#90 Bari Tessler – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of ensemble advice, South Africa. Today I have with me in the studio, Bari Tessler. And I’m really excited to share today’s episode with the listeners. Because this concept of somatic advice and how things show up in our body is, I think it’s something that like, connects back to all our money decisions. And Bari, thank you so much for being here today.

Bari Tessler
Thank you so much for having me.

Louis van der Merwe
I want to start with what a body scan is. And I noticed before our conversation, you took a little bit of a bit of a pause before answering the questions that I had. And you were so intentional, with the way you show up? Can you share a little bit of what is a body scan, I know I’m jumping right into it. But just to tease the listeners a little bit.

Bari Tessler
Sure, we can start with what is a body scan, and then we can back up and I can share more of my story and you can understand where it comes from. Right? And why I use it. So a body check in. So some people call it a body scan out in the world, I call it a body check in. And it’s simply a moment of closing my eyes. You know if I want or leaving them open but but pausing and letting myself check in? In my body? On a few different levels. So on a physical level, what’s going on, on a sensation level? On an emotional level? And where’s my breath? So on a breathing level? Where’s my breath in my body? Is it shallow? Is it full? Where is it in my throat in my chest? And sometimes the body checking can just be checking in on one of those levels? What you know, check in? What sensations Do you notice in your body? Or physically? What’s going on? Are your shoulders up? Are they down? Is your jaw loose? Is it tight, right. And I invite people to do a body check in and all the daily money moments that we have. So before we’re going to have a money conversation with our spouse, before we’re going to go online, and do some online shopping, you know, before we’re going to talk to our kids or parents about money or make a money decision, I also do a body check in in the heat of the moment, you know, because sometimes I forget to do it before is prep. But in the heat of the moment, when you’re online shopping, when you’re in the middle of that money conversation when you’re at the car dealership, a body check in is wonderful to do. And then I also do body check ins after the money decision is made. Or after the money conversation or after the money purchase. As a debriefing as a check in to see you know what was going on. In my body? What am I feeling now? What worked? What didn’t? What could I do better? So that’s a teeny little glimpse of, you know, what a body check in is and a little bit of how I use it. Yes, in my work.

Louis van der Merwe
Why is that important? When we talk about money for us to notice how our body showing up?

Bari Tessler
Well, it’s very important for me and many of the folks that I work with, and I have to go back, you know, now I have to go back a little bit to my story and then lead back in so I trained as a somatic psychotherapist, so I have a master’s in somatic psychology, and I spent most of my 20s getting that degree, you know, it was a lot of schoolwork, it was a lot of internship work. It was a very large thesis, and so on. Right. And so I my entire master’s degree is in somatic psychology. And the reason I chose that is because at the age of 16, I asked my parents if I could go see a therapist. I asked my parents if I could go to therapy, I wanted to understand myself better. And they sent me to a male therapists and they sent me to a talk therapist now. It was okay, its first steps. But neither of those are really good fit for a teenage girl you know, or for me, you know at that time, what I was, but I did you know I did therapy and it was a first step. And what was also happening at that time is I would go into my bedroom and play music really loud and dance out all of my emotions and then come out of the room and then be able to understand and are articulate what was going on for me right and share that with my parents are. And I felt a lot more calm afterwards, right. So for me, there was a year in between my undergrad. And before I knew what was next. And that in between was when I was living in Israel for a year. And I was jogging one day outside of a kibbutz that I was living in, living on. And, you know, I thought I made up somatic psychology and dance movement therapy, you know, I grew up as a dancer, I started getting really interested in psychology and therapy. And one day, I really said, I’m going to merge those together, and do dance therapy. And I really thought I made up an entire field. And then I get to Jerusalem and learn that there’s graduate programs in somatic psychology, and I make anything up. But what was great is that there were graduate programs, and you know, that in one in Boulder, Colorado, in the states that I could go to, right. So

Louis van der Merwe
someone also made this up just a little bit before you

Bari Tessler
Exactly, exactly. And I just knew that one, I stored a lot of things in my body, right. And soon, I learned that many people, we all store many things in our body, both beautiful things, painful things, trauma, joy, we, you know, experience it in our bodies. And sometimes things get stuck there left there, I just have learned that checking in with my body is, is is a great tool to help me understand what’s going on for myself in the morning. In the moment, it gives me more information. So it helps other people get out of their heads. And now I love the mind, you know, I like doing it. But I don’t want to just be operating in the world from my mind or making decisions just from my mind. There’s also sensations and feelings and you know, what our breath is doing. And I can look at someone and watch their facial expressions and their body movements, and someone can watch my you know, and so therapy, bringing in somatic psychology into therapy sessions is just as a therapist noticing what’s going on in the other person’s body and their breathing. Now, I don’t always know what that means to them. So I may invite them to say, you know, what do you notice? You know, what do you notice with your breathing right now? Or what? Did you just took a deep breath? Or you just did you notice you just held your breath there? Or what are you noticing and your shoulders or your chest? So it’s just inviting someone to notice what’s happening in their body? And then they can tell me what that means? Or what memories that brings up or, and so on. Right? So everyone shoulders up does not mean the same thing. And from my view, right? So it’s, it was one of the very first tools that I brought to my financial therapy work. And I realized I needed it. Because the very first group that I led 22 years ago, the very first financial therapy group, the first evening, I asked people to start talking about their money stories, meaning, you know, let’s go right to your family history, family of origin. Let’s get to it. You know, and I noticed that people just kind of went to a bit of a shock. deer in the headlights was too fast, too furious. So the very next evening, this was only a six week group. But the very next evening, a week later, I brought in the body check in.

Louis van der Merwe
Can I interrupt you? What did you see that made you realize that? Hey, this is this is too much too soon?

Bari Tessler
Well, I again, I have been studying body language, right? So after spending a decade, you know, of, you know, at the graduate program that I went to, we had to be your own case studies. So we had to be in therapy, in individual therapy and group therapy. We had to lead somatic groups, we had to lead movement groups, we had to do tons of somatic sessions with other people. So I had been studying body language and moving for a long time. So it was obvious to me that everyone was different. It was only to a lead. I lead very small groups, 10 people in my living room in California at the time, and I just saw the deer in the headlights. I just saw everyone go into somewhat of a freeze a shutdown, you know, and everyone’s body did that a little different. But it was just really obvious to me that everyone was telling me through their body language, it was too much too soon. And it didn’t feel safe and they couldn’t be brought brave. And I mean, they shared a little bit but when we when I introduced the body check in, which helps us pause, slow things down. You know, take them out Moments get centered, you may notice you’re not centered, you may notice you’re having really strong feelings. That’s fine, right? There’s no one way to do a body check in, there’s no right way, everyone’s going to be a little different, you’re going to notice something different each time. And really, it’s about letting yourself be curious. Right? And so that very second evening, when I brought in the body checking tool, and it’s not something you do one and done, it’s a lifelong practice, right. And I brought it in invited it. And I could just tell that, you know, everyone took a little deeper of a breath. Or, you know, I could tell that it felt more safe and brave in the space so that people can then even monitor how much they wanted to share that evening, or how little or, you know, they didn’t leave their bodies. I know, though, that first evening that it wasn’t just free, some people just completely checked out. There were lots of different versions of what I saw as too much too soon. You know, I moved people into overwhelm. So this little tool can help us pause, slow things down, get more in the present moment. Right. Yeah.

Louis van der Merwe
Strikes me how curious, you must be around how people respond, and just how for someone else, seeing that they might not have noticed that without the same training and the same intuition that you’ve accumulated over time?

Bari Tessler
Yeah, I was always a notice or, and a sensor. So as I was doing that, to some degree anyway, it was natural for me. But sometimes I would get overwhelmed with that information. You know, that was natural for me to notice. But then I had to learn tools as a therapist on how to work with all of that information. Right? Yeah. So that’s a little bit about the somatic tools. Now, that’s just one tool, or practice that I teach people, but it is step one. So when people say to me, tell me about your financial therapy methodology. I know you love to integrate emotional literacy and financial literacy. What’s step one? And I always say, step one, is the body check in?

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah, yeah, I noticed how important that is and how you can just actually ground someone, would you practice this with every session with a client? I know that a lot of your your work is in group sessions, but on a one on one session? Is this something that a financial planner could take and kind of make their own that might meet their client where, you know, they feel that okay, this, this is helping us just get present, it’s parking, the things that might be in our mind and just noticing what’s going on nobody?

