151: 4 Keys to Enjoying Stress and Its Transformative Gifts with Kate the Socialite

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I am thrilled to have you here as I am every week. Here's the scoop, I recorded the intro to this podcast when I recorded the podcast episode but there was a glitch, there was a glitch in my microphone so I'm re-recording the intro.

I could have gone back and listened to what I had said when I recorded it the first time but I am going to be honest with you because here's the thing, we recorded this a couple of weeks ago and I think what's important is what I remember about it, what I remember about my conversation with my client and now friend, Kate.

What I remember is probably what I want you to remember. I didn't go back and listen to the intro, I'm just going to tell you what I remember. I remember in my conversation with Kate, which you're going to get to hear in just a couple of minutes, that Kate told me that she actually has learned to like stress in a strange way and she has realized that she can push through it.

When she does, she discovers new things about herself. She discovers that she is capable of way more. She also discovers that life can be better if she embraces the fact that as a human, she's got the capacity to feel all the feelings.

Kate and I have been working together now for, I don't even know, maybe six months and I think what you will find from listening to this conversation is that the things that she came to me originally for, we have totally worked on, and then there have been so many more bonuses, so much more bonus learning and growth that she's experienced as a result of coaching and so much that she has learned about herself through this experience.

That's what I remember. I'm curious what you get from this but I think what's most important is that you're listening to a real live human with little kids and emotions and her willingness to work on herself. So sit back, buckle up, and listen to my conversation with Kate.

Hey, Time to Level Up listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. I am thrilled today to have Kate, Kate the Socialite is her name out there in the world but she does have another name. She does have a last name. Her last name is not the Socialite but she does have a last name. I'm going to let her introduce herself.

I do want to add in that I met Kate, I don't know now how many months ago, anyway, I was on her podcast and when I was on her podcast as a guest, she had some thoughts that maybe she needed a coach herself and so that is how we started but that's how our relationship has now transpired over the last few months as over maybe six months, I don't know, as me helping Kate in a coaching capacity. But I'm going to let Kate introduce herself. Kate, who are you? Tell us who you are and what you do.

Kate: Well, Andrea, first of all, thank you for having me on the show. It is such an honor to be here. And yes, I do have a last name. I don't use it very often because it is German and it's hard to pronounce and spell but it is Greunke and it is not spelled the way it sounds. I'll just leave it at that but my name is Kate Greunke. I go by Kate the Socialite.

My agency is called Socialite and I do have a podcast, like you mentioned, The Kate Show, which you were on, which you're going to be on again because you were such a hit and I have had my listeners either sign up with you or just reach out to tell me how much they appreciated that episode because you brought things into the conversation that I had never thought of and yes, like you said, that's when I realized, “Oh, crap, I need a coach.” It's been great.

Andrea Liebross: I think it's really interesting too that just things happened in that conversation like that wasn't the plan really but it just happened in the conversation.

Kate: Oh, no.

Andrea Liebross: Yes, and then I think also, I really appreciate, in reflecting on that, that you were super vulnerable and saying, “Hey, this is what's really going on. I never thought of it this way.” I appreciate your vulnerability and I think actually we could get all Brené Brown-ish but vulnerability has to do with confidence and courage too.

But anyway, today though, why I wanted to bring Kate on is in the months that we have been working together, I as the coach have really recognized that Kate has adopted this philosophy of “I can think bigger about myself and about my business,” both things personally and professionally.

I have noticed, and I think she has too, changes in her personal life and in her business as a result of not just staying in our small and safe and “this is how it's always been” kind of thinking. PS, nothing was going wrong, nothing was going wrong and nothing still is going wrong but embracing like, “Okay, but it doesn't have to stay the same and how do we want to change it?” and big thinking is really what has driven her to create that change I would say. What do you think? Do you agree?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. You helped me realize that I am the CEO of my business. Like I said before we started recording, for some reason, my business has always been about a mile or two ahead of me, and for some people, that may be like, “Oh, well, that's nice,” but it's not because I'm supposed to be driving the ship, not being dragged behind it through the water, and that's kind of what was happening.

