63: The Power of Femininity in Your Business with Maii Vu

You’re listening to the Mastering Money in Midlife podcast with Debbie Sassen, Episode 63.

Welcome to Mastering Money in Midlife, a podcast for midlife women in business to overcome financial anxiety and make more money without burning out or sacrificing their families. Join Certified Life and Money Coach Debbie Sassen as she shares practical business strategies and mindset shifts that help you dissolve the money blocks that keep you stuck in a cycle of underearning and undersaving, sabotage the growth of your business, and prevent you from building the wealth that you desire.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the podcast. We are nearing the end of January. And we have been talking all month about your income goals for 2023. I’ve been giving you a lot of ways to approach your goal: Setting your goal from abundance rather than scarcity. Different personas that you can be in as you’re moving toward your goal, whether it’s going to be the Cheetah, the Scientist, or the Bear. What you need to declutter in your business to meet your goal.

And today, I have a very inspirational guest on the podcast. Her name is Maii Vu. Maii is originally from Vietnam, and today she lives in Australia. Coming from an Asian background Maii has thrived by breaking free from social norms and activating her truest potential. She has manifested big success and money using her signature Spiritual Femininity System.

Maii helps ambitious women tap into their hidden potential, using feminine power to start living a fulfilling life of both love and success and quantum leap their business. Maii is a podcast host, a motivational speaker, and the founder of Empowered Muse. Welcome to the podcast, Maii.

Maii: Thank you, Debbie, for that grand entrance. I’m so excited to be here. To whoever listening, I’m glad to be here. And yeah, that was about me. And in short, it’s about activating the potential in you that you are forgetting or like letting sleeping. And also having people really quantum leaping in both life and other aspects of life.

Because I truly find that it’s not just a business that you are going to grow. It’s also who you are as a person. And I help people become a better person with their success.

Debbie: I love that. That sounds fabulous. And I think also, as women, it makes so much sense. Because so many women that I speak with they’re afraid of losing themselves in their business, like it will become all about their business. And we love our businesses, we love showing up. We love serving in our businesses. Helping our clients, and serving them.

And we have big lives. We have families, we have partners, we have other things going on, and interests that we want to fulfill. I love the way you’re tapping into their potential in their life and their business. Before we jump into all that, please share with our listeners today your story.

I know you grew up in Vietnam, and now you live in Australia. Just talk about your beginnings and how you got from one place to the next, and what changes you’ve gone through. And, of course, we’re going to talk about money. You and I’ve already spoken about your grandfather’s story and your father’s story around money. And we’re going to talk about all the things. So let’s go.

Maii: Yeah, awesome. So thank you for letting me introducing more about my background. So what really drives me forward? When I started as a woman in Asia, I always had big dreams. Like I always pictured myself speaking on stages like Oprah Winfrey. And at that time, I was a little girl studying overseas, I was studying in Australia. It did give me the expansion of the hard skills, which is, you know, intellectual reading skill, English skill, and communication.

But it didn’t actually quite help me to develop the mindset and the energetic, internally, in order to get that. So I was really stuck. And I got back home, and I was thinking that, oh, maybe starting a career in Vietnam would be really, really easy because I have all the networks, and I know a lot of people. So I did have a better and easier start.

I took myself as an intern for like a really big communication agency, [inaudible], if you know that. They’re really big, international. So I was started as an intern, and I start from scratch. I built myself up. I became, I think, one of the youngest brand managers for resorts and hotels in Vietnam. During this one year, I grew myself into that brand manager because I wanted to really master myself in the luxury industry.

But it didn’t really fulfill me to the point of freedom in time and freedom in like doing what I love. And you know, truly, it didn’t fulfill me in terms of creativity and, you know, satisfying to really see big projects becoming reality. But it doesn’t bring me the fulfillment of seeing how valuable the world actually brings to other people.

So at that time, I also struggled with love. And you know, like 26, in Vietnam, you have to be “married” and have a baby already. And if not… You know, in China right now, there is a term called “wasted woman”. If you are over 30 and you are not married, you are called a wasted woman. And we have the same concept in Vietnam, actually.

It’s a very kind of like shameful position. If you are over 30 and you’re not bearish. So at 26, I was so pressured; I have to be married otherwise, I don’t want to be known as wasted. So I put all of my attention and focus to get the right man. And luckily enough, at 26, I didn’t get married. The only potential guy that I can actually get married to was actually running away.

I was left with a position of, oh my gosh, I have this year to change things around and really create something magical for my life. And that was when I realized that the way that I live, the way that I think, and the way that I behave around men have to change. And that is the first incident that got me into coaching.

I was coached with, you know, other woman coaches talking about relationships. And then I discovered the power of femininity, where you actually can, at that time, manipulate other men to get engaged with you, if you use my energy and you do the right thing. And I got engaged within a year. But then, what happened next was something that I don’t want any woman to experience.

