Welcome to the Six Figure Business Mastery Podcast, where every week,

Kirsten and Jeannie dive into the essential topics to fuel your business

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Tune in for expert guest interviews on all things, marketing and

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So get ready to unlock your business potential and take it to the next level.

If you're ready to use your money to make a life rather than using

your life to make money, stay tuned.

Hi, everyone.

I'm so excited to introduce you to Laura Rotter, the owner of a company

called True Abundance Advisors.

She is a heart centered and values based business financial

planning firm based in New York.

After she had a successful career managing money for institutional investors,

including Citicorp and ParaAdvisor, she discovered mindfulness practices

and was drawn to guide professionals.

Facing a big life change to achieve both financial security and life satisfaction.

So we are thrilled to have her today.

We're going to talk about how entrepreneurs can use money

to live life on purpose.

So thank you so much, Laura, for joining us today.

I'm looking forward to our conversation.

All right, one of the things I'm always interested in is how do people

choose the career that they're in?

So what took you on a journey to become a financial planner?

As Jean said in the introduction, this is a second career for me.

I was one of those nerds in high school that discovered that I could

have a really interesting career.

and make good money from it.

I was the primary breadwinner of my family of five, three

kids, and a wonderful husband.

And so the second decade of my career, I just took it for granted.

It's what I did for almost 10 years.

I no longer enjoyed what I did.

The environment changed.

It was now the frat boys in college leveraging relationships to make money.

And I started To think about leaving and my husband was very contrary, said you

agreed to be the primary breadwinner.

I said I liked what I did.

I didn't realize I had signed a contract to continue to do it.

And as Jeannie said in the introduction, I have found yoga and mindfulness.

It made me aware that I was choosing to be a victim of my

life rather than authoring it.

If I was wearing a pair of tight shoes, I was the one who could

make a decision to take them off.

And so I started to teach yoga in my home in the evening.

Wall street left me November, 2013.

So it's been a little over a decade.

And I thought I could teach yoga, but that too would require me being public.

All us entrepreneurs know people don't just come to your door.

When you hang out a sign, you have to be on social media.

You have to be publicizing your business.

And I felt between the two is a woman in my fifties with tight hamstrings.

Should I build a yoga practice?

Or should I take the decades of financial market experience

and fluency and use that?

To build a new business.

And so I actually explored becoming a rabbi.

I explored becoming a yoga teacher, which I did.

And then I decided maybe being a financial advisor for women

might be how I could meld as I've.

I've said it yoga with money because there's so much

anxiety and shame around money.

So if I was someone who could create a safe space for people to talk about their

money and organize and clarify their money that maybe that was my calling.

So that was my decision in 2016 to start my firm True Abundance Advisors.

Your journey there because deciding that you could take off the tight shoes, right?

Like you were the person who could decide to take them off and realizing

that just because the career had changed when you were on wall street didn't

mean you didn't still have all this wisdom and knowledge and experience.

And I love how you decided to shift it.

To a more holistic approach on the institutional side of Wall Street.

We always would like to say that of course, though we're managing money,

let's say for Harvard's endowment, that is ultimately helping people get

scholarships at whatever else, but it's not the same thing at all as dealing one

on one with people and their emotions.

And the stories they've grown up with around money and helping them both face

it, acknowledge it and move beyond it.

And you also work with people when they have like big life changes.

That's always such a hard time.

You're dealing with emotional things, family, friends, and then you've got to

think about the financial aspect of it.

I feel like when people are in that, in that stage, things coming

at them from all directions.

Yes.

And it's an interesting point, Jean, in that most of the time when people

call a financial advisor, there is some sort of transition going on.

Could be as simple as I'd like to retire soon.

Am I in the position to do it?

Because it's not that easy to speak to a complete stranger about your money.

There has to be some catalyst, something going on that has

someone pick up the phone.

And so I really.

recognize and acknowledge that I'm dealing with people when they're already

in a state of discomfort and transition.

