This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 059 / The Power Of Entrepreneurship with Cait Scudder

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

I’m joined today by Cait Scudder - Forbes Featured Business Coach, Host of the “Born To Rise” Podcast, and Internationally recognized Online Business Expert - who’s on a mission to empower 10 million driven, bold-hearted women to create profitable purpose driven businesses that can change the world. Now THAT is a mission I can get behind. If you have a dream that just won’t go away. If you’re considering an opportunity that excites the hell out of you. If you have it in your heart to start a business and the only thing that’s holding you back is fear, then Get. Into. Action. Yes it might be hard, yes it is scary, and yes you could fail...but you could also change EVERYTHING. “The woman that you are becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces and material things. Choose her over everything.” Now that is Woman’s Work. To learn more about Cait you can visit her website at: www.cait.co To join the Honor Your Ambition 12 week Mastermind, visit honoryourambition.com and follow us on Instagram @honoryourambition

For a very long time, I believed that I was too ambitious, too opinionated, too focused on work, too driven, too direct, basically too much. I bought into the lie that women didn't want the things that I wanted or weren't wired the way I was wired, or at least good women didn't. So there was clearly something wrong with me. It's taken far too many years to realize that that was complete bullshit. I have gifts, and I'm pretty sure I was meant to use them because wouldn't wasting or ignoring my gifts be the bigger shame? I have dreams, and I'm sure I was meant to chase them, and I have purpose,

and I am positive I am meant to live it. The same is true for you. Leslie Griesel, who you probably remember from episode 30 on mindset, and Kristen Burke, who was my guest on episode 33 on achieving your goals, and I have collaborated to bring you the Honor Your Ambition Mastermind. Over 12 weeks, we'll cover very important business acumen competencies. You know, all the things they should have taught us in school, but didn't. I mean, honestly, when's the last time you needed your parallelogram skills? Plus, the opportunity to exchange ideas, ask for feedback, network, and share knowledge with other ambitious women.

If you're an entrepreneur looking to scale your business, or you're at the early stages of launching your business, or you're a corporate executive just looking to increase your business acumen, this mastermind is for you. Visit honoryourambition.com and follow us at honoryourambition on Instagram to learn more. And join us, because sometimes it takes being surrounded by other ambitious women to recognize that there was never anything wrong with you in the first place. Are you frustrated with working in a career where someone else is the decider of your

worth? Do you feel like your talents and contributions aren't valued at the level they should be? Have you experienced being passed over for a promotion or an opportunity only to see it given to someone who is less equipped for the role than you are? Are you tired of somebody else being in the driver's seat when it comes to your career trajectory, opportunity, or income? I am Nicole Khalil, and unfortunately, I can answer yes to all of the above, which is why I ultimately chose to leave what looked like an uber-successful career to start my own business. Today on This is Woman's Work, we're going to talk about the power of entrepreneurship. The choice to run your own business is not right for everyone, and it is certainly hard, but we all get to choose the hard that's best for us. For me, the hard of being scared,

the hard of worrying if I could replace that income, the hard of going it alone, all those hards are better challenges than the hard of hoping that somebody would recognize my value, the hard of trying to convince people that I had earned the same income, respect, and opportunities as my male counterparts. I guess we all got to choose which parts we're willing to live with. I'm joined today by Kate Scudder, Forbes featured business coach, host of the Born to Rise podcast, and internationally recognized online business expert who's on a mission to empower 10 million driven, bold-hearted women to create profitable, purpose-driven businesses that can change the world. Now that is a mission I can get behind.

Kate, thank you so much for joining us. It's such a pleasure to have you here. And I'm so excited to talk about the goods, the hards, the myths of entrepreneurship. Oh, Nicole, thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure. I wanted to start by talking about this sort of misconception that it's overnight success, right? A lot of times people see you, I'm sure, and hear the stories of your successes and they think it just happened and they miss the years and the moments and the tears and the, and all of that.

