Stop Starting Over: Turn Your Experience Into Income — with Paula Washington

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Today’s guest reframed something for me. She said your experience isn’t just history. It is strategic capital. And most of us are sitting on a fortune of it that we’ve never been paid for.
Paula Washington is the author of The Encore Playbook and the creator of the Golden Compass Methodology. In this episode, we cover how to turn one skill into five income streams, why you need to be in line for the 2030 wealth transfer, and the internal shift that has to happen first. That move from breakdown to becoming. If you’ve hit the point where the old identity doesn’t fit anymore and you know the next chapter isn’t really clear yet, this episode is for you.

When The Switch Flipped

Before we get into the work, I wanted to start with Paula, the woman behind it. When did she first realize this whole next chapter thing, that it’s not about starting over necessarily, but remembering and finally utilizing everything that her life and career and experience had already taught her? When did that switch flip on?
She had iterations of that switch flipping on at different decades. But when it really hit was when she wrote The Encore Playbook. She always had Encore in the back of her mind because she was in her early 60s and said, you know what, there is no playbook. There’s no story.
But she and her first cousins all lost their last parent in 2020. They had a memorial service every month for about six months. And at the end of something, there’s always something to begin. They all left at the ages of 89. It was a transition, a passing of the baton. She felt she was the continuation of something bigger than herself, and she couldn’t punk out. If they walked it out, she had to do something.
As she was researching and finding out about her great-grandmother who graduated in 1894 from college, her great-grandmother’s daughter being a concert pianist and a real estate broker, her mother being the first female in a branch in a major bank where the only other women were tellers, she started looking at what they did without even thinking about it. And she asked herself: What am I doing with all of the intellectual property that I have? What am I doing with myself? I have to continue something for the next generation because we never stop as business owners or entrepreneurs or visionaries. We just come up with new ways to present it. Why it’s important and relevant now. And now I have enough behind me that I have the wisdom.
So her tagline for the Golden Compass Methodology is where soul meets strategy and wisdom becomes wealth—soul, where you get real with yourself. You’re not going to lie anymore. You’re not going to do all the crazy stuff you did. You’re going to own your own chaos and crazy, laugh at it, make a joke, show people that’s just the dirty. It’s all part of the dirty. And then face that, come up with a vision and a strategy on how to package it and put it together. Move that wisdom and know that experience doesn’t have an expiration date, and then get to the place where you turn it into strategic capital. Because at the end of the day, we do business and have fun making money. Can we do that? That was the major turning point for what she sees happening for herself in the next 20 or 30 years.
How Do You Know If You’re Done Or Just Exhausted
A lot of accomplished women get to a point where the identity they thought they had doesn’t fit anymore. They’re like, how did I get here? The next chapter isn’t really clear yet. They know what they don’t want, not what they want. How do you navigate someone through that? How can someone tell whether that’s really finished or they’re just exhausted by the way they’ve been living?
Paula lived that herself. What’s really happening is you’re getting frustrated with the way life is. As a woman, physically and mentally, our bodies will tell us, and our nervous system says, no, we’re not living this way any longer. This was never the plan for you. Stop pushing the rock up the hill and create the hill. Own it.
We tried all those things, and none of them work. And now we’re saying, okay, at 48, when I turned 40, I didn’t think I would be where I was at 40. I was a little disappointed, but then happy at the same time because it was a level of liberation. Towards her late 40s, she realized 50 is coming. Life gets really good because I don’t care. Parenting is different. The older your kids get, the more time you have and all of these things. The more freedom you have in your personal life, the more leadership you own in your personal life; everything else blossoms.
And when you’re in your parenting state or caregiving state or wherever you are in all of your roles, you start to say in your 40s, wait a minute, this isn’t how it’s going to be. I’m not living like this the rest of my life. And how about all of you get ready to go through a change because I’m going through a change. And I’m going to build my boundaries along the way.
In doing that and really owning your truth, Paula created a program called Design Your Life First. In her 40s, she was designing her life first. She went through a divorce, downsizing, all those different things. That was everybody else’s picture or framework for her. When she designed her life first, she realized her father’s side was entrepreneurial. Her mother’s side, they were working. The working thing didn’t work. So she decided to own the entrepreneur. She’s not concerned about what anyone else thinks because she has to do what works for her.

