Kathryn Binkley:

Welcome to episode number 38. I have a special guest today, and I can't wait to get started. Alright. I've got Naphtali Roberts with me today. She is a life and business coach, therapy practice owner, wife to creative entrepreneur, and mother to 3 little kids, and she's going to tell us all about her business and how she helps entrepreneurs.

Naphtali Roberts:

Thank you so much for having me here today. Like you said, I am a doer of several different things. They all kind of overlap. I started kind of in the entrepreneurial space as a child because I am actually a 4th generation business owner. And for a long time, I thought I was 3 generations, but I was talking to my mom of late, and she was like, no. Your great grandparents both owned businesses. Wow.

Naphtali Roberts:

My both grandma and grandpa, which kind of when you think of the early 1900, that is kind of unbelievable, but true. It has kind of always surrounded me, which has been a beautiful thing in that it has given me the perspective of the good, bad, and the ugly to be an entrepreneur and small business owner. And so, I, being a child of entrepreneur, swore that I would never be one. I thought that that didn't align. I had all these ideas of what owning a business might be, and I was like, nope. I help people. That's what I do. Flash forward, I end up getting my master's in clinical psychology, and I work in community based mental health for about 5 years.

Naphtali Roberts:

And then I have my first child, and I told myself I need it to stop working. That was not true. No one else was telling me that, but I did. And I paused for a couple years, and I went through a whole couple years of being totally out of alignment, being happy on the outside and miserable on the inside. And so when my 2nd child was 6 months My husband sent me down and was like, I can't do this anymore. Not our marriage, but you being miserable. And out of that Birth, my 1st business that I still have. I own a marriage and family therapy private practice.

Naphtali Roberts:

I've been doing that for about four and a half years, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with everything about creating a business and being in a business and recognize that all the stuff I've been doing as a therapist had so much overlap and started to recognize about a year and a half, 2 years ago now that maybe I liked the business development and the coming alongside other entrepreneurs more than I even liked doing the therapy itself. I was having lots of clients came in who had parents that were entrepreneurs, and we were ending up having lots of conversations about balance and being in alignment and creating a business that was in that space. And from that, then I launched my life and business coaching business, and now I do both, and I love both of them differently. So that's kind of my journey in the next day.

Kathryn Binkley:

That's amazing. Entrepreneurship is in your DNA. With that all that said, so you found this passion. You have these 2 businesses. What really lights you up about running these businesses?

Naphtali Roberts:

What lights me up is walking alongside, whether it's in my therapy practice or within my coaching business, it's walking people that have a specific idea of who and what they are in the world and then how that impacts so many different places. Whether it's in my therapy practice, I work a lot with big feeling kids, and so many of them coming and believe that that's a very negative thing about them. It feels very overwhelming. And so, getting to walk alongside them, I get to help them reimagine their life and how they are in it within their strengths and their weaknesses. And that is also what I love about being a life and business coach because I get to do that very specifically within the businesses, and then internal lives of creatives and entrepreneurs that I get to work with. So that lights me up. And every day when I get to do that, I just come home, and I can't believe that I get to kind of walk alongside and help people reimagine, kind of how they mindfully enter their lives and their businesses, and then getting to see the growth that buds from that soil.

Kathryn Binkley:

Yeah. It's so rewarding, isn't it? I can't wait to dive in today's topic. You're going to the beliefs that keep us from balance. And I think the first thing that we really need to dive into is what is balance and what is balance not? Because there are a lot of there's a lot of talk about balance. What does that even mean? Yes.

Naphtali Roberts:

There is so much talk about balance, and I would say from the front end that I do not believe that you can have it all. And I know that might be shocking, but I don't believe you can have everything. But I do believe that you can have an aligned life that is full of goodness and connection and impact. And that if we are living a balanced life, and I'm doing air quotes, but none of y'all can see me. That is what balance is. It's a life full of the things that you prioritize and not full of the things that don't matter to you particularly. So that is a life of balance.

Kathryn Binkley:

Okay. Yeah. I love that. What's interesting is I think that you and I share the same belief, although I would often state that I do believe we can have it all. But I then go into defining it as you can have everything that you want. Like but you have to prioritize. Like, you don't get everything. Like, you get the things that you want.

Kathryn Binkley:

That means there are some things that you don't want, and that's okay. So maybe you have a similar belief, or maybe there's some differences. It's going to be fun to talk through.

Naphtali Roberts:

Yeah. I think that it sounds like there are very similar beliefs, but I think I can share from my own journey that I had to redefine believing that I could have it all. I grew up, like I said, entrepreneurial mom who empowered me to do so many things. But one of the things that she would own now that she kind of made a misstep in in how she defined things, is that she told me that I could do anything I wanted to do. Great concept, but the reality is not true. I cannot, in the makeup of how my mind works and my personality be an aerospace engineer. Like, it never is going To happen. I don't like geometry.

Naphtali Roberts:

I don't like any of the other higher Math's that you need to do that. There's just so many things about that. I don't wanna sit in a cubicle and figure out things. So I could realistically never be an engineer, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other things that I could be. But as a kid, when I had this message of you can be anything, I would try things. And then what I would internalize when they wouldn't align with me was that I was a failure. And so that, I think, is why that concept of balance and owning that you you can't have everything, but you can, like you said, have everything that is important to you and aligns with you. And that's why I think that knowledge of you is such a core piece of having balance because otherwise, you're always chasing everything else that everybody else wants, and you're ending each day feeling like a failure because you're trying to put on these identities of success and growth that other people have put out into the world that don't fit you.

Kathryn Binkley:

Yes. Amen to that. I love to think about this idea of and I talk a lot about how you imagine success, but success is really defined differently for every single person, and yet we often are measuring ourselves up to someone else's idea of success even when we don't even want that life. Right? Or we want parts of that life, but we don't see the back end. We just see the front end, the nice, you know, Instagramable version of it and not the downside to that. So, yeah, really getting clear on what it is that you want is so critical and knowing that it doesn't have to match up to everyone else. You get to come up with that for yourself.

Naphtali Roberts:

As you were talking, it comes to mind a coaching client I worked with earlier this year, and when she grew up the daughter of an entrepreneur service-based business owner as well. When she came to work with me, she was ending each day feeling like a fraud and an imposter and a failure because she couldn't do business like this person she idealized. For her, she came wanting to know, like, I don't remember social media strategies and, like, how do you do SEO for a local based business. And at the end of the day, all that we worked on was basically her getting really, really clear on the fact that, oh, the way that her dad did business wasn't the way she wanted to do business. It didn't align with her. And when she could let go of that expectation, everything else was made clear, basically. And that the work really was letting go of the ideal, because that's what was pulling her out of balance or out of alignment and causing her to feel certain things every single day in her life and her business.

Kathryn Binkley:

Wow. I'm thinking back and since you work on both sides, you work with the whole marriage and family side as well. I'm thinking of something that I heard and learned about related to marriage. And that was this idea of looking at your spouse and having them measure up to your idea of the perfect person, which as a woman, we tend to create this ideal woman that we don't even measure up to, but then we're measuring her spouse up to the ideal woman whether whoever our spouse is doesn't matter. We're still measuring them up to the same ideal person. And when there are gender differences, there's so much that, like, that that's impossible for them to measure up to the ideal woman. But I almost want to translate the yeah. I'm sure you can add so much. I'm sure we can translate this over to business as well. What's on your mind?

Naphtali Roberts:

No. I think, like, so much jiving with what you're saying, like, in that when you take those same concepts and ideas and you say, and you start your day. I actually do this because, like, I'm a firm believer in kinda, like, getting the thoughts out of my head and the beliefs out of them. Because so how kind of the brain works is that, to get a little sciency on you love it. Is that we function most of the time out of, like, an connected place. We're just functioning, and we are not even aware of, like, why we're doing it. It feels right. It feels like the way we should be.

Naphtali Roberts:

And that's why mindfulness is important, because it causes us to pause and ask ourself questions. So one of the questions I curiously ask myself each and every day is, what am I expecting of myself in my life and my business today. One, does that expectation align with what I really want, or is it a should put on by other people or something I read. I'm a lover of books and podcasts. That's why I'm a podcast host. I go on other things. But those areas can be, kind of landlines for me in some states of mental being because I start to idealize the hosts, the people I hear talking, and it can cause me to be like, oh my gosh. I should show so be like Jenna Kutcher.

