As someone who’s been in the industry for so long, internationally recognized business mentor Ali Brown has witnessed a lot of changes that came along with the birth of the web and social media. As these unprecedented times bring about a new change, what hope is there for the future of businesses? In this episode, Ali talks about her freelancing experience before “social” and managing to stand out and succeed throughout the years. She also opens up about her pivot to coaching and empowering women leaders through The Trust and her podcast, Glambition®. Join Baeth Davis and Ali Brown as they get raw and real about their business journeys and hopeful ideas for the future of business.

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Ali Brown, Manifesting Generator: Hope For The Future Of Business

Internationally Recognized Business Mentor, Ali Brown, Gets Raw & Real

You are attending the show where I interview people that I feel are living their design in real-time, having a great time doing it, influencing and impacting the lives of other people, and inspiring other people to align to their design. No matter what business you’re in, your job is to make other people’s lives easier, smoother and more fun. Whether you sell tires or coaching, you’re here to bring more ease, success and joy to your clients, customers, family and friends.

Our aim here is to help you get true to you. You know that saying, “You do you, boo.” The saying that we abide by is you’ve got to learn your own design so you can customize your life to you because what you learn out there isn’t going to help you in the long run, and you will have to dismantle a whole lot of it.

I’m super excited about our guest. She’s one of my dearest friends. Back in 2005, I was the first person to sign up for her first online workshop. I attended that workshop three times. I have coached with her and watched her become one of the most recognized entrepreneur coaches in the world. You may have heard of her. Her name is Ali Brown. She has built a coaching and consulting enterprise that has ranked in the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the nation.

She was also named one of ForbesWomen to Watch, one of Ernst & Young’s winning women entrepreneurs, and was an entrepreneur delegate for the United Nations Foundation’s Global Accelerator Program, which she and I talked about before it happened. We both saw it. I said, “You’re going to go to the UN.” She said, “Yes,” and she did before she got the invite. Ali was also featured on the ABC hit primetime show, Secret Millionaire. I recommend you to gold watch that episode on YouTube. It’s such a moving episode. She has over 250,000 followers via AliBrown.com. You can find her there. Her social media channels are rocking.

I love her Instagram account. She’s always doing great lives there. She has Glambition® Radio show on iTunes where she interviews 7, 8, and 9-figure and beyond women entrepreneurs who have these extraordinary stories, much like Ali’s of being in one place in their life and coming up with a solution, and bringing it to market. Please subscribe to her podcast, become a follower and leave a review. Her coaching and mentorship have been featured on CNN.com and many other major media outlets.

She has been named by Entrepreneur Magazine as having one of the Top 10 Twitter Accounts Every Entrepreneur Should Be Following, so follow her on Twitter. Ali is a frequent traveler with their husband, Brett, and their four-year-old twins. They live between Arizona, Southern California and Sydney, Australia. She has created an organization called The Trust, a premier network organization for high seven-figure and beyond women entrepreneurs. There are very few networking groups for women of this caliber.

You may be experiencing this if you’re in that range of success financially in your business that a lot of the groups you join don’t have peers. She’s created a peer network that leads to amazing business collaborations, great business deals, amazing learning and support. Check out her organization JoinTheTrust.org. Let’s bring on the amazing, beautiful, brilliant, reverent, and most talented business coach I’ve ever had, Ms. Ali Brown. It’s so good to be with you. It’s nice to see you.

It’s good to see you too. Even though some days I prefer audio, I was like, “This would be good to see Baeth.”

It’s great for people to see you because you are beautiful and telegenic. You also have such a wonderful energy about you when you’re teaching and presenting. You really draw people in. Will you share with everyone where you were before you decided to become an entrepreneur and then how you became an international mentoring sensation? Most of my clients will tell me, “On my dream board, I have Ali Brown and Oprah,” and they list some other people but you’re on people’s dream boards. You’ve reached dream board level

Information is helpful, but it changes all the time. The person you’re becoming is the gift in all this.

It’s funny going back because as we get older, you count the years. It’s almost weird to go back because it seems like so long ago, but it is good to go back because everyone needs to hear how things started. I’m glad things started when they did, and it was before I had a lot of people to compare myself to. There were no social media, and the web was new.

It’s 1998 and I’m trying to put you in the right frame of mind. Maybe a year or two earlier, the number one song was Macarena. Let’s go back to the ‘90s, hip hop, Salt-N-Pepa, and the exciting thing at the time was the web was so relatively new. It was like, “This thing is going to come out and connect the world, and we’re all going to be a part of it.” We didn’t really understand it. That’s how it started. I switched from job to job, and I thought something was wrong with me because I kept thinking, “Everyone I graduated school with has had the same job 3 or 4 years.” I’m hopping around and I’m restless. There’s this restlessness.

There was one point I was working full-time at a publishing company. I was teaching step aerobics. I was selling vitamins off my bicycle. I joined a network marketing company. I was having fun. I was trying stuff on, and I’d see people so scared to do that. I would try it and say, “I’ll buy into this thing and sell these vitamins. If no one buys them, I’ll take them all myself.”

