The Mission-Driven Entrepreneur Show: Stephanie Smolders Interviews Imogen Roy
In this episode of The Mission-Driven Entrepreneur with Stephanie Smolders, we discuss the hustle myth, living into your Human Design profile, time management vs. energy management, and how we can all connect to our bodies’ sense of self-trust and inner timing.
Your mission is your compass. It's your North Star.
It doesn't have to be big and lofty; it doesn't have to be profound. It's something that you have chosen to focus on to help guide you in the hardest moments, and to help you make decisions about what's important.
Further Explore Energy Management, Cyclical Living, and How to Build Your Own Regenerative and Sustainable Productivity System:
Learn more about coaching with Imogen
Listen to Imogen's podcast, A Year of Magical Living
Start harnessing the full power of your cyclical energy with Imogen’s free Could-Do List template
Revolutionise your productivity, banish burnout and flourish in life and work by letting your body lead in Imogen’s group program, Align + Flow
Read the Transcript:
Stephanie: Welcome to today's episode of The Mission-Driven Entrepreneur Show. I'm so excited to welcome Imogen to the show. She is someone I look up to and I always get excited when I get to talk with her, I even take notes when she's talking. She is a Strategy Coach who helps entrepreneurial women to be more prolific, productive, and present in their life and business. She helps women use unconditional and unconventional methods and tools to break free from the mainstream male-dominated narratives about business to create success on their own terms. Welcome, I'm so excited that you're here.
Imogen: Hello, Stephanie. I’m so glad to be here.
Stephanie: We always start the podcast with one question and that is: What is your big mission?
Imogen: That’s a big question. My big mission in the world is to help people to see all the possibilities that are available to them to create a beautiful life. Beautiful success on their own terms. And it starts with helping people to unlock their imagination and access all the tools that they already have inside of them, rather than looking to the external world to get the answers.
Stephanie: How did you get there? I love your story of how you got there.
Imogen: It's interesting, I have a friend staying with me at the moment and we were talking about this last night. And the truth is that this started when I was a kid. It's really interesting. I recently went through my Saturn Return – I turn 30 this year. Your Saturn Return is an astrological event that provokes you to reflect on the first 30 years of your life, or the first 29 years of your life, in order to evaluate and work out what you want to keep with you and what you want to leave behind for the next phase. This year I was thrown into this moment and I became very reflective, very nostalgic, and was sorting through all of my experiences and different memories. Something that really came to light, was that I realized that I've never felt more myself now. The last time I felt this way was when I was about seven or eight years old. I feel I've done this journey where I was me, then the world conditioned me to become who they thought I should be – what sort of behaviors I should exhibit, how I should act in the world, how I should speak, the kinds of careers I should go after, how I should look – and I feel like I've come back to myself. So it's really been a process of unlearning more than becoming.
“The big challenge I’ve faced in the last few years has been reminding myself that I have a body. Reminding myself that I have a mind, but my mind is an assistant to my body. My mind is there to be a tool to help my body, make decisions, help my body make choices. It is not the driver of my life.”
The big challenge I've faced in the last few years has been reminding myself that I have a body. Reminding myself that I have a mind, but my mind is an assistant to my body. My mind is there to be a tool to help my body, make decisions, help my body make choices. It is not the driver of my life. So a lot of the work that I do now is specifically about helping women to create a business, create a life that really works for them, is aligned with their personal values their personal goals. But most of all, coming back into their body and actually using everything that they have available to them and not letting their minds take over.
Stephanie: So beautiful. What was the catalyst for you to switch from having a career to becoming an entrepreneur?
Imogen: It's difficult to pinpoint a certain catalyst. I had the sense that there was something better. I could be doing better. I could be feeling better. I could be using my gifts better. I could be living a more interesting life. And I let that I let myself entertain that possibility. I guess what pushed me to make the decision was that was various health issues were showing up in my life because of chronic stress, so I ended up having not one but two herniated disc surgeries in my back, despite having never had a serious accident. It was really a medical mystery. I had a lot of back pain, a lot of stress issues, a lot of headaches, and I was really tired all the time. I think it was my body that had been ignored for so long became a lot more confident and desperate to make it understood that I was not living the way I was designed. That I was living out of alignment and that things would get worse. It was a push and a pull. The pull was, I had this niggling sense that there was something else out there for me. I didn't know what it was but I knew that there was a possibility, and that the my body at the same time was going, This isn't working. This isn't working. This isn't working. Do something about it. When I was 27 I left my full-time marketing job. It was a very good job. It was a well-paid job and I worked with great people. I set off on my own with no plan, with no real idea of what I was doing, no clients, but just being so open to discover and open to exploring. Three years ago, I was a freelance social media strategist and now I'm a coach helping women to design that dream business using tools like human design, and tarot cards. It just shows you that in the space of such a short window of time so much can change. I have never felt so fulfilled in my work, and so in love with my life as I do now.
