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From Financial Bulimia to Empowered Entrepreneur: Kimberly Spencer on Mindset & Sustainable Success · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:06
  The biggest barrier to productivity and growth is courage.
• 0:12
  Today's guest is Kimberly Spencer, founder of Crown Yourself, an innovative coaching and consulting business, and Communication Queens, a podcast guesting agency.
• 0:24
  Kimberly's entrepreneurial journey is anything but ordinary, from founding her first Pilates studio at just 19 to becoming president of a successful e commerce company and even having a screenplay picked up by Lionsgate.
• 0:38
  But her story doesn't stop at business wins.
• 0:41
  Kimberly dives deep into the mindset shifts and personal challenges she faced, including overcoming financial bulimia and navigating self sabotage.
• 0:52
  In this episode, Kimberly gets real about how trauma shapes our money habits, the power of courageous action in business, and why building meaningful human connections is non negotiable for entrepreneurial success.
• 1:06
  Whether you're looking to scale up, get unstuck from self doubt or pivot in your business, Kimberly's wisdom in today's conversation will inspire you to Crown yourself.
• 1:17
  Step out of your comfort zone and create abundance on your own terms.
• 1:22
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:28
  All right, Kimberly Spencer, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:31
  Thank you so much for having me on, Dave.
• 1:33
  I'm excited to connect with your audience and just dive deeper with you.
• 1:37
  Yes, we're excited to have you.
• 1:40
  So.
• 1:40
  So Kimberly, you are the founder of Crown Yourself, which is a coaching consulting business, and also Communication Queens, which is a podcast guesting agency.
• 1:52
  So you have this dual business helping other entrepreneurs.
• 1:56
  Was there a singular aha moment where you realized like, I have to build this thing.
• 2:04
  I tend to birth twins and when I was pregnant with my first son, I had had my business Crown Yourself since getting since exiting my E Commerce company, I was the president of the E Commerce company.
• 2:18
  I had a successful buyout by everybody else's standards.
• 2:21
  But unfortunately for me, in my own perception, which is why I work so often with entrepreneurs on their mindset, my perception was that I had failed.
• 2:29
  My perception was that I'd failed my company.
• 2:32
  I had lost this company that I had worked two years to build and we literally signed the buyout agreement three weeks before I went off on my honeymoon and got married and walked down the aisle so that I
• 2:46
  never before had fear in terms of my career and biz and businesses.
• 2:53
  Because I've been an entrepreneur since I was 19 years old.
• 2:55
  My first business was a private Pilates studio and I first started as a freelancer.
• 2:59
  I then built my own private studio, which then led me to having the expertise in the fitness industry to be able to come on as a consultant for this e comm company.
• 3:09
  And when I saw the product, I was like, I don't just want to consult for this.
• 3:12
  I want to.
• 3:13
  I want to sell this.
• 3:14
  I want to.
• 3:14
  I want to grow this.
• 3:15
  Because I could see that being in every Pilates studio, the device that we were selling.
• 3:20
  And within two years of growing this company, I learned so much about business, so much about partnerships, and I had three months, right before getting married to my husband, of negotiating with lawyers.
• 3:32
  And they don't always send you the nicest emails when you're not.
• 3:35
  When they're not on your side.
• 3:37
  And so every fear that I had thought I had conquered in other areas of my life was brought up plain as day by professional men.
• 3:47
  And that I was too young, too inexperienced, no college degree, didn't have any credibility.
• 3:55
  And meanwhile, I'm like, well, look at how far we've grown the company.
• 3:57
  Look at where we are going.
• 4:00
  Look at the press that we've received.
• 4:02
  Look at how that we've gotten in every major magazine and we're getting in other studios.
• 4:07
  But the problem was that I was inexperienced with dealing with legal.
• 4:14
  And when I was bought out of my company, I was very happy to have a successful exit.
• 4:19
  But I didn't realize that those belief systems were only to get me to lower my price, quite frankly.
• 4:26
  And so I'm sitting on the couch on my honeymoon with my husband wondering, like, what do I do when I get back?
• 4:32
  Because I've had my Pilates business.
• 4:34
  I didn't want to keep going with that.
• 4:37
  I'd fulfilled my childhood dream at 24 of becoming a successful screenwriter, had my first screenplay picked up by Lionsgate distributed on Netflix.
• 4:45
  Netflix, that was.
• 4:48
  I then got the position as president of the E.
• 4:50
  Com company.
• 4:51
  And I was sitting on the couch saying, I see how all of these pieces play together.
• 4:55
  I see how healing the things, the issues that I'd had with my body plays into entrepreneurship.
• 5:02
  I see how relationships play into entrepreneurship.
• 5:04
  I see how, you know, business and the belief systems.
• 5:07
  I see how all of this works together holistically.
• 5:10
  And I looked at everything I've been passionate about, from health to wellness to beauty pageants to storytelling.
• 5:17
  And I leaped off the couch and I said, crown yourself.
• 5:19
  And my husband goes, what's that?
• 5:21
  And I said, that's the name of my company.
• 5:23
  He goes, great.
• 5:24
  What do you do?
• 5:25
  And I said, great question.
• 5:27
  I'm something like Marie Forleo.
• 5:30
  And that was.
• 5:30
  That was the extent of what I had as far as clarity, as far as what a coaching company was.
• 5:36
  And for a year and a half, I dabbled in lack of action, or what I lovingly call productive procrastination.
• 5:44
  Doing all the things that make a business look sparkly and pretty on the outside.
• 5:48
  The photo shoots, the branding, the website, the copywriting, the Instagram posts.
• 5:54
  And yet my business made $150 with $115 in one year.
• 6:00
  And that was a place that I had grown into what I call financial bulimia, where I leveraged my Pilates business.
• 6:11
  I'd resurface that to support my coaching business.
• 6:15
  I was in such a place of doubt and disbelief and questioning and fear of rejection, fear of getting sued, fear of repercussions, fear of rejected, that I was not moving anything, I was not moving the needle.
• 6:31
  And it wasn't until I discovered that I was pregnant with my first son that I said my business has to succeed.
• 6:38
  What I've been doing has just been playing hobbyist and playing safe.
• 6:43
  I know this is a mindset problem.
• 6:44
  I know that I can fix this.
• 6:45
  I recognize the mindset problem is what I call money bulimia or financial bulimia, because I'd Overcome bulimia with 10, a 10 year battle with bulimia when I was younger with no psychological or medical intervention, and I'd overcome it
• 6:59
  within two years.
• 7:00
  And I knew I had a nine month deadline to shift my mindset and shift my results as far as my business was concerned.
• 7:06
  And I went off and I got certified in nlp, timeline therapy and hypnosis.
• 7:10
  I then started actually growing my business and started actually putting myself out there and getting sales.
• 7:17
  And once I got my first $2,000 client, I said, oh yeah, I remember this, I remember I know how to do this.
• 7:25
  And that alone built the confidence for me to completely go all in and scale and grow.
• 7:31
  And by 2018 I had replaced my husband's income and by 2020 I was the sole breadwinner while we got stuck in Australia living abroad during COVID And fortunately I'd had a digital based business since 2018.
• 7:46
  So we grew 300 that year and then 150 the year after.
• 7:51
  Even while I had a child, lost another child, lost three family members, including my father and two family friends and had just massive life transitions from that and then started a second business when I had my second child
• 8:05
  because why not?
• 8:07
  Okay, wow, appreciate, appreciate all that.
• 8:11
  A whole lot to unpack there.
• 8:14
  So you, you had by all means like a successful career on the surface, but you weren't happy and you had all these internal issues with mindset and the self awareness to realize that that's what was holding you back
• 8:32
  or causing you to sabotage.
• 8:33
  And that's what needed to change.
• 8:36
  And I want to get into how, how you scaled up and everything.
• 8:39
  But, but first you mentioned a couple times here financial bulimia.
• 8:44
  Can you just for our listeners kind of go into more detail about what that is and, and how it affected you?
• 8:51
  Yeah.
• 8:52
  So if you think of an entrepreneur, typically the biggest thing that they're scared of is like taxes at the end.
• 8:58
  And this is what I learned.
