Dina: Hi Alexis, how are you doing tonight?

Alexis: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me Dina.

Dina: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for being here. I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this topic because we here at soul roadmap, always talk about living life intentionally and I know that today we're really going to talk about doing just that when it comes to practicing anything. But we're also going to be talking specifically about an area that you are very familiar with and that you really coach a lot of attorneys on. So if you would just share a little bit about yourself, a little bit about who you talk to, who you work with, and what we're going to be diving into today.

Alexis: Sure. Well, when I graduated law school back in 1999, it's hard to believe it's been 20 years and a reunion coming up. You know, I thought, I thought that was it, that I had, you know, gotten the golden ticket and I went to work at one of the best law firms in the country. Very quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to work at the big law firm as a mom. I was, I gave birth to my first child right after law school. During my clerkships, I started as an associate attorney as a mom and you know, it was commuting an hour each way and while the paycheck was great after taxes and everything, it felt like it was gone. Taxes, insurance, 401k even though I was, I think I was making $185,000 a year, I wasn't keeping any of it. And I was living in the South Bay community of Los Angeles and I just had this vision of really being able to have a practice that was a community based practice where I would be able to serve the families in my community, be a mom.

Alexis: And when I gave birth to my second child, there was no way I could go back to the big law firm. And I did not ever think that I was going to be a business owner myself. I went to law school so that I didn't need to go into business for myself. My dad did not look, make entrepreneurship look good. And so, you know, I was taking what I thought was the secure path and then all of a sudden it turns out that I'm going to be starting my own law practice and I got coaching to make that decision. And this is back when, I don't know if you remember, you know coaching 20 years ago, but that was for weird people, right?

Dina: Like it was like everybody thought Tony Robbins like was this weird infomercial guy cause he was this weird information guy. And it was like coaching was not a thing. It was just kind of like an oddball kind of deal.

Alexis: And the only reason that I got it is because I was at this women in business event at the local chamber of commerce. And I heard this woman speaking and she was speaking on branding or advertising or something like that. I didn't hear a word that she said about branding or advertising. What I heard her say is that she had a practice working from home, working with clients that she loved, and she was able to be there for her son when he got home from school and she was able to, you know, make her own life. And I heard that and I thought, Oh my God, that's what I want. I didn't even know that that was possible as a lawyer. And I said that, I want that. So I went out and I bought her book.

Alexis: Again, not to read about the topic because the topic, because on branding, which I didn't care that much about, but to get her secret, how did she do this? How did she create this life that she loved? And in the book and the acknowledgements, she acknowledged this coach. And so I tracked down that coach who lived all the way across the country. And I'm in California. This coach was in Georgia. And again, back then we didn't do things remotely. There wasn't like this kind of, you know, meeting face to face. It was, it was like I'm hiring this person all the way across the country. Dina, at the time, I think it was something like $350 a month for this woman to coach that was a fortune. There was no way that I was going to spend $350 a month on myself. I'd never spent that kind of money on myself.

Dina: Wow.

Alexis: Even though as I said, I was making $185,000 a year and she, you know, persuaded me that hiring her would be a good idea and I persuaded myself because I thought, well, this woman has a life that she loves, I want it. And she worked with this coach. I want to have that the very first session that this coach does with me, she asks me when is the last time you got a pedicure? When is the last time you got your hair done? When is the last time you went to the dentist? When is the last time you got you exercised? And I was best. I was so pissed. I was like, wait a minute, I'm paying you $350 a month, which is a lot of money for me and you're asking me about my personal hygiene habits when I hired you to help me to like love my life as a lawyer.

Alexis: And she said Alexis, if you are not engaging in self care, you're never going to love your life. Yeah. It doesn't matter what you're doing, you're never going to love your life. And she persuaded me that I needed to start making some investments in myself, not just in my kids, not just, you know, at one time, one kid, not just in my husband, not just in our home, not just in paying my student loan debt back, but actually in self care, which I didn't even know what self care was. I had never gotten a pedicure. I was certainly not exercising. I hadn't been to the dentist since I got my wisdom tooth out on an emergency basis in law school and you know, a haircut who needed a haircut. 

