277 Alexis Neely: Outside the Box

Alexis Neely is a legal phenomenon and entrepreneur bringing consciousness and artistry to business, the law, wealth building and legacy planning. Known also by her artists’ name Ali Shanti, Alexis shares her journey to consciousness using the canvas of entrepreneurship, and shows how to live an inspiring, multidimensional life with her process of “intention, surrender and trust.” Learn too how she’s transcended money limitations, let go of the need to “do it all” and on her way to a $25m business.

Melinda Wittstock:         Welcome to WINGS Alexis.

Alexis Neely:                     It is great to be here Melinda. Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:         It is so great to have you on and of course, I know you better as Ali Shanti and because we’re both sisters in this marvelous Unicorn Group of women really showing up and supporting each other much like the mission with WINGS. What I love is that you have two names. To me, it says you are so multi-faceted.

Alexis Neely:                     It’s true. It’s true. Yeah, Alexis Neely is the name that I started off with, I guess in business and life as a lawyer, graduated law school as Alexis Neely, built my law practice and wrote a bestselling book and appeared on TV as Alexis Neely and then … actually back then, it was Alexis Martin Neely. You got to have those three names seek out, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O’Connor, Alexis Martin Neely and then, Ali Shanti came through as I began to discover that really, I have this other way of being in the world that Alexis Martin Neely just didn’t represent and in fact, back then, Alexis Martin Neely, really didn’t like this other way of being that I came to understand as Ali Shanti.

I spent a lot of years in a big internal conflict with my Ali Shanti part that is my artist part, my priestess part, my spiritual part at war with my Alexis Martin Neely part which was my lawyer part. My businesswoman part. My boss lady part. I am so happy to say that internally, these two parts have merged to me now, inside. They’re one and the same. There’s no more internal conflict and I have discovered that I get to live both of them outside in the world and I am so happy about that because so many people, Melinda, told me, “You have to choose. You can’t use both names. It’s confusing to your marketplace.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t that frustrating though because people have a tendency I think to want you to live and just kind of like box you in. You can only have one box but that’s just not who we are.

Alexis Neely:                     No. One of the signs of conscious evolution is that we become able to hold multiple perspectives. We truly are multi-dimensional beings and I think many people, I mean, every single person that I’ve ever talked to about this has acknowledged that they feel as if they have multiple parts and mostly they feel as if they have to hide their various parts in different sets and settings. Part of what I stand for is the integration of all of these parts and being able to hold this paradox within ourselves. I can say that the more that I have done this in my own inner being and brought this into the various parts of my work, I work with lawyers today and I train them on the New Law Business model for example.

I thought for many years, I can never let them see my Ali Shanti side or so many of my friends who know me as Ali Shanti like, they feel as if they never see my Alexis Neely side but once I started to integrate these and realize that actually the lawyers love my Ali Shanti side. It’s what brings heart and soul into what I’m teaching them as lawyers. It’s what brings back the humanity into the practice of law and how they work with the families they serve and the business owners they serve which is critical as we move into this new reality where robots are going to replace most of the lawyer work out there.

If they don’t find a way to reclaim their own humanity and all of their parts within that, they’re going to be left behind so the more I was able to bring Ali Shanti into the work with the lawyers, and then as I more and more bring my boss lady, my business self to my artist friends, to the creatives that I work with, the more they’re like, “Oh, wow, I can be my artist self but I don’t have to be a starving artist.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Now, this is so interesting. How many people don’t do what’s in their heart because they bought into a pre-conceived notion usually by well-meaning people around them, family, friends, school, media. They can’t do what’s in their heart and make money.

Alexis Neely:                     Well, right. That was the biggest fear that I have for so many years like if I truly allowed people to see all of me, if I allowed them to see my artist, if I allowed them to see my spiritual side, if I allowed them to see my Ali Shanti, then I wouldn’t be able to make money and support my family. That was this insidious thread that ran through my mind and in fact, caused me at one point to sabotage everything that I had built as Alexis Martin Neely, even believing that it wasn’t valuable. Creating this story in my mind that what I have created wasn’t valuable. Now, I can look back … this was back in like 2009, ’10, ’11, ’12. I was going through this kind of awakening and it was very confusing at that time.

