When your business is successful and life looks great on the surface but something feels off underneath, then coming together in Nature with an in person community of female entrepreneurs could be what your soul is longing for.

Your business is successful and on the surface it looks like your life ticks all the boxes. But underneath something feels off. 

You’re stuck at the computer for most of your day and, even though you have lots of amazing people in you love, you can often feel lonely. You may distract yourself from your feelings by scrolling social media, then get lost in comparison and imposter syndrome. 

Or you might avoid looking at what’s really going on because you sense that when you start changing one thing, everything will change. Which can bring up fear, resistance and anxiety. So you pull back and retreat into yourself again.

Perhaps what you’re really longing for is more connection, fun, joy and meaning? To know your purpose-led business is actually making a difference, that you don’t have to do it alone, and you can play the game on your terms.

Playing the Game 

You are not alone with those feelings, I’ve noticed them in myself and my clients. It’s the reason I do what I do. 

As an entrepreneur, you have the freedom, flexibility and power to make choices aligned with your life force. With what gives you energy, brings you alive and enables you to be the change you want to see in the world.

So often though, you can end up just falling into what everyone else is doing – modelling your business on what works without questioning whether it’s actually working for anyone, let alone you.

Business up to this point has been a patriarchal, colonial and capitalist construct that only exists in the form it does because of unspoken social agreements that it is The Way.

Which means that you can unwittingly step into that version of reality, believing it is the only reality. 

One that’s based on scarcity, urgency, survival of the fittest and competition.

For instance, forcing yourself to share, be visible or build a personal brand on platforms designed to elevate individualism, performance and polarisation. 

Creating marketing content that is attention grabbing, shows why you are better than your competitors, and why your solution to your clients’ problems is the best.

When, really, you know no-one is better than anyone else, and that there's room for everyone. You're here for the collective.

To add fuel to the fire, you can then make it mean there’s something wrong with you when you find business as usual depleting, draining or unfulfilling.

What I’d like to suggest is that feeling that’s something is off isn’t something that’s wrong with you. What if it has an intelligence? What if it lives in your body for a reason?

When you can pause listen, welcome it, that feeling can be a trusted guide and companion. 

One that supports you to move towards the kind of life you recognise as your own, the kind of future you want to pass to future generations.

Community & Nature

My work in the world is to help women thrive with their ‘work’ in the world. In a way that enables them to create more impact and income, fall back in love with their business, without burnout or compromising their health or relationships.

To this purpose, I am always listening for where women feel something is off, and then helping them to question everything done so they can find what works for them.

It’s something I learnt in my birthing business and I see so many parallels between the way women ‘do’ birth and business. 

Whether it’s birthing a real, Iiving, breathing human being, or birthing your creativity, your ‘work’ in the world, they come with the same challenges.

They’re both a rite of passage, and they also both rely on a deep connection with others and Nature. 

Women’s health and happiness, including hormonal health, depends on intimacy, pleasure and a sense of belonging.

In times of stress, you’re wired to reach out and connect with others, and to bring the village and community together. It’s the positive side of people-pleasing.

Meanwhile, you cannot help but feel more confident, creative, resilient and expansive when you spend time in Nature.

It’s who you are, where you came from, what enables you to be alive and thrive. Nature is what you’ll return to when all is said and done.

It makes sense that being alone in front of a screen for long periods of time, engaging with social media as it currently stands, or attending indoor corporate-style business events where everyone’s trying to become a key person of influence, the expert on this or that, leaves you feeling anxious and exhausted. 

I know it leaves me feeling drained, and it’s not a game I want to play. How about you? 

Belonging 

So how do you change the game? As a starting place, what if you were to play with the idea that you’re living in a time of de-imagination?

That is, everyone is so stressed and overwhelmed, operating in default survival mode, that it can be very hard to imagine let alone believe in a different reality.

From that perspective, reclaiming your imagination could be seen as a radical act of self-care, people-care and planetary care. 

