How do you become a mindful millionaire? Figure out how to take better care of your money and be a good steward of the money you make. Susie Carder welcomes Leisa Peterson, the author of The Mindful Millionaire and the founder of WealthClinic.
Leisa shares with Susie how she’s passionate about helping people realize their true value to empower them financially. Clear out the beliefs you have that are keeping you from moving forward. One way of doing that is to avoid hanging out with people who are not at your level.
Want more tips on how to overcome scarcity and experience true prosperity? You wouldn’t want t miss this episode. Tune in!
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Welcome to the show. I’m so excited to introduce you to Leisa Peterson. She is The Mindful Millionaire Maker. As a coach, author, business growth strategist, and Founder of the Wealth Clinic, she helps people elevate their financial consciousness by realizing their true value and becoming financially empowered. Please, welcome my girl, Leisa.
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You have no idea how excited I am to have Leisa be on the show. I shared this with you. When I first met you and when I realized you were in JVMM with me, it’s like, “I got your book. I was writing an article.” The way that you talked about money was so refreshing and insightful, an I had not met you yet. That following Tueday, we were on a JVMM call. I had such a fan girl crush, then I was private messaging you. She wasn’t nearly as excited as I was that I was messaging her. Thank you for being here. I did your formal bio, but tell everybody your bad-ass relay. What’s your jam? What do you do? What have you created in the world? I love the book. Share it with us because they know you but do not know you. They just know that I’m a fan and I have a girl crush on you.
I am a fan of yours. This is so fun. I love being able to share that the greatest thing about my life and the work that I do is that I have always been this person who, if I don’t know how to do something, I’m going to go figure it out. As we have talked about, my mom was a hairdresser, and my dad sold drugs on the side.
This is a learned behavior that you have. Nobody gave it to you. There’s no magic wand in this conversation.
I am normal and maybe a little unusual and quirky, but what I have done for myself and for my family is I have built a legacy of wealth that will continue beyond my life and will help not just my husband and me, but our children, and their children. That legacy is something I love teaching other people how to do. How to go from wherever you’ve come from, bust through those beliefs, figure out how to take better care of your money, and be a really good steward of the money you make, and then ultimately, what you are going to do with it. That’s what I’ve done in my own life. I’m a multimillionaire. I have set up many different businesses for my husband and for myself over the years. That’s what I’d like to share.
You said for the legacy of wealth. People go, “What’s the quick fix?” Wealth is not a quick fix. Wealth is a strategy. Wealth is a long game, not a short game. Luckily, I was young. I was 25 years old when I met my first investment banker, who sat me down and said, “You’re making a lot of money. We need to put this away.” That was the thing that saved me from all economic crises. It’s the long game, not the short game. It’s to have that mindset so young to go, “What’s the long game?” and not get caught up in the sparkly, “I want the money now.” The long-term is that legacy play. I love it.
This is so in the wind with what I teach. I’m teaching how to make it and how to monetize it. You’re teaching the legacy piece, so what are the things we need to know? Our community is a little more seasoned. They’re not starting out in business. They’re accomplished in business, or this is another career that they’re doing. They’re realizing like, “I didn’t set up for retirement,” so we’re trying to get the money in play so that they can start monetizing and then turn them over to you.
One thing that comes to mind is that many of us are used to putting our money back into our business because we know that we can take that money and we can make more from those decisions that we make inside of our business, but what I like to talk about and it’s great to get your thoughts on too is if we were going to pay for something, let’s say $25,000, we’re going to invest in a coaching program, how can we get a chunk of money and make the decision, “I want this amount of money, and I’m going to go set up an investment account with it,” and be super purposeful?
I had this happen with a client of mine who has been in business for many years. She has a very high net worth, but as you described, no savings in retirement or earmarked for that purpose. It took us a while to get there, but I kept saying, “We’re going to do this,” and we set up her Vanguard investment accounts. I don’t advise people on their money, but there are some simple things and tools that anyone can do that don’t cost a lot that is easy to set up. She needed to have that chunk of money waiting to invest, and she was so excited. Sometimes, it’s committing to having a chunk of money, and you’re going to get started and then take that step. Let’s keep it basic and simple.
