Hello, Yoga Family. Welcome back to the show. Today’s episode is going to completely shift how you think about marketing, visibility, and your role as a business owner. What if the key to success wasn’t about selling more products, but showing up as more of yourself? What if your energy, your unique frequency, not your offer, was your most powerful marketing tool?

I’m so excited to be joined in this episode by Juliet Stapleton, an internationally recognized visibility strategist to dive into how human design can transform the way you approach your business. I was the biggest human design skeptic. This consult I did with her changed my life. You’ve heard me talk about it if you are in my somatic coaching program or my advanced 300 hour teacher training.

Today we unveil how aligning your business with your energy type creates more flow, fulfillment, and sustainable success. Inside today’s combo, we’ll explore why selling access to you, which is very awkward if you’re a yoga teacher, is more valuable than any product and how to build what Juliette calls a visibility castle that’s rooted in your authenticity power of resilience, self-trust, and strategic alignment. We’re going to go over everything.

If you’ve ever felt out of sync with traditional business advice, this episode is going to help you design a path that feels good and works.

Before we dive in, don’t forget to grab my free yoga business plan template. The link is in the show notes. This is the perfect tool to help you align your energy and start building a business that feels as good as it looks.

All right, let’s get into it with Juliet Stapleton.

Brett (02:48) Hi Juliette, welcome to the Uplifted podcast. I’m so excited to reconnect with you, welcome. 

Juliette Stapleton (02:53) Thank you for having me. I’m so excited for this conversation and it’s gonna be so much fun. 

Brett (02:58) There are a lot of yoga teachers, prospective yoga teachers, life coaches, and healers listening. A lot of us, when we pursue this career path, we want to help people. But we don’t realize that we’re also becoming an entrepreneur and all the different pieces that come with becoming a business owner. I work a lot with people on clarifying what success looks like for them when I do business coaching, because for me, when I started, to be a successful yoga teacher was I’d have a book deal and I’d be teaching at festivals and I’d be teaching online and I’d be leading all these retreats. The reality is you can’t do all those things. You need to figure out what success looks like for you. But the missing ingredient that you came into my life and helped me figure out, which I’m so excited to share with folks, is this idea that in addition to figuring out what success looks like for you, you can start thinking about what success is healthy for your energy blueprint.

I’m gonna hand it over to you from that moment. You are an expert in human design, but really helping people map their human design into their business, how they can market and serve and have a bigger impact when they better understand their energy. Do you wanna tell people a tiny bit about human design and then the way you work with it?

Juliette Stapleton (04:11) Absolutely. Let me start with the fact I don’t consider myself an expert in human design who went through all the certifications. I don’t like doing things one way; that’s part of my design. I do like figuring things out for myself through my own experience and the observation of everything I see and people I work with. When I’m talking about success, I love that because as a human design projector energy type, success is my signature feeling, but it’s not what success might even feel to another person. Understanding that is such a mind-blowing advantage within the business angle. It’s interesting because, as you said, we start with this idea, “Oh, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that,” and so many ideas, but we don’t know how it feels. We haven’t experienced it yet. A lot of things that we want in the beginning might not be what we even like or what we can sustain energetically and creatively. For me, the human design system is something that gives super practical validation on how you are in terms of how much energy you have on a daily basis to put into your activities. I’m not even talking about business, just life and adulting, being a human being with responsibilities.

That takes a lot of energy and everybody has their own approach, but there’s also things we’re told by society, cultures, and traditions: you should do this, work hard, try and give it all. What does it look like to you? You can take a lot of different personality tests, and astrology, and it tells you about how you are and you can recognize yourself. We self-identify a lot.

But through all this research, human design is the system that can tell me it’s okay that you are, for example, a 1-3 profile, just like yourself. The 1-3 is a profile that is created in a way to take everything in, experience everything, and analyze it in an extremely mental process that’s always happening. We’re living in a bubble, sometimes not paying attention to others, because our process is to take everything in, process, and then share the unique perspective and unique angle that we find. I have seen that in your way you approach certain modalities and certain ways in yoga. You do that too; you condense your experience and then you say, “Actually there is a different way,” or “Actually this doesn’t work.”

It is your role. Your role with this human design profile is to share your own unique perspective, your opinions, because even though they’re based on your personal experience and your personal stories, people bounce off that. You’re here to tell others what doesn’t work. You are here to tell others that there’s a crack in the foundation. This is what you’re created for this lifetime to be, to do. It also gives you purpose. It also gives you more permission to express yourself through, for example, content. When we talk about marketing, creating a business, there are traditional business and marketing strategies that are very important to understand. They’re not going away just because there’s some human design system out there. Human design is not a solution or a silver bullet to all our problems. We need to understand the principles and the rules of the game. But isn’t it wonderful when we can embrace ourselves? The same with marketing. We need to understand what is required from us. We’re living in the world where becoming familiar is important.

