The Reality Gap That's Shaping Your Business (And How to Recognize When Who You Are and How You Show Up Don’t Match)

Intro/outro: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Catherine Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a Sought after Entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast, and here's your host, Katherine Thompson. 

Kathryn Thompson: Hey. Hey, super stoked that you're tuning this week's episode, and I cannot wait to dive into today's topic [00:01:00] because I wanna talk about incongruency and how I've probably talked about it on many episodes before, around when our messaging is incongruent in that customer buying journey, how that can create friction or can create some kinks within that customer journey.

That don't lead to the results that we desire, like attracting misaligned clients or not making the sales we want, or whatever it might be. There's many, many things that can transpire as a result of the incongruency, and I've talked a lot about the nuance of messaging and how we want to get even more nuance with how we communicate to people, specifically in the face of ai because.

After reviewing thousands and thousands of bits of copy and content over the last couple years, and with the rise of ai, I'm starting to see these like very similar patterns in the way things are being said and how they're being said that I know are generated via [00:02:00] ai and. One of the things that we don't realize is that when things are on repeat over and over and over again, whether that's in your own messaging and or like out in the world, yes, repetition can create more awareness, build that no, like, and trust all the sorts of things.

But the counter to that is, is it can also create what I call white noise, where people then start to tune certain phrases and things out. Because they've heard it so many times, even if you've said it on your sales page, but someone else is saying it in the exact same way. Like things like, here's the truth, or, but the truth is right.

Which is a very common phrase that we are seeing across the board when it comes to AI written copy and or saying something like what nobody else will tell you. Right. Which is again. Something that AI [00:03:00] is just regurgitating out over and over with copy, regardless of the industry, regardless of the niche.

The reason I want to talk about that and raise sort of an awareness there is, is because the more nuanced you can get in your messaging and the more congruent Lee aligned you can make it to who you are and your personality and what you bring to the table. The better resonance it's gonna have with people.

I'm not saying not to use ai. I'm a proponent of it, but I'm just saying that there is some massaging here and really understanding who you are across the board in your business in order to know how that is being reflected out into the world. Now, that's not really the congruency that I wanted to dive into because I've talked a lot about that on many, many episodes.

You can go back and kind of listen to the content ones and stuff like that. But I want to talk about the incongruency in our own energetic being, and if this isn't some [00:04:00] like fluff thing, like, oh, if you just be who you are, then people will just come to you and you can sit on your laurels and life will just happen, and that's just not the way that it is.

What I'm talking about is that the incongruency. In your energetic being that you might not even be aware of, that then is presented in friction within your business. And I'm gonna share a story of my own, but I'm also gonna share stories that I've seen and how this has manifested in their world so that you can start to.

Take a look and take inventory within your world because one of the things I used to roll my eyes at and I believed it, but I also rolled my eyes at it. 'cause I was like, what does this actually mean is our inner world is a pure reflection of our outer world. We're living in this like simulation, right?

It is like what we see presented how when things happen in our outer world that are like so counterintuitive to how we think we behave and act, then we say things like. Well, I would never do that. [00:05:00] Like I would never ask one of my mentors to stay late on a call to, to, to help me. I would never ask one of my mentors to.

You know, go outside of the boundaries of our agreement to deliver something that was never in the agreement, right? So in a copywriting world, being a copywriter, when you hire a copywriter, the copywriter isn't your marketing person isn't your, you know, director of operations. And yet, many times I've been in copywriting agreements that all of a sudden I'm being asked to like run the entire marketing department and I'm going.

I'm your copywriter. Like I'm not here to tell you what your offers are and what the strategy is and how you wanna launch and all those sorts of things. That's not what I'm here to do. You hired me as a copywriter. I would never breach that sort of boundary, right? It are things that I used to say to myself, rather than getting curious about why is [00:06:00] that presenting in my reality, right?

It is a shift from why is this happening to me? I would never do this, yada, yada, yada. To wait a minute. This is showing me something, and this isn't like, I don't want you to take this episode as. I am trying to find the right words to say this, but I don't want you to take this episode as like it's all on you, right?

Like that, that if something bad happens to you in your life, it's your fault, right? There are some really tragic things that will happen that are not your fault at all, and that's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is, is that when you're running a business, let's just say you see a high rate of return, right?

Like re refund requests or chargebacks or whatever, and you're sitting there going like, I would never do a chargeback After I bought something from somebody, I'd reach out to them. I would talk to them like, what the hell's going on? This could be presenting in your reality because of other facets of how you're [00:07:00] running your business and how you operate within your business that are not even correlated to that, but that's how they're being presented.

