The Pyramid of Resilience Building for Business Owners & Teams

I’ve been working on some new stuff lately - some resources and training I’ve been putting together on building resilience for some work I’m doing with some companies and teams and I thought it might be helpful to share this here with you, so you can see how it might make sense for you and your work, your teams, your business.

It’s no surprise to me that I’m hearing more conversations about resilience lately, and having people come to me to support their work or their teams in understanding and building resilience. In times of rapid change and so much uncertainty, we need to get to grips with what it means to be resilient more than ever. We need to learn the tools and practices that can support us to manage ourselves through disappointment, tragedy, chaos and flux. 

What I want to use this space to share about is what I’m calling the pyramid of resilience building. The structure that needs to be in place for sustainable growth, development, fulfillment and capacity. Because resilience isn’t the end outcome of what we’re looking for when we talk about it, is we. I’m struck that when people come to me wanting to look at resilience, they’re often actually talking about a greater capacity to stay in alignment with their values, to grow as people, feel more fulfilled and have a better capacity to do the work they love and live life meaningfully and present.. That’s the goal of resilience, so we need to talk about what the pathway is to it.

I’m probably going to do this over a series of two or three episodes but today I want to break down the pyramid so you can see clearly what is most important to be in place in order for resilience to have the room to grow.

If you can imagine a pyramid structure, the bottom foundation in building resilience would be emotional or internal safety. And that’s what we’re going to cover today. 

The next layer up would be self and co-regulation 

The next layer would be resilience and then the top of the pyramid is sustained growth, fulfillment and capacity. 

So let’s dig into the first thing, the very foundation of resilience building - emotional or internal safety. 

Internal, emotional safety is so intrinsic to our ability to be able to handle pressure and stress and not have it swallow us up because if we don’t feel emotionally safe in our environment, with the people we are with, with the expectations we are being held to - the foundation is shaky from the start.

If we don’t have the tools to understand how to find emotional safety, the pyramid towards resilience is not off to a great start.

What I mean by internal, emotional safety is a strong knowledge of self - of our triggers, of the things that fire off our nervous system into fight flight freeze and fawn AND the emotional safety that comes from our environment - from people that feel safe to us, who actively promote our emotional safety and that of others’. So I want to ask you to reflect right here - maybe you want to grab a journal and pause this episode and jot some stuff down… 

WHAT DOES INTERNAL OR EMOTIONAL SAFETY FEEL LIKE FOR YOU?

Think about times where you have felt emotional safety and trust.

Take a moment to experience what that feels like in your body.

Who are you around when you experience emotional safety?

How does the structure or conditions of your work impact your feelings of internal safety?

And adversely - 

What are the triggers or threats that often make you feel emotionally or internally unsafe. We can easily name them in the physical world but what comes up for us when it comes to emotional or psychological threats?

The reason this is so important is because when we are emotionally safe, feeling like we are able to be and respond in a more rational capacity, we are more able to regulate ourselves when difficulty comes. Someone who is exposed to environments or people who don’t feel emotionally or internally safe or someone who isn’t able to understand their own inner triggers and self-doubt  is more likely to have a nervous system that is activated and be out of their window of tolerance - struggling to regulate or respond rationally. Let me share with you a quote about windows of tolerance from Linda Graham, psychotherapist, consultant, trainer on the neuroscience of resilience. She says this:

"The Autonomic Nervous System is central to resilience because it keeps us in a 'window of tolerance. The window of tolerance is a zone where our nervous system is relaxed, calm, alert, engaged. When we are in our window of tolerance, which we hope is most of the time, we feel centered and balanced. Everything is humming along in equilibrium. When we are in our window of tolerance, we can perceive-process-respond to life events with a kind of wise equanimity. We can cope. We can be resilient"

- Linda Graham

So how can we establish a sense of emotional or internal safety as a bedrock for building resilience. My advice is this:

• Self-awareness - understanding the situations, people, conditions that threaten your emotional safety. This is key - the external sources that can contribute to not feeling emotionally safe. And also what is key is noticing and coming to more deeply know how the voice of your own inner protector and how it shows up when you feel vulnerable or you are approaching something emotionally risky. Keeping a close ear to hear when that voice is raised within us rather than our sense of intuition or our inner wisdom.

• Boundaries with others - being clear about your expectations and gathering clarity from others about theirs. Having difficult conversations when you need to instead of settling for ambiguity and feigned comfort. Knowing what lines you aren’t willing to cross, or that you won’t allow others to cross. Being loyal to your needs and the conditions that enable you to feel emotionally safe and making sure that you follow through with those boundaries.