My last job was at this little ad agency in New York, and I worked for these two older, Orthodox Jewish guys. I was the first outsider they led into this agency. They didn’t know what to make of it. I came from this healthcare background where the last job I had was I wrote newsletters for health insurance companies who would publish magazine-style newsletters for their insurance holders. They said, “You, healthcare.” If you’ve ever been to hire for a job, you can say like, “Can you start today? You have healthcare experience here.” They brought me in and stuck me in a corner. I loved it though, because I got to create this whole plan. They signed this huge hospital program in New Jersey and didn’t know what they were doing.

I was 26 and I was like, “These guys don’t know what they’re doing,” but they trusted me and I felt so proud. I knew what a big deal it was for them to let someone new in, put me in the back and say, “You work with the clients.” I figured this whole thing out myself. They said, “We have a printer and a designer. Here you go.”

That is when I started realizing I’d probably love to run my own thing and work for myself because I was doing everything from getting the ad copy out to the clients. I knew how to fix the fax machine because when Tony’s rabbi would come in, it would always break. All these stories are going in my book. I realized that I’m not writing a business principle book. It’s all these hysterical stories from New York. The place was like a comedy, but what changed was when I had a freelancer coming in and out. His name is Eric, and he did the design. I got to know him because we would sit there and move the clip art, nudge it over and try to get the columns right.

Finally I said, “How do you freelance? What is freelancing? I noticed you’re not here all day. I’ve seen your invoices. You charge well. You come back then from The Hamptons. How do I freelance?” He’s like, “You could do this easily. There are many ad agencies in town that don’t hire full-time copywriters or designers. You could get some gigs and probably make twice as much as you can make now.”

My jaw dropped, and my awareness shifted in a way that had never shifted before. I was like, “How soon could I do this? It’s because I’ve gotten a little disenchanted with the office, and they wouldn’t update it. There was 1 bathroom with 8 men and 2 women.” I decided to leave. I remember going to the Barnes & Noble down in Union Square and picking a book off the shelf. At the time, it wasn’t $100,000 grand. Now it said Secrets of a Freelancer Writer, Second Edition: How To Make $85,000 A Year by Bob Bly. I picked up that paperback and started to learn how to work for myself and get gigs.

I walked into ad agencies, asked for referrals and joined networking groups. I’m so glad looking back that there was no way to do it online at that moment because I had no one to compare myself to. I had no one to even ask what they thought. I had no choice but to do it. That is how that started. The turning point was when I started an email newsletter. There are ten clients that had been put together and a few colleagues. This was all there was at the time in my AOL address book. This is how we start things.

I started sharing a bit about what I knew. I started teaching like, “These are some things that I’ve seen are working.” If you could say you wrote web copy, these ad agencies would pull you in. They thought you were like a new God in this new media that no one knew how to do. I wrote a bit about that and started to grow the newsletter. People started asking me, “How are you marketing with an email newsletter?”

I was like, “I don’t know a lot but I’ve done enough to get some clients from this, so why don’t I write an eBook on this?” It’s because I’ve started to see eBooks. I bought an eBook on how to sell eBooks online and put it up. I sold it for $37 and would start selling products online. This was fun. I miss these days. It was simple. I had no one to say, “I’m not doing as good as her.” Everything was so new. I loved learning. That turned into people asking me for more business advice and teleseminars where you had those classes on the phone.

I was doing them before they had Bridge Lines muted. You would hear people flushing and making dinner. It was such an exciting time. That turned into bigger conferences, big home study kits, and all this stuff during the heyday of that time. We were shipping out our products and speaking of so much fun. Where I landed that I loved so much was the coaching end of this because the information is helpful, but it changes all the time. When I’m working with the people, it’s the person you’re becoming that is the gift in all this. In the end, who I’m here to help are the leaders who are transforming through this process of growing a business.

What a beautiful realization through your own journey that you are here to profoundly help someone develop in a sense their truth and depth.

Jim Rohn said that. If you don’t know who Jim Rohn was, he was Tony Robbins’ original mentor. Tony took a lot of those ideas, added cool music, and flew through the air. Jim Rohn was the originator of a lot of that type of thinking. He said, “You don’t become a millionaire for $1 million. You become a millionaire for the person you become in the process.” I remember sitting with that for days going, “That is what it’s about.” Especially for women, you break through that first million, and there are chance launches and these things you if you land backward and gold. When you earn it, who you are at that stage, you’ve learned to likely manage a team, you know who your friends are. You’ve had this bomb, and you’ve probably blown up a relationship. There are all these check marks on the way to that point.

I was asked in the interview with Business Insider. They said, “Why did you choose to work with women?” I said, “It’s because it’s fascinating and a much more holistic journey for them than men.” I know you work with women and men, Baeth. I have in the past. People don’t know that but I do take on male clients sometimes, and I find it quite boring. It’s a very linear process for many of the situations I’ve been in. That’s changing. There are many more men now involved in a business that is more holistic-viewed and can pull a conversation we could have. For women, this is such a personal journey in who they’re becoming.

In part, it’s because of how our brains are structured. Men, in general, are very single-focused. If you give them a task, they’re very good at being single-focused and getting that task done, whereas, in the female brain, everything’s connected, left and right hemisphere. We are almost always aware of everything at all times. I know where the dog is in the house.