Stephanie: Yeah, and always booking out.
Imogen: Yes, always booking out with ease. Ever since I began I've been fortunate to never have a problem of not having any work. It’s because I see so much opportunity and possibility around me. There is always an unmet need, there's always something that I can help with, there's always something that I want to learn. I've never gotten stuck in a place where I'm not doing something that I love. Again, this is the thing. I help a lot of women transition from being an employee to entrepreneurship. There's a lot of fear about, what if I never work again, what if I don’t get any clients? So often what we think will be the biggest problems don't show up for us. Of course, there are other challenges that we never expected. I had a client earlier this spring who left a very successful job as an agency strategist, went freelance just as the pandemic was hitting, and signed seven clients back to back during a lockdown. During a pandemic when the whole advertising industry went on pause, and yet there she was signing clients, working nonstop and loving it. I just thought, here we have a beautiful example of how the assumptions we have about how things are going to go are irrelevant. Just because it happened to someone else doesn't mean that it has anything to do with you. Everyone's experience is completely unique and that's why I love this journey. All of my clients are always doing things their own way and doesn't matter what the world tells them they can and can't do or who they should or shouldn't be because they're constantly proving everyone wrong.
Stephanie: It's so magical if you get to work with people who have that sense about them. But I want to ask you as you come from a mainstream workplace that you help a lot of women who are still there but who want to transition. What do you see that is labeled a mainstream business workplace culture and how do you want to change that by changing people's lives?
“I think the first step when someone’s moving from an employee to having their own business is to unlearn everything they were ever taught by people who don’t run a business. ”
Imogen: I think a really big one is this myth that we have to be pushing and hustling and working all the time to have any measure of success. I think it's just not true. If we take a step back and look at this on a macro level, it's kind of adorably dumb what we've done as humans. We've invented all these ingenious machines to help take the workload off us, to help make our lives better so that we can labor less. And these machines have sped everything up. But what we've done is we’ve not let them take the load and let us take a step back and stay human, what we end up doing is mimicking the machines, trying to keep up with them, and we've completely forgotten why we invented them in the first place. What's happened is now we have this incredibly inefficient system. On a macro level, you end up with things like it takes three liters of water to make one liter of bottled water in a plastic bottle. And then on an individual level, people end up having to take so many hours of rest or having to numb themselves just to survive one hour of unnecessarily stressful work. Just to do one or two hours of intense labor, the amount of recovery that's needed is so enormous that it’s so imbalanced. We will never have enough leisure time to actually recover from how we work.
I think the first step when someone's moving from an employee to having their own business is to unlearn everything they were ever taught by people who don't run a business. And to really be conscious of not bringing in every bad habit, and everything that it means to be a successful employee in the eyes of your boss – constant presenteeism, who's the latest in the office, who's always looking busy – because that's not what moves the needle when you run your own business. To see these as two different things. What it means to be a “successful employee” or a “good employee”, versus what it means to actually see success in business. The first thing is decoupling from this idea that being busy is being successful.
“If you’re going to let go of being an employee and become a business owner, there’s this whole process of deconditioning that has to happen. ”
From what I see and what I know, the most successful people I've seen seem to have an awful lot of free time. They seem to so radically under scheduled themselves because their success comes from never missing the magic that life is about to present them. I really try to emulate that. I really try and do as little as possible, so that if something great comes my way I have the capacity to give it my full attention and I'm not so busy with my head down, hustling away, that I actually miss opportunities for collaboration, opportunities where I don't need to do anything to benefit from, opportunities to witness something magical, opportunities to be inspired. If you're going to let go of being an employee and become a business owner, there's this whole process of deconditioning that has to happen. And it's hard. That's why I would do this work.
Stephanie: It's also very much a Human Design profile as a Projector to not hustle, to trust into rest, and to spread this message that you don't have to always look busy and be busy in order to be successful. How has Human Design changed you or your business?