Bari Tessler
I, you know, I now work with one of my programs is called as a mentor program for other therapists and coaches and financial planners, right? And so yes, I’m, I’m inviting financial planners, and all the financial professionals to bring these tools into their sessions when it feels relevant, appropriate, when the client seems open to it, but then, on some level, you don’t have to call it a body check in you don’t have to write. But yes, you can even do that before you’re going to have a session with yourself, right? Or yes, when you sit down with a client, you can just take a moment and just say, let’s just take a few seconds here to notice, you know, what your feeling is we’re beginning. Right? How about that? Or, you know, and I always end my body check ins with this tool, which is now called resourcing from Peter Levine’s work, right? But when I graduated from my program, it was 1998. Peter Levine’s first book was just coming out. So we didn’t study his work. Right. So this tool resourcing, which I’ve been doing for years and not calling that it’s just, we would end the body check in with one little adjustment, like, what is one little adjustment that you can make in your body right now, that would help you feel more present okayness in yourself, right, feel more calm. It could be, you know, lowering your shoulders and doing a little shoulder shimmy. That’s always one of mine, or loosening my jaw, right, or making sure the soles of my feet are on the floor. So there’s, I always like to end my body check ins with that. So why did I bring that up in this moment? I don’t know why I brought that. Why, why why shared that? Let me check in. Let me check in. What was your question? Let’s see if I can always come back to it after a few minutes.

Louis van der Merwe
I think it’s so beautiful that you just shared like a practical example of of how this might work. And what I’m wondering is the kind of space that someone would have this conversation assuming that It’s, it’s in person. One of the things that we should maybe pay attention to like when we’re inviting someone into a meeting room, like, I’m assuming a lot of the spaces that people meet with their clients are maybe not conducive to this, like, are there things that when you meet with someone, or with another professional that you think, Oh, wow, like, they miss this, they really need to pay attention to that?

Bari Tessler
Well, here’s the thing. I mean, all my work is mine, and has been for, you know, years and engineers. So I don’t meet with people live anymore when I have it, right. So when I had my son, 14 years ago, I needed recovery time after I had him. And my husband got my entire business online. So where I used to do local groups, live groups, or I used to see clients live local. I haven’t done that in 15 years, you know. So here’s, here’s the thing. Number one, with any financial professional, or even therapists, we have to do our own money work first. Okay, so we that is step one, it’s similar to what a parents do, how do they teach their children how to have a different relationship to money? Well, you need to start working on your own relationship to money first, and even couples individually, and then they can come together, it’s very important that they each know what their money styles are, and personalities and approaches have a better understanding of that. And then they can learn how they’re different and what their dynamics are. Right. And so it’s the same with when we’re professional. And here’s the thing. We’re not going to know everything about money, there’s always going to be things to learn. Now, my financial planners are folks who come from more of a traditional financial management background, at first, you may all think, you know, you know, everything, or you learned a lot of really important things. And there’s still missing pieces in your education. And what’s the missing piece is one doing your own money work is to money psychology, you know, is to really learning how to work with your clients and have compassionate conversations. I think that’s all changing. But you know, I once worked with a couple and he came from a traditional financial background, and she really did not, she was more of a yoga teacher at the time now turn real estate, he really thought he could be the best teacher for her. And he kept pulling out the spreadsheets to show their numbers. And she was like, get those away from me, you know? And he was like, but I know everything. I’ve learned all of this, like I should you need to listen to me. And I’m the answer. And I have the answer. It’s very black and white, you know? And for her, you know, that’s where she brought me in. And he was very skeptical at first, you know, and he didn’t understand what was this talk about money, emotions and money stories. And it took them a little bit, but he realized, oh, there were some missing pieces from his education. And guess what? A couple usually has two people have their own styles and approaches to earning and spending and saving and investing. There’s not one right way there really isn’t. You both need to listen to each other. And they learned how to have a new kind of money date, where they didn’t go to the numbers or the spreadsheets first, right? They told stories and shared money, memories and what they learned from their parents and their lineage first, then talked about values, and then they moved on to the numbers, right. But the other piece is she really had to learn her own bookkeeping system, not spreadsheets, she had to go off and get a trainer and someone to hold her hand metaphorically and literally, and teach her how to use I think it was Quicken, you know, so she felt empowered, and can come to the table and say, This is how I’m looking at her numbers, right? And then he got to learn, wow, he actually has some emotions, or some childhood memories from his family of origin. And he never shared that with her. Right. So to come back, I think that, you know, the therapist needs a therapist, the financial planner, not just needs a financial planner, but they need a therapist. And so they need to do their some of their own money work first, which is what our triggers what our strengths are our money, what are our challenges, really understand our money story, right, as some people call money scripts, and start there just so you have more compassion and understanding that, you know, as Rick Taylor and I always talk about, it’s either 85% or 90% or 95% of money decisions are based on our emotions, right? We keep seeing different locks on that. And so if that’s the case, then everyone reads really needs to understand what are the set of emotions or cocktail of emotions that comes up around money and as a financial planner, or you don’t necessarily have to go back to school to be a counselor or a therapist. But you can go to therapy for a little bit, you know, you can do some of your own work, where you can understand that for most people, for most of your clients, it is very emotional, they will make decisions by their emotions. And so learning a few tools or practices to bring into the sessions would be really, really helpful. You know, I always say, when you go to a financial planners office, definitely do a body check in before you head into the room, do one in the middle of the during the middle of the meeting, and you might need to go take a bathroom break, because that’s a great place to do a body checking, go take some space, come back, maybe get some water, you know, have a snack, come back in. And then then maybe you can be more present and ask the questions that you need. And, or even when your eyes start glazing over, when they start showing you an investment statement, or some of the you can say, Hold on, give me a moment here. I’m gonna take a deeper breath. Right? So you you as the financial planner can just notice start to notice, you know, what’s going on with your client? Are you noticing they’re shutting down? Or you’re noticing they’re looking at the budget or plan or, you know, and their eyes are glazing over? Or right? Do you maybe even just do you need a moment? Or do you need me to explain this in a different way? Or, you know, what’s going on with you right now? Like, are you having any emotions or memories?