• 8:59
  I'm a second generation entrepreneur and you take the money in, so you consume the money and then you spit it all back out, you vomit it up in the form of operational expenses.
• 9:11
  And so there's very little profit.
• 9:13
  And sometimes there's a lot of cash flow bottlenecks and a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs have this as a regular business model with how they run their businesses.
• 9:27
  I've sat in rooms with entrepreneurs making multiple millions of dollars and they're still like, I don't know if I can pay, pay weeks.
• 9:35
  Because that, it's the perception and the struggle with having it that I, I really, there's a concept of money.
• 9:51
  Money is very much, it's, it's a resource.
• 9:53
  It's like food.
• 9:54
  And if you think of it like food, food nourishes the body.
• 10:00
  But when there are belief systems at play that cause you to doubt yourself, that make you think that you don't deserve to have the success that you're having, that are self sabotage patterns in essence, then having nourishment, if
• 10:15
  you believe you don't deserve it, well then spit it back out in the form of operational expenses and somehow then you're back at that point.
• 10:23
  And a lot of times this can also be an entrepreneur's motivation strategy.
• 10:26
  When you've come from some form of trauma and most of the entrepreneurs I work with have either had childhood trauma or some form of shock trauma with like losing a business, losing a spouse during, you know, going through
• 10:36
  a divorce or something while they were scaling.
• 10:39
  And when you've had a trauma, there can, that trauma can create a feeling of insecurity in the body and actually a feeling with familiarity with the security of risk.
• 10:53
  So you would, and this is all subconscious, subconsciously I was more comfortable putting myself in a place of a cash flow and profit crisis rather than letting my business nourish me.
• 11:06
  And it wasn't until I, I became a mother that I was like, I need to be nourished so I can nourish my child.
• 11:12
  That, that shifted from a scarcity mindset and ultimately an underlying belief of deserving and shifted into me seeing how can I allow money to nourish me, how can I let my business nourish me and how can I allow
• 11:28
  myself to receive as well as give.
• 11:32
  Okay, so it sounds like what you're saying is you and, and many, I guess when you say many entrepreneurs are so comfortable with the familiarity of the risk and the barely making payroll and the kind of just getting
• 11:50
  by type of trauma feeling that they would rather stay in that because it's familiar rather than I guess, evolve into the unknown.
• 11:59
  Is that what you're saying?
• 12:00
  Yeah, a lot of times.
• 12:01
  Because when you have, when you are familiar there is a level of safety with what you have known.
• 12:09
  And a lot of entrepreneurs have struggled and it doesn't matter how much they're making.
• 12:16
  They could be making $50,000 a year, they could be making multiple millions of dollars a year.
• 12:20
  But somehow it's not the revenue of what you consume in, it's what's being expended out and ultimately profit and cash flow are king and they nourish the body and the business and they make you feel stable.
• 12:34
  Like just the thought.
• 12:36
  I would be curious as to how many entrepreneurs out there have a three month buffer in operating expenses available to like nourish the business in case any, like, even if you made no other sales that you would be
• 12:48
  able to fully operate and pay complete payroll.
• 12:51
  A lot of businesses don't have that.
• 12:53
  And that cons the concept of financial bulimia and money bulimia.
• 13:00
  It's because of our, our energetic set point when it comes to money.
• 13:04
  Just like our body has a set point around our weight and in order to lose weight we have to shift our set point where we're familiar, where with our body it may gain five pounds, it may lose five
• 13:14
  pounds, but generally it stays around the same place until significant changes or significant bad habits stack up and then that weight increases.
• 13:22
  Well, the body with money it's just opposite.
• 13:25
  There's a comfort level with the amount of money that you retain, with the amount of money that you bring in and the amount of money that you spend and when you are and it doesn't, and I've seen this
• 13:36
  coaching nine years of entrepreneurs.
• 13:40
  It doesn't matter how much money the business or you are personally making, that that set point is what needs to shift ultimately both energetically and emotionally and physically so that you can start feeling safe in your body, which
• 13:57
  is run by your subconscious mind with having and holding and receiving and hanging on to more money.
• 14:05
  To ultimately create wealth, not just bring in and promote your next, you know, 50k, 100k month.
