GoSolo.Subkit.com recently interviewed me on being an entrepreneurial and solo business owner. Here is the interview.
Creating Your Own Path – Jennifer Hillman
Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in coaching but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Jennifer Hillman, Founder of Jennifer Hillman Inc., located in Tucson, AZ, USA.
What’s your business, and who are your customers?
My business, Jennifer Hillman Inc, is an umbrella of businesses supporting my clients’ lives and assisting them in building their dreams. In 2001, I started as Angels Intuition, a spiritual, personal life advisor. The business grew into Inner Strength Coaching of intuitive life coaching due to confused clients handing me the responsibility of their lives. My clients now are open to possibilities and looking for guidance forward. As a life coach, I give that responsibility back and their inner power, confidence, and dreams.
Created by Jennifer Hillman’s Poetry Series, Embracing Souls is available on Amazon.
Tell us about yourself.
I got a Graphic Design degree and found my ideal job as a Production Coordinator at a cable station. After four years, I got fired from that job I loved due to the “#MeToo” situation. And for the first time, I stood up for myself and took legal action. Even during the legal case, I was bullied into a settlement by my then-husband and attorney. My case took over two years. I went from depression to meditation leading to spiritual awakening and finding myself again. I took responsibility for my own life, ended my 19-year marriage, and started my intuitive life coaching business and writing. I also started living my bucket lists of dreams I let slip by me. I was traveling road trips solo across the country, meeting interesting people. For marketing, I started a live radio show (or podcast as they are known now) on BBSRadio.com under Abstract Illusion Radio or AIR. I interviewed some fantastic writers and spiritual teachers/ leaders of the time between 2007 and 2010 on BBSRadio and other independent online radio stations from 2010 to 2016. You can still hear the show on BBSRadio archives and my YouTube channel.
I started my business on available advisory phone lines of the time. I worked on several sites and created my website, AngelsIntuition.com. I joined a few local business networking groups to get word-of-mouth advertising going and wrote daily blogs on my site and a few other blogs. I registered for a new online magazine.
What’s your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
For over 20 years in business, I have been blessed to help and assist thousands of clients. I hear a client has achieved their dream, received that great opportunity, found that true love they were looking for, and is grateful for the call with me. And they refer friends to call me, and those friends refer me too.
What’s one of the hardest things about being a business owner?
The hardest thing for me was not getting distracted by the financial aspects of business and focusing on the core mission of my business. Trusting myself with my business and the direction I was focusing on and losing the passion for the business. My business is a living thing for me and needs to grow and diversify to keep it interesting to continue.
What are the top tips you’d give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
Follow the dreams of your heart and do a company you love to do. Trust yourself – you got this.
Research and learn about the business idea with the basics, the legal aspects, the accounting, insurance, your niche market, and if you have employees, respect their opinions and know their rights.
Be open and plan the big picture of possibilities with the business by-products. In other words, please focus on the center of business, yet see the company’s diversity and varieties and have a core mission that unites them all. Do your best not to overthink or overwhelm yourself.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Be willing to invest in yourself and your business by taking a business class, like Marie Forleo’s B-School. It builds a good foundation for any business. B-School helped me refocus on myself and my business interaction in balance.
Change doesn’t feel comfortable… embrace the feeling and keep moving in that direction… regardless of the pull (ego/resistance) to stay comfortable. The reward of peace and the feel of you is amazing. ~jh ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Within each of us are the blessings of experiences, inner knowing wisdom and exactly how to achieve what seemingly feels impossible. The body, heart, and being are the way to the truth with trust in recognizing this simple fact. Yet doing just that can be an experience all unto itself. We may feel the need to wait for more clarity and postpone doing anything. While doing that, we lose ground with taking that much-needed action to live the dream we may desperately need now. The frustration grows and yet this is exactly what we need to push us through the breakdown into a breakthrough.
Until you truly trust yourself in directing your energy and your life the way you wish it to be it can feel like you are repressing the true rebel you intuitively know you are. It is finding your way to that rebel and accepting the wise insights and courage to bring forth that courage of the rebel.
