Transcript

Sigrun:
You are listening to the Sigrun Show, episode number 385. This is a special episode with insights from 15 six to seven-figure female online entrepreneurs, on the next normal in online business.
Welcome to the Sigrun Show. I’m your host Sigrun, creator of Somba, the MBA program for online entrepreneurs. With each episode, I’ll share with you inspiring case studies and interviews to help you achieve your dreams and turn your passion into profits. Thank you for spending time with me today.
Building an online business takes time. I share with you proven strategies to help you get there faster. You’ll also learn how to master your mindset, uplevel your marketing, and succeed with masterminds.
This week, I should have been in Iceland to host the Selfmade Summit. But instead, I hosted the five-day online course, How to Succeed in the Next Normal in Online Business. The speakers from the Selfmade Summit and some special guests joined over a whole week, and shared how the last three months have changed their lives and businesses, and what next normal means to them. The insights are mind-blowing and we cannot wait to see these speakers on stage with us next year, June 22nd to 23rd, 2021.
Yes, the Selfmade Summit is happening. We just had to postpone it by a year. And as a bonus, you receive all this amazing insights from our Selfmade Summit speakers and special guests. Tune in and listen to Denise Duffield-Thomas, Lisa Larter, Suzy Ashworth, Elena Herdieckerhoff, Claudia Chan, Joanne Sweeney, Lorraine Dallmeier, Dr. Natalia Wiechowski, Gwen Lane, Molly Pittman, Nnenna Kalu Makanjuola, Caitlin Bacher, Ashley Crouch, Kirsten Stendevad, and Ann Wilson. You’ll find the show notes, links, and bios of all the speakers at sigrun.com/385.
 
Elena Herdieckerhoff:
And as we all know, the event business disappeared. So that was an interesting situation for me, because TEDx events, especially the ones that are in person have been called off. Some have moved online, but for the most part, TEDx organizers have postponed their events to next year. And that also meant, of course, for me, I had to put my own clients on hold and say let’s not go further in the process until we can actually pursue applications and go out there again. And also, of course, to bring on new clients is not really possible when what you’re offering doesn’t exist at the moment. So that was interesting.
But thankfully, I was set up in a way that was quite crisis-proof, because I have a second business, which is where I do intuitive business coaching. It’s something I’ve been doing since 2014 and has always been something that I enjoyed doing for a select group of entrepreneurs that felt called to work with me. So actually, I re-pivoted to that during this time. And as it so happens, that was a good idea because not only is it something I know how to do and enjoy, it’s also something that many entrepreneurs needed at this moment, where they’re like, something similar is happening in my business, my clients are disappearing, what do I do? So it actually turned out to be a good match for me and also for my clients.
The positive thing about the online world is that building communities is so easy and so quick, and I think more and more people are gathering together online, whether it was during corona times, Zoom dinners, Zoom cocktails parties, or whatever it was. I’ve spoken to friends and had virtual dinners which I would have never had otherwise, and I actually ended up feeling more connected to people I care about during corona and even now than I was before. So I think the online space has also given us room to improve our community relationships.
I think for me on a personal level, I think it’s a next normal for humanity from a consciousness perspective. So what I see happening and what I see coming out of all of these big massive changes and earthquakes in all variety of manners is actually a real awakening to our truth and who we really are at our core, and this reassessment and this reconnection to our souls. I think that is happening all across the board is actually going to reinvent not only just how we do business in life, but how we evolve as a collective of humans and how we can elevate our consciousness to the next level. So for me, new normal is new and higher consciousness.
Claudia Chan:
I think that the more proactive you are, as opposed to just sitting back and being like, okay, you know what, I don’t know enough about this or we’re still trying to figure out, the more you can make that a priority and actually do the work, so I’m speaking to every individual out there that owns a business, which is pretty much everybody that’s in this Zoom call right now in this event, to every corporation and anybody that’s a leader, is actually invest the time and just do the work on learning about what is happening around race right now and thinking about where you want to stand in it. Because it is this sort of passiveness and it is the sort of, well, I’m just not going to touch it, because the more proactive you are, the more integrity, really, that your organization has around something that, like you are an organization in this humanity and so your value system being proactive about that I think is really, really important.
