Why I Shut Off My High-Performing Sales Funnel (After 2.5 Years of Success)

intro: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Kathryn 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, Kathryn Thompson.

kathryn thompson: Hey, hey, Super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode, and I cannot wait to dive in [00:01:00] today's topic because I want to talk about these quiet moments behind the scenes that I think a lot of people don't see in the entrepreneurship journey. One that's probably not often shared these inflection points or threshold points that.

How we lead with integrity and in alignment regardless of the outside success metrics. And what I mean by that is I think a lot of people are still chasing these external success measurements and using that to actually guide their quote unquote success. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It absolutely does work.

But what I've noticed and what I've observed over the last. However many years in entrepreneurship now, eight, I believe. And then prior to that, being in business with other business owners and supporting them through different consulting projects, is that [00:02:00] oftentimes that outside perspective, that external measurement of success.

Isn't what has us feeling good within the success. So you've probably heard the statement. I had it all together on paper, right? The perfect house, the perfect relationship, the perfect job, career, business, whatever. But inside I was starving or I was dying, or I just felt like. How did I get here? I no longer recognize the person in the mirror, all of those sorts of things, and maybe you've felt that at some point in your journey.

If so, you're gonna wanna listen to this podcast because I want to share with you some of the behind the scenes inflection points and threshold points where. Leaders lead with integrity and alignment first, regardless of the outside perspective, measurements, metrics, all those sorts of things, and how those decisions have brought them closer to feeling [00:03:00] that much more.

Aligned or true to what it is that they're building. And this conversation has been sparked by a conversation that I heard today on the diary of a CEO where Alex Hermo, Cody Sanchez and Daniel Priestley were on and they were talking all things entrepreneurship. And Cody shared a story about how her team kept saying, Hey.

When you share posts about your husband and your life and all those sorts of things, they get so much engagement. We've gotta share more of that, give us more of them. And her husband didn't want to, her husband wanted to keep a lot of their relationships sacred, which I think is a really beautiful thing.

And Cody honored that. She just said, there's a lot of our relationship we don't want to share online, and so we're gonna keep it sacred. These are the moments that I'm talking about, these decisions in business that are quiet, moments of leadership behind the [00:04:00] scenes that lead us through integrity and alignment to our values, to what's important to us, what matters, and this varies for everybody, right?

You might have a husband that's like, yeah, man, I don't care, but. There is another value you're wanting to honor, protect all of those sorts of things, which is why it's important to tune in and get really rock solid on what matters to you now, and also then as seasons of your life change, what matters to you then, because it's in those moments, we, on paper, things are presenting in a certain way, but internally.

Within your network of relationships, whatever that looks like. Husband, wife, partner, kids, you name it. Daniel Priestley said the same thing. He's like, I don't show my kids online. They can create their own accounts if they want to be online. You see lots of parents who put like stars over their kids faces when they're [00:05:00] showing things online to again, protect the sacredness of their family and their relationships.

Obviously because of their relationships with their kids, their partners, their wives, whatever. Matter to them more than the metrics on paper. And these are those quiet moments of integrity where we need to lead within our company and our business if we want to avoid losing ourselves in the process. So if you're somebody who has experienced that where I've had all the things on paper, but I don't know how I got here, this isn't me, and.

I feel like I'm, you know, dying inside, then this is something you really will want to sort of visit and, or if you're in business and you're seeing a lot of the messaging that's out there, that's like, follow the metrics, test the metrics, tie the metrics, you know, measure everything, understand what's working, what isn't working, which I think is important.

I think that's [00:06:00] valuable information, but I don't think that that information. Is gospel. And I also don't think that that information should bypass your deeply rooted values and if family is one of those, or the relationships you have in your life or time spent outside of the business, whatever your values are.

It's being able to then run that through your internal compass and your system. And I'm gonna share a story about my own journey because I'm somebody who naturally pri pivots, right? I ditch my corporate career, and everyone said to me, what are you doing? It's a six figure career. It has a pension. Like, what are you doing?

Don't do that. That's stupid because on paper. It is something that people are like, this is a really good determination of success, but also it's gonna set you up for long-term success, which is often measured from the perspective of working, saving your money, and then having enough money to retire, which is really how our culture [00:07:00] determines, or at least in first world culture, right?

