Listen Here:

In this episode, we discuss:

• Intuition in business & creating a successful partnership
• What you need to do to manifest your financial desires
• How to use the cycles of the moon to manifest
• Healing your feminine energy to build a six-figure business
• Energetically rewriting what selling means to you

Additional Resources:

COUNSELING: BetterHelp

Making professional counseling accessible, affordable, convenient – so anyone who struggles with life’s challenges can get help, anytime, anywhere. Visit BetterHelp for 10% off your first month of private online counseling.

MEMBERSHIP GROUP: Empath Leaders

This monthly membership is healing for the healers of the world. Your impact will only grow as far as you grow yourself. Inside this container, we emphasize more embodied feminine leadership and less trying to fit into masculine molds. You will be invited to experience a breathwork session, a group coaching session, and a healing session every month in which I bring in my whole healing toolbox. You will also have access to all the Uncensored Empath courses and programs for 10 to 50% off.

COURSE: Launch Your Wellness Biz

A 30-day course for lightworkers who desire to turn their pain into their purpose and create profit. I’ve heard so many people say they don’t know where start when it comes to building an online wellness business, this solves that problem and helps you go from overwhelmed to bringing in regular paychecks.

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Uncensored Empath, a place for us to discuss highly sensitive energy illness, healing, and transformation. My name is Sarah Small, and I’m a life and success coach for empaths, who wants to create a thriving body, business, and life. Think of this podcast as your no-BS guide to navigating life health and entrepreneurship. You’ll get straight to the point, totally holistic tips from me in real-time as I navigate this healing and growth journey right beside you.

This is a Soul Fire Production. Welcome. My guests today are Betsy Milne and Laura Milne, who are both transformational business and branding coaches, who are on a mission to empower women with the tools and motivation. They need to turn a spark of an idea into a full-fledged business and sought after brand. Luscious Hustle was born from the ashes of burnout, I’ve been there, and it was created to redefine what it means to hustle as an online entrepreneur. Betsy and Laura, in less than a year, harnessed their passion to build a six-figure business and support a lifestyle and time freedom that they craved. In today’s episode. We’re going to dive into some of the energy within business, and how to create a community of women that it feels luscious, and lighthearted, and empowered versus that burnout that we drive ourselves into. Betsy will be talking about how to help women heal their feminine energy in order to build a six-figure business. And also, what moon manifesting is. Laura chats with us about how to energetically rewrite, what selling means to you, and what we need to really do to manifest our financial desires. So this episode is for you, if you are ready to level up in all areas of your life, let’s dive right in.

Intuition in business & creating a successful partnership

Sarah: Welcome to the show, Betsy and Laura. I’m so glad to have you both on today and to hear more about your story and get to know each of you better. So I was just telling you before I pushed record, that I definitely thought you were sisters because you have the last name. How the heck did you find each other and ended up being business partners, maybe Betsy, if you want to start that story off.

Betsy: Well, it’s interesting. So we’re recording this in May and four years ago in May, I got a random DM from Laura. She just slid right in there, this is way before people were doing the DM connect. I found it and I was such a newbie at the time. I saw the red flag, opened it, was like, holy crap she has the same last name as me. And then I closed it. I’m going to come back to this and respond. And I couldn’t find it for a week. But it turns out, she just sent me this really great message. She was just, I love what you’re doing on Instagram. You’re in health coaching. I have this product partner. I’d love to get to know you. P.S. by the way, we share the same last name. How cool is that? And it was really just one of those authentic, get to know you type Instagram DMs that everybody should still be doing. Yes, by the way, not just spamming each other. And we got on a phone call very quickly. It was, Oh, let’s email, let’s get a call. And before we knew it, we were working together. And I signed up with her product partner because I’ve been looking at them for a while. I was a health coach that had a need for what she was working, the product she was working with. And it just snowballed very quickly.

We would get on the call and we were supposed to be talking about our network marketing businesses, and we would just talk about business in general. And what it was like to be a female entrepreneur, and diving into the soulful side of running a business. And six months later, I was out in New York City with a girlfriend and a bunch of girlfriends, and I wanted to talk about business, they wanted to talk about Tinder. And I was, Oh man, I want to have a podcast. And at this point, I have to say, Lauren and I were friends, but, we’d never met in real life. We only talked for an hour a month.

And I was, I want to start a podcast and I want to do it with Laura. So I quickly texted her on the way home from the city. It was, Hey, I got this crazy idea I want to start a podcast. And she was, I’m in. I was, great now what? And that’s the evolution of our business and our friendship. And our brand has been connecting at a soul level with each other, the work that we’re doing, what we’re talking about, and then figuring it out from there. And taking action in a way that is totally heart-led, soul-led, and intuitively guided, I guess is the best way to say that.

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I actually just had a woman… I run a coach training program now, and there are amazing women inside of that container that are learning how to be empathic healers, coaches, and getting all these tools. And one of them actually asked me this past week, Sarah, I’m thinking about going into this partnership, this collaboration, this business with another woman and I’m nervous. I’m nervous if it is gonna work out and how are we going to manage each of our different personalities and what that looks like? So, Laura, I’d love from your perspective, just how have you guys navigated this and what have been the challenges, the joys, the excitement, and everything in between?

