Episode 68: Astrology With Knobs On; Human Design for Financially Ambitious Women with Emily Armitage

Hello and welcome to the Mum Means Business podcast, where we shine a light on inspiring women who have one thing in common. When they’re not managing tantrums, homework, P.E. kits and play dates, they are busting their gut to build a thriving business that supports their family life. I’m your host Victoria Phipps and I’m figuring out how to play this game right alongside you. I’m a motherhood, family and personal brand photographer, I teach portrait photographers how to lead with print in the digital age, I’m marketing lead in the family business my Dad founded over 20 years ago and I’m “Mum” to two little girls.
If you’re a multi-passionate mum too, in need of some solidarity whilst navigating the messy middle of making your big dream a reality, then stick around. This is for you.

NOTE: This is the transcript from the original recording, rather than the edited episode so timings may vary.

Victoria (00:01)
My guest today is mum to one little boy, founder of the Yorkshire Zen Company and a business and identity strategist for financially ambitious women building service-based businesses. Having become a fully fledged business owner and a mum at the same time, she understands firsthand the challenges of building a business and a family simultaneously. Taking the buzz out of the word alignment, Emily Armitage uses human design to co-create legacy businesses which work

with her clients energy and in their season of life. She believes that misalignment in business has a measurable cost to our impact, our energy and our income. So she is determined to revolutionize female founded businesses with the energetics, identity work and business strategy we need to grow from solopreneur to CEO. Emily supports women to rediscover deep self trust, make life changing amounts of money.

and do business on their terms to make greater impact without the hustle. My knowledge of human design is very limited and so I’m so curious to learn more and always ready to deep dive into the importance of business alignment, especially as time poor mums. So Emily, I can’t wait to talk with you. Welcome to the Mummy’s Business Podcast.

Emily Armitage (01:17)
Thank you for having me. I love my Elizabeth Day style intro. That was amazing. Thank you.

Victoria (01:24)
So I joke, really love writing these intros. So I joked with Emily before we started recording. I like, basically think I’m Elizabeth Day now. So I have written you a really lovely intro. I’m glad it’s approved. I’ll

Emily Armitage (01:32)
I loved that, I was like, yeah, I need to hear that every day.

Victoria (01:37)
take it. I’ll email it to you and you can play it to yourself in the morning before you get going. So let’s start.

Emily Armitage (01:39)
Thank you! Amazing.

Victoria (01:44)
Let’s start the beginning of your business journey in a vertical commerce.

Emily Armitage (01:48)
Okay.

Victoria (01:49)
So starting a business, becoming a fully fledged business owner at the same moment as you became a mum, what made you do it? Okay.

Emily Armitage (01:55)
Yes. I’m not sure I’d recommend that path if I’m perfectly honest.

So sort of rewind a little bit. I’ve been quite entrepreneurial for as long as I can remember. There’s a prize list up in the kitchen at my mom and dad’s from when I was about five. And it was all the list of jobs and terms that I would do. And

when they had to pay me and stuff, hoovering and reading

Victoria (02:19)
my god, that’s so smart.

Emily Armitage (02:22)
to my sister and all things like that. like, obviously.

50p, 10p, 20p, all that kind of stuff.

Victoria (02:28)
So you contracted it out.

Emily Armitage (02:30)
Contracted it out terms and conditions you have

to pay me at this point and all that stuff So that is on the wall still and then I did what you’re meant to do. I I went to school I got good grades I Decided not to go to uni because I was just done with learning and I went into the world of work when I was like 17 and I worked in lots of different various industries But I always kind of had a side hustle on this on the side to running along a long ways mainly because

because I get bored quite easily and I was doing a lot

Victoria (03:03)
Yeah, I relate, yeah.

Emily Armitage (03:06)
of admin roles and it wasn’t really stretching my brain there’s absolutely nothing wrong with admin roles if that is your zone of genius in your forte it’s so needed not mine necessarily so like know I once worked in a pump factory right and I had to stop the production line and I cost them £40,000

I put the wrong code in and they sprayed all these things

Victoria (03:30)
my gosh. no. Awkward.

Emily Armitage (03:34)
green and they should have been orange or something and yeah that wasn’t the best day ever. So yeah admin codes

Victoria (03:39)
No.

Emily Armitage (03:41)
all that stuff not for me. So yeah and then I sort of fell into live coding because I experienced that myself I qualified and I was doing that alongside my full-time job.

And my career was progressing and my life coaching business was morphing and changing and I became a money coach because that’s really important to me because of my history, which we can go into if that’s relevant.

Victoria (04:09)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (04:10)
yeah, and I found human design via a client in 2020. She kept talking about human design. I was like, I have no idea what this is, but I feel like I should know because it’s obviously important to her and I need to support her. Down the rabbit hole I went to investigate.

Victoria (04:25)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (04:26)
and I start, just, it really spoke to me. I’d never found anything, a modality, a framework, any kind of…

tool like that that really I saw the depth and the nuance and the duality of myself within and so I started using it in my life and then I realized how powerful it was as a business tool and at this point my my business was failing I had no cash I had no clients and I was pregnant and I knew that I wanted to leave my corporate role because I didn’t want to

be the kind of mom that I saw my colleagues being where

Victoria (05:08)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (05:09)
they were really stressed. They were seeing their kids at the drag ends of the day when everybody’s tired and hungry and exhausted. Yeah, drag ends of

Victoria (05:15)
I love that expression. That’s exactly it. The drag ends of the day. Yeah, yeah.

Emily Armitage (05:19)
the day and they’re not having the kind of relationship that I wanted to have with my child. And so I was like, right, my business needs to work. This needs to…

be able to support me.

and the family life that I want. And yeah, so I went all in on my human design. I remember we went to Cornwall on holiday and I was sat at this table with a massive bump in the heat, looking at my human design and looking at my business and like piecing everything together and being like, I need to understand how this all fits together. And yeah, I came out of my maternity leave and handed my notice in like the day went after I could.

feasibly do that and left

Victoria (06:07)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (06:07)
my corporate role. Yeah, but it was an interesting time jumping into that while navigating motherhood for the first time, particularly as I’m somebody with neurodiversity in the mix and that wasn’t discovered quote unquote formally until I had my baby because all my coping mechanisms were just blown totally out of the water as well. So I was kind of

Victoria (06:33)
Yeah, I get that,

Emily Armitage (06:35)
navigating

motherhood, navigating these diagnoses and realising more about myself and how I work and how I don’t work and the support needs I’ve got and then building this business at the same time. So yeah, it’s been quite the experience.

Victoria (06:52)
This sounds like a massive journey of self-discovery. Like just everything happening at once. So

Emily Armitage (06:56)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Victoria (07:01)
the human design element, we’ll go back a little bit. You said that

Emily Armitage (07:04)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (07:05)
you’d experienced coaching earlier on in your life and that’s what made you go into coaching in the first place. So was that kind

Emily Armitage (07:12)
Yeah.

Victoria (07:13)
of career coaching?

Emily Armitage (07:15)
Well, it started off as career coaching and then ended up being like just a massive unpeeling of the onion of me. I am the onion. And so

Victoria (07:24)
Okay, yeah, yeah.

