Self-Love as a Superpower: Transforming Your Business and Relationships

Alaina Schwartz, an elite performance coach, shares her journey of transforming her mindset and achieving success while working fewer hours. She emphasises the importance of inner work and changing the beliefs around hard work and sacrifice. Elena helps high achievers tap into their intuition and use it as a guidance system in their business. She also helps them clear limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging patterns. By raising their frequency and operating from a place of joy and conscious choice, her clients experience significant up-leveling in their businesses and attract higher-level clients. The conversation explores the themes of self-love, personal power, and the importance of relationships. Both Alaina Schwartz and Michelle Margaret Marques emphasise the significance of loving oneself and owning one's power. They discuss how society often discourages individuals from acknowledging their strengths and how this can hinder personal growth and relationships. They also highlight the importance of non-judgment and holding a mirror to the truth of oneself. The conversation concludes with the idea that loving oneself and radiating that love can have a positive impact on others.

Quotes:

1. "Your intuition is your superpower. It's the quiet whisper of your soul guiding you towards your highest good." - Elena Schwartz

2.  "Self-love is not a destination, it's a journey. It's about embracing all parts of yourself, the light and the shadow, with compassion and understanding." - Alaina Schwartz

3. "When you own your power, you permit others to do the same.  And that's how we create a more loving and empowered world." - Michelle Margaret Marques

Takeaways

Success doesn't have to come through hard work and sacrifice; it can be achieved by changing the mindset and beliefs around it.
Tapping into intuition and using it as a guidance system in business can lead to clarity and aligned decision-making.
Clearing limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging patterns is crucial for achieving higher levels of success.
Operating from a place of joy and conscious choice allows for conscious creation and attracting desired outcomes.
Shifting the focus from external validation to inner fulfillment leads to a more fulfilling and balanced life. Loving oneself and owning one's power is essential for personal growth and healthy relationships.
Society often discourages individuals from acknowledging their strengths, but it is important to overcome this and embrace one's power.
Non-judgment and holding a mirror to the truth of oneself can lead to personal transformation.
Loving oneself and radiating that love can have a positive impact on others and create a more loving and joyful environment.

Sound Bites

"Changing the six inches between my ears was the biggest game changer."
"The less I do, the more I'm able to create."
"Tapping into intuition on demand and using it as a GPS guidance system in business."
"It is an ego place, right?"
"There's no power play for me. It's just I am who I am and I'm here and I'm in the conversation."
"You're not here to make me happy, I'm here to make myself happy, you're icing on the cake."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction an

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Transcript

Michelle Margaret Marques (00:00.496)
Welcome again to the Bloody Hell Chelle Podcast. And of course, as usual, I am joined by an incredible guest, Elena Schwartz today. my gosh, I cannot wait for this conversation. And I know you're fed up with me saying that because I say it every single time. Elena, thank you so much for joining me today. Can you please tell my incredible listeners all about yourself?

Alaina Schwartz (00:25.25)
Yeah, first of all, I'm so delighted and honored to be here with you, Michelle. So thank you very much for inviting me. I, as she mentioned, I'm Elena Schwartz. And what I typically help people do is I help entrepreneurs, six, seven, eight figure entrepreneurs, anywhere from two to 10 X revenue while working 20 to 30 hours a week or less. And my attitude is when you make the inner work work, then the outer works.

And so I do really, I would say I'm an elite performance coach. I'm also a bestselling author and a public speaker, but really my passion and purpose is working with entrepreneurs and helping them understand that to actually have a level of success in lifestyle that we want, that we don't actually need to sacrifice anything. And if like most high achievers are like me, we've been brought up to believe that.

You know, success comes through hard work. You have to put in long, grueling hours. Nothing of value comes easy. And typically our accomplishments are wrapped up in our worthiness is wrapped up with our accomplishments. And so when we start to unravel that whole paradigm, it actually allows for a massive opening to be an ease and flow and magnetize what we want right to us.

Michelle Margaret Marques (01:45.12)
wow, can you see now? This is why I'm so excited about having this conversation. my goodness, Elena, my head is filling with lots of different questions as we speak. Well, let me ask you this question. What is the one thing that you know now that you wish that you had known at the beginning of your journey that you can share with the listeners?

Alaina Schwartz (02:10.754)
Yeah, you know, I started out as a lawyer in the music industry in New York City. So I was a lawyer for 18 years. And for the vast majority of time, I worked 60 to 80 hour weeks. And I hated being a lawyer, first of all, but it also burned me out and made me very physically ill. But like I said before, I really believed that hard work was what was going to get me to what I wanted. And so when I became an entrepreneur,

Initially, I had done a ton of different mindset work and I was in ease and flow, but then I self -sabotaged my business. And I went back to the one thing that I thought was the game changer that would actually make my revenue come back to where it was and be able to scale. And that was hard work. And I went back to 12, 16 hour days. And so if I could go back now, I would understand that actually just changing the six inches between my ears is really, I'm not saying I didn't have to do other things or continue to take action.

