Ep 238: What If the Problem Isn’t You, It’s Your Business Model with Stefanie Carlstedt

That’s exactly what happened to Stefanie Carlstedt. She’d built a business that looked successful on the outside.  But it felt completely off on the inside … and she was burning out.

Then came a moment that changed everything:

“I thought it was fluff—just another personality test. But then I read my Human Design chart and started crying. For the first time, I felt seen.”

If you’ve ever felt like your business isn’t quite working for you, you’re not alone. In a world of burnout and one-size-fits-all strategies, Human Design might offer something surprisingly useful.  Especially if the usual advice hasn’t gotten you where you want to go.

Stefanie has 13 years of experience, multiple businesses under her belt, and hundreds of clients behind her. Today, she helps entrepreneurs design businesses that align with how they’re actually wired—using Human Design as a tool to unlock clarity, confidence, and momentum.

WE ALSO TALKED ABOUT

• The pivotal moment Stefanie walked away from the corporate world after a personal crisis
• How she built a “successful” business that still left her feeling empty
• What Human Design is (and why she was initially sceptical too)
• The link between your energy type and your ideal marketing strategy
• How your personal design might reveal fears holding you back with money
• Why people-pleasers may need to unlearn business “rules” that don’t fit
• Using Human Design to rebuild a business that feels good to run
• Whether AI tools can support authenticity, or risk replacing it

Tune in to this episode for a fresh perspective on finding the right-fit business approach for you.

Get regular access to tips, techniques and advice from experts about growing your business: https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter/

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Stefanie’s free Human Design Business Report & Audio Series: https://stefcarlstedt.com/hdreport
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (re: how birth timing can affect success)

My newsletter is for people who need a way to make money from home so they can build a better life for themselves and their families:
👉 https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter

_____________

Trudy Rankin is the host of the Online Business Launchpad Podcast, Director of West Island Digital and the founder of the Online Business Lift-Off program.

Affiliate Disclaimer: If you click on links on this page and then make a purchase, I may earn a commission (at no extra cost to you).  I am a proud affiliate of these resources because I use them in my own life and business.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 238: What If the Problem Isn’t You, It’s Your Business Model with Stefanie Carlstedt

Trudy Rankin:

[00:00:00] Stefanie Carlstedt: And I remember sitting in my couch in the living room and just melting and crying because it was the first time I felt like seen.

[00:00:06] Stefanie Carlstedt: What I had always known about me made sense.

[00:00:09] Trudy Rankin: That’s how Stefanie Carlstedt describes her first encounter with human design. And for her it was a turning point. And as we got into this conversation, I discovered that Stefanie and I had different definitions of what we each meant by quotes, human design, but that just makes the conversation more interesting.

[00:00:27] Trudy Rankin: So whether you are all in or you’re raising a curious eyebrow like I was there might be something here for you, especially if you feel like what you’re doing in business just isn’t quite the right fit. In this episode, we dig into Stefanie’s journey from burning out in a “successful” quotes business to rebuilding one that finally felt right and she shares how human design helped her shift the way she markets, manages money and makes decisions, and how she’s now using that same framework to guide other entrepreneurs.

[00:00:58] Trudy Rankin: And Stefanie’s not [00:01:00] just throwing around buzzwords. She’s actually lived the overwhelm and managed to rebuild from it. With over a decade of entrepreneurial experience and having helped many clients, she offers a perspective that might be just what you need if you are feeling stuck or out of sync with your business.

[00:01:17] Trudy Rankin: Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast. I’m Trudy Rankin. And I help people who need a flexible work from home option grow the online side of their business so they can earn more stress less, and have greater freedom in how they live.

[00:01:31] 

[00:01:43] Trudy Rankin: Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast.

[00:01:45] Trudy Rankin: I’m your host, Trudy Rankin, and today I have got Stefanie Carlstedt with me. And Stefanie is interested in something that I’ve been interested in for a very long time, and that is about basically designing your [00:02:00] business around who you are, not what the gurus say you should be designing your business like, and it’s about making businesses fit people rather than making people fit businesses.

[00:02:10] Trudy Rankin: So I’ve asked Stefanie to come on to the podcast this week and just talk to us a little bit about that. So Stefanie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. 