When I used to have kids, I knew where they were. I know how much food in the fridge, and always get gas for the car. We’re aware of all of it. It’s because more of that circular awareness, we can’t go towards the goal without understanding how it impacts the rest of what we do. You often give clients the opposite advice of most coaches. I wondered if you could tell us more about that. Give us a couple of examples.

It didn’t start that way. Meeting you was such a pivotal turning point for me because you were the first to sign up for my workshop in 2005. That’s when I was very much about teaching. I would get information and teach. I showed you guys how to do HTML code to teach everyone out. I loved teaching what I knew and sharing it. Once I got into the internet stuff, I learned a lot from watching the guys. I loved what they built, and we need that. I’m going to quote my friend, Claudia Chan, “The world needs a mom and a dad.” That’s very true. We need the feminine and the masculine.

I learned from emulating them because I was looking at the bigger launches. I’m like, “We’ll do things this way.” As I built, I got a bit disenchanted with everything. You met me before when I was still building, and I was so excited. You’ve been so privy to my journey that you saw a turning point where I also started to see the big levelizer when the social came on. It ruined the party for me. In social, suddenly everyone was on there. Everyone could copy each other so easily. There were suddenly template websites.

Sometimes we wait too long and have that little wake-up call when we realize either we’ve not been so clear in what we stand for or we’ve not been acknowledging it.

I’m not saying it’s not good to have things easy, but you could do it even if you didn’t want to and earn it. It was crazy. I started to look at what was happening, and I’m thinking, “If I’m just teaching information, that’s very easy to knock off and copy. It’s going to change all the time.” This isn’t why I’m here. I don’t want my epitaph to say, “She taught the online blueprint.” It was evolving but I was still enjoying it. I still helped so many people.

It was great but there’s this little inkling, which many of us have at times like this, “What’s the next chapter? What’s this about?” I started looking at a few things. One was the internal part of this and what I desire like, “Why am I here?” Externally, I was starting to lose my positioning. My team is getting questions about, “What’s the difference between Ali’s program and the coach that dances in our videos?” I’m like, “What?”

If you’re dancing your reels and make money, God bless you. I don’t have the energy for that market. It’s too much going on. I started to see all this craziness and I’m like, “Wow.” If people don’t see the difference now, then I need to pick a new lane like Inc. 500, the UN, and all this stuff like Secret Millionaire. From an external perspective, sometimes we wait too long, and there will be a little wakeup call when you realize either you’ve not been so clear in what you stand for or you’ve not been acknowledging it.

I got sucked into that lowest common denominator marketing and trying to help everyone. This is a multi-layered answer but it’s very important because we wait on both. Sometimes, we wait too long to say, “Do I have permission to make a change? What do I want?” Even if things are going well, you’re trapped in an excellence-type of thing.

If you’ve not been watching what’s going on in your industry, then you may be thrown for a loop because suddenly, people won’t be able to tell why they should invest in your program. Why would they want to work with you? Why would they want to buy your product? That’s the external conversation in all this. All I knew was like, “If I want to stand out immediately and probably honor myself, I’m going to start dismantling this stuff,” and I started to.

2011 was when I was on the show, Secret Millionaire. That was a life-changing show. If you want to see it, you can still see it on Amazon and Hulu. You’ll see me transform on that show. You’ll see me go through an experience that re-oriented me and get clear on what I wanted because I hadn’t had the space to do it. I had to live among the homeless for a week to have that space in my life to think about what the next level would be like. I was at a point I had every five minutes of my day scheduled and having a blast, but then at night quietly going like, “Where’s this going?”

All these experiences could have pointed me in this new direction to start to want something different and made some big changes. I decided to dismantle some of the programs I’ve built. I wanted to make a lot of space. I wanted things to be simple again. I wanted to only work with the clients where I knew that I was in my absolute sweet spot and had no competition in that particular lane. That’s working with the women in 7 and 8-figures as far as coaching them individually, working with them and nurturing them. I made the shift for myself.

I had no idea how beneficial making that shift would also be externally, and getting so clear that I wanted to do things so differently that it was a marketing and a positioning tool like, “Ali only does one-on-one coaching. No one does that anymore but Ali’s doing it. That’s all she does.” That’s all I did at the time before I started The Trust. It’s a saying that’s been around for a while, “If you want success, look at what 99% of the world is doing, then you do or the people in your industry do the opposite.” It’s a sure way to stand out and get clear on what matters to you.

For example, clients come in and we’ll do the VIP day, which I love in person. There’s still nothing like it because we shut the doors, we have a huge whiteboard and we’re like, “Let’s go.” We start mapping everything out. Very often, they’ve gotten locked into a model that they started because in our industry, this is what we all do. You build it this way. You have three levels of programs, and then you have a mastermind. I’m talking about the business coaching space.

I walk up with a red marker and I’m like, “What can we start? What do we take out?” It’s because they have no space, but they have a long conversation, they know that something has to change. What they’ve built was determined by this point is not sustainable, scalable or enjoyable. What are those options? When we make space for them to then think about, “How could you do this differently? What is this about?” It could be as easy as making a program simpler. It could be them suddenly not being accessible to anyone. It could be taking them off social media. I love poking at things, prodding them, and saying, “How can you do this in a way that is so in line with who you are and unlike anyone else out there?” That’s the fun part for me.

