Expand Your Fempire Podcast #81 Transcript

Honor Your Feminine Wisdom in Business with Julie Foucht​

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:00] Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire Podcast. I’m your host Caterina Rando and I am blissing to be with you today. You know why? Because I have an amazing guest, Julie Foucht.

[00:00:43] Julie is the founder of The Art of Feminine Business. And I love this because you know I love doing business the feminine way, and we have so much to talk about with Julie. Julie, welcome, welcome.

[00:00:58] Julie Foucht: Thank you. I’m so excited to be here with you.

[00:01:02] Caterina Rando: Thank you, Julie. Before we dive into all the hot topics about the Art of Feminine Business, I always like to hear about you, your background, a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey that brought you to this place of serving and supporting women in the special area of doing business with femininity or the feminine way. Let’s hear about it.

[00:01:28] Julie Foucht: Oh yeah. That’s a big question. So my entrepreneurial journey started when I was 12. People would pay me to take their garbage after their weekend in our little neighborhood resort community.

[00:01:43] But I actually started in the coaching world about 20 years ago. I had just left a really bad, abusive relationship, a 20 year marriage, and I was broken. You know, how you get, like I had no self-confidence, I didn’t know how I would survive. I didn’t know how I was going to take care of my kids. And I started taking courses in personal development. I worked with a shaman. I worked with a psychic. And it was great. And I thought this is the work I want to do. And it took me a few years to get up and running.

[00:02:20] And when I got up and running, I learned I love working with business women. I have such a passion for women making money. I think it’s hugely important for our planet that more women have more money.

[00:02:35] I started working with business women and I got really into the masculine. I got really into how do you build a funnel and what’s a launch and what should your website say? And my husband’s business, my second husband’s business, crashed. The housing crash that we had in 2011, 2010, took his business out.

[00:03:00] And I had to get real about my business. I couldn’t do the little hobby business that I was doing before, where I just worked a couple of hours.

[00:03:09] So I took everything I learned. I hired a high-end coach. I dug in and I really learned how to market like a man. I learned how to push myself beyond the limits of what my energy was. I learned to sell with pressure. I learned how to get out there and push, push, push, and grind.

[00:03:33] And at first it was fun. I mean, it’s fun when you start making money and you haven’t before, right? But what I would do is I’d sneak this other stuff into my coaching. And so my clients would get on a call with me and I would secretly pull a Tarot card to help me ask questions, or I tap into source energy, or I’d say to them, “oh, let’s talk about your inner child.” And my clients were like “whoa. Where did that come from?” And they loved it, but it wasn’t part of what I was putting out into the world. And I was at the edge of my first six figure year when I joined a networking group for six and seven figure earners in the coaching and self-development industry. And I mean, literally I was at like $92,000 for the year.

[00:04:28] And it was October when a car smashed into the back of my little Honda. It was a big truck and it wasn’t the first hit. It was the second hit that really screwed my back up. And I went from being able to work 12 hour days, six days a week to maybe doing two or three hours, a couple of days a week. So I get up, do a client call and go lay on ice. All of my marketing disappeared because I couldn’t… I just couldn’t be on the computer. All of my networking went away because I couldn’t stand to attend a networking event. I could barely drive to the chiropractor, much less all these networking events.

[00:05:14] And what happened is that in those quiet spaces where I was laying on ice, I began to hear the whispers and a voice telling me there’s a different way. There’s a better way. There’s a way that works for the feminine soul.

[00:05:31] And at the meantime, in this big, you know, six and seven figure earners group, woman after woman after woman was saying to me, “I built a multi-six figure business and then got adrenal fatigue and I’m reinventing myself. I’d built a seven figure business and then got breast cancer and I’m reinventing myself. My husband and I built a seven-figure business, and it’s killing me and I’m stepping out of it.” Right?

