Nora
You are going to love my guest who went from being a single mom on welfare to now enjoying the life with the welfare of health and happiness in her life and enjoying good financial success. She is 25 years in business now ; has worked with startups, doing mergers and acquisitions. She has now been implementing her strategies that she has learned in business to start a wonderful women’s ministry for single moms. She is mentoring currently 10 young women for business and spiritual growth, helping in her church by implementing everything she has learned in business. I love how she loves to help and give back. She is the mother of three boys, has a successful blended family. It’s really cool because one of her sons is sitting here in our studio which is absolutely awesome! She just got back from Houston and rushed to this studio. I am so excited to have Neece Jackson here talking and you are going to love her story:
Neece:
Thank you, Nora, and thank you for having me on your show.
I was a freshman in college, just starting out and got into some trouble, got pregnant out of wedlock and that was a really tough time for me and my family, The disappointment as you can imagine. I am first generation born here in America. My parents are immigrants from the Philippines so that wasn’t what they hadn’t hoped for especially with me being the eldest of three so here I am pregnant. The father of my baby left when I was five months pregnant, so I needed solutions and answers quick on what I needed to do with my life. I did get on welfare and got on assistance to be able to pay for the hospital bills and care that I needed through my pregnancy, labor and delivery to make sure my son had insurance for medical coverage. That was important. It was a point in my life where I was really lost.
I remember hearing God’s voice one day saying, “this is going to be ok”. This was before I gave birth to my son. “I was going to be ok”. I didn’t know what that was going to look like, and I was really worried about my future. So here I am at 19 and working a part time job while I’m going to school at Macy’s in downtown San Francisco and I encountered this woman who just struck up a conversation with me and she began to talk to me about how God is a good shepherd and that he seeks the lost and immediately it resonated with me because at that point I was really lost in life. I didn’t know what to do and I had a supernatural encounter with Him and that day I gave my life to Christ. That is when things began to turn around for me,
I did stay in school for another year. I was bringing my son to school with me because there was onsite daycare at San Francisco state but it was such a struggle. I can remember trying to get on the bus with him and his stroller, my backpack for school, his baby bag and an umbrella because it was raining and nobody on the bus would help me get on. I was trying to close up the stroller, hold him in my arms with all of our stuff and the umbrella and I remember crying on that bus asking myself “what am I going to do with my life?” “I can’t do this” and the father wasn’t helping at all. He was gone. I had no assistance from him, yet he was a student at the school too. So, it was a struggle. It was a very lonely place, so I decided to leave school, get a full time job, start working and tried to get out of my situation. It became about making a life in some way, shape or form so I was doing temp jobs, I was learning as much as I could. I realized that I had a knack for things that were administrative and I got really good at it. One day a friend of mine said “hey, there’s a startup company in the Bay area and they are looking for people so I applied and got started at my first job making $30,000/yr. I thought that was a whole lot of money at the time but with that salary I was able to get on my own and get off of welfare. My dad did help me out and helped me buy a car, so I had a way to get to and from work with my son. I was able to get subsidized day care for my son while I worked. God really started to make ways for me even in that workplace. The favor of God was really showing me that I can make something of myself. Coming from a place where I felt rejected, I didn’t feel like I had a whole lot of hope or answers or solutions at work, I just focused with my head down and started to get promoted. I was with that company for five years before they were acquired. I gained a lot of experience. During that time I did meet my husband and when I met my husband, we had Elijah after we got married.
I said, “I really need to go back to school.” I love business and I really wanted to finish my degree in business, and he totally supported me in that. As soon as I gave birth to Elijah, a month later I was back in school. I was determined and fortunately I had a very supportive husband and that was key.