So what happened after the engagement was I faced a lot of fear. I got a lot of trauma resurfacing; I didn’t know at that time it was called intimacy fear. I know now because I’ve coached a lot of women through it. But I got a lot of fear, it illusioned me, it haunted me day and night. The time that we were actually engaged to become married, I wanted to quit the relationship. But I didn’t listen to my intuition.

I don’t know why I had to quit; I was working so hard for this goal to happen. Because this is the only ticket to freedom that I got in my life. At that time, you get married, and then you do whatever you want. That is what it is. You have to get married, then you can do whatever you want.

Debbie: I want to interject with a question. Was this your personal pressure? Or was there, in addition, did you have their social pressure? And how strong was your parental pressure?

Maii: Social. It’s like if you meet 10 girls at that age, then 11 girls would have that social pressure. Eleven girls would live under those norms. And not every single person can fight it. The only reason why a woman can fight it is if they get overseas, if they got lucky enough, and you live overseas.

At that time, I didn’t find myself living overseas. So I got back. And I have to follow the rules. And I felt the pressure of the rules, so I had to find a way out. And getting married was a way out. However, getting to the marriage, to the ceremony, I was so haunted, and I don’t know why.

I was pregnant at that time as well. And on the day that I got married, I felt like it was the worst day of my life. Oh, it was the darkest. There is a lot of story behind the scene. It’s not just about the man and the woman relationship. It’s also the in-laws, so a lot of drama was happening. I don’t want to get so into it because we’re not talking about love today.

However, I gotta say two weeks after the ceremony, I walk away from the relationship. The man proven to me, all the fear that I was fearful about, you know, betrayal and got [inaudible] all come true. He made it all come true for me.

I was alone raising the baby, in my belly, by myself, no job, no money. Because in Vietnam, you get married, and then you’re dependent on your husband. So I have no job, no money. And I would face the decision that I get to make it the worst day of my life and myself there. Or I get to live and raise the most powerful girl. Because at that time, she was a little girl in the world.

And I found the easiest way is to become a powerful woman myself. And that was the meaning and the motivation for me to get out of the darkest time of my life. It wasn’t easy. I was faced with a lot of pressures, a lot of pain, a lot of emotional traumas, and a lot of that was going on. And I decided to make the most out of my pain.

That was where I was fueled with going deeper and healing a lot. I healed deeper. I moved on from that coach who teach me surface stuff. Because yes, I got engaged, but I didn’t clean up any of the blocks, right?

Debbie: You made yourself a bigger mess.

Maii: You can win the lottery, but you actually don’t know how to sustain it. And I felt the same. So I realized that I need to remove all of that identity, traumas, blocks, all of that blockages, and unconscious things; I have to work on it. So I dived deeper into healing. I dived deeper into spiritual work. I dived deeper into coaching.

And that was when I felt like I need to help other women doing this. And at the same time, yeah, I wanted to do something flexible, that actually helping raise my baby and earning some money. So I chose to become a coach when she was six months old. My business is four years old. I already earned, I think I already make over half a million dollars and move to multiple six-figures.

A lot of time, I meet a lot of new coaches, and they ask me, “Are you in business for like six or eight years?” “No, I’m like, here for like three years.” And the level of growth that I’m experiencing in my business right now is equal to like six to eight years of developing a solid brand and business.

So that is when I realized that I have the power. When I am filled with confidence, I have the power of creation and quantum leaping. I don’t have to wait for 10 years to get here. I’m actually here by choice. And I want to have more women breaking free from social norms. Breaking free from those pressures.

Because when you’re being pressured, and you make a decision, you’re going to make a wrong decision. And also working on subconscious blocks and removing all of those unconscious blocks so that they get to enjoy not just success and money, but all sorts of happy, family and relationships.

A lot of women coming into my world want to have both. Want to have  beautiful family and success. Now, first of all, they had to overcome is not believing that they’re both available. So they allowed themselves to either have love or either have money.

Because I have two types of woman come into my world, either they are very much happy in the relationships, or they are very much successful.  But they don’t have both. And the only reason they don’t have both is that there’s a limiting belief that they can’t have both.

So the first door we jump through is undoing that limiting belief. The second door that we jump through is looking deeper into social conditionings and programmings. Some of my clients are like making a lot more money than their husbands. The biggest fear they have is the husband would feel intimidated by their success and would leave.

Now of course, if you use that to you know dominate him, manipulate him, of course he will leave. If you use that and shame him, and look at him in kind of like a down turned eye, and then of course he would leave.

Debbie: Like negative or derogatory, right? Like he’s not good enough. If all of a sudden, you’re believing those thoughts about him.

Maii: Yeah, if you act on it, he will. But if you actually know what is underneath, like what beliefs you have about men and how to undo that, you actually can activate him to become a better man for you. And a lot of my clients couldn’t believe that.

When I work with them, they get better with money, and the husband got better at work. Got better opportunities, got better pay, got bigger bonuses, and started to step up more as a very masculine man in the relationship. And that relationship flourishes better.

