CeCe has served as business development manager for AT&T Global Sales Division, leading a team of voice and data sales reps, which starts with the

Transcription

1 Welcome, welcome, welcome, everyone. This is Dr. Venus Opal Reese, your host for the Defy Impossible Black Women Millionaires Plus Virtual Salon: Inner Secrets From Seven-Figure Sisters And Their Millionaire Mentors So You Can Live Your Worth Out Loud. Again, I m Dr. Venus Opal Reese. And I am so excited and thrilled to introduce you to one of my most favoritest people on the planet. She has been with me from the beginning. In fact, she was my very first Black Women Millionaires interview when I started this whole movement. Her name is CeCe Clark, and she is Director of Global Sales and a massive trainer, that s who she is, with Motivating the Masses. That is Lisa Nichols company, and that s a multimillion-dollar brand. And CeCe is over all of the sales for that company. She has over 18 years of corporate sales, business development, and entrepreneurial experience, having scaled and grown both emerging and Fortune 500 companies. As Director of Global Sales of Motivating the Masses Inc., CeCe is charged with the strategic growth of the organization and is responsible for the sales of transformational products and related services in markets worldwide. As a massive trainer and coach, CeCe created the amplified sales I don t know how to say this predictive income training systems, helping sales executives and entrepreneurs get the systems, techniques, and confidence they need to earn the money they choose to earn. With a master s degree from the City University of New York, CeCe truly holds her insight into the inner workings of creating predictive income as the Director of Workforce Development at the DC Chamber of Commerce, advocating for and training over 1,700 members of the largest and the number-one ranked chamber in the Washington region. And she has provided them with the tools to build and grow their businesses. CeCe has served as business development manager for AT&T Global Sales Division, leading a team of voice and data sales reps, which starts with the

2 managing and growing of three of AT&T s top 10 corporate accounts, with a combined portfolio of $53 million in annual revenue. And finally, as the CEO of Clark Development Group, a Washington DC-based real estate firm that CeCe founded and grew from zero to $5 million in 36 months by the age of 34, CeCe is passionate about sales and helping people to master the three Ms of sales: money, mindset, and method. CeCe believes that mastering the three Ms will enable people to execute the exact plan to generate the money they choose, the systems to generate this income repeatedly, and the mindset to do so with grace and ease. So this is my beloved sister in success, CeCe Clark. Now that s her bio. Let me tell you about her heart. I met her through somebody like another millionaire sister friend. But she and I you know how there are some people you just kind of take to? We took to each other at least I took to her and she has been with me through ups and downs. Her loyalty and her empathetic heart have been in a lot of ways a saving grace for me. She was my very first interview when I started this, when it was just a baby seed in my brain. She worked out her life to come and be with me when I was doing training in Chicago. She came to sit with me in the back of my rooms at [ ]. She s encouraged me to go to yoga. She s just somebody I can tell my secrets to. So CeCe, I want to say thank you for your sisterhood, for being such a catalyst and a mentor for me. I love you. I believe in mentors. I m a beast about that. She has created sales trainings for my people just as a love offering. So I m saying all that to say that she is a beast, but more than that, she is a woman, a black woman millionaire with a heart of gold. CeCe, I welcome you, I welcome you, I welcome you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Venus. It s funny, it s great when you also have a person that you consider a mentor. And I m going to tell you, I do a lot of work, I know a lot of amazing people. But truly two two, count them of my

