The Emotional Alchemy Podcast
Welcome to the Emotional Alchemy Podcast where safety is medicine, connection is never automated and everything is relational.
The Emotional Alchemy Podcast
138. Transformative Value Alignment for Ethical Business Success with Empowerment Coach Cara Kovacs
Today, we will dissect the cultural narratives surrounding wealth and the daily ethical decisions of running a service-based business. My guest, Empowerment Coach Cara Kovacs shares personal anecdotes that illustrate the liberating shifts that occur when individuals align with their authentic selves, drawing parallels to the entrepreneurial path of purpose and value-driven living. Together, we challenge the stigmas attached to money and redefine it as a resource for building impactful relationships and achieving goals.
In this conversation, we dive into the delicate dance between advocacy, business ethics, and the healing journey of financial trauma. We stress the importance of safety and self-sovereignty in coaching and the empowerment that comes from self-trust. We share our own values on how we engage with social and political activism in our businesses and invite listeners to consider their own values to create business policies that align with their own personal and business ethos. If you're passionate about integrating your values into every facet of your business and life, this episode is a powerful stepping stone toward that journey. Join us for an episode that's not just about doing business but doing it with integrity, purpose, and a profound understanding of the impact you wield.
Resources:
- Cara interviewing me on The Business Witch Podcast
- I found Cara's Values to be so inspiring that I'm working on my own Values Statements for my new website!
- Antiracist Business Book by Trudi Lebron
- A Renaissance of Our Own by Rachel Cargle
- I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This T-Shirt by Madeline Pendleton
Cara Kovacs is an intersectional feminist, trauma-informed empowerment coach. Named as 2019’s one of “35 People Under 35 To Watch In Wellness” by Wanderlust, she has helped hundreds of people actualize their deepest dreams. In her 6th year of multi-six figure entrepreneurship, she has helped her clients make millions while building their soul-called work and sharing it with the world.
Connect with Car
Kat HoSoo Lee is an Emotional Alchemy Coach, Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Emotional Alchemy Podcast.
She loves playing in the space where science and spirituality converge because this is where we get to experience emotional alchemy. In her work, she educates space-holders about somatic physiology and environmental biology so they can deepen their practices of listening and presence which ultimately helps them expand their capacity to hold space for others.
As a Spiritual Business Mentor, she guides soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. The work bridges the emotional landscape with practical tools which allow them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, relational marketing and purposeful service.
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
Hello and welcome to the Ritdid Business Podcast. Today I've got someone on that. I have been quiet following slash stalking for a little while, kara, and when she reached out to me about being on her podcast I was like, yes, but will you also come on my podcast please, because I want to pick your brain too. So thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me and I want to give a shout out to all the quiet stalkers out there. Tell the people that you're stalking that you like to work and remember, if you are a business owner, that you have a quiet stalker to.
Speaker 1:It's true, it's very true. I feel like my entire client base is like made up of quiet stalkers. Like whenever they sign up to work with me, I'm like where have you been? And they're like I've been hanging out with you for two years, you just didn't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have people in my group programs being like nobody liked my post and I'm like I never heard of you until you joined this program. Have you ever liked a single thing that I've ever posted? They're like huh. No, it's like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It goes both ways, friends. It goes both ways, it's an important reminder. Yeah, but before we jump in, I just want to share with folks that you and I are doing a podcast trade is kind of how I think of it. So I am over on the Business Witch podcast. She's over here. So if you love Kara, go hang out with her on the Business Witch podcast. And you know, just for fun, do you start with the one that I was on, the episode that I'm on.
Speaker 2:I love that. I appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 1:Well, oh my gosh, so many things that I want to talk about with you, but one of the like big pieces that I've been personally kind of like grappling with and I'd love to learn from you, because I see you doing this so differently than I do is how can we embody the impact that we want to have? Another, that is, in promoting small businesses, in talking about capitalism, in, you know, talking about some of the political things that are happening in our sphere of advocating for, you know, communities that we feel really aligned with. How can we clarify where I guess where we want to make our impact and how much responsibility as business owners we have in sort of driving those conversations forward? And, yeah, I'm kind of curious, maybe just giving people a framework of any of your thoughts and philosophies and values around that and why you choose to make decisions in the ways that you make decisions, because I really admire the way that you show up in this sphere.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I really appreciate that and I definitely want to say that that was cultivated over time, so it wasn't something that I had an easy answer for when I started, and I think probably a lot of people can relate to this. There's many ways in which I have stumbled clumsily through that process, but where I've arrived now and you know, want to shout out teachers that have helped me get to that space, very specifically Trudy Lebron, who has been my coach for the last couple of months and who's the author of the anti-racist business book. But just really immersing myself in a different kind of coaching philosophy over the last couple of years has helped that, and so I want to name that first, because I think finding teachers who you really align with can be so tremendous for making that process easier, to have a frame of reference that feels value aligned for you. And then the second thing in terms of a framework. You know I said value aligned and the easiest way to make decisions about anything you ever want to do in your business or your life is from a values based perspective, and Trudy has a values exercise in the anti-racist business book, and then Rachel Cargill in her book A Renaissance of Our Own talks about personal values, and I think it's okay that if your business and your personal values are different and that's where people get stuck sometimes they think they have to be the same thing and they don't. Maybe for some of you they are. And that's the other thing, too, that I'm not putting a moral imperative on other people to have the same values that I have. I want to partner and collaborate and coach with people who are value aligned. But alignment is not the same thing as a synonym. It doesn't mean that we have the same values. So those two resources I just mentioned provide you exercises for clarifying your personal and your business values.
Speaker 2:And where I start in my signature program, which is my lowest tier offer, and we're renaming it, so by the time this comes out right now it's called Business Switch. I'm ideating a fun new name because really the root of that program is teaching service providers how to build the framework for a value aligned business. It's not actually super witchy, so I was like we have a branding issue, I'm going to swap that out, but title TBD. But we start with values and the thing that values really do for you is they are an arrow and they are an anchor, so they tell you where to go and they also make you feel safe in the decisions that you make.
