“There is always a blessing in our biggest burdens.” Jereshia Hawk
About Our Guest: Jereshia Hawk is a former engineer turned multi-million-dollar CEO and millionaire on a mission to narrow the racial wealth gap by training experts to create sustainable online coaching businesses. She is also the host of Jereshia Said, her own podcast and a new contributor to medium.com
Episode Summary:
This episode is powered by the Move to Millions Method
Sometimes the way to the next level is through reverse engineering. In this powerful episode, Dr Darnyelle sits down with Jereshia Hawk, a beautiful, grounded soul who left a lucrative career in engineering to become a leading voice for women of color in the online business world. Her story is powerful; her presence is jarring. Her spirit and soul are breathtaking. Jereshia helps every listener to reverse engineer a path that will bring their biggest goals into view without settling or sacrificing what is most important – love of self, love of God and a commitment to change the world. Grab a pen and paper and listen is to discover:
- 5 keys to getting to your next level by shifting where you are into where you desire to be
- The importance of turning your preferences into policies that shape how you allow others to treat you
- How to package your transferrable skills into a business that can change lives
- How to hire the right team members to move the company forward
Last Book Jereshia Read: a fiction book on her kindle. Hasn’t read a business book in 3 months
Favorite Quote: “God’s wealth circulates in my life, it flows to me in avalanches of abundance. All my needs, desires and goals are met instantaneously, for I am one with God and he is everything!” Tony Robbins
Tool Jereshia Swears by To Move to Millions: Profit First by Michael Michalowicz
How to Connect with Jereshia Hawk
Website: www.jereshiahawk.com
Facebook: Jereshia On Facebook
Instagram: @jereshiahawk
Podcast: Jereshia Said Podcast
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jereshiahawk/
Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is not responsible for the content and information delivered during the podcast interview by any guest. As always, we suggest that you conduct your own due diligence regarding any proclamations by podcast guests. Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is providing the podcast for informational purposes only.
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In this episode, I chat with Jereshia Hawk, and she says, “Entrepreneurship is the key to economic stabilization.” This was one of the most powerful conversations I’ve had in a long time, from her powerful story of overcoming adversity and making the decision that millions were her birthright. I’m excited to share Jereshia with you.
I won’t steal her thunder upfront, but she shares a lot about something she’s never shared before publicly, which I know you’re going to be excited by. This conversation was timely relevant. I believe it’s exactly what you need if you are sitting on the threshold of believing that you should be making millions, but you haven’t quite crossed over yet.
I’m excited to share how she was able to reverse engineer her success and now she’s sitting inside of her multimillion-dollar company. She has been in the online business space, making a difference in the lives of women for a few years now. She considers herself to still be a startup. What’s pretty awesome about all of that is that inside of several years, she’s built multiple million-dollar companies. I believe that success leaves clues and you can, too.
There were many parts of the interview that I loved. There were many things that she shared. One of my favorite things was how she talked about turning her preferences into policies inside of her company. In order for you to learn more about that, you’re going to have to read this entire blog. I want you to grab a pen and paper, shake the hand that you write with because I already know you’re going to be writing profusely as we jump into my conversation with Jereshia Hawk.
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Jereshia, I am excited to welcome you to the show. How are you?
I am blessed. I am grateful to be here. I’m grounded and I’ve been eager to have this conversation with you, Darnyelle. I am so pumped.
Take a quick moment, tell everybody who you are in your own words.
I am first child of God. I am a wife and I’m still getting used to that title, role and responsibility. I’m an online business coach. I specialize in premium-price curriculum-based group coaching programs, teaching other experts how to repackage and document their expertise. I design a $3,000 to $10,000 online virtual coaching program. We specialize in organic marketing using live video and organic content as a lead generation source and teaching them the nuances of how to articulate their value so that they can confidently sell online. It’s me in a quick nutshell.
I’m here for all of it, too. We were talking about this whole need to help people understand that wealth isn’t just for them. It’s for us, too. I love that you led with your spirituality. My relationship with God is everything to me. I’m one of those people who, like you, doesn’t apologize about it. I feel like many people in the Christian community, or however they might self-identify religiously, don’t get to experience the fullness that is God because they’re boxed into the way that it should be. I see that in online business, too.
I know for myself and you might have a different story, but when I first started my business, I was busy looking left and right and seeing what somebody else was doing instead of figuring out what I needed to do. I was reading your story and I loved how you talked about when you were in college, senior year and somehow tuition needed to be paid. I would love for you to share with our readers a little bit about that story and how your business was birthed from the onset of having to figure out how to solve that problem for yourself.
I have no financial aid collide run out. My mother left when I was two. I left my dad in middle school. My grandmother, who was a math teacher at the time, took me in. She and my aunt were like two peas in a pie. My aunt did sales at Victoria’s Secret. She was a district sales manager and my grandmother was a Math teacher on the cusp of retiring. Even in the household, going to college wasn’t something that was ever pushed on me. I was the kid in the home where even though I was the youngest, I was treated the oldest and they figured I’d be okay because of how I navigate all the things in childhood.
