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Homeless to Millionaire - Grace Vandecruze #6096 · Financial Survival Network

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So how it works is we all have a history, a financial history,
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a family financial history, and a personal financial history. And so there's a
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roadmap of walking through what's your first money memory? And I had a very
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poignant first money memory that really, as a seven year old child, left
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me in fear. You are listening to Carrie Let's's Financial Survival Network, where
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you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to thrive in today's trying
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times. You need the Financial Survival Network now more than ever. Go to
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Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival Network
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now more than ever. And welcome. You are listening to and watching the
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Financial Survival Network. I'm your host. Carry Let's say we're in mid June
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here, already hard to believe. Things are crazy out there. Economic ills
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are mounting for sure around the globe. And I thought I would bring you
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somebody who specializes in overcoming adversity. Her name is Grace Vandakruz. Grace,
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for thirty years, you've dedicated yourself to helping individuals, clients, corporations to
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overcome adverse adversity. And hey, we need your advice now more than ever,
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so tell me first, how do you define adversity? I think that's
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the most important thing, because one man's adversity is another man or woman's challenges
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in life. So true. So look, in addition to being an investment
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banker working on Wall Street for thirty years, also CPA, also masters at
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the Wharton Business School and so forth, one of the things I do is
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climb mountains. And I've climbed twenty five mountain peaks and over three continents.
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And one of the things I learned with climbing mountains it's like life, and
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it doesn't matter where you are in life, whether you're sitting in your office
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or standing on the foot of Mount Everest. We are climbing mountains. And
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what an adversity is It is an attack or a series of attacks, or
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an insurmountable a goal that we have that is exceedingly difficult to overcome. Sometimes
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it seems that the strength required to get to the other side is beyond us,
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and we're just sitting there saying, how are we going to deal with
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this? And so that's the fine an adversity, all right? So those
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inversive comes strictly from without or is it also from within? Your reaction.
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Is it your reaction or is it external circumstances or both. I think it's
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both. I think adversity comes from without, but a lot of it is
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based on how we act, how we react to the adversity, based on
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our own inner strength, tenacity, resilience, and our desire to just move
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beyond it. So someone wants told me or I read or whatever. You
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know, you're never a failure unless you believe you're a failure. Yeah,
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you know, it's interesting because in mountain climbing, the word failure is never
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used. You know, if there's an accident, if someone dies, it's
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always let's go back to base camp, let's regroup, let's use the experience
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as a learning exercise for us and retool and repivot in par as how we
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go forward. And so that's you know, that's the way I view life,
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that every failure, or what people call failure, it comes with a
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gift, and in that gift is a learning opportunity. And your ability to
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move on and my ability to move on is based on what we've learned from
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that last gift, which was wrapped in sack paper. In terms of an
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adversity, just to give me with my life and perspective. My major adversity
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came when I was in college and I went home and the home that my
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family. I'm second oldest of seven, so the home that my family shared
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with me on a beautiful summer's day. As I turned the corner to the
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home, I saw a lot of flames. As I got closer, I
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realized it was our home being engulfed in flames. And as a family of
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seven in a home that worked hard to get and we were renting at the
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time, it was difficult to see how can we staying together as a family.
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And everyone that came to give this advice, look, your family of
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seven, why did you split into your family of nine? Actually seven kids
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little to two or threes, until you can get yourself together and then come
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back as a family. And my dad, I have to say, my
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late dad, amidst in those ashes, his result of us being together as
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a family was never more stronger. He always reminded us that the saddest day
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of his life was when he was eight and he was orphaned and he was
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separated from his two brothers, and he said, there is absolutely no way
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we're separating, and the only place we can go as a family and be
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together. Is a New York City homeless shelter. So data began with me
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heading off to school, ended with me walking into the shelter with a thirteen
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gallon trash bag which contained all of the memories that I estalviashed from the flames.
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And it wasn't lunch. There was a lot of room in that bag
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walking into a shelter and that was our home. It was our home for
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eight months. But what's interesting about me in my life is that my grandmother
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was a very oppositive positive force within me, and she always told me to
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believe beyond your limits, meaning never planned your life based in your circumstances.
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That your gives, your goals and your talents exceed the capacity for you to
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hold them in your current circumstances, that you have to really keep pressing forward.
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So while I was in that shelter, that shelter was never within me,
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and it has taught me resilience, determination and courage in moving forward.
