How to Take Action and Stay Focused on Goals as an Entrepreneur

"Everything you do has to be absolutely authentic to you." - Kjrestin Klein

In this episode, we have a talk with entrepreneur Kjrestin Klein to uncover powerful insights for anyone navigating the entrepreneurial journey. They dive into why asking for help and finding mentors can be game-changers and stress the importance of staying authentic in business. Kjrestin shares how passion and confidence can fuel success, along with her GRIP goal management system—a tool designed to keep entrepreneurs on track.

In this episode, listen for: 

• Self-Reflection and What to Avoid: When entrepreneurs tend to compare themselves to others, have self-judgment and overthinking, this can undermine confidence. But how can you use self-reflection to help avoid this? 
• Greater Sense of Fulfillment: What fulfills you as an individual and as an entrepreneur? Kjrestin talks about the concept of flourishing through the five F’s: family and friends, finances and future, fitness and function, fun, and faith: How do you use a greater sense of fulfillment? 
• Value of Resources: Using resources like SCORE and joining supportive communities. What resources are you using to help with both personal and professional development? 

Discover how to overcome self-doubt, stay focused on your goals, and build a fulfilling entrepreneurial life with actionable insights from Kjrestin Klein by tuning into this episode! 

Connect with Kjrestin Klein: 

Website: https://devatasolutions.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DevatasSolutions 

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We’re Dana Johnson and Sara Lowell hosts of Entrepreneur Encounter, a growing and thriving entrepreneur podcast dedicated to soft skills development and we’re so grateful you found us. We started this podcast to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you feel more empowered, thrive, and be fulfilled as you reach your entrepreneur goals. 

We interview experts and thought leaders so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of yourself you’ve never seen before. 

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Transcript

Have you ever encountered a hurdle with launching or growing your business? Listen, there are two things that run a business, the backend and your soft skills. Telling you right now, if these aren't in place, you'll lose clients and you'll lose money. You don't want that while you're in the right place. Hey, I'm Dana. Hey, I'm Sarah. We're your hosts of the Entrepreneur Encounter and we're going to give you a behind the scenes glance into our businesses, give you genuine feedback, tips and tricks,

Plus occasionally bring on guests that care about supporting you to grow your business organically and nurturing authentic relationships. Are you ready?

Welcome back to another episode of Entrepreneur Encounter. We're excited to have our guest on today, Shearston. Do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Hi, yes. Thank you so much, Sarah. It's great to meet you. My name is Shearston Klein. I am a serial entrepreneur and I have gotten to the point in my life now where I realized that I've only gotten where I am because people help me along the way. So I'm

kind of in the both business and volunteer side of helping entrepreneurs do what they love. That's awesome. Can you explain what exactly helping entrepreneurs do what they love? Like, is there a specific type of entrepreneur that you work with? So I do everything in some of my businesses. We talk with new businesses that are coming up in our fields. For example, I own a ski shop and talking with other ski shop owners is really powerful. Sharing that information across the industry.

is an important way that the industry stays healthy. I also am a volunteer for SCORE, which is a wing of the SBA that mentors other small businesses and startups. You can either be a startup or you can be well into second generation and just need some help having some eyes and ears on what's happening in your industry and how to run operations and back office stuff, how to find that work-life balance when you're trying to start your own business.

And then I have a consulting firm. I've written one book, working on a couple of others. Everybody has different ways of accessing information. So whether it's one-on-one help, whether it's just kind of mentorship, just saying, I've been there before, just kind of open conversations like these, or the written word. love that. That's great that you'd help other entrepreneurs because a lot of the times entrepreneurs are not necessarily understand where they can go to get the help.

