E97: Learning to Trust Yourself as an Entrepreneur

Welcome back to the Kitchen Table Dreams Podcast! I’m your host, Kimberly Houston, and today we’re having an important conversation about trusting yourself and using discernment in your business.

Too often, entrepreneurs second-guess their instincts, seek external validation, or let fear guide their decisions. But here’s the truth—your calling will keep calling until you answer it. In this episode, I’ll walk you through five key ways to strengthen your discernment and build a business in alignment with your highest self.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

✔️ The difference between fear and intuition—how to tell which one is speaking to you
✔️ How to audit your alignment—are you building from authenticity or approval?
✔️ Why small aligned decisions are the foundation for confident business moves
✔️ How to use evidence, not emotion, when making key business choices
✔️ Why your calling won’t stop calling—and how to finally say yes to it

This is an episode you’ll want to bookmark, save, and take notes on. If you’ve been feeling stuck, unsure, or overwhelmed in your business, this conversation will help you move forward with clarity and confidence.

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going!

• Visit the Show Notes
• Tag me on Instagram: @KimberlyIHouston
• Follow the podcast on Instagram: @KitchenTableDreams
• Join the Kitchen Table Dreams community for more support: teachmehowtobake.com/community 

Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more content on business, alignment, and trusting yourself on your entrepreneurial journey.

#KitchenTableDreams #Entrepreneurship #TrustYourself #BusinessStrategy #Alignment #IntuitionVsFear #Discernment #SmallBusinessGrowth #FemaleEntrepreneurs #MindsetMatters

Visit https://nutrimill.com/KTD for $20.00 off your next purchase of a Bosch mixer or Nutrigrain Flour Mill

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Self-Trust in Entrepreneurship
• 3:37 Distinguishing Fear from Intuition
• 6:56 The Importance of Self-Healing
• 10:32 Auditing Your Alignment
• 13:37 Making Small Aligned Decisions
• 16:26 Using Data Over Emotion
• 19:22 Answering Your Calling

Transcript

Kimberly Houston (00:00.982)
Hello friends and welcome back to the Kitchen Table Dreams podcast. I am your host, Kimberly Houston, and I am so excited that you are here tuning in and listening to this episode. So today I want to have a conversation with y'all. And this is one of those things where if I were in a coaching session with you, I would say today I'm going to hold your hands while I say this to you. And one of the things that has been really, really weighing on my heart

is entrepreneurs being able to listen to themselves and trust themselves along the journey. So as you guys know, I very recently re-rendered the podcast to Kitchen Table Dreams. Now, while Kitchen Table Dreams as a podcast name is new, the idea behind it is not. And so as I have been working on my own personal alignment as an alignment coach, there are some things that I have been doing.

that I'm like, I knew I should have done this five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago. And I just never did. Right. There are parts of ourselves that we abandon for the sake of others, for the approval of others. And at the end of the day, the only person that we are abandoning in those moments is ourself. And so I wanted to take a moment to have a conversation about

using discernment in your business and learning how to trust yourself. So I have five main topic points that I want to give you guys today. So this is definitely one of those you're going to want to save. You're going to want to bookmark. You might even need to take some notes, particularly if you find yourself in a season where you are struggling and you are not sure how to see your way through this moment. The thing that I can tell you is that clear is better than cute.

That is the mantra that has been running through my head for the last couple of weeks clear is better than cute and a lot of times we create things that are cute right like I By trade and my pastry chef and so cute is all that I did Cute is all that I know right when you own a bakery you expect it to be cute and so clear is better than cute when it comes to running the business

Kimberly Houston (02:21.868)
while it may be cute to name the business, it is not cute to run your business out of fear. And so we're gonna dig into this today and I hope that it lands in the way that it needs to land and that you walk away feeling more empowered than you did before you turned this on. So let's jump right into this. The first main point that I have for you is you need to know the difference between fear and intuition. Fear is often loud, frantic,

rooted in past experiences or external opinions. So what this can look like is you may have failed or not succeeded doing something in the past. And you bring that same fear into whatever you're doing right now because you believe that failing in the past became a part of your identity.

And the thing that I would like to offer you in this moment is simply you didn't fail. You just did not reach the intended goal. Just because you didn't reach the intended goal doesn't mean that you failed. It very simply means you learned something new about yourself. And so the lesson in that is that you know not to do that particular thing again.

