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Incubating my Business Plan

By Amy Nielsen

I had signed up for this retreat almost eight months ago. In fact, I signed up for it with the intention of using it as a launching pad for the first part of my health and wellness mentoring journey. I was really looking forward to the experience. It centered on a topic dear to my heart, was taught by and shared with some exceptional women in a location I love deeply.

Though I had never been to this particular conference before I have been to several of its ilk and was interested to see how this version incorporated the elements of several parts of my life that I feel are somewhat separated.

This was a “nodule on the web” sort of event for me. An event where several different parts of my personal web intersect in an interesting way; where people will know me in a different way than they have before. Many of the women I knew would be at this retreat would possibly have heard of my recent adventures through the lenses of mutual friends and acquaintances.

I have spent the last four months working very hard on a new business plan, but not one related to health and wellness mentoring at all. This was not a retreat or conference I would have attended in support of the food truck business I was creating. It would be fun side knowledge to share, but not the crux of the business. But, I cued the business strategy book up on the Kindle and away I went.

I felt a little like I was going through a worm hole as I travelled up the eastern edge of New York state and across into Vermont. All areas of the country I know well, but that I have not travelled through in many, many years. As I went over the top of one of those glorious Vermont peaks, my break light came on and Casper, my white SUV, started to grind.

“Aw, crud” or some such escaped my mouth.

I played the “just how much does Murphy hate me today” game all the way across Vermont and half way through New Hampshire to the camp. Lucky me, I had started early in the day, as I intended to take my time across one of the most spectacular drives in the country. I arrived at the conference, parked my car, unloaded my stuff, called my home office, i.e. my husband to find a place to get the breaks done on Monday as well as a place to stay over on Sunday night, and by the way, has him ask Nana to stay an extra day. Please! And I let it go out to the universe.

I was planning to work on the overall topic of the conference since it was no longer applicable to my business plan. I was expecting to work on a very physical level with some alternative treatments for my personal health and wellness. It was that kind of retreat. Only women. So I brought the work for that school, my homework, a book on the topic I am working my way through and even a journal I keep meaning to start.

Once I got settled into the weekend and met up with the friends, I got into the groove of the space. I had several of those moments in class where I heard not only something healing to me but something I wanted to pass along to a specific person in my greater tribe.

I started to hear how I introduced myself to people and how I described myself, what I do. Because, I don’t “do” anything right now. I’m a SAHM searching for what I want to do when I grow up. What I heard myself saying in that space of great grace and great power was not the business I had spent the last four months trying to shove into my life, but what I had been incubating when I signed up for the conference in the first place all those long months ago.

I began to take that information and look at it. I talked it out with some of the women I found myself in regular contact with throughout the weekend as we ebbed and flowed through the classes. I began to look around and see who does what and what the options are out there. I started to “try on” other identities to see if that job title, or skill fit my being. I touched in with some deep understandings of where my core is situated right now; what my current strengths are and what the weaknesses are. How to use those and learn and support others through my own personal journey.

And I realized that while I love the idea of a food truck, it’s not what I am supposed to be doing right now. Never once did I even mention the café to anyone who didn’t already know I was working on it as a plan. It never occurred to me to do so.

Instead, I found the most strength and felt the most need is in supporting our military spouses on the journey through the deployment cycle, daily life of a military spouse and the transition into the civilian world.

I can support our community on a large scale at duty stations around the country through workshops and classes. I also want to mentor individual clients on their path to health and wellness as they move around the country. It is exceptionally hard to keep up with alternative treatments when you move as often as a military family does.

If I can be a bridge to link them to care options around the country I believe people will be more likely to continue practices that will support them through the incredibly stressful life we live. By teaching classes in alternative stress management techniques that can travel with a family I believe families will be better equipped to deal with the inevitable hardships.

By the middle of the weekend I was wishing I had brought the business books I intentionally left at home. I wanted to write out my new plan. I wanted to sketch out the logo design. I wanted to write client intake forms. I wanted to start my list of conferences to offer. I wanted to be doing the doing of the business. But the Great Mother in her way said, “Wait child, let it grow. You have more learning to do within you yet before you teach others.”

It was fire circle night. If you have never been to a live fire circle, it could be you and a friend and a guitar and a candle or it could be a bonfire in the corn field with the truck radio, or the wild women in the wild horse ring singing our power, but go to one. Be part of one. It will transform you. And it transformed me as it always does.

By Sunday at closing I was feeling the stress of different meals, different water, high energy and deep learning. My voice was shot, my belly was starting to get unhappy and I had to figure out the car. Yep, remember Casper with no breaks and a five-hour drive back across New Hampshire and Vermont? Yep.

So I said my good byes and trundled down to the brake shop, back up to the hotel, then back in the morning to get the car and away to home. That extra night to get the breaks done turned out to be the space between my learning and my knowing. I needed the space to process what I went through before facing my family with a new plan.

The space to incubate your ideas on a deep cellular level, in the energy of your being. The time to let the idea flow out and through you. To really believe it will happen so much so that you delve deeply into the the pulse of the business is crucial to determining if that business is really the right one for you to start. It is a gift you can give yourself and your business that will be the make or break for it.

I thought I knew what I wanted to do. I made a business plan, created a name, even designed the wagon to carry it. I went to meetings with small business advocacy people. They asked me all sorts of very challenging and opening questions about exactly what that business would look like, and feel like.

I took those questions with me as I went away for the weekend to a retreat. I ended up with a totally different plan but one that is much more suited to me and what I have to learn and to give. Without the space and time to work to be open enough to hear that voice, I would have kept trying to shove my spirit into the wrong bottle. Take the time to incubate your business plan. It is the most important part of the planning process.

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