Patrice C. Washington's presence commands attention. She's tall with flawless brown skin, large almond-shaped eyes, and a big beautiful smile. When I saw her in passing at the Disney Dreamer's Academy this past weekend I immediately wondered who she was. Two days later she was introduced as The Money Maven during a panel and I immediately thought, "that's the pretty woman I saw during the press conference." That's why I was shocked when, some time into the panel session, the money coach said she walked around for the first 25 years of her life with her shoulders hunched.
"I ended up looking for validation and affirmation outside of my household. she told a crowd of parents. "People in my household told me I was ugly. They told me I was too dark. My lips were too big, my nose was too flat. I was too tall. My eyes were too big. I looked weird. I had a complex."
As soon as I heard Patrice say those words I knew I had to ask her how she pushed past that experience to become a real estate agent at 19 and now a best-selling author and nationally recognized wealth expert.
Though she credits her husband for planting the seed, it was Patrice who did the work of looking herself in the mirror every single day and affirming her physical beauty until she actually believed it. And from there things only got better as she tapped into her purpose of using the Bible to teach people money and business principles and realized if there was just one person who needed to hear what she had to say, she didn't have a right to stop.
Check out her words of advice for pushing past insecurities and having the courage to dream below.