Resetting your Money Mindset with Jennifer Love

“True wealth is a state of being, and it’s a state of living wealthy. It’s a state of being alive, connected and whole within yourself.” - Jennifer Love 

Today’s Brave By Design guest is on a mission to help leaders become limitless, and after listening to her powerful message, you’ll see how she’s doing this! Jennifer Love is rated among the top 5% of advisors globally, and her mission as a Money Therapist is helping leaders build what she calls true wealth.

On any given day, Jennifer may be found diving deep with a leader in a private money therapy session, serving as a judge for events like Startup Weekend and on stage sharing her research and views as a wealth philosopher. She also prepares entrepreneurs to land a shark on Shark Tank, advises clients behind-the-scenes of shows like Biz Fix with Marcus Lemonis, meets with community leaders and government officials and negotiates with investors. Part of Jennifer’s day could also involve advising leaders of Fortune 200 companies and celebrities in developing their true wealth, or being at home enjoying time with her sweetheart John and fur-baby Maggie. 

Achieving true wealth takes the stress out of the money equation so you can effectively raise, make, manage, and give money. It also creates deep soulful satisfaction in key areas of their lives. This something we’d all like, am I right? This is why I am so eager to have Jennifer share her expertise on true wealth with you all today. 

Connect with Jennifer: https://jenniferlove.com/

Remember to hit SUBSCRIBE wherever you listen to podcasts!

Free webinar in late January for coaches, consultants and service-based businesses: Learn how Brave by Design became a Top 125 podcast and Laura gained new clients through podcasting. Register at podcastbrandlab.com

What You’ll Hear In This Episode: 

• Jennifer’s thoughts on personal scar tissues and how to investigate and process your own traumas first [11:38]
  
  
• Why you need to be willing to say “no” to things not aligned with your values, and what can happen if you don’t [16:50]
  
  
• What “true wealth” is really all about [22:46]
  
  
• Where to begin the journey, and Jennifer’s thought process for getting there [24:36] 

Additional Links & Resources:

Discovery Your Money Store - Book a Discovery Call with Jennifer!  

Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

The #OneMoreWoman Movement

Marshall Rosenberg

Transcript

Jennifer Love: 0:00

true wealth is a state of being. It's a state of living wealthy, right? It's a state of being alive and connected and whole within yourself.

