A conversation with Sarah Leslie, personal coach and mentor. Sarah works with high achieving women craving more freedom and fulfillment.
Are you an entrepreneur or high-achiever yearning for more freedom and flexibility in your life? Join us for an inspiring story with psychotherapist and coach Sarah Leslie, as she shares her insights on breaking through internal barriers to create extraordinary results in business and life. Listen in as Sarah shares her journey and practical tips for mastering self-leadership, releasing self-doubt, and aligning with your deepest desires.
Sarah opens up about the money lessons she learned from her parents, and the impact those early experiences had on her career choices. She candidly discusses her 20-year career as a psychotherapist, the burnout she experienced, and the pivotal moment that led her to leave her six-figure job to pursue a more authentic and fulfilling path. This episode is a must-listen for women seeking to create wealth, freedom, and fulfillment on their own terms.
Discover how Sarah transitioned from therapist to online coach, building a thriving business that empowers others to achieve their dreams. She shares valuable insights on the importance of self-awareness, spiritual growth, and trusting your intuition. Learn how to overcome limiting beliefs about money and create a life of abundance and joy.
Key Takeaways:
💡 Breaking Through Internal Barriers: Learn how to identify and overcome the limiting beliefs that are holding you back from achieving your full potential.
💡 Mastering Self-Leadership: Gain practical tips for cultivating self-awareness, building confidence, and making empowered decisions.
💡 The Power of Intuition: Discover how to connect with your intuition and trust your inner voice to guide you on your path.
💡 Creating Wealth and Fulfillment: Learn how to align your passion with your purpose to create a life of both financial abundance and deep fulfillment.
Connect with Sarah:
Resources: Free 90 minute consultation
Message Sarah on LinkedIn for info about 6 Month Mastermind beginning June 25th
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Subscribe to my YouTube channel
Get your free copy of Unlock Your Money Blocks Workbook: Your step-by-step guide to unlocking your blocks to financial freedom.
Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment or financial advice. It’s for informational purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.
 Laura Rotter
Are a high achieving woman in midlife, but secretly feeling unfulfilled. You've climbed the ladder, checked off the boxes, maybe even achieve that six figure salary, but something's missing, that nagging feeling that you're not truly living the life you desire. That you're playing a role, instead of expressing your authentic self, you might try to ignore it, push it down.
Tell yourself you should be grateful for what you have. Or maybe you've tried therapy, self-help books, maybe even a life coach searching for that. Spark that sense of purpose. What if the key to unlocking your true potential isn't about adding more to your already full plate, but about stripping away the internal barriers holding you back.
My guest today, I. Sarah Leslie spent many years as a psychotherapist, witnessing firsthand the struggle of others and her own to break free from limiting beliefs and create extraordinary lives. She finally reached a breaking point. A moment of intense clarity that propelled her to walk away from a successful career and embark on a journey of self-discovery.
Sarah's story is a powerful reminder that it's never too late to rewrite your narrative. To embrace your deepest desires and to create a life of authentic success on your own terms.Â
Narrator
Welcome to Making Change With Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves.
Now, here's your host, certified financial planner, Laura Rotter.Â
Laura Rotter
Welcome, Sarah, to the Making Change With Your Money podcast.Â
Sarah Leslie
Thank you so much, Laura. I'm glad to be here.Â
Laura Rotter
I'm gonna ask you the question I always ask at the beginning of my podcast, which is, what was money like in your family growing up, Sarah?
Sarah Leslie
Oh gosh. I love that question. Money was, it wasn't, it was, I would just say a lot of the time I didn't know it, know about it. It was like not known to me. And the times in which it was known would probably be something around, like the first memory that comes up is we would go to, for a period of time at least, we went to McDonald's on Sunday mornings and it was like a real treat, like a big deal.
And we would go with my mom. 'cause my dad would always already be at church and it felt like. We were really spending money, right? Like we were doing something really big. Or we'd go to the movie theater and it would be that same kind of feeling of, ooh, we're getting like a really special treat and now I'm seeing how money is working in this like special kind of a way.
Then I have other memories of like my dad doing the checkbook and tracking everything that he was, I mean, in my little kid mind, I was like, oh, my dad's working really hard and writing a bunch of stuff down in this thing that he calls a checkbook. And some of those moments would have stress and, oh, I don't know if there's gonna be enough.