[00:02:18] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited. I think this is going to be great. 

[00:02:22] Trudy Rankin: I’m really looking forward to it. So let’s just go ahead and start by getting you to just tell people a little bit about yourself, a bit about your background and then we’ll move on from once we’ve done that.

[00:02:34] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah, for sure. Well, I, um, have been an entrepreneur for 13 years. I followed the normal trajectory of life. Up until then, I always knew that something was different about me. I never quite fit into the norm, but I followed the norm as far as college goes. Is I got my graduate degree, I got the quote unquote perfect job because that’s what everybody said was normal and would make me successful, would make me happy, and I felt like I was [00:03:00] immediately shrinking after I walked into that job. I felt guilty for it. I felt like, I should be thankful, grateful, but I, I, something was missing in me and it was actually the moment my, my dad was diagnosed early onset Alzheimer’s, and I remember going back to that job the next Monday after I found out, and I couldn’t stop crying.

[00:03:21] Stefanie Carlstedt: I just couldn’t compose myself. And I remember my coworker putting me into my office and telling me to come out when I was done crying. And that was honestly the last straw. That was the pivotal moment in my journey where I said, no more. I’m walking away. And it was terrifying. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

[00:03:37] Stefanie Carlstedt: I just knew that I couldn’t do that, and I needed to be by him through this awful disease process. And so I dove headfirst into entrepreneurship and built. I tried many things and I built a big business over the next 10 years, and I helped hundreds of people step in the online space. I held thousands of clients, but something was [00:04:00] missing and it was a full circle moment. I lost my dad and I felt empty. I felt almost like I had been building.. I built the life based on society’s expectations of the college. And then I built a business off of business expectations and how we’re meant to build a business. And I had fallen into the trap of following every guru, trying all the trends and the hacks and the tricks, and I lost myself in the process.

[00:04:26] Stefanie Carlstedt: And so it was in that grieving part of losing my dad, where my stepsister handed me my human design chart. And she said, just look at this. And I said, I think it’s fluff. I think it’s another one of those personality tests, but I’ll give it a try. And I remember sitting in my couch in the living room and just melting and crying because it was the first time I felt like seen.

[00:04:48] Stefanie Carlstedt: What I had always known about me made sense. And so it’s my mission now and what I do is help business owners, entrepreneurs get their business to grow, to [00:05:00] be fulfilling, to feel really, really good by infusing their human design into their business. So that’s where I’m at today, and I know what’s where I’m meant to be.

[00:05:09] Trudy Rankin: I think it’s interesting because I know so many people who are entrepreneurs or they want to get into the entrepreneur space and they do feel like they have to fit in. They have to copy what everybody else is doing. And there’s a certain, there is a certain aspect to that, that is correct.

[00:05:25] Trudy Rankin: As in, there are some things that work with people and some things that don’t work with people, but there are so many different ways to run a business and to put a business together mm-hmm. That if you copy somebody else and you destroy your uniqueness in the process, that just doesn’t work.

[00:05:41] Trudy Rankin: Mm-hmm. I’m really curious because where you were back when you first discovered that your father had Alzheimer’s, early onset Alzheimer’s, and you. Threw away your job and you decided you were going to get into this entrepreneurial space. ’cause I’m assuming you’re going, well, I’ve got to support myself somehow.

[00:05:58] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah.

[00:05:59] Trudy Rankin: What was the [00:06:00] very first thing you tried and how did you find out about it so that you could even, how did you even realize that you could be an entrepreneur in a very specific way? 

[00:06:09] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. It’s interesting because 13 years ago it really wasn’t, it is not even the norm now, I, I look at my life now and none of my friends and family around me are entrepreneurs.

[00:06:20] Stefanie Carlstedt: I’m the only one, but I’m proud of that. Right? And, and more and more people are, are getting into this space, which is really, really cool. But when I launched into the online space, I didn’t really know. The first thing I did was network marketing. It was very available and everybody was in my newsfeed talking about it.

