S2E9: Outgrowing Old Ways: Navigating Business Transitions and Finding Alignment

In this episode of The Positive Voice Podcast, Coach Chef Kim shares her journey of reinvention as she navigates the ambitious goal of creating a million-dollar business in a year.
Kim dives into the essential growth spurts of life and business, explaining how to recognize when you're out of alignment and when it's time to pivot. Drawing from personal experiences, she offers actionable insights for entrepreneurs facing life transitions—whether due to family, career changes, or a shift in purpose—and provides tips on aligning your business with the life you truly desire.

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Transcript

 Hello friends, and welcome back to the positive voice podcast. This is your girl coach, chef Kim, and I am so happy you guys are joining me today. So one of the things I want to talk about was this, as I am moving through this journey, as many of you know, I have this audacious dream that I can make a million dollars in a year, right?

So let's talk about where we are on that plan and how things look now and how things are evolving. I don't know about you. But there is exponential growth happening in my life currently. It's really difficult to explain it, but it almost feels like if you're watching like a superhero show, like let's say The Flash or something, and like the world is going at one pace, but this one character is moving through the screen really, really quickly.

That's what it feels like in my life, right? So one of the things that I decided to do was I I am betting on myself in this season and I am investing more than I ever have into coaching. And if you've been around for a while, you know that I, you know, did a master's degree in transformational leadership and coaching.

And then when that program closed, I moved into getting a PhD in mind, body medicine and, uh, Uh, and I did that up until we lost my father a year ago. And so for the past year, I have really been like looking at what is next and what is the vision that I have for myself. And so I'm currently sitting at this intersection of who I am versus who I'm becoming and how do we get there clearly.

And then I'm sharing that journey as we go. Right? Alright, so that's catching you up. If you're new here, that's where we are. So one of the things that happened is that I am currently in the Hello7 coach certification program. If you are familiar with Hello7, you'll be familiar with Rachel Rogers who wrote the book, We Should All Be Millionaires.

She's a coaching program specifically built for coaches to learn how to coach better, but This is more business coaching. So how do you how do we grow the message of women can be millionaires too? And here's how you one become a millionaire yourself and then to teach other people to become one So that is that's where we are currently Okay, when I tell y'all this program is just as intense as the masters and transformational leadership and coaching and the phd program Just as intense.

And I love, love everything about that. But here's where I want to share some knowledge with you guys on this podcast, because what I'm very aware of is that now I'm in a new transition in my business. And a lot of people who are attracted to me, a lot of people who listen to this podcast may be in transition in their business.

And you're like, I have served this type of clientele all this time. I have done this thing in my business for all this time. Um, And now I want to do something else, whether you are doing something else because your marital status changed, because you are a parent, you are going to become a parent, you want to become a parent, or what your parenting looks like has changed.

So like for me, my kids are older and they don't need me nearly as much as they did. Right. So there's something, there's some sort of transition that is happening in your life that is causing you to look at the business you are doing currently and saying this no longer serves me. So if that is you, that's what this podcast is for today.

And I want to talk about it. So one of the things I want you to ask yourself is why is this no longer serving me? All right, if you feel like you're doing the same thing over and over and over again, but there is no joy. All right. You often question. Why am I doing this? You're often telling yourself. I just need to make it through the busy season I just need to make it through the next six weeks and you feel like you are killing yourself literally physically emotionally financially spiritually all the things you feel like It's an outer body experience.

There is zero joy in what you are doing. You are out of alignment. You are out of alignment. Okay. So then the question is, well, CCK, how do I get back into alignment in order to do the things I want to do? Well, number one, you might have to let things go just because it has served you in one season of your life.

Just because it paid the bills at one point in your life, just because you used to find joy in that thing, doesn't mean that the current version of you also finds joy in it. It may have sustained you at one point, but now you've outgrown it. If I can make this make sense, um, children have growth spurts frequently.

Children have growth spurts and as a parent you can look at your child and there are some warning signs There are some telltale signs that your child is going through a growth spurt. Number one, they eat more. Number one, they eat more That is the number one telltale sign that your child is embarking upon a growth spurt.