Imogen: You're absolutely right. But at the same time, I think that often what I see in Human Design is that we have a sort of shame around our strengths and our gifts, and we end up overcompensating. For instance, no one feels as much guilt, shame, and panic around the idea of a niche as manifesting generators who don't need one. And no one overworks themselves, burns out, and hustles quite as much as Projectors, exactly the people who are not here to work. I think for me it's been a process of understanding, it's been hard to come to terms with the fact that I'm a Projector and I'm not here to work, because my entire identity, my whole life has been about working hard.
When I first discovered Human Design that really hit me like a ton of bricks. It took me months to come to terms with what that meant. I saw it almost as an attack. Like the universe was laughing at me. No matter what our design is, what our profile is, or what our authority is, we're all on this journey of coming to terms with ourselves. Often we are living out of our design because of this inherent shame we have about owning that part of us.
“Use your imagination. Set up systems that are efficient. Enjoy being a full-time human as opposed to being a full-time employee or a full-time business owner.”
I agree when we can live into our design as Projectors, the beautiful gifts we have to offer the world, for Projectors but also for all other types, is to model the fact that there's another way of doing this. You don't have to work that hard. Use your imagination. Set up systems that are efficient. Enjoy being a full-time human as opposed to being a full-time employee or a full-time business owner. Live this full life.
Generators are here to show us all that when we live into our joy, when we do what lights us up, and we avoid, delegate, and pass on what isn't ours to do, we have a much more fulfilling life.
Manifesting Generators are here to show us all that you don't have to stick with something if you don't want to do it anymore. And that the most creative and fulfilling opportunities come when you blend the whole load of stuff together and make something brand new.
Manifesters are here to show us that you can just do things your own way. Reminding people that your way is the right way, always. Not to make yourself small.
We all have a gift that we need to first develop in ourselves and use for us first and foremost, and then through using that for us we inspire others.
What I love about Human Design is that it completely removes the this need or drive that we have as humans to fix each other, to try and change each other. I think especially for Projectors we can fall into this trap where just because we can see everyone, we feel it's our responsibility to reach in and tell people, “you should be doing this,” and, “why are you doing that this way?”
No, The beauty of the Human Design System is that when everyone uses their own design for themselves, it ultimately makes the collective better. Nobody needs to fix or heal anyone, they just need to live into their design and then there is balance in the ecosystem. This is why I love this system so much.
“The beauty of the Human Design System is that when everyone uses their own design for themselves, it ultimately makes the collective better. Nobody needs to fix or heal anyone, they just need to live into their design and then there is balance in the ecosystem.”
Stephanie: I felt like you were speaking directly to me. I used to have this savior complex where I always wants to make sure that other people are being lifted up and that I would help them. Today right before this, I had a conversation with someone because I just went to the doctor for something minor, and I rarely go because I'm super healthy and this person always goes to the doctor so I asked him for recommendations. I told him how I'm not going to take half of what she's going to subscribe me because I don't take antibiotics, I rarely use any kinds of creams or whatever, and he was so in shock that I lived that way. And I was like, I can help you. So I messaged him, “I'm not going to help you unless you ask me a specific question and you invite me in to help you.” Before, I would send him a whole list of, I do this, I do that like and this is what I do to stay healthy. I was like, Nope, if he's not asking me and he wants to go to the doctor every single week for something that's his thing, that's not my thing. I'm not going to save him. I felt like you were talking to me.
Imogen: We've all been there. You're telling the story of my life. This is where the Projector bitterness comes from because the advice when we're reaching in with something that's not needed, that's not wanted, and is a projection – that’s where bitterness comes from because it's not valued. And the “wait for the invitation” strategy seems intangible and quite difficult to follow. It doesn't mean you have to wait for an invitation to eat, or you have to wait for an invitation to start a blog. If you are about to share your gifts or your knowledge with someone, do they want to hear it? Have they asked for it specifically from you? Have they have they demonstrated that you are the person that they want to hear from right now in this moment? If not, then don't do it. Save yourself, protect your energy.
I think it’s also this mindset of scarcity. It's this mindset that the opportunities for me to shine are so few I have to grab them wherever I can, and it's not true. It doesn't work like that. Save your knowledge and save your gifts for the moments when you are going to be called on and you're going to need every ounce of energy that you got because they want you. The more you fritter it away with people who don't want to hear it, the less passion and the less energy you have for the moments that matter.