So were you an overnight success? And if not, can you share a little bit of that process? Totally. Oh my gosh. I'm so passionate about this topic. I'm so happy that you asked. Honestly, yes and no. And I say yes and no, because I think, you know, whenever we see somebody, like you say,

that we admire, that we look up to, or that's accomplished things that we find admirable and inspiring, you know, we're seeing the tip of the iceberg. We're not seeing the seven eighths that have gone under the water. So I think, you know, everything is relative as an online business coach in the online space that, that I'm in, that we're both in, I think overnight success is very relative. Like I say yes in that, sure, the first year in my business, I was featured in Forbes. I scaled to six figures in my first year from the time I decided to like press go and actually launch my business.

What is not featured in that story. And what I am like very open and talking about is like all of the time, all of the prep, all of the years, literally years that I spent second guessing myself before I was brave enough to invest in myself, to pull the trigger, to actually put my voice and words and image and brand out into the world that literally took me years of like spinning my wheels and being in self-doubt before I was brave enough to do it. And so I, you know, I think that behind even the people who seemingly, you know, like me have this overnight success story or like, you know, started and scaled without any outside investment or any of these things, there's so much more than meets the eye. I mean, I'll just share really openly for my journey, Nicole, like I came into entrepreneurship from the route of education. Actually I had my,

I got my master's in teaching when I was 23, I was like a baby and, um, you know, got my first job as a teacher, no idea. It was like my first salaried position. So when they're like, great, we're going to give you the most workload of any teacher. Plus you can do after school sports stuff. And we're going to, you know, you live an hour away. So you're commuting two hours a day and we're going to pay you $38,000 a year. And I was like, this is amazing. Like, and it took me two years of doing that to be like, yeah, no, like this is exhausting. This is not sustainable. I knew I wanted to be of service. I knew I wanted to impact and lead, but I knew that a, you know, adolescence wasn't really, I was a high school teacher. That wasn't really the age that I've felt the most passionate by. And like, there was so much more of my gifts that weren't really being

used. And so when I quit that job in search of just like making space for what comes next. And, you know, I talk about this a lot, like this messy middle period before we have clarity before we're on the other side being interviewed on podcasts, right. Before like we've got it figured out, there's this like terrifying void of messy, you know, mucky, just figuring out what comes next, what comes next, what comes next. And for me, that period had a lot of self-doubt, a lot of uncertainty. I didn't have, you know, a huge financial safety net. I, I ended up going to Bali to do a 500 hour women's leadership immersion. I knew I was leaning more towards like the personal development, inner work stuff. I'd already had a yoga teacher certification and that kind of work,

which is so interesting because I use a lot of those tools now, even though I don't teach yoga, um, you know, that kind of work was really calling to me. And so I, I paid out, I paid out before it paid in, I paid out and, and followed that inkling to like go in that direction. And, um, you know, didn't, it didn't make sense. It didn't make logical sense. And I think for a lot of people, um, you know, there is that period when we're, when we're forging our way forward before we've gotten to that other side, before we've like, quote unquote, made it a success. It seems like we're making a lot of mistakes actually. And so, yeah, for me that brought me to Bali and I could

talk a lot more about my whole journey and trajectory, but the reason I'm sharing this, this part of the story with you is because in 2016, I moved to Bali at the very end of 2015. I just met my now husband and the father of my baby girl, Ella, like in a very eat, pray, love sort of a moment and sort of a way. But there was this moment in early 2016 when I'm like, I want to start my own business. I know I'm going to do this. And then my savings was like, literally I was at the very bare bones of my savings. I thought, you know what? I'm going to have to go home. I'm going to have to go back to waitressing. I'm going to have to go like cobble these jobs together. I'm going to go have to do in-person work. I nearly left my relationship. I actually bought a flight home because I was like, this is too hard. This is too out of my

comfort zone. And long story short, I ended up staying, but I got a job, like a distant remote job writing user manuals for a software company. And just to like make some money, I didn't have a trust fund. I didn't have, you know, a wealthy family member who is like going to invest in my business, but I figured it out and I made it work. And I decided that my desire to start a business and to be successful, no matter how wildly out of reach it felt at that time. And let me tell you, it felt so like, I don't know if this whole affirmation thing is going to work for me because like, I can barely pay rent. Um, it just, I was like, it's, you know

what? I need to give it space. I need to give it time. And, and that's what I did. And so what you see, you know, the Forbes featured this or the, this launch or the, this, that what you don't see is nearly leaving my relationship, getting a job, doing something kind of soul sucking as a means to an end, to have money, to be able to invest in myself. And now sure. I'm a seven figure business owner and have a team and work like 25 hours a week maximum and have, you know, all of these amazing things. But it's like that came through bushwhacking my way through not knowing, investing in myself in really terrifying, scary ways, being at the, at my edge, finding creative ways to make it work.

