Hi there, wellness entrepreneur. Welcome back. Today, I’m honored to have on special guest, Kelli Russell, and she is a neurosomatic therapist. And I know her from in the yoga community for a few years here in San Diego, as well as a client, and she is a wealth of information.
Alison: Welcome, Kelli.
Kelli: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.
Alison: Awesome.
Question to Kelli: Well, tell us specifically, what is a neurosomatic therapist?
Kelli: Yeah. So just real briefly, my past is a bachelor’s degree in psychology, minor in sociology, which is just a study of why do people do the things they do? And why do groups of people do the things that they do? And then I got my master’s in marriage and family therapy and counseling.
Then about eight to 10 years ago, I got trained in how to delve into the subconscious mind. And that’s what controls 95% of everything that we do. So it’s a way to create changes where they truly matter. So, we’re actually creating new neural networks in the brain, while calming the nervous system and creating a rich experience with desired outcomes so that we can really create changes.
So instead of a talk therapy where you’re getting insights and it’s nice to be listened to, but actually I believe those stories become more and more ingrained and people stay stuck. Now we can create a new way of being with new thoughts and new feelings and new emotions to something else. So I’m really excited about helping people transform or change or meet their goals or do something different. That’s what I’m most excited in helping people.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. And I’ve seen you help a variety of different people in a variety of different ways.
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Question to Kelli: So give us some examples to ground people into some tactical or specific examples of how you bring this work or transformations that you help your clients experience.
Kelli: It can be applied to anything in life, but I have this one guy that I was working with and it was more about his business because he just lost a major client that was 70% of his income. He had just moved into this big house and hadn’t even furnished it yet. His wife was pregnant with their second child. He had a three-year-old and he was like, “Oh no, my whole life is over, what am I going to do?” So we were able to release the stress that was holding him back, but then also establish powerful, positive subconscious beliefs to help him shift out of it.
So with that particular client, he had an opportunity to get in front of them again and have a meeting. So we really looked at it creating mind movies of what this meeting would look like and the types of things that he would ask for. And he felt that he and his staff were doing a lot of things that were out of their scope, but not getting paid for it. So there was a lot of built up resentment. So we went through it really specifically. He saw himself in their boardroom with the whiteboard, writing on the whiteboard, the things that he was asking for and the things that he actually could do really well and how much that was valued at, what he thought that they should be paid for. We also looked at how that would sound and how that would feel in his whole entire body symbolically.
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So how it looks, sounds, feels, if you could touch it, if you could taste it, what would it be like? And we look at potential obstacles like could anything bad happen? And then how would we react if something bad happened? So really, he had such a good outlook of what he was wanting that when he went into that meeting, it was amazing.
And I got to see him a couple months later and he said, “Kelli, if we hadn’t done that process, I wouldn’t have been as clear with what me and my staff could do or what we were worth or what we were asking for. I got everything that we wanted.” It’s just amazing. We’ve been working really well together. So I had a chance to meet with him a couple months later and he said, “Kelli, this is the best two months I’ve ever had in my business in all time.”
Alison: That’s amazing.
Kelli: I know! I also have this woman, she had some problems at work. She was looking for a new job. She just quit her job and she was living in this dark apartment. She didn’t have any pets. She was just feeling like really lonely. She said, this whole part of my life, it just feels really dark.
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And so we created a new experience of what she wanted and she said, “Well, I live in a place that has tons of light and I see myself having a golden retriever and we’re playing together in the backyard and I see myself working part-time, part-time online and part-time going in the office. I’m doing great work. I’m getting compensated.” And we just created the, again, this really rich experience of what that would be like. Three weeks later, she called me back and she’s like, “Kelli, you’ll never believe it. I moved out of my house. I moved into a new one. It has tons of light. I got myself a golden retriever. I got the job that I was looking for where I get to work part-time online and part-time going into the office.” And it was just as we laid out.