• 14:12
  Okay, so you realize that you have this issue, and then how did you overcome that?
• 14:20
  The biggest barrier to productivity and growth is courage.
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  And so often when I coach entrepreneurs, they know what they should do.
• 14:32
  Like, you know, you should go make sales.
• 14:35
  You know, you should fire that team member.
• 14:37
  You know, you should have more conversations with your bookkeeper.
• 14:42
  You know, you should probably, you know, look at your, your p.
• 14:47
  L more than just once a month.
• 14:49
  But at the same time, a lot of times they don't do.
• 14:53
  We don't do what we know we should do.
• 14:55
  And that comes from the singular question, am I approaching or am I avoiding?
• 15:01
  And when you can look, because what you approach, you're going to have to approach with courage.
• 15:05
  You're going to have to face it.
• 15:06
  You're going to face that fear early on and leaning into approaching.
• 15:11
  So every time my body would start to feel the somatic feelings of fear and of the old pattern of like, oh, I'd rather avoid this.
• 15:20
  I'd rather not follow up with that person.
• 15:23
  I'd rather not have that conversation with my team member.
• 15:26
  I'd rather not do that thing that I know I should do.
• 15:31
  I approach and I lean in.
• 15:33
  And that was a singular.
• 15:35
  Because we can mentally go through all the.
• 15:37
  The rigmarole of shifting the subconscious mind.
• 15:40
  And then there's.
• 15:41
  There's some beautiful shifts that you can have, but ultimately it's taking that action.
• 15:45
  And where I see a lot of female entrepreneurs more specifically get stuck and struggle is they do all these other extraneous actions.
• 15:52
  I'm not saying journaling doesn't help.
• 15:54
  I'm not saying holding the, the energetic alignment doesn't help.
• 15:58
  And, you know, taking salt baths and all the nice things that are, that I see more female entrepreneurs doing.
• 16:06
  I'm also saying there are certain levels of courageous action that need to be taken that will progress you forward faster.
• 16:13
  And it's leaning into those audacious acts of courage every day and saying, like, what is that big act of courage that I need to do today to move the needle the most?
• 16:23
  Because ultimately that's.
• 16:25
  That's where the goalposts will be moved.
• 16:28
  Okay, so beyond all the techniques and, and other stuff, right, that's out there, you're saying the singular most important thing is just doing those things that scare you.
• 16:41
  Like, just do it in terms of something you're avoiding, an action, you know, that needs to be taken.
• 16:45
  But maybe there's some anxiety around just the singular act of just doing it is, is the most important thing.
• 16:51
  That's what you're saying.
• 16:52
  Yeah.
• 16:52
  Because if you were to think about it, we have the mental plane where we have the emotional plane and then we have the physical plane.
• 17:00
  A lot of entrepreneurs when, especially the spiritual entrepreneurs, when they start getting into spirituality or understanding the unconscious mind, a lot of their actions stay stuck in this loop on the mental and emotional realm.
• 17:14
  Oh, I'll just shift being angry or I'll just shift my, my frustration and I'll just bring more joy.
• 17:21
  But if you're not actually doing the action that's scaring you, if you're not actually having that moment of okay, I'm just gonna, as, as one of my clients says, jfti, just effing do it.
• 17:35
  That courageous action that you know you should do a lot of times that's on the other side of another person and whether that's holding a boundary with a client and saying no.
• 17:45
  Our contract is, was for this amount of time and you know, if you want to go farther, then we need to renegotiate.
• 17:54
  Instead of doing the people pleasing thing where it's like, oh, well, you know, I still want them to like me and I want them to give me a great review on trustpilot and I want, you know, I, I,
• 18:03
  I, I, I would rather not, I would rather give them a refund.
• 18:06
  Even though in our contract that says I don't issue refunds.
• 18:09
  And those people pleasing habits that cause us to self sabotage our own boundaries and our own growth and those other, those things that are on the other side of courage when we do those actions, that's what actually moves
• 18:20
  the needle.
• 18:21
  Okay, all right.
• 18:23
  And then so let's get into when you finally discover this, you get pregnant, you realize the self sabotage and you realize the clock is ticking and you really need to get your ish together in a hurry.
• 18:38
  Like what happens next?
• 18:40
  How did you do that?
• 18:43
  So like any new coach, like didn't know where to start, but I knew that conversations create conversions and I just started having conversations.
• 18:54
  I started having conversations anywhere I could on LinkedIn.
• 18:57
  Not necessarily.
• 18:58
  I think where a lot of entrepreneurs do this incorrectly is they go and they start being like that guy at the bar who's really wants to have a girlfriend and they just, he's so, he's kind of desperate and
• 19:12
  asking everyone and looking to propose to everyone.
• 19:15
  I'm like, no, no, not every client is, not every person is a client, but have conversations.
• 19:21
  A person may know a client, a person may be Able to connect you to a client.
• 19:25
  A person may actually be a client, but have conversations and put yourself out there and make offers.
• 19:31
  So I set a daily KPI for a the amount of offers that I was going to make every day and be the amount of connections that I was going to make.
• 19:38
  And as I said in my book, make every Podcast want you.
• 19:40
  It really started with this theory that was the first thing that built my success in my Pilates business and my first business, which was a lesson that was taught to me by my mother when I was 6 years
• 19:51
  old and had only one friend in first grade.
• 19:55
  And I had.
• 19:57
  And my friend got the flu, and I was paralyzed of speaking to anyone.
• 20:03
  I was so scared.
• 20:04
  I was like, what am I going to do?
• 20:04
  I'm going to sit alone for a whole week because she has the flu.
• 20:08
  And I asked my mom, how do I make more friends?
• 20:11
  And she said, can go up to 10 people and say hi with their name.
• 20:16
  No expectations, no I'm gonna, like, sell to you or get you to do this one thing, but just hi and start a conversation.
• 20:26
  And so I started having conversations.
• 20:28
  And that was really one of the things that scaled was I started making offers daily and having conversations regularly.
• 20:36
  And then what.
• 20:37
  Why I started the podcast guesting company in 2022 was because by having conversations through going on other people's podcasts, that had generated a quarter of a million dollars in sales for my coaching business.
• 20:50
  And I said, well, I think I'm onto something.
• 20:52
  I think that this is more than just my own industry with coaching.
• 20:56
  And I started taking on clients in industries such as bookkeeping, other entrepreneurs in tech, in biohacking, in authorship, thought leaders.
• 21:07
  And they were starting to see results as well.
• 21:10
  Realtors and real estate investors.
• 21:12
  Having conversations creates conversions.
• 21:14
  And having conversations in a public forum, such as a podcast, where it's an intimate environment, but then it's broadcast out, there's more opportunity for more people to listen in on that conversation.
• 21:25
  And it just made sense to start that second business.
• 21:29
  But that's what started scaling, was really recognizing the power in human relationships.
• 21:35
  And that's typically what I see a lot of people avoid, is they want to find that magic hack.
• 21:40
  They want to press the button and have all the interwebs flow in on their ads.
• 21:44
  And you can.
• 21:45
  You can definitely have success in ads.
• 21:48
  And those ads come from fulfilling a need like showing how you're going to solve a problem and being of service in a relationship.
• 21:59
  Okay, now having conversations, right?
• 22:02
  Clearly great idea.
• 22:04
  And a lot of entrepreneurs network relentlessly and want to expand and.
• 22:10
  But let's, let's talk about LinkedIn specifically, because a big problem, and I've talked about this with many colleagues and friends is, I mean, you know, the term that's commonly thrown around is the pitch.
• 22:21
  Slap, oh, my gosh, all the time.
• 22:23
  You know, and so.
• 22:24
  Right.
• 22:25
  Clearly you want to connect, you want to find that ideal client, you want to find who's going to be the right fit for you.
• 22:30
  But so many people out there are doing it wrong and specifically too, right within the consulting or the coaching industry.
• 22:38
  I mean, I've seen it firsthand where you just talk to somebody and they're trying to, they're trying to sell you on services on that first call.
• 22:46
  So, like, talk about how, because clearly you had success doing this, you scaled up your business.
• 22:52
  What's the right way to, to do that?
• 22:56
  I like to look at other models and other areas for finding the right way.
• 23:01
  And so I always look at dating.
• 23:04
  Like, in dating, when you're going into having a relationship, I bet that you're not asking for marriage on the first date.
• 23:12
  Like, I bet.
• 23:14
  And yet so many people when they're asking for that sale on the first date, on the first meeting and thinking, oh, I'm going to add value to the person.
• 23:22
  No, you're adding value to your own bank account.
• 23:24
  You're more focused on yourself.
• 23:27
  What everybody is asking and wondering is, what can you do for me?
• 23:33
  And as in me, as in like, the other person on the other side.
• 23:38
  And so not going in.
• 23:40
  It's just the opposite of saying not going in and attacking it from, like, oh, I'm going to be so of service to you and look at how amazing I am and all the things that we can do for
• 23:50
  you because, oh, that's going to actually be of service for you.
• 23:53
  It's going in and starting out with questions like, even just before this podcast, like, Dave, I asked you the question of where is your audience?
• 24:01
  Like, what are you struggling with?
• 24:03
  What is the pain?
• 24:03
  What is the struggle?
• 24:05
  What.
• 24:05
  And you said you shared with me some of the struggles that you found from your audience.
• 24:10
  Because the, the content that I would deliver for an entrepreneur who's just starting out would be different than the content that I would give for an entrepreneur who has a team of 50 and being able to have discernment.
• 24:24
  And look at how can you serve that other person and their audience and what they're already building right now, rather than how can this just be for me.
• 24:33
  We have to start looking at, through the lens of service for others, not just being of service to yourselves.
• 24:41
  And then so I do get the follow up question from a lot of my community is well, how do I add value?
• 24:46
  Like, oh, I was thinking of adding value by doing this free class for someone.
• 24:49
  I was like, well, yeah, if they've expressed that they want a free class or they've expressed that they need to solve that immediate problem.
• 24:55
  But you can also just make a small and simple ask and start a conversation where you're saying, hey, do you have a YouTube channel or do you have a podcast that I can drop a review for?
• 25:09
  As, as, as just a favor.
• 25:12
  Like I just like to do this, I'd love to, to support you and what you're doing.
• 25:17
  Let me be of generosity first and then see where this relationship goes.
• 25:23
  Rather than being a taker.
• 25:25
  No, I mean in dating, nobody wants to be in a relationship with a taker.
• 25:28
  That's called a narcissist.
• 25:30
  The same is true in business.
• 25:31
  Like, we don't want to be in relationship with someone who's just interested in solely what they can, what we, how we can benefit their bottom line.
• 25:39
  We are interested in having relationships with people who care who, people who actually given us people who show up who we can trust and that, who show us that they can actually serve us and then from there that
• 25:54
  we build.
• 25:56
  Okay, all right, so as you're scaling the, the coaching business up and then eventually you started the podcast agency, what are some of the challenges that you, you encountered?
• 26:10
  I mean babysitting, that was one.
• 26:18
  Doing it as a mom is definitely a challenge when competing priorities take place.
• 26:24
  And I see this with a lot of my clients who have younger kids as parents, sometimes it is inconvenient.
• 26:33
  And the biggest thing that I can say is embrace the inconvenience because entrepreneurship is not convenient.
• 26:40
  And if you're just going to do it when you're in a good mood, that's not a commitment, that's not devotion.
• 26:44
  That's a business.
• 26:46
  That is, that is, that is a hobby.
• 26:53
  That is something you enjoy.
• 26:54
  That doesn't necessarily mean that you are fully in and fully committed.
• 26:59
  The article that I wrote for Forbes was are you in and it's complicated relationship with your business?
• 27:04
  And if you think of in terms of relationships, we have an energetic relationship with money and we also have an energetic relationship with our business.
• 27:14
  And a lot of times a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning stages, just like with having an infant child, we're putting so much of ourselves into that.
• 27:23
  And yet a lot of times we're not receiving a lot.
• 27:27
  And if we're not receiving a lot in the terms of sales, because that's how a business shows you that it loves you, returns you, returns to you in the fall of sales.
• 27:37
  If you're not saying that, then there's a shift that needs to happen in how you're showing up for the, for the business.
• 27:42
  And maybe it's in the offer, maybe it's in the model, maybe it's how you're doing it, maybe it's in what you're doing.
• 27:48
  I had a big lesson when I started the the podcast agency just this past year because we had the model of having a full on done for you endtoend podcast booking agency.
• 28:00
  And I was in that model, wrote the book on on successful Podcast Casting how to Leverage It Without Promoting My Book, and then came back five months pregnant, recognizing that we had a serious bottleneck with our model.
• 28:18
  And what more of our clients were asking more of for me was for my coaching and consulting and less for the done for you services.
• 28:24
  So I wasn't actually operating in my zone of genius.
• 28:27
  I was operating my zone of excellence and my team was operating in their zone of competence.
• 28:32
  But they weren't actually, we all weren't operating in our zone of genius.
• 28:36
  So I pivoted the model in Q4, five months pregnant with my third child, borderline anemic, and said, we're going to pivot the model to what our clients are asking for more of from me, which is coaching and high
• 28:49
  level coaching and consulting.
• 28:51
  And instead, and we're going to build the system, support them in having a system that allows them to have autonomy, not having us have a codependent relationship with our clients because we were starting to feel like a monkey
• 29:02
  in the middle.
• 29:03
  In essence, where we would get the podcast for our client, lob it over to our client, they we would have to do some shuffling and juggling in the middle and sometimes our client would get back to us and
• 29:13
  sometimes they wouldn't and then that podcast slot would be gone.
• 29:15
  And then so we'd have to lob it back again.
• 29:17
  And I realized I didn't like being in that situation.
• 29:19
  I didn't like putting my team in that situation.
• 29:21
  And I let go, ended up in Q4 of last year, let go of 84, 85% of my team pivoted into a consulting model.
• 29:29
  We saw our scales or scales, our sales skyrocket.
• 29:34
  And that said to me, okay, now we're in the right model, but we have to surrender the good or the expected and allow Ourselves to recognize where is our zone of genius.
• 29:46
  I have seen a direct correlation between the amount of time an entrepreneur and each member of their team see spends and their zone of genius and the amount of income the business is making.
• 29:57
  And a lot of times entrepreneurs, especially when they're starting out, they get stuck in the space called the zone of competence, or worse, the zone of excellence.
• 30:06
  The zone of competence is where you're doing all those things that you can do, but you're not actually, they're not in your zone of genius.
• 30:13
  So, for example, doing the canva images, scheduling your own emails, editing your own podcast, starting a podcast when, which is I say in my.
• 30:23
  My book, I'm like, well, that's kind of like adding a baby to.
• 30:27
  To a relationship that you're like, oh, this relationship is in trouble.
• 30:30
  And now let's add a baby to it.
• 30:33
  Because we want to look at what are those.
• 30:37
  What are those things that only we can do that are really our true light, our divine purpose, in my language, shining through?
• 30:46
  And how can we then build a support system of other people's geniuses to allow us to us all be operating in that genius zone?
• 30:55
  And that's how you scale.
• 30:57
  Okay, excellent point there.
• 30:59
  Hold on.
• 30:59
  I lost your sound.
• 31:01
  How's this?
• 31:02
  Let me see.
• 31:05
  I hear you just fine.
• 31:06
  Okay, now I can hear you.
• 31:08
  Okay, so let's just dive into that a little deeper.
• 31:11
  So because you talk about zone of competence.
• 31:14
  Zone of excellence.
• 31:16
  Zone of genius.
• 31:18
  So if.
• 31:18
  If the true magic happens when an entrepreneur spends as much time as possible of their time.
• 31:25
  Okay.
• 31:26
  In the zone of genius.
• 31:27
  I mean, how do you distinguish between a zone of excellence and a zone of genius?
• 31:33
  So this one is tricky, but it's super fun when you.
• 31:36
  When you solve it, because excellence is typically the thing that you are going to be receiving a lot of validation for.
• 31:43
  Oh, your branding is so great.
• 31:45
  Oh, your website looks so amazing.
• 31:48
  To give you an example, when I first started my coaching, I was surprised that people just having conversation with me could have breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough.