Like all of the things that I think we, we forget that successful people have also had to go through. So we actually have a lot in common. I thought education was my career path and became a high school teacher and had my, Oh my God, what am I doing moment? You know, between the education and student teaching and all of that, it was a few years in, I guess the question I'm curious how you came, like, what was it that had, you know, that what you were doing was not the right fit after you'd invested time and energy into it? I think, you know, I get that question a lot. Like, how do you know? It's so interesting. I'm going to share kind of like an unconventional, like super transparent answer. And I hope this is a, is okay to go into this depth and detail on the podcast. But I, when I was in high school and a little bit in college, I struggled with an eating disorder.

I was bulimic and I had a lot of anxiety and was like always very type a very driven, very achievement oriented. And I, I think a lot of my, like that, that behavior, the bulimic behavior was like a way to process anxiety and get something out that it didn't otherwise feel safe to kind of get out. And I remember being in graduate school. So I got a scholarship, a full ride to go get my master's. You know, it was this very big thing. I came from, went to undergrad at Amherst college, got my master's at Smith was on this very like

academic-y track. And I, when I was in graduate school, that's when my bulimia was like at its worst. I actually had to go into an outpatient hospitalization program. I'm like, I was in a very bad state of mind mentally. My mental health was really, really suffering and my physical health as a result of this. And I just remember feeling like I remember walking into my professor's office and basically having to wave the white flag. I was so terrified I was going to lose my scholarship. I was going to get kicked out, but I just had to say, Hey, listen, this is what I'm struggling with. I am actually going to the hospital, um, weekly around class times. Like I'm really having a hard time and, um, and just needing to like that, the relief that came from speaking my truth and being like, whoo, okay. Something's kind of got to give

here. So I did end up graduating. I did end up taking the job that I got straight after, but I share that moment because like, even, even while I was in my training to become a teacher, there was this dual thing happening. Number one, I believe so deeply in human development, human psychology, how we learn and lead as human beings. Like that's why I got that master's in the first place. But there was a deeper part of me that felt like profoundly anxious about going in that career direction and being under the like, you know, academic kind of umbrella. And so when I was a teacher, I'd like, I was in recovery and like had mostly gotten over that, but I, I, my anxiety was

still through the roof. And I remember very distinctly, I taught so many classes. I think I had the school was tiny that I taught at. We had like a hundred students or something. And I was teaching 60 of them Spanish. I taught the entire school. It was the only Spanish speaker in the building, let alone teacher. And, um, I just remember between classes going in there and like going into the bathroom and like crying my eyes out and being like so close to like making myself throw up again. And then being like, you know what? I need to get out of here. Like, this is not good for me. This is not good for anyone. I'm like at my edge right now and I need to step away. And, and so I listened to that. I listened to my my body which is like a huge thing that I share with

my clients I think as women we're we feel like we have to operate as men we feel like we have to ignore our bodies our nervous systems and like what could be more detrimental to the people that we serve in the work that we do in the world and so yeah it was like that crying in the bathroom moment when I just had to like wipe my tears and go back out and teach another class that it was like that crying in the bathroom moment when I just had to like wipe my tears and go back out and teach another class that I was like I am not available I am so young and I am not available to be miserable and anxious and like crying in my work day something like I'm made for more than this unfortunately I can relate to all of that too. The height of my eating disorder, also bulimia, was when I was doing my student teaching. And as you said, I was required to do coaching in addition to that.

