The Pleasurepreneur Podcast with Regan Figg

Rewilding Your Business with Lucy Aikenreid : A Matriarchal Approach

• Regan Figg

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Episode Description:

In this episode, Regan chats with Lucy Aikenreid, a passionate business coach with a nature-based approach to entrepreneurship. They dive deep into how integrating pleasure, acceptance, and nature can transform the way you approach business, especially when it feels like the world is expecting you to hustle nonstop. They explore how to align your work with your values, tap into your creativity, and move away from stress-driven business practices.

Lucy shares practical insights for her program, Rewild Your Business, including a powerful "medicine walk" exercise to help you find clarity and ease with your business challenges. 

Whether you're struggling with decision-making or simply feeling resistance in your business, this episode is a beautiful reminder to pause, listen to nature, and trust your intuition.

Key Topics Discussed:

  • The power of integrating nature and pleasure into your business.
  • How to shift from hustle to ease and grace in your entrepreneurial journey.
  • The concept of "rewilding" your business for greater creativity and connection.
  • Practical advice on overcoming resistance in business, including a nature-based ritual for clarity.
  • Business as a surf journey: navigating challenges and learning to flow with the waves.
  • How to approach fears (like "sharks") in business and focus on what truly matters for long-term success.

About Lucy:


👇 Get your FREE Pleasurepreneur Business Audit:

Regan is offering a FREE Pleasurepreneur Business Audit to help you identify areas in your business where you can inject more rest, play, and pleasure — and ultimately create more profit and success.


 👉CLICK HERE for your FREE Business Audit the tool that created a $20k launch for me and will make your business more profitable, pleasurable and sustainable👈


Connect with Regan:
For more inspiration and actionable tips on creating a business that feels good, follow Regan on Instagram and tune in to her next episodes.

Timestamps:

  • [00:00] Intro to the episode.
  • [05:30] Lucy discusses the concept of "rewilding" your business.
  • [15:20] The importance of integrating nature into your work for creativity and clarity.
  • [25:00] Practical tips for overcoming resistance and reconnecting with your business.
  • [42:00] The “medicine walk” exercise for solving business problems.
  • [50:00] Business as a surf journey analogy and how to navigate challenges.
  • [59:00] Lucy shares details about Rewild Your Livelihood and upcoming programs.
  • [01:03:00] Final thoughts and where to connect with Lucy.

Support the show

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Pleasurepreneur podcast. This podcast will help you create what you desire in your business with pleasure, whether that be calling in your ideal clients, making more money or creating a balanced business life blend. I'm your host, regan Figg, pleasure and business coach, published author of A Mother's Pleasure Wife and Mommoth to Three Little Wildlings. However you're choosing to listen to this podcast, ask yourself how can I make this more pleasurable? And do just that? I acknowledge the custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded and produced the Wadi Wadi people of Dharawalland. Now let's proceed with pleasure. Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Pleasurepreneur podcast. Today I interview business mentor, surfer, unschooler, mama of two and all-round delightful human being, lucy Aikenreid, who is the founder of Rewild your Livelihood and the Disco Unschooling Course.

Speaker 1:

Lucy is such a light in the world of business and was so fun to have on the podcast. She has a beautifully unapologetic way of doing life and business, with rewilding being a big part of her message. She shares with us her personal stories of what it looked like for her to rewild her business and what it means to sell like a matriarch in a patriarchal, masculine, dominant business world where nature is unappreciated and underutilized. Lucy also shares how following her bliss has helped her to create success in her business and fulfillment in her life. Create success in her business and fulfillment in her life. She is a badass, kick-ass pioneer of business. But make it wild. Her work is invaluable and this episode felt like such a delightful treasure hunt, revealing so many gems along the way. Kick back, relax and enjoy, and now let's proceed with pleasure. Well, thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm so stoked to be here.

Speaker 1:

How do you see yourself as a pleasurepreneur? Because I totally see you as a pleasurepreneur. So what does that?

Speaker 2:

mean to you. What do you feel like that flavor is for you? Yeah, okay, amazing start.

Speaker 2:

I would say that I came to pleasure via pleasure, activism and by Adrienne Marie Brown I would say that I had to come in that way because I had to do so much shedding of sort of like the puritanical protestant work ethic. I needed to come at pleasure from a kind of activism perspective, this idea that a woman taking pleasure is a direct upheaval of patriarchal, colonizing imperialism. So I kind of that was my entry point to it about maybe seven years ago, my entry to pleasure. Up until that point I really did think that life was just a sacrifice. You know, you just showed up every day and you just worked with the cards you'd been dealt, and if that was painful then you know that's what you have to roll with.

Speaker 2:

And so that book really helped me, began shedding that. So it wasn't really from a business perspective and then as I got more serious about my business work, it just really naturally evolved that pleasure is kind of central to my business now. And yeah, god, I could honestly talk so much about that because I would say the main energy for me is about this being matriarchal, I think that it's a matriarchal way of living to take pleasure, to delight, to enjoy being alive, where you can and you know, find ways to just make the everyday pleasurable. That to me feels really matriarchal and it feels like the other to just be like, oh, that is so hard. It's just basically a hangover of yeah, 5,000 years of patriarchy.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, and I love how you're weaving in, like how it's a matriarchal way of living. What do you mean? Because I know you talk about like selling, like a matriarch. What does that mean for you in this context and in your business?

Speaker 2:

So my life and my work is massively influenced by this book, the Great Cosmic Mother. I read this a couple of years ago. I'm actually running a book club with 500 women are working through this book this year because I wanted to read it again and take it more in in community. I would say it's almost like the backbone to the reprogramming that I'm doing with my mind. So, just yeah, like deconditioning from all of the ways I have internalized just modern society's ways of being.

Speaker 2:

So when it comes to business, there's quite a few big differences. The big differences begin with belief. So things like a modern, contemporary take on business is that, oh, it's just something we're doing to make money. It's something outside of us that we just grab hold of and just persevere and put your head down and leap from success to success and grow your business.

