Today is one of those interviews where as soon as I hit the stop button on the recording, I was like, I cannot wait to share this with you all.

Joining me on today’s podcast—today is part one and next week is part two—is Kim Wensel.

Kim believes we are more than our job titles. For over twelve years she’s helped organizations and individuals find meaning in their work and build a connection with others through data storytelling, copywriting, and personal branding.

Today she leads her own firm, Pattern of Purpose, where she advises entrepreneurs on how to communicate who they are and what they believe—on stage, on page, and in person.

In our discussion between today and next week, we’re talking about how to focus on what makes you happy, and still be able to make money in the process. Many of us think, “Well, I can’t do this just because it makes me happy in my business, because I don’t know if that’s going to make me money. It’s going to make me happy, but I don’t know how successful it’s going to be.” Then we lean so far the other way and only focus on the things that we know are going to move the business forward.

Well, I want to help you begin to find the line between the two and focus more on what makes you happy, because that’s what is going to help you grow your business and increase your profit.

So, we talk about a whole host of topics between today and next week. That’s why I wanted to break it down into two parts. They’re going to revolve around the concept of showing up as your authentic self and using your talents in an authentic way that lights you up, and then watching the benefits that come as a result of you doing that.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to get past the awkwardness of promoting yourself
• Why you need a clear understanding of what “success” means to you
• The dangers of merging your personal identity with your business
• Why you need to celebrate your achievements more
• The benefits of doing something because you want to instead of have to

Links & Resources:

• Riverside.fm
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips
• The Art of Online Business website
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

Kim Wensel’s Links:

• Follow Kim on Instagram
• Pattern of Purpose
• Pattern of Purpose on Instagram
• Kim’s website

Got A Question You Want Answered On the Podcast?

Ask your questions or let me know if there is a topic or guest you’d like to hear from in the comments below or click here to visit my contact page and submit your question there for a chance to be featured on one of my upcoming Q&A episodes.

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

(Best of!) Let’s Get Personal: a Q&A With My Wife Amy

How to Banish Burnout, with Helena Lucia

Coaching Call: Feeling Discouraged, Revenue “Security,” and Self Worth

[00:00:00] Kim:
I worked with a high-level coach this year. I was talking about what clients wanted me to do, or what prospective clients said that they were looking for. She looked at me and said, “Kim, I’m really not interested in what anybody else is looking for. I want to know from you, what do you want to be doing?”

I was like, (gasp) I don’t know.

[00:00:56] Rick:
What’s up my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. Rick Mulready here. Thank you, as always, for coming to hangout. Super appreciate you.

Today’s one of those interviews where as soon as I hit the stop button on the recording, I was like, I cannot wait to share this with you all.

Joining me on today’s podcast—today’s is part one and next week is part two—is Kim Wensel. Kim believes that we are more than our job titles. We are more than the CEO of our business.

For over twelve years, Kim has helped organizations and individuals find meaning in their work, and build a connection with others through data storytelling, copywriting, and personal branding.

Today Kim leads her own firm, which is called Pattern of Purpose. She advises entrepreneurs on how to communicate who they are and what they believe on stage, on page, and in person.

In our discussion between today and next week, we’re talking all about how to focus on what makes you happy, and still be able to make money in the process. Because so many of us associate, “Well, I can’t do this because it makes me happy in my business. Because I don’t know if that’s going to make me money. It’s going to make me happy, but I don’t know how successful it’s going to be.” Then we lean so far the other way, and only focus on the things that we know are going to move the business forward.

Well, I want to help you begin to find that line between the two. Focusing more on what makes you happy, because that is what ultimately is going to help you grow your business and increase your profit.

What I’ve found in working with our Accelerators who are already very successful business owners—and I’ve found this myself in my business—the more financial success that you see in your business, the harder it tends to be to tap into what you really want, because so many of us lose the fire in our business from when we first started it. We’re a few or several years into our business, it’s very successful, based on our definition, and then it’s not fun anymore.

Well, this conversation is all about incorporating more fun. What lights you up. Don’t confuse this conversation with do what you love and they will come.

No, we’re running a business. This is not a hobby. This is all about how to focus more on doing the things that you align with, that light you up, that energize you. Because, as Kim talks about here, there is a direct correlation about how you feel about your business and how other people feel about it. They can see it.

