Chauna, a breathwork meditation facilitator, was in the middle of building a brand new course and feeling overwhelmed and overworked when our paths crossed.
Her pain points were many, but the main emotion behind all of them was absolute overwhelm.
Chauna’s brain was on overdrive - trying to switch from task to task fluidly, dozens of times a day. Through our work together she found a new way to prioritize, how to delegate, and the permission to say no.
HOW WE WORKED TOGETHER:
Chauna and I first met as colleagues when we organized together in Breathwork for the People, a group of breathwork facilitators calling for a stronger foundation of anti-oppression, anti-racism and trauma-informed care in breathwork trainings. We were asking other breathwork leaders to make some important and necessary changes to what they teach and how they do business. During this time, Chauna was working on launching her own diverse breathwork training program. It was a much bigger undertaking than she expected, and she felt out of her depth in a variety of different ways.
Soon after Chauna realized what an undertaking creating an entire training would be, I jumped on a short phone call to help her work through a few sticky points. Soon after, Chauna found my sounding board so helpful she decided she wanted that sort of support full-time and signed up for one-on-one coaching together. She needed help with her training program, which she had inadvertently built backwards - selling the program before she’d fully built out the course. Between running the behind-the-scenes and teaching, and with other non-breathwork work on her docket, Chauna was, quite simply, tired.
Working together to assess her business, we realized Chauna had a terribly difficult time delegating and making decisions about how to get the most help from the team she surrounded herself with. She was paying for services she wasn’t properly utilizing, and found herself unable to make choices in a timely fashion - all of which was ramping up her stress and overwhelm to unbearable levels. With some simple structural changes, Chauna was able to be much more organized and give her time more appropriately to the tasks she actually needed to handle – and delegate the things she didn’t need to focus on. Handing off email controls to someone else while
taking back power to “drive the car” of her own business allowed her to lose the “struggling entrepreneur” mindset that had plagued her career thus far. Small but impactful things like hiring a virtual assistant, creating admin only days, moving all her pilates clients to certain days of the week, and giving herself more time off all allowed her to show up for herself - and her clients and students - more authentically.
On how our work impacted her business, Chauna shares:
“It's given me so much more brain space. I now finish 95% of my to-do list. This time around in the second cohort of my training program, everyone’s gotten everything on time and no one has any questions. I haven’t wasted a dollar on contractors I’m not using. I'm more organized and productive. It’s awesome to pay people to be a part of your team - You get to use all of the help they're bringing, instead of letting it just drift along like before. Now, everything's getting done on time.”
Previous to our work together, Chauna had let her clients run the show and run herself ragged trying to give 100% of herself to every business and every client - but the math simply wasn’t adding up. Managing the stress was easy – managing the blows to her self-worth as she navigated her work-life struggle felt almost impossible. By learning how to let go of control and take her hands off of the little details, she could put her hands back on the steering wheel and get herself, and her business, back on track.
In her own words:
“I really like the combination of magic and business coaching. It's really good to have that duality, because at the end of the day, I need both. My work focuses on intuition and energy work, yes, but I still have to create a profit and loss statement, I still need somebody that can understand quarterly finance goals. Being able to combine that in a single person has been perfect for me. She gets what you do and gets the business side of it.”
– Chauna
conclusion
Back in the Driver’s Seat
Chauna felt like she was drowning in her businesses, spending money on help she wasn’t using, and struggling with a disorganized and flustered behind-the-scenes workflow. It took careful assessment of where she needed to be hands-on, and how she could be hands-off, to get an even stronger handle on her business. Sometimes letting go is the best way to regain control and strength. After our work together, for the first time in her eleven years of business, Chauna learned that she didn’t need to grip quite so tight to steer the car of her business.