Maybe you have a beautiful baby of a business just ready to come out….it wants to grow up big and prosperous.

Are you surrounding yourself with the right person to help birth it?

This article was published months ago but I thought you’d enjoy reading it as there are some inspirational nuggets inside.

This came at about 3am….it was pouring rain and I couldn’t sleep because it kept going round and round in my head…….

A bit of the back story first though – I had just signed up a new client.  The perfect kind of client that ‘gets’ the work I do.  The kind where there is an instant synergy.  It tells me that my marketing is working!  I had been pretty clear on who I wanted to attract, but I hadn’t been quite as BOLD and powerful about who I was being until my friend/coach Nancy Marmolejo took me through her Profitable Essence program and helped me find it!   It was there that I finally claimed that I’m not just about growing your business….that’s of course part of it, but its in transforming YOU that is the most rewarding.  You and your business get transformed by the work, and the results are amazing!

And since I have been putting that ‘vibe’ in the world, the coolest of clients are finding me!

So at 3 in the morning my head was swimming around, looking for a metaphor for this blend of me getting more clear about my work, and that magic is bringing the exact right clients in.

Then it hit me – the Midwife versus OB/GYN analogy.   I think of it like this…you go to an OB and it’s kind of on their terms.  You as a pregnant woman are pretty dis-empowered, and mostly have to submit to how they want things to go.  A midwife on the other hand supports YOU in creating the delivery the way you want it.  She will assist you in finding the strength inside yourself to do the hardest thing you’ll ever do.  Since there may be men and women who don’t resonate with the childbirth analogy, let me take you a bit further into the similarities.

See, most business owners don’t really know what to do to create a profitable business and certainly not how to  market themselves.  They go to a web developer who tells them what kind of site they need, they listen to some friends who tell them what they should charge and what to offer,  so very often what comes out is not a  pretty baby!

The cool new client that came to me is a beautiful and spiritual woman who had a dreadful website!  Here she is with a very soft and feminine side, yet her website was black!  Another one of my recent clients listened to someone who directed her to create a site that had not a single piece of her in it.  It was corporate and cold…nothing at all of who she is.

When these clients come to me they haven’t had the success they want, don’t understand why their marketing isn’t working, and they are sometimes even ready to give up.  That’s where the “Business Midwife” comes in.  Because my belief is that your perfect business- just like a baby – is inside of you, just waiting to be birthed.

Let’s look at how you know when you have birthed your ideal business?  It starts with how you feel.  Do you have fun?  Is it something that you are proud of?  Is there an ease to it?  Do you feel fully expressed in the business world?  That means, are you giving yourself permission to bring ALL of you to the table?  For this if you are spiritual, you be spiritual.  If you are quirky or analytical, be that.  And when you finally give yourself permission to be there….magic happens.  I call it the Dog Whistle effect.  Just as the dog whistle is imperceptible to the human ear, your perfect marketing message will only be heard by those eager souls who would love the work you do. But if you water it down by not showing up fully,  they miss it….and you experience the frustration that so many entrepreneurs struggle with.

I know from personal experience how to birth a baby!  I did it naturally two times, and my last son was born in a tub.  And I know how transformative that experience was.  Instead of having the “let’s just get this kid out” feeling that some women experience, it became the most pivotal experience in my life.  I took all the pain, discomfort, and struggle and turned it into the knowledge of my own power and strength as a woman.  Growing a business affords you these same opportunities!  You will feel stuck, you will want to turn back, you will experience pain and doubt, but if you persevere and allow for the transformation….you will be rewarded the most amazing creation of your life. That’s my hope for you.

What are your reasons for not showing up fully yourself?  In working with loads of business owners, these are the problems that I regularly see as holding them back.  I’ll give you the first two today, and check back on the next blog for the last reason and some conclusions.
We are afraid it won’t be viewed as “professional” if we put out who we REALLY are. Look, we are all still a little swayed with Corporate America’s notion of how to dress, how to act, what to say, blah, blah, blah. Most of us were at one time employees who had to follow a dress code, org. chart, and the works, so we risk being influenced by that when we start our businesses. Breaking through this piece takes tremendous courage.

What I have found is that usually this is an area that you can’t see for yourself. We look at our gifts/skills/strengths, and think that because it’s easy for us, everyone can do it, so where’s the value anyway? If you have ever heard yourself say those types of things, you need to do some research! Ask your clients, friends, mastermind partners, or a coach to help you uncover your unique gifts so you can begin to own them and infuse it through all your marketing materials. But first, you have to begin to be BOLD and go looking for what makes you who you are.

We don’t know exactly what the “secret sauce” is for our business that will allow our magic to resonate with our ideal clients. This is a biggie that can sometimes take years to land on. I’ll share my journey with this….In December I spent time with my friend/coach Nancy Marmolejo. She was putting me through her Profitable Essence work, and so in order to discover what my magic was, she asked me to coach her. After the session, she said,

“Okay Therese, you are in the wrong business! You say you are a marketer and work with mindset, but really you are a healer.”

Holy Cow!!! She discovered it! But here’s where my mind went…

”I can’t say I’m a healer! What will people think? I’ll lose credibility? I don’t want to be compared to people who are really healers, because I love all things business and marketing…OMG!”

But she was right. I think I have confused my audience by focusing just on marketing when I’m really all about creating a transformation in them, so they can transform their businesses, so that can transform those around them. The marketing magic I do is just a way to get their brilliance out in the world. I was able to get okay with this concept because I took the essence of the word healer, and moved it into the word that I can really resonate with which is transformation. (And truthfully, since I have stepped more into this, I’m getting the coolest clients…what a blessing!)

How to do this for yourself? Begin to notice what gives you the most ‘juice.’ Look at the clients you have worked with and if you could pick the top 3 moments where you felt so in your zone, what was present? That will give you the clues you need.

And there is one more reason…read the next post for the answers.