Even when I went off to college, I was the one that filled out my FAFSA forms. I was grateful at the time by my parents not being my primary providers because it gave me the largest cap on financial aid. It’s like there’s always a blessing and the things that feel like our biggest life burdens. I started off school at Iowa State in Architecture. I did two years there. My aunt passed away. This is full context, you guys understand the weight that I felt in my senior year of school but my sophomore year, my brother had called me at the time, letting him know my aunt had passed away unexpectedly and she had a two-year-old son at home. About an hour later, my grandma called me saying, “You’re going to take care of this kid.”
I’m like, “Grandma, I’m nineteen years old. I’m not ready for this.” She’s still alive and raising my young cousin. She planted that seed, saying, “I’m getting old. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be here. You’re going to need to be the person that comes in line and financially provides for this young boy.” That kicked a gear in me. Even talking about wealth is didn’t for them at the time. I knew that my Architecture degree, that profession. I still love architecture and design but I started thinking about what is my career earning potential, knowing that I might have a child that I have to take care of. There was this thought I had in me, I’m like, “I don’t care what anything happens. We will not be breaking and barely getting by.”
I changed my major to Civil Engineering. It was the closest thing I could think of to Architecture. For years, I never thought I was capable of being an engineer prior to doing that. In high school, I had been exposed to engineering, but I never thought I was smart enough. I switched my major to Engineering. I come back home and then it’s my third year in my Engineering program.
I’ve been busting my butt and I get a letter from the financial aid office saying, “Mrs. Hawk, your financial aid has run out. The bill is $13,000.” I remember it vividly, law and order SVU was on. I had got back from Coldstone. I was sitting in my living room next to my boyfriend at the time. I’m reading this email, my legs crossed and my Hello Kitty lap desk holding up my laptop and my ice cream. I’m like, “What am I going to do?”
I’ve come this far. I can’t give up. I can’t call home because there’s nobody for me to call to cover the bill. I had completely funded myself through school in regards to paying for books, light bills, and all of that. I’m like, “What can I do?” Within three days, I had Googled how to start an online business. At the time, I loved shoes. I used to do modeling in auto shows for Chrysler. I loved fashion. I’m like, “I can sell shoes online. I’ll sell clothes online.”
I figured out how to open up a website, it was BigCommerce at the time. I found 6 or 10 different wholesalers. I had $2,500 in the savings account, bought my first seven wholesale boxes of shoes. Within three days, I had my resale license, a website was up. This was not too long after Instagram had got started. I created an Instagram account for the store, @Shop_Lovestruck.
Within the year of me finishing my senior year of school, I was also still doing auto shows for Chrysler. I was working an internship at the utility that I started my engineering career and I had this business going in addition to finishing my degree. I had made over around $50,000 or $60,000 in that first year, paid off my tuition, bought a car cash, went to Thailand, and shut the business down. I don’t think I’ve ever told the full story in that scope, but the weight of not making it, but having come so close to finishing, I was like, “There’s no way. I can’t give up.” Success was the only option available on the table. Making it was the only option. There was no what if and plan B. I had to figure out a way to make it work.
You said many powerful things. I want to pull back the layers and dig a little bit deeper into some of the things that you said, because sometimes when we’re hearing a story or we’re listening to the story, we’re not hearing the messages in the story. There are a few things that you said that were powerful. I also believe that there’s a lot of people reading this episode who will resonate with it. The youngest, but being treated like the oldest and this sense of responsibility being placed on you because of what you went through. I don’t necessarily need to tell all my story, but that right there, that one hit me deep. I’m number 3 out of 7 but I’m the only one who graduated from high school, went on to college.
Every time there was anything that went down, they always came to me because I was the one who could handle it, except I wasn’t but that’s what everyone perceived me to be. I wore this weight. It wasn’t even a badge of honor. It was this weight that I couldn’t do something wrong. I couldn’t have a moment. Even when you said, “Success was the only option,” that was a mantra I repeated to myself consistently as I was growing up. I was the only option because I didn’t want to be like my brothers and my sisters, both of my parents were addicts. My mom went to jail when I was eight. My dad was a functional addict. He would go to work on Friday and come back on Monday. He would be somewhere getting high all weekend.
The only reason a business exists is to solve a problem for somebody else.
All we had was ourselves and all of that weight fell on me. I got that and then I loved when you said that there’s always a blessing in your biggest burden. That’ll preach right there. If you decide you want to start a church and that’s your first message, I’ve got it. That was good. I love this mantra that you stated over your life and I’m going to encourage everyone first to write this down, then secondly, to start speaking this over yourself, “We will not be broke and we will not be barely getting by.” We know, Jereshia, that’s our life, that’s our story. We’re always robbing Peter to pay Paul. We have enough for the moment. We don’t have something left over.