I can see now that the confusion was really created through this terror and what was underlying the terror is exactly what you’re talking about here. If I allow myself to be fully seen, I will not be able to support my family and so because that terror was running me … but I couldn’t see it and I want to make that really clear because so many of our decisions as entrepreneurs, as parents, as partners in relationship, so many of the ways that we are being are unconscious. They’re unconscious and I believe that the definition of awakening, the definition of enlightenment is to come into consciousness, is to be able to start to see all of our motivations, all of the choices that we are making from a place of truth, from a place of truth.

Back then, I couldn’t. Back then I couldn’t see it and in fact, what I did Melinda is I outsourced much of my inability to see to money, the money and I think many of us do this, rather than allowing ourselves to feel the reality of how terrified we are that maybe we’re not good enough or that … and that’s what it was for me. For me, it was this constant story of not good enough, not smart enough but rather than feel that fully in my being, I created a story around money and I outsourced my feeling of fear to money because I could solve money. Money I could solve. What I couldn’t solve, what my mind couldn’t solve, what my ego couldn’t solve is the actual terror that maybe I didn’t think I had what it took.

Melinda Wittstock:         Here’s the interesting thing so you can like get into the concrete thing of like, “Okay, I’m going to succeed externally. I’m going to have all the things, the things, the material things. I’m going to have lots of money, I’m going to hit all these milestones, do all these things,” but if you don’t have that inner piece worked out and if you don’t feel you deserve it or you’re not valuing yourself, all that money is going to fly right out of your hands and I speak from experience on this one because I could easily generate money but hanging onto it was really hard.

You just find ways to lose it or to overspend or I don’t know, no matter how many zeros anyone puts behind it, so all these things are so really about … when I see a lot of women struggling to make money or they’re in say perennial ‘chicken and egg’ or in debt, right? No matter how much they’re growing their business or all the different things that kind of happened or having planned financially very well, deep down, there’s always a mindset issue.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah and let me point to it maybe a little bit more specifically because I think that we hear this a lot, right? It’s a mindset issue, it’s a mindset issue but what is the actual issue, what is the actual issue? From what I have experienced through my own being is the actual issue often is a parts conflict. A conflict between various parts of you that has not been surfaced in a way that allows you to see it and feel it so that you aren’t always operating from it because the truth is, is that when we have clarity and we can see all the parts and what they want, and then come into an aligned vision where our parts are actually on the same team.

Today, Alexis Neely and Ali Shanti, these internal parts within me, they’re on the same team. I know that we all and I always say we all because they’re these multiple parts inside of me, although now integrated into one, we all want the same thing. We all want to be working as a guiding force for making better life choices. When it comes to parenting, when it comes to facing death, when it comes to making good use of our time, energy, attention and money and teaching on all of these concepts, I know that all of my parts are on the same page working towards the same thing.

Until I could get all of my parts on the same page, working towards the same thing, there was this constant battle that I could hear in my head that was consistently wanting me to run, wanting me to run away from whatever it was that I was creating. The voices sounded something like, “You’re never going to be able to do this. You’re doing too many things, you’re working on too many things. You better just stop right now or you don’t have enough money. You don’t have enough time.” Now, those thoughts are insidious and they’re not moving me any closer, they’re not moving you any closer to that what you want.

When I was able to get all my parts on the same page, now, instead of those thoughts, what I could start to do is get very clear on, “Okay, well, what is it that I do want, what is it that I am moving towards? I want to write multiple books. I want to launch a podcast. I want to grow my companies so that I can hire a COO. I want to go out and raise money for my company and build a technology solution for the lawyers that I serve. I want to educate families on how to make sure they’re making the right decisions to keep their loved ones out of court and out of conflict before it’s too late.”

Now, I could … again, I could look at that and say, that’s too much, you can’t do all of that but it’s actually true, Melinda. I can, I can and am doing all of that and it just takes managing my time, energy, attention and money so that I’m recognizing that time isn’t vertical, like I don’t have to do it all today. Time is horizontal. I actually have a long time to do all of those things if I map them out, map out the use of my resources and I stay focused on just the next goal for each one of those pieces.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, this is really … I love this: time is horizontal. Maybe time is even quantum, right?

Alexis Neely:                     Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         When we think in terms of intentions, which I’ve started to do. I’ve changed my whole way of operating. I used to do task lists, I used to have things that I had to do. I was a human doing instead of a human being.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’ve switched completely around now where my morning meditation, I’m all about what are the outcomes I want today. What are my intentions and I try, I don’t always succeed but I try to get out of my own way, right?

