In this solo coaching video, Donna Brown warns entrepreneurs against discarding valuable parts of their professional history when reinventing their businesses. She argues that every long‑term role, even those left behind, contains skills, passions, and a personal "zone of genius" that can be woven into a new, authentic business model. Using a detailed case study of her client Pamela—who combined 31 years of publishing experience with a deep practice of meditation and numerology—Donna illustrates how aligning one’s natural engineering‑type thinking and spiritual insights creates a unique offering (Alicia Publishing) that generates flow, excitement, and market traction. The talk emphasizes recognizing one’s innate wiring, mapping past experiences to future offers, and designing a holistic business that feels effortless rather than forced. Donna concludes with a call to retain and integrate one’s full story instead of “throwing the business out with the bathwater.”
Chapters
Are you throwing your business out with the bathwater? That may sound crazy, but that's what so many people that I've worked with have done. I have a great story of a beautiful, beautiful client of mine, Pamela, and what happened to her has happened— happens to so many people. I'm sure you've heard or read somebody's post or livestream saying, oh, I used to do this, now I used to do this other thing. I used to do that, now I do this. Oh, for years and years I did this. No, no, no, no, I don't want to have any more of it. Now I'm going to do this. And what's really interesting about this is that if you were completely disinterested in something, it would be pretty difficult to sustain a job for 10, 15, 20, even 30 years. There was something about this. Sometimes there are jobs that we absolutely get out of necessity, but I'm talking about those jobs that you actually chose, that you said yes to, and then you said yes to staying. Every time you didn't quit, every day that you didn't quit was a yes, I'm going to stay. And in those jobs and in those experiences and in those relationships, even there was something there for us. And in that something there for us, what is it? What is the skill that we learned? What is the— what is that sort of special part of us that it really spoke to? That our natural way of being and relating to the world. And you'll hear me say this over and over again because I really believe that that's the key to unlocking your genius as an entrepreneur, is to really understand that and explore that as much as possible. But there was some part of it, let's say the part of you that loves to create systems, that sort of very architectural and engineer-like way of thinking. Let's put that an engineer-type brain. So you could be sort of an accountant or an engineer, or, and so then you'll build up these amazing systems for other things because that's the way you're wired. That's the way you think. I have a business design studio because my brain is wired In a— that just thinks naturally and designs things out. I design things out and then I make them happen, whether it's a physical product or a business or a service, doesn't really matter. That's the way I think and the way I'm wired. So if I go with that instead of against that, I'm always going to have an easier time. And that's just a little aside thing here, is that's basically what people are talking about when they're in the flow and they're not creating any sort of attrition with what, with what they would naturally do and things that they would unnaturally do or don't or choose to do a little bit less. So when you go, when you decide to forge your way in the online world and create something for yourself or even with physical products and you decide no longer to be an employee but to be self-employed, Whatever that looks like, quite often we literally turn our back on a big chunk of our lives and the experiences that we've gained. So back to Pamela's story. And Pamela is gorgeous in all ways, just the most beautiful person. And we came together for a business design intensive. And what was so interesting about this is that she'd had a spiritual awakening, and for 8 years now, or possibly a little bit more, she's really been dedicating her time and her energy to studying numerology, just to meditating, to learning different practices and different techniques, and really going down this path, and was teaching meditation or having or creating meditations or doing meditative courses with people or working, doing reading numerology readings, and she's still doing those, and they're very powerful and really, really, really cool. So check them out. But what was interesting is that she wasn't— she spoke about her business in a very sort of soft way, in a very sort of underspoken, sort of— yeah, is that a word? I'm thinking in Italian, but sort of, you know, very soft-spoken and sort of not really— when— and then so I said, well, What did you do before that? She goes, oh, I was in publishing for 31 years. It's like, and so why aren't you doing that too? She goes, because they don't fit together. And this is the fun part when you do this. This is, this is, this is my, my zone of genius, my love, my, my passion, my— I don't know, it's just, it's almost like it feels like a game. It's so much fun. But when you take all the pieces of yourself and weave them together in a beautiful business model, you're definitely going to have a business like nobody else. So on the one hand, she could have been competing with all the big meditation teachers, you know, who have huge followings, things who are part of, let's say, contemplative traditions. Let's say a Zen tradition or a Theravada tradition or a Buddhist, you know, or Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Or they could be, you know, you know, Deepak Chopra, or I don't know, all these, Mooji, any number of people teaching any number of things that have been added for decades, which is not to take anything away from what she was doing, but there wasn't as much power in that as there could be because she was missing the other part, and it's that other part of herself that had been left behind when she left that job. It's like leaving a piece of your energy and leaving a piece of your, your story and yourself really in this other place where you said, oh, I'm not doing that anymore. And so there's that kind of sadness too when you think about it sometimes. Oh no, I don't do that anymore. Sometimes you're glad, but there's also a part of you that feels kind of weird about it. So the magic for her was to really bring things together in this gorgeous business model that's now a new imprint, like publishing, Alicia Publishing, and she's helping authors who have really special messages bring forth their book in the way that she knows how to help them. She can help them with the numerology of the titles and the people that she works with. I'm doing this great sales pitch for her because she's amazing, but what I want to say is that she, we moved her into this, brought her into the sense of wholeness of her experience. Once we did that and created and drew out this business design for her and designed out what it could look like, all the different aspects that she could create, all the different offers that she could have, all the different ways of supporting people who want to write a book that's worth reading and not just a vanishing vanity— not vanishing, well, maybe they should be vanishing— a vanity publishing sort of just to say I did it thing. Who really want to share something and who really want their book to be meaningful and truly want people to read it rather than saying, oh, I now have a bestseller. She can help them in ways that are very, very unusual. And so she's taking her, her publishing experience of 31 years, 3 decades of amazing experience on one side, and this incredible wealth of experience and knowledge that she's gained on the other In meditation practices, in understanding, um, people's, you know, people through their numbers, through their numerology, and, and how that can bring them insight into their own work, into the people they should be working with, and all kinds of other stuff. When that came together, whoa, it was like fireworks. All of a sudden she was jumping out of bed and ready and excited to, in the morning, and ready— that sounded weird. She jumps out of bed in the morning excited to work on her new business and the offers are coming flowing out and people are reaching out to her with not even an offer created and not even knowing what the investment would be. Just because when you bring those things together, there's that— that's what people call flow. It's that there's nothing stopping that energy. You're bringing all of yourself to your business and all of yourself to your experience, all your experience, all your gifts, all your dreams, all your magic. everything into one beautiful business model or offer or the type of physical product or services, whatever you do. So please don't throw your business out with the bathwater. This is Donna Brown and the Design Studio and the Business Design Studio, and that's the thought for the day.
