Equinox Cofounder Lavinia Errico on Practical Woo and Mourning a Success

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expert you don't need a dictionary to understand it's time for some Money Rehab.

If you're running a small business or a side hustle, you're going to do

a lot of things. You're going to incorporate the business, you're going to give it a name, you're

probably going to give it a website or a handle on social media. But are you going to give it

an astrological birth chart?

According to Lavinia Erico, co founder of Equinox, you should.

I see a lot of influencers talking

on social media about spirituality, but far,

far fewer entrepreneurs talking about it.

So today Lavinia and I are going

to talk about where what I'm calling practical woo should come in.

And if you're on the fence about

all of this, don't worry because I can be skeptical too.

So you'll definitely hear your voice in this conversation. We talk about the early days of

scaling Equinox, what it was like for

Lavinia to be pregnant during the launch of the company, and what she thinks of business now. Lavinia is also building a new business move Joy.

So we talk about what it's like to have a second business baby after

the huge success of your first.

Here's Lavin. Lavinia, welcome to Money Rehab. Finally.

I'll go with you anywhere, darling.

Money, anywhere, any Rehab.

That's true.

When was the first time we met? You remember the story much better than I did.

We met when we were doing that event. I was hosting a panel around women empowerment and it was at the BMW, the Beverly Hills BMW.

There was some part of it that and right now, especially with Pregnancy Brain, there was a Spanx Part of the

story that I remember, you sat down and it was in the morning and you were.

It was a prep meeting or something.

No, no, you said it from the panel. You said something like, cool. I never expected to be at 8 o' clock in the morning standing here with Spanx and Louboutins in the middle of a dealership. A dealership. It's like, wow, we're going to keep it real today.

We're going to be friends. And we were. And we stayed instant. But we've done a bunch of panels since then.

Yeah, we have.

There was one time we did a panel with other female founders. And you really like meeting beforehand.

I do. I love that.

And we did dinners with the founder of Sugar Fina, which was super nice.

So great. Paige.

Paige from Paige Denim.

She was a doll.

She was awesome. And then we did another panel with some other female founders, and I was hosting that whole day and I was really stressed out. And I remember you came and I was like, lavin is here. And you saw it. Like, you felt my vibe.

You're like, I'm off. And we went into a closet.

Yeah. We're like the stop.

And we just started breathing and changing. I'm like, we got to shift the energy. We can't go on that stage with you like that. We got to shift the energy. And we went into this little closet and just started bouncing.

It was so kind of you to see me in that moment. And then we went and just did our little thing and then went on stage. And are you naturally good at managing stress in those situations? Like, how have you evolved to know when to.

First of all, for me, movement always changes my energy. And that's why I'm such a believer in movement. Right. Because it just shifts the energy. I have a tendency to have a little bit of anxiety, and I had it as a child. So over the years, I just use a lot of different things.

So breathing, dancing, like, if you're going on panels or you're anxious or stressed, what would you.

Usually, on my way there, like, I'm in my car, I put on certain music that lifts me up, and I even do the breath work a little bit when I'm driving. Even though my breath coach would say, don't do it when you're driving, but I do.

Because it almost makes you high, right?

It makes you high. So when you get that rush, you feel so good. I know when I was on, I used to put a little band, a little elastic band, and if I felt myself like in a place Where I couldn't excuse myself. I would just take the band and hit the band. And as soon as it hit, it would be like, come back. You're good.

That was a DBT thing that I learned in dialectical behavioral therapy. Like, to put the band. Or sometimes I put my nail and it shifts or it makes you feel like I'm alive. I feel.

I do this. Yeah. But now I just. Like, it's right between her thumbs, right between here. I just squeeze it and with my nail. And all of a sudden, it just brings me back. It's something to just stay calm.

You've gone through all the woo.

A lot of woo.

Woo.

All of it. And I'm so not. I'm really this Italian Jersey girl from Jersey who's so grounded, who can grit through it, grind through it, shovel it out. But I also like that woo. I enjoy some of it. Like, I do. And I'm like, hmm. Not sure I believe it all, but what I know is it feels good. So once it feels good, I'm like, okay, I might not drink all that Kool Aid over there, but I got something out of it. I feel like almost everything I do, there's always one pearl that I can walk away from. And the truth of is, that's the way I like to spend my time. I'm not the. The woman that loves to go shopping. And I like personal development. I like spiritual development. That's my happy place.

When I go to your house, which is also your happy place, there is a lot of woo. What representation. Like, there's a lot of crystals. There's a lot of. Like, you have the biggest supplement display outside of one of the vitamin stores

that I've ever seen.

There's Buddhas, and you go through a lot of it and in different colors that you gravitate toward. And like. And all the astrology and the Kabbalah. But what I think of you as this practical woo, you will call bullshit. Like, you are very. Your BS star. And I don't know if this is a Jersey thing or, like, people from Jersey, but you'll be in, like, the yoga or the breath and this and that, and you'll try all the things, but every once in a while they're like, no. And, like, the Jersey girl comes out.

Yeah, because that's who I am. Like, that's really at the root. Like I said, I don't buy into it all, but I enjoy it. I know when I'm being a tourist, I'm being a tourist in something. And I know When I'm walking my walk of spirituality and of personal development, like, I know my core values, these are my core values. And then everything else is enjoyment and pleasure and recreation and just something to do to be in community with like minded people that are also engaging in more conscious things. Right. I'd rather do that than just constantly talking about, I don't know, things that sometimes.

Superficial.

So superficial. Every place they traveled and where they ate and the ritzy bougie hotels they stayed at. That's fun. And I have that in my life too. But I can't stay in that energy for too long. It feels like I have ants crawling on my back. After a while it's like, get out of here. I need something a little deeper. Can we swim in deeper water a little bit?

I love swimming in deeper waters with you because you're really tapped into your intuition in a way I haven't seen before. It's like not a platitude or trite

when people are like, just follow your gut.

If I want to know what you think about somebody, you will for sure tell me. And you feel it because you've done so much work on yourself.

Thank you. I do think that at this stage of my life, it's become a little bit of a super power.

But it's taking you a while.

It's a girl.

Sister.

I'm in the sixth decade of life. Like, if I don't have it by now, and by the way, I still remain a student.

I always hear you doing some other adventure, like some breath workshops. Yeah, Manifestation job, some other energy thing. You've gone through a lot of it and you've also used some of it in business, like the astrology stuff and the.

But I've been doing this. I mean, to be truthful, I've been doing this since I'm very young. This isn't new. Like, I've had an interest in astrology as a kid to. I remember doing my first sweat lodge. All my friends, like a bunch of people were going to Florida for spring break and I was going up to Never Sink New York to do an Indian sweat lodge at 17 or 18 years old. And people were like, what do you do? I'm like, I don't even know. But it sounded amazing. And I think I was the only one in that tent or teepee that was under 45. And I loved it. I never felt so alive, so connected. And that was probably the beginning of knowing that's my. That's my lane. Like, I felt this feeling of that's my lane.

And you didn't.

At that point, I'm sure you didn't know how that was gonna apply to business life. You worked a corporate job first when you and your brothers started Equinox.

Yeah.

And you were doing both for the same time.

My first real job, I worked for Longcomb, and I got into kind of like, their executive program and moved up with them. And I learned so much. Like, that's a big part of why I. I know every young person wants to be in a startup. In a startup, they want to be an entrepreneur. But the training in those corporate situations are unbelievable. And the training I had first in sales. And I always say, every single person needs to know how to sell.

Every person.

If you're a doctor, some of the doctors that I see, the ones that are doing so well are the ones that are comfortable selling, where the other ones that are not comfortable, their practices aren't doing as well. So I don't care what you're doing. Everybody should be comfortable talking about what they do and asking for the sale. Right. I did that and worked with them creatively and so many levels. And then from there, the controller left. I'll never forget when she called me, she's. I didn't even know who she was. And she's like, Lavinia. She left a message on my. We had answering machines in those days.

Ah, yes.

Do you remember that? She says her name. I'm the controller in Lancome. I want to talk to you. Can we meet for breakfast? And I was like, sure. And she's like, I've been at Longcombe, now I'm leaving, and I'm going to Fred Heyman, 273. And so he had originally founded Giorgio Beverly Hills, and he was starting a new fragrance. He sold that fragrance, I think, to Avon. I was creating a new friend. She goes, and I'm tick one name with me and we never met. And I'm like. And she goes, and it's your name. I'm like, why did you take me, though? Like, why? She goes, because every six months, you're the vice president and the regional were coming in here telling us we had to give you a raise and why. We had to give you a raise, and now I want to hire you. And she knew how much I was making, and she doubled my salary.

How much was it about?

I think I was making, like, $35,000. So she said, I'm going to give you $70,000 plus bonus potential, and you'll be able to make $110,000. And it was like, that's a lot of money.

Yeah. You know, like, you're 20 something.

I was 26, I think, and then I started with that. And that was a whole other. Because, again, it was a startup, like, 273 was a startup. And you learn a lot in that place and how crazy it was, and they just throw you out there. And I didn't have a lot of the background that I really needed for that job because I was more like sales out there with the creating, doing these video makeovers and getting out, and more on the sales side of it, running the team, you know, and things like that. And so now I had to do both. You just put on your big girl boots and you do it. And that two years was probably the best training that I could have gone into to prepare me for Equinox.

When you were on another one of our network's shows, our friend Nellie's show, you were talking about this idea that you felt like you and your brothers you started Equinox with didn't make any mistakes. Why do you think that?

It's weird because when we opened up our first gym, which, by the way, wasn't an Equinox, it was like our proof of concept outside of Equinox. Like, when I look back now and I look at that, what we did, like, we did it right. It's kind of like, weird.

Girl own it.

Yes, it's weird. Everything from. Maybe the only mistake we did is that we didn't fill the pool in because there was a pool. So it was an existing gym. We did a major renovation. We got at the whole thing. The only thing we did was we kept the pool. And I think that might have been the only mistake we did. We should have just covered that pool up and got rid of it. Because that pool was such a nightmare. The women, the old women would come out and they would be like, the pool's too cold today. And it was just like, every day it was something. And I never realized that every day is a science project with a pool. Because for whatever reason, all of a sudden, you walk in and the pool's green. You're like, what do you mean? The pool screen. Like, why is the pool green? I don't know. There's maybe somebody peed in it. The pool was our biggest nightmare. But other than that, even the way we built it out and the way my brother Vito, especially the way he designed it, and, like, we put in the best floor. Like, there was a neo shock floor, which, I mean, Nobody had even put in floors like that. And how he even found that sometimes I'm like, it was just the best. Like, the equipment was amazing. Everything was just amazing.

Well, you went into it like low pressure. You didn't go into it thinking it's a billion dollar business. You're like, let's do this proof of concepts with cool floors, cool stuff. And like, why not just.

We're creating a gym that we wanted. And I think that. Well, first of all, we were all very active. I was a dancer growing up. My brothers were athletes. My parents turned our basement into a gym. I think we had one of the first universal equipments in a home. I don't even think it was designed for a home in those days. I think it was designed to be in a gym. And my father bought it. I guess we wanted it, my brothers wanted it. And that became the place we all hung out at after school. And I went to dance school. When I come back, that was like the way we hung out with each other was in the basement. Who was working out? Somebody was hitting the drums. Like I was practicing dance. Like it was just this. We were six kids.

And your twin brother.

Yeah, my twin brother.

And your other brother. So all three of you started it? Yeah. And then how long did you get pregnant with Zach?

I got pregnant with Zach. Oh, let's see. We started believe Westchester was around 89. And I got pregnant in 93 unexpectedly. Unexpectedly? Yeah.

And what was your time like? I mean, just startup mode, but on steroids.

Oh, yeah. When I got pregnant, I was a shocker. But I knew, I felt it was so right. I knew it was God. I knew it was God. And you know, look, it was a little dicey. It was like, huh, Your third partner, like pregnant? Are you kidding? Are you really going to be able to carry your weight as a pregnant woman? Like being pregnant and having a baby? Maybe you should think this through. Maybe this might not be the best time to be having a baby. And maybe it was even a little bit more forceful than that. But I don't want to think about that. So it was definitely talk about life and transition and how, what are you going to do? That's why for women, we so have to know who we are. Like, we have to know who we are. Because I look back now and if that would have been 10 years before and that would have shown up like that, I wouldn't have kept my child because I wouldn't have had the confidence to do it. And every day, I have to admit, I say, thank God, I did it. Thank God. God, I did it. Because it wasn't so hard. It was really hard. And not because of me, but because I also had a partner that did not believe that I could carry my weight as a third partner and be a mom.

Not your partner, as in like your son's dad.

No, no, no. My brothers. But I want you to understand something.

Hold onto your wallets.

Money rehab will be right back.

And now for some more money rehab.

But I want you to understand something. To have that conversation. In those days, wasn't today. It would be awful. It would be mean and horrible. But in those days, that's how they looked at women. It wasn't like he was a bad person for thinking like that. And I know that. Even though it was painful for me, so painful. But I don't. I'm not. There's no animosity about it because I understand where it was we were opening up. We already signed 895 Broadway, which was our second. The really big gym and the really big club. And so it was a lot. It was. But I don't know why, Nicole, I don't know why I was so confident. It was. God, it was. I was so confident. I got this. It's not going to be easy. I don't know if I realized how hard it was going to be, though.

How hard was it?

It was hard, number one, being pregnant. And my pregnancy was relatively easy. I did have a little hiccup in the beginning. I couldn't work out for, like, three weeks. I had a little tear in the placenta in about my 14th week.

Hold on. Like, when somebody says, I couldn't work out for three weeks, that sounds, like, delightful for me, but for you. Can you explain? Explain how significant has.

No. I worked out every single day of my life.

Because you were addicted to working out.

Yeah, I was over the top because, you know, I was a dancer. And at 12, I made this professional group, and I heard one of the girls say, too bad she has her body more like a soccer player than a dancer.

I was a dancer, too. They always say stuff like that. And it stays with me, because in

those days, it was. You had to be emaciated. Like, your arm had to look like it was coming out of the socket. You had to be so skinny. I had more of an athletic body. I remember asking my older cousin, like, what does that mean? I heard one of the girls say, I have a body like a soccer player. And she's just ignore it. She's just saying that. You're more muscular, but I knew I was muscular. Like I was 12. I wasn't this small, petite girl. But that began the beginning of my issue around my body and just trying to work it out so hard that I had a body like somebody else. So yeah, part of that was over training, overworking out. Thankfully. I was always good with my food though. Thankfully. Because I watched a lot of dancers become anorexic with the food and then they had no nutrients. And today I know women who were in the hospital paralyzed because they for years and years and years just ate lettuce and their bodies, literally. So I'm like, I always ate like I hate, I ate my protein, I ate my chicken years ago. We didn't always put fat on it and was like, I'll have a salad with no oil, I'll have chicken with no skin. So you didn't have a lot of fat, but you ate hamburger and you ate, you ate food but you were

working out like multiple times a day

in the middle of the night, twice a day before we opened Equinox and I still had it in my apartment. I had a stationary bicycle and if I would come in out from dinner and if I felt like I ate too much, I would get on that bike for an hour, an hour and a half in a rubber suit to just sweat it out. Yeah, it was part of my journey in those days. I felt like my currency was my body. I felt like my currency was my beauty. Like I'm really like, that's why I do what I do today. Because that is not our currency as women. That's not our currency, it's not our beauty, it's not being a size 2. That doesn't bring us wisdom, that doesn't bring us our knowledge, that doesn't bring us how friggin fabulous we are. Has nothing to do with the size of that.