Alexis Neely:                     Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         I don’t know necessarily the how. I don’t want to sweat the how. The universe might have a better plan for me. I also don’t know the timing and so when we said intentions and they don’t happen immediately, that doesn’t mean that intentions don’t work. It just means that there’s a slightly maybe different plan on the timing and it all becomes clear in the end but doesn’t that require so much trust to kind of like fall backwards and like let the universe catch you? It’s scary.

Alexis Neely:                     I love that you basically just laid out a guiding feature of my life now as well. This idea of intending then surrendering and trusting. I mean, it’s all there so the way it used to work when I was only in my Alexis Martin Neely self was that everything had to happen on my timeline and everything was a push and from that place, my way of being was not enjoyable. It wasn’t enjoyable for me, it wasn’t enjoyable for the people on my teams, it wasn’t enjoyable for my family. Frankly, I was very bitchy is … I don’t know, is that the word I would use? It’s not nice. I just didn’t feel like the kind of woman I wanted to be.

I often felt frustrated and tensed and nobody would really reflect that back to me because I think that I was holding … I was very powerful. I was holding a lot of power and I could make a lot of money and I could hire a lot of people and then there were people that were just really staying in my field because I was supporting them financially and I could never tell like do these people like me because I’m likable or because I’m paying them and that was always this big question for me and a really challenging one because I didn’t feel likable. I didn’t like myself. I didn’t like who and how I was being.

A big transition for me, has been this intend, surrender and trust because to me it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. What truly matters is how we are being in the process of that doing, so if I am getting constantly frustrated and then acting out from that frustration of not achieving, not hitting the numbers and constantly focusing for example on the numbers and getting stressed out and tensed, ultimately, it’s not sustainable. It doesn’t create a thriving reality. What is different now is that yes, of course, we have financial milestones that we’re hitting in our company. We wouldn’t be able to run our company effectively without that.

Last year, we broke three million in revenue. I was stuck by the way, at a million and a half of revenue for many, many, many years. People will listen and say, “Oh, that’s a great place to be stuck,” but it’s actually not. It’s not a great place to be stuck because stuck is stuck is stuck and if you’re doing a million and a half in revenue, chances are that you’re doing … you’re not doing everything yourself because you have-

Melinda Wittstock:         But almost, but almost.

Alexis Neely:                     Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s hard … it’s really that difficulty in getting to scale which so many women struggle with.

Alexis Neely:                     Yes, I couldn’t scale at a million and a half of revenue because I had to be the manager. I was constantly the bottleneck so now, we broke three million and I’m able to have a COO that we’re paying $250,000 a year and that just frees me up tremendously. Now, instead of … and by the way, part of how I use to operate when I was in this old reality, this different way of being or time was vertical and money was finite, my operation, my way of being was to constantly try to pay everyone as little as possible. Constantly try to get as much work product out of them as possible.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, so that’s scarcity right and like, I really wanted to jump into this whole topic of like fear and scarcity versus love and abundance because I see so many … a lot of men are stuck there too but I see a lot of women in particular stuck there because we’re still relatively new to entrepreneurship. We’re still relatively new to scaling businesses, two, three million dollars but then beyond to the eight and nine and even 10 figures.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s where I’m going.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, me too and so … but we have all these things that hold us back and I think the thing that holds us back the most is that fear based scarcity, we think, “Oh, if she succeeds then oh, maybe I can.” It keeps us from … we underpay other women or we haggle, like I don’t know. I don’t see as many guys doing that.

Alexis Neely:                     Well, it shows up for the men in different ways because … so I’ll say that yes, I’m now ready to go to eight figures. I can see a future in which my business is earning 20 to 25 million a year. We’re actually modeling that out right now, we’re going to raise money to build this ancillary technology that will serve our lawyers and allow them to deliver their service to their clients with so much ease that they can focus on what they should really be doing, which is counseling, which is coming to the law with the heart of a teacher and not having to focus just on putting together documents which are likely to fail anyway, when their clients need them.

We’re really creating this technology that is going to transform the way that lawyers were able to serve their clients and that is a 20 to 25 million dollar a year company. Here’s the thing, here’s what’s different than the way I would have been doing it in the past. In the past, I would have been doing it from this place of scarcity that we’re talking about where I’m trying to do it on a shoestring budget. I am trying to pay people as little as possible. I don’t want to raise money because, “Oh my God, that’s scary. I don’t want to give up any of my company.” These are some of the things that hold women back.

