How to Best Transform Your Relationship With Money to Be More Abundant - BM293

Susan Friedmann:         Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, My special guest is Leisa Peterson. She's a business and money coach and author of the highly successful best-selling “The Mindful Millionaire.” She's a podcaster and self-made millionaire who inspires people around the world to create a life of prosperity. Leisa, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Leisa Peterson:             Thank you, Susan. I'm so happy to be here.

Susan Friedmann:         Oh my goodness. I'm loving it. I'm so excited about our time together. You and I spent a little bit of time just beforehand and get to know each other a little bit. One of the things that I read about you actually was that you have a unique gift. You've designed a path that will transform our relationship with money. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Leisa Peterson:             Sure. I have the opportunity in the work that I do to meet people from all different backgrounds. I have both as a business owner and then for many years working in financial services, both as an executive and then eventually as a mortgage banker and then a financial advisor, and over the course of working with people and their money, I started to notice that there were patterns and behaviors of people depending on how they responded to money. About 12 years ago, I started asking my clients to open up to me and talk to me more about their relationship with money and what their backstory was.

                                    That work that started just kind of as curiosity would ultimately lead me down this path of writing my book and figuring out that I had an ability, almost an inner wisdom that was within me that could quickly identify the core root belief that caused somebody to live in scarcity. If I could show them and help them heal that wound, they could very rapidly start living a more prosperous and abundant life and that was what I chronicled in my book.

Susan Friedmann:         Whoa, that whole idea of scarcity to abundance. I know that that's a big theme for you. Let's go down that money mindset path. What can you share that would be helpful for our listeners? You know that they're primarily solopreneurs, they're coaches, speakers, trainers. They've got a book or they're about to publish a book. They obviously want to make money. Yet, I'm sure having spoken to so many people about their relationship with money, sometimes we sabotage ourselves with earning money. We repel it versus bring it into our lives, attract it. Talk to us more about all of that.

Leisa Peterson:             Yeah. There's no question about it that what we believe about money ends up showing up in our choices, decisions and in our reality. That's why belief work is so helpful. However, because I had this long career of working with people and their money in a practical way simultaneous to, like you said, me building my wealth and figuring out, well, how could I save money and invest money and take good care of myself and my family, I learned that beliefs are really important, but different than a lot of people who talk about money mindset out there in the world, and maybe listeners have done some money mind work, maybe they've read some books or done some belief work, what I've found is that it does not stop just with the beliefs.

                                    If you don't turn it it into a very practical application, meaning you start managing your money differently and you learn strategies for watching your money and watching your expenses and watching your income in a personal standpoint, or as a business owner, if you don't understand how to look at your company from the perspective of the lens of money, you're probably doing that mindset work but not actually maximizing it. Does that make sense?

Susan Friedmann:         It certainly does. Over the years, I've done a lot of that myself and exactly what you're saying is managing that money. I was often afraid to look at my bank account and see how much I had in there. I was taught that you've got to look at it, you've got to know what's in it, and as you rightly say, watch your expenses, but watch those credit cards, I think as well. What about the feeling that you've made mistakes in the past and you're like, "Okay," and you start beating yourself, you purchase maybe some courses or some coaching with someone and it wasn't right and you start sort of beating yourself up about that. Can you address how you would stop that kind of behavior?

Leisa Peterson:             Yeah. Well, the first thing is having worked with money for so long and been on this journey myself, I want to make sure everybody knows that everyone makes a lot of mistakes with money. It isn't about not making mistakes. That's not what causes you to build wealth or not. What is more important is that you don't do what you're talking about. So if you have a pattern of making a mistake and giving yourself a hard time about it, that is a worse problem than the mistake itself. A big part of my I work is around becoming more aware of those beliefs, bringing the stuff from the past up front and center, not because we want to dwell on it, not because this is therapy, but because if you don't forgive yourself and you don't forgive others associated with it, it will continue to haunt you in one way or another.