My strategy has been consistently taking a little bit of money. When I see the chunk, then I don’t want to touch the chunk. To me, savings is as exciting as spending used to be. When I was young, because my background is very similar to yours, we had no money, and I was spending and buying the thing. The sexy car, shoes, bag, and then all of a sudden, you’re like, “I don’t need another fricking bag. I don’t need any more shoes. What do I need?”I remember crying. I was like, “I don’t want to spend this, even though I know it’s for the future,” but I’m not spending it. I’m leveraging it. It’s that consistency for my real estate, investments, and executive bonus plan. There are so many ways we can monetize our wealth. Do you get into that in the Wealth Clinic? Talk about the Wealth Clinic because you have a Wealth Clinic. What does that mean? That sounds sexy. I want to go, and I don’t even know what it means. I’m like, “I’m coming.” What is it?
Imagine that I used to be a financial advisor, and I did not feel like I could help people in the ways I wanted to, which was, “Let’s look at what’s going on inside that keeps you from moving forward with the money strategies. Clear out the beliefs that you have that are keeping you from moving forward.” In many cases, that’s the sense of I’m not enough or I don’t have enough. Some people get motivated by knowing that they’ve got $5,000 invested to start, and some people get motivated by knowing that they’re doing it one step at a time.
The point is you’ve got to find what works best for you, so what I do is teach people how to change the mindset around money and wealth creation, clear out the stuff that’s not serving you, and also bring you into a community of people who are openly and regularly talking about, “How can I be a better custodian of my money? How can I create passive income sources outside of my business? How can I do some other investment that I might feel too afraid to do?”It’s all the things that I love about being a certified financial planner, but without the restrictions and without investing people’s money and having to charge them for that. I charge them for the recommendations of how you take care of yourself and how you optimize the situation. Sadly, a lot of financial advisors have their hands tied behind their back. They can’t do the things that I do now.
What’s the difference between having a lot of money and then building the mindful wealth? Talk about the difference between them.
The big difference is that you are not just in it from a fear play and make as much money as possible regardless of the toll it takes on you, humanity, and the environment. You are looking at “How do I earn, save, and invest my money from a highly conscious perspective?” Keep in mind that we start where we’re at. It’s not a utopia, but what I saw is a lot of us do things with our money out of fear rather than looking inside and saying, “How does this serve me? How does it serve others?” Building wealth from that place changes your life because your money has great meaning to you rather than being about proving something or dealing with your fears, which ultimately, we never get there when we’re always responding from our fears. There’s always another fear, but if you turn it to what’s meaningful, valuable, and important to me, it changes the conversation in our head, and we make better decisions.
Figure out how to take better care of your money and be a good steward of the money you make.
I love that you say that because I do a money block exercise. When I’m doing it with my students, I always do it for myself because it’s a check-in for me. I realized I was doing this exercise, and the one question was, “Can I handle large sums of money?” I’ve handled large sums of money. $10 million, $15 million, or $20 million, but my answer was no. I can’t handle large sums of money. I’m like, “Where’s that coming from?
”I’m working on a billion-dollar project with a client. I’m comfortable in this million, but the B scared me. I had to look at that to go, “It’s just more zeros.” That’s what I tell my clients. The difference between $100,000 and $1 million is more zeroes. From $1 million to $10 million is more zeros. From $10 million to $100 million is more zeros, but the billion word came in, and I’m like, “Can I handle this? Do I know enough to advise or coach this person?”
The last thing I want to do is be a fraud or be that charlatan because there are so many in this industry. I love that you talk about that because wherever you are, it follows you. You get comfortable at a certain level. If you do not have a check-in or if you’re not doing the work, you can’t get to that upper limit conversation or that pinnacle financially and go, “Here it is again,” which pisses me off because I’ve done so much work.
I am right there with you. The fun thing about money is that it keeps awakening us to our bigger potential to the highest version of who we really are. Money is just a tool in that process. It does not have as much meaning as we give it, but if we see it as something that helps us wake up to our truest potential, then it’s fun to make money.
It is fun. I always tell people, “Math is money, and money is fun.” Nobody wants to do the math, but it all goes hand in hand. You can’t have the money without doing the math. You’ve been slaying it because we’re in another group together watching you. You guys have got to follow her because it’s such a delicious and different conversation. I love the way that you talk about it because it is so different, but the same.
What has been your thing to stay growing during the pandemic? People are struggling. I don’t know if you’ve heard this one, but the newest stat is 60% of small businesses have closed their door, and those are the ones that reported it. When I look at the group that we’re in, we’ve all figured it out, slated it, turned it around, and made it happen. What has been your secret sauce that has kept you growing and kept you in action? Most people want to put their head in the sand, and they’re going, “I don’t know if I could do it anymore.” We’re all tired, but they’re tired, and they quit.