And it sounds like the pregnancy journey helped in that growth.

It did too, for sure.

Because I helped with my growth around my body image as well. Yeah, just have to.

You have to.

And so did you slow down while you were after the placenta thing?

I never slowed down, work wise.

But you felt like you had a chip on your shoulder too.

You were like, I had to prove my worth. I had to prove that I can do this. So I was definitely grinding it out. Have to prove that I can be a mom. I can work through this pregnancy. I've got more energy than anybody and it was nonstop and thankfully I have a lot of energy. Like I just am that person that's probably why I felt like I could do it because I never get sick, I'm never homesick. I'm very lucky. I have a very strong constitution.

So when you delivered, I had a

C section right away. I had a C section and trying

to get under those abs.

Yeah, yeah. I remember my doctor. And they're pulling because they pull up. And the doctor said, the assisting physician, surgeon said, oh, my God, I've never done a C section this difficult. And my doctor, who knows me well is like, Lavinia, Lavinia, everything's fine. It's just that you have a ridiculous amount of muscle mass on your abs and we have to literally pull it all apart. Everything's fine. So the baby comes down and super healthy and everything's amazing. But the healing of that C section because of what they had to do and all the fascia and all the stuff was brutal. And I couldn't walk for the week even though I would be trying. But yeah, so I had Zach on a Monday, left the hospital on Thursday and had my first marketing meeting on Monday at 9 o'clock in the April house. Yeah. And then never stopped working. I just kept going, working, working. And I'm not proud of it. It's not something I say. It's just that's what had you until

you guys had your big exit and sold and in Boss Bitch. I think you have a story about the aftermath of that where you were forced to slow down, but you also went through some serious depression during that time. What did it feel like? A death, A breakup.

I remember walking. We sold the business in December and we had to clean out our desks and a lot of our staff didn't know we were selling. They thought we were raising money. So now we had to say our goodbyes and. Oh, God, like they were like family. So then we have Christmas and then we go on vacation. We come back, Randy goes to work, my ex. I take my son to drop off because now I'm going to be doing drop off every day. And I remember walking off of the playground, or the blacktop, I think they called it in New York. And as I'm walking out, it's like the entire. Everything just went like this honed in and it was like my ears muffled and I was. I didn't know what was happening. I kind of thought, I'm having a stroke. Am I having a heart attack? I kept walking slowly because in case I was going to fall, I wanted to be able to catch myself on the way down. I got home and Maxine was there, who was like, my son's nanny. And I said, max, I don't know. Something's wrong. She goes, what's wrong? I go, I don't know. I told her what happened. She goes, I think you should just go into bed. Maybe you're. I don't know. Everybody's always dehydrated. Maybe you're dehydrated. I call my mom, told her what happened. She goes, you know, Levin, you've had a big month. I think, just relax. You're going to be fine. And the truth of it is, I felt like that for probably three months. And the hardest part was, how do you tell people? Like, you just had this big exit. It was all over the papers. Everybody knows how much people are like, oh, my God. I felt like one person I said something to as a joke. They were like, just go to Chanel. Go on a shopping spree. That'll make you feel better. So it's just like, how do you explain that? And then I realized what I learned in my therapy was that I was going through identity paralysis. And it wasn't just identity from Equinox. It was that my whole life, my identity was all my accolades, all my successes, being a good student and being a good dancer and being making the professional group and becoming a Rockette and getting into usc. Like, my whole life was that my whole identity was also all the things on the outside of me. And now I didn't know who I was, and now I have nothing because it was one.

From one day to the next. There wasn't burnout. There wasn't staying on and helping with

transition, basically, and wanted it that way. Like, we had a couple different offers where it wouldn't have looked like that. It would have been like, you have to stay on. You have to have earnings. Stay on 5 to 10. You're like. We were like, no, we're leaving. We're walking out the door. And I went through, like, the deep, dark seat of the soul of having to look at, like, all of that stuff. The truth, where how so much was driven by ego. So much. Everything I did was like, to succeed was from my deep insecurity of deep insecurities. And I had to work through that. And until you get to the nothingness. And it takes time and it's a journey, but when you get there, it's like all of a sudden, you feel so good.

Wasn't there an astrologer or something that you were seeing that said, we're going to go through this dark period? And you went back to check your birth certificate to verify.

I did everything with astrology because I've

done it at your house.

And you're like, people don't know this, but we built our whole business on astrology. Like Equinox opened on the equinox at 8:05am because that was when the astrologer told us to open. That was the magic time for us. So Equinox had its own chart from the day that we opened. I think at that point, because when we signed the leases, we weren't doing Equinox, we weren't doing astrology at that time. But by the time we opened, so the astrology. So that was the birth. So that's how they looked at the chart of Equinox, probably. Now I would look at the chart like what I did with my new business. The chart was the day I put together the llc. So I literally had that chart done

before as a birth.

As a birth. When you're birth, the time and the date exactly. So I change shows it on the day I wanted. So with Equinox, we were very lucky that there was a very auspicious time on the day that we were opening because we did open on the autumnal equinox and that 8:05 was the magic. So Equinox had its own chart then me, Vito and Danny had our own chart. And then we had the chart of Equinox together. And we used it a lot like we signed leases on the Astrology, we opened clubs on the Astrology, we hired people doing their astrology. So we definitely did that.

Do you still keep tabs on what's going on there?

No.

You saw that they went Viral to do $40,000 a year membership for health

and longevity and stuff.

What do you think?

I think it has its place. These wellness programs right now are huge. I mean we have the one Tony Robbins is doing with the hotel person. That's going to be about $35,000 a year. All of these very high end wellness places are showing up everywhere. I have friends that are working with functional medicine doctors that are spending $165,000 a year for the membership with the doctor. And that includes some stem cells. Every day I'm hearing more and more stuff in that. It'll be interesting to see what they do for that 40,000 because I hate to say it, a lot of the really good stuff that's going on out there isn't FDA approved. I don't know if they'll do it because they're a big company. There's definitely a market for sure.

Hold onto your wallets.

Money Rehab will be right back.

And now for some more Money Rehab.

And now with Move Joy, which is your new venture. How do you think about that compared to Equinox? I've heard and I'm sure you have Elizabeth Gilbert talking about Eat, Pray, Love being her big thing. And then, you know, the books after were hard to compare to that. Do you think of them in comparison or separately?

I think of it very separately. First of all, I want you to know, like, the way I look at it is I'm not doing this for a legacy. I already have one. I have a really good legacy and it's great. I'm doing this really as it's really my mission. It's my ministry. That's how I feel about it. I was talking to somebody this morning on the phone and she takes my class all the time and she's really gone through some really hard times. And she said, you know, what you do is so different than anything I've ever done before. And it literally makes a difference every day in my day, Even if the shit hits the fan and we all know every day shit's gonna hit the fan, I can handle it so much better because my energy is better. Because sometimes, listen, I have my moments where I go, am I really gonna do this? I haven't really launched, I'm in a beta. Am I really gonna do this? And I'm like, I know that when God gives you a gift and you don't use it, that is an issue. We have these gifts. When I hear somebody who has a beautiful God given voice and they don't sing now, that doesn't mean they have to be a professional singer. But sing, that's your gift. Like, you've been born with this gift. And I've been saying this to people for years. You have a gift, you have to use it. And now I'm not going to use the same to myself. Like, I need you make your own advice. Yeah, I have to use my own advice. I've been mentoring with that orientation, that message. I can't not use it on me now. And I do have this gift, especially for women, 50 plus, to really change the way I really feel. Like I understand as a woman all we've suppressed. I really understand how every emotion, every emotion has an energy attached to it. And all of those emotions live on our physical body. And we suppress, we hold it in.

