Boss Your Business - The Podcast

Yvonne Heimann [00:00:01]:
Have you ever felt stuck in a job that doesn't fulfill you? Today, we're examining the journey from corporate burnout to finding true passion and purpose. Many of us struggle with feeling trapped in unfulfilling roles, lacking direction, and fearing the unknown when considering a career or business change. Joining us to delve into this transition is Carissa Andrews, an accomplished author and educator. Carissa evolved from a corporate graphic designer to a successful indie author and creator of an online education platform for writers and authors. In this episode, we'll cover her inspiring story, exploring her practical strategies for overcoming obstacles, and discuss ways to rekindle joy in your work. You'll leave with insights on navigating career shifts and a boost of encouragement to pursue what truly lights you up.

Yvonne Heimann [00:00:59]:
Oh, my God. This will be an episode that I have a feeling I'm gonna remember for quite a while. And I want to introduce you today to Carissa Andrews. I am so happy you are joining me today. And before we dive into who you are, what you do, and why I invited you, I'm gonna pop my favorite question at you. How did you get here? How did little Carissa come from here to today? Because I always love seeing that. That journey and the paths that we looking forward, probably never expected, yet they really seem to be funny looking back.

Carissa Andrews [00:01:48]:
Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, Yvonne, first of all, thank you for having me. Okay, so, little Carissa, back in the day, let's see, I had. I grew up with two brothers, and so I was very much a, where's my book? Where can I hide? Get me out of the house.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:05]:
It usually is either way, the how do I get away from this? Or bring it on.

Carissa Andrews [00:02:10]:
Yeah. Oh, there was plenty of that, too. I was the oldest of the three, so there was plenty of that. But I was usually, I'm just gonna slip outside if it's nice. Although it was Minnesota, so that only worked in the summer and kind of a little bit in the fall. But get outside with a book and try to stay away from people. Books have always been my thing, and so I've just always loved reading, experiencing worlds. I've never kind of stuck with one genre.

Carissa Andrews [00:02:35]:
I love all things mystery, science fiction, fantasy, non fiction, romance. It didn't matter. I'd read it all. And so it always started with just that love of reading. And I never at a million years I would ever write that. Just was not on my radar at all. I had a lot of teachers who thought I should write. A lot of teachers who thought I should write children's books because I do art as well.

Carissa Andrews [00:02:59]:
My mom's an acrylic artist, so everyone kept trying to get me to do illustrations and children's books, and I just was like, no. Ended up in graphic design, of all things. Loved graphic design, hated the corporate world. And I was like, what do I do now? What do I do with this? And a good friend was like, hey, you know what? You've always liked writing. Why don't you just open a blog or write a book or something? Here's a cool idea. You could write.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:22]:
Hey, by the way, why don't you write a book?

Carissa Andrews [00:03:25]:
Right, right? Why not try it? It's fun. I believe in you. I did not write the story idea that she gave me. I tried. I started it, and it was just not it cool idea popped into my head. I ended up running with it, writing my first novel turned into a trilogy. That whole thing kind of kept going, and then it kind of transitioned from being just an author to helping my local community figure out how to write and publish books because we.

Carissa Andrews [00:03:55]:
I'm in central Minnesota, and so not many people knew about indie publishing at the time. I was teaching at the local library. I think it was in 2017, about how to go about publishing, how the process works, that it's not as big, scary, or, I don't know, as bad as people would try to make it out to be at the time. And it was really just for the locals. But there were people who were missing classes because it was the middle of winter, we had cold days, like, we're talking like, negative 40 degree weather. And I was like, how do I get the information? I was teaching to some of these students because they were asking for it. And so I ended up playing around with different online tools, ended up creating online course of that course for them. And it kind of just went from there.

Carissa Andrews [00:04:37]:
Like, I had no anticipation of ever opening a. An online education like platform for authors at all. But here we are now I've got. I don't even know. I've lost track of the number of courses. I think there's 13 or 14 courses, four memberships, meditations for authors, 251 podcast episodes so far. So it's just kind of grown out of. Grown out of my love of reading, being that kid who always had a book underneath my big willow tree.

