Entrepreneur Spotlight・Dr. Mirjam Hachem
“I think that building and running a business is a continuous path of finding yourself again and again and learning to stay true to yourself over and over.”
Welcome to another round of Entrepreneur Spotlight! Here we feature stories from heart-led online entrepreneurs with a special focus on Covid right now and how it has impacted our businesses and lives.
I highly recommend to grab a cup of tea or coffee and sit down for a quiet moment to read and enjoy these stories in full, as they contain many nuggets of comfort and wisdom.
I met Mirjam in 2020 when she emailed me the most wonderful feedback with regards to my business and the health journey I was on. At the time she still offered weight-loss related services and we ended up working together in that capacity. She is an amazing human being, very compassionate, warm and smart, with an ability to ‘see’ you and guide you gently onto a path of healing. All of this happened at the beginning of Covid and I was so inspired by the pivot she subsequently engineered for her business out of necessity. I knew I wanted to interview her for this series and I am so happy she said yes! I think you’ll really enjoy her heartfelt and highly insightful story and words of wisdom.
I’m Dr. Mirjam Hachem and I’m a sex and health therapist. My work is to help men and women create fulfilling sex lives and happy relationships.
Love is the natural bond between men and women. Centuries of oppression, violence and inequality have profoundly damaged this bond and disconnected men and women from each other. This disconnection between men and women is the deepest wound in the soul of humanity. With my work, I seek to heal this wound. I help men and women to connect with their true loving nature, their bodies, their sexuality, and with each other.
1) Tell us a little about your business.
I am a sex and health therapist and I give therapy sessions for couples, single men, and single women, where I help them to solve their sexual problems and create a sex life that is fulfilling to them. I do so based on knowledge and methods from different scientific fields and healing practices: bodywork, energy work, neuroscience, psychology, and biochemistry.
2) Has Covid changed the way you run your business?
Covid has changed every aspect of my business and my life. I live in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and I started my business here in October 2019. My dream, at the time, was to be a small local business, right in my own neighbourhood, with strong ties to the community, where I would receive my therapy clients in my practice. Next to giving therapy sessions, I also offered trainings, where you could acquire in-depth expertise and therapeutic methods that you could then practice in your own life or business. One of my dreams for the future was to give seminars and group workshops. I had a wonderful start. Only two weeks after I launched my website, I started giving my first training which was a mix of therapy sessions and knowledge sharing. I was very happy, yet there was still a lot of marketing to do. I was very focused on getting my message out there through my website - where I provided extensive information, ebooks that I shared for free - and my LinkedIn profile.
Just as things were picking up at the beginning of 2020, Covid happened and the world went into lockdown.
For me, this meant that I could not continue my business as I had built it. There was no prospect that I could work one-on-one with clients any time soon. Physical interaction plays a great role in my therapy sessions. I don’t only talk to people but I also help them to connect with their bodies through movement, breathing, and different kinds of physical exercises. With Covid, this way of working became impossibly dangerous overnight. Not only for the safety of my clients but also for my own safety, I had to think of something completely new. In the beginning of the lockdown we didn’t know how long the lockdown would last, whether a cure would be found, and if not, whether there would be a second wave, another lockdown, and so on. The same uncertainty remains today. Given these unpredictable circumstances, I decided that the only way forward was to transform my business into an online business.
I have to say that this decision caused quite a personal identity crisis for me for about two to three weeks. I felt so sad that I had to let go of the dream that I had just gotten started to realize. Also, both personally and professionally, I love working with people. I love being with people and interacting with each other. Sex is a personal and intimate issue. It’s important to me that people feel seen, heard, and understood when they work with me. I also want to create an environment where they feel safe. I was afraid that it would not be possible to provide such an environment online. I was also afraid that I wouldn’t be able to show people the exercises properly on the screen. At the same time, I found that there was no alternative. Sitting around, waiting and hoping for things to go back to normal was no option to me.
On top of that, the euphoria of starting a new business that I had last year when I started up for the first time was gone. Starting again from almost zero was pretty heavy and it took great endurance and discipline to go through it.
The process of becoming an online business took about four months. As I went through the process, I ended up changing every aspect of my business. I had to create a new business model, think differently about my services, and, for the first time, I started thinking about digital products. Then I built a completely new website because my previous website, although beautiful and informative, was not suited for an online business. Then, for the first time, I started to think about email marketing and other online marketing tools. I knew of course that they existed, but I had not considered actually using them.
As I moved along in this process, I got more and more creative about the amazing things you can do on your website, the many ways in which you can express your creativity online, and the technology and tools you can use to reach people. Next to being a therapist, I am also a writer, and I was so happy that I could now integrate my love for writing into my business.
And then, of course, there are the therapy sessions. I offer all my sessions through Zoom now, which is wonderful as it allows me to work with people from different countries, people who have to travel a lot for work, and people who simply prefer to be at home. I have to say that I am amazed at how well it works. On top of that, I am happy to share that very recently, I was able to reopen my physical practice for two days a week. Sessions take place under very strict safety guidelines but it works, and I am so happy to see people face to face again, although my face is completely shielded by a protection mask.
3) What are the challenges and rewards?
I think that the greatest challenge in creating an online business is staying true to yourself. I find that there is immense pressure from online media on their users to create fake lives, to be superficial instead of substantial, and to simply scream louder. There is also pressure to get into a never-ending spiral of social media marketing. Yet, I don’t like social media. I think social media has a way of creating insecurity, unhappiness, and disconnection between people. I’ve deleted all my social media profiles, except for LinkedIn, around 4 years ago and I don't want to go back. Given that I now have an online business, it can sometimes be hard to ignore the marketing opportunities on these media. The reward for me is knowing that I live by my values and that I don’t give my valuable time and attention to something that I don’t want to look at.
I think that building and running a business is a continuous path of finding yourself again and again and learning to stay true to yourself over and over. There is so much you can do, so many possible products you could develop, so many avenues of income, so many ways of marketing, the options and opportunities are endless. It is then your task to choose only the ones that are in line with your true nature, your values, and your mission. The core values that guide my work and life are integrity, intelligence, and love and I match every decision I make against these values.
Sometimes, however, I get derailed without noticing. For example, I had the idea of making a YouTube channel where I talk about sex and relationship topics. I never stopped to think about whether I actually want to make videos. Videos are popular, YouTube is a great marketing tool, and so, it simply seemed like a great idea to me. However, I am not a visual person at all. Working with videos and imagery is very unnatural to me and it takes an unreasonable amount of energy for me. I made 3 videos in total within a period of two weeks. At the end of those two weeks, I was so exhausted, that I got sick and had to stay more or less in bed for a whole week after that. I then realized that I had gone off track. I did something for my business that was against my nature and my body gave me immediate and unmistakable feedback that this path was not an option for me. So I reminded myself of who I truly am - a writer and not a video maker - and deleted my channel.
Another challenge is putting yourself out there and making yourself vulnerable for everyone to see. For example, when I started out with my Love Notes, I wrote rather general pieces about love. But over time, my Love Notes became more and more personal and I started writing about my own experiences and challenges. That was pretty frightening at first. The reward was hearing from others how much they enjoyed reading my notes, how much they liked reading something personal and authentic, and I received a lot of compassion. That was very touching and beautiful. I share my Love Notes both on my website and through email. I send the notes out every Sunday at 7:00 am. When I look at how many people opened the email, I see it opened at 7:01, 7:02, 7:05, 7:15, etc. So I can see that people are really looking forward to receiving my email. That is really amazing.
One of the greatest rewards, I believe, is seeing your efforts coming to fruition. It is so exhilarating to me when someone finds me through my website or LinkedIn profile, then contacts me, then opens up to me about their most intimate problems, and then allows me to help them. It means that I have managed to communicate the warmth, integrity, compassion, and safety that people need to open up. This confirms to me that I am on the right track in the way I represent myself online, which I am often insecure about. Then when the actual sessions start and I see people making progress week by week and month by month, I feel purest joy beyond description. I was so happy when I asked some of my clients to write testimonials for my website and they were delighted to do so. I am so grateful that they allowed me to share the positive experience they made with me, anonymously of course.
4) What does your self-care look like these days?
That is a very interesting question because it was only in the past weeks that I have learned some fundamental new lessons about self-care. Until recently, my self-care looked the same as it always does: I eat healthily, I meditate, I do yoga, I go swimming, I don’t drink alcohol, I go outside a lot, I go into nature, I see my friends, I go to my favourite café, I read good books, I keep my house clean, I plan well, I am organized, and so on. You should think that this is the perfect self-care routine and it has served me greatly for many years.
Yet, in the past two months, I noticed all of a sudden, that none of that worked anymore in the way that I expected. I started to feel more and more down, sad, and unfulfilled. First, it was hard for me to pinpoint what the problem was. The very same things that used to give me joy and delight, that made me feel happy for days, that I would look forward to all day or all week, all of a sudden had less and less effect on me.
Then I realized that the reason why I felt this way was because my delightful self-care activities were one part of a natural balance that I had taken completely for granted and therefore never noticed before. The other part of that balance was doing exciting, fun, spontaneous, silly, and irresponsible things. Since the onset of Covid-19, these things have almost completely vanished from my life and I only began to notice the impact of this about a month ago. Yes, yoga is very healthy and a wonderful way to connect to your body and spirit, yet it can’t give you the feeling of a warm summer night being out with your friends dancing and not knowing what the night will bring. It’s the feeling of unpredictability in the most positive sense. The feeling that anything could happen.
Now that we all have to stay at home as much as possible and can’t be together in groups and go places, our days have become more or less the same. Today is just like yesterday and tomorrow will be just like today. This can be a depressing prospect. So my new self-care endeavor, although I’m still experimenting here, is to find new ways of creating excitement, newness, and doing things for no other reason than the pleasure of it. When you look closely at self-care, you will find that self-care activities are usually motivated by taking care of your health. Just look at my self-care list above and you’ll notice that most of it is health-oriented. Yet these responsible activities need to be balanced with pure fun and joy. When fun disappears from our lives, responsibility becomes meaningless and it starts to feel like duty.
So my new path of self-care right now is to find fun within the small, confined circumstances that we are currently living in. So recently, I started knitting, which is both fun and calming for the mind, and I started learning a new language. The key to making these activities fun is by attaching no goal whatsoever to it. The moment you turn it into a goal, the fun goes away. I also started to dance alone through my apartment every day to feel joy and aliveness in my body and to fill my house with positive energy. Make sure you turn up some great music every day, sing along, and dance.
I also talked to the people in my house about what we can do to experience more fun and closeness during isolation. I live in a house with three apartments and 5 people in total. We then came up with the idea of coffee time. Every weekday, between 10 and 11, it’s coffee time in the apartment downstairs and everyone is welcome. It’s so beautiful, it really changed the way we experience our day. There is so much more connection and joy now.
So generally I would say, one way to practice self-care right now is to generally let go a little of your goals and allow yourself some relief from having to achieve something. This was a very hard year for everyone and we all need to recover from the events. It’s important to give yourself space to re-energize. This is what we most need given the restrictions all around us
5) Do you have any tips for other entrepreneurs during these uncertain times?
My advice for other entrepreneurs and I believe that this is absolutely crucial, is to find grounding in yourself, in the real material world, and in nature. This is especially true in times of unpredictability and uncertainty because our environment cannot provide us with the stability we need to feel safe and secure.
If you have an online business, then you will spend a lot of your time online. Given the current social isolation, you might have the tendency to spend even more time online. The problem is that the more time you spend online, the more you lose your grounding, which will make you feel even more anxious. This is for two reasons:
When you look at a screen, your mind gets locked into the screen and disconnected from your body. Your brain becomes completely immersed in whatever virtual world you are in and it loses the connection with the real world.
While your brain is off in the virtual world, your body is left behind in the real world, having to sit in an uncomfortable position, and touching keyboards and touchscreens. This is very unnatural for the body and costs a lot of energy.
Over time, this disconnection between your mind and your body leads to an uprooting of yourself. This is the reason why people who spend much of their time online and especially on social media start to feel disconnected, lonely, empty, and depressed. If you want to be successful in your business and also be happy and fulfilled as a human being, you need to make sure that you stay whole and connected with yourself, your body, with other human beings, and nature.
Your body literally loses life energy when touching keyboards and touchscreens. It’s important to balance this out by touching natural materials like water, soil, grass, wood, or wool. Go outside and breathe in as much fresh air as you can. Be in nature as much as you can, even if it’s only a park when you live in the city. Move as much as you can in whatever way is most joyful to you. Physical movement is the basis of our physical and psychological health. Be in physical contact with other human beings as much as possible. This can be with your partner but also hugging your friends and being close with family.
I personally always strive to interact with technology and the internet only as much as is absolutely necessary for my business. In my private life, I strive to use as little technology as possible. The most important thing to remember is that technology is a tool. The internet is a tool. Social media is a tool. Those things are not your life. In fact, these things have nothing to do with life. They are machines. Your life is right here in the real world. Your life is in your body, it’s in your connection with other human beings, and your connection with nature.
