S1E8: Answering your Business Prayers with Rev. Deborah Johnson
Welcome to Women Rocking Business, where we are here to help you rock yourself, rock your life, and rock the world as a woman entrepreneur. Because the world needs you and the time is now. I’m Sage Lavine, CEO, trainer, unretired camp counselor, and best-selling author of the Hay House Book, Women Rocking Business. We’ve had the honor of serving over a hundred thousand women entrepreneurs around the globe, just like you, who are here to do more, be more, and have more by giving your gifts to the planet. So let’s dive in.
Reverend Deborah cleared her schedule when she heard this was happening to be with you today. On the count of three, let’s welcome her into the studio and let’s give her a big wah-hoo.
Sage Lavine
00:00:53
I sat in Reverend Deborah’s church 10 years ago. For the first time in my life, I saw a path where I could believe in the divine without choosing one religion. I’m speaking that with respect for all of your spiritual beliefs, absolute respect for every single spiritual belief that’s out there. But I sat in the back of the church and for the first time I understood that everything was spiritual. That money could be spiritual. I cried my eyes out, Reverend Deborah, I cried my eyes out over and over, and I watched you on that stage. I thought to myself, “Maybe someday, that woman could speak on my stage.” Of course I didn’t have a stage, but I just want to say to every single one of you that has a dream like that, guess what?
Sage Lavine
00:01:33
Dreams come true. It only took 10 years, but you know, I’ve also gotten a chance to speak on Reverend Deborah’s stage. Reverend Deborah is someone that I know believes that money is a spiritual path. know that you’re here to do a work around money today. So say more about that piece.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:01:51
Hi. Everybody just take a breath. Sometimes when we start talking about money, we get anxious. So there’s some opening comments that I would like to make to kind of help frame some of the things that I have to say. So in addition to being a minister, my corporate career was actually in real estate investing. I have an undergraduate degree in economics from USC and I have an MBA in urban land economics in real estate finance from UCLA. Economics is a social science. It’s a study of behavior.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:02:33
It’s about us. Economics is just the study of people and what it is that people do with their resources. This is why there can be so many discrepancies and different economic theories, is it they’re really not predicting money. They’re predicting what they think people will do with the money. Right? Okay. So just, just let that sit in for a moment… that ultimately it’s about us. One of my favorite things, and I like to remind people of is that you are a verb. You’re a verb. You’re not just a noun.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:03:14
You’re not just an entity in the universe that life is happening to. Life is happening through you and life is happening as you. So the biggest shift that has to take place in terms of wealth consciousness is to not see yourself as like little ol’ me and how am I going to attract in all of this abundance that is outside of me to recalibrating your own identity, recalibrating who it is and what it is that you think that you are. Because ultimately it’s not just, can you bring something to you?
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:03:57
Can you maintain it? The way that you maintain it is you identify with it. The way you maintain it, is it, you embody it. The way you maintain it is that you resonate with it. So ultimately what you’re doing here in this program is you’re shifting your frequency. You’re not just gaining tools to try to make something happen. You’re learning how to be your truest self.
Sage Lavine
00:04:23
One of the questions, Rev., that a lot of our Women are grappling with is, you know, what is my highest purpose? What is mine to do in my business? How do I reconcile where I am in my life now with where I want to be, living my highest purpose and some of the work that’s required to get there?
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:04:44
Take a minute of breath. I’m going to keep saying that. Keep breathing, because that’s so important. My own personal experience in having been a spiritual counselor for several decades now, is that our purpose reveals itself to us on the journey. It isn’t like people just wake up, have this real clear sense. “Oh, I’m supposed to be that.” And start moving in that direction. As you start engaging, as you start taking the opportunities that are before you, as you start having gratitude for those, there’s an awareness that dawns on you.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:05:29
It may seem out there, but this is the first thing that’s coming to me. It’s kind of like understanding yourself coming out of the closet. There is an awareness that happens like, “Oh shoot, I’m gay” or whatever. It isn’t like, you just wake up one day, “Oh, I’m gay” and then go about the business. You’re looking at your life and you’re looking at how it is unfolding and here’s a story that’s being told. But the story has to be bigger than you. Okay. Your purpose isn’t just about you. Sage was just saying that a moment ago. Your purpose is going to be how you can engage the world, how you can make a contribution.
So the greatest way for you to determine your purpose is just ask that question on a daily basis. “How can I serve this day? What difference can I make this day? What is the impact that I can make this day?”
Here’s a kisser, the universe wastes nothing. This is one of the biggest problems that I see people do is that they’re busy trying to get away from something. The universe wastes nothing. It’s just like the Pachamama earth. The feminine, everything comes out of her. Everything goes back in her so that even the crap becomes fertilizer for what’s next.
So you don’t want to leave anything behind, you know,. You used to be a teacher, okay? So look at what you’re doing!
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:07:03
So you don’t want to get to that, “Oh, I’m tired of being a teacher.” No, if you are a teacher, that’s going to be a part of your purpose. Now you may not want to be in the classroom in a public school system in that way, but you don’t want to turn your back on anything that you’ve done because everything and not just the things that you’re proud of, the things that you aren’t proud of, the addiction, the abuses, the bankruptcies, like whatever that stuff is. If you’re willing to surrender your judgment about it. Just like when Sage was saying, “Don’t just call this moment a crisis.”
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:07:46
If you just say, “This is my human capital, this is the stuff that’s happened to me.” Put it on the alter. It’s like a divine alchemy process. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. It only changes form. All the gold that’s ever will be is here. So it’s a ring, it’s an earring, it’s a watch. It just gets melted down and becomes something else. And so it is with the stuff of your life. It melts down and it reshapes into something that is a blessing, but that means bring all of you to the table. Part of your purpose is going to be in the stuff that was the pain.
Part of the reason why I’m such a good diversity trainer is because of all the pain and the trauma that I went through around diversity.
Sage Lavine
00:08:33
Can I be super blunt with you? We’ve known each other for years. So you guys, Reverend Deborah is a black lesbian minister. Do you think it was easy for her? She’s the most powerful freaking woman I know now in my life. We have women here, Rev D., who are you losing family members to COVID. We have women here who have evacuated their homes. We have women here who are sitting here in 400 air quality outside their house and they don’t know when it’s going to get better. We have women who are up in the middle of the night to be piping in with us. What would you say to the women who are in it right now….and then they have this business dream, right?
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:09:18
I’d say take a breath. Yeah. Tap into the wisdom of the ancestors. Stop and think about this for a moment. Each and every one of us that is here is part of an unbroken chain of life since the beginning of time. Let that sink in for a moment. An unbroken chain of life. Not only that, we are the survivors of the survivors, our direct ancestors had to live long enough to procreate.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:10:02
It took some wisdom. It took some fortitude. It took some strength. What I do for myself is I just remember that, no matter how hard I think it is right now, it’s a drop in the bucket to what my foremothers had to face. It is a drop in the bucket. When you think about the circumstances, the conditions, the economics, just the technologies of whatever are days where the levels of responsibility and whatnot they had.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:10:42
We are the answer to their prayers. We’re the answer to their prayers and now is not the time for us to get mealy-mouthed and “woe is me.” What’s the strain? We’re all standing upon the shoulders of giants. You’re standing upon the shoulders of some strong women. I’m actually reminded of something.
A guy said… I’ve been doing work inside of male’s prisons for over 20 years. He said this on my pulpit after he did 28 years. He was one of the first guys that we ever worked with, and this stuck in my head, he said, “I have done so much with so little, for so long. Now I can do anything with nothing.”
It’s this kind of a strength that we have to tap into to recalibrate and not start with the story that I’m not enough, or that I’m too weak, or I don’t have it. No, running through your veins, you’ve got strength. Running through its cellular memory about not only how to survive, but how to thrive. Tap into it. This is this ecosystem that Sage was talking about.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:12:17
The ecosystem doesn’t just start right now. The ecosystem has legacy. The ecosystem has a divine design that it has been living for centuries generation after generation after generation. Tap into that wisdom.
Sage Lavine
00:12:36
Stop asking for it to be easier, ask to know your own strength. You were right up against this. You didn’t have a church. You didn’t have money in the bank. You had nothing. You manifested freaking everything out of nothing. I watched you.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:12:53
So I grew up in the Pentecostal church. I grew up very fundamentalist, evangelical, charismatic, Pentecostal. It was like the jumbo pack. We learned a lot about the Bible. We have this idea in our head that the Bible was very oppressive to women and like, you know, biblical times, and they were chattel and property and all of the rest of that. Well, you know what..that’s just part of the story. My name is Deborah. Technically speaking, it would be the Hebrew Day-Bor-Uh. Deborah was the bad ass. Deborah was a prophet.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:13:35
She was a judge. She was a general. A prophet, a judge, and a general. I love this part. Her captain was Barack, just saying. The reason why I bring this up is that whatever your story is, you’re going to find evidence to support that. So if you want to run with the story that the whole life of women has been about being chattel or less than, you’re missing the story. Just like as a black person in America, don’t start with the history being 1619, when slaves hit this continent, we are the first people on the planet, math, science, language, it’s like all of that came out of the continent of Africa.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:14:37
If we only stay stuck on the little bit of narrative that we have that makes us less than, that’s not the narrative that you want to hook into.
Sage Lavine
00:14:52
Can you see why I love this woman? Anybody here feeling that truth bomb? Who’s got a question for Reverend Deborah? Jen Cormier.
Jen Cormier
I’m also an earth-based interfaith minister. I just wanted to ask you, I heard you starting everything from nothing and being a spiritual counselor. I’m stepping into doing grief work and bringing a program, a year-long program, to people that are moving through grief and loss. I’ve had people finding me and working through the grow calls and then getting to that point where I’m supposed to make my offer for $347 a month, you know, for a year.
Jen Cormier
00:15:39
And I just stopped. And I said, “Well, I have something that I’m working on and I’ll let you know.” you know, they’re like, “Yes, I want to work with you.” I just, I’m about to break through on how I can offer work that feels sacred and spiritual, where the lineage of teachers that do everything by donation. I have lots of mentors who I love and adore, and who’ve given me things for free. Now I’m asking where the price tag and I just can’t quite get there.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:16:08
Take a breath. I want to respect the honesty of the vulnerability that you’re speaking with. Now, we can all feel that and a sisterhood, we can hold you in that space. In so many respects, I’m sure that your story is our story as well. A couple of things that I just want to remind you of one is that you can’t lead people through places that you never been through. So if you’re called to be a grief counselor, you’re going to become intimately familiar with grief.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:16:50
So don’t look at the grief as something that’s bad or deterring you, it’s helping to prepare you. Everything is a matter of consciousness. I understand what you’re saying and feeling like you don’t want to put a price tag, so to speak, on your spiritual gift. I can appreciate that. But you do seem to be comfortable with the idea of a donation. So it isn’t so much that you don’t want to receive. You feel like you don’t want to make it a fee.
Is this what I’m picking up from you? You give them an opportunity to donate and think of it as a suggested minimum donation.
Because people really don’t know what to donate. They honestly don’t. They know that it’s worth something. They know that it’s worth something and you want them to feel empowered. See, when people donate, what you’re doing is you are giving them an opportunity to align their resources with their values. You’re allowing them to not only empower you, but empower themselves because your money is one of your strongest energy forces. Where is that going to?
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:18:27
Somebody might be very happy to have that energy flowing towards their own growth, or even in your pocket, than some other things that they could have been doing. The good you seek is seeking you. The good you seek is seeking you. Let it come from wherever it comes from and don’t put artificial blocks on it. Let the universe support you however it wants to support you. Don’t have a “no” anywhere.
Sage Lavine
00:19:03
Jen, you’re beautiful. Jen, I’ve been watching you do this work for a little while now. It’s interesting to me that we landed on grief as your niche before COVID hit. You know, you stepped into that before the world turned upside down and now you’re sitting on a resource that is the exact resource people need. So I would venture to claim on your behalf, if I so may, just knowing you, that there’s no accidents. Your moment of backing away from that $347 amount was a moment in time, just like Reverend Deborah saying.
Sage Lavine
00:19:44
That moment is preparing you for your next moment. And you know, Reverend Deborah, I love your idea. We’ve actually had clients go through our programs and decide to invite people to make a donation on behalf of their organization and explain that 10 or 15% of that money goes directly to a social cause and the rest goes to my organization.
I want to add that not everybody is meant to charge money for their services. Some of us have had teachers who were in a position to not have to charge money. Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a teacher who didn’t charge you very much money or maybe not at all, raise your hand high, like a lot of you.
Sage Lavine
00:20:25
So that wasn’t their path like somebody else might’ve been footing the bill. Somebody else might’ve been supporting them. They might have come into money. Guess what – you didn’t. If you are here learning how to rock your business and make money with your purpose, the universe would have given you money in your bank account if that was your path, guess what?
Sage Lavine
00:20:48
If you’re needing money and you have a gift to give, this is the thing. The universe is wanting you to learn to value your time. We’re living in a time now, you know, teachers that started up their spiritual practice and their spiritual wisdom years ago were starting in a different era. It’s now 2020 and the world has changed. The world needs healers who are actually getting paid. The world needs healers who are getting paid for their gift. When people pay, they pay attention.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:21:17
Yes, grief is an interesting emotion. We tend to think of grief as something that we feel around, things that we once had and that we lost. That’s only part of the case. What I’ve really grown to appreciate is that the deeper grief is that which is unrequited. The deeper grief is actually around what we didn’t have. It’s like, if I had a father that I grew up with and he died, that’s one kind of grief. If I never met my father, that’s a whole other kind of grief.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:22:01
You mentioned being in a divorce situation. What you find is that way after couples have divorced, they don’t even want to be with each other anymore. The grief isn’t around the marriage that they lost. The grief is around the dream that they have to let go of all of the marriage that it didn’t become. So even in the black lives matters movement and the protests that have been happening in the streets that really got ignited around George Floyd’s murder… with all of those chance and all of that stuff that was going on that was out there, that it wasn’t just the grief about what happened to him, and what’s been happening to black men, primarily black men.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:22:47
The grief was also about the promise of equality, the promise of justice that just hasn’t happened yet. That’s what I’m seeing in you right now. What I’m seeing is that this grief is that there is something that is bursting within you that is saying, “Let me be!” You just can’t keep that genie in the bottle anymore. There’s a part of you that has to give yourself permission to be as great and as big as you are and for that to be okay.
If it comes with money, be okay with that. Even if it comes with a little, some people don’t like it. Be okay with that. That ain’t your problem. You just have to say yes to your calling.
Sage Lavine
00:23:51
You’ve been preparing a lifetime for this, Jen. You ready? [Yes.] Give us a one word statement of what you’re, what you’re ready to make happen now.
Jen Cormier
00:24:05
I’m ready to welcome everything.
Sage Lavine
00:24:08
Having peace and having someone actively holding you through a grief process, that’s a commodity, sister. People who actively get held through the grief process show up stronger at work. They show up stronger as parents. They can go out and make more money. They can go out and have a stronger nervous system. They can go out and be healthy and get proper sleep. This is a commodity. Okay? So for every single one of you that are supporting people with mental, emotional, spiritual journeys, you have a commodity, you’re holding it. On the count of three, let’s give a wahoo to Jen for courage, her vulnerability. We’re so proud of you. One, two, three, wahoo!
Yes. Every idea comes with its own infinite supply.
Sage Lavine
All right. So if this content is resonating, I’d like to invite you to consider attending our exclusive Women Rocking Business three-day training, which you can attend virtually, or at certain times of the year, you can attend live. This is a three-day business building rite of passage that thousands of women have attended from all over the world and used as a launch pad for their greatest entrepreneurial dream. Throughout the course of the three days, you’ll actually create your individualized launch plan to launch your business in the next 90 days and to grow it in a way that’s aligned with women’s values, you’ll get our entire system for finding your clients online.
So you can go out there and confidently enroll the perfect high paying clients, even if you’re just starting out. This is an experiential event where you’re actually interacting with the content all three days of small break-outs and meeting with our coaches. It’s amazing. You can get all of the details, the dates, and grab your discounted VIP seat at www.womenrockingbusiness.com/rocksales. I can’t wait to see you there.
Sage Lavine
00:26:15
Can you give us that rant before you go? Because that one always thinks and, and reminds me that there’s something bigger happening here, I’m being called. Every idea of yours comes with its own infinite supply.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:26:23
Yes. Every divine idea comes with its own supply. It isn’t even your idea. The fact that it’s been given to you is evidence itself that it’s possible. Our only job is just to say “yes,” not to figure out all of the wherefores and the hows about it. What your dream is waiting for you to come true. If you can figure it out and you know exactly how it’s going to happen, you need the dream a bigger dream. If your dream doesn’t scare you half to death, if your dream does and feel like it’s too much that you’ll ever gonna feel, then you don’t have a dream. You gotta plan.
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:27:08
It’s too small. It’s too small. I will leave you with this. When I was in graduate business school, there was a study that was done by the University of Chicago that was trying to get a sense of what were the commonalities of very, very successful business executives. This stuck with me because there was only one response that they all had in common. That was the answer to the question, “If you knew now what you did back then, I mean, if you knew back then, what you know now, what would you have done differently?”
Rev. Deborah Johnson
00:27:52
You know what they all said? “I’d have dreamt a bigger dream.” That even with all that I’ve done, I was still playing too small. I would have dreamt a bigger dream.
Sage Lavine
You guys feeling this one? You just give us a word of what you got. Give Reverend Deborah a word of what you’re taking.
00:28:18
You’ve been listening to Women Rocking Business. I’m Sage Lavine. The next step is to join our private Facebook group. The Women Rocking Business Sisterhood and introduce yourself over there for the real and vulnerable conversation of what it really takes to launch and scale a business you love in that Sisterhood group. We have each other’s backs, each other’s sides and each other’s fronts. This is true collaboration. So go grab a seat in the Sisterhood because we can go so much further when we go together, you’ll find a link to the private Sisterhood group and do our upcoming events in the show notes.
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