The Antidote to Always Needing to Show Up and Be Available as a Personal Brand

INTRO; After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place. Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life. Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast. And here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning in this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive in today's topic [00:01:00] because it is something that I've been deeply contemplating for many years now. Something that I've been in deep conversation with clients, as well as colleagues, people in the industry that I love and adore the work that they do.

And that has to do with the notion of always being on or always being available when we don't feel like it. When we don't Maybe when we're not in the right mood, maybe when we're maybe feeling a little melancholy or down, maybe when we've lost inspiration, that we don't necessarily feel like quote unquote showing up.

But as a business owner, the rhetoric is often you've got to be consistent, you've got to Show up even if you don't want to. You've gotta show up in the face of the crickets or the haters or the trolls or all the things you've got to be available to your clients. You've got to deliver, you know, on the services you promise, which I'm not [00:02:00] saying that we don't wanna deliver on services that we promise, but I also want to acknowledge the humanness in running a business in living.

your life. And this doesn't necessarily even always relate to just being an entrepreneur. I think this is just, this could be you in a career. And the notion that we have to continually push through and keep moving forward and keep taking the steps forward and, and keep being consistent, even when. we might not be feeling it.

And if we're not feeling it, then there is something innately wrong with us because we aren't disciplined enough. Maybe we're not motivated enough. All of the sorts of things that come with just maybe having an off day, an off month or an off year. And I truly, truly believe that the idea of pausing the idea of sitting in silence, [00:03:00] The idea of actually reveling in the in between and the not knowingness is where so much magic happens but there's this fear, one, that if we do pause and we do step away from social media or we don't post for six months or we take a hiatus or a sabbatical or whatnot, I mean, sabbaticals aren't new things, Professors in universities have taken them, right?

They've taken sabbaticals, and yet again, in the online entrepreneurship space, like the notion of a sabbatical or the notion of taking a longer pause than quote unquote, you know, your. two week or three week or your four week vacations, whatever your vacations are, that we actually don't give ourselves the pause and the opportunity to be in silence because what if we lose momentum?

What if we become irrelevant? What if we get left [00:04:00] behind? What if people, you know, move on and find somebody else? What if we lose clients? What if we lose money? All of these things start to rattle around in our brains, and I totally get it, but I also want to share sort of the perspective of what those thoughts are.

and feelings are, which is a sense of fear that's coming up within you, which is totally valid. Um, I have felt it. I definitely have the notion of like not posting on social for months or the notion of not sending an email one week, right? I think again, we buy into the belief that If we don't send that email or we don't post five days a week that somewhere along the line that we're not going to be further ahead.

And I'm not saying that we, we aren't here to put in the effort and do the work. Like I'm not saying that we just sit on our laurels and not do [00:05:00] anything. But I also think that we're out of balance when it comes to actually pausing and sitting in silence and going inward. And a big part of my process that I've learned about myself is, is that.

Sometimes I need to remove myself from the rooms, sometimes I need to step off of the treadmill and just be in my own thoughts, feelings, emotions, like I just need to sit with myself in silence, not consume things, not listen to outside mentorship or advice, so that I can really be in the in between and sometimes even the not knowingness and sometimes sitting in that contemplation is like I'm not actually really getting answers, I'm just Letting my body exhale.

And I think that can be a hard balance to navigate when you are a business owner. When you are a founder of a company and time, quote unquote, this illusion of time, it doesn't stop. And so there's clients coming in. There's [00:06:00] clients that require, you know, your. intentional insight and thought, clients that require your time, but not only clients, but also on the other side of it, the marketing and the sales.

And if you don't have a big team that's supporting you with that, which a lot of y'all who are in my world don't, then you are all of the hats, right? You are wearing every single one of those hats. And I've been there as well where I'm wearing all of the hats and That can get really tiring, especially if you're putting in the work and maybe not seeing the results you want to see yet, or you're not seeing the results that you desire, um, whatever that might look like, and I think our innate needs.

Inner wiring and conditioning is like just to keep going, just to put one foot in front of the other, just to keep trying. And I'm not saying to give up, but I'm saying that the way I look at life now and the way I look at my [00:07:00] business is if I miss sending an email one week because I just didn't have the time or I ran out of time, then that is okay.

Because on the grand scheme of things, on the big picture view of life, that one email that I didn't send is not going to make or break my business. And it's not going to make or break my business. The success that I create, even though I took a six month hiatus off of social media, we can always reinvent ourselves.

We can always create abundance and success in our reality. At least that's my philosophy and my mindset. And that I think so much of our reality is so Fixated on the moment, which I think is beautiful. We've gotta live in the moment, but I think it's micro in that we're looking at the one thing that's [00:08:00] not working or we're, we're so dialed in on the details.

For example, like if I don't send an email on on Sunday when I. you know, have committed to doing that, to stay connected with my community and to stay connected with my people and to provide value and all of the things that I do. Like if for, if my body in that moment is tired, exhausted, maybe I get sick or whatever, I think there's so much pressure to do the thing in spite of what our bodies are telling us.

And I would love to invite you if you're in a season of tiredness, you feel like your soul is exhausted or you're feeling like I just really need to go inward right now and get curious about maybe what my next steps are. Maybe you feel like you've outgrown what you've created and now you want to evolve.

Maybe you want to expand in a totally different direction. Maybe you've lost the inspiration and the love for what you've [00:09:00] created, which is 100 percent okay. Again, I think there's rhetoric out there that's like, business is supposed to be boring and, you know, you're not supposed to like it. Again, that's to me, the same rhetoric that's being fed to us in corporate, right?

Is a job is a job and you're not supposed to like it. I'm of the mind that I'm like, I can recreate success over and over and over and over and over again. And if that means starting from scratch every time. Cool. But to me, I look at expansiveness as I could burn something to the ground and start from scratch and be totally okay.

That sticking with something just for the sake of sticking with it because quote unquote we're meant, you know, business is supposed to be boring, you're supposed to fall out of love with things. That, for me, is again, the rhetoric that is a blanket statement across the board. And I believe we are nuanced human beings and that we are the only ones that know what is the best path forward for us and there is no right [00:10:00] or wrong.

And so, you If expanding your business is the season you're in right now and you need to sort of take your foot off the gas for a moment just to breathe and to pause and to go, okay, what is that next course of action? And that might take me a month or two to like sit in contemplation. It might take you six months.

That is perfectly okay. What I have started to feel deeply in my body is this like running on a treadmill and whenever I'm in an environment where I feel like somebody's pushing my leg down on a treadmill and I know that people can't control me, but when I feel the energy of a space where somebody's like foot on gas pedal and we are not taking that foot off the gas pedal, I almost get out of breath even though I'm actually not running on a treadmill, but I feel out of breath because I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

Like. [00:11:00] Can we just stop and breathe for a moment? The season of life that I'm in right now is like, I'm, I'm in this like slow moving, non rushed season of life. And I don't know if that's age related and where I'm at in life, or if that's just my notion of like, I don't want to rush through life and miss the beautiful aspects of my life.

And if I'm constantly looking at, Where I'm going, like five, 10, 15 years from now, right? Where I'm going and what I'm like, quote unquote, striving to and not really stopping and reveling in the moment right now, like, you know, going away for family weekends and spending time with family and like really being there with them, not.

thinking, Oh crap, I've got to write an email for Sunday and I didn't write it. Oh shit. Now I've got to, you know, like that is consumption that is always being on and that is not being [00:12:00] present in the moment. But the other, the other piece of this is, is that I don't think we're meant to always be on. And I think the idea of always the notion that we have to always be high vibe when we're on the road, or we always have to be available or we always have to be in a good mood is actually the thing that's doing a lot of us a disservice because when we aren't in a good mood if we are in a in a season of melancholy right or we're just kind of down and out or maybe our hormones are out of whack and we're not feeling that great or whatever it might be there's a lot of variables at play.

Just to say that you've got to stay committed and you've got to keep moving forward to me is a disservice, but also that you have to be like always in the best mood is also a disservice because that's not reality. That is just not reality. The human experience we're meant to feel. I remember someone saying to me one time, you know, [00:13:00] that being frustrated and express expressing frustration, like is, is not beneficial because the person, A, is not going to receive that, right, very well, and to like constantly just be in a state of like neutrality.

And I, and I understand that to some degree, but I also don't, because I think being angry and being frustrated and being happy and being excited is all part of the experience. And what makes, um, Humans really hard on themselves is when they get frustrated or they get angry. And it's almost like it's a bad thing.

Like, Oh, well, you should have done that. Or that was a place from a place of judgment or whatnot. And to me, self love and acceptance, is living this beautiful, nuanced, holistic experience. And that is radical responsibility, but also radical acceptance. Like just accepting all of it. [00:14:00] Like I, yeah, I was frustrated.

I got angry. I made that mistake. And, but accepting yourself in that process and loving yourself through that process. And part of that is that, The radical acceptance that maybe this season of life you're in right now is not meant to go fast. Like maybe this season of life is actually meant to take a pause and take a breather and that you won't become irrelevant and that you will Won't, you know, disappear off the internet so you'll, you won't lose clients that actually this pause or this breather or this sitting in silence and contemplation is actually what your body and your soul truly needs in order to evolve and to grow.

And if you are in a season of wanting to go fast and hit your goals and go, go, go, that's also perfectly okay. That. What I'm trying to say here is there is no right or wrong, but the reason I wanted to share this episode is because a lot of the conversations that I've had and my own contemplation is [00:15:00] making the season of life or making the feelings and emotions mean something bad about ourselves, like we're doing it wrong or we're not doing it right or, you know, that we've, we've, we're missing something or it's a limiting belief or it's a block.

And what I've realized for myself that when I'm. very much in the personal development and growth space that I have to be really mindful in a lot of ways because I think we can get into what I call a spin cycle. And by that I mean, we express how we feel and we express, what we maybe desire or what we don't desire.

And then it's met with sort of a fix it energy in that like, I'm going to help you fix this situation. And in reality, there really isn't anything to fix that all of our expression is valid in a lot of ways, but also it is our expression. And that if we're made to feel or believe, or there's even that, you know, [00:16:00] energy at the table, that it's not.

Right in some way, or that this is the very reason why things are quote unquote, aren't working. Then right then and there, if we say, well, that's why things aren't working. It's already like, okay, well I'm doing something wrong, right? That language, it's not working means something is missing or something, something is wrong and we've got to fix it.

And sometimes that is actually the case. I'm not saying that, but what I'm saying is is that when we can just accept where we are right now and revel in that, even if it's a place that we don't want to be, even if it's fucking uncomfortable, even if we're like, You know, we're just jittery to get out and get moving and for things to happen that we radically accept where we are right now in this moment.

And that if our body, soul and spirit is asking to go inward, is to asking to pause, is to asking to just sit. [00:17:00] And maybe, maybe the awareness isn't there. Like maybe you're not getting that awareness, but you're feeling a collective exhaustion or you're a tiredness in your body, then Anytime I feel tired in my body or anytime I feel like there's resistance.

I'm, I'm getting curious about why the resistance and I'm not seeking outside advice or agency to tell me why I have that resistance. I'm looking inward to tune in and go, why, why am I feeling that resistance? Because for me, I know, I feel really innately that my pulse, like that sacral pulse that I have in my body is super unpredictable, which brings me back to the very beginning of this all, which was like the whole notion of like needing to be on all the time and available and needing to be consistent and show up consistently, you know, facilitate my groups consistently, all of those sorts of things.

It brings me back to that because [00:18:00] my sacral pulse is absolutely unpredictable and inconsistent, meaning I don't move like everybody else and everybody else doesn't move like me. So the notion that I'm expected to show up consistently, what does that actually even mean? The notion that I need to be available and on all the time, what does that actually even mean?

And is my resistance to pausing, to slowing down, to going inward, to just sitting in silence, to maybe step off the striving bus at the moment, right? Is my resistance really resistance to actually doing the act? Or is it resistance to the fear that I have around becoming irrelevant, losing customers, pissing people off, whatever it might be?

Is that why I have the resistance? Right? These are the questions I start, I ask myself to get really [00:19:00] curious around that contemplation, but I want to come back to my sacral pulse and we all are wired differently. And I think the biggest thing that I want you to take away from this episode is, is that the more we get to know self, And the more we get to know how we navigate through this world and the more attuned we become to knowing our own navigational system compass, whatever you want to call it, the more we can start to make decisions that are in full alignment to that, regardless of what anybody else says around you.

And my pulse, I have the 63 channel in human design, which is from the root to the sacral. It's a projector channel. It's. There's a deep feeling of melancholy that happens with that when things aren't transforming or changing. So the 63 channel is a formatting channel. It's all around innovation. It's, um, knowing that We're always moving and shifting and changing.

