Ep. 82 Going Public After Crisis: Building an Energetically Aligned Business w/ Joanna Ingram
Joanna Ingram is here on this planet to champion courageous women to express their individuality in business by guiding and inspiring you to join the dots of your unique brilliance so you can be paid for being authentically you. On this episode, Joanna share so much of what it has looked like for her as a powerful, spiritual woman to learn her own brilliance and go public, herself, with her wild and wonderful offering to the world.
We discuss:
When having it all figured out fails
Forced transformation through crisis
Making the impossible possible
Using energetics in business to create an aligned business that you don’t burn out in
How we accidentally repel clients and what to do instead
Jump into this incredible episode of what it looks like to heal from and through crises by aligning with yourself and going public to offer the world your greatness.
Connect with Joanna:
i: https://www.instagram.com/iamjo.ingram/
f: https://www.facebook.com/ingram.jo
podcast: Goals with Soul https://open.spotify.com/show/3LmwoUdyHdDr3l9VGHYq8N?si=7b02654bbfc64362
Follow Carin on Insta: @carinhuebner
Join the email list: https://portal.carinhuebner.com/public/form/view/62a7a9056cfde7fd9ad9d018
BOOK YOUR PODCASTING DISCOVERY CALL: https://portal.carinhuebner.com/public/appointment-scheduler/6424b2c60ea51ee627d8a250/schedule
Transcript:
(This is an AI generated transcript and contains errors.)
(01:35):
Hey everyone, thanks for being here. Welcome back to another episode of Heal and Go Public. I have an amazing guest with us today and I'm just so excited to share this person with you. We've gotten to meet recently through a collab space, a networking space, and we've had a call and I just can't even tell you about the connection that we've had. I've just been so thrilled about this new friend and colleague in my life. I'm such a big fan of her work and what she offers to the world and how much she's helping other folks and women especially access a lot of their own power in their offerings and how they get their brands and their messaging out into the world. So I can wait to hear what she has to say about healing and going public generally, and also how she helps folks do that as well.
(02:19):
So my friend today is Joanna Ingram. I'm going to read you her formal bio and then I'm going to have her introduce herself as well. So Joanna Ingram is a former advertising agency director turned brand messaging consultant and client alignment coach from London host of the leading podcast goals with Soul and mum to three spirited girls. She helps visionary coaches and corporate thought leaders clarify their authentic message, raise their profile and prices, and stand out from the crowd as the go-to expert in their industry. Her mission is to champion courageous women to express their individuality in business. Joanna's here to guide and inspire you to join the dots of your unique brilliance so you can be paid for being authentically you. Oh, I got goosebumps reading that. Joanna, thank you for being here.
Joanna (03:08):
My pleasure.
Carin (03:09):
Can you tell us a little bit about, that's your formal bio and print, right? But tell us a little bit about who you are and maybe if you want to go into what you do or if you just want to tell you who you are and how you're showing up today.
Joanna (03:22):
Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Karen. So I live in London. I have three spirited daughters and I love doing pottery and drinking red wine. And just like we were just saying, I'm deeply spiritual, which I use in my business, but I'm prone to a little bit of kickback in the lunch hour and watching a little bit of married at first sight. And I just think that being totally human and authentic is what connects us with those people in our lives that we are meant to be with, whether those are personal relationships or in the case of what I specialize in, those clients that we work with in our soul-based businesses. And for me, it's been a journey of self-expression over the years from that kind of mum that wasn't in any of the photographs that would kind of hide in the background was never on camera, to now running a business that relies on me being visible and teaching others how to do the same and doing it in an authentic way that doesn't drain us and allows us to create sustainable and joyful businesses, which of course allow us to create the joy in our lives.
(04:26):
That overflow and spaciousness, that particularly as a mom, has been a real journey for me both becoming a mom, which is something I'll share with you in a minute if you're interested. But also the idea of actually getting to enjoy our lives as individuals, not just as mothers. Hence my pottery thing. And it's like how do we express ourselves as individual humans too? And we can do that through our business. We do that creatively. So yeah, I'm on a journey of exploration as a long answer for
Carin (04:57):
That. Wow, that's so beautiful though. I love it. Discovery is a really big word for me in my own process. And so a journey of exploration that sounds like, I mean, it's probably been a hard one in your journey to get to that place and also such an open and beautiful and wonderful. Oh my gosh, just so incredible. So yes, I want to hear about your journey of becoming a mom.
