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The Positive Voice
The Positive Voice, is a podcast dedicated to helping you live your best life. Our show is all about spreading positivity and inspiration, and we cover a variety of topics that are designed to help you cultivate a more positive mindset. From the neuroscience of positivity to the power of affirmations, we explore the many ways in which you can bring more positivity into your life. Our episodes are full of practical tips and strategies that you can apply to your own life, as well as inspiring stories from people who have overcome adversity to achieve their dreams. So if you're looking for a dose of positivity and inspiration, join us on The Positive Voice and start living life to the fullest!
The Positive Voice
E63: It's lonely in the Middle...dissecting the phases of the Entrepreneurial Journey
Feeling lost in the entrepreneurial wilderness? You're not alone. Join me, Coach Chef Kim, as we uncover the rarely discussed emotions that plague the entrepreneurial journey. From the biting loneliness to the gnawing uncertainty, we're getting real about what it takes to stand firm when your business world is shaking. My own rollercoaster ride from launching a bakery to reimagining my career amidst a pandemic is just the beginning. We're also celebrating the grit of a custom cookie and cake artist who transformed her personal and professional hurdles into a recipe for success.
The entrepreneurial road is paved with sacrifices, often unnoticed by the customers we serve. This episode peels back the curtain on the realities of hustle culture, the importance of setting boundaries, and respecting your own time. Hear my candid stories of late-night bakery runs and learn why it's crucial to align your business with your personal values. Plus, we dive into the psychological scars that can linger long after the oven cools down, exploring how past business experiences can shape our reactions to stress and our definition of success.
Your business should nourish your life, not consume it. That's why we're bringing focus to entrepreneurial wellness and offering a supportive hand to fellow business owners. Whether you're craving connection or ready to reshape your professional landscape, our free mindset group and the upcoming 90-day emergence coaching program might just be the sanctuary you need. Let's navigate these tumultuous waters together, redefining success to encompass life satisfaction and overall well-being. So, until our next sweet encounter, carry these insights with you as armor and inspiration on your entrepreneurial quest.
Welcome to The Positive Voice, a feel-good podcast designed to inspire and uplift through heartfelt conversations and the power of positivity! Hosted by transformational life coach and hope dealer, Kimberly Houston, where we delve into personal growth, wellness, and the beauty of overcoming life's challenges.
Join our creative and supportive community as we laugh, learn, and grow together on this life-changing journey. Subscribe to The Positive Voice and let's spread the joy, one conversation at a time!
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Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of the positive voice podcast. I am your host, coach, chef Kim, and I'm super excited that you have decided to tune in today, so this is going to be one of encouragement and empowerment. At this point, we are about two months into my 90 day coaching and emergency coaching group that I launched in January, and as I'm gearing up for cohort number two, which will go live in March I'm sorry, in May. As I'm thinking about that and preparing for it, there are some things that I want to discuss. So the first thing is this there will be a time as an entrepreneur, when you feel like you're in a very, very lonely part of being a business owner. Let me explain to you what that means. You reach a place where you may begin to outgrow. Your current friendships or your family members don't understand why you're going hard in the paint. They don't understand why you can't come to the family functions because you have deliveries. They don't understand why you're no longer at the places you used to be at prior to you getting serious about your business and so the life that you had. You actually begin to mourn it because it no longer serves your future trajectory, but then, at the exact same time, you're not quite to the level of having the space, the time or the access to entrepreneurs who are killing it in the game, people who have put in the work. They have already been through the phase that you are in and now they are on the other side of it. They have reached the point where they do have passive income, come again in addition to their active income, where they do have some sense of work life balance not necessarily that it's 50-50 balance, but enough to the point where they know how to give the time and attention to whatever needs it in that moment, without feeling guilty. And you're not quite there yet, right? You haven't reached the point of being in the this. This feels like a success realm versus the. I'm just starting out. You're somewhere in the middle and somewhere in the middle feels lonely. Somewhere in the middle is when you begin to question if this is what you're supposed to be doing. Somewhere in the middle is where you can't figure out if this is worth it or not.