And oh, different conversations that I would witness between him and my dad, between him and my mom and me not really understanding. To the degree that I would now what they were actually talking about or why there was so much worry around it. Yeah.Â
Laura Roter
Thanks so much for sharing that. I would say so many of us don't grow up with direct messages about money, and yet it's so clear that you did take in.
Sarah Leslie
Yes.Â
Laura Rotter
Just from your parents, both appreciating when there was money available for a breakfast at McDonald's or the movies and also sensing the stress in their voices when, you know they were dealing with money. Uh, I guess I am also taking away that they did communicate about money, no matter how stressful that was, which isn't always the case.
Sarah Leslie
Yeah.Â
Laura Rotter
For every family.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, definitely we wouldn't, I don't like remember a lot of conversations about money, but we were a family. We. We moved like every three or four years. And one of the things that my parents did really well throughout that experience is we always ate dinner together at the table.
And so we had lots, we ate together and we were allowed to talk like, 'cause I've heard some people who've eaten dinner together, but there was no talking. So this was a totally different vibe. It was very warm, very loving, open conversations, delving into all kinds of topics. Money just didn't seem to be one of those topics that came up as often.
We covered politics and religion all the time, but money necessarily didn't come up as often. I just don't have as many memories of it.Â
Laura Rotter
Yes, and again, I'd say to you, Sarah, most of us really have no memories of actual conversations about money. It's just something that wasn't done and frankly isn't necessarily done except with intention even now.
Yeah. So given what you just described, Sarah, what was your relationship to money? Did you feel the need to have a job? What was your teenage into young adulthood life as it,Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah. I would say money. I would say I would really intrigued by it because certainly there were plenty of times where I wanted something and was told I couldn't have it because there wasn't money or whatever.
The answer would've been something around that. Or I needed to earn the money, right? So I looked forward to this time when I was going to be able to earn the money, of course, not knowing what I was really looking forward to, right? Just as a child thinking probably at that time, oh, I wanna be a teacher, or I wanna be a house cleaner, or I wanna be a rock star, and I wanna be able to earn money.
And my first job, I did get an allowance for a short period of time. Really like that isn't a consistent memory. And mostly we would get money from our parents if we wanted something or my grandparents were very generous and the money, I think I would've as a child would've felt like there they had more money.
Because anytime I went to their house, the goodie hole was well stocked and they would always, my grandmother would take us shopping for clothes and then we'd also go to the arcade and there was money available to go to those things. So of course, as you learn things as a child, you don't have context for, you're only going to your grandparents' house every now and again, or I was, but I look forward to getting a job and my first job actually was at Winn-Dixie.
Which is a supermarket for anybody that doesn't know. And I think I must have been 15. I think you, I think I could get a job at 15. I can't quite remember, but I was only at Winn-Dixie for about a week. Because I'd waited all this time to have this official job. Now, to be fair, I did do a lot of babysitting before that.
And so it was like, Ooh, I love this money coming in. 'cause you got paid cash and you got paid right away.Â
Laura Rotter
Yep.Â
Sarah Leslie
And when I transitioned into the quote unquote real job, I was like. Oh my gosh, this is terrible.
I waited all this time to have a real job. To what? Stand for hours. Doing the same motion, constantly doing the cash checking at the registers. And dealing with people who are not necessarily the most friendly when they're grocery shopping necessarily. No. It was like so not for me and making, honestly, I don't even remember what minimum wage was back then, but it didn't feel commiserate with the activity that I was doing for several hours.
So. I only lasted a week.Â
Laura Rotter
I can see that Doesn't sound like the greatest job. And then of course when you get a first actual paycheck, when they take the taxes out and you're like, what? What? Where's the money?
Sarah Leslie
Yes. It's a big letdown.Â
Laura Rotter
So what impact, if any, did that have on you, Sarah, in terms of choosing the next step on your early professional journey?Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, I think it motivated me one, to find something that I actually would enjoy, which is really interesting to think that far back right now in my mind and recognize, oh, because the next job that I took was at a movie theater.
I. I actually stayed there for almost all of high school, and I think even came back for maybe a summer of college to work there, and I loved working there. You get to see free movies, you get free popcorn and free soda. I would be able to sneak my friends in and my parents. And so it definitely, without being consciously aware of it, I had decided no, if I'm gonna be making, I feel like it was 5 25, I'm gonna have to Google that after we get off here and remember what the minimum wage was back in the late eighties, early nineties, for how much I would've been making.
