How to build a business that thrives whilst living with chronic illness

Your Dream Business

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Nikita Williams, where we are talking all about how to run a successful business whilst living with a chronic illness.

In this episode, Nikita shares her own personal experiences of living with chronic illness and how she found alignment and capacity through business ownership and personal growth. Nikita shares some incredibly valuable tips and strategies to help anyone else living with a chronic illness to not only manage every day tasks, but also to run a business that thrives.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

1. How to stay productive when dealing with brain fog
2. How to approach decision making whilst managing flares
3. The power of finding strength in accepting life with chronic illness

Nikita is an award-winning Business and Mindset coach, Certified Professional Aromatherapist, speaker, and host of the top-ranking global podcast Crafted to Thrive. She aims to help all entrepreneur women - especially those with chronic illnesses - share their stories and empower them to use those stories as fuel so they can be successful, create the life they deserve, and, most importantly, thrive. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to iTunes and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Nikita on Instagram Listen to Nikita's podcast, Crafted to Thrive Find out more about working with Nikita Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I hope you are doing well. So, this week I have an interview with the very lovely Nikita Williams, who is an award-winning business and mindset coach, certified professional, aromatherapist, speaker, and host of Top ranked Global podcast, Crafted to Thrive, which I've been a guest on a long time ago. She's been featured on Rising Title and the Jasmine Star Show, which I'd just picked her brain to find out how. And she was diagnosed with endometriosis back in 2009. Fibromyalgia in 2010. These diagnoses inspired her to use her previous entrepreneur, community and corporate experience to jumpstart her career as a business coach. She aims to help entrepreneurial women, women. I am terrible at reading these things. You know, I am a lovely listener, especially those in chronic illnesses. I think I must've had something when I was a kid, like someone must've scared me when reading out loud because I do not like it and she shares their stories and empower them to use their stories. So, as fuel so they can be successful, create a life they deserve, and most importantly, thrive. Well, I've done a terrible job of doing her bio. The interview will be so much better. Nikita, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? Nikita: I am doing great, Teresa. It's okay. I am the same way. Teresa: I hate reading. Like I know some business owners and some podcasters Literally script their podcast. Mm. Could you imagine? Nikita: I can't. I can't do it. I have clients that do the same and I think it, it's a miracle that they can, I would lose my head. Teresa: Literally no idea. As you saw, I literally had a very well written bio to read and I couldn't even read that. So. Can you imagine an entire podcast of me trying to read? But anyway, anyway, anyway, Nikita do a much better job than I have done. And please introduce yourself. We always start by you sharing how you got to do what you're doing today. Nikita: Thank you so much for having me on, Teresa. So I've been living with chronic illness for now 15 and a half years. And over those 15 and a half years, endometriosis and fibromyalgia were my first like, diagnoses, but there's more ever since then. And most women who live with chronic illness know that you usually don't just have one. The average is three or more. And let's just say we're, we're kind of over that number, but I have come to this world of finding alignment and capacity through living with chronic illness. It has been a huge part of my life. Thriving for me, living and enjoying life. When you have a constant fear and challenge of uncertainty, you find reasons to find as much alignment in your life so that you can enjoy it and, you know, have those beautiful moments. And that's definitely been my journey as a business owner as well as just a human being. So that is in its nutshell that that began, honestly, with my podcast. When I had my podcast, I started my podcast literally after having a hysterectomy and having some complications afterwards. And I started that healing journey to finding more alignment in my life by embracing what I love, which was people and helping them. Teresa: I, this is such a great topic for today because this has been coming up in my world just very recently and the universe has done its thing and brought you to me at the right time because I was having a conversation with someone earlier about, well, in fact, two conversations happened today. One happened this morning that was very much along the lines of someone who was letting things get in their way that really shouldn't get in their way. And they were already going, Oh, I can't do that because of this. And, Oh, I can't do that because this is coming up almost like, you know, self fulfilling prophecy. And then the second person I spoke to had some really big, massive stuff in their world. And we're like, Am I just making excuses? Should I just keep pushing forward? Like, why does this stuff, how do I run a business when this stuff seems to be coming up all the time? So I'm really, really kind of excited to get into this conversation because I think I tend to. I'm on the side of, I just crack on. Okay. Which is not always the best thing to do. And I've had to learn how to slow down and stop a bit and, and just do the bare minimum. And that this like a million questions, I haven't even given you one, but in my head, like it's like this conversation, we'll just stop. But first off, how do you create a business that enables you to give yourself the time and space that you need without