Ep #85: Black Women Entrepreneurs Share 3 Secrets to Success – Part 1 with Sade Curry

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Episode Summary

Jenna invites Sade Curry to share how she moved beyond the ways that she was socialized to see herself and the way some other people saw her to discover her secret sauce.


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Show Notes

In celebration of Black History Month, I’m inviting two successful black women entrepreneurs and coaches to the podcast. This week, we are joined by Sade Curry to offer valuable insights and tips tailored specifically for women of color who own businesses. However, these tips will undoubtedly help all women business owners.

Sade has been a dating coach for five years who helps divorced women date with ease and find a partner that is right for them. She is certified in the Sedona method of emotional processing and holds certifications as a feminist coach and a life coach. Sade shares her unique journey from growing up in Nigeria to achieving success as a coach in the US, along with what helped her grow her business to its current stature.

Tune in to learn how embracing her secret sauce has been game-changing for Sade. Discover three tips she has implemented in her business to shift her mindset, improve sales and marketing, and effectively process her emotions to lean into abundance. Sade also shares how to navigate toward your goal when your current reality is not matching up with your desired state, and how she overcame societal perceptions to reshape her self-image and the way other people saw her.

 

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • Sade’s unique experience of entrepreneurship as a woman of color coming from a corporate background.

  • What helped Sade navigate the pressure and challenges that come with building a business.

  • How Sade’s embrace of her values, experiences, and different aspects of her life positively impacted her coaching business.

  • Three tips to advance toward your business goals.

  • The importance of having conversations. 

  • How Sade found her secret sauce and her guidance to help you find your own.

 

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hey, as a special treat for Black History Month, I'm bringing in some successful black women entrepreneurs to share tips that are specifically for women of color who own businesses. But this information is wildly useful for all women business owners. As we do around here, they'll be sharing real tactics, great mindset tips… both of them are fantastic coaches… and an energetic tip.

I am beyond excited for what they have to share and how very useful I know it will be. In today's episode, you'll hear from Sade Curry, a dating coach for divorced women. I know you'll love hearing about how she moved beyond the ways that she was socialized to see herself and the way that some other people saw her.

She'll also share the mindset shift that helped her uncover her secret sauce and turn it into smart and a highly resonant messaging. And y'all, I swear I did not guide her on this, although it might sound similar to what we stand for, and help women lean into, here at The Uncommon Way.

So if you find yourself nodding along with Sade, but there's still some friction in your brain and you want to just keep hearing it in different ways to help you really absorb it, I'm linking to an episode in the show notes from this podcast. I don't want to share the title here right now and detract from Sade’s message, but you can find it if you want it.

Finally, she's going to share a very tactical energetic tip for moving from scarcity to abundance, or shifting any kind of desired energy closer to you, when your reality isn't quite matching up to your desired state. I can't wait to use this one and I know you'll want to also.

Before I sign off, Sade has created a great resource called 50 Green Flags of a Healthy Partner for Divorced Women. We're going to link to that too in the show notes so you can get your hands on it. Okay, enjoy this very valuable episode.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the podcast that helps women entrepreneurs get clear on signature offers and strategies that sell themselves so you can lean back and stop the hustle. You will learn to maximize your mindset, messaging and strategy, and step into the uncommonly successful business and life you are creating. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Hello, and welcome to Black History Month on The Uncommon Way Podcast. Thank you, Jenna, for the invitation to speak to your audience during Black History Month. Listeners, my name is Sade Curry, and I am a dating coach for divorced women. I help them date with ease and find a partner that is right for them after a divorce.

I have been doing this for about five years now. I'm also certified in the Sedona Method of emotional processing. I am a certified feminist coach and a certified life coach. It is just really a pleasure to be here today talking about building a business as a woman of color, as a woman of African descent, as a woman who has an accent living in the United States. It has just been a roller coaster ride.

First of all, starting a business is not for the faint of heart, we know that. And starting a business when you don't have examples in your immediate environment, in your family, is even harder. Then there can be this internalized pressure when you look and sound different from the arbitrary norm that surrounds you. You may not have generational wealth. You may not have family members investing or supporting your business.

For me, my journey was really in some ways unique to me, just like all of our journeys are. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri. My family went back to Nigeria when I was two years old. And then I came back to the United States when I was 21. I've been here now for about 25 years, so most of my adult life.

Growing up in Nigeria, I had the privilege of experiencing an environment where it was mostly merit based. I mean we had our challenges, right? There was a lot of nepotism, favoritism. However, just that unique experience of being identified by what you look like was not a thing that I experienced growing up. And so, that part of living in the Midwest, living in the United States, was a little bit of a culture shock for me.