I've heard of score. have that here in my area as well. And I hear a lot of great things with that. And I know when you start out, you're like, who do I go to? Cause there's so much noise out there, so much information out there. I know for myself, from my personal experience, I had no idea. And I know when I started online, everyone felt like hire a business coach, hire this person, hire this person. But you're like, wait, well, think first of all,

Entrepreneurs are used to doing everything by themselves, just how we do things. What makes us passionate entrepreneurs is we see a problem, we go after it, we solve it, right? We think we're the only ones that can do that. And so we tend to forget that there are other people like us out there that might be able to save them from some pitfalls. We don't necessarily go looking for it. And it's not in your face. mean, even score often asks us mentors, how can we reach more people? So then the next thing is

Great ideas are great, but you're not necessarily gonna make money out of every great idea. So you really need to focus on the money. Is there money to be made? Because if there's not money to be made, it's a hobby, not a business. And you can have a great hobby. I mean, I have a ski shop. People put lots of into skiing and finding a better way to do it and have more fun and go near places, stuff like that. I count on that. Certain people that make up living out of that. And underscoring all of this is the authenticity.

and figuring out exactly what needs to happen to make that work for you. Obviously, you can get into the other aspects of what makes a successful business powerful contracts, all the different bits and pieces that make, like you say, your back office operations, making that all strong and stuff like that. But again, at the core of all of that is how you do things, how you approach things, making sure that it has your stamp of approval.

that is based in authenticity. Exactly. Passion. I love that because entrepreneurs, when we start a business, we have this passion and then we're like, okay, well, it's not making me any money like you saying, like then it's a hobby, right? So you have to figure out like when they say market research, like, are you going to actually make money off of that thing? Cause I didn't realize until I started that I'm passionate about what I do. And I know that there's a need for that. But at first I didn't know anything.

just started just to start, but you have to have like an effective way to be able to get your business out there as well. But if you don't have the passion, what's the point? Like if you're not enjoying your business, then why would you create something? Of course you want to make money, but. There's lots of ways in this world to make money. The most money has been made and the most money has been lost being an entrepreneur. So it's really important to understand that there's going to be an average.

The best case scenario is you make Carnegie level of money. Worst case scenario is that you lose literally everything. The reality is someplace in between, and it's your passion that's going to make the difference between that. I mean, you can be as passionate as you want, still lose everything. So that's where you have to have that reality of things. And I think you brought up a really good point. What I see hold a lot of entrepreneurs back is they end up having this great idea. They've done their due diligence.

So they know it's going to work, but then they keep doing their due diligence and keep digging deeper and deeper, looking for some way that it might fail. At a certain point, you gotta jump in the water. You just gotta make it happen. Being an entrepreneur, you're never gonna mitigate every little risk. And there's a point when more research isn't going to help you and you just need to jump in the water. Exactly, just do it. Coming from experience, I had a job. During the pandemic, I was let go.

I didn't know what I wanted to do and I was like, well, I have kids. I want to see if I can work from home and why not try to start freelancing. I just started. I did research for like maybe one or two months while I was still trying to find a job. And I was like, I'm just going to start this business. I'm just going to jump in and do it and see what happens because I know if you don't do it, you'll never know if it's going to work or not. So just like you said, like just jump in and do it.

Especially like if you want something of your own and you're passionate enough about it, then know that it's going to take time. It's not going to happen overnight because I think a lot of the times when entrepreneurs start out, they think it's going to happen right now. It's not. I don't think it does. I can't tell you how many times I mentor somebody on a startup and they say, well, I need to start making money now. I just quit my job to make this happen. I'm like, dude, I don't want to think about that twice. You're right. I think there's a handful of things I

I a lot of people how to backfill, how they got going. It was a hobby maybe to start with. I just started helping a friend do such and such and now I have a full-fledged business. What do I do? I don't have all these pieces in place. I'm like, that's okay. We can backfill. That happens all the time. You haven't been sued yet, so quit getting truants. There's all these bits and pieces that you can build that back in. Do I like to see...