3 biggest breakthroughs in the last 12 months of my life, Dr. Venus was walking with me hand in hand through both of those. The stand that you took for me and the love that you showed to me, I could never, ever, ever repay you. In so many ways you gave me a gift of freedom, truly, of freedom. And I m forever indebted to you and grateful to you for that. I love you very much. Thank you, yay. Let s jump right into your story, and I m asking similar questions to all of my sister millionaires, because for every entrepreneurial black woman listening, what we need are business inner secrets. The tools, yes, but I want us to tell the people the stuff that the country club set won t tell us. So would you please share a little bit about your story, where you started and what changed in terms of your self-image as you became a black woman millionaire? It s funny, Dr. Venus, because every time I hear that bio read, I always smile, like, Who is that crazy lady? And I look at my life and I m always laughing and kind of smiling because I have the distinct honor of leading that global sales division. Again, our company touches over 36 million people a year, and it s a big responsibility. And I get to travel the world. I m actually scared about the month of May, Dr. Venus, because I will literally travel the entire circumference of the planet earth during the month of May, speaking around the world. It s just amazing. I was laughing, telling a friend. They were asking where I was on the 4th of July. I was like, Oh, well, I was chatting with my friend Steve Harvey. We were on the rooftop of a hotel in downtown New Orleans. And I was saying, I spent Halloween with Tom Joyner; we were at his house on the beach. But it s crazy, crazy, Dr. Venus, that I get to live this life, because it s certainly not where my journey started. I was the little smart chocolate girl growing up in inner-city Cleveland, Ohio, which was the second most segregated city in the country at the time I was growing up. I grew up the youngest of four girls to a single mom who struggled. She never graduated from high school. I met my dad when I was about 12 or 13, something

4 like that. So she was by herself trying to raise these four girls in inner-city Cleveland. So the life that I have lived today is certainly absolutely no indication of where I came from, in no way, shape, or form. So what changed inside? What was it? What changed on the inside that you could go from smart chocolate inner city girl to kicking it with Steve Harvey and Tom Joyner just because you can, $5 million by 34? You know what I mean. What changed? I m going to tell you. It was those inner secrets that you talk about. It was three things, and I m going to really oversimplify this. I m going to really oversimplify this, because they are simple. I know that the first thing was really doing the work on myself. I didn t know what I didn t know, but I knew I wanted something different. And so the first part of it for me was really just kind of doing the work on myself and understanding kind of how I felt about money, or how I felt about me even before money. And just really understanding that and doing what I call the work, the growth work that was necessary to change me from who I was to who I wanted to be. But the second thing, Dr. Venus, was that I relied on the examples of others. I sought out mentors and it s great that you said mentors. I had mentors at a distance. I had people that, even if I couldn t touch them or talk to them, I used their examples to encourage me and to inspire me. I was never that person who just wanted the glam part of what they did. I wanted to understand what was required to get to where they were, and I did that stuff too. It wasn t just to have the fun stuff. And then I think the third thing, and probably one of the biggest blessings on earth, especially in my adulthood, was I always, I always, always, always, always, always made choices that were congruent with my highest value. So even when it was hard, even when it was difficult, even when it was inconvenient, I always made choices that were congruent with my highest values.

5 And I am going to tell you, when I didn t do that, I paid the price. I paid the price financially. I paid the price emotionally. I paid a price when I didn t do that. I would love to hear about that, but I m going to circle back to that, because part of what I m intending for us as black women is, a lot of us don t even know what we value. We are just in a survival mode, trying to keep it together or move forward or take care of everybody, so there hasn t been enough time to reflect, to even discern what we value. So hold on to that, because I want to come back to that. But I love those three points in your inner transformation so that you could give yourself permission to prosper, definitely. So my first one was, you said you worked on yourself, your inner you, really tended to who you are for yourself even before money. Before money, you were like, Let me deal with me on the inside, my values, what I want to do. The second thing was that you hired mentors from afar, but you were like, I don t want the glitz. I want the system to get what they got, which I think is brilliant. And then the third thing I m hearing you say is that you took action that was a direct match for your highest value. I just want to underline it so that you all can walk with me in this, because that s what she s saying. My job is to interview black women millionaires, and this is remarkably consistent. What I would love for you to help us understand now is, coming from the inner city, what was your relationship with money and how has it transformed so that you could respect the money? Five million dollars by 34 is beast, you know what I mean? And as a vision of a company, I think you ve gone public, right? We have! The second company founded by an African American woman to ever go public in the history of the world, only the second. Exactly. And so I want you all to understand that money is not the same money as trying to get a client. It s a whole different money when you start talking about trading stock and people being able to buy stocks and investments on Wall Street, and you are over in that division.

