Episode 104 - Soul Chats with Terri Levine

Amy
Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode. We are doing a Soul Chats interview with Dr. Terri Levin. I'm so excited to share this Soul Chats with you. We end up talking about the coaching consulting industry and what that looks like, and how to be more heart-centered. We also talk about AI and its ever-changing industry. We talk about book writing and so much more. I'm so excited for us to jump in, but before we do, let me tell you a little bit more about Dr. Terri Levine. She is known as a business mentoring expert with a heart. Terri is one of the world's top business and marketing strategists. Terri is known for consulting with business owners to help them move from ineffective traditional sales, marketing, and operational methods into effective, authentic, transparent, people-centered communication models. Terri has over 30 years of business, sales, and marketing experience and has helped over 6,000 business owners reach revenue goals they never thought possible. She is one of the world's foremost experts on how to market a coaching business. She has built and sold several multimillion-dollar companies. She is a best-selling author of over 40 books and a highly requested keynote speaker at events and conventions throughout the world. To learn more about growing your business with Dr. Terri Levine, Proven Growth Strategies, attend one of her free informational webinars, which we will share that link in the blog. Show notes, you can just click it, click the description. I am so excited for you to join us in this Soul Chats interview. Let's begin.

Amy
Hi, Dr. Terri Levine. I'm so excited you are here today. How are you doing?

Terri
I'm doing great, and I'm super happy to be with you.

Amy
I'm so excited you're here. Now, you've been in business a really long time. Share your journey with our listeners today.

Terri
Sure. I didn't know what I didn't know. When I came out of college, I had a master's degree. I was a speech-language pathologist and went, Oh, I'll just open the clinic. And somehow, I guess I thought that magically I would get doctors referring patients because that's what I needed. I had no business sense. I had no sales background. I had no marketing. I knew nothing about operations. I knew speech-language pathology. And it was a real struggle. And it took me quite a while to finally figure out how to get doctors to refer. Then when I figured it out, it was like, Oh, I could probably repeat this and start another business. I sold that business. We started a home art show company and instantly had success with that and sold that business, started a rehab business, same formula. I realized that my sweet spot of what I really understood now was how to market and grow business quickly. However, I made a big mistake, Amy. For five years, I was CEO of a national healthcare company. I am not an employee-type person.

Amy
There are people that are meant to be employees and people that are meant to be business owners, and we all have our roles, too.

Terri
For me, I had to see, I think, that that wasn't where I fit. Then I left that well over 30-something years ago, started my coaching and consulting business, had 30 clients in 30 days, and I never looked back. I'm like, this is where I'm at home. That's my journey and this is what I absolutely love doing.

Amy
That's amazing. You started different companies when you start something like a business, it's your baby. Then we get this desire to do something different. How did you work through the voices in your head or the what-ifs when transitioning? And how did you know that it was time to transition?

Terri
Great question. Well, I never thought of selling my speech pathology business. I was very attached to it. It was like my baby. And then someone came in and made an offer. I was like, oh, okay. Then when I started my home art show company, I started with the end in mind. I'm going to grow this. I'm going to love this. And at some point, I'm going to set it up where it is sellable. All of my businesses, including my current company, they've all been set up to be sellable, where I'm sitting in the CEO chair, the company doesn't revolve around me. I actually am the owner of a company. I'm not running a day-to-day business. I've been asked over the last five or 10 years, are you going to sell Heartrepreneur? That's not in my game plan. I hope to have this and be doing this for the rest of my life as long as I physically and mentally can. However, it is positioned, like all my other businesses, that it could be sold.

Amy
That's interesting because in the coaching business when you're the face of the company, that is hard to position yourself with the end in mind to sell it without giving away your trade secrets. How did you manage to do that?

Terri
I created a company from the get-go. So it's only Terri Levine, and it's all Terri. And if Terri is not around, there's no income. It's created so there are a lot of courses, a lot of automated programs, and a lot of other consultants and coaches on the team. So it doesn't revolve around me and the brand. It's Heartrepreneur. It's not me. It's not my name. It can go on without me. And that really comes from understanding from day one, Steven Covey's words. We co-authored a book years ago, and these words always resonated with me. "Start with the end in mind." I think a lot of coaches go, oh, I'm going to have a coaching business, and it's my name coaching, and here I am coaching. And they don't really think about the game plan. And then they're doing day-to-day tasks that aren't transforming people's lives, like sending out emails and sitting on social media and blah, blah, blah. I only do my zone of genius, and that's it.

Amy
I think that's really important because I think that so often coaches, healers, people that are consultants, they feel that they have to do everything in order to grow their business. And that's simply not true. Like, for me, I'd get really bored if I had to sit there and do tech stuff. I'm not good at it. And so I love that you're talking about being in your zone of genius. Talk about what Heartrepreneur is. Sorry, that's a tongue-tie for me.

Terri
You said it perfectly, Heartrepreneur. I'll tell you how it even came about. It was not the original name of my company, and I was working with my publisher, had a contract for a book, and went to meet him in New York to review the manuscript. And he had already done, I think, three books with me, had the contract. He takes the manuscript, and he throws it on the floor. And he said I don't want this book. I was like, I don't know what to say or do. And he said I've known you for 11 years. I want the book about how you do business. You do business as a heartrepreneur. I remember going, A what? He said I don't know. I invented the word. You put all this heart into entrepreneurship. I took the train back from New York to Philadelphia, and I was like, What is he talking about? And all of a sudden, I had this... I could have had a V8! moment where I went, I get it. I don't sell, I don't really market. I do things organically. I totally get it. I wrote down on a piece of paper in my journal transparency, authenticity, and integrity. I'm like, okay, that's what Heartrepreneur stands for to me. I went home, started working on the book, called my attorney, trademarked the term heartrepreneur, rebranded the company logo, you name it. That's what's important to me is it's disrupting how most people do business, which is transactionally.

Amy
I love that. I love that you took tough love because you worked hard on that book and then you took the feedback and ran with it, which I think is amazing. And now you have this new company or this new branded company. And how do you navigate helping people in their businesses?

Terri
Great question. So I teach people a formula that I wrote a book on this called The Conversion Equation, and the formula is the Conversion Equation. The formula is the Conversion Equation. I've worked with, I think we're almost at 7,000 coaches and consultants worldwide in the past 30-something years, exactly on this conversion equation and changes how they do business. They can actually stop hunting for client family members, and paying for ads. They can stop all of that. And they get not only a lot more prospects, but they also get qualified prospects ready to raise their hand and work with them. They don't have to go through long phone calls, demos, and all of this stuff. And it makes a big difference. And it's all in the process of transforming lives every single day. I wear this little bracelet it says it's so hard to see on these virtual things it says, serve and create. I love that. Just wake up every day, serve, and create. And at the end of the day, I turn my little bracelet around, and it has a checkmark. And the check mark means I've done what I'm supposed to do today.

Amy
You feel accomplished, which also is like acknowledging that, hey, I did this. This is great. It's completely different today. Which I think that completion helps just even with mindset of moving on and not worrying about the to-do list or anything like that. So that's really awesome. Now, I know that you teach a more of a feminine approach than a masculine approach. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Terri
Yeah. So it was very interesting. I had written a book called Turbocharge Your Business, and I was speaking at a women's event, and I modified what I taught in Turbocharge Your Business to be more heart-centered and to be more emotional because that's my female audience. And then my publisher said he was at the event in the back of the room, and he said, while I was at the back of the room navigating your book table, he said, now go write me, Turbocharge Your Business for Women. He said because what you taught today is different than what's in the original book. And I realized that, yes, I changed my approach. And even though I have male clients, they're very heart-centered, they're very emotionally based, and they have really incredible emotional intelligence. And so I play off of female emotional intelligence. And in my experience, we're better business owners because we bring so much of our emotional intelligence into business. So I teach people how to use their emotional intelligence more and how to use logic less.

