From foster care and food stamps to 7 figures with Erika Cramer

I love to share money transformation stories here on the podcast to show you guys what is possible when it comes to money. You are going to love today’s episode with the amazing Erika Cramer, who’s also known as the Queen of Confidence as we chat all about her beginnings in life and how she has built a thriving business today. 

In this episode, there are quite a few swear words. If you’re a regular listener of the podcast, you’ll know that I usually edit them out because I do know that I have a lot of moms who listen to the podcast, but this episode just wouldn’t be right if I was to clip them out. So please, if you do have children around, maybe make sure that you listen to this one later. But this episode is one you don’t want to miss. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will be inspired. 

Hello, and welcome to the Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers, and build the business of your dreams so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving, and global impact. 

CLARE: 

A big warm welcome to the podcast, Erika Cramer. It is so fantastic to have you here. How you doing today? 

ERIKA: 

I am on fire. I am so damn excited to finally be talking to you, my love. 

CLARE: 

The reason why she’s saying this, I tracked her down like a stalker. I was everywhere. I was in her DMs, I was emailing people to email her. I was so intent on getting Erika on the podcast- 

ERIKA: 

It worked. 

CLARE: 

… so it’s so wonderful to have you here. If you ever need someone stalked, I’m your girl. 

ERIKA: 

It was lovely. If it was stalking, that was really some beautiful stalking. I love you. 

CLARE: 

Amazing. Well, for anyone who doesn’t know you, do you just mind giving an introduction to who you are, who you help, and why you do it? 

ERIKA: 

Yes. So my name is Erika Cramer, the Queen of Confidence. I am a confidence coach for women for mindset and business. Why I do it? Oh my god. So I had a crazy, turbulent life and upbringing. I did not believe in myself. I sabotaged myself. I people pleased. I had zero confidence, negative zero, and just worked on myself, invested a lot of money and time on mentors, business mentors to grow into the Erika that you see or hear today. And so I got really passionate about it and I wanted to help other women, not matter how big or small your story, to stand in your confidence and reclaim it. So I support women in business, women in their mindset on how to stand in their voice, how to show up, how to take up space, how to create an engaged community in an authentic, integral way that we can monetize, make money, make impact and change the fucking world. 

CLARE: 

You have to go and follow Erika. Her Instagram stories are amazing. I’m becoming a little bit obsessed with her on Clubhouse as well, and her emails are amazing as well. She also has a book which is out, which I’m sure you’ll talk about a bit later in the episode. 

So, coming back to this work that you’ve done, and we’re going to dive a bit more into your story a bit later, but when you talk about how you started doing this work, people often say to me, “Well, what does doing work mean?” And I’m really curious to understand from you, why did … how did you even know to do this work? How did that whole journey start? 

What is “doing the work” and how to know if you need to do it 

ERIKA: 

It’s so funny, I say that in my book, it’s like, what is the work and what is working on yourself? Back then, I had no idea. And so if you’re listening and you’re like, “I don’t even know if I need to work on myself,” one of the ways that I think would be the best ways for you to find out what you need to work on is to look at your life. So, if you’re listening to this, maybe close your eyes, do a little scan of your life. Look at your love life, look at your body, look at your money, look at your bank account, look at your business. Look at all the areas of your life and where do you see a lack? Where is something not going the way that you want it to go? And I can guarantee you that that area needs work, needs love, needs support. Maybe there’s a thought that’s not serving you, that you’re thinking. Maybe there’s a whole belief system going on within there. And I tell my clients, “Work on the biggest thing that’s fucking with you the most.” That’s what I say. Because you might go, “Oh my God, Erika, everything’s a hot mess. I’m still single, I don’t have a house, I don’t have any money, my business isn’t going.” And I’m like, “Cool, but what’s the biggest one?” So the most impactful thing that we can do is work on the area that bothers us the most. It’ll stick out like a sore thumb and when you get to working on that, you go, “Cool. I don’t have the …” 

Let’s use money as an example. “I don’t have the money that I want to have.” And you go, “Why? What’s going on there?” Is it money beliefs? Is it your thought process? Is it that you have really bad beliefs you picked up from your family? Is it that you don’t have the resources, you actually don’t know how to make more money? Or you work a job you hate. So maybe you identify, “I need to speak to a coach that talks about money. Clare, where you at? Let’s work with Clare. Maybe I need a coach that helps me build business. Maybe I need a therapist.” 

For me, coaching was the thing I chose. I did therapy for 19 years and it just felt like I was going backwards every time I had a session. But maybe for you, therapy is it. So, you decide what area of my life do I need results in, then go looking for someone, something, a community, a program, a course, a person, and you put money towards it. You put money, time and energy and invest in that. And then hopefully, that program or that person can give you tools to grow. Similar to when you want to lose weight and you’ve been trying for 10 years, get a damn personal trainer. They know what to do. Follow their steps, you’ll get that result. 