So when I started my business, I had come out of the corporate world. I was working full time as an Information Technology Analyst. I started my business while I was working full time. I'd made about $40,000 in 2020 coaching divorced women; just on divorce, before I pivoted to coaching on dating.

When the George Floyd crisis happened, the way my company handled it was just a little bit not great. Let’s just put it that way, it wasn't great. That was when I decided to just take a leap. I was like, “I've made $40K, I think I can do this.” And so, I made the leap to go full time in my business.

Up until that point, I didn't really see myself as a woman of color building a business. I was just building a coaching business based on my experiences as a divorced person, and dating, and healing. But when I stepped out into the coaching world, some of my own internalized oppression started coming out.

It wasn't so much that anyone said anything to me or anyone did anything to me. It was just years of being socialized as a person of color, years of growing up in an environment where colonization was the overarching narrative, and years of being socialized as a woman. All of that began coming out.

Because what happens when you are in business is that you face obstacles, everyone faces these obstacles. You face pressure, you have to learn how to sell, you’ve got to learn how to market, you’ve got to learn how to identify the value that you bring, you have the ups and downs of ‘am I making money this month? Am I not making money this month?’

My theory is, that what our brain does when it faces a challenge, it doesn't like it, and then it tries to explain what is causing the challenge. And so, my brain went into, “Well, you must be facing these challenges because…” and then it dug deep into the way that I had been socialized, my internalized oppression, and my own self-doubt about who I was to explain the challenges I was facing.

And so, I've had to work through that. I've had to work through looking at myself differently from the way I was socialized to look at myself. At looking at myself differently from the way sometimes other people look at me. And really grounding myself in my own value and the value that I bring to my clients. Letting that voice be the strongest voice in my business.

The voice that reassures me that I have value, that I bring value, and that I am good at what I do. Grounding myself in the evidence that my clients get results, and my clients love the work that I do. Working really hard to drown out sources outside of myself that want to tell me otherwise, and sources inside of myself that wants to tell me otherwise.

So today, I am here to share with you three things that I have done in my business, that I have done in my mindset; a way that I believe about myself that has helped me in my business. One tactical tip for sales and marketing that I continue to lean into in my business. And one energetic tip that I continue to use to process my emotions, to lean into the abundance that exists in the world as it relates to my business.

The first thing I want to share with you is my mindset, my mindset tip. That is, that your secret sauce is your uniqueness. I'm sure most, if not all, of you listening have heard this before. That your differences are your differentiator. That is easy to hear that, and yeah, that's true. We look at people who are more successful in business or we look at celebrities, and we're like, “Yes, their differences are their differentiator. This person fully owned who they were.”

It's one thing to look at someone who's made it all the way to millions or even billions of dollars and agree that their uniqueness helped them along the way. It's quite another to look at yourself and to listen to that voice inside of your head and say, “You know what? My uniqueness is the secret sauce in my business.” It can be a little bit of a journey.

And so, I want to share with you how I have really taken my brain from that place where it continually doubted that my uniqueness was my differentiator to fully believing it and fully leaning into it. So, a little bit of an example in my personal story is the fact that I am a dating coach, and there is a certain brand expectation around being a dating coach. I am none of those things I am.

I'm an Enneagram 3, which is the ambitious woman. I studied engineering in college, and I worked in IT for decades. I am basically your practical, no nonsense, get-it-done kind of woman. I did not wear makeup until my 30s. I love to wear jeans, sweatpants, hoodies, blazers, dresses. I do wear dresses, but they're not really my thing.

And so, I started out in my business really feeling like I was this unsexy dating coach. I just couldn't bring myself to step into the lush, feminine… I don't know, whatever it is that I thought a dating coach was supposed to look like. I couldn't get myself all the way to that look, that feel. I couldn't embody that “be in your feminine energy” thing, it just wasn't me. I felt like that was going to harm me in my business and as a dating coach.

But I knew that I could help women meet a partner, I had done it. And I had done it consciously. When I went into the dating world, it was a whole shit show for about six months, and then I sat down and said, “I can do this better.” I really thought through how I wanted to do it better.

What I brought to that process was, “Okay, what if I just made it a pipeline? What if I just made it a process?” Which are all the things that I did in my workplace. And that's how I solved the problem. I used words like “troubleshoot your dating journey.” That was my value. The fact that I was an engineer, I was an IT analyst, I created process diagrams all day long on the job. That was the thinking that solved the dating problem for me.

And so, I leaned all the way into it. I leaned all the way into bringing engineering thinking into the dating process. Now, of course, I still lean into the relationship side of things, the romance, all of that because women want, some women want, some of that.

However, the core of the value that I bring is my experience and the way that I think. And when I embraced it and leaned all the way into it, my business really leveled out and became more consistent. It was easier for me to write content because I was simply writing what I was thinking. It was easier for me to explain how I helped women date, because I simply said exactly what I was going to do you and how I was going to do it.

I stopped trying to add in flowery language. I stopped trying to make it seem sexy and romantic. I stopped trying to portray this fairy tale idea, and simply presented my process as it was, and presented myself as I was. I will tell you, it has made all the difference in my business.

The last three years, 2021 through 2023, I have made over $100,000 in revenue each of those years. Ranging from $120,000 to about $150,000 something every year. I can consistently create that because I am not trying to be someone that I'm not.

So, I'd like to say, sit with who you are. Find the evidence. Literally sit down and make a list of everything that you are; good, bad, the parts you accept, the parts you don't accept. Look at that list and find the parts of you that your clients need. The parts of you that you are bringing into your business, but you are afraid to actually verbalize and say that you are bringing this to your business.

Spend time in it. Look at the evidence. Embody it, and do the work to be okay with it. Branding and positioning is not about changing yourself to look a certain way. It's about taking who you are, exactly as you are, and then presenting it in a way that your clients understand. Showing them the evidence that you have found that this is exactly what they need. When you believe in your value, they also will catch that belief and believe in your value as well.

The second thing I'd like to share with you is just a practical tactical business tip. Which, again, very commonplace, nothing new, but I want to show you how I've used it in my business.

We all know that relationships are everything. Relationships are everything in life and in business. Now, what builds relationships? Communication. I want to encourage you to have conversations. Have conversations with other humans.

In my business, I have listed conversations as the leading indicator of my sales. So when I am having conversations, I know that I am filling my pipeline with people who will either hire me, or who will refer me to someone who will hire me. That is how I look at conversations. And that makes business so easy for me because I love talking to people. I love having conversations.

Now, I am an extrovert, so I do like having conversations in person. However, I don't have a lot of conversations in person. I don't do a lot of networking. In fact, I don't leave my house much. My husband, who is an introvert, leaves the house way more than I do, and socializes with people in person way more than I do.

I tend to focus my personal relationships on a very small number of people, that I'm very close to, that I can go really deep with. But in my business, I have a ton of conversations online. Now, I've come to this arrangement, so to speak, partly because of where I live. My community, my environment didn't feed my business the way I wanted it to. There’s just not a lot of coaches or people into personal development in the area that I live.

And so, I leaned into the online world to find the people that I wanted to have conversations with. So, I constantly reach out to my fellow coaches, my online friends, for connection calls. I have conversations over Zoom. When I post content, I will engage in the comments. I will share value.

And I know most of you may have heard about, “Okay, go into groups and share value with people and things like that.” I like to look at it slightly differently. I just like to think about it as just joining the conversation. Because there can be a lot of pressure on the idea of sharing value, “Now I've got to like create this thing. And it has to be valuable to this person.” I like to lower the bar for me to participate in a conversation.

When I am scrolling online I'm like, “Oh, do I have a thought about this? Do I have an idea about this? Is there a way to go with this?” I will simply join the conversation. And that has been such a blessing to my business, to just have conversations.

I have conversations that I enjoy. I participate in conversations that I enjoy. I connect with people. People get to know who I am, I get to know who they are. I refer my fellow coaches to people, and other people refer me to others. It's just a really wonderful way to make friends and do business.

So, I want to encourage you to have conversations. I don't want to call it “networking.” I don't want to call it “giving value.” Just have conversations. Just say something; reply to something. Ask yourself: How do I like to have conversations? Which conversations do I enjoy? Where do I like to go to have conversations?

Sit down and brainstorm. Just make a list and then lean into that. These conversations don't have to be around your business specifically. Again, it's all about relationships. It's all about connecting with people. And these relationships will become the lifeblood of your business, one way or another.

And even if you're using webinars or you are using a funnel, or you are using an email list to build your business, think about all of those things not as this dry, stark technology that you're trying to use to make sales. Think of every email as a conversation starter. Think of every webinar as a group conversation. Reframing all of these business tactics into conversations, I think will really bring life to your sales and marketing process.

Now, finally, I want to share with you an energetic tip. As a person of color, looking out into the world and not seeing a ton of examples of someone like me building the kind of business that I want to build, I think there becomes this internalized feeling or narrative that what I am going for, that my goal is far away. “That it's way off in the distance. It's way off in the future. I’ve got to hustle, I’ve got to grind, I’ve got to stay in it. And who knows if I will ever achieve it?”

And every day can start to feel like that. Like you're in there, and you're doing the work and you're building, and it still seems far away. I want to talk to you about energetically bringing it closer. Because the truth is, you're probably closer than you think. This is something that has happened over and over and over again in my business.

Where I will think, “Oh, my goodness, I took so many weeks off/I had this personal crisis, and I wasn't marketing like I usually do. I wasn't writing content like I usually do. And now it's going to take me three months to get back on track and make the next sale/sign the next client.”