The lesson in that isn't that now you have to live your life in fear that you're going to fail. You didn't fail. You learned a new lesson. Okay. So it's the first reframe I want to give you. Intuition is calm, grounded, and aligned with your deeper truth. When I had to think about the type of coach I wanted to be, and there are many different things I could call myself, a life coach, a business coach, a business strategist. One of the things that I just kept coming back to was alignment.

I make decisions in my business and in my life based on inspiration, meaning I may get a download that says, hey, you should do this. I may have a dream where I can see myself so vividly doing something that is very easy for me to reverse engineer the vision that I had in order to make it happen in real life. I'm really, really good at that. And so alignment became the thing for me. And so what I want you to understand is that intuition is calm. It is grounded.

Kimberly Houston (04:47.276)
and it is aligned with your deeper truth, not other people's truth, yours. And then lastly on this one, in order to help you distinguish between fear and intuition, I want you to think about this. If you were standing in line, take it on a roller coaster, you may feel butterflies in your stomach. You may feel a little nervous, right? The thing I want you to remember is that fear and excitement

live in the same part of your brain. And so as you are experiencing these things, you may soon discover that you're not scared. This is really excitement. This is really exciting, right? Like those two things activate the same parts of our brain. And so you can make a choice to say, I'm not scared, I'm excited. That's one way to reframe it. Another way to reframe it is when you start to feel that

you can ask yourself, is this aligned with my highest good? If the answer is yes, then do it. If the answer is no, then what you're feeling is fear. What you're feeling is intuition telling you not to do something. Your intuition is not going to tell you that everything is bad unless that is the lens that you live your life through at this present time. If that is the case for you, I want you to know.

you do not have to live your life in fear. Whatever it was that caused you to get to this point, and this is what we call shadow work, Whatever it was that happened, that triggered you, that got you to the point that you now live your life full of fear, you were gonna have to go back and heal that. was scrolling Instagram earlier and came across something that one of my cousins sent me in the

on it, the lady was saying that you have to grow yourself up. Like there are parts of you that you are waiting for someone to apologize for hurting you. You are wishing that someone would not have said some things about you. And I can tell you, even if they came and apologized, even if they told you that they were wrong about you, it will not heal the hurt.

Kimberly Houston (07:10.624)
It is not someone else's responsibility to heal past hurts. It is yours. There is no way for another person to heal what has hurt you because once the thing happened and you internalize that as hurt, your body stopped maturing, your brain stopped maturing, your emotions

stopped maturing in that moment for that cause. And if that is the case, only you can go back and heal yourself in the way that you need to be healed. That is not the job of someone else. And I know that may be difficult to understand and to hear, but here's what I can tell you after going through a massive awakening and a really, really massive healing journey.

That's your responsibility to heal yourself. That responsibility doesn't lie within another person. To them, it may have just been Tuesday afternoon, but to you, it was a moment that caused you to fragment away from yourself into becoming the version of yourself that you are now. Only you can go back and it, not them. And so if that is where you are in life, then I would encourage you to do some shadow work.

I would encourage you to ask yourself those deep questions. would encourage you to begin small. Don't try and tackle it all at once, but ask yourself, what do I need today? What do I need today? If you were trying to understand how to tap into yourself, like I reached out to a friend earlier today and I was like, hey, how are you feeling? Are you grounded today? And she's like, not as much as I should be. And I'm like, well, let's tap back in, right? The same way we have physical hygiene, you have emotional hygiene. And so if you don't learn how to connect with self,

If you don't learn to understand the importance of the breath, if you don't learn to understand the importance of you being able to hug yourself and love yourself through tough times, and you are always expecting external validation, you will be stuck where you are for forever. And I want to let you know that you have permission, you have permission to love yourself in a way that others haven't been able to love you. And so in the way that we do that is we ask ourselves, what do I need today?

Kimberly Houston (09:35.828)
Stop and think, am I hungry? Do I need water? When you have to use the bathroom, get up and go. Don't hold it. The reason I'm telling you to do something as simple as that is many of us were conditioned not to believe ourselves. Many of us were conditioned not to believe ourselves. And when you are conditioned not to believe yourself, that causes your intuition to have some issues in coming through, right?

