BONUS Episode: The Real Work of Mindset Transformation with Neill Williams

Welcome to Successful Generations, a podcast for the next generation of family business, family philanthropy, and family wealth. Sure, people might assume you won the birth lottery, but coming from a family with a recognized last name has its challenges.

Hello my friends. This is Ellie Frey Zagel host of Successful Generations podcast. So excited to share with you a bonus episode. I’ve never done this before, but my client Neill Williams has a podcast called Unbusy Your Life. She recently interviewed me because her clients were seeing her as this cool cucumber. Somebody who had it all together. She’s a productivity coach. She does have it all together when she’s coaching them.

One of the reasons she has it all together is because with me, she and I work on behind the scenes. Getting her mindset to a place that she can just kill it and really serve her clients just so extraordinarily. So I wanted to share this podcast because I think the energy between she and I is just so, so amazing.

Just a little bit of background. She and I met in coaching certification a few years. Neill and I talk about what she had to do in order to get her mindset from basically…When she was starting off in her business, she was full time corporate. Then her coaching business was kind of a side hustle. She was making zero dollars in this side hustle. She was having to figure out how to turn this side hustle into a business. I’m so thrilled to say that she did the work. She continues to do the work. Today she has made over $200,000, that’s in a 12-month time frame. She’s poised to double that again this year. That was within two years.

So, again, I cannot think of anybody else I’d rather introduce you to, especially if you’re thinking about productivity. If productivity and your schedule is one of those things that, like me, that’s just really standing in your way from massive results. I would really recommend that you not only listen to this podcast episode but also subscribe to Neill’s podcast Unbusy Your Life. Get on her mailing list. She produces really great content weekly. Then she also has a group coaching program that she really unpacks all of the everything in order to get more time back during your week.

So without further ado, I’d really love to introduce this bonus episode with Neill and I unpacking her brain. I am the coach. She is a client. You will love it. All right. Talk to you soon.

Neill: Welcome to episode number 56 of the Unbusy Your Life podcast. I’m super excited and, to be quite honest, a little freaked out by this episode. This is the one that I promised to you where I’m revealing to you my messy human brain. I’m doing that by bringing on my own coach Ellie Frey Zagel and having her really talk about some of the things that she’s coached me through over the last couple of years. I get emotional in this one. We talk a lot about the change in my self-concept over the last couple of years. A lot about the change in my own money mindset over the last couple of years.

The reason why I’m able to be talking about self-concept and money is because I had already done the work prior to my work with Ellie on my own mindset and my own productivity and my own efficiency. So you’re going to hear less about that in this episode because I’ve already done that work. That’s not the work that I’m working on anymore. Which is why I’m helping all of you in the world do that work, and why I am the perfect person to be doing that work with you because I’m already so good at it.

In fact, I was just thinking to myself the other day. Like I just am on Friday looking over the week and everything that I have created. I am like blowing my own mind with how much I can get done. I like had this thought to myself. Like I would go toe to toe with anybody who thinks they are productive, and I can guarantee you and I will do more.

So I’m not going to speak much about time in this podcast because, again, this is the work that I’ve been doing on my own money brain. The reason that I’ve been able to do that about my self-concept and my money brain is because I’ve already done the work on time and productivity and efficiency. So I hope that you enjoy the show.

I hope that you use it as an example. That you can literally go out and get anything you want in the world. I hope that you use it to be inspired to take action, even if it’s just to take the very next step towards whatever your dream is or whatever life you want to be living. Please just let me be the example of what’s possible in the world. Through deliberate intentional thinking and coaching and getting coached. Please enjoy my interview with my coach Ellie Frey Zagel on my messy brain.

Okay. So as promised in earlier episodes, today I have my beautiful coach Ellie on. She is going to dish all the dirt on my messy brain. This was really important episode for me to do. Ellie and I were talking about this a few weeks ago. Partly because I have so many clients coming to me and people saying that, “You’re such an evolved human. You look like you’re cool as a cucumber. You look like you have your shit together.” I would say that is true as a coach.

Like when I go into a coaching session, all my own stuff gets filed away. So as a coach, I do show up as like yes, I’m very direct. I’m very to the point. This is what’s happening. I can see what’s going on with your brain. I pull it out and I give you the coaching. In that way it is true.

But as a human being, I still have a brain. I thought it was important for you all to see some of the evolution in my own thinking and the way that my brain has changed over the last year and a half. I literally feel like I’m a different human being from who I was a year and a half ago. Ellie has been such an instrumental part of that.

So I wanted her to come on and share her insights too because I wanted you all to know that what I’m saying is the truth. That it’s not just me speaking it. Like Ellie will confirm it for you, I promise. I could have just as easily brought on my husband or my son. So Ellie, thank you so much for being here. Why don’t you introduce yourself? Tell everybody what you do and why you’ve agreed to still be my coach.

Ellie:  Well first of all Neill, thank you so much for having me on. When you shared this idea with me, I was like oh my gosh. This is amazing. Of course, we need to do this. We’ve had so much fun, and I use fun in quotation marks. We’ve had so much fun over the past couple of years that your listeners absolutely need to know what we’re going to discuss today. So having said that, my name is Ellie Frey Zagel. I am a leadership coach for family business leaders. I work with family business leaders all across the country. I have been working with Neill for two years now.

