E46: The Truth About Manifesting

EPISODE 46

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:04] AW: You’re listening to the Transcend Podcast. I’m your host, Asha Wilkerson, an attorney by training and an educator at heart. This podcast is all about empowering you to build a business and leave a legacy. Here’s the thing, the wealth gap in America is consistently increasing and while full-time entrepreneurship is not for everyone, even a side hustle could change your financial landscape if you’re intentional about using your business to build wealth. I’ve run my own law firm for over 10 years, and in that time, I’ve helped countless California businesses go from idea to six figures. On this podcast, we talk about what it truly takes to build a sustainable business and find financial freedom. Let’s dive in.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:47] AW: Hey, you all, welcome back to another episode of Transcend the Podcast. Thank you for being here with me. I love that you tune in every week and if you’re new here, welcome. I’m going to do something a little bit different today and I’m going to share this revelation that I had in my own journey. Some parts of it made me quite uncomfortable, some parts of it I’m totally in awe of, and I think every part of it is a learning opportunity for both you and me. So, I’m actually going to just jump right in and share it with you.

You’ve probably heard me say over the last few episodes that in December 2020, my dad passed away and he was on top of things enough to create a trust for his assets, really felt like settled in this little town called Newberg, Oregon, to about 26 miles west of Portland, Oregon and he was literally, I say settled because he was literally the first person to purchase land and build on this part, particular part of Shallow Mountain. As a kid, I grew up on Wilkerson Way. My last name was Wilkerson. His last name was Wilkerson because he got to name the street after him, and so he lived on Wilkerson Way for 40 plus years, and all the other people who bought property and built houses up there have also lived on Wilkerson Way, which I think is just absolutely awesome.

Fortunately, my dad was able to leave the property behind and also some money, and I knew that I wanted the property, but it went back and forth where I was thinking, is this a good investment? It’s old, there’s a well, there isn’t even like city water, because it’s just on the outskirts. It is still considered rural land. But because my dad left the property to my sister and me, I knew that I would be able to get the property for a fraction of the cost because all I would have to do was buy out my sister’s interest, because she didn’t want the property. So that worked out great.

I worked with the bank, got everything in order and was approved to buy the property. Now, I live in the Bay Area in Oakland, California, and I have been looking for years just thinking about buying real estate and just kept saying like the time is not right now. My mom is Baby Boomer generation. So, for her generation, the American dream was to go to college, get a good job, work at the same place for three, four decades, buy a house, raise a family and like that’s it, right? That’s the dream. For me, I knew that homeownership, as a single person with my income level was not something that I wanted to do in the Bay Area, because I just felt like so much of my money would be going into property. Right now, I really, really value traveling and experiences and things like that.

So, I feel fortunate enough to be able to get into this house. And let me tell you, I’m working with you all as business owners to talk about setting up leaving a legacy for the folks who come behind you, so that every generation doesn’t have to start over, right? We want to alleviate poverty, eradicate poverty in our community. We want to be able to pay for the schools that we want for our children. We want to be able to help support financially, the political candidates that we want. We want to save for retirements, we have to work forever. We want to be able to leave some money behind for our kids, and even though that that is the vision, I feel some kind of way about having stuff left for me.

I didn’t grow up with my dad telling me I’m going to leave something behind and in fact, that relationship was quite tumultuous, and there was a lot of financial strife between the two of us my from my childhood, so I never expected anything to be left behind at all because he was not – I was not generally someone he spent money on. I’ll put it that way to put it politely.

[00:04:16]

So, for me to be able to – after he died, to look at what he had acquired was like, wow, first of all, I had no idea. Two, wow, this is what it actually looks like to have a little bit of a head start like a jump, because the way that it worked out, I was able to get into this house for no money down. So, because there was equity in the house because I wasn’t buying 100% of the house, only the percentage that I had to buy out my sister. I can explain more about that later if you’re more interested or if you want to hear more facts about how that works.

