Episode 235: How I Align My Business to My Human Design
Episode 234 was on how to align your work and business to your Human Design. In this episode, I’m lifting the curtain, taking you behind the scenes of how I align my business to my Human Design.
Reflecting on the same six areas of business:
What to do - Incarnation Cross, G-Center
Business Design – Aura, Pressure Centers, Sacral Center
Sales – Strategy
Copywriting – Throat Center
Marketing – Throat, Ajna, Head centers, Cognition, and Motivation Variables
Decision-Making – Authority
I share what my specific design is for each area and how I use it to welcome alignment to work and life.
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 234: How to Align Your Business to Your Human Design
Episode 215: Finding My Voice: Vulnerability in Communications
Episode 190: Subconscious Capacity & Listening to My Splenic Authority
Connect with Naomi:
Share the Episode:
“Based on the active gates in my Throat Center, I lead and influence when I express my voice, sharing my learnings and experiments from personal experiences.”
Read the Transcript:
Hello there, my friend and welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast. I'm your host Naomi Nakamura, and today is a follow-up of last week's episode, Episode 234.
Like what I did with the episodes on Human Design Variables, where I did an episode explaining what Variable was, then followed it up with insights and reflections on the variables from my Human Design, that's the approach I'm taking with this episode.
Episode 234 was on how to align your business to human design, so in this episode, I'm sharing how I'm aligning my business with my design.
Before I proceed, I want to give the same disclaimer that I did in the last episode - I'm not a business coach, and I don't aspire to be one, but I do think I have some things to share on this topic, especially because our work directly our mental, emotional, and physical health and we care for ourselves every single day.
What I'm sharing today is in the context of my own business, and my coaching practice, it applies to everyone, whether you’re a business owner or not.
In Episode 234, I looked at six areas of business, and how to apply it to your Human Design. Now, I’m going to take you through those same six areas and how I’m aligning to mine.
- The first area, is business alignment - what I do
As my business started as and continues to be a side hustle, I really started with a clean slate – all options were on the table, and I chose health coaching because my own health journey has been profoundly insightful for me, and health has been a passion of mine for almost 20 years – long before I ever considered becoming a health coach. This really aligns with my 1 / 3 Profile lines.
But one area I recommended looking to is your incarnation cross, which is your life theme.
Some people are unhappy with their jobs because of who they work with – their managers, colleagues, and clients. But others are genuinely unhappy with the actual work that they’re doing.
If that’s the case, is what you’re doing in alignment with your incarnation cross, which I’ll sometimes refer to say “IC?”
So, my incarnation cross is the Right-Angle Cross of Rulership which is using well-intentioned leadership and influential energy; knowing how to message things for the good of the community.
So, questions to ask myself are:
Am I leading from a place of service? Am I marketing and selling what I do for the benefit of others and the greater good? Is my message coming from a place of genuinely wanting to help and be of service to others? Am I stepping into a leadership role by guiding and directing others?
This is what the Right-Angle Cross of Rulership is about.
And it’s been a hard one for me to process because I’ve never seen myself as a leader in the traditional sense, of how we perceive leaders to be. We tend to look at the loudest, most popular, and charismatic as “leaders,” and I’ve never seen myself as any of those things.
I also never saw myself as a marketer or a seller. Still, now, since learning my Human Design, I can see some conditioning in the stories that I’ve created about myself based on how selling and marketing are traditionally taught and perceived.
Traditional sales and marketing are rooted in initiating and responding energy, whereas as a Projector, my strategy is to wait to be recognized, to wait for the invitation.
So, no wonder I believed I’m no good at marketing or selling because I’ve been taught to do it using Manifestor, Generator, and Manifesting Generator energy, which is totally inappropriate for me as a Projector.
But what those stories were about was me not recognizing or appreciating my gifts and what I bring to the table, especially knowing how to message things. And that's what marketing is - knowing how to message things. And contrary to common belief, marketing and selling don't have to be deceptive or slimy. They aren’t bad things; it comes down to the energy with which you do it.
So, learning about my Incarnation Cross was a bit of a surprise because it’s my life theme, but I never saw myself that way.