Joanna (05:21):
Yeah, it's a little bit of a different one for most people. And interestingly, when I first started building my business, I ended up as a guest on a number of parenting podcasts, particularly about childbirth because I have a really unique story, but I very rarely share this particular story anymore. And I'll tell you why. Because as brand messaging expert, I understand that there are brand stories that connect us with those ideal clients. And the story of my creation of my family is a very small part that rather than being the story, although I'm always happy to share it because that small part is often very touching for people. And that part that I'd love to share with you before I dive into the story is my affirmation that came from it, which is that I make the impossible possible and I could do that in my own life and I could do that as a business owner and I could do that as a coach and champion for my clients. And that came from my experience becoming a month. So let's rewind. I was 29 years old, my first pregnancy, ready, excited I was going to have a water birth. It was all going to be amazing.
(06:39):
It didn't go to plan, and I'm going to fast forward through all the details, but thank God my daughter was born healthy. My daughter Kitty is now at college just to put that in perspective. But within the hour of her being born, I hemorrhaged really badly and had an emergency hysterectomy to save my life. Spent two weeks in intensive care. They weren't sure if I was going to make it. I had the maximum amount of blood available pretty much, and left the hospital two weeks later as a new mom, PTSD, completely overwhelmed with this enormous thing that happened both nearly dying in childbirth and of course losing the ability to complete my family in such shocking circumstances as well as being physically extraordinarily weak after multiple surgeries and blood loss and so on. Sorry, this is going to sound like in the UK we call 'em soap operas, but it's like, do you know what I'm talking about when I say soap opera?
(07:43):
Yeah, it's like days of our lives. Its like, oh, come on, what happens next? Seriously. And then fast forward a few months and my husband walks out, so I become a single mom with an eight month old baby at the time. A week after that, my cat got run over and killed. And at this point I was in, I was for real, I was in therapy. And I went there and I was like, you're going to laugh. I was like, you've got to laugh. This has happened. And then the next week this has happened. I'm just like, everything was changing for me. But important reflection, there's something really important that happened here. And this was from a very early age. I was a very, still a very capable, driven person. And I took on this idea that everything that happened, I had to force it through.
(08:31):
I wasn't well supported. The universe didn't have my back, that I had to hold the weight of the world on my shoulders and all the things that came to me in my life of my hard work, my commitment, my ambition, my abilities, my intellect. I was very academic. I got a first class degree. I got a job at Ogilvy Mayer, a leading advertising agency as a graduate. It was like, oh, I make stuff happen. And then suddenly this enormous thing comes my way. And I'm like, what? In fact, speaking of being in control, like I mentioned, I had the perfect birth planned. And there are a few ways, but not that many ways that a birth can go worse. There are a few, but for most people that's like, what the heck? I didn't even know that was possible. That can happen. That was the piece that I really had to come to terms with this new way of seeing the world, which meant that I had to develop a lot more certainty and trust.
(09:33):
I started becoming a lot more spiritual, started to seek out new ways of being comfortable with the uncertainty and the way that good things happen. Bad things happen to good people, get the right way around and this whole concept. But I also decided that that wasn't going to be the end of that story, and I really wanted to complete my family. Fast forward to right now, I am married to my second husband, Ivan. We've been together coming up for 20 years, and we have together 12-year-old twins Now. Our twins were born seven years after my eldest with the help of a Californian surrogate. So we had this crazy journey that took us from London, 11,000 miles over to California to welcome our biological twins into the world. Wow. A last three months early. That's another journey altogether. Wow. But overall, it's been a real eye-opener.
(10:36):
And when I say I make the impossible possible, I think, wow. I mean, if I could do that, I can create the business of my dreams, the life of my dreams. And that doesn't mean that it all comes easy, and it doesn't mean that I never overthink. And it certainly doesn't mean that I don't try and control things because at our essence we have certain programs that run, but having the ability and the trust, and now I'm a chronic healer, breathwork facilitator, and I'm all 20 year veteran of the advertising industry, means that I can see things with that expertise, but also through the filter of that life experience and moving forward to the work I do now. That's how I help my clients to really bring their message to life is that combination, your experience, your expertise, your passions, your skillsets, your interests, all these things combine in a way I call brand epics, which brings you into your business. And it's my contention or my experience that if you're an empath and if you're heart centered, if you are not bringing yourself into the business and really enjoying your work, you will head towards burnout. You'll walk away from your business, you'll fall out in love with it. You'll align yourself with clients that don't light you up. And ultimately, you all deserve to love what we do, and that means love what we bring personally into those businesses.
Carin (12:05):
Thank you for sharing all of that with us and for sharing your own birth experience and your own, I mean near death, I mean your own being at the limits and the edges of everything that you've known and having to reset everything, all of those stories that you had been living off of for so long too. That is so massive, and I can see the fingers of all of those experiences in the passions for how you help folks. I can also see that you are getting into, okay, how is this person, you see how you're wired and how being in your exact youness and offering that to others and to the world brings you so much life and so much joy and so much this joy or vivaciousness and that I could see, and this may be projection, but I could see how you desire to do that for others also, that they have businesses that they're not burning out in, that they are the ones that they can look to and be like, I am creating these things that I'm really proud of and I'm connecting with people and creating change in their lives and in their businesses that I'm really proud of.
(13:17):
Can you tell me a little bit about that passion? So you told us a lot about how you're wired and what you bring to the table and all of that. Can you tell me about the passion for help? Where does that passion for helping others build these soul? What is your language soul-based businesses? Yeah. What is your passion for helping folks create those kinds of businesses of their dreams?
Joanna (13:38):
Okay. I love this question because when I first leap out of ad agency land into only my own business, my overriding thought at the time was just get a business that pays the bills. And I looked at my expertise and coming up 20 years of corporate and being very driven, I was like, right, productivity, accountability, CEO strategies, getting it done was my real method. In fact, my podcast now called Goldsberg Soul at the time was called Action Taker Tribe, and it was all very masculine, very driven, and yeah, I started to make some money. I got some clients, started to smell my business, and it was about six months in that I suddenly got completely burned out. In retrospect, I hit the ground running hard. I launched three times. I had a membership. I launched my podcast. I was on every social media platform. I was just working so damn hard.
(14:32):
But in addition to that, what I was teaching and the courses I was creating and the clients I was working with were very depleting because it was all about that masculine drive energy, which I was so familiar with, but I didn't really have the understanding that it wasn't really part of my type. I now understand I really like human design and I learned of a human design reflector, which for anybody that's not familiar, is a type that is actually very energetically depleted very easily because we have these open centers, so we take on a lot of external energy and we can reflect a mirror back to others, and that's our gift. But it's often at the cost of our own energy and we have to make decisions slower. We have to go with the lunar cycle and be a lot more chill. And now that wasn't me at all.
(15:21):
And I was working against type was completely burned out. There was one particular evening, I was sat on the floor of the kitchen back against the fridge, head in hands. I just said to my husband, you know what? This is awful. I was sobbing. I was like Dark knight at the soul moment when it came to my business, I was like, I'm the worst boss to myself, far worse than the bosses I had in corporate. And they were bad enough. I'm beating myself with this whip to just go at this pace that's unsustainable. And a lot of the clients I was working with, although they're beautiful, beautiful humans, I was attracting through my messaging, through the types of offers, people who would say, I can't do it. I don't know how. I can't get there. And that energy meant that I was overing over proving in order to get them over the line because I believe in results and I believe in excellence.
(16:17):
The downside was was that I was completely depleted. And although they were getting results, it was from borrowed energy. And there's a coach out there that's spot on for what they need. But I realized in time that wasn't a perfect match. We talk about perfect fit clients talk about soul clients, and I realized that my perfect clients are a lot more energetically matched to who I am. They're the sorts of women that I would have a cappuccino or a glass of wine with any dare of the week. And there's a connection there. And that only comes from being more yourself. So you asked about the soul-based businesses. I realized that my interests and my passions were very much aligned with learning, chronic healing, getting into human design, starting to learn more about energetic. When I was burned out, I spent the best part of that summer walking around the woods, barefoot listening to Abraham Hicks podcasts and just absorbing this idea of feminine flow, divine balance, the universal laws, starting to align myself with what that looked like with my message, what that looked like with my offers, what that looked like with my marketing.