Anyway, so I was able to get this house in Newberg, felt really good about it, and there was some money leftover and so I was talking to my financial advisor at Edward Jones, shout out to RJ Martin who’s also in Oakland, down the street and around the corner from my house. I asked him, I was like, “Okay, so I should probably just invest the rest of this in the stock market, right? How much should I invest? Versus how much should I keep for a rainy day? What exactly should I do?” Because I wanted to make sure that I was going to be a good steward of this money, right? I’m fortunate to have it come my way. But I also want to make sure that I have a plan and then I’m just maximizing what it is.

So, I talked to him and RJ is like, do you want to get a rental property? You have enough for a down payment on a rental property. I was like, “What? I just got this one property, what are you talking about?” You all, literally, it had never, ever crossed my mind to think about getting another property on the heels literally, like a week and a half, maybe 10 days, maybe 10 days after closing on buying my dad’s place. But RJ planted the seed. Now, this is why it’s really important to have people in your community who have different skill sets from you, and who will challenge you to do things that you weren’t even considering. I mean, I’m sure he knew that he was planting an idea because he’s an investment property. He has properties in different states and is building his portfolio.

He’s asking me about the legal stuff and I’m asking him like, “How the heck did you buy a property out of state, right?” But he planted the seed, and I kid you not, you all, I was like, “Okay, all right, maybe.” What did I do next? I took the steps to connect with real estate agent to – well, first of all, again, to look at Bigger Pockets, which is a fantastic website. If you’re interested in learning about investing, whether buying your first property or like looking at buying investment properties, but I went on there and then I reached out to a real estate agent who was on Bigger Pockets and said, “Look, I’m looking to buy an investment property, I’ve got X amount of money to put down, it would be great if it was an Oregon, because I already have a property in Oregon. My mom’s here, I’ll be coming back and forth and it’s more affordable in California.”

So, I connect with Stephen Tran on Bigger Pockets and we take the conversation off the platform and he’s like, “Hey, I’m licensed in Oregon. This is great. But I want you to know about the tenant laws here and I’ll put you on my listings, and I’ll look at what you can get.” He’s told me multiple times, he’s like, “You can’t really get much for the amount of money that you have.” But he had his own network and one of his business partners was trying to offload a duplex in Washington, the state of Washington, which borders Oregon, because he is looking to liquidate some of his assets to invest in a bigger project.

Steven makes this connection, we meet in Washington, and I look at the house just kind of talking about things. Now, he can’t represent me because he’s not licensed in Washington, but as a friend of his friend, and as a new friend of mine, he’s just kind of talking to me about things. All of this, no joke, happened within probably seven days of RJ planting the seed in my mind. And then two days later, I see the property on a Monday, meet with the seller on Wednesday, and we strike up a deal. The house isn’t even listed on the market which means that actually there was one other person who was set in line to buy it before me and they the deal fell through or they decided to move on to a different property and so that I was next in line and was able to negotiate something that I felt comfortable with.

So, that was Wednesday. We strike up a deal Thursday, documents are signing, and now I’m in contract. The time that I’m recording this podcast, I’m in contract to buy my second property. I closed on my dad’s property on January 10th. Today is February 8th. Okay. So not even a month after closing on the first property. And I had written in between that time, I wrote down in my journal, a new goal and I said, I want to own three investment properties in the next three years. My goal will be to save up enough money for a down payment to get a new property every three years and different locations where it really makes sense. I just wrote it down with just open. It wasn’t like, I wasn’t stressing about it. I wasn’t saying it’s got to happen. I wasn’t really putting too much thought into it, and then no joke, two or three days later, literally, I am in contract now to buy the second property.

