E121: 9 Game-Changing Lessons from the past year

This birthday episode is a special one. As I turned 45, I paused to reflect on the lessons that have defined my past year—lessons that changed not only my business but also my life.

In this episode, I share nine game-changing truths about entrepreneurship, money, community, boundaries, rest, visibility, and more. From learning why alignment trumps hustle, to understanding money as a neutral tool, to recognizing the power of community and the importance of offering “painkillers” not “vitamins,” these lessons will challenge the way you think about success.

Whether you’re a chef, a creative, or a coach, you’ll walk away with practical insights to apply in your own business and life right now.

If you’ve ever wondered how to grow without burning out, how to honor your energy, and how to build something sustainable without the grind, this episode is for you.

Transcript

Kimberly Houston (00:00.536)
Hello friends and welcome back. So this one we're going to call the birthday episode. This year I turned 45 on September 14th and while a time was had, I realized that while I was flying to Vegas that, or in preparation for my flight to Vegas, that there are some lessons I've learned over the last year.

that I wanted to share with people about entrepreneurship and about life. So in honor of my 45th birthday, I'm going to give you four plus five things, so nine things that changed my business and my life over the past year. So number one, alignment over hustle. Listen.

Since 2020, I have most definitely been on a journey to not hustle. I can remember the very first book that I bought in 2020, January of 2020, was Grace Over Grind by Shay Bynes. It is a Christian book. I remember, so her niece was one of the students that I was teaching cake decorating to.

And when her sister told me about her and her book, I was like, let me get that. Let me read it. And so I had the book. You know how like you buy a book, but it takes you a minute to actually read it? That's what happened with that one. And so when I finally read Grace Over a Grind, it started to almost change the way my brain was set up, right?

I never heard in a religious setting, leaning into God's grace over your own grind. Well, let me not say that. So a lot of people preach about, you know, finding your strength in the Lord, et cetera. And I promise this won't be a religious episode. I'm just taking you back to where I was in 2020. And so at that time, I was still heavily in the church and I was still

Kimberly Houston (02:15.016)
as prior to deconstruction for me. And I still had this fundamental belief that God still required me to suffer in order to see success. I no longer have that belief. I don't think that we have to suffer in order to have success. But what I learned in that process was the way that you don't suffer is that you work in alignment.

And when you work in alignment, you don't have to hustle and grind for a dollar. So, years of pushing myself to the limit, honestly, 14 hour days on my feet in the kitchen as a pastry chef. many days, like I can remember on my birthday one year I did, I taught a cake decorating class in the morning, like 9 a.m. for kids.

And then I went to a completely different location and taught a different cake decorating class for kids. And then I had to do a delivery. And then I went and taught another class at a different location. So three different locations of teaching cake decorating. The classes were only like an hour. A delivery in the midst of those. And then that evening I had a wedding. All of this was on my birth.

That's how I spent my birthday, working and delivering cakes for other people. Because I felt like my output is what defined my input, is what defined me internally. And that's a lesson for somebody right there. Baby, whatever it is you producing for other people is not your input. OK, that's not who you are internally. And so alignment over hustle is definitely the first lesson I would say.

I wish more people understood work in alignment and you don't have to hustle. You will need strategy, but you don't have to hustle. Number two, money is neutral. It's not emotional. It's just a tool. Money is not good or bad. It's not evil. Money is just a tool. People who say that they are in business, and I see this a lot in the baking and pastry culinary world in general.

Kimberly Houston (04:39.982)
is that people do it for the love of it. I love to feed people. I love to be creative and do cakes and cookies and yada, yada, yada.

People do it for the love of it. They do it for the passion of it all. And as a coach, my question is, well, honestly, my statement is passion doesn't pay your bills. So let's revisit this, right? Money's not good or evil. But when you have this limiting belief that the root of all evil is money, we've all heard that. When you take that one as a limiting belief, that people with money are bad.

You are blocking your blessings. You are telling the universe you don't want money because you think that people with money are bad. But please help me understand how you not having money helps you live a better life. It doesn't. When you think about all the things that money can afford you, People are like, money doesn't grow on trees. Money can't make you happy. Money will absolutely make you happy.