So, we talk about a whole host of topics between today and next week. That’s why I wanted to break it down into two parts all around this topic of: showing up as your authentic self and using your talents in an authentic way that lights you up, and then watching the benefits that come as a result of you doing that.

I am so excited to bring you this interview with Kim Wensel.

Before we dive into it with Kim, if you’re an established online course creator, or you’re an online coach, and when I say established, you’re doing at least a 100k a year in your online business, and you’re looking to take things to the next level.

But you’re not really sure what next steps to be taking, or you’re likely overwhelmed in your business. Right? All the things. Well, I want to invite you to apply it’s application only for my Accelerator coaching program. We help you make more profit increase your profit, increase your impact with less. Right. And we do it through the lens of mindset, optimizing your mindset, optimizing our sales and marketing and optimizing your systems and processes.

So if you want to be surrounded by an amazing community of other online entrepreneurs, just like you, this is one-on-one coaching group coaching and a mastermind experience.

So if you want to learn more and apply, go to RickMulready.com/Accelerator.

All right, my friends let’s do this. Let’s go hang out with Kim. Kim.welcome to the podcast. How the heck are you?

[00:05:40] Kim:
I’m great. We’ve been planning for this then the day is here. Huh?

[00:05:45] Rick:
I know that’s actually why I was thinking about that this morning. I was like, we’ve actually been, it’s been a while since we were like, okay, let’s schedule this. And here we are. I’m pumped about today’s episode.

[00:05:58] Kim:
Me too. I was going to reach out to you on Voxer and just share my excitement. And then I was like, wait, maybe he intentionally doesn’t want to have a conversation so we can just save it for the airwaves. So that’s what I did. I just kept you in the lurch.

[00:06:13] Rick:
Could you just call it the airwaves? Like, feel like we’re on old school radio

[00:06:17] Kim:
Okay. You should know. I’m actually an 80 year old woman trapped in a 30 something year old spotty. This is why many things will, you’ll begin to understand them. If you know that about me.

[00:06:29] Rick:
Nice. Nice. Well for that family who does not know who you are, why don’t we start? Why don’t we start there? Who is Kim Wensel?

[00:06:38] Kim:
Good question. I am a mom. I have two little ones. My oldest is going to be eight next month, which is a little crazy to me. I’m an entrepreneur, so I am in my second business. I started nine years ago, but I only went full time two years ago. So I don’t really know how to answer the question. How long have you been in business?

Because I feel like I did all of my learning along the way, but once your household depends on the income, you view business very differently. So I run a solo agency called Pattern of Purpose, and I say solo agency, because as we might talk about this year, I’ve tried expanding, realized very quickly. I don’t want to manage, I really liked doing the work.

And what is the work? it’s communications, brand messaging, some coaching and newest to the menu of services. I am hosting retreats, more and more of them for business owners. and we can dive into that, but they’ve been one of the most pivotal experiences that I’ve had as an entrepreneur, finding a community of people who really get it, meeting people that I wouldn’t necessarily meet otherwise.

So that’s on the docket for 2022, but I tend to work with two different groups of people. So one would be. Entrepreneurs who need help communicating who they are. I like to say onstage on page or in person. and

[00:08:19] Rick:
I liked that by the way. Yeah.

[00:08:20] Kim:
I think in words, thank you. and then kind of on the, on the polar opposite of side of my business, I work with large companies, startups, that just need fresh thinking around the way that they are positioning themselves messaging. So for instance, right now I have a client who’s building the first cancer app of its kind. That’s really going to help people going through cancer and their caregivers from time of diagnosis, through treatment, in a place and stage where. There’s a lot of unknown. There’s a lot of questions that come up and usually the only place that they have to go to answer those questions is the emergency room.

So there’ll be, sort of mental health, nurses and then a community for caregivers and people going through cancer. So a wide variety of work. And I would say the through line is really helping people communicate in an accurate way who they are and what they want to be known for.

[00:09:27] Rick:
Why do you think people have such a hard time doing that?

[00:09:29] Kim:
I can tell you exactly why it’s funny. I’m doing a workshop tomorrow night on bios writing your bio. and this one is specifically for audio narrators, what a niche. Right? And so I’m reading through some of the comments that people have shared. And I think one thing is it feels very narcissistic. To talk about yourself.

We haven’t been trained. I mean, especially women, underrepresented groups have not been trained to feel really comfortable promoting ourselves. And so the second that you feel like you have to put that hat on. I mean, you could be, if we weren’t recording, you could be talking about yourself and, and sharing all the great things about yourself.