[00:06:00] And all these stories coming from women at the same time, I was hearing the voice saying “there’s a different way”. And if you know the book Big Magic by, I think that’s Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Big Magic. She says there are ideas out there that are floating around wanting to be birthed. And when an idea comes to you, you can say “yes, I will birth you into the world”, or you can say “no”, and it goes and it finds someone else. I think at that time, this idea of a feminine way of doing business was out there floating around. And I was one of those people who said “yes, I like this. I will birth you into the world”

[00:06:42] Caterina Rando: Let’s hang out there for a second, Julie, okay? So, before, because I want to get into this art of feminine business and hear about your journey with that, I want to back up and say all the things that you said about the masculine way of doing it… what I heard you say is that that doesn’t work for a lot of women. Would you agree with that?

[00:07:08] Julie Foucht: I would agree that, well, let’s put it this way: women can make it work. Women have made it work. I mean, literally when women entered the work place in large numbers, we only had men to emulate.

[00:07:25] Caterina Rando: Right.

[00:07:26] Julie Foucht: So we’ve done that since the early eighties. And if you look at even the clothing in the eighties, big shoulder pads, narrow, narrow skirts, that’s all about emulating men. Yes, yes, yes. Oh my gosh. I remember putting a tie on my daughter. I thought it was so cute. She was like five.

[00:07:46] So we’ve emulated men and we’ve been able to be successful with that. But what’s happening is we’re coming into a new era where we are allowed to bring our full feminine into it. And that requires a different way of doing business. It requires a different way of using our energy. Women flat out don’t have as much testosterone as men. We’re not designed to push in the same way.

[00:08:13] Caterina Rando: Totally a hundred percent agree with you that women doing business differently, especially when you’re speaking to women and your potential clients are women, is going to get you very different results, and hopefully the results that you’re looking for. Can we talk a little bit, Julie, about what is the feminine way? Before we talk about how to make it work, let’s be clear that everyone understands what it is.

[00:08:45] Julie Foucht: Right. So the way I define it is: the feminine way is actually by turning inward first and listening to our own rhythms, listening to our own connection to source, listening to our own, you know, our soul’s longing, and then allowing things to unfold from there. And that’s very different.

[00:09:11] The feminine widens and deepens. The feminine is collaborative. It’s connective. It’s about community. There’s no competition when you operate in the feminine, because collaborations and community are what allow you to grow bigger.

[00:09:29] Now in the masculine… and there’s a place for masculine. We all have masculine and feminine in us. Right? And there’s a time when we use it. But when we operate out of the masculine, then we are first looking outward and it’s very much a push energy versus an allow energy. It’s a hammer energy. If you just think about physiology, the masculine rises, the masculine pounds.

[00:09:57] The feminine opens. The feminine deepens. It’s a very different kind of energy. And the masculine, when it’s at its highest vibration, is really designed to support that feminine. I was at a networking event once and a woman had said, “how do I know what I’m supposed to do?” And my answer is, well first we do some internal examination. First we connect up with source, God, the universe, whatever language suits you, and we make those connections. And then we birth what we’re doing from that connection to source, from that connection to soul. And the man sitting next to me said, “no, go do some market research”. Well market research is great, but it’s way far down the line, because I don’t want to go do market research, find out something that somebody wants, and spend the next two or three years doing something that doesn’t make my soul sing.

[00:10:56] Caterina Rando: Let’s hang out there for a second. Let’s hang out there for a second. I love this because, Julie, many times people have said to me “Well, have you done market research?” And the truth is I like to do what I like to do, and to find the people that want to do it, rather than do a bunch of research to find out what other people want to do. Because if I don’t want to do it, then I’m not going to be blessing when I’m doing it. And I’m not going to be blissing when I’m trying to sell it.

[00:11:29] Julie Foucht: And that’s gonna affect your sales. You’re not gonna have the sales.

[00:11:32] Caterina Rando: Exactly. This is a very good example of the difference between masculine model and feminine model. Julie women have been listening though to so many masculine gurus for so long that I think sometimes they don’t trust their own feminine wisdom.

[00:11:59] Julie Foucht: Absolutely. I think that’s probably the biggest problem. And it’s not just in recent times. Like women in our society have been told for hundreds of years we can’t trust ourselves. We’re too emotional. We are too reactive. Do you know that up until about 150 years ago, women couldn’t be trusted to have their own bank accounts.