People think things out and have a full business plan and have their back operations and have their bits and pieces together. Yes, I prefer that. You at least are tracking your expenses on your income and that kind of stuff that you at least think that by the end of the year, you need to pay taxes on the money that you just got. It's easier than having to go back and have to do those things. But sometimes you just find yourself in a business. Like you said, you're helping a friend, something's happening, you're like, holy cow, I can make a living off of this. Yeah, and then you need to fill that back in.

and make sure that all the bits and pieces are there. So I think there's that balance between going for it and setting it up and researching and making sure you have all the bits and pieces in place. A depends on the industry too. I mean, if you're jumping into teaching skydiving lessons and you don't have some of your pieces in place, you're probably asking for trouble. If you're just making houses and somebody says, hey, can you do the trim on my house?

And the next thing you know, somebody else comes up and says, you do the trim on my house. The next thing you know, that's a little different. For sure. And then another piece, I believe, that helps you with starting and growing is confidence. And I've talked to many other entrepreneurs too, is at the beginning, we may feel like we're not confident enough, or we may feel like we're not doing the right things. But I think it comes to a point where if you're passionate about it,

you're going to get that confidence in. And then when you feel confident enough, I believe you'll probably grow a little bit faster. And that actually has in my mind, kind of a twofold way to address that because you're right. A lot of entrepreneurs are young to start with. If you're an entrepreneur, nine times out of 10, you were born that way. I mean, solving problems, been, you were the guys buying gum for a dollar and selling it for...

50 cents a piece or whatever, you know, at school when gum was not allowed. So there's a couple of things here that help with that confidence is first of all, truly understanding where you're going and why you're going there. Everybody, especially entrepreneurs tend to have these goals. I call them b-hags, big hairy goals. And they've got this great big picture of what it is that they want. And we have been taught

that goals you're supposed to identify them, you're to able to measure them, you're supposed to be able to do it. Nine times out of 10, most of the goal management systems that we've been taught over the last number of years, they don't work. And they don't work for a couple of reasons. And they really don't work for entrepreneurs because we have these giant ideas, these giant goals with no actual road plan for getting there. It's what Mel Robbins calls, they tend to be box jumpers. They have these big goals, big ideas.

but they're not box steppers, meaning they don't take these one at a time steps to actually get there. That's why my sister and I wrote a book called GRIP, Goal Management System. Now, I didn't come up with the GRIP acronym, but what it stands for is goals, requirements, issues, and plan. And the key to each of those is, it's an iterative process and you can literally start anywhere on this. If you have a goal, I wanna start this online marketing business.

Defining that goal more definitively sometimes gets hard. You know what you want and you don't necessarily know how to word it. But as you go through the grip process, you start looking at requirements. What does that require? Not only what does the lifestyle require for you, like for you, for example, you wanted to be able to work from home because you had kids and it was pandemic and you couldn't get something. So that's a requirement. Well, what's the issue with that? Well,

If you don't have any issues, there's a lot of issues. There's a lot of issues with that. You already have the goal, right? So you start making a laundry list of complaint items. And then you realize as you're making this laundry list of complaint items that there are a few more requirements. You need to be able to work between these hours. Part of the issue is finding space. Finding space in your house and being able to sell your kids like you can't come in. so the requirement is that you have this space. The issue is you need to train your family to respect that space.

And then the plan, what is the plan? Well, the plan is on Monday, I'm gonna meet with my family every Monday and tell them I have these things happening and this time that I need. What can we do with you during those times? That can be game time, that can be nap time, that can be whatever. So now you have a plan in place. Mondays you're gonna meet, everybody's gonna get what the general plan is. So I'm using that as a very small example, but this process allows you to identify what's happening

what is required to happen, what the issues are that are standing in the way, what requirements need to go to address those issues and how to make a plan to deal with them. And in the end, it helps you redefine that goal. You you get more and more clarity into that goal until you really know where you're headed. And this dovetails into the second part of that is if you're not following your plan, there's a reason, there's something happening. And that's where I think entrepreneurs get derailed oftentimes because what happens is they don't

reach their big hairy goal and then drop it because it's too late or they missed that opportunity or somebody else thought of it or they're too far down the road or whatever. And many entrepreneurs have this just deutritus behind them of all of their failed projects and they start to feel it's like it's them. Like they screwed up. I never get anything done. I never reach my goals. Nothing ever works. And it gets frustrating. being able to get to the point of understanding why things don't happen,

because there are only two reasons in the world why things don't happen is because you put too much on your plate or because you're not using your time effectively. Exactly. And not using your time effectively can be broken down into a couple of different reasons, either poor planning. And that can also be poor execution, distractions, that kind of stuff, or avoidance. And when it comes down to avoidance, this is what you were talking about. That's where the confidence comes in. If you understand your avoidance issues,

This takes personal reflection. The process can help you understand where you're going and understanding where that plan is and identifying that. And then the avoidance issues come in a handful of different ways that what you call lack of confidence manifest. And that can be a comparison, meaning I don't do it as well as somebody else. Somebody else could do this so much better. Why do I think I could do this? Or obstacles. The obstacles can be anything.

time, money, energy, materials, the fact that it's hard. In your brain, you have it set that it's going to be hard. And so you find all these other things. I gotta clean my desk. So I've got to do this. You keep finding these ways to avoid because you think it's gonna be harder. You don't have the time, money, energy, materials. The other way that we tend to fake ourselves out and avoid things is self judgment. I don't know what to do. yeah. A lot of us do. And that's why.

You know, 58 years old, that's why I'm here to tell entrepreneurs, none of us know what we're doing. I wake up every day not knowing what I'm doing. Don't let not knowing what you're doing get in the way of trying to do it anyway, because it's a learning process. What was the line in one of my favorite movies was Awakenings with Robin Williams and at one point trying to explain his years and years of research. And the other researcher looks at him and says, you can't do it that way. And he goes, I know that.

I know that now. Yeah. That's where also mentorship comes into play because we can help tell you ways we've already tried and don't work. Hey there, listeners. Ever feel like you're struggling to connect with customers or lead your team effectively? That's where soft skills come in. Entrepreneur encounter isn't just another podcast. We're a community dedicated to helping early stage entrepreneurs like you master the soft skills that make or break a business.

Technical skills are important, but without communication, collaboration, and confidence, your business might never get off the ground to the next level. In our membership, Dana and I share actionable insights and tips to help you nurture the soft skills you need to thrive. Give you access to bonus content, workshops, and a network of like-minded entrepreneurs who are all on the same journey. We'll teach you how to boost your confidence, become a leader who inspires and motivates your team, navigate conflict,

like a pro to resolve disagreements without drama and build stronger relationships. Communicate clearly and concisely. Get your message across. Build trust and close the deal. you're ready to take your business to the next level, join the circle by clicking the link in the show notes. It's always great to have those conversations with somebody that has been where you're at. So I could talk to somebody that's 10 years ahead of me.

and I'm only in my third year. So I can talk to that person and say, okay, what did you do in your third year? Just to kind of get an idea because I love all this about the goal management and the time management because yes, we all set goals, but how do we actually achieve them and build the confidence so we don't have to avoid them? Because I know as an entrepreneur, we have all these things that we want to do, but we have to figure it out. We have to be willing to put in the effort.

be willing to always learn because no matter what age you are, you will always be learning something. Something new is always going to come up. You have to be willing to adapt to that as well. I think that brings us to the fourth avoidance technique, and that is prediction. You are exactly spot on. What you were just expressing, there are a ton of entrepreneurs out there who sit back and go, well, I shouldn't do it this way because it's not going to work out.

They're telling themselves a story five years down the line that they don't even know why should I bother? It probably won't work out anyway. understanding your avoidance technique and what you're doing to get in the way of your goal is really important. And that's why the whole process and how they dovetail together. What I really like, what you mentioned was also that time management piece because entrepreneurs, we can look really busy all the time.