Speaker 2:

You know, chop down rainforests, whereas a matriarchal perspective would recognize that since the dawn of time we've been industrious and that women have often been leaders in industry, that we have been able to be business leaders and mothers, healers and shamans, that you know there's not that your business, your livelihood, is just one sacred part of who you are that you're invited to bring into the world and it's also going to ebb and flow. It's not going to be like this linear charging on to great success. The matriarchal way is that this is a sacred seed. It's going to ebb and flow within me and my journey is going to ebb and flow and all I have to do is show up to every day. So that's like a little bit of a taster of the different energies, but quite a few more.

Speaker 1:

Well to me and it's like just so much of what you shared to me. It's like such permission giving to connect with our natural essence and connect with our nature and our natural cycles. And when I think about you know the work that you do, I'm like, oh, you are just such a beautiful embodiment of all of that. So I love how you talk about rewilding your business and you know the matriarchal way of selling, for example. A couple of things that I love hearing from you. What would you like to be known for in your work?

Speaker 2:

Well, I came to business really late. I really only started to make proper use of what I'd been given in my late 30s. Until then I was trying to run a business but, you know, was just kind of pouring out my life's energy on the altar of kind of advocacy and activism without really being able to be fed by it. So, as I'm sure you've come across, it's just a surefire way to get to burnout. And yeah, it was another book actually about activism and burnout that really kind of woke me up to how the path I was on which was doing just enough livelihood stuff in order to fund all of my activism and all of my hermiting we moved onto a farm with another family, off grid in yurts, and I just would spend all day, every day, in nature, kind of rewilding my spirit, and I do just enough work to basically allow me to do that.

Speaker 2:

And then, reading this book, I hated it. I was like ew, I hate this book. It's telling me to make money so that I can be a really sustainable activism Gross puke. But it obviously planted a seed in me as I looked around and was like, oh my God, all of these environmental activists that I love and have spent the last few years on the front lines with are all just like husks of themselves because it's just not regenerative, we're not replenishing ourselves. And I was like I've been given a lot of gifts. Let me see if I can get serious about my business.

Speaker 2:

But taking on everything I've learned from that time in the wild and taking on those like really big messages that I literally received from the mountain and the forest like how do they apply not just to activism? It's my business, yeah, and so that's how basically my I guess my business programs have evolved from, from this idea of your livelihood actually being natural. It's not some random mechanical thing over there. It's as natural and can be as wild as your spirit, as your activism, as your time in nature. Yeah, I think if I hadn't come at it that way, I just I just couldn't do business at all. I find so much of it repellent yeah, I hear you.

Speaker 1:

What were some of those most memorable messages from the mountains?

Speaker 2:

I think one of the like really clear. I've had like a couple of really standout clear moments and one was when I was feeling all sorry for myself because I was like 36 years old and had just lived so many lives and I was like it's all, what has been the point of it? Like I spent so many years as a youth worker in the church doing stuff that I don't even agree with now what a waste of my young life, you know, like working for the church and and then I did a whole bunch of social policy stuff which I don't even really agree with now either. I don't think that we're going to get the change we need in the world through social policy. I was feeling all sorry for myself. Like I'm 36, I've got nothing to show you old, old woman at 36. Yes, I know I should be a success in something and all I've got is a big YouTube channel.

Speaker 2:

I was feeling, I was honestly feeling like I wish I just knew what I wanted to do early and then could work towards it and have mastery in it. And then I like looked right ahead of me and there was a fern tree there and it was in its beautiful state of all seasons where there were, like these beautiful spring shoots, bright green, effervescent, bubbling out the top and then it was like shedding, a whole bunch of its brown leaves hanging down, and then around the base of it was like, honestly, half a meter, if not more, of old leaves in various states of rot. So they were all kind of decomposing and feeding the root system of that fern. And it was as if the fern gave me a little shake on the shoulders and was like Lucy, nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted. Every single shoot that you've given birth to that has then dropped and fallen away is feeding your root system. You don't have to worry about how you're spending your time. You don't have to worry about all the years you spent as an evangelical Christian. You don't need to worry about any of that. It's all feeding your own little ecosystem here. So just carry on shooting out whatever you feel is yours to give birth to and you know the great mother or nature will kind of take care of the rest.

Speaker 2:

And it literally did feel as if the firm actually spoke to me. I just couldn't have come up with that by myself. Now, like saying it to you, I'm like everyone knows nothing is wasted, come on. But I really didn't think that. I was like really like feeling very sorry for myself and despairing, and since then I've like really integrated that belief that it's something I can hold really well for my clients, you know, because a lot of the women I'm working with are in their thirties and forties. They've done wildly different things and then they've spent 10 years mothering and not doing any business stuff. And then they and they come and it's like ah and, and it's like actually every single thing you've done is bringing you to this exact moment and it is. It couldn't be more perfect or right now for you.

Speaker 1:

I love that so much. I've also had a similar moment like that. I've had a variety, like some people, like the life that I've lived. So I started out as a professional dancer on cruise ships and then I finished my exercise physiology degree, so working underground in mines as an exercise physiologist, and then I was working at a council and then I had my kids and now I've started my own business and it's all about pleasure and business and like it's just wild. And I love that thread of like nothing is wasted because all of it, even if you don't like, even if you don't look back, to be like, oh okay, well, all of it, even if you don't like, even if you don't look back, to be like, oh okay, well, I've got this skill now from that place, or that experience, like I don't think that's required. Yeah, just that understanding of like, oh, I've got chills. It's like it's all stacking, it's all for a purpose.

