296 MINISODE Alexis Neely: Awakening From Fear

Alexis Neely is a legal 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 advice on overcoming fear, stepping into your true mission, and overcoming limiting beliefs like “money dysmorphia.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Alexis, welcome to WINGS.

Alexis Neely:                     Great to be here Melinda. Thank you for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh, I’m so excited to talk to you and of course I know you better as Ali Shanti.

Alexis Neely:                     Yes, that’s my artist name and how people get to know me when they get in on the inside.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, I love it because I think we have so many identities as women, as entrepreneurs and I want to talk to you about that and first of course, just start by asking what’s inspiring you right now?

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah, I would say that the biggest thing that is inspiring me right now is really seeing very clearly, where in my life and where in the life of others, we have basically two ways of being directed either through fear or through love and I’m in this big awakening around that myself and seeing how fear was my motivator for so long and I couldn’t even see it. It was hidden from me but the choices I made from that place kept leading me into needing to face that. Needing to see that fear so that I could consciously make all of my choices in life and business from love and I’m happy to say that I’m living that now and it feels really good.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s such a big difference, isn’t it and I love what you said about not being aware that you were coming from fear. How did it show up for you? What was it that cause that awareness?

Alexis Neely:                     Well, I’m writing a book right now, called The New Law Business Model Revealed and it is a book for lawyers and also for people who work with lawyers and want to understand why are they getting such a bad experience and how to get a great experience and it’s tracking back to the history of the decisions that I made along the way of building my law practice and creating a new law business model and when I look at the choices that I made, I can see how now, now, I can see how many of those choices were based on a fear that I couldn’t see. In my case, that fear was mostly driven by insecurity, self-worth issues which is really funny because I graduated first in my law school class.

I went to work at one of the best law firms in the country. I started my own law practice, built it into a million dollar a year revenue generating business, wrote a bestselling book, started appearing on TV, built another million dollar business and I ended up sabotaging all of it and walking away from everything that I had created because I couldn’t see that I was terrified. I was terrified and had I understood that I was terrified and been able to ask for help vulnerably, I wouldn’t have made it to walk away from it all and rebuild. I did rebuild, I did go on to ultimately rebuild everything, much better than before, finding that love motivation.

Finding the place where I was no longer trying to prove myself because that’s really what it was all about, right? I was trying to prove that I was good enough to myself.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Yes, I know and we all do because underneath that I guess is the fear that we’re not.

Alexis Neely:                     That’s exactly right. Underneath all of what I was doing back then was this fear, exactly what you’re saying, was this fear that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t smart enough, that I needed to prove myself so I did all of those things from that place. When I was able to circle back around, the truth is that I am so in love with being in service in the world. I am so in love with helping lawyers to see that there’s a new way to serve families and business owners. I am so in love with helping families to see that when they face incapacity and death consciously, that they can have amazing lives as a result.

I am so in love with helping business owners to see that when they really look at their legal insurance, financial and tax systems in a conscious way, they can achieve their dreams but I couldn’t come from that love when I was coming from the fear but the fear was hidden from me. Unfortunately, I had to let go of everything, sabotage everything because that fear was hidden and so really what I want to do is help people to see their fear, see where that fear is motivating their choices, not so that we can stop the fear. We’re not going to stop the fear but we can meet that fear in a conscious way and then start to consciously make the choice to come from love.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s beautiful. I love it and you’ve been through so many challenging things which you’ve just described and of course, there’s always something challenging in entrepreneurship. Are there any specific ones right now that you’re working on?

Alexis Neely:                     I would say that my current biggest challenge is that I do not yet have the experience to scale beyond where I am. I’m hitting all of these new levels of growth. We just hit the Inc. 5000 List last year, with my company. Yeah, we broke three million in revenue. This is all very new for me. We hired a real deal COO. I’m now looking at going out and raising money for a new technology company that I started alongside my existing training company. I’ve bootstrapped everything, I’ve never raised money before and so I can feel my fear arising. I’m scared like, “Oh my gosh, we are going into a territory that I haven’t been in before but now because I can see it for what it is, I know this fear. I can face it directly and work with it instead of allowing it to sabotage me.”

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s beautiful and I know you will. That’s awesome and entrepreneurship really is a journey. If you want therapy, be an entrepreneur, I’d say.

Alexis Neely:                     That was great. It’s the ultimate personal growth experience.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes, it is.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah, so there we are.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, my journey bears that out as well and so, along the way, I was going to call you Ali, so Ali, Alexis, along the way, what are your top three go to pieces of advice for women in business and female entrepreneurs. I mean, if you could do it all over again, what would be the top three that would be your north star moving forward?

Alexis Neely:                     The first one is to get close to other women and men who have done what you want to do already. I can’t emphasize enough how important that is and really, when I say get close, I don’t mean just following them online. I mean, get with them in person. Go to the events, stretch yourself I have to say that going to events even when I thought I didn’t have the time or money to do it, were the things that moved my life in business forward the most because I got to get close to the people I have been watching online for so long and then see, what was real and what was not and who I really wanted to learn from. That is number one.

The second one is to cure your “money dysmorphia”. Money dysmorphia is a disease that I’ve identified, impacts most of us. It certainly impacted my life significantly and if you know what body dysmorphia is, you know that when … if you have body dysmorphia, you look in the mirror and you see a distorted view of yourself and you make eating choices and exercise choices unhealthily based on that. Well, money dysmorphia is the same. If you have it, you’re going to look at your financial reality in a distorted way, that is going to cause you to use your resources, your time, energy and attention which are non-renewable poorly.

When you can see your money dysmorphia, then you can make your choices around your time, energy, attention and money. I call these our TEAM resources wisely so that’s number two, is really get clear, really understand the use of your time, energy, attention and money and that time, energy, and attention are non-renewable. Money is infinitely renewable when you know how to earn it and access it.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love that. I love money dysmorphia. I think that’s so true. We have all these money stories and so what is the third one?

Alexis Neely:                     The third one is to keep going no matter what. Keep going. The only failure in the context that we understand failure is to turn around and go back and just completely give up. There might be times that you need pause but keep going, keep moving forward, I’ve identified this way of manifesting and moving things forward that it’s kind of different than I think what most of us have learned. Intend really clearly, what it is that you want for your future, what you see and then surrender and trust life to bring it to you, without attachment to what it’s going to look like. Intend, surrender and trust and let that pull you forward so that you’re able to keep moving forward without this grasping and trying to hold on to this very tight way of leaving how it should be.

Melinda Wittstock:         That is so, so beautiful. I love that, surrender. Surrender was actually my word for 2018 and it really was a great organizing principle. I let go of a lot of stuff.

Alexis Neely:                     Yeah. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Alexis, Ali, how can people find you and work with you.

Alexis Neely:                     The best way is to go to moneymap.tv. That’s moneymap.tv and on that page, I have created a guided visualization, meditation, that will help you to re-orient how you are making your choices about how you use your time, energy, attention and money, really on a daily basis. If you watch this meditation, instead of making your choices from a place of confusion or like what is this life all about? What am I doing here? You are going to get centered and clear about your role on this planet at this time, remembering who you are, why you’re here and what is yours to do. You can get access to that. It’s totally free at moneymap.tv and I’d love for you to watch it.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love it. Well, thank you so much for flipping on your wings and flying with us.

Alexis Neely:                     Thank you for creating this format for us to do this together Melinda. I so appreciate your service to the world.

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