Episode 48: Selling with Heart, Charging Your Worth, and Choosing You

What if choosing yourself was the most powerful business strategy you could implement? In this inspiring and candid conversation, Jennifer Kok sits down with abundance expert Sarah Walton to talk about women, money, mindset, and the truth about charging what you’re worth.

What we chatted about: 

• Selling with Heart Isn’t “Icky” Sarah reframes sales as something women already do naturally, whether it’s convincing toddlers to eat peas or sharing a favorite book with a friend and shows how to attach value (and money) without guilt.
• The Hidden Training That Holds Women Back  From childhood phrases like “Don’t cry” to being praised for being “selfless,” women are conditioned to undervalue themselves. Sarah unpacks how this impacts pricing, boundaries, and why so many women hesitate to charge for their brilliance.
• Choosing Yourself IS the Business Strategy Sarah explains how trusting your instincts, honoring your energy, and refusing self-abandonment can transform not just your mindset but your bottom line.
  Why Listen?
  Because this episode will make you pause, reflect, and reimagine how you’re running your business. You’ll walk away with practical mindset shifts, a deeper understanding of why women often undersell themselves, and the fire to finally charge what you’re worth — unapologetically.

Meet Your Guest:

Sarah Walton is a business coach, sales expert, and host of The Game On Girlfriend Podcast. She’s helped hundreds of women start and grow businesses they love—through private coaching, Effortless Sales, and her signature The Abundance Academy. Known for her no-fluff style and powerful mindset shifts, Sarah is also the face of “Coffee With Coach” on YouTube. She went from growing up in a low-income household to helping women build wealth that supports their families and communities. Her mission is simple and bold: put more money in the hands of more women.

https://instagram.com/thesarahwalton
https://www.facebook.com/sarahwaltonpage
https://www.tiktok.com/@thesarahwalton

The Freedom Calculator: https://sarahwalton.com/freedom/

Meet Your Host: Jennifer Kok has been a business owner for over 25 years and is now a business coach. She turned her first business into a franchise and successfully sold it 20 years later.  She was passionate about building a business and a family at the same time.

I support women entrepreneurs in their second year and beyond as they build businesses and families, helping them achieve Clarity, Confidence, and Consistent Profits.  The reality is, you’ve built a Business You’re Proud Of— but it’s time for it to work for you.

The Earn More Stress Less 9-Pillar Blueprint helps women entrepreneurs with families create profitable, sustainable businesses that finally pay them back — in money, time, and peace of mind.

Join me for a Free Online Workshop:
3 Steps to Boost Profitability: Strategic Shifts to Help Small Business Owners Make More Money.   If you want more profits follow this link to register. 

https://nextwavebusinesscoaching.com
Facebook:

You’ve Built a Business You’re Proud Of -But It’s Time for It to Work for You. You’re still wearing all the hats, working long hours, and not paying yourself what you deserve. You know there’s more possible. More profit, more clarity, and more freedom to enjoy the life you’re building.  The Earn More Stress Less 9-Pillar Blueprint helps women entrepreneurs with families create profitable businesses that finally pay them back. 

Transcript

Jennifer Kok (00:01.198)

Sarah Walton is in the house. Sarah, I am so excited to have you as a guest today.

Sarah Walton (00:07.027)

Jennifer, me too. could spend time with you like for days and just absolutely love all of it. So I'm so thrilled to be here with you today.

Jennifer Kok (00:15.608)

Well, same, and maybe we need like a girls getaway weekend where, you know, we invite some few business besties and we go drink wine and talk about business and talk about life. So there we go. Sign me up. So Sarah, love, you and I have a heart for women entrepreneurs and we talk a lot about this. How can we help women entrepreneurs not only believe in themselves, but step into their calling.

Sarah Walton (00:24.041)

I'm not mad. Yes, please. I'm in. Hard yes. Let's go. Yeah, right? Love it.

Jennifer Kok (00:44.502)

and do it in a way that doesn't pull them in 50,000 directions. Because as women, whether you're building a family or not, I feel like women just are pulled in 50,000 directions. So tell us briefly, because I know you have an amazing story, but tell us how you help women. What are you doing with your coaching business?

Sarah Walton (01:02.179)

well, yeah, I call myself, this is like so like, this is what I am. No, but I call myself an abundance expert, which sounds, people are like, bless you. But you know, I'm a business coach and I'm an abundance expert. And that really kind of filters into teaching us how to sell with heart, right? Because I think we're told from a very young age that selling in any way is bad. And meanwhile, women are so great at selling. Like how many times have you?