Naphtali Roberts:

Like, insert any, like, famous podcaster. And I love Herb, but I'm not gonna be 100% Herb. And her life is not as perfect as everyone believes. Like, she talks about that. And so I have to ask myself daily, like, what expectation not on my putting on my spouse, which that's a whole different episode we could do.

Kathryn Binkley:

That's right.

Naphtali Roberts:

I think especially if you and also your spouse, because you have to remember my spouse also owns a business that becomes a whole kind of area. But what expectation am I putting on me that doesn't align, and it's not insightful into who I am. And then what belief or fear is driving me there? Because I think for very, very long time, I could see the problem. Like, I could see that I was, like, not scheduling things in the way that x, y, or z person said to Jim. And I knew that I felt maybe overwhelmed and scattered. I was like, I must find a new way to schedule. I would look at all the podcasts, and I read all the blogs, and then I would head into Monday morning with this new color-coded journal and color-coded planner. And by Tuesday, it would fall flat.

Naphtali Roberts:

Because it wasn't the right fit for me. I was putting someone else on, and I think that that's such a core thing to balance. One of the biggest beliefs that I know, Trips assess us, is the belief that we have There is one right way. Like, there's not one right way. There's the way that is the most aligned and effective for you. Yes. But we believe, and we're not always aware, so we're functioning at this, like, automatic response system place of our brain that there's one right thing and we're not even conscious.

Naphtali Roberts:

We have to, like, list out why we're doing what we're doing each day, and then we'll start to notice those thoughts. It will become conscious, and then we can be curious with them and see if they're helpful.

Kathryn Binkley:

Okay. So much good stuff there. And one thing that I think is top of mind for me that aligned with this in a bit, and then we'll need to circle back to talking more about beliefs. But one thing that just comes up top of mind that I feel compelled to talk about in the moment is what happens when you hire a coach as well and how you hire a mentor or a coach to help you. But then so often and I try so hard with my clients to help them see that this isn't My hope for them, this isn't the goal, but you start to emulate your coach. You start to do what they do even without maybe consciously thinking of it, that you start to talk about the same things and to structure your offers the same way until at some point you're like, Hold on. That doesn't even make me happy. That's not how I want to run my business, and that was never the reason to hire them to start with us, not to copy.

Naphtali Roberts:

Yeah, there's a lot there to dive into this. You know, as anyone maybe that is thinking of getting coaching or maybe is already in a coaching relationship, I think it is important for you to do some work as well as to have some honest conversation with your coach because I've kind of been in multiple situations. I've had coaches, and whether they were aware of this or not, that very much took a stance of expert within our relationship. And because it was in a season where I was just moving into the online space, I ran, like, a very successful local based business. But when I was making that shift, I heard a coach, and she very much took that stance. And me being in the space that I really did look for her to her for knowledge, didn't kind of understand that, like, she was setting up that power differential until we get a certain point in coaching where all of a sudden, I was like, once again from some truth speak from my husband. He was like, what the heck is going on? Like, I, who are you? You don't act like this.

Naphtali Roberts:

You you're, like, staying up till 2 in the morning, getting work getting up at 5 AM and come to recognize that she had put this belief and this expectation on me that I didn't even hold for myself. But because I am someone that loves gold stars, I do. I had started to pace myself based on this expectation. And so, you know, I don't necessarily blame her, but I do recognize that for me, I have to know what triggers me as a human when I'm hiring a coach.  And I have to be willing to have those conversations with coaches. I just started with a new coach. I've also been in the mastermind.

Naphtali Roberts:

And one of the first things I asked her was more about her coaching style in terms of that. As I said, you know, some people, maybe in terms of, like, their processing of things are a little bit more differentiated than I am in that vulnerable, connected relationship. But I need a coach that says, okay, that's a great idea, or I have questions about that idea. Tell me why you're thinking that's a good thing. And then they help me, and they support me. And that's, as I coach myself, the perspective I try to take is, yes, maybe I'll have a reaction to something you say in coaching, and maybe it's aligned with, like, truth, or maybe it's just my own stuff. I'm going to have you get all that stuff out of your brain. We're going to lay it all on the table and then we're going to together examine it.

Naphtali Roberts:

And then you, as someone that is getting coaching, gets to decide what is aligned and works. Because I know at the end of the day that the only way to create a beautiful and balanced aligned life and business is for you as a human to do that work. I can guide you how to do that. But if I try to put that on you, your business and your life is gonna be out of alignment, and that goes against everything that I believe to be good and of value in the world.

Kathryn Binkley:

I totally agree. Yeah. It's fascinating. And I did another episode talking about these common beliefs when you're hiring a coach, and one of them is, unfortunately, People are looking for someone to tell them step by step what to do, and much of the work that I do is helping clients to realize now this is your business. You get to decide. You and, yeah, like you said, I'm going to guide you. And with all of my years of experience in marketing, I'm going to help you avoid some potential roadblocks or whatever. But ultimately, if you feel strongly about something, then no matter what I believe, you should pursue that.

Kathryn Binkley:

Absolutely. And it's if you have a coach who only has one way, then that's yeah. That should be a red flag because there is no one way, and that just sums up this whole portion of this podcast so far. There's no one way to create access. There's no one way to go about any of this you get to choose.

Naphtali Roberts:

I know that one way mindset is where so many of us get out of balance. Yeah. I, almost without fail. Let's say that every coaching client that's come to me, that's the 1st place we start. It the words come out different. The phrases are different. And yet, when we boil it down, that if they've already started a business or maybe if they haven't started a business and they want to and they have been, like, thinking about this idea for, like, 10 years, that is always where we start because it's just a common stock place.

Kathryn Binkley:

Yeah. When someone is starting to feel frustrated because they're not being told exactly what to do, and business put back on them. How do you work through that with someone?

Naphtali Roberts:

Well, I name it. I think that's a huge part of coaching is just, you know, me being able to say, like, it sounds like you're really, like, overwhelmed right now that I'm not just telling you what to do. Is that accurate? And most of the time, people will say yes. Sometimes people will try to be like, no. No. No. No. No.

Naphtali Roberts:

I'm not feeling that way. And then I'll be like, well, tell me what you're feeling right now because something just shifted. I can see, like, you're looking away. You're like, the sense of relief that normally happens during our session isn't here. So, what expectation am I not meeting for you? And it's funny. The point of coaching is to get all those thoughts, beliefs out and reorganize them. It's just one of the main goals of coaching. And so just by having that, honest conversation, That's big.

Naphtali Roberts:

Also so if someone comes in and they're very, very stuck in that place, one of the questions that I will ask, because this is one of my favorite get unstuck in so many places questions is, what would your mind need to know to be true in order to changed the belief you had of which is you need to be told what to do right now. And so we will hang there because that question, and I love it because it's a question we can ask ourselves in the moments we feel stuck in whatever space. Is just to say, what would I need to know to be true? And then by asking that question and back to the science again. It actually causes our brain to look for that answer. It's not like the woo hoo of life. Our mind does not automatically look for things that is not already thinking. Our neuro pathways become strong and deep. And so if we are trying to create new mental space and new pathways, then we have to create a way that we do that.

Naphtali Roberts:

And asking ourselves very specific questions that pull us into a sense of, notice changes our mind's pathways, which then allow for us to the different things because our mind is not going to see them unless we structure questions and time to look for them.

Kathryn Binkley:

Our brains are looking for those shortcuts. They're looking right there telling themselves, your brain is telling itself, like, oh, I already know this, and, like, skipping. Or I've experienced this before. It's just like this. And, if it's not, just to conserve, I guess, energy or something.

Naphtali Roberts:

Our brain functions mostly in the automatic. So, unless we are mindfully trying to be out of that. It's efficiency. I mean, it that's how we may if we think about it, like, our efficiency part of our brain is that fight, flight, freeze place. It's very reactive. There are no words in there. It's just sensation. And so that's why we actually have to, as humans, choose to think words, write them out, talk them out to someone, whatever works with who you are as a person, because it moves us from the amygdala, which is that very, like, fight, fight, flight, freeze place to a prefrontal cortex, which a lot is a place that we can make a lot of conscious choices, but isn't where we hang out that often in our lives and our businesses? We're much more amygdala driven unless we are consciously choosing to be different.