But I had enough intuitive awareness like, Ooh, I don't wanna keep working while I hate it. And get this little bit of money, at least let me transition to something that I would actually enjoy doing. Even though it was probably the same amount of money or maybe even a little less, I really don't remember.
So it would've influenced me in that way of, yeah, I wanna actually enjoy what I'm doing. I think also at the same time, it started to really imprint in me something around that I wasn't actually gonna be making a lot of money. It was that it didn't feel like I was doing, seemingly a lot of work, a lot of time devoted to this thing, and then it didn't feel like I was getting very much back.
'cause I had like things I wanted to buy and things I wanted to do for sure. So I think there's certainly some patterns that would've started early on of the notion of you do a lot of work and you get a little in return because that definitely was subsequent jobs and even a lot of just bigger picture themes of my choice to go into social work and eventually psychotherapy where the general understanding.
Standing certainly that I got in my world and in my schooling was you don't go into this to make money and don't expect to make a lot of money and do expect to work really hard and a lot of hours.Â
Laura Rotter
Yes. I'm, I am going to reflect back to you knowing many social workers that, and especially. As the paperwork has grown, a feeling that the actual part of the job they love, they do not expect to make a lot of money, and the p the need for more and more paperwork made the job.
I. So all consuming. Yes. That actual one-on-one work, which is the reason that people go into social work and psychotherapy, gets to be a smaller percentage of the actual time that you're working because all the everything else that needs to get done. So at what age though, Sarah, did you decide that you wanted to become a social worker slash therapist?
What was that?Â
Sarah Leslie
That was very young. My. I would've developed a passion, probably like around 11.Â
Laura Rotter
Wow.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, it was very early. Again, my dad was a pastor, so I was witnessing a lot of helping and being in the role of service and ministering to a large group of people, and I adored my dad. My dad was really my hero for many years into adulthood.
And so I watched him very closely and observed him and took in what he was doing. And so I just naturally as that happens, because we're sponges, as we're watching our parents, as little kids, I was like, oh, I wanna do something similar to my dad where I'm also helping and giving back. So we lived in Alaska when I was maybe like seven to six to nine, roughly six to nine, and then we moved to Gainesville, Florida.
So of course in Alaska, completely different. Of course, in Alaska you really don't have very many homeless people who are homeless for obvious reasons. And then when we got to Florida, it was like a real culture shock for me and a heart shock for me because this was my first time of really experiencing a large amounts of homeless people, especially on the university side of town.
And I was really pained at seeing this. Feeling guilty and like, why are these people sleeping outside and I get to sleep in my nice warm bed at home? What's going on here? So that's where social work came into play very early on. Yeah. Feeling that I have to do something I.Â
Laura Rotter
Interesting. I almost thought you might say that like movies play a through line in your life, but it's really the heart centerness I'm hearing.
And I'm curious when you said earlier that you moved every couple of years, was that because your father was taking a new different church? Interesting.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah.Â
Laura Rotter
And so was there an expectation that your parents would help with college or. Did you have to do it on your own?Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah. With college. I don't remember at what point we started talking about that, but the thing that was most important to me is I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college where I would just feel more connected to the people that I was going to school with versus this large state university.
And of course there were a lot of conversations around money related to that because of course, going in state would've been much cheaper than what I ended up doing, which is going to a small school outside of Boston, which was exponentially more expensive. And I think it was just assumed that my parents were going to help me.
And as I remember it, because now that's been like well over 20 years ago to remember. I'm pretty sure we split the cost. 'cause I know I had a chunk of student loans and I know they also had a chunk of loans. And I vaguely remember sometime around when I was 27, perhaps my dad letting me know they had finally paid off their loans.
It was many years after, before I had paid off my loans.Â
Laura Rotter
Congratulations.
Sarah Leslie
Yes.Â
Laura Rotter
No longer carrying student loan debt. 'cause I certainly meet with a lot of people who are old enough to have paid off their loans, but still have student loan debt. Yeah. And did you, I'm just curious, did you go on and do a master's?
Sarah Leslie
I did.Â
Laura Rotter
And so that also you paid for yourself?
