57: Genecia Alluora From Supporting Herself Through School To Supporting Millions of Women To Love The F Word

FWEP00057 Genecia AlluoraHence, we are live. Genecia, welcome! So my name is Alexandra and today you are my guest for I Am Magazine and I’m very thrilled and grateful to have you here with me and to be able to interview you for our next issue, that is the business issue coming out in March. Welcome Genecia.Recognizing your big WHY?We all want to do something that is in line with our passion, something that we can manage and hold our time properly and something that can also help people around us but how can we do that when we don’t recognize our purpose first? Here’s the tips that Genecia said:(02:12 - 02:18) I think the first thing you need to do is recognize your big why. Why is it? What you do? And Why you do it?(03:15 - 03:26) In this life, I have been taught resilience and many times in school I was being bullied because when you are not rich, the rich kids in school will bully you.(05:21 - 05:27) My why is my family, to take care of my family, my mom, my dad, and my brother through my working years.(05:29 - 05:33) I built up my self esteem along the way.Learning an essential lessonIn life we have hardships and that’s exactly the fuel that can push us to be the best version of ourselves, this is what happened to Genecia:(05:57 - 06:04) In 2004 I actually joined a modelling competition and I came in top 20 out of 1000 girls.(06:07 - 06:23) When the pageant then came knocking I really wasn’t prepared because public speaking, you need to do like department and stuff. Even though I have some form of experience, you know, if you wanna join something, you want to win, right? You wanna do really well.(06:24 - 06:35) So I went to tap into my compartment called the compartment of resourcefulness where I went knocking on doors asking for sponsorships.(06:46 - 06:55) That was how I eventually found a sponsor who sponsored me to do public speaking even before I joined the pageants and her name was Rebecca.(07:06 - 07:14) She gave me dvd’s and cd’s and books, notes, and everything that she has got.(07:15 - 07:17) And then she asked me for my bag.(07:20 - 07:28) She reached into the bag and she opened my wallet, she took out 60 dollars and emptied the rest of the coins.(07:32 - 07:40) I was like, staring at her like ‘Rebecca, why are you taking my money? That’s the rest of my pocket allowance for the rest of the month, you know?’(07:41 - 07:50) And she’s like ‘Genecia, I know I’m sponsoring you, but I need to teach you the value of exchange. The power of value.’(07:51 - 08:09) Even though this is for you but nothing is free. Whatever you’ve got, that amount will allow you and teach you to be committed to read through the notes, to look through the dvd’s and whatever I’ve given you. If I had given you completely free you will not treasure what I provided for you.(08:16 - 08:19) So looking back, I thank God that it happened.(08:24 - 08:38) Guess what? I won Ms. Singapore in 2006 and I was Ms. Singapore International and later on in 2011, I won again as Ms. Singapore Chinese Cosmos and both times I represent Singapore and I’m really very proud of it.(08:39 - 08:44) So all this journey was amazing and I never gave up.3 Things learnt in Beauty PageantsThey say experience is the best teacher. Genecia have learned so many things in life specifically in joining beauty pageants:(09:18 - 09:20) The first thing I learned was teamwork.(09:37 - 09:47) The second thing I learned was how to present my platform. Which is how to be consistent, to show, to speak about who I am and share what I believed in.(09:57 - 10:08) The third thing I learned was learning how to communicate consistently in the way that is authentic(10:24 - 10:39) So all these things led into being an image consultant, helping CEOs and politicians because it’s all about personal branding, it’s all about being align in your body language, the way you are as a personThe struggle is realHonestly, almost everyone of us struggle to know who we really wanted to be. Genecia was not exempted to that struggle but she found someone who guided her through that struggle. Let’s see what she said:(11:18 - 11:23) In 2012, I struggled for an entire year thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life. (11:24 - 11:30) And I found someone, a mentor, who was willing to teach me and guide me how to do the next step.(11:31 - 11:38) So in 2013 I went online and I made a hundred thousand dollars in 3 months and then a million dollars within a year(11:39 - 11:50) And that completely changed my life because I’ve never made a million dollars and when you do consultancy work it’s usually by power and usually by project basis(11:59 - 12:02) I make my first pot of goldZero Business KnowledgeNot all of us know how to do business. If you know how then good for you, but if you don’t, what exactly will you do to reach your way to the top? This is what Genecia had to share:(12:06 - 12:16) Me and my partners, we started a cafe retail chain and that’s how I went into retail. I’m a medical student, I graduated as an occupational therapist(12:17 - 12:24) I have zero retail knowledge, like, zero business knowledge. I mean, other than the things I already know (12:25 - 12:29) So to do that cafe retail chain I have to learn everything from scratch.(12:40 - 12:47) So we grew from one outlet, we have 18 franchises and licensees and we have 7 outlets in three countries.(12:54 - 13:05) That really changed my life because I was based, I went to Indonesia and was based there. I was working with the franchisee and that really opened up my mind to the world of business.(13:11 - 13:16) That’s how I learned to duplicate business, how I learned how to grow a business and scale a business beyond the shores.Finding your real purposeDespite everything that we have, are we really on our path that is paved for us? Here is what Genecia has to say:(13:26 - 13:45) All these things that we did kind of like the foundations of me building Soul Rich Woman because in 2014, 2015, I was feeling a bit empty because even though I have money, I have fame, I have everything that I want to, a business, but I just felt that something was missing.(13:47 - 13:49) I just felt that my calling was greater than that.(13:55 - 14:00) When I transitioned to a cafe business, I’ve been, I just didn’t felt balanced in the things I was doing.(14:01 - 14:12) Eventually I turned on the webcam, I turn on my webinar and I was doing this webinar thingy on every single wednesday. It’s called ‘Webinar Wednesday’ (14:19 - 14:22) So in the beginning I have zero viewers.(14:27 - 14:40) So from scratch zero to the first ten, the first ...