[Alex Harvey] ​​​​​​​From engineer to location independent business owner & coach

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success with your host Jane Slack-Smith, where we celebrate the incredible journeys of individuals who've transcended their limitations and achieved extraordinary success.

Hello, it's Jane Slack-Smith here, and welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Now today I have a very special guest with me. So Alex Harvey here is an intuitive business and success coach. Now I'm just going to read out what she said, and she said she helps women build their wet dream life and business. Like, who wouldn't want some of that, Alex? But Alex has helped hundreds of women around the world to change their money stories, multiply their bank balance, and build an income doing what they love. She offers transformational work with one-on-one coaching, online courses, group programs, retreats, In actual fact, it's not Where's Wally, it's Where's Alex half the time because she's around the country, around the world, and it's amazing just watching everything that you do. So welcome, Alex.

Thanks, Jane. Oh, I'm so excited to have this chat with you, and thank you for that beautiful introduction.

Oh, it's great. I mean, you know, when we talk about the wet dream, I'm just going to go and touch on that a little, a little later because I know you've had like numerous businesses, but it didn't all start with you living this incredible digital nomad life around the world, did it? Tell me a little bit about what was happening to you before and where did you start?

I started off my career in engineering, which often really surprises people, and I know we share that similarity in our background. I studied civil and environmental engineering at uni, and, you know, I didn't really consider business as an option. I would also say that I wasn't in touch with any sense of having a passion that I wanted to follow either. You know, it just seemed logical. You know, that was my aptitudes. It was just really logical. So I studied engineering and then I went out into my first engineering job. And the first day— no, maybe not the first day, but like the first week, within the first couple of weeks, I just thought, oh my God, I cannot do this for the rest of my life. You know, I—

Did you have the insight at that stage?

Yes. So I was working at a mine site, and I was working in the non-process infrastructure. So I wasn't like in the nitty-gritty of the mine, but it was still that environment, and it was remote. And that's where I started things out. Engineering in mining, living remotely in the desert in South Australia.

So you, you came from the country in South Australia. So was it so different being on the mine site?

That's a good question. It was, it was different. I guess probably not as much for people who hadn't come from the country. So I did come from the country. Where I lived was a lot closer to the capital city, Adelaide. Where I was living at the mine site was a 6-hour drive from Adelaide. And, and it actually had a lot more facilities than where I grew up, but I think it was a lot more remote. And also, I went to boarding school at age 13.

Oh, wow.

Mine in Adelaide. So I didn't really, you know, as a young adult live in the country. But, you know, and I guess like a mining town is a very different environment to a normal town. Like it's just actually very different. But I think that's a good thing honestly in terms of livability because this town, contrary to a lot of mining towns, was actually a very livable town. It had good facilities, like facilities my town I grew up in never had. It's interesting.

So what was that kind of sliding door moment? You've, you know, you've made a choice, you've studied engineering, like I studied engineering, I know it's not easy, you know, you committed, you didn't, you know, give up, you've gone to your first job, you're sitting out there going, where's my kombucha? What happened?

So, yeah, my first, in the first couple of weeks, you know, I think the thing that really wasn't sitting well with me was the feeling that I was like on a chain almost. Like I felt, you know, I can't go too far because I've got to be back 6:00 AM Monday morning. You know, I can't, I can't leave. I, you know, I felt very trapped in the, in the structure. My parents worked a lot, but my parents had their own farm and their own business. So I never saw them in this structure of someone else tells you when you're allowed to take holidays and how much holidays you're allowed to take.

Mm-hmm.

And that was all very confronting to me, to be honest, and not something that I wanted to stick around for. But I guess my more like sliding door moment, something that I started to do once I started work was personal development and, you know, and even spiritual development. And I started through that process to uncover my passions. And, you know, I started just doing things that I would never normally do, you know, and saying yes to things I would never say yes to. So there was a buy-swap-sell group for the town and people would post— someone posted on there that they wanted someone to photograph their kid's party. And I'm not a photographer, but I I had a DSLR and I can take decent photos.

