Leela Cosgrove: Intuitive Business and Heart-Centred Leadership

To anyone who follows Leela Cosgrove, you see a successful, intelligent entrepreneur and philanthropist. She has numerous achievements up her sleeve, including a successful multi-million-dollar enterprise. She didn’t get there easily though, and that is why we love her.

Leela is a woman who beat all odds, refusing to submit to the expectations of what early life dictated to her: a Brisbane housing commission flat, surrounded by violence, drug use and poverty. She chose instead to rise above it and shine. But to Leela herself, she sees herself as the same as everyone else. Except with a twist, of course.

Meet Leela Cosgrove, badass and high priestess of hard truths.

Kim: Can I ask who Leela Cosgrove is? What makes you tick? What lights you up?

Leela: Gosh, those are big questions. I am many things, and it’s funny, one of my oldest friends refers to me as “The Leela” [laughter]. I guess I’m just like most people; I’m a lot of things. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a spiritual practitioner, I’m a wife, I’m a sister, I’m a daughter, I’m a philanthropist, I’m a writer. I am many, many things, and all of those things are aimed at service.

Kim: Leela, you consider yourself the badass and high priestess of hard truths. I love that! Can you share why those terms resonate with you?

Leela: [Laughter] Let me start with high priestess because that’s something I’m passionate about. So, I grew up with a mother who was a Pranic healer, and my grandmother, she gave me a deck of Alistair Crowley tarot cards for my 13th birthday. So this is sort of a family thing.

When I was growing up, my mother and my grandmother owned a second-hand bookstore. One of the books I read when I was 13 years old was Mists of Avalon. It’s a story of the Arthurian legend told from the women’s point of view. The concept of this place where women went together to worship and connect to Source and stuff, but without it being separated from the world, right, because that was the disconnect for me. It’s like, sure you go to a nunnery, but nuns are apart from the world, and priestesses are a part of the world. So that concept of high priestess has been in my head since that time. Then as I’ve gone further through my life, I’m 42 now, I made the decision in my 30’s not to have children. And that in and of itself kicked off a whole bunch of internal questing in terms of maiden, mother, crone.

If you choose not to be a mother and you’re in that period of life, how do you look at that? How do you grapple with your own femininity and your own feminine journey without that if you’re not a mother? After a lot of questing I came to this concept of high priestess, for me anyway, because I do lead a community. I have done so for a long time and when you read books like Mists of Avalon and they talk about the high priestess of the community, even if she did have children, she would hand them to the community to raise because her job was to be the mother of the community first, and an individual mother second.

That was something that really resonated with me. So I’ve always loved the concept of high priestess. I think it’s a great way for women to see themselves. But high priestess of hard truth was something a client said to me once, he said, “You really are the high priestess of hard truths”.

And that’s because my life is very much about honesty, even when it is not good for me, not comfortable. Personally, it costs me large amounts of money and other things. I have a real dedication to getting to the heart of truth beyond everything else.

Kim: I love that answer and hence why I just knew we had to interview you. You’ve built an extremely successful business as one of the leading consultants in Australia, USA and Asia, correct? Can you tell me a little bit about what you do in your own words?

Leela: Sure, if I’m giving the cliff notes version, I tell people that I’m a small business marketing and sales consultant. But what I actually do underneath all of that is help people come to their truths and realize what it is they want from life. What they need to do to get there, and whether they’re really willing to pay the price. Because there’s a price for everything, right?

I grew up poor and in a housing commission suburb. I can tell you, there’s a price for poverty. And I’ve made a lot of money and I can tell you, tax bills, staff and all things, there’s also a price for having money. Everything is hard, you just have to choose which price you’re willing to pay in life for whatever it is you choose you want. I think that’s really what I do underneath everything else.

I help people get clarity on what are they doing, why they are doing it, what is it going to take to get to where they think they want to go, and is that really what they want.

A lot of the time people come to me and they want to make a million dollars. I’m like, “Okay, but why? For what end?” Don’t get me wrong, I do not have money issues. I’m not one of those people who tell you money doesn’t make you happy, there’s a lot of happiness that can be tied up in money.