Emily Armitage (07:28)
I was like a guinea pig client for a friend of a friend who was doing a coaching qualification she was looking for people to practice on. I ended up she ended up coming to me schlepping over from Manchester for like nearly

a year. I must

Victoria (07:47)
wow, okay.

Emily Armitage (07:48)
have been like all of her case studies because we covered such

Victoria (07:51)
You

Emily Armitage (07:52)
a huge amount of stuff and she practiced so many different techniques on me and all that kind of thing and as I was sat there there’s this little voice in my head being like you need to do this this is what you should be doing.

and then I didn’t do it, didn’t do it, didn’t do it and I didn’t actually do my coding qualification for another eight years because I was like

Victoria (08:13)
wow.

Emily Armitage (08:13)
yeah there was just so much you can’t do this, how would it work? Like I don’t have a blueprint for working for myself my parents both had really good careers but working in NHS and teaching so like you know I don’t have the blueprint yeah yeah yeah absolutely

Victoria (08:27)
They’re like institutions, aren’t they? Yeah, yeah, yep.

Emily Armitage (08:32)
and it just like

no other family members really had their own business. Yeah.

Victoria (08:38)
So it’s a really big deal to take that leap and

do it when you don’t have that model to you because it feels scary.

Emily Armitage (08:43)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because you’re like, there isn’t anyone I can really go to for advice. I mean, there kind

Victoria (08:51)
Mm.

Emily Armitage (08:51)
of is now because my father-in-law has had very successful businesses and lost everything and built it back up again. And he’s quite the entrepreneur. So I do have somebody now, but at that point, he wasn’t there then.

Victoria (09:04)
He wasn’t there then. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (09:08)
So yeah, it’s been an interesting one fathoming it out, especially in the online space.

because online business and the online coaching industry and the online business development industry is an interesting space to be. I think we forget how young it is and how, I’m gonna say the word immature and I don’t mean that in a negative way, yeah. And there’s

Victoria (09:29)
No, I agree, yeah, no it is. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (09:32)
so many evolutions it needs to go through. And I think as well,

Victoria (09:36)
Yeah, no completely.

Emily Armitage (09:38)
yeah.

as well. There’s a lot of, it’s a very female centric industry which I love and I absolutely support but there’s also a lot of women.

and I include myself in this, doing their own work at the same time as supporting other people and dealing with our internalised patriarchy, our internalised misogyny, our internalised racism, all that stuff, working out how to do business when we’ve been swimming in this capitalist soup and it can end up…

becoming quite charged and quite, I see a lot of backlash and backstabbing and then I’m like, why does it feel like lunch hall at secondary school and everybody’s, you know, got a bit of, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

Victoria (10:23)
Yeah, exactly, which is ironic because that’s what we’re trying to get away from because that’s where all our trauma is. And yet actually

it’s kind of training ourselves and this plays into, know, reparenting the parent as well. You know, if we’re

Emily Armitage (10:37)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (10:38)
mothers training ourselves to not just default to that behavior which we were conditioned to go to in times of distress.

Emily Armitage (10:45)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Victoria (10:48)
And actually that, like you say, is a process. And I think…

Emily Armitage (10:50)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (10:52)
I’m on the outside looking in at this, but I’ve interviewed a fair number of coaches on this podcast now

Emily Armitage (10:57)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (10:58)
because it’s a thing right now that

Emily Armitage (11:01)
Yeah.

Victoria (11:01)
women are going into because just like you, see the value in it because

Emily Armitage (11:05)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (11:06)
they’ve experienced it themselves. Like, I think I could do this. I think I could really help other women. But like you say, you’re often unpacking it a few steps ahead of the person you’re helping.

Emily Armitage (11:15)
Yeah.

Victoria (11:15)
You’ve done a lot more work, but

Emily Armitage (11:17)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (11:17)
you’re still working on it. And I wonder, to be honest, if we’ll ever be done.

because there’s a lot to unpack.

Emily Armitage (11:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t think,

I don’t think in our lifetimes we’ll ever be done, but it’s what we then pass along, isn’t it? And I think

Victoria (11:28)
No, exactly.

Emily Armitage (11:31)
we all need to hold each other with a, yes, call people out when it’s wrong and people need to investigate themselves and that level of self-awareness needs to be there, but also hold ourselves with a bit more grace and a bit more understanding as well and a bit more elegance potentially, rather than divisiveness. Sorry. Yeah, that was it.

Victoria (11:45)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, completely. Go on. Yeah. No,

there’s so much to navigate because I don’t know how old you are. I’m 40. You don’t need to tell me how old you are. It’s all right. Are you? Okay, cool. So I’ll be 41

Emily Armitage (11:57)
I’m 40 in October. I’m nearly 40, yeah.

Victoria (12:02)
then. So we’re pretty much the same age, but you know, we are an analog generation that has had to

Emily Armitage (12:06)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (12:06)
go digital and that’s enormous. And we’ve also had to navigate, you know, so many changes in like gender roles.

Emily Armitage (12:14)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (12:14)
And

just a system that was, know, but the school system that’s built for the industrial revolution that now, you know, parents are like you say, suffering, seeing their kids at the drag ends of the day, which I am stealing and using it all the time. You know, which is

Emily Armitage (12:28)
Go forth, accuse it.

Victoria (12:30)
brilliant, but that’s how it feels. It feels like they’re

Emily Armitage (12:32)
Yeah.

Victoria (12:33)
the most stressed out points in the day. No one’s having a nice

Emily Armitage (12:35)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (12:35)
time at those points of the day. No one’s relaxed. No one’s, you know, in rest and digest. Everybody’s just

Emily Armitage (12:41)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (12:41)
get out the house or get to bed really.

Emily Armitage (12:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Victoria (12:44)
And

it’s no quality of life. And I think there’s a lot of recalibrating that is going on and like trying to unpick these systems and establish

Emily Armitage (12:51)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (12:52)
something that works better for everybody whilst doing all that internal work as well. And

Emily Armitage (12:56)
Yeah.

Victoria (12:56)
I think it is a crunch that we’re kind of going through at the moment in terms of our social evolution. And there’s an awful lot to navigate. And when you bring your working life into that as well.

And this thing of, you know, women can have it all, that we were all told whilst listening to the Spice

Emily Armitage (13:11)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (13:12)
Girls or whatever we were doing at the time. This sort of evolution of female empowerment and actually then acknowledging that what that means for a lot of us is that we’re doing it all and we’re exhausted. So what

Emily Armitage (13:22)
doing it all. Yeah.

Victoria (13:27)
happens next? You know, what does that look like? And actually all of this is so fast. I completely agree with you. It’s the fact that we’re expecting

or asking men to step up and take on domestic labor. Men haven’t done domestic labor for millennia. And like literally

Emily Armitage (13:40)
Mm. Mm.

Victoria (13:42)
in the last sort of 20 years, we’re like, no, no, you need to do this now. And that’s huge for men, you know, because they’ve been

Emily Armitage (13:46)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Victoria (13:48)
settled in that stereotype, you know, breadwinner, whether they wanted to be or not for

Emily Armitage (13:53)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (13:54)
hundreds of years. There’s so much to kind of recalibrate and then show our kids.

And

Emily Armitage (14:00)
Yeah.

Victoria (14:00)
I think…

It’s an awful lot. I understand why everybody wants to be coached through it and wants to kind of have that moment carved out to establish what this success that we’re all striving for looks like right now in this moment.

Emily Armitage (14:13)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Victoria (14:15)
tell me about your experience of human design. So you didn’t become a coach for eight years, then you did become

Emily Armitage (14:21)
No.

Victoria (14:22)
a coach and then you coach somebody and they open your eyes to human design.

Emily Armitage (14:26)
Yeah.

Victoria (14:26)
So what…

Emily Armitage (14:26)
Yeah, yeah, she just

kept talking about it in this session and I’m like, my god, what is it? I, and this is part of my human design being like the researcher and investigator and knowledge seeker and

Victoria (14:36)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (14:37)
if something sparks my interest, I’m like, okay, I need to know everything about this. And human design is complex and complicated and you either look at it and go, this looks like something I can get my teeth into or you go, absolutely not. This looks far more complicated than I am prepared to deal with. And that’s when you come to someone like me who

can actually translate it for you and make it useful and make it usable. So would it be helpful now to just like talk about what human design actually is? Do you think? Yeah. Okay. yeah, human design

Victoria (15:05)
Yeah, go on, tell me, yeah, go.

Emily Armitage (15:10)
is a modality that combines many Eastern and Western modern and ancient modalities together. So you’ve got astrology in there, which everybody knows. So I like to describe it as astrology with knobs on because people then sort of get it.

Victoria (15:25)
Okay, yeah, yeah,

Emily Armitage (15:26)
astrology

Victoria (15:26)
yeah.

Emily Armitage (15:27)
plus. So you’ve got astrology, you’ve got the iting, you’ve got Kabbalah, you’ve got the chakra system, you’ve got quantum physics in there. So it combines all these things together in a multifaceted

5D matrix view of who you truly are. So when you put your birth date, birth time and birth place into a body graph chart creator, there’s lots of them online, you will come up with this outline of a person with all these shapes on it. Some of the shapes will be coloured in, some of them won’t be. There’ll be numbers around the shapes, there’s lines and all those things contribute to

your energetic blueprint or signature and so nobody’s is the same so even if someone is born on the same birthday as you you will have differences. I’ve read for clients who the same birthday as me 10 years apart and we’re very very different there’s some similarities for sure but it’s a really good way of understanding who you are before the conditioning of the world

got layered like cake over that initial original blueprint and so you can really take it particularly in business like I found it the most useful as a business framework because it helps cut the crap it helps remove all the shuds and the industry standards and the norms because when you understand your how your energy naturally works and you combine that with your human experiences and the life season that you are in like so there’s so much differentiation

online with people giving business advice like for somebody

Victoria (17:10)
Hmm.

Emily Armitage (17:11)
who’s in their 20s what they’re saying is not going to work for me as a woman who’s nearly 40 with a three-year-old like it’s just not like I love you it’s going to work for you crack on I’m not going to take it because it’s not going to work for me

You and you then add in the stories around, you know, who you’re allowed to be as a woman, who you’re allowed to be as a mother, who you’re allowed to be as a business owner, any kind of, I fell over on stage when I was seven in the nativity and that means I really don’t want to show up on camera, all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Victoria (17:42)
It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s crazy.

Yeah, but we carry all of this. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (17:44)
all these things compound. Yeah, exactly.

And then we’re like, why is my business not working? I blame the algorithm. And obviously, yes, there’s

Victoria (17:52)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (17:53)
some stuff around the algorithm. Like you have to understand how those tools work and what the changes are there. But ultimately there’s so much that we can do to remove any distractions and intimidation by…

other people we see in the industry, what your mum said about female business owners, the stuff we pick up from the press, like the witch hunts that still happen. You can be successful for this amount of time as a woman with this level of success, and then we’re going to cut you down. And that’s like the soup that we swim in. We see it on, you know, all the time. Taylor Swift, tap around. You don’t have to like these women, but observe what their arc is and you’ll be like, okay. And that, that

Victoria (18:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (18:36)
sinks in. So when you can use your human design as like a real base to

back to to understand how your energy naturally functions because we don’t all have the same battery per day we don’t it doesn’t work like that some people are far more fluid in how their energy functions some people will absorb a lot from other people and need to remove that before they can you know move forward in their own way it’s just such a brilliant tool for doing that and really seeing like you can you can see how you’re meant to work through it you can see what offers might work

best obviously combine your skill set with them it’s not you’re a I don’t know five one so you should do this like ethically should you be doing that do you have the skills and experience to

Victoria (19:20)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (19:22)
do that okay if you do let’s go and also around like the throat center and visibility and speaking your power into the world which I deal with

98 % of my clients we talk about

Victoria (19:35)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (19:36)
showing up, speaking up, being more visible because that’s really hard and it’s ingrained in us as women to not because it’s dangerous and yeah those are all the things, sorry.

Victoria (19:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there was never,

no, it’s all right, on.

Emily Armitage (19:51)
Yeah, those are all the things your business is asking you to do to be successful so you can support yourself.

Victoria (19:57)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (19:57)
Like I’m a big believer that business is the best vehicle for women to make money on their own terms, but we have to unravel a lot of this other stuff first.

Victoria (20:07)
Yeah, so much stuff to unravel. There was never a two year old that, well, maybe there was a two year but that, know, most toddlers in a safe environment loved are not thinking twice about what they say before they say it. And yet all of this starts to layer on thick and we fall over on stage. And this is the thing about going from analog to digital, you

Emily Armitage (20:30)
Hmm.

Victoria (20:30)
know, speaking or being on the telly when we were kids.

It was for someone else, you know, it

Emily Armitage (20:38)
Yeah.

Victoria (20:38)
wasn’t for us. And then you, you put all the, the rhetoric and the stories around, you know, don’t show off, don’t be too big for your boots. Nobody’s interested in that. That’s a very long story now. Should we wind it up? All of that

Emily Armitage (20:56)
yeah.

Victoria (20:56)
stuff. And then, you know, we come to start our own businesses and we’re supposed to talk to camera and, and deliver our message. And it’s.

completely at odds with everything we have internalized, I think, as millennials, as

Emily Armitage (21:10)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (21:11)
to what is going to lead to our being accepted, to

Emily Armitage (21:15)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (21:15)
our being liked and loved and safe and all of those things. So it, of course, feels really terrifying. And I imagine as well, you know, even going into the, excuse me, even going into the human design element of it, everyone

Emily Armitage (21:29)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (21:30)
is also bringing their own innate blocks to that.

you know, just the way that they are going to harness their energy in the right moment

Emily Armitage (21:39)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (21:40)
and deliver that message before you even get into any of the conditioning. So how have you found human design is able to help people overcome like particular resistance that’s

Emily Armitage (21:52)
Yeah.