Dina: So I you know, I think we need to take a pause here for a moment. If anyone's listening to this and you're multitasking, I want you to come back. I want you to really hear what Alexis just said. If you don't care yourself right now, not taking care of other people. We're talking about taking care of yourself, getting your hair done, getting your nails done. If that's what does it for you. If you don't invest in those things, you will never be happy if you don't take care of yourself. Okay. Hear us here. This is important. Okay.

Alexis: Yeah. And if you don't know how to take care of yourself, because it is more than just the surface, I've come to find out. Yeah. But if you don't know how to take care of yourself, which you might not, if you didn't have a role model for that then you know, it's, it's, it is really time to learn. Because what I discovered through that, I started waking up an hour early every morning to go to the gym before work. And again, this was a big deal cause I had a baby at home and I was breastfeeding and pumping and, but I did it, you know, the coach said to do it. So I did it. And one day as I was driving to the office, the sun was coming up is beautiful. And I just used to marvel at the, you know, the sun coming up over the freeway. And but this day as I'm driving, all of a sudden the car in front of me swerves and I'm in my little Volkswagen GTI and I noticed that the car in front of me swerved because there's this massive roll of carpet in the highway and I have two choices. I could either hit it head on or I can, you know, try and avoid it.

So I try and avoid it and I turned my wheel and all and them spinning across the freeway and I hear this voice yell into my head, turn into the spin, turn it into the spin and I turn into the spin and I come to a screeching halt facing the wrong way. You know, against traffic up against the median and I get out of my car to see what the damage is and I hear the voice again. It says, get in the car and move now and again in the car. And I move forward. And literally right where I had been standing, seconds before another car comes spinning across the freeway and slams head first ended up median like right where I had been standing. Wow. And the woman that was driving that actually had a child in the back. She was okay.

Her car was totaled, but I would've been killed had I not heard those voices in my head that that day. And that was the very first time that those voices in my head had ever come through to me as a saving grace. Up until that time, the voices in my head had been really mean to me, harassed me, beat me up. You know, told me I was stupid, I wasn't good enough and, and those, and that really motivated me through law school to graduate first in my class because I thought it was the stupidest. So I studied more than anybody else. Do know to achieve all the success that I had achieved. It was that negative voice. But now here that voice came and it wasn't, it saved me and I, and I began to realize after I drove away that day that this voice had actually always been guiding me and wanted the best for me.

But because I haven't been engaging in self care because I hadn't been taking care of myself, it was trying to get my attention. And the only way I knew how, you know, much in the same way that a young child tries to get a parent's attention, starting to use more, more negative behaviors if it doesn't listen. And so through that process I began to become empowered instead of disempowered. And through that process of empowerment, I realized that I was going to start my own law practice. So after just three years at the big law firm, I went out on maternity leave and I couldn't go back. And so in 2003 the year my son was born now with two children, my husband was a stay at home dad. I went out on my own and I didn't know anything about business whatsoever. I was terrified.

I did not have any money in the bank, no savings, you know, no wealthy family behind me, $100,000 in student loans. Again, my husband's staying at home, so just my income depend on and, but I had that voice inside of me that was saying, if she can do it, I can do it. And that was really my mantra for a long time. If she could do it, I can do it. And so I started my own law practice. And in just three years I created a new law business model that was, that allowed me to build that law practice into $1 million a year run revenue generating business. Now, this was incredibly difficult for me because I still had very negative mindset, very negative mindset. But I did learn in that time the power of how to use my mind, how to, how to start to redirect my mind, how to invest in myself or grow.

They've probably invested over that time plus to by then $250,000 and learning how to build my practice into $1 million law practice and coaches, consultants, lost clients, screw ups, hiring the wrong people. I'm not, you know, the first year I made $1 million of new revenue, not putting aside money for my taxes and you know, all of these mistakes that I made along the way. But I let the most important thing that I learned during those first three years was I learned how to deal with the rejection of not getting hired by clients. These, when I went out on my own, I thought for sure that it was going to be easy to just, you know, get for five, six clients a month. You know, I was a mom. I knew I needed a state planning and had actually discovered a hole in the estate planning process when I was at the big law firm that was leaving families at risk and they're their children at risk of, of not being raised by the people that the parents wanted or being taken into the care of strangers even.