Neill: Yeah, I think it’s been about two years. It went really fast. Then sometimes it’s like it did not go fast.

Ellie:  So I think this is relevant to the conversation. I kind of think about like all we’ve done in the last two years, and the people we’ve become in the last two years to get the results we’ve gotten is mind-blowing. Like two years is not very long, but if you look at everything that we’ve had to become and do in order to get to where we are now it’s like a million years.

Neill: I agree. I think that’s such a good point. Because when you think about growth and development from that standpoint like the growth that we’ve had over the last year since certification. Ellie and I were in the life coach school certification together in 2018. That’s how we originally met, and we just kept in touch after that. So if you just like take us back to when we’re in certification, like the brains we had there compared to who we are today. Massive growth.

Really, I think about it like most adults probably don’t grow even over decades the way that we have grown over the last couple of years. Because it’s been so intentional, we’ve spent so much energy and so much deliberate time growing and evolving our brains. As a result, ourselves.

Ellie:  Yes. I love that you pointed out the intentionality. This is what we do for a living. We love doing it, but it’s also who we are. So we spend multiple hours every day getting coached, self-coaching. Our results didn’t just happen to us. That’s one of the things that we’re going to talk about because there was a little bit of an aha for you. You were getting some results and you’re like, “I have no idea how I got those results.” I’m like really?

Neill: Right. That is speaking to my money brain. When I was in the point where I was like I have no idea how you create money. Like don’t people just give it to you like in a paycheck.

Ellie:  Well, it was also in showing up in clients too. You’re like, “I have no idea how I got these clients.”

Neill: They just come to me. It’s like I have no control over it. I don’t really do anything. Like it’s just this thing that happens in the world.

Ellie:  Yes. Which is a very disempowering thought. So what you and I talked about is when you have these types of thoughts, like I have no idea how this happened, it just happened. To actually flip it around and ask yourself like how exactly did this happen?

Neill: Yeah. What you pressed me on was not just how did it happen, but how did you make it happen? Like you actually created this. So let’s step it down exactly like what you did that created this thing in the world. So I want to get into that. I totally want to talk about that because that goes to like my money brain. And the huge evolution I think that I’ve had in my own money brain over the last couple of years and still the evolution that I’m working on now with you in my money brain.

Maybe let’s like start at the beginning. So I wrote down a couple of things, and I want your honest feedback. Just so you all know, this is a little bit vulnerable for me to be exposing my brain to the whole world. I’m doing it because it’s so important for me to be in integrity. And for you all to see that the only reason why I’m able to do this work in the world and why I’m teaching how to be productive and how to get things done in less time is because I’ve done this work by myself.

I wasn’t just born this way. I didn’t just have these skills that I have now. I literally have spent tons of energy cultivating them over the last few years. So I want you guys to see where I was and the progression that I’ve had as an example of what you can do too with your own human brain.

Ellie:  If I may just jump in there on vulnerability. I have a motto that you and I used. Your thought was, “My vulnerability is week.” When in actuality it’s your superpower.

Neill: Yeah. It took me a while to get there. One of the assignments you have me was to make a post on Facebook. This was like way, way early on. This was when we were first coming out of certification. I didn’t yet have the self-concept or the identity as being a coach. It was like I kind of am doing this thing in the world, but I’m not going to tell anybody. Especially not my family and my friends. So what you asked me to do was to post on Facebook about being a coach.

I remember. I was with my son and my husband. We were getting ready to go on a camping trip. We had gone to the store to get some things. I posted it, and I literally felt so sick to my stomach I thought I was going to throw up. I texted you. I was like, “I want to delete this post like something fierce.”

Ellie:  Ah. Do you remember what happened?

Neill: No. Honestly. Isn’t that funny?

Ellie:  You got a ton of engagement.

Neill: Yeah. Okay. I kind of do remember that. Yeah. I remember people asking questions and kind of being curious.

Ellie:  You kind of came out on Facebook if you will.

Neill: Right.

Ellie:  You told people that you were a coach. You had really been living a very quiet life before that. You were working at your corporate job. You didn’t want anyone to know. You weren’t owning your identity as a coach. Meanwhile you’d gone through certification. You had clients but nobody else knew. Including your mom didn’t know about your coaching. Your best friends did not know.

Neill: Right. Right. It was this thing I was kind of like hiding from everybody because I was worried about what people were going to say. So I’m in this highly technical professional field in the corporate world. I was an actuary, if you even know what that is. I kind of like liken it to Chandler being on Friends and everyone’s like, “I have no idea what it is.” It’s a transpondenator I think is what Monica said on that one episode.

So I’m an actuary in the corporate world, right. I’m transitioning. That was my identity. I’m on partner track and all of that. So it was excruciating for me to transition into this identity, this new role as a coach and entrepreneur. Like it took me a lot of effort to change my brain about who I was.

Ellie: Yeah, I did. Months, maybe even a year.

Neill: One of my longest transitions I would say.

Ellie:  This work doesn’t happen overnight.

