5.22 | How Productivity Caps Your Wealth with Latasha Kinnard

Are you a high achieving black woman who did all the right things? You got the good grades, you got the higher education, you got the income, got the house. But you still don’t feel satisfied or happy? If your achievements never feel like enough, you’re in the right place because this is Latasha Kinnard’s specialty. Latasha of Tasha Talks Money is a financial educator and creator of the Magnetic Money method, a neuroscience based approach that helps high achieving women break out of survival mode and step into their quiet wealth identity. And her work blends psychology and modern wealth strategy to help women build wealth in a way that feels actionable and authentic and from a place of peace, inner peace. So this episode was sparked by one of her posts saying that the more, you know, more education was just conditioning into good girl productivity. And it led to a whole conversation about the pervasiveness of chasing money goals like dopamine hits in high achieving black women and, and that ending, that, that chase activates ego dissolution. It activates also a deeper spiritual relationship with the uncertainty of life. And I look forward to hearing what resonates for you from this episode. Okay, let’s grow. Hey Tasha. I’m so happy that we get to have this conversation together. And so welcome, welcome to the podcast.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Thank you so much for having me. I am, I’ve been waiting for this conversation.

>> Isha Vela: Yeah. Okay, good. Because, you know, just for the, for the listeners to, to give them some context, I watched one of your reels that talked about like, more education is really just about like validation and that, you know, productivity is not going to really work for you. It’s. It’s a part of our social conditioning. And that resonated so deeply with me because I have 11 years of postgraduate education and I like let it all go to work in, in finance and network marketing. And you know, I love that decision. For me, it’s been so much more, I’ve really seen sort of the lie that more education is, and so I would love for you to speak more on that from your perspective.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Well, I started realizing as an Adult. Especially in my relationships with black women, we were all so burned out, right? We had come to a place where we were burned out. But if you look at the track record, so educated, so productive, so high functioning, just contribution everywhere, you know, productivity spilling all over the place. But. None of them were where they wanted to be. None of the people that I was seeing, they were in good positions and they were, you know, they had a lot of material things. But if you ask them, did they feel happy or did they feel satisfied or did they have a sense of in their lives. I’m looking around and the answer was always no, right? And it wasn’t always just this overt unhappiness. There was just always this chasing, chasing, chasing. And so let me. That’s my phone, one second. so always in chasing mode. And I said, well, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. And I was thinking about how we go through school, because I spend a lot of time thinking about these things because a lot of my clients are looking for their next financial level, but they feel stuck. They feel like they’ve been, you know, successful in so many other areas, but then they get to this point in life where they’re stuck and they’re not able to get to the next level. And I realize that a lot of that is this drive to be productive when at this point of our lives, productivity isn’t the answer. It’s our ability to ourselves, our ability to regulate our nervous system. So that fight or flight mode and that survival mode that worked for us before is no longer working. And I realized that a lot of that was implanted during those school years where we were validated for the work that we did. We were told that we were smart and that we were wonderful and that we were going to be successful and that we were going to have all of our wildest dreams if only we did our schoolwork. And I think it really just prepared us to be little worker bees instead of the full, successful, vibrant beings that we truly desire to be. And so we’re unlearning that and trying to learn something new.

>> Isha Vela: And you know, with this, there’s, there’s a piece around like the socialization of black women, right? And about like, you know, Us like women of color, black women, using their body to labor, right? And that labor was, rewarded, right? or expected, let’s say, let’s say expected because it wasn’t really rewarded. But then you, you shift that into the school system and you, you know, you have these like high achievers. We have to like work harder. Black women have to work harder to be sort of at the same level. So that’s like the, the system is already set up for that. Right. And then. Right. From the educational standpoint, and then sort of from the marginalization standpoint. Right. Of like having to work harder to achieve the same result. So there’s like the dual, the dual piece there. Yeah.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Yes. And even more than that for, when I look at it, a lot of the time it’s that because we have to work twice as hard, we get really good at working hard. Like, we’re so good, at working hard, we’re so good at being productive. And that becomes a major part of our identity. And that is why a lot of us have this love hate relationship with, you know, it’s like, yes, productivity is my superpower, but it came from a place of struggle. It came from a place of not being enough.