Amy
Yeah. And I think that that's really important, especially as we're navigating this new level of consciousness and how we're approaching where it's not just a man's man's world. There are a lot of women that are running big companies, and we can have a softer, more feminine approach. It doesn't matter if you're a male or female. It's just how we are interacting with humans as humans, which I think is really awesome. As the coaching industry is changing, it's like an ever-changing environment, especially with social media. How do you keep up with all the changes, how do you stay centered, and what you know is effective? Because sales and marketing are always going to be a similar strategy in terms of how we're connecting and that heart connection and that transformational connection that you're wanting to make. But how are you navigating all the different changes that happen?

Terri
Oh, man, I love this conversation because I literally this morning started writing an article about this. This is perfect, A me. I don't pay attention to all of the changes that are happening because that's not my area of genius. I don't want to know the algorithms and how they're changing and what I need to do and social media or ads or what that... I don't want to know that. I'm here to do what I do best, which is coaching and consulting to transform people's businesses. So I have a team. I also own a digital marketing agency, and they do my work, too. They do my social media, they handle any ads, they do all of that. So I can stay in what I know best. If you want to be a digital marketing expert, which nowadays you have to be to understand the changing environment, you're literally going to have to make changes every day because algorithms change that frequently. So that's one thing. I give up the stuff that I don't feel I need to know. The second thing is I just stay in my lane. I just keep doing what's been systematically proven to work. It's a process. It's a method. I just do that every single day. I ignore everything else going on, all the chitchat in the industry, all of the fake gurus that show up every day, which they do, or all the DMs; hey, I can help you, whatever. I just stay in my lane.

Amy
And speaking of DMs, I personally do not care for the DMs that are just spam. It's spammy. That's the word I'm looking for. It's spammy. And when someone messages me, and they didn't even say hello or acknowledge something that I've done. We haven't had a conversation, and it's like, Hey, I can help you grow my business. And I'm like, Yeah, do you know anything about my business?

Terri
So I had a guy message me a few days ago. It was on LinkedIn. And he's like, Oh, I see you're a coach, and I can help you get your first client. I'm like; obviously, you don't even look at my profile, 30 plus years in the industry with almost 7,000 clients. I could help you reach out to people in a much better way. And then I just blocked.

Amy
Yeah. I think it's interesting, too, because numbers are not important. It doesn't matter how many followers you have. It doesn't matter how many likes you have. None of that is important because if you don't know how to strategically convert conversations into paying clients in an ethical way, you're not going to make money. So someone that has let's say, 200,000 followers and all these likes, you have no idea actually how much money they're making, if they're even making money in their coaching business. And so I talk to my clients about that, too, because everybody's like, well, I got so many views, but is it converting?

Terri
Exactly. I was talking to this guy the other day, and he made a huge mistake in his business. He paid someone to get him 100,000 Instagram followers, which probably... Most of them are probably fake. He paid a lot of money, $20,000. So, of course, the follower count is going down every day. And I went into his account and I went, it's mostly bots. So he said, what should I do? I'm like, if it were me, I would close down that account. I would start over again. Well, before he even had a chance to do that, Instagram flagged the account, and now he's booted off permanently, and he can't get a new account on Instagram. So what I say about that is the numbers are nothing. I've had a client who doesn't even have an email list of 100 people, has almost no social media following, and was able to do $10,000 in the first week with me following a formula which isn't about getting more people. Those numbers are not going to necessarily be people who convert. Whatever, I've got 20, 30, 40, 50,000 followers on XYZ platform. Does that mean I'm going to make money on that platform? No, your ego is not your amigo. Let the numbers go.

Amy
Yeah. And I think that's so true because I've had people come up to me at conferences and retreats where they're like, I love your podcast. They're awesome. They have never, ever liked one of my podocasts. And it's like, you don't know what people are looking at. And not a lot of people are actually clickers to hit the like button. I know that I personally am not. And I try to manage my time on social media because it can be a huge time suck. How much time are you spending on social media for your business?

