Abundance Trailblazer &  Salina Gray is here to teach us ow to Gamify life to prioritize energy and quality of life, overcome your personal hidden money blocks, and how to reframe our money mindsets for abundance and wealth. Get excited, Selina even walks us through her “Money Timeline” exercise from her own arsenal of coaching tools that she has used to help thousands of clients start living their most abundant lives. 

Selena says, “I blaze a revolutionary trail for women entrepreneurs ready to reclaim their liberated richness and call in more abundance fulfillment and intentionality into their life and business.” In 2011 Selena founded her own wealth company as an international keynote speaker and wealth and business mentor, Selena helps 1000s of entrepreneurs transform their relationship with money, earn more, keep more and welcome more joy and peace into their lives and businesses. 

Episode Transcript:

hey, beautiful soul, welcome
to spirit speakeasy. I'm Joy Giovanni,
joyful medium. I'm a working psychic medium, energy healer and spiritual gifts mentor. This podcast is like a seat at the table in a secret club, but with mediums, mystics and the spiritual luminaries of our time. So come behind the velvet ropes with me and see inside my world as I chat insider style with profoundly gifted souls, we go deep, share juicy stories, laugh a lot, and it wouldn't be a speakeasy without great insider secrets and tips. You might even learn that you have some gifts of your own. So step inside the spirit speakeasy. Hey, beautiful soul. In today's episode of spirit speakeasy, we are going to talk about something that is sometimes taboo, but that we all need, we all deal with every day of our lives. We are talking about money, about abundance, about the energy of money, and fears we have about money that are maybe even unknown to us. This is such a profound and valuable topic, and we have with us such an incredible expert. She is an abundance Trailblazer. She came as an introduction through friend of the show, shatel story, our wonderful astrologer friend, and this conversation was just so profound. Selena gray is her name. She is going to give us so much in this episode. She gives us concrete tools. She gives us an exercise, a money timeline to work on so we can start really identifying and moving out of our money blocks. So get excited. If you are someone who needs money, likes money, makes money, spends money, touches money. If you live in this world, and even if you have a lot of money, this can help you. So I'm so excited to really get into the nitty gritty of money, abundance, the energy of it, what our blocks are, and how to move through them with the amazing and beautiful soul. Selena Gray, hey, beautiful soul, welcome back, or welcome in for another episode of spirit speakeasy, I am really excited to introduce Selena Gray. I'm going to read her bio, and then we're going to dive right in and start chatting as a CPA. Selena worked for nearly a decade as a controller for two international public companies, managing large finance teams across 12 countries, an unexpected autoimmune diagnosis created a life altering wake up call for Selena, changing her relationship with money, growing her worth and claiming new levels of power. In 2011 Selena founded her own wealth company as an international keynote speaker and wealth and business mentor, Selena helps 1000s of entrepreneurs transform their relationship with money, earn more, keep more and welcome more joy and peace into their lives and businesses. Selena says, I blaze a trail for revolutionary wait. I blaze a revolutionary trail for women entrepreneurs ready to reclaim their liberated richness and call in more abundance fulfillment and intentionality into their life and business. Help me welcome Selena Gray, it's so great to be with you.
Joy. I'm thrilled to be here. I know my bio is a mouthful. So beautiful. Job articulating
Well, thank you. I would love it if you tell us what you do, what you help people
with. Yeah, so it's really not what I thought I would do at all. So when I first got into accounting and became a CPA, I thought I would live a corporate life and retire early. And the universe always, you know, shows up as it must for us to learn lessons. And so back in 2011 I was well into my corporate career, and I ended up in it with a 30 plus day hospital stay. And I I passed out in my office in Tunisia, and I flew home to Calgary, Alberta, and I remember like going into the hospital and thinking, Oh, this is temporary. I remember saying to the doctor, like, we've got to speed this up, because I've got a lot of things that I gotta get back to with my team. And it just didn't work out that way. I ended up nearly dying from my goodness the experience, and it was absolutely the cosmic two by four to my temples to wake me up and realize this was not the quality of life I wanted. And I realized that I had been pursuing all of this wealth and credibility outside myself, but in that hospital bed, you start questioning things, and I realized, wow, there's something deeply missing inside, and I had been already starting. Side hustles, because, you know, that's what we do when we're Uber a type personalities. And I'd been teaching other accountants about cash flow and budgeting because it just was natural. And I loved having connection with people. And I realized through, you know, an experience with a nurse at the hospital, she's like, You have to read this book, and it was called Spirit junkie by Gabrielle Bernstein. I'm not sure if anybody listening knows that book. I think a lot of us know that book, but I read the pages and was like, oh my goodness, she's addicted to drugs, like I'm addicted to workaholism. And I just realized that I had a poor relationship with money, and I started interviewing everyone around me, asking them questions, because it's become less taboo. But it was very taboo in 2011 to talk about money, and I realized, wow, I can make a difference here. It's a passion of mine. It was something that almost cost me my life. And I started becoming a student of money and learning what makes decisions with money, the energetics behind it, the idea of emotion taking over, because I had clients who had 50 million plus dollar portfolios, and they like, wouldn't buy new clothes. And I'm like, This is not a math this is not a math problem. This is something bigger. And so that has evolved to me really assisting, almost exclusively, women entrepreneurs to really stand in their power and realize like they're blazing trails in their own right, and in doing that, honoring their relationship with money, honoring their intuition and spirituality, can lead them to more abundance than they can possibly imagine. And I love the word legacy money. You know, we don't just want to have companies that replace our incomes. We want to create legacy money that can change our life and change the legacy of our family. And so that's in a long winded nutshell, what I'm about
that's amazing, and how incredible that you were able to use your own really challenging experiences and difficult times to blossom into this new version of your work that's pretty incredible. How are you doing with your autoimmune challenges today? Are you pretty stable?
