Meet Me
Business Priestess, Truth-Telling Lawyer,
Evolutionary Strategist + Catalyst
What a difference a year two years can make!
This post was originally written one year two years ago and [everything is completely different now] while so much is different I hesitate to take it down because it chronicles the evolution taking place so I’ll just cross out what’s no longer accurate and update what’s happened in the most recent year by putting the newest stuff in [brackets like this].
From the outside looking in, I’m a driven [not quite as driven now] mom entrepreneur who has built two million dollar plus businesses in the past 6 years (and another 2 6-fig businesses at the same time) [and now really doesn't care so much about the money part though it did serve me quite well for a long time], trains lawyers, writes books about legal stuff and lawyers and appears on television. [and now entrepreneurs, too, and is in the process of launching a brand new technology company!]
In late 2009, I decided not to appear on television again until I could do so knowing I am making a positive contribution to the world doing it and these days I don’t write [much] about legal stuff, I write about how evolutionary entrepreneurs can structure their business and lives for maximum freedom and impact [and since I'm no longer doing television, I have started an internet show designed to let you in on the Whole Truth About Love + Money (that's the name of the show)].
My inner girl is quite a bit different [and she's coming out to play quite a lot more lately - yay!].
She has dreadlocks [more like lots of feathers than dreadlocks, but I've been known to sport an actual dreadlock after a great festival], at least half her body tatted [I really only have 4, but I'm sure there are more on the way], writes about freedom and lives a Burning Man life all year long [I live on a farm, in community now and some days, it really does feel like a Burning Man life].
Oh, and she thinks it’s really annoying that I keep talking about my 7-figure businesses, as if that’s a big deal. She’d prefer I *tone it down*. And that I not talk about her. At all.
She says that if I let anyone know about her, I won’t get on television again and my businesses will fail.
This blog is about finding out.
Good news! One year later and I’ve come to discover that the more I’ve integrated my inner girl into my life, the happier I’ve become and the more successful my businesses have become. Wahoo!
LIFE
At my core, I’m a teacher, a guide, a leader, a mentor, [a creator] and a coach.
That usually means I’m telling everyone around me what to do. [Well, I think not so much anymore, but I used to.]
It’s taken me years to accept and embrace this part of myself. This part that has a gift for helping people see more than they can see.
I became a lawyer at least partially so I could prove to everyone who ever thought I was stupid or wouldn’t be a success that I am smart enough and good enough.
To help people see beyond conditioning requires becoming aware of it myself and then letting go of all of it. It’s proven quite difficult to do.
Part of my conditioning is [was] that to be smart enough and good enough, I must be the best of the best of the best of everything I do. And, if I don’t, then I’m stupid. [Fortunately, I've healed a lot of that now and I no longer have this need to be the best at everything, just what I am uniquely created for.]
Yes, that’s really what I thought. Even when I wasn’t aware of it, that’s what drove me … that need to prove something. Oftentimes it still does. [Yay, not anymore. It feels amazing to have released this!]
Fortunately, my quest for truth helped me become aware of my own bullshit motivations so I didn’t get trapped in a life of high achievement for the wrong reasons.
While I was driven by the desire to prove something to all those people, I am even more driven by a desire for truth. I refused to live my life based on conditioned, patterned, false beliefs … and the need to prove something to others is definitely that.
But, it wasn’t always that way …
In 1999 I graduated first in my class from Georgetown Law, got a job at one of the best law firms in the country making a healthy 6-figure salary, got married and had a baby.
The American Dream.
But it didn’t feel like a dream. It was a nightmare and I simply couldn’t imagine doing it for the rest of my life.
But, I had no idea how to go from where I was (a lawyer in a big law firm) to being who I knew I was, especially since back in the day I had no clue who I was. Just that I wasn’t that.
It wasn’t until I began working with my first coach that I got an inkling that I might not be a lawyer for the rest of my life.
Before I could embrace who I really was and how I wanted to impact the world though, I had a few things to do.
So in 2003, I embarked on three journeys that would bring me much closer to my truth.
- One: I became a mother for the second time and gave birth to my son in a birth center surrounded by women who held me in their arms as I brought him into the world with a whole lot of roaring, but without the intervention of drugs or doctors (a successful VBAC after having had a c-section with my daughter only 3.5 years earlier).
- Two: I left the security of my $185,000 (and increasing annually) paycheck and the prestige of the big law firm to open up my own solo law firm.
- Three: I began to discover what God meant in my life (up until then even saying the word God out loud made me nauseous.)