Speaker 1:Here is what I can tell you, because I coach entrepreneurs at various points in their journey and I have the honor and the privilege to have monthly one-on-one conversations with the people who are inside of my emergence coaching group. I understand them and their businesses intimately. One of the things that I pride myself in is that I don't consider myself a business consultant at all, and here's why I say that I coach entrepreneurs across a wide variety of industries, niches, etc. Some of them are online, some of them are in person, some of them are hybrid, and so I don't have the time to dig into all the nuances of what their their specific business may need. A business consultant is the person who has time to dig into the nuances of the things that you are doing. I am a coach. I am more concerned with your thought processes, with what's inside of your heart, what's inside of your mind, what limiting beliefs are holding you back from moving from stuck to successful. That's where I come in right. So I'm not somebody who's going to give you a six figure plan. I'm not going to do that, because what's the point in giving you a six figure plan if your mindset doesn't switch and you live with lack? When you are focused and stuck on having a lack mindset, it doesn't matter how much money you make. You will not be an energetic match to keep it. And so, as I am working with entrepreneurs and we are just kind of going through the things that have shaped them and turned them into the person that they are, I like to get people to understand entrepreneurial wellness. I know what it feels like to be starting out when I started my very first.
Speaker 1:Well, I've had a couple of entrepreneurial endeavors. When I started my first bakery, it was in home. I had to go through all the things, all the steps to get my home certified. It required me to move to. I had to. I went to culinary school. I didn't have to, but I did. I went to the corn on blue. I graduated top of my class. I did all the things right. Then I turned around and began teaching and I taught from ages three to 93. Not a lot. I had a three year old in the class and I also had a 93 year old grandmother in the class, and so I covered the gamut on all the things that happened when it comes to baking, when it comes to culinary instruction.
Speaker 1:I then wanted I knew that at some point I wanted to open a brick and mortar store. I didn't know if that brick and mortar store was going to be a bakery. If it was going to be a place to teach, and so I settled on both, and those of you who know me, you know my story. You know that that business plan was approved on March 13th, friday, march 13th of 2020. And then, on March 14th, we went into what they considered at the time a two week global crisis that turned into the COVID-19 pandemic, and so I felt like that I had put years.
Speaker 1:At this point, it had been about eight years of me working diligently. I got a master's degree in education because I wanted my school to be the best one there was. I had done all the things. I'm a LaCourdon blue train chef with a master's degree in education. I write curriculum. It's what I do. I do it on my spare time for fun. I have published three books and I'm currently working on a fourth.
Speaker 1:Right Like this is who I am. This is the makeup of who I am as an entrepreneur, and what COVID taught me was there was power in the pivot, and I understand that we definitely overused the word pivot a lot, but what I took away from the experience was everything that I had experienced up until that time created the entrepreneur that I am. These are the same tools and techniques and things that I then turned around and looked at my life and said well, you know, I suffered an injury Thanksgiving Day of 2020, where I'm still working through it four years, almost four years later well, three and a half years later where my hands don't work. You know, just last night I was in a brace because I couldn't feel my fingers, and so this is something that doctors have stated I will live with forever. So what do you do when you've done all the right things, when you've been the beginner entrepreneur, when you've reached a level of fame and success that you were like there's literally no way that this won't work Right, like when I was approved, when my business plan was approved to open the cookie Emporium that was going to be the name of the business we were going to open.
Speaker 1:When my business plan was approved on March 13th 2020, I was at the height, the height of my career as a custom cookie and cake artist. I had just been on TV, you know, the Real Housewives of Atlanta aired right around this time. Their season finale aired with Portia's gender reveal for her daughter. I did the cake Like there. I had done a lot with the Real Housewives of Atlanta. I had done other things, you know, was in talks with other companies to do some other stuff, and a lot of things have happened since then.
Speaker 1:And when you're at the height or what I thought was the height of my career, and then a global pandemic happens, you suffer from something that doctors still don't know what it is, where now your hands don't work, and then you have to close this business that you've worked tirelessly on and diligently on. The thing that I learned from this was what I thought was probably one of the worst seasons of my life, wasn't? It quite literally was the opposite, and I'm going to tell you why. As an entrepreneur, you need to be able to understand that placing all your eggs in one basket is probably the dumbest thing you can do. There is no reason that and this is not me saying go multi task and have multiple things happening. That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:I began to obsess over photography while I was still doing my business. It was six months after we had been in quarantine. We still do not have, you know, there's no vaccine in sight, anything like that and I started. A friend of mine messaged me and she was like hey, you know, you can be selling recipes, right, like I was just. I had a small group on Facebook where I was teaching people, almost like playing chops in their kitchen, like here's how you use the stuff that's in your kitchen and turn it into stuff, here's how we can make quick bread, et cetera. So it was just something fun to do. It wasn't really a part of the business, it was just an outlet for me. And she was like you know, you can be selling these recipes. And I was like, what does that mean? And so she took me through the process and then I began obsessing over photography.
