Empowering Women to Master Their Mindset and Relationship With Money With Linda Grizely

Josh St. Laurent: Welcome to the Wealth in Yourself Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you master the complex subject of money by simplifying it through stories and actionable advice. I'm Josh St. Laurent and this is Wealth in Yourself. Welcome to the Wealth in Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I'm your host, Josh St. Laurent. Today we're joined by Linda Grizzly. Linda is the founder of Vision's Financial Planning and Mindset and Money. Her mission is to guide and empower women in transforming their money mindset and unlock their potential. James to help her clients reach financial freedom and abundance by challenging limiting beliefs, building an abundance mindset and recognizing self-worth. Today we're going to dive deep into some of those strategies that you can use to do the same. Linda, welcome. Glad you're here. Linda Grizely: Thanks for having me, Josh. Josh St. Laurent: I'm looking forward to your conversation. Linda Grizely: Likewise. Josh St. Laurent: I'm excited when I was reading your bio. It's a lot of the stuff that I am fascinated by as well. Lots of different roles in your career, both in finance, finance adjacent. Can you tell us the story of how you came to start two of your own financial companies? Linda Grizely: The short version is I was working for a large brokerage firm corporate and I had two elderly parents that were divorced, so separate, double responsibility, trying to take care of them. A husband, I have five adult children between the two of us. We had two new grandchildren and with all the stuff that was going on with my parents, I barely had time to breathe. I was like, immediately after work, I was going home to go into my dad's to take care of my dad and then I was taking my mom was in and out of the hospital and it just really got to be the point where I like, I had no life because I was either at work or running around taking care of other people. I took a leap of faith and left the corporate world and started my own RAA, which is separate from what we're talking about today. Then also my mindset and money, which is a money mindset and mastery course that I use to help coach and mentor people through transformation with their money mindset. Josh St. Laurent: How did that transition happen? Because my story was similar, corporate finance. I think you and I both spent time in fidelity. What was that moment that you said, I'm interested in money mindset? Let me start moving in that direction. Linda Grizely: Yeah, so after I left and I started putting my stuff together for my business and financial planning, I started thinking about clients that I had and the way that they would have these internal obstacles that would keep them from moving forward. I started to realize that they really just needed to get out of their own way and I wanted to have find a way to help my clients in the future get out of their own way. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know, I want to make this available to people that aren't my client because not everybody needs a financial planner. The other people will have like one person in the couple will have a financial advisor or planner or they have like a family person, but there's not someone in their life that can help them work through the mindset part of it. So I wanted to keep it separate and make it available to other people. And right now I work mainly with women and a lot of my women are solo printers or entrepreneurs, a lot of real estate agents, other coaches, people with small businesses like virtual assistants, those are the type of people that I mostly see coming through my course, although they're all over the place. I even have a therapist or counselor that's doing my course. So it's really interesting to see the types of people that come through. And the point of that is that everybody has a money mindset. Everybody has something that keeps them from getting to that next step of financial success and understanding what those things are is part of what I do. Josh St. Laurent: Now are there common hurdles that you see a lot of these women coming into the course with and how do you typically address those? Like is there a common story you can share with us of, hey, I see people come to me and they're here and by the time they finish the course, this is where we'd like to see them get to. Linda Grizely: The most common story is their lack of financial training or learning and knowledge that they had throughout their lifetime. So they just ever talked about money. Their parents never talked about money and not having that background and that open dialogue. They kind of just keep it to themselves. And there's really not a place for people to express their money situation that's safe, right? If you're talking about it with friends or family, sometimes you can divulge too much or they just focused on like giving you advice and not really helping you understand like what it is that you're doing that might be an internal blockage putting yourself in your own way. That's really the biggest part of it. The biggest obstacle though is really understanding that you can make change to your money mindset and you have to be open to that. And so the people that are starting in my course and coming into my program are people that have realized like, hey, I'm struggling with something. Either I think I'm bad at money. I don't think I'll ever make enough money or whatever their negative belief is. They know that there's something there that they're struggling with. And so they come in with an open mind ready to learn. And that's really the biggest obstacle is realizing that you want help, that you want to make a change and then taking that action to make it. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, totally, totally agree. If we're talking about could be a woman, could be a man listening, who says, you know what, I recognize it. I've got some blocks in my money mindset, but I have an open mind. I'd like to change. What would the first step be? Is there an exercise that someone can do to get a sense of maybe where they're at right now or some of the areas that they could look at improving? Linda Grizely: The first thing I would say is start to think about your experiences with money and go all the way back to your childhood. What were your first experiences with money, not only with your own money, but in your household. So did your parents talk about money or whoever you lived with? Did they talk about money? Did they argue about money? Because if there was a lot of argument about money, you might think that talking about money is a negative thing or that money is a negative thing or that money causes problems, right? So you might have that internal belief and not even realize it just by being in that experience. So mine, for instance, was I didn't get an allowance, but I could do work around the house and earn money. My parents lived paycheck to paycheck and they didn't really save money. So when I started to earn money, I would do jobs to earn money and I would get just enough money to do the thing that I wanted to do or buy the thing I wanted to buy. But I never did more and I never saved because it wasn't part of the lifestyle that I grew up in. So it wasn't part of the lesson that I learned when I was young. And I didn't learn it until I was older that you know, you really do need to save. And it took a long time and it actually took some internal work for me to realize like, Hey, I need to change something here because you know, there's times in your life when you're not earning enough money to keep up with your lifestyle when you're older and you need to have like an emergency fund to keep up with that, things like that. But really looking back at those original stories is what helps you figure out where to start. And the other thing is to look at your habits. So look at your spending habits and how they're tied to your emotions. If you have a bad day, are you treating yourself to something? Are you a person who gets an endorphin rush from buying something and how can you transform that into something else? You know, can you instead of like actually hitting purchase? Can you just start putting things on a wish list? Oh, I might like to have this. I might like to have that. It goes on the wish list instead of in your cart to buy. And then you can like intentionally buy it later when you're in a better mindset or you know, get that endorphin rush just by putting it in there or even moving money like, okay, I was going to spend 10 bucks on this. So I'm going to move it to my savings account. Looking at your original stories and then looking at your habits now would be the place to start. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, you made some great points in there. And I wanted to touch upon because I know you and I both work with a similar group of folks with the entrepreneurs. Do you feel like it adds an extra layer of complexity when someone is trying to balance not only their own personal finances, but also maybe for a business on top of that? Can you say a little bit about that? Linda Grizely: Yeah, it does. Especially when if you're a real estate agent or somebody in that similar type of thing, your constraint is not equal. It's ebbing and flowing all the time. So there's a whole other level of planning that needs to go in there or idea of your mindset in setting that money aside and knowing that you're not going to have that steady stream. So how do you plan for that? That's a big part of it. And then the people that have the businesses, I think that they come in because they're open to growth and they have a growth mindset. They're open to learning and expanding their horizons. I think that's a reason why a lot of them come into rather than just people who have a job where they're getting a steady paycheck. Josh St. Laurent: So true. The fluctuations can make it really, really hard, not a regular pay for people to kind of budget around cash flow. And before this, you made the point around, identify those money stories that are barriers to you, figure out what those are and where you need to put your focus. Can you say a little bit more about what would the next step be after that? Maybe you sat down with someone and I know you do a lot of coaching as well. From my experience, the initial few meetings of initiating the change, really, of moving from okay. And I realized this is a potential barrier problem in my life to begin, you know, taking action to start making some positive changes. How does that happen? You know, and how long does it take? Maybe is a good follow up to that too. Linda Grizely: Let me first start with the end, which was how long does it take? It takes a long time. It's a lifetime process because you're always going to be going through changes in your financial situation, in your mindset, in your circumstances in life. So it's going to be a continual process. But the more you open up your mind and the more you