Entrepreneur in Residence : Nette Hargreaves

And for the next few months, we will welcome Nette Hargreaves of Empowered – Human Design 4 Women as our Entrepreneur in Residence. So I have put Nette in the spotlight so that we can all get to know her a little better and find out more about what she has to offer our community.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I am a mama bear to a 10-year-old daughter and have been living in Totnes for four and a half years. I grew up in Germany and then lived in Spain, the US, the UK and Belgium. Freedom is a huge value for me and I love travel, (clearly deprived in this area!) adventure and having new experiences.

I am also fascinated by how we operate as people. I have delved into different practices such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming and various coaching approaches. I am really passionate about Human Design as it is the most accurate and supportive modality I have encountered in 20 years of dabbling in self-development.

I also love a good novel and am currently (quite uncharacteristically!) intrigued by the series “This is us”. I normally can’t handle the suspense and cliffhangers and this is very much about real people having relatable experiences, with multiple stories intertwining in the past, present and future and some very clever storytelling.

And a little about your career journey?

My dream was always to work in travel – my first career ambition was to be a flight attendant (my teachers were horrified as I was deemed far too clever to be serving drinks at 30,000 feet). I ended up working in hotels for 15 years for six different brands in three different countries.

Variety has always been really important to me and working in hospitality allowed me to try out many different things from reception, reservations and sales through to revenue management at both hotel and head office level. After taking a sabbatical, I freelanced for a few years and realised a long-held dream of doing a degree in Art History at Goldsmiths College in London.

So what do you do now?

After I had my daughter, I began working for myself both on- and offline. I now have a business called Empowered – Human Design 4 Women. It’s all about empowering women to be the energetic leaders of their everyday environment. I love using Human Design as my main starting point as it makes everything utterly unique to each woman. It’s super effective since your Human Design is about following your own blueprint rather than someone else’s.

How long have you been an entrepreneur and what made you decide to go down this route?

It’s hard to pin down as I have done so many different things since leaving my corporate career. I have been working for myself on and off for the last 15 years. I say on and off because that time includes taking a few years out to get a degree and become a mama. I got my taste for working independently when I freelanced and I really enjoyed the freedom of being in charge of my own schedule. Being an entrepreneur now also allows me to schedule my work around my daughter’s school time and gives me the flexibility I crave.

What does being an entrepreneur mean to you?

I love that when I work with clients I can see the impact of what I’m doing straight away. I can respond to what is happening in real-time. I see the challenges and the aha moments. Of course, the work always continues afterwards too and yet it is so satisfying to have that direct feedback. It’s very different from working in corporate where what you do today might not have an impact for weeks or even months to come. I love that my work is about people rather than projects or revenue-based goals. And I love modelling for my daughter that being an entrepreneur is an attainable ambition.

What is the biggest lesson you have learnt so far since you started your own business?

I have learnt that really everything is about connection. When I had a product-based business for a few years, I thought in the beginning that it was about selling the thing but really it was about connecting with people.

It was the same when I worked in hotels. Making a sale was really about connecting with my customer. Getting team members to implement new concepts was about making both a personal connection and also connecting them to the idea and the change that implementing something would create. It’s caring about people and their personal and professional growth.

And our interconnectedness means that when one woman experiences growth or success in some way, so many others are lifted up as a result – I love that.

What is the biggest challenge you find in running your business?

It’s that being in charge of my own time also comes with a lot of responsibility. It’s up to me to hold to my own commitment – no one else is going to look over my shoulder or do it for me. At the same time, it’s also making sure there is a healthy balance between time devoted to my business, my family AND myself. 

And to remember that as women we are cyclical. It’s easy to get addicted to the rush and excitement of feeling good and “out there” and less easy to meet ourselves with kindness when our bodies demand space for rest and recharging. Definitely still working on that one! 

What is your business superpower?

 My business superpower is busting through the fluff to get to the heart of the matter… with love and compassion.

What does success mean to you?

Success to me is living a good life. It’s being happy with who I am, unconditionally loving myself and finding pleasure in the everyday. Success is also about having a lifestyle that supports my values and gives me room for spontaneity and fun.

As our Entrepreneur in Residence, how will you be able to help our community?

 I am so excited to be Entrepreneur in Residence! I love the empowerment that comes with community and sisterhood and I have felt first-hand how uplifting being part of The Tribe is. I also believe that our energy is our energy across all areas of life. Therefore if we release a challenge related to our personal life, it is going to positively affect how we show up in business, and vice versa.

So I am here to support you with being the most empowered version of you so that you can show up for yourself, your family, friends and clients. I have simple tools that help you to understand your design. We can either delve into a full reading of your chart with a bonus integration call or we can arrange a 30-minute focus call. 

If you need a little boost in a specific area of your life right now, then a Human Design focus call really helps to get you moving forward fast. We can agree on a topic beforehand and then address it through the lens of your design.

What should people know about working with you?

I bring a sense of both sacredness and fun to everything I do. It’s important to me to create a container that signals that time taken for your own discovery is special. It’s an act of self-love. And having fun isn’t all about rip-roaring belly laughs, although I love those too. It’s about bringing a sense of lightness and ease. That’s one of the many reasons I love Human Design so much.

When we look at your chart, there are often so many areas where it’s energetically aligned for someone to stop doing things, to identify the places that feel like treading treacle. Stopping devoting your energy to those places frees up time to focus on the things that are energetically correct which means better results with more ease. There is so much freedom in releasing what doesn’t serve us and making more room for the things that light us up!

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If you would like to find out more about the support that Nette is offering to our community over the next few months, please click below.