You're an amazing photographer now, but way back then, you're just saying yes to everything, hey?

So I did it. I photographed this kid's birthday and then someone wanted an iPhone cake made for their partner's birthday, so I made this iPhone cake. I'd gotten really into raw food through this time and there was these monthly local markets and I just thought, Why don't I? Why don't I do a raw food market stall? That would be way out of my comfort zone. Like I would never do that. So why don't I just do that? So I started progressively doing all these things and and I and feeling passion, you know, for what I was doing and and the health side of the raw food. And then I I just reached a point almost two years into working there where. I felt like my soul was dying. You know, it sounds dramatic, but that's that. And I didn't even necessarily— I don't know how much I believed in the concept of a soul then, but that's what I felt.

Mm-hmm.

And I, and I just, I just had this message like, I have to leave now, otherwise, you know, there's a part of me that's just dying. And so I had my raw food market store, but I didn't want to continue making the food because that was a lot of work. And I had saved up. I had been saving up money for when I was going to quit my job anyway. Like I knew it was—

So you had planned ahead.

I knew it was the thing I wanted to do. Yeah. So I just, you know, after having this moment of just feeling like I was just sinking below the surface and I just had to get out of here, I handed in my resignation the next day. And boom, I was out of there.

So tell me, if we go back to you're in this mining town, you know, you're on this path of spiritual personal development, you've decided to bring raw food to the markets. Like, I'm just thinking of the mining towns I lived in. Like, if someone turned up with raw food, it'd be like, geez, mate, where's the meat? Like, did you, did you find people in the town that were very receptive? You know, were the people supporting you, or were you at a point where you're like, you know, I'm, I'm the sole survivor here, I've got to get Well, okay.

So I felt like the sole survivor in terms of someone doing personal development and spiritual development. And, you know, I didn't want to go to the barbecue and have drinks on the weekend. Like, that's just not what I wanted to spend my time doing. So I felt very isolated in the end in terms of my values and my interests. But the raw food thing actually did pretty well because this mining town— They intentionally wanted it to be really livable because they wanted families to go up there. And so the wives— the wives of a lot of the men working up there were actually very into health. And although raw food wasn't a thing at the time, people were receptive and they liked it. And I even had some custom orders outside of the markets. So yeah, I felt like people got around it and they liked it. Wow.

Wow, that's amazing. Well, obviously you've probably left a bit of a legacy. So we've got to the point now where you're like, that's it, I'm out of here. My soul's dying gently day by day. You know, where do you go from there? Do you just have money and you're like, I'm out? Or did you have a bit of a plan of going, you know, it's not here, it's engineering somewhere else? Or what was it looking like for you?

Yeah, so I wasn't intending to go back to engineering. I, when I first started saving up money to leave my job, I thought I would just travel because I had never taken a break between school, uni, work. But then the raw food thing was happening, and a woman that I knew from the town, she had actually an organic baby business, and she came up to me at the first raw market stall, and she invited me over to her house afterwards, and she was the one that said to me, you should be thinking about this as a business. You could make a business out of this. And that was my first sort of thought about it actually being a business. And she also put me onto some resources of people to follow online that taught about business and such things. And so I started to dive into that. So I'd had like these 9 months maybe of taking online courses about— actually photography was one, photographing my food. And having a blog, making a website, having a business, doing all these things. So I was very— I'd become very into the idea of that and very passionate about the idea of that. And what I decided with leaving, yeah, I didn't have a business going, but I just felt like I had to get out of there. And if I just follow my truth, everything's going to work out.

Yeah.

That didn't quite work out the way that I thought it would because, you know, uh, resistance, fear, self-sabotage, things like that. But—

Imposter syndrome comes up.

Yeah. I just went—

I imagine traveling as well, like having a raw food, have to make raw food business and traveling is not that great.

Well, I wasn't going to keep the raw food business. I was— I was—

you learned all the fundamentals of business.

