Beyond Business Podcast Ep 4

Written By Debbie Lee

Episode 4

Mindful Business with Daniela Hofmann

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EPISODE SUMMARY

Join me on the Beyond Business podcast as I welcome the wonderful Daniela Hoffman for a heartfelt conversation that explores the path of purpose-driven entrepreneurship. Daniela shares her journey from a career in finance to discovering work that brings her the meaning and freedom she seeks. Daniela's story highlights not only how impactful it can be to align our work with personal values, but also the courage it can take to do so.

Listen in as Daniela and I reflect on the personal and professional evolution that comes from embracing your true self. We talk about the sometimes rocky road to finding joy and fulfillment through our work, and how our definition of success can change along the way.

The conversation offers an honest look at both the challenges and rewards of integrating your identity with your mission-driven business, and the growth that happens as a result. We touch on the trust and commitment required when working in this way, and how it can enrich both our own lives and that of the communities we live and work in.

This is a super rich conversation, offering both inspiration and practical guidance on the journey of mindful business.

CONNECT WITH DANIELA

You can find Daniela online in the following places:

MORE WAYS TO GO BEYOND BUSINESS

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

00:03 - Debbie (Host)

Welcome to Beyond Business the podcast, the show for impact driven egopreneurs who want to be part of a bigger change and make a difference that reaches beyond your business alone. This week on the podcast, I'm joined by the wonderful Daniela Hoffman. Daniela and I are not only business colleagues, but have also become friends through shared values and our work, and overlap in the journey that we have taken to get here. Daniela aims to create a free and meaningful life for herself and others around her. Through her work, she supports purpose driven conscious business owners. As a consultant and a mentor, she's also the founder of the Cabin, a mindful online co-working space. I thoroughly enjoyed this rich and varied conversation, and I hope you do, too.

00:57 - Debbie (Host)

Good afternoon, Daniela. A very warm welcome to the podcast. I've been so looking forward to this. It's such a pleasure to have you on. I wonder how you're arriving today.

01:14 - Daniela (Guest)

How am I arriving today? That's a very good question. I think I feel a mix of two things. One is this sort of knowing this week before the holidays Actually just two days, now three days and I feel a bit of a weight of the things that have maybe not been finished, that I wanted to finish and that's my own expectations, no one else necessarily. And the other one is kicking in of a mellowness and like I can relax now, enjoy. Yeah, so those kind of two. They're here, they're present.

01:58 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, I really feel you in that actually. Yeah, these last few days I've been reflecting on how this winter energy of hibernation and turning in words and going underground and taking time to reflect and rest and find calm and tranquility it often seems to have odds with the outside world and this real. I feel too this pressure to finish things off or prepare presents or got two little very excited kids running around at home and the two things are quite at odds in some way and I hear from you the holding of both of those things 100%.

02:47 - Daniela (Guest)

Yes, yes, no, totally yes.

02:53 - Debbie (Host)

Well, I'm so excited about our conversation. I wonder, to start off with, if you could tell us a little bit more just about yourself and what you do.

03:08 - Daniela (Guest)

Sure. So I currently live in the French Alps. I've moved here about two years ago now. I was born in Germany and grew up there, then moved to the UK, lived there for 16 years and then, because I really wanted to see something else left and my travel plans or plans of exploring and kind of read a discovering where I want to be in my mid 30s did not plan out the way I thought it would, because the pandemic came along and I ended up like my parents, which was an interesting period If I look back, a very important period, but it took me in a completely different direction and in that time I met my now partner and we decided to move to France, which was never on my yeah, just never thought I'd end up here. But I'm here and I think I feel more at home than I've ever felt at home anywhere else even though I can't speak the language.

04:21

Or very very it's still very basic. So that's been a beautiful turn of events and I think in my whole kind of. So if we keep it to the professional life, I think that's what it's always been like. There was Like there was this I went a very traditional path and I went to uni and then after uni I did a graduate scheme and kind of did all the things that maybe my parents would have wanted for me, that society would have wanted for me, but knowing I always knew that it's not really for me. But I did it anyway Because I think at a time as well, you're so young and there's certain interests that yeah, numbers interested me, I like numbers, so I went into finance. It was kind of almost like that is, I'm just following an interest here. Plus I always did say never.

