129: 3 Inspiring Women Share Their Experiences of Turning Their Healing into Flourishing Businesses in the Healing Community

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00:00:00 Chazmith: Hi, welcome to Our Power Is Within Podcast. I am your host, Chazmith, and my mission for this podcast is to inspire you to take your power back and to realize that you are the  healer that you have been looking for all along. We are capable of healing in mind and body and soul all. Today's episode is brought to you by Primal Trust Academy and Community, created by Dr. Cathleen King, who is a dear friend of mine and has been featured on this podcast three times already. Primal Trust is more than just a program that you are left to do all on your own. It is a whole community with many different avenues of support. Within the community, you will find forum support moderated by coaches and other graduates of the mentorship program. You have access to study groups and integration groups to help you navigate the Regulate program, which is the foundation program, where you would first begin, designed to help you find freedom from chronic illness and trauma by teaching Brainier training, somatics, breath work, and more. They really focus on combining both a top down and bottoms up approach. 

00:01:14 Chazmith: In addition to all of this, there is an ongoing calendar of daily live awesome classes. To learn more, check out the links in the show notes and use the code OPIW to save 5% off your monthly membership costs, or sign up for a whole year and get two months free. As a reminder, this is the last week to win the four free months to the Primal Trust Academy and Community, where you will join Regulate, interact on the forum, participate in any live classes, and join the study groups to jumpstart your healing today. This is all courtesy of Dr. Cath. There are several ways that you can enter to win, and I am going to allow unlimited entries for these two weeks. 

00:01:55 Chazmith: So we started one week ago, and this contest closes in exactly one week on April 4th, and the winner will be announced the following week. As a reminder, there are several ways that you can be entered into the drawing. You can sign up on my website homepage to my podcast email list. If you have not done so already, you can create a short story on Instagram telling me why you want to win and tag me. You can share your favorite episode on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or wherever you do, your social media and tag me. Or you can leave a five star rating and review. Screenshot it and send it my way. All these ways can help me grow my podcast and help support my podcast, which means the world to me. And every time that you do one of these things over this next week, I will enter your name into the drawing to win.

00:02:50 Chazmith: All right, so I cannot even tell you how excited I am to share today's episode. I feel so honored when I get to have a fun chat with just one awesome human. But today, I get to share with you this amazing chat I got to have with three lovely, amazing, awesome, super women. How cool is that? I brought three inspiring women, who are in the chronic community, who have been on their own healing journeys, and through their journeys have created absolutely beautiful, supportive and successful empires. They might tell me it is a reach to call their businesses empires, but I see the magic unfolding from all of them. These women are magical, powerful souls and they have taken something that is hard and heavy like chronic pain and illness and grown through this experience and then moved on to really turn this hard, dark experience into pure light. I am sure by now that many of you are familiar with at least one of these ladies and the work they are doing, but if not, you will be by the end of this episode.

00:03:57 Chazmith: Fun tidbit, they've all been guests on the podcast at one point or another through the past few years. We have Dani Fagan, who you may know online as My TMS Journey. She has brought such valuable resources into this community. And through following her passion, she has created this amazing yoga and breath platform where people can find regulation, calm, and presence through their movement with her offerings. We have Dr. Cathleen King, who has gone through her own extensive healing journey and has learned so much along the way that she knew she needed to put it all together in a way that made sense for people to help them begin to step into their true self, or as she calls it, their adult main personality. So they can live their purpose, their truth, and their values, to create magic in the world and experience deep healing. She now offers this beautiful online community experience with multiple programs, live classes, and community support. And we have Jennifer Mann, who also brought into light a vision she has as she was emerging through her healing experience in partnership with her also amazing business partner, Karden Rabin. She has created this wonderfully, supportive, comprehensive school for self healing known as CFS School. If you have an idea burning in your belly, a dream, a vision, a goal, or you know in your heart that you are meant to build your own business, but maybe you've lacked confidence, or you've not felt ready, or you felt at a loss of direction,  or maybe even fear arises, then this episode is for you. 

00:05:40 Chazmith: These women all open up to have a real conversation about what life is like, stepping into their truth, and allowing their visions to transpire and how to balance everything along the way, like honoring boundaries, learning from our mistakes, not defaulting back into old patterns, and more. So I'm just saying you might want to pull out a pen and paper for this one to take some notes and jot down any follow up questions you might have. Please enjoy.

00:06:12 Chazmith: All right, ladies, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. This is so exciting to have all of you in one place at one time and get to see your beautiful faces. 

00:06:20 Dani: Hi, darling. It's lovely to be back and thank you for inviting me. 

00:06:24 Jen: Good to be here, Chaz.

00:06:29 Chazmith: All right, so as we all know, but for the audience to know, we are talking about building a business either through, during, or post recovery and everything about that, what it looks like, what it feels like, the ways it helps us through our recovering journey, the way it might cause setbacks, and then how we manage that, all the good stuff. And so what I'd like to do to set us up is I'd have each of you spend a few minutes just sharing a little bit about yourself and what really inspired you to step into this journey, to take this on, to birthing in a business, and where the mission or the inspiration came from, if you will, and anyone can start.

Don't be shy.

00:07:16 Dani: I don't mind starting if you want. It's weird when there's more than two  people in a conversation. It's like Brady Bunch. You're not sure where to go away. Obviously, had conversations before, Chaz, and you know some of my story, but just a little recap. I had chronic back pain for about three or four years and chronic anxiety my whole life. Now I look  back, it was a laundry list of many, many different things and I found this mind body work. Although all of us approach it in a slightly different way, it's all singing the same sort of song, I think. And I almost fell into this accidentally. And I think from what I've spoken to a lot of people about the progress when you're healing and when you feel healed, you feel compelled to do something with that information that helped you because so many other people are suffering. And I think that's probably true for most of us. I don't think anybody's ever 100% healed because we live in a mind body system, right? It's like you're never going to be switched on or off. That's just the way it is. But out of that chronic cycle, I felt like I needed to do something with information that I'd found. 