Instead, what’s different now is I don’t want to have a 20 to 25 million dollar a year company because I personally need more money. I want to have a 20 to 25 million dollar a year company because that’s what’s actually required to serve my clients and ultimately their clients in the way that they need to be served. Now, it’s coming from this place of service as opposed to me needing something and the way that I was able to make that shift is by getting really clear about what I actually needed in order to have enough, what I actually needed in order to have enough. Back in probably 2009 or ’10, I read a book called The Soul of Money by Lynne-

Melinda Wittstock:         I love that book. Lynne Twist is one of my … I adore Lynne.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah, she’s incredible. Her book was incredible. In it, I first heard about this idea of sufficiency. Sufficiency. I love that, sufficiency. We can all have enough. There is enough here for all of us. Now, back then, I was not on that track. I was on the track of more, more, more, more, more and again, like I said, paying people as little as possible, trying to get as much out of them as possible. Wondering why are they not showing up to do what they said they were going to do, who’s doing what and why do I never feel like my needs are met, that’s where I was. I read this book, The Soul of Money. I get this idea of sufficiency.

I love the idea but I realized, I don’t know what sufficiency is for me like what is enough? What is enough? I ended up creating a process where I could be very clear about what enough actually did mean for me, so that I was no longer needing to operate from a place of scarcity but instead, anytime I would get scared, I could come back to knowing that I actually did have enough. That changed everything for me. It began to relax my nervous system. Having this clarity of knowing what enough was and that I knew how to earn enough allowed me to start to make my decisions from an entirely different place. I don’t worry about debt, I think debt is an amazing resource. When you know how to invest your debt wisely-

Melinda Wittstock:         When you know what to get in debt for.

Alexis Neely:                     Exactly. Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         Not holidays or shoes, you know what I mean?

Alexis Neely:                     Well, and not to … a lot of times, we get in debt for example to hire this coach or this … do this training. When we don’t actually even know if it’s what we need. We don’t even know-

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh, I’ve done that because I am a big believer in personal growth and investing in myself and honestly in business, the game changed for me only when I did start investing in coaches and masterminds and all of that but I did also invest in ones that weren’t necessarily the right and I did sort of not necessarily managed money the best way. I don’t know, I mean, I like debt for things that you can leverage. If you’re using it as a tool, to be able to bring in more revenue or scale or whatever but you really have to know your numbers.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Be on top of your numbers, not be … not run from them, not look at them, thinking that if you don’t look at them they won’t be a problem.

Alexis Neely:                     Yup. Well, and that was the big turning point for me. That was really the big turning point for me because before I really understood enough and how to look at my resources, both in personal life and in my business, from this place of enough, what was happening is I was constantly thinking about money. Even though I liked to believe that I wasn’t driven by money, in fact, the truth was that every decision I made was based on money, because again, it was like this distortion. It was this distortion in my field where I believed one thing. I believed that, “Oh, I’m not money motivated. I’m motivated by something bigger than money.”

Because I didn’t really understand the nitty-gritty of my numbers and I didn’t have systems in order to actually be looking at my numbers, then the truth was that everything was actually based on money so I have to untangle all of that and create these systems. For example, today, first of all, I know what enough is for me so that I’m not coming from scarcity. I know exactly how much I need to earn on a monthly basis. I know exactly how I am earning that every month. I know then, when I … for example, if I’m taking on an additional client, somebody comes to me and they’re like, just the right person, I’m just the right person for them, I know whether or not to take on that client not from the basis of money.

My financial needs are actually already met but from the perspective of is this really the person that I’m meant to serve? Is this … like, because I have something very unique to offer them or should I connect them with somebody else who’s actually going to serve them better. I have to say that this is one of the things that has freed up, my time energy and attention the most is being able to say no, being able to not take somebody on just because they’re going to pay me a lot of money to work with them. My God, it’s so freeing. It’s a big one.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s a big one so this one comes back to fear and scarcity too, right, where we take the wrong client because we think, “Oh my God, like I really need this, I can’t not go …” when I finally, finally learn this lesson as well … Are we sisters? Anyway, I finally learned this lesson and started to say to people, “No, I don’t think it’s good alignment,” or tried to get out of the attachment for that, right?