That know, like, and trust factor. This is in the Human Design System, it’s the fourth line world. I talk about it in my second book, Visibility by Design, because familiarity is the key theme for that fourth line. We need to become not strangers, tell a little bit about our story, a little bit about our personal life. I’m not talking about private details.

But there’s always something that we personally have lived, experienced that we can share, a lesson, an experience, how we became the way we are. And then based on these stories, there’s another scene that’s happening. It’s master and follower in this world. We can see how we are living in a world where some people are becoming visible and then there are people who look up to them. So this master theme is prominent. Those are just two little aspects of this world we’re living in. If you’ve ever seen The Crown, the series on Netflix, there is a fundamental moment, a key moment when in the 50s, during the coronation, the royalty decides to broadcast the coronation.

Long story short, the reason for that was to become more accessible to the ordinary people, which was unheard of before. Before, the royalty were living in a castle on a hill, nobody’s allowed in. Nobody knows what they do. Nobody even knows what they look like. And this moment, with the television, with the information age, the need to become more accessible was so strong and in a way it saved royalty. They enjoyed another however long up to now and they’re still playing that game now, the game of visibility. When you understand the rules of the game and then you understand how you were designed, that’s a perfect marriage. That’s when a lot of times you can make choices that are aligned with you within that rule of the game. Am I making myself clear?

Brett (09:41) Yes. I want to clarify a couple of things for people who might be listening because what you said at the end here is that we’re trying to match our personality and our energy to the game of business. You can’t match your energy and your personality to the game of business unless you understand it. What I got from my consult with you is that you validated a lot of the ways that I wanted to do business or a lot of the feelings that I had.

For example, to give people a practical example of this, because of that one-three line, you said, “Yes, it’s natural for you to want to talk about yourself a lot and you should do that.” I feel a little bit weird about it. You’re like, “No, that’s great.” I felt very overwhelmed by a lot of the data analytics that I was doing in my business. I was like, a business my size should be looking at all of this data. I dreaded these meetings, even though I was forcing myself to do them. And you, knowing my profile, were able to say, “Well, it makes sense that you hate those meetings because the way you’re designed and the way your energy works is that looking at large amounts of data like that isn’t helpful for you.” You were great. You were like, “You should know your basic ROI and what’s happening with your ads at a high level. But that clouds your decision-making. You make decisions in this other way,” and then you talked to me about that. What I want listeners to understand is that you might not have the one-three line like Juliette and I do, so you might need to be doing something a little different. Maybe it’s not so much sharing more personal stories. It’s a totally different strategy that she can tell you when she knows your human design. Meaning we need to know where you’re born, when you were born, and where you were born and that’s pretty much it.

This is a huge permission slip because I can’t tell you, let’s give another practical example. How many students or teachers come to me and they’re like, “I want to start a membership site.” I’m always like, “No, you don’t,” because it’s a huge commitment. But now I would say, “Go do a consult with Juliet and see what business model would be great for your energy type.” Are you someone whose energetic structure is set up well for that constant delivery and churn and intimate communication? Some of you listening very well might be.

But others of you listening might be, potentially like me, more introverted. A podcast or YouTube where you’re not so face-to-face with people might be a better way for you to manage your energy and share your gifts. I want to make sure people get it. If you do a consult on your human design, but then take it to someone like Juliet, who can map it to what you should be doing business-wise and then how you should potentially market yourself.

For me, it was a huge game changer. It felt like this giant permission slip, all the things I’d secretly been wanting to do and secretly been feeling, it was validated. It was like, “Yes, of course.” I walked away from this consult fist-pumping the air, being like, “Yes, I have permission to not do business this way, even though that’s the typical way to do it, to do more of this, to do less of this.”

I even talked to you about how I run some of my meetings, and I was like, “I find certain meetings really draining. How could I restructure them better for my energy type?” You had all these great ideas. When we start a business or we’re going after success, we’re trying everything and we’re so desperate and we’re not with ourselves and our energy. We’re desperately trying to fit in. We’re wearing high heels and the prettiest ball gown and the craziest hair just because we think that’s what we have to do and that’s what everyone else is doing.

But if you know your blueprint, it can be so valuable. Now I don’t make any decisions in my business without consulting the consult that you gave me, because it’s like a hundred-page report. I’m just like, “Wait, before I make any decision, does this fit with me and my energy?” Is there anything you’d add to clarify this for folks? I want to make sure they understand the value of human design in business. Maybe you can give some examples of when you started your business and then started doing things a different way once you understood more about your human design.

