We recently connected with Rachel Camfield and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Rachel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

To be successful as a creative entrepreneur, I believe it takes having a vision that is inspiring and motivating to you. I believe that it’s important to pause and take time and spend time with that vision, if not a little bit each day, at least weekly. I believe that tapping into your own well of wisdom is the most powerful way to succeed and to be successful. That doesn’t look like doing everything on your own, but having the right supports in place for you to have your own safe and sacred space held so that you can access what is true and what is coming through for you that is real. Because what is real is often revealing. Business owners tend to want to bury their heads in the sand if things are not going well or the way that they imagined it or wanted it to, but success is about owning and honoring your experience and meeting your own needs. Realizing that your business is there to meet the needs of others, and you cannot do that well if your needs are not met.

If and when resentment, frustration, and anger come to the surface in your business and brand, that is not a sign that you’re doing something wrong necessarily. I believe that anger is an arrow, and these arrows can also be anchors for the ways that we need support. I see this struggle in entrepreneurs, and it becomes a part of their story sometimes. The stories that are playing in our businesses and our brands are the scripts that are operating our experience. I believe that you hold the pen and can do the unpacking required to have the experience that you are desiring in your life‘s work.

Rachel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi there, my name is Rachel Camfield, and I am a gentle business coach for intentional creatives. I got into the coaching space in 2015. It was always my dream to create my own brand around purposeful transformation in your life and in your work because I fully believe that your gifts are here to bring not just the world fulfillment but you fulfillment.

I work with small business owners and creative entrepreneurs who are learning about themselves through having their own business. They are willing and wanting to do the deep inner work of personal growth because they realize that the byproduct of doing the inner work is sustainability and success, not just in their metrics and their income, but in how they feel in their lives.

I entered into gentle business coaching after having a career in the business world. My background is in the wholesale home decor and gift industry. I was able to grow a partial state territory to a multiple seven-state territory and manage social media, PR, sales, and client relationships within the product-based business world. It taught me so much of what I know about business, and I decided to bring it into the online space.

I focus on gentle business coaching specifically because the effects of burnout in business are real, and the impact is not just someone’s experience of their business and their brand, but their experience of their life and their health. It is so important for me to support creatives on their healing paths as well as their brand growth journey, and I do this through transformative live coaching sessions.

I help solve the problem of business owners’ businesses owning them. I help put you back into the power of your life and brand so that you are not at the mercy of it. I help creatives be supported in building a brand that celebrates their sensitivity as strength, honors their boundaries as wisdom, and lets their authentic voice be the magnet that connects them with their clients that they are meant to serve.

I am most proud of creating my own version of success within a life that I love. I’m so proud that for over a decade, I have been serving individuals and small brands in a very authentic and intuitive way through sharing my own gifts. I am proud for giving my clients tools and skills that they are able to use for the rest of their lives, not just during the duration of our time coaching together.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I love this story because I draw on the experience to this day. It was 2009, and I was in college. My big dream at that time was to be a fitness instructor. I had to work really hard to become one, and I actually didn’t get selected the first time that I applied after spending an entire semester learning, practicing, and getting certified. I was devastated, but I asked for a second chance. To this day, that has created a pathway for me to keep trying. The story is that I didn’t have a car, and I was riding my bike from my apartment to the gym to teach my very first fitness class. It was a long ride, and I was over the moon excited and ecstatic to finally be an instructor. But I had a bike accident on the way there. I went around the corner too fast and my bike slid out from under me. I fell on my side, scraping my whole right side of my hip. I started bleeding through my workout shorts. I was crying and upset, and so frustrated that this was happening right before my first-ever fitness class. I remember like it was yesterday that I had a decision to make. Would I go home and not show up for my first class, or would I show up bloody and bruised and probably a few minutes late because of what happened and teach anyway? I decided that who I was was the second person. That’s not to say I didn’t get a Band-Aid and a hug and tell someone that I was hurting before I went to go do my best. I didn’t pretend like it didn’t happen, but I decided to honor my dream and my commitment by still going and showing up to teach that first class, bloody. It wasn’t the picture I had in my mind, but it was my reality. It’s funny to me that my business today is about gentle growth because that’s not really a gentle story, but a lot of the time, people think that what I do is soft and fluffy. That would be incorrect. What I do is highly intuitive and involves deep wells of resilience to continue and to honor your truth, even when it’s hard, and even when it’s hurting.

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

I have had to unlearn that longevity in my life’s work is not going to come at the continued expense of myself. There are absolutely moments where you have to be strong, you have to push through, and you have to be brave, but over-functioning as a pattern is not sustainable. The work that I do with myself and with clients is about the business growth journey, being connected to your healing journey. When you’re in business for yourself, you have a very large mirror revealing you to yourself in so many ways, situations, and circumstances. You can either embrace what is being revealed and rewrite your scripts, or you can continue to perpetuate learned patterns and over-functioning ways of being.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rachelcamfield.com/
• Instagram: @rachelcamfield | https://www.instagram.com/rachelcamfield/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RachelCamfield

Image Credits

Photography: Jess Capozzola, Lexi Andrews