Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in personal and business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Lauren Best CHt, Founder of Lauren Best Collaborative, located in Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

I help solopreneurs and creative entrepreneurs design new ways of working by setting up and building upon the foundations that will empower them to enjoy more authenticity, freedom, and simplicity in their lives and businesses. Through my expertise as a Business Experience Designer & Certified Hypnotherapist, I collaborate with clients to move through the noise of what they think they should be doing to a place of taking confident and easeful action that feels so incredibly good.

To put it simply, I help people experience alignment with their mindsets and the true action that they want to take so that they truly enjoy sharing their genius zone with the people who need it most. This might mean designing the ways they structure their work and systems through creating new rituals, how they can embrace their superpowers, exploring new possibilities for pivoting into a new service offering, setting the foundations they can build to prioritize how they want to spend their time and energy, and unlocking new potential within their subconscious minds.

Tell us about yourself

At the beginning of discovering new possibilities for my business in the second year of the pandemic, I neglected a lot of the freedoms that I envisioned for myself—like taking more time to rest, saying yes to an afternoon of leisure just because, and focusing on the type of work that felt incredibly easy. It’s like the traditional ways of working that I was trying so hard to forget were just so ingrained in the way I was showing up.

Before taking the leap to start my own business, I had designed dozens of customer experiences, business concepts, streamlining of operations, business pivots, and new ways of delivering services in my career as a Business Transformation Consultant. I have also collaborated with public and private sector organizations, small businesses, and entrepreneurs across the globe, from Canada to the UK, Netherlands, Australia, and Singapore, and was able to design their ideal way of working. Yet, it took many months of trying things someone else’s way to realise that the way I was working wasn’t possibly the way that would bring me the most success, energy, or value of my time.

Without the environment of having to work for someone else and being stuck in survival mode, I finally realised that my energy involves many different cycles and phases and that I now had the chance to design my own way of working that would flow with my energy, not against it.

This experience of working through my limiting beliefs and deconditioning from the traditional ideas of what a successful business looked like not only brought me to a place of discovering hypnosis to work on my mindset, to then becoming a Certified Hypnotherapist, to now helping other solopreneurs to unlock their own version of success and show up authentically as themselves. It’s important for me to bring the balance of fun, intention, and ease to my everyday life so I am able to live authentically and freely and have space to support others in doing the same.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I love that this new chapter of my life has not only brought me to a place where I get to discover new realities of experiencing my own version of success but also that I get to choose myself and honouring my energy over the need to be performance-driven. Like a lot of my clients, there is a recovering perfectionist lurking in the background when it comes to trying new things, putting myself out there, or sharing my wisdom. But what has become even more powerful is my ability to be driven by curiosity, experimentation, intentional action, and also just doing things for fun. I am finally embracing the idea that I can continuously reinvent myself and that I get to design my work and life on my own terms.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

When we start something new and don’t see the results we hoped for as quickly as we may have seen them in the past, it can create space for limiting beliefs or self-doubt to creep up. I see this same struggle for a lot of heart-centred business owners who have taken the chance on themselves to start a purposeful and simplistic business and just as quickly revert back to the hustle mentality that provokes the idea that success is only achieved if you work really, really hard. There are different seasons that we experience as business owners, some faster and some slower, but all in all, sometimes good things just take time and the ability to lean into self-belief.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Take time to continuously check in with yourself. The more self-awareness you build, the easier it will be to identify the type of action that feels good for your body, your mind, your dreams, your energy, and your heart.
  2. Make space for enjoying the things you love, saying yes to what feels good and no to the things that don’t.
  3. Free yourself from the pressure to perform or show up like anyone else. You're different from everyone else, so you should absolutely design your business to feel like you.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://lauren-best.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenbest_co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenhollybest/

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.

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