HEATHER EWING: The CRE RUNdown

Ep. 57 Risa Haasbroek - Tame the Dragon

• Heather Ewing, CCIM • Season 1 • Episode 57

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In this transformative episode, we explore the art of taming the wild emotional dragons that often hold us back such as fear, doubt, anger, and procrastination and turning them into powerful allies. With a blend of storytelling, science, and soul, we uncover how mastering your inner world is the true foundation of sustainable entrepreneurial success. Learn actionable strategies to train your emotional responses, strengthen your resilience, and build the mental fortitude required to navigate risk, rejection, and uncertainty. Whether you're just starting your entrepreneurial journey or leveling up your empire, this episode equips you with the mindset rituals and inner tools to lead with clarity, courage, and conviction. 

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Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Welcome to Heather Ewing, the CRE Rundown. I am your host, Heather Ewing, and today I have a great guest for you guys. It is none other than Risa Hasbrook Risa, welcome.

Risa Haasbroek:

Hi Heather, Thank you for having me.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining me. We were talking a little bit about your lovely accent. Can you share a little bit more where you're from?

Risa Haasbroek:

I'm originally from South Africa, but I live in the US now. I have been for the last how many 11 years now, so the accent should sound a little bit more American, but I guess I'm too old. It's a done deal, I will never get the Well, it's beautiful.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

I wouldn't change a thing about it, so it's perfection. So we've known each other through LinkedIn. For gosh, I want to say it's about a year and a half, maybe longer, and so share with our audience a little bit more about you so they can start to get to know you.

Risa Haasbroek:

Okay, I call myself the dragon whisperer and that's just to intrigue people. It's a brand new. It's actually. I'm a mindset coach for entrepreneurs, so for me it's the mindset part of it. It's the vital part, because you can have all the strategy and the tactics in the world, but if your mind is not ready to act on it, or to even just for it to land for you, you're not going to take constructive action. So I'm a big proponent of get your mindset into place before you start taking action.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Definitely Well, and I can speak for myself over the years, of those, those peaks and valleys, right where the mind is strong, and others like oh, it derailed on on that one. But what was the impetus for getting into this? Right, it's neat because you're hearing more of it through the NHL, nfl, these big sports teams, right they have, they have their mindset. Coach, performance coach, whatever term you want to give it, right at the sidelines. It's really become a movement. I would say what was your impetus for getting into it?

Risa Haasbroek:

Let me give you the skinny version so that we can really dig into the stuff that I want to talk about. We came to the US 11 years ago because my husband got a job here. I was a homeschooling mom, stay-at-home mom. Up to that point I always wrote on the side, otherwise I would have gone crazy, okay, but still it's. You know, I was like a freelance journalist. Then we moved here and my kids were a little bit older and because of the exchange rate between the two countries, I realized that we were.

Risa Haasbroek:

You know, at the beginning I thought there's no way that we could retire in the US and I wanted to make my little contribution because I could see my children, you know, building a life here and me going back to Africa. And it's an 18 hour flight every time and several zones. You know, I want to be closer, live closer to my children and I started my own business. That's what I know. I don't know how to do it. I started selling homeschooling material to other homeschoolers back in South Africa. You start with what you know, right, but the things I didn't know about business, it's like I had no idea what I was doing. But I always said it's a crash course right If you want. The best self-development project on the earth is to start your own business.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Completely.

Risa Haasbroek:

You really meet your edge and you understand oh, I have so much to learn. So I was working about 60 hours a week and not making a lot of money. And then one day I heard a life coach talking and she said she was making millions and working only three days a week. And that really got my attention. Oh, there's a different way to do this. And then I started following her.

Risa Haasbroek:

Eventually I got certified as a life coach through her school, loved it. It's a very useful. They call it the model, but it really shows you the link between your thinking and your emotions and how, when you change your thinking, everything downstream changes. So it was a powerful tool and as I applied that, I was working fewer and fewer hours in my business. So I could see the value of that and the value of the mindset part. But by then I was like I want to be a coach. I love, you know I don't want to sell grammar courses, that's boring.