being inconsistent, letting people down, not showing up? Nikita: Yeah, great question. And also those three things you just mentioned are the things that are constantly holding people from living with chronic illness, from even doing the thing, right? Like they don't have an answer to those questions. So to me, it's embracing first, the mindset that everybody is trying to figure out how to do this. And in their, in their world, whatever life hurdles, you can have chronic illness, or you could just have a really busy life. You can have a really unpredictable life. Maybe you're a caretaker. There's just so many different levels of where running a business while living with life can affect consistency, can affect your capacity, can affect, you know, whether or not you can decide to set up systems and process in your life for being Casey emergencies, the what ifs, all of those different things. Right. And so I like to answer the question around what you're asking around, like, do you know, What is your baseline? Teresa: Mm-Hmm. Nikita: what's your filter? Like? Where are you filtering saying yes and no to things? And oftentimes as chronic illness warriors, we tend to overcompensate. Right? Overcompensate. Do more plan to do more over, deliver over, over, over. And not leave enough space. And so, because I know that's kind of also I'm a high achiever, I'm also like, put my mind to it and like do the thing that's definitely how my brain works. I had to really think about what do I want? What do I want this business to do for me and to serve my life versus like I'm just trying to just grind this out. And for me, it really came down to two things, capacity and freedom. I feel like You need capacity to decide, you need to know what your capacity is to decide how freedom will look like for you. For me, my business really needed to have space, lots of space, lots of calendar space, lots of ability to move and flow. Teresa: Mm hmm. Nikita: And my calendar, if you look at my calendar, my clients are like, how do you do any of what you do with all of the space in your calendar? And it's intentional because I need the space. And so the first thing I say that helps you is creating a schedule or routine that takes into account your reality of life. Your reality of uncertainty because the thing about uncertainty when you're living with chronic illness is that you're certain that your chronic illness is going to show up someday. And you're bedridden at some, at some point. Right. And so for me, it really has been embracing and accepting. I'm going to have a flare up. I was just telling Teresa before the show, I've had death in my family. I've also got COVID for the first time. Can't believe it. And. All of that was happening, but my business was still running because of this point of building a business that is within the capacity of understanding that life and crap happen. And so that's how you show up consistently is just embracing that fact and being okay with that imperfect action. Teresa: And I think firstly, when you said space in your diary, I was like, Oh yes, I looked at next week today and I was like, I can't wait for next week because there's hardly anything in it. And I am so excited about that. And it's not that I don't love what I do. Of course I do. I adore what I do, but just seeing space in my calendar makes me feel like makes me feel like I run my business, you know, and, and that I've created something that I love. Whereas the last few weeks running up to us recording this podcast, I have been so busy that I have literally had back to back to back to back. And that doesn't feel good to me. Like I can do it, but it doesn't feel good. So I think. Almost the word I want to use there is expectations. You've almost set your expectations straight from the get go saying, I will not be able to do X, Y, Z. Is that right? Nikita: Yeah. And I, I think when I think about expectations is that we often have these boundless thoughts of what we think it should be based on what society has told us it needs to look like to quote unquote be successful. And I had just learned that when it comes to expectation is that I get to set it. No one else gets to set that for me. And so if I look at my calendar, to your point, even when it's a busier season, I still know my expectation is that I'm going to see space because I planned it that way. I'm going, I'm, I have to, like it's, I have to, and it's also a choosing to and expectation of thinking. I need to do or complete so many different things in a given moment of time feels extremely triggering to me, like to my body. My body does not like looking at a calendar and seeing I don't have space. Like I literally might go into a little bit of a panic attack. Like it might literally go through that because my expectation is set that I am always giving myself space. Regardless. Like I was just having this conversation with my mom and I was telling her, I was telling her something and she's like, yeah, but I'm your mom. I'm like, yeah, I love you. But I also have this boundary around what I expect of myself and what I can give. And I love you. And I know you mean this from the best place, but this is for me and your business honestly is for you and other people that you serve. Right. And so you just give yourself that permission. Teresa: So again, you said another word there that I think is key with this is boundary. And how do you do that then? So obviously from what you're saying, you start your, your business life with great intentions of This is how I, what I need. This is how I need to show up. So I guess you're setting those boundaries from day one. Did you know them from day one or no? Good. That's a good space. Nikita: That's funny Teresa. Teresa: You've got it all together, right? Okay. So how did you discover them and how did you then set them? Nikita: I feel like the first thing that I discovered and I've always leaned into is my strengths. And to me, my strengths always set up the expectation and it always set up like what I'm capable