Transcript of Episode

Leah Gervais: Alright, visionaries. Welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision show. I couldn’t be more honored, excited, and it couldn’t be more fitting to have Marla Mattenson with us here today. She is I think the definition of a visionary. So, um, we’re gonna learn a lot from her today. We’re going to be very inspired by her today. Um, we’re really lucky to hear from her both about her entrepreneurial journey and what she can teach entrepreneurs. So thank you so much for being here, Marla.

Marla Mattenson: I’m honored. Thank you so much. I’m excited. Let’s dive in.

Leah Gervais: Let’s do it. So before we kind of rewind, which is where I want to start with you, um, will you just give us a sentence or two about what you do?

Marla Mattenson: Yes. So I work with my love, life and business partner, Julian Colker and we work with visionaries and we work with visionaries who have a strong vision and mission to bring out into the world, to impact humanity and uplift the vibration of humanity. And we do that through the nine realms of intimacy, which is way more than just physical. And we do this through mostly the unseen world. So we teach couples and individuals how to collapse time and how to time bend and how to really manifest what they truly desire in their bank account, in their love life, in their health, in their wealth, and basically all areas of their life with a lot of joy and a lot of fun.

Leah Gervais: Yes. Oh my God. That’s like, those are the two words I would think of you first with is joy and fun and inspiration. I met Marla a year and a half ago at an event with David Neagle. Who’s one of my mentors and, um, she just had such, you had such an amazing energy about you. I loved just talking to you and connecting with you. And then I saw you speak earlier this year and it was one of the better speeches on entrepreneurship. I’ve heard in my journey doing this. So we’re very excited to learn from you. 

Marla Mattenson: Thank you so much. 

Leah Gervais: My pleasure. All right, so you have this incredible business. I will get onto that in a second. Um, and you’ve really, you know, integrated it with your life in such an admirable way. Um, but I know that this wasn’t always your story. So could you just take us a little bit back and I guess specifically, my question would be, did you have a vision for what your life would look like when you were a younger girl? What did you think would happen?

Marla Mattenson: Oh, I love this question. So yes, and no. Yes. And I always knew that there was so much more available than what we were looking at. And I had a very deep connection with what we call the unseen world at a very young age. And I was sort of talked out of that in childhood. And so it’s like, I would tell my mom or my dad, Oh, I see this. Or this is what I think is happening. And they would cause they didn’t have that kind of vision. So they would say, Oh, that’s, that’s nothing. That’s not what you see. But I actually saw at a very young age or as an energy. And um, and so I didn’t actually shut that down in me. I just shut people out. And so I kept my inner knowing and I kept my inner world and I learned how to play in the vastness inside of me, but I never learned how to actually do that with others, like how to play and dream and enjoy and collaborate with others.

So I only knew how to do it with myself and my very huge tribe of playful, unseen world entities. And so I was never bored.  I really just enjoyed my childhood and also felt very alone. So I felt very alone and unseen and unheard and kinda like, what, what are people doing? It just didn’t make sense to me why people made the choices they made. And so, and I remember at age 10, my family did an evening activity, which was fantastic. Actually it was from a therapist. They gave us this activity and they wanted us to write our top 20 list of things you want to do in your lifetime. And so I wrote a list and one of the things on the list was, and this will reveal something- buy the state of California for a million dollars. Okay. So I had a big goal because I wanted to protect the state of California.

I’m from California, I’m from Los Angeles, you know, born and raised. And at the same time, my ignorance about money, like as if it was going to cost a million dollars to buy the state of California. And some of the other ones were like a lot of traveling and interesting things and inventing things and winning first prize in gymnastics and you know, those kinds of things. So I had a big vision as a child. I had no idea that I would be who I am today. And so it’s been a really incredible journey of, and a lot of pain along the way. Also, you know, a lot of, you know, stepping into territory that, um, was terrifying for me to expand into what I’m really capable of here. 

Leah Gervais: Oh sure. Oh my God. I could go on that for a while, knowing what you know now and having been through so much education and experience and so much life experience, what is it about how you were when you were younger, how tuned in you were at a young age? Why do you think that is? Especially if your parents weren’t, maybe the ones, you know, endorsing that or fostering that, where did it come from? 