I take care of my parents financially and that makes me really happy. My sister, I don’t take care of her, she takes care of me, but she works for me and that makes me really happy. Getting to see her fulfil her creative destiny and do really cool, amazing stuff and being a part of that journey makes me really happy. So there is happiness to be had in money, but there’s also a lot of stress and difficulty that comes with it too.

People can get these arbitrary numbers in their heads. “I want to make a million dollars”, “Okay but what does that mean?” I always call that a ‘Clayton’s’ goal, it’s a goal you have when you’re not really having a goal. It’s just a number people pluck out of nowhere. So it’s “What do you actually want from your life? What are you actually trying to achieve? What impact are you trying to have? What work do you love doing?” Because business is work and it’s going to be hard work so, what work do you actually want to be doing?

I help them get clear on that so that they can really understand what their journey needs to look like to achieve their goals and whether that’s what they want to do. And sometimes it isn’t.

One of my good friends who is an editor in Hollywood came and did a nine-day residential sales event with me. He said, “I’ve got to make my business work” and by the end of it, he was thinking “I don’t think I want to run a business!” And I’m like, “Good, because you have the dream job, you’re an editor in Hollywood working on amazing shows, why would you want to run a business?”

For me, I’m just as happy when somebody realizes what their work is, and it’s not business. As I am when somebody blows up their business and makes millions of dollars.

It’s not “How much money did the clients make?” It’s, “Did they find their truth? Did they come to this place in their soul?”

Kim: Was that your intent when you first began your business and journey as an entrepreneur?

Leela: I think it’s a progression. I definitely think when I started my business, I didn’t know that’s what I was going to do. My friends back then would tell you, “Yeah, Leela is someone who is brutally honest and who will ask the hard questions”. It is who I am, but I didn’t realize that that was going to become expressed through my business. It naturally evolved over time.

Kim: Leadership and stepping up in that space can have its own challenges. Were there personal obstacles that you overcame?

Leela: They’re still there, funnily enough. I’ve had this conversation four times today about leadership. Because even now, I still have moments where I’m like “Why would anybody want to follow me?” That doesn’t make any sense.

These days it’s less about clients. A lot of my focus is on the team we’re building for our projects. I have these amazing hyper-smart people who I look up to, who I am intellectually intimidated by. And they’re like, “You know Leela, you’re amazing and we want to follow you”.

That’s just all a bit weird. So yeah, it’s been an ongoing journey. It’s still something I have to come to terms with regularly, people actually want to work for me, they want to be on teams with me. I still find it hard to get my head around.

Kim: Is there a process that you work through yourself to overcome that constant hurdle?

Leela: Yeah, I do, and I just have a really good team around me. That’s the reason I’ve talked about this four times today. I’ve talked to my psychologist about it, I’ve spoken to one of my spiritual advisors about it. I have a team of people around me that I talk to and who help me tap back into my own truth, and I think that’s really important. I think it’s easy when you’re in a leadership position to get in your head that the job of leadership is a solo job. But I couldn’t survive without the team and the amazing group of people who hold space for me.

Kim: Leela, you’ve got a spiritual background, but business and spirituality have not always aligned. So how have you managed to pull the two together?

Leela: I think that’s a really recent idea that business and spirituality are separate. I think one of the best ways I sum this up is this:

I went to Egypt in 2011 and I was on the bus talking to Muhammad, who was our guide. You know, Egypt is an emerging country, it’s a third world economy, it’s a lot of people who are living in poverty who are selling stuff on the streets just to try to make ends meet.

We talked to this tour guide about what we did, and we’re talking about sales consulting and stuff. One of the things we said to him was, “One of the big things that we have to do is really help people get past their fear of sales, and their fear of making money.” Muhammad got this look on his face and he was like, “How can people fear making money?”

