Nicole Cacal is our first guest discussing MONEY, and what it means to her. Her consultancy, Forbes Ignite, convenes conversations with business and nonprofit executives around hard-to-tackle issues.
She is an amazing Ladyboss whose mission is to help with financial inclusion. You can find Nicole on her website www.nicolecacal.com and on Instagram @nicoleccacal.
We know that a women lead world will be better for us ALL; particularly when we look at how the power inherent in Money, Sex & Politics are accessed.
“My background is in financial management. I worked in the investment management industry for close to a decade. I also studied finance in undergrad. I thought that my whole career trajectory was going to be in investment management. I went back to school, I did my first graduate degree at the Parsons School of Design where I teach now. There, I learned about business design. Really, it’s just using design to solve challenges for businesses. Creating solutions within a set of constraints. That’s all that it is. I use those design principles in order to create solutions for people and for the planet. My mission, going from the investment management world into what I do now, at Forbes Ignite, is specifically to create financial inclusion.” – Nicole Cacal
On the Podcast, we talk all things Money, Sex & Politics as they pertain to women thought leaders, industry disruptors, and business activists.
In this episode, we are talking MONEY and financial inclusion.
Don’t worry, we promise to keep it light and bright, f-bombs delightfully placed 🙂
Seriously, it’s mostly comedy & errors with suggestions on how we can maybe, probably do better & asking leaders if they agree!
YOUR HOST OF MONEY. SEX. POLITICS PODCAST
Join host Rose Kaz, serial boat burner, humanist & social entrepreneur as she digs into conversations with a variety of female-forward visionaries who actualize their big visions into real-life actions.
These leaders push forward to a world where women are equal to men, underrepresented skin tones find safety, and folks who identify as theys and thems are valued.
JOIN US BACKSTAGE
Our talks here point to the shift we are building digitally to build a better world by doing social media differently. See what are we building behind the curtain, come Backstage, and get involved.
Contact us at SayHiLBI@gmail.com for inquiries and questions. We love to discuss Money, Sex, and Politics!
Today at LBI, we are celebrating 1 year of being alive, as part of a new digital ecosystem that connects women & femme forward people globally. In our first year, we launched our digital platform, a new gathering place for thought leaders, industry disruptors and business activists called The Backstage Pass.
I am thrilled to announce we are also cheering on our next digital baby to join the family that drops TODAY, at the end of this blog entry!!
If you’ve read any of my previous articles here on the Boss Blog you’ll notice I really want you to know about where I’ve come from and why I am building The Backstage Pass to be truly inclusive and feel like home, like Grandma’s house. Everyone has a different version of home but often Grandma’s house is safe, has some Big Mama energy & her own fair rules.
And inclusivity matters a lot to me and it has since I’ve learned out to love at inception. Not only is inclusivity one of our core values but it is this month’s theme on the BsP. So I wanted to write this reflective, 1 year in the making post from the lens of seeing how inclusive I have really been as a leader, as a marketer, as a writer, an activist, a friend and a human; a short retrospective to see how I’ve done and where I can improve.
And, whilst this entry will certainly touch on my WHY of starting an ecosystem like LBI, I really want you, dear reader, to know HOW we have been accomplishing our big, inclusive vision to build the most important place on the internet for women thought leaders, industry disruptors & business activists.
In 2020, I was devastated. Not fully by Covid, though I did get in my feels deeply about it briefly. I quickly realized that our world, the planet, was making a cry for help; more like a scream really, asking the citizens of this world to have better respect for our health, our resources and ultimately, our people; and at very grave costs of many, many lives. And that cry was amplified and broadcast globally by such groundswell movements like BLM. Rest in power dear George Floyd.
There are many groups both online and off who have been calling for a system upgrade for many, many years. Not only because of lack of inclusivity but also for years and years of systemic injustices & oppression.
As a woman in business who also sees herself as an industry disruptor, I am very grateful for these movements, their leaders & endless dedication to a just equitable world. I activate alongside them as frequently as I am able. And, I still think we can do better to mobilize and organize these various groups with incredible missions TOGETHER. Can we have an inclusive, connective thread to draw these movements together, a network that unites those various missions into one central HUB?? Kind of like the way FB was started with an aim to connect people globally, but instead of being built on a premise informed by dudes slutshaming women in the dorm room, ( fact check, it’s true!)
We are building this safe space where we can amplify both groups & individuals who want to see a more equitable world come to fruition. We are laying the foundation with empathy & kindness, access & inclusivity, collaboration & connection.
In these foundational years, we are focusing on bringing together any human who identifies as a woman, from any and all backgrounds, skin tones, hair styles, income levels, all fields, and all walks of life because when more women have more access to, to resources & tools that are generative instead of extractive, to a community of like minded, humanist leaders, we will see the needle of progress be shifted.
When I sought out to start the BsP, there was not a safe place online where women could honestly and without criticism engage in empowering, equalizing and fundamentally different ways of using social media and I wanted to change that. So how exactly are we doing that?? I’m so glad you asked!!
In the last year since we launched The Backstage Pass, we have held many events, both virtual and in person. We met Backstage before and after our events to organize & mobilize our meetups!
We met in Asheville, North Carolina to connect inside the Asheville Masonic Temple, a space historically not the most welcoming of women as guests, particularly darker skinned women. There we reached across the aisle to talk about funding, access to more monies for business development, education and other financial tools for women & underrepresented groups.
We had great support from local groups also seeking to see a more diverse populace thrive. The NC SBTDC, Mountain Biz Works and local women leaders & business women held down the panel conversations whilst attendees shared their access to tools & resources in our meet & greet.
We hosted conversation about what it means to really lean into other women’s lived experiences in Miami, Florida at the Melanated Beauty Spa with Maghan Morin & Quadeera Teart . We shared lunch, snapped headshots and made great connections to amazing women doing amazing things!
We indulged in a handful of awesome online events including a gorgeous collaboration of poetry & self care co hosted with Chioma Ossai . We got inspired in deep talks about owning your financial worth in relationships with Hilda Zamora Esq & Dr. Jackie Black.
We activated and connected over 40 women running for office in various roles of leadership from every corner of the United States. Women running for seats in the state Senate, House and for City Council, School Board and a variety of NGO leaders all crossed paths in an online forum. I was honored to co produce with the amazing Berhenda Williams, Jenn Buck, Abi Green .
So we’ve made some friends, we hope we’ve influenced some people but more importantly we hope to keep doing so!! The work around equity is not light and needs community to progress. This is no small task and we are here for it ! The BsP is the uniting HUB on the internet that brings thought leaders, industry disruptors and business activists together, in one safe digital space where we can organize and mobilize for that most equitable world.
And as we have connected to women at a global scale talking about hot topics like Money, Sex & Politics as they pertain to our various lived expereinces & how we can build equity and activate these convos outside the Backstage Pass platform, we are excited to bring our second channel live from the LBI Network.
Our Money, Sex & Polotics Podcast will be our second channel in the LBI Network that connects women globally to one another and to more tools & resources to build that equity. Through conversation on the pod about these 3 hot topics, Money, Sex & Politics, we will stream to even more incredible thought leaders, industry disruptors and business activitists just like YOU.
Be sure to have a listen and once you have, please do like, subscribe and share the MsP! Then, head on over to the BsP to meet all the amazing people you will hear on the pod!!
And if you haven’t yet RSVP’d to the big 1 year celebration DIGITAL DANCE PARTY… WHAT ARRRRE YOU WAITING FOR??
Rose Kaz is the Fem Founder and she’s done this a time or two. Her photo & video production company has taken her around the world but her new app allows her female clients & even women she hasn’t met yet to lean into each other, learn about our opportunity as business activists to support, grow & shop directly from one another. We are building a new economy, globally. WOW!
And the app we are talking about is that which Rose + the LBI Crew has launched where the ask for women is to: ‘ take center stage in their lives; to stand up, speak out & get GLOWING like never before’ Think activism meets B school meets super hip, online resource center! Sprinkle in some new school networking and POW The LBI Backstage Pass is #trending!
Click here to come Backstage, meet Rose and the entire community of femme forward leaders.
I started teaching guided meditation classes in 2016 in small country down before it was trending. During that time I encountered a lot of people who felt like meditation just wasn’t for them.
They tried it on their own, or had another experience in a class or with a video on YouTube that just fell short.
There is a stigma around meditating that paints this picture where the only way to properly meditate is in complete silence or peace. With no distractions and a calm space.
This concept is far from inclusive.
Many of us do not have access to the time or space where we are guaranteed a silence, alone time or peace.
Over the years, in my experience with meditation I have adapted a new definition that is adaptable for most everyone.
Meditation is not about you getting still or silent. Meditation is about re-connecting with your Self and your High Power, or the high power of the planet or cosmos (whatever you believe or practice).
This means that meditation can look an infinite number of ways depending on who you are speaking with.
Some people find their meditative state in writing or crafting. Others in music or dance. Some of us do prefer to find the silent still moments to go within. You might like reading or hiking.
If you are showing up to your task with intention to connect with yourself and your spirit – you are creating a window of meditation for yourself.
Yes, you can still sit cross-legged on the floor with your fingers in mudra positions. You can still play meditation music while you bike, run, or lay on the floor and breathe.
The point is that meditation can look whatever way you need to it, as long as it inspires connection with self and creates a space inside of you for you to listen and hear what’s coming through.
If you find yourself wanting to meditate because you know it will make a difference in your life but 1) when you try to do it you can’t get your mind to quiet down enough 2) we feel like we’re doing it wrong or 3) we don’t stick with the process long enough to see results.
Let me reiterate this little secret….
There’s no one “right” way to meditate.
Here are some tips to help you break the vicious cycle of meditation-struggle and break on free to the other side of your meditation relationship.
Meditate with a Timer
Meditation doesn’t have to be something that takes up your whole day or even 15 minutes of it.
I recommend getting a kitchen timer that buzzes or beeps, setting it for 1-3 minutes. Dedicate that small duration of time to your sitting, walking, or crafting meditation. If you want to go longer, go longer.
If you’re just starting to create your habit, start with 1 minute. Even tackling several 1 minute intervals throughout the day will make a huge difference for you.
I know what you’re thinking, “what can I possible craft in a minute?” Your chosen meditative active may take you longer, but for that one minute of your timer, you’re intentional focused on being present with yourself and the activity at hand. Not letting your mind wander to worries or other tasks.
Choose Your Intention
If you’re sitting in a quiet room trying to clear your mind to nothingness, it can be an incredibly difficult task. Especially at the beginning of your practice.
Choose an intention for your meditation. Ask yourself what you need more of in that day. Your answer might be joy, romance, connection, love, creative expression, movement.
Whatever you may be needing in that moment, hold the intention of what you want to create or call into your life as you meditate.
Take intentional breaths and recall experiences or dreams in your mind that are aligned with your intention.
You can also place objects around you, smells, colors, sounds that feel aligned with the intention you’re holding for your meditation.
Have Fun with It
We all want to infuse as much joy and happiness into our lives as we can. Why should your meditation practice be any different?
Have fun with your meditation! Make it work for you. Toss the rule book out the window and listen to your body, mind and spirit.
One of the most important things we can do for our meditation practice is to answer what our spirits are calling us to do. Some days that might be to set our timer for a minute and daydream about frolicking in fields of fairies or sitting on a quiet beach somewhere.
Other days, it might be to surround ourselves with water and absorb its healing powers.
Sometimes our meditation practice is laying on the floor crying.
It can look however you need it to. Don’t let standard definitions of meditation leave you feel excluded from being able to start or develop your practice.
Release the rules you’ve put on what it means to meditate and instead, operate from the space of bringing yourself joy, peace or whatever other intention you set out to create that day.
Megan Monique is a professional intuitive, creative director and native Texan.
When she’s not lighting candles under the full moon and pulling oracle cards for her community, she’s building out creating illustrations, webpages, strategy, editing copy, creating content plans, leading teams, and having intimate entrepreneur-based conversations.
Megan works with thought-leaders to break down their BIG ideas into actionable and aligned steps that build momentum in the direction of their unique goals and desires.
Click here to come Backstage, meet Megan and the entire community of femme forward leaders.
My name is Ber-Henda Williams, I am a life + biz coach who supports other empathic and creative visionary entrepreneurs and leaders in places of leadership to harness their voice, embrace their feminine power, and build mission-based businesses in service of social transformation, justice and equity.
Inclusivity is of utmost importance to me and the mission of my business.
It’s important that we all have a space to feel heard and seen for who we are and what we are moving through on this crazy, intense, vibrant journey we call life.
Each week in my newsletter I highlight a Woman of the Week from all different backgrounds and walks of life and the work that she is doing in the world.
Today, I’d like to share some of those voices and faces with you. If you feel inclined, click their links and see what they’re up to!
Born and raised in Southwest Detroit, “mother, daughter, sister, creative,” Amelia has been active in her community for over 17 yrs. through her professional experience in “brick & mortar” non-profit development and as a community organizer in arts/cultural work.
Creating and executing workshops, community events and large-scale mural productions.
Proud of her Chilena-Latina-American heritage and language, she strives to use them as inspiration to continue developing her skills as a creative.
Her passion as an activist is rooted in movements that are founded on popular education and creative expression, working towards creating outlets that encourage us to collectively challenge the current norms and structures of mis-education which keep communities disenfranchised.
Lenise Rose helps individuals from all different walks of life achieve financial wellness and create a path toward building holistic wealth.
Lenise earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology and Psychology in 1995, her Masters in Community Health Services and Counseling in 1999, and has obtained several certificates, licenses, and awards throughout the years since.
As a Holistic Wealth Building Coach, Lenise has experienced success and mastery in her personal financial wellness and is blessed to have the opportunity to support others on their wealth building journey.
As a Social Entrepreneur, she is dedicated to supporting her clients to achieve financial peace of mind and the ability to positively impact our world through purposeful giving. She specializes in helping social service professionals maximize the value of their skills and talents and become social entrepreneurs.
Clients say that Lenise has a unique skill in helping you build a healthy relationship with money and holistic wealth by lifting your consciousness into an abundance mindset.
Supriya has been a part of the metaphysical world since she was 12 years old when her own mother had a spiritual awakening.
Ever since then she started to make sense of what she has already been experiencing most of her life which was her spiritual gifts.
She’s a clairvoyant, claircognizant, clairaudient and clairsentient or otherwise known as an empath!
She has spent the last decade working in some of the biggest companies around the US and in the world.
After getting tired of the corporate BS she decided to start her own business which was originally a social media marketing agency.
She later found that her clientele was leaning towards a certain type of industry, holistic health wellness, and spiritual coaches.
After leaving her job in January of 2020 she renamed her business to The Spirit Digital and started coaching people in the spiritual world which included yoga teacher mindset coaches, and ayurvedic shop owners.
It wasn’t until she took a trip to Mexico that she got the idea for Business Chakras, which came as a download on the beaches of Tulum!
The Business Chakras is a system where the chakras in your body represent each part of your business.
Today, Supriya is known as The Energy Healer for Businesses as she uses her business chakra system to heal businesses all over the world on a spiritual and technical marketing level.
Is inclusivity an important part of the business you’re building and the work you are doing out in the world? I’d love to hear about it! Leave me a comment below and tell me more…
I am a life + biz coach who supports other empathic and creative visionary entrepreneurs and leaders in places of leadership to harness their voice, embrace their feminine power, and build mission-based businesses in service of social transformation, justice and equity.
I was driving home from a road trip and it hit me: integration is the newinclusion. And the first thing I thought was, “Sarah Poet, who do you think you are to say that anything is the new inclusion?”
I’ve been thinking about this concept and others lately and they all seem to have a common theme – question the constructs within which I assume anything to be true. Question everything.
We see this thing we think is reality, but it’s not reality. It’s actually all based on our assumptions of it, the frameworks that have existed since before we arrived. For example, we have frameworks of patriarchy and colonialism still at play in our current world. Those are not my favorite frameworks, and so I don’t like to assume that they are true just because we can see evidence of them. I want to dream of new frameworks, and then create them.
As humans, we put a lot of energy into fighting the frameworks, or trying to deconstruct them. Or, some of the time, we just operate within these constructs without questioning them at all. As someone who speaks about masculine and feminine archetypes in my work, one of the most common frameworks that I want to encourage us to question is the one that said men have power. Well, why does this have to be true? Why was this true? And most importantly, how do I (or we) act or behave when we assume that it is true?
It’s just a framework for reality that we default to participating in, and then we try to rise up and fight against it, but it doesn’t even have to be true and we can choose to question it and therefore collapse what is false about it. Men are not inherently more powerful than women, and so I don’t have to react in a way where I fight for my power. I am inherently powerful – not because I’ve taken my power back or fought against a system. But just because I am.
Let us also note that this framework of “someone has power and someone doesn’t” was built within a paradigm of separation.
If things are separate and not united, then one group or gender can have power and another can’t. But what if we choose to believe in unity instead of separation? What if we stop participating in separation?
Let’s look at more examples of how humans behave when we believe in the construct of separation. I’d say entire feminist movements have been built on the concept that one group has power and another doesn’t, and so feminists have been fighting for power within that framework. You might say, “Of course women have to fight for power!” And I would say, “No, we don’t.”
We simply have to be powerful. I do not define my power because I’ve had to “take it back” or fight men for my power. I spent a lot of time doing that, and it’s actually exhausting. Rather, I want to be powerful, and to be sovereign, which requires integration of my personal and inherent power, not my inclusion into an external system of differentiated power. Who I am does not require external permission, which I feel like inclusion is inherently seeking.
If I focus on the external framework accepting me, then I will have to fight for my right to be included. I don’t choose to do that. I choose to integrate all parts of Self and to show up whole. Nothing defines whether or not I can be included, except my own level of personal integration.
It’s like I said in my TEDx, if “equity” of women means that I have to participate in a rat-race built in patriarchal masculinity (different from conscious masculinity), then I don’t want it. I played that game as a woman leader, climbing ladders and putting on a false sense of being able to handle anything. I fought against misogyny and wanted to be included for a time. Until I didn’t, because who made those rules?
More and more lately we see women leaving the workforce in this thing that culture is calling the Great Resignation. I know that the pandemic has burdened women with the lion’s share of responsibilities for family and caretaking, and yet I believe that women are also leaving because they are questioning the framework of the systems that haven’t been working for us for years. Because they are inherently patriarchal, inherently separationist, and women have had to fight within those systems for something we should have never had to fight for.
I would call that thing we should never have had to fight for “integration.”
Let’s look at integration in a personal sense. As a child, I experienced deep trauma and I didn’t realize what had truly happened to me until I was an adult with the dis-integrated symptoms of trauma, which led me to go to trauma-based therapies. In those therapies, such as Hakomi and Internal Family Systems, we work to integrate the “parts” of the self. If the child-self has experienced a traumatic event, there will be a separation in the psyche.
That “part” may not feel safe anymore, or it may feel outcast, and it may stay that way well into adulthood. In the therapies, we don’t really ask the core Self if these parts can be included – if they can pull up a chair and join the other parts of Self and be accepted. To be explicitly clear, we don’t just want to include the parts, we want to integrate them. And the assumption is that they can all be integrated, we just have to look at the health of the system and restructure the psyche to integrate all the parts. We work to integrate the separated or isolated part. And we do this because wholeness is the entire purpose.
An integrated human, just like an integrated system, will operate much more functionally in wholeness. To me, inclusion depends on a part (or group of people) having been separated out, and then included back in. But integration speaks of wholeness and to me has a deeper intent.
I used to be a Special Education teacher. As many people likely know, each student who qualifies for special education has an individual legal document called an Individualized Education Plan (IEP in most states). The IEP will say how much time a student is able to sit in the regular classroom and access the curriculum from there versus how much time they need to be in the smaller special education classroom, to get all their needs – academic and social – met.
First I want to say, I think schools are doing the best they know to do, but I do question this model. When a student can go back into the “regular” classroom for their education, we call this “inclusion.” But the reason I question whether this is the correct way to do it or not is because, to my original point, the entire basis for this way of “including” is based in a model of first separating the children out. Why are the children separated? Why are schools set up this way? And what would an integrated model of education look like?
Well, I consult with a few such schools, and what we’re noticing is that student empathy and community actually increase when there is a model of integration. No one is the core group, and no one needs to be included back in, because the wholeness and coherence of the group were always the priority.
If we never separate out, then we don’t need to “include” back in.
And you may say, “Yes, but this idea is null and void because we do have exclusionary systems and women were and are treated as less than and people of color were and are discriminated against, therefore having less access to full equality.” And I would say: I know, I know, and all of that is still predicated on ideas of separation, which I’m just not interested in perpetuating. If I condone it, then I am constantly living my life within that framework, fighting against walls and barriers that will feel very hard to knock down.
I want to question the walls we fight against. I find that in my own life, as I question the structures, they simply begin to fall down, because I’m not believing that I am within them anymore.
I don’t want “inclusion for all” – because inclusion is inherently based in separation. You have to first be separate in order to be included again. What I am advocating for is the integration of all into a paradigm of Unity.
It’s a mindset shift of epic proportions. And it’s possible.
I keep going back to the example of the body and mind in trauma therapy. It’s not that I want to deny that the separation / trauma event happened. I realize that it did. But when I ask myself if I want to focus on inclusion of the outcast part, or if I want to focus on integration into the whole, I want the latter.
I want wholeness, integration, and connection. I believe we function better this way, and this is how we actualize the true Self, and this is how we can also actualize potential in community as well.
So what does this look like when we’re talking about groups of people, or organizational health, or the fact that black and brown people are still treated differently?
It means that we begin to design systems of integration rather than systems of inclusion. It means that we question the existing structure within which we are trying to “include” everyone. If inclusion feels difficult, or if it isn’t working, maybe let’s question and realize that these structures were not meant to support all people and parts. These systemic structures were built within a paradigm of separation. Therefore, they may not be the best thing to fit into. Do you want to be included into a system that was not healthy to begin with? Or do you want to make sure that an integrated system exists, and that everyone can operate with equity within it?
Again, I want the latter.
I want us to question everything, to question the walls that we stand within. I want us to have open dialogue about what our needs are, what kinds of collectives and communities we want to create, and I want to do this together. No one person (or group of people) can design systems that are inherently integrated. We need integrated groups of people to design and develop new integrated systems.
I believe that this is possible for our workplaces andcommunities. All members of the organization or the community would need to be considered and consulted in order to design an integrated, new, system that is capable of far more than the systems of the past. It requires us to redefine leadership, to move from old models of patriarchal masculine where there was a hierarchy or one leader, and to take team restructuring and shared leadership (or at the very least, stakeholder feedback) very seriously.
I am here for the work of it, and willing to facilitate new ventures such as this. I’m here to do the worthy work of analyzing organizational systems, asking what is dis-integrated and separate, and to work to integrate those parts – be it people, ideas, resources, emotions, races, genders – into new systems where separation is no longer the assumed framework.
Let’s build integrated systems within the framework of unity. Let’s do it together.
Sarah Poet is a truth seeker, a soul traveler, a former school creator turned feminine/masculine integration expert, and, as it turns out, a medicine woman for modern times.
It is Sarah’s mission to serve the true evolution of human consciousness, to integrate feminine & masculine on all levels, and to bridge us collectively from separation to connection, and to live a life of integrity and heart.
To this end, Sarah is a teacher, couples coach and Sacred Union activator, energy medicine practitioner, mentor, speaker, spiritual counselor, systems analyst, and new-paradigm leadership coach and business consultant.
You can watch her TEDx and book a consultation at www.sarahpoet.com.