Okay, and Not to sound dramatic, but it can happen overnight. I absolutely remember My youngest going to bed one night and their clothes fit in the next morning when they woke up Literally nothing fit in the closet. Shoes didn't fit, socks didn't fit, pajamas nothing Nothing fit like my child grew overnight and we had to go to the store.

We went to Justice We were there at 12 o'clock and it was a Sunday. I'll never forget it We were there at 12 o'clock when they opened we walked in the door And I told the salesperson, I said, listen, I've been in retail management for 14 years. What I'm going to tell you, I need you to listen to me or else you're going to suffer today.

I need you to go call it another person. And she was like, what? I said, we need to purchase an entire new wardrobe today. And I need a dedicated salesperson for that. Tell me what your sales goal is for the day. I can assure you we're going to not only meet that sales goal for you, we're also going to apply for a credit card and get approved for it and you need to call in somebody else.

It's okay, it's gonna work. The manager looked at me and then I moved out the way so she could see my child in pajamas standing in the store. And she said, yes, ma'am. And they went and called another person in and we spent four hours in that store and quite literally bought one of everything in my child's new size.

There are moments in your life where you outgrow the thing that has carried you in a particular season. There are going to be moments where you need to completely overhaul everything in your life, the same way we needed to overhaul my child's closet. Now. Cherry had many girl sparks, but that was the only one.

Where we ever needed to shut down a store and try on everything in it. Every other time, I knew the warning signs. I knew what was happening, right? And that's a lesson in itself. That first time all the growth spurs had been little, were the warning signs there for me that this was coming? Yes. Did I pay attention to it?

No. Why? Because I was caught up in my everyday life. But from that moment, never, ever, ever did I look at a change in, um, how much my child was consuming. A change in how much they were sleeping. Never did I look at those things and take them for face value. I immediately started assessing what was happening so that I could be better prepared.

And so then I knew that, okay, we need to do X, Y, Z, X, Y, Z, X, Y, Z. That is how you need to be with your life. There are going to be moments where you need to completely overhaul everything. Everything is changing, right? You need to walk into a store, tell them to call in somebody else, because now you need to try on everything in the store.

You need to have an entirely new wardrobe that fits who you have become While no one was paying attention And then there are other times where you can just buy little pieces here and there to supplement what's happening, right? Think about it this way still using that same analogy If you are this works for young ladies more than it does for young men, though Um, if you have a daughter who, or a son, if you have a child who is into dresses or skirts, if there's a growth spurt that happens, then you're not necessarily worried about the pants legs, right?

You can just put them in a skirt. You can put them in a dress and put them in some tights. And that works as like a little band aid to like help that child still feel comfortable in who they are. Until you can actually go in and buy new things, right? You can buy a couple of pieces at a time to supplement what they already have in order for them to be able to show up in the world in the way that you would like for them to show up, right?

Same thing with your business. There's going to be some times where you just need to change a little bit in order for you to show up better, right? It may mean you need to just show up on whatever your social media platform of choice is a little bit more consistently. That's not a full overhaul. Right.

You just need to be more consistent. You need to send out an email once a month, once a week on a consistent basis. That's something small that you can now implement as a new habit. That's going to help you out, right? Like these are things that you could be doing to supplement what's already going on in your life.

But then there are going to be other times you need to complete overhaul. And that means you need all new branding. You need a new logo. You've changed the colors. Like nothing about the business fits anymore. You've had a growth spurt and now you need to act accordingly. Okay. So that's, that's one of the first things assess where you are.

Are you in the position where you need a full overhaul from the growth spurt? Or can we supplement things until we are in a better position to need to do something else? So that's the first thing assess where you are. Secondly, once you figure out where you are in this trajectory, you need to know where you're going.

Okay. So a lot of people, when, when they want to book a call with me and they're not clear on what is next, the reason that they are unclear on what's next is because they don't know where they're going. And so I like to bring people back to center. All right, where are we going? Like I need you to make a decision.

Where are we going in this business? If you don't know where you're going in the business, then the second question I ask is where do you want to be in your personal life? What do you want that to look like? And then let's build the business that supports you having that particular type of life personally, right?

These two things are intertwined. And so as we begin to work on that and we create where we're going. Once we know where we're going, my next assignment for people is what is the next best thing? Not what's the next biggest thing? What's the next best thing? So one of those things for me is for the past probably year and a half, I have been seeking out a platform that is community first than courses.

I have a lot of courses, but even though people are signed up for my courses, and I mean, Thousands of people are signed up for my courses, but they don't interact with each other. And I really want people to interact with each other. I just don't want people like learning by themselves. And so I've been seeking a platform that allows me to do community first.

And what I noticed was the first course platform I was on built a community structure into it. But that still wasn't it. The second course platform I went to had a better user experience. They had a community type program, but it looked very much so like a Facebook group. Still not what I was going for because I could just use Facebook for that.

And so now I finally landed in the place that I've been seeking. And so now that I'm on Mighty Networks, it is community first, courses second. Right. The reason I wanted to go community first courses second, even though I have a lot of courses is because the statistics don't lie. Most people don't finish the course, but they will engage in a community.

And so if you're going to pay for a course, I want you to also have the community you need that will help you grow. And so we are in, the process of moving from one platform to another. So what does that look like for me? We're supplementing. It means I'm currently paying for two different platforms, but I'm only doing that for a month, which means I gave myself 30 days to move all of my content off of one platform into the other.

And while that sounds like a very long time, I have about 17 courses. And when you have 17 courses that are all very detailed, very in depth, have all sorts of engaging things that go with them, 30 days to get it moved is not a lot of time. And so that is the focus of my life right now is that I have to get these things moved so that I can have everything where I want it to be come January 1.

And so you have to make a decision. Right. And plan it out. Like I've literally planned it out. I know that I'm going to spend X amount of time, that it's going to take me this long to move this over. And so I've already mapped it out on a calendar on how I can get everything moved over, including a little bit of time for breaks and a vacation that I have coming up.

When you are planning to move from one place to another, when you are thinking about that next best thing, you must go deeper than just saying, Oh, well I need to do this thing for my business. Oh, I need to add email marketing to my business. Great. That means you need to go figure out where you're going to be sending these emails from.

Right. One of the things that I have noticed is that ConvertKit, AKA, they have now changed their name to Kit. They completely rebranded into Kit during their rebrand. They have tag teamed with all of the course platforms to become the email solution of choice. This is incredibly smart in their marketing, but for me as a creator moving from one platform to another.

I can see that on both platforms, they are the recommended integration, right? Because that's what they built into their stuff. But for me to have to take the time to not only move my stuff from one platform to another, but then also go learn a whole new email marketing system at the same process, that doesn't make sense for me.

Particularly when. Me being on flow desk, it's working just fine. I don't have a problem with integration. I know how to use zaps in order to do the things I need to do. It is not important enough for me in this season to move over to ConvertKit, I'm sorry, to move over to Kit even though they are the thing of choice.

I need you to pay attention to that. A lot of times we get caught in weeds and this is when you start running off into all these other things. The shiny object syndrome. The shiny object syndrome says I moved from Thinkific over to Mighty Networks and that means I also need to move from Flowdesk over to KIT because they said so.

That does not work for me and my business in this season. What this means is I moved from Thinkific and I moved to Mighty Networks and then I still have all my stuff set up in Flowdesk because it's already built. And now all I have to do is just change the zap from one company to another and I can continue running my business as is.

Right? So much so that most people who are in my courses probably won't even realize they've moved over other than receiving a Come and join this new community. They won't even realize how much work has been done on the back end of this process, right? And that's what you want. So as you're thinking about it while you're in transition, don't make your life hard You need to do the next best thing not everything All right, so that's number two.

And then lastly, number three, every day when you are creating your to do list, mine is done on my daily schedule. It's a block schedule. And I will make sure this is in your show notes that you can grab a copy of my block schedule. I'll give you the template on Canva, and you can go in and adjust the colors and whatever you need to do to fit yourself.

But I have my days broken down into two parts. Three hour increments in those three hour increments. I am writing out what very specifically I'm working on. So, if it is something for my coaching program that I'm learning, then that is written in one color. Now, you don't have to read this colorful, this is just how it works in my brain.

I write that out in one color. If there's an appointment that is happening during that day, that's written in another color. If it's a coaching call where it's me to a client, that's a different thing. If it's a coaching call where it's me to my coach, then that's something different. If this is time that I am setting aside to do podcast episodes, that's in a different one.

If this is time I'm setting aside to edit said podcast episodes, that's another one. Because I want to improve my podcast quality, I'm currently taking a podcast course. And so I have it written into my schedule that I have podcast time specifically set for learning and then I have podcast time specifically set for implementing those things that I'm learning, right?

Um, and for you to even see that, like if you just, if you're looking at this on Whatever your platform of choice, you will notice that all of season two now has a different cover photo because that's something I learned in a podcast class, right? There's, there's many things that I'm learning, like I'm forever growing, but I am not a person who buys a class and then doesn't do it.

I'm buying the class, I'm implementing it, and I'm integrating it into my life immediately. But I'm also doing that very strategically. So if you are someone who struggles with being able to implement things into your life because you don't think you have the time, there are two tools I want you to use.

Number one is going to be a time and energy audit. The time energy audit helps you, um, by literally just writing down how you feel. Uh, over the course of about three days, maybe longer, if you want three to five days, you're just monitoring how you feel you are either red, yellow, or green. Um, and I'll make sure that's in your show notes so that you can fully understand this process.

Once you learn this, you will realize you have patterns in your life. There are some times that you are green. There are some times you wear yellow. There are some times you are red. And when you take an inventory of that over an extended period of time, you will realize the best times for you to work.

You will understand that the hustle and grind life doesn't make sense, particularly when you're red. A lot of people who are like, well, I'm just pushing through. I'm just pushing through. Don't push through shit. That means you're red. If you tell me you're pushing through, I want you to go do a time and energy audit.

Because only people who are pushing through, they're red. You have to push through the fatigue, push through the anxiety. That means you're red. It means you should be resting. If you were to work when you're green, and let me explain to you how this worked for me. So when I did this the first time and I realized I was green between like 10 and 2, that has changed.

But at that time I was green from 10 and 2, that was when I said, All of my coaching calls. That was when I said the hardest things I needed to do for the day. It was during that time period and I got things done so much quicker that I no longer had to work 40 hours a week. I was done with what I needed to get done in that four hour time frame because I knew I was green.

I knew that regardless of what I was doing, I was going to show up as my best self during that time frame and I built my life around it. OK, so time energy audit is one and then two block scheduling. Use that time energy audit so that you know when you are green. And then you book the things during the green that you need to, the things that when you are yellow, you put them there.

The things when you are red, you give yourself rest and you put it on the schedule. Rest goes on the schedule. Okay. So those are just three ways that will help you as you are in transition, particularly as we are living in this life post election in the U S as we move into the holiday season, where a lot of you who are listening to me are probably working Uh, particularly my friends in the culinary industry.

Y'all are working real hard right now in queue for getting those Christmas cookies and holiday orders out. Uh, so for those of you who are listening to me as you are baking, shout out to you. I appreciate you. I remember those days, but. If you are in a season of your life where you're like, I can't do this next year, I don't want to do this anymore, then please let me invite you over to our free community on Mighty Networks called The Shift.

It is also down in the show notes. Please come join us in The Shift. And if you are to the point where you know you're at that intersection, where you need not only the community, but you need guidance on what is going on. is next, then I would love to invite you to come and join us in the emergence experience.

If you don't have time to commit to joining a full out group coaching program, my calendar is also open right now with new hours for one on one coaching, where we can do a one hour business strategy call to help you on your way so that you can figure out what is the next best thing for you to do in order to not only survive through the holiday season, but.

Thrive in your business as well. Again, thank you guys so much for joining me for this episode until next time, stay sweet friends.