6 I don t even know how to do your numbers, but I m just asking you, something had to change. You can t come up poor and then be accountable for reaching 35 million people, with a public company, sales force, and a multimillion-dollar business without shifting your relationship with money. What was it before and what is it now? Absolutely. I m going to tell you my relationship. For me growing up, money was hard. Money was for other people. Money was a struggle. That was half of my conversation. But I want to tell you the other half of my conversation that I ve never talked about before, Dr. Venus. I ve never talked about it before. The other half of my money conversation was really, I don t have a right. And I ll tell you a lot of that came from having been violated sexually as a very young girl, a four-and-a-half-year-old girl. I never felt like I had the right. I didn t have the right to my own body. I didn t have the right to make choices. I didn t have a right to anything, including money. So Dr. Venus asks us what happened when life broke your heart, like what were the decisions you made. Is that how you say it, Dr. Venus? That is exactly how I say it, yes. And the decision that I made is that I don t have a right. And that included money. And I m going to tell you, the big shift that happened for me happened as a result of a training I attended called The Millionaire Mind Intensive. Don t get me wrong, Dr. Venus, there was a journey before getting to the Millionaire Mind Intensive. I knew I wanted more. I was reading books and I was listening to we didn t have podcasts back in those days; we just had Internet radio shows. I was listening to Internet radio shows and I did all the things that I knew to do with my limited learning to really create the life that I wanted. But what happened with me at the Millionaire Mind Intensive is it really made me present. There are two things; it really made me present to the story that I had around money. It really made me present to the fact that the way I was living my life was through this filter. And my filter was that I didn t have a right.

7 So all of my actions, Dr. Venus, everything I thought, everything I said, everything was filtered through that point of I don t have a right. So what that training did, what the work that I did with the Millionaire Mind Intensive, was in trying to rewire and rewrite some of those stories. In my language, what I say is it just cleaned out my filter so that my thoughts, my actions, no longer got filtered through I don t have a right. And then my filter changed, and my filter was now I am enough, I can do whatever I choose, I am abundant, I am prosperous, I create my life. I love it, I love it, I love it. What makes it so beautiful is that there are a number of us who went through that. My language is very different from CeCe s, but I do think that when life breaks your heart whether it s a violation when you were a kid at a very young age, 4½, or whether it s a divorce or a bankruptcy you feel like life betrayed you. And that does shape how you see yourself, which in turn shapes how you see and view money. This is one of the things I want to highlight for all of us who ve walked through some shit, because otherwise it s so easy to see black women millionaires like a status. Please fill me on this. It s a revolutionary act. Black women, historically we have been violated. We have been placed at the bottom. We have been the workhorse, cash cow, scapegoat, shadow. We come from a history of hurt. And whether it s your own body or your momma s memory or the actions of your father, that shit walks with us. So what I m loving about what you are pointing to, CeCe, is that you were hungry before you even got to the training. You were really hungry. I was. Because you knew in your heart of hearts that you were bigger than this. Can I tell you? Here is how I see it. That part of me that kept saying, I don t have a right, I don t have a right, I don t have a right Dr. Venus, there was another part of me that truly didn t believe what 4½-year-old CeCe was saying.

8 There was another part of me that didn t believe that. And it was that part of me that was constantly doing things to try to prove 4-year-old CeCe wrong, constantly. So 4-year-old CeCe says, I don t have a right, so I m going to go out and do this. I think I said this last time, Dr. Venus; it was an act of defiance. I would say, Little CeCe, this is brilliant, because it is an act of defiance. But it is even more. Let s explore it to break it down, because all of us are in different places in the journey. It s survival. That was survivor strategy because you all, walk with me if shit went down ugly again, from dysfunction to divorce, whatever way you want to flow with it, there is always a survival strategy to overcome that pain. And it works. That same defiance that got you to $5 million, that same defiance got me to Stanford. You know what I m saying? But I m saying that you all need to understand that point. And what I m hearing you point to, CeCe, so clearly is that, yeah, life broke your heart, and then you came up with survival strategies to, in a lot of ways, overcome the heartbreak. Which brings us right to our next question, which is, How did you turn your survival into seven-figure success? It really was that. Like I said, it was truly that act of defiance. When I look at talking about how my biggest breakdown really fueled a financial blessing for me actually, fast forward, let me say it this way. When I was creating my business, I m going to tell you, I didn t recognize my first business, the real estate business that I grew to $5 million by the time I was 34. Again, I was just doing what my training taught me to do. I was doing what my survival was telling me to do. I was just doing stuff. But that s not what I would point to if I were thinking about what was my biggest financial breakdown that led to a financial blessing for me. What I would actually talk about more was the loss of that business, because here s what folks don t know. Dr. Venus, that business was amazing. The real estate market was doing great. I was in Washington DC, and I had a portfolio that included over 50 homes and apartment buildings and all kinds of real estate.

