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Interview with Caroline Diana Bobart, Founder of Advanced Intuitive Administration
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I met Caroline Diana Bobart through Twitter when she retweeted a post that I was involved in. Her Twitter name, @HotDeskGenie, made me laugh out loud so I headed over to her website to see what she’s all about. Caroline is the founder of Advanced Intuitive Administration, a service that helps female entrepreneurs tap into their creativity and intuition to drive the growth of their small businesses. As you will see from my interview with Caroline, the main focus on her life’s work is to help all of us identify and manifest our unique abilities so that we may realize our true potential.
Christa - AIA's objective is "to help female entrepreneurs with forward-thinking conscious businesses achieve their goals". How did you identify this mission as something that is unique and necessary in the market place? Were there specific experiences that you had that led to you founding AIA?
Caroline - I started my first spiritually minded conscious business as a Relaxation Therapist, Reiki Master/Teacher and Intuitive Healer in 2002. It was a roaring success and an invaluable validation of my ability to create an enjoyable and meaningful life's work that has stayed with me since then.
I have always recognised it to be a universal truth that there are countless women out there who have the same vision to create this experience of manifesting their unique skills and talents as a means of working for themselves. In the last few years especially, I have seen many of my own female colleagues create from a different place than they did a few years ago. In keeping with my own intention for myself, they too have an earnest desire to create their offerings from a place of greater social, environmental or humanitarian consciousness than the status quo. They are determined to provide only that which contributes to the world in a meaningful, honest and ethical way.
As a Professional Intuitive, the intuitive readings that I do have always played a significant role in the way in which I help women see and understand themselves and their ability to consciously create their experiences. Through the years my work with women began spilling over into helping them with their creative and or business endeavours. Ultimately I identified being able to help other intuitive women establish and grow their own conscious businesses as the perfect marriage between my unique skills and this ever evolving trend. And so, Advanced Intuitive Administration was born in the summer of 2008. As it states on the website, “AIA is NOT a Business, Management, Marketing, Sales, IT or Financial Consulting Service". Rather it provides tailored Intuitive Consultations which help forward-thinking Female Entrepreneurs explore the various aspects of their conscious business creations, gain clarity and refine their goals.
Christa - AIA grew out of your own experience as an entrepreneur. How did you decide to make the leap from focusing on running your own business to also include services to help other entrepreneurs?
Caroline - That's a great question! My work over the last seven and a half years has always been one of service and working with women especially is something that has always been near and dear. It is a natural feature of each of us to change and to grow and my view of the 'leap' that you mention is a reflection of my own evolution as a dynamic, creative spirit during these years. I have found that in addition to being able to help clients on an individual, personal and intimate level that the doors of possibility have been thrown wide open when it comes to women being able to express themselves and find their true voice in the world. We are each big female creative power houses who's inherent nature it is to create. These facts have allowed me to not only revolutionise the service that I provide as an entrepreneur but also to confidently and enthusiastically guide other women who are ready to create and grow their businesses upon the conscious and intuitive platform that Advanced Intuitive Administration provides.
Christa - AIA offers Intuitive Consultations in a variety of formats. How did you develop this idea for a service and how have you seen it benefit entrepreneurs?
Caroline - Again, another great question here Christa. The different types of formats or consultations that I provide have emerged in direct response to the common types of issues that women started coming to Advanced Intuitive Administration with.
For example, there are female entrepreneurs who have something unique to offer and are still formulating their thoughts on how they can 'package' their offering, fill a niche, communicate with their target audience and stay true to themselves and their beliefs. In this case I have seen the AIA Intuitive Consultations for "Start up Businesses" really help these clients capture and explore the previously elusive feelings or images of what they want to create. It is nothing short of magical and exciting to see the transformation and focus that occurs as they embark on a process of developing the ideas arising out of our work, and the self assurance that comes with having someone outside of themselves see and validate their previously unseen process of creation.
Other entrepreneurs who have already been running their businesses for a period of months or years may have come to a point for example where they are having trouble maintaining a healthy work/life balance due to the tremendous demands of running a successful sole-proprietor business. They feel an intense need to take stock and reassess their situations and choices about how they can continue running their businesses in a sustainable and still progressive way. They find the Intuitive Consultations for "Clarifying Goals" assist them in stepping away from their emotionally charged view of their enterprise so that they can get back in touch with their original goals, see where and how they can be refined, where opportunities for growth exist etc. This type of session has everything to do with enabling the entrepreneur to regroup, refocus and redefine the way in which they can recapture the enthusiasm for a creation that may have become lack lustre and dull.
And of course there are the Intuitive Mentoring Sessions which are well suited to helping an unsure client pinpoint what it is exactly they feel moved to create and the Mini Intuitive Consultations that allow the client to focus on specific topics directly and in detail.