Because you can use money to buy the things that bring you joy. You can use money to take the trip you've been wanting to take. You can use money to get your kid those braces. You can use money to take your dog to the vet. Money is neutral. It's just a tool. So what I like to get people to understand as a coach is how much money do you need to live the life of your dreams? Right? You don't have to be a millionaire. You don't have to be a billionaire.

You might just realize that you just need $275,000 a year to live a comfortable life. And that is okay. But the only way you're going to make that happen is if you understand that money is not evil. Money is neutral. It's not emotional. It's just a tool. three, community is the true multiplier. Going further and faster with the right people will fundamentally change how you show up in life. I...

Kimberly Houston (06:45.61)
just finished a coaching program and it was a lot of money to do this coaching program. And I can tell you that without a doubt, the thing that made it worth it were the people that I met. The people that I had to show up for and show up with every single week in my cohort are the reason that we all crossed that finish line. It was

a team effort while we were all working individually and building our own businesses and everybody is coaching in their own way and in their own industry. We had a common denominator is that we were there for one another. And I don't know any other situation where this would happen, right? Even when I was working on my master's degree.

When I was working on a PhD, while all group projects are not great, when you build in a community of people who are just as driven as you are and you're not forced into something, when you all have the same outcome and the same goal and everybody is showing up for everybody, including themselves, that is a game changer. So community, community, community. Number four, boundaries.

Boundaries equal sustainability. Listen, saying no is a complete sentence. If you can't let that settle in your spirit, how about this? Saying no is saying yes to your future self. If people are like, hey, you want to go out this weekend? You can tell them no. You can. You want to know why? Because even though you may not be busy and you may not be doing things, you need to rest. You need to rest. It's a thing.

So leading with that, Number five. Rest is a revenue strategy, friends.

Kimberly Houston (08:54.19)
Pausing creates space for creative and financial growth. Rest is a revenue strategy. If you do not build in rest into your day-to-day plan, into your week-to-week plan, into your month-to-month plan, into your annual and yearly goals, if you are not building rest in, you're going to burn out. You will crash and burn. And you will miss out on more opportunities than you would ever believe because you did not plan your rest.

Plan risk, it is a part of a revenue strategy. Number six, visibility is non-negotiable. Visibility is non-negotiable. People can't buy from you if they don't see you. People can't buy your products if they don't know you exist. Visibility is non-negotiable. Number seven, your offer doesn't need to be perfect, but it needs to be profitable.

One of the things that I've experienced over the last three years coaching entrepreneurs is that entrepreneurs are going to overthink every time and they're trying to put out the most perfect thing. And that's again, the people working from passion, right? It's got to be perfect. It's got to be perfect. You can't release it until it's perfect. And then there's somebody else out here.

who just woke up with the idea and went on ChatGPT, asked Chat how to execute it, and they are executing while you're still thinking about it. It doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be profitable, right? Done is better than perfect. Put it out there. You know, I used to tell people all the time, launch it, bro, fix it, live. Like, if you never launch it, and that's the problem, most people never launch.

Launch it broke, fix it live. I promise it's okay. I do it all the time and have done it that way for 13 years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't work, then adjust your thinking. You did not fail. You had a zero dollar launch. It might've been ahead of time. I've said it on the podcast before. I did a whole cell phone food photography course, launched it, crickets, crickets. Just, I'm like, wow. Like I paid a professional.

Kimberly Houston (11:19.502)
to do this for me and like didn't even, it not work y'all. There was a professional videographer in my house during the pandemic while we were recording this cell phone food photography course and I've sent it out to my list and the whole nine crickets a year later, a year later.

started promoting it again, sold like hotcakes, sold like hotcakes. And that one opportunity I created, I released it out of season, right? I created it, released it, was super excited about it. It was a year later before it took off. And that class by itself has afforded me opportunities to travel. I've taught cell phone photography at multiple conferences. I've taught food photography at multiple conferences. I have an entire six-figure business on selling photos.

of food photography, you have to launch it, right? And then fix it live. And I promise it's okay. All right, so number eight, I believe. Stop convincing the wrong people. Okay, maybe this one should have been number one. One of the things that I had to, I don't want to say fight, but like really, really work through this year.

Waze.

the idea that I was creating products that my coaching services would be available for people who in real life could not afford it.