And then I also had discovered a hole in the planning process that was leaving people with estate state plans that they thought were going to work that wouldn't work. Not just if they had minor children, but because of the way that we did estate planning and the way that a state funding has actually done for the most part it's flawed. There's some, some big flaws in the traditional law practice model that leaves clients with plans that are really just a set of documents that aren't actually going to help their family when they need it because they won't be updated. The assets aren't owned in the right way. And so I had discovered all this thinking when I first came across it that it was malpractice. It happened actually in my own family when I was in law school, just finishing law school and then going into the best law firm in the country and finding out it wasn't malpractice was exactly the same way that we did things.

And so I thought, well, I'll just start telling people about this and they will hire me because they don't want plans that don't work. But I very quickly realized that there was a lot more to it than that, that, you know, actually had to learn the art of selling and marketing things I knew nothing about and was pretty resistant to because of my dad's profession. What did your dad do? You've mentioned him a couple of times that, so my dad my dad was really good at selling people things to people that weren't real. He could sell anything to anybody. But you know, when I was in fifth grade, went to prison. Wow. Yeah. It's why I became a lawyer. Actually. I went to lawyer, I became a lawyer in part to save my dad because I loved him so much and he really respected lawyers.

I probably at that age wanted to be a psychologist or something. But he didn't respect psychologists. You respected lawyers. And and I remember reading his depositions, I must've been in like sixth grade or something like that. And, and just reading, you know, these stacks of depositions about my dad's case and falling in love with the law. At that point it was like this, you know, this like, you know, investigation and story and, and I, and it, you know, I had to try and figure out what was going on. Like, is my dad a bad person? But I loved him so much. You know, it was very confusing that that took, you know, a good part of my life to work out actually. Yeah. And so I was very resistant to the idea of selling because of that. And it was really important to me that whatever I was selling, I knew had value.

And the truth, the matter is that when I first went out on my own into estate planning, I questioned the value because I knew that there were flaws. You know, I knew my father in law had died with an estate plan that he had paid $3,000 for. It didn't work. He'd paid that money to keep us out of court and from dealing with his ex wife. And then all of a sudden we're in the probate court dealing with his ex wife and I though wait and then I find out we're doing things exactly the same way at the big law firm. And, and then I, you know, I see that there's all these holes in the planning that I had in my own plan for my own daughter. You know, if, if my husband and I, something happened to us and our babysitter was at home with our daughter.

Yeah, we had named guardians in a will, but that, well a wouldn't be able to be found. Who knows, you know, who'd know where it was the, the people I named live 3000 miles away. And see that meant that my daughter was going to be taken into the care strangers until the authorities could figure out what to do. What kind of an estate plan was that? So, you know, I had to, when I went out on my own, fix these issues cause I couldn't do it at the big law firm. And you know, things were too deeply ingrained there the way that they were. And so before I could feel really confident in getting hired by clients, I had to feel really confident that what I was delivering was actually something meaningful and of value. So I had to fix that. And, and then once I fixed it, I had to learn how to explain that to the people that I was serving so that they would be able to tell the difference between paying somebody 500 or a thousand dollars or $1,200 for an estate plan that wasn't going to work or going online and doing it themselves and paying me three, four or $5,000 for an estate plan that would work.

And then I had to learn to go out and speak in my community and educate people so that they would even know that I was there, you know? So I didn't know how to do any of that. I don't know how to do any of that. So here I am thinking, Oh, it'll be easy to get four clients a month, five clients a month. And with that, you know, if I'm charging four or $5,000 a client, well great, I'll be able to support my family on that. But it wasn't like that at all. So far from that. It was so hard to build all the systems and learn how to do the sales in the marketing and, and, and then ultimately learn how to hire people and train them and manage the financials. So over this three year period of time, I did it. I did learn how to build $1 million a year law practice.

I learned how to do the sales and marketing part. I learned how to hire people. I didn't learn how to do a very good job of leading those people. I thought it was a really good boss. I was the worst boss. That took actually another probably five, six, seven years to figure out. I actually had to go through a lot of heartache, figure those pieces out. I had to get sued by an employee. I had to ultimately even let go of my businesses and go through bankruptcy. How to figure that out. That was really the managing the money piece. I knew how to make money. Even I been built a second million dollar business after my law practice. I didn't know how to take care of the money that I was making. Cause remember I was just learning all of this from scratch.

