088: Elizabeth Ralph – Building Wealth Through the Power of Spirituality & Investing

Jonathan DeYoe: Hi, welcome back. On today’s episode of the Mindful Money podcast, I’m chatting with Elizabeth Ralph. Elizabeth is a wealth strategist and intuitive investor who retired at the age of 39 to teach others how to reach financial freedom in nontraditional ways. As the founder of the Spiritual Investor and the host of the Spiritual Investor podcast, she helps entrepreneurs transform from unsure investors to effortless wealth creators. She was a financial executive. She was an energy trader. Until in 2012, she had an epiphany while feeding cheetos to a kangaroo on a beach in Australia. I’ve never heard that before, so I had to say it. She realized her purpose, saving unwanted horses, and committed to a strategy to achieve financial freedom within ten years. Since then, Elizabeth has helped countless individuals reshape their perspectives on wealth, rewrite their money narratives, and redirect their financial future through the spiritual investor framework. Elizabeth, welcome to the Mindful Money podcast.

Elizabeth Ralph: Thank you so much, Jonathan. Um, this is amazing to be here. And I got a lovely conversation with you beforehand, too. So this is win win situation already.

Jonathan DeYoe: I hope we didn’t waste all the good stuff on the pre conversation.

Elizabeth Ralph: I know. Let’s do it again.

Jonathan DeYoe: So, before we get too far into it, where do you call home? And where are you connecting from now?

Elizabeth Ralph: I kind of have two homes. Main home is California. That’s where I’ve lived most of my life. But my family, they all live in Tennessee, and so I kind of go back and forth. I’m, um, remodeling a house in Tennessee, and I now have farmland that’s a whole new asset, and I’m learning more about that so, yeah, I feel like I have the greatest life ever, because I just hop on a plane, and I’m in a whole new world. Boom.

Jonathan DeYoe: I feel like I have the greatest life ever. We can both have the greatest life ever.

Elizabeth Ralph: I don’t know. It’s pretty good.

Jonathan DeYoe: Pretty good. Did you grow up in Tennessee then?

Elizabeth Ralph: No, I lived here as a child, and then I ended up moving to California. My mom moved out there, and so I went out there, and then I went to school out there, and then I went to college out there. And then after that, it was like, okay, well, let’s go get a real job after college. Let’s stop hiking and backpacking around Europe, and let’s actually get a real job. My family, they were very grateful because they’re like, oh, my God. Well, we have a professional. You know, I like to study and learn. Right. So I moved to San Diego and got the real job at the financial firm.

Jonathan DeYoe: When you were growing up, how old were you when moved from Tennessee to California? 14. Okay, so while you’re still in Tennessee, what were you learning as a youngster about money and entrepreneurship?

Elizabeth Ralph: Uh, so much. My mother was a financial advisor, so definitely grew up with it around the dinner table. My grandfather was a big entrepreneur. He ended up with owning the largest electric cotton gin in the world for a little while, and so I watched him do that and build a big business and get investors and all that. The other side of my family, they were just kind, and the postal millionaire just saved, and just so I don’t know, I kind of had both offset ends of the spectrum, which I think created a lot of balance. I didn’t worry for money, and there was not a lot of talk of scarcity. I know I listened to your story, and I, uh, know a lot of people have that. I never worried about money, and it’s interesting because still don’t worry about money. Like, I just never have had that feeling. But I think that’s actually one of the things that, because I definitely feel like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing now. And I think that’s one of the reasons that it helps me help other people, is because I do feel like I inhabit a specific frequency with money that allows me to be more open and also be able to listen and really get in there with people, because I’m not bringing those stories in. At least that’s the story I’m telling myself.

Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, just a little devil’s advocate, and I don’t think that there’s a problem with it. At all. If you’ve never experienced, maybe I’ll ask this as a question. If you haven’t experienced financial hardship, how do you meet somebody who is going through financial hardship and advise them on it?

Elizabeth Ralph: Well, I don’t believe in. I guess, for myself. I don’t believe in financial hardship for myself, because when I started out, um, with building the wealth plan, the ten year wealth plan, I was in debt. I couldn’t get to work because I couldn’t fix my truck, because I couldn’t afford to put a new transmission in it. I struggled to find a place to rent because I had a big dog. I’m not saying that my life has not had what people would quote unquote, call financial struggle. It has. I just never have qualified it as that because I have a deep knowingness that wealth is not a linear situation. I still felt wealthy during that time, and I still was like, this is just a phase. This is something that I need to get through. And money is ones and zeros, and how I feel about money and my perspective about money is what brings me money, and that’s what I’ve always.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you said that, and it triggered a memory that money is ones and Zeros. My father, when I was young, he said, jonathan, a lot of people think of $100 in a bank account. If you add three zeros, it’s just more zeros. I remember him specifically saying, it’s just more zeros. Like, it’s not a different person, it’s just more zeros. Which, yes, that’s an impressive. I find that interesting. We both have that kind of a thing in the background. What advantage does that give you both in your own life, and then in supporting others?

Elizabeth Ralph: Well, in my mind, uh, it doesn’t create separation. And so, uh, consciousness is all one. Like, that’s what we’re moving towards. Right? And so the more you separate yourself from having the three extra zeros to having the $100, then the further it is away from you. So I call in money because I’m not separate from it. If I’m not separate from it, then I energetically can tie up with what is the emotion, the feeling of that money. So what it becomes is envision it in my mind is like it’s all just a water hose with water running through, and it’s like I’m not standing on it. Occasionally I’ll stand on it when I’m trying to, uh, up level as well, but it’s like I have an awareness of it.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you’ve worked with lots of people on this process. Do you ever run into somebody that just can’t get off the hose? And then how do you work with someone that just is standing on the hose and won’t move off the hose? And how do you work with, uh, that? Because I think that energy is out there a lot.

Elizabeth Ralph: It is out there a lot. Well, I feel like I have a pretty good filtering system with people coming into my world. Like, they’re going to go through the podcast, they’re going to go through the program, something where they’re at least open to, okay, money is energy, and I’m interested, I want to learn more about this. So it does help in that regard. But yes, I have worked with people, actually, I’ve done some experiments where I’ve just kind of like taken people off the street and said, let me work with you, because it’s great practice for me, too. And I’ve done it actually in a real time environment, which was really fun. What I find is that if people can’t get off the water hose with money, it is typically other things. It’s the emotions that are tied in with childhood relationships, all of that. Right? It’s typically like one big ball of wax. And so you just have to keep going back into it, and you have to keep going back into it. Now, if someone is willing to actually stay the game with me, or I’m just saying, just meet anyone who will take them through this process, what ends up happening is there becomes a sort of a crack, an opening, and then what will happen is they’ll see that money come in, they’ll start to feel better. If you can catch someone at that point and help them make a better decision, then what happens is the universe steps in because you’re getting that momentum. So then it becomes bigger than me. It’s almost like I step to the background, and then it’s like the m momentum. The momentum, the momentum. Then the 3d evidence is like creating itself around them to teach them.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I want to go back. You said something, it triggered me. I went and asked a bunch of questions. I have some things I wanted to get to here at the very beginning, and I want to get sort of the definition of retired, like you actually say in the intro. I said retired at 39. What does that mean? What is retired at 39? Because it looks like you’re still working.

Elizabeth Ralph: Yes.

Jonathan DeYoe: Right.

Elizabeth Ralph: And it’s so funny. I just had this, uh, conversation with my team the other day. I was like, I’m going to do a whole podcast on the words that I don’t like, and that I don’t use budget is one of them. Commitment, I don’t like that word because it’s like, so many different levels. Retirement. I don’t like that word because what is retirement anymore? Right? Nobody wants to be old and sit in a rocking chair anymore, right? Nobody.

Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t want to be old, but I do like sitting in a rocking chair.

Elizabeth Ralph: I want to be the one. This is one of the things I thought of when I was going through that. I was like, okay, when I travel, I want to be the one getting off the bus and going up the mountain, not sitting on the bus and looking at the people out the window. I had that vision, right? So my version of that is really, it boils down to, it’s my version of financial freedom. And I really am a big believer. Everybody needs to define that based on themselves. And people always ask me, how do you define that? Well, for me, it’s like I just thought of what will make me feel at ease? What will make me feel like, oh, my gosh, I can breathe and not worry about money where I am at this point, right? Which would have been the 39 because that was my goal. I was like, okay, I don’t want to be working, uh, on the trading floor at 40. It was a great job. Oh, my gosh, a great job. But this is not where I wanted to be for the rest of my life. So my definition was two things. I wanted to check two boxes. One was I wanted to cover my cost of living with just monthly cash flow. So basically that’s bills. That’s not have a mortgage, it’s not flying on private jets. That would be additional if I chose to do that, but just not the ease. So that was the first thing. And the second thing is I wanted to be done with long term retirement in terms of, okay, I know at a conservative growth rate that my retirement will be there when I’m, um, x age, right? So those are my two boxes. They’re going to differ for everyone. What? Huh? Ended up. And of course, I’m so grateful that I did that because I wouldn’t even be doing what I’m doing. And I was not going to teach people money, by the way. I was not going to do this. I retired so that I could write fiction. I love to write. And then I was at a kid’s birthday party, and a friend of mine was like, wait, can you help me with my money? And I’m like, I don’t do that. And she’s like, but you hear the typical thing. Like, well, I don’t trust anyone. I can’t talk to anyone, blah, blah. You hear that, right? And I’m like, finally, by the end of the party, I’m like, yes, I’ll help you with money. So I drove to her house. I was like, I’ll do eight sessions. And I’m sitting out front and I’m thinking to myself, okay, I know how I do money. Obviously, I know about money, but I said, if I do this, I have to do it my way. And I went in there, and, uh, she and her wife and their two kids, they sat down. I said, we’re going to start this with a meditation. And they were all on board. And from there, it was gold. And I got a letter in the mail six months later. It was thick with, like, photos. And she said, we just bought a cabin in big bear, and our children are going to grow up there having memories, and you’ve changed our life. And I was like, I mean, I get emotional thinking about it, and this was years ago. I was like, if that’s not a sign, then I don’t know what is. So I guess this is what I’m doing. So that’s why I’m doing this. But I do, uh, my business is growing, and I’m loving it, and I’m kind of in my next, uh, phase with it because this is another thing I’ll say just really quick, and I’ll just stop here. But my cost of living at 39, my cost of living is not the same as it was at 39. Right. So I just want to throw that out there. That wealth is, like, constantly changing and evolving, just like we’re constantly changing and evolving. In fact, after I left, I started competing on horses, and I was jumping and doing dressage and all that. My cost of living went way up.

Jonathan DeYoe: Of course.

Elizabeth Ralph: Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you’d spoken. So the ten year plan, you put that together when you were 29, to retire when you were 39, and that was successful.

Elizabeth Ralph: I put it together at 30, and I said, I’ll leave by 40. So I left a little bit before. So, yeah, okay.

Jonathan DeYoe: And just as we were getting into this, you had mentioned that you’re in your third phase of wealth. So can you just kind of explain the phases and what’s changed for you?

Elizabeth Ralph: Yeah. So first phase, that was that ten year second phase was really just, thankfully, I had the, uh, assets that I had. One of the big advantages for me is that I was in a position where I bought a lot of real estate in San Diego right up to the financial crisis. So I was like, snapping up houses that were like half off. Right. So that helped a lot. And also know I was a trader, so I was no stranger to the market. So I was investing quite a bit into stocks. So that helped a lot. But then what happened is the second phase was, okay, I got my basics covered. What I’m going to do now is I’m just going to not touch anything, just let the assets grow. It happened to be a great time to be doing that, right, because that was probably 2016 till probably 16 to like 19. That was a great time to be doing that. But I was spending more money at that time because I was growing the business. So I was putting money back into the business. But again, I was able to do that. But I still, again, going back to the, I always feel wealthy. Is that even when I was like, okay, God, I spent this on the business and this didn’t really turn out like I thought it was going to turn out. I never changed my mindset on it because I understand that the dollars just like the market, if the market didn’t go up and down, it wouldn’t be a free market and it wouldn’t be any good to anyone. And so I’m kind of like the same thing. So I went through that phase and then the business finally took off. And then once it took off, then it kept expanding. Expanding. Now, then there’s six of us, including myself, on my team. So it’s really been an amazing journey with this. Now, what’s interesting, though, the third phase is I’m kind of getting back to basics, to be honest. And I don’t know if this is just like something that’s just kind of going on in the world energetically right now where really, really loving. Like walking on the family land. I am traveling. I walked across Spain. I walked to the Camino in June. That was a spiritual journey. So I’m doing big things like that. But my cost of living is so low right now because I don’t have a mortgage and things like that, and I don’t really have a big lifestyle. So now that I’m sort of back into investing again, but in different assets completely, like, I’m interested in new construction now, like different things, which is really fun for me. It’s not something that I would recommend. It depends on where people are. But I’m, um, to a point now where I’ve got enough boxes ticked where I can kind of do different things, if that makes sense.

Jonathan DeYoe: Jonathan, so it sounds like you have been very successful. You’ve never felt like, I mean, you’ve tried a bunch of stuff. Some of it stuck, some of it didn’t stick, but you’ve created some success out of that. Personally, how do you take that success and then teach people? Tell us about the spiritual investor framework.

Elizabeth Ralph: I think the biggest thing about it is that I don’t go into it. Like, you have to do it this way. Here’s the rules. I think people are so sick of rules, uh, especially when it comes to finance and money, because if you can start with exactly where someone is and what is their value system, what are their goals, what’s important to them, just like I said, with me, that was my definition of financial freedom, and then figure out what they’re afraid of as well. So when people come in, it’s all about, like, let’s just put creativity to money. Let’s create ease with money. We have, like, self love and money forgiveness with money, all of that. It’s kind of like, how can you sit back in the chair and finally breathe? Because you’ve gone your entire life feeling horrible about money, feeling like you’re not good at money, like you don’t have enough. A lot of people have debt right now. They’re feeling so bad about that. But again, money’s ones and zeros, right? They kind of have to leave that behind. That’s where we really start. And then creating clarity. If you don’t know your cash in, cash out to a certain degree, you don’t have to look at it every day. But if you don’t know it, then there’s going to be this unknown. Like, we’re all afraid of the unknown, right? So then there’s helping people with that and then teaching them how to expand money. Because whatever you invest in, I teach people how to invest in multiple different things. As long as you’re turning cash into a cash generating asset and you’re happy, then great, because I would rather someone be energetically connected to what they’re investing in rather than go out there and chase like, oh, I’m going to get 2% more here. Well, you might this year, but you might not. And don’t base it on what you saw last year. So I want people to be closer to their money, because then it becomes part of their story, and when it becomes part of their story, then it becomes one, and they’re not separate from it anymore.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’m going to see if I can’t tease through to this, to a question. So it seems like we’re both and I kind of mentioned this earlier. It seems like we both have some similarities. Like we have this history with the financial industry. I’m still pretty deeply embedded in it myself. We’ve both taken a spiritual tangent with it. We both work in financial education. I’ve been to the website. I’ve read a bunch of the stuff that you’ve written. I’ve listened to some podcasts. So I feel like I’ve stayed pretty true to some very simple core messages. Save more, invest in great businesses, let compounding work. When I go in and read your pages and hear you, and, uh, we’ve already heard it here today, right. I’ve heard things like calling in money, expanding your dollars, like thinking yourself as a money conduit, the energy of money, this type of language. But then I see very practical messages come in things like invest a portion of your business income every month, a nod to dollar cost averaging growing at 10%, a nod to equities, a, ah, reference to 2.5 million being a source of 100,000. Right. That’s a nod to the 4% rule. Right? So here are the questions. What is really different about the spiritual investment program, the framework, as opposed to, say, like, you go to a financial planner and they help you connect with your goals and dreams and values, and you write a financial plan, and you put that plan to work. So what is the big difference?

Elizabeth Ralph: That’s, uh, such a great question. It’s because they can hear it. Like, when they go and sit down in front of a financial advisor or go to the typical, they can’t hear it. They cannot energetically take it in. So the people who come into the spiritual investor program, they hear it because they are connected. And, uh, it’s their language. Like, you’ve met them, where they are. I swear, if everybody could just go out there, because this is, in my opinion, the best business plan, too. If everybody could go out there and be authentically who they are and speak like they speak, then what’s going to happen is the people that you’re supposed to work with will magnetize to you, and you don’t need to worry about what anybody else is doing or charging or anything like that. I don’t have something that I never compare what I have. I’ve never looked at anyone’s prices. I’ve never looked at anything, because I don’t freaking care. Because I can tell you that I can say it in a way that they will hear it. And it’s not even about me. This information is coming through me for them. And if that changes their life. My job is totally done.

Jonathan DeYoe: So it sounds like we do the same thing, even as another advisor might do or another financial planner might do, or. The practices are very similar, but the way we speak attracts a different subset of people that needs to hear it that way.

Elizabeth Ralph: Yes, that’s exactly it. And then once that gate is open, a lot of people that come into the spiritual investor program do work with financial advisors, and if that’s what they need, I encourage that. I’m like, here’s the pros of that. Here’s the cons. I want you to understand it. Do you know what happens? They go and they ask better questions, which is great for their advisor.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yes.

Elizabeth Ralph: It’s a win win, the whole thing.

Jonathan DeYoe: Huge. Yeah. I’ve had this experience in m 25 years of financial planning practice. If somebody comes in and the first thing that need to happen is you need to debunk a bunch of myths. You need to unpack the suitcase of garbage they brought in with them. And once you unpack that suitcase, they’ll hold onto the handle really tightly, but maybe you can get it open and get some stuff pulled out of it and answer some questions and provide some guidance. And once they hear some of that and they know that, hey, we’re here to help, we can figure this out, and we can take these steps. So, I love this. In my first book, I talk, talked about these money illusions, and on your site, you talk about some myths and some other things. So just three things. What’s the myth of freedom?

Elizabeth Ralph: The myth of freedom, like, in my mind or in their mind?

Jonathan DeYoe: In your mind.

Elizabeth Ralph: The myth of freedom. Meaning, uh, how do people get it wrong or what’s the lie in it?

Jonathan DeYoe: Both.

Elizabeth Ralph: Okay. Well, I think that sometimes people feel free when they can go out and they can kind of go shopping or something like that, right? And then you have this sort of blip of freedom. It’s almost like this high. But I think that there’s a normalized amount of non freedom, which is that emotional. Ugh. Uh, that you feel that a lot of people don’t even feel anymore because it’s been. Been. It’s kind of like an emotional body that’s like Eckhart Tully talks about, these pain bodies that we have in ourselves. It’s just there, right? So I think that is the illusion. That’s the illusion of freedom right there. So I think that’s one thing. The other thing is that someone said to me the other day, I had a live workshop the other day. We do three live workshops a year where people just come in, it’s like a public. People just kind of come in, and I just workshop with them. And I always ask them, like, what are you feeling right now with money? And she said, I feel like I have no control over money, because when money comes in, I just have to send it right back out. So she feels like money is this entity that’s almost, like, outside of her kind of ruling her life. And so it doesn’t matter what amount of money comes in or what amount of money goes out. There’s not freedom, which leads to the fact that freedom is not determined by an amount of money. Because, as you know, I mean, when I was working on the trading floor, my boss, God, the cost of living for him and all his kids in private school in the three homes would choke a horse, right? So it’s like he didn’t have freedom. He was stressed, right? But he was making a ton of money, right? So I think we have that. And I think the third thing I’ll say is that I think there’s so much neediness out there right now in the world. Just especially if you look at millennials, like, needing to buy a house, needing to have something done by a certain time, needing to all of this, which is actually causing us to look outside of ourselves. And so one of the principles that I teach is how to sort of bring that energy back in. And so when you bring that energy back within you, automatically what happens is a lot of those needs go away and you can actually manage your money in a more abundant way by not needing something. To me, that’s better than being strict and being like, I have to not do this month kind of thing, because then that goes into lack. So I would say those are kind of all. That’s like three corners of freedom, I guess.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. There’s another thing I’ve seen you write about, and I’d like to hear comments on, is the risk of procrastination.

Elizabeth Ralph: Yeah. Because I feel like we can learn a lot from looking back on our life. And I encourage people look back, but look back without judgment. But if you look back on your life, for most people, the decisions that they have avoided have cost them more than the decisions that they feel like they kept themselves safe from. Like so many people say, I’m not going to invest because it’s risky. Well, okay. Anybody could have put money into the stock market three years ago, right? You don’t need to be a financial wizard to do that. You just needed to do that, right? So it’s like the cost of sitting on the sidelines and helping people realize that. Because once you really get that, you can no longer wait. And I think if you can get people to no longer wait, that is as valuable as giving them the best financial piece advice out there is just do something.

Jonathan DeYoe: Um, I run into this all the time. Do you think the fear of investing is if you had to say that, if we knew that fear of investing was one of the things that kept people from investing. And there’s probably a myriad other things that keep people from investing, but you and I know that investing is how you get your goal. It’s how you get there, right? It’s how you create the income you can’t outlive. It’s how you send the kids to college. It’s how you do what other things are in that list. There’s the fear of it. And I think that’s probably the biggest reason that people procrastinate, is they’re afraid. What are some of the other things that you run across that you’re working with somebody? I can’t do that because, you know, it’s interesting.

Elizabeth Ralph: I’m so glad you brought this up, because from what I’ve found, I actually don’t think that people have a fear of investing. I think they have a fear of making a bad decision. And if they have a fear of making a bad decision, then that’s not just showing up in money, that’s showing up everywhere. And so people don’t like to be wrong. And, uh, they’re so afraid that they’re going to be wrong that if they go out and invest and they’re wrong, I think that deep down they think, well, there goes my shot. Because they do know on some level that wealthy people get wealthier because they invest. They do know that is a way to do it. But do you know what I’m saying? It’s kind of like if I shoot towards the goal and I miss it, then it’s like, what is the rest of my life going to look like? And that’s why I think this is such an inner game. And I think that money gets a bad reputation because it’s not the money, it’s the people behind the money. And I think that if people are judging themselves in other areas, I just don’t think they’re not going to be able to step off that water hose.

Jonathan DeYoe: Right. I ask every guest to simplify things for us. Let’s pretend for a second that somebody new, maybe they come into one of your live sessions and they pull you aside afterwards that, hey, I’d like to go deeper on this. What’s the first thing that you would have them do that they could do today that would give them better outcomes, personal and financial?

Elizabeth Ralph: I think the thing that I would have them do today is I actually did a workshop on this, and it was all about once. You can kind of see what are your own habits with money right now. So everybody has their way of dealing with money. They pay the bills late, they pay the bills early, they don’t like to check the mail, something like that, right. Something silly like that. I think the first thing that I would have people do is to, again, non judgmental, just like, look at what your habits are. And then within those habits is actually hiding the block. Because what we do is we just keep cycling in those habits. And so let’s say for someone who I worked with a client the other day, and what she does is she goes, I need to go out and make rent. That was her language. And so what happens is when she goes out, she basically is like, okay, I need to bring in $1,000 today in tips or whatever, right? And so that’s how, uh, she lives her life. That’s a cycle. But what it does is it creates, there’s never going to be extra because she’s always just getting that. She’s basically universally saying, that’s enough, right? So if you can break that cycle, because what happens is she’s getting a high when she makes the $1,000 and she’s feeling like that is telling her brain, I achieved, right? So when we break that, then what happens is we break that whole relationship to, I’m doing a good job or I’ve won, I’ve lost or I’ve lose. Because that’s what we’re doing. We’re creating these cycles of win lose, but the cycles are just keeping us where we are. And then we go out and January 1 comes and we’re like, oh, I want to make a million dollars this year. Well, none of those cycles in your life are actually going to get you the million dollars. And so what you have to do is it’s kind of like when I walked the Camino across Spain in June, I broke all my cycles. And so energetically I was open again. And so I think that people have to give up the things that they’re doing now in order to allow something new in. And I would say that’s probably the fastest, most meaningful, because when people do it, I see it every time. They’re like, wow, more money came in and this happens overnight or it happened two weeks. We just did a live on Friday, and I got a message from a guy on Saturday. He’s like, already more money has shown up because I broke my cycles. Yeah, it allows new in.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve heard coaches refer to this as, I’m going to get the phrasing wrong, but in order to become, you must allow yourself to not be.

Elizabeth Ralph: Exactly. And it’s based on the spiritual principle. Exactly.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s the thing to do. What’s one thing that people wanted to have more financial success might have heard? Let’s debunk a myth. What’s something that people are told they need to do that they should just stop doing?

Elizabeth Ralph: Bury your head in the sand and pay off all your debt first. I know that goes against every financial principle in the entire world, but I see people doing it, and they’re so depressed and they’re so sad, and there’s no way they’re going to bring in more money if that’s all they do.

Jonathan DeYoe: So stop focusing on paying off the debt first.

Elizabeth Ralph: Pay the debt off. But it doesn’t have to be every single dollar. What can you energetically connect to with $50 of that? Maybe. How can you create magic with a small portion of it that then again, breaks a cycle and makes you feel good about something? Because one of the reasons that wealthy people are wealthy is because they walk into a room full of people and what are they looking for? Opportunities. Because they don’t need you to make a decision to give them something. They’re open. They’re energetically open. And so what I try and do when people come into the program is get them to that place before they become the multimillionaire. Like, you can carry that. If you can carry that into the world, into your life, it is no difference than if you’re at a restaurant and someone walks in and they’re angry, you don’t have to speak to them. You feel their energy. Are you going to do a business transaction with them? No. If you don’t like them or, you know, it’s shut down energy. So what I don’t want people doing is, even though I know that it is, like, I get the financial side behind it, I get all that. But if someone’s continuing to go out into the world and be that angry person, and, uh, I’m being extreme here, but energetically be shut down, they’re not actually bringing in more money to help with the debt. You see what I’m saying?

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I totally see what you’re saying, and it strikes me you’re speaking of it as energy and the benefits are financial, but the benefits are probably relational and better parenting. M. It’s across the board, right? I say the same thing about mindfulness. It’s the same concept. It’s who you are in the world, attracts the stuff you want or repels the stuff you want. You just have to be aware of who you are in the world. Right.

Elizabeth Ralph: That’s exactly it. So going back to that example, I think it’s really, if someone is in debt, I think you need to decide, what do you feel good about? Because if feeling good is what you’re really trying to do, then do you feel good about putting 80% of that money to the debt and 20% do something magical, but also step into the responsibility of that. Don’t take the 20% and then go spend it on something else. You know what I’m saying? There comes the responsibility with it as well.

Jonathan DeYoe: I want to loop back to something personal here before we wrap for the day, and I appreciate everything you’ve said. What’s the last thing you changed your mind about?

Elizabeth Ralph: Last thing I changed my mind about. Uh, okay, well, this is something I’ve been going through my own lessons lately. Uh, when it comes to money, as we’ve talked about here, I’m so free flow and all of this stuff, right? It’s like Kumbaya. Right? But you know what I figured out, Jonathan, and this really kind of came back to bite me recently, is that I was not applying all this free flow to relationships, actually. And so I think the biggest thing that has changed for me, especially in the last two months, is how come I’m not, uh, across the board applying the principles that I have now. So I don’t know if this answers the question correctly or not, but I would say, for me, that’s probably been, um, the biggest thing that’s changed, and I’m having a great time with it. It’s not easy either, because when you start to go into relationships, you start to go into childhood stories and all that stuff. But I think, interestingly, what’s happening is, in an indirect way, I can already kind of feel that this is going to come back in from a money perspective and is somehow going to tie into this third phase of my wealth plan, which I don’t totally have my head around yet.

Jonathan DeYoe: When you do, you have to come back on.

Elizabeth Ralph: I know.

Jonathan DeYoe: Last thing is what would constitute a perfect day for you.

Elizabeth Ralph: Perfect day, definitely. Being with my horses, walking the land. I would say being with friends, laughing with friends. The where I live now, it’s like it’s open land. It’s been in my family since the late 18 hundreds. And so I see the sun on one side and I see the sun rise on one side and set on one side. So pretty perfect. Just kind of rolling through the motions as is, really.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s, uh, beautiful. Finally tell people how they can connect with you and find more stuff about you.

Elizabeth Ralph: I think the easiest way is just go to elizabethralph.com, just first and last name. Or you can go to Elizabeth Ralph on Instagram. Usually I’m hanging out there. Know on the website we have a monthly know that’s free if people want just kind of a snapshot. And it covers a little bit of sort of like the energy of money and then also investing. And then my team, they usually throw in some strange links of just like weird stuff that I’m into, right? Like the one I’ve watched on YouTube or I’m like, no one cares about this stuff, right? Like what book I’m reading. But those are the, that they click on, right? It’s like, I bought these big pants the other day at Banana Republic and they put that in the newsletter. I was like, you guys are crazy. And it was like the number one click link or something.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, people want to know. I mean, it’s a beautiful thing. I’ve had like a newsletter for 15 years and I always include curated links and it’s people really deeply curious. Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Elizabeth Ralph: Oh, I got to get your m newsletter.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’ll sign up for yours. Cross sign. Thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. I get a little bit weird about some of the woo woo stuff. Like, I try to keep it practical, but this has, I think, been helpful and I hope it’s helpful to the listeners as well.

Elizabeth Ralph: Yeah, amazing. Thank you.