(17:24):
And as I inquired in that for myself and found those solutions, it became clear that that was what I was here to do for my clients who were suffering the same experiences that I was suffering, that we were getting depleted, that we were attracting clients that weren't elevated in the energy that we wanted to work with. And now I'm working with clients who, I mean, what they're earning is less relevant, but their energy is very much, yes, I'm stuck. Yes, I need help, but I have a vision and I'm unstoppable, and this is happening. And there's a rise in energy that comes. That means their results come really fast, that they're able to implement the downloads that we co-create, and we're able to work with dual energy to create the breakthroughs that they need. And in turn, whilst they're getting the results and outcomes that they desire, I'm inspired by them. I'm motivated by their work, which leaves me actually energized at the end of a call rather than depleted. Hence sustainable, joyful businesses for my clients and also for me, which is really where we should all be aiming to create businesses that create more meaning in the world. There's no good if we burn out and go back to a nine to five in the first 12 months, right?
Carin (18:45):
Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness. Thank you.
(18:50):
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(19:44):
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(21:07):
I have a question around, so you took us on this journey around your birth story, how much that kind of reorient and all of the subsequent events after your birth story and all of that, how this kind of rewired and really changed your life and changed a lot of the narratives and the things that you were believing about yourself. So I have a question for you about going public, but I also want to tie in that you have been in some spaces as far as being a woman, one of the leading marketing and advertising agencies in the world, in the UK, in the world, and then family life, being a mom, doing both of those things. You have run affront to some narratives that are cultural narratives or cultural expectations. So I want to know, does running counters to some of these expectations or these boxes come naturally to you? And then how did that impact your going public journey? Was it harder or less difficult for you to go public and be public, or is it just as challenging? I mean, compared to what, right? But can you tell us about your going public journey?
Joanna (22:19):
Yeah, absolutely. As a woman working in, well, I mean there were a lot of women in that industry, but there was a very masculine overtone about the culture and the competitiveness, and it's a corporate environment, albeit one that's slightly more on the creative side than some. And I found that culture quite stifling. I didn't really go with my natural flow of energy, and the hours were really long and the expectations were high, not just in the delivery, but in presenteeism and things like that that I didn't necessarily agree with. But I think that journey to visibility meant that because of my corporate experience, I did have the confidence to stand up in the front of a boardroom and speak. However, it's very different speaking the company line versus speaking your truth. And that was a journey that I really had to go on. I don't think I anticipated that being part of me running a business, which is when I talk to the point of launching my business as accountability and productivity and then changing to a very core focus on soul-based brand messaging to articulating your innate brilliance, to leaning into what marketing and integrity looks like, being aligned in how we create our offers, and working with those people that are primarily spiritually based or intuitive business owners, coaches, and healers was big shift from where I started and each time I went public about that, it was difficult.
(23:52):
So when I first transitioned from working in advertising to being laid off at the start of the pandemic, a lot of shame in that, although I was among many people suffering from the same fate due to the economics of the time. And I actually realized very quickly that the universe was gifting me this. I was like, I wasn't crying into my pillow. I was like, this is a gift and I'm going to take it. But at the same time, going back into a place like LinkedIn felt really scary. It took me four months to even change my LinkedIn profile from my former corporate job to saying I'm now a business coach, which is what I was calling myself initially. I was like, who do I think I am? And this is an interesting thing because particularly in corporate, but women in general through societal conditioning can be made to feel like they have to be given external permission to do certain things, even from the time at school where, I mean, certainly in the uk you raise your hand, you want to speak, you raise your hand, we wait to speak and we say what gets approval of others.
(25:02):
And that when you come into your business, particularly in these purpose-driven businesses, creating meaning and changing the world, if you stay like that, you will blend in. You will lose the ability to attract the people that you're really meant to work with. And I realized quite quickly that I had to move to a place of thought leader opinions and speaking my truth to enable me to work with the people I wanted to work with. So it was one thing saying I'm a business coach, but then after my burnout period, when I reemerged into a much more spiritual positioning about my business and those people I work with, I had to announce it. And I was like, well, okay, this is great. I've got some current clients and I'm already talking in spiritual language to them. I'm already helping them implement energetic business strategies, which is supercharging their messaging and their marketing is working.
