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EP 71: SOLO - Be Open to Creative Solutions · Crafted Connections

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm open to creative solutions.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: This sentence changed my life and we're gonna dig into why and how.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome back to Crafted Connections.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, I'm Katelyn Calhoun, and on this podcast we have conversations about creativity and business.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, it's about the humanness of building your life around work you love.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you are new here, welcome.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the middle of a fall series on burnout and recovery.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, long story short, I closed my business that I spent eight years building, and frankly, my life fell apart a bit because my identity was deeply tied to said business, and I've been slowly climbing back out.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sharing the arc of this journey with solo episodes where I'm processing it out loud and conversations with people I trust who have been through hard things as well.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to enjoy the full series, go back to episode 68 where we kick it off.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to have you along for the ride.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, quick catch up.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks ago I left you in the valley, fall of 2023.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And last week I spoke to my mentor Jill, who widened the lens and shared her experience moving through burnout.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a season that a lot of us move through and a lot of us get into, and we don't always talk about how to get out of it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So today is the climb.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's it is the it is the baby steps, it is the what Katelyn Calhoun did while she was in the valley to slowly inch her way out.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it was not a straight line, and it took a lot longer than I wanted.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would make the argument that we're still we're still pitter-pattering up the mountain, you know, sometimes taking breaks for water.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: With that being said, you gotta grab your favorite beverage and settle in.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so like I said, I left y'all fall 2023.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as I let everyone go, all of a sudden I was this, I was a solopreneur again, right?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had been a solopreneur for six years, hired people within six months, found myself as a solopreneur again.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started looking for a corporate job.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, okay, maybe land a six-figure role and then chip away at the debt.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like that was the best thing that I could come up with as I was, you know, looking at the mound of debt ahead of me.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh some callbacks and interviews happened.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I kept applying, and and nothing really, first off, not not a lot came in.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a short period of time.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't moving as fast as I wanted it to, but not a huge amount came in.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the most promising lead was a like a 50k year arts administrative role, which sounded like a lot of fun, but I could not afford to take on that role with the debt payments every month.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So nothing was moving fast enough, and the debt was feeling very, very heavy.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this goes back to what I've shared already in the series.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't find anyone describing what to actually do when you find yourself in the valley.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of stories will you'll be in the valley.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: In in the way people share this, they'll be in the valley, and then they will all of a sudden be a seven-figure business owner or all of a sudden have the job of their dreams.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and I just didn't find, I was like, what are the steps?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do you sit through this and move through this?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is where I'm here to share with you what I did.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I was looking at the numbers constantly.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that was the healthiest thing.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost like a very, very OCD and neurotic how often I was in my spreadsheets.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was always trying to problem solve on a daily basis.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Every morning I was meditating, I was, I was frankly praying, I was journaling, I was really, really, really trying to figure it out.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to a lot of spiritual podcasts, um, and spiritual podcasts that are like business adjacent, um, they're out there.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of business owners that have they talk about the woo-woo of it as well.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And one phrase came across my desk through those podcasts, which is I'm open to creative solutions.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that just hit me right with what I was going through.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, this is it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is my this is my mantra, this is my prayer, if you will.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm open to creative solutions.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to say something I'm proud of in those first six months is that I got out of bed every day, probably before 10 a.m.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every day before 10 a.m., I was out of bed taking on whatever the day was gonna bring, whatever I needed to focus on, whatever I needed to do.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to make sure that I don't blow through this portion of the episode so quickly, because this is where I was really desperately looking around for like an answer or a what do I do?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in retrospect, it really was sitting with things, listening, being the most intentional I could be with the next step, all the while having that mantra.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm open to creative solutions.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I think it's important to note here as well the mantra wasn't I'm gonna manifest$100,000.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was I'm open to creative solutions, which is much more broad, much more simple, much more believable to me with the situation I was in.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you'll find that a creative solution did come along.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, I sat down with a friend who worked in business financing and was like, Hey, can you help me look through this?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: What can I do?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: How can I solve this?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we looked over all my numbers, and you know, her initial response, you know, to me being like, I think I'm gonna try to find a job and just try and like chip away at this.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, That that feels like the best bet at this moment.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then a week later I got a call from her, and I remember walking around my living room while on the phone with her, and she said to me, What if you sell your house?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember like looking up at the crown molding and and like the rug that I had bought for the house, and just it was such a terrifying thought because we loved that house.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was our first home.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was a beautiful home.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was blue.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's my favorite color.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much about it that it was so hard when she suggested that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not gonna lie and say that there wasn't an air of relief, you know, somewhere underneath all the shame of the fact that I was like, am I the reason we're gonna like air quotes lose our house?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so that obviously is pretty heavy.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I felt like there was some truth into her solution.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the like next step in her suggestion was sell your house and rent.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when we actually did the math, like renting didn't necessarily make sense because our mortgage was lower than any rent we'd be able to find in the area, or honestly, a little bit outside of the area.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then also if we were to get an apartment or some sort of duplex, our dog has a history of barking with shared walls, so that just like wasn't going to be like a healthy choice uh for us as a family.