So that’s why I’m so passionate about this work because women get to fully use their potential, achieving whatever success they have, and still have a beautiful life and light behind them.

Debbie: That’s beautiful. That is amazing. I love everything you said. And I really want to circle back to the first door; I love the way you call it a door, that you invite your clients to jump through, which is the door of the belief that they can have both; they can have a successful business, and they can have a successful life.

Many of my clients are desiring to grow bigger businesses, and make more money, and they’re pretty happy with their home life. And they really believe that it would take away; from themselves as a mother, from their selves as a partner, and they wouldn’t be available as much. Like, “I have a baby right now. This isn’t the right time to for me to start doing something and working.”

I love the way you talked about how, when you were just a single mom with a baby, you managed to grow your multi-six-figure business. Or, I’m marrying off one of my children, and because I’m so busy with the wedding… Then this child needs some help, and this one has some therapy that needs to be undertaken like I’m going to be busy with other things. So I don’t have the capacity, whether it’s emotional, energetic, or financial capacity to invest in my business.

I think that that is such a missed opportunity for a woman. Because when we’re in charge of our money, when we’re in charge of our time, when we even allow for the possibility for all of the things to happen at the right time and at the same time, like they really, really can happen.

It’s just really a belief that it can be all in the same month; it doesn’t have to be all on the same day. Or, it can be all in the same week, it doesn’t have to be on the same day, right? If you’re taking your child to therapy, it doesn’t mean that you have to just completely block out the week and not spend time in your business that week.

And I want to hear more about the quantum leaping, because when you’re in a place of belief, you can, I love to say collapse time, your quantum leaping time, you can move faster because of that confidence that you mentioned, that belief that you mentioned. And you can really jump more quickly when you have that certainty that it can happen.

So what are some of the tools or modalities that you use with your clients to help them? Because I imagine it’s not just their thoughts. I believe that we work from the top down, we work from the bottom up, and we have to be able to feel certain emotions in our nervous system and the energy coursing through our nervous system. And allow things to happen and be there and process through us in order to quantum leap. So talk to me a little bit about how you do that with your clients.

Maii: I love what you just brought up because it’s so true. Like a lot of people say that if I’m busy with my life, chaotic, I don’t have the capacity to handle my business. It’s so much further away from the truth. One of the examples this week, I just told Debbie that I’ve been sick three days of the week, and I have witnessed the highest sales of the week. I’ve locked in $80,000 in contracts, in terms of re-signing and people signing up for my mentorships this week alone.

And I posted nothing. I mean, I posted something I prepared before. My team posted it for me. My team handled my store, my team handled my podcast, and everything else. That is what I’m going to give, a little bit of the magic I use with my clients.

Because the first thing that people attach is this, they got the wrong concept about the law of attraction. People thinking that you have to feel high-vibe all the time for the money to come in. And honestly, you got to decide if you don’t believe this, but you got to start deciding that money doesn’t have anything to do with the state of your feelings. It has nothing to do with that.

When you actually allow money to come as a neutral. Like, it’s not like you don’t appreciate that. It’s not like you to look down on it. But it’s like, oh, okay, so I receive money, and money coming into my bank isn’t the source of my excitement or addictions. But actually, I find it like okay, it’s neutral, like I’m safe. I’m safe money coming in, and I’m safe money doesn’t come in.

So when you feel safe with no money coming in, or money coming in $100 or $200 per day, then you will feel safe when money comes in at $80,000 like me, or $100,000.

Debbie: I just love that. I just want to say this because so many people believe that they’re going to feel a different way when they have money. And so many people that I work with, they just end up with more stress and anxiety because they’re believing something about the money is going to change them.

Yeah, but we have to find our sufficiency, our enoughness just feeling good and adequate right now. I love what you said, I agree with that 100%. The money is neutral. Money is just a tool that we can use. Money comes to us, money flows through us. We can just use it to buy things we want. And we need to pay it forward. It’s a beautiful tool, but it means nothing about me. And as long as today I have a roof over my head, I have food in the refrigerator, I’m taken care of, I’m good.

Maii: And that is exactly what I decided when I was sick. Money has nothing to do with what I’m feeling right now. So I’m feeling safe. And the thing is, people get wrong about, oh, I have to call in big money so I will feel abundant. I would have time and freedom; I will feel enriched. Wrong.

The only emotional state that you need to call in money, and hear me loud and clear, is when you feel safe. Safe is the emotional signature of calling in money. So when you master feeling safe in your body, no matter what happened in your life, you can go through, God forbid, a hospital experience.

You can go to COVID, or you can go through a significant health breakdown. You can go through a life challenge. You can go through like a marriage breakdown. You can go through a fight, internally, with your family. And you can still allow money to come in when you feel safe in your body. That you are safe. And yeah, it’s got nothing to do with money coming in or going out today in your life.

Debbie: I love it. You said, when you talked about being sick, it reminded me that I learned this lesson. It was, I think, three and a half years ago, and it was on my birthday. So I remember. I remember exactly the client that I signed, it was on my birthday. And I had a raging fever. took some medicine to bring my fever down, but I did not feel great.