(25:57):
But it was like a secret. You only found that out once you were working with me. And this I see in my clients all the time. They're like, oh, I do all of this with my clients. I'm like, where is it in your marketing? I've just done, I've just an audit of your marketing and I'm struggling to see where you are expressing that. And this happens very often. We hide things. We feel a little embarrassment or shame or confusion over the sharing. And again, I had to rise awkwardly to this challenge of saying, I believe in the universe. I'm kind of woowoo. And then even more recently to saying, I work with intuitives, I work with healers, I work with coaches who have a spiritual aspect to the type of they do and owning that. Now my clients are like, oh, they're phenomenal. They're channels, and they are spiritual mentors. They're life coaches who talk about the universe or do medium ship within their containers, as well as working with health coaches who just love working with someone who has the same belief they have. And okay, spoiler alert, they're probably on the road to bringing more of the spiritual teachers into their own business, but they're just not doing it yet,
Carin (27:12):
Right?
Joanna (27:13):
That's where they're called.
(27:15):
But yeah, going visible and being very overt about that was a scary place. But I'll tell you an interesting synergy that really meant a lot to me about the earlier this year, somebody that I used to work with back in my corporate days. In fact, many years ago I hired her into one of the jobs since then. She's risen up the ranks in advertising agencies in media, and she's a very senior player at a big agency. And she reached out and said, I'm on the committee of a women's group because of course all the corporates are bringing in these interest groups. And she was female leader group. She said, I heard your podcast completely love it. I don't suppose you do paid speaking gigs, do you? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. That's very aligned with what I do, and I'd love to bring my teachings into the corporate space.
(28:04):
So it's almost come full circle. And over this summer, I went in and I did a presentation for 90 women in the agency and spoke to 'em about personal branding and injected my own flavor of my beliefs into that, which I think is at a more nascent stage within the corporate environment. But I think from at least the feedback I received, that a lot of people are going through their own personal journeys, maybe not so public in the corporate space, but it's moving in that direction. And I'm really delighted to have been able to be visible in the space that I used to inhabit, but with my new authentic message. Yeah.
Carin (28:42):
Oh, thank you. That was so thorough and amazing. And I also just really deeply resonate. So I come from a history of, I have a history of religious trauma. I had a long experience in religious spaces. And so when you say that patriarchy oppression, the voices that tell us to stay within these certain boxes, or I think the way that you were saying it was that we need external validation in order to be able to feel like we need to show up in spaces. For me personally, coming to the terms of who says that I get to be in certain spaces and not others was a big transition for me. And of course, there's things that I should have certifications in if I'm going to offer them and that sort of thing. But I was at this precipice of I really wanted to be a supervisor for other spiritual directors and was like, oh, I need to get a certification in this.
(29:33):
When in reality, I had been practicing for eight years and had facilitated groups for my prior degree program, for my master's degree program and had all of this. When I looked at the experience, I was like, oh my goodness, I have it. I just don't have the paper that says that was designed probably by, the program was designed probably by a white male that then the paper says, Karen can be in this space. So once that started breaking down for me and then having to journey out of there, were just, I'm going to pivot. This is just a little share from me, but I'm going to pivot currently as far as leaning more into my podcasting and my creative business out of my spiritual direction business because of a lot of the pressure that I experienced in that space to be, and we even talked about in the pre-show a little bit, I had this pressure to be like, oh, I am the grounded one in my life.
(30:22):
I am the grounded person, and that's what I offer out of. And it was just all of this pressure. It was really bleeding into perfectionism versus authentically showing up with people. I mean, you said that you're perfect clients for the people that you're going to have a glass of wine with. I was finding that with my spiritual direction clients, but because of the ethics around that field was saying that that was not possible for me. So wondering at, okay, what can this look like and what does this look like? So I went on a little bit of a tangent there, but something related also is with my past education, I know a little bit of what religious history in the country that you reside in looks like. I know a little bit about the Church of England. I know a little bit about Anglicanism. What does it look like? Do you being a person that's in working with soul-based business owners, is there, this is just a curiosity question. Is there a stigma around these woo businesses in the region of the world that you're in?
Joanna (31:18):
What an interesting question. I've got to be honest and say I don't know because I don't really get too into it.
Carin (31:29):
Yeah, you're like, I'm in my lane.