Victoria (21:52)
key to them?

Emily Armitage (21:54)
Yeah, yeah. So let me use an example of a client because that’s probably the easiest one to do. And she had, she knew she needed to be more visible, but to her visibility was like standing on a stage in a spotlight. Like it felt very alone.

Victoria (22:06)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Armitage (22:07)
It felt very exposing and it, kind of really pricked so many of her sensitivities and wounds and all that kind of stuff. But when we actually looked at her design, how her energy functions,

isn’t to be that one necessarily standing on the stage in the spotlight. So that was her visual of what visibility was. But actually visibility can come in lots of different ways. It doesn’t have to be on the telly or in the spotlight, all eyes on you. It can be through networks, it can be through community, it can be through creating a movement where you’re all together, not you on your own. And that’s how she

Victoria (22:53)
Yeah, collaborations

Emily Armitage (22:53)
was yeah

Victoria (22:54)
and yeah.

Emily Armitage (22:55)
that’s that’s definitely how her energy functions and in experimentation and play rather than like I’m a leader so you have to listen to me it’s I’ve experimented and this is what I learned and this is wisdom too

Victoria (23:12)
That’s interesting.

Emily Armitage (23:12)
So using

it, yeah, look like a lot of the time it’s reframing around what it actually looks like in the codes within your design rather than what your vision of something is. Yeah, that’s probably the best example I’ve got. Does that kind of explain it?

Victoria (23:31)
Yeah, yeah,

completely. Yeah, completely. And there’s gonna be a different approach that suits each of us. And I think

Emily Armitage (23:37)
Mmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria (23:40)
it can feel like me standing on the stage with a spotlight, know, Spanish Inquisition style. That’s terrifying to me. And I’m like fairly extroverted

Emily Armitage (23:47)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (23:47)
and comfortable talking, of course. And if that’s your image that

Emily Armitage (23:51)
Yeah.

Victoria (23:51)
you’re holding in your head, because we’re so visual as well, aren’t we? That’s the visual. When we set up our iPhone on our…

tripod and we look at it and we just imagine ourselves on this big stage and all these thousands of people

Emily Armitage (24:02)
Mm.

Victoria (24:02)
looking at us, a big spotlight in our face. It’s terrifying. So it’s really

Emily Armitage (24:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria (24:07)
interesting that you can reframe that. And have you been able to establish for people where that kind of zone of genius is? Because I think for solo printers or women who

Emily Armitage (24:20)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (24:21)
are early on in their business, you’re kind of, you’re wearing all of the hats, aren’t you? You’re doing everything. You’re kind of.

Emily Armitage (24:25)
Mm-hmm, every hat.

Victoria (24:27)
Yeah, you’re marketing, you’re invoicing, you’re answering emails, you’re doing absolutely everything. And that can be fine for a period of time. But then when it comes to the beginnings of growth and you’re thinking, okay, I could outsource something, it’s hard sometimes to know what, and the whole thing can

Emily Armitage (24:47)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (24:47)
feel scary, because by that point, your business is your baby. But if

Emily Armitage (24:50)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (24:51)
you’re looking at somebody’s human design, are you able to support them in that and say, okay, well,

actually energetically, this is where you’re thriving. I know that you’ve got like a control thing around this, but it’s not really for you. know, maybe actually that’s the thing that you pass over to somebody else and it gives you more time and more energy to do the thing that is going to energise you. Is

that part of it?

Emily Armitage (25:18)
Yeah, absolutely.

It can be. Yeah. And I think the first thing I should say is that human design is always an enabler and an expander. It’s never there to limit you. And I think sometimes

Victoria (25:28)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Armitage (25:29)
what I see is people have a small amount of knowledge about human design and then they use it as a bit of an excuse to be like, Oh, well,

Victoria (25:35)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (25:36)
I can’t do that because I’m a generator or I can’t do this because I’ve got an undefined throat.

Victoria (25:39)
Alright.

Emily Armitage (25:41)
And it’s like, hang on a minute. No, like business is still business. Your human design is a tool to support you in whatever decision you are

going to make. So it helps explain things and then like I always say my clients are the experts in their business. I’m not an expert in every single like I have clients in so many different industries like I can’t call myself a mentor because I’m not like I don’t know

Victoria (26:05)
Yeah, yeah.

Emily Armitage (26:06)
how like a PT thing is but in terms of looking at when you’re at that stage like what to outsource

you can absolutely look at parts of your design where your strong suit would be. And then if you decide, actually, no, I still want to keep this, we can look at, right, well, this part of it is going to be a challenge. So what can we do to mitigate that? What strengths can

Victoria (26:31)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Armitage (26:32)
we pull on in your strong suit, in your design to mitigate this challenge? Rather than it being a very black and white, you can’t do, I don’t know.

admin going back to my other example or you can’t do social media you should only focus on this or outsource all your sales calls like it doesn’t necessarily work like that.

It’s more what parts do you enjoy as a human being? think sometimes the human design and the human being can get a bit separated. And it’s like the whole point is it’s the human part of it. And we’re just looking at what supports you, what you may find more challenging because of how your energy functions. And how can we translate that into business architecture or support that you need or offers that will support your life season now? how can

Victoria (27:24)
Hmm.

Emily Armitage (27:24)
we use that in a real-

practical way to make this thing better for you than it currently is feeling.

Victoria (27:32)
Okay, so talking about seasons then, presumably this all kind of evolves.

Sorry, I’m gonna block a call.

Emily Armitage (27:44)
Okay.

Victoria (27:46)
I have Stevie Wonder superstition in my headphones. That’s my ringtone. It’s suddenly Stevie

Emily Armitage (27:49)
Ow!

Victoria (27:50)
Wonder just like blared into my ears. And I’m also gonna take a drink. I’ll get this edited out.

Emily Armitage (27:55)
Go for it.

Victoria (27:56)
I’ve got frog in my throat. Okay. And we do a big clap because that’s what lets James my editor

Emily Armitage (28:04)
Okay.

Victoria (28:05)
know.

So on the point of seasons then, presumably this is something that as a tool you say it’s expansive and it’s supposed to be

Emily Armitage (28:16)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (28:19)
something that feels positive and focuses on the areas which are your strengths, but presumably this can be used in different ways depending on what season of life somebody’s in in terms of their family life and also their business evolution. The only thing that I’ve ever done that is anything like this is I have my

birth chart done, which is all astrology, I think, and this was years ago.

Emily Armitage (28:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Victoria (28:42)
And it was very in depth. It was actually a World War II veteran who was like an astrologer as his career, anyway, random,

Emily Armitage (28:48)
cool.

Victoria (28:49)
but I spent about three hours with him and his wife. And it was super interesting, but in that there was an element of, because it’s all down to where and when you were born, which I think is transferable to human

Emily Armitage (29:03)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (29:04)
design.

there was an element of the chapters in your life and there was a little bit of foretelling and backward looking. It seems like something might

Emily Armitage (29:14)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (29:14)
have happened in 2014 and asking me questions and then looking forward, this is gonna happen over here and there might be a bit of challenge there or this is where you you saw over here. And is there an element of that that is able to support people?

as they move forward in terms of like planning or is that something that is like purely astrological?