I think about those trifling statistics that the average American family doesn’t even have $1,000 to use in the event that something goes right. That is crazy to me. I think about even when I was sixteen. I started working when I was 14 or 13. Back in the day, I used to kick it working papers when you were young. My dad made me set up a bank account and he would put half of every paycheck into this bank account in order to create a nest egg for myself. When I was sixteen, I came home from cheerleading practice early. I got the bank statement and what should have been $75,034.19 in the bank was $34.19. My dad smoked all my money, all of it, except for $34.19.
You can enjoy a couple of combo meals at McDonald’s on that one, Darnyelle.
That’s about all I could do. It was at that point in time that I made that conscious decision that I would not be broke, I would never be getting by, and I was also going to learn about money. I was not going to be a victim and confused. I was going to completely understand all of the concepts, all of the ways to create money, so that would never be my reality to this day. I hope those of you who are reading that this story could be your story because, unfortunately, it’s many of our stories in this process. I loved when you said you had to figure it out on your own because there was no one to call. We have the same reality.
There is no one to call because we come from chaos, negativity, and lack. Even if there were somebody on the other end of the phone, they wouldn’t be able to see what we believe is possible and they would only shut it down. I could imagine if there were someone that you could call and you would call them and be like, “I got to come up with $13,000.” They’d be like, “I tell you to do is pray. We got your room ready.”
The thing is that I’ve come to learn now as an adult, is that like, I used to fault my parents for being who they were. I used to fault a lot of them for not having the mindset that I felt I needed to be supported with at the time. Learning what I’ve learned now, looking back, they were doing the best they could with what they had and learning to accept them for who they are versus who I always wanted them to be. That’s a journey that regardless of what family dynamic you had, there’s probably always something we wish we would’ve got or received from whoever was our caregiver. That’s something, too.
Probably I was about 13 or 14 years old. My aunt, I’m named after her. Her name was also Jereshia. It was a grueling way that to learn the lesson, one of the lessons that she taught me was that like, “We didn’t owe you this. We didn’t have to take you in. We didn’t have to choose to raise you.” It was the line, “You are in our roof. Listen to our words. We didn’t have to take you in.”
At the time, when I heard that, I felt unworthy of love. I felt like even caring for me was this burden that they had taken on. When I look at now as an adult, it’s like nobody in this world owes you anything. I don’t know if this is because of my family dynamic. Even to an extent, there’s a responsibility that adults play when they choose to give birth to somebody.
I do believe that responsibility is real but there’s so much expectation that we have on everybody around us versus I’ve taken it as like this radical responsibility for me to be 100% obedient to every desired dream that God has placed on me, regardless of who else is in my care system. I don’t know, saying that out loud but I feel I could argue both sides of it.
I can see both realms of it but that belief and that thought pattern have been a huge reason and driving force for me getting where I’m at now. I’ve been tons of therapy, reconciling that in a healthy manner, it being a healthy driving force and not like this resentful anger of a driving force. A lot of the time I go in person, you can call us yourself and that’s if you paid the phone bill that month.
I say that all the time, too. I was talking to my mom. She had made me a promise like she used to do when I was a child. She was like, “We’re going to do this and I’ll meet you at 10:00.” I’m there at 10:00. She doesn’t show. She called me about an hour and a half later. She’s like, “I’m sorry, we can go now.” I’m like, “No, I’m good. I took care of it.”
She’s like, “I’m sorry.” I said, “I believe that you always do the best that you can with what you have. I’m not holding you for anything.” It took many years in therapy. I started therapy. Thank the Lord for the University of Delaware, which is where I went to college. As a part of our student package, they offered personal assistant services.
I come from a whole bunch of mess. I was right there, first day the shop opened. I’m like, “Please, fix me because I need some work.” I told my new therapist, I said, “I’ve been in therapy since I was nineteen.” I believe in doing the work. It’s such an important precursor to being able to unlock wealth. What I love about reading that in your story was two things. Number one, you realize that you had the power to create your life, your situation, and whatever story you were going to tell yourself because you could have told yourself, “I’m packing up.” Say goodbye to all your friends and went home. No, you told yourself that success is the only option.
If someone tells you no, nothing changes except that person doesn’t want to be served by you.
More importantly than that, you realize that money is an energy that is available whenever we decide we desire it, 100%. You proved it. It met the need. It gave you some extra, took you to Thailand and then you’re like, “I’m done.” The skill that you learned in having gone through that lesson, there’s always a blessing our biggest burden, was that you were able to come back, decide to start the new business, which I want to hear about that trajectory, and now you’re a multimillion-dollar company. That would have never happened. Had you succumbed to that?
This has not been announced publicly. It took me few years to make the first million, several years to have a multi-seven-figure top-line revenue business but by the end of this 2021, I will have seven figures net worth, which is like all that happened for several years from having a negative net worth. Nobody got nothing but wealth, but on a t-shirt in my family. It’s surreal at times.