Marla Mattenson: Oh, I was just born with it. This is my soul’s journey. Right? So my belief system, and nobody has to agree with me, but my belief system is that, you know, we make soul contracts before we come into this lifetime. And so we have soul family and, and along our path of life, we connect with people from our soul family and we have agreements. We have premade agreements that we say, Hey, when I see you, I’m going to do this. It’s going to annoy the hell out of you. It’s going to make you feel like just crap. And then you’re going to do this with it. And then we’re going to see where that goes, okay, are you in, I’m in, let’s do this.

Right? And so, and then, okay, I’m going to incarnate. And so it’s a, it’s a soul agreement. Like I chose my family, my biological family. I love them. I don’t always enjoy them, but I absolutely love them. And I’m learning more and more to enjoy exactly who they are and how they show up. And we’re very different. And yet we have a lot of similarities. And so I learned more about myself based on who they are and how they show up in the world. Because part of my DNA, half of my DNA comes from my mom, half my DNA comes from my dad. And yet that’s just what comes from, you know, science and what’s beyond that is the soul. And so, and then there’s the fusion of the two, which is, you know, we hold the dualities, which is okay, there’s my DNA and then there’s what I came in here with as a soul. And the overlap between those two is really my expression of who I am. 

And so it’s not about cutting out your family or cutting out your history. It’s about integrating all of who you are, all of who you’ve been and loving every single version of yourself from this moment, all the way back to before you were born. And before that and your future self, like, can you love your future self into existence? The only way you can do that is by loving who you are today. And the only way you can really love who you are today is if you love genuinely every moment of who you were in the past. So if you’re still judging or making yourself wrong for any little thing from the past, step one is always number one, the awareness that you’re doing that like, God, I wish I could go back and change this thing. No, no, don’t change any little thing. Everything brought you to who you are today.

Leah Gervais: Beautiful. Beautiful. So when you mentioned that, you know, as you kind of grew up and you were sort of like, I still have this inmate, this never went away. I had it in me. Were there. I think you mentioned you, you, you know, you did a lot of work to get to where you are today- some of the painful. was there a moment or perhaps a few that you recall when that journey, I know you were always on it, but maybe like a turning point where you’re like, I’m not only, I’m not going to just keep this in anymore. I’m going to let it out. And I’m going to explore this. Do you have a moment that sticks out?

Marla Mattenson: Well, so many moments and I’ll just be a hundred percent honest and transparent here. It’s still happening. There’s still moments, you know, we’re never done. I always say we’ve never arrived. We’re always arriving, always arriving in every moment. And so let’s see a few really stand out. Okay. This is interesting. I’ll just say it because it’s coming in. So I remember the first time I think I was in my early 20’s when I stopped using sex as a way to fill my well and I was literally, can I say this? Oh yes, please. Okay, good. Okay. So yeah, it really is. It’s really, it was an incredibly beautiful and painful moment. So I was being intimate with this guy and you know, we’re in his bed, we’re, we’re getting down to it. Everything’s happening. And he’s a sweet, sweet guy too. Like, he wasn’t like a mean dude or anything, really kind loving human.

And I stopped. I looked at him and I said, I can’t do this. Wow. And I stopped and I put my clothes on and I got in my car and I cried for like an hour. And then I drove home and I was like, I will never leave you again. I was talking to myself like I literally like, it was, I could cry about it right now. It was so tender. I didn’t know that I was literally leaving my body to try and fill something inside of myself that could not be filled by somebody else. That was one of the first moments I remember really feeling like, Oh, that’s what it feels like to abandon yourself. I didn’t know what that, like, I couldn’t name it until, and then once I had that moment, I was like, Oh, damn, I’ve been doing this all over the place.

I’ve been doing this for my whole life, abandoning myself, my needs, my desires for other people, the people pleaser in me was very strong because that’s how I learned how to manipulate, to get my needs met. And, uh, and what, what I was doing really was, I was creating more distance between me and another person to actually have an intimacy or an intimate connection, because I was trying to be who I thought they wanted me to be rather than being who I am. And I couldn’t be who I was. Cause I didn’t even know who I was. I was, I had been so trained by myself, this is nobody else want me to, um, you know, twist myself into a pretzel to try and be what I thought other people wanted, even though, and this is credit to my dad. My dad used to say, he’s got some amazing sayings.