Sarah Leslie
That was all me. Yep. A loan for all of that, really. The schooling, the living, all the expenses. Fortunately, the program that I had gone to an undergrad allowed for an advanced standing, so you only needed a year of a master's versus traditional two years.
Laura Rotter
Right. And it sounds like you took on a reasonable amount of debt, which also isn't always the case, especially when you know you're going into social work or a field that's not gonna pay you six Yeah. Years to make sure that you don't accept all the loans that lenders are willing to give you.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah. Gosh, there was so much to learn.
There was so much to learn at that age, and really I was. You're not, you're, I didn't feel like I was well informed enough or well educated enough and just not old enough to have had enough experience to really understand. At 20 or whatever age exactly, 18. I was agreeing to take on 30 plus thousand dollars of loans, but I did learn from my parents.
That being said, I did learn from my parents at a relatively early age that checkbook and my dad taught me how to use the checkbook and how to write it all in there and how to account for it and how to understand you have this amount of money and you have this amount of expenses. So there was a lot of.
Education around money and money in, money out, that kind of conversation. So I at least had an understanding, okay, I am agreeing to taking this amount of money and I am agreeing to pay it back. And I would've had enough feeling inside of me like I wanna pay this back as soon as possible. 'cause it doesn't feel like a good thing that I have this like outstanding thing.
And that again, was certainly something that I would've just learned. But I was very aggressive in paying it off.Â
Laura Rotter
I love it. I love that. There again was a conversation around this. I have very little to no memory of having any conversations with my parents around money though. I also have, my husband used to joke that he married me because I balanced the checkbook.
So there's was like something in my upbringing where I knew, I remember like having one of those Christmas saving funds where after, at the end of an entire year I was. So proud of myself 'cause I saved a thousand dollars. So…
Sarah Leslie
There you go.Â
Laura Rotter
It was definitely that head also of being a good saver and being careful with my money.
So how long did you practice as a social worker psychotherapist? I guess I said in the intro about 25 years. Was it?Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, it was just over 20 years in that role. So as soon as I graduated college, it was the only type of work that I did up until 2019. At which time I had actually gotten myself into a specific area of therapy world, we'll just call it, as a big general industry of helping people, mental health and wellness, where I was actually making six figures.
I got to a point, I'm trying to remember when. I think I had been a supervisor at this place in Florida Healthcare District and I was doing a ton of work, like I was running a program and the salary that I was making, again, that same feeling of this is not commiserate with what I'm doing and the impact that I'm making on people's lives.
This is like crazy and I just remember making this internal decision of there has to be another way. Surely there's a way that I can have a huge impact on people, use my clinical skills and also make enough money to support the lifestyle I feel called to be living. So it was still a few more years in my journey before I ended up actually at a job that did start paying me what I felt was commiserate with the work that I was doing.
So just to add that in there. But quite a journey to go on to actually be able to get to that point where I was like, oh, I feel really good about this. And the thing that was still true in the pattern is I was working a lot of hours, right? So I at least upgraded to where I was working a lot of hours and working really hard, and my pay was commiserate.
I also got to a point right just before 40, where I was like, this is not sustainable. Like those two, it's like you could literally start paying me a million dollars and it would still like not be sustainable because that's just how much and how hard I was working. So 2019, I. Left my job and made lots of other radical decisions.
I downsized radically. I moved out of the 2000 square foot house I was taking care of. I moved to the beach, lived in a little studio that was already furnished and just started a whole new chapter of my life. I.Â
Laura Rotter
Wow, that's a lot to digest. So first of all, let me start with, I'm curious what the role was that was paying you six figures.
Was it more of an administrative rather than getting paid by the hour for working with clients?Â
Sarah Leslie
Yes, it was definitely a salary and I was the director of clinical services at a local treatment center in South Florida. So I was overseeing about 14 to 20 direct staff. And then indirectly supervising the entire clinical program.
Laura Rotter
And was there a specific treatment that you were working with, when you say it was a treatment center?Â
Sarah Leslie
Treatment center for alcohol and mental health.Â
Laura Rotter
Got it. Yes.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah. So pretty tough population.Â
Laura Rotter
So I'm also hearing that not only do you have strong clinical skills, but you have strong administrative skills.
And can I assume, as we discuss how your professional life has evolved also just people skills?Â
Sarah Leslie
Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. When you're dealing with people, the way I used to describe working in treatment is you are dealing with people who are having their worst day. They don't really wanna be there.
