#111 - Building From the Roots Up: PDA, Curiosity, and Running a Business Your Way

I'm getting personal in this episode of Pattern Shift — recorded from my brand new praktijk in Rotterdam. I trace why I bootstrapped from 300 euros, refused investors, never built a conventional team, and kept rebuilding the brand. I name Pathological Demand Avoidance directly and connect it to my lifelong distrust of the ready-made — in business, fashion, and a painting I found on the side of the road last week. From sour puss to happy kitty: on curiosity as the antidote to cynicism, and three questions to find out where you're running on borrowed structure.

 You know me as a guide, mentor and teacher, but I've also set off on a new adventure, coaching. Coaching gets a bad rep sometimes, but when it's done right, it can be really transformational. As part of my coaching education, I'll soon need to do real coaching sessions. And it could be a really great opportunity for you to experience it at no or low cost. If you've ever been curious about working with me in this way, now's the time. Just send me an email: info@ja-wol.com

Transcript

Saskia 0:00

Hey, and welcome to Pattern Shift. I'm Saskia a creative life and business coach for fiber loving makers, teachers, designers, shop owners, and all around creatives. I help you way find your next step, organize your business to fit your life, and launch ideas with joyful action. Together we'll untangle the tricky bits like branding, marketing, and sales, and build something sustainable, soulful, and truly. You.

