Women Like Me Stories & Business

From Empathy to Innovation - April Bell's Journey

• Julie Fairhurst • Episode 82

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April Bell - https://madewithempathy.com/

What happens when you combine empathy with innovation? In our latest episode, April Bell, an insightful innovation consultant and single mother from Dallas, Texas, shares her compelling journey. 

Through her unique perspective, April reveals how empathy is a soft skill and a transformative force in understanding customer needs and driving business growth. She brings us into her consulting world, highlighting examples like her collaboration with a baby care team to demonstrate how digging deeper into emotional drivers can lead to more meaningful and sustainable business solutions. 

Whether you're a large corporation or a budding entrepreneur, April's insights promise to reshape how you connect with your audience and develop products that truly resonate.

Join us as we draw fascinating parallels between entrepreneurship and a trek to Machu Picchu, underscoring the importance of planning, adaptability, and resilience. From navigating the everyday hurdles of competing priorities to overcoming the fear of social media, we unpack the power of authenticity and gratitude in forging genuine connections. 

April distinguishes empathy from sympathy and shares a personal story of resilience that highlights the significance of allowing situations to unfold authentically. As she reflects on the impact of empathy and gratitude, April inspires us with her vision for a book that empowers individuals at crossroads, encouraging self-empathy and curiosity as keys to unlocking potential. 

Tune in for a transformative conversation that could illuminate your personal and professional path.

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Who is Julie Fairhurst?
Julie Fairhurst – Speaker, Author, and Founder of Women Like Me

Julie Fairhurst is a champion for women’s empowerment and the founder of the Women Like Me Book Program. Since 2019, she has published 30 books and 300+ true-life stories—at no cost to the writers—giving women a platform to heal, inspire, and reclaim their power. Dedicated to breaking generational trauma one story at a time, Julie’s mission is to uplift women emotionally and financially, helping them create better lives for themselves and their families.


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Speaker 1:

Well, hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. I'm your host, julie Fairhurst, and oh, I have a treat for you today because I have the lovely April Bell with us and it's going to be a really, really interesting conversation. It's going to be about business, it's going to be about personal life, it's going to be about motherhood. So tune in and watch the episode and let us know what you think when you're done. So let me introduce April Bell to you. April, thank you so much for being here, and could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 2:

Sure, thank you for having me. You're welcome. I live in the Dallas Texas area. I guess I'll tell you that first. It's a far cry from where you are, but for some reason I feel like I'm always getting on with Canadians so well. I feel like they just need to come to Texas, at least in the winter. At least in the winter, yes. But I guess the most important thing for me to tell you is that I am a mom of a 13-year-old daughter, about to be 14.

Speaker 2:

I'm a single mom, also have multiple businesses, and the one that has been the most, I guess, important part of my life for the last 15 plus maybe 16 plus years at this point, is an innovation consulting practice where I help brands elevate their products and their people based on empathy, and usually we get hired to help when they don't know how to market their products, or maybe they're not even sure how to extend a product line. They really want to understand how customers feel, and so what I've noticed with my practice is that when we uncover subconscious beliefs and emotional drivers and understand how to marry that with what we're doing, then we actually can create sustainable products and profit. And I think that's important to me now because while I do a lot of empathy learning for my clients, I am learning how to kind of reinvent and pivot my own business so that it's sustainable, through empathizing with what's needed for my daughter and I, and so that's kind of a little bit about me where I am right now.

Speaker 1:

Wow, it's um, I just love that whole the, the, the. The core of your business is empathy. It seems like it's. It's the core of your business, so it's what you bring to your clients, what you're, uh, how you're dealing with motherhood, and also how you're helping yourself in your personal life as well. I think a lot of us don't think about empathy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, and when we do those of us who tend to naturally kind of be empathetic it can sometimes feel like a burden instead of a gift. It can sometimes feel like a burden instead of a gift, it can sometimes feel like a soft skill instead of a power skill. And what's been interesting for me is that you know, larger companies know that when they empathize with their customers and their people, they can actually create amazing solutions because they're heart-minded, and that having heart-minded solutions and activating the heart whenever you're trying to create in the unknown, it actually creates almost a fuel to keep motivation and to keep almost vitality in the picture, instead of it just being solving problems from a place of figuring it out, like so many of us do most of the time.

Speaker 1:

Right. So I would like to ask you, as an entrepreneur myself, how so? I know you're working with some very large, well-branded corporations out there, but how about me? How about the little entrepreneur out there? How can I use empathy in my business to grow my business?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's a foundational skill, much like Microsoft Outlook, in that we use Outlook for a myriad of purposes, right? You may use it for email, you may use it for calendaring, you may use Outlook for chatting, you know. And so it's like this multi-tool that, whenever you have something that you need to solve, it allows you to understand things at a root cause. It's a place to go right. Microsoft Outlook is a place to go when you need to be productive. Empathy is a place to go when you need to understand things at a deeper level. Right? Most entrepreneurs ironically what I've seen small businesses, they live in the unknown. Small businesses, they live in the unknown. Right, you live. Am I going to kill anything to eat today, you know, or next month or next year, I don't know, but I'm going to go see if I can try. So this place of living in the unknown and still showing up can be very challenging, especially when we emotionally get stuck or stalled. So when empathy does the most benefit is when we are stuck or stalled. What we can usually know is that it's not what we think is surface level, which is time, money, energy. There's actually sucking on. There's a sucking of one of those resources based on an emotional, sometimes suppressed, need or driver, and if we can understand what that need or driver is, then we can, like, have a different perspective and start solving against the bigger problem, versus solving with more time or money. You want me to give you an example? Yes, yes, please, please, Okay. I'll give you an example of this. Just came to me while you were how this looks.

Speaker 2:

So one time I was in with a team and we were doing what we call ethnography, where we just go into someone's home and learn about their behaviors and what they think and how they feel about the subject at hand. This was a baby care team, and this baby care team knew that they wanted to position all of their products around this idea of everything is natural. Right, we have natural ingredients, we have natural products, we are doing things naturally, because they felt like that's what moms needed to hear, Right? So we were trying to find different ways that natural can be brought to life with different products. We go in this mom's talking to and she was probably like four or five months, you know, a mom, a new mom and she was talking what we had heard before, which is everything needs to be natural.

Speaker 2:

As we were talking, she was holding her baby and the baby starts crying like uncontrollably, and so she was talking about how she only likes to feed breast milk, you know, and that's how she gets her baby naturally fed. In one hand, the door in the other, grabs some adult milk, gets down a bottle, puts the adult milk into the bottle and starts feeding her baby this adult milk from a carton. And so we had one male on the team and three other women and then the male is like why did you just give your baby that? And I'm like, oh wait, wait, wait, let's not ask that question, let's ask the question to understand a little bit more what was going on.

Speaker 2:

But she realized suddenly that she had done that and there was some incongruence with her, what she was saying and what she did.

Speaker 2:

And what we know in marketing is that when there's incongruity, when there's something being said and something else being done, we call that white space.

Speaker 2:

That means there's something within a belief system that's not quite conscious. So we went in and probed to really understand what was going on and she kind of started getting emotional and said I need peace so badly that the thought of my baby crying while y'all are here and I'm trying to provide for you the information you need was so anxiety producing in my whole system that all I wanted to do was to go in and get the baby peace, so that I could have peace and I could give you what you need. So what was interesting about that learning is that, instead of this company going in and creating all their products around natural products, instead they decided that their entire positioning was going to be about how to give moms peace right. So when you start creating products for peace production versus natural, you're talking about a higher level benefit that is more emotionally motivating than something that is more what I call tactical or feature driven. I'm going to stop. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, no, April, it just. I actually got shivers when you were explaining that and I mean I have a background in sales and marketing. But that thought process and the understanding how they, how they went, how that whole process work, and then that's what, how they focus their marketing plan around it, that's brilliant.