Louis van der Merwe
I love how you phrase those all his questions, almost like inviting someone to respond instead of just saying, oh, let’s do a body scan right now. It’s

Bari Tessler
exactly it’s an invitation. And I could probably add

Louis van der Merwe
to the problem. Well, they’ll

Bari Tessler
go why? Why it’s a body scan, what what is, you know, what is on the agenda? What does that even mean? So, an invitation, you’re also inviting yourself to take a deep breath and write and yeah, slow down.

Louis van der Merwe
Bari, when when we think about clients in a major transition, because often as financial planners, and even as a financial transition, as we’re dealing with clients, where the issues that they’re dealing with are often very emotive and we seeing them in extreme times of their lives. Does does this make it more difficult to have these conversations these type of conversations? Or is that actually why this is so necessary? Because someone is in such an extreme state that they have left the the body and they may be not connected?

Bari Tessler
Yes. You know, transitions happen for all of us in a long life, right? They do. Births, Deaths, loss of job moving, right, we can name so many, right? Loss of money, increase in money, like there’s so many different ways that like these transitions happen, right? I’m going to tell a little story. And give a few tools of how I work through this. Okay. Because whenever there’s I call it your sometimes it’s a curve, I call it a curveball. But sometimes I call it a transition, it just depends on what it is like, were you given some kind of life, or money curveball or life curveball that affects your money? stuff right? There, it’s all cut. It’s all pretty much interconnected. Right? So when, in my 20s, my favorite topics were intimacy, relationships, grief, death, sexuality, like all of those topics, you know, and then, and we’d never realized my graduate program had never talked about money. And then that became my big topic. I think, originally, I thought, Well, I would never be dealing with those other topics. And those are my favorite. I deal with all those topics. It’s just through the doorway of our relationship to money, right. So sometimes I refer to it as a money curveball, like something happens and it surprises you. No one likes to be surprised, right? Another moment, I’ve all these little ways of saying it. I call it a money. Cohen Kayo, an from the Zen Buddhist m term, which is it’s a riddle, there’s some kind of riddle that you’ve been given, and you need to figure it out. So you’re in a transition, or you’ve had a curveball, and it’s gonna take some time to come to a single solution. And you cannot see what that is yet. And so you have to hold it as a riddle. Right. So I’ve in my book, my first book, there’s a whole chapter on money co winds and that concept, right? So I’m always kind of evolving how I talk about things. But I’m trying to give people some simple language money, Cohen’s not so simple but money curveball is right. And so that they can, they can hold on to things, think about it in a simpler way, and make sense of what’s happening. Right. So there’s ebbs and flows in life, and there’s ebbs and flows in money. And that was one of those simple aha moments years ago, similar to the same emotions that come up in life and all other areas come up around money, you know, but the ebbs and flows one was huge, like, not every year, are we going to earn more and save more? And give more? Hopefully, we have some of those years, but not all our years? And for most people that I know, right? So within that there’s going to be these curveball moments. And I think number one is just naming. I’m in a transition or a curveball just happened. If we can even just bring awareness to that. That’s progress. Because usually what happens at the beginning, is we go into fight flight, freeze fawn, right, we go into dysregulated nervous system states. And we don’t know what’s happening. It takes us a few days or a few weeks, I had a smaller version of one thing about five years ago, where was just any nice spring day walked to my mailbox, I opened up my mailbox, and there was quite a few letters from the IRS. And I was being audited for not just my personal finances, but my business finances, all of our entities are being audited. And I had been audited the second year of my