So yeah through all of that I began to teach other lawyers what I learned along the way. And and so today I have a company called New Law Business Model that teaches lawyers the new law business model that I invented in my law practice from soup to nuts that the, the, the for curriculum teaches lawyers how to do estate planning and serve families and or business owners. Also doing some business practice work, which I also discovered is deeply flawed. So first learning to serve the clients in a new way, a retraining really cause what we learn in law school about trusts and estates about business practice really does not prepare us to serve clients in a meaningful way. And, and even if we'd like apprentice where the lawyer who's doing been doing it for 20, 25 years, we're not learning to do it the right way.

So we first teach lawyers how to practice in this truly meaningful way where when they're serving their clients, they're getting thank yous, HUD's appreciation, three, four or $5,000 per client and they're happy to pay it. The clients are thrilled to pay it. And then for the lawyers who love the model. Then we license those lawyers to use all the systems that I created over the years for educating the community, for serving the clients with automation and technology that I was able to ultimately create for managing the financials of the law practice for building the team, knowing how to be a leader, really taking, I would say my over $1 million worth of mistakes that I made and not having to make those same mistakes and being able to build their own law practice based on the one of three practice models that I've identified.

Either the work from home pro virtual practice model where you're seeing six to eight new clients a month, bringing in any more between, you know, depending on if your average fee is three, four or $5,000, you know, bringing in anywhere between 20 to $40,000 a month with one team member, one full time team member or, and working from home, you know, a lot virtually in that model or this what we call a staff practice part-time law baller model where you're seeing 12 to 15 new clients a month bringing in 36 to $60,000 a month. Three team members who are really running things and you only have to go in the office three and a half days a week once it's, that's a lot of lawyers favorite model. Cause you can, you know, you, you could be bringing home 250,000 a year, three and a half days a week.

It's nice and serving clients in a really meaningful way or the seven figure empire builder model. Which is a full office 20 to 25 or more new clients a month. But the lawyer isn't the one seeing all the clients. In that case, the lawyers really operating the business operating more as the Rainmaker, you know, business development, educating the community, managing the team, leading the team, handling the financials, only seeing a handful of clients per month and then training other attorneys in the office to run, you know, see the client, to engage the clients and serve the clients with the support of the back office. And so we found that the lawyers that were serving choose one of those practice models and then we're able to help them build it from wherever they start off, whether that's just coming out of law school or having, you know, done estate planning the old way for 25 plus years.

One of our lawyers that I trained years ago, way back in the beginning, he just sold his law practice. He had been in practice 25 years. He was doing $400 wills came in and learned from us. Great. You know, he reinvented his law practice, got re-energized by it, and he just sold that practice for a seven figure payout, a big exciting thing for him. Of course. And, and, and for me as well, because that's the dream, you know, is that lawyers can actually be in business. And what I realized over the years is that everything that I learned in my law practice and in building this online training company for lawyers and that I teach to lawyers is not just limited to lawyers, it's every professional service provider is all the same business is business as business, as business. And if you're a professional service provider, the, the, the very same things that we teach the lawyers are the very same things that apply to you.

The difference being that with the lawyers, we give the lawyers all of the done for you everything. When I am teaching to professional service providers as, as I was doing for many years in another business that I've kind of put on the back burner for the moment as I focus on new law business model. You know what I'm serving the professional service providers through that business called eyes wide open. It's all the same. It's all the same principals. The difference being that I haven't done it all for them yet. They're having to apply the principles and create their own systems.

Dina: All right, so I am like chomping at the bit here at, we need to back way up. Okay. We're going to talk about mindset because everything that you were really diving into in your story, like how you got to where you are right now is everything that listeners need to hear. I mean I think that's such an overused word right now. I think that it's a real big buzzword. I also believe that it is something that is ignored in terms of, you know, we see the outside world and we tend to externalize a lot of things and, and blame a lot of outside sources for the way we're feeling in the way we're behaving in the world. And once you started recognizing the impact that your actions were having, I mean you really had some, some things going on that you had to work through.

Alexis: It's interesting, you know, talking about mindset because I had a horrible mindset. Horrible.

Dina: Well, explain what you mean by that. Get real, real detailed on that.

