114. Trusting Your Intuition & the Spirit of Your Business with Olivia Bowen
So much of building a business comes down to strategy: the plan, the offer, the metrics. But sometimes you can have all of that figured out and still feel stuck, unsure why a certain part of your business feels harder than it should. If you’re open to getting a little woo-woo with me, this episode is going to give you a different way of looking at it.
This week I'm joined by Olivia Bowen, a coach who blends strategy, intuition, energy work, and spirituality in a way that I was initially pretty skeptical of but came to really love. Olivia did a full energy reading on my business, walking through each chakra, or energy center, and sharing what she picked up on. We talk through what the spirit of my business is trying to tell me, and how that actually translates to the day-to-day of running a business.
Whether energy work is completely your thing or something you've never explored, this conversation goes beyond the reading itself and into the deeper questions our businesses need us to ask. It’s about how we make decisions, trust ourselves, and grow as business owners. By the end, you'll have a new lens for figuring out where your business needs attention next, and permission to trust yourself when the answer doesn't come from logic alone.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to recognize the spirit of your business and what it is trying to tell you.
The role of each energy center, or chakra, and how it connects to different aspects of your business.
Why trusting your intuition is a critical part of making aligned decisions as a business owner.
How reflecting on the energy of your business can reveal what to focus on next.
The value of stepping back to gain perspective instead of relying solely on strategy or logic.
Ways to apply energy-based insights practically to your business, even if this is completely new to you.
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Olivia’s Biz Chakra Assessment and Business Chakra Guide
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hi, mom friends. Today's episode is so much fun. It's a little different than our usual conversations, and honestly, that's part of why I'm so excited to share it with you. If you've been listening to this podcast for a little while, you know that I'm on my own journey of woo. And as I've talked about it, so many of you have reached out to share your own journey into the spiritual world, energy work, human design, into what I call the woo. And so I know you will love this conversation.
I met Olivia Bowen a few years ago in DC at a networking event I hosted, and we immediately clicked. Olivia's a coach who blends strategy, intuition, energy work, which you'll hear about, and spirituality in a way that I initially, honestly, found outside of what my logical brain could comprehend. If you've been listening, if you know my work, you know that I tend to lean heavily on mindset, psychology, systems, and practical tools. So when Olivia talked about doing energetic readings for businesses many years ago, I was curious but skeptical. And fast forward to now, as I'm exploring realms of strategy outside of my own comfort zone, she came back around and not only led an awesome workshop for my clients, she did an entire energy reading for my business.
So, in this conversation, Olivia walks through each energy center or chakra and shares what she picks up on about my business. We talk about everything from messaging and creativity to pricing, intuition, receiving support, and what it means to trust yourself as a business owner. Whether energy work is completely in your wheelhouse or something you've never explored before, I think you'll really enjoy listening to this conversation. Definitely come in with an open mind and be ready to apply some of the concepts that we talk about within my business to your own journey.
What I found most valuable wasn't limited to the actual reading itself, though it's super interesting the way we talk about it and recount that experience. But it was the way it opened up new questions, new perspectives, and really a deeper conversation about how we make decisions in our businesses. And if you're someone who has ever wondered whether there's more to building a business than strategy alone, I think you're going to find this conversation really interesting because the answer is yes.
And if you're feeling stuck, a conversation around the energy of your business could really provide clarity and a spark of inspiration on how to get unstuck, what actions to take, what to focus on in your business. There are so many things we could be doing in our business at any given time. So sometimes it's really nice to take a hint from the energy of our business on what to do next or how to grow or what to focus on.
So you can connect with Olivia and do an energy reading of your own by going to the show notes, jenna.coach/114. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Jenna: Hi, Olivia. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Olivia: So excited to be here, Jenna.
Jenna: Yeah. So we did a fun little thing the other day, and Olivia invited me to do an energy reading on my business, which was something that I would have never expected myself to do, even probably a year ago or even six months ago. Let's be honest. And I thought it was so much fun and so interesting and so helpful for a lot of reasons. And so I want to talk about that today on the podcast and really get into what an energy reading on your business is, where it came from, what are some of the elements of it, all those good things.
So I would love for you to share a little bit about how these energy readings came to be and maybe a little bit of background for all of my folks who have no idea what an energy reading is, aka me six months ago, all of the baby woos out there who are just dipping their toe in it. Can you talk to us a little bit about where this came from and what it is?
Olivia: I love the baby woos, and I actually remember talking to you about this a year ago. And you're like, "Oh, okay. Well, good for you."
Jenna: Yeah, I was like, "Great, that's awesome."
Olivia: But you were so encouraging, but it was not your thing. So, yeah, I work with the energy of the business itself. So I'm a trained Reiki practitioner, I'm a trained coach, and about a year and a half ago, I was driving home from dropping my kids off at school. And I had this idea about doing Reiki on the business itself. So Reiki on the entrepreneur, sure. That makes sense. There's a physical body, there's an energy body. And Reiki, it's from the Japanese tradition. It is a form of energy healing.
But I kept getting this idea that I had to do it on the spirit of the business. And I was really annoyed that I kept having this idea that I had to do Reiki on the spirit of the business because it sounded a little bonkers even to me who is deep in my woo journey. And so I was driving home from school, and I just talk out loud to my spirit guides. And so I'm in the car. I probably looked like I was on the phone. I'm like, "All right, guys, if you want me to do this, then just tell me how on earth I would do this because I don't know, there is no body." And immediately my spirit guides were like, "Oh, we're so glad you asked." Darn it.
And so what they instructed me to do is paint the chakras on a piece of paper. So I take out my watercolors and I paint the seven chakras and we can get into what those are and how they correspond to the business. And then I use my pendulum and my hands and I just feel into how the energy of each chakra is moving or not. And then I've also tuned into what each chakra corresponds to. So if the pendulum is moving and the energy feels good, I have the ability to just actually feel the energy physically, then that tells me that area of the business is doing really well and doesn't need extra support.
But sometimes if the pendulum is not moving, if the energy feels stagnant or just still and at rest, that might be the business saying, "We could use a little extra help here." So it's just a different entry point so we can bypass our thinking mind on our business because we could think so many things about our businesses. So this is a way to bypass that and see what your business itself might be asking for.
Jenna: I love that because so often, we overthink as moms and humans and women, we overthink everything. And there's so much that you could be focusing on in your business. And actually, that leads to a ton of overwhelm because we have access to so many gurus out there who have that magic bullet and they have the blueprint and they have the thing and you should be doing this and you should be doing that. And everyone is right and everyone is wrong at the same time, right? And it's so overwhelming. And so I love this idea of, hey, let's let go of all of that, at least momentarily, and just tap into the actual business.
So can we go back a few steps and maybe just go through a little bit of the chakras? Because that was new to me entirely. And talk about maybe a little bit of how this works on the human body for anyone who doesn't know, because I still don't know because I haven't done that, and then how you specifically translated it to business and what that looks like.
Olivia: Yeah, and before I even get to that, there's one concept that I mentioned, but I think I should clarify a little bit, which is I believe that your business has its own spirit, its own energetic signature, which is so helpful because it's so easy for so many of us to conflate ourselves and our business. So if our business is doing well, we're doing well. If our business is not doing well, we are not doing well. And so this gives just a little more distance as well, so that we can look a little more objectively at what our business needs, so that it can support the rest of our life.
Jenna: That's such a good point because it is really hard, especially early on in the business, to not take it personal. And if we can move away from taking things personal in our business, not making it mean anything about us, not making the results mean anything about us, not making any of the steps being difficult mean anything about us, we will get so much further. I feel like I just talked about a concept similar to this, well, not similar to this necessarily, but decoupling ourselves when I talk about being scientists.
I want us to be scientists in the business, which is maybe the same thing as energy, but maybe different, I don't know. In my mind, they're different practices, but then I'm like, wait, energy is science. But we look, a scientist doesn't get to the end, they have a hypothesis of what they think is going to work. They test it, they do it. And when they don't get the result that they thought they were going to get, they're curious. And they're like, "Oh, well, let me look, and let me evaluate, and let me see what I need to change next time." And they don't make it mean anything about them. And I think the more we can do that in our business, the more we will have fun, the more that our business will love it, the more that we'll stick with it, and we'll learn what doesn't work so that we can learn more about what does work for us. So I think that's a beautiful point. I digress, but I love that.
Olivia: No, so glad you said that. And I actually see magic and science as pretty much the same thing. So much magic we just haven't figured out the science to prove it yet. I love science, I love data collection, I love all of that. And then the last piece before I get into the chakras is I also believe that everyone's business chose them. So just having the idea for your business, you are already chosen. You have already been picked. Your business needs a human being to help bring it into earthly terrestrial form and it picked you for a reason. And just remembering that when the experiments aren't going the way we thought they were going to go, can be just really reassuring because it's on your team. You already have a business partner in your business.
Jenna: Totally. And that makes me think, a little digression again, of the book by Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic. I don't remember anything about that book except for this one story she tells where ideas are alive and they fly or swim or whatever, and they implant themselves into a human. And if that human is not ready to bring it to life or they choose not to or they don't, then they'll leave that human and they'll go to somebody else. Ideas are this actual being that wants to come alive and they try and find their host. And I love the story. I did a terrible job of telling it, but I would recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic because it's exactly what you said, that these ideas, they want to come alive and they find us for a reason. And so we got to bring them to life.
Olivia: Okay. Should we dig into the chakras?
Jenna: Yes, please.
Olivia: Okay. So I like to start at the base, start at the root, and then we will work up to the crown. And the root chakra is right at the base of your torso. This is both in the physical for a human and for your business. This is a sense of safety, security, foundation, very much that rootedness. So if you're feeling untethered, if you're feeling unmoored, there might be something going on with your root chakra. And if people are curious, you can go so deep because different chakras have different colors associated, crystals associated, tarot cards associated. But for this, we'll just keep it to the essence of each chakra because I think that's really all you need to know to do this work on your business.
Jenna: So for the root chakra, what does that align with in business terms? If you had maybe less energy movement, more stagnation in your root chakra, what would we then look at or work on in the business?
Olivia: It could mean any number of things, so this is where we also bring in our human discernment and intuition. It might, sometimes I ask people, is this the business that you want to have? Sometimes we start businesses that sound so smart or that our parents said, "You know what you would be so good at?" I'm like, "Yeah, I would be good at that." But if it's not what you really want to be doing, if you're not the right fit for that work, that might show up in the root chakra.
It could also be something like not having the right systems in place for your business to grow. So once we find where the energy is asking for a little more attention, then we get to be really curious investigators. So those are two of the big flags that I see on the root chakra that it's just not the right business, or it might just need some refinement, or you don't have the structures, the actual foundation in place to welcome in more work.
Then we move up to the sacral chakra. This is the womb space for us mamas. And so it makes sense that this is the seat of creativity. So if your business is asking for support here, it might be saying, "Can we get a little more creative with our offers? Could we get a little funkier with what we are creating so that it differentiates us from others?" It could also be asking for a little more play in the creation. So are you just cranking things out using AI because you feel you need to be plastering stuff on Instagram? Or are you bringing joy, playfulness to that work?
Jenna: Also, I know you mentioned this and I just pulled up the picture of when we did this together, and there's colors associated with each of these as well. So the root is more of a deep red. Sacral is orange. And then the colors sort of get softer as you move up.
Olivia: Well, it follows the rainbow. It's a familiar pattern.
Jenna: Science, man.
Olivia: Because energies have frequencies.
Jenna: There you go. There you go.
Olivia: So the next one is your solar plexus, and this is one, so I read the energy of the business, sometimes I read the energy of the entrepreneur herself. This is in both cases where I often see the need for a little more support because the solar plexus is the seat of your personal power. So if you are still wary of fully owning your gifts, of really stepping into your tremendous power, that might show up in the sacral chakra. In the business, this can look like imposter syndrome. It can look like fear of being seen. It can look like underpricing, all of these ways that we are abdicating our power or not fully claiming it.
Jenna: Yeah, I love this one because there's so much hesitation that can come in for moms who are new at starting a business. And not that this would be something that is to bring up shame for anyone or to highlight weaknesses or anything like that, but I think it's just an important piece to be able to say, "Hey, let's shift it and step into power. There's something going on that has you hesitating. Let's work through that and show you that this is something that you can do. You're not an imposter. This is something that you're an expert at."
I love this one specifically too because I think that there's so much power that comes into starting a business, in the evolution of who we become as our business evolves. I think they're so intertwined.
Olivia: Oh, yeah. I mean, our businesses are spiritual experiences. I think motherhood and entrepreneurship are two epic portals to bring up all your stuff that you have been here, you chose this trip to Earth School to work on these things and it's just going to shine a light on every last piece.
Jenna: Yeah, yeah, the good, bad, and the ugly. And I will say that it is similar to motherhood, so worth it. The process of becoming and evolving as a human when you have these mirrors that are shown to you and you are forced to work on things, you are forced to grow your confidence in ways that maybe corporate never asked you to do. You are forced to step into your power in ways that are uncomfortable. Same thing with motherhood. It's just so worth it, the evolution.
Olivia: And I love that you highlighted no shame here or in any of these. It's always, one, it's a snapshot. So it's, it can change, it will change over time. It's just giving you a reading on what's happening right now. And sometimes patterns persist. So for me, the solar plexus chakra, man, for a year, this was the one that was really asking for support. And I could feel it in my physical body, and it would come through when I did the energy work. And it just kept inviting me to go deeper and deeper into, where am I not fully claiming my power? And if I look at where I am now compared to where I was when I started this work, I'm like, "Oh, I thought I was doing it," and now I see how far I've come, and I know I've got a lot farther to go too.
Jenna: It's a data point to get curious about. It doesn't give us all the answers. It actually doesn't give us any answers necessarily. There are no answers out there. There are no right answers out there, let's say. But it does give you something to look at and be curious about and to work on, which I love.
Olivia: So we move from the power of the solar plexus up to the heart chakra. This is green. I happen to be wearing my green shirt today, bringing you guys a little extra love. And not surprisingly, this is all about love, authentic connection, resonance with your ideal clients, your soul clients. This purpose can come in here. So if this is asking for more support, it might mean that you're afraid of rejection, that's still feeling really personal.
Or it could also show up as overgiving, which is a lens of being afraid of rejection, right? I'm going to just give and give and give so that you have no reason to pick someone else for this service. So it might need a little more self-compassion. It might need a little more emotional alignment, tuning into my boundaries good, am I showing up lovingly, whatever that looks like for me? I talk about a lot in my work because I care about my clients and I think all of your listeners are getting into their work, yes to make money, absolutely, but also because they want to support the people they work with.
Jenna: Absolutely. I love this one. For me, I know when we did this, it showed up. There was energy moving and there were these arrows that you saw of just shooting out and really this idea of love bounding out to my people, which is something that is a core principle, a core value. I always am talking to my clients about doing things with love for ourselves and also love for other people, if we felt love, what would we do? And so I really loved that aligned so much. It's one of those things that you kind of see and then you just feel proud of, "Oh, this aligns, and this is reading how I expected it to read."
Olivia: Yeah, and sometimes when I'm doing a reading, I have no idea what the shapes that come through mean and it's really clear to the person on the other side. But this one, when I got those, it was just like, "Yeah, love bounding out." I was like, "Well, yeah, that's so Jenna, just beaming love, beaming love to our people," which I think you are such a great example of this too because you're not a softy pushover.
Jenna: No, I was going to say sometimes it's tough love.
Olivia: Yeah. So it doesn't have to be all fluffy, loosey goosey. The love can have structure and some oomph to it.
Jenna: Yeah, I think of love as tough love, telling the truth. Sometimes love means telling the truth to people. Sometimes love means creating safety for people. There is a webinar that I'm going to be doing at the end of the month that I've done before about creating a business, starting a business without financial risk. And I really feel like starting something new and this career that's so scary and you don't want to give up your steady paycheck, I feel like love means let's figure out how to do that in a way that you feel financially secure and safe. So yeah, I think love shows up in so many different ways for everybody too.
Olivia: Yeah, that webinar sounds amazing. I'm sure everybody's going to be popping into that one. From there, we move up to the throat. This is a blue color. Exactly what you would expect to find in a throat chakra, right? This is messaging, communication, self-expression. So if this is asking for more support, is your messaging as crisp and clear as it could be? And the best way to improve that is to just practice, right? Get out there, see what lands. You are going to get better so much faster putting yourselves in rooms and talking to people than going through endless rounds with ChatGPT.
Jenna: Yeah, oh my gosh. Please create from your art and practice and be messy. And, of course, lean into AI at the end of your creation to polish it off if you want to, but we are, I think we are losing a lot of energy when we're using ChatGPT, which is kind of counterintuitive, right? That's the thing that's making us create faster and we just have to plug in certain things, but I think we're losing so much energy.
Olivia: Yeah, I was talking to someone the other day and she said, "Oh my gosh, I had the ChatGPT Canva plugin and it made 100 quote posts for me in three minutes." And I had just met this woman, so I held my tongue, but I'm thinking, are they going to be quotes that are really resonant with your people? Are they going to stop anyone in their tracks? Is this really going to do what you wanted it to do or is it just feeding the machine? That's a tangent for another day.
Jenna: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I should do an episode on AI for sure. But this is actually the one where my energy was stagnant. I had energetic stagnation in the throat chakra when we did this. All my chakras were energized and flowing, but this one was stagnant, which I think is good to talk about because then it's sort of us exploring what could that mean and tapping into different areas. Of course, I use my voice on this podcast. I message on this podcast. I have emails. I have different things that I am doing. It's cool to be able to get curious about that specific thing and to say, "Hey, this might need more support or attention," and then deciding really what area of my business that I want to shake things up in or try and create a little bit more movement.
Olivia: Our conversation about this also led me to change my language a little bit because I realized stagnation isn't always the most accurate language around the pendulum not moving. And I was like, "Oh, does your business just need a break?" Sometimes you just need a break. Sometimes something is stuck and needs to be moved through and activated. As you were saying, get curious about it. So I think it is useful to take that opportunity, "Well, if that's coming up, is there somewhere where you could be using your voice more visibly, more strongly, more authentically?" But you also do a lot of that, so is it, "Maybe you just need a pause?" So I'm curious, since we did the reading a few weeks ago, have you gotten any insight or are you still playing around and being curious?
Jenna: It's really interesting because actually up until this point, I was kind of thinking about the podcast and, "Oh, maybe there are new exciting things to bring to the podcast, maybe there's this." But I think the podcast is great. I have a lot of really great guests coming up, very different conversations like this one. But in this moment, as I'm thinking about it, I have been thinking about my lack of visibility on social media. I have been somebody who is really big on you do not need social media to start a business. I've proven that. I have an Instagram account, I have a LinkedIn account, I have a Facebook account. I do not spend energy or invest time in those. I think you are the lead magnet, right? I just talked to somebody who was telling me that, "I'm the lead magnet."
And I loved it because I'm like, "Yeah, then you have to get out there and meet people and be magnetic, right?" It's hard to be magnetic through text. It's so much easier to be magnetic through meeting people. But as we're talking about this, I have been really noodling on what does it look like for me to be more visible and for me to share more of my message? Right now, I have over 100 episodes on this podcast. I have so much content built up. I have so many expert ideas built up, opinions, all the things that I've been sharing for so many years. And I have really been thinking, "Okay, the next thing is being more visible in social media platforms, whether that be Instagram or LinkedIn or what have you," but creating some consistency around it.
So I'm thinking that could be it where it's like, "Okay, I have the podcast figured out. I have my emails and kind of how I connect with people. I have my webinars where I speak. I've figured those out. I give a lot of value in those, but now it's finally time for me to invest some energy into social media, I think."
Olivia: Yeah, that might be the next growth edge. And I just want to echo 1,000%, you do not need social media to get started, but since you have such a strong foundation, and when I read the energy of your business's root chakra, it was a very solid slab, a big piece of flagstone, right? That felt so good, solid, foundational. And so now, where can you stretch into other areas? And I've been playing with the stories I tell myself about social media lately too.
So, stories that I've been retiring include, "Well, that's not going to work because it's such a crowded place. People aren't really going to connect with me there. It's a waste of time and I don't want to add to the noise. It's too hard to do it really well." And I was like, "Holy cow, look at how I'm just taking myself out of the game."
And so the game I've been playing with myself lately is, "Okay, what if it's just easy? What if it's just so easy?" And I only do it that it's super easy. And so I just went out on my front porch, recorded a 30-second clip that I'm going to post later today with a perfectly adequate caption. But just, that's so easy. That is not going rounds and rounds on Canva. And then on the connection point, I was like, "Oh, my word. I literally met my husband on the internet and I'm telling myself I can't meet clients on the internet?" Oh, okay. And so that just, poof, that excuse is gone. And so I've been looking at what are the stories and excuses that I'm making for why this isn't worth it or a good idea and then finding counter evidence. And guess what? It's gotten really easy and not a time suck. I'm like, "Oh, look at that."
Jenna: Yeah, no, I love that. And just a couple episodes ago, so episode 106, I offered that there's one powerful question and you're alluding to it, that we can ask ourselves in these sticky situations that's, "How is the opposite true?" That's the question, right? To just get our heads out of the space of social media sucks, it's so hard, I don't want to do it, I hate influencers, whatever it is. It's like, "How is the opposite true?" And it's so helpful to break free of that.
As you're saying, social media, even though this is a helpful tangent, I would say because social media is on everybody's mind, I think. But when I'm saying that being visible on social media, I'm coming from this place of I don't feel pressured to do that. I don't feel like I have to find clients there. Truly, when the idea came to me, it was like, "I have a lot to share and there are a lot of people who can access my wisdom on these platforms." I've talked about this before, but I truly think that if we can help people, we are obligated to put ourselves out there so that they can find us, so that we can help them, right? It's like, we are obligated.
And so we do want to break free from that, all of the mental drama that we have about social media. It takes time, right? I'm five, six years into my business at this point and I'm like, "Okay, well maybe now's the time that I'm going to post." But really from this place of abundance and no pressure and, "Oh, that's a really great tool that now I'm going to tap into because I feel really good about the clarity of my message and what I want to say and being able to recycle all the things that I've said on this podcast and bring it into the new platform."
So such a good point about changing our mind about things and really changing the stories because it does open up so much opportunity for us. And even this podcast and even doing this energy reading, right? It's you said, a year ago, I was like, "Yeah, cool, good luck. And I'm not going to ask any questions because that sounds a little bit crazy." And now I'm like, "Yeah, let's do all the things. Let's open up all of the opportunity for data and for learning and use all the tools. They're there. They're in our tool belt. We just have to learn how to use it and get after it."
Olivia: Yeah, and I love the way you were talking about social media was such a direct expression of the energy from your heart chakra. It's just love beaming out. We don't have to make it so complicated. And because you have that strong foundation, now is the time. Now it makes sense for you.
Okay. Two chakras left. We've got the third eye, so this is right between your eyes on your forehead and the color of this is indigo. And your third eye is all about vision, intuition, strategic clarity. So if you are someone who is second guessing what's going on in your business a lot, that might show up in the third eye chakra. If you get shiny object syndrome where you're just like, "Ooh, I could do that, I could do that, I could do this. What about this idea? Let me launch this new thing and this new thing instead of refining and getting really good at the core thing," that could show up here. So your business might just need you to quiet some of the noise, get really clear on the essence of what it is that you're supposed to be bringing forward and learning to trust your intuition as a business tool.
And then lastly is the crown chakra. This sits right at the top of your head and the color here is purple. Some people represent it as just white light. I like purple, violet. And this is divine purpose, soul connection, legacy work, the holy aspects, regardless of what your faith tradition is, the holy aspects of your work. So if you are just feeling really lost or disconnected, that might show up here. If you have existential doubt about whether this work even matters, "What's the point?" that can show up here. Or if you're having a big overreliance on external validation, that could show up here. Because really, if you just drop into source, drop into that universal connection and being held, it's all going to be good.
So connecting into source, higher power, whatever makes sense for you, maybe taking some sacred time away, just quieting the noise, taking a pause. You are so much better served by taking a beat than being frantic and doing 17 things. It's okay. It'll be there. Your business picked you because it trusts you.
Jenna: Yeah, I love this one too because not that you should throw it all away if this one isn't strong, but it's so important and I tell people, if your purpose is there, if you, you know that this is a good idea, so many of my people, they can see it and they can see the value and they can see this work is so important. And I'm like, "That's really the majority of what you need." The how will work itself out if you keep going from a place of desire and from a place of purpose and from a really strong why. If you have that, it will eventually come together because putting good out in the world is, you're going to figure it out. It's going to click eventually.
Olivia: Right, and we just have to do the experiments to get there. And that's just part of the process. I mean, I love listening to the How I Built This podcast with Guy Raz because every founder telling the story of their billion dollar business starts with the stories of, "Well, and then I got a truckload of rancid almonds and had to figure out how I was going to meet my Costco delivery." And it's like, okay, whatever it is, you've got to go through it and figure it out and then you're building all these muscles and skills that are going to serve you as your business evolves and as you need that greater depth of knowledge.
Jenna: Yeah, not to mention, I mean, full circle what we talked about at the beginning, it's who you become when you solve that problem and keep your cool, and then also grow your confidence and look at yourself differently after the fact, that's not just gold for business, that's gold for motherhood, partnerships, relationships, it permeates through everything. And that's why I love this work so much, the building of the business and the tapping into your business has a ripple effect in our life and it's such a positive one. If we truly are in it to also work on ourselves and become the type of person who can overcome some of these sticky situations.
Olivia: Right. And that's the whole invitation.
Jenna: Exactly. So, I love this. I'm so glad that we went through it. I'm so glad I have new verbage and language to talk about it, to think about it. I would love for you to share maybe just a little bit about you worked a traditional job, you worked in a 9-to-5, you gave that up for entrepreneurship. I'm always curious what gave you the courage to do that and to also keep going in your business? As we said, when things inevitably are hard.
Olivia: I tried to escape entrepreneurship. Both of my parents are entrepreneurs. My mom just sold her business yesterday. So that's a huge deal, 38 years. And now she's got one more year and then she gets to really retire. I almost went to college for entrepreneurship. I had a small boutique communications agency in my 20s. And then my husband Michael and I were ready to put down roots and start a family. He's a writer, so it was going to be easier for the communications professional to get a job with benefits than necessarily for the science fiction writer to get a job with benefits.
So we moved to DC, his hometown. I got a great job at a great nonprofit. I was there for, I think eight years, moving up through the ranks. But the pandemic hit. And so March of 2020, I had just come back from maternity leave after my second daughter, and I was finishing this huge project and I was about to take a vacation when we had to cancel the project I'd been working on for a year because it was in person. And instead of getting a vacation, I got put on the COVID task force. So I was working truly around the clock. I mean, 3:00 AM was not unusual. And by December of 2020, I'm working in my windowless basement, terrified. It's my job to marinate in everything about COVID and translate that for our team across the country.
And Michael came down and found me literally sobbing on the basement floor, could not get lower emotionally, physically. And I was like, "I don't know what I'm meant to be doing, but I know that it's not this." So for 2021, my only goal is to find my life's purpose. Small. And take steps to get me closer. And so I just had that in the back of my head and I was doom scrolling one night and saw an ad for Martha Beck's Wayfinder life coach training program. And I'd seen this ad about four years earlier pregnant with my first daughter. And at that time, my thought was, "That would be so cool. I could never do that. I'm the source of benefits."
And this time it came around and I was like, "Oh, I can't not do that. I'm going to have to figure out a way to replace my benefits." And so I did the training, I went to a different nonprofit briefly. It was so toxic and dysfunctional. I'd said I would be there for a year. It was so bad. Took it off my LinkedIn, you can't go see where it was, that after four months I was like, "I'll give you a runway but I'm out of here."
And so then I went full-time into entrepreneurship and life got really lifey, really fast. My husband developed an idiopathic seizure disorder. We didn't know what was going on. You know, I was paying insurance out of pocket, but I had to find a way to make this work because my life definitely wouldn't have worked with two kids and a sick husband who needed to be driven to appointments if I had a regular 9-to-5. There is no way. I mean, we would have to put my entire salary towards hiring support.
And so over the last few years, you know, I've wound my way and you've been along for the ride for these last few years, which I love. And just really have fallen in love with working with female founders, entrepreneurs, and more recently, I love working with women in law. So I've added this branch for law moms who, what all of these women have in common is everyone's brilliant. Everyone likes to make things happen and is willing to dig in to do the tough, kind of gnarly work sometimes. But everyone also has a vision of how sweet it could be. And so then I get to be the guide on that journey. And sometimes we have to descend into the underworld and really do some excavation and then we get through to the other side and it's just so rich.
Jenna: I love that. I love your journey. I also learned a little bit about you that I didn't know about background, which I love. It's so cool also that your business has different facets of it. It's important for people to see that, that it doesn't have to look like everyone else's, right? You have the energy work that you do and then you have this journey that you go on with law moms, which I'm sure is has things that are tangential but also very different in the work that you do. And it can look like that. You can create what you want.
Olivia: I take direction from the spirit of my business. So when my business was like, "You have to go get this Reiki training." I'm like, "I don't know why, but okay." And when my business and my guides were saying I have to do Reiki for the spirit of the business, I'm like, "Okay." And then when they said, "Now it's time to go work with women in law," I was like, "Okay, curveball. But sure, let's go explore that."
Jenna: Well, how nice it is to just have someone telling you what to do. I think we all would like that more of that. And so it really is tapping into these energies, tapping into your intuition, tapping into the spirit of your business if you ever get the chance to listen to what your business is trying to tell you.
Olivia: And then the key is trusting it when it does not make sense to your thinking mind. So much of this has not made sense to my thinking mind. But now I sit where I am, like, "Oh, okay, I see how it fits together. No one else has this special mix."
Jenna: 100%.
Olivia: And we've talked about this, competition does not exist. Jenna, you are the such a perfect coach for certain people and I'm the perfect coach for other people. And there's zero competition here. It's all just live and put yourself out as the truest version and your people are going to find you.
Jenna: 100%. How can more of your people find you? I know we will have all these links in the show notes. How can they schedule and get a business energy reading with you?
Olivia: Yes, so we will put some resources in the show notes so people can find the chakra guide and a little free assessment. And I also have a special, I'm going to do it, I decided during this chat, I'm going to offer half off just to your listeners if people want a an energy reading for their businesses. Would love to just dig in with your folks. And find me on Instagram because I am feeling that's a great place to connect with people lately. I am The Olivia Bowen. My last name is B-O-W-E-N. Or visit me, my website is oliviabowen.com.
Jenna: Okay. Olivia, thank you so much for coming and sharing this wisdom, this whole new world of tools and I really appreciate you.
Olivia: This was delightful. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
I met Olivia Bowen a few years ago in DC at a networking event I hosted, and we immediately clicked. Olivia's a coach who blends strategy, intuition, energy work, which you'll hear about, and spirituality in a way that I initially, honestly, found outside of what my logical brain could comprehend. If you've been listening, if you know my work, you know that I tend to lean heavily on mindset, psychology, systems, and practical tools. So when Olivia talked about doing energetic readings for businesses many years ago, I was curious but skeptical. And fast forward to now, as I'm exploring realms of strategy outside of my own comfort zone, she came back around and not only led an awesome workshop for my clients, she did an entire energy reading for my business.
So, in this conversation, Olivia walks through each energy center or chakra and shares what she picks up on about my business. We talk about everything from messaging and creativity to pricing, intuition, receiving support, and what it means to trust yourself as a business owner. Whether energy work is completely in your wheelhouse or something you've never explored before, I think you'll really enjoy listening to this conversation. Definitely come in with an open mind and be ready to apply some of the concepts that we talk about within my business to your own journey.
What I found most valuable wasn't limited to the actual reading itself, though it's super interesting the way we talk about it and recount that experience. But it was the way it opened up new questions, new perspectives, and really a deeper conversation about how we make decisions in our businesses. And if you're someone who has ever wondered whether there's more to building a business than strategy alone, I think you're going to find this conversation really interesting because the answer is yes.
And if you're feeling stuck, a conversation around the energy of your business could really provide clarity and a spark of inspiration on how to get unstuck, what actions to take, what to focus on in your business. There are so many things we could be doing in our business at any given time. So sometimes it's really nice to take a hint from the energy of our business on what to do next or how to grow or what to focus on.
So you can connect with Olivia and do an energy reading of your own by going to the show notes, jenna.coach/114. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Jenna: Hi, Olivia. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Olivia: So excited to be here, Jenna.
Jenna: Yeah. So we did a fun little thing the other day, and Olivia invited me to do an energy reading on my business, which was something that I would have never expected myself to do, even probably a year ago or even six months ago. Let's be honest. And I thought it was so much fun and so interesting and so helpful for a lot of reasons. And so I want to talk about that today on the podcast and really get into what an energy reading on your business is, where it came from, what are some of the elements of it, all those good things.
So I would love for you to share a little bit about how these energy readings came to be and maybe a little bit of background for all of my folks who have no idea what an energy reading is, aka me six months ago, all of the baby woos out there who are just dipping their toe in it. Can you talk to us a little bit about where this came from and what it is?
Olivia: I love the baby woos, and I actually remember talking to you about this a year ago. And you're like, "Oh, okay. Well, good for you."
Jenna: Yeah, I was like, "Great, that's awesome."
Olivia: But you were so encouraging, but it was not your thing. So, yeah, I work with the energy of the business itself. So I'm a trained Reiki practitioner, I'm a trained coach, and about a year and a half ago, I was driving home from dropping my kids off at school. And I had this idea about doing Reiki on the business itself. So Reiki on the entrepreneur, sure. That makes sense. There's a physical body, there's an energy body. And Reiki, it's from the Japanese tradition. It is a form of energy healing.
But I kept getting this idea that I had to do it on the spirit of the business. And I was really annoyed that I kept having this idea that I had to do Reiki on the spirit of the business because it sounded a little bonkers even to me who is deep in my woo journey. And so I was driving home from school, and I just talk out loud to my spirit guides. And so I'm in the car. I probably looked like I was on the phone. I'm like, "All right, guys, if you want me to do this, then just tell me how on earth I would do this because I don't know, there is no body." And immediately my spirit guides were like, "Oh, we're so glad you asked." Darn it.
And so what they instructed me to do is paint the chakras on a piece of paper. So I take out my watercolors and I paint the seven chakras and we can get into what those are and how they correspond to the business. And then I use my pendulum and my hands and I just feel into how the energy of each chakra is moving or not. And then I've also tuned into what each chakra corresponds to. So if the pendulum is moving and the energy feels good, I have the ability to just actually feel the energy physically, then that tells me that area of the business is doing really well and doesn't need extra support.
But sometimes if the pendulum is not moving, if the energy feels stagnant or just still and at rest, that might be the business saying, "We could use a little extra help here." So it's just a different entry point so we can bypass our thinking mind on our business because we could think so many things about our businesses. So this is a way to bypass that and see what your business itself might be asking for.
Jenna: I love that because so often, we overthink as moms and humans and women, we overthink everything. And there's so much that you could be focusing on in your business. And actually, that leads to a ton of overwhelm because we have access to so many gurus out there who have that magic bullet and they have the blueprint and they have the thing and you should be doing this and you should be doing that. And everyone is right and everyone is wrong at the same time, right? And it's so overwhelming. And so I love this idea of, hey, let's let go of all of that, at least momentarily, and just tap into the actual business.
So can we go back a few steps and maybe just go through a little bit of the chakras? Because that was new to me entirely. And talk about maybe a little bit of how this works on the human body for anyone who doesn't know, because I still don't know because I haven't done that, and then how you specifically translated it to business and what that looks like.
Olivia: Yeah, and before I even get to that, there's one concept that I mentioned, but I think I should clarify a little bit, which is I believe that your business has its own spirit, its own energetic signature, which is so helpful because it's so easy for so many of us to conflate ourselves and our business. So if our business is doing well, we're doing well. If our business is not doing well, we are not doing well. And so this gives just a little more distance as well, so that we can look a little more objectively at what our business needs, so that it can support the rest of our life.
Jenna: That's such a good point because it is really hard, especially early on in the business, to not take it personal. And if we can move away from taking things personal in our business, not making it mean anything about us, not making the results mean anything about us, not making any of the steps being difficult mean anything about us, we will get so much further. I feel like I just talked about a concept similar to this, well, not similar to this necessarily, but decoupling ourselves when I talk about being scientists.
I want us to be scientists in the business, which is maybe the same thing as energy, but maybe different, I don't know. In my mind, they're different practices, but then I'm like, wait, energy is science. But we look, a scientist doesn't get to the end, they have a hypothesis of what they think is going to work. They test it, they do it. And when they don't get the result that they thought they were going to get, they're curious. And they're like, "Oh, well, let me look, and let me evaluate, and let me see what I need to change next time." And they don't make it mean anything about them. And I think the more we can do that in our business, the more we will have fun, the more that our business will love it, the more that we'll stick with it, and we'll learn what doesn't work so that we can learn more about what does work for us. So I think that's a beautiful point. I digress, but I love that.
Olivia: No, so glad you said that. And I actually see magic and science as pretty much the same thing. So much magic we just haven't figured out the science to prove it yet. I love science, I love data collection, I love all of that. And then the last piece before I get into the chakras is I also believe that everyone's business chose them. So just having the idea for your business, you are already chosen. You have already been picked. Your business needs a human being to help bring it into earthly terrestrial form and it picked you for a reason. And just remembering that when the experiments aren't going the way we thought they were going to go, can be just really reassuring because it's on your team. You already have a business partner in your business.
Jenna: Totally. And that makes me think, a little digression again, of the book by Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic. I don't remember anything about that book except for this one story she tells where ideas are alive and they fly or swim or whatever, and they implant themselves into a human. And if that human is not ready to bring it to life or they choose not to or they don't, then they'll leave that human and they'll go to somebody else. Ideas are this actual being that wants to come alive and they try and find their host. And I love the story. I did a terrible job of telling it, but I would recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic because it's exactly what you said, that these ideas, they want to come alive and they find us for a reason. And so we got to bring them to life.
Olivia: Okay. Should we dig into the chakras?
Jenna: Yes, please.
Olivia: Okay. So I like to start at the base, start at the root, and then we will work up to the crown. And the root chakra is right at the base of your torso. This is both in the physical for a human and for your business. This is a sense of safety, security, foundation, very much that rootedness. So if you're feeling untethered, if you're feeling unmoored, there might be something going on with your root chakra. And if people are curious, you can go so deep because different chakras have different colors associated, crystals associated, tarot cards associated. But for this, we'll just keep it to the essence of each chakra because I think that's really all you need to know to do this work on your business.
Jenna: So for the root chakra, what does that align with in business terms? If you had maybe less energy movement, more stagnation in your root chakra, what would we then look at or work on in the business?
Olivia: It could mean any number of things, so this is where we also bring in our human discernment and intuition. It might, sometimes I ask people, is this the business that you want to have? Sometimes we start businesses that sound so smart or that our parents said, "You know what you would be so good at?" I'm like, "Yeah, I would be good at that." But if it's not what you really want to be doing, if you're not the right fit for that work, that might show up in the root chakra.
It could also be something like not having the right systems in place for your business to grow. So once we find where the energy is asking for a little more attention, then we get to be really curious investigators. So those are two of the big flags that I see on the root chakra that it's just not the right business, or it might just need some refinement, or you don't have the structures, the actual foundation in place to welcome in more work.
Then we move up to the sacral chakra. This is the womb space for us mamas. And so it makes sense that this is the seat of creativity. So if your business is asking for support here, it might be saying, "Can we get a little more creative with our offers? Could we get a little funkier with what we are creating so that it differentiates us from others?" It could also be asking for a little more play in the creation. So are you just cranking things out using AI because you feel you need to be plastering stuff on Instagram? Or are you bringing joy, playfulness to that work?
Jenna: Also, I know you mentioned this and I just pulled up the picture of when we did this together, and there's colors associated with each of these as well. So the root is more of a deep red. Sacral is orange. And then the colors sort of get softer as you move up.
Olivia: Well, it follows the rainbow. It's a familiar pattern.
Jenna: Science, man.
Olivia: Because energies have frequencies.
Jenna: There you go. There you go.
Olivia: So the next one is your solar plexus, and this is one, so I read the energy of the business, sometimes I read the energy of the entrepreneur herself. This is in both cases where I often see the need for a little more support because the solar plexus is the seat of your personal power. So if you are still wary of fully owning your gifts, of really stepping into your tremendous power, that might show up in the sacral chakra. In the business, this can look like imposter syndrome. It can look like fear of being seen. It can look like underpricing, all of these ways that we are abdicating our power or not fully claiming it.
Jenna: Yeah, I love this one because there's so much hesitation that can come in for moms who are new at starting a business. And not that this would be something that is to bring up shame for anyone or to highlight weaknesses or anything like that, but I think it's just an important piece to be able to say, "Hey, let's shift it and step into power. There's something going on that has you hesitating. Let's work through that and show you that this is something that you can do. You're not an imposter. This is something that you're an expert at."
I love this one specifically too because I think that there's so much power that comes into starting a business, in the evolution of who we become as our business evolves. I think they're so intertwined.
Olivia: Oh, yeah. I mean, our businesses are spiritual experiences. I think motherhood and entrepreneurship are two epic portals to bring up all your stuff that you have been here, you chose this trip to Earth School to work on these things and it's just going to shine a light on every last piece.
Jenna: Yeah, yeah, the good, bad, and the ugly. And I will say that it is similar to motherhood, so worth it. The process of becoming and evolving as a human when you have these mirrors that are shown to you and you are forced to work on things, you are forced to grow your confidence in ways that maybe corporate never asked you to do. You are forced to step into your power in ways that are uncomfortable. Same thing with motherhood. It's just so worth it, the evolution.
Olivia: And I love that you highlighted no shame here or in any of these. It's always, one, it's a snapshot. So it's, it can change, it will change over time. It's just giving you a reading on what's happening right now. And sometimes patterns persist. So for me, the solar plexus chakra, man, for a year, this was the one that was really asking for support. And I could feel it in my physical body, and it would come through when I did the energy work. And it just kept inviting me to go deeper and deeper into, where am I not fully claiming my power? And if I look at where I am now compared to where I was when I started this work, I'm like, "Oh, I thought I was doing it," and now I see how far I've come, and I know I've got a lot farther to go too.
Jenna: It's a data point to get curious about. It doesn't give us all the answers. It actually doesn't give us any answers necessarily. There are no answers out there. There are no right answers out there, let's say. But it does give you something to look at and be curious about and to work on, which I love.
Olivia: So we move from the power of the solar plexus up to the heart chakra. This is green. I happen to be wearing my green shirt today, bringing you guys a little extra love. And not surprisingly, this is all about love, authentic connection, resonance with your ideal clients, your soul clients. This purpose can come in here. So if this is asking for more support, it might mean that you're afraid of rejection, that's still feeling really personal.
Or it could also show up as overgiving, which is a lens of being afraid of rejection, right? I'm going to just give and give and give so that you have no reason to pick someone else for this service. So it might need a little more self-compassion. It might need a little more emotional alignment, tuning into my boundaries good, am I showing up lovingly, whatever that looks like for me? I talk about a lot in my work because I care about my clients and I think all of your listeners are getting into their work, yes to make money, absolutely, but also because they want to support the people they work with.
Jenna: Absolutely. I love this one. For me, I know when we did this, it showed up. There was energy moving and there were these arrows that you saw of just shooting out and really this idea of love bounding out to my people, which is something that is a core principle, a core value. I always am talking to my clients about doing things with love for ourselves and also love for other people, if we felt love, what would we do? And so I really loved that aligned so much. It's one of those things that you kind of see and then you just feel proud of, "Oh, this aligns, and this is reading how I expected it to read."
Olivia: Yeah, and sometimes when I'm doing a reading, I have no idea what the shapes that come through mean and it's really clear to the person on the other side. But this one, when I got those, it was just like, "Yeah, love bounding out." I was like, "Well, yeah, that's so Jenna, just beaming love, beaming love to our people," which I think you are such a great example of this too because you're not a softy pushover.
Jenna: No, I was going to say sometimes it's tough love.
Olivia: Yeah. So it doesn't have to be all fluffy, loosey goosey. The love can have structure and some oomph to it.
Jenna: Yeah, I think of love as tough love, telling the truth. Sometimes love means telling the truth to people. Sometimes love means creating safety for people. There is a webinar that I'm going to be doing at the end of the month that I've done before about creating a business, starting a business without financial risk. And I really feel like starting something new and this career that's so scary and you don't want to give up your steady paycheck, I feel like love means let's figure out how to do that in a way that you feel financially secure and safe. So yeah, I think love shows up in so many different ways for everybody too.
Olivia: Yeah, that webinar sounds amazing. I'm sure everybody's going to be popping into that one. From there, we move up to the throat. This is a blue color. Exactly what you would expect to find in a throat chakra, right? This is messaging, communication, self-expression. So if this is asking for more support, is your messaging as crisp and clear as it could be? And the best way to improve that is to just practice, right? Get out there, see what lands. You are going to get better so much faster putting yourselves in rooms and talking to people than going through endless rounds with ChatGPT.
Jenna: Yeah, oh my gosh. Please create from your art and practice and be messy. And, of course, lean into AI at the end of your creation to polish it off if you want to, but we are, I think we are losing a lot of energy when we're using ChatGPT, which is kind of counterintuitive, right? That's the thing that's making us create faster and we just have to plug in certain things, but I think we're losing so much energy.
Olivia: Yeah, I was talking to someone the other day and she said, "Oh my gosh, I had the ChatGPT Canva plugin and it made 100 quote posts for me in three minutes." And I had just met this woman, so I held my tongue, but I'm thinking, are they going to be quotes that are really resonant with your people? Are they going to stop anyone in their tracks? Is this really going to do what you wanted it to do or is it just feeding the machine? That's a tangent for another day.
Jenna: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I should do an episode on AI for sure. But this is actually the one where my energy was stagnant. I had energetic stagnation in the throat chakra when we did this. All my chakras were energized and flowing, but this one was stagnant, which I think is good to talk about because then it's sort of us exploring what could that mean and tapping into different areas. Of course, I use my voice on this podcast. I message on this podcast. I have emails. I have different things that I am doing. It's cool to be able to get curious about that specific thing and to say, "Hey, this might need more support or attention," and then deciding really what area of my business that I want to shake things up in or try and create a little bit more movement.
Olivia: Our conversation about this also led me to change my language a little bit because I realized stagnation isn't always the most accurate language around the pendulum not moving. And I was like, "Oh, does your business just need a break?" Sometimes you just need a break. Sometimes something is stuck and needs to be moved through and activated. As you were saying, get curious about it. So I think it is useful to take that opportunity, "Well, if that's coming up, is there somewhere where you could be using your voice more visibly, more strongly, more authentically?" But you also do a lot of that, so is it, "Maybe you just need a pause?" So I'm curious, since we did the reading a few weeks ago, have you gotten any insight or are you still playing around and being curious?
Jenna: It's really interesting because actually up until this point, I was kind of thinking about the podcast and, "Oh, maybe there are new exciting things to bring to the podcast, maybe there's this." But I think the podcast is great. I have a lot of really great guests coming up, very different conversations like this one. But in this moment, as I'm thinking about it, I have been thinking about my lack of visibility on social media. I have been somebody who is really big on you do not need social media to start a business. I've proven that. I have an Instagram account, I have a LinkedIn account, I have a Facebook account. I do not spend energy or invest time in those. I think you are the lead magnet, right? I just talked to somebody who was telling me that, "I'm the lead magnet."
And I loved it because I'm like, "Yeah, then you have to get out there and meet people and be magnetic, right?" It's hard to be magnetic through text. It's so much easier to be magnetic through meeting people. But as we're talking about this, I have been really noodling on what does it look like for me to be more visible and for me to share more of my message? Right now, I have over 100 episodes on this podcast. I have so much content built up. I have so many expert ideas built up, opinions, all the things that I've been sharing for so many years. And I have really been thinking, "Okay, the next thing is being more visible in social media platforms, whether that be Instagram or LinkedIn or what have you," but creating some consistency around it.
So I'm thinking that could be it where it's like, "Okay, I have the podcast figured out. I have my emails and kind of how I connect with people. I have my webinars where I speak. I've figured those out. I give a lot of value in those, but now it's finally time for me to invest some energy into social media, I think."
Olivia: Yeah, that might be the next growth edge. And I just want to echo 1,000%, you do not need social media to get started, but since you have such a strong foundation, and when I read the energy of your business's root chakra, it was a very solid slab, a big piece of flagstone, right? That felt so good, solid, foundational. And so now, where can you stretch into other areas? And I've been playing with the stories I tell myself about social media lately too.
So, stories that I've been retiring include, "Well, that's not going to work because it's such a crowded place. People aren't really going to connect with me there. It's a waste of time and I don't want to add to the noise. It's too hard to do it really well." And I was like, "Holy cow, look at how I'm just taking myself out of the game."
And so the game I've been playing with myself lately is, "Okay, what if it's just easy? What if it's just so easy?" And I only do it that it's super easy. And so I just went out on my front porch, recorded a 30-second clip that I'm going to post later today with a perfectly adequate caption. But just, that's so easy. That is not going rounds and rounds on Canva. And then on the connection point, I was like, "Oh, my word. I literally met my husband on the internet and I'm telling myself I can't meet clients on the internet?" Oh, okay. And so that just, poof, that excuse is gone. And so I've been looking at what are the stories and excuses that I'm making for why this isn't worth it or a good idea and then finding counter evidence. And guess what? It's gotten really easy and not a time suck. I'm like, "Oh, look at that."
Jenna: Yeah, no, I love that. And just a couple episodes ago, so episode 106, I offered that there's one powerful question and you're alluding to it, that we can ask ourselves in these sticky situations that's, "How is the opposite true?" That's the question, right? To just get our heads out of the space of social media sucks, it's so hard, I don't want to do it, I hate influencers, whatever it is. It's like, "How is the opposite true?" And it's so helpful to break free of that.
As you're saying, social media, even though this is a helpful tangent, I would say because social media is on everybody's mind, I think. But when I'm saying that being visible on social media, I'm coming from this place of I don't feel pressured to do that. I don't feel like I have to find clients there. Truly, when the idea came to me, it was like, "I have a lot to share and there are a lot of people who can access my wisdom on these platforms." I've talked about this before, but I truly think that if we can help people, we are obligated to put ourselves out there so that they can find us, so that we can help them, right? It's like, we are obligated.
And so we do want to break free from that, all of the mental drama that we have about social media. It takes time, right? I'm five, six years into my business at this point and I'm like, "Okay, well maybe now's the time that I'm going to post." But really from this place of abundance and no pressure and, "Oh, that's a really great tool that now I'm going to tap into because I feel really good about the clarity of my message and what I want to say and being able to recycle all the things that I've said on this podcast and bring it into the new platform."
So such a good point about changing our mind about things and really changing the stories because it does open up so much opportunity for us. And even this podcast and even doing this energy reading, right? It's you said, a year ago, I was like, "Yeah, cool, good luck. And I'm not going to ask any questions because that sounds a little bit crazy." And now I'm like, "Yeah, let's do all the things. Let's open up all of the opportunity for data and for learning and use all the tools. They're there. They're in our tool belt. We just have to learn how to use it and get after it."
Olivia: Yeah, and I love the way you were talking about social media was such a direct expression of the energy from your heart chakra. It's just love beaming out. We don't have to make it so complicated. And because you have that strong foundation, now is the time. Now it makes sense for you.
Okay. Two chakras left. We've got the third eye, so this is right between your eyes on your forehead and the color of this is indigo. And your third eye is all about vision, intuition, strategic clarity. So if you are someone who is second guessing what's going on in your business a lot, that might show up in the third eye chakra. If you get shiny object syndrome where you're just like, "Ooh, I could do that, I could do that, I could do this. What about this idea? Let me launch this new thing and this new thing instead of refining and getting really good at the core thing," that could show up here. So your business might just need you to quiet some of the noise, get really clear on the essence of what it is that you're supposed to be bringing forward and learning to trust your intuition as a business tool.
And then lastly is the crown chakra. This sits right at the top of your head and the color here is purple. Some people represent it as just white light. I like purple, violet. And this is divine purpose, soul connection, legacy work, the holy aspects, regardless of what your faith tradition is, the holy aspects of your work. So if you are just feeling really lost or disconnected, that might show up here. If you have existential doubt about whether this work even matters, "What's the point?" that can show up here. Or if you're having a big overreliance on external validation, that could show up here. Because really, if you just drop into source, drop into that universal connection and being held, it's all going to be good.
So connecting into source, higher power, whatever makes sense for you, maybe taking some sacred time away, just quieting the noise, taking a pause. You are so much better served by taking a beat than being frantic and doing 17 things. It's okay. It'll be there. Your business picked you because it trusts you.
Jenna: Yeah, I love this one too because not that you should throw it all away if this one isn't strong, but it's so important and I tell people, if your purpose is there, if you, you know that this is a good idea, so many of my people, they can see it and they can see the value and they can see this work is so important. And I'm like, "That's really the majority of what you need." The how will work itself out if you keep going from a place of desire and from a place of purpose and from a really strong why. If you have that, it will eventually come together because putting good out in the world is, you're going to figure it out. It's going to click eventually.
Olivia: Right, and we just have to do the experiments to get there. And that's just part of the process. I mean, I love listening to the How I Built This podcast with Guy Raz because every founder telling the story of their billion dollar business starts with the stories of, "Well, and then I got a truckload of rancid almonds and had to figure out how I was going to meet my Costco delivery." And it's like, okay, whatever it is, you've got to go through it and figure it out and then you're building all these muscles and skills that are going to serve you as your business evolves and as you need that greater depth of knowledge.
Jenna: Yeah, not to mention, I mean, full circle what we talked about at the beginning, it's who you become when you solve that problem and keep your cool, and then also grow your confidence and look at yourself differently after the fact, that's not just gold for business, that's gold for motherhood, partnerships, relationships, it permeates through everything. And that's why I love this work so much, the building of the business and the tapping into your business has a ripple effect in our life and it's such a positive one. If we truly are in it to also work on ourselves and become the type of person who can overcome some of these sticky situations.
Olivia: Right. And that's the whole invitation.
Jenna: Exactly. So, I love this. I'm so glad that we went through it. I'm so glad I have new verbage and language to talk about it, to think about it. I would love for you to share maybe just a little bit about you worked a traditional job, you worked in a 9-to-5, you gave that up for entrepreneurship. I'm always curious what gave you the courage to do that and to also keep going in your business? As we said, when things inevitably are hard.
Olivia: I tried to escape entrepreneurship. Both of my parents are entrepreneurs. My mom just sold her business yesterday. So that's a huge deal, 38 years. And now she's got one more year and then she gets to really retire. I almost went to college for entrepreneurship. I had a small boutique communications agency in my 20s. And then my husband Michael and I were ready to put down roots and start a family. He's a writer, so it was going to be easier for the communications professional to get a job with benefits than necessarily for the science fiction writer to get a job with benefits.
So we moved to DC, his hometown. I got a great job at a great nonprofit. I was there for, I think eight years, moving up through the ranks. But the pandemic hit. And so March of 2020, I had just come back from maternity leave after my second daughter, and I was finishing this huge project and I was about to take a vacation when we had to cancel the project I'd been working on for a year because it was in person. And instead of getting a vacation, I got put on the COVID task force. So I was working truly around the clock. I mean, 3:00 AM was not unusual. And by December of 2020, I'm working in my windowless basement, terrified. It's my job to marinate in everything about COVID and translate that for our team across the country.
And Michael came down and found me literally sobbing on the basement floor, could not get lower emotionally, physically. And I was like, "I don't know what I'm meant to be doing, but I know that it's not this." So for 2021, my only goal is to find my life's purpose. Small. And take steps to get me closer. And so I just had that in the back of my head and I was doom scrolling one night and saw an ad for Martha Beck's Wayfinder life coach training program. And I'd seen this ad about four years earlier pregnant with my first daughter. And at that time, my thought was, "That would be so cool. I could never do that. I'm the source of benefits."
And this time it came around and I was like, "Oh, I can't not do that. I'm going to have to figure out a way to replace my benefits." And so I did the training, I went to a different nonprofit briefly. It was so toxic and dysfunctional. I'd said I would be there for a year. It was so bad. Took it off my LinkedIn, you can't go see where it was, that after four months I was like, "I'll give you a runway but I'm out of here."
And so then I went full-time into entrepreneurship and life got really lifey, really fast. My husband developed an idiopathic seizure disorder. We didn't know what was going on. You know, I was paying insurance out of pocket, but I had to find a way to make this work because my life definitely wouldn't have worked with two kids and a sick husband who needed to be driven to appointments if I had a regular 9-to-5. There is no way. I mean, we would have to put my entire salary towards hiring support.
And so over the last few years, you know, I've wound my way and you've been along for the ride for these last few years, which I love. And just really have fallen in love with working with female founders, entrepreneurs, and more recently, I love working with women in law. So I've added this branch for law moms who, what all of these women have in common is everyone's brilliant. Everyone likes to make things happen and is willing to dig in to do the tough, kind of gnarly work sometimes. But everyone also has a vision of how sweet it could be. And so then I get to be the guide on that journey. And sometimes we have to descend into the underworld and really do some excavation and then we get through to the other side and it's just so rich.
Jenna: I love that. I love your journey. I also learned a little bit about you that I didn't know about background, which I love. It's so cool also that your business has different facets of it. It's important for people to see that, that it doesn't have to look like everyone else's, right? You have the energy work that you do and then you have this journey that you go on with law moms, which I'm sure is has things that are tangential but also very different in the work that you do. And it can look like that. You can create what you want.
Olivia: I take direction from the spirit of my business. So when my business was like, "You have to go get this Reiki training." I'm like, "I don't know why, but okay." And when my business and my guides were saying I have to do Reiki for the spirit of the business, I'm like, "Okay." And then when they said, "Now it's time to go work with women in law," I was like, "Okay, curveball. But sure, let's go explore that."
Jenna: Well, how nice it is to just have someone telling you what to do. I think we all would like that more of that. And so it really is tapping into these energies, tapping into your intuition, tapping into the spirit of your business if you ever get the chance to listen to what your business is trying to tell you.
Olivia: And then the key is trusting it when it does not make sense to your thinking mind. So much of this has not made sense to my thinking mind. But now I sit where I am, like, "Oh, okay, I see how it fits together. No one else has this special mix."
Jenna: 100%.
Olivia: And we've talked about this, competition does not exist. Jenna, you are the such a perfect coach for certain people and I'm the perfect coach for other people. And there's zero competition here. It's all just live and put yourself out as the truest version and your people are going to find you.
Jenna: 100%. How can more of your people find you? I know we will have all these links in the show notes. How can they schedule and get a business energy reading with you?
Olivia: Yes, so we will put some resources in the show notes so people can find the chakra guide and a little free assessment. And I also have a special, I'm going to do it, I decided during this chat, I'm going to offer half off just to your listeners if people want a an energy reading for their businesses. Would love to just dig in with your folks. And find me on Instagram because I am feeling that's a great place to connect with people lately. I am The Olivia Bowen. My last name is B-O-W-E-N. Or visit me, my website is oliviabowen.com.
Jenna: Okay. Olivia, thank you so much for coming and sharing this wisdom, this whole new world of tools and I really appreciate you.
Olivia: This was delightful. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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