CLARE: 

Awesome. And if you are thinking, “I don’t have work that I need to do on myself,” you just haven’t scratched damn hard enough, because I used to always think that. I was like, “No. There’s no work that needs to be done here.” And the interesting thing is, is the more that I have dove into this work, the more I’ve realized how much is actually there and how much I was suppressing, how much I wasn’t addressing. And the more that you start to dive into it, I start to feel like I’m becoming a more authentic version of myself, because I’m really … there’s not areas that you’re going, “Oh, that’s not there. I’m leaving it.” So, I love that you’ve shared that and given some practical tools as well. 

Just on that last note, when you said, “Investing money,” why do you think that that’s an important part of the process? 

ERIKA: 

Let’s say you’re in business and you want a client to buy from you, or let’s say you work a job and you want your client at the place where you work to buy the product or to be a client of yours, they have to make an investment. And so, when my clients right now, we’ve just launched a mastermind, when my clients go, “I’m going to give you 10K,” I know what that feels like. I’ve done that. I’ve pulled money out of my savings. I’ve put it on credit cards, I’ve done really bad decisions financially. I’ve been scared and crying going, “Oh my God, I’m so scared to back myself.” 

So I can really energetically, physically, mentally, spiritually, all the fucking ly’s, feel what my client feels. And I’m like, “Hey, I got you. I’ve been there. I understand you.” And there’s some power from when you’ve experienced something, because people get to see themselves in you and they go, “Okay, she gets me.” I’m not just talking crap. I’ve actually experienced it. 

And the second part is, if you get something for free, you don’t know the value. You don’t know the cost. And so when you keep giving your best friend free sessions or your mother or whoever it is that you’re giving something to, they haven’t done a value exchange, which is energy exchange. And so when we used to trade pigs for chickens, that was a difficult system to track. 

And obviously now, we’ve decided that money is the system, but when you do this, really, it’s an energy exchange. It’s, I’m going to back this and I’m going to say thank you. We’re not charging sessions or one hour, I can’t put a cost on what I do for a person. I’m helping them stand in their power and let go of the lack of self-confidence. That’s not worth $120 an hour, that’s a lifetime learning. So I think it’s important that we put our money where our desires are and that we invest, because we are spending money on stuff. Nails, lashes, fucking Netflix, takeaway. It’s like is the return on investment happening for you? And the best return on investment is in your brain, in your mind, and in your own investment of self. 

CLARE: 

I love this so much. And if you guys are wondering, I’m thinking about early last year, my business was going so well. I was really heavily booked for my coaching and I decided to run a competition. And in this competition, you would win two business coaching sessions with me. Massive, massive value. 

The person who won, I had hundreds of people enter, the person who won showed up for one of their sessions and didn’t even bother showing up for the second session. And it’s someone that I know. No offense to her if she’s listening, but it just goes to show that … and obviously, because she hadn’t spent any money, she didn’t see the value and she was never going to get the transformation because she hadn’t put money behind it. And I definitely have found this time and time again, the things that I lean into the most, whether it’s a mastermind or a course, the more that you lean into something financially, chances are the bigger transformation you’re going to get, because you’re going to show the hell up for it. 

ERIKA: 

Yes, girl. If you feel it, if it’s painful, if it’s like, “Oh God, I don’t know if I want to do this. Oh my goodness,” you will show up. You will squeeze the juice from the lemon, you will grind the fricking grind. You’re going to plan the seeds of the lemon. None of that’s going to go to waste. 

Where when you get it, you haven’t invested, you don’t feel it. And I really believe that we have to feel it in order … and maybe in Australia, I’m American, but in Australia, I’m worried as well about doing scholarships or giving people things, because I feel like we’re really blessed in Australia and in this country, there’s a lot of fricking privilege. 

We don’t struggle, and even when we struggle, it ain’t struggle like it can be in other countries. And so, I think depending on where your clients are and who you’re serving, really applying attention to that. If you’re not going to value it, then don’t sign up for it. Make sure that your blood, sweat and tears are in it, because that’s more likely that you’re going to sit at the front, ask all the questions, and really grind that lemon. 

CLARE: 

Awesome. So could we start, you touched a bit on your childhood, I’d love to start back there if we can, because your story is so inspiring, but I think that it’s important that people really understand where it is that you’ve come from so that we can talk about where your business and life is at now. So, let’s dive back into your childhood. Can you share a little bit about what was going on in your childhood and specifically around money as well? 

Erika’s childhood and its effect on her money mindset 

ERIKA: 

Yeah. So I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. My mother was a single mother, my dad left when I was two years old and she suffered with bipolar disorder her whole life, so since she was in her 20s. And she would take her medication, everything would be fine, but then all of a sudden, she would get sick. And I didn’t know as a kid, because I’m two years old, three years old, and she would just physically abuse me. 

