“The biggest mistake people make is that they’re not themselves,” says today’s guest authenticity expert Erin Weed. Using a process she created called “The Dig,” Erin helps entrepreneurs and thought leaders discover and cultivate their most authentic selves in order to most effectively communicate with their audiences. Through a series of questions, she helps her clients discover their message on both the macro and micro levels, the ‘why’ behind the ‘how,’ so that they can clearly, confidently and concisely deliver their singular message to the world in a way that makes audiences sit up, listen, engage and trust. On today’s episode of Conscious Entrepreneur, Erin talks to host Alex Raymond about getting to the head/heart core and the biggest mistakes most leaders make with their messaging. Drawing from her own experience in founding a personal safety and self-defense company Girls Fight Back, she’ll share how you can get started on your own process of discovering your true self and the unique story you have to share with the world.

People are craving human connection beyond the facts and figures. We all have three core truths running within us at the same time, Erin says. She reveals what these truths are, what they mean, and how to plug into all three to begin expressing your fullest, most honest and most genuine self.

The journey to the core isn’t an easy one, but where entrepreneurs lead, the rest of the world tends to follow.

Quotes

• “Things started to shift over time, where audiences started appreciating the polish and the perfect less and they started craving the authenticity and the realness more.” (3:41 | Erin Weed)
• “I just think it’s our responsibility to be communicating our truth. It’s not up to other people to be mind readers or heart readers or gut readers. We have to, as conscious leaders, one of the things that I feel really passionate about is encouraging conscious leaders and entrepreneurs to be the ones to go first. To be willing to go into maybe the more uncomfortable of the three dimensions of your truth.” (9:32 | Erin Weed)
• “There are all these different bypasses to get to the truth, based on how a person is wired and what’s important to them.” (14:04 | Erin Weed)
• “I realized I would create the best talks of my life when I was simply telling a story, and then finding the bigger meaning in the story so that everyone else in the room could get something from what I just shared.” (16:16 | Erin Weed)
• “A lot of people don’t like their dig words because it’s your biggest life lesson, it is your path, and sometimes we can be very resentful of what we’ve been dealt. But I’d like to believe, on some spiritual level, that we picked it for ourselves for a very big reason.” (28:28 | Erin Weed)
• “One of the things that holds conscious entrepreneurs back is we do not know or accept the fact of how unique, special and needed our voices are.” (32:49 | Erin Weed)

Links

Connect with Erin Weed:

Website: https://www.erinweed.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“It can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it,” says Amy Lewin, of entrepreneurs who are unhappy in their own companies. Amy is the Editor at Sifted, a media platform focused on Europe’s startup ecosystem and she joins The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast to discuss a survey Sifted recently posed to a number of entrepreneurs, the vast majority of whom reported experiencing poor mental health, high stress and even a strong desire to leave their businesses within the coming year. Though these figures may seem alarming, they merely shed light on common struggles and pressures felt by entrepreneurs which are so often swept under the rug for fear of looking weak or needing to maintain an ultra positive mindset in order to see their businesses succeed. On today’s episode Amy will reveal more of the survey’s findings as well as what venture capitalists (VCs) can do to support entrepreneurs, in whom they, after all, have a vested interest.

The survey highlights the importance of a community in an entrepreneur’s life. Family and friends share the entrepreneur’s burden, while simultaneously being unable to relate. Professional networks of like-minded contemporaries can go a long way toward making isolated individuals feel heard and connected, as well as ease the mental health stigma.

Today, Amy shares the common regret shared among most entrepreneurs and why quitting might be the best thing they could do for their careers.

Quotes

• “It was just a real sign of the personal toll—and not just even on the founders, but on their family, on their friends, on their colleagues—just another reminder that building startups is really tough.” (4:48 | Amy Lewin)
• “Whenever we publish stories about that personal side of company building at Sifted, we get the most amazing response. People love knowing that they’re not the only ones. And I think sometimes, startup culture is so much that you’ve got to be optimistic. You’ve got to believe that your company can be the one in 100 that’s going to really make it. You hear from so many people that your idea is never going to work and you have to believe in it yourself and I think when times are really hard it can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it.” (6:27 | Amy Lewin)
• “That attitude that’s going to be out there from some corners that if you are struggling in any way then you are weak and that you’re not in it for the long term, which I obviously don’t believe, but is obviously what some people still think.” (13:04 | Amy Lewin)
• “Encourage founders to go on holiday. Encourage them to have a personal life. These things are important. We all need to recharge our batteries and ‘visionaries do,’ too. There’s that famous saying that comes from the VC world: “I’ve never seen a company go bust because the founder took a week off, but I have seen plenty of companies go bust because the founder didn’t.’” (18:26 | Amy Lewin and Alex Raymond)

Links

Connect with Amy Lewin:

https://sifted.eu/articles/founder-mental-health-2024

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Getting better at business and growing as a person are very dovetailed together. They’ve been very mutually beneficial.” Entrepreneur Matthew Bellows’ career is proof that professional and personal success work in tandem. Recognizing time as a person’s most precious commodity, he was drawn to entrepreneurship as a means of gaining asymmetric returns on that time. He was moved to co-found Bodeswell, a company which invented self-service financial planning software, after sorting through his late father’s estate and becoming frustrated with the state of the financial planning space. Matthew joins The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast to discuss what he’s learned throughout his evolution from founder and CEO of WGR Media, to CEO and later Executive Chairman at Yesware, and now a General Partner at Grit Capital.

He’ll explain what it was like to cede his CEO position at Yesware, and what it taught him about the true mission of business. He’ll share what it was like to have American Express acquire Bodeswell, and the best way other entrepreneurs can prepare their companies for a similar acquisition. Learn what the biggest mistakes and assumptions are that most entrepreneurs make and what they can be doing differently.

Throughout his career, Matthew has maintained a seated meditation practice. Now a meditation teacher, he reveals on today’s episode how this practice has profoundly impacted both his professional and personal life.

Quotes

• “I needed to find some activity, professional activity, that would have potential for asymmetric returns on my time. In other words, just working for what amounts to an hourly wage, even if it’s a very good hourly wage, it has linear returns on your time, and your time is the only thing you’ve actually got in your life. So, what would be the things that I could do that would potentially break that linear curve into an exponential curve.” (4:31 | Matthew Bellows)
• “Sitting meditation for me provided a foundation to weather the storms that came. The storms absolutely came; there was no dodging the difficulties of going through that kind of process. But at least I felt like, for the most part, I had a ground and when I lost my ground, when I lost my foundation, I had a place to come back to.” (14:07 | Matthew Bellows)
• “It was very difficult to let go and to turn over the reins, in a sense. But at the end of the day, you’re not building a company for yourself. This is not a personal aggrandizement project, this is not something that is for any one person or any one investor. You’re building a company to serve customers and in order to serve customers your company needs to keep growing.” (22:26 | Matthew Bellows)
• “The combination of getting better at business and growing as a person, I think, are very dovetailed together. They’ve been very mutually beneficial.” (35:36 | Matthew Bellows)
• “You need to be prepared—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and financially— to wander in the desert for a year or two years, just trying to figure out, ‘Is this even a thing?’ So many people think, ‘I’m going to go and it’s going to just click,’ or they think, ‘Oh my God, I need to raise outside capital, and then I can figure out if this is a thing.” Neither of those two paths are optimal.” (37:59 | Matthew Bellows)

Links

Connect with Matthew Bellows:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbellows/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm