Jaimie: Well my guest today is Laetitia Andrac and she is an energetics and strategy business mentor, also known as a business Julep as she carved this name for her work. She is the founder and CEO of essential shift consulting Proprietary Limited with TCR helps women leaders and entrepreneurs in creating a soul aligned business career and life without burning out. Now she believes that what you think in your head and mind what you feel and I are passionate about in your heart and soul and what you are creating with your hand and Will are deeply connected. Hence the logo of her business essential shift with the three circles, which represent these three elements. She's making ancient spiritual wisdom accessible for business modern day entrepreneurs. And Laetitia has a solid grounding in mindfulness started meditation as a five year old, for example, and spirituality a lineage of healers, along with an authentic say it as it is approach and impressive business savvy and strategic background. She incorporates her 15 plus years in business and leadership to help guide women to create soul and business alchemy. Her passion is to bring a sense of the sacred and intentionality to everyday life. Laetitia is a mother of two, two girls and lives in coronella beach, and she's attempting to practise what she teaches coaches and mentors and that is creating a life that is aligned and sustainable. Laetitia Andrac, welcome to Pitch Perfect.
Laetitia: Thank you for having me, Jaimie.
Jaimie: What an intro. I've never had anyone like you on my podcast actually. And what you do is absolutely incredible. I guess I just want to start off I've got so many questions to ask you. But how did you get into these because I mean, burnout is a real thing. And I know I have fallen, fallen victim to burnout in the last couple of years. And I'm very susceptible to that because I just keep going and going and going. How did you kind of get into that world and really forming a soul aligned to business?
Laetitia: Thank you for asking this question. So for me, it's been, you know, a journey of trial and error. So I didn't you know, I didn't wake up one morning I was like, Oh my gosh, is going to be essential to consulting and he's going to be helping this and this and that. What you've read today, which we're sharing today is about 15 years in the making, basically, it's really through raising other businesses before so I created three other businesses before this one, which were all beautiful lessons through the failures that I experienced with them. So it was really trial and error and my own burnout happened in 2014. And it's through this burnout that I really through this moment of darkness of really falling down, that I kind of gathered all the pieces of myself and what was really unique about me so this is when I really reconnected with my own lineage, my knowledge as a healer, my practices, my spiritual practices, my connection with the season with the moon and weaving that with deep strategy knowledge through being a strategic consultant and all of that. So it's really about trial and error. So I just want to anyone who's listening to this and maybe like, oh my gosh, she knows her shit. Yes, I do. But it took me time to find what was my my class, you know, what is my class and what I'm really amazing at so inviting any listeners, you know, that actually I stumbled upon during this work. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I come from that farmer background and I really believe that as an entrepreneur, we are farmers we are connected to the cycle of season we are connected to ourselves and the soils that we create our business upon. So I really want everyone to just connect with themselves. If they want to be an entrepreneur then while you may sound good all the time, you will learn your lessons. So that's how I ended up doing this. It was more kind of an invitation hours mentoring, startup and scale up since 2012. For my work as a strategy consultant, and then as a general manager at Intel strat when I was mentoring, startup in moody and investing in startups. And after a while everyone was coming to me being like, oh my gosh, your way of helping us design our strategy is really different to other people. Because I start with the person that I'm helping designs a strategy rather than the other way around. And it was Czanne's that I ended up creating essential shift but essential shift before being named essential shift was all differently and it was a different business, which was all about just innovation. So I you know, every single role and maybe if you're listening to this podcast as its evergreen five years, maybe I'll be doing something else and that's all good.
Jaimie: I love that. I love that so much. And so just taking me back so I think you mentioned it was 2014 when you had that burnout experience what actually happened for you what because some people who are listening to this may know exactly what you're talking about. But for others like I was in that same boat two years ago, I had no idea what burnout was. So what was the kind of the trigger and and the symptoms and the fallout? Can you sort of take me through and describe that experience?
Laetitia: Yes, definitely. So I really from the outward, and the story I was telling myself is I was on the top of my game. I was a strategy consultant. I had just been to Berlin where I was facilitating the Bloomberg Philanthropy Meier challenge. So pictures is Mike Bloomberg in the room. I was mentoring about 21 cities, European cities around social impact and innovation for social impact in one of my favourite city in Europe, which is Berlin, which is so vibrant, and I just like, you know, the top of it and at the same time, writing, you know, some thought leadership for the firms that I was working at as a strategy consultant, and mentoring some new members of the team and, you know, selling some projects here and there for multimedia and do like everything was amazing, right. But what happened is I came back from this trip in Berlin, and the you know, the next few days, I was very tired. So it started with me being tired, which is very unusual and neurodiverse and very active. I wake up in the morning and straightaway, I'm like, let's do something about it today. You know, really this overarching mindset and all of that, and that morning, I couldn't leave my bed. I was just lying down. And your hand was now my husband looked at me. I was like, what's happening? I was like, I don't know. I just have like, zero energy. I don't know what's happening. I don't want to wake up. I was really like, my body didn't want to move, you know, so I decided to call the office and say I was sick. It was the first time we take a sick leave in, you know, seven years of doing this work. And I would go you know, even when I was vomiting and it would hide myself in the toilet, you know, to vomit if I had you know, Gastro like, I would just, you know, hide myself when I was sick and I would still take myself to the office, but that day I couldn't. So I went to the doctor. She asked me a few question. I burst into tears. And then she said you couldn't process my ego my brain couldn't process that only burnout was not something I would face. You know, it was I had seen people burning out because especially through the you know, strategy consulting work, you like having a life expectancy of seven years why it's hard. Like people don't last that long, and dark. And so basically, I had seen a lot of people burn out and for me, it was like, No, I'm not one of those. I'm very struggling. I'm like, Oh, this story I was telling myself. So I was really ashamed was a diagnostic. recommended, and I didn't say to my friends I hide about the burnout for years. I only started sharing about it when I moved to Australia as a pension to myself, but I was not I didn't want to attach my identity to my body didn't want to move. So I was in last stage of burnout. If you read my book, it's I'm not the one who developed this but there are 12 stages of burnout that are identified by a researcher and if you suffer burnout, I am not sure how to help you recover. You need to go and seek for you know, professional that will help you doctors, psychologist, all of those kinds of things. So here again, I'm not like guiding you to recover from the burnout. It's more like bringing awareness into the subtle sign of the burnout and the subtle sign of the burnout is really starting to feel like you have less drive you have less motivation to do the thing to see people and since I got and I didn't notice those little sign I had to wait till I hit rock bottom to really address the burnout. And once you burn out what once you had a tendency to burn out easily. So that's where I really hold myself accountable. And I help my friends to do the same thing in terms of making sure you're not burning out together. Yeah, that's so interesting, because I would have thought if you have burned out once you should be more aware of the warning signs next time around so it doesn't work that way. So in terms of research, what's their noticed it's actually someone who burns out funds is more likely to burn out again, because you're suffering from adrenal fatigue. So you've like burnt yourself so you have less resistance, and you may burn out more easily. So definitely developing self awareness and being really aware and looking for the subtle sign because you will move from the you know, stage one was a subtle sign quicker to stage well if you're burnt out once. Interesting, you know, I never really thought this was a thing but it was this year actually after my she was in June this year, certainly two months ago, was the first week of June after my launch I literally couldn't get out of bed. I people were saying to me we haven't seen you on Instagram. I think it was 10 days or maybe went two weeks or something without even doing an Instagram story because I just could not have any motivation even show up to do an Instagram story because I just put so much into this campaign the morning really concentrated market. So is this something which you can help with? It is what you do bread and butter helping women in particular to avoid burning out? Yes. So in the so my clients are mainly women. I also have now but my targets is mainly women because I really want to close the gap in terms of men successfully raising their business and paying themselves well and having profitable growth and accessing funding and all of those kinds of things that we know exists in reality.