start to understand what's going on inside of you, the easier it's going to be as time goes on. That being said, the course that I created was originally an eight week course. Now I've built it in a community and there's eight main lessons, but there's other lessons in there. And what we do is we go through assessment that were created by psychologists. So there's psychometrics in there. They're taking the assessment. They're journaling their thoughts after the assessment. Then we have a live meeting on video, right? A live video meeting where we talk about it in a group. They're having group interaction, talking about each other's stories. And they actually learn a lot about themselves, but they also learn how other people are dealing with their money, mindset, or the journey that they're going through so that they can see that they're not alone. And a lot of times they get those aha moments from other people, not even just from their own selves. There's journaling for them to do after the meeting too. And then there's other side work that we do in there. So it's a combination of the group coming together and talking, you know, and like master minding, right? What we've learned through the assessment. Everybody has their own journey, but going through it together helps to create some dynamic to that. Josh St. Laurent: I love the group dynamic, the normalizing of some of the common money scripts, you know, like we hear all the time, you know, money doesn't grow on trees. That's sort of lesson that's been ingrained in us. So I think it is helpful to hear from other people like, you know, my dad said that growing up too. So I find that part of it really, really interesting. Do you find that the community is kind of stick together after the course is over? Linda Grizely: Yeah, there are some that stick together that have kind of like gotten to know each other. And the community part, I just added on. So that's new, the community itself online. So I'm hoping that that will build. They get access to the community for a year. So they can go out your own pace or they can take the eight week course, but really they can revisit any lessons and redo things because you can see progress over time. If you retake the assessments, hopefully your scores are changing for the better as time goes on. And so you can come back and recheck and stay engaged in the community. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot. I want to ask you kind of switching gears a little bit here. You had spent quite a bit of time and wealth management and financial planning. Now you're more on the coaching side, money mindset, much overlap. Do you think there is between the two and should someone seek them both out? Or is there a scenario where someone would maybe start with one versus the other? Linda Grizely: That's a great question. They should do both because you have the concrete side of it and then you have the mind side of it. And they go together. They go hand in hand. Like I said, I was originally looking at adding this into my financial planning practice, but I decided to do it separate so that I could help people that weren't my financial planning clients, but they do go like in a circle, like one feeds the other and one, you know, they each feed each other. But I think to have a holistic financial wellness, you need both. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, I agree. I want to just leave this next question just super open ended. What else should we know about money mindset? What am I not asking that we should be talking about that maybe not enough people are talking about? Linda Grizely: It goes pretty deep. So you have your money story, which is what was given to you by your experiences. You have a money personality, which is also part of your life experiences, but part of just who you are. Linda Grizely: You have a risk tolerance, right? So when we do risk tolerance as a financial advisor or a planner, you're looking at just the level of risk itself that a client is willing to take, but understanding how that is psychologically to you can help you understand why you're doing the things risky or not risky for yourself. You have your risk tolerance, which is how much risk that you're willing to take, but then you also have a risk capacity, which is how much risk you really can take in your finances, which you work with your advisor and your planner to work on. But when there's a disconnect between your risk tolerance and your risk capacity is where the mindset comes in. You know, why are you not taking enough risk or why are you taking too much risk when your financial situation says that you should be here and you're weighed one direction or the other. So talking about that is another place that we go. It's really like a whole like broad range of things that go on in your mind regarding money, it's beliefs in yourself, internally and externally. So if we talk about money beliefs, there's beliefs that you have about you, whether you think like, oh, I got some really bad with money or I'm never going to make that much money, which are all negative beliefs, right? Or they could be external like, you know, money is the root of all evil and rich people are greedy. So those are all negative also about money, but externally. So it can never ending the amount of stuff that you could talk about about your money mindset. So we try to focus on the key point, which there are a lot of them and work through figuring out like what they mean to you and how you can make an action plan to change and move forward in abundance and stop, you know, being in your own way. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. I'm over here nodding because I'm fascinated by the topic. So it led me down the path to become financial therapist. You know, I love all things financial mindset. I'm curious above and beyond the eight week course, are there resources that you suggest for people who are wanting to, I'll just say dip their toe in the water, maybe a book or a survey questionnaire that can help them better understand their own money stories, money scripts? Is there anything that you are giving to maybe new clients or prospects to help them start the process of better understanding their money mindset? Linda Grizely: Yeah. There are some great books out there. I do refer people out to therapists occasionally. If there's a deep, frustrated issue, I'm not a therapist myself. And then there's also financial coaches that I refer people to if they want a more specific help with budgeting and like actually going through like what they're spending their money on, I refer people out to financial coaches. So it just depends on where they're at. But there's a lot of resources out there for people that want to just get started on their own and see definitely. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. No shortage of money mindset books as for sure. So I want to switch gears. There's three questions more specific to you and like about you and your life. And so the first question is what is living a wealthy life look like for you? Linda Grizely: A wealthy life to me is being carefree and content and happy. It's not about a number. It's not about how much money I'm making, how much money I have, any things that I have. It's more about the feeling that I have. That to me is wealthy. When you feel like you are content and secure and happy with where you are, that's wealthy. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. Absolutely. If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom, who isn't there yet? What would it be? Linda Grizely: Do the work internally and externally. Do the mind work, do the numbers work. It's going to take both to really get you there. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. So true. If you only had a thousand dollars and you were starting over, what would be the first thing you would do with that money? Linda Grizely: It's a really good question. You have so many things. So I would invest in myself, right? So I would invest in some sort of personal growth because that to me is super important. It's part of my journey and it's going to be a lifelong thing now that I'm so into it. But every time that I invest in myself, it pays itself off. And then I would save part of it. I wouldn't spend it. I would harness the power of compounding, right? And get it going so that it could grow into more. Josh St. Laurent: Yes. For everybody listening who wants to find you and connect with you online, where is the best place to connect with you? Linda Grizely: On social media, the best place is linked in and it's Linda Grizely, it's your IZ ELY and you will see a bear emoji next to my name so you'll know it's me. That's the best place to find me. And then I also have my website mindset and money.com. And if you put a slash POD for podcasts down there, there's a special offer in there for listeners. Josh St. Laurent: Perfect. Okay. Well, we'll link that in the show notes, make it easy for everyone to find. Is there anything else you would like to say about money mindset that we did not cover? Any questions that I should have asked and did not? Linda Grizely: The only thing I would like to say is that our conversation makes it sound really complicated, but the idea is it's the same thing with your finances, right? It seems really complicated, but just get started. Start somewhere, take small steps, start thinking about it and paying attention to it because our energy goes where our focus is and our life's go where our energy is. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, it's such a good point. Starting is sometimes the hardest part. Well, thank you for being here, Linda. I have really enjoyed this conversation. I love talking about money mindset. So thank you for here for making the time. Linda Grizely: You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Josh St. Laurent: This has been the Wealth in Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. Our guest today was Linda Grizely. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. The Wealth in Yourself Podcast is hosted by me, Josh St. Laurent, an edited and produced by Ray Haycraft to learn more about how to make your money work for you. Visit us at www.wealthinyourself.com and connect with us on all social media at Wealth in Yourself. This podcast is educational in nature and is not meant to be investment advice. Please do not construe anything said to be advice and the opinions of the guests may or may not represent the opinions of Wealth in yourself. This podcast and the information presented are separate from my employment at Golden Gate University. Still, they are part of my mission to make no cost financial knowledge more accessible. If you like the show, please take a moment to leave us a review. We read all of your feedback and we want to make sure we cover the topics that matter most. If you have a specific subject you'd like us to explore or a guest you'd love to hear interviewed, don't hesitate to shoot us a direct message. And as always, thanks for listening.