Speaker 2:And so, in cultivating my own personal business values, which are slightly different from values I might have in romantic partnership or friendship or community, I am very clear on how I want to show up, based on whatever issue it is that we're talking about. So my business values are integrity, authenticity, accountability, and I'm forgetting the last one right now it's been a day I have four or four of them oh, sovereignty. And so for me, what feels most in integrity is to be authentic. That's why authenticity and integrity they kind of go together for me. But what feels most in integrity is to act in a way that is congruent with myself. So it might not be in integrity based on somebody else's definition of integrity, and that's an important distinction that I've had to learn in choosing to be vocal about issues that I care about. But for me personally, in order to be in integrity with myself, to feel morally congruent with my own thoughts, actions, what I stand for, how I show up in spaces, being honest about my opinions and making statements when I feel, so called, is in alignment with my values If that is a sign to somebody else that they're no longer a good fit for my community, I lovingly release you. I hope you find somebody who's in alignment with your values.
Speaker 2:Another thing about that accountability has been such a hugely important component of that. I am a cisgendered white woman. I coach people from all different walks of life. I can't guarantee safe spaces because there have been many times in my own coaching that I've been blind to my privilege. So part of having an accountability practice and position as a value framework is like I can't tell you that I'm not going to mess up, but I can tell you that we're going to have an accountability conversation for that.
Speaker 2:Now, what I mean when I say that is accountability to my own integrity and my values and my clients, not to people on the internet who want to drop random things in my DMs and expect me to be accountable to them. That's not an integrity, that's not an authentic choice for me. So essentially, I've just laid out for you how those values which are core to me help me know exactly what I should do in a situation if somebody is asking for a refund, if somebody has negative feedback. If I did this last week, I'm like teetering a little bit of overwork right now and I'm getting a little grainy, a little irritable crunchy because of it. I said something in a way that I did not intend, and my values indicated exactly how to take care of that situation, even if inside I'm like I would prefer to avoid and pretend that that had never happened.
Speaker 2:That would be operating out of alignment with my values, and the thing that I love about choosing these things is you build a much stronger business model from them, because you're making decisions that are rooted in what you believe in and not necessarily how you feel, based on something being hard or scary. And when we make business decisions rooted in how we feel, we don't make the strongest decisions. So your values are going to be different than mine, and if one of your values is privacy for example, my partner one of his values is privacy. He is an artist in a particular industry where it wouldn't make a lot of sense for activism to be a part of his work, but as a personal value, it's really important to him, and so protecting his privacy and our relationship is not part of his work, whereas I'm talking about how polyamory and business are related all the time on my platform, because authenticity is my value, like that's a very clear example of how those things can look really different and still be aligned for people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. There's several things that I want to like circle back around to, but something that feels really, really important to just like highlight and like neon sign emblazoned is your personal values do not have to be the same as your business values, and I feel like that's where people get like real crunchy and sticky and feel a lot of. I'm thinking back to like like clients who have had this struggle and it's like guilt and shame. Guilt and shame, guilt and shame come up and then that makes it so that it's easy for somebody to come into their DMs and say, hey, why aren't you saying this about X, y and Z, whatever the issue is, and it leaves them vulnerable to acting out of integrity with their values, acting from a place of dysregulation, acting from a place where they feel perhaps pressured to move faster or take an action before they're ready to or if they're ready to, and so I think that that is something that like, like for me.
Speaker 1:It's you know, four years into business for you. I don't know how long you've been doing this, but like, like that has come with experience and time, of being like anchored and rooted in in my own values and being like no, actually, that would be out of integrity for me to speak about, I think in particular I'm thinking of, like, this most recent conflict with Palestine and Israel, and, while I have a very, very strong personal stance on what's going on over there, I'm just gonna pause so that the siren can go by.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, I was like it's okay. Where is the mute? I was trying to mute myself. Please continue.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 1:So like, even though I have a very strong sort of personal value and belief system around that conflict, I don't feel like I am educated enough or really understand the like nuances of that situation enough to like teach about it, and I really think about my platform as being a teaching platform and so, like, I'm never going to teach like to me.
Speaker 1:Like that's where the integrity piece I think that you and I sort of tie in is like, for me to be an integrity with my work, I have to know that this is something that I know I can teach about. For me to be able to speak about it, you know versus. You know if there was some sort of like conflict happening that involved, you know, the Asian-American diaspora, or you know if something god forbid happened in Korea. Like that is something that I know, that I can speak on and teach about, because that comes from my own personal lived experience and I know a lot about that. Versus what's happening in the Middle East is not something that I fully understand, and so my integrity my personal and business integrity is to sit back and learn from people who this is their work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are a few things I want to say that I feel like are gonna be like. I don't know why. I feel like they're gonna be controversial. Maybe they're not, maybe they're not at all, but I just think that there's an obscene amount of pressure that people put on the people they follow on the internet and then also that people put on themselves to be represented like you have to be perfect to show up in these spaces. We don't put that up well, we put it on our politicians, but it just seemed to matter, and we don't necessarily put it on businesses in a super meaningful way.
Speaker 2:Like being a small business owner is an incredibly vulnerable and courageous act. Like to opt out of dominant culture and say I'm gonna build a life for myself and construct something that's gonna support me takes a tremendous amount of work, and to presume that anybody who's doing that should be an expert on how to do it perfectly and in total moral congruence with your own personal opinions about how they should act is insane. But it's like how we show up on the internet. There's a social media culture of like they said something that I didn't like and like now I don't like them and I try to be really careful with that, because I'm just as guilty of doing things like that as other people are. You know, I I think about this anytime. Like me and my friends are shit talking a celebrity, I'm like I don't know anything about them and we're having a completely super flouist conversation rooted in absolutely nothing. And like people are talking about me in some kind of a way because there are enough people out there who know who I am and who project on to you or me or anybody that they see on the internet the person you went to high school with, who you still follow your ex-boyfriend's new partner like you're just projecting these judgments that like aren't made in anything.