And because I wasn’t attached to the money and I really just showed up in service of my client, she said yes. And she signed up to work with me for six months. And we totally changed her thoughts about her business. She was in the restaurant business. She really wanted to open up her coaching business and expand, and that’s what we did together in our six months. And it was a beautiful relationship.

Because exactly like you said, I was not attached to the money. It didn’t matter that I was sick. I didn’t have to be excited, you know? Money is amazing, right? I love that. It’s so good.

Maii: It’s safe. And that is why I was, raging fever as well, and selling two clients at 30k. And then another few clients, we sold up for the whole year of my group coaching. Like, it just happened when you detach the meaning of it.

So make money means, not like make money means nothing, but like make money means not associate the meaning of having money with any excitement or anything. You’ll be grateful for it, you’re thankful for it, but it’s just feeling safe that you’re going to receive the money.

Now that leads to the second thing that I wanted to talk about, which is energetic expansion. So feelings are different from emotions. And what I really understand and got brain hacks a lot around for my clients is, the universe and human manifestation works this way. When you send an order, the universe receives, but the universe is only responding to your emotional state of being.

So whatever thoughts you send into the universe, they receive it, yes, but they only can respond to the frequency that you’re vibrating. The frequency that you’re vibrating at is determined by the emotional state of being. The emotional state of being is bigger than just the feeling. So you can feel shit, sorry about my language. When I had a fever and had all of that, my emotional state of being was safe, was bliss.

The general aura that I was vibrating at was that protection, that loving, and that is why it kept coming. Now how does it help you to juggle different things at the same time? You are ambitious. You have multiple businesses. You have multiple things you want. To be the best mom ever, you also want to be the best coach, and you want also want to be the best team leader and the CEO, right? How do you juggle that using this knowledge?

If you know that the universe is always responding to your emotional state of being, and that is the signature emotion at different levels. So picture a 10-level building, and the penthouse level is where everything is resolved. You’re just having the most amazing life. There is an emotional signature to it; it might be bliss, it might be joy, it might be euphoric; different word for different people.

If you get to access that emotion right now, daily, moment to moment, hour to hour, then it’s like you taking the elevator going there. And you stay there for a day, for like a minute, an hour, per day. And then, if you get to stay there, masterfully staying there for long, you make it become your new emotional state of being. And that is how you quantum leap time.

This is the key concept of my quantum leap, working on the emotional state of being. And there is a lot more to an emotional state of being. There is like a lot of blocks that are coming, not just from this lifetime. It can be generational trauma. We talked about our grandfather having, you know, betrayal and all of that; we borrow that from there.

It can be soul stories, or soul expansion, you learned from a previous lifetime. Maybe you were being executed by a lot of women in a previous lifetime. And of course, in this lifetime, if you become a coach and your coach women, you would face a lot of fear around womanhood. And a lot of anxiety around womanhood.

Yeah, we know that, right? So it’s carried in our bodies. And that’s why the emotional state of being is more important. We carry a lot of emotion in our bodies. And sometimes consciously, we can only see 5% of the feelings. We can feel happy when we eat something nice and go to a beautiful restaurant, we get treated right by the man, and he paid.

But then, 95% of the time, how you unconsciously feel if you don’t release those emotions from your body, and usually it’s heavy emotion stored in the womb. Heavy emotional experiences like fear and anxiety and all of that are stored in our wombs. Now our womb is what? Second chakra. The second chakra, as you understand healing, it’s the abundant chakra. It’s where the money is accessed in your body.

You know, like when you have an orgasm, it’s happening in the second chakra. The energy of the male, the energy of masculine, comes through that and touches us in that. So if we got blocks in the second chakra, of course, you have blocks in money. And what blocks the second chakra is usually fear or heavy emotion. Heavy emotions go down deep. So that’s why 95% of the time, heavy emotions are stored there.

So I develop a lot of modalities like breath work. A lot of emotions we don’t have to remember and feel through, but we can actually unblock them. My client, the client that I just helped get her first 16k month, did breathwork two hours, three hours per day. She does consistent emotional releasing.

So I do involve a lot of healing tools in my coaching modalities to help my clients. Because I truly believe that if you want to upgrade your emotion, then you’ve got to unblock a lot of emotional stuff.

Debbie:  All the stuff that’s down there, that’s been stored in our bodies from ancestral trauma, things that we’ve inherited, things that we receive from our mothers when we were in utero.

Maii: And things even beyond that, like in a previous lifetime. If you do believe in one. You were born as chief of, you know, some tribe. Or, you were born as a woman in some country. You might be born as Queen of some country. Like, who knows? And all those stories might still live in us right now. So we have to clear it out, even though we don’t remember it.

Debbie: Yeah. And we don’t have to remember what happened, like 3, 4, 6, generations ago. But especially as women, even in 2023, right, it still is not 100% safe for women to show up boldly and be visible and be loud. We are physically the weaker sex; we just are.

