S2: Episode 9: Katrina Widener, Solopreneur and Business Coach

Kickass Coach is how Katrina styles her approach to the work she does with her clients. This Minneapolis solopreneur has a ton of words of wisdom. From her own experience of being laid off repeatedly due to re-structuring or her thought processes about career decisions and managing the day to day of life’s journey. When Katrina decides to do something that feels right, she goes for it. From her own experience in a variety of roles, she provides great advice for all of as we think about what do in our careers, the cultures we work in and the moments that we are doing the work we love. She has great advice about finding the environment where we are most “lit up”.
 
 More on Ford Keast Human Resources can be found here: https://www.fordkeast.com/services/human-resource-consulting/

 & for all the podcast and YouTube information visit our website:
 https://www.career-resilience.com/

 If you enjoyed this podcast or our YouTube video and need support in your own career resilience please do get in contact with Jann at HR@fordkeasthrc.ca

 We would love to hear from you! Want to show your support? Subscribe and leave a review! It means a lot! Thank you

Jann Danyluk, Career Resilience. 

Transcript

 | 00:06 | Welcome to season two of Career Resilience, where we talk with people about their career parks and their career journey, and maybe we can all learn from each other. My name is Jann Danyluk and I'm a human resources consultant in London, Ontario, Canada. I work with Ford Keast LLP, providing human resources, advice and counsel to my business clients.

 | 00:27 | They also support people through individual one on one coaching in helping with career development. I hope you will enjoy our series where we talk with ordinary, extraordinary people. We get to hear about interesting journeys. We get to talk with people about failures, successes, advice and counsel to us as we develop our own careers. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with these people, and I hope you'll enjoy listening to it. And now for some logistics, please subscribe on YouTube.

 | 00:58 | Or if you're a listener, please follow me wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have a chance, I hope you'll visit my website. Careered Dash Resilience dot com. Welcome. Hello. Today, my guest is Katrina Widener. That's what I feel so properly or pretty close to travel Legionnaire. OK, perfect. So welcome, Katrina. Really appreciate you being on. Career resilience with me and talking with us about your career resilience.

 | 01:30 | Now you are a coach, a business coach and you coach that a small business is in the in their work. And I just wondered why you throw in the bad ass. Is there a difference between bad ass and just a small business? I honestly would just say the main reason I have that bad ass thrown in there is twofold. The first one is right.

 | 01:57 | If I am trying to get like my juicy, ideal clients, the person who I love working with, who loves working with me. Oftentimes they're going to see that bad ass and kind of get an idea of who I am, right? They're going to say like, Oh, this is a person who like, is maybe a little bit more edgy themselves. Maybe as approaching business coaching in an alternate way is like really getting like. Like, honestly, just like a different approach to the way that we look at business coaching a little less unbuttoned, a little bit more informal.

 | 02:31 | And so it's yeah, it's like an indicator for the person to kind of get to know me and maybe self-identify. But also there's a certain confidence about someone who's like, Yeah, I'm a bad ass right now or someone who is like, I want to be a bad ass like it could be either or. And so also giving my clients that little extra like, Oh yeah, that feels good. That's it. That's something I want to self-identify as.

 | 02:59 | It starts their mindset shift even before we start working together. It starts them kind of like being like, I'm going to choose to step into that role and choose to believe myself as a bad ass almost immediately. OK. So in what way are you a badass? Yeah, I think honestly for me. Being 31 and having had a business of my own for five years, but I have been full time in for five years, is like my number one biggest way that I'm like, Hell, yeah, I'm a bad ass.

 | 03:34 | Yeah, but also like I, I am the type of person where when I decide to do something and like I mentioned beforehand, I approached business coaching in a much less formal way. I approach it really in an individualized way, right? We're looking at the clients themselves, what they like, what they don't like. Are you an extrovert? Are you an introvert? Who are you? And utilizing that to actually build out their business and their business plan, as opposed to cookie cutter advice like every single person, is going to go through the exact same format of how to find success in their business, because personally, I don't believe that that is going to be super successful.

