The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson

Embracing Faith in Business with Kendra Sutton

• Jennifer Ann Johnson • Season 2 • Episode 43

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Explore how faith can transform personal and professional life with Kendra Sutton, founder of KD Sutton Creative Solutions. Kendra shares her journey from corporate life to entrepreneurship, where embracing faith became essential. We discuss the power of trusting the unseen and how faith brings peace, joy, and self-discovery. Kendra reflects on her shift to fully integrating faith into her business, offering insights on self-acceptance and recognizing one’s unique gifts.

We also delve into forgiveness and grace, especially in family dynamics. This conversation highlights the role of empathy and boundaries, both personally and professionally, for a well-rounded approach to life and work.

Visit us at jenniferannjohnson.com and learn how Jennifer can help you build the life you dream of with her online academy, blog, one-on-one coaching, and a variety of other resources!

Jennifer Johnson:

Today, we welcome back into the studio Kendra Sutton. She's the owner of K Sutton Creative Solutions and is an experienced marketing, branding and advertising strategist with a demonstrated history of helping clients navigate the complex and fascinating world of lead generation and brand awareness. She's skilled in traditional mediums such as TV, radio and print, as well as Google, digital marketing, social media, brand storytelling and corporate social responsibility campaigns that help her clients get noticed by their customers and create a lasting impact on their bottom line. She's passionate about creating great work through collaboration, and her moxie is coming up with brilliant ideas that produce creative solutions. Welcome back in Good morning. Good to see you again.

Jennifer Johnson:

Yes, I mean, the last time we met it was a fabulous conversation and we totally. We came in talking about one thing and it just kind of mushroomed yes, and I fully expect that it's going to happen the same way today, probably Because that's just how we are. And I want to talk about faith, forgiveness and favor in your daily business, and I know that's a big part of your life. And I want to start with faith Because let me preface this with I know a lot of people in corporate positions or corporate companies. This may be uncomfortable because a lot of big companies may not embrace that faith part. Yes, right, but what does it mean to have faith day in and day out in your business? I know this is going to be a. It's a big question because there's many different prongs to it. But what? What do you see that as?

Kendra Sutton:

Well, first of all, I can't start my day without it. My whole entire business bloomed from faith when I did not even know what my next steps were going to be after ending a 13-year career. So that's where my faith really kicked in. And faith is believing in things that we do not see, and part of my practice of faith in my relationship is that I already thank Him for what I want or what I ask for, whoever it is for my employees, for myself, family, colleagues that it is done, and that is having the faith that what you are proclaiming is done, and so I use that to lead business, because business is ever changing. You're going to have clients that come and go, and so I have faith that our time was finished and there will be beautiful new ones coming along. Just that positivity, that hope.

Jennifer Johnson:

Have you always been like that, or?

Kendra Sutton:

No, I would definitely say call myself. Up until a few years ago, I always had faith, but I was lukewarm that whole expression of lukewarm. Celebrating when good things happen, of course, and questioning when bad things did, excuse me, and that is not faith. Faith is trusting in the process and always trusting in the process and not on your own understanding, as Scripture says, and that is a challenge. It's not an easy practice, especially when life throws curveballs at us and it does yeah, every single day, yeah.

Kendra Sutton:

Yeah, but if I didn't have that in my business and in my life to lean on and to trust in and to support and the blessings come, you know it's just having that. It's a pillar in my business, for businesses, that I am seeing a shift of more people and businesses going there and it's not and there's all different religions and respect those and I understand it's a treacherous territory for some companies to get into. We have, you know, we have all these things that have happened in our society with political correctness et cetera. But I think that we have to honor people's faith and just really embrace those that want to talk about it.

Kendra Sutton:

We're not here to judge Right.

Jennifer Johnson:

So I'm glad that you kind of went that way, because my next question to you is going to be what does it look like if we don't have faith?

Kendra Sutton:

How does it feel? What does it look like? I'm going to just say from my personal journey an extremely unhappy and joyful, rocky road. And yet I had so many good things happening in my life but was not finding joy, was not finding peace. That was the key word peace. I just wanted peace.

Jennifer Johnson:

And meaning peace. Was it not like you had to keep chasing the next thing?

Kendra Sutton:

No, and I didn't have to keep pleasing others and looking for validation from others for who I already am.

Jennifer Johnson:

So that's a big one. Yeah, because I think as entrepreneurs especially because we do, you had mentioned you know it's a lonely road. It can be a lonely road and maybe it's something, and I learned this that a lot of our validation, looking is from things that have happened to us in the past.

Kendra Sutton:

I would like to say a hundred percent.

Jennifer Johnson:

I mean, I know myself yes, me too Like I've had things happen to me when I was a child where I wonder why, and this all came out when I was writing my book. It was crazy, it was very. It was almost like it was a therapy session doing that, but it was things that had happened in my childhood. I wanted to kind of give the middle finger to and say, look, I did this and you didn't think I could, right?

Kendra Sutton:

So I spent my I pretty much spent my whole life until three years ago like that, and I'm in my 50s. That was my mantra my whole life growing up.

Kendra Sutton:

I'm not going to be my parents. I'm going to be the first to graduate college. I'm going to own a business. I'm going to make something of myself. I'm going to, I'm, I'm, I'm.

Kendra Sutton:

And did I accomplish those things? Yes. And when I was done, did I have joy? No. Did I have peace? No, because it wasn't coming from the right place. Right, it was coming from trauma. It was coming from anxiety, wanting acceptance. It was not accepting myself as to who I already was and the gifts I had already been given and how magnificently I was already made, and that everything we have is inside of us. We have to tune into it, we have to get mindful, we have to own all of our ugly, crap and garbage.

Kendra Sutton:

And you just brought something up when I started reflecting back. And I will tell you, I had a horrible situation, an accumulation of a horrible situation, and I hit bottom. And when you do that, you start reflecting. The thing is I had hit bottom a couple of times, so I'd had an accident one time, and I say that's when he laid me down. So I would look up, because I would not. I was going a hundred miles an hour. My family was extremely concerned about how much focus and drive and everything else did not matter. I was on a mission, the wrong mission Right, and they thought I was burning not only the candle at both ends but in the middle too. And ironically, my mom to this day still calls it divine intervention. But that is you know. I had faith but I wasn't practicing it, I wasn't enabling it to work for me, I wasn't tapping in and truly to the greatest source possible. And so I say you know he laid me down so I'd look up. I love that.

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Jennifer Johnson:

All right, friends, we are back in the studio again with Kendra Sutton and she's the owner of K Sutton Creative Studio and we're talking about faith, forgiveness and favor. So we've talked about faith. Now I want to move on to forgiveness. It's a big one, I know right, that's the big one. It's a big one. That's the magic pill. Is it something you learn? How does that work? How do we learn to forget, or is it not something we learn?

Kendra Sutton:

I will tell you, it is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Harder than starting a business, harder than relationships. It is truly one of the at least for me personally, it's one of the most difficult things I've ever found because and especially we were talking previously about our past traumas and and all those things weave into the fabric of our personality and our being and I was sharing. When I started reflecting backwards, I started remembering all these situations as a manager in business, et cetera, and how I would react to things or how maybe I made some decisions in those roles as a leader, and I realized they were from triggers, they were from things of the past, and so that's when the question, when I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, okay, how do I change this? The only way to change that was I had to go back and sit in those and forgive.

Kendra Sutton:

And it wasn't only about forgiving the people that have hurt us or betrayed us or done damage. One of the other hardest things was forgiving myself. Oh yeah, in decisions that I made in reaction to those things, and you don't realize it at the time, no, you don't. So that's where the second part of that forgiveness came in is I was like, oh my goodness, I need to go back and apologize to that person from 10 years ago and I did those things. I called people. People were like.

Kendra Sutton:

I don't even remember it, oh my gosh. But I do Right. And you know, somebody told me here in our community one time. I called her and I apologized to her.

Jennifer Johnson:

She was one of them.

Kendra Sutton:

And I said you know I'm really sorry if I've ever hurt your feelings or offended you or anything, because I'm thinking there's some points that I probably did and she shared with me one time. You know, she said it wasn't that you, it was just that you would distance yourself and that hurt at times. Wow, and that's what I said. You know, it took my breath when she said that, because that was never the intention. But when you're not operating in that mindfulness or you haven't realized that about yourself, or how to rely on that faith and forgiveness, and at that moment I asked her will you please forgive me? That's the intention of my call. I knew there was something Right, because it made me uncomfortable, of course, or you wouldn't have come up, and so she did, and so I explained to her that I'm making calls today and here's one of the best pieces of advice. She said just be prepared.