So for us to go against the grain and to show up, we’re really putting ourselves at risk. And it is definitely in our inheritance and our heritage, as a woman, that if we are too much, too bold, too loud… My mom called me “The mouth” when I was little. I guess this has always been part of who I am. Talking on a podcast is just who I’ve been, since forever.

But that was dangerous. That was very dangerous. You could be kicked out of the tribe. And that would be a good situation if you were kicked out, but you could be punished, killed, whatever. And we know that that is still happening in our bodies.

And we also see signs of it in various places in the world still happening today, unfortunately. So we feel unsafe, and so doing the inner work and clearing and processing, and really metabolizing the inherited trauma that is living in us, is how you are able to clear down and heal up in order to make more money.

Maii: I love the words ‘clear down and play up’. It’s really true. And that also leads me to the last thing that I want to bring on; identity and modeling. Coming back to my story, I figured out that the fastest way to teach a woman to be a better person, or the worst person, is by modeling. As women, we learn through modeling a lot.

And I truly believe it’s happening with the men as well. Like, that’s why they have the alpha male kind of story identity, right? Because we are kind of tribal people, we follow the leader. And we do have a model of like an auntie or mom or someone around us that already has a beautiful life.

And you witness how she juggles in life, still has the most successful career, and still has a beautiful relationship with her husband. He doesn’t get fearful when she makes more money than him. And we actually would love to have the same life, but we, unfortunately, don’t have that kind of modeling in our society or in our close proximity.

So that’s why I feel it’s my mission. I’m not sure about you, but I am sure you believe that it’s our mission to stand up and do this. To claim this success and love, and enriching life. Because we want more women to feel that level of freedom and love. Wholeness as a person, of wholeness in love and life.

When we grow up, we don’t have much modeling. We only either had the modeling that you get so successful, and you are staying at the top lonely, and you got abandoned by your family because people only need your money. Or, they come and ask you for money. But you’re not valuable in terms of as a person to them.

If you have a lot of money in Vietnam, the story is then your children won’t have a good marriage. The reason they believe this is if you have a lot of money, then people would look at your money, and they would get married to your children for the money and not for the person itself.

Debbie: So it’s not safe. It’s not safe to have money.

Maii: It’s not even ideal to have money. And if you do have money, you would have bad luck in other areas of life, like health or relationships. And I think that was one of the things that got into me as well. Like, in the middle of the marriage breakdown, I realized that I had that belief as well.

That I either get successful or have a family. And I decided to switch, to fix that belief system. So that’s modeling.

So, identity. So a lot of women come to me and say, “Hey, I’m so inspired by your story, by your breakthrough, by the way you run your business. I would love to run the same business, but I don’t I’m not interested in money.”

And I ask them, “Why are you not interested in making a lot of money?” And they say, “Because the person that I know,” so there is a big identity in them, “that if you make a lot of money, then you’ll be evil. You don’t spend time on yourself, you’ll be so busy, you don’t actually care about life.”

But I’m a person who loves to meditate, to do yoga, to do this and that. I don’t want to sacrifice that. And I realized that we got a lot of identity and meaning associated with that level of success.

Debbie: And stigma. And also, I hear that it’s not spiritual to have a lot of money. “When I have a lot of money, or if I have a lot of money, then I’m going to abandon or break away from God or my kids. My kids are going to become entitled.” That was a little bit, maybe, from your story, right? “There’s going to be a level of entitlement. And it’s not going to be healthy for my family. So I want to make some money. But I don’t want to make a lot of money.”

Maii: Yeah, that is our potential. And that’s why I call myself tapping into your potential, because we usually hold back to that potential. Because it’s just not making sense when you make a lot of money, then you don’t have a better life. Or, like, no one can overcome that shadow of you. Or, like, you can’t do good things.

So I was coaching a client recently, and I told her, if you believe that rich people are evil and they do bad things with money, why don’t you get richer and use good things with money? Put in more charity, give back to society more, and do better things more. Because that is going to model for other people that richness can bring happiness to others, and it’s not a selfish thing to do. And that is also encouraged more, like money in good hands, in better hands of people who have a good heart.

Debbie: I cosign that 100%.

Maii: Why don’t we actually do that and become that person and create that change? And this is, I believe, what men, what Gandhi was saying, become the change you want to see in the world, right? If you want to see money in good hands and money doing good things, why don’t you get so rich and use that money in that sense?

Debbie: Beautiful. I love it, we should definitely do that. I want to say two things. One is that this change is happening in the world; it’s happening slowly. I think we’re going to see that quantum leap. And we are seeing the rise of the feminine, the rise of the feminine energy, the rise of more money in the hands of more women. And certainly, there’s going to be a transfer of wealth from older generations to younger generations as certain, you know, people who did extremely well during the Industrial Revolution, they pass away.

They pass on money to their children, in particular, women; women will have more money in their hands. And please God, they’ll be able to use it in a powerful, positive way to help heal the planet. So I think we are there, and we’re watching that happen.

And the fact that you and I… You’ve moved from Vietnam to Australia. I’ve moved from America, the United States to Israel. But we’re just part of this global movement that’s happening. Where women are showing up, we are being bolder, more visible, and running our businesses. And allowing women in general, and us in particular, to receive more money and do more good things with money. So I think that’s amazing.

Before we finish up, I would love you to share your story, if you don’t mind, about betrayal; you mentioned just the word betrayal. But I think it would be so powerful because so many of my listeners have stories of money betrayal in their family of origin.

And we need to clear that because it is a trauma that lives in our nervous system. Unless we can close the stress cycle and we can release it, and again, we can move it through our bodies, so that we can stop looking at money as a potential source of betrayal. So I invite you to share your story.

Maii: I think I have so much story not just for money, but like all aspects of life, and the trail runs so deep in my body. The first thing I can say is, when I was growing up, my father is the most beautiful man that you’ll ever find. He is so committed to family. He is like totally dedicated. He made a lot of money, and he’s spent every single lunch and dinner and breakfast with us.

So the level of dedication is that high. And he was the most trustworthy man in my life. He always, and often, talked to me in this way, “Maii, you can’t go out there, and you should never trust a man.” So as the person who has the biggest trust of me, and telling me to never trust a man, of course, I was always prepared… My nervous system always prepared for betrayal.

And the story that I think, besides the story of my grandfather, which we’re going to talk about later… There’s another story of his life where he always told us about a friend’s betrayal. Where he got, you know, a friend took advantage of him, friends doing this to him, and he couldn’t resolve the emotion.

And of course, the way that he’s sharing it was a way to, you know, process emotion, and he needed someone to share. And he didn’t have a coach to do that with, so he put it on us. The thing is, as children, we don’t know how to filter those stories; we took it as truth. And I grew up believing that friends are going to backstab you at any given moment.

I did have a lot of experience with that. And then, turned out that my ex, who was considered one of my closest friends, also did that. It’s proof of the belief system that I grew up with. And then, I also have a story of when I started. My business was really struggling for the first nine months, and it was excruciating.

I was healing, my baby was six months. So I was healing a lot, doing a lot of work deep work on healing. I would feel like I was in a dark shadow preparing for my rebirth. I didn’t know that, but I know it now. But then, the minute I broke through, I had the first $25k happen in the most miraculous way.

I launched a $33 master class, and Universe kind of told me that there’s gonna be 53 women joining the $33 class. At that time, 20 was like magic already for me, because I only had about five clients at that time. And the rest, was like friends and family and my followers. So I had no idea who the heck are those 53 women.

So I listened; I launched the first launch, and I got about 20 people. Half of them I gifted because I love that so much. I gifted them; free. Because I wanted them to learn it. The other half, they bought. I didn’t give up the idea of that $25k, but after I launched it, someone randomly messaged me, and she was a leader in Vietnam.

And at that time, I had a story that the Vietnamese wouldn’t get this, and they would never understand this concept. The backstory I have; about five months before that, I shared about femininity in a group of Vietnamese, and they kind of threw rocks at me. They kind of pushed me away and blocked me from the group. Not just blocked me, but they kept talking negatively about me.

I didn’t know until someone in the group reached out and told me. I found you because they keep talking about you. I was like, Okay, that can work.

Debbie: All publicity is good publicity.

Maii: I kind of don’t believe that. And then she reached out and said, “Oh, my God, the level of knowledge you have is incredible. Can you teach us about femininity? Because the way you teach about it is so unique. And so it’s kind of like mind-blowing.” I said, of course, I would. And I taught for free, like a class.

So I remember she invited her community, her top inner circles, so 30 people joined that free class. And in that free class, I was so shaken. I was still having to get over the pain of being, you know, in a Vietnamese community; got executed kind of feeling.

I offered that $33. I thought, “No one has $33 in Vietnam to buy that.” I also thought that at the end of the free class, I still feel shaken. And I close my computer. I posted, then closed my computer. And then, when I open it up again, not 33 people, but 50 people signed up. So it means that the 33 people that joined live invited their friends to join. It was that good.

Debbie: Amazing, amazing, absolutely amazing.

Maii: And within about a week of launching that Vietnamese version of the feminine class at $33, I have 75 people, like 70-ish people joining. It was the biggest class that I’ve ever launched until that moment. That also opened up the whole portal of clients for me.

I give it all in that masterclass, I give it all in that program. And it turns out a lot of people want it to be coached by me. So at that time, my rate was 1,005. Because the demand was so big I raised it to 2,005. And immediately, 10 people signed up. And then there’s so much money, man.

They asked me to open another one. So opened two coaching groups at the same time. You know, in the coaching industry, they say you have to have a full roster and your open-book coaching. I didn’t even have time for that. I was opening up three different offers, high level, at the same time, because of that demand. And at the end of that month, I made $25,000.