business 20 years before. And I call that my cute little audit. This freaked me out. And it took me a good week or two of having trouble sleeping. To You know, one day within, let’s say two weeks of that, that mailbox, you know, moment, two, in the middle of the day, I work from home, and I realized I’m gonna go take a bath today now, because water always helps me shower baths, you know, cold showers, hot showers, the whole, you know, just helps shift my state, and I got in the bathtub. And in the bathtub, I think I was there for two hours just hanging out. And it took me just a few minutes to finally name after a few weeks. I’m in a transition. I you know, I’m in a mani Cohen riddle. And it’s freaking me out. So I spent like 30 minutes just sitting in naming what all the feelings? Why am I I’m so angry that this is happening. I want to go running away. I’m freezing and shutting down. I was doing all of it. You know, it’s remote. And then I and then I just named all the different states and feelings first. Then I moved into what is this reminding me of oh, this is reminding me something of my parents and a financial challenge they went through. All of this is reminding me of this, right? And so I just sat there. And someone recently called this self coaching. And I was like, that’s a great way to look at it. So I was in the bathtub, doing some self coaching, taking myself through a process I teach about right, which is naming the feelings, feeling them sitting with them, acknowledging them honoring them. Then after I did that, then I can move into now. Okay, now, what are my next steps? Or what have my what are my next practical questions? Okay. Well, do I have support? Yeah, I have a great accounting team. And they’re going to interact with the IRS, and we just have to send them all the documentation and it doesn’t have to be paper anymore. Like in the olden days, it’s all digital. Right? So my entire audit, we proved everything from digital receipts, you know, not paper, like my first audit. And do I trust them? Yes, I do. And I just went through all these questions, and they were more spontaneous questions in the moment, I love to ask questions, new questions, you know, and I wound up getting out of that bathtub not having a solution, why it took a few more months to go through that audit. And a few more months for the IRS to come to the conclusion that all of our income and expenses were accepted, after tons and hours of paperwork. And there was one gray area, self employment tax in the US. And accountants could be risk more risky with that and my accountant was and we owed a little bit for that. But all of my income and expenses were accepted, which was very empowering. But getting out of the bathtub that day. I didn’t know how that was going to end up. But I got out But that tub at least going through all the emotions and naming them and sitting with them and the memories and what it was bringing up, and then asking questions of what kind of support did I need. And then honoring that I was in a transition in a money colon, that will get resolved at some point. So I basically calmed my entire nervous system in a two hour, bathtub, now you don’t have to do that everyone’s gonna have their own version, go on a walk, go exercise, go talk to someone that you trust and feel safe with, there’s so many different ways that we can do this. But that’s a little bit of how I took myself through a curveball, you know, a riddle that took many months to come to a resolution. And it’s essential that you find a way to calm yourself down. Even though you’re still scared, even though you’re still feeling some anger. But to take it down a few notches in that process that I did in the bathtub is one of the ways that I support people through their own curveballs.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you for sharing that beautiful story. I’m, I’m part of a grief coaching group. And they talk about having a temporary break and finding something where you can replace or something physical, you can go to, to say, Hey, I just need to get away for a little bit. And then, like, you recreated that. And what strikes me is the fact that you came to the conclusion that yes, this is temporary, I’m gonna get through this, this is something that will path boss at some point. And we just need to, you know, follow the path and see where it leads.