So I was coaching dance in the afternoons. And I remember thinking, I am coaching these young women and I have this full-blown eating disorder and would I want this for them? And it just got to the point where I was like, I'm literally you know, have this full blown eating disorder and would I want this for them? And it just got to the point where I was like, I'm literally making myself sick. Whatever it is that I'm doing isn't the right fit if that's my response to it. And for women listening, it might not show up as an eating disorder, but I think your body will let you know whether it's in the form of stress or anxiety or, thank you for sharing that.

I think it's so important that we listen to our beings, right? Okay. So I want to switch gears a little bit because I know a lot of people will be curious about this. You had a half a million dollar launch. You did it right before giving birth to your daughter. I think a lot of times we think as women, we need to choose either focus on professional success or focus on family. And I think often we're told that we need to choose

like that. We can't have, have it all talk us through that experience. How did you manage to do both so successfully? Such a great question. And I'm so, yeah, like this, this narrative of we have to choose or we can't have it all. I literally wrote a post about that not too long ago, like exactly, exactly on this thing. So, I mean, I'm happy to talk through my specific experience of that as well, but I think mentally mindset wise, first of all, there are so many stories, so many narratives out there in mainstream culture about women, about what it means to be a good boss, about what it means to be a good business owner, about what it means to be a good pregnant person, about what it means to be a good business owner, about what it means to be a good pregnant person,

about what it means to be a good birthing woman, about what it means to be a brand new parent, postpartum, what it looks like at, you know, one week postpartum, six weeks, six months, like there's all of these societal narratives and shoulds. And I have never felt that so strongly than when I was crossing through that threshold of motherhood. And like immediately after, you know, do you breastfeed? Do you bottle feed? Do you, you know, do you go back to work? Do you take a year off? Like all of these different things. And I think that the most important thing for women to know, and this was like the internal work that I did and some of the best advice that I received was like, give yourself permission to do what is right for you. And so for example, I had mentally in my

mind, you know, it's I, and I, you can probably maybe just tell this through the energy of me being on the phone right now, but like, I'm, I'm a pretty driven person. I'm a pretty type A person. I'm a pretty like on top of it person and also laid back at the same time. I'm like pretty driven person. I'm a pretty type a person. I'm a pretty like on top of it person. And also laid back at the same time. I'm like a funny mix of both of those, but, um, I was not wanting at the end of my pregnancy, I, I cut all of my client calls off. I officially like went on maternity leave two weeks before my official due date, Ella, my daughter ended up being two weeks late, quote unquote, past her due date. So like that month, let me tell you, Nicole, I was like, I was walking, even though I was massive, I was walking like four miles a day because I was just like, I could not sit still. And I, instead of being like

out of breath. And so many people were like, Hey, you're just going to be exhausted. You're just going to be like a whale lying down and like, you know, not have any sort of energy. I was the opposite. I had a ton of creative energy. I was like just randomly so, so energized. And I'm like, I need to put this somewhere. And so I had in my head, this mental story of it's bad to work, or you really should be winding things down in your business. And like being in this like very yin nesting mode and learning how to make homemade bread and like freezing another frittata. And I'm like, all right, we already have seven frittatas in the freaking freezer. I don't need to make any more postpartum food. I want to go make some money. And so I just gave myself permission to do what I wanted to do, to be in my business in the way that I was

actually available for. And I think mindset wise, this is where most women get, we hang ourselves up is because we think we need to act or comport ourselves in a specific way to fit a standard. That is like this nebulous thing. That's actually completely unrelated to our own desires. I think that the most important thing to do and what I did like to simplify and just be in my business. And it was actually the easiest launch that I've ever had this half a million. It was actually a $512,000 launch that started before I even had Ella. I think the last month of my pregnancy was like a $300,000 sales month, which was just insane. And then we wrapped the launch up back when I came back from maternity

leave, like four weeks later. And it was, um, it was just the most unconventional laid back launch that I've ever had because I gave myself permission for it to be easy. I gave myself permission to show up like super pregnant, but still really energized. And I just allowed the natural momentum, the natural movement. I simplified my sales process. And I think this is another thing, you know, even now as a mom, like I'm now seven weeks postpartum, I'll be not, sorry, not seven weeks, seven months postpartum in a couple of days from the time that we're recording this. And you know, the way that I operate my business now has changed like since, since I became a mom just like the way