Yeah, I learned the fundamentals of business. And so I moved. I just wanted to continue my development and my path of self-discovery. And I just had this mindset that my work, next work would evolve from that. So I actually moved to Byron Bay. My sister was living there, one of my best friends. And I wanted to do a lot more work on myself.

Byron Bay.

Yes. That's where I went. Off to— I packed up my car. My little Volkswagen Golf and drove across to Byron.

So you've got these skills that you've learned in starting a business. You've had success in it. You've had almost like a little mentor who's gone, oh, you know, you can do this. There's something in it. Was there like this belief in yourself that, you know, well, I've kind of cracked this, I could crack anything? Or did you go to Byron and go, you know, I'm tuning out for a while?

You know, I wish that I went to Byron and tuned out for a while. I think that would have really benefited me. But what I realized through the unfolding of this process was that I felt like I needed to keep going, keep working. And then once— Because it was also once I was in Byron, the idea of the business and coaching sort of picked up more and more. And I realized that I just didn't feel like enough and I needed to get to a certain level of success before I could stop, you know.

And I—

it took me a long time to realize that was what was going on. But I just— I couldn't rest. I couldn't stop. Even if I wasn't doing things that were productive, like, you know, I was studying or learning or doing just a bunch of inessential activity. But But I literally felt like I didn't have free time to catch up with people I met, go to the waterfalls for a day. Like, it's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous.

I didn't have a job.

Like, seriously.

Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Your Success Club. Your Success Club is a group of vibrant abundance seekers. If you subscribe to exitthematrix.io, we are going to drop you into the club room, which has lots of goodies, resources, and a free gift just for subscribing. Now, back to the podcast. So tell me this, you talk about like the personal challenges and, you know, how can you coach if you haven't been successful yourself? And all these conditions that we put on ourselves that you now say, you know, it helps with the third-party testimonials and the validation. But in actual fact, if you've got the skills and expertise, You've got the skills and expertise. So you've talked about the personal side. Were your parents going, send her to a private boarding school, send her to uni, and now what is she doing? Was there some judgment there as well?

Not initially. Initially, my parents were supportive, and when I spoke to it about my mom, she was very supportive, and she said, yeah, we gotta, you know, gotta do what you gotta do. Like, you know, I'm always here if anything happens and you need help. So initially she was very supportive. But what— the area of personal development that I really wanted to crack for myself when I moved to Byron was my sexuality and feeling— and I don't know if sexuality is even quite the right word, but yeah, my connection to my body and my pleasure and, you know, my sexual self, because that was feeling just very— blocked and I guess traumatized. And so that was a big thing I dove into. And I, um, I also started to then work with people around that. You know, I also studied sexological bodywork, which is somatic sexology. And it was once I got into that that I didn't have the support Um, of my mum mainly. Um, yeah.

If I was going to kind of summarize that, because I think, you know, you could put taboo subjects on, you know, intimate sexual relationship with yourself, but, you know, the reality is it sounds to me you came from a situation where you had 2 years where you completely blanketed in being in the box, turning up when the man told you to. Turn up, being in an environment that's, you know, let's be honest, remote and, and not just desert but arid in probably a lot of other things as well. And you've got to a place where you're saying, I need to appreciate myself. I've closed myself off to myself. And you've gone through this experience and this awakening only then to have a judgment from those closest to you. How did you handle that?

Yeah, well, for the first year or two, and I get, you know, it's, I guess, sort of hand in hand with sometimes going through a lot of personal development, but then also that I was doing sexual personal development, um, was I just felt— I, yeah, I felt like I just couldn't relate to any of the people previously in my life, or I didn't know how to talk to them, or I didn't know, you know, if they—

Mm-hmm.

you know, what they thought of me. It was like this very big disconnect with my family or my extended family. I don't think I saw any of my extended family and even old friends that I had. I just felt like I didn't know how to connect with, have any connection with them. And then that was the thing that I think, you know, unfolded over a couple of years, maybe even a few years of just actually getting comfortable in myself and then starting to— Yeah, I realized how a lot of that was my shit, you know, of like feeling so different and like I don't belong and I can't connect with these people. And yeah, it was just, it was just a process. And then I came out of it and, you know, now I don't feel that at all, like at all. But it was very severe in the beginning.