Kendra Sutton:

Not everybody may accept your apology. And I hadn't thought of that, and she was right. I called 20 people that day and 19 accepted my apology and one didn't. That one still to this day has not. Wow, and I will tell you that bothers me, but that's part of also living in faith and favor and forgiveness is that I've learned I can't control other people. That's that other person's decision. I've done faithfully what was correct, fully what was correct. I've stepped forth in faith asking for forgiveness and I put it out there and I did the right thing. I can't control what somebody else does, how they accept it or whether they want to accept it and amen to that.

Jennifer Johnson:

Once you realize that you've done everything in your power, then you do have to let it go. Yes, I want to start breaking out into the Elsa song right now.

Kendra Sutton:

Exactly right, the Frozen song. But I can't sing to save my life, so that's not going to happen. But, so true, yes, so true.

Jennifer Johnson:

So, true.

Kendra Sutton:

And the other thing on forgiveness, and when you talk about how trauma or things from our past that affect us and I think that's something also is I'm not a parent unfortunately I didn't get that blessing but as parents too, everybody's doing the best they can do at times and I had to forgive my parents for that and realize that. And then I started looking at my grandparents and what they probably experienced and grew up in and you know, it's generational patterns it is. They don't get broken unless we make a decision to do that. That's very true.

Kendra Sutton:

And in speaking to the Pace Center for Girls one day I was mentoring, they asked me to run over and mentor. They needed somebody to step in real quick and they ran in the door and they're like you have 10 minutes and your topic is courage and just like these podcasts, it started out as courage and in just natural flow it evolved to forgiveness unexpectedly, because I was talking to them about having courage. And here was this beautiful 14-year-old. And here was this beautiful 14-year-old, very resilient, traumatized girl Raised her hand and she said to me what is the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life? And at that second it came out, before I even could catch it, so it came from somewhere within me.

Kendra Sutton:

And it was, forgive my father, at that point. There were 52 girls in that room. Typical teenagers love them to death. But heads down on the table, everybody acting like they're sleeping bored why am I having to listen to this? And at that moment I said that 52 heads came up off the table.

Jennifer Johnson:

What does that tell you?

Kendra Sutton:

You were authentic, it hit home hard and at that moment it even took my breath because I knew what I had walked through and I thought I wish every father of every daughter in this room could be standing in the corner right now and see what just happened. And if you don't think you have an impact on your child's life, that was that moment and that was when that was my moment also of like have I really forgiven him? I can stand up here and I can advise and I can mentor and I can talk, but am I living it Exactly? And I wasn't. I had partially. But I realized in that moment, in that room, with those girls, they did just as much for me as I did for them on forgiveness because I had to go back and walk it.

Jennifer Johnson:

Wow, Kendra. This is even more powerful than the first podcast that we did together. Oh my gosh.

Kendra Sutton:

Wow, and forgiveness. One thing forgiveness isn't a one-time deal. Yeah, sometimes I'm caregiving for my father now, somebody who was never present in my life ever, and he came back into my life five years ago and I had a choice to make and I went on faith because I can tell you, every ounce of my being was like no, no, and H? E, double no and um, I, I had. It had to come from faith. I had to come from honor your mother and your father is one of the commandments, no matter what they've done.

Kendra Sutton:

It's not a dot dot dot. There's a period at the end of that and that's where I had to learn multiple times in a given day to keep forgiving. And so forgiveness is not a one-time thing. Sometimes we have to keep forgiving the same person and not let them abuse you or whatever. But I'm saying especially at his age and in the situation we're in at 76 years old, he's not going to be changing. So I have to learn grace.

Jennifer Johnson:

That's the big word here.

Kendra Sutton:

Give grace and with grace, forgiveness, and so sometimes we have to do that with our employees. They may be going through something having empathy, but there's boundaries too, and that's the healthy part, right.

Jennifer Johnson:

Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with you as well. If our listeners would like to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Kendra Sutton:

Well, I'm on LinkedIn, so under Kendra Sutton and KD Sutton Creative Solutions, also my website kdsuttoncreativesolutionscom or 239-910-6414. Fabulous, thank you so much. Thank you for having me again.

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