Laura: Yes. Well, that’s a really good question. It’s interesting, we’ve actually had quite a few clients as well, that were in partnerships or they formed a partnership while we were coaching with them. And partnerships can look different. So some of our clients we’ve had, they have formed partnerships, and I fully trust that their partnership is like ours, that will last a really long time. Others though, it’s a moment. It’s a season. It comes and it goes. And so, what determines whether or not, it’s going to be lasting or not, is the bigger meaning that comes out of it. So I’ll say this off the top, let’s say I have a soul contract. So there’s that. That was the first layer. And then the second thing is, Betsy and I have very different personalities. Human design, we’re the opposite enneagram, we’re the opposite that we literally live 3,000 miles apart, two different countries, two-hour time zone difference. So there are huge differences in distances, but, what drew us together was the same desire, same passion. We wanted to be having these really interesting conversations with women, that we weren’t having anywhere else in our lives. And, the more we dug into that greater meaning and the value we wanted to create, and we were always seemed to be on the same track. Even though we come at it from different angles, we were on the same track. And that’s, I think what is created the longevity, and created the depth of friendship, and the depth of partnership, and the depth of the brand, and the business, and why we attract such amazing clients. So, that to me, it’s the open communication, being willing to be truthful with each other, and is it going to work?

What you need to do to manifest your financial desires

Sarah: Yeah, I’m super interested to hear about the sole contract you guys also feel between yourselves, between each other. And Betsy, you also mentioned feeling you approach business from an intuitively guided place. And there are so many people listening who identify with being highly intuitive, being empathic, and navigating, How do we use that in our lives and our businesses? And I’d love to hear from you, Betsy, how you guys felt that solid, this is a soul contract, this is something for us to do? And also, how intuition plays into your business as a whole?

Betsy: So this is a great question because I think that we’re all seeking clarity at the moment, but for Laura and me, the clarity didn’t actually come for about 18 months on. We have a soul contract, this is why we were brought together. And it’s always hindsight. When you look back, you see the lesson. So if you’re listening to this right now and you feeling guided to do something, just take the chance, don’t overthink it. We’ve always done things very quickly. When we started our podcasts, we did it within two weeks. It was December 15th and we were on air on iTunes, two weeks later. No clue what we were doing. We just took that chance. So that’s where I think intuition really plays in. It’s trusting yourself. I, at the time we started our business, and the time that we came together and started working, I was a very wounded person. Very wounded. I had past traumas that I hadn’t dealt with. I was dealing with illness, chronic illness coming out of New York City. I was suffering from depression when Laura and I first signed our soul contract. And, yet something just kept saying, show up, just do it, take a chance, go for it. And so Laura and I, we were recording an episode of our podcast, right when we rebranded.

So, for a year, we were Luscious Living podcast and we were talking about health and wellness. And then we really decided that we were going to double down on business. And that was our passion together, was helping women build businesses. And so, when we rebranded to Luscious Hustle, we were doing a podcast episode and Laura was, on May 25th, 2015, I was in labor and I was going off and I was writing in my journal and I’m supposed to be going to the hospital. And I’m writing in my journal about this life that I want to create for myself and my daughter, and having these conversations. And I was listening to her story and I was, wait, what May 23rd, 2015? I’m, let’s start doing the math. And it turns out at the exact same moment that she was journaling in her book, going to the hospital, being late to birth her child. I was actually in the midst of a health crisis, watching a webinar about becoming a health coach. And I had the thought at the exact same moment, if I can heal myself, I can heal other people. So I signed up to be a health coach, not because I wanted this certification to start a business, but just cause it was, intuitively, do this thing it’ll help you. And what’s cool about that story is that we didn’t meet each other for a full year. So, we both set the intention and created the spark of the path that we were going to walk down together, a year before we actually met. And so we both had to do work on ourselves. She had to be a new mama. She had to start her network marketing business. I had to get my health coaching certification.

And a year later when we came together, that was already in motion. And again, it was six months before we started a podcast, another full year before we met each other in person. And by the time we met in person, it was just, Holy crap, everything is aligning for us. And, so I think in the grand scheme of things our soul contract, yes, it’s there. I mean, she has been my greatest friend and my greatest teacher. We’ve had our moments. We used to never fight, now sometimes we do. But it’s, that’s what growth looks like. And there’s nobody in this world that I would rather be walking this path with. And I’m so grateful, but yes, we can pinpoint it to the day and the moment that we signed that soul contract. But again, with manifestation and believing in woo and trusting the process. It was a full year before she came into my life and another full year before we met in person. And so patience is really key.

Sarah: Yes. I so agree with you. And I think some of us, including myself, tend to have a challenge with that patience. And a lot of that patience then aligns with trust too. I trust that this is going to come to fruition, or that the person is going to come into my life, or at the very end of a course launch that even if I haven’t hit my goal, that I trust and I’m patient that it’s still going to happen. And, you guys have an incredible story of in less than a year building this six-figure business. And it sounds like a lot of the manifesting happened before you even met each other. And then, once you met each other, it was like quantum speed forward. We’re doing the damn thing. And Laura, I’d love to hear from you, because I think there are so many people who desire that. They are looking for how do I manifest my desires, more specifically my financial desires, and build this business? That it allows me to have the freedom or whatever that other desire is that it gives to you. So, what do we truly need to be doing in order to manifest our financial desires? And when people don’t feel like they’re making progress, what are some of the underlying things of why we might not be getting there?

Laura: I think to answer that and piggyback on what Betsy said. You have to be patient, but you also have to be not judgmental about how you end up receiving the thing that you’ve asked for. Because it invariably will not show up packaged the way you thought it would. We’ve made that, for that six-figures in our first year of business, didn’t happen the way we thought it would. It didn’t happen. If you would have asked us on January 1st, what programs and products do you think are going to get you to those six figures? It did not come out the way we thought it would, but it still happened. It was about being open to receiving that, and being open to pivot and adjust, and stay in alignment with what feels, right.

