Elevate Above Your Circumstances with Mary Owusu

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Oh, my God. I just had an incredible conversation with a client and a dear, dear soul, Mary Owosu. She, her story.

Is going to blow you away. And this is a very different episode because I wanted their story because it's a story of resilience. It's a story of fighting for what is important to you. And as an entrepreneur, as someone that's trying to build wealth, as someone who's trying to, to build a journey, build a life that I call a legacy factor life, okay? She is a walking exam. It's not just her, her and her four siblings. Okay? This is someone who came from Ghana and basically was left here to fend for herself and to create a life. And oh, the life that they created. This is rich. For those that want to create a richer lifestyle, have a deeper impact and live with complete freedom. Enjoy this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show because this one is epic. I'll see you in the episode. This is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom because that's what it really means to be an absolute entrepreneur.

Hey there, Mary. So good to have you on the show.

Kind of. It took a little while to get.

You on, but we got you here.

I'm so happy to be here, Mal. Thanks for having me.

Oh, my God, I can't wait for our conversation because we met, I'm going to say almost six months, maybe five, four or five months ago, and the first time we had a conversation you told me your story and I just think that one, it was an incredibly compelling story. A journey of persistence, a journey of God, just dedication.

And, and possibility. And I Just I want to make sure that we get this story out in the world. Because, you know, the affluent entrepreneur Shores is all about possibility. It's about living into possibility, capturing possibility. But sometimes it's not a straight line. So let's do this. Before we get into some of the. The depth of some of this, I just would love for the audience to. To hear a little bit about who Mary is today. And then we'll take it back to how Mary got here.

Oh, I love that. Start from where you are and work it back. I love that. I love that. So who am I today? Oh, my gosh, that's a fantastic question. I will say that I am an entrepreneur, I'm an educator, and I am a giver. Those are the three things I could say that I am.

When I say I'm a giver. I'm a wife, I'm a mom, I'm a role model to folks. I also have role models in my life. I try to give as much as I get, whether it's from family and friends or whether it's from the circle of networks that I have in my life. Educator. So I'm a professor. I actually am a college university professor. I teach marketing and analytics to a bunch of really smart young adults, both. Both undergrads and graduate students looking to get their master's degrees. So I'm an educator in that sense, but I'm also an educator and an entrepreneur because I take my education beyond the classroom. I just think it's so important to get professionals who are out there who are supposed to know what to do with the degrees they had or the degrees they didn't ever get and turn those into actual results for some organization, whether it's their own or some business that they represent. And so a part of my entrepreneurship is just teaching regular old marketers, everyday marketers, how to do digital marketing and analytics. So that's the entrepreneur part that also borrows from the educator part of me. So those are the various hats that I wear, I give, I educate, and I'm an entrepreneur. I just, I think it's important to have all those things working together to make me the whole Mary that I am.

I love this. And it's true. The whole Mary, you are. Because as we started, now, for those of you don't know, Mary is one of my elite clients.

And.

And as we started to peel back who Mary was, what she does, where she's focusing, the things, the greatness and the goodness she brings to the world, I was like, floored at so many facets of your world.

Because it truly is amazing. But it's even more amazing when we start to look at your journey to get here. I mean, let's just. I just want to reiterate for all of you out there that they're watching and listening. Mary is a professor at a New York university.

She's got her own business and is an entrepreneur that she built from scratch. Successful one, I might add. She is a wife, she is a mother. She is always vibrant every time we talk. And I think that this is, this is the thing that I want to take away. Because when you hear the story.

Then.

We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and go, why am I not stepping up? So let's do this. Let's go back and let's go back to how did Mary. Because Mary's. You're not from the US Initially.

Nope.

So let's go back to. To how you got here and the process and, and the journey. Because it was a journey.