Neill: Yeah. I think that speaks to the other piece is like commitment to the work and doing the work, even when it is uncomfortable. Because when you are growing, if you’re growing at the rate like you and I grow and a lot of the people kind of in our community grow, it is uncomfortable. It’s not like this amazing feel-good process all the time.

Ellie:  In fact, rarely.

Neill: Yeah.

Ellie: Like you and I in coach speak always talk about the river of misery, right. Like growth is on the other side of the river of misery. It’s called the river of misery because it feels terrible. Oftentimes people think that the work that you do in coaching should feel good. We should all be happy. Like the example I just pointed out on Facebook, you posted something very vulnerable. You’re sharing a piece of you that you hadn’t shared before on Facebook. You felt like throwing up.

The other side of it was that people, I mean I remember, people were coming out of the woodwork. They were really engaging with you. Like I’m so proud of you or they’re asking you questions. They were just really supportive.

Neill: Yes. That was true. Then there were also the people who were like, “You’re crazy. Why would you leave this partner track, highly lucrative corporate life to go do life coaching? Like who does that?” So I had to grapple with that. I’m so glad that I did because what it did is it made me have to believe in me even harder. If I had only gotten all of the supportive like loving, that’s great. That would have been not the same level of work that I got to do because I had the people who were questioning me. I think that was really, really important.

Ellie:  Yes. You were questioning you. I remember one of your best friends, maybe it was even a family member, said, “Is everything okay?”

Neill: Yep. Like, “What’s happening with you?”

Ellie:  Which I think is hilarious.

Neill: Right. Because you think like somebody makes this big career move. Immediately what people think when you’re like our age probably that you’re going through some sort of midlife crisis. Like something horrible has happened. Because of that, you have to make this big change in your life. Versus sometimes you’re just like no, life is amazing. I had a beautiful life. There was nothing wrong with my life whatsoever. I just wanted more. I wanted to ask more of me. I felt like I was capable of more. That my capacity was higher.

I maybe didn’t correctly evaluate the extent of the discomfort that it was going to require me to move to that next capacity. But I decided and I went in anyway. So I think once I made it through that, I was like okay. I can see that I’m a coach. Now I’m like I am an amazing coach. Brilliant. You get on a call with me, literally I will show you in just a few minutes what’s happening in your brain and why you have what you have going on in your life. Like my skill is just so much higher. So it’s easier for me to believe. But I had to believe first in order to become super skillful.

Ellie:  I’m so glad that you brought that up Neill because belief comes first. You had a lot of proof how you were a coach, but you still didn’t believe it. The belief really comes from inside.

Neill: I think it’s once you start believing, this is why it’s counterintuitive for so many people. It’s like once you start believing, then that’s what your brain filters. It’s the evidence that it starts creating. Then it makes it easier to believe. It’s that beginning belief, like that baby belief, that needs the fostering. It takes more energy and more effort to believe. Whereas when you’re building the evidence, it just becomes easier. You don’t spend as much energy as time working on the belief. It’s just who you are.

Yeah. So then once I got to like okay. I can see that I’m a coach. Then you had to coach me through money stuff and the transition from employee to entrepreneur and the money brain that goes along with that. So what I remember is you asking me like how do you create money? I literally was like I couldn’t answer the question. What I taught myself throughout my career was like well I just go to work for somebody, and they gave me a paycheck. Money is just something that comes to me every two weeks. It’s deposited in my bank account.

Ellie:  Well, I think for all of your clients, especially your entrepreneurial clients, this is a really big deal to kind of consider. Like you are in charge of your business. You’re in charge. We call it the results or your r-line if you want to talk about the model. So what you were doing is kind of abdicating your responsibility in kind of creating the money or bringing in new clients. So we really had to remind your brain of why the clients were coming in. Like what your role is in attracting those clients very, very specifically.

So, for instance, we talked about your Facebook posts. We talked about your podcast. We talked about your email. We talked about the value that you were putting out in the world. Then that value was getting picked up by other people who felt it was valuable and they wanted to pay you money.

Neill: Yeah. I think that was like the most important decision for me was I remember you taking me back just to my corporate job and asking me well how do I make money there? It wasn’t just that someone is giving me a deposit into my bank account. No. I was offering value. You had me really dive into what is the value that I am giving in exchange for the money in that job. Like I could see that more easily. That was like where you had me start.

Then we started moving on to, “Okay this client came on. How did you create that person? What is the value that was exchanged here?” I think that is the most important thing. So for anybody who’s listening who maybe has a side hustle like I did and you’re transitioning from this employee role to the entrepreneur role. There is like fundamental changes in your brain that you’re doing to need to make in order to complete that shift to being an entrepreneur and creating money. You’re creating money as an employee, but you don’t necessarily see it that way.

I had to see it how that was happening there first for me. Then I could see how I was doing that in my business. So then I was like okay. I get it. So it’s a value exchange. It’s not a charity. Somebody is not just giving me money. I never even think about it that way. There’s just no giving of money. It’s like I am helping this person create this thing.