Body keeps score.

Body keeps score. There's books on it, the medicine showing it. We know It. But there's not a lot of things out there that are helping you release that. Even working out. When I look at women for all my years, when I look at the women going to the equinoxes of the world, right from the beginning, people would say to me, I'm not going to equinox till I lose 20 pounds. I want to look beautiful. And we definitely had that. But we were young when we created that. We were young. It was all about being fit and beautiful and models and. Yeah, that was our energy. We did that. We definitely did that today. We would evolve, even though we were.

I hope so.

And we were evolving along the way. Even by the end, by. We shifted, I had a little breakdown, ended up falling. I realized, wait a minute, I'm, like, under 35 years old. If I'm not, I'm fit. I'm like, if this isn't health, what's health? So that was like. We started that, and we ended up opening the wellness center. So we were already changing out of that. I still look at the classes that are out there now. I look on this Instagram and I see the people that are trying to inspire women, and they're out there in their little shorty shorts and their bra tops and their eight packs, and it's. No, that's not inspiring women. That's shaming women. Especially a woman who's going through menopause and her body is changing. Is that really going to inspire her? No, she's going through some stuff. Right. So it's like, how do we really inspire women to really love their bodies? Like, to really say, I love my body, I love my body. Now, that doesn't mean we don't want to change it a little. That doesn't mean we don't want our body stronger, healthier, leaner. Yes, we can have that. But we start with so much love for it instead of shame. So much shame, Disgust. When I watch women, I listen to them. I want to get rid of the cellulite on my legs. I want to get rid of my muffin top. I want to get rid of my back fat. I want to get rid of my arms. My arms are like, stop, stop, stop. Let's connect a little bit. Let's love your body. Look at. There are some people that can't get out of bed.

You mentioned a couple of emotions, shame and disgust. But the emotion that you resonate with your Instagram is your company is joy. And you've done so much of this work on your own. Joy. And I know that you inspired me by going into the stairwell to move my body and find like a little moment of joy that way, to shift it. And that's what you're giving to others because you did it the hard way. And you spent a lot of money at trying to figure all of that out for yourself. And you're giving it back.

That's what I feel like. I've spent years and probably I've had access to some of the best healers, doctors, innovators in this field. And I studied with them, I practiced with them. We collaborated together on things like, I learned so much. I learned so much. And then, of course, I danced professionally. So my body has moved in that way. I've done my certifications for different movement modalities myself and never to. I did teach for years, but for me, it was more for my own practice, from my own knowledge. Until we can change, we have to move to change. You want more life in your body. You want more life, want more vitality. You got to move like, you got to move. So before you do anything, we have to learn how to move. And over 75% of our country is deconditioned, overweight or obese. 75, everyone, the equinoxes, the soul cycles, the orange theories, all of it. The Tracy Andersons, all of them are fighting for the same 25%. They're all fighting for that same 25%. There's really not a lot of people that are going after, really going after the decondition market. I feel like since Richard Simmons got off the radar, he was the one. No shame. He's not asking you to take a picture of a person you admire and put it up on your mirror and look at that picture every day.

I can speak from personal experience. I've had meatballs at your house. I've had spaghetti. You live this idea of true balance and self acceptance, and it's taken you so long to do that. And you've inspired me for this last decade so much that I'm so excited for you to be able to do it in such a scale in a way that helps. Thank you others through this, Lavin. We can talk forever. And we have, and we'll continue next decade and beyond. But we end our episodes by asking all of our guests for a tip. Listeners can take straight to the bank for money, for anything. Maybe you can give the tip that you've given me around Kabbalah, because anytime I've moved over the years, I've always sent you the listings. And you do like a math Thing and you're like, oh, maybe this one, maybe not this one. Can you explain what you do?