Life proceeded along. I was learning how to run a business, raising my kids, and resigning myself to a life without sex.
Yes, you read that right.
I had decided that marriage, my own business and 2 kids was plenty. I was only 28, but who needed sex? It just took time and energy I didn’t have. (It wasn’t that I didn’t love my husband, I simply didn’t want to have sex with him anymore; can you relate?)
And I thought that was okay.
Until one day I woke up. Or I should say, my body woke up. I started feeling beyond the numbness for the first time in years. To deeply feel. And I became aware of how much I missed it. [If you can relate to any of that, you might want to watch this video I made on how more sex = more business success.]
Within 6 months, I left my husband, moved into my own place, and began to find myself as an adult woman for the first time. (Apparently, this had something to do with Saturn Return and is quite common around the age of 30.) All I knew is that I was ready for more life, more feeling and, yes, more sex.
The divorce was painful, ugly, and raw.
Throughout it, I held the vision that my husband and I would one day be a family again and parent our children together. Today, that vision is a reality.
Five years later, my ex-husband and I live together as roommates, close friends and co-parents to our kids. Sad to say, this is no longer true. He went off the deep end, got another DUI, and became emotionally volatile again. I am doing my best to facilitate him having a continuing relationship with our children, but we are not roommates or close friends at the moment.
[Great news update as of mid-2011! The ex is sober and showing up for me and the kids in a big way. We are back to being friends, though not living together, and our kids are really happy about it.]
I have a boyfriend who travels back and forth between Colorado (where we live) and Atlanta (where he is dad to his two kids) to stay with us every other week.
By a very strange twist of fate, Dave and I ended our relationship in early 2009 when I began to acknowledge the hard truth that we wanted very different lives and I got married at Burning Man 2010 and that didn’t work out. At all.
I live in a beautiful home two houses down from one of my very best girlfriends, her boyfriend, their roommate and their five kids. We are creating an intentional community of support that is what I’ve always dreamed about having.
I live on a farm now, in community.
Once again, I find myself in a long distance relationship, this time with a man I’ve known for many years, who I think really just may be my partner for life and a very, very, very long time. The story of how we met and our lives have weaved together is a great one, but I’ll have to share that another time.
His name is Craig. He’s a 4 on the enneagram. He lives in Rochester, NY because that’s where his tween-aged daughter lives. And we are working on spending as much time together as possible. He is my business partner in the online evolutionary marketplace I am developing. It was his vision and my implementation. You can read more about him than you probably want to know on his blog, The Voices In My Heart.
My life is the ultimate proof that you really can create life on your own terms when you let go of your ideas about what’s realistic and possible.
Everything is possible when you commit to a life of truth.
BUSINESS
When I opened the doors to my solopreneur business (a solo law practice) in 2003, I knew nothing about entrepreneurship or how to do business.
I just wanted to work closer to home, build a life in my own community, stop having to drive through 20 miles of LA traffic every day, and get to see my kids more.
I knew I wouldn’t continue to be able to do the corporate thing when my husband called frantic one day with my daughter screaming in the background because he thought she broke her arm and he was washing the car seat cover and couldn’t get her strapped into the seat to take her to the hospital.
I hated that feeling of being too far away to take care of my baby. In my off hours I was an attachment parenting, radical breastfeeding, co-sleeping mama. But for 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, I was an associate in a big time law firm and couldn’t relate to anyone I worked with.
For years, I beat myself up for not fitting in at the firm. I convinced myself there was something wrong with me. Until one day I woke up and saw that there wasn’t anything wrong with me and there wasn’t anything wrong with the law firm; we simply weren’t a match.
So, I started my own law firm. I tried to partner with a couple of other lawyers instead of going out on my own, but ultimately, I wanted to do things my way and no one else seemed to really get it. Truth be told, they all told me I’d fail.
I didn’t. I invented a new kind of law firm. I created the PFL Way™ and my clients loved it.
Within 3 years, my law firm was bringing in a million dollars a year of revenue. And yet in so many ways, I still new nothing about business.
Very quickly I had figured out how to generate revenue. But, I knew very little (okay nothing) about managing people, my time or my emotions, and very, very little about the things that are really important when you are building a business – legal, insurance, financial and tax stuff.
Between 2006 and 2007, I learned how to automate and systematize my business operations and create a recurring revenue business model. Then I began to learn how to make an impact on a bigger level.
It was a huge transformation.