Bari Tessler
Well, they’re all temporary. That’s the thing in the moment, it does not feel like that. And so telling ourselves that, but even tell ourselves that we have to have awareness that we’re in a transition state, right, we have to do some self coaching and realize the larger view, the larger perspective, there’s ebbs and flows, everything is temporary, but we don’t know how long a curveball or riddle is going to last. Some of them are just a few weeks, some are a few months, and some take longer to resolve. So we have to keep coming back to what is that, you know, for me, it’s all also besides the water is hiking, you know, or going on a really, really long walk in the woods. And that’s another place where I can find rest, or deep quiet or listening and hit some kind of pause inside myself where then I can have these talks with myself and say, Hey, right, we’re in a temporary place. It’s not going to be like this forever. What kind of support do we need? Who do we need to reach out to? Right? Yeah,

Louis van der Merwe
building your team. You mentioned your books. And so I want people listening to this, to be able to find that, can you share a little bit, you know, the the art of money, and you have the art of money workbook? Where can people find that and also what led you to sharing your work so openly.

Bari Tessler
So I have two books now, as you said, and the first one came out in 2016, the art of money, a life changing guide to financial happiness. And that’s a 300 page book. So it’s pretty meaty. And it’s my entire methodology. So it’s my financial therapy methodology that I’ve been teaching for 22 years and, you know, integrates money healing money, practices in money maps, I shared all my tools and practices and tons of storytelling. I love telling stories. And it’s in the first book, my stories, stories of folks in the community. That’s the first book. The second book is a workbook of about 200 pages of journaling exercises. So if you don’t even know where to start, you go to that second book. And ask yourself one question, you know, or you go to your partner and you ask them one question, you know, on a money date or out for dinner and one question, you know, there are hundreds there are many, many, many questions also, based on my money, healing money, practices, and money maps, right broken down. You can get those books everywhere online, as far as I know, you know, Book Depository if you live all over the world, Amazon. They’re in a lot of local bookstores in the US and Canada. It’s starting to be translated into other languages, which I’m really proud of. We’ve had Korean we’ve had Chinese, Czech, Polish and Spanish. It hasn’t happened yet that I know of, but that’s my goal for the year is to have it translated into Spanish. Next feels essential, because I’ve always had Spanish speakers, you know, in my community, and I’ve always had people from all over the world. So the reason I did those books is I mean, day one. I was been teaching my work in groups as I mentioned, so 22 years ago, my first group 10 people, my Living room and then I just hit repeat. And each time, we’ll do it better and different and add in things that I missed. Or I could, you know, I realized about the body check in will miss that add that in, I realized we forgot about some kind of forgiveness, add that in with yourself, right? I just you know, I’ve been fine tuning it in groups for years, because I think we can learn so much from each other. We can unshaven, quicker, not quicker, you know, some people need to do private work, but I just always wanted to do groups, it was also more affordable and more accessible. Right then private therapy. So my private financial therapy, I always like open up 10 slots. And that’s it over the years, where groups I’ve, you know, one after the next. I’ve always done it that way. And the and I used to always give free talks to on my work, and anywhere and everywhere. I’d get 50 people I get five people, you know, I never know. And I did that over and over and over. But one of the very first talks, someone stood up and said, well, when’s the book coming? And I just said, you know, soon. So you committed? Yeah, well, I know, I always knew that there would be a book I just did. And when we I started, I had a co writer at the time, I’ve always had people helped me with writing because I come up, I like I’m such a storyteller. And I love the tools and practices and I love directly working with people. And I can create an entire outline and, and then but I need someone to write it. And then we go back and forth with every word and every sentence in every paragraph. And but I’ve always needed writing and editing help, you know. And so I’ve worked with three different people over the last 22 years. And I was working with a woman who we started creating the book proposal, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. And then I had a woman named Rachel Newman, who was running a small publishing house parallax press call me and say, Have you ever thought about writing a book? And I said, Well, yes, we’re in the middle of creating the book proposal. And she said, send that over. And within a few weeks, within six weeks, I had to book my first book deal. So that’s how that happened. And there may just be a third, you know, book on on the horizon, it’s being discussed. Which is exciting. For me. Yeah.