They're hating their life circumstances, and a few of them at least, were really hopeful about the future, but a lot of them were really not in a good place. So as the person overseeing the clinical team, I got called in a lot for the hardest cases. And so there were, and numerous amounts of opportunities to work on my people skills, both with the clients and with my team.
Laura Rotter
Yes.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah.Â
Laura Rotter
So Sarah, what was the particular catalyst that had you completely upend your life?Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, it really, it's a combination of things and several different stories that I could tell. The one that's the most notable is I had just gotten to a point of stress. In my own experience and feeling like there's no way out of this situation, I have worked so hard to get myself here, and I'm finally enjoying that.
I don't have to be worried about what's in my bank account and I can just spend the money and feel good about the way I am living, but I don't feel like I'm really living. That was like the real kicker is for most of the years as an adult, I had, my sister has three kids, and I would go to their events, all the different events, and I would be like auntie who was always on site.
And then slowly I started to become auntie who was not available because either I was working or I was too tired to go to the things. And so one night I did still manage to take myself to yoga because it was like the one way that I could replenish and renew myself. And so I'm in yoga and I'm, it's at the end of the class and there are probably like 50 people in this class and the lights go off and you have a two minute rest called Shavasana at the end and just out of nowhere, seemingly right out of nowhere.
Of course, it had been building for quite some time, but seemingly out of nowhere I just burst into tears, just uncontrollable tears. After that two minutes, which I did allow myself, it was not like I couldn't let it out. It was coming out regardless. I got up off of that mat and I was like. This is the end of what I've been doing and there is a new chapter ahead.
I don't have the exact details and I know it starts with, I can't be at this particular job anymore. There were just various things going on there that I didn't feel comfortable with, and as the clinical director, I was signing my name off on things, which I also just got to a point where I was like, I can't have my name on these things anymore.
And so it was. It was a very hard decision. I loved my team. I had hired almost all of them. I had created systems and strategies and all of just so many ways for us to function really well, but inside and my health was slowly deteriorating. So it was a decision that came to a point of, this has to happen or else.
Laura Rotter
Oh, that, uh, is a pretty intense decision. I'm wondering what, how you made the decision financially.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, great question.Â
I started to get a really good sense. I had been at this particular comfort company for well over six years. I don't remember exactly, but we'll just say it was well over six years. And I had a sense like, yeah, there's a lot of like just quote unquote crazy going on.
Here it is treatment. So there. It is just a lot of chaos that goes on in the treatment center as just the normal, and there was just a lot of what I just felt like was unhealthy things going on within the staff system. And so I had, there were enough people there that I felt really good about that. It kept me there and then they started to leave.
And I was like, okay, I need to really pay attention to what's happening here now, similar to you and what you shared, I too was great at saving. And so I put large amounts of money to the side. Now I had large, larger amounts coming in, so I could put much, much larger amounts going out, and I set it up where it would literally go directly over there, so it wouldn't even come into my view.
It just automatically went over thereÂ
Laura Rotter
Yourself first. Pay yourself first.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yes, exactly. So I had this like big stash that I was sitting on. And then the other thing that I did is I asked for a raise. I was like, you know what? I can't exactly see what's gonna happen here, but I'm at the point now where I feel like.
I am gonna go in and ask for what I feel is truly commiserate with what I'm dealing with and not just like my work level, but what I am dealing with by staying here. So I asked for probably like a 30% raise. So it was a very ambitious move, but I was able to do it because I was just at that point where I was like, if he says no, that's gonna mean I'm probably going to end up quitting very shortly after.
I had more lesson to learn because he said yes.Â
Laura Rotter
Ah.
Sarah Leslie
And so I stayed and I just decided, okay, I had already made the agreement. If I get the raise, I'm going to stay and I'm gonna take every penny of that and put it over here. Also, I. So that's what I did, and I also hired a coach. This person came to me just totally through divine intervention where I was in a leadership group and I had been vocalizing some of my discontent with work to a few of my peers in this leadership group that I got to meet with once a month.
And. Somebody sent this woman to me who was doing a project for her graduate degree, and she needed to work with a C-level employee to be able to help work on like organizational management essentially, and empowering that person to lead even more effectively. And so this friend of mine was like, would you be open to this person working with you for a few months and like fulfilling her graduate degree and also helping you?