I think that's the Projector genius is this this idea of living a rich and juicy, but incredibly efficient life. Having this flawless sense of inner timing that you move, stop, or wait without hesitation because you always know when it's the right time to do something. That's what I've learned in my journey of deconditioning from toxic productivity, remembering who I am, and trying to integrate what I've learned through Human Design and living into my design. I’ve started to develop this sense of inner timing. When I choose to move or not or speak or not, sometimes it doesn't make sense to other people. Why are you suddenly moving off across the country? Why are you not going to publish your book that you wrote? Because I know it's not the right time or it's the right time. I know. It doesn't matter what anyone says. And I'm always right. It's learning to trust that.
I don’t believe this is just a Projector thing. I think every person – man, woman, child – we're all encoded with this potential for an inner sense of right timing. This inner sense of knowing. This is fundamental. You asked me what my mission is and maybe this is it. Helping people tune into that sense of self trust and in right timing. We don't need a blueprint. We don't need a strategy. We don't need to take a thousand courses or ask 100 people for what we should do because we just know in ourselves what's right for us in any given moment.
Stephanie: I love it! What a good circle we've come on with these questions. But you're also someone that I always take advice from when it comes to productivity and trusting that whatever you feel like that you'll do it. Could you give some tips on energy management or on productivity for women or those kind of topics? A lot of people ask me and I'm like you have to go to her, she knows!
“The big problem with mainstream productivity is that the focuses on time management. I say that we should focus on energy management.”
Imogen: The big problem with mainstream productivity is that the focuses on time management. I say that we should focus on energy management.
Why? We are all cyclical energy beings. All of us. It's kind of rare for us to think of ourselves as energy beings. We might think of ourselves as flesh and bone beings, or mental beings. For so many of us, our defining experience of our life is being in our minds, and our bodies are often this thing that we don't notice until something goes wrong. But we are energy beings.
How we interact with the world is through energy. With mainstream productivity, we tend to have this discipline and punish approach. We plan our time and we choose how we're going to show up at work by thinking of effort and reward. I'm going to work. I'm going to put in an effort and then if I do everything I set out to do, I'll reward myself with something. I'll reward myself with a break or I’ll reward myself with watching TV.
If we remind ourselves that we're energy beings, so therefore we need energy in order to expend energy, you understand the flaw in this model. It's like trying to drive a car a long distance when we haven't filled up the gas. I'm going to get in my car, it’s already on empty, and we're going to try to drive 100 miles. Then when I'm basically completely empty, driving on neutral with no gas, then I'm going to try and fill up with fuel when I'm already in a desperate situation. As opposed to, no, you fill up your car first and then you take a journey.
We do this all the time with our bodies. Inevitably what happens is we're already on empty, we're already starting from a tired place. We try to push ourselves being like, I'll reward myself at the end, and inevitably what happens is you're running on empty so you can't achieve all the things you want to do. Then you never reward yourself because you have a big stick you're beating yourself with going, I’m rubbish, what's wrong with me, I can't do it, I'm so lazy because I didn't get my to-do list done.
The first principle of moving from time management to energy management is understanding that there's an input and output energy balancing. If you want to do anything, the first thing you need to do is fuel yourself, what's going to give you energy? Now of course, there's the ones that we all understand like sleep, food, water, but there's lots of other things too. For a lot of people, exercise expands their energy, or reading a book, or getting inspired expands their energy. Taking a walk outside expands their energy. All these things that we often use to reward ourselves after the fact that actually the fuel we need to get going.
For me in my life, one of the big shifts was when I was an employee I'd be in the office at 9am. I would be rushing to work, I'd be kind of tired and foggy in the morning, I’d arrive in the office, it would take me forever to get going with my work. I'd stay in the office until 6 or 7pm. Get home, be so tired, have no time to do any of the things that I wanted like workout or have a hobby. Then begin the cycle again being tired in the morning.
Now how I work is my morning is my energy fuel time. I do whatever I need to do to get myself ready for the day, which means maybe a walk, maybe working out, maybe meditating, maybe having a really slow, romantic breakfast with my husband on a weekday, maybe reading a book, listening to a podcast. Then I maybe start the day at 11am, or sometimes even later, because I fueled myself. Now I can go the whole day knowing that I have the energy and I'm not waiting until the end of the day to do the things that recharge and restore me.
With energy management as well, especially for women, is understanding that there are three hormonal cycles that affect us as humans.
There's the circadian rhythm which a lot of us know about. It's the 24-hour hormonal cycle that governs our sleeping and waking hours, our appetite, and so on. This is the cycle that governs men for their whole lives. This is also why mainstream culture, workplace culture, business culture is all set around the circadian rhythm.
But for women in their reproductive years, they have a different cycle that governs their life. It’s called the infradian rhythm. This is a 28 to 30 day cycle. This affects your brain, your energy levels, your motivation, your metabolism, everything really. With the infradian rhythm taking over, that means that you are consistent, but on a monthly cycle rather than a daily one. You're not going to be the same every day, like a man might necessarily be. You're going to be different from week to week, and understanding that we need to completely reevaluate what we consider a productive day. A productive day in the first week of a woman's infradian rhythm is going to be very different to a productive day in the last week. So, really understanding how our body is working. The first is the input and output model, and also how the energy is going to be changing through the month is absolutely key.
Stephanie: I love that. I love that you tackle this because you're so good at understanding productivity and having certain systems that help you understand yourself so that you can be productive your own way. Because productivity for me is different than productivity for you. Well, I think it's going to be very similar still for us, but maybe for other people. I also need my morning to fuel myself, and I tend to start my day at 10 or 11am as well. I used to beat myself up that I couldn't be the the business owner who wakes up at 7am, started work at 8am, and then worked all day and had this hustle mentality. I would do that for two or three days, and then I would crash that same week because I was pushing myself to be someone that I wasn't designed to be. I love that this is something that you are sharing that you want to share on the podcast. How can people learn more about their own rhythms?
Imogen: The three important rhythms are the circadian, the infradian, and there's also the ultradian which is a small one. It's basically an 80 to 90 minute cycle, followed by a 20 minute rest period during waking hours and then it reverses in sleep. So in sleep, your brain is resting for 80 to 90 minutes and it has 20 minutes of activity, that's when we have the REM sleep. You have these three hormonal cycles that are governing your life. But as you said, everyone's experience is so different. This is why I'm so against blueprints and one size fits all approaches because there is no universal human experience. In the deep nuance where things actually move the needle, things are different. Some people are either on hormonal birth control or they're not menstruating, and they're not going to feel the full effects of the infradian rhythm. Maybe the circadian rhythm is going to be the one that they feel the most. Maybe the lunar cycle really affects them. Maybe they feel deeply affected energetically by the power of the full moon, the waxing, waning, and the new moon. I say to people, experiment. Track your energy for a month, two months and see where you are. See if there's any patterns that show up. If you really want to take this seriously, I also advocate for a short period to avoid any stimulants. So no caffeine, no alcohol, no alarm clocks if you can, to see when are you naturally tired or when are you waking up in the morning to try and work out what is your natural waking and sleeping rhythm. Like you said you know some people are early birds, they naturally do wake up at 5, 6 or 7am and they have a lot of energy in the mornings or they like to start their morning in a calmer space. Other people are night owls. They might wake up really late but have most of their productive energy in the evening or into the night. It's really hard for people who fall outside the “norm” to arrange their lives in this way. I'm actually interested to see now with so many of us working from home, not having to commute to work, whether anyone is experiencing any increased flexibility in how they can link their work day to their natural rhythms.
The first step is tracking yourself before reading any books or looking at any studies or so on, is to ground yourself in your own experience. Do an experiment, see how you feel. It doesn't have to be complicated. It could simply be at the end of every day, write down three words that summarize your energy for that day. Then over time, see is there a change? Are all the same words popping up all the time or are they slightly changing? What is it that changes your experience with energy? Oh, I felt really good today. What did I do in the morning? What did I do last night? Who was I with? What environment was I in? What was I eating? This is where we start to understand as well, how this input-output energy balancing model might work for us because we need to know what is it that fuels us. And again it's going to be different for every person. Some people feel they can't actually be productive without eating a big meal for breakfast, and some people don't eat any breakfast at all. They eat too much they get all foggy and they can't do anything meaningful. So again everyone is so different. It starts with getting into your body and tracking, how am I experiencing my energy for me?
Stephanie: I want to ask a harder question. You're talking about understanding your own rhythm, your own energy, and being either an early bird or night owl. Do you believe that this could also be conditioned?