So I want to you know, help the woman that you know, correcting those buyers. So I focus mainly on the moment and what I've noticed is a lot of the way that I've taught really mastering a way of growing your business and selling a launching and growing which is not necessarily sustainable as a woman because we are way more cyclical. We have the cycle of the season in life that affect us. If our mother if we are premenopausal menopausal. We have the cycle of the moon affecting us and the cycle of our bleed our flow. We have you know all of those cycles, a cycle of the seasons that are really affecting us. And that's where I really help my clients to grow a business sustainably by really honouring their own energy. So we start with a self awareness. What's your energy? How can you honour your own energy based on your dosha which is an ancient spiritual practice from India, which is really the science of life because in India and I was trained as an ova practitioner about 17 years ago when I lived in India, so it's really bringing this knowledge of self so that you run your business in alignment with yourself and not with someone else's recipe for you to launch to sell to so on and so forth. So sometimes, you know, launch can be great depending on your type of energy. If you're a pizza person, go and launch for three days with the whole fire there and go only if you're more half a person, then maybe you need like three, four weeks to launch and you launch more slowly, consistently. Everyone will find this your discovery. But yeah, I really helped a lot of my clients come to me, like my ideal clients that come to me that like I've been in business three 710 years I've grown into you know is this multiple six figures seven figure and how do I go to the next stage because right now I'm like hungover, burnt out, lost my mojo lost my staff. I don't even know how to grow it to the next level because I just like, I can't sustain this. And so do you find most people come to you after they've been burnt out? Or do you is that yes, I would imagine because people don't think it's ever going to affect them, do they? Until it happens. So I would say it's it's very interesting because I asked some clients for come on recommendation of someone else who is like, okay, she's going to help you not burning out as you grow your business. So I have clients coming in the more early days and so then we are setting up the right foundation for them to never burn out. But I would say 60 70% of my clients I need to run the data to make sure I'm giving you a right number. I was a general manager in data in science and commercialization in Telstra. So I love data as well as intuition just for you to know so I want the data to be around but if I ran the numbers, maybe we'll end around 60 to 70% of the woman that comes to me have already suffered from the small to have out. Yeah, right. I see. And of course, this is not I don't know if it's probably the majority of what you do, because when you look at your website and and we'll talk about your book in a moment, actually which is very exciting. But when you look at your LinkedIn profile and you know I did a fair bit of research about you before you came on today, and I'm so stoked to hear. And I know I've been trying to get you onto the show for months now. But one of the things that you really specialise in and it seems to be a big focus for you is increasing your clients revenue streams and you've got some incredible results. I mean, you even on your on your LinkedIn profile, you're talking about how you helped a client, create a brand new monthly recurring revenue stream of 30k after only a few hours of working with you another client I think, unlocked a revenue stream and made $25,000 in 24 hours. How did you do this? Is it really a mindfulness thing or is it business strategy or is it all of the above? It's a mix of two. So what I love to say is I play in between innovation strategy and intuition and spirituality. I am this bridge between both of those worlds, which today are very disconnected.
But if you go back to ancient practices of doing business, you know, the ancient merchants, the ancient farmer, they were really connecting both elements. So I used to be a strategy and innovation consultants for a big fan which was called Dublin monitor in the US. And in Telstra, I was there just to develop new growth new revenue stream because we know telecommunication is not going to be the next wave of big growth in revenue. So Telstra if you have any listener Well, obviously is it's like Verizon in the US. It's like orange in France, is like Vodafone in the UK. So this is like a big telecommunication company. And I was hired by Zen to really develop new growth and new revenue stream. So he says like something that my creative brain love to see in people when I look at someone's business and I work with them on their energy and their intuition. Then quickly, we unlock something that was a goldmine. You know, like the story of the digger you know, they were digging close to the goal, but then they gave up and I'm like helping them dig the last few you know, knock and then boom responses go which was there and as always been there. So I just come and I, you know, light brings a light on there, you know, blind spots because when you're a CEO in your business, you always have blind spots. And I do too and my husband was the same background is a form of strategy consultants. My favourite thing to do is sitting down with him when the girls are sleeping, having a red wine and for both of us to be like, What is my blind spot? And he will tell me, what's my blind spot and I'm gonna tell him what is his blind spot. We used to work together by the way. So it's like we really know each other very well. And he's the best, as you know, putting the light on my blind spot and that's what I do for my clients.
Jaimie: That's great. So do you work with anyone so anyone who's in a service base or product based business and you kind of look at their business from the outside in and give them ideas for extra revenue?
Yes. I don't care what your business is. And this is coming from 15 years of experience working across the board in multiple type of businesses. When I was a strategic consultant, they didn't care if it was, you know, a defence, business, defence, public service or if it was a hospital. If it was, you know, Sanofi which is a pharmaceutical company, or if it was a car companies just go there. Make it profitable. Make it work. Find a way find a solution. And that's exactly what I do now is my blind sight from the outside and I bring awareness to them to see those blind spots and to unlock those potential for them. So that's why you know, I have success story and they came on my podcast of you know, a business, which may create from zero 6 million in 18 months. How the fact is that happened just because I have those 15 years of experience of seeing the gold hidden. Wow, that's a real skill. I see. That's very, very exciting. I want a piece of that. I mean, a lot of people who are in my world I mean, I've got people from health coaches, course creators, but a lot of people who listen to this podcast are online course creators, and I know that you work in a lot of course creators yourself. And so is it simply a matter of I'm an online business owner, he's an extra source of online revenue that I could be looking at or is it basically could be anything I could be thinking or maybe I should be seeing more clients in person or how is it not a one size fits all I can imagine. No way No, no, no, no, no, of course creators is great. It can, you know, sell and create and that's why I love to call myself a business doula because I help them that this thing can be a cause. But often, it's actually outside of the box thinking that will create for you the most profitable revenue stream and maybe it is you know, and you're specialised in this, you know, developing a speaker revenue stream, or maybe it is you know, holding a very premium retweet, or maybe it is developing actually a software that support your clients through their, you know, customer journey and what is their next pain point. And that's where, you know, being a former Human Centred Design practitioner, and trainer now I don't find Human Centred Design anymore. That's why I say former but I use a lot of human centred design approach, which is knowing the customer journey, and what is missing what is missing. And sometimes it's developing, you know, in your software, I have clients because I have a, you know, a lot of knowledge around software development and so on so I can help them think about, okay, let's develop a software revenue stream, or if it's a speaker opportunity, okay, so let's think about that. And then going work with Jaimie she will help you, you know, be on stage and, and promote that but just looking at what you have really the goal, like what I was doing, was looking at the untapped assets that Telstra was adding to create a multi million billion euro industry. I love so, I love small numbers too, you know, sometimes maybe, okay, I'm just going to post you know, a workshop in person and give losses or maybe I will, you know, impact the whole community and create a group of people developing bursting a Corporation and a Partnership. I am not limiting to one because what I love actually, and this is my neurodiverse friend, Brian, sorry, it would be so good if I had to support only online courses. Creator, I would be so good if I was only supporting software businesses I love the mix. It's so rich. I can tell he does see to your face and beauty of voice and so exciting. Also, what's exciting is your book and you talked about the lights before and shining a light with your husband. Just as when the kids went to bed every night so your book is called light it tell me a little bit about what the book is all about and how it came to be. Yes, so the book is called latest how to trust your intuition and build a thriving business. So what I realised is something that was missing in entrepreneurship is people outsourcing. Their
decision making their intuition to someone else. So they will go and look for a mentor for business coach for you know, someone that they really see up to or comparison you know, on the internet and say, Okay, I'm gonna do that. But this is outsourcing. Your own decision making your own intuition, your own assumptions on how to grow your business. So what I really want is I want everyone to really internalise this and go back to reconnect potentially in the framework. The framework the framework is different to blueprint, a blueprint is like you have to do this and it works. The framework is you adapt this to your own needs. Okay, very different. So, the in the light framework I really speak about, well, you need to do things in your unit, and leaning in, which is the L of the framework and ending in towards a unique way of being a business owner being a sacred CEO, as I call it, so that no one else can copy you. No one else can take your IP and no one else can tell you what to do. You internalise all of this, and then nothing can destroy you. You are sacred CEO and you're running your business in your own way. What's really important in the light framework is a key which is about gathering and this is where you have your village around you. You have other people that think you know shine the light on something that is in your blind spot as I described before, and I start off my village my husband is here. I also have my I also have my spiritual mentor my auntie with, you know, in my lineage one of the, you know, most experienced healer in my lineage. So I have my own village as well which I gather around me to help me grow my business. So the book came to life. From a place of Iceland, I wanted to write a book. From a place of I meditated, I went on a silent retreat for a full day as I was reading a friend of us who passed away of cancer very quickly, while I used to work with in strategy consulting. And this book came for me was I teach them the life plan. Yes, it's the way you've always lived. It's the way you know things and this is how after this, like everything came through the LiFE framework game and it's applicable to anything applicable to business it's applicable to the journey of writing is also applicable to your love life. My mother, read the book and she was like, Oh my God.
