Self-Made Women: Cynthia Stant of Inner Feminine Beast On How She Started With Very Little and Created A Million Dollar Business
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Not everyone is going to want to celebrate your success. When you hit huge milestones all you’re going to want to do is scream from the rooftops and celebrate like crazy. You cannot get upset when people you love and people you want to tell aren’t that happy for you. You have to remember that being an entrepreneur is a choice. A lot of people aren’t willing to do what you are willing to do but that is also why you will get to live a life that many others will not. And although you earned it, just remember everybody’s doing the best they can at the conscious level that they are at. So it’s very important that you are very selective with who you keep as the top five people in your life. Always choose to be the smallest person in the room. Because those people will help you to rise up. They will celebrate you, motivate you, inspire you, and be there to support you. Find your tribe. I would not be where I am if I didn’t have the women I have in my life.
Some people were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth. Even then, becoming a millionaire is still quite an accomplishment. But people who start from nothing, and especially women who start from nothing, who make it to the top to become millionaires, despite the pay inequalities based on gender, the confidence gap, with nothing but grit, hustle, resilience, and “stick-to-itness”, are on a whole new level. We want to share those stories and inspire other women. In this interview series, we’re talking to “Self-Made” women leaders who started with nothing (i.e. started without investors or trust fund or capital or even people believing in them) and went on to create a million dollar business.
As a part of our series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cynthia Stant.
Cynthia Stant is a self made millionaire, sales consultant, and brand strategist. After conquering the corporate world of sales at an executive level, she found herself without a next move in life after being fired. After just 6 months she was already pulling in multiple 6 figures from her favorable programs by tapping into her financial, business oriented, and metaphysically disciplined background, in order to start a path for luxurious, hardworking, successful, ambitious women like herself to follow and thrive from.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory” and how you grew up?
I grew up in the small state of Delaware. My father was married when he was 18 and had two children, but then years later had a divorce. My mother was 20 when she met and married my father who was 10 years older. Together, they had my older sister and 7 years later I was born. I am the baby of the family. My father was 45 by the time he had me. I lived a very happy suburbia life that my family worked extremely hard to provide. Being the youngest, I often played alone at home and became very used to playing with my imagination. Being that my sister was so much older, when we would interact she would pretend to be my teacher. I would often be at school desk and she would be writing on the chalk board and creating worksheets for me. She would teach me whatever she was learning at school at the time and I would love earning a golden star sticker from her. This made me very advanced at school. I was always in gifted programs. I even was asked to skip two grades and had the local University come interview me and my family to see what our at home life was like because of my high state testing scores. My parents decided to not have me in advance because they were concerned about the social aspects. It makes sense now that my sister is a school principal and has her doctorate in education. As I got a bit older, I was in every extra curricular activity. I inherited my father’s athleticism and height. I have been close to 6 ft tall since I was 12, and I was often the youngest person to earn the spot on many of the sports teams I was on. I was captain of the cheerleading squad and softball team in middle school, and continued to cheer and participate in many school events including the yearly charity fashion show as I grew up.
Growing up, what were your early experiences and perspectives about money? Or we could say, what was the “money consciousness” in which you were raised? Can you please give an example of what you mean?
Because my father had two children from a previous marriage who were only a few years younger than my mother, my mom worked three jobs to provide for the family. I often wouldn’t see her in the morning and she would come home and kiss me while I was already sleeping. She used to work at the bank in the morning, JCPenny’s men’s shoe department in the evening, and very late evenings she often served at the bar my father and she owned. My mother worked her hiney off and advanced in the bank. She took night classes at the local college to climb up the ladder in her career. She worked her way up to becoming Vice president at the 3rd largest financial firm in the world. She benefited from extremely long hours and hard work and instilled this in me. She somehow was still very present for me in my life — Helping me with every school project, hand sewing every halloween costume, and somehow sneaking out of work to see me at Distinguished Honorary awards ceremonies at school. She showed me that although she worked a ton, she prioritized her children the most. In 2008 my mom was let go during the financial crisis. After 16 years in a leadership role that she took so much pride in, it was all thrown away. She was devastated. This was my first real lesson in life that the source of your success and happiness cannot ever come from outside of yourself.