I’ve been doing lot of personal work around this. How? I’m constantly asking myself, with every Instagram story, every post, every podcast episode, and every email sent to my community:
What’s my intention behind this? What am I doing here? What’s my message and is it coming from an altruistic place of genuinely wanting to help others? Am I sharing something that my community wants to or needs to hear? How will it benefit them? Is it coming from a place of service energetically? Am I sharing from a place of service?
The next thing I'm working on is, what is my message, my voice with my services that I’m marketing and selling?
And the third is tapping into my creativity about how I message things. How do I creatively, market and sell myself and my services?
It's about giving myself the permission and space to experiment with my strategy of waiting for invitations, but also going to creative places that I've never explored before.
If you notice, in talking about how things are “traditionally” done, I haven’t used the word “normal” because what is “normal?”
I could say, “I don't sell or market myself “normally,” in the normal way.” But instead, I'm using words like “traditionally” or “commonly” done. It doesn't mean it's the right way, and it doesn't mean it's the right way for everyone.
It may be the right way for Manifesting Generators and Generators. Collectively they make up 70% of the population, so much of our world, energetically, has been shaped to support them. But as someone who is neither one of those things, I need to think differently. I need to approach things, not in the traditional sense, but in a way that's more appropriate for me and my Human Design.
Another part of your design that I recommended looking at when deciding what to do is the G-Center. It’s the center of love, identity, and direction in life.
I have an undefined G-Center, which means that my identity is adaptable depending on who I’m with, and I find direction through exploration. This really aligns with my 1 / 3 Profile Lines of diving in and learning everything I can about what interests me and about experimenting and learning through trial and error.
Some people say that those with undefined G-Centers fit in everywhere, and nowhere. Because we're so adaptable in who we are and where we’re going, we have a need for freedom and independence, so it’s also important to be around people who are supportive of this need for flexibility, adaptability, and freedom; to be able to explore the expansiveness that comes so naturally to us as undefined G-Centers.
Personally, I’ve learned to become selective about who I let into my inner circle, both people in real life and people online. It’s something I’ve really become selective about - who I allow myself to be influenced by who I surround myself with, who I choose to follow.
So, the question is, does the work that I do align to the theme of my Incarnation Cross, and allow for the expansiveness of an undefined G-Center?
As I’ve experimented with different things, learning through trial and error, tweaking, and changing things along the way, I think it’s evolved too.
- Business Design
The second thing is looking to your Type and then pressure centers - the Root and Head centers, and the Sacral Center, the center of lifeforce energy.
Why? Because how you design, i.e., how you structure your business is going to determine how you show up for it every day. How are you going to deliver on your promise – on your products and services?
We know that Projectors have undefined Sacral Centers making us non-Sacral beings. So, work-life balance and rest are of the utmost importance for Projectors.
So, when it comes to business design, what’s the best way to design my business to support my essential need for work-life balance so that I can manage my energy in a way that doesn't deplete me, having inconsistent Sacral energy?
In the early days of my business, I started by doing a lot of group coaching programs, which is a one-to-many business model, something I talked about in Episode 234 - one of me working with many - a group.
The thing about group coaching is that traditionally, do a launch to promote the program and sell seats in the group.
You have an open and close cart period and during that time you're actively promoting your program by sending emails to your community and promoting on social media. You may schedule blog posts or podcast episodes with topics aligned to your program during your launch period.
I’ve always found the launch process to be scary and stressful. It requires loads of energy. I’ve heard others share that during their launches tell their family to leave them alone, their homes become chaotic messes, and they don’t eat or sleep much. I haven’t done a launch to that extreme but generally, everything about this process stresses me out.
In my opinion, launches like that, traditional launches, aren’t aligned to the Projector Strategy of Waiting for the Invitation. At least they aren’t for me. The pressure is too much – and remember, I have undefined pressure centers (Head and Root). I’ve found myself falling under the pressure of overthinking everything, and overthinking is not in alignment with any part of Human Design, no matter what your design is. In hindsight, subconsciously, I think I did a lot of self-sabotaging of my launches just to be able to make the pressure go away.
