Do Business the Feminine Way
When you think about the qualities that go into building a successful business, things like strategic thinking, self-discipline, decisiveness, efficiency, focus might come to mind. When I asked Chat GPT to give me the top attributes of masculine energy, these were all on that list.
When I asked Chat GPT about the top attributes of feminine energy, some of the words that stuck out to me that have been most important in growing my businesses are intuition, flexibility, reflection, desire and belief.
There’s a lot of masculine energy that comes into building a business, but today I want us to consider how we can bring the feminine energy into our businesses and lives.
It’s not that masculine energy is bad, but many of our systems and structures are infused with a lot of negative masculine. Even if they contain positive masculine attributes, we need more balance with the feminine. We need both masculine, but many of us were taught, or see around us, all the masculine stuff, and do not value, or even learn, the feminine pieces.
We will be officially launching the Feminine Productivity course soon that helps you bring more feminine energy into your business and day.
For now I want to share more about implementing in a new way in your business. I’m going to use the example of how I weave feminine into building a course, but what I share will work for any goal — filling your private practice, writing a book, growing your social media, landing a new big client.
Listen to those kind, gentle intuitive nudges.
If we can listen to our intuition, we have found our path to a result. The feminine is subtle, sometimes quiet. She is waiting for the right time, not because she is scared, but because she is wise and just knows. She grows to the rhythm of her seasons.
Three years ago, I dreamt about the name of the course, Feminine Productivity. I loved it. I knew that was the name the second it rolled off my tongue. I bought the url. The same knowing that delivered the name, kept telling me not now whenever I sat down to write. I did not always listen. I made a workshop with the name. It was our least attended ever. I forced myself to write, but no new words came.
Then a few months ago, at a retreat, I started getting whispers of what to include. I matched the whispers with extra time to capture them, and more extra time to be quiet enough to hear.
A week or so ago, I was questioning what I was doing up so late writing. The behavior looked similar to a hustle and push mentality that has not resonated in a long time — but it did not feel that way. Instead, I was filled with excitement and purpose. I felt an internal urgency to communicate the concepts of Feminine Productivity right away. It reminded me of giving birth, and that was my intuition showing me that it was time. I was in the season of making. And I was up for it because I had just come out of a season of rest.
What does this look like in practice?
For me it’s quiet mornings that are nurturing to me. I spend time quieting my mind and connecting to my intuition. I go between meditation, stretching, journaling, and I love pulling an Oracle card.
I have a waterproof pad in the shower, because I so often get intuitive hits there.
I don’t pack my days, because it’s harder to hear or see those intuitive nudges when I’m super busy all the time. I slow down on purpose. I take time between meetings and tasks when I can.
I eat food that literally keeps my channels open.
I check in with my intuition before I plan for anything. When I sit down to plan my week, I take time to breathe and get quiet. When I’m about to plan a big project, I often pull an Oracle card.
Wondering about how to fit intuition into your own planning process? I’ll teach you how to do that in Take Control of Your Day. If you are tired from juggling a bajillion things, you should sign up for this free workshop.
Establish belief.
Mindset is really important in business. Every business coach I have ever worked with teaches one part business and one part mindset.
In the masculine model, we spent time doing things based on measurement and metrics.
The feminine bases choices on feeling.
I was on a call this morning with a client. She has told me many times how good she is at what she does, and how she is different from her competitors. She said exactly what she was going to do this week to focus on new sales, but there was no wind in her sail. Her energy felt flat. I asked her to tell me what a client would say about working with her. The positive energy and beautiful words flowed, and we made it her mantra.
Now she still has sales goals, but she starts with that mantra then moves to the task at hand.
What does this look like in practice?
Here are some specific actions that weave in the feminine when I’m trying to follow through on a project or plan.
Write down what’s holding you back. Reflection and contemplation are feminine. Write down what you’re nervous about and what’s feeling hard or overwhelming. Then identify one thing you can do to counteract those fears. This is where a tapping session, or yoga class, or understanding of your human design serves your work.
Even if I spend 30 minutes writing what’s holding me back, I gain time because those obstacles can get solved instead of keeping me in procrastination mode or plowing through and making something that’s not great (that’s a waste!)
Hype yourself up. Write a short (1–3 paragraph) review of your own work, as if you were your own biggest fan. Read previous compliments from clients for inspiration. What makes your work great? Why should someone work with you? There’s a lot of faith in the feminine — faith that your initial idea is amazing, faith it will all work out. When we get into the doing, it is so easy to lose that connection. This practice helps you feel it again.
Connect to others who have been before you. Read a book or listen to a podcast about someone who has already done what you are doing. Borrow someone else’s belief, while you build yours.
Feed desire.
Those intuitive nudges are powerful and the best way I have found forward. When we have that initial intuitive hit, knowing, nudge, one could also call it a desire. In my experience, it’s the desire piece that makes a big difference in how a goal goes, and it’s the fleeting part.
When an idea or next step comes intuitively into our hearts and guts, it’s strong and clear and fueled by desire. Let’s say you get the hit that now is the time to make the course or write the book. The desire makes that almost seem easy.
Then 10 minutes later our brain kicks in. All of a sudden, we are already behind, overwhelmed, and it does not seem so fun anymore. We keep pushing and it only gets worse. Our brain is trying to protect us from change, which it sees as unsafe.
It’s our job to keep the desire alive and get back to the place of ease and flow. Remember how I stayed up late writing the course? Weaving in the feminine was the key to feeling focused and efficient (there’s that balance!)
What does this look like in practice?
Imagining the best case scenario. Before I make a plan, I write about my desired outcome. I write about how the outcome would impact my life, my family, those I’m helping. I really build the desire, I cultivate it in this story I’m telling. I go back and write it in the first person. I read what I wrote before I sit down to work. It’s challenging to do something for future you. This exercise brings your ideal future into the present.
Feel the benefits of the result. This practice is about really feeling the outcome you want. I close my eyes and feel what it feels like to be done and have achieved the result I want. Sometimes I have to say it out loud a few times, so I can really get that energy of desire. This exercise helped me understand how flat some of my “wishes” had become, and how important it is to my motivation and focus to really feel that quality of desire.
Clear energy. I find desire often gets squished by other areas of my life that are not getting my focus at that precise moment. So for example, I sit down to make slides for the course I’m working on, and the mess around me is super distracting. When I take 10 minutes to tidy it up, the energy of my work space is lighter. Or it’s time to be creative and something with one of my kids is weighing on me. The feminine art of clearing that energy makes those ideas come so much faster.
I hope that what you are seeing is where the feminine needs some time and space, and how these things don’t take extra time — they are actually making us time.
If you’re curious about this process of bending time and bringing more balance to your life (even if you are juggling too many things), I’ll teach you how to do that in Take Control of Your Day. Sign up for this free workshop here.