I was like, definitely who? When can I start? Like today? Can we start today? And so I worked with her probably like well over six months. I don't have a clear memory of how long, but it felt like a pretty sustainable amount of time. And of course I didn't know this at the time, but she was my true first introduction to coaching.
She wasn't officially a coach, but she ended up coaching me and we restructured my team. We restructured the way I was doing things. We moved things around. The way, I'd just like to say it now, is like we changed all the furniture in the house and I thought this might work. If I can change all the, rearrange the furniture completely, the house might be okay for me to stay.
It wasn't. I got even more clear after rearranging everything that I was doing with her help. This just isn't gonna work. I think initially because she wasn't a, at the point for her professionally, I was like her first client, and so I think it was hard for her because she had felt like she hadn't done her job, but I said to her like, Hey, listen, you actually really did do your job because I couldn't have left here had I not done all of this to prove to myself, I've literally done everything possible to get this to work for me.
I've gotten to the conclusion, I've gotten to the other side of that journey to recognize this isn't going to change and so the only thing I can change is me leaving. So those are the key things that I did to set myself up. So it wasn't an irrational in the moment decision, it was a very well planned out, strategic decision, even though I didn't know exactly what, how that was gonna unfold, I took a lot of steps to put into place to say, I'm gonna be okay.
Whatever happens.Â
Laura Rotter
I love that. I love that story. Thank you for sharing it, Sarah. Yeah. And I'm just moved to ask you the question, since you mentioned your involvement in yoga and even said divine intervention. Yeah. What role spirituality played in continues to play in your journey?Â
Sarah Leslie
My, my dad, as we've been talking about it was a pastor, so God was a regular part of the conversation and so was Christianity and a lot of themes, all very open for conversation.
There were a lot of themes inside of that. I was learning as a young person easily in my teenage years, where my dad and I would talk about these topics at length because I would just be like so confused with some of the positions that he was expressing and that the church that we went to. And over the years I have grown to develop my own understanding of God and my own understanding of spirituality.
And so it's very, it looks very different from what my childhood upbringing looked like, and I have learned to, I think the biggest shift is really trusting myself, right? And this concept that. I think a lot of what I learned was that God was, even though we are taught that God is inside of us, what I learned was God was outside of me.
And so I was like always working to perform or to achieve some external standard because that's just how it was. It was very confusing, but that's how I ultimately learned it. And so over the years, my spirituality has really become more internal and trusting that still small voice. That is God, I believe that is God that is within me, and if I clear out all the other noise, I actually do know what to do, and that's why that decision to leave there when it happened, when I was laying flat out and just the emotions came over me, the still small voice came back with so much clarity and such a loud sound.
Whereas before that, I really hadn't been able to hear it because I just didn't know. So that moment in yoga is really impactful because I felt like I reconnected with that still small voice, and that has been a huge part of my journey and a really big learning curve to actually learn how to trust that voice every single day, preferably every minute of the day, which is just not something I was doing previously to that.
And by then I was 38. So it's been a huge part of my journey, a huge part of my learning. And the coach that I work with now, I found just over three years ago, and I've just, again, divine intervention. I'm like scrolling through Facebook, which I rarely do, but I was scrolling through Facebook and I came across some of his posts and I was like, whoa.
What is, what's going on here? He is like talking about God and he is talking about being a better person and feeling really good about who you are. I gotta check this out. And so it drew me right in and it was just, again, divine intervention that I would've come across this person. He lives in California.
I would've never met him if we were, if we didn't have Zoom and technology. And he has really helped me go so much deeper into exploring what does spirituality mean for me? I. How does faith look for me? Even inside of money, right? Like how does God think about money and how do I think God thinks about money?
And a lot of conversations to just radically expand what I believe about money and what I believe about how we can really use money and trust money and feel comfortable with money. So yes, in the last like we'll say maybe five or six years. My spiritual journey has been very rapid and very expansive…
Laura Rotter
And so much of this really resonates with me, Sarah, and I was trying to think of when I grew up a very spiritual kid again with the same sort of father in the sky.
Sarah Leslie
Yeah.Â
Laura Rotter
Religion and. Though always had a sense of a, of personal God and being watched over and taken care of. And then through my involvement in Buddhism and yoga, it really, my whole sense has shifted and I definitely think that was part of my journey at a similar age of. Starting to realize that the work I was doing was not filling my soul and gradually moving away.