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, it there was truth in the like maybe selling our house is part of the solution, but it wasn't the full solution.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, quick pause in today's episode because I want to tell you about something I've been building, I've been working on that I've been curating for y'all.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Calhoun Edits.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing: we all know we should be doing video.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Solopreneurs, marketers, business owners, you know the benefits, but the part that we all dread is the editing.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: You film something, it's super fantastic, but getting over that hurdle past the edit halts the entire project.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've spent all this time creating something, you don't finish that last little bit, right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've been editing video for over 10 years, and I'm here to make it super, super, super dang simple.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to succeed.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to utilize the power of editing and the magic that can come from putting things together, having that rhythm.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And over on Instagram at Calhoun Edits, I break down short, practical tutorials, mostly in the edits app, because it's free as can be, on stuff that you probably don't know about.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Keyframes, captions, sound effects, all sorts of little things that make your videos feel polished without taking your whole afternoon, your whole day, your whole life, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd rather hand it off or want some one-on-one help, you can book a free 30-minute consultation right in my bio.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So go follow Calhoun Edits and let's get your videos out of your camera roll and into the world.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: We deserve it.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right, back to the episode.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings me to my fella Phil and his current binge at the time.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was binge watching a couple on YouTube uh documenting their journey on America's Great Loop, which is, for those who don't know, a journey where you circumnavigate essentially the eastern side of the United States.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: You go through the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi, you know, around Florida, and then up the East Coast.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, super cool trip, right?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Phil says to me, What if we sell the house and move on to a boat, like they're doing?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And after everything we'd been through, this lit us up.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: It lit us up so incredibly much.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like this was probably since I had decided to like go all in on my business earlier that year.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was probably the thing that was most exciting.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it also had some practical things to it.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have to be honest, like this decision, while it lit us up, it was an adventure we wanted.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have to say the final decision was heavily driven by finances.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I would argue like somewhere between 50 to 70%, if not completely, right?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, we were excited, but the plan was to reduce the debt through the profit of our house sale.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: If my business hadn't been where it was, we would never have explored it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: We would have just probably, you know, enjoyed this couple's journey around the loop and never really envisioned ourselves in that position.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, with that, if my business hadn't failed, we would have stayed in the house and in a lot of ways been totally fine.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: But again, we got really excited.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we knew that like action needed to be taken, which meant selling the house, selling everything we own.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we started kind of telling our network and our community, our friend groups, this then, the other.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So not everybody got it.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of folks were like, that's not gonna happen.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna live on a boat.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, why not an RV?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, van life.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think people can picture van life and RV stuff because that's been so popular for so long.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But if if people haven't seen something, it's really hard for them to imagine it happening.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that is one thing I love about myself and also my fella Phil.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have great imaginations.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: We are dreamers, and that is something that is just really strong when we when we go for something, we're always, always here for a creative solution.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, with full speed ahead, we decided cool, we're gonna get this house ready for sale.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: We started prepping the house, called our realtor, a contract gig came through for a few months that ended up paying more than that arts role I was up for would have paid.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I took that.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: In October through January, we were getting rid of everything we owned.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we also planned to start our YouTube channel.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the first week of March, the house officially closed, and we were Airbnb hopping until we could find the boat of our dreams.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: That whole process uh took a second.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in this, for the record, has is takes longer than uh than we plan it to.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: But uh finally in June, on June 1st, I believe, we moved aboard our boat.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that summer was all about getting ready, getting ready financially, skill-wise, to take off on the loop later that summer.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And something I want to like highlight, so like imagining summer of 2024, there was still like a lot of weight uh with with like the sadness of my business not being in great shape, there, you know, the the results of some of the choices.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: When all said and done, we left Indianapolis quite quickly.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't really have the time to process anything.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: But there were a lot of wins as well.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just the decision to do this, to take off on this adventure was such a win.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Selling the house.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, when we were actually, we when we took the boat out for the for the sea trial where you like test to make sure the thing doesn't sink, you know, before you buy it from someone.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even just getting insurance for the boat was such a challenge.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: But when we finally got it, we were like, we're going, it's happening.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it took its time, but it's like there were so many just joy-inducing wins along the way.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So even though there were lots and lots of wins in summer of 2024, uh late summer, early fall of 2024, client things started falling through, and we were taking inventory of our skill set, and we just like weren't quite ready to leave.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we were trying to leave, and we realized that uh some of the locks had already closed for the season.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think this was maybe mid to late September.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we realized we just don't know enough.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know enough, we don't have enough funds.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: It would be not safe to leave yet.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so, again, with the pivoting, we quickly found storage, we put the boat in storage, and we had to figure out where to live.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Simultaneously, in October, I was coming up on eight years having my company teardrop pictures.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it hit me that people, it wasn't necessarily about the brand teardrop.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: They they cared more about me and what I was up to, and I was carrying this company and this brand beyond what was necessary.