Brenda St Louis | Managing Your Money With Financial Therapy

In this episode, I talk to Financial Therapist Brenda St. Louis. She has an interesting background and started out in Clown School in Vancouver before launching her career.  We talk about the stigma behind finances, money and income and how a Financial Therapist can break through those issues so you can earn more money and enjoy a powerful, fulfilling life. She thought me about the different archetypes and how to use them to my advantage.

About Brenda: 

Money Coaching explores the practical elements around money. It’s about financial literacy, building systems that allow your money to work for you, and understanding how to leverage the money you make so that you can have a life that you love. Brenda work with bank accounts, lines of credit, saving, spending, investing and more.

Financial Therapy unpacks the emotional inheritances you adopted from your family. Here, we explore the unconscious behaviour that motivates you with money, unlock limiting beliefs around money and self-worth, and begin to heal any trauma that may have prevented you from interacting with money in a healthy way. Brenda helps you learn and practice strategies to navigate your unique money personality more skillfully.

Links: 

https://rewireyourlife.teachable.com/p/turningdreamsintoreality

The publishing for profit podcast is brought to you by Ghostwriters and Co. Earn more money by publishing better content and learn how do we increase your thought leadership? So you can build your brand head over to ghostwritersandco.com for more information that’s ghostwritersandco.com. And now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Joel: Hello, and welcome to the publishing for profit podcast. This is your host Joel Mark Harris. This episode is brought to you by Leap Zone Strategies. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m going through. Through their course built to rock. And it’s a fantastic course. I’ve talked about it before on this podcast, but what I really like about this course is it’s not just a bunch of videos, not a bunch of modules.

You actually get real-life coaching sessions at a very affordable price, so highly recommend it. I will leave a link to the Built to Rock program in the description in the show notes. and I highly recommend you check it out this week. We are interviewing Brenda St. Louis, who is a financial therapist.

And if you haven’t heard about financial therapy before you are not alone, because I have not heard about it. Either. So, we talk about what financial therapy is, how you can better relate to money. And she became a financial therapist when she went to clown school. Yes. You heard me right. Clown school.

She went to clown school and then she got the epiphany to become a financial therapist. So it’s a very interesting conversation we have with Brenda. We talk a lot about different subjects. We talked about how she, you know, obviously how she got into financial therapy, how you can better relate to money. We talked about cryptocurrency and where we see money going in the future and whether cryptocurrency is going to be a thing of the future, or there’s going to be a new thing.

so very in-depth conversation around money. and I think everybody can learn something from this episode and how they can better improve their relationship to money and how they can especially as an entrepreneur, how you can better, Relate to money and how that can improve your business.

So without further ado, here is Brenda St. Louis, Brenda, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Brenda: I’m great. It’s so good to be here.

Joel: Awesome. I want to start off because I’ve never heard the term financial therapy before. So can you give us a little bit of a rundown, what that is and what you do?

Brenda: absolutely. I think financial therapy is kind of the new, it’s a new modality it’s been around for maybe about 10 years, but there are very few of us and it is. Money is kind of one of the most under-explored energies, I believe. And there’s a lot of emotional stuff connected to money. And what I’ve noticed over the years of working with clients is if they see a financial therapist, a financial advisor, or they go to their bank, or everyone will give them the logical ways of dealing with money.

If you don’t deal with the emotional stuff around money, you can’t take action and people get paralyzed or they feel ill-equipped, or they feel unintelligent around money. So the work that I do is about strengthening the emotional literacy that we have at the same time as the financial literacy so that you can store it and lead your money with your values, with your, what really matters to you and with confidence.

Joel: And I know you have a very interesting background. you know, I thought I had an interesting background, but your background trumps, I think pretty much all backgrounds that I’ve heard of and all the types of people I’ve had on the podcast. I think yours is by far one of the more interesting ones. So can you talk a little bit about your background and how you got into Money therapy and where you are today?

Brenda: Absolutely. And it’s interesting because it all makes sense to me. When I look back on all the places that I have, developed in my career, as a kid, I was like the class clown.

I was dyslexic, and I didn’t have that ability to understand numbers that everyone thinks that you’re supposed to when you’re a financial person. so I just thought I wasn’t very good at it. And so I ended up kind of studying creative writing and English and religious studies and all of those, more of the social arts in a lot of ways.

And for 25 years, I have been an RMT or a massage therapist. And eight of those years, I left Canada and lived in Asia T com a voice actor.  I was a voice actor on television, on radio and doing commercials to animation, dubbing to all of that. During that time I became a physician. So at, in the stage of helping people step into their power and their potency.

I travelled all over the world, teaching people how to get out of judgment, how to recognize how potent they actually are and to, you know, you know, remove themselves from a lot of the main points of view that don’t allow us to step into what we’re good at or what we’re great at, or the belief that we are.