And when I coach myself and work through my thoughts and feelings, or when I am able to readjust and reframe my perspective, I find out that my next client was just right there. Right? I'll give you an example of… actually this happened January of 2024, so just last month. I went on a two weeks retreat. I was at an off-the-grid silent retreat. We couldn't have phones, computers, we were cut off from the outside world completely for two weeks.

Before I went on this retreat, I had done a one-week launch. I had just done a launch and sold my group program. But during the launch, I had taken down my one-on-one coaching consultation link, because I wanted to drive all of my traffic to my group program.

So I had taken down the link, and the whole time I was at the retreat, I was thinking, “Oh good, I can't wait to get back and see a bunch of consultations on my calendar.” And then, to my disappointment, I came back and there was not a single consultation on my calendar.

Of course, I started to troubleshoot this and I found out that I had forgotten to put my consultation link back up. I was like, “Ah, great. Of course, I forgot to do that.” I put it back up and then settled myself into a, I don't know, two to three weeks wait while I ramped things up again and people would put consultations on my calendar.

What was so hilarious about what happened, is that I'm on Facebook posting content, having conversations, and I get a Facebook DM. Someone says, “Hey, how do I book a consultation with you? I've been trying to, and I haven't been able to.” I was like, “Oh, actually I just put my consultation link back up. It was down for a while.” She was like, “Oh, great.”

So I sent her the link, she books a consultation, and during the consultation she says, “Hey, I've been following you for three years. I was kind of thinking I could do the dating scene on my own. But I think at this point, I realized that it's going to take me forever to do it. So, I'm ready to work with you.” She came to the consultation call ready to work with me.

The whole time I was at the retreat, and thinking, “Oh great, now that my consultation link was down, I needed to ramp up to sign another client,” that client was already waiting. And so, I told that story to illustrate that your next sale, your next client, your next level in business, is probably closer than you think.

And believing that, and leaning into that feeling can make it faster for your brain to navigate its way to connecting you with that. So, one way that I do that release, or that shifting energetically, is one of the tools in the Sedona Method that I facilitate. It's called “holistic releasing.” What you do is, you take your current emotion, typically a negative one, and you lean into it all the way for 10 or 15 seconds.

Then you flip to allowing in just a little bit of the emotion that speaks to your goal being closer than you want it to be. I'll give you an example. Let's say scarcity and abundance. So scarcity, which is the feeling of ‘I don't have enough money, there's not enough money, there's not enough clients, I'm never going to make it, there's not enough XYZ.’

That has a feeling, an emotion, a sensation in your body attached to it. And so, if you find yourself in those thoughts and that emotional state, the release calls you to allow it to come in. Allow yourself to feel it in your body. You can ask the question: Can I allow myself to feel scarcity as much as I do? Just let your body open up to that emotion for about 10 seconds.

And then, you ask another question: Can I allow myself to feel the possibility that there is abundance? You just titrate a tiny bit of abundance. If that's all you can allow in is just a tiny, little thimbleful of abundance, you allow yourself to do that for just 5 or 10 seconds. Then you flip back to the scarcity, which is the dominant emotion in that moment, for 5 or 10 seconds, and then you flip back to abundance. Flip back to the scarcity, flip back to the abundance.

What that practice does, is it actually neutralizes the scarcity. It brings you more to that center, to that middle of the road, what some schools of Buddhism call “equanimity,” which is balance. Because the world really is sort of balanced, right? I like to say, I want to be on the positive side of neutral, for most things. Because most things are on the positive side of neutral.

And so, that little release, flipping back and forth between a very heightened, chronic negative emotion you might be feeling, flipping from that to just a little bit of the positive emotion, back to the negative emotion you're feeling, will help ground you. It will help bring you back to neutral. It will give you the space in your brain and in your emotions to have some clarity around whatever the issue is.

Finally, I just want to encourage you. As a person of color, I want to say, you know, we bring so much value to this world. We bring so much value to our clients. And even if you're not a person of color listening to this, every human brings something to the table. There is a reason each and every one of us is here.

Lean into that. Lean into the value that you bring. Lean into your uniqueness. Lean into your calling, your purpose. Lean into the reason you started your business in the first place. You wanted to bring this gift into the world. You wanted to bring this thing that didn't exist before. Because when you do it, it's never existed before in the way that you bring it to the table.

Something inside of you called you to bring your business into the world. So, I want to just encourage you to not give up on that. Right? We need way more diversity in the business world. We need way more diversity in the coaching world.

So, if you are called to help others, if you are called to participate in this value exchange where you bring your gift to the world and you receive fair compensation for it, I hope you will keep pursuing that dream. I hope you will leave your own footprints for future generations to walk in.

Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for your attention, and Happy Black History Month.

Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.

Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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