The Surprising Mindset Shift to Enroll More Clients with Ease

Welcome back to the She's Crafted to Thrive podcast. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, and I am so excited that you're about to listen to the series, How to Grow a Creative Business While Living with Chronic Illness. This is the last episode in this series on this topic, and I hope that you have found more awareness. I hope you have given yourself more grace. I also hope that you've seen how you can make adjustments in your business so that your mindset and your body are actually working with your business versus your business working against you. I hope that this last episode of this last part of the series helps you to look at different tools you may never have thought of using intentionally to help you grow a more holistic and impactful business. All right, before we hop into this part of this last part of the series, I want to invite you to jump on a free coaching for clarity call with me. Every person that I've ever worked with in this coaching for clarity call walks away with a golden nugget that serves their life and their business in such a wonderful way. What I want to invite is the woman who knows she's ready to start running her business in a way that honors her pace and her reality of life, and that her life and her business are working in harmony together. That her business actually serves her life and that she's so excited about it. If you're looking to pivot or grow, or you feel like you've plateaued, or you feel like you're constantly picking up and starting over again because of living with chronic illness, I want you to book this call. I want you to book this call if you've been sitting at the same income level for the last 6 months or so, around that $1,000 or $2,000 mark, and you're wanting to grow, but you're feeling a little bit anxious of what that might mean for your spoons. I want you to hop on a call with me. It's free and I'm really there and it's really designed to help you get to that next step in your business with a way that helps you feel more aligned, have more spoons, and feel more excited about the possibility of you reaching your goals in a way that honors your reality of living life with chronic illness. All right, so that's my invitation to you. I hope to see you there. You can find the link inside of the show notes that says book a Call with Nikita, and it's free. All right, jump into this last part of the series, how to have a holistic approach to creating more ease and comfort to increase your impact and results in your business as a chronic warrior. Stay tuned. You're listening to the She's Crafted to Thrive podcast, and this is your host, Nikita Williams. On this show, we're talking about what it's like to start, grow, and scale a business while living with chronic illness. You will hear from other creatives and CEOs as they share their stories and the lessons that led them to learn to lean more into what works for them. You'll discover that success does not mean perfection, and fear, negative thoughts, and challenges are all a part of the journey, but there's always an abundance of wins. So stay tuned and you'll find the inspiration and tools you need to craft a life and business that thrives.

I am excited for this episode in the series of how to grow a creative business while living with chronic illness. So whether you have a service-based, product-based, or you're a coach or consultant helping other creatives or other women living their lives, you want to be running your business in a way that aligns with your reality of life, living with chronic pain physically, emotionally, and just life hurdles in general. So what I have found for myself living with chronic illness, there are a lot of misconceptions that I've had in my own head that have had to reframe. And this series is really about looking at our circumstances, our reality, our lot in life from a holistic point of view. I believe you can have a holistic approach to creating more ease and comfort and increase your impact and results in your business while running It with and living with chronic illness by focusing on the thought and the actions that our mind and body is connected. And therefore what we create in our business and what we do for our clients and how we market, how we speak, how we attract, it's all encompassing of looking at ourselves holistically. And that's why I often tell people I'm a mindset coach. I'm kind of like a mindset coach and a life coach for your business. We talk about business, we talk about strategy, we talk about, you know, marketing and different tools and how you need to show up and all of those different things that work for you. But the first thing I want to make sure and make sure you're clear on and make sure that you're completely confident and solid in is that your reality of life is serving your business in a way that honors your pace. Your space and your body and mind. So with that being said, the reason why I believe running a holist— running your business holistically is important is because it actually gives you more spoons. It gives you more energy. And what do I mean by that? Well, oftentimes when I'm working with clients, what I have found that they're doing is they're running their business like over here on the side, as if it's separate, almost like this employee, um, and employer relationship. So many