Speaker 2:And then, as a small business owner, I was listening to the Financial Feminist podcast, which is one of my faves. Really love Dream podcast guest. I'm like manifesting that I'm claiming it here, but I was listening to that podcast and one of her guests, madeline Pendleton, who wrote a book called I survived capitalism, and all I got is this lame t-shirt. She was talking about how our country does not provide universal basic income, health care, child care, like all of these things that are kind of fundamental human rights, and then the onus gets put on the small business owner like we're the American Dream, apparently. Apparently we've accomplished what is supposed to be the American dream. But like, if my assistant need needed paid maternal leave, knock on wood. Or family medical leave, whatever it is, knock on wood. I couldn't afford to pay her her salary and hire a new person because I'm a small business owner with limited resources. But we look at our Instagram like the, the, the quiet stalkers out there who are watching what we're doing and be like oh, maybe one day I can have a business like cat, maybe one day I can have a business like Kara. And then they say something that isn't in congruence with your own personal beliefs and all of a sudden they're trash and we have to be really careful that we're looking at people that way and in total honesty and total transparency.
Speaker 2:My own journey in business in the last two years has been one of the like, to me fundamentally more difficult than when I started. When I started, I had a kind of deranged sense of confidence that I was gonna be a really really great, really really fast, and I think that's why I achieved results very quickly. But I was very much bought into a lot of coaching communities that, in my opinion, now, being outside of those communities, operate from within a kind of ML. Me like skeevy manifest your way to a million dollar year, even if it means predatorily selling to people who you put into a financially precarious situations in order for them to pay you. I was like coaching in those spaces. And as I began to divest and really think more critically and have my own journey of emotional maturity as a business owner, I was angry and I was like this whole community is trash. I like hate everything that I learned.
Speaker 2:And now, with a little bit of distance and a little bit of healing and a little bit of recalibration to what, how I want to show up and how I want my values to be reflected in my business I'm able to look at that and be like, well, it's not all bad, like there are things that you really benefit.
Speaker 2:You built multi six-figure business because you learned in those spaces. And then I love what Kelly deals says about this. She's like we're all in the water, we're all wet, so we're all deconstructing harmful things that we've picked up, whether it's messages about how thin we should be or how our relationship should look or how we should feel about money or self-confidence or whatever it is. We're deconstructing those things all the time. That's a lifelong journey. And then when we look at other people who are on their own version of that and say, well, they're a terrible person because they didn't show up the way that I think a person with that kind of platform should be showing up in a moment like this, I would like to say to them shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1:I love it, I I also just want to like name the like necessary grace that we need to have in order to like pull ourselves out of these systems, you know, and the sacred anger that is also necessary in those spaces. And so, like, what I'm hearing in your story is like, hey, like you started to become more aware and you started to see, you know, hey, that's really not how I want to run my business. That feels a particular way in my body that doesn't seem to align with these particular values that I've set up for myself. And in order to like exit those situations, I think the anger is necessary oh yeah, I was mad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm still a little bit mad, I'll be honest.
Speaker 1:I'm so mad. Yeah, fair. But I think that, like, as we start to like exit those situations, it's also important to like take a pause in the way that you just beautifully did right now, which is like, hey, it wasn't all bad. You know, I, as you were speaking, I was just like sort of like overlaying my relationship with my ex-husband over on top of it, where it was like, in order to get out of that relationship, I needed to a like find that sacred rage that was within me and then like move to, like get myself out of that situation. And now I can look back and say, hey, it's been several years since I've been in that relationship.
Speaker 1:It wasn't all bad, right, like, but the nuance comes with regulation, and so I think that what I'm seeing a lot in the world right now when it comes to this, like us versus them, like the judgment of you have to do this a particular way, or you know you have a big platform, so why aren't you posting in this particular way is like this, like culture around co-dissregulation.
Speaker 1:That seems to be sort of like sweeping through these like social media spaces in a way that is like sort of touted as like this is how you find your people when it's really like what you're doing is you're continuing to perpetuate cycles of dysregulation. When you're doing that versus one of your values I want to go back to a sovereignty is when you're able to say, hey, this is how I feel, this is my lane, these are my boundaries, these are my values, and you're allowed to have your own thoughts, feelings and opinions and your own values and your own perspectives. And can we still see each other as human beings and can we still learn from each other? And is there space for curiosity and understanding and perhaps even just like an opening up of your own perspective in ways that like is actually like really regulatory? Go ahead, you had you opened your mouth yeah, I mean there's, there's.
Speaker 2:My brain goes in five different directions. I'm like, should I say this? Should I say this? Because there's so many things that I think of when you're saying this. But actually what I was feeling called to speak about was to bring it into the conversation about what's happening with Gaza and Israel. So, like I am Jewish, I'm first-generation American. My family was decimated in the Holocaust. My grandfather was one of 11 to survive. My grandmother was one of two out of nine who survived. My family fled during the Communist Revolution in 1956, in the middle of the night with my nine-year-old father to Brooklyn, and I was raised looking at photos of my family with little Jewish stars on their shirts.
Speaker 2:When I was 19, I went on a birthright trip and I was in a closeted queer relationship at the time, which Israel is gay friendly, we can give it that but my personal feeling of shame that I was having about that at that time was such that I didn't make any friends on the birthright trip because I was afraid of being judged. So, very opposite of how everybody is, you wouldn't have recognized me. I was like super quiet, like super reclusive, like it felt like nobody liked me, even though it wasn't anything anybody had did. It was like a totally internal experience, but there was something that was happening, because I decided to separate myself from the group that I was able to look more critically at what was going on and I was 19, I didn't understand it, but I was like something about this feels very weird. And then, when everything happened a few months ago, I started to revisit why I felt like it was weird, and you and I talked on my podcast about a feeling of dissonance in your body and what I was made aware of was how I had experienced, like a nationalist brainwashing event that like I didn't have that language for at that time. So, like, when you arrive on birthright I promise I'm getting somewhere with this that is like relevant to what it was we were saying. But no, I want to hear this.