Speaker 1:

And I don't think that everybody knows that. You know, like, I think, that as humans, we want to like, quantify everything and we want, we want the data and the stats and we want to. You know, for example, if I've done a launch of something, we expect that at the end of the launch, that is the result. But no, I think the result it's going to ripple on until the end of time. You know, yeah, and so that's such a beautiful message. Thank you for bringing that. I love that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree. I love what you just said there as well. Oh my God, I love that so much and I think that that is a huge difference. It's a huge part of what I think women business leaders are bringing is this and it explains why I get so kind of like towards certain business accounts or models this idea that you can quantify everything and if you do this, then this will happen.

Speaker 2:

I just honestly do not agree, and I love that idea that, yeah, you might do your launch and you know you might get half the people that you wanted on that launch, but you know what, in your comms about that launch, you might have changed the trajectory of someone's life.

Speaker 2:

So it's not for us to show up and be like, okay, I'm gonna do this and it's gonna result on this and it's gonna result on that. And I'm not gonna do that because that's gonna. We're to show up and like really tune in to how we're meant to do this, what we're meant to say, who we're meant to reach out to, and you know, like we're just tuning in and then we're just going to go whoosh, and it will kind of look like a launch, but we're letting go of the finite results of that thing and trusting that just us showing up every day and tuning into this little sacred seed may get us the numbers that we want. But, more importantly, it might have like infinite, like ripples through all of time that might change like generations to come in someone's family line.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, exactly right, yeah, and I think that I always say desire is the strategy. Like our job is just to know and to honor and to embrace what it is that we desire. Like the desire has its own purpose and we as humans can be like oh, I think I know the purpose is to make this amount of money or enroll this amount of clients or help this amount of people. But oftentimes maybe the desire, for example, a launch our human brain's like, oh, to get this many people to like, help them, and et cetera. But actually the purpose for that desire was to actually shift and change so many other things that we're actually not even aware of.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree totally. What about? Like I have, I love launching, because to me, launching is such a mystical experience.

Speaker 1:

Because, to me, launching is such a mystical experience, isn't?

Speaker 2:

it. Yeah, and every single time I have absolutely out the gate reports from people. So every launch I will 1000% appear in someone's dream, and this last launch I did the dream was hilarious because she had had a dream about me last summer and I'd given her a blanket. Back then she was like, oh, I wonder what this means about this person, lucy, like she only knew me from Instagram. And then I did made a reel about me sitting around a fire. The blanket that I used in that reel was the exact blanket that I had given her. So then the next time that I opened up my Rewild your Livelihood program, she was the first person to enroll and I just, I just love that because it's like we we do try and control every element. We're trying to control things that are not ours to control, and that's the main source of anxiety. I think that's.

Speaker 2:

The main barrier to pleasure is that we get so upset yeah, trying to control and getting then anxious about all of the things that we can't control. And you know, that's just one of the things. It's like I couldn't control how many people that reel reached. All I could do was wake up that day and make a reel, and it just so happened that I used a blanket that had a beard in someone's dream, right? How are you ever supposed to know that? Imagine if I was like right, I've got to choose exactly the right blanket that's right, that would be, oh yeah, very good.

Speaker 1:

It is so magical and mystical and fun and just like, how easy can it get? Like the fact that you're just like oh, I'm just going to use like you probably hadn't even consciously thought what blanket you're using.

Speaker 2:

I probably used the scabbiest blanket because I honestly wasn't thinking about that reel reaching a lot of people at all. And it reached like 1.7 million people and it was the worst fire I've ever made the scabbiest blanket Like there was nothing really good about that real, but for some reason it just went off and I was like, ah, should have used a nicer blanket no, it was the perfect one apparently it was the holy blanket the holy blanket, but that's it.

Speaker 1:

It gets to be easy and it gets to be fun and it gets to be just like, okay, like a curation from our own creativity and our own desires. Is that, like you've spoken already about your moving into the world of pleasure through pleasure activism? Was there a point, or maybe even in starting your business and running your business, was there a point where you realized that you could let things be more fun, more easeful, less calculated, less controlled, or has that been something that you've kind of brought from the beginning?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Hmm, I think, yeah, it was like an interweaving of tons of different things. So pleasure activism really helped me look differently upon my own pleasure than just having my own children, deciding that I want to raise them with the idea that life can be joyful and not arduous and hard all of the time. So then trying to apply to myself what I was trying to raise them with but then I think it was also where I went in my business was definitely sort of sparked by what I don't want to be like. So I did a bunch of when I was like, ok, I'm going to get serious. I did a bunch of high ticket coaching things, business programs and basically spent a year trying to learn from the masters about how to run a business.

Speaker 2:

But basically what that year was for me was I'm not going to do it this way, yeah, and it was all that kind of stuff like the really intense controlling, like things like that were framed to be non-manipulative but were absolutely manipulative. Yeah, just things like yeah, just tons, yeah, just tons of it just felt like greed and yeah, basically it was just like a year of what I don't want my business to be like, and then that made me just go directly the opposite way, which was, yeah, I just want to hold lightly to things. I want to be dedicated but totally detached. I want to be in surrender to my business and I want to be in the flow of life and not feeling like I'm pushing rocks up hills, which is what it felt like to be in all these other programs. And, yeah, so, honestly, that was probably a really significant factor for me was going through this horrible year of feeling like, oh, this is horrendous, I'm going to do it this way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that, and I I think that's a really practical step too for anyone listening who is navigating how they want to operate their business, whether it's from the start or somewhere in the middle is to start by thinking like what don't I want?

Speaker 1:

You know, I find if we're talking about desire and exploring what it is we want, like sometimes it's the most easiest to kind of prune back what it is we know for sure we don't want, and then we can reveal from there what it is we do want, yeah, yeah. And so I can imagine that there's probably probably not everybody would be working with these other people who aren't in alignment with them and realize, like, actually that's not me, that's not what I want, I'm going to unapologetically do things my way, you know. And so within that year you've realized what it is that you do want and how you want to be operating your business and showing up in your business. And for me, something that I see in you is just like unapologetically being yourself and operating your business from this place of like unapologetically can I say that unapologetically, you-ness, how is it that you have been able to really embrace exactly who you are and grow your business with that or weave that into your business.

