Dr. Venus

I have four degrees. I have a bachelor’s, MA, MFA, and a Ph.D. The MA and Ph.D. are from Stanford, MFA was from Ohio State University. The BFA is from Adelphi University. I stayed at school.

The truth is it wasn’t so much for education. It’s because they would feed me. It was more about survival than it was about ambition.

I guess the best way to answer your question is not too graphic because I don’t want to I don’t want to take people through all those changes.

Dr. Venus

Pain is preparation for your destiny.

I don’t think my experience is singular in that to live through certain things; it changes you and forces you to learn how to rebuild your life. But I don’t think it’s a hierarchy of pain.

I think that sisters who have past situations but aren’t as extreme as mine still hurt as much.

The thing that I’m more interested in is how do you have that pain. Be profitable. I think that there’s this whole thing about learning your lesson. I’m asking my clients, my tribes to do something different. I’m asking to not only identify the lesson but actually, identify the blessing and the pain. I tell you, that’s what I’ve done.

Dr. Venus

When I look at my mother taking a pair of scissors and cutting my hair off until it was bleeding on the scalp and told me I was ugly, which is no fun at 12 by the way. You have to learn how to rebuild your life after something like that. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have the compassion I have for women. I wouldn’t have the compassion of what it means not to feel beautiful, to feel ugly, and to feel like you’re not worth shit.

If you’re trying to make paper, you gotta turn that because otherwise, you will undercharge. You’ll barter. You give stuff away for free. It’s just going to be a mess as you try and get to how to rebuild your life.

Every person has pain, and every woman has a walk.

Take the things that hurt you the most, and instead of hiding from them, lean into them and find the diamond in the coal because that’s where your moneymaker is.

Dr. Venus

Your million dollar moneymaker is not located in your accolades, in your skill, nor in your brain. It’s located in your pain where life broke your heart, and it’s the last place we want to look.

But it’s the only place to look because it’s what has made you who you are. You have a lot of skills, but nobody has your story. Nobody has your walk, and that cannot be duplicated.

You are God wrapped in flesh. You are the one we’ve been waiting for. You are the way, the truth, and the light, and until you embrace that, you’ll always bend your life to other people’s addictions, agendas, and to other people’s emotional immaturities.

Dr. Venus

I don’t care if you have the corner office or you stand on a street corner. It doesn’t matter to me. The bottom line is you are a woman with destiny, and I tend to focus my business model on black women for two reasons. These people need the support to learn how to rebuild your life.

I think black women don’t know what it feels like to be first. No one models that for us. We always try to get in where we could fit in. So in my camp, is black women come first but that it isn’t only.

Also, it’s is my way of manifesting God in thought, word, and deed. I say that until black women heal the history of hurts we’ve inherited, the world is not going to work, and I could say the same thing for an Asian woman, for Latina women, for Irish woman, for a German lady. Every woman has a cultural consciousness she’s inherited her money, and no one talks to us about that. And know one is talking about how to rebuild your life.

Dr. Venus

In your family, is the first born, you’re trained to be thought to do everything for other people so you can delegate. There’s a whole history of hurts that your body evokes just by you having a wound. No one talks about that about our money except for me regarding the healing part of it.

I don’t think that the pain is negative. I don’t believe that the pain is without purpose.

Dr. Venus

That’s a great question, and I don’t know anybody who has asked me that in an interview. I’ve had it posed in different formats but never in this context.

Dr. Venus

As I mentioned before, every person has pain, and every woman has a walk, and I say that you were born until history occurs that are culturally biased. I think that we’re all spiritual beings having a human experience. And you can look to how to rebuild your life into a spiritual experience.

If we are spirit, just like you could feel somebody who’s transitioned, or you can feel somebody’s energy when they walk in the room, and you want to get away from it. I say we’re all connected.

Dr. Venus

Energetically, we’re all the same. We’re all one. So if we’re all one, if we’re all spirit, and that means we’re connected, that means we’re still connected to our ancestors.

If we’re still connected to our ancestors, we’re still connected to the wounds.

For African – American women, I’m thinking regarding my research as a scholar, a Ph.D. from Stanford regarding the trance at landing slave trade, as our bodies had been sold and our babies had been ripped from us. Our men are being killed and lynched all for some cotton.

Some tobacco and some cane for a bag of fucking rice. That shapes your relation to money energetically. You need to look to how to rebuild your life after things like this.

I can say the same thing for a Jewish woman who had parents that came from the holocaust. She’s going to have a very particular relation to money and herself because of that history of hurts.

If you think that your relationship to money has something to do with willpower, you’re not going to win at this.

Dr. Venus

So, when I say all women are slaves, I mean, you are a slave to a history of hurts, this undistinguished as such, and you acted out in your behaviors, in your performance. The question is how to rebuild your life after this kind of slavery.

What I’ve noticed with black women, generally speaking. I’m not suggesting every system’s the same because we’re not. There are some systems that can stand my guts.

We have a practice of being independent. Well, that’s only because our ancestors had to be independent. That’s how we survived as to the slavery, is being independent and being strong.

Dr. Venus

If you’re trying to learn how to rebuild your life, build a business, you have to start to delegate. And so, if it does not let you delegate, you can’t grow your business. That’s a survival strategy. That’s not a characteristic.

That’s not a character trait. That is the survival strategy which has been passed on generationally that has become our usual, and that makes you a slave.

Until you have your money, until you heal emotionally from the wounds that keep you in bondage, you will never be free.

