The six pillars of doing business differently
Learn about my framework to build a solid foundation for a business that want to do business differently.
The six pillars are:
Embracing the Mess
Unlearning and Discerning
Imagining and Visioning
Trusting and Surrendering
Finding and Defining Enoughness
Befriending Fear and Taking Brave Steps
Take a listen to figure out which pillars your business is solidly built upon - and which pillars it might be time to start building.
Links and resources:
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[0:04] Welcome to breathe into business a podcast for folks who want to hear what it's really like to run an intuitive lead business.
I'm your host Amy kuretsky a breath work facilitator who helps service providers.
Creators and artists tap into their own inner knowing so that they can run businesses from a place of trust and self-confidence.
I created this podcast to help folks like you.
Who are disillusioned with the / culture of online small business building to permission yourself to follow a different path.
In these episodes you'll hear conversations that are,
messy and even a little bit scary at times my biggest hope is that each of these episodes helps you feel even 10% more confident in leaning into what your intuition is sharing with you and doing business your own way.
[0:53] Let's take a breath and talk business all right.
[1:00] I'm excited to be here with you today I hope that you are excited to be here as well should we take a breath and get started.
[1:12] Okay so in today's episode I'm going to share with you kind of this framework that I have created over the years.
[1:22] It's been over the years of working with hundreds of service providers of course creators and artists like you and like me and
the themes that I have seen come up time and time again working with business owners who want to do business differently.
And I've really found that there are kind of six foundational pillars or topics that we can talk about and that we need to work through if we want to run.
A heart-centered grounded successful intuitive lead business or basically a business that is like Guided by our inner voice and a,
business that's willing to do business differently and so you know these are the pillars that I've found,
can really help us create solid foundational structure for both our businesses but also like the humans who run the business AKA,
ourselves and so today I'm going to go over all six of them with you what they are why I consider them foundational and as we progress through.
Future episodes in this podcast and future seasons of this podcast you'll probably start to notice that each episode I really talked about.
[2:49] A foundational pillar
almost every topic that we're going to talk about going forward in this podcast can relate back to one of these foundational pillars that's how important I believe they are too,
building a business that works for us but is also able to do business differently.
[3:10] Okay so you're probably wondering what are these six pillars all right let's get into it so the first one I like to call embracing the mess.
And I truly truly truly truly truly truly feel like in any.
Great cycle of transformation and growth the end is the beginning is the end is the beginning excetera etc etc.
You know think about the death card it's not just an ending it's also a rebirth that's also a beginning,
and that's really what I've found embracing the mess to be it's both where we start in our work.
But it's also a place that we come back to over and over time and time again as well you know when I was first developing this framework of the six pillars.
[4:04] I was reflecting on the themes that I kept seen come up in conversations with my clients and while the other five pillars kind of dropped in really quickly and easily for me.
I will say that I almost completely overlooked this one of embracing the mess because it was so deeply in her woven into every conversation that I was having with my clients that it was almost hard for me to like see it,
as its own pillar it was like not being able to see the forest from the trees and the first time that I ran the incubator which is that small group.
Group coaching program that I run that uses this framework as a syllabi you could say.
I originally had embracing the mess planned as the final pillar but as soon as I actually created the content for it,
I knew that it wanted to have the spotlight and actually be first in show because I really do think about it as the beginning and the end and the beginning again and the ending and all of those circular patterns.
[5:12] So this pillar of embracing the Mast is really about letting go of perfectionism it's about meeting and loving ourselves and our businesses exactly where we are it's about acknowledging you know
The Duality and complexity in relationships that we often hold as service providers as small business owners as course creators as
artists it goes back to that basic tenant that I believe in my business that.
[5:44] The health and success of our businesses our inner woven into our lives in ways that.
Inexplicably tied we can't always
pull them apart especially when we are small business owners especially when we are Solo business owners especially when our brand is our name
they're so interwoven like who we are and what we do and all of that and that can feel really really messy and so working with this pillar is all about accepting that interconnectedness of our lives and our businesses
and finding a bit more Acceptance in that.