Thank you for asking it I was stable. I had my daughter in 2015 and I was like, oh, it's no problem. And a couple months after that, by health tanked, and then I stabilized again. And I, you know, have tendencies of word holism that I'm actively always healing and working on. And in 2013 I ended up being almost bedridden for 920 23 what am I saying? 2023 I ended up being almost bedridden for nine months. So I worked with the clients I could, but I wasn't taking on additional clients because I wanted to have enough capacity. So I was a bit of a shell of myself. So I ended up hiring a functional health doctor in October, and completely revolutionized my health and so I'm really grateful to say that I have nearly zero symptoms. I have to really watch my energy, but I'm doing so much better, but it's been a roller coaster even up until, you know, early this year, so I'm really grateful for that. Thank you for asking.
Yeah, well, congratulations. And I'm always surprised to see how many highly sensitive people, or energetically sensitive people have some version of autoimmune challenge. And kudos to you for keeping up on your own. You know, wellness and development, and I feel like even, even when we get into these levels of teaching, we're still responsible to, like, be looking after ourselves. But it still can be kind of a hard thing. Sometimes
can be extremely hard, especially when you feel like, No, I've got this. And then the auto immune comes back up, and there's like another layer of the lesson. And I think it's been one of the greatest teachers that I've had in this lifetime, and it's really been a gateway to me learning more about spirituality, to be completely honest, because you know otherwise you you can continue to look externally. And I feel like forcing yourself to look at health being wealth makes you look at life differently.
I agree, and a lot of us do have the autoimmune challenges, but a lot of us also have the challenges you were describing, of being either over producing or feeling like we have to be the ones to get everything done. How does your work with finances and money and being a striver tie into that overall wellness picture for you, personally and in your work? So
it's one of the reasons why I evolved my company name to richness evolution, because I've really realized it's an evolution, and harmonizing the evolution is essential. So I view it as seasons of bursted energy towards when I feel productive, and then I really have to look and come back to the Eagle Eye View and say, Okay, what am I doing here? Do I have the quality of life that I want is the identity of who I hold as a CEO actually honoring the quality of the life I want? Does my family get enough time with me? Do I feel resentment towards anything? Because if I do, there's a good sign that I need to tweak some things. So I'm committed 100% to lifelong evolution, which is I'm allowed to grow and expand and change my mind and set incredible boundaries around things that suck energy, and cognizant of what really infuses energy into my life. So I love my work, but I know prolonged access to my work can, like, steal energy, and so I really put boundaries around and I have my team as gatekeepers to say, okay, Selena, you committed to this many hours a week? What are we doing? And it's become a bit of a game for me. I gamify. You know how I can optimize my revenue by reducing the amount of hours I spend? And I've been doing this for 13 years, failing miserably. Some years, other years really doing well. And so I've labeled this year my comeback year, because 2023 was really hard for me, and I had to downsize some things, which is really gut wrenching for an entrepreneur, because we always want to grow and expand in some way, shape or form. And it felt like that was taken from me. And 2024 I really came, came back to this concept of like I get to control my life in the best way, you know, I get to have the best quality of life. I am healthy, and what does evolution look like to me now? And so then I define those parameters based on, you know, my family, my work, my friend groups, and overall quality of life. And I stay in those and I build gatekeeping parameters, like my right hand is always like, Selena, we're not doing that. You said you were gonna do that. Like, oh, right, because I can sometimes get really excited and eager. So ultimately, it's like defining what I want, getting into granular detail about what that looks like, and then safeguarding and gatekeeping around that. So it becomes fun after a while. You know, I used to spend 60 hours a week, and now I can do what I used to do in 60 and 20. And so that feels like abundance to me.
That's amazing, is that, and you used a term, gamify your life, which I think is such a cool way to look at it, is that something that anyone can kind of easily, I don't know, easily, is the right word, but could seemingly implement for themselves to fit their own life. Absolutely.
It's something I often speak about with clients, because we have this rigid societal expectation on when we're a business owner, these are their hours we have to work. You know, these are the parameters that we need to show up in. We can only charge this amount of money. And I like to push the edge of all of those concepts. So one of the things I love people think about is, when do you actually desire to work? And people often look at me, you go, what like? Let's gamify this. Let's make it fun. You know, when we're playing a game, we're usually having fun, you know, on that edge of joy, you know. And I like to bring in that element and not make it quite so serious to say, Hey, do you love to work first thing in the morning? Have you ever asked yourself that question? And most people are like, well, not really. I just that's when you start working. And I learned this because I used to try to mirror banking hours, because I worked a lot with families in the beginning, and they always would be home in the evening. So I would have, like, a cat and a dog on my lap with my laptop, you know, talking to the families, and I'm like, I can't sustain these these hours in the evenings. And then I innovated, and I gamified, and I was like, How can I still prioritize this for families, but not at the expense of myself? So I'd love for anyone who's interested in that to really start paying attention to the areas that feel like work or feel like not as much fun, and to ask better questions, like, what's coming up for me? Is this emotion mine? Is it someone else's? Is this resentment because of a decision I've made, or a belief I've I hold? And start looking at when you feel most energized in your day. Or what client, you know, personality types really energize you, and start using that as fuel to build a business you really love, because I love to challenge people to say, like, Okay, how you've done it always. Doesn't mean you have to keep doing it in the process of trailblazing, you know, the one who's, you know, really blazing a trail. She thinks about the identity she holds and the business she's building for the good of herself and the good of her clients. And I think we always build businesses, you know, unknowingly at the expense of ourselves.
That's such a good point. So then, how did you okay? You realize I've got my cat and my dog, and I'm working these crazy hours, and I'm talking to people when they're available, and this isn't working for me. How did you shift that? Like, what were the next steps for you?
