Ep. 21 Healers & Money with Jane Chevalier Circular Path Consulting

Welcome to the podcast. Jane Chevalier glad you’re here. Introduce yourself and your business please.

Yeah, I’m so happy to be here, Meegan. Thank you. Yep. So my name is Jane Chevalier and my business is Circular Path Consulting, where I specialize in business strategy for entrepreneurial body workers.

I help my clients find. New directions that brings personal satisfaction and financial fulfillment. And my expertise involves pivoting to a different specialty, reducing hands.work, and scaling businesses.

Okay. Which is why I’m really excited to have you on the podcast because I have a lot of people in my audience, a lot of friends and colleagues who are body workers of one type or another.

Just quickly tell us where in the world you are based.

Yes. So I’m based out of Denver, Colorado.

Awesome. So what, tell me something you now know that you wish you knew when you started your business.

Yeah, so something I now know is that there’s no one way to start a business. When I did it, I felt like I had to like put on a monkey suit, like my first business back over a decade ago, and I was a massage therapist.

I felt like, you know, being in business meant I had to kind of blend in with the herd and put on a business suit and kind of almost feel like I had. Kind of step into imposter syndrome of instead of showing up authentically as myself as, you know, my kind of hippie at heart massage therapist self, I kind of had to put on a business mask on.

And I think that’s a huge mistake and I definitely learned that I could take that mask off as time went on. But I think just starting out, I felt like. Something I had to do, and that’s definitely not true.

Absolutely. So what helped you break away from that? Like, what helped you sort of transition from that mindset into where you’re at now?

Yeah, well, definitely time, of course. That was long ago, like I said, over a decade ago time. But also just getting comfortable and getting my feet wet and interacting with other entrepreneurs and just getting comfortable with talking about myself, talking about my business, and speaking in front of other people.

So I think getting comfortable and practice, practice, practice.

Yeah, completely. I agree. So rather than, you know, trying to get it right inside our own heads, inside our own world, it’s actually getting out there and being willing to make mistakes. Try it on, and then you kind of start to emerge as yourself within your business over time.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think it helps that your biggest fans, your clients who come back again and again, Like that’s solid proof that you’re on the right path, and those are the people I think who really know you at your center in your business. And so just trying to think of them when you’re in situations that might be a little challenging or feeling like you’re putting yourself out there.

Yeah, exactly. So shifting the focus from inside yourself and worrying about what you know, what are people thinking about me that actually start thinking about what are my clients needing? What are these people that I’m serving, needing? And I, I actually find that really helpful if I’m, if I’m becoming too, you know, self-conscious or a bit nervous if I’m speaking in front of a group, to actually start thinking about, well actually, why, why are these people here?

What are they wanting to hear? What are their problems?

Yeah.

Definitely.

So you help body workers shift direction, move from being so hands on in their business to finding other ways of being in business that really serves them. And I was really interested in talking with you about this because that’s certainly something

that happened for me after being in, in business and working with clients one-on-one for about 20 years. Going through this, it wasn’t a burnout that it sort of had that pattern. Where my, you know, I had this strong nudge. My nervous system was like, you need to change direction. And I sort of, well, it was trial and error for me in terms of how I did that, and it took time.

So that’s something that you specialize in. Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah, definitely. So I think there’s two big reasons why, well, three reasons why body workers wanna change direction. Number one is, you kind of hit on it, they might be hitting burnout. Maybe they’ve been doing the d deep tissue massage for over a decade and they’re just burning out their body post.

Their bodies just can’t handle it any longer. Number two they’re realizing that they would like to be more financially fulfilled and they’re kind of hitting a glass. They’re hitting a glass ceiling with that. I think those are the two main ones, the number three. Maybe they’re just bored and they just wanna try, try something new.

Or they’re really opening the scope of their interests and they wanna integrate that, like their continuing education. They wanna integrate that in their practice or they just wanna try something new.

Yeah. What do you reckon is one of the biggest obstacles for them when they’re, you know, they’re at that stage, they’re thinking about that.