So, as an example, in that first year, we had a membership program briefly, and it was amazing and the content was awesome. And we did this whole launch sequence for it, and we had members join. And we got a couple of months into it, and it just didn’t feel right. There was just, everything went to show up. We were talking basically, but what we want it to be talking about and we had amazing feedback, but it just felt heavy. Every time we had to show up for Call It, every week, every month it felt heavier and heavier than the last. So it was, okay, something’s off here it doesn’t feel right. So we made the decision to pull the plug on this program, refund a whole bunch of money. And in doing so, it felt like an elephant had been lifted off of our chest. And within a few months, we ended up launching Moon Arts Signature program, Moon Goddess, which had a massive success overnight. We just launched it on a whim. Betsy literally showed up on Instastories one day and started talking about the wound goddess. And I watched our own Instastories, and like, Oh, we’re doing that program? Okay. We just went with what felt aligned. And that program ended up being so much bigger.

And then, we, just from releasing the one program that didn’t feel aligned, our mastermind group, moon goddess groups, we made way more money. Most of those six figures in that first year came in the last three to four months of 2018. And again, it’s just that knowing that you have to, yes, trust the process. You have to be patient, but you have to trust that if you’re staying in alignment with yourself and asking yourself the tough questions, and being true to you, seeking your own truth, that will help lead the way. And it might look strange and weird compared to what you thought was going to happen in your more ego-centered mind. We have so many examples of this with our clients as well. We have clients that built incredible businesses.

One client has a new yoga methodology that she’s launched in New York City. And that’s not the business that she came to us to build, but in doing the deeper work with her, we figured out that’s actually where her heart is. And she had this hangup that she thought, well, yoga teachers can’t make multiple six-figures. That’s not a thing, but actually it is. So as soon as we got her to believe in that, we did the deeper work, we helped her build out the structures that needed to happen. The container. Then, boom, within a few months she was having 5k months. And following her passion in something that she didn’t think was possible.

On the flip side, we’ve also have had clients who came to us and they were, one girl I’m thinking of. She was freelancing. And she has all the potential, all the skill, all the talent to have to run her own business. But it just never, it just was not feeling right. She was making momentum, but it felt sluggish. It felt slow. It felt heavy. We did some work on that and it ended up manifesting a job. She’s making more money than she’s ever made before. She manifested a move and a new house, and all the things. She’s so happy. Is she running her own business right now? Nope. But she doesn’t care, because she has manifested exactly what she wanted. So it’s okay, yeah, it didn’t come in the form of her building up this great big freelance business, but she doesn’t care. She’s so happy and to me, that’s manifesting. It’s tuning in to what it feels like, what’s in alignment, do deeper work. It sometimes feels very ugly, sexy, and hard, but when you do it right, that’s actually what gets you there faster?

Sarah: Yes. To me, there’s this word is coming up of surrender and really surrendering to the process, and to the control, the grip that we have on, it needs to happen this way and this is how it’s going to happen. And instead, surrendering to all breaking possibilities, and then allowing this to come into our life. Because when we try to control, we also then close ourselves off more unconsciously and constrict what we can allow into our lives versus that surrender of, I allow anything and everything of the highest good and may all opportunities come into, into my life, into my space. So that I can grow in the most organic, authentic way.

I want to take a quick moment for you to just check in with yourself. If it’s safe for you to close your eyes, maybe you close your eyes, or you just bring your hands to your belly, or your heart. And take a deep breath. And I just want you to notice how your body’s feeling. We rarely stop to do this throughout the day. And for me, I’ve been doing this and reminding myself to do this a lot during quarantine, during social distancing. And as things re-open and then close again, and all these rules and all these restrictions, I’m reminding myself to tap in and just notice how I’m truly feeling.

And I’ve noticed in tapping into my own body and listening to my needs and my feelings that I’ve been craving an outlet to talk. To talk about everything that’s been on my heart, and on my mind, and in my body. And my weekly sessions with my therapist for Better Help, have been so supportive. And so life-changing, and so necessary right now. That I know that I have is one hour every week, plus messaging in between our calls, to just express myself. And to do that check-in with my body, check in with my thoughts and notice what layers of grief are coming up? What stressors are coming up? How was I triggered this week? What family issues are coming back up to the surface that are bringing up negative emotions?

And so, I just want to give you all permission, if you haven’t already given yourself permission, to know that you are worthy and deserving of the support as well. And I’ve partnered up with Better Help, to provide you accessible, affordable, counseling. It’s not a crisis line. It’s not self-help, it’s professional counseling that is done online. And allows you to have that outlet, that platform to get matched with a counselor, that’s going to be the best fit for you. And align with your values to be continuously supported. So, if this feels like a good fit for you, I want to give you 10% off your first month. Go to trybetterhelp.com/uncensoredempath. That’s trybetterhelp.com/uncensoredempath, and get 10% off your first month of therapy.

How to use the cycles of the moon to manifest

Sarah: You mentioned the moon goddess as an offer you have, but I know that you also can use the moon and the cycles. The moon and that ebb and that flow and that reminds me of that energy of surrender too. So how do you use the moon to guide your business or how can you? And use the moon for moon manifesting as well. Betsy, if you want to kick it off.

Betsy: I would love to kick it off. I could talk about this all day. So, when it comes to the moon, it’s interesting that you’re using the word surrender. So surrender is a real trigger word for me lately. Because I do, I think it’s a very beautiful word, but I also think, Laura and I are word nerds in the sense that when we hear a word being used over and over, we like to dig in and peel it apart a little. And I think that there’s still some underlying conditioning around the word, surrender. That if you surrender, you’re giving up, or that you somehow failed. In the sense of like releasing and letting go. And so, when it comes to moon manifesting, the moon is a really powerful tool because it is an energetic cycle that lasts 28-days. Just the way that our bodies as women work on a 28-day cycle, men work on a 24-hour cycle. So, the world that we live in Monday through Friday, get up at 8:00am, be done at five, come home, be with the kids. That is very much a masculine cycle of energy.