And during that time, I worked for an organization and people would pay me a lot of money. Like I travelled all over Europe and Australia, New Zealand, the States. And I ended up landing in Canada, which I’m from, but that’s where I ended up landing. And I’ve had please people paying me a lot of money to become conscious or to feel good or to be, feel, empowered.

And then they’d have all this debt after, and I’d be something missing with the relationship with money and the relationship with our body and our soul and our spirit. So during that time, there’s a longer story around this Joel. So I’m going to try to make it a little more this name, but during that time I went to clown school.

And clown school was probably one of the most pivotal moments in my life. And it has wanting to go to clown. School has followed me throughout my entire life, like from grade eight, actually, but I knew there was a clown school in Vancouver, Canada, and that’s where I ended up and I ended a relationship and I was like broken hearted and I just wanted to be happy.

Right. So I had money to take time off because I had come to Canada to finish my book and I decided that I would have enough money that I didn’t have to work for a year. I know I’m lucky. Not everyone can do that, but I was blessed that way. And, during that time I went to clown school and in one of the workshops that my teacher is really pivotal.

It’s like a chip Chanco clown school where there’s like, Shamonic work and mass work and things like that. Yeah. So I did this mask and I got this. You’re supposed to have this pound of clay in front of you and you put a mask on and the teacher whisper something into your ear and you make a mask.

You’re making you make eight of them. You Paper Pache them, you paint them, you put them on, you dress them. And the combination of all those are your clown. But this first mask, I just kept getting this sentence in my head. Over and over and over again that you are here to transform the consciousness of money so that it’s a conduit for love and connection.

And I’m like why I have $40,000 in debt. Like I am supposed to do that. But it was so clear and it came so strongly to me that I was like, okay. So I took like 10 books out of the library a week and I studied everything. I can get my hands on with money. And over the last 13 years, I’ve developed what I have now, which is a really empowered, powerful transformational platform to really step into who we are in the world in relationship to money so that we can steward the earth, our communities, our bodies.

And ourselves, because I feel like money is a way that connects everything on the planet. So when I follow the breadcrumbs from my life, this totally makes sense that I’m a financial therapist, but it is a convoluted way to get here there. Right?

Joel: Yeah, because I mean, if I think of finances, probably the opposite thing I can think of is clown school. It’s interesting that you made the connection. That’s super cool. what are, because I want to talk about clown school seems so interesting to me. So what’s, I mean, I want to spend a little bit of time. Well, not too much, but what, like, what did you learn in clown school and what did you take away that maybe you can, use as a financial therapist?

Brenda: Oh my God. I think that everyone should go to clown school. It’s like, it’s like kindergarten for, people that are on the adventure of discovering who they are. One of the things that you learn in clown school is when you’re on stage, the way that you captivate an audience is that when your audience reacts to what you’re doing, you have to let them know that, you know, they reacted.

And then you know, that they know that you know, that they know that, you know, so it’s the ultimate in connection. Right. And it’s such a deep connection and you’re playing it so dynamically with so much presence constantly when you’re on stage or when you’re doing anything that that skill can be used in therapeutic processes with clients, it could be used when you’re giving a Ted talk.

You can be used when you’re on stage, working with a large audience. even in the zoom room, when you’re reading the energy of multiple people in a zoom room, you have to have the skill of really tapping into everything. So I would say that for me, clown school was about being Uber present. Hm.

Joel: Wow. That’s amazing.

Brenda: Yeah. And I think that’s a skill that you can use. In any area of your life, but I have focused it on working with money because I don’t know about you, but when people start talking about money, they go into this fog. They disassociate they’re not present. They don’t know where their body is in space.

They need to eat or buy or distract themselves from stuff. Money can bring up so many things that make us not present.

Joel: Yeah. So I guess that’s my next question because when for me, whenever I think about money or talk about money, the primary emotion is fear is I’m scared to bill my clients. I’m scared to remind them.

I’m scared to look at my credit card sometimes. You know? So I think fear is a primary emotion around money. What other emotions do you see? And how do you work through them?

Brenda: Well, thank you for sharing that because you’re not alone there. And I think that’s one of the big things about our money staff is we feel like we’re all alone in it.

You know, when we have to do it all alone and we have these feelings and we can’t talk about it. So a lot of the emotions that come up around that could be shamed. You know, shame that you’re not asking for what you’re worth, shame that you have our time articulating it, shame that you’re not doing as well as you think you should.

And if someone has a high net worth the shame that they might get. Judged because they have too much money or that they don’t know what to do with all the money they have. You know, it’s never just about scarcity because scarcity could be that place where I’m just paying the bills and I’m living paycheck to paycheck and I don’t know what’s coming next.

and that could be that. That’s can be really fear-based right. Because you’re like, I don’t have any foundation to stand on. So if something happened, especially as an entrepreneur and I couldn’t bring in money, how am I going to feed my family? How am I going to pay my rent? Right. So there’s some real fear there, right.

In that place. And then there’s this scarcity of having a lot of money, but hoarding it, holding it because you feel like what if I don’t get more? Right. So there’s this real resistance to allowing the energy to flow that’s with money. So, yeah. I mean, it’s a, it’s a big question of what emotions show up around money, because we are also unique and different and we inherit the patterns that our parents have had with money, and then we resist them.

And so they uniquely show up differently. Or we, we, we align and agree with them and we’d become just like our parents. Or we have like a, like, a mutation of both of them, both of our parents. And then we create our unique way of being with money. And if we don’t explore it, it becomes this unconscious behavior that is repeating itself over and over again.

And then if you get married or not married, or you have kids, or you have nephews or people that are in your life, you’re going to pass that on. Right. So it’s just this perpetual cycle of unconsciousness in a lot of ways. So I would say fear, shame, guilt. Those three are really big ones. there’s a lot of anger.

There could be a lot of anger hiding, hoarding, you know, there’s lots of behaviours that can show up around money too.

Joel: And so then how do you come in and work with those emotions and get people past it or see how they can. Make their lives better using money rather than having, having it as a hindrance.

Brenda: So over the last 13 years, I have practiced a lot of different ways and lots of it has worked and some of it hasn’t. So I I’d say the last three years, I really figured out the secret ingredient to really, shifting your relationship permanently with money. And I’m going to talk about this one ingredient first, before I go into how I work with people.

And this one is to remove the shame and taboo. And you have to do that with another. You have to do that with a community of your peers. It’s not with a therapist because you’re still hiding when it’s just you and the therapist. Right. But when you’re being seen by people that are also committed to creating a healthy relationship with money and you’re being accountable to them, it permanently changes how we navigate our money situation in the world.

And it takes the taboo. It takes the shame, it takes all the secretness out of it. And it’s like airing your laundry, you know, so that it can, they can drive, you know, they’re clean laundry, hopefully, but, and this. This journey is multifaceted. So I often say to people that I work in four different ways.

With people. The first one’s mindset, my whole program is called rewire is rewiring your wealth, rewire your money, genius, rewire your future and rewire your world. So I do a lot of different rewires and a hypnotherapist. I work with the subconscious so that we’re, it’s not so hard, right? Like if you’re like, I often say your subconscious, like 80%.

Of the, of, of who you are and 20% is your conscious mind. So if 80% of your subconscious is going in one direction and 20% is going in the other who is going to win, you know, like it’s like, you’re battling, you get like, you’re pulling yourself into this future. You think you want, but your subconscious is not on board.

So let’s just not do the hard work. Let’s get down into the subconscious and get it going in the right direction. So that’s what the hypnotherapy is about. And that’s about, doing the tracks. So we get into trans, we get into the alpha and theta brainwaves, where most of the things that we limit ourselves were birthed in and we just undo them so that we get you in the right.

Track. And so in that regard, we also have to look at your story cause there’s a lot of patterns that we have. You know, so we do a real deep dive into what you inherited from your parents and all of that stuff. So therapy, that’s why it’s financial therapy. So we’re doing therapy. So mindset is key and really being aware, fear of the internal negative talk that shows up the second one is financial literacy. And I don’t know about you, Joel, but I was not taught about money when I was a kid.

Joel: Zero.

Brenda: I know it seems ridiculous that kids are not taught it. But I do want to say one thing that when I was a kid, my parents had us go with the financial advisors and we sat. So we knew about compound interest and we knew that if we kept putting money away, it would grow.

But my brother did. He stayed with them. And he’s a bit of an OCD person. My sister and I are impulse-driven. We’re in the money, archetype, parallel we’re fools. So we spent it all and travelled the world. Right. So even if your parents tell you how to do it, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will do it. So, there’s more.

More than just financial literacy that will change our behaviours. But financial literacy is key and I’ve partnered with the top financial literacy schools in North America, the enriched Academy. And they have an amazing, easy way of learning about financial literacy in an easy way that it’s fun. Like they have the dad jokes and the like, you know, their videos and it’s like, it’s not so heavy duty and dry.

so that’s really important. And then the third piece is this money ecosystem. So this is the systems, you know, money can be really complicated and it’s not actually complicated, but the whole industry makes it sound like it’s so complicated with all the jargon and the language. And, and even when you go to a bank, they charge you all this stuff.

And you think that you just have to pay for that. So we don’t know. We just say yes. Okay. You know, so what we do is we create a system and we educate you on where your money’s going. Any of the leaky money, we go into your finances and look at it and clean it up and set up a system so that if you won the lottery, you know what to do.

