Earning Well From Passion With Nicole Roberts Jones And Living A Wealthy Life With Jennifer Love

Loving your job is one thing but having the opportunity to earn well with purpose and passion is another. Nicole Roberts Jones is the CEO of NRJ Enterprises, where she helps individuals bankroll their brilliance. Her mission is to help you align your purpose with your paycheck. She breaks down the process in her new book, Find Your FIERCE: Answering Your Soul’s Call to Purpose, Power & Profit, which she discusses in this episode with host Dr. Dianne Hamilton. Tune in and learn ways you can live in your full power and potential.

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Success is not just about how much money you earn. It matters how you make and manage your money as well and how it aligns with your purpose. Jennifer Love is a money therapist, wealth philosopher, and nationally acclaimed business advisor. She is also the CEO of Living Wealthy Institute, where she helps entrepreneurs remove stress and create a nourishing and wholesome experience while making money. Jennifer believes that it’s all about being clear with your values and purpose when it comes to accumulating wealth. She sits down with host Dr. Dianne Hamilton to discuss how you can achieve a wealthy life in all aspects and extend that wealth to society and future generations.

I’m so glad you joined us because we have Nicole Roberts Jones and Jennifer Love. Nicole is the Bankroll Your Brilliance expert. She’s the CEO of NRJ Enterprises. Jennifer is the CEO of Living Wealthy Institute. She’s one of the top five internationally acclaimed business advisors. We are going to talk to these two fascinating women.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Earning Well From Passion With Nicole Roberts Jones

I am here with Nicole Roberts Jones. She is the CEO of NRJ Enterprises. She is a Bankroll Your Brilliance expert. She has created the Brilliance Mastery Academy. I’m so excited to have you here, Nicole, welcome.

Thank you. I’m excited to be here with you.

TTL 858 | Earning Well From Passion — Find Your FIERCE: Answering Your Soul’s Call to Purpose, Power & Profit

This is going to be fun. I know you are the bestselling author of four books. You have been everywhere. Your clients are Steve Harvey World Group, Dell, McDonald’s, Blue Cross, you name it, who’s who. For those people who have managed to miss you and the things you have done, can you give me your backstory so we can catch people up on how you reached this level of success?

Let me tell you, I never set out to be here. If you would have asked me years ago where I would be an entrepreneur, I would have told you this, “You have lost your mind. The answer is no.” I always say I’ve got here in an accident. It all started in 1993. Don’t worry, it’s not a long story but I need to give you that context because some of you who are reading might be in the same place I’m in or I wasn’t then. In 1993, I had the career I have dreamed of since I was seven years old. I worked in the entertainment industry. I loved every single minute of it. At the time, I worked for Viacom’s largest cable network.

We had outreached over 89 million homes weekly. From there, I worked on the Netherland TV show in casting a TV show on Fox. I worked with an entertainment group. What we produce generated over $12.6 billion a year. I have to tell you that because I want you to realize how big I was playing if you would know me like I think you know me, Diane, you know I was going to all of the hot Hollywood parties, bumping elbows with all the stars, people you have seen on TV and looked at on film. I was living this dream.

How tall is Schwarzenegger or Denzel or whoever you ran into?

It’s relative because I’m short so I might say they are taller than you think. You may be way taller than me so it’s all relative but they are shorter than the average man, I will say that. Denzel is probably average. He might be about 5’7, 5’6. I never met Arnold Schwarzenegger, to be honest with you. This is in the ’90s. He was full in his Terminator time. I was never into Terminator. I was doing all of that, going to all these parties. What I felt at night when I was by myself, I felt like something was missing. I didn’t understand how I felt like that when I loved my job. I loved every minute of everything I did. Feeling like that, I started calling my girlfriends, trying to figure it out. They kept saying, “Are you crazy? Didn’t we go to this party and didn’t you go to this thing? Don’t you love your job?” That made it worse.

Your comfort and your conviction can never coexist. Click To Tweet

Being dazed and confused, I didn’t realize this was going to be my a-ha moment. One Friday night, one of my girlfriends asked me if I want to volunteer with her at a program working with young women at our church. I said, “No problem.” As I started working with young women that night and when their eyes lit up, my heart lit up. I said, “This thing that I’m doing, this is it.” Keep in mind, I didn’t know that’s called coaching. This was 1993. I had never heard of coaching. I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know I could get a paycheck for this thing but for the first time in my life, my soul was alive. At that moment, I had a decision to make. I could choose to live in perception and what everyone knew my life to be or I could go after this thing that was rumbling in my soul.

I wrote a book on perception, the fact that what we think other people have this idea of who we are though. I felt a lot that way when I was in pharmaceutical sales. Although I love working for the company, I didn’t like being a pharmaceutical rep. Everybody would always tell you, “That’s the best job in the world. You are so lucky.” I’m like, “I don’t like to drive.” You are driving all day. It’s the tasks at hand if they are a good match for what you love. As far as the Hollywood aspect, I sat next to Tom Selleck once in an airplane. He’s 6’4. He is as tall as you think he is. He was a big guy, a nice guy, too. As we look at some of the things that people think that we should be doing, it’s hard. A lot of people ask me, “How do you know what you want to do? How do you get your vision?” With entrepreneurs, you think that they have this idea from the birth of what they want to do. A lot of them know they want to have a company but they don’t know what they want to do. How do you help somebody or guide them if they are fuzzy about what direction to go?