Determines a level of success. And then also having a high paying career, which is what a lot of people strive for. So of course when I said I'm gonna ditch that and open a wine business, it was like, what the heck are you doing? Right? And so it's in those moments where we can go. Thanks for the input.

Thanks for the advice. Thanks for whatever it is. Thanks for building a case study on why I might be making a stupid decision, but I have to trust internally what I truly value in life, right? And at the time when I made that decision, I often said I'd rather get paid a hell of a lot less. Doing something that I actually enjoy and feel fulfilled in than getting paid a shit ton of money and actually dying slowly in the career because I'm not fulfilled on a daily basis, and I'm a process person.

So if anybody that doesn't know what that means, they're [00:08:00] often are outcome driven people and process driven people. Outcome driven people are often driven by the outcome, what they're gonna achieve, what they're gonna get, that sort of thing, meaning the high paying career. You know, the relationship, the house, you name it.

And so they're driven by that. There's no right or wrong. There's no better, worse, there's no hierarchy. There's no superiority in this. It's just how we're wired. And so they often don't necessarily care about the process of getting to that outcome. And again, not from a not integral place. It's just the process is less important.

It's more about the outcome and what they're achieving. I'm a process person, meaning I have to enjoy the process, otherwise the outcome or the destination's not gonna matter anyways. So I have to enjoy the experience, the process that I'm in. And so at the time, after 15 years in corporate, I knew I had come to the end of that chapter in my life and I wanted to move on from that, and I was willing to risk [00:09:00] that move.

Which comes down to, again, the threshold inflection points. What are we willing to risk? What are we willing to lose? And not from a lack perspective, but what are we willing to let go of and walk away from? And then also, what is no longer in alignment with our inner values and what is, and that helps us move within our business within integrity.

And that's just one example of a pivot or a transition that I've navigated through. One of the most recent one is, and I haven't really publicly talked about this yet, mainly because I'm in sort of the integration of it, is that last fall I had on paper an exceptional funnel. I had built this funnel for two years.

It had been running exceptionally. A lot of the people that came in and looked at the funnel, assessed the funnel, helped me with the funnel, said that I was a bit of an anomaly, meaning that I had run the same ad. Or ads [00:10:00] for about a year and a half without seeing any change in the funnel. If anything, I had scaled that funnel and had gotten exceptional results, had exceptional close rates on my sales calls, had exceptional clients coming through the funnel.

You name it on paper, most people would've died for that funnel. Last fall, I started to feel an internal shift happening, and the internal shift for me now that I've sort of unpacked it and gone through it was is that I often felt like in order for me to create the results that I was creating, I always had to have my foot on the gas.

So meaning I always had to be running ads. I always had to be taking sales calls. Although I have a sales call person that takes calls from me, which is exceptional. But I always had to have the machine running right. I always had to have my foot on the gas. I always had to be in client delivery. And my system was tired.

I think that was is the best way that I can describe it. I [00:11:00] felt like my system was depleted and it didn't matter how many vacations I took or breaks away from the business I took, I just couldn't replenish that. I just felt sort of depleted and I remember thinking, I wanna be able to take my foot off the gas and not feel the pressure to have to market and sell.

And I remember at the time my mentor's like. You're crazy. Right? And kept trying to sell to me how exceptional my data was and how, how exceptional my metrics were and all of the things, you don't wanna burn this down, you don't wanna give this up, you don't want da dah, dah. Right? And lots of friends and colleagues said the same thing, like, don't, don't break what isn't broken.

Right. I've done that and it's taken me years to rebuild and all of the things, right? All of the stories, the horror stories of what will happen if you. Let go surrender, walk away, pivot, change course. And I know better because I know I've dealt with that my whole life with all of the counterintuitive steps and [00:12:00] approaches that I take.

And these are the silent moments of integrity and alignment that you're choosing in your business behind the scenes to make a choice in your business. To move in a direction despite the success that you've created on paper and also tangibly, right? Like I had created results in a tangible way, and I made a decision at that point that eventually I would turn off my ads.

Now it took me months to do that and to get to a place of actually turning the ads off, but slowly from September of last year till March of this year. I reduced my ad spend over and over and over again to a point where the middle of March of this year, 2025, I shut my ads off for the first time in almost three years, and I haven't turned my ads back on since.