I had this moment of, “Oh yeah, fear of money is such a first-world, middle class luxury”. I think it’s one of the reasons I haven’t ever had that much of an issue with it. Because I grew up with nothing and I wanted that to not be the case, not just for me, but for my parents and for my siblings.

So I actually think it’s a false dichotomy that’s been created by, ironically and counter-intuitively actually, by improved living conditions. It allows people to be contemptuous of money and turn their nose up at it.

But if you think back to the oldest times, wise women, shamans, they weren’t accepting cash because we didn’t have cash, but they were accepting what was the equivalent of cash, right. So the wise woman didn’t have to farm, she didn’t have to feed herself. The villagers brought her those things in return for her skills. That’s what money is, it’s just a way to buy those things that you need. It’s always been a transaction.

I believe in energy for energy. If I’m going to put my energies into something, whether it’s the harder business and sales stuff or the more spiritual and meditation retreats that I run, I put the whole of myself into something, I absolutely have no shame about taking energy back in return for that. Why should I be ashamed or have any issues around that? Why should those things be separate if I’m going to give everything to you?

The best way that you can help the poor is not to be one of them, right? The people who can make the most difference in this world are the people who have the resources, and I don’t just mean money. Money is one thing, network connections, the people that you know to be able to affect change.

Kim: What do you believe has been the driving force behind your success as a female entrepreneur?

Leela: The Egyptian Goddess Isis mostly and I’m actually pretty open about this, and people think it’s really funny. I actually don’t make a lot of business decisions. I allow myself to be guided and always have done. I’ve always got a pendulum sitting here, that’s how I make most of my decisions. My meditation is how I know what I’m going to do next. I have multiple spiritual teachers in my life that I go to when I’m confused. That I can go to, to check in with. Those intuitive decisions, offset with that I am a workaholic, and I am a ‘learnaholic’. I am always somebody who has tried to better myself on every front, to learn as much as I can, to get as good at my job as I can to be.

To be the best possible version of myself as a leader and as a teacher that I can be. And I think that work ethic is a really important part of it as well. That’s the whole thing really, I just try to be the best I can while also improving myself constantly. And then I just basically let Isis guide me into what I’m supposed to do.

Kim: That’s magic, I love it. Leela, if you were going back in time to when you first started your business and leadership journey and gave yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Leela: It would be, stress less, stress less, stress less. Everything is not life and death, it’s fine. The worst possible thing that could happen is you’ll go back to a day job in between and pick up some money. It’ll be fine. And everything doesn’t have to happen yesterday, you’re going to be doing this for the rest of your life.

Kim: Just baby steps, one step at a time isn’t it sometimes? What is your vision for the future? Your business, you as a leader, all of it.

Leela: What I’m working on right now, and what I’m really interested in, is how trauma impacts personality development and then by extension, in a business context like in sales particularly. That is kind of the methodology I’m working through. So I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the years from sort of having a fairly traumatic childhood to then starting a business. That is not good for your trauma. I’ve been working with a therapist for many years. I’ve done a lot of personal development, and a lot of spiritual development, I consider the way I eat as a part of that journey as well. I’ve learned to regulate my hormones and regulate myself physically. So right now I’m taking all of that stuff and I’m currently working it into a piece of software.

But my really long-term vision for the next 20-30 years is to take the research that I’m doing and the data I’m collecting. And to be able to roll out a larger trauma education in terms of not just understanding your trauma, but also in terms of how to manage it and how to regulate it. I honestly believe that the number one issue in the world is trauma.

There was a wonderful meme on Facebook the other day that said “Trauma undiagnosed and untreated, looks like personality”. That just resonated so deeply because definitely who people thought I was 10 years ago, because the way I presented myself, was just my trauma. I think that’s what creates all of the world’s problems, and if we can start to teach people about this we create a better world.

Kim: My last question Leela, what is your fierce truth?

Leela: Truth is totally subjective, and I acknowledge that my truth is not your truth. I believe it’s important to heal our trauma so we can clear out what we really believe, what we really feel, what is really true for us and what we want to do in this lifetime. Not in the next lifetime.