I wrote a whole book about it. It’s called Find Your FIERCE. For the minute that you are reading, don’t think you are not going to get your breakthrough in this. With my husband, I tried to say, “I can help you find your fierce.” He said, “There’s a whole lot of things you can do but you will never help me find my fierce.” With that, years ago, I was watching Beyoncé performing. I would say I was hating on her a little bit but I would be lying. I was hating a lot and a full-on jealous moment. I can dance but I can’t sing so I feel like she stole the job I’m supposed to have but that’s a whole another conversation. In the middle of feeling jealous, what dropped in my spirit is you have fierce too. I’m like, “This is not God talking to me while watching Beyoncé.” Here’s what I began to realize. When Beyoncé created Sasha Fierce, that alter ego she created when she was going solo for the first time, it conjured up fear in her. Meaning that before then, she had always had girls around her in Destiny’s Child. She grew up. She was nine years old, and then she’s 19, 20, somewhere around there. She’s got to do this by herself and it’s scary.

What I began to realize that she had to conjure this ego up so she could live in the full power of what she was born to do. I started realizing what would life look like if all of us put in our full gifts and talents, no perception, no judgment, not feeling guilty. We let nothing else stop us, we’ve got clear and uncompromising what we were put on this Earth to do. In essence, I realized at that moment that God was calling me to help people find their fierce. There’s a four-step framework, to answer your question quickly, to find your Fierce framework. The first is what are you passionate about? What could you do hour upon hour and never ever get paid for it because you love it so much?

In my book, there’s a picture of me when I was three. There’s a picture of me pushing a baby carriage. Most three-year-old little girls have a baby in their baby carriage, number one. Number two, I’m talking in the picture. My husband found a picture. He was doing rolls for my 40th birthday. He and my mom were pulling up pictures. He said, “How come in 90% of your pictures you are talking?” “I do. I talk. I have been talking my whole life.” We have that in common. That’s why it’s no coincidence that I talk for a living. It’s passion. The second thing it’s got to correlate with is proficiency. You’ve got to be good at it. You can’t love it and not be good at it. I love to sing. Trust me. If I started singing, Diane, I can’t hold a tune if I wanted to. I can’t hold it if I held it in my hand.

Michelle Obama talks about this in her book Becoming. Both of these have to correlate. Those of you that haven’t read Becoming, don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil it. In Chapter 10, she talks about the fact that she had matriculated through law school. We all know that. She got to a place that many people wish to get to in the law profession but she realized that she hated it. That’s that. Passion was missing. She was proficient in it but she didn’t love it. To find your fierce, your purpose, the thing you were born to do, you’ve got to be passionate and proficient in it. The third thing is it’s got to solve a problem. Ultimately, it’s not for you. It’s for everybody that needs you. I love that Steve Jobs created the Apple computer because I have everything, iPhone, iPad. I have a MacBook. He solved the problem.

iDog.

Don’t give him any ideas. I probably would get an iDog. I travel so much. I want a dog and I can’t be able to get one to care for it. He solved a problem in the marketplace. Ultimately, your gift is the answer to somebody’s problem. The problem is it could be people because it was a group of people that need that gift in you. Ultimately, after you find what you’re passionate and proficient in, those correlate, you realize a problem you solve is going to lead to the fourth P which is profit. How do you profit from it? Those are the four Ps to the Fierce framework.

First of all, I want to know since Beyoncé stole your name, what’s your alter ego name?

I don’t have an alter ego name. Beyoncé doesn’t use her alter ego anymore either. She used it at a time because she was scared. It’s almost like Superman and Clark Kent. At some point, Clark Kent needs to send his full power so he can be Superman or Diana Prince. Most people don’t remember Diana Prince. Diana Prince was Wonder Woman. At some point, if Diana Prince stood at her full power, she would be Wonder Woman full-time. For me at that moment when I had that epiphany, what I believe my lesson was it was time for me to stop playing small, not being afraid of what other people had to think or say about this new thing I was doing, and then giving others permission to do the same.

It’s interesting to think about creating an alter ego. I’ve got to give that some thought. When you brand your own name, you are the thing that you are saying, it’s a different thing. As you were talking about when you were a kid, all the pictures of you were talking, I was thinking about as a kid, I would be playing with checkbooks and weird things. Little girls don’t care about checkbooks. My mom gave me her old checks. I remember thinking that’s the coolest thing ever. I knew I would go into business. I always planned to do that. Do you know how when people get into college, they changed their degree or program 3 or 4 times? I was one of those people who went in. I knew I was going to do it and I did it but a lot of people think like, “That looks shiny.” How do you keep from looking at everything as the shiny next new thing?

It depends because sometimes it is time for you to do the next thing. You’ve got to assess, is it time for you to make a pivot because it’s time to expand your territory or are you shifting from this place you are in out of fear? If I look at Michelle Obama as an example, I told that same story at an event I was speaking at. The woman said, “Do you think that her going to law school was a waste?” I said, “No.” “Do you think she would have been a phenomenal first lady without it?” “No.” Sometimes it’s a combination of all the things you have been through that becomes the stew that is you, even if you think about school. We have to go to kindergarten before we go to 1st, 2nd or any elementary. We have to go through elementary before we go to junior high before high school and on and on. It’s the stage to matriculate. The question is, “Are you matriculating because you are growing and expanding your territory or are you running from something you are afraid to do or be?”

From having written so many college courses, you scaffold this course that leads to the next course and then the next course. When I first started doing the show, this was thousands of people ago, I used to ask them the question, “Would you do something different?” Most people would say, “No because it led to where you are.” I’ve got to see Michelle Obama speak here in Phoenix at the Workhuman event. She was great. It was a great event. You develop into that kind of a dynamic personality through all of your experiences. I tend to be a Nike kind of person. Just Do It. Women tend to not apply for the job until they have 100% of the qualifications where men will be like, “I can do it.” How do we get that do-it mentality?

Be willing to step out of comfort to grow in ways you never thought was possible. Click To Tweet

We have to be willing to step outside our comfort zone. One of the things I have learned in my own journey is your comfort and your conviction can never coexist. If I use myself as an example, I worked at entertainment. I was pretty comfortable and loving it. With this newness of this thing that I didn’t know what to call it, me being comfortable would have been me staying in entertainment. Uncomfortable was me going to the library, that’s how long ago was, by the way. There was no internet. We go into the library to research this thing that I thought was social work but I realized was coaching. That’s all I could capture back then. Going after it, so I went and got a Master’s degree in Social Work, all this stuff I didn’t know what I was doing at any stage. What happens too as we’ve got more seasoned. I don’t like to say older. I’m seasoned. I’m not older. As we’ve got more seasoned, we forget what it’s like to do things uncomfortable because we’ve gotten to a level of success that’s very comfortable. It was willing to step out of comfort to grow in ways you never thought possible.

The being seasoned thing is something that comes up a lot with what I do. If I wasn’t seasoned, I wouldn’t be able to talk about so many things for the radio show or my teaching the courses. I could teach just about anything because I have done it by this point. That’s one thing. What seasoning does for you are all the different things that you have a chance to do. I’m sure you work with younger people or less seasoned people who want to go into being an entrepreneur but they don’t have that breadth of knowledge. What’s the most important thing that they need to focus on when they start a business?

I like to use a lot of analogies. It makes a difference when you try on a pair of shoes. I’m a shopper. All of you shoppers out there, you are with me. You will love it. All of you that hate shopping is not going to love this example. When you go to Nordstrom or wherever you buy the shoes that you love, if you just buy them and don’t try them on, you get home and they hurt or something is off. Many Millennials, many young folks and some seasoned folks do this too. You are starting a whole new arena and you haven’t even tried it out yet. How do you know that it’s going to be a good fit? How do you know you can stress into that arena? It’s the same thing. The best shoes I buy, I walk around it for a few minutes. I do need a few minutes. Some people at Nordstrom get sick of me because I will wear the shoes, walk around and get 5 to 10 minutes. If they hurt in the first ten, I’m not buying them.

It’s the same kind of concept. You’ve got to try some things on and see. That’s why internships are so critical. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer when I was an undergrad until I realized all that came with being a lawyer. I was like, “I like to talk. I could do something else.” It’s trying it on and allowing it. The other piece is if someone is going to hire you, they are going to hire you from expertise. It’s not just a degree. When I meet twenty-year-olds, let’s say, and they think, “I’m going to be a director,” it’s like, “You haven’t even had a job yet. What makes you think you want to go from Bachelor’s degree to a director? I don’t understand. You’ve got to pay dues. You’ve got to put some skin in the game,” as my husband would say.

They do get it though. I see so many young people with these titles. I’m like, “What are you again?” They will tell me. They sound good but I’m not sure what they do. Have you noticed that a little bit?

I noticed that some of these companies give them that title that sounds good but they are pretty much below happy.

“Chief Happiness Officer. I want that. I don’t know what it is but it sounds good.” I like the shoe analogy. I will give a big shout-out to Dennis at Nordstrom because he lets me walk around in my shoes. He’s the best. It’s a challenge because you get people, especially young people see a few people make it big. They all want to be Elon Musk. They want to be the next billion-dollar company. They want to be on the top. It’s like winning the lottery. There are very few people who do it.

Not only that but they are comparing their life to the highlight reel. What I mean by that is if we look at Jeff Bezos, this picture is from back in his day. He was in his garage with one computer and he looked stressed out. People forget about that, all the years it took and all the people that thought he was crazy for these Amazon ideas. Now when you look at him, it’s like, “I want that.” What about all the nights that he probably stayed up late? What about all the months he didn’t make any money? He probably was in the red trying to start this business. What about all the people that thought he had lost his mind? Get about that piece. That piece is so critical.