Speaker 2:When you arrive on birthright, they hold signs that say welcome home when you get into the airport, and I remember being really confused by that, by being I'm like, I'm Hungarian, like what do you mean? And then essentially saying, like this is your land, and it's kind of like okay, when Jews are asking right now, or Zionists, I should say, are asking right now, like do you think Israel has a right to exist? I'm like, do you think the United States has a right to exist? To like imagine Christopher Columbus like holding a sign for all of the Europeans who, like landed in the North America, that was like welcome home. It's literally the same thing. And I like thought back to having had that experience and I was like, oh, I didn't resonate with it because, like they were sharing a theory with me that is is colonization and something about it felt off. I didn't have the language for that, but it was just, and so I felt really called to speak about that because it was relevant to my personal experience exactly differently, differently. And this is where, like, the accountability piece comes in.
Speaker 2:When BLM happened in 2020, I became very radicalized in a particular way, where I was like shoving do the me and white supremacy workbook down the throat of every white person that I knew, kind of like to the point that my mother was like you need to, like I'll take a breath. Actually, I'm like you need to do it right now. And she's like I'm gonna. I'm not gonna do it right now, but you need to do it right now or you're a bad person, right, and like I can look back on that experience now and be like that was my own fragility and my own saviorism, because I felt bad about like myself, about how I didn't know those things. So when I was like being introduced to those concepts, I had a sense of urgency that, in order to make myself feel better, I made my myself responsible for like making sure every other white person that I knew was doing that. Yeah, and so I think like that's why I mean why we're all in the water and we're all wet.
Speaker 2:Those are two very different examples of ways in which you know major historic events that have radicalized a lot of people to activism in a new way, like the responses that I had to that. I'm not saying that like the one that I had about Israel is necessarily even right. What I'm saying is like both of those responses were really born out of like a huge emotional and impactful moment where I wanted to do what I can to feel in congruence with myself and that doesn't mean that I made 100% of a perfect choice and while everybody else simultaneously is experiencing an ongoing collective trauma that is making most of us depressed to expect people to know perfectly how to show up when there's no frame of reference for that, because our times are continually unprecedented and I shared my own personal experience of ancestral trauma and relationship to that. So people are also simultaneously experiencing that and maybe haven't had the privilege of having space, health for them to like really unpack what that means. The way that we act with each other is. There's so much stuff. It's an iceberg. I think we talked about icebergs on my podcast, I can't remember. It's an iceberg where you're not seeing that story that I just told you about, like all of those other things, and people are arguing and they're projecting their own iceberg onto the other person and when it comes to, like your personal versus your business values.
Speaker 2:My business exists because I think that small business owners can impact policy change and we can impact shifting the wealth gap and we can impact who gets funding for political campaigns and we can impact the culture of how we do business. I'm genuinely only interested in business coaching because of its relationship to social advocacy, so to remove that component of that interest from my business, my business would be like less interesting to me personally. For other people they might be in this because they feel some kind of soul calling to the methodology that they teach and being an activist is something they want to do in their personal time. We all need you right now. Like I do have a kind of moral imperative about there, like we need to be staying informed, we? I don't want to make any statements about voting because I think we're gonna have like the biggest third party. I'll pause again. There's another another guy coming on through. Sorry, I live next to a fire station. No, it all makes sense.
Speaker 1:I'm in a city. I get interrupted for snow, you get interrupted for sirens.
Speaker 2:Yes, Okay, I think we're good. I do think we're gonna have a really surprising election with, like third party turnout and a lot of people opting out of voting because they don't feel like they like the options, but like completely opting out of the conversation. It would be to deny our essential interconnectedness and how we're all on this dying rock together that we need to make collectively less hot. So, like personally, I think there's a moral imperative about being engaged. But to expect a small business owner to make political statements because they are a small business owner, versus to understand why their business exists and operated an integrity for them and then conduct themselves as a citizen and integrity for them. It's really expecting something from people that a lot of people haven't expected. From Taylor Swift, for example, like she could be being more politically active. My opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the contrast of those two stories feels like thank you so much for sharing them. And like the thing that I really just want to like highlight there is the level of integration and regulation that you have to come to in order to hold your own boundaries around this kind of space. And, you know, I think that if we all take a moment to take a breath and try to act in ways that is responsive versus reactive, I think that we would, all you know, perhaps have a little bit more wisdom to draw from, because our bodies are going to tell us things are. You know, our values are going to tell us things. We're going to act in ways that feel more in alignment with, with what it is that we truly feel.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think that when you are talking about this, it's like I love the boundaries that you have when it comes to this, because, you know, when you're like saying hey, like one of the most important things about running a business or helping small businesses is because I know that you know this moves the collective forward and it helps shift the dynamics and it helps with like wealth, distribute, distribution and all that stuff, and it's like, yeah, that can be true for you and it could be not true for somebody else and, like you, there's a lot of permission and a lot of space for people to be able to make those choices for themselves, and that's something that I really, really appreciate about how you are are moving the conversation forward, because it's like, even though that's true for you, it doesn't have to mean the same thing for somebody else. You know.
Speaker 1:And for me when I, when I think about it, it's not necessarily that I want to do like activism, work around like small businesses, it's more of hey. Like I know that I, as a small business owner, make different choices around buying things, and then you know, the CEO of Target, right, and so I want there to be more money in the hands of people like me because we're going to be more aligned with sustainability. We're going to be more aligned with, like you know, making sure that, like people are paid fairly. I have like a huge push towards, you know, homesteading and growing our own food and making sure that the clothing that we wear is ethical.
