I am your cheerleader. I love encouraging people and reminding them of what makes them brilliant and beautiful and special. I want everyone to feel free to be their authentic selves and pursue what makes them feel like doing a happy dance in their living room on a Monday morning.

I’m also going to be the person who calls you out on your b.s. excuses. Without that person, you will remain stuck where you are. Comfort breeds conformity.

I don’t believe in excuses. I don’t believe in a fixed mindset. I don’t believe in laziness. I don’t believe in hiding. I don’t believe in too hard or too scary. I don’t believe in keeping our talents to ourselves.

I believe in growth. I believe in passion. I believe in drawing on our deepest strengths. I believe in aligning with our values. I believe in meaningful impact. I believe in giving our greatest gifts to the world. I believe in doing the work.

Let’s get this journey going … together.

Welcome!

MY STORY

I was the child that parents dream about. I was agreeable, polite, diligent, got good grades, and never got into trouble. There was only one memorable incident, actually, and the crime didn’t stick. I was in the first grade and got called to the principal’s office for not bringing in some playground equipment after recess. But, ah ha! I wasn’t the one who brought it outside. That juvenile delinquent was the guilty party. The charges against me were dropped. Clearly, if I still remember this minor skurfluffle then trouble wasn’t something I was closely acquainted with as a child.

This was a terrific way to be as a kid. No detention, no punishment for a lousy report card, no grounding for breaking the rules. I was not only figuratively but literally a cheerleader – grade school and high school and into college. The lessons I learned as a kid by getting gold stars, making other people feel comforted, and never ruffling feathers did not serve me well as I grew older.

It’s no surprise that a kid like me had skated through childhood by learning to please others.

Receiving the approval of my teachers or my parents or my friends lit me up. That’s why I tried to never get on the bad side of that equation. So when I started to think about what I wanted to study in college and what I wanted to do, I was extremely influenced by other important adults in my life.

I had always been good at and liked math, which wasn’t terribly common for girls in my day. Over the years, I became conditioned that I should probably do something with math. I was OK with that, but I was also fascinated with human behavior and the mind. I had always been deeply empathetic and felt like I saw things in people that others did not. That was something I wanted to explore. I still wasn’t sure how these two things fit together, but I thought I’d figure it out. When adults heard that I was going to study mathematics they always asked me if I was planning to go into finance. Finance sounded dreadful to me, so my typical reply was, “anything but finance”.

I was accepted into a program in college that focused on applied mathematics, but it also required a double major in a social science. I thought this was beyond cool because I could combine my passions for math and psychology. Boom, that was my double major!

When I declared psych as my dual major, the program directors said, “Weeeeelllll, yes, technically you could do psych, but most students choose economics or computer science. Those just make more sense.”

Oh, really? That makes more sense? Hmmmm … ok then. If that’s what most people do, then I’ll major in economics.

WHAT A COLOSSAL MISTAKE.

My economics classes were a painful slog throughout college. I loved my math classes, and Shakespeare, and human behavior, and my writing workshop. But those econ classes were beyond painful.

By my senior year I had no idea what to do with what I studied because, you know, “anything but finance.” I decided to double down and go to graduate school in economics. I know! Stop laughing. That’s because my Economics PhD boyfriend (soon to be husband and then soon to be ex-husband) thought that was a good idea. I turned down a bunch of pretty cool job interviews because I was told I should be a serious academic. Yes, if you say so.

I got through a master’s degree but couldn’t take any more beyond that. I learned after graduate school that the only companies that wanted to hire a 23-year-old who studied math and economics were finance companies. The serious adults around me told me that I should feel excited to get into an industry where I can make money. I should go for it. Alrighty, then. That’s what I should do? Then I’ll do it.

I did it for over 20 years, and I unhappy and unfulfilled for most of it. I wanted to change my career so many times but couldn’t figure out what else to do. My values did not align with the industry and every day I was confronted with people who deflated my energy. It didn’t scratch my itch for genuine personal interaction and service to others. I felt like I missed my calling.

I had some good times in finance too, don’t get me wrong. I met dear friends and I traveled. I lived in Illinois, Montreal, Florida, New York, and California. l learned how to make myself visible. I learned how to succeed as a woman, and I found my voice. I helped start three different companies for their owners and I realized that I absolutely loved practical problem solving and helping others reach their dreams. A spark was ignited.

I always knew there was something more that I was called to do, so finally I decided to hire a career coach to figure out how to marry my skills with my passion. That was the moment I began to trust myself instead of the opinions of others and started my own journey toward my true calling.

My path took many detours along the way, and a few wrong exits, but eventually I was able to envision the life and career that I wanted to pursue.

I knew that I wanted to share my journey with others. I wanted to help them avoid the years of pain that I suffered through. I wanted them to trust their vision and their instincts. I wanted them to accept financial gains for their calling. I wanted to help them get to that Monday morning happy dance much sooner than I did.

A Little Bit More About My Entrepreneurial Journey

Becoming an entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding but challenging undertakings in a career journey. My first venture began in 2007 when I started Miracle Mile Advisors, an L.A. based wealth management firm, with one other partner.

Founding a financial services business about a year before one of the most devastating financial crises in modern history taught me a lot of lessons!

Of course you have to plan for your business, but flexibility is SO important so you can surf the waves that appear before you. We went from a solid growth trajectory to just-try-to-stay-alive mode virtually overnight. We performed well given how bad the economic situation was in the world, but a lot of our clients were pulling out their money because they needed cash.

We made it through the difficult years, and the business is still around today even though I chose to leave it a while ago, but I’ve never forgotten the tough lessons I learned in that experience.

Since then, I’ve launched several other start-ups in the finance world, including my current role as CEO of The Macro Institute, where we focus on financial education and research. Finally, in this business I was able to leave behind the responsibilities I didn’t enjoy and am able to focus on the things that really light me up.

Now I’m also using my entrepreneurial experience to help other women who want to start their own business!

I noticed that sometime after crossing 40, many of my female friends were also feeling restless in their careers. The words I heard were burned out, bored, over it, fed up with bureaucracy, office politics, incompetent managers, lack of advancement and limits to compensation. The phrase I heard a lot was, I just want to do something that makes me happy and fulfilled.

Naturally, I started asking what my friends wanted to do. Some had solid ideas, some just some dreams, but nobody felt like they knew where to begin. It was the same story over and over.

Given my background, I originally started out in financial coaching in 2016 and since then I’ve helped people going through life, money, and career transitions. Today, I feel like I can make the most impact by helping other women around my age figure out their next act.

My current coaching work focuses on both the soft and hard skills necessary to start a business: getting rid of limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome, creating a positive growth-oriented mindset, assessing if your financially ready for entrepreneurship, visioning your future business and working backward to set goals to reach that vision, then providing guidance on how to set up and market your business.

My goal is for YOU to have the career that gives you the lifestyle and financial security you deserve and enables you to share your unique gifts with the world!

CREDENTIALS

• Certified Strategic Futuring Coach

• Certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Life Coach

• Trained in the following programs:

  • Coach Pony: Build A Real Business (led by Christie Mimms)

  • Product Launch Formula (led by Jeff Walker)

  • Coach Builder (led by Donald Miller)

  • Transformation Academy - How to Build an Online Course

• Various online course trainings from Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, Ashlyn Carter, Brittany Krystle, & Mariah Coz.

• Member of the leadership committee for the Entrepreneur chapter of the Ellevate Network

MEDIA APPEARANCES

These appearances are for my financial services company, The Macro Institute.

InvestmentNews - Video

Money Life with Chuck Jaffe - Podcast

Zephyr’s Adjusted For Risk Podcast - YouTube Video

Bloomberg Radio - Audio, segment begins around minute 39