That's a whole nother podcast. We're not going to go there. But many of us were conditioned not to believe ourselves. When you say, I don't want to go there, I don't want to do this, I don't feel good. And people will tell you to suck it up, buttercup. They taught you not to trust your own intuition. And so as you are now learning to trust yourself again, and I had to go through this process and it took a lot. It took a lot.

It took a lot for me to go through that process of being able to trust myself and trust my intuition. It started with giving myself something to drink when I'm thirsty. It started with feeding myself when I was hungry. It started with getting up and going to the bathroom when I needed to go, right? And so those are ways you can tap back in to yourself in order for you to get to the point to being able to distinguish between fear and intuition. Number two, audit your alignment.

Are you building your business from authority or approval? This goes back to external validation. Are you someone who has to run an idea by an external source before you can execute it? I am not that person. People are always like, Kimberly, how did you launch that new website? How did you change the name of your podcast within a couple of days? How did you, how did you, how did you, because I don't need your approval to do it.

If Source Spirit God Angels universe tells me to do something, I move off my ass and go do it. I don't need your opinion for that. I don't need to explain to you why I did it. Now, do I as an alignment coach and someone who believes in transparency tell you why I did it? Yeah, but do I have to? No.

Kimberly Houston (11:42.87)
To make this a real quick thing for you, two things. One, when you are making decisions about your personal life or your professional life, are you making those decisions based on personal values or external validation? Here's how you're going to know real easily. Number one, if you've got to text somebody or call somebody before you make a move, everything you're doing is external. You're not doing it for yourself. You're doing it for the approval of someone else. Real quick.

Ask yourself this question. If no one was watching, would I still do this? This is something that I did with my children. If no one was watching, would you still make this choice? That is how we dealt with what is morally correct and what isn't, right? And so when you were thinking about alignment, would you still do this? Would you donate to a particular cause without recognition?

Do you want to build wealth in order to make the world a better place or do you want to build wealth in order to make your life a better place? Hey, either one of those works, right? There's no good or bad in it. You just need to know why you're doing what you're doing. Are you doing this to build your business and your life from a place of authenticity or from a place of approval? Number three, make small aligned decisions before you make big ones.

Okay, so trust is built through consistency, right? Small, low risk decisions that align with your long-term vision make the most sense. And the only way I can think to explain this is love bombing. When you are with a narcissist and they love bomb you, right? Everything is 100. I mean, they go from zero to 100, love, love, love, love, love, showering you with gifts, doing all the things. And then,

They go from 100 to zero, right? And they gaslight you into believing that nothing has changed. Listen to me, listen to me well. When you weren't in your business, you can do that to yourself. You can do that to your audience and I don't want you to do that. Do some very small things that make sense in the rollout, right? I...

Kimberly Houston (14:03.098)
I was not planning on adjusting the name of the podcast from the positive voice to kitchen table dreams a month ago. That's not what I was doing. However, when I go back and look at the last four podcast titles, they all look like they led up to a pre-planned change name of podcast. It wasn't.

It wasn't, it's just where I was in life. And because I don't have to wait for inspired action, I do things as they're downloaded to me. The highest version of myself knew what needed to happen. And so it all just worked itself out. I don't know that I could have planned it any better. There isn't necessarily a content calendar when it comes to my podcast. It's me going, I feel like I should talk about this today. And then I do, right?

There isn't necessarily me going, okay, so we're going to do this, this and this. And I would love to get to that point, but we're not there. And so to be able to go back and look at the beauty of the way these last few podcast episodes have been about how you name yourself, what you allow other people to call you, how you move in business. And then me having the idea, I need to adjust the name of this podcast. Like all of these things make sense. Make small aligned decisions before you make big ones. Okay.

Data and discernment. Okay, let's talk about this. This is number four. Use evidence, not emotion. One of the things that I talk to my clients about the most is what is the evidence of this emotion that you're having? Being scared is an emotion. That is not a fact. Being afraid of the unknown is a emotion, not a fact. Okay?

