Her gift of taking the perplexity about money and making it simple for the masses has driven her business to international prominence. LaShawne Holland (@LaShawneHolland), CEO of LaShawne Holland International of Brandywine, Md. has declared war to help women leaders discover and maximize their financial possibilities. She oversees a financial development and wealth education company specializing in money mindset mastery, economic elevation, business systems education and peak investment cycle performance. Echoing the wisdom of Jim Rohn, Holland emphatically believes, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.â€
We recently caught up with America’s Wealth Activator aka “The Queen of Green†to share some of her entrepreneurial journey and principles on wealth generation:
BlackEnterprise.com: When did you start your business? How long have you been engaged in business enterprise?
LaShawne Holland: I’ve been engaged in business enterprise since high school. I used to design and sell T-shirts. While in college, I worked a job and had two side hustles (Mary Kay and doing nails in a barber shop) to pay for my college education. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My mother owned a nail salon and my grandfather sold tobacco. His family owned the first black-owned grocery store in Charles County, Md., called Marshall’s Corner.
Two years after marriage, my husband and I started our own real estate investing company. From there, we purchased an asset-based lending brokerage firm. Today, we own a financial services company and Holland & Holland Enterprises, LLC. I birthed LaShawne Holland International three years ago but have been teaching financial literacy, wealth empowerment seminars and conferences at churches for more than 18 years.
Who do you typically provide wealth solutions for in the marketplace?
First, Generation X, 83% of my clients are professional women leaders ages 36-45, with an annual income level of $90,000 to $125,000 or more. However, 70% of them have at least $25,000 in consumer debt. I service what the marketplace calls “the new luxury buyers.†Sixty-three percent of Generation X has no plan for their finances, and the same percentage spend up to their entire income each pay period, leaving them with more month than money. Although they happen to be earning much more than the Baby Boomers, they have little to show for it and next to nothing left over. They are essentially the cash poor, credit rich generation, desiring to improve their financial standing. My final
How do you help people view money differently and from a new perspective?
I teach people how to play the money game to win and not to lose. This means transforming their money mindset. Many people are not aware that your internal money blueprint directs and controls your financial habits and decisions. If your internal money blueprint has a bad root system, then the results will be less than favorable. We all have two voices going on internally with respect to our money blueprint, the voice of poverty and the voice of wealth. The voice of poverty will cause you to spend all you have, get in consumer debt, not plan properly for your retirement, not leave an inheritance to your children and your children’s children, and keep you operating your finances from a place of fear, lack and scarcity. The voice of wealth follows wealth strategies that are successful. It also will:
- Train you to understand cash flow
- Have cash flowing to you and not from you
- Lead you to hold your head high for opportunities to see you
- Empower you to plan for your future, so you will not outlive your money
- Empower you to control your money and not be controlled by it
- Allow you to see blind spot blockers and autocorrect them
- Grant your desire for a freedom based lifestyle
Why do you think some people struggle with the concept of wealth, wealth principles and wealth generation?
Primarily it has to do with culture and how we were and are still programmed. People don’t realize that your money blueprint is formed by what you heard, saw and experienced by those who influenced you in your formative years. Science has proven that by the age of seven, you have programming that will last for the rest of your life. Science says that an object in motion stays in motion until a force interrupts its path. What we don’t change gets passed down to the next generation. We are dealing with money mindsets that are four and five generations deep. [Some of us] weren’t taught wealth-building principles. Instead, we were marketed to and programmed to buy stuff on credit from store owners and sharecroppers that we couldn’t afford. That decision-making is often rooted in low self-esteem which is the most expensive liability to finance. We weren’t taught that it’s our decisions, not our conditions that determine our financial destiny.
You helm a “Amplify Your Wealth Tour”? What will you be speaking about, teaching and offer training on?
This upcoming April and May, we will hit cities in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Texas. In September, I will be hosting my annual Wealthy Women ROCK! Live Event in Annapolis, Maryland as well.
Roz A. Gee (@RozAGee) consults and speaks as The Brand Empowerment Agentâ„¢ and CEO of The Rated Gee Agency (www.RatedGee.com), A Brand Empowerment Company that offers service sectors in Media Relations, Brand Identity and Development, Brand Messaging and Speaking & Training. Roz has masterfully mixed over 20 years of cumulative experience and has worked professionally for industry titans such as General Electric, AT&T, AOL, IBM, SAP/Sybase and Northrop Grumman. Send inquiries to: info@RatedGee.com Facebook.