Special Episode: Wealth and Wellness Coach Leah Davis

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to B.R. Ambassador to learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:33] Welcome to this very special edition of Coach the Coach Radio Stone Payton Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I have so been looking forward to this particular interview. We’re going to get a chance to visit with a young lady who has just had a marvelous impact on our organization and with and through the work that we’re doing. Brought that to the West Coast and out to the Bay Area. So I look forward to speaking with her in just a moment. But while I have you, let me ask you a question, man, you have been interviewing a lot of coaches for some time now, and I know even more so in the last several weeks. How’s it going, man? Are you having fun? Are you still learning stuff from these practitioners?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] Yeah, this is one of the my favorite shows that we do because it is such a collaborative giving group and these are folks that are out there trying their whole job every day is to helping other people be better. And I’m a big fan of that, and that’s what we’re trying to do. A Business RadioX is help our clients and guests be better and give them something of value that’s going to help them in their career in some manner and then in their life. And what I’m hearing from a lot of folks is, you know, they’re all doing kind of coaching in some form or fashion, but they each do it kind of in their own special way, you know, in their own kind of they all have some secret sauce. And what I like about this part of the series that we’re adding to the mix is in this episode that we’re producing, we’re trying to get kind of granular and tactical and really focus on how our listeners and how our coaches can really improve and get more out of kind of the marketing work they’re doing because that’s kind of our expertize. And so that’s why I love doing the show. I love talking to coaches every day, and I love doing this particular episode of the show where we’re really kind of getting in the weeds and getting granular on how to help them help themselves to get one more client.

Stone Payton: [00:02:40] All right, well, tear up, Lee, who are you going to be interviewing today?

Lee Kantor: [00:02:44] Well, today on the show, we have Leah Davis, and she’s with Leah Davis coaching, and her tagline is inspiring women of color to claim their wealth legacy. She’s also the full disclosure of the Business RadioX ambassador for the Bay Area. Welcome, Leah.

Leah Davis: [00:03:01] Hi there. It’s so good to be here with the two of you. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:05] Well, Leah, before we get too far into things, tell us about your coaching practice. You know, for our listeners, let people know who you coach and kind of the a little kind of elevator pitch about your coaching practice.

Leah Davis: [00:03:18] Wonderful. Thank you. Yes. So as a wealth coach, I enjoy supporting diverse women entrepreneurs as they get crystal clear about the dream. So it’s a lot of discussions about their money management habits that they may or may not be doing. That’s moving them towards the vision they have for their future. And throughout the coaching process, it’s really important to me that I provide education about the women’s wealth gap and how they are being impacted the most as women of color we are. And we’ll work together on a doable plan of short term and long term financial stability things so that they can build and protect the wealth legacy and overcome those barriers that are common with women who are experiencing this. And when we’re furthest behind in the wealth gap. And then on the wellness side, that’s more of a holistic process. So most of us have experienced trauma at some point in our life and being a person of color in this country, we definitely have. So I really focus on the impact that childhood domestic violence and intimate partner violence affects their physical and emotional responses to managing their finances. And so because most women that have experienced violence towards them have a harder time envisioning their future because we’ve been in survival mode for so long. So with this holistic approach, it’s a physical, emotional and even a spiritual focus to guide women towards feeling safe with their money. And then they can no longer second-guess the decisions that they make learning to trust themselves and others and life in general.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:37] Now for our listeners, can you share maybe one story of kind of the before and after where somebody came to you and maybe was struggling and maybe was frustrated and then they started working with you? And then they were able to kind of kind of right the ship a little bit.

Leah Davis: [00:04:54] Yes. Thank you for that question. I have a wonderful story of actually one of my first clients when I started my business and she had approached me wanting to overcome this habit that she had, where she kept giving her money to women that she was supporting. So she works in the management at a nonprofit, and she also has experience of domestic violence advocate. And she’s also a survivor herself. And so she found that she would be supporting women outside in the community by sending the money. They would hit her up and say, Hey, you know, I need a place to stay. And so she sent her like a thousand dollars or something, and she would do this automatically without taking a look at her finances. And she realized she was driving herself crazy because then she was pulling money out of her own savings, giving it to other people. But she felt this inherent need to make sure that they were OK, and she also had a lot of trauma around money and her family. She had an older brother who had unfortunately committed suicide when his business had failed, and he was no longer, I guess, believed that he was someone to be feeling proud within their family. And so that really took a toll on her family. And so the conversations about money and success, it was all just really, really dark for her. And so when she came to me, we really just started chipping away about her experience with money. Her relationship with money. She’s also survived domestic violence, like I mentioned.