• Curiosity and compassion over shame and blame - shame and blame in most contexts will add fuel to the fire of feeling emotionally unsafe. If we are able to slow ourselves down to welcome curiosity and compassion to the things we feel are difficult or feel emotionally risky, we can gently diffuse those feelings. Not bypass them - we aren’t in the business of pretending we dont feel how we feel, but approaching our feelings with curiosity (i.e. hmm, I’m finding myself really nervous about this conversation I have to have with my boss even though they’re usually really lovely, I wonder what it is about it that I’m worried about” Or “this deadline is feeling really stressful right now - I wonder if this is something I can push back or ask for more support with so that I can approach it more rationally” instead of catastrophising or spiralling into self doubt.) and then dollopping on some compassion instead of blame (i.e. “The last time I had to have a tricky conversation it didn’t go well, it makes perfect sense that this would have me feeling nervous. I know I can do this and be ok and it’s fair that I feel worried about the outcome” or “there’s a lot to get done here and I need to make sure I’m not running myself into the ground. I deserve to feel able to complete this project in a way that isn’t so frantic.” 

• A strong sense of values alignment - being aligned more deeply to our values is going to help steer us in our decision making and give us the satisfaction of integrity that can help us feel emotionally safe. 

Ultimately emotional safety requires our willingness to be able to recognise what feels unsafe, decipher if that risk feels protective in a way that is going to move us towards our goals or keep us from them, come back to our window of tolerance so that we can respond and react to whatever is happening from a place of courage, calm, clarity and curiosity. 

If we are unable to recognise our emotional safety triggers and always feel like we are operating outside of our window of tolerance, we will find difficult situations more and more hard to manage. Our nervous systems won't ever have a proper opportunity to reset and retreat.

It’s up to us to do the work to determine what this aspect of building resilience requires from us. Maybe it’s a keener sense of boundaries. Maybe it’s a deeper understanding of the protective voice that holds us back, maybe being more clear about our values and getting into more alignment with what we believe and do.

This is really important work and a crucial baseline in the trajectory of building resilience. If you are finding yourself or your team struggling to deal with set backs, feedback or disappointment - start here. Start prioritising what emotional or internal safety looks like for you or your team. 

What can you do to help yourself or your people recognise what it feels like to be internally safe so they can turn towards that in times of difficulty or stress. 

As always, I’m here - willing to chat more - you can email me hello@melwiggins.com and if there’s anything I can do to go further with this and support you or your team in resilience building, know that I’d love to do that and you can contact me for more details of what that could look like. I have training workshops and packages for teams and leaders that I’d love to share with you. And if you’re a female business owner keen to develop some of these tools to support the building of your business and you as the business owner, we do all of this in my four month brand builder programme which is open right now and you are welcome to check that out here.

MINDTRASH, OTHER PEOPLE'S OPINIONS AND THE PLAGUE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

You’ve probably heard me mention that this time last year I sent out a survey for female business owners and had a really amazing response to it. I think over 70 women in business gave me feedback on some of the biggest challenges they were facing in their work, what they would love to do more of, what they wish they could do differently etc and it was really revealing for me as a coach to hear those responses. It has actually shaped so much of the work that I do here on this platform, the content I create, and that was the intention - to find out what was troubling female business owners and see if there were ways I could support them for free. 

I asked this question towards the end of the survey - it was this “What is the biggest mind-trash thinking you come up against in your business that you’d love to work through?” So I want to talk about some of the responses here. Here. Mostly because one response came up an unprecedented amount of times.

Number one mindtrash that came up in my 2022 survey was about other people. Answers reveals were things like: Other people are better than me, what will other people think if I do x y and x, I don’t think what I have is of value compared to other people in my industry. Other people other people other people. 

First of all - if this many women in business are saying the same thing - something about this must be very natural. This is our protective nature - the nature that we all have within that wants to remain safe in the pack, to know that we are not at risk of being abandoned or rejected. It’s only normal that when it comes to putting our bravest, most honest work out there that we find it excruciating because we know how exposing it is, how naturally there is judgment that happens (because we all judge or have opinions). Our sense of this perks up when we are doing work that feels deeply personal, so of course our brains want to try and mitigate that risk and help us feel safe again. But no amount of me or anyone else saying “you can’t be concerned with other peoples opinions’ or ‘stay in your lane’ advice is going to soothe us out of that. So I want to offer an alternative frame, rather than asking you to bypass your worries or self-consciousness about other people. 