If you lost your job and what you do, what to do. So it’s like really, but it’s so powerful to have a good money ecosystem. And then the fourth piece is what I talked about was community and connection. And that’s really about being seen in a group being accountable and being heard throughout the all. So that’s how I work with clients.

Joel: That’s amazing. I think that’s, those are the four very crucial pieces for sure. I want to delve into, you mentioned, you know, parents, and I think this is an important aspect because I know my financial literacy, the way I spend money is directly related to how my parents spend money. Do you. I think that’s always the case that you learn those behaviours from your parents, or do you learn them in other ways as well?

Brenda: Yes. And yes, I would say, you know, like I think most of our behaviours, our points of view and our limitations, our birth between the ages of one and 12. That’s when our patterns are developed in our brain. So if you’re witnessing your parents, be a certain way about money, you’re going to mirror that it’ll be framed in your body, but you also might make a decision. That I don’t want to be like that. Okay. So you could do this, like, like what’s a good example. Like, do you have an example how you are with money that’s related to how parents are?

Joel: I think spend, like, not, Not worth worrying, but not worrying if that makes sense. So, yeah, I guess being a little bit more impulse, like my parents were impulsive, they didn’t track money.

and so I definitely learned that behaviour of not being so careful with money with spending it a little bit more freely than I should sometimes. so yeah, I think that’s pro that’s probably the example I would give.

Brenda: So the way we do one thing is often how we do everything. So we can look at it with money, right?

Like, so if your parents, you know, don’t pay attention to like say money or stuff like that, they also might not pay attention to other things. You know what I mean? Like whether it’s, Oh, kids need new shoes or I don’t know, like whatever, or they like those kinds of things, their behaviour that you’ll mirror in other parts of your life.

Like you might not pay attention that bottle has been sitting on the counter for three weeks and it needs to be put under the sink, right? Like we have different ways that we do that. So that’s a behaviour that will spill off into money. And when it causes a problem, then you want to that’s when we look at it and deal with it, if it’s not a big deal, then we never actually look at it.

Right. So if your parents both made pretty good money and it didn’t matter if they were impulsive, they didn’t, you know, that kind of thing. They may not have the greatest retirement plan, but they didn’t feel the pain until they were much older than they may not ever choose to change it. Right. So in that regard, it’s like, that’s how we.

Kind of mirror our parents. Now, when I talk about how, parents inform us about how our emotional state is around money and it rarely has anything to do with, they say it has everything to do what you pick up energetically with them, so that you had described to him, like I’m not tracking and not knowing it’s like that avoidance.

Behavior, but there’s a worry underneath. There’s like a, like, Ugh, but I don’t want to look at it. Right. Okay. This might not work, but I don’t want to look at it. This is what I deem the innocent archetype. And it’s the very first archetype that shows up with people and every kid is supposed to be an innocent.

Like you’re not supposed as a kid. You’re not supposed to worry about having a food over your food on the table or shelter. Like your parents are supposed to take care of that. Right. But when you get kicked out of the house or you have to get your job, or you go somewhere and like you’re, you’re, you’re starting your life.

You’re supposed to graduate from being an innocent too, which I consider a warrior or a wizard or a wise elder, right. Or a caregiver. There’s just different archetypes that we are growing more grown-up. Some people don’t, they stay in innocent and like the bills come in and they just shove them in the drawer and they don’t want to look at them and they say, I’m terrible with money.

I’m no good with money. and so this is, this is a pattern that can happen when you have the innocent, that hasn’t matured yet. Right. So that, that’s one thing that can happen. Does that answer your question?

Joel: Yeah. can you, so yeah, you talked a little bit about the archetypes. Can you tell us the different types and what they represent?

Brenda: So the archetypes are eight there’s usually there’s I have nine money archetypes, but I, kind of evolve them from my mentor Deborah Price that has run the money. It’s the certified money Institute coaching Institute in California. But I change them a bit because of the work that I’ve been doing over the years, that it, there was some things that needed some evolution around it.

And they’re young in base. So any psychology background and study that you have we’ll, we’ll highlight these in different ways, but there’s like 28 money archetypes, I think out there, but I’ve just used nine in relation to money. And these archetypes I’ve positioned on what I call the hero’s journey with money.

Because Joseph Campbell talks about how there’s a hero’s journey and all of the stories and movies like Star Trek or Star Wars, the wizard of Oz, they all have this art, the hero’s journey, and there’s certain key things that happen along the way. And if we can look at our journey in our life as a hero’s journey, then it’s more empowering.

I think like we learn things when we get. In the belly of the whale or the dark night of the soul, or when people turn against us. And like we have mentors show up in our life. There’s just these pivotal places in it. So I fashioned them that these archetypes show up along the hero’s journey. So each one of you has maybe three to six of them.