Terri
So, I'll be really transparent. I spend 20 minutes a day, and that is mostly in my Facebook group, Heartrepreneurs with Terri Levine. I tell people right up front, that's me. I'm in the group, I respond, that's all me. The rest of social media, 99.99% is my team, and I'm very transparent about that. On my personal Facebook page, I do occasionally put things like a dinner meeting with friends or whatever. All the rest of the stuff that's on there is not me. The responses are not me. I'm very upfront about that. I literally set a Timer for 20 minutes, and sometimes I'm out in 15, and that's it.

Amy
That's good. I think that it's really important to set timers. And this is something I also do, which is just because you can get stuck into the rabbit hole so fast because the app is designed to give you so many dopamine hits and designed to keep you scrolling. And so if you don't go in with the focus, you will lose focus really quickly.

Terri
It's true. And I use an app called Newsfeed Killer. So I don't see the Newsfeed on Facebook. So if I want to see anything in the Newsfeed, like I want to see you or something, I just have to go to your page. Otherwise, I don't see all of that stuff. So I ask all of my clients the first week they're with me to go on a news diet, a social media diet, and to install Newsfeed Killer.

Amy
I've never heard of that app. I think that's awesome.

Terri
I love it.

Amy
Yeah. Because I think that just especially being in the United States during election time. It's crazy. It is. And I personally don't watch the news. I get my news in different ways and set time on how I look at it. So I love that that's even an option to do, which is amazing. So for you, you have a Conveyor Belt Method. What is that?

Terri
So the Conveyor Belt Method comes from the Conversion Equation, and I'll give you the structure. It's four simple things. And if anyone is taking notes, these are the things to take notes on. It starts with interrupt. So step one is interrupt. This leads in what we're talking about. We're talking about social media, and you're scrolling and scrolling, and there's so much stuff. Well, when people are on social media, their brain is in downtime. The best way to describe downtime is, Amy, have you ever driven somewhere and gone like, I don't remember passing that light or whatever? Your brain has done it before. So your brain just takes over and puts you in downtime. You don't have to be highly focused. Well, that's how we look at social media in downtime. And so whatever your messages are on social media unless you interrupt people with the right message, it doesn't get in. So that's the first thing we interrupt, and we get the person's brain to go into uptime, which means I'm awake, and I'm alert, and I'm paying attention.

Now, the brain will go right back into downtime unless we do the second step, which is engage. Now that we interrupted you, we have to engage you. And we usually do that with some an interesting fact or statistic or something that's shocking or surprising so that we go, Oh, that's interesting. And the brain stays in uptime. Step number three is educate. Now that I have you in uptime, now I'm going to teach you something. Now you're going to see that I have some knowledge, I have some expertise, and I'm going to give you a piece of that that comes with serving create on my bracelet; I'm going to help you. And then the fourth step is to offer your hand without being salesy or pitchy, making some a no or low-cost offer or no or low-risk offer. And so it's interrupt, engage, educate, and offer.

And in the Conversion Equation, I took I think it was about 200 different client case studies, and I embedded them in different places in the book. So if you work with people in spirituality, or you work with energy, or you work with health, or whatever area you work in, you're going to find examples of real-life people and how they applied it. And then you can take that and apply it too.

Amy
I love that, and I love the part even about the interrupt and the educate part, because I think that so often people are afraid to give. And in the world we live in a world of a lot of free information. So you have to make enough noise for people, and you have to give enough for them to know that you're an expert, to know that you can help them, to know that you can create a transformation for them. So I love that as well. What would you say to someone that's wanting to start a business but they're really scared that they are nervous on if they can provide value or not?

Terri
That confidence piece right there to me is one of the biggest things that really holds people back. So what I say is go test it. Go to three people you know, friends, family, colleagues, coworkers, anyone, three people you know. Get them together, whether it's on Zoom or in person, and teach them something. Something that you're like, I know how to do this. I'm going to teach this, whatever it is. And at the end, just say to them, I'm giving you this information for free in exchange for you to be absolutely honest with me and tell me whether or not I have the ability to teach and train this information well. Get honest feedback.