And so could you share with our listeners how that then impacted the next step of creating the business you're doing today?Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, absolutely. So the business that I have today, I, I knew when I left my job, my nine to five job in 2019. Of course, I still wanted to help people. Of course, I wanted to use my skills.
I loved the work that I was doing, and I wanted to be able to make money. So, again, another divine intervention moment. I'm scrolling on Facebook. It sounds like I'm on Facebook all the time, but I'm really not. Okay. So this is like the second time I'm scrolling on. And sure enough, I come across this person who used to be a therapist.
Had transitioned out of working at her office as a therapist to being an online coach, and I was so intrigued. I'm like, what is this thing that this person has done? I need to learn everything I can about this because I wanted to also work remote. I wanted to be able to travel and go and do and be. And I knew I needed to transition out of being a therapist because there were a lot of restrictions as a therapist, and I was just at that point reaching 40, which happens for many people.
Mine was an awakening of I don't actually want all these restrictions. I don't actually want all these rules. I actually do wanna be able to get on social media and tell my story. I actually do wanna be able to offer to my friend to sit down and help them. If they're in crisis and they could really use someone with my expert skill level, which you couldn't do any of those things as a therapist.
As a psychotherapist in good ethical standing, of course, which I want to be. And so it led me to, I need to pursue this thing. And I found online coaching and literally within. It was probably, I left in February and by May I had set up my online business to be a coach, to be able to work remotely. And from there, of course, we grow and evolve as entrepreneurs of course.
And as I grow, my business changes. And for the most part, like the bones of my business really got started in that sh short time period. Yeah.Â
Laura Rotter
That story is leading me to ask you, is there a particular population you like working with? You mentioned how you loved what you were doing before you left in 2019.
That was a very specific kind of population. It was for sure. Now. And I certainly know when I started my financial planning practice, if you could breathe and pay me, I was working with you. But now much later, that's no longer the case. So who do you enjoy work with, working with? What's your to your, what's your target?
Yeah. Get that.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah. So as you commented before we hopped on here, right? My, my phrasing or my slogan in the most recent, I don't know, two years we'll say, is go all in. So my people are those people who are going all in on their dreams. And I know that can sound a little fanciful, but ultimately that's what I did, right?
It was like I'm no longer satisfied with what I've been doing. I desire to live a new way and really go all in on myself. Figure out this online thing, be able to travel, be able to find love, be able to do more experiences and make all of the money to be able to support all of that. So it was really that.
That transition that led me to realize I wanna work with people like me. I don't wanna work with people who are like really struggling. I was good at it, which is why I enjoyed it. And I loved the people that I was coming into contact as I was in that evolution of my journey, who are also doing that same kind of a thing.
So it was a very natural fit for me to align. I started getting on social media regularly posting. When I left my job, I was like, oh my gosh, I've been so unhappy for so long, and if you're unhappy, you don't have to stay unhappy. I just, you couldn't keep me off of Facebook for the first, like six months after I left my job.
So it started to bring a bunch of my friends, I say friends loosely like people in my network forward, and they're like, what is happening to you? What did you do to get out of there and how can you help me do it? So I very quickly realized like, yeah, I really do wanna work with people like me who are going all in who have big dreams, right?
And when I say big dreams, it's like you wanna be really deeply fulfilled in your life and whatever that is for you uniquely, that's what I help people create. I. So it can be across any industry, any stage of the journey that people in. It's really more about the person that they're that person that's going all in.
So I've worked with people who are already business owners for many years, and they've gotten to a point where they're feeling that I just, I need something else. I'm not fulfilled. What is it I need to do to get to that next level? For that particular person that comes to mind, I did a lot of work around their, their marriage.
How to revitalize that and how to take it to the next level, open up and have more emotions and more communication. And then I've also worked with people who have had very successful businesses, have left for very similar reasons that I left and then start a new business. And I've taken them from starting a new business to making over a hundred thousand dollars.
So it's, I work with a RI wide variety of different people, which I love. It's all helping them through this very similar process of being here. They wanna be somewhere else and they just, for the life of them, can't figure out how to get there because our minds will not allow us to get there. And so there's all of this like emotional and internal shifting we have to do to be able to get to that new version of ourselves.