And one of them was, you know, there’s nothing you can do to make someone fall in love with you. They’re either going to fall in love with the real you or they won’t. But if you spend your time trying to twist yourself into a pretzel, those are the words he would use to make them fall in love with you, then what happened? They fall in love with a false version of you. And then you feel like they don’t know you cause they don’t. Cause you haven’t been revealing who you really are along the way. So it’s better to just be who you are, push away the people that don’t enjoy that. And it calls in the people that do enjoy that. I didn’t actually hear the truth of that advice until many, many years later. He’d been saying it, but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear it.

Leah Gervais: Do you, I want to ask a follow up question to that and then I want to kind of go back to your timeline. But I think that this is such a powerful point because I think so many of us have moments of that where we’re like, Oh my God, someone’s been telling me this. Or we’re on the other end where we’re giving someone advice and they’re not hearing it. They’re listening. Is there any way, is awareness the only way to actually hear something? Do you have to choose to hear it? And no one can do that for you. Is that like, I guess I don’t know how I’m answering this, but do you kind of see where I’m going with it?

Marla Mattenson: Yes, I do. I see exactly where you’re going. Yes. The answer is yes. Step one is always every single time awareness because, and let’s just talk about logically why, right? Because you know, my background is in mathematics and neuroscience. And so I always want to look at the logic behind something, even when I’m in the unseen world and I’m in the world of energy. I still want to make sure that it actually makes sense and logical about it because that’s how we integrate. So what we’re saying here is if you don’t have awareness, can you really hear what’s happening? The answer is no. And here’s why you’re hearing through a filter. So like, if, if, um, let’s say Julian says to me, you’re so beautiful Marla and I don’t have the awareness in myself that I’m beautiful. Then what do I have? I have all of my thoughts, emotions, and previous experiences about how I feel about myself or what I know myself to be in terms of beauty or being beautiful or a beautiful energy or physically beautiful.

And so that gets overlaid on top of the compliment that he’s trying to give me. And so instead of having a clear pathway directly into my heart where I’m receiving exactly what he’s saying from his perspective, separate from mine, instead I have this filter that that compliment goes through and then it gets distorted. It gets distorted by my prior experience of myself and life and the distortion can amplify it, meaning, Oh yeah, I am amazing. You know, like I can go there if that’s my history. Or I could say, if I don’t actually feel like I’m beautiful. Like for example, many times in my life, I didn’t feel beautiful. And so I could easily say, well, you know, you feel that way because you’re seeing through Rose colored glasses, but you don’t see the real truth because there’s ugliness inside of me and you don’t see that or not naming that.

So I pushed that compliment away. You see? So the awareness has to be there in order for you to really receive the purity of what somebody is saying. And this is why coaching is so powerful because what happens, right? And you know, this from the work that you do is when you have a client and that client has a blind spot, we all have blind spots. They’re always emerging. Right? And then what you do with those blind spots is how quickly you manifest what you really want in your life. So if you say something to a client and you don’t check for understanding, meaning you don’t say so, what are you hearing me say? And you, you wait, okay, now they repeat back what they heard you say, you can hear if you’re really listening, their filter of what they’re getting, from what you’re saying, they’re not getting the purity of what you’re saying.

Because they don’t have your life experience. They’re getting it through their own filter. And so if you can help them see the filter that they are putting up and have them see it, name it and dissolve it, then they can actually have a direct connection to the purity of what you’re saying from your own, from your experience. And that’s how you help your clients elevate and amplify quickly because you teach them how to see their own filters and how to dissolve those filters and integrate them in claim them like, Oh yeah, I am a controlling bitch sometimes. Hey, what’s up? 

And it comes in handy from time to time. And then don’t bring that to my relationship, right? Because that is not where it will come in handy. Although it pops out there too sometimes. So it’s not about being perfect. It’s about checking when it arises, when your particular flavor of ugly arises. Right. And, and how quickly can you come out of it? How quickly can you become aware of it? How quickly can you come out of it? And how quickly can you lower the intensity of it?