of us have learned or have been in, in the corporate world or whatever world you're coming from, where you have the employer who says, do this, and you do it. You show up, you do what they say, and you leave. They don't really care about what's going on in your personal life. And honestly, most of us, and for most of the women I've talked to who start running their business or want to start their own businesses, because they wanted to have the flexibility to honor their reality of life, honor their ups and downs, right? And for some reason in our businesses, once we get started— and I say for some reason, there's a very real reason— we start to run our businesses very much like the employer and employee relationship when it comes to our business being the employer and our body being the employee. And what do I mean by that? Well, when we are in that thought process of employer and employee, The employer is dictating what it is that we need to do, when we need to show up, what we got to do, telling you when you can take vacation, telling me— telling you when you have your lunch breaks, telling you when you do all of those different kind of things. Also, they don't want to hear whether or not, you know, it's a bad day, and they're like, if you don't got any more vacation time, you're not getting no vacation. It's also being like, we don't want to be all up in your drama, we just want you to come up to work and do your job, and We're happy that you did it. And here are some quote unquote benefits, which really is a paycheck. And then we on the inside are like dying slowly, right? But that same mentality is often where I find my clients in their business. Their business is held to this employer state. Their business somehow is starting to tell them when they can work, how they're going to work, how they're going to market. It's dictating all of the things. That are happening in their life. It's the thing that's telling them how long they're gonna work, and it's the thing that's telling their clients like, be open and free, and I'm gonna have no boundaries, no settings. I'm gonna allow people to make those choices for me. And it baffles me, but it totally makes sense why this happens. And I have been in that boat myself thinking, oh, this is how you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to treat your business like you would if you were working for employer. But you guys, The magic here is realizing that you are the employer. You get to decide when you show up, you get to decide when and who and how and how much time and your vacation and how you going to show up. You get to choose that. That is in your wheelhouse. So when we start looking at our businesses from that lens, as being the boss, as being the CEO of your life, and your business, and you bring them all together to make a little happy, happy sack, what happens? Your shift of mindset shifts and change. What happens is that you start looking at your body and your mind and your relationships and the things that matter, like, more openly, holistically. One way I like to think about it is an illustration that I've heard multiple different times, um, when it comes to trying to set priorities, right? So if you have a jar, right, and some sand and some rocks. If you put the sand in first and then try to add the rocks, the rocks won't fit. They all won't fit. But if you put the rocks in first and then pour the sand in, it all covers up. And that's the approach I believe we need to have in our businesses, especially when we're looking at our reality of life. The rocks is our mind and body, right? Those are important. If they don't get in the jar, There is no business. There is no money. There is no anything else, right? So all the other things like time and schedules and offers and products and services and all those different things is like the sand. So we need to shift our way of thinking about our businesses to be in literal holistic and prioritizing you, your body, and your mind, right? And so for me, that looks like spirituality. It means like physical health. It means mental health. It means relationships. It means time and energy. It means honoring rest and eating and exercise and movement and fulfilling the needs that we actually have. I actually have inside of my program, the Align Clarity Way, a whole module on what's the difference between needs and wants, because in our businesses, Many of us think our needs are wants. You're thinking that these things that you're doing, your business, are needs and ignoring the actual needs. And so we talk about that, like identifying what that really looks like. So one of the ways that I have found to really run your business holistically is to make a daily practice of incorporating a mind-body practice to allow you to really increase your spoons and your creativity. One way to do this is breathwork. Another way to do this is journaling. And a third way to do this is using essential oils. So I think I've talked about this before, but journaling is just like where the mind meets the paper and awareness. It's like when you can see the thoughts and speak the thoughts and hear the thoughts and know what the thoughts are and give yourself time to acknowledge them and sort them out, figure out what it is that you're feeling or thinking. The other thing is breathwork, intentional breathing. It's the way that we can go in our body by