Having money boundaries has been life-changing for proud Yorta Yorta woman, author and wellness practitioner Allira. In this conversation with Larisha Jerome, she talks about how she’s changed her negative beliefs about money and built a business empire.

This is a modified transcript of an episode of RBW: A podcast sharing inspiring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s stories. To hear more, click here. 

Allira: Hi my name is Allira. I’m a proud Yorta Yorta woman and I’m currently living, breathing, dancing on Wadawurrung country, down in Geelong.

Larisha: So first question, you have so many hustles and projects on the go, what drove you to work for yourself and build your own growing empire?

Allira: I love that my empire is still growing, my big empire. Growing up, I had always envisioned myself working for me and only me. I’ve done so many roles in hospitality and in the corporate world that it just got to a point where I was like, I know what: I want to work for myself. I just didn’t know what I wanted to be doing.

I guess for me, I’ve just been through so much in my life that it’s led me to this whole, like, spirituality side, but also like the content creation side of social media as well too.

I always knew that I’d be working for myself, which is kind of cool.

From rock bottom to growth

Larisha: So, you’ve recently written your book, Wild and Witchy, which is all about self-love, manifestation and spirituality and in it you mentioned financial insecurity. How did you navigate this and turn your life around to really cultivate that financial independence into your life?

Allira: I’m really honest and open. Growing up, I had a mum who was a single mum. She worked like three or four jobs at one time just to put food on the table. So, money has always been something that was a negative in our household. I knew, like as I grew, that I needed to sort of turn that into a positive and understand that money has value.

In the last couple of years, sort of hit rock bottom with my finances because I was really unstable with my mental wellbeing. At one point, I had like $200 in my bank account and no savings or nothing. And that’s kind of scary looking back, thinking, you know, I was just scraping the end of the barrel.

Then, I got to a point where I guess my business just sort of started thriving in that respect, and I started turning my relationship around with money. And now I’m sort of in a really healthy financial position at the moment, which is like really crazy and really good because I think I’m sort of like the only family member at the moment that’s pretty comfortable. I think that’s pretty successful in itself.

Larisha: What’s your advice around feeling worthy and asking for what you want within your work, especially as a woman and as a Blak woman here in Australia?

Allira: It took me a little while to really understand my worth and I think that sort of falls down into that whole self-love journey for me. I got to a point where I know that I work really hard just as much as everybody else, and I got to a point where I was like, I’m actually worthy of being paid to do things. I’m worthy of receiving that money just as much as everybody else around me. So, I just had to sort of enforce and affirm to myself that I’m worthy of like receiving anything.