My father took care of me daily and was a serial entrepreneur. I saw him own every single type of small business. My mother and he owned a bar, a car battery business, a bakery business dropping off baked goods at gas stations and convenience stores, lollipop stands, pool business, and even electrical lighting. Starting at the age of 4, I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and help the whole family to roll up hundreds of newspapers and bag them. Often I would go with my family first thing in the morning carrying a bag, black ink on my hands covering one side of a neighborhood street or an apartment building with my sister. I would travel the entire east coast visiting all the stops my father had to make to run his businesses. We’d go to bowling alleys to fix lights, we’d go to giant freezers on the side of the road to pick up bake goods, and we’d stop at every laundromat to collect the quarters that people left to buy lollipops, often finding that all the lollipops and quarters were stolen. My dad always took me somewhere special once a week to reward my behavior. My father was a historian at heart. So we would go to many museums, battle fields, and the zoo. We would read every sign top to bottom and often spent time drawing our favorite animals. I asked a million questions and he always had an answer. This added to my advanced learning. When I started school, my dad would take care of me the best he could. I remember my first grade teacher would keep a hair brush for me to do my hair in the morning because my father struggled putting a 6 year olds hair up in a ponytail. My father’s way of doing business conditioned me to think that it’s important to have multiple streams of income, and the more things you do, the more successful you will be. But just like my mother, his child was what he loved most. Upon my father’s death bed, he joked with me at 72 years old that “he still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up.”
Awesome! Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s talk about what you are doing now, and how you achieved the success that you currently enjoy. Can you tell our readers about the business you’ve created?
I am a sales consultant and branding strategist for 6 and 7 figure entrepreneurs. I help my clients to grow and scale service based businesses online through utilizing social selling, aka selling through social media. This means creating effective and profitable conversion events such as masterclasses and workshops, and having authentic connections and making sales in direct messages on several different social platforms. I primarily work with multiple seven-figure entrepreneurs who have sales teams and I teach the sales teams how to create an online experience through authenticity and support which ultimately helps the company to increase the revenue dramatically through their selling efforts. I have been blessed with the gift of knowing how to sell. It comes natural for me. To me, sales is all about serving, and being a solution. I find sales to be a spiritual practice because I truly believe a sale with me or whatever I sold was the start to someone’s success. At the age of 22 after taking a lot of pride in providing outstanding service at an upscale restaurant as a server, I had a table leave me their business card to come interview to work for them. 13 interviews later, I became the youngest state portfolio manager in the world and 1 of 4 women to represent the 2nd largest wine and spirits supplier at the largest national distributor. I managed a team of 42 people in sales. I was responsible for forecasting, budgeting, creating programs and tools to support my teams, building relationships, and training my team in the classroom and in the field. Most of my sales people had children my age. It was hard and I busted my butt often missing trick or treating with my young son or New Years Eve because these holidays fall on the 31st when you have to get your numbers in. I traveled regularly to Las Vegas, Kentucky, New York and Chicago. It was glamorous but my family instilled in me to prioritize my children. I became a young mother at 22 and married my boyfriend of 3 months after we found out we were having a baby. When most of my friends were going to music festivals and backpacking, I was in the boardroom doing anything to advance my career. Much later I actually decided to demote myself to become a sales person. I was making a capped salary and they were making commission. Sales people won all the cool prizes, had minimal responsibility, and were home at night and on the weekend. The title didn’t matter to me, the freedom did. I rose to the top of the ranks immediately and remained there as long as I had that position. When you’re good at sales you create a solid pipeline through relationship building and I now only worked about 2 hours a day. I thought to myself what else can I do to make money? After going to the University of Delaware and earning a degree in marketing with a minor in advertising I then stumbled upon and fell in love with Metaphysics. I attended the College of Metaphysical Studies where I learned how to meditate. After meditating daily for months, my intuition became very keen and selling to me became even more