Yvonne Heimann [00:05:03]:
So I'm curious, because I was already laughing when you said a friend came and was like, why you should be writing. Yeah, I feel like. I feel like that was one of those moments where it's, the universe is like, girl, I've been telling you for how long, how many people do I have to place in your path till you finally listen?

Carissa Andrews [00:05:28]:
Right, right. And it was my best friend, too. So she and I were getting. She was probably just so sick of me sitting there going, I hate my job. I don't know why. Because she was just like, why don't you do something else? Do this thing that you, like, start with a blog. Like, why not? And it was just the right timing, too. It was literally the thing that just lit me up.

Carissa Andrews [00:05:47]:
As soon as she said it, I was like, oh, yeah, I could do that. I really could do that.

Yvonne Heimann [00:05:52]:
Do you think of really, because you mentioned struggling in corporate world and doing things that don't fulfill you, that you're not passionate about. You mentioned in your childhood, a lot of teachers and family, and everybody was like, why don't you do this? Do you think it just had to happen in this specific schedule, where it had to happen of the moment when it happened and how it happened?

Carissa Andrews [00:06:16]:
Oh, yeah, I think so. I think I'm always that way, too. It's like the first time someone tells me something, my instinct is to be like, no, that's not. No, no. And I'll have excuses. And then the second time I hear it, it's like, well, that's interesting. But third time or fourth time I'm hearing it, and the universe is slapping me upside the head. I'm like, okay, maybe I should look closer at this.

Carissa Andrews [00:06:40]:
Maybe I really should look at doing the membership that way. I don't know. Okay. Yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:06:45]:
And it's interesting because I mentioned it in the green room to you, as well as on multiple other episodes, where it's like, it is interesting without planning. Without planning. So, guys, what I. What I mentioned to Carissa in the green room before we started recording is like, it is interesting how when I choose who I bring on, I'm like, all of my ladies, everybody that's coming on is being vetted. Do I really want to have them on or not? But when people are getting scheduled is literally a glimpse at it and, okay, cool that here, there. And somehow, somehow, every single time, what we are talking about without me knowing, when I schedule, without me knowing when ladies are able to come on, because sometimes the schedule just doesn't fit and they come in on the next rotation somehow. Yes, universe, I'm hearing you. Somehow, my topics on the podcast always align with what's happening in my own life and in my own business.

Yvonne Heimann [00:07:50]:
And it's ridiculous. It's like no matter how logical I am, no matter how systems oriented I am, there is something about the universe putting things in your way that just. I wish I could explain it. I wish I could trigger it when I need it.

Carissa Andrews [00:08:07]:
Right, you're triggering when you need it, not necessarily when you want it.

Yvonne Heimann [00:08:14]:
You got.

Carissa Andrews [00:08:15]:
Yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:08:16]:
Yeah, she got me on that one. Yeah, she got me on that one. I'm not. I'm one. I want everything now.

Carissa Andrews [00:08:24]:
I have always been like that myself, and I think the universe, especially this summer, has been putting a lot more patience in my way where it's been a lot. A lot more of, like, let's slow down. Let's reassess. Let's look at things again. Are you sure this is how you want it set up? Are you sure that you can't have this better. Oh, yeah. It's been a. It's been a big introspection, summer.

Yvonne Heimann [00:08:44]:
I'm sitting here with goosebumps because that was literally my summer, where it's like, okay, universe, I got that lesson. Believe me. I finally internalized it. I heard you. Can we move on now, pretty please?

Carissa Andrews [00:08:55]:
And the universe is like, did you, though? Did you know?

Yvonne Heimann [00:09:00]:
Let me. Let me test that. Let's. Let's do that one more time. Again. I'm like, goddamn it.

Carissa Andrews [00:09:08]:
This time with feeling, right? Once more with feeling.