Nora:
I love what you did with going on welfare. There are times when we do need to take advantage of programs like welfare. There are always organizations around us that can help us. I know here in Arizona we have 183 agencies that help women. It’s to help women like you get back on their feet. You mentioned something too that I haven’t had with another person on the show, temporary jobs. When I was younger, I would do “Kelly Girls” and that is something to do in the meantime to have money coming in. Check with a headhunter for places like Kelly Girls. I also like how you applied for that job because sometimes we think, “I don’t know if I can get it” Go for it! One thing can lead to another. You realized that you had a knack for business. I want our friends listening to know that you have a knack for things, maybe you haven’t realized it, but you do have a knack for things and it’s always a good idea to make a list of your strengths. Ask your friends and family what they think your strengths are. We don’t need to do the “weakness” things, let’s just focus on the strengths. That’s wonderful because that helped you get to the point where you could finally get that job and be on your own as a young single mother. That’s wonderful! I love how you believe in God and sharing how that part of your life that is what encouraged you. The favor of God!
Ok so now you are married, and going to school …..
Neece:
Yes, I’m married and going to school and that was toughest part of my life. Being a single mom and not having much was hard but the true challenges came after I got married and I was working full time and going to school. I did not like working full time because when my husband and I got married, we bought a house right after so we needed the means to pay for the house so I worked full time. Being able to commute 93 miles one way back in CA and that was tough. I had my worship music and prayer time. That’s how I spent my commutes. Really the time spent in that car really helped ease a lot of the stress that came with a new marriage, a blended family, going to school at night. I was up before sunrise, and I was back home after sundown. I rarely saw my family so it was a really huge sacrifice, but I knew that there was something greater that was to come. We know that when the battle is fiercest, the victory is even greater. I really hung on to that in knowing that things are going to be hard. Life is hard but there is always grace in those moments. It is character building. God is strengthening us, He’s teaching us how to depend on Him, not in our own strength but in His. Truly, I could tell lots of stories of the struggles about near death experiences and things like that that really impacted my life in surrendering. Here I am working extremely hard with this new startup company and just learning how to manage money, share decisions with a husband. I was a single mom so I learned to not be dependent on others, you learn to make the decisions that need to be made and keep it moving.
Nora:
Right, which is good because when you are a single mom that is what you need to do is to make those decisions but when you do marry, you need to be collaborative and not get stuck in being so independent. That doesn’t make for a good relationship. I love your mindset of where you kept yourself thinking in ways served you so to speak rather than getting into self-pity, bitterness, or the area of “oh my gosh look how hard I’m working and woe is me” Those kinds of spots don’t serve us. Someone I love listening to is Graham Cook and he says “Beloved, have another thought” in his English accent …..maybe he’s Australian, I don’t remember where he’s from but our thoughts can either serve us or hurt us. I love your positive mindset about your situation.
Neece:
That’s really key is having that positive mindset and being able to reach for more. I had a builder’s mindset. The Bible says don’t ever despise humble beginnings and we’re always working toward something and we’re never going to stay in that place. Those were life lessons for me. Like I said….those tough moments were times of learning “what is God trying to teach me in this moment?” Whether it was trusting Him, or improving my prayer life, or learning new strategies on how to make money. How do I steward these resources wisely right? Coming from having very little you learn to manage your money in such a way that it is going to make it stretch. A lot of coupons!
Nora: How was it growing up with your parents when it came to finances? What kind of a modeling did you experience?
Neece: Well, my parents were immigrants. My grandmother on my mothers side was born in 1910 so she came from an era when girls didn’t go to school so my grandmother did not know how to read or write but she taught herself. She used what she knew which was weaving blankets to be able to sell them at the market so that my mom and my uncle could go to college. My mom was able to come to America on a professional Visa. She majored in Chemistry and at the time she came to America, her and my uncle who majored in Engineering, were both approved for professional Visas and they came to San Francisco and my mom eventually went back to marry my dad who was serving in the Air Force. So that was a big dream come true for my mom. My dad is also Filipino and is one of nine children and education as so important to their family so I have a family full of doctors and nurses and very well educated uncles and aunts. My grandparents were rice farmers, so they worked really hard to put them through school. Some are professors in college, they teach, they some studied medicine, some went on to study nursing, some to study business. They are all very accomplished so coming to America was their way of instilling those same values. In terms of managing money, my parents weren’t very communicative. I knew my dad was very frugal. He told us to save, save, save!