00:08:20 Dani: And back then, it's not that long ago, but it feels long ago now. Back then, there wasn't really that much information online about mind body recovery. There was some books. There was TMS Wiki. There was Nicole Sacks doing her podcast and a few other things, but nowhere near like it is now. So I felt compelled to put together all the links that I'd used, all of the information that I'd found to help me recover into one place. And I just built the website, mytmsjourney.com to help other people. I had no idea that this was going to become my job. I was going to say, quite happy graphic designer. In my past life, I was severely stressed out, burnt out, nine to five, a freelancer. But as soon as I connected with people in the community, I realized that there was more to what I'd done than just stick it online and leave it. So once I felt well enough, I decided to do a yoga teacher training just for my own enjoyment because I was well enough to do it, like a reward for recovering, I suppose. And then it just fell into place that it makes sense to teach these principles, this nervous system work, to other people. So it's happened by accident. It was never really my intention to make a business out of this. It was never on my radar. It's only very recent that it has been on my radar. But yeah, I almost did it by accident, which is probably quite weird because every other business I've ever been involved in has been business plan and have meetings every day about it and stick to your goals and sales targets and shit. And this has just been a massive wing it and see what happens for me. So, yeah, that summarizes that for me.

00:09:57 Chazmith: Yeah, it was really organic. You just started with like, "Oh, I'm just going to do a class a week," and then it seems like there w as this demand and you just kept responding to the demand and you grew.

00:10 :06 Dani: Yeah, it was definitely just chuck something out and see what happens. And I love that way of working now. It feels so much more freeing that I'm not stuck to a schedule like you mentioned before when we were having a chat before you started the interview, I get to decide, and I know that's very different for different people in different businesses. For you girls, maybe it's different, but it's just me. I get to be human and be switched off when I want and make use of my on demand, my online content, where I don't have to show up in person. And that has been really weird actually, as well as massively freeing. It's been like, I still get this now and I went on a trip recently and I had the same thing happen. I feel like I should be being productive 24/7 still, even though I'm earning a full time wage and my business is running in the background without me doing anything really massively to keep that going if I take a trip, that is really odd to me, that's kind of very foreign still, but highly recommend.

00:11:05 Chazmith: Yeah. Who's next? Jen? Cathleen?

00:11:07 Jen: Yeah, sure, I can go. Thanks for sharing, Dani. I love that. So I guess I'll summarize my experience and my story as well. So I had chronic fatigue and POTS and chronic anxiety as well, since I was a child. I used to get panic attacks, and I used to faint from the panic attacks when I was little. And I used to be a professional ballet dancer. And then I had a chronic injury, so I had to stop. And I became a yoga teacher, Pilates instructor, movement coach, massage, everything that has to do with the body. But that wasn't kind of enough for my very high achieving, perfectionism self. And I didn't feel like I was enough. There was this not enoughness coupled with passion. So it was like, I'm really passionate about this, but I' m not going to settle. I'm going to do more. I was like, "I want to be a physio. I want to be a doctor." Because my education was only in ballet, and I had the highest and everything, but no sciences, math or anything. So I did biomedical sciences, and I loved it. And then with that, I went to physiotherapy and I loved it. I was so nerdy and just loved it so much. 

00:12:29 Jen: But that whole experience really increased my anxiety. And I started to have really bad pain in between my shoulder blades, my hips, my calves, like, fibromyalgia kind of pain. And I just thought, "Well, I don't know, I'm not moving as much. And it 's very stressful, probably that 's what it is. And I was managing it with my yoga, with breathing. But I mean, I wouldn't do yoga breathing for one day, and it was so bad. And with what I was learning, I was like, "This doesn't really add up. I don't understand, this is not my experience. This doesn't feel true." So then this is very interesting. I don't think I've ever shared this, but my last placement before I crashed with CFS was in a fibromyalgia clinic. I was in this clinic, and then the last patient of the day came in. I was with my clinical educator at the end of the session, just reviewing all the patients of the day. And I remember her saying specifically, like, "You really don't want to do this. You really don't want to work with fibromyalgia patients because the pain, we don't really know if it's true, if they're making it up. And it's this experience." And I was there having similar pain experiences, not quite as bad, but I was so much more aware. And I went home, so angry and confused. 

00:13:52 Jen: And then my journey into the business basically became, I don't want to be a physio anymore. I want to do this, whatever this is, because I didn't know what that was yet. But once I learned everything and I started healing and learning that all these things that I had learned about specific areas of the musculoskeletal system and just in general, our nervous system and our mind, body, everything, it didn't really resonate. And I didn't feel like it was true anymore for me. And I was seeing patients and the questions I was asking because that's what you have to do when you work in a healthcare system. You have to ask the same questions. It just didn't make sense anymore. I don't want to be asking these questions. They make no sense for this particular patient anyway. So I left Physiotherapy, and while I was still kind of healing, I was finding my feet. I met Cardan, who is my now business partner, and I didn't really know how it w as going to begin and how it wasn't like, we're going to start a school or whatever, CFS school, and it's going to happen. We were just like, I want to help people. Maybe I'll start with one to one, I'll get a few certifications. And then Cardan was like, "Let's hold a container. Let's hold five people and see what happens." And I was like cool. And I wrote eight weeks of content in a day. And Cardan was like, "Whoa, calm down." And I was like, "I got more if you want." And then that's how it began. 

00:15:29 Jen: So in some ways, Dani, I resonate with that. When you said kind of not on purpose. I mean, the purpose was there in terms of I wanted to help the people, I just didn't know it was going to become this business. And it definitely helped me alchemize what was happening inside me already, like, my healing. And I chose the first day I did brain retraining eight months before I saw some results, and I chose to say, I'm healed. I'm choosing this path of being healed. And I was still having symptoms, but I was like, no, this experience of getting there is really helping me. I like this. So even with the business, even if I still had ups and downs at the beginning, I was like, "I'm healed. It 's fine. I can fucking do this." And then I did. So for me, really worked. Just staying in that state in my mind and body like yes, this is right. This is good for me. Everything is healing. It's light. It's good for me. It's good for me. Okay, that's it.