Do you know what’s interesting? How about my trajectory is similar? I started this business in ‘07 but then I didn’t know what I was doing. I ended up having to go back to work, file bankruptcy. I came back out into full-time entrepreneurship, January 1, 2011. May 4, 2014, I crossed the $1 million mark, cash in hand. 2016, we were into multiple millions. In 2018, I’m more than $1 million network. I have a $5 million net worth now, but four years from the time I crossed it, I did it. It was a decision. That success is the only option, that I will not be broke, that I will have money.
My affirmation every day is, “I thank you, Lord, that I have more money than I can give, spend, invest and save.” I have so much money now that I couldn’t spend it all if I tried. I love that. I say it proudly, unapologetically, and I love teaching the success clue, or as I was reading your story, reverse engineering, how other people can be able to create it, too.
That’s what I would love to dive into. This is so powerful because there are many people who look like you and me, that maybe have similar growing up backgrounds but inside of our community, there’s a big wealth gap. There’s also equally amongst entrepreneurs and small business owners. I read the statistic, 84% of entrepreneurs suffer with some form of imposter syndrome.
They don’t even believe wealth is set aside for them. Because they don’t believe it’s set aside for them, they’ll never make the move towards it. What I would love for us to do collectively is put our superpowers together and create a blueprint, a roadmap of what we could tell people now, regardless of where they start. Whether they’re starting back at $1 or they’re starting at $100,000 or wherever they might be starting at.
What are some of the things that they could begin to do now, that several five from now, their net worth could be $1 million to the positive? I know it probably didn’t seem fast as you were going through it but I feel like it went like this because in five years we’ll be able to completely dramatically shift the reality that is your life and now be in a position to teach other women this.
You can’t see my hair, but I have hairy arms and my hair is standing upon in. I’m excited to celebrate you and be one of the first people you’ve shared this with publicly. This is phenomenal. Let’s reverse engineer. What is this look like for people that might be trying to figure out, “I’m starting at zero but I know that millions are in me? I know that I’m capable of getting there. I know that where I come from does not have anything to do with where I’m going.” What would you say to them as the first step?
The first thing is like a philosophy that I believe in is that entrepreneurship is the bridge to economic equalization. That is a fundamental principle that I believe wholeheartedly. I believe from there like, “There are a million different routes you can take on entrepreneurship.” I’m a big believer from my own success, from how I support clients, even from how you support clients, Darnyelle, that I truly believe that online coaching is a great avenue that allows you to acquire wealth, in my opinion, quite quickly.
Based on how you operationally structured their business, you can do it while maintaining high-profit margins, which can help accelerate your capacity to get multimillion-dollar top-line revenue. Sometimes you don’t even need to get to $1 million top-line revenue to have $1 million net worth, depending on how you operate it in the timeframe that you want.
This like, do you have a fundamental belief that entrepreneurship is a gateway to economic equalization, in yes or no. If you do believe that philosophy, everything else that we talk about will make sense and we can co-sign on, sign off, and agree on. The second thing is that in the beginning of my business, talk about imposter syndrome, I used to have these doubts that sometimes we can’t see or we don’t fully embrace or honor the expertise that we already have, what I did in the beginning of the business, the first months of existing. I kept comparing myself to what I saw in the online space, thinking that, “I had to do what she’s doing if I want to be successful. I have to do what he’s doing if I want to be successful, even if it didn’t align with my innate gifts, my talents or my existing expertise.”
Secondarily, it’s important to identify what are those transferable skills that you’ve already acquired expertise in that could be repackaged into something that you can sell. Being an engineer, I could have repackaged my expertise and became a consultant in the engineering space, in the project management, or something along those lines.
That’s one way I could have leveraged my expertise directly but I instead looked at what are those skillsets that made me an effective engineer. How can those skillsets allow me to repackage those into something, which is what we’ve created now, our online coaching business, to be able to solve a problem in the industry? I don’t have an MBA. I was applying to get my MBA at the time when I started my coaching business, which is hilarious. I chose not to pursue the MBA.
I have one and if it weren’t for the fact that I got it when I worked in Corporate America, I wouldn’t have it.
I see a lot of our clients before working with us, they had this belief that I have to go get validated by another White institution, whether that’s a university, a college, some other White person certification program that they created and made up on their own to validate that they’re capable of doing this. If you already have existing expertise, you have 3, 5, how many ever years of either work experience that you’ve been paid for or you’re maybe a self-taught scholar where you’ve been diving into your own expertise, I would identify what a skillset that I already possess that can be turned into a service that I can sell is. Thirdly, understanding the business principle that you get paid based off the value that you deliver and based of the value that you can articulate.
None of us will ever get paid what we are worth, because our worth is infinite.
The only reason a business exists is to solve a problem for somebody else. It’s important that once you identify what that skillset is, you need to be able to properly align that with a problem that exists in the marketplace. Solve that problem with the expertise and skillset that you have. Probably the fourth thing is being able to deliver the service or fulfill the process of solving the problem is important. More importantly, to even get to the place where you can serve that client, you need to learn how to effectively sell. Effectively selling is properly being able to articulate the value that you can deliver in a way that prospect can understand before they make a buying decision with you.
That skillset is something I learned, being able to climb through the ranks in corporate as fast as I did. By 25, I was leading a $400 million pipeline project. I was not fully qualified on paper to that hat role. There was half the company more qualified than me to take over that position. At the time, I was good at articulating my value in a way that my superiors could understand that, “She can get the job done,” even though I didn’t “necessarily” have all the requirements outlined.
There’s another similarity. I started working in Corporate America at 22. By 25, I was a Vice President running my own department. I didn’t have an MBA yet at that point. I was good at articulating the value, understanding the problem and immediately offering solutions that would add value. That makes sense.
It’s not exuberating the problem. It’s only focusing on, “If I put my head down and do good work, I’ll get recognized.” That’s a lot of what we’ve been taught culturally, I believe.
That’s the whole hustle and grind.
Hustle and grind with your head down and wait for somebody to pull you up. It’s important that our voices are heard and that we are effectively utilizing our voice to articulate that value and connect the dots for that prospect as it correlates to the problem that we solve to help see and be able to bridge that gap too. Those are some of the introductory things that I would recommend anybody do if they’re starting at ground zero or even if they’re further along.
Even if you’re doing $1 million a year now in your business, it’s important that we pause and even recalibrate to say, “Where am I adding the most value in the marketplace? Is this a problem that I still need to be solving?” My problem evolved that I can solve in the marketplace. Even those principles, I still will reset myself with on a regular basis now.
I want to do two things. First, I want to recap the five that you gave us then, I’m going to add what I think is important to be a part of this as well that you didn’t touch on so that people know that work needs to be done too. Number one, understand the fundamental belief that entrepreneurship is the gateway to economic stabilization. Number two, fully embrace and honor your expertise by asking yourself, what are the transferable skills that you possess that you can repackage into number three, to be able to deliver and articulate the problem that you solve based on the skillsets that you already possess so that you can be paid based on the value that you bring to the table and can deliver.
Number four, have a clear process and way to fulfill the process in order to demonstrate the solution to the problem that does exist. Number five, to be able to clearly and effectively articulate so that you’re able to sell your solution and it is clear to the end-user before they make an investment decision to access it. Did I miss anything?
That’s quick and dirty.
Here’s what I would add to that because all of that is quintessentially fundamental but the part that we need to cover is the mindset work. There has to be the raising of your deserve, belief level, and a recalibration of the way that you were taught about money. Before my mom went to jail, I used to go to the grocery store with her or wherever. My mom was a booster. She would go to department stores pretending as if she’s pregnant, fill her belly with stuff, come out, go sell this stuff on the streets.
Whenever she got paid from the people, that money was already spent. The first lesson I got about money is that there’s never enough of it, no matter what you do, because I used to watch my mom hustle and grind. She was the original gangster of hustle and grind from my vantage point and she never had money. It was this elusive thing she could never have.
From my father, I remember being 11, 12, junior high. We’re going on a little school trip. All the little girls wouldn’t get little shorts, little t-shirt and it was $20. The early ‘80s. My dad saying, “What do you think, I have a tree out back with money on it? Money? You got to work hard for money. We don’t have a tree out back.” That was the second relationship.
Whenever I would think about money, I would always think, “There’s never going to be enough of it no matter what I do. Unless I’m willing to completely exasperate myself in any situation, I will not grasp enough of it to even try to make a dent.” We have to undo that work. We talked about how we both have a full understanding and appreciation that our families, our parents, the people who raised us, they did the best that they could with what they had. Once you know better, you have to do better.
You have to be willing to ask the questions to validate that the thought process and mantras that you inherited are not the truth. The only way you can do that is if you begin to question what money has been, seek a new definition for money and raise your deserve level for it because nine times out of ten, if there was a situation around money in your life, as you were growing up, it made you believe that you didn’t deserve it and you weren’t worthy of it.
That is what you’re still carrying around as this adult, attempting to start your own company and get it to the million-dollar mark. We’re not even talking about top-line million dollars and then million dollars net worth because we haven’t done the work on our relationship with money. You’re going to have to do that work, people.
You’re going to have to retrace your steps and figure out who gave you the definition of money, where is the evidence or proof to that, is the truth in question, whether or not another reality could be possible, and what would that look like if it were. That’s like coaching 101. We’re going to have to do that part, too, Jereshia, because otherwise we’ll do all of these things and we’ll make the money, but we’ll spend it and we won’t have anything to show for it. We’ll go get the things.
I don’t want anybody to believe what is like this. The mindset has to be there than this. For me, it’s always been like this intertwined experience. What you’re saying is that 1,000% accurate and the journey of the money stuff never will stop. Those things are always running in tandem and I’m glad that you added that into the dialogue because we’re used to doing versus learning how to be and being of the aspects of what comes with doing. One percent agree with you there.
