One Year From Now with Hailey Thomas: Big Happy Money ft. Serena Hicks
This week, I’m joined by my coach and mentor, Serena Hicks, in part one of a two-part conversation to discuss her growth as a business owner, her work with Antiracism School, and the concept of Big, Happy Money.
In this episode, Serena and I cover:
Developing money making skills
Making the decisions that orient your success
Overcoming years of financial struggle
Creating a safe space for inclusivity
Detangling internalized racism
Struggling and over-preparing for struggle
Our brains want us to be prepared for the worst. It’s essential for our survival to be prepared, but our businesses often suffer from us “over-preparing” for dry spells, failures, and lack of customers. For Serena, 2020 provided a wake-up call when she put money aside to prepare for an expected lull and realized that this mindset of expecting a lack of income was not helping her succeed. While having your funds in order is important, it’s time to acknowledge that you can make money at any time and that creating that income is a skill to learn, not an uncertain phenomenon.
“To plan for the drought is really different from tending to the land.”
Experiencing and acting on those experiences
As a biracial woman, Serena has her fair share of stories to tell regarding racism and discrimination, from negative assumptions about her family to unfair stereotypes about her employment level. When racism took center stage in 2020 with the Black Lives Matter movement, Serena felt compelled to act upon those experiences and do more for the black community in a big way. Setting up Antiracism School was a leap of faith for Serena, but it’s been a rewarding experience for her to work with people that genuinely want to enact diversity and implement inclusivity.
“Despite all of this, I choose to create and serve and love all and feed this world.”
Trying and making mistakes
I talk to my clients often about commitment and about the need to fail, and Serena and I absolutely share similar opinions on those ideas. Commitment to your business, your methods, and your customers means that you accept that mistakes will happen, but that you won’t give up on figuring it out. There’s a thousand ways to make money effectively in business, creating money is a skill to master, but only through making the decision to act on your ideas, to provide worthwhile service, and to risk making mistakes can you succeed at the level you really want.
“If you’re doing it right, you’re going to make mistakes at some point.”
More about Serena:
Biracial Biz Coach for intentionally inclusive folx who want to make way more money (and create generational wealth) by working way less. My career started at MTV News in 2000. I spent the next decade working for MTV, VHI, Comedy Central, Martha Stewart, and finally Tyra Banks in NYC before I moved back to my home state of Texas, where I mostly just struggled in corporate America (sponsorships and PR) before having a personal revelation and revolution as an overweight, totally broke, totally single, 40-year-old grieving her recently deceased big brother. I hired my first coach and soon figured out how to make a ton of money by melting into the magic of life and what changes when I chose to show up in it and for it unapologetically.