I had a client, family member do this a couple of years ago. She's very introverted, and she was really worried that she couldn't teach something. So she had four friends of hers. They got together for coffee, and she taught this concept that she had of how to structure an eBook. It was an idea that she had, and she wanted to teach it to business owners. Well, three of the four people instantaneously was starting to literally write their books. The other person had an outline. When she said, What do you think? Or whatever, they said, Well, do you have a course or a program I could buy? That changed everything for her. I love it.

Amy
Now, are you telling them to make sure they're connecting with someone that would also possibly want that particular thing?

Terri
Good question. So the answer is yes; however, don't plan to make an offer. Don't plan to sell them. Ask them just to give you their absolute honest feedback. No offer, no selling. If they're interested enough, they're going to raise their hands. And that's really what I teach is they will always raise their hands. I call it reverse marketing. If you have created value, you don't even have to say, Would you like to work with me? Half the time, before I'm even done with the presentation, I have people going; well, how do I get this? Or, How do I act? Wait a minute, I haven't even given you the good stuff. So that's my recommendation.

Amy
And that sounds always such a good feeling because that means you know you provided so much value that they're like, Okay, I'm ready to do the next thing. Thank you for giving me this thing.

Terri
Exactly.

Amy
I understand this thing now, so let's go to the next step, which is really awesome.

Amy
How are you navigating how our economy has been impacted and is shifting from COVID and all of the prices increasing and talks of recession and things like that?

Terri
I've been in business for almost 44 years, and I've seen everything. Recessions have come and gone. The political climate has changed. COVID, the dot com crash, there's always going to be something. I actually pay no attention to any of it. I can't do anything about it. I can't change the price of eggs or gas. I can't do it. The only thing I can do is I have a vote, and I'm allowed to vote. That's basically all that I can do. My focus is on my clients and taking care of them, not on anything going on in the world. I can only control helping the people that are investing with me and giving them everything that I have. That's it. I don't chitchat about all that other stuff. I don't concern myself with it. If a recession comes, it comes. If a dot com crash happens, it happens. So I actually tell my clients, you have to be focused on the now. We can't go back and fix the past, and we certainly don't even know if we have a future. This could be our last nanosecond on the planet. Why would I worry about something that I don't even know if it's going to happen or if I'm going to be here when it happens? I can only focus on in the moment for the moment, and that's my best advice.

Amy
I agree with you. For me, I've had amazing things happen during tremendous times or chaotic times or recessions and things like that. I think that it's important to keep your focus and also be adaptable for things that are changing as they're changing. But to keep your focus and not get too caught up in the conscious fear of what's going on because that will change your mindset and change the way that you do business and change the way that you're energetically receiving also from the universe, which I think is really important. Many industries are starting to use AI. What are your thoughts about that? And are you using AI in your business?

Terri
Oh, man. No one's asked me this one yet. This is a good one.

Terri
About 10 years ago, I told my clients that if you weren't in an industry that you had to use your thinking for coaching, consulting, mentoring, advising, within my lifetime, I would expect that you'd be out of business. Because in Sweden and Denmark, they have been doing surgery 100% robotically in many hospitals for years. And once I saw that about 10 years ago, I went, if it's going to happen there, it's going to replace jobs everywhere. So we're in the right field because it depends on our brains. I experimented with one of the many chatbots that were out there. I didn't let it go live anywhere. I just wanted to see what it brought up. I decided it's not authentic for me. It's not my voice. It's not my thoughts. I decided not to go live use it. I can also tell I've seen a lot of posts on social media lately that I can tell instantly they're from a chatbot and they seem very similar to everybody else's posts. If you want to stand out in your market and not be a cookie-cutter? I actually recommend that you turn your head away from AI because people come to you for this. Be authentic.