For me, it was being able to take a high-paid one-on-one coaching practice to a high-paid group program or multiple group programs. Being able to make that transition was bumpy, to say the least because every belief that you did or did not know that you had about coaching in one format has to be changed in order to do a good job in the next format.
We’ve been doing that ever since June of 2020. I went from reinventing my business with zero revenue, and now, we’re multiple six figures and set to more than double in 2022, all because of being willing to say, “What you set up worked for you in the past, but you’re ready for a whole new level.” While that’s going to take some time, be committed to busting through the beliefs and then building the infrastructure to support it.
I realized when coaching clients, I can give you all the tools and all the strategies, but if we don’t have our mind right, sabotage creeps in. That’s why we call it sabotage. You don’t know that you’re sabotaging. It happens. It’s so important, especially reinventing inside of this climate. I have clients who are waiting for it to get over. It’s not getting over. It is what it is, so we’ve got to reinvent it.
Let’s talk about some of the biggest challenges or failures that you’ve had in business. To me, that’s when I earned my stripes. I don’t like it at all, but it is the juice and business. Every one of those pinnacle stories, I can share and go, “Here’s what I learned.” What is one of those stories for you where you’ve had the rug pulled out from under you and let the wind knocked out of your sails? You know those.
Clear out the beliefs you have that are keeping you from moving forward.
The first thing that comes to mind is not understanding how important it was to go to high tickets. I offered low ticket group workshops for 5 or 6 years of my business. While I was helping a lot of people, making a difference, and learning a lot, I feel like I held myself back consistently out of this small voice of “You got to help everybody. You got to be able to have those price points where anyone can afford them,” and that now in retrospect, it does hurt.
The sad thing about those low-cost programs is people don’t always show up. They pay their money, they are not committed, and you get a lot of scarcity. I started to let that scarcity infect my thoughts about how I could make an impact in people’s lives because there’s a transference of consciousness that goes both ways. I didn’t understand this, meaning, who we are matters a lot to who we serve, but who they are and who we attract and serve matters a lot to what we are capable of doing. We have to be very careful not to hang out with a whole bunch of people that aren’t at the level of where we are personally, and I did that for a long time, and I can’t do that anymore.
I got chills. That’s awesome. Thank you for the authenticity. What’s frustrating about our industry is they’re saying, “Go sell the low-hanging fruit.” I talk about building seven-figure businesses. You don’t have enough client base to do that. You’re not that established for most people. If you do have the people in your database, they’re not qualified to go to the next level, then you’re stuck playing in that level, and you’ve got to grow. I love that you shared that.
I always started, I was like, “I’m doing too much work for this amount of money,” and keep raising my prices, but I realized the first time I paid $100,000 to get a coach, I had the butt pucker. I was like, “Holy crap,” but I knew she was going to help me with it. It was not a concept or another fricking class. It was, “Do this. Get this.” That’s what I love because I’m coachable too. The next week, I charged somebody $100,000. I’m like, “If I’m paying that, I’m charging that because I’m not paying and not charging it.”
It was my mindset that was holding me back because the minute I did it, that’s the value of investing in the Wealth Clinic or in our Global Leadership. You can’t charge that unless you know what it’s like to swipe that card, and there is a different level of, “Holy crap. I’ve got to do this work.” I still have people that pay $35,000 and don’t do the homework, which blows my mind. I’m like, “How do you not do the homework, and you are paying $35,000?” That’s their mindset, and we’re working through it.
I’ll share one other thing because I want everyone to know this isn’t my only business. My husband and I run a commercial building, we have an Airbnb business, and we are doing property development all at the same time that I’m running this business. One of the things that helped me get real with myself was realizing that I could make so much more money on my own investing and that I couldn’t afford to help people that couldn’t pay me what I would pay myself to have that time. I’m like, “Your whole life is not in alignment.”
I’ve met people in your community. They are seasoned travelers and experts at what they do. That realization of stepping into how freaking amazing you are and being willing to charge for it was something I was still doing even though I had been working on this money stuff for all these years. I say to everyone, “Find the conversation that you need to have with yourself or your coach to break that cycle once and for all, because once you do it, all of a sudden, you’re charging $100,000 because you paid it. That was the conversation you needed. Somebody else might need something else, but do it because time is money. Money is time, and money loves speed, so let’s move fast.”