Juliette Stapleton (13:37) Totally. What I want to add… yeah, the report is only 50 pages, but it feels good. It feels like there’s so much validation. We have to also clarify that when Brett came to me, she already had a seven-figure business. We come to these realizations and these permissions at different levels. 

Brett (13:43) I think mine is 100. I’m gonna check after, but I’m pretty sure it’s 100. 

Juliette Stapleton (14:01) When you’re in the very beginning of your business, you don’t know yet. My advice to you, and also probably as a one-three who experiences everything myself, you cannot know what works for you until you know what doesn’t work for you. You have to try; you have to go to that ball in the high heels and suffer. Then next time you know that it’s not for you, or maybe you love the high heels.

Right? You don’t know. I never knew that motorbiking would be my favorite way to travel. I would be saying, “I’m not getting onto that thing.” Then my second husband drove on a motorbike, gave me a helmet, put me on almost by force. In five minutes, I knew this is it. You have to experience things to know. I want to very clearly state that nobody can tell you this is one way that works for you because there are certain energies you have and some things will be more aligned with you, but you still have to go ahead and try it and experience and not just once, commit to experiencing certain strategies for three to six months, see how you feel. In the beginning, everything feels overwhelming. That’s important. But when you already are in the process of this, everyone who starts a business in the beginning, it’s slow, nothing is clear, there is a struggle and it is a survival of the fittest and the ones who are more resilient and the ones who adapt. People like us, we just didn’t give up in the beginning when it was tough. But with human design, what you can start seeing is observing why certain things are not working out and how you are making decisions. Because at the end of the day, everything in life is about decisions. When you’re making decisions that are aligned to you and your type, what I love about human design is that it gives you a very clear understanding about your energy type. For example, that’s just top-level stuff. For example, you are a manifesting generator, Brett. As a generator type, your existential question is, “Who am I?” You are in a way focused, your energy is here to do your favorite work or your life’s work, to buzz from it, to be satisfied with it, get tired, go to sleep, wake up, still buzz from this life work. This is about work for you and you. I’m a projector, I’m a very different energy type.

My energy type is to connect to others because I have this penetrative aura that sees very deeply into the other aura and I’m designed to guide because I naturally feel where there are blind spots or I can ask a vulnerable question. Therefore I can’t just tell everybody what I see. I have to be invited into this vulnerable conversation otherwise I’ll get a pushback. There is a strategy that comes with each one of our energy types. And when you understand that…

I am here not to people-please; it’s not about them, it’s about me. Me helping others is not about how much I’m helping them, it’s about how I love helping them, it’s about where I light up when I’m helping them. You can pick and choose the elements to create your own unique business in a way that suits you. I love talking about this because one of the biggest realizations in my business—I am in this business now nine years—and the biggest realization was that you have to make your business convenient to you. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try difficult things and learn and master certain strategies and tools, but you have to make it convenient. For example, I’m also a lone wolf. Very lone wolf. I have very little social life, all my life is pretty much online and I just like doing my thing and sharing it.

Doing something like even masterminds, membership sites, you mentioned the membership site, which is difficult to start if you don’t have any audience. There are elements to all these business models. But even before I pivoted into human design, I was doing Facebook organic marketing. That’s a lot of hustling. That’s a lot of posting every day. That’s a lot of sending DMs, which I hated. I absolutely hate it. I knew this strategy. I’m very good at strategy. I was even teaching it and some of my clients were so good. They were building Facebook groups, thousands in a couple of months, they would have 5,000 people all joining. Happy people, all organic and I’m thinking, “Well, how come I can’t do that? I taught this person to do things. I’m doing that every day but I’m not getting these results.” Now fast forward to when I discovered human design. Human design says, “Hey you’re not for groups. You can lead them, yeah, but you’re not really into this networking and hanging together in groups. You get too tired. You need to be on your own. This kind of authority, a little aloof perhaps, and just be cocky about your opinions. That’s all you have to do.” This is in a nutshell what I know about my design. That made such a difference.

Brett (18:47) And it gave you permission to stop doing all these cold DMs and things that didn’t fit, correct? 

Juliette Stapleton (18:52) My business when I was a Facebook organic marketer, I will be super transparent, it was a broken tab business. That’s how I call it. It’s like a feast and famine type of business where you launch something, perhaps the launch was successful, but you exhausted yourself. Your nervous system is completely stressed out because of that. You sabotage the next launch.