                                    So a lot of this work with money, people don't always realize comes down to your ability to forgive and let go and release these stories of shame and mistake and regret, and, oh, I shouldn't have done that and if I had only done this, then everything would be perfect. Those are the things that actually keep you from being clear, spacious in your awareness, which is closer to abundance than scarcity, right? Scarcity just tunnels your visions. You only see a few options and that's what we're doing. Most people live in the regret. They only see a couple possibilities for any given situation. They do those things that seem like, oh, this must be what I have to do.

                                    It doesn't lead to what they want, and then meanwhile, if they had just changed the way that they were letting go of the problems of the past, they could have looked at all these other possibilities and that's what they lean into and that's how they make their better decisions and that's how they build wealth.

Susan Friedmann:         Well, that's a great segue into this whole idea of feeling more confident and empowered. Have you got some specific tools that you could share with our listeners that they could easily implement, let's say when they finish listening to this?

Leisa Peterson:             One of the things I notice a lot in this whole line of the inner critic taking over comes down to self-trust. I don't think it gets talked out about as much but self-trust with money, meaning you know you can depend on yourself no matter what, right? That's what that means. If you haven't been able to depend on yourself and you want to just tell yourself, oh, I can trust myself, it's probably not going to work. So what do you do? You have to develop a practice that is going to actually get you into a position of being able to trust yourself.

                                    What's funny about that is that this is why I talk a lot about fear and failure and mistakes not being a bad thing, because one of the tools that you would help yourself to develop self-trust around is actually doing things, having it not work out, being okay with the fact that it didn't work out, and the fact that you keep moving forward, ultimately to find the things that do work. That is actually one of the cornerstones of developing self-trust. You actually have to fall down and pick yourself back up, and then eventually, if you're learning and you're eager to get it right, you will figure it out. That's one of probably five things, but it's so important that you realize that sometimes you have to walk into the fire, right, rather than run away from it. Does that make sense?

Susan Friedmann:         Oh, it certainly does. I just think of my own situation the number of times that I've done that and then I beat my myself up and it's like, oh Susan, you did that yet again. But you're right. I know I keep moving forward and finding better ways to do it better ways to trust myself with money. So this practice is extremely powerful. You talk about mistakes, our listeners love learning more about mistakes. What are those mistakes do people make around this whole money mindset and managing their money?

Leisa Peterson:             I think one of the biggest that comes to mind that we can really have a hard time letting go of and forgiving ourselves is we look back at our life and we think I made all this money. If we go back and total up our tax returns or something, it's like I've made millions and I do not know where all that money went. That would be one of those where it is actually very helpful to notice something like that, that if there's a tendency to not save money. I think for business owners, this is the unspoken secret that too few people talk about. People talk about having this really high revenue oriented business, like I'm a seven figure business. I really don't care at all about that. What I care about is what I'm keeping and what others are able to keep.

                                    I think that what we've got to realize is, first of all, comparing to anybody else is useless. You don't actually know the bottom line. The more you know your bottom line, the easier it is to know that you're going to do something different. Many times, businesses aren't structured with the right profitability metrics. If that's the case, the sooner you know that, the sooner you can start to reconfigure the way that you spend your time creating better systems, creating more leverage, creating better tools that increase the amount of money that you're making, and hence, being able to keep at the end.

Susan Friedmann:         So of course, this begs the question, can you share at least one or two of those tools we might be able to use that's it easy to use?

Leisa Peterson:             Sure. When you say tools, you mean how do I create more leverage in my business or-

Susan Friedmann:         Is that something that we could emulate?

Leisa Peterson:             I think so. I mean, it's trial and error just like anything else, but many of us start out coaching one on one and we get to a point where we're like, "I don't know that I can actually charge anymore and feel good about it." Yet, when we total up all the hours that we're comfortable coaching, we realize that that's not going to reach our financial goals. Going through the process of figuring out how can I create other structures inside of my business that would allow me to have more leverage so that instead of maybe charging people $500 an hour, which is fine, what if I could make $5,000 an hour or $10,000 an hour. What might that look like?

                                    We don't have to go into those details. But the thing that I think is amazing about human beings is many times it's just that we're not asking ourselves that question, like what could I do to make $10,000 an hour and how might that look in my business, and get yourself out of just looking at getting there one way, but maybe looking at getting there five different ways.

Susan Friedmann:         I love that idea of are there other revenue streams that our authors could take and speaking, coaching, online programs, I mean, all of these, and of course, what else can you do with your book. So just having those other revenue streams. I love the idea of taking a figure like $10,000 a month and saying, "Okay, what would it take to break that down? What could I do to perhaps bring that kind of money in?" That's a great question. What else about this whole idea of feast and famine? I often find at certain types of times of the year, for instance, that more money comes in than other times of the year. How can we stop that sort of ebb and flow, roller coaster, up and down, feast and famine, all these different explanations?

Leisa Peterson:             Yeah. This is probably one of the reasons why about four years ago in my business, I looked at that up and down and I looked at the private coaching that I was doing. I just kept thinking in the beginning, all I did was say, "I don't like that and I want to change it." What if I had enough money coming in every month that would cover all of my expenses so anything I made with coaching would go straight to the bottom line? That was when I began doing mastermind groups that would require someone to make a commitment to work with me for a year and be part of something bigger than themselves and finding the things that we all had in common, people that I had already in my community.

                                    I went one by one to people that I thought would be a great fit for what I wanted to create and the value that I thought was there. Sure enough, it became a reality in a very short amount of time. I didn't need any direct marketing. I didn't need a big following. I just needed to know that there were a certain number of people that were interested in conversations that I wanted to have who I could bring together. It was amazing the first year of having that set up, because all of a sudden I was like, "Well, I've got all of this covered. It's consistent. I'm not watching my numbers go up and down, feast and famine every month."

                                    It gives me a way of having more control over my life in my business than I feeling, because especially if you've left a job where there was a regular paycheck, that can also be really I'd say harmful to your confidence to no longer have that. So the sooner I could get that, the more enjoyment I had in my business. It wasn't just about the money.

Susan Friedmann:         Would you consider that as passive income or do you put that under a different category?

Leisa Peterson:             I call that semi-passive or recurring revenue because there's still some time involved in making those phone calls and bringing the group together. But it is a lot more passive because I wasn't coaching every single call. I had 20 people coming to an event rather than one person and so I could charge less and touch more people, have my numbers make more sense to me and not spend as much time earning that money if I had been in coaching. It's raising the amount of money I could make each and every hour that I invested in it and then the more people that participated, obviously that number would go up.

                                    So it's not passive, but truly I'm a passive investor in other things. I'll just say there really is very little that is passive in entirety. Even if in the beginning, you invest dividend paying stocks, which would be more of a passive income, you still have to research those and decide which ones you're going to buy and go through the process of buying them even if you're paying your advisor to buy them for you. You still have work. It's kind of like that with pretty much everything. So I like to look at it more of like imagine zero would be no work at all and 100 is tons of work, where does it fall? Some things might be a 10. Other things might be a 90. One to one coaching is more like 100. A membership might be at 40 or 50, depending on how you organize it.

Susan Friedmann:         Yes. It's interesting because I always thought, oh, if I had courses that would be passive income, I wouldn't have to do anything. But as you rightly say, no, that's not the case. You're still doing something and there's really no such thing as passive passive income because you've still got to do something, some work behind there, even if it's just putting the course together or then looking at marketing, selling it. So yes. What other mistakes do you find that entrepreneurs make that would be helpful for our listeners?

Leisa Peterson:             Well, something that you and I were talking about offline, this idea of nicheing into specific areas. Many of us struggle with this, so it's not that I've totally mastered it. But I do know that the more you can reach a very, very specific audience and have it be something obviously that you are excited about, the easier it becomes to create content, to reach those people, to have engaged conversations, to have them be passionate fans of what you're doing. There's so any reasons from an efficiency standpoint and from a profitability standpoint and from an ease of marketing standpoint to hyper niche into whatever it is you're doing.