With embracing the rebel, the creative genius is alive, magical and with synchronistic happenings in beauty and graceful ways. It is when you take those right actions, even if you aren’t 100% sure they are right. Taking the risks trusts the rebel, yet it is more than that. It aligns the body, heart and being into one focus. Power is intensified by this knowing. That inner voice and inner child join forces to release the burdens of others you may have been carrying without knowing or worse we do know and we choose to remain in misery out of some kind of obligations that others have placed on us.
Taking a step into freedom, you shake up the norm and create your own reality.
As we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, attempting to pull the Scarlett O’Hara line (“There’s always tomorrow!”) isn’t the best advice to take. You have this one moment at a time. We can make excuses and lots of reasons not to take those adventures, yet we are only holding ourselves back out of fear and in truth, those are illusions of the mind. Your mind is not supposed to be the one in control. And if you are anxious, frustrated and still hesitating on taking those steps you know in your heart are right and having the excuse of waiting for more clarity… you are only bullshitting yourself and hurting yourself. No one can make you do anything and you are continuing the mind game.
In time, the excuses are only going to continue the dark nights of the soul until you do exactly what you wanted to do in the first. Throwing off the safety nets and need to know everything before you move forward towards your dream brings you the steps towards living that dream. It is actually taking that leap of faith that you gain that safety net as you are trusting you will be okay and using that courage, faith, and diving into the dream.
A few years ago, I ran away from home. I simply decide that I needed to get away from the overwhelming pressure and stress for a few months and just requested one thing to start me off: A place to stay. I asked a client/friend who I know had two bedroom place in this location. She said sure for a couple of weeks and after that, we would come to a financial agreement. No problem. I packed what I needed for this and left. At the end of two weeks, I knew it was time to move on, so I called another friend and asked if we could get together… he had a birthday party to go to and invited me to come along. There, I met the woman’s three dogs. All the dogs seemed to be expecting me and the last one to come to me was part Akita. I had four Akita in the past. A sign to ask if someone had a place for me to stay for awhile and the woman said she was looking for someone to take care of the dogs and do some errands for her for a work for rent situation. I said yes and moved in the next day. It worked out beautifully. I had a new place to live and it was free except for making sure the dogs were taken care of… easy as these dogs enjoyed my company. I was happy and my income increased. Things fall into place for me, meeting new friends and living a few miles away from my childhood home. I felt I was home, center for myself and with that, I knew it was time to go back home to complete the responsibilities I had waiting for me. I went home after the magic began to fade a bit. When I returned, I took on the leftover burdens created and restarted my life. Things opened up to me and I found the peace I needed from taking that leap. It may have been just a temporary break, yet I trusted what I intuited and followed my heart in each step. I found what I needed one step at a time. So happy I did it.
Following what you know is right; the Divine will guide you with ease and grace every time. Make that decision and listen to the whispers open you up to a whole new reality of possibilities. If you don’t, you are choosing to remain stuck and no one to blame but yourself. The choice is only yours…No one else. Choose with the whispers of your heart. Watch the miracles happen as you right before you.
Amen for the journey. the tumbleweeds never stuck around too long nor the heartbreak lingers into the recesses of life. the heart opens and the truth falls before you… be able to see the beauty, the grace, and love that keeps you going, with a deeper compassion, determination, and gratitude for your journey. the ride of your lifetime… as you create the mysteries and mystic connections between words and heart emotions deepening than more you reach in… your soul welcomed you;. taking your hand and consoled you another lesson as the tears wiped away… again. the inner light brightens a few more amps as your dreams seem a bit closer as you brush off the dust clean up your hands and face seeing the smile growing with the laughter nothing stays the same everything changes with each breath thoughts dance as dreams formulate so dance with life… the answers you seek will come… in the bizarre moment of motion… breathing in the sweetness enduring caress of love. ~jh
“I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Empty. I have emptied myself out. After a recent bout with my inner demons of fear, low self-esteem, unworthiness, doubt, depression came to visit all at once. The fetal position was my favorite comfort zone and wanting to hide again. Wondering why I am here and my purpose of being. I was guided to certain things like re-reading The Alchemist and The Silence by Robert Sardello, listening too closely to the inner voice musing through the music daily. I began to get answers from within for the outer chaos dancing around me and looking for a way out of it.