So she would hit me, the police would come, they would arrest her, sometimes arrest me because I didn’t like them arresting her, and we would both end up in the back of a police car with handcuffs. I would go to a foster home, she would go to a mental hospital. And this happened twice a year minimum, so always Christmas and always summertime for us in America. 

And so, this, I guess, growing up in the system, growing up in the foster care system, there was sexual abuse, there was sexual abuse in my home when my mom had boyfriends. I felt this abandonment, this lack of family, this lack of belonging, and really lack of structure, because she did the best she could, but she also suffered with her mental illness. 

And so, I think for me, she was disabled technically, so she got welfare. We didn’t have any money, so there was food stamps. We didn’t have a car, so everywhere we went we walked or we drove a bus, we went on a bus. And so, there was food stamps that we’d be in line at a grocery store and the food stamps got declined. So it’s like putting things back. 

And I remember having the kids in my school being the little cashiers and me being like, “Oh my God, this is going to bounce and we’re not going to be able to buy this food,” and so there was a lot of criticizing and a lot of made fun of on the playground, and I was constantly fighting and defending my mom, because there was some embarrassing stuff that she did as a kid. 

And so, the money beliefs were really bad, because we didn’t have money and it was stuff like, “We can’t afford that,” or “We don’t do that. We’re not those people that do stuff like that.” I couldn’t get a dog, I couldn’t go to Disneyland. And so I think I just grew up feeling like I was limited and like I wasn’t a smart person, and it was really in the foster homes when … we’re Latin, we’re Puerto Rican, Spanish women, so I grew up in foster care with white families that lived on the other side of town in the rich neighborhoods and I would go to YMCA summer camp. Shit that we would never do in the hood, where we lived, that we would never experience. 

And so, I got to experience what this life could’ve been like, and then going back to my mom, and so I always wanted to be able to create something like that. I always wanted a fireplace and I always wanted to build this life, but I honestly thought, Clare, it was out of reach. And I wasn’t white enough, I was too Spanish, not smart, dumb, did really bad in school. I was a horrible student and I hated school and barely graduated high school. 

So it really affected me in that sense, not understanding money. Never having … kind of Rich Dad, Poor Dad situation. Never having a role model. And even in the foster care, I was only in foster care maybe for six months. Once, it was two years, but I was so young that it wasn’t enough time for the foster family to really teach me and ingrain that into me. 

CLARE: 

Wow. I was welling up hearing that story. It’s just amazing where you’ve been and where you are now. So, thank you so much for sharing that. And so what happened is that you reached a point in your life where you said, “Enough’s enough.” 

ERIKA: 

Well, oh God, that was the childhood. So then at seven, my dad kidnapped me, which was crazy, and that was a whole other story, a whole other podcast. And then when I came back, when I was 16, I joined the army because we were poor and I couldn’t afford to go to college and I thought I needed to go to college. I had the belief that if you don’t go to college, you’re a loser. 

And my grades were horrible, so I’m like, “Oh, the military will pay for college,” so I joined the US Army. I married my high school sweetheart who had joined the marine corps, and when I finished high school, I went off to bootcamp. And in bootcamp, 9/11 happened, which was terrible, because that was probably the wrong time to go to bootcamp, because I’m like, “Oh my God, we’re going to go to war. Like, what?” 

So, forget about college, my high school sweetheart, Giovanni and I moved across the country. He ended up going to Iraq for two years and I just literally sat there as a military wife in secret, waiting for him to come back. When he did come back, we moved to Florida and I said, “I’m going to join the military full-time.” I was making like $5000 a month, which is huge for me, an uneducated Spanish woman who didn’t do well in school. I still didn’t know math. I failed all the math. 

And so I was like, “Oh, we’re making money,” but I was in the military, so I didn’t love my job. I hated what I was doing, but we were making money. There was a night that we went out drinking and driving, I ended up breaking my back in a car accident, a terrible, really almost fatal car accident. And that was kind of my wake-up moment where I started modeling and I started trying to do things that I was interested in. 

I went to hair school to become a hairdresser to transition out of the army, and the following year my husband passed away in a drinking and driving accident. And that really was the moment, Clare, where it was like, “Oh, shit.” I almost died the year before, now my husband who had been with me since … seven years I’d been with him, high school. And I was 23 years old, he passed away, and I kind of just couldn’t cope. I’m like, “I’m done. I feel like God hates me, or whatever’s in control here, hates me. I’m cursed. I’m a piece of shit. My life is horrible. I’m not smart. I can’t do any of this,” and I just drank lots of alcohol and numbed out, maybe for five years. 

I met a man in Vegas and he was at a hair conference. He was from Australia, he was from Sydney, and I’m like, “Yep, I’m going to move to Sydney. I don’t care.” I attracted this man, he seemed nice. He was a narcissist. But anyway, shout out to you, Paul. Thank you for bringing me to Australia. 