So yeah, and it's a beautiful point, like, they weren't even my cat and dog. I was going to their house, and their animals are sitting on me, you know? Oh,
you're at their house, working virtually for this part.
Sure exactly this was way back in the day, like I'm literally at their kitchen table. And so I just started thinking about, you know, how can I close the gap between what I'm doing and what I fantasize about doing, and what I fantasized about doing is literally what I do now, I have an office, and I can come into it, but I can close the door, and I have a team who takes care of me, but I have, I get to have the most incredible conversations with change makers and action takers. And I thought about like, what could that look and feel like? And I visualize it, and it's obviously changed a lot over the years, but I wanted freedom the most that stuck out as a value, that really felt like a yes to me. And so when I thought about it, like being tied to someone else's schedule, didn't feel like freedom to me. And freedom was very much an abundant feeling. I could feel it in my body, and that's what I think about abundance, what it does, it's not just monetary. It's like that feeling where you feel like you have wings, and freedom felt like that to me. It felt like abundance. So I started thinking about, okay, what can I do to implement more freedom? What can I do that's for the good of me and the good of my clients? How can I reposition my offers so that everyone wins? And I started realizing I was really attached to trading time for money, because I come from accounting firm, we would charge every 15 minutes of our time. And I started immersing myself in education around value instead of time. And so I started thinking about, what is the results I'm actually getting for my clients? You know, what am I doing for them? Can I do that in a different, repurposed way, so that they still feel tremendous value, but it's actually really exciting gives me more freedom. And I started thinking about, what would I do in the evenings if I'm not at my my clients homes? And I was like, I could do anything I want. And so that's what kind of fueled me to keep going like to this day, freedom is still the most important value to me, not because of any other reason, then it just really energizes me still, like, I love to be the creator of my own life. And so that's a non negotiable for me. So if you're listening to this, you're like, I don't know where to start. Like, what is your version of freedom? And then you start thinking about how to take the very next step in making change. You don't have to go all the way to the fantasized state, which is what people typically do, and the gap feels too big. It's like, oh, what's the very next step? It's like, oh, maybe I could do three nights a week instead of five. And then if I do that, how can I repurpose client meetings, or how can I change the value structure for them? And it became like a snowball rolling down a hill. For me, it was like, intoxicating in the best way. I was like, wow, this is fun. I can find solutions. But on my terms, does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense. And I love that you're already as we're talking just, you know, 15 minutes into our conversation, I can feel that the infusion of the energy of money and the energy of wealth and the energy of abundance, because you're reframing it almost as not looking at, you know, always the budget and dollars and cents of it, but looking at, okay, what is it that you value, as you said, what is it that you're looking to feel, or what does abundance provide for you in your life? And how does that look? And how can we make smaller steps towards it.
Absolutely, it's fundamental. Because, yeah, I believe most people desire abundance in all forms, but we do not know how to execute the steps to make it a reality. And so if we're only focused on money, we can become, you know, obsessed with the dollars, instead of what the freedom of the dollars represents to us. And I've had many clients and friends and peers fall into that trap. It's like, oh, I want one more house, or I want to go on, you know, this many more trips, and it becomes kind of a manual thing, instead of it's infusing your life with more richness. And so that whole idea of richness evolution is you want. The more you live your life, the more you want to evolve into your own richness, state defined by you. Like we all know societal terms looks at richness one way, but to me, like, just because you have a nice car doesn't mean you're rich. Because I seen 1000s of people's bank accounts to know that that doesn't automatically carry over. And I've had, I've had clients who've got the big, ginormous house, and the 2.5 kids, you know, statistically, I'm doing air quotes right now, and have the great job downtown, and they feel empty inside. So their abundance, although on paper, seems high, because they have, you know, high cash flow, but their internal richness and abundance feels low, and so they give it up. They give it up, and they follow their values or their heart. Like I always say, if there's something on your heart, it's there for a reason. It's your natural abundance talking to you. And so following that can set you free. And I've had clients who then sold the house and then toured, you know, the world for a year, and we're like, wow, you know, I can see richness in many different forms, quality of life, relationships. Yes, we do need money. It's like how we function in our society and and money gives us choice, which is one of the reasons why I love it so much, the choice to choose your own richness, that's essential. Does that? Does that make sense? Yeah,
it makes perfect sense. And as you're saying it, I'm just thinking about this idea of not only what we have coming in, because sometimes that might, I don't know, maybe I'm attaching energy to it, but it might be more incremental to change than changing our value or what we want to put our money towards, for example, to free up other areas. Is that part of the coaching that you give your clients to kind of evaluate all of that as well?