And the other thing in a crisis and in any kind of situation like a COVID, is that the best leaders or the true colors of leaders and what people do stand for, that stuff surfaces, right? You’ll see who the really, really good companies are versus the ones that do nothing. You’ll see the leaders that really speak up versus the ones that say nothing. And so this, again, you could choose to be passive, you could choose to be quiet, but that really also is very revealing as to… Because there’s a difference between not something and being proactively for something.
And so that is the next normal for me, is truly designing my whole life and being really intentional that everything is set up in a way that’s in alignment with what really matters the most. I always say my quote is, your schedule’s less about what you get done and more about who you want to become. And so I want to be a great mom, I want to be present for my kids, I want to have a great marriage. Wealth is wellbeing. The next normal for me has to be just really enjoying every day of life and not taking it for granted, and just designing my schedule, my time, and my choices to be in alignment with that.
Joanne Sweeney:
I have been spending my time on planes, on trains, and realizing that the downtime coupled with the exhaustion that goes with it was not sustainable longterm. And so I had made a conscious effort, but with COVID I’ve made a definitive intention that I’m not going to go back to that. And I still want to speak on stages, but certainly flying across Europe for a two-hour meeting when I can do it right here from my home office is totally legitimate. And so, yeah, I’ve made a conscious decision, and I feel so light and so excited that I’ve made that decision, and now I can focus on creating programs and coaching that I know my clients need, and I do believe I will attract those clients and more broadly across the globe.
I think, I hope that COVID-19 and the destruction that it has caused to society, and by having statistics like understanding that a third less papers from women are being published right now, actually puts an extra focus on the demands of women in the working world and also in the self-employment world. And hopefully, it can be a good thing to be a catalyst for some sort of change. In a crisis, you actually see who your leaders are, you see their true colors, and I think that social media has actually helped the voice of the minority grippings. And I say in the first page of my book that the pendulum of power has swung from church, state, and corporate business into the hands of the citizen because of the democratization of the internet, the free availability of WiFi, and smartphone consumption. Now we have no choice but to listen, okay? You can’t be like that emoji where you see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The truth is in front of you and the truth is being spoken and it’s being broadcast in viral ways right across the world.
I feel a greater freedom and even bandwidth in my own head to get that message out. So the next normal for me feels that it came sooner than anticipated, and it’s going to be easier because it’s been forced upon me, which is I feel like a weird gift.
Lorraine Dallmeier:
Yeah, it’s been absolutely crazy. You say what has happened, what hasn’t happened, I think is maybe the better question. I have never worked so hard in my life. I’m literally working like 60, 70 hours a week. It’s crazy. But basically what has happened is we teach people online how to make their own cosmetics, and then how to turn it into a brand using natural ingredients and organic ingredients, and that escapism I think has really appealed to people, as well as the fact that, obviously, we teach practical skills and then show you how to start a business with it. So the results of lockdown and the pandemic has been an absolute tsunami I think of new students, is the best way to put it. I think more empowerment for people starting their own businesses. I’m even seeing it with my own friends, like my school friends are all going, “Here’s my business. I’ve started a business.” And I’m going, this is awesome! For years, I thought I was the odd one out. Now everyone’s doing it, and I love that, because I want to see some of these small businesses really flourish.
And I think that’s the way that things are going to go, because people have had the rug pulled out from under them in this pandemic. A lot of people have lost their jobs or been taken away from work, and it’s made them reevaluate who they are and what they want from life. And we all want more time. We want more time with our friends and families, and to be able to do the things we enjoy, and maybe commuting for hours a day and being stuck in an office filled with cubicles isn’t what most people want. So I think that the next normal is people empowering themselves to create something for themselves that they love.
I think we as women need to believe in ourselves more and have more confidence in business. Actually, I had a call with Elena, who obviously was on your mastermind yesterday, and we were talking about one of her upcoming summits which I’m going to be speaking on as well, and we were talking about what we love in business, and I sort of went, “I love making money.” And she went, “No, look, that’s what we want, we want to see more of that.” And women don’t talk about these things very much today. We don’t talk about the fact that we like being in control, we like running our businesses.
Suzy Ashworth:
Up until the start of this year, I was very firmly placed in business and mindset, and then the pandemic happened. I too had an event that was supposed to be happening in May. That got canceled. But what it did, the pandemic gave me space to think about really what this whole course is about, which is how do I want to be showing up in 12-months’ time? What does the world need from me, and am I really in alignment with what I think the world needs?
