Ep. 9: Field Notes - Breaking Business Rules (by following my design)

Sandy: Welcome to Human Design Field Notes. This is where we learn human design in a way that's simple, fun, and actually useful in real life. The kind of thing you can try for yourself, talk about with your girlfriends, and before long, you'll want to know everyone's chart. And I'm not just teaching it, I'm testing it too. I'm rebuilding my coaching business using my own human design and I'll be sharing the field notes as I go. The experiments, the insights, the wins, the mistakes, and probably a few things we can all have a good laugh about. Because human design isn't meant to be stared at on a chart. It's meant to be lived. I'm your host, Sandy Connery. Let's see where this takes us. Welcome to episode nine. This is kind of exciting because it's our first field notes episode. So the way we're structuring this is that the most of the episodes are going to be about teaching human design. And then we're going to pop into the field, if you will, go into the wild. And the field notes are about how I am using human design in my own business. I'm going to be sharing behind the scenes, how it's working, what's working, what's not, and why. And How I am actual, like real stories, real life examples of using human design in my business. And stick around to the end because I'm gonna explain what in my human design specifically makes this like peek behind the scenes or you know, peek behind the curtain method of marketing so perfect. Okay, so one thing I wanna say before I start is when I was learning human design, well, I'm still learning human design. One is never finished learning human design, but in the beginning beginning, I was really desperate, like There's so much human design information out there like facts. Strategy means this, and you know, a one-three profile means this. Like there's just these definitions. And I was really searching and had a hard time finding people who were sharing stories, like drop me into the moment of your life and tell me what is happening and how you used your design. Give me real examples. What were you thinking? What were you feeling? What was going on? What was the outcome? And so this is kind of my answer to that, is that search, is that it was hard to find. There's a lot of teaching and not so much applying. Okay, so here's where we're gonna go in our first field notes episode. I want to talk a little bit about strategy and authority so you know what I'm saying in the rest of this episode. I want to tell you a couple stories of how I applied it in my business and what happened. And I'm gonna talk about how I'm no longer following rules, the rules, what everyone says to do in business and how freeing that is. And then I'm gonna talk about my profile and marketing, knowing what my profile is, which I'll also explain. So again, human design is full of words and weird words and things that don't aren't always obvious. So just bear with me. I'm gonna go through everything eventually and I will explain everything through this episode as I describe it. Okay. So before I get into the examples of what's happening in my business, I first need to talk about strategy and authority and just make sure all of you understand it. So in human design, you will hear the phrase just follow your strategy and authority, or just whatever's going on, just follow your strategy and authority. Those two words go together all the time. And I get it because even when I was learning to read, the advice was like all you need to do with any person that you read for is just get them to understand their strategy and their authority and it'll change their life. So let me just define those two terms for you. So first is strategy. So every energy type has their own strategy and our strategy is how we create the most aligned opportunities in our lives. So whether that's business or career or relationships or work or anything. Strategy following your strategy eliminates resistance and just creates more flow and ease in your life. There are five energy types in human design, and each one has their own unique strategy. In the last series I describe each of the energy types and each of their strategies. So if you have your chart, you can look on there to see what your energy type is, and you can go back and listen to that episode and learn what your strategy is. okay, so let's talk about authority. I have not yet taught authority on this podcast. It is going to be the next series, but in order to understand the rest of this episode, we just need to define authority so you understand what I'm talking about. It's not that hard to understand though. So our authority is our decision decision-making tool. It is what we turn to to make decisions. It is the it's like an internal compass or a GPS. So it's how we are each wired to make the most aligned decisions, right? So we know that we're choosing the right opportunities or the right partner or the right relationship or the right experience or the right trip or whatever. there are many, many different types of authority, emotional authority, sacral authority, splenic authority, voice authority, lots. And we're gonna go through each of these. and this is this decision-making piece is so essential in understanding your human design. It's so powerful. So I am a generator. I am a sacral generator. And here's how my strategy and authority work together. So I am meant to follow my strategy of responding. Every single generator's respon strategy is to respond. And that means like waiting for something to show up in my orbit and then responding to it. Waiting For something to appear in my world and then responding to it. I'm gonna give you lots of examples in a minute. Then I use my authority, which for me personally is sacral, which is a gut response. It is like every decision I make, my body is going to tell me. It's not my mind, it is my sacral response. It is lower belly, it is physical, it is quick, it is basically instantaneous. Answers right