That’s a long answer but it started with my shift, which I was worried about. My ego was like, “How am I going to be received? Who am I if I’m not doing huge events with acrobats?” Part of me was like, “Ali was always doing the big thing. If she did big, I’d do bigger. I’ll bigger my biggerest. Let’s do it.” It became about a whole different game and honoring the metrics that mattered to me and not looking at what anyone else was doing.

If you want success, look at what 99% of the world is doing, then do the opposite.

It occurred to me that our readers could maybe figure out what their metrics are. What are your fulfillment metrics? Pick five and keep it simple.

That’s going to be changing now, freedom is metric. Time-off and not working Fridays are metrics. Some of you may not be working on Tuesdays. It’s something that you want to do every week. It’s changing the game, and this is a microcosm for what’s going on in the world now. The old systems, matrices and the paradigms, everything is being blown up now. It’s terrifying and exciting at the same time because we are reinventing all the new models. Here we are with all this control over our own business, and many of us are paralyzed to make changes. We’re moving as slow as a corporation when you can decide to instantly like, “I don’t work Tuesdays.”

I take Mondays off now, which is a game-changer for me to not have to wake up Monday and work.

That’s nice to get your head around the week.

Plan the week, be easy to the week, and do things your own way. It’s brilliant. You take people through this process and help them figure out what to keep, what to shift, create space for new ideas, new approaches to come in, and show them they can pivot quickly because they’re nimble. What are some of the strategies that your seven-figure-plus clients have been implementing of late that are working well?

People want more high touch now. People who want different texts have taken over. If you have an opportunity now to sell anything in person, in small groups, and where people get something real from you, you have a huge advantage. Not everyone is up for that until we get that, but people are craving connection, gathering and new experiences. That’s going to be the next level of doing business. There’s a bifurcation in so many places in the world nowadays, and then you see these splitting everything from incomes, and how we look at things to the Ascension Language, you have the 3D and the 5D.

There will be a bifurcation in how people want to be worked with. There’s a tech. There’s the low touch. Everything is apps, instant click. You have a brain fart and something is delivered from Amazon. You don’t have to think about anything. There’s going to be this whole other side of gathering, connection, and that high-touch transformational work with people. You and people who are a lot in these spaces, there will be incredibly increased demand for these experiences and services. I see that in my clients as well.

Many of them have a mix now, but when they are doing more of that high touch, and it’s about quality of life and the meaning of the work they do, they’re getting a lot of response. I want to give you credit too. I want to draw into the work that we did together. There was a lot of this time that I felt so different. I remember you were in my events and programs. I’m like, “Can I get a reading from you?” That’s back when you were doing solely the hand analysis at that time. I finally felt that I wasn’t abnormal. I finally understood more about how I was wired.

I always had some confidence. It wasn’t a lack of confidence, but it was a little confusion over why I was here, why I always felt different and never felt like I fit into a group. I don’t go to a lot of things, probably because I feel like a bit of an oddball. When you did that very first reading for me, and we did several from that point on, and when you link in the human design, my mind was blown because it finally explained also these waves of how I would feel that I would beat myself up.

I’m like, “I’m not on. Why am I not wanting to power through this and make it happen?” I see people doing that, and that’s where social for me was the death of me. If I pay too much attention to that, I’m like, “I’m not doing enough. I’m not marketing enough. There are not enough people that know what I’m doing and how cool I am.” I get overwhelmed with that stuff, so then I would shut it off and hide. You said that’s how you’re designed. I said, “Really?” These waves and honoring who we are, that’s the whole new journey that we’re on. I’m happy to talk about that if that’s where you want to go.

What we’re on in understanding our design, whether we use hand analysis, human design or straight ahead astrology, is that we’re moving into a time where the person who is individuated or differentiated into their true self. They have the advantage because they’re more creative, they don’t need to look outside themselves for their answers and their inner-directed rather than outer. We’re all designed to be in response to our environment, but we’re not meant to make our decisions from the authority of other people. We’re meant to make our decisions internally.

This is a pretty development in our evolution. 1,781 are decisions moved from the mind to the body. That’s the first thing. You’ve got to be inside your body and be able to feel your body to even know, “I’m going to cancel that meeting because I’m not in a meeting mood. I want to be there for those people, and they deserve the best of me but I deserve the best of me, which means I’m canceling the meeting.” Your design in particular, you’re here to be influential to other influential people. There is a rarefied quality.

One of your gates is 31, which is influence and you have Line 3, which is about exclusivity. Much of what we’re taught is, “My design is to include everyone who wants to play provided they don’t throw sand at anyone. They’re welcome.” It’s not your design. Your design says you’re only able to lead those who lead, which is what your business is about. It’s calling on other leaders to show how leadership is done.

Being a leader to leaders is a very important role that often gets overlooked because mostly leaders are leading a community, they’re the spokesperson for their corporation or whatever they’re doing. That’s maybe impacting others, but who’s helping and leading them? The other thing in your design is so interesting. You have this exclusivity piece being an influencer to influencers and a leader to leaders. The other side of it is you have the design of a profound healer and transformation agent.