05:35

So I did a finance degree and then I what Finance business degree and then I did a grad scheme in management accounting because I always liked the business side of things. I always wanted to be in business, in industry. I never wanted to be an auditor, say even though they also work with industries.

05:57

But I wanted to be in business. My dad started his own business when many, many years ago he's now retired, but I think he was always like my Not that I necessarily wanted to be like him, but I liked the way he could structure his life around his work and I think that was always, I think, in the back of my head. I always knew I'm never Like I'm going to work for someone now, but in the future that's not going to happen, and so it did Like eventually. I had also the confidence to have a wonderful coach. We're very close friends now. She's actually now in some of my, just joined some of my communities, which is such a beautiful thing that we stick and be in our, in each other's lives and she really gave me that confidence at the time that I needed to say, hey, I can try something. And whilst everyone was saving for mortgage, I was saving to get out of corporate life and I did. And since then so it's been like six and a half years now it's been a wild, weird, beautiful, really challenging, really exciting ride and I went from. I set up two businesses, I closed them down. Again. I did now on my third or fourth, but it's a constant like seeing or trying things out and seeing if I like them and do I like them long-term. But you gain so many skills along the way. I think that's like one thing I've put away from this whole experience so far I learned more in. I have learned more in the first two, three years of not working for myself that I have in like 10 plus years before working for someone else and working in a corporate environment in a setting where everyone tells you. But people tell you what to do and you kind of almost like listen. So yeah, it's been very, very exciting and I think so right now, where I'm at is I'm running a co-working space. It's an online co-working space.

08:13

So I think very early on, even before pre-pandemic, I shifted everything online Because I think, even though I'm not much of a Like now anyway, I'm not much of a traveler but I love being independent from I think that the office for me kind of, almost Back in the day I represented a prison cell in many ways, so to be at a certain place at a certain time was very hard for me to navigate. So very early on I tried to be location independent. So even when I had a product business I was involved in, like super food lattes many years ago, and I was like my focus was to outsource it so I could still deal with all the customers, but I wouldn't have to be somewhere to fulfill the orders, so someone else could fulfill the orders. And I worked actually with some brilliant, brilliant people who did that and there were so many solutions out there to help you. And, again, that was all pre-pandemic and yeah, so I set my life up to be the mode and I really I love it Even now.

09:29

Even like pandemic has massively helped, and now I'm still I don't want to go back ever to an office setting and it also allows me to just speak to so many people, to meet so many people from anywhere in the world. And so, yeah, I think if I'm taking it back to what I'm doing now, because that was a long intro so I run the cabin, this online co-working space. We run in the space mindful co-working sessions. So at the core, it's working on a piece of work in a destruction tree space, but there is more to it, so it's got a mindfulness and meditation element to it which makes this so special. I've been doing this now for over two and a half years and it's again. It allowed me to meet so many amazing people and everyone that I meet there. Most of the people there have a similar profile to me, so they work for themselves, mainly women, and they don't have a team. They look so there's like this connection piece.

10:42

It's really beautiful and they all do very important and inspiring things and that's in the healing world, coaching. They have their kind of eco businesses or businesses that are conscious businesses, purpose driven businesses. That's what most people are working on and that's also what I do in my consulting work. So I do a lot of consulting work and again I had to find my feet in that like it took me a long time, but I think I've now gotten to a point where I really enjoy it and I enjoy the kind of the different aspects of it, and consulting work can sometimes speak a lot of doing. The cabin is more doing and being, and now I'm also folding in some embodiment work, which is totally being, and so I'm like half the whole spectrum and I love to move in the spectrum along the spectrum and it's, yeah, I feel, pretty complete right now.

11:44 - Debbie (Host)

Thank you.

11:45

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing I really I was really gripped by your story.