                                    We always have that sense in the back of our minds before it works that you're too small, you're too narrow. Where are you going to find these people? That's the funny thing is, is that you've got to get past those beliefs in order to have the kind of success that you could have by focusing. The other day, I had somebody on my podcast and he had built this very successful business all around golden retrievers. I was like, "Wow, that's amazing." He said, "At first, I wasn't sure if it was going to be puppies or adult golden retrievers." I was like, "Wow. We're really getting niche." He's like, "It became golden retrievers."

                                    Then he just said the fan community is so strong here that they're able to support their whole family successfully and now he's starting another business because of the success. He's like, "Well, I don't even have to focus on the profitability of the other business right now because golden retrievers has worked so well for me." I just hear these stories all the time and I'm like, "Wow, we live in a very fascinating world that old beliefs would not allow you to think that way. But because of the internet, we have limitless opportunities here."

Susan Friedmann:         We certainly do and I love that story. I'm going to share that too, because yeah, that just focusing in so targeted on something that there is a market for, I mean, you've always got to make sure that whatever your nicheing down to, whatever micro niche you go into, that there's a market for it. Something that you alluded to is what I call fear of focus. I get this question all the time when I talk about niche marketing and that is, well, if I'm in this market, does that mean I can't sell to anybody else. No, you can sell to other people. It's just that your marketing efforts are more effective and more efficient when you narrow down and just talk about golden retrievers, for instance. So yes, I love that.

Leisa Peterson:             It can take years in all fairness, especially for me, I help people with money. I help people that are oriented to more spiritual insight. It was all about the combination. But even as I go down the journey, it's like I still find new nuances of people who are attracted to my work that I might not have about until I can see the patterns of what's happening for people and then what it is that they are actually seeking and what they gain from it. So I feel like I just continue to learn.

Susan Friedmann:         Oh, we're constantly learning. I would say if you're not ripening, you're rotting. So let's keep ripening. Leisa, that's a great segue into telling our listeners how they can contact you to find out more about your products and services.

Leisa Peterson:             The best way to get a taste of what I'm up to is to go to wealthclinic.com/vision, and on my website, I've got a blog, I've got podcast, but in this opportunity, I'm sending you the first chapter of my book. I'm sending you a meditation. I'm sending you other resources that would allow you to look inside of this relationship that you have with money, kind of notice if there's some patterns of scarcity that are still hanging out and the meditation would help you start to shift those patterns quite miraculously actually.

Susan Friedmann:         Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you. One of the things that I omitted to tell you in our talk earlier was that we end off with a golden nugget, some sort of words of wisdom that you could leave with our listeners.

Leisa Peterson:             The thing that comes to mind that could be really helpful for your audience, coaches, consultants and authors is that we are far more powerful than we realize. Something I've learned in my coaching practice that is really started to take on a whole new level is that when we get to that level of mastery and what we're helping others do and we're applying those principles in our life, that's how I really see mastery, it's not just for our clients, but it's also for us, we start to gain the ability of transferring our consciousness to the people that we work with.

                                    It sounds kind of hocus pocus woo woo, and maybe it is, but what I have found is that our ability to be so confident and so clear in how we can help people transfers into confidence with the people that we help. So they can make strides far faster, exponentially faster than we did ourselves. I just mentioned that because, again, we're a lot more powerful than we realize. If you don't know that that's happening, you might not elevate the prices you're charging and the programs that you're offering, because you don't realize just how magical you've become.

Susan Friedmann:         Do you have that magic? I know that you have ways in which you can share that with our audience. We also are going to pop over to our member area. I know Leisa, you'll share some more insider secrets with that group. I look forward to that. In the meantime, thank you for sharing your wisdom here. Listeners, thank you so much for taking time out of your precious day to listen to this interview. I sincerely hope that it sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Here's wishing you much book marketing success.

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