Along the way you may not have all of them. You may have some of them, but during your life, like when you’re a teenager too, when you start your work too, like having some failures in your life, you’re going to deal with them all in different ways. So the innocent is the first one and the orphan is the other one.

And the orphan is the one. When you have maybe an abusive family or you’ve been betrayed by elders or people that haven’t supported you, you just don’t have a trust. That you’re going to be taken care of. Right. So behaviours show up like you blame the world for all of your troubles. you might be really manipulative.

You might be really disassociated with your body because of you. You haven’t felt safe, you know, that kind of thing. As you evolve, you turn into the warrior, which means you get things done, you know, where you’re going, you’re going to teach yourself how to do it. And that’s the archetype that we really start to strengthen as we’re working with your money relationship.

And then the wizard, the wizard is the, the one that manifests. like, I know I had a really strong wizard where like, I can magically manifest stuff if I think about it. Right. I didn’t have any systems to capture it, but money would come in. So the wizard is another one in that is the archetype that trust that the universe has your back.

They don’t have scarcity. There’s a lot of intuition. In the wizard. Sometimes the fool will show up and that’s impulsive, undisciplined, irresponsible. They’re the ones that are gamblers. They like to jump out of the airplane without knowing they have a parachute, you know, they roll the dice more than any other architects, so they might win more, but they lose just as bad.

The artist believes that money is the root of all evil. They have a hard time asking for what they’re worth. They might also have a hard time sending out invoices and asking for money. So there’s a real weird kind of wonky relationship with money. The tyrant is the one that is the hoarder. It’s like, there’s never enough.

They feel like they are never enough and they just have to take everything. Or they might be the ones that track everything on the Excel sheet, just like, make sure everything’s balanced. And they get the receipts from the people in the family and they partition it with the money. So it’s really rigid.

And there’s a lot of fear in that archetype. And then there’s the wise elder. Oh, no, there’s the caregiver. The wise elder I’ll talk about at the end, the caregiver is the one that, you know, they get their value from taking care of people, you know, so they’ll surround themselves with a lot of innocence or tools that just need to be rescued in a lot of ways and orphans as well.

And they get their love. They hopefully feel like they get loved by what they give. And as you’re a healthy caregiver, then you, you, you recognize that you’re not going to give to everyone. You need to give to the right people. And as a caregiver, you, some people just come in as a caregiver. You’re never going to get over it.

It’s who you are. And then we have the wise elder, and this is the one that I’ve added to the mix. And that’s the one that. Is going to tell a new story. It’s the one that knows how to shop environmentally knows that the impact that they use with their money is going to affect the planet and the communities they’re aligned with their values.

And they’re not going to get sold to by propaganda or marketing. So they’re a much more balanced and a full-bodied relationship with money. So there’s a, in short, the money.

Joel: Was it easy or hard, to shift architects from like, if, if, if you’re like the fool and then you will say, I want to be the wise elder, how difficult is it to change your behaviour to become the wise elder?

Brenda: Well, you’ll probably always have the fool in you, you know, cause the four likes change and newness then and back. So there’s a lot of gifts in the fool. The fool will take a risk and they’re not. So fear-based. So those are really beautiful qualities to have when you’re going on the journey. But what is missing in the fall is doing your due diligence and your research and taking the time and sitting in meditation and tapping into your intuition.

So those are the practices. If you have a very strong pool that you need to use, if you’re going to step into the wise elder.

Joel: So one of the thing that strikes me and is like when you go into a relationship with somebody else, right. You’re combining your financial resources, but as we’ve talked about, often you come at finance finances a different way, and you have different experiences with finances.

So what are some strategies you can use with your significant other. To move forward in an impactful way where you’re not. Cause I mean, obviously finances is I think the biggest stress in a relationship and it’s why often relationships don’t work. So what are some strategies you can use to move forward powerfully and not ha not be fighting over money all the time.

Brenda: So one of the most important things is to understand that you are not your partner and you do not have the same history as them. And to really understand why they are reacting the way they are. So when we do, when I do work with couples, we’ll go through their money. Bio we’ll get their story and what archetype is leading.

So for example, say you have a. I’ll do a heterosexual couple because it seems to be the ones most people relate with, but like say the, the man is the one that brings in the money and takes care of everything and dishes out the money to the kids and the wife and everything. And the wife says I’m not good with money.

I never look at money. I never do. Like, I don’t know the numbers, like that’s kind of a thing. So he has this weight of having to be so. In charge and, and no in the know of everything. And she gets a free ride in his eyes right. In her eyes. She’s like, I have no control like I’m not. I’m not in control.

I don’t understand anything. And if he was sick, I would be lost. So that innocent, her innocent. If the carpet gets pulled out from underneath her and something happens to him, she’s lost. So there’s this real anxiety here. So there could be this power differential. So when we go into the man. Well, this has happened to the clients of mine before, where he had to go to work on a farm at a really young age.