Alexis Neely:                     Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         I started to have more confidence and it would open the door for the right clients to come in.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah, well, the only way that we can do that, like we’re not going to … our internal systems will not let us do that if we don’t know that our needs are met and so I believe that it begins with this very clear knowing of what do you actually need. What do you actually need. So many of us, especially as women, don’t know that. We are not willing to stand in the clarity of our own need and also, there’s a lot of confusion between need and want. We’ll hear a lot of women say, “I need to have a million dollar business because that’s what success means.” When in fact, what they might need, need from … so I break it down into multiple levels, right?

There’s a need that you have minimum to be happy, minimum to be happy like if you lost everything and you were down to just your basic need for thriving and I don’t mean just getting by, by the way. I don’t mean like just scraping by, I don’t mean starving artists. I mean actually meeting your minimum needs to be happy, there’s a number. There’s a number that is associated with that and I’ve created a process to identify that number because I needed to identify that number for myself because before I have that number identified for myself, I actually thought that in order to be free, Melinda, I needed 40 million dollars in the bank. That’s how bad my own money dysmorphia was, 40 million dollars and then I’ll be free.

Melinda Wittstock:         What did 40 million mean to you though, because 40 million is a lot of money, so when you actually break it down and you think well, what am I going to do with all of that? Why do I need it?

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah, this was the mentality. The mentality I had at that time was that 40 million in the bank held in the bank and this is the way a lot of people think about it. This is the way by the way many financial advisers teach us to think about it. Now, most people don’t think 40 million, may think one, two, three million. We’ve got our number but at that time, the reason it was 40 million is because I could have that in the bank, generating 5% interest, 5% interest on 40 million which was a conservative estimate of the amount of money I could generate as income on that, would be two million a year of passive income.

It’s this myth of passive income so if I have 40 million in assets, whether in real estate or the bank or whatever, generating 5% will generate me two million a year. Now, the real question is why did I need the two million a year? Well, then that two million a year would support my business so that if I didn’t want to take on any clients, I wouldn’t need to because my business was supported by this two million dollars that would be coming in so I could still do my business, I could still support my business without me having to take on any clients. This was all very twisted actually but it was twisted by the real mainstream thinking that many financial advisers are thought and many of our mainstream media financial personalities are teaching.

It is I think at the heart of why so much in our culture is broken and why we are at risk in the next 20 years of significant impacts of climate change and many, many, many problems because this is the way that our seniors, our parents, are actually thinking about life. They are hoarding, saving, right? We have got this culture of, you have to save and if you’re not saving for your retirement, you are bad and you’re contributing to some way of not having enough in the world and so you need to make sure that you have enough saved, in my case that was 40 million.

Some people it’s a million, two, three million, four, five, whatever so that your savings can generate the income that you will need to live on so that you don’t have to work. This whole philosophy of life and work and money and business is broken and it is creating a culture of hoarding that is …

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s antithetical to abundance. I mean, money like energy needs to flow.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s right. Right, exactly, exactly and so, we actually have to wake up from this addiction, wake up from this fear based mentality and first do the work in ourselves. It really does start with each individual to see where this hoarding mentality is showing up in ourselves.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, I like the idea of having money … passive income is great but I like the idea of putting it to work, not just sitting it … having it sit in the bank. I mean, one of the reasons why I want to have a lot of money is because I want to give a lot of it away. I mean, I don’t want to use it as leverage. I don’t necessarily feel like I want like just it, just sitting there, right?

Alexis Neely:                     Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         The kind of money for a rainy day.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s the thing is like we’re actually in the rainy day right now.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Alexis Neely:                     We are in the rainy day right now. When we look … and it can be hard to look at and face honestly because it can be really overwhelming to think about but when we look at truth around the climate change reports, if we do not change our ways of being now and to some degree it’s already too late but there’s still things that we can do now. We’ve got max, max, max 20 years before we really start to see the impacts of climate change. When I look at how fast the past 20 years have gone, “Wow, this is going to go really fast.”

What are the decisions, what are the choices that I need to start doing differently today, right now to heal all of this within myself first and foremost. Then, when I can meet this in myself and heal it here then, I can take it out to my parents. I can take it out to my kids. Then, we start to be able to do family healing around money and start to, as a family learn to use our time, energy, attention and money, TEAM resources in an entirely new way. What is this entirely new way? Well, it is number one, being really clear about what we actually need. What is the minimum you actually need, not just you but also your parents, also your children, what is the minimum that we actually need in order to thrive.