[MESSAGE]

[00:08:57] AW: Hey, family, I am so thankful that you are here listening to Transcend the Podcast. And thanks for letting me interrupt you for just a second. I want to tell you about my new quick, easy download for you called the Build Wealth Roadmap. Now, I’ve taken my years of experience as an attorney, as a business coach and as an entrepreneur, and just my life experience in general and broken down the steps that you need to take to actually use your business to build wealth. I want you to know where you’re trying to go and more importantly, how you’re going to get there. So, go ahead and go to transcendthemembership.com/roadmap and download my free Wealth Building Roadmap guide for how you can use your business to build wealth, and also just that life freedom that we’re all striving for. So, head on over to transcendthemembership.com/roadmap and get your roadmap today.

[END OF MESSAGE]

[00:09:52] AW: I’m talking with one of my really good friends who’s on the East Coast, I’m like, “What is going on?” And we started talking about like the power of manifestation. He was like, “Is it I really manifestations? We’re going back and forth.” I’m like, “Yeah, it is manifestation. But why does it feel like it’s so easy?” It was so easy for me to manifest this multifamily rental, which is what I wanted. I didn’t want a single-family home. But sometimes it feels so challenging for me to make progress in business.

He’s like, “What do I have to learn from this situation?” There’s always something to learn from it. What I realized is that, and I’ve heard these things before, and I just did a neuro coaching certification. So, I understand how our brain works and the subconscious beliefs. I just did a podcast episode on it, you probably heard it a couple weeks ago, when your actions don’t match your goals. It’s really because there’s some subconscious belief that you can’t do it, that it’s not right, it’s unsafe, whatever, that you’re going to be threatened. So, your subconscious tries to keep you safe and doesn’t want you to put yourself out there. I’m like, “Why was I so open and able to manifest these things so quickly on the property side, but business sometimes feels like such a struggle? Why is it so hard to make the progress that I want to make on the legal side of things, my membership community?”

I dug in a little bit more. So, the trick is, or the task is to get curious, like not to judge myself, but what is it? What is it? I said, “You know what, I wrote down that goal of owning three investment properties in the next three years with complete openness.” I didn’t have any reason to believe that it couldn’t happen and I wasn’t super attached to the outcome, because I was just kind of writing like, “Yeah, okay, let’s just see what happens.” I didn’t have any doubt that that could come true. I didn’t have any proof that it could come true. But I also didn’t have any doubt that it could come true. So, I just had this openness that this is 100% of possibility for me, and because of that openness, I took the steps that I needed to take in order to put myself in position for that thing that I’m asking the universe for to come to me.

What did I do? I made sure that my accounts were still together in terms of the money, right? I reached out, did a little bit of research on Bigger Pockets, found somebody in the real estate industry, a real estate agent who I could connect with, told him what I wanted, and was open to what that would look like. I mean, I’m super new in this area, and I think that novice sort of spirit that I have right now really leaves me open to a bunch of opportunities, because I don’t already have in mind what I want it to look like, which is a really big benefit. So, I’m not saying, “The house has got to look like this. It’s got to be in this zip code. It’s got to do all these things.” I do have some criteria, of course, cash flow is really important to me. But I didn’t care if it was in Oregon or Washington or I probably wouldn’t go to Idaho but some others Florida. I was looking at property in Florida.

I was completely open to whatever would pop up that would meet the most important criteria for me, which was cashflow, and in a multi dwelling unit. But then I’m like, “Okay, so I’m just completely open in what is going on with business?” I just listened to a video about sales funnels and I’m already irritated with the video because I have a funnel. I don’t like the funnel very much. I don’t know if the funnel works very well. It’s been in place for a couple years, even from the get go, it’s been semi problematic and I don’t know that the funnel doesn’t actually work or is it just not getting enough eyes. But I have some thoughts around the funnel, right?