[00:06:37] Stefanie Carlstedt: And you know, from then on I did digital marketing, I’ve done health and fitness. I’ve done an array of things. And I had built success, but I had also, I say I slowly died in that process of building based on everyone else’s blueprints. And you know, with entrepreneurship too, there are specific things that [00:07:00] you, you need to do, yes, in your business, but there are different ways that your human design needs you to do it, to, to feel like it’s fulfilling. 

[00:07:10] Trudy Rankin: I think that’s interesting ’cause can you talk about that just a little bit? Maybe talk a little bit about the, how shall I phrase this? The difference between the things that you have to do in order to run a business successfully that’s been proven over thousands and thousands of years, and what you have to do uniquely, that’s uniquely you in order to be successful as a business owner and not die inside.

[00:07:33] Stefanie Carlstedt: Mm-hmm. 

[00:07:34] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. So it, you’re human design actually tells you how you’re meant to market. So we all have to market, right? We all have to put ourselves out there. We have to get over that fear of being seen, being heard, being judged, and we have to put ourselves out there. But our design actually tells us in what specific way. Social media is very good for some human designs and not good at all for others. So podcasting is great. Email stuff is great. There’s an array of [00:08:00] different ways you can market and your design actually tells you how you’re meant to do that and if you have a social media account, some designs are meant to post daily and some designs are meant to post maybe twice a month and they’ll still have the same success.

[00:08:15] Stefanie Carlstedt: But we don’t understand that. We think we have to be consistent every single day in order to grow, and we don’t understand that we’re actually blocking our success because it’s against our design, and that’s why we feel so overwhelmed and stressed and frustrated with our business. We almost end up resenting it.

[00:08:30] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. 

[00:08:31] Trudy Rankin: Yeah, that’s kind of interesting. So is there anything else besides the marketing side of things that, that, um, we need to focus on our unique human capabilities as opposed to what everybody says we should be doing? 

[00:08:43] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah, so is human design is very, very nuanced. The main part that people always know about their human design, if they know , is their energy type.

[00:08:52] Stefanie Carlstedt: So that really tells you how you’re meant to put effort into the world. And some of us are not energy beings, some of [00:09:00] us are more of the guiding. And they see things and systems better than they the people see themselves. So they’re more of a penetrating aura. They can only work two to four hours efficiently at a time, but they’re way more efficient than, let’s say, a manifesting generator or a generator in two hours.

[00:09:18] Stefanie Carlstedt: And so it’s really important to know that because if you are trying to work as a generator, which is eight hours a day on the same thing, you will burn out faster than most people if you’re a projector. And so the energy type. It’s the profile. How you’re on the stage of life, how people see you, how you the traits and other people that you can see the best and are able to call out in your marketing the best.

[00:09:41] Stefanie Carlstedt: You actually have hidden fears inside your chart that most of us don’t know are there that run the show a lot of the times. And when we can look at them when I show my clients what they are, and we face them they like, they dissipate. The fears get smaller and smaller because we’ve actually looked at them and we know this is what’s running the show, and it’s [00:10:00] not, it’s not real.

[00:10:01] Stefanie Carlstedt: Again, it’s very nuanced. It goes into your money codes, how you’re meant to make. How you are, again, meant to show up. The environments you thrive in. It’s every single aspect. That’s why I say my clients walk away with completely different businesses than the next person once we’re done 

[00:10:18] Trudy Rankin: I find it interesting that you mentioned money, because that was the next question I wanted to ask. And that is how do you bring the concept of human design to the concept of money, business finances and I guess marry those two things together because there are certain aspects of money, business related money, things that are just they’re there.

[00:10:41] Trudy Rankin: You can’t change some of them. How would you just talk a little bit about that? The money, personal money approach and the business money approach in the concept of human design? 

[00:10:54] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. So you, in your human design, you have something called… you hear all different places, core [00:11:00] four, life’s work, whatever it might be.

[00:11:02] Stefanie Carlstedt: And within that it, it tells you, , what you’re here to do, and you have something in your, you have nine centers in your human design. When you look at your chart. The ones that are undefined, that are not colored in are where you’re here to gain wisdom from. And they are where you will make money from.

[00:11:18] Stefanie Carlstedt: They’re where people look at you to guide them. So once you understand it all, it makes sense. So just an example for me, it was so cool to see that I am actually living out my design. By doing this business because my design actually says I am meant to build something really big, burn it all down and build with what actually works.

[00:11:40] Stefanie Carlstedt: It’s written in my design and it’s actually what I’m doing and living out, and it’s really cool to see that. Play out. And I have the life’s purpose, the life’s work of this new era, which is the era of the individual, which is coming into fruition right now. We can feel it. Things are shifting.

[00:11:58] Stefanie Carlstedt: Things are changing. People [00:12:00] don’t trust you if you’re not authentically you. And that’s where human design comes in. And I have the core four of the new era, which means I’m meant to lead it. And that’s what I’m doing with my voice.

[00:12:11] Trudy Rankin: I’m curious because the, the, I’m familiar with the concept of human design from a very high level.

[00:12:19] Trudy Rankin: And by that I mean, the understanding that you do need to take people’s personality and preferences into account when you’re building a business. Otherwise, the person’s going to burn out or they won’t succeed. But I’m kind of curious about the framework that you’re using because you’re using terminology that, that I’m not familiar with specifically.

[00:12:40] Trudy Rankin: Is there, can you just very quickly just give us a high level overview of that framework, uh, so that we can sort of relate to some of what you’re saying? 

[00:12:50] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. Okay. Well, let me back up a bit because you kind of hit it where a lot of people might not even know what human design is. So human design is [00:13:00] actually generated from your birth information. It’s generated from your birth time, your birthplace, uh, and your birth date and three months prior to that.

[00:13:09] Stefanie Carlstedt: And it creates this chart and there’s scientific research backing it up now, but it’s from ancient, like it’s ancient, it’s ancient modalities and it’s really starting to gain traction right now. So what it does is it creates this, this chart and I think almost 1400 people have gotten their chart with me. And only one has come back and said that this didn’t feel like them, and it’s because their birth time was wrong. So it’s very accurate in how you’re meant to move through the world, how you’re meant to make money, how you’re meant to guide leads, sell, all, everything.

[00:13:39] Stefanie Carlstedt: It’s very nuanced, but the high level is that energy type, the how you’re meant to move through the world. There is a personality side of your chart and there’s an unconscious design side of your chart. 

[00:13:52] Trudy Rankin: Okay, so part of me… i’m just going to be honest here. Part of me is going, as you said at the beginning, [00:14:00] fluff.

[00:14:01] Trudy Rankin: And the other part of me is going, hang on. I read a book by, I think his name is Malcolm Glad, is it Gladwell? He is a very, very well known guy from Canada. He’s a scientific researcher who has, he wrote a book about how people who were born within a specific period of time are actually much more like highly likely to succeed because of just because of what’s happening around them in society.

[00:14:26] Trudy Rankin: And he specifically used, like hockey players. Boys, girls, whatever, who were born in a certain month are much more likely to be successful as hockey players just because of the amount of training that they get before they start to move into, up, up the ranks in terms of the hockey professionals and stuff.

[00:14:45] Trudy Rankin: And I’ll put the link to that book in the show notes because it was a bit of an eye-opener. It’s basically saying where you’re born, when you’re born, and the context surrounding your birth are going to determine a lot of what happens to you in your life [00:15:00] rather than… which goes completely against the grain for me because I’m into the individualistic,

[00:15:04] Trudy Rankin: I can make my own future. I can, you know, make my own fortune, whatever. So can you just talk a little bit about that? If we as individuals are supposed to be able to… we are supposed to have this ability to make our own future, our own fortune, how does that fit in with what you’ve learned through this whole concept of human design?

[00:15:25] Stefanie Carlstedt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So what I say is that, and what I heard lots of people say is that this is actually… we were born with this. And the moment you start to understand it, your gifts unlock. The, the things that come into you are things that you have been blocking off your entire life. I mean, when people look at me and say, I think it’s fluff, or I think …I don’t know about this, my response back to them is, are you willing to stay stuck and if, or try something else?

[00:15:54] Stefanie Carlstedt: You know? And so it’s really… it’s eye-opening is what it is. It’s something that you [00:16:00] really can’t, and that’s why I created my human design business starter kit for free because I want people to get enough information so they can see how this can be transforming in their business.