Joanna (31:31):
Yeah, I stay in my lane and unpopular opinion, but I don't read the news. I don't watch the news on tv, and I don't listen to the news on the radio. My mother, it drives her mad. She cannot understand it. She cannot abide it. But I'm able to say, look, mommy, if there's something really important throughout the pandemic, you are going to tell me it's all good. I don't need to be absorbing this constant negativity. And it doesn't come from a place of wanting to be ignorant, but it does come from a place of realizing that it was really affecting my mental health. I didn't find that I was uplifted by what I was reading. So I found that staying in my lane and being very true to my own energy has helped me. It really helped me through the 2020 pandemic, and it's helped me through this business building piece.
(32:21):
I don't really feel a great deal of negativity. I don't feel like there's any witch hunt going on. I feel that actually the universe and spirituality is relatively mainstream, particularly among women, particularly among educated women. So I think that we can easily find a gentleness there. And I don't think that it gets too caught up with the debate about religion and organized religion. I feel that it sits aside from that people of all religions come spirituality and what you call the universe, what your particular word for that is, is very personal, and I respect all of that. I'm very agnostic when it comes to how we approach spiritualism.
Carin (33:07):
Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for entertaining me with that one. I do want to take it back a little bit, and I'm going to combine a couple of thoughts here. If you can journey with me for a second, I am really interested in, so I've asked you about your own healing and going public journey. You've also shared so much with us about how you help other people heal through their businesses and also go public through their businesses. And it sounds like a huge passion of yours and a huge focus of your business is the sustainability of somebody's businesses. So not only helping them go public with their business and their wild, wonderful offering to the world, but also stay public looking at their energetic flows, looking at how they work, how they're wired, all of that. I heard you mention this is like a two-prong. You also look at the balance of feminine and masculine. So you mentioned that feminine and masculine energies. You mentioned that in your past experience with the ad agency space as well, as far as that was a lot of masculine energy for you, a lot of pushing, a lot of that kind of stuff. So can you tell me a little bit about just your methodology, how you help people stay public and how that masculine and feminine kind of balance comes into that equation?
Joanna (34:16):
Okay. That's an awesome question multilayered, and I think I'd love to approach it by telling you about the aligned client code, which is the framework that I use, which will hopefully answer all these points. Because if you picture a triangle, it's really simple, and the triangle's just divided into three equal chunks. And at the very top of the triangle, you've got messaging. Messaging is your unique differentiation, your positioning, what it is about your innate brilliance that brings you into your work and helps you to stand out within, well, let's be honest, what can be a really crowded industry and niche? It's also your aligned avatar, your sole clients who you are meant to work with, and your messaging there, elevating your messaging to match your brilliance and those clients that are best suited to work with you, that will value the work that you do and get the best results sits at that pinnacle there.
(35:12):
However, there's only like if you imagine an iceberg, it's a part that's visible, but there's a whole lot going on below the surface. And the next level deep is that of aligned marketing. And this speaks to your question of energy, masculine, feminine and how you say stay sustainable for longer. So first of all, you're authentic. You really understand your positioning, and you make sure that you are able to connect with your sole clients through what you say their desires, not agitating their pain points, being very focused on being that elevated coach that they desire, that expresses your expertise and all that goodness. But when it comes to marketing, so many people fall down through taking on the recommendations of others and believing that that's the only way to succeed. I did it when I first launched into online business. I had a coach who told me that I had to go live and be in Instagram every single day.
(36:14):
That was the route to success. Just stay consistent, stay at it, not the truth, not for me. And this is the interesting thing, there isn't a right strategy. All of the strategies out there are great for someone, and there will be someone telling you to build a Facebook group and make millions or to build a YouTube channel or to get into outbound outreach. And it's just like, whoa. And your head can be easily turned. And if someone's a business owner listening to this, they're going to resonate and say, yeah, I've bought some training. I've joined a container and it didn't work for me. What's up? Is it me? It seemed to work for the coach that ran it. It seemed to work for other people. But the truth is that working with your own energy, and this is the masculine feminine piece, is what creates marketing success.