there. I have to tune into my body to feel the sacral gut response. Again, you may have a different authority and we will go through those, but I just want to talk about my decision making and describe what it feels like for me as a as a sacral generator. But know that even if you are not a sacral authority, you also have a power to make decisions from your body. It's just going to be a little bit different. Okay. So let's drop into my business as it currently stands. I have spent the last ten years working at a software company. I was a co-founder there. And as a s we kind of spun up a coaching business because our clients needed help. So I have been business coaching for probably five, six years as a as an aside. And then a couple of years ago, we shut it down and I just kept a handful of clients. I still have, now that I'm no longer at that at that software company, I still have a if a couple of clients that I work with. That is the business. That is it. I am in this new stage where I'm no longer with the software company and I'm like, what am I gonna do? I am going to start this up. I'm gonna reinvigorate this coaching practice because I re recognized how much I love doing it and I'm adding human design to it. So that's sort of the new piece. So I am going, that's the the field notes is I'm going to sort of be sharing with you how I'm growing the business, how I'm marketing, how I'm pricing, how I'm, you know, creating packages or whatever it may be. I'm going to be showing you what I'm doing and how I'm making those decisions based on my human design. So I want to go through a couple things recently around decision making. First, I want to talk about this podcast. So I got the idea that I'm gonna add human design to my coaching business. Big sacral response all over body. Yes, yes, yes. Like this is what you need to do. I think I shared in episode one that I had learned about human design and then like on a Friday, and by Monday I had signed up to, you know, officially get the training. So it was a very quick, instant hell yes response to that idea. That is my sacral saying yes. That is not my mind, it is my body saying yes and me following it. And the same thing happened with the podcast. I was actually bike riding and I got the idea, like, I need to teach. What if I made like a public free simple human design audio course as a podcast? And again, the way I would describe, like when I get an idea, like, should I do this? My authority, my inner authority, my decision-making tool is my sacral response. It feels to me like every cell in my body is vibrating. I'm just like, there is no question that I should do this. Like it's a hundred percent yes. And that's how I felt about the podcast. The mind, once I that once I get the idea and I'm like, yeah, that would be so much fun, my mind can come in. And I'm sure many of you will relate to this and give me all the reasons why it's a terrible idea. You don't know enough. You can't carry a solo show. There's a lot of people who've been doing it for a lot longer than you that already have podcasts. Like what what are you adding? And, you know, you know, chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter. And so the way I dealt with that is like I recognized that those thoughts are from my mind and not from my body. Decisions in human design need to come from your authority, which is my sacral. It was 100% yes. There's lots of reasons not to do it, but that is not going to override my body, right? In the past it would have. 100% it would have. Even pricing. So I put together some human design reading sessions, just single sessions. And even pricing, I just went from like ten dollars and up and like just listen to my body to where I got the reaction, like, yes, that feels comfortable. We used to teach that in our my old coaching programs. And I think it's so interesting because I remember saying to everybody, like, how does that feel in your body? Is that a yes? Do you do would you feel comfortable saying that? And I now realize that not everyone can has a sacral authority like I do. So that would work. that question would be appropriate for someone who does, but not everyone does. So I like that was is one regret in hindsight. Like I just wish that I had known that, that not everyone has that like, my God, this is the price kind of reaction. I also wanted to share a story about a no, like a sacral no. I was asked recently by a fellow entrepreneur that I've known for years. He asked me to teach a a workshop on human design and business for his new cohort that he's running this this coming fall. And instantly it's a no. It's like nope, there's just No vibration, there's no excitement, there's no tingle, there's no not it flat, nothing. And so that's a hell no. And even though if I wrote out a pros and cons list, it would be yes, like it would be a great opportunity to prepare something new, some new material, another opportunity to teach it. I love the microphone. It's a great opportunity to get in front of a new audience. It would grow my email list. It might even potentially result in more clients. Lots of there's no downside to it. There's no downside not to do it. And in the past, I would have I would have thought this is a very good opportunity and I should do it. Like the smart decision is to say yes to this opportunity because all of these benefits could happen. But when I sat with it, well actually I didn't even have to sit with it. It was it was through a Facebook message. We had a conversation through Facebook Messenger. And instantly when he said it, I was like, Yeah, no, no. I didn't say that to him i immediately. but I knew immediately because when I check and use my inner authority of the sacral, it's a no. The other place I'm I'm using this authority is around the rules of business. And I think we're all very familiar, if any of you are, any of you are entrepreneurs, especially in the online space, there's all these things that you should do to make money, right? Like all the