of, right? There's a part of me that felt that my strengths weren't really strengths, right? And so over the years, have I learned, okay, I can depend on me here. I can depend on me here. And those things have helped me create those boundaries. Those things have helped me create understanding what my expectations are. That's where I tell everyone to start. Start with what you feel good about doing, what you feel aligned doing, what fills your cup, and make those the bigger, you know, balls in your jar, if you will, first, right? And so that's where you start if you have no clue, if you have no clue, start with what you do. Teresa: How did you then, so you have the podcast. And you consistently put the podcast out and that is hard work. How did you, and how do you manage looking after yourself, being considerate to yourself and still showing up doing that? Nikita: I love that question because it's hard, but it's not hard. Like to me, it wasn't hard. Like I said, I started my show in 2017, right after hysterectomy complications being in the hospital, and I needed two things. I needed to grow my business and I need people like those are my strengths. I'm a very, I'm an extrovert person. I love connecting. I love networking. And at the time. I was like, I'm not going out anywhere. I'm not going to go to networking events. I was literally bedridden. I was like, none of that happened. And so I leaned into the thing that was my strength, which was connecting with people. And so with my podcast, when I started that, I didn't know how to do it technically, but that's what YouTube is for. And that was what, what, you know, Google is for, and I didn't put any expectation that I was going to be like Oprah interviewing everybody in the first 10 episodes. I didn't put my expectation of like, this is going to be number one from the get. I had no expectations in that regard. The only expectation was I knew I could connect with people. That's it. What happened from there, I was okay with. I was open with learning. And that's where I gave myself permission around, you know, the expectation of being like, just show up for what you do know, and then you'll learn the rest. And then over the years, I've just kind of It's been easy. I've added people into my team to do certain things, systems, processes to kind of automate some of it. And thanks to AI now these days, there's, I mean, me doing a podcast now versus 2019, 2020 is like a whole different experience, but it's easy. And it's easy because it lives in a zone that I know I'm good at. Teresa: And that is such a crucial thing. I think there's so many things in our business that we need to do. And so many of them we feel we have to do. And it's like actually just asking yourself the question of, do I want to, do I need to, is this important? You said earlier that, you know, if you're in a busy season, so I guess you almost allow yourself to go, this is a busy season, I'm going to get through this and then I'm going to give myself some space or how do you do it? Nikita: So as living with chronic illness, a busy season, to me, it used to me pushed through. It used to be to me, like, I just know I have to push through. But what I've learned and what I see with my clients is that that creates, the worst season after. So what I mean by that is a lot of us are triggered by our flare ups and our pains and symptoms with our chronic illness during seasons of high push, extremely busy, busy times. And we can do it, definitely can do it, but it's the after effect that is the, the consequence that leads to the inconsistent actions. And so what I personally do and the thing that I work with my clients to do is like, even in the busy time, we actually account for more space. in smaller increments over time because that gives us some recovery time so that when that busy season is done, we have actually given ourself enough space to, to allow for maybe a week or two to like really chill for a moment and get back. But we don't need two or three months. We're not going to be triggered into a flare up because we were pushing and doing everything back to back. We can't afford that for consistency sake. Teresa: And so in terms of like making money, then what are your thoughts on that? Because there are points where, you know, I've got a summit coming up, you know, you're going to be at the summit. Like there are points in our lives where we have to work really hard, like, and sometimes like people would use the reason of not making money because they haven't been able to work as hard or because they haven't been able to show up as much. What, what are your thoughts around the. And I'm not even talking like the hustle culture because I think we're past that. But there's still an element. Well, if you want to earn money, you are, you have actually got to work, you know? So how, what's your thoughts around that? Nikita: So when I think about, so funny when I think about making money and being sick, because really that's what we're talking about. Chronically sick and making money. That's, yeah. Those two things don't seem like they work. Teresa: Definitely not. Nikita: It is about intentionality. I know it sounds so frou frou. It sounds so like, blub blub. It sounds dreamy even. But when you design a business that is going to serve you in the seasons where you are absolutely sick and cannot do, right, it can still be creating the, the, the leads and the sales in the back end. And so this is why I find for chronic illness warriors who are starting a business, starting, they think they don't need these systems in place until they've reached a certain dollar amount. And in actuality for us, we need them at the, at the beginning. Right. And so that if you are doing like a talk or if you are growing a list, or if you are offering a new service, you need processes and system that give you the flexibility to offer that Solution and a different ways, especially service providers. If you're a service provider living with chronic illness, you need to be able to deliver what you're doing. And