11:50

It's such an interesting story and hearing you reflect on it as well, I really hear how it's been a journey for you. I really struck me that you said that so right from when you began in your finance career that there was something not quite right, but maybe something you couldn't quite articulate and, I imagine as well, maybe didn't have any other like tangible alternatives to as well and totally. And then, yeah, coming out of that then it was like this real release of freedom and like adventure and creativity, and it sounds like then you've come right through that and then like made your working professional life your own, like you really created your own support system, your own sort of structure around you. So, whereas the maybe the rigid yeah, the rigidity of having to be in an office at a very particular time didn't sit, but now you've been able to create the cool working spaces where you can like turn up but maybe ease into it a little bit more in a way that feels comfortable and feels more like you.

13:19 - Daniela (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, and it's yeah, it's a really how you describe it. It was such a journey of kind of coming back to who am I and like, yeah, I did not have any role models, I guess, other than my dad, and my dad did a full career before he started his own business, only when he was in his 30s. So, again, it was like you go to school and you go to uni to learn something, and then you work for someone to learn the ropes, and then you kind of go and set things up for yourself, but you don't do that like straight coming out of school. And you know, in many ways, of course I really value the time as well, but I can only say that, like the time in corporate I can only say that now because they, like you know I was talking about that coach that I met.

14:20

I met her at my last corporate job and without that I wouldn't you know, I wouldn't have that beautiful connection now and my business partner in my earlier business businesses we, you know, 10 plus years later, we're still very close and I'm now supporting him in his new business and so it's like it's also, it's just so interesting for me it's been also this big thread around the people I meet and and yeah, but it's yeah, totally realizing that one thing may not suit you, but in a different setting it's maybe totally what you want to do.

14:58

But you just have to go from like try it in a different setting and then it maybe really works for you. But it's, it's really like trial and error and what works and what doesn't, and what makes me happy and what doesn't. But it also, I mean, it's it really, it's an evolution. It's I couldn't have done what I'm doing now 10 years ago because I didn't have the confidence, I didn't even myself, I didn't, yeah, and I didn't even know it was possible, because there were no people around me who were doing that.

15:29

Because they all had different, very, very different objectives. They liked working where they were working, they liked doing this, and it's very different. Now I have all sorts like on a very again, on a very big spectrum of people who love doing one thing and not the other, and and they like one setting and not the other.

15:48 - Debbie (Host)

So it's yeah, it's really, really amazing and yeah, I'm really, I'm really struck by what you said earlier, too, about the learning curve and high steep.

16:05

That is something I really relate to myself. I think, like second to becoming a mom, like running a business has been by far my, my biggest learn, like my my steepest learning, and in ways that, like I couldn't anticipate beforehand, because I think the key difference that I've really heard you touch on is that it's quite, I think that when you have a purpose-driven business, it can be, it's quite hard to separate yourself from it, because it's like an outlet of your creativity and the thing that you really care about and really want to create, and like there's so many positives and so many benefits to that. Like it really brings passion and energy and enthusiasm and determination and commitment and at the same time, it's like it's more vulnerable in some ways as well, because it's this thing that you've created, you've like poured your heart and soul into, and then it's like you know, like sending that out into the world and so, yeah, I don't know, there's like a level of personal investment in it. I think that doesn't always come with every role, like every employed role, let's say.

17:36

But I really like what you said in that about like the different settings, like it's not that, like working in different environments is necessarily better. You do one's better and one's worse, or anything like it's really about finding that personal fit. Yeah, so much, yeah. And for me, like, one of the big contrasts is that I guess, in like certainly companies that are set up in a traditional way, there can be quite a well, a somewhat linear career path mapped out where you're like, or at least markers of progress, let's say, because in the world of entrepreneurship and I find it it's a lot harder to delineate what those markers are. And so, yeah, I'm curious to know, like from your experience, what your, I guess, like, what your markers of success or progress are.

18:43 - Daniela (Guest)

Wow, that is such a good question Because it really has changed so much for me, I think. Well, because it's so again, it's so parallel, so intertwined with my own journey and of getting closer to who I really am, about all of the layers that certainly corporate hasn't helped to wear 50,000 masks and that all of it like had to come off and with that, I think my yeah, my idea of success and what it looks like has changed so much, so much. Of course, I think I totally got to admit that here, but I think when I left corporate and I kind of entered this new world, I felt like I was so special and then I was like, yeah, now I'm going to make it and I'm going to be like super successful, whatever that means. I think back in the day I thought I was a lot of money means being super successful, but then what happens is something completely different. And I was at a point because I was running the one of the first businesses I ran. I literally just put money in, wasn't paid because, you know, wasn't working anymore, but we were developing a. We were actually at the time we were developing a chatbot and we were putting a lot of money in and I was living in London so I was to pay crazy rents and life was just expensive and all of my savings, well, it's been last long. And I got to a point where I was like what am I? How, what, what is? How am I going to support this? Because there's no way I was going to go back to my old job. And that was actually a point of like, really and we were talking about this before that work can be such a deep spiritual journey, because really it was like the death of ego in that point when I took on a. So at university I never really did any bartending jobs or sort of yeah, that sort of work, but I did.

21:12

Then, you know, in my early thirties, I got the point where I was like I don't know how am I going to pay rent next week, next month, and I need to do something and what could I do that I don't commit, like I don't commit myself into new employment anymore, but I'm, and I can still work on the business during the day, but I have some money coming in. So in the evenings I would be, you know, front of house and back of house at a hotel, and that was not easy. That was really not easy, but I think the humility that it taught me and the real like you really want this, and this is sort of there was so much, so, so many beautiful moments in this part. I think I did it for six, seven months. It was amazing. And also the people you meet there, because so many people are just. Some want to be actors, some want to be it's just everything. You meet, like some people who are moms, who are working three jobs. It's incredible. And again it's like, wow, this is. I would have never experienced this if it wouldn't have been for the path I've chosen. And yeah, I think this was, I think in the traditional markers of success, I think I've hit the box and was on faith, but for me it was like it was a defining moment of like something new, because it's like I know I can even do it when I, when it's like like I do whatever it takes, I want to do it so badly, I want to be independent so badly that I'll do all this.

23:04

And then, and then, as life works, something else comes up and then there's a freelancing job that came along that really wanted to do, and then things changed and I moved back into it, but I wouldn't miss that. I wouldn't miss that period, because it really does help. It did help me to redefine what success is for me, and for me that is freedom, and that's freedom of location, that is freedom to do the things I want to do, and it, what that looks like, almost doesn't matter, and it really has been like this over the years as well, because it wasn't the first time that I kind of went into a situation like this where I didn't know where money is going to come from, but there was. I think I created a new element of trust that it will happen and also that I am not sort of I'm not afraid to do something that's maybe to tiny over. Really, yeah.

24:09 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, it's funny where the word trust was like, that was what was coming to me. So two words actually trust and commitment as well. So when you talked about it being a spiritual journey, like this real commitment to this path that you've chosen, this purpose driven, purpose led path, and like, in that it sounds like you were able to draw on this real resourcefulness of like coming up with options and solutions that you might not even have considered before, and I imagine that doing that, maybe even on more than one occasion, as you described it, builds this trust in yourself, or trust in something else, or trust in like, that the thing will appear.

25:01 - Daniela (Guest)

Totally. Oh, this is yeah. This is a really great summary of it. It's trust is, yeah, trust in life that if something isn't for me, it won't be for me, like and then, and then I respond to that rather than trying to make something work that just really won't ever work. But it's yeah, it's really, it's trusting that life as my back. If that's good or bad, like almost that well, I don't necessarily trust in good or believe in good or bad, but it's like life will lead me down a path and it's for me to respond to this circumstance. And in this case I had no money and I'm. There were two, I guess two ways to respond ago. Do I go back to my old life and be miserable, or do I choose something else? And I was not prepared for the beauty that would I would actually meet there and the learnings and the shifts within me, yeah, option, and it's interestingly like in options that you would have previously, like totally real, totally real.

26:18

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you know.

26:22 - Debbie (Host)

I'm really, really drawn like before, so I was looking on your website the other day and I was really drawn to this line that you have on there and it says I see work as a form of creative expression and a vital contribution to our communities and society at large. And yeah, it really came up in that when you were speaking there. There's something about what you just, I think you described as like the death of your ego or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But it's always like allowing that to happen so that you can then like commit yourself to something else. That like that community contribution or societal contribution and I mentioned that plays a really big part in your work. Now you really building that, your own community, and so I wonder, like how that plays into it for you.