Like right now in my group. What I’m helping my students with is how to get all their stuff done in less than 30 hours per week and live in a more balanced work-life situation. That is valuable, right. That’s the value that they’re receiving in exchange for the money.

So I don’t know if you remember anything specifically, but for me that’s what stood out for me is understanding what creates money. I literally had no idea before we started talking what created money.

Ellie:  That’s so interesting. It actually made me think about two thoughts that you were having. One is like I don’t know how, which is such a disempowering thought. It’s such a victim thought and powerless though. That was your thought a lot of the time. Like, “I don’t know how to reach my goals. I don’t know how I make money. I don’t know how I get new clients.”

Through the exercise that you just highlighted and others like it, we really turned your brain into like wait a second. I know exactly how to add value into the world. I know exactly how to get clients. I know exactly how to make money. It was such a more impowering money for you. Which is one of the reasons you’ve been really successful, I think, is this ability that you have to get into a very empowering place. This, “I can do it. I know exactly how to do it. I’m going to go do it.” Then you do it.

Neill: Yeah. I would agree. I think what’s so fun about this you guys is I just had my session with Ellie right before this call. Of course, my brain was a total mess. I brought her like the things specifically. Okay these are the things that I want to coach trough. We got through them. Both of the places that we got to I was feeling very disempowered initially. Feeling overwhelmed, worried, that kind of thing. We got the place where I felt super empowered and literally in charge. Like I can take on the world. Like that kind of unstoppable energy.

Ellie was so great about pointing this out to me, just even in this last session. Was like you know what’s happening right now is it’s not as if you’re not experiencing those things. It’s not as if you’re not experiencing overwhelm or stress or anxiety. What’s happening is you become so much more masterful at the skill of not indulging in it, not staying in it, and wasting as much time and energy in it. Instead moving to a new thought, a new feeling, taking action in a different way.

Ellie:  Yeah. Quicker and quicker. Absolutely. Yeah. I’m looking through two years of journals of you and I coaching together. Disempowerment comes up a lot. What’s happening is you used to stay in it for months. Now you’re in it for 24 hours if that.

Neill: Yeah.

Ellie:  Sometimes just mere minutes or hours. You don’t allow yourself to be in that space. You recognize where you are and then you get yourself out of it really quickly. This is the work of coaching. This is the work that you and I do. It’s like you’re always going to have those thoughts of self-doubt or vulnerability or stress or overwhelm. The work is not to get rid of those. You’re human. Those are feelings that you should be having as a human being. That’s good information for you to have.

The work to get you the results that you want to get quicker and quicker is to get out of “negative space”. I’m going to use that in quotes because I don’t know if it’s necessarily negative until it shuts you down, and it stops you from getting where you want to go.

Neill: Yeah. I think that’s such a good point. You have seen this in me, and I see this too. Like it’s happening with money too, right. Like the timeframe it’s taking me to create a certain amount of money, like let’s say $100k. Like it took me eight months. Then it took me four months. Then now I’m working on three months. I really believe it’s because of this ability, this skill of being just quicker and not staying in these disempowering overwhelmed stress kinds of situations and moving myself faster to a space where I’m actually taking action from an empowered place. It’s such a good point.

Okay. So let’s talk about perfection. It’s something I think that has come up kind of as a theme as you’ve been coaching me over the last couple of years. What do you think Ellie?

Ellie:  Perfection has come up time and time again. It comes from a story that you’ve had since you were a child.

Neill: Yes.

Ellie:  So what are some of those thoughts? Do you remember?

Neill: Yeah. I mean like this was part of my identity. I love my sister. I’m not blaming her at all. I just remember her saying to me when I was a kind like, “Little miss perfect. Little miss perfect.” I really started to take on that identity as little miss perfect. So as you can imagine, I’m top of my class academically. I’m the captain of every single sports team that I was on. Like I’m doing all the things. I’m going to college. I’m getting the 4.0. I’m doing all of that showing that I’m little miss perfect. Right.

Here’s what I want people to hear about that. That served me really well for a long time in my life. Because it really fueled me to get certain results in my life. It worked until it didn’t. Then it was one of my glass ceilings that I had to let go of. I had to let go of the identity of being perfect because it was preventing me from being the entrepreneur that I wanted to be in the world, to being the coach that I wanted to be in the world.

Because that is all about failure. Failure and perfection do not go together. So if you are someone who has the identity of a perfectionist, failure is like literally your worst nightmare. Which is what mine was, right. Because if you fail, you can’t be perfect. Like they’re opposites of each other.

So in order for me to become the next level of who I wanted to be, which is a reason why I chose to continue down the path of entrepreneurship. Because it’s required so much more of me in terms of my own growth. I had to let go of the perfect personality. That was excruciating. Because going from perfect, always doing it right, always hitting your goals, always having your shit together.

Like that identity to like okay, I’m going to go out and do this thing. It’s really messy and it was really hard. I failed a lot and I fell on my face. I was uncomfortable. That was really hard. I know you coached me. For sure this was a lot of the stuff that I came and ugly cried on our sessions. Like I totally failed again.

Ellie:  Yeah. One of the things that I’ve really admired about you Neill is that you are in it for the long haul. Like you don’t quit. Like I think that’s also part of your identity.

