It’s been traumatic. Depressing. And finally – the truth is landing.
18 months of unnecessary time, effort, emails, pouring through transcripts and manuals. Going cross-eyed trying to combat constantly moving goalposts and shifting logic with reasonable, respectful replies.
The worst was the anxiety that would hit my body, a sickness that took me and rippled out into my family.
Snapping at my kids. Spending late nights in front of the computer. Heart racing. A knot of dread in the pit of my stomach.
And dealing with the shame of realising I wasn’t able to just “man up and make it work” like the other success stories. Feeling the guilt that I couldn’t just absorb the loss.
Until it finally hit me – I was going about this all wrong.
I was dealing with a person who was simply comfortable with “taking”.
Somebody who had turned taking money from others into a game. Who had finessed a money-back guarantee that sounded unconditional – but on the other side of payment, came loaded with conditions like “attending 12am calls” and “posting every day.”
A good old-fashioned bait and switch.
I imagined her taking cash from friends’ wallets at high school parties. Or being descended from a long line of pick pocketers.
She was so wrapped up in maintaining she was right, she was happy to be caught out in lies and just deny it. She posted reels saying that we were just haters jealous of her success.
I realised she was protecting an identity more than she was protecting the money.
There was a finality to her refusal that just said to me “I don’t believe taking from you is wrong. I simply believe you are a casualty of what my success requires.”
With 4 kids, a looming operation, extended leave from my business it was a critcial time for me. Every chunk of time, energy and money that was allocated to my business needed a return on investment.
The most isolating part was feeling like the lesson I was being forced to face was
“If you want to be successful, you have to be ruthless and full of shit”
You must be willing to down-tread on other people with less resources than you. In fact, those are the bodies you will climb over as a necessary part of your ascension plan.
You must perform for money. Show a curated lifestyle of you always living the dream. Position yourself as the hero of every client. The saviour of all their problems.
You have to ignore what you say you want to live a good life, and be what money asks of you.
Wear that as a mask and never let it fall.
I refused to learn that lesson.
The young woman who took 52k between myself and my friends is finally having her CEO refund the money. Who knows what crisis of conscience they’ve had – or if they’ve finally realised that 1 star reviews cost them far more than just giving a refund.
They’ve stated only “a team restructure” and considering it was the founder I’m not sure how that works lol.
My share was $6,800 – the first installment of an $18k package.
$232.17 landed in my bank account today. As a refund on the international bank fee that was not disclosed.
Her claim to fame is that she became a millionaire at 23, I thought that meant she knew what she was talking about. It impressed me but for the wrong reasons.
What I really think happened is I believe she fell victim to the “make more money at any costs” and lost her ability to hold herself accountable along the way.
For some people, 18k can be chalked up to an expensive lesson.
Chasing it requires more self reflection, bracing and chasing than is financially viable.
For others – losing 18k means they’ve just lost their life savings.
Now they’re couch surfing, Airb-n-b-ing their own apartment out just to try to recoup some of the loss. Applying for assistance, such is the cost of the erosion of your self-trust.
That’s the bitter truth here. Some can’t afford to chase it down. Others simply can’t afford not to.
The money that arrived today showed me how much this time in the battlefield – against the bank, the ombudsman and the entrepreneur has shaped me.
What I discovered is left now is a deep, deep humility. A reverence for every dollar that graces my bank account that wasn’t there before.
That $232.17 went to breakfast this morning, sitting in front of the mountains, eating a nourishing meal with my thoughts.
Then to the butchers to buy some quality sausages to nourish my children. Some beef for the slow cooker to fill our kitchen with delicious aromas. And juicy marrow bones for my dogs to gnaw on.
Every dollar has a place now where it didn’t before.
It shows me how flippant I used to be.
When you’re good at selling, you think more sales is always the answer. But what happens when that ability is compromised?
I could never understand why if she was making $300k profit in a matter of days as she said she was – why she would not just refund me $6,800? It’s when people lose touch with what living abundantly really means.
What I realised is that I too had been falling victim to that weird insensitivity to money.
If somebody bought a 30k package off me and said yes too easily I thought shit I should have tried to get 40k.
Maybe only charging 30 makes me seem like an amateur.
Maybe the sale will fall through because I didn’t “own my worth” and charge 50k.
In that instance it did fall through by the way. That person spent a lot more money with somebody else who was less qualified to help them. In hindsight I realised, as I was questioning my value, it was easy for them to do the same. They bought more systems and strategies that fixed a leak, instead of creating a identity shift that would have crafted them an entire new boat.
In my tentativeness I lacked the leadership to advocate for what they really needed, and essentially I let them down. They went and bought the wrong thing, because of my lack of clarity and conviction.