Laura Khalil: 0:12

Welcome to brave by design. I'm your host, Laura Khalil. I'm an entrepreneur, coach and speaker. I love thinking big, exploring the power of personal development and sharing the best strategies, from thought leaders and pioneers in business to empower ambitious women and allies to bravely rise and thrive. Let's get started. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of brave by design, we have a great interview in store for you. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk about something I hear from a lot of people, which is how do you stand apart when everyone has your skills. And I hear this a lot, especially if you're someone who's ever stopped pursuing a career goal or creative goal because there's a little voice in the back of your head that says, well, it's already been done. I have nothing to add. How many of us have said that to ourselves? I'm imagining the virtual raise of hands right now. I hear this a lot from prospective podcasters. budding entrepreneurs, job seekers, are people looking to climb up the ladder in the corporate world? We stop ourselves because we think we're not good enough, or people already have our skills, and we have nothing to add, right? You ever say that to yourself? I have certainly felt that way too. You know, when I started brave by design, I knew there were a billion personal development podcasts on the market. That's not news to me. But what made brave by design successful, had nothing to do with it being yet another personal development podcast. It had to do with my secret sauce, those unique indelible qualities of Laura, that no one else has. People listen to brave by design, and maybe you're listening right now. Because you like me, my personality, and you may enjoy how I conduct interviews and who we bring on. That's how I stand apart from the rest. And it's one of the reasons we have ranked in the top 125 career podcasts. So everyone has a secret sauce that makes you stand out in your unique ways, even if the other elements or skills you possess are the same as everyone else. No, I love my food analogies. So let me explain this through one of my favorite treats. chocolate chip cookies, is your mouth watering because I have been making those all week. I received a KitchenAid stand mixer for Christmas this year. And I have been really excited to take it for a spin and you know, speaking about doing breads and more complicated things, but I said you know what, Laura, let's just start off real nice and easy. With a chocolate chip cookie recipe that would be just, you know, a fun way to take it for a world. Now we got to find the recipe, right? So if you google chocolate chip cookie recipe, I'll wait go Google it. You'll notice there are 119 million results. And all of them are more or less, pretty similar, right? You need your chocolate chips, flour, sugar, vanilla extract, baking soda, you know the basics. So in a sea of things where everything looks pretty much the same, how to determine what recipe to use. I mean, maybe it didn't matter. But I found one recipe that piqued my interest because the author explained that if you left the cookie dough in the fridge for a day, you'd actually get a more caramel like flavor from the brown sugar. I've never heard this before. And I have been baking for a while. And that was this recipes, secret sauce, and how it stood out to me from 119 million other chocolate chip cookie recipes. And sure enough, it made the most delicious chocolate chip cookies with a hint of toffee like caramel flavor that had people asking, wow, what did you put in here? These are incredible. See, there are lots of people who have your skills and interests but there's only one you so if you're thinking about how to figure out what is your secret sauce, the special things about you that will help you stand apart from the rest. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and at the top of the paper. I want you to write this phrase. I am uniquely able to.dot.on the rest of the page finish that statement. What makes you unique for most people. If you get stumped you can ask your family, your friends, your colleagues About your personality traits that are unique. You know people say about me while Laurie you tell it like it is. you convey important lessons in funny ways. You're a great interviewer, you're a goofball. You're unique set of traits combined with your skills and experience give you a secret sauce that very few other people have lean on that to help you stand apart from the rest. And the next time you hear that little voice in your head, stopping you from taking on an endeavor because it's been done before. Ask yourself how your secret sauce can make it happen in a completely unique way. Everyone, welcome to this episode of brave by design, I am so excited for you to have a chance to meet our guests today, Jennifer Love is among the top 5% of advisors globally. And her mission as a money therapist is helping leaders build what she calls true wealth. That takes the stress out of the money equation so they can effectively raise make manage and give money. Yes, it also creates deep soulful satisfaction in key areas of their lives. I have three words to say Jennifer and those are Tell me more. Jennifer Love. Welcome to brave by design.

Jennifer Love: 6:25

Thank you for that wonderful introduction. And yes, I'm happy to tell you more like Don't we all just want more juiciness and satisfaction and soulful connection in our life. I mean, that's the end of the day, this is all about. And we sometimes along the way get lost in our heroine or hero's journey. And we forget, and yet I'm here to remind us to come back.

Laura Khalil: 6:52

I love that. You know, it's it's funny, because when we talk about anytime anyone is talking about money, you can feel with certain people almost like a construction, like they start to shut down, closed down tight and get really brittle on her just even like in an energetic sort of way. Yeah. And I want to start first by asking your story, because it's uncommon for women, in my opinion, to be so unabashed about saying no, this is a force for good. We're gonna master this. And I'd love to hear how you got to that point.

Jennifer Love: 7:26

Hmm. Well, I'll start by saying I mean for a couple of decades now. I've been studying human and organizational behavior, and the relationship that leaders have with wealth and with money. So this has been a lifetime of study for me. But it really goes back. Like if we want to look under the covers of Genesis story.

Laura Khalil: 7:50

Let's go down.

Jennifer Love: 7:51

It goes back to the three year old me. And the three year old me was standing in the hallway in Oklahoma City, listening to her parents fighting in their bedroom. My dad was punching holes in walls, he had been a member. And, you know, didn't really at that point, didn't know how to really control it. And my father was an entrepreneur, very successful entrepreneur. And my mom, my mom was a mom, you know, she was mom that was staying home, a couple kids. And so I'm three years old. I'm standing there in the hallway, and I'm hearing them and I'm like, what's going on? What's happening? And then my dad opens a door and he comes walking out and he walks out of her life. And I'm looking at this vision of my mom sitting on the bed crying, and I crawl up on the bed and I see the cut up credit card sitting next to her. And she tells me that our father's leaving, he's not coming back and we don't have any money. Oh my gosh, that was the day that we went from living a very wealthy life to moving into poverty, basically for a few years. Really. Yeah. And I watched a mother who my mom I love my mom. She's like this sensitive, soulful human being with so much heart, so much love. And and yet, I watched her become incredibly disempowered around money and become a very much a victim in her own life. And I remember, I remember thinking at three years old, I never want to have another woman ever experienced this again. That was a story like how can I help? You know how I don't want mom to have to go through this? Yep. You know, not that I needed to take that on as my own burden, right. That's a whole nother story. But it really became what can I do to help mom and then over time it became How can I help other people never have to experience a disempowerment in their relationship with money. And that's where that's where it began.

Laura Khalil: 9:54

God that's incredible. You know, and I think that's really a testament to what I hear from You know, my clients and when I go speak is that so much of our inspiration comes from having gone through really challenging experiences that have informed us in our younger years. And in some ways, I don't know, I guess I kind of see that as a gift because you wouldn't be doing more. I

Jennifer Love: 10:18

mean, I mean, let me get while about this, Laura, I've had so much of my own stuff to work through I called the stuff issue, I refer to the trauma as the scar tissue in our life, right. And that shows up and expresses itself, in our spiritual aspect, in our emotionality. In our mental, you know, the thoughts, the beliefs, as well as physically, you know, trauma lodges itself physically in our bodies, and I call that scar tissue. And so I had, I had a great amount of my own scar tissue to work through, as we all do, we all have we all do. And the the thing that I'm talking about with true wealth and living wealthy is that part of what happens I see for all of us, is that we get blocked by the scar tissue in our life, right? It starts to weigh us down, and all the different various ways that it does, right, the four asked buyouts of humanity. And so part of my work and part of what I see is all needing to do our own work, is to break through that scar tissue to work it to eliminate it, so that we can access that natural state of being alive and free and whole in ourselves.

Laura Khalil: 11:37

I love that. So for people who are like, Okay, I think I might have scar tissue. What? What are they looking for? Exactly? When we think about that scar tissue in that trauma? Where do we, because some people may think, oh, I don't really have a problem with money, but they're scraping by or they may think money is the worst thing ever. And I don't have anything to do with it with those types of folks. Where do we start to invest

Jennifer Love: 12:08

investigation is is one of my favorite things. So contemplation, self inquiry, right? asking a question as simple as, what are the things that I'm hiding that I'm afraid to look at?

Unknown: 12:22

Oh, boy, oh, my gosh,

Jennifer Love: 12:24

right. What are the things I don't want to look at my, in my life? Because I'm afraid to look? And that's going to give you a whole lot of information about what's going on for you. Right? What is it that you're hiding from? Or you don't want other people to know about you? Why? Right? So those are two fantastic investigators, investigative questions to begin to ask yourself, and that's going to lead you down a road to help you understand where that scar tissue might, the for at least the first layers of that scar tissue might be hanging out. Maybe it's in your belief system. Maybe you're even maybe even holding on to beliefs that aren't even yours. Right. I've been doing. I'm working on a show right now. And one of the episodes I'm deconstructing the Cinderella story. And so and how I see, the Cinderella story has been incredibly disempowering. For all of us in our relationship with money, especially women, we're we've been perpetuating this. For generations, the story goes back to, like before Christ, right, and crosses just about every culture in the world.

Laura Khalil: 13:35

Yeah, I didn't know that.

Jennifer Love: 13:36

3000 different variations of the Cinderella story. And this is a story that has been told for generations, right? So on the epigenetic level, these stories lodged themselves into emotion because stories are emotions, right? They become emotional for us, and they launch themselves in us on an emotional level, then we begin to believe the stories, we begin to believe that women should tear each other down and hold each other back. We believe that we should play small in our lives and learn helplessness I call it in the crab in the bucket mentality where we're pulling each other back, right? We believe that we need to be saved by a man or saved by something, whether it's a man or something else in our life, that something outside of us can save us, right? we perpetuate these beliefs over time. They lodged themselves in our DNA, and we're carrying them forward from our ancestors, and they may not even be hours.

Laura Khalil: 14:32

That's right. And how resourceful are those ideas today? You know, it's interesting when you mentioned that the first thing that came to mind for me, is Clarissa pinkola. Estes book, women who run with luck is an incredible book. Oh my gosh, and to your point, it's really all about deconstructing those fairy tales and how they are really disempowering. So folks, if you're not familiar with that you may want to pick it up because it's it's incredible. But also, you mentioned Cinderella. So it was really interesting. You mentioned the Cinderella story. And I bet everyone listening had kind of like a different thing come to their mind. And the first thing that came to me when you said, oh, we're gonna the Cinderella story, the first thing I thought of, Oh, right, you need a man to save you.

Jennifer Love: 15:24

Do you know how much this shows up? Laura, I've heard so many women over the years tell me that they're afraid to make more money, because they're afraid that they'll, or some variation of this, that they make more money, they'll end up alone, because a man will love them. Some variation of that. So they end up playing smaller, they're afraid to put themselves out and be more visible, or they somehow kind of step into being more masculine and strip themselves of being the feminine person that they are. Right? It isn't I mean, it expresses itself and not that there's anything wrong with being masculine as a woman. But if that's not your true nature, and you're doing something that's not in alignment with who you actually are, and you're literally robbing yourself of a part of yourself, it's like cutting off limbs of your body, right and operating in the world with only part of yourself, Well, if we take that over into financial money, decision making that kind of scar tissue, right, coming back to that scar tissue is impeding your ability to make healthy decisions. Why? Well, because we're not actually clear about one, oftentimes. And I'd be clear if with you, how often you find your clients are clear on what their values are.

Laura Khalil: 16:45

Oh, forget it.

Jennifer Love: 16:46

Yeah. And then layer on top of that, what are our needs, if we don't know what our values and our needs are? Where are we making money decisions from, we're making money decisions from oftentimes I see with my clients, a place of fear, place of scarcity, a place of lack, and for those who have the millions and billions, because I work with a lot of those folks, you know, it comes from this place still of scarcity, and fear, and lack, because they have the money, and they're afraid that they're going to lose it. And so there's this whole mentality of protection that comes into place there. And underneath all of that, is this need of emotional safety. And when we don't feel safe in the world, we do operate out of a place of fear. And when we're operating at a place of fear, man, we we really inhibit our ability to be expansive in the world, in the way that we invest our dollars the way that we're making decisions with our dollars. Let me give you an example of this. Several years ago, I started a company called one more woman, and the first year of business, you know, I had outlined what our values were in our values. I like to have like hashtag a wall kind of values cool. Our values were like, We go make meaning. You know, we're playful heroines were the real deal. We have her back. We have abundance mindsets, and we're better together, right. So I knew I had this at the forefront of everything that I was doing in that business in the first year. I was like, I want to go get a sponsorship. And not just any sponsorship, but I want like over $100,000 sponsorship. And I was like, Man, that's pretty ballsy on my part. Because like I'm going for it anyway. And so I you know, I put this whole deck together. And I and I went and met with a great financial partner up in Silicon Valley, and I'm sitting in their office, and I'm asking questions, I'm really listening to them. And, you know, really great meeting, I leave the meeting, I put a whole pitch deck together, and they come back and they're like, you know, they're saying, Yes, however, there was a caveat. The caveat was, because this was going to be a year long sponsorship. The caveat was, but we only want to do a test trial of 90 days. And I was like, but a bomb bomb. And and I had to sit and I had to sit with that, Laura, because the way that we were building them into our programming for our members. And our members were, you know, these were women leaders, we were helping them with financial literacy. We were building them into the programming, the sponsor, the way that my team was focused on the marketing and building out the marketing in for events in all of this huge It was so it was such a big deal. And I thought you know what, if if we do this and we only do a 90 day trial, I'm literally putting my team at risk and putting our members in a possible position of having something and then having to take it away from them. Right and that doesn't feel like having her back. Right, right. When is my value going back to the values and so here I am with this big financial decision of do I want to go back to this Big, mega corporate company and say, Excuse me? No, we actually need to do the full year or I can't do this deal. And I sat with it. And I sat with it for the weekend. And I was like, No, this is my value. This is my values, our decision making filters for me. That's right. And so I went back on Monday. And I said, You know what, I really want to do this. I think for all the reasons I've listed that this is a great deal. Here's why I can't do that. Here's my value. And here's what I've done. And here's how we're building you in, you know what they said, no problem, can we just break it out into quarterly payments? And I said, Sure, there we go. And we close the deal, right. But I was willing to walk away from that $110,000 sponsorship.