Whereas our creative process does have ebbs and flows. We started using the moon because I was actually trying to heal trauma. True story. I was working on it personally, and saying, okay, I have to heal this trauma. I don’t want to bring it into the business, but you know what, there’s something magical about using the moon, setting intentions with the new moon, releasing what wasn’t working at the full moon. And, I found that I quickly was able to let go of this old trauma, this old story, and step into the business in a new way. So I said to Laura, listen, I really liked that there’s masculine and feminine energy in the lunar cycle. I like that. There are days when we’re in the feminine energy, where I just want to take a day off, and take a step back, and just be in the business and be creative.

Will you humor me? Let’s just do this for a lunar cycle and see if we can, the same way that we’re using it for personal manifestation, let’s try it in the business. And in the first month that we did it, we went from, we had been struggling to keep our 5k months, just keeping that consistent. We hit 5K easily, then we went to 10K, then we went to 15K. So it was each lunar cycle we were doubling then tripling our revenue. And Moon Goddess was born out of that because if you have the framework, and energetic framework that allows you to not just be pushing and hustling all the time. Because Luscious Hustle represents lusciousness is the divine feminine. Hustle is the divine masculine. We need to have both in order to be successful.

It’s not, go, go, go hustle, hustle, hustle. There are spaces for you to receive, and to be open, and to sink in. And that was how Moon Goddess was born. It was the exact strategy that we used in our business to go from 5K months to 15K months, with ease. We released it into the world and we taught people how to do it. And the biggest feedback, actually, that I still love hearing the most it’s, thank you for giving me permission. Thank you for giving me permission to take space in my business, and not just feel I have to go all the time. And, I think that, in its, in its own way, is surrendering. You are surrendering to this space. You’re surrendering to the opportunity and you can receive in those moments of surrender. But the word, ‘surrender’ itself, is still a trigger word for me. Cause it’s, well, I’ve just given up. But you’re not giving up, you’re actually integrating and opening up, and receiving and letting go. Even that’s a bad one. Because I say that, and I can picture Rapunzel falling backward letting go. We’re not letting go of anything. It’s just creating the space to continue to move forward. It’s just a different way of doing it than how we’re taught, or how we’re nurtured.

Sarah: Yes that makes so much sense. And I think those words can be interpreted in different ways. We all have different stories around them. And now, you’ve piqued my curiosity, my interest and what parts of the 28-day cycle are more in the masculine, versus which ones are more in the feminine?

Laura: So, they alternate, masculine and feminine energies within the cycle. And the thing that I love about Moon Goddess too is, piggybacking again, on what, Betsy said, creating more space. You don’t have to rush. So for example, we have a launch sequence that you can use that’s in alignment with the moon. And I think especially when you’re a newer entrepreneur starting out, you’re constantly comparing and contrasting yourself to what else you see, what you see everyone else doing on social media. So you see someone doing this big launch. And they’ve launched a quiz, or they’ve watched an opt-in, or they have a webinar, the whatever. And it seems to happen overnight, and it’s not happening overnight. There’s a lot of background work that needs to happen, but you don’t know that when you’re starting out.

So giving someone a framework, energetically, it’s okay to just do this part of the planning right now, and then do this, and then do the next step, and then do the next step. And, there’s a launch phase every month, but you might take two or three lunar cycles to launch something that’s much bigger. And that’s okay. And again, to just harness the energy of, are you in a third-quarter launch, or are you in a full moon and you need to release something? Are you in a new moon and we need to meet, set a different intention for what’s happening with this program, or product, or offering? And what that all means, whether you’re doing it over a single lunar cycle or you’re piggybacking multiple lunar cycles together. And I love digging into that with our ladies, because once they understand, like Betsy said, that the energetic fundamentals of how to use it, you can apply it to freaking everything.

We’ve coached health coaches on how to use the moon in their business. Not that they’re teaching the moon to their health coaching clients, but they’re using it on the back end of their business to understand when their clients should be doing different things in their journey on losing weight, or getting healthy, or healing their gut, or whatever. So literally, you can heal your gut, you can clear up your skin, you can heal past trauma, you can launch a program, you can watch a website or a podcast. There’s isn’t anything you can’t do with it. It’s just understanding those fundamentals and again, giving yourself permission to not have to be in the hustle all the time. But then, also, not swinging backward into wounded feminine energy, where you’re lulled and stuck.

I think that’s actually happening a lot in the world right now. People are becoming, because of what’s happened with pandemic life. People have been forced to come to a halt. And so, you see people either shifting into a new gear and trying to open up, and peeling back layers, and being open to seeking their own truth. How can I pivot? How can I change my work and my way in the world? Or you see other people sitting in fear and getting stuck, and that’s usually, a combination of wounded feminine or wounded masculine energy. So again, if you’re using the moon, you can lift yourself out of those bubbles. So it’s not that, we’ve had clients come to us and say, Oh, I was embodying my highest self last weekend, and I just shit the bed this week. And you’re, no, no, no, no, you’re still your highest self. You’re always your highest self, but we have little mini, you think of it like a mercury retrograde. It looks like it’s going backward in the sky. It’s not, it’s just looping on its path. And, it’s the same thing with our personal development. We have moments where we feel like we’re backtracking. We’re not, we’re just sort of cycling. And when you can tap into that, then it helps motivate you. It helps build up that sense of worthiness and that confidence in yourself, and that clarity about where I’m going next.