Yvonne Heimann [00:09:10]:
It's like, universe, I do love you. I do love you. But sometimes. Sometimes, I know it's all for the good. Which brings us a little bit to your everyday life. I want to talk a little bit about when life hits us over the head, when universe decides, oh, yeah. You know what? We gotta make sure you learn that lesson. Thank you.

Yvonne Heimann [00:09:40]:
How. How do you work through this? How do you keep business running? How do you keep you running when life just happens? How do you boss your mindset in those situations?

Carissa Andrews [00:09:48]:
That's a really good question. So, normally, I would say in the past past, Carissa would have just kept trying to push through, kept trying to just continue on with the plan, because I had a plan. I'm a double Virgo, so I like to have my plans. But I think the thing that I've learned, especially in the past year, maybe year and a half, and especially this summer, is that when things are coming up into my way, and they are, it's almost like the universe is sending things that are so profoundly absurd that I'm like, okay, I have to stop and take notice of this, right? I have to stop and go, okay, this is just not. This is not just a keep barreling through. This is a hold up. Reassess, go in deep. I typically start my day with meditation after.

Carissa Andrews [00:10:38]:
Well, technically, I start my day with reading. Get the kids out the door and read for a little bit. But then after I read, I do my meditation. And so when things are coming into my mind or into my awareness that are unusual and I have to stop and take notice and go, okay, this is not right. I will drop in. Like, I'll start to drop in now and do meditations. I start to do a lot of intrathecal breathing, trying to move energy from my body, you know, Joe Dispenza. Joe's wonderful.

Carissa Andrews [00:11:05]:
I love, like, what he teaches. I've been doing a lot of heart math, trying to get into heart coherence and kind of realign my energetic and autonomic nervous system, because typically I will stress myself out to the point of, like, completely going into dysregulation. And so then I know that I am no longer operating from a clear space. And so my first go to is always meditation and then just pulling energy, pulling and pushing energy, trying to get it to move and making sure my nervous system is back online.

Yvonne Heimann [00:11:35]:
Have you heard. Kind of off topic. Have you heard about the mastery app? It combines breath work with hypnotherapy.

Carissa Andrews [00:11:45]:
Ooh, cool.

Yvonne Heimann [00:11:47]:
Because you mentioned Joe Dispenza and the energy movement and just tuning into and meditation and everything. I don't do well just with meditation. Just my brain is like, oh, my God. And then just breath work and just focusing on that also. So the combination of that has been a huge change for me. Francesca happens to live here in San Diego, too, but, yeah, she, Francesca Simpa, she combined those. She combined teachings from Joe Dispenza with the breath work and all the things.

Carissa Andrews [00:12:23]:
I've learned through heart coherence, actually, that if I'm not paying attention to my breath work, actually paying attention to it, my body's response is to go breathing shallow. And so then I don't get as deep into meditation or as deep into hypnosis if I'm doing that. And so I'm having to retrain myself to breathe deeper during those. We actually have programs. Well, some of them are in my classes, but then we also also have, like, a membership ourselves for authors, where we have meditations and hypnosis for specifically authors. And a lot of it, I'm starting to, because of the Heartmath Institute and learning more about the HRV and all the things with. With our autonomic nervous system, we're incorporating a lot of that into the meditations, into the hypnosis.

Carissa Andrews [00:13:08]:
Yeah, it's so good.

Yvonne Heimann [00:13:10]:
And it's. I'm like, that's. That's been my journey over probably the last year or two to. I've had so much old stored energy and anger and all kinds of stuff in my body where I'm, like, through actually starting to optimize my sleep, I started to dig into my sleep pattern and all the things love me, the oura HRV rate and all the things. Right? Yeah. That's how it actually started to. Just wanting to optimize my sleep and then went into the fuller nervous system. And you mentioned, gotta love this summer.

Yvonne Heimann [00:13:45]:
What the hell ever was in this air this summer? There was something going around.