Now. The reason for that is because, like I said, I wanted to be able to take my foot off the gas in my business from an expense [00:13:00] perspective, an overhead perspective. I had started to think about my business, like the business I had sold, the wine business, which was high overhead and high production, and I was like, I feel like I just replaced the brick and mortar with the online business.

Right? And I feel like this is a journey that many entrepreneurs go through where I left corporate, right? I started the. Wine business. I was like, I replaced my corporate hours with double corporate hours, right? Trying to find the balance there, but then realizing the high overhead and high production value, that the more we sold, the more work that was, whether that was my time or hiring out, that sort of thing.

And then also the constraints of having a brick and mortar. Okay, that doesn't really jive with me and maybe where I want to go. And then the online business. Similarly going, okay, what patterns am I repeating in my business that I've repeated for the last couple years, which is foot on gas pedal, right?

Always having [00:14:00] to be on in order to. Sell within your business and attract clients. And also having the evergreen model set up in a way that didn't enable me to take proper breaks. And when I say proper breaks, oftentimes people, again look at it from that corporate perspective, the holiday taking a vacation, and I'm not talking about that because I think for many of us, we are very cyclical beings, meaning we work in cycles.

We work in sort of a rhythmic cycle, but our world is created very in a linear way in that we're designed to work the nine to five, the Monday to Friday. We're designed to put in a bunch of hours in work and then take off two weeks or a month or whatever. And that is how most businesses are, are designed.

And it's interesting because. When I talk about taking a break, it's like, yes, more and more people should take breaks. But I'm saying no. I'm [00:15:00] talking about integration breaks, meaning being able to sort of step away from the business maybe for multiple times throughout the year and maybe more extended periods throughout the year.

Right? Like if you think about a farmer, let's just say, right? They work cyclically. They're not doing work in the dead of winter in Saskatchewan because there's nothing to plant, there's no crops. That's what I'm talking about, like can you cyclically work? Teachers are another kind of example, although they're cyclical period, that two short months in the summer they get off.

But I'm talking about they're working in a school year cycle, right? So there are things out there that are, are cyclical in nature, and that's sort of what my system was starting to crave and. These decisions that we are presented with are often that much more difficult when things are working, when the system is working, when the [00:16:00] business is working, when the relationships are working, but you as a person are feeling a pull, a draw away from it.

It's being able to honor that integrity, that authenticity, and that alignment despite what looks good on paper or what success you have created. It's knowing how to walk away from the success that you've created, even though it's still successful, and even though someone else might dream for this, or die for that career, or die for that relationship, or whatever it is, it's finding the courage and the bravery.

To make those decisions. And I think, again, those are the silent moments that often don't get shared in. What I say is a very sort of grandiose surface level reductionist marketing landscape that we live in. And I've talked about this many, many times, and again, not from a judgmental place, but just from.

An honest, truthful [00:17:00] place is that that's usually how marketing is. It's very reductionist and or it's this sort of hero's journey that's painted, right? We don't actually share the end of the story until we've reached the height of success, and so we paint this rock bottom moment and then this like height of success.

As a process person, I am dying for more process people to actually share the process because it's in the process that all of these. Moments. These moments that define us, that define our journey, define who we are, are the things that I think a lot of people would love to hear more of, which is why hearing Cody talk about that and the decision she made to like not share more of her and her husband, even though.

That's what got a lot of engagement, right? It's our obsession of chasing virality. It's our obsession for views, likes. And Alex Ozzi said something really brilliant also on the podcast. I highly recommend watch [00:18:00] listening it, watching it. I watched it on YouTube, but he talks about like, most people aren't wired, or we haven't experienced rejection in our life.

And so we're not used to having any sort of rejection, but we're also, you know, not used to. Having people say that what we're doing isn't good, or whatever it might be, and therefore we chase those metrics of virality, or we chase the likes, the shares, the comments. And then we make decisions based on that, which is why a lot of creators, content is formulaic, right?

You see it. If you're this, then you need this. If you're this, this is the missing piece. This is a real reason why X, y, Z is not working, right? We see these formulas, the POV, right? It's a formula because people are chasing the algorithm. They're chasing the views and the likes. They're chasing all of that, and.