But changing the six inches between my ears was the biggest game changer because when I started to do the work that I teach now, Michelle, in my business, which was almost four years ago, I literally seven times my revenue in 13 months without changing, really outchanging anything in my business other than this.

Michelle Margaret Marques (03:23.856)
Wow, my goodness me. I find it incredible. I mean, I work with clients myself and I help them create the life that they want as well. I do identity shift coaching along with investment and finance and private equity, all those other things. People are like, how does that all go together, Michelle? But it really, really does because it brings a whole fresh view to the finance world and the way that I work with projects, right?

Alaina Schwartz (03:27.042)
Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (03:40.386)
So awesome.

Michelle Margaret Marques (03:53.392)
So again, from that perspective, what I'm hearing from you is, is that the way that you've changed your mindset and the way that you've really gone within has then increased everything else in your world, right?

Alaina Schwartz (04:08.706)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was literally just before we talked on the phone with a client, he's a wealth manager. So this will make sense in terms of your world. And when he came to me, he was probably at like 15K a month or something like that, but he was working about 55, 60 hours. He's now down to if 30, if he's at even 30 hours in his third month.

He booked revenue that was the equivalent of his last two years combined. In his fourth and fifth month, he went from 25K months to actually 100K months. And the issue he was having this morning, I'll call it quality problems, was like, I have so much time, I don't know what to do with it. And I feel like the more I sit around and be, the more money I make and just watch come in, but it feels like I should be doing more. And it's like, yeah, I call those first world quality problems.

So, but that's actually what starts to happen just from shifting our mindset. And like most of my clients, he was a do, do, do, or like constantly in do mode, constantly thinking how to do more to create more. And now he realizes actually the less I do, the more I'm able to create because we utilize our energy in a different way. And when we have our energy and frequency working with us rather than against us.

Michelle Margaret Marques (05:02.864)
Yup.

Alaina Schwartz (05:28.002)
we're able to see vast your levels of opportunity and possibility and actually be able to capitalize on them.

Michelle Margaret Marques (05:37.008)
Yeah, it's so true. You know, I often talk to my clients about my premise for life. My whole ethos is building my business around my life and not my life around my business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I probably work less than 30 hours a week. I'm not bragging. It's not bragging if you've done it. And I'm a big...

Alaina Schwartz (05:48.514)
I love that.

Alaina Schwartz (05:59.106)
Yeah, I work about 25 hours a week too.

Michelle Margaret Marques (06:02.864)
Yeah, yeah, I'm a big believer of that. You know, my previous life, I owned a day spa and I was working seven days a week. And I got to the point, just like you, burnout, I got to the point where I didn't even know if it was a weekday or a weekend. And it really didn't matter anyway, right? Because every day was a work day. And when I left that all behind, five, five and a half years ago now,

Alaina Schwartz (06:12.194)
Right.

Michelle Margaret Marques (06:30.064)
and started my practice that I have now, my coaching consulting practice, I've made a very clear decision at that point that I was going to work three days a week and that was it. Yeah. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Michelle is not available.

Alaina Schwartz (06:42.466)
Love that. Love that.

Alaina Schwartz (06:50.307)
Yeah, for me it's Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But I mean, I like to take CEO morning so I don't roll in till like 11 or 12. And somebody recently asked me, so then they figured, that means you must work really late. And I'm like, no, I'm typically done by four or five. If that.

Michelle Margaret Marques (06:55.792)
Yeah.

Michelle Margaret Marques (07:05.328)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it. I mean, I'm also a single mom. So just like you, like I love that whole CEO mornings, I'm going to implement that. But mine are the CEO afternoons. So I like to get up. Exactly. The other way around, I like to get up, start early. Before that, she needs to get ready for school and things like that. She schools from home. So then I will organize her and her lessons, go back to doing my calls.

Alaina Schwartz (07:15.426)
Yeah. Right, because you take time off to be with your kid, right?

Michelle Margaret Marques (07:34.544)
And then by usually two, three o 'clock in the afternoon, I'm done because then it's time for her. You know, she has our music lessons, whatever else is going on in her world. Dinner, walk, we walk every evening. That's our time to connect, share our days. And that's very, very important to me. You know. Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (07:38.114)
I love that, yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (07:53.41)
Yeah, I have to say it was a wake up call for me because, you know, as I said in the beginning, I created over six figures in my first year of coaching and then I proceeded to self -sabotage. And when I went back to working 12, 16 hour days, I will never forget this one day, Michelle, where I was hanging out on my couch with my laptop, of course, working and my son, and I was a single mom too. I mean, I still am, but he's older now.

But my son, who was nine at the time, had his head on my shoulders and looked up at me with these giant blue eyes and said, mom, you're working all the time. And I just went, I built this lifestyle business so I could spend time with my son as a single mom. But there I was back doing the same old thing that I knew how to do, that was gonna make a difference. And that was really the awakening for me of I've gotta figure this time thing out. I cannot keep doing what I'm doing.

Michelle Margaret Marques (08:48.176)
Yeah, the awakening for me was I have three older sons. So they're all grown up, live in their lives. Actually, my eldest son's just we've just found out they're having a baby. So I'm very excited about that. Thank you. Sharing all the secrets now. And one of the things that might particularly my eldest son, just like your son said to you, he said, Mum, you worked all the time when we were growing up. You were just constantly working all the time.

Alaina Schwartz (08:49.762)
Hmm.

Alaina Schwartz (08:59.69)
Congratulations.

Michelle Margaret Marques (09:15.344)
And that was the wake up call for me because my son's my eldest son was 21 when my daughter was born. She's almost 13 now. And so for me, after she was born, it was like, OK, I've got to do this differently now. You know, I'm very close with my sons, but the relationship I have with my daughter. my gosh, doesn't even compare. Right. The bond is so deep. And that for me, when I'm working with my clients, particularly clients that are parents.

Alaina Schwartz (09:30.626)
Yeah.

Michelle Margaret Marques (09:44.72)
That's one of the driving lessons for me, right? When I work with people. What would you say are the things that you recognize with your clients and the things that you know your driving force behind your teaching is?

Alaina Schwartz (10:00.546)
Yeah, well, those are kind of two separate things. Like all my clients are really high achievers. They can also be called like type A personalities, right? So they tend to have, overthink a lot, be kind of perfectionists or reformed perfectionists constantly being doing like being sitting and being is actually really challenging. They're usually always in motion, right? So that's what I see a lot of times. And the other thing that I see,

is that they tend to have really, really big goals and they measure themselves against their ideals. So they are always falling short. They never feel like they're quite where they want to be. And that actually messes with their head and causes them to work even harder because they see, these are the goals I have. As soon as they, if they ever reach a goal, because sometimes they don't and they get stuck at income ceilings, but if they ever reach a goal, then it's like, it's like 30 seconds of celebration and then onto the next goal.

And it's like a constant moving horizon. It's a constant moving target that they're measuring themselves against and always falling short, like never being quite good enough. So that's the sort of MO of a lot of my clients. And what I teach my clients to do, well, you're a high achiever. That makes sense, right? It's the MO of a high achiever. And so,

Michelle Margaret Marques (11:12.592)
Sounds like me.

Alaina Schwartz (11:21.826)
What I typically help my clients do is like, have you ever had like a 3 a genius or aha moment or gotten a download on the shower on a walk? Right, that's our intuition coming through. And almost every, like I've yet to have somebody say they've never had that happen. The key is actually listening to it, right? So you get the guidance and do you actually listen to it or not? And what I teach my clients to do is tap into their intuition on demand and use it as a GPS guidance system in their business.

Michelle Margaret Marques (11:39.888)
Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (11:50.018)
So they're always knowing what to do. They no longer have to second guess. They no longer have to question, is it the right decision to make? You always know actually what's aligned for you and what's aligned for your business. And you can also use that same energy to go into your subconscious mind and clear the blocks, limiting beliefs and self -sabotaging patterns. Now, excuse me, I'm a certified DNA healer. And what that means is that energetically, I believe that DNA is encoded vibration.

But it encodes patterns, not only our patterns, but also intergenerational patterns. And particularly as it relates to my clients and the work I do, intergenerational patterns around success, money, and hard work. And so I can actually go in and remove those intergenerational patterns. And then I teach my clients how to do a lot of this work for themselves so that they stay in flow, a flow state where synchronicity is just a bound.

where they become really magnetic for their highest level clients. Because almost every single client I work with up levels their pricing and up levels the kinds of clients that they actually work with, like significantly up levels. And so it's because they're operating at a different frequency. And so I'll use a very quick analogy. Frequency doesn't operate on a scale of 1 to 10, but let's assume for a second it did.

and all liken it to a 10 story building. Now, when you walk into the ground's floor and you look out the window, you see a certain level of possibility and opportunity. You have a certain level of awareness. And when you take the elevator to the 10th floor and you look out, there's vaster levels of opportunity and awareness. It was there all along, you just couldn't see the possibility there, right? And so as you raise your level of awareness and raise your frequency, all of a sudden you start to see like,

One of my favorite things that my clients say is that opportunity came out of nowhere, right? It's like it came out of the blue and it's like, no, it was there. You just couldn't see it based on your level of awareness before. Now that you have a different level of awareness, you see all of these income producing opportunities and become magnetic for all of these amazing clients.

Michelle Margaret Marques (13:59.152)
Yeah, I love that. And I love that analogy. It came out of nowhere. I do. I love that when people say to me, this opportunity came out of nowhere. Yeah, it was always there. Yeah, you just had to see it, right? And then of course, the other thing from seeing it is taking it. Having the courage. Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (14:04.582)
Thank you.

Alaina Schwartz (14:11.394)
Exactly, exactly.

Alaina Schwartz (14:19.842)
Yes, yes, yes. Right. Having the courage to take it. Well, I mean, for viewers who are listening only, this may be a harder, but let's assume you have a circle and that circle is your comfort zone. So the number one goal of your subconscious mind is to keep you safe and alive. And so because of that, it wants you to keep repeating patterns over and over again, like on a hamster wheel, you just keep repeating it. And when people step out of their comfort zone, what happens is they're stepping into the unknown.

We haven't done it before, because if we had done it before, we'd have it already. So we haven't done it before. And so then the subconscious mind freaks out and goes, I don't know if Michelle is going to be dead or not, so I've got to create something, some form of self -sabotage that will move her back, right back into the comfort zone so I know that she's safe.

and the self -sabotage patterns will be made, like we'll believe, no, this thing is actually really real. I need to take my focus off for a second and focus on this instead. It feels like it's really real and we don't realize we're actually creating it in a way to keep us safe. It's a bizarre thing to go, I'm creating chaos in my life to keep me safe. But it's because our subconscious mind knows how to deal with that chaos.

It's dealt with it before it knows you've survived it. It's okay dealing with it It doesn't know that you've done the thing you're trying to do. That's your new your new goal

Michelle Margaret Marques (15:41.2)
Yeah, yeah, takes you back to the illusion of safety.

Alaina Schwartz (15:45.41)
Yes, exactly. I love that, the illusion of safety. It is an illusion for sure.

Michelle Margaret Marques (15:50.928)
That is an illusion, isn't it? It's like, it's that analogy, you know, we're walking along the cliff edge and we just continue walking along the cliff edge and we have no idea. We're frightened to take one more step closer to see what's over the edge, but we have no idea that when we do that, there's actually firm, solid ground right there and everything is incredible. Yeah, that's the way I like to look at it. I can ask, I could speak to you forever, Elena.

Alaina Schwartz (16:10.818)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Michelle Margaret Marques (16:20.528)
I say that every single time because again, I love these conversations. my goodness, what can I ask you next? I've got a thousand questions running through my mind right now. Let me ask you this question. I usually ask it near the end, but I'm going to ask it now. What was the bloody hell shell, jaw dropping moment that challenged everything that you've ever thought in your life, but really ultimately has brought you to where you are now?

Alaina Schwartz (16:23.11)
I'm sorry.

Alaina Schwartz (16:51.362)
Yeah, you know, that's a really great question. It doesn't feel like it was a particular moment. It feels like it was a series of moments. So I was a lawyer in the music industry, highly successful. Like my career culminated with me being the executive vice president of the largest independent music company in the world at the time. And I literally walked away from it because I just like, I said, I just can't do this anymore. Like I'm...

It's never been my passion. It was my parents' agenda for me. I finally was able to go, okay. I mean, I knew it for many years, but I didn't have the courage to walk away because I didn't know what was next. And so I was sort of being held by golden handcuffs and it got to the place where I couldn't, I really couldn't stand it anymore. And I just walked away and I went through a really dark night of the soul. And I watched all the structures of my life basically fall apart and burn out.

I went from having a very sweet nest egg, like serious amounts of investments to being in debt. My marriage started to hit the rocks. I started to have difficulty with my son. We moved out of New York City to upstate New York. So I moved into a community where I knew no one, like just my whole life just kind of fell apart. And it was in the process of rebuilding that life. Like I remember I started doing this work. It was work that I used to teach earlier on in my coaching.

called the inner child re -parenting work. And I started working with an inner child re -parenting coach and I just had so many -has and I was having marital issues. And she said to me, I really would like you to commit to not leaving your marriage until you've worked through it and you're no longer triggered by your, my now ex and your marriage, because if you don't work through it now, then they'll just be the next guy that you have to work through it with. So work through it now while you've got the opportunity.

And it took me five years based on the state of mind I was in at the time. I was massively sleep deprived. I had like so much going on. I had so much anxiety that I'd never experienced in my life. And then all of a sudden there came this point where I was like a clear channel. There was just like joy inside of me. And I will never forget, Michelle, I was sitting, I hadn't actually had a real conversation with my ex in a while at this point. And...

Alaina Schwartz (19:06.498)
He was going off on me for something that happened three years ago, a year and a half ago and three months ago. And I was just in a state of total joy. I was just like, wow, he's still stuck in that story. I'm so not in that story anymore. And I thought, it's going to allow for our relationship to change in a really positive way. And then it got old really quickly and two months later I walked out of my marriage. But the point is, is like that moment of going like,

No matter what's going on around me, I can be in a space of total joy. Like that doesn't have a hold on me anymore. All those triggers that used to bother me don't have a hold on me anymore. Now I'm at choice, right? Because now I'm consciously creating. I'm no longer creating by default, by creating by the subconscious patterning by default. And that was for me, one of the biggest shifts that allowed me to get on the path. And that's actually when I started coaching.

That's exactly the time I started coaching. So it allowed me to get on this journey that I'm on now that has been so life -giving, so blessed.

Michelle Margaret Marques (20:11.952)
Yeah, and it really is. I love how you put that conscious choice and that moment. I was thinking of a particular moment. Funnily enough with my ex -husband, where I reached that exact point where you're just like same similar thing. He was going, we'd already broken up at that point, but he was going on. We had a very, very messy divorce. But and I just was like, yeah, that's fine.

You know, and it's I love those moments where you come through those difficult times and you really reach that point where you're actually really just happy in yourself, right? And I think that's the best way to describe it, where you just really feel comfortable in yourself and there's no power play. There is no trigger. There's no outside.

Alaina Schwartz (20:55.17)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Margaret Marques (21:09.008)
influence, it becomes a very, very inner experience, right?

Alaina Schwartz (21:13.186)
Very inner experience. Yeah, because you're not operating from a space of ego anymore, right? You're just operating from a space of more of the truth of who you are without like taking life personally, taking what anyone else does personally. That is like, you know, it's one of the things I teach my clients is how not to take stuff personally, nothing. No matter what, you know, comes up in life, no matter what anybody else says or does, it's not about you.

Michelle Margaret Marques (21:17.968)
Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (21:39.65)
And when we actually learn that it's never really about us, it's about the person that's doing it or whatever else, or that it's happening for us, not to us. We're not victims to life, right? It's happening for our own growth and redirection to something better. Then it's so empowering. Like it really allows us to take charge of conscious creation. And that's really what I want my clients to do is like we create, as I said, we create by default all the time when we can consciously create what we want because...

We create everything in our lives, everything except what's created by the collective, which we're part of. We create everything. And so that means we're creating all the things we don't want in our life too, but we have the ability and the choice to create something different instead. And that's where the power is.

Michelle Margaret Marques (22:26.)
Yeah, it's so true. And I love that point that you made, operate from the truth of who we are. Because that for me is really the most joyful, easeful, graceful place to be, right? It's just, my gosh, someone asked me earlier, actually, I was having an investment call, and someone asked me afterwards.

is it a negotiation of power back and forth? And I never come from a place of negotiating power back and forth. And like you say, that's that ego place, you know, and it may sound very egotistical what I'm about to say, but I said to her, I'm a powerful person. So that's the place I operate from and it doesn't come from a, you know, an arrogant place. It's a very truthful place for me.

Alaina Schwartz (23:02.37)
It is an ego place, right?

Michelle Margaret Marques (23:18.768)
There's no power play for me. It's just I am who I am and I'm here and I'm in the conversation.

Alaina Schwartz (23:25.858)
Yeah, I love that. What you're saying is actually true. So our society as a whole doesn't tend to allow us to acknowledge our own strengths, right? And so when we acknowledge our strengths, we're considered conceited, arrogant or whatever, but it's not from an ego place. It's owning your own power. And when I'm in my powerful beingness and you're in your powerful beingness, we get to have a completely different conversation when they're not.

rather than when I'm trying to operate with power over you. That's the ego space, is the power over you, whereas versus like, even in relationships, I mean, most of my clients when they come to me often have struggling relationships because they work so freaking much in their businesses that their relationships are strained. And in the process of that, in the process of healing, it's like, can we...

Michelle Margaret Marques (23:58.32)
Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (24:19.266)
Can we each come from a place of like, you're not here to make me happy, I'm here to make myself happy, you're icing on the cake. You're not the cake, you're icing on the cake. And when I'm no longer making you responsible for my happiness, I'm making me responsible for my own happiness, I get to have a completely different life.

Michelle Margaret Marques (24:37.232)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. And it's so true. Every time when I work with a client, it doesn't matter what they come to work with me for. We always end up going through the relationship side of things. The problem's there. It's always there. And I like that, what you say, that place of making me happy. It makes me reflect on the conversations. People say to me that I have a superpower of building relationships. And I do. I acknowledge that.

But I think that place of coming from just what I know is powerful within me creates a very warm, friendly environment. I'm often told it's very refreshing the way that I operate, especially when it comes to investment deals. Because it's usually a very dehumanized place to be in financial investment deals, right? And I like to bring that.

Alaina Schwartz (25:17.346)
Mm -mm.

Michelle Margaret Marques (25:30.992)
to the relationship. I like to bring that to my coaching and consulting relationships. What would you say is the most powerful thing that you bring in your life overall, whether it's with your clients, with your personal life, what do you bring?

Alaina Schwartz (25:50.082)
Well, there's two things. The first is the space of non -judgment because wherever my clients are, it doesn't matter. I don't care where they are on the spectrum. I'm not judging them for it. I'm just seeing it as an opportunity. I don't buy into people's stories. You can tell me this is what's going on. I had a client the other day who she's a marketer and her team dropped the ball and no one was owning it. And the client freaked out and it's potentially a very expensive mistake.

and she was dealing with the stress of having to deal with it. And I'm like, I'm not buying into that story. Like to me, here's the opportunity in that. And then you just create a reframe and she was able to see it for something completely different rather than it taking her out, right? So one of the things is like space of non -judgment and not buying story. The other thing is I stand for a mirror of the truth of you.

Michelle Margaret Marques (26:42.352)
Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (26:42.818)
So, right, so that's my job with my clients is to stand for the mirror for the truth. Like I will show you, I believe who you really are. I know who you really are. And I will hold that mirror for you until you believe it yourself. Right? Because we tend to not, we tend to have a lot of worthiness and lovability issues. And we don't even realize how they're creating what we're experiencing in our reality.

Michelle Margaret Marques (26:57.072)
Yeah, I love that.

Alaina Schwartz (27:10.626)
And so when my clients really do the deeper inner work of becoming so much more self loving, unconditionally loving of themselves, like it's so much easier to attract money being through love than it is through ego, which is how most of us make money. And so I'm there to stand to hold the mirror so you can see that truth of who you are for yourself. And then you pick up the ball and you get to run with it yourself. And so that, that what I say is those are kind of my superpowers.

Michelle Margaret Marques (27:34.128)
Hmm.

I love that. I love that. You make me think of say, I always say to my clients, I'm not buying your story. It may keep other people at bay, but I'm not buying.

Alaina Schwartz (27:48.322)
Right? Because if I die in your story, I'm enabling you to be small. And I don't want you to be small in your small self. It's not the truth of who you are. So why would I buy your story to keep you even small to enable you? It's like enabling a drug addict. I don't want to enable you to continue doing whatever it is you're doing because you're not getting results that way. So it's like, you got to do something different than what you've been doing to get different results.

Michelle Margaret Marques (28:02.672)
Yeah.

Michelle Margaret Marques (28:08.144)
Yeah.

Michelle Margaret Marques (28:13.552)
Yeah, I love it. And it's great to be in that place of non judgment as well. I mean, we really need to create more and more of that kind of space, right?

and more of the space where we do hold the mirror up to our clients. Because I think it sounds to me like we operate very similar ways. And I do, I love that. I have a client that tells me, Michelle, you're like a little mole with a mining lamp, you know? And you just keep burrowing until you find the solid ground to work from. And we need that. We need that in our lives. We need that. We need that as coaches. Our clients need that. Everyone.

Alaina Schwartz (28:39.874)
I'm sorry.

Michelle Margaret Marques (28:52.418)
Everyone needs that, right? What would you say to anyone listening that's maybe thinking to themselves, well, Michelle and Alaina, that's great for you. You have all these tools and all this training and all these expertise, and you're working with these incredible clients. Well, I can't do that for myself. What would you say to them?

Alaina Schwartz (29:12.61)
BS belief system.

I would lovingly say that, because I'm not here to shame or blame anybody. It makes total sense to me why people believe that, it's possible for you, it's not possible for me. It's how we've been raised. It's the stories that are glorified in our society about what it actually takes to become successful. And so somebody, even the idea, one of the things that I help my clients do is shave anywhere from two to six hours off their workday, if not even more. And when I say that to people, they're like, yeah, right.

Michelle Margaret Marques (29:20.176)
Of course. Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (29:44.418)
How am I not going to lose the money I've already made plus even be able to scale? Like they don't get that. It's a paradigm shift. It's a total paradigm shift. And so it makes sense to me that you would operate from like, yeah, you could do that, but I can't. And honestly, I used to believe that too, because I was watching all these people around me be really successful. And I was like, well, why can't I replicate those results for myself until I started to do the work that I do now. And then I started to replicate those results for myself. And honestly, I see it a -

Michelle Margaret Marques (29:48.944)
Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (30:13.826)
across the board, across the board, one of my clients is a coach and she was operating, she didn't have a scalable model. She has a multiple six -figure business, but she doesn't have a scalable model. And so literally last week we walked her through creating a group evergreen program that she could do. So she didn't have to be in launch mode constantly. And in less than a week, she enrolled three clients into her brand new program. Like that's what's possible, like totally possible.

