How to build a business that thrives whilst living with chronic illness

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Nikita Williams, where we are talking all about how to run a successful business whilst living with a chronic illness. In this episode, Nikita shares her own personal experiences of living with chronic illness and how she found alignment and capacity through business ownership and personal growth. Nikita shares some incredibly valuable tips and strategies to help anyone else living with a chronic illness to not only manage every day tasks, but also to run a business that thrives.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST How to stay productive when dealing with brain fog How to approach decision making whilst managing flares The power of finding strength in accepting life with chronic illness Nikita is an award-winning Business and Mindset coach, Certified Professional Aromatherapist, speaker, and host of the top-ranking global podcast Crafted to Thrive. She aims to help all entrepreneur women - especially those with chronic illnesses - share their stories and empower them to use those stories as fuel so they can be successful, create the life they deserve, and, most importantly, thrive. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to iTunes and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.   LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Nikita on Instagram Listen to Nikita's podcast, Crafted to Thrive Find out more about working with Nikita Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook Transcript Teresa: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I hope you are doing well. So, this week I have an interview with the very lovely Nikita Williams, who is an award-winning business and mindset coach, certified professional, aromatherapist, speaker, and host of Top ranked Global podcast, Crafted to Thrive, which I've been a guest on a long time ago. She's been featured on Rising Title and the Jasmine Star Show, which I'd just picked her brain to find out how. And she was diagnosed with endometriosis back in 2009. Fibromyalgia in 2010. These diagnoses inspired her to use her previous entrepreneur, community and corporate experience to jumpstart her career as a business coach. She aims to help entrepreneurial women, women. I am terrible at reading these things. You know, I am a lovely listener, especially those in chronic illnesses. I think I must've had something when I was a kid, like someone must've scared me when reading out loud because I do not like it and she shares their stories and empower them to use their stories. So, as fuel so they can be successful, create a life they deserve, and most importantly, thrive. Well, I've done a terrible job of doing her bio. The interview will be so much better. Nikita, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? Nikita: I am doing great, Teresa. It's okay. I am the same way. Teresa: I hate reading. Like I know some business owners and some podcasters Literally script their podcast. Mm. Could you imagine? Nikita: I can't. I can't do it. I have clients that do the same and I think it, it's a miracle that they can, I would lose my head. Teresa: Literally no idea. As you saw, I literally had a very well written bio to read and I couldn't even read that. So. Can you imagine an entire podcast of me trying to read? But anyway, anyway, anyway, Nikita do a much better job than I have done. And please introduce yourself. We always start by you sharing how you got to do what you're doing today. Nikita: Thank you so much for having me on, Teresa. So I've been living with chronic illness for now 15 and a half years. And over those 15 and a half years, endometriosis and fibromyalgia were my first like, diagnoses, but there's more ever since then. And most women who live with chronic illness know that you usually don't just have one. The average is three or more. And let's just say we're, we're kind of over that number, but I have come to this world of finding alignment and capacity through living with chronic illness. It has been a huge part of my life. Thriving for me, living and enjoying life. When you have a constant fear and challenge of uncertainty, you find reasons to find as much alignment in your life so that you can enjoy it and, you know, have those beautiful moments. And that's definitely been my journey as a business owner as well as just a human being. So that is in its nutshell that that began, honestly, with my podcast. When I had my podcast, I started my podcast literally after having a hysterectomy and having some complications afterwards. And I started that healing journey to finding more alignment in my life by embracing what I love, which was people and helping them. Teresa: I, this is such a great topic for today because this has been coming up in my world just very recently and the universe has done its thing and brought you to me at the right time because I was having a conversation with someone earlier about, well, in fact, two conversations happened today. One happened this morning that was very much along the lines of someone who was letting things get in their way that really shouldn't get in their way. And they were already going, Oh, I can't do that because of this. And, Oh, I can't do that because this is coming up almost like, you know, self fulfilling prophecy. And then the second person I spoke to had some really big, massive stuff in their world. And we're like, Am I just making excuses? Should I just keep pushing forward? Like, why does this stuff, how do I run a business when this stuff seems to be coming up all the time? So I'm really, really kind of excited to get into this conversation because I think I tend to. I'm on the side of, I just crack on. Okay. Which is not always the best thing to do. And I've had to learn how to slow down and stop a bit and, and just do the bare minimum. And that this like a million questions, I haven't even given you one, but in my head, like it's like this conversation, we'll just stop. But first off, how do you create a business that enables you to give yourself the time and space that you need without being inconsistent, letting people down, not showing up? Nikita: Yeah, great question. And also those three things you just mentioned are the things that are constantly holding people from living with chronic illness, from even doing the thing, right? Like they don't have an answer to those questions. So to me, it's embracing first, the mindset that everybody is trying to figure out how to do this. And in their, in their world, whatever life hurdles, you can have chronic illness, or you could just have a really busy life. You can have a really unpredictable life. Maybe you're a caretaker. There's just so many different levels of where running a business while living with life can affect consistency, can affect your capacity, can affect, you know, whether or not you can decide to set up systems and process in your life for being Casey emergencies, the what ifs, all of those different things. Right. And so I like to answer the question around what you're asking around, like, do you know, What is your baseline? Teresa: Mm-Hmm. Nikita: what's your filter? Like? Where are you filtering saying yes and no to things? And oftentimes as chronic illness warriors, we tend to overcompensate. Right? Overcompensate. Do more plan to do more over, deliver over, over, over. And not leave enough space. And so, because I know that's kind of also I'm a high achiever, I'm also like, put my mind to it and like do the thing that's definitely how my brain works. I had to really think about what do I want? What do I want this business to do for me and to serve my life versus like I'm just trying to just grind this out. And for me, it really came down to two things, capacity and freedom. I feel like You need capacity to decide, you need to know what your capacity is to decide how freedom will look like for you. For me, my business really needed to have space, lots of space, lots of calendar space, lots of ability to move and flow. Teresa: Mm hmm. Nikita: And my calendar, if you look at my calendar, my clients are like, how do you do any of what you do with all of the space in your calendar? And it's intentional because I need the space. And so the first thing I say that helps you is creating a schedule or routine that takes into account your reality of life. Your reality of uncertainty because the thing about uncertainty when you're living with chronic illness is that you're certain that your chronic illness is going to show up someday. And you're bedridden at some, at some point. Right. And so for me, it really has...