Episode 69: Turning the Volume Up; What My Human Design Revealed About Playing It Small

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

Hello and welcome to this solo episode of the Mum Means Business podcast. Last week, I was confronted with an unnervingly accurate appraisal of my character, my personality traits and my behavioural tendencies by a woman I’d never met in person and had only had one prior conversation with. That woman was podcast guest Emily Armitage, and she was decoding my human design.

After we recorded, I was so curious to learn more about this mysterious personality typing system. I knew I wanted to book an alignment hour with Emily, and my God, I’m so glad I did, because it was fascinating.

Emily is a business and identity strategist who uses human design to help financially ambitious women to thrive. So she comes at the whole thing from a curious but also very practical point of view. Emily doesn’t just assess you, give you all the data and wish you well. She’s determined to give her clients something actionable, something they can go away and think about to help them move forward in their career or their business. I feel like I left the conversation with just that, whilst at the same time knowing that what we discussed was the tip of the iceberg.

Human design mixes ancient wisdom like astrology, the I Ching, Kabbalah and chakras with modern sciences like quantum physics and genetics to map our unique energetic blueprint. And by the end of this episode, I want to leave you curious enough about your own design to go and get your chart done if you haven’t already. But first, I thought I would take you through what I learned about my human design in this alignment hour, which was actually an alignment 90 minutes, what came up for me and what I’m going to do with the information I now have.

Emily asked me to complete a questionnaire ahead of time so she could prepare, and one of the things she asked me to do was identify a specific area where I felt stuck in my business, a block or something that was triggering resistance. I didn’t need to think too hard about this. Straight away I knew it was leads and money. One leads quite literally to the other, doesn’t it? But this is where I have felt a blockage for some time.

After I pivoted my photography business away from weddings in 2023, 2024, I soon realised I could no longer rely on good old fashioned SEO. Listen to episode 67 for that story. So I’ve played with a mix of social media marketing, email marketing, in-person networking and personal outreach, but even now I still haven’t settled on a reliable strategy to bring in new leads and my scattergun approach has inevitably led to mixed results.

There was a time a couple of years ago, even one year ago, when the block was uncertainty around the offer itself. But after 17 years in photography, I now know the sort of work I want to do and who I want to work with. I’m no longer second guessing myself on pricing. I have finally designed a client experience that I’m confident delivering and literally obsessed with, and a photography business model that is sustainable and drives profit. I am ready to attract more right fit clients.

Then there is the online education side of the business, which is so new. Perhaps I’ll do an episode to explain what that was all about and what it’s taken for me to finally get this up and running. But again, it’s something I feel really confident in and really passionate about. And yet I feel like I’m still testing my marketing, having not yet landed on a reliable strategy to attract the photographers I know I can help.

And this podcast, same. I love it so much and I really believe these conversations are needed. The DMs I get from listeners are so heartwarming and I can see the positive impact the podcast has when it lands. But I have a sense that it should be growing faster. I’ve worked really hard to create content around it over the past year, and perhaps comparisonitis is at play, but it can feel frustrating sometimes when you have something you know can be of value, but it feels like you’re pushing an ever-growing snowball up the hill to find the people you’re making it for and let them know about it.

So having identified these areas where I feel frustration in my business right now, I was ready to hear what Emily had to tell me about me. So, drum roll. I am a manifesting generator, which Emily explains means I’m here to follow my passions and desires. I love that phrase, you’re here to X, Y, Z, because it feels so validating and permissive. I think so often we give ourselves a hard time for just being who we are, but this idea that we are all here to do something feels incredibly liberating.

So being a mani-gen, as the cool kids call it, who knew, also means I’m multi-passionate and may feel like I jump from one thing to another too fast. I shared with Emily that I often feel greedy or guilty or scattered, or like I’m not following the advice around niching down, because there are always so many things I want to do all at once. Right now it’s photography, the online education, this podcast, marketing for the family business, as well as being an engaged mum, a partner, a daughter and a friend. But it turns out that’s literally how I’m designed to work. It was really reassuring to hear those words out loud. She encouraged me to reframe this jumping around as a feature, not a bug that needs to be fixed.

Apparently I have sacral authority, which sounds really cool and impressive, doesn’t it? Simply put, Emily explained that this means my decisions come from my gut and I’m not prone to too much deliberating or overthinking, which felt true to me for the most part. But I realised I’d long criticised myself for being too impulsive and unwavering or stubborn once I made a decision about something. Emily again encouraged me to reframe this as healthy self-trust, not stubbornness.

