Welcome to the Catalyst Conversations podcast, I’m your host Jennifer Maggiore. 

For some of us, being in business is like eating glass every day, but that’s what it’s like being in business, right? Have you ever felt like maybe you just aren’t cut out to cope with the emotional demands of being an entrepreneur? Or if you can be successful AND spiritual? Or maybe you’ve been told that you’re “too sensitive” to hack it in business. 

Well get ready, because you’re probably actually “highly sensitive” – a highly sensitive entrepreneur that is! 

In this episode I talk with Heather Dominick - a woman who is impressively successful, and highly spiritual I might add. 

She’s appeared on Lifetime Television and was published in several books including Stepping Stones to Success alongside Deepak Chopra. She’s been recognized with the 2015 Best of Manhattan Coaching Award and she's the creator of the 2014 Stevie Award winning virtual event A Course In Business Miracles®: 21-Day Discovery Series that attracted close to 6,000 registrants from around the world.

Heather is also the founder and leader of the Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur® movement. She helps the 20% of us who are born “highly sensitive” to make sense of our feelings, strong intuition, empathy, and deep thoughts, and feelings when it comes to self-employment. She has helped thousands of clients create solid, sustainable, high level financial success building on the personality traits they once thought of as weaknesses. 

She tells us about the coping mechanisms HSEs use – a cycle or fear, pushing and or hiding, and soothing that leaves us mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially drained. She also explains some of the strengths HSEs have, and how they’re different from entrepreneurs who are not highly sensitive. If any of this resonates listen in because you, like me, may be a Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur. 

Maureen Jann is a veteran B2B marketer whose career in Digital Media has grown up with the Internet. She is currently the Founder and Managing Director of SuperDeluxe Marketing, a marketing, content, and thought leadership strategy agency on the outskirts of Seattle.

In this episode we talk about how:
+ she manages time for herself and her family while operating three businesses

+ how those businesses are what she calls her “insurance policy”

+ an unconventional lifestyle have made she and her husband happier and more successful

We also find out about her dislike for Phil Collins and the month of February 

Show Notes + Resources:
https://brandwithcatalyst.com/time-management-busy-entrepreneur

Ellia Harris is a Mindful Organization and Productivity Coach. Through her company Mindful Organizing, she works with professionals who are stressed by their messy homes, managing caretaking, and balancing work and family. Working either virtually or onsite, she helps them figure out what to change so they feel confident juggling their busy lives. 
 
As an international speaker, her expert topics are mindful goal-setting, creative problem-solving, clutter-busting, and productivity. Ellia is a member of the NAPO (National Association for Productivity and Organizing Professionals) and is a member of the NAPO Education Committee.

We talk about:
+ knowing your organizing style – are you an “inny” or an “outty”

+ setting priorities for organizing and focusing on what’s important for success today

+ Marie Kondo-mania – do you really have to get rid of most of your stuff to stay
organized?

Show Notes + Resources:
https://brandwithcatalyst.com/mindful-organization

Kiola George is a NYC based producer and tech entrepreneur. She has over ten years of media experience with Walt Disney Co. and Screenvision Media.

Her latest venture, Heybor™️ is a mobile app that allows users to rate and review residential properties across the US. In addition to her business and career achievements, Kiola is also a mother to 5-year old Zoe.

In this episode we talk about how
+ in spite of her success, she still sometimes suffers from imposter syndrome

+ she juggles a successful career, a growing business, and parenting her daughter

+ Heybor is changing the way we find new places to live and connect with our neighbors

Kiola has great insights on keeping it all together while growing a business – I’m happy to share them with you.

Lanette Veres is truly one of my greatest inspirations. She was a top-performing banking relationship manager before she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1998 after months of headaches and fatigue. Despite going on to have 5 brain surgeries she founded the Gray Matters Foundation, which serves to bring a smile and hope to patients diagnosed with brain tumors around the world.

We talk about:

+ the important of knowing you aren’t alone and the gifts that can come from trauma

+ the challenges she faces in caring for the brain tumor community

+ how she overcomes deficits caused by her surgeries – that aren’t the same that many of us founders experience - and doesn’t let them hold her back

Show Notes + Resources:

https://brandwithcatalyst.com/caring-community

Learn more or donate at https://www.graymattersfoundation.org/

Katherine Metzalaar is a registered dietician and nutrition therapist, and founder of Brave Space Nutrition and the Body Image Badass Group. She works with clients, many of them burnt out women entrepreneurs who sacrifice themselves and their health for their businesses. She helps them to understand that they are complex beings with unique relationships with food and their bodies – there is no “one size fits all” prescriptive answer to a healthier body.

We talk about:

+ ditching the diet mentality and unlearning years of unhealthy eating habits from childhood and messages in the media

+ what intuitive eating is and why it’s so important.

+ decreasing the stress and anxiety around our food choices

+ how healing our relationships with our bodies starts with no  longer using weight as a parameter for defining success or failure

Show Notes + Resources:

https://brandwithcatalyst.com/self-care-healing-relationships

Tish Times is a sales and networking expert, speaker, trainer, author and the founder of Tish Times Networking and Sales. She helps business owners and sales professionals generate more revenue with her process for staying top of mind and closing sales with ease. Tish’s books include Networking is Not a One-Night Stand and 10 Super Simple Networking Steps for Career Success. Most recently Tish has developed the Unstoppable Confidence Sales Academy, a business school that teaches a systematic, sincere, and effective approach to networking and sales to produce lucrative bottom-line results.

We talk about:

+ the one game-changing strategy you can start using today to increase sales

+ what a repeatable sales process really is and how to create one

+ why follow up activities are rarely successful -- and how you an change that for your business

Show Notes + Resources:

https://brandwithcatalyst.com/sales-strategies

In this episode, I have the privilege of speaking with my friend and client, Karen Barno, a retreat leader and international motivational speaker. Karen is the CEO of a highly successful organization, is a mentor for women who get to mid-life and wonder “is that all there is?,” and is a certified Shaman and Reiki Master. She shares with us her story of going from broke and homeless to a recognized business leader.

We also talk about:

+ how she overcame abuse as a child, and being incorrectly labeled as “special needs”

+ when she knew that her drinking was getting out of hand

+ how her fear of success held her back so many times

+ the challenges she had to work through to support a successful organization while building her own successful business

Show Notes + Resources:

https://brandwithcatalyst.com/broke-and-homeless

Amanda Welch was always interested in art growing up. By the time she attended the University of Alabama, design was a natural choice, leading her to earn an interior design degree. Today, she works in Seattle, helping high-end clients to create the beautiful, comfortable homes they’ve always wanted.

In this episode we talk about:

+ how the jobs she liked the least over her career taught her the most

+ the challenges of communicating the value of her work -- and my tip for doing just that

+ breaking through industry stereotypes and differentiating herself

+ her tips for women entrepreneurs, including how she learned to trust her gut and why her mentor has been instrumental 

Show Notes + Resources:

https://brandwithcatalyst.com/value-in-mentoring

Stephanie Sims is a “recovering” investment banker, speaker, author and the founder of Finance-Ability. She gives founders the knowledge, tools and self-awareness they need to find the right money for them, and has helped her clients raise over $30M to grow their businesses. 

We talk about:

+ overcoming our fear of the numbers (and why we don’t want to know what’s happening in our businesses financially to begin with), the types of funding available and how to know which is the best for your business.

+  what Stephanie calls the “Business PII (pronounced PIE)” – profitability, intention and independence

+ bootstrapping, borrowing and betting – and which funding source is best in different scenarios

Show Notes + Resources:

https://brandwithcatalyst.com/business-finances