The Antidote to Oppression ...

Foreign. Person you. It's Andy Boucher here with yet another member only video and I just clicked my do not disturb so hopefully we won't be bothered. And excuse my appearance. I'm just about to go do my video. My day kind of or my video. I'm about to go do my workout. My day kind of got away from me, but that's okay because it got away from me for all the bestest reasons. So my 8am workout is now happening around noon. But I don't care as long as it happens, it happens. Tada. That is not why I'm doing this video. Go off on a tangent for you. I wanted to talk about entrepreneurship for a second. I wanted and more. I wanted to talk about the empowerment of first, of course my heart and mind and soul and energy go to the empowerment of indigenous women. But empowerment of women as a whole and you may not realize how directly tied to entrepreneurship that is. But if I could wave a magic wand and I now know this wouldn't work. I've tried it. I have my wand. If I could wave a magic wand. I used to always say that if I could wave a magic wand, instantly every disempowered person I know would become an entrepreneur. And I now know that would not work. Because not everyone has the self determination, has the drive, has the motivation, has the guts to dare to try to run their own business. Some go in with some pretty funky ideas like I'm going to go into it because I want all that time off. You couldn't have all that time off working for someone else. So why would you do that to your own company? Why would you rob your own bank account? If there's one decision I made early on when I started my business, it was that I was going to work as hard for my company as I did for anyone else's. For any other employer out there, I had to work at least that hard, if not more. And of course I ended up working more. And of course I ended up why did I hear that notification? I should not have heard it. But anyways, interesting. I hope you didn't hear it. Distracted Squirrel so that's a bad reason to go into entrepreneurship, but why? I wish I could make it work and why I would wave that magic wand. And is the fact that the phrase I always use is entrepreneurship forces you to dance with every ghost you've ever had haunting you from your past. If you have low self esteem, entrepreneurship is going to force you to deal with that and it's going to be baby steps and it's going to be a lot of steps and some of them might be really scary and painful at times, but you're going to get through it. Do you think keeping in mind, I was raised in poverty. I'm a 10 year domestic abuse survivor. I've had alcohol blow my family apart more times than I care to count. Do you honestly think that I would have ended up the confident, outgoing business person I am now without some intervention? That intervention was entrepreneurship. I had to deal with all my insecurities. I had to believe in the value of the services and products I was selling, enough to ask for money for them and not just put a great idea out there and hope someone would offer me money for it. That doesn't work. And guess what? If you only asked for 10 bucks, you're only going to get 10 bucks. Even if it's worth 7,000, no one is going to say, wow, that was so amazing that I want to pay you more. It doesn't happen that way. Entrepreneurship forces you to believe in you. To show up and work when the sales aren't coming in, to keep going and keep trying when the family and friends, the nine to fivers or whoever are telling you, why don't you just go get a job? Or why don't you just give up on that crazy dream? I heard it. I dared to write a book from an indigenous perspective. Do you know how many people lined up to say, who the heck would want to read that? Well, more than 10,000 people because it's a bestseller and that's what you need to sell to be ranked a bestseller in Canada. So we got the answer to that question. A whole ton of people. And by the way, I know I don't track the sales anymore, but I definitely used to because they were blowing me away. When I was unpacking my oppression, my internalized oppression, and not believing in myself, it really was mind blowing to see my book selling in Europe or when the first person in Ireland purchased it or the first person in Australia. It's amazing what can happen when you stop telling yourself it can't. I. The first time, the very first time, I achieved more than $100,000 in gross revenue for my business. Mind absolutely blown. And that's when I started telling people, you know what? I had goals, dreams for my business. One, I passed them about five years ago. And two, I realized Creator had way bigger dreams for my business than I did. Because Creator didn't have my oppression. Creator didn't have my doubts and fears. Creator just knew what he had designed me to do. So that is what, you know what for me. And I was an employee. I worked, I was a single mom for a lot of years. I now I used to always say I, I couldn't risk how much money came in because it was food on the table for my kids. I wish I'd become an entrepreneur sooner because I would have spoiled them rotten a lot sooner. Now I spoil my grandkids. But I did the employee thing for the longest time. And two things drove me insane about being an employee. One, that this was before I became executive director because there's only one boss. But when I was like a department head or a manager at that level, I could be working my tush off because that's the kind of person I am. If you hire me, you're going to get my best. That's just my values and ethics. But I could be working my tush off and see another manager barely showing up, just half assing it. And we got the same salary. And no, I didn't automatically do less. I'm not going to become less of a person because someone else is less lazy bum. That would put them in charge of my life. That's not going to happen. So that frustrated me. Entrepreneurship. The harder I work, the more I make. I like that. I control the gas pedal. I control the size of my bank account. I like that by the way converse is true. I don't work, I don't get paid. I don't have crazy things like paid holidays. And