For example, I worked for this amazing brand like three years ago. Grew rapidly from the ground up was multiple eight figures. Absolutely amazing. And her outward message was all around like female empowerment and women taking their power back and liberation and all these sorts of things. But she saw this like really weird high rates of chargebacks.

Chargebacks aren't refund requests. Chargebacks are like somebody bought something from you and then they put, put the chargeback like this is a fraudulent charge. Or like, I didn't get what I asked for when in reality they absolutely did. Right. So it's kind of a. Not really an integral way to ask for a refund, in my opinion, especially when you've agreed to pay for something and you put your credit card [00:08:00] information there.

Of course, if you were scammed and someone took your credit card, different, but this wasn't it. This was the people ask. Doing a chargeback without ever coming to the company and having a conversation, which to me is kind of out of integrity. It doesn't align with my values, and so if. I was the founder, which I wasn't.

If I was the founder, I'd be like, well, those aren't my values. How am I attracting people that go against my values? Right? Without doing some investigative work, you might completely miss the incongruency that was happening. So externally, the brand was all around empowerment, liberation, female power, all the things.

Internally, the particular founder was operating from a heightened state of fight. So everything was a fight internally with team. She was always in combat. She was talking poorly about team behind their back, all of the sorts of things, and also trying to extract as much as she could from her team. [00:09:00] And I'm talking like consistently wanting them to work.

Seven days a week be available 24 7 messaging people at 11 o'clock at night being like, I need this. And then by 8:00 AM not getting a response and being like, where are you? It's like I was sleeping right. To me, those all feel like logical things, but the, the energy behind that operation internally was extraction, so people doing chargebacks.

We're extraction. So while she was grounded in her values of female empowerment, like liberation, open communication, community, all these sorts of things, she was front facing that as a brand. But internally, that's not how the Opera operating system was running. So massive incongruency, which then presents as.

Extraction from clients that had [00:10:00] bought from her. Why this is important is because the natural tendency is like, oh, we'll do better communication, right? We'll let people know when their membership's renewing, we'll, yada, yada, yada. All the things. Tactical. We go tactical first because it's like, well, I gotta change those things when in reality.

It wasn't anything to do with that that needed to be changed. Sure. Some minor tactical things like sending out a reminder, but even that, when we implemented that, she was still getting the same number of chargebacks. That didn't change the number of chargebacks, and that's because internally from a team management perspective and operational perspective, she was extracting from her team and she wasn't seeing that as extraction energy, which then.

Presented externally in her reality. That's just one example of many different founders that I've worked with that things have started to present that have been literally their internal [00:11:00] world. Being reflected to them in other facets. And that's where we miss the connection because we're not willing to get go deep on the incongruency.

Our natural tendency is just to fix it, right? There's a problem. I need to fix it. There's a problem. I need to optimize for it. When in reality it's like, wait a minute, what is this showing me? And then why is this happening? And then where maybe am I? Extracting. So like looking at that value or the, you know, the piece of it that wasn't an integral, which was take, take, take, take.

Right? I signed up for your course, I got the course, and now I'm gonna do a chargeback. And I already went through your course, right? That is extraction, right? And then if, if you can see and spot the congruency, incongruency, you'll see that you're, you're operating that way now. If you're not able to see it, then rather [00:12:00] than jump straight to tactical, find somebody that will mirror that to you.

Right. We'll mirror back to you, what the heck is going on? But you've gotta be open to the, what the heck is going on, because you'll often not want to hear it because it's about yourself, right? It's rarely about your team not doing what they're, they said they're gonna do, or yada, yada, yada, right? Well, my team doesn't do anything or whatever.

It's rarely about that. That's just one example. I wanna give you another example, which is my own example. So a year ago, I said to my mentor. I feel like my messaging is so dialed in. I'm an expert at what I do, and yet there's times in my life that I attract opportunities that just want to extract from me for as mu for as little as possible, right?

So I'm gonna pay you a thousand dollars, but I want you to work 24 7 for me. And then having no sort of, um, connection [00:13:00] to why that's not feasible or sustainable for anybody. Because I don't work for you full time. Right. Or having people in my orbit that are like, Hey, can I pay like. This instead of that, right?

That wanna sort of negotiate the price that you've put out there. I'm not talking about payment plans, I'm not talking about, um, anything like that. I'm talking about like, my course is $3,000. Hey, do you think I could actually pay you less than that? And I've had that happen. I've had people literally try to negotiate the price of the offer.

And also negotiate the price. Like, I can only pay this per month. This isn't a negotiation, right? This isn't about what, what you we're, it is not a negotiation here. And so I would, I kept thinking to myself, why the heck do I keep attracting that extraction energy into my world? 'cause it's interesting, right?

If you're in the world of someone who's extracting, you've put yourself in that scenario, why am I [00:14:00] attracting these types of opportunities? Interesting. Mine was not because I was extracting to team or whatever mine was for the fact that I've always, from the minute I started making money out of university, have always inherently thought I didn't have enough money, even though I had substantial for rent, and you name it, that I was never in a place of being desolate or whatever, that I never, ever, ever felt like I had enough money.

And so when I was sitting with my mentor, that's actually what came forth is that I always am operating from this place of not enough when it comes to money. So until I clear that wire, like clear that belief within myself, I'll naturally continue to attract opportunities that don't present necessarily in I don't have money, right?

I can't afford it. 'cause the person that was negotiating. This is what all I [00:15:00] can pay. Never said that they didn't have enough money. They just said, this is all I'm willing to kind of pay for this service, and they were negotiating that with me. Similarly, the woman I worked for paid me well. But she expected the moon, she expected 24 7 availability.

She expected e evenings and weekends, right? And for the four months that I worked with her, my nervous system was in a complete state of flight. Like I was always sort of on edge because I was like, oh, am I gonna get a message here? Like I'm literally walking in to get a pedicure on a Saturday morning.

What if I get a message right or like the day I was walking into my best friend's baby shower and I'm getting phone call after phone call, after phone call, after phone call on a Saturday morning? Where are you? Where are you, where are you? And finally answered going, I'm literally walking into my best friend's baby shower, what's up?

Well, I just had to figure out blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was nothing pressing. There were nobody, there was no one dying, like all of it. [00:16:00] Right? And that's that fight and flight response that she was constantly in, which then. Completely made the internal system that which then presented in fight or flight with extraction of chargebacks and refunds.

Right. What's a refund? Is like a regret. Oh shit, I shouldn't have bought it. This isn't what I wanted. Right. Is like they're, they're wanting a refund because they're flighting, right? Is is They probably bought from a dysregulated place and then realized, oh shit, I actually don't want this. I don't need it.

It's not aligned with me. Whatever. It wasn't what I expected. I want out. And this is all connected energetically. The natural tendency again, right for me was like, oh, I should just, maybe I need to tweak my messaging, or maybe I need to position my offer differently, or maybe I need to be more selective or ask harder questions or, you know, not be as trustworthy or what all the things, the stories we wanna tell ourselves of, like what we could have done differently [00:17:00] and all the things that we do to try to fix it.

Rather than stopping and pausing for a hot second or having someone reflect it back to you. 'cause that's what she reflected back, she said to me, and that was the question back to me was like, where are you like believing, operating from a place of not enoughness or not having enough, or only being able to do this much because it's too much or whatever.

Right. And that's a really key sort of reflection. Now, one of the other big ones that I spot and have spotted within clients of mine are similarly, all of the things that they say they don't want in a client. And they're like, I don't want, I want somebody who's all in. I want somebody who follows through on what they say.

Right? When they say they're gonna do something, they do it. They don't go against that, or [00:18:00] they show up and they do the work, or they don't expect quick fixes or fast this and that. But then simultaneously in the relationships they're in, they're not all in on things. They don't value their word, and this can go to self-sacrificing.

I see it a lot, right? It's like I want people who are all in and committed and all the things, but they're the same people that will self, self-sacrifice their health for the business. Or they're the same people that will be like, I wanna get healthy this year, but actually don't commit to doing it. Don't follow the habits.

Or are the same people that are like, my business isn't where I want it to be, and they aren't actually putting in the work to get their business to the place that it needs to be in order for them to create the success that they want. Right. And or they commit to course after course, after course, after course.

And don't actually follow through on the courses that they've taken. And yet they don't want those types of clients. No, these are just examples, right? These are just examples of [00:19:00] how it presents in the outside world where we've got this like cognitive dissonance between our external world going, I don't want to attract these people.

Why do I attract them? Or, I don't want whatever, I don't want to market this way. I don't wanna sound this way. I don't want to da, da, da, da. All the things. And then internally, we're operating the same way and. One of the coolest ones that I reflected back to a client was she said, you know, I don't want people that just want this quick fix.

Like I'm so tired of people just wanting a quick fix. And I said to her, well, where in your world are you impatient? And she was like, oh my God. She's like, I get so frustrated when I have to like put in the time and effort too. Learn how to market or learn how to call. I just wish I knew it. I said, bingo.

There you go. You're expecting to be a master in marketing when you just started learning marketing six months ago or eight months ago, [00:20:00] right? So where are you impatient? And what's really wild about this is that over the last. I don't know, a month or so, I've been getting these wild dreams and all of them are me waiting in queues in an airport, in a bus station, in a train station.

And then the most recent one was I was almost at like a cattle farm. It was like, and I was trying to get out of this maze of cattle. Lines or whatever, fences. And every time I got up to like a place to get out, there was like a pack of dogs that wouldn't let me out or then the next one was a pack of chickens, and then the next one was a pack of cats.

And I was like, what the hell? I can't get out like all these animals are in the way. I'm sharing this with you. Because when I sat with that, I was like, why am I getting these four dreams sort of back to back where I'm like rushing to get somewhere and then I'm. Bunged up with a queue of hundreds of people and it's not moving.

And I'm like, impatiently [00:21:00] waiting to get to where I need to go. And mine was like, you need to be more patient. And then I started to like look at my own world because one of the things I get frustrated with is people that want overnight success, people that don't want to put in the work, people that want the quick fix, people that are willing to give up.

Their funnel after a week because it's not giving them what they wanted when they haven't even given it a chance to take off. Right. My frustration is like, it's gonna take time. Anything sustainable takes time. Anything that you build, long term, takes time, yada, yada, yada, all the things. And so it's interesting because yet in my reality and in the marketing world, that's a huge part of what's rewarded is quick fix, fast cash, all the things.

And so I. Was contemplating this impatience, and I was like, Ooh, interesting. The same advice I gave my client, you know, a year ago or whatever, was the same advice that I need to take now. [00:22:00] I need to be patient with where I'm going and the growth and the evolution and all those sorts of things. The reason I'm sharing this with you is because it's all connected and that.

Even you can have the most dialed in messaging, the most dialed in offer, the most dialed in business, and you'll start to get things presenting in your world that you're like, I would never do that. I would never ask somebody of that. I would never expect somebody of that. Why is this happening? Right? Why do I keep getting people that tell me they can't afford it?

Why am I getting people that. You know, wanna just take, take, take, take, take, and never really actually pay me for what I'm worth, yada yada, yada. All the things. Well, where are you impatient? Where are you in extraction energy? Where are you feeling like you're not enough in? It doesn't even have to be business related.

It could be in a relationship, it could be in your personal life. Where are you self-sacrificing yourself? Right? Where are you going against your own values? If you say you want x, Y clients. Where are you [00:23:00] and you're not seeing those clients come through or you're seeing some come through, but then you're seeing other things come through that don't align with quote unquote your values.

Where are you self-sacrificing your values? And I can guarantee you there's places like we're not perfect beings, right? Like I'm a prime example of like the health one, right? That's always been one of mine is like self-sacrificing movement or. Physical activity because I'm busy, I'm at my desk, yada, yada, yada.

Right? When in reality, then that self-sacrificing will get presented in clients. Where are my clients self-sacrificing their values? Where are they committing to something that they can't actually follow through on? Where are they signing up and saying yes to something when they actually don't have the capacity for it?

Where are they taking on too much? And I see that being presented with clients, right? That will come to me and say, I want this result. I wanna simplify and then. I look at their systems and I'm like, you've got a, you have way too much on your plate to try to even achieve in six months, [00:24:00] right? Or that perception of timing, right?

I, I want a six figure funnel in six months, but I don't have a validated offer and I don't have an audience. Well, there's way sure that you could build the foundation to get that going, but again, where are your timelines completely skewed. Where, and again, we can sit here and bypass and go, anything's possible.

You know, don't tell me I can't achieve things, yada, yada, yada. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that where are the incongruencies in what you say and how you be and what you do, and how might those be manifesting in things that are not even correlated to it? Right. We so instantly wanna look at the messaging, the offer, the copy, the, the infrastructure, the team, right?

It's everybody else's fault, or everything else's fault. When a lot of times what I'm seeing manifested. [00:25:00] Is a combination. I'm not saying it's one or the other. I'm just saying that oftentimes there is a, a correlation between energetically where you might have fractures or kinks in your energy that don't align with maybe your values or how you preach or perceive to be out in the outside world, and then that's being portrayed or whatnot, um, on the, in other ways within your business, and again, with relationships as well.

So. Well, we can look at congruency for language and words. I think it's really important to also look at the incongruency of our energetic being and also get really ruthless about that and how it might not be correlated straight away. But when there are things happening in your business that are frustrating and it's a pattern that's happening, you can't even understand why it's happening.

And you feel like you've done all the right things, then take a look at that inner world and start to look at where you [00:26:00] might be in that extraction of energy, where you might be in that fight or flight energy or freezer FA energy, where you might be in impatience, where you might be in resentment or frustration or shame or guilt, right?

Because oftentimes your clients are also mere reflections of what's going on in your inner world. And I. Wholeheartedly believe this. You know, like I've seen this over and over and over again. Sales calls I've taken where I'm like, I feel like you're talking my world in a lot of ways, and not even sales calls for my company, right?

Where it's like, how. Like, are you, are you in my world? 'cause I feel like the same issues you're having are issues that I'm equally having. And so that we, we are living in sort of that simulation. So I'd love for you to get curious about that if there are patterns or things in your world, whether it be personal or professional, that are coming up rather than try to tactically fix it.

I'd love for you to look internally, and this is another one that I [00:27:00] think is really, really key, right? If you're not wanting to work with fix it, like people that want you to fix them then and, but they're presenting themselves in your reality, then where are you doing that in your own life? Were you outsourcing your power to fix the problem before internally getting a read on that landscape inside and going, huh, let me try to understand this from a foundational place, from why this pattern keeps happening, versus what can I do externally to fix it?

What outside source can I do to fix it? Right? If my offer isn't selling, then. Oh gosh, I better hire a business coach, right? Or, oh, my messaging isn't working. I better hire that messaging person. Or, my copy isn't converting, so I better learn how to write better copy, or whatever it is, right? Or it's not attracting the right people or whatever it's going.

Sure, some of those foundational pieces might be playing a factor, but what I am saying is, is that oftentimes the patterns that keep producing in our [00:28:00] external world. That might even seem like shockers, like, I would never do this. I would never, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Why is this happening? Is likely something going on internally within yourself that is probably energetically playing a factor?

Now, like I said, I'm not talking about like tragic events or something like that. That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about things like. Continually attracting clients that say they can't pay or negotiating or getting a ton of chargebacks or whatever it is. I'm talking about things within your business.

I'm not talking about tragic events that happen where it's like, how is this my fault? That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about persistent patterns in our world that are showing up that can tell us something about. The energetic way we are being in other facets of our life and our reality that might be presenting like that because you will [00:29:00] attract opportunities into your world that match that inner existence.

And even if. There are pockets that are really, really good. You're gonna get some of those like fragmented pieces that need to be looked at. So hopefully this is shone a light on sort of the energetic body incongruencies that happen within your reality. Because I know for the longest time when someone said Your inner A world reflects your outer world.

It's, it almost becomes like cliche or this catchy tagline and it's like, but what does that actually fucking mean? Like what does that mean? It means nothing. Right? It's like until I can understand how these might be presenting and how oftentimes they present in non-correlated ways and how they often present in ways that we're like, I would never do this.

I would never expect something like this from somebody. I would never treat somebody like this. Why are they doing this? Or why is this [00:30:00] happening? It's often, wait a minute, you're actually doing that, but it's not in correlation to you engaging with a business. It's actually in your relationship with your team, or it's your relationship with your husband, or it's for your relationship with your partner.

Right. It's, it's usually not directly correlated to the actual incident. And so our natural tendency wants to go, I'm gonna fix that incident at the micro level, better communication, da da, da, da. When it has nothing to do with that. Like nothing. It has everything to do with how you're being in all of the other facets of your life, similarly, right?

You're self-sacrificing by not eating nutritious food and not getting up from your desk and not taking a holiday or taking a break. Then you'll naturally start to see things presenting in your inter external world that again, might not be people taking advantage of you, [00:31:00] but might be your clients who.

Are self-sacrificing themselves in their business to some degree. And you're wondering why you attract clients that don't follow through on what they say they're gonna follow through on. And it's because you don't either, you're, you're not impeccable to your word. And when you're not impeccable to your word.

Then that's gonna transpire out. And being impeccable to your word means honoring your rest and honoring your body, and honoring your soul and all the things. Where are you saying yes to? Things that you wanna say no to? Where are you people pleasing? You can't be mad at your clients who are self-sacrificing or who are not being impeccable with their word when there's facets of your life where you're not impeccable with your word word.

And that, like I said, can be completely not correlated. So with that, I hope that has been illuminating for you and we will see you next week. Cheers. [00:32:00] 

Intro/outro: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com.

Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.