Alexis: Yeah. Great. So I'll say this, that with this horrible mindset, which I'll share with you in detail, I was able to build 2 million dollar businesses, and I couldn't hold onto 'em. The horrible mindset that I had drove me into bankruptcy. And it was only because I hit rock bottom as a result of this horrible mindset that I was able to shift what actually needed to be shifted for me to step into my my true self as a leader. And now today, my company, you know, we'll do three, three point seven million this year would not have been possible with the mindset that I had. We hit the Inc 5,000 for the second year in a row would not have been possible with the mindset that I have. So what do I mean? Because this mindset is very insidious and it is especially true for lawyers. I don't know about others, but I will say it's especially true for us as lawyers and I think it's part of even what drives us to law school. And so the mindset that I had was one of deep scarcity.

And you might say, well, but you had $1 million a year practice. Yes, I had $1 million year practice and I built a second million dollar a year company. But the scarcity, I did it from a place of scarcity. I did it from a place of fear. I did it from a place of not enough, I was not enough. So I had to prove something. I had to build those businesses to prove that I was good enough and I didn't have enough. I never had enough. It was never enough. So what that meant is that when I hired people, I was always trying to get the most out of them for the least pay. That's one way that we see evidence of a scarcity, negative, horrible mindset. I was always, I was never, it was never, my response to stability was always their responsibility. Who, who's at fault here? Who's not doing what they say they're doing? Well, it was me. I wasn't doing it, but I couldn't see that because I could only see the places that everybody else wasn't doing what they were doing.

So created this very negative atmosphere in my law practice among the team. Everybody was pointing fingers at everybody else. Why were they doing that? Because I was doing that. So if we see it around us, it's coming from us. And I didn't know that. I didn't know that everything I saw around me was coming from me. I had no idea that was happening. That was a big awakening. That was a big punch in the face really, because, you know, like ultimately I had to take 100% personal responsibility for my life and what I was seeing around me. Yeah. Just because I was the, you know, smart lawyer who graduated first in her class and built these million dollar businesses, I was an asshole really. And I ultimately had to see that that you know, I was, I was not a very nice person and it was confusing to me because in my heart I was in my, I thought I was a good person. I thought I had everybody else's best interests at heart. I thought, wow, here I am employing all these people and paying them. Doesn't that isn't that good? What the place I was coming from with it where I was the boss. They wouldn't have jobs if it wasn't for me. These were some of the thoughts that were running behind the scenes. Then I kind of thought were justified thoughts, but I knew they didn't feel good at the same time. So that was very confusing.

Dina: See that's really interesting that you mentioned that because you did have some connection with how those thoughts felt in your body. But they felt confusing. Can you explain what that means to you?

Alexis: Well, that's ultimately why I ended up having to go through bankruptcy because I crumbled under the weight of the internal conflict. I thought I had to be a certain way in order to earn money in order to build million dollar businesses. I thought I had to be forceful and directive and kind of mean and you know, rule with this kind of like fear based iron fist. Oh my God, we're going to run out. We're going to run out. I thought that was what it took and I couldn't do it anymore. You know, I got, it got to be like 2009, 2010. I was at the height of my success. It was appearing on TV as a family, financial, legal expert. My ego was frankly out of control. I mean, it was super out of control.

But I thought I needed that in order to be successful. I didn't know how I could be successful without that. So I said, forget it. I won't be successful. I'll just let it all go. I'll just walk away. I'll go live on a farm and not on any money. And, and I did that for a year.

Dina: Oh, what was the big turnaround on that? Like what made you decide, Nope, I can do this?

Alexis: Yeah. So in that year a lot of things happened. I mean, I prayed a lot. I prayed a lot. And I also only did what I would do for free. I only did what I would do for free in that year because I was pre-bankruptcy so I actually couldn't earn money anyway. You know, I had to limit what I earned to $5,000 a month in order to be able to qualify for bankruptcy.

And so I said to myself, okay, well here's your opportunity. So, first of all, at the very beginning of that year, I met the man that I'd called the hundred million dollar man. The a hundred million dollar man was a big meeting for me because for sure I thought this man would be free. He has $100 million, of course he's going to be the most free human that I'll ever meet. And he was the most trapped human I'd ever met. All he could talk about was money, how much he earned, where it was, how he could access it, what forms of currency he had it in. And he never really knew if people actually liked him for him or for his money. And I knew that feeling. I knew that feeling too. I didn't know if people like to be for me because I was paying their paycheck.