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so with the loop slipping away and recognizing that my business had come to an end, uh, it was a season of losing two dreams at once, uh, which was a lot to process, but it was also a moment of a lot of clarity.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, in one fell swoop, I decided to close the business in October 2024.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, my soft launched Calhoun Creative Consulting, which was like just a way to throw my name in there and keep keep a lot of possibility.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the name Calhoun Creative Consulting like just kind of came to me while it all just like was a quick download.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, this is what you're gonna do and this is how it's gonna go.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to express before we move on to the next part of this episode, some swift things had that had happened, some like pushing and quick decisions I made, you know, a year or two prior were a different energy.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: This like soft launch of Calhoun Creative Consulting was a very like it was a knowing, this is the next step, Katelyn.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard to do, but it was the next step.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of other decisions I made uh in teardrop, especially that last year or two, that were driven by what I thought someone else would do or what a business owner would do, but not Katelyn as the business owner.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's something very interesting to consider when you're making business, career, personal decisions that like they're yours to make.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't really matter how fast you make choices, but it does matter how the choices feel.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the soft launch of Calhoun Creative Consulting felt very, very good, especially during a time where a lot still needed to be untangled.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was nice creating something that was so fresh and so that had so many open possibilities.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, with the untangling, all of it's taken longer than I want.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I heard once something like, you know, it's gonna take longer than you want, but faster than you think.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've learned when it comes to recovering from a situation is it's regular steps.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're very, very, very little steps.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not about trying to take giant leaps or trying to move yourself faster than you are frankly capable of.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all about quantum leaping.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all about investing in a way that moves things forward quickly.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes you don't have those resources or the energy, and also it's not the time to do it when you're recovering from a burnout situation.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: I also found leaning into more practical information and less of my manifestation, you know, consumption diet.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love, I love manifestation processes.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love learning about woo-woo stuff.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: But when it came down to the recovery of this, I needed more like practical, actual implementation.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I needed somebody who was like on this earth talking about business and not, I needed to step away from trust, if that makes any sense.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I needed to know that like I do this, then this happens.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I needed a lot of cause and effect.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I also learned to be very honest about what the numbers actually look like.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: As I shared in the last solo episode, my business was not built to take on the payroll that I stress tested it with.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, that stress test broke the boat, busted the situation.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I just found the people along the way who helped.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've got mentors like Jill from last week, another friend Kimberly, who has been on the pod before.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: They brought in some tough love and mentorship from like people who had actually been there, people who had actually had employees or had been in a financial recovery situation, people pursuing adventurous lives.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then also Phil and I leaned on family in a way that frankly felt very embarrassing to me in my 30s, but we had to do it.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And being prideful and not asking for help wasn't going to get us out of the situation.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really, really grateful for for who we have and the support we've had along the way.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the mindset shift from that valley to where I am now is really embodying slow is fast because you can move through things really quickly, but sometimes it takes har longer to recover than if you just went slow and did things right in the first place.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is the same as being on this boat.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: When we take this boat out of the channel, it's about going slow and not making rash quick turns.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have to move slowly so we don't hit anything or we don't like, you know, run aground.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about us moving as quickly as possible.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's about moving with intention and being clear on where we want to go and making small little changes towards that direction.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, back to fall 2024.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Our boats in storage.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: My business has closed.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have nowhere to live.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I posted on our uh boat Instagram, I said, boats in storage, we're gonna live somewhere between here and California.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we knew we didn't want to drive all the way to California.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: We were shopping around for a few like house sitting opportunities.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And a friend of mine from high school DM'd me and said, Hey, we've got this place in our backyard.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a duplex, like right behind our house.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, did you would you like to live, you know, upstairs?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we can we can do uh rent-wise.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was frankly a ridiculously low price, one that we would never have been able to make it through, you know, winter of 2024, spring of 2025 without.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna talk about this more in future episodes, but it it became such a treasured time in my life.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited to share about that.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: When all was said and done, that first year of recovery, of climbing out of a valley that I both found myself in and created for myself, I was about to step into some really wonderful experiences where like I got to rebuild my identity outside of being a business owner, outside of being a person who works all the time.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really special.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So next week I'm gonna be having uh a friend of mine who has lived on her boat for over 10 years now, and we talk all about her experience.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited to include this uh as the next step in this series because I'm still dreaming about what that looks like.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's really important for us to set our sights on like an exciting thing to come.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'll be talking to Jessie next week, and then the solo after that is kind of everything that wouldn't have happened if my business hadn't closed, hadn't failed.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that includes the friendship that I alluded to earlier in this episode, the friend that I ended up getting to live next door to.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: But all to say, thank you so much for listening and being a part of both Crafted Connections and uh my telling of this experience.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is it is proving to be very challenging and very, very good for me to share.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I really hope that it's helping you as well if you're listening through it and and you feel called to enjoy it.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So have a great week, friends.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Crafted Connections is lovingly produced by Calhoun Creative Consulting, a strategic storytelling firm dedicated to helping people and brands tell their stories in a way that resonates.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and connect with us on Instagram at Crafted Connections Bot.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Keep creating, keep connecting until we meet again.