Speaker 1:And so, like I want more people like me to have more money because, like you know, as cliche as it is, like we do vote with our dollars. You know whether you vote in the political sphere or not. Like we do vote with our dollars and I feel like that's such an important piece that, like that doesn't get talked about enough. And like, if I can help someone feel more regulated in their system, so they they like the blocks and the challenges that come up around business like have an opportunity to melt away. Like I'm going to do everything that I can in order to help them move through that, because I see the bigger picture of like, hey, like. I want 50, 500, 5000, 50,000 small business owners to have, you know, more spending power, because the world's gonna look really different once we have that spending power.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And another thing I heard on that financial feminist podcast is that poverty is a policy decision, and so when we see issues like the housing prices are so astronomical that people who are making the average American salary can't afford to own a home, that's not happening in a vacuum. It's happening because of policy decisions. And one of the things that I talk about on my platform so much is that entrepreneurship to me is a form of liberation, because you're essentially saying like you can't cap how much money I can make, you can't cap how I earn money. Like you can't tell me how I'm going to conduct myself or my business practices. What you think is professional and you meaning dominant culture, like isn't personally resonant for me. Like I'm gonna live my life in the way that I want to live my life and I'm gonna thrive, not in spite of capitalism, but completely, completely separate from, not its influence. Like we're obviously influenced by this context that we live within, but it's not in spite of anything, it's like for everything. It's not like anti, it's because I want to create what is aligned for me, and then my hope is that in my work, I help other people do that, and I think that that is really needed right now, like the idea that the American small business owner is the American dream is. It's not reality, because most people can't afford to buy homes in the United States and most people that I know, like in my community that I coach, they feel like they have to be married to jobs that they don't like in order to be financially secure. That's not happening in a vacuum. That's a policy decision. That's the way that our economy has been structured. We perpetuate these ideas of like go into student debt and you'll get a job, and then you go into student debt and you get a job that you can't afford to own property from. We teach calculus, but we don't teach people how to save for retirement.
Speaker 2:I like it's insane to me like people put money into their 401k but they don't know that they need to invest it, and then like they get to retirement and they don't have enough money to live off of because we didn't teach financial literacy.
Speaker 2:But like you had to go to calculus class, right. So the other thing that I think about entrepreneurship is it actually really invites you to get very real about the circumstances so that you can build your own, and I think that that's so empowering because when you look at the reality of what you're capable of and like, what you actually want, versus what dominant culture has told you you should want, or is the path to get that, which oftentimes for most people doesn't even work anyway, I think it's actually safer to be an entrepreneur than it is to work at a job that you don't like, because you know what's going on, because you have to and you have agency and nobody can fire you except yourself. So I see it as a way of breaking free of a lot of these social imperatives and economic constructs and creating something that empowers you to live the life that you want to live and that is, in many ways, more real than what we thought we were going to be able to have, based on these stories that we were told.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I definitely agree with that. And you know, like, now that I've done this entrepreneurship work for so long, I think to me the thing that I've found so liberating is being able to just reclaim, like, who I am, like I don't have to hide my tattoos, I don't have to hide the fact that I had, you know, I've been polyamorous in my life. I don't have to hide the fact that I'm queer, like, like there are so many things that again, as you say, like the dominant culture still, even in the United States, is maybe in a more subtle way now, but is still pretty discriminant towards, towards like I can say fuck and like no one's going to like say anything about it, you know. And versus, like when I worked in the medical industry, it was like you got to keep your you know arms covered and it's still a very like conservative way of quote, unquote, looking professional.
Speaker 1:And it's like now that I'm out of this like box, like you can't stick me back in you know, and I think that the folks that I've coached that sticking point where you're sticking your head out of the box and you're being like is it really okay, Am I allowed to do this?
Speaker 1:That feels like the most vulnerable moment where it's like okay, so this is a jump out of the box moment, or go back in the box. And if we can hold more people to be the most vibrant and bright and expressive and authentic versions of themselves and I'm recognizing that I'm using very expansive language, like very young language part of that is also like maybe you, the most authentic version of you, is quiet and deep, like has these deep roots that go down, like whatever it is, that is the most authentic version of yourself. Like, if we can encourage people to feel safe in those moments where they're tentatively taking those first steps, I think that, again, if we're looking at sort of like the individual steps that have these like big culture and collective shifting moments, I think that that's one of them and it's something that I think you and I both like seek to do for our clients is like, hey, that validation that you didn't get when you were a little kid, like I'm here to be your cheerleader when it comes to you expressing yourself.
Speaker 2:What this is making me think of is, like the metaphors that people have already to know this in their own lives. Like all my friends are gay. So is that a song? All my friends are gay? I don't know. Anyway, all my friends are gay.
Speaker 2:And like I'm thinking about, you know them before they came out versus after of like the oh my God, what are people going to think? Are people going to be upset? Is this something to be ashamed of? Now there's vibrant community and radical self expression and actually being in the relationships that are right for them, that make them happy, and so I think that, like you know, when you were talking about using expansive language, what I was thinking about is, like this story of this is the thing that's supposed to make you happy. For 99% of us, it does it. And so when you actually do what makes you happy, you know I had a six figure job when I was 26 that I was so depressed.
Speaker 2:I had Sunday scaries every single Saturday because I was like, oh my God, it's almost Sunday and then I have to go do that job again and I was like is this my life? Like I was very depressed living in that model, and I've been depressed trying to just conform myself to other people's ideals, and so I understand. For some people, their version of that is not going to be to be a business owner. It's going to be on a team, working within a company that they actually feel mission, aligned with or respected as an employee at, or being in a relationship where they really feel seen and validated and can contribute to their community. And like it's going to be your own version of that and finding. You know, we talked about this on my podcast, too, when you were talking about really finding what your purpose is and aligning with that, which is the same thing as figuring out your values and living a life that's rooted in your values. And what I will say, just because I think it's important, like to tie it to one in something that I really like teaching about and to something I think that our audiences share is like, okay, but what do I do with that?
Speaker 2:When it comes to making money and the way in which I feel about it being bad to make money or evil to make money or bad to charge for my services, like I'm sure some people listen to this or like if I was rooted in my truth, I would live on a commune where we traded all of our seeds for all of our eggs or whatever, and we don't live in that system.