I've been there. And how many times you go to pick up the kids at school and how many of your other parents, how are you doing? busy, busy, busy in America that we've gotten to the point where that is sort of our benchmark for how successful you are is based on how busy you are. I have news for you. Busy does not mean successful. No, I don't think so either. And that's why we were talking about that concept of being busy. And I put that in air quotes. The concept right now

is the idea of work-life balance. What I find in post-pandemic America, we realize that maybe we might be doing this wrong. Europe who gets six plus weeks of vacation and Americans get maybe five and don't take all of them, that there might be a better way of doing some of these things. And for entrepreneurs finding that balance, and this goes back to the authenticity conversation. You get some people who are in entrepreneurship

that say basically you have to put your family on hold, you have to put your life on hold, you put all your finances on hold, put everything into this bucket and that's all you can do and if you do everything, you're guaranteed success. Well, I can guarantee you will burn out. I can guarantee you that there is no guarantee that it will work out. Sacrifice every other thing in your life for something that won't work. So preparation, goal planning, self-reflection, learning about your avoidance techniques, using a solid

Sara (Rembert) Lowell (19:37.026)

goal management process that incorporates the requirements and issues as well as the goal and plan and a well-written goal that really reflects what you want for the rest of your life. Because that's the basis of what I refer to as the five effing F's of flourishing. lot of people who talk about domains, that's a big buzzword, or filling your buckets. Dean Boccar has a really good one. He calls them the five buckets.

And there's another, it's based on a concept of the 13 domains in our life. And I kind of had to distill that down for myself. And I refer to it as family and friends. Cause for me, those are kind of both the same. They both start with F and they fit really well together. Finances and future are the second one. I put those as.

Kind of the same thing because your finances really are paying for your future. You're paying for what's happening right now and every day, but it's what gives you the space and room to do what you want. We live in a capitalistic society and you don't have to feel guilty about making money. and function are my third because your body is part of the tool that you bring to the table and how that body functions in the world, how we function in the physical world is critical. Fun, I put all by itself.

because that is, we have to have fun. I have fun when I work, but it's absolutely a critical component of what we do. And if we don't make room for it, you're not gonna be happy in anything you do. And then mostly because it started with an F, not because the word is all that good. I used faith as the other because spirituality, faith, religion, that's only part of the picture. It's that belief in fact that we're here for a purpose and that we have a gift to bring to the world, that trust, I guess, in...

whatever system we are living in, and that's trust in our government, trust in our families, trust in the reason that we're here, the universal trust. And again, like I said, I love because it helps me remember things. And that's why, again, the five F's F, so flourishing. They all had to start with an F. And so that last one is kind of a holding place. If you're not filling those buckets effectively, your life is not going to feel as fulfilling.

you're not going to consider it flourishing. And it doesn't matter how much energy, it doesn't matter how your balance sheet looks on your small business, how successful you have an entrepreneur, consider yourself. If any of those buckets are lacking, you're not going to feel successful. I have to agree with you on that. As entrepreneurs, as people in general, like we see things online, like this person is going on vacation to wherever. And then you like start talking to yourself, well, like,

I don't have the money to do that, but see, it's simplicity. Like, can you just go to spend time with your family and friends and just have a good time? To me, I believe just hanging out on the back porch is my go-to. Like I don't need to go vacation to another country to fill fulfilled. I know a lot of people want to do that. That is completely fine. But like you were saying, like you have to find the fun and what works for you. Like what makes your life, what makes you happy? What fills your buckets? What?

brings joy to your life. Like everybody's life is gonna look different. Well, it is. You actually bring up a really good point because when you distill it down, there are six basic human needs. And those human needs, you can word them in lots of different ways. But in an oversimplified version of it, they are the need to belong. That covers the need for love, the need for feeling a part of something, whatever. The need to be unique. You need to be able to stand out. You need to be able to identify yourself as an individual.

