5 Things I Wish I Had When I Started My Business

Catherine A. Wood  00:01

Hello, hello, welcome to the prosperous empath. I’m Katherine wood. And I’m back friends. We took the last two weeks off from the podcast for the first time. And we were also closed in the business. I took some vacation with my family. And if you’ve been here for a while, you know that every August I go up to New Brunswick, Canada with my family, we have a family home that’s been in my mother’s family for generations, right on the St. John river. And it’s super rustic outdoor bathroom growing up, I used to bathe in the river like it’s, it’s, it’s pretty rustic. And I love it. And I also just love going unplugged. It’s so restorative to be completely off of email and social media. And I don’t know about you, but the longer I’ve been in business, the harder it’s become, to not cheat and check my latest social media post or if I got that email to Like, legitimately not check as Wi Fi has become more accessible worldwide. But I was, I was in integrity with my intention. I did not check email or social media, not a once for the past week. And it was awesome and so inspiring. And honestly, it feels really in line with what I want to talk about today. Because today officially open, we open the doors for registration for my newest program offering it’s called the eMERGE mastermind, it’s a six month mastermind for early entrepreneurs who are in their first one to three years of business who are looking for coaching support, to grow their business to find their CEO footing to connect with a group of values aligned conscious creators, and really grow your confidence in your early years of business, which I get it, y’all it’s hard. And as we’ve been designing this program, really intentionally for the past several months, something I’ve noticed is that so much of what we decided to include in the program, how we decided to design the program is a reflection of what I wish I had had when I was first starting out in business back in 2014. So in today’s solo episode, I want to share with you five of the things that I wish I had had when I started in business. And you can imagine that all of these things are included in our emerge mastermind. But regardless of whether or not you’re interested in the mastermind, I think you’ll find this episode useful because at some point, you’re likely going to hire a coach or consider your next business investment or consider a container or community that you want to invest in and belong to. And I invite you to consider whether these things are present. And which of these feels important for you to consider as you make your next business investment. And I’m also going to leave you with a couple of questions to try on for size and consider for yourself as you invest in the next support structure for your business. So let’s jump in. 

So the first thing I wish I had had when I started in my business was I wish that I had had a values aligned small group to be a part of so much of your first referrals and collaborations and lessons learned and ideas and acknowledgement are going to come from the colleagues that you support yourself with and if you can set yourself up well by ensuring that those are values aligned conscious creators that you surround yourself with you’re going to be set up so much easier for success I realized that so much of Haley, I’m going to back up and just finish this one halfway through. When I first started my business, I joined this networking organization that was an amazing community for me. So many of those relationships I’m still in touch with they’re still some of my greatest referral partners and cheerleaders and some of them came to our wedding. Why Stoptober like they’re just huge key relationships in my business journey. But one of the things that I also realized in hindsight is that when we’re first starting out in business, we don’t know who our people are, and who are not, we often go off of who people refer us to, or who people recommend. And I remember for me, like when I first started out in this networking organization, some of the people, they just confidently sold their services, they were really great at marketing themselves. And I was really gung ho to invest forward and take risks, and set myself up for success. And a lot of those early people that I hired to support my business, were not good fits, because they did not share the same values as I did. So as you were thinking about which communities you want to belong to, which masterminds you want to join, which communities you want to be part of, I invite you to consider are your values expressed in the language, the testimonials and the energy of the community? Okay, the second thing I wish I’d had when I started my business was a community. So empaths, thrive and community if you’re here, then I know you would value immensely from belonging to a community where you fit in, and where you can experience belonging and where you feel comfortable, being vulnerable. So consider that. So many of the vetted referrals and collaboration partners you will receive will come from belonging to a community. And what I really appreciate about our communities are that we are a community of Empath, entrepreneurs, and paths are naturally gifted at giving to one another at collaborating, referring, celebrating, sharing about their peers, offerings and programs. And we are about reciprocity in really modeling. Learning how to give as well as opening yourself up to receive and learning how to ask for what you need and ask for what would support your business. So I’ve noticed over the years that there’s often this transactional nature, that gets created in the transformational communities that I’ve belonged to that I’ve invested in, there’s this transactional nature, sometimes with the leaders or the facilitators were while you’re in their community, there’s relationship there’s support, there’s celebration, there’s I don’t know friendship, but when you choose to leave that community or the your investment ends, that the relationships often just dry up. And that is absolutely not the case with prosperous empaths alike. I have noticed time and time again over the years that amongst empaths, that there is just this natural, ongoing relationship that gets formed and created and not in a codependent way, like in a very generous, but boundaried way. And so something I really invite you to consider in the communities that you choose to invest in is Can you envision yourself experiencing belonging here? And would you feel comfortable being vulnerable, it’s often to the degree that we’re willing to be vulnerable, that that opens up the degree to which we allow ourselves to be supported. Okay, the third point it is super important for ambitious and baths to have built in the space to implement and take action. So much of the early entrepreneurial journey is about overcoming resistance and that internal sense of fear or risk to actually do the courageous thing to ask for the business to set the high level pricing to do the thing that you’ve been resisting and when there is a built in structure in the container in the program in the in the group offering to actually take action. It not Not only will support you in procrastinating less, and overcoming that resistance sooner, but it will also support you in taking action from a more grounded place. Because when we’re taking action and our parasympathetic nervous systems are triggered, we’re often in that fight or flight place, we’re so much more fearful and insecure and reactive, and that shines through when we’re doing the courageous action or business. But when there’s a built in place and space to take action and to implement, we can really ensure that our parasympathetic parasympathetic nervous systems are activated. So whether we’re we’ve scheduled that time into our calendar, or we have an ongoing call on the calendar to take action and implement, we can do so so much more often just from a more grounded and embodied place. And naturally, we’re so much more confident from that place. So I don’t remember when I made this switch in my private practice, because it’s been so long, but when I made the switch to coach three, the first three weeks of every month, and then take the fourth week off from client calls with clients to really implement, and, and integrate what we’ve been learning, it made such a difference, not only for me, but also for my clients in taking action. And not surprisingly, so many of my clients have implemented similar call structures in their own businesses, because it supports them to have that, to have that difference in when they’re in the ideation phase, when they’re visioning when they’re designing their next offerings, versus when they are implementing whatever that looks like for you. So in the mastermind, that has looked like us implementing a bi weekly, co working call a power call for the for the participants to really support one another in doing the thing that they’ve been resisting, highly recommend, this has been something that I have incorporated in my own business, with peers in a regular fashion, because we’re so much more accountable to other people besides ourselves. So a question for you to consider. In as you’re as you’re really considering, like, is there? Is there a built in space or room to actually take action on what you’re learning is, how clear Are you on what you’d like to use this container to help you bring to life and create in your business. Okay, number four. It is so important for me to follow, to hire to invest in leaders who walk their own walk. And what I mean by this is I am so not interested in signing up for a program or working with someone who doesn’t model their own humanity. I can remember early on in my business, I belonged to this community. That was amazing. There were so many successful business owners in this community and I was always impressed by their success rate at closing clients. But something that I really struggled with, throughout my whole time belonging to this community is that the leaders rarely shared their own challenges or their own humanity while I became or while I was part of this community so they you know, challenged their clients to take the uncomfortable action and to be vulnerable and I rarely noticed or felt Haley, I’m gonna record this one again. Number four, the fourth thing I wish that I’d had when I started my business was leaders who walked their own walk, I cannot speak highly enough to how important this is. Because as an empath entrepreneur, it is so important for you to follow leaders who embody and model what it is that they are telling you to do. And I remember when I first started out in business, I was being trained by two leaders who embodied so much masculine energy. Now I have a very healthy sense of masculine energy. But I, in my early years really needed to balance that out with more of the feminine, like I really needed to learn how to open myself up to receive, to flow more to surrender to embrace my creative side. And I was following two leaders who talked about this, but I wasn’t seeing it modeled in how they ran their own businesses. And I also didn’t have the sense that everything that they were challenging me to do that they had done themselves. And that is really hard when you’re trying to overcome resistance, and take the uncomfortable, brave actions to move forward in your business. If you can’t trust that, though, the leaders and coaches and facilitators who are encouraging you to step outside of your comfort zone are doing the very same thing, it can be that much harder to take action. And I am so mindful of this, because one of the things that has been really important for so many of my clients over the past decade in business is in learning how to rest and to disentangle themselves from hustle culture. And in my early years in business, I belonged to this community that was super successful. They, they had a really wonderful business model. But they talked a lot about well being and modeling work life balance. And they also had in their business model, this quarterly, vacation week off where the whole company closed down. And all of the leaders were encouraged to disconnect to take to really take a week off. But what I noticed, through my time being part of this community was that there was really this ingrained hustle culture, just embedded in the culture of the business. So while they talked about taking a quarterly week off, it was almost ostracized if you actually did. So for me, it is so important that leaders who are talking about their values and what they stand for and what they’re teaching, that they’re actually embodying the very thing that they’re teaching. So as you’re thinking about the leaders that you want to work with the coaches and facilitators and program leaders that you want to invest in, ask yourself the question Are you present to their authenticity and humanity. And last but not least, the fifth thing that I wish I had had, that I wish that I had been instilled in when I was first starting out in business, was permission to do things my own way. Now. I’ve been in the online space for the past decade. And I am so done with this hype marketing tactics that tell you to hire this coach to sign up for this program just to do things this way to follow their model to all you need is this five step framework to follow right like that just does not work for us as ambitious empaths, we need to do things a little differently as empaths and something I am super mindful about with empaths is that we’re often really good at that we’re often really good at dimming our own intuitive voice and trusting the voices of our peers, which are often louder, more assertive, more extroverted. And that just does not work for ambitious me paths I saw, I really want you to consider that you as an ambitious Empath are naturally intuitive. You’re also naturally gifted at supporting and contributing to others. So you likely do not need someone else’s framework or system or methodology. You need the space and permission to connect with your own intuition and be held accountable to do what you know that there already is for you to do to support clients in the way that you are already naturally gifted at doing. So much of our success, as ambitious empaths is dependent on elevating our self belief on honing our intuitive muscles. And truly creating that sense of safety first in our own bodies in order to be able to feel comfortable in dreaming bigger and then developing that courage and authenticity, to own our message to own our voice to take a stand for it and to allow ourselves to be supported and held accountable along the way. Now, I don’t know about you but something that? As you consider if there is that sense of permission to do things your own way and by permission, I really mean self permission like if you feel that sense of self permission. Consider the question, what is your what is your sense of your voice being welcomed and celebrated here. I hope that you’ve found this helpful. I noticed getting super impassioned as I was sharing some of these things. When we were when we were considering the design of our Emerg program. We we kept oh my god, Haley, I’m sorry. I hope that you’ve found today’s episode useful. We created a merge with all of these lessons in mind, truly the path of empathic entrepreneurship. It is so not just about business, it’s a way of life. It’s a conscious choice to create, to impact and to live authentically. And so so much of how we get supported as empathic entrepreneurs has to model and embody Adi, those values and those distinct ways in which we operate our businesses. So, if you’re at all interested in learning about emerge, if you want to get on a call to chat more about it, I would love to connect with you about it, you can reach out to me via email, you can send me a DM over Instagram or however you’d like. The link to the program is in the show notes. And if you would like to have an in person experience of what it’s like to be in community with us, you can always join us for our monthly non networking power hour where you’ll have a real sense of what it’s like to get supported by us. We have one more power hour remaining before we launch the program at the end of September. So the next non networking Power Hour is on September 18. That’s a Monday at 12 noon Eastern time and we will include the link to sign up in the show notes. But for now, I would just love for you to take away from this conversation, clarity on which of these elements are important for you to consider. If you’re new in business or you’re looking to hire your first coach, or potentially your next support structure. Thank you so much for tuning in.