harmosy kind of advice out there. You should do this and you should do that. And I'm just letting go of all of it. I'm just dropping it like a heavy bag that was never mine to carry. It just gone. So an example is I don't have a niche. Everybody tells you, I would have told you five years ago, you need a niche. You gotta you gotta niche down so that your messaging can be more clear. And that might that's that's true. It sure is a lot easier to sell and to write copy when you're s very, very specific as to who you are selling. But I don't want to. Like, I think about it like, maybe I should like niche down and just like talk to to generators, or maybe I'll just do parents. I'm like, no, no. Like again, there's no excitement around that. There's no buzz. There's no, if I put my hand on my belly, it's a no. There's nothing, right? So I'm not niching down. It's against the business rules, but I'm just not niching down. I might later, so it's a no for now, doesn't mean forever, but right now it's a no. The other rule, and again, I was spouting this for years, is around consistency. If you have a blog, you better be blogging every week, right? So people know you, so people can expect and look forward to that in their inbox every Tuesday at eight AM. And I'm just rejecting that advice. It just doesn't feel right for me. So when we speak about this podcast, I'm going to I've got lots of ideas. I'm super excited to do this podcast. And I keep creating episodes. Like I can't stop. but there may be a time where I don't. Like I might skip a week or two, and that's okay. And Part of my design is I have my sun gate, so that's kind of like your sun sign in astrology. My sun gate is gate thirty three. And it is the gate of reflection. And so what I have learned with this having this gate, and I should explain gate for a second. Gate in human design are the little dots that are the black dots on your chart with a number in it. Each of those numbers corresponds to a gate. And it's it's like your gift, it's like what you're really good at. And you really should lean into your gates or your gifts. and some of them you probably are, and some of them you probably aren't. Like you could be living in kind of the the wisdom of a gate and you could be living in the shadow of a gate. anyway, that's an aside. But my sun gate is 33, which is the gate of reflectivity or reflection. And it's about being out there in the world, experiencing life. And then pulling back, retreating, and reflecting. So kind of going silent and reflecting on what you have learned and experienced and then coming back with more wisdom. And I just think that's so beautiful. And I can see many times in my life where that is a thing where I just need to go silent and think and reflect and then come back smarter. The when you read about that gate, this sort of analogy is like, you know, a wise old sage in a community who is like witnessing and participating and then needs to go away and have some solitude to reflect on what is happening and what is going on, to process what he's or she's learned and then return to the community to speak more truth. So My cop my podcast might not be consistent, and that's okay. That is literally how I am wired to process information. That is my main gate. That is my main gift. And so that is just so empowering to know like this rhythm is going to work for you, even though it's against all of the like, you know, visibility or being visible kind of rules. Be consistent. Be predictable. I'm not going to. I might at this point. current rate I'm gonna be doing two podcasts every week because I just have so much energy around it and so much so many ideas. Like I literally can't like I have to pull myself away to stop podcasting every day. but that might not be forever and that's okay. So I just love the feeling and the permission to do this podcasting this marketing at my own pace. Another rule that I am not following is I've decided to not put this podcast on YouTube. And you know, the the standard advice is that YouTube is a super powerful search engine. It is. It's the biggest in the world. People can find you if you are on YouTube. And if you have a podcast, you might as well put that on on YouTube. And I know that. And I Taught that, but when I asked myself, do you want to put this on YouTube? It was a no. I just I can't. I don't want to. And again, a no for now. It might be a yes later. What I did do was the very last second before I filmed the first podcast, I did flip on the camera. I did decide to, you know, comb my hair and flip on the camera. So I do have the videos of each of these episodes. I just don't feel compelled to put them on YouTube quite yet. The thought of making thumbnails and coming up with thumbnail copy. Ugh, no. So again, I might. I might change my mind. but if I was my own client, you know, two, three years ago, I'd be like, put it on YouTube. You should put it on YouTube. And I'm just allowing the no to override any kind of business logic. And it feels good right now. I just really want to. simply do audio and see what I can do with that. But I do have the video in my back pocket, so we may do something with it. The next area I want to talk about is profile. And we haven't, I don't think I've mentioned profile yet. And it is another layer of human design. and I will be doing a whole series on profiles, probably after the authority series. But basically a profile is so if you took human design and you stripped everything out of it except you left the profile types. That would be the closest to like a personality test. It's kind of it's based on archetypes. And I really love working with profiles. I love reading about them. And I think for any of you who are entrepreneurs, I think this there's some really great marketing information in here for you so that you can recognize that you're, you know, you can see the best way to market given your profile. I think it's incredibly interesting. Anyway, a profile is made up of two numbers. I am a one three. There