What do you think gets in the way of them transitioning from that real hands-on work and boarding out successfully?

Yeah. So I think obviously fear, like they know they’re good at it. They have a following. They’ve had the same loyal clients for however many years, and they know that they’re good at it and it’s, it’s security, it’s safety.

They know they’re gonna have that same amount of money in their pocket every week. And to put that at risk is scary because when you’re self-employed You’re the only one, you know, pulling in the money and it’s scary to put that at risk to try something new that you don’t know if your clients are gonna like or if you’re gonna attract a new pool of clients for that new service that you’re providing.

Yeah, for sure. That was certainly was my experience, particularly when, you know, if you’re self-employed and my partner is self-employed, and so there was a definite reliance on. It still is on my input financially into our partnership, into our family. And so then there’s that risk of, you know, if I say goodbye to this business that is working really well and I worked really hard to build it up over the years and am I, am I just gonna throw it all away?

And what if this doesn’t work? Yeah. And then the other piece of me around that was, I tried, I did actually stay with hands on while I was sort of building the more coaching part of my business, but I only have a certain amount of bandwidth. Right. Still have family, raising family and so it became, it was a lot to manage.

So you see that with your clients?

Yeah, definitely. I’m actually working with someone right now who’s been doing massage therapy and cranial sacral therapy for more than a decade and he wants to transition into intuitive readings and he definitely has the gift he always has since the first time I met him.

So it’s not a question of if this new realm he’s pivot, pivoting into is something he can do, cuz he definitely can. He’s phenomenal. It’s just, you know, seeing if it’s something his clients want to do. And. He’s been, right now he is making a long-term plan. He has a year plan of when he wants to be done doing body work and just do intuitive readings full-time.

So we’ve kind of worked backwards from that year goal and we’ve made a plan and. Part of what that looks like is starting still doing the hands-on body work. And then when he has little pockets of time offering free mini sessions of the intuitive readings for current clients who he has a good relationship with, and having the write testimonials and kind of really fine tuning the types of questions that he’s asking his clients after

the, the readings in order to kind of get a feel for how can I scale this? How often can I offer this service for the same person using it kind of as a consistent service as opposed to like a one-off thing. And really getting clear on what is the problem that this particular service. Is finding a solution for.

And so we’re helping him get really clear on the advertising around it and kind of the marketing plan with how he can offer it to his clients. And then fading it in while fading out the body work.

Nice. I really like that. And Yeah, I probably could have done with your help a couple of years ago when I was being very messy and, and like you put it just so clearly and simply, and I love that that analogy of like fading one out, fading the other in so that there’s not this massive gap.

And because I, I think that’s possibly what happened for me a little bit is going well and all the covid shutdown sort of made this happen because I was doing hands-on. It’s like I kind of went, okay, so that’s it. I’m done with the hands on. But it still took time to let my audience know, my clients know what I was offering now and for them to get used to it, and actually some of them, you know, what I was offering in the future, which wasn’t hands-on, wasn’t really what they were looking for.

So then my audience sort of shifted and so that was a little bit of a, a messy transition for. So I really appreciate the way you’ve talked about it as, cause it does, it takes, it took me about a year actually planning it out and thinking about it really clearly and actioning on that plan. Yeah. So, so I think in my experience anyway, a lot of body workers are sensitive are more spiritually.

Whatever we wanna call it. Attuned, interested on a path, where do you think that intersects with financial beliefs and issues? And do you see that with your clients?

Yeah, definitely. So as you said it, as healers we are sensitive souls. That’s why we’re healers. That’s why we’re able to have the capacity to hold space.

For others and help them through their healing paths. And so kind of, so there’s a couple of elements to this I’ve learned and that I believe is so as healers, we kind of, because we have that capacity and space for kind of areas in people’s lives that kind of, you know, We have strengths that other people do not have.

For instance, the c e o of a Fortune 500 company is probably not gonna have the sensitivities that a healer has, but they’re able to really focus on money. And so I have a couple of thoughts on this. So first you know, with mental health therapists, how they say Therapists tend to have the biggest issues and that’s why they go, they wanna be mental health therapists cuz they wanna like solve their own issues.

And so they wanna do that. And like, the same is true with like any type of healing profession I believe. And like body worker, you’ve had issues and you, you’ve kind of learned how to fix them. And so now you wanna keep fixing yourself while you’re fixing other people.

And so, Within that is we’re also, and sorry if I’m kind of jumping all over the place, it’s hard to organize, surround us. Love it. We, we have our issues and we’re like, explore our issues. We’re bringing awareness to our issues. And when it comes to money, Like a, a lot of healing professionals were attracted to this profession.

Not because we think we’re gonna make an easy buck, but because we wanna fix something in ourselves. We’re wanna fix others. We’re drawn to it for the fixing and the human. And so, yeah. Yeah. It’s the service. And so typically this profession attracts those types of people who wanna fix themselves and others.

And so they’re not money’s typically, not the first thing that comes to their mind when they go into this type of profession. And so there’s kind of that piece is you’re not focused on getting into this career for the money, you’re focused for the reasons we discussed. And then secondly we tend to so people who tend to be kind of in the healing arts, not everyone, but a lot of them tend to kind of be, I don’t know if I wanna say, have martyr energy.

But that kind of like energy of saving others before saving yourself. And so I also believe that has to do with the money is, is your, you would rather help someone and serve them and heal them, whether or not you get something in return and the session like knowing that you’ve helped them and you fixed them.

Which also might come from like ego of like, wow, like I’m so good. I fixed someone might be enough. And so with that mentality and just saying, well, you know, that’s good enough for me. I don’t really care if I get paid that much. So it’s kind of like, it can either come from like that martyr space or it can kind of come from that ego space.

And so, That’s kind of where I think that comes from. And then I didn’t know if we were going in a, if you were asking like, how to overcome that or if this is just kind of where we’re at right now.

Let’s, let’s carry on with this. So interesting.

Yeah, and so I think.

Something that’s changed for me is that when I burnt out personally in my business, I kind of, you know, I, I did have a few people who worked for me and so I was getting passive income and I was growing my business, which was great. But just hitting a breaking point of like, I don’t feel like I’ve been financially val, I haven’t been accurately valuing my business and my profession.

Enough all of these years. And so for me, that’s not why I stopped doing it, but I, I definitely felt that. And so in order to prevent other body workers from feeling that, like finding out, number one, are they feeling that way? Number two, do they wanna stop feeling that way number. Do they want to thrive financially?

And if the answer is yes, then that’s great, obviously, like, yes, let’s make some money. And so the other part of this is I think a lot of us are scared of money or maybe we have issues in our past from our childhood, like maybe for some reason we associated money with something that’s bad. And someone who’s been a mentor for me recently with overcoming.

He’s not my personal mentor, it’s from a distance, but his name is Ken Honda and he’s actually based outta Japan. And he wrote a book called Happy Money that I’ve been reading and it’s been really helpful for me and with my clients as well. And it’s all about viewing money. So number one, he recognizes that a lot of us who maybe have struggled, struggled with money or we have a problem with saying yes to making a lot of money.

He’s like, okay, you’ve probably experienced something in your childhood that made you think money was bad, so let’s work through that. And you know, he’ll talk, he’s talked through different meditations that you can do. You talk to childhood self and you’re kind of like, okay, like what happened? Or what were the, the handful of events that happened that made you associate money with something bad?

And let’s do some healing around that so you can kind of. True longevity, healing with your inner childhood, your inner child or your spirit, to try to remove those money blocks. And again, easier said that than done. That might happen quickly. It might happen over a longer period of time. But once you can kind of get past that, he says, okay, so money, if you view it, money is literally just blank sheets of paper and whatever.

Whoever’s holding the money is responsible for the energy infused in that money. So I can either put good energy into that money or I can put bad energy into that money to put it simply. And so if you think about it that way, you can say, you know what? It’s my decision how I want money to impact me, my business, my life, my.

I want it to be good. Like I, I, I’m gonna, I’m deciding right now that money is a good thing and that it’s gonna impact my life in a beneficial way. And so how can we apply that to the healing arts? So, in the healing arts or, you know, body workers how can we view the fact that whatever price we decide to make our services, That that’s a really beneficial, good thing because if we mark our services, you know, at X amount of dollars, we are going to show up energetically to that same level, and we’re gonna give our clients that much more value and

when we give our clients a really good session, whether that’s coaching or massage, or psychotherapy, when they hand us the money, that’s actually gonna be. Good, happy money as Ken Honda puts it, because the money that the energy they’re infusing in that money that they’re giving to us is good energy.

Because they are feeling good. The vibrations in their cells and their bodies and their spirit that they just got from the session we gave them is gonna be in the money that they give us. And so can we view the money we’re receiving as happy money? And, and so how? When you say it like that, it’s just like, yeah, the money I’m receiving is literally a mirror of the session that I just gave them, and that’s a really good thing.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think when our, when our pricing, there’s so much in that, but, but what I’m picking up on right now is when our pricing is too low. And I’ve definitely been through that and that’s, you know, an edge for me when our pricing is too low, particularly when I was doing one-to-one sessions and a lot of them, I, over time there’s this sort of it’s like I’m giving so much value and I was just talking to a woman last night who was interested in working with me and she said, yeah, I was talking to a friend of a friend and she said to me that working with you completely changed her life.

And I don’t know who that person was, but if I’m charging way too low for that work, there’s not a reciprocal exchange of energy happening. And so for me and my awareness, That is speaking to that martyr self-concept or thread that comes in for us as healers. So I think it is such an important piece to look at.

And yet I do see a lot of body workers, yoga teachers, healers who they work so hard and they give so much value. They really do give so much. But they’re, you know, they’re really struggling financially and their business is really struggling financially. And so this is a piece that is so important for us as healers to look at, you know, whatever we are as healers, we’re in the helping professions, right?

To look at for the sustainability of our business. And so I think some, some practitioners say Yes, but if I’m pricing way up here, I’m not gonna be able to help those people that can’t afford my services. Mm-hmm. How do you what’s your perspective on that? How do you meet that in your mind and heart?

No, definitely. That’s such a huge point cuz I think like every single person I’ve met has said exactly what you’ve said. Yep. Yeah, and I think there’s a couple options you can do with that. So for instance, I know one person who will do sliding scale, where they’ll have different brackets based on your income.

They do their price points, like three different options based on what your, your average income is. And you know, it’s an, you can do an honor system. You know, if you want to ask them for proof, you can do that. And then another option is you can do, like, make sure you’re meeting the salary that you need and then you can say, okay, I’ve made my, my salary for the month.

I’ve made the income I need to make, I’ve got room for, for one one. I don’t wanna say freebie, but one lowcost person and really making it an intentional, sacred thing and maybe putting it out there like, Hey, I’ve got one slot open for someone who might be struggling financially. I’d totally like to help you.

Let me know. This is definitely, you know, a coveted spot in making that as an opportunity. So there’s definitely options for that.

Yeah, beautiful. I’ve at times played around with a sliding scale, bought, played around with it, implemented it into my business.

At times I’ve offered low cost work with me. Other times I’ve worked for a provider here in New Zealand, so all of this work in New Zealand is paid privately. There’s no, you know, it doesn’t matter what you do, there’s not really an insurance situation for paying for therapy, or there’s a ACC if you have an accident.

That’s covered by the government. But that’s for a small amount of practitioners. What I did do a few years ago was I worked for a provider that offered six free sessions that you could get through your doctor. And so I was a provider for them, and so that was the way I, I did that. So I had a, you know, a few clients going at a time that were coming through that avenue, so that really supported that part in me

that wanted to be of service to the wider community. And since I’ve shifted my business into a coaching framework, I got in my mind. So what I wanted to do was make my free stuff so valuable that even if somebody wasn’t coming to work with me, they were still getting a lot of value from my work that’s out in the world.

And I, that’s been really helpful for me. And my sensitivities. I, I really value that and I input that into all of the work that I put out there. And so that’s been a, a helpful perspective for me around the financial stuff as well. Yeah, because it’s so, it’s so layered, isn’t it? Because it’s not just.

How I grew up, it’s the, you know, the gender roles that I grew up in. It’s inherited trauma that is so like in our d n a unconscious, and I think it’s totally fine for this to take a while to unwind because this is, this is part of our life’s journey. And so that, that’s what I see for myself. I’m like, It’s taking time.

But each year I look and I go, oh, actually I’ve grown and I’ve expanded from that perspective of where I was last year, and that is now implemented within my business and how I serve people. And then that’s also reflected in my, you know, in my net profit, in the wage I receive for my work. Because if that’s not enough, that is what leads to burnout.

You know, if that’s not sustaining me and my family, then that leads me down that burnout path, right? Which then we track back to, I’m overgiving. Because I’m not looking after myself first, and that is that that whole thing around needing to have a full cup for ourselves before we’re able to help other people. No vitality no energy, and we can’t do this thing that we were put on the earth to do. Right. Which is serve yeah. To help people. And so that for me is why I am working and have worked really studiously on my money stuff.

Yeah, definitely. And I also think too, it can start leading to resentment with your clients too as well. And that’s, you’re gonna start not serving them in the right way. So it’s in an adverse effect as if you did potentially like hypothetically, continue down that path too.

So it just shows that that would not be the best interest for your clients if you did that.

Do you know, that’s a quite a hard thing to admit as a practitioner, but I have seen it sneaking in for myself, and that was a real turning point for me many, many, many years ago when I was charging way less and I had a client who wasn’t happy about what she was paying.

And then, and then a few months later, or a month later, told me that she was going on an overseas holiday. And I noticed those threads of resentment creeping in and it was like, well, I, I’m not taking my family on an overseas holiday because we don’t have the budget, but I wanna be really clear about this.

That is not on her, that is not on our clients. That was on me. I set the price for my services. And so that was a real moment of I really need to look at myself and how I’m valuing my work.

Yeah, definitely.

Hey, This just made me think about there’s this thing that people say, Around, you know, for coaches and practitioners, and they say something like, you should be charging way more because you are worth so much more charge what you are worth.

And, and that gets me a little bit because actually we’re all infinitely worthy, we’re all infinitely worthy, right? We all have infinite value. We need to be charging what our services are worth, what our offer is worth like to me, it’s important to separate out me personally and my worth with the worth that I offer within my business and price that accordingly.

Yes, definitely. You, I was actually gonna bring this up and you brought it up too, so that’s definitely, and the first time I really heard that, I don’t know if we talked about this before, was from Stacy Boehman. And she brought that up. Was your, is it exactly what you said?

What you’re charging is not a reflection of your value as a human. Because our values are all 100% worthy. And you can’t put a price tag on that, but exactly what is your experience, your education, your offer that you’re putting together. For instance, if you’re just starting out, you literally, today’s day one of your business maybe it’s okay to have your prices on the lower end until you get a structure.

You get your feet wet, you make lots of mistake. There’s a lot of room for error. And then as you kind of build up, you’re able to, your price increases with your experience and your structuring of your business.

Yeah, yeah.

Totally agree. Because when you when you price at that level, when you’re starting out, that gets you into momentum.

And that can be for some people that I see, and particularly when they’re, they’re pivoting or when they’re brand new, Getting into momentum can be tricky, but if you price well there, then you’ve got that momentum happening and then you can expand forward from that much more easily.

Yes, yes, definitely.