He never got to play. He never got to take care of things. He never got anyone to take care of him. He was taking care of everyone all the time and his work, he got paid at five years old for the work he did on the farm. So everything that he did was related to money. So his incent never got nurtured and he could never relapse.

She was innocent. Her whole life. Right. So when she could see, Oh, he just wants to be taken care of, and we’d start to have some compassion for the varying architects that show up for each other. It’s so much easier to have more conversations because you have a framework that you can refer to and. That’s one key thing.

And I mean, that’s really extravagantly different. Not every couple is that dynamically different? Because especially now we all, both, there’s usually double incomes and a family. Like we’re, we’re leading in different ways that you want to have regular money dates. I call it your date with your digits.

And if you could have it every week, that would be great. And so we all, we both look at the finances, we see what we need. I’ve been spending and what’s happening and have some dialogue around it and creating a framework where there’s no blame. There’s no shame, there’s no anything. And that sometimes takes a time, especially in a relationship where you’ve built up resentment over time.

You do need to do some healing so that you’re not throwing arrows at each other. When you’re doing the money talk. So it’s just like I was saying, money is one of the most under-explored, under talked about energies in relationships, or even in the world that, you got to start from square one. It’s not like a quick little recipe of how to do it.

Reading some books would be a really good idea together taking my course together.

Joel: We’ll put, all your, the course in your, in the show notes as well. So people have a link to that as well. so. With entrepreneurs that they have a S you know, they have a certain, I guess, modality. And then you have, I call them nine to fibres or steady income jobs. Do you see a difference in how they approach money?

Brenda: Absolutely. First entrepreneurs are really happy with risk. They can take risks and they know they have to right. So it’s almost like a lot of times entrepreneurs fly without, foundation underneath them until they can build it up when you’re employed you’re you can just rely on that paycheck.

Right? You don’t have to worry about it. So that is key. That is a big piece. It’s a different kind of mindset. And, when you talk to people that are nine to find, versus I got, I have no idea how you guys could do that. You know, that would terrify me. And then you get an entrepreneur saying I could never have a boss.

I can never have to answer to anyone. Right. So they’re totally two different personalities. Yeah. So when we’re doing work with money, similar energies can come up. But for different reasons, You know, so I’m a nine to five or per for instance, might say, I don’t know why I have no money at the end of the month.

You know, I’m just living beyond my means. Same thing can happen with an entrepreneur. You know, like I had a really good month this month. So I spent it all because I’ve been not spending for three or four months. Right. So it’s the same cycle, but for a different reason,

Joel: Yeah. With entrepreneurship, you keep hearing that cash flow is cash is king. It’s about more about cash flow than anything else and money in the bank. Then how much you’re earning. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of cash flow and where you see it in financial literacy?

Brenda: So of course cash flow is very important. If you don’t have cash flow, then how are you doing it?

Absolutely. But systems, I think are more important. You do need cash flow or as you can’t support the systems of course, but, and you don’t want him to be living off of the savings to run a company because then you’re really not running a company. You’re just having a hobby that’s paid for basically. So cash flow is really, really, really important, but I also think systems are important because.

If you’re a real estate agent, if you’re a contract worker or whatever, there’s this feast or famine energy that happens in entrepreneurship for a lot of people that haven’t developed systems and structure and continuity in their business. So when I’m working with someone, if they’re a new solopreneur, oftentimes they’re living out of their business account or their personal account, they haven’t created.

Two entities where there’s your personal, there’s your, your business. And that is really, really, really important because you want your business to support you. If you’re, if you’re creating your, your business out of your personal, then you are supporting your business, but even energetically separating them.

And even if the money goes into the account and comes out equally, because. That’s how it is because it’s, it’s not so fluid just yet. You’re still treating it as a business and it has the capacity to support you and grow over time. So structure and system are really, really important to creating a successful business.

Joel: We talked about financial literacy in school. Can you talk a little bit about what sort of education you’d like? Young people to have around money.

Brenda: Well, I think it’s, it has to do with a little bit about who you are and the structure, because what happens? Young people, especially teenagers. We have a lot, they have a lot of, hormonal, Undeveloped brain.

Decision-making like, decision-making when you’re young is I want to take a risk. I want to leap, I want to try stuff. And that’s how we learn who we are. Right. So as a teenager, you’re going to do things that are stupid. Like that’s the way it works. Right. That’s how we learn. And oftentimes that’s when money suffers.

And then when you have teenagers that are risk-averse and they save and they do all that stuff, they’re good with money. Right. And they get rewarded and they’re like, Oh my God, that like 16-year-old, he’s in the stock market. And he’s doing all of this stuff. Not everyone is created the same. And I think that’s what happens when we do go to school and we learn financial literacy.