And so after going all in with my clients and helping them, and really trying to just hold everything down, I did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done in my business, and I had a three-day blackout. I turned my phone off, I turned the computers off, and I just went and sat and listened to what was coming up. And now the way that I talk about my work is I’m a quantum transformation coach. And what has been amazing is when I looked at what’s been going on in my business since the start of this year, and I’ve made more money in the last five months than I did the whole of last year.
I think what is required of people now is to really be looking at what is going on in the world and really looking at the role that you want to play. I think that anybody with just a half… It’s not even conscious that anybody with half a kind of admission, half a kind of purpose, it’s like there has never been more crap going on in the world that is calling you to rise right now. So if you’re not going to do it now, you’re never going to do it. Literally, you’re never going to do it.
A lot of people I know went into fear, and a lot of people thought that they were going to need to pull back or did pull back because they were paralyzed. And I really understand that, and again, those are the people that I looked at and said they need to hear me right now, so what am I going to do? But I work with a lot of single mothers who are the sole breadwinners, and they really needed me to say, “If you want to go out and work and sell, then go out and work and sell.” And this is where the pivot and the purpose became so much more important, because people had to really look at, is the thing that I’m selling really valuable right now? Is the thing that I’m selling going to help people right now? And if it wasn’t, then we need to change it. So it was so people could go out without any shame, without any guilt, knowing if you’re going to ask people to invest in your right now, then you’re doing that from a real place of I am serving.
I believe that what we are experiencing now is a shift in global consciousness, and I believe that we are at the start of a new awakening, and what that is asking for and requiring of us is a new level of leadership and a new level of activation, for us as individuals. It’s really an invitation. So it’s not just about doing what feels good for you, but it’s really understanding the difference between separation and unity. It’s really, really an invitation for us to look at what does oneness mean, this thread that goes around the universe and connects each and every one of us as humans and the collective humanity. What do we want as a collective? And I believe that the new normal is an awakening of more and more people who are ready to stand up and say that we are all connected and this is about uplifting everybody.
Dr. Natalia Wiechowski:
Yeah, so there was a lot of confusion around the whole crisis situation and how to respond to that. Because a lot of my clients, they are online, they worked on their digital programs for a very long time, and they had great successes and they made sometimes more money than they’ve ever made before. And they’re like, I’ll tell you, I even don’t know if I can talk about that. I don’t know, can I still be positive? And I had the feeling that especially in the German-speaking region, especially in rather conservative parts of the country, it was almost like people would get upset if you would just spark anything that would be positive, because everybody, in some people’s perceptions, needed to understand that it’s terrible and we’re all suffering, and da da da da da.
I was like, okay, I do understand and we’re here to acknowledge that it’s a terrible situation. But like everything in life, what is positive? Or what can we learn out of this? How can we help each other? So we all found our way how to comment on the current situation without offending people, sharing our own perspectives, and for the first weeks we really focused on how can we serve you, how can we help you, lead by example, lead by being the change you wish to see. So I think it’s beautiful how much more we’ve reconnected to community and appreciate the people around us and make friends with strangers and find new ways how to serve each other. So I hope that this will also stay post-pandemic.
In the beginning, we might have a few funny rules that we need to follow, but sooner or later, it will go back into normal, whatever that means. Because I think that none of us here is normal. I think we’re all extraordinary, the way how we work, they way how we live. It’s not normal anyway, so no need to measure ourself based on these standards. It will go back. We will have learned a lot, and I would be super curious to see how and when it’s going to change.
So I believe that the new normal is less of a normal in the sense that people will more and more have the courage to look at society and say, okay, this is the guideline. Okay, fine, and if it works for you, fantastic. But I believe that a lot of people will have the courage and the strength because they survived this pandemic crisis to find their own answers and their own solutions. So I do believe there will be more individual solutions, hopefully more empowered, happier, and more successful people. So there will be a split towards those who grew out of it and who say, wow, that’s my second or third like, and those who go back to everything how it was and just feel miserable and sorry for themself.