Speaker 2:

I love that question and you know, an old me would have been all shy about it, like, oh you know. But I'm not going to be coy, because actually it has been really hard one and I truly do see it as a form of activism to not comply with what other, how other people want me to be. It's been largely about me discovering my own neurodivergence through my, my daughter's diagnosis, you know, seven years ago being like, oh my God, my daughter has ADHD. Oh, look, I take all of those things in exactly the same way, and so does my mom and my sister. And then being like, okay, what does it mean to stop apologizing for having a brain like this? It's not just about not verbally apologizing, it's about actually showing up in the way that you are and not pretending to be somebody else.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it has been very deliberate the last seven years to run my business in this way and to show up in this way. It's like making kind of inappropriate jokes on my calls and finding myself funny on my calls and being open to where a call kind of wants to go, whereas before I think I would have been like, oh no, a normal person wouldn't do it this way. A normal person would show up like this. A normal person would have a PowerPoint presentation or whatever. I'm not against PowerPoint presentations and I always used to think that.

Speaker 2:

I used to literally walk down the street and walk past someone and think how would a normal person greet this person? It was constantly in my head. I'd be like what would a normal person do here? And basically I guess I just I've been really practicing dropping that question what would a normal person do here and just acting from sort of my truest way of being in the world. Yeah, so I see that as activism. It's like a sort of neurodivergent activism, trying to help the world soften into so many multiple ways of being that isn't just this one normal way. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I see that as being so permission giving, which is so great, considering with the fact that you're helping people to well, like, share with me, like, what are some of the things in your business now that you are helping your clients do? Like, what is it that you love to help your clients with right now?

Speaker 2:

So I would say I'm like I weirdly, weirdly like the nuts and bolts of business. I really like the psychology of marketing and showing up on Instagram. I really like helping most of my clients probably 80% of them are neurodivergent. I really like helping neurodivergent people get their plans together and do things like launch or move their offline business onto online businesses in ways that are not self-punishing, so like really practically offering tools for helping instead of being like oh, I'll flagellate myself and then I might be able to do a post on Instagram to like share techniques about how to do it in a way that feels really delicious and delightful. So I really like nuts and bolts of business. It's kind of funny I don't know why and I also just love bringing people into that different paradigm of approaching their businesses, and so I do have a way of doing this. That's like a neural pathway rewiring kind of methodology. It's like six steps and it works, and it's probably the reason I've been able to decondition so dramatically over the last few years, but I will also do it through a launch or through any tricky times. I honestly turn to this methodology tons in my own life, so I use that methodology to help people move from the old paradigm to the new paradigm. One of my favorite foundational paradigms here is this idea that we are good, we are intrinsically good, and everything I'm doing can be approved of and all of the parts of me can be approved of. So that is like one of the particularly my deeper, more intimate things that my mastermind that's one of the main paradigm shifts that we make with this methodology is going from the sense of I'm broken. I'm working on my healing. I don't know if this is the right move. Should I make this move? I'm getting really caught up in. You know whether to launch on this day or that day, whether to have my website all fixed or just launch with a google doc. You know all of these little decisions and instead approving of the whole thing and approving of how we're showing up. This is unshaming work.

Speaker 2:

Basically, and I think for me, that is one of the stark differences between matriarchal business and traditional business. One of the key things that make me want to puke is all of the shame involved in traditional business world. It's like, even coming from great people on instagram, you still get this essence that they they're like. Oh yeah, you're kind of a bit shit, aren't you and trying to move to to matriarchs of their business.

Speaker 2:

Being like I'm a matriarch here, I am intrinsically good, good, all of the parts of me, even the quirkiest, most funny, nonsensical parts of me, are actually really needed and lovable. And finding ways into that and then going how I show up to my business today is immaculate. Yeah, because when you show up with that energy, what things turn out really well for you? It's like it takes a lot of trust because we're so used to shaming and punishing ourselves to make better decisions. It doesn't work. When has that ever worked that it literally is the worst way to make good decisions is to shame and punish yourself into being better. You know like, be better, do better.

Speaker 1:

Yeah right and like we wouldn't do that with our kids, but yet we can do it with ourselves. It has the same outcome, you know?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so that for me is, like I guess the foundation of of most of my work really is. I call it the approval cure. Yeah, it's finding a way to approve of ourselves and approve how we're showing up, approve of our businesses, approve of our marketing, and entrusting the approval cure, magical and amazing things start to come out as a result of it yeah, how freeing and I guess like that it can be such a simple process.

Speaker 1:

But I think it isn't easy because it feels uncomfortable to have to meet that and do that deconditioning. So, yeah, that's incredible, that that's what you help your clients with.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, actually it does involve a lot. It involves so much because that kind of approval is so radical and it can feel really confronting to how you've been raised and therefore really confronting to your relationships with your raised and therefore really confronting to your relationships with your family and all the people you hold allegiance to. Yeah, there's a lot going on in that paradigm shift.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a little bit like I call it like de-employeeing in my business. I think if we have gone through, say, school and then years of being an employee and then we start to run our own businesses, we then can often fall into this model where, okay, well, our clients are now the bosses of our business. What, perhaps what I think my clients might be thinking or wanting like, actually dictate the decisions I make in my business, and the more we can come back to like how do I want to lead, and trusting in that that that is going to be the way that our business wants to be led, the more easeful and enjoyable and powerful it can be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that so much. De-employing it's so good. I think about it all the time in terms of, you know, coming from like a campaign and activism perspective. You know about how we will go on strike if we're not good bosses to ourselves. Like our bodies will go on strike and our minds will go on strike. Like clients will be like oh you, I just, I just can't show up on Instagram and it's like well, what have you been like on Instagram for the last three months? Oh, you've been like like forcing yourself to show up on there, um, using a format that you absolutely hate, talking about stuff that you're not really that excited about. Of course you're like mentally that excited about. Of course you're like, mentally, your spirit has gone on strike with Instagram. Your spirit is like nope, I'm not going to do it, I'm on strike, I need better conditions.