[6:23] And I really believed that this pillar is like foundational to doing business differently because you know experimentation and breaking the molds and creating like brand new ways of working and relating is.
It's messy work like all of it is super messy and we need to learn to embrace and accept that messiness so that we,
can feel more comfortable taking risks in the name of expansion transformation growth all of those things and so I really see this pillar as like
our own personal permission slip to experiment to have fun and to like play in our businesses.
So that's the first pillar moving on to the second one.
I call it unlearning and Discerning because before we can really fully Embrace doing business differently we need a like.
[7:21] Really start to gently examine how we've been culturally conditioned to do business currently and really start to explore which Concepts and ideas we no longer want to carry forward,
in the way that we do business so in unlearning and Discerning we're really focusing on differentiating ourselves
and our business practices from maybe the cultural norm it's all about breaking ties and cutting cords with old harmful ways of doing business that make us just kind of like
I don't know feel yucky I can imagine,
for myself I can actually like go back and reflect on ways that I've interacted with other business owners when I've been the you know potential client or the.
The purchaser of something where maybe different ways that they marketed something or different ways that they sold something,
really rubbed me the wrong way and maybe kept me from actually moving forward and working with that person or purchasing they're offering and I bet that you can think of,
at least five to ten instances when you've been in an experience like that as well and so when we're working with this pillar we're really asking ourselves to question just about everything we do this to like.
[8:39] That our yeses are like whole body fuck yeses as opposed to a yes that's like,
well because that's what everyone else does or like that's what the training that I bought said I should do
or even just like a I don't know sort of yes like it's just what I do so,
just like every pillar when we're working with on learning and Discerning it's really helping us kind of tune into our intuition.
[9:11] Even more clearly and so this pillar is all about kind of like noticing and defining the ways that we don't want to run our business it's about like educating ourselves on ways.
That likes staying with the status quo maybe can be extractive or harmful and like thinking about how we want to do that differently and it's also about like really working with our
intuition to allow us to discern where we want to.
[9:46] Move forward and where we want to like learn from I think that in business there's a lot of voices out there I know that I am just one voice of many in your earbuds all the time and we can.
We can listen to all these different voices but it's really important for us to be have really clear inner knowing so that we can be Discerning as.
What information we want to fully allow not only into our.
[10:18] Our ear buds but also our energetic bodies and our businesses and which ones we don't.
[10:26] And I really feel like this pillar is foundational because if we want to break the status quo we first have to realize how ingrained that
current status quo is in our current thinking so even if you.
I feel like this is actually so foundational that even if you only worked with this pillar by itself and embracing the messiness.
The like you'd be well on your way to making choices for you and your business that are already in more alignment for her
for who you are and who your businesses and
to do business differently and to run a more spirit-led intuitive lead business like these two things are so foundational and so important
that even if you only worked with these two you'd be really great you'd be set and I'd be so proud of you and excited to see where your business goes.
[11:26] But if you want to keep going further let's keep talking okay so then the third pillar I call imagining envisioning.
So here's the thing if we have never seen somebody run the type of business that we want to run or if we've never seen somebody like put into practice.
A business practice that we want to employ,
basically we've never seen our Dream actually modeled for us before it can be really hard for us to imagine it for ourselves.
And I will put an aside in here that is unless you're an Aquarius or like have a lot of Aquarius in your birth chart.
In which case like bless your little heart because you all are the inventors for the new paradigm for all of us and I fucking love you for that so thank you.
[12:16] But there's some of us like me who don't have a lot of Aquarius in our chart and maybe for us it is a little bit harder to,
really imagine a brand new way of working a brand new way of being a brand new way of relating and marketing and all of these things and so this pillar is about,
expanding our minds and imaginations it's about.
Like throwing out the rules like all of the rules the rules of business the rules of the game.