Neill: Yes.

Ellie: You’re willing to go through the hard, aka the suck. You’re willing to go through it in order to get what you need to get from this lesson. In order to get the growth that you need or the results that you’re looking for. Even that mindset of not quitting is going to help you with your perfectionism. So you were able to rely on the, “I’m going to figure this out,” versus the, “Oop, it didn’t work the way I wanted it to. I’m not perfect.” Then you quit. So I just want to share that that was your anecdote for perfectionism is this idea of like well, I’m just going to keep trying until I do get it.

Neill: Yeah. You know what? Something else occurred to me the other day as I was making my list of all the things I thought we should talk about. I realized that I’ve changed what I value. So I used to value perfect so that people would perceive me in a certain way, right. Now what I’ve realized is I value accomplishment and contribution way more than perfect and the perception of me. So because of that, I’ve been able to let go of the perfect identity so much more. The habit of perfecting.

So I don’t spend time trying to make something perfect. Or worrying about that I have a typo or grammatical error. Whatever. If that happens, it happens. It’s totally fine. I don’t make it mean anything about me anywhere whereas I would have made that mean a lot about me. Like total shame spiral, right, before.

So I just think my priorities and my values have also shifted. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being integral. It’s about accomplishing and the contribution that I made in the world. That is not where perfect lives, in my opinion.

Ellie:  Yeah. I think it’s really great that you just pointed out Neill that you didn’t say it’s about the money that you make or how many clients you have. You said it is about you being in service of the world. Like how are you helping people, to get to allowing them to get to their dreams. That is your why. That is your purpose.

You’re right. From there, perfectionism is about you. How are people going to see you? It’s about your fear of judgement. When you get rid of that and you really focused on what your vision is for the work that you do in this world, you were able to really put the perfectionism aside and get your hands dirty and get to work.

Neill: Yeah. That’s such a good point talking about the why. Because you’re right. For a while when I was first in this, I was kind of in that space of like. I remember you saying this to me. Like, “How many times are you going to quit? Like you’ve already quit in your mind.”

Just so everybody listening hears this. Like Ellie’s real direct with me, and I love that about it. I don’t want to waste time tiptoeing around. She’s just like no. You’re being entitled right now. Why are you doing this? You know she will tell me the way that it is. I love that. Because I know that is part of her loving me and her wanting the best for me is to point it out directly to me. I know that I can handle it too. As a client, I’m like okay. This is the coaching I’m receiving. I’m receiving it for a reason. Let me just absorb it and digest it and figure out how I want to use it.

So I think what you said about the why is so important. Like I stopped just doing this for the now, right. I started having a broader picture of this is really like my contribution to the world. I feel like I’m going to cry now. It’s so interesting. I really do feel like this is how I can provide the most value to the world, and how I literally think about myself and my life is like I’m the laboratory rat. I try everything that I do. I try it myself first. If it works, then I go teach my people. I put it in my group.

I’m like this is an amazing new thing you guys. It worked totally well for me, and I want to offer it to you. So like what can I do with my own life as an experiment to learn so that I can teach you. So that you don’t necessarily go through the same pain and all the failures. Like I shortcut that for you and I just give it to you. I really feel like that is my purpose on the planet to do that. Like rinse and repeat that.

Ellie:  Yes. Finding that why, that passion, that something that’s bigger than you. That was a really big changing moment for you.

Neill: Yes. For sure.

Ellie:  It was a really big shift for you.

Neill: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s true for all entrepreneurs. Because if you’re attach to a certain result or something, it makes it so much harder. If you’re in it for the long game, then you’re like okay. That didn’t work. Not a big deal because this is my life’s work. It’s so different than like, “Oh, I’ve got to get to this goal for this year.” That is not to say that we don’t have goals. We totally do. Like I definitely have a goal. Like I definitely have a goal. I also am not so attached to the goal that it makes me quit on my long-term game if that makes sense.

Ellie:  Yeah. You wouldn’t sacrifice your integrity. You wouldn’t sacrifice your students for your goal. Like for a money goal I should say.

Neill: Totally. Absolutely.

Ellie:  That would just never ever happen because you’re so passionate about your purpose and what you’re doing in this world.

Neill: Yeah. Integrity is really important to me obviously because I wouldn’t be on this podcast with you crying and sharing all my stuff if that wasn’t really important to me. So yeah. I think the why is one of those pivotal things that really shifted for me. I had to sit down and really ask myself, “Okay. Are you in this? Are you really in this for all of it? Not just for the parts that feel really great. But for the time that feels terrible and you’re crying and you’re questioning yourself and you’re doubting. Are you in it for that too? You have to be in it for all of it.”

Ellie:  Amen.

Neill: Right.

Ellie:  Yes.

Neill: This reminded me of something else. Especially over this last year I had a lot of growth, which means that I had a lot of discomfort. I had a lot of negative emotion. We called it like my cocktail, right. My cocktail of emotion was discomfort, worry, self-doubt, fear, anxiety. Like we had this cocktail of negative emotions.