In the face of ai with AI coming online now, right? We're gonna see more and more and [00:19:00] more carbon copy content getting put out there. And it's the authenticity. I even hate that word, authenticity, right? It's, it's our ability to, truthfully, in a raw, unfiltered sort of way, share. All of these bits and bobs of what actually goes on behind the scenes, the messy actions that are taken, the way in which you make decisions, the way in which you think about things, the way in which you approach things, why you made that decision, why you didn't make that decision, right?

When somebody can get an inside look at the way in which you approach the world, your unique perspective, how you view the world. That isn't something that AI's gonna copy that isn't something that they can put a fingerprint on and say, and more and more people, more, most people don't want to go to the depth that, that I feel like a [00:20:00] lot of experts and thought leaders are being invited to step into the depth of.

These behind the scenes moments, the how, how we navigated them, how we didn't navigate them, the fears that came up, the things that, the crazy things that were said to us in the process. When we start to share more of that, I think in a lot of ways that's gonna build that much more trust with the people around you, but also enables you to, again.

Not have to conform to a formula. And so the question I have for many of you listening is, where are you still trying to contort yourself to fit into a model that might not be in alignment with you? Where are you still reducing and diluting your message and what you want to share and what you want to say?

Because it doesn't fit [00:21:00] that POV or it doesn't quite fit in the Instagram caption, or it's not tangible enough, or you might feel like you're gonna be misunderstood or it's not palpable enough, or whatever it is, right? All of that fear coming through the dilution, the reductionist, the F fit contorting to fit.

I invite you to unpack that 'cause it's in these quiet moments. And I say this very honestly, it's in these quiet moments of integrity in alignment where we make decisions that are counterintuitive, that look crazy to everybody on the outside, and that don't align with the measurements of success that we've been sold or that are quote unquote sold as gospel.

The likes, the views, the shares. The dms, the never having to take a sales call and only selling in the dm, whatever the message is that is [00:22:00] being communicated as superior to all other things, when we can veer away from that because it's not in alignment with our values. That is where I truly believe true fulfillment comes from because we have actually the freedom to make the choice to do things that work for us rather than doing things for the sake of doing them because they work, right?

There are a lot of things that work, and there's a lot of strategies and methods and approaches that work, but if it doesn't work for you. Or it's sacrificing your relationship, right? It's pulling you away from your time. It's with family or friends, or the things that you also equally love as much as you do your business.

Then what's the point? Like, that's the question I often ask my clients of, what's the point of all of [00:23:00] this, right? If, if you're not, if you don't enjoy it, like really enjoy it. I'm not saying that there's not gonna be challenges or battles that you're gonna have to overcome and things like that, right? I'm not this spiritual bypass or that's like everything's perfect.

Light and love. It's always gonna be peaceful. You're never gonna have to have challenge. It's always gonna be easy when you find alignment. That I don't play that game, right? I think there's always gonna be challenges. There's always gonna be things that you're navigating. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

But if you're not like grounded and aligned in your values, it's gonna start to eat up at you, especially if you're heart centered Entrepreneur, right? It's gonna start to eat you up inside. Which is why you're probably bumping up against some resistance when it comes to some of these things. Another example is, and I often see this in the content that's out there and the content that goes viral, right?

So again, it's choosing between what you value and what is important to you versus what's not. And this is just another decision I made in [00:24:00] my business and some people can say, well, you're crazy, or like, what's the point? Yada yada, all the things. And that's fine, I don't care. But you've probably seen this with.

Content that's being produced, right? It's choppy. There's lots of angle turns, there's movement. Um, you've probably seen it, right? It's like, feels very dopamine hitting to me when I watch it. I'm like, oh, I, I can't. Right? I it's, it's like being in a IMAX theater where there's like racing cars and flashing lights and overstimulated and all of a sudden my internal system's like nauseated.

'cause I'm like. I have motion sickness by all of the movement. That's how it feels to me, and I refuse to make content like that. Absolutely refuse. I'm, and I also don't want to spend a ton of my time producing high production content. Never bought into that. Don't want to do it. I had mentors for years telling me I need to record more, be on video more, all the [00:25:00] sorts of things.

And again. I wasn't just rebelling because I'm like a rebellious person. My system literally from a value perspective, I'm like, I don't want to spend my time recording content. And then people would be like, well, here's a hack on how you can do it in 3.5 seconds. And I'm like, cool. It does. That doesn't work for me, right?

I'm not following a script. I'm not reading off a script like that doesn't work for me. It just doesn't. I'm not somebody who can read off a script. If I'm having to read something while also speak, I'm disconnected, and I can feel that, and I know others can feel it. It's just a value of mine. I don't wanna spend my time doing high production content.

I don't wanna spend my time just producing dopamine, hitting content, because that's what goes viral and that's what works. Nada. Right? Because I am a creative process person. I want to be in creative expression, and for me, creative [00:26:00] expression is literally channeling through me what I'm saying. I have no script here.

I just knew what I kind of wanted to talk about. I'm not reading off a teleprompter. I'm not any of that. If I stumble on my words, cool. If I say too many ums, great. Right? I think we overthink. So much about how we need to communicate, how we need to come across, how we have to appear, and there's this manufactured persona that ends up happening This, this manufactured performance, manufactured success, manufactured credibility.

None of that feels real to me, and so it doesn't mean that I haven't done. Those tactics in the past or the formulas in the past, but that's where I'm saying you start to make these decisions and get more and more clear on what you value and what's important to you. And it's in that quiet moment of integrity and alignment where it's like you make the [00:27:00] decision to not do something just for the sake of doing it because somebody told you it worked and or you're doing it because you're seeing the success.

But now. In this season of life that you're entering, you're wanting to shift or pivot or change or do something different, and I think we're always on this evolutionary path. We're always shifting and growing. I think for many of us, we're walking contradictions, and I think that's partly. Why many people struggle with others being authentic is because we set expectations for other people to show up a certain way and behave a certain way.

And there's this righteousness that if somebody doesn't act like you, behave, like you, show up, like you, then somehow you're morally superior to them, which is a very toxic trait. So nothing that I share. [00:28:00] And the tactics and the things that I use and the strategies I use to me is not gospel, right? It's not that it's, there's a right or a wrong, a black or white, and either an or, and it's an either or, right?

And I wanna share more and more sort of my thinking and behind the scenes and how I approach things because I don't approach things from that reductionist perspective. But I also don't approach it from a one size fits all approach. And when I say one size fits all approach, I mean, I'm not just looking at.

The short term metrics, I'm playing the long game, but I'm also looking at things very holistically. I'm a systems thinker, so I'm looking at things from a systems perspective. If we make this decision, likely it's gonna impact these things, right? So when someone comes to me and says something isn't working, I'm not looking at just one piece of.

Data, I'm looking at the whole system, and [00:29:00] the system includes the human right. So if someone comes to me and says, this isn't working, I'm not then trying to prove to them why it is working. I'm coming from the approach of like, Kay, tell me more about why you think it isn't working. And oftentimes. Sure the metrics maybe don't align with their expectations, but oftentimes the clients that I work with, it's the fact that it's similar to what I experienced in the fall where I felt like my foot was always on the gas pedal and what I had built felt like it was no longer aligning with where I wanted to go.

The evergreen model, the foot on the gas pedal, the high expenditure of ad spend felt like it no longer aligned with me, and I could feel the shift coming. That's usually where I find the resistance once I dig beyond the metrics and the numbers, because I often find the people that work with me are at these inflection and threshold points and they don't know how to transition through [00:30:00] them.

It's not that they don't know how, they struggle with transitioning through them because they're often met with, but your numbers are good, your business is good. Don't walk away with from your success. Don't give this up. You'd be crazy to walk away. Everybody would die to have what you have, right? All of the things that then get into their head that go, man, am I crazy or.

Should I stay with this? And a lot of the people I work with hold onto things longer than they quote unquote should. Meaning they struggle with letting go and surrendering to what the next iteration looks like. They're struggling with what's emerging through them. They want support in that emergence.

They don't want somebody to then just sell them on, well, your metrics work, or, let's optimize this tactic, right? Let's optimize your ads so that you can have more freedom. Let's hire a sales per sales call person for you so you don't have to take all the sales calls. Let's hire you a DM person so that you [00:31:00] can, you don't spend all your hours in the dm, yada, yada, yada.

It goes on and on and on, right? We're so wired to fill positions within our company and our business to eliminate the resistance, when in reality it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with optimizing the ads. Has nothing to do with hiring more people on your team. It has to do with the values that you carry that you're like.