And then the second that we feel like we have to turn it on, where somebody is going to see it, we go from natural flow to, hello. My name is Kim. There’s just this robot effect. And so one, I think that people are just uncomfortable talking about themselves, but two, I think that. There’s this sense that we have to sell or prove ourselves, and then it becomes really confusing.

Well, how do I connect all of the things that I’ve done and this won’t make sense to people and is this even relevant? And so there’s this question of, well, am I focusing on what they want to hear? Or am I focusing on what I want to say? So, yeah, it’s just, I mean, you’ve heard the saying it’s easy to mark it for somebody else, much more than yourself.

[00:11:05] Rick:
Yeah. And that really thank you for breaking that down. Cause that does, that does make sense. And it actually, I won’t mention any names, but it, that happened, I will say this year on a podcast interview that I was doing, and it was very different from like the lead up conversations that I had with this person. And then the actual inner like hit record and then interview.

And during the interview, I was like, whoa, I’m thinking to myself what is going on? Right. Because this is very different.

And then as soon as we finished, it was like snap fingers. And then I was like, wait, where was this person? Where was this person? 10 minutes ago. Where was this person when we were doing the interview? And I just found it fascinating

[00:11:52] Kim:
I think part of that too, is this culture of the elevator pitch and this sense that we have to have this one way that we describe ourselves in any time we’re introducing ourselves. And so we focused so much. I used to do a lot. I was trained in public speaking and. I was trained to have to memorize the whole script.

And so I would just get so nervous. I would be so focusing on what I was supposed to say rather than being present in the moment. And I still think a lot of people train that way. Don’t you think?

[00:12:24] Rick:
Yeah, I I’ll share my story about that after you’re done what you’re saying. Cause I have various, yes, I have a story about that. Go on.

[00:12:34] Kim:
Yeah. No. So I think that, I think that there, well, I’ve been saying this a lot lately. I think there are very few times in our lives where we feel like somebody is actually there with us in the moment, listening to us. and, because of that, we feel the pressure to have to just fire hose because we feel that timer, running down, running out and, or, counting down.

And when you feel that pressure, you don’t even know what’s coming out of your mouth. You’re just trying to get them to know everything about you. And instead of just being present in the conversation, you can tell when somebody is present in a conversation with you, you can tell when they’re more focused on asking you questions. So I have a perfect example. Can I share this?

Okay. So I was at a meeting in Boston last week and it was with the organization. I mentioned that is bringing a new product to the market. And there were a group of us around the table, some in-house, individuals from various teams and then consultants that are helping with the PR launch.

They’re helping with marketing and ads and messaging. And so. Of course, we need to know who’s there. So we go around the table and it’s like, okay, share who you are, what you work on. And then I think the icebreaker was the first job that you’ve ever had. So it’s like first person, boop, boop, boop. Second person goes around.

Right. I get to myself, I crack a joke, some self-deprecating humor like I do. And then the person after me and he’s going, he starts with the, well, my first job was, and then we’re five minutes in and then he’s going off just about all the things he’d done. He’s done. And I thought, okay, this can’t, this can’t get worse.

Like obviously everyone else listening is going to recognize. All right. I don’t want to be this guy. The last person around the table went on for 15 minutes and I could just tell, he just didn’t know where to stop. And he was so. Unaware of what was happening because he was so stuck in his head about describing literally from his first job to now he’s what did he say?

He’s 57, every single position. And then I worked at this agency and then I decided I didn’t really like it there. So then I went out on my own and then I met my partner in business and then we named it that, I mean, so I guess moral of that story is the best way to get people interested in you is to ask them about them.

[00:15:30] Rick:
Yeah, I I’m just, I’m just picturing, like that would have driven me, absolutely nuts sitting at that table.

[00:15:39] Kim:
Yeah, me too.

[00:15:41] Rick:
Ah, Going back to Emma, love that because like right there, it’s like the best way asking others about what they’re doing.

And one thing I noticed is that when we started here just a few minutes ago, when you described yourself the first word that uses, I’m a mom. Most people say, here’s what I do in my business.

[00:16:10] Kim:
Okay. that was on purpose though. Rick I’m I’m gonna, I’m gonna be real honest, but I had to actually think about that because I am that person that describes myself with my title. Usually just trying to be fully transparent here.

[00:16:24] Rick:
But I’m telling you, I picked up on that.

And so why did you answer that way?

[00:16:31] Kim:
There’s a very specific reason and it ties into a lot of the work that I’ve been doing this year. So I am. Highly overachieving. I have three degrees, spent a lot of time in academia and throughout my journey, which has not been linear as most people, the way I oriented myself to the world was always through the job title that I had at that moment.

So what does it mean to be an international development officer? What does it mean to be a grant writer? What does it mean to be a brand strategist? And so for so long, because work’s really important to me and because I don’t know, I guess I just always, I met my husband young. We had kids sort of young that was always sort of there. I never really had to think about it And so I have spent probably the last 10 years trying to figure out how do I. Describe myself in a way that people can understand, but it also captures the breadth of what I do.

And this has been a tussle. I mean, honestly, it’s funny because it’s, that’s what I do for other people. And it’s a thing that I struggle with the most. Who am I, and what do I need to be prioritizing? And this year was the first time I made the conscious effort to be on where I was in a point in the day and a point in the week.

And I’ll be honest. So at my oldest is going to be eight next month. And my youngest is four. And for most of their life, I’ve been just fitting work into every nook and cranny when we didn’t have something else scheduled. Now, part of that is growing a business and eventually wanting to leave the nonprofit sector I was in and go full time.

And. Try to make it through the day. But I got to a point where I thought, you know, like my daughter starting to say things and adopt mannerisms. And I remember when I, when she was little, she had a pretend cell phone and she’s like, I, mommy, I work all the time. I work, work, work. And when I don’t work, she said something else.

And I, of course it was hilarious, but I had a self reflection moment of whoa, like whoa. And I, you know, this is still me working at home. I’m still there for every meal time. It’s not as though I’m. Working out of the house all day, every day, but where my attention has been, it was a real wake up moment for me this year.

And so I’ve been doing that work of, okay, I need to create space. I need to be intentional. I need, I need to be as present with my kids as I am with my clients.

[00:19:24] Rick:
Yeah. I think so many of us can relate to that. Like I, for myself, like Maya’s going to be three in a month from now a month from yesterday when we’re recording this. And I catch myself, like when I’m with her. On my phone for a second or best, you know, slack messaging or my team or something like that.

And at first I was like, no big deal, but I’m like, no, wait, she’s picking up on all these things. She’s seeing this, that, Hey, daddy’s on the phone when he’s with me, am I less important than his phone? And so that I’m still working on that. I’m still, and yeah, I mean, I’ve experienced the same thing where I work from home.

You know, she’s literally just two minutes. I don’t know if everybody heard it, but she just got home from preschool. My wife just picked her up and you know, she knows that I’m, you know, daddy’s quote unquote working and I’m really trying to, I mean, I want to be the, I want to be the,

To show her what’s possible in, you know, doing what and what we’re going to be actually talking about here is doing what makes you happy.

And being able to do that in the way of still making money in the process. I want to show her that’s possible and to show her that be the example of that for her and that it doesn’t always have to be hard and all that stuff.

[00:20:52] Kim:
I think it’s, it’s going to be, it’s going to be something that as entrepreneurs, we never just learn or make it right. Because if you’re anything like me, most of my best ideas happen when I’m not sitting in front of the computer. And so there’s this. I just have to be this awareness that, okay. There are going to be times where something comes to me and I need to capture it, or I do have to take a phone call, but it’s that constant bleed that I think has been, I’ve had to realize, okay, we, we can’t have that be all the time.

I can’t have my phone out and every time I hear something go off, I’m responding to it immediately. So it’s just that awareness. And I know everybody talks about digital detox and all the things I went off, social media last December. And I’ll be honest, even when we were taking hikes in the woods. I felt the difference of not going on and checking or posting a picture.

And so, yeah, it’s just something I’m checking in with all the time. And I don’t think I’m ever going to have it figured out because also that, like, it changed by stage. So when my kids were younger, it was so much easier for me to work and travel. And now that they’re older and they have sports and I pick them up from school and they’re just so much more aware of their surroundings and time it’s much harder actually at this stage than when they were newborns.

[00:22:26] Rick:
I thought you were going to say when they were like, they were too. I was like, don’t really,

[00:22:31] Kim:
I’d be like, get ready for what’s coming.

[00:22:35] Rick:
I do want to go back real quick and tell that story. Cause I kind of teased it about memorizing your like, talk and I don’t know how many years ago actually I do. I, should I take that back? This was nine years ago before I even started this part of my business. I used to run a podcast called inside social media where I interviewed the heads of social media from the biggest brands around the world, like, like Ford and McDonald’s and jet blue and Lowe’s and all this other stuff.

And I did a talk at used to be called blog world. And Vegas, and I’d never done a talk before. And I was so nervous, like so nervous. I hired a, I hired a speaking coach and I literally memorized the entire thing. And basically everybody who was in the audience was there were all my friends or like my wife was there at the time.

She was not my wife. She was my, at that time, she was my girlfriend. And I felt like, like, like you said, I was this robot because I didn’t allow any kind of emotion to come through because I was so focused on remembering what the next thing said. And I nailed it, but I am still really good friends with one of the guys that was there.

And he like jokes about how that was. He was like, you were so nervous and it just came across and everything. And, anyway, contrary to like how I am now, like get getting up on stage is like, it lights me up. I love it. It energizes me and I, I almost under prepare, like I have slides, but I’m not like, I actually don’t, I don’t really rehearse.

[00:24:31] Kim:
Neither do I at all ever,

[00:24:34] Rick:
A good thing or a bad thing. I just feel like, you know, kind of like this, this interview right here, like we haven’t even talked about truly what we’re going to be talking about, but I think what we’re talking about is super helpful and super relatable to what so many online entrepreneurs go through, especially with families and especially with talking about themselves and presenting, you know, who they are and what they do and so forth.

And we, for so many years, like I wrapped up my identity into. My business, like I was my business and it wasn’t until several years ago where I was working with a coach and they were like, your business is completely separate of you. You are not your business. I was like, well, wait a minute. Yes, I am.

Because I’m the personal brand. And they were like, no, no, no, yes, that’s the case, but you are not your business. And so when I’m working with a student or when we’re working, we’re working with one of our Accelerator members, it’s like, and this is coming up for them. I like, I want you to think about your business sits next to you in this chair or on this couch next to you.

You know, you can pat it on the sat or whatever, but the businesses over here, it’s not you. And it doesn’t say anything about who you are, whether it’s going really well or it’s not going well, it doesn’t mean that you are a failure or you are this or that. It’s like, it’s the business.

[00:26:04] Kim:
That is such an important message that I don’t, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard about. Anyone in business really talking about because when you use the word personal brand, I think most people think, well, this is the bone that I have to pick with the industry. When most people say personal brand, they are saying, build a business around you like the business of you.

And there’s this really great quote that I saw. One time, Christina Tosi, who runs milk bar and on her site on her personal site, it says I am milk bar and milk bar or no milk bar is me and I am milk bar, but I am so much more than milk bar. Right. So I’m definitely not saying it verbatim, but the idea is like, yes, milk bar could not exist.

Without me because it is my brain child. it is the energy that I show up with every day. It is my creative output, but I am so many other things too. And I love that you mentioned this because this is the struggle that I honestly have had most of, most of my life as an entrepreneur, because it’s like, well, if you don’t want to have a team, then how do you take the emotion out of pricing?

How do you separate what I post? Like where’s the line between sharing human centered content and storytelling and your messaging going completely off the rails because you’re going so heavy on the selfies of your kids that you’re not talking at all about what you’re selling. And if somebody doesn’t know.

How to work with you. That’s an issue. And that’s where I struggled for a long time, even just a small decision of, and I hear this still a lot from people like, do I have a personal Instagram and a business Instagram. and for me, what that decision looked like this year is I, so I consider myself a creative, I’m a writer, and I made the decision that I was no longer going to market myself outwardly as a copywriter for a number of reasons.

I’m happy to share, but I did feel like part of my identity was being stripped away. What does this mean about me if I don’t write anymore? And I had, I can’t remember it was a coach or just a colleague who said to me, well, what if you reserve all of your writing just for you and you just wrote. About what you want to write about without any expectation.

And I was like, what does that look like?

[00:28:50] Rick:
Do you mean like creative writing? Do you mean just like.

[00:28:53] Kim:
So what I mean is that I’m creating Kim Wensel.com, which is a glorified blog. And I’m talking about what I went through with medical issues this year and how to navigate the health system. And I’m homeschooling my kid for half of the year, while running a business, or here’s my house tour. And there doesn’t have to be this, these very specific messaging pillars that I have to follow, because that makes sense for marketing, which is important to have a healthy business.

Right. But it’s also very limiting when. You feel like you want to share and not everybody wants to, but for me, I’m somebody who that is how I process and that is, and I do, I, people get a lot out of it and I’m someone who believes in genuine human connection. So where does that fit? If it doesn’t fit in my business?

[00:29:53] Rick:
Can it fit in your business and I’m asking more so honestly for myself, because I struggle with this. I mean, for anybody who follows me on Instagram, for example, I have a presence there, but it’s not very big to be honest with you. And the reason for that, like we can produce content on Instagram that all day long about pulling quotes from like this interview or what have you.

No problem. But I feel like I would rather. Do that a fraction of the time, but do more of what exactly like you’re talking about. However, I had this mental block around it of like people don’t I think, and I’ve been told by so many people, that’s not the case that people, I think that like, people don’t care.

I mean, like why does somebody care that if my setup, as an example, right now, I’m playing around with my setup because I’m starting my YouTube channel and I have my camera literally in front of my monitor right now on a switch pod. And I love it because now it’s mobile and I just did this yesterday.

But in order for me to see something on the screen, I have to go, you know, I have to turn my, you know what I mean? So I’m like, why would anyone care about

[00:31:12] Kim:
Back on you because we’ve had three conversations now ever. So I feel like I can push the thing is though the way that you talk a lot about your, why in business, you bring up your family every single time. And so honestly, the first time I went over to Instagram, I had to search for that.

I was like, oh, I wonder questions going through my head. I wonder if, he shares his family on social media, or if that’s, if he’s one, someone who has decided I’m going to let you know, my kid and wife decide whether they want to be on social media, I wonder, oh, I think he said he lives near the beach where exactly, you know, those questions that I was going in and it was, and then my next thought was, oh, he’s really good at posting all of the stuff that he’s doing.

He’s really good at repurposing his content. I could learn there. So it’s a balance. It’s a, it’s a balance. But I think for me, it was more of, I felt, I felt that the desire to go deeper and it was actually this intentional pulling myself a little bit more out of Pattern of Purpose because. Eventually, I want to give space for Pattern of Purpose, to be able to become bigger than me in whatever form that looks like without having to know what that is now.

And I, I have this inkling, I don’t know why call it intuition that eventually me as a person, I’m not going to be doing one-on-one calls for my whole career. Right. And to be able to separate them and talk about all of the sides of who I am, which is as a mom, as somebody who used to work in international development and nonprofits as someone who, I don’t know, all the things.

Right. All of the things without the pressure. And that’s just what I need in this season of life. I need to be able to. Share more than here’s what I’m selling today or here’s what’s coming up or here’s, here’s the podcast that I was on and I can do those things in Pattern of Purpose. And I can feel stronger about sharing those things because it’s with intentionality and knowing I’m not losing that other side of me. Does that make sense?

[00:33:39] Rick:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s just, like you said, it’s what you need right now in this season of your life, in your. Staying quiet enough to be able to listen to that and then saying, you know what, this is what I need. And I think that this is what I’m going to do in order to achieve that, or to be able to honor that I should say.

And do I know if this is the right thing or not? I have no idea, but I’m going to give this a try right now.

Yeah.

[00:34:09] Kim:
Expectations around it has been really important.

[00:34:12] Rick:
I think that that’s where I think that that’s where I can learn a lot from that as well. Cause you mentioned like, you know, am I somebody, am I one of those quote unquote who shares their family? And it’s, it’s really interesting because I don’t share pictures of my anymore. And the reason for that is because my wife has an online business as well.

She’s a, she’s a health coach and early on, she posted a picture with, with Maya and somebody took the picture and was like post. like on their own account on Facebook and like, it freaked us out. And so

[00:34:54] Kim:
I’m going to have nightmares now

[00:34:56] Rick:
That’s why I don’t, that’s why I don’t share. I’ll, I’ll share if anybody, you know, fall’s going to Instagram by the way.

I’m at Rick Mulready Kim. What’s your Instagram.

[00:35:06] Kim:
At pattern underscore of purpose, but also at Kim Wencel.

[00:35:09] Rick:
Okay, cool. So there are a couple of different accounts for different, different types of things. And so for anybody who follows me, like they’ll notice maybe not, I show I’m okay with showing, you know, the back of Maya’s head or something like that, because I struggle with that because yeah, my why, but I, I not comfortable sharing things with her or pictures of her, like the other day.

I like to take her to the beach here where it’s San Diego. From where we live in right now, I was like 20 minutes away. And there’s a picture of her. I forgot to bring her bathing suit to the beach. Cause I didn’t think we’re going to go in the water. That was not the right choice. And here she was laying down in the wet sand with all our clothes on, just leaning on our arm, just like looking out into the water.

So I was like, this is so classic her. I took a picture from behind her of that. I’m okay with that sort of thing. Right.

But it’s just more of like doing it like you, like you said, just doing what makes, if I feel good about it and doing it without expectation.

[00:36:23] Kim:
I think the other thing that I believe is relevant to this conversation is the balance of curated versus in the moment and I I think for those of us who do want to create very human centered brands, who very much care about the human side of what we’re selling and the experience that we’re creating, it’s very hard to do that.

If you’re planning a hundred percent of your content in advance and you know, again, I’m at the other end of the spectrum where I’ve had so many people say, Kim, can we just get a content calendar? I can’t write unless I’m inspired in the moment and I have to type it my phone in that moment. And I have people look at me thinking, gosh, like, and so I, you know, I need executive part of why I pull things apart but we’re running online businesses, we’re not walking in the front door.

[00:37:20] Rick:
Right, right. And I, and we, I like, I definitely take that. I think like, wait, why does it sound like doesn’t, doesn’t somebody know that, you know what I mean? You know, like I take, I take it for granted. And so one thing I have been thinking about doing is because I’m what I’m telling all of our Accelerators.

And by the way, for those of you listening right now, who have. Podcasts. We are recording this the middle of November, 2021 in 2022. Everything I’m hearing right now is that YouTube is creating some form. I don’t have no idea what it will look like a podcasting platform, and we’ll be, focusing and highlighting video podcasts.

And so if you’re not already kind of like exactly what we’re doing right now, I have my camera on. Kim has her camera on, we’re using riverside.fm. I need to get like an affiliate link for them. I don’t have it, but we’re recording it. It’s video and audio. Then my team takes it and does their thing with it, but add a video portion of your podcast and get it on YouTube.

So I don’t even remember why. Oh, so anyways, so I’m starting a YouTube channel. That’s all. It’s on the house. That’s all part of our interview here. I’m starting a YouTube channel. Which is gonna, you know, like a YouTube, like YouTube style videos, the podcast is on its own channel, full episodes. And I also have a clips channel, like highlights from this interview, for example.

And so I don’t know a whole lot about record doing, like creating a YouTube channel. And so what I want to start doing is I want to start sharing, like what I’m going through, like the kind of equipment that I have, and it’s not a whole lot. And like what my mindset is around it. And what’s holding me back and I’ve had topics for a month now and like all that type of, all that type of stuff.

But a lot of times I do take it for granted and I’m like, people don’t really care about this,

[00:39:24] Kim:
I was facilitating a retreat this past weekend.

And it was for women who are just starting or pivoting their business. And I go in thinking that I need to talk so high level and you know, where we spent the majority of our morning defining what success looks like a year from now. Half the group was in tears. Right. Because it’s just,

[00:39:51] Rick:
Yeah,

[00:39:52] Kim:
We’re just used to making things really complex. And like you said earlier, it has to be hard. doesn’t though.

[00:39:59] Rick:
I think that’s really interesting to me that that was, I’m actually not surprised that there was a lot of time spent on that because I think that so many people can’t clearly answer that question. And for the longest time, I couldn’t answer that myself. Like I would finish every single day and I’m not even talking like years ago, I’m talking in the not so distant past, like I would finish a day and you know, it could have been a day where I had like four podcasts interviews and like two coaching calls for something.

And I would finish the day and I’m like, oh man, I didn’t get enough done. And I would beat myself up and I would be like, you know, in that grumpy transition from quote unquote, work, Rick to, you know, dad and husband, Rick upstairs. And somebody said to me, one day, I was like, well, where are you going? Like, how are you defining success?

Like, what are you measuring this against? And I was like, oh yeah, nothing. So I’m like, I’m, I’m playing a losing game here because I’m not, if I’m not comparing it to something like, where am I going, for example, and how am I feeling about what I’m actually getting done. Then this is just a perpetual loop of every single day.

I’m, I’m mad at myself or what have you for feeling like I didn’t get enough done, but against what compared to what? And I couldn’t answer.

[00:41:36] Kim:
Well, and I think, I mean, I worked with a high level coach this year and it was the first time that somebody had my attention and said, I was talking about what clients wanted me to do or what, perspective clients said that they were looking for. And she looked at me straight in my eyes on the screen and said, Kim, I’m really not interested in what anybody else is looking for.

I want to know from you, what do you want to be doing? And I was like,

[00:42:08] Rick:
Yeah.

[00:42:10] Kim:
I don’t know. I think I don’t want to do anything cause I was just so burnt out at that point. And that was the beginning, the beginning of the end, but you know, like the unraveling of whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s such an amazing thing that as an entrepreneur, I can decide, I want to do something and I can go after it.

And it’s such a harmful thing that I can be an entrepreneur and see something and go after it because we rarely take the time to acknowledge what we’ve accomplished. And so one of, one of my master’s degree, one of my master’s degrees,

[00:42:49] Rick:
One of my degrees, which is amazing by the way, like that’s awesome.

[00:42:55] Kim:
I went to school for social work. I’ll just put it that way. And a lot of what we talked about was celebrating successes and acknowledging wins both with ourselves, but also with clients because. Sometimes just acknowledging how far you’ve come can be the difference between being able to keep going and being stuck.

And we don’t do that enough. I would say most people don’t do that enough, but especially creatives or ideas, people are visionaries. However you want to categorize yourself because it’s almost like, think about the last time that you had an exciting idea for something that you wanted to sell. So you take the notes and in your notes app, and you write things down in your notebook and you’re like, this is how it’s going to be.

And if you’re anything like me, you start putting a skeleton of like, here’s email one, that’s going to go out and then email two. And you have, it’s just like, you can’t keep up with the ideas that are flowing and then something gets in the way and then something else. And you come back to the idea and you’re no longer excited about it.

But you feel like you have to do it. It’s kind of like the book that you open up and you feel like, okay, well I’m halfway through, so I should just finish it even though you don’t like it. And so that’s the thing, like we get to decide, but we feel like we’re in chains to all of our ideas. And we don’t take that time to say, wait, wait, wait, wait, w was I excited about this?

And I think when we first talked, it was that realization that someone that supports me, she said, are you excited about this? Because it’s actually exciting to you? Or are you excited about this? Because it’s exciting to someone else and being able to disentangle those two things and recognize, okay, so somebody could be.

I vibe off of other people’s energy a lot. I’m an extrovert. I love being in community with people. So it’s really easy for me to just, if I have another passionate person on the other end, we start going. It’s so easy for me to keep going and to be able to, to stop and actually ask myself, wait a second.

Do I really want to be doing this? Or does it just feel good to have this thought partner who wants to be doing something together? Whether it’s a, a collaborator, whether it’s a client, whether it’s a customer, whoever it is, and yeah, that’s too sure.

No, I would say podcast interview energy probably matters the most,

[00:45:40] Rick:
Oh yeah, totally.

[00:45:42] Kim:
And it’s a one-time thing.

[00:45:44] Rick:
Well, who knows? We got you back on the show, so a lot of what you’re talking about and we keep alluding to is just being true to ourselves. Allowing ourselves to be true to ourselves, and focusing on what we want to be doing well. What makes us happy. What we like.

What you just said, I think you put it perfectly: does this make me happy? Or am I doing this to make somebody else happy? Another way to look at that also is, “Am I doing this because I really want to do it, or am I doing it because I think it’s going to help my business?” Oftentimes when we look at it through that lens people make the decision to do it because they think it’s gonna help their business.

But it doesn’t light them up. It’s not something that they’re really passionate about doing.

Okay. So, that was part one of my interview with Kim Wensel. Coming up next week is going to be part two. In part two we have a discussion around doing things in your business because you really want to do it, or are you doing them because you think it’s going to help your business, and how to walk that fine line.

We talk about the more financial success that you’ve seen, usually the harder it is to tap into what you really want to be doing, what really lights you up. We started to touch on that here today. We talk about why you have to take the time to define what success looks like for you. Otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels in your business, and I share personal experiences there.

We talk about how people will make decisions on whether to work with you based on how you show up in your marketing, and how you show up in your energy. Because there is a direct correlation between how you’re feeling about your business and how other people feel about it as a result.

We talk about those things and a whole lot more, coming up in part two of our interview with Kim Wensel, next week.

Until then my friends, be well, and I’ll talk to you soon.