Leah Gervais: Hmm. I love that. You’re saying this it’s coincidental because just today I was on a call with a client and kind of what I say my, my phrase instead of what are you hearing me say? Which, I love that. But I often just say, okay, how does this feel? Like when we’re talking about something, I’m always saying like, how does, how are you feeling from this? How are you feeling from us? I’m always trying to grasp how this, what emotions, this is bringing up for them. And someone today just kind of just said, good. And I was like, wait, I want to be clear that, you know, I’m not just asking you how you’re feeling like I’m your mom calling you on your phone? Like, how are you feeling like, no, really I need you to tell me, how is this making you feel so I can understand what this is bringing up for you. So I love everything you said about how coaching is so impactful.

Marla Mattenson: That is so Important Leah, I just want to pause on that for a second because helping someone to name their emotions is so invaluable. And then to guide them into where do you feel that in your body, where do you feel what I’m saying in your, and have them go and have an internal experience of it. And then that leads down into the storylines of where that originated from, because it’s touching something. If they’re not feeling it in their body, then it’s staying outside sort of in their ORIC field and they’re not receiving completely what you’re saying. So it’s like, what are you feeling? Where are you feeling it? And then what exactly are you hearing me say? Because to have them repeat it, it’s like, wow. Oh, okay. That’s what you’re hearing. Fabulous. Okay. And you know, it’s always, it’s kind of like improv. Yes and right. We never want to negate anything a client says, but it’s like, Oh yes. And what else do you feel? I’m saying, what else do you feel? So it’s kind of like, yes. And what else are you hearing from me? And helping them to go really deep into, and they’ll reveal things you weren’t even thinking about, but that’s their material that’s arising. And then you go, Oh, let’s look at that. And so that’s how to be so natural and organic in the coaching, just going by what you’re already doing into, you know, what are you feeling right? 

Leah Gervais: I love it. And it’s so many, you know, explanations kind of the way you were filled. You were explaining that filter in attending one, listening on podcasts, we’re both putting our hands up, like literally a filter. And then it explains, you know, why so many people never changed their lives because they will receive exactly the information they need to hear actually all the time. But they’re either receiving it in a way that isn’t helpful or completely deflecting it. And it really does take someone to be like, do you know that this is what’s happening in order to shift? Which brings me to my next question. So you just shared with us, and I appreciate that you shared that you were using sex as a way to try to fill up something that needed to come from within you stopped and you are now an intimacy expert. And I know you work with people beyond relationships, but I’d love to hear a little bit of the business story here. How did you know wherever you want to take us with this?

Marla Mattenson: Oh man. Okay. Her parties. So, um, this could go all night. Um, let’s see. What do I want to share? First of all, I mean, I truly have so much gratitude for every step along this path. And so I think that what might be in service of the listeners today is the journey from that, knowing that there was more for me and taking that step into the unknown of what does it feel like to offer services for a higher dollar amount, for a higher financial investment than I’d ever done in my life before. So, you know, I’ve had many incarnations in this lifetime of who I am and what I’ve done for work, and I’ve truly enjoyed every moment of my work I really have. Um, and I tend to get a knowing inside like, okay, even though I loved being a high school math teacher, for example, which I did for seven years in Los Angeles unified, there’s something more, there is a next step here. And it’s time to go back to my roots, which is coaching. And, and so I left the teaching profession and decided to work with a high level coach, David Neagle, in fact, and I know you’ve worked with him as well, and I heard his voice on an audio, um, you know, one of those audio programs and I thought, oh, that’s, that’s my dude.

Like, that’s the guy that’s going to help me. I just knew it. And I was terrified. Cause I thought, Oh, how much is going to cost to work with them? Right. And cause I had very poor money mindset ideas. I had massive poverty thinking and I just knew I’m working with this guy. I don’t care what it takes. And so I went to one of his events and I just said yes to myself. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. And I had been coaching for many years, so he didn’t need to help me with being an expert coach. He needed to help me with pricing. And so I remember at that event at the lunch break, I was sitting at it table with, I think like eight people. And this one woman was sitting next to me and she was telling me that she sells her 90 day packages for $8,000.

And I burst out into tears. I was like, what, what, how do you do that? And I was still a high school math teacher at the time making like not $52,000 a year or something like that. If you’re teaching a thousand dollars a year because I, you know, I did extra work. Right. And I was the common core coordinator and I was this and I was that. So, um, I was earning extra money more than just the base salary and other people we’re trying to offer me advice at the table. I don’t even remember who else was at the table because I didn’t want to hear from anyone, but this woman, and this is what I’m doing right here right now. That’s it period, the end. And so she so shared, so lovingly and generously, Oh, it’s really not a big deal. That’s what my services are.