One of the key aims of Advanced Intuitive Administration is to address the varying spectrum of needs of women who are trying to engage the creative process for themselves. It is therefore also important to point out that prior to any of these sessions, clients fill out and submit a 'prep sheet' so that their sessions can be specifically tailored to their unique businesses and needs.
As a final point, owing to my professional training as a Medical PA with several top notch surgeons and consultant specialist doctors at several of the major hospitals in London and Wales, my organisational and administrative skills have been finely honed. The Office Management Consulting/Virtual PA side of Advanced Intuitive Administration is pure dynamite in combination with the close intuitive work that I do with clients. Not only does it help me maintain a good left/right brain balance in my working life, but it frees them up to get on with whatever it is that they do best knowing that their office systems and requirements are in the hands of someone who truly sees and understands their needs.
Christa - Is there one entrepreneur's story with AIA that really stands out in your mind as inspirational and that demonstrates why AIA's mission is so important in the business world?
Caroline - Each time I have evidence of the pure creative magnitude of the women I work with, it fills me with awe. Additionally, I’ve been able to observe and really understand that no matter how ‘boxed in’ or limited we might feel because of our situations or past choices, that the human spirit is ingenious in the unlimited avenues it will create in order for us to thrive. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to shine a light on our true selves to help us remember our enormous capabilities.
Earlier this year I did some close work with a spiritual/conscious business owner who came to me exhausted and just about burnt out on every level. She is a one woman show providing an invaluable coaching service to a widely varying clientele helping them rediscover themselves and their lifelong passions and goals through training programs, courses, teleseminars, workshops and 1:1 consultations.
During our initial consult it was clear that she knew she couldn’t physically sustain the pace that she had been going at and that the long term viability of her business was seriously under threat, not to mention her own health and zeal for the creation that she had built up from the ground. We worked together for a period of months on helping her reassess the different aspects of the business. As time went by I was able to see in many ways that our consultations helped her create a shift within her thoughts, the perspective from which she viewed the business and her relationship to it. It created the opportunity for her to start changing her relationship to the areas she herself had instinctively known had become a drain and naturally turned her attention to those that still made her feel excited and enthusiastic about it. Sound too simple? Believe you me, the level of self-honesty, trust and belief that is required at a time like this is profound!
In other words, our work together enabled her to really focus on the areas that would allow her to positively move the business forward and recognise the importance of releasing or delegating the tasks she spent way too long struggling with to people who could do them far better and quicker than she could. Four months later, she now has a staff of three, the workload has been split, she can focus on the coaching that she does best, the business has branched out into creating sacred pilgrimages for women and there are several new projects in the pipelines to further grow the business – all as a result of her being able to step back and consciously and intuitively take a fresh look at herself, redefine her goals, restructure her business, recharge her batteries and realign her efforts with her true spiritual goals. She has been able to recapture the abundance and sense of fulfilment and possibility that enabled her to flourish at the start.
It has been remarkable to bear witness to this woman’s inherent creative genius. It is a testament to each of us women that we are so MUCH bigger, wiser and capable than most of us can perceive!
Christa - If you could give one piece of advice to every female entrepreneur around the globe, what would that advice be? What would you like to say to all women interested in starting their own businesses, but afraid to take that leap of faith?
Caroline - Given the close work that I do with women in intuitive and conscious small businesses I would encourage any female entrepreneur to really claim the deep wells of inherent intuition, creativity and vision that sits within each of us. Rather than building upon their powerful, natural strengths as female creative spirits, too often we see women who have left their feminine natures behind in exchange for the belief that they need to become more male in order to survive.
My work with women who have made the choice to run their businesses in a conscious and almost spiritual way has been a tribute to the grace and success that can be achieved when we are absolutely determined to be true to ourselves. They are the new breed of female entrepreneur; she is successful because she knows her worth, she is validated, intuitive, gracious, socially and environmentally aware. As lofty as it might sound, these gals have embraced universal, creative and intelligent forces on a large scale. Because their work is so heavily inspired these women are nothing short of pioneers in their fields. Their ability to be determined yet allowing at the same time has redefined the possibilities for female entrepreneurs worldwide. Their revolutionary personal and commercial accomplishments have begun replacing the images of struggling crystal shops and therapists that many have come to associate with spiritual individuals plying their trade.
To women interested in starting their own businesses but afraid to take the leap, of course you must make sure that you’ve done your research, consulted with professionals and have a business plan that is sound. If at that point you still really believe that you have something unique and invaluable to offer, I would quote you that beautiful paragraph from the brilliant author Marianne Williamson, whose book A Return to Love spurred me onto my first awareness of my path in my early twenties. In it she says;
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
For you see, you would be at that very place now at which you can go forward and absolutely shine!
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