Risa Haasbroek:

And then slowly I transitioned, you know I became a coach. I coached for Russell Brunson for a while. I was just a contract coach in his program and then I worked with entrepreneurs in there and I had this one friend who she was part of a cohort when we were training and she kept telling me Risa, you're a business coach, you should get to entrepreneurship, that's what you want to do. And eventually I listened to her and made the transition. And here I am coaching entrepreneurs on their mindset. But I have a you know, coming from a really lived experience. I suppose you know I've been there, done that. No one does Right. Yes, so that's the potted version of my story.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

That's terrific. I love it and I think it's one of those. All of our different experiences do really set us up for the next one right, and a commonality amongst all of us entrepreneurs is the business that was and is successful is not the one, typically, that you start with. There's very few that do so. I agree too. I had, you know, an art, business, personal training, all different things right, where you learn a lot from each and every one, and the mindset is, I would say, the foundation that you get to use to catapult yourself forward. So what's something that would be helpful for the audience to know?

Risa Haasbroek:

It's understanding, deeply understanding. That was the shift for me, understanding where emotions come from and that's why I call myself the dragon whisperer. It's that dragon inside the fairy, dragon that can be on your team or not on your team, and you want to get it on your team. So understanding your emotions is so important and realize they are not generated by the circumstances directly. There's that step in between your thinking, the way you interpret things, the way you look at it, the story you tell yourself about events, and if you really truly radically embrace that truth, it's amazing.

Risa Haasbroek:

You know how it's possible to redirect your mind into a more I don't even want to say positive, more constructive way, it's like you don't have to be optimistic about things, but there's always a different way to look at things once you realize that and then you generate a different kind of feeling that naturally would drive more constructive actions, definitely. Or even it's like it's used, and it will help you stop taking action because sometimes, because of the feeling we are in inaction and even that it's like when I have a more, you know it's more an open, expansive kind of feelings. Those are more constructive actions.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Right. Could we go through an example? Right, so it's kind of nice to I feel like we have a nice periphery set up right, Could we go through an example, maybe, of a client that you helped? So just also help people see tangibly how that breaks down right, Because we always hear about mindset tangibly how that breaks down right, Because we always hear about mindset. Of course, these days you hear so much about burnout, stress, health issues, you know, exhaustion, all these different things. Is there an example that you'd like to highlight where you help someone and kind of break down some of these different elements to give people a good, good idea of the magic you do?

Risa Haasbroek:

So it's. I'm going to use my most famous client, who told me afterwards because of a single question you asked me I made millions. But she isn't you understand, she's an outlier, right, it's not going to correct. I just wanted to, you know, give that at the beginning. But it's also a very tangible example to use yo.

Risa Haasbroek:

She lives lives in Australia. She's originally from China, but she's already. She was a seasoned entrepreneur and I worked with her in the Russell Brunson program but she was kind of stuck and sunk. Cost fallacy was definitely not her friend. She was in a business with a friend and she knows how to create a huge audience on social media she's so good with that.

Risa Haasbroek:

But she didn't like the business anymore. So it meant burning everything to the ground and starting over. But she was also behind in taxes, so she had to spend more money to get out of the business before she could start making money. And then I asked her tell me how it's possible that you can do all of this, that you can sell the business and the guilt about the partner you know the business partner, I'm letting her down all of those kind of feelings were also in the way. But I asked her tell me how it's possible. And she said afterwards we met actually at Russell Bronson's ClickFunnel what's the name? Hackers, right, the big event that he has. And she told me that in the foyer Risa, you have that one question.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

I love it, that's great.

