Navigating Change: A Guide to Conscious Entrepreneurship (with Teresa McBratney)

Welcome to the Frugalpreneur podcast. I'm your host, Sarah St.John, and my guest today is a successful entrepreneur and spiritual business mentor with over 25 years of experience helping hundreds of entrepreneurs scale their business to seven figures, being authentically themselves. Welcome to the show. Teresa McBratney.

Thank you. So glad to be here.

Glad to have you. So I gave a little bit of background on you, but I'd love to hear more about how you got into this area of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship.

I started a business with my partner, my partner in business and my partner in life. And we had a very successful business, and we ran that for, like, over 20 years. So I have the entrepreneurship in my blood. It's just how I live.It's who I am. And there were a lot of changes that came in the marketplace, and it changed our business.We were in the housing industry, and we had kind of this perfect storm of the financial crisis. The credit market's freezing up, the housing bubble bursting, and on top of that, regulations. So it. It dramatically reduced our business.And so about 2015, I was like, I wanted to strike out on my own. And the thing with the previous business was that it never really was me. It wasn't who I was. It was his idea. He knew the market and he had the idea.And then I basically was able to bring out this success, us together, we had this wonderful success, but it wasn't mine.That's the genesis of my brand and of my business that I've been doing since about 2015 or so is just basing it on what is inside me and how I use my energy and how I express myself and how I want to expand. And it's really kind of hit a chord. I think a lot of people, I think we're trained as people or kids, as children.I think we're trained to sit at a desk and learn a certain way. And entrepreneurship, it disrupts all of that. It's like you have to go your own way. You have to know what. What's going to work for you.You have to feel into it, and you have to know yourself pretty well to do that. That's how I operate. That's what I do. I help other people do that, too.

So your business now is New Divine Human. Can you explain how that coincides with entrepreneurship? Because it's more about how your soul is a big part of your business and things like that.I'd love to hear more about that kind of thing.

Sure. The new Divine Human. We're going to need more individuation and I can explain that.But we're going to need to be more authentically ourselves and live more true to ourselves in order to move forward in the 21st century. There is a conscious evolution happening, and it's moving toward critical mass, meaning the 51% where people are awakened.It's going to require that we do business in a different way. It's going to require that we be fully ourselves, true to ourselves. And plus, that's the most efficient way to do it.You know, you're the frugalpreneur.You want the best way to do your business, then you base it on what you naturally have a huge resource in, and that is yourself, your heart, what you stand for, what you're about, and bringing that to the world and expanding your consciousness. That is the way of the future is an expanded consciousness. It's. We're all in it together. It's not me against you. We're in it together.And so what I do, it contributes to the whole. And that is the new divine human. That's the way of business. That's where we're going.Even though it may seem kind of messed up right now, but that's where we're going. We're going to a brighter future. Yes, but for everybody.

Can you explain more what you mean as far as, like, what we're headed towards and all of that?

My spiritual teachers, they taught about awakening. And awakening is a state of being where we are connected to ourselves. And in that, then we are connected to the whole.What happens is the more people that become connected to themselves, that aren't running on programming and conditioning, but they are truly in the moment that they do things that are aligned with themselves and they have fulfillment and they are connected to other people and the communities and the collective. As that happens, it expands consciousness, expands consciousness of humanity. And it also, it sets us free.It sets us free from any kind of trap or enslavement or. I don't want to get heavy in terms of like conspiracy or cabals or matrix or anything like that.We are exponentially expanding our consciousness as humanity. That is where we're going. But it's coming along really nicely. And it's more that humanity can focus on this beautiful thing that we call life.And my spiritual teachers taught about 2025 that we would be approaching critical mass.That 51% in human design and gene keys, which I study and use in my work, I find it's very supportive of this spiritual awakening and of people really bringing in a quality of consciousness that is important for them to live their life, do what they're here to do, you will achieve the greatest fulfillment. So, but human design and gene keys, they mark a time of 2027, which, you know, when you're looking at cosmic timelines, you know, it's 25 and 27.They're pretty close. So there's things that are lining up and then expansion and consciousness.An evolution of consciousness is underway and it's being ushered in and it's being ushered in through each one of us.

So it sounds like what you're saying is like, instead of with the conditioning and like the way we've always been taught or raised to believe about certain things and how to do certain things and, and how our life should look and all that kind of stuff, focus more on the internal self intuition, things like that, and what you feel and believe to be right and true and how you should approach business, life, whatever, versus what basically you've been taught, told, conditioned to believe, and how to. Even in business.

Absolutely. There's a new paradigm for these large systems. What are our large systems? The economy. You can see it in the creator economy.You can see that people are there doing their thing. They're expressing themselves, doing what's in them and what's true to them, what's authentically them.They're expressing that it's created a whole new economy. You yourself, and this beautiful podcast.This is an expression of you and what you do because you want to do it and you're good at it and you enjoy it and it benefits not just you, it benefits the whole. I just see that as the wave of the future. And it's already happening for sure.And a lot of people, I think that there's vestiges and old patterning and a lot of things that are going to. They're not going to support us anymore. So one system will go away or be reformed or evolve into something that serves us.And it could be business, education, government, banking, economics, all of it. And it's much more global, all of it. I mean, it's really. I think there's a huge evolution going on right now.We're kind of at a point where what is creating these systems is going under a fundamental evolution because people don't want to fit into a box. People aren't going to toe the line and do what they're told.

Yeah. And I feel like even.I feel like that just in the last, I don't know, five or 10 years, there's been a lot of shifts in terms of like, how work should be done, especially after 2020, there's a lot more remote work. You know, people used to think, oh, you have to go into an office from 9 to 5, but now a lot of people are working remote, flexible schedules.So there's that. But then also it used to be that you had to have a degree and of course you still do for certain things.But there's a lot of things that you can go to trade school now for or take courses or get a certification or whatever. And I think those things have always existed, but I feel like that's becoming more and more common.So those kind of shifts within business and education.

Absolutely, the shifts are happening and they're happening more rapidly and you can sense that, you can feel that there's shifts happening because people are, they're waking up and they want to live a full life. They want to live an extraordinary life. They want to have a beautiful human experience and that includes all everything.Their health, their wealth, their relationships, their loved ones. They want to feel whole and complete and they want to do work that is uplifting.They want a business that supports them as well as supports their family, supports their clients. They want a business that, that works for them.

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So for someone who maybe is resistant to change or maybe they're because I think a lot of people, they like the being in the box or they're just so used to it, maybe they don't like it, but they're used to it. And maybe they struggle with thinking or doing business outside the box and, and all of that.What advice or tips would you have for someone who is set in their ways and it's difficult for them to, to get outside that box?

I would recommend the key thing would be to tune into yourself and be really brutally honest with yourself about what you desire. And when you're able to tap into that desire for something more, something better, then that starts the ball rolling.Then the curiosity gets up and you say, oh well look, this person's doing this over here. I wonder what that would be like. And get the curiosity going. Tune into the desire for something better, for more freedom, more fulfillment.And of course that includes money, but it also includes responsibility.A lot of what happens is that we're conditioned to turn over our power to the school, the employer, and then we end up creating businesses where we're turning our power over to the business. Sometimes we're turning our power over to the spouse or to the, to things that are outside of us.So I would spend the time daydreaming, I would spend the time saying, what is it that I truly want? And you can do that through just noticing what kind of gives you a little lift, what gives you a little turn on in outside life.It's like, oh, wow, look at that piece of art. Or listen to that person. That really gets me going.So you understand what's making you tick and you understand what is meant for you through your desires. I would totally get in touch with desires. That is how I started my first business.I didn't start my first business with a strategy or a plan or how it was going to come out that way. I had the desire for a business with employees and all of the trappings, right? Because I did. That's 20 years ago or 25 years ago. That's where I was.It's like, wouldn't it be cool if I had a business and I had people working for me and it came about and we made a lot of money. We were making high six figures a year for 20 years. It was a good business. It was a very sweet business.The business model was a reoccurring income business model. And so we didn't spend a lot of time chasing business or anything like that.It was coming to us and our products and our services were out there on our behalf. And most all of the sales and everything was all incoming. And it grew year after year for 15 years.

What was the business was that their.

Real estate one yes, it was. Yeah.

So what was the recurring aspect of it?

It was a subscription based model.

Okay.

So we had large real estate, mortgage and title teams. We did their marketing. We wrote and distributed housing economic newsletters on their behalf that they personalized.It wasn't exactly pre email, but it was pre Facebook, I'll tell you that much. So we ended up like building a proprietary email marketing platform to deliver our products.We had the intellectual property that we licensed to these sales teams and it became a part of their routine and they became, it was just how they, they did business. And we helped them develop their marketing relationship model of being there in their inbox when the transactions would come up.It was really a great thing. It was very innovative. My partner was very good at that.And I did the economic analysis for the newsletters every week and we distributed on the email platform. And until technology changed, our lifetime customer was like easily 7 to 10 years.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. When I finally closed the business, I had one client that had been with us from the beginning, 20 some years.That first client, I mean, that's just how it, how it went. It was wonderful and it was reliable. And we hustled, we worked in restaurant and catering and stuff like that to get that business going.And then the same thing, when you're an entrepreneur and you have it in your blood, of course you're going to bootstrap. And I mean, that's just the way you do it. You find ways to get to where you want to go without spending money because you're not making money.So my recommendation would be to come into an understanding of your desires. But I would also, and I've always done this all my life, set up an income stream that supports you, that doesn't take all of your energy.So when I was a student, I would work nights in a restaurant and I would study and do what I wanted during the day.I had my own schedule during the day, and then I would work at night, and then I would go out after shift and play a little, play pool or darts or something, you know.