Or if you run the next launch and not every launch sells out—we have to understand that this is normal to have a launch that doesn’t sell out—but then you feel so upset because you haven’t recovered from the first one yet. It’s like sabotaging yourself on a roll for a long period of time. You’re basically shooting yourself in the foot all the time when you’re doing something that’s not aligned with you. It’s not convenient to you. It’s not something that you can live with. It’s not something that suits your energy levels, your stamina.

All those things. That’s what happens. The business itself reflects. Then over time, especially when I pivoted into human design, I already was around. I already knew certain things what to do and how to do it. I did a little bit of that on Facebook as a Facebook organic marketing expert, I started there. But what I started doing then is I started tracking where clients found me, asking people, asking in forms and intake forms on my paid products. I knew everything, where clients came from. I was shocked to find out that very little of them were coming from Facebook. An embarrassing fact to admit. That was also a reflection of doing something maybe well, maybe understanding what you’re doing, but it’s not your thing. You’re not getting the results that you potentially can get. Yet when my business started resembling more energetically who I am…

It still does. It was able to carry me through so much personal drama in the last two years. I had a lot of loss in the family, got remarried, and there were ups and downs. It was a crazy amplitude of things that happened. Yet my business was consistently bringing clients. I was visible. Everything that I’ve created in my business, even years before was supporting me. That’s the kind of business I wanted to have. It’s a business that I don’t have to hustle every day. If I’m waking up and my energy is on zero, I don’t have a requirement to show up. I can step back, I can regulate, I can calm my nervous system, and then show up when I’m more lit up. The live element I was able to remove. Now I know a lot of people, and again, I can see that in their human design as well.

A lot of people are very good at showing up every day. They love the live interaction. That’s something that activates them. Wonderful. There’s so much available technology-wise, strategies-wise to choose those things and experience them. But again, you need to experience something over a period of time to really know.

Brett (21:39) I think what’s interesting here, and this is why my consult with you was so profound, is being the size of business that I was when I finally came to you, it was like I was doing everything because I had grown. I was doing Pinterest and Instagram and YouTube and email marketing and Facebook and organic search and paid ads, and my team grew a lot during COVID. It was helpful to see and be reflected back, “These elements that you don’t like, these channels that you don’t like, you can let them go. This is what fits for you.” But I do agree and I appreciate what you said because there are a lot of people listening to this who are starting out. It’s like you can’t skip the step of trying all the things. But I also feel like if I had had the consult that we had at the beginning of my business journey, it would have been so helpful for me because I would have built in such a more sustainable way.

In 300-hour teacher training, those of you who’ve taken that program, we talk about your business as a spiritual practice. I always say, “If you’re having fun, your students are having fun.” Business should be fun because the reality is it’s so hard. If it’s not feeling somewhat fun and easeful for you, you’re just never going to succeed because it’s going to feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. It’s naturally so hard. When people are like, “What social channel should I start on?” I’m always like, “Don’t do all of them because you’ll burn out. What are you naturally drawn to? What do you enjoy?”

The human design piece is just another layer on top of that, where you can let someone know, “Actually, you’re quite introverted more than you might think.” It’s been so interesting for me too, because in getting so deep into my human design and remembering who I am, I’m seeing how much my parents influenced me. In some very positive ways, but some ways that I’m just acting the way my mom did or more her personality. I’m much, much, much more introverted. That translates to my personal life and that translates to my business. It’s such a permission slip to know this is the way I am and I can let all of this go. But what I wanted to ask you, because this is a really interesting topic and I don’t hear this talked about enough is: at what point for listeners who are maybe in that early stage of business and they’re disliking something or hating it, having that resistance to doing it, at what point is…

Do they need to do it for resilience? Because maybe it’s going to work. And at what point do they know that maybe it’s just not part of their design, that specific strategy? There’s this nuance to this, right? We have to suffer in the high heels a little bit before we can just be like, “I’m just going to wear sneakers to the ball.” How is there a way to pick that apart? Because it all feels hard in the beginning.

Juliette Stapleton (24:13) I almost laughed out loud now when you mentioned the heels because I had a photo shoot and I went and I got myself high heels because I wanted a little bit of a lift, the posture changes, everything. I got high heels. Two hours we were doing this photo shoot. I came home, had a huge bruise on my leg. Even my body said, “No, this is not for you.” We need to suffer a little bit, right? We need to know what’s not for us. We need to also have the courage, this is the key word, to then say, “No, this is not for me. I’ve tried it. I really did.” I think that people do give up in the beginning stages. There is a tendency to give up too early. You need to try things, but then let’s step back a little bit. We also need to think bigger than just what platform shall I post on because the biggest mistake I think people who are starting their businesses and then they’re going to use the online space to find clients, the biggest mistake is not having a long-term strategy. I’m not talking about, “I want to do a TEDx talk,” or this. Your ambitions you can achieve or not, whatever is your thing. But what are you building? Because the more you see what you’re building, the more everything starts making sense.