Speaker 1:I knew how to write recipes I'm a pastry chef. I understand there is actually a particular way you should be writing a recipe right Like. I get that. I understand the process behind it, but what I did not have were the skills to take the photos. And so, right after my 40th birthday was in September and October I sold my first recipe and I used the money from it to purchase my first photography class. To all the people who purchased something for me in October 2020, y'all are real ones. Y'all are MVPs, cause I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but that didn't matter because they knew I was a pastry chef and they knew my recipes weren't going to fail, and this is something I did not think about at the time.
Speaker 1:People were willing to bet on me because of the education and the experience that I already had. I was trying to outdo photographers, and let me tell you something there was a lesson in this. What I ended up learning was just because you can take a pretty photo doesn't mean your recipes work. There are photographers who do not have my skillsets and in no way could they tell you how they were able to create this really beautiful photo. All right, so when you're working with other business owners, when you're selling recipes and photos to bloggers, baby, they gonna make the money off the fact that these recipes work. And so there was an influx of people who wanted my content. Again, I did not have the photography skillsets. They did not care. They knew my recipes were going to work because I was coming into this industry as a unicorn. I was an actual chef tapping into this, and I discovered that at that time, there were not a whole lot of other people with my skillsets, so this was really really good for me.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is October. When this happens in November is when I suffered the injury. In December was when the doctors told me to close my bakery out altogether, and so I began to dissolve that company. January was the first time that I made five figures. It was my first five figure month. February I made more money. March I made more money In the first 90 days of 2021, I had already made over $30,000 just from selling recipes and photos.
Speaker 1:Now here's what I need you to understand I took the skills that I already had, I took the passion that I already had and I put it into learning how to become a better photographer. Between October and March, I had taken five different photography classes. I became obsessive in making it better. Once I realized that I had an influx of customers because my recipes did not fail, because I had a background as a pastry chef, I was like, okay, so if I actually become a really good photographer, I can make way more money, right Boom? The answer to that was yes, and so we carry this out, and what I'm noticing is people are willing to and I mean they were paying me. People are willing to pay me a higher premium because they knew my stuff was gonna work, and then the photos got good, and so then that just took it through the roof even more, and I had been doing this for a year at this point.
Speaker 1:And then one of my friends and I were talking Sydney and I were talking and she was like I want you to teach this to other people. She was like one I need you to tell your story because people need to understand the power of the pivot. And then, secondly, I want you to teach other people how to do this. And so it took a couple of months, but we did One. I told a whole bunch of people about my story and how, when they told me to close my bakery, I was okay.
Speaker 1:I made more money, letting go of the dream that I thought I was supposed to bring the fruition. Once I let that go, that was when I started making money. That's number one. Number two a lot of people in the industry were not talking about what happens when you can't do this anymore. Like, yes, you see the glitz and the glamour and you see the cake artists on TV and you see all these things, but like, what happens when you can't do this anymore? You've quite literally never seen an old pastry chef. So this is not an industry where the longevity is going to be there. And even though it was easy for me to just move into recipes and photography because I had a friend who told me about it, a lot of other people did not.
Speaker 1:And so then that's when I launched the classes. And so then I launched classes where you could learn how to do this. You can learn start to finish my entire process for running this six figure business and that is a course, right. Then I was like, okay, what else are we gonna do with this? So that's when I wrote the first children's curriculum book. It's really specifically made for homeschoolers, for homeschool parents who wanna teach their kids baking. So then I released this book, and teach me how to bake catches off. And I was like, okay, cool, that's fun.
Speaker 1:Then somebody messaged me and I noticed there was a lot of chatter about teaching classes and I was like, okay, well, you know, I've taught classes for years. I've taught three year olds, I've taught 93 year olds, I've taught nonverbal, autistic children, I have taught kids who are in group homes, I have taught young people who were rescued from sex trafficking, you name it. I've probably taught them, I've engaged them in the kitchen. And so then that's when I wrote the book the Ultimate Guide to Culinary Instruction Tips and Techniques for Successful Teaching, Currently on Amazon. It also will be in the show notes, right. So again, I'm using all the things that I've learned. Number one all the photos and all the books are mine. Why? Because I became a photographer. Number two all the recipes in the books are mine. Why, because I went to Little Corn on Blue and I'm a pastry chef. All of the information, the way these books are laid out, it's full curriculum. Why? Because I have a master's degree in education.