So, as I’m listening to this video about creating a funnel in my mind, I’m already, I’ve done that. How is this going to be different? My attitude is completely different than it is when – or than it was when I was thinking about getting this and just exploring an investment property. I have done so many things in business, I’ve seen so many things, in my mind in reality is so much more close to what the potential is, because I’m limiting myself by my previous experience. Whereas with the house and the investment property, I didn’t have any previous experience. So, I hadn’t limited myself in my mind into what was possible. Even though I know and I knew that there are these limiting beliefs that are holding me back in business and things just feel like tight and secure, especially as an attorney. We have people breathing down our backs. If people want to make a complaint, whether they’re our client or not, there’s the ethics board they can go to. There’s the rules, professional responsibility that we have to follow. There’s our reputation in the industry, there’s the legal standard that we have to meet, when we’re doing legal work. There are all of these things that just make it super stressful to be an attorney. So, there’s always this pressure of like, don’t mess up, don’t mess up, stay in your lane. Don’t try anything new that hasn’t been done before.

[00:14:28]

We always say jokingly, like, you don’t necessarily want to be the one that makes new law. If you do, you want to make sure you’re on the winning side and not on the losing side or you get an example, an example is made out of you. So anyway, I hope that makes sense that I was just completely open on this real estate side, on this investment side, didn’t have any limits because I didn’t have any experience and I hadn’t been jaded by anything. So, I was just completely 100% open to what would come my way, but then on the business side, because of the experiences that I’ve had, and because I think I’m so tied to the outcome I want this thing to happen, whatever it is, I want to make this number of sales. I’m very specific with what it is that I want to have happen that I am not nearly as open to things happening in a way that is outside of the way that I have envisioned it.

I’m sharing this with you because I think it was a fascinating mirror for me to see myself completely open in one area and not nearly as open in this other area when I am coaching people on how to get through and coaching myself on how to get through like the mindset stuff and the mind trash, and to how to go through and identify those limiting beliefs, and then rewire that belief so that the subconscious is actually working with your conscious mind and not against your conscious mind.

So, I hope that that just maybe lit some things up for some of you. If you are in a position where you are feeling like the goals that you want, are really hard to achieve, it’s probably because there is at least one underlying belief that is in contradiction to that goal that you want. So really, the power of manifesting comes about when you actually believe that what you want is possible. Because when you believe it, your actions are going to follow that belief. So, when you believe that it’s possible to build a million-dollar business, you are going to do the actions that are required of you to build a million-dollar business. If you don’t believe, if you think that your ceiling is $100,000 for your business, you are going to do the actions that get you to a hundred, because subconsciously, we are affirming our beliefs, or actively, we’re affirming our subconscious beliefs about ourselves, about what’s possible about, what the world wants from us, about what we can do all of those things, right?

There is a lot of mindset work that is constantly done by entrepreneurs at every single level. And you’re not abnormal, you’re not like outside of the normal range. If you’re feeling like how come my thoughts and my actions don’t match up? Or how come I just can’t manifest, it is because there is some underlying belief that doesn’t match what you’re saying that you want. So, how do you move through that? You have to identify what that underlying belief is, and work to change that belief. If you didn’t feel like or don’t feel like you’re good enough, you have to believe that you’re good enough. How do you do that? It’s not just enough to say, like, “Oh, I’m good enough. I can do this.” You have to actually provide evidence to your brain that contradicts that fact that you don’t believe.

So, how have you been good enough in all of these other areas? What evidence do you have to show that you are good enough to do this? What do you believe? Or what can you believe about yourself? What are the facts that you can put in place to change the belief that you are not good enough, to the belief that you are good enough? Once that belief changes, then your actions will start to match that belief that says that you can do it, and before you know it, you will be off and running and you’ll be doing the things that you said that you wanted to do. A moment of, a few minutes of transparency and vulnerability with you all as I’m sharing this journey with you, getting more and more comfortable about exposing the realness of being an entrepreneur. There’s the skill that you have, and then there’s the mindset that you have to build too. So, you could build a business but you also got to build your mindset and I want you to know that you are not alone in whatever emotion excitement, sadness, fear, confusion, frustration, elation, all of that stuff that you are absolutely not alone in that at all.

That’s what I have for you today. Give me some feedback. Let me know what you think. If you’d like a little bit of help getting over some of those subconscious beliefs that are holding you back, just let me know. Talk to you all later.

[END]