Imogen: Hmm…Well, I guess, if you're thinking of it from a Human Design perspective, there are certainly clues in our Human Design System for how we are likely to experience energy. For instance, when I'm working with a client I love to point out the environment, tone, the arrows. Are you person designed to be dynamic in your environment? Are you designed to be more receptive? Because all of these things give us clues. When we're following our design, we're so less likely to be deconditioned, and we're more likely to feel ourselves and therefore reach this kind of state of perfect energy balancing. I don't really know whether one is naturally born an early bird or night owl and whether we can change. Again, especially for women, when we're children it's the circadian rhythm that governs our lives, in in our reproductive years as the infradian rhythm, and then after menopause it goes back to the circadian rhythm. So for women, we really have these three different phases of life where our energy is going to feel very different. We're going to have different kinds of superpowers. Over your life you might change. I can imagine that someone who was an early bird as a child becomes more of a late riser as an adult, and then returns to a place where they're different again. This is why the tracking is important. To keep checking in with yourself. I'm changing. Not seeing that as something that is wrong with you but that your body has different needs at this time, and that you're going to have to change how you show up for yourself.
For instance, I had a burnout in November 2018 which hit me really hard, and took me by surprise because this was before I discovered Human Design, before I knew I was a Projector, and I thought that I was here to work. I thought that I was unstoppable when it came to how much effort I could put into working. And it all, you know it all caught up with me. I always heard about burnout and I truly believed that it was something that only happened if you were in a toxic work environment where you're really under the thumb, you're being bullied, you're being exploited. But I was doing what I loved. I was a brand strategist working freelance with startups. I felt on top of the world. I loved my clients. I loved my work. And then I burned out. I ended up having to give up my biggest client because I couldn't fulfill the contract anymore, and I lost 80% of my income. I had to start everything over again. This wasn't my first rodeo; this wasn't the first time I'd like run myself into the ground from overworking. I'd already had two stress-related surgeries. So I decided, okay I think this is the nail on the coffin. I think this demonstrates that I can't keep going as I've always done. This strategy is not working anymore. So, I committed to an entire year of basically doing the reverse of everything I’d ever thought I had to do to be successful. Instead of the effort versus reward model – I’'ll work and then I'll see if I have time to do a yoga class or meditate – I flipped it. I'm going to put in all my hobbies, all my passions, all my workouts into my calendar as appointments, and then I'm going to work around them. I'm going to increase my prices so that I don't only have to work half the time. I basically committed this entire year to this experiment where I had a very rigid schedule, actually. I planned all my time out in advance. I had daily habits: a journaling habit, a working out habit. It was such an empowering year and I saw amazing results. At the end of the year I realized, because I was getting so in tune in my own body, that I didn't need this level of rigidity in my life. I could trust myself to give myself what I need without having to commit to a daily habit. For instance, I used to work out every day, and now I work out when I feel my body is calling me to work out. And I feel great. I don't meditate every day, but I meditate when my body is calling me to come home to myself and check in. I journal whenever I feel called to do so, which tends to be once or twice a week. Through this process of being very regimented about my self-care, what actually happened was I internalized this body wisdom to the point where I don't need a system anymore to take care of myself. That was an unexpected discovery. You don't actually need a lot of tools, strategies, and systems, checking in on yourself, and all these things to manage your life. When you get to that point where you trust yourself, you have this inner sense of knowing, this inner sense of timing. It's effortless. It's effortless. And I don't believe this is just me.
This is where I want everyone to get to. Look at an animal. An animal doesn't have a planner to tell it where to go, when to eat, when to sleep. They just know. And we are animals. I believe that we can get back to this. Where we just know when to eat, when to rest, what to eat, where to go, when to start, when to run, when to work out, when not to, when to work, when to get inspired, when to see people, when to retreat. There's no reason why we can't. It's just training ourselves to get to that point where we don't need any more training. We don't need to learn anything else. And maybe that's the scariest thing of all. When we talk about lifelong learning, it's actually lifelong unlearning. It's a returning process.
That's the journey I'm on right now is, how far can I take this? How much more can I trust myself? What does that look like in my life? I just stop disciplining myself and let go of what I “should” be doing and just follow what my body wants to do in any moment. It’s feeling really interesting.