Risa Haasbroek:

It doesn't always work that way, you know it's like, but she was just ready to hear that and it's the word possible. Then suddenly it opened possibilities for her. Okay, let me think of a strategy. How can I do this? Yes, I have to pay the back taxes and all of that, and it's going to cost me. I have to pay the back taxes and all of that, and it's going to cost me. But let me start planning instead of spinning in, you know, in overwhelm, and I can't do this because I'm telling myself this story. That's really not helping me. So I would say, if you go back to the kind of model that I use, her thinking was it's impossible, it's going to cost me so much to do this. And then that created, say, for instance, the emotion of overwhelm, and then she was stuck in inaction and also thinking in circles I can't do this. It's like, okay. And then when she changed it even to something a little bit more empowering, like it is possible to shut down this one business and start my new business. It's possible.

Risa Haasbroek:

And now suddenly, like I said, that's an expansive kind of feeling that would generate for us something like empowerment or just and now you start making the list okay, how much money actually do I own? How much all of it? How? How quickly can I get into an income? Now you ask the constructive questions, for instance, just the planning part, but okay and off she went. But, like I said, she had a lot of experience already. But it was so funny because she was trained in NLP. Do I have to explain a little bit more what NLP is? Does your audience know?

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

I'm familiar with it, but they probably don't.

Risa Haasbroek:

It's Neuralistic Language Programming. So it's a lot about changing your thinking. And she was a seasoned, she was a coach herself. But it's so funny how we get stuck in our own mind. That's because of the emotion. The emotion makes the experience so real and it makes it feel as if that's the only way it can be. So the job, the work that you have, is to break the illusion again and again and see oh, it's not. This is not real. I'm creating this feeling because of how I'm thinking.

Risa Haasbroek:

But then I often get people tell myself I don't want to lie to myself. But once you understand that the world is very, very complex and you know that old analogy of we are like four blind men trying to describe an elephant, that's all of us, that's. The world is so complex and we filter out most of the stimuli just not to get overwhelmed. It's your brain doing you you a service. And when you tell your mind, look for something red, it will find it. Look for the evidence that this can't work, it will act. It's a very good servant. It will actually do that. But when you realize how complex the whole situation is and that it's always possible to ask how can I think about this differently, and it's always possible to think about something differently because the world is so complex. It's not about lying. It's about opening your mind to other options, to more right of the stimuli how would you say physicality ties into this too.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Right, because I think my own personal thoughts I don't have anything to back this up, but I think, just looking at my own, you know several decades on this green earth and just in talking with other people too that a lot of people try to solve it just through the mind and and as I've started integrating more of like the physicality, I feel like things shift a lot more quickly and it gets you out of a headspace that is such a If you need to transition into a new one. What are your thoughts on that?

Risa Haasbroek:

That is such a valuable point because you nailed it. It's like we experience the emotion as a sensation, as a vibration in your body. It's a bodily experience, so no wonder focusing on the physicality is so valuable. I know you as an athlete. You are very much attuned to your body. I can imagine Right. But it's almost using your body and that experience, that vibration, that sensation in your body like a feedback loop.

Risa Haasbroek:

Oh, I'm all tensed up now I have some crazy thinking. You know. It's that Using your body as, like I said, as your feedback loop, as a signal to I need to change my thinking, as a signal to I need to change my thinking. And what I've seen of late is that you don't even have to like really dial into this specific thought and try to find that one. When you come back to yourself, when you realize I'm the one creating this experience, it's like you settle into this clarity of mind. I call it. You come home and suddenly you are relaxed and your mind opens again and you see more possibility. Because that's what happens with anxiety we really get on the blinders. It makes sense for your survival, when you are really threatened, to really focus on the snake in front of you, but most of the time it's rubber snakes that we are conjuring up in our minds, right.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Yeah, it seems to be a human tendency, right? Until you kind of, like you say, tame the dragon and start infusing different thoughts and, of course, over time those become different beliefs. But how would you say, what is something that you have as a go to for when things get stressful, right? Are there any hobbies, physical things that you tend to go to to to keep that dragon tamed and in that expansive state?