It was a journey, Mel, in the literal sense as well. It was a 24 hour journey on the plane, literally. And also a journey, figurative. Figuratively speaking, in the sense that it was rough. So, you know, and for a long time I didn't talk about my story. So it's. It's really bizarre to be sharing the story. But I really want everybody who's listening to just know that there's power in telling your story. And it took me a long time to figure that out. I don't know about you, but there might be some dates that stick out in your mind in life. You know, one of my siblings, my youngest sibling got married on 1111 11. So that date always sticks in my mind. Or my birth date. There was some coup in Ghana, where I'm from. So that date, date is also like an official date that sticks on the calendar in Ghana, things like that. There are dates that stick in our minds for life and there are some personal ones probably in your life, Mel, and maybe some of the listeners as well. There's some dates. Well, one date that sticks in my mind is August 15, 1992.

I don't know if you know what you were doing, but I know exactly what I was doing. Do you know what you were doing?

I don't. All I could think about is my son was almost 2 years old.

Which meant that. Yeah, so it was a crazy time in my life, but I don't. I have no idea what I was doing on that day.

Yeah. Two year old. Yeah. I bet you have no recollection you're probably just trying to catch a couple, you know, snaps or something. That was an insane time. Two year olds. Oh my gosh. Well, I'll tell you, August 15th, 1992 sticks in my mind because that was the exact date that we left Ghana and came overnight to Buffalo, New York. And you know, if you put Ghana on a map and you put the city where we lived and you draw a line to Buffalo, New York, you can see that we moved from nearly the equator to possibly the coldest place on earth overnight, you know, and it's like, why did we do this? Right? So let me tell you what happened. My father was a professor in one of the universities in Ghana. The city was called Cape Coast. He taught at the University of Cape coast, one of the biggest slaves, slave castles, slave sympathies in history. A lot of people still visit Cape coast just to see those old slave castles that unfortunately were part of the slave trade. So he wanted to get his doctorate and so he had some choices to make. I guess he had some options. And between him and my mom, they decided that Buffalo was the place to go. There was a great university there, there was a connection that they had. So overnight, I'm sure there was some planning, but for us kids, it felt like it was just an overnight decision because five children from 3 to 13, I was number, I was age 11 at the time. My sister was 13, she was the oldest. And then there was me. And then we went all the way down to three. We came to the US Straight to Buffalo for my dad to do his doctorate. When we came, we didn't quite know what to expect because there was no planning. Honestly, in those days, America was really portrayed as this place where everything was golden. Literally. I thought I would pick up gold when I got off the plane. I thought it was just sparkled on the. I thought it'd be sprinkled on the Runway for us to just grab and put in our purses and, you know, just have a lavish life. That's the picture I had. I thought there would be no poverty, no, no sadness, you know, I don't know what kind of memory or what kind of thing made me have that impression, but we were comfortable in Ghana. Mel. Here in America, not so much. My dad had come a few months earlier to find us an apartment. And we came and it was a one bedroom apartment for all seven of us. It was tiny. It was probably the size of a single living room that we partitioned for a place to sleep. A little kitchen in the side and there was a stench of cigarettes. I had never smelled that before. Infested. Infested. The place was infested. But that was all he could afford because the only money he had was the stipend he was getting as a PhD student. So he had to figure out how to support himself and all of us and then get his doctorate. So that's how we found ourselves in America, was for him to try to get this doctorate degree so he could go back, get a higher level job, and hopefully be able to support us even more, or that he could stay here with that degree and we could all live here and have a different kind of life.

Right?

That was. That was the idea.

Yeah.

I'll tell you that. I did not think the poverty that we went through was going to be something I would ever experience. We had nothing. We had nothing. No car. Our clothes were borrowed or dropped off in the front of the house because my dad had made some connections with some churches so people would come and drop clothes off at the front door. We walked everywhere in the Buffalo winters. We just made a long line and just kind of stepped in each other's footsteps to walk to school, to walk to church, like, you know, step where your sister steps, step where your brother steps. That's how we got back and forth from place to place. We ate at food pantries. We certainly couldn't afford our rent, so the rent was subsidized, but by us cleaning that apartment and other apartments owned by the landlord. So we'd find our ways to walk to wherever the apartments were, take care of the buildings, try not to sweep into the drunk people that may have been laying in the doorways and, you know, in the hallways. Do our best to not get snatched by anybody. Just figure out how to subsidize our rent down to a few dollars so we could have enough to buy the loaves of bread or the milk or whatever we needed to eat. As a family of seven, it is.