I actually value my time more than this task, or I actually, I. Want a simple, lean business structure. So I don't want a massive team, right? It's coming back down to what actually matters. And in the fall, I had to really get clear on what matters and the things that I was really craving. I didn't want. My foot on the gas all the time.

I want to really create a cyclical and rhythmic business. Have I done that yet? No. So come back at some point when I do, but I will share my process with you as I navigate this. I've had to create it. I've had many clients say to me, [00:32:00] share with me what you're doing, because I crave a cyclical and rhythmic business as well.

So there's that component. That value for me was coming through. I didn't want my foot on the gas. Two, I wanted a very lean and simple business, so I didn't want a ton of overhead, meaning I didn't wanna spend high expenditures every single month on ads, at least at this stage in my business when I am the primary client delivery person.

Right? There was that, and the other part of it was, is that I was wanting to shift away from. Some of the tactical delivery, meaning what should my IG bio be? How many posts should I post every week? What funnel should I pick, right? There's nothing wrong with the tactics, but I was wanting to shift more to the systems thinker, the strategist, more of that consulting role rather than building out tactics.

Because to me, tactics are easily something that. Can be [00:33:00] copied by anyone. Plus I started to see where the, the industry was going in a lot of way with ai and I was like, anybody can start to be a tactical master in this. Right? And I'm beyond that, like that isn't something that I would say is my quote unquote.

Natural gift and genuine brilliance. I'm somebody who can see below the depth. I'm somebody that can, you know, get to the crux of the patterns that are, that are appearing that most people can't see. I can spot incongruency a mile away with people's messaging business model, so I can see where there's misalignment.

When someone comes to me and says, Hey, Catherine. I have this offer, this messaging, however, I'm attracting these types of people. I just had a client recently say that, right? Like, this particular client wants this from me. And I'm like, I can see exactly the mindset, the level of consciousness that client is approaching this work with.

And I can see that my client doesn't wanna work with those [00:34:00] people and therefore we're not gonna message that person. But I can see very quickly how her messaging. Literally is speaking to those types of people. So we've gotta make those fixes. That for me, feels more juicy than how many emails should I send every week?

What should I put in my emails? Those sorts of things. I'd rather support somebody on the the systems thinking perspective and how do we get the system working, including yourself. And so these are the behind the scenes moments. I think that I would love more people to talk about when it comes to making.

Integral decisions in the face of what's working on paper and what's working sort of tangibly, and also the brave and courageous. That's required to walk away from some of these things that, again, I don't think people necessarily talk about is being able to let go. Let go of what's no longer working, [00:35:00] let go of what you've outgrown, let go of the program, the Facebook group, whatever that is, no longer serving the mission that you want to carry forth.

And finding that courage. Um, I had a client also recently come to me and she's like, I have this group of people and there's like 2000 people in it. I just don't wanna do it anymore. And the reason she didn't want to do it was the very same reason I let go of my group three years ago now. She came to me and she said to me, Kathryn, I just don't wanna be responsible for maintaining engagement or rallying people or motivating people or anything like that.

And I said to her, I feel the exact same way. I'm not wired to be the cheerleader. I'm just not wired. There's many people that are wired, you know, aerobics, teachers who do that and love it. They're wired for that. I'm not wired for that. I'm not the person that wants to do the handholding. I'm not the person that wants to be the fix it, right.[00:36:00] 

The getting in there and fixing everything all the time, like I. I am not that person. I'm not wired like that, and so I'm not gonna contort to that. And the Facebook group that I had felt like I was the one that had to always be motivating and, and draw out engagement from people. And there's nothing more depleting in my opinion.

For a manifesting generator to have to, with a highly defined will center, to literally feel like you're pulling out of people, you're pulling teeth out of people to ha get them to show up and get them to engage and hold them accountable, like none of that. Feels good in my body whatsoever. And so she said to me like, I'm feeling, and she basically described exactly how I felt when I had my group.

And I said, I didn't even think twice about shutting it down. I just was like, I'm done. You know? And she, and I said to her like, do you, does this group make you feel excited? Like, and she said, not anymore. It did when she started it, but not anymore. And so then I said, well, what [00:37:00] is your fear of letting go?