Now, do you work with a lot of entrepreneurs?

I'll tell you, the truth is not really.

I do.

I myself became an entrepreneur.

I've Recognize that it's important to keep my judgments and my

values distinct from others.

I'm thinking of two women in particular that when they started to work with

me were what I would call Schedule C.

They had their own businesses.

Schedule C is an IRS tax form that enables you to write off.

Plenty of expenses against your income.

And while working with me became W2 employees.

So chose to both of them to work with companies that they were consultants for.

Everybody has different levels of comfort with uncertainty, with funding your own

health insurance and other choices that we make when we decide to become an.

Entrepreneurs.

I've had nightmares about going back to work for an employer.

My values are not their values.

My comfort level with uncertainty is not their comfort level.

Finding the right person to help them with their finances is so important

because when your business is at a certain level, you file as an S corp, so you

do get a W 2 even working for yourself.

But You have all the pressure of your personal finances and

then your business finances.

And I think it can sometimes feel overwhelming to then think about

how do I plan for retirement?

But I like your idea of having the life on purpose.

Many business owners start their businesses because they want

to have control of their time.

They want to have control over their finances.

But we often know that they sometimes end up working 80 hours a week, so they

don't have control over their time.

And then they often don't.

They're just so busy trying to make money.

They forget to figure out how to invest in, or am I living based on my values?

So what are some of your advice for everyone?

Not just business owners around.

Living a life of purpose when it comes to your money.

I think that's a great question.

We teach what we need to learn.

Once I started to work for myself, I was the worst boss I ever had.

I perpetuated the hours I kept on wall street.

I was.

Exhausted.

I never had a break.

I remember speaking to a coach.

I think it's important to have a coach when you have your own business.

And I use Calendly to have people schedule meetings.

And I said, people are scheduling meetings at nine o'clock in

the morning and I'm not ready.

And I'm, and she said, Laura.

Who controls the availability of hours on your calendar link?

And I said, I do.

And she said, why don't you not make that time slot available?

And that was such an aha moment that I can, and certainly if clients need

to meet with me at other times outside of what I now make available, which

is 11 to five, I can make more time available, but I have a much more

spacious morning than I ever did.

And there's a lot of overcoming.

Preconceived notions about what being valued is, right?

I still see in myself how I, if I'm not busy, I'm not somehow valuable.

And so in addition to Prosmet meetings and client meetings and onboarding

new clients, I have a podcast and I'm publishing weekly, writing and

trying to make time outside of work.

I am still.

Discerning what's the right amount of busyness and perhaps since I'm embedded

in the culture like we all are, this will be a continual lifelong journey

until perhaps physically I'm going to have to make different choices and.

As I say as I work with clients, the first thing is to be aware.

Awareness is the first step.

If you're not even aware of what's behind choices you're making

that might not be serving you, then there's no chance of change.

I am in the awareness.

State.

I worked most of my career in a nine to five and it is a different mindset

when you are in charge of your own time.

You're so focused and you're so conditioned to be the nine to five

and always busy and always working.

So I hope that the mindfulness that you're learning is going to help you with.

Just understanding your time and energy and, and being able to plan for that.

And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to work for myself.

I wanted to go on the field trips with my kids.

I wanted to be able to go to the store in the middle of the day.

If I need to go to the store instead of being, don't move from that desk.

Yeah.

So it's a different mindset.

Yes.

And as I listened to you, it's something for better, for worse.

I raised three kids.

I was the primary breadwinner, not the caregiver.

My husband was, he became doctor mom for many years.

Pulled himself back into a more part time position and I was not

picking the kids up from the bus or being the mommy at school lunches.

Now I have time to reach out to friends or women in the area

who are also entrepreneurs.

I'm part of a book club.

This is new for me this year.

It was exciting for me to be invited to a book club, to be in the company

of women, which was something I did not have the ability to do for many years.

I was either on a training desk with a bunch of dudes.

Or home with my family.

I think the whole pursuit of more.

So we have to work more hours to buy more stuff.

We have to work more hours to feel valued.

Is that constant validation, whether it's through time we work or the things that

we buy, I think it's a lesson we're always learning and trying to take control of.

Focusing on the choices you made in the past, the choices you're making now

and building the life that you love.

That's a powerful message.

How do you.

Express that to your female clients when it comes to their money.

Well, how do you help them get clear on their purpose around money?

I'm thinking of a client I just recently started to work with who

they've accumulated credit card debt and having difficulty saving.

And then think about choices I made when I decided it was time to leave Wall Street.

Spend less than you earn.

When I made the decision to leave, I had a 6, 000 square

foot house on an acre of land.

The carrying cost of the house itself wasn't the issue.

The cost of heating that house, the cost of getting the grass

cut on that house was phenomenal.

And the taxes, like I said, the mortgage was small.

I had a vacation home.

And I was funding that as well.

I'm a skier.

We would also take a vacation at least once a year to the West

coast to ski and other vacations.

And we wouldn't organize them themselves.

We would use backroads or Austin Lehman or a company that was an expensive package

so I could just write the check and go.

I looked very closely at my spending.

It was important to me.

And I think we're at different stages at different times in our lives.

I was in my fifties.

I wanted to not use.

My life to make money anymore, which I had done, I wanted to

use my money to make a life and I sold the 6000 square foot house.

I'm in a house that's half the size.

I sold the vacation home.

We don't vacation the same way we do.

I still take the same vacations, but I'm not paying someone else.

To arrange the whole thing for me, I am happier than I have ever been.

I embrace the decisions and it's a process.

So if I'm working with a woman who wants to leave her W 2 job and start

company, we started looking at their, I look at spending in three buckets.

There's the bucket that is your needs.

Even if you lie in bed all month.

and eat bonbons, you're still making these payments.

You're paying your mortgage, your rent, you're paying your electric, you're

paying your cleaning woman, things that are already committed to ahead of time.

Those are harder to change, but we take a look at those.

Do you need to live in this house?

Do you need to live in the New York area, which is quite an expensive area?

When you buy groceries, do you go to Whole Foods or do you go to Costco?

How often are you shopping?

How often are you going to?

Concerts, ideally your needs are 50 percent or less of what you're bringing

home or what you're anticipating bringing home so that there's still 30 percent

of your monthly income that can go to fun and then another 20 percent that

can go to savings and not only savings for when you're no longer working.

But savings for the big trip you want to take each year, or savings for the charity

you want to give each year, savings for your Christmas gifts, so you're not

putting these things on credit cards.

So when we're looking at making a life transition,

those are the questions we ask.

How much cushion do you have?

How long can you go?

To get your business up to speed because my first year or so I didn't

make any money, actually spent some money to put, to put things in place.

So how much leeway do you have?

And I realized the privilege that I had, my kids were off the payroll.

I had paid for their college.

I had a lot of savings and now my academic husband is working and

will have a pension when he retires.

Do you have a significant other that can pay for your health insurance?

So these are the kind of things that we look at and address as you anticipate

making a change to move towards being your own boss and all the joys and

uncertainty that comes along with it.

Can I share a story with you?

Something that happened today.

So we have a client and she's become a very good friend and she's been

a very successful business owner for the last decade, but she has

never really looked at her finances.

And in fact, when it comes to her finances, her anxiety goes.

through the roof.

So as a friend, I said, let me help you set up the software.

It's called, you need a budget.

com.

And it's just going to help you figure out where your money's going.

So it took us a while, but we got her business budget on there.

It took us about six weeks for her to actually really figure out what

she was spending in the business.

So when you get the category set up properly, and then she

did it for her personal and she did that with her husband.

And it was really challenging.

And she went away on vacation at the end of the year and she said, and

she'd probably put 60 hours of work into this over the past three months.

And she went on vacation and just sick the entire time.

And I think it was just because of all the anxiety she had around

just facing where her money went.

So fast forward, she is now making conscious decisions about

how she's spending her money.

And it's so fun because she left today to go to a conference.

And she said, she texted me from the plane and she said, so funny.

Some of the women going to the conference are here and they're in first class.

She said, I'm in the last seat by the toilet because I didn't want to

spend an extra 15 to pick a seat.

And she said, I feel good that I parked in the economy parking, even

though it took me longer to get there.

I got a quick walk in.

I feel so empowered to make these decisions.

Look on the bright side.

When airplanes crash, they like crash nose first and you're in the back.

So it's so empowering that even when financial times are hard, you at least

have power, the power in the information.

I've got to make more money or I've really got to cut some costs or whatever it is.

But I think that is the first step for people on designing their life.

Thank you for that story.

I recommend to my tech savvy clients to use something called Tiller, T

I L L E R, and it's a spreadsheet.

It costs 75 a year.

You could either do it in Excel or Google Docs.

And you connect your accounts to it.

It auto categorizes for you.

Once you set up some categories for recurring transactions, then I, every

Sunday, log on and see what's falling into that bucket that I call bills get paid.

And then what's the fun spending?

Am I keeping to my imagined budget?

I started to work with a couple who had a lot of anxiety, exactly like

your friend described about, Oh my God, every time they spent money, they

felt like they were doing something wrong and they set up the spreadsheet.

They shared it with me.

I walked through it with them and I said.

You're fine.

Oh, yeah.

Like, how does this sound?

You're fine.

You're spending within your means.

You could see the relief.

We make up stories based on how we grew up.

And then we're terrified to look because we imagine our story is true.

And I really feel again that it's a blessing, the work that I do for people.

We haven't yet addressed.

Investing their money.

Most of the time people think that's all of what I do.

Yeah.

And I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it's all about your mindset.

Because for our friend, the perception in her mind that she wasn't in first

class, like everybody else was, you'd have to think about it as no, because

I'm prioritizing where I'm spending my money and that's not necessary for me.

So you have to feel good about those kinds of decisions.

When I first started my business, I didn't have an office.

So I would go to other people's homes.

I still remember the first day, one of the first weeks I had two meetings.

One was with an older woman.

She was in a row house in a neighborhood in.

Westchester, she had one of those little glass menageries on her on the table

and she was wearing a lovely polyester pantsuit and her big night out was

going to the church to play bingo.

She had millions and millions of dollars.

The next meeting I had in a beautiful home with floor to ceiling windows looking

overlooking the pool in the backyard.

They had a beautiful piano.

They had under a million dollars.

The husband was close to retiring.

They were not going to deny their kids who were about to go to college.

No matter where they went in, they were going to pay the tuition.

I said to them, what's your plan?

Are you planning to win the lottery?

Are you expecting an inheritance?

It was so Frightening to me.

You don't know who's sitting in first class.

You don't know if they're putting them on a credit card

and don't have a pot to piss in.

I mean, it really, how people dress, the cars people drive, how people carry

themselves, how they spend, often has little correlation to their net worth.

And that is what I've learned from this work that I do.

So true, Laura, I could talk to you all day long, but I want to thank

you so much for coming on and helping us think a little bit bigger and

prioritize things, especially when you're thinking about some big life changes.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

I do want to say one more thing because I know we're all business

owners and of course money is a scarce resource that we manage and

so is our time and so is our energy.

And so we really have to be thoughtful about how we allocate all three of those

resources and they're tied together.

So true.

And you have a resource for us.

It's called Unblock Your Money Blocks.

It is at trueabundanceadvisors.

com slash workbook, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes below.

We will also put where people can schedule a call and talk to you more

about how you might be able to help them.

Thank you so much again, Laura.

This has been an absolute pleasure.

My pleasure.

Thanks for listening to the six figure business mastery podcast.

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