 | 04:12 | And stepping into that role as bad ass and being a bad ass really is kind of saying like, Hey, like this, like, I'm a bad ass. And the fact that like, I'm not going to tell you how to do things the way that every single other coach out there is going to tell you how to do things. I'm not going to give everyone the exact same advice. I'm also not going to let you like kind of hide in our conversations. I'm not going to let you kind of sit back on your laurels and just say, like, OK, if I just execute tasks one through five, then I'll be a successful business owner.

 | 04:44 | I'm also going to challenge you a little bit and get you start thinking about yourself and what you do in a different way. And I firmly believe that that in and of itself is bad as well. I think so. So let's just talk about your background a little bit before we get into the billions and how you've had to be resilient. So tell me about your educational background. Let's start there. Yeah, definitely. So I went to college and I actually graduated with two different degrees.

 | 05:15 | I have a degree in magazine journalism and a degree in arts and sciences, which is specifically history. And that was just because I loved history and I loved writing, and I loved learning about all of that. And we're really the magazine journalism was very much learning how to write and edit, how to do social media, how to market and how to work with an ideal client, how to create a product that's really specifically tailored to the person that is supposed to buy it.

 | 05:46 | And not just like, I'm doing this because it sounds fun to me. Work on it. Hmm. So I started out with magazine journalism and history, and most of my will say nine to five roles in my professional career have been within the magazine industry sphere or within the marketing sphere. So that makes I. Yeah, I worked for several titles, including Better Homes and Gardens magazine and several other titles within their parent company, Meredith Corporation.

 | 06:19 | I've freelanced full time as a journalist beforehand, and I've also worked full time as a marketing specialist and social media manager for small businesses. OK, so I like to kind of say like I did the big, big company, huge corporation offices all over the country. I freelance and did it on my own. And then I also worked for a startup, really small company. So I kind of got the full range of experience before I went out and started my own business.

 | 06:50 | And in the magazine company. So when you when you were working in the big, how were you and how did you have to be resilient through that process? So my experience working in a big corporation and I will say that this is probably true for most people who work in really big corporations. I was a small piece of the machine that was the whole company, right? Like I was one teeny tiny piece.

 | 07:20 | And I loved the team that I worked on, but that meant I was entirely replaceable. Right. I think I got laid off from that one company and rehired five times. Like they would, they would completely dissolve one of the magazines I was working on, and that would be gone. And then I'd get rehired for a different magazine, and then I'd be working for that magazine and they'd be like, Oh, anyone who's at this level, that whole level across the company is going to get laid off.

 | 07:51 | So I had so many connections I could get hired and rehired within all of these different departments, different magazines, and different areas. I worked in the test kitchen for a while. I worked for their in-house marketing solution for a while. I worked for several different magazine titles. And it just very much felt like this lack of.

 | 08:16 | Value placed on the individual worker and more like very much the stereotypical big, big corporation idea of the decisions are being made at the top. Those decisions are not consulting anyone in the middle. Anyone in the bottom. And like I said, I was laid off, I believe, five different times and rehired within the company over and over and over again.

 | 08:43 | Well, I think that many people in large corporations feel that there are no more than anything else, but that would really come into relief if you were being laid off, because that's a real lack of control, isn't it? Oh, definitely. Yeah. I mean, there was one point of time when I was working at one magazine and in the in-house marketing solutions and.

 | 09:13 | Budgeting came around is that time of year, and I got laid off from both jobs at the same time. Literally 24 hours apart, I was like, OK, well, at least I have this other one that I can work on, and they're like, Nope, that one's gone, too. And I had to completely find a new role after losing both of those previous ones. So it is one of those situations where you're like, I really just felt like I was along for the ride. This was the very beginning of my professional career.

 | 09:41 | This was I worked, for instance, at Better Homes and Gardens magazine for two years, and after two years, that was when it was an along like the whole line of people at my level. Everyone got laid off. It was not my department, it was not my title. It was not like specific to what I was doing was across the entire corporation.

 | 10:08 | Yeah, and it's just very interesting how you pick yourself back up time and time and time again when the same situation happens repeatedly within the same company. So that's my question to you then, Katrina. How did you cope with that? What is it about you that enabled you to cope with that? I think in reality, like I was able to one rest on the fact that I had a ton of like a huge network.