You need to be able to grow and contribute. You need to have need for safety and the need for adventure. So what you were kind of talking about, one person's need for adventure was going to the Maldives, for example, and yours is maybe the idea of, you know, venturing across town and going to have cocktails with a friend. Your capacity to meet each of those needs or your definition of meeting each of those needs might be different. They can also the same thing. Your need for adventure could be fulfilled by making a spicy cocktail.

and sitting on the panning, but also fill your need for safety because you're not putting yourself out there. You don't have to worry about travel plans. You don't have to worry about it. All you have to do is step out onto your porch. So it can actually serve both functions. You invite a friend in there. Not only have you met your need to belong, you made the spicy cocktail. So you feel very unique being able to come up with this great recipe. You have had your adventure and safety. You have also filled your family and friends bucket. You have not spent all your money. So you have

filled your finances bucket. You had to carry the chairs and make everything get out there and you're taking care of yourself. So you've now filled your fitness and function bucket. You've filled your fun bucket. And now you trust in the world that it's a pretty good place. You filled your faith bucket. You studied how to make this special cocktail. So you grew, you invited a friend and shared it. So you contributed. You have had adventure and safety. You feel unique and connected. It doesn't have to be

You don't have to have big, big, big things to fill your bucket or to set. no, but you need to be aware because if you're not aware that one of those buckets isn't getting filled, you won't take the time to address it. no, for sure. A couple of months ago, my dad sent me a picture. I forget what state he was in and it was his hotel view. And he's all like, this is where my joy is coming from. That's how he finds his happiness, this finding the simple little things and his

and the view of his hotel room, like that he was filling his bucket. like every time I think about joy and happiness, I revert back to the picture that he sent me. And then I like what you were talking about, like how are my buckets being filled? I love that so much. Yeah, joy can be found everywhere. It can be in that first sip of tea in the morning. It can be in the beautiful bird you see passing by. Is it really fun when you can see that beautiful bird hanging out on?

some beautiful veranda in the Maldives? Sure. Trust me. I like to have that too. But I think the key is wherever you are, start there. Exactly. Because I can be honest with you, you could be zipping around the whole world traveling and doing these very Instagramable moments and still happy if you're not dealing with the other things. Exactly. This was such a great conversation. I know we can probably go on and on because this is a great topic.

that we've been discussing today. But before we get off, is there anything else that you want to leave the listeners with? Anything else, any tips? So thank you again so much for having me on. As you can tell, this is my passion. I love this stuff. And it does, for me, all dovetails together. These are little points of wisdom that I have collected over the years from other people and from my own self-reflection. I was lucky enough to work on a book with my sister that

I think is kind of the foundation for where people need to start. Some people call it a North Star, some people call it values, whatever. You need to know where you're going. You can judge whether or not you've gotten there. So I think that reaching out, learning from other people, you will be able to get so much further standing on the shoulders of others, reach far higher. And so I think my point to most entrepreneurs is what you had said, never stop learning.

but learn from the right resources. Other people have figured this out before you. So you don't need to reinvent the wheel to ride a bike. There are resources out there. I cannot recommend Score enough. They have a website, secondscore.org. It'll pop up. It says how to find a mentor. It'll tell you everything. And there's a ton of resources. Even if you're not comfortable talking to somebody else, there are a ton of free resources that are available. And of course I'm always available. I'm happy to help people.

If they go into score and request a mentor, they can type in my name and it'll come up with me specifically. I do get booked out quite rapidly, but I do my best to fit people in. They can also reach out to me on social media and I respond to them. I do run a Facebook group based specifically on goals. You can find my Facebook group, Devated Solutions is my Facebook page. Grip Goals is the Facebook group.

So that's a great place to talk to other people about goals and goal management. And I give a lot of the grip tools. I drop those quite regularly. That's part of what we talk about. Of course, the book is available on Amazon, both in Kindle copy for practically free. Again, I didn't want to make it expensive. Entrepreneurs, if you're just starting out, a lot of times putting all your money towards the business you're trying to start. Now, if you're going to cut down a tree, you can get a hard copy, but that's more expensive. I make you pay for the tree.

That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. And as always, all of the information will be in our show notes until next time. Bye.