Gwen Lane:
And so the last three months have been amazingly interesting. So for my blog business, I work a lot with travel brands, so that clearly postponed. Everything was shut down. They were like, hold on all partnerships. And so I felt like kind of the travel industry and the e-commerce industry shift to, wait, we need to hold on, meaning to, like Molly was saying, stop the ad spend and see how it plays out, how long this is going to take.
I am loving seeing people who have always wanted to start a business but were too afraid to, finally are like, okay, I’m on unemployment, I got furloughed, I’m going to now take a course, a program, hire a coach, and actually dive in. And so I think a entrepreneur business revolution is happening.
A lot of people contracted and are scared, right? There’s one side that are like, okay, I’m going to save my money, got to make sure on a rainy day, but there’s also the people who were on the cusp I feel that were waiting for something, and unfortunately sometimes we need a life threatening thing to happen, right? We get in an accident, we’re like, okay, I’m going to go do that thing I’ve always wanted to do. And I think this was that thing that pushed people to be like, I’ve always wanted to do this. I could get COVID, and that was kind of the thought that I was seeing people who were joining my program. They were like, “I’ve always wanted to do this. Why am I waiting? This could happen at any time to me. I should just do it right now.”
So I think the new normal is there’s a lot of people now looking for their next thing or their new thing, and they’re being more courageous about it, which I love. And I love helping people grow their personal brands. So for me, that’s a win-win for both of us. I think that’s the new normal is people starting to realize that maybe having a job is not the most stable thing in the world anymore, and nothing is secure, and it’s up to you create that reality that you want.
Molly Pittman:
Like I said, I’m the CEO of SmartMarketers, so our job is to educate you guys on what to do in your business, how to grow, how to make peace with this changing digital landscape, which is really similar to our world right now. When all of this started, it was funny, I was saying to our students, I feel like digital marketers and entrepreneurs, we are some of the best prepared people for what has happened over the last few months, rapid change. We experience that every day in our businesses. Stuff’s changing, problems pop up, algorithms change, whatever it is that you’re facing that day, that’s normal life for us. And we have a high stress threshold in that way. And that’s just something that is interesting to me and that I wanted to point out so that all of you guys know that you are well-equipped to handle this and whatever else is to come.
The world is never going back to normal, and in a lot of ways that’s a great thing. I feel like business and values are just, I don’t know, everything’s more exposed maybe isn’t the right word I’m saying, but it’s real, it’s more raw, and I think that’s the direction that the world is going in. People are literally waking up. And so that changes business in a huge way. For me, that’s exciting, especially in the online marketing space, because there are a lot of people that don’t really care what they’re doing. They’re doing it to make money, and people want more than that now. They want to work with people who care, that are genuine, that are authentic, that care what’s going on in the world. And so if that’s how you’re showing up, if you know you’re living that way already, you’re good to go. And I think you’re going to see more of that.
I think that it’s interesting because I couldn’t agree more by the way about online courses, membership, whatever format, that’s only going to rise, and this has caused that evolution to happen so much more quickly than it would have, which is exciting and good for us.
Nnenna Kalu Makanjuola:
This has been a great opportunity to do those things that you’ve always wanted to do to slow down. For me, with my two kids, life has been hectic, homeschooling, but at least I’m not shuttling kids back and forth. I’ve had a really good moment of zen to look at my business and to be able to continue working and reworking some of the things that I’ve always wanted to do.
I have a saying, I have a card here that I keep in my office, and it says never, never, never give up. And inside I wrote, always be Oprah ready. That has always been my mantra even before COVID, to be Oprah ready, because I don’t know if you’ve heard these stories, when Oprah invites guests, when she touches you, your world changes. But for some of those people, they went bankrupt because they couldn’t handle… Their websites crashed, their systems were not strong enough to handle the good things. So we always think, oh, when something good happens to me, then… But you have to be ready before the something good happens to you.
And I’m hoping that this would translate far deeper, because one of the biggest problems that I’ve had has been getting into stores that don’t think we matter. I mean, I’ve had stores that no longer accepted because they said, they’ve had a polite way to tell me that it’s not good demographic. So even some just don’t respond once they see what you’re about, they don’t respond. And that has been such a barrier, getting into bookstores, just bookstores that sell any book. I say, “Just put it there, you know? Put it there and I’ll send my audience to you. You’ll be on the list. You’ll be on my [inaudible 00:26:28] list.” And I say, “Well, this is one more place you can go.”