So I think the most important thing is knowing what you want. And once you figure out what it is that you want is creating such a rich experience for your mind and your body to feel so that it’s like a dress rehearsal, and then it’s so much easier. It’s like pulling that life line to you. It’s pulling reality closer to you, making it much more possible.
Alison: Yeah, I found that 100% to be true. Like in my own business, if I don’t feel the belief, for example, in my body, if I don’t feel the vision or a shift in my body, then it’s a lot slower to actually happen. Or there isn’t that same clarity. For me, I have to feel it in my body.
Kelli: Exactly. And sometimes people just have old stressors that are blocking them. Things that happen in childhood where they start second-guessing themselves or they have low self-esteem or suffered major trauma, major abuses.
By minimizing those, we get into the stress programs and lower the subconscious stress so that they’re no longer a bruise that gets poked. They’re no longer a blockage that’s in their path. So I also help people remove those. So it’s really like clearing what’s in the way and then inserting those positive, powerful things so that they can move forward and they can make their goals happen, make them a reality.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. And I can tell, you’re so passionate about the work and through the years of doing this work, very skilled at what you do.
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Question to Kelli: Let’s transition into how you actually had got the clients to actually do this really life-changing work with your people. So tell us where you were in your business when we first started working together.
Kelli: I was scared. I reached out to you in fear because I was doing work that I love. There’s nothing else that I would rather do in my whole life. I’m lucky to have a supportive spouse because at times he was fronting a lot of the bills for us. And I would say, “Maybe I should just give it up. Maybe I should just work a desk job or be a personal assistant or something like that.” And he would say, “Kelli, that would kill your spirit. You’re not meant for that. Keep moving forward.”
But we were at a point where never in my life had I not been able to meet our bills. I’m the one that handles the bill-pay in the relationship, and we were at a point where we were coming up a few thousand shy. And throughout my whole entire life, I’ve always been a little bit ahead. I’ve never had debt. I’ve never owed anything. And so I started getting into a panic because I was thinking, “I can’t keep going down this road. Well, then I’m better than that.” But I had always pushed against sales and marketing because I thought it was yucky and I didn’t like it. And I didn’t really want to learn it. So there was a lot of resistance there, but I knew that I needed help. I knew that I could move through it. So that’s why I reached out to you.
Alison: Yeah, I love this. I think there’s so many parts of this story that’s so relatable to others.
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Question to Kelli: And what really shifted for you? What helped with the shift specifically? We’ll start with the marketing and sales.
Kelli: Learning more about it, letting go of the resistance around it, because I had created my own stories about it, you know? And so part of it is like, “Okay, it’s just a recognition and acceptance of reality that if I wish to be successful in this field, I have to do it.” And it’s an unknown for me. And so how do we learn things that we don’t know? We have to get educated. So that was like my come to Jesus moment where I was like, “I have to learn this. I know I can do it. I need to seek out a helper because I don’t know how to do it.”
And what I really liked about you is you’re a real straight shooter and you also understand the subconscious mind and those limiting beliefs. And I like the way you communicate in a real clear, direct manner. So that’s why I felt comfortable in working with you because I knew that you understand me and the work that I do, but also you could help me identify those blind spots.
Alison: Yeah. And I’ve seen, I mean, your marketing was still good before, but I have seen shifts in your marketing.
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Question to Kelli: What do you feel has shifted for you in terms of like frequency or showing up or the type of content that you’re posting? What has shifted for you?
Kelli: I think that was your help in really speaking to an individual person. So rather than just doing something that’s blanketed out or super general to everybody, it’s choosing a specific client to speak to, like something really specific that they are going through and how I had helped them address it and how we looped through it together and what the outcome was on the other side.
My fear in doing that was like, “Well, if I speak about a certain person, then other people won’t see themselves in that,” but that’s not the case. People feel the realism in the story and they can still see themselves in aspects of it, even though it’s maybe a slightly different person than they are, I think they relate to the human being behind the story in a way that’s way more specific. So it was really helping me get specific in something real that I was helping someone through.
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Alison: Yeah, I love that. And that is, we’ve all been there. I’ve been there myself where I was just in one email trying to speak to everyone about everything that I did. And I just remember when I would sit down at my desk, sometimes I would feel so much pressure to try to get it all out. Like, “Where do I start and what do I say?”
So for sure, that is such a key thing for me too, is just remembering speaking to that one person and that one problem or one goal that they might have.
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Question to Kelli: And then another area we worked on too was just, because you’re naturally out there in the community. You teach yoga classes. You have a large network of people that you communicate with and talk to. You do get referrals and word of mouth. How did you, working together, how did we leverage all that? Or really, what do you think has made the most impact for you on any of that work that we’ve done?
Kelli: Well, I think that part of it was thinking about the format that was the most successful for people. And really to get the changes that people want to see, I need a baseline of about six sessions because that’s how we can make really big impact in letting go of some of those trauma patterns and establishing those powerful positive beliefs.
So that had a huge shift in my business. So instead of just doing one-offs where people are seeing a little bit of change, but maybe not the bigger impact that I want them to see, so really deciding like, “Well, how many sessions do you think that would be where you can deliver on what they’re looking for?” Changing to just having that baseline of six sessions, I think that was getting my clients the results, more referrals, and that also helped me as business owner of getting that consistent business as well. So that was super huge.
I’m still working on this aspect of it, but you are helping me share a few little stories. I teach two yoga classes a week, but it’s sharing a little bit of information, maybe in the beginning or the end of a yoga class about somebody going through a transformation or about a little bit of the work that I do. So somebody might speak to me after class and say, “Well, can you tell me more about that? I’d like maybe to work with you in this capacity,” and then we could set up a consultation. So that’s something new for me that I still feel clunky at, but I think that can be really powerful too.
Alison: Yeah! And you amazed me because we would have like one session on that, and then you would go teach, and then you would message me and be like, “I got a consult.”
Kelli: Yeah, it works. It’s like just figuring out. I want to be authentic. I don’t want to be salesy, and I really want to support and help people. So you’re just helping me figure out how to say it right, or how to, I don’t want to do it in a smarmy way. So it’s just, I want to be authentic. I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, and I also want to share the power of the work that I do. So you really helped me figure out how to say it right.
Alison: Yeah, and you want to do it that way. You don’t want to feel slimy because then it comes out weird, and you don’t want to step on a studio’s toes. You don’t want to ruin the relationship, and you want to make sure that it’s done in a way that feels like it’s part of your flow and more natural, but yet you don’t have to be perfect, as you just said.
Kelli: That’s right!
Alison: I love that.
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Question to Kelli: So I think a curious subject to talk about is two things, is number one, like implementing all these techniques that we worked on together. What are the results, what are the shifts in your business because of this? And then I have another area we can talk about too.
Kelli: Well, you and I have worked together for six months, and the last three months, I hit my goal, which was 10K a month. And I think that was being consistent in emails, social media posts, changing my message to speak to an individual in a heartfelt way that’s real.
And I think just you holding me accountable. Like I knew I was meeting with you most weeks, and so I was like, “Okay, I need to be on this because I know Alison’s going to ask me questions or I’m going to do new things.” So just knowing that you were a presence there helped me stay on target and on track. And I was really proud of myself. I don’t know that I’ve ever hit my goals like that before, but I knew I could do it. And there was just, I didn’t have the information. And so it felt really good to be able to do that with your help.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. And you did the work and you are now developing the capacity because you did it not only for one month. Like you are a five-figure earner because you did it like three months in a row. And you even like, it wasn’t just squeaking past 10K, like you blew past it. So, make sure that you continue to celebrate this for yourself. And like embody as you do your work, like the feeling and being of a five figure a month earner while like you help a lot of people. And that is the work that you’re doing. So, you definitely have the benefit of both worlds.