And in fact, I had a secret belief that they didn't like me because I was such an ass. Like, why would they like me? I didn't even like me, you know. So in this year I decided I would only do what I would do for free. And what happened in that years. I found that number one, I was ended up working with a couple of women in my online industry who were going through a business breakup and I love working with them and I hadn't loved working with one-on-one clients in a long time, but now because I wasn't doing it for the money, I was able to find my way back to the love for serving the love for serving clients in this very intimate manner where I was helping to hold them through this breakup and surfacing all of their internal conflicts. And it was really good at it because I had started facing my own internal conflicts.

You know, by this time I had started to do the personal work necessary, so I was able to help them. The other thing that I found is that the lawyers that I had been training all of those years wanted to keep paying my company for the resources that they were licensing from me, even though I wasn't creating anything new in that year. And that was a big aha because I thought that they would all hate me because I hated myself. So I thought there's no way that they'll want to keep licensing the resources that I have for them. Maybe they're not even that valuable. I wasn't even sure I was supposed to be serving lawyers. And at the same time in that year, my best friend at the time, the woman that I actually moved here to Colorado to live close to had graduated from law school and she was starting to implement my teachings, which I was just doing, giving to her for free because she was my best friend and I was going to walk away from it anyway.

And, and she had to pick a practice area and she was going to go into public interest law because she wanted to make a real difference to people's lives. But she had just gotten divorced and she had to support her kids. And I said to her that you can't go into public interests law. You need to make money and support your kids. Why don't you go into estate planning the way that I teach? And she said, Oh no, I don't want to do estate planning. That's for old rich people, white guys who are trying to save money on taxes. And that's not why I went to law school. And I was like, no, no, no. I promise you it's not like that. Let me just teach you the model and see. And so in that year, I'm teaching her the model for free and I'm watching her implement it and I'm realizing, Oh my God, this isn't about like what I thought it was.

This is, this is something so much deeper than what I thought it was. I had, I had lost sight. It wasn't just about helping lawyers to make money, which I wasn't down with anymore. It was about really helping families to connect to their hearts and helping lawyers to connect to their hearts and connecting, helping lawyers to connect to the hearts of the families that they serve. And, and seeing her implement it from fresh brought me back to the reason I had started in the first place, which I had lost sight of along the way of building these million dollar businesses and getting so caught up in the money, you know, and, and, and my scarcity, frankly. And, and then I also realized at that, at that rock bottom place that actually my, my role in the community is to earn money. That I had a disease called money dysmorphia and that this disease, which I think most people have, was causing me to approach earning money from this place of scarcity in which I was using it.

So I'll just I'll define money dysmorphia for you. It is the distorted view that we have of our financial reality that causes us to make, to, to see our money through a distorted lens much in the same way that people see their bodies through a distorted lens when they have body dysmorphia that causes us to sacrifice our nonrenewable resources, time, energy and attention. Yeah. Time, energy, attention and relationships as well, which is, you know, part of that attention and energy. And so we sacrifice our nonrenewable resources and service to money. Money is actually infinitely renewable when you know how to earn it.

And I knew how to earn it, but I, I hadn't seen it that way before. I hadn't seen it as an infinitely renewable resource. I'd seen it as like the end all be all that I was sacrificing all my time, energy, attention and relationships for. And once I hit rock bottom and was able to actually see what was happening, I was able to see that I had it all backwards. And that money is actually a fuel for your creative dreams. It's not the end goal. Right. And that in fact, for me it was really hard for me not to earn money. Not like that. It was hard for me not to earn money, but that it was actually hard for me to keep the money away. Cause remember I could only earn 5,000 a month.

Dina: But you couldn't hold onto it. Like when you had it, you couldn't hold onto it. And that was part of that issue.

Alexis: Yeah, I actually also learned is that I'm not supposed to hold on to it.

Dina: Right. It's flows, but it's very different though. You had two very different experiences. So I want to make sure that, you know, listeners really hear the differences in them. When you were acting from that place of scarcity and when you were holding on really tight, it flew out of your hands and you weren't able to maintain a business. But once you started to like really understand that it wasn't about the money, that that is something that can come and go and you're going to be fine no matter what. Because yes, you've got it handled. Yes. And you were able to create a business that flourished

Alexis: Well because it was actually about what am I creating with the money. You know, back when I was putting that $350 a month into that coach and ultimately, you know, and to exercising and dental work and pedicures and you know, all of those things I was creating my health.