Nora:
Families are like that, they don’t communicate about money or sex with our kids, We expect that to happen in school when really it’s better to happen at home. I am fortunate that my parents did talk about money. My dad was an entrepreneur. It is something to discuss so that your kids can be financially literate as I say. To be able to balance a check book, understand about their saving, giving, and spending. Those three areas and they need to be balanced out. We can get so much into spending that we feel guilty and can’t even enjoy the work of your hands.
Neece:
My dad worked really hard, he was the bread winner in our family and it was not a lot of communication. It was “do as I say” and that was it.
Nora:
You were telling me that your dad wanted you to be a nurse because of the doctors and nurses….
Neece:
For him it was a sure guarantee that I would live a good life and be financially stable
Nora:
Knowing you like I do, when you first told me I thought…..no, I don’t see that nurse things but I see that business side. Nursing is great though. My daughter in love (I call her daughter-in-love) she is a nurse and she is home with the baby now. The good thing about a nursing degree is that you can use it all your life in different ways.
Neece:
That’s the same as in business,
Nora:
Yes exactly, that another great area is business. The thing about business, being an entrepreneur in a way is somewhat caught more than just taught. I was going to go back to school to get a business degree and I looked at the classes and I thought “I know all of that stuff” maybe it was going to teach me more but back to you…..You’re this young mother going to school had an infant …
Neece:
We had three. My husband has one, I have one, and Elijah is our together.
Nora:
There he is just meditating on our conversation. He’s a doll! So that’s awesome, you each had one then you had one together. That’s a blended family and you’re a wonderful family. Kudos to you, I commend you for being able to make a blended family the way you made it work….they way you’ve made it done.
Neece:
It was a lot of hard work and so a lot of hard work but our youngest is in college now and we are able now to both, based on what we’ve learned together as a couple, really instilling in them the importance of having a budget, knowing where your money goes. We listen to a lot of Dave Ramsey and it’s great because it makes you a good steward with the resources that God gives you and I think that’s really important because there are a lot of resources out there that help you manage money. You don’t have to make a whole lot of money to make it, it’s what you do with it.
Nora:
So true right?
Neece:
I think that was the key for me when I was a single mom was learning how to do the things that I needed to do with what I had.
Nora:
That is so important. We think just a little bit of money and you can’t make it, it’s just how you end up making the money, saving the money, giving, then you reap what you sow. I love that about you
Neece:
Thank you. I think also not focusing on what others are doing and what they have because I think a lot of people have this “keeping up with the Jones’” type of mentality and I’ve seen so many people destroy themselves over it and find themselves in financial situations that I don’t think they’ve ever dreamed of having and you end of being in so much debt and then for what. So, it’s keeping things in perspective, making sure you stick to your priorities which Is being honorable at work, working hard then providing especially when others are dependent on you.
Nora:
That’s wonderful and I love that philosophy. I was thinking that you’re going to want to share with our friend that is listening to us that when you did go on welfare, which was good, to not be ashamed when we do have to reach out for help and get programs and not be ashamed of well I don’t have this and I don’t have that because that is what I call fear of man. Fear of man can, insecurity of who you are, really wreak havoc in your life. Instead of knowing who you are, and everyone has destiny created for a purpose rather than “I have to dress this way” or as women a lot of us feel like we can even leave the house if we don’t have some kind of makeup on or our hair a certain way. It’s exhausting time instead of being secure in who we are . One thing is, and I realize in my life, that people remember you and care more about you not so much for what you look like as for how you treat them. How much you love them or not so if you’re not feeling very beautiful, smile at people and just love on them and treat them well. That’s what they’re going to remember. They’re not going to say “oooh, look at that eye shadow” or the lack of it. It’s your smile and how you’re treated that’s what they remember.