What is the minimum we need in order to thrive. Again, not starving artist mentality but also, not confusing that with what we actually want. I go minimum to be happy and then I go minimum to be of service because for many people, our minimum to be happy and our minimum to be of service actually are different. For some people those are merged and then finally, is this idea of preferred if I could afford it. I want everybody to also know, okay, if my minimum to be happy is met, if my minimum fee of service is met, my next level is preferred if I could afford it. This is where we get into once.

The reason I want people to know the difference is because many, many, many people are already at their preferred if they could afford it but are still operating as if they’re not. If you’re at your preferred if you could afford it level of income, already, then I want you to start to look at how can you hire more people to free up your time, energy and attention and how can you pay those people really, really, really well. For example, in my company, New Law Business Model, we have a living wage commitment. We are not paying anybody under what we have determined is a living wage. Now, that’s not minimum wage. We have determined that a living wage is $25 an hour.

That’s for some team members who are at the lowest level in our company, the most entry level, that’s a lot. That’s not really an entry level. Some folks are paying what, 12, 13, $15 an hour for entry level. Some folks are looking at how they can hire overseas and pay $4 an hour. We want to make sure that everybody working for our company is earning a living wage. We also want to make sure that everybody working in our company is able to have a life and able to take time off and able to take vacation time and not have to feel like they’re working under so much pressure and stress. This is to me, what creates a thriving reality for everybody.

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh. I mean, really, really beautifully said. I think too that entrepreneurs have a, I don’t know, a special mission right now. I think we’re the hope. I think we’re the people who were going to take on and solve problems because entrepreneurs by our very nature are problem solvers. We look for problems. We look for ways in which we can create value for other people and change what is. It’s sort of like we’re alchemists at our best. When you think about the big intractable challenges, like you mentioned climate change, this is a huge thing but there are, I see so many new business developing around this, around solving a lot of these big problems with nice … I call them evolved enterprise models.

Some of them are like buy one, give one or there’s all kinds of different ways. I means, Wings of Success, we give away at least 5% of our top line revenue to charities around the world, specifically to support women so we walk our talk but here’s the interesting thing Ali, from a really hardcore business perspective, the companies that are doing that are as conscious capitalism or evolved enterprise, whatever we call it are outperforming those that don’t. They’re actually disrupting the old way, which I find really encouraging by any metric like whether we’re talking revenue, margins or valuation.

They’re growing faster and they’re actually … I think a lot of fortune 500 companies if they don’t kind of get with the program will be wiped out but in the context of climate change, yeah, we got to move pretty fast.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah. It’s such an interesting time to be alive. We are in transition time. There’s no question about it and in order to keep really great people on your teams, and this is what I think is the biggest risk to the fortune 500 companies, is that in order to keep really great people on your teams, we are going to have to … we really get to create work environments that work for everyone and we hear all these things about the Millenials and I work with a lot of Millenials and how they’re just not willing to work under the old paradigm anymore that is a top down power and control paradigm where you go to work from basically eight to six every day.

You’re commuting an hour each way to get there and you make 36, 48, $60,000 a year to do that. They’re just not willing to sacrifice their lives for that kind of a reality and they are waking up to see that they don’t have to. There are so many ways for them to be able to earn money using their creativity, that they don’t have to do that anymore. We’re stepping into a new reality, whereas a business owner, you have an opportunity to structure a company, to structure a work environment that really captures the top talent, if you can be really clear in your company on what it is that you really need.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah.

Alexis Neely:                     We come back to that. What it is that you really need in order to create a phenomenal work environment not just for yourself as the CEO because that’s no longer sustainable, not just for the top leadership team because that’s no longer sustainable but for your entire company. For your entire company and free up your own and everybody’s time, energy and attention in the process to focus on what really matters, to focus on what really matters and ultimately at the end of the day, that is love. That is love.

Melinda Wittstock:         Become full circle around, love or fear it, all comes down to that in the end. I have a question for you. What we like is a kid, were you … did you know that you’re an entrepreneur?

Alexis Neely:                     No, definitely not. I went to law school because I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur. My dad was a businessman. He was always in the business world but he wasn’t in the business world in a good way. He didn’t make it look very attractive to me so I took the safe route, I thought by going to law school and I came out of law school. I graduated first in my class and I got a job in one of the best law firms in the country.