It's interesting, you know, having had somewhat of a similar experience, I remember when I told a close friend of mine that I was leaving mining engineering and going to become a mortgage broker. And his face dropped and he just said, I can't talk to you again. You've just let all women down. You were setting, you were setting a path for them. And this is like you become a sleazy salesperson. I can't talk to you. And he didn't talk to me for 6 months. And it really shocked me. I was just like, wow, my decision, my life. Like, where did you get to put this on me? But, you know, it takes, I guess, that kind of resilience and the will to go, am I, am I going to be true to myself? And you made that decision and created an amazing business. Can you tell me about the next step for you? So you've got this business now. You, you know, I saw you, you know, recently in safari in Africa. You're off in Europe. You're We're at Bali now. Like, how did that happen?

Well, that's a pretty long story, I would say. It's definitely got iterations and phases. So when I first left my job and moved to Byron, within about a month or two, I ended up coming across and getting into I guess you could say a community, like someone's work. Um, and they had, you know, courses on selling from your heart, you know, doing what you love, kind of all of that kind of thing. And that's what I think— that's what really started me off in coaching. And, um, and I got my first coaching client through that. And, and that was also a thing. So before even the sexuality stuff so much, my mum thought that was a cult. doing courses like that and being a part of that kind of thing. And she was very concerned that it was a cult. Um, my mom's— I have the best relationship with my mom now. She's amazing.

She—

we're just completely on the same wavelength about the work that I do and that I use. Um, but at this time, this was a difficult time. And, uh, and so for the first— I would say, yeah, for the first Yeah. For the first year, less than a year, I really— I mean, it sort of spun my wheels. I didn't really know how to get clients or get them consistently. And I also just felt very uncomfortable about selling, about just even offering something. I had a very intense resistance and fear and shame of actually putting myself out there. And so there— and I also was just, you know, I was placing my whole self-worth and validation on this. And so they reached a point where I was just completely burnt out. And so I decided to actually quit coaching or take a break from coaching for a while. And I think that might have ended up being almost a year.

Right.

Maybe a bit less. And so then, you know, then I got into— it just kept calling me, you know, and it just kept like naturally, organically unfolding. And so I— it— yeah, it just naturally happened that I'd had this whole money transformation, money journey, and I would, you know, I would be helping my sister with it. I would be helping all my friends. I'd be giving them this system that I'd created. And, you know, people finding it so valuable and then telling me that they're telling their friends the same thing and it's been so valuable It was valuable to their friends. And so I was like, okay.

You've got something good.

Yeah. I was like, okay, maybe I can try something again, but I'm going to do it differently this time. And so from there, I started to build up a coaching business again. And yeah, those, you know, the first few years, I can see how I made it really difficult for myself. And, you know, I kept just always feeling like it wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. for a long time. But yeah, eventually I guess getting better and better tools, getting a better and better handle of my own self-mastery, getting better and better structures to coach other people with. There's been a lot of ups and downs through that, but it's continued to unfold up until the point now where I have reached a point that I did for a while think I'd never get to, of being fully supported by my own business. Yeah, traveling the world. I've just been on a 4-month trip to Europe, Africa, Australia, back to Bali. I'm living in Bali. All of these wonderful things that, yeah, for a time there, I had sort of given up hope, you know, came in with full hope and ambition and then it was sort of crushed and eroded for a bit. And yeah.

Interesting though, because you've been on the journey. So now when you're coaching women in the Modern Women Academy, You've got that experience where you kind of hack it and go, you know, you don't have to do this. And I can, I can see this, what's happening for you. So you've got that insight where it can almost like allow— your experience can allow others to jump over the obstacles because you can see them coming.