Kimberly Houston (13:03.982)
You are convincing the wrong people. Here's, let me see if I can break this down for y'all. My coach said, you have an incredible product. You are in an incredible niche. You are talking to the wrong people. And I was like, there's no way. I have all these followers on all these platforms.

and my email list has such and such and such and she was like, and none of those people are buying because those people can't afford it. You're talking to the wrong people. And she was like, do not water down your pricing because your current audience can't afford it.

It took me months to let that settle into my system and to be okay with that because the reality is

Your energy belongs with the people who are ready.

There is no reason that you should have to try and convince people to purchase your product. If you are offering a painkiller and not a vitamin as you're offering, right? So let me explain it to you really quickly. A painkiller, think about when you go to the doctor. If you are in pain when you arrive, you need them to give you

Kimberly Houston (14:40.238)
painkillers. You will leave that office, doctor's office, dentist's office, whatever. You'll leave that office and you will go directly to the local pharmacy to get that painkiller. Do not pass go. Do not stop. You are going directly there to get the thing that will take you out of the pain.

But if you go to the doctor and they tell you that your iron is low or that maybe you're a little vitamin D deficient and you need to take a daily vitamin, you don't have the same amount of urgency in going to the pharmacy to pick it up. You might just throw it into your next grocery pickup, right? Which may be three days from now and then you will get the vitamin and you'll take the vitamin until you feel better.

And then you'll stop. And you complete that cycle, right? You'll take it. You feel better. You stop taking it because you felt better. And then you feel worse again. And then you remember, I should have took that vitamin, right? And so it's this back and forth with the vitamins. But baby, when it's a painkiller, when you are in pain and you need relief, it don't matter how much it costs. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if it's raining outside. You're going to the pharmacy. It doesn't matter if you can't afford it. You're going to pick up the phone and call somebody and they're going to send you the money to get you out of pain. You react differently for a painkiller than you do a vitamin. And the thing that I had to learn this year was the amount of knowledge that I have is a painkiller.

for entrepreneurs who've been spinning their wheels. My level of coaching requires people to rise to a new level in ways they may have never had to do before, quite simply because I offer a painkiller, not a vitamin. I don't offer year-long opportunities for you to work with me because I'm coming in, I'm assessing the pain, I'm looking at what's wrong.

Kimberly Houston (17:02.218)
and we're going to fix that in 90 days, right? We are immediately applying pressure to the things that are causing you strife in order for you to be able to move forward. Painkiller versus the vitamin. Now, once you have identified that in your business, you will realize that your very large audience of people that you're talking to, they only want the vitamin.

Because what you're providing is a vitamin, but it's not the thing that's going to make or break their business. It's not the one decision that's going to change their whole life. And so I have crafted a product that really is one of those one decision moments. You make that investment and I promise you your whole life is going to change. A lot of people, I won't say most, a lot of people.

spend the majority of their time trying to convince people who think they need a vitamin to feel better that they can just take that vitamin when in reality they are hemorrhaging, they are not sleeping, they are not eating, they are stressed out, they are feeling physical illness of the stress. Those people need a painkiller and you offering a vitamin. They need a painkiller and you're offering a vitamin.

you're talking to the wrong people. When your offer is a painkiller, you only talk to the people who need the emergency right now, right? So that was number nine. It probably should have been my number one, because that was one of the biggest lessons I had this year. And then number 10, celebrate the small wins. This is something I've been working on consistently for the last couple of years. But I think this year,

I really, really tapped into celebrating the small wins. Like momentum is built one tiny consistent action at a time. And people are always like, well, I don't really feel motivated to do something. Motivation doesn't pay your bills, right? Like I am seeking inspiration. Most of the times I was inspired to do whatever. I take inspired action. And I do that because I allow myself to celebrate the small wins, which puts me into a different state energetically.

Kimberly Houston (19:22.932)
allowing me to be open to the universe to download things that will inspire me to move to the next step. And so friends, those are my nine lessons that I have learned over the past year that I wanted to share with you my 40 plus five list. Alignment over hustle, money is neutral, community is the true amplifier, boundaries equal sustainability.

Visibility is non-negotiable. Your offer doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be profitable. Rest is a revenue strategy. Stop trying to convince the wrong people and celebrate the small wins. Until next time, stay sweet friends.