Speaker 1:I was able to take everything that I have learned and everything that I do and turn it into a business that works for me. And then, very recently, I had this other thought of entrepreneurial wellness. So when I became a coach, did I go back to school for it? Of course I did. Have you not been listening to this story? Yes, I went back to school to become a transformational life coach and I spent time. I spent the last year and a half studying humanistic psychology, understanding neuroscience, understanding how we create new neural pathways in our brain, and, yes, I am a very accomplished mindset coach at this point in life. And the thing that I was really trying to get for myself was how do I take everything that I've learned over the years, everything that makes me who I am? How do I put that? How do I put that into one thing, like, what is my focus at this point? And when entrepreneurial wellness fell on me, I was like, oh my God, because, yes. So here's something that I've learned.
Speaker 1:When you're in the very beginning and you have support of your family and friends in the beginning, a lot of times in the very beginning you will have some support from some family and some friends not all, but some. Once you hit this middle phase where you're not as successful as you wanna be and you're trying to decide if this is even worth, the cost of what is costing you, is costing you time, is costing you sleep, is costing you friends, is costing you your relationship, when you're in that phase and you're trying to figure out, is this even worth it? This is what I know to be true. You are not sleeping properly, you are not eating well, you are not and I don't wanna say working out, but you are not moving your body in a way that you should be, and the reason I know this is because I'm coaching entrepreneurs in this particular realm, in this particular phase of entrepreneurship, and I know you're not and so I made it a thing that people should be moving their body, go for a walk. So I'm like I put my money where my mouth is.
Speaker 1:And so I started at the top of our 90 days. I was like I am gonna go to the gym three days a week and I will work out for a minimum of 10 minutes. I have to be on the treadmill for 10 minutes and after 10 minutes I can check in with myself and say do I wanna be here today or am I ready to go? We are in month two of this and not only have I only done that one time where after 10 minutes, I was like, nope, I'm done. But now my three days are unintentionally bumping up to four and I can see very easily how it can bump up to five Because now my body is requesting I can feel it when I move, I can feel it when I wake up it is requesting that I move it. Okay, how do you get here? Well, entrepreneurial wellness.
Speaker 1:So I just did walks. I'm not running, I'm not lifting weights, I'm not doing a whole lot of stuff, I'm just walking on the treadmill for 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes, and that's my goal, right, like that's good enough for me. But here's what I can tell you I am sleeping so much better when you know that Monday, wednesday, friday you are putting in the work in the gym. You start making better decisions with what you put in your body. So does that mean that my diet has also changed? It does. Did I intentionally change my diet? Not really.
Speaker 1:So what I realized was happening was I was not a breakfast person, like I love breakfast, but I wasn't getting up to eat it. But if I go work out, I am starving afterwards. And so then I was like, well, if I'm gonna be eating breakfast, let me make sure I'm eating stuff that's high in protein. And so then I started creating these breakfasts and I realized my taste buds were changing and I wanted different things. And I drink water all day long, all the time. Now that's not something I was doing before.
Speaker 1:So what ended up happening was, at the top of my 90 day program I said I'm gonna walk Monday, wednesday, friday, I'm gonna walk for at least 10 minutes, and anytime I'm working on anything that has to do with the emergence coaching group, I'm gonna be drinking water out of a pink cup. This is all really important. The pink cup is my reward because everything in my office is pink okay, so it matches. It's a whole thing. And so this was giving me a cute little dopamine hit that I get to drink out of my pink cup when I'm working on emergence coaching stuff. Well, y'all that means I drink water all day and I drink water all day, and now I'm working out three days a week and so naturally, I'm sleeping better. Naturally, I wanna eat better foods.
Speaker 1:All of these small, incremental things were happening simply because I've wanted to help entrepreneurs who were in the space of is this worth it? And I don't know what to do. I feel like if I had had someone tell me when I was in the is this worth it phase, if they had told me to go take a walk, if they had taught me about habit stacking. If they had taught me about reframing my thoughts and moving more towards a positive mindset, as opposed to being in victim mindset and blaming other people for the way my life looks right now. Blaming other people because you don't have customers, because you feel like your customers should be your friends and family. That's not your target market. Stop it Like. There are things I just didn't know when I was in that is it worth it?
