008: Lessons from the Blissful Millionaire How to Build Wealth and Fulfillment – Moneeka Sawyer

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Moneeka Sawyer 0:00
Now, one of the things that kind of started this for me was I had heard that rich people all have seven streams of income

yet right

when we when they don’t tell you is that it’s not seven streams of income that you’re active in

income that you have a vision for and you oversee but you have other people running those different things right.

Tony Maree Torrey 0:23
Welcome to the legacy in the making Show. I’m your host Ellie’s foremost Success Coach Tony Maree Torrey, I interview leaders and influencers who have gone beyond the superficial markers of success and claimed true fulfillment by leveraging their positions to create positive and profitable changes in their businesses and beyond. They share their stories and offer real world boots on the ground experience. That translates into practical advice to apply to your own journey. I invite you to this injection of wisdom and inspiration. So you can prevail and move your Well Hello, I’m Tony Maree Torrey, allays foremost success coach, and you’re listening to the legacy in the making Show. I’m very pleased to introduce you to the amazing Moneeka Sawyer. Moneeka Sawyer is the blissful millionaire doesn’t get any better than that. She reached financial freedom by turning $10,000 into over $2 million working on the five to 10 hours per month with very little stress. No wonder Moneeka, you are so blissful. And now what she is on a mission to do is to help as many other women as she can do the same thing. One of the ways in which she does this is she hosts a top rated podcast show called real estate investing for women and has interviewed some really prestigious guests. such as leeza Gibbons, Dr. Joe Batali. Hello, l l rod. And and me, I feel quite honored to be in such highfalutin company. Moneeka has also featured on stages with Suzanne Somers, Martha Stewart, iced tea and cocoa. And places like the NASDAQ marketplace, Harvard, Carnegie Hall and on TV such as NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox reaching over 100 and 50 million people Wow.

Chinese like Chinese happy money cat pings that’s that’s what I’m doing now that happy money cat dance.

Unknown Speaker 2:45
It’s so funny when

Unknown Speaker 2:46
people read I don’t know if you have this experience to Tony is when people read your bio. You’re like, Is that me?

Tony Maree Torrey 2:58
Thank you.

Yeah, man. years ago, many, many years ago, when I was still evolving as a coach, I was working with a marketing trainer. And he was teaching us to do our bio. And I’m like, I don’t think I’ve done anything special. And it’s like, Okay, well, kind of like walk me through some of the things that you’ve achieved in your life. Unlike, by the time it all came out. I was in a classroom environment at the time. By the time it all came out, it was just like, they’re like, yeah, you’re like, you were just putting on false modesty. And I was like, No, I really I wasn’t I really didn’t. Because I think we do. Do we don’t tend to. I mean, we just get on. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 3:42
Yeah.

Tony Maree Torrey 3:44
So I want to get It’s so lovely to have you here today. And the kinds of folks that we’re talking to are people that are looking to evolve into creating success beyond the traditional markers. Success. And I think that you have done an amazing job of that, because you’ve achieved a lot. And you’re super efficient, and you’re all about bliss. And you really, you have this amazing lifestyle that many of us aspire to. So tell us a little bit about yourself, and how it is that your story of all

Moneeka Sawyer 4:20
Oh, that’s such a wide open question. So

let’s focus on the real estate piece because that’s kind of the business piece of this. And so, so my journey in real estate started when my parents came to this country as immigrants with only $200 in their pocket. Wow. And they had heard and, you know, you know, this story, right, because you’re an immigrant too.

Tony Maree Torrey 4:41
Yes. It was not dissimilar for me. I kind of say I came with nothing but a backpack.

Moneeka Sawyer 4:45
That’s right, right.

Tony Maree Torrey 4:46
Some cash in my pocket, but not a lot.

Moneeka Sawyer 4:48
Not a lot. Right. And so they came when they heard that the golden ticket to to wealth in the United States was to buy real estate. This is something we can do. In the United States, so we can’t do in the same way anywhere else in the world and get so much support around that by the government and by society and all of that stuff. And they decided that they were going to buy real estate so that they could give me the life that they wanted me to have. And so they stayed really focused on that goal. And Fast Forward 15 years now, I’m 18. And they paid for my college education. Yeah, they did the same for my two other sisters, they pay for weddings, and now they have this amazing retired lifestyle. So I had seen my whole life what real estate could do and what being in business for yourself could do. Right. But on the other hand, my mom was a doctor, my dad was an engineer, so real estate was a high their side hustle. And, and so I went and got my college education, and was gonna follow that normal path to success. Right? I went to UC Berkeley. I was gonna go into corporate and And did that and within a year realize that that was not for me.