Yeah, and like, I like to have a holistic approach, so we're looking at our business to say, okay, what are we feeling energized by? What is feeling depleting. What are the clients we are, like, obsessed with working with, and the ones we're not, and then evaluate that based on the offers we currently have. Do we want to make changes? And what do those changes look like? Because when we start tuning up and making small changes, I like to do things in 12 week sprints. I call them, so we have the opportunity to work across, you know, quarters of the year. It's my CPA background. We can get a lot of things done in 12 weeks. And so we start analyzing those things from Curiosity, rather than, I don't have enough. You know, lots of entrepreneurs are like, I don't have enough, therefore I must do these things. And one of the things that I strongly believe it is scarcity narrows our worldview. Dr Gabor Monte talks about how trauma narrows our worldview. I 1,000% believe that scarcity does the same thing. It just narrows our vision, so that that's all we can focus on, and we can't see the things around us. So we are automatically set on we are behind, or I don't have enough, or I need to have more, we do not see what's around us in the present, which often we pause and look around and tweak a few things. And I've had clients like, within a couple of days, earn $30,000 worth of revenue that they couldn't fathom possible before because they were set on, you know, I must do it this way instead of, what do I actually want? And what would that? What could be possible for me? And then every belief we burn down in real time, if possible, or we seek additional support. So, for example, I had a client who was really excited to work with leaders, but in her relationship with money, she felt like perhaps she wasn't worthy to work with leaders. She could absolutely help them, but there was this subconscious tie to I don't have enough, so how could I be of value to leaders? And when we started questioning that, from curiosity and her value system, she started realizing in real time that it wasn't a comparison. You know, her gifts were of tremendous value, and her what she had in her bank account was irrelevant, and she got like, three clients in the leadership role within a few days, and she she was mind blown. And these things happen often. This is not just like one offs. I think we are often blocked by our money because of two things. We don't feel like we have enough, or we're chasing security. We have to feel safe in our earnings, like security, meaning we have enough to pay everything that we are owing. And if we don't, our nervous system can't slow down enough to think about beyond security. So if we can be secure, then we can access thinking about abundance in all forms. If we are only focused on security, we can only think about monetary abundance. And it's not right or wrong, it just is the way our body reacts. And so I love to get people to a place of making sure they feel secure. And then they can dream, then they can make small tweaks, then they can start thinking about their business and their offers in a more streamlined way that's accordance to their gifts or their trails, like I would call because they have we all have superpowers that we can trailblaze and thinking about that makes earning easier, at least in my opinion.
I think that those are such important points. If someone's listening or watching and thinking like, Okay, I'm kind of in that middle zone of still having some worry about security, still having some worry about paying these bills, whatever it is for the individual. What guidance would you give or tips about starting to make that shift, cross that bridge, to that abundant place, or to shifting the mindset at least.
So to me, when we think about security, we have to address the numbers. So a lot of people have fear in the numbers, and I like to look at our past choices with numbers as just a collection of experiences. Yes, so I like to use that energy like I love to encourage people like they can go through their past six months in their business and look at some of their costs and think about all the incredible rewarding things that those that money expended gave them, whether it's knowledge or lessons or experiences or education or whatever it is to really think about that, because there's a part of us right now who would be beyond thrilled for how far we've come, you know, from the past, if we look to what we have now, they'd be mind blown, right? And so I like to experience that with money. Seldom do we look at money and think, yes, unless we have a big launch or something, but if we're going through what our costs are to really the first step being like to celebrate how you chose to spend it from a place of doing the best you could with what you had. And then secondly, looking at it to say, Okay, what do I really need to run this business at a secure place? So what I'm saying by that is go through and like, maybe we don't need 14 subscriptions right now. Maybe we only need three. Like, most of us can find a pile of money we've set fire to each and every month because we're too busy to just stop those subscriptions, you know, things like that, or to ask ourselves, like, oh, there's this annual cost that keeps popping up in June and every June, it gives me anxiety, but I never seem to save for it. To take and take inspired actions and say, Okay, say that bill is coaching. I'm just making this up, but say every June we've got a coaching bill. We love the coaching, but we don't love the big payment. So we can set up an account that says coaching, and then automate, you know, every week to make sure that that thing, by the end of 52 weeks, it's paying for itself, so that it's not just weight on our shoulders thinking, Oh, June is coming. I don't have it. It's like we have our own back with the interactions with money at a granular number level, that it's starting to come together. And you're starting to look at that and say, like, Okay, this is part of my security. And looking at what do I need to earn in my business to make this happen, the third step for me is how much reoccurring revenue do I currently earn? Because reoccurring revenue is the absolute favorite of mine. It's the freedom maker. Like I in 2023 I mostly run masterminds, and I work with groups of humans and clients one on one, but most of the time they work with me for at least a year at a time, and so I set them up on reoccurring revenue. You know, even for me in 2023 I've been blessed to have a successful business, but I know my money, my money personality, can be set to panic. If money isn't always coming in, I can, doesn't matter how much is in my bank account, I can freak out. So reoccurring revenue has helped me reduce those super low, you know, roller coaster moments. Reoccurring revenue, it's like, okay, instead of just offering three months at a time or one off. How can I turn these offers into more reoccurring revenue opportunities? And pretty much every single business I've ever worked through or worked alongside or with can create reoccurring revenue. And so to me, that is the best safeguard, because all of a sudden you map out your next six months and you see money coming in, and so you feel secure that it's coming in. And even for those of us who maybe have an accountant and have bookkeeping done, I encourage you to set up a simple it could be on like a literal notebook, or you can use a very basic Excel, and you put the months in and put in what's coming in and what's coming out, and project that into the future. It can create this idea of like, Oh, I feel secure, or this is how much I need to feel secure. So it's actually tangible and feasible. You can go out and motivate yourself to do that, and then I like to number four, say, well, even though I'm striving for security, I still deserve quality of life. I still deserve abundance in more forms. So I start looking at my life and saying, What could I make small changes to like as simple as getting up 30 minutes before my children and just going outside and sipping my tea or my coffee and putting my feet into Mother Earth and letting her energy infuse me, you know, things like that to just pause and find abundance in walking like I remember feeling like overwhelmed in my business, and I went to this silent retreat in Kripalu in Massachusetts, and we didn't speak for like days. And so it really forced your other senses to come wide awake, and I remember walking and I'd never heard the crunch of the leaves and the sound of the trees. You know, the wind in the trees and the birds so vividly. And I left there being like there is more abundance around me than I could possibly imagine. But when we're laser focused into scale. CEO, we're laser focused and finding more clients, it's hard to access that and that that abundance usually fuels me into other things. So here's an example. I look for abundance in other ways, and then what normally happens is, because my energy is now set to a different context, an old client might message me, or someone might buy a ticket of an event I'm doing, and so it all starts working together. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that would be That's a great answer. A few examples to just get yourself out of your own way, because we all do it. Every single one of us gets in our own way. We all have to work on a relationship with money, and I think the key is to just not make it mean you're alone in it. There's there's certain solutions and strategies and practical opportunities you can implement that'll work for you. And if it doesn't work for you, get rid of it and try something else.
