WWP Podcast #11- Talking Entrepreneur Personality Types, Unschooling Your Kids, Bankruptcy And Balance with Cadey Charfen

Warrior Women With A Purpose

Summary

In this episode, I chat with entrepreneur Cadey Charfen, president and co-founder of CHARFEN, an organization that helps entrepreneurs identify and live in their strengths. She and her husband Alex have created and led wildly successful businesses, bounced back from bankruptcy, and have found a work-life balance that actually works for them. Cadey shares about entrepreneurship, momentum, and even lets us in on some secrets, including how she’s used her habit of obsessive researching to make a combination of schooling strategies work for their children to great success.

Today, Cadey opens up about:

• aligning your mind, body, and actions to your goals,
• un-schooling her children,
• the entrepreneurial family, and
• coming into her own as an entrepreneur.

Highlights

On her purpose:

My husband and I run a training and consulting company for visionary entrepreneurs…We really feel like those are the people that propel the world forward so we train them on how to grow their businesses, how to create dynamic teams in a dynamic culture that will support their vision and their growth.

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On fear/failure:

Let me tell you a little secret: there’s self-doubt at every level.

I think that there’s insecurity at every level. And I do new, scary things every day. I think that once you accept and are able to understand that that’s the journey, it becomes a little bit easier.

And when I got into real estate I was like, this is something that I have control over my own destiny. And I really just jumped head first and I was scared to death. But I did it.

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On work ethic:

And I always say, if you have a should in your life – I should drink more water, I should eat healthier – that’s where you start. Stop should-ing all over yourself. Your life can be changed in a moment with a decision.

It really only takes one decision to build one habit to get you into momentum…Start the snowball and just let it build.

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On intentions:

I think that the majority of us spend some time of our lives causing damage but that can definitely be repaired but it’s really deciding to make the choice… You have to make the decision to do things differently.

The secret is that we’ve all had traumas throughout our lives …You can choose to let that define you or you can say, yup, that happened, this is what I learned, and you can go create success for yourself anyway. Choose the latter because it makes life so much more fulfilling.

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On taking ownership:

If there’s a small amount of incongruency at the beginning of something, if you’re not completely aligned, years down the line, it’s like a gaping void. It’s no longer a small misalignment because you’ve ignored it or you haven’t corrected it or you really haven’t faced it or admitted that it’s there.

I feel like that’s what we spend the majority of our adult lives trying to overcome – is the stories and those things that were implanted into our psyche when we were younger. If we can protect our kids from that as much as possible – I don’t know that they’re going to come out unscathed; none of us do - but if we can model really good habits and show them self-love through loving ourselves first, then hopefully they’re going to come out far better than we did.

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On educating her children:

Instead of saying, ok, I’m going to be their educator, I said, how can I curate their education based on their interests? Really, the outcome that Alex and I want is we want our children to be able to understand that they’re resourceful and whatever they want to know, they can get access to. We’re in the age of the internet. Anything you want to know is literally at your fingertips. And so, if we can teach them how to be resourceful, to be self-led learners, then I feel like they’re going to succeed.

At the end of the day, your children are going to learn far more from you and far more from the way that they’re listened to and heard and supported, than they’re going to learn in school.

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On support:

I’ve gotten a lot better at asking for help.

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On being an entrepreneur:

For entrepreneurs, it’s easy for us to throw ourselves into work and be consumed by it cause that’s how we’re wired and we want to see that baby grow and become the vision that we have in our minds.

I think that you have to just start small and to be persistent and be resilient. When you’re just starting out, focus on getting those first few sales. And really listening to feedback of your clients and adjusting to that.

If you focus on the foundational things at first, then you can scale fairly quickly once you start to see success. But it’s getting that first follower and those first people that believe in what you’re doing that are willing to provide feedback for you and just believe in you, I think that’s really important.

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On drinking more water:

It’s a resource that we all have, in the United States especially. And it’s one small change that makes a massive difference in your health, in your mind-body connection, in the momentum that you feel physiologically, and really can create a tremendous amount of momentum in your life. And it doesn’t cost a thing!

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Keep in touch with Cadey Charfen:

Websites

charfen.com – products that serve businesses and entrepreneurs and soon, the entrepreneurial family

getthirstynow.com – a transformative approach to hydration

Links Mentioned

wsj.com – The Wall Street Journal