E31 How to Take Your Life Experience, Start a Business and Help Others, with Brianna Wilkerson

The My Journey to Fearless Podcast

Welcome to episode 5 of the “How She Did it” mini-series where I’m interviewing 8 inspiring women who have kindly agreed to share their stories about how they found their passion and purpose, started their businesses and left their day jobs.

Today I’m speaking to Brianna Wilkerson and Brianna is sharing her story of how she found her purpose through healing her own relationship to food and her body, and how this inspired her to want to help other women with these struggles.

We talk about:

• How Brianna started to train as a coach, and then started her business, alongside her full-time job
• That you’re already successful if you’ve found your calling and you’re doing it - no matter what your journey looks like
• How businesses have different seasons and sometimes we might need to scale back - especially when having a baby and running a business.
• Every one of us has a business inside of us that we can start using our own life experiences.
• Brianna never thought of herself as an entrepreneur, but this calling kept welling up inside of her and she knew she had to listen to it.
• Money worries and blocks, the thoughts of “do I have what it takes to run a business?”, and the fear of making the wrong decision.
• How we can shift from an employee to entrepreneur mindset
• Be careful not to get stuck in planning and overthinking everything - the clarity you are looking for comes from action!
• The key to building your audience is to let people get to know us so they can make a connection with us - and this requires us to overcome our fears of visibility.

It’s such a great conversation and I know you will take away so much from it.

Links

Find out more about Brianna here:

Facebook

Instagram

Facebook Group

Food Freedom Journal

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Timestamps:

1:59: Brianna explains how she went into her career because she was good at it and it seemed like the best choice.

2:54: While in college Brianna realised that this wasn’t her passion. She realised she had a passion for coaching. But she had to work for the firm for three years after college.

3:39: Brianna struggled with her own health and body issues, and as she began to heal she realised that she could help so many other women with their relationship with food, their body, and themselves.

4:39: Brianna realised that she could offer support to other women experiencing these issues. One day on her lunch break she googled health coaching and this is where her journey began.

5:39: Brianna waited to take the course until she could pay for the whole thing up front and started doing the course in her lunch hour and evenings.

6:24: As soon as she started to coach women she knew this was what she was meant to do.

6:49: Brianna explains how the journey to starting a business isn’t always simple - she still had her job for a while and then went part-time, and she explored different options with different jobs alongside her business until she could do it full time.

7:49: If you’ve found your calling and you’re doing it then that is a success! Don’t compare yourself to others.

8:34: Businesses have different seasons, but stay in it if you feel called to do it. You have to keep going.

9:09: Juggling a business and a baby and scaling back for the season you’re in. You can still focus on one or two things you can do now with the time you have.

10:14: Brianna talks more about her health problems and how she overcame them. She was exposed to a lot of diets growing up and she describes the mindset she developed around her body when she was a teenager - specifically around wanting to control food and exercise, and then comfort eating in later years.

13:09: Brianna started to see her own value and realised her worth wasn’t in her weight. She started to check in with herself holistically and decided to take care of herself, rather than focus on losing weight.

14:24: Brianna felt the calling to blog, so she did! It was so exciting to be able to offer something to the world.

15:09: Everybody has a business inside of them that they can start from their own story. People forget to look at their life experiences when they are trying to find their passion and purpose.

16:04: Brianna never saw herself as an entrepreneur, but her purpose kept welling up inside of her and she had to take action.

16:49: Brianna talks about how she was feeling when she took her first steps into coaching.

18:09: Once women start taking care of their bodies they also start to grow in other areas and find their passion and start their own businesses.

18:49: I’m not an expert - who am I to help other people? Social media leads to comparing yourself to others, just stay focused on helping your clients.

20:29: Brianna talks about the fears she’s encountered and how she overcame them. Here we dive into money worries and blocks, the thoughts of “do I have what it takes to run a business?”, and the fear of making the wrong decision.

22:09: The differences between an employee and entrepreneur mindset. Brianna became obsessed with personal development books.

23:09: Having a coach and journalling helped Brianna get clear on a lot of things, and how we constantly need to up-level ourselves and our mindset to be able to up-level our businesses.

25:24: Brianna’s biggest piece of advice for you if you’re stuck in a job you’re not happy in.

26:54: How people try to find their passion and purpose by consuming more and more information, but it’s when you take a step back that the ideas and the clarity come.

27:39: How nothing we do is wasted. Everything leads us to where we are now, and it’s taking action that brings clarity.

28:09: Don’t get stuck in planning and overthinking everything - just start and it will all become clear. The clarity comes so fast once you start. It doesn’t have to be perfect. People will connect to you - just trust that you’re enough.

30:24: If you hide away and let your fear of visibility take over then nobody will know about you and how you can help them. Let people see who you are and the rest naturally happens.

32:09: People aren’t thinking about us as much as we think they are - they are thinking about themselves!

32:54: Know that you don’t have to do this alone - find someone to help you.

33:09: Brianna tells us what she does in her business and shares how you can find out more about her.