Back in 2018, somebody jokingly called me the queen of visibility because I was so consistent on Facebook. I was always there. I just took it on. I thought, “OK, that feels right. I have this kind of royal archetype. I’m going to take it and run with it.” Eventually, it brought me to this understanding that what I’m doing is I’m building my visibility castle with everything that I do.

Social media is so small. It’s almost like social media is just paths that lead us to this visibility castle. The real deal happens beyond that. The real deal happens with pieces of content where I can truly express myself. Whereas if I just use only Instagram, for example, I can’t go too deep there, honestly. I personally am not even on Instagram because I find that it takes so much physical effort to create content for it.

And people just scroll because I scroll. I don’t go that deep. Facebook, maybe. LinkedIn, maybe. But where I go deep is blogs. I go and read. When I have an itch, when I have a problem, what do I do? I Google like we all do. These days we also talk to AI, but that’s also the reason for you to create more content. Because AI also scans what we’re writing in a way, puts it into a database. I have had clients where the AI recommended my name. Focusing on a bigger picture, understanding what people are essentially buying when they are buying your help? Whatever you do, they’re not buying what you do. They’re buying access to you.

When you’re not selling products in the shop, when you’re not selling digital products, some sort of information, when you’re not selling information, then people buy information. But when you’re teaching them something that facilitates transformation, when they’re going to spend time with you, they’re buying access to you. How do you sell access to you?

The only way to sell it is to create a personal connection. I’ve been there and you’ve been there when we get so into someone that we meet online or in person, usually online, we start following the content of that person. Then we go and binge-watch all their YouTube videos or we binge-read their blog or listen to their podcast. We get so much more connection, especially if it’s a correct person for us, which is not always the case. Charisma is also an issue, but we build this excitement.

Then we start looking, “How can I get more of this? How can I get more of what they’re saying?” But not just anyone. I don’t care that next door to me lives an amazing expert in the same thing. They look like an ordinary person. This is the person I want that I’m following on somewhere.

Brett (28:00) This is such a huge reframe that people are buying access to you. Would you say that’s true, again, across all human design profiles, if you’re a coach, someone who’s offering a transformational type of experience? Juliette Stapleton (28:14) Human design is especially that’s what they see and experience when they interact with you. Obviously not all industries are selling access, but as coaches, as healers, as spiritual guides, absolutely. It’s not what you do, it’s buying access to be with you. Brett (28:29) I often say in trainings, “It’s not about your sequence and your playlist and all this stuff. It’s about your energy. People are wanting to bathe in your energy.” It’s obviously going to be a combination of all those things, but your energy precedes you. That’s the most important thing. Can I tell everyone about my journey of how I found you? I think it’s such a great example of what we all can aspire to online. Just so you know, tell everyone the name of your first book because it’s a really great marketing… I don’t want to say basics because there’s nothing basic about it, but it’s really talking, I think for an early business owner, it would be a great read. 

Juliette Stapleton (29:01) It’s called On Marketing and Human Design: Embody Your True Self and Reclaim Your Power for Magnetic Online Visibility. It just gives you the basics of human design with a little advice in terms of marketing, how to use it. 

Brett (29:04) Yes, everyone, and then the second book is Visibility by Design, correct? And that’s the one on visibility that sells. We’ll put all the links in the show notes. That one is where you talk about the visibility castle. When you made that analogy, I was like, “My gosh, you have to come on the podcast and talk about this,” because first of all, I’m launching something that has this whole fairy tale theme right now. But I was like, this idea of a castle. When I did, I had a very… 

Juliette Stapleton (29:18) No, it’s On Visibility That Sells. 

Brett (29:40) Interesting experience back when my business was bigger during COVID and things felt really overwhelming. I did a more MBA-style, “how to CEO” type of course. One of the big takeaways from the mentor in that program is she kept saying, “Your business is precious. Your business is precious. Don’t just let anyone in.” She was giving me a lot of advice about hiring and she’s like, “You’re not desperate, right?”

She was giving this advice not just to me, to everyone, but she was trying to train us to think of our business, now in retrospect, like a castle. We have a moat and we’re going to put the bridge down only for the right people to hire, the right energetic fit, having very high standards. Because so often as solopreneurs and small businesses, we feel desperate and we’re like, “Anyone who could help me,” or “Anyone who I could maybe hire.” I was feeling that in your book as well, this idea of the visibility castle.

Can I tell everyone how I found you? As you all know, there was an episode many months ago now, but we’ll put the link in the show notes for you where we had Emma Dunwoody on. She described to us what human design was and I got interested in it. I’d heard of it for years, but more interested through what she explained on the podcast. I started doing research into my profile and Googling around and reading different blogs about, I think I was typing in whatever I am, one-three design, something like that.

I was getting all of this terrible content where you could just tell it was either AI-generated or just saying the same generic stuff. Then somehow I clicked to your website and I started reading your blog about my profile. I was like, “Whoa, this was written by a real person.” I could tell it was written by a woman and there was some sense of humor in there. I got really sucked into reading it. It was very long. It was like a long blog post.

Juliette Stapleton (31:23) I go long. That’s what I meant by in-depth. You have to show the depth. 

Brett (31:27) Way longer than the SEO tools would tell you it should be. But I was interested and I think I read the whole thing. Then I clicked and I was like, “Whose website is this?” I somehow got to your homepage and then I see you and you’re dressed like an empress sitting on a throne. I’m like, “Who is this woman? What is this?” I was very attracted to your energy. Of course, I kept exploring your website and eventually I ended up… I don’t think it was that day. I think I was like, “I’m going to sit with it for a little bit.”

But the energy was such a pull that I was like, “I’m gonna go back.” It was a combination of long-form content where I got to see you and get to know your personality. It felt like you weren’t writing like a robot. It felt like you were writing to a woman like me. Then it was the combination of the power of visuals. We take in visuals so much faster than the written word. I’m always telling folks in 300-hour training, “Invest in professional photo shoots.” That’s something I regret not doing much earlier in my career. Images are so important. There’s so much opportunity for you to, once you’re clear on the frequency, the energy that you’re offering someone to figure out, “How do I manifest that visually so they see it and they instantly understand?” Because even without reading more of your website, once I saw that photo, I was like, “Okay, I get it. I get what this woman’s about.”

I’m into this. This is bold. This is a little bit mystical. This is up my alley in terms of what I would want from someone that I’m going to do a consult with. So, do you want to reflect on that or just break down a little bit more strategically the steps of the castle? So listeners who are maybe just even starting a business can think about, “How do I create?” You talked about social as these pathways to the castle that carriages can trot up. But then, we have this castle and I don’t know, are we at the top in a royal tower? Tell us, because you break it down well in the book, but I’d love to hear a little bit about the high pieces.

Juliette Stapleton (33:25) I love that. Here’s another transparent piece. I have changed my website since and I put some stunning photographs, but they’re not the queen of visibility sort of photographs. I feel like my business slowed down a little bit. So I’m going to take this as a cue because you’re not the first person who said that this is important.

It doesn’t mean that I also talk about in the book, not everyone is a queen. We have to understand our archetypes. It’s actually really interesting. If you’re into understanding yourself, you’re going to love it. So finding out what your archetype is, you can do Jung’s 12 archetypes. I’ve done the test before. I also went to a stylist who does role archetypes in clothing and she was the one like, “Why are you here? You’re definitely a queen.” That was after I’ve done this photo shoot and I didn’t do this photo shoot for business, by the way, I did it for my own goofy self. I realized then that, hang on a second, I have this whole thing, this whole material. I leaned into that because it felt right.

When I started thinking about my visibility castle, it just makes sense. I also love how just earlier you were saying, “We have a moat.” You’re not for everyone and not everyone is for you. Yes, in the beginning when we are creating our business and we’re in this survival mode, we need money, we need clients. It’s very difficult not to be desperate. It’s valid that you feel like this, but the truth is that not everyone is for you.

You can attract people who will be wrong people in your business, and then it’s going to affect how you feel about yourself and your business. But the truth is that the Visibility Castle is your hub. It’s a place where you reside, and it’s the place where you reside and where people have different access to you. From that Visibility Castle, you shine your light, like a lighthouse projecting the light. But let’s just go into fairy tale mode. You’re that magical queen or a person or a wizard or a witch in your hut, but you’re there. You emanate this call. This call goes through different enchanted paths. That’s your social media, that’s your other things outside your castle, which usually is your website. It’s where you want to lead people, where you want people to come and then dive into who you are. You’re describing how you found my website. Then you went to my home page because not everybody lands on the home page. But that’s like a facade of my castle. That was like, “Whoa, I love this. Let me see what’s inside.” You’re coming in and there is this first room and you can walk around and you’re welcome. There is content, there’s videos there you can listen, you can consume. There’s a lot of advice. Nothing is held back. Whatever I see, I put in my blogs, and that’s why it feels so personal because I’m not doing it… I don’t have an archetype I write to because for me as a one-three, it’s very difficult to focus on another person. My whole karmic focus is within. So I focus on myself and share. In a way I say to my clients, it’s not about what they need to hear within the reason, obviously you need to know your target audience, but it’s not about what they need to hear. It’s about what you have to say to them within your area of expertise. That’s when it’s going to be attractive and compelling and people will want more. And so when you come into that castle and this first hall is so beautiful and you want to have access to more then of course maybe there is a little audience with the Queen you can have. In my case it’s these blueprints that I create, these reports that you experienced and this is where there’s a taster. But it’s not a taster for just you to see if I’m good enough for you.