And I’ve seen him after and I’m like, “Hey,” whatever, but he wasn’t a nice guy at the time and I was just in so much pain. I felt like such damaged goods, like I was just ruined for, and came to Australia. He wasn’t nice. I met another man in Melbourne who was basically the same guy, wasn’t nice. And then I met my husband who was my personal trainer. And he was the only person in my whole life, from America, from where I grew up, even in the military, who was conscious, who was aware, who was studying spirituality and energy and universe and God. And he studied all the religions and he was so calm and loving and accepting, and he was the first person I told my whole story to and he didn’t shame me or condemn me. He really took me in and I fell in love with Hamish, he’s now my husband. 

And he is the one that guided me and was like, “There’s a lady that I see,” he had a coach, she was a clairvoyant coach and I’m like, “What the hell does that mean?” I was very freaked out about that, but I slowly, from a year after coaching with her, I was a totally different person. 

And that’s kind of how it started, me working on my stuff. She took me to Gio’s death, that was the biggest impact thing that I was trying to sweep under the rug, and she’s like, “Let’s go there,” on your first session, and I’m like, “Okay, what?” And just had a mental breakdown, basically, but in a good way. I needed to break down all the shit so that I could overcome it. 

Nine years later, $130,000 between me and Hamish later, I’m here doing the work that I’m doing, and I will not allow my past or my story to be the reason why I can’t make money, make impact, and change the world. 

CLARE: 

I could just listen to your voice. You’ve had such an amazing life. I can totally relate. My husband was really … I remember when I first met him, he had these crystals in his bedroom and I was like, “What the hell is that?” And he’s like, “They’re my crystals.” And I was like, “This guy’s really weird.” 

But now, I’ve obviously come on a full circle and I’ve realized that there is so much more than the black and white in the world. And I was meant to meet him for a reason. I know you’re meant to meet Hamish for a reason. And I’m so glad that you’ve finally met someone who sees you for you, and has supported you. It’s not that he’s been the one, but he’s supported you to- 

ERIKA: 

Totally. 

CLARE: 

… transform your life. So let’s dive into where you are now then. 

How Erika built her 7 figure business 

ERIKA: 

Woo-hoo. Could we get some music? My life is perfect and boring and amazing. No, just kidding. It’s definitely not as dramatic as what it was, and the after. So the before was that. The now is really, I get to do this incredible work. I was a stylist when I first came here and we built a styling business, which I soon realized women, doesn’t matter how confident you look on the outside if the inside is, “I’m not good enough. I’m not pretty enough. I’m too fat,” whatever, then we need to work on that. 

So through my journey of paying coaches and mentors to heal my life, I was doing my styling events and kind of weaving in personal development exercises into my styling events and women were coming for styling and leaving crying being like, “Oh my God, my life is …” like having epiphanies and I’m like, “Maybe I need to do this.” 

So I had my second baby, Nava, at home. He was a home birth, and Hamish, my husband, is like, “That’s when your power came. I feel like that’s when you believed in yourself.” I was in the shower and I heard, “What is the Queen of Confidence about? What does she do?” And it was not styling, cotton, linen, horizontal stripes. It was, she talks about confidence. 

And it was the moment where I really kept it real, Clare. I was like, I’m not talking about style. I’m not doing styling workshops. I want to do confidence classes. I want to teach women how to be confident. And I think at the time, no one really was doing that. I think Tony Robbins was doing it, whatever, but it was still a bit of like, “Oh, you’re going to go to a confidence workshop?” It was a bit wank. No one was doing that. 

But I was like, “I don’t care. I want to do it.” And I launched that, and it was two and a half years ago almost, almost three years, but two and a half years ago, my son was three months old, we had no money. My husband’s gym was dead, the business was dead. We had no money. We were in the highest debt ever. We couldn’t buy bread. We were looking for coins in our car, literally counting, “How the hell are we going to pay this, that and the other?” And I said, “I’m not going back to my corporate job,” which I was getting 90K a year for, $90,000. “I am going to do confidence coaching.” 

And my husband almost died. He’s brown and he turned white. He was like, “Are you crazy?” He literally was so pale, like when we first found out we were pregnant, that’s how he looked like, “What?” And I’m like, “Honey, it’s now or never. I’m done. I’m done not listening to the knock that’s coming for me and asking me to do what I want.” And he was like, “Cool.” And I just hustled. I worked really hard, and in that first year we built our coaching business to $160,000, which was huge for me, Puerto Rican marginalized woman who never knew anything about money and I created that. 

Yes, my husband helped me, supported me, he’s amazing, but I did the videos. I built my Instagram. I built the podcast. I had 1000 followers and they were all from my styling business. I hated Instagram with a fucking passion. I was like, “This shit doesn’t work! You get all these follows and unfollows,” and I was anti-Instagram. And within a year, we built that business, $160,000 business. And I was like, “Wow, this is amazing.” The profit was great, because it’s just me and Hamish. 