Jennifer Kok (01:07.618)

Yeah.

Sarah Walton (01:30.099)

had a best friend buy a perfume you love or a book you love or go to a movie with you or whatever because you love it, you share it, that's selling. And it's like, but then you attach money to it and we get weird. So I think really helping people understand how natural it is for us to be doing this. And like we go back way, way back, right? That at any fair, when we were like hauling carts in animals places, right? It was like, let me make you this shawl.

Let me make you this bread. Like this is naturally what we do to survive. And I really believe that we are given our gifts and talents and expertise so they can sustain us. I don't think we were given a mission, a desire, a talent so that we could hate our day jobs and give those gifts and talents away for free. don't think that that's what God, universe, divine, whatever intended. I think we are given these things to sustain us.

Jennifer Kok (02:25.25)

Wow, okay, that is really powerful and we could sit here and unpack that all day long and I love that perspective. You I know we talk a lot about sales and when people hear the word sales, it's like this ick. And because we picture the old encyclopedia salesman, okay, I just dated myself, that doesn't even exist anymore. But you know, the car salesman, we always have these stigmas.

Sarah Walton (02:31.945)

Hmm.

Jennifer Kok (02:47.188)

And you're right, mean women every day, like if you've got toddlers, you're selling them to get dressed, you know, like just every day you gotta sell them on something.

Sarah Walton (02:53.833)

It's so true, it's so true, right? Like eat your peas, eat whatever, pick a thing, we're so good at it, yes.

Jennifer Kok (03:02.446)

So that must have come from somewhere in your journey. at what point, like what were you doing before you became an entrepreneurship? At what point did you say, you know what, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. Do you feel like it chose you or do you feel like you were always set destined to do that?

Sarah Walton (03:20.425)

takes me a hot second because I think I was always destined. Like if I'm gonna be super straight with you, like I was making scrunchies, gosh, I just hated myself too, scrunchies, whatever those were, right? I was making those in my mom's sewing machine in the basement when I was in the sixth grade and selling them for 50 cents a piece. Like I learned, I needed to buy a prom dress when I was 16. So I did all my friends nails and they paid me to do their nails for prom so I could go buy a dress. I always,

One, I loved helping, right? Of course, we're like, I don't know. I've never worked with a client who's like, I don't wanna help anyone. Like we're all wanna help people. Like it's like, I almost don't say that anymore because it's a given. But to be able to give them something they wanted so I could have something I wanted, that just made sense to me. I was like, why would we not do that? They need to get their nails done. And they got excited that they were helping me buy my prom dress. Like it was such a win-win. It didn't occur to me as entrepreneurship, but I don't think I ever didn't have that mind.

Jennifer Kok (03:56.408)

Hi.

Sarah Walton (04:18.203)

of like, I want something, and I think this is why I call myself an abundance expert now, is that if I want something, I will figure out how to make it happen. And I'll get creative on that. And I think that's what abundant people do, is they see opportunities other people miss, and their response to opportunities is yes and. It's never either or. It's always yes and. And how do we work through that and to get creative and to refuse, quite frankly.

Jennifer Kok (04:39.36)

Mmm.

Sarah Walton (04:47.163)

the black and white lies that we have been raised in. You're either a good mom or you make money. No. No.

Jennifer Kok (04:55.885)

Mmm. Oh, that's wow. That's tough. Yeah You're right. And so really what I'm hearing is we have to be really resourceful Lots of grit a little bit of stubbornness there. Like I'm not letting I'm not letting someone else label me or label what I'm doing and you know We are going to create this life not only for ourselves But for our families too, and I think you hit the nail on the head with women were wired to help we want to help

Sarah Walton (05:06.063)

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (05:24.917)

And we're also kind of natural fixers, I always say. We're the first ones to fix the situation we problem solve. And so because of that, I see a lot of women entrepreneurs, especially service-based, they struggle to charge for it. Because to them, it becomes so natural. And don't you sometimes wonder or see that when it comes easy for somebody, they feel like,

Sarah Walton (05:39.241)

Correct.

Jennifer Kok (05:47.724)

I'm just gonna help, that's okay, I don't need to charge you for it, no big deal, it didn't take me long. You we tend to kind of minimize these major gifts we have. So how do you start to help women in your abundance academy overcome that? And really just get out there and charge, because...

