Hi there, I'm board certified professional organizer, Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Organize Energize podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at thepodcast.organizedandenergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organize Energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Hello there and welcome back to the show. Today we're going to talk about how to create a system to scale without burning out. Leah Dunlap is my guest and she's an intuitive business architect, a CEO of Oracle on purpose, international speaker, best-selling author, and podcast host, and also the founder of the seven-figure wellness business program. She did this because she knows the market's expanding, but most women are not scaling with it. Wellness professionals hire her to scale the seven figures without burning out. That's the important thing. How do you scale and not burn out? So Leah helps you install the strategy, the systems, and energetic recalibration to become the CEO you're meant to be. You do this so you can have more freedom, joy, and profits. So let's meet Leah. You're going to love her, Leah Dunlap. Hi, Leah. I'm so glad to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you having me here today, Kathi. Yeah, yeah. We do a lot of the similar things, and that's why I really wanted to talk to you. and everybody you know you do different modalities uh than i use so uh yeah for those of you who don't know you for those listening who don't you uh give us a little bit about your backstory what you doing where are you from what's going on absolutely so i am an intuitive business architect and um i have been doing this work uh or some version of this work i should say to be correct um since 1994. i'm really committed to helping people find and follow their purpose uh specifically focused now on working people in the health wellness and transformation space because i think they're the ones making the biggest difference in the world today and something we definitely need to bring more of is more balance and uh and clarity and health to our lives so that's who I focus on working with now. I am really deeply invested in helping people to understand that they do have a unique life purpose and that they can use that to become more prosperous and more fulfilled in their lives and by doing so make a bigger difference. What was the path that got you there? I would say that the the the final path right because it's been a long winding road I said originally I started out um when I was very young I was going to become a therapist actually a psychologist and i took my very first psychology class and as an intuitive my whole life um i got used to getting these little insights little nudges uh and so my very first class uh the gentleman that was teaching our class his name was raul guzman i still remember to this day and he said you need to know now that it could take people years and years to ever get results from the work that you're going to be doing and i i always like to tell the story that at that moment the oracle said get out of this class out get out now get out so here's a little truth telling i am a college dropout because i said okay i got very clear that i needed to follow that nudge and i went off and i said okay i still need to help people i still want to serve people what do i do and so i continue to follow the nudges and the thing that i was brought to was um hypnotherapy And so I trained as a hypnotherapist. I'm a certified clinical hypnotherapist. I do NLP, EFT. I got trained in a lot of different modalities, always with the hopes to help people find that true joy in their lives and to feel like they were here on purpose. So that was the beginning of my journey. However, and also I should say, part of my family, you know, being in school, getting a good job, all those things, all the boxes you need to check off to be a good, young, upstanding citizen, kind of put me in a split path. And the second path was that I started to work in the corporate world. I worked in sales, marketing operations, you know, always to show up at the dinner parties with my family and say, I'm getting all those boxes checked until eventually the roads divided. And the universe gave me what I like to call a two by four moment and said, that's enough. I thought I was having a heart attack and I was stuck going back to my office to like ask for permission to leave. And in that moment, it was like clear as a bell. This is it. That's enough now. You have to stop. You have to choose the work you're meant to do. I had to start doing what I was telling everybody else to do, which was do what you're here to do. Do what you came to do. Be on purpose. And so I stepped away from the corporate world in 2008. Never looked back. Fired my alarm clock. and took on the journey of really growing my business authentically through the work that I do, helping people. And I've been doing it ever since. And I serve people basically through all different modalities. But ultimately, the goal really for me is to help people find not only their true work in the world, and it's really about prospering. And I've become much more attuned and committed to helping people really find wealth and wholeness, excuse me, wealth and wholeness in their lives and their businesses. I think so many people in health or healing or transformation space get trapped thinking that in order to be of service, they must, you know, become givers beyond the pale, you know, they must always give things away. And, and they struggle with the idea that they can not only be sustained, but that they can actually be wealthy, that they could that wealth is not, you know, something to hold against themselves. It's not something bad. It's something good. It helps them to do more in the world, to help more people and to stay prosperous is is my goal okay so back up here though you were having a heart attack and like literally and you had to go ask can i leave i feel terrible yeah yeah um you know i i spoke about this in a magazine i was uh you know highlighted in and the thing about it is now that i think back to the moment it happened i was this was when i was working in sales i worked in an industry where i worked in um i'm in portland i worked in portland oregon and across the river in another state vancouver was where my office was and this particular boss was very uh intense about having us come in and check out at the end of the day and so uh despite the fact that as i was sitting stuck in the middle of a bridge between the two states i started to have palpitations my heart started hurting i started sweating i had a sharp pain in my left arm and i thought literally at that moment as i was sitting on that bridge this this is it i'm i'm dying i'm having a heart attack and all of a sudden i remember thinking someone asked me when they went in an interview like what was that like and i think back to that moment i thought I am not dying on this bridge. This is not how it ends. This is not what I'm supposed to be doing. Like, this is not my life. And so, yeah, I still had this kind of almost, you know, you know not to be too dramatic about it but I had this you know feeling about that particular job that was so intense and i was so fearful that i needed to get weirdly enough i needed to get there to tell them it was okay that i can leave and also i think part of it was this thought that they held all the power like that's where my health insurance was like if i got fired i'd lose my health insurance all these things are tied up in this moment yeah yeah it's like that so yeah it was like this really strange time and i'm grateful that you know i did end up going to the hospital i found out that there was something thankfully not a heart attack going on but something severe enough that i had to stay home and and have some surgery and um and as i was recovering from that surgery i got a laundry list from my boss about what he needed me to do when i got back and i typed him a message um and it was simple i am not coming back and i quit my job i quit my job sitting on my sofa um in the dark for the whole afternoon going oh my gosh i can't believe i just did that and when my husband came home and said what's going on i said i quit my job and he said it's about time yay good guy he's such a good guy and really he saw you know he saw what i've been struggling with because the ultimate reason that i was having so much problems and i think behind all things really from health related stuff is so much stress you know and how it affects us and how it affects our bodies and i was literally pulling myself apart and it was dis-ease yeah it was it absolutely was it absolutely was and i and i i think that's why i'm so passionate too about helping helping people in that realm because i know how important it is for people to find their own version whatever it is of feeling healthy and supported and strong in their bodies um and it's all the things you know i look at it it's like a 360 degree wheel it's not just the stress it's all of the things we do um and a big part of that for me is like knowing who you are and being on purpose it needs you energetically it feels good to do your work yeah and that's a good thing yeah that that's exactly why you know that's that's a tagline on my first book is you know get organized and live your purpose add space your life purpose purpose is so important because you know we we should do what we love and and be on purpose with our our gift whatever that might be so okay so you quit your job husband says yay for you it's about time then what happened oh it was so easy then they started throwing me money i mean no it wasn't i mean let me be honest however i i think the reason i say that like jokingly is that if you look at my life today i'm you know very well off and do very well i have a great business and i had to take a giant leap i had to say whatever it takes i'm gonna do it um and so i started off by just literally throwing up my shingle i had already had my certificate as hypnotherapist so i was like okay i i can just throw up my shingle and i can start helping people um and i had written a book it's called the power plan and that book was really prior to all of this mess um how i had gotten out of my first marriage and got my life started again in 1994 and so i was like okay so i've got the book i've got the information i've got the program i've been running for years now i have a shingle um and so i just started telling people what i was doing and then they would be like oh i need help with this thing or i need help with that thing and at first i was like very uh adamant that i was not going to work on business with anyone I was like, I don't do that anymore. Like I shut that door. And unfortunately, you know, God, the universe had different plans. And it said, look who I'm going to send you. I'm going to send you all of these people and everything that they're going to talk to you about really is about their work and what they're doing and how it's going. And I was like, okay, I get it. I get it. Um, so then I, yeah. So then I started really helping people who were in business either, you know really um i loved working and i still do with women who were starting their own businesses like i was at the time and you know didn't have the the business background that i had or you know weren't really taught in their whatever practitioner school like you know work with massage therapists and others um you know homeopaths that that that training wasn't really developed for them when they left school. And so they were kind of drowning and floundering in that part, but they really believed in the work that they were doing. So I love being able to put the two things together and help support them. And then of course, using my tools in hypnotherapy and as well as my intuitive gifts, being able to find some of those gaps of where they were struggling and help them overcome them so they could really prosper and feel good about what they were doing. Do you have a story about one of your clients that, that kind of spells out that, that the cycle? Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite clients, especially that taught that really move from an environment where she was an employee and, and then became, you know, opened her own clinic and now has a clinic. I guess I'm giving away the story a bit, but she now has a clinic in Scotland, as well as, you know, business in California. But when we first met, she was just leaving working for a major medical firm. And so she knew that she was unhappy with how things were running and how she wanted to do her work. And that was the key for me when she and I met. I was she just didn't think it was possible. Like, I want to work this way. I want to work in this in this natural organic in a really invested way with my my clients my patients and I can't do it in the confines of this of the system that I'm in what was her modality what was her modality that she was she's a naturopathic doctor okay perfect yeah she's a naturopathic doctor um and so she's also a midwife and she's a medical intuitive and she like the medical intuitive piece she had in her back pocket was hiding and so i was like we sat as we do and i always start with like looking and taking a 360 degree view of the person and i'm like here are all these facets of you how would it feel if you got to include them in what you do every day right not high parts of yourself or whole parts of yourself back but really fulfill this purpose of who you are as a unique individual like to remind everybody it's like you're it's a one in 400 quadrillion chance that you exist that's a right war with 17 zeros behind it i mean this is not an accident this thing you are this person you are this way that you are and so we start there and we look at like what is that for why why do you have all these magical things and so we sat down and we looked at what she was doing and got her to the place where she allowed herself to dream about what could be possible if and then I said great let's go do it she was like wait no really I said yeah let's do it all and so I take my clients through a process to show them like everything that you really truly desire that comes from that place that known place in you it already exists for you we're just we're just driving to that journey we're driving to the destination and sometimes that means we're going to kind of come along some bumps along the way of old thoughts, old beliefs, old ideas that don't really serve you and aren't helping you get there. So we'll work through that. And of course, we worked through that piece. And she started to really build her her her clinic in California, and, and was able to really see it thriving. And, and she, I think back the original time that we started working together, she like tripled her rates in the first few months of us working together. And that allowed her and this is why it's so important to me it allowed her to continue to invest in her company and give more back to the people she was working with and then we moved from that to her being able to hire someone to work for her so she could free up her time And by the time we started doing that the other little secret piece that she was holding back in her really in her in her heart packet was I've always wanted to live and work in Scotland. And I said, that sounds fun. Let's do that. And again, we put that on the list of things we were working towards. And sure enough, much sooner than she expected. I think she was thinking like three years and we ended up doing it and about working on it together. And I want to say it was less than a year, almost like six to eight months, six months that she moved to Scotland. And then within a year of that, she had opened the, the, her wellness center in Scotland. She's one of the only naturopathic doctors in all of scotland and wow thriving and she has yet again continue to increase her rates have more ability she's spoken on stages with you know amazing people in london she's working on some cancer research she's just phenomenal and everything that has come from that has come from the chance that we always bring her back to what is your purpose why are you doing what you're doing it allows her to make choices about what's next from a place of being supported and engaged in her life and her business as as a way of being i love that instead of fear and insecurity and i'm not sure um that's an incredible story does she still have her agency in california she does she does that's amazing so it's like oh i've always wanted to live in scotland well let's just live in scotland like i i i feel i feel so strongly about that you know i've lived in many many places and i i always am sad when people feel like they're stuck where they are local you know whatever their low house that they're stuck there i'm like you can live anywhere you want to live you can wear anything live anywhere in the world i mean that you know no holds barred come on you know absolutely especially these days i mean the technology alone has made it so much more viable and and that's the beauty of it you know that that's how a part of what we did for her was to kind of create that path but now she's like oh now i'm gonna go build up more in california and it's like she's seeing how living that lifestyle and putting that as the priority it adds a different dimension to how we make choices you know how we organize our lives is is really up to how we prioritize what's most important to us you know if you're if you are someone who's looking at what do you do and how do you create something in your life you know the priorities matter and and whether or not you're choosing them intentionally or not is a big factor about what the outcome looks like you know it's like you're always making choices and sometimes you're not making them intentionally for me with the work that i do with my clients we we are very intentional about what we're creating together when I work with them. It's very important, especially for the for the healing modalities. You know, people in the world, you know, number one, feeling like they're valuable number two, charging what their value is knowing that they that they can, and people do pay for their expertise. Yeah. Okay, so you said the word organizing. So what systems do you use, Miss Leah to keep yourself organized as you grow your business, as you work your business? yeah so i mean as i grow my business i will always say to everybody even the clients that i work with you know there are i have teams we have teams we have people that are good at what they do um and and i think every you know the basics and foundations of that are like you know somebody on your finance team so that could be as little as a bookkeeper um you know as a cpa uh having people really that can take the visions that you have and help you make them possible without with their own expertise. So I definitely believe in like the standards of business organization. It's weird for most people to hear me say that because they, oh, you're an Oracle, perhaps you're a lot, you know, flighty and, you know, everything's just, you know, oracles and crystals. And I'm like, I'm a yes and girl. So yes. And I have foundations for things that I do. I'm organized in the way that I like even hold a session with someone. There's a form, there's a way we do that. And I think that the reason I have those tools, you know, I have all of these tools is so that I can relax into the structure. Right. It's like, I know what we're going to say next. You know, I have a podcast as well and I have a flow to it. Why? Because if I have a system for all the things that I do, then I can just kind of relax into it and know that this is what's going to happen next. And I don't there's not a lot of wasted energy trying to make things you know happen um right and if my day-to-day my work I think there's I have a very weird for most people time block system and it starts with me first uh the joke around town is you won't talk to me usually before 10 o'clock and it was like you don't talk to people for 10 o'clock I'm like yeah because I have a huge list of things that I do for me to be prepared for my day and my people that requires that I sit quietly, that I have time to meditate, that I eat well, that I have space to really let the powers that be speak to me and give me inspiration. And then I can be a hundred percent with my people and I know that I'm giving them my best. So that's something all those people think like you time block. I'm like, yeah. And the first time block is mine. It's mine. And then everybody else afterwards and i will be there for you 100 but not until you know usually 10 o'clock um me too me too i'm a girl i gotta have you know 9 30 is the is the stretch right perfect so yeah so those are some of the things like systems within the business itself the time blocking piece and then having teams that you know not everybody has to have every team at once but like i said there are some fundamentals i think for business that most people overlook that really do give you more time and freedom back. Well, yeah, you said, you know, bookkeeping will delegate what you hate, delegate what you hate, delegate what you don't want to do, delegate what you can't do, and delegate what's below your pay grade. You know, like, why, why would you be doing bookkeeping when you can bill out much more for your services yourself, for your expertise? Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. Okay, so if you could look back on your journey um you know isn't it so cool that actually you got sick in the bridge and it was like that you know it was like the womp in the head but if you could if you could look back and tell your 18 year old self uh give her a little piece of advice what would you tell miss leah and she was oh that's such a great question and i i'm fortunate enough to have had a moment in my life about 10 or so years ago now where I sat across someone like me and I gave her that advice because I knew I'm like oh let me tell you something at that age I already had this gift and I had a lot of the talents that I use today I didn't believe they were valuable I didn't believe that people would pay me to do what I really loved doing and what felt so easy and natural to me I didn't understand And that is why I spend so much time in the corporate world. Now, of course, today I say, all that knowledge still helps me. And that's great. There's no lost learnings. However, if I went back to her, I would say, make sure that the thing that you love so much that feels so easy to you stays in your life, that that becomes one of those priorities. Because that's the magic that's the secret that is your purpose and the rest of it is less important really and someday you'll know that but i would definitely say your purpose leaves clues and it should be followed absolutely i love that one of my favorite things that a guest has said uh it it follows right along with with what i believe you know i say your gifts and talents are what you can do standing asleep on your head and that your that your god gift so to speak or source gift and that's what you're meant to bring into the world and so you know little leah don't doubt that because that's what you got and that's what you can get paid for absolutely yeah fantastic i would say the same exact thing i give the same same advice yeah absolutely yeah it was fun the moment that i told that woman that was sitting across me she's like well i'm just not sure she's like in her 20s she's a little older and she said i'm just not sure if i could get paid for all of this and i was like i think we're sitting at a group table and i was like oh excuse me wait sorry uh i have to talk to that girl right now yes please do it don't wait uh yeah we need people to do the work we do and and whatever is so easy and joy for you joyful for you that's it that's it you know they say do what you love and the money will follow well yes i mean but you do have to have the systems in place and you do have to have some grounding and just like you said lee you have to have the teams and all that but if you spend the time to set up that that under base you can do anything you want like oh absolutely i totally agree and i think that that's that's part of it you know it's not a it's not a yes but it is a yes and Yes. And like, yes. And, and it takes, it takes stuff to get things done. And that's okay. That's okay. It takes stuff to go to work. We pretend like that's not a, that's not a challenge, but I'll tell you what, um, when everybody started working at home, they started realizing like, Oh, I, it's hard to go back to work now. And it's like, yeah, there's, there's a commitment there. there's a lot of stuff that goes into that too so it's not that you know being an entrepreneur or going out on your own isn't necessarily harder it's just different but it all takes it all takes structure it all takes things that you do have to pay attention to if you want to succeed the good news is you can create when you're on your own you can create the own structure your own structure that works for you like you we start your days at 9 30 or 10 and you know at tops with clients because we have our own stuff to do. I love creating my life how I want it to be. And that's what entrepreneurship is all about. And that's why I really wanted to have you on the show because you work with people that feel that they can't necessarily do it. I mean, for those of you who are out there who are in the middle of this feeling, the spiritual modalities, yes, there is such a path for you forward that you can do it and you can make a lot of money at it. If you charge money for it, you can make the money for it. Feel worthy. I spoke with one of my other podcast guests the other week about, you know, don't be in guilt about money. No guilt for the dollar, baby. Like, you know, you're here to do that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's pretty cool. Okay, so I know you have something for the guests that you would like to offer out to the audience. so talk to talk to people how they can get in touch with you um and all that yeah absolutely well so one of the things that i came across as i was just saying is one of the struggles is that a lot of people want to scale right they want to scale their business they want to grow their businesses and they're they don't know where they are so you can't like we're just talking about like the structures of your business have to make sense for that however there are people out there that are feeling like oh well i want to make a million dollars and i love that i love that for you i absolutely do and right and the end is are you ready yet you could be there but you might not be yet and and the frustration people get when they think they're doing all the things and it's not working and underneath it is like oh you're just not there yet like there's some systems you have to have in place first or some structures like we said um so i thought how do i help them figure that out how do i help more people figure that out so i created a program and actually it's not a program it's a survey that helps you actually answer some questions and get a really clear idea very quickly automated automatically returned to you so you can hear like oh here's the biggest bottleneck right now for you to get there and here is the next step i mean how nice it would be to just have like one thing like here i'm gonna deliver it back to you in an email and you can just focus on this one thing now it will also tell you where in the in the lane you are as far as getting to be ready to scale sometimes people are at the foundation stage some people are right at the cusp of scaling and they just need a little something extra so this will say like here's where you are it doesn't mean that you can't it only means like this is where you're starting from so you know what to do next to get there so um it's called the seven figure wellness business readiness survey and it will take them through the process um that they can utilize the answers themselves right they can do it themselves or um if they if they need help um once they get the information back and they're like okay now i know this answer what do i do they've got a link there that they can schedule a call with a strategy call with me to go over that that information and give them some additional resources and support so that's it the seven figure wellness study and and it's really easy um i think we've given you the link so you can take them there i'm guessing um or included here on the podcast um and if they are like i'm lost anywhere on any platform you can find me coach Leah Dunlap and reach out and I will happily reach back out to you and get you started wherever you need to go next. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, you're you're a valuable resource. And, you know, I will attest, you gave me some great direction and insights. So, you know, thank you, Leah, I really appreciate you and your work. It is, it's incredible for people who are doubting, especially in the healing modality that they can do what they what they want to do, because they can. Yeah, absolutely. So anything that I should have asked you? Did I did we cover everything? Well, anything else? And there's so many things, but I know, like, in relation to what we're talking about, I just like to encourage people, like, the thing that I know, for sure, is that really, truly, everyone's here on purpose. And so if you're not feeling that, if there's some part of you that feels lost or confused or frustrated right now with what you're doing. Don't stay alone in that. Find support, whether that's me or someone like Kathi, who knows, you know, how can help you with your organization. It there's so many, there are so many wonderful people out there doing this kind of work. No one should be stuck or left behind. So if you are feeling like you're not sure you find that place in you, please reach out. We're here to help. Yeah, we are here to help. Absolutely. Thank you. This has been amazing. So gang, if you're listening you love it please give us a thumbs up give us a comment share it with a friend who might really thought you know find this valuable and help them scale and help them reach their dreams that's what it's all about is sharing the love uh i am this close to a thousand subscribers on my youtube channel like so close so please subscribe to my youtube channel which is Kathi burns uh if you're listening to the podcast from youtube just subscribe please but please do it and and share this with your friends. The most important thing is to share love, give valuable resources to each other and to your friends and you'll get it right back. So thank you, Leah. I so much appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure until next week, you guys, we'll see you then. Stay healthy, stay strong, stay organized, stay energized, and we'll see you then. hey thanks for listening to this podcast i hope you enjoyed this episode and if you want to hear more feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice also if you feel so inclined i would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me have a stellar day