[00:16:09] Stefanie Carlstedt: And so it really, I don’t agree honestly with this is what you’re supposed to do. That’s not what human design is. Like let’s say you are born this time like you’re supposed to be this. That’s not what human design is. Human design helps you unlock everything that you’re meant to be, in the way you’re meant to do it, right?

[00:16:30] Stefanie Carlstedt: So I came here and I found my path in entrepreneurship, which I believe is my calling, but I am meant to do it in a completely different way than anybody else. And that’s where things start to unlock. That’s where you have a business that is fulfilling, that’s bringing the clients that feels really good and there’s no burnout attached to it.

[00:16:51] Stefanie Carlstedt: Most of my clients come to me completely burnout because they are trying external things from external thoughts and ideas and principles [00:17:00] outside of themselves. Once we unlock their own unique way of making decisions, their own unique way of moving through their business, doing all those things, that’s when everything unlocks and they can see themselves in it.

[00:17:13] Stefanie Carlstedt: And it just, it things flow to you. I know it sounds out there, but it’s one of those things where you have to understand it as far as give it a try and give it a chance to really watch it unfold in your life. 

[00:17:28] Trudy Rankin: So I want to circle back a little bit to, we started to talk a little bit about the concept of human design and money.

[00:17:34] Trudy Rankin: And I would like to just sort of dig into that even just a little bit more because it sounds to me like, like I said, I have this higher level understanding, but not the deep detail. It sounds to me like it’s really a system or a framework or a way of helping you understand yourself

[00:17:52] Trudy Rankin: deeply enough so that you are operating in harmony with who you , as opposed to trying to force [00:18:00] yourself into a mold. Can you talk a little bit more about the money side of that though? Because people grow up with very different understandings of, or habits or practices of how to handle money. And one of the things that I found with the people that I work with is they have to unlearn a lot of things about how you work with money.

[00:18:23] Trudy Rankin: Can you just talk a little bit about that? 

[00:18:25] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. And that’s, uh, one of the first things that we go through too, is the unlearning of the things that we’ve been taught. We’ve been brought up to… I was brought up with a very, very controversial money mindset of one parent had nothing, one parent had everything.

[00:18:41] Stefanie Carlstedt: And so it was very hard for me to, to unlock some of that. But what I’ve learned is that inside your human design, I mentioned those fears that you have, right? So one of the fears that was running in my background was fear of the past repeating itself. And that really helped me unlock why I [00:19:00] was stuck, why I was doing certain things.

[00:19:03] Stefanie Carlstedt: And trying specific things and ignoring who I actually was and what my gut was saying. Because you do have, uh, something called your authority in your human design, which is how you’re meant to make decisions. And when you unlock that it makes a huge difference in every area of your life.

[00:19:20] Stefanie Carlstedt: There is, there’s fear of success. Some people have the fear of success because money is evil, money is bad. And so it’s good to look at where is that coming from, but we can’t know that that’s really there until we look at our individual… there’s gates in your chart that tell you. Every time I’ve read the fears to my clients, they’re like, yep, that’s holding me back.

[00:19:42] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yep. That’s holding me back. And we work through them, because you do have to look at that stuff, but again, once you unlock your design, you become so okay with being you. Everything else just melts away. I was a people pleaser to the point where I would get sick if I thought someone was mad [00:20:00] at me or whatever it might be, and now I’m so okay with being me.

[00:20:03] Stefanie Carlstedt: I really, just, with the best of intentions, I don’t, it doesn’t bother me. So that’s a big gift in it too. 

[00:20:11] Trudy Rankin: Can we talk about that just a little bit? Because that’s one of the things that a lot of the people that I work with really, really super struggle with, and that is that they were they are either intrinsically, I don’t know if it’s an intrinsic thing, but they feel like it’s intrinsic, that they are people pleasers.

[00:20:26] Trudy Rankin: And just talk a little bit about how you managed to walk your way through that, that people pleasing need and how you managed to work your way out of it. 

[00:20:37] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. So again, just keep continuing to go back to all the things that human design has taught me. You have something in your design called your profile and it really, it teaches you again, how you’re seen in this stage of life.

[00:20:51] Stefanie Carlstedt: And if people have a line five in their profile, they are projected upon a lot and they need to really… because people think they can [00:21:00] help them and they need to really learn how to set up boundaries. They need to really understand where their boundaries are and what they will accept and what they will not accept.

[00:21:09] Stefanie Carlstedt: Some people have a line four, which means that their network and their environment is incredibly important to them. And if they have an environment where they are, feel like they’re people pleasing or it’s not a positive environment, they will burn out in their business very, very easily. So it’s just learning those, those little triggers that you have that will set you free from that stuff.

[00:21:33] Stefanie Carlstedt: Because we are not, we did not come to this earth to to live, to love, to build a business like anybody else. And when you start to unlock that, because again, we have been so inundated with this is how you do things. This is the trajectory of life. This is the trajectory of business. If you have 10 K followers, you’re not successful.

[00:21:52] Stefanie Carlstedt: If you aren’t making 10 K in a month, this is how you do it overnight. Right? And it, it just doesn’t work. And so once you [00:22:00] understand deep within you and your business, is filled more with you and how you’re meant to do things, it just, it unlocks. 

[00:22:09] Trudy Rankin: So just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to work your way through that process?

[00:22:13] Stefanie Carlstedt: Probably, I would say probably about three months. But I was very devoted to it and I was, I like shut out the world. I don’t watch the news, I don’t listen to anything else. I really wanted to know how I’m meant to do things here and how I’m meant to thrive. And I got certified in it so it could, it takes, my clients usually like working together for six months to really have that full transformation.

[00:22:38] Stefanie Carlstedt: But you can study your design for a long, long time, and there’s completely… there’s so many depths to it, but yeah, it’s, it doesn’t happen overnight, like we say, because we have been conditioned. We have to release these conditionings that have happened that have, you know, come about over the years.

[00:22:57] Trudy Rankin: Yeah, it’s a quite a mindset shift to be able [00:23:00] to move from being a people pleaser to being a recovering people pleaser, I guess I would phrase it that way.

[00:23:07] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah.

[00:23:07] Trudy Rankin: So that’s kind of interesting. I want to swing back to something else that you said too. You said in, in your background with the money side of things, you said in your background you had one side of the family had nothing and the other side of the family had everything.

[00:23:20] Trudy Rankin: I’d like you to talk about that situation a little bit more because I think a lot of people certainly have grown up that way, where somebody, there’s one person in the family who’s out there making all the money and the other person is not the one making all the money, but they’re supporting the family in different ways.

[00:23:37] Trudy Rankin: Mm-hmm. And that’s not always respected. Mm-hmm. And there’s this, there seems to be this societal… in the eyes of society, power imbalance. In terms of, well, if, if this person makes the money, then they get to make all the decisions about how it gets spent or all of those sorts of things. Can you talk a little bit about that from the perspective of human design and how does that play out when you’re [00:24:00] coaching people who might have that issue?

[00:24:02] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. It goes back to understanding what’s holding them back and their fears and knowing that part of them, and really working through it because money mindset is huge. And again, the more you can unlock the pieces of you that will unlock you being so okay with being you, it dissipates, it goes away, and you don’t have stress about it. You don’t have anxiety about it, you don’t have fear about it. And so it’s important to look at and it’s important to understand, but I help my clients see that it’s, it’s not here to hold you back. It’s here to teach you a lesson.

[00:24:37] Stefanie Carlstedt: It’s here to, you went through that for a reason. I believe that we have things that we go through for a reason, and I believe that my dad guided me to human design, and so it’s. You have, there’s some people have been through more life than other people and it actually shows in their human design. If they have a line [00:25:00] six in their ,design every single one of my clients who has a line six in their profile has been through a lot of hurt, and it’s really important for them to understand that it wasn’t for nothing.

[00:25:13] Trudy Rankin: There’s a difference between it wasn’t for nothing and it happened for a reason.

[00:25:19] Trudy Rankin: Mm-hmm. There’s two, those are two different things. Kind of what, where’s your focus with that? 