00:16:32 Chazmith: Awesome. 

00:16:33 Jen: Thank you. 

00:16:34 Chazmith: Thank you. All right, Cathleen, it's your turn.

00:16:37 Cathleen: I love these stories. It's so beautiful to witness both of you just following the call that's happening, and it's awesome. My story: I started as a physical therapist a little over 20 years ago, and I was actually trained in the Sarno Method and Thomas Hannah and I worked with mind-body disorders with chronic pain. And I, fortunately, was trained a little bit alternatively to the typical physical therapist in the States. I had some awesome mentors. And so the irony is that I worked with chronic pain, a lot of fibromyalgia, a lot of the chronic stuff back in Portland, Oregon. And so I believed in the mind-body connection. I really understood it. And then somehow I started to get ill. And before I knew it, I was chronically ill and unable to work and diagnosed with things like Lyme disease and chronic viral infections and chronic fatigue and PTSD and just mold and the whole thing. And I was like, "What the hell?" It was like it came out of nowhere, but really it was just building up my whole life. High trauma as a child. And I didn't apply my mind body medicine because I had infection. I had real toxins and the lab test to prove it all. I didn't have pain, and I never had pain because I knew how to work with pain. It never happened to me in all those years, which is pretty rare for my type of situation. 

00:18:00 Cathleen: So ten stubborn years later of chronic illness, trying to heal it in every way I could. I lost most of my function, and I was just in a dark, quiet room, couldn't drive. And so I thought, I wonder if those old functional neurology exercises I used to use, so I used to use a lot of functional neurology mind body medicine, Hanna somatics, things like that. I wonder if those functional neurology exercises that it would chronic pain would help. And so I went and actually saw a functional neurologist to take. I wasn't going to be my own patient. And sure enough, I started to turn around quickly. I'm like, "What the heck? I've got Lyme disease. How is this possible?" And all of a sudden I was like, "Oh my God, it's in the brain, and it's in my nervous system." And this infection, my only infection, is fear. You hear me say that? I was like, that's my infection. I relabeled everything. And I started using those tools that I was taught years ago and coupled with recognizing some of the new tools of neuroplasticity that had emerged, which was the brain retraining. So I really started to hit that, understand that, and had really good results. And so I immediately saw a need in the brain retraining world that they weren't doing these other practices that I thought were important because of my background. 

00:19:18 Cath: And so in 2018, I launched a beta program. I mean, how did I start coaching? I just did. I just started coaching. People would find me, and I wasn't fully recovered at the time, but I knew I had breadcrumbs for them that I was looking for. So I was like, "I need to help these people." And it was like, "I'm a few steps ahead of them, and that's all that matters in the process." And I just kind of kept going through that. And then I realized that there was a huge blind spot in the brain retraining community of bottom up practices. Somatics, polyvagal theory, functional neurology. And so in 2018, I started to create a little beta program that launched in 20 19, creating calm just to see how it would work. And it was interesting because it was like a half and half. Half the people were like, "Oh, my gosh, I love these exercises," and half were like, "You are dangerous. You're having us look at our body. These eye exercises made my symptoms worse. This is bad. And we are taught to stop." Stop and go away. So I had a rocky entry into the brain retraining world, and I kind of became like the coach over here. There was the normal coaches and then there was Cathleen, and she just does things a little different. So I kind of rolled with that for a while. 

00:20:33 Cath: A business was starting, but I never thought of it as a business. I just felt a need and a calling that I wanted to follow. And the next calling came when I launched the Primal Trust Mentorship in 20 20. Again, recognizing this brain retraining world was just like, rewiring themselves into circles. I would get people that done the typical programs for years, and I'm like, "Well, what do you visualize?" Like, "I don't know, vacation here and this there." I'm like, "What are you rewiring yourself towards?" And I'm like, "I have no idea." I'm like, "You missed the boat here." Who are you and what do you love? And I realized this values led rewiring was also missing. And so my next project was I'm just going to start a mentorship. I didn't have any content written. I was sitting on a rock in Sedona and it just dropped in. I'm like, okay, it's nine classes and we're going to launch it in two weeks because that's what I do. I fire first, aim later. One of my downfalls.

00:24:31 Cathleen: And I had 50 people show up, and it went really well. We worked on this inner work so I had done the somatics and stuff before but this was more of parts work and developing this inner adult that I was realizing I needed to A: start functioning in the business world and B: just functioning as a mom and Chazmith: like finding this essence that I had lost as a child or maybe I never had this true self and recognized that a lot of people in this chronic healing journey didn't have a sense of self. They didn't know what they loved. They had a lot of conflicting relationships with their inner parts. So I just started doing a lot of stuff. And people will tell you early on that Primal Trust is doing all this stuff, but it's how I do things. I'm learning as I go. I'm trying things out. I'm really wanting to understand this whole collective of chronic illness, and it just started a snowball. And next thing I know, I needed mentors and I needed helpers. And I rewrote my mentorship every single time. I was testing out the beta program of creating calm and what worked, what didn't, just following a call. 

00:22:47 Cathleen: I still don't really consider myself a business person. As you know, Chaz, I'm a manifesting generator. My strategy is to respond. I'm just responding to the needs in front of me. And building the content of f from that. And then in somewhat of a chaotic way, creating a whole team and a business. And everyone who works for me knows that about me, that you're getting into a big experiment and that's just my way. And it's starting to really come together. Here we are a year out of the Primal Trust Academy community and it's grown. We have a big staff and my job now seems to be training the mentors and training my staff and helping to empower them. And kind of like Jen was saying, helping people believe that they have worth and value along the way to be helping others. There are a few steps ahead of others and there's a value there in mentoring people and teaching people what you know, teaching them the practices that are helping you holding space of co-regulation because you get it. 