That’s why I wanted to add it in because the tactical strategy is sound. I wouldn’t add anything to that but somebody is going to think, “I believe in entrepreneurship is the value of economic stabilization.” I’m going to do all the things and still be broke and be like, “Why am I broke? I did all of the things,” because you have to constantly be working on that.
I say all the time, “No one goes to bed a blunder and wakes up a wonder. We’re all on a journey.” Once you make your first million, and once you see your first million and all of your assets, there are other mindsets that are going to pop up. I remember I used to have all this belief that I was going to wake up one day and it was all going to be gone. For years, I checked my bank accounts every single day.
Now I still do but I shifted my focus on it. Initially, it was because out of the fear that they might disappear because I’m remembering the story of how my dad took my money. Now I look at my money, my stock portfolio, all of the things, but I look at it to be able to see how easy it is for me to create money. Money is around me all the time. I can never say that I’m broke. It was Joe Vitale. He was the first person I heard say this, “Go to the bank and get a $100 bill and carry it in your wallet.” You can never say you’re broke. It changes your energy about being broke that you don’t even allow those things to enter into your psyche, which is true.
If you don’t have a $100 bill in your wallet, go get one and don’t break it. If you ever break it, replace it as soon as possible because it does shift your energy around money, which is a big part of the process. That is such a powerful tip for those of you who are reading. I hope you’re getting your whole life now because what Jereshia is saying and it’s important, it’s powerful. Before we started, I was celebrating her to have gotten this at her age because the sooner you learn this, the more impact you’ll be able to have on the planet.
It’s not just for the money, for the sake of the money, it’s the money for what we can do with the money, how we can impact the lives of others, how we can create a better space, how you’re taking your knowledge and understanding, and you’re teaching your clients about these things they may not have ever learned on Google because they wouldn’t have even known to go look for it on Google. I feel like that exposure creates an expansion and the people that you get to serve every single day, which is powerful.
This has been such an amazing conversation and I don’t entirely want it to end. Before we roll out, though, when you think about your journey to getting to where you are now, outside of the things that we’ve already covered, is there anything else that was essential that you did, thought, believed, and acted upon that helped to solidify your own move to and beyond the million-dollar mark?
One of the biggest mindset shifts that I went through is that I need to stop trying to get paid what I’m worth. I do not believe any of us will ever get paid what we are worth because I truly believe your worth is infinite and it is a birthright, when I started understanding what it means for me to be a trust fund baby of the kingdom. I imagine like Kim Kardashian’s kids. They are all mega-rich, wealthy, money out the wazoo. There’s no ever questioning of what they’re entitled to because of what name they’re attached to.
When I understood how to correlate that to like, what does that mean being a child of God? Understanding the vastness of the kingdom, and me being a child of it and knowing that I’m entitled to certain promises that have been made. A lot of the time, when we hear the word preach of like, “You need to get paid what you’re worth. You need to raise your rates.” Under that belief system, it can be detrimental long-term. To me, it is us reenacting slavery but doing it on ourselves.
Allowing another human being to say that you’re worth $500 for your service, $2,000 for your service, $20,000, $50,000, whatever it is. If you have this deep personal reaction to it, question why is your reaction is large as it is. If you could accompany that with the belief that I’m getting paid for what I’m worth, and this person now is telling me that I’m not worth this, all hope can be, I don’t want to say loss, but it can be a grueling experience.
I say all the time, “It’s not about being paid what you’re worth because no one could afford you. It is, however, about being paid what you deserve.”
That goes back to the value. I get paid based of the value I can articulate and deliver. If the client or prospect says, “No.” Is there either a disconnect in the value that I was unable to articulate or was it misalignment because this person’s problem doesn’t align with the program delivery or the offer that it is that I’m selling? It has nothing to do with my worth or my value.
I say that all the time. No means that the person isn’t ready to experience transformation through you. Do you want a person who doesn’t want to be transformed by you to be even in your space? No, it takes all that onus off of my worth being attached to the yes or the no, which is powerful as well. The ability to be able to think millions, make millions, amass millions, and contribute and impact others to the tune of millions is such a complex thing and there are many inner workings that go in there.
I love everything that you’ve shared, especially this last piece about detaching your work from whatever it is that you provide to the marketplace. I tell people all the time, “If someone tells you no, are you not beautiful?” Nothing changes except that person doesn’t want to be served by you. Who wants to serve people who don’t want to be served by them? No one.
You need to properly align with a problem that exists in the marketplace and solve that problem with your expertise and skillset.
That’s their choice. At the of the day, we all have freedom of choice. I like to assume that people are making the best decisions for the season that they’re in and this might not be seasoned, but that doesn’t mean that next season won’t be. We have so many prospects that boomerang back around. That divine alignment with where my gifts, skills, program delivery, promise, and all that aligns with what that person’s problem is, it’s a beautiful moment and it’s okay. That was a huge mindset shift, too, that has supported me in getting to the position that I’m at now.