Laura Khalil: 20:46

When I started brave by design a year ago, I had no idea that it would actually help me build multiple revenue streams for my business. If you are a coach, consultant, or service provider, who loves podcasting, and wants to learn how I got brave by design into the top 125 career podcasts, built five figures of revenue from the podcast and grew my brand. I'm offering a free webinar later this January, head on over to podcast brand lab.com. For all the details. That's podcast brand lab.com. That's an incredible story, Jennifer. And you know, that's the kind of story that people and women need to hear most, that it is okay to walk away. If it's not in alignment with your values, and you were always keeping your customers first, which was one of your values, stated differently. But that is, that's kind of, you know, I've always, whenever I've talked to clients, or whenever I've talked to people who want to be entrepreneurs, and understand how to consult, which is my first career, I always say you have to be ready to say now you choose who your clients are you choose who you want to surround yourself with for the workweek. And if you're not excited by the deal, if it doesn't bring anything to your life, why are you saying yes. So it's sometimes that's hard for people to hear. They're not used to, they're so used to try to kind of do a land grab, you know, and take everything in, without having some discernment around if it really feels true to them, if it is aligned with their values. So I love that story. So let me ask you this, Jennifer, what is true wealth to you? Yeah, true. Wealth

Jennifer Love: 22:43

is a state of being. It's a state of living wealthy, right? It's a state of being alive, and connected, and whole within yourself. true wealth is a model. For me. It's a model of identifying kind of the spiritual, emotional, and mental and physical scar tissue that creates our upper limits in our life, in our relationship with finances, that's keeping you a prisoner inside of yourself. And I find that so many people are I once was, I get it, I know what it's like. And also, then we're reconnecting to that natural state of being, which requires us to clear that scar tissue that's constipating our life and robbing us of our freedom, and robbing us of our joy and robbing us of our security. And then there's a practice field, I call it the integration phase, right? It's being in the practice field where we can end emotional poverty and ease our anxiety and step into a life empowered by healthy financial decisions from a whole self, not a half partly amputated self. And then we can embody this flow state of living wealthy, and being okay with whatever comes, knowing how to make healthy decisions, generously giving spending and besting raising money, all of it. That's what true wealth really is. It's a state of beingness

Laura Khalil: 24:19

oh my gosh, I love it. I'm just like, I want to eat it all up. Jennifer, this is so great. So for people who are saying to themselves, you know, yeah, I hear you, Jennifer. I hear what you're saying. But right now, I am in a job I hate. I am just trying to get my monthly expenses paid for where does someone like that begin? Do they begin with just doing that gentle inquiry into those wounds? Do we begin with making a plan? What do you feel is the best next step for them?

Jennifer Love: 24:55

Well, I think the inquiry is always where I'm going to send someone initially because we need to identify What's going on? Right? And I'm going to just give one more little piece here. And that is to begin to understand what our needs are. Because if we're if we're making a plan, but we don't know, underneath it, what our needs, our financial needs, our emotional needs, like our physical, like, if we don't know what our rights are, if our wants are, how the heck are we being with our money? Right? Like, why are you going to go make a plan when you don't even know what your values and your needs are? So please, like, begin to understand where the scar tissue is by doing that self inquiry, for sure. But I'm going to give you a quick process for understanding what your needs are. And this is about two Marshall Rosenberg.

Laura Khalil: 25:44

I don't know Marshall Rosenberg, who is that?