Melinda Wittstock:         At Georgetown.

Alexis Neely:                     At Georgetown.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is minor detail.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah, and I decided that I would go to … I would collect my six figure paycheck and I would stay there forever and it was a big shocker to me when I discovered, “Oh, I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I actually can’t stay at this big law firm and do things the way that don’t feel right to me. I actually need to go out and create my own law practice.” That was such a surprise and I had to face so many fears to do it, especially around money because I didn’t have any financial resources other than the six figure paycheck but I had … my husband was a stay at home dad. I had two little babies at home, under the age of five and everybody was dependent on me.

I knew in my heart of hearts that I had to do it because the way that we were practicing law not because there was anything wrong with this law firm. In fact, they were one of the best law firms in the country, started by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right hand, lawyer. He doesn’t make a decision without Charlie Munger but just the way law was practiced in the traditional sense, in the transactional/litigation sense. I knew it wasn’t truly in service and that in order to create what I really saw as possible for my role to humanity as a lawyer, I would have to leave and start my own law practice and that drove me.

The beautiful part, what I got to experience again, and again and again is that when I got clear on my vision, and I didn’t know this at the time. I can look back now and see but when I got clear on my vision and committed even without the clarity about where the resources would come from, when I committed to that vision, the resources showed up every single time.

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t that interesting. That’s happened to me too when I’m in alignment, things get into flow. Otherwise, it’s like pushing a boulder up a mountain.

Alexis Neely:                     Well, yeah and if we … again, this is like so much of the power of our vision and what we focus on. When I was focused on what I want and I continue to hold that even without knowing how it was going to happen, this whole thing that we talked about intend, surrender and trust, the resources would show up. On the flip side, when I allowed my fear to be the driver and I started focusing on all the ways that I wasn’t, all the ways that I couldn’t, coming from this inner conflict inside of me, between these two parts that I have, all the ways that my work wasn’t valuable. I mean, I actually … even though I had created an entirely new way of practicing law.

A way of practicing law that filled the holes in the way most lawyers are practicing law that leaves families in court in conflict. Even though I had done that, my mind came in and made me believe that what I had created was worthless and the more I focus on that, the more I focused on, well, maybe what you’ve created doesn’t even mean anything. Maybe it’s not even important. Maybe this was all just so that you could make money. Those were some of the thoughts in my mind at the time. Those thoughts ultimately from this really history ancestral patterns, generations, the legacy that my family brought to me to heal by the way because I do believe that we’ve each come to this planet to heal, a very familiar philosophy.

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh, I had that exact same epiphany sitting in the Amazon rainforest.

Alexis Neely:                     Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right so I was confronted in a lot of generational patterns.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah, well and …

Melinda Wittstock:         It stops with me.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s right. I believe it’s why we have actually incarnated into these physical bodies at this time is that we are the first generation to have the time, energy, attention, and money. To have the space, to actually feel the pain of our ancestors, having lived eons of a win-lose paradigm and this survival and some of our ancestors in that survival paradigm, they powered over and they controlled and they won through hurting other people. Others of our ancestors, used sneaking and cheating and lying. I think if we look back through our ancestry, we all see a history. I mean, we could just look at Game of Thrones, right?

We all see a reality in which our ancestors used killing, powering over, cheating, stealing or lying, thieving, in some ways, sneaking in order to survive. That is actually baked into our systems in ways that can be very hard to see but it’s critical that we see it and by the way thank them for it because if they hadn’t done it, if they hadn’t survived, we wouldn’t be here right now. We wouldn’t be here.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s interesting, that really plays into this whole idea of really accepting yourself, sort of loving your shadow.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s right and so I had to be willing to see, okay, my dad stole from people in order to survive and that does not make me my dad. In fact, if I can surface the parts of myself and be willing to see them the parts of myself that are greedy, the parts of myself that are coming from scarcity, the parts of myself that are selfish. If I’m willing to see those parts, and honestly look at them and by the way, this was really at the heart of the split in my personalities. Ali Shanti and Alexis Martin Neely because there are ways that Alexis Martin Neely was greedy, was just out for herself and so Ali Shanti had to come on to the scene to be able to be an objective observer, to hold this other pull inside of me.

