EP293: Financial Blindsides -How losing it All Can Actually Be a Blessing. Using the Enneagram to Navigate That Uncertainty.

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Welcome to the Leadership Formula Podcast where you will learn the secret sauce behind achieving massive success. I'm your host, Tracy o', Malley, multimillion dollar entrepreneur, your Enneagram expert, master performance coach, and mom to millennials. Do you want deep, meaningful relationships to wake up every day with purpose and make money doing something you love? Well, you've landed in the right place. Every week I will teach you how to get exactly what you want in life by strengthening your emotional intelligence. Using a combination of the Enneagram framework, live life coaching sessions, and real talk from yours truly, it's time to transform yourself into the ultimate leader of your life. Let's do this thing.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Leadership Formula Podcast. And we are going to be diving into some really sensitive topics the next few weeks as we are rounding out 2022. If you listen to the episode from just a few days ago, I talked about life's blindsides and how we navigate those. And. And for so many of us, we let them derail us instead of letting us prevail. And I get it. Like, I have experienced a blind side in every area of my life and I'm going to touch on those over the next week or two because I want you to know I freaking get it. This is the beautiful gift of me being the age I have. I am, because I have, you know, some more life experience than maybe you now. I'm not minimizing any blindside that you're experiencing. All the things I'm going to share with you, promise you that when it was happening, I didn't see the gift in it. I actually sometimes felt like a victim. So I'm not minimizing the pain and the hurt and the fear and the worry and the anxiety and the anger and the sadness and the grieving that goes with sometimes when life blindsides you. But the beautiful thing of my experience in life is that on the other side of it, I have seen why every single time it happened, it propelled me forward at a very rapid pace. It doesn't mean I didn't sit in some shit for a little while or it got worse before it got better. But today, and especially this, this week of the holiday season and Thanksgiving is next week, I really want you to find some thankfulness in some of the hard things. Again, not minimizing it, not minimizing any of it. It's really, really hard to see when you're in it. But my goal has always been to help light the path for you on trails that I have maybe had to blaze on my own. That is the whole beauty in making your, your pain, your shit that you've been through matter for something. And, and I was just speaking over the weekend to a beautiful group of women about that very thing. Like, I know that if you're listening right now, you've probably been through some crap and you are raising your hand saying, I want to grow, I want to grow. And unfortunately, I have never met anybody that has grown and stepped into fulfillment and owned, like, whatever lane that they're in, feeling fulfilled and fired up and authentic and zero fucks about what anybody thinks unless they've been through some stuff. But my, My goal the next few weeks is to kind of let you into a little part of my life. Some of these stories I've never shared before. Some of them are fresher than others. But today I wanted to start about financial. Because this year has absolutely been rocky financially for most of the world, with uncertainty, inflation, all sorts of crazy things going on in the world. The political environment, like, there's so much riding on what's happening in the world for our finances. You know, I. I cringe when I look at my portfolio, which is a miracle that I even have one, because 15 years ago it had. I'd lost everything. So the fact that I even have a portfolio I'm really, really grateful for. I don't love seeing the numbers go down. And it actually created a little bit of like, this is not that a little traumatic kind of response in my nervous system. It's like, this isn't that, this isn't that. And with the financial thing, like what your enneagram type is, and specifically your subtype, this is where the subtype really comes into play when it comes to blindsides. Because your instinctual response to life can drastically change how that might look for you with any of these blindsides. But I wanted to take you back, gosh, to 2000. This was 2009. Many of you were maybe youngsters or, you know, really young to, to understand.