Speaker 2 0:30

Hi, and welcome back to Pattern Shift. I am today coming from my new. My all new own office space, my praktijk as we call it in Dutch, where I will be, coaching one-on-one with actual people in the actual room. Usually. I actually also. Coach, actual people, that's a lot of actuals. But they're mostly online and international. I have started working here just in the last month and it's been amazing and I am using a different microphone. I'm not fully set up yet, so if you are. Wondering why the sound is different. I'm just hoping that the way I'm recording this and with the tools I use, I can make it sound good enough. for now, which is what I like to do in general. Just, go with good enough and then move on to the next thing. And this episode is a little bit about that. It's not fully about that, but it'll explain to you, how I can actually just record an episode when not everything is how it's supposed to be. So this topic today is going to be about the fact that I never really fully followed a blueprint for my business, and I'm not sorry about it. I have. Regular thoughts about it. I can get, a little wobbly when I think, am I, am, am I doing this right? And then I center and I, think about it and I know that I'm doing it the right way for me. So. I don't think I've actually talked about this in this way before. it's kind of an origin story, I guess, but maybe it's also a confession about why I built Yvo the way I did, why I basically bootstrapped everything, why I never worked with investors. And, why I never really built an actual team and probably never will in the conventional sense. Um, why I. Um, rebuilt and rebuilt and corrected course, and course corrected again and kept going. And I always kept the name. I did a name change once when I went from my blog, which was called Snit It Again, Which is my name, Saskia. and it was a really bad brand name. it was a little wink to Britney Spears's. Oops. I did it again. it was a good blog. It was fun. but when I opened my actual shop and when I started designing, Actually, no, when I opened my shop is when I started with the name Ja, Wol. which means yes wool, literally in Dutch, and spelled a little differently in German. And I always kept that name. And, in my latest course correction, I actually use my brand name to explain my. my step by step framework and it works beautifully, but we'll get to that. So just getting comfortable. So I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately and, about what it actually means to build a business completely from the inside out or from the bottom up, or however you wanna call that, about, things that look like stubbornness to most people. a lot of people that are close to me, look at it that way. And why it has always felt wrong to me. It wasn't, it's never been about stubbornness. So, I'll, talk about it and hopefully be able to explain to you how these things work with me. There's a version of how people build businesses that, you see as, that's projected as this is the template, this is how you do it. like you have an idea. Then you find investors. You call yourself a startup, even if you're really tiny and don't. Really do much yet. and then you hustle hard enough to, not need the investors. And then you build a team and scale and you systemize and you grow. And there's this whole industry online, built around teaching how to do this, courses and coaches and frameworks and formulas and there's a particular kind of vibe on LinkedIn. That, for me is just overwhelming, exhausting, basically very annoying. It just doesn't, I just don't speak that language and for a lot of people and specifically creative people, I think there's this. Because of this, there's this sense that they're doing it wrong, or that they need to take these kind of courses and do it exactly that way. and the reason that it feels really. Hard is because they're not following that kind of program properly, and that the discomfort you're feeling is resistance and that you need to push through that resistance. And I felt like that for a long time. not really paralyzed by by it, but aware and this whole idea of everybody else seemed to know the rules and I seemed to be continuously unable to follow them. and I've always been like this, not just in business. I've been like this in the way I dress, the way I, decorated my kids' room the way I am. I've decorated my house, in, in lots of different ways, the way I chose my hobbies. I cannot buy like a ready-made aesthetic off the shelf, not because I'm so. Precious about it, but because the moment something becomes a look or a thing that I'm supposed to want, I don't want it anymore. I can walk into a perfectly curated space and feel nothing. it feels like these days literally beige to me. And then I find something beautiful in a flea market, or literally this, last week I found a painting that was, put to the side of the tree. As if it was, it was discarded, as if it was. Trash and it was a, a little bit of, um, a blue lines of the outlines of. Different naked bodies and I really liked it, so I picked it up and that made me think that what I have on my wall here in my office space is you can, if you're on YouTube, you can. See, the quilts behind me, but I have all kinds of different things here on the wall. a really beautiful painting by my oldest daughter and, a print by an intern who's now a rock star and, a mini quilt I make myself, and I'm gonna add that painting to that. And then I had an idea, a while ago. In the WhatsApp group of the block that we live in, someone posted a photo of, people who are cleaning our garage space, our parking lot type space. And I loved that picture. It was just it for me. I feel like I need to print it and I need to enlarge it and hang it on the wall and have all these different kinds of. Craft arts. is it, is it real art? Is it not real art? When is it art? Because I say so, because they say, so I found it. It's there, it's made by an artist. I've paid for. With actual euros for art made by artists. let's actually, let's not get into that discussion here, but what I just wanted to say is that the curiosity that surrounds all of this. is way more interesting to me than what is supposed to be art or what is supposed to be, interior design or fashion or whatever, or the way you set up a business or run a business.. As I said, everybody seems to know the rules and follow these rules, or at least a lot of people are, and I seem to be continually unable to follow them. And I've always been like this. I think I get a little suspicious of things that are preassembled or f fully like done things that are really done. they feel like they're not real to me. If that makes sense. So for a long time I thought that was a flaw, that was kind of a, a very inconvenient personality trait that made everything harder than it needed to be. Um, was it that I was going through puberty and then I was in my twenties, and then it was, um, I was just tired from, in my early thirties having kids. Um, what was it? But I could just not follow the system. And if I could, I probably would be further along. Right. And that's what I'm thinking a lot, in my very near vicinity, there are people that are following those rules and, Am I supposed to be doing that? Should I be further along and what is success and what that does that look like? I think about it all of the time, but now I know this is not really actually a flaw. It's connected to something that has a name. they call it PDA, and it sounds really harsh, and I usually. Don't name it, but I, I've figured out this, that this is it, and it's called pathological demand avoidance, or For sure, just demand avoidance, which sits under the autism A DHD umbrella, and basically means that when something is. offered to you or framed as a demand, especially an external one? my nervous system treats it like a threat. I don't just dislike being told what to do, my brain is wired to resist it. So, autonomy is not just a preference for me, it's actually how I work. you might say it's a survival mechanism actually. And once I understood that a lot of things clicked into place, and it wasn't just personally, I'm starting to realize that professionally, a lot of that comes from just having. A different type of brain about processing things differently. So if your nervous system is designed to reject external demands, then building a business on someone else's template is not just uncomfortable. It n. Literally might not even work for you, not long term. these blueprints might, work for a while. you might white knuckle through it, through a launch or a follow or a funnel or a post at the right times. and say exactly those things that you get in this, in this step-by-step program. But at some point this. Structure, which is borrowed from someone else, from another way of doing things can start to crack because it was never your way of doing things. it was always someone else's way. So I bootstrapped things from the beginning. I built my business with 300 Euros and never took a loan at some. At some point, I remember thinking that I might need one, and in the end. I didn't, and I just made decisions so that I could be autonomous and I do feel really proud of that. So I actually couldn't have taken an investor or