Breakdown Or Becoming

She was part of an anthology book on strength and had to write a chapter. She titled it: Was it a breakdown or a becoming? And yes, it was a becoming. It was the best thing in the world. They eliminated the baggage and the only things that weren’t suited for them. It wasn’t about him. It was an old paradigm. Go to college, get married, have children, work 30 years, retire. The prescription we follow. That wasn’t for her generation. And when life falls apart, and things happen, pay attention to the signals because it’s telling you this isn’t your direction. Shift.
And if you’re the only one on the street, she can guarantee that if you keep walking, you’re going to meet others just like you. Then you’re going to turn around and help those that are still stuck.

Strategic Capital

What does strategic capital actually mean? How do we value that?
When Paula talks about strategic capital, it means now you have the wisdom, you have the experience, let’s turn it into cash, let’s monetize it. Because why? You have strategically evolved to the highest place you could be for this moment. You are intelligent enough and creative enough, and you have an intrinsic genius you haven’t tapped into to make this capital strategic.
If I create this, let’s create these revenue streams, and three are going to be active; two are going to be passive. The passive ones will support her until the other three take off. What’s the core business to work on right now? And what are the other two spin-offs that will come from that, that she can do in alignment, pretty much in a circle?
Because as women, we live and walk in a circle. We’re in the middle, and we choose where we want to put what we want to play with or what we want to walk to in the middle of that circle. We are clear exactly what we’re saying. We could be talking about lunch and shopping and going to business, and the bank and whatever else all in one sentence, and we know exactly where we are. So if we are that intuitive, be strategic about your capital. Understand revenue streams. Understand investments.
There’s a 2030 wealth transfer coming, and her heart and passion right now is to get women in position for this conversation. It is extremely important to be in position. You’re not going to be the one at the table for the whole thing because you’re not at that level yet. It’ll take years to get there. But it doesn’t matter where you are in the line. Just as long as you’re in the line. There are $10 trillion of unmasked funds available. You ought to be in that line.

From Impostor Syndrome To Strategic Authority

How do you shift the mindset of lack, not good enough, impostor syndrome, whatever you want to call it, into: look at this wealth of experience, expertise, knowledge, value that I provide, everybody should be working with me, and I should be deploying this in so many different directions?
Paula has two frameworks. The Golden Gap Methodology, which is the compass that diagnoses where you actually are now, what you’re becoming, and what your business needs now. That’s a diagnostic tool. Then there are two bridges: the Leadership Bridge and the Encore Bridge, a framework where you exit with intention, navigate the new, commit, communicate, authentic connections, O for opportunity, R for relevance, and E for excellence, your personal trademark.
On the quick side of all of that: you’re an alchemist. You’re at the top of your game, the master of your game. You’ve been doing this for 20 years. You are a master at who you are and what you know you can accomplish. But you are not a master at the new thing. So you don’t need to be intimidated by it. You need to have confidence in: I’m going to bet on myself. I know I’m going to win because I’ve won before. I never got paid for what I did before, but I’m going to get paid now. I know my value, and I know that you don’t know what I know. And you need to know me because I can take you someplace you’ve never been.
She had a client, a retiree, very high level in government contracting. She was shooting too low. They repositioned everything, doubled everything, and she landed four enterprise companies building out their contracts for the next two years. All because of a conversation change. And you could see her value and then shift the people around you. Those that started with you cannot go where you’re going. Eagles do not fly in flocks.