The magnitude, but you probably now, looking back, maybe you had parents that were affected by this. I was in my, gosh, early 30s, mid-30s, when the financial crash happened in 2008. That was also coupled by a very recent divorce on top of it. So I was navigating not only a divorce, and I'm going to save that story, that blindside for a different episode. But the financial kind of blindside happened. Obviously. It started chipping away the housing market. We had been in our house. I'd had this house for 78 years at this point, was running a business with my ex husband that, you know, during the height of when we had it from 2000 to 2008, we were rocking and doing really well. And I gotta say, like, sometimes our blindsides come without any fault of our own. And sometimes they come from maybe some poor decisions or putting your head in the sand. And I kind of believe like this experience happened with a combination of all three. It was obviously the times I was putting my head in the sand. I was surviving. And there were some choices that were made that definitely didn't help the situation. So what happened was I was in. You know, I've always. I was in the car industry for a long, long time. Not just the corporate end that I've talked a lot about, but the business that I had for 10 or so was in the car industry, had a car transport company. Like I said, it was doing really, really well. When we bought it in 2000, we. We accelerated the growth of it, like tripled the growth of it within the first year. It was awesome. My husband at the time handled a lot of the operations. I handled a lot of the administration stuff. And long story short, cause I want to focus on the financial aspect of it. This allowed me to work from home when the kids were young, which was really, really great. I did also work in the restaurant industry for the first half of the ownership of that business because again, I don't want to rely on one thing ever. I really, really don't. And this experience that I'm going to share with you kind of confirms that for me and why multiple streams are really, really important. And not having all your eggs in one basket is really, really important. But it was the week between Christmas and New Year's of 2009. Now mind you, again, I'm going to save the full story for another episode on a different blind side of in a marriage. But it was ugly. It was really, really ugly. And I don't recommend working with your ex if there's been some really crazy shit that has gone on, right? But at the time, it was what we knew it was our finances. Like I was not gonna surrender it. And I know he wasn't either, but it was ugly and the fighting was pretty extreme. And you know, couple that with the temperature of the financial world at the time, it was getting more stressful. And because the fighting got so hefty and we had a lot of subcontractors and one employee and it got so the culture, the environment was so toxic that one of my closest friends was our operations manager. And without warning, between the week between Christmas and New Year's, not only did my biggest client decide to take our services in house, that was 85 to 90% of our income. Not only that, my one employee, who is one of my closest friends, decided to go with them. And it was devastating. You know, I was already feeling pretty alone, going through a messy divorce and all the things. And the kids were, gosh, they were like 9 and 10 at the time. But the betrayal. And as an Enneagram aid, betrayal and violation is my biggest fear. And it happened like twice over in this one experience during the week of Christmas and New Year's. So I had to make a decision. And I was devastated. I was like, oh, fuck. Like, seriously, I'm not going to be able to make the mortgage. I'm not, you know, had very tiny, tiny bit of savings, a lot of overhead, a lot of people relying on us. I knew that this person that had left our company was going to take probably some of the best people with him because he was so great. I mean, he really, really was great. And, you know, we've since had a beautiful reconciliation over the last, you know, gosh, 15 years or so, whatever it is now. And I understand why he left. Like, even though I felt betrayed and hurt and all the things I understood completely, like, I would not want to be in this environment. It was toxic and ugly, and he was in the middle of it and having to make excuses for shit. Like, I totally get it at the time, again, did not feel like that. So what happened was that I had to make a decision. I remember talking to my ex husband, and he was all four, like, we can do this again. And he's an enneagram 7, not the healthiest of one, and just super optimistic, almost oblivious to what was happening. And I say that with so much kindness. Cause he's. He's great. He's a great person. But you know me, the enneagram 8, the realist, the, you know, Debbie Downer, sometimes of like, this is impossible. But I had to make a decision. And I had to decide, do I rebuild this with him or do I go out on my own? And I don't know if this hadn't happened, if my ego would have let me walk away. You know, I wanted probably in some way to prove him wrong. But it also forced me into corporate America, which at the time, let me tell you, I was fucking angry. So I rang in 2010. Bitter, angry, pissed off. Like, the unhealthiest enneagram 8 version of me probably there ever was. I was commuting 44 miles each way. I had to foreclose that house. Like I said, there was no way I was going to make the mortgage. I had to let go of the jeep that I had. Financial security was rocked. And you know, when it comes to my, my subtype, you know, I toggle between one on one and self preservation. And every ounce of my self preservation instincts were on high alert. Thankfully I had such a good reputation because I kind of moved into the operations end after we got divorced because I didn't trust him completely. So I wanted to know all, all components. So I built up enough of a good reputation that even during a financial crisis I had three job offers at the time. So I started working at one of the car options out here in Arizona. And I'm so grateful for that experience. Even though I was a cancer in that office, I was the top salesperson in that office is when I started selling cars at a corporate level. And where that enneagram ate in me really. You know, because I had felt so betrayed and violated. You know, I was over expressing in domineering parts of me. I wasn't in that vulnerability or the compassion. I had 0, 0 at that time and I had 0 for myself. So although on paper I was, you know, the top salesperson and performing at a high level, I knew I was a cancer in that place. I should have been fired for sure. I was insubordinate. I