That’s the outcome. That’s what they’re worth. 

And so right at that lunch break, I posted on Facebook and I said, Hey, did you know that before I was a teacher, I was a coach. And I love coaching. And if you’re curious about coaching or coaching with me, please reach out, send me a message. I’d love to hear from you. It was so simple. This was 2015. Okay. And I got three messages, one from a former client from 12 years earlier and the two others and the client that client that I had worked with in the past, she signed on to work with me. And actually I’ll just be totally honest. I told her it was, I just was like, screw it. I’ll this is what I’m doing too. It’s, you know, it’s a $8,000 to work with me over the course of 90 days.

And prior to that, I was charging $95 an hour. Okay. So I was like not doing packages and I was, you know, it was very much a, you know, in the one off sessions, I didn’t understand about holding energy and holding space for people. So, uh, and she said to me on this call, I know you’re totally worth it. I know that this is totally worth it. I don’t think I can do $8,000. Can we do it for less? And I said, you know what, since you were a former client and I know you, et cetera, let’s do it for $6,000. And she said, okay. And then I learned from David don’t ever do that. Don’t ever lower your prices because it sends a confused message to the universe. I charge this, just kidding, I charged that don’t do that, create your pricing and offer extra value, but don’t lower your pricing, help people raise up to where you want them to be.

So that was the first and last time I ever lowered my pricing for anybody. Okay. So in any case, that was the beginning of, of me saying yes. And that was before I worked with David. So I signed her on for $6,000 for 90 days. And then I had my VIP day with David. And so at that VIP day, we created what my programs were going to be. And we raised those rates to $12,000 for a six week program. Cause I had a lot of mastery, you know, it wasn’t, he didn’t teach me to teach me how to be a coach. So you’re just starting as a coach. You want to go through a program you want to go through, you know, how to become a masterful coach and raise your rates from there. But, I think that’s one of the most beautiful stories of the very beginning of stepping into my financial abundance and then it’s only gone up from there. And the truth is, Oh, this is interesting in my first VIP day with David.

Leah Gervais: I think I know this story and I love it. 

Yes, you’re in the cloud. Okay, good. I’m in my first VIP day with David and his team, which is an amazing team, by the way, just a plug also for David’s podcast. The art of success is so fantastic. If you haven’t listened to that and you definitely want to add that to your playlist with Leah’s. Um, so here’s the thing with David and the first VIP day, when I said $12,000, I heard a different number. I heard $120,000 and I thought that’s crazy town. That’s crazy town. And I pushed it away. I didn’t say anything in that moment. And then over the course of, I think it was about nine months later, I was charging $120,000 for my work.

And then it only went up from there. And the last VIP day I had with David in 2017, um, I heard $250,000. And so, and then that’s the current rate. So it’s, you know, I mean, that’s not the beginning rate. The beginning rate is, uh, you know, a smaller investment, definitely less. Um, because we vet people, you know, you can’t just say, I want to work with you. And then we say, yes, it’s, it’s the 30 day process first to see if anybody can actually really handle and have the resilience to do the work. Because if they don’t have the resilience, they don’t already have the significant background in, how do you navigate your own trauma? How do you navigate your own overwhelm? If you don’t already have that, you need to work with somebody else first to really get solid with that, where, you know, we can poke around and say anything to you and you receive it. Yeah. Right. Work hard at removing those filters. Don’t have that filter. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t. Yeah. And we are just straight laser shooters. So, um, yeah. It’s beautiful. 

Leah Gervais: Thank you for sharing that story. I guess one thing I’d love to zoom in on that I think would really help people. So I, um, as we’re recording this, I’m actually launching the program that I have for new entrepreneurs. It’s called Scale Your Side Hustle. And so this is fresh in my mind, hearing people, um, with those very real new entrepreneurs feels fears. I dealt with them, I’m sure you’ve experienced them. Um, and you know, I think, um, sometimes people forget that we also have experienced them and that it wasn’t always that easy for me. So like, I don’t know if there’s, if I should be categorizing this, but when I think about what I think the newer ones that newer phase, but you’re mostly afraid of is should I spend money on my business? Is this going to work? What will people think of me? And I’m sure you’ve navigated through all of those in some element, but in the beginning, do you remember feeling one in particular that was maybe the hardest or just the most work for you to get through? And do you have any advice for someone who’s like at square one? I’m sure you have so much advice for someone who’s at square one.

