The Prosperous Empath’s Edge: The Ultimate Key for Empaths to Succeed

Catherine A. Wood  00:01

Hello, hello. Welcome back to the prosperous Empath, friends. I hope you had the most beautiful weekend and that your week is off to a wonderful start. I am feeling super reflective these days over here, I’m still batch recording some of these episodes over the summertime for when I’m away this fall for maternity leave, and I’ve just been feeling super reflective on starting a family, on business, on what I want this next chapter of my life to look like. And really feeling so grateful, so grateful for this Gosh, foundational work in coaching that’s given me so much access to really invent this next chapter by my own design, by my own rules, by my own playbook, something I’ve been appreciating with the the welcoming of motherhood is that so many people have these really strong opinions about how motherhood goes and and folks tend to like to project about motherhood and what to expect and what I need to prepare for. And you know, I am certainly one for a healthy dose of humility and surrender, and I’m, you know, willing and welcoming of all the changes that I can expect, and have no idea what to expect. And I’m really present to my own sense of agency and choice around how I want it to go, and what intentions I want to set, and how I want to plan for what I’d like to have, and I’m just, you know, grateful for all the work that I’ve done on my own sense of self to really give me that self permission to do things different. And you know, we’re coming up on two years of Gosh, launching the podcast. We’re almost at our 100th episode, and that has me really reflective on business as well, and how I’ve grown my business differently than some of the other colleagues and businesses that I have grown alongside of, and I think that that is it’s one of the reasons I launched the podcast in the first place in back in 2022 because I really do think that for an empath to succeed in business, we follow a different rule book, and sometimes we know what that rule book looks like, and sometimes we don’t, and we discover it along the way. I certainly didn’t have all the answers when I started in business, but I have found my way, and I wanted to share, really as we’re approaching our 100th episode of the show, some of the distinctions for how an empath thrives and succeeds in business that are a little different than some of the other Folks who we may grow our businesses alongside of. I here’s some context I want to set for this series. So first of all, I really do believe that empaths succeed in business using different approaches and different strategies than some of the other folks that we collaborate and refer and partner with in business, and a lot of these distinctions were really illuminated for me recently, when I read the book give and take by Adam Grant. We read that book most recently in our unbounded mastermind, before pausing for my or before I paused for my maternity leave, and the book was, gosh, it was so impactful for me. I don’t I can’t remember the last time I’ve highlighted and earmarked and sticky as many pages as I did in this book, it just reinforced so many of my own beliefs and my own values around business. And something I really appreciate about Grant’s approach is it’s all based on data. So my economist background just really loved reading this book and hearing all of the statistics and all of the studies to really back up some of my own experiences and some of my own felt sense of how business has worked and not worked for me. So we so. Succeed using different tactics, different approaches and different strategies, and we don’t always succeed. I’m sure you have met and collaborated alongside of many empaths in business who who they haven’t made it. Maybe they’ve experienced burnout one too many times, and they didn’t learn from the experience to take care of themselves or learn how to sustain themselves in their business without self sacrificing. Perhaps they’ve gone bankrupt or never learned how to earn a sustainable income while being generous but boundaried in business. So regardless of the empaths in our orbits, whether they’re you or someone you know, some succeed and some don’t. And I’m really curious about what you think distinguishes between the two. What sets apart the empathpreneurs who thrive and succeed and grow and scale and thrive and prosper in business, and the ones who don’t. And what I’ve noticed from my own coach vantage point is that when we are Upper Limiting or at a growth edge in our business, whether it’s trying to reach a new income level or launch a program or write a book or manifest love or grow our wealth or our support, that there’s often this opportunity for a breakthrough in our capacity to receive, in our capacity to receive, whether it’s better support, receive better love or wealth or grow our earning capacity. And how do we how do we do that? How do we open ourselves up? Haley, I want to, I want to remove that whole paragraph about Upper Limiting. I’m going to share that at the end. I’m I want to share with you some of the research that really stuck out for me in reading, give and take so grant conducted personally and researched some studies around around the success ladder and who falls at the top and the middle and the bottom of the success ladder, and he uses the terms of being an empath as he uses the terms of being a giver, a taker or a matcher in business, and for our sake, I’ve really collapsed being a giver and an empath, because in my experience, they are one in the same. Empaths tend to be generous givers. So for our sake, we I’m using the terms giver and Empath interchangeably. So for our references, I’m using the terms giver and Empath interchangeably so he some of the research that grant mentions is that in a study of 160 professional engineers, it was found that the least successful engineers were the ones that gave more than they received. They had, across the board, the lowest number of drawings and technical reports completed, they had the most errors made, the most deadlines missed and the highest amount of money wasted. A similar study of 600 medical students conducted in Belgium showed similar results that the students with the lowest grades went out of their. Way to help their peers, giving their peers a leg up, often at the expense of prioritizing filling their own knowledge gaps and grant himself. Conducted a study in North Carolina of sales people that also showed similar results the they were concerned with what was best for their customers, and so they didn’t sell as aggressively as some of the takers. So what these studies indicate is that the givers, they landed at the bottom of the success ladder in terms of income, revenue, time wasted, and effectiveness. So that makes sense, right? We could imagine that givers would land at the bottom of the success ladder for those reasons, because we’re so generous, because we’re often so focused on being of service and what’s in the best interest of other people, we gain a lot of intrinsic value from contributing and giving and being of service. So it begs the question, who lands at the top? If givers land at the bottom, then who’s at the top? Takers, matchers, and the research says no that givers also land at the top of the success ladder, and this finding held up across the board in those three studies that I just mentioned. In the three studies among the engineers, the medical students and the sales people, the givers across the board landed at the top. So what separates the two? What separates the givers who suffer from the doormat effect, who who give way more than they receive, who experience burnout, who never thrive financially? What separates that group of givers versus the ones who thrive, the ones who prosper, the ones who become prosperous, empaths and what the research showed is that the givers who excel are the ones who are willing to ask for help when they need it. Successful givers are every bit as ambitious as the takers in our midst. They simply have a different approach to reaching their success, and I think that that is so mind blowingly powerful that the givers who thrive and the givers who don’t. The only difference between the two is the givers own willingness to ask for help, and for those of us who’ve grown businesses or who’ve deepened romantic relationships or who have become founders and CEOs and executives, learning to ask for help is a process. Learning to ask for help in an open, hearted and vulnerable rather than a strategic or tactical or um a self serving way, is a massive breakthrough, and something I’ve appreciated in my own work as a coach is that so often when we are Upper Limiting or when we’re At an edge. And what I mean by an edge is really stepping into an exponentially new level of success, whether it’s in the realm of our business or our love life or our relationships or wealth, there’s so often an opportunity for a breakthrough, for a fundamental new way of being, a new way of orienting ourselves in terms of our giving muscle, in terms of how we give how we show up, and how we how we make ourselves available and open to receiving. So how do we do that? How do we how do we become better at receiving, at asking for help, at being vulnerable, and this really brings to mind something that I’ve been offering in my business in a number of ways for the past five years now, and it’s the non networking power hours that we offer every month. So when I first. Hosting non networking power hours. It was right before the pandemic, and I was hosting them in my house, because I was really experiencing the loneliness that’s so prevalent in being self employed, and I was wanting to expand my community and create more support and collaboration and just create this experience and reminder for myself and peers that you know that I wasn’t alone. And so I started hosting these ask and give circles, which are an exercise that I first learned of in this leadership fellowship that I used to be a part of, called starting block. And what was really fascinating in reading give and take is that it turns out the research that was used by starting block to adapt these ask and give circles is is referenced in give and take and grant talks about this study that was conducted by a Stanford professor, showing that weaker ties are actually more effective bridges and sources of new opportunities, referrals, ideas, brainstorming support, then some of our close ties. He showed that in that study, 28% of folks who had recently changed jobs had heard about that new job from a weak tie, versus 17% who had heard about it from a strong or close tie. So he defines weak ties as acquaintances, people we know casually, and weak ties can tend to open up access to a different or new network and original leads, whereas strong ties often tend to be our close friends and colleagues, the people that we really trust, and we often tend to operate in similar circles, and know of similar opportunities. He said, strong ties provide bonds and weak ties provide bridges. And I think that that makes a lot of sense. So in these non networking power hours that, again, I used to host in person, and since launching the unbounded mastermind, in our emerge mastermind, and opening the doors to the public, to our previously closed private community, it’s something I see over and over again, that in bringing people who share similar values and a similar commitment to give and contribute together, that there are some just beautiful new collaborations and ideas and opportunities that are generated. And at the same time, it can be really tough to ask for help. It’s even tough to ask even tougher to ask weak ties for help, right? Like, how do you show up in a new community, whether it’s the non networking power hour or a mastermind or group coaching program or a new networking group that you’ve become a part of. And how do you ask for help from people you don’t even know? For so many of us, asking for help can be seen as a sign of weakness or vulnerability, especially if we’re operating inside of an environment where there’s not this mutual expectation or or norm established that we’re all going to be vulnerable, we’re all going to ask for help. So while asking weak ties for help is the fastest approach to new opportunities, we don’t always feel comfortable making those requests, and I think that that makes so much sense. I think that lack of trust can oftentimes create this real psychological barrier from a willingness to be vulnerable or model something different from what’s being demonstrated or were observed in other people, and what I’ve come to appreciate in my own masterminds and in the communities that I’ve formed and become part of, is that it only takes one person willing to be vulnerable and ask for help in an open hearted and authentic way in order to create that culture shift, in order to create that new norm or that. New agreement to practice something different, to practice sharing a window into your own experience how things are really going and what would really be A meaningful request for support or help or assistance. You I think Simon Sinek said it best when he said, givers advance the world. Takers advance themselves and hold the world back so for the I and I really believe that in order for givers to advance the world, we need to advance ourselves. We need to advance ourselves by learning to ask for help more directly, more simply and more open heartedly, we can do that by becoming a some of the approaches that have really supported me in learning how to be more vulnerable and ask for more help, more simply and more directly. Have certainly been through the work I’ve done with my own coaches and therapists over the years, learning to just really understand on a foundational level that there’s always something that I need, that in any given moment in time, there’s always something that I need and I want, and that as I become more practiced in distinguishing my basic needs, that I will also gain more clarity around what I want and what I desire. And it is a it is a willingness practice. It is not a black or white practice, right? It’s not like some of us know what we want and need and some don’t. It’s kind of like working a major muscle group at the gym. As you become more self aware, more open to sitting in the discomfort of the question, what do I want in this moment? What do I need in this moment? As you become more practiced in tuning into that question, you will start to gain and hear for yourself more clarity around the answers. So that’s, I think, a huge practice in in becoming more self honoring and more clear about what you want and what you need, another practice is giving up the idea that if we just give and give and give, that other people will want to reciprocate in return, like no fair putting your breakthrough on the heels or the back of someone else. No fair assuming that someone else should know what you want and need when you can’t even say it or discern it for yourself. It really robs us the experience of getting to know ourselves better and more deeply, and I can’t I’m laughing because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that conversation over the years with my own coaches, as well as with clients. It’s just like this real vulnerability to ask other people for what we want and need from them, and as we become more practiced in asking people’s willingness to say yes or no or offer a counter offer will become less significant. Something I really appreciate is that for so many of my clients, it’s really hard to ask the people that we trust and love for. Support, because what if they say no, and what we make that no mean about our own love ability or our own inherent worthiness, but the key is to not stop asking. The key is to continue asking, continue leaning in so that any single response to a request that you might make becomes less significant, less life or death less meaningful. I think another huge and invaluable way to practice expanding your capacity to ask for help and be vulnerable is to do so in a community of values aligned creators. It’s one of the reasons I love facilitating the mastermind, because there is this magic that gets created when there is this um there’s this magic that gets created in a distinguished space where there is a shared agreement to be vulnerable, to ask for what you need to ask for support, and that shared agreement to practice being different in relationship expands your capacity to practice that new way of being, that new way of operating in relationship everywhere else in life. So it’s such a it’s such a growth edge. And when you can find a community, a business network, a Business Mastermind, a group where you share those values and where you share that commitment to practice becoming the version of yourself in your business that you’re committed to operating as everywhere all the time. It expands your capacity, expands your growth edge. It makes it more normal for you to practice and being able it becomes more Normal to do it in your day to day. You the final nugget I want to share with you today on the episode is this. The final nugget I want to share with you today on the episode is just this reminder that as you practice asking for help more consistently and reliably, as you practice opening yourself up to receive help, receive support, you will become more practiced. It will become more natural for you and a prosperous giver maintains this willingness to pay back that support and pay that support forward. When a giver succeeds, it creates this cascade, this domino effect of positive regard and positive intent and Adam Grant i and in my experience, folks typically want givers to succeed, And they root for givers and empaths to win, because it really does create this ripple effect, this tendency to spread the success of self and the success of others. So coming back to cynics quote, I really do believe this givers advance the. World takers advance themselves and hold the world back. So I am sending you so much love and appreciation for being here and for all of your efforts to advance the world this week, whether it be large or small, I thank you for tuning in, and I look forward to being with you next week.