Those are real feelings, AND those feelings need worked through - because they can be thieves. And when we don’t address it, what this kind of thinking can do is rob us. Here are a couple things that our self-consciousness and hyper awareness of other peoples opinions can steal from us:

• Robs us of the joy of learning and trying. Being overly concerned with other people can really stunt us of the opportunity to give things a go and all the rich learning and joy that can come from that creative process. It can prevent us from the deep lessons and learning curves we will certainly experience when we begin to give things a go, try things out and step into more stretchier territory. It’s a real shame that this happens because it’s the most beautiful (and sometimes scary) place to be - in that centre of trying, creating, seeing if things work, if they resonate. When we are consumed by other peoples hypothetical opinions, we give over that opportunity to grow into our skin.

• Another way we lose when we are consumed by our own self-consciousness and fears about what other people are doing and if they might be doing it better is that we end up shrinking down and playing small. We talk ourselves out of things that come our way that could be good for us, we maybe show up and share about our work but we water things down and keep our head just slightly peeping up above the parapet in case we are too noticed or too visible. This kind of shrunk down version of ourselves is an injustice to us and our gifts and to the people who might really love and enjoy them or be served and helped by them.

If the plague of self-consciousness or the fear of other peoples opinions are running rampant and stealing these things from you - I want you to remember these three things:

Other people aren’t thinking about you as much as you think they are. They really aren’t. If 70% of my survey answers have anything to reveal, it’s that we are all concerned about other peoples opinions and how we measure up and that indicates to me that we are spending more time worried about that threat than it could possibly be true. We are all consumed with our own insceurities and self consciousness to be spending time reeling over our own opinions of someone elses work. If this is true, then maybe we can release that thought and remember that actually, people are kinder and more generous of spirit than we often give them credit for. It’s more likely that someone is looking at your work in admiration right now. It’s more likely that someone is aspiring to the kind of offering that you’re bringing. It’s more likely that someone is watching you show up and having warm thoughts towards you because they know how much it takes to be brave and put yourself out there. What if the opposite was true and you operated from the more generous lens of “everyone is wishing me well out here” or “people are focused on their own thing, I can focus on mine too”. What if that were truth and instead of letting this rob us, we allow it to fuel us. 

The second thing is this: if you’re always loyal to everyone else's hypothetical opinions, how can you be loyal to yourself? If your posture is to be churning over every scenario of what you think people assume about you, what you think people are saying, what you think people want from you - how much space are you really leaving for yourself? For your desires, your creativity, your intuition about what is next, your opinions on your work, your gut sense about what you might like to create or try next? When we are overly consumed by the hypothetical needs or opinions of others, we squash any sense of autonomy over our own creative process. It creates a tension and a division in our loyalty. 

And finally, just to play devils advocate for a second, stay with me - so what if other people do talk, are air-quotes better, do think a certain thing about you? What does it really mean about you? Is it true? Only you really know.

Similarly, what if everyone is praising you, running to your work, eating up everything you do. What does that mean about you? Is it true? Only you really know or get to decide. 

If we over-fixate on the opinions of others - whether they are positive or critical, we are going to be blown by the wind every day, making decisions based on those things. Someone said they like this - we double down. Someone seemed critical or questioning of this thing we made, we shove it to the back - don’t let it see the light of day again. We make things mean more than they are - when at the core, your work is sacred and the only person it should really matter to is you. It should matter if you’re proud of your effort. If you are connected to it. If you are enjoying the process of creating it. If you are committed to it. If it feels valuable to you and how you want to show up in the world and in your work. Once this type of loyalty is embedded in you, you can realise that your main job is to do that - to show up for yourself, be led by your intuition, desires and ease and allow whoever is compelled by this loyal version of you and your work to be drawn in by it when they are ready. And they will. A steady presence, someone who is unapologetically doing their truest work and opening an invitation to join them is always compelling.

The work isn’t to override these feelings of ‘what will other people think’ what if im not as good as other people etc. It’s to notice them, cultivate some compassion for the natural reasons that it occurs and then make a decision to be loyal to yourself as you move through them. 

I hope this brings you a bit of comfort for when other peoples opinions or self-counsciousness arises within you on your creative or business building journey.

5 AREAS TO EMBRACE FEMININE ENERGY IN BUSINESS

Today I want to talk about what it means to embrace the feminine energy in business building. I think it’s important before I start to let you know that we are talking about energy here and not gender so I want to clarify that the feminine and masculine principles I’m talking about are not defined by gender or sexual orientation. They are universal energies, principles, or capacities found in all people, systems, and cultures. 