We’re birds of a feather, and we’ve talked about this before. We have the same thing. We have the wealth strategy of real estate, apartment buildings, and multiple incomes coming in. This training and consulting business allows me to get the cash to invest in the real estate. I’ve made millions over there. That’s way easier money than this. I love doing this. This is my passion. It creates the cashflow to create the wealth over here. I need you guys to hear that. It’s not just the business. The business has always allowed me to either do another business, leverage that, leverage my wealth, and invest in my portfolio to go, “I’m not taking cash from my business, but I’m monetizing it,” and going, “What’s the play? What’s the strategy?”
Know that it’s not one and done as the economy changes because there will always be something. I was talking to somebody, and they’re like, “Can I ask that question? What have you been doing to grow in the pandemic?” He said, “There’s always a pandemic. There was 9/11. There was an economic crisis. There was the collapse of the finances. There was a recession. This is just another version named something else. If you don’t learn to have that resiliency, that’s when you realize this is what I need to work on. I’m not going to quit.” You have it. I have it. I’m like, “I’m not quitting.” I get mad if I don’t hit my goals. I’m like, “What is wrong? Something is not working.” If you look at your life on our deathbed, what’s that one thing you want to be remembered for?
I want to be remembered for being someone who loves myself and others equally. There’s a sense of equanimity that permeates the work that I do, the relationships that I form, and the legacy that I leave behind me is that I wasn’t this completely self-centered person that was all about me, but it’s that everyone that I come in contact, I treat them as I wish to be treated. That goes really deep. That’s more important than anything to me.
Don’t hang out with people who are not at the level of where you are personally.
What’s one question you wish I would have asked about you or your business, or what we need to know?
The question that would have been interesting to ask is about, I have two audiences, and that’s not a smart business decision, but why was that so important to you even if it wasn’t all about the money?
I’m like, “What’s the answer?”
In my book, you aren’t supposed to do this. I wrote to two audiences. That’s why it probably took me five years to write it. The two audiences are one that looks very much like me and you, where we built the wealth, we made good decisions, and we took really good care of ourselves. That’s our story, but the other story that was as important to me was the story of people who haven’t had the thought process, the mindset, or the things that we did from an early age, they’re more like my parents. I wanted to be able to make a difference in the lives of people who haven’t had the advantages or the opportunities to turn their life around as it pertains to money.
I also wanted to remind people like Susie and me, which you and I both are similar in this, that there’s so much more to money and that you have to find a healthy balance between the pursuit of money and then all the super important things in life, because your fascination with money can become more important than other things, and that’s not how you and I want to live.
I took the summer, and I took six weeks to look at this business or this brand I launched years ago. I’m like, “Is this what I want to do?” Part of it’s not fun. I’m like, “I don’t want to do that. I’m too old.” I’m going to say it. I’m too old and seasoned. I always say seasoned, but to do stuff that’s not fun, and fun from the standpoint of, “I want the fulfillment, but it’s got to be fun for me too. I have to have that quality of life.” From that time, which is exactly what you’re speaking to, is to go, “What do I need to change, tweak, or modify so that it’s not work?”
I never want to work. I love what I do. The minute it starts feeling like work, that’s when my indicator goes, “Something’s wrong.” If you can get anything from this interview, it is looking at it as it’s never too late to leverage your wealth. I don’t care how old you are or how young you are. I started at 25. I’ve met Suzanne DeTore. I’ll never forget her because she was one of those that’s like, “This is what we’re going to do,” and sometimes, you need that. You’re like, “This is what I’m going to do.” I love that. How do people find you?
The best place is my website, WealthClinic.com. You can learn about the book, my interview with Gaia, and you can take a quiz about your money, your relationship with money, and chakras, which is really fun too. That’s a great place to get started.
I want you to go take the quiz so that you can learn about your money chakras and what’s stopping you. It’s one little thing that can change the trajectory of your life, and I love that’s what you’re about. Thank you for being my sister on this journey. Thank you for having such a powerful conversation and relationship with money and being so honest and real to share that you’re constantly tweaking what you’re up to and what you’re doing. We’re never done. I don’t think I’m done. The minute I think I’m done, we’re dead.
Thank you so much for joining me, and thank you for reading this episode. Make sure you like, follow, and, more importantly, make sure you go find Leisa and get the book. It’s juicy, and I loved it. It was one of those super speed reads you didn’t want to put down. That’s how good it was. It was fascinating. It’s a different spin on the money conversation. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate you.
Thank you.
Leisa Peterson is THE Mindful Millionaire Maker. As a coach, author, business growth strategist and founder of WealthClinic, she helps people elevate their financial consciousness by realizing their true value and becoming financially empowered.
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