Tony Maree Torrey 6:04
It’s a hard life, the corporate life and

Moneeka Sawyer 6:10
Corporate life is also part of what you talk about that idea of what success looks like, right we climb we think we need to get the education climbed the corporate ladder, or you know, whatever it is, and that’s what success looks like you make a ton of money. You buy a nice house, you have a nice car, you get married. There’s this whole thing about what life is supposed to look like. Yeah, well, you’re out of college, I realized this is not for me, and I was scared out of my mind.

Tony Maree Torrey 6:36
It is a scary prospect thinking about letting go of that umbilical cords. Exactly, exactly. And so so I was sitting with

Moneeka Sawyer 6:46
my dad one evening over the dinner table, and I had seen what real estate could do for us, but I also seen the level of stress and because from my dad, he said, you know, monito everybody has stress. Everybody has fear and anger. Everybody has money problems. Do you want poor people money problems? Or do you want rich people money problems. So I made that decision that I was gonna have rich people money, and we were gonna get rid of the problems, right? focused on this path of bliss. But here’s the thing that I discovered, I realized that real estate, like any business is going to be a long term game. It’s not a get rich, quick scheme. So it was going to be in my life for a very long time. If it was going to be in my life for a very long time, it needed to make me happy, I was not going to be miserable. And so that’s why I focus so much on my business about creating it in a blissful way, which simply means that it supports the joy in my life through the whole process, not just when I get to the end result, right? The entire journey, rather than having this business take everything, like suck the life out of it, like many people, yes Kind of how that focus happened and why I built the business the way that I did.

Tony Maree Torrey 8:04
So what do you think it was that was different about you, Moneeka that helped you get to that place so early in life and let go of what I call the push mentality and start creating from ease and flow. I mean, it’s what I work with my clients on all the time. And you and I, we know, we know read Goossens in common and one of the things that Reed says is that before he started working with me, he actually thought that success was having six plates spinning all at once and going through like the total hustle and the portion, you know, he’s someone with a lot of energy. And so he was able to maintain that for a fair amount of time until eventually it started wearing on him. So what do you think it was that helped you understand that was not the road to travel?

Moneeka Sawyer 8:58
So I’ll be really candid I am the person that loves to have six plates roll, like spinning at all times, because I’m also very high energy. And so I have to kind of rein that in because we

Unknown Speaker 9:11
can’t

Moneeka Sawyer 9:12
live a truly blissful life and really have the time freedom and the emotional freedom and the mental freedom and the focus on a successful business if we’ve got all these things going now, one of the things that kind of started this for me was I had heard that rich people all have seven streams of income.

Unknown Speaker 9:31
Yet, right?

Moneeka Sawyer 9:32
But we weren’t, they don’t tell you is that it’s not seven streams of income that you’re active in.

income that you have a vision for, and you overseed other people running those different things, right. So but as a young woman, I thought, oh, I’ve got to have six or seven streams of income. I don’t know. I’m out there, whatever. And so, the thing is

that I learned very, very quickly that that was going to exhaust Mm hmm. And I did not want that life and so I got a coach and he started to explain to me streams of income right and what that really looks like. And so what I ended up doing is taking these loving to have the six plates spinning and creating those in different areas of my life. So instead of having everything focused on my business and having all this chaos, Hmm, I could not focus on I have a lot of energy. I like to have different projects so I can switch my focus around and like variety. Having them all in my business, I could now have them so I had my my disk spinning in my relationship and my health and diet or exercise. I was Excuse me, I was a professional dancer, right. So I had Wow. So I had I had my investments going I my real estate going so I had I had the joy of having the many spinning plates mm. None of the chaos instead I was able to put it together to create a balanced fund sort of a weird backwards way. Does that make sense?

Tony Maree Torrey 11:08
It totally makes sense exactly what came into my mind was you know, the coaching principle I’m sure you’ve probably seen like the pie chart with all the aspects of our lives you know, relationship health and well being our spiritual life, our business, our home environment, all those things are all pieces of the of the pie that create a balanced life and as you were saying, before you said it I immediately went to Oh, she’s really been building a balanced life. Yes. And I love that because that’s a lot of the work that I do. Many of my clients do come to me because they’re starting to see cracks turn into Kenyans, you know, they’re starting to, they’ve had that youthful exuberance and they were you know, this is an Australian say We talk about running on the smell of an oily rag, right? Where you’ve seen where you you know, you run on the fumes and you run out, you can only run on fumes for so long. So most people come to the realization that you came to when they started really feeling the consequences. It sounds like you’re a pretty smart cookie and you got there ahead of most of the rest of us. I certainly have my burnout story for having had the for me the burnout culminated in a panic attack on the freeway where I nearly wiped myself and other people out. And so that was a really huge wake up call for me that I needed to start doing life differently. Moneeka, if you were sitting in a room in front of a bunch of like founding CEOs, obviously for you, it’s about women sitting in a with a group of women who are ambitious have reached a certain level of success, but are looking to change Take things in their lives and their businesses to the next level. What would you share with them that you can share with us today?

Moneeka Sawyer 13:07
Keep learning, keep learning and keep taking action. I think what happens with success is that we get complacent. We sit, we rest on our laurels. I know how to do that. I’ve done that before. I’m smart. We are smart, right? But if you go into every day, knowing that you’re smart, and that you don’t, that you know how to do everything, you don’t leave the door open for the next opportunities. Growth can’t happen without new opportunities. And those new opportunities come from allowing for them, looking for them and being open to them. So going into each new day, with that beginner’s mind, and really looking for the things that you don’t know. It doesn’t mean that you’re not smart. It just means that you don’t know that and if you Don’t know that there’s a new opportunity for you. And I used to coach executives all the time. And that was one of the things I had to keep reminding them like, they would say, well, I’ve heard that before. That’s great that you’ve heard that before. Have you implemented that? Have you taken it on? Like, is it in your heart? Or is it that? Oh, I’ve heard that before. That doesn’t work for me. Well, how do you know, there’s two big things about that? First of all, have you implemented it? And today, you’re in a different place than when you heard it last time, then affect you differently?

Tony Maree Torrey 14:31
Right, really true. And how do you embody that knowledge? So so it shifts from knowledge to wisdom?

Moneeka Sawyer 14:39
Exactly, exactly. And we will never be done. If you want to be truly satisfied in life, you will never be done so know how no matter how successful you are today, there’s an opportunity for even more growth, even more expansion and even more opportunity.

Tony Maree Torrey 14:57
And where are you focusing? Your growth and opportunity at the moment.

Moneeka Sawyer 15:03
Such an interesting question because I’ve been thinking about this all weekend, like such a prime time to be talking about this. So, I have gotten to that point where I can retire. And you know, we’ve we’ve been so fortunate, you know, we, our businesses done phenomenally well. My husband has a really great job. So we’re able to support each other in a lot of different ways. And so I’m at that point where I’m like, Okay, do we want to continue to work and hustle? Or is it time to transition now into retirement and travel? Like, in this, like the big picture of life, you know, and David and I have been talking about will retire in about five years. Well, five years actually then it requires a plan. And I’m so used to being in business and loving the work and loving the message. Loving getting my voice

out there and all the things that we get to do in business

that I haven’t focused on the plan. And so right now I’m kind of in this interesting transition like who I’m so blessed. I’m 50 years old, and I get to talk about this. Like, this is amazing.

Tony Maree Torrey 16:15
That is amazing. And not only because you’re 50 that because you look like you’re 30 Yeah,

exactly. Yeah.

Sorry, I just have to

jump in there for a second I do this body of energy work with my clients and and it works on their energetic field for one a better word and we jokingly call it a field facelift because people always look younger. Once they, you know, it’s just to do with kind of letting go of things that we’ve got stored up in ourselves, right. And yeah, it’s hysterical because people do that takes 1010 years off that bliss, you know,

Moneeka Sawyer 16:57
almost goes

Tony Maree Torrey 16:58
to clearing house. off.

Moneeka Sawyer 17:00
Yeah, yeah, it’s so true. I need to find out more about that. We’ve talked about that a couple times. I need to find out more.

Unknown Speaker 17:06
Yeah. So.