Marla Mattenson: I love it. I love talking to you. This is really fun. Um, you know, cause it’s like remembering more of the beginning of the year, right? So first of all, something that I think is incredibly important and a lot of people say this, but they don’t always practice it, which is hire in the direction you want to go, don’t hire for where you’re currently at. If you hire someone for where you are, then you’re not going to be growing exponentially. You’re going to be growing incrementally, right. You’re just going to be growing sort of one plus one plus one plus one, rather than a multiplier. So if you really want to grow and you want to grow quickly and you want to move beyond this beginner’s phase and you want to do it with as much grace and ease and joy and flow, as you possibly can, then I’d say one of the first things to do this. This is actually just a great activity, is to write a list in three columns. Column one is the things I love to do that I’m really great at column two is the list of things that I’m good at or I’m okay at and I still enjoy doing, and column three is I don’t want to do these things at all. Like if somebody could just take these things off my plate and those are broad stroke categories, but I think that everybody can understand it’s like your zone of genius.

Like I’m willing to do these things cause I’m okay at them or I’m good enough at them that I can do them. Cause really it’s really a solo-preneur thing. When you’re first starting, you do everything. And then the third column is really like, I really have no business doing these things in the business and it’s going to cause a problem at some point. So maybe finances is that thing for you. Maybe the attention to detail with calendar invites and, and all these other things are the things. So that column, that third column of like, Ugh, these are the things I need to take off my plate immediately. That’s your first hire. And, and I would say hire someone really early on because it’s going to give you the motivation is, you know, Hey, I’m not just doing this for my livelihood. I’m doing this for somebody else’s also, and you can do it hourly.

You can do an independent contractor agreement. Um, you know, I’m not an attorney, but I would also say make sure that everything is work for hire rather than, so you don’t run into any intellectual property issues down the road in your independent contractor agreements. My dad is an attorney, but I am not. Uh, and so I’d say hire someone early on to help you so that you don’t go through the high highs and low lows when your business is doing well financially and not doing well because you’ll have somebody else to take off that extra pressure. So whatever your worst skillset is, have someone else take that on. And so, and, and it will be scary. It will be scary. It’s still scary for me sometimes. You know, my, I mentioned my control issues. Well, one of my control issues is I can do things, most things better than anybody else on my team. Okay. I’ll just be honest. 

And then there’s places where that is absolutely not true, but in the areas where it is true, it’s so challenging for me to just hand it over because there’s a part of me that wants to micromanage, make sure it gets done properly. And so I’ve really worked over the years on letting that go and letting it be good enough and it doesn’t have to be perfect. And that’s okay. In fact, that’s how other people on the team grow when I just am hands-off and also one of our core values is celebrating mistakes and not just celebrating. So they have happened over and over, but so that they don’t happen again. We all learn from those. So, and the other thing is, can I do it with two- parter?

Leah Gervais: Please 

Marla Mattenson: Okay, is working on your confidence and here, this is a really fun visual. So if you can imagine a pendulum, okay. One side it on the high side is on one side, it goes all the way down to the middle. And then, you know, up to the other side, one side is arrogance and then you’ve got the neutral spot down at the bottom. And then on the other far, other side is confidence. And so in order to get to true confidence, what is confidence? Confidence is knowing you can do something, be something, have something because you’ve already experienced it.

What is arrogance? Knowing you can do something, be something or have something before you’ve experienced it. You gotta be willing to be seen as arrogant, right? Because you haven’t experienced it yet. Love it. How do you, how do you know you can have that? How do you know you can charge that? How do you know you can experience that? No, you don’t, you can’t actually be confident, right? It’s not about confidence. It’s about being willing to feel arrogant, being willing to be seen as arrogant. And once you’ve experienced it, once, twice, three times, four times, five times, we always say it takes five times to sell something, to experience something in order to actually have the true confidence that this is just who you are and confidence, you don’t need to work on it. You’re not working on confidence. You’re working on being willing to be arrogant and be seen as arrogant.

