#85 Your Journey of Wealth Empowerment Starts Here With Alison Brown

“If you’re miserable now when you achieve your goal of becoming a millionaire you’re still going to be you; you will still be miserable.” Alison Brown

Overview of the Episode

Are you a rich woman?

Alison Brown is a wealth empowerment coach and real estate investor who once felt uncomfortable answering this question.

I’m excited to have her today in episode 85 to close the Season 7 of the show. Alison helps women gain confidence and clarity around wealth, creation and investing, and while being a full time, employee, wife, and mom.

She and her husband run a real estate investing business that went from zero in cash-flowing assets to 5 million in five years while working with their job.

In this conversation, Alison shares her journey and why any woman should feel comfortable dealing with money and not abdicating to their husbands or other financial professionals.

Alison purpose is to help women realise that they don’t need to be intimidated about investing and can learn the ropes.

Here’s a snapshot of a few things we talked about

Don’t abdicate and delegate your financial matters to your husband, a financial planner, or your uncle. You can educate yourself and work alongside professionals. It’s your money. You should be in control and get your questions answered.
Alison started working with her husband early on in their marriage with network marketing for the additional revenue stream, but it didn’t work out. Then she saw an opportunity to work together in real estate, and it was the right fit for them.
The couple started to rent their single-family home and moved to a duplex they bought, living on one side and renting out the other side to cover the bills. Once their first home was cash flowing, it covered the mortgage and putting money in our pocket.
They acquired a second property and a third one but got tired of being landlords and dealing with tenants issues and started to look into larger assets. They sold their smaller residential units that had appreciated and bought large assets also for tax efficiency. That’s how they took their portfolio from zero cash flowing assets to 5 million in assets that are cash flowing. These large assets are handled by professional property management which takes the hassle off their hands
On her journey to define her ideal woman avatar, Alison realised her own limiting beliefs regarding her role as a wife. She thought she had to be the supporter working in a regular job, and her husband needed to sort out all the financial matters. Until she read the book Rich Woman by Kim Kiyosaki, which opened her eyes and helped change her mindset
Being a new mum was becoming overwhelming, and she started to resent staying at home looking after the kid whilst the husband was going to events, building up his network and knowledge in the real estate. She felt she was missing out on opportunities and had an open discussion with her partner to work together.
What helped Alison to her partnership with her husband was the ability to take responsibility for her thoughts, sharpening her communication skills and releasing her husband from all kind of expectations. The couple also made a list their limiting beliefs and shared them with each other. This shared introspective journey was extremely beneficial to understand each other
There’s a lot of work to do around mindset, and it might seem, depending on your situation, really hard to start calling yourself a rich woman. There may be resistance, and Alison certainly has experienced a few of them. Look at all the ways that you are rich and blessed now, no matter how big or small and start embodying that.
It’s never too late to start your doing something in life, including building your wealth. Stop saying: I don’t have time, this seems too complicated, etc. and look at where it’s coming from. That’s a thought which can lead to a feeling of anxiousness or discouragement. If that happens, replace that negative thought with a positive one like: “I could manage my time differently, I could choose to do different things with one hour a day”. That will open up your world. If you want to do something take the first step and start doing it: read books, listen to podcasts, find some free resources
Alison teaches women to stay curious, and find out ways to make their money work and bring in other experts too

Fire Questions and Answers

When you travel, do you select your flight by the cheapest flights or by the duration?

Duration.

If you had just one laptop and a hundred dollars to start making money today, what would you be doing?

I would probably circle back to my day trader friend; she does day trading, which is like different than playing the stock market for long-term. You’re in and out in like seconds. So I would put all the hundred dollars in the transaction, pull them out, put them back in, pull them out.

What is financial freedom for you?

Financial freedom, for me, is synonymous with time freedom and time freedom is going to come when we have multiple streams of income coming in, and we get to have much more choice.

What is your definition of meaningful work and meaningful life?

Meaningful work and meaningful life is something that profoundly resonates, with who you are, who you’re becoming and the people you can help most. The people that you get goosebumps or chills or emotional about helping, that’s where your meaningful work is, the things that hit you in the stomach or hit you in the heart, wherever you feel those things, that’s when you know you’re onto something.

The last piece of guidance to do more meaningful work and live a meaningful life.

I shared this quote the other day on my Facebook, and it fostered some good discussion. And one of my favourite quotes I’ve been mulling over for years is: comparison is a thief of joy.

You’re going to get distracted and your energy is going to go to terrible places if you’re always looking at what other people are doing.

Quotes by Alison Brown

If you’re miserable now when you achieve your goal of becoming a millionaire or starting your business or whatever, you’re still going to be you, when you get there; you will still be miserable.
If you’re saying: I don’t have time, or this seems too complicated or whatever your reason is, look at where that’s coming from. That’s a thought.
Depending on your situation, it can be really hard to start calling yourself a rich woman. Ask yourself: what could I start thinking that would be believable?

Action points

What is your key takeaway from this episode? What are you committed to doing today to find more meaning in your work and live a more meaningful life? Share your thoughts on my Facebook page.

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