And then the following year, I decided to launch my group coaching program online and decided to launch our retreat, which I sold out with a swipe up. We made like $500,000 on Instagram. Our second year, we finished at $554,000. Our second year in business, half a million dollars for a woman who was like, “I’m stupid, I’m Spanish. I don’t know enough about anything,” and it was like, “Oh okay, we’re here. This is happening.” 

And COVID happened in June 2020 which is the year we don’t speak about, but that year, I decided I feel like I could help women in business do what I’ve done now that it’s two and a half years, or two years, and I said to my husband, “I’m going to take a small group of women and just see if I can test, beta test.” 

I charged a low price point and I had a high length of time to practice with them. And that was in the middle of COVID. That was June 2020 when no one had money, when everyone was freaking out and I literally sold this mastermind. We made $60,000 in two days, which was great for my own confidence of, “oh shit, the story that no one will buy during a pandemic is bullshit. The story that that’s too expensive is bullshit. I wonder what other stories I’m telling myself?” Maybe if you’re listening to this, what are the stories that you’re telling yourself as why you don’t have the money? Why you don’t have this, why you don’t have that? 

And so, we did that. It was amazing. We’re wrapping up that mastermind now, because it was really long, and now we’ve launched it again and we’ve got six or seven women, we’re going to take on a big group. We’re going to do this again. And now, my business is building women in a year-long program where I can coach their mind and really help them with life coaching. And then the other side is, helping women in service-based businesses who want to do what I did from zero to where we are now, because that’s … my message is zero to this, you can do this with your raw and realness and your story. 

And so that’s where we are now. Now, our main program is automated. We’ve got a great … what is it called? Passive community, where we’ve got 300-plus women in 16 countries that are doing the work. And then we’ve got our scale squad women who are going to work with us and grow their businesses. I’ve got a podcast, hit a million downloads, which is crazy, because I do that shit in my car. 

And so now I can help my mom. I can give her money. It makes me emotional, because I want to bring her to Australia and it’s very expensive. If you think about bringing someone from America who is … obviously, not right now because no one from America can be in Australia, but bringing her here, to be able to help her financially, because she still lives in the same place where we lived. 

Having my two kids, and they were in childcare five days a week, stuff like that is what I was able to create financially, and that changed my life, having my kids in childcare five days a week, two kids. So, these little things that we think isn’t a big deal, money does help you. Money makes you feel better. Money makes the freedom. And I feel like more money doesn’t equal more problems, it’s like more money equals more impact. And so now, that’s the now version of what’s happening. 

CLARE: 

Awesome. So where, if you don’t mind sharing, where did your 2020 land from a money perspective? 

ERIKA: 

So I think technically this year in June, we should be at a million dollars this year in June. 

CLARE: 

Woo! 

ERIKA: 

I know. So I was good, because the mastermind, the 60,000 happened in June, so technically counted for that 2019 to 2020 year, and now we’re in 2020 to 2021, you know what I’m talking about, the financial Australia, you and your financial year … because I love Jan to December, but now I’ve trained my brain and my zero to go, tell me the Australian year. But this year, we should finish at over a million, which is really fantastic. 

But this calendar year, I was like, “I want to make two million dollars.” So January 2021 to December 2021, I was like, “I want to make two million dollars in our business.” And I know that when we do that, when we do that, that that will mean that we’ve impacted the lives of many women and that we’ve supported who they’re supporting as well, which is just next level. 

So my business has shifted. I was a life coach, really helping every day women. My niche is every women, like Tony Robbins’ niche, and that’s hard. So it’s a lower ticket product, longer term. I’m happy to wait. I’m happy for that, because that’s my … I guess that’s my underdog Puerto Rican-ness. I want to make sure that my shit is viable for all women. 

So my program, we did an extended payment plan, which helped us, by the way, during COVID. When we did our 12-month payment plan, we made $80,000, just that 12-month payment plan. Same product, same audience, but a 12-month payment plan. And when we did that, I really got to see, it’s 130 Australian dollars a month. That, to me, in America, that means 100 bucks a month. I know an American woman who lives in the ghetto can pay that. I know it’ll be hard for her, but it’s enough to make her go, “Shit. I’m showing up. I’m going to do this.” And that makes me feel really good, because that’s a part of my mission and my vision. 

And then my mastermind, obviously we have a payment plan, but that’s high ticket. So now we’ve moved our business into this place where we can serve greater and still impact women, help business women, because my whole vision is about women being empowered. And how do we get empowered? We need to be clearing our mindset and we need to be standing in who the fuck we are and going for what we want without the bullshit story that we can’t do it because of a gender pay gap, of because you have a ghetto story, because you don’t feel smart, because you’re not smart, skinny, pretty, followers. 