Sarah Walton (05:52.755)

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Kok (06:04.383)

Not to stereotype or anything, but men a lot of times don't struggle with that. They will run the numbers on what their service is, they will do some market research, and they'll just put it out there, and it's a take it or leave it. Where I see women always have to either kind of give us the pep talk on why we should order and buy from them and pay that. Kind of like, I really need to really sell my worth.

Sarah Walton (06:29.783)

it makes me nuts. And it's not our fault, right? I am gonna start like that. Like I am, I, you know, I'm not a lean in fan, right? Like don't yell at us because of how we were trained. Like, good God, we were trained this way. let's take a second and look at the training. Yeah, it's like, breathe for a second, everybody. Okay. There's so much here. And when I say we really were trained to not value ourselves, that is, I'm not being like cute. That is not a Hallmark slogan. That is not a meme.

Jennifer Kok (06:32.105)

It's not.

Jennifer Kok (06:40.573)

Great. Well, it's our hearts. Yeah.

Sarah Walton (06:58.983)

That is a real fact. And I think I do have a really specific perspective on this because I was raised Mormon, which is a very, very patriarchal society. And I think I really saw, like almost systemically, how women were taught to give for free. And I think, and then I just, you know, once I wasn't in that culture anymore, I still see it everywhere. I can see it. And I think I'm more sensitive to it than others because of...

my childhood and I'm very grateful for that, right? Because it does help me see things other people just accept. And I'm like, actually question that. And so it starts at a really, really young age. If you were ever told something like, don't cry, where's my pretty girl? If you were ever told something like, you look so pretty or, my God, your laugh is really loud.

Jennifer Kok (07:26.103)

Sure.

Jennifer Kok (07:32.087)

Yeah.

Sarah Walton (07:51.816)

or anything like that, the subtle message is, your existence is bothering me, please stop it. And it sounds crazy, but it's literally from, don't cry. You look prettier when you smile. These things that have sort of become like, we use them sort of as catchphrases now, but I want us to just take a step back. And this isn't to like make anybody mad or to like say there's a big bad out there, but we should be aware of the water we've been swimming in.

Jennifer Kok (07:58.99)

Mmm.

Sarah Walton (08:19.241)

And the water we've been swimming in is lose yourself. she's so selfless. That is something other women reward in each other. my God, she's so great. Have you ever watched like, you know, anybody who has kids, right? If you go to like help at school or show for the school lunch or whatever, and if there's a dad there, everyone's like, my God, he's so great. This is just amazing. my God. Meanwhile, you've been there every day for three months and nobody even notices, right? It is true, right? It's just like.

Jennifer Kok (08:29.547)

Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (08:44.309)

Right. So true. Yes.

Sarah Walton (08:48.295)

That goes right into charging. Men do not have a hard time charging. They don't because they were raised in a different society than we were, right? They are rewarded for speaking out. If you're a little boy in school, you are 10 times more likely to be called on when you raise your hand than a girl. And we are taught through those messages over and over and over, your voice doesn't really matter.

And again, I'm not trying to like say teachers are bad, not at all. We were all raised in this. And I think the only way that we can really start to understand the damage that was done is to talk about it. And it's not to like piss us off and like make us go fight everybody, right? It's just to say we were up against this and we've been up against it our whole lives. So it's okay for us to stumble sometimes and go, this doesn't feel natural to me. And it's like, yeah, that makes sense because it was actually trained out of you. And you go,

Jennifer Kok (09:28.471)

Right.

Sarah Walton (09:41.8)

Okay, well, how do we train it back in? Great, let's start there. And just the truth of that, because I think getting angry is valid, sure, but it's not very helpful. Valid, again, I'll say it's valid if I just made somebody mad, your anger's valid. And we wanna work through that so that we can get to the other side of, well, this is really valuable. And yeah.

Jennifer Kok (10:03.373)

And I think, you know, it's like, I don't think anybody ever sets out intentionally to do that to anybody, right? And I'm sitting here thinking about, okay, I'm just going to have to go pay for therapy for my daughters because I'm sure I made a few comments along the way that you're right. That's just what we do because that's what we heard and, one generation after another.

Sarah Walton (10:14.769)

Hahaha!

Sarah Walton (10:18.515)

We all did, no. Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (10:25.205)

In order to make things better, we shed light on them. And thankfully there's people like you that are shedding light on that, you know, through your podcasts, through your work, through any and every woman entrepreneur we work with. You know, our hope is that things just come out a little bit better, right? And so just having the conversation and it's really been, I feel, a recent conversation about women making good money. Cause the statistics are still out there.

Sarah Walton (10:39.763)

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (10:50.293)

in corporate life that women aren't making as much as men. And we know that women entrepreneurs, like we said, just aren't charging as much. So one of the things that you talk about and I think is really, really profound is how do we create a business strategy around this? Obviously, you know, we're in business, we need the business strategy. A lot of what you're talking about is the mindset. And we know that they have to go together. You cannot have a solid business without solid mindset. But you use the phrase, choosing yourself,

is the business strategy. Unpack that for us a little bit. What do you mean by that? Yes, take us behind the curtain.

Sarah Walton (11:21.513)

Correct, yeah. Like, what does that mean? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's, okay, so along with us being trained that we're not, that we should do everything for free is also this idea that our instincts are incorrect or that our emotions are actually a negative instead of a positive. So what we can do to really choose ourselves is trust what feels correct and

really trust what does not feel correct. So we can look at something very simple, going back to like the charging conversation, right? I have a beautiful client, she's just incredible. A trained psychologist for 30 years, she's doing these amazing things and she's like, but I just can't charge for this one or that one. And I'm like, let me ask you something, do your male colleagues go through this? And she was like, absolutely not. And I said, great, you're a psychologist, why are you going through this? And she had a moment, she just sort of looked at me for a second and said,

I'm not trusting my own instincts. And I was like, brilliant. And there it is, it's so beautiful. She's given her life over to teaching people how to listen to themselves. And then it was like, my gosh, I need to eat my own dog food. And that's, say that all the time. Like, I need to eat my own dog food here in charge for this or whatever, because we're all kind of up against that same thing. So choosing yourself is about really looking at what's in front of you and trusting.

Jennifer Kok (12:29.751)

Right.

Sarah Walton (12:47.599)

whether it feels expansive, like, my God, that is gonna stretch me and I'm a little bit scared, but scared and excitement are the same thing, versus that makes me feel awful. That makes me feel awful is you choosing probably a strategy over yourself. And that is self abandonment. And it's again, what we were taught to do. And there's a very fancy term for it now, thanks to...

Jennifer Kok (12:59.169)

Okay

Sarah Walton (13:17.451)

my gosh, just forgot. Terry Cole. I was like, I just forgot her last name. Terry Cole wrote a great book called Boundary Boss, which I recommend everybody reads. And it's called High Functioning Codependence. So I've said that on stages. I'm like, it's called High Functioning Codependence. And like, I see people go, that's me. I'm like, I haven't defined it yet. But they just hear it they're like, yes, right. Yes, that's me. That's me. And I so have empathy for that. So.

As women, like you were saying when we first got on, right? Like we multitask, that's part of our jam. And there's actually a physiological reason for that. There is a physical construct. If you were born into a female body, we have more connective tissue between our right and left hemispheres in our brain than male bodies. It's a real thing. It's not made up. And this increased connective tissue allows us to multitask like we do. Like literally I was, yes.

I grab my phone and I'm like, yeah, can you pull the chicken out of the fridge? No, don't send that email, put that one over there. Yeah, no, I need that done by noon. Okay, great, thanks. And then we go, right, we're just doing all this stuff. It's crazy, but our brain literally physiologically is designed to be able to do that. And the male brain is not, right? Which is also so necessary and needed in our world, right? And I always joke around, anybody who has a male partner or a brother or a father around, and you're like,

holding a baby, you've got the garbage, you're on the phone and you're like, hey, could you do that? And they're like, I'm watching TV. And you're like, you wanna kill them, right? But they're not being like, they literally can only do one thing at a time. And thank God. Exactly, I was gonna say, thank God.

Jennifer Kok (14:41.9)

Right.

Jennifer Kok (14:49.037)

I'm actually jealous of that feature in my husband. Yeah. Cause I often think, wow, I could really be 10 times more productive if I could tune out the dog and the Amazon delivery guy and you know, the laundry and everything else in my home office, but I can't. And well, now I know there's science behind why we are multitaskers, which is why my husband always says women should rule the world cause we can get a lot of crap done.

Sarah Walton (14:56.937)

If I can't, everything. Yeah.

Sarah Walton (15:05.725)

Yes, now you know why.