Two life-changing things came out of it:
- I was able to work only 2 days a week in my law office and still bring a million dollars of revenue into the firm thanks to technology and systems I had created; and
- With the time I freed up, I began to teach other lawyers my business model.
By 2008, I had a second million dollar business but I was back to working constantly. That was also the year that I published a bestselling book, appeared on the Today Show, and sold my law firm.
Sounds great, right?
It was. And, it wasn’t. I had some massive challenges because I didn’t really know how to run a real business beyond sales, marketing and systems. Here are just a few of the things that happened after we hit 7-figures:
- One of my employees sued me after I found out she had spent 18 months taking advantage of my loose policies and caring nature;
- I didn’t have the right insurance to fight the lawsuit and had to settle for a hefty five figures;
- The guy I sold my law firm to refused to invest in marketing and within 6 months had stopped paying the bills (including what he owed me on his agreement to buy the firm.)
- I was audited by the IRS (I did get a no change, which meant no extra tax, but the audit process itself is quite onerous and emotional.)
- And I found myself giving up my inner work because I was so busy with business, television, promotion …
You see, I knew how to make money and market, but I didn’t know how to do the business of my business. The legal, insurance, financial and tax parts. The hiring the right people and letting the wrong people go parts. The doing it all without losing myself.
The hard stuff. Not knowing how to do these parts of my business cost me nearly $800,000. Yes, eight-hundred-thousand-dollars.
And most importantly, my peace of mind. I became someone I never imagined I’d be … ego-obsessed and no longer living the truest truth of who I was.
I came to see the pain and loss of those experiences as my blessing and gift to share so I invested 2009 in discovering the higher purpose of legal, insurance, financial and tax systems for business owners and I committed to myself that I would find a more integrated way to live my life and do my business … I would seek sustainability.
In 2010, I moved to Colorado so I wouldn’t be tempted to do television unless it was purposeful and I knew it would make a positive impact in the world.
And that same year, I launched two three programs to save business owners from the pain and heartache I had experienced by being unwilling to look at the hard things in my business:
- The Money Map to Freedom:
A 6-step systematic framework for making money decisions in your business – from what you should invest in, to what you should charge, to which programs, products, courses, and services you should offer – all based on what’s right for your life and what you really, really, really want to do. I created this money map for myself because there was so many ideas I had and so many ways I wanted to serve. I couldn’t make decisions about what to do next without a strategic, scientific framework for doing so. - LIFT Foundation System & Toolkit:
Building a business without the right legal, insurance, financial and tax stuff is like building a house on a cracked foundation. It’s just a matter of time before it collapses. The bigger it gets before the collapse, the worse the collapse is going to be when it happens. When you’ve got your LIFT Foundation in place, challenges will still come along, but they’ll remain speed bumps instead of becoming massive potholes. - The Powerful Feminine Leader Co-Creation Mastermind
To guide women entrepreneurs to build their businesses around their Great Work with grace and ease.
And because we always teach what we most need to learn, I am now experiencing what it’s like to have LIFT in my own business and things are taking off to another level.
I have made the commitment to take the company I started three years ago to the next level
- a level in which the work I’ve created can truly continue on without me, no matter what.
- a level in which there is enough revenue that I can finally do only what I can do and leave the rest to everyone else.
- a level in which my work can positively impact millions of people.
It’s the most difficult of the transitions yet. And the most rewarding. (And now one year later, I can tell you, it’s happening!)
Through all of it, I’ve gotten to see how a commitment to truth and right action will overcome everything.
Today, I am what I’ve really always known I am: a coach, a mentor, a guide, and a teacher.
Here’s what some people have to say about that:
“I owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to Alexis for helping me create and launch a 6-figure program this year. I had been struggling with how to design it and the right way to get the message about it out to people. In no time at all, she showed me exactly what to do. She and Dave are truly brilliant at helping entrepreneurs design high income businesses, without giving up their heart or values — I love that!”
“Alexis has this amazing gift as an entrepreneur; she can look at your business and see all the moving parts and then at the same time see how it all relates to the big picture of how you will make money now and in the future. When you are working with her, you know you have tapped pure entrepreneurial brilliance!”
“What a blessing, to find a trained lawyer, an killer business strategist and a successful online and offline marketer all rolled into one beautiful and authentic person! Alexis, thank you for bringing your unique and powerful skills and clear insights into my life. I thank my lucky start I got access to you before the TV Networks sweep you away!”PURSUIT OF TRUTH
It’s a quest that never ends.
Every day I strive to be more aware and make choices from truth and awareness instead of patterns and conditioning.
