Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in personal development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Dr. Valerie René Sheppard, CEO of The Heartly Center for Mindfulness and Self-Mastery®, located in Trabuco Canyon, CA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
The Heartly Center is a hub for transformational wisdom and guidance. We help people raise their Consciousness so they can experience more Peace, Love, Joy, and Freedom every day of their lives. The focus is on activating heart wisdom and balancing Divine masculine and feminine energies to enable them to live in the ease, peace, and Grace of being in the flow. Clients come to the Heartly Center to release limiting beliefs and other low-vibration energy from past traumas and to know their magnificence so they can express it in all that they do.
We have worked with people from ages 15 to over age 80. We especially love to serve "at-risk" emerging adults ages 18-29. We put emancipated foster youth, low-income, underrepresented minorities, and first-generation college students under that heading.
Because of my corporate background, I am often asked to serve large enterprises and organizations through keynote addresses and workshops for executives and entrepreneurs. Topics center around high-performance leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and developing heart-centered organizational culture. I also provide VIP private coaching one-on-one.
Tell us about yourself
I am motivated by the intention to help transform the planet from fear to unconditional love. I am troubled by the growing experiences of low-conscious expression around the world. These include othering and hate-centered expression, the efforts to supplant truth with conspiracy theories and other fear-based rhetoric, and the death and destruction that have resulted.
I am committed to helping people access the Divinity that they are as integrated Spiritual-Human persons, so they can meet all the challenges in life with more Divinely inspired courage, confidence, inner peace, and happiness. That supports my mission to birth more harmony, collaboration, and cooperation to build a world that works for everyone.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
I'm very proud of my college-level self-mastery curriculum that was piloted at the University of California, Irvine, for four years. The quantitative and qualitative data collected from students who took the courses suggests the courses improved their abilities to manage the rigors of their post-secondary lives better. We're now scaling the curriculum to make it available across the globe.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
The biggest challenge that I've faced involves matching resources with the business needs. There are many things I love doing, and I'm also uniquely qualified to do in the business. There are also necessary and crucial tasks and roles for which I have little or no motivation and/or lack the skills. Ensuring cash flows can support the ongoing expansion needed to get things off my plate and handled exquisitely has been a growth area for me.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Ensure that you leverage heart wisdom over your mental machinations and intellectual alibis when choosing the purpose that fuels your enterprise. That is most sustainable as a touchstone that can help get you through the tough times.
- Make cultivating relationships with people who are on the cutting edge of your industry. This will help force you to look for the market position that you can uniquely own.
- Be bold and creative in making altruism a definitive part of your overall strategy. Contemplate and activate the means for your growth and expansion to benefit the common good. Design your means to flourish by doing good for the collective.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://heartlycenter.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heartlycenter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happy.to.be.me/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ValerieSheppard
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriersheppard/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
Turn your craft into recurring revenue with Subkit. Start your subscription offering in minutes and supercharge it with growth levers. Get early access here.