are six numbers total. They're also called lines. They are taken from the I Ching. And the simplest way to explain this is their archetypes. Each number represents an archetype. I am a one-three. The one is the investigator, the three is the experimenter. So the line one is the researcher. Is the searcher the you know the looking for knowledge really wants information? line ones want to build a really solid foundation of understanding, and people in your orbit know that you know your stuff. Like there's a trust that even though they don't know what a line one in human design is, they know that you've done your research. They feel that. They literally feel that. The line three is the experimenter. And this is the person that just goes off and tries things, learns by trial and error, just goes and does things even though they're maybe they're not ready. They they're the ones who'll go run the experiment. they can't really get a handle on something until they press the button themselves, right? Or they do it themselves. They need they gain their proof through experience. And again, people can feel that, right? They know that it's battle tested because it's coming from me. And even without, again, without understanding that I have a three line, people are going to sense that. She wouldn't say that, but I know she's tested it. I know that she's done it. So when I learned that I was a one three, it made so much sense for me because yeah, I love a rabbit hole. I will just take in information. People are always saying to me, like, my God, you read so many books. I can't believe how you can remember all that information. I don't, but I don't need to tell them that. And it's just I need to go deep and I need to understand something. But I also, there's a point where it's like, okay, enough, let me go try it. Right. And in with technology, I am that way. Like I don't wanna read the instructions. I just literally go click every menu, every button, and I methodically go and test something. That's the only way that I'm gonna be able to figure out is if I get my hands in there and do it. And that's why this podcast, this format, makes so much sense for me. So I'm going to teach, which is my line one, and then I'm going to show and expose the back end of my business, how it's working, what the experiment looks like, what I am doing, where I'm failing, where I'm succeeding. This makes so much sense and it makes me so happy. I cannot tell you. how much energy I have around this format. This type of marketing of like peek behind the curtain kind of marketing, like you know, you know, over the shoulder, I'll show you what I'm doing, isn't going to work for all different profile types. I have a client right now that I'm working with who's a five one. So she has the one for information and study and knowledge and and strong foundation, but her five is more like a hero archetype. She would not I mean, she could absolutely do this method of like, let me show you what I'm doing, for marketing, but it wouldn't land well. It's not gonna land the same as what if a one three does it. So this is what I was referring to before. when I was saying like understanding your profiles can really indicate what kind of marketing you should be doing. So me being a one three and doing a podcast in this format, it just made so much sense. I can't wait till I'm like fully experienced into th three, four, or five years of human design before I start to teach and talk about it po I I can't. I'm too much of an experimenter. I need to go try it and I am so excited to share it, to show, to show it all all to you. There's no shame about saying, you know what, I did this, because I thought it would work and it didn't. I have there's no shame in that. And I think it show I I think it's super powerful. And I I have always appreciated the people who have taught that way by letting me see what they are doing. So I am excited about this. And I will be going through all these profile lines in upcoming episodes in great detail. But if you do want the information sooner about your own design, just book a session with me and I'd be so happy to go through it with you. Okay, so let's wrap this up. So here's how just summary how I am applying human design to my business. First, I'm paying attention to what happens when I stop automatically doing what I've been taught I'm supposed to do. And I'm starting to experiment with how I'm actually Design to operate. I'm getting to know myself better through my human design chart. I'm listening to my body and not my mind, which is just wild, because that is just not what we've been taught, you know. Think it out, figure it out, use logic, what are the pros and the cons. I'm also paying attention to what's actually showing up in front of me instead of always trying to decide what I should do next. And that is the generator's strategy to respond to what is happening in the world or happening in my world, happening in my orbit. So I am not trying to initiate things, like really try to push through and initiate things. I'm waiting and observing what is happening around me and I'm responding to that. And I'm just questioning a whole lot of things that I've spent the last 20 years. believing or simply how you build a business or how you should build a business. And it's really fun to dismantle everything you've learned and start to experiment how it can be different. So welcome to the experiment. I hope you enjoyed the first note first field notes. And that is a wrap. If you're ready to start learning your own human design, grab your free chart at sandyconnery.com. And if you want some help making sense of your particular chart, you can book a private human design reading with me. We'll connect all those dots and talk about what your design actually looks like in your real life. You can book that at sandyconnery.com too. And if you're enjoying the show, make sure you subscribe and share it with a friend. Now go get your chart and let's get you living your human design.