Sarah: Yes. That makes so much sense and makes me want to try that in my business. Cause I feel I lead with intuition and what feels good for me. I don’t do well with time blocking or too much structure in my business. But I’ve never actually experimented with a lunar cycle, and how that might also invite more ease and opportunity into my business as a whole. And Betsy, you had mentioned that you were using those to heal your own trauma or past experiences. And you guys have both mentioned the masculine and the feminine. So, how has doing the inner work on yourself, Betsy and I don’t know what that looks like for you or what your story is. But I’d love to hear more about how that inner work, and that healing also, then, transferred over to the business and the success, that then, you’re able to see within your business?

Healing your feminine energy to build a six-figure business

Betsy: So for long time, I thought that personal and business didn’t really mix. When I was 19, I was raped by a stranger in my own house. It was awful. And that lived in its box. It was something that, here I am, I’m this 40-year-old woman and I’m running a successful six-figure business. And yet, there was this box that kept popping open, at the most inopportune moments in our business, over, and over, and over again. And I was actually at a mastermind retreat, and I had to get up in front of a room of 30 women that I knew. I intimately knew them and had worked with them for six months, and had to introduce myself. And I had a flashback to that moment, where I was 19, I was in a really awful situation and it was terrible. It was an out of body experience.

And in that moment, Laura wasn’t actually there yet. She was flying in, she was on an airplane, and I will never forget driving from New Hampshire down to Boston, to pick her up at the airport, crying the entire way. Going, I can’t show up in business if I don’t deal with this. This story is killing me right now, and keeping me from standing in the vision that I have for the future. And it’s keeping me from showing up fully for Laura, even in our business. So that was the trigger for me to say, okay, you know what, I gotta deal with this. How am I going to deal with this? I didn’t have a therapist at the time. I had already been diagnosed with PTSD. I had gone through therapy, I’ve been on drugs, all the things. And, I will never forget. I flew up to Calgary in September, and we were standing in Laura’s kitchen and the whole Kavanaugh thing was going on. And she’s, you have to tell the story, you have to do it. And again, it was, I don’t know how to do this. This has no place in our business, whatsoever. But it did, because it was my energetic block.

It was the thing that was killing me from the inside out and keeping me from stepping fully in. So, Laura, God bless her heart. She held so much space for me while I was going through this. And I did a solo podcast. We released it to the world. And again, it all followed the lunar cycle. So the lunar cycle, lunar energy is divine, feminine energy. It doesn’t matter what phase we’re in, at the underlying energetic cycle is feminine. And the sun is masculine, so there’s always a duality with energy. And so, I was using the lunar cycle, very basically new moon set the intention, full moon released what was holding me back. So for four months I used the lunar cycle with the story about getting raped and what it was doing to me. And setting the intention in the business and then allowing myself to explore, where was the block coming up? What was I saying to myself that was holding me back? So four lunar cycles later, I was finally able to go out into the world and share my story. It blew our business up because all of a sudden it was, Oh my god, I’ve had the same experience and that’s really what I needed. I needed my feminine energy to be received. It needed to be reflected back to me that I was okay, that I was safe. And so, if you’re an intuitive or an empath, and you’re doing the work that you do in this world, you have to be willing to open up and share. And it’s scary. It’s the scariest thing you’ll ever have to do in business, but it will also create the most amount of space for you.

So, I released that story, and honestly, it’s funny cause I still have my moments. It’s not something that’s ever gonna go away. I’ve integrated it into my life. But we launched Moon Goddess a month later. I was so ready because so much space had been taken up energetically with that past trauma. That once that was gone, it was okay, here we go I’m going to use what I just learned and share it with the world in a new way and help other people heal in their businesses, so they can go out and do the work that they want to do. And so, part and parcel, we talked about this, it’s not about waiting until you’ve healed yourself, in order to start your business. It’s about doing work, that lights you up and supports you. I would have never dealt with my trauma if I didn’t have our business, because it would have lived in its little box.

And Laura, last year she went through a divorce, same thing. Her life could have been happy on that trajectory for a really long time, but the box was too small for her. And so, she had to take a risk and she had to take a chance. And again, she was, we were both really lucky. We had this business that supported us to do that deeper work and get out of our own way and show up fully intuitively led, supported, and loved.

Sarah: Thank you so much for sharing that. And, I resonate with the sexual trauma, almost taking up space in my sacral chakra, in the womb. And that is our creative center and it is where we, as women, there’s birth that happens, can happen there, but that it’s also energetic birthing. So, business birthing, business ideas, offers, services, products that you want to put out into the world. And for me it felt, after putting it off and pushing it down into its little box for so long, I felt I could, on a physical level, now feel an energetic heaviness and a blockage. And this space of my sacral chakra was so full. Full to the brim with all these old stories, and the triggers, and the trauma and even the self limiting thoughts and beliefs, and the way I talked about my body, and the way I treated my body.

And when I finally did this womb healing within the feminine energy and released, holy fucking shit, all of a sudden I had space to receive in my life. I had space for new ideas. I had space to let money come in. I had space to be in my feminine energy that I had also disowned and pushed away for so long. Cause as a society, oftentimes, the masculine is more rewarded in that very linear path and structure of what you’re supposed to do, and fit into this box, and what you’re supposed to do with your life. And I was so exhausted by that.