Yeah, I think that's so bad. I love the action steps too. I'm an action steps gal myself. I think it's so nice to have tangible things that we can look at and do. And you had mentioned it with your client that was wanting to work with really high level leaders, and once that person started realizing, oh, there's some an emotional piece going on here. There's some emotions coming up, how did you or how would you encourage someone to kind of work through that piece when they realize, no, it's not my skills, it's not my qualifications. It's, you know, I've got this piece I'm checking in. That's okay. There's something else. What do you what are your thoughts on that?
What a great question. So something I've witnessed over the last decade plus is that we all set to automatic, uncertain experiences with money, very similar to other things like trauma. And so we immediately go back into the past. And so one of the things I love when people start really awakening to money Being emotional is an exercise that I've called the money timeline. And so what I encourage people to do often is to take a blank sheet of paper and write a line through the center of it, just like horizontally. And up top write a plus sign, and down at the bottom write a negative sign, and then on the left hand side, write born, and then all the way to the end of the white sheet of paper. Right now, the word now, so we've got this horizontal line, and up top is positive, and up below that is negative. And then we've got born on the left side and now on the right. And then I want you to start thinking about some of the very first memories you have with money and things start flowing out. You know, you can sit down. I like to do 30 minute power hours. I call them. I like to turn everything off around me, my phone, my computer, everything, and I allow myself to go into just like thinking or action mode. And this really revolutionized it for me. So I'm just going to share some examples. I love that. So when I was, I believe, six years old, I had a birthday party and I got like $100 cash from all of the people who came, and that was like more money than I'd ever seen in my entire life up until that point. So it was amazing. And I remember my mom taking me to a local clothing store, and she's like, you get to try on clothes and buy yourself some clothes for your birthday with this money. And I put it inside a little cherry purse. It was clipped at the top, and had cherries in the front, and I was so proud of myself. And I remember leaving the change room to get a different size, and I came back and that change purse was gone. And I said to my mom, Mom, do you have my purse? And she's like, No, you have to watch many Euro leave you, she said. And I remember feeling like devastated. And then fast forward some time, and I am in grade 11 in high school, and you know, we all have to bring things to our school functions. And mine was pretzels, but I didn't have enough money to buy the fancy pretzels at the store. I only had enough to buy the no name pretzels, so I take them to school, and everyone makes fun of me. They're like, these are horrible. They're spitting them out. They're like, ew, no name. And it really hurt my feelings. Obviously, I was, like, nearly traumatized by this small experience, and I've had a lot of experiences my life. I'm just now speaking to the money. If someone's listening and thinking like, this is ridiculous. No, this, this just hang tight. So about 10 to 15 years later, I started diving into money work, and I realized those two experiences were still with me to this day, like I was hiding money under my bit my bed, physically hiding money under my bed because I was scared to not watch money, because it was leading me. Like even my bank account seemed like a scary place for it, like, even though I was a rationally trained CPA at this point, because of that experience, I was fearful money was going to leave me, so I needed to have a pile of money with me. I had $10,000 under my mattress like a crazy. Person, and I share these things because they're embarrassing, but they're true, and it's an irration, relatable,
too. I don't think it's that crazy. I mean, it
sounds right. It's just like these things you do because of things that happen to you, and you don't really think about it the second I went into my closet one day, and I had just an enormous amount of luxury goods. So when I was working my corporate job, I would just buy fancy things. I would buy fancy things over and over again, like Burberry, you know, Louis Vuitton, everything. And I looked in my closet, it was filled with luxury goods, and I felt empty inside. And when I did this, this thinking for myself, I realized that I was using those high end labels to hide who I was, because no one was ever going to call me no name again. I wanted to be someone who was worthy of labels or worthy of people seeing me as a as you know, a luxury thing, and it was rooted in the pretzel experience. And so like, these are very small interactions with money that then go and shape, like for me, hundreds of 1000s of dollars worth of buying decisions that were irrational and crazy, but I did it because of this subconscious connection to an experience. And then I'll give one more example on the positive side. So when I was 12, I grew up, you know, in a lower middle class household, and I, from the age of 14, like, bought all of my school clothes and did all those things. It was a good, a tough, but good lesson from my parents. And at 12, I started realizing, like, I really love money. So I'd go to my aunt's house in the summer, and her her father in law, would hire me to do odd jobs, and there was these ridiculously tall buildings in the yard, and he's like, Can you paint those? I was like, Yeah, sure. He's like, make me an invoice. Tell me how much you're going to charge me. Are like, you have to go cost the supplies and all the things. So it took me, like almost all summer to paint these buildings, and I way went off on costs. And, like, I had no idea was doing. It was a mess, but in the end, he paid the invoice, and then he gave me $1,500 cash on top of it, and he said, you don't get paid for the time you spent, you get paid for the job you've done, you've done an excellent job, and you'll learn to invoice better. And that stuck with me, that, wait, maybe I don't have to trade hours for dollars. Maybe it's possible to earn more than I thought possible. And so I like to do that experience with my clients or with audiences I speak to as a speaker to say, like there are things rooted in our soul that is like buried by Rubble, that in our present day, we make decisions unconsciously from what happened to us. And that's our relationship with money. Like if we go to the grocery store and we really want the good, organic, healthy salad dressing, but we look to the right and see the on sale, you know, lesser brand, and we automatically get it. It's tied to our Money Story somehow, like instead of a conscious choice. And so I like to take people through that. So getting back to the client with her emotions, I'm like, Okay, where did this start coming up for you? Let's do the money timeline, or let's review the money timeline, and then we can start finding like experiences that we're ready to release. You know, like, I no longer have an attachment to luxury, like I did. I still love a nice handbag, but I rock, you know, like the $15 Amazon one, no problem. You know, I'm no longer defined by it, and I think that's the goal as an entrepreneur. So many things are thrown at us so that we can have opportunities to heal, and some of the most important are as it relates to money, because it's blocking us from the clients that we actually deserve to work with, or charging the amount that actually showcases our value, or going for the project that lights our soul on fire because we're scared to not be secure.
Well, it's so profound, too, and thank you for sharing those examples too. They're so helpful, because we in this work, we talk a lot about patterns and programming that either perhaps came from the community we grew up in, or our family of origin, or, you know, having a situation and losing money when you're little, or whatever it might be. So it's, it's amazing to see and discover how those things currently affect us in our grown adult lives that still kind of poke their way in there. I love this idea of this exercise too. I work on timelines quite a bit for different parts of my work, actually. So I'm pretty excited. I always explain it like an old fashioned history class timeline, is the way I say it. But I like to say too that, you know, I. How do you so say someone's doing this exercise with you, or you've assigned it and they're doing the timeline. Is it just the memories that come up for them that they're drawn to from that younger period? It
could be anything. It could be literally anything like so, for example, phrasing that we might have heard from our parents, money doesn't grow on trees, or rich people do this, you know, or whatever it is, to note those things down, or even to read books or listen to podcasts on, like the topic at hand, because sometimes people will say, Oh, like this happened to me and it sparks a memory. So I'll give an example from a client. Yeah, exactly. That really resonates for a lot of people. So he was really excited to grow his business. He was exploding on social media. He was making about $10,000 a month, which was very good, but he desired more. And so we started carving into, you know why he's rubbing up against this $10,000 a month, but never really going over it. And it came out that his mom grew up in the potato famine in Ireland, and had said once that rich people were terrible, and he thought anything over $10,000 made him rich, and this is all living in his subconscious. So he had made all of these assumptions. And so I said, Hey, why don't you go have a discussion with your mom about it and see if she remembers? Number one, she didn't remember. And number two, you know, he got some clarity around what she actually meant, and it created an open gateway for him. And we started making changes, and he started exploding to hundreds of 1000s of dollars a month. And like, those types of things can become really practical. We think we have to do so much healing, but really it can be a practical thing. Or, you know, a client who really wanted a transformer for Christmas and ends up getting a go bot and, like, makes a whole bunch of decisions based on that. And those are the types of things. When hearing about that, everyone's like, Oh, for Christmas, I got this. Or, you know, what did my parents say about money? And then we it starts opening up thoughts and patterns and examples. So it can be memories, but it can also be like, having a discussion with your husband and saying, I don't really remember. Do you remember? Or, you know, like having a conversation with a friend, like, what was the most disappointing Christmas gift you ever got? You know? Or like, yeah, did you ever talk money with your parents and just asking those types of questions? So it could be thoughts, experiences, patterns that we've witnessed with our parents, and just allowing ourselves to process from a place of power of now, not just lived experience from the past. Yeah,
I think that's so profound, and it's, it really is. I'm like having this aha moment with you right now, because it's, it's so fascinating to me how it affects, you know, it's those beliefs, it's those core beliefs that sometimes just bringing the recognition to it, of, oh yeah, someone told me when I was seven, oh, I have one. Actually, I wear perfect a lot. You commented on my shirt. You liked it. I wear pink a lot, because when I was little, I was told that pink is for blonde haired girls and not for brown haired girls. And I really loved pink and but I was like, Oh, well, I guess I don't get to wear that color. So when I got old enough to unravel that a little bit, I was like, Oh, I just am gonna wear the colors that I like and not still listen to a voice from six years old. It's
the same thing. Joy. This, to me, is revolutionary. Like, this is everything, because you're right. Like, we are impressionable as children, and if we see people as a place of authority, we tend to just take what they think is the truth. And that's a great example. That's non money specific, but is exactly related to our money decisions, where it's like, oh my gosh, and how liberating it can be for the little person in you to then be like, Sure, brunettes can wear pink, like, as a brunette myself, I'm like, fist pumping in the air, being like, yeah, we can wear pink. Like, that's something we can get behind, and it can be bigger than ourselves, right? And so I love that example. Like, what is your version of the pink shirt? As it relates to my What did people say you couldn't do? Like, I remember my parents being like, well, you'll never go to university, and that could have either created a ceiling or an opportunity for me. And I was like, I'm gonna be the first one in my family to go to university. And I was, you know, and that's awesome, but that's those minuscule conversations or thought processes can really have a big impact on our money. And so that translates to be when we're being CEOs, like, we have so much already on our plates and so many hats to wear that sometimes we don't give the credit to just being like, do I actually want to charge this or does this seem reasonable? Like, why did I do a three month package? Because someone else probably did it, and I thought I had to do it too. Like, what if I could innovate that? Yeah, and instead of doing one offer, maybe it's two offers, and all of a sudden I can find this one way to work with more people, which I've done many times. So I think it's, it's really about like allowing ourselves to feel free and to play around, like the gamification and money is always in the undercurrent of our decisions, even if we are extraordinarily wealthy, and I just like to make sure that those decisions honor what we desire, instead of honoring the wounds we've held.