Emily Armitage (29:38)
So there is an element of I don’t particularly use that I don’t I don’t

Victoria (29:42)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (29:42)
find it necessarily useful I would rather give you the information

Because your human design is kind of is locked in like like you say it’s based on your time your place your date of birth it nothing Changes within that what does

Victoria (29:57)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (29:58)
change is where you’re meeting it so as you’re evolving as you’re having these human experiences as you’re Stripping back layers of conditioning you will come at your design in different ways You will meet it differently as a different version of you So it will mean different things to you at different times and possibly

would be more useful and different parts may be more shouting louder depending on the experience you’re in or what’s going on for you at that moment in time. You can look at things like transits like planetary transits which is pure astrology again because it does bring that in but I don’t tend to use that in my work. I would rather you understand

who you are underneath everything and make decisions from there. And I think as well, I should say that every part of your design could be in a high or a low expression. So there can be sort of

stuff happening to like for you or to you which means that the energetic signature of the throat center for example because we’ve been talking about visibility is in a lower expression because of the conditioning you’ve got surrounding it because

Victoria (31:18)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (31:18)
of the falling over on stage at the age of seven all that sort of stuff and it’s when you start stripping back that conditioning and working with that space that the expression rises and it becomes higher and then you feel more confident and the energy flows more freely with

it.

So there’s a lot of that as well. But yeah, I don’t use it like an astrologer would maybe. Thing is, everybody kind of translates things differently. And it’s

Victoria (31:45)
Hmm.

Emily Armitage (31:46)
like, I’ve had astrological readings, and they didn’t kind of do like the foretelling thing. So, you know, everybody kind of takes that information and puts their own flavor on it, I guess, depending on what’s been useful for them. So yeah, and that just gives us more options, doesn’t it?

Victoria (32:03)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think to be honest, there’s enough to go at for you in terms of just helping

Emily Armitage (32:08)
Yeah.

Victoria (32:09)
people decipher what is them and what is the story.

Emily Armitage (32:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Victoria (32:17)
Because as we’ve spoken about, that’s a life’s work almost as it is. And I think you

Emily Armitage (32:22)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Victoria (32:25)
can certainly overcomplicate things.

By, mean, I’m sure that you’ve already said it’s so complicated. I’m sure that there are so many different elements of human design that you could deploy if you wanted to. But I think, you like you said, you speak to so many of your clients about visibility.

Emily Armitage (32:42)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (32:42)
You know, that’s massive at the moment. And

Emily Armitage (32:45)
Yeah.

Victoria (32:45)
it’s kind of also how you are meeting people in their human design

Emily Armitage (32:48)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (32:49)
in that moment. And at the moment, that is a huge challenge for a lot of people who are trying to grow a business.

Emily Armitage (32:53)
Yeah.

Victoria (32:54)
So that’s where it’s best deployed. And you can overcomplicate things by talking about when Mars is going to be in line with whatever.

Emily Armitage (33:00)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Like I always

start with the insights and then we move

Victoria (33:05)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (33:06)
on to the practical plan from those insights. But even understanding…

the insights you have because it’s so bespoke, because it’s so personal, like that you need to percolate that a little bit and then as you see it in action that’s when you start to build evidence that this works and you can do it in a different way because it might be different to what you’ve been seeing and that can be scary because you’re like well you know I don’t have the the map but you do

Victoria (33:33)
Hmm.

Emily Armitage (33:34)
the map is your human design it’s just different to what you’re you’re actually seeing externally.

Victoria (33:40)
Have you had people come to you who have had other, I’m gonna call them like personality tests, but that’s not what I mean. That’s kind of like for the Just 17 magazine. You know what I mean? Like

Emily Armitage (33:49)
Yeah.

Victoria (33:50)
the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram or any

Emily Armitage (33:53)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (33:53)
of those, because there’s so many metrics

Emily Armitage (33:56)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (33:56)
out there that, and a lot of people, if they’ve come from like a corporate career, they may have had it done there.

Emily Armitage (34:00)
Yeah.

Victoria (34:01)
Have you had people come to you who’ve had experiences of those? You know, they know what disc they are, but this is taking them.

deeper and have you

Emily Armitage (34:11)
Yeah.

Victoria (34:11)
sort of seen a comparison there in their reaction and how that’s helped them?

Emily Armitage (34:15)
Yes, definitely. The reaction is generally, my God, like I have literally just met you. How are you telling me this stuff about me that no one

Victoria (34:25)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (34:25)
else knows? And I did have a client the other week actually, who I’d not worked with previously. And she was like, I just have to say how strange this experience is because I’ve never met

Victoria (34:36)
wow.

Emily Armitage (34:37)
you and you’re telling me this stuff that’s so internal and so true. And it’s really weird. And I’m like,

Yeah, it is really weird, and I don’t hold that… I hold that very seriously. It’s not a light thing. I’m a stranger, effectively, and I’m telling you this stuff. You’ve gotta trust me with it. I’m not gonna…

hold it over you or like it’s your information, I’m just translating it for you and helping you transform it into something useful. Yeah, people, I’ve done a lot of those personality tests and I think that particularly as millennials, we do like something to define us. think because of how we’ve

Victoria (35:16)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Armitage (35:20)
grown up, like the environment we’ve grown up in, the society we’ve grown up in has been so unstable. Like 9-11, 2008 financial crash.

go to uni you’ll get a job, there’s no jobs, like it’s just been like wild, yeah. So we’re looking

Victoria (35:34)
Surprise! No jobs. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (35:38)
for anything that can define us because our definition is so…

there’s been so much upheaval, right, as a generation. So I think we can, some people can be a little guilty of being like, this is my human design. This is my anagram. This is my whatever. And you see them in like their Insta bios is like, this is me. And it’s like, yeah, but why are you actually doing me that information? And the people, yeah, yeah, it’s just, yeah, exactly.

Victoria (36:03)
Yeah, it becomes like a tag for you. It’s like such as such, manifesting generator. Like whatever, and you’re

just like, okay.

Emily Armitage (36:10)
And that’s great. If you want to, and to use your like the Cosmo quiz kind of thing, like great, that’s fine.

Victoria (36:16)
Yeah, exactly.

Emily Armitage (36:17)
But actually it’s a really useful business tool. So if you want to use it in a way that’s not like vague and fluffy, like, or academic and you don’t actually apply it, great. But you know, if you want to apply it and you want to use it, it’s gonna change so much for you because it just gives you the key to a totally different world.

you can then use it to your advantage. I’ve had people who’ve had like disc and they’ve had other things, Myers-Briggs, but also something else that can’t quite remember. And it’s always correlated. There’s always a correlation. I’ve never met anybody who’s not living out at least some of their design totally by accident. Like it’s so innate in who you are. I just point it out and you go, okay, I do that anyway. And we’re like, yeah, now how can we use that? Cause you know it’s you.

