It is an understatement to say that my business changed when my daughter was born five years ago. But as I reflect back, what appeared like a need for a new business model was really a deeper need for a mindset shift to gratitude and play that would allow me to energetically align my next phase of life and business.
I started feeling the need for a shift when I decided I wanted to invest in growing a family life as much as I wanted to have success in my business. Up until this decision, my energy was largely devoted to creating success with my business and serving my clients. Success for me was meeting my financial goals and doing whatever I could to help my clients feel better and have less physical pain by implementing more movement in their lives. Success looked like clients feeling better when they left my office, having repeat clients, and recurring revenue. I didn’t realize it until after the fact, but my focus on making money by focusing on “fixing problems” was burning me out and draining my energy. I was starting to lose my sense of joy in my love of movement, and starting to feel burnout creeping in. That was a big red flag that I needed a shift to reconnect and up-level my mindset, model, and energy!
When I got pregnant in 2016, my energy immediately started to shift and I knew it was going to be a catalyst for a shift in my business as well. I started preparing for a break and shifting my focus to taking care of myself and preparing for new responsibilities and experiences. This is also when I realized that my business model and my mindset needed to shift in order to grow with me into this new space in my life.
I knew I needed more than a new model or a new mindset. I needed new energy...one that re-inspired my sense of joy, gratitude, and play in my life and business.
My business model was the first piece to shift, although in retrospect, shifting my model and mindset was the same movement and made space for new energy! At the time, I had a brick-and-mortar private movement therapy business and I had just finished my coaching certification and started integrating coaching with my clients. I saw in the coaching model an opportunity to shift the focus of my own work and my clients’ results into a new space, based in this new energy of joy, opportunity, and potential. I also saw an opportunity to start to scale my methods out of the in-person one-on-one space so I could start to systematize my method and empower my client’s self-change process.
My goals for my business were to coach less, but more effectively and with inspired energy. And to create coaching systems that would support my clients’ self-change process and help me grow my business, thought leadership, and income without adding more hours to my plate. The first shift was to bring my husband into the business to take over the movement therapy in-person clients and then create new online content systems to support new growth in my clients’ self-change process. You can listen to the podcast on this transition here.
But the big energy shift came when my daughter arrived. All of a sudden my whole energy shifted to her. And more specifically, I dropped into a different kind of energy in myself- one of awe, gratitude, and joy coupled with complete exhaustion. Even though I had planned a six-month maternity leave from clients, I was still running my business behind the scenes and tried to keep working and “pushing forward” and working in the same way. But it quickly became clear that the kind of “pushing and hustle” that I had done in the past to create success was no longer a match for this new energy I was embodying in my life. And trying to switch between the two created stress and inner conflict between “being with her” and feeling like “I should be working”. I realized I wanted alignment between this expanded energy in my life and my business. And I needed to shift my mindset in my work as well. All of the changes of the business model I had been reaching towards intuitively had a mindset and energy root.
I thought becoming a mom would make things harder, but it actually clarified what really mattered for me and paved the way for claiming a new aligned path in my coaching business.
I wanted to bring the experience of being in the moment, feeling deep love and gratitude, and focusing on the intention of joy and creativity that I felt with my daughter into my business. I wanted to make more space for joy and movement in my life and business. For me, this meant shifting from a “therapy” to a “coaching” model and allowing the energy flow I felt being with my daughter to shift the energy and possibilities I held for my clients. The more I yielded to love and connection, gratitude, joy, and enjoying just being with my daughter, the more I was able to help my clients claim this energy in their lives as well.
This is how the “Movement Creator’s Movement” was born for me. I realized that the real secret sauce for me in having holistic success as an entrepreneur in the transformation space is that I get to create my movement! I get to keep transforming and shifting as my life changes. And “being” in my creative flow of change, joy and gratitude is the aligned embodied energy practice that keeps me in integrity with my values and inspires my clients, and creates movement in my business!
Dawn Strom
Dawn is a Gyrotonic Master Trainer, Movement Therapist, Coach and Creative Human who loves envisioning unique possibilities and trailblazing new paths. She works with holistic minded, ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs to help them RECLAIM deep meaningful purpose, down time and joy.
Dawn Strom
Dawn is a Gyrotonic Master Trainer, Movement Therapist, Coach and Creative Human who loves envisioning unique possibilities and trailblazing new paths. She works with holistic minded, ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs to help them RECLAIM deep meaningful purpose, down time and joy.
Sign up to get a weekly roundup of new articles
>> YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
How to Envision Sales As Service and Transformation