[00:25:24] Stefanie Carlstedt: My focus is that when I say it wasn’t for nothing, is that every time I’ve worked with a client like that and we work through it, they’re meant to, they help someone on the other side of that hurt of what they’ve been through. They’re able to now help someone through that.

[00:25:42] Stefanie Carlstedt: So that’s what I meant. Yeah, 

[00:25:43] Trudy Rankin: yeah, yeah. No, just clarifying. One of the most horrible arguments that I’ve ever heard for people having to go through terrible experiences is that you’d had to go through it ’cause you had to learn a lesson. It’s just like, really?

[00:25:54] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah, no, it is just to help people on the other end, is my belief in what I’ve seen in human design, [00:26:00] because a lot of the line sixes are the guides and they are meant to teach and impact in a different way than other people. For me, I’m meant to trial and error my way through life. So I’m meant to fail forward and fail more than most people, so I can actually share what works and let other people skip those failures.

[00:26:20] Stefanie Carlstedt: So it’s really, really cool. 

[00:26:22] Trudy Rankin: Yeah. Okay. So that’s interesting. I’ve got an another question. You were saying earlier on, uh, talking about how we’re in a more individualistic society, I think was how you phrased it. And it’s interesting to me that … that could mean a, a bunch of different . That could mean. Hey, we, we all have to be individuals to the point where we don’t look after other people. So community is disturbed and people just aren’t as happy and healthy as they used to be when they did have supporting communities. Or it could mean, Hey, we have permission these days to [00:27:00] be ourselves, to do the things that we can either be good at or get good at without having society sort of look down on us and say, you know, it’s just like that whole thing, you want to be an entrepreneur and everybody tells you should just go get a job. Mm-hmm. So, you know, it’s that, it’s that difference. Those two things are different.

[00:27:17] Trudy Rankin: I’m assuming, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you’re talking about the second thing that I mentioned, which is about, this is a beautiful time to be an, to do the things that we can do as individuals. Would that be correct? 

[00:27:27] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. So here’s the thing about this new era that I’m talking about, and you can do research on it, it’s been said that it’s going to happen for thousands of years at 2026 to 2027 and what’s happening is that the systems are breaking down like the education systems, the government systems, like they can’t survive the way that they have been thriving because it’s all based on not being yourself, honestly. And the groups together. So what I mean by the individual era is that the way we’re going to move the collective forward, the way [00:28:00] that we’re going to help other people is by being fully ourselves.

[00:28:03] Stefanie Carlstedt: And then we can help, like me being fully myself in my human design is helping a ripple effect of people because it’s, it’s guiding them to their purpose. It’s helping them see they can be who they are. So it’s no more copy paste. It’s really the way you’re going to stand out and the way you’re going to help the collective all of humanity move forward is by you honing in on your gifts and what you can do.

[00:28:26] Trudy Rankin: So I want to take that concept and I want to ask you a question about one of the biggest things that’s happened to in the world, I think since basically the internet was basically put together and invented and became mainstream. And that’s the use of AI and AI tools. And we know, of course, we’ve got people saying it’s going to end humanity as we know it or maybe end it completely.

[00:28:48] Trudy Rankin: Some people are saying it’s the best thing since sliced bread. You know, this is amazing. And I can tell you for a fact that some of the AI tools are allowing some of my people that I work with to do things they would [00:29:00] never be able to do otherwise, simply would not be able to do otherwise.

[00:29:03] Trudy Rankin: Can you take those two extremes and relate them back to the concept of individualism, if you like, or the ability to, for a human, to be as human as possibly they can be. And how do you think those two things fit together? AI and individuals. 

[00:29:21] Stefanie Carlstedt: Well, every single one of my clients gets an AI the trained AI, so it’s trained in human design. It’s trained… it’s turned off from the internet.

[00:29:29] Stefanie Carlstedt: That’s the thing, is we have to learn how to work with it as our authentic self. And as it knows who we are, how we speak. ’cause your design actually tells you how you’re meant to speak. I, for instance, I have a defined throat and I have my spontaneous speaker gate is a, is activated, which means that I am meant to just speak truth when I feel like it.