Leah Gervais: Oh, this is so, so powerful. And this leads me to more questions, could talk to you about this forever. And we won’t go on forever, but this is so, so helpful. And I think, you know, for me, I’m not going to go too far into like my religious and spiritual background, but I always had an interest in a personal development and love spirituality and was very I meditated before I started my business. But I did not understand the mechanisms that I’m still very much learning. It kind of like you said, it’s an ever growing journey, but the respect I have for the importance of spirituality and understanding how things work spiritually and energetically has been one of my favorite parts of my business. 

And definitely one of the most unexpected, I mean, I think like most people I live in New York city. So, you know, you say you’re starting a business and it’s like, Oh, so do you work 20 hours a day? And you drink a lot of caffeine and blah, blah, blah. Like there’s kind of that grind. And I actually don’t hate that. And I like that. I love to work. So, um, all this is to say that in, in learning what I have, I have now at this point in my business, multiple six figures, um, view my number one job as, as the CEO as someone who works with a lot of clients on very deep stuff in their life and, and manages a team like you’re saying, my number one job is managing my energy and seeing how dramatically different my business goes when I’m feeling positive and optimistic and in gratitude and in appreciation versus when I’m feeling stressed. 

And, and we still often justify these emotions because they’re so common, but they are so, so toxic and so harmful. And so experiencing that and just seeing that we often make these things a lot harder than they are really, if you can just kind of center yourself. A lot of this happens. I hope that you’re agreeing with everything that I’m saying. This has been my experience. So my question for you is when you are, um, you know, maybe you agree with what I’m saying. You understand that you do have to put out a positive energy in order to, to do anything that you want it to be happy to, to be healthy. Um, and still people are struggling to manage the stresses of entrepreneurship, the confusion, the difficult days, the rejection, what are some of the first tips to quickly quicker bridge that because those emotions will happen forever. I’ve never gotten to the point where like they just disappeared and just been able to recognize them, not work when I’m experiencing them and get through them a lot faster. So, yeah, that’s a very big question, but I’d love to hear where you go with it.

Marla Mattenson: Okay. Well, first of all, I love that you’re sharing this. You know, a lot of people don’t realize that emotions are a choice. So how we choose to feel every day is either coming from an unconscious choice or it’s coming from a conscious choice. And so most people are living with an unconscious choice about how they feel emotionally every day. And they’re just like, well, I’m not really feeling well, not really into it. Um, you know, yeah. A bad day or I watch something on the news or, you know, I’ve got all these things going on and you just sort of let yourself go on the down. And most people don’t realize that actually you have a conscious choice and also a responsibility to raise your vibration. Because if you want clients to come to you to rest and surrender in you and your not actively working on raising your own vibration, like if someone came with a video camera, they installed videos around your house, okay. I love this. And 24 seven people were able to witness how you actually live behind the scenes. Would they hire you? Are you showing the world who you really are? Is that in alignment or are you putting on a face for the world? And you’re not actually living what you’re trying to sell, what you’re trying to teach, what you’re sharing out in the world. And this is not to activate shame in people. This is to activate the choice of, Oh, dang. You know, I do have a gap. Guess what? Every single human has a gap from what they’re doing behind the scenes and how they’re showing up and what they’re putting out into the world. Every entrepreneur let’s just put it like that because people can argue with every human, but with every single entrepreneur, there is a gap. 

There might be a financial gap. There might be a gap in your relationship. There might be a gap in how genuinely you feel happy all day long or not. Like if you’re teaching confidence and happiness and you’re feeling like shit every day and you’re having to really work hard to bring yourself there. That’s not in alignment. Right? And if you actually are raising your vibration, every time you go into that and you become aware, Oh, I am on a down. Right. And you bring yourself back up then great. You’re either consciously closing that gap or you’re unconsciously making it wider. And so this is part of the work of behind the scenes is where is my gap of integrity? Where am I not putting out into the world? What’s actually happening behind the scenes and where am I putting out to the world? Things that are not happening behind the scenes.