What's more important? The money or my health. Of course health.

Dina: Because so many people don't act from that place. If you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, Oh Hey, you know, when was the last time I really spent money on a gym membership or you know, just, you know, doing something nice for yourself or taking a friend out to dinner, something like that. I mean, just kind of think about this. Think about those ways that you can incorporate money and ask yourself whether or not you're in this scarcity mentality. Are you killing yourself at work because you're paying your, you're worried about paying your student loans or you know, you are worried about saving money, but you can't seem to hold onto it. I mean, really listened to what Alexis was saying because when you start thinking about money differently, you will begin to change your behaviors.

Alexis: Yeah. So, so everything changed as a result of this. And first of all, I also learned that I learned had to learn how to care for my money, which I didn't also either know how to do because you know, they don't teach us that in law school. And even when I was learning how to do sales and marketing and you don't engage clients and, and educate my community, nobody's taught me how to manage the money. So I just figured, well, I'll just keep making more and more and more so I don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Right. Totally skewed thinking. And so through all of that, I ended up creating a whole body of work called the money map. Because that's how, that's what, that's how I do things, you know, as is I, I learn. But are you familiar at all with human design?

Dina: I think so. I think we've actually talked about that at some point. Maybe not you and I, but on the podcast

Alexis: Human design is an awesome system that uses your astrology and then to you. So your birthday time, et cetera too. Create a map of the best of really you and how you operate in the world. It's remarkably accurate, you know, like an uncannily right on. And so I, I came to find out in 2011, this guy messaged me on Facebook out of the blue. He's like, Alexis, you have to stop operating the way you're operating. You're not a manifestor, you're a generator. I didn't know what any of these terms were. I've come to learn, I've come to learn how to work with my human design. Part of my human design is my profile is what's called a one three. It's part of your human design is your profile. I have to learn by making mistakes. And when I make the mistakes, I learn the lessons and then I teach from my learnings.

And so as a result of all of this, I ended up creating this work called the money map that I really created for myself so I could come into right relationship with my team, resources, time, energy, attention and money. And as a result of that money map work I was able to realign my wife really fully completely realigned my life and go on to build the business that I have now. Bring that work into working with the lawyers for a long time. I did offer the work of the money map outside of the legal field too, all sorts of professional service providers who are building their businesses and and their lives. But a few years ago, 2016ish, the money map, doing the work of the money map again on myself cause I do it consistently on myself, showed me that I needed to focus on serving the lawyers only and not the, also working with other professional service providers.

And that was really hard actually. That was a hard decision because I love, I loved having both of those businesses and, but ultimately I realized that to be a mother to my children, I have two teenagers now, they're 16 and 19. To be able to be in relationship with myself and my community and have a partner, I couldn't have multiple businesses anymore. It was, it was a hard, hard thing to accept. But as a result of that, I've been able to, you know, today now have any law business model where it is and I can now see, you know, a future where new law business model is very close to not needing me as much as it does. Oh, that's so nice. It's so good. We just, I just brought in as a real COO in October of last year, so almost a year ago. And he's like, you know, it's not like, it's not like a virtual assistant that I've turned into a COO. He's like a COO who you know, now has 15% of the company, you know, partner with me getting paid, you know, real salary CMO coming on board. I've in the process of writing the new law business model books. So all of this is now, you know, giving me the spaciousness where I can see, okay, I'll be able to bring this money map work back to a broader audience again.

Dina: I want people to hear what you're saying here because when you make mistakes, this is how you create something that is going to work. You're going to have setbacks, you're going to have failures. That's how it works. But unless you were willing, willing to really sit with those feelings like you were Alexis, like you were able to just like sit with it and you took a lot of time with those feelings and you actually became conscious of them and you recognize, do you know what I could improve as a boss. I can do things better. Until you really make those mistakes and feel what comes up for you, feel that and work through it. You are never going to be able to redesign your life like Alexis is talking about.