Laura Rotter
And so I'm gonna ask you to be a bit more specific about how you work with people. Over what period of time are there packages? Sure. How do you structure the work?Â
Sarah Leslie
So my primary way of working with people is over a period of six months, right? When we're doing that kind of a big transformation, you really do need about six months.
Yeah, you need a few months just to, to get really clear on what you want, and then a few months to get really dialed in on it, and then a few months to really practice it. And honestly. People get really good results from working with me, and so they want to continue. By the time we get to the end of the six months, it's cool and can you help me do this thing now?
Can you help me do this thing? So that is very different from what I was doing before in Therapy Land as well, which I love that part to be able to work with people continuously. So I work with a small group of people. That's my primary working one-on-one. And then I also have a mastermind that'll be coming, starting again.
I just finished around. It'll be starting again in June. That's really focused on helping the entrepreneur who's feeling like there's a rub, there's a stickiness, there's a. Ooh, I don't really know how to show up as that next level leader that I know I have to be able to make better, faster decisions to be able to work with more of the people I really want to be working with.
Like really mastering some of those self-leadership skills that quite frankly, you just don't learn growing up. And I didn't learn until about 10 years ago myself. So that Mastermind is for a small group of people, about eight people max, so that there's still a lot of individual attention. And because I'm an, my expertise really is in doing that deeper internal work.
I like to have small groups so people can feel more comfortable to really talk about fear and self-doubt, which I just don't think, I'm not as comfortable talking about that in large groups. So I like to keep the Mastermind really small.Â
Laura Rotter
Love it. I guess I wanna make sure I keep in, I put in the show notes, something about the masterminds.
Sarah Leslie
Yeah. So I can send you a link for sure. But you can email me sarah@sarahlesliecoaching.com to be able to easily get more information from me as well.Â
Laura Rotter
Perfect. So as we get to the end of our conversation, Sarah, I do always like to ask how your definition of success has shifted over time and, and specifically financial success.
Also, if you could address that.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yeah, so I love that question, man. My definition of success I feel like is constantly shifting and changing. And what I used to think, certainly it's very different from what I used to think as I was chasing things and not even really sure what I was chasing. But now it's am I being the true expression of myself?
That's really what success feels like for me and how I'm gauging. And I have worked very hard not to gauge my success based on what's in the bank account for sure. And that has taken quite some time to get to. And my mind still goes there because I was trained that way for so long. And financial success, I think about it.
I guess now I don't think about it in terms of money. I think about it in terms almost more of like fulfillment and do I have the money that I need or want, I don't really think about it as need anymore, but do I have the money that I want to be able to do the things that I want? Right? And if there's a moment where I'm wanting something that I don't feel like I have the money for, then it's a matter of, cool, how do I create the money?
Or how do I create the space to be able to allow myself to have that thing? Which feels very liberating, very freeing, and it brings this other level of peace. There's just like this overarching sense of, I'm gonna be okay no matter what happens.Â
Laura Rotter
I love that. Which really is an expression of faith. Yes. And it's something that I share naturally.
And what I'm also hearing you saying, Sarah, is that. You are no longer defining financial success by the size of your bank account. It really is an acceptance of enoughness, and that doesn't mean an acceptance of scarcity by any stretch of the imagination, but like this is. What I, again, you didn't wanna use the word need, but to feel fulfilled.
These are experiences that I need in my life or things I need in my life, and therefore I will make sure to have them.Â
Sarah Leslie
Yes. Beautifully stated.Â
Laura Rotter
Love that. Before we end, is there anything else you wanna be sure to say to our listeners?
Sarah Leslie
You know, I would say to the listeners, if there is a part of you that's, oh, I don't feel like I am being who I really wanna be in the world.
There. There's never a better time than right now to make that decision to do things differently, to allow yourself to be that free expressed version of you. And while it can feel incredibly fearful to do that, it is worth everything that you have to do in order to get there.Â
Laura Rotter
Thank you so much, Sarah.
Thank you for agreeing to be my guest. I've really enjoyed our conversation.Â
Sarah Leslie
Thank you. This has been so fun.Â
Narrator
Thanks for listening to Making Change with your Money Certified financial planner. Laura Rodder specializes in helping people just like you organized, clarify, and invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning.
Go to www.trueabundanceadvisors.com/workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey. Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.