Then we moved onto my profile, which is a combination of numbers, and mine was five one, the challenge solver. The five is heretic, so I’m likely to have polarising opinions, practical solutions and save the day energy. And this rang so true. It took me right back to one of my many couples therapy sessions that my partner and I had back in the early days of parenting, where I was described as a fixer, always rushing in to solve the other person’s problem, in that case with no thought or consideration given for whether the other person actually wanted me to fix their problem or not. Flashes of recognition like this kept happening throughout the session as Emily revealed more and more layers.

The one is the researcher, which means a love of knowledge for its own sake and a tendency to get stuck, perhaps chasing qualifications instead of just doing the thing. This immediately made me think of how long I put off launching my Print Over Pixels course, because I kept telling myself the story that I didn’t know enough. I was waiting to feel ready, and now I know I never would have. I had to learn that ready is a decision, not a feeling. And that is now one of my favourite sayings that I tell myself all the time.

So the chart Emily showed me has all sorts of lines and nodes, some highlighted and some not, which she explained at the time but which I definitely need to dig into more deeply to understand better, because there’s only so much ground you can cover in 90 minutes. But there was this one North node on a fifth line, which she interpreted to perhaps help me out with my marketing conundrum. She said my ideal clients or audience want to disrupt the status quo, call things out and do things differently. This ties in with the polarising opinions piece. The podcast, for example, challenges the traditional idea of who we’re allowed to be as mothers. The whole ethos of my signature course, the Print Over Pixels course, challenges the industry standard way of doing things for photographers.

I realised I’d been nervous to say the things I want to say too loudly. Mothers can be ambitious and nurturing. They can pursue their own big dreams and build wealth and be excellent mothers. Photographers can create beautiful portraits and make great money and put their own family first. As a photographer, it is possible to lead with print in the digital age. In fact, it might be imperative for the survival of our businesses as AI comes knocking at the door.

I haven’t wanted to be called out for a detail I got wrong. I haven’t wanted to offend or put anyone off. I haven’t wanted to be disliked. And so maybe I’ve been too palatable. Emily encouraged me to turn the volume up on these things rather than keep it low so as not to disturb or upset anyone.

This next bit was about my frictions, and it was actually quite funny because Emily explained I have an open head, not empty, which is what I thought she said at first, but just totally open. She explained that having an undefined open centre means you’re open to picking up other people’s energy and the world’s conditioning, and that your not-self, which might manifest as frustration, shows up when you’re out of alignment. So my open head might mean I jump from overthinking to not thinking at all, from overconsuming information, looking for the answer instead of trusting my body. Tick.

Then my undefined solar plexus means I’m susceptible to people pleasing, worrying about what others think, absorbing other people’s moods and emotions as my own. Tick. And my undefined root means I might struggle to start something, struggle to stop something and take on pressure or stress that was never mine to carry. Tick.

I started to wonder if all women had these elements in their chart, but Emily explained that this meant I was particularly prone to absorbing the social conditioning that we can all identify with. This explains why I find it so hard and it just takes me so long to unlearn these stories we all internalised growing up about what it meant to be a good girl.

The theme throughout though was that nothing is good or bad, nothing is right or wrong. It’s just information we can hopefully use to our advantage going forward.

Next up we talked about my superpowers, which is way more fun than frictions, right? Emily told me I have a defined throat, which apparently means I have consistent, authoritative access to communication designed for visibility and messaging. There were various gates, I think is what they’re called, which were highlighted and we went through each one individually, and I’ll be honest, it was all lovely to listen to. So I have access to transformative words, knowing the right timing to shift how people see things. I can bring new ways of thinking, knowing which insight to speak into the world and when. And something about being designed to provide the macro vision, ownership and distribution of resources, which is something to do with a pretty sought after money channel that I’ll have to dig into a bit more in the fullness of time. The idea of a chart element being sought after made me laugh, because this stuff is supposedly fixed in stone based on the exact time and location of your birth, so there really isn’t very much we can do to change it.

There was another moment which really resonated with me, and that was when Emily explained the defined G Centre, which suggests I have a strong, consistent sense of self and direction. I innately know what is and isn’t for me, and I’m able to help others who feel lost find their direction. Immediately I was like, yes, and it ties in with the save the day energy, because I love nothing more than helping people find their way back to joy, particularly in their work. I am that person who’ll sit next to a stranger, exchange a few so what do you do pleasantries, and then bluntly ask, but do you like what you do, and see where the conversation goes.

Then Emily described my four channels, which are progress, rhythm, money and structuring. Words like vision, leadership and management all came up, and to be honest a part of me still felt like they were big words that definitely weren’t for me. It’s so interesting, because if I’m here to lead, disrupt, share my vision and speak the truth as I see it, then why have I felt so much resistance? It provoked me to really think about where I stopped and where the social conditioning began.

We didn’t get time to talk on it too much, but Emily was also able to identify what she called my variables, which map out my ideal digestion, environment, perspective and motivation. The chart showed that I work best with flexible structure or routine that can flex with intuition rather than rigid systems, which I 100% agree with. It showed that I’m a big picture learner, needing to zoom out, not get lost in the weeds, which again feels true, as honestly I feel like my brain dies a death in the weeds. And that I need familiar, comfortable environments to work well in, both physical and digital, because I’m fussy like that.

It was a lot to absorb in a short space of time, and actually going back through the notes and speaking about it now has been a really helpful way of processing it all a few days on. I’m obviously a millennial, and so I was raised in the era of magazine quizzes, and I love a personality test, perhaps you can relate, but this definitely feels different. There were a few things that challenged my thinking, but nothing that fell off the mark. I have a feeling that having my human design as a tool in the tool belt will be helpful going forward, in those times when I feel stuck in my business, and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to Emily for her interpretation.

As for the block I cited in the beginning, the whole experience has shifted my mindset around the way I’m showing up in my marketing. I’m not particularly interested in the labels of human design and I’m certainly not about to write mani-gen on my Instagram bio, but I do feel like having this experience has enabled me to give myself permission to do what I’m here to do. I realise I’ve been afraid to say the things I really want to say. I have been meek and apologetic, very sorry to bother you with this, about my opinions, and I’ll be honest, it hasn’t felt great and it obviously hasn’t inspired confidence, and therefore it hasn’t landed.

So much of communication is about energy, and I don’t even mean that in a woo sort of way, I literally mean the way we read each other’s energy. As a photographer I see this in my subjects. I can tell if there is anxiety in their faces, and a big part of my job is to help them feel relaxed and comfortable and the best version of themselves in front of the camera. We are so skilled at reading each other. And if people are watching my talking head reels, they will be reading my body language and making snap decisions about whether or not they trust me, like me, believe what I’m saying, and yes, whether they want to invest their time or money with me.

So I have to find a way to be better aligned with myself, and I think that has been compromised by the fear of other people’s perception, and also by a lot of internal monologues that start with who am I to say this, or who am I to teach that. But perhaps I’m designed to speak, to communicate and to share my thoughts with the world. I’ve always been compelled to do it. I’m a firstborn child, and my parents often joke about how they used to wonder what my voice would sound like when I was a baby and what I would say, but that it actually wasn’t long before they were praying for me to take a breath and be quiet.

So perhaps I was designed to start this podcast. Perhaps I was designed to disrupt the way family photographers deliver their work into the world in 2026, as niche as that sounds. And perhaps I was designed to share my story, my experience and my honest take on things as I see them. Perhaps that’s for me, and whether people choose to listen is for them. That reframe feels enormous, but perhaps aligning myself with what I’m here to do rather than tempering it could unlock something in the way I market this podcast and my business. I’m sure it won’t happen overnight, but I am determined to try.

If you got this far, you now know all there is to know about my human design. But the reason I’ve shared all of this is not just to give you an insight into what the experience was like, but to say that we are all unique and we all have our own roles to play. If you knew what you were designed to do, what you were here to do, and in a crazy way it felt like you’d been waiting for permission to do just that, wouldn’t you feel validated to just go and do it?

At one point when I was recording with Emily, she said, you’re allowed to be how you are. That’s not a bad thing. That’s not a wrong thing. You’re allowed. We only have this one life to play with, and if you’re listening to this, I know you want that life to be as big and beautiful as it can possibly be for you and your family. I know you have big business goals that you’re working towards every day. So if you ever feel stuck or frustrated, then knowing your human design might help you unlock something that shows you a path forward. On this occasion, it has for me.

So if this has sparked your curiosity and you would like to know more, go back and listen to my conversation with Emily in episode 68. And if you have any questions about human design, you can reach out to her on Instagram at @emilyarmitage_. Or if this monologue has sparked something for you, I would love to hear about it, so feel free to slide into my DMs too, at @mummeansbusinesspodcast or @victoriaphippsmbe. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen, and I will speak to you soon.