• 31:58
  I started to doubt my own capabilities and question that.
• 32:02
  So I took a skill set that was in my zone of excellence, building websites.
• 32:06
  And this was back in 2017.
• 32:08
  And I added that into my packages and I found myself, while I was getting praise from my clients, I would coach them on their business.
• 32:15
  I'd help them build the actual structure of their website and web Persona.
• 32:21
  And while my clients would praise.
• 32:23
  Oh, it looks so good.
• 32:24
  Oh, you're.
• 32:25
  You know, this looks so amazing.
• 32:27
  They were getting the breakthroughs from the zone of genius.
• 32:30
  The praise was coming from the zone of excellence and I was feeling depleted and resentful after a weekend of building a client's website.
• 32:39
  And that was when I realized that the praise wasn't worth it.
• 32:44
  And a lot of times that zone of excellence is a tricky place to play because people will praise you for those skill sets.
• 32:52
  They will say, oh my gosh, your systems are so amazing.
• 32:55
  They will say certain things, but that's not really where your genius zone lies.
• 33:02
  The zone of competence is the one that's all the things that you can do, but you should really be paying someone else to do.
• 33:08
  And as one of my mentors put it, basically, if you are wanting to grow to a hundred thousand dollars a year, you, you basically your hourly rate, if you were to work a traditional 50 hour week, 7, 5
• 33:24
  days a week, 7 hours a day, your hourly rate would be about $80 per hour to make 100k a year.
• 33:32
  If you're doing 15 an hour tasks playing around on Canva as a graphic designer, you're only going to make what 15 an hour tasks playing around on Canva as a graphic designer are going to do.
• 33:43
  Even if you're not the graphic designer in your business, like even if you are wearing all those hats.
• 33:49
  So you have to look as an entrepreneur, where is the hat that most needs you?
• 33:53
  And typically that's in the role of the visionary.
• 33:55
  And the role of the visionary is not one that's praised because as kids, as someone, especially growing up in America, we're praised for the doing.
• 34:02
  High achievers are praised for, oh, you do so much versus oh, you're not so much praised for how you think.
• 34:09
  And when you, as you elevate your role, your role is less in doing the tactile things inside of your business and more for the strategic thinking and living in that visionary seat and holding the vision for the company
• 34:23
  and the vision for the culture and having the ability to see strategically what systems need to be placed where in order to grow even further.
• 34:33
  And the more you can elevate and sit in that seat of the visionary and sit in that role, if that is your true role, that's like your zone of genius space.
• 34:43
  Some people are more executioners, some people are more strategic thinkers and that's actually their zone of genius.
• 34:48
  And they need to bring in someone for that visionary space.
• 34:52
  But more often than not, the people that I work with are the visionaries.
• 34:56
  They're the founders or the entrepreneurs.
• 34:57
  They have the idea, the goal, the, the vision for where they want their business to go, but they're stuck doing the 10, $20 an hour tasks in their business, like doing your own books, for example.
• 35:11
  And that's what keeps people stuck and in a bottleneck because they'll be in their zone of competence and not really operate in that zone of genius where they need to be.
• 35:21
  Okay, all right, well, Kimberly, I could talk to you for hours about all this, but we've, we've got a wrap here shortly.
• 35:27
  So just for everyone, if they're hearing this and they're resonating with these ideas and then they want to get in touch with you and find out more about your practice and how you can potentially help them, what's the
• 35:39
  best way people can reach out to you?
• 35:41
  If you love this podcast and you're a fan of podcasts, just head on over to crownyourself.com forward/podcast podcast and listen to the crowd yourself podcast and come into our world.
• 35:50
  And if you love this and are like, oh, I'd love to learn more about podcast guesting and how to leverage that for my business and how that could work, then just go to communicationqueens.com forward/book and grab a copy
• 36:01
  of Make Every Podcast want you.
• 36:04
  All right, Appreciate that.
• 36:05
  We'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 36:08
  Kimberly, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom from your journey with our audience.
• 36:13
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 36:14
  Awesome.
• 36:15
  Thank you so much, Dave.
• 36:16
  I so appreciate it.