One of the things that your design requires is that you go on retreat frequently. Your day will have downtime structured in the way you set up your day. We’ll have a lot of spaciousness. You’ll take little retreats right at the local hotel like, “Here’s my phone number. I’m going to be there for two days to work on my book or whatever.” You may know like you described, completely dismantle what you’re doing and disappear for a while as you regroup, and then the rumor mill starts, “Did Ali Brown quit?” “I heard she downsized.”

People are craving connection, gathering, and new experiences. That’s going to be the next level of doing business.

People will make up stories. When the fact is when Ali Brown retreats and goes inward, you get stronger, not weaker. You have the design that requires copious amounts of introspection and alone time in order to bring that next creation forward. As a result, you’re not designed to be constantly out front of people. You’ll have a social media blitz when you have something to promote, but otherwise, if you’re out there once a week or every two weeks, it’s not going to matter for you because it will be correct.

I need to hear it again and again because I do still feel the constant pull and pressure. For example, the solution is that when I’m in the mood, I’ll put Instagram back on my phone and take it off. I’ll put it wherever I want to post. You’ll know because I’ll start doing a story blitz on things that I’m feeling, memes and things that go on in the world. I’ll cool it for a while and my team will keep up the regular posts and I’ll be on there again. It’s so perfect, and to honor that and be like, “We don’t need six posts a day and X percent engagement.” It’s so different.

I have a couple more questions for you, then we’ll look at your chart. One thing I want to address here is that you and I are emotional types. Fifty percent of humanity is emotional in how they make decisions. There are seven other decision-making processes. The emotional type is the most common, and it’s also one of the most difficult. The reason is emotional type people almost never have 100% clarity about anything. We have to get to 67%.

If it feels pretty good and it’s not either triggering fear, anxiety or on the other side, massive ecstatic excitement, neither one of those is good for decision-making. It’s more a calm feeling like, “I’m ready to do this thing.” It’s because of that, half of the world’s population is not consistent in how they show up. We’ve put this huge thing on consistency. Consistency is a masculine attribute. It is not a yin feminine attribute. Consistency, structure, even alignment, and purpose are very masculine. It lives in men and women.

If women get too caught up in being consistent, it does not honor their flow. Women technically have a cycle so even if the woman is not an emotional type, she still has a body that doesn’t consistently perform. If women do not get 8 to 9 hours of sleep at night, they don’t function. Their hormones are all out of whack. We can’t perform because everything in our body is so we can grow a baby. That’s how our biology is. We’ve got to eat, sleep right, and have copious amounts of non-stress time to even have our brain function and fire the neurons properly.

You look at most women and they’re operating like men. There’s this huge pressure to be consistent, “Be consistent in your marketing. Be consistent on how you show up.” I don’t have any consistency in my chart but you have a little bit. People will say to me, “I need you to be more consistent.” I’m like, “I’m not the person for you.” I flat out tell them, “You will never get consistency for me.” I will honor my word but that’s different.

We are the more emotional types. Your waves, they’re literally waves that go up and down. You’re here when you’re calm and feel like, “I’m ready to come on a retreat.” You come right out and out comes The Trust. Remember, you and I talked and you’d already created it but you hadn’t announced it. I said to you, “Ali, you need a group that’s exclusive, maybe a networking group.”

We’ll look at that because one of the things about everybody’s design is everyone is designed to make money and work. It’s just how you work. There’s a type called the projector. They’re the opposite of you. They can only do a few things at a time and they need a ton of sleep and downtime. They’re trying to be the worker bees, and it’s a nightmare for them until they learn to be correct and embrace their laziness. Speaking of that, you have a term called excellence burnout. This is a perfect segue to that question. What is excellence burnout, and what are the signs that a woman is possibly on the brink of or deep into excellence burnout?

Excellence burnout is where I was. It’s where you are proven and generate the money sometimes. Often, we build a whole brand around ourselves in excellence but we’re craving the genius. I got this concept from Gay Hendricks’s book, The Big Leap, which I often give to my clients because they will be at a level where they are trapped in excellence. This can be for people on many different levels, but those of us in a business, especially for a long time and you see people out there that they can work off in the same brand and messaging forever.

I kept thinking why I need to be more consistent, so I need to do something for years at a time and lock-in. That’s where I got trapped. I had no creative space and a place to do some things that I wanted to do. The business worked. It’s what I designed, but then I was trapped in it. I mentioned this because a lot of people are this way with their businesses and jobs. There’s nothing to complain about, so sometimes they feel almost like, “Do I have the right to even say that I like something different and something better?” It’s because in here, all your prayers come true. Everything on my vision board was pretty much checked off.

Kids were not on the vision board by the way, and that came later in the story. We’re having a great time. It’s all good. It’s all the beautiful part of the journey and very much part of the story in the end because until I made that space, I had no idea of the wild ride that was in store. Some symptoms when you’re experiencing the excellence burnout, if you’re starting to feel a little resentful of your schedule and work, you don’t have freedom in your business, unconsciously starting to self-sabotage things a little bit if you go way too long like things blowing, not working or team leaving. That means it’s probably way too long.