It’s timing. The unicorn thing doesn’t just happen overnight. We are getting some people like the Theranos thing, Elizabeth Holmes or people out there who are trying to fake it before they make it kind of thing. It’s dangerous to compare yourself to Jeff Bezos or anybody like that. That’s not realistic. There are not many of them. How do you set the bar for yourself when there are these high bars? How do you know what to aim for?

It’s staying in your own lane. I read this article about an Olympic runner named Gwen Torrence. This was in 1995. She pretty much was the fastest woman in the world at the time. She won this Olympic race, long story short. If you have ever seen an Olympic race, you have seen the people run the lap and they are waving, people throwing flowers up, all kinds of stuff. While she’s doing that, the judges are looking at her reel and they realized that she’s, one, running in someone else’s lane, which apparently, gets you disqualified. That’s what I have seen so many people do. I see many people do things that are not in alignment with their fierce. That means that you are running in someone else’s lane. You are running your race to do your business, to do your career, to do your life. You are running in somebody else’s lane that lane was not designed for you. If you do that, you will automatically be disqualified from the life that was tailor-made for you.

It reminds me of when I saw Gabby Thomas. Have you seen her yet? I love her. I want her to win. I’m very up for her going to Olympics.

It starts with you being clear. I took gymnastics too. Let me tell you. I failed hard at the 2nd or 3rd class. My mother too realized that I’m not meant to be a gymnast but had I stayed in that class, I’m supposed to be Gabby Douglas. That was a long time ago. That was in the ’70s. I would automatically never be successful because I wasn’t meant to be Gabby Douglas.

There’s another one though, Gabby Thomas. Have you seen her? She’s the runner. Gabby was a great gymnast too. You have to be named Gabby to do well. Not Diane, for sure. Getting to see these incredible athletes, entrepreneurs and people who do these things, people get this high of wanting to reach the summit but then it’s a lot of work. Especially in 2020 with COVID, a lot of people had all their eggs in one basket. They lost a lot and they don’t know what to do to catch up. I know with a lot of it, you want to create multiple streams of income. You want to do different things so those things don’t happen. Do you have any advice for people who took a beating in 2020?

I already knew this but it got blown up in 2020. One thing that never gets canceled is your purpose. No matter what’s happening in this world, the one thing that never gets canceled is the thing you were born to do. There are 24 hours in the day, we sleep eight. If we only have sixteen hours of the day to play with doing this thing we are born to do, you’ve got to be clear that you can’t add more time to your day. That means for you to make money, what most billionaires don’t tell you is you’ve got to have more than one revenue stream but one of those revenue streams has to be something that is included that you are not present. While I’m talking to you, Diane, somebody is going through one of my online programs and I’m not there.

As a matter of fact, a woman in Singapore went through one of my online programs. I sometimes call people randomly. When I saw her phone number, I’m like, “First of all, where is that? Why don’t you email?” We’ve got on a Zoom call. I was like, “How did you find me?” I was amazed. You’ve got to be able to take your problems that you are the solution to in all the ways you could package it so that you can serve more people and help transform more lives, whether that’s lives, businesses, careers or whatever it is you do. You always have to be there.

Having a funnel of different ways for the small entrepreneurship things right at the beginning is important. I do the same thing with my certification courses in different things and make it amazing. Everybody wants it that way anyway when they are trying to find things. It makes it easy for a lot of people to have options. It’s part of knowing what kinds of things you can offer. Scrolling down on a piece of paper and some chart in a way has helped me. If I have this, I could do that and what will lead to this. Do you have a way of charting it out for people or do you talk it out with them when you work with them? I’m curious how you do it.

It is talking about that because there’s no cookie-cutter. A program that might be a good fit for you may not be a good fit for me. You’ve got to, number one, go back probably in the passion and proficiency. What is it? When those two correlate, what’s the predictable result you get people, too? People are not going to pay empowerment or pay for motivation. It’s so funny how many people I have talked to that are like, “I empower people.” “Good for you. We can do that for free. Charge on something.” You’ve got to be able to articulate the predictable result that solves a problem and then looking at the solutions. I will give you a tangible example. Dr. Deborah Tillman who was America’s Supernanny, I had the opportunity to work with her. She came at a time where she couldn’t take any more clients. What most people don’t know in addition to being on TV, speaking all over the world and coaching families, she also owns childcare centers. What we did was we created what I call a blueprint.

Most people don’t realize that there is a methodology inside of you and because you are on autopilot, you don’t even realize it. When I told Deborah that we had to do this, she was like, “I tailor the experience.” Deborah is sweet. This is how I received it. She didn’t say it like this. She said, “I tailor the experience every time I work with a family.” We are going to work past that. Not that she’s going to fire me. When she came back to the second coaching call, I gave her the exercise I give to every one of my clients. She wasn’t here. She had no idea that she had a methodology. From that methodology, we created what she calls the GPS, which is a Greater Parenting System, something that has online programs and group programs. In essence, for her, it wasn’t about making more money. She wanted to stop leaving transformation behind because there were so many more families that needed her.

Sometimes you need an outside perspective to grasp what works, what doesn’t. I have had a lot of this talk with different consultants about what seems obvious to you or me might not be obvious to the person with whom you are working. You don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t see the forest, the trees or whatever the expression is. You have this sense of getting information from an outside source that enlightens you in a way. It seems like it should be intuitive and sometimes it’s not. Do you find that’s the case for a lot of people?

Sure because you are on autopilot. Some things are intrinsic to your DNA. When I say DNA, I mean Distinct Natural Ability. Those intrinsic things that you don’t even realize you do, one. Two, some things are valuable to other people that aren’t valuable to you because it’s easy for you. You are like, “That whole thing?” It’s like, “No, that person needs that.” It takes an outside person to see. I always say it’s in your blind spot. Those of you that drive, when we go to get our license, we have to do this whole thing where you look at your blind spot and you are supposed to still do it when you move over all that fun stuff.

No matter what’s happening in this world, the one thing that never gets canceled is the thing you were born to do. Click To Tweet

There are areas of your brain that are in your blind spots. Someone else has to say, “This is valuable. Did you see this?” For me, going back to that story in 1993 when I started working with those girls in that church that night and those girls are in their 40s, I’m like, “How did you become in your 40s?” They reminded me. “Nicole, what you did was you showed us what our purpose is. You have to carve out a career that was in alignment with our gifts and talents.” I have been doing this for years. It’s who I will be. It took me a while to understand that but that’s the way I’m wired. Everyone has this certain natural inclination for things. Once you get clear on that, it then allows you to serve more people and do more good in the world.

You are doing so much for people. A lot of people could benefit from what you are working on. I want to make sure everybody can find you and get your information. Is there a site or something you would like to share?

Yes. First, I’m going to give a gift to those of you that are saying, “Nicole, all this is great.” I do hope. It’s BrillianceRoadmapQuiz.com, the free quiz. You take the quiz. It will tell you where you are on the journey to start or grow your business. After that, it will give you another free five-step strategy to help you move it forward. My new favorite thing is Instagram. @NRobertsJones is where you find me on Instagram.

I hope everybody takes time to check out your site and take the assessment. This was so much fun. I knew it would be, Nicole. Thank you for being on the show.

Thank you for having me. This was fun. I felt like I was talking to a girlfriend I have known forever.

Living A Wealthy Life With Jennifer Love

I am here with Jennifer Love. She is a money therapist, wealth philosopher, ally of nature, you name it. She is very much interested in business advising. She’s also a dark chocolate enthusiast. I love that you listed that in your bio, Jennifer, welcome. I’m very excited to have you here.

Thank you. I am a dark chocolate lover. I am a Cofounding partner of a dark chocolate company called NibMor. I’m like, “Come in and do a plug for my chocolate.” It’s amazing. It has been part of my own journey of healing and my own version of my leadership style for developing myself.

I’ve got to try that. My daughter is into dark chocolate so I’m going to have to check it out. I have not tried it, I will admit. I have had people that have created different things. I had the CEO of Hint. I’m completely addicted to Hint since she has been on. Have you ever heard of Hint Water?

Kara is awesome. I love Kara.

She’s good. Peach is my thing. I drink so much of it since then. I know you have won so many awards. You have done many things. I want to have you give the backstory on you because I won’t do it justice. A lot of people want to know how you’ve got to this level.

I’m thinking through the reflection of what is my own leadership style. How did I lead myself here? It’s not just about leading ourselves in our business. It’s about leading ourselves to the point where we have the capacity, belief, openness, ability to receive, guide and grow. If I think back on my own journey, it has been through taking the adventure of my life into myself and allowing myself through the different businesses that I have had. I have had five different companies over the years, which half of them are still going strong. It was like to get me to that place. Why did I choose that company, that product, that service? I wasn’t just choosing it to make money, whether we are doing our own thing of allowing ourselves to live in our purpose and be on fire or whether we are miserable at the job that we do but we are doing it for a reason. We are doing it for more than money. Regardless of what we are choosing, we are doing it for more than money. We are doing it because underneath that, we are trying to lead ourselves, and therefore others, somewhere.

That’s where what’s interesting to me about my own backstory. The choices that I made to lead myself to where I am had so much been about healing. It has been about what’s the next right step for me so that I can benefit from this thing that I’m investing time in, that I am giving my heart or my dollars to, whether we own a business or not. What am I choosing and why am I choosing this? What’s the next right step? If I think back to the three-year-old me, I was making choices throughout my career that were so based on I’m not enough or I’m not lovable. Therefore, I’m going to try to prove myself. I’m going to try to gain all that I can so that I can feel good enough, that I will have the accolades, the press and the money in the bank.

The problem was, Diane, that I’ve got all that and yet, I still didn’t feel fulfilled. It didn’t make me feel like enough and I was loved because that’s not it. That’s my point. Where my story began was the three-year-old me who watched her father walk out, watched her mother become financially disempowered and say, “We don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to live in emotional poverty every single day. We can choose again and become aware of what we are choosing, why we are choosing it so that the step that we are taking forward is the step that we want from a place of love.” I know that was a lot. I dropped it on me for my backstory.