At first glance, they just assume there’s no market for it. So that has been really, really tough, but I’ve also been insistent that we are going to be in those places, that we shouldn’t be confined to only black bookstores. I want to bring Africa to the world. I want to bring wellness to the world. We consume everybody’s. They can consume ours, too. I’m hoping that it will have a more positive implication where the people who are making these decisions about what books they can accept or what magazines and publications they can accept in their store, hopefully they would be more open, and not just for me, but for all the other black publications.
Lisa Larter:
COVID has been really interesting for me. You and I were together in Miami right before it kind of blew up. Yeah, it was a scary time, and I think two weeks later I was supposed to be in New York for a week, and then I was supposed to be in Australia for three weeks, and then coming to Iceland, and then Italy. And then all of my travel has been canceled. But I have to say, I have a little bit of COVID slowdown envy for people who have been able to take a little bit of a break, because our business has been full-on busier.
So I think the first thing that I did is I got clear on what my assumptions were that might happen to the business. So I’m a cashflow freak. I’m a very big believer that business exists to generate a profit, and I’ve got a very long runway of cashflow in my bank account. And so the first thing that I did is I made some predictions around what business I thought we might lose based on the situation, and if we actually lost all business. So I did best case/worst case. If we lost all business, what did the runway look like in terms of supporting my team before I needed to make some big decisions in the business? What is my next normal? And I think because my normal doesn’t feel like it has been disrupted, I’m not necessarily thinking next normal in terms of the COVID situation.
But when I think about the evolution of my business, I will tell you that there’s a few things that I am looking at doing in order to be able to better serve some of those clients who maybe are not ideal clients for me privately, and that includes maybe creating some more online programs.
I did an online program, gosh, it must be a decade ago, I think it was before its time, called the Social Business Academy. It didn’t go well when I first launched it, and over the years I’ve dabbled, and I’ve got some things on my website that are old, and people are buying them, and I cringe every time they buy them, because I think, on my god, it’s so old. And then they email me and they tell me how great they are and how much value they got from it. And it just makes me think there’s a demand for what I know about business and marketing, and I need to invest a bit more time and effort in creating some of those digital products that are affordable and accessible to others. And I have not made time to do that, and so that’s one of the things that I am looking at for my new normal.
Caitlin Bacher:
I think that as leaders, it’s important to recognize that sometimes we don’t know what to do and sometimes we don’t know what’s next, right? And especially in a time like this, I think if you are fortunate enough to have a coach like Sigrun who is able to really help keep you focused and keep you supported during this time, that it’s such a blessing and it’s so incredibly important.
Financially, we have been fine. Our sales have actually doubled over last year. And again, I think that that’s just because we’re fortunate to have an online business. And so when something like COVID happens, it’s not just your audience looking to you, it’s your team who rely on you for their full-time income, and all of the challenges that they are experiencing with their own family behind the scenes, the illness, the various things that they have going on.
Ashley Crouch:
I flew from Switzerland, so I flew back, and then as you know, the borders closed really quickly. I think it was February 28th or 29th. So I found myself in bed. I found myself in bed in a wheelchair. I couldn’t even make a coffee for myself.
Running a virtual company, at any given time we have up to 30 contractors. My business development director, she actually got COVID and she’s based in the UK, and so they were messaging me, what’s the plan for the year? Well, at the same time, I’m hearing we’re going into quarantine, but I had been in quarantine for three or four weeks already just because of the injury. And so what I realized is that I was going to launch a mastermind, and this mastermind was going to make up about 30% of the annual revenue. We were getting ready to launch it in March, but the mastermind was dependent upon four live events in luxury locations, and it would be 30 to 50 people, the profit margin was quite nice, but it was going to be this magical experience.
All of a sudden, 30% of the revenue was gone, as well as another marketing channel, which is speaking. I was slated to speak all of these different places. As you know, Sigrun, that was no longer a possibility, and so I felt like it was this huge opportunity, because as someone who does run primarily an online company, I was used to working from home, and anyone who does run an online business, that is a huge benefit. But what I realized was it’s not enough just to serve women of color as clients. It’s not enough just to have women of color and diversity on the team. It’s not enough to have microloans deployed throughout the world. I really started getting intentional about having curated conversations with people that I know and trust and love, and hearing their stories to not only highlight the people that we serve, but start bringing even more of those microloans to the U.S. as well and see what can we do as a business to allocate a percentage of those profits, a percentage of the top revenue here at home.