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Wow, that is an amazing story. Off and say, being a podcaster
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for the past fourteen fifteen years, all we have are are stories. And
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so now if you hit once you got through that hitting adverse and in your
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life it's like, hey, I've been through worse than this. I can
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take it, and I can turn it to my advantage and help it help
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me achieve my goals. Scott Adams wrote a book called Failing Your Way to
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Success Right, and so failure like is an integral part of success, isn't
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it. Yes, it's like bawling forward. You know you fall, but
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it's not how many times you fall, it's how many times you get up.
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I just want to get up one more time than I fail in order
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to be successful, resilient, determined and accomplish my goals. And interesting in
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climbing the mountains because I've been in situations where I remember, right before COVID
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in twenty nineteen, I decided to summit the highest speaking Euroute month El Bruce
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climbing month. El Bruce with a Russian guide and mouth. Elbruce is in
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Russia, right at the border of the Republic of Georgia, and it's you
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know, around approximately nineteen thousand feet in elevations. It solid rock of iceism
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in its almost one of the most insturmountable mountain. Didn't stub mean on And
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I've been to Everest, and I would say Mount l Bruce rivals it if
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not more, and we're climbing, and all of a sudden, a beautiful
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clear day became completely dark with a storm coming in. And one of the
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things I'll remember about this storm is that the noise was deafening. I mean,
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the noise was louder than the New York City subway. And that's not
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wild, that's wild. I mean it was so loud it was dark.
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I couldn't see in front of me, and of course the snow and the
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ice is coming down. And I remembered that it's my guide that is in
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front of me, and he knows the way better than I do. Of
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course he's an expert. So what I had to do was not focused on
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the storm and the noise and the snow, was focused on my next step.
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It's my next step that matters the most. And make your next step
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the very best step, so heartening. Back to what you said, once
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you've been through an adversity, it's easy to go to the next Because I
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had pined Kilimanjaro, and because the guides there would say poly poly, which
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is step by step, measure your step carefully, make it your best step,
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and they'd say it like a mantra in the storm, I just zeroed
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in on my next step, and because I had a guide, he left
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clues in terms of his bootprints, and I just kept step by step by
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step. And I think that sometimes that's what life is all about. It's
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a series of steps we take, even when we'd don't have the strength to
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take a full step, taking that half step. But the series of steps
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we take, even in the storm, even in darkness, even in all
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the uncertainty, they matter the most because those are the steps that will get
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us during destination. That's a great story and I think we can all learn
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from it here. So when clients come to you and I think their situation
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is hopeless, what's the first thing you tell them to do? Interesting?
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So I have two distinct set of clients. One is I am an advisor.
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My company advice on merchants and exquisitions in the insurance industry. So many
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of my clients are coming because they like to grow and the industry is very
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fragmented. So many companies have timey market shares and they're looking to expand.
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For me, it's a terrific opportunity because The first thing I say to my
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clients is, look, I'm not just an advisor in the space. I
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lived through a series of disasters that if my parents had insurance, if they
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had a net, then that homeless shelter could have been in a brand new
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apartment. So not just an advisor of an advocate for financial security and financial
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wellness and empowerment. And I service my clients with a great deal of pride
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because I love what I do. I love building their brands and bringing them
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additional opportunities to expand their network. In addition, I work with a number
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of communities where individuals are looking for their next step in their financial wellness and
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in their financial goals. And so what I do is I give them a
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roadmap. I give them a roadmap of how do you start to do an
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inventory not just a physical inventory of how many assets you have, but a
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psychological inventory. What was your first money memory? Think about it, because
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many of us are first money memory is just tainted by some sort of lack
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insecurity. We have memories of family members not repaying each other and putting someone
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else in deep financial distress, or you know, parents being laid off and
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some financial crisis so I tell my clients, regardless of how wealthy you are,
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many of us are still suffering from some sort of financial PTSD. So
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yes, because before we work and you know, here's what stocks to buy,
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or here's the insurance or the other things. The foundation needs to be
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laid where we can get a wellness mindset regarding our money, regarding our finances.
