Episode 234: How to Align Your Business to Your Human Design
In this episode, I’m answering the question, “How do I align my business to my Human Design?”
In hindsight, after this episode was recorded and edited, I should have titled it, “How to Align My Work to My Human Design” because whether you work for yourself or someone else, you still need to like what you do, know your voice, market yourself and more.
You’ll hear me list six critical areas of business and what parts of your Human Design to look to for insight and alignment.
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 232: How Can Projectors Make A Living in This World?
Episode 182: Human Design Non-Sacral Types and Their Strategies
Episode 186: Exploring Human Design Pressure Centers: Head and Root
Episode 187: Exploring Human Design Awareness Centers: Ajna, Spleen, Solar Plexus
Episode 184: Your Human Design Authority - How Do You Best Make Decisions?
Connect with Naomi:
Share the Episode:
“One of the main reasons why I have side hustles is because I like to try things out – experience them for myself; after all, I’m a 1 /3. With a One Line, I spend a lot of time studying things that interest me, and with a Three Line I need to experience and experiment with it for myself – and that’s what business is to me. I love it and spend a lot of time studying it, and it’s why I have my side hustles.”
Read the Transcript:
Hey there friend, welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura. I'm excited to be here today because we are talking about something that I don't talk about on this show, but it’s one of my passions.
But before we get to it, I want to remind you of my new, free workshop, The Four Pillars of Health for Projectors that’s now available. You can find it right on my website, and I’ll include a link for it in the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/234 for Episode 234.
Also, you’ll want to stay tuned for next week’s episode – it’s a milestone episode and I’ll have a special offer only for those who listen to the podcast!
But this week, we’re talking about a favorite topic of mine – business and answering the question, “How do I align my business to my Human Design?” So, this episode is for entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, or those who like me, also love business.
This is another one of the questions that we weren’t able to get to in Episode 217, which was a rapid-fire Q&A episode with my friend Nadia. We received so many questions but were only able to address a handful of them, so, I've been answering ones we didn't get to in several recent episodes, and in a handful of ones to come.
One of the main reasons why I have side hustles (I have more than one) is because I like to try things out – experience them for myself; after all, I’m a 1 /3. As a one, I spend a lot of time studying things that interest me, and as a three I need to experience and experiment with it for myself – and that’s what business is to me. I love it and spend a lot of time studying it, and it’s why I have my side hustles.
Not only do I enjoy coaching, healthy things, and Human Design, but I also like experimenting with different strategies and things in business.
So, I love this question and I'm excited to share my thoughts, but before I do, let me preface it by saying I'm not a business coach. I don't do business coaching. While I talk a lot about work, it hasn't been in the context of business coaching, but rather in the context of work-life balance and the relationship between work and your well-being.
But I'm going to share some of my thoughts here on aligning your business to your Human Design, some of which probably fall in the business coaching bucket, but here’s the disclaimer - I'm not a business coach, nor do I claim to be. I have mentored people in their business, but I don't see myself as a business coach, nor do I want to be a business coach, but I think I have some insights to share here.
So, if I were starting a business today, or not, even if I'm starting a business today, but I just learned about Human Design, and want to align my business to my design, off the top of my head, I would look at six different areas.
#1 - What it is? What’s my business going to be?
If you're just starting out, maybe you’re starting a side hustle. As I asked in the last two episodes if the slate is clean and all options are on the table, what is it that you want to do?
If you have an idea but maybe need a little more direction around it, for example, you want to be a health coach. That’s a very general thing because there are many different things you can do within health coaching. And over the years I’ve come to learn that it’s beneficial to get really specific and niche down in what you do. Be clear in what you offer, who it’s for and what’s your differentiator.
If you’re looking for direction around this, you might look at your Incarnation Cross which has your life themes. It’s not going to tell you what specifically to do, but it can shed some light on themes for your life, and what purpose you’re here to fill, which can point you in the right direction.
I would also look to the G-Center which is the center of love, identity, and direction in life.
I know I’ve recently done a handful of Projector-focused episodes, let me share some examples that extend to other Human Design Types.
With business alignment and deciding what you want to do, Generators are going to want to pick something that they're truly excited about – that thing that makes them so happy because when they do it, they exude joy. You can feel their enthusiasm – it's attractive, magnetic, and draws you in. Think about how that translates to business success for a Generator – not only are they doing what they love to do, they’re also having so much fun that it probably doesn’t even feel like work – and oh yeah, they’re earning a living doing it. It’s literally living the dream!
Say this Generator’s incarnation cross talks about being a leader and this person loves kids – maybe they start a business that combines the two – coaching, mentoring and educating. Not only are they doing what they love, but it’s also in alignment with their incarnation cross aka their life theme.