00:23:46 Cathleen: And I see that as one of the biggest issues is that people wait for their recovery to start bringing their value into the world. And that's just, I don't think that's the best way to have it done because then you don't recognize the value that you had while you were ill and when you're recovered. If you think it was only when you're recovered, you're going to be afraid of getting ill again because that was the you that had no value and no worth. And if people recognize that they are living their purpose now, the recovery white knuckle grip loosens a bit. So I don't know if I've totally went off track here, but the point is that the business now is really helping those along the way to find a purpose and a passion and be able to give back.

00:24:32 Chazmith: Yeah, that 's awesome. And I think what's really special about what you're doing too is you aren't afraid to put it out there like you said, you called it like a beta program, but you've changed Primal Trust literally every time you relaunch it. And I think that's really amazing because you're not afraid to change something and have it look like it wasn't good enough before. You're willing to stand in your authenticity and your truth and just be like, hey, I'm just learning too, I'm trying this on. And you're willing t o also bring it out to the people better. And I think that sometimes people are afraid to put something out better than what they had before because of the fear that people will judge them as it wasn't good enough before. And it's not like that. You're just saying, hey, I don't need it to be perfect, I'm learning too, I'm growing too. And I think that gives people permission to also approach life that way.

00:25:21 Cathleen: This field that we are all in, we're all trailblazers and think about what we know now is so much more than just two years ago, right? So we' re all in. This whole arena is so new. It has to change. It has to adapt. It has to evolve or else w e are missing the boat again. We're missing what's coming out in the collective consciousness that's needed to be healed. I receive different information now than I did a year ago, what to emphasize and what's coming forward. And I think that everyone in this room is on that conscious expansion journey and bringing live transmission as you go. It's not like things were the old way, where you make a program, and that's just what it is for ten years. I just think that time is done in collective.

00:26:05 Chazmith: Yeah, I see a lot of people always saying, oh, she's always improving things, which is really cool that they're taking it that way.

00:26:11 Cathleen: Yeah.

00:26:12 Chazmith: Okay, so it sounds like none of you really had this big vision and that you were always working for. You just had this feeling you had something that you're passionate about, an interest, a thought, and you moved into it, and then it's just kind of built and grown along the way.

00:26:27 Jen: I always had visions of something really big. I didn't know what it would look like, and I didn't know it was going to be a business. But one thing I did do once I found out that healing was possible when one person only had healed and recovered and I watched their video, I was like, if they did it, so can I? It's pretty basic, but everything on that list I now have. And I was talking about this with someone a couple of days ago, and I was like, "Wow, all those things are now an active experience of my life." And I remember that when I wrote these ten things out, it wasn't like a big house live by the beach. It was like, "How do I want to feel? Why do I want to live by the beach? Why do I want passive income?" Because I'm a projector, and that's how projectors work. I want something that helps. Why do I want to help people heal? How do I feel? And how do they feel when they receive my wisdom through my own experience that I learned through other people just going through all those things. 

00:27:33 Jen: My vision was an expansion of all of this to help people recover. I didn't know how have a life that now we are completely living. So I think that I did do a lot of manifestation, and I think I always have. I just didn't call it that. But I have always had a lot of belief, like, if I want something, it's totally possible, I can get it, I can do it, I can live it, I can be it. As long as I just keep rehearsing the feeling of having it, then I know that it's accessible. If I don't rehearse the feeling of having it, then it's scary. It's like, more scary than ever. So going to what Cath was saying about your experience and value and who. Are you and what do you want? You're healing, for what experience? What are you going to be? How do you want to do this? For who? For what? And so we, too, because of my experience and we have that in our program as well, because there's the practices and all that stuff. But then what is it all for? Because if there's no bigger picture, there's no any picture, the brain is like, these neurons are only going to fire if there's enough drive behind them and belief and feeling and like, yes, I can see who I am, who I want to express myself as and be and what I want. So I just think we have so much incredible potential with our mind and body. It's just truly magnificent. It's truly amazing.

00:29:05 Chazmith: Yeah, I love that. I want to ask you a question specifically. So in your past life, it's quite common knowledge now that you were a bit of a perfectionist. We've talked about it, you've addressed it earlier, you were that way in your ballet and just in your living and with your business. But now it's very well known in CFS school that you teach in a way that's everything but perfectionistic. And you really encourage everybody in your program to do opposite of perfection. There's no one prescription, there's no one right way. This is exactly how you do this program. It 's like make it your own. There's no right way. How did you get from A to B?

00:29:48 Jen: So I like to think of myself as an adaptive perfectionist. So there's maladaptive and adaptive and there is like a path which I didn't know this before, I was a totally maladaptive. But I think the reason why the four of us are in this room because of some adaptive perfectionism and some pattern of high achieving, but in a more conscious and aligned way, rather than I have to do this because of my dad or because of this or because of that. That's what I was doing. I just didn't know it. But now I do. So from A to B, it was essentially because it is useful. Adaptive ways of mastering something is useful. It's how you get from A to B and succeed. If you want to pass a test, you can't just be like, "I'll make a few mistakes, I'll be fine." You have to pass the test with enough margin of error that you actually pass the test. So the risk of sounding that perfectionism is not a bad thing. 

00:30:57 Jen: I do want to actually give a little bit of credit to that pattern. It's not all bad. So A to B is A: it's like, you make a mistake and I'm a failure. I am nothing. I feel worthless. I get pain in my body, I experience a very bad experience. And then through learning to tend to the needs of little Jen, who never really got that secure ground under her feet. That safe, unconditional love that was calm and it's just there and everything's okay. It was just like chaos going back to her every time. Like why are we doing this? And also, what are you feeling? How can I keep repairing that relationship to myself with me towards her, and through that build and repair, she kind of feels now, if I'm 100 % honest with myself, she feels like her needs are being tended to. So I am now able to use some of my perfectionism achievement adaptation, let's call it. I don't know, but in a way that feels safe and not scary. And that was through the repair of this relationship to my inner child and feeling safe and secure in my body. But about our program, yes, totally. There is no one way. We are all different people with individual experiences, and all of us were guides for you to take the knowledge, the wisdom, the practice and then make it yours, because that's how you're going to know that it works best. Because at the end of the day, it's you with you and no one else. And so if you make it yours, then you know that it 's there for forever.