So you can't tell me it's not possible, because I've seen it over and over and over again. The key is the willingness to get out of your comfort zone and step into whether it's what Michelle offers or whether what I offer, but step into doing the deeper work, because that will make a massive shift. The inner work makes a massive shift in the outer work. It makes the outer work.

Michelle Margaret Marques (31:05.552)
Yeah, yeah, it can't not make a shift, right? I would, I, you know, I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim this nationally, internationally, whatever. It can't not work. Yeah, because once you do that in our work, it changes everything. And let's talk about love. When we come back to this place of love, the core culture in my, in my business is love.

Alaina Schwartz (31:15.97)
I agree.

Alaina Schwartz (31:25.058)
everything.

Michelle Margaret Marques (31:34.128)
that my core essence is love actually. As much as I'm very blunt and I'm very straightforward and I call it fearless coaching and I ask you questions that you definitely will not like from time to time and I will say things to you that you definitely will not like from time to time. My clients say you always make like to make me cry. It's not about making someone cry actually. That's a shift of emotion which is a very good thing. But you know this place of

Alaina Schwartz (31:34.338)
Mm -hmm.

Michelle Margaret Marques (32:03.472)
of that all that fierceness actually is rolled up in love and even my team we do love bombing sessions in my team we do you know we do we love bomb my clients we you know every single piece of communication is sent out with love you know the way that i work with my with my team is to actually bomb everyone and and fill everyone with love that's how we work.

Alaina Schwartz (32:30.626)
I'm sorry.

Michelle Margaret Marques (32:32.432)
Although it may not feel like it sometimes, I call it tough love. But my point in all of that rambling, Elena, is would you say for you was a big turning point? I think I heard you mention in your in your story, a big turning point was really falling in love with yourself.

Alaina Schwartz (32:52.738)
Yeah, you know, one of the major difficulties that I had in my life that kept me sleepless, like literally getting four or five hours of sleep for years, was a lesson in self -love. It really was. When I looked at why am I creating this, when I really started doing this work and started to unpack, why did I create this situation in my life? It was all about a lesson of self -love and really about loving myself more and putting myself first. Putting myself first.

from a highest good perspective, not from an ego perspective. Because typically putting yourself first from an ego perspective will be selfish, but we're taught even putting ourselves first from a highest good perspective is selfish and it's not. It's the most self -loving thing you can do. And whatever is in our highest good is in everybody else's highest good because we're all connected. It has to be, right? If we're connected and I'm doing something that's in the highest good, it has to be for the highest good of all too.

So for me it was, and it's funny that you say that Michelle about you because I do the same thing in my business. I even call my clients, it's on my LinkedIn profile, hi love. I call my clients loves all the time. It's about being in the space of love. And it does start with loving yourself first, really does. It really starts with loving yourself first. And then again, that makes you become magnetic to everything you want to create, but you're not loving yourself to become magnetic.

And it's through the love of yourself that you become magnetic, right? So it's not doing to get, if I only love myself more than I can get more. And it's like, no, no, no. If I only love myself more than I love myself more and I feel really happy and then my whole life is happy because of it.

Michelle Margaret Marques (34:19.248)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Margaret Marques (34:29.616)
Yeah, it doesn't work when you try to fake it. When you, I love myself more and indulge in more things I enjoy or do so that I can then gain this, no, that's not the way it works listeners, you can't do it that way. You have to genuinely love yourself and then it radiates out to everyone else. That's how it works. It's a vibration for want of a better word. Well, it is a vibration. It's a vibration.

Alaina Schwartz (34:44.158)
you

Alaina Schwartz (34:56.002)
It is, it is, it is.

Michelle Margaret Marques (34:59.216)
I call it 500 or above.

Alaina Schwartz (35:01.698)
so David Hawkins' scale of consciousness. It is, because when you operate on a certain level of consciousness, we get to uplift that many other people who are not in that space. And so the way, the true way that we help uplift society is through love, is through loving ourselves and giving from that overflow, not giving so our cup becomes empty, but giving from that overflow. And then rising tides do raise all ships.

Michelle Margaret Marques (35:04.24)
Yes.

Michelle Margaret Marques (35:30.128)
I love that. I love that. Yep. And I love bomb everyone, especially the people that are a bit grumpy. I like to love bomb them the most, to be honest with you, because it is it's about taking your energy and radiating out to everyone else when you're when you're full of love and positivity and joy and contentment in your own self, your own skin.

Alaina Schwartz (35:38.686)
Thank you.

Michelle Margaret Marques (35:58.384)
that actually benefit every single person around you, whether you know them in person or not. I live in Barbados and it's a very small community and I'm often told, you just always have this energy. You're always smiling. You're always, you know, well, yeah, I'm happy. I can't not be any other way. I can't be any other way, right? Because it's genuinely in me. It's, you know, it's...

Alaina Schwartz (36:03.202)
Mm -hmm.