Sarah Walton (15:14.451)

Well, there's no question, right? But we're designed to do that, right? It's like it really is the female physiological design. Now the good news is we can train ourselves to go towards that way of one at a time and men absolutely cannot go too many at a time. So we are lucky in that we can cross over. If we train ourselves, they can't, which is also just a fascinating scientific thing. But anyway, all of that to say, that makes us incredibly high functioning. So we've got this high functioning piece of high functioning codependence, right? We are in.

are incredibly adept at this. We can do it. And then we're taught to betray ourselves. We are taught to abandon ourselves inside of that high functioning ability. And again, that starts with don't cry. You hear your emotions are making me uncomfortable. Stop having them. And then you're rewarded for that. With those phrases I mentioned earlier, my God, she's so selfless. Isn't she amazing? God, you're such a good helper.

Jennifer Kok (16:05.985)

Yeah.

Sarah Walton (16:11.175)

Like these little things comes in and it's like, yeah, but I'm really hungry. but I should go help because I'm a good helper. And right there, that is the crux of why women don't charge. Right there. That moment, when we learn the codependency, right? We get rewarded for abandoning ourselves and then you throw the high functioning on top of that and you've got a recipe for disaster. You've got a recipe for burnout, exhaustion and not charging.

Jennifer Kok (16:34.765)

Mm.

Sarah Walton (16:39.271)

Because it's the same as saying, but I'm really hungry or, I have to pee. Yo, but they need me. And you're not taking care of your basic bodily needs, which if you've ever studied in psychology, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the very bottom rung of needs is physiological safety. And we abandon that and we are taught, and not only just taught, rewarded for doing that at a very, very young age.

and then you have a coach like me come in or a coach like you, Jennifer, and we're like, charge, what's your worth? And they're like three cents. Because it's like that's what we were taught. Yeah, and so we really wanna have the compassion and the understanding that there is actually some wiring to rework there. It's totally doable, but to expect somebody to just like throw, you know, pretty icing on a mud cake and that's gonna be fine. That's not gonna work. Like you can't.

Jennifer Kok (17:10.561)

Yeah, like how? Right.

Sarah Walton (17:31.86)

toxic positivity your way through this or just slap a number on a service-based business and act like it's gonna be okay. That's a very, again, very masculine way to approach something. Grin and bear it, tough it out. Who cares if you have feelings about this? And the reason I think it's so important that we examine it and look at the retraining of it is that our instincts, our feelings as women with this increased connective tissue in our brains, right?

is actually what makes us incredible at running businesses that change people's lives, running businesses that contribute to our communities, running businesses that support children, support clean water, support, like pick a thing that...

the ability to tap into our emotions, the right and left hemisphere, our emotions, our reasoning, and then going over to the logical and saying, great, and this actually creates profitability, which means I can hire this person and I can do that, and maybe we can get health insurance for everybody. We can cross back and forth between the feeling and the logical so smoothly and beautifully. And when we allow that, because we heal how we were trained, because we heal the personal message we each received.

That's when the business takes off. And it's only when we embrace the full femininity of that fact that we can really, really succeed. And that's what I mean by the business strategy is choosing you.

Jennifer Kok (18:58.593)

You know, that is really so profound and I've never heard anybody explain it that way. And I just thank you for sharing that because you're right. The business strategy is there. We chose something and most likely, you know, most women who go into business tell me it's because they wanted freedom and flexibility. So once again, heart centered. They wanted freedom and flexibility for their children or for their grandchildren or for their puppies or for their community or just for themselves, for whatever it is. But there was a heart string.

or they saw a need, like you said, something in their community and they're like, I have a skillset that can fill that. So typically women entrepreneurs jump in because they feel a tug at their heart and they want to do something different about it. They don't usually start out a business because they want to go make a billion dollars. If that comes along with it.

Bonus, right? Bonus size fries, let's go for it. But typically that's not the starting point. And so it's really, I think so important that how you share the fact of how we're wired, what society's told us over the years, even though hopefully it's getting better, we know we still have a long way to go. And how do we kind of partner that all together in our brains and on paper as we build out these businesses? And I always say that women who make really good money,

Sarah Walton (19:50.473)

Great! Right.