[00:12:28] Caterina Rando: Well, that’s a whole ‘nother conversation for the suppression of women in our society. That’s a whole ‘nother conversation. But yes, we’ve only been able to own property and have bank accounts and all these things for a short period of time. So how does a woman start to trust her inner knowing, Julie?

[00:12:54] Julie Foucht: So that’s a really, really good question. And I think we can start really simply. So sometimes we think we need to jump in and get all the answers about how to evolve our business for the next 10 years and get it all at once and get it down and trust it. And if you’re in the habit of not trusting yourself, then you have to start small. So you can start with asking yourself questions like apple or orange, what’s better for my body today? Now these are not, you know, like the outcome of that is not a huge life altering outcome, unless you’re allergic to one or the other..

[00:13:34] Caterina Rando: Right.

[00:13:35] Julie Foucht: But start with the small questions. Today, do I write the email first or do I check my Facebook messages first. Right? And start to feel your way into it.

[00:13:49] If you look at things like human design or the Enneagram, one of those methods of how do you best operate. If we’re looking at human design, there’s a couple of different ways to make decisions. One is through the heart. One is through the gut. One is just knowing in the moment.

[00:14:08] And so you begin to trust your decision-making, whichever one you are. And if you haven’t had a human design reading, I highly recommend it. Fascinating the permission it gives you to be you.

[00:14:20] So we start there, and we start asking those questions. For me, it’s all in my heart. So does my heart desire, apple or orange? Great, does it feel better? Does my body lean in when I think about answering social media or when I think about writing the email? What would feel more pleasurable to me? Feminine loves pleasure. She’s all about pleasure. What would be more pleasurable to do this first or this first? And just start small in taking those actions and then track the results. ” Oh, I wrote the email first and now, Hey, I am free”. Instead of stressing about it for the next two days, I’m free to take the week off. Woohoo! Right? Track your results.

[00:15:06] And I think over time, you begin to trust and you develop some skills and trusting. One of my skills that I’ve developed over the last 30 years is to really go into meditation, and have conversations with my highest self, or have conversations with the energy of my business, have conversations with the energy of money.

[00:15:30] And those conversations have really guided me in developing the business I have today. That feels really good for me. And I will tell you, Caterina, I would rather have a business that feels good, where I am serving clients at such a high level, then to have somebody give me a business worth $3 million that I hate going to every day.

[00:15:54] Caterina Rando: Absolutely. I like to say that your business is supposed to be your bliss, and if you’re not blissing in your business, you’re not doing it right. Because we could go get a J.O.B. And we choose to be self-employed or have our own business because there is some rewards here for us and if it doesn’t feel good, why do it?

[00:16:18] Julie Foucht: Exactly.

[00:16:20] Caterina Rando: And so, so let’s, let’s talk a little bit, Julie, you know, I have the privilege of having a multi-six-figure business for many years. I support women, as you do, in having multi six-figure businesses or perhaps you’re doing seven figure businesses. And what I often find is that women start businesses because they want to help people. And that’s the right reason, in my opinion to start a business.

[00:16:52] The challenge is that they’re not wanting to do the business part, or they don’t want to do the selling part. And maybe they don’t want to do the selling part because they were taught how to do the selling the masculine way, like you mentioned about pressure. What are some of the things that you find, let’s start with one thing, that you feel gets in the way of women massively monetizing in their business?

[00:17:17] Julie Foucht: I think it, it starts with beliefs. Most of the women that I work for or work with are little bit magic or a lot magic. Right? And what do we know about women who are magic throughout history? Well they get burned at the stake or they get thrown in a lake or they get ostracized, right?

[00:17:37] So there’s this unconscious, underlying belief for women that says “if you become very visible, if you make a lot of money, you become a target and it might kill you”. We have to acknowledge that that’s there and we have to clear that away.

[00:17:56] Then the second thing is women get stuck in this idea “I’m going to be in my feminine all the time. I’m going to sit around and meditate all day and hopefully business will come from that”. Well, the feminine is like the river, and if you don’t have any banks to your river, what you end up with is you end up flooding, ruining the crop, and nobody eats that year.

[00:18:21] So what we have to remember is that we also have a masculine side. And the masculine is there to support the feminine. It’s not to bully the feminine. It’s not to take over, but it’s to serve the feminine.