Yet my feminine energy was so full that I felt I couldn’t do anything. So, it took a lot of this inner work, this deep, deep, inner healing that was unsexy. That was hard. That was not always fun. But on the other side, it was more than worth the reward to then feel that liberation energy. And then, the rebalancing of the masculine and feminine. And Laura, I’d love to hear from you, how has your own inner work also helped you guys? That you said it so well, this doesn’t seem related to my business at all yet. It is so, so interwoven into your energy body and the way you show up. And you did see this resolved after doing that inner work. So Laura, I would love to hear from you as well, around any inner work that has again, seemingly not been related to business yet, catapulted business in some way.

Laura: Well, I think even just the origins of how it started. I was pregnant and about to birth a child. And then, also birthing ideas and setting out intentions into the world at the very same time. And it’s funny, because we just had a client who, she may have already given birth. I don’t know, in the last day or two, but she said, all of these ideas are coming to me right now. And, I was, I know, cause your sacral is a super power charged up that’s going to birth the baby. And all these ideas that are coming to you, so just be patient. You can still launch the ideas and the baby at the same time.

But like that, my daughter is… being a mom and having my daughter was my first dream and so, that’s a big piece of why. And also, my human design is generated there. So I’m all about the sacral, it all comes back to the sacral. And, then, the business was birthed from that. And, when I think about my divorce last year, and all of the ridiculous trauma that happened after leaving, never mind before. What ultimately pushed me to leave, I wasn’t happy. It was one of those things that, the relationship was easy, but it was boring, and unfulfilling, and not happy and then over time it got toxic. Because that’s what happens with someone who’s toxic. But what ultimately pushed me was, that both my human baby and my business baby could not be properly cared for and fulfilled by staying i  that relationship. Now, I should have left because it’s not worth it. It wasn’t good for me. I was being hurt. But sometimes when you don’t see that, you don’t see yourself, you just keep, especially as a generator, I’ll just keep marching on. But it was when, like the whys, being verbally abused in front of my child, all of a sudden it was, Whoa, being verbally abused is not okay at all. But then, when it started happening in front of my kid, that was the trigger, because she’s my why and so, I had to shift and make a change.

And then, jealousies. My ex, weird narcissistic jealousies and things coming up over my business and the time, and the energy, and the passion that I had for my business and my clients. All of a sudden that was a red flag that came up, whoa, okay, we need to look at this. And so, I don’t know where I was going with that, but those were the flags, those are the triggers that helped push me out, and helped me see what was possible. And, my mind is blown even to this day. Some mornings I wake up and I want to pinch myself. I’m the same person I was a year ago and I’m totally a different person and I have a completely different life. And the possibilities for me, feel endless compared to what I even was capable of imagining a year ago.

And so, the other thing I want to say there too though, is the business, like the way the business supported Betsy, it also supported me. And I think that’s a really strong lesson that I want to get out to women, who, whatever you have going on in your life. You have trauma, you have depression, you are living pandemic life with children and no childcare and you’re maybe in a toxic relationship. And we were broke as jokes by the way, when we started. The two of us together, seriously broke as a joke. I was hustling weekend night shifts, still as a pediatric nurse. Working every week, every single weekend, just to keep a roof over my head and food on the table, and inject some money in the beginning of the business. We were working hard and we didn’t have a lot to work with. But, you can heal and you can grow the business at the same time, and you should. And actually, you will get farther, faster, when you do those things in tandem.

And one of the most common objections that I hear from women as well, when I heal myself, then I’ll start my business. When I have time, then I’ll start my business. When I have the money, then I’ll start my business. I just need some more space to wrap my head around whatever the thing and how I’m going to do it. We didn’t have a lot of space and a lot of time, we had to just start, and then create the space. It won’t happen the other way around. And that’s my biggest, if I can just drop one thing for anyone listening to this, it’s don’t, ready is a lie. If Betsy had waited to unpack her Pandora’s box of trauma, it would have never happened. We wouldn’t have this business. We wouldn’t have done all the travel, and met all the people, and had all these incredible, amazing experiences, and have so much abundance made available to us. And it’s the same thing for me, I chugged along that relationship as long as I could, until it absolutely could not be done anymore. It was toxic and killing me. And then I dropped it. And I didn’t try to wait until it was going to be okay to start building my business and start building a better life for myself and my daughter.

Sarah:  Thank you so much for sharing that. And I think that does give permission to people to hear that. Hey, I did this and I’m not perfect, or I’m not a hundred percent healed. I know for me, I was still experiencing some debilitating anxiety. And I had a lot of chronic health issues that I was still working through. Even if I had seen maybe 10% progress, but there was a long way to go. And as I healed internally, and physical stuff with autoimmune disease, my business was right alongside that journey, growing with me as I grew. And as I healed, my business grew and healed its own wounds. And it’s just incredible to see. And I think you’re right. I think so many people allow that voice in their head of, well, once I’m healed, then I will, to hold them back from that leap, that jump to start. And start before you feel, quote ‘ready’ and that’s okay. And you might stumble, and you might have some challenges, and you might fall on your face a couple of times. But, there’s so much learning and growth to be experienced in that stumbling and just starting and putting yourself out there. And I found that running a business can be this fast track of spiritual development and personal growth. Because in your business, all your shit comes up to the surface.

I am so excited to tell you about a brand new offering we have at the Uncensored Empath. It is the Empath Leaders Monthly Membership. This is healing for the healers of the world because your impact will only grow as far as you grow yourself. I’m willing to bet you’ve taken some courses and you’ve been on your self-development path for awhile. You’ve been listening to the podcast, but when it comes to the impact that you want to have on the world, and maybe a business that you’re growing, you’re still getting in your own damn way. Because here’s the thing, you can listen to all the podcasts. You can do all the things you can enroll in all the strategy courses, and you can still feel stuck, because we get stuck in our conscious mind.