27:26 - Daniela (Guest)

So I and again we're coming back to this like work certainly for me being a spiritual journey, because I mean, life is one right, life as a whole is one big journey. It's always been work. I think work has been one of the big things. Another one would be relationships, but I think work has been the very, very constant that I had to really dig deep at times to to yeah, to not, I guess, drown or yeah, I guess that's a good description, and so so for me, it's like work really has helped me to and I was saying that before really to get closer to who I am and who I should be, because all of these kinds of things that I meet along the way they just teach me something, you know, they challenge my ego, they make me really humble, they make me believe in something greater, they make me meet others and I see myself in them, which makes me realize that we are all really one.

28:42

And, as I said, other people may not have that and for them their big teacher is relationships, or for them their big teacher is death, or whatever your thing is. But yeah, for me really it's work, and I think, especially in this realm of working for yourself, there is so much of expression that you can. Yeah, the way you can express yourself and I think if I just look at myself, that has changed so much because I'm not staying the same person and the same version and I think I almost I need it, I need to and still continue to respond to whatever is I need to learn right now or whatever is present for me and, yeah, really my path is reflected in that. So my work, I think, will never look like from one year to the next, probably never looks the same.

29:49 - Debbie (Host)

You used the word evolution earlier. It's like constant, ever-evolving experience and I think that I guess, as human beings, we like to have a certain amount of certainty and control over things and, unknowing how things are going to pernice, I think it's a really natural instinct to look towards the what is the end point of this thing? And, yeah, I really see a lot of courage and bravery in your journey and putting yourself in the position where actually, you often don't know what that end point is or what the next evolution will look like and when it might happen. And, yeah, I guess the plus side of that is it is really exciting and it is adventurous and it's like, yeah, it's like living life to the full in lots of ways and at the same time, it comes with a different choice that comes with like yeah, that's like scary times or brings up these fears, or like what really calls you or requires you to look deeper into yourself, into places that you do want to go, and like, yeah, I really see that bravery and courage in choosing that path.

31:22 - Daniela (Guest)

Thank you, and it's really interesting how you put that, because that's not always what it looks like to me, because I also like I'm also wired for safety and for you know, like any of our mammal, like old, very old brains are. But that's not my design. Like, my design is to kind of forge my own path and so I won't, like life won't allow me to stay in one place for very long, and that's painful and because it does, it comes with uncertainty and I don't know where to go. But I need to be with it, as you said, like I need to be with it. And then it looks to the outside world. I have lots of courage and all of that, but I think to me often it's a very. These times are super challenging. But yeah, I guess there's also this knowing there. Okay, this is now the 10th time, so I can do it, it'll be okay, it'll be okay.

32:27 - Debbie (Host)

It'll be okay. So I wonder for anyone listening if they would like to join you in the cabin or they would like to find out more about your mentoring or consulting work. Where is the best place to find you? So?

32:46 - Daniela (Guest)

the best place to find me is probably one is the cabin website, which I'm sure you'll probably link to as well.

32:53

I'm sure you'll link to so it's mindful co-working dot com, and so that's everything cabin-related. And you have the free sessions, the intensive, so that's kind of longer form co-working events that take place monthly, and then also the club, which is like kind of a weekly, almost daily happening of co-working sessions, and then probably Instagram as well, that I have my sort of a page where more of my embodiment work is featured, and then the cabin also has its own space.

33:32 - Debbie (Host)

Amazing. I think I'm right in saying that the cabin. There's a free session every Tuesday if anyone would like to give it a go, get a taster, find out a little bit more what it's like Exactly Awesome. Thank you so much, daniel, it's been such a pleasure to chat and, yeah, thank you so much for sharing your time, your energy and your story so generously to this.

33:57 - Daniela (Guest)

Oh, thank you, it's been. Yeah, it's sort of crazy conversation. I really loved it. It took me to some places, thank you.

34:07 - Debbie (Host)

A journey in itself. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Beyond Business. If you've loved what you've heard, I would be incredibly grateful if you could rate and review the podcast so that together we can create a global ecosystem of change makers, pioneering business as a force for good. Until then, I look forward to speaking to you in the next episode.

Debbie Lee
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