Neece:
It’s so good and I’m so glad that you brought that up because there is a lot of distractions out there that are just plain not important. When you don’t have much and there are persons or little persons for those of you with more than one kid , you have to put food on the table and sacrifice is ……. Love is sacrificial and sometimes you have to just deny yourself those luxuries that really at the end of the day don’t benefit you or your children. I think that being a single mom I just didn’t have that option. I didn’t have that luxury to say that I’m going to go get my nails done every week or whatever it is that makes you ……now I’m not saying you should completely deny yourself, because if you work really hard to treat yourself every now and again. My mom taught me that is that if you work hard, be sure you reward yourself too.
You pointed to giving, when my mom passed away….my mom never got to work in the career that she went to school for. She majored in chemistry and when she came to America there were job opportunities for her in Michigan, but she didn’t know anybody in Michigan and as a woman, my uncle was very hesitant to let her go out there on her own without family being there either. She’s an immigrant back early in the 70’s and there was just a lot of probably racial tensions in those times, and it just was not a safe place. I can’t imagine that my mom, being new to the country, you know, English is a second language, so she ended up staying in San Francisco and she found work in a dairy factory at first working in the labs and then she went into medical billing and was very good at it. But when she passed on, I didn’t realize how loved she was by so many people. I mean the house was packed and overflowing. I love how you said “it doesn’t matter what you wear, my mom was a very modest woman but her example in just loving and being generous with even the little you have, it impacts people.
Nora:
It does impact people and it comes back to us in various ways. I love your story because you went from being on welfare to enjoying welfare in life. We didn’t get to the end where you graduated and your degree is in Business Management and that’s what took you into the 25 years you’ve had in business helping with the startups and acquisitions that we’ve mentioned.
Friend there is hope, if you are on welfare just remember Neece Jackson , she was on welfare but she was able to get off and live IN welfare instead of being on welfare. Is there anything you want to add that we didn’t get to talk about before we close now?
Neece
No, I just want to encourage the women out there that if you’re struggling financially, there are resources. Nora mentioned that there are programs available to us in this country which is the awesomest country. We do mission trips to Mexico and they have nothing….absolutely nothing to help support these families that are impoverished. The church is the solution. There are a lot of churches that are going into the cities that are trying to help these families it makes me grateful that I can come home and work in a country that there are so many programs available to assist people with whatever you’re struggling with. Whether it is financial, there is a reason why we have a welfare system is to help people get on their feet.
Nora:
Exactly, there’s definitely a place for it.
Neece:
And there is no intention to …..now there folks that are dependent on the system which I think that we have to encourage them to find their purpose and find their identity because they’ve been created for greatness and there is a way to break that generational cycle and that mentality that “I’ just going to be dependent” and there is freedom in that
Nora:
That’s a miserable place to be is to live like that and have decided that this is where I’m going to stay and there are some……I don’t know that much about it but I’ve heard and I’ve seen a friend whose mother was on welfare and she ended up on welfare and that’s not what the program is for and we do know unfortunately there are people that abuse these programs but there is a lot of help out there through their government programs, there are churches, there are a lot of non-profits out there. Probably my friend listening, you’ve never needed that before so you don’t know that exists and they do exist and they’re there to help. We live in a day and age of the internet where you can read a lot of blogs, you can watch YouTube, you can listen to this wonderful podcast where I have guests like Neece on here who are here to encourage you and give you hope so you know that if she can do it, so can you!
Neece:
Thank you. I say “dream bit” dream bit and pursue it and use the resources that are available to you to make it happen. It’s ok to get help temporarily but when you achieve your dreams you can give back to others and that’s what really inspires me today is that I know what God has done in my life and where He has brought me from and there are women that need to know that He can do it for them too.
Nora
Alright, wonderful thank you Neece
Neece
Thank you for having me.