Kathryn Binkley:

And so a lot of the beliefs that keep us from balance, do they stem from that amygdala place?

Naphtali Roberts:

They okay. So, they're all kind of, like, mixed together. But okay. What happens is that they are hanging out there. Okay. They are very like, we're not conscious of them, so they're just kind of in our brain. But because they're there, our mind the responsive place of our brain, the amygdala, senses them. Most of those beliefs cause us to either fight or freeze or flee or, you know, whatever we do.

Naphtali Roberts:

We just do those response patterns, and we're not even aware why. So, like, for me, the belief that there's one right way to do things, which runs very, very strongly inside of me. Will often cause me to fight this anxiety I feel because of it, because I always feel less then within that belief system. Then, I will find myself pattern doing 2 things. I go to Google, and I Google all these answers. I get stuck in the Google. And then I, like, try to take action, but then I'm like, I don't know enough yet, and then I go back to the Google. And so, the amygdala places that patterned response is the look for answers.

Naphtali Roberts:

It's the evolution really based response. It's like, find protection. Like, we feel not safe when we don't know something, and find an answer, try to take things, but I don't ever know enough, try to find answers. So, it gets us in this response pattern loop, basically. Gotcha.

Kathryn Binkley:

I think that there's well, I know that there's a huge part of this journey that is just getting more comfortable with the uncertainty.

Naphtali Roberts:

And recognizing what you believe that uncertainty means, and then having ways you remind yourself that that's not true. In my private practice, there are as in most of our businesses, there are seasons that are busier and seasons that are less busy. And I'm four and a half years into it, and I still. I know in my conscious brain that that happens. I budget for that. I plan my business-like income streams around that. Like, I when I budget, I only budget for a 10-month year.

Naphtali Roberts:

I don't take 2 full months off, but that allows me to kind of roll with the slow seasons. But still every single year, sometime in that, July period, which is, like, always my slow time. Everyone goes on vacation. Nobody's getting therapy or coaching. And, I always feel this, like, someone sitting on my chest feeling. Now for the 1st 2 years of business, I would do really ineffective movement in that space to, like, try to find new ways and be in Google and all of it. And it wasn't resourceful because it really wasn't aligned.

Naphtali Roberts:

And so now, I just kind of know going into the summer, there's going to be a day, maybe a week, that you're just going to feel like someone's sitting on your chest, and I need you, deep brain, to know that there actually is no danger because you've already prepared for us. And so, I just, during those seasons. I have to just double check I'm not responding to it. So, look at myself, look at my choices and go, wait. Oh, I'm spinning my wheels right now. I'm going to stop that. Or I have to just say, like this, you are okay.

Naphtali Roberts:

This isn't something you have not planned for. This is a pace that is a part of your business. It's okay you like the summer months because it allows you to kind of take some additional time off, restore yourself, and, like, be really on fire for that next season of your business, but I have to be really, really conscious of it and, like, planned to have specific thoughts during that season to comfort and remind myself that I'm okay.

Kathryn Binkley:

Got it. What are some of the other beliefs that come up that keep us from balance? Because I'm sure that there are.

Naphtali Roberts:

Yes. So many. Some of the big ones, like I said, is that there's only one right way. Successful people are busy.

Kathryn Binkley:

So, anything like a good one.

Naphtali Roberts:

Yeah. We might hear the word hustle. We might hear the word grit, and I don't have problems with either of those words, but I do have problems with the pictures that many of us assign to them. So, the words themselves, like, actually. There's sometimes we have to speed up in our business. There's sometimes that it takes some, like, really strong movement. But me, I hear grit.

Naphtali Roberts:

And what automatically I think is I have to keep going at something even if it hurts. I'm gonna say that again. I have to keep going and push through the pain because someone with grit, to me, pushes through the pain in business. Pain is different than feeling uncomfortable. I think that's a core to recognizing our pace and our priorities is because when we recognize, oh, no. This has moved from feeling, like, uncomfortable. I think it's good to feel uncomfortable in your life and your business, but it's not good to be loving in pain.

Naphtali Roberts:

So that's a huge one as well. Yeah.