[00:18:34] So as you’re meditating into your morning, as you’re doing your morning rituals, you might bring in the energy of your business and say “what are the actions that are aligned with what I want to create with my business and what are the actions I need to take. And is there anything getting in the way? Is there a belief? Is there a time constraint? Is there an ancient vow that I need to let go of so that I can take those actions?” And then actually take those actions.

[00:19:05] And I keep a little notepad next to my computer here, and I will write down like, here’s the three actions that need to be done today to move forward with my business. And then I double check them. Okay, business. Anything else? Sometimes my business will say, go to the beach today.

[00:19:27] And so sometimes that content that needs to be written gets written on the beach cause my business was like, “you need to be on the beach, need to be out of your office.” But it’s that combination of putting the riverbank up, right? The masculine is like the riverbank. The masculine’s the container that allows you to create magic out of your feminine, allows you to be in your creativity, allows you to really deepen your wisdom and your understanding. But if you don’t have that container, if you don’t have that action, you can never make anything that your dreaming manifest on the physical plane. So it just stays out here in the spiritual planes going “somebody help me get, get down there so I can serve people”.

[00:20:18] Caterina Rando: Well, what you’re also talking about is really having and seeing and paying attention to your business as a separate entity. Of course, it’s already a separate entity, but a separate energetic entity that you’re building a relationship with.

[00:20:36] Julie Foucht: Absolutely.

[00:20:38] Caterina Rando: And that will support our decision-making, our clarity, our intuition is what I’m hearing you say, is that right?

[00:20:46] Julie Foucht: Yes. Yes. Action is masculine energy. All the actions need to support that feminine intuition, need to support the feminine creativity. Need to support the wisdom that comes through you, from your feminine.

[00:21:03] Caterina Rando: Julie, love that. Okay, good. So once we have clarity on what we’re doing. Let’s talk a little bit about the selling part and the marketing part, because this is where masculine energy and masculine ideas have a lot of influence that I think for a lot of women makes it very hard for them. What are your thoughts about the selling from the feminine?

[00:21:31] Julie Foucht: So I think we have to understand, first of all, why people buy. And people actually buy because of emotion. They buy because they feel something they don’t want to feel anymore or they don’t feel something that they do want to feel. So we have to understand that. And that is, you know, that’s the realm of the feminine, the feeling, the communication, the connection is in the realm of the feminine.

[00:22:02] So we start by identifying what are the feelings that my people that I’m meant to work with, what are they feeling that they don’t want to feel and what do they want to feel instead? And I do a cool little process taught to me by a guy named Jeffrey van Dyke. In this process, we go into the childhood wounds and we’re able to pull those feelings out and create a list of them. And then we wrap those into marketing. And people want to work with us because they feel like somebody sees and hears them because we’re able to identify their feelings. So that’s the first place for marketing. And we need to use this information with a lot of honor for people. Right? This is not used to talk people or manipulate people into doing something, but it’s simply “if you are feeling this way, I can help you feel this other way”. And we only use that if that’s true.

[00:23:00] The second place to look at marketing is we then have to justify it to our heads, right? Here’s where the masculine comes in. The masculine part of us goes “Great. You feel great about this person. What’s the ROI on this investment?” So we have to answer, what’s the problem that this is going to solve. I’m going to help you make more money in your business. I’m going to show you how to ramp up your marketing. I’m going to show you how to lose weight forever. Right? We have to look at those really specific things.

[00:23:33] And what a lot of women do is they talk about their transformation. “I’m going to help you align with your inner authority so that you… you walk the world as you.” And it’s gobbledygook, right? The masculine brain goes, you’re going to what? Why? Huh? “I’m going to empower you to be all you can be”. And the masculine mind is like “no, that doesn’t add up.” So we have to be able to be really specific on that end, on what’s the promise that we can give. Cause you and I do this, we’re all about transformation. Like you’re not going to have a multi six figure business if you’re in the mindset and the body of a $50,000 a year employee.