It's like [00:20:00] a regeneration rebirth. Um, I also have the 12th house son in my 12th house, Libra, which is all around that as well. And so I can sit in a state of melancholy and my acceptance around that melancholy. has been the very thing that has helped me shift and move through it, but I have no timing around that, meaning, the more I try to fight the timing on it, the more resistance and the more frustration and the more deep melancholy I feel, but when I can just sit in the melancholy of things sort of quote unquote feeling stagnant, and, and accept that, like radically accept that as not right or wrong, The more easily I can move and shift through this, because the 63 channel is literally all about change and that the only really thing in our life is change.

So the notion of me trying to control [00:21:00] anything from changing or, you know, control anything really is also what causes a lot of pain in my reality in my world. And I wouldn't have known this if I didn't really kind of sit with who I am. And that's why I can filter advice and insight that comes my way, or when I'm discerning stuff on the internet and content that's being posted, I filter it through my own system, which is why when I'm in.

Let's call it the pause or the void. That 63 channel has what we call the void in a lot of ways, sitting in that void of non movement, or at least it feels like non movement. And the shadow side of that for me is trying to force movement, so that could look like, you know, seeking out, you know, somebody to help me fix the problem and investing in something that can look like scrolling on social media to fill like this need of needing something new.

That's me constantly questioning quote unquote, like, am I on the right path? What is my purpose? The worst thing that I can [00:22:00] possibly do based on my own innate wiring is questioning my purpose. Like, what is my purpose? Because for me, My reality is living in the now is really the only thing that we have, but that really is on a deep rooted DNA level for me and how I'm wired energetically is, is literally the contemplating my purpose is the worst thing I could possibly do, and so for a long time when I didn't know any of this about myself, You know, the bookshelves were full of like, find your purpose, what's your calling?

You know, I'd invest in coaches and mentors to tell me like, what is my thing? I'd be so uncomfortable in the not knowing that I would literally try to fill that void and fix it. through personal development and growth. Now, I'm not saying personal development growth is not a good thing. I absolutely think it is a brilliant thing.

But what I'm saying is, is that when you really truly know yourself, you can start to navigate this world in a more seamless way. And I wanted to share that with you. [00:23:00] Feeling of melancholy, because when I first read that about my own design, I was like, wow, this is so true. I get this feeling of melancholy when things feel stagnant, when they're not moving, when they're not shifting, when they're not innovating, when they're not growing.

And yet, my sacral pulse knows when it's time to move and when it's time not to move. And For the longest time, I, I held the belief that I had to show up five days a week on social. I had to send an email once a week, if not twice a week. I had to sell all the time. Like, these are beliefs I held and I started to unravel and unpack those, because I started to question, like, there's obviously something wrong with me.

Like, why can't I stay consistent? Why can't I stay consistent with posting? Why can't I stay consistent with sending emails? And for me, the biggest thing is, is if I don't have anything to say, like literally, and sometimes I might not have something to say, I don't just want to talk for the sake of talking and fill [00:24:00] space and fill air just to be heard or just to like check something off a to do list.

Like that just doesn't align with me. And a lot of people I'm in deep conversation with are saying similar things in a lot of ways, which is why I wanted to share this with you, this journey of being a founder and entrepreneur in your business and how to sort of navigate that. And for me, The best thing that I've ever done is to like continually learn about myself and to get really curious about why the resistance, why am I feeling this deep dread or resistance to taking a pause or a rest?

What is that? Because right now, like I said, in my season of life, I'm looking for simplicity. I'm looking for slowness. I don't want to be rushed to make a decision, but I also don't want to feel like I am in a rush. to run my business. And that rushing for me feels like striving in a lot of ways. Do I have goals?

Do I have intentions? Do I've got things that I desire? Absolutely. But if I feel like I'm in a rush to achieve [00:25:00] those, or I'm in, I have some perceived deadline of like, it's got to happen by this date, I feel like I'm in a rush to make it happen. And I feel like I'm fighting my flow against my life. And if we truly trust life, and what life has in store for us, then we will surrender to any timeline, really, because we actually don't really know, right?

We actually don't really know when things will transpire in our reality, in our world. And so to set a deadline to it, to me, is trying to hack divine timing and, you know, That, for me, is counterintuitive to, like, fully trusting life. If I fully trust life, then I can set an intention. I can set a desire. I can pause.

If my body's asking me to pause, I can pause, because this is part of my timeline, right? This is part of my season of life. This is the way I'm moving through life. So, There's a bigger thing here that we can unpack and unravel because I do think a lot of [00:26:00] mainstream manifestation, personal development, right?