Kathryn Binkley:

That's so, so good. I talk a lot about how less is more and really getting away from that hustle-preneur life because that's what so many people talk about, but I really don't believe that it has to be that way.

Kathryn Binkley:

I'll give an example. I spoke to one of my clients at the end of last year, and she really didn't want to work all the time. And she assigned this belief to the number of hours that she was going to work that that meant a limited income. She set a goal for the entire year of 2019 based on working less. And when I heard her goal, I was like, Wait. Hold on. Like, you've made that much in a matter of just a few months.

Kathryn Binkley:

Why would you limit yourself? And we chatted about how she could hit far bigger income goals, impact goals, while still working less, and it's phenomenal because she's exceeded that goal already, and it's Just Q1. Yay.

Naphtali Roberts:

Yeah. And it's so true. Like, I you know, I'm thinking of another coaching client as well that, one of the things that I kept saying is, like, you can slow down and, actually, I'm almost 100% certain your business will grow if you slow down because and it's not just because of scarcity of availability, but because all she was stopping doing was all the ineffective things. She was and then she had more energy for the things that were impactful and effective. Flash forward a few months; I get this called. She had had some family situations come up, so we had paused coaching. And she was like, Nathalie, you're never going to believe what happened.

Naphtali Roberts:

I was like, while you're having this big family crisis, your business has grown. She's like, yes. How did you know? And I was like, because it's the thing that I've been telling you to do. She's like, yeah. It really took me having this thing where I didn't have any other option to finally test it out. And she's like, I'm never going back. Like, she's like, when this family stuff is over, she's like, because my business has like grown by a 3rd while I slowed down. I was like, yeah.

Kathryn Binkley:

One of my clients once, I think, I was so shocked when I told her I was like, literally, I do not want you to work the entire week. Like, take an entire week off. Because she was hustling. So much working morning to midnight, constant, and it's just not necessary. There's so much focus in the entrepreneurial space on what else should I be doing. And often, that's not at all what's going to make the difference. It's not about more doing.

Kathryn Binkley:

I love it. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Alright. Any final words that you'd want to share with all of the listeners tuning in about beliefs about balance or anything in general.

Naphtali Roberts:

I would say if some of the things that we have talked about today feel new and comfortable but intriguing. I want you to stop right now and put 15 minutes in your calendar sometime in the next 3 days to revisit these ideas and ask yourself these questions that we've talked about. Because if you don't schedule. It's not gonna happen. And, like, mindfulness, we have these ideals that being mindful or aware just happened, and that is a bunch of crap. It doesn't, and you have to schedule it. So schedule it. It doesn't have to be 45 minutes or an hour.

Naphtali Roberts:

I'm talking 5 minutes or less. Put it in your calendar right now.

Kathryn Binkley:

Great advice. Okay. So definitely put it in your calendar. Listen to her. She knows what she's talking about. Take the time. It's not going to make a difference if you don't act on what you're learning, so take that time and act on it. And if they want to hear more about you, where can they go? We're going to hear more content from you.

Naphtali Roberts:

Starting today, the day that this episode goes live, you can come to the Everyday Mind podcast to hear all sorts of musings everything that goes on in our everyday mind. So, if you go over there today, you can hear an episode on creating calm in your life. That's an interview with an amazing author, who wrote a book called Creating Calm, as well as, not having an identity of over a while, and then also just a basic kind of understanding of what mindfulness is and mindfulness isn't. So, head on over to the Everyday Mind podcast anywhere that you listen, or you can find a link to it on my website, which is naphtha roberts.com. And just go to the Everyday Mind podcast, and you can hang out with me and all sorts of amazing creatives and entrepreneurs that I have been doing all sorts of amazing interviews. Like, I really want to go back and listen to all of them, which is great because I can when they go live.  Awesome.

Kathryn Binkley:

Okay. And we'll drop a link in the show notes as well so that it's easy to find, and you don't have to work too hard to to go figure that out. We've got it we got you covered. Alright. Thank you so much for joining. I loved having this conversation. There are so many more things that we could have dove into. Right? It's a big topic. I'm sure that there's more that more to discover, and you'll cover it all on your podcast. Everyone, go take a listen.

Naphtali Roberts:

Yes. Definitely. Can't wait to hang out with y'all there.