>> Isha Vela: Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. Right. It’s that, not enough piece. Yes. And so you always have to do more to be enough.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Always have to do more. And then, you know, and that’s why I tell people, you know, you get that feeling of doing more equals achievement. You know, you think that doing most is achievement and that’s how you achieve. And so we began to conflate the two. And then we start wondering why when we, as we get older, we’re doing the most, but it’s not getting us what it once did. It’s not producing the same results anymore.

>> Isha Vela: Right. And even though you talk about your client having material wealth, it doesn’t necessarily translate to their happiness. So they have achieved a certain level of success. Right. From, from a, a material standpoint. But then it doesn’t, the emotions or the feelings don’t quite match up.

>> Latasha Kinnard: No. I was just watching Issa Rae.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And she was on Kev on stage and they were talking and he asked her, do you feel successful? And she said, no, I don’t feel successful. And I’m just like, she has done so much, just incredible, outstanding. And I look at not only what she’s done for herself, but what she’s done for the culture and the people that she’s brought along with her. But when you ask her, do you feel successful? She said, no, I don’t feel successful unless I’m working on my next thing. And I’m just like, baby, that, survival programming. And you’re never feel successful with that running in the background. And it has nothing to do with what you’ve done or who you are, because if it did, all of us, so many of us will feel successful because we’re doing the thing. We have the degrees, we have the education, we have, a lot of us have the jobs. But it isn’t leading to the fulfillment.

>> Isha Vela: Yeah. And what for you is the, the key to getting into the vibration of fulfillment, of enoughness? Because that’s essentially what we’re talking about, right, Is the energy of enoughness. How do you. You talk about. There’s like the magic. You have a magic money method. What is that for you?

>> Latasha Kinnard: So for me, it is a very neuronal process, and it starts with your brain. And, and I think it has become very common to hear the word safety attached to money. You know, that people don’t feel safe, money. And I think that a lot of people don’t really understand what that means because nobody thinks that your money is going to come and get you or that, you know, that your money is a threat or that money is scary. You know, so when you say, oh, you don’t feel safe, safe with money, it doesn’t really land properly for a lot of people. But what is actually happening, what is actually being said is that I like to say it simply. Like neurons that fire together wire together and neurons that fire consistently together, they get stuck together. So there is a normal pathway in your. The way that your brain expects things to go. Like, your brain know you know you, and it’s like, oh, things are supposed to happen like this. And being, good with money isn’t a part of that story for a lot of people. From the, from the beginning, it’s that I have to work hard for money. And that’s what. It’s not necessarily a safety. It’s a normalcy that you having financial freedom, you having financial stability, you feel you having wealth be a normalized part of your story that’s not there. And when that’s not there, then you feel unsafe. You feel it’s just not in your comfort zone. That’s really what it is.

>> Isha Vela: Not familiar.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Exactly.

>> Isha Vela: Yeah. And so it’s just unknown.

>> Latasha Kinnard: the way that we start to deal with, you know, reaching a vibration of worthiness is just by relaxing into. Relaxing into that you are enough, you are worthy and looking for the evidence of that in your life. So that’s why I actually like to have people start and I tell them that, you know, rewiring your nervous system starts with your eyes and the stories that you tell yourself. It’s this, it’s this feedback Loop. So you want to be telling yourself a story that causes your eyes to validate that. And then eyes will send that message back to your brain and vice versa. And then it’ll start to feel normal and then it’ll start to feel accessible. And then those ceilings that were there will start to come down and opportunities that were always there will start to be noticeable by you.

>> Isha Vela: And I would love to hear we’re going to come back to this and into the survival mode, but I would like to hear about Lori. Like what, what has been your journey in getting to this place of realizing like, what survival mode is, how it’s playing out in your life, how this piece around like productivity and more education and chasing and how it ties into identity. How did you get to all of these conclusions? Well.