Why It’s Hard For Women

Why is it so hard for women and not men?
Because women were socialized to be second and to serve, when actually we were first; you can carry a child. You’re first. We know how to nurture something for a long period of time. We know what it takes to balance and do different things all at one time. We were created to do that. But we were not created to be multitaskers burnt out by other people and their systems, their structures, and their expectations on us. We were not created to be assertive. We were created to lead, stand toe-to-toe, side by side, but not subservient to anything.
And so when you get that in your head, and you get to a place where you let go of all the lies you were told by society and how you were raised and all of that stuff, it’s not serving you anyway, so let it go.
The older we get, the more we let it go. At 40 we get liberated. 50 is jubilee. We’re celebrating. It’s off to the races. Paula is in her late 60s now and having the time of her life. She’s looking at 70, planning her party, trips, everything. Because ahead of her is the greatest part of life. Ahead of you is the greatest part of life, not behind you. The behind you was the growing up, was the journey to prepare you for the greatest opportunities that are yet to be revealed.

Turning One Skill Into Five Income Streams

Gen X is in the sandwich generation of caregiving and parenting. They’re spending a trillion dollars out of pocket to care for parents who didn’t have things set up. That is a financial strain that becomes an emotional strain. So let’s go back to income streams and dig in more. How do we close those gaps, and how do we turn something into a revenue stream?
Let’s take any business. Let’s say someone’s been on their job for 25 years. They’re a tax specialist. They’ve learned how to manipulate and manage numbers. They always knew how to make the company better, but the company never let them do it. They come out and want to create their own thing, want to talk to people and teach them. They don’t want to get caught in the numbers. Okay. So now that’s two industries right there.
What industry do you feel comfortable enough going into first and then letting the other industry be the second and third stream? Do you feel good talking in front of people? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to be a trainer? Do you want to be a consultant? Whatever the first thing is, then from there the other two automatically spin off.
Paula came out of corporate for training and development. She got her first contract because she actually walked in looking for a loan and they didn’t have a program. Of course, she had one in her briefcase. They redid the outline; she got the first contract, became the spokeswoman for that particular program. She kept her training consulting company, got contracts, did the work. Realized she was an excellent speaker, an excellent trainer, and thrived in front of people. So she decided to do less consulting and do more coaching. Then events on the nonprofit side for women and girls building wealth. One idea, one skill as a trainer, and she was able to create those streams. Then books, tapes, ebooks, products, services, courses, all going on autopilot as passive income.
One, two, three, four, five. You start at one and build out from there. Never do everything at one time. Never. Stick with one thing. Work with it. When it starts to expand, plan out for the following year. Make sure you know what your passive streams are. Make sure you have money to live off of for at least a year at the standard you’re at, and then you will be able to run a business, and you won’t show up anxious and desperate. Because anxious and desperate turns people off.

The Word That Changes Everything

You said something that I want to tag. Decide. You said it twice in this episode. We all have the desire, but until we decide, nothing is going to happen.
This is the direction we’re going in. This is the experience I want to have. Instead of Oh, that would be nice, I think about that. Doesn’t get us anywhere. We have to decide and then take the next right action. We don’t have to do it all at once, but we have to take the next right action.
And this is the perfect example of the feminine and masculine energies working together. Everything Paula was saying came from an attuned, aligned, nurturing, collaborative, expressive feminine energy. And then putting the decision to move forward in the masculine energy of: these are the things we’re going to do. Women do both really well. We tend to go one way or the other often. But if we can learn to harness both sides of that, we are unstoppable. That’s why we’re leaders. And as we mature, we learn to align both sides together. We learn how to flow.

Trusting The Timeline

One of the things Paula has learned over the years is she does more with less work than she did with all that hard and stressful stuff all those years. She can get more done in an hour or two than she did running around doing all that other stuff for years.
And if there’s anything to end on, it’s this: trust the timeline of your life. Time is your friend. What didn’t happen, you can’t change it. Let it go. But be kind to yourself.
We’re never behind. Right where we need to be.

Where To Find Paula

Website –  https://www.paulawashington.com/

Instagram – iampaulawashington

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/paula.washington.92

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulawashington-mba/