natural to me because it was all about energetics. I could see the solution people were looking for, I could vibrationally sense where someone was at, and who I could naturally support best. I wanted to take this knowledge and teach it. I had no idea how to start a business though, so I hired a business consultant. She was beautiful, young, semi local, a master sales woman which I adored, a mother, and I could see her potential. She could be wildly successful. This business consultant had a competition amongst her clients for lead gen and I, being the sales woman I am, went for it. I didn’t win, I got second and was devastated. But out of the kindness of her heart she reached out to me and thanked me and offered me an intimate VIP day with her instead. I was thrilled. I came super organized and over prepared as I do with everything. She was shocked that I had such clarity and preparedness being that I was only in her program for one month. She asked what I did and I explained to her my sales background. Then all of a sudden it hit me. I was meant to be her first sales person. She told me no because I was a client, and because it wasn’t in her budget for another six months. At this point she only had interns. This was one of the biggest life lessons that I know now, If you want something bad enough, you can sell yourself into it. I decided to quit my job and for much less pay I decided to be her sales person, and I convinced her to trust in me. The agreement was I would continue to be a client to someday own my own company and until then I would sell for her. I asked to be trained to not only be a good sales woman, but become an amazing businesswoman. I asked for her to train me to be the CEO that I knew she was. And we agreed. Now I had to figure out how to sell on social media with no training. I took what I knew from my sales experience and from what I knew in metaphysics as far as energy and connecting with people vibrationally, and in my first month I did about $670,000 in sales. From then the company took off. With the income we now had we would grow the team. I was responsible for hiring and managing the sales team. We attracted hundreds of clients and got the attention of several big names in the industry. People everywhere were interested in how we were making the sales. So my boss asked me to start coaching her 6, 7, and even 8 figure clients on how the sales are being made on social media. I absolutely did not want to. One, that was scary, and two it took me away from doing sales. She said it was important that I did it and so I did. I fell in love with it immediately. I was really helping people. And through coaching, I realized that it created a much bigger impact. Because if you teach the leaders, the leaders can support 1 million more people then you can as an individual. Eventually I was making multiple six figures and it was time to start my own business which was always my own intention. But with the amount of money that I made I wanted to hire a team to run that company while I still worked full-time at the one I was employed for. I’m not sure what happened, nor will I probably ever know, but one day after I made 5 sales, some new HR girl called me and she told me that I was fired. I was so upset. I felt so blindsided. But I know that it was meant to happen. I already learned from my mother’s experience that nothing outside of me should be the source of my success or happiness. And the very next day is when I started my business.
What was your vision when you started this business? What’s the WHY behind the work that you do? (Please share a story about this if you can.)
So even though I loved teaching business and sales I had restrictions from my previous employer about what I could and could not do. I believe in being ethical and I therefore had to create a business doing something else. I realized when I coach sales that so many women would come to me and send me voice messages after class. It’s as if they would all whisper and say “Cynthia, I absolutely loved your training. It’s intriguing to me how you’re so intuitive and woo woo but at the same time you’re so practical and logical. It’s like you’re really helping me to understand sales.” I would respond and say “thank you, but why are you whispering?” I worked with many business consultants, I went to school for business, but never once was I taught that business is a spiritual practice. The understanding of universal laws and energy is even more important than learning the systems. It’s not what you do that matters as much as who you are when you do it. I realized I need to teach women how to not only be the CEOs of a business, but to be the CEO of their life. And when you understand and embrace how to have a disciplined spiritual practice you can create self accountability, self responsibility, and self integrity, which are all tools to lead to wild success. My company started with a program called the Spiritual Success Experience. Three weeks after starting my company with no clients, no testimonials, no program, and never doing it before, I had my first four clients. Four months in we secured our first six figures. Six months in we secured MULTIPLE six figures. This is where I was meant to be. After the completion of restrictions from my previous career, I then went public coaching business and sales, and the first online launch that I had for this was a six-figure launch. I managed all of this with just one employee and I made sure that freedom to be with my family is always my top priority. I help women to create beautiful businesses that lead to luxurious lifestyles, not lifestyles that revolve around a business. My ”why,” as I have been taught by my living parents, will always be my family. But for me, I will write things on my terms, keep things simple, and make sure I create a big impact, have more freedom, and promise myself that I never rely on anything on the outside of me to be the source of my success or happiness.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