And she's like, well. The fact that I've built it to this amount of people and I feel like, what if I'm letting go of something that can like bring me money? And I said, well, is it bringing you money? No. Well then. Uh, is, do you have a way to, to change it so it does bring you money? Well, I could do this and do this and do this and do this, and you could just tell she wasn't excited about doing anything that she was recommending, which is all the classic ways of creating engagement.

And maybe I could run a challenge. Maybe I could do it, da a, but she just wasn't excited about it. She eventually decided to let it go, and then had regret about it, and then thought about getting it going again, and then decided, no, I'm done with it. Right. I am sharing this because for many of us, especially if you have an undefined solar or spleen in your human design, and I have one as well, it can be very hard for us if we were really conditioned in this to not let go of what's no [00:38:00] longer serving us.

The reason why I feel like I'm innately gifted at this in some capacity is because I have Gate 50 defined in my will or in my spleen, which is quite literally the My Sun sign and my conscious sun, which is my brand and my life purpose in a lot of ways is quite literally supporting people in. Letting go of what no longer serves them and really helping people redefine and also honor what really matters to them.

And this looks different for everybody else. And so if we are building from the outside in and we're not really certain with the value and our values and what matters in this season of life, then it's gonna be really difficult to express ourselves authentically externally, because. We won't know and we won't have that inner compass of knowing when something is out of alignment.

And [00:39:00] so if a post goes viral, we might think, oh, people love when I post about my husband. I have to do this, and your husband's like, well, I don't want you to do this. And there, and then you get into this argument in your relationship about, well, but it works. I have to do this. Right. I'm not saying that you might, that's how you might approach it, but that can happen, right Where we start to sacrifice the things that are important to us.

Family relationships because of the metrics or the numbers or work, or what we feel like we have to do or what we should be doing. Because I don't know, the internet, gods told us that this was a viral post. And so with that, I just wanted this episode to really highlight I think these threshold and inflection points within our business where from a leadership perspective, when we are leading ourselves through our business, that we're doing it from that place of integrity and alignment and authenticity.

And when we have a really clear, [00:40:00] grounded understanding of what matters to us and what our values are, we're able to make those decisions very quickly and we are able to make them in the face of what might be working and what's demonstrated outside of ourselves is working. And this is so important because.

I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs try frameworks and tactics and all the things and they don't work. Someone sold us on the idea that this will work in 30 days or 60 days, or someone sold us on the idea of some big money thing at a certain period of time, and we buy into that, and then we get in it and we go, but wait a minute, this doesn't align or jive with me.

If we approached it through our values and we were discerning with the messages out there, we would make more integral and aligned decisions from the get go than having to learn through the process of making misaligned decisions and then learning from it. And I'm speaking from 100%. Experience, right?

When I left [00:41:00] corporate, I was trying to escape corporate and I opened the wine business and it was a very misaligned decision for me because I actually didn't know what I valued. I didn't give myself the space and time to actually do that Before I made the decision to step into entrepreneurship, I just felt like entrepreneurship was gonna be the answer that would help me overcome the frustrations I had with corporate.

That's not really how we want to make decisions. Had I internally checked in and said What matters to me in this moment, I likely would not have gone down that path, but I needed to go down that path to obviously learn from it. And it's all part of my journey, and I don't regret it because I learned so much from it.

But in the same breath, it was one of the hardest experiences of my life. Life because it was four years of. Misalignment and, and feeling trapped. I felt like my back was against the wall, like I couldn't get out. I was very trapped in it, which is a very hard place to be when freedom is one of your core values in a lot of ways, that freedom, that [00:42:00] autonomy to make a decision to make choice.

So. I'm gonna leave you with that, but I would love to just pose these questions to you of like, where in your life are you making those decisions at that inflection or threshold period, in integrity and in alignment, and just be aware of those. And then also, where are you not? Because to me, again, it's not black or white, right or wrong there.

I think as humans we're not always operating in alignment. We're not perfect. We make mistakes. Um, and I don't want to paint the picture that you know, that the, I'm a perfect being, or the other people I referenced in this podcast are perfect beings. 'cause I just don't think that that's true. And so. But I think it's really important to do your own self-reflection and your own introspection so that you get a sense of you and what works for you.

So with that, I'm gonna, I'll leave you and I cannot wait to tell next week's episode. Cheers. 

intro: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also [00:43:00] find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.