“You are here. You are meant to be here. Get use to it. Stop arguing with creation.” ~Bashar
Do we argue with our creations? Do we focus too much of the design’s detail and create resistance with the process? Hell yea I know I have, with the inner knowing of the plan of the dream for over a decade, I have to build a little, retreated a lot with the pressure of realization of the plan came close.
Why would I? Knowing the beauty and ease available once I broke through that wall. Or did I really? There will always be another wall or level in the journey. The perception of how thick of the wall is up to the individual and I saw it as a thick 6″ Plexiglas box that seemed to grow each time I got closer to getting through so I would stop and regroup… with the demons waiting in the wings to pounce during those moments. Yet knowing most of my challenges were self-made.
“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.” ~ The old man told Santiago in The Alchemist.
Do we create hardships when they aren’t necessary? No, we may slow the progress down with the inner voice patiently allowing us dancing with our truths. Yet all is in the divine time and we know how much we like that at times. I needed to test and challenged as I was stupidly asked for it. I question my sanity and ego at times. I always get an answer, not always liking the answer I receive.
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” ~Paulo Coelho
As I am on my knees in tears, asking the inner voice why is this misery happening to me? I am gifted with an inner video of the exact moment I asked for it. Damn. I get in full color from the witness position with the giggling of the inner voice and the tear of my inner child in the background.
Silly me, yet life is a paradox with your sense of the unlimited possibilities, the universe whispering to us and the reality we each face daily. I actually do enjoy this in hindsight. I can only laugh at myself and this journey I am creating for myself. Great content for articles, books and insights to understand my clients and what is going on with them.
I have allowed the persistence of the inner demons’ taunting get to me, breaking me down into that fetal position, losing touch with my truth. I split myself in half, having to hold tight to the reality I know to be truth and the darkness of the inner demons’ dance.
The last bout with my inner demons was quite the dance, though the universe heard my prayers and sent in the omen through songs (like “Shake it off” by Taylor Swift), nature signs of visits from hawks (guardian messengers), ravens (magic and shape-shifting), owls, (omens and seeing through the darkness into the light) and eagle (take the higher vision of dreams)) and meditation with the truth I had hidden from myself and connection with Sophia returned.
I broke through a wall as the sun broke through my window after I dance with the moon in the early morning, seeing my shadow below me… A smile came and lightness to my heart that has been aching for weeks. It was like I could breathe again after holding my breath for months. Clarity and courage returned as well as those soothing whispers of the Soul of World with the understanding of the challenges are gifts of love. Gifts for our evolution into the true sense of love and all its powerful manifestations has we dance with those inner demons.
Omens revealed mystery which I was holding in hidden ways that distracted me from breaking a hole through that thinning Plexiglas as the clarity of my dream appeared within those moments doing the class exercises. Slowly peeling back the self-deceptive denial and owning the reality I created and now being more responsibility for the current dream unfolding. Now it is time to allow the true adventure to live and to meet my destiny head on. So my plan is going through the ceiling instead of wasting any more time with those walls to embrace the plan I know and releasing the need to struggle.
“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.” The Alchemist to Santiago in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.
Do you know your role in the world’s history? If you have a dream, an inner whispering and calling to you, you do and now is your time to claim your destiny.
The alchemy lives in each of us and it is up to us to change and live the dreams into reality or the lead into gold. Empowering ourselves through the trials and tests we meet up with each day. Connecting with the heart and allowing those whispers of omens guides us forward to meet our destiny and victory of self, the divine plan leading to the treasure we seek. ~jh
(Original published in RebelleSociety.com) Image by Julio Aries
Created by Jennifer Hillman’s Poetry Series, Embracing Souls is available on Amazon.
image by jennifer hillman
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