With Manifesting Generators, we know that they have a lot of things that they’re interested in. So can create a business that's inclusive of the variety of things they’re interested in?
Can you imagine how much a Manifesting Generator will shine when they’re able to create a business that supports all the things they want to do? They're going to draw people to them - draw business to them.
To hear more of my thoughts on this, give Episodes 232 and 233 a listen, and Episode 201 on what it’s like to have and embody a Self-Projected Authority, which is the Authority of the G-Center.
We may not all have a defined G-Center, I don't, but we do experience the energy of it; it’s just not consistently available to us with undefined G-Centers. But you can still look at it, and even go a step further and look at what are the active gates in your G-Center.
So that's number one of what’d I’d look to my design for – what do you want to do?
#2 - How are you going to design your business? This is what my friend, frequent guest, and fellow Projector, Nadia Gabrielle teaches – Service Design, and I’ll include a link to her website in the show notes.
I’m an alumnus of her Service Design School where she teaches service providers how to design their businesses to serve the client and business owner.
How can you design your business with your Human Design, and she also includes Astrology, in mind?
I would start with your Type. How can you design your business that aligns with the ebbs and flows of your energy?
We know that for Non-Sacrals – Projectors, Manifestors, and Reflectors – energy management is crucial. It’s non-negotiable.
So, are you going to design your business with one-to-one solutions (and by solutions, I mean products and/or services)? Are you doing to design it to be one-to-many?
Besides your Type, I’d also look to your pressure centers – that would be your Head and Root centers.
Why? Let me share an example.
If you want to offer solutions that are one-to-many, that’s going to require you to have a large audience, community, following, and client base. Typically, this means lower-priced offerings which means you’re going to have to do a lot of marketing around it which can translate to a lot of pressure to deliver on those numbers. Can you handle the pressure? Are your pressure centers defined or undefined? How are you designed to handle the pressure? Do you have the energy to support those efforts?
Then to go along with your Type, is your Sacral Center defined or undefined? What are the active gates? Do they connect to any other centers to create channels?
It takes energy to run your own business – will you have the Sacral energy to support you, or will you have to be mindful and creative in how you manage it? Can you design your business in a way that offers you the flexibility to manage your energy and still run it efficiently and profitably meeting your financial goals?
Manifesting Generators – can you design your business in a way that supports your variety of interests?
So, how you design your business matters and aligning with your design can have a huge impact. So, for this, I’d look to your Type, Sacral, Head, and Root Centers.
Now, let me clarify that these are not complete or exhaustive lists. I can only offer generalized guidance here on public platforms. If you really want specific advice, and I get it, I’ve been there too, book reading so you can dive deep into your design and see how all the various parts of it fit together.
#3 - The third area, and a significant one, is sales because without sales you don't have a business.
When it comes to sales, follow your Strategy because your Strategy is how you make things happen; how you can move forward in the world with less resistance and more ease and flow and isn’t that what we all want?
Manifestors, your Strategy is to initiate and inform. If you initiate without forewarning - telling people what you're doing, there can be backlash. People may feel blindsided, taken by surprise, and resist what you’re doing.
However, if you tell them in advance, taking them along for the ride, sharing your journey along the way, you’re going to get people excited. They're going to be invested because they’ve been on your journey with you.
I have a Manifestor friend who does this beautifully and she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it! She knows her Human Design, but I wouldn’t say it’s her guiding light, but whether she realizes it or not, she’s unconsciously following it and it’s a pleasure for me to witness because she’s living in alignment with her design effortlessly, just by living her life. Not only is her business flourishing, but she’s earned the trust of her customers because they’ve been right there with her.
Now, we know that initiating is not for everyone. It’s only for Manifestors, yet we’re taught/conditioned for everyone to initiate so no wonder so many of us lack the confidence and belief that we can be business owners because we think we can’t sell.
Follow your Strategy and see what happens.
For Generators and Manifesting Generators, their Strategy is to respond. If they initiate without responding to something they’re probably not going to get the results that they want, or it may not happen in the time they’d like it to, or with ease. There may have a lot of resistance and roadblocks that come up which only leads to frustration, which is the emotion that Generators and Manifesting Generators feel when they're not aligned with their design.
Now for us Projectors, because I’m a Projector so I say “us,” “we, “and “ours,” our strategy is to Wait for Invitations.
When Projectors try to sell or really, attempt to do anything without an invitation, it’s cringeworthy. We all have either been in or observed situations where someone is trying to sell something and it’s so awkward, and embarrassing, and everyone is uncomfortable and cringing. That’s what selling without an invitation is like. It leads to Nowhere, USA.
I have experienced this first-hand, both as a person being sold to and as the person trying to sell without an invitation. I can share stories upon stories of experiences in which this happened. And each time I was left feeling bitter, which is what Projectors feel when not in alignment with their design.
