We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heather Whelpley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Heather, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I recently found a business plan I wrote before I launched my business six years ago and discovered that ONE LINE of the multi-page document fits what I do now. That line said that I wanted to speak and train and work primarily with women. At a high level, that is what I do. At the time of launching my business, however, I thought I wanted to primarily be a coach and run an online business, with some speaking on the side. I also planned to write a book on getting the most out of development experiences at work. I even interviewed over 25 people for that book!

It took getting space from my corporate job and actually running my business to discover what my business was! I realized the book I was planning to write wasn’t my book and scrapped the whole thing. I began to dig deeper into both my own experiences and the challenges I saw in the women I was coaching and realized we were all handed rules that caused us to overachieve and feel like we had to be productive and successful all the time – and I realized we could break those rules to find greater joy, freedom, and impact.

THIS got me excited. I wrote my first book, the award-winning An Overachiever’s Guide To Breaking The Rules, after diving deep into my own journey of letting go of perfectionism and overachieving and started speaking on imposter syndrome and creating your own rules for success for companies and women’s leadership conferences. I saw immediately how the rules and the weight of “should” and “supposed-to” resonated with audiences. Most people had never questioned these rules. Once they did question, they could break them WITH purpose — and release a lot of guilt, exhaustion, and perfectionism in the process.

My second book, Grounded Wildness (which will be released in October 2023), goes beyond the rules of overachieving and productivity and captures ALL the rules we’re handed, particularly as women, that cause us to feel like we need to prove ourselves through likability, success, desirability, and a million other forms of being “good.” These rules tell us to question our voices, change our bodies, always do more, and listen to others’ voices above our own. Grounded Wildness is what happens when you break the rules that have broken you – and the inevitable freedom that follows.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a speaker and award-winning author that works with women to break free from perfect and create their own rules for life so they can rediscover their voice, take up space, and unleash their authentic leadership – and life. I’m on a mission to build a revolution of women breaking the rules WITH purpose, creating change, and living in joy and freedom. I do this through speaking to corporate audiences and women’s leadership events on imposter syndrome, creating your own rules for success, discovering your authentic voice, and becoming a grounded and wild leader as well as through my books, An Overachiever’s Guide To Breaking The Rules: How To Let Go Of Perfect and Live Your Truth and the upcoming Grounded Wildness: Break Free From Performing Your Life and Start Living It (available October 2023).

Prior to starting my business, I worked in a wide variety of human resources, leadership development, and change management roles at large multinational companies for ten years. I’ve worked in both corporate offices and manufacturing facilities across the US, Latin America, and Australia. One of my last corporate roles focused specifically on women’s leadership development, which unleashed a passion for working with women that continues today. I bring all these experiences as well as my personal journey into my work, which allows me to connect with a wide variety of audiences on a deeply human level and share stories and tools that apply to the workplace and to our lives as a whole.

Many years ago, I spoke at a company and one person said after the presentation, “Today we go to show up and be human.” It’s one of the best compliments I’ve ever received. I seek everyday to create an environment where we get to be fully human and remember our grounded and wild selves.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Running a business has been a series of pivots! Smaller ones happen on a continual basis, but many larger ones were needed early in my business. When I started, I thought I wanted to run an online coaching business. I did EVERYTHING you were “supposed-to” do for that goal – I had a Facebook group, posted to Instagram, hired a digital marketer and ran Facebook ads, hosted a challenge, had a million freebies, wrote all the emails with all the marketing language, and launched an online course. It all failed. Multiple times over. I invested thousands of dollars and even more time and energy with zero results.

Here’s the interesting thing…I hated doing all the things I was “supposed-to” do. So although it was a huge disappointment at the time and caused a massive amount of stress, I have nothing but gratitude for these failures. The final one finally made me stop and question how I wanted to run my business – and then I started following my own rules. I focused on speaking, which came to me easily and got great results, both for audiences and financially. I started marketing from a place of authenticity and human connection. I published my first book, which came straight out of my soul. It was a pivot from following the rules of others to following my own intuition.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Through school, my corporate career, and into my business, my answer to any problem was to push harder and do more. As you might imagine, this led to stress, anxiety, and sometimes actual illness. It came to a head when I found myself having a breakdown a few days before Christmas as I was trying to get everything read for a launch in the new year and wondered what in heaven’s name I was doing. WHY was I doing all of this? I was even my own boss now! No one was forcing me to push harder – and yet I kept pushing.

As soon as I stopped to ask myself the question, I had an answer: I was doing it to prove myself. I was proving my worth through achievement, success, and productivity. Those rules didn’t come from me — they come from hustle culture and all the messages that tell us to push harder and do more. Once I got to root cause of these rules, I could unravel them for myself and choose a different approach to running my business – and to running my life.

I realized the answer to most problems is actually to slow down and do less. I’m more creative when I have space, I connect with people more easily and authentically, and I make decisions from a place of calm, as opposed to a place of fear and anxiety. Although I still feel the pressure to do more occasionally, I know now that is a signal to pause, take a breath (or maybe go for a hike!), and reconnect to my truth. This deeper truth knows that it’s only the rules telling me to do more – and that I can make a different decision.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heatherwhelpley.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heather.whelpley/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherwhelpley/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@heatherwhelpley865

Image Credits
Jennifer MacNiven