Amy
Yeah. Well, good. I think AI is going to be a conversation that's going to be coming up more and more and more and more. And for me, I just find it really fascinating on what people are doing. And we have used our own stuff. That's the way that I've always done it because I love the way my brain thinks, and I love the way that I articulate words in a particular way. And there are things that we can use that can support us in getting the job done faster, but I don't believe that some of the technology right now, could it later on, can get the voice exactly the way it is. Energetically as well because there is an energetic piece to it. As a spiritual entrepreneur, there's that energetic piece that I think is really, really important to have.

Terri
I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the energy connection. The way that I played around with it was for a blog post, and I read the post that it wrote, and then I read it out loud. When I read it out loud, I went, so static, it's so bland, and it's so not my voice. Then I just deleted it and got rid of the app and said, Okay, for me, I want to have that connection and that heart-to-heart connection. And, energetically and spiritually, the way that my audience connects with me is through my voice and my words. Anyway, for me, it's just not something at this point that I'm considering. Yeah.

Amy
Well, thank you for sharing that. I absolutely adore it. Now, you've written many books.

Terri
Yes. I think I've written. If I'm remembering correctly, I wrote 40.

Amy
That's a lot.

Terri
It is.

Amy
Some people have the desire to write one book, and they're so fearful of even just writing it. How did you write over 40 books?

Terri
This goes back to childhood. When I was seven years old, I lived in New York, and I wrote a letter to Santa Claus and mailed it to the... I didn't know how to reach Santa Claus. So my father said, Just mail it here. And he gave me the address of a newspaper. I don't know why my father did that.

Terri
Well, my letter to Santa was published in the newspaper.

Amy
I love it.

Terri
It was crazy. Really crazy. And my teacher I was seven, my teacher said, You're going to be an author. And somehow, you know how that could be planted in you? It got planted in me. So by the time I was nine, I was writing poems, I was already journaling, and a lot of it was drawing, but I had a journal. I started writing every single day from nine years old on. When I started in my first business as a speech pathologist, I just didn't know how to reach people. And we didn't have all the technology way back then. And so I started writing, and I started writing articles and columns for magazines in the rehabilitation industry. And then I realized how much I loved to write, and I can't stop. I can't turn it off. So the last book that I wrote, I just wrote a book about a month ago; I just stuck it up on Amazon and put it there for free. I'm like, I don't even need to make money from books anymore. I'm not looking to be published anymore. I've had Wiley and Simon & Schuster. I'm good. I'm just writing for the sake of writing and the joy of writing and, again, to make that serving and creating happen.

Amy
That just gives me such a warm butterfly feeling. I think writing is such a freeing process that sometimes we can torment ourselves with if we don't allow it to just flow. What's your writing process?

Terri
Great question. First, I start with a framework, and you would laugh if you saw it. I have colored sticky notes in seven different colors, and I just start putting thoughts all over my walls and literally cover my walls. Now that my walls covered, while they stick, is now organizing them into the various chapter one, chapter four, whatever. Then my process is every single day, first thing in the morning when my brain is really fresh and excited, I write a minimum of four pages, minimum. Some days when I'm in flow, it could be 20 pages. And other days, it's like, all right, keep going, keep going, got to get four pages. And a book gets written pretty darn quickly with this method and the framework on the wall. I've taught that framework to just a lot of other authors just as I hear, try this. And people have had great results with that. I love it.

Amy
So you're not necessarily worried about word count. You're just like, four pages, that's it. That's what we're doing until the book is done. And do you take time off in between that? Do you take the weekends off, or is it every day?

Terri
Oh, really nice question. I have very strict boundaries around my work. I work about 21 hours a month. I do not work on Fridays. I do not work on Saturdays. I do not work on Sundays. I have boundaries as to when I start in the morning and when I finish in the afternoon. And so, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are my days of writing normally. Even though I don't work on Friday, I find that because I have that whole day of leisure when I get up, I'm ready to go; I will do some writing. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that's it.

Amy
So the Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you're working 21 hours a month, how do you do that?