That makes a big difference. I know you’re in the process of building out this amazing team. I’ve heard you express some of the delights and the disappointments that go along with that. As you now get to the point where you’re trajectoring up to 8 and 9 figures, I see about 10 figures for you when it’s all set and done. I feel that in my spirit.
When you think about the team and all of the stuff we’ve been talking about, even in their individual values and beliefs that they need to bring to the table inside of your organization, how does that play out? How do you find yourself spending time in the development of your team to help make sure that their beliefs are in line with the beliefs that you know are going to serve your organization well?
When we talk about beliefs in alignment, I have a graveyard full of people who have come, been fired, let go, or resigned to the company. A lot of learning but there’s still much more to do. Probably one of the biggest things in belief alignment is properly screen for that before you even allow anybody in the door. We do a great job with this inside of our coaching program of taking the time to properly qualify prospects before we even give them an invitation to enroll. Is now the right time for them? Is their problem aligned with the promise that we deliver? Even with clients, if they don’t fit the cultural values and believe in the overarching philosophy of what it is that we teach, regardless if they can pay or not, we do not allow them into our program.
We started discovering what is the qualification process needs to be when screening for candidates to join the Team Hawk in itself and then additionally, what are those qualification requirements needed for specific roles. There’s an overarching for the company, but then in addition to the specific role in department functions. Sometimes, too, we think about how to grow this bigger business.
When you shift from being the solo person who’s making all the decisions and executing on those decisions to allowing your company to have an identity beyond you as an individual, you start realizing like, “What are the core values of the company?” There’s going to be a lot of alignment for what your core values are as a person but getting there like what’s the mission, the value, the vision of the company outside of me as the individual, outside of my net worth and outside of that?
I’m grateful for every experience that I had that didn’t work out because all of those, like troubleshooting, helped me discover what my preferences were, so that those preferences could become my policies. Sometimes I didn’t even know what my preferences were. I’m like, “I don’t even know what to screen for.”
When I had an experience where I’m like, “No, girl, that is not it. Jot that down. That’s a preference we don’t want to violate. That now needs to become the policy.” With belief alignment for the business owner, I’m like, “Give yourself grace and time to discover what your preferences are. All those possible failed attempts at hires or failed attempts at onboarding, don’t look at them as failed.” I’ve hired, trained, and onboard incorporate but it feels all the guidelines were already established.
The company that I worked for was 125 years old. My business hasn’t existed for a few years. We are still an infant. Putting things in a context, even how am I creating the opportunities for me to discover what my preferences are so that I can create policies around that. I’m grateful for being an engineer because to me, it’s this huge experiment of testing, documenting the hypothesis, categorizing the results, and all of that.
Those are some things that have served and supported me now is that every opportunity I do get is paying attention to what my preferences are in situations in what feels great and what doesn’t. Documenting goes into policies and every time I hire, how can I get better at hiring slow and firing fast? Doing a better job of prescreening individuals before we even allow them in the door.
We’ve had a great job hiring people who had belief in value alignment but have not done the greatest job of hiring people who had the skillset and/or us having the internal training to close the gap on their skillsets. Everybody we’ve hired at, let’s say, for the most part, has been huge value alignment. They believed in the mission. They were like gung-ho for what it is that we were trying to do.
There was misalign like either they were a better fit for a larger company that already had more established processes, more defined role versus sometimes I forget that I’m still a startup. We’re nimble and lean. Things can change. Whole business trajectories can change. We can triple in revenue in a year, which has happened every year we’ve existed, which is not common in a company that’s existed for 100 years.
They have 3%, 10% growth. They’re over the moon. Even learning beyond the values fit, are they a good culture fit in the sense of like, have they worked at another startup that’s less than 50 employees before? I didn’t use to screen for that type of cultural fit. Whereas there are other aspects of culture beyond our beliefs that are important in the startup and early day phases.
I wanted to ask you that question specifically because I heard it in my spirit. The people that are reading the blog, they’re six-figure entrepreneurs. They are somewhere on the journey towards having a million-dollar company. I’m big of thinking about it before you get there and having the conversations with yourself, so you know what it looks like. When it starts to come, you don’t run from it.
Instead, you launch towards it because it means that you’re closer and you start to see fear for what it is, which is an indication that your next level was present. I felt like because we were having this conversation around money and some of the things they need to do, that’ll put them on that trajectory, we got to talk about the other side, which is if you’re trying to do it by yourself when you get there. I know that there are people out there who want to teach you to have a seven-figure company with just you and a VA.
I know that they exist, but I don’t think that’s the way that you should do it. I’m not saying you got to have 500 employees by any stretch of the imagination, but you do need to have a core team so that you don’t have to be the chief everything officer. You can truly be the CEO and strategically advise and overlook and spend only a portion of your time in service delivery but the majority of your time is in that strategic oversight and how do you continue to grow and scale and all of those types of things. This has been phenomenal. Before I let you go, I always have my three closing questions. They’re like what is the first thing that pops into your head. The first question is, what is your favorite quote?