Speaker 2:And I just want to encourage people and this is like really the tip of this conversation this could be an entire second episode but like I just want to encourage people that if you opt out of participating in this culture, instead of trying to shift it through being self empowered, self directed and having self agency, the system gets to just continue to exist. So nobody is being helped by you not charging for your services and by you saying like I don't want to participate in looking at the money in the world and I think that's part of it. If anything, I think that that actually gives money way too much power. A lot of coaches teach that money is energy and I fundamentally disagree with that. Money is a theoretical concept made up that we've all opted into, agree that we believe in it like is mostly on a screen.
Speaker 2:It's not real. Your energy is what controls your relationship with money and how you wield and use it in your own business. And so when we aren't fetishizing it and what I mean by that is selling really really high, bespoke quality services because we want to make a lot of money, so we only work with like people who can pay us our high rates and full or fetishizing it by means of like I'm not going to charge because that's bad and that's wrong and I shouldn't do that. And like we should all be like give me a dozen eggs and I'll give you a coaching session or whatever. Like that is also fetishizing money. And so both ends of that spectrum give money so much power and give this like larger construct and this larger system so much power. As opposed to, I'm going to use money as a tool. Like money is a tool.
Speaker 2:Freedom is a goal, having a business that has a larger impacts, that I'm well resourced enough to be able to provide sliding skill services to people with need and donate some of my time into my community. Money is the goal that facilitates that. Just like social media may not be something that you love, but it's a marketing tool that is a goal that gets like, or a tool that gets your, your word, out to your community. You may not like love writing emails, but people need to know what it is that you're selling. So all of these things are tools and don't over emphasize the power that they have and then feel limited by them, because it's really diminishing the impact that you can have in your business and it's also probably helping to reinforce some of the very things that you're trying to deconstruct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for saying that, because I think you know it's something that I fundamentally agree with too is like I don't think about money as being an energy I definitely like road that way for a while and just ended up blaming myself when I didn't have enough money or like it ends up becoming like yet another sort of victim cycle. I think that when we start looking at some of these things, like you said, like social media, newsletters, money as tools, we then start thinking about, well, what is that really helping me build, and so like. When I look at social media, I'm like that is a tool for me to build relationships. You know, and I can use social media, I can use the newsletter, I can use flyers at, like, my local coffee shop, like whatever it is like. As long as we have this like idea of like, okay, the goal is to build relationships and you get to choose how you want to do that.
Speaker 1:You know, and you know, when I think about money as being a tool, it's my tool, for freedom is how I think about it, because it's like, once I have money, it allows me to have the freedom to choose who I want to spend my day with, however long I want to spend that, you know, time doing that with that person. And so, if I can sort of deconstruct this idea that, like, money is energy and you know, it comes in like a river and it flows out like, like, like. No, it is a tool and it helps me have in define a relationship around freedom that helps me live the most authentic version of my life, and so then, you know, it feels like a cleaner way to also participate within capitalism, because then it's, you know, it's no longer this, this esoteric thing that I just need more and more and more and more and more of like. There is a certain amount of like enoughness that's going to come when there's satiation, and I think that is one of the problems with capitalism.
Speaker 1:Is this constant drive to always have more and more and more versus being able to like sit back and be like hey, did I actually accomplish the goal that I really wanted to accomplish, which is, like I have the freedom to sit on my land and have a conversation as long as I want with Kara, you know, sweet, do I have the freedom to be able to say yes to only the clients that I really want to work with? Then yes, you know. And so when we pull out the like energy within these social constructs and we just are able to sort of like look at them as like neutral things you know, social media is a tool, newsletters are a tool, money is a tool then we get to define how we want to relate to that thing and how we want to use it.
Speaker 2:What I wanted to say when you were saying like money is an energy is like if money were energy, it's been largely attracted to colonizing white supremacy for the majority of human history. Like money can't be like. It would be a weird energy to be connected to because historically it's been monopolized and controlled by oppressors. And so the way that I invite people to think about the energy, if they want to commune with money energetically, is the energy of abundance, and so many of us, whether we're well resourced financially or not, feel abundant in some area in our lives. Maybe it's like having an amazing sandwich for lunch, or like having really good friends, or like the abundance of love that you feel with your pet, like there's an area in your life where you're already actually able to feel like what it feels to be abundant and to go on a healing journey where you can apply that energy of abundance to financial security, which, just like our values are going to look different, are what financial security means for us is going to look different. I live in LA. You need $1.5 million to buy a shithole in LA and I'm not even I'm not even being like emphaticious about that. It's literally like go on Zillow and like look at what they're selling something that is a two bedroom next to the highway that has like no plumbing in it for $1.5 million in LA. So like, if you want to be a property owner in LA, you're going to have a different financial goal than if you have four kids and you live in Minnesota and $1.5 million can buy you four mansions. But you also need to save for college tuition.
Speaker 2:Some people who work with me they're trying to replace their annual salary. Some people who work with me want to have a seven figure business. Your money goals are your money goals. Your values are your values. Like let's build you what you want and be in celebration of that.
Speaker 2:Because we all want to live different lives, but we all want to live lives of meaning, where we feel safe and we feel like we can make a meaningful contribution to society. Like that's what my people share and the path to get there is going to look different and the healing journey to get there is going to look different. And to presume that money is an energy, particularly for my clients who have different experiences of privilege where, like, we all have money trauma but, like, for some of us, healing our money trauma is a very different journey than for the other ones of us, and to treat it as if there's like some kind of blanket mindset work where you can think your way out of having it is unethical and rooted in a lot of these social constructs that we've been talking about dismantling this entire episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of the things that I really just want to like it this is going to be like my life's work, I feel like is like thinking about the healing journey as being this cookie cutter experience that, like, if I just go through these 10 steps, then I will somehow get to this like healing place, and I feel like that's how a lot of the money is energy conversations revolve around is there's a lot of mindset, there's a lot of mantras and, you know, when you get to the end of the 10 steps and somehow your relationship to money hasn't healed, I find that a lot of people end up blaming themselves.