Trusting yourself doesn't mean you ignore facts. I want to know what is the evidence that this will or will not work. You should be tracking your results. You should be tracking patterns in your business. One of the things that I realized is that two years ago this week, I changed the name of the podcast from the Baking Mama podcast to the Positive Voice. It was in time hop.

Kimberly Houston (16:28.778)
Two years ago this week, this podcast got an adjustment because I have outgrown that season of life that I was in. That podcast was focused on parenting, homeschooling through the pandemic, going through a divorce, et cetera. We are beyond that. My children are grown now. I have been divorced for quite a few years at this point. And so none of that was serving me.

And so when I rebranded the podcast back then, I also rebranded the content I was talking about and we stopped talking about those things. But it served me and it served those who were listening to the podcast at that time. And now here we are two years later. And as I grow, you grow, the audience grows. We needed something else. And so I created that new thing, right? Aligned action testing means that you make decisions, you test them.

And then you would just based on both your intuition and your data. I read the data. As I stated on last week's podcast, I looked at what things got the most downloads and the things that got the most downloads were about intuition. They were about alignment and they were business strategy. Those are the things that people were listening to. And so that is why I had to change my podcast in order to align with that. Right. And don't just make decisions off of emotion.

What is the data? Show me the evidence that this makes sense and that is going to work. If you ever decide you want to coach with me in a one-on-one setting or in a group setting, if you say, feel like I should do such a such, I want to know the evidence of it. I want to know if you have done the research. I want to know why you feel like that move is going to be the thing. And if you can prove that that thing makes sense, I'm all for it. But if you're just like, well, I mean, it's cute.

No. The answer to that is no. And so you have to learn how to take aligned action based on making a decision, testing it out, and then adjusting it based on the data, not your emotion. Am I scared to do things? Sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes. And here's why it's sometimes. If I were to have asked myself that question, I don't know.

Kimberly Houston (18:55.864)
four years ago, maybe even two years ago. Kimberly, are you afraid to be on this podcast? Absolutely not. Kimberly, are you afraid to be interviewed? Nope. Kimberly, are you afraid to speak at conferences? I'm not. It's not because I'm an extrovert, I'm actually the opposite. The reason that I don't fear it is because of this. I am aware that every time I open my mouth and speak, whatever comes out, there is somebody on the face of this earth

who is supposed to hear it. It's not up to me to figure out who that person is. It's not up to me to judge what I say, to judge how it comes out. That's not my job. My job is to release what source has put in me and to let it fall in the way that it should. Every time I've second guessed something and went to adjust it, it has not served the person it was supposed to serve.

And because of the evidence of that, because of the data, I made a decision a couple of years ago that I wasn't going to censor myself and that whatever comes up comes out is supposed to land for a particular person or for a particular subset of people. And I am okay with that. The thing that I like to express with my clients is

Your yes is attached to someone else's breakthrough. And if I decide that I don't want to act on inspired action anymore, that when source downloads things into my body, into my mind, into a creative outlet, when I make the decision that I'm not going to do it, even though I know with everything in me, I need to be doing that thing, when I make the decision to ignore my intuition,

to ignore source, to ignore the voice of God within me. Then I am the one who is left responsible for somebody else not being able to get that breakthrough when they need it. The more you hold on to the thing you know you're supposed to release, the longer it takes for that person who was assigned to your yes to get their break.

Kimberly Houston (21:23.734)
And while I do not see myself as someone who will ever be in a pulpit and be called pastor, Reverend, preacher, any of that, the thing that I do know is that there is a calling on my life that requires me to speak to the masses. My word of the year has been speak for the last three years, if I'm not mistaken. And that word hasn't been released from me yet.

I know that when I speak, lives change. And so I know this because I've tapped into discernment. I have begun to trust my intuition. And I know that when that inspired action, when that idea comes, I know it's my job. I know it is my assignment to move on it. And so I do. As you move through your business life, as you move through your personal life, I want you to look at

evidence and not emotion because emotions will keep you stuck. And lastly, number five, your calling will keep calling even if you ignore it. It could be that as a child, you knew you saw yourself as a particular type of person doing a particular type of thing. And then some adult in your life told you no.

Some adult in your life diminished your light. Some adult in your life diminished your power. Some child in your life said something stupid to you and then you believed it. And so you let go of that thing that you knew you were supposed to be, that person you knew you were to become. And so you start doing other things and you start becoming the person that other people want you to become.

and in the midst of that you are abandoning yourself.

Kimberly Houston (23:25.836)
I want to tell you this, if you're that person, I want to speak directly to you. Alignment isn't something you figure out. It's an ongoing process. Your time hasn't passed. Whoever it was that you were put on this earth to be, you know that deep down inside who that person is and how they're supposed to show up. They meet you in your dreams. You can hear them.

You can see them. You can close your eyes and envision it right now.

Kimberly Houston (24:04.66)
whatever that situation is, whoever it is you're supposed to be, they're going to keep calling you until you answer. And here's my thought on that. Why spend the bulk of your life trying to be someone that somebody else wants you to be when they haven't lived up to their own purpose either?

Why are you trying to impress somebody else who is imposing this idea of who you should be based off of the things that they did or did not do in their own lives that they are ashamed of? Why are you being held hostage to the idea of what someone else wants you to be?

You don't have to do that. When you ignore or doubt your calling, you somehow find yourself coming back to it. You will find yourself back in that place where you should have been. How do I know? I can tell you very easily. Four years ago, there were some very big things happening, right? Very major changes happening in my life.

When I got divorced, that was not a part of the plan. Never saw that for myself, but it was needed based on the situation we were in. No love loss. It was just, it was a thing. And so I knew then that I had an opportunity to decide what the rest of my life would look like because the identity that I had as a wife and a mother no longer served me in that season. I had the idea

that I would have had seven, eight, nine, 10 kids, know, giant house, giant yard, lots of children running around everywhere, homeschooling, doing my sourdough bread, living my best life. That is not at all what my story is. Not at all what my story is, but that is the version of me that I thought was going to happen when I started homeschooling my kids over a decade ago. At that time, both of my kids were much older. There was no way I was going to birth.

Kimberly Houston (26:28.852)
another child with that much of an age gap and definitely not now with a 20 year age gap. I know that that season of my life has passed. Now as I re-envision what my life looks like, it doesn't look anything like that. Part of me was still holding on to something that I knew was not going to happen. Part of me was still holding on to the idea that had been planted in my mind by other people.

And I had to let it go. And as I went through the process of letting it go and allowed myself to dream, imagine, come to terms with what my life now looks like, what it's going to look like in the future and how the universe fully supports who I am becoming as a person. As I looked at all of those things, I realized that a younger, much younger version of me knew

that my job on this earth was to teach children. My job on this earth was to influence families, not necessarily mine. And that's the thing that I had to settle with is that while I came up with the idea that I was supposed to have all of the children who were going to be within my orbit, that's not at all the case. I write curriculum for children. I write books for children.

I create content for children. I bring families back to the kitchen table every single day, but not in the way that I thought I was going to. I do it on a much larger scale through the various ways that I produce content and release things into the world.

The vision didn't change. It was just adjusted based on what my life looks like. And so you have to understand that it is up to you to honor that calling that's on your life. It is up to you to understand that your idea might be too small. Again, me influencing hundreds of thousands of families around the world, I'm like, that's a lot. wrote a book.

Kimberly Houston (28:50.11)
And then I wrote another book and then we developed children's books. And when those release, I know that it will absolutely inspire kids all over the world to want to be in the kitchen. But then source also let me know that if the kids are in the kitchen, that means their parents are too. And so you've got to speak to them. And so I have content for parents. I have a podcast. I teach other people how to teach people in the kitchen.

I've set all these different things up, all these different parameters up that will allow for the vision to expand as much as humanly possible. And the reason that I can do that is because I answered the call after I stopped running. And so my hope for you is that

This episode has helped you tap into understanding the difference between discernment in your business and learning to trust yourself. I hope that these five points, knowing the difference between fear and intuition, aligning your business, building it from authenticity or approval, making small aligned decisions before big ones using evidence and not emotion, and answering the calling that will continue to keep calling until you answer it.

I hope that these things have moved you just a little bit closer to where you are supposed to be in your life. If you would like to keep this conversation going, I ask that you please tag me on social media. You can hit the podcast Instagram at KitchentableDreams or you can find me at Kimberly I Houston across all social media platforms. Until next time friends, stay sweet, stay blessed and continue to chase your dreams.