Dr. Venus

It’s a beautiful question.

You heal it one wound at a time. That’s how you learn how to rebuild your life. I don’t think it’s like a magic pill.

I can tell you what I’ve done and could tell you what I teach my students and my clients to do whether it’d be a VIP day, a webinar, a seminar, a lobby event, a speaking engagement.

You have to start somewhere regarding feeling, and is always an internal conversation with self. I call it the Street Fight. You have to get in a street fight with yourself on your behalf.

What I propose is that we start off with the five B’s of doing the impossible. The impossible is not going to look impossible. It’s going to look like normal. Like, “Oh, I really can’t have that raise,” or “I really can’t make that money,” or “No one’s going to listen to me, ” or “No one’s going to pay me.” That’s your impossible. Your impossible is not going to look fantastic. It’s going to sound like you can’t have it. It may seem like there is no way to get to how to rebuild your life.

Dr. Venus

If we break it down, your real life is where you’re in bondage, where you’re playing small, where you’re safe, where you’re staying stuck. It’s not fantastical. It’s not extreme. It’s your normal. What I do to start all of my clients off including myself, is I start up with the five Bs.

The first place we start regarding healing is you got to declare. You got to maintain your independence from the strongholds that kept you safe, stuck, and small in your personal life, in your cultural life, and in your working lives.

Dr. Venus

There was a whole time when I was pissed off with white people, and rightly so. They do some bullshit. It seemed like there was no way to get to how to rebuild your life. White purposely showed his ass, and I lost my temper. It happens. This is where I realized that I was projecting to them. I was trying so hard to be as good as my peers when I was a professor that I came off as insecure. I came off as defensive. I came off as condescending.

And so, what ends up happening is we take actions that get a reaction that we’ve been feeding, and I had to heal my inferiority. I had to take the case that I thought I was less than white people. They didn’t tell me that. I thought it. I related to myself as less, so that meant I had to flex more.

Dr. Venus

Exactly.

Dr. Venus

It won’t even try and is beyond mental. It’s physiological.

Survival is not a mindset. We spend more time trying to change our minds about shit that can’t be changed. Survival is a physiological condition that is triggered when you’re threatened. You will either flee, freeze or fight.

My teachings are not rooted in mindset. My teachings are rooted in the physiology of survival. What I point to is you have to declare your independence. You have to determine where you are with yourself.

Dr. Venus

You have to develop desires, so you start to be pulled by your passion instead of trying to force an outcome. You have to design yourself that is not rooted in any evidence or the past, and you have to do your own impossible. Now, how to rebuild your life if you don’t see another way.

Your own impossible may be forgiving your mother. Your own impossible may be asking for that raise. Your own impossible may be saying “I do.” You’re a whole person. You’re not just a business person here and then, a mom there. You’re a whole person. You can’t cut you in half and say “My business person stays out the door.” You are a holistic being.

The way you do one thing is how you do everything. So you’re going to have to take you in the same way you are about your lover.

Dr. Venus

When you are in love with somebody, you get to know them. You seek them out. You figure out how to please them. You are all up in it. You gotta get that way about yourself. You got to get so interested in yourself that you understand what triggers you or hurt your feelings.

What takes you out the game, how you fight, how you leave, how you stay, how you make people pay, how you get back at people. You gotta get that interested in your triggers, so you have some say so, and other people can’t push your buttons.  It can get confusing how to rebuild your life.

As a business owner, owning a business, asking for money is inherently threatening.

Dr. Venus

It’s like, “Oh, damn. What if they tell me “No”?” So you’re already in survival mode just by being in business. All of your insecurities and all your wounds are going to show up. You are going to go on a sales call and choke because you’re afraid they’re going to yell at you, and you don’t go to a networking meeting because you think you don’t believe that you’re dressed well enough. You’re not going to ask for the sale because you’re going to think they believe that you’re begging.

Those are all your survival strategies that keep you safe, and until those are turned, you cannot become a black woman millionaire or a millionaire across the board. You have to learn how to rebuild your life. At least not the way I do it. You can do it by tricking people or lying or all that extra.

If you want a sustainable business, that’s rooted in your worth, you have to heal.

Dr. Venus

Thank you.

The good news is it can be learned. Thank God we’re not who we used to be. We have another day. We can have another shot at this. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it hurt.

This is my prayer for everyone within the sound of my voice. You’re counting all the time. You gotten knocked down. I’m counting the times. You got back up, and that matters. That matters.

Dr. Venus

If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, if you’re going to be your own boss, if you’re going to make your own paper, inherent in the definition of an entrepreneur is risk. But I promise you this. You’re a good bet. You’re going to have you for the rest of your life, and therefore, that man will go away, that woman will go away, but you’re going to have you.

Dr. Venus

You’re going to wake up with you every day. You’re going to sleep with you every night. So why not heal you? Why not invest the time, energy, money, and emotional intimacy with yourself to be your own best thing? To have your life make a profound difference for the people who could only hear your words.

You are the answer to millions of people’s prayers, but they can’t find you because you’re still hiding in plain sight.

Will you let your life shine? When you let your life shine, there will go to be so many souls and so many spirits saying, “Where you’ve been? You are the answer to my prayers. I’ve been praying for you. I didn’t know you were going to talk like that. I don’t know you’re going to look that, but you are the one that I have been waiting for, and I thank you for being more committed to your future than your past.

Being an entrepreneur means to be more committed to what you can be than what you used to be.