Beautiful. Such an interesting, rich conversation and really got me thinking about My journey with my relationship with money cuz it is a relationship, right? And like you said around Happy Money, I think I’m gonna read that book. Is that it’s neutral and it’s like what we do with it.

You know, if you’re an asshole before you had lots of money, you’re still gonna be an asshole afterwards. If you’re a good person before you have lots of money, most likely gonna be a good person afterwards as well. Yeah. And I think that this is so important for me, and I can hear how important it is for you too, in terms of supporting our, our wellness practitioners, healers, body workers, to actually build businesses that not only support their clients to really thrive, because they’re clearly doing that, but then also supports themselves and their families and their life to thrive. I think for me, that’s such an important piece.

Definitely. And that’s part of my mission that I actually have on my website, which is like, Imagine a world where people in the healing professions had health insurance. We had 401k, we had vacation days.

We had the ability to do all of the things in our personal lives that someone at an executive You know, corporate company has. So the what if we were able to access all of those things too? Just because we’re doing sacred work doesn’t mean that we can’t have all of the amenities that the general population has.

Absolutely. Totally

agree. Yeah. It’s been so great speaking with you, Jane. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you want to add, that you wanna share, that you wanna speak to?

Just that, you know, our, as humans, our paths are, we’re told that our paths are linear, but time and space is definitely not linear.

Our paths are circular, which is kind of where my business name came from and that. We change over time, and most likely, you’re probably not gonna wanna be doing the same thing forever for the rest of your life. That’s very rare. Some people have that and that’s really special. But most humans, we change, we go through different stages.

And so just acknowledging that it’s okay to change and to want to do something else. And it’s okay to, to wanna stop doing something that’s not serving you anymore. And it’s okay to wanna do other things, like making lots of money. Just yeah, just recognizing that it’s okay to change and that we go through so many different phases as humans.

Beautiful.

Thanks so much, Jane. And if people are interested in learning more about what you offer, how do they follow, get into your world.

Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram Circular Path Consulting. I’m also on Facebook, or you can go to my website, which is circular path consulting.com, and I’m actually launching my podcast tomorrow called Healers in Business.

So if you wanna learn more about similar topics that Meegan and I discussed, you can tune in there too. And I will be hosting Meegan on there as well.

I can’t wait to listen to your podcast. That’s so exciting. Healers in business.

Yes.

Yeah. Beautiful. One very last question.

What’s your current, favorite book? And it can be about business or otherwise.

Yeah. My current favorite book. It’s actually been one of my favorite books for a very long time when I got on the spiritual path. It’s a collection of stories. It’s called The Pocketbook from Pema Chodren she’s an American Buddhist monk.

And they’re just these short little chapters. It’s a small little pocketbook and the, they’re just these good little tid book. Tidbits on just different perspectives on life. Just like reminders when you’re going through different blocks or barriers. It’s, and it’s just easy to read too.

Beautiful.

Thanks so much for joining us, Jane. I’ve had such a great time talking with you around all things healers, money pivoting, how do we expand out? Yeah, thanks so

much. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed that episode. How good was that conversation with Jane Chevalier from Circular Path Consulting?

I really love unpacking that intersection of us as small business owners, healers, practitioners, spirituality and money, finances. It’s such a powerful conversation, and what I would say to you around that conversation that we’ve just had is take the one thing that really landed for you, that gave you that little opening in your nervous system.

Set off that light bulb. Take that one thing and really deepen into it and think about how you can bring that into reality within your beliefs or within your business. So that’s a really powerful thing to do, is to just take one thing from, you know, an inspiring conversation that you. Take one thing and implement it in your life, whether it’s through your business, your beliefs, your personal life.

And if you enjoyed this podcast and you know, a friend, a healer, a practitioner, a therapist who could do with hearing this, send it to them, forward them the episode, that can be your act of kindness for the day. Hey, have an amazing, amazing week, my friends. Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for sending me the messages, telling me what you’ve gotten out of each episode. It’s just been such a rich conversation for me. Loving it. Speak to you real soon.