didn't think the rules applied to me because I could perform. I was so miserable and so unhappy and part of my job was to entertain my 300 used car dealers that were my clientele in my book of business. And I remember my boss at the time telling me I wasn't entertaining enough and to you know, use my American Express card some more. So it accelerated my dysfunctional drinking habit to the next level. And this is what I mean by although I was very destructive and I left some wreckage in my path and I hurt my kids and I hurt some people along the way. It was the greatest blessing that I ever had. And I'll get to where when I'm growing part of my cap and you know, you know the book the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, you know we all hit the ceiling. And when it comes to money and security it is where when I'm feeling threatened in the past where I have gone to some unhealthy places verbally with people, you know, with my ex husband when this happened, I of course was not very kind to him. I Felt it was all his fault at the time. Other times in my life when people wanted to take care of me, I used, you know, financial security as a weapon. At times I was like, I will never let anyone take care of me. But this experience really helped me see that, okay, when my back's up against the wall, I can actually make things happen. I did not want to be in business with my ex husband anymore. I really, really didn't. But I didn't see another way out. This forced it. Another thing that happened with the financial blindsides. I had to be in corporate America for quite some time. And when that dysfunctional relationship with alcohol really accelerated and I couldn't be in that environment of the car industry anymore, I had to take my income again down to zero pretty rapidly because if I stayed in that, I would die. Now, mind you, at the time I was the sole provider emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially for my kids. When that business went down the tubes, the child support did too. There was none, none coming in. And I don't say that to throw anybody under the bus. That was just the reality of the situation. Was I very fucking angry about it? Yes. Did I have a lot of resentment at the time? Absolutely. Absolutely. I still don't completely understand it. But that's between God and him, right? Not dogging anybody. So you can imagine when I had to make the hard decision between my health, my life, the example I was portraying for my kids, or financial security, who was I going to bet on? And I needed to bet on me. And again, the financial insecurity, the blind side of going from income one day to none the next was very, very scary. And what kind of caused that was I had quit drinking four months earlier and had a very, very bad relapse after 111 days. And I knew that if I stayed in that environment, it was no good. And I know many of you are listening right now that you might be in a desperate situation where, like, I can't leave, you know, the household relies on me, whether it's as a single parent or part of a partnership. And I understand. I remember looking at my kids not knowing how I was going to make it happen, but I knew why. So when I checked myself into rehab, taking my income down to zero and also like, humbling myself quite a bit, I remember telling the kids, I don't know how things are going to change, but I know why they are. And when I come back, things are going to be different. Things are going to be different. And it was at that time that I think it was maybe six months sober. I was living off the last bit of savings I had. My dad had passed away a little bit before that, so I had just a tiny little bit to rely on. And that's when network marketing kind of presented itself to me. And I can tell you this, had the circumstances been any different in my life, there's no way in hell I would have done what I was about to do next. And there's something about radical honesty with yourself and letting go of resentment. And I would like to preface this in saying that that's easier said than done. And just saying I'm going to let go of resentment isn't how it's done. If you want to know how to let go of resentment, that is part of the one on one coaching program I have. When you work side by side with me, I really, really help you through what letting go looks like and healing and, you know, repairing it so you don't fucking repeat shit. But for the story sake and the length of this podcast sake, I knew I needed to let go of resentment. Had any of the circumstances been any different when network marketing kind of started knocking on my door, I don't know if I would have been open or as successful at it. Couple that with some recovery under my belt and the tool of the Enneagram and that gift of desperation definitely was in full effect at that moment. And even though on paper I was least likely to be successful at that, most of my network that I had left, I'd cleared out most of my local social network because I was that single mom that went to rehab. And clearly my environment was way stronger than any willpower I had. They're all great people. They just weren't great for me. Me and that gift of desperation when it came to that financial blind side is exactly what was the setup. And it set me up for one of the greatest comebacks I would ever have in my life at the age of 40 years old, 10 years ago. Right? All of that happened because of the blind side financially, that happened between 2009 and 2010. Every single bit of that had to happen for me to do what I did next. And for those of you that are just joining the story, what happened next was this is that single mom that went to rehab that started in network marketing on the day of her six month sobriety date, took her income from zero to a million dollars in 26 months and built an organization that is now upwards of 120,000 people deep. I don't actively work that anymore. Currently But I still gain a multiple six figure residual income based on that. That set the trajectory in a way that nothing else would have allowed that to happen. I promise you. This is where no matter how scared I was, no matter how much I tried to drink that pain away or, you know, I. I have a disordered relation. I have a prior disordered relationship with food and was tag teamed by two separate eating disorders at the time as well. That when I went into rehab, I addressed that like there was nothing that was going to really make me open my head, my mind, my heart and my soul to the possibilities of what I could actually do with my leadership. Like a financial blindside. A financial blindside will really show you what you're made of. Because I know a lot of you are in a good situation. You really are. You want something