It’s also a taste for me to see if you’re worthy to go to the next level. Am I going to invite you into the quarters or maybe perhaps you can become my apprentice or live with me or let me guide you? But that happens on such a remote level. Not everybody is allowed. For me, the big decision here was it’s not about the money. I don’t want people who are not for me in my world because it affects my self-esteem. I basically take it home. I can’t just turn off zoom and then not care about it. If there’s someone who is incorrect energetically or who doesn’t see me in a way I want to be seen as a guide, that’s going to be damaging. There is a moat, there is this level of separation. But yet, what I do as a queen is I am building more and more structures. When I started, maybe I was still a queen, but nobody knew that. I had to build this castle. How do we build a wall? One brick at a time with every piece of content we create. This is another mistake a lot of people in the beginning make. They write a blog post and they share it and nobody comments or something. They’re like, “Oh, I failed.” No, you haven’t. You just put one brick in the wall. How many bricks does it take to build a castle? Express, leave, express, leave. The stuff that you’re expressing when you are true to yourself. This is what I think the blueprints also help. Understanding the angle that does validate who you are and how you are, but also gives you this role, as I mentioned in the beginning. There’s a role for one-three, sharing our unique perspectives. We’ve tried so many things in the course of our lives. We also poke and probe everything, all these smoke screens of every industry, and we will find what’s solid and what’s not solid. And we will tell everybody that’s what we’re here for. So you know, this is the energy I want to put into my blog post as opposed to, for example, just teach the basics of human design that bores me to death.

Brett (39:12) She said before we recorded, she’s like, “I can’t do that. My energy is not down for that.” 

Juliette Stapleton (39:25) I want to do this. Let’s talk about what lights me up. Let’s talk about the empowerment. Let’s talk about building this visibility castle, which is going to, after a couple of years perhaps it’s going to take time, it takes time to create a big structure, but it’s going to start supporting you in a way that you can step back. In the beginning we always have to invest a little bit more. People also want everything straight away, faster and very easy, but there is an investment of effort and time, and of course we want to be more wise, I should say, less naive. What are we investing our energy and time into? Naivety is a big problem. 

Brett (39:56) There’s a tension here that I want to make sure we touch on before we close out, which is similar to the tension we talked about earlier. It’s the tension of, “I want to have my moat bridge up and I want to be selective and I only want to work with ideal clients that are a good energetic fit where I can deliver tremendous value and they can have that attraction to me, wanting that access to me.” But at the same time, when we’re starting out, we’re desperate for cash, and is there anything you would say about that? I think what I might say about that and I have coached people to this conclusion of building that one brick at a time and doing it totally authentically rather than shiny object syndrome or rushing to do the latest trend or just writing the basics. When I think of the first thing I did it was “Yoga for abs” or something that I totally don’t care about, wasn’t me, but I was just trying to think what people would want. But maybe it’s like staying in a part-time job or your full-time job a little bit longer. That’s what I did at the beginning of my business. I had all these coaches coaching me at the time. They were like, “Quit your full-time job. You can do this.” And probably I could have, but I really wanted my business to be this place of pure expression for me. And I didn’t want to have that feeling of “need customers right now.” But aside from building really slowly and maybe having a part-time thing as you transition into this other thing, is there anything else you’d say about that tension? Because it’s contradictory advice. I completely agree with it, but these are the key points that I think are really relevant to new business owners that are hard. 

Juliette Stapleton (41:35) It’s such a good question and thank you for asking and I totally agree with you. I think that those coaches who tell others to quit their jobs, they’re not one-three profiles by human design because the one line wants security, it wants to feel solid, it wants to feel stable. We would never advise somebody to take a leap of faith and put themselves in financial risk and danger. This is definitely not that kind of advice. You’re right. I also have had another form of income while I was building this online visibility. Now cash injection can happen. You can create master classes, can create events that are just one-offs. What I’m describing here is a visibility strategy. It’s not a money-making strategy. Money-making strategy you can have, you can create things here and there and you will experience your clients because we want to meet our ideal clients, but how do you know who your ideal clients are?