I think that's so important to hang on to and to kind of sit with and dissect. I have one more question about the exercise. I want everyone to really be able to, like, take advantage of this amazing exercise opportunity you're giving us. So say that we realize, okay, these are some of the money stories from my childhood, and I've identified those, and is the way to kind of correlate them to what's happening now, just to like you were saying, ask yourself those questions of kind of looking around and Well, how am I allocating money in personal or business or whatever it is, is that the way to bridge those two things together? So
yes, and we can simply be curious about which ones feel like a gut punch to us. So like when you notice the aha moment, like, those are the ones to me, that are showing the breadcrumbs of change. So like some of them, what I believe is that we're continuously working on this over time, like once we awaken to something, it's like we we cannot forget exactly, but have the one or two that stick out to you, and allow them to come up often, allow yourself to be having interactions and go, ooh, hang on, you know? I remember when my dad said this one thing, and now, like, I always have to budget like this, and then ask yourself, like, so the pattern interrupter or the reprogramming is, is that from a place of power or wounding, and what do I want now? And what is my legacy money really desiring, you know, and what's the first step of making change for that? So maybe we, we do need additional work in healing, because some are really deep, and they can't just be something we converse and change, and some we can, right, like, yeah, we have to start analyzing that. So for me, you know, my workaholic wound has been really long, and I thought I'd be done with it, and it just keeps popping up. But instead of just assuming I'm done, I just get curious again when another version of the ravel comes up, and I'm like, oh, right, you know, so one of my biggest wounds with workaholism was having a ton of money and stock options that I never got to enjoy because I was then labeled, you know, sick, and it's a long story, but sometimes when I feel sorry for myself, I think about that money that I that should have come to me, and then I think that doesn't serve me. You know, with all the experiences I have now, and all the gifts that I have now. What, what could I be pouring into my business with a power energy instead of victim energy? And so then I like to clean it up. So I That example is like, curiosity leads us to action steps to build traction, to therefore get us legacy money. So that's what I love to do. Is like, Get clear that money is not just emotional. There's an opportunity for us to clean it up, assess our security, look at reoccurring revenue, and then blast on the opportunity for legacy money, and we can redo those steps often.
That's amazing, and you've already given us so much to work with. And I think you probably will agree with me, but I believe that in this work, because it's all energetic, it's like everything is everything. So what's happening in our relationship space is affecting what's happening in our money space is affecting how we greet the world. And if we're across the board, you know to your point, are we choosing from a place of fear and lack, or are we choosing from a place of abundance and intention, which I think is kind of the underpinning of your work as well?
Yeah, and it's exactly like that's the essence of richness evolving. So when we know better, we get to choose to do better, and that's what evolving means. And so we're taking all of that and not just siloing it into different areas. We're looking at it from a holistic view to say, wow, like I really did so well, honoring my boundaries in this friendship. How can I then take that same power and move it over here into my business and do the same thing with my client? Because we often see those things in silos. And I'm like, come on, you did this amazing thing. What's the transferable energy in your business? Because you did it over here, there's evidence you can do it over here. And I get really, as you can tell, excited about that, because we often think money is just this silo, and we don't want to look at it, or we obsess about it, or some combination in between, but when it's just part and. Parcel with the business, and we realize we have a lot of influence on it. We get our power back from it being an external force and instead a part of our own richness, the journey that we're on, the trail systems that we're building as entrepreneurs.
And I love that there's this opportunity to continue to learn and grow and keep expanding in all the areas, you actually have an opportunity for people that are maybe wanting to get a little bit more engaged with this work. Will you tell us a little bit more about your Trailblazer experience? Yeah,
I would love to. So, as I've been chatting about, like all of us entrepreneurs at different levels have aha moments or things that we're stuck with. And so I love to create year long experiences for entrepreneurs, especially women, because we often feel like we're alone on the journey, and there's some quarters that we're absolutely crushing, and then the next is like, Oh man, this is not awesome. So I love to have four seasons with people and inside the trailblazing experience, we go through things that I've talked about on on this podcast, where it's like, okay, we're having an emotional reaction to money. Or, you know, this revenue doesn't feel strong enough, and I'm feeling blocked because I just, I don't feel secure, you know. Or I had this massive, amazing launch, and I want to know what to do with the you know where to make sure I'm honoring my legacy money. Or, Hey, I see this opportunity for reoccurring revenue, and I want to have more of it. So inside those 12 months, I have a group of us that we go through and we have candid conversations and access to a bunch of trainings that are really strong. They're like the best parts of my last decade, and just have the ability to go through this idea of connection as currency in the Trailblazer experience. So connection is currency, meaning we're not alone. We can borrow the belief of our peers as entrepreneurs. We can talk about the hard things, but we can go on this trail system and earn legacy money that can literally change our life, and that that's something that fires me up, and I've had, you know, different iterations of it, you know, I've called it the revolutionary year in the past, and I've had lots of women through it, and it just creates this incredible change for for women. And you gain friendships because you talk about subject matter that isn't normally talked about. And so if you're interested in that, I highly encourage you to head over to my website, Selena gray.com, but you don't have to come inside and experience with me to do this work, like do the exercises from today, and just get curious about the things you can shift. And I think either way, there's profound change coming your way.
That's incredible. And I will link everything in the show notes so everyone doesn't have to remember Selena gray.com, but it's pretty easy to remember, and it's gray with an A right? Thank you. So that'll be in the show notes for everyone. I'm excited to check out the Trailblazer experience, just because I think it's, I think you're right. I mean, I think we don't always have money conversations, and we, as we're, I guess, the buzz, way to say it, is leveling up. But as we're growing and moving through, whether someone is, I have a client right now that's just wanting to create her own business, all the way to someone who's a very high level, you know, franchised entrepreneur, so to speak. There's always growth happening, and there's always a part a ceiling for us that we don't know. Yes, what a better way than to be in community.