This was another thing that was super important for me. I think that it has really spurred my own growth. Like I used to think that that meant that I was doing something wrong. What you showed me was like no. Actually, this means actually you’re doing it right. This is the thing that’s going to get you to your goal. This is the thing that’s making you money.

Ellie:  Yes. I had forgotten about that. I am so glad that you brought that up because we used it in several sessions. I think it was really helpful for you because it was all of these like really yucky emotions, right? Like that’s the scientific word. You were like trying to resist them. What we were able to do is really showcase that when you were feeling this cocktail, that directly resulted to massive money growth.

Neill: Yeah. Because when I was feeling it, I was doing like these hard scary things that I’d never done before. Like pitching people that were like well beyond where I was. Seven figure entrepreneurs. It felt very scary. I was also in master coach training, which was a very challenging thing for me to go through. I experienced a lot of this negative emotion in there too. It was just so helpful for me to see that like oh. This is actually what it’s like.

I think that’s why it was so important for me to realize like okay. Am I in it for the long game? Like if this is the way that it is and it will just be this way, I’m going to have a lot of negative emotion and I’m going to have a lot of positive emotion. Am I willing? And do I still want to go after it knowing that? That this is the way that it is.

Ellie:  Yeah. You clearly chose yes.

Neill: Yeah. Yes. I was like okay. I’m in. Yeah. Here’s something else. So this just came to me. I didn’t write this down. So this last year, I had some personal things happen which who didn’t in COVID, right. We all had stuff happen in 2020. My husband lost his job. Not that he lost it, but the company he worked for went bankrupt. Like literally were given 48 hours’ notice and doors closed. He happened to be on vacation. It was like this crazy thing, right? Then my son gets pre-diagnosed with dyslexia. This happened in the same week.

I remember coming to a call and I literally…I think I looked at you and I just started bawling. I was like, “I’ve got a lot of shit happening right now.” It was so amazing. It almost makes me cry when I think about it right now. Because like I was so upset. My mommy brain was so upset about the learning challenge with Lincoln. You looked at me and you were like, “That’s just like normal in my family. Like we’re all geniuses and we all have something.”

I remember being like oh my gosh. Like nothing’s gone wrong here because that’s where my mom brain was, right. Like we’re doomed. Like the world is crashing down. So I wanted to just like express to you. If you have a kickass coach like Ellie, what will happen is you will be just held in space. They don’t agree with you. That was what was so amazing that Ellie didn’t agree with me that there was a problem here. She was like, “I don’t know what you’re so upset about.” Then it made me feel like oh. Everything is actually okay. Do you remember that session?

Ellie:  I totally do. I think it’s hilarious how you talk about it. I’m like okay.

Neill: My brain’s interpretation of it.

Ellie:  Yeah. But I think that’s also the power of group. I know you have your groups. I think that to know that you’re not alone in your struggles, to normalize something that you think is a really big deal. Everyone is like, “Nope, that’s not a big deal. That’s my Tuesday.” I think that is one of the most powerful reasons in my opinion to join a group.

Neill: Yeah. That is such a good point. Yes. Because what happens is like your brain, things that seem like not normal to you, you get into a group where other people are experiencing the same thing and it’s totally normal. For instance, even like money. Like I feel like we’re really in this entrepreneur world. Like we talk about money a lot. We make a lot of money. So if you’re in your regular life and nobody’s talking about money, which that’s true for me in my own life. You sometimes think that you shouldn’t be or that there’s something wrong with you. Or that you’re bragging or something like that.

But then you get into a group where other people are doing the same thing in the world and it’s like, “Oh, this is actually okay. There’s nothing wrong with me.” When you get to the place where you’re seeing the way that people think and it’s the way that you want, you’re like oh yeah. It’s easier for your brain to just adopt to the norms of that group, right. So I agree with you. That group mentality is so powerful. Because it can take your brain impossibility to possibility and probability very quickly just by being immersed in it.

Ellie:  Exactly.

Neill: Yeah. So good.

Ellie:  I want to actually…You’ve been talking about money and the money mentality and kind of the mind shift that you have gone too. Which has been pretty significant from kind of a scarcity model to a more of abundant model. The work that you do in scheduling, in being more efficient with your time is actually very similar models if not the same models. Do you want to talk about that?

Neill: Yeah, that’s such a good point. There is the brain that thinks scarce in time thinks scarce in money and vice versa. So when I’m doing work with my students on shifting their mindset from scarcity of time to abundance of time, it’s like a meta skill. It already shifts over into from scarcity of money to abundance of money. The reason is we have this connection in our brain of time and money. So it’s easy. Once you break that in your time models, you just slip it over into your money models.

We just literally did this in the session before we were on this call. I was telling Ellie about how I had this crazy experience last weekend where my brain was like—and I haven’t gone through this for a long, long time. My brain went into full on overwhelmed stressed out because I have what it told me was too many things on my calendar to get done this week, right. So she was like this is so fascinating. Because my brain went off the rails for my goal this year. It was exactly the same thinking. Exactly. I’m never going to get there. I don’t have enough. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So yeah. It’s such a good point that if you do the work on time, which is what I do with people, it automatically does the work on money in a lot of instances as well.

Ellie:  Yeah. I think it’s the Freud quote that is so perfect here. “How you do anything is how you do everything.” This is such a beautiful example of how we can coach you on one thing, and there’s a ripple effect.

Neill: Totally. Yeah, that’s such a good point. I think that’s why coaching is so powerful too because even though we’re taking this one specific little piece in this session. Like you start to see it in other areas of your life. You’re like oh wait. If I could think this way here, then I could probably just think this way over here. You like slide that over, and it just makes it so easy. So it is like this amazing skillset. It’s meta skills. Like once you learn it in one area, you just reapply it to other areas. It’s so amazing. Yeah.

Okay. So I know we’re just about out of time here. The last thing that I wanted to say, and this came up I think just a few months ago actually. Because in this last year I made way more money in my business than I had every planned to. My goal was $100K and I doubled that. I realized that I have this attachment to my business account and the number growing and growing and growing. I was questioning myself about this, right.

So I bring this up because I want people to see that this sometimes happens. Like your coach can say like one thing to you, and you can be left grappling with it for weeks or months. Ellie said this to me at the end of a session just like kind of off the cuff, a little bit like sarcastically. Because I was telling her about the level in my business account. I was like this is crazy. Now I find myself not wanting to spend any money and getting a little bit worried when I do have to pay an invoice. I don’t want it to go down. So she says–

Ellie:  You were completely in your head. Like you were like in your story. Totally. Yeah, all of it.

Neill: Totally. Absolutely. Of course, I was. Yeah. I was being the perfect client, right? So she says to me, “Oh so your business is just a savings account?” Then she was like, “Okay, see you later?” I’m like mic drop. Yes. That’s exactly the way that I’m thinking about it. Like it should just keep accumulating and get bigger and bigger and bigger. So I knew that that was kind of an area that I wanted to work on.

So I do think that that still is part of my work this year is what I make it mean with the amount of money in my business account. The reason why I think this is important is because right now you and I are working on cultivating my million-dollar brain. My goal is not a million dollars this year, but we are working on my million-dollar brain. I know I still have money stuff to dive into to get there. The reason why I know that is because I haven’t made a million dollars yet. So I know that there’s still thinking and growth that has to happen in order for me to create the business that creates a million dollars. Do you have anything to say about that?

Ellie:  I love that you brought that up. Because the reason I said that was to kind of disrupt your thinking right. You were like, “Oh my gosh. That’s totally true.” It aligns with kind of the scarcity thinking that we’d already been doing around money. That we’ve already been discussing in this podcast in the sense that it’s never enough. What you were doing is you were just putting money away and it was never enough. It was never enough. It was never enough. So you just kept growing it. You weren’t investing it. It wasn’t a tool. It was literally just a savings account.

Neill: Yeah, because the way that I was looking at my business is it’s all inflows. The part that I’m doing now is working on the outflows and what I make that mean.

Ellie:  Yes. Can you talk a little bit about the work that we’ve done in your future self Neill because I think that that is like think about your million-dollar Neill? Who is she?

Neill: Yeah, so this is such a good question. In the coaching world, we talk a lot about future you. This was part of my goal series on the podcast. So if you want to go back, January I talked all about goals. So I talk a little bit about this in that. So it’s thinking about who you are at your goal, and how that person interprets your current situation. How she feels or how she thinks. What she does.

So like when Ellie’s saying that if I’m already at my million-dollar goal, what am I making the money in my account mean? Either the inflows or the outflows. Do the outflows mean anything when I’ve already created my million-dollar business? The answer to that is no. Like I don’t have an emotional charge about that. I don’t hold tightly to the money in that account. I view it very differently. So when Ellie is asking me that question, what that reveals to me is that I need to start thinking that way now because that’s what’s going to get me to my million dollar me. Is that what you were asking me?

Ellie:  Yeah, no totally. Just like the work that that’s ongoing, right. So it’s ongoing work. It’s called your self-concept or your future self. Putting yourself into the shoes of your future self now. That’s the work.

Neill: Yeah. Something else we discovered when we were doing this work is some of the feelings that I have at that level are different than the feelings that I have now. So at that level I’m feeling calm and certain. Instead of, for instance, this last year I was on this emotional rollercoaster. I did not feel calm at all. So I’ve been actively working on cultivating calm in my life this year because I know that’s how my million dollar me feels.

Ellie:  Yes. I love it. Thanks for sharing.

Neill: Yes. Such a good question. Such a good question. I love that. Yeah. That is a lot of the work that we do is accessing the future you and being that person now because that is how you get to future you. So good. Yeah, okay. I’ve taken up like an hour of your time already. I mean we could sit and talk about this forever. Like forever.

Ellie:  We could.

Neill: There’s so many things. But I hope that gives you a good flavor of kind of like a little bit of the evolution that my brain has taken over the last couple of years. It’s really been a change in my self-concept of who I am in the world. That I’m a coach. I don’t need to be perfect. Allowing the judgement to be there for whoever wants to judge me, and still supporting myself no matter what other people say.

Then also just a lot of work on my money brain. On changing my money brain from employee to entrepreneur and money and how it’s created and what I make money mean. I still have this attachment in my brain which I’m working on that money is security. So if you notice that about yourself, I think it’s a pretty common connection. So that’s part of the work that I’m doing too.