different. You do. I did too. But it was good. I was okay. There was no real uncomfortableness other than my anger and resentment. Right. I could still keep a roof over my head. But goodness is the enemy of greatness that you have inside of you to make some amazing things happen. And it was in that, that low bottom kind of feeling scared moment that I really, really recognize what Tracy was made of. And it set me up for the next 10 years of financial security, of smarter investments, of understanding that all my eggs will never all be in one basket. Not even with one company, you know, one network marketing company. I will never like. At the end of the day, I will always bet on me. I will always bet on me. I have enough receipts to prove that that's a good bet. That's a good bet. And I know that you have the receipts too. You might not feel like it, and I get it. I get it. But if you're in a situation where good is the enemy of great, I'm not saying to blow up your life. I don't recommend it. I do not. I don't recommend necessarily burning all the boats, but you're going to have to find a pain point that is uncomfortable enough for you to really do what is required for you to be in that element of greatness that I know you have in you. And this. Honestly, the starting point for me was understanding my Enneagram type. And, you know, I talk a lot about the Enneagram and my faith and my faith in myself and God and a divine universal power. Honestly, that comes first. But, you know, life happens and our instincts kind of get in the way. And understanding the Enneagram has been the greatest tool, and knowing how to use it has been the greatest tool in my life next to that 100%. This story looks really different without understanding and integrating the Enneagram. And that being said, if you aren't positive, and even if you think you're positive, I'm going to strongly encourage you to get my Enneagram blueprint. It is an assessment that I have finally attached to, that I believe in. It's 95% accurate. All the other Enneagram assessments out there are, are inaccurate 65 to 70% of the time. I promise you. I've done thousands of interviews with people and this holds true. And this one I've been using for the last two years. And even then I was like, I don't have enough case studies unless I do these interviews. And the statistics of 95% accuracy or 100%, like right on with that, with that statistic. And so if you really want to understand your Enneagram type, make sure you have it right. Because if you love the Enneagram and you're using it as a tool, having the right information is absolutely key. And you have come to the right place. To get that, you can go to traceeomally.com the work with me section. And that is where you can get your Enneagram blueprint. You will get an email with a very specific link for you to take your assessment. I will look over it to make sure there's nothing in there. I've been reading Enneagram assessments for almost a decade now, so I am very, very skilled at seeing if something doesn't maybe look right. And if you get your results and you're like, this doesn't resonate, that usually means you're right on track or you've experienced a lot of trauma and the coping mechanisms are on full, full force. But I promise you like, I got you. And then you'll get a 75 page beautiful blueprint. It's like your sole blueprint, you guys. You'll learn about your wings, your lines, your blind spots, where you thrive. You'll learn about the other eight types as well. I am so proud of this product. And once you have the right information, the things you can do with it, the possibilities are absolutely endless. And if you do need a guide, I am your girl. You can do that in a 90 minute power session with me. Or like I was saying, if you have a lot of trauma and resentment and anger or sadness or anxiety and you're not sure you've tried all the things, when the student's ready, the teacher appears and that private one on one VIP Coaching is available. I am almost at capacity and I'm not just saying that. I promise you, I'm looking at my list right now. I've got eight right now, and I usually only take eight, but I know myself, I can take two more. I can be okay with 10 private, one on one clients at a time. So there's literally two spots left. And now more than ever, as we wind out 2022, if you feel like you're about to get blindsided or you're in the middle of it, now is the time. Betting on myself in the middle of that and spending the money and the time it took to go to rehab, my life wouldn't be the same because it was in rehab. My therapist that I still see today introduced me to the Enneagram like all these different chain of events had to. And I'm here to help you make your blind side matter for something. I really, really am. All the information with ways to work with me, whether it's just getting your blueprint or getting a little guidance, Whether it's for one session or multiple months, you can go to Tracyomalley.com the work with me section. I would be honored to guide you through this part of your journey. I take what I do very, very seriously. I take using the tool of the Enneagram very seriously. I'm. I'm so ridiculously passionate about it. I never get tired of talking about it because I love it that much. Let me help you use it for. For something, something really beautiful in your life, in your personal life, your professional life, your financial life. In the coming weeks, in the coming episodes, I'll be sharing where I've had blind sides in other areas of my life. I'm going to touch on a health blind side, my own, as well as with people close to me. I'm going to touch on a marital blind side. I'm going to touch on relationship blind sides. I might have one or two more because I think as we assess where we are and where we're going at the end of 2022, we need reminders of what's possible. As always, I am so grateful that you take the time to listen into this podcast and share it with others. Come 2023, we're going to have some new, exciting things around here on the podcast. So thank you again for just being here and supporting the podcast and trusting me with your journey. I don't take that lightly. As always, I'm here to help you become the ultimate leader in your life, personally and professionally. And until next time, you guys. I just love you.

I'm so happy you enjoyed the Leadership Formula Podcast. Please help us spread the word about this show by sharing it with a friend and leaving a written Apple Podcast review. If you have any any follow up questions to this episode, you can DM me directly on Instagram at Tror Malley. You can also find additional resources on my website@tracy omalley.com I'm excited to lead you into the next level of your life.