Moneeka Sawyer 17:08
But yeah, so that’s kind of my journey now is really, you know, and this is what I was saying about, you know, learning about the next level for me, the next level may not be business Hmm. For me, the next level may be full on living life. But I’m in that point of transition, like what is full on living life look like? I feel like I’ve been doing that so far.

Tony Maree Torrey 17:31
Yeah, but it’s

Moneeka Sawyer 17:32
starting to look different to me. Yeah,

Tony Maree Torrey 17:34
right. Mm hmm. Maybe it’s time to start a movement as opposed to a business. Mm hmm. That may be interesting. Yeah. So let’s switch gears a little bit. We’ve talked a lot about all the things that are going amazingly well for you. Let’s talk a little bit about a challenge you have experienced like was there a time when you really Were butting butting your head against something. And what did you do with that setback? And how did you overcome it? Mm hmm.

Moneeka Sawyer 18:10
So I’ve had a lot of setbacks, personally, and also business wise. I’m in this one. In this show. I’ll talk about sort of the big business setback. But in 2008, I bought a million dollar home in October.

Tony Maree Torrey 18:24
Oh, wow. And I know what that means.

Moneeka Sawyer 18:31
Within six months, it was worth only $500,000. So I had lost $500,000 in six months.

And then my husband lost his job.

Tony Maree Torrey 18:43
Oh, wow.

Moneeka Sawyer 18:44
So I was like so many other people out there. This this house that was seriously underwater. I had a ton of property at the time and all of it was, you know, like, value.

Tony Maree Torrey 18:56
Yeah.

Moneeka Sawyer 18:58
And so I kind of had to decide Like, was I gonna sell this thing and just get rid of it like everybody else was doing was I gonna freak out? And I was freaking out? Can you imagine? I mean, how many people did this right? You watch that price go down, you keep thinking it’s gonna turn and it never turned. Yeah,

Tony Maree Torrey 19:13
right. That fear really lucky and made it through because I was investing actively between 2006 and 2008. And our last property was when my house after we finally sold that because we were doing a lot of fix and flips at the time, which was super fun. And speaking of being in alignment with your bliss, like for me, it’s all about potential, right, whether it’s human potential or the potential of a home. And, and so that was like, I still I just loved doing it. And the last one that we you know, it took us a while to sell because things were tricky, and I actually had very good instincts around profitability, and so we we still made money on it, but it just took us longer to offload And he just said to me, never again. He’s like, I’m never doing this

stressful time for people. And it

Moneeka Sawyer 20:08
was a really stressful time. And you’re really lucky because so many people got badly burned, especially if you were doing something that quick is flipping Ryan flippers and wholesalers, they were kind of like, you know, there was a lag. Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah. So, for me, though, it was just a house. And so David got a new job. He took about a 30% pay cut. So we took a huge pay cut, and we could no longer afford our home. And so instead of like, being with the masses, and completely freaking out, I engaged my bliss practices.

Unknown Speaker 20:46
Right.

Moneeka Sawyer 20:47
And I remembered his saying by Warren Buffett, he says, If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.

Tony Maree Torrey 20:55
It’s really true. So

Moneeka Sawyer 20:56
yeah, so I grounded myself. We took Deep breath, swallow our pride rented out my dream home. And then we moved into a little dump that we could we could afford. I mean it literally you walked in there. It smelled like dog pee and wet fur.

Unknown Speaker 21:13
Huh?

Tony Maree Torrey 21:15
fixer for sure.

Moneeka Sawyer 21:17
Like it should have been a tear down except that it was a townhouse. You couldn’t. I mean, it was horrible. So but that was the opportunity of the time. That’s what we could do. I did want to rent. And so we fixed it up. I lived there and then we came out of it. We’ve moved back into the dream home, which is where I live now. Everything would appreciate is we actually made quite a lot of money. But it was really

Tony Maree Torrey 21:42
understanding that market cycle. Mm hmm. Is this is have challenges and you need to stay grounded and rational rather than making emotional decisions. It’s so important. It’s one of the reasons why some of the foundational work I do with my people. is getting them in touch with their purpose, because that is the and getting them in touch with it in a way that it becomes extremely memorable. And it really sinks into the subconscious. And so then that becomes the foundation that allows you to weather the ups and downs and stay in alignment with who you truly are. And then, you know, anything is possible and and I believe that the universe one of the better word rewards those of us who stayed true to ourselves and to our authenticity, regardless of what’s going on in the circumstances around us.