>> Latasha Kinnard: very hard one, I grew up on the south side of Chicago in one of the poorest counties in the country. And so survival mode was just part of my bread and butter. Just very normal to me.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And as I got older. And I wanted to be able to escape my environment, the pathway to do that was working hard. That’s what I thought, right. And that served me well. I was going to work hard and get an education. I was going to work hard and save my money. I was going to do all the things that, you know, would lead me toward the path of the American dream, or so I thought. And it worked for a while. And then. I got to a point.

>> Isha Vela: Where.

>> Latasha Kinnard: I felt that ceiling of. I’m only having incremental growth. I’m only having this little bit of growth year over year. I’m looking for exponential growth. So like, I grew up dirt poor, so just, you know, making $100,000 a year would be a big deal for me. But I wanted to expand, to think about how do I make millions a year. That was something that I had absolutely no context for. And I realized that anytime that I started wanting to think bigger, there were certain habits that I would fall into. And I call these, this trauma based busy work. I would start creating all of these plans. I would get millions of notebooks and write down all of these different plans and all of these different journal entries. And you know, there was so much work that I thought was moving me forward that eventually I realized I’m doing the same thing my mama do, which is clean the house every day. When my mom gets really nervous, she just start cleaning up all the time. You can, ah, you can call her any time of day and ask her what she’s doing, she’s probably cleaning up because that’s her way of self soothing. And I realized I’m doing the same thing, but with my notebooks and with my plans and with all. I’m just stuck in this loop of plan it out, you know, create a checklist, do all of these things. And I realized that it wasn’t working. And my background is in neuroscience and psychology. And so I started asking myself what is really going on. Anytime I want to reach for a pen in a notebook, anytime I want to start going deep into research, anytime where I feel like I need to do a complete overhaul. I asked my what is really going on? And I realized that those are the things that I feel safe doing. Those are the things that make me feel in control. And I could see it clearly, in my clients as well. And so that’s what has me do the work that I do right now. And that’s how I got here.

>> Isha Vela: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. And, and for some, for you it’s notebooks and like, sort of trying to organize. I feel like there’s a sense of like disregulation or anxiety that comes up and like that’s like that kind of brings you down from the anxiety. Right. And for other people it’s like food or for other people it’s getting distracted with Netflix or whatever it happens to be. That kind of brings them down. And that’s so interesting because as I’m listening to you, like, I didn’t, I didn’t, didn’t grow up like poor. I grew up like lower middle class. But the, the thing that was fed to me because I grew up in Puerto Rico, like in this context of poverty. Right. In relation to the United States, like I was also my, my parents were, you know, my father grew up poor education. And I was just like, all right, I’m getting off the island, I’m going to the mainland, I’m gonna. Right. And did all that and then graduate school and then like a certification program. And like it’s just, it’s. I’m realizing sort of in the last three years I’ve just been realizing how it’s like me just like. Right. Just trying to improve and not necessarily to make more money, but to achieve a level where I felt like I’d done enough or I’d done enough to either get out of where I grew up because I didn’t want to. I wanted to escape my, my young experience. Yeah. And just seeing how much that’s been part of that Whole education process that I now, yes, I use the psychology. I studied psychology. But, It. I ended up, you know, in private practice and also, like, my income was capped at, you know, $160, $160,000 per year. And that was working my ass off. Right. And close to burning out. So, yeah, it’s. It’s. It’s amazing at sort of like how our socialization is so much about. I sit with clients all the time who, like, they want to up level into their next. Right. Their income is capped, they’re have. They have a job, they want to get more education is. That’s the immediate step that they want to take in order to make more money. And that. That’s like. That’s not it. It’s not it.