really focusing and kind of doing like a literal body scan. Like, where am I feeling this pain? Where am I feeling this stuckness? Well, I might— where am I feeling frustrated and overwhelmed with things, right? If we feel all those things in our body, you better guarantee and know it's going to show up in your business. Number 3, essential oils. And that's where I really want to spend most of our time in this episode. And it's because I know there are a lot of people out there who are like, Nikita, are you starting to sell essential oils? No, I don't sell them, but I am a certified essential oil specialist. I've gone to school for learning how to use them in a way that honors your mind and your body in a holistic and safe way. And I know there's a lot of people who believe that it's just a scam, essential oils, and you know, there's all these big companies, and, or you might feel like they're all safe and everything's good. There's a lot of misconceptions about essential oils. So one, I wanted spell some of those real quick just so you understand. Essential oils are used in the practice of aromatherapy. Aromatherapy is literally the therapy of the mind and body, aka hence why we're talking about it in this episode, because of the mind-body holistic approach to running your business. So how is that to be the case? Well, these essential oils are literally containing plants' life essence, or their lifeblood, if you will. Like we have blood running through us, plants have an essence. They have constituents, they have scientific molecules that are part of our body that work with our body. So much so that most essential oils are used in some of our medications that we use today. Actually, that's how a lot of pharmaceutical things started, was using the science of the plants, of how they affect the mind and the body in order to help us overall. So to me and anyone who does understand this, that means it has a direct effect and it could be wielded in such a way that it honors our ability to create a more holistic approach to running our business, to feel more creative, to feel more energized, to feel more at ease. So I wanted to share with you 3 oils that you probably aren't even thinking or even hear about often or understand what they are. And I just want to talk to you about them because I use them in different blends for myself personally and for my clients when we're getting together, especially when we're doing mindset work or we're doing strategy and we really need to be focused and clear and connected to what our purpose, passion, mission, why is all of that stuff, our values. We want to make sure those things are clear and present for us when we're creating in our business, when we're growing our business. So these 3 essential oils are ones that you probably don't ever hear. I don't think I've heard of a podcast episode talking about these oils, and that's cool with me, but they are very powerful and I am going to tell you why. So the 3 essential oils are myrrh, cardamom, and jasmine absolute. Now I think most of you have heard of jasmine, one of the oils, but the reason why I came to know about jasmine essential oils or Jasmine Absolute is because of living with chronic bladder pain. As you guys know, in the last year or so, I've been diagnosed with intercystitis cystasis, which is chronic bladder pain. And let me tell you, I have experienced a lot of different pain between knee reconstruction where they literally broke my bone and reshaped my kneecap to endometriosis and surgery. And I can tell you chronic bladder pain beats them all, y'all. It beats them all. So I've been looking for ways to find more relief from the pain with chronic bladder pain. And so obviously part of that is my diet, things that I drink, things that I don't drink, things that I eat, and all that's been great. But there are still things that it happens. It's just what it is. So I have learned through my certification course, Jasmine is actually a natural uterine tonic. It helps improve the circulation in the uterine wall, which is really interesting because it helps with the flow of blood in that area. And when you have chronic things, usually it's inflamed, and anti-inflammatory can kind of get stuck in those areas. And I have found it to be one of the most potent ways for me to manage the pain. It can bring my, you know, 7 to a 5 or 4, which— that's huge for me because usually I'm living every single day at a 4. That's just where my pain level is, and it's— I'm just used to it. So probably for most people it's probably like a 10 or 8, but for me it's a 4. Sometimes it's a 3-ish, but it's pretty high. I have a high tolerance for pain. But jasmine is more than just a great thing to help me with my chronic bladder pain. It also has constituents in it, or molecules, or science-based things that work, or synergy that works with our body that helps release stress. It's an antidepressant. It helps release brain fog. It helps increase this feeling of self-confidence and enhances alertness. And there's a different essential oil— essential jasmine oil called Jasmine Sambac, which I'm sure I'm saying that wrong— that helps improve, or has been shown that it can also help improve, hand-eye coordination. So if you're like me, I'm a very klutzy kind of person. I try not to be. I feel like Pilates helps me in some way, shape, or form not be so klutzy, but I still am. And