Alaina Schwartz (36:22.37)
Right, right.

Michelle Margaret Marques (36:27.12)
It's like it's permanent, it's everything. What would you say to anyone, again, I'm going to go back to my previous question, what would you say to anyone that's thinking, well, yeah, I can love myself, but I'm not sure that that can really radiate out to everyone else. How do I do that?

Alaina Schwartz (36:48.898)
Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. I don't think the goal necessarily is to love myself too radiated out to everyone else. It goes back to the goal, if there is such a thing as a goal, is to just love yourself. Everything else takes care of itself, right? One of the clients that I was speaking with today when he was talking about not knowing what to do with his time and feeling like he just wants to sit around being, and I was like, well, what's the problem with that?

And the only issue was that he kept thinking, well, what's going to happen next as a result of doing this? He wasn't thinking about right now. And I was like, well, only think about the right now. What's in the highest good for you to do right now? Is it in your highest good to sit around and be right now, to just be in the space of life? And if it is, your business will flourish because of it. Like, you don't have to worry that, me sitting around and being is going to then be to the detriment of my business. And it's the same thing with love. Like,

You just be in the space of your own love, tending to yourself. And at a certain point when your cup becomes full, because most of us are operating from a cup that's depleted, right? So those people who are grumpy, for example, they're operating from a cup that may be half empty, you know? And so when we start to fill our cups up, then it naturally, you want to radiate it out. Unless you're a service to self.

Service to self -person means the way I'm going to love myself is climbing over your back to get what I want. Now, there are many people, we know people like that. There are many people like that and no judgment for those people. They hold the balance of the spectrum so that we get to operate on a higher frequency, right? In the scale of polarity, they get to hold that spectrum. And...

Michelle Margaret Marques (38:24.268)
Yeah.

Alaina Schwartz (38:37.858)
If you're really a service to other type of person, meaning I'm going to love myself enough that eventually it will overflow, don't worry about the eventually, just worry about really loving yourself from that truth perspective. Again, not from an ego perspective, but from a truth perspective. So not from a perspective of like,

I'm gonna be really important and this is what I need to do and I need to feel powerful and I need other people to approve of me and I need this Validation like that's all from an ego perspective. That's our true love and so being operating from a place of like I'm worthy just because I be I deserve love just because I be I deserve everything in my life Just because I be I don't actually have to do anything for it. I deserve it just because I'm here

Like that's the space of true love. And when we start filling our cups with that, it will naturally radiate out.

Michelle Margaret Marques (39:29.04)
my gosh, what a beautiful way to put that. And I'm so glad I was really hoping. What I expected you to say, we don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything but love yourself. And other people will either feel it or they won't feel it, right? It's like, some may not even choose to feel it.

Alaina Schwartz (39:44.834)
Exactly.

Alaina Schwartz (39:48.962)
Mm -hmm.

Alaina Schwartz (39:52.898)
That's absolutely true.

Michelle Margaret Marques (39:55.504)
Right? Even if you're radiating it to the entire planet, some people will still choose not to feel it. Elena, I could talk to you all the entire day long and beyond that, to be honest with you. I can't believe it. We're up to time. It's not fair. Every single episode I say I'm going to find a way to slow down time when I'm recording these.

Alaina Schwartz (39:58.914)
Mm -hmm.

Alaina Schwartz (40:20.558)
I'm sorry.

Michelle Margaret Marques (40:23.792)
mad scientists in the office there, like, you know, working away in the background. Elina, I ask everyone who joins me on my podcast, if they would please give a gift to my amazing listeners. And you have very kind words.

Alaina Schwartz (40:39.394)
I would absolutely love to give a gift. Yeah. I have a mini course called the number one shift to shave two to four. No, it's the number one shift to free up two to four hours of your work day while making more money. And it's a mini course that I am offering it for free. And your audience can find it at www .alainashwarz .com forward slash time course.

So that's www .alainashwards .com forward slash time course. And I would absolutely love for you to come into my world through the time course. It has so much value in it that I know it will really help you make a shift in not working as hard.

Michelle Margaret Marques (41:23.728)
thank you so much. That's amazing. Thank you. And of course, we will put those details in the show notes. Please make sure you listen to the episode. Well, you'll have to listen to it to get to those details. You will have already listened to it to even be listening to me right now. So, Elena, thank you so much for your time. I have loved this conversation and I have loved connecting with you. I hope long may it continue.

Alaina Schwartz (41:27.97)
My pleasure.

Michelle Margaret Marques (41:52.688)
I would love to see where it goes. listeners, you're so, so welcome. You're so welcome. Thank you. Listeners, thank you so much for joining me. I will look forward to you listening to the next episode of Bloody Hell Chelle. Take care until then.

Alaina Schwartz (41:55.97)
Thank you so much, Michelle. Much gratitude.