>> Latasha Kinnard: That’s something that I really have to have my clients do their due diligence about whenever they start telling me that they want to go back to school. So it’s just this whole thing about, okay, well, you know, and it’s startling to me how many people don’t ask the question, once you get this degree, how much more money will you be able to make? I don’t. You just was like. And that is how, you know, is just that response to, okay, this is going to. This is like you say, is going to relieve some of that, tension and that anxiety that’s built up. And another way that I started to realize that this is just patterning and that it’s not necessarily the actions that we take, but the mental patterns that we have have in response to this, you know, hustle culture. And, black women, especially, working really hard. The antithesis of that or the opposite of that has been the soft life, and things like, you know, manifestation, meditation, all of that. But if you look at it, I’m impressed by our ability to turn everything into a job or to turn everything into hard work. Because if you look at the soft life, I’m like, that looks like it take a lot of work to be able to, you know, orchestrate that and make everything all aesthetic. And, you know, how we go about the art of allowing is like, we make it a job. And I was just like, yeah, we’re just really good at work. And we really have to, deprogram that because we think that, you know, there’s this spectrum of surviving is on one side and thriving is on the other. But I’ve really been thinking about surviving and thriving is both being inside of your fight orf flight systems. They’re both you in act highly activation mode. You know, survival looks a little bit more like struggle, and thriving looks a little bit more like success, but they both require so much force, so much effort. And, and I’m starting to engage with the idea that the opposite of survival mode is just rest, you know, and not this idea thriving all the time. And I was just like. Because, I mean, once I was done surviving, I was like, okay, now I have to learn how to thrive. And now I’m at the place where I’m just like, right, I got to. I got to figure out how to thrive. And you know, I’m like, okay, maybe I just need to learn how to rest. And my boyfriend jokes with me all the time because he’s just like, you just don’t know how to relax. Like, just relax like I thought I was.

>> Isha Vela: But I think that, you know, something that you’re getting at. I think, you know what you, you mentioned earlier, the identity piece, right? If we’re constantly rewarded for doing more, for being the good girl, for being the good student, for being productive, when you stop doing those things, your identity is just like, ego is not having it, right? It’s like, hell no. And there is a crumbling of identity that. That has to happen in order for you to be able to rest and able to be at peace, at rest, at ease. Like, there’s a whole deconstruction that happens. Right? As, as. As a human being, also as a black woman, right? There’s layers of it, Social identity and just being a, A, ah, human, right. Just being like someone who is like, you’re not. You’re not overriding your body anymore, right? What does that look like when you’re not pushing your body beyond its limit. Which is what burnout is, right? Yeah.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And the interesting part is that many black women won’t even relate to that feeling. You know, they will feel like, I’m m not pushing beyond my limits. Like I’m capable. I have a high capacity, to do this. And that’s just adrenal fatigue. And it’s like, what I’m trying to say is we’re just so used to it that we don’t even get the signals of distress anymore. And just like, this is okay. I am okay. I am able to handle this. And one of the things that I had to realize is that just because I am able to do something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what’s in my best interest. Like, what if I started thinking about not what I am capable of, but what is most Fulfilling for me or something more in that realm, you know, instead of always being in the realm of I’m capable, I am able, I can do this. Which is something that has allowed me to feel safe for a long time. If I feel like I’m capable and I feel like I can do it, then I know that I won’t fail myself.

>> Isha Vela: Right? Yeah, yeah, that, that, that, that inner striver. I feel like it’s almost like this, this young part of ourselves, the. The little overrider that says, I can do it, I can do it. And it just gets in there and does it and muscles through. Yeah. And there’s a satisfaction in that, right? Of having, like, overcome. yeah, exactly. There’s a pride in that. And the overcomer. And it’s like, what if I don’t do that anymore? Like, what if I just chill the out? Don’t do the. Don’t not. You’re not productive. It’s like the brain gets so, like, people don’t understand. A lot of people don’t understand. Like, if you’ve been in hustle mode, productivity mode, when you stop seeing, like, the bra, the identity, ego gets very scared. The brain starts, like, there’s high anxiety. The brain starts telling you lots of stories about how unworthy you are. Like, you’re so fucking lazy. What the fuck are you doing with your life? Like, it gets really crazy in there. Has that been your experience? Is that your experience with clients too?