Speaker 1:And then, when we sort of buy into this concept around, like money being energy, then I feel like it starts to play a lot with the like manifestation. You just have to, you know, believe yourself to your goals. When, like, we need I don't know I don't have like a set, like sort of manifesto of business values, necessarily but I feel like sovereignty would be such a huge one, because I find that, like when people feel safe and that journey of safety can look so, so different. And this is where I feel like, you know, the the cookie cutter things don't work. Once you feel safe, people come up with the most beautiful, beautiful solutions to their problems you know, and and.
Speaker 1:So I think that ultimately, as practitioners, what we all need to be doing whether you're in money coaching or business coaching or relationship coaching or whatever it's really about safety being the medicine, because when safety is the medicine and you center safety, then people are able to find the sovereignty in their own lives to make those decisions and find those solutions for themselves. And to me, that's like where the the magical things happen, because, like then, I can pull myself out of the equation and they don't have to be reliant on me for the rest of their lives. You know, I never want to be in a situation where now I've now created this like codependent relationship with a client and they're looking to me to be the rescuer of all their things, and and and I think that that comes from really being able to center safety and help people with whatever toolkit you've got, like everyone's got a different toolkit yeah help people really feel safe.
Speaker 2:I also think creativity is really hard to have when you feel unsafe. Yeah, it's just like you need spaciousness and safety to access creativity. And I really appreciate what you said about like creating that codependence, like the sort of like MLME, like put it on a credit card kind of coaching spaces that I was like I don't actually think that I want to do it this way anymore. It felt very much like you always need to have a coach. You should always have a coach if you're a coach and my business has made so much money off of reenrollments and I'm a Cancer Moon I do not like saying goodbye to clients. I like love the people that I work with and I always get kind of like oh my god, I'm not gonna like know what's going on with them. But what I found from working in a one-on-one capacity for such a long time is that there actually is a point where I feel like I've set somebody up really well to know what they need to know, to like build a system and a structure, and usually what I do in those cases is for clients who've been long-term clients I've started to sell, like downsell consulting packages to so like we can touch base if they have a problem, like they can come ask for support. But the idea that you should always be outsourcing or gut checking your decision making with a practitioner is one of those theories that I was actually like.
Speaker 2:I don't think that this is personally resonant, because I was in my as the client. I was in my own coaching relationship where I was like every single time before I ever did anything, I was going to somebody else to ask if it was right. That's a really interesting way to be the CEO of your own business, and what it actually turned into was me taking advice that was completely out of alignment for my own values. I acted out of integrity with what I felt was the right decision to make, because my practitioner was so adamant that she was right and it ended very badly. It's one of the things that I most deeply regret ever having done in my entire career.
Speaker 2:I was able to like apologize, take accountability, have a nice exchange with the person that was impacted by it, and I'm not even blaming that practitioner, because it was my decision to act out of my own consciousness and take her advice. But it really awoke to me like I've decided that you're right over what I know to be true for myself, which is where sovereignty is so important and why I'm like hey, I like I feel like I want to be posting about Palestine all the time, but like that might not be the way that you want to show up. I'm not like I'm not hey, you should really be doing that like no, that's not. That's not how you coach people to be the way that you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I think that when you center safety, you also center self-trust, you know, and so one of the things that I always have with my one-on-one clients who graduate out of their packages is, like, hey, I'm always going to be here, you know. Like it's almost like knowing that your parents got your back, no matter what, but like you might be the one who has to call them up just to say, like hey, I need help, you know, but it doesn't mean that, like you know, you'll never, ever, ever need to coach again. It just means that, like, I think that you have enough tools within your toolkit to be able to make a lot of these decisions solidly, and if you need a thought partner on this, like I'm here, you know. And so I think that you know.
Speaker 1:That is one of the things that felt really cringe to me about a lot of the MLM type coaching stuff that I was seeing, and I actually have a very, very like pared down Instagram now, because I just got kind of sick of seeing that as being the only business model Is this idea of like you always need to have a coach. Like no, like sometimes you move on from relationships because you got what you needed from that relationship and you've grown and like thank you very much and sweet Like, can we still stay in touch? Because, you know, I genuinely like Cancer Moon as well. I genuinely just like love, knowing how people are, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and I think there are ways in which, like I am a consultant for a couple of companies where it's like I help them build the infrastructure and then they can touch base as they need to and like I love that, I love having long relationships with people. But there's also something to be said for knowing what you specialize in, and I really feel strongly that I specialize in helping people build a system and then scale said system. But if you're like managing that system, what is my role besides you gut checking what you already think is right by contacting me, and so something that's changed a lot in my business in the last year is like I love working with people for two-ish years and then I feel like we probably did the thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have one more question and then I'm just trying to be mindful of time here. But we've talked so much about, you know, activism in whatever form it takes. But how can we take action as small business owners if we want to be in a bigger arena when it comes to specifically like small business activism?
Speaker 2:So there's a great, actually an organization called Small Business Majority that a client of mine referred me to and I sit on the board for the California Council and they have a council based on what your state is, and they go to Washington to speak on behalf and represent small business owners as they are impacted by policy decisions. And even if you just get on their email list like, they will say, like are you somebody who's been a victim of like predatory lending for getting financing for your business? Like, we would love to talk to you. I had a client who went to Washington on behalf of Small Business Majority to talk about how some of the child care laws that were going into place would impact small business owners who are mothers. So that's a really like easy way to engage with small business owners and really understand, especially based on your state, how policies are impacting you in particular. Now I want to make a distinction just from an industry perspective. Like, you and I operate more in the online world and we're service providers, and a lot of the people in Small Business Majority are like product-based business owners or they own actual brick and mortars in the state that they live in. So it was really cool for me to join that community because it wasn't the way in which I had come into being my own business owner, which was much more like a location independent. You can be a digital nomad I have clients in New Zealand and Canada and the UK and all the things but I think, in terms of activism, it's a great place to connect to and, even if you just sign up for their emails, I think that's a great place to get started.