Andrea, when you looked at me one day and you were like, “Go, be the CEO. You are the CEO. All these things that you're doing are CEO things,” and I was like, “Oh, yeah. Oh, okay,” and that helped me so much because then I had the confidence to be like, “I'm going to hand off more to my team because I have CEO work that only I can do and I can't be distracted by all these little things anymore because it's stressing me out,” which definitely affected my personal life.

It made me a hot mess. I was a hot mess when I came to you, Andrea. People will tell me all the time like, “Oh, you look like you have it all together,” and I'm like, “Well, that's how I want you to think, people. I want you to think I have it all together because I'm [inaudible] and all that nonsense.” But truthfully, I was a hot mess and I'm a lot less of a hot mess now. I'm more of a lukewarm mess and it's been great.

Andrea Liebross: And you're in a new house and you've got two kids out of, they're still little but in school in daycare and that wasn't really happening either, you were struggling with that whole thing.

Kate: Yeah. I was trying to be everything to everyone all the time. I was trying to manage my team. I was trying to be a full-time mom to one of my kids, for sure, because the other one wouldn't want to be around me that much. She likes going to school, which is great. But yeah, I was struggling to let the second one go to daycare and you were like, “Look, it's good for him. This is good for you. You've got to just stop doing all the things,” because in doing all the things, I wasn't really doing any of them well anyway.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. You were doing them well but you could do them better, let's put it that way.

Kate: Yes, and I do want to add too that when I had you on my podcast, I wasn't actively looking for a coach.

Andrea Liebross: No, you weren’t at all.

Kate: Yeah, but then I realized in the middle of all that, I shouldn't be looking for a coach once things have gone wrong or when I'm starting to panic, it just makes sense to have a coach when I'm like things are good but they really could be great. I don't really know how to make them great because I feel like I'm the bottleneck here, and I was. I was right about that. I was the bottleneck and I'm getting out of my own way, out of my business's way, and out of my team's way but I'm glad that I didn't wait to work with you until something had gone terribly wrong.

Andrea Liebross: That's a great point because I think a lot of lot of people think, “Well, I don't need that yet. I'm going to wait for the other shoe to drop and then I'll come see you.” I think that's a really great point I think when coaching also is most effective is when things are good but they could be great. I think that's where the biggest leaps occur because you're not in this emergency putting out fires mode.

When we're in emergency putting out fires mode, we also tend to catastrophize things and sometimes, no matter what we do, it's never going to feel great. But when you're in like, “Alright, I'm just plotting along here. I'm good but it could be better,” that's where you're in the best mindset and you're open to other thoughts and other thinking and you see the biggest leaps. That's a really good point so thanks for bringing that up.

I wanted to talk about the four keys that I think are necessary in order to think big and I wanted us to talk about those and see in reflecting how you've adopted those four things. The first one is if you're going to be a big thinker and you're going to harness that fear and shift a little, you've got to consider all your thought options.

I don't know which example we want to use here but I think you've really figured this out that there are lots of thought options, meaning you can think about things in a hundred different ways. I think one thing that I'm thinking about in particular is what you do or we’re doing in your business, you had the thought that I should be doing A, B, and C, but we had options.

Andrea Liebross: Right. You pointed out “Why do you have to be doing all these things? Well, do you really have to be doing them?” You were just asking really simple questions but they were also hard questions for me to answer because I was like, “I don't have answers for that. I don't know why I should be doing all of this. I just know that me doing all these things is burning me out.”

That's when you took me, rewinded the thoughts, and said, “Let's start over,” and one of my favorite little Andrea sayings is “Why don't we just try on this thought?” Like trying on clothes like, “Oh, okay, that's good that there's no commitment there. I can take the thought off and put it away if I want to.”

Andrea Liebross: Right. We can put it back on the rack.

Kate: Right, yeah. We would try on these different thoughts like, “Well, what if we did this? What if you had your team do this? Or what if childcare looked like this?” I'm like, “Okay, now I'm not freaking out about it anymore. Now I realize that I do have options and I'm not stuck.”

Because I did feel very stuck, spinning was like my default, just spinning my wheels going really, really fast but not really getting to a point. It was happening in my professional and my personal life so yes, that kind of big thinking and just realizing there's different thinking out there beyond what's in my skull was super helpful.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. I think also we think about things as facts. I'm going to use the childcare example. You really had a story in your head of this is what it should look like to care for a child under the age of two, for example. It was a fact, it wasn't an opinion, it was just the way it should be.

When we explored that and we thought about “Well, why is that your story or why is that your fact? What are you gaining from it?” you could gain the same exact thing in the end, get the same exact result even by changing your thought a little and it could get better.

The shifting between what are facts and what are thoughts is another interesting way to look at this. We all do this. We tell ourselves, “Well, this is the way it has to be.” Really? Does it?

Kate: It took so much of the drama out of it when we went through the exercise of like I kept in my brain calling it fact and fiction because so many of my thoughts were kind of fictional that's why they weren't helping me.

To give your listeners some context, me struggling to outsource childcare is really no different than if they're struggling to outsource any part of their business because basically, it's a responsibility they took on because they needed to but now there are options.

It can feel wrong to let someone else take this very important responsibility. I had my one-year-old with me while I was working and trying to take calls and video was extremely hard. It wasn't fair to him either. People can experience the same thing in their business where they are doing so much that it's actually hurting the rest of their team and their personal life.

Just having the courage and the confidence to be like, “I know that so many other moms have no problem dropping their kid off at daycare but for some reason I do. It's just like some business owners have no problem outsourcing every single thing but sometimes they really do struggle with that,” just realizing I need to treat it the same way I treat my business and saying, “This is something that's still very important to me and that's why I'm going to do my research when outsourcing,” and turns out, I found an absolutely wonderful nurturing lady who loves my son so much and watches him three days a week so I can get work done.

My daughter goes to 4K so she's happy too and I can get work done without feeling like I have spaghetti brain by the end of the day. All I had to do was make a choice. It's just crazy. I just had to think about it differently and make a choice.

Andrea Liebross: Yep, make a choice. And that's okay, the choices you made are all okay and they're working for you. Just because we're capable of doing something doesn't mean we have to do it. You are capable of running your business and having Salen with you but that doesn't have to be that way or just before we started recording, we’re talking about writing copy. You're totally capable but it doesn't mean that you have to do all of it.

We have to shift the dial or change what we're thinking in order to create a different outcome and the outcome can be just as amazing. So number one is consider all your thought options, which brings me to number two what big thinkers do is they really figure out what's the real problem, and 99% of the time, the real problem is just that they don't want to feel a negative feeling. That's it. That's all it is.

Kate: Yeah, which you taught me is really the definition of not being confident because confident people are okay with experiencing negative feelings. I have always struggled with confidence for a variety of reasons but one of them was I just didn't know what confidence was so it's hard to hit a target when you don't even know where to look. Just having the ability to look at a situation and be like, “This might go wrong and that's okay,” okay, this suddenly got a lot less dramatic.

Andrea Liebross: Right. It might go wrong and that's okay, or I was thinking about when you're moving, like I don't have everything under control for these couple of weeks and that's okay. It's going to feel messy. It's going to feel a little chaotic. It may not be done the way you would do it if you were doing this all by yourself and alone, which you don't want to do either, and that's okay.

Or in your business, we had a couple of times where we've talked about clients and you're like, “This doesn't feel very good,” and you were trying to solve the wrong problem in a sense when dealing with some client issues.

Kate: There are just so many different ways to think about these things now that I have the big picture thinking and it became a habit because now, it's something that I apply in my personal life, my business life, everything. Becoming a more confident person has helped me accomplish, well, I mean the process of accomplishing to be fully transparent, the ability to start relaxing again because being type A, I started my business right after college and this has been my life and sometimes I feel much older than 32 because I've been in business for almost a decade and I'm still grinding just as hard as when I started but I shouldn't be.

I don't even have to be but it became a bad habit at that point. It took a lot of conversations with you and all your patients to be like, “Okay, investing in yourself and doing things that refresh you actually help your business, your family, and all these other things so they need to be another to-do on your to-do list.”

Thinking about it that way has really helped me because it removed the guilt from being like, “If I'm going to take a half hour or whatever for lunch and go read a book outside on my patio, okay.” After we talked about that, I did it and I felt amazing. I was so productive when I came back to work.