>> Latasha Kinnard: I don’t have a whole lot of negative self talk, and I think it’s more so on the other side of the spectrum. but I think I have a lot of positive self talk because I have a fear of failure, right? So because I have a failure, I’m always, you know, trying to empower and encourage myself. But that’s an indication of a feeling of lack, you know, Like, I feel that feeling of not enough because I have to constantly remind myself. and these things are important. Like, you have to speak life into yourself. You have to, you know, be the one who tells you, create your own narrative. And it’s just, you know, do you believe your own story, I think is what it comes down to. And I think you’ve mentioned, youthfulness twice. And I think that this is a part of the conversation that gets missed a lot. Because I like to say youth covers a multitude of sins. Like, we can get a lot of things done when we’re young, and it don’t have to be done in the right way. Or, like, we don’t have to try to find a light alignment or enlightenment or what, whatever the case may be. Like we can get by on our grit, we can get by based on our hard work. But I think that there is something about passing that 30 threshold that I have observed where your body says it’s time for you to tap in. Like whatever we were doing before, wherever I was carrying you before, whatever I was allowing before, I’m not allowing that anymore. You are going to have to get in alignment with who you really are and figure this thing out. Because I’m not about to keep going like this.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Yeah.

>> Isha Vela: And sometimes the body speaks in, in the form of burnout, in the form of adrenal fatigue, illness. Right. And we’re having to stop in our tracks. I feel like the body’s always the first to decide and dictate when that’s going to happen, when the boundaries need to be set. Because oftentimes it’s us needing to set boundaries around ourselves and that, like that, that inner productive person or the the, the part of us that pushes, we’re having to set boundaries with that part. We’re saying like, yeah, no, I’m not doing that anymore. And making it a conscious decision versus just operating from, from, from that automatic place of just scarcity and survival.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And you know, what I’ve observed, and this might sound strange because I can’t personally account for it, but what I have observed is that even just life externally responds different to your effort. Like there, there comes a point where you have that sensation that life isn’t responding the way that it used to. And I see this, I see this experience explained time and time and time again with clients because they don’t understand why they’re stuck. You know, they, they were able to get the straight A’s in school, they were able to graduate, they went to a top university, then they got into the school, the program of their choice. They got a good job and they make a lot of money and they’re just like, but I’m not, it’s like I hit the ceiling and I’m not continuously going up anymore and I don’t know why. And I think that survival mechanism has a lot to do with it.

>> Isha Vela: Say more about that. I’m curious. The part about like, like reaching that threshold and then not being able to go further. Like what do you see happening there and how do you resolve that with people?

>> Latasha Kinnard: so what I typically see happen is, you know, when, when, when highly ambitious black women are young and little, you Know, they have all of these plans that they’re creating for their future. They have the plan to get the good, grades, I mean very intentional. They have the plan to go to a good high school and then go to college. And they have this idea about how they want their lives to be set up. And then they accomplish almost all of the things that are on that teenage to do list. That, that list that they created, the list of dreams that they created when they were a teenager. And then that list runs out and it’s like, I’m still not fulfilled, but what’s next? You know, cuz there’s always that drive, get to the next thing. And so milestone has just been like a bump up, a bump up, a bump up, further consolidating and enforcing the idea that work is going to get you to where you want to go. But then you get to this point where you’ve worked, worked work, you got to where you want to be and now you’re like, okay, what’s next? You know, I want to have more money. I want to be able to help my family. I want to, you know, put my kids in this type of school.

>> Isha Vela: And.

>> Latasha Kinnard: It’S almost like whatever train they were on has stopped. And they cannot figure out what do they need to do to continue this achievement train. What do they need? It doesn’t feel the same way that it used to. And for me, I m. Haven’t. I don’t know what it is about the teenage checklist, that teenage list of dreams that you create that I consistently see people knock it off. Like they’re like, yep, yep, yep, check, check, check. Do all of that. But then when they become an adult, they have, they don’t know what the next phase of their life is going to look like.

