Whitnie Wiley

I would probably attribute my success to a couple of things. One, I would go back to my faith, and that I'm very clear about what I am doing and why I'm doing it. The other would be support. My husband is extremely supportive. He's actually the reason that I am an entrepreneur. It wasn't a path I was looking for, wasn't something I had tried it before and it didn't work, and I wasn't really looking to go down that path again. But he kept telling me, if you're not enjoying what you're doing, why don't you try creating what you want? So I did that. Having faith, just a broad faith in what I'm here to do, a good amount of confidence in who I am and what I bring to the table, and then the support of not just my husband, but my family in general, plays a huge part in my success.

The best advice I received was just being true to yourself and getting clear about what you want. When I was working for someone else, I was often working at the whim of other people, and it was suggested to me at some point to focus on the things that I was really good at and sort of amplify those. That has morphed into paying attention to what you enjoy, what you enjoy doing, and how you enjoy doing that thing. My philosophy that has come from that is you do the work you love, you love the work you do, and you find a pathway to that by getting clear about what matters to you in your work. Even when you're doing something that you're not fully enjoying, and that was part of my journey and ultimately how I came to working for myself, I found the aspects of what I was doing that I did enjoy. What I really enjoyed was the education aspect and relationship building. I didn't enjoy the politics of the work that I was doing, but I did enjoy talking with people and explaining policy. I love policy development. So really tapping into the things that you enjoy about the work you're doing, even if you don't enjoy the work itself, and then following the path and being open to what it could look like, rather than being really strict about what it needs to be.

I think be kind. Be kind to yourself. I think we are really, you know, we do so much, women, women in business, women entrepreneurs in particular. We're doing all the things and feel a need to do all the things, sometimes without asking for help, without giving ourselves grace and space and forgiveness for not doing it perfectly. Be okay with that it's not always gonna look the way, exactly the way that you want. Lean in to what is, and then if it needs iteration, make an iteration. But give yourself some grace and forgiveness. The more we can do that, the better off we are.

I think the big challenges have been the influx of more and more coaches and consultants. During the pandemic, one of the things that happened was people were at home, people losing their jobs, and opportunities that opened up on social media, TikTok and Instagram in particular. People were taking the skills and knowledge that they had and making them available to people in that virtual space. That's a huge challenge. That wasn't something that I was prepared to do, though I have sort of leaned into that. So just an influx of a lot of people, and I guess we could call it competition to some degree. The huge opportunity has been AI coming along and sort of leveling the playing field for people to be able to take the knowledge that they have and make it available to people that you wouldn't ordinarily have opportunity to connect with. So I have a huge network of people from around the world, none of whom I would have probably met had it not been for the pandemic, and social media, and now AI that allows us to connect in ways that I wouldn't know those people were even there. I think that the competition is a challenge, but the tools that we have available, the resources that we have available, turn some of those challenges into real opportunities if you take the time to leverage them.

This is an easy one. I live this daily. Love, service, and giving. And it comes out of my faith. I'm here to love people, where they are, how they are, and to serve and give of my gifts, my talents, my treasures, and use those as a pathway to help other people see how they can be the best that they can be, and to do the same for others, to love, serve, and give. And if we all do that, it makes the world a better place.