Victoria (37:09)
Yeah, yeah,

Emily Armitage (37:10)
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Victoria (37:10)
yeah. But it’s taking the mask away. It’s like, yeah, we know it’s you. That’s you, that bit. This bit,

I don’t know what you’re doing over here, that’s not necessarily you. Have a think about that bit,

Emily Armitage (37:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Victoria (37:21)
but this bit, it completely makes sense. And it is interesting, there

Emily Armitage (37:23)
Yeah.

Victoria (37:23)
is some correlation, but I imagine having somebody to just translate it because it

Emily Armitage (37:28)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (37:29)
is complicated and interpret it. You must have clients that bring specific blocks to you that you’re

Emily Armitage (37:36)
Yes, yeah.

Victoria (37:37)
able to…

completely make sense of. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (37:38)
I prefer it if you do. I prefer it if you do

because that gives us a starting off point. So like the first step to working with me is an alignment hour and you bring a block, you bring a challenge that’s

Victoria (37:50)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (37:50)
happening. Where’s the misalignment? What’s going on? Because then I can use your design to help you move that, remove it, however, get back into alignment. And then you see how practical it can be. Whereas if I’m just giving you like a reading, because you can go and have human design readings, absolutely.

I’ve had them myself but it’s just a lot of information that you can’t actually relate to you can’t necessarily relate to anything yeah and you’re like

Victoria (38:16)
You don’t know what to do with it, yeah.

Emily Armitage (38:18)
well that’s great now what do I do whereas I want it to be very practical and very hands-on and very like here’s my recommendations here’s you here’s what the problem is this is the gap this is how you fill the gap with your your energetic blueprint

Go, go forth. I’m here for the, for support. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Victoria (38:35)
go try it, come back, yeah, let me know how it went. And then you can,

you must be quite confident in it then because then that’s your kind of client experience. It starts with this hour and you send them off to kind of test out what you’ve suggested and they come back, yeah.

Emily Armitage (38:53)
Yeah, so they can either go off and do it or they can

book straight in and do the more practical because I do like a three call intensive afterwards

Victoria (39:02)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (39:02)
where we focus in on specific parts and you get more of a plan there rather than just the insights and then you can work with me longer term to change your entire business if you like. Yeah.

Victoria (39:14)
Yeah, yeah, great.

So how has it gone? Talk to me about those early days when you had your baby and you were kicking this off. How was it?

Emily Armitage (39:24)
And

the

beginning and I think most people get this like surge of creativity. remember somebody saying to me, you’ll just get this real creative burst, right? And I did and I was like, wow, this is crazy. And I had no sleep and I was just up at three in the morning like crazily writing content on my phone, like baby

Victoria (39:44)
Buzzing.

Emily Armitage (39:47)
in arms, feeding, like watching some crap on telly like, I was just.

Victoria (39:51)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (39:52)
It was like a really insane, like I use the word insane in a very light way here, but like it was wild, like the experience of that and the hormones and the

Victoria (39:59)
No, I relate completely. Yeah, I was the same. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (40:02)
sleep deprivation. And I’m like, I take it over the world kind of vibes.

Victoria (40:07)
hahahaha

Emily Armitage (40:08)
And then the sleep deprivation really hits and like my kid I love him to bits but he doesn’t he’s not a good sleeper like we’re he’ll be four in September and we still like he’s generally awake at least once in the night and when he’s not then I’m awake like what’s happened so

Victoria (40:25)
Is he breathing?

Emily Armitage (40:26)
Yeah, exactly. So it’s the sleep is interesting because that creative burst tailed off and then you’re just tired and then you’re like, right, how like, what do I need to do to

create this life that I said I wanted to create. What boundaries do I need to have to put in place? Who do I need to be? Who do I need to ask for support from? Which as a firstborn daughter I’m really terrible at doing and I am not used to this. And it’s yeah and you’ve just got

Victoria (40:56)
Yeah, I’m a first born daughter too, get that?

Emily Armitage (41:00)
to like remove all these parts of yourself and shake them up and then I had like the the whole neurodiverse thing in the mix as well which was

I didn’t realise how strong my coping mechanisms were until I couldn’t use them anymore. I didn’t really realise I did them or had them and then I couldn’t do them and it was like, it was like the world cracked. Like that’s the only way I can describe it.

Victoria (41:26)
What were your coping mechanisms? What were they?

Emily Armitage (41:30)
just the control and like doing everything myself ultimately and my communication and having to ask for help and support I found so difficult particularly with people that I…

that I don’t live with anymore. like my parents or my sister, like my husband kind of just got it, but he works away a lot. So he left for two weeks when the baby was 10 days old and I was still in bed after the C-section and like I had to have people coming in and helping me. that was just like.

Victoria (42:05)
There is so

much about our stories that is like relative. It’s interesting. We’re both the same age, first born

Emily Armitage (42:09)
really? Yeah, yeah.

Victoria (42:10)
daughters. My youngest is going to be four in September. So she’s

about the same age as your son. And I recognize all of these control tools.

Emily Armitage (42:19)
Yeah.

Victoria (42:20)
And my partner left seven weeks after my first was born. I’d

Emily Armitage (42:26)
Mmm.

Victoria (42:26)
literally only just started walking again. It was quite a tricky labor. And he got stuck in Oman for three and a half months.

Emily Armitage (42:33)
no. that’s worse. god. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. hate it. Yeah, yeah.

Victoria (42:33)
And it was just, it’s so interesting. Well, no, but you know, you just had a C-section, like you literally are still in bed. So, and asking for help and all of this stuff, that’s been like a real learning curve for me

as well. I haven’t had an ADHD diagnosis or anything like that, but I’m kind of like, I probably, probably I’m in there somewhere. know, it’s just, all,

Emily Armitage (42:51)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Victoria (42:54)
it’s all so, so interesting that so many women are kind of discovering that now at this point in our

Emily Armitage (43:00)
Yeah.

Victoria (43:00)
lives.

Emily Armitage (43:01)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Victoria (43:01)
having kind of muddled through for so long as well.

Emily Armitage (43:05)
I’m autistic and I’ve got OCD and the

Victoria (43:09)
Okay.

Emily Armitage (43:09)
OCD thing really kind of ramped up when my child was born. I know

Victoria (43:15)
Get that, yeah.

Emily Armitage (43:16)
there’s some element of the protection and it sends your brain a bit wild but mine, because I have OCD and it was undiagnosed, I was just off the charts and this went on for…

for while and it wasn’t until we went on our first like family holiday abroad and I felt like a lot of the time I have felt when my OCD is very bad that I’m living in like two different realities at the same time like I’m very aware of the real world that I’m in but then also there’s this like disaster movie playing in my head that feels very very real as well so it’s almost like there’s a bit of a split and that was happening a lot when I was first a new mom and I mean when we went on holiday

and I was just like I don’t like flying anyway that really sets me off and just the whole time and I was like I am NOT okay like I need to get some help here like I’m not alright and I went to the doctors and I got referred to like a talk therapy and I thought it was anxiety like I’m just got anxiety and I sat in this room and the woman was like hmm has anybody taught you about OCD before and I was like no do you think I have that and she’s like yes we’re going to like

Victoria (44:29)
You

Emily Armitage (44:30)
fast-track your referral in a different direction.