>> Isha Vela: And there’s two things that come up for me as you talk about that. I’m sorry to interrupt. One of them is the dopamine hits, right? That those achievements are no longer hitting, right? They’re no longer hitting in the way that they once did. And then so there’s, there’s like this chasing. The chasing piece is. The other one is like next. What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? And I feel like that’s very much a function of capitalism too, of just like bigger, better, faster, more next, let’s go. And when people start decolonizing or uncolonizing their bodies and out like that mentality, then there’s kind of like this empty space of like, well, if I’m not chasing what am I doing? If I’m not doing, what am I really? Like, why am I here? And that brings on a whole host of like, existential questions about what am I doing right M. If I’m not doing, then why am I here? Or like, I don’t know. I, I maybe, maybe I’m going too deep with it in, in a way, but I feel like there’s so much that is systemic around this that we, you know, we think is so personal, but it’s also very much systemic in how we internalize systems of, of oppression. Like, where, where are you with that in terms of like your, your work and your thoughts on that?

>> Latasha Kinnard: Definitely, I definitely believe that it’s systemic. And I relate to what you described. Like, I had that I had that point where I was just like, you know, dealing with what does rest look like? And I rested. I just took a period to rest and it was so uncomfortable and but what I realized was like, not only did I feel different in the moment, I felt differently about my future. I became so uncertain about the future. I felt like I m don’t know what the future is going to bring if I’m not like actively working hard to build something in it. Like instead.

>> Isha Vela: Right.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And people would tell me like, well, maybe it’ll just unfold. And I’m like, what do you mean? That sounds very scary. I just let the future unfold.

>> Isha Vela: And so. Right, that’s, that’s what I’m getting at. Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at like the existential crisis piece of like the uncertainty. And it’s like. All right, so. Because the, this whole piece around chasing is, is sort of a force. Right. There’s a forcing energy there. And when you’re no longer forcing, you’re allowing. Right. And then that means that you are also receiving. And you are receiving life and life is unfolding. And so you’re, you’re having it revealed to you sort of at its own pace versus your pace versus your will versus your. Right. And so, yeah, that uncertainty is a place where that spirituality piece starts to come in. Right. Of like, oh, there’s, there’s, there’s more than just me pushing. Yeah.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And that’s the part where my work has really evolved. Because when I first started 10 years ago, I was just helping people create their budgets and their financial plans and but then have it. And I realized for me, money is such a full body experience. Like helping people deal with their money is full on like has so many different facets and with my background in neuroscience and psychology, that’s kind of the lens that I chose to be able to give me the, the best holistic perspective that I could gain. but what talking my clients through and I tell them, like, you know, let’s not work on the budget right now. Like, let’s focus on something else, like, or let’s answer these questions and let’s get to the bottom of, like, when you feel worthy and when you don’t, and when you don’t feel worthy, what do you do? What are the actions that you take? And helping them see that for themselves, has been. Really empowering work. But it really gets back to your point of, like, when I’m getting them to stop being on the achievement train, when I’m getting them to be still and just sit themselves and, you know, get to the bottom of the desires of their own heart. Like, you know, we don’t have to have thing, but abundance is not having everything. Abundance is being very intentional and clear about what matters to you and then allowing that to flow into your reality. And, helping people through that process has been really, really interesting.

>> Isha Vela: Yeah, same going through it myself. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We, we go through our own thing, and that’s what we end up teaching. Right. Like, what we experience, what we alchemize, is what we then want to share with other people.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And, and, and seeing that a lot of the different things that many of us are teaching, they are a response to the systems that govern us and us trying to have autonomy in our own lives and, and, you know, coming to terms with the fact that we live in this world. But we might. We may not always want to be operating the same way everybody else is. So we may not, you know. Yeah, a capitalist society. but that doesn’t mean that, you know, we have to be hyper capitalist. What does intentionality look like for us?

>> Isha Vela: Right, right, exactly. Not being extractive of ourselves. Yeah.

>> Latasha Kinnard: What does that mean?

>> Isha Vela: Hey, like pulling. Pulling from yourself, like. Yeah, right. Like extracting energy. Like you extract oil from the earth. Right. And you’re extracting life force. You know, when we’re no longer extracting from ourselves, but we are filling up. Right. That’s another aspect I was thinking.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Oh, go ahead.

>> Isha Vela: no, go ahead.