I also believed that to support the pipeline to my group coaching programs, I had to be in constant creation mode. Blog posts, podcast episodes, and social media content led to a lead magnet, which then led to email content for an open/closed cart launch, and then the content for in-between launches.
And at the time I wasn't just focusing on Instagram and Pinterest was also trying to do Twitter and Facebook. Each of those platforms have different audiences, and content dimensions, and I was trying to create four or five different versions of the same content to post on all of the different platforms. All trying to consistently email my community, create lead magnets, write programs, etc., etc., etc.
It was a lot. In fact, some of my non-creator friends even commented to me, “Gosh, you push out so much content, how do you do it?” By working at my full-time job, then spending another 5-6 hours in the evenings working on my side hustles (because I have more than one).
It got to the point that most of my time was spent creating content than coaching. I remember having a moment where I thought to myself, “This is not why I got into doing this work, to begin with.”
I genuinely love coaching, helping, and supporting people, essentially, my Incarnation Cross, but my business design wasn't set up to support being in constant creation, launching, and delivering mode.
Can I tell you that I have created about 8-10 complete ready-to-launch programs that I’ve never launched because just thinking about the whole process gives me stress, fatigue, and anxiety?
This went on for a couple of years, but one year, I went to Lake Tahoe with my family at the end of the summer and for the first time I realized just how desperately I needed a break. I’d been operating in overdrive for far too long and was on the verge of burnout when there I was, coaching people on how to recover and avoid burnout?
Unconsciously, before I’d heard about Human Design, I started shifting my business design away from group coaching. If you’ve been here for a while, you may have noticed that I haven't launched any group coaching programs in several years. It was a consciously made decision to focus on one-on-one coaching for the sake of preserving my energy and my sanity!
Now I only do one-on-one work – coaching, and Human Design readings, although I'm thinking about offering relationship reading soon. Other than one-on-one work, I also offer self-paced programs, but this is all very intentional as I’ve designed my business to align with my energy.
The return on investment in group coaching hasn’t equated to the amount of energy I was putting into the marketing, launching, and coaching.
This is not to say I am not going to offer group coaching in the future. I'm kind of excited to do that when the time is right, but when I do, I'm going to go about it in a more mindful way. So don’t expect to see “traditional” launches around here. I’m going to “launch” in a way that supports my energy because if I don't take care of my energetic needs, how can I expect to be able to guide and support and coach others in theirs?
This has all brought about a mindful shift in managing my expectations of myself and with it a release of the unnecessary Head and Root pressure that I was putting on myself.
- Sales
The third area is Sales. I talked about how, when it comes to Sales, it is all about following your Strategy - how you make things happen without resistance.
As a Projector, my strategy is to wait for invitations.
When I did launches for my group coaching programs, I can tell you, that a lot of those launches were failed launches meaning that they did not meet the return on investment because energetically it wasn’t waiting for invitations. Energetically it was initiating and trying to push things and that is so not the energy of Projectors.
Transparently, I'm still trying to figure out what waiting for the invitation looks like for me when it comes to Sales. Sometimes it means making a direct ask – a direct call-to-action – and sometimes it doesn’t. I lean into my instinctual Splenic Authority to tell me when it’s appropriate to do so and when it is not.
But what I am very consistent with is sharing what I do by consistently showing up here on the podcast, bringing you new episodes every Tuesday. I’ve gotten better at being consistent about emailing my community each week.
And believe it or not, I’m actually very consistent on social media, although those of you who follow me on Instagram may be raising your eyebrows at that, Instagram isn’t the only social media platform that I use. I have someone who manages my Pinterest for me so the activity there is very consistent.
I’m more or less consistent on Instagram but I have other thoughts and feelings about Instagram, so I rely on my Splenic Authority as to what and when to share there. I find that Instagram takes up a lot of my energy so in managing my energy if something must go, it’s the first thing on the list.
I'd much rather prioritize being consistent here on the podcast first, than with emailing my community because those people, by nature of the content, are more engaged because it takes time and energy to listen to podcast episodes and read show notes, and to join my community by subscribing to my emails and then open the email and reading it every week.