Victoria (44:33)
wow.

Emily Armitage (44:34)
Yeah, and that has been so incredibly useful. Like the therapist that I had for that was just brilliant. And I use the toolkit that we created, like even understanding how my OCD works and how my thoughts are formulated, like what I do, the behaviors I do, which compound that. Just understanding all that was fascinating as well, being able to stop myself.

like collect, yeah,

Victoria (45:00)
And notice, yeah, yeah.

Emily Armitage (45:02)
and notice and the toolkit that we created. I still use it today. It helps me, definitely helps me cope. But it’s like, yeah, all these things one after the other really, really compounded.

Victoria (45:16)
It’s a massive story of self-discovery, isn’t it? And I think we’re

Emily Armitage (45:19)
Mmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Victoria (45:20)
all on it, but like your story, just laying it out like that. And I think, you know, credit to you because you’ve shown such curiosity all the time. You know, there’s no burying your

Emily Armitage (45:31)
Mm.

Victoria (45:31)
head in the sand. It’s like, no, I want to understand myself. And I

Emily Armitage (45:35)
Yeah.

Victoria (45:35)
think, you know, I relate to that because it’s like, now that you’re a parent as well, you know,

Emily Armitage (45:41)
That’s the crooks.

That’s the catalyst. Yeah.

Victoria (45:42)
Yeah, you need to know

yourself if you’re going to have any chance of encouraging your kids to be themselves and to parent them in the best way possible. And also just to like you say, have grace and be human

Emily Armitage (45:54)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (45:55)
and say, mommy sometimes struggles with this. And if you struggle with stuff, that’s fine too, because I don’t think

Emily Armitage (45:57)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Victoria (46:00)
that was the story when we were kids and it’s

Emily Armitage (46:02)
Nope.

Victoria (46:03)
no shade to our parents or, you it’s just society at large, you know, it was all about masking. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (46:08)
Yeah, that was the environment. That’s, yeah,

yeah. That’s, we do this, this is the route, this is the path, this is how we do it, is what a family does, this is how we behave, this is not acceptable, this is what we do. And then

Victoria (46:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (46:21)
we’re doing it in a very different way because we kind of see the issues with that and that kind of,

Victoria (46:27)
the ramifications.

Emily Armitage (46:29)
yeah, absolutely the impact and what that has had been on us and we don’t want to pass that on to our kids.

Victoria (46:36)
Yeah, yeah, no, it’s really, it’s so, all of it is so interesting. And now you’re at a point, I presume, where you feel like you really are in tune with yourself in comparison

Emily Armitage (46:48)
Yes.

Victoria (46:48)
to, you know, when you were starting out in your career and you were doing this admin role and the pumping stuff all got painted the wrong color and whatever, and you’re kind of flounding around trying to find your way.

Emily Armitage (46:55)
Yeah

Victoria (46:57)
Do you feel like you found your thing? Like this is it?

Emily Armitage (47:02)
I, that’s an interesting question actually and that’s something, so I have a really strong connection to my intuition and I ask it questions quite a lot, it’s part of how I’m designed, obviously, I’m gonna say that, but and I ask it questions a lot and I’m, I did ask it this this last week like I’m like is this what I’m meant to be doing and my intuition was kind of like it’s what you’re meant to be doing now, whether this is a forever thing, I don’t know, like you’re always gonna be there to.

support women and to, because my big thing is around like…

having for that financial freedom like economic feminism because when women have more money and when women who’ve done the work and are doing the work still have more money we make such massive changes in society and in our society like it or not money is power and when we shift the money we will shift the power and that’s what we need to do and business is such a great vehicle for doing that so that’s like my underpinning why of everything and this like

creating an aligned business and legacy business through the power of human design is where I’m at right now. And there it’s a forever thing. I don’t know how it’s going to evolve, but I feel good in what I’m doing in that space now. Yeah.

Victoria (48:19)
Yeah, but that’s also

the fun, I think, in

Emily Armitage (48:23)
Mm.

Victoria (48:24)
business building in 2026. know,

Emily Armitage (48:27)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (48:27)
long gone are the days of career for life. We can pivot, we can evolve, we can make different choices that fit. And again, it’s coming back to intuition that feel right in that moment, because you can outgrow something, you can be done. You can have incredible impact and be done and be ready for something else. Yeah.

Emily Armitage (48:38)
Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

Victoria (48:48)
Yeah, and it all links into

Emily Armitage (48:48)
and it-

Victoria (48:49)
this self-discovery because you’re challenging yourself, you’re getting out of your comfort zone again and growing on

Emily Armitage (48:53)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (48:53)
to do something different.

Emily Armitage (48:54)
Yeah. And it’s the self-trust in that there as well and the self-leadership and the self-awareness to be able to know I’m having this big impact but I’m done. Like because so many people get to this pinnacle and they think, I’ve got to recreate this pinnacle all the time. I’ve got to keep it here. And actually we all evolve. Our life season changes. Our human experiences change things for us. And it’s…

working with that and for me having a human designer as a tool to go back to again and again and again to meet it as I am at different phases to be like right what’s next where am I expanding to now what’s what’s going on and that’s very useful.

Victoria (49:33)
Yeah, that, yeah,

definitely. And that’s kind of societal as well, isn’t it? Because we can so easily fall into like a scarcity mindset and it’s fear that’s driving our decision to kind of stay where we are.

Emily Armitage (49:48)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (49:49)
Fear of the unknown, fear of being unsafe, fear being a beginner and fear of financial instability. And if one of your major goals in your business is to help women achieve

their financial goals and financial security, then that must, I don’t feel like I’ve achieved all my financial goals, still got a massive mortgage, so I’m projecting, that

must

Emily Armitage (50:14)
hahaha

Victoria (50:16)
make it easier for them to choose to move on to something new because they know that they have a financial foundation from which they can do that. Do you feel like it’s money

Emily Armitage (50:25)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Victoria (50:26)
that keeps women stuck sometimes?

Emily Armitage (50:30)
this is a whole podcast episode in itself. Yes, short answer, yes. I

Victoria (50:32)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (50:38)
think as well, like money is so loaded. it’s an inanimate object that we have loaded.

with so much stuff like personally but also as a society as a collective like we give it so much power and what it means and we make it you know our saviour or our jailer and it’s yeah i find the relationship between people and money especially

in the system that we’re using it in, i.e. late-stage capitalism, I find it fascinating, like endlessly fascinating. But I think we can become so tied to it so you can get, you can have massive financial success.

but that doesn’t look like or feel like what you thought it would on the outside. You can have massive financial success and it feel great and you’d be using it, but then you worry, you fall back into the pit of I’ve got to replicate this, I’ve got to replicate this, the pressure’s on. Or you can not be having financial success and be like,

I need to get a job to support me. And then there’s shame in that because that’s not what the narrative is. And ultimately everything is data. And when you can bring yourself back to that self trust, you take your power back from the industry norms, from what that other coach online said, and you can make monetary and financial decisions based on who you are, where you’re at and where you want to be. Then it removes a lot of the emotion. It stops becoming.

this like shameful burden because you can take the job, you can decide to change and pivot even though you’ve got this success and nobody, you know, everybody’s like, my God, I want to be you. And you’re like, well, it’s up, so don’t. You can change

Victoria (52:29)
Hmm.