The epitome of living wealthy is being wealthy in the different aspects of ourselves. Click To Tweet

We have a lot of things in common. One of the first books I was supposed to write was supposed to be a financial book for young adults. I wrote my dissertation on emotional intelligence, which deals with a lot of the stuff we are talking about. There are a lot of overlap in business and behavioral things. Some of your interview topics were about emotion and some of the stuff I deal with, your money personality and all that. Understanding the psychology part of the business is super important. I have talked to so many psychologists on the show about how they overlap. I was wondering, how did you get interested in the behavioral aspect of it?

It was from watching a mother become financially disempowered, feeling into my own wounding at a very early age and having a great amount of anger that I didn’t know what to do with because no one was talking about it. It wasn’t okay for girls to be angry and act out of that but I didn’t know where to put it. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t understand the discomfort that was happening for me and why it was happening for me the way that it was happening for me, watching my mother and how it was happening for her. I became fascinated with what was happening inside of me and other people. I started down the road of getting a PhD in Forensic Psychology, studying the darkness in people and being very fascinated about what makes people turn that direction, turn into that darkness and act out of that and yet, it was a little too dark for me. It’s interesting, fascinating but not something I wanted to choose to sit with every day.

Ironically, that is in some ways what I do with my clients. Through our darkness, to the other side of that, we can’t access this great being of light and love inside of us. I know I’m talking a little rude but I mean that. Underneath our pain, our shadows and darkness, the poor decisions that we are making about money because we are acting from a place of fear or scarcity is deep care and love. If we can learn how to compost our thoughts, become aware of what’s running this emotionally and the conversations that we need to have, the ownership that we need to take or the things that we need to release and put down and let go of, that’s fascinating and cool to me. Looking at human behavior and also organizational behavior, to me, it’s those inner workings of why is everything in this web of ourselves coming out and expressing in the way that it is or through our bodies, having things show up and arise.

I’ve got bumped off a horse. I broke my spine. How did that come in? How am I being with that? What am I choosing even in that? Talk about affecting your business, your ability to work or deep levels of pain. We are experiencing deep levels of pain in all areas of our life. It’s all interwoven together and impacting the other. How are we choosing our thoughts? I will tell you, when I’ve got the diagnosis of having caught equina syndrome and I had to go in for emergency surgery the day after the fall or otherwise, I would have a 10% chance of ever walking again. It’s a big deal. Coming out of that and being told that it’s going to take 1 year to 2 years for full recovery, I’m saying, “I hear what you are saying but I’m going to choose something different. I’m going to be walking out of this rehabilitation center with no wheelchair, with no cane, with myself or some walking sticks. That’s what I’m going to do.” It was 5 to 7 days after the accident, I’m being able to walk up a small flight of stairs but how did I do that?

I was doing that because while I was listening to what they are asking me to do in terms of moving my body but I was also welcoming the pain. I was saying, “Come enter me. I welcome you here, all that is.” For me to welcome it, guess what I had to do, Diane? I had to surrender. I had to release. My muscles required me to relax for me to accept it. I accepted, surrendered, opened up and my muscles relaxed. Sometimes that would take me hours to focus on that. It was like a full-time job in a rehab center. I’m breathing through it. I want to take you to this important point. I’m leading you here. What happened was my body opened up and the pain moved right through me. It changed form. It no longer was being stuck inside of me as this tightened body of pain. I had to do that over and over again, accessing breath, visualizing and doing all the things that everyone says that we’ve got to do. I was doing it deeply for hours but this is what we can do in all aspects of ourselves. We can accept the emotional pain.

We can accept the things that have happened in our life. We don’t have to make them all right but we can accept them. We can stop and say, “What’s my part? What’s my side of the street?” A real leader takes radical ownership. A real leader can put their righteous ego down and say, “There are two sides of the street here. What is my part?” That’s when we can start putting down the blame and the shame, that inner fear with every single decision that we are making, how we are being in a relationship, how we are showing up. Since we know from a scientific point that 90% of all of our money decisions are being made from a place of emotionality, we better get clear about what’s happening for us emotionally, going back to your research in your book and what you have been up to.

Those are all about asking questions. Since I’m focused on curiosity, I think that that’s so critical. When it comes to living wealthy, I’m trying to see how you tie that all together.

The epitome of living wealthy is being wealthy in the different aspects of our self. To me, we can’t exist wealthy having money, the possession of possessing something. That’s one form of wealth but there are many forms of wealth. There’s also good freedom within our self to be ourselves. There’s the freedom in our self to share our self, to express ourselves. There’s the freedom in our self to receive from other people. All of this is fundamentally playing into what’s in your bank account, how you are growing your assets, how you are deciding that you are going to be about generational wealth, what you are leaving behind, how you are communicating that or building the structure and foundation for that. All of our inner world, the adventure of ourselves, the roller coaster of ourselves has everything to do with our ability, capacity and quality of living wealthy from the inside out.

Flow like water because water can get around anything. Click To Tweet

You brought up generational wealth in there. I’m curious because of the discussion of some of the people out there who were saying what they are going to do with their actual financial wealth and different types of wealth. Let’s go into the financial aspect of it. When you think about the impact of the gates or whoever in the world who doesn’t want to leave their financial wealth to their children necessarily, is that something you are seeing as a thing with the higher income people out there who have a lot of wealth to leave? Are they trying to teach their kids something by doing that? What do you think of that practice?