We all possess feminine and masculine energy within us and the balance of these energies is used in many different aspects of our lives. We rely on both of these areas to show up in different ways and for different means.

It may be that we rely more on the feminine energy for the nurture of parenting or maybe our masculine energy comes through more clearly when we are in activism mode, standing up for justice or making our voice heard for issues that matter. I give these tiny non-exhaustive examples to show that both energies are important and have a lot to bring to the table. This isn’t a masculinity bashing podcast episode but an opportunity to explore what each side brings, and particularly to note how defaulted to the masculine we often find ourselves as women running businesses. 

Because business and entrepreneurship has been largely forged and dominated by men, it’s only natural that there is high masculine energy around it, which can make it really difficult for women - especially women who tend to have strong feminine energy - to feel like it is really for them or that they are cut out for it. And yet - we know that any overextended energy that isn’t balanced out will often lead to toxicity. And that’s what we are seeing now in the world of business - men and women who have defaulted too hard into the masculine energy of business and it has led to unprecedented burnout, clambering for status, unhealthy leadership, win at all costs type of ways of working.

For years in business, the masculine energy has typically been held up as being more powerful and effective. The masculine energy pushes through, is assertive, wants to take control of situations. As women (and as men), we can easily see how the qualities of the feminine energy are present in our personal lives, however it still feels like it isn’t welcome in our professional lives or in our work. Our late-stage capitalist culture has overvalued traditionally masculine energy, while denying or undervaluing feminine capacities. So I want to talk through how our feminine energy can actually be some of the most powerful contributions to business right now - contributions that will include a more collaborative, empathetic, creative and receptive way of working. Ways of working that are better for everyone.

I also think it’s important to say that while too much masculine energy in our business can lead to all kinds of problems - it doesn’t mean we don’t need it to be strong negotiators in our businesses, to have clear direction, to look for logic and reason, to implement focus, integrity, structure and stability. All of these qualities of more masculine energy can really benefit us in our work. But an overextension of these and a negligence of the feminine can lead to being mechanical, arrogant, insensitive, power-hungry, and empty in our sense of purpose. 

The feminine energy brings adaptability, intuition, creativity, flow, sharing, patience, vulnerability, empathy, inclusion, and trust to our work. But when we lean on the feminine too hard we can see how it can also lead to immaturity in how we run our businesses -  being overly sentimental, hyper-dependent, reliant on praise, unfocused or irrational.

While masculine energy is oriented towards action, decisiveness, competition, productivity and profit, we are definitely seeing a shift in values coming from the feminine as becoming more important to the wellbeing of us all when it comes to operating a business. When we overextend into the masculine and forget the importance of the feminine energy in business we are giving up some really incredible opportunities to connect, be intuitive, have a greater impact and take people with us.

there are some elements of business that I believe deserve a much stronger dose of the feminine in business building:

1. Conflict: The feminine energy is the best to use when it comes to handling conflict (this can be applied both with internal conflict in yourself or with your work or team mates or clients/customers) - listening carefully, staying in the discomfort of challenge instead of racing to find a quick fix. 

2. Goal Setting: It’s also hugely important to exercise the feminine energy in business when it comes goal setting - staying open and receptive to what matters most as your work evolves instead of fixated on arbitrary goals or targets.

3. Selling: When it comes to selling - being invitational and understanding of the dynamic of potential client/customer vs business dynamic means that you allow relationships of trust to be built instead of having narrow sales focuses that may pay off in the short term but might not lead to repeat or happy customers. The feminine quality keeps a wider perspective around selling and is likely to be curious about: is what I have what the other party really needs? Is this exchange win-win situation? 

4. Generating Ideas: The feminine energy wants us to keep open to being playful about how things can be done. It is open to new perspectives and ideas rather than looking for the most logical or obvious course of action. It is thinking about the bigger picture, greater good again, rather than acting on impulse or shortcuts.

5. Time Management: The way men see time is linear. They go from A to B because that's how they are biologically designed - they have 24 hour hormone cycles. The way that women live is different. We are cyclical creatures. And we have to honor our rhythms. As women, we naturally have waves. We'll be on fire, but then we need some Netflix in the middle of the day. Men tend to operate in 24-hour periods. But women tend to view time over a much longer cycle so embracing that feminine energy can be really useful when working on bigger projects that require more time to develop and land - not feeling that pressure to have the whole thing executed in an unrealistic time frame.