Carissa Andrews [00:13:50]:
I think it's still going on. There's. It feels like it's dissipating, but it's.

Yvonne Heimann [00:13:56]:
Can we be done now? Can we? I've been in this for the last four months, but it's like I'm looking back, and, yes, there's definitely a lot of hard lessons to be learned this summer. For me. Some things came around where I'm like, oh, my God, I thought that was done. So let's clean this up. Final end of story. I'm done with this. But I also had to give myself the. The.

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:24]:
Not the accountability. What's the word I'm looking for? The acknowledgement of, if this summer would have happened only two years ago, I would have been a complete mess.

Carissa Andrews [00:14:40]:
Same. Yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:42]:
Between mindset, between just managing my nervous system, between managing expectations, between not taking things too serious, knowing that there is the only constant is there is no constant. I know there is an end to it, and I just gotta keep going and trust my intuition. So I love how you, first of all, start your day and really start in that inner center, but also help your authors do the same thing. I'm like, I remember when I was writing my book, going through two publishing houses and not being a complete shit show, and then getting to a point where it's like, I don't even know if I'm ever gonna damn finish that thing. It's everything that happens, and I'm making my own life more difficult. So having the tools, having the resources to make it a little bit easier is great to have. So I love all the resources you are giving your community.

Carissa Andrews [00:15:45]:
Yeah. And it's so good to have compassion for yourself, too. I think, as entrepreneurs, you know, whether all authors are entrepreneurs as well, it's like we. We kind of forget that we can have compassion for ourselves and our journey and that it's not like it's not from here to there instantaneously. There's a journey that happens between manifestation, between bringing into the fruition, the thing that you're calling in. And sometimes we want it all to be instantaneous, but that's not where the lessons come in, and that's not where the growth happens, unfortunately.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:16]:
But I want it now! I swear, sometimes I feel like the little child on the ground just thought throwing a tamper tantrum. And actually, I have thrown one of my coaches, like, you know what? Just grab a pillow, just throw a freaking temper tantrum, get it out, and then back to work

Carissa Andrews [00:16:33]:
That's good, because you're moving the energy, you're not storing it, then that's so good. Yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:36]:
So how do you bring all of this into your business? How does that manifest within your business, in your everyday life? How do you boss your business?

Carissa Andrews [00:16:48]:
Yeah. So, for me, like I said, I start my day with the. I read. So I read a nonfiction book, and I read a fiction book every day. I write fiction. I write nonfiction. So to me, it's important to kind of really dive into both and to just be aware of trends, to be aware of tropes, and then just to feed your mind things that you enjoy. Anyway, like, I just.

Carissa Andrews [00:17:07]:
I love to start the day with that, especially once the kids have gone out the door and they're in school. So I do that for probably about an hour, go into meditation right after that, because I like to start my day with that, that flow. So it's like, if writing and teaching authors is my thing, I'm going to start with that first, kind of get my mindset going, go into meditation, do the meditation to tie those things together, get my nervous system online, make sure that my mind is in the right place before I then go to work. Now, I'll typically do a workout right after that and then go into work. But the way it works out with my actual teaching stuff is it's permeated everything. Like, I talk manifestation, I talk about, you know, the neuroscience behind it. I talk about quantum manifestation and how the quantum field interplays. I talk about the autonomic nervous system.

Carissa Andrews [00:17:55]:
We have meditations and hypnosis, and we're literally, my partner and I, Tammy, we're working on. So she's a board certified clinical hypnotherapist, and so she does all the hypnotherapy, and I do all the meditations, and we're constantly talking about and thinking about, okay, what are authors dealing with right now? What can we, what kind of support can we start to provide to them that's going to help them understand that this, this doesn't have to be a nervous system dysregulation kind of job, because there's so many people out there who have been teaching indie authorship, particularly on the fiction side. It's not so much on the non fiction side, but on the fiction side that you have to hustle, that you have to write a book a month, that you have to write as quickly as possible. And that's the only way to be able to earn. And if you want to earn big, then you have to be spending big on the ad platforms. And all of it has just kind of created this dysfunctional, I don't know, system for a lot of creatives, because they either they can't keep up or it doesn't feel good, and then they're wondering why they're falling behind, or they wonder why their author career isn't working the way they want it to, and it's because they're trying to fit their lives and the way that they operate their business in a methodology that doesn't make sense for them. And so we're trying to pull them back. Pull them back.