it helps with the hand-eye coordination because it is a physiological way of stimulating the effect of being increased in attentiveness. So it creates— it increases your focus. So jasmine is a beautiful oil to use when you are looking to feel more confident. We're wanting to release some of that brain fog. So this is an essential oil that I use with my clients to do deep breath work, um, right before a strategy session so that we can clear and also— I like also deal with some pain since it is an antidepressant and it also has some analgesic. So y'all know I'm getting very scientific-y in here, but basically it can be pain blocking for certain things. It can reduce the amount of pain that you feel. So it also increases its effect when you use it or pair it with Roman chamomile, lavender, and clary sage. So clary sage is another beautiful oil, but I recommend, especially for all my endometriosis warriors, to work with an aromatherapist or essential oil specialist on this because it can increase some of your flow. And if— for— if you're like me, when I had my uterus, that was a thing for me. And it's not like I need any more help, but I use clary sage and it did not have that effect on me. But for some it does, so just keep that in mind. So jasmine is a beautiful oil. You have to be careful that you get one that is wild harvested and organic organic because they have been found to be adulterated because it is a quite expensive, very expensive oil if you buy it from any place. So if it's really cheap, I can guarantee you it's not wild harvested or, or organic. So just be careful. So the next oil is another essential oil that I, I love the smell of. It's like in different Middle Eastern foods, and I think it's even in baklava, and it's cardamom. So it creates a mental clarity. It also helps calm and create balance and harmony holistically, giving a more supportive, you know, head and heart alignment. And we all need that, right? Especially if we're dealing with, you know, trying to figure out what does our business need to look like when it comes to our life? How do we put it in a place that feels like it honors our life and serves our life versus take away from our life? So it really also You know, cardamom also increases cognitive function for focus and understanding, and again, clarity. So this is another beautiful essential oil that is working to help you have a holistic thought in your mind and in your body and creating strategy, goals, um, dreams for your business. It works really well when you pair it with sweet orange or bergamot or any of the citrusy oils. I find that cardamom, since it has that like warm kind of spicy-ish undertone. It smells really great with another orange sweetness, um, and paired with like a lovely floral note with jasmine. So a beautiful blend that you could try using in a diffuser when you're trying to get focused or trying to create, or trying to create a plan for your business. Using a beautiful blend of cardamom, sweet orange, and jasmine would be like the bomb diggity, just telling you. Okay, and then the last oil that I want to share with you is myrrh. Myrrh has— we all know of it, we've all seen it, it's in the Bible, you know, we hear about it often, but we don't hear about it in the context of business and life, right? So myrrh is very grounding. It is very grounding. It soothes the mind on overthinking and contributes to a sense of peace. So first of all, who of us don't need more grounding and calmness and stillness when it comes to overthinking? You know, when I think about my clients in their business, oftentimes the reason why they feel stuck or the reason why their business is kind of running amok as their employer is because they've overthought because of all the information coming into them and they don't know what will serve them, what will not serve them. So they're trying it all and trying to do it all. And so when they come to me, sometimes it's really hard for them to be like, but what about this? And but what about that? And what about, about what they said? We really have to work on calming that mind. And obviously we use breathwork and journaling and mindset reframing to embrace that. But myrrh is a great oil to help assist invest in the more fundamental ways of getting that into your body and your mind. The thing about myrrh, just for safety reasons, it is contraindicated. So it's asked— it's been shown or researched that it shouldn't be used with those who are pregnant or breastfeeding. It may be fetotoxic. So it's one of those oils that has a safety concern that you want to make sure you're checking in with your health coach or with, um, your aromatherapist, specifically aromatherapist or essential oil specialist, someone who's been trained and also asking your doctor, hey, I'm thinking about using myrrh. The same thing for all of these oils, make sure you check in with your doctor to see if any of these things will be not something they want you to take. Um, the other beautiful thing about myrrh is that it works really well when you pair it with frankincense, lavender, or helichrysum. Now, the reason why they work really well with that, it's because of the beautiful synergy between frankincense, lavender, and myrrh, is that frankincense is meant to like trigger a focus, a clarity. Like, there is— I can't think of the word right now— an actual constituent that is in there that