A far cry from. From picking up gold when you get off the plane.

And yes, I was lied to, Mel. I don't know where that came from, but somebody planted the wrong impression. And in my brain, oh, man, it was rough.

And I'm. I assume that your, Your parents, I mean, your dad and dad knew that you were walking into this kind of environment, but was looking longer term as the possible at the possibility of what, what, what could be there for the family.

I agree. I think that was it. I think they knew that there was going to be some hardship. I don't think they knew how hard it would be. But I think they were certainly planning for us to have a good life, you know, to figure this out along the way, you know, and they did. They. They made sure that we got some people in our lives who would help us if we needed things. You know, from time to time, you know, the principal of the school that we went to or the teachers would pick us up and drop us off at different things. So there were some connections happening along the way. But the. The real hardship came when my father finished his doctorate. And here we were all thinking that he was going to be able to get this best job and be able to make real money. We wouldn't have to live on his measly stipend anymore.

How. How many. How long did it take for that to get to the doctorate? Was it a year, two years?

He had, like, his doctorate. It was a. You know, doctoral programs are a minimum of four years, and then they go on from there. He got it done in four years flat. Done. Wow. He got it done. And I mean, he did anything he needed to do to just do that thing and get it done, and he got it done. And then the job hunt began. You know, he was looking for work. He applied to every university he could. By the way, his degree was in physics education. He was going to be teaching physics teachers how to teach physics. I mean, that's not something you can just find any old person becoming an expert in, right? And yet he could not find a job, Mel. Nobody would hire him for his accent, for the way he looked. He even applied to high school jobs because he got so run down. And there was a high school that actually hired him. And then the. The parents out of this. There was this racist rant that happened where people felt like their kids were getting bad grades because they couldn't understand this African teacher who was teaching them. So it's not their fault that their kids can't get the answers right. And all this stuff. And at the petition, went live and all these things, and he was let go. He came home devastated. And we were all like, now what now? You know, now what? So after years of trying to stay here, my dad said, I'm going back. I said. He said, I got to go back. I'm going to go back. I'll teach there. Send some money if I have it. And he kind of just went. And that's when we, the six of us, my mom plus the five of us were left. And we had to figure out how to stay here because we were actually contingent on him staying from a visa perspective.

Yeah.

And now we were really screwed, if I may say that, on this show.

Yep.

Oh, it was unbelievable. So you guys.

You all stayed behind.

We all stay behind, Mal. We all stay behind and go ahead.

And you said that you were contingent on his visa, meaning that.

They could have sent you back if they found out.

Correct. They could have sent us back if they found out. So.

This is why I say there was a long period of time when we didn't share our story. I didn't share my story because we were worried that if we told anybody, you know, he's gone, we're not sure when he's coming back, it would open up conversations, people would start gossiping, and next thing we knew, you know, we would be getting deported. So we kind of kept it to ourselves, you know, just doing little things to try to have anything to eat, you know, just, can I borrow a ride? Or can I maybe clean a house for, you know, $5 or $10 just to offset something I needed to pay for or just the small little things that we could do just to survive. And the. The rubber hit the road. As. As they say, my idioms aren't very good, even after 30 years of being a. So I still say all the wrong things. I say, like, cats out of the bag, but sometimes I'll mix it up and say, milk spilled on the cat. Random stuff. But, yeah. So the rubber hit the road. I think that's a thing. And.

My mom one day was like, I think I have to go and talk to the immigration people, because we had hit a roadblock where we needed something, and she knew there was something she needed to turn in or deliver, and she needed the paperwork, and so she knew she had to go in. And my mom, before she went in, for the days and days before she went in, she would have these nightmares. And we could hear her in the middle of the night pacing the halls in our little apartment, just, like, walking back and forth. She would have these nightmares of dogs chasing her. And she described it to us as she was. She said this. The immigration people, they're going to come after me if I go, they're going to come after me. And she was in fear, and we could hear her. We could feel her. We knew something was changing, but we prayed about it, and we said, you know, whatever happens when she goes, you know, we think we'll be okay, but let's. Let's hope for the best. So my mom, she did go into the immigration office, and.

They deported her.

Wow.

They gave her left the five. Five of you here.

That's right. And left the five of us here. So when they let her go, they didn't, you know, handcuff her and ship her out. They gave her what's called voluntary departure, which just basically meant, thanks for coming in to tell us you must leave by X date. And so it was one of those. And then she had to leave. So she what?

And then there we were, us kids having to raise ourselves. You know, this kid's raising.

How old were you at this time?

This must have been. We had been here going on. My dad had done his four years. He had tried to get a job for a couple of years after that. We had then stayed for a little while. It was pushing 10 years at this point, Mal, that we had been here.

And so we.

Were like, we gotta figure this out. Because the youngest of us were still like preteens, barely out of grade school.

My older sister was in college. I think I was about to. I was in the middle of college. You know, we were just all over the place in that little spectrum of, say, 23 to 13, around that age range.

And so we had to figure this out. And this is where I think there was so much grace in our journey, because I think this all happened for a reason. What we didn't know at the time was that we were about to have to open up to people because we didn't know how we were going to pay any. Pay for anything, rent. Where were the siblings going to live? We didn't even know where we were going to live. Mom was gone, who's doing what, who's signing what, who's paying the rent? We didn't know anything. And so we had to start talking to people.

And once I remember my sister, my older sister, me, and then my sister after me just having a conversation like, we got to figure this out. You do this, you talk to this person. Who are you going to talk to? Okay, they might know a lawyer, this kind of thing. And we kind of game plan. And then we all were like, okay, go do it. Report back. We got to figure this out. And I can't tell you, Mel, the power of compassion in people.

Someone once told me that, you know, you can feel somebody's pain, but that's not compassion. You can have empathy for somebody, that's not compassion. You can even have sympathy for somebody, but that's not compassion. Compassion is when you want to relieve the pain that somebody has and you are willing to walk alongside them to make that happen. And the people that stepped into our lives with compassion. I will forever be grateful for.

The couple that took us in, took my siblings in, the younger ones, and raised them. Imagine raising teenage kids who, yes, their parents aren't here, but they're still teenagers, and they're going through their teenage stuff. And here they took them in and took care of them. And we are so grateful to them even today for doing that. And then the other, My other friend who came to me to say, I know a lawyer that you can call. I don't know what he does, but call him. And then me calling up this lawyer and telling him the story and him saying to me, mary, wait, stop, stop, stop. What's your brother's name again? When I was telling the story and I tell him, my brother's name is Theo. And he says, theo, does he go to so and so school? And I say, yes. And he says, my son goes there. I think they might know each other. And then him, this lawyer deciding to take on this case, this massive case pro bono, bringing in the law firm so that he was an immigration lawyer, but so that his family lawyer counterparts and his, you know, all these lawyers with these different practice areas would all step in and fill in their parts of the problem and be able to work their magic in such a way that they figured this out for us.

I mean, the people that came through the woodwork, they walked with us, right? It wasn't, here's a phone number. Good luck, or I'll pray for you. You know, keep us posted. It was, I'm willing to walk through this with you. What can I do? There was a man, this older man, who would send birthday cards and gifts to us every single birthday. And we never knew where he lived. We knew his name, but we had no idea where he lived. He met us once and took all of our birthdays down. And every day without. Without missing a beat, he would send birthdays, letters, and something in a little card for each of us for years and years and years till he passed away.

Just.

So.

This is compassion of people, Mal. Compassion.

This is so. I don't know, you know.

The. The love of the humanity, the love of the human spirit. You know.

We. We talk about money a lot on this, on this show, but I really try to talk about richness. And richness is how we experience life. Richness is how we feel as we go through life. And I can only imagine, because I, you know, I didn't have that situation. I did. My dad was an immigrant. He ran. He. He had his challenges getting here. But nothing. Nothing like you. Because you're trying to go to college, you're trying to get educated, you're trying to fight a system. You're trying to find a place where you feel safe. At any moment in time, you could be deported, you could be kidnapped. I mean, anything could have happened to you. I'm curious.

How you think the compassion that these folks showed you.

Molded you and your siblings and how you show up today.

It's been everything. It's been everything. It's defined us. Right.

Not only did I see the compassion, but the other thing that I saw in this process was that there's always a system that we. That we are operating in. And we didn't realize that there was a system. Of course, there's a legal system, but there's also. What I mean when I say a system, I mean a series of actions that you can take to release yourself from whatever your situation is. But until you know the system, you can't break through the system. You can't survive the system. So I learned two things. I learned about relentless compassion, but I also learned about this system mindset that has carried all of my siblings and myself through life since that period of time. I. I'll come to me last, but I'll tell you, my baby sister, who was three when we came, remember, we could have all been deported. But this baby sister, she is working in the seafood and meat industry in the biggest corporations you've ever heard of. She is in charge of sustainability to ensure that the seafood that you pick up at the grocery store.

Is sourced sustainably, that we're taking care of our environment. She goes to the boats if she needs to, to make sure that the fishermen are doing the right thing. But she is a corporate leader at the biggest brands you've ever heard. She represents them when it comes to seafood and meat sustainability. That's what she does. Wow.

And all of your siblings from. Are doing amazing things. Educated.

Put yourself through all of it and stay dedicated to being the best you could be.

100%. 100%. My brother, who was 4 when we came, he's always been connected to education as well. So what he does is he works with marginalized youth. He teaches teachers how to reach marginalized youth, and he's hired by the biggest education organizations in the US to train their teachers so that they know how to reach the marginalized youth. The folks in the urban areas, the folks that seem like they are unreachable. That's where his heart is. That's what he's always done. And that's what he loves to do. And without him, some of the people that we touch and know may never have had the opportunities that they deserve to have. That's my brother Theo that I mentioned. My sister Esther, the one that's behind me.

She has always loved socializing. Esther was always. Her name is Esther. She's the one that was always like the social butterfly and always just lovable. Such a free spirit. Still is. She works to create experiences for a bunch of different brands. So you imagine the biggest pop up that might happen in the middle of Vegas, or the thing that's showing up at your mall on Christmas, or bringing a big exhibit to the biggest show place in New York City, France, what have you. She is out there making the connections that bring these big experiences to everyday Americans who just want to go and experience some part of history or relive something that happened in the past. She creates these experiences and negotiates them. That's what she does. My older sister Martina, she also went into education. She's a PhD and her research is in reproductive rights of women. And she works with women who have been through trauma to identify how that might affect their reproduction. So whether you've had a concussion or whether you've had something that happened with a pandemic, or she does research in that field, creates these amazing papers that are peer reviewed and written all over all the big journals. And then that educates the doctors so that when somebody comes in and tells you that she's, you know, all of a sudden not able to conceive or what have you, you can connect the dots and say, oh, did you have a traumatic experience this many years ago or what have you. She does this work and she travels all over the world interviewing and doing surveys to try to get the data to then inform your doctor and my doctor on why we might be feeling the way that we are as women.

Oh.

Oh, it's.

And then there's me. It's.

I'm nothing compared to them. They're amazing.

No, no, no, let's, let's not. I mean, because here's the thing that, that's the thing that I, that really hit me hard was, was that the fact that it wasn't just you. You got five, there's five of you, and conceivably one or two of you, you make it, you do well. And the rest, they're struggling. But y', all, you all accomplished, you all excelled. You all.

Rose to the challenge. And I look at where we are today in our society, and you Know, whether we're entrepreneurs that are dealing with challenges and obstacles. Oh, you know, the pandemic shut us down, or finances or the economy or inflation, all of those things. And we seem to. It's a generalization, I get it. But we seem to be willing to give in. We seem to be willing to say, oh, well, and settle. But there was something with the five of you that when the chips were down, when things were. Were, your back was against the wall, when. Cause clearly it wasn't an easy journey. So the question I have is really, how. How did you make sure that you all, one, stayed together and two, stayed in progress and embraced the possibility that still existed in front of you?

You know, the answer to that is so meta, as people like to say, because I think the experience itself is what glued us together. Right. Because when you go through something traumatic. Yeah, you have each other because you went through it together. So you become each other's confidants. You become each other's encouragers, motivators, drivers. We are each other still today. Everything, right? You have the biggest issue at work. You call me. You have a relationship thing. You call that. You call that person. You do this. We just stick together. And at the end of the day, it's not like we keep anybody out. Everybody, our spouses, they're all a part of the circle. What we do is we just see that in order to grow, you know, we've got to give to each other what we're going through. So we talk about things, we feel things together, we share things. And I think that traumatic period brought us even closer together. We were already close.

Heck, we sang as a family when we were young. We like. We were like the singing family back home in Ghana. People kind of knew us like that. And then we laughed and we lost that identity a little bit. So we were already kind of close in that we did that singing thing together. But when you go through trauma and, you know, the details of, you know, the emotions and the late nights and the scary things, you just bind together. And that's what brought us together. And so we motivate each other. You know, when one person got an mba, the other one said, I'm going to get one. And we said, yeah, go for it. We all have our master's and, of course, Ph.D. if, you know, for some of us as well. So it's just. We just motivate each other. There's no jealousy. There's none of that. There's just encouragement, and we pass it on to our kids and bring Our spouses in, and we just try to just be ourselves as much as possible with each other.

Was there, I'm sure. I don't know. I don't put words in your was there, but was there a time.

Where you thought about giving in or giving up?

Certainly not about the immigration stuff.

Okay.

I think just like anybody, when you hit the entrepreneurial bug and you're working through those late nights, you know, I've had. I've had challenges there. Just like any entrepreneur, when you fail, sometimes you're like, you know, do I just want to fail hard or do I just want to throw in the hat? I've been through those kinds of self doubts, wanting to give in on the entrepreneurial side of me, but not on, you know, any other thing. It's just, you know, maybe that idea is not the best one. Mary, switch to another one.

Yeah.

Those are the kinds of thoughts that I have. Not like giving up. Like, I just need to just be done and do nothing and just stop trying in life. Never that. I think that drive to shoot for a big. A bigger, better version of yourself is just ingrained in us, and we try our best to pass it on to the folks that we cross paths with. For me, those are my students, my clients, you know, they see my energy. I say, you could do this too, man. If I did it, you could do it. Let's work on this campaign together. We're going to get run, we're going to get it done. We're going to sprint our way through it. So I pass. I try to pass on the mojo, you know, as much as I can.

I love it. I love it. So. So was it the.

Professorship, if you will, if that's. If that's a word that came before the entrepreneurship, or the other way around?

You know, I think the entrepreneurship has always been there. What? I think if you ask the entrepreneur, when did you become an entrepreneur? They'll say, I think it's always been there.

Yeah.

Would you agree?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm. My first entrepreneurial endeavor when I was actually realized, oh, you can make money doing things that you really like, was at 11 years old. I mean, I was. I literally was out doing magic shows for kids birthday parties at 11 years old and getting paid 50 bucks for a half an hour, which was really good back then, you know, that's amazing.

At 11.

At 11. Yeah. Yeah.

And it is a bug. But you.

Yes.

Did you have. Before you. You kind of itched that scratch and got into and started building your business. Were you a Professor first. And then you, you came to the business side of it.

Yeah, so I, I was, I graduated school, I did my master's, I went straight into corporate. And I always had this in the back of my, the back of my head. I wanted to do more than just my corporate job. I just always had that, that thing inside me. I actually started to get into real estate. And that's the other thing I do when I say I'm an entrepreneur. I also have several properties as well as the business. And so there's always been this part of me that's like, oh, you know, there's way, there are ways to make a living besides getting paid by somebody. And so because I had that bug when I was approached to be an adjunct, which is how I started, before I became a full time university professor, I said yes. And I think if I didn't have that entrepreneurial bug, I probably would have said no, because I'd have said, you know, let me just do my nine to five and go home. I'm getting paid, I'm good. But I wanted to get in front of the next generation, talk about what I know, show them compassion. Because I could understand. I was in your shoes years ago when I couldn't afford a textbook. That's why you don't have to buy a book in my class. Right. When I couldn't understand whatever I needed to learn or was staying up late or didn't have money, all those. I get it. Let me teach you still how you can still make it in this field of digital marketing and in this field of analytics, I could still get you there. Let's work on this. So that part of me, I feel like the professorship just allowed me to amplify that, you know, and so back in 2020, when the college said, we need you to come full time, at first the decision was hard, but when I made that leap, it was just the right leap. It was just the right leap. So I do that now full time. But I also am able to continue to serve others with compassion, teaching them a system, mindset, teaching. I call it, I call it sprints. I teach people how to do digital marketing with sprints. Instead of just, this is everything you need to know, and this is. No, this is how you should go about it systematically and when you should do this versus when you should do that. So people have clarity. So because I teach it the way that I want to learn it, I think I attract people who appreciate my energy and who I connect with and who can hopefully take this and pass it on to others that they reach and touch as well.

I love this and just everything about how you show up, you just the vibrancy.

Because I feel like so often if we listen to media and you know, maybe even social media, it's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to sit back and say the, the promise of the gold you could pick off off the Runway.

The.

Gold was there, but you just had to dig really hard for it. And, and you did, and your siblings did and, and you're this shining example. It's, it's why I want. Wanted you on the show. And, and I hope that I, I'm gonna intrude on you again and say, can I bring you back to talk more deeply about the digital marketing side, the marketing side and analytics and how that we can use that to build our business, build our entrepreneurship, build our wealth and that kind of thing. Can we make sure that we do that?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I would love the opportunity to come back, Mel, and I'll tell you just a little sneak peek to your audience. You know, I'd like to say that I turn everyday marketers into sprint marketers. I teach you how to take all the confusing and overwhelming things about the marketing function and actually turn it into something that works for you without overwhelm by teaching you sprint systems. So not how to do marketing as a marathon, but rather what's the problem? Okay, here are the sprints. You need to take the short bursts of energy you need to do to get that problem fixed. But if you have this other problem here, the short burst. So think about it as checklists, but I call them sprints and these are the ways that you marketing. So I would love to come back and talk about how to do digital marketing right and take all that overwhelm out of it for marketers and business owners.

That would be awesome. We'll make sure that we, we get that dialed in and we'll make sure that everyone knows a couple things before I close this session out.

I'm sure you have these conversations with your students, but when someone comes to you or you hear someone that's, that's complaining or saying, hey, it's hard, I can't do this or I'm not cut out for this. What would be your one, two or three things that you would tell them to, to. To keep them going?

I do have students who sometimes say those things, but even more so I have students who never say those things but just give up. I'd never heard from them. They just disappear. And I wish for those students that they didn't. Because when I reach out, sometimes they respond, but sometimes they're just gone.

So what I do is I always try to encourage my students. I always try to tell them, you belong here. You know, this field is accessible for everybody. First class of the semester, I'm telling you, I'm showing you pictures of people that may look like you, may look like me, who have done these things, who have been able to do this. I encourage them from the very beginning that you can do this, and then I empower them to do it. Meaning you would love my classes, Mel. I don't just teach you college material. I teach you real world material. So my students walk out of my classes with certificates From Google, Adobe, HubSpot, all the big players, right? They get these certificates. And every class that you take with me, the assignments I build with you, I help you create portfolios. You don't realize till at the end of the semester when I say, okay, take every assignment I've told you to do. Put it all together. We spend the last class this semester piling it all into a portfolio. Along with screenshots of your certificate, we build your portfolio. The last class of the semester. You have what you need. You have what you need to go out there and get a job. And if you need me to step in and review your resume, help you with a job interview, what have you, just book me with my little booking link that I put at the bottom of every email my students get from me. You know, I'm just there for them. And so the short answer to your question, Mel, is not only do I tell them that this is accessible to them, this field that seems far away or feels like it's not for people that are me or you or whatever they're thinking, so I empower them, but then I also give them what they need to actually show up prepared to get the job if they want.

Seems to me that everything's coming full circle. You are just continuing.

The compassion circle that allowed you and your siblings to ultimately flourish here. And you are paying it forward in a way by saying, I'm going to walk by you and I'm going to stand by your side and I'm going to help you experience life in a richer way.

And I. I gotta tell you, this is why, you know, it's. It's a. This is a very different episode for our show. But this, this is what the whole idea of affluence is like. It's a life that's built on meaning. It's a life of impact. It's a life of peace. It's a life that is fulfilling. And. And you just exemplify that.

I just.

That's why your story has to get out. And that's why I said we're going to take an episode. We'll deal with the business stuff in another episode. But, but I think that this is important. And I hope that those of you listening, those of you watching, you can see the heart and the soul and the vibrancy of Mary, let me ask you this.

If someone wants to follow you, if someone wants to kind of connect with you and see how do I find out more about this amazing soul, Right. Where, where, where do we send them? Because we'll make sure that it's hooked up in the description and the show notes and all that stuff.

The best way to follow me, and I would love to connect with anybody that wants to follow me. I'll make it really simple. Just go to maryowusu.com my website, mary o w usu.com and there you'll find how to connect with me on all my socials and where I'm at and all the things I'm doing. Let's connect. Let's build this connection together. Let's help each other and hopefully make the world even better than where we found it.

Mel, I love what you said. You just almost. You had me crying. I just have to. I know, I know. Not almost. You had me crying by saying back to me what I said to you. And you know, when you said like the gold was there, it just wasn't right there to pick up. I had to dig to get it. And then what you just said, too, you're just saying, hearing it from you, it just hits me differently. And I'm so grateful to you for this opportunity to sit here and talk about my story. I think people like you and your circle, all the entrepreneurs that you know, they all have stories, too. You know, our stories are all different, but the reason why we get up and we do this entrepreneur thing is because we have relentless compassion.

Yeah.

And we also know have a system mindset. We've created something that we know can bring our compassion to life for people. Because our, our thing, our system solves a problem for people, you know, So I think all these entrepreneurs, we all have this bug, this. Whether we called it compassion before or not, and whether we called it a system mindset or not, that's what we have that I think connects all of us. Serving people and having something that solves their problem. And I just, I love what we do and I'm glad to be in this entrepreneurship bubble with you and your network. I think, I think, you know, like minded people.

Walk together.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Mary. Listen, y', all, there's so much beauty and gold in this episode. I want you to go back, I want you to, to listen to it again, watch it again, reach out to Mary, tell her what some of your takeaways are. But imagine for a moment.

What the world would be like if we all approached it with the compassion.

The resilience, and the positive expectation that Mary and her family did. Because that's what drives entrepreneurship. That's what drives an affluent entrepreneur to live a richer lifestyle, have a deeper impact, and to live with complete freedom. And so, Mary, I can't thank you enough and I can't wait for our next conversation to talk about it and we'll make sure we hook everything up. And for those of you out there that are, that are here, as I always say, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. And we had a great example of that on the show today. Thank you for listening to the Affluent Entrepreneurship with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of Building youg Money Machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.