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Question to Kelli: And I think what you touched on this a little bit earlier and I think people might be curious to know is, you highlighted in the beginning that when you were earlier on in your business, your husband was a primary breadwinner, but now you’re the primary breadwinner and your family. And some females that are listening might be curious about that. How do you feel about being like the primary breadwinner in your family and taking on that role and responsibility right now anyways?
Kelli: Yeah, that’s the tough one. We’ve seen ups and downs around that. Next for my husband is he is getting his own coaching. So now is his turn to supersede anything that either of us has done before. So maybe we’ll flip-flop that again, but it’s just having a conversation with each other.
We’ve certainly hit struggles together. We tried to work together and we were butting heads quite a bit. So we started actually separating out a little bit more. And we find that that works better for us. So it’s figuring out what works in doing that. So I think it’s just communicating about everything, the concerns, the excitement, the growth, and it’s still a work in progress. We’re still working on it. Had our growing pains.
Alison: Yeah, and I think for you guys, I totally see both of you just really growing and evolving in many ways. And yeah, there might be flip-flops, but I think it’ll be less of like a primary person for like a year or half a year. It’ll be more like more months to months or just a few months to months, alternating back and forth.
Kelli: Yeah, I would love both of us to see that grow. And I don’t want to be in competition. I want to be on each other’s team. It’s just like putting each other on.
Alison: Yeah, I love that.
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Question to Kelli: So for the entrepreneurs listening, and especially because you do help entrepreneurs get unstuck and find more momentum in their life, in their business, wherever they might feel the most stuck, what advice do you have to the entrepreneur that maybe does feel stuck in their business or does feel stuck in an area of their life?
Kelli: Getting support, calling in the helpers. So if it’s that you need self-confidence, you need to move past previous stressors or traumas, find somebody to support you in doing that. If you need like me to learn about sales and marketing, find somebody to help you do that. That we’re looking at those areas where we can grow and to begin to learn more instead of just being stuck and saying, “I’m so bad at this, I’ll never learn it.” It’s like, no, you can learn it. As long as we have breath in our bodies, we can still learn and grow and achieve things that were previously not possible.
Alison: Yeah, 100%.
Kelli: So go forward, call in the helpers, figure out what that is. And it’s really whatever you’re most connected to because there are so many different types of healing and so many different types of helpers. So which one sounds like it could be for you? And try it out. And if it doesn’t work, try out something else. And if that doesn’t work, keep trying out something else until you’re like, “Yeah, that’s it.”
Alison: Yeah, exactly. I kind of use the formula of figuring out a gap of where my lack of education is, whether it be like a gap in how to communicate better with my husband. So I need more of a helper in that realm. A gap of learning how to manage my finances better or whatever’s going on in my house, or is it a gap in marketing? I figure out the gap. And then I kind of think about like, “What is the type of person that would help me to fulfill that gap?”
So like, for example, my husband and I have a counselor that we’ve had now for a couple of years. And I knew that she was the person for me because I had a sense of what I was looking for. Like you said, I didn’t want to just do talk therapy. I wanted us to be able to communicate better and share our struggles and our perspectives with the individual, but then also get like tangible takeaways and which led me to the Gottman method. And then I interviewed several practitioners in that method. But when the individual that we’re working with now, when she told me like how she worked with people and how she actually utilized the Gottman method, plus she does a heart-based mindfulness strategy too. I was like, “Oh, that’s my person.” And now we’ve seen progress. We’ve been with her for a long time. And so that’s kind of personally how I find my helpers.
Question to Kelli: Do you have a strategy of how you find your helpers?
Kelli: I like interviewing, like you said, especially when you have really deep things that go into your heart, your mind, your life. So yeah, I think having consults with multiple people to see if it feels like a good fit before you sign on.
Alison: Yeah, I love that. And for me sometimes too, I have fears about investing like time and money.
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Question to Kelli: For yourself, how do you work through those fears or hesitations to get to the point to either invest the time to research? Cause it does take time to research the practitioners and do the interviews and figure out the right person. How do you help? Cause I know this is like really where you excel, like helping people get that momentum to start that. How do you advise someone that feels maybe, “Okay, I’m getting the nudge. Maybe I should do something, but I can’t get going.”
