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A True Story: “Who Are You Anyway?”

Written By Millen Livis


Yesterday I spoke with a prospective client about her money anxiety, constant sense of ‘not having enough’ and fear of financial hardships. She is a professional woman who works hard, is ambitious and driven, and makes a decent living….

On a surface, she was very poised, confident and successful. However, once we got deeper into the candid conversation about money and her financial future, the money worries and financial insecurities showed up. She shared with me how this constant anxiety around money affects her health, her sleep and her relationship with her partner….

I was deeply touched by her sharing… You would never guess that this lovely, smart and successful woman has so much deeply covered fear. I felt that she REALLY needed to express it, to give voice to her hidden emotions and shine light on something that was kept in secret inside her body for so long…. I listened and kept the space for her emotional discharge.

But at some point the conversation suddenly turned when she asked me the following question: “Why would I want to listen to YOU?”

I loved the fact that she finds it important to discern among all the ‘money and abundance coaches’ out there…. I too would want to know what makes a person qualified to work with me. So, here what I shared with her and I thought you may want to know about me as well:

As a first generation immigrant from Europe, I had a VERY modest beginning in this country. I had NO money at the beginning and worked odd minimum wage jobs while learning English. I worked really hard and was able to save money to buy my first car… old blue Chevrolet. Yey!

When I found my first professional job with a brokerage company, I was thrilled! It was the beginning of my own journey to wealth and freedom. Hard work, courage, resilience and perseverance helped me become a successful executive for major firms on Wall Street. That’s where I’ve learned about investing in a stock market.

I then went back to the graduate school to study business and received my M.B.A. degree from a prestigious Ivy League school, Wharton Business School, in my mid-forties. After graduation, I didn’t want to go back to corporate America. While it was comfortable to stay at my well-paid corporate job, it didn’t feel good… and I left the corporate world for good.

It was not an easy decision, oh NO! Actually, it was a major life crisis… My marriage, health and finances were literally falling apart at the same time. I felt lost, broke (and broken), stuck and hopeless.

It took faith, time and help from other people to recover my confidence and get clarity about my true desires and life direction. I did a lot of soul searching, personal development and mindfulness work and enrolled with a life coach. When I finally started listening to my intuition, I decided to take an inspired though imperfect action and become an entrepreneur. The beginning was rough (a familiar cycle of ‘win, fall, learn, repeat’) but that’s where I’ve learned about investing in real estate.

What I told to my prospect and am trying to share with you here is that I have ‘failed myself forward’: made a few mistakes, learned from them, invested time and money in myself (over $170,000, my best investment!) in order to learn what works. Where am I now? I’ve achieved personal and financial freedom and so CAN YOU!

As you can see from my personal journey to Financial Freedom, your financial past does not determine your financial future. Today is a new day and a fresh start. And I can be by your side along the way to your financial success.

To your Health, Wealth and Freedom!

With Love and Gratitude,

millen-sig3

 

Millen Livis

About the Author

Millen is a Wealth architect and Financial Independence Coach, entrepreneur, and a bestselling author. Being a Possibilities' Catalyst, she uses her intuition, business, and investment expertise to support entrepreneurial women (like you) who want to master their money, live their purpose achieve financial prosperity and freedom. With her physics and business education, corporate and entrepreneurial experience, money management know-how, mindfulness practices and transformational coaching skills, Millen has a unique ability to guide and support clients in achieving extraordinary success in their lives.

  1. Thank you for sharing wonderfully inspiring story, Millen! I think your client’s question was brilliant and frankly I’m surprised more people don’t ask it. I do think one of our challenges is how much to share – where to draw the line between being authentic and demonstrating experience and expertise – without getting too personal or putting people in a coma … or maybe that’s just me.

    1. Thank you for your comment, Marquita. Yes, I agree with you – it is somewhat a balancing act of coming across as authentic and real yet not too personal. I try to share something about my own journey that is relevant to my clients’s concerns and inspiring so that they can start believing that they too can achieve what they desire.

  2. Thanks so much for sharing so much about your own story, Millen. It is so important that people have a sense of who you are and where you have come from, especially if they are going to trust you and choose to work with you. When we put ourselves out to the world as an expert, it is imperative that the other person resonates with you and your journey. As someone who loves and values people’s stories, I see this is a key to attracting the people that are the perfect fit to work with. It’s also encouraging to hear how so often our “failures” are the stepping stones to lasting success.

    1. Thank you so much for your comment, Beverly! You are such a great story teller yourself and I am sure you know very well how important the authentic stories are for establishing trust and credibility. I am happy to share my story because I know that there are other people out there who may relate and get inspired by my journey… And yes, I agree with you that we often learn more from our “failures” and that’s why I feel that I “failed myself forward.” I try to live my life with very few regrets and that implies taking risks and learning from “failures.”

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