All that, I feel, to me, I know there’s a gender pay gap and I know there’s inequalities, I’m not saying that, but if you live in a first-world country, if you’re in Australia or in America, the opportunity is the limit. So the only thing that limits us is what we’re thinking. 

CLARE: 

So, it’s interesting, I speak to a lot of women about money, obviously, and your story is so inspiring, but I know that there’s a big money story that a lot of people have, and I’d love for you to help tackle that today. And that is, it’s easy for coaches to make big money. So I end up with a lot of coaches on my podcast and the reason is, is because coaches are happy to talk about money. But I don’t actually coach coaches myself. 

So, I would love for you to share, if someone’s sitting here going, “Well, that’s fine because the coaching space pays well, but my industry doesn’t,” what advice would you have for them? 

ERIKA: 

I have a stylist in my mastermind and she was working a job and she literally worked two jobs, a café, she was hustling, hustling bad. She didn’t live alone, and she, at the moment, is making about $3000 a month in her business. Now, you might be like, “That’s not a lot of money.” But from her working a job, not living on her own, having to hustle and spread herself so thin, her being able to create that in her business is huge, because if she’s done that, the scalability now from an online program or a course or whatever else, a podcast so she can monetize is next level. Another client of mine is a photographer. And so I think that it doesn’t matter if you’re not a coach, if you look at your industry and what you’re doing, what’s the big problem that you can solve? And you get strategic into thinking, “What are people doing that’s working?” 

And a little tip that I do is I’m like, look at someone from your industry and what are they doing? Can you model, not take their shit, don’t copy them, but can you model the model that they have or what they’re doing? Or can you look at what they’re doing and what’s missing? What would you do differently? And how can you solve that problem? 

And sometimes when we think outside the box and we step into, this is the solution, and that’s all that business is, it’s solving a problem. You solve the big problem, you get a lot of money. You solve a little problem, you don’t get paid a lot of money unless you can scale the little problem times a million people, the tiny offer situation, you can do it. 

So I feel like that could be a story. And if it is you, if you’re like, “That’s my story, is that I think my industry, no one makes money,” here’s my challenge, go find three people in your industry that are fucking killing it and have a look at them. How are they doing it? Follow their email list. Get their freebie download. Why are they killing it? And how can you decide that you’re going to be one of those people? Because we know that the impossible is possible. The four-minute mile person broke the record everybody else fucking did it. 

So if no one’s done it in your industry, amazing, how can you do it? What do you need in order to make it happen? Because it could be a bullshit story that’s stopping you. Instead of saying, “I can’t do that,” it’s like, “Well, what can I do? What can I do? Well, I can do that. I can do that.” Amazing. And go your own way and create it for yourself, because someone’s done it. Believe me. 

CLARE: 

I totally agree, and thank you so much for sharing that, because this is one big myth about the million dollar businesses that I really want to bust is that it’s not just for people in coaching. Anyone can build a million-dollar business if you believe it. 

ERIKA: 

100%. 

CLARE: 

I want to chat too a little bit more about confidence and about wealth. So, if someone is really struggling to break through with money and with how they’re showing up, what is the connection between what someone’s earning and how much belief they have in themself? 

ERIKA: 

I really believe it’s a direct correlation, directly. I think Tony Robbins talks about this, that it’s not your industry, it’s not that it’s COVID, it’s not that it’s a pandemic, it’s not that you’re a ghetto girl from Boston. It’s not that you don’t have the tools, it’s a mindset shift. It’s really a shift of, again, your story. 

You’re believing a bullshit story and because you believe it, you’re looking for evidence to make it true. And when you look, you find. Our brain wants to be proven right, that’s what our brain is designed to do, so you’re like, “See? See, no one will buy. Told you no one swiped up and bought my thing! See, Erika lied. See, Clare doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” 

Why would you want to prove yourself right for that? And I’m like, “Good, what’s that doing for you?” I feel like it’s a direct correlation. And I want to say, if I can, about valuing yourself in pricing, because I feel like we get it really twisted. I hear a lot of women go like, “I’m going to charge what I’m worth and what my industry’s worth,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

But inside, they’re weak in their confidence and they’re weak in their self-belief. And so, they go, “Well, Clare’s doing that and she said I should, so I’m going to do it.” And I’m like, “Don’t do that shit.” I used to charge $67 for my workshop, not because I was worth $67, I knew it was worth $120, but I’d never done it. I didn’t have that inner knowing. I had what other people told me, but other people are not you. So if you don’t believe in it yet and you need to feel it, experience it, be integral about it. 

Like last year, my mastermind was nine months and 10K. I gave them my life, my soul. I helped these women to the extreme more than anybody. All my coaching friends were like, “Too cheap, too long.” I don’t give a fuck. I wanted to get a result. It’s my first time doing it. And now, I have the integrity in my entire being that I got those women results, I know what to do. Now, my new one’s going to be shorter, whatever. But I had to go through that. 