(37:04):
Consistency is important, but consistency needs to be what consistency looks like for you. So let me bring this to life a little. So in my own business, I found that I absolutely love going deep. I really love doing things well beyond the surface level. And that means chatting to you right now, Karen. That means being the broadcaster on my own podcast. It means writing articles for online magazines and really sharing a higher level of value than just a simple quote over on Instagram. Not to say I won't do that. I will sometimes because I feel like it, but in having the ability to show up as an expert and create long form content, I'm able to transmit my energy a lot more. And that works for me. It also means that a lot of the clients that come to me are like, I don't want to dance in reels, so I work with them to get their aligned marketing in place, which could mean being a podcast guest.
(38:09):
It could mean working out what the rhythm is that's right for them, and how to express things like expertise and authority more in their marketing. I love what you said earlier, Karen. You said, I've got all this list of certifications, qualifications, and yet I still felt I needed more. And I see this over and over. Oftentimes when I'll do a messaging assessment, I'll go onto a perspective client's website and I'll look at what they've gotten somewhere buried on their about page right at the bottom will be like, and I have qualifications in boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, all these things. And I'm like, whoa, hang on a minute. And then I'll look at their content and other places I'm like, you have so much expertise. And yet they'll say to me, I think what I need is another certification right now. If I could just get this certification over here, I will be good enough to finally express myself.
(39:01):
And I turn that on its head. I'm like, you are beyond ready. What we actually need to do is create that self-expression, that embodiment of your message so you can work with those higher level clients or more clients now, not when you have another certification. I love a certification, and I'm certainly not saying that we shouldn't be qualified and we shouldn't be into lifelong learning, but when the belief is the limiting belief that I need another certification before I can be an expert in what I'm already very experienced in, that's when it becomes a problem. And that's something that I love transmuting for clients and being able to bring their expertise out into their work today once they can go ahead and do a certification in six months or next year or whenever they're called, but already starting to work with those elevated clients and loving what they do today, if that makes sense.
Carin (39:58):
Absolutely. And I love it, and it makes me think too, Jenna, because with you, knowing the spiritual sides of things and also with your breath work experience and knowing even what things look like from an embodied perspective, also, it makes me think of how often I have to talk to people about what's keeping them from the microphone in my podcasting business. And some people, and you probably hear this a lot too, as far as people will come and be like, I don't know what to do for content. I don't feel like I really have any content. I don't know what to talk about. I don't know. And it's like, oh my goodness. And so working on my point being is that there's so much that works against us feeling safe enough in our bodies and in ourselves to go public in some of these spaces. And it sounds like you're able to really bring, whether it's breathwork or something from, do you just use affirmation in your space of looking at people's credentials and everything that they have to offer and use that, or do you bring an embodied lens to it as well knowing that you have a breathwork certification?
Joanna (41:02):
Yeah, very much so. That third part of the pyramid at the bottom is business energetics and underpinning messaging and underpinning marketing, it's a lot about how you show up and the energy that you bring. And interestingly, there are different ways of embodying things. And as a breathwork facilitator, a very much belief that sometimes we have to get out of our heads and into our bodies. But aside from that sematic experience that every month we do, I do breathwork for business in my group container, which allows us to stop thinking about the answers and allow us to get that intuitive nudge towards the answers for our business specifically.
Carin (41:42):
That is so cool. That's so cool.
Joanna (41:46):
But there's also a piece here that I realize being a bit of an overthinker and very much an action taker on a spiritual journey, we're often told, oh, you just need to meditate and you just need to step away from the mind and the ego. But if you are someone who has relied on your brain and your intellect and your thinking in order to solve problems and get you where you are in the world, it can be a very long journey. And I questioned this. I was like, right, there must be other things I can do in tandem with learning these approaches that could help me get results sooner, like right now. And I started sharing on my podcast, my journey towards manifesting, which was one of frustration and one of overthinking. And I started to get some really good feedback, people saying, you know what?
(42:33):
I get this. This is my problem. And everyone's like, oh, manifesting is so easy. You just need to make a vision board. And I'm like, hell no. It's not that easy. If it were, I would just have all the stuff would be here because I could record my own Abraham Hicks episodes. I know the answers to this, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me and in my business and elsewhere. But we'll focus on business specifically for a minute that I realized that there were certain actions that were happening in my business that were creating an energy that was repelling those clients I most wanted to work with and attracting those in a self-doubt style energy. And as I elevated my actions, when we talk about that, it's like how I spend my time in my business, how I show up, the sorts of content I put out, how I express myself.