 | 10:40 | If anybody who is listening to this already knows me, community is one of the things I talk about all the time. I love meeting new people. I love expanding my network. I love connecting people. I have clients who come to me and they say, like, Hey, I am a commercial photographer and we'll be having a meeting. I'll be like, Hey, I have three people I want to introduce you to so that you can make new business connections and relying on that network and growing that network and really putting time and effort into it, right?

 | 11:11 | Not just like giving someone a business card at a networking event, but growing relationships and sending them clients and actually building a true foundation of community that first and foremost, made it really easy for me to say, I know I can fall back on this and I can find another job. Like I found every single job that I've had within that corporation through a connection, so I knew that another one was going to be coming up.

 | 11:40 | But I think also what was helpful for me was to separate in my mind knowing that getting laid off was not anything personal. It was not a direct reflection on who I am and the work I was doing and what I was producing. It was really a situational event. And every single time when I would get laid off, the next job would be that much closer to what I wanted to do, right? It allowed me to say, especially because it was early in my career, like, this isn't what I want to do.

 | 12:10 | This is not the ideal role. And so even though I got laid off, that means now I can look for a role that's that much closer to what I want to end up doing. Then when did you know what you wanted to end up doing and what was that? It's so for me, it was a little bit, we'll say, nontraditional. I knew I wanted to work. It was less about the role that I had. I'll put it that way. This is why it's nontraditional.

 | 12:39 | I wasn't looking to say like, I want to be this level of magazine owner or editor at this company. By this point of time, it was I want to work in a team that really, really values me. I want to do work that I love doing every single day that I'm interested in. I want to be able to sit down. And sure, maybe if I'm working really hard on a project, go into some overtime, but also end the day when I need to, because the things I value are my relationships.

 | 13:09 | My family, my friends, like my relationship with myself and knowing the qualities of the positions that I wanted, more so than getting caught up in a title or a role description or those sorts of situations now allowed me to maybe take a holistic look at what I was going to take a next step into, as opposed to just moving laterally, right?

 | 13:35 | Like saying, OK, I'm looking for a job because I just got laid off or when I was freelancing, it was I'm looking for a job because I'm tired of being alone all the time. As a freelancer, I'm an extrovert. I love being around people and I don't want to make a lateral shift. I want to make a forward change. And how can I differentiate between that? And it's really, who do I like myself? What moments do I like myself in? Are there the moments when I am sitting in a ton of meetings with people being super collaborative and creative and coming up with new ideas?

 | 14:10 | Or is it when I'm stuck behind a. A computer doing data entry because one of those sounds really fun to me and the other one does not. I think I was always like, What's the next position that lets me to get closer to the version of who I am, but I want to be? When did you take the path into coaching? So I worked in the magazine industry and like I said, I freelance after freelancing. During that year, I freelance full time for one year.

 | 14:41 | I left Des Moines, Iowa, where I was living for the magazine jobs, and I'm originally from Minnesota. And so I was like, If I am freelancing full time and I have no need to be in an office, I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity to move back to where my family is, where my core friend group is. And I did it. I took the job and I just like ended the lease in my apartment and moved back home.

 | 15:09 | And I got here and I was like, all my friends are in nine to five jobs. And when I was in Iowa, I had a group of other freelancer friends so we could work together. We could spend some time together. I could go into the office. I was freelancing for a bunch of magazine titles. I could go into the office if needed for meetings and the like. I got here and I was like, I'm bored and I'm lonely, and I want to spend time with other people.

 | 15:37 | And what's an easy way to spend time with other people? Getting a job, you get to spend a lot of time with people all day long every single day. So this is when I made the shift into more marketing specific roles. Okay. I worked for a small business as their marketing specialist and social media manager. I worked there for four years, I believe, before I then decided to quit my job and move forward as a coach and really be there a couple big shifts for me.

 | 16:10 | There is one point of time in 2017 where I had been in my company for so long and I knew it was going downhill. The environment was getting toxic. The culture was getting toxic. If I'm being really, really honest and frank, I would not be surprising to see a member of my team leave a closed door meeting crying. It was.