Emily Armitage (52:33)
that up because you’ve got that self trust and you can, if you can’t remove the shame, at least work through it. It’s a, yeah, money’s

Victoria (52:42)
Yeah. Okay.

Emily Armitage (52:43)
an interesting one.

Victoria (52:45)
It is. And just to close the loop on your earlier comment, how has your journey with money been? Because you

Emily Armitage (52:53)
Yeah

Victoria (52:53)
said, you know, this is a massive driver in your business now.

Emily Armitage (52:55)
Yeah.

Victoria (52:56)
You’ve evolved through, you know, various roles in a corporate career. You’ve taken

Emily Armitage (53:01)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (53:02)
this leap. You’ve started your own business. You’ve become a mom.

Emily Armitage (53:06)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (53:06)
You’ve

had all of that chaos, the insanity of that early matressence period where you’re firing

Emily Armitage (53:11)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (53:11)
on all cylinders and you found this niche that suits you right now. How

Emily Armitage (53:16)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (53:16)
has all that looked in terms of your, I’m going to say again, in inverted commas, money mindset.

Emily Armitage (53:23)
Okay, so a bit of background like why am I so passionate about this?

So when I was younger, a lot younger, I was in a toxic coercive relationship. And part of that coercion was around financial abuse. everybody thinks like, we cut your credit cards up. And it’s not as dramatic as that. Like it’s very subtle and it’s in what’s not said as well as what is said. That’s how coercive control works. And I ended up with very little financial power of my own, if any.

kind of freedom or choice that that money brings and so I am deeply deeply aware of the space and the choices and the opportunities having money can create as a woman with financial independence and so that’s kind of a very big driver around why I do what I do. I worked my way up in a corporate career and like

I think the money mindset around like having a safety net and having a cushion to fall back on.

and then being able to prove it to yourself that you can make that yourself rather than you are making money when you’re working because you’re doing a job, you’re doing the tasks to fulfil

Victoria (54:42)
You’re showing up, yeah.

Emily Armitage (54:44)
the need and then somebody gives you the pay at the end of the month. But when you’re working for yourself, as many of your listeners will know, like that’s on you. Like you have to, nobody’s handing you the paycheck, you’ve got to pay yourself. I don’t, again, to sort of go back to the

work is never done. think with the monetary aspect, the work is never done because you’re particularly like I find this for myself because it ebbs and flows like enter entrepreneurship is not this one way linear rocket ship to Mars like it doesn’t work like that. It does this waves this ebbs and flows

Victoria (55:16)
No. Sadly not, no.

Emily Armitage (55:20)
and I think particularly with financial ebbs and flows like

different situations arise and you have to work on how you feel about money and how money and you are interacting and what your relationship is every step of the way or at least I have. So again I don’t think it’s something that’s ever necessarily done I think it evolves as you evolve and as your situation changes because you

Victoria (55:49)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (55:49)
know yeah.

Victoria (55:51)
Yeah, and I think it all can evolve in tandem.

Emily Armitage (55:55)
Yeah.

Victoria (55:55)
know, everything feeds into everything else because money is so emotional as well. And I think people

Emily Armitage (56:00)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Victoria (56:01)
think money’s about maths and it’s got very little to do with maths. And again, know, women particularly, they’re like, okay, well, perhaps they were told at school they weren’t very good at maths. A lot of millennial women were told at school they weren’t very good at maths, me too.

Emily Armitage (56:10)
yeah, me.

Victoria (56:15)
So you’re like, well, I might not be great with money then.

And again, it’s like you were saying about the human design, we can lean on these things as kind of excuses.

Emily Armitage (56:23)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (56:23)
And actually we sort of write it off that that’s not gonna be our forte and perhaps we’re more creative and we label ourselves sometimes in an unhelpful way. But actually understanding that money is largely emotional and that we have

Emily Armitage (56:38)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (56:39)
so much of our own stories that are attached to money and our experiences, like you said with your previous relationship, that feed into it.

Emily Armitage (56:48)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria (56:48)
that all of that unpicking that kind of goes hand in hand with motherhood, with business, with human design exploration, everything I imagine just feeds into each other. And you can have surprising moments, I imagine, in your work where something unexpected is just unlocked for somebody. Yeah. Okay. Nguyen.

Emily Armitage (57:08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s not, sorry, go

on. No, it’s not like, here’s this information and people just like.

absorb it and then that’s it tickety-boo off they go it’s very much like particularly when people work with me longer term we revisit and we revisit because things change and and they meet it at a different place and then they’re like okay i get this

Victoria (57:36)
Yeah.

Emily Armitage (57:36)
now and as the evidence builds that’s when things change or click or there’s a moment of right okay this is different yeah yeah it’s it’s

Victoria (57:46)
Yeah, no, it must be really

rewarding.

Emily Armitage (57:50)
Absolutely, it really is, yeah, it really is.

Victoria (57:55)
It’s really interesting. I really appreciate you sharing it because I feel like I’ve learned loads. And I

Emily Armitage (57:59)
Good, I’m glad.

Victoria (58:02)
have a question for you. I don’t know how old you were when you fell over on stage, but if you could go and have a conversation with your eight year old self now, what would you tell her?

Emily Armitage (58:17)
If I could have a conversation with my eight year old self, I would say to don’t marry a certain someone.

Victoria (58:27)
No.

Emily Armitage (58:29)
Or maybe do, because otherwise you won’t end up here. And don’t let your confidence get as suppressed and whittled away.

Like you’re allowed to be how you are and that’s not a bad thing. That’s not a wrong thing. You’re allowed.

Victoria (58:52)
Yeah, that permission piece

Emily Armitage (58:54)
Yeah.

Victoria (58:54)
is massive. And how is it, it’s wild when you think back, like how is it that so many of us are sort of in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s maybe, only just starting to believe that we’re allowed to be who we are? Like,

Emily Armitage (59:09)
Mm.

Victoria (59:09)
it’s totally wild. Like it’s quite a number that has been pulled, isn’t it? When you think about it like that, yeah.

Emily Armitage (59:15)
Yeah, thanks patriarchy. Yeah.

Victoria (59:18)
It’s crazy. I’ve loved this conversation. Emily, thank you so much

Emily Armitage (59:19)
Yeah. Me too.

Victoria (59:21)
for your time today. Where can everybody find you if they want to go and learn more about what you do and human design or potentially work with you? Where should they look?

Emily Armitage (59:27)
Yeah. Yeah,

so my website, www.emilyarmatage.co.uk. I’m on LinkedIn, which is just my name. And I’m also on Instagram at Emily, yeah, emilyarmatage.co.uk. That’s right, Instagram.

Victoria (59:43)
Amazing. this has been brilliant. Thank you so much.

Emily Armitage (59:46)
Thank you, thanks for having me on and I’ve loved this as well.