Like the rules of physics I don't care throw them all out I want you to be in a place of limitlessness,
and allow possibility and potential to be everywhere
and so oftentimes in this pillar we're really working with breathwork we're working with guided visualizations future Focus meditations and then you know it's one thing to imagine the thing but then we also have to.
Bring it back down to earth make it a little concrete and so we do some visioning and like taking those ideas and really making some concrete plans with them to map out how we will actually get there.
And I really see this pillar as foundational because you know doing things differently requires inventiveness it requires new ideas and those things require.
[13:40] That possibility that only imagination can really bring forward okay so that is our third pillar.
Lots of more like let's go on to the fourth pillar okay trusting and surrendering so.
I don't want to make any assumptions here but I'm going to guess that it might be pretty obvious to all of you why trusting and surrendering,
is considered a foundational pillar for doing business differently.
If you are unsure why it is than I am amazed and inspired by you because I have found that it takes so
much
trust in ourselves so much trust in our intuitive nudges and so much trust in the universe at large to do business differently.
I will say that on multiple occasions I have chosen the word trust,
as my word of the year because it is something that I have personally felt the need to work with.
Over and over and over again no matter how established I become in business no matter how.
No matter how successful I become in business trust is still something that is a constant.
[15:05] You know we all know that there are zero promises like in business there's no such thing as a sure thing in business and we've all of us already taken a big scary leap to start our business in the first place,
so yay congratulations I'm proud of you and this pillar exists because trust and surrender aren't just like
foundational at the start of a business Journey
like I said their muscles that they have to be flexed and conditioned all the fucking time like from now until forever in business and in life that's why it's something that I work with in my own practice and my own life time and time again
years and years and years it's something that is always coming back and.
[15:52] Bringing new layers of depth and support each time.
[15:58] So this pillar is all about practicing those skills because yes you know having trust and being willing to surrender our skills and it's about practicing those skills in small ways and also working up
to larger and larger ways it's about kind of titrating the amount of trust and surrender that we work with.
Up and up and up until that capacity for deeper amounts of trust and surrender grows.
[16:28] I really feel like this pillar goes hand-in-hand with a later pillar when we're going to talk about befriending fear and taking Brave steps but we'll get more into that in a minute.
[16:39] And I believe that this pillar is so foundational,
you know like I already said regularly trusting ourselves and our inner voice and our intuition or whatever you want to call it,
and also surrendering to Spirit or did universe or whatever you want to call it is,
kind of basically the definition of running an intuitive lead business so
don't be surprised if several episodes in the future and several interview questions that I have with awesome folks that I talked to you on this podcast
really focus back to this question to this topic I really think that it is the pillar that business owners like myself included struggle with the most but can be.
Also something that really allows us to expand past the point of what our imaginations can even hold.
[17:37] So that is the trusting and surrendering pillar if we move on to the fifth pillar I call it finding and defining enoughness.
And yeah I know enough nespoli isn't really a word or at least that's what my computer tells me every time I write it down and it gives me the red squiggle line underneath but I love that word enoughness.
And.
You know for me a major theme that I've personally been working with a lot lately is this idea of trying instead of striving.
[18:16] Like truly putting in the necessary effort and like given it a good try.
[18:23] But separating that from this idea of striving or like pushing myself into burnout at every turn and the only way that I'm able to
try without strive is by knowing how much is enough,
how much work is enough how much effort is enough how much income is enough or the like,
I don't know get real psychoanalysts on you like how much I am enough.
[18:58] And so I know that it's pretty common in business spaces.
To explore this idea of like redefining success but like I want to.
Invited the idea of like what about redefining what enough is so that's what this pillar does it's about finding out our,
you know at least our current version of enoughness whether that's in a financial capacity and then we're going to do some real like tangible number crunching
or maybe we'd be getting a bit more esoteric and expansive and diving into like.
Kind of that soft and tender part
underneath the like masks of productivity or The Masks of success that we where to find out how we can feel more enoughness in like all parts of our lives.
[19:53] And I really feel like this pillar is foundational to doing business differently because.
Knowing when we have like worked or created or taught or learned enough allows us to also know when we can.
Pause and play and rest or relax and because capitalism tells us that there is no such thing as enough.
Truly like a basic tenet of capitalism is that the economy always has to be growing.
Not staying stagnant and stable not declining or gasp like even slowing.
They equate that to a recession and they equate that to failure but I call bullshit on that.
If we really want to do business differently we need to untangle our way out of.
Capitalism's mindset of what stability is and stop seeing stability as a failure.
[20:58] So that is the fifth pillar.
So let's talk about the last and final pillar befriending fear and taking Brave steps.
[21:11] You know at this point I think I've been in business in one form or another for over a decade now and I'm going to tell you it has never stopped being scary in one way or another.
Truly like the things that used to scare me don't really frightened me so much anymore but like now there are newer bigger scarier things that freak me out.
And they do like regularly and so in this pillar we're kind of invited to work with a few different things.
I really love that it helps us shift our perception from this idea that fear is a bad thing and that we need to just like quote get over it already or like.
Quote push through it in some way and instead kind of like see our fears as invitations and guides and like one of the biggest Transformations for me that has happened through working with this pillar is really start to see
my fear is like an old friend.
[22:15] It's like the one that like knows all my secrets and Elementary School crushes and like all of those things and is here to like help me move.
From.
One grade to another it's like graduating from one class or one school and moving to the nether it's like scary to trying something new but that doesn't mean that it's also you know
not at least a little bit exciting to and you know I really feel like this is a foundational pillar for
having a successful business that not only does things differently but does things more intuitively because you know running a business is some scary shit and if we do want to
grow and I'm not using the word grow just in terms of financial growth or,
numbers growth I'm just talking about it in terms of like personal growth you know evolving growth.
[23:16] If we want to do a business if we want to have a business that allows for growth,
then it's imperative that we learn how to take action even when fear is present and to do it in a way that is like supportive to our nervous systems and that is supportive to our bodies and we do that through befriending fear instead of
pushing through it okay.
Those are the six pillars we did it we've gone through all six pillars the I've found are imperative for running an intuitive lead business or doing business differently.
So what do you think are there pillars that you feel super sturdy and confident in is your foundation really solid with some of these pillars but maybe.
Not quite fully built with some of the others or maybe they were built at one time but they're kind of crumbling and need to have some patch work done or be rebuilt all over again.
I'm curious feel free to tell me send me a little voice note or join our patreon community and share in the Discord Channel.
[24:27] But either way lucky for you each episode from here on out is going to tap into one or more of these pillars so you're going to have a lot of chances to work with each of them just by hanging out here in this podcast feed with me
yeah.
And I'll also say that these are the same six pillars that form the foundation of my coaching both in that small group incubator program that I run in the spring but also in the Private Client work that I do too.
And if you're wanting to kind of do a deep dive into that first / last pillar I have just the place for you to start,
I've got a free downloadable coaching module for you all about embracing the mess.
In it you're going to get a 45-minute coaching session video All About embracing the mess plus a 13-page fillable workbook with questions that invite you to let your thoughts get a little messy or tidy up or anything in between
if that's something that you want to work with you can find it by going to my website at Amy koretsky.com.
[25:36] That's what I got for you today it has been my pleasure to be here with you and I look forward to our next time together by.
Thanks so much for listening today if you liked this episode or even if it just got you to think about your business a little bit differently,
I'd love for you to subscribe to the show and share it with a business bestie or a few of them.
[26:01] And if you're interested in giving yourself a bit more permission to get messy in your own business.
Head on over to the show notes to download my free coaching module on embracing the mess,
in it I share my thoughts invite you to write and reflect and offer some actions you can take to start embracing and loving the Messier parts of yourself and your business.
[26:24] Breathe into business is recorded on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and anishinabe peoples.
It's created by me Amy kuretsky with the production help from softer sounds Studios thanks again for listening and breathing into your business with me today.