So I think we can all do our part. It’s going to be about listening and about highlighting new stories and new perspectives that we haven’t before. So from our business, that’s what we’re hoping to do, is work with even more women of color, allocate microloans to even U.S.-based organizations and people who can use that. And then for myself, just really being intentional and curated. One of the things about being in PR is you’re kind of supposed to know everything and everyone. You’re supposed to be a super-connector. That’s the whole point of why people pay you. But what I’m realizing is that I can be even more intentional in the people that I talk to and the conversations that I have, and so personally, that’s a really big step forward for me.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
At the start of Corona, I will admit I had a few moments of absolute freaking panic. And one of those reasons, too, is that in the last year, I’d just finished building my dream home and I also bought a massive big farm that we were turning into a wedding venue. So I was like, oh my god, what have I done? This is the worst time to be with two massive big mortgages.
But here’s the thing. I knew that people were looking to me, and suddenly I had probably double the amount of podcast requests. And so it was like when you’re on a plane and you’re looking to the flight attendant when there’s turbulence to see if they’re freaking out, to see if you need to freak out. And so I realized, I was like, oh, I’m a flight attendant here and I need to get my mindset back on track, which I know how to do and I teach, because I know people are going to be looking to me to see, should we be freaking out right now?
What are we supposed to do, just sit here and starve for the next couple of months? I’m not going to apologize for serving my clients and feeding my family. And that just shows though, without her doing that, imagine if that was the only port they had in that industry, and they’d all have just sat there and gone, well, I guess I can’t do anything now. But I will say, it’s also totally okay, I think every entrepreneur needs a business girlfriend that you can be petty and bitch to.
We are the first generation of entrepreneurs who can make money with the internet. For all those as a kid, stop talking, you talk too much, we make money out of that now. We’re first generation who can, we can make physical products without even touching them once. And so that actually brings up some weird stuff for us, because we haven’t quite caught up with that in our loose brain. And so all the stories we’ve been told about working hard, it doesn’t quite compute with how all of us can make money now, which is not working hard and not doing things with your hands and not physically laboring for your money. So please be gentle and compassionate with yourself that that actually feels a little bit weird and it feels like that people in your life don’t understand that. It feels a bit discombobulating.
Next normal for me, realizing one where I can make my business more inclusive, that’s definitely we’re seeing this in the last couple of months, that we all have blind spots around race and inclusivity, so that’s a big one for me. But also have been really clear that money can change the world. I hired a philanthropy coach last year because I wanted to be very intentional about where my money was going, because a lot of countries are not going in a great direction in terms of inclusivity and looking after the environment and things like that, and you know what? That takes money behind the scenes, that takes money for advocacy groups and legal advocacy for the environment and the laws to change. And you know what? Unfortunately, there’s a lot of money in politics at the moment. Donald Trump sends out emails every single day asking for money for his reelection campaign, so I am super passionate about putting my money into the world that I want to see.
Kirsten Stendevad:
And so when corona first occurred, my immediate sense was euphoria. Wow, here’s the crack we’ve been waiting for so the light can get in. Here’s the opening we’ve all been waiting for, dramatic opening for change, for quantum leap. So that was my initial thought that it was an extraordinary opportunity for transformation and for an upgrade into the new consciousness.
Then comes a mail from Sigrun that my favorite conference on the planet in June has been postponed to ’21, and that’s one of the ways I realized the consequences of this crack. This was not only going to be a pleasant ride into the new consciousness, this was going to be a bumpy road. This was going to have a lot of consequences.
This is what crises do to us. It creates real resilience and it creates real community. We start to notice it. What gets people through crisis is community, is each other, is helping each other, and we feel so much more motivated when we’re all in the same boat. So it actually opens the hearts and opens up creativity and opens up… Sometimes we have to look further and look up, and really get next to our intuition. So, so much good can come out of crisis, and that’s what I’ve been focusing on.