Yes. And I, I absolutely think that if I had gotten everything I wanted in the beginning, yeah, I would I think I would not be a very good coach. I would be nothing on what I am now from really having the experience of like a very high level of resistance and, you know, and all the years that I put in to now be where I am and then be able to help people not fall into a lot of those pitfalls that just really like had the handbrake on for a long time.

Well, before we wrap up, I'm going to ask you a question, and that is, what's something that people don't know about you that could be quite surprising?

I'm really bad at thinking of these things, and I think I already told you something and can't remember what it is. What is something people— okay, I know, I bet this is what I put down too. Okay, it's really weird. It's a very weird thing that happens in the country. is, um, that, uh, you— there's this thing called calf handling.

Right.

And, um, so you might have seen at shows, actually, if you've ever been to a show, people walk around a ring with a calf, like a big calf, like a kind of cow calf or a cow. And there's this particular way that you get them to walk, that they follow you, that you hold their head, that you have them stand, the way that their feet stand. And I guess just because I grew up in the country on a dairy farm, uh, we were that person.

Were you in a white coat?

No, no, no, a white shirt, black pants, and, um, Williams boots. Yes. And so I did this calf handling, and I actually won a whole lot of ribbons doing it. I just threw out all the ribbons when I was just in Australia last time. I was like, oh my God, I don't even— I literally don't even care about this. Why have I got all these calf handling ribbons? Um, but yeah, Yes, I was, you know, I was at the Adelaide Show calf handling.

I, I have to say that, uh, is something I didn't expect to come out of your mouth, Alex. Well, you know, I, I love the journey that you've shared with us because— and, and thank you for being so vulnerable about it as well, because I think, you know, when we're kind of in the box of been to school, been to uni, got the job, my heart's not there, it's It's often that people sit back and go, it's only going to be another 40 years and then I can do what I really want.

Yeah.

And you made that decision. And the difficulty of doing it, especially when there's some family, friends, extended family resistance as well, and you held your truth. Like, I really have to, um, you know, acknowledge you for that because a lot of people sit back and it wears them down and you don't realize that your soul is slowly being eaten away. And so I really appreciate you sharing your story. Now tell us a little bit about how people can contact you, what you do with the Modern Woman Academy now. And, uh, cause I know I've seen your money courses, they're amazing. And I know you're doing one-on-one coaching. So how do people reach out to you and how can you help them?

Yes. So you can find me, um, on Instagram is my main social media platform and my handle is @alexh.co, um, or my website, www.themodernwoman.academy. And, uh, yeah, so you can reach me at either of those places. And I've got a really great ebook to start with for anyone that feels like they might be interested called Make Money Want You, which is about how to make money doing what you love and practical elements of that, as well as the mindset and relationship to money. Because it's a huge shift from employer to self-employed. And as you mentioned, I run a couple of courses. So I've got my Money Queen course. Which is available, you know, at any time for people to go through. And I also have an Unlocking Gold course, which is a weekend immersion to learn the foundations of, of creating the life you love and living your true nature and purpose. And then I have, as you mentioned, one-to-one coaching, and I've got a higher-level group program, which is a 6-month business mastermind for women who are creating their their passion businesses from their heart and what they love and giving them the external business structures and then also the internal personal development to be able to really implement that and live out their potential.

Well, not only having exited the matrix yourself, you're now helping others do it. Thank you so much, Alex. Look, this is a wrap, guys, and another amazing guest and an incredible episode. Before you go, I really encourage you to go and Give us a 5-star review. Review us, share it with your friends, and sign up for the newsletter at exitthematrix.io so we can keep you up to date with new and other guests so that they can share their story too on how they exited the matrix. So once again, thank you very much, Alex. It's just an absolute pleasure having you here. And, uh, to everyone, as always, thank you. Here's to your success. Thank you for listening to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success.

Make sure you subscribe to future episodes at www.exitthematrix.io. Until next time, here's to your success. Sen kumulu lafı var, sen kumulu hali var, vayla eti var!