6. Pressure: If the masculine energy is too heavy when pressure strikes in business, the impulses will be to be too self-critical or even harsh with others who might be involved in your work, however if you stay in contact with the feminine energy you are more likely to be able to access self-compassion and understanding.

What we want is to be able to know what areas of the masculine and feminine to bring with us and assert when we need it. Maybe we need to bring more masculine energy to our sense of value when it comes to pricing our work - being decisive and practical about it and then weave the feminine into how we show up and sell it by bringing a receptive, intuitive invitational feel to our offers? You see how they can work so well in tandem and balance with each other to make our businesses stronger?

When we learn how to balance the masculine and feminine within ourselves we become magnetic - there is a sacred union of health between both of these energies that can really serve us well. 

When we default to running our businesses with too much of the masculine energy we can quickly become burned out as we neglect our self-care, overwork ourselves, and forget to experience pleasure, flow and ease.

In reality we are all a combination of both energies, however most of us default to a preference in business and because the system was built in a masculine space, it’s that. And so many amazing women in business are resisting their feminine energy and battling so much imposter syndrome and burnout and many men are denying the feminine energy they could be accessing and depleting themselves and feeling like frauds. 

If you feel a bit impostery or disconnected as a business owner or as an entrepreneur and you feel you are struggling to fully embody your true authentic self in your business, understand that it’s probably because you’re being told you have to be a certain way and are leaning too hard into that default masculine business energy that we’ve been sold as the only way to be a business person. Please know that you do have a choice and you can create a business that embraces both the Feminine and the Masculine energy and use them to build a healthy, regenerative, purposeful business. In fact, it’s important that you do.

5 NEW BUSINESS MANTRAS FOR 2023

Over the last few weeks I’ve been ruminating - allowing thoughts and ideas to come when they’re ready and I usually find when I have a bit more space or margin, I can sense certain things taking shape naturally. I notice that I keep coming back to certain themes within myself, in my processes and thoughts and I notice those things appearing or being talked about more frequently in my calls with groups and clients so I thought I’d share some of them with you today.

I’m calling them Mantras - 5 ideas or ways of being that I really want to hold onto as I run my business and do my work this year. Some of these have been brewing for a while and are finally landing in my head and my heart and I want to offer them to you so you can think on them as well.

The first one is this:

Trust is paramount (in yourself and your clients)

An idea that has never steered me wrong is that I already know what I want. I already know what I want to do, how I want to do it, how I want to develop my work, what I want to earn, who I want to work with and how valuable my offers are. I already know it. And I believe that you know it too for you. However - if it was that simple, we’d all be out there doing it. My intuition is the more innate, true part of me and it has so much wisdom for me but it gets clogged up like a sink with fear, with other peoples opinions, with the noise of social media, with my own protective habits. All of this can clog my intuition but it’s there waiting for me to listen to it because it is trustworthy and it won’t push. My responsibility to myself this year is to make space for it. To face the clogs and dig them out of the way so that my own desires and knowing can flow. 

This goes for my clients or any potential clients too. As a coach, I want to fully trust my clients to show up for themselves and for our work together. I position myself as a reliable, trustworthy person and believe the same for them. I believe they have full autonomy over their decision making and I am not here to cajole or manipulate them into doing anything outside of their own knowing. I trust them to do that clog digging work with me for themselves and operate in their fullest sense of power. Anything less than that is babysitting or codependency and I am not interested in coaching dynamics like that. I totally trust anyone interested in working with me to make the best decisions for themselves about when and how they do that and am only willing to work with people who really trust themselves to begin coaching from a place of empowerment. 

The second mantra is this:

Growth is not measured by numbers, but by depth of trust and impact in your work

I am determined this year to only measure growth and progress through the lens of trust and impact. I feel like this goes against all the traditional advice to be checking numbers and figures and dont get me wrong - those are important too. I’m not working for free - I value myself and my skills too much to neglect the financial side of my business. Make no mistake, I want to earn a living from my work and I do, but I’m no longer going to be sneakily distracted by numbers, followers, subscribers and sign ups. The real metric that matters for me this year is the level of trust I am building in those that have not yet worked with me. Trust that reflects all that I talked about in the first point. Trust that I am someone who values them, trust that I am the right companion to support them in their work. Trust that I have the skills to help them free themselves from restrictive or punitive ways of working. Trust that I can help them to build a truly aligned business. I’ll know this by the conversations I have in DM’s, by the responses to emails, by the good discussions on free strategy calls, and maybe by how many of those people feel empowered to join me in doing this work.