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And my book tells the readers how to re cast your money memory,
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how to a regardless of what happened in the past. Here is my money
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destiny because wealth is my birthright, success is my birthright, Wellness is my
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birthright, and the book just gives it a complete road map of how to
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do that. That's great because I remember my first money memory and when you're
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talk about PTSD, it kind of haunts me to this day. One minute
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everything was fine. The next minute found out my father is a business partner
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who is a relative embezzled. Back in the sixties, this was three hundred
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and fifty thousand dollars, which is a huge amount of money. That is
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a fortune today, yeah it's millions, and you know, like we were
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all freaked out. My mother went to work. It was like wor it's
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time in my life. But within eighteen months my father had turned the whole
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thing around and my mother was driving a new Cadillac. But what the amazing
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man. Yeah, but the damage to my psyche was done and it lingers
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to this day not to like where then. But no matter how good things
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are, I often find myself fearful, not often on occasion, fearful of
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the future of the You know, I am in my sixties. Am I
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going to outlive my money? Or is it going to outlive me? And
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you know, it's caused me to make mistakes in my life that I shouldn't
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have otherwise. And you know, you really resonated with me because I realized
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that some of the mistakes were to get rid of the pain from when I
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was that ten year old kid, rather than making sound financial decisions. Oh,
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that is such a great point. You know, there's a statement that
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says we spent our whole life trying to shield from our childhood trauma. And
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you know, if we're not going about that the right way, it detracts
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completely from planning for the future. And like you said, making the right
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financial decisions really good. So one of the things I noticed you do is
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the personal inventory here. How does that work? So how it works is
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we all have a history, a financial history, a family financial history,
16:18
and a personal financial history. And so there's a roadmap of walking through what's
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your first money memory? And I had a very poignant first money memory that
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really, as a seven year old child, left me in fear and shame
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over the fact that we were entertaining an uncle my mom had not seen for
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years, and she was laying out the finest we had in the home,
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and we had everything laid out for his tea except we did up milk and
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it. You know, she laid out everything. She said, Grace,
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go to the kitchen and bring the milk. I was dreading that walk from
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the living room to the kitchen because I knew we didn't have milk. And
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as I'm about to enter the kitchen, my mom said to my uncle,
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she said, Uncle, Leslie, the cow gave us black milk this month.
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I've never heard that before. And he laughed, he said, oh,
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you know, the cow does that sometimes. So my mom herself was
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embarrassed, but she made a joke out of it. It was a unique
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joke. And you know, at that time, the bear left me,
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but still I'm serving tea without a critical ingredients, And that was my first
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money memory of black scarcity, of not having enough and also internalizing that like
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I'm not worthy, you know, you know, I'm not worthy to even
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entertain this wonderful guest because we did not have all that we needed, and
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that gets translated into our lives where we can earn as much and yet not,
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so that the roadmap in the book help you identify those stories that either
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consciously or unconsciously shape your money memory. And I know from climbing a mountain
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that everyone asked me, hey, you know how physically prepared you are,
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and they focus on the physical, but I have passed lots of mountaineers stronger
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than me who either turned back or didn't make it. And I know it's
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ninety percent plus of a mindset more than the footsteps. Your mindset will guide
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your footsteps. So really shifting that mindset from a lack to abundance, from
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a feeling of lack of self worth to the fullness of the person you can
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be within you, because your net worth can never exceed your self worth.
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And it's working on the inner work where the out of my manifestation of value
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wealth and abundance can blow. Hey, so your book Homeless to Millionaire,
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Six Keys to Uplift your financial abundance, right, Yes, and we can
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get that wherever fine books used to be sold as well as Amazon. That
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is correct, that I'm really inspired by your journey here, and like going
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back to what I said earlier, you're never a failure unless you believe that
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you are. And because you've failed, there's lessons in every failure that lead
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to a greater success if you're open to it. And you've helped open my
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eyes to a couple of things that I realize, you know, issues I've
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dealt with throughout my life, but that I realize having fully resolved. So
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I'm getting the book and I'm going to have you back on after I read
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it. And he is there a website where you're at? Or do I
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just give your LinkedIn it? There is a link. Raceglobalcapital dot com is
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my website and real masterclasses based on the chapters on our book. And that's
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my National Abundance with Grace dot com. Okay, excellent, Well links in
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the show notes, this interview on Financial Survival Network dot com and if you
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got a question for Grace or myself. Please shoot me an email at Klatcarrie
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LUTs dot com. When you're at the site, please sign up for your
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free newsletter. Hey, Grace. One thing I wanted to run by you
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like I started helping entrepreneurs with failing businesses because when I thought back to that
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time in my life where literally, you know, it was synchriswim for my
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family. You know, basically within eighteen months my father had turned it around.
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Later on in my life, I faced a similar challenge and within one
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hundred and eighty days I turned my company around. We were making more money
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than ever. Just because you face your demons, you don't run from them.
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That's the important thing. So thank you from a personal thank you from
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my own demons that we all deal with. And I'm going to get the
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book. We'll have you back on then and have a nice conversation about it.
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Thank you so much, Carrie, all the best, Thanks for listening
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to carry Lenz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For
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the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever