204. Living WELLthy with Dawn Dahlby

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Scarlett.

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Hello, everyone, and thank. You for joining me today. So happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings.

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And as a result, my life was a hot mess. Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together. And since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories.

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This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours. Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening and Dawn't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at Coach. Sandee Sgarlata.

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Enjoy the show.

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Dawn Dalvier so excited to see you again. I know it was just last month we were together and it feels like it was a day ago, and sometimes it feels like it was two months ago, but yeah, Sandee so excited. Thank you for allowing me to come on your amazing podcast. Thank you. Such an honor to have you here today, and I'm so excited for your book.

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I have my copy sitting right here, and it's pretty rare that I actually have one of my guests books with me because I interview so many people and I actually have a whole stack of books of authors that I've interviewed because I'm like, oh, my God. And I interview them and then sometimes they send me a book or I'll go online and I'll get it. And it's like, I've got a lot of reading catch up, and I've only read into it a few chapters. But before we dive into that, I love what you do, and I never even heard of you're, a behavioral financial advisor. Behavioral, yes.

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So super important. I'm a certified financial planner. I've been in business for a couple of decades, sitting down with clients, helping them build their financial plan and managing their assets. And then you realize, like, clients actually got to a point where they've achieved their goals, their financial goals, and they're able to live in financial freedom. But there's still this major part that we weren't addressing, and it's the emotion and the relationship and the fear based relationship we all, including myself, have with money that there's never enough.

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And I was like, gosh, I'm doing a disservice to the clients by not addressing the elephant in the room, which is like, our relationship with money. So that's what the behavioral piece is. So the behavioral thing is really just about emotion. We all have emotional relationship with money. And so that's what needed to be addressed.

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With myself, with you, with every human being on the planet. Yes. Well, because money is really at the core of everything that we do. And we Dawn't even realize that because we're so conditioned by society. Yeah, well, it's like oxygen, right?

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I mean, we need to breathe. We need to breathe to live. And we need money to live. I'm trying to educate people that it's super important to get the technical advice because we all need it. We all want more money.

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Super important. But we also need to understand the behaviors around money and making sure we're building it the right way. And that's what the book is about. Well, I love the title of your book. Own your worth, grow your wealth and live wealthy.

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I was making sure because I tagged one of the pages to make sure that it was the same thing. And yeah, that's just incredible because it's. All so interrelated, so interrelated so many times. We feel I think people feel a lack of wealth and we live in this wealth crisis. I Dawn't even know the statistics, but so many people live really like, their income is so low and they Dawn't have savings and they Dawn't have investments and they can't even think and dream about being financially independent because there's not enough there.

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And if you really dive deep into the I'm the why girl, like why behind the why behind the why, and really take a moment to step back and really analyze the why and the psychology around why there's not enough money here, it's always an internal job. It's an internal issue that we're having with how we're thinking. And so if my job in this world before I die is to inspire over a million people to think differently about how they can have the money in their life and how they can actually become a millionaire, and it's all in how we think about ourself and how we feel about ourself and that emotional connection we have from our childhood. And once we can fix our pain, then it opens up a whole different world for us. And it's possible for every single person on this Earth.

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Because I grew up in a town of 2000 people that in the middle of Wisconsin, and it was dark and gloomy and I always felt limited. But if I can make this happen, I'm no better than anyone else. Anybody can make this happen. Well, as you were saying that when you were saying how anybody can be a millionaire, right now the listeners, their limiting beliefs are popping up because they're like, right, how can that possibly be right? And they Dawn't understand that the connection, right?

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The connection, the limiting beliefs, it all stems back to childhood. Like, what did we believe about ourself? In fact, Bruce Lipton I read his book, like, 15 years ago, and he says our beliefs about ourself and our wealth are formed by the time we're age six. Wow. Six.

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So what? You you barely know how to tie your shoe and talk at age six. But we've already formed our beliefs, and those beliefs are from our parents, and their beliefs are from their parents. And so we need to rewire our brains. So if there are listeners out there, we all have limiting beliefs.

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I do, too. But it's all about understanding the why behind why we have them, and then that gives you the power to fix them. I love it. That is so powerful. So we're going to dive more into a lot of your talking points.

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I love all these talking points, and I wish we had time to talk about all of them, but I'm going to pick out a couple. I was reading the first chapter of your book.

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I know. We have that connection, Dawn't we? Yeah. And I take care of my mom right now. And I had all these issues come.

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Up today, as a matter of fact. So I can't even imagine what you went through. Do you want to just tell the audience a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. I can't even talk about it because.

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It'S so dear to your heart and it's dear to everybody's heart. My mother was an alcoholic because of her childhood. If you look at any addiction, it's all because of who wasn't there for these young kids, like when my mom was a child and how her parents weren't there for her. And so she suffered her entire life from numbing her pain because she didn't love herself enough, which is so sad. And it just became this toxic relationship that I even had with her because she had a toxic relationship with herself.

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And so I loved my mom. She loved me more than anything. I had so many amazing experiences with her. But literally, I was moving to Arizona four and a half years ago. Actually, it's coming up on five now, where my husband and my two teenage daughters, we decided to move from Minnesota to Arizona because we just needed to get away from the depressing clouds and knew no one in Arizona except the sun.

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We're like, hey, this is really cool. We want to live our next half of our life in just this vibrant location. And so we moved here, and my mother decided that she wanted to start her last part of her life. She was 73, and she wanted to move with us. And she came to Arizona, and we were going to move her.

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It was a Saturday, she came in on a Friday. We went out to dinner, and we were going to move her to her new condo the next day. And we found her slumped over dead in our rental home, and she was gone like that on a day that she was moving to her new place to start her new life. And again, I just was like, what happened? And she was an alcoholic, a hidden alcoholic.

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Like, she hid her drinking still because she wouldn't drink in front of us anymore because we knew that we weren't going to allow that happen. But when I started peeling back, what really killed her, it was her worth. It was her lack of worth, which gave her no wealth, and her lack of the alcohol numbed her pain and it made it really toxic for us. But it wasn't the alcohol that killed her. It was her worth, her lack of self esteem, and what she thought and what she thought about herself and what she felt about herself and the fact that she was living in this freaking false belief about her worthiness, and she couldn't get herself out of that.

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And I'm like, oh my God, she was 73. But that's what killed her, not the alcohol. That was a Band Aid. And so I have this being raised by an alcoholic parent, like, you start to, like, want to, like, stop that. That modeling behavior.

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Like, even though I have never been an alcoholic, I still am addicted to success and addicted. You know, we all have our addictions, right? Yeah. We model, we model our parents behaviors. And so I had to really kind of break the chains of what I was doing from my version of addiction and realizing, what am I passing on to my kids?

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I'm not passing on like, I'm not a big drinker, but I remember my daughter coming to me like, mom, why are you so working so hard? Why are you working so much? And I'm like, Well, I have to I have to pay the bills. And like, oh, this girl is modeling mama's behavior in just a different way. And so I have this really strong passion in my life to make sure that we're understanding our worth and being aware of who we truly are and not allowing this fear and anxiety to rule our behaviors.

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That is so powerful, because you're right. And sometimes it was funny. I was on a friend of mine's podcast, and in my early twenty s, I was addicted to cocaine. And then we were talking like, yeah, now I'm a self help junkie. And he was like, you know, you went from being one type of junkie to another type of a junkie.

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And I was like, oh my God, you're right. Yeah. But at least it's a positive one. It's a positive one, and that's okay. We're born with personalities, Sandee.

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Your personality and my personality, we have a lot of energy, right? And we just like my core value is excitement and achievement. God gave me that gift, so I just need to use it in a positive way now and not be shy. To be like, I suffer with anxiety. It's so hard for me to get on an airplane.

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Not getting on an airplane made me become a financial advisor because I'm like, I Dawn't have to travel, and I can make a lot of money. And then I was like, after 23 years of doing that, I'm like, but I need to get on an airplane because I have a gift to empower so many more people than just that one on one. So I was letting fear still grip my life, and I'm like, okay, then how do we deal with this fear and anxiety? And how do I help other people deal with that? Because you being addicted to cocaine was just your own fear, right?

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You're just avoiding life, and that was soothing you. And then you just realize, well, I need a positive soothe, because cocaine is just going to take you down the wrong path. But we have to be real and authentic about this because we're all human beings. We all suffer with stuff. It's how we deal with the shit storms in life.

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How do we deal with that? Are we going to go left? Are we going to go right? And that's what makes us really the difference, because we all have the same coping mechanisms, and we need support and help. We all do.

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Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So incredible. All right, so one of the things that you listed on your sheet, the talking points, was, before working on your finances, ask yourself these four key questions to understand your relationship with money. I love that.

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And that is so key. Your relationship with money? Yeah, absolutely.

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That's the whole behavioral stuff that we've been talking about. It's all your relationship. And I'll tell you that if you are listening and if you're suffering with thinking that you Dawn't have enough income or physically, whether it's you're thinking you Dawn't have enough or you literally Dawn't have enough income, that's all based upon what you're thinking about yourself. Because if you have lack about yourself, your lack of yourself is going to mirror the lack of income 100% of the time. So if there's an income issue, then we need to go internally, and you need to look at your purpose.

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You need to look at your strengths and making sure you're earning an income in relation to your strengths. You need to look at taking your purpose and taking those strengths and really defining what those are to you. Because we all have a purpose, and we all have strengths. And when you really utilize those two things and making sure you're earning an income in relation to your purpose and your strengths, that's when your income is going to grow, and that's when you're going to start to feel better about yourself. And also, we all have weaknesses.

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Sandee has weaknesses. I have a ton of weakness. It's understanding your weakness and not letting those dictate your lack of income. That's what needs to have happen, is people need to go internally and understand those things and then making sure they're earning an income in relationship to those items. And then you work around your weakness.

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Right? You Dawn't focus in trying to improve your weaknesses because you're self aware of those, but then you work with other people that have opposite strengths of you. But that's how we grow our incomes. And when we grow our incomes, that's the engine to building your wealth and making sure you're investing and keeping your money, too. It's all so powerful, but it all stems from how you think about yourself.

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I love that. And I didn't realize that you have listed in here that you're actually, like, one of the first behavioral financial advisors, right? I am the first one because I realized after sitting in tens of thousands of client meetings that our clients deserve this type of advice. They deserve to learn the technical aspects, which is the certified financial planner. And I'm a fiduciary, so it's like I have to give my clients the best advice for them, which is so important.

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But we're doing a disservice to the rest of the population and to even my own clients. You got to talk about the behavior stuff, too, because I've had clients literally build their portfolios to millions of dollars, and they're like, I'm still going to Trader Joe's to buy my two Buck Chuck wine. And I'm like, Why? Because they think they're going to run out of money and not have enough. And so it's the psychology and the technical advice together.

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So that's why the behavioral stuff is so important. I love it. I think that's really incredible. Okay, so the last thing I want you to talk about is you say, here, define the connection between your brain and your bank account. So what are the three ways to cultivate a positive financial mindset based on your expertise?

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So the three ways you do that is you go through this process, which we've been talking about already is really owning all that is you. We talked about your purpose, your core values. Well, we talked about your purpose and your strengths and your weaknesses. You also have to really understand your core values. We all throw around the word core values, but really understanding your top five core values and then building your life plan on how you spend your time and your money around your core values.

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So that is super important. And understanding your goals on top of that, which we all talk about as well. But the first step is really owning all that is you. And that's what the book talks about in the first third of the book. The next part of really understanding is the earn it section, which is earning the right to have more income and earning the right to have a better outcome, which is so important.

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You think it's these opposite but interconnected forces. So really it's the personal development. Like you said, you're a personal development junkie. That's the earnet section of this book, where if you want a better life, you want more money, you want to live life at the next level. It's all in how you respond to the challenges in life.

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And that's why I call this section of the book Earn it because it takes energy and it's earning. Like, we have to earn it. It takes a different mindset. It takes a different reaction to life because we all deal with the storms. It's how we react to the storms, which are so powerful.

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And that's what really defines our success in life. And then the grow it section is really about and that's the third step, which is really about creating your financial plan. Like, you need the technical advice, too. You need to understand how to have a balanced spending plan so you can still live for today. We want everyone to still live for today and not give up today.

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Life's important. Our time today is important. But you can actually still live for today and plan and save for tomorrow if you do it the right way. And you do that through minimizing your taxes, minimizing your investment fees, and maximizing your investment performance. And so Grow It is teaching people really those aspects.

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How are you able to live for today and plan for tomorrow? By getting that technical advice of minimizing your taxes and maximizing your investments. This is such good stuff. And to all the listeners out there, you've got to get a copy of this book. This is kind of like a Bible, right?