(43:26):
Then I started to connect with those high level clients. And it wasn't that I was creating more content. It was that the energy in that content was really different. The energy in my containers shifted. And this was by bringing that energetic law of attraction piece, and that's where I work with my clients. And I noticed over and over that I could help some with their messaging, we could uplevel it, we could find marketing that felt good, and there was a missing piece of the puzzle. And that was if you look behind in the business and you see boundaries being overstepped, like I mentioned earlier, I said I had that rescuer energy and I was trying to save my clients. How can you work with self-led, motivated, inspired clients who are fully energized if that was your behavior pattern in your business? So I moved out of that.
(44:18):
I created different tools and techniques for identifying that and shifting, and then I started sharing it with my clients. And that seemed to be the combination which makes it my aligned client code, makes it that unique framework, messaging, marketing, and the business energetics for the ideal client I work with. Those are the three in combination that lifted her energy, how she showed up that often transmuted quite a bit of shame in the business into something she could share. It's like from shame to sharing, talking about going public. And I was able to share that. I found manifesting hard sometimes. I still do regularly. I still do totally. Let's not pretend that we can all just burp unicorns just because we feel like it. Sometimes we have to go through a process. And I love the fact that we can be in different seasons and cycles and still come back to creation.
(45:17):
And that's my journey, and that's how I'm able to help the clients that I work with. And a good example, it's a great story. I have a beautiful client, Cara, she's an amazing business strategist, already successful six figure business owner who was working regularly, working 60 hour weeks working for Unappreciative clients, was completely burned out, trying to balance being a mom, working with her health goals and wanting to grow this business. And of course, she came to me at first through the lens of messaging. She was like, I just don't think I'm connected with my ideal clients. I want to elevate my messaging. But when we got into the kind of backstory of her business and we found about her working with these misaligned clients and the hours she was putting in, we worked through some of these techniques about the boundaries, about who she wanted to be and show up.
(46:06):
And she shifted so fast. Honestly, I've never seen anything like it. Within about a week of us doing the energetic work, she fired two of her least energizing clients, which wasn't, I was not directing her to do this. We were doing really deep soulful work. And she said to me, I can't fire my clients. They make money for my business. I'm not doing that. And I was like, you don't have to do anything that's misaligned for you. And she left me a message, we talk on Voxer, you're not going to believe this. I've just fired them. And I was like, well, how do you feel? She's like, I feel amazing. I feel unstoppable. I feel spacious. But the story doesn't stop there because the work we then went on to do was doing this alignment piece and what her offer needed to look like to create spaciousness, to create a synergy between her message and how she delivered it.
(46:58):
And so we dialed in this new offer, and she's an action taker. She just went for this really fast, and two weeks later, she'd already got four new clients into this new container. And I do believe that yes, the messaging was on point, absolutely. Her marketing was aligned. Yes, we'd laid the groundwork for all of that. But that piece there about the business energetics, and she created space, she created a boundary, she created a manifesto, I call it the energetic business, what she was no longer available for, what she's now available for. She put that into action and her business rebalanced within that same month and took the revenue stayed, but the de-energized 60 hour week piece is receding and instead aligned clients are coming into play with aligned offers, creating spaciousness. So that's what we're talking about, sustainability and joy in our business. I think that illustrates it really well for me.
Carin (47:57):
Yes, thank you for sharing that. And I could ask you a million things, and I could talk to you forever. But my friend, I want to know how listeners can work with you or how they can follow along.
Joanna (48:08):
Yeah, I would love to say hi over on Instagram. You can find me at I am Joe Ingram, and you can also join me on Goals with Soul, which is my podcast, which is available on all platforms. If you are already a coach or healer and you would like to step into your articulation of your innate brilliance with the help of my free training, you can grab that at Joanna Ingram link slash uplevel.
Carin (48:37):
Amazing. Thank you so much. And all of those links will be in the show notes as well, so y'all can easily find them. Joanna, thank you so much for being here today. It's such a gift and an honor to hear a little bit more about you, your journey, how you've gotten to where you are in your business, and the offerings that you bring to other people so that you can help impact this world. So thank you so much for being here. It's such a gift,
Joanna (48:56):
And thank you so much for inviting me, Karen, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you.
Carin (49:00):
Oh, thank you.