Leah Davis: [00:06:14] And then one of the key components, though, is that she really wanted to also buy a house and be able to have conversations with her partner about, you know, purchasing a home together. And so she had so much fear around meeting with other friends of hers that could assist them with applying for a loan because she didn’t want to talk about her credit. She couldn’t talk about money. And so we started unpacking that throughout the coaching. And it turns out when she was able to send over her Excel spreadsheet that she had it took. We had a 12 week coaching session, and I think it was around the seventh or eighth session where she finally sent that to me. She had kept saying she was going to send it to me from the beginning, and she sent it to me and it was, you know, about twenty thousand of debt. And to her, that was just so much and there was so much pain around that and a shame. And she had not ever talked to anyone about this, that she experienced just with me. And in that session at the end, she just realized how difficult it was, but how much better she felt and having that conversation with me. And so shortly after, she explained to me that she’d been carrying that for about 13 years, that her previous partner, where she had experienced that domestic violence, there was financial abuse and her credit had been ruined by this individual who had taken advantage of her. And so that was a lot of pain for her over 13 years carrying that.

Leah Davis: [00:07:33] So once we went through that process, then she felt so free and able to talk to her partner about the debt that she carried. And she explained to me at another session that he looked at her like that. It, you know, he was thinking it was like hundreds of thousands of dollars the way that she had not wanted to talk about it, and so together they began working on a plan. She’s sort of paying down that debt through the coaching. We worked on how she could respond to those phone calls she was receiving from women in the community looking for her support, and she learned how to pause. Waited twenty four hours, let them know and to think about it. And then we also worked together. So she created her buckets of money. So she really wanted to make sure she could continue supporting these women but have her limits a cap on it. And so she had a designated fund, and so she felt really confident now where she can look at that and say, OK, I may or may not be able to support you and then transfer the money to them. And then now she’s moved, and they’re in the process now of buying a home, her new partner. So she’s learned some amazing money management habits, communicating, setting up boundaries and still being able to do what she really wanted to do, which was to be able to support other women so they can get some stability as they’re recovering from domestic violence.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:45] Wow, that is a powerful story, and it shows you that you probably relieved so much stress you helped her kind of, you know, kind of dissipate a lot of the angst and stress and, like you said, shame that maybe she was having and then reframe it in a way that she’s probably living a more balanced life.

Leah Davis: [00:09:06] Yes. Yes, I mean, I she she also works in nonprofit world as far as fundraising, and it also really impacted her ability to have conversations with her team about going out there and raising this money to support other women of color because she got shamed. She also said she knew that it was impacting her role, and she wanted to be able to bring more money. And they’re bringing in the dollars now. The organization where she’s at because her energy has shifted her relationship with money has shifted her relationship with herself and others. She’s doing amazing now and I’m so proud of her.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:41] And that’s the kind of ripple effects that good coaching can have on an individual. You think you’re just helping that individual, but actually you’re helping all the folks around that person as well as they learn the skills they need to kind of level up, then that is permeating their network and their community. And that’s where change really can happen in a powerful way. Congratulations on that.

Leah Davis: [00:10:03] Yes, thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:04] Now, in this episode, we’re trying to kind of help our coaches get one more client in my head. That’s what we’re trying to do is help everybody get one more client. And the way that we’re doing that is trying to help our coaches learn how to get the most out of an interview or some of the social media that they’re doing. A lot of folks nowadays are being interviewed on different kinds of shows or podcasts and and they think that a lot of them think that, Oh, I just do this interview and then I’m done and then business is going to come my way. So that’s all I have to do because I’m doing the work of doing that interview. But the the most successful coaches, I think, take it one step further and say, You know what, now that I have this content, there’s going to be other ways that I can leverage this content, and I should kind of wring out as much value as possible from any piece of content that’s created, whether it’s me as just the interviewee or it’s me as the interviewer or the person that’s involved in the creating of the content. But I’m going to kind of get the most out of any interview experience, and you’re someone who does a great job on social media. Can you share a little bit about how you kind of, you know, use social media and use kind of interviews or shows as a way to kind of grow your network, serve your network and maybe support and celebrate other people in your network?

Leah Davis: [00:11:28] Yes, I can definitely share that. First and foremost, it was important for me to hire somebody because this is not my this is not my jam. I, you know, when I first started out with my coaching, I was like, OK, I’ll push a little here on Facebook and let me try to create my own little social media calendar. And I couldn’t stick with it because, you know, my mom, I’m working and running a business, and I didn’t know what I was doing. So what I did was I had already previously met with a gal who had originally done my first web site and I met with her and I said, You know, how much does it cost for your services? And at the time, I didn’t have the funds for it. So I said, You know what? I’m just going to sit with this and the money’s going to come eventually somewhere. And so what I did do is I applied for a business loan through a seed fee. And once that was approved, I use those funds specifically for my marketing team and to get me out there. That was the first and foremost because, like I said, I don’t know what I’m doing. I got to hire somebody. And so with that, it’s been an amazing journey and it’s been a learning one for me, too. So when it comes to like repurposing the content in their interviews, it’s actually a step back getting out there. So I will proactively reach out to other shows.