But I can’t be disappointed.
I was able to treat the disease that convinces people that enough is never enough, that the goal is always another zero, another launch, another record month.
The more I raised my prices, the more I was able to shift my positioning to those who could get a faster and bigger return on their investment 5x, 10x, 20x and beyond. But it was kinda like swimming out into the ocean.
What felt deep after leaving the shallows is nothing once you hit open water. The numbers that used to make your heart race become casual. What once seemed expensive starts to feel like puddles. And somewhere in that recalibration, you can lose your felt sense of what money actually means to a real person in a real life.
This experience forced me to sit with my own relationship to money.
Because getting good at making money can make you worse at valuing it.
And none of us are immune.
Because wealth and money are not the same thing.
I’ve met people with very little money who were deeply wealthy, and people with a lot of money who seemed trapped by it.
What I’ve come to understand is that wealth is having enough trust in life that you are never so lacking that you have to extract it from somebody else.
It’s about being of service to the whole instead of individual gain. And being a custodian of the currency exchange that flows through you.
You don’t need to martyr yourself for money, or be a tyrant who hoards it all. You are also meant to be a beneficiary of that money. You role is to receive with gratitude and give with integrity.
To value yourself and your skill sets enough that you put yourself in the places that can value you – and walk away from the ones that don’t.
To steward money as a precious resource – just in the way that oxygen is all around us, but also every tiny breath is so precious.
This experience has given me an incredible trust in reciprocity.
One that was forged in the barren wasteland of when I had nothing to grab onto.
When my own self trust was eroded. When I believed I couldn’t be trusted to make a decision. When good people I thought I could trust let me down. When I gaslit myself until I finally woke up.
That’s where this trust came from. Not from the good seasons. From that one.
Now that trust shows up as money that comes in when I am most myself.
Where I don’t sacrifice myself for it, at the altar of a someday far off success when it might pay off.
It comes in waves – sometimes big heaving dumps of cash in my bank
And other times it’s like a tide that’s retreated where we are making creative solutions from what we can find.
They say necessity is the mother of all invention. Triplet motherhood is that on steroids
It’s taught me not to be fearful of the times where money is tight
Because I can be resourceful in times of short supply – and that is a gift too.
Subscriptions that get cancelled. Insurance policies renegotiated. Skill sets that get diversified. New networks and alliances expanded into. Priorities that shift into something that’s more important and pressing
I now know that even in that sparseness , there’s something growing in the void that can burst through
So that’s something I’m genuinely grateful to that girl for.
Reflecting the mirror back to me and where I’m out of integrity with myself in the way I receive, exchange and accumulate money.
It was ancestral money I invested in her too btw.
Thats why this has landed so much harder.
But I know people out there are going through seasons that are hard, seasons that are plentiful – but for some reason we only feel comfortable in asking for help in the seasons where we think we can “afford” to be vulnerable.
The same thing that’s keeping you stuck and not asking for help is the same thing that’s keeping the pipeline stuck in your business.
There are come-to-Jesus moments that show you where you’re out of relationship with yourself and money. You don’t have to wait for a crisis before you give yourself permission to make a move on it.
Maybe it comes in the sickening gut punch of a tax bill you hadn’t accounted for.
Or a bone-deep exhaustion when you collapse on the couch in the evenings.
Or the late night financial acrobatics while you hold it all together with duct tape.
There comes a point where being strong starts costing you more than asking for help ever would.
The strongest people I know are often the worst at asking for help.
The ones everyone leans on, the ones who have always had to figure it out themselves – are often the ones swirling the longest. Not because they can’t find the answer. Because asking for help feels foreign when you’ve never had anyone to ask.
There is a reciprocity that happens outside of just being paid in money. I trust fully and believe fully that when you give generously where it’s needed the most, somewhere the abundance flows in from another place.
So if you’ll allow me the grace to give to you, when you’re so used to being the one giving –
DM me (or email info@biancaa) the word CAPACITY and I’ll give you a complimentary reading.
I’ll ask you 6 questions, show you exactly where you’re leaking capacity and give you a fast course correction. And you’ll leave with a deep body knowing of what your next power move really is.
I usually charge $97, but let me gift it to you. As an return on all the good you put out into the world.
If you’re swirling.
If you’re trying to solve the same problem over and over.
If you’re holding everything together with duct tape and determination.
Let me have a look.
Sometimes the thing you’re trying to force isn’t actually the thing that’s broken
The real wealth economy is giving what we have to each other when we have it in abundance. When we can give from overflow, we can give each other resources that are outside of just exhanging money.
That’s what real sovereignty looks like.