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Really? This is like your roadmap. It is a roadmap. And we designed the book. There's so much detail I could have put in the book.

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And my stepmother, not my mother, but my stepmother, who's a writer, amazing woman I love. Oh, did you meet her? Yeah, she's a fantastic time with her. Your father's family was at the conference and yeah, you just have such a wonderful support group. Yes, but she really helped me write it and has counseled me for 30 years on the personal development because she was a counselor before she retired.

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But she was really instrumental in this book. And what we did is we designed this book so it can be not a textbook, the how to because it would put people to sleep, but really, it's almost like a workbook. So you're going to get this book and you're going to literally grab your pen or your pencil, your sharpie, and you're going to do these exercises because it's not just about reading and going, oh, that made me think differently. No, it's about literally going through the exercises and taking them and applying them to your life. So it is a book that you will have with you for a long, long time and keep referring back to.

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Yeah, and I encourage everybody to really do that work and write it out. Because when you're writing things out as a reminder to everybody you're using more of your senses, and it's going to really instill within your brain. It's going to help rewire the way you're thinking. And it's truly magical. It is.

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Here it is. I always joke about spelling it differently, like, live wealthy. So many really cool things with this book. Is it's about living a well life and having money, which is the whole behavioral and the technical part of this book. And like Sandee said, you page through and there's exercises here that you can write in.

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But it's just such a like, again, it took three years to get this to the stage, but I'm just hoping that it literally released last week and it already became an Amazon bestseller, number one in the first day. Because I think it's like my heart and soul went into this. This isn't about me being the best human being in the world. And look at the book and look at what I did. This is about no, look at what we can do together and how I can support you with my pain and all of my experience, because you can live a wealthy life just as much as I can.

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And I always tell people, too, like, okay, I'm good at numbers. I'm not good at spelling. So I had to spell the word wealth wrong.

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So what other services do you offer to people? Because I think you have I'm on an email chain of yours, but I do think that you're offering some courses as well, right? Well, yeah, it is. For 23 years, I was helping people that had millions grow their millions even more. And I'm like, wait a second, I need to have an offering available to people that Dawn't have the millions.

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Maybe they're struggling with income. Maybe they're struggling with debt. Maybe they're struggling with whatever relationships they're needing to figure out. They're at the baseline of building their wealth. They Dawn't have the millions.

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So what I did is I created this digital educational platform for people to go in and get that same type of fiduciary advice that I'm giving my millionaire clients, that it's now been open to the non millionaires. And it's not just a course, because I'm a behavioral expert. We all know that most people Dawn't take action unless they have someone there with them guiding them through this. But it's a course. But it's a course.

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It includes me. It includes a financial plan. It took me three years, not just to write this book, but three years to develop this really cool interactive financial planning tool where people can still be private with their money, but they can fill out this tool and it's going to share with them what do they need to do to be able to start healing their financial? It literally will help them implement. And then you can meet with an advisor on my team and we take you through the whole process, just like we would if you were a one on one client with me in my firm called Relevant Financial Group.

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But that firm is designed for people that at least have a half a million dollars in investable assets because they just need a different level of service. Sure. Oh, no, that totally makes sense. And I love that you have that. We'll have the website in the show notes, so is that the best place for people to go?

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Just go to your website and you can find all the information about your course? Absolutely. It's Dawndalby.com. Dawndahlby.com. I'm everywhere and it's all under Dawn Dahlby to make it easy.

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Fantastic. Dawn, is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience before we wrap this up? Let me just talk from my heart for 1 second and just know that and this is unscripted, but we all need to raise our thinking and our expectations in what is possible for us in our life. And I'm just a small town girl who just wouldn't accept to live life at an average place or meteoroker place. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with average because there's nothing wrong.

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But what I'm saying is that we all deserve to live our life in a lane that is designed for us to live. Whether it's multimillions or it's $100,000 to support your life, it doesn't matter. But we all deserve and are called to live a life that is happy and fulfilled for us and Dawn't ever sacrifice that. And that's what I want to say. Beautifully said.

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That was beautiful. Thank you so much for listening. Everybody go out and get your book, own your worth, grow your wealth and live wealthy. Thank you, Sandee. So incredible.

00:27:38

Thank you, Dawn. And thank you listeners.

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I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe. And that your lives are filled with. Peace, joy and happiness.

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Take care everyone.