And then there's our sweet Reflectors. The Reflector’s Strategy is to follow the 28-day lunar cycle. What does this mean? Impulsivity isn’t meant for them. They do well when exercising patience and taking their time, talking things out with trusted confidants. And when they don’t, Reflectors feel disappointment.
So, while all the areas of business that I’m focusing on today are important, sales are perhaps the most important because, without sales, you don’t have a business. And the area of your design that I’d look to for alignment is your Human Design Strategy.
#4 – Copy
What’s copy? It’s the words on your website, in your emails, on your social media. Your copy is your voice, how you’re expressing yourself.
It’s how you communicate to people who you are, what you do, and why they should work with you which is why your copy is so, so, so important.
It's also excruciating to write - at least I find it extremely painful. I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I think I'm going to dedicate an episode to copywriting and Human Design because while I struggle with copywriting, it’s definitely not my favorite, my Human Design really helped me find clarity with it.
It’s all about how we express ourselves so when it comes to Human Design, I’d look at the Throat center - is it defined or is it undefined? Beyond the throat center, I’d look at what are your active gates in the Throat Center. What does it say?
There's so many insights to be derived from the Throat center and it directly impacts how you express yourself - the words on your website, the words you write in your emails to your community, how you speak on your podcast and videos, and also how you present yourself and share what you do on social media. It matters - a lot - that's why copywriters make a lot of money because words matter.
So, when aligning your business to your design, I’d look at copywriting and your Throat Center - how you express yourself.
#5 – Marketing
Expanding further on copywriting is marketing. How do you market yourself and your business? It goes hand-in-hand with the Throat center, right, with whether your Throat center is defined or undefined and what are the active gates in it.
I’d also look to the Head and the Ajna centers because so much of your marketing, heck your entire business, is based on our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, ideas, and how you’re inspired - things that come from the Head and Ajna centers.
No matter what kind of marketing, it's creative and so what insights can you glean from your Head and Ajna centers – are they defined? Undefined? What are the active gates? Neither center has that many gates. What, if any, other centers do they connect to, to form channels?
Beyond all of that, you could also look at your Cognition, one of the Variables.
My Cognition is Outer Vision and I’m very inspired by things that I find visually appealing. How might I translate this into my marketing? Visual marketing is highly effective for me, so how can you use your Cognition in your marketing to appeal to your target customers?
There’s also Motivation which is another variable. I have two episodes on Motivation, Episodes 206, and 208. Shockingly, they’re among the most popular episodes that I've done. I didn’t expect it. There are downloads for those two episodes every single day since they were released, months ago.
How would Motivation factor into your marketing? Here’s one example: Are you someone who is motivated by having a large following? Or are you someone who isn’t inspired by a large following but instead motivated by a small, but engaged following?
Wouldn’t that be a factor in how you approach your social media marketing?
It could even be a factor in how you design your business – one-to-one or one-to-many offerings.
#6 – Decision-Making
And then lastly, at number six is decision-making which applies to all areas of business you’re making decisions, every day. You’re making big decisions like, “How am I going to design my business? What's my sales strategy? Where am I going to invest my marketing dollars?”
But then there’s other decisions like when it comes to social media - should I do an Instagram post or a carousel? Should I post a photo or a graphic? Should I create an Instagram Reel or post it to Stories instead? What’s going to be the most effective way to achieve the goal that I have with this post/reel/story?
Should I do an Instagram live?
Business owners are making decisions every single minute of every single day and so it's important to follow your authority because Authorities are how are best make decisions. So, it behooves us to truly understand our Authority and what it feels like when you follow it, and what it feels like when you don’t. How do you embody it?
So let’s recap the six areas that I’d look to when aligning my business to my Human Design:
- What to do? Incarnation Cross, G-Center
- Business Design – Aura, Pressure Centers, Sacral Center
- Sales – Follow your Strategy
- Copywriting – Throat Center
- Marketing – Throat, Ajna, Head centers, Cognition, and Motivation Variables
- Decision-Making – Follow your Authority
There’s so many other areas to also look at when aligning to your Human Design, but here’s some areas to start.
For next week's episode, I'm going to take you behind the scenes and lift the curtain, sharing some things I've never shared before, not even with some of my closest friends, walking you through the changes that I've made in my business to align it with my Human Design.
So, I hope you come back and listen to that episode as well.
As you can tell, I love answering your questions. So, if you have a question about Human Design or how to integrate Human Design into your life, whether in your health, work, business, and whatnot, I'm happy to answer them. You can ask your question by leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/234 for Episode 234, you can fill out the form on the Contact page on my website, or you can find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithNaomi and send me a DM there. I always love to hear from you.
So, with that, I'm going to end here. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you gained some insights and maybe had some things illuminated on how to align your business to your design.
So that's it. Bye for now.
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
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