Whereas on Instagram, where we have zero control over the algorithm - my personal opinion right now is that Instagram is a hot mess. As someone who works in tech and lives in Silicon Valley, I find myself continually disappointed in the lack of innovation that’s currently coming out of the app and the focus on copying someone else (TikTok).
But hey, I have zero control over that or the Instagram algorithm. According to the analytics on my Instagram app, I have close to 2K followers but not even a tenth of those people see my content.
So again, in managing my energy as I’m running my business, Instagram is at the bottom of my list. My podcast will always be at the top, with my email community because this is where I get the most return on investment of my time and my energy.
Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent, but bringing it back to Human Design Strategy and Sales, this is how I’m experimenting, learning, and evolving in aligning it to my design and waiting for the invitation.
It's a hard thing to do given how we’ve been conditioned to approach sales, which is why I devoted an entire episode on Projector Invitations in Episode 225. But again, it's something I'm still experimenting with, still learning, and evolving.
- Copywriting
Our words, our copy is our voice, it’s our communication of who we are, what we do, what value we provide, and what’s our point of view out to the world. It’s everything.
When it comes to communication, I look to my Throat Center. My Throat Center is defined which meant I’m meant to express my truth.
What other centers do the gates in your Throat connect to indicate how you're meant to express your voice, your truth?
My Throat Center connects to my Spleen center and it’s the only channel in my entire design. So, with the Spleen center being the center of primal instincts, I’m meant to express myself spontaneously, allowing my instincts to guide me in how and when to express myself, similarly to what I just mentioned when talking about Sales.
So, it comes to writing copy, my best writing comes to me when it’s unplanned. I get a hit of inspiration, open my voice memo app and start speaking. Or, when I’m speaking with or being interviewed by someone, whatever comes out of my mouth becomes some of my best copy.
Both situations are so much more effective for me than me opening up a blank Google document and trying to write copy that way.
In fact, this is how I plan solo podcast episodes like this one. I write an outline, a bulleted list of all points I want to make on the topic. Then, I open Otter, my voice memo app, and just start talking. I take the recording, clean up grammatical things, then record the episode.
I use the same process with my website copy, show notes for each podcast episode, emails, and social media copy.
Going beyond a defined Throat center, I also look at what the active gates are in my Throat center – and you can do this whether you have a defined or undefined Throat center.
I have four active gates in my Throat center.
I have Gate 16 which is the gate of expression of skills and talents which is about sharing learnings from experiments, and which also goes back to aligning with my 1 / 3 Profile lines.
I have Gate 31 which is the gate of influencing future direction which is leadership.
I have Gate 35 which is the gate of speaking about personal experiences.
And I have Gate 45 which is the gate of directing others.
So, based on all of this, I lead and influence when I express my voice, sharing my learnings and experiments from personal experiences.
Remember my Incarnation Cross that I shared at the top of the episode? Can you see the synchronicities there? Because so much of my Incarnation Cross is about knowing how to message things.
I shared my recent experiences with this in Episodes 214 and 215 when I talked about struggling with my voice and the tone and messaging of how to best express myself. Looking at the active gates in my Throat center provided a lot of clarity around this.
So, when it comes to copywriting, I looked at my Throat center and the active gates in my Throat center and active try to align use in the words that I use to express myself.
- Marketing
Marketing goes hand-in-hand with copywriting and expressing ourselves - the Throat center and its active gates.
I also look to my Head and Ajna centers, and my Cognition and Motivation Variables.
I have an undefined Head center. This means that I have ideas and inspiration from external sources – art, music, social media, and other people.
To hone in on this, I use a practice that I learned years ago, way before Human Design came into my life called, “Decon Recon” – deconstruct and reconstruct.
I gather a bunch of sources that inspire me, take ideas or themes that I like from each one, and using it as inspiration, build something that’s mine; externally inspired but still unique to me.
My website is a great example of this. I built it myself, but it’s also based on two templates from Go Live HQ. I love their templates and have purchased multiple templates from them that I’ve used over the years. They have two templates where I love different things from each one, so I deconstructed and it and reconstructed them to combine those things together into my own unique website.
Another way that I work with an Undefined Head center when it comes to marketing is to use templates, for example, social media templates on Canva or from Creative Market.
Blank pages are overwhelming to me, but having a template, a jumping point, if you will, is how I’m able to start my creative process, exploring and experimenting with what works and what doesn’t work – for me.
Now I do need to be careful of feeling overwhelmed or getting distracted going rabbit holes as I search for external inspiration.
I also have an undefined Ajna Center. The Ajna directly aligns with the Head Center, and both are above the Throat Center. In fact, the Head Center can’t be defined unless the Ajna Center is defined because it’s the only center that’s possible for it to connect to.
Having an undefined Ajna means that I’m a flexible thinker and see perspectives from multiple points of view. So, it’s important for me to use discernment (and follow my Splenic Authority) in knowing what’s right for me and what’s not.
My undefined Ajna allows me to see people in different ways that they see themselves, and in different ways that maybe the world sees them. I'm able to offer different, unique, innovative perspectives that perhaps they haven’t considered, just because I'm able to see different sides of things.
When it comes to Cognition, Cognition is a Variable that’s our strongest sense and my Cognition is Outer Vision so what I “see” is my strongest sense.
It’s no wonder that I’m very inspired by aesthetics - things that are visually pleasing to me. And so, I curate my Instagram feed with things that I find aesthetically pleasing – inspired externally, remember? Also, remember going back to my Undefined G-Center, and how I allow myself to be influenced?
So, how things look is very important to me and how my marketing “looks” is also very important to me – my website, the layout of my emails, and the graphics, and photos I use on social media. I take into consideration all these parts of my Human Design to know how to message things – which goes back to my Incarnation Cross and how I express myself.
All of these things are in my mind as I strategize and plan my Marketing. The interesting thing here is that these are things that I was already doing prior to learning about Human Design – Human Design just put it all into context for me and helped me understand why these things matter, why I do the things that I was already doing. It’s validating and self-affirming.
If this is the first time that you’ve considered how to align your business to your Human Design, I know how overwhelming it can feel. I’ve been thinking, observing, and experimenting with all of this for a few years now. But I hope it gives you an idea of how and where to get started.
To round out Marketing, I want to talk about Motivation, which is another Variable, because so much about marketing these days involves social media. I want to connect marketing and social media to your Motivation because it provides me a different perspective on how I approach social media.
Those who have a Desire Motivation (which I don’t) are motivated by being a leader. And to be a leader, they need to have followers. This is what motivates them - to lead people that follow them. So, when it comes to social media, the size of their audience, i.e., their number of followers is a motivation for them.
I don’t have a Desire Motivation, rather, I have a Need Motivation. So, the number of followers isn’t something that’s important to me. This is not to say I don’t appreciate those who are following me, what I am saying is that audience size doesn’t motivate me.
So, let’s for a quick second go back to Business Design. In a one-to-many business model, the size of your followers – your community matters because if it’s not large, there’s not going to a lot of people who are going to buy, and it’ll be hard to operate a one-to-many model.
But having a Need Motivation, for me, it’s more important for me to have an engaged community rather than the size of my community.
I know people who have hundreds of thousands of followers, yet if you look at their numbers, their engagement appears to be like one percent. And I say “appears” because engagement is more than Likes and Comments. It also Saves, Shares, and DMs.
But can you see why this is important to take note of when it comes to Marketing?
So, when it comes to my business, what does it mean to have a Need Motivation?
It means that I need to learn how to connect with myself to connect with others. Human Design and health coaching are personal and deep in nature so being able to connect with others is important. It’s also the correct Motivation for me.
I’m not here to get caught up in the “normal” (there’s that word again) way of doing things, I’m here to do things the right way – for me.
I'm motivated by doing what needs to be done to be able to connect with others authentically. And I do that by sharing my experiences which gives others the opportunity to look within themselves and explore those things for themselves as well.
A huge part of what motivated me to do this podcast is to tell real-people stories, my own included. Isn’t it alignment with the active gates in my Throat center?
It’s why I’m doing this very episode of pulling back the curtain and sharing my journey of how I’ve aligned, and how parts of it were already aligned, with my business in hopes that it can give you some ideas on how you can align your business to your design.
My Need Motivation prompts me to do what's necessary so I can be a close, trusted resource for others. which is why I’m not motivated by the size of my community or how many followers I have – it’s about intimate connections and an engaged community.
Saying this out loud, it makes sense that the one-to-one business model appeals to me so much more than a one-to-many model.
The shadow of the Need Motivation is fearing things before they even happen. And I’ve done this a lot. Having several launches that didn’t pan out how I wanted them to have made me fearful of launches (in addition to all the other reasons I’ve already shared). A huge part of why I don’t like launching is what if it’s another disappointment?
Or I don't want to post a photo or graphic on Instagram because the last one I posted got two likes. But by not posting, I'm also not allowing the message of that post to be shared. Posting for the sake of getting more followers is not the correct Motivation for me, and while I may see results, it may not be the results I want.
Can you see how your Motivation can impact your Marketing?
- Decision-Making
The sixth and final area of aligning my business to my Human Design is following my Splenic Authority. Following your Authority is important, especially in business because as a business owner, you’re making decisions all the time.
Having a Splenic Authority is having an instinctual knowing that can't always be explained which means it has a role in all of it, really, my business design, sales, copywriting and messaging, marketing, all of it.
When I find myself overthinking or questioning myself or trying to do things like someone else – that’s a reminder to me that I’m not following my Splenic Authority.
I have episodes planned for this show through to the end of the year, but while I have a list of topics, they aren't all assigned dates because I lean into my Splenic instincts as to whether now is the time to talk about this topic or now is not the time for it.
There’s no rhyme or reason, I just follow my instincts. I also don't outline and flush out the specifics of what I'm going to talk about in every episode until the week I record it. Of course, when I get an idea of a topic, I write down the talking points that first came to mind, but when it comes time to plan the episode, sometimes those talking points stay and make it into the episode and sometimes the episode ends up taking a totally different direction than what I originally thought.
Another way that I find myself following my Splenic Authority regularly is – you know I mentioned I only flush out episodes the week I record them? I’ve tried things like batch recording episodes, or even planning all my social media out for a month, but you know what? Those things don’t work for me, and I beat myself up about it for a long time.
I don't know how many weekends I had a Google doc open in front of me with the goal of writing 10 social media posts – two weeks’ worth of content and at the end of the weekend, I maybe wrote one post. The knowing just wasn’t there.
For me, it must happen in the moment, it must be spontaneous. And you know what? My most engaged social media posts, and by engage I don't mean likes, I mean, likes, comments, saves, shares, and DMs are on posts that came about spontaneously, in the moment.
Sometimes I’m not able to post right away, but I do whip out my phone and open the Notes app and wrote everything down that’s on my mind. And then later in the day or the next, I spend a little more time working on how to visually present the thought, but the point I want to share is that my most engaged posts are ones that have come about spontaneously. So that's aligning my Splenic Authority with my business.
So, there you have it - the six areas I talked about in Episode 234 on “How to Align Your Business to Your Human Design, and this is how I've aligned my business to my Human Design.
I hope by sharing this I’ve given you some ideas of how you can start to align, not just your business, but your life too. You don’t have to be a business owner, you can also align your work to your Human Design even if you work for someone else - how you best communicate and message things, how you market yourself because marketing yourself is important whether you work for yourself or someone else.
Use it in your work, personal life, and how you align decision-making – Human Design extends beyond your work and business, beyond your health, to all parts of your life.
So, I leave you with some things to think about and consider from your design and how to align and integrate it into your life.
If you have any questions, I'm always happy to answer them! Listener questions are like templates which as you know are great for my Undefined Head center – they’re jumping points to plan new episodes from!
Don’t forget, to celebrate the 5th year of this podcast, I have a special code for you to use to get 20% off a Human Design Reading or Functional Nutrition Assessment with me. Use the code: 5THPODCAST20
Which is valid for 90 days from today, expiring on Wednesday, November 9th.
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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