And we live out those same unconscious patterns over and over again. And instead, our subconscious is where all of our programming resides, and our inner child, and that subconscious, and our ego inside of that subconscious will always have something to say, every time you want to bust through and break the ceiling to get to the next level. For years, I’ve been saying that your pathway to healing and equitably leads you to your soul’s purpose. But when no one tells you about starting a business, is that it will also be a journey into the depths of your soul. Your triggers and insecurities will arise, and your shadow will poke its disagreeing head out of the closet. But this is also the greatest opportunity to heal at lightning speed.

Your entrepreneurship journey, the impact that you want to leave. The legacy you want to leave on this planet is like stepping into a spaceship of spiritual ascension and descension into the heart. So this is where we have to get our whole operating system onboard, and where the inner work comes in. The Empath Leaders Membership is not your average membership. There are no monthly themes. There are no set curriculums or even modules. And instead this container is for you to hear yourself, not for you to hear me. It is meant for you to provoke the healing within yourself, and not just to take away lessons, but to be the embodiment of healing and change. It is more embodied, feminine leadership and less trying to fit into masculine molds.

If this is sparking something within you, let me tell you what’s included each month inside the membership. As a member, you will be invited to experience one monthly breathwork session, where we will go through a conscious, connected breathwork practice. And you set your intention for shift or change or transformation. There will also be one group coaching session every month, on which you can come on and ask me anything and everything about life, and business, and relationships, and anything on your heart. And lastly, there will also be one group healing session every month in which I bring in my whole healing toolbox, and all the modalities that I’ve studied in being fem-trained in. Including some things timeline therapy, inner child work, subconscious reprogramming, hypnosis, and so much more.

There’s also access to all the Uncensored Empath courses and programs for 10 to 50% off. And there is a Facebook community for support in which the women are actively asking questions and getting support in between calls. Something super special I’m doing right now, is that when you sign up and you enroll in the membership by August 15, 2020, 30% of your monthly registration fee will also go to the Loveland Foundation.

The Loveland Foundation provides accessible, affordable, therapy to black women and girls. So if this feels like a good fit for you, the investment is $111 per month. Every other option to work with me, that is this high touch, is a four-figure investment. But my heart is feeling so called to invite in more women to the membership, and to provide more ongoing support, and a container where you don’t have to feel isolated and instead you feel soul connected to these other people inside. This is my invitation to you. You’ll find the link in the show notes, or you can simply go to the uncensoredempath.com and there’s a tab that says ‘members’. I truly hope to see you inside.

Sarah: Betsy, I’d love to hear from you, coming back to this conversation around the dance between the masculine and the feminine, and your Luscious Hustle embodies that dance between the masculine and feminine. So how do you then use that, and then apply that to your selling process and the success that you guys have seen?

Betsy: Oh my God, I love this question because I could talk about sales all day, every day. So most of my career, I spent in New York City working in the fashion industry. Which is a very, it’s so funny, cause it is a feminine industry. You’re selling to females, but it’s run by men. And I was taught a very masculine way to run a business. I went from, I built million-dollar accounts and I was at fashion shows, and then I was getting my ass handed to me behind the scenes. It was very, ‘Devil Wears Prada’, just not in a good way, toxic way. And I was taught a way to do sales that did feel very sleazy and felt very wounded. And so, when we started our business, I would, at the beginning, it was, I can’t, I can’t sell. I don’t know how to sell, it’s icky, it’s sales-y. And yet, I was making sales in my own weird way, just by talking about the things that I loved. And I think 80% that it’s a fact, it’s not, I think 80% of things that are brought in this world are bought by women. So, when you’re talking to women and doing the dance between masculine and feminine, it’s really about the masculine energy supports us to show up. It supports us, it gives us the framework to move forward. It’s an inspired action. But the feminine is really where sales open up in my opinion. And I think that as we connect and as we learn how to have deeper conversations, I’m the queen of conversation and confrontational conversations. I love getting in there.

It’s like the book that I was showing you before we got on here, The Dance of Connection. How do we connect at a soul level? And sales should not feel icky. Sales should not feel salesy. Sales are there to support you. And it’s like Moana at the end of the Disney movie, when the fire god comes, and she curls up and she becomes the mountain, and she’s got all the flowers on top of her, that’s to me, the harmony between masculine and feminine. Masculine in that sense is the mountain. The feminine is all the gorgeous stuff that lives around you and you can’t have one without the other in the sales process. You have to show up, you have to ask for a sales conversation, you have to talk about your product. You have to talk about your service. You have to ask for the sale. But if you do it from a place that’s heart-centered, if you do it from a place of integrity and authenticity, then it does not feel icky or salesy. It is that dance that brings you together. And part of our mission has been helping women make sales for the last six months because we saw how hard it was for people. And it doesn’t have to be hard and it’s a really necessary skill to have in business. And so, I hope if you’re listening to this and you’re worried about making sales, or you’re afraid, don’t be afraid. You have to get comfortable with that dance between the masculine and feminine showing up, asking, but also listening, and receiving the feedback. It’s not about you. It’s about them. You’re there to help them make a decision. It’s not about closing sales, that’s very masculine. It’s about helping the other person make a decision. And you might be the right fit for them and you might not be. That remains to be seen, but you got to do it.