Alexis: Well, and that's the mindset. You know, that's the mindset piece that you were talking about. So I remember back in 2012, right when I was coming out of the bankruptcy, 2012, 2013 timeframe and I, and I figured out that it was mindset. I didn't yet know how to fix my mindset. And I remember being in despair really because it was so painful to see it and not know how to fix it, not know what to do about it. And so now, you know, all these years later on the other side of it, I guess what I, what I want everybody to know is that the mindset is everything is happening for you. Nothing is happening to you. Sean Stevenson. I think is one of the most well known people who a shares that quote, he actually said it right before he died. He just died recently. A couple of weeks ago. He was a a man who was born with a deformation that caused his bones to break constantly. And, you know, he kind of, he was like a head in a torso with these little arms and legs in this wheelchair and he was the most incredible human, beautiful wife, incredible speaker. And he, he died a couple of weeks ago from a head injury. And the last thing that he said before he died to his wife as, this is not happening to me, it's happening for me. And if we can all live our life with that knowing none of it is happening to you, it is all happening for you.

And if it's truly happening for you and not to you, why, why, why are all of the things that are so frustrating and difficult to deal with and all of the failures and, and all of the clients who come in and reject you and don't hire you. And all of the, you know, employees who don't do what you want them to do and you know, make mistakes. And you know, even though the employee who sued you or sued me in this case, you know, or why are all these things happening? They're happening to teach you how to be the person that you really came here to be. You know, in my case, what I ultimately learned from every single client that came in and didn't hire me was how to create a system for engaging every single person I met with who needed my services at an average fee of three, four, $5,000 when other lawyers are getting four or $500, $1,200 or you know, people are going online to legal zoom that I now get to teach to other lawyers. But I had to be rejected by almost half the people I sat down with and I had to have a client hire me for $5,500 only two weeks later, call back and cancel in order for me to create the system where that would never happen again because it was all happening for me, not to me. And fortunately I must've, you know, known enough of that in order to keep going. That's the other piece of mindset.

Many times I wanted to quit. In fact, I did quit at one point. I hit rock bottom. I quit. I gave up. And sometimes that is necessary. You know, one of my favorite quotes is the JK Rowling quote on hitting rock bottom. I'm going to look it up real quick. It's so good. It is just so good. You know, J K Rowling, the author, I think the most the authors earn the most money ever. The author of the Harry Potter series, rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. Now my hope is that that you don't have to hit rock bottom. You know, when, when, when I'm working with lawyers now I'm working with lawyers to keep them from hitting rock bottom. And sometimes I do notice that they do have to hit rock bottom.

And, and that, in that moment of rock bottom is where they find the breakthrough in that moment of I give up, I surrender. Maybe that's the moment where prayer comes in and my prayer always is, show me the way, you know, I'm not asking God for eight or life or spirit or universe, whatever you know, is, is your understanding of it for a thing I'm asking for guidance, show me the word, let me see what I can't see. And when I do the answers always come and I'm, and I do that with the knowing that I came here for a purpose. And so did you, and that purpose was not just to earn money.

Dina: I loved this conversation with you. Alexis. You have been very open with us. I really appreciate that. These are some hard lessons that you came by; you really earned them. So thank you for sharing them with us. I am going to link to some different resources that you've mentioned, your websites that you mentioned.

Do you want to let listeners where they can find you and I'll be sure to link to all of those places in the show notes.

Alexis: Yes. So if you are a lawyer and you want to start families and or small business owners in a way that has them love you and has you love them and I feel really great about the work that you're doing and make a great living while you do it: Newlawbusinessmodel.com has your answers. I would strongly recommend that you watch one of our webinars and then book a call with one of our law business advisers who will help you identify the roadmap for you to get from wherever you are to the kind of practice that I've described. If you're not a lawyer we do have an eyeswideopenlife.com. We do have some free resources there that will support you too. Apply the money map process to your own life. I'm not actively offering the money map right now other than to lawyers through our training programs there. But if you go to eyeswideopenlife.com you can access the free resources that I have available even though we're not selling any programs formally right now.

Also we do have the money map for lawyers and that's at moneymapforlawyers.com and it will help you to actually map out the practice model that you want. How many clients do you need each month, and at what average fee to have the life and law practice that you want regardless of what practice area you're in. In our training programs, we only work with lawyers who want to serve families and or business owners with our estate planning and business planning methodologies. But any lawyer can use the moneymapforlawyers.com to map out their own practice area, their own practice model.

Dina: Thank you so much for being here with us today. I really appreciate it,

Alexis: Dina, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it as well.