It's silly that it's taken me so long to realize that it is okay to not be working every second that I am alone. But it's also been the most amazing thing because I really have started feeling like myself again.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. I think one of our very first conversations, I remember talking about getting your haircut and you're like, “I don't know. It's just last on the list,” but you didn't want it to be last on the list so it was almost as if you had to figure out how to give yourself permission to not make your own self last on the list. You had to figure out how to make it just as important as serving the client and getting [inaudible] to what they need.

Kate: Right. I think that will always be an ongoing struggle for me but it will be an easier struggle because I'll start to develop the habit of taking care of myself better. If your listeners are like, “What does haircutting have to do with it?” well, I have two children that don't sleep so the first one was worse than the second and I went four years without sleeping so it definitely changed who I was temporarily.

Even though I would eat well and exercise, there were just so many things about me that I would just let go. My hair, trying to be like Rapunzel over here, I guess, just get longer and longer and longer, and then someone would ask me, “When was the last time you got your haircut?” “I don't know, a year ago maybe.” Right now, my hair's down to my elbows but I like it that way so I'll just keep it that way.

But yeah, you were like, “Go, get your haircut. What the heck?” I was like, “You're right. This is really dumb. This is how far I have sunk. I won't even make time to go to the salon.” So yeah, I was in a rough place when we met because I was just so deprived of sleep and self-care.

Andrea Liebross: 100%. I want to circle back to feeling the negative feeling when it comes to business. I think it's interesting, and I do this too but I catch myself, that when we've got something in our business, like a client issue, an unhappy client we'll call it, we want to solve the problem by changing something in our own business that we know already works.

We want to change something that we know is already working but when we really look at why we want to change it, it's just because we don't want to have a difficult conversation with someone, we don't want to experience what it's going to be like to say no to someone, we don't want to say, “Hey, listen this is what I can do but if you like it, great. If you don't like it, that's okay too.”

Sometimes problems in our business don't have to be solved by changing things, they just have to be solved by us recognizing that it's okay to not feel so great in a conversation.

Kate: In that situation, it ended with me firing the client, which I've only needed to do a few times. Actually, that really woke the client up and she was like, “Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry,” and she apologized profusely and came back. I let her back in.

Andrea Liebross: Oh, look at that.

Kate: I was not expecting that to happen. Anyone in business will occasionally get a crazy person, it just happens and they will abuse your service or they will accuse you of things that you've never done. I have had so many people threaten to sue me over the stupidest things that I just laugh at this point because they never do and there's no evidence.

There's no nothing but the thing is people bring their own dirty pain and messy emotions into business relationships and a lot of that will get taken out on various service providers. I'm sure a lot of your listeners can attest to that but looking at that and being like, “Okay, was the problem us? No. Was it a problem with our process, a system, or the service we're delivering? No. Because everything's going well for all our other clients, [inaudible] this client. Okay, this client has to leave.” Just narrowing it down.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. Super interesting. I see that happen in a lot of businesses and again, I've thought about the same thing in my business. But that was an awesome revelation for you that you're never going to make anyone happy and sometimes being honest with them even though it's hard is really the best thing. It's interesting that that person actually turned around in a sense.

There's another thing too, think about this, sometimes we're doing that person a disservice by not being honest with them, by not saying, “Hey, this isn't our fault, this isn't anything on our end, this is on your end,” or we're doing them a disservice by a team member doing a disservice to a team member by not offering them more opportunities in holding them all for ourselves.

We don't do that because we're also afraid of how that's going to feel. How is that going to feel for me? How's it going to feel for them? Anyway, number two is identify the real problem, which usually is just not wanting to feel a negative feeling.

The third thing that big thinkers do, and I do think you've figured this one out too and I can think of some good examples, is what I like to say is embrace ambiguity, be okay with uncertainty, or be okay with not knowing all of the information. I think when you change your thoughts and you decide to move forward with things, it comes with some uncertainty, ambiguity, and not knowing what's going to happen. How do you think that's shown up for you?

Kate: Well, that's shown up in a lot of ways because I'm a planner and I like to have as much detail as possible about things. When I'm doing something that feels big personally, professionally, if I don't have all, I call it my ducks in a row, if I don't have all the information, then I feel like, “Well, this must be a foolish decision because I just don't know.”

But the reality is you can't know all the things all the time. It's not possible and you can make the best decision at the moment with the information you've been given and then if it goes wrong, I hate to say it but sometimes, maybe that's just part of your story because I know that's been my case. Sometimes, it's just part of my story, something that I had to learn from. It's something that I just had to go through because sometimes bad things happen.

But all the time, just going back to “This is going to be okay or it is okay,” and having the confidence to just go through it, instead of trying to avoid it and trying to avoid feeling certain things because back to your earlier point, I found myself running from a lot of emotions that really were preventing me from thinking big and realizing I don't want to ever feel discouraged.

But if I go through and make a decision without all the information and then I feel discouraged, I'll think, “Oh, it's my fault it didn't go right.” It's like, “Well, maybe, and that would be okay too because I'd learn from it, or maybe we just don't know all the things because we're human.”

Andrea Liebross: Right. We don't know. When we think about uncertainty, we honestly don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow, so even if we try to plan everything, we can't. I think this happens a lot with relationships.

If we think about relationships within our business or personal relationships, there are so many variables but we want everything to be perfect, we want everything to be laid out, and we want to know what we're going to expect and it can't always be that way.

Kate: No, it can't. Sometimes we truthfully don't even know what we want anyway.

Andrea Liebross: Ah, that's a really good point.

Kate: Yeah. We have very baseless expectations. I have had some of the silliest expectations. When I first got married I thought, “This would be great. We're never going to be frustrated after this point. After we say I do, we're just going to be happy all the time,” and I'm like, “Yeah, okay.”

Well, I mean it's great, I have a great marriage, I love my husband but I'm like, “Okay, I needed a strong dose of reality for that one because the best things in life take very intentional thinking.” That's true of marriage, parenting, and business. I wish that I had been able to learn these things 10 or 15 years ago but it is what it is.

Andrea Liebross: It is what it is. You're learning it now and that's okay.

Kate: Yeah. The funniest thing about uncertainty is when you're starting a business, everything is uncertain, absolutely everything. You really can't control all that much, you just do your best with what's in front of you and then you go to the next right thing. That's all you do for like two years straight and then you finally get enough clients that it's like, “Oh, okay good.”

Because I just noticed that even with my clients, it takes two years of hard work before they'll see a lot of fruits of their labor. Speaking of labor, the thing that taught me the most about uncertainty was having kids because both of mine were overdue and the uncertainty of being like I am a ticking time bomb and I can't control it, I can't control anything, I don't know how long I'm going to be like this. I don't know when this is going to happen. Am I going to be in the grocery store when my water's going to break like in the movies?

I had to give up so much control because otherwise, it would just make things worse and it would steal the joy from the moment that I was in. The same thing is true of being in business.

Andrea Liebross: That's so true. I know you've tested out some things like having other people manage your inbox, you've tested out having other people do some of the content writing, you're about to test out a new product offering. We don't really know what's going to happen with any of that even though we have all these expectations and think we do because of the past.

I'm going to call them trying on new dresses that you've done, trying those things even knowing you're not sure what's going to happen, that all takes some confidence. That all takes you quieting that little voice in the back of your head that's like, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I think what's fun is when we see that, “Okay, maybe this didn't go exactly as I planned it but I learned along the way and I learned things that I didn't expect.” That's happened a couple of times too.

Kate: It has. Also, something that I see in myself and even in my own clients is the desire to make it perfect before presenting it to the world. The funny thing is if we spend a year making something perfect, six months later, we'll be like, “No, it's not perfect anymore. I should have done it this way.” That's why we can't always move forward until we have all the information, we just have to move forward.

We just have to do it because that information is out there but we have to take that next step. It's like stepping stones but you can only see the one right in front of you so we have to focus on the one right in front of us versus the last one at the end of the stepping stone path of whatever it is. That's been helpful for me.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. I always look to say, “What's our next best step? It's all we need to know. What's the next best step?” The fourth thing and the last thing I like to say is seek support. If you're going to think big, you need to seek support. I think that can come in so many different ways.

You offer a form of support in your own business to your clients, I'm offering you support, and I think it also can be family members although we've figured out, I think you and I have done a lot of discussing on what kind of support are they best offering? What's their role in this whole scenario? But what do you think about that, seek support kind of thinking?

Kate: Yeah. I think that it's unrealistic, well, I was unrealistic for a long time thinking that I don't need support or I don't deserve support.

Andrea Liebross: Oh, that's a better one even.

Kate: Yeah. Both of those thoughts are very destructive because it actually really helps other people when they're allowed to help you. That's something that even just asking my husband for help with the dishes or the kids, he wants to be needed.

Asking people for help in my business, I asked you for support because I'm like, “Things could be great but I don't know how to get there,” and allowing people to become part of my community, be part of my tribe, people weren't meant to live as islands but I think American culture has taught us to be islands where we don't even know our neighbors so we don't have someone we can ask for support even if we needed it.

That has to change on a professional and a personal level, we have to be okay with asking people for support because it benefits them too. When someone asks me for support, I'm not offended. I'm like, “I'm so glad that you need me. That makes me feel special.” Just having that big-picture thinking of “Okay, it's actually not about me. Even me asking for support, it is not all about me.”

Andrea Liebross: No, it's not. I've been challenging my clients to ask for 20, I do 20 asks and ask for support or ask someone to do something for you. It's really hard to come up sometimes with 20. You were trying to work on that. It's really hard but I haven't had one person say to me, “Well, I came up with this list, I've started asking, and this person said no.”

I don't think anyone's reported back that they have gotten a no on an ask, me included, which is interesting but we hesitate, we totally hesitate. How do you lean into the support? Was that a growth process for you leaning into the support? Because a lot of times people say, “Well, I don't know, let's say I hire a coach, I don't know if I'm going to use it to its fullest.” I hear that kind of comment. I bet you hear that too in your business like, “I want to make sure I'm using all the things.” But what do you say to that? What's your thought on that one?

Kate: That people will get what they need when they sign up and everyone needs something a little bit different. Especially with the marketing services that we offer to people in the home industry, it's like because I have such a niche industry, I know in general what a home professional is going to need to market his or her business but the nuances of that are something that we uncover together where I'm consulting with them.

Again, that is a perfect scenario of making a decision when you don't have all the information. Do you know how coaching will benefit you? No, so go find out. Do you know how email marketing is going to transform your business and increase client conversions? No, so go find out. Stop making these decisions based in fear because fear will keep you stuck exactly where you are and it's not where you want to be or you wouldn't be coming to me or you, Andrea.

Andrea Liebross: Right. So true. I get that all the time. I want to make sure that I'm going to make use of all the things but I don't think you know how you are going to make use of all the things, if you'll need all the things, or what that's going to look like. I know that you and I sometimes, you will go back and forth on Voxer and you'll just say, “Okay, I don't know exactly what I'm asking but this is what's going on. What do you think?”

I can just send you back like a 10-second sentence, in 10 seconds, I'll just say one thing and you'll be like, “Oh, I never really thought about it that way but that's super helpful.” Even just putting yourself out there in almost being like, “I don't know what I need but I know I need something,” you're going to find what you need is really the bottom line. You're going to find what you need if you actually ask and just initiate. I think there's the thing, initiating, just initiate and trust that you're going to get what you need.

Kate: Yeah. Because again, it's like if you let your fear keep you stuck, then you will stay stuck.

Andrea Liebross: It’s totally true. Alright, to wrap up, what do you think thinking big is? If you had to say it in one sentence, what do you think thinking big is?

Kate: Every time I hear that phrase, I always picture an eagle soaring over a landscape seeing everything below, seeing everything in context, and understanding how one road connects to another, how you could get from here to there, and how these power lines connect those power lines. Being able to just see everything and then being able to make better decisions because of that.

If I'm putting on my eagle brain, like this morning quite honestly, I was really, really stressed out about some stuff in my business, and then I realized, “Okay, be like the eagle. Go way up high. Does this issue actually need to be dealt with right now? No. Is it even an issue? No. If someone is impatient and they think they need it now but they don't because it's not ready yet, when will it be ready? I have it in my calendar, it is happening.”

I had to pull myself out of the mire and be like, “The big picture is it's actually bringing me back to reality.” It's actually, again, helping me plan ahead, make better decisions because the worst thing that I can do with the limited amount of time that I have to work on my business as a mom and just anyone in general, we only have so many hours in the day, the worst thing we can do is let ourselves get derailed by someone else's fire or by a fire that we created just for fun because somehow we need something else to do and we have to stop making fires and be like the eagle and be like, “No, this is the big picture and my goals are here. This is the path I have to take to get those goals. I don't need these little rabbit trails.”

Andrea Liebross: I love it. So good. Okay, I love the eagle. I'm going to use that image. I've never really thought of it that way. I always think about it as like the future you who can see all the things, who can see all the roads connected, who can see where you want to go, and asking that person what you would do today but your image of that eagle, I love it. I love it.

Alright, I already said last but next last thing, is there a favorite saying or is there something that you've taken away from coaching like a sentence that you use all the time to make you even better than you already are? A favorite sentence or thing I say.

Kate: I'll give some quick context around it, although I'm sure a lot of your listeners will have heard you say it before. But if we're in a group coaching call or a one-on-one call and someone or me says something or explains a problem they're having and you just sit there and you're like, “Alright, let's go back and change the thought that preceded everything else that you just explained,” it changes everything.

It's a superpower that none of us knew we had, that we can think about this differently which will lead us to make different decisions which could possibly change the outcome but even if the outcome doesn't change, we've changed.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. Usually, we've changed and feel a lot better.

Kate: Yeah. It's always less dramatic. There is never a moment where you bring up, “Okay, let's go back and change the thought” that somehow then results in something more dramatic or emotionally difficult happening. It always deescalates.

Andrea Liebross: I love it, yeah, because you move out of that stuck stress and you move into progress stress, which deescalates all of that tension and overwhelm. Awesome. Alright, Kate, where can people find you if they're looking for you? This has been super fun. Where do they go? Tell them all the places.

Kate: Yeah. You can go to katethesocialite.com. I'm also on Instagram although I am notorious for not being very much into social media. I run a marketing agency and I'm not into social media, I'll let you think about that one. If people listen to my podcast, they'll know why. I also have the podcast The Kate Show, which you can find anywhere you get your podcasts.

Andrea Liebross: Awesome. I love it. That will all be in the show notes. Hopefully, we can do this again. I love having conversations with you. So fun.

Kate: Thank you so much.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. So listeners, go follow Kate. She's got great information. Even if you're not in the home industry, it is all very useful. I think like what you said at the very beginning, if you're thinking about coaching, if you're thinking how you want to elevate your game, if you're thinking about thinking bigger, you don't have to wait till something goes wrong. You don't have to wait.

I think being in a coaching community, and I find this in my own coach, it's life-changing. If you want to live a better life and have a better business, go for it. Alright, until next time, I'll see you all next week. Remember, now is the time to level up. It is not tomorrow, it wasn't yesterday, it's today. See you soon.

Okay, my friends, so what do you think? What do you think when you listen to Kate and I chat? What are you thinking about? What comes up for you? What was relatable? What would you love to have that you don't have right now? It's out there for you. It's available, my friends.

If you're making up a story that you're too busy, that there are too many soccer games, that you just don't have time, that things are okay, there's nothing really wrong, all of that is just a story, it is just a story that your brain is creating to keep you safe, to keep you comfy.

Come on, my friends, it is time to stop just consuming ideas, consuming podcasts, consuming books, and shift and transfer all of that learning into creating more time, money, and energy for you and I am here to hold your hand in doing that. Can you sense my excitement? I’m about to jump out of my chair. Let's do it. Let's go. Come on. Now is the time.

Here's what I want you to do next. I want you to go to LinkedIn, Instagram, or go to andreaslinks.com, go to any of those places, find a way to connect with me. Send me a message right now that says, “Let's go,” and I will reach back out to you, I promise. We will figure out how to do this together.

There are so many ways we can do this together and I'm so excited to be your guide, your Sherpa, your personal board of directors in doing it with you just like Kate. You can be Kate. You can be you, let's do it. Alright, my friends. Until next week. Remember, right now it is the time to level up. I am fired up today. I am very fired up today and I want to get fired up with you too. Alright, see you next week.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.