00:32:53 Chazmith: Yeah, that makes so much sense. It's funny because so many people that find themselves in this community and types of programs to help them heal, it's funny how often there's people that are like, "Oh, no, I want to be told exactly what to do and how to do it because of their past conditioning." That's what feels safe for them in that moment. And then we say pause, and then we say, that's a neurology that you're doing. That's not necessarily helpful for this particular healing pass, but yeah.

00:33:22 Chazmith: Dani, I want to ask you a question now. So you talked about how even today that there's still this struggle with the feeling a need to be productive even though you have a fully functioning business in the background and you know there's a party that knows you can take this trip and everything's okay, but you still have that feeling sometimes. So I guess I'm wondering how you manage that feeling, how you work with those feelings when they come up to best care for yourself on this journey. And I'm going to double that up with part two, which is how did you learn to feel confident in taking space and honoring your boundaries as your business started to grow and not worry about how that would reflect towards your members or your clients, if you will?

00:34:10 Dani: I think it's similar to what Jen just touched on, where I' m honoring myself, my inner child and my inner experience like I've never done before. So it's a very different approach to this role than any other role that I've ever had. So I think this is just normal for any human levels of conditioning and memories of how I used to be business wise or work wise and like you say, you can turn your maladaptive traits into positive traits by treating them with love and not fear. I'm still healing now. I think healing is just going to be a long term thing. He's still healing. Old traumas and stuff now very much related to that type of conditioning, that kind of lack of like I have a long history of maybe not having enough money or maybe not doing as well and having to kind of push harder and work harder and stuff like that from my family and stuff. So it's just patterns that I've learned to accept and be compassionate towards, learn from and just sit with. Like it's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to feel weird the first two weeks of your trip because you think you should be doing something more productive or something. You should have done another course before you left or whatever it is. 

00:35:26 Dani: There's always so much more that you can do. But I need to honor my capacity, which is still sometimes up and down, and I need to honor that child inside that, like Jen said, never really had that kind of constructive boundaries and ethic, if you like, in terms of how you're working. And I think now, being super real with my audience as well, my sort of community is so much more resonant than being a brand as well. They really appreciate my honesty and I need to have a break and I'm going to take a break. I think that it kind of gives people permission to think, "Oh shit, well, I can actually do that as well in my everyday life, and I'm not running my own business. I should be able to choose." And yeah, it's a privilege to be able to choose those things, obviously. But given the circumstance that I'm in, I can every minute of every day, I can choose to change my mind. 

00:36:19 Dani: Yeah, I need to show up in a certain way for certain things, but it doesn't have to be a cookie cutter way of showing up. Like I used to believe it was. You have to show up this amount of working hours. You have to work nine to five, you have to work Monday to Friday. Now I can just kind of make up whatever that is as long as I show up and I create the content and I'm showing up for the community. I think it very, very new way of living, definitely. And my partner, he's a software developer and he works a very old school, I guess, way of working. So put the two of us together and it's kind of like, well, I'm not getting up at 06:00 in the morning, 05:00 in the morning, and going training and then getting to work to his desk at 06:15. I haven't woken up yet. It's weird to have that in the same household. And that kind of triggers me sometimes to be like, well, if he's doing it, I should be doing it. But actually, our businesses work very, very differently. 

00:37:13 Dani: I think it's just going to be a continual learning curve, finding out what fits and what works for me and my inner child and what feels comfortable and then just kind of working that way. But yeah, setting boundaries has always been difficult for me. I never even knew what boundaries were. But setting boundaries with myself has been really important, as well as with other people in the community and stuff, learning where my limits are, seeing my capacity burning before it actually happens and then having to stop. It's been a serious learning curve of learning about myself, honoring that no matter what first priority.

00:37:49 Chazmith: Yeah. It sounds like the journey of your business kind of developing and unfolding has also been congruent with your continued growth and your continued healing because it is reflecting these old patterns and these opportunities for you to choose and step into something different.

00:38:03 Dani: Yeah, exactly. Every single time I do that, I'm setting that new neural pathway and deleting the old one. It does just take a lot of repetition. I'm much better with it now than I was before. I think it just takes time and practice, like any of this healing stuff does. I'm happy with that now, and it takes as long as it takes. I'm comfortable with that. I don't beat myself up about anything anymore. It just is what it is. Just accept it and embrace it whatever happens.

00:38:30 Chazmith: Yeah, that 's awesome. All right, Cathleen, so we know that your business grew fast. It kind of came out of nowhere, right? You had 50 people in one mentorship. You launched this community not knowing what to expect, and it took off. And sometimes when businesses start to grow really fast, it's hard to keep up with them. And in my experience, from what I've learned and things like that, it 's like, "Oh, where do I go? What do I do? How do I navigate this?" I'm curious how you were able to approach this experience of dealing with, like, "Oh, my gosh, my business is growing really fast," like you said, now I have to hire mentors. I'm going to do this. How were you able to navigate that? And also, what were you learning along the way in terms of how you could manage your self care and also prioritize your well being?

00:39:21 Cathleen: Yeah, such a good question. Again, my strategy is to respond rather than to plan. And I think knowing my design, my entire business was built around my gene key and human design, and really knowing that was a guidepost where I could respond to the needs. And I also am somebody who's not a micromanager. I do not do this, and I just let them do it. I need somebody to do this. And let them do it. And that gave me a freedom to continue t o respond rather than to manage and control. I'm now at the point where the business needs a manager, so I have somebody else doing that. Because knowing what my role is and knowing what it isn't has been what has saved my nervous system, my body, my sanity. I'm really clear on that. I'm really clear on my values. I'm really clear on what I don't value. And of course, sometimes in business, you have to do things you don't value. I don't value figuring out the numbers in my books, but I had to do it. And those are things that can throw me out of balance at this stage. I had to do that. 