And a lot of the industries, they want to change the industry or there's messages within the industry that are like, We want to have more heart led messaging. We want to have more, you know, balanced approaches and holistic approaches, but we're trying to fit that rhetoric and that transformational stuff into an old model that just keeps us stuck in the model.

And I see that in a lot of the personal development, right? It's like, you know, if, if we truly trust divine timing and we truly trust life, then why are we putting a deadline on our goals? Because to me, if everything that we desire is meant to come to us, it might not come to us in the way that we thought, but it comes to us, then why are we putting deadlines on it?

Why are we still trying to fit ourselves into this masculine, hyperproductive model when surrendering to life [00:27:00] and really letting go and really releasing control? is what is required if we want to move in flow with life rather than a resistance to it. So again, this is something that I have not solved for myself.

It's something I'm, I'm continually deepening and integrating into, um, because I think as a natural human, we like to control things and we like to know when things are going to happen and we want that certainty for sure. But I just wanted to have this conversation. With you today, because I do know, like I said, I'm in deep conversation with myself and in deep conversation with other people and other people I look towards in terms of entrepreneurs who I deeply value and respect, who have built widely successful companies, seven, eight figure nine figure businesses who are starting to have these conversations as well more openly that, you know, they have fallen into the trap that a lot of entrepreneurs sort of fall into, and [00:28:00] that is constantly being on and constantly being available.

but holding on to that belief that you have to in order to be successful. And that then just keeps us on that sort of path of exhaustion. And I don't believe in life. We are meant to always be on and always be available and always be striving for the next thing that The pause, I think Richard Wood says is so beautifully that we have a hard time as humans to really stop and smell the nectar or really stop and revel in the moment and like, take it in, you know, not just sit there and be in meditation, but to like, really, truly feel smell like tap into the senses like, When was the last time you went for a walk in nature and not just walked in nature because walking in nature is good for you, quote unquote, but like literally just walked through and like taking it in, like heard the leaves [00:29:00] actually like rustling in the wind or noticed the tiny little mushrooms growing on a log or stump or saw a bunch of little um, ants walking along the pathway, you know, I'm, I'm giving examples of when we were in Costa Rica, because we would go on these night hikes or day hikes or whatnot.

And just to see all of the things going on in nature that were happening, like little ants carrying leaves, you know, back to their, their hole in their colony or whatever. And, you know, You know, and being witness to these things, right? Like, seeing a tarantula buried in this hole that, like, we probably wouldn't have even spotted or noticed because we would be so motoring through nature just because nature is supposed to be good to be in.

Like, we were on this slow walk. We had nowhere to be. We weren't in a rush. We were on no timeline. And that, for me, is, [00:30:00] The season of life that I'm definitely in and that is what I'm continually integrating into my business and integrating into the way that I run my business that I'm not in a rush to get anywhere and that for me is, is where I'm at and that feels.

like a big body exhale. Um, and knowing when I'm in community or I'm in mentorship or whatnot, where it feels rushed that we've got to get this thing done like ASAP. Um, to me there is no ASAP, right? And I get it. I get why people run their businesses that way. And I was somebody who absolutely used to run my business that way.

But I, Like a lot of these business owners that I've, that I'm hearing talk about exhaustion and being tired, you know, I too fell into the trap of always being on and always being available and somehow making it mean something not great about me if I wasn't always on or wasn't always [00:31:00] available or I wasn't always in the mood that I wasn't disciplined enough or I wasn't motivated enough or what's wrong with me and now it's this radical self acceptance of like, I get to be all of it and there actually really isn't anything missing or wrong with me.

And that if I want to take a hiatus or sabbatical for six months, 12 months, if I want to start a completely new company from scratch, that I get to do that. And if I want to hop from career to career to career, that's totally kosher to, you know, I did that in corporate, right? And it was seen as a, like, how are you ever going to promote yourself?

To get to where you want to be in your career, if you continually just hop from career to career because you're not like, quote unquote, loyal, right? All of these stories that we've been told and that we've inherited in a lot of ways is like, how can we get really curious about that? But then also how can we accept that we get to be who we want to be?

And that is a nuanced thing. Being that is different than everybody else, and that is a hundred percent okay. So [00:32:00] hopefully this episode has been helpful and you can walk away with some questions of your own contemplation of where you're at, and I cannot wait to hear from you. Cheers. Thanks for listening.

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