Yeah.

So I'm curious when considering that the business was doing so well, making so much money, how or why you decided to close it?

Well, we actually took quite a hit to our income following the financial Crisis, which was 2008, and we were able to maintain six figures in that business through about 2015 or so. And it was like, okay, the writing's on the wall, I'm going to have to do something else.And my partner was having health issues and it was like the business was not growing, Things changed radically in the market, regulations, the market changed and technology moved on. If you don't have the money to invest in technology, technology is going to move on. So I maintained it for a while.I maintained it to be able to turn it into something, turn not it, but to create something new, to create a new business. And so I started in 2015 of like, okay, what do I want to do? And I knew how to do the business stuff.I knew how to start a business from scratch, create something from nothing, bootstrap it. I know how to do all of that. And so what I was missing, the piece that I was missing was what do I want to do? What is going to be like my stamp.I had worked with a partner for all those years. So you talk about conditioning. You know, he was kind of the inspiration and I was kind of the get it done.I had to find what it was that I wanted to do and what I could help people do the best.So it was a deep dive for me and I had the time to really explore that self discovery and what are my gifts and what is my purpose and what am I here to do? All the deep life questions. And I had a lot of luxury of time to look into that and to discover myself.Now I'm able to bring that to people in a much more condensed time frame of where they can just go on that journey of self discovery and look at what are their gifts, what are they here to do and how. I mean, they could be in a business right now that more than likely they're already using their gifts.And it's a matter of the perspective of saying, this is how I'm using my gifts right now, so where do I want to go? That's how it was. I was definitely, we were on purpose and using our gifts without even knowing it.In a lot of ways we were doing what was natural to us and our energies together just worked. And I was able to.He had never had success before he met me and we got together later in life and he had tried many different things, but us together, I was able to help draw that success out of him. And so that's my intention with my business now is it's not really about me.It's about drawing that success out of other people and having them tune into who they are, their gifts, their purpose, their true desires, not the desires of others or outside family or husbands or wives or a lot of times working on stuff. And I know I did, I did for years and years. It was all about making something happen, facilitating someone else's dreams.

I think your story about seeing the writing on the wall with the financial collapse and how it impacted real estate and all that, I think that's an important lesson in recognizing and being able to pivot. I had an online travel agency that was doing pretty well, but then 2020 happened. All my bookings got canceled.And the thing is, if you're a travel agent, you don't actually get paid anything until the person completes their travel. So I had done all this work to, like, get all these bookings and all this stuff, but, like, then everyone's travel got canceled.So then, anyway, so I decided I had already started a podcast a year prior to 2020 and decided, okay, I'm gonna close the agency and just start doing the podcast thing. Now, granted, the travel industry is obviously. I mean, I don't know if it's back to what it was before 2020.I don't know that, but I know it's obviously better than it was. But I wasn't sure. How long is this going to take to recover? I'm not going to be able to get any bookings for months at least.And so I think it was the right decision to make given the situation. So I think that's a good thing to quality to have as an entrepreneur, to know when to hold them and know when to fold them, I guess. I don't know.

Yes, absolutely, Absolutely. But you can see the disruption in these large systems in your experience.And yes, as an entrepreneur, I think that knowing when to cut your losses and always follow what's working for you, always follow that. That easy path of like, oh, this is kind of. Because trying to force something, it's just not going to work. That's just not.And especially when there's outside forces that you have absolutely no control over. You have to go, okay, what's working for me? Well, you're. You have.You had already put a seed together of something that he wanted to do of like, hey, this is cool. I'll just do this. We'll see what happens. And now, I mean, look at the.Look at the trajectory and the success and everything that you have from this, because you, you took a chance. So, yeah, entrepreneurship, you gotta. You gotta take a risk. But take a calculated risk.

Yeah, exactly.

Take a calculated risk and know what's working and go where you think you might be interested. Or let's check this out. You don't want to start with, like, you don't want to start with a strategy. You want to implement strategies after the fact.And I can get very, very strategic. But you have to find what works first. And when you find what works, it's like, okay, how can I scale it?How can I do it more efficiently so that my profits go up? How can I get more people on board or whatever it is that you're wanting to do?How can I duplicate myself to do the work instead of working on the business? Then I can work instead of working in the business, working on the business. Those types of things that happens after you.You strike the goal, after you have something that's working that the market's showing a demand for.

Mm. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, I appreciate your time today and coming on and sharing some insight and where is the best place for people to reach you?I know before we started, you had mentioned email.

Yes.If anybody is interested in more information and finding out about more about themselves or doing a deep dive, especially if they have the time for a big spiritual journey, you want to go straight, straight to it, just email me. It's my first name. Teresa T E r e s aew divine human.com for people that want to build a big beautiful brand and business based on their energy.That's what I'm here for.

Yeah. And you have the brand aura, which I'll have the link in the show notes too. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.