anything, even if I wanted to, even if I known where to start with all of that. because the moment someone else's expectations entered the picture, formal ones, financial ones, I would've. Started building for them instead of for me. And I know what that looks like. I've done it in other contexts and it's not pretty. The only way, that really works is my, my physical exercise I work with, With, a personal trainer'cause they are expecting me to be here. Literally here. It's right there. and so I show up. but in terms of running my own business, that is a completely different kind of feeling and it's just, ugh. It doesn't feel right for me and not just not right. It feels like I am locked in and, it was just never gonna work. I also never really build a team in the conventional sense. I tried and every time I added a layer between me and the work. something disappeared and not as so much because I'm a control freak. maybe people will call me that. I don't know. but because of the way I think and the way I make decisions, the way I work, is really so specific and really needs to be. Very much in the moment sometimes that I one cannot transfer that to other people. But also a lot of the time I cannot expect from other people that they will be there to jump on these things willy-nilly or whenever I get something that needs to be done in the moment. However, I do believe that things that are not working for you or for me, for example, long time, if you're a long time listener, you notice about me. I do not do well with financial admin. And so, I am very fortunate to have someone to help me with that and, eternally grateful. Yeah, those kinds of things I will ask other people to do, but working in a larger team. Usually for me, is super, super frustrating because, the pre the decision making is way too slow. yeah, and I could do a whole episode about that, but let's just stay, try to stay, on this topic. I also rebuilt the brand, more than once, kind of course corrected more than anything else I would say. I kept discovering things that were actually true, not strategically true, and I needed to say them differently, do them differently. especially when I started to study Wayfinder coaching, that's when I really started to learn how to, know about my own. needs, but also where I want to go. And it, it gave me kind of a way to, to way find my way around what's happening inside here. But I always kept my brand name after the first initial change because that really just always felt. Good and true and it's just a really good name. Although it's internationally quite unclear. It might be unclear for people. But, I work with that and, through the rebuilding and the course correcting and the years where I wasn't sure if it was working, The thing that kept me from becoming. Sad and bitter and cynic and even quitting, was being curious. Curiosity. I am genuinely, deeply curious about craft, about people, about art, about why things work and why they don't. About what makes running a business feel alive and. Instead of, mechanical. And I think this curiosity is, the antidote to cynicism, not necessarily optimism. I would, although I'm very optimistic, I, I. Yeah, I think I'm an optimistic person, but I would say curiosity has been and, and still is, the best way to look at all kinds of things, to not become a sour puss. although I got close. probably some people at the end of, when I had my shop will tell you I was not the most joyous person to be around. I was just exhausted trying to do what everybody else was doing and, doing it better, and I didn't. Yeah, it was hard. so yeah. But now I feel like I'm not a sour puss anymore. I'm just a really. Happy Kitty. So then I look at this hustle culture stuff and the cookie cutter coaches and the beige interiors and the rules and the numbers and the growth hacks and the funnels. And, I don't feel resentment, I don't feel angry about it anymore. I'm really curious about it and how, how and, and no ways to do it differently. And, Who does this work for and, and why, and what does that look like? And can you actually, just borrow and choose different elements of, different platforms and different blueprints and make it your own? And that's what I basically do as a coach. I figure out, together with you what works for you, but in such a way that you can still, grow. And you can still, get closer to your intentions or if you wanna use that word, goals, set goals and get to them. I. Yeah, this has really been super interesting and everything is coming together, for me right now. All this insight, all this experience, and connecting it to coaching, connecting my, business as a small business owner and doing all of this work to building coaching offers that are focused on helping you find what works for you Even in my framework,'cause I use a lot of the same words.'cause otherwise people dunno what I'm talking about. Right. So this, you cannot, it's not really smart to start naming everything completely differently because that's just like, then it's even harder to communicate what you do. It's built in such a way that you have the freedom to, to find the different tools and the different platforms, the different. Goals and elements that work for you. And we, on one hand I help you not to dive into all these rabbit holes where you can never get out of and waste so much time. So there is some guidance, but at the same time we come at it from a coaching perspective. So what's already, what's already inside you, what do you already know about yourself, about your business, and then connecting that to tools that work for you. So let's make this practical. Here's what I wanna offer you. And it's not a system, it's not a formula, it's just a question or actually three questions. you can think of them as a small way finding exercise you can do in your journal or just sit with it for a few days. I definitely think journaling is a way to go.'cause writing things down. Is is proven to connect to your brain and to really digest it better. the first question is, what have you been? Tolerating or dealing with in your business, that you've built for someone else's approval? Not necessarily person, maybe an idea, of what a, an actual business looks like, or, what is it supposed to look like, at the stage when you're, where you're at, where have you been performing that blueprint kind of thing. The second question is, what have you rebuilt or walked away from that felt like failure at the time, but was actually just right for you? What kind of looked like it was? Maybe a little instable, maybe a little chaotic from the outside, but was actually you not wanting to be boxed in. And the third one, what keeps you curious? Not necessarily motivated or disciplined, but curious because I think curiosity is the fuel. You can find your way back to what really genuinely interests you. even inside those parts of your business that feel hard. when you stay curious, then you've got something to work with. So there are no right answers to these questions. That's the hard part about this. It's not a blueprint, so there's no right answers. you're working from the roots up. You are feeding the roots of the tree with nutrients and, that it takes time for the tree to grow And you need to be grounded and, self-aware and, and sometimes that's really hard and that's where a coach can really help you. so in the next few episodes, I'm gonna talk about different, offers that I'm building that. Are kind of new.'cause the focus is now, not just on group work, but also on one-on-one coaching. And then when you coach with me, you get access to the community and you can hang out with other people if you, want to, because that's up to you. If you like to know more, you can always reach out, via info@ja-wol.com. you can react to the YouTube video and, find my information on pattern shift fm. If you would like to know more about bullet journaling, there's a workshop available for you so that you can have a mindfulness practice and a productivity system at the same time. the beauty about the bullet journal system, or method I need to say is that it, it blends to whatever you want it to be. It is exactly how I coach, and it is exactly coming from that same perspective of using it in a way that works for you. I'm actually one of the first, six certified bullet journal. Trainers in the world. There are more now, but I was with the first group and I was the first in the Netherlands, so I'm pretty proud of that. if you distrust the status quo, if you refuse the ready-made, If your brain just itches at external demands. for a long time I thought these were obstacles in my way, things I had to manage in order to build something real. But I don't think that anymore. I think they are the. They are the reason that, my work is my work and that I can help specific people, that are probably a lot like me. But you don't necessarily have to be like me to get something out of this. But if some part of what I described sounds familiar, the, borrowed structure, the performing of the blueprint, the curiosity that keeps you going, even when rules don't fit. I hope you heard something useful today. Let me know if you did. I would love to hear from you and thank you for being here. I'll see you and or hear you in the next one.