Speaker 1:

I love that concept right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, and I just see it as if you're doing something that you love, if you're offering something you can't wait to facilitate, if you're calling in clients you adore and can't wait to work with and doing that like, unapologetically, based on what it is that you want, everything flows so much easier.

Speaker 1:

Because, as you're sharing, like, if you're trying to force yourself to show up on Instagram in a way that doesn't feel in alignment with you, or you're trying to sell something that someone said you should but there's elements to it that don't please you, or you're just trying to call in any clients who will come and work with you, even though there's a specific person you would love to work with, you're not actually going to then create those incredible results that your business is calling you into because you're creating so much resistance for yourself.

Speaker 1:

You know I don't want to sell like, I'm not going to show up and sell something that I don't actually want to run. You know, and I'm not going to feel it's not going to feel easeful and fun and enjoyable to be calling in clients who like, oh, I feel like that work is not exactly the work I want to be doing, or you know that will really quite drain me, you know. So yeah, the more we can like accept who we are, what we desire, and unapologetically embrace that like that's, that's alignment, that's flow, that's ease, that's pleasure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and trust it trusts. It takes so much trust and, like it reflects back on what you were saying about desire being the main thing it takes so much trust to, yeah, go wake up and be like, yep, I'm going to follow my desire, I'm going to follow my flow and bliss today and just absolutely trust that it's going to unfold perfectly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah right, Can you share with us? Maybe you can think of a time when you have actually really allowed yourself to follow and trust in that bliss, follow that pleasure, instead of traditional or conventional logic or strategy. And it has worked out like in such a beautifully successful way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I have a couple of examples from last year actually. Well, this time last year my website completely, completely went offline and my web person, and even a local web person, couldn't get it back. I just launched my signature program, disco, which works with homeschoolers, and I did sort of try, but also I just surrendered. I was like I'm not gonna ruin the month of March by stressing about my fucking website, like life is too short to ruin a whole month. So I did what I could. They were like no, it can't happen. Blah, blah, blah. It was like constant emails but I just give them what they needed and just not worry about it, even though this is like a huge chunk of my yearly income. And then by the end, like we ended up doing a big migration. Then I launched it and got a really good number and it all went well. And then something went on with the payments. Basically, if I had had it on my old website, it wasn't connecting properly to Stripe and I would have had like 80 people on a wrong payment plan that I then would have had to manually go through and stop 80 payments. But because I had done this migration, stripe reconnected and all of the payments went. So just not stressing and not forcing my site back up probably saved me, honestly, hours and hours and hours of labor. Probably saved me, honestly, hours and hours and hours of labor. It was just like a tiny example of just letting something go and it working out for you so much better than it could have done. And, you know, running the program a month later didn't matter.

Speaker 2:

And then, really similarly, last September, I was meant to launch Disco and it just didn't feel like it. I tried to feel like it because I do. I call this opening a window, and it's where you do this sort of visualization. You open a window in your mind to this task that you don't want to do, in order to see if it's just like a mental block or a, you know, just a different kind of resistance, or if you really shouldn't do it. So I tried doing all my techniques and I was like no, I really, I really I really don't want to run it. And I'd already emailed everybody and told them when it was going to be launching. I'd already sort of started drumming up this thing. Oh yeah, we're going to be doing it in October. I've got tons of emails being like are you going to launch disco and but I just didn't. And did I do anything instead? Oh, actually.

Speaker 2:

So then the end of last year, wrapped up with my business work instead of my homeschooling work, with this most amazing burst of energy for around helping matriarchs do instagram really well.

Speaker 2:

So I don't know if you saw my document one to 10k the matriarch away that went off like thousands of people read it. Then 500 people joined this little workshop that I ran and then I just opened up a mastermind for Instagram that sold up, sold out in a week and so just ended the year just with so much joy and bliss and a feeling of it was just a massive plot twist for the end of the year. None of that was in my calendar whatsoever and I definitely wasn't going. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to do disco because then that might leave me a little bit of energetic space to do something else. There was nothing calculated at all. I was just in the flow and, yeah, just had the most amazing end of year, absolutely loved it, absolutely adored this Instagram mastermind that has just completed this week and yeah, just surprising, but I shouldn't be surprised because I was just following my bliss and it worked out really well right, exactly, yeah, the desire is the strategy.

Speaker 2:

If it's not there, there's something else for you yeah and just yeah, just trusting that and yeah, just for me. It's the idea. It's like there there's something else for you. Yeah and just, yeah, just trusting that and yeah, just for me. It's the idea. It's like a real metaphor of not being a rock anymore in the river that the river has to flow around, but just being the river itself, that just kind of flows. And sometimes that river is ferocious and destructive and like charges over its banks and sweeps trees down with it because it's just got the rage, and then it will go around a couple of bends and then it will just start meandering again. It will go completely still and peaceful and silent and will keep to its little channels, you know, and just allowing yourself to be the river and not the rock.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

It's quick, it's actionable and it's designed to help you create big growth in your business in very small, subtle ways. Click the link in the show notes to get immediate access and start auditing your business in bite-sized chunks at your own pace in less than an hour. Now let's get back into the episode. And so, talking about rivers and not rocks and flow and nature like how do you, how do you connect with, how do you connect your natural rhythms with a structure to run a business. How do you run your business whilst also honoring those natural rhythms within yourself?