My company recently celebrated the second anniversary of starting. People often wonder how I had so much success so quickly. The reason is because I started as a multiple seven figure woman in my energy. Remember it’s not just what you do that matters, who you are matters even more. So even though my bank account and my sales didn’t match the people who I was having conversations with, my energy did. My success is absolutely because of the power of proximity and making genuine connections. In my first year some of my clients were top 25 podcast hosts, best-selling authors, TEDx speakers, or multi millionaires. I was having eight figure people on my podcast, some of the biggest names in the industry on my show. People always wonder how I did it, the truth is I just reached out and said hi and I match them energetically.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Although I mastered sales, I still had quite a bit to learn about running a business. In the beginning, I had this story that I would tell myself that was not true. I thought all of my programs had to run in sequential order. I did not make them available for open enrollment. So I would launch, get several new clients, and start a new coaching call with just those clients. I had to keep adding new calls, and I always got lost on where I was in the curriculum and what I said to who. I was working more and was mortified 10 minutes into a coaching call when one of my clients said, “excuse me but we already covered this session.” Being someone who is super organized this felt terrible. I gave myself permission to see things differently. I realized with one little twist I could make my program open enrollment so I only would coach one session with all of my clients. This little secret is something I now teach my clients and they say it is worth millions.
We’d love to explore the traits that help you achieve your success. What were the mindset obstacles that you had to overcome in order to reach the place of earning a million dollars? Can you tell us what you did to overcome them?
I come from very masculine industries. I was the manager for a bourbon company, I was slaying sales in the online business world. I started my business with a sales person‘s mindset. It was about doing more to make more and chasing numbers. This is a patriarchal way of doing business. Do more, produce more, go go go! Understanding energy I could foresee that this was going to lead to a burn out. So I hired a spiritual mentor to help me to be the woman I had to be in order to align with the business that I wanted to ultimately create. This mentor helped me to bring God into my business as my business partner. Having a partner in business, I could do less, and I could focus on my genius. It meant that I could be a supporter. I learned to embrace my femininity and just surrender to what ultimately was wanting to come to me and through me. It was a month after having this mentor that I started having $50,000 cash days.
What were the external obstacles that you had to overcome in reaching these milestones? And how specifically did you overcome them? (Please share a story or example.)
I had to really look at the systems, strategies, and structure of my company, and the programs that I offered. I had to realize that what I was taught by someone else that worked for them maybe isn’t actually the thing to work for me. When I was the sales manager for my previous company we would do 10 day conversion events. They were exhausting but started with those in my company because that’s what I knew. I had to rewrite the script. I went for it and did a one-day presentation to see if it was possible. I got the same amount of results. The focus had to be on my energy and beliefs behind it. I was also used to leveraging price increases. But then I decided what my value was and I would show up and double the investments of working with me overnight. I was nervous it would scare people away, but it attracted even more aligned clients. Just because you were taught something one way, doesn’t mean you have to keep it that way. And if something works for somebody else it doesn’t mean it’s the thing for you. That’s why I don’t teach particular systems to my clients. I help them to channel their system because this is the absolute difference maker.
Was there ever a point where you wanted to give up on your journey to creating a million dollar business? How did you work through that panic point? Please share a story.