>> Latasha Kinnard: I love that phrase. Oh, that’s gonna stick with me. That’s gonna stick with me. But I was thinking about the word productive today and about how we call ourselves productive. And it felt that. I felt that extracting power in the word. I’m like, productive. Like, you know, I of ourselves. Like, we are the product that’s creating more.

>> Isha Vela: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Latasha Kinnard: I’m like, what would happen if we didn’t treat ourselves like a tool?

>> Latasha Kinnard: You know, that was. That the purpose was to do something.

>> Latasha Kinnard: So yeah.

>> Isha Vela: And instead of like using our bodies as a tool to be something, but be just ourselves or be enough, like, that is the tool. Right. Because when you walk into a space and you have that confidence of just you, like you’re, you’re in your relaxed self, right? This, this relaxing into your being, that does more to change the energy of a space. And if you come in and you share all your achievements and your like accolades and this and that. Right. yeah. And another thing that’s, that was popping up as you were talking earlier was this. When you are in achievement mode, there’s this like, go, go, go. And then all of a sudden you get to this to get to a place you’ve achie. You’ve gotten the multiple six figures. And then you’re kind of like, all right, I, I did the thing and there’s this possible potential depression that comes in right of this, like, all right, I got the thing. All right, what do I do now? I guess there’s nothing else to do. You know, when you’re striving towards a goal and then you get it and there isn’t a next, right? Because we are like, next, next, next. It’s kind of like, oh, and then you settle into this new normal. But that’s a whole. piece as well, right? Because I, I remember graduating, my PhD program and I hit a depression. I was just like, all right, I did this thing and I don’t have the money in my bank account. Right? I didn’t have money in my bank account. I didn’t have anything to show for it except for this piece of paper and a picture with me wearing a purple robe and a, and a hat. That’s it. There wasn’t anything else. And I was like, oh, this didn’t have the hit that I expected it to. Or, you know, just things like that. I’ve been just in this conversation with you or what’s coming up. I think it’s important here, around. This, this specifically around the education piece. Like even the way now, especially where our economy is going and where, you know, people. I, I’m sure you have friends who work in, in education who are talking about that structure crumbling as well. College is getting more expensive, people need to get into more debt in order to study. And then are Right. With this new career that you can then access, is that, is that going to be enough to be able to pay back the debt? Right. That’s the question that people don’t, the aspect that people don’t analyze. So. The way that we, the way, the way we work is changing even or how we make money is, is different. Right? Not necessarily a job, but entrepreneurship, like what has that path been for?

>> Latasha Kinnard: I definitely can see how the way that we’re making money in our society is evolving. And the way that I’ve been talking about this or thinking about this is to really create autonomy in our lives and over our lifestyles because I can see that they are very much being exploited. And you know, influencer marketing is an industry that is ever growing and I think it could be a really powerful way for us as a collective to take back a lot of the power that those big, that the big companies have because of their marketing budget. And instead of us sharing big companies products that we share each other’s products, you know, that we become the mouthpiece for our communities in the way that these corporations want us to do for them. And not only that, but that we leverage our lifestyle as an income stream and an asset because the corporations are already doing that. They are already leveraging our lifestyle and our life force for their benefit. And so if you are a person who enjoys being on camera, I think reclaiming your likeness is something that’s going to be something so important as we go as, as influencer marketing continues. but also you spoke about spirituality and I think that inside of the evolution of money, we have to go inward because none of us knows what the future is going to hold. Right. And so my, my, one of my main strategies is to always be, I never have all of my. Eggs, in one basket. Right. So that’s one of my main strategies. I’m just highly diversified but not over leveraged. But then the second thing is listening to that internal voice as I’m thinking about how do I put all of this together and doing so from conviction and not from trends. So that way no matter what happens in the market, I stand on it. I stood on my decisions because I wasn’t oper operating from a place of greed, I wasn’t operating from a place of fear, but I was operating from taking action that I believed in. So in that case, no matter what happens in the future, I’m okay with it.

>> Isha Vela: Absolutely. Absolutely. And what has been your, your journey as an influencer entrepreneur what would you say? Like, how have you, you know, grown your own wealth, diversified? Like, what’s been your process there?