[00:24:24] Caterina Rando: Right. Well, I like to tell my ladies, my potential clients, my clients, that you want to talk about the results, which is grow your business, grow your revenue, get more clients, get more speeches. Those are the results which is what the masculine and really the executive brain is looking for. And then also remind them and mention the transformation that will feed their heart and soul. If we can talk about both of them, then we’ve hit all the buttons.

[00:24:59] Julie Foucht: And we can talk about the transformation and we should, because that’s part of us educating our audience and transformation alone doesn’t sell.

[00:25:09] Caterina Rando: I hear you. I hear you. And of course it depends on what your business is, but I would a hundred percent agree that both results and transformation we want to talk about. Let me ask you this, Julie, because this is a huge topic – doing business the feminine way, the art of feminine business. What’s one guiding principle that we haven’t touched on yet that you would like to share with our listeners about feminine business?

[00:25:42] Julie Foucht: The one guiding principle is that you have access to source energy, that you are made of source energy, that you create from source energy, that when you slow down and tap in and listen deeply, that you can create whatever you want. Remember always that source is your source. And so you need to be in communication with your source.

[00:26:13] Caterina Rando: And something I like to tell everyone is to take time everyday for thinking and planning. And this would be part of their thinking and planning is talking to their business in the way you’ve discussed. Thinking and planning is not just scheduling and decision-making, it’s what comes before the decision-making, which is the reflection and the rumination and the visioning and all the more feminine aspects of strategy.

[00:26:43] Julie Foucht: A hundred percent. And sometimes I’ll sit down to do that and my monkey brain won’t stop. Right? Like, I’m not getting anything, nothing’s popping up. And I’ll just get up and leave. I’ll go to the grocery store. Sometimes I’ll wander through Target. That’s a great place to distract my monkey brain. Or I’ll go walk in nature. And you know, the answers that I was looking for often will come. I take my phone and I dictate notes into my phone all the time. Or I’ll rush back. I can’t tell you how many times I’m downstairs putting on my shoes and all of a sudden the thing that had been alluding me comes clear and I run up the stairs to my office and dash out the notes and that trip to the grocery store doesn’t get done. We need to give ourselves that space.

[00:27:35] Caterina Rando: Yes. And I think that we also can come to expect it. For example, there was a study in England about, you know, where people get their most creative ideas, and what they found was the bus, the bath and the bed.

[00:27:51] Julie Foucht: I love that.

[00:27:52] Caterina Rando: So the bus meant not just the bus, but like when you’re driving or you’re on the bus, you get ideas. When you’re in bed, you get ideas, and the bath or the shower, because we’re usually doing something in those places that we, you know, know how to do, like drive your car or take a shower. So we don’t have as much attention on the doing. And so our mind wanders. I use my shower absolutely for creative thinking. I always get lots of brilliant ideas. And also we can use our subconscious mind to tell our subconscious mind before we go to bed to get busy on whatever it is. And then we can usually wake up with solutions or they come in the morning. I love that. That’s that’s wonderful. I love about the tennis shoes.

[00:28:47] Julie, let everyone know… What’s coming up for you? What’s exciting that you have in store? And then let everyone know how they can connect with you.

[00:28:57] Julie Foucht: So I have a podcast that people can listen to. And we do a ton of great stuff in my Facebook group. Lots of free stuff, lots of education, lots of feminine stuff. And we brag every single week in our group, which is another great strategy to help you with your marketing is to learn to brag.

[00:29:18] Caterina Rando: Love it. Julie, any other we’ll put, of course, any links in the show notes, but in addition to your Facebook group, how can people best connect?

[00:29:27] Julie Foucht: I am on Instagram at The Art of Feminine Business. They can look me up on my website, juliefoucht.com, and connect with me on LinkedIn and on Facebook.

[00:29:42] Caterina Rando: Beautiful. Thank you, Julie. Thank you so much for being with us today. I am so happy that we have touched on, explored, looked into this very important topic of the art of feminine business.

[00:29:57] My friend, I want to remind you: you have massive value to bring, there is a lifetime supply of people to serve. Take this next week to do your business with more feminine energy and feminine focus, and I’m sure you will be growing thriving and blissing even more. This is Caterina Rando. I cannot wait to be with you again next time. Julie, thank you again.

[00:30:25] Julie Foucht: Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to talk with you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.