It’s probably by Tony Robbins is the first thing that’s coming to mind. I’m completely butchering his quote, but the philosophy is around like there are trillions of dollars trickling around our feet every second of every day. There’s a whole paragraph of a quote that he wrote around that. I used to reread that everyday in my younger years. It helped me shift my mindset around money being a resource and it’s always available. Think about how much water there is in the world. It’s something that’s always available.
What’s the last book you read?
I’ve been reading fiction books and I don’t know the name of them. I just been finding something on Kindle and downloading it. I wish I knew the name. I don’t even know the name. I read three, they were good, something about the crow bird or the crow bird sing, something like that. I’m terrible at names. I haven’t read a business book in the past several months.
I have to take to breaks from them, especially because I’m about to start writing my next book. I believe this is the book. This is the one that is going to make all of the difference out into the world. My final question is, what is one tool you swear by that has helped you make the move to millions?
Probably Profit First. It wasn’t a tool, but it’s a philosophy. That was imperative for me in the early stages.
That was such powerful for me, too. I found this book in 2015. I had it for 6 or 9 months before I opened it because I’m always listening to podcasts or whatever. When I hear somebody mention a book, I immediately go to Amazon and I buy the book. I like the physical copy. It was sitting on my shelf forever, then finally I was like, “I need to read another book. because I try to read a book a week.”
I’m like, “Let me finally pull this book down.” It was like my whole life has been sitting inside of this book. Prior to Profit First, I was already saving maybe 10% of everything, putting it into a cash reserve account because I wanted to get to the point, at that time, six figures in cashflow, and then the goal became to get seven figures in cashflow.
I read it and I put the rest of it into works. Inside of a year and a half, I ended up getting about $285,000 in my profit account. He ended up doing a rerelease of his book. In his second edition, I’m the first case study in there. When you open it and read it, you’ll see me talking about how it completely changed my business because I was only doing the savings. I wasn’t doing anything with all the other accounts. My favorite account is the drip account because we get a lot of clients that pay us in full. Being able to drift that money, so we’re not like, “We got a whole bunch of money to spend,” but all the money has a purpose. It is a life-changer.
Jereshia, I have enjoyed this conversation. It’s been amazing. This cannot be the last time that we have you here because you are such a wealth of information and inspiration. I know that your voice is a voice that will continue to impact for generations to come. I am grateful and admiring of your story and what you’ve been through.
You used all of that for your good, you turned all of those burdens into amazing blessings and I see you blossoming into a force inside of our industry. I’m excited and grateful to know you and I look forward to watching you shine. I’m going to have my glasses handy. I’m not going to be able to see. I already know it’s coming but I do want to thank you for being here. Anything you want to say in closing, the floor is yours.
Thank you for having me and for creating this platform, so these conversations can take place. I know every reader now is grateful for the opportunity to even be in the room with us as we’re having this dialogue to elevate them where they’re at. My only request or ask if anybody reading is screenshot, you reading this blog and tag both Darnyelle and me on Instagram.
Let’s continue the conversation like we started the dialogue, but let’s keep it going. I would love for you to tag us on Instagram. I’m @JereshiaHawk. Let us know what your top takeaway was. Let us know that you read the blog and share it with your social following so that we can continue the dialogue. That’s my only ask. Thank you so much for having me.
My joy, my pleasure. All right, guys, we’ll see you next time. Take care.
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Did I tell you that you were going to love my conversation with Jereshia? It was everything to me. There were many powerful nuggets that Jereshia shared that I know that if you were taking notes, you got them, too, and you’re going to leverage the power of those notes to be able to help you to continue to shift and change. One of my favorites is there’s always a blessing in our biggest burdens.
I encourage you to take a look at some of the things that you’ve been through. Those things that threaten to take you out that became the setup for the biggest comeback in your life. I also loved when she talked about the fact that success was her only option. There was no way that there was going to be anything else that was going to be part of this for her.
We got deep. We went into not only her story, but into five powerful tips if you’re looking to start your own move to millions, which is equally as powerful as well. I know that there had to be something good you got out of this that will help you to reverse engineer your move to the million-dollar mark. Don’t forget what she said, if you love this episode, tag she and I add your @JereshiaHawk, @DarnyelleJerveyHarmon, and your stories on Instagram and share your biggest a-ha moment with us.
We know that this conversation was powerful as much needed, and it is destined to shift the trajectory of your life because of your business. We believe that millions are your birthright, that you deserve it now. The quicker you take the steps to work on the mindset, as well as the tactical strategies and changes that you need to make, the closer you’ll be to making that move to millions. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing Jereshia with you. I’m excited about continuing to watch her shine and you being continually blessed by her existence on the planet. All right, you guys, I’ll see you next time. Take care.
Important Links:
- Jereshia Hawk
- Profit First
- @JereshiaHawk – Instagram
- @DarnyelleJerveyHarmon – Instagram