[00:29:51] Stefanie Carlstedt: I don’t need a script. I will actually die in a script. And so it, but some people need scripts, so it goes as nuanced as that. But it really [00:30:00] is… ai, I believe is game changing and life changing for people who feel stuck, who feel like they know they have more to offer. And I think it’s a great collaboration tool as long as you use it in a good way as far as it knowing you authentically. Like I upload everything single thing I do. I give it my podcast episode so it knows me, it hears me, and it’s not attached to the internet at all. That’s how I believe that we’re going to work best with it. 

[00:30:33] Trudy Rankin: Okay. So by using it as a tool, who gets to intimately know who you are as a person in terms of the content that you produce, um, and the thoughts that you have, and then using that, using it like.. That’s kind of interesting because it is a very much a double-edged sword.

[00:30:48] Trudy Rankin: ‘Cause I do work with writers as well, and a lot of writers have discovered that the world thinks that it’s better to have AI generated content [00:31:00] than human generated content. And I’m still scratching my head a little bit about that because you know, you’re going to have this ever decreasing pool of content that becomes more and more an echo chamber.

[00:31:10] Trudy Rankin: Mm-hmm. Um, if you don’t have human content contributed to it. Yeah.

[00:31:14] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. 

[00:31:14] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. And I think too with the AI, it’s important for it. That’s why I said just a collaboration partner. It’s not meant to, I don’t think it should be meant to write all your posts, write all your content, do all the things, but it’s a good col.

[00:31:30] Stefanie Carlstedt: I mean, there has been times where it says something and I’m like, that is a great idea. I’m going to run with that. You know? And so it’s helping us get past our limitations. And helping us see different things in different ways and different ideas. So yeah, definitely not, you can see the AI generated post captions out there everywhere, and they make you want to throw up.

[00:31:53] Stefanie Carlstedt: But yeah it’s really important to stay as, as authentic as you can within it. 

[00:31:59] Trudy Rankin: Yeah, I [00:32:00] think that’s really important. Stefanie, it’s been really interesting speaking with you if people were interested in finding out more about human design, what it is, or maybe how you can help them with it, especially if it’s somebody who’s feeling like they are stuck or they just don’t fit what they’re trying to do, where’s the best place for them to go?

[00:32:17] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah, um, can I, hopefully we can put it in the show notes ’cause my name is spelled kind of weird, but it’s stefcarlsted.com/hd report and it will give you your free report, 12 page PDF, explaining your energy type and profile and business. And then I also created a nine part audio series that will help you look at this chart that you’re going to want to put on the shelf because it doesn’t make sense, to help you kind of dissect different pieces of it to see and show you how it can transform your business. So it’s my mission to get this everywhere, so that’s why I created so much for free. 

[00:32:50] Trudy Rankin: Okay. No, thanks for that. And I will put that in the show notes, uh, so that people can go and find that.

[00:32:56] Trudy Rankin: So once again, it’s been interesting speaking with you. It’s, it’s a topic that I [00:33:00] have an interest in, but I’ve not looked at it the way you look at it. So it’s been interesting and fun. But thank you so much for being on the podcast. 

[00:33:06] Stefanie Carlstedt: Yeah. Thank you for having me. 

[00:33:08] Trudy Rankin: Whether you are a believer, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, human design offers a lens that might help you see your business and yourself differently. Stefanie Carlstedt shared what human design means to her. And while it may not resonate with everyone, it’s a compelling approach worth exploring, especially if you’re feeling burned out or off track.

[00:33:30] Trudy Rankin: So my advice is don’t write it off without giving it a quick look. Stefanie’s free human design business report and audio guide or linked in the show notes. So be sure to take a peek and see if anything. And if you enjoyed this episode or learned something new, remember to hit subscribe and leave a review.

[00:33:47] Trudy Rankin: It really does help people find the show and hopefully feel a little bit less stuck themselves. And one more thing. If you’re building the online side of your business and you want regular tips, insights, and encouragement, [00:34:00] sign up for my newsletter at OnlineBusinessLiftoff.com/newsletter.

[00:34:05] Trudy Rankin: That’s OnlineBusinessLiftoff.com/newsletter And thanks so much for listening.