It’s a very personal choice. I’m very much about liberty without going into politics. I’m very much about freedom of choice. Those of us who are leaders, who are like, “I’m accumulating wealth.” It’s making sure we are going on the greatest adventure of ourselves, taking our side of the street, being clear in ourselves, emotionally clean. You might say that being emotionally clean and a high vibe is important to this decision-making process. When we look at that from a place on making the decision, it’s like going out as a gardener. I come from a family of gardeners and farmers. It’s like, “I don’t want to have just this one orchard. I want to have whole huge fields of orchards of apple trees.” If we don’t know what to do with those apples, then we are afraid to expand beyond the production of one small field.

This is part of being in a relationship with generational wealth. It’s like, “How do I want to grow my apples? How do I want them to be grown and continue to expand out? How am I going to create a contribution to my family, to the world, with that? How do I want to show up and be a healthy wealth steward?” I would say it’s by making those kinds of decisions, which requires us to be clear and to understand what our values are, to live into them and use them as decision-making filters in every financial decision that we are making. With generational wealth, what do I think about people leaving their money like the Gates? It’s a very personal choice. It can be a very beautiful thing if what underneath it is clean.

You bring up some important things about how we deal with our financial decisions. You also help people prepare for certain things. I know you have prepared entrepreneurs how to land on Shark Tank. I was fortunate to have Kevin Harrington wrote the foreword in my last book. I know that that’s a tough place to land. We are talking a lot about there’s no real solid advice with all kinds of things. We are talking about this is what we need to do but how are we going to get to this place? When you talk to people who were trying to get financially secure or get on Shark Tank, what kind of advice and what step-by-step things you go through with them? I want to get real more specific.

One of the companies that I advised the Shark Tank process, they were a design studio. They had won a Jell-O mold competition and then were contacted by Diageo, Oprah and these companies that wanted to place orders for these biodegradable cups that would return to the sea because they were made of seaweed. They were a design studio so they didn’t have production or product set up. When I met with them, it was developing the strategy for what’s the best way to go and grow. All of that is coming back to all the frenzy stuff of what we were talking about. Starting there, what is important here and why?

What are my values? How do I want to make the decisions from that? It’s building the strategy around that. Not starting with the strategy and trying to fit the values into the strategy. It’s building the strategy around the values and the purpose. I helped them put together the whole investment strategy, the whole investment plan, the sales plan, build the company, essentially. How did we want to go out into the food space as a biodegradable cup? Did we want to grow foodservice? Did we want to go in retail and direct to consumer? Do they want to grow B2B and some wholesale? How is this going to go down?

It’s getting clear on those kinds of decisions, ultimately choosing to go down the foodservice route. During this time, we are building out what the sales strategy and model was going to look like. Beginning to source ingredients and getting here the manufacturing piece of this. There were a lot involved in that, figuring out a biodegradable cup. During that time, we were contacted by Shark Tank. We are like, “This is the right decision.” Using the values, why do we want to do this? Why it’s got to be more than just getting fame? There’s something okay about that but there’s something not sustainable when you are making decisions like that. Why do we want to go on Shark Tank? I had a list of 100 questions that needed to be filled in, all the things that you have, know about your business. They were going to be standing in front of 4 or 5 sharks. They needed to be prepared. It’s filling in those questions and making sure that they also know their business in and out. We prepare for about three months getting them clear, getting them solid, understanding the financials, the relationships and the strategy.

During that time before we went to Shark Tank, we secured a $100,000 contract. There was Save the Date out of New York, which was an event planning company. They were able to walk out on stage with the Sharks having a $100,000 deal being pre-revenue, a clear strategy, understanding it, having practiced in front of their advisors, being grilled in it and taking the time to prepare, to practice, to be ready for any question. Even the day before, we were in LA from New York, I’m in the hotel room and I could see it. They were a wreck, super nervous, full of anxiety, having some fear about, what if celebrity investor comes into our business, takes over what does that mean, having to deal with all of that emotionality that was then impacting how they are responding through the practice. They were completely botching it even though they knew every answer, they knew their business in and out at this point. It’s coming back to the fuzzy stuff. They had to present what was happening for them emotionally. They had to sit and listen to their fear, the anxiety. They could surrender, release and accept it.

Guess what happened? It moved right through them so it wasn’t stuck so that when they walked out onto the stage, they ended up having four sharks fighting for them. They’ve got a better valuation with more money than they went and asked for, which is very rare on Shark Tank and ultimately securing the deal with Mark Cuban for the full amount. It had gone on to do some cool things. In terms of step-by-step, I’m not this 1, 2, 3 here’s how you do it kind of person. My advice is to flow like water. Let’s flow like water because water can kill around anything but if we are super rigid, we are going to be blocked by that rock, those boulders that come up in front of us. It’s not always just a 1, 2, 3 and one size fits all. It’s more like, “Let’s go like water.” Look at the lesson in the story of what did you take away here. The important part of the takeaway is to use your values for how you are designing your purpose or your strategy.

Being the CEO of Living Wealthy Institute, I’m wondering, is it all B2B or B2C? Where do you stand with your company?