 So I hope that was clear. Yeah, definitely. It’s kind of like everybody has a gap in their integrity of the difference between what’s happening at home and what they’re putting out into the world. So realizing that you have a choice in your emotions and like how quickly can you pivot and love yourself and be the vibration of love, be the vibration of joy. Because like you said, and like you practice and like we do too. That’s what calls in more of the same. So if you want people who are practicing this and wanting to learn how to do this even more, and that’s part of your work, then it needs, it’s urgent that you’re practicing that. It’s urgent. And the other thing is that this statistic is not a, you know, a data-driven statistic. It’s coming from my knowing, which is 95% of what we are experiencing in the world is happening in the unseen world.

And what is the unseen world? I’ll talk about the seen world. First, the seen world is the world of our five senses. What you can see, taste, touch, smell, and experience in our three dimensions. But if we really think about that, everything in our three dimensional world comes from the past, right? The shirt I’m wearing right now, someone had a thought of making this shirt years ago, and now it’s here in my house. You know, even my hair came from the past. It was growing my rings, everything, the computer, everything in the three dimensional world comes from the past. So if you want to create something new, it comes from the unseen world. It comes from the world of pre-manifestation. It comes from the world of thoughts, ideas, belief based, love, dreams, imagination. That’s the unseen world. It’s not fancy. It just is.

So the more you tap into it, and by the way, there’s massive joy in the unseen world. It’s like, Oh, what could I imagine? How and what I always say when I’m really working on manifesting things in my life, is this like, whatever it is I’m thinking of or magic this or something. My small human mind could never even imagine because it’s so much better. 

Leah Gervais: It’s so much bigger. I love, love, love that. Oh my God. Okay. Marla, I could obviously talk to you for days. I’m going to take you up on the sleepover offer. Don’t know if that was real, but whenever we can travel again, we’re doing that. I have a few lightning round, one word questions for you. And then we will wrap up. Is that, are you ready? I’m ready. Let’s do it. Okay. So going off of what we just talked about, what is your go to when you were having a bad day or a sad moment, whatever way you want to put it?

Marla Mattenson: Oh, that’s beautiful. Love actually, I put my hand on my heart and I go to love. And actually what I, Oh, this is supposed to be a one word thing?

Leah Gervais: Well, whatever is helpful.

Marla Mattenson: I do want to stay more about it. Cause it’s so good. So one of the practices that I do in the unseen world is when I’m on a high, when I’m doing really amazing in my life, I send love to my future self. Who’s going to be on a down because hashtag human. And I also send love to my past self, like love for the challenges that I had been through in my life. So I feel a little uplifted. And so when I send love to my future self, then when I’m on a down, this is why I wanted to say a little more about it is I receive the love from me. I received my own love down and my heart just expands. And I remember I’m in love with life. 

Leah Gervais: Opposite of self abandoning is the definition of that. Beautiful. Um, do you have one business book or a podcast? I know you mentioned David. So I guess one book that really influenced your business journey?

Marla Mattenson: You know, my business journey?

Leah Gervais: Yes. You know, I’d say You Squared by Price Pritchett. It’s small. It’s totally worth it. I think it’s like $12. It literally outlines the energetic world in his way. And then there’s a part two to it, which is called The Quantum Leap, a journey or creation or something. And, and that’s the second volume. And that series is just beyond, I highly, highly recommend it. Yes. 

Leah Gervais: Love that, love that answer. Do you have a seven figure tip you want to share? 

Marla Mattenson: Team and culture of your team! What gets you to six figures? Won’t get you to multiple six. What gets you to the multiple six? Won’t get you to seven. What gets you to seven? Won’t get you to eight. And so really allowing yourself to not only hire a team, but talk to seven figure business owners and ask them who are the essential players on their team because who we have now is like light years beyond anything I allowed when I was at six figures.

Leah Gervais: Great tip. Awesome. Where can people find you? 

Marla Mattenson: They can find me and Julian on Instagram, @theintimacyexperts and on our website, theintimacyexperts.org.

Leah Gervais: Awesome. Well, Marla a million. Thanks. This was a really special time together. I know this is going to help so many thank you for sharing your wisdom and your energy with us. And I just am so grateful. Thank you. 

Marla Mattenson: Thank you so much. 

Leah Gervais: My pleasure. All right, visionaries. I hope you love this DM me, DM Marla and Julianne. If you want to give them a big, Hey, we’d love to hear from you guys. I would listen to this two or three times and let this sink in. And like I said, Marla is such a visionary. Everything she shared today will help you get there. So here is your biggest vision.

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