9 When the market shifted and I didn t do enough to shift with it, certainly not fast enough, I m going to tell you, Dr. Venus, I woke up one day and I was 60 pounds overweight, I was $2 million in debt, and I was severely depressed. So when you talk about my biggest financial breakdown, for me that was the epitome of it. But here is where the value was for me in that valley. I went back to doing what I knew to do. And that was that foundation-level work that I did at the Millionaire Mind. It was the whole idea of working on myself and getting my relationship with myself back in alignment, getting back to looking at the examples of people that I wanted to be. I literally went back and started that same process over again. And again, what did I tell you? I started by saying that the times when I didn t make choices in accordance with my highest values bit me in the butt. Well, let me tell you. In my real estate business I made some decisions that were not in accordance with my highest value, and they bit me in the butt. They bit me in the butt. And so what I truly did when that business failed is, I went back to those three foundation-level things that had worked for me in the very, very beginning, and I again started doing the work. But here is what was amazing. Because I started doing the work and I was healing myself, in the process of healing myself I created another business, which was an IT consulting business. After being $2 million in debt, in 36 months I grew that IT consulting business to just over $1 million a year in revenue. Why? Because I went back to my foundation-level work, working on myself, looking at my examples, and really living in integrity, making those choices that were in accordance with my highest value. And in doing that, I was like, There is a story here. I was not the only person. Anytime I would share my story with other people about how I d grown this business and then lost it and then grew another one, people were inspired by that. Now this is what s great about what you are saying. This is good stuff, so let s slow it down to break it down. I m going to pull out and highlight some pieces. Is that your survival, going back to those basics, those three things that you

10 mentioned before, because that was the survival strategy that got you out of the ghetto? Yep. And here s the thing, and this is great, because if you understand survival, you don t see it as a bad thing. That survival strategy of doing the real work, the inner work with yourself, getting mentors or people that you admire, that you want to be like, and then taking actions consistent with your highest value got you back the seven-figure success. Am I hearing you properly? You are absolutely hearing me properly. Great. But I want you to know that it didn t stop there. Of course not, no. That was only a couple of million. Now you are rocking it with Steve Harvey and Tom Joyner. Oh yeah, and you spend your days in Rio, you go and kick it over in Belize. I think it s silly but it s real, miss globe-trotter traveling the circumference of the earth in May. I m proud of you. It s great. I love you. I appreciate you. But because I stared sharing that story with other people, I decided, You know what? This is a message that I think would empower other people. People are telling me I empower them and inspire them. Maybe I should start sharing this message. When I decided I wanted to share this message, what did I do? Again I went back to my foundation levels, and I said I wanted a mentor. I wanted a mentor at a distance, and I d found Lisa Nichols and I wanted to use her as the example. If I was going to now create a speaking and writing business, I needed a mentor at the business. That s part of my system. That s part of my process. And so I became a part of her community. It started producing the results in my new speaking and training business my third business now, I want to keep it straight.

11 I went back to my foundation, and I started doing the thing that I knew supported me and supported my success. And because I was close to her by this point, because that s how God works and because I was producing results, she then turned around and said, You are doing some amazing work. How about this? How about I buy your company, CeCe Clark? I love it. And then how about I bring you on board with me to be the Director for Global Sales in my company? And instead of the 36,000 people that I was touching through my speaking, through my coaching program, through social media, I now get the opportunity to share my message with the over 36 million people that our company touches every day. So for me, it s How dare I? I am in a place right now that we call authentic happiness. Authentic happiness is when you wake up in the morning and you say, This is the absolute best day of my life. You mean it. And then you wake up tomorrow and it s the absolutely best day of your life, and you absolutely mean it. And that s what I live right now. So I have to laugh at myself and say, How dare I not accept the value that having lost this business gave me? That s good, because that s what I m hearing for our other sisters in success who are on that millionaire track that the failure, the breakdown literally, was the catalyst for you to fulfill your destiny to live an authentically happy life. And it couldn t have happened without it. It couldn t have. There is no book or school or anything that could have got you there except for that particular because otherwise we avoid the breakdown. We don t realize that the breakdown really is the foundation or the opening for the breakthrough to really fulfill what you want to fulfill, and we avoid it like the plague. Yes. CeCe, this is delish. I want to get these last two questions in, because you are pouring brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant work. The word is us and it s so delish. I don t want to change it by jumping to any other question. So what