Here’s a great solution. The first few things you should do for that first is to make space wherever you can. Secondly, I tell clients, “You may not be able to get out of this thing now.” This isn’t like a decision you make quickly but add on a creative project. For me, that was Glambition® Radio. People were like, “What was the strategy behind your podcast?” I’m like, “We launched that when podcasts weren’t cool.” I wanted the opportunity to have incredible in-depth conversations with these women leaders that I wasn’t seeing anywhere else. You don’t see it covered in Fast Company or Inc. It’s not how I built my business. It’s like, “Who have you become? What’s the wisdom you want to impart?”

I remember being on this team call. There must have been ten people on this call alone. When I mentioned the podcast, they all went crazy because they started planning like, “What’s the upsell? What’s the down-sell? How are we going to use this? How has it been in the plan?” I said, “Stop. I’m doing a podcast because I want to do a podcast. This is mine. No one is touching it. This is my thing.”

How funny that I came full circle to wanting to do something all on my own in this magical way? I’m like, “There are all going to be a whole other level of comments.” That was my slow escape from excellence into genius. It’s the best tool I’ve had to connect with incredible women and stay in touch with them. Many of them have said, “I’d love to join what you’re doing or I’d love to come to speak.” It’s been an incredible tool. I’m glad I started it earlier.

It’s a wonderful podcast, and I encourage everyone to check out Glambition® Radio with Ali Brown and leave a review. I have one more question, then we’re going to look at your chart. Where do you see the business going after 2020 and even 2021 of this pandemic? What do you see?

Make space wherever you can.

There are a few factors going on. Firstly, you have the Great Resignation. I first heard Dave Ramsey coin that phrase, “You have many people being unlocked or forced out of their jobs now. It’s an incredible thing to see happening that people are finally realizing that they have some freedom they’ve had all along, but it’s going to force them to do something and live differently.” You’re going to see more people coming into work for themselves. Overall, it’s a big question. The wonderful thing about this is that we were being forced to unlock living our lives the way we’ve always wanted to. A quick example for me is homeschooling my kids. When I thought of homeschooling, I thought of the Duggar’s.

I liked the part making them do chores and stuff. The weirdness started happening and we weren’t sure what school was going to be. They were going to be home on a device. At that time, they turned seven and I’m like, “I don’t want them in the iPad all day. I sent them to Montessori to not be on the iPad.” Finally, we’re like, “What does it take to pull them out?” In Arizona, you fill out the form, then you can go home and work on the farm. It’s so simple. I’m like, “Brett, I think we could do this.”

To his credit, that man was so onboard. He’s like, “Yes, totally.” This has been the last domino for women business owners because education was the last thing we tolerated. The bus comes, you put them on, you go, “Thank God,” and then you get on with your day. You know what they’re learning but you may not know, “It’s school. It worked. We went to public school and I was fine so they’ll go to public school and they’re fine.”

Now that we got a taste of the homeschooling, don’t get me wrong. There are still days that I’m like, “I’m going to put you guys on a bus. I don’t even know where that bus goes but I know it comes at 7:30,” tick me off. Overall, it’s been incredible experience that we opted into for 2021 because you realize what you’re capable of, and this has unlocked freedom for our family. Now, we can travel when we feel like it. Hopefully, by 2022, we’ll be able to go back to Australia, which we were going to every year. That’s where Brett is from. There’s been unlocking and very uncomfortable moves that we’ve had to make, but then we settled in. We’re like, “We’re made for this.” This is who we are in the first place. That’s what I see transforming on people on many levels.

One of the things in your human design is motivation. We all have motivation or human design. Your motivation is hope. I was thinking about that as you were sharing through this whole interview how hopeful I always feel when I speak with you. The way you motivate others is to give them hope about the future and things to look forward to. You very much orient from this observational place of seeing what is and what could be. This hope energy is your genius. Not a hope without a plan but hope with a plan.

The thing for you while we’re talking about hope to be aware of is that you want to watch out that you don’t slip into guilt because guilt is your not-self. Guilt is when you feel like you should be doing something or you should be showing up a certain way around social media. The ‘shoulds’ for you. Whereas some people are able to motivate with guilt. It’s in their design. They’re the people who are more of the taskmasters, “If you eat that, you’re going to get fat.” That’s a guilt motivation.

Whereas hope motivation is, “You may want to make some changes with your body. Let’s talk about what results you’re looking for and create a plan.” Both help motivate people depending on who’s delivering the message, and you’re the person that delivers hope with a plan. It’s a beautiful thing. Before we wrap up, shall we look at your human design chart?

Sure.

As I say to all of our readers, I always ask the guest, what should we talk about with your human design chart before the show? We’re going to look at your purpose as it relates to how you are designed to go in and out of hiding or retreat. I meet a lot of people that have this, and they feel very much like you do. They feel that pressure and even guilt sometimes to be consistent, be out there all the time and always forward-facing. Some people have that in their design. Some of the mega-famous people out there, they’re in their design. They’re visible all the time, like Jennifer Lopez. Some people never go away. It’s in their design.

We’re looking at your design. Where we find purpose in human design is in the location of your sun. This is at the moment you’re born, and your Earth. The design sun and Earth, which is 88 days before you’re born. Every human alive has this going on. Eighty-eight days prior to your birth, this is when the soul comes in. The soul crystal is right here. It’s basically our neo-cortex. Our soul lives in our neo-cortex. What the soul crystal does, and it’s an actual crystal, is it informs the building of the body.

What’s interesting is when we die, that crystal goes back out into the field. This idea of past lives and reincarnation, it has some basis in how consciousness travels through time. I don’t think it’s as literal as it’s been made out to be in terms of actual bodies if people remember. You have a soul, and so your soul came in. When we look at the sun and the Earth, they make up 70% of us. You have a very interesting incarnation cross, and I want to talk about it because you’re a very visible person and there are things in your chart that lay that out.

Let’s talk about your personality sun because that’s the first thing people see when they encounter you. I’m going to tell you the keynote for 33 line 4 is dignity. “A lack of turmoil in retreat, the underlying faith in resurrection that turns retreat in an opportunity for renewal and the healthy retreat for regeneration.” What happens for you is when you hit what the coach Dan Sullivan calls The Ceiling of Complexity, your natural inclination is healthy. It’s to retreat and say, “Like you do with your clients, what am I keeping? What am I getting rid of? What excites me? What’s creative? What’s going to cause me to want to step out of retreat?”

Your personality Earth, which is where we are growing as souls. The personality sun is what people see. You’re a Leo. You shine without Leo energy and people see this tremendous dignity you have If you just carried it and you’ve always had it. Even the way you speak, you can get away with saying some pretty heretical things because you deliver it in this very dignified, classy and thoughtful manner. You’re not haphazard in the way that you go about things with this design. It’s calculated and it needs to be.

All of our learning is our personality Earth. It’s the part of us that needs to get grounded so we can be most effective with other people. Yours is down here off the route, and you have the whole channel, so it becomes even more significant when you have incarnation gate connected. Let’s look up 19 and 4 because this is what you’re learning. It’s the team player, “Individual approach, which attracts and accepts cooperation. The power and energy for outward activity and the ability to accept others as long as they can keep up. A driving force that can benefit the whole group, the energy to seek out and exalt in the company of others.

It’s an interesting paradox, the dignity to go into retreat, and then when you come out, have the right team and people to exalt with. When we move over to the design side, and this is true for all of us, our design sun is what keeps us healthy, radiant and alive. For you, it’s location. What keeps you healthy is a mental process because 24 is off the neo-cortex, and 24 line 6 is called the Gift Horse, the possibility of being deaf when opportunity knocks. There’s a reason for that, “The conscious participation in a process that prepares one for easy identification of opportunity. Identification and focus with the rational thought process.”

What this means is that what keeps you healthy is choosing the right opportunities and being careful not to be too suspicious because you’ll be suspicious to keep your privacy, but lots of opportunities will come to you. There’s another piece to this about what keeps you healthy. You’re here to systematize what you do and you’re a role model who then teaches people the system. You did that with your online blueprint. You were able to systematize.

There’s role modeling and also a sharing of your system that is so impactful. Finally, your core genius, gate 44. This is all about being a role model to a team. There’s so much leadership in your chart and there’s no surprise there. Forty-four is called coming to meet, and it is alertness. It’s basically that the success of any interaction with others is based on coming into those interactions without an agenda like when you do an interview with someone or you meet a new client.

It’s the capacity to go, “Let’s see what’s here before we try and change it, judge it or fix it. Let’s see what’s here.” You’re going to love this because I think I mentioned this word to you. Aloofness, it’s in your design. “A perfected renewal in which the establishment of new form protects you against being rejected. The awareness of patterns, which ensures one’s instinctive wellbeing.”

You have this ability to be aloof from the team and the larger community when you need to be. It’s fascinating that you have a retreat on one side, which is about going into isolation to regenerate. You have this aloofness, even when you’re participating where you have a lot of gatekeepers. The reason for that is you have to have the gatekeepers to protect your energy.

The shadow side of it would be being intolerant of lesser mortals or being intolerant of people not as competent as you. Never feeling special, different or above it all, but that’s the shadow. What’s interesting is you’ve probably noticed in yourself as you’ve gotten older and it’s integrated more. You’re like, “I’m choosing to be distant to protect my energy,” versus, “Those people aren’t up to snuff.”

It shifts as we evolve into a more holistic view. That’s absolutely correct for you and that is your genius. The thing people are coming to you for is you show them the patterns that they need to put in place to ensure their wellbeing as an individual. To make this practical, it might be saying to someone, “Client Jane Doe, you need to get some help with your childcare.” It’s something as simple as that like, “Do you have permission?” Your design is one that has hiding built-in.

Once I learned that, it gave me so much less guilt because the guilt was built into. It all came together and it’s good to hear again and again because I forget. You get swept up into, “What are the plans? How are we growing? Also hiring a team.” There’s a time now for example that I’m working probably more than I’d like, but we’re in a big push. How do you recommend I negate those times, do what I can and then maybe plan a big rest after?

The thing for you is the way you’re built, you have a ton of energy for what you love. You’re going to work in spurts. It’s similar to someone that works in the movie business. They’re in it when they’re in production. When they’re not in active filming production, they’re either editing and maybe many times prepping for their next project. They don’t have to get all the editing and planning done in one day, and they’re able to take more naps.