There are certain numbers that are just not as great to live in, to reside in a home. And that would be. And I'm not even sure I can tell you every reason why for those numbers, but I did have an amazing teacher, Dr. Levery, that talked a lot about that and I understood. And that would be a 4. So you don't want to live in a house of a four.

You add all the numbers.

You just take the address.

Oh, not the zip code.

No zip code. And it's only the numbers of the where the house is.

So if it's 2020 Main Street 2020 would be a 4 because you add them together.

Yes. So you just add the 2 and 2 and that would be a 4. And yeah, that number shows a lot of chaos, a lot of craziness. Now they do say if two people lived there and they were very spiritual and real integrity, like two people that had so much integrity in their life and they communicate powerfully, you could do well there. But it takes that. Think about it. 2020 was when Covid. That happens to be a year when things like that happen. And the other two numbers are an 8 and a 9, those two numbers. But the advice that I really would love to give people, and maybe I feel this way more now because of what I personally went through, is around money. Like when you have a money manager, you have to know you've got to stay on that. You've got to be so diligent, do your homework, know those numbers and really know them because I definitely got blindsided with mine. And that is like a thing that I have now.

You got screwed by somebody.

I totally got screwed by him. I think in the beginning he was really good. I think his heart was in the right place. And then I think life and he needs to make more money and had a bigger family and wanted to do bigger things. And so I think he was doing unscrupulous things with his clients money. And I unfortunately was going through a really hard time because my husband at the time, as you know, had cancer and stage four. So I basically said to him, look, I'm not going to be able to

be in the statements, be in the weeds.

Yeah, I have to do this. But I trust you because we'd already been together about 10 years. I trust you. I felt like he was like my third brother, went to all his kids weddings. And then I find out five years later at about the same time when that Happened. He started. So I just really. Now I'm with a team, and I follow it and I look at it, and I'm aware where he would come and he would present me with this great book and show me, like, oh, even the forensic accountant, when he would go through it was like, this guy's really smart. So, of course, me, who's not a numbers person, I just thought I had. Oh, my God, he's making me so much money. I'm doing so well. And then I learned he was actually making himself more money than he was making me. So now I really want people to like, if you have a money manager, you've got to still bring somebody else with you who knows that. And you could. That can mentor you on that or look through that for you as well. I think it's really important because I'm more creative. My lane isn't. If I would have known, I would have had you, my darling. Look at this for me anytime.

Is there a question or something? Because he stole money from you.

Yeah. And you know what? We hired a lawyer. I had the lawyer. And the lawyer basically said, lavinia, what he did was unethical, but it wasn't illegal. There's a lot of gray areas of what's legal. And if you go to court, he's probably going to win because it wasn't illegal, but it was really unethical.

Obstacle.

What would.

So what you would be really clear and intentional about asking about fees or

specific questions to ask, understanding what the. In what the. And even ask him, what are you making on that? How much are you making on that channel?

Your inner Jersey girl. Yes, but I didn't just ask, like, plain questions.

Yeah, Like, I didn't even think about that stuff. Wait a minute. Every time you sell that and you do that, how much are you making? You don't win or lose. You win or learn. And I learned, and it was a bit of an expensive lesson. I'm learning and I'm learning more, and it's actually fueling me. What's part of what's fueling me to be bolder, to be bigger, to give back even more. Especially when I see women get screwed. Like, I got screwed. I don't like that. And I'm smart and I have money. And you still can get that. You just know everybody else is getting screwed. It bothers me, like, so much.

Jersey Girls coming out.

Watch out.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network.

I'm your host, Nicole Lapin.

Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoy.

Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money?

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