12 is your number-one success secret that other black women entrepreneurs can implement immediately to get started on the path to seven-figure success? I m just going to give you one work on yourself, right? Yes. Work on yourself, because that s where to start. That s that foundation-level relationship that controls everything. Your relationship with yourself determines whether or not you keep your commitment to yourself. All right. Preach, girl, preach. Your relationship to yourself determines whether or not you will allow yourself to accept guilt commitments. Oh, I have to go to this place because my sister needs me to do this, or I have to pay my daddy s bill because otherwise his cable is going to be shut off. Those are guilt commitments. Your relationship with yourself will determine whether or not you accept those. Your relationship with yourself will determine your level of integrity. It will determine whether or not you make those choices in accordance with your highest values. If you don t love you, you can t love you, period. It s that simple. That s done and done. Drop the mike. Just drop the damn mike, CeCe. Because what you said in 50 different ways is that your self-worth, the value you have for yourself, the personal integrity you have with yourself determines your financial affluence. Every day, all day. And not just with your money, but with your man or your momma or your baby or your boo. That it s all going to come back down to I love the way you said it it will determine if you keep your commitments to yourself. I mean, going to the gym versus eating the cookie. Versus eating the darn cookie.

13 That s real talk right there. Until you walk it, you don t know it. You think it s marketing or a good logo or Twitter or doing business, until you walk it. You don t realize that those essential promises that you don t keep with yourself totally undermine your money, and no one tells you. You are not going to hear that from anywhere else but Black Women Millionaires. You won t hear that from anywhere else. You won t hear this even from the media. They are going to tell you to go get skinny, go get lipo. So CeCe, you know what? That s the word, girl. You are going to be preaching up here. It s always great to sit with you. It s always great. So how can our listeners learn more about you and your work, my sister in success? I know we have the page up, but I d love for you to tantalize us, make us want you. Do something. What are you giving us? Dr. Venus, I m really, really excited about the gift that I have for your black women millionaires in the making. One of the things that I really encourage people to do is to lead your life and not just live it. I want you to lead your life and not just live it. So many of us are just living our life. The gift I have for your listeners is really just this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful e-book, and it s called Giving Yourself a Tune-Up. It s all about how to take care of yourself so that you are constantly operating in what I call mission-ready condition. I love it. Because especially as black women, we are so all about taking care of our kids, taking care of our momma, taking care of our babies daddies, whomever. And our wives, and our sisters and cousins. Right, exactly. And so for me, I want you to take care of yourself first. I want you to give yourself a tune-up so that you can make decisions about your life and not just choices.

14 Got it. Clear, beautiful, love it. This is great. I can t wait to read it. CeCe, thank you very much. And where is this going to be? This will be on the page so that you will have access to it. CeCe, I bear witness to you. I thank God for you. I thank you for your presence in my life. Thank you for your walk. Thank you for your willingness to share your truth out loud so that others, me and all of the sisters who are listening, can benefit from your genius. It is a privilege and an honor to walk with you, to know you, to be fed by you, to be mentored by you, to mentor you, and I thank God for your presence in my life. I would not be who I am if God had not blessed me with an earth angel called CeCe Clark. So I bow down. I thank you, I thank you, I thank you. I love you. I receive it. And just know that I am a reflection of you, lady. I love you, and I thank you for who you are for me and who you ve been for me and who you continue to be for me. All right, ladies. This is a hot session. Oh, this is hot! So again, this is Dr. Venus Opal Reese, your host for the Defy Impossible Black Women Millionaires Plus Virtual Salon: Inner Secrets From Seven-Figure Sisters And Their Millionaire Mentors So You Can Live Your Worth Out Loud. Please remember this, my sisters in success: you are worth so much more than you have ever been taught to believe. Good-bye for now.