And I want to grow the impact of my work - the depth of which my clients are showing up for themselves and truly finding more freedom and joy in their businesses. I love nothing more than seeing how the tools and resources we use together have lasting impact in their work. I see them staying aligned, bringing in brilliant customers and clients, being loyal to themselves, making hard decisions, optimizing their time and looking after themselves. A lot of people often come to my work through the feedback or sharing of my clients - they tell their friends or colleagues and I love this. It means so much to be able to help people this way.

Thirdly comes this. This year I am focused on

Creating a body of work rather than churning out content.

I want everything substantial that I create to be adding to a body of work that people can utilize or dive into at any time. Relevant, supportive, practical and provoking. I don’t want to get caught up on the content train where I have to perform for a platform that is insatiable for new stuff or stimulation. Social media platforms are noisy and distracting and it’s hard to hear all of the nuance amidst the advice and I love nuance and context so I don’t want to show up there with soundbites that can’t be unpacked with care. I also think it’s pointless to serve up really huge concepts on social media because there is rarely any time for integration or embedding of them. We simply can’t digest all of the well meaning goodness that we are hit with as we scroll. We get a second of a hit of dopamine when we read something that is important or true but then we pass by it and don’t get the chance to think about how it could really apply, so this platform, this podcast and my emails are going to be where I create my body of work that reflects what I really want to say and social media will be a little library snapshot of all of that and point my audience back to here. Viewing what I create as a body of work gives it value for me the creator - knowing that someone can find my work and go back to the beginning of this podcast and listen through as much as they want really helps me concentrate on providing honest, authentic and meaningful content. It also gives me freedom to use social media a bit more playfully, because you know I love a good play on there. 

The fourth mantra that I’m focusing on is in relation to how I show up and offer my work and its this: Everything is an invitation, never an expectation. My friend Michelle taught me this expression and I use it daily to lesson the icky feelings that come up when I think about how to market myself and make sure people know about my work. It can really be this simple. You are always invited - invited to come along, to listen, to contribute to the conversation, to comment, to sign up, to invest but it’s never an expectation. I don’t know you, your circumstances, your capacity, your financial situation, your pressures so I want to approach all of the offers that I have with that knowledge and compassion. Back to trust - I truly believe that anyone contemplating working with me on their business has the autonomy and deserves the respect of never feeling like joining me feels pressured. I want my marketing and selling to feel invitational and so I will leave plenty of space for those decisions, I will follow up with grace, I will invite regularly so people don’t miss it (because people always miss it) and I will be loyal to myself and make sure that I am sending those invitations out and giving people the opportunity to join in in what I have or will create. Always an invitation, never an expectation.

And finally this:

I don’t have to do this alone

I know that my temptation will always be to keep any struggles I have to myself - to not reach out or ask for help. I know my pride can overshadow what I know to be true - that doing any kind of important work to me is always better shared and that there are communities around me that will meet me with support, encouragement, ideas and love. I may be the person most invested in my own work, closest to it and most emotionally and physically connected to it but I know I’m not alone in the similar issues and questions that I have and I have experienced the power of a community of supportive women so many times in my work that I have seen to really show up and cheer each other on and listen to what each other is going through that I want to make sure to activate this for myself as the year progresses. I want that for you as well because I know how powerful it truly is. When we release some of the insecurities we may have of worrying about other women being competitive or of thinking that no one will care - we can really find amazing connection that can propel us forward knowing that us having each others back is part of building a different model of business - one much more interested in the greater good and the flourishing of all people rather than viewing business as something to tightly hold onto.

So those are my five mantras:

• Trust is paramount (in yourself and your clients)

• Growth is not measured by numbers, but by depth of trust and impact in your work

• Create a body of work rather than churning out content

• Everything is an invitation, never an expectation

• I don’t have to do this alone

I wonder if any of these feel important for you to explore or take up for yourself and your work this year? I’d love to know if they are - so do feel free to DM me on instagram @melwiggins or to reach out on email hello@melwiggins.com and let me know.

And if you are interested in working together this year to help move your business and work into a place of alignment with your values, and of profit and purpose, my invitation to you is to have a look at my Brand Builder Programme. We have a beautiful community of female business owners in there that are working through the really powerful resources and tools that I’ve put together that will bring so much more ease and clarity to your work and over the life of the fourth month programme you’ve got me with you every step of the way. The link to find out more is in the shownotes of this episode and I’d be more than happy to chat with you about whether this could be the right next step for you in developing your business and you as the business owner. You are always invited.