This other pull in which actually I’m going to consciously choose to create a world that works for everyone. In order to do that, I can’t pretend that the parts of me that are greedy and selfish and money driven don’t exist. How do these parts co-exist within me so that I can heal the parts that are based in this survival mentality. How do I allow myself to alchemize and that’s what we’re doing. We are doing actual alchemy through these bodies. How do I allow myself to alchemize the horror, the horror of how my ancestors survived. How my dad survived. How do I alchemize that through my system so that I’m not longer driven unconsciously by those motivations?

I believe it’s why … I really believe it’s why we’re all here and we either do it in our own beings or our children will have to do it in theirs and I also believe, Melinda that if enough of us can wake up in this way, using our businesses as the vehicles, using parenting as the vehicles, using facing death and doing our estate planning as the vehicles, using money as the vehicle. If enough of us can wake up in this way, I believe that we will shift the impact of climate change on the planet and enough time to thrive.

Melinda Wittstock:         I think so too. I think we are talking about time, if time is quantum or horizontal or even bendable, some getting into theoretical physics, it’s one of my little kind of unknown hobbies, not that I am one but I’m fascinated by it, far from but I just … I love the ideas and the integration increasingly between science and what would be spirituality. I really believe that so much is possible with intention and everything you said is just so moving to me. I think entrepreneurship … I’ve arrived now at this place where it’s a canvas. It’s a canvas for personal growth, it’s a canvas to write all those kind of historical wrongs to fix the planet, to really create what we want from a place of love, rather than fear. My God, we’ve solved everything here in this interview between us.

Alexis Neely:                     Well, I do believe. I do believe that together we can do that Melinda. Together, we truly can do that but it is not going to come from burying our heads in the sand or pretending that everything is all love and light. We’ve got to bring conscious awareness to how we are actually being through our businesses. Through our businesses like you’re saying entrepreneurship as an entrepreneurs, we can make a change but we’ve got to be the change and what does it really mean to be the change? It means to be willing to see who and how we actually are, face the parts of us that we don’t want to face. Face the reality that we are dying.

Everybody is going to die, we’re all going to die. We are all going to die and use that knowing to make our decisions, our choices about how we use our time, energy, attention and money, how we prepare for death, from this place of knowing that actually how we be in this now moment is what creates our past and our future.

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh. I love it. I love everything you say. Alexis, Ali, how can people find you and work with you?

Alexis Neely:                     There’s two ways. First of all, if you are a lawyer and you want to learn a new way to practice law, that brings the heart, the heart into the practice of law, brings your heart, your humanity back to the practice of law, with a new law business model that allows you to stop escalating conflict and start helping families come together to keep themselves out of court and out of conflict and helps business owners to really see their visions become a reality with the legal insurance, financial and tax foundations that they need to do that then I want you to go to newlawbusinessmodel.com.

That’s newlawbusinessmodel.com and if you are not a lawyer and you want to, really start to write a line, your own time, energy, attention and money and service to a world and a life worth living, then you get to go to moneymap.tv and the lawyers, you could go there too, moneymap.tv. I have created a guided meditation for you to watch on a daily basis. It’s just seven minutes and when you watch it, it will reorient your choice making from this place where maybe you have been operating in a way of scarcity, greed selfishness because you didn’t have another orientation or maybe you don’t want to really see that.

You’re willing to start seeing where are the places that that shows up in your life that you haven’t been able to see so far but you’re really actually committed to something else. You are really committed to something else. I’ve created this meditation because I needed it for myself. I needed a way to re-orient to what was more true and what is more true is that I want to live in a world that works for everyone. I had to be able to see myself in that world and this meditation will help you see yourself in that kind of a world, in this kind of a world that we’re creating together and that’s at moneymap.tv.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wonderful. Gosh, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying. I so enjoyed our conversation.

Alexis Neely:                     Thank you Melinda. I really appreciate you being able to go to this full range with me because a lot of people … they’re not yet aware of their multi-dimensional beings but you are.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes, I am, it wasn’t always the way but it’s so interesting about the universe, right, you attract people or … what’s the phrase where it’s great, when the …

Alexis Neely:                     When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s correct too and also when the lesson is learned the experience is no longer necessary.

Alexis Neely:                     Yes. That is a good one as well. Yeah, when the lesson is learned, the experience is no longer necessary. What I hear when you’re saying that is that you are attracting the people into your life who can see your multidimensional ‘beingness’ and meet you there.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes and you too sister. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

Alexis Neely:     Thanks.