 | 16:39 | It was not a great place to work, and I had no qualms about the quality of work I was doing or the fact that I was good at my work. But when you work in an environment like that, you slowly start to dissociate and disengage. Yeah, like why am I? I can say pretty confidently, I was depressed that year. I had anxiety for the first time in my life and I knew exactly where it was coming from.

 | 17:11 | And simultaneously, I had some personal shifts that were happening. I had a relationship that was ending. My mom had just gone into remission after having breast cancer, and I was like, I have all of these things that are going on in my life. And I kind of had this moment where I started listening to podcasts ironically for the first time in my life and someone was sharing her story and saying she decided she had all of these things that were happening in her life, and she needed to make the decision to make something out of them.

 | 17:43 | She was like, I can let them take me further down, or I can let them be the catalyst where if you like, think of like a bow and arrow or it pulls you back, but then shoots you forward. And I listen to that podcast and I immediately was like, I, I need this to be my catalyst for moving forward. I'm deciding this is this moment for me. This is when it may look like some things are ending.

 | 18:11 | Some things are coming to a close, but really, it's the opening of the next chapter to use all of the clichés and metaphors. And so how much guts did that take? Well, my gosh, it was terrifying. OK. It was terrifying. Yes, definitely. I mean, I was convicted and what I wanted to do, and I knew without a doubt it was the right choice for me.

 | 18:37 | And the way that I came to coaching is, I actually had a friend who was like, Katrina, you know how to make people feel really good about themselves. And I was like, How do I capture that feeling in a career? How do I, if that's like the thing that I'm the most proud of someone I've ever saying to me, How do I make that come to life in a day to day basis? Yeah. And the answer for me personally was coaching.

 | 19:06 | And so I decided to start taking steps toward being a coach. And what? Is this look like? I had no idea what it looked, I was like Googling like, what is a coach? Like, How do you do this? And I feel lucky and. Because I decided to work with a coach myself. I was like, I'm still on my nine to five job. I kind of know what I'm doing. I'm doing the mindset work of doing the personal growth work.

 | 19:34 | I'm sitting down, I'm journaling. I'm answering all these questions I'm looking at, like reading all the books, right? And I was like, But also, there's that whole business aspect, and I've never ran a business beforehand. And if anyone had said, Oh, by the way, Katrina, in five years, you're going to be owning your own business, I would have been like, Yeah, and I wouldn't. I would not have believed it whatsoever. And so I hired a coach and that that helped me significantly.

 | 20:03 | And I love working with coaches for those reasons because not only was she able to answer the hard questions, how do I get M.S. right? Like, how do I actually get clients right? Like just this teeny tiny thing? How do you get clients? But also, I was able to get like, OK, but what happens if my client ask me a question and I don't know the answer and get some of those like imposter syndrome questions out of my head?

 | 20:32 | Get some of that confidence built up kind of get that clarity of this is exactly what I want to do, and this is a thing that people do and I can make a career out of it. I can make a good career out of it. And knowing that I was coming out of this, not super happy place. Yes. And I was excited about something, and I hadn't felt excited about something, and I knew that I could have left that job and made another lateral shift train.

 | 21:01 | I could leave that marketing job and get another marketing job or a social media job or writing and editing job. But I was like this. This like makes my heart feel happy this like I can get that like warm, juicy feeling when I think about making people feel good about themselves every single day. Yeah. And so that kind of helped me outweigh the huge fear I had. So it was almost like I had this feeling on both sides of the spectrum.

 | 21:29 | And if I'd only had the fear I would, I don't know if I would have been able to make the jump and move forward. But I also had that really big excitement feeling that big, juicy energy feeling. So what advice would you give to someone who was in that position that you were in there in a job where they liked the job? They're good at the job, but it's not a fit for them. In your case, it was a toxic environment. In other cases, it's just, you know what? I know this isn't the job for me.

 | 21:59 | What advice would you have for them? Because I feel what you did was really jumping off a cliff because most people have to pay the rent. I'm sure you had to pay the rent and everything that goes into not just doing the business, but getting the gigs and financing the business. There's a lot of components there besides just, you know, I know that I make people be better.

 | 22:29 | Yes, yes. For me, I was lucky I had some savings, and that was what really allowed me to, like I said, make the decision, and make the choice. I had to sit down and say, I'm choosing that this is where my savings are going. I'm choosing this over a house. I'm choosing this over these other financial goals that people might be. I'm choosing over travel, right? But not everyone needs to start their own business.

