mother’s initial career was that of an accountant. In my house, discussions of budgeting, saving, and investing were mixed right in with discussions of religion, academic expectations, and the pathway (that they knew) to success.
While neither of my parents came from affluent backgrounds, they made it their mission to provide a different life for me and my sister. And with that mission, there sometimes came strict rules and a narrow-minded focus on what success was supposed to look like: make good grades, get a good job, make a lot of money, and win at everything.
I was trying it. I was doing it. I was going about life exactly as my parents taught me. I wanted to make them proud, but I was hating every minute of my day-to-day life. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to be the self-employed, bad-ass, boss-chick, business woman that I knew was inside me just dying to be unleashed.
So the thought of playing by someone else’s company rules literally made me sick to my stomach. I hated being told what to do, when to do it, when to come in, when I could go home, or when I could vacation. It was a living nightmare. I literally felt like for at least 8 hours a day I was shackled to a 6x8 jail cell that was more commonly called a cubicle.
I remember waking up on that summer morning of 2012, dragging myself to work, crying tears of angst as I sat in traffic on my 1-hour commute to the office. I couldn’t imagine this was really how life was supposed to be - miserable.
I needed to find my purpose, and something I was most passionate about was helping other people with their personal finances. My best friend, girlfriend at the time, and most of my peers were gainfully employed, but were still having a tough time managing their money and establishing financial footing. They were perpetuating the money cycles they were taught, or had seen in their childhood, by living above their means, paycheck-to-paycheck, with no financial progression whatsoever.
That’s when it clicked. My purpose is to help others better manage their money, so they can ultimately live life on their own terms! But first… I had to live life on my own terms. So I decided that I was going to change my mindset about my current situation, and see it as an opportunity to financially leverage myself to follow my dreams.
I dug deep, cleaned up my past, and started teaching other women how they can do the same: I’ve watched their bank accounts, credit scores, and confidence SKY ROCKET too! I have since made a commitment to dedicate the rest of my professional life to helping other women find their PASSIONS, follow their DREAMS (whatever that looks like), manage their MONEY like bad-asses to CREATE the life they always wanted to live!
Since then, I’ve worked with many private clients, spoken in front of countless groups: I live my dream of being an entrepreneur, having the freedom I desire, traveling the world, giving back to the community, and making way more money than I EVER have before. Plus, I have created the Girlfriend’s, Budget! Level Up Your Money, Level Up Your Life System™, a series of 6 important inner and outer financial freedom building steps to help established career women get out of their own head, and financially leverage themselves to follow their dreams.