Sarah: Yes. I love that you’ve said that because it also can trigger our inner people pleaser. And that’s what I mean by business is this beautiful gateway to inner work and personal development. Because you may realize at that moment, Oh wow, my inner people-pleaser wants everyone to say yes to this opportunity to work with me, or this package that I have, that I put so much time and love and energy into. And yes, this inner desire to be liked, yet, there’s so much healing and detaching from the outcome. And saying, I’m here to help them make a decision, it’s not about me. And it’s not about whether they like me or whether I’m good enough, or smart enough for them. And instead, it is to empower people to make the best decision for themselves. And that really shifts the mindset around those, whether it’s a discovery call, or whatever conversation you might be having with potential clients or potential customers.

Such different energy to bring into that space when you blend that together versus completely in your feminine or completely on your masculine. So, I’d love to just pop it back over to each of you one more time and just ask if there’s anything else that you’d love to share. Especially to the women who maybe have hesitation or fear around jumping into the inner work to help propel their business forward, or to selling, and starting their business. What words of wisdom or guidance would you share with them, based on what you have experienced over the last couple of years in your partnership, and what you’ve built with Luscious Hustle? Laura, you can start.

Laura: Well, the thing that I’m really zeroing in on all the time lately is truth-seeking. In every sense of the word. There’s a Jordan Peterson quote that, it’s a person’s worth and value when their life is dependent on how much truth they can bear. How much truth you could tolerate. And when you’re doing personal development, it’s about getting truthful with yourself, and sometimes looking in the mirror and seeing those old stories, and realizing that actually you were the one holding yourself back all along. That’s not fun. It’s not pretty, it’s not easy, but when you seek that truth, life actually gets easier. If you’re willing to drop whatever storyline is happening in your head and just accept what’s in front of you, lovingly.

And the same thing with the sales process. We’re running a sales program right now, our Soulful Sales Accelerator and we just worked through objections with the ladies. And they had so much fear around objections. Nobody, all my people coming to me don’t have the time, they don’t have the money, they’re demanding to know what the return on investment is. And they were feeling very overwhelmed and fearful about how do I handle, air quotes, these objections? And really, objections are fun, when you can become a truth seeker. Then, even if someone says no to you. No, I think this program is shit, I don’t wanna have anything to do with it. I’m not hiring you. That’s not gonna happen, but let’s say it happened. Get inquisitive, get curious. Oh, okay tell me more. Why? What are you feeling right now? What’s going through your mind? What’s lacking for you, what are your expectations?

When you can get curious and seek the truth from someone else, and openly receive it, that’s where big, big growth happens. And it’s not a loss. It’s not a waste of your time. It’s not a waste of your energy. And it doesn’t have to be a bruise to your ego either. You get to learn. That’s the most valuable market research you could ever hope to get and you get to expand from that. And that’s the heart of having a good sales conversation, of running a good business, it’s about seeking the truth, understanding, and actively listening to that person, and then providing value back. That’s it. So whether you’re doing it for yourself or you’re doing it with someone else in your business, to me, it’s all about truth-seeking right now.

Sarah: Yes. I appreciate that so much. And I think that many of the empaths listening are also naturally good at that active listening you mentioned. And so, why not use that and tap into that natural ability to get curious about people. Betsy.

Betsy: I think for me, it’s take action. That’s been a motto of mine. And I know if you’re an empath and you’re listening to this, you’re probably, no way it’ll work. I don’t want to do that. But ultimately, what is the divine masculine? The divine masculine is inspired action. It has momentum. And, how do we collapse time? How do we have this massive amount of growth? We have to continue to move forward. So when you’re sitting in your shit, and Laura’s exemplified this. At the beginning of our business, I was having daily panic attacks. I’ve gotten off podcast interviews and ended up in the hospital with panic attacks. There is a level of fear and crap that I’ve had to purge from my body.

But sometimes when things feel heavy or, it’s unsexy work, we want to take a step back. It’s okay to take a step back, but tap back into your why. Take a different step that maybe feels a little bit off the path, but it’s not off the path. And keep that momentum going, keep moving forward so that you’re not sitting and looking back and being, Oh wait, there was an opportunity there and I missed it. Because regret’s a funny word, we don’t talk about it a lot, but I think that with everything moving in the direction that it’s moving in this world. And with so many unknowns being faced, I know I personally don’t want to look back and regret anything. I want to know that I’m taking steps and I believe everything happens for us.

At the end of the day, it’s not happening to me. It’s not having to Laura it’s happening for us, as opportunities to grow. And manifesting is about taking action. It’s not about sitting in lotus position and calling the heavens and saying, dear universe, give me this. We ask for what we want, but we still have to show up and show that we’re willing to show up. And so it’s, keep taking action, no matter how small the steps are. Micro actions will get you further than taking big leaps. And so, just keep showing up, keep taking action. Micro-actions. You don’t need to know how, you don’t need to know where you’re going, but if it feels good, chances are you’re doing the right thing. And it’s going to lead you where you want to go.

Sarah: Yes. Thank you. Thank you both so much for sharing your stories and sharing your heart. And we will definitely link to all of your social handles and website in the show notes so people can connect with you further. And just deep in those conversations and get the support that they need, and taking the action and seeking the truth. So thank you again so much, Betsy and Laura.

Betsy: Thank you for having us.

Laura: Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for tuning into another episode of the Uncensored Empath podcast. If you want my Empath High Vibe healing Playlist on Spotify, it is yours. All you gotta do is go over to ratethispodcast.com/empath and once you choose whatever platform you want to leave a review on. Simply screenshot it and email it to me at sarah@theuncensoredempath.com. And I will send you this playlist that I listened to in the bathtub, that I listened to for dance parties, that I listen to while I’m doing my work, all of the things. And I so, so, so appreciate your time and your loving support. I will see you all in the next episode.

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