Stephanie: You're so on fire! Now I want to experiment with this more. It's definitely trusting yourself as an entrepreneur as well. If you don't trust yourself, how are you going to trust your offers? How are other people going to trust in you? It all starts there. I love that you picked that out as well. It's super important.
Imogen: Right! We're both marketers. This is the marketing strategy that no one talks about. You don't need tons of budget for ads, a complicated funnel, or 1000 courses to learn the latest trends. If you are so trusting in yourself and in what you're offering, you're so passionate about it, you believe in it so much that whatever you share about it – whether it's three lines of an Instagram post or a video or a blog post – it’s so captivating that it does all the work for you.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Imogen: I think that's just it. Again, Projector Magic is reminding ourselves first of how easy and how little actual work needs to go into something for it to be a success. How sometimes the solution is so stupidly simple and so obvious that it's invisible.
Every time I think about when I have chosen to invest in something or in someone, it's so often because I just saw them so believing in what they're doing. They may be imperfect, a little sloppy, mincing their words, spelling things wrong, their branding is a little bit cheesy, but they truly believe in what they're doing. They trust in themselves and are so unworried about how many people sign up or what people say that it's so magnetic. You just think, I want to be around this person because they're living the full expression of their design. I want to be around people like them. So many people who are trying to market themselves, don't get bogged down in the tech. First work out, what do I really want to share. I want to create what makes me excited. If you focus on what makes you excited, inevitably, it makes others excited.
I've experienced that for myself where I've experimented on my own life, seen results, shared them with people. Folks, I did this crazy experiment, and my life didn't crumble. All this cool stuff happened, I'm gonna tell you about it. That's basically how I became a coach. I didn't decide to be a coach. It just got to the point where so many people were asking me to coach them and refusing to take no for an answer. Then one day I realized, okay, maybe I should actually become a coach and say yes to these people. That's how it happened. I was just talking about the things I cared about, sharing what interested me and people were asking to give me money for it.
So I don't believe it has to be complicated. Going back to what we talked about initially, I think one of the biggest myths we're sold around how to be successful is that everything has to be hard. This is not true. It's not true.
Stephanie: So much good stuff there. I'm going to relisten to this episode for myself because I tend to get caught up in, oh, I have to have funnels, my emails need to be optimized, and everything needs to look perfect, but I sell the best when I really truly 100% believe in it and share if it comes up in that moment, rather than having a whole funnel and a whole lot. It is nice that I know all that stuff and that I can set it up and then it’s passive, but it doesn't really make that much of a difference?
Imogen: It's the system that amplifies the natural authority that you have. So it's step two to amplify that self trust and that pure message that you're sharing. But what we're told in marketing is that it's the wrong way around. It's like set up your funnel and then see if people show up or look at the market, see what everyone else is doing, see if you can create something. It's so externalized. And we’re entering a new world where there's limitless possibility. What I love so much about the concept of Facebook ads, is that never before in human history has it been possible to create something, type in a few keywords, and basically reach exactly the people that you're thing is supposed to serve no matter where they are in the world. It is pure magic. It is absolutely magic.
We need to remember this. The rules that used to govern our lives on what was possible and what was realistic no longer apply. One of the things I think is really difficult to live in this strange limbo period where so much of our experience as humans is changing, I mean fundamentally what it means to be human as changing, is that we're still using old ways of thinking and applying them to our reality, and that's really out of sync. And so, exactly as you said, it doesn't have to be complicated. If you can just reach a small group of people all over the world who've been precisely waiting for what you have to say, you don't need to spend years building up a shop front, building up authority, and building a brand to get customers and to start growing a profitable business. It excites me. What I'm trying to imbue in my clients is the sense of limitless possibility and excitement. Oh, there's another way I can do this. Oh, I never thought about that before. Oh that sounds really fun. Oh, that would be really easy for me. Can I really do it that way? Yes! Yes, you can.
I tend to work one on one with clients intensively over 12 or 13 weeks, and then after three months we have a check in or I find out what they're doing. And nothing likes me up more than watching them make these moves in their own unique way. Following their intuition, using the strategies that we created for them to amplify that intuition. Seeing them out there living these beautifu,l full lives, seeing results, growing businesses, and just having FUN. Having fun. That's what I want for everyone in the world is playing with life doesn't have to be so serious.
Stephanie: That's a really beautiful way to end this podcast because we can talk for hours – we sometimes do. But I want to wrap up with the last question, what does it mean for you to be a Mission-Driven Entrepreneur?