Speaker 2:

I love it.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for giving that example. Sure, it's locked in the vault the vault.

Speaker 2:

Well, if you transfer that thinking, though, to entrepreneurs, okay, and you think about. For me, I'll just say, one of the concepts that I've been working on it's such a it's so I work on how to pivot whenever you're in a stuck place is the concept of eliminating perfectionism for forward progress. And it's so ironic because I have been very much struggling with getting my face out into public because I want things to be perfect. Yes, and it's hilarious if you think about it, because I am trying to teach the value of progress, not perfection, and yet I am struggling with my own perfectionistic tendencies. Why is that? If I'm going to use empathy as a lens to understand that perspective, it's probably because I have been trained as a producer, as an entrepreneur, that when I'm producing, producing, producing, and I can do more, you know, and so allowing grace to give space for not being perfect is something that I am having to learn. What I'm trying to teach?

Speaker 1:

Oh, no, no, absolutely. And as you were talking, you know, I thought to myself years and years ago we could, we could be, we. It was easier to be, to be perfect, I think, because we weren't online, our face wasn't everywhere, that wasn't the way we needed to. This, this was not, this didn't exist. So it was really more face-to-face with people. Then you then off you go that that this stuff's not hanging around forever. And I think we've shifted, and I know, even for myself, when you were talking, that totally relates to to how my business has been over the years. It's it's like oh, do I have to go on camera? Oh, do I have to put my picture out everywhere? But, yes, you do, because this is the new world. Yeah, and perfectionism is not helpful in the new world.

Speaker 2:

Right, and so it's it's. I'm glad that resonated with you, because what you're doing in the world is actually an example and you're embodying what corporations try to create. Whenever they don't know, when they don't have systems in place to figure things out, when they're trying to create something new, they have to go into this what I call a failure tank. You know it's an incubation tank of like we're just going to learn and try. It's okay that we don't have everything perfect. It's a product funnel. There's a lot of ideas in the top end of the funnel. We just need to get down to a few that we can start acting on.

Speaker 2:

And so you know, in my book I talk about that with this like empathy co-creation process. I've kind of renamed it to be Ignite, which is a step-by-step process for allowing you to progress and using the milestones to keep you in the game. So you want to know how to help entrepreneurs and small businesses ramp up is by being willing to stay in the game while they're trying to pivot or create something bigger than what they have, because they're not going to do it overnight. It requires patience, it requires connection, it requires just kind of making a few small little actions to see what sticks. It's like throwing a noodle or multiple noodles on the wall and see which one is actually cooked, ready enough to go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, again, thinking back to myself, in the first 18 months of my business many years ago, my of my business many years ago, I was terrified and and terrified of of making a mistake and terrified of not knowing the information if somebody asked me, and all of that fear of not being perfect and not knowing everything caused me 18 months of poverty and uh and and grief, a lot of grief, and and yeah, I just love how you said you know you're like you, just as you were saying like you just need to stay in the game.

Speaker 1:

And I think if you're living, if you're trying to do your business in fear, it's really difficult to be in the game.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that's so powerful.

Speaker 2:

That's right. Oh, I love that. Like, if you're living your business in fear, it's hard to stay in it. Like what's fascinating about that quote is that I believe that there's a lot of benefit in, like sports coaching or sports marketing, if you will, meaning the sports arena has given us a lot of ability to vision what we want and get in there, and they also talk about showing up and practicing and playing. But what I think that you that, that, what you tipped on is that a lot of times there's a fear of losing that sports also generates. So I I like to think of living a business as if you're living a journey, like a living a journey.