Louis van der Merwe
Wow, I can I can see how proud you are of what you’ve created. But also, what an impact this have made in people’s lives. What is the that’s inspiring you when you think about the future of of your work, and as a somatic practitioner in your financial therapy work?

Bari Tessler
Oh, great. I want to answer one more thing about the book, and then I’ll move into that. So we just surpassed 30,000 copies for my first book, which I’ve always had a small list, I have 10,000 people on my email list. My social media is not huge. But we’ve sold 30,000 books. That’s, that’s I think, you know, for a first time author, and for a personal finance book that you know, incorporate somatic tools in it. I am, I was very happy to see that that happened December of 2020 to 2022. So what’s on the horizon for me? Is this third book, right, which I won’t say anything more about yet. But really, what’s on the horizon is the, you know, I teach to programs now. And for years, I just had the one program, it’s my year long program. It takes you through my three phases of my methodology. It’s really for everyone, right at all different income levels. And there’s always therapists and financial professionals in there, but it’s moms and it’s everyone, right, and that your loan program. It’s a lower price point program. That’s always available. That your loan program, and I’ve been doing it now for I’ve been doing for 22 years with a year long I’ve been doing for 12 years. So okay, so there’s that. But then sorry,

Louis van der Merwe
this is this is virtual, so someone from South Africa would be able to join Oh, yeah, if you can figure out the timezone.

Bari Tessler
Oh, yeah. Well, no, that’s the thing. You don’t even need to figure out the timezone. So all of my content is an online teaching. So the 12 modules that break down money healing into four months or four modules, money practices, it’s all in this online teaching area, right. So all the content, the audio, the written, everything’s there, my library, it’s all in the teaching platform. The support is twofold. Again, it’s a lower price point program, right? But there is some live community support. There’s a Saturday call working. So what time What time is it for you right now?

Louis van der Merwe
So it’s, it’s just off to eight o’clock. Okay. European

Bari Tessler
Time. All right. So we have tons of folks on European time and so it’s it’s a morning session, and we have folks right who it’s evening for them and they attend or even and that’s weekly with my alumni guides, they host that and then once a month I do an office hours and that’s also at a time like this where it’s evening for you. So yeah, Are you can you know your total? Yes, you can join all of that. The thing that’s really exciting is that for years, people have asked me to do some kind of certification in my financial therapy method, and I kept researching it over and over and over. And I kept coming to know, not doing it. Because I don’t want people under my umbrella. That’s just, you know, I chose to get the master’s degree, but then I, and did so much internship work, but then I chose to not be licensed therapy because I didn’t want to jump through more hoops. And I wanted to do my work in a different way. It was before online programs, I didn’t know how I was going to do it. But I just had some, you know, a little bit of a rebel spirit in me, you know that I was like, there’s another way, there’s another way. So if I don’t like being under someone’s umbrella, then why would I want people undermine right. And so it took me a while. And I thought I would do this when I turned 50. But it wasn’t until I turned 53. Last year, that I finally created the structure and the framework, and it’s a four month mentor program for other therapists for other therapists and coaches and financial folks. It’s 16 Zoom calls. So it is going deeper and all of the themes that are in my books, and in my year long program. And originally, I thought everyone had to take my year long program as a prerequisite. But I decided not to do that. So I just charge a little more for people who’ve never taken my program. And then they get the 12 modules like all at once were in the year long. It’s dripped out one month at a time, right. And we’re professional. So again, we’re not going through that content one month at a time, we’re going deeper and all the themes and the goal there is threefold one, to have a safe and brave space for financial professionals to do their own money work. Right, we really, really, really need a place to talk about our money stuff, the good,

Louis van der Merwe
the brave space is in the transition is to work. One of the protocols is also to create a safe space. But there’s just there’s something more to it, when we call it the brave space.

Bari Tessler
I’ve just started adding in brave to save in the last year. Yes. So I love that you caught that a safe, safe and brave spaces. And second is to learn more tools and practices to bring to your clients. Again, if you’re an estate planner, therapist, social work will be different but right we’re learning that MySpace. And then the third is to create healthier businesses or practices around pricing and business models. That’s the third thing. So I’m on my second run of this, I’ll do another one at the end of 2023. It’s a small group, the first round, we had 40 people the second round 17 I think this next group will be something in the middle. And and I’m loving this. I’m really really loving, mentoring other therapists and financial professionals in my work, this is something I love.