Well, I think that it’s very important to know where you’re operating from. So if you start giving in a crisis out of fear of not receiving, that’s the problem. The fear is the problem, not the giving. So it’s very important where you come from. So do you come from guilt like we were talking about, or do you come from fear or shame? All those feelings are going to have a ripple effect, so it’s very important that if we give, and I think a crisis is a good opportunity to notice where do I give from? But if you give a real generosity and compassion, I have this feeling of let me ship into the hull what I can ship into the hull, and if everybody does that, we have a pool of resources and good energy that we can all draw from. So I thought it was such a beautiful opportunity to just see, just experiment actually, to do like the scientists, experiment and see what happens.
Ann Wilson:
Just like Denise, I think for many of us, when it first hit, it was just a real just sense of… Well, for me, I almost a felt a deep devastation. I live in Southern Africa. There’s extraordinary inequity, poverty, real challenges economically. So there was this huge wave of reminding me why I do what I do.
Holy moly, the internet, is it not just a sure thing of wonder and joy? We were laughing earlier saying we wish we had all had shares in Zoom just before this pandemic. There’s also just been for me such a widening and expansive way of looking at connection, community, intimacy, vulnerability, and realizing it doesn’t just have to happen in person, that with curation and with consciousness and with vulnerability and openness, I’ve had some of the most intimate, beautiful, extraordinary, connected experiences with my tribe, with my peers, and it’s just really expanded so many opportunities for me, saying how to keep that connection going. So it’s been this exquisite and excruciating mix all in one.
Who’s your community? Is it a consciousness to clean up our stuff so that we can turn that crisis into something that is expansive, and not just then contribute to so much of the victimhood, the spiral. Now I’m not saying anger and frustration and grief, those are really good, but with consciousness so we can move through them. And I think this is so important, we’ll also then have this kind of collaboration. Who is that community? Who do we also have in terms of sisterhood can also go, you know what, you’re getting into some shit there. Let’s do a sprinkling or whatever we need to do, but let’s get you back to who you really are.
There’s devastating, they’re about 10 years old now, but they haven’t changed significantly, which is also heartbreaking. Women around the world represent about 65% of the workforce, and a significant amount of that work that they do is unpaid. They grow 55% of the food, so food security is predominately supplied by women, control about 42% of the wage bill. They own less than 1% of assets. That’s actual physical property, stock market assets, business ownership.
No wonder we have got such a messed up world. We’ve literally got, without this economic power, without the representation, money is just a representation of core power. It gives voice, it gives mechanism to make choices, to take action, and that’s what I always say I’m a financial activist. For my activism and I continue to say, for God’s sake, woman, let’s step up. We have to learn this. And it’s not about shame. It’s saying let’s learn these skills, let’s get over that shame, let’s get over that guilt, because if we do not do this, the world is just getting more and more messed up. We need our power. We need the compassion. We need the energy of woman in this place. And we have to have the fuel of money behind it.
Yeah, I think for me what’s really come out and also with a lot of the just inequity and inequality and discrimination and the disempowerment that comes from when we don’t have access to opportunity and how to break down those barriers, I think all through this craziness, I’ve felt a far deeper confidence to speak far more of my deeper truths, where maybe I had on my business, I felt, well, I speak about money and investing inside. No, this core underneath me which is far more, can we say fierce, and activist and going really, and I think I’m feeling far more the courage and the confidence, but also the ability to just call to just speak a lot more of some of my deeper truths to want to bring that out, to want to go money and service of what? Money and service of life, to speak more about conscious consumption. What does that look like? Where we really start understanding the power of the choices we make, how we consume our energy, our money, where we direct it, and really start bringing more voice to that in a lot of ways.
So just really dropping and having the power to speak more about these aspects and risk in that type, because I’m going, well, shit, if COVID hasn’t taught us that life is risky, shit, we’re never going to get it. So we might as well as just bring all of ourself in and see where the hell that goes.
Sigrun:
You’ll find the show notes, links, and bios of all the speakers at sigrun.com/385. I hope to see you at the Selfmade Summit June 22nd through 23rd, 2021, in Reykjavik, Iceland. I can’t wait to see all these speakers on stage and share with us even more mind-blowing insights.
Thank you for listening to the Sigrun Show. Did you enjoy this episode? Let me know that you listened by tagging me in your Insta Story or Instagram post using my handle sigrun.com and the #SigrunShow. See you in the next episode.