As a author, Pauleanna Reid has all the time recognized the facility of vulnerability.

Because the owner of a flourishing ghostwriting company and a long-term senior contributor for Forbes, she’s mastered the art of extracting emotional conversations and turning them into impactful stories. It’s this superpower that she says saved her from drowning in greater than $50,000 price of debt.

“I believe with most things, once you share vulnerable parts of yourselves, it type of opens up or gives other people permission to do the identical,” she shared with Essence. “So I’ve normalized that conversation because in my household, it wasn’t necessarily something that was dropped at the forefront.”

As a fellow journalist, I’ve followed Reid’s growth journey as a burgeoning and now established author/founder via her enrapturing social media storytelling. She often shares in-depth profession advice on Instagram and doles out clever counsel to her followers through her own lived experiences. So, it was quite the surprise after I ran across a recent Instastory post stating she’d been $50,000 in debt just a number of years ago.

Reid shared that in 2017, before her full-service ghostwriting agency WritersBlok was established, she was working at an organization earning $65,000/yr. Being that she’d left college early and didn’t earn her degree, she said it was an honest salary for a single woman living within the greater Toronto, Canada area. Nevertheless it wasn’t enough for the life-style she was trying to steer.

“After I was 30 years old —I’m 35 this yr— I had a really interesting conversation with a collections agent,” Reid shared. “And like most ladies I do know, I used to be maintaining the facade. I used to be rocking $1,000 purses with only a pair dollars in it. I used to be covering the tabs for all my friends at dinner. I used to be taking trips I couldn’t afford and opening bank cards and taking out loans I couldn’t sustain with. Maintaining with the Jones. And at a certain point, I just broke down because I had collections agents calling me continually since I used to be so behind on payments. And so typically, when the agent calls, they’re not attempting to get personal. They only want their money, and that’s it. But I had one agent—God bless his heart—he says ‘ma’am, I don’t mean to overstep my boundaries, but you’re way too young to be going through this.’”

She said the decision took now not than 30 seconds, however it modified her life endlessly.

Soon after that conversation, Reid said she took her financial future more seriously. “Step one I took to get my funds so as was getting real with myself regarding my situation,” she shared. “At 30 years old. I used to be in $52,000 of debt despite making $65,000 in my corporate profession as an executive assistant for President and CEOs. The maths isn’t mathing, you realize what I mean? I laid out all of what I owed in a spreadsheet and prioritized what have to be paid first.”

She then realized that despite what most personal finance gurus might advise, saving her money wasn’t the answer. She knew she needed to make more of it. “I believe a variety of people have passions and side hustles and all this stuff happening, but I needed to hone in on one thing—one skill—and maximize it. That’s after I began to take my writing profession seriously and take it from freelancing to owning.”

Shortly after this revelation, it dawned on her that the gift she had for accurately depicting other people’s stories was not only her ticket out of debt, but to multi-millions. Leveraging her personal relationships she’d made through the years, she began ghostwriting speeches, books and articles for high-powered individuals. Later that very same yr after the fateful collections call, Reid launched WritersBlok and now, it has grown right into a team of ladies of color which might be, as Reid describes them, “content ninjas.”

“I lead a team of nine badass women of color and we support world leaders and doers, helping them turn their personal stories into brand assets,” she explained.

It’s protected to say that she’s come a good distance from drowning in debt and earning $65,000 a yr, a sum that Reid says she now earns in a single month. To this point, she said she brought in greater than $1M since last yr providing consulting services, brand partnerships and public speaking.

“I’m never going to be embarrassed to share my story since it may lead to another person’s testimony.”