Speaker 2:

So I will do a big proviso here or a caveat, and say that I do not ace this and all of the things that I do. I do like 80% of the time and some months I fail at them and you know it's a pretty constant invitation for me back into practices. I feel like saying that because just somebody on my mastermind last week was like Lucy. I feel like every day I have to work to stay in this paradigm. It just doesn't come naturally and I was like, yeah, you do. That is the reality. Actually. It's only the most enlightened being can wake up every morning, every single day of their life and not actively, intentionally choose to fuel the new paradigm, like I'm always reading, always listening to podcasts and always doing courses to help remind me of the new paradigm that I'm in. The same goes with cyclical living. So for the last eight years I've been pretty devoted to my menstrual cycle and that kind of provides most of the cyclical structure to my business. I just kind of know what's coming up.

Speaker 2:

Just looking at my calendar, I know when I'm going to be plotting things in, when I'm launching something. I'll have the launch in that month, because my cycle is between 25 and 28 days. I can't see it for the next year. So if I know I'm launching in April, in March I'll be able to fix the dates so that I'm launching over the best part of my menstrual cycle. So I've got the right energy and for me, the main thing there is that I'm not finishing the launch when I'm bleeding. That is like a golden rule for me. Usually a launch will traverse a few different points of my menstrual cycle, so I can't like be only ovulating when I'm launching but I need to not be bleeding, because if I'm bleeding I'll just be like everything's perfect and you can't really have that energy for the last day of your launch. You need to have a little bit of like human desire to have the right people on your course no, yeah, yeah, and I've noticed too I call it the mid-launch dip.

Speaker 1:

I feel like wherever there's a launch, somewhere kind of in the middle, you know, beyond that part where you've gotten the first like out of the gate excitement and maybe you've had some conversations, some interest, some sales there can be a lull and I call that the mid-launch dip and I find where I'm at in my cycle. Sometimes that can align beautifully with the mid-launch dip and it's not. It doesn't even seem like a problem. The other times I'm like, oh dear, this was not a good choice at this time. Yeah, because that's when we can start to stress out or think that no one's interested or like it's almost like we're able to sink into that kind of the shadowy part of you know, motivation and and focus in business.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, yeah, totally Like if you around. If that mid launch dip comes in my autumn like day 21,. I'm going to be awake thinking, you know, with my little hustle hat on, thinking of all the things I did wrong and all the things I need to do better tomorrow. Yeah, but I also one of my strategies I just last year I was probably doing like launches, like the 30th launches. I've done so.

Speaker 2:

I've done a lot of launches over my business and it was just such an easeful year of launches kind of forgot that launches can be stressful at all.

Speaker 2:

Really, last year and a big part of that, honestly, I think, is just time you know, by the time you're on your 30th launch, you just know it's going to be fine, so you're not really having to deal with so much angst.

Speaker 2:

But also I just do loads of lovely things when I'm launching as well, so that it feels like there's other big things going on and my business is not the primary thing. And I think when it comes to like pleasure in your business, I think that's like a really important strategy is to just have things in your life that take up your brain and provide you tons of delight and tons of deconditioning, work and learning. That is just not your business. I think we can sometimes want our business to do everything for us, and the launches that have been really hard have been when I guess there's not a lot else going on in my life and so it's taking up all of my attention. Yeah, I really try to not basically have that. I'll even start like an art project, yeah, or yeah, I'll definitely surf every single day of a launch so that you know I'm getting a lot of fulfillment and a lot of focus in all sorts of other areas rather than just being like my launch.

Speaker 1:

yes, yes, oh my gosh, I hear you. My last launch for my mastermind. I just went, I want to go away. So, within a matter of like six or seven days, I'd booked a mid-launch, midweek getaway for myself, a place that wasn't even an hour away and I was just like floating on like giant flamingos in the pool and dining by myself and, just you know, having a cocktail in the evening. It was just so gorgeous, so wonderful, and it was the most pleasurable launch I've ever had and the most successful. Yay, oh, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise. And like when?

Speaker 2:

you talk about.

Speaker 1:

You know you've done, say, 30 launches now, and yes, I agree it does. There are things that you realize you don't have to worry about or that actually aren't that necessary, but I would say that probably what you have been learning and reading and listening to and embodying over these last few years and you know consciously choosing for sure has quite subtly, you know, revealed to you this new way of being, or enhanced way of being, where you can be just naturally flowing towards your enjoyment, your pleasure, your bliss, your ease, your flow.

Speaker 2:

You know, yeah, definitely yeah for sure and think that, um, it's a really important message for business women to hear and understand is that things definitely do get easier. It's the same with parenting. It's so nice having 12 and 14 year old because I can. I'm like on the other end of the tunnel. I'm like guys, it gets so much easier. Oh my god. It gets more and more amazing and you get so much time like now.

Speaker 2:

I basically have had empty nest syndrome in the last few weeks because my 14 year old's been on an island with her best friend. My 12 year old has just spent inordinate amount of time with another family and I've just been like sitting at home, like twiddling my thumbs. I mean, you're not necessarily going to get that in business, but the more your business grows with you, the more you establish things, the more your business muscle, your business intuition strengthens. It all just gets easier and easier.

Speaker 2:

And some people are in the toddler stage with their business and they're like this is so hard, I can't possibly do this for the rest of my life. And the message is you're not going to be your business isn't going to be a toddler for the rest of your life. You have to hang in there and that's the thing, like with toddlers and I say this to the parents I work with I'm like just hang in there. Those years, those years are tough and you know there are strategies and there are things that help for sure, but also you're just going to have to hang in there for a lot of it, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then building a business with little people is quite the journey as well. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Having a toddler business and toddlers and actual toddlers. That's what I did. It was so fun, that's what I. That's what I did. It was so fun, um, but do you know what I felt like? For me it has been great, because I started my business when I had a two-year-old and a newborn and then started growing it from there and then, two years later, I had my third babe. I had three babes in four and a half years and then decided I really needed to write my book, and so I'm now at a place where, like I said this morning, I dropped my four-year-old off at preschool and the boys are at school and I'm like, oh my gosh, the spaciousness and the capacity. So it's totally doable when you've got little kids if you are able to honor your energy and like, do what it is that you desire and trust that I actually actually really, really agree with you.