Jennifer Love: 25:46

Yeah, Marshall. Rosenberg is a psychologist for many years ago, he's passed on. But he's left a legacy through nonviolent communication or grant. And his work is so foundational to understanding what our needs are. And it starts with a process of taking just a simple observation of something that's happening in your life, let's say a triggered experience, right? It can be anything, really. But just, I like kind of stating the facts of what that situation is, right? And then what is it that you're feeling in your body? Now this is where a lot of people get really stuck? Where do you feel that Oh, I feel my stomach tightening up? Or I feel my shoulders? Or maybe it's my jaw? Or maybe, you know, it's my chest area? I feel like some tingling or I feel like a swirling in my belly. Right? What are the sensations that you're feeling? Why is that important? Because when we can access our body, our body is like a gauge. It's a tool that gives us information about what's happening for us. It's the treasure hunt that we're on to identify our need. So the observation of the experience, the triggered moment, what's happening in my body? Okay, what are the emotions? Am I angry? My frustrated? am I afraid? Right? What is the emotion that I'm feeling? Okay. Okay, then what are all the thoughts? The judgments that are associated that I'm off? Because she did this? Right? I'm mad because of I'm afraid of. Right. So what are all the thoughts and the emotions? All of that is giving us the information and clues for what's really the need that's not getting met? Oh, hmm. I have a need for being comforted right now. I need to feel connected. Oh, I need some nourishment right now. Whatever your need is. Okay. So now that I understand what my need is, what's the best strategy for me to actually get my needs met? What's the request I can make either to myself, because oftentimes, we can meet our own needs. But what's the healthy request not demand? That's very different. demanding something of someone is very different than, Hey, you know what I have this need? I'm wondering if you could help me out with X, Y, and Z fill in the blank, right? Yeah. So that I can meet my need, right? That is the foundational place that we all need to go, I feel like we're walking around in a world, Laura, with leaders with folks who are so emotionally impoverished, I call it we don't know what their needs are, who have unfulfilled needs, and when we get our needs met, then we can really begin to operate from a place of planning for our future. And knowing what we want and how we want it, right. That's the foundational place to start. What are my values? And part of how you identify your values, is by looking at what are you spending your money on? What are you spending on? What is it that you love to read or learn about or talk to people with right you? Those are clues for understanding what your values are, and then doing the self inquiry, you know, what is it that I am afraid to look at in my life? And what are your needs in that process that Marshall Rosenberg left us with? Thank you, Marshall, for identifying our needs. Those are foundational places to begin.

Laura Khalil: 29:23

You know, I love that. Thank you for explaining that. I love it for so many reasons. The first is because as you said the body is an incredible tool that we do not often use to our fullest advantage to help get all that somatic intelligence from we just try to ignore it most of the time. The second thing I really resonated with me is you know, typically when we talk about financial advice, or we talk about abundance, we talk about money. We're often if not always putting the cart before the horse That's exactly right. We're not doing this

Jennifer Love: 30:02

work. That's exactly right. And you know what happens, Laura, because we're not doing this work. First, we make a big freakin mess that we have to then go clean up and spend a lot more time and a lot more energy and a lot more money cleaning up. Yeah,

Laura Khalil: 30:17

yeah. And so there are, I'm sure are people right now who are listening to this thinking, well shoot, I think I'm in a little bit of a quagmire right now. And so Jennifer, what do we advise for people? And how can people learn more about you and the resources you offer? moving forward?

Jennifer Love: 30:37

Yeah, we'll come over and over to Jennifer Love calm. I've got a discovery session that you can have with me for free. And also, you know what I'd love to give everyone today I have a list of contemplation questions for that self inquiry. I've got a whole list that I'll just give to everyone who comes over and is like, hey, Jen, send me the contemplation questions. Oh, OMG. Signing up. You got it. Yeah. And I my recommendation is to go through one a week and just sit with it. Just sit with the inquiry. So with a question. And if you want to dig even further, of course, I'm here.

Laura Khalil: 31:13

I love that. Oh, my gosh, it is been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Jennifer Love: 31:21

Yeah, this was a nice conversation. Thanks for having me.

Laura Khalil: 31:25

I want to thank you for joining me and remember to subscribe to your favorite app so you can stay up to date. And I would love your review. If you've enjoyed this episode. Please leave a review and comment on Apple podcasts. You can also keep in touch with me online. You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm also on Instagram at force of badassery. All that information will be available in the show notes. Until next time, stay brave.