Kelli: During COVID, I listened to tons of podcasts from the most successful people of all different realms and walks of life. And what I heard consistently was they all felt fear and they were all scared and they moved forward anyway.
Now hearing that story in so many different ways over and over helped me feel like it’s okay to feel afraid, but I need to keep taking one step forward in front of the other. Sometimes I find myself, I’ll be looking at the mirror, feeling scarcity, feeling fear or worry and I’ll catch myself and I’ll say, “Well, okay, I don’t want to feel scared. How do I want to feel? I want to feel brave. I want to feel resilient. I want to feel like I can get through this. I can do this.” So I work myself up into that, how I want to be.
And then it’s doing the scary thing anyway, but I want to do it strategically. So I am, you know, taking note of who I think is going to be best. And we went through a couple of not good experiences and spent a lot of money on coaches before. So I was hesitant. I was like, “I don’t want another experience like that. It was horrible.” So it’s learning, growing, knowing the right questions to ask and seeing if it’s a good fit and then taking that leap.
Alison: Yeah! And that’s such a powerful question that you said, “How do I want to feel?” Like knowing that we actually have a choice.
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Yes, sometimes our emotions, as you know, because you’re the expert here, like you can’t control them, right? A situation or a circumstance is going to happen and you can’t control them when they come up in the moment. Like if you’re angry or sad or disappointed, but we also do have control in the ability of like knowing how we do want to feel at certain times as well. It doesn’t always have to be just like going on the emotional roller coaster with no hands on the wheel at all. That’s how I used to feel. And so then to avoid that, I would try to like feel nothing unconsciously. I didn’t realize.
Kelli: Yeah, or people will try to control everything and we cannot control other people. We cannot control other nature. All we can do is change our internal state of how we deal with life’s ups and downs. So that’s what we can choose. How we wish to show up through the turmoil? What type of qualities do we want to instill as we move through that?
Alison: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And for me, I have a friend that says like, when you say, you know, feeling the fear, I just love this kind of mantra, like I can feel the fear and I can still go.
I used to misinterpret this as my friend calls it gagging go. Like you just got to feel kind of vomiting and do it anyways. But I used to misinterpret this to be like, I got to block the fear, block the hesitations, like not honor actually what was happening in my nervous system and kind of just do it anyways. And that kind of, it was a big energy leak for me, I found out, because I was kind of stuffing that into the side or in a closet or under the rug. At the end of my day, I would feel so exhausted.
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But when I actually learned how to view that phrase a little bit differently or gag and go, or do it with the fear anyways of learning how to lean into the fear and actually feel the fear and know that I can also bring another emotion like confidence or courage, certainty along with that and actually like honor and say, “Well, why am I feeling fear?” And being present with that, it allowed me to process it through and it didn’t become an energy leak. So it was like a subtle thing for me, but it made a big difference in how I felt day to day.
Kelli: It’s a big thing because when people shut things down, whether suppression or repression, that starts with stress and then it turns into illness and sometimes into disease. So it really needs to be something that is looked at head on so that we can move through it in the way that we want to move through it. And really it’s like dealing with it. That’s how we become anti-anxious, dealing with the ups and downs and all arounds that is life in a way that we feel proud of. Can I feel centered and balanced as we move through life no matter what life throws at us? That’s really the beauty.
Alison: Yeah, and that’s really what you help your people to do.
Kelli: That’s right.
Alison: Yeah, I love that.
Question to Kelli: So anyone listening that’s like, “Oh, okay. Maybe she can be a helper.” How do they find you and get in contact with you?
Kelli: It’s on rapidtransformationsessions.com, and they can schedule a complimentary 30-minute consult so that I can learn more about what you’re experiencing specifically. And then I can talk about how I think I can support and we can see if it’s a good fit.
