Candid Conversation with Deana La Rosa (one of two)

Thank you.

I'm having a rough morning though.

I don't know, Dina, I don't know how you're doing it. And this will have to be part 1 of part 2.

Yeah, it's just, it's, it's insane because like the lawn mowers— I, I text my landscaper, I'm like, can we like change the time to be before 9? And you know, it's just like, it's, it's one of those things. It's life, right? You got to roll with the punches. My son was sick in the night. Yeah, my dog's spending way too much time in the backyard, so he's ended up eating stuff he shouldn't. So it's been a fun morning. But at least I get to be with you.

Oh my God, I'm looking at you and I'm sorry to be crying.

Aw, I miss you.

I miss Celebration and I miss our meetings. So, but you've come so far. So you have a book? How is your book doing? Tell me.

I wrote a book on Blended Families: A Roadmap for Success. Because, you know, when we, went through all of our transition as a blended family, moving here from New York by myself with no family and then getting divorced, it was tough. And then just kind of trying to, and building my business and blending a family, it was rough. So I had all these notes and voice messages and stuff that I kept along the way. And then so I finally decided, a friend of mine, Forbes Riley, said to me, what are you waiting for? And I was like, I don't know. I just went and wrote the book. And so it was definitely a passion project of mine. And so now from there, I kind of let the book stay stagnant for a while. And then I had a few people say to me, oh, wow, that book really helped me, and, or I wish I had that book sooner. So then I decided to like start my Blended Families Community on private Facebook group. And then I started this One Family webinar series. So I go through each kind of components of my book to just create a community of women or men, both, you know, parents, step-parents, and even adult kids to just understand the dynamics of a blended family and how to kind of make the best of it to get to that, you know, love and peaceful family, not always being in power struggles or taking things personally because it's not about us as the adults, it's about the kids, giving them a normal life, you know.

Oh my God, that's so smart to have built. Wow. Wow. That is incredible. And then you also blended your businesses too. So you have, I mean, I'm watching you grow and that just a few minutes of that, cause I know you have another call, but can you just tell us a little bit about that and then we can come back to it next time.

Yeah. So, um, you know, and we knew each other, um, you know, when you were here in Celebration, when the market had crashed, I had, um, started this, um, cause you know, we were affected, we lost everything and But we, I started these t-shirt designs 'cause I felt like even though the financial stuff was happening, we had just, you know, we had 3 girls, healthy girls, then I had my daughter Ella, and then we had my son Joey who had health problems and he's lucky to be alive. You know, he spent a lot of time in the NICU. And so I started this t-shirt design again, I kind of like started it and kind of left it kind of stagnant, right? And then my lending business kind of started blowing up again because when I met Joe, he was in real estate and he was having some issues getting like a lender that was kind of like that New York minute motivated and go, go, go person. So once my son was healthy, I got back in. And so he has his real estate side and I do the lending side. And then we've kind of built all these other businesses around real estate and lending. And so what we've just come to realize in all this, we have amazing companies, amazing people surrounding us. We are really, it's more like those are the vehicles to get to the people, which is our passion. It's like more of lifting up people, supporting people. So we kind of molded, kind of, or like, I'd say kind of blended everything like you said together so that we can use that as the vehicle to help get to people, motivate them, help them thrive instead of just surviving. And we talked about recently on our Plan Over Panic series, you know, what kind of life do you want? Do you want to be— are you happy just getting by? Do you want to be thriving or are you just in a rut and you wanna get out? So that's kind of where our coaching comes in and everything that we've been working towards. And that's why we created LaRosa Co. so we can focus on that coaching aspect. You know, so it's exciting.

I love about your coaching is that you're not, I mean, I love all coaches, but you guys really have earned the right to say you're a coach. You've been in business, you know, you're not just talking, you've walked that walk. And now you're teaching it. And I think that's what makes it so splendid. And the two of you together, the whole package is really, it's an incredibly, and it's a beautiful package too, just like physically to look at and then just spiritually too.

Thank you.

Well, I'm sorry, you know I love you.

I love you too. You know, it's amazing 'cause we, it's like I always, I tell my kids this, right? You know, you're gonna have to go through life and you're gonna have to fail your way to success. You're gonna have to make mistakes to get to how to handle things. You're gonna have to hurt people to realize how to be compassionate and empathetic. And so I kind of teach them, like, I don't like stranglehold my kids. I want them to stumble. I want them to fall. I want them to make mistakes because I really think like God has taken Joe's life, my life, and then like blended us together to say anything and everything that you could pull from your own life experience and your knowledge base, you should be sharing that with the world. So we always like, God's at the center of our life, our family, and our businesses. And so we are just kind of like taking all the downloads from him to say, we've been through this. So like, we can't, you're right. Like you can get all the certifications you want in the world, but unless you've walked the walk, you really can't talk the talk. So we just take everything we've learned and we share it authentically. You know, we talk about the mistakes versus, and the challenges versus these successes we've had because of learning, right? And I think everything is worthwhile when you learn from those mistakes. And we can share it with other people and help them. That's the biggest blessing.

Beautiful. All right, I know you have to go, so you'll do that. You're going to come back for, uh, absolutely.

You need to find more time.

Thank you. All right, have a great rest of the day.

Thank you.

I look forward to talking to you again. I have more to ask. Thank you. Oh, you're beautiful. Sorry, you're just gorgeous.