Latest / The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson / Embracing Faith in Business with Kendra Sutton

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Embracing Faith in Business with Kendra Sutton · The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson

• 0:36
  Jennifer Johnson: Today, we welcome back into the studio Kendra Sutton.
• 0:39
  Jennifer Johnson: She's the owner of K Sutton Creative Solutions and is an experienced marketing, branding and advertising strategist with a demonstrated history of helping clients navigate the complex and fascinating world of lead generation and brand awareness.
• 0:54
  Jennifer Johnson: She's skilled in traditional mediums such as TV, radio and print, as well as Google, digital marketing, social media, brand storytelling and corporate social responsibility campaigns that help her clients get noticed by their customers and create a lasting impact on their bottom line.
• 1:11
  Jennifer Johnson: She's passionate about creating great work through collaboration, and her moxie is coming up with brilliant ideas that produce creative solutions.
• 1:20
  Jennifer Johnson: Welcome back in Good morning.
• 1:23
  Jennifer Johnson: Good to see you again.
• 1:24
  Jennifer Johnson: Yes, I mean, the last time we met it was a fabulous conversation and we totally.
• 1:29
  Jennifer Johnson: We came in talking about one thing and it just kind of mushroomed yes, and I fully expect that it's going to happen the same way today, probably Because that's just how we are.
• 1:39
  Jennifer Johnson: And I want to talk about faith, forgiveness and favor in your daily business, and I know that's a big part of your life.
• 1:47
  Jennifer Johnson: And I want to start with faith Because let me preface this with I know a lot of people in corporate positions or corporate companies.
• 1:58
  Jennifer Johnson: This may be uncomfortable because a lot of big companies may not embrace that faith part.
• 2:05
  Jennifer Johnson: Yes, right, but what does it mean to have faith day in and day out in your business?
• 2:11
  Jennifer Johnson: I know this is going to be a.
• 2:12
  Jennifer Johnson: It's a big question because there's many different prongs to it.
• 2:16
  Jennifer Johnson: But what?
• 2:16
  Jennifer Johnson: What do you see that as?
• 2:19
  Kendra Sutton: Well, first of all, I can't start my day without it.
• 2:22
  Kendra Sutton: My whole entire business bloomed from faith when I did not even know what my next steps were going to be after ending a 13-year career.
• 2:34
  Kendra Sutton: So that's where my faith really kicked in.
• 2:40
  Kendra Sutton: And faith is believing in things that we do not see, and part of my practice of faith in my relationship is that I already thank Him for what I want or what I ask for, whoever it is for my employees, for myself, family, colleagues that it is done, and that is having the faith that what you are proclaiming is done, and so I use that to lead business, because business is ever changing.
• 3:20
  Kendra Sutton: You're going to have clients that come and go, and so I have faith that our time was finished and there will be beautiful new ones coming along.
• 3:31
  Kendra Sutton: Just that positivity, that hope.
• 3:34
  Jennifer Johnson: Have you always been like that, or?
• 3:38
  Kendra Sutton: No, I would definitely say call myself.
• 3:44
  Kendra Sutton: Up until a few years ago, I always had faith, but I was lukewarm that whole expression of lukewarm.
• 3:50
  Kendra Sutton: Celebrating when good things happen, of course, and questioning when bad things did, excuse me, and that is not faith.
• 4:01
  Kendra Sutton: Faith is trusting in the process and always trusting in the process and not on your own understanding, as Scripture says, and that is a challenge.
• 4:14
  Kendra Sutton: It's not an easy practice, especially when life throws curveballs at us and it does yeah, every single day, yeah.
• 4:25
  Kendra Sutton: Yeah, but if I didn't have that in my business and in my life to lean on and to trust in and to support and the blessings come, you know it's just having that.
• 4:41
  Kendra Sutton: It's a pillar in my business, for businesses, that I am seeing a shift of more people and businesses going there and it's not and there's all different religions and respect those and I understand it's a treacherous territory for some companies to get into.
• 5:15
  Kendra Sutton: We have, you know, we have all these things that have happened in our society with political correctness et cetera.
• 5:20
  Kendra Sutton: But I think that we have to honor people's faith and just really embrace those that want to talk about it.
• 5:34
  Kendra Sutton: We're not here to judge Right.
• 5:36
  Jennifer Johnson: So I'm glad that you kind of went that way, because my next question to you is going to be what does it look like if we don't have faith?
• 5:50
  Kendra Sutton: How does it feel?
• 5:51
  Kendra Sutton: What does it look like?
• 5:51
  Kendra Sutton: I'm going to just say from my personal journey an extremely unhappy and joyful, rocky road.