We don’t address. Emotional literacy on how we’re going to relate with money. Because when we spend money, we get an endorphin release or a dopey and opium hit, or we get a cortisol reaction because we don’t want to get rid of our money and it’s stressful. Right? So every kid is going to have a different reaction to it and to understand the neurophysiology or what we call neuro finance in the brain to understand what it’s triggering for you.

And I think that is more important than actual financial literacy, like, cause like, as I was saying, when I was growing up, I had some level of financial literacy, but it didn’t change my choices, you know? Cause I just wanted what I want.

Joel: I guess short of working with somebody like yourself, how do you, how can, can you change how you relate to money emotionally or was that.

No something that you need, somebody like an outside source to help you with.

Brenda: I think we can, and we’re all capable of doing stuff that can change and transform ourselves. We just need more education. I think knowledge is the first step. Action is next. And transformation is third. Transformation doesn’t happen without knowledge.

So as we start to educate ourselves and understand the terrain, then we can make better choices. So I think that that is really, really important. I think that money has been so secretive and so taboo and so private for so long that it’s hard to do it on your own, you know, because like you can’t, I don’t know about you, but like I will have conversations.

Like I come into a party, someone says I’m a financial therapist. People don’t talk to me or they’ll go, Oh, so you do this and then this and this. So they tell me what I do. I’m like, no, but they won’t ask. Right. Cause it’s scary.

Joel: Just lead with the clown school should be good.

Brenda: I went to clown school. And I became a financial therapist because I went to clowns.

Joel: There you go. I bet you, I bet you it’d be the toast of the party then.

Brenda: So in that, in that regard, I think that you know, we don’t have to do it alone. And I think the biggest thing for transformation is to be with others that are doing it too, you know, and if we constantly think I’m going to figure this out all by myself, you can, but you might miss some stuff.

Joel: Yeah. I think that’s super important that you don’t have to do it alone and you’re not alone. And there’s other people in the same situation because we often feel like, you know, yeah. Especially like with my, with again, around fear of money, that’s no one can help us or I’m too embarrassed as you said.

Right. So having that awareness, I think is super key.

Brenda: Yeah,

Joel: I want to get a little bit, philosophical with you if I’m name and, this is the conversation have been having with some of my friends, you know, especially with the rise of cryptocurrency. People are saying that money is less made up.

Thing that doesn’t really matter. And I think too, with here in Canada, because we’re, we’re spending so much and we’re getting in debt as a country, that, but people don’t seem to be concerned about that. Some of them, I should say, because I call it doesn’t really matter because money is not really it’s, it’s something made up and it’s not an actual finite thing.

Can you talk a little bit about your beliefs around obviously money is not tied to the gold standard anymore. So is it really just a concept that we use as a society to help us run better? Or is that, should we, I guess be concerned about that and as a country and where things are heading, I know that’s a huge question.

So you can take what you want and answer what you want and just leave the rest.

Brenda: Well it’s a great conversation and it’s really an important conversation because I think that it also speaks to the fact that we don’t really know what money is. Most people don’t know what money is. And when a lot of the work that I do is about, you know, creating a currency that honours the planet, our communities and ourselves.

And right now, it is one of the most toxic systems on the planet. You know, the stock market is rounding by the top 1%, maybe eight people basically run the entire stock market. So any decision that’s going to be made financially is in this upper echelon that we don’t have any control over. Although 80% of the stock market is held by most of the little people too.

Okay. So in that regard, we still have a lot of power. We’re just really segmented in it. So when we think about money is not real, I mean, we can go into the explanation of OCR currency that it’s come off the gold standard, and it doesn’t have the same, measurable assets other than what we decide it to be.

and it’s been used to run the country, but it’s also been used to create a very, very wide. Haves and have-nots, and that, that, is going to continue, I guess, not like the way the system is developed. It’s not going to correct itself. So a lot of people that save cryptocurrency is the way to go because it’s decentralized and no one has the power over it.

And I think that the libertarian movement around money and getting out of the toxic capitalism and all of that stuff is, is a really interesting conversation. And I could go there for days with you. and I have a very interesting point of view of how I would like and see a currency that was in strictly linked to the resources on the planet that we all opted into.

So nothing could get created or destroyed that didn’t affect the planet. That we weren’t aware of the effects that it had on the planet and our communities. I imagine a currency like that showing up, which would be very sustainable and it would create connection rather than disconnection because I think money.

Right now touches every single person on this planet. Even if they’re in the middle, off the grid, they still are affected by it on some level. So I think if we can change the consciousness of money in a way we can change how we are interconnected in Intercom and 10 interdependent on the planet. I know it’s a utopia idea, but I’m still holding it up there.

So in to answer your question is money real. it’s as real as we believe it to be, you know, and it’s a consensus reality and everyone on the planet believes it’s real. So it’s real right. And we create value with it. And when we put value on it, then it has power. It has power for us and against us. So I think that.