Speaker 2:

Um, I I think it's really special to be starting a business when you you're still mothering. I think it's special for lots of reasons. One, I think it I personally needed something more than just being a mother. I I had still so much creative energy that needed to be put into something and I was doing hundreds of things and I didn't go anywhere. I didn't become a mum and then my creative energy just fizzled out. I had it more than than any other time in my life, so being able to direct it into something was really cool.

Speaker 2:

But also, you're kind of building a business without the sense of pressure.

Speaker 2:

Like once you get loads of time on your hand, there is an element of like god, I really better make the sense of pressure.

Speaker 2:

Like, once you get loads of time on your hand, there is an element of like God, I really better make the most of this and like better start making a success of my business and selling loads.

Speaker 2:

Whereas when you kind of got little kids, it's like a really precious time where you're just like nurturing this little business with the time that you have, and it's like, well, you know, I only have like three hours a week, so I'm just going to be able to do this. So there's something in there about just finding a way to love every stage that you're at, and that is one way I think is to be like I'm just in the baby stages of this business and I'm just doing what I can and I'm learning what I can, without all of this pressure of I'm I'm a full-time entrepreneur. Now I better back and do some really good stuff and make the most of every minute. I love those things. It's like, oh, my kids are just happy in doing their plaything. I just see what I can get done on the laptop now and anything I get done.

Speaker 1:

This is a bonus, right, I see it as such an advantage. I think society has told us that. You know, in many ways children are such a disadvantage and being a mother is not valuable or celebrated and so we can almost like naturally if we're in business with young kids, we can almost naturally. That's kind of like the baseline. We assume that we're at a disadvantage. I see so many advantages to being a mother and also having a business.

Speaker 2:

Me too, so much it's like I think they're a perfect pairing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's nice to blend the two and try and navigate, yeah, noticing what's important at that time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I do feel like at the moment on Instagram there does seem to be quite the big sort of like battle lines drawn between working mothers and mothers who are just mothering without, you know, running a livelihood or whatever. And, yeah, I just find it to be such a funny thing that we've set it up that, oh, just being a mother is like the most natural thing in the world and it's capitalism that is making mums feel like they need to run a business or go back to work, like that is just absolutely not true at all. You know, there's evidence that goes back tens of thousands of years that women were mothering and potting. Like potting making, they were the vessel makers, they were the town's potters, they were the town's artists, they were the town's fire people. You know, like they've, women have always done really important work in the community alongside mothering.

Speaker 2:

It was never, ever just mothering. You know, women were in charge of bringing in 70, up to 75% of the community's calories. We've always provided for our families and our communities whilst mothering. So, yeah, it's such a misnomer to have it set up that anybody trying to squeeze business in is somehow getting distracted from the important work of mothering. It's nonsense.

Speaker 1:

Yes, we can embrace what we desire, yeah, okay. So I would love to know talking about, like, embracing what it is that we desire and really you know, seeing you be such a commission giver to unapologetically live your life and grow your business in a way that feels good and right and true for you. What advice would you give to someone who wants to do business on their terms but is scared to break the rules?

Speaker 2:

Well, obviously I want to say you should do my programs, but you know that the alternative I would say it's always finding someone that is going to have your back when you're doing that. There's just such important work. So it might be joining your program Regan, it might be joining mine, it might just be finding the friend who also wants to start a business on their terms or turn their business upside down and just having a solidarity buddy, a celebration buddy, someone who is like fuck yeah, you're going to do it that way. You know like we, we can. I truly do think that that is the most significant part of our transformation is having community around us who are bigging us up when we're making decisions that reflect our new way of being or thinking or our new paradigm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so when I was doing I had to do so much work to bring in abundance. I'm like the fifth generation of ministers' children, so like, literally, my great, great, great grandparents were ministers all the way down to my parents. My grandparents used to play brass instruments in the tenements in Wales and people would like drop pennies into their brass instruments. That's literally how they got their wages. So I have had generations of money stuff to untangle.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one of the significant things I had to do was to find people who weren't wealthy, evil capitalists, because I had such an allegiance to the working class and poverty as noble that I had to find people. And I literally rang someone up and was like can I come hang out with you? Because I don't know anybody who's wealthy, who is a good person. That is so great and like reading books and finding people online who were modeling the new way of being. I, you know us. So, um there, if we want to change, we have to find people around us who can kind of like midwife us into that new way of being, because everything we're absolutely neurobiologically designed to stay the same as our community. Otherwise we'd be booted out to go and take on the bears and wolves by ourselves outside of the fire. You know, yeah, so yeah, basically I'd say that's my one thing is to start there, is to find someone who's going to just massively support your journey into creating the business that you want yes, such Such great, great advice.

Speaker 1:

I think that's such great advice for anything that you want to achieve, like if you are starting to desire something that is unconventional or that the people around you don't understand, or even maybe it's that you want to create something in your life that you don't know it's possible. Start collecting the evidence that it can be, whether that is from people you know or people on the internet, or different countries or different cultures. Start collecting all that evidence of how it can be done and how it is possible. That really is going to support you. Yeah, oh, thank you so much. Now last question what have we not spoken about yet today? That is important.

Speaker 2:

Okay, this is related to the approval cure, because that is like quite a massive piece and it's about one of the ways that we can approve of ourselves is this fundamental understanding that we are nature and I'd say that understanding is matriarchal and is also one of the foundational pieces to everything I do is this absolute understanding that we are not separate from nature. We're not looking at nature or hanging out in nature, we are nature herself. And I find that that is really important for pleasure, because it's about how we approach our bodies and we see our bodies as incredible, our breasts as mountains and our like wrinkles, as valleys. And so, just for being able to experience pleasure, essential to that is to not be anxious about our bodies and asking what they're doing all of the time, but instead just like absolutely love them as pure wild nature. But also the idea that we are nature helps us when we are wanting to approve of the quirkiest things that we do, because it's easy to approve of the bits that make sense, like, oh, I do that because I'm fifth generation minister's kid and you know I'm undoing like generational wealth curses. You know it's easy to sort of approve of all of that stuff that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

But what about the really weird stuff that we're constantly doing, like why do I keep setting myself up to feel rejected and lonely? That doesn't make sense at all. But you can approve of that if you really understand yourself as nature. Because nature does not make sense like why does the volcano do that with no warning? Why does this spider? Why does that little wasp harvest spiders alive? That's so unnecessary and kind of cruel.