So interesting. You use the word ceiling because one of my core taglines in in this group is, let's have your ceiling become your floor, and we celebrate breaking through ceilings, because when we break through ceilings, it can feel a little wobbly because we're in a new level, and so we always out of the comfort zone. Yeah? So we talk about what that looks like. So how, like, you had no idea, but how fitting? Like always universe moments, right? Yeah,
I love it. Well, you have graciously agreed to do our spirit Speed Round ready of our chat, which I'm pretty excited about it's just four fun and easy questions about you. The first question is, will you share one thing that has really shocked you or was unexpected about your ability to help people grow their abundance?
I realized I became obsessed with giving. So I've always loved to give, but as people do better, I want, like to give more and touch more people, and it actually became a bit of a problem. So like, when I would have masterminds, I have this another thing my teams need to gatekeep. Like I love gifting people and rewarding people, and my team is like, okay, we're way over budget. So the practical side of me is like, yeah, budget, but I'm like, these women have done extraordinarily things, you know, and so then we would blow the budget, or I find the more successful I become, the more I give to random strangers on the street. And how I'm how much I love it. So I know that's a strange answer, but that I'm trusting the first the first one that. Comes up. I just have become obsessed with over giving to the point that sometimes it's a problem.
Selena, there are no strange answers here.
Okay, this is shifting gears a little. If you got to spend a day in the spirit world, you got the full tour over there. You got to spend time with everyone you've ever known who has crossed over. It's almost time to return to your life, and your guide tells you you have one hour left, and you can spend it with anyone on the other side. Who do you choose and why
I'm getting emotional, which is, of course, not shocking, because that's what we sometimes happens when we think of the spirit world. I would meet my grandma for who I'm named after, but never got to meet, and I feel like I know her, and so I would just really love to have that hour
that's amazing. I love that answer that's beautiful. And I feel like you probably do already know her. I think I do. Even though we have these powerful gifts and connections, we have very human lives. What's one quirky thing about you that people might be surprised to learn? I
am extremely clumsy. I am covered in bruises, like I walk into door jams all the time, and like I quickly my daughter, who's nine, plays hockey, and she made a new team, and I know I'm not supposed to embarrass her, but they have this job called mom coach, and it's a mom who helps them work out. And so I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie, and it's six o'clock on a Sunday morning, and the girls are running sprints, and there's not enough girls to run sprints, so I, of course, am gonna run sprints with nine year olds, and I proceed to fall in the concrete and, like completely chew up my hands and face and keep running and roll out of the fall and back up into running. And it was mortifying, but my daughter said it was okay, so, but clumsy. It's just a thing. Like my event in September, like my core clients always say this. They're like, we're gonna bubble wrap you, because the night before I go on stage, I like, break a toe, or I fall really badly, and so it's a running joke in my community, like, Selena needs to be bubble wrapped. That is
fine. You're such a poised speaker when you're doing public speaking. But I'm sure, I'm sure this is a surprising one for a lot of people learn about you. Will you leave us with a pearl of wisdom. What's one piece of advice that you wish you'd had earlier in your understanding of how abundance really works. I
really believe this concept in borrowing the belief until it becomes your own. So abundance feels like this foreign concept. And I really believe that people around us have different forms of abundance that we can borrow and learn from and so when we see someone doing something that feels abundant to you, to just ask them like that comes naturally to you. Tell me what that feels like, you know, and then you start practicing. And so one of my themes in this company is borrow the belief until it becomes your own. And we can do that with strategy, mindset, abundance, anything. And so we don't feel strong enough sometimes to do it on our own, but if we're in a community with people who already have what we desire, we can borrow their belief they have in us, or borrow their intellect until it becomes our own, and we can keep running with it. That's something that I believe as entrepreneurs is vital, and I hope that is a strong way to end
that's perfect. I love that. Well, you have given us so much to work with. I am so grateful for you and for everything we had to do to make this talk happen.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate your time and your wisdom. Thank you for shining your light. Joy.
You are exquisite, and I am so honored to be here, and you've inspired me to go wear pink after this, I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna roll Yes, but I
appreciate you so much. Been grateful to have you. Thank you.
Wow. That hour conversation went so fast. It felt like 20 minutes, I had to keep checking the time to make sure Selena was so gracious to open her schedule to us for this conversation, for the hour, I wanted to make sure we kept on time. So I kept having to check because there was just so much information and I had so many questions. But what was really cool was even the questions I had made that I wanted to take this opportunity to ask Selena, she naturally answered, serendipitously, as you know, often happens here, as part of just what she was saying, she really gave us so much to think about and so much to work with. This is going to be an episode that I am definitely going to personally go back and listen to many, many times. Who is going to try the money timeline? Raise your hand. I'm definitely going to get in there and try that. I would love it for you guys to give your feedback. You don't have to share your timeline and what you wrote and the things from your own life, but I would love it if you would share. You know, I did my time. Line in the comments of wherever you're watching this. And big thank you to Selena gray for her time, her wisdom, for shining her light. And there are so many tips and tools that she gave us about not only money belief, but how to look at our finances, whether it's personal finances, business finances, or the, you know, the business of family, because that's money in and out too. So she is not only this amazing expert CPA and once controller for two international public companies, but now she is really sharing all of this wisdom so beautifully for all of us. So I hope that you are like me and gonna scoop up these golden nuggets from Selena and really take them on and sit with them in your own life. I am, as you guys know, wishing you all abundance of your own so that we have more and more to share, as Selena was saying, so big thank you to Selena gray again, I'll list everything of hers and the website, so make sure to check that out as you're working these tools. Make sure to let us know if you tried the tools and how they worked for you. And I am always so appreciative of you being here and sharing this time and space and learning alongside me in a lot of these conversations. So thanks for being here. I appreciate you so much. Big hugs,
lots of love,
lots of abundance. Bye for now. From inside spirit speakeasy, you.