Terri
So again, because the business is a company and I'm the CEO, I'm not sitting in the, if I don't trade time for money, I don't get paid. What I do is have meetings scheduled Monday mornings and meet with my clients on Monday mornings, and then I'm off Monday afternoons. Tuesdays, I have interviews that are scheduled, and I do some work in my Facebook group for a couple of hours, and that's it, working on content for the group in the upcoming weeks. Wednesdays, I have a team meeting and might meet with a couple of client family members in the morning, and I'm off in the afternoon. Thursdays, I just do any quick team meetings or clean up work, then I'm off in the afternoon. So I'm very structured and have very strong boundaries around when you can reach me, when you can't reach me, how you can reach me, how many times a day I check email, etc. I've set it up so that this is how I tell my clients to think. I used to love Steve Jobs. So I think if I were Steve Jobs, would I be doing these tasks? Would I be the one on social media? Would I be the one creating Siri? No. And so every time I look at doing a task, I say, No, are you sitting in the CEO chair? Or, Yes, are you sitting? And I move into the CEO chair and delegate. That's great.

Amy
Now, you said you work with your clients on Monday. Are you also doing group programs or anything like that? Or is your team doing the group programs?

Terri
I've only done groups for over 31 years. And the reason why is the first couple of years I did work with individuals, and I had 30 clients in 30 days. They were all individuals. At the end of those 30 days, I realized I am saying the same thing over and over again. So many people have the same, and these recurring themes were coming up. Back in the day, Thomas Leonard was one of my first coaches, the founder of this industry. Thomas said I think you should put them in a group. I went, How would I possibly group them? He said This is how you do it. I took five of them and experimented and said, Here's what I'm going to do. I'll put you in a group. If you don't get value, if it's not working, I'll give you all your money back, and we'll see. Well, those five people told me they were making more change, more transformation faster because of the group, synchronicity, the synergy, the like-mindedness, the energy. And they were making progress faster than any clients I'd ever had. So pretty quickly, I started shifting all my clients. It's been a good 31 years. I only do group work.

Amy
I love group work. I feel like you can reach more people, have a bigger impact because the way that you reach people their impact impacts their group too. And it's such a huge ripple effect in how that all is orchestrated. It's really beautiful. So I love that you're doing the groups and that you've moved away from the 1:1. What would you tell someone that's afraid to relinquish control?

Terri
So I would say to start with a very small group, maybe 3 to five people, and put them in there and do it as a charter member or a pilot or a beta test, and let them know that if it's not working or you don't feel it's working or they don't feel it's working, you'll shift. Let them know. My experience has been... One of my clients just did this. I think it's her third or fourth month. She had a lot of individual clients. She was getting really burned out. She put all 15 in a group. She put all 15 of these folks that were like-minded in one group and basically said if it doesn't work, not work it out; we'll go back to something else or give you your money back. This is month three or month four of running that group, and they're loving it, they're happy, and they're creating friendships, and they're going to be on the journey with these people probably forever. The other thing I find is ever since I've done group work, my clients don't leave. I mean, I've had so many clients for 20, 30 years now. They just don't leave. They have these connections and friendships within this community. I call them my client family members. They are family, and they work with each other like family. If I'm away, or I'm on vacation, or I was very ill with COVID last year, they took over, and they were helping each other and working together. That's the magic of a group. I don't know that it's even being confident. It's just step outside of your comfort zone and just go do it. It's a heck of a lot of fun, too. I love doing group stuff.

Amy
It's a ton of fun.

Terri
Isn't it?

Amy
And what I meant by relinquishing control, like relinquishing control for team, like for team to help with building.

Terri
Oh, yes. Good. So it's funny. Everyone thinks, well, I have to do it myself because only I could do it this way or whatever. I learned many years ago, and this was my lesson from corporate America, everyone is replaceable. I had someone who was like the next person under me in the corporation who decided to leave, and I begged this guy to stay. I offered him more money, offered him everything because I thought he's not replaceable, and so he leaves. We hire someone else. I remember my brain was like, not going to be as good as Bill. It's going to take forever. This guy, another guy came in. He had the most creative ideas and ways of doing things. He streamlined some of the processes. Then I saw where maybe Bill had been more of a hindrance than I even ever realized. That's when I got this lesson. It's not about me, and it's not about me doing it right or perfect. I tell my team, go make mistakes because the work that we do, thank goodness, isn't going to kill anyone. We're not doing surgery. We make a mistake, we apologize, and we learn, and that's all. When I bring on a team member, I have standard operating procedures. They're all video. They go watch them in my Google Drive, and then they get started. If they say, What about this? Just go do it. If there's a mistake, we'll fix it. That's how I've learned. It is about becoming a very good delegator. If you're going to sit in the CEO chair, you have to relinquish, you have to give up, and you can't be a micromanager. Oh, no.

