Build a Business That Works With Your Natural Style: Insights From Keyshia Johnson

The business advice that works beautifully for someone else can leave you exhausted. Fractional CHRO Keyshia Johnson explains how understanding your natural behavioral style can help you recognize the ways of working, communicating, networking, and leading that fit you.

Why does networking seem effortless for some people? Why do certain entrepreneurs appear to love sales while others would rather avoid it? And why can one part of running your business give you energy while another leaves you completely drained? Those were the questions Keyshia Johnson, founder and fractional CHRO of Catalyst Rising Consulting, brought to her Bloom Connections Educational Moment. Her session, Stop Working Harder, Build a Business That Works for Your Natural Style, started with a simple idea: “Success becomes more sustainable when you stop trying to build a business like everyone else.” For Keyshia, understanding the way you naturally operate can change how you think about everything from networking and sales to communication, leadership and eventually the people you bring into your business. And to understand why, she started with something many business owners experience.

When Someone Else's Way of Doing Business Doesn't Feel Like Yours

Keyshia pointed to a familiar pattern. Business owners can feel like they need to “market like everyone else, sell like everyone else, network like everyone else, lead like everyone else.” She even called out LinkedIn as one of the places where that pressure can become especially noticeable. You see what another entrepreneur is doing. It appears to be working. So you try to adopt their approach. But Keyshia explained that repeatedly trying to operate outside of your natural style can leave you feeling “frustrated, inconsistent, and overwhelmed.” That led directly into the question at the center of her presentation: What if the difference has less to do with whether you’re capable and more to do with how you naturally behave?

Skill and Behavioral Style Aren't the Same Thing

Keyshia made an important distinction between what you’re capable of doing and what naturally gives you energy.

Some people enjoy being heads-down in a project or working with data.

Others get their energy from interacting with people.

Someone may have the skill to network, sell, analyze, organize or lead without every one of those activities feeling equally natural.

As Keyshia put it, the answer can have “less to do with your skill and more to do with your natural behavior style.”

Once she established that difference, she introduced the tool she uses to give those behavioral patterns a framework: DISC.

DISC Helps Put Language Around How You Naturally Operate

Keyshia uses the DISC assessment in her work to help people understand behavioral style and communication.

She broke its purpose into three ideas:

Identify. Understand. Adapt.

First, DISC can help identify patterns in someone’s behavior.

Then it can help you understand how that person communicates, what they may need, and what they expect from other people.

Finally, that understanding can help you adapt the way you interact with them, which Keyshia connected to reducing tension and creating greater collaboration and trust.

But before explaining the four DISC styles, Keyshia made sure the group understood what the assessment doesn’t tell you.

Your DISC Style Isn't a Judgment of Your Ability

DISC isn’t an intelligence test. It isn’t measuring your education. It doesn’t tell you how skilled or experienced you are. And, as Keyshia emphasized, it is “not an indicator of value.” That distinction matters because understanding your behavioral style isn’t about discovering which parts of yourself need fixing. It’s about recognizing patterns. Keyshia explained that our behavior can reflect both nature and nurture. There are ways we naturally tend to operate, but we also learn how to behave in school, at work and in different environments. So DISC isn’t saying you can only behave one way. It gives you a starting point for understanding what may come naturally and where you may be adapting. With that distinction established, Keyshia walked the group through the four styles.

The Four DISC Behavioral Styles

DISC stands for Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.

Keyshia explained them through what tends to energize each style.

Dominance

Someone with a Dominance style may enjoy challenges and problems.

Solving something difficult can be energizing rather than intimidating.

Influence

Influence tends to center around people and contacts.

Keyshia identified Influence as part of her own natural style and connected it with social relationships and environments.

Steadiness

Someone leaning toward Steadiness may value pace and consistency.

They may prefer an environment that doesn’t constantly shift around them.

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness tends toward procedures, analysis, accuracy and structure.

Keyshia described someone in this style as potentially wanting to make sure things are done correctly and avoiding a loss of accuracy.

As she walked through these differences, she kept returning to the same point:

There isn’t a better style.

There are simply different natural needs, behaviors and ways of approaching situations.

And that’s where DISC becomes especially interesting for a business owner.

Your Natural Style Follows You Into Your Business

Think back to Keyshia’s opening questions.

Why does networking feel easy for one entrepreneur and exhausting for another?

Why does someone seem completely at home selling while someone else has to work themselves up to do it?

Why would one founder happily spend hours analyzing data while another would rather spend those hours talking to customers?

DISC gives you another way to interpret those differences.

Instead of immediately deciding:

“I’m bad at this.”

you can begin asking:

“How am I naturally inclined to approach this?”

That doesn’t mean removing every uncomfortable responsibility from your business.

Keyshia’s point wasn’t that we never adapt.

In fact, adaptation is one of the purposes she identified for understanding behavior in the first place.

The difference is that you can adapt with a better understanding of what you’re asking yourself to do.

And once you understand that, another business decision becomes possible.

Being Capable of Everything Doesn't Mean You Need to Do Everything

The conversation after Keyshia’s presentation showed exactly how this can translate into business decisions.

Al’leesha Hamilton reflected that understanding her strengths could help her recognize where to bring in support.

She described realizing:

“I’m capable of doing all the things, but like, I’m really good at this part.”

That realization led naturally into thinking about what an assistant could handle and where another person might need to be brought into the business.

That’s a powerful shift.

A founder can stop evaluating every responsibility solely through “Can I do it?”

and start considering:

Where am I strongest?

What consistently drains me?

Where would someone else’s natural strengths complement mine?

That changes DISC from an interesting personality assessment into something that can influence how you build.

And it doesn’t stop with delegation.

You Can Adapt Without Wishing You Were Someone Else

Toward the end of the conversation, Keyshia returned to something she wanted everyone to remember.

DISC isn’t about taking an assessment, seeing another behavioral style and thinking, “I wish I was more…”

Her response was the opposite:

“I love who I am, and I’m going to nurture that.”

She acknowledged that there will be environments where we have to adapt, change or learn another way of operating. That’s part of nurture.

But adaptation doesn’t require treating your natural style as a deficiency.

And that brings her Educational Moment full circle.

The goal isn’t to find the DISC style of the entrepreneur you think you’re supposed to become.

It’s to understand the entrepreneur who’s already running the business.

From there, you can make more intentional decisions about where you stretch, where you adapt, where you ask for support and where you lean into what already comes naturally.

Because, as Keyshia reminded the group at the beginning:

Success becomes more sustainable when you stop trying to build a business like everyone else.

About Keyshia Johnson

Keyshia Johnson is the founder and fractional CHRO of Catalyst Rising Consulting. She works with founders and startup leaders who need HR leadership and people solutions as their organizations change and grow. Her work includes leadership development, talent assessment, hiring and people processes, employee relations, talent retention and organizational change. Keyshia also uses DISC assessments to help people better understand their behavioral and communication styles. Her DISC experience includes an assessment, detailed report and debrief, along with conversations about natural style and networking strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does DISC stand for?

DISC stands for Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness. The framework looks at behavioral tendencies and can provide insight into communication, needs and expectations

Does your DISC style determine what you're good at?

No. Keyshia specifically explained that DISC isn't a measure of intelligence, skill, education, experience or value. It focuses on behavioral style rather than determining someone's capabilities.

Can DISC help entrepreneurs with networking?

Keyshia uses DISC as a way to help people understand their natural style, including how that can relate to networking. Her DISC offering includes developing a networking strategy based on what is uncovered through the assessment and debrief.

Can DISC be used for leadership and teams?

Yes. Keyshia described DISC as a framework that can help people understand behavior and communication and adapt to others. During the discussion, Bloom members also connected those insights to leadership, delegation and understanding team members with different approaches.

Is one DISC style better than another?

No. One of Keyshia's repeated messages was that DISC isn't a value judgment. Different styles have different natural tendencies, and the goal is to understand those differences rather than wish you were another type.

Learn Something. Share Something. Grow Together.

Keyshia’s Educational Moment reminded us that there isn’t one way to network, sell, communicate, or lead. Understanding your natural behavioral style can help you recognize what works for you and where you may need to adapt or bring in support. Because building a business doesn’t require becoming someone else. It starts with understanding how you naturally show up. Want to experience the next Educational Moment? Join us at an upcoming Bloom Connections gathering.

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