allows the brain to get more focused. It helps bring that into more clarity and focus. And I often hear a lot of people say, oh, I use frankincense at night to go to sleep. I'm like, oh my goodness, you must have wild, vivid dreams. And it's probably true. I can say that for myself recently. I have used it because it was in a blend that I was using at night, and my dreams have been so vivid of it. I'm like, oh my goodness. So you want to be really careful when, when you use these essential oils. To a degree, you will have some effects on this clarity if you use it with frankincense and lavender. It's just a beautiful blend. So the reason why I wanted to share this with you is that we as chronic illness warriors need all of the tricks and spoons and extra things to help us to feel and be more peaceful, more focused, more productive, more creative by empowering our minds and our bodies to, one, be connected. You know, there's a lot of work out there that works on the somatic, or just the parts of your body you have control with within your body. And then there are some people who are only working with the, the mind part of it, or just the things that you must be doing. And I have found that Working your business and life holistically allows you to grow with more ease. My clients have said to me, the moment I started to incorporate mindset work and aromatherapy, that they felt more complete in moving forward with their, their shifts and their growth in their business. And they happen more fast. They, they happen more quickly. And that totally makes sense because of course, when you are working with your body versus against it and you're taking it into account and you're acknowledging it needs this extra support or needs the support, love, and care in general, and you're allowing your business to work around that, you create more joy, you create more sustainability, you create more focus, you create an easier way to create impact and results in your business. When you take full advantage of honoring where your body is and how important it is to what you do. So that is my tip for today. It's really just to lean into identifying certain areas of your business where maybe you have neglected you. Maybe you have neglected how you want to show up because you think that, well, I have to have an open schedule because nobody will book with me. Or maybe I have to, you know, price this low so I can get so many clients. But you feel exhausted and tired, and maybe your work is suffering because your body is. Maybe you have been running your business fine and you're about to scale it, and you're like, I don't think I can scale it. And so you're having this self-sabotaging thing happening that you don't even know is— that's happening, where you're like, you start to go and then you're like, uh, or your body starts to have a fight, or you start to have a flare-up and it's like, man, every time I start to do this, your body's trying to tell you something. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, your body's trying to tell you something. So you really want to just honor and look at your body being the rocks. Your body and your mind are the rocks that go in that jar, and everything else will fit in when you take care of it first. It holistically works when you put all of the things in. You put the rocks in first and you put the sand over it. It looks perfect. It looks like it's supposed to be there together. And that's how you want your— want to be running your business. That's how you sustainably grow your business. That's how you don't end up burnt out or in the hospital. That's also how you run your business even when you have a flare-up or when life hurdles happen, because you've been running in a way that honors you and your life and your mind and your body. Can we do that more? Can we find ways to do that more? That's my challenge to you after this episode. And I want to thank you so much for joining me for this series. And what I would like to say, this series was really designed to help you look at your business differently, look at your mind and your body differently, and hopefully come to this conclusion that the reason why you may not be getting to where you want to be is that you've been not paying attention to your body and your mind in a way that honors your life. And your business is not serving it. I hope you look at this series as a way to tap in more into what matters most, right? So that you feel in more alignment. And as always, as always, I hope you enjoyed this. Come back. Obviously this might be the end of the series, but this is not the end of the podcast. I have so many other interviews coming up in so many other podcast episodes with just me talking about different things when it comes to your business and your mindset. And I can't wait to continue sharing with you. If you enjoyed this series, or if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Tell them to come check it out. Maybe it might shift their mindset so that they can have more impact and ease in their life and in their business. All right, y'all, that's a wrap.

Thank you for listening, and I hope this conversation inspired you. Be sure to visit craftedtothrive.com to check out our show notes, connect with our guests, and grab some of those goodies. Join us for the next episode. And in the meantime, remember, yes, yes, yes, you are crafted to thrive.