Speaker 2:

I lived in Lima, peru, for a while and I went to Machu Picchu three times and all three times I trekked up to Guanapichu I think that's what it's called and I never did the full trek right Because it was always kind of fast paced, so I had people visiting and I someday I'm going to go back and actually go through that whole trek, because what I've heard for those people who have gone through the entire process of trekking up to Machu Picchu first, then want to want to be too, I'm going to butcher that. I hate that I'm doing this on, but they have to plan for some risk mitigation. They have to plan for worst case scenario, for weather. They have to do so without taking everything and then they just enjoy the journey because they've kind of got a plan in place and they know that it may not go exactly as planned.

Speaker 2:

I think owning a business and running a business is much like that where if you're going to grow, you got to go towards where you want to grow. You have to move in that direction, not knowing exactly how it's going to go. That's very hard for those who have probably generated business acumen in a certain way, because once you've done that, your neural pathways get kind of streamlined. There's some deep ruts. So then when it's time to grow, you have to kind of form some new paths in order for that to occur. So the way that I think that entrepreneurs, small businesses, can use this same practice for innovation is when they really are needing to innovate. There's a practice, there's a tool, there's a system that's broken and they need some understanding in order to fix it.

Speaker 1:

Wow. So we've chatted a little bit before our interview here, our chat, and I think, if I understand correctly, like you and again, you have worked with some really big name brands out there, but you're now wanting to also help me, like the little people, the little brands of the world now, and I love that. I love that You've. You've got all of that skill, all of that knowledge base and but, and you're an entrepreneur, so you're able to just take that. So, so what, you know, if somebody was, you know, if somebody's like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do, I'm so so struck, stuck in my, my business, I'm thinking maybe about quitting what, what? What are a few tips that you would give that person?

Speaker 2:

What are a few tips that you would give that person You're talking specifically about? Maybe they're already in a place, career-wise, where they don't want to be and they want to kind of move to something different.

Speaker 1:

Well, they want to move to something different, or they want to get. I guess yeah, they need to get their mindset set, because maybe they're stuck doing what they're doing and that's not really their purpose or their calling, or they're burnt out on that. How do people make that shift?

Speaker 2:

Okay. Process of ignition like of igniting something, you don't start out by just snapping your fingers and starting a fire. Let's just even say it's a campfire, for even sitting around you have to have certain ingredients for the spark to happen. I think what happens when it's time to make a shift is that we the way that our society has produced our need to act is that we think we need to act fast and we need to make a good decision when we act fast. Those two things prevent us from acting fast because typically there are lots of options and considerations, and so we go into this push-pull with ourselves of knowing we need to act but knowing there's a lot of options and not knowing how to navigate all the options.

Speaker 2:

So the way that I would tell somebody who quickly wants to make some kind of change is to start, instead of acting, start asking. Start asking questions to yourself on who am I and what do I care about and why do I care about that. So you're not asking the how question, you're asking who, what and why. Those are the most important.

Speaker 2:

And then, once you start getting some answers for yourself, without judgment, but instead curiosity, then you go and start asking people that you think you want to serve. Who are they, what do they want, why do they want it? And those two things are kind of those first two steps of my Ignite process, which is like imagining what I want comes from those first set of questions. Then you're gathering information from others in order to kind of piece those together. Then you've got something you can navigate, because when you know those two foundational pieces who am I, what do I want and why? Who are they, what do they want and why Then you're able to start kind of getting some discernment and then possibilities are flowing from solid foundation instead of only head black and white thinking, if you will, right.

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow, yeah, good, I mean, you're just, you're just, you're blowing my mind, april, seriously, you're getting me. I just find it so interesting. I mean, I know so many ladies, I belong to all these networking groups and and they're not all of them, but many of them are struggling, struggling getting their businesses up and running and, and you know, and fear of, you know, putting themselves out there on camera and the whole social media thing. And a lot of them are more mature and got their full-time gig over here, but then this is really the direction they want to go, and so they're trying to build this while they're still over here.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I have a thought that just came up for me when you were telling me about that, because I think that's a common problem. The first thing I mentioned is when you don't really know it all. There's a second thing that happens, I think, once we start on a trajectory and we kind of know more about who we are, what we want, and that is just competing priorities and time right. And so what I would tell you in that is authenticity and having truth be heard and seen is the most powerful way that empathy can help navigate, and what I mean by that. I'll give you an example A friend of mine who is now actually working for a smaller company.

Speaker 2:

Usually she was in the food service business and she worked for very large corporations and she got stuck because she really wanted to be CMO of her organization and she felt herself getting kind of passed by and nobody was really, you know, seeing her value, and so she was ready to completely jump ship and start interviewing. So we went through a process of again, not just black or white, not just either or not just jumping ship or staying, but instead start creating a series of questions that she needed to ask in order to start making decisions for her. One of those conversations was with three people in her current organization who she respected, and her saying what she needed to say about how she was feeling unheard and unseen and unvalued. At the same time, she was interviewing for new positions and evaluating what they were like culturally. And so what happened? I'll just fast forward. What happened at the end of that kind of process for her is that she ended up getting a bigger job with a bigger corporation with more money. She landed there for a short time, did her whole rhythm with them, she did a stint with them and then she used that experience to go and actually have a role that she loves, loves, loves, loves.

Speaker 2:

Now, with a smaller, more sustainable company that's actually making big change in the world. Now that was a slower process, but the process that she went through if you can think about that as a journey was invaluable because, as she went through and authentically had conversations about what she needed in order to stay, what she needed to leave, what she needed to accept a job offer, then she started curating a lie that worked for her. You know, yes, and it wasn't straight, it wasn't linear, it was a little bit of you know. So I would say to anyone who is they think that they have a problem they've got to solve right now that's maybe feeling desperate to solve is find out why that's the desperation. Like, where's the desperation coming from? Is that coming from reality or is that coming from a wound? If it's coming from reality, what are the options that you have to solve that thing that you're desperate for you?

Speaker 1:

know, yeah, wow, very thought provoking. I love that. Thank you for sharing her story. That was very helpful, very helpful. Can we shift just for a little bit? I want to stick with the empathy, but maybe let's just leave the business community. How can we use? How can using empathy in our personal lives actually help us?

Speaker 2:

I think that you have to decide and balance on a consistent who you're going to be empathetic with and in what form. Okay, self-empathy and empathy for others sometimes feel hard for those to coexist. I believe strongly that you can only be as empathetic with others as you can be with yourself, and so learning how to embody empathy meaning being okay with what I'm feeling, being okay with what I'm experiencing, allowing that to actually be there without trying to change it that is a powerful way to be, and the only thing it requires is space, time to allow yourself to ask questions. And then, secondly, curiosity instead of judgment questions. And then, secondly, curiosity instead of judgment. When we empathize, a lot of times we think that it is, um, what I would call sympathy. Yeah, because we're trying to go and fix something right. Sympathy is usually activated when we care about what is happening, either for ourselves or others, and in that caring, we try to go solve it or fix it, and then, through the fixing it, sometimes we stagnate and create more problems on top of it, rather than empathy is just the allowing of something that is real to be. I'll give you a great example I blew out my back this weekend.

Speaker 2:

I probably blew out my back because I was going too hard and once the joint was crooked, my muscles just wanted to protect and so I can't even really move. And I had somebody come over and give me a red light little therapy belt which I didn't even know existed. But now I want one so badly for Christmas and I have been. What I've noticed it was is that usually when someone comes to my house, I'm the one that's like getting everything ready, et cetera. This friend made me brownies, put me in the chair, would not allow me to stand up or got onto me if I did, and just allowed it to be what it was and I felt so much empathy, right, I didn't feel like that person was trying to fix me. I didn't feel like I needed to fix myself, I just let it be, and I think that was the best thing I could have done for my back was just be empathetic. Does that make sense? It?

Speaker 1:

makes complete sense, because I think that we I think that I believe that most of us are not very empathetic for ourselves. We're too much, much too hard on ourselves and too judgmental, and and, yeah, just let it be, because it is what it is, and and and I and I also a hundred percent agree with you that we can't give to others what we can't do for ourselves, right? So if we can't show ourselves empathy, we're not going to be able to share, show our children or our parents or our spouses, or the poor cashier who's had a rough day at the till. You know, we're just, yeah, we just can't because we just can't see it. But I think that it's so important, yeah, it's just huge. I appreciate you very much because you've really, during our conversation here, you have really opened up my mind to many, many things, many things about empathy and business, and it's really gotten me thinking. So I really appreciate that, april. So thank you.

Speaker 2:

Well, you're welcome and I want to say something about you. Okay, that, I think, is very powerful that you may not see. So what I'm going to get emotional when I see you.

Speaker 2:

I just see so much empathy I do, I see so much grace, I see so much in giving. So like this is Thanksgiving week here in the US and you know, a lot of times we are so wrapped up in the giving that we forget to just have gratitude for what exists. And what I see in you is the ability to let gratitude surface regularly, and when you do that, it creates this gift of opening in others which allows more you know what I would say authenticity to show up, because that's really all that empathy does is. It just allows an opening for authenticity to rise up. For authenticity to rise up and I feel like that's what you do for so many is is letting them be with the pain in a way that's purposeful Right.

Speaker 2:

So when you, when my, when my corporations want to do empathy, it's because they have a purpose you know, they want to create purposefully and they wanted to do so with intention, and, and I feel like the gratitude that you just generously give is another way that's really able to tap into possibility, which is what people usually need when they're stuck, you know. So I just wanted to say thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

Oh, april, thank you so much. I'm going to make a little clip of that and every morning I'm going to put it up there. That's going to be my, one of my things I listened to in the morning when I'm getting ready for my day off. Thank you, I I that's beautiful. I appreciate it. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. Well, unfortunately, april, we have to come to a close. Is there anything at all that you would like to share out there in the world for others? I'll just mention that if anybody does want to reach out to April, I'm going to have all of the links have how you can reach her, how you can get her book. All of those will be in the description of either the podcast, if you're listening, or the video, if you're watching, so you'll be able to certainly reach out to her. So, that being said, what would you like to say in closing to everyone that's watching or listening?

Speaker 2:

I guess I would just say you know, I think that the reason that I decided to write a book and have been wanting to help those who are smaller businesses, individual decision makers, those who are in a pivot or a crossroads, is that I have learned, because of the work that I have done with being empathetic for others, that until you can do so for yourself, you will not realize your full potential, and that you could do so perhaps in your current situation and perhaps you cannot is derived from a place of just having optimism and faith in small actions with trust, and that the way that you trust yourself most is by taking small actions based on what you know is true, and the way to find truth is by being curious.

Speaker 2:

And so all of these concepts about how to keep fire in your life so that you can be vital and live the way that you, I'm going to say we're designed to live purpose. Then I put those into the book because I had to go through a lot of pain in my own story in order to see that for myself I was not going to be able to model for my daughter, to be empowered, to be confident, unless I actually was able to grow in a way that was hard for me, and so if you are feeling, especially during the holidays and despair, that anytime, that you begin the idea of creating for purpose and then allow yourself to connect with others, just that instant does create a spark and it does help with hope. That's what I would want to say.

Speaker 1:

Oh well, thank you. That is inspirational, motivational, thought provoking. I appreciate it. I will be doing a lot of thinking today, april, and I appreciate that. So, again, everyone, if you want to reach out to April all of the information will be in the description and feel free to do so. Feel free to go and grab her book. I think I'm going to grab her book sometime today. I'm going to head on to Amazon and pick it up. So, yeah, so do that. And again, thank you all so much for being here and until next time.

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