“So, when I was pregnant with our first daughter, I had a moment where I just put my hand on my big, big pregnant tummy, and I swore an oath to my unborn child that I would not repeat my mother’s story, my grandmother’s story, and their total lack of financial sovereignty, which then caused them to play a much smaller game, have a much smaller life—if you will. It’s not something that I wanted for my child and I was experiencing myself moving in that same direction. I was very gifted, very artistic, very self-expressed with like… no money at all.”
Invoking the Wealth Witch: Merel Kriegsman On Becoming the Wealthiest Woman in Your Lineage
This week, THE IDEALISTS. podcast host and entrepreneur Melissa Kiguwa speaks with the rockstar of women’s wealth, globally-recognized money muse, Merel Kriegsman—known for empowering clients to grow their bottom lines by over $25 million last year. A one-of-kind, neurodivergent mother of three, former opera singer, and regenerative farmer, Merel has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Business Insider, ABC News, CBS News, and Good Housekeeping.
In this freeform and thought-provoking episode, Merel shares her ideas on how the constraints engendered by the current trend of “ethical marketing” can lead to a kind of “purity” culture that can prove so detrimental to a founder’s creativity. At its core, fear of “cancel culture” can hijack necessary bold decision-making and conversations women need access to in order to thrive. She also reflects on her journey to coaching through brand and web copywriting and what it means to be the first woman in your lineage to break through and make an authentic transition to sustained wealth—how crossing the class divide can feel at once joyous, but also like mischief.
in the episode:
Merel leads off the episode by describing the controversy surrounding a recent article she’d written about ethical marketing being disguised as purity culture, and how important it is to not be hamstrung by all the so-called rules—or if you are going to play by them, do so, consciously—with intent.
Next, Merel dives deeper into issues of “cancel culture” and asks what happens when women are “canceled” for pursuing money or ambition or power? How does that detract from overall social justice work so necessary for women’s equity?
She then relates a piece of key wisdom about how we undervalue our talents, why we so often feel triggered into somatic discomfort by asking more for work that comes easily to us or even feels fun, and how to recast that particular spell.
Lastly, Merel shares her audacious wish to make more magic in the world and help women everywhere become the wealthiest in their lineage, to fund the kind of change they want to see—online, locally, or globally. For Merel, this has meant contributing to her own local indigenous community as it continues to cope with poverty, hunger, and addiction.