You don’t. In the beginning, you have to work with different kinds because you don’t know, you’re clueless and you’re trying to guess and that takes… we’re not clairvoyant. We don’t know what people think. We don’t know who is going to be correct or who is incorrect. What I found and the experience, literally the experience of my business was yes, have a different type of income in the beginning. It’s going to take so much longer than all those gurus are telling you to have consistent income, but meanwhile focus on your visibility, build your audience because you need to build the audience. Start posting about whatever you want to share because you want to just create that splash. First you create the audience and grow your email list because then you will have an audience who is now looking up to you. They like what you’re saying and then you can start fine-tuning what you want to do versus what they’re asking and then feeling. And human design does give you a lot of good… even how to make decisions. What is the correct way for you to make a decision?

Not through your mind. Through your body. Some people don’t have the body inner guidance. They have a different way. Like they have to talk to trusted advisors or they have to wait through the lunar cycle. There are different ways that we have this fantastic way to assess what’s correct, what’s incorrect. Correct and incorrect is not right or wrong. It’s just like a map. It says, “You know what, you’re going, that’s your destination. You can take this route. You’re going to learn certain lessons. You need those lessons.”

Some things will not work out even if they’re correct for you, because they’re correct lessons so that then you know what doesn’t work for you so you can fine-tune. Of course, we can’t just choose in the beginning. We need those mistakes. We need those experiences. Love them. Love failures, because now… it’s like…

Now you can put a red flag there. Next time you’re not going to go near it. Don’t make the same mistake over and over again. Notice what doesn’t work. Then it’s like in the law of attraction, we have this contrast exercise where we can write what we don’t want because it’s so much easier for the brain to know what you don’t want. Then it becomes much clearer what you can do and how can you adapt it or twist it. Some things we can’t not do, like we can’t not have marketing. We cannot be hermiting and then clients will find us or everybody will talk about us. No, create content, be out there, be visible. Visibility strategy is something that you build brick by brick. Meanwhile, how can you make money that maybe, not with long-term programs, but how can you make cash injections? Learn about this. There are so many strategies. There are no secrets. There’s just trying, trying and doing. I am not perfect. I have not been doing even closely what I probably should be doing or should have been doing because everybody has their own journey. Take responsibility that it’s not going to be perfect, it’s not going to be as fast, or sometimes there’s going to be a burst of momentum and everything happens in a short period of time. Then you can start creating your next level of visibility, your next level and think bigger than social media. This is so important to first of all, build a lot of content. YouTube is good, talking about social media. I’m not talking about YouTube because it’s a good search engine. It’s a place where you can host your videos. I have a problem though, one little problem why I like hosting my… I put my videos on YouTube, but then I embed them into content on my website. Because when somebody is consuming my content on my website, there is no sidebar with suggestions with cute puppies and all makeup tutorials and whatever else I’m watching and my brain doesn’t want to focus on the serious stuff. It just wants to procrastinate. So that’s where YouTube can also be a double-edged sword.

Again, it brings you back to have a place where you are and it’s best when this is the land you own, this is your castle, this is something that you’ve created. This is yours. It works again and again. So as you pivot, as you expand, those old pieces don’t always have to go. They’re already there, the search engines scrolled them, they’re creating that solid foundation, like the concrete. The concrete is getting set, which is great to just build on top of that. Of course, we can talk about it for so long, but if this idea of how can you create this sustainable visibility, that then if you… when my second husband, two years ago he had cancer before and it came back and three months it took him to pass away. It was such a long painful process. I could not create anything. I couldn’t. And my business carried me because I built it with this visibility castle in mind. That visibility castle was strong and it just kept growing. That was shocking to me. Even though three months I stepped back from my business, I was just serving clients that were coming in.

You can read about it in my book On Visibility That Sells. That’s just sharing how I see it. It’s obviously something that works for me. It’s something that would work for anyone who is a coach or who is selling access to themselves through who they are.

Brett (47:35) Yes, and a lot of yoga teachers don’t realize that that’s what they are. So yoga teachers, this includes you. Juliet, this has been so fun. I love talking about the sustainable long-term strategy instead of the spin-out and the burnout that I see so many people do. Friends, we’re going to link Juliette’s two books in the show notes, as well as where you can get the same consult I got if that’s something that’s interesting to you.

I really enjoyed it and it was a lot of information I wish I had had about myself a lot sooner. Juliette, thank you so much for being here. It was so fun to be in your magnetic energy again and hopefully we’ll have you back on the show soon. Thank you so much.

Juliette Stapleton (48:09) Thank you so much, Brett. I was just having a blast today. Thank you.