Speaker 2:I've already talked about Treaties Book. I think everybody needs to read Treaties Book, the anti-racist business book. It will give you a values exercise. It will also talk about how business is really, really personal. It's the opposite of that adage. Business isn't personal. It's so, so, deeply personal and I think anybody listening to this knows that already because it was really personal. To put your face on a platform and be like, hey, buy a thing for me, like it stirred up a lot of stuff for you probably.
Speaker 2:So recommend that book so much and it'll give you like whether or not you choose to be an activist, whereby you're using your public business platform to speak about causes that you care about. If you are a service provider who's working with people who have different backgrounds from you. You have a professional and a personal responsibility to understand what it looks like to take accountability when you mess up because you're blind to your privilege. To understand what it looks like to, as best as you can, create safety for a diverse population. To understand social responsibility as a business owner. I think that that book does a really good job of outlining how to do that, and then obviously it's like a continued lifetime practice. So those are some places to get started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. And I also just want to name too that like your activism can look very personal to you. So, like you know, my nervous system goes when you talk about going to Washington and like representing small businesses. But when it comes to like the smaller scale stuff, when it comes to I believe very strongly in local government and the impact that individuals can have like on the local level, like that feels really juicy and nourishing to me, you know. And so like I think that when we're talking about activism, if we can like we sort of like unpacked and dismantled, like, hey, activism has to look like a particular way, like even in this arena, the scale of it can look anywhere, from you impacting individuals in like a one-on-one relationship all the way up to like bigger. You know political arenas, and none of it is wrong as long as it is an alignment with what your values are and what you feel an alignment with and what you feel like your particular lane is. So I just feel like that feels important to name there too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean, how can we dictate for other people? How should they should be showing up like nobody? It should be. That's why when people try to do that in my DM's, I just ignore them Same.
Speaker 1:I mean, to be fair, I've had like really really good discussions, particularly about Israel and Palestine, or like, yeah, israel and Palestine, when somebody comes to me with like genuine curiosity, you know, and it's easy to like find that tone and and it's like, yeah, like let's have an expansive conversation about this, like I might need to learn something and you know, you might need to understand why I've made certain decisions. But, like you know, anytime we go into any space dictating or trying to convince somebody to do something that we feel like it should be done our way and we think we know better, I I don't ever see that going well.
Speaker 2:So quit it? Yeah, can I? Can I say one thing about that actually, just because I feel like it's very relevant.
Speaker 2:What I've learned in going on this journey of being like I don't want to participate in the coaching industry in this particular way is that, in order to build trust with people who have either been harmed by that model or who were already suspicious of it, because they felt like it wasn't right for them, that to go in full-on attacking it creates a dissonance where people are not able to understand how what I do might be different for them or feel safe enough to be vulnerable enough to trust me to listen to what it is that I have to say in the first place. And so what I've learned on this journey in that particular realm that I think is also applicable to activism, is like anytime you go into a conversation and you're like you're wrong and here's why, or like this is bad and here's why, like people freeze up and they can't meet you. So it's what you said about somebody approaching you with curiosity and being tender and like genuinely wanting to know where you're being witnessed without being judged. It creates this kind of spaciousness, and I really had to apply that as a business model as, instead of, you know, being like I was harmed in this particular way and like it was bad, I try to be like have you ever noticed this thing?
Speaker 2:That happens like here's a bigger cultural trend that I've witnessed within the industry. Have you been impacted by that? And then people are able to see themselves in that without feeling like they're being necessarily targeted, and there's like a more open dialogue. That gets to happen. And anytime that we're going in, you know all systems go fire and brimstone burning and like tear it down, like you're gonna lose most of the people who probably care about what it was that you had to say yeah if you weren't approaching it that way yeah, and you might even lose people that were on your side to begin with.
Speaker 1:You know, that's that's where I felt my resistance going up is like, hey, like I'm on the same side as you.
Speaker 1:Like, can we just chill? You know, and you know, one of the things that I always talk to people about is, if you only see two options, that means that your nervous system is in a sympathetic state. It means that you are in a full-on fight or flight mode, and so, instead of moving and activating in that space, like taking the time to look for your tools to self-regulate, to co-regulate with other people, to find folks that are willing to do that work of like trying to understand where you're coming from, so that you can see that nuance before you take an action. I feel like is such an important thing, and and it's it's one of my own sort of filters in terms of like, do I say something or do I not say something is like, if I only see two options and one is good and one is bad, then this is not a time for me to say something. It's actually a time for me to, like do a little bit of deeper digging personally.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's a great tool for people yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, my dear, I would love to just invite you to share how people can find you. What are you sharing out in the world right now? And, yeah, I'd love for my community to go poke over into your world thank you.
Speaker 2:You can find me at Caracobaxcom. We're at Caracobax coaching on Instagram. I'm sure the correct spelling of that will be in the show notes, but it is here with a C.
Speaker 2:My podcast is called business which, and I have a signature program that we launch every January, may and September that teaches you how to build the framework for an ethics service, an ethical, service-based business, and I love it. You get coached for me twice a week for the 12th of a price of one-on-one coaching with all the tools, tips and tricks to build a service service. I'm gonna take up from the top and we're gonna edit it. You can get all the tools, tips and tricks to build a service-based business in a way that is ethical, aligns with your values, can be profitable with sliding scale, has an intersectional feminist praxis for how you sell and how you serve, and so, if you're like, damn, that sounds like what I've been looking for. Our next launch is May of 2024 and you can head over and subscribe to my email list to be the first to find out about it sweet.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for joining me here today and I hope people go over and check that out and, at the very minimum, go check out her podcast. I really enjoy your podcast and I was really excited to be a guest on your podcast, so thank you oh, thank you so much, it's been great yeah.