Speaker 1:Phase, when I was in the hustle and grind phase, no one came in and told me that hustle culture would kill you, that when you end up closing your business because you have suffered an injury, because you were out here sacrificing yourself, your time, your sleep, all the things in order to make a cake for somebody's birthday party, that I promise you ain't nobody gonna remember in 10 years, when you were killing yourself in the hustle and grind culture because you feel like that's what you're supposed to do and you have to close your business, no one is gonna say oh my God, I hope you feel better. 100% of the clients that I had said who do you recommend? 100% of the clients that I had for years. We are talking weddings, baby showers, bachelorette parties, their kids' birthdays, soccer tournaments, the whole night. I was with these people for years. I was their cake person for years. They all said who do you recommend? Now some of them say oh my God, I'm so sorry, is this happening? Hope you feel better. Yes, but it wasn't the majority friends, maybe a fourth of them said that there are people who took this day, still email me and asked me if I can do a cake for them. Where have you been? I haven't done this since 2020. Where have you been? It's 2024. There's no reason anybody should be asking me anything about that.
Speaker 1:But this is to prove a point. You are sacrificing yourself as an entrepreneur for people who are not understanding what you're sacrificing and what you're giving up when you are trying to figure out is this worth it? I don't want you to think about your customers. What I want you to think about instead is what life is this leading me to? How am I showing up as an entrepreneur? I charged a premium.
Speaker 1:If you called me the week of and said you needed cake or cookies, you were taxed. There was absolutely a rush fee, and sometimes the rush fee might have been more than your order, and I did not care. And I'm gonna tell you why. Other people's failure to plan is not my emergency. You knew you gave birth to that child 16 years ago. Why you decided to wait until the Tuesday before your child's sweet 16 party Not my problem, not my issue. I don't understand why you did that. I had that happen with a wedding too. On Thursday they called me and they needed a cake for a wedding. On Saturday they were taxed for that. Because what do you mean? You didn't know you were getting married. Why did you wait to the last minute to get your cake?
Speaker 1:I needed to be compensated for other people's lack of being on top of their own stuff, right, and sometimes you be like, yeah, no problem, here, do it. And other times they were like, no, thank you. Well, cool, go find somebody else who does not value their time. I value my time. I also don't play with my time. So if you didn't show up on time, guess what? I'm leaving my house. It's not my problem. You did not value the time that I have. And when you make decisions like that, then I have to go. Here's what entrepreneurs need to understand. When you bend over backwards and you do everything for people people I like to call strangers on the internet. Now, a lot of my customers did become like family, but there's some who did it right. Strangers on the internet Well, you are breaking your neck literally for other people.
Speaker 1:I want you to ask the question is this getting me to my ultimate destination? As I look at my life right now. I often say I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine what I was thinking when I was like, yeah, I'm going to open this destination bakery and it's going to have a lot of people and it's going to have a school attached to it and we're going to do all these things. I did a cake order. It was just some cupcakes for my former assistant and I refuse to post it because she knows how I feel about that. I don't do this anymore.
Speaker 1:But PTSD was real For two days my neck was hurting and it was just cupcakes. It was not difficult, it wasn't hard, it was very easy. It literally took me 45 minutes to put it together. But when I say my body went back into fight or flight mode, because I remember the trauma of doing everything humanly possible to make sure that other people's special day was special, at the cost of myself, at the cost of a whole lot of things in my own personal life, and I could feel it all over again as soon as I gave her the cupcakes. I could feel the tension leaving my body. I could feel the stress leaving my body and I think that for a minute my mother thought I was being really dramatic about me feeling like I was having PTSD until she watched the stress melt away. All trauma isn't childhood trauma, it's just not there. There's definitely some work life balance trauma that a lot of us have experienced that we don't really give much attention and care or thought to.
Speaker 1:And if you're an entrepreneur, listen to this I want you to think about if you are running your business currently in the way you want to be running your business five years from now. If I were to re approach the idea of opening the cookie Emporium and having the school attached to it, what would that look like? I would approach it from a very different lens now than I would have four years ago when the business plan was approved. Four years ago I was willing to sacrifice myself in the process, and now I am not. I am not willing to hustle and grind until it happens. I'm not willing to do that. If the universe aligns and wants me to do this, then it will come with ease. I no longer believe that I have to work hard in order to be successful. I do not have the idea or the thoughts that I need for my celebrity clients to book with me every single time they do something in order for me to be successful. I was successful before them, which is how they became my celebrity clients, right Like they're. The things or the people who are purchasing from you are not what make you successful. Your thought process is what makes you successful. You can define what success looks like For me.
Speaker 1:Originally, when I launched a 90 day coaching program, I was like you know, if I get five to 10 people, that would be great. And then I up the ante and someone mentioned to me well, don't you want like 50 to 100 people? And I thought about that no, I do not, absolutely not. I don't, because I'm only one person and I can't give each individual the time and care and attention that they need. If I have 50 to 100 people in my coaching program because it is very much so active, I am doing it all the time. I have caught one on one calls throughout the week. I have a weekly coaching calls with them and then on Wednesdays I have a coaching accountability group with other coaches where we discuss the things that we're learning in a different program, and I also have a coach who is coaching me. No, I don't want 50 to 100 people, I can't. And so I was like okay, we're going to see how many people sign up for it and we're going to roll with that and 20 people signed up and 20 people ends up being the perfect number. Could I push it to maybe 25? Possibly in cohort to there may be 25 spaces open, but there will not be any more than that, because there's literally no way for me to show up as my best self. If there's any more than that Now, if we expand this later and I bring in more coaches that are certified and can handle all of my clients with care, then we'll discuss what scaling looks like, but for right now, I've hit the sweet spot on where we are.
Speaker 1:This feels like success to me. Other people, other coaches, other coaches who do not have the training that I have and who are not taking the time to dig into how your childhood has shaped who you are as an entrepreneur. The people who are trying to give you a six figure plan and just telling you here, go do this, with zero point of reference behind who you are and why you can't get started. Yeah, I'm not that coach, that's. That's not at all what I do. And so for me, I know that there are certain things that I am doing that are. It's not only just affecting the people in my coaching program, is affecting every person they come in contact with, and I'm 100% positive that this coaching group is successful because I define what success looks like. I'm also not defining my worth as a coach based on whether or not the people in my coaching program execute. I can only help you through yourself. But, once again, I still can't make you do it right, and while I don't think I've had anyone not execute on anything that we've discussed, it could happen and I will not feel like a failure If it does not happen right.
Speaker 1:I've done my part. I know what makes this feel successful for me and I love that, but four years ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you that. Four years ago, I did not have the the framework to be able to move through the idea that there needed to be progress, not perfection. Four years ago, if I were doing this, I probably would have been one basing my success off of the success of other people, and I would have said that I would have allowed my perfectionism to be seen as my strength as opposed to understanding that people's progress is far better than me showing up as a perfectionist and trying to get them to do the things that I can do.
Speaker 1:I'm built different. I already know this. If you know me in real life, if you had a conversation with me, if you've met my children, I'm not your average person. I'm just not like. I'm a Virgo and I'm a Virgo's Virgo. I am very, very aware that my strength is also my weakness. I am going to show up in the most incredible way possible with anything that I do that is to my benefit and to my detriment, and we're working on it right Like. I'm very aware of this. It can go too far, it can absolutely go too far, but I am in training to learn how to not go too far, and that is something I am able to now teach the people in my 90 day emergence coaching.
Speaker 1:And so when you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to figure out, is this worth it, is this successful, you have to know where you're going. Do you know what you want your life to look like in five years? If, in five years, you don't want to be working inside of your business, then right now you need to be working a business model in a business plan that allows you to teach other people. It allows you to bring in employees. You cannot be controlling and say you don't want to work inside of your business in five years. If you don't plan on clocking in every single day in five years, guess what that controlling nature has to go. It has no room here. If you're controlling everything, how are people going to be able to feel like they can come in with their ideas and their thoughts and their creativity and help take your business to the next level?
Speaker 1:Ceos that micro manage people. They are not Forbes top 500, top 100, top 10. That's never happening. If you are someone who needs to micro manage every single part of your business, you're not gonna scale. You will never not be working in the business. You have to understand that everyone has their own unique qualities. They have their own unique skillsets and they can come in and take your vision to the next level. If you are not a visionary, then we need to have a conversation. If you think you're not working inside your business in five years, visionaries understand the people they need to bring on. Visionaries understand that if I'm not working in my business in five years, who do I need to be apprenticing me right now? Who do I need to go be under in leadership and mentorship so that I can learn how to back off and let other people lead in the spaces that they need to lead in in order for my business to grow and to thrive. Micro managing is lack mindset. There's no abundance in micro managing. If you need to be somewhere every time the door is open, if you do not understand that FOMO is a lie, there is no fear of missing out. I absolutely love that. Oh, we're all gonna do. Y'all go right ahead and have that. Today. I'm staying in my bed Today. I am resting. I don't need to run and be somewhere all the time.
Speaker 1:I used to live a life like that. We were on the praise team, we were in the choir, my ex-husband was running sound, he was doing security Y'all. We were at the church more than our pastor was at the church, and it was the craziest. At that time is what we thought we should have been doing, but when I think back on it, it was literally the craziest thing in the world. Why am I here all the time? Nothing about this makes any sense, but when this is the mindset that you have, that this is where I am going to be fed. That was one of the things that was said all the time we used to go to church. I'm going here to be fed, baby. I don't have to leave my house to go to a restaurant to eat, so why do I need to run to the church every single time? I need to be quote unquote fed. Why can't you do that yourself?
Speaker 1:And when I went through the entrepreneurial wellness piece of my journey and I started understanding that taking walks in the sun, taking my dog out for a walk, taking my shoes off in the grass and really connecting with nature, actually looking at the beauty and the joy of the earth, looking at what the universe has given us, taking in a deep breath, being grateful and thankful for where I am in this space and time, understanding that life doesn't have to be hard, I don't have to work hard. I can have a life of ease. I can manifest a life of ease. I can be in a relationship that does not include struggle, love. I can have the opportunity to show up as my true, authentic self, and people want that. People want to be around me. I do not have to mask when I leave my home. I can be the same person at my house and the same person on the stage talking to 3,000, 5,000 people.
Speaker 1:Once I fully understood this and I learned what authenticity was and I learned to be radically accepting of myself as an entrepreneur, once I understood that my yes to showing up was going to be the breakthrough for another person, once I fully understood these things, I was able to show up in my life so much differently. I didn't have to hustle and grind. I don't have to be working 24 seven. I don't have to spend all of my money chasing the next class and the next class and the next class, like nothing about that makes any sense to me, and even though it's counter to the way influencing is working right now and everybody has a class and we should have reoccurring income with the memberships and things of the sort, I was like this does not fit. It's not aligned with who I am. Do I have courses? Yes, it's a lot of knowledge in my head. Should I be compensated for the things I know? Yes, and I'm gonna tell you why because I have done the things that other people are trying to do. I have already done the trial and error and if I've already done it and I can tell you an easier way to do it.
Speaker 1:If I can just lay out the blueprint for you, why would you not pay for that? Why would you rather spend two to five years trying to figure out all the things that are literally inside of a book? Why would you not value yourself enough to understand that everything cannot be nicked and donned, that everything cannot come from YouTube University? Some things you need to pay for, some things are an investment. When you make an investment into yourself, you're the only person that can determine that return on investment. Are you gonna take the class? Are you gonna immediately implement the things from the class and change your life?
Speaker 1:Or are you somebody who just keeps bouncing from coach to coach to coach, from school to school to school, from online program to program to program, because you're trying to chase the dopamine hit, when in reality, you're chasing cortisol. You're chasing the feeling of being real, real high and dropping real, real low. You're chasing the feeling of the victim mentality that you put all this money into things and it's not working. You're looking for an excuse not to succeed your idea. The fear is not really a failure. The fear is of success. But when you do this to yourself, you have no one but yourself to blame at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:If you don't understand that, as an entrepreneur, whether you are brand new, you are in the middle, where it's a little bit lonely, or you've reached the success status the thing you have to realize is is, at any point in that journey, if you fall out of alignment, you're gonna know when you're out of alignment. You are not sleeping, you are not eating properly, I'm almost positive. Your home life is shit. Your work life is probably also trash. If you can't connect with yourself on a spiritual, emotional, psychological level, you're out of alignment. If you don't wake up every morning excited to do the thing you're doing, you're out of alignment. My question for you is are you chasing money or are you living your life on purpose? Those are two different things. When you live your life on purpose, when you live your life inside of your purpose, the money will come.
Speaker 1:The difference between the abundance mindset entrepreneur who fully understands entrepreneurial wellness, isn't just one thing or another thing. It's all the things brought together. It's all the things that create the abundance mindset. It's the willingness to get up and do a little bit of extra work in the gym, even though you know you don't want to when you wake up first thing in the morning. But you know you're gonna feel better in 30 minutes and you're gonna get a whole lot more work done. Yeah, all those things, entrepreneurial wellness. If you know that you should eat the salad in the middle of the day instead of I don't know a steak and baked potato, because it's gonna make you heavy, then you go for the salad, you go for the thing that's lighter so you have more energy to get the work done.
Speaker 1:You take the time to do the time and energy audit. You do a time and energy audit. You automatically know when your best times of the day to get work done are and you rework your schedule around that, as opposed to trying to push through, as opposed to trying to show up, because everybody else is showing up at a particular time. But have you really asked them how they feel? How much coffee are they drinking during the day? Do they really need a caffeine drip in their veins because they are not sleeping well? Their home life is not wonderful. They are not making the money they want to make, but all they're doing is working. They're working all the time, working, working, working day and night, and you see zero results from it. You want to know why? Because you're spending your wills, because you're not working in purpose, then because you're out of alignment, and one of the things that I am working diligently and doing in this 90-day emergence coaching is getting people to number one understand themselves. We spend 30 days learning yourself. We take a deep dive into who you are, the people who were in your neighborhood and how you became the person that you are. The second 30 days of this program we are focused on abundance living and abundance mindset. What does that look like? Well, that looks like you might need to change your diet. You might need to add a walk or two to your life. You definitely need to be drinking more water.
Speaker 1:You need to think about things in the positive, in the affirmative, in the here and now. You need to be present, sometimes not positive when you are hijacked. Number one you need to know that you are hijacked. You need to understand that when you flip your lid, that's the middle of an amygdala, hijacked, and there are ways for you to come out of it. You also need to understand that toxic positivity is not the way to do that. You need to know mindfulness becomes a thing for you as an empowered entrepreneur. You need to know how to calm yourself.
Speaker 1:You need to know how to get present. If that means you need to take your shoes off and you need to fill your toes in the carpet, or you need to go outside, you need to fill your feet in the grass. Whatever it is is going to ground you to the earth so that you can come out of the amygdala hijacked. That's what you need to do. You need to be present, not perfect. You need to be present, not polished. You need to be present, not productive. There are moments where you just cannot, when your brain is in fight or flight. There's you need to be present. That's it. You need to be present.
Speaker 1:Positive affirmations are not going to help you, and I'm a positive affirmations girl. Okay, y'all know this. I got affirmations, I've got, you know, meditations and all the things like yes, that is who I am as a person. But if you're in the middle of an amygdala hijacked, if you are totally pissed off and you don't know what to do, if you are feeling quote, unquote overwhelmed, you feel like you're sinking, you have got to become present in this moment. You have to understand you are safe in the world. It's not crumbling around you, it is okay. You must become present before you can be positive.
Speaker 1:That is what we focus on in those second 30 days abundance, living, abundance, mindset, knowing social, emotional intelligence and how to control yourself. And then in those last 30 days, we spend time focusing on the new habits, the new tools, the new techniques that you're going to use in order to carry this program out for the rest of your days. I do not want anybody paying me for 90 days and then at the end of the 90 days, you're like oh, that was fun, I'm not doing anything else. No, your life should be fundamentally changed in all aspects. You should sleep better. Your diet should be better. You should know more about yourself. Your communication strategy should be different. The way you show up in business should be different. The way you show up in your relationship should be different.
Speaker 1:Entrepreneurial wellness is understanding that it's all of you and that parts of you, and that is what we focus on. That is what being an empowered entrepreneur looks like. It looks like understanding the difference between you just out here doing things because it sounds like a good idea, because it sounds like it's a program that will make a whole lot of money for you do y'all know? Rich people kill themselves all the time, like, think about it. The unaliving that happens among people with a whole lot of money is high. The reason for that is because people say there's no amount of money that's gonna result to your happiness. I don't know if I believe that, because money definitely makes me happy. It allows me to be able to afford things that I could not afford before. So I'm not gonna say money won't make you happy, but I can say this money gives you the opportunity and the resource to do things you've never been able to do, which will ultimately lead you to that target that you were trying to get to.
Speaker 1:So if you are an entrepreneur listening to this, whether this is the beginning of your journey, you're in the middle of the journey, that's a little lonely and you need people who can support you and can help you move, will truly understand where you are.
Speaker 1:Or if you're an entrepreneur who has hit this, you know what I feel really successful in this part and I'm ready to start a second stream of income or a third stream of income, and I know that I'm I know about to go through this again and I know I need people who can be there for me. I would like to personally invite you come hang out with us. Number one in my free mindset group we are talking about mindset for entrepreneurs holistically like what does your entire life look like, not just your bank account? And then, number two if you are really ready to take your life and your business to the next level, I would absolutely love you to check down in show notes and check out my 90-day emergence coaching that will get started in May. Until next time, friends, stay sweet. Know that I love you, know that I'm here for you, know that I'm rooting for you, and I'll see you guys next time on the positive voice podcast.