Risa Haasbroek:

I have a very, very active mind, so my biggest problem is a sleep problem and I can't turn my mind off. And I know it's pretty universal, it's not that special Right. But what I really love is I discovered Yoga Nidra. I don't know if you know, but I have to explain that also a little bit more.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

I listen to it at night.

Risa Haasbroek:

It's just getting into the parasympathetic part of your nervous system. That really works for me. I know usually I don't like techniques and habits. I like to focus on the insights. It's how you understand that. But if I, if I'm very honest with you, you're gonna. I love it so much. I have a you. I bought some of these. It's a guided meditation, in case someone doesn't know, and it's a body scan going back to the reality that you're in. Oh, definitely Great. I can feel my mind just slowing down and I come home again. You know, I'm able to redirect myself, talking even, and tell myself you'll fall asleep soon, and if I do it regularly enough, I sleep like a baby. It's. The difference it makes is huge.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Definitely no, I agree. And if you think about it, right, that back in the day, right, it used to be personal business health, blah, blah, blah. Right, like they're all separate silos. As the years go, I think it's much more accepted. No, it's all interrelated, right, this is affecting this and it's all a big consortium, and so to me it would also make sense, right, if you are doing the mental reps. Right?

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

I remember taking a course through John Assaraf at Neurogym and the whole premise behind that was you take classes, stay active for your physical body why not your mental space? So I like to that you bring in about the physicality with the mind and mental growth and things of that nature, because I think to sustain anything long term, which is what we all want, right, if you think about it, we're all within the commercial real estate realm associated. You work with a lot of us. You know what I mean. So you know it very well that it's very demanding, there's high stress and you have to perform at an optimal level and if you're burned out, if you're going through all of these different physical things and otherwise you're just not going to be able to perform at the same level. So I love what you offer and I think it's integral. I think everyone needs a performance coach, quite honestly.

Risa Haasbroek:

Okay, thank you, I will take that.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Yeah, definitely so. My last hard hitting question for you, Risa, is what does living fully mean for you?

Risa Haasbroek:

Oh, I just I just wrote an article about it what it means to be happy. And I know happy gets a bad rap. You know it needs like a marketing. To some people it seems a little bit frivolous. I would say, you know, one of my favorite songs is that happy song by Pharrell.

Risa Haasbroek:

Yes, it's like if you feel that happiness it's the truth and if you understand what makes people happy. And it's four components. You want three components, you want meaning, you want connection and then you want that feeling of achievement. So it doesn't always feel that way, but we like to overcome hard things. It gives us a sense of satisfaction and that definitely contributes to our happiness.

Risa Haasbroek:

And then, using those three ingredients into four areas of your life, your faith, and that could be anything that takes your small little ego and let it dissolve into something bigger than yourself. It doesn't have to be religion For me it is religion, but it doesn't have to be for everybody. Family, which is a big problem at the moment in America People are not talking to each other because of politics Okay, right, okay, and so friends can is such a big contributor to happiness, and that's also in the decline, and I think COVID almost, you know, exacerbated that problem that we don't have. We don't know how to make friends anymore. And then the last one is work. But it's like bringing in the three. It's connection, it's meaning and it's also achieving all of that into work. So it's a nice little package. Do the things that make you happy. That's a fulfilled life.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

I agree, and you know, really, it is that simple, right. I think if you've ever noticed, right, anyone that masters any arena. It's clear and concise, right. So happiness to me. Why not? Right? It's clear, it's concise, it brings you joy. That's that, to me, is a perfect answer. So, risa, before we, before we end, how can people connect with you to learn more and really upgrade their lives and career?

Risa Haasbroek:

I'm really very active on LinkedIn and I also have a free audio course about the management of emotions, but I think it's just easier if people reach out to me under my own name, the Dragon Whisperer. If that's easier, they will find me on LinkedIn and send a connection request, and I think that's the easiest way to get to know me better.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Perfect Risa. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Risa Haasbroek:

Thank you, it was lovely.

Heather Ewing, CCIM:

Bye-bye.