A balanced and successful business is built on more than just physical work alone. Combining her love of helping others with the technical drive of years in the field of environmental science, certified success coach Karen Auld’s new webinar highlights how having a positive or negative mindset can influence potential outcomes.
The course, “Mastering the Mental Side of Building a Business,” is hosted through the New Jersey Small Business Development Center at Raritan Valley Community College. Auld has been teaching at the SBDC for six years.
Each session contains the same content, but Auld is offering them in a trio of free, three-hour webinars on Thursdays, February 17, March 17, and April 21, from 6 to 9 p.m. The registration links are available at SBDC’s website, sbdcrvcc.com. Contact the SBDC office at sbdc@raritanval.edu or 908-526-1200 extension 8516 for more information.
Auld’s class supports entrepreneurs by starting with an exploration of how the brain functions. Through learning where thoughts come from and then “how you can align your thoughts to your goals, especially around your business,” as Auld says, fear can be slowly replaced with confidence, making obstacles easier to overcome.
Auld covers the four pillars of business: operations, finance, sales, and marketing. Then, by managing their thoughts and setting goals within those areas, attendees will feel more inspired to move forward constructively.
Absorbing self-help content with a conservational consciousness, Auld ran her own environmental health and safety consulting company for eight years until returning to the industry. She wanted to apply what she learned to uplift those in the same position.
While she still continues her passions by working full-time for Johnson & Johnson, Auld also teaches at SBDC on the side as an extension of that knowledge-based curiosity.
“I just became fascinated with how people think. Being a scientist, I started reading a lot about neuroscience and how the brain works. The more and more research I did, the more I realized that if your thoughts are not aligned with what you want to achieve, it’s going to make it a thousand times harder for you to achieve whatever that is that you want to,” she says.
The hopelessness or confusion, Auld says, can be alleviated by envisioning the future and seeing the bigger picture, then reverse engineering back to make those dreams a reality. Building towards those possibilities as part of a larger framework, rather than only worrying about the day-to-day business, influences the trajectory of a successful business owner.
“When you’re just thinking day to day, it can get boring, and it could also be exhausting,” she explains. “What I talk about in the class is what I call the CEO mindset. It doesn’t matter if you’re just a small business owner, you’re still the CEO of your business, and you have to think like one.”
Her interest in self-empowerment echoed environmental work where “you have to influence people to change their minds,” as Auld compares the two. She trained under Dr. Robert Holden, a coach and author of several self-help books, then began working with entrepreneurs.
“At the time, I had my own business as well, and I realized how the mind really is,” she says. “How we think influences so many things.”
Auld grew up in Bound Brook and graduated from Rutgers. She lives with her husband, an architect, in Hunterdon County.
The avid appreciator of the environment’s one-on-one coaching services have been put on halt because of her other work, but she continues to mentor at the SBDC. Auld enjoys “repackaging things” that might sound too technical to someone without scientific expertise, her end goal being that everyone can cultivate the same enthusiasm for their personal growth.
“Somebody who’s starting a business, they have this goal in mind. They’re excited to start something, and sometimes though, the prevailing thoughts that they’re having is ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, this is gonna be hard, I’ve never sold this product,’ and their mind can just really impede their success,” Auld explains. “So, I developed this webinar to help people, number one, be conscious of their thoughts, and then to ensure that their thoughts are in the direction that they want to go.”
Auld brings up a quote from Henry Ford that goes, “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right,” to show the power of the brain. She also mentions Roger Bannister, the first person to run a sub-four-minute mile, a feat previously thought unachievable before he accomplished the task in 1954.
Now that time, and much lower, have been conquered by others empowered at seeing Bannister knock down the barrier of the seemingly impossible. Auld wants that same mentality of teamwork, as well as perseverance, to be fostered through the webinar.
“That’s the good thing about this class, is we try to do that camaraderie,” she says. “We all feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can do this,” or our thoughts do go to this place of where you feel unsure, but that’s okay. It’s just a thought, and you can change your thoughts.”
Batting away “imposter syndrome” and inhibitions, the mental side of business is just as important as the physical components.
“I really feel that if the two are not in harmony, then that can be detrimental. It’s not like one has more importance over the other, but if they’re not aligned, and there’s no harmony between the two, then I think that that’s where people run into some trouble,” she says.
Back when she was trying to grow her own consulting business online, Auld happened to find a seminar that piqued her interest — an opportunity alongside Steve Harvey, the famous entertainer and television mogul. She worked with Harvey as an attendant of his Success institute program, where under the School of Business Acceleration, she was able to gain an experience similar to the MBA degree she had always yearned for.
Instead of opting for one of her own, Auld participated in a year-long course that consisted of twice-a-week meetings and three retreats alongside Harvey. The experience left an impression on her continuous educational process.
That insatiable search for knowledge means that in terms of sharing her insights, she runs other courses at the SBDC.
“I teach a class called ‘The Side Hustle,’ so that’s all about how we manage our life and our time when we’re trying to build a business while working for someone else. I also teach a class called ‘Overcoming Procrastination.’ I’ve developed what I call my signature WAIT loss process, so it’s all about how you stop waiting and start moving in the direction of your dreams,” she explains.
Auld is scheduled to speak at TEDx Asbury Park in May about her data-driven program, Sustainable Soul, which uses research to back up her belief that “people who are living their purpose are the people that are going to save the planet,” she says.
“It’s about how happy people are making better decisions about the environment, and I believe people are happy because they’re following their purpose. I have this whole survey that I’ve been asking people to fill out. It measures your happiness level, and it also asks you [about] some decisions you have made around environmental issues,” Auld elaborates.
The online link to the survey to help Auld expand her research is here.
“What Sustainable Soul is doing is it’s taking all the things that I’ve learned about mindset, purpose, and just being a purposeful driven person, and applying that to what I’ve learned about the environment,” she says, extending the principles of her course beyond just business or how to seize an economic advantage.
Currently, Auld is in the process of turning her webinar into a self-published book that she hopes will be out sometime this year.
“Those three hours are jam packed,” she adds, noting that everyone usually is surprised at how the time goes by so fast. “It’s a really fun class for me to teach, too.”