Carissa Andrews [00:19:09]:
This can be sustainable. This can be fun again, remember why you started writing? It was because it was fun, not because of all this nonsense. So it really permeates the entire ethos of author revolution, where it's you creating your author career your way, but in a way that feels good. And that just really is our main objective for authors to come. Come back. Come back to your fun, come back to your joy, because that's where all the good stuff happens.

Yvonne Heimann [00:19:33]:
Oh, my God. I am. I am so excited to literally see this entire hustle movement pop up everywhere. I'm like, I think Gary Vee started this b's of we have to post every single day, five times a day. And I'm like, I get it. You have a team of how many people? But seriously, it's. That was fun for about a week, but at the level where he's doing it, I even see him everywhere, all the time, anytime. And I'm like, oh, don't get me wrong.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:10]:
Me as a reader, considering I am halfway through my latest smut, and I'm like, where's the next one of that already? Because I'm just soaking it up. But you can also tell in the writing if it just was happening or if you were forcing it. It was so interesting for me on my last series that I read where I need to say a lie. It's four or five books in it. One more is coming. And they were all great till the last one was like, what happened? And I'm pretty sure that she just. Her series got swept up. I'm not gonna call any books or names.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:56]:
Doesn't matter. She's got a great series there. And it was one book, but you can tell on the writing. Where. Where, I'm assuming. Okay, you started to subscribe, you got picked up. You. You are on book talk.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:10]:
All the things. Your books are everywhere. And we are seeing in the last book the result of it, because you've been following the public perception rather than your own clock, your own joy. And I'm like, this. This. This is. This is not what we are used to. So I love that you are on the forefront of this.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:34]:
You don't have to hustle. You don't have to constantly push books out. And it's like, I've seen so many different ways how authors still staying in connection with their community, with their writing, with their readers, where their community becomes part of the series, their community becomes part of the writing and the journey of it.

Carissa Andrews [00:21:56]:
Oh, yeah. And you can do that from joy. You can do it from a place of fun and enlightenment. But when you allow the pressure to shift you off of, like, your. Your journey as an author, now you're taking it into a new territory that maybe you didn't plan on going. I think that's where a lot of benefits of being a planner or a plotter really comes in. Because if you plotted out that series, if it's five or six books, and you plotted the six books out, it doesn't matter what that external stuff is unless you want it to, because you know where you're heading. But if she didn't plan out the series and she was kind of like, let's just see what happens, and then it blew up.

Carissa Andrews [00:22:35]:
It's easy to be swept away then or feel the pressure of, oh, this book has to perform. And now you've really mucked it all up because your energy is not in the story anymore. Your energy's in. I don't want to disappoint people. I don't. I don't want to fail with this. And so you're. It's so interesting.

Carissa Andrews [00:22:53]:
There's so many dynamics that can mess up your energy when you're a writer, and I agree, you can totally tell when your writing has shifted, when it's changed. When I look back at my earlier writing on my blog versus some of my actual fiction stuff, there's an energy to it that you don't even realize is in the words or in the way that you have a rhythm with your sentences, that it changes totally if you're in a burnout state or if you're in a pressure cooker.

Yvonne Heimann [00:23:22]:
And I think that applies to everything, especially to female led businesses and creative things we do, because so much is rooted in our passion and our joy. And I ended up on that train. I literally talked about it in one of my YouTube videos where I'm like, I'm done with YouTube. I'm done following all the external advice. I'm going back to following my passion, what I'm excited about, and what I'm called to talk about than doing five freaking sop videos, because that's what worked on YouTube. So it's interesting how that relates to a lot of things we do when we don't trust ourselves to have the answers.

Carissa Andrews [00:24:13]:
Yeah. And it's so weird because so many high achievers, typically the high achievers are the ones that have imposter syndrome. And it's so weird because normally we have more information than most because we've dug in more avenues, we've probably looked at a lot more things. We have more knowledge in various aspects, like multi. We're often multi passionate as well. And so because we have information all over the place, we think none of it correlates or ties together, but it always does. It always has a common thread or a common denominator. And we don't give ourselves enough credit for how much we know or how much we innately are called to.

Carissa Andrews [00:24:50]:
And so, yeah, we get so confused or allow the noise of, oh, this is working for that person. So it must be the thing that's going to work for me, too, instead of following our own inner guidance and just trusting that what we're doing is enough. And it's, again, that compassion. Right. We have to have compassion for our journey. And, you know, maybe getting sidetracked is part of the journey. Maybe that's part of the what you have to learn because there's going to be a piece or a component of that you're going to end up overlaying at some point. So you won't know until you look back and go, okay, that's why I ended up getting off into the woods over there.

Carissa Andrews [00:25:25]:
But okay, that's good. That's good.

Yvonne Heimann [00:25:26]:
And I think a lot of the imposter syndrome happens because we focus more on the things we know we don't know rather than focusing on the things we know.

Carissa Andrews [00:25:36]:
Yes, yes. And then leveraging those.

Yvonne Heimann [00:25:40]:
So much more to talk about, so much more to learn. Where can people go to connect with you, to learn more, to do more with you?

Carissa Andrews [00:25:49]:
Sure. If they want to learn more from the author revolution side, it's just authorrevolution.org. There are two r's in the middle. So authorrevolution so.org. and that's where they can find all the information about the podcast or the courses or the memberships I offer. And then from the author side, if they're interested in paranormal or urban fantasy or steamy romcom, you can head over to carissaandrews.com. and again, there's two a's in the middle. So it's Carissa and andrews.com.

Yvonne Heimann [00:26:19]:
You have the whole angel thing going on there in the middle. And Carissa was also nice enough. I will have it linked in the description. As always, guys, you know, we make it easy for you. You are also giving my listeners a week free trial to your future self magic membership. That was a tongue twister for the German. Tell my audience about it. What is that? What can they experience in there?

Carissa Andrews [00:26:48]:
Yeah, so your future self is the membership where you can come in. There are going to be twelve programs that are going to be core, but it's kind of like beachbody for the mind. So this is where we have four weeks of meditations or hypnosis for authors. And so they are specifically for authors to be able to either manifest more money, manifest a better relationship with their books, or their author career. New beginnings. So if they're starting a new book or a new series, there's one on that we have a quantum manifestation like program. We have. Let's see.

Carissa Andrews [00:27:18]:
Oh, gosh, there's so many different ones now. I've lost track of all of them. We're on the 9th one right now, or no 10th one that we've created. So we're almost done. We're almost wrapped all the way up with our first twelve. And then we'll be adding more when concepts really come to us. Like, if it's something that we really are, like, okay, the authors need this kind of program now, but the core, the core twelve are almost finished. And, yeah, it's just so that you, if you are trying to get into your manifestational zone for your author career, you're trying to get your mindset back online, you're trying to get your nervous system back online, and you just want to feel good about what you're doing to.

Carissa Andrews [00:27:54]:
That's what this is. We're digging into the subconscious mind through the hypnosis, and we're just elevating your visualization through the meditations to be able to remember that you are the master manifestor of your author career. So we can help you with that.

Yvonne Heimann [00:28:06]:
I love that. Carissa, thanks so much for joining me today and for everybody listening and watching, you know what's coming. Make sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any amazing guests like Carissa. I got to enjoy having on today. Thank you.

Carissa Andrews [00:28:25]:
Thank you, Yvonne. Thanks for having me.