So sometimes I feel like we charge what we think we’re worth, air quotes, and I’m like, doesn’t mean you’re not worth that, but if you don’t own it, you don’t have confidence and you’re wobbly, no one will buy it. So charge what you believe. And I love easy, low-hanging fruit, and then you can always up your price. 

So I think that’s something that we need to debunk in the industry of, you need to charge what you’re worth. It’s too cheap. It’s like, you don’t even feel that. You’re not in alignment. So forget about what I say as a coach, what do you feel feels good to you? And we can always go up. So I think that’s something that we really need to look at. 

CLARE: 

I’m playing devil’s advocate a lot today, aren’t I? But I want to pretend, to be inside the heads of the listeners, and I want to answer for them the questions that they’re going to have. Some of them are going to say, “Erika, that’s fine for you, because you’re so confident and I’m not confident.” Is confidence something that someone is born with? Or is it something they can learn? 

Debunking the confidence myth 

ERIKA: 

They can learn. It’s a practice. I call it a practice. Like if you meditate, if you’re listening and you do meditation or you do yoga or you exercise, it’s something we learn. We practice it. And confidence, like the book, it feels like shit. I called the book, Confidence Feels like Shit. The truth about confidence and what it really takes to create it, you feel absolute shit. You are lacking, you are nervous, you’re shaking, you’ve got skid marks in your undies. There’s pee dripping down your leg. You’re in massive self-doubt, self-sabotage, imposture syndrome. You’ve got it all happening at once. But you move anyway. You take a move and a step anyway. You fall flat on your fucking face in front of everyone and you get up and you stop looking around and going, “Who saw me? How much am my bleeding? Oh my God, my knee is scratched really badly, do I need stitches?” It’s like, who cares? Just get back up, because you’re going to fall again. 

So just get comfortable falling, get comfortable feeling uncomfortable. You will not create confidence in a comfort zone. It’s supposed to feel crappy, you’re supposed to be scared, that’s what it feels like. So I was never confident. And the reason I’m confident now is because I continuously show up. And I think that it leads to not caring what anyone thinks about me. Not caring about what I think about me. Not caring what I think about me, it’s like, who cares? I fell down, everybody falls down. 

Next thing, next thing. You don’t get better unless you try. And if you don’t try, you don’t get what you want. And when you don’t try, that’s where you sit in that space of lack and self-doubt. And the longer you don’t try, the more self-doubt creeps in, the bigger the gap. It’s a fucking crowbar into your dreams. Then you don’t get what you want. And then you go, “It’s because I’m not good enough.” And I’m like, “No, it’s because you feel down, made a fucking pity party, you mad a big show, so you asked for the ambulance. Oh, big scene. Oh my God, poor me. Instead, just get back up, because everyone’s falling and no one’s paying attention to you, because everybody else is on the floor as well.” So it’s like, go for it. Are you going to wait until you get hit by a bus or your husband dies or you get cancer or what are you going to wait for? Some tragic shit to happen for you to realize that your time is now? It’s not guaranteed, so just do it when you want to do it and know that you’re going to suck and then you get better. 

CLARE: 

And the people that you look up to and think, “Wow, they’re so confident,” and people in my mastermind are saying to me, “How do you show up on video?” And I’m like, “Because I spent three years filming videos and crying and deleting them and crying and deleting them and posting them and looking like a fool, and I just kept doing it.” And now when I do it, I feel confident. I don’t get nervous when I’m doing it. It doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes, but it is just a practice. And to your point, it feels like shit. This book, you guys have to go and check it out.  

But Confidence Feels like Shit is basically, it sums it up, because it’s not easy and this is the thing about the work, but if you have a look at the people who make it in life, they have something in common, which is exactly what Erika said, they don’t give up and they just keep on going, and keep on going, and that’s how they then get to the place that they desire. 

I have loved, loved, loved talking to you. I feel like I could just go on and on and on, but we do need to wrap it up pretty soon. I would love if you could explain in a little more detail, if people are loving your vibe, I know you’ve touched on your different programs, but could you please go through each of them in a bit more detail so that people can maybe see what might feel in alignment for them if they are wanting to step into their more confident self? 

ERIKA: 

Yes, definitely. So the first thing that I offer is called The Sisterhood, and it’s basically a year-long coaching experience where you learn about your mindset, that’s the number one thing that we talk about, the first part that your thoughts create your reality and that everything you think you don’t have to believe. And most of the shit you think is probably not true, but you don’t question it, so we talk about mindset. We talk about FWOT, which stands for Fuck What Others Think, or Forget What Others Think, if you don’t want to swear, if you want to teach it to your toddlers or teenagers. 