Debbie: Amazing. What a story! I just love, love, love your story. You did something in the Vietnamese community that nobody had ever done. And you became the leader; you became Oprah. You wanted to be Oprah Winfrey, and you became Oprah Winfrey.

Really, congratulations. Because it is such a huge accomplishment that you took the call and you stepped up, and you were vulnerable and willing to share your story. And you have changed lives for so many women, which is so beautiful.

Maii: I thank you for that, for seeing me through that. I haven’t been fully I’m Oprah Winfrey, Vietnam. But right now, I confidently not saying I’m Oprah Winfrey, but I truly know I’m a leader of a lot of women. But at that time, when I first got $25k, the biggest fear that got into my body was, oh, my gosh, I got shaken, because this is going to be gone tomorrow. And I was like, where did I learn it, I never had that much money in my life, so actually couldn’t be my experiences. Because this is something new to my experience. I don’t have this before.

So I traced it back and I realized it was a story about my great-grandfather. He had a lot of money; he was a wealthiest man in the village. He supported a lot, gave a lot. And then, when the politics in the country change, a lot of people betrayed him and turned him into the government; talked bad about him, made up stories about him.

And he got taken away all of the assets. That was the darkest time of my great family time. And my dad suffered from it. To the point that he got some savings for himself. My dad even told me. The minute that the family called him back home, because literally everything was take by the government. He had a lot of rings, golden rings, because they were rich.

So he actually gave the rings to friends, because he didn’t want to come home and get ripped everything off his body as well. So he saved some for himself, some gold and stuff. At that time, in Vietnam, gold was really valuable. You can literally buy a beautiful big house in the middle of the city with like a ring like this, literally.

So my dad had a lot of things like this. But the thing is, he didn’t choose to buy houses. If he did, we could have been so rich right now. We could be having a different conversation right now. But he didn’t. He chose to buy trousers and bike and TV. And now I realize that he bought it because what’s the point of getting rich if you got ripped away all of that as well, right?

What’s the point of building the wealth, so that you got taken away from all of that from you. So at that time, I’m constantly hitting that. So he chose to buy pleasure, short-term pleasure, which is, you know, dancing [inaudible]. He became very rich himself. But then he couldn’t get beyond the level of wealth that his father built.

And I realized that our story is being taken away all the success in the night is the biggest fear. And I’ve worked through it so much. And I’m sure if it’s come back, I have to work through it again. But if I want to build some level of success and wealth, beyond what my great-grandfather had built, then I got to tackle it, and I got to work on it.

Debbie: Right. And that is a trauma. Yes. Well, right. It’s for his family, and you have a fear of it happening to you. But a trauma is something that happens, like too fast, too much too soon. Or too slow, too late, too little.

Well, let’s say if you’re living in survival mode, you’re not in a comfortable situation, you don’t have a comfortable roof over your head. You know, I’m talking like bare-bones sort of living. You don’t have proper food, and you’re working hard to survive. There’s just there’s too little. And the time span is stretched over. Each person in their nervous system and how much resilience they’ve built up in their nervous system. Because of whatever they’ve inherited from their family of origin.

We are incredibly resilient. Women are more resilient than men, we have endurance. And so a man can probably break, let’s say, from trauma more quickly than a woman because we’ll just keep going and going. But yeah, it can either happen too slowly, where you’re just living at or under the poverty level, for very long time.

It’s part of the reason why it’s so difficult to break out of the cycle of poverty, or the welfare cycle. Because if you’ve been in that situation for so long, and forget about what you’re believing in your mind, but what you’re experiencing and feeling in your body, this is all there is. And it’s scary.

And we’ve talked about feeling safe. And just like that hold on and grasping to what you have, and not letting go because it just feels like you’re just going to be letting go of everything. Right, that will continue to keep you in that cycle of poverty.

And then, you know, the other thing is like something happening too fast, which could be having your business ripped away from you. Or, it could be winning a lottery. Winning the lottery sounds like it would be an amazing thing. But most lottery winners do not have the financial identity. Their “financial thermostat”, I sometimes call it, is not set for that amount of wealth. And it’s just not who they are. And they’ll squander it very quickly.

Because they haven’t yet expanded their capacity to have the capacity to receive and hold on to so much money. There’s so much, we could just go into this for hours.

Maii:  I love it. But yeah, that’s so much into that world, the unseen world, but their power, it’s so powerful beyond what you can comment. So, I think investing in unblocking, investing in working on another system, like you, or like healing trauma. It’s all going to be so beneficial, not just for your short-term, but for your long-term run. Because you’re gonna always gonna face it, when you go to the next level.

Debbie: Exactly. So what is one thing that you’d like to leave my listeners with today? And then you’ll tell people also, how they can get a hold of you. We’ll put all of your links in the show notes. But if you had to just summarize everything you’ve been through, and everything in your experience, and everything you’re teaching, in a short message, what should we take away?

Maii: I would love to remind everyone that you came as a creator in this lifetime. And you, along the way, might pick up on a story and belief and got programmed to look at things through the lenses of fear. Of differentiated, separateness, of the hardness and struggles, and all of that.

But I would love for you to remember that as a creator, you know, everything goes easy and effortless as long as you stay in alignment with that view and lenses of love. Then you are going to have everything easy. This is the bottom line of my empowered system.

If you embody love, and your emotional state is love, then you kind of like access the universe abundantly. Because I believe love is a language of universe, universal abundance. And when you’re spiritual, you get to connect to that abundant source. When you embody and let love come over you and internally and using love daily. So don’t forget the power of you.

And I truly believe that we have so much potential. We don’t use it just because that we forget about this power of creation. So do use that. Don’t let it go wasted. The chances of being a human is one over a million chance. And the chances of winning a Powerball in the States is like one over 20 million. So like the chances that winning that Powerball is one over 20 million. So don’t get let wasted. Use that power.

If you’d love to learn more about this quantum leaping healing, you can definitely check out my Instagram and follow, and let me know when you come from Debbie Sassen’s podcast. So my Instagram is empowered.muse.

And I do have a special gift. We don’t have a lot of time to talk about the quantum leaping process here, but my superpower is putting structure into spiritual work. So I help people understand the woo-woo stuff in a logical way, step by step way.

So I do have a first stage process about quantum leaping. And the teaching is so simple. And when you get it, you actually understand how it works and you can do it and replicate it again. So go to bit.ly/quantumuplevel. And I will leave the link with Debbie, and you’ll find it in the show notes.

Debbie: I’m looking forward because I think I’m going to quantum leap and uplevel. 2023 is my year, so I think I’m rushing.

Maii: Do check it out.

Debbie: Alright, thank you so much Maii for being here. It’s been a real, real pleasure. Thank you.

Maii: Thank you, Debbie for having me. And I send you so much love. Again, because it’s the language of the universe.

Debbie: Love is language. Alright, thank you.

Thank you so much for tuning into today’s podcast. If you loved Maii’s story and were inspired by what she was able to achieve in her life and in her business, then I invite you to join Money Healing Circles. Money Healing Circles is a short-term coaching program; very specific and focused just on your money. It is for ambitious, high-achieving business owners who want to clear the limiting beliefs and heal the nervous system energy in their body that is blocking them from quantum leaping their business.

We all have money stuff, and it comes up at every level of business growth. This is my invitation to you, if you want to really increase your income this year, quantum leap it, set an audacious goal, and achieve your goal, that you heal your money stuff. We heal down into our bodies in order to earn up the income ladder.

In our seven-week program together, we’re going to uncover the negative emotions you have about money. It could be overriding negative emotions, or perhaps it’s connected with a specific incident or series of incidents in your life. We’re going to find out where you might be carrying some shame or guilt, anxiety around money, frustration or anger around something that happened in your childhood.

We’re going to allow it to be there; all feelings are welcome. We’re creating a safe space for your soul, for your body, and for your money to be seen and heard. And then we’re going to clear it. We’re going to allow the negative energy to move out of our bodies, out of our minds, and rewire and reprogram our minds for more wealth.

We’re going to set big income goals. If you’ve already set your big income goal, I might actually tweak it a little bit higher, because I have a tendency to do that. And I want you to stop people pleasing, selling out yourself, overworking, overgiving, overexerting, and of course, undercharging for the valuable work that you do in this world and for the amazing service that I know that you give to your clients.

If you would like to join Money Healing Circles, you want to go straight to my website and join now. Let me give you a few more details. It is a $2,000 investment. We will be meeting on Thursdays for seven weeks, starting the 9th of February. It’s going to be at 10 o’clock New York Time, which is 3 o’clock in the afternoon in London, 5pm in Israel.

That’s weekly for seven weeks. Small group: we’re limited to eight. And there are a few spots left. If you would like to join now, go to my website, DebbieSassen.com/mhc. That stands for Money Healing Circles. Join today.

If you are a resident of Israel, it’s $2,000 plus VAT. So you can go to my website and type in DebbieSassen.com/mhc to join the Circles. If you have any questions about Money Healing Circles being the right investment for you, reach out to me by email:  Debbie@debbiesassen.com, and I am here to answer all your questions.

I know that when we heal our relationship with money, everything else in business becomes easier. And here we are, almost in February. Wherever you are on the path to meeting your goals, let’s get rid of some of that energy that’s holding you back. Let’s get rid of the limiting beliefs that you can’t, that you’re not allowed. How dare you? Who do you think you are?

Let’s let them go, together. Forgive ourselves for past money mistakes. And invite more wealth and abundance into your life and into your business this year.

Thank you so much for tuning in today. I will see you next week on the podcast. Bye-bye for now.

Thanks for listening to Mastering Money in Midlife. If you want more information on Debbie Sassen or the resources from the podcast, visit MasteringMoneyInMidlife.com.