00:40:28 Cathleen: And so I'm also aware that when I'm getting thrown out of balance, like building out my platform, I did all of that myself. I needed to learn those things. Some of those things would kind of spin me out, but I knew why. I'm like, "I don't like this. I can do some brain rewiring and practice my valuing this," and I would kind of like, "All right, this leads to that." So there are things that would sort of spin me out that I had to do. But I knew they were temporary, and I knew I would hire them at some point. And there were things that I did love to do. So I think that's what helped the expansion to happen. I mean, again, that's part of my design. It's quick expansion and community building. So I'm just living it and getting out of the way is one of the things that I've had to do to let other people build what they're doing in the business and just trusting that it works out. And so far, it just has. I've been really blessed that everybody doing everything, they are empowered to do it their way, and it somehow fits into the hole.

00:41:25 Chazmith: Yeah, that 's awesome. This is a general question, so anyone can answer if you feel it's applicable to you. I am curious what mistakes that perhaps you made along the way. I'll say mistakes in quotation marks because we know that there's really no mistakes if we're learning and growing from them. They're just opportunities. But let's say, for lack of better words, what mistakes did come up along the way and whether that was like not realizing, "Oh, my gosh, I haven't been taking care of myself. I'm not leaning into self care. I have been putting myself on the back burner for too long," or just any kind of mistakes at all. And then how do you navigate those? What did you learn from them and how did you shift into something different?

00:42:06 Cathleen: One of my mistakes being a responder, someone who responds, is that there can be some confusion in do I respond to the needs of my community or do I respond to the needs of myself? My community was how I survived my childhood. So I learned to respond to them for my safety. And in the last year, I've had to recognize that sometimes I'm responding to the community rather than to myself. Like I should have waited another six months before I put that out. People were like, "Oh, I want it now, I want it now." I'm like, "Okay, responding to you guys." And somehow, even though it was one of my values and I'm passionate, so here's what's tricky, I valued it. I was passionate about it. It was in my vision. And the pull from others was so strong that if I would have just taken a little bit of time to check in like this isn't the right time for me to respond to this. So I'm learning these nuances and subtleties of my pattern and the tricky pulling out living my passions versus, you do that later and attend to me now. And that's been a beautiful development, and our business is always here to help us heal, and it's just leading to a deeper layer. But the mistake was I went against myself and I could feel it. And the momentum was in place in the quickness that I launched that new program. So that's one I'll point out for me.

00:43:32 Chazmith: Yeah, so then you had to learn from that step back and then really take the time to really reinvest into yourself and your own well being.

00:43:41 Cathleen: This new phase is different, where I'm having others help to hold the container of the mentorship coming up, like, I'm not going to do it all by myself anymore. I don't have to. I'm responding in a new way and just different forms of pacing, recognizing that it can feel awesome and it doesn't mean it's right right now. So that's one of my big life lessons, and I'm in the middle of learning it.

00:44:07 Chazmith: When I have a passion or an idea, I want to do it all right now. And then it's no wonder that when I try to do it all right now, one week, two weeks, one month, five months down the road, I'm like, wow, why am I so tired? Because you thought you had to do it all. Now there's this urgency, this hurry. Does anyone else have anything that they've had encountered along the way?

00:44:31 Dani:I think similarly to what Cath just said, I think diving into stuff too soon or diving into too much thinking. I can cope with doing X amount of classes every week, or X amount of courses or X amount of design work, or X amount of hours on social media. Like, just overwhelming myself with everything is a lesson learned, definitely. And I have trouble with delegation. One, because at the moment, I don't have anybody to delegate to. But there's definitely something that you've made me realize they're speaking Cath about. I know what my lane is. I know where I feel most driven and where I feel my role is. And that does shift, that has shifted over the last couple of years. I even somehow don't really relate to my pain persona anymore either. I'm not that person anymore. So things have got to pivot again and it's a tricky thing to keep up with. But over committing is definitely I wouldn't say it was a mistake. It's definitely been something that I've learned from. And taking this kind of chunk of breaks that I do allows me to step back completely and almost start afresh and remember and remind myself, like, I don't need to be on my phone 24 hours a day. Yeah, I do my own social media and I do my own design work, I do my own customer service and shit, but that can wait. I haven't shown up on social media while I've been away really at all. And no one's probably noticed.

00:45:52 Chazmith: I did.

00:45:55 Dani: My God. We were waiting.

00:45 :57 Chazmith: I was feeling really sad about it. No, just kidding.

00:46:01 Dani: We worry so much about what we're putting out there, but really it's being received in a much different way than what we perceive, I expect. I think that's probably the main thing for me as well. Over committing too soon, maybe, or just in general. Yeah.

00:46:15 Chazmith: Okay, Jen, if you don't have anything, that's okay, but if you do.. 

00:46:19 Jen: No, I mean, I' m sure I'm in plenty of mistakes. Something that comes to mind is at the beginning of our business, the way that Cardin and I complement each other very well, I think, and we have different strengths and it's really nice to be in partnership with someone. And I've always been kind of like a lone warrior. I've always had my freelance thing going or work so hard all the time, whereas through also similarly human design, I've learned that I can produce much more by doing so much less and that suits me so much more. So I think one of the things that as our business also grew quite fast, I thought that I could move at the same pace or I thought that I could keep flowing with my creativity and flow with the community. But now there were other people that I hadn't communicated with or that I hadn't waited for. And then there was maybe some misunderstanding, like, you shouldn't have said that quite yet. 