So over the next year, the work that I’m going to be doing really in my brain is up leveling my self-concept to my million dollar me. We’ll be working more on the future self-part. Then part of that is my money brain too. My million-dollar money brain which I do not have yet.

So I think it’s important to realize like even though I’ve done so much work over the last couple of years and there’s been so much stuff that’s gone on in my brain, and I have a human brain with lots of drama. I’m actively working on it. I don’t make the thoughts that I have mean the same thing that I used to make them mean. Like there’s something wrong with me or that I’m not going to get to my goals, usually.

I think the point is this is a process, a long term, a long game process. It’s not a one and done quick diet kind of situation. It’s like I’m in it for the long haul. I’m going to keep evolving myself for the rest of my life. Is there anything you wanted to add to that Ellie?

Ellie:  No. I think that the work that you and I do together and on our own is try to get to the place where we want to go faster and faster. So we may still be dealing with some scarcity. We may still be dealing with some money mindset like years from now, but it’s going to be at a masters or a PhD level. Not a beginner level.

Neill: Totally. Yep. We’ve graduated kindergarten. We’re in elementary school at least. We may be headed to middle school. Who knows? It’s going to be a continuous process. Like it will just be part of what we do because this is who we are in the world. Ellie and I are very aligned in that. That this is a long-term game for both of us. We’re in this for growth for the rest of our lives, and also for making our biggest contribution to the world. She’s doing the same.

I wanted you to speak a little bit to that to my people who might be your ideal clients that are listening to this show. Who do you work with? How do you help them? How can they get in touch with you?

Ellie:  Well first of all Neill, thank you so much for having me on the show. This was so much fun to unpack this with you. I am so proud of you and the amazing growth that you’ve done. It hasn’t been easy, but the person that you are now is incredible. I just can’t wait to see what happens in the next two years. Anyways, I’m super proud of you. I love you so much.

Neill: Ditto sister.

Ellie:  So I work with multigenerational family business leaders. I help them with love, leadership, and legacy. I have a group called, I know it’s a brilliant name, the Family Business Mastermind. What we do is a three-step process. We really focus step one on becoming the authentic you. A lot of my clients come to me and they’re exhausted. They’re living somebody else’s life. They feel very depleted. So we kind of turn that story around and really get them into a place of confidence, set some boundaries, and refuel them.

Then the second step is to learn how to lead within your family, lead your family, and with your family. So that if you can imagine in family business, it’s not that easy. So anybody who works with their significant other understands this. So we talk about same page leadership. We talk about leading with love and curiosity. We talk about taking responsibility for your own actions, not judging and blaming others.

The last thing that we do is creating a legacy that is your own while honoring somebody else’s. Especially for those who are in a multigenerational family business or family enterprise. They maybe weren’t the wealth creators to begin with.

Neill: Like I’m not in a family business. I mean maybe Lincoln will want to take over my business. I have no idea. I think how amazing it is that you’re doing this work on the world because just doing business by itself is so challenging. Then if you have like the dynamic of your family members on top of it. Like even those two things separate, but then you’re combining them. Oh my gosh. I cannot even imagine the challenges that exist there. So I’m so excited that you’re doing this work. So you have the group. Then you are also doing a podcast, yeah, soon?

Ellie:  Yes. So I have the Successful Generations podcast. It’s been a couple of years now that I’ve had this podcast. I actually am rebranding it to the Family Business Leader podcast. Really excited.

Neill: Yay. So exciting. Okay. So how can people find out more?

Ellie:  successfulgenerations.com. It’s the best place to find out more about me and the work that I do.

Neill: Okay. Amazing. So if you are in a family business and you want an amazing badass coach, go check Ellie out. She will coach you hard just like she coaches me hard. I’ve also had huge growth because of it. I’m so grateful to you for staying with me and for continuing on as my coach even though my brain is a mess. Like every week I’m like oh my gosh. Most of my sessions I’m like okay. You better sit back. I’m going to be a lot today just FYI.

Ellie:  Never. We always get through it. Bring it.

Neill: It’s so amazing. So amazing. Again, the reason I did this show is because I really wanted you guys to see that I am a human. That I actively work on my brain, and that’s why I’m able to do the work that I am doing in the world. That I’m not a special snowflake whatsoever. I just am deliberate about managing my brain and learning how to do my best work and be my best self and show up at my highest capacity in the world. That is available to you too. There’s nothing special about me or Ellie. It’s just that we’ve chosen on purpose to do this work and to get coached.

So if you want Ellie’s help and you’re in a family business, go check out her website successfulgenerations.com. Check out her podcast too so you can get a flavor for the work she’s doing in the world. Thank you, Ellie, so, so much. I love you so much.

Ellie:  Love you too. Thank you, Neill.

This episode may have just ended, but the conversation continues. What is one thing of value you received from this episode? Head over to successfulgenerations.com to connect with Ellie directly and meet other likeminded next gen leaders. If you like what you just heard, go to iTunes, and leave a review. Of course, we would love it if you would subscribe to our show. Until next time.