No. There was never a single point that I wanted to quit. Now it certainly hasn’t been all rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns, I’ve shed my number of tears and had several sleepless nights. But never once did I consider quitting. I am committed to my business because it’s my purpose. And when I say commitment to me that means like jumping out of an airplane. Once you jump you don’t go back. I embody this and I teach often that if you do not quit you will not fail.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
The title of this article was suggested to be self made, but truly no one’s self made right? It’s through the support and connection of others that we together rise. My spiritual mentor who introduced me to having God as my business partner helped me tremendously. Although I was fired, my previous boss truly was a mentor. She showed me a lot of things to do, and not to do. But she gave me the confidence and supported me to begin coaching. I will forever be grateful for the time that I had working with her. My best friend started as a client. She is one of the most successful women that I know. Being connected to her is what inspires me to go bigger, and her daily voice messages help me to remember that even though I am the boss, I am really not alone. And the one who has been there from the very beginning, and has always had my back, and been 100% down with me as my support system is my husband.
What were the most important resources, tools, affirmations, mindset strategies or practices that you used to build your business to where it is today?
Daily meditation, reading Neville Goddard daily, and using tools and what I refer as “thank you letters” to work with the law of assumption. It’s what I do and what I teach. It’s not about reacting from where you are, it’s about being the woman now who has the end result. Again it’s not what you do, it’s who you are when you do it. If you can be her now, you will get her results. I do everything I can to remain in the frequency of the woman who has what I desire.
What do you think is the greatest challenge for women and creating wealth/abundance? What advice would you have for someone that is feeling blocked by that obstacle?
I think often women practice the patriarchal ways of doing business that we’ve been taught. I believe a lot of people are waking up to the divine feminine. It’s not about doing more, it’s not being one who has more. It’s not about slaying and working hard, it’s about surrendering and being supported. It’s not about pitching, it’s about inviting. It’s important to look at money as a relationship. I know that you desire money, but are you being the woman that money desires back? Understanding alignment and energy is everything. And it’s also important to have systems set in place in your business that make it easy to make money. I often see 30 day, 60 day, 90 day programs. That means a client comes in and then they leave. Which means you are constantly having to focus on sales. If you’re constantly focusing on sales, your clients feel that, and you’re going to lead to burn out. It’s important to have a subscription-based model where you can secure a future income by having recurring revenue. You can make one sale over the next 12 months, knowing that your client is going to pay a certain amount every month. When you have this level of recurring revenue it’s a lot easier to breathe and focus on what is wanting to come through you versus forcing and pushing just to make ends meet. I also know several colleagues of mine make millions of dollars a month in cash. I see women all over the online industry with mastered earned income. This means they are working to make the money they have. To me yes they are successful, they are rich. But to me it’s not about being a rich woman, it’s not being a wealthy woman. So I not only have earned income, I use that money to create passive income. My husband and I have built a multi-million dollar real estate investment portfolio along with our business partner, consisting of single family units, multi family units, and storage units. It’s important if you’re going to create true freedom, that you learn how to have your money make you more money. Money loves a purpose, and money loves to move. I foresee in the future but I will be teaching these wealth practices.
Great! Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- When you react you are losing your power. In business and in life everything is happening for you, by you. When you judge and label things that are happening, you’re reacting to them. Instead as a leader, it’s important to remain calm and realize everything is a gift. It’s showing you where you’re at. Your job is to observe. Because you are the cause that creates the effect. Nothing is happening to you, it’s happening by you. And when you are the boss everything is a result of how you are being and showing up in your business. So when something happens that you think is bad, learn to observe and to pivot. Momentum is key to your success. What goes in motion, stays in motion. Aligned action is what will get you aligned results. It’s far more dangerous to stay where you are at, than to move forward and get something wrong. Keep moving and knowing failure is inevitable. As master yoda says “failure is your biggest teacher.” Every day I ask myself, what works, what doesn’t, and what do I want to do differently? Then I do it.
- Fear is your GPS. Not fear that pushes, but fear that pulls. Everyday I do something that feels a bit scary. But, being the CEO of my life I label everything. So Instead of saying something is scary, I say that it is exciting. I am training myself to realize that the feeling of fear is the feeling of growth. All growth happens when you get comfortable with being uncomfortable. But it’s important to realize that you wouldn’t be nervous if you didn’t care. Your desire is what is pulling you into the unknown to do scary things. As Michael Bernard Beckwith says “pain pushes until the vision pulls.” Let your desires pull you, and make you choose to see fear differently. Because you will never be fearless. If so, it means you’ve stopped growing. It’s not about being fearless, it’s about being courageous.