Leah Davis: [00:12:39] Send an email and say, you know, these are topics I’d like to cover or are you interested? I may or may not get a response, but they’re in my pipeline now to continue following up with them. And for those that have then I can have a conversation with them if that’s the process that they have and then do an interview with them. And what I do enjoy doing, what my marketing lead has done a great job at is cross promotion. This is all new to me. I have no idea what this is because I’m the worst since social media. I’m learning, though. And so whenever there’s an interview, an opportunity to have, we make sure we have a plan to cross-promote on our social media platforms, which is for me is LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. So, for example, I’ll use Bay Area Business Radio as an example for this. When there’s a guest who’s going to be on the show, we just check if they’re interested in cross promoting. My marketing lead has put together the content for this. We have a link. So when someone confirms their date that they’re going to be on the show, then they use that link. And once they complete their name and some basic information and their headshot, it gets funneled to our marketing, my marketing lead, who then has the timeline to go ahead and create the graphic that we then use on our social media platforms. And we also make sure that we cross, promote in email using newsletters.

Leah Davis: [00:13:58] So I will send out on my email list when the show is done with the link for that interview, for that individual, and then they will send it out to their email list as well. And a link to that and also invite and encourage anyone on their email list to reach out to me if they’re interested and being on the show as well. So that’s been a wonderful way in which we’ve been doing the cross promotion and getting the content out there. And as far as repurposing for myself on my website, my marketing lady, she went ahead and put in like a clip on my website of my interview from Business RadioX. I first came on board and so when you go to my main page at Coach the Coach, there’s an actual clip on there where you can click on it and listen to it. And it’s me talking about the work that I do. And I love that because it’s me, it’s my voice. It’s authentic, it’s real. And it’s not just maybe a picture on a screen with a little bit of content of my bio on there. So I think it’s just a really nice touch that she’s put on my website for that. So that’s some of the things that we’re doing when it comes to the promoting and using the social media platforms to get myself out there more as well as those who are interviewed.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:07] And I think you brought up an important word, and I think that this is something that a lot of folks maybe take for granted and you use the word authentic. I think folks out there are a little kind of more marketing savvy nowadays, and they don’t like the slick, perfect content that they prefer an authentic human to human interaction, rather than something perfectly polished and slick. It just creates more listen ability, more relatability, and it is more authentic. And I think that that’s what folks are hungry for nowadays. Do you find that as well?

Leah Davis: [00:15:45] I completely agree. There’s one thing that we have noticed is that I will get more traffic to a post if it’s an image of me and it’s just authentic and real. I can put other images out there of, you know, other graphics out there, you know, all my social media and some content on there. But it’s just not. It just doesn’t get as much traffic onto that posting, but whenever it’s me, for whatever reason, like you’re saying, I think it’s just authentic. We get more traffic and responses that way.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:17] So now you mentioned you mentioned that this is kind of at this point, it’s almost like a machine you have, right, you have a way to reach out to folks to get them to interact with you and possibly interview you. You have a way to take the content and then repurpose it on a variety of platforms. You have a way to cross-promote with any of the people that you’re working with, so you create these Win-Win conversations. And then at the end, you have a way to kind of put all the content in a place where it can be found, you know, in the future, so it becomes evergreen content. Has that just happened because you hired these experts to help you build this and then any advice for folks out there if they are trying to build their own kind of content machine that you’ve kind of built?

Leah Davis: [00:17:03] Great question. I would say it’s a combination of me hiring also my experience, so I took my experience as a financial adviser. It seems like eons ago and what I learned out in the field and how to do some of the sales outreach, but I just wasn’t experience the marketing side. So I have my experience combined with the team that I hired on the marketing side and we piece it together. And I’m glad that you said it sounds like it’s a machine because for me right now it sounds like pieces, and I honestly just hired somebody else to help me on the business development workflow side. So I’m working on that now where I’m going to have things more automated from the start when I’m contacted through my website with a phone call or through email. And from there, we’re working on a system and a workflow process to be able to follow up to keep track of the system to where this lead is at so that I can keep track of it and get that into an interview or potentially have that person’s interested in becoming a client, then I’m going to have that in a workflow as well. So the the machine is kind of an infancy stage right now, but it’s about to get really slick with the expertize of the other individual that I recently hired to help me on this business development side, which I think is so important because I don’t have that. I mean, I I’m great at coaching, I’m great at talking, I’m great at listening. When it comes to business development and marketing weak points here for me. So I’ve realized I really got to rely on other professionals that they’re going to see things that I don’t even know or aware of. And then together, between my experience and my vision and their expertize, I think this is really going to take us somewhere far.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:48] And then when that’s in place, then you’re going to be able to really, I think, benefit from the fact that everybody’s in their lane doing what they do, right. You’ll have this machine that’s bubbling up prospects and leads for you so that you can focus on what you’re great at the coaching and they interacting in the human to human relationship. So I think that if you can build that, that would be great. And maybe you can come back on to let us know what are the components to share with other people so they can kind of accelerate their learning curve and maybe smooth out some of the the hiccups that they’re finding in their career? Because that’s what all the coaches that I find that I talked to every day are just super passionate about what they do. And then sometimes they get bogged down on some of the stuff, like you said that they’re not that’s not their superpower. And then it frustrates them and they feel like maybe this isn’t the right calling. And a lot of times sometimes you just need a little guidance from somebody who’s been there and done that to help you kind of get back on track in terms of living into that mission that you you intended to.

Leah Davis: [00:19:50] Yes, I completely agree with you on that end, you know, even through the certification program I went through, there was no training on marketing or business development is purely coaching. So that’s something that I think hopefully will change with this particular certification that I received on the financial coaching side at some point because I think that is something really, really key, a key ingredient for a successful coaching business. And I understand the feeling of getting burnt out. I mean, just recently, right before I hired this gal for the business development side, I was feeling really bogged down and I was feeling a losing a little bit of inspiration and just kind of avoiding like, Oh, I got to do something like this and what am I to do here? And just feeling overwhelmed? But once I had my sessions with her, it’s like, Oh my goodness, I see the light, you know, because I don’t want to be doing things that I don’t enjoy doing. I understand there are some aspects of running a business, but yeah, it’s not all beautiful and we do need to do the work, but the percentage of my time does not need to be spent doing the things that I don’t love doing. So I really want to be able to focus on doing what I love doing outsourcing to those who are experts and things I don’t really enjoy because I want to keep my energy and joy up so that I can continue doing what I love, and in turn, that is going to be received and seen by those that I’m reaching out to serve.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:15] Good stuff, Leah, now if somebody wants to get a hold of you for coaching, what is the best way to do that?

Leah Davis: [00:21:21] They can go to my website, the best place, which is Leah coaching. That’s LDH CEO. And if you don’t know how to spell coaching, I’m also on Instagram at leea coaching.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:37] Good stuff, so you learn something there.

Stone Payton: [00:21:39] Well, I did, and I had one more question before we wrap it, it’s kind of related to this burnout, this burnout business, when someone is like you, Leia. And candidly, in my experience like Leia and may I mean like Lee and sometimes maybe even like me, when you pour this much of yourself into your profession, into your calling. I know that you can that we can all become a little bit susceptible. We can get tired. Do you have any discipline or do you have a place beyond sessions like you were describing where you go for inspiration or where you go to get recharged?

Leah Davis: [00:22:15] I am very disciplined when it comes to my self care. I get up, I would say, Monday through Friday. I train hard and CrossFit, so but prior to getting up in the morning, I pray and meditate every morning, even on the weekends. That is my go to to give me that inspiration and to keep me grounded and motivated. And you know what, when there’s when there’s times when I’m having a sleepless night, I’m going to listen to something inspirational where it is going to remind me there’s there’s more involved in the work that I’m doing. It’s not just about me, it’s about doing my part to help others heal and to move forward in their lives, and it will help their families in the community. So listening to different audio books, I have a bunch of different folks I listen to that are inspirational, some spiritual leaders, and that’s what it is that I do on my end. To do that and also I will, I will step back. I have no problems. Just realize, like, you know what? I’m not feeling it today, so I’m just going to, you know, focus on something a little bit less energy output and take care of myself and eat something yummy and roll up my sleeves tomorrow and see where I’m at.

Stone Payton: [00:23:25] Well, I’m not nearly as disciplined as you are, but I certainly feel like I can intellectually understand the value of it. As I strive to be more disciplined, I can promise you and our listeners this I one of the places I’m going to go for inspiration and to recharge as Bay Area Business Radio as I’ve got, I’m going to go there. I’m going to continue to go to Coach the Coach radio. This has been an absolute delight having you on the show one more time before we wrap best coordinates for people to reach out and connect with you. Maybe have a conversation with you about any of the topics that we covered today or anything else they want to talk about.

Leah Davis: [00:24:03] Take me out of my website. It’s Leah Coach the Coach Leah coaching, I’m also on Instagram at my handle, Leah coaching Find you there.

Stone Payton: [00:24:14] Fantastic. All right, this is Stone Payton for Lee Kantor and our guest today, Leah Davis and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.