stat holidays just means a day where I don't get any emails and I get caught up on work. The second one, that super burned my butt. I'm a grandma now. But like I said, I was a single mom for a lot of years. There is something fundamentally wrong when a mom or a dad, a parent has to ask permission to be there for their child. I had an employee employer, I should say. And not my employer, but my supervisor, I guess I should say. I actually had a supervisor at one point because I don't know about you, but I had two kids. They don't get sick at the same time. In fact, they tend to do it congruent. Is that what it is? After each other consecutives together. So congruent, I think. I'm not sure. Grab a dictionary, Sandy. But it would always happen. One of my kids would get sick and as soon as they got well, the second one would get the flu or cold or whatever the first one had. And that happened. So I was using up all of my sick time and Holiday time so I could be there for my kids. No complaint. That's. That's way more important than a vacation. I had a supervisor actually tell me that if I wanted to be successful, I had to choose between my career or my children. Took me a half second to look at her and said, that's easy. I choose my kids. Oh, look at the face here. Just. Just a little face sticking in. It took me a half second to tell her I'd choose my kids and walk out. Now, luckily, I guess luckily, at the time, I was in a meeting to discuss my absences with my supervisor, the woman that said what I just told you and her boss. So my department head. And luckily he realized HR would have a field day with this because that was totally out of line. So when I left the office, like, I stormed out of their office and left the flipping building. I knew, get out of here or I'm gonna say some things that I can't take back. I was so angry, I stormed out of the the building and across the road to the coffee shop that we all went to. And the department had followed me there. And yummy. Got to hear some things. It's like, this is my coffee break. If you want to follow me, then you got to deal with whatever I say. I'm not in the office right now. And he was smart enough to listen and let me vent, and he apologized and made her apologize when I got back. But that didn't fly for me at one point in time. I'm watching my cat eat my plant here. Not good. This is such a member only video. All of these bloopers and things going on. But what was it? Oh, I can think of another time. Same employer, which happened to be a federal government department, by the way. Just throwing that out there. My daughter was in kindergarten. I'm not sure if it was SK or jk. I'm going to guess JK Junior Kindergarten. And they were having an I love you party on Valentine's Day. And they were each supposed to bring in someone that they loved and as an invite to this party. And we had just received a department wide memo from the head of the entire organization or the organization. We were in our region telling us that a minister, one of the government officials, was visiting on February 14, and it was mandatory that we roll in the office, that all travel had to be canceled, meetings had to be canceled, had to be there to greet the minister. I wasn't able to go to my own daughter's I love you party now. And I was devastated. Now My colleague was raised by a single mom and she was trying to comfort me by sharing with me how many events her mom had to miss. That didn't help, FYI, but my eldest brother was able to attend on my behalf. Luckily my sister in law suggested that my daughter absolutely adored her oldest, my oldest brother her uncle. And my brother was like 6 foot 5 and 300 pounds. So he was like a jungle gym for a bunch of JK students and turned out absolutely well. But devastating for me as a parent, as an entrepreneur. If my daughter needs me, I'm there. If my son needs me, I'm there. If my grandkids need me, I'm there. If a friend friend needs me, I'm there. And I'm also working at 6am because I choose to and I work on the weekends because I hate being bored and I just gave away my couch because I'll get a couch when I retire because I want to build my bank account and I want to have an excellent retirement. And that time is now. So I'm making it easy for me to succeed and a lot harder for me to be distracted. Now that may sound insane to you, but I heard it the other day, if you want to achieve some goal, don't be listen off what you will do to achieve it. What are you going to give up to achieve it? And for me it was giving up four hours of mindless television viewing in the evening. Now I do reading that I've been trying to get to forever in the evenings and I go to bed proud of myself. Entrepreneurship is the antidote to oppression. I repeat, entrepreneurship is the antidote to oppression. Maybe I should put this out to the general public even though I look like crap. I don't know. I don't know. But we got to talk about it. Because someone else deciding your worth, someone else deciding your hourly salary is still someone else deciding your worth. And that doesn't work for marginalized people and oppressed people. Entrepreneurship, you decide how much you're worth, you decide how much you want to make, you decide what you're going to offer, what you're going to say, what you're going to sell. And you take the ownership and the responsibility for everything you say and do and sell. With the gift comes responsibility. I take full all of the decisions are mine as an entrepreneur and I love that. And all the decisions are mine as an entrepreneur. And that's a heavy responsibility. I wouldn't change it for anything. In September will I will have finished 16 years and I wouldn't go back for anything, but I just wish I get could get more people to believe in themselves enough to try. And if you have a crazy idea and need some encouragement, well then email me because we should talk. Guess what? My daughter is messaging me and I'm an entrepreneur. I'm going to go respond to her. Consider it. Please. It is time to break free of oppression because we all deserve to break free of oppression. Until next time. I love you. Take care. Bye Bye.