I would build in retreat time after any big launch push because your nature is if you’re into it, you’re going to bring everything you’ve got. You’re going to say, “I’ve done my part. Now, you need to leave me alone for however long so I can regenerate my energy for the next time. If you want me like this, I need a lot of time alone to rebuild the fuel stores.”

The way you’re designed is your fuel burns out fast in a spurt. You’re like a sprinter versus a long-distance runner. The sprinter sprint. They win gold medals and do these amazing things. They’re like, “I’ve got to go retreat.” Versus someone who’s a marathoner and they train seven days a week, rain or shine, so they can run their six marathons a year. I know some people like that. They do 50-mile races. I’m like, “Good for you. I’m not doing that.”

We all are designed to do the thing we’re designed to do. For you, I would say that if you can recognize, “I have to power through this and I have this big break to look forward to.” Planning backward always from your retreats would be my advice to you, which wouldn’t be my advice necessarily to someone else. To me, that’s the beauty of the human design. It’s so customized and tailored to your genetics and how your body functions. When you get that right, everything else is easy. Thank you for your time. Before we wrap up, I know you have an amazing event coming up, which I bought a ticket to. Could you share more about the event and then share about The Trust?

I’m going to start with The Trust, then I will go back to ICONIC. The ICONIC is coming up quicker. The Trust is the network for women entrepreneurs doing over $1 million. The reason I created it was that once I got over that mark, and I didn’t want to be part of a coaching program anymore or go to some of these masterminds and stuff. I was like, “Where can I meet other amazing women, create and support ideas and all this stuff?” I tapped into a few organizations they felt really outdated or I’d tap into some other places that were still a big brodown or circles you couldn’t get in.

Things I’ve been privy to like winning women and these groups of women that are incredible and doing $50 million or $500 million. I’m like, “How do I connect these worlds for these women who need to see something but brodown and in a different way?” That’s why I created The Trust. It’s JoinTheTrust.org. We have some incredible events coming up in March 2022. We’re going to be in Miami Beach with the founder of It’s a 10 Haircare. If you know that little blue bottle, it’s everywhere. It’s in every store. It’s in every Ulta. She’s built a $500 million company from one product. I love her story because she had a line of products that bombed.

She said, “I’m going to create one amazing hair product.” It took off. We bring these women in to spend the morning with us. Visit JoinTheTrust.org, and we’ll be happy to talk with you if you’re a fit. If you’re not at $1 million, have a look at ICONIC. At ICONIC, we attract a lot of women over $1 million but we don’t require you to be. It’s a wonderful room to be in. If you like some of the conversations, it’s two days of exciting conversation and closed doors. This isn’t like a filming event, dog and pony show. It’s amazing women in a room.

I’ll tell you, the average revenues in the room are still about $2 million. That’s how amazing the audience is in the room. We’ll give you a great taste of these discussions that we have. One of the exercises that I’ve done since the first year we did this in 2017 is redesigning. What metrics have been your false gods? Let’s redesign everything around that. I also have done some fun exercises like the internet blowing up and how do you market, which I was a little ahead of my time.

The internet is getting weird. You can’t market anymore. The algorithm chase. It’s like a lot of exercises to get you out of your day-to-day and re-orient you and go like, “What is this about? What’s my iconic work in the world?” Go to IconicWithAliBrown.com. We have more seats available. We’re over half sold out. We’d love to consider you, and please apply. The number 3rd or 4th here in Phoenix.

Thank you, Ali Brown.

Come to ICONIC and see us. We’ll both be there.

Thank you for this incredible conversation. This is such a pleasure. To those of you reading, if you want us to do a marathon, let us know. Thanks, everyone, for reading. Thank you, Ali Brown. It’s such a pleasure.

Important Links:

• Ali Brown
• YouTube – ABC’s Secret Millionaire Ali Brown Gets to Common Ground to Homeless Youth
• Instagram – Ali Brown
• Glambition® Radio
• CNN.com
• Top 10 Twitter Accounts Every Entrepreneur Should Be Following – Article
• Twitter – Ali Brown
• The Trust
• Secrets of a Freelancer Writer, Second Edition: How To Make $85,000 A Year
• Amazon – Secret Millionaire
• The Big Leap
• It’s a 10 Haircare
• IconicWithAliBrown.com

About Ali Brown

Ali Brown is one of the most recognized entrepreneur coaches in the world, and has built a coaching and consulting enterprise that ranked in the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies in the nation. She was named one of Forbes Women to Watch, one of Ernst & Young’s Winning Women Entrepreneurs, and an entrepreneur delegate for the United Nations Foundation’s Global Accelerator. Ali was also featured on the ABC hit primetime show “Secret Millionaire” and has over 250,000 followers via AliBrown.com, her social media channels, and her Glambition® Radio show on iTunes. Ali’s coaching and mentorship has been featured on CNN.com and many other major media outlets. She was named by Entrepreneur Magazine as having one of the Top “10 Twitter Accounts Every Entrepreneur Should Be Following”. Ali is a frequent traveler with her husband Brett and their 8-year-old twins, living between Arizona, Southern California, and Sydney, Australia.