00:47:23 Jen: And for me, I'm like this bird flying and I'm like flying here and flying there. And then when there's other elements to the journey that all of a sudden I'm like, "Oh no, okay, I'll fly this way." Or then my energy is just, I guess, learning how to express myself in a more structured way, which suits my need to express and my flow a little bit less. But I think we're finding a good balance. But so I think it would be that like just not realizing how many people are involved and me just continuing to flow as I normally do, but now there's all these people that I have to communicate with within our team and our community. But yeah, as you said, Chaz, every stake or failure, it's just opportunity for me, even. I don't know if you can relate, but every crash, every dip, personally, I have always, in hindsight, been so grateful. I'm like, "That's where I learned the most. That's where I grew the most." It was horrible and it sucked and it was in that moment, I didn't realize it, but afterwards it was just what brought me to catapulted me forward every single time, every setback. And that's been the same in our business. All the things that happen, you just learn and then, "Oh, then you move forward."

00:48:48 Chazmith: That's so true. That's why I don't even really like to call even in the pain illness aspect, I don't like to call it setbacks. I'm like, can we choose a different name? Because I honestly feel like every time that we have these setbacks, it 's really such a huge growth point and a huge healing point so it's like, can we not have negative--

00:49:07 Dani: Like a brain freeze, isn't it? 

00:49:08 Chazmith: Yeah. Language is so important, so if we could just maybe change the language around it when we have symptoms. I' m healing now. I got worse again, like, "Oh, actually. This means I'm healing something deeper." So language is huge. Jen, you got pregnant a couple of months after you launched your business. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey and how that impacted the journey and just how you were able to balance that and navigate through that?

00:49:36 Jen: I've always seen myself as a mother. Like, I knew that I wanted to have children, but when I had chronic fatigue, I was also looking at all these results and I too had mold and all these things and the fertility results were very poor and they were like, I don't know if this is going to happen for you or when. So then when I started to do a lot of work on my uterus, especially towards December, I was doing light meditation on my uterus every night and being with my womb and connecting and speaking with her and creating a fertile environment and a place where even I would want to go and rest and perfect and right. And then in January, kind of, I felt the need to try and see if anything would happen. Almost like, let's see what it would feel like to try and have a baby just this once. And then that once it happened. And so I didn't really have time to think how, but when it happened, I think at the beginning I was shocked. Not in a bad way, just in like, "Oh, wow, okay, what's happening now with my body?" I need to do some reading. These feelings are weird. 

00:49:36 Jen: So then that coupled with this business that was growing, it was a lot to manage. I'm not going to lie. The first trimester was hard because in the first trimester, my window of tolerance went down a lot. And I had to do a lot of work on reminding myself, like, this is okay. This is your first trimester experience. Fatigue is normal. Being tired is normal. And so it was like a lot of layers. And then also holding space for people. And the interesting thing, which maybe you also resonate, ladies, but whenever I'm going through something, I can hold space really well. It's almost like holding space helps me, it heals me. So while it was really hard to have all these layers, I was still seeing my clients and still growing CFS school and having our program run and being with the community, but with a little bit of some of the tools that were really useful. And a lot of the knowledge that I have, like I said earlier, was so important for me. 

00:52:04 Jen: Every morning when I woke up feeling a little bit of the feelings that I had, not the same, but experience of fatigue in the first trimester, I was like, "Okay, let's just remind my body, remind me." And then from that, something like, clicked. And I started to really enjoy my pregnancy and have so much energy. I had so much brain energy, creative energy. And I remember Cardin was like, "Whoa, what happened?" The first trimester has turned a page, and now I'm like, so much energy. My brain is like juicing. And so that was really good. So my experience, and probably Cardin as my partner, was like wavy as his life, but kind of towards the middle of pregnancy, we were like, how do I go on maternity leave now? How does this keep happening? But I want boundaries. I want space for me and my baby and for my body, just my energy. Like, how do we do this? And so I just feel so blessed to have a system in place that we created with Cardin that was in place, that our team and me and the community. I took literally four months off completely. And that was fine, and that was completely okay. And I feel so supported. As I said, I do feel really grateful for my business partner. 

00:53:32 Jen: And personally, as a woman who just started her business right after these years of illness. And I just felt like a badass, to be honest. I was like, "Look at me." I remember I was like nine months pregnant with my husband at the beach, and I was like, "I'm badass, right? I'm nine months pregnant. I'm just chilling." The mission is still continuing. If I want, I can flow with my community on Instagram, but if I want, I don't have to. If I need my space, but I don't have to do anything right now if I don't want to, because I'm honoring my body. And the community is growing, and CFS School is growing, and we have a self study, and it's working again. Like Cath said, we were like, are people going to heal without our like, what's it going to be like? Even at the very beginning, we were like, we know this works, but let's see. It's an experiment. It really is at the beginning, and then you see it works, and you're like, "Oh, my God. Holy shit, it works. This is incredible." And so I just remember feeling really proud of myself and of my body. Cath, I know you've had babies and have you Chaz? 

00:54:45 Chazmith: No.

00:54:47 Jen: You haven't, right? Yeah, I thought you have. Okay. But I just remember the feeling of just being like, "Wow, this is amazing." My body is amazing. I don't have to do anything. My body's just creating a human. My brain is not even communicate. Well, it is, but you know what I mean? It's not consciously doing anything. So, yeah, that was my experience.

00:55:09 Chazmith: That's awesome. Oh, my gosh. I wanted to ask so many more questions, but out of respect for time, I want to ask one more for each of you. It 's the same question for each of you. You've all lived your own experience. You've shared a little bit today for people to tap into, but based on where you're at today and looking back on the whole journey of your business growing, whether it was organically or not, if you knew somebody was listening right now, and they were thinking about some kind of idea they had or some kind of calling they felt or some kind of business they wanted to create. What would be your single biggest piece of advice that you would give anybody out there? Based on your personal experience, the ups, the downs, the lessons that you've learned, the trials and tribulations, all of it, what would you want to Impart into somebody listening?