At the Living Wealthy Institute, we are working with leaders and entrepreneurs. It’s the C-Suite executive. They are usually most of our clients. It starts its workshops and diving into this deep inner work with them.

You are dealing with their relationship with money primarily. Where do you start with that?

We start from this place of awareness. There’s nothing new in that. Anyone who’s in the personal development field heard it before. You start by getting clear about what’s running the show. I take you through several assessments and audits on money blueprints. We get clear on your money memories, how those are tied into how you are making decisions and showing up with the money now. From that place, then we know what is. We can begin to see what it is. I then begin to walk you through the living wealthy process, I call it. It’s starting with this place of awareness. Once we get clear on what’s running the show and how we are making the decisions that we are making, often what ends up happening is that we start to turn and look. Blame, shame, frustration and guilt start to enter. Judgment starts to arise in us. This is impacting how we can show up as a leader with our teams, making financial decisions, being willing to put ourselves out there with risk.

From that place of acceptance, we then have to move through into this grief process, the letting go of what wants to be shed. We get into the practice field. I’m oversimplifying. I’m getting broad strokes here. You are going to get into the practice field because you’ve got to start practicing with your four different wealth zones, I call it. The different areas that make up who you are in your financial life. That’s your spiritual, emotional, mental and physical wealth zones. Nothing new about this but yet these principles are foundational and are incredibly important. We get in and we practice. We start practicing how we are doing these things. We start practicing retraining our brain like a puppy and retaining that inner critic, flipping the script, accessing compassion, becoming available to feel into what is true for me, practicing, integrating. From that place of commitment, then like the puppy, before we know it, we are embodying living wealthy.

You kept saying this isn’t new. That’s how I felt when I speak about different things like emotional intelligence because I wrote about that so long ago when I was studying it. I thought this is interesting. Thinking that down the road, maybe this is hot now. It continues to be hot because people still don’t grasp a lot of the concepts that as you implied are super intuitive but sometimes we need to be reminded of certain things or one person telling you something in a slightly different way makes a huge impact. It’s interesting. You could tell your husband, your spouse or whatever something 100 times but then somebody else tells them the same thing and they get it. It’s like that. Sometimes it takes a different angle. It takes a certain different perception to get some of these important key ideas home. I know you talk about so much that we could go on. This would fascinate me all day because I love this stuff but we are getting near the end of the show. I know a lot of people are going to want to know more about how they can reach you and find out more about what you are working on. Is there some site or something that you want to share so people can follow you?

Practice with your four wealth zones. That’s your spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical wealth zones. Click To Tweet

I want to respond quickly before I go to what you said because you said something important. For our level of readiness or being able to hear something comes at different times through different people. We live in a world that is at war, in shames and wrongs, accessing our emotionality. We are stripping ourselves of it daily by creating a connection to technology and not our self like other humans. We are at this war. Emotionality and accessing it have been made to be wrong on some level. We are not supposed to do it and yet you hear these pockets talking like, “Emotions are your friend. That little buddy is coming out. It’s not so bad over here.” There’s love on the other side of that anger. I wanted to drop that into space and say yes. For those who are interested in exploring what your relationship with wealth and living wealthy is like, I’ve got an assessment that you can take over on JenniferLove.com. You can hang out with me in these principles I explore through wealth and emotionality, in my show, the Nature of Money or over on Instagram, @TheJenniferLove.

You are not related to Roger Love, are you?

I’m not.

Have you seen him speak? He’s great. He has been on my show. I highly recommend his entertainment. He had us up singing and dancing. I can’t sing but I did at his event. I wasn’t sure if you two were related. You will have to listen to that show. He was fun too. It must be the last name that’s a great last name to have because you have both been wonderful to have on the show. Thank you so much, Jennifer. I enjoyed our conversation.

Thanks for having me.

You are welcome.

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I would like to thank Nicole and Jennifer for being my guest. We get so many great guests on this show. If you have missed any past episodes, you can catch them at DrDianeHamilton.com. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you join us for the next episode of the show.

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About Nicole Roberts Jones

Nicole Roberts Jones is uniquely gifted at one thing – drawing out what’s best in YOU and helping you take your Brilliance to The Bank. A veteran of the entertainment industry, Nicole worked in Talent Management and Casting before shifting her talents to help others Bankroll Their Brilliance through her Brilliance Mastery Academy. She now works with entrepreneurs to create multiple streams of income from what they already know in order to build an empire from their expertise.

Additionally, Nicole works with corporations to assure their executives and middle managers push their internal edge, and step into the true power of their gifts and talents at work. Her clients have included the Steve Harvey World Group, Dell EMC, McDonald’s, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Lisa Nichols and Motivating the Masses, Coach Diversity Institute, the BOSS Network and Working Mother Magazine to name a few.

About Jennifer Love

Jennifer Love is the visionary CEO of the Living Wealthy Institute, helping world leaders develop a healthy relationship with wealth free from overwhelm and anxiety by following a regenerative money equation for a holistic and nourishing experience.

Leaders who know how to raise, manage, grow and contribute money can live soulful, wealthy lives to become allies for future generations to come.

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