Louis van der Merwe
What’s the feedback that you received from that first group of professionals that’s now gone through this? What changed for them after they’ve completed this,

Bari Tessler
we had them fill out an intake not everyone did. I wish everyone would fill out intake forms, but that’s not how it goes. And we mostly got really, really positive reviews everything from it was the best money I’ve ever spent on any financial training or financial education or any any business training or business education. So that was that was great. But it was the most well spent money right? I mean, our intake was really detailed. You know, tell us one new somatic tool you learned and how you’re using it with yourself with your clients tell us one new money tool you’re learning to use with yourself. Tell us aha moment so there was there was so much you know, there is there was so much in there, I would have to go back so I don’t you know like what were we all we always grab testimonials from that. And then that’s what’s on our program page or sales pages. What did people say? I have a hard time repeating that back. Even though it’s not so much praise it’s it’s also just like, This is what they got, you know, this is what they got from doing the work. Oh my god. I mean, there’s so yeah, there’s so many that I would have to go look to see.

Louis van der Merwe
Bari I like how when we talk to people to say hey, this is the work that we need to do. Now you have created something practical and you’ve said hey, this, this is actually what it means to do the work right either self paced or through this this group.

Bari Tessler
Yeah, I mean, even with my first program, when we will say well, what are the results they get, you know, and I’m like, my god, it’s everything from they’re not fighting with their spouse anymore. around money. They’re sitting down I’ve been having loving and compassionate money conversations, or, yeah, they’re learning to save for the very first time. And it’s not just they’re learning to save, but they got to understand why they’ve been so afraid to save have been so resistant to save thinking about the future is brought up so much for them. You know? Yeah, people, some people learn how to pay down debt and pay down debt, you know, there’s a lot of practical things that they learn. But they also learn that their money, emotions aren’t going to necessarily go away. But now they have tools to meet those challenging moments. And so the money emotions are decreased, or they’re smaller, or they’re not as scary, or, you know, so I, this is always an interesting question, like, what are the results, because we could talk for hours about what people get by doing this work. And it’s so different, where someone begins and where they end and if they’ve done therapy before or not. And, right. So there’s quite

Louis van der Merwe
a, that’s also even the results that they have noticed, right, it might not be the things that they haven’t noticed, or that’s not as obvious, just the way they’re showing up in their client meetings,

Bari Tessler
which well, for them program, it’s the way they’re showing up the way they feel more confidence in themselves in their work and their value. And the way that they price things in their business models, they feel more, you know, in, in the tools that they’re bringing to their clients and what they’re noticing in their clients and how they’re able to support them, and hold their hands better for therapists, it’s just that they can talk about money in the first place in the sessions, you know, which is really like, in back in the day, if you brought up money stuff therapist did not know how to support someone, because they hadn’t done their own work. They hadn’t done their own work, work around their own money, relationships. So it’s so essential you understand your biases, your strengths, your challenges, your triggers, it does not mean that one day, we will be done with our money work. This is a lifelong journey. And we’ll be fine tuning forever. But we can get the tools and practices to meet these curveballs to meet these big emotions to meet when we’re going into overwhelm. And that’s what I’m teaching.

Louis van der Merwe
I think that’s such a beautiful way for us to end this conversation. Thank you so much for creating these rich resources. For someone that wants a little bit more information, what would be the best place for them to go?

Bari Tessler
Go to my website, Baritessler.com, get on my email list. And if you get on my email list, you get a little taste of my financial therapy methodology, which you’ll see referred to sometimes as the art of money, you’ll learn about money healing, money, practices, money maps. Once a week I send out a newsletter sometimes it’s a new article. Next week, I’m going to be sharing my relationship with my mom, we just went on a trip together and more about my money story with her and her money story. I’ll be sharing that sometimes I share a podcast interview right? Or go get one of my books or both of my books and begin there.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you so much, Bari, I wish you all the best for your third book and the work you’re doing.

Bari Tessler
Thank you so much for having me. I hope that that was helpful and interesting to your community. And I think we just touched the surface but thank you so much.