 | 22:58 | There's a lot of times people hear entrepreneurs tell their stories of like, OK, like, I hated my job. So then I left and did my own thing, and it feels almost people are like, OK, but how? And like, do I have to do that? That doesn't sound like necessarily what I want. And the thing is, is that what I always tell people to start with is I get curious about yourself. It curious about your job. Why isn't your job the right option for you? For me, I had done.

 | 23:27 | Big Corporation didn't love it. I had done freelancing. Didn't love it. I did small business, didn't love it. I kind of went through all. The option was like, Well, this is the only thing that's left. But for some people, it could just be like, Is it a culture shift? OK, I can find a company where I'm doing the same work and it's a different culture. Is it the work itself? Are you more of a creative person and you're doing more analytical stuff? Or are you more of an analytical stuff or analytical person? You're being asked to do creative stuff? Yeah.

 | 23:57 | And like, I read an article around that same point of time that was really talking about this idea of like the moments when I love myself are x y z, and the moments when I don't look myself are x y z. Hmm. And it could be the moments when I love myself or when I'm killing it in a meeting, and I'm able to provide information that everybody's excited about. Or it could be. I love myself when I'm. Sitting down to design something for my company, but I don't love the interpersonal relationships aspect of it.

 | 24:29 | Well, it's really asking yourself like, what are the things I do like? What are things I don't like and more than just like? This isn't my favorite, but like I don't feel like myself when I'm doing this, I don't like the type of person I slip into when I'm in that role or in that position. And then you can make any decisions based off of that. You can start saying, Hey, manager, I am really great. Great at these things. I know I'm really great at these things.

 | 24:59 | Look at these statistics of how I've helped our company move forward when they do these things. But I also have these other things on my plate that get in the way of me doing the first category of things. And they bring me down and I want to benefit our team and want to benefit this company. And I know I can do that really well if I focus more on these things. Maybe you don't have a manager that's super open to that. And that's when you could say, OK, well, let's maybe I'm a marketer.

 | 25:28 | I'm just going to use this world because I know this world, and I started in this role where I didn't get to be super collaborative. But I'm an extrovert and I'm really great around other people. How can I find a role that's related where I can be an extrovert? Yeah, it's really knowing yourself and knowing how you operate, knowing what environments you're the most let up in what as an entrepreneur keeps you awake at night. Ooh, so many things.

 | 25:58 | I mean, I think this is a great like set up of questions, right? Because I'm a naturally confident person. Yeah. But yet you when you are an entrepreneur, especially like, I'm a solopreneur, I don't have any partners. I don't have anyone else on my business with me. I'm the sole. I'm the CEO. I am the president. I have the owner. I am the founder of my company. I make all of the big decisions on my own.

 | 26:28 | I will say as I have been an entrepreneur for longer as I've delved more into mindset and personal development work as I've learned more about myself. One of the big switches for me was when I learned how to make decisions confidently every single time. Staying up at night. Worrying about things gets less and less for me. I take a look at your website, for example, Katrina, and it's a really snazzy web site, lots of content and so on.

 | 26:57 | And I think, my gosh, when does she get to do all that? I mean, you're also, you know, coaching and doing the core of your business. So how do you divide things up so that you know you're focusing in the right place at the right time? Well, first of all, I want to say I appreciate that because I have put a lot of work into that website. But for me, it's a balancing act, right? I really try to be proactive in the way I do planning in the way I do goal setting.

 | 27:28 | So one of the big shifts for me personally in my business as I switched to a group business coaching format as opposed to doing one on one business coaching. So every once in a while, I'll take a one on one client if they specifically ask me about it. It's not even on my website, but that means that I get to help six people in two hours a week instead of no six hours or 12 hours a week doing one on one coaching.

 | 27:56 | So part of it is planning specifically. Part of it is I'm a writer, right? Like, I started out as a journalist, so copywriting comes naturally to me. Blog writing comes naturally to me. Newsletters. I have a podcast editor who edits my podcast, right? I'm sure you do as well. And so getting the right help has been a big part. But also I and this is one thing that I teach my clients as well, is I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at.

 | 28:29 | I'm a pretty easy writer. I can sit down and write a newsletter, an email, a blog post showing up on Facebook groups, for instance. Not so fun for me. I can't. I, I don't want to say I can't, but I don't love showing up every single day on a Facebook group. I'm not the type of person who wants to be tied to their social media all the time.

 | 28:52 | So I set up my marketing strategy and my content planning calendar in a way that works for me in a way that is prioritizing the things that I can do quickly, or I can do easily and really putting my time in the places that it's going to be the most impactful. Yeah. So I'm just trying to get down to the nub of your resilience because I can see that, yes, you're a confident person. You've made some tough choices.

 | 29:19 | You've had some major lows, not so much in the lead off, but in your toxic environment. And you know, it's great that you have that experience, especially great when it's in the rearview mirror. But what do you see as the nub of your of your resilience?
 | 29:38 | Honestly, when I think of what makes me resilient, it has been this constant feeling in my life that no matter what happens, life keeps going right and you can have setbacks, you can have low points, you can have imposter syndrome or those times when you're in bed laying, looking up at yourself and you're saying, What?

 | 30:07 | What do I do next or what is the right path for me? How do I even keep moving and. The fact is that life just keeps happening, whether we're lying in bed or not. It's like no matter what, you're going to wake up and it's going to be a new day. And so I just always have kind of said, well. How do I make the choice to do what I can now and let the rest fall into place, right, like when I was getting laid off?

 | 30:40 | I'd like my first big corporation. There was no idea at that point in time that's like one day I'm going to have my own business and one day I'm going to do all these things. It was just how do you how do I make tomorrow better than today? Yeah. And how do I? What actions can I take right now that help me in this moment? And this might be a little unorthodox, but I've mentioned I'm a little unorthodox when it comes to coaching, but a lot of people will say, like, What's your five year plan? What's your 10 year plan?

 | 31:08 | And I have goals in mind, like I have ideas in mind. And this works for me. I'll put that caveat out there. But to sit down and say what are like again, where are the areas I feel really good and where are the areas that I don't feel good in? And how do I move the needle on those areas? I don't feel good in now? No, and I trust and it has always worked out for me that by focusing on.
 | 31:40 | Maybe it's kind of like maybe I'm not focusing on like Super Big Picture, I'm looking 10 years down the line, how do I plan on every single step to get to that place 10 years down the line because things do happen. You have like corporations with toxic cultures, you have relationships that end or you have, I don't know, like a huge move that comes up out of nowhere. Life happens and you can't plan for it.

 | 32:05 | But I can plan for how I get from where I am now and happy in these three areas to how I can change what I'm doing on a day to day basis to get happy in those three areas. I talk a lot about self-care not being how you escape from your world, but how you build your world in a way that you don't need to escape from it. You. And really switching that and prioritizing that idea of like, how do I plan my day to day so that I don't need to escape from my day to day?

 | 32:39 | Those are really wise words. OK, I have my three questions that I want to ask you. So the first is what the best was or what has been the best career advice you have received? I would say the best career advice I have ever received. Ooh, that's a good one is really. For me has really been like view every failure as a goal.

 | 33:10 | So I'll explain that a little bit. Instead of viewing a failure as something to feel bad about or shame or embarrassment, I failed. If you aim to fail five times a month, if you're like, This is my goal, I'm going to try to fail five times this month and like, I'm going to make that happen. I'm going to have a list that I check on every single month. That means that you are taking bigger swings than you would have ever allowed yourself to take beforehand.

 | 33:40 | You are asking that person that you never thought would come on your podcast and maybe they say no, and then that's one of your big fails. But maybe they say yes, and you would have never thought to ask them if you were aiming to fail. Yeah. Or maybe it's like. I'm going to try this new product or this new marketing area believing it's not going to work, and not only then you do often get these unexpected, amazing things that happen, but you also stop being afraid of failure.

 | 34:15 | That shame and embarrassment feeling is no longer associated with failure because it's just, I'm checking something off a list. You get a sense of like. Productiveness or satisfaction, because you're like, I did the thing I said I was going to do. Yeah, that's its all mindset, isn't it? Yes. Yes it is. OK, so second, is there a book that you've read that has really resonated with you and helped you or just inspired you?

 | 34:48 | I generally recommend the book Essentialism. If people have not read that book. It is basically saying if you have 10 minutes of energy and you're putting them in 10 different directions, you're only moving slightly in each of those different areas. But if you are putting 10 units of energy in one direction, you will go much, much further. And so it's basically, I mean, there's much more in that book than just that.

 | 35:17 | Yeah, but if we're nailing essentialism down to one sentence, it's really saying what is essential? What are the things that I actually want to be focusing on instead of just like, well, I could try this or this, I could go in this direction or these are top 10 focuses for the day. Not great. OK, we'll give that a look. And the third and final in my little series of three questions is what advice would you give your younger self?

 | 35:45 | I would personally, for myself, I would say. You don't have to control what happens, you don't have to know how or know when or know what it's all about. I mean, it's basically the same thing as people saying like, live in the present. Right? It's like it's all about how you're feeling on a day to day basis and setting up big plans and saying like this is what's going to happen and this is how it's going to happen.

 | 36:18 | It doesn't allow for the beautiful to come in. It doesn't allow for the unexpected to come in. It doesn't allow you to get these surprise magical moments. And that's really the fun part of life, right? Yeah. And maybe I'm going to give a bonus one, and it's the exact same as the other one. But just overall, it gets to be easy if you let it. It gets to be easy if you let it. Mm-Hmm. I would struggle with that a little bit.

 | 36:49 | How does it most people do? How does it get to be easy if you let it, if you move in the directions of everything we've been talking about, right? Like you build your life in a way that you don't need to escape from it. You build your marketing or your job based off the things that you like to do or how you naturally operate, it gets to feel easy. So if I'm if I'm a natural networker and I'm an extrovert and I love talking to people and then I get a lot of clients by talking to people and networking and connecting people, you know, that's easy.

 | 37:23 | Yeah. But if I decide in my head that there's a specific way, it has to be done and I put should on it and I, I work with a coach and they tell me, this is the way I need money. This is how you're going to make money, or it can really apply to anything. It's not going to feel easy. It's going to go against who I am naturally. And so if I let it be easy, it will be easy. Well, I can tell you, Katrina, I'm a very intense person. I think what we're finding here is very opposite personalities.

 | 37:54 | But it's interesting to hear you and your story and so each year I have a word of the year. That's just I like to do. And last year, because I'm an introvert, I thought, Well, I'll go with connection that will be my word of the year. And so everything was sort of geared in that. And I would think is, does this relate to connection? Yeah, it does. Mm-Hmm. And this year, because of course, for me, that's a bit more exhausting than it would be for you.

 | 38:23 | And so this year, my word of the year is chill. Yeah, that's great. What's it? This is like also a great example of like, you can have connection. It's just your version of connection and not my version of. Yeah. For networking events, a weak connection. Exactly. Anyway, thank you very much. Is there anything that you want to add? I mean, you've given us some really great things to think about.

 | 38:51 | Anything you want to add or finish off with. I would just say, like exactly what we were just talking about you. Everyone is unique and everyone is designed. I was like to say, you're designed exactly the way you're supposed to be right there. There is no like I need to be like her or they're doing things this way. Or why am I not as x y z as this person?

 | 39:20 | And it's really, really. I just want to reiterate this idea that like who you are, that's the secret sauce. And it's just saying, OK, I know who I am now. I'm going to learn the strategy behind that, or I'm going to apply that in a way that like makes sense within my industry or makes sense within my clients or make sense within marketing. And when there's big should and normally doesn't work out, I think that's so true.

 | 39:52 | And I think that there are a lot of people that look at what they do for a living and say, Why am I doing this? And perhaps life is a little too short to be in that situation. And I think some of the things that you've said sort of make us think in that in that direction. So yeah, thank you very much for chatting with me today. You are very welcome. This has been a lot of fun. Went fast. It did go fast. So to our viewers and our listeners, if you are a viewer, catch us on YouTube.

 | 40:23 | If you're a listener, wherever you get your podcast and thanks for joining Katrina and me today, lots of really interesting insights. Thanks very much. Until we see you again.