that I ran this launch was different because I was pregnant, very, very pregnant and about to give birth at the time. I think that there is so much more possible and available to us than our limiting beliefs allow us to believe possible, right? We, we write a story about how difficult it has to be when really, you know, there's, there's just so much available to us when we unhook ourselves from that narrative and just allow ourselves to get behind what we actually want. And I can talk through the like strategic elements of the launch, but like that was the most important thing because the strategic elements honestly was actually just go live, talk about this thing, get a wait list on it, get some hype around it, open up applications, have a really incentivizing early, you know,

signup bonus. And, um, and that's exactly what I did. And it was, it was very, very simple, very low tech and deeply, deeply fulfilling as well to know that that huge success and momentum had happened at a time when Ella was also coming into the world. So there were so many good things in that. One thing that jumped out at me is, is this sort of limiting belief. I see a lot when, when women consider entrepreneurship or starting a business or launching a course or something, it's, it's sort of the fear around, can I replace my income from whatever I was doing before? But even that is a little bit of a limiting belief. Can you double your income in one year? Can you triple your income and work less? There's so many other ways to see it. And you mentioned this early on and I want to revisit it. You work 25 hours a week know you make a lot more than you did as a teacher. Similar experience for me. I doubled my income in my second year as a business owner, but was working still 30 hours or less a week.

So how do you do that? And I know you're not doing it alone, right? You don't run a multi-billion dollar business type thing by yourself. So tell us a little bit how you make it work to have financial success, profitability as a business owner, but also working 25 hours a week. Totally. So there's a couple different things to this. Number one, as you said, it's like no secret. I'm going to be the first one to say it all the freaking time. I have so much support. And the key here though, is that I started investing in support way before I quote unquote could or should way before it made sense. So I actually back in 2017, I quit after I started to sell my first coaching packages. I ran my first program. I

started to see like, yeah, a real proof of concept play out. And I was making a really good salary as a technical writer, like more or less $70,000 a year. And I was doing that remotely from Bali, which like in Bali made me the queen of Bali. Like I was, you know, it was like all the other, you know, barefoot hippies that I was hanging around with would have been happy to make, you know, a third of that and, and live a very abundant life in Bali. And so when I quit that job to go all in on my coaching business, I still hadn't like replaced in a regular steady way what I was making, but I knew that I needed to free up my time, my mental capacity. It was the right time for me to take that leap. And then like two weeks, not even joking later, I invested $15,000 in my first business coach. Um, my first investment of that caliber, like first of many, many, many. And,

but the point was like, I had no job anymore. And, uh, it was way more, it was like way over triple quadruple what I was charging myself. And it was, it was freaking scary to pay and I paid it in full. And it was, it was a moment where it didn't really make sense. And I've just, I've continued to invest in my business, invest in my growth. And here's the thing that I think is important, investing from the place that I am growing into, not the place that I am currently in. And I think that that is a really challenging mindset to get behind as women, because oftentimes women, we are like, I don't know if you feel this is true, Nicole, but like, we're often the level headed ones, right? It's our responsibility to be

fiscally conservative, to think about the kids' college funds, to think about like, you know, to think about the mortgage or to think about, I know I don't, you know, well, we do actually, funnily enough, have a college fund started for Ella that we just like put the stimulus checks in, but like, you know, to be those people that are like more on the side of, let me plan and save. And let me think about the family, right? We're not encouraged to be risk takers. We're not encouraged to see ourselves as our own best asset. And yet this belief is like one that I am so like fundamentally for shifting in women, because when we can learn to see ourselves, our own earning potential, our own growth potential as our single most profitable and

valuable asset, we get to play with money. We get to collapse time. We get to like exponentially expand and grow. And so that was way, way, way before I'd been making, you know, any money in business and like continuing to invest in support like that is one of the major things that's allowed me to be very successful, number one, but now also have more time. And so moving into a couple other like strategic elements here, I've hired and invested time and money and building out a team to help me delegate and be really effective with my time. So I am a educator, coach, content creator. and one of the things that my team really helps me to do is to leverage my time in the most maximum way so if I am showing up to do a live stream or if I am showing up to record a podcast episode team is responsible for then pulling out a lot of the

gems a lot of the magic repurposing it helping you know one piece of content become marketing and and education that goes out on multiple platforms. So it's like, I look like I'm in all the places all the time, but I'm actually being very selective and streamlined with the way that I leverage my time. So that's a very concrete example of being more efficient during working hours to minimize working hours, working less and making it work more. The second thing that I have done is, um, is paying attention to what the money-making activities are in my business. I think it's very easy as business owners, especially when we're solopreneurs or even when we don't have

a team to focus on like everything being a priority at once. Right. And I always say like, if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. So for anyone who's listening, if you're finding yourself like fiddling in Canva with your graphics and tweaking the copy on your website every five seconds and like doing this and doing that and researching all of this and watching everyone else's free live streams and like doing all of this stuff, maybe just, maybe it's time to look at where is your time, your working time actually going? And is that working time helping you a serve your existing clients and community be making money. Those are the only things that I do now in my business. And I've been able to scale up to this place, but everything else can wait. Everything else is not a priority. Everything else I can delegate. And so, you know, delegate,

automate and delete, like where you can do those three things in your business, you are going to find so much more success. And then the third thing that I want to say, just because I'm a mom, I have a nanny, I have help at home. And that is what helps me to be fully present those 25 hours that I am working. And, you know, and it varies week to week, some weeks, it's like 15, some weeks, it's like 28, but like the average is around 25. And when I'm, when I'm working, I'm like full on fire, present, delivering value, being really present. And when I'm off, like I'm with my daughter and I'm enjoying my family and, and having help, not just in my business, but also in my home makes that possible. I feel like you just gave an awesome keynote talk. And if the environment were appropriate,

I would give you a standing ovation. That was so much good stuff in a short period of time. But I want to reiterate what you said, invest into the person you're growing into. That really resonated with me. I think you're dead on. We as women tend to be a little bit more conservative and maybe worry about investing in something that only has to do with us, right? We might be more inclined to invest in our children's college fund than we would if we perceive it's going to only benefit us. But that shift of thinking about it as an investment, not only in yourself, but in your future for your family, for your clients, for the people you care about, as opposed to just putting it in the expense

column. This is an investment, not just an expense. A hundred percent. And be willing to like prove your doubt wrong of like, okay, cool. Like watch me make this back. Watch me. And I think that's the really cool thing about empowered investing is that you realize when you have that like fire in your belly to make it work, like you are going to show up for that investment. So whether it's like hiring a coach or a mentor or hiring a team member, like you are going to, you know, even me when I have a nanny hiring a team member, like you are going to, you know, even me when I have a nanny, I'm like, great. Like those hours when I have childcare, I don't know if you've found this as well, but it's like the stuff that I can squeeze out of an hour now, I'm like, what was I doing before I became a mom? Oh my God. I've said that to

myself so many times. Like, what did I do with all that time? Why did I feel so busy? Totally. Kate, this has been amazing. And thank you for packing so much punch into a 30 minute podcast. If you're listening and you want to learn more about Kate and her work, visit her website. It's kate.co. So C-A-I-T dot C-O, um, or follow her on Instagram at Kate Scudder. So again, C-A-I-T-S-C-U-D-D-E-R, or check out her podcast, Born to Rise. And she also has a free Facebook community. Um, so search the Radiant Entrepreneur, so you can get insights, pearls of wisdom, uh, you know, news of what's coming free resources, all the good stuff. Um, Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. This is incredible. Thank you so much for having me. Nicole is my pleasure and I'm just so fun to connect with you today. Thank you so much. My pleasure. I'll leave you with this thought. If you have a dream that

just won't go away, if you're considering an opportunity that excites the hell out of you, if you have it on your heart to start a business and the only thing that's holding you back is fear, then get into action. Yes, it could be hard. Yes, it is scary. And yes, you could fail, but you could also change everything. You could also succeed beyond your wildest imagination. And we all have to choose between two pains. You can't escape one or the other. You get to choose between the pain of doing it or the pain of regret. So choose the pain that you can live with. One of my most favorite quotes

says this, the woman that you are becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces, and material things. Choose her over everything. Now that is woman's work.