It's just you know, you when you find something that's really resonating with oneself, it's because it's coming from a place of trusting yourself. I trust in myself and my intuition to write this book. But I wrote it in English and native French speaker. Writing is not my forte. And if I did it, you can trust your intuition and do it too, because I know that my book is already impacting so many given the feedback I received. That's amazing. It's only in the presale. Stage at the moment. We'll put the link to these to buy the book in the show notes, but you can go to live.com What was the process of writing a book was it take you forever? Was it a fun process? So how would you describe that different phase through the process, you know, and
what I love to explain through the writing process is first of all, when the idea of the book came when it came through me in this meditative stage, I trusted my straightaway and I decided to go with all of the framework which was leaning in straight away, I looked for a mentor. That was like if I need to write a book, I need someone to help me through the journey of writing a book. I need to have someone who walked the path before and can help me and guide me and hold my hand through the journey. And that was the best decision ever because otherwise during the journey of writing a book you have like entrepreneurship like motherhood, like relationship, ups and downs, ups and downs and things that are coming up or like quizzes. So insights of rejection from publisher all of those kinds of moments, moment to navigate, and I having someone by my side and going all in and being like look, I'm going to be an author, and I released the post on Instagram released the post on LinkedIn, send an email to my email is communicated to everyone as I am writing. And then it's like my way of being held accountable. So I leaned in, I went all in with that. So that was fun. Leaning in part, I mean, like, but then coming out with a mapping of the book, and then starting writing it was, you know, kind of the it's not the hardest part because the hardest part was the feedback from my book mentor, but the first you know, getting pen on paper and starting writing was kind of challenging to me because I wanted it to be perfect. So I spent a lot of time on the structure and again, being a former strategy consultant, we know how the structure of the presentation is every single strategy consulting, we spent weeks for, you know, a presentation to a board around what's the story? What's the story? What was the point in the story? That was like, Okay, it's a story. It's a story building, what's the story morning, and I got stuck in that for a few months. And that's why my book mentor was like, I think you need to start writing now. Okay, so I will start writing. So then I was fun to write the first draft as I called it, but then sending it to my book mentor and receiving feedback was really challenging. So that's why you know, you raise is a roller coaster, because it's like, Okay, it's done. My book is done. No, no, it was not done at all. I have a lot of free work reward to do and so on. Because this is where I honour it. I give myself some months to walk away from the book, and then start writing again. And so yeah, so it was you know, there is a part which were very fun part, which were very challenging, but what I would say it's like any project you take on board just be prepared for an amazing growth journey. Yeah. Book was an amazing growth journey, and I'm really proud of what I have written, be better to be perfect, but as I always say, perfection is like inaction. So I'd rather you know, act in something imperfectly delivered to all of you. And as the founder of Intuit say, if you're not ashamed of your first product, and you release it too late, so I have a bit of shame, but I am very proud as well.
Jaimie: I can't wait to read it myself, which is here if people want to work with you, and I'm sure they will love to listening to this. How can people get in touch with you and how do you work is a one on one coaching one off sessions, or a series of sessions a program and membership of course, all of the above? How can people get involved to work with you?
Laetitia: It's like a buffet, you can choose what you want to eat. Being fragile. It's all about the crude analogy.
No, but you can you know, if you're already on the podcast right now listening you can listen to my podcast essential ship forecast, and then you can get used to listening to me what I'm teaching, see if it resonates with you, you can listen to some case study of my clients will come on my podcast and I love for them to share
their story of working with me. And if you're ready to be challenged, get your kick back softly as I always say my clients and in a French way so I'm not always complimenting you. I'm not very Ozy or British. I'm always getting straight into what needs to change. So yes, you can work with me either within my membership, which is called a circle or if you can join my courses, I have a few self paced courses and live courses as well. And then if you're like okay, I want more and exclusive support, you can join my mastermind and if you realise okay, I just want to upgrade myself and the very one to one was good to sell. I have a few spots for one to one, but I only take very few clients want one because then it's those who I really transformed their business, you know, and scale it with them. So it's very energy demanding for me and I'm looking out for my own energy so I don't take many one to one.
Jaimie: Well, that's the I can't wait to see what you're going to be doing in the future. Can't wait to read your book. Thank you so much for coming on to pitch perfect today. It's been wonderful chatting with you.
Laetitia: Thank you Jaimie for having me.