Amy
I have to tell my team; we celebrate mistakes.

Terri
Love it.

Amy
We celebrate mistakes because that just means that we're learning from it and it'll be perfect. We'll figure it out. And like you said, it's not surgery. Nobody's going to die. May someone be upset? Sure. But we're human, and we all make mistakes. So I love that. And I think that it's really important to not do everything yourself because you will get burnt out. And when you're creating a business, it's important to create it in a place where you have more freedom and more space to do the things that you love because your work shouldn't be your only job.

Terri
Yeah. To me, we're human beings living life and having this amazing experience. If we really open our eyes and look around, it's like, Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. What we choose to do in our work is an extension of who we are. It's not who we are. I opened a seminar years ago, I don't know if there were 50 people, and I said, So tell me about yourself. And almost everyone started with a sentence like this, I'm an accountant, I'm an attorney, I'm a coach, I'm a healer. I let them all go. When they finished, I said, Your I am is not correct. You are not your job. You are not your work. And when you're stating it that way, it tells me somewhere here you actually think you are. I am Terri Levine, having this great human experience with friends and family and health and wellness and all of these things. The joy of doing the work that I do is a piece of Terri Levine. I hope that people get that message from us today.

Amy
I think that's really important because we get so wrapped up in identity. I'm a mom, I'm a father, I'm this job title, and when that gets taken away, then there's an identity crisis. I love your approach where, no, we start with, who am I? Who am I on a soul level? So, I love that, Terri. I absolutely love that.

Amy
I know you have a free webinar for our listeners. That link will be in the description, the show notes on the blog. Let everybody know what it is.

Terri
Sure. So what I did was I taught a master class for my clients and really showed them an exact process to get to six figures in six months or less. Like exact, do this, do this, do this. My clients said other people need to see this. I put together the webinar. It's totally free. You can go watch the class, take notes, and then I really encourage you to implement it because it works.

Amy
I think implementing is the key. You can watch as many webinars; you can read as many books as you want. If you're not implementing, it's not going to work. So I love that piece. What are you most excited about on a personal level coming up for you to do or to experience for transformation?

Terri
Okay. I was invited... I live in Mexico for part of the year, in Pennsylvania for part of the year, and in New Jersey for part of the year. I'm currently in Mexico. I was invited by a friend who connected me with a shaman here in Mexico to go and do a jungle experience with plants and with different rituals. And that is coming up in March, and I am stoked.

Amy
I am so excited for you. That's going to be extremely transformational. I just feel the word yummy. It'll be really yummy for your soul. So I'm excited for you. And I think that that's having those little journeys to look forward to is really important. And you're like an entire being lit up when you are sharing it. I absolutely love it. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners before we hop off?

Terri
Just to really focus on the three words that Heartrepreneur stands for, which are transparency, authenticity, and integrity. If you focus on that each and every day and serving and creating, you're going to have a lucrative, wonderful business that will really be... And so you use yummy, I mean, use delicious for you. I wake up every day, I can't wait to do what I do because it's so exciting to me, and it's so transformational. I just feel like I'm doing such good in the world. I know that your listeners want the same thing. So I'm encouraging that. Absolutely.

Amy
Well, thank you so much for being here today. It was so fun chatting with you. If you guys are interested in joining the free Masterclass webinar, check out the links in the show notes, and the blog. You'll be able to get to that site. Thank you, Terri, so much. Make sure you guys like and subscribe, and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye.