Sacred Wealth Podcast Transcription
Episode 9 | Rich As F*ck Book Review Transcription
PODCAST INTRO:
You are tuning in to the Sacred Wealth Podcast, I am your host Meaghan and I am so excited to have you here. Throughout my ten years in finance, I have come across so much anxiety and fear surrounding money. It is now my purpose to help women become rich unapologetically. The goal of this podcast is to empower you to love your debt, to be so ecstatically grateful for what you have, and to feel safe to ask for more. Together we will figure out what your luxury is and get you on the path to financial freedom. Let’s fucking go.
MEAGHAN WALL:
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Sacred Wealth Podcast. Today is going to be so fun. We are doing a book review of Amanda Francis's new book, Rich As F*ck, and I just have to say that this book has been super beneficial and transformational to my money mindset at the beginning of 2021. It has been so eye-opening and fun to learn about myself. So if you are into self-development books, then I highly recommend reading this one.
I'm going to start out by reading a quote from the end of the book. I think it nicely sets the tone for the whole book itself. So the quote is, "Looking down upon people for having what you want is a very effective way to judge yourself out of getting what you want. Judging people for having money is a very effective way to repel money." End quote. This, to me, perfectly sums up what the whole book is about. At its base level, Amanda really wants to get through to you that whatever it is that you desire is perfect, true, and right.
You wouldn't have these desires if you weren't meant to have what you desire. If you decide that, for some reason, people who are rich are terrible and yet you have this conflicting desire to be rich, you're never going to allow yourself to become rich because you inherently think that rich people are bad. As we go through this book, Amanda reminds us that we can have what we desire but we have to remove all of the things within us that say that what we desire is wrong or bad or, for some reason, not meant for us.
I think that's a really important point to drive home when you're talking about money because there's so much shame on both sides of the spectrum. There's shame associated with people who have money. There's shame associated with people who don't have money and everywhere in between.
Amanda gives us her background at the beginning of the book. She is from small town, Oklahoma. She classifies the neighborhood or the community that she grew up in as lower middle class. I want to make sure that we highlight that she is a beautiful, white woman and she does talk a little bit about the privileges that this has allowed her. I also think it's important to realize that she can only speak based on her own experience.
So expecting her to try to postulate about what it might be to have grown up as a Black woman or as a Person of Color in the same town and what different troubles or social injustices she might have had to overcome is just unfair to put on this book. We are learning from someone who is white and has objective circumstances that would benefit her more than they benefit marginalized peoples in this country. The country I'm speaking of is America. That's where I live. That's where Amanda lives. I also want to mention that I am white as well.
At the end of this podcast, I'm going to be giving a list of money teachers, who are People of Color and do amazing work in this space. Now that's not to say that if you are a Person of Color, you can't learn something from Amanda. She has amazing points of view and, I think, does her best to be inclusive and to be broad with her strokes and to really tailor the steps in this book to each and every person, so that they can get something out of it.
So the structure of the book is broken down into 11 chapters. Each chapter has journal prompts at the end of it. We began by getting a background about Amanda. Like I mentioned, she is from a small town in Oklahoma, lower-middle-class. She mentions that her family has a lot of negative talk around money and that it takes a lot for her to overcome the environment that she was born into and raised in.
She also mentions that she looks at her friend's parents, who have more money than her family does, and instead of judging them and placing them into this box of, "Oh, they're rich, they must not have to work for their money, they must have it really easy.", she decides to observe them and learn how to be like them. She sets the tone very early on in the book that she decides that she wants to be a woman who has more than enough.
Chapter One is called, "The Energy of Money". It's a short chapter and it's basically talking about how energy is everything. Whatever you do, the energy behind that action is going to dictate the outcome of that action. It's the energy behind it that makes all the difference. You don’t have to take on the rituals of others, you get to create your own rituals. You can make any activity special just by setting an intention.
I'd like to read a quote from Chapter One where she says, "I am a white girl, born to parents who are still married, who cared about me and chose to live in a small and safe town in Oklahoma. My mom cleaned houses and my dad worked as an umpire on evenings and weekends, in addition to his regular job, to make everything work. I honor everything my parents did to create a stable life for me. I also know that nothing about where I come from adds up to the life that I have created."
She mentions that no one ever paid for her education. She's been working, for as long as she can remember, for her money. We're learning from a woman who has never had anything given to her from birth. That's not to say that her experience is more valid than a trust fund baby or someone who was born rich. That's something that I really want to highlight. Just because Amanda has had to grassroots grow her entire fortune, her entire net worth, from zero to maximum, does not mean that her experience is more valid than someone who was born into being rich.
The minute that we invalidate someone's experience, just because their parents decided to put aside money for them so that they didn't have to go through the struggles that their parents went through, doesn't mean that they're any less worthy of that money. Because I know, for a fact, that a lot of you out there listening to this episode would do anything for your kids. You would absolutely set up a fund for your kids to have their college paid for so that they don't have to have student loans.
You would never tell another mother to not have a savings account for their child because that means that they aren't worthy of that money. No, that means that you cared enough about that child to make sure that they were set for money. Because there are so many things in this world that are just as worrisome as money and our lives can be hard or scary or stressful, even if we have the money thing taken care of. So having the money thing taken care of is just one less thing to worry about.
So back to the book, Chapter One, like I said, is all about the energy of money. Energy is everything. Another quote from this chapter is, "The energy with which you do a thing determines the outcome of that thing. Meaning the attention, expectation, and emotion in which you do a thing has more to do with the result of that action than you have allowed yourself to realize." End quote. Like I said, this chapter is super short. She goes into what the energy of money feels like and her own transformation. Then you get the homework and we're on to Chapter Two.
Chapter Two is, "Stop Waiting on God Or a Man or Your Next Client". I love this chapter but I somewhat disagree with a few of the things that she says. She begins the chapter by setting the stage as a godly woman. She is very religious but she sets the scene for you to adapt the word God to anything that resonates life source, light, love, cosmic forces, infinite intelligence, anything that resonates with you, which I really appreciate.
She says in the book that up until about Chapter Nine or Chapter 10, that all of the chapters were written before 2020. So we can see after Chapter Nine or Chapter 10, how the tone of the book really changes. It's interesting because I feel like the end of the book is much more grounded. It's almost more somber. It is very much taking into consideration the experiences of others and I really appreciate that.
So while we're in Chapter Two, we can only take her experience as a white, beautiful woman and we can't expect her to speak from anyone else's experience but herself. So she says, "Nothing I have is because I'm special and none of this was by accident. I designed this life day by day on purpose." And that's a beautiful statement, but I really think it misses the fact that she does have a lot of privileges and that's not to say she doesn't acknowledge her privilege over and over in the book.
This one statement can be a little misleading because the world is set up for white people, white men, first and foremost, and then white women secondly. So the reality is no, she's not special, but a lot of the systems in this world are made for people like her and for people like me. So that's something that I really want to stress. Although she is not tone deaf in this book by any means, she reiterates over and over again that she knows that she has certain privileges, I just wanted to make it clear that the beginning of this book is written before 2020. And I think a lot of you will know what I mean when I say that.
So back to Chapter Two, this chapter is really fun because this is where she puts all of the power in your hands. She hypes you up. She says, "You have arrived as enough. You don't need anything outside of you to make you enough." And she gives you the permission to create the life you desire. She talks about worthiness and unlimited possibilities, and she goes through how to bring anything you desire into this physical reality.
She gives you a four-step process with some great substeps. I think by far, this is the most tangible chapter that has the most step-by-step process of how to bring money into your physical reality. So that was one of my favorite chapters. And to end Chapter Two, I'll just read one more quote. She says, "To become rich as fuck I had to rearrange a lot of ideas about the town I came from, family I came from, and how things were not set up in favor of people like me."
I think the reason why she really tries to drive home this idea of your past does not dictate your future, is that it's so easy to fall into this, "Well, I'm just a small-town girl. That's not meant for people like me. I'm just a janitor or I'm just a teacher. I'm not meant to be rich as fuck." There are these self-imposed limitations that we put onto ourselves and she goes further into the limitations that we put on ourselves later in the book. So yeah, I really wanted to highlight that specifically. So let's move on to Chapter Three.
Chapter Three is called, "There's No Such Thing as a Fixed Income". This was one of my favorite chapters and starts out by talking a lot about shame and what it means to know limitless possibilities. One of the quotes that I have here is, " Psych 101: Shame doesn't lead to positive lasting change." End quote.
My favorite thing was learning about energetic maximums and minimums and your energetic set points. So I really was trying to figure out how it was going to condense this, but I really am feeling called to share this story that she shares because it is something that truly shifted the way that I think about my own money. So if you'll bear with me, I'll just read this passage for you.
This chapter is amazing in and of itself, but this was my favorite part. So beginning the quote here, "For five months in a row, I earned at least $6,000. Sometimes I even got up to $8,000, which was my energetic maximum at that time. I was so happy to be in the 6K to 8K a month range that I thought I might truly be ready for the five-figure month I really wanted. Then the weirdest thing happened. I was going through the beginning of the month and it was adding up to be the slowest month ever.”
“The way clients, sales, and invoices were coming together, things were not looking good. What was worse was that I had begun to teach on the topic of money. Another problem, I was terrified to talk about money. I imagined that people were going to think I was greedy, selfish, money-hungry, and, in general, a very bad person if money was an interest or desire of mine. Although I had created a training on money and was beginning to share with others what had been working for me, I was so, so, so afraid to share the materials with the public.”
“My fear that I didn't know what I was doing, my shame associated with the topic I wanted to speak about, and the appearance of a slow month added up until I wondered if everything I knew and believed was wrong. The pressure was on and I was doubting the shit out of myself. Trying to find comfort, I said to myself, "Well, at least I know I can make $3,000 a month."
“Here's what happened, the month ended, I had made $1,100. I doubted myself into the worst month of my career. One day I logged into my banking portal and found the craziest thing. My credit card had been paid off. Apparently, there had been some sort of reversal of fees that equal $2,000. This also technically meant that I had received over $3,000 that month, which was the amount I had allowed myself to decide I was okay with bringing in.”
“There was also something else going on in my vibration. I had begun to play with the idea of paying off my credit card debt in full. While the concepts I am teaching you now we're developing inside me, I had way, way less practice with them all. I had never practiced the idea of overflow and I did not understand that I could eliminate debt through earning and receiving excess amounts of money.”
“I still believed that paying off my debt would likely require me to sacrifice in my saving and spending in the style of the Instagram post I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Contributing to my internal state was this. I had a long history of piecing together money from various jobs through my teens and early twenties.”
“I didn't have a super-strong belief around what it meant or would feel like to consistently earn money through my business. So I chose to believe that somehow, someway I could possibly make $3,000 that month, and maybe someday, somehow I would figure out how to pay off the debt. Here's what I need you to understand. There were so many other realities available in this scenario. I could have continued to believe that between 6 and 8,000 was standard for me. I could have locked in a belief that I would pay off the debt while continuing to earn. I could have understood the sacrifice was not required. I could have been someone who believed in receiving a credit on my card while continuing to earn, right?”
“I could have admitted to myself that this money stuff that I longed to talk about and that I was freaking out for wanting to teach on, like I was writing posts about money and deleting them every day, would soon become my destiny. But none of that was where I was at. I was willing to lower my minimum. I was willing to sacrifice. I was willing to be paid through a credit instead of straight cash. I was willing to receive random money from other places when I wanted to bring in money through my business.”
“I created the situation with my thoughts, beliefs, fears, and vibration. But even when I was blocking money left and right with my doubts, fears, and limiting beliefs, it still found a way to get my lowest minimum standard to me. Because God is good. The universe is good. Money is good. And all things are trying to work with us all of the time.”
“Despite the funny way that month went, seeing a credit card be paid off through a fee reversal allowed me to know that I was onto something. I choose to view this situation as proof that I was being supported and that money was always trying to come to me one way or another, however I would let it. After that month, I went right back to making $8,000 a month. Two months later, I experienced my first five-figure month at 10K. The next month I made 20K." End quote.
The thing I love so much about that story is that she didn't let a weird month slow her down. She used it as tangible proof that what she was learning was actually working. So instead of seeing that month as like, "Oh my God, this is proof. I shouldn't be teaching on money. I only made $1,100 a month in my business. That $2,000 for my credit card doesn't count."
There's so many ways that she could have taken it as a sign for the opposite. And I want to stress how amazing it is that she decided, "No, this is proof that I was right”, instead of this is proof that I was wrong. I want to be clear that she decided, she chose to believe that it meant that she was right. Nobody told her it was just as easy, probably easier to have decided that she was wrong. That to me just is an amazing belief and confidence in yourself and in herself.
This chapter, Chapter Three, is rather long. She goes on to share some of her clients’ stories, some of her friends’ stories. But that's really what I gathered from this chapter to be the biggest transformation for myself. So I highly recommend you read the book because I'm sure something would stick out to you that didn't stick out to me necessarily.
So then we get to Chapter Four. I'm not going to go through each and every single chapter, like I just did with Chapter Three. I'll give you a quote from every chapter, but I'm not going to go deep into them. So Chapter Four is, "What to Do When It Looks Like It's Not Working. This chapter is all about tips on manifestation. And the quote that I chose for this chapter is, "For me, I know it is done when I can't even imagine not receiving what I've decided I will." End quote. This chapter gives a breakdown of how to manifest and gives tips. I really love this chapter. It's powerful and gives a lot of amazing advice.
All right. Chapter Five is called, "Circulating Money". This chapter is an amazing chapter because it really resonated with me and how I already teach around finding your luxury. This chapter is all about spending and spending as a wealthy woman, which is kind of her archetype that she talks about throughout the book is how to embody this wealthy woman. And the quote that I chose for this chapter is, well there's two. The first one is, quote, "Letting money go, just make space for that money to come back to me, and then some." And I love that quote because being able to part with money can be just as terrifying as being okay with receiving money. Having this mindset of, "I get to let go because more gets to come back to me", is so powerful and it's something that I've truly believed for a long time.
The second quote I chose for this chapter, just to sum it all up is, "I shop as a worthy woman. I shop as a deserving woman. I shop as a woman who knows who the fuck she is." and that to me is like everything that I teach. Aligning with your luxury, being unapologetic with the type of wealthy, the type of rich that you want to be. Even if rich to you means living in a tiny home on five acres of land, drinking filtered water, growing your own food, and traveling in your converted van. You know what I mean? That is just as valid and just as, quote-unquote, "rich" as wanting to be a millionaire and living in a $3 million home in Malibu, California. Like I was saying at the beginning and like Amanda says throughout the whole book, is that whatever it is to you is perfect and worthy and divinely inspired.
Now to Chapter Six, which is the most mindblowing chapter of the whole entire book. So Chapter Six is called, "Get Comfortable with the Cash Money". Yo, this chapter blew my fucking mind y'all. This chapter is all about receiving versus having. So I'll read you the first quote from this chapter, because let me tell you, I was like, "Damn, she is speaking to me."
So here goes the quote. "A lot of people who teach on money or manifestation are broke. I know this because they often enroll in my courses or hire me for coaching. I've seen this many, many times, a person becomes more and more confident about their ability to receive money but they do not know how to also practice embodying the energy of having money.
They will have a successful product launch, a large month, or receive a big bonus, allowing them to buy some really nice things or pay the bills and debt they've been avoiding. They get excited about how good they are at manifesting and buy some really nice things or pay the bills and the debt they've been avoiding. Then all the money is gone. This is how a feast or famine cycle is created." End quote.
And when I tell you this was me last year. My gross profit last year was $36,285 and my expenses were $32,964. Leaving me with $3,321. I had spent almost every single dollar that I had made. And let me tell you, I was so excited about last year because I had matched my last corporate salary from the last job that I had left and that felt so good to me and still feels amazing to me. And I had accepted that spending all but about $3,300 of that money was okay.
And it is okay, I'm not saying it's not okay. I'm just saying that this year, after reading this chapter, my new goal is to have and be with money. This chapter is so short but it is so good. And I really feel like it has provided me with my missing link. A couple of the other quotes that I wanted to share from this chapter is, "I went from being someone who could make money to being someone who could save, be with, and have money." End quote. And another quote is, "I just decided that more than enough was simply my vibe." End quote.
This is where I want to talk about my new offering because this book has really inspired this offering. It is called the Quantum Money Masterclass Bundle. And the whole idea of this masterclass is to learn the life cycle of the mindset behind the money. So we have receiving, having, being, and giving. Receiving is the deservingness and worthiness of receiving and being doted upon. Having is the art of overflow and breaking the cycle of just barely enough. Being, owning your opulence, luxury, and being unapologetic in it. And giving, stepping into empowered release.
So this masterclass will go over all of the phases, all of the life cycle of the mindset behind the money. This masterclass is happening on March 6th, at 6:00 PM Eastern. There will be a replay, so if you can't make it to the live call, don't worry I'll send you a replay. So what makes this a bundle is that you get the masterclass and you get a one-on-one session with me so that we can talk about anything that came up around the topics covered in the masterclass.
And like I said, this book had really put into place the missing puzzle piece that I felt like I needed from my life cycle of money. I had the receiving down. I had the being down, the being in my opulence, the knowing what my luxury is. I had the giving down, I knew how to release money well. I knew how to spend my money, that's for sure, like I just mentioned about my gross profit and my expenses. But the piece that I was missing was having and the art of overflow. So that's what I'm tuning into all throughout this year. So if you're interested in learning about these different phases and then having a one-hour, one-on-one coaching session with me, I highly, highly recommend this bundle.
So what's included is the one-hour group masterclass plus a one-hour one-on-one coaching session. This is for you if you feel stuck in any one mindset and don't know how to move on. If you feel like you need help around money and business, but don't know where to begin. If you're ready to become truly intimate with your money. And if you need something just to give. If you know that something has to change. There are limited spaces available because I can only do so many one-on-one calls with everybody. And the pricing of this offering is $555. So I would love to see you there and I would love for you to join me. I am so excited about this offering and when the divine inspiration came through, it was like a lightning bolt and I am so amped about it.
Chapter Seven is called, "Debt Is Not the Devil and Saving Is Hot AF". This is a chapter around how to get rid of debt by landing on a why and also landing on an energetic standard for debt.
Chapter Eight is called, "Next-Level Wealth Practices". This is a short chapter on investments, real estate, what to do with the money when you've been saving.
Chapter Nine, "Business Lies and Standards". This chapter goes through and debunks some common myths, like "I need a niche" or "My industry is over-saturated.
Now, as I mentioned before, Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 take on a different tone. She says in the beginning of Chapter 10 that, in real-time, "It's April, 2020 and COVID 19 pandemic has taken the world by storm." Chapter 10 is called, "Being a Good Person and Being a Rich Person.” God, this is such a good chapter and I wish I could do it justice, but I really think that you should read it. So the quote that I wanted to share for this chapter is, "For nine chapters I shared about money, earning money, saving money, having money, spending money. It mostly poured out of me. Now that I am just a few pages away from being done, I can't stop thinking of what a hard time that people who don't have money are having." End quote.
When I'm recording this it's February of 2021 but if you had been following Amanda back in April of 2020, you would have seen how shaken she was by the state of the world and really still is. She, I think, got a really big wake-up call. Not that she wasn't aware of other people's struggles in the world before this time. Of course she was. But I think in the midst of millions of people losing their jobs and the Black Lives Matter movement taking the country by storm, I think she really got grounded and had a lot of internal dialogue with herself and external dialogue with her followers on Instagram.
This chapter to me is telling of her heart and why she is rich and her purpose in being rich. Which has always been to teach women, people, how to be rich, and how to make money. One of the things she says in this chapter is, "Money is not limited and neither are we." In this chapter, she really takes the time to tell you her beliefs around being rich and being safe. So here's a quote. She says, "Here's what I know. It's safe to be rich and loved. It is safe to be rich and respected. It is safe to be rich and appreciated. It's safe to be rich and generous. It's safe to be rich and anything else you want to be. It's safe to be anything along with anything else you want to be."
I really think that this chapter is so beautiful. She talks about what she does to give back. She talks about tithing for those women who feel like they need to give back to the church. There's a subheading called, "Becoming a Snobby Asshole", where she talks about how money is just an amplifier. If you're an asshole, money's gonna amplify that assholery and if you are a loving mother of three, money's only going to amplify that.
This chapter is probably my favorite of the whole book, other than Chapter Six, that kind of blew my mind. But this one to me really says that you get to be who you want to be and be rich. Being rich does not define who you are and it also doesn't say that you have to lose your groundedness. A lot of the clients that I come across are terribly scared that they're going to lose their connection to themselves. They're going to lose their discernment. They're gonna not be able to tell what's right and wrong anymore, which is silly. You have to know that money is going to amplify all the amazing things that are already amazing about you. If you're into sustainability, it's only going to give you more opportunity to be more sustainable and to provide sustainable resources for others.
Chapter 10 ends with this quote, "The world was not set up fairly and I know that we are all-powerful, capable and worthy, period. Due to your background, past experience, and the fuckery of oppressive systems, it may take very intentional, continual and diligent, inner work to fully believe, own and embody this fact. These are the cards that we have been dealt but I believe it is our collective soul assignment to play these cards differently than those who came before us. I am firm in this, we are meant to thrive no matter what we've been told about ourselves, our communities, people like us, or our possibilities. We are made to own our lives. We are created for greatness.
Then we move on to Chapter 11, which is called, "Rich as Fuck", which is the title of the book. This last chapter just talks about all the amazing things that you get to do with money. What it feels like to be rich, which is what we all want to know, but secretly already know. You already know what it's like to be rich because when you think about it you get excited. You start thinking about all of the amazing things that you'll be able to do. You start thinking about how so much anxiety you're not going to feel anymore and how money just isn't going to be a factor for you and how amazing that feels.
One of the quotes for this chapter is, "Money does not live by a moral code. Money tends to hang out with and multiply for the people who feel worthy of it. It is up to us to apply our morals and values to money, decide how we desire money to work for us, and use money well and for good." This is another really great chapter because she talks about how there's new anxieties and there's new obstacles and new limitations that we put on ourselves with every layer of wealth. With every level of wealth, there are new things that you never thought you'd have to think about or that you feel like would never have been a fear for you. As well as the same fears, cycling and returning. And maybe it's just a new dollar amount that you're having to work on.
This is where I wanted to share that my husband and I, the other day, we’re talking about how it's crazy because we think more now in thousands of dollars, rather than hundreds of dollars. Whereas, I don't know, five to eight years ago, $200 would have been so much money to us. And don't get me wrong, it is a lot of money. But now we think more in thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars is what really hurts our bank instead of the hundreds of dollars. It's just a new level. It's just a new dollar amount, but it's the same fear. It's the same anxiety.
The last quote I'll give from this book is from Chapter 11. She says, "The truth is money is available and I like having a lot of it." I really enjoyed this book. If you love self-development, if you love reading about money, if you love learning about money, highly, highly, highly recommend.
And I did want to say that if you end up hate reading this book, if you're like, "Oh my God, you know, she's so rich. I just want to see like what stupid things she'll say next." You're not going to get much out of this book because she is one of the most grounded money teachers that I've come across and she really makes everything tangible and relatable to everyone at every income level. And I think that anyone can learn something from Amanda and she has been a massive expander for me for years.
So thank you, Amanda, for this book. It's been in the works for years and I'm just so glad that I was able to get my hands on it. I did want to give a few POC that teach in the money space and in the social justice space so they are, on Instagram, @iamtoriwashington, Tori is spelled with an I. @heyberna, B-E-R-N-A and lastly @ihartericka, spelled I-H-A-R-T-E-R-I-C-K-A. I have learned so much from all these beautiful teachers and I just can’t recommend them enough.
So, all right, that is the end of this episode. I would love to see you at the Quantum Money Masterclass. If you have any questions, shoot me a DM on Instagram. I am @sacrednumbers.co. I'm now on tik-tok. I think it's @sacrednumbersco, there's no dot in my tik-tok name, but I'll have it linked on my link tree in my Instagram bio. Okay. See you later, Sacred Galaxy.
PODCAST OUTRO:
Thank you for listening to the Sacred Wealth Podcast. It would mean so much to me if you would subscribe and leave a five-star review. And if you choose to share this episode on social media and tag me. I would love to pull you an Oracle Card as a thank you. See ya next time, Sacred Galaxy.