Speaker 2:

But look, that's what it's doing. Why is that praying mantis eating her lover, not all of the time, but just randomly, spontaneously, just you know, every now and then. Like nature is intrinsically ununderstandable and I just find that to be so useful as we think about ourselves as matrix of ours, of our business. You know, we can make sense a bunch of times and then a lot of the times we're going to have patterns and things that are just a little strange and a little baffling, and so let's just approve of them. Just as the storm is okay with itself and the wildfires are okay with themselves, let us just find a way to be okay with ourselves and accept our totally wild, nonsensical nature, accept our totally wild, nonsensical nature.

Speaker 1:

That is so good, amazing, okay, this has been such a great, great, great, great conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Now let me know how can people find you and how can they work with you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the way that I'm most active is on Instagram, so my handle is Lucy, underscore Rewild, and I post on there pretty consistently. I am going to be running my signature program, rewild your Livelihood, in April, so I'll be starting to enroll that when it next works for my period, yeah, yeah. So yeah, keep an eye on that. This is such an amazing program. It's kind of a complete money and business program from a matriarchal nature-based perspective. Yeah, so if people are wanting to dive in with that, I would be so thrilled to get to know people. Glorious.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. Hey, I'm wondering if you can offer me one very practical takeaway for our listeners as to, perhaps, how they can rewild their business, just one simple little thing that they can do, maybe this week.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So this one is related to that fern story and it's something that I first got, I think, from Starhawk, who is a green witch that I was learning from for quite a few years. There it's sometimes referred to as a medicine walk. So you take your problem that you've got in your business. Maybe the question is, how should I show up on Instagram today? Or why is this thing giving me so much resistance?

Speaker 2:

Or any question, any like sticky thing you've got with your business. You write it on a piece of paper and you put it in your pocket and then you go out into nature somewhere. It might just be your garden, it might be the beach or a forest or a park, and you give yourself around 45 minutes and you arrive in nature and you put your hand over your piece of paper and you ask nature to give you some insight or some answers, and then you just take 45 minutes to just enjoy nature, and it might be sitting in one place or it might be walking, it might be sifting around, just peering at petals and so often like more often than not you'll get to the end of your time there and you'll have the insight that you need for your business problem.

Speaker 1:

That's glorious, that's so great Like oh great. I'm looking forward to my next decisions to be made, my next problems yeah, Give me a good excuse. I'll pop it in my like wedding top when I go for a surf.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I know there should be a waterproof version. I yeah, I know there should be a waterproof version. I learned so much from the surf. It's actually insane Me too. We should do a podcast about surfing and business.

Speaker 1:

Yes, we totally should. I often share analogies about being out in the surf because it so relates to business, so much.

Speaker 2:

Ridiculous. It's actually ridiculous Basically like a business mastermind is surfing. I know right, we should talk about that, Not now, but another time, For sure, for sure.

Speaker 1:

Maybe we should make it a business expense and we'll go on a surf trip.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God. Yeah, you should come to my town. Do you have surf right where you are?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, we're on the southeast coast of Australia, just south of Sydney.

Speaker 2:

Oh my, are there sharks there? They're sharks though, yeah, but there are sharks though Avery, and that's the thing. That's business analogy. There are actually sharks, guys Like you're inhabiting sharky waters.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but do you know what? And I shared this actually with my mastermind last week and I was like I was out in the surf and you know, probably about a year ago I would have been like actually, no, only recently, up until recently, recently I was like, oh, I just I go through these kind of thoughts in my brain of like, if a shark came, I would definitely just like do the mick fanning and like punch it or like these dumb things that you think of when you're out in the surf by yourself, and I would absolutely do none of those. And then my leg rope touches my other foot and I'm like, oh, my god, I'm definitely dead for sure. But I, I realized I was like, oh for sure, there have been sharks that have come around and checked me out and let me go. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

Like I've seen so much drone footage of people being out in the surf, whether they're surfing or swimming. That's their habitat, they go in and around. And here I am thinking with my beautiful human brain that like, oh, if there was a shark, I'm like, ah, you know. And I think again like the more, the longer you're in business, the less you worry about the sharks, because you kind of know they're there but they're not really going to bother you unless you let them bother you.

Speaker 2:

Or you. It's exactly right Like you're worried about sharks and what you should really be worried about is whether your lungs have enough breath to get you through the next big pin down. There's actually stuff that is dangerous, and you should understand what is dangerous to your business and not be freaking out about stuff that isn't dangerous. For example, getting bad comments on Instagram. People give that so much attention and it's like that's not going to destroy your business at all. It makes no difference to your business whether people give you bad comments on Instagram, but you're so worried about that and you're not worried about this other really significant thing that is actually going to be bad for your business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or like the worry about the shark and the worry about the unkind comments on Instagram. That fear and that worry actually impacts your ride. Yeah, it impacts your performance, your ability to say it, but it also impacts your experience of it, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I know Well, maybe I will start a podcast just to have this conversation with you. Sounds great, stretch it out for a while. I'll send you my calendar Hook me up.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, gorgeous Lucy. It's been such a great morning. I knew it was going to be a great day. This has just been the icing on the cake and we're only at 10.46am, oh my.

Speaker 2:

God, thank you so much. I'm so excited for your day. It's just getting better and better. Yeah, I know I've honestly loved this conversation so much, regan.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for sharing your absolute gems of wisdom with the listeners.