Imogen: I think for me mission-driven means firstly, seeing your business, your enterprise, not just as a tool to extract profit – because I think that's the old way of doing business – but to extract profit whilst building collective wealth. Not just financial wealth, but educational wealth, opportunity wealth, relationship wealth, experience wealth. Creating something that is a thriving, healthy ecosystem. Then it’s a net benefit to the world, to the planet, to the community. I think the other half of it is for me, a mission is your compass; it's your North Star. It doesn't have to be big and lofty; it doesn't have to be profound. It's something that you have chosen to focus on to help guide you in the hardest moments, and to help you make decisions about what's important.
“A mission is your compass; it’s your North Star. It doesn’t have to be big and lofty; it doesn’t have to be profound. It’s something that you have chosen to focus on to help guide you in the hardest moments and to help you make decisions about what’s important.
For me mission-driven means having personal values, living into them, and using them to help you do hard things. ”
Mission-driven means having personal values, living into them, and using them to help you do hard things.
For me, those words are vision, courage, and friendship.
Vision for me is having a big picture view of not just where I'm going but how my actions impact the wider world, and making sure that I'm choosing to do things in a way that isn't just benefiting me by exploiting someone else.
Courage is about trying to live into this value of pushing myself, or doing things that feel personally hard or put me at personal psychological risk in order to share a message, or to do something that I know benefits the collective.
Friendship for me is all about relationship. I love to think of a business or an enterprise as a big tree. Of course we all want the fruit, right? But the process of creating the fruit is enormous. To create the fruit, you first have to have really rich, fertile soil. And for me the rich, fertile soil is all the things you don't see that go into making a successful business. It's the privilege you have, it's the people that have helped you, it's your teachers, it's the experiences you've had, it’s those relationships. Everything that creates this really healthy microbiome. Then you have your shoot. It's about trusting in yourself to bring this idea to life, to nurture it, to give it the fuel that it needs. We talked about holistic productivity: fueling yourself and giving yourself a fighting chance of actually being able to do this thing. At the same time, the root system is going down, that strong foundation. Trusting in myself, recognizing that there are seasons, that the best way for me to serve my businesses is to build a strong root system, this foundation. It's all invisible, no one can see it, but it's there. Then finally, the last part of the process is the fruit. But if you try to grow the fruit on its own, you go to a tree and force it to grow fruit really fast, you're gonna end up exhausted and frustrated. If you just take care of the soil, and watering it, being patient, making sure you pull out the weeds and so on, you'll get your fruit and it will be fairly straightforward. In organic agriculture, they say, “Don't grow crops, grow soil,” because you can't grow crops without healthy soil. It’s the same with business. You can't grow a business without a healthy ecosystem. For me, friendship means building that ecosystem of support. Building the ecosystem of relationships. I want every client of mine to be a friend. I want everyone to feel like I'm their friend. That I'm there. I've got their back and that people have my back. That we have this wide base of support, like a tree, that is helping us to thrive. I think one of your questions was what's made the biggest impact in your life in business? For me, it's people. It's the relationships. It's my teachers. It's my clients who took a chance on me and invited me to be a coach for them. That's it, that's the secret to my success. If I take care of my relationships, if I take care of my friendships, the rest of it takes care of itself.
For me, mission is so linked to where are you going and why? What are your values and how can you live into them?
Stephanie: Wow, so beautiful. I love the tree picture that I have in my mind now. I want everyone to reach out to you! Where can they best connect with you?
Imogen: The best place to go is my website, www.imogenroy.com. You can also find me on Instagram. I look forward to connecting with you on social media.
Stephanie: Thank you so much for being here and going deep and sharing it all. I'm so excited.
Imogen: Thank you so much, Steph. It's been a real delight, as always, talking with you.
I’m Imogen, and as a Strategy Coach (a discipline I invented at the intersection of Brand Strategy and Life Coaching) I help people to be more prolific, productive, and present in their life and business.
I do this by developing and teaching unconventional strategies and tools that break cyclical beings free from toxic, unsustainable, and disempowering narratives about work and business to create unstoppable success without burnout or compromise.
If you’re ready to take a more proactive approach to protect and replenish your most precious resource, your own energy, learn more about my online course, Align + Flow, or book a free call with me to talk about coaching.
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