>> Latasha Kinnard: I, feel like all of these questions that you’re asking are questions that are very much at the forefront of my mind. Okay. which is so strange because these aren’t, you know, these are not necessarily ideas and theories that are fully developed, but just things that I’ve been thinking about.

>> Isha Vela: And.

>> Latasha Kinnard: And for me, for a long time, I was very stubborn in terms of content creation because I wanted to do it my way, right. Instead of figuring out how can I align myself with where the market is. And so I was really stubborn about it from the very beginning. I had a lot of resentment towards it because I came up 10 years ago when this stuff wasn’t, you know, you didn’t have people online dancing and pointing to try to get people interested in their business, and I had a lot of resentment about that. but now I’ve had some things happen in my life that makes this look just so not something that I want to, like, resent anymore. It’s like, just let that go and figure out, where do you fit in? Just get in where you fit in. Don’t hold resistant to the process. so that has been a lot of, you know, my programming and deprogramming over the past 10 years, and I think where I am now is thinking about what’s the best way for me to get my message across. and it’s so unfortunate what happened over at Twitter, because Twitter was, like, my biggest space to get new clients, because. The format was just, like, it was so much more geared towards my personality, which is not aesthetic. Right. Like, I don’t. I tell people, look, I’m not into luxury. I’m not about to give you this aesthetic stuff. I’m the Camry of the coaches, okay? You come here because I’m efficient and reliable. I’m not trying to be nobody’s bins or BMW like it. It doesn’t appeal to me. Right. But also, I think how you said earlier about just stepping into, like, whatever that decision is that I make about how I want to show up online, stepping into it with the confidence. And when you have things in your space, like resentment and bitterness, it really diminishes your ability to, like, be fully in your own power.

>> Isha Vela: So that’s absolutely.

>> Latasha Kinnard: That’s kind of where I’ve been and, rebuilding since I have left the Twitter sphere and rebuilding my presence on Instagram. yeah, it has been really, really interesting.

>> Isha Vela: That’s so. It’s like, it’s so. Again, like, it’s interesting to me too, because I’ve been rethinking sort of how I show up. and I’m in the process of kind of like. Like maybe going to YouTube and doing more long form stuff. And yeah, it’s really interesting, our relationship with different platforms. That’s another whole conversation. But, yeah, and just getting this message across and. And, you know, we’re. We’re stewards of this information. Right. We have these experiences and we’re stewards of this information we have to disseminate, like, as part of our, we are change makers. Right. And. And part of your work is like, how do I get this message out to people? You get to, have your business around that and profit from that. But it’s like, yeah, like in. With all of the changes happening with different platforms, algorithms, also the economics of society and where we’re going, where our money system is moving to, those are all things that we need to kind of rethink and reconfigure as. Right. As things shift. Right. We’re always having to shift our. How we show up and. Yeah. And where we show up. but I want to give you time. Yeah. And I want to give you time to talk about, what is it that you’re offering right now? I saw something about a December detox.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Oh, yeah. So I’m doing the December detox on Instagram right now for all of the reasons that we talked about today. And I’m realizing that, this deprogramming from what the education system has reinforced in us and, detoxing from how comfortable and familiar we are with survival and relearning and discovering what we feel like when we feel safe, when we feel worthy, when we feel enough. How does that feel in our body? How does that feel in our mind? What is our experience of the world? That’s really what I want to look at this month. So definitely invite your community to take, part in that with me this month. And I think. I think it’s going to change the way that people feel about safety, about themselves, and about money.

>> Isha Vela: Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Tasha. This was a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom and experience.

>> Latasha Kinnard: Thank you so much for having me and giving me the space to have such beautiful and wonderful conversation. And I just love the work that you’re doing.

>> Isha Vela: Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, be well. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Remember to hit the subscribe button to get notified of new episodes dropping on the new and full moons of each month. And if you haven’t already, leave us a five star review on itunes to make sure that everyone who needs this transmission receives it. Until the next episode, I’m sending you fierce, fierce Love.