Alison: Awesome. And you’re also on Instagram as well. How can they find you there?
Kelli: @innermostsherpa. I like that imagery because it’s kind of like we’re going on this journey together and the sherpa usually have some type of donkey and all the equipment and they’re going with you on this hike but you’re walking together. So I’m going side by side with you but I’m helping you with some tools and processes and methods that help you transform. But we’re on this walk together. So @innermostsherpa.
Alison: Yeah, and when I first saw that I was like, ooh, the guide. Like you’re the guide. I love that. Great, you’ve shared so much wealth and wisdom here.
Question to Kelli: Any parting words of wisdom?
Kelli: Don’t give up. It’s never too late. A lot of times people get stuck in their past or that they feel like they’re doomed for a certain direction because that’s what they’ve seen so far but it is never too late. Never too late. You’re never too old.
You know, it’s just, there’s this book. It’s called “The Happiest Man Alive” by this guy named Eddie Jacu. And he was a concentration camp survivor. He went to four different camps and he was saved because he had a skill that was desired. He was a machinist. So when he got out, he went to work at an auto shop for 10 years and then he bought the auto shop. He became the store owner and he got married before that and everything.
And then at age 72, he and his wife became realtors. And in his 90s, he became an international speaker and went all around the world sharing his story as an inspirational speaker about how to live a happy life.
So when I see things like that, I know that it’s possible, you can recreate yourself at any moment. You can start a new career. You can learn new skills. You can do something amazing or different that you didn’t think was possible. So it is possible. Even people think that they have problems in relationships with their partner or with family members that they think are unsolvable. That’s not true. As long as there’s a desire, as long as you have a breath in your body, you can make a change. You can make a difference. You can do something different and you can learn. So that’s what I like to help people understand and to provide their resources and the personal power to do that. And really, I just want people to live a life that they love.
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Alison: Yeah, so impactful.
Kelli: It’s never too late and always learn something new. You can transform relationships. You can transform yourself.
Alison: And you’ve had clients in their 80s come to you.
Kelli: I had these two 86-year-old clients who drove from Pasadena for two hours to my office in Encinitas. And the reason why, the man reached out to me and he said, 95% of our relationship is great. 5% is not great. And he calls them depth spiral arguments. They would get into arguments that would spiral out. And he said, “We don’t want to do that anymore.” So they found me and we worked together over several sessions. And then he said, guess what? No more depth spiral arguments. And he called it his first miracle. He said, “We’ve experienced our first miracle in working with you because we’ve been married,” I think they’d been married like 60 years and they were able to create a shift. How amazing is that?
So now we’re working on the second one. It’s just so amazing. So the second one is like being more positive. The man in the relationship has some health goals. He’s working on his blood pressure. And his wife is working on, even if she feels like under attack from a family member or disempowered, that she can be calm, she can be relaxed and she can remember that she doesn’t have to take it so harshly because she’ll get into a reaction. So I’m helping her transform that into feeling empowered but handling it in a way that is in good relationship with others instead of again, blowing up. So like, “How can we handle that in a way that invites people in and we can work through that together.” And then he’s working on his health. So now they’re still coming to me, but they’re like, “We’re hoping for a second miracle.” So let’s see what happens.
Alison: Oh, I love that. So many stories you have of lives touched and people helped no matter the age or the circumstance.
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Kelli: I love that. They are showing me that you can create a change at any time and that even if 95% of your life is better, they still want to change that little part to make it amazing. How inspiring is that? They inspire me.
Alison: And that little percent can end up being a bigger impact more than they even realize.
Kelli: That’s right.
Alison: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your entrepreneurial journey and all your wisdom today.
Kelli: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on and thank you for your help as my coach.
Alison: Yeah, of course, anytime. And yeah, go give Kelli a follow on Instagram or reach out to her if any of this kind of percolated and you think you might want to work with her. I highly recommend.
Kelli: Oh, thank you so much. Look forward to it.
Alison: Awesome!
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