This past week, I have had another product go live for free in a bundle. It’s something I decided would be fun to do this summer, and I might take part again in the future. During Mercury Retrograde in Virgo and Leo, so hitting my Midheaven, I focused on cutting the fat from my business and increasing the intensity of the personal development work that I do.
My biggest priority has become the purity of my energy when I take an action, so that the answer to the question in the title is a positive one. I want people who engage with my brand to feel like they’re having a bougie day out shopping and having brunch in Belgravia with the friends who recharge your soul’s battery.
It’s undeniable that I am passionate about championing other women and supporting their success. While a lot of mentors talk about being an expert and being respected instead of inspirational and seen as a friend, I desire to be in the frequency of “and”, to quote Jak Shaw in the most recent run of her The Deep Mastermind. I see it as recognising that there are things that are my zone of genius while also being relatable. Not from a place of making myself small for it, although I am a bit of a sexy hot mess. Relatable in the literal sense of someone the right person relates to.
The language of service triggers the hell out of me thanks to the baggage of Catholicism, but the undeniable truth about business is that it is about assisting someone. And it is my desire, as someone who is pleasure-led, to have a good experience of my work, which means I have to lead with a good experience for the other person. But I find that a lot of the online space dehumanises people. We sit in rooms talking about leads and funnels and how AI tools can help you scrape the public data on people’s profiles so you can better target them with the chatbot in the DMs.
And look, I’m all for lean business and creating ways to offload the admin without having to pay multiple team members (speaking of which, meet Kate, the queen of this area in my life). I’m not against the idea we need a market of people to sell to, I have a business, not a hobby. But I believe language shapes our reality and that there’s got to be a better way to talk about the very real people we desire to impact with our work.
Because it’s easy to put a name to a face when you have the first client yay, but what about when you scale? Are these people energetic ties that you cherish, or just numbers that give you validation and money?
I’m moving away from focusing on personal branding as my primary thing, and part of it is because I feel constricted and limited by that conversation. Do I believe a personal brand is vital to a successful business? Absolutely. But there is so much more to it than the marketing surface level I’ve dedicated the beginning of my business to.
I’ve been called to the path of the High Priestess. Or I’ve called myself and justified it with every meaning-making system under the Sun. One of the most famous examples of a High Priestess in history was the Pythia, who served at the Oracle of Delphi, where kings and dignitaries sought counsel. Across the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East, we see High Priestesses being born to royal lineages. Her wisdom held power.
It is also an archetype closely connected with the Magician, as they are conduits of the intangible into physical form. As I looked at my birth chart from a Vocational perspective as well as followed the prompts from former podcast guest Sarah Mac‘s latest class about refining our offers, and also the work I’ve been doing with the Matrix of Destiny, this call to descending into the power of the feminine seems like the obvious golden thread of my life.
I rebranded my Substack from “Witchy Musings” to “Kinda Spiritual” not because I don’t identify as a witch anymore, any label in the esoteric applies to the things that I do in my private life to an extent. It was because I felt limited to talking about witchy themes, and I needed room to grow, but also it was apparent to me how I don’t look like a stereotypical witch, and I don’t live life like a stereotypical spiritual person (especially not the asceticism). I wanted to create a space that felt more me, where I can both be deep and whimsical without the pressure that I speak about spiritual matters so I have to always be thinking about heavy stuff when my main hobby is making memes about an otome game on Tumblr.
I didn’t want to feel tied to a pseudo-goth aesthetic when during a workshop connecting us to our soul’s style I was like a modernised version of a flapper. There was a lot of sparkly things involved. You could say the constrictions were all in my head, but as a branding and marketing professional of over a decade I am acutely aware of the way everything from the words we use to the images we put in people’s minds trigger specific symbolic significations. So maybe it was all in my head, but it was liberating to let out my more fun side.
So you can find me on Substack every week talking about manifestation and other things, and here we will see. I still desire a space for more lifestyle conversations, because a core tenet of what I stand for is taking care of ourselves and enjoying the sensual pleasures in life. After all, my natal Jupiter is in Taurus and a good brunch is an expansive mystical experience for me. But I have not yet worked out the practicalities, since I am in the process of narrowing down my focus and don’t want to put too many things on my plate and be too scattered.
