We recently connected with Alex Mufson and have shared our conversation below.

Alex, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I knew I was a CEO at three years old, when I had an imaginary…business! I had the last remaining Wooly Mammoth down in South America and I even had an assistant named Michelle. I would become enraged when my mother wouldn’t take me to O’Hare Airport to catch my planes– she really didn’t understand the responsibility of a CEO! All that to say, I’ve always known business ownership was for me. I did do a stint as a W2 employee at one point because after receiving a Masters in Social Work I was required to have supervised clinical hours for a state license, so I had to get a “real job” after being self-employed for my whole career. Experiencing both, I can say that there is perceived security in a W2 job. You get a regular paycheck, and though there is often not a lot of upward mobility, it feels less stressful on the surface. However, what I knew to be true was that whoever owned that company was certainly not letting me in on the ins and outs of what was going on in the business (and since I had always run my own business, I knew there were definitely things going on behind the scenes!), and so even though there was perceived stability, you never truly know if your job is secure. For me, being in control of my own destiny is more comforting than any paycheck, and as soon as I was licensed I got to work getting back to entrepreneurship.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a chronic entrepreneur, and always have more than one project going, but every business aligns with my personal mission, which is to redirect the flow of capital from those who do harm with it to those who heal with it. To that end, my passion project is my company Rêv, where we work at the intersection of business, life and Human Design. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and if you had asked me five years ago if I would develop expertise in something called “Human Design” I would have looked at you with a healthy dose of skepticism, for sure! But Human Design not only changed my life, but also helped me scale a business (Aspen Growth Coaching, a mental health company) from zero to seven figures in under three years! At Rêv, I mentor other entrepreneurs to do the same, and brought a bunch of the best values-led experts I know in finance, HR, health and more together to help people develop businesses that center radical humanity, not profits.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In my first career I was an animal behaviorist. I worked with horses and LOVED my life and job. However, what I didn’t realize at the time was I had built a business that truly required my physical energy–I served it, not the other way around. When I was in my mid-twenties I began having mysterious brain hemorrhages. I was hospitalized in major medical centers around the country and no one could tell me what was going on. At the time, this was devastating on a number of levels, but I realized my business would not operate if I was no longer able to over function of it. I was forced to pivot completely to take care of my body, and out of necessity, I turned my entire life upside down. When I returned to entrepreneurship I took a completely different approach, building a business that served me and everyone in it, rather than us just belonging to the company.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

To found the company that went from zero to seven figures in under three years, I took a $10,000 personal loan from a former client from one of my other projects just to buy a computer, hire a bookkeeper and get a professional website built, because I didn’t even have that! I paid that off within the first year, prioritizing that before anything else. To me, building businesses is like building a little machine. At first, you are putting more energy than money into the little machine, but it should be spitting out money. That money quickly is reinvested into the business machine, so that now you have given the business your energy AND some money. The goal is to eventually have the business spit out more money than you have to put back into it, allowing you to also scale back on the energy you are submitting. Eventually you hire, and so there’s even more human energy plus money being submitted. Before long, the business should be supporting you and everyone in it in a balanced way, so that this circle of energy never stops.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.revhumandesign.com
• Instagram: @alex.mufson
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-mufson-lcsw-96146b29/

Image Credits

Dan Bradner
Kale Chesney