• 5:58
  Kendra Sutton: And yet I had so many good things happening in my life but was not finding joy, was not finding peace.
• 6:03
  Kendra Sutton: That was the key word peace.
• 6:06
  Kendra Sutton: I just wanted peace.
• 6:10
  Jennifer Johnson: And meaning peace.
• 6:11
  Jennifer Johnson: Was it not like you had to keep chasing the next thing?
• 6:16
  Kendra Sutton: No, and I didn't have to keep pleasing others and looking for validation from others for who I already am.
• 6:24
  Jennifer Johnson: So that's a big one.
• 6:25
  Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, because I think as entrepreneurs especially because we do, you had mentioned you know it's a lonely road.
• 6:31
  Jennifer Johnson: It can be a lonely road and maybe it's something, and I learned this that a lot of our validation, looking is from things that have happened to us in the past.
• 6:44
  Kendra Sutton: I would like to say a hundred percent.
• 6:47
  Jennifer Johnson: I mean, I know myself yes, me too Like I've had things happen to me when I was a child where I wonder why, and this all came out when I was writing my book.
• 6:58
  Jennifer Johnson: It was crazy, it was very.
• 7:01
  Jennifer Johnson: It was almost like it was a therapy session doing that, but it was things that had happened in my childhood.
• 7:07
  Jennifer Johnson: I wanted to kind of give the middle finger to and say, look, I did this and you didn't think I could, right?
• 7:17
  Kendra Sutton: So I spent my I pretty much spent my whole life until three years ago like that, and I'm in my 50s.
• 7:25
  Kendra Sutton: That was my mantra my whole life growing up.
• 7:28
  Kendra Sutton: I'm not going to be my parents.
• 7:30
  Kendra Sutton: I'm going to be the first to graduate college.
• 7:32
  Kendra Sutton: I'm going to own a business.
• 7:33
  Kendra Sutton: I'm going to make something of myself.
• 7:36
  Kendra Sutton: I'm going to, I'm, I'm, I'm.
• 7:39
  Kendra Sutton: And did I accomplish those things?
• 7:41
  Kendra Sutton: Yes.
• 7:43
  Kendra Sutton: And when I was done, did I have joy?
• 7:45
  Kendra Sutton: No.
• 7:46
  Kendra Sutton: Did I have peace?
• 7:47
  Kendra Sutton: No, because it wasn't coming from the right place.
• 7:53
  Kendra Sutton: Right, it was coming from trauma.
• 7:58
  Kendra Sutton: It was coming from anxiety, wanting acceptance.
• 8:01
  Kendra Sutton: It was not accepting myself as to who I already was and the gifts I had already been given and how magnificently I was already made, and that everything we have is inside of us.
• 8:18
  Kendra Sutton: We have to tune into it, we have to get mindful, we have to own all of our ugly, crap and garbage.
• 8:28
  Kendra Sutton: And you just brought something up when I started reflecting back.
• 8:34
  Kendra Sutton: And I will tell you, I had a horrible situation, an accumulation of a horrible situation, and I hit bottom.
• 8:42
  Kendra Sutton: And when you do that, you start reflecting.
• 8:44
  Kendra Sutton: The thing is I had hit bottom a couple of times, so I'd had an accident one time, and I say that's when he laid me down.
• 8:54
  Kendra Sutton: So I would look up, because I would not.
• 8:57
  Kendra Sutton: I was going a hundred miles an hour.
• 8:58
  Kendra Sutton: My family was extremely concerned about how much focus and drive and everything else did not matter.
• 9:09
  Kendra Sutton: I was on a mission, the wrong mission Right, and they thought I was burning not only the candle at both ends but in the middle too.
• 9:19
  Kendra Sutton: And ironically, my mom to this day still calls it divine intervention.
• 9:24
  Kendra Sutton: But that is you know.
• 9:27
  Kendra Sutton: I had faith but I wasn't practicing it, I wasn't enabling it to work for me, I wasn't tapping in and truly to the greatest source possible.
• 9:37
  Kendra Sutton: And so I say you know he laid me down so I'd look up.
• 9:43
  Kendra Sutton: I love that.
• 9:44
  Jennifer Johnson: I love that.
• 9:45
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• 9:48
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• 9:49
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• 9:51
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• 9:58
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• 10:00
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• 10:04
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• 10:07
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• 10:15
  Jennifer Johnson: All right, friends, we are back in the studio again with Kendra Sutton and she's the owner of K Sutton Creative Studio and we're talking about faith, forgiveness and favor.
• 10:25
  Jennifer Johnson: So we've talked about faith.
• 10:27
  Jennifer Johnson: Now I want to move on to forgiveness.
• 10:30
  Jennifer Johnson: It's a big one, I know right, that's the big one.
• 10:34
  Jennifer Johnson: It's a big one.
• 10:34
  Jennifer Johnson: That's the magic pill.
• 10:36
  Jennifer Johnson: Is it something you learn?
• 10:41
  Jennifer Johnson: How does that work?
• 10:42
  Jennifer Johnson: How do we learn to forget, or is it not something we learn?
• 10:48
  Kendra Sutton: I will tell you, it is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life.
• 10:53
  Kendra Sutton: Harder than starting a business, harder than relationships.
• 10:57
  Kendra Sutton: It is truly one of the at least for me personally, it's one of the most difficult things I've ever found because and especially we were talking previously about our past traumas and and all those things weave into the fabric of our personality and our being and I was sharing.
• 11:19
  Kendra Sutton: When I started reflecting backwards, I started remembering all these situations as a manager in business, et cetera, and how I would react to things or how maybe I made some decisions in those roles as a leader, and I realized they were from triggers, they were from things of the past, and so that's when the question, when I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, okay, how do I change this?
• 11:46
  Kendra Sutton: The only way to change that was I had to go back and sit in those and forgive.
• 11:55
  Kendra Sutton: And it wasn't only about forgiving the people that have hurt us or betrayed us or done damage.
• 12:04
  Kendra Sutton: One of the other hardest things was forgiving myself.
• 12:08
  Kendra Sutton: Oh yeah, in decisions that I made in reaction to those things, and you don't realize it at the time, no, you don't.
• 12:20
  Kendra Sutton: So that's where the second part of that forgiveness came in is I was like, oh my goodness, I need to go back and apologize to that person from 10 years ago and I did those things.
• 12:33
  Kendra Sutton: I called people.
• 12:35
  Kendra Sutton: People were like.
• 12:38
  Kendra Sutton: I don't even remember it, oh my gosh.
• 12:39
  Kendra Sutton: But I do Right.
• 12:40
  Kendra Sutton: And you know, somebody told me here in our community one time.
• 12:46
  Kendra Sutton: I called her and I apologized to her.
• 12:48
  Jennifer Johnson: She was one of them.
• 12:50
  Kendra Sutton: And I said you know I'm really sorry if I've ever hurt your feelings or offended you or anything, because I'm thinking there's some points that I probably did and she shared with me one time.
• 13:05
  Kendra Sutton: You know, she said it wasn't that you, it was just that you would distance yourself and that hurt at times.
• 13:15
  Kendra Sutton: Wow, and that's what I said.
• 13:19
  Kendra Sutton: You know, it took my breath when she said that, because that was never the intention.
• 13:24
  Kendra Sutton: But when you're not operating in that mindfulness or you haven't realized that about yourself, or how to rely on that faith and forgiveness, and at that moment I asked her will you please forgive me?
• 13:38
  Kendra Sutton: That's the intention of my call.
• 13:40
  Kendra Sutton: I knew there was something Right, because it made me uncomfortable, of course, or you wouldn't have come up, and so she did, and so I explained to her that I'm making calls today and here's one of the best pieces of advice.
• 13:56
  Kendra Sutton: She said just be prepared.
• 14:00
  Kendra Sutton: Not everybody may accept your apology.
• 14:03
  Kendra Sutton: And I hadn't thought of that, and she was right.
• 14:07
  Kendra Sutton: I called 20 people that day and 19 accepted my apology and one didn't.
• 14:13
  Kendra Sutton: That one still to this day has not.
• 14:15
  Kendra Sutton: Wow, and I will tell you that bothers me, but that's part of also living in faith and favor and forgiveness is that I've learned I can't control other people.
• 14:27
  Kendra Sutton: That's that other person's decision.
• 14:29
  Kendra Sutton: I've done faithfully what was correct, fully what was correct.
• 14:43
  Kendra Sutton: I've stepped forth in faith asking for forgiveness and I put it out there and I did the right thing.
• 14:45
  Kendra Sutton: I can't control what somebody else does, how they accept it or whether they want to accept it and amen to that.
• 14:51
  Jennifer Johnson: Once you realize that you've done everything in your power, then you do have to let it go.
• 14:57
  Jennifer Johnson: Yes, I want to start breaking out into the Elsa song right now.
• 15:03
  Kendra Sutton: Exactly right, the Frozen song.
• 15:04
  Kendra Sutton: But I can't sing to save my life, so that's not going to happen.
• 15:06
  Kendra Sutton: But, so true, yes, so true.
• 15:10
  Jennifer Johnson: So, true.
• 15:11
  Kendra Sutton: And the other thing on forgiveness, and when you talk about how trauma or things from our past that affect us and I think that's something also is I'm not a parent unfortunately I didn't get that blessing but as parents too, everybody's doing the best they can do at times and I had to forgive my parents for that and realize that.
• 15:38
  Kendra Sutton: And then I started looking at my grandparents and what they probably experienced and grew up in and you know, it's generational patterns it is.
• 15:54
  Kendra Sutton: They don't get broken unless we make a decision to do that.
• 15:59
  Kendra Sutton: That's very true.
• 16:00
  Kendra Sutton: And in speaking to the Pace Center for Girls one day I was mentoring, they asked me to run over and mentor.
• 16:08
  Kendra Sutton: They needed somebody to step in real quick and they ran in the door and they're like you have 10 minutes and your topic is courage and just like these podcasts, it started out as courage and in just natural flow it evolved to forgiveness unexpectedly, because I was talking to them about having courage.
• 16:32
  Kendra Sutton: And here was this beautiful 14-year-old.
• 16:35
  Kendra Sutton: And here was this beautiful 14-year-old, very resilient, traumatized girl Raised her hand and she said to me what is the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life?
• 16:44
  Kendra Sutton: And at that second it came out, before I even could catch it, so it came from somewhere within me.
• 16:53
  Kendra Sutton: And it was, forgive my father, at that point.
• 16:57
  Kendra Sutton: There were 52 girls in that room.
• 16:59
  Kendra Sutton: Typical teenagers love them to death.
• 17:02
  Kendra Sutton: But heads down on the table, everybody acting like they're sleeping bored why am I having to listen to this?
• 17:08
  Kendra Sutton: And at that moment I said that 52 heads came up off the table.
• 17:13
  Jennifer Johnson: What does that tell you?
• 17:15
  Kendra Sutton: You were authentic, it hit home hard and at that moment it even took my breath because I knew what I had walked through and I thought I wish every father of every daughter in this room could be standing in the corner right now and see what just happened.
• 17:37
  Kendra Sutton: And if you don't think you have an impact on your child's life, that was that moment and that was when that was my moment also of like have I really forgiven him?
• 17:51
  Kendra Sutton: I can stand up here and I can advise and I can mentor and I can talk, but am I living it Exactly?
• 17:58
  Kendra Sutton: And I wasn't.
• 17:59
  Kendra Sutton: I had partially.
• 18:02
  Kendra Sutton: But I realized in that moment, in that room, with those girls, they did just as much for me as I did for them on forgiveness because I had to go back and walk it.
• 18:12
  Jennifer Johnson: Wow, Kendra.
• 18:12
  Jennifer Johnson: This is even more powerful than the first podcast that we did together.
• 18:17
  Jennifer Johnson: Oh my gosh.
• 18:19
  Kendra Sutton: Wow, and forgiveness.
• 18:21
  Kendra Sutton: One thing forgiveness isn't a one-time deal.
• 18:23
  Kendra Sutton: Yeah, sometimes I'm caregiving for my father now, somebody who was never present in my life ever, and he came back into my life five years ago and I had a choice to make and I went on faith because I can tell you, every ounce of my being was like no, no, and H?
• 18:44
  Kendra Sutton: E, double no and um, I, I had.
• 18:49
  Kendra Sutton: It had to come from faith.
• 18:50
  Kendra Sutton: I had to come from honor your mother and your father is one of the commandments, no matter what they've done.
• 18:55
  Kendra Sutton: It's not a dot dot dot.
• 18:56
  Kendra Sutton: There's a period at the end of that and that's where I had to learn multiple times in a given day to keep forgiving.
• 19:05
  Kendra Sutton: And so forgiveness is not a one-time thing.
• 19:07
  Kendra Sutton: Sometimes we have to keep forgiving the same person and not let them abuse you or whatever.
• 19:13
  Kendra Sutton: But I'm saying especially at his age and in the situation we're in at 76 years old, he's not going to be changing.
• 19:21
  Kendra Sutton: So I have to learn grace.
• 19:25
  Jennifer Johnson: That's the big word here.
• 19:26
  Kendra Sutton: Give grace and with grace, forgiveness, and so sometimes we have to do that with our employees.
• 19:33
  Kendra Sutton: They may be going through something having empathy, but there's boundaries too, and that's the healthy part, right.
• 19:46
  Jennifer Johnson: Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with you as well.
• 19:49
  Jennifer Johnson: If our listeners would like to get in touch with you, how can they do that?
• 19:54
  Kendra Sutton: Well, I'm on LinkedIn, so under Kendra Sutton and KD Sutton Creative Solutions, also my website kdsuttoncreativesolutionscom or 239-910-6414.
• 20:07
  Kendra Sutton: Fabulous, thank you so much.
• 20:09
  Kendra Sutton: Thank you for having me again.