Moneeka Sawyer 22:40
I absolutely agree with you on that. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy. No, oh, no. I mean, sometimes it can be really, really, really hard.

Tony Maree Torrey 22:48
But if it’s, if it’s hard, but it’s aligned with you, it still moves you forward. It’s still me. It’s so worth it. Do you know what I mean? Oh, I What am I Know what you made and you may not even like like when you’ve made a decision based on your deepest knowing and your values and your vision, it may not, it’s not a guarantee that you will like the results that you get. But it’s still better than making a decision from fear and not liking the results you get. That’s right.

Moneeka Sawyer 23:21
That’s right. That’s right. And you’re more likely to get a result that you do like, if you do it based on your values and your vision, rather than if you make decisions based on fear, you almost always end up on the other side unhappy with the result.

Tony Maree Torrey 23:38
Yeah, I love that. So the legacy in the making show was pulled together really out of an inspiration for me wanting because I believe that we can change the world through business and or movements. Like obviously you’re thinking about transitioning into something slightly different that isn’t necessarily The same as what you’ve been doing before. But I still believe that this is how we change the world. And so if you were to identify a problem that in the world that really bothers you that you would want to have, you know, not we can always solve all the problems in our lifetime, but we can contribute to the solution or we can get the ball rolling for other people to take up the baton for you money, how what would that be?

Moneeka Sawyer 24:30
So I lived in India as an exchange student when I was 16. And one of the things that really horrified me was how women retreated there. And I saw women my age girls my age or younger, who are married off into arranged marriages to much older men, and they never had any choices. I saw women getting beaten. I heard people screaming, I mean, they just hold the horrors of being a female in so many parts of the world. And I decided right then that that was not going to be my life first of all. But the other piece was that I needed to figure out a way to help. And so one of the things that I realized over time was one of the biggest factors in the uplifting of all people, including women, is education. Like if you educate people, they they are able to create a different life for themselves. So I became very committed to the education of girls in India. So even at the age of 16, I started donating $10 a month to a school in India that supported the education of girls. And I’m have been doing that ever since. So now I’m heavily involved with a school in India in one of the villages and now they educate like for 100 miles around. So I’m very, very involved with that. But that journey started when I was 16. Now at 50, you know, it looks completely Difference a lot more than $10 a month, right? I did a documentary. I mean, I’m really involved in that. But that’s the kind of thing that really rubs me up. It’s like really empowering women, you know that I’m all about empowering women really empowering women, all over the world, in India, of course, is close to my heart because I’m Indian. So

Tony Maree Torrey 26:21
I love that. Tell us about your documentary. What’s the name of it? And is it is it possible for us to see it anywhere?

Moneeka Sawyer 26:26
Yeah, it’s called the School of hope. And and you can actually see it at so I have two websites, there’s blissful investor.com which is my main real estate one. But then there’s also core bliss, life, calm core bliss life. And on there if you see if you go to the tab that says, My work in the world, I think it is you can actually see the documentary there. It’s really fun.

Tony Maree Torrey 26:52
Oh, that’s fantastic. I would love to see that. I will certainly be going to core bliss life.com to watch that documentary. how a man you done something so formidable as to as to just putting it, bringing it to life for people. That’s amazing. Yeah. Well, Moneeka pleasure. Oh, and this has just been such a great conversation with you. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you want to share with the legacy in the making show audience today?

Moneeka Sawyer 27:24
Yes, I like to close every show with this. Always remember, goals without action are just dreams.

So get out there,

take action and create the life your heart deeply desires.

Tony Maree Torrey 27:41
I’m glad you tuned in to the legacy in the making show. If you’re genuinely interested in creating positive change in your business or your life or on a more global scale, I invite you to connect with me at Tonymaree.com. That’s Tony with a why Maree with two E’s when you get there. You You’ll find the path to purpose master plan, the truly brilliant method to make sure you’re clear on why you’re here. This is the absolute critical foundation to honing your instincts and leaving a legacy you’ll be proud of. You can also find out about the innate wisdom Business Council, which is an opportunity to evolve your vision in the company of like minded leaders and much, much more. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and we’ll see you next time.