To be able to imagine and taste what that future reality could look and feel like, goes hand in hand with having courageous spaces where you feel safe. 

Where you feel like you belong, and where you can take risks, experiment, dare to dream, to speak your hopes, fears and dreams.

It was through having this experience myself, that Wild Founders! unNetworking events were born. With the intention of creating local in person community, which enriches the local economy.

For two years, I was part of a Nature connection and leadership programme. I started with the foundation year and flowed into the facilitator training.

It was held outdoors, was structured around the seasons and cycles of the year, and we spent many evenings around the fire sharing songs, stories, jokes, laughter and tears. 

I felt so seen, heard and loved that I finally knew what my gifts are, the impact it had on others when I shared them, and the beauty of celebrating and receiving the gifts of others. 

The thing that made this possible wasn’t that everyone was like-minded. 

It was the willingness and commitment to work through conflict, discomfort and awkwardness because we individually valued the community as a whole – and the intimacy that led to.

What I loved most of all was that, while we had facilitators and teachers, it was largely emergent and co-creative. Everyone was learning together, no-one was the expert. 

Each person brought their skills, wisdom and life experience and shared them with the group, each owning their unique place in the ecosystem and enriching the community through collaboration.

Yes, it was an investment of time, energy, money and emotions! But that meant that I was fully invested in the process, and came to understand and know myself in a way that was deeply healing.

It has gifted me an experience of community I will never forget, one that now lives in my bones, flows through my blood. It’s also given me a barometer for connection, to myself, to others, the world.

For this and so much more I will always be grateful.

Gathering in Nature

Inspired and informed by this experience, Wild Founders! unNetworking also brings together over a decade's experience of teaching movement and embodiment. 

Along with my love of mythology, and growing interest in foraging, singing (I never thought I would say that as I was always the bear in the choir) and improvisation games.

The events have been a total delight. They’ve challenged me. I’ve been figuring it out and experimenting as I go to find out what works best for my energy and for the group.

We meet roughly every six weeks around the seasonal calendar on a Monday morning in the Mendip Hills, near Bristol and Bath, UK. 

The day-long Summer Special was co-facilitated by members of the Wild Founders! community, which made it feel effortless and flowing.

It was incredibly moving to hear women reflect how easily they were able to make authentic connections with one another, that they felt safe to be vulnerable, to drop the masks, and that they didn’t feel any sense of competition with one another. 

Friendships have formed, working relationships have naturally come together, and further creativity and conversations have rippled out from Wild Founders! 

Private 121 clients have told me they’re taking what they’ve experienced at Wild Founders! into their own businesses, facilitating group work in new meaningful ways with their clients. 

Louise Lawton personal stylist and founder of Style Galore says:

“Wild Founders! has given me confidence in going forward, trusting in myself and my decisions for me and my business. It's an amazing alternative to the ‘standard’ networking offerings in a hotel or conference centre. It's so much better getting out into nature and it feeds the soul, which can only be a great thing for the person but also their business.”

Catalysts for Change

I believe changing the world starts with yourself. With what you can do now, with what you’ve already got. That entrepreneurship gives you the freedom to make choices that are aligned with the future you want for yourself, and for future generations. And I believe creating community, locally, in person, in relationship with Nature can, together, be powerful catalysts for change. 

Join Wild Founders!

If you want to:

• stop feeling anxious and lonely, like something is off in your life and business

• start enjoying more connection, a greater sense of belonging, freedom and possibility.

And are ready to be part of a growing community of like-minded yet diverse female founders and leaders at different stages of business, then Wild Founders! unNetworking could be for you.

You don’t have to do anything other than turn up, be anyone other than who you are – and there are no unspoken rules! 

Click HERE to book for Wild Founders! unNetworking Autumn / Winter 2024. 

Or, if you’re a million miles away and would like to chat more about how you could set something similar up in your area with my support, email jess @ jessicaadams.co.