We talk about FWOT because, to your point, no one is confident. I don’t believe anyone is confident. And in the book I say, “No one is confident. It’s a practice. It’s a thing we commit to doing. You never reach confident.” Clare feels great doing a video, but if she messes up or a bird shits on her head or if she falls over publicly, that’s going to be a lack of confidence, and that’s okay. You’re going to get back up and recreate it and re-practice it. 

So the number one thing is that we care so much about what people think about us and we’re so worried about the opinion of others that it stops us from doing what we want. So first, we tackle mindset. Then we tackle fuck what others think and how to actually let go of the opinion of others. Then we talk about ego and creating your alter she-go, because we all have an inner queen of confidence that we need to channel. 

The business is called The Queen of Confidence and it’s not Erika Cramer on purpose, because that’s who I want to be. I want to be the Queen of Confidence. She’s my alter she-go. She’s who I strive to be every single day. And then the next module we cover is self-love and worthiness, and that’s a big one, lots of tears there. Just, how do we actually love ourselves instead of making it a cute hashtag? And how do we express our worthiness. We go through relationships because I think that our relationships impact everything, who we’re hanging out with, really addressing our family and boundaries and communication and collaboration, confrontation. 

And then the last module we cover is money and manifesting, because this is a life-coaching program, so you need to talk about that. So how can you create the money you want? How can you manifest from a genuine place as opposed to thinking that by giving yourself affirmations and shit that that’s going to make money fall on top of your head, because it doesn’t. 

So that’s The Sisterhood. It’s a tribe. I run that in Melbourne, so we have six live events a year. And then I also run it online and it’s all live, so I’m coaching live, there’s a live group. That’s The Sisterhood, so it’s more for mindset and you as a person working on yourself. And then the next one is the Scale Squad. 

And the Scale Squad is two, we have start-up, which is from zero to $5000 a month if your business is making under $5000 a month consecutively or you’re just starting and you want to build a business, that’s the mastermind. And then the other one is Scale Squad Mastermind, which is high, more money, more impact. We’re making it, we’re scaling. We’re talking about teams and building. 

And so I take both, because I really wanted to teach women, if you don’t have anything, if you have zero, if you have negative, and you really want to do something, I wanted them to have a place where they could see me and go, “I’m like you, I’m how you used to be, how did you do it?” So there’s no trickery for me, and that’s what I teach. 

And those masterminds, I think for me it’s about teaching how opposed to telling you what you need to do. And I’m very teaching, I’m very like, this is how you do this. This is how you do that. Before we outsource and throw money at people, we need to look at systems and we need to understand every part of our business in a way where you don’t feel dumb, where you don’t feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. So every part of my business I figured it out. And now I can outsource my ads or outsource my funnel, but you better believe that if you’re not doing what they need to do, I know, because I know how to do it. 

So it’s like that’s the kind of empowerment that we’re trying to create. And then I do retreats, so we go to Bali usually. Hopefully 2022 we go to Bali, and I also do a retreat in Melbourne and those are really just mind. It’s all you, it’s all mind, it’s crying. My husband co-retreats with me. He’s a schematic healer and a meditation breath work practitioner, and he coaches men. So he comes into those retreats and he does the spirit side, the energy side, and we just have a beautiful time. So I do retreats, and what else? I think that’s it. The podcast, the book. 

CLARE: 

Did I see you and Hamish did power couples? Is that a regular part of your offering? 

ERIKA: 

Yeah, so I think we’re going to do a power couples retreat this year in Melbourne, but we basically, last year during COVID, created workshops online, so we did masterclasses. And then we ran a little mastermind with couples for three months, because again, we saw there was a problem. We’re stuck at home with our partners, we’re going to kill our partners, and our children were homeschooling. 

And so the mental health of my women and the mental health of his men really got impacted and we thought, “Let’s come together and help couples cope and be able to speak and interact together.” So we’re going to be doing a live event for couples that we’ll probably livestream, so people can buy tickets from wherever they are in the world, and really just sharing how I genuinely have the best husband in the world, he’s my best friend. I love him more than I did when I met him. We have a great sex life. We have a great parenting life. It’s really amazing, and I never had that, so we want to teach other people how to do it. 

And it starts with, if you want to be a power couple, you have to be a powerful individual who takes responsibility for their shit. And then if your partner does that and you come together, you’re powerful individuals in the couple. And so that’s what power couples was about. So yes, we’ll be doing that again as well. 

CLARE: 

Awesome. So many ways that you can work with Erika. And I will share all of the links in the show notes for today’s episode. Thank you so much for coming on today. Your story is so inspiring and I am sure the listeners will have taken so much away. Thank you so much, Erika. 

ERIKA: 

I love you, Clare. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for your beaming beautiful-ness and how amazing, inspirational, and passionate you are about the work that you do. We need you woman, and I just want to acknowledge you and thank you so, so much. 

CLARE: 

Thanks so much for listening. If you loved this episode, please share it with your audience and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @Clare_wood_coach. And also make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week, and I look forward to talking to you again next week.