00:56:02 Dani: I don't know if this is going to be as relevant, but for me, finding or stumbling on a niche within this great big mind body world really worked for me and created a space that didn't really exist. At that point in the space, the kind of movement is medicine type thing. The breathing and creating a business based on the practical side of things and how to pragmatically help yourself, not necessarily the educational side of things. I think if you can find something that really resonates with you and what your passion is in this space really helps. There's a thousand coaches. There's probably a million by now that are kind of doing a similar type thing, and there's nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with that. We need millions of coaches. But I think based on your own recovery and your own experience and your own passions and your own strengths, you can find where you fit into a space. Rather than going, oh, I need to cast this huge net out into the wilderness and hope that people stick to it, it's creating something really specific and targeted and. Then you find your people. You find there's enough people to go around for everyone to have their own community within this space. I think it's good to have a focus and a niche. Helpful anyway.

00:57:19 Chazmith: Love it, ladies.

00:57:21 Cathleen: I think I'll speak to what I see that people do that I think can be counterproductive. I see a lot of people that have these great ideas and they spend so much time like, "Oh well, before I do that, I need to build a website, find my brand, figure out my fonts, oh, I better go do this coaching program here and take this course here." And they literally never launch. I have a few friends right now that I'm watching them procrastinate, and they have no idea that that's all they're doing. I didn't have any of that crap. I just had a great mentor though, who just helped me to be like, just go, respond, do what you want to do, build it as you go. Because all of this stuff, it's that I got to clean my house before I do the thing I need to do. That's what they're doing. They're cleaning house. And if people could recognize that sometimes taking the program and the course and the coach to build the business. I know there's a lot of great people out there, but I never did any of that. I just did. I just did what I wanted to do and that was okay doing iterations. I was okay having live learning rather than somebody else coaching me what to do or how to do, I just did and pivoted. And I think that's embracing some imperfectionism, embracing the mystery and just being in the middle of it. So, yeah.

00:58:52 Chazmith: That's good advice. I love that. Well, I will say I can speak to what you said because it's true. I had this idea, I mean, just for the podcast. Not quite a business, but a business. I had this idea. I know the specific day and place I was and the friend I shared it with, and it w as like this big burning idea. But I did that for like eleven months. I didn't start because I was that person. I was like, "Well, I need a cover art and I need a logo," and I need all these things to be perfect first before I put myself out there. Then I realized this one particular day, it was like eight months into it, and I thought, "No, I'm not doing this perfectionism to this degree anymore. I can just start and I'll figure it out as I go." This will be a perfect opportunity for me to rewire those old patterns. I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to put it out there. If I have to change my cover art five times, I'll change my cover art. I still it's two and a half years. I don't have a logo yet. Some business mentors might tell you you need one. I don't care because it's two and a half years later and I've put out a lot of great content and that's what matters.

01:00:00 Dani: So I totally resonate with that. Yeah, totally. I remember speaking to you about this a couple of years ago. I think it was like, you don't need that. You don't need that at all. And also what's really helped me to stop procrastinating get stuck in that perfectionism wheel, which I do so much, especially with the design and look and feel and naming and wording and all that, it's like, people need your help now. Stop fucking around with the font and the color and is it matching and which one is on the grid and what does it look like and who is it better? Is it as good as theirs? There's thousands of people here going, please help me, just fucking do the content. Show up, just show up. 

01:00:39 Chazmith: At the end of the day, all that stuff doesn't matter anyways and the grand things.

01:00:43 Jen: I think for me, a couple of things that I think I found helpful was not comparing myself to others and just living my truth. But if there's ever the what are they doing? Or like, "How can I oh, my gosh, what I'm doing okay?" Does it need to be actually, I think just doing you and showing up as your most authentic self, I think that will naturally bring in what is meant for you, who is meant for you and everything. And then also, I know that Cath mentioned it a lot, but human design helped me a lot to lean into what I was naturally feeling, but I didn't realize I had permission to live out be or and the strategies in which you can lean into to really explore what feels good are really, really helpful. And then one last little thing is I think, especially in this field, whether you have five Phds or no or nothing, I think our experience will always be our greatest qualification. If I'm honest, sometimes I speak to people who do have PhDs and your experience and your path is what will work for you. And I think just knowing that there are no gaps there's just you and your path and the path that you're on that's constantly moving, that would be my little insights.

01:02:21 Chazmith: That's a good ones, for sure. Thank you. Ladies, this is so much fun. I'm so glad to have this conversation. I think it'll provide a lot of value for people out there who are going to tune in and who have had those ideas burning in their bellies and passion and desire. So thank you for being you and for doing what you're doing and building these beautiful businesses that are supporting people in the healing and thank you for being willing to be here with me and share.

01:02:48 Dani: Thank you, Chaz.

01:02:50 Jen: Thank you so much.

01:0 2:51 Chazmith: I love being in the same space with all of you.

01:02:54 Dani: Thank you, ladies.

01:02:57 Chazmith: All right, you guys, that is a wrap. How amazing was that? I have no doubts that if you have ever considered taking your next steps in building a business of some sort along your journey, then this episode was for you today. If today did indeed provide any value for you, please consider taking a pause and scrolling down right now on Apple podcast or visiting my website, ourpoweriswithin.com to leave a five star rating and review. Or you could share this message with a friend or family member who has also been considering taking their next step toward their business dream and you could share this episode on your social media. 

01:03:36 Chazmith: Remember about the contest. This is the last week to win four months free in the Primal Trust community where you can join the regulate program and start healing now. There are many ways to participate. I referred to all of them at the beginning of the episode and in the show notes for more details. Also, as I mentioned earlier, if you had any follow up questions from this episode, make sure that you did indeed jot those down and send them my way. And be on the lookout for a live on Instagram that I will be doing with Dr. Cath where she will be answering any follow up questions you might have to help support you following your dreams and navigating your next steps. If you are enjoying these panel discussions and you have requests for specific topics, please let me know. And friends, until next time, make this week great. Thank you for joining me on this journey.