- My brand is called Inner Feminine Beast™️. This is because I understand the universal law of gender. It’s important that you embrace not just the masculine who is assertive, wants to slay in sales, who is disciplined, but you have to embrace the feminine within you even though you may not have been taught it. This is your intuitive side, your ability to be supported, your ability to surrender and to receive. And it’s not about balancing them, it’s about living with them in harmony. We must embrace both masculine and feminine ways in order to manifest magic and miracles in business and in life.
- True success is abundant. In life and in business you don’t ever have to ask yourself, is it going to be this OR that? Begin asking yourself how can it be this AND that? I always look for how I can have both. I can be super supportive to my clients AND take off every Friday and have a vacation every month. I can travel the world AND be present with my children. I can make more money than ever before AND work less hours than ever too. Again it’s not about labeling, it’s about observing. When you can see things clearly it’s like you lift the veil. Whenever there’s an obstacle there’s always an opportunity. You just need to learn how to see it. It begins with training your brain to look for both. It’s about abundance and not limitation. When I started my business I lived in an apartment and then moved to a three bedroom townhouse. My two boys slept in the same bedroom in a bunk bed. I had the master room with my husband, and I wanted a guest room so people could visit me. There was no room for an office. So I was going to put a desk in the TV room to work at. But then I had to ask myself, does the multiple seven-figure earner within me work in the corner of a room where her children play video games? No. Although it was an expensive investment I had to think about how I can have an office AND a guest bedroom. I spent thousands of dollars on a Murphy bed which is a bed that lays down from a beautiful shelving. I created a legit office that was my sacred space where I serve and do God’s work. It is where I created the money in my business AND hosted my visiting guests. I decided on both. With the work that I did in that office in the townhome, I now live in $1 million waterfront beach home that has two guest bedrooms AND an office. I chose both. Because I made a decision from the energy of the woman who had what I desired even though it wasn’t obvious to me right away in the physical.
- Not everyone is going to want to celebrate your success. When you hit huge milestones all you’re going to want to do is scream from the rooftops and celebrate like crazy. You cannot get upset when people you love and people you want to tell aren’t that happy for you. You have to remember that being an entrepreneur is a choice. A lot of people aren’t willing to do what you are willing to do but that is also why you will get to live a life that many others will not. And although you earned it, just remember everybody’s doing the best they can at the conscious level that they are at. So it’s very important that you are very selective with who you keep as the top five people in your life. Always choose to be the smallest person in the room. Because those people will help you to rise up. They will celebrate you, motivate you, inspire you, and be there to support you. Find your tribe. I would not be where I am if I didn’t have the women I have in my life.
We are sure that you are not done. What comes next? What’s your next big goal and why? What plan have you put in place to achieve it? Why is it a stretch for you? What will achieving it represent for you and for others?
No, I’m definitely not done. I just started the 3rd year of my business. To me that feels like I’m in third grade. Second grade actually, because the first year is definitely more like kindergarten. I am going to continue to work with women to create more impact, freedom, and money in their businesses. And I’m going to continue to work with entrepreneurs and their sales teams to secure amazing talent, sky rocket their revenues, and to create a company culture that keeps that talent and supports growth.
It’s not set in stone but I am giving myself time to play with curiosity and imagination. I foresee not only teaching sales and business strategies that are aligned with universal laws and fueled by spirituality, but teaching women how to convert their riches into wealth. I have this desire to show women how to make their money make more money through investing and wealth practices. Many people ask about what I’m doing behind the scenes in my real estate and I believe the vision is pulling to do something about it. This will support me to help women to create legacy wealth. To help them to prioritize what I care about most, and what was taught to me by my loving parents, to take care of our children.
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Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success!
Self-Made Women: Cynthia Stant of Inner Feminine Beast On How She Started With Very Little and… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.