As a philosophical conversation. My question would be, can we move into a new alternative? Is it possible to shift 9 billion? Like how many pills people are on the planet? Like,

Joel: 9 billion, 900 something around there?

Brenda: Yeah. Yeah. Can we shift 9 billion people’s perspectives of what is valuable? Right. I don’t know, I don’t have an

Joel: answer.

So do you, do you think cryptocurrency is kind of the wave of the future? Is that where money is heading or do you think we will always be tied to if yet currency?

Brenda: I believe that we could create a new currency that is based on crypto because the structure of the blockchain is pretty brilliant. With this transparent ledger system and the way it’s structured like if you think of how Ethereum is structured and how you can build your own currency out of Ethereum, I don’t know if you know a lot about crypto.

Joel: I know. Yeah. I know a fair amount of writing for a lot of publications dealing with cryptocurrency and blockchain. Yeah.

Brenda: So blockchain is like a beautiful technology that I think can be harnessed in a way that’s pretty powerful. I do believe that data ism is the new religion and as more and more data gets collected on the planet, it’s going to rule in a lot of ways.

And as we kind of move passively away from it and hide from it. Then we are the effect of it. So I think that we need to get ahead of it and. What I am working on and I have a think tank of some really big thinkers. And I’m, it’s just at the beginning of it right now is imagining a currency. That’s a reciprocal currency that has a blockchain structure.

So it could be Bitcoin or a new Ethereum based coin that is connected to the data on the planet. We can quantify. AI can quantify every cell on this planet. If we give it the directive. So, if they could quantify how many fish are in the ocean, how many oxygen molecules are in the atmosphere to how much minerals are in the earth?

Like we have the technology to do that. And that data was collected. And even the data of how much food is available in a community for people so that there’s no food waste to the Freon. That’s really released in the atmosphere with the air. Conditioning’s like, you know, like. All of that data. We could have it collected in one place.

I know it’s big but if a lot of people got into it, just like, COVID like no one ever thought that they could do what they’ve done when there is a global pandemic. But if we all come together, there’s lots of things that we could do. And. That data was connected to the cryptocurrency. And we had an opt-in, we opt-in into that currency and we had exchanges and creations and distribution and, and developments and innovations within that model.

I think that that could be a heck of a lot more sustainable, but what it does is it takes away the power over and our primitive brains are. Constantly getting the hit of power and our primitive brains want, want more. Right? We haven’t cultivated an evolution of our brain. We evolve technology, we evolve all these things, but we don’t evolve our private primitive brain.

So I think that as a human race if we make our objective to not go into fear-based decisions, But go into community interdependent decisions that would change. But I don’t think that the powers that be on the planet right now will want that. So I think that the present currency that’s, there will probably stay for very, very long time until there’s a critical mass of it switching into something else.

But there has to be something else that we can opt into because not everyone believes what. At the top, April eight, but I can say all of them, not like that either, but, side by bringing out in kind of career right now.

Joel: Gotcha. And so is that the rewire, your wealth, a global movement that you’re talking about or is that something different?

Brenda: Well, I’ve written a novel that is fiction that talks about this. So it’s the possibility of what the technology we have right now. Why are your world is not related to that in particular where you, while your world right now is a bridge between where we are right now to having a healthy relationship with the money that’s you’re on the planet to do more good with it, to ethically invest, to consciously consume, to rewire our primitive brain tap more.

I want more, I want more to connect with each other. And knowing that there is another, so that’s where the movement is right now. And that’s my goal is I’d like a million people to be in the platform right now we have about 3000. So we’re growing.

Joel: yeah, no, it’s it, it’s a very ambitious and very worthwhile goal to have for sure.

so I think we’ve talked out about a lot here. I want to leave it off with a question I like to ask and that’s what is, cause I know, Oh, you’ve taken creative writing. You’re a big writer. what is your favourite book? And you don’t have to choose one, but maybe one that you would, I would like to highlight for our listeners.

Brenda: I love  Noah Harari. One of my favourite philosophers. I love how we imagined the world and that homeo DEI, homo Deus is one of my favourite books of his. And, it just really talks about technology and humanity and our brain and all the things that I was talking about. It’s one of my favourites. but I also like the secret life of trees.

Yeah. That was a really powerful book. And, so my, the books that I love, or like things that allow me to see how interconnected we all are. You know, and those books do that for me.

Joel: Awesome. Well, Brenda, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate your cruciate, your wisdom, your knowledge, and your time for the listeners. Where can they reach out to you? Where can they find you?

Brenda: Yes, just go to my website at Brenda St. louis.com and St. Louis is spelled like the city, but it’s all one word, Brenda St. louis.com.

Joel: Awesome. Well, thank you so much and have yourself a great day.