Jennifer Kok (20:19.447)

go on to do really good things. And I've seen a lot of guilt with women when they're making good money. So then sometimes that can lead to self-sabotage or they start to do things a little frivolously. I've also seen women hold a lot of guilt between their time, like between either family, other, you know, aging parents, whatever it is. know, women, we're the center and we get pulled in a lot of directions. And so it, like you said, boundaries is so key.

Sarah Walton (20:21.16)

every time.

Sarah Walton (20:36.52)

Yes.

Sarah Walton (20:46.717)

Yes.

Jennifer Kok (20:46.933)

And one thing I talk a lot about with women is success. I feel like there's this misleading perception of what success should look like for business owners. And it's because of the world we live in. And that's not going away. There's only going to be more AI telling us that we can do 500,000 things in one day. And there's going to be more social media and more TikToks and everything else showing us the highlight reels. And what I say to people is,

Sarah Walton (20:58.345)

Mmm.

Sarah Walton (21:10.791)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (21:14.893)

You know what, success comes in a lot of different packages. Success for you could be the fact that you could pick your kids up from preschool three days a week. Success for this person could be the fact that they have enough money to pay for kids' college or take their family to Disney. Or success comes from, you know, it could be financially I was able to, you know, buy a cottage or go on a trip with my girlfriends, whatever it is. Success comes in a lot of different packages. And you talk about, you had a year.

Sarah Walton (21:42.185)

Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (21:42.958)

2022 where personally it was really, really tough. But what came out of that was your business tripled at the same time. So here you must have been in a season. You don't have to give us all those nitty gritty details, but the season of being pulled in a lot of directions and having to probably sustain and hold a lot of people up when you were going through something. Why do you feel your business tripled during that type of a season?

Sarah Walton (22:08.327)

Yeah, my goodness. It's like, just thinking through that just now, I was like, I've talked about this before, but I was like, that was tough. No, but I'm gonna be really sure that I decided to. And that sounds, my God, that sounds like so like, I just understood I made it happen. I don't mean it like that. Like I will lay out what was going on. So my daughter.

Jennifer Kok (22:13.525)

Yeah, I high, sorry.

Sarah Walton (22:30.537)

was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. And if anyone's been through that, it is incredibly scary, right? I knew something was wrong for nine months. Doctors weren't listening to me. I was screaming and yelling on her behalf, right? My father was diagnosed with Parkinson's. My husband and I decided to separate at the same time that his dad was diagnosed with stage four kidney failure. I mean, it was like, really? And my son was going off to college. I got melanoma. I'm like, seriously, what is happening? It was just like, in one year. So like,

Jennifer Kok (22:56.541)

One year?

Sarah Walton (22:59.251)

People are like, what were you going through? I'm like, do you have a few minutes? Like it was nuts. I'm sitting here going, am I on camera? Like every time the phone rang, I'm like, is this a joke? Are we kidding? It was just, I was like, what are we doing? What's happening? Yeah. They also, I'm so grateful for that year in so many different ways. I think I learned again, going back to you want to talk about connective tissue between the two hemispheres, right? Like it was like, whoa.

Jennifer Kok (23:03.565)

Like, yeah.

Jennifer Kok (23:09.421)

Well, it's like, okay, God, how much more can you pour on me here? Like, what are you trying to get out of me here? Yeah.

Sarah Walton (23:26.963)

How much can we handle here? And I think it really deepens my ability. And I think this is why the business tripled in addition to my decision to make sure it did. But I think my depth and capacity for compassion, for communication, for our shared humanity, like I've been saying, I think it's my.

Don't quote me, I might be wrong, but I think it's my very fifth. I have now 300 podcast episodes, right? But I think my fifth, one, two, three, four, five, that fifth podcast episode is called, You're Not Special, right? Like any one of us can get a call. Any one of us can get bad news. Like, no, I don't care that I'm a coach and I talk about abundance. I can get a surprise bill. Like we're all in this humanity thing together. And I think, you I've always taught that. And so I think to kind of live that out loud and to...

to share that I never share as things are happening. Like people knew something was up, right? And I don't, I always say we share from scars, not from wounds, right? Like we really wait and I'm very careful not to trigger other people. And I wait till I've healed something until I share it. But it was obvious. I was going through something and I think the humanity for myself that I had to dig up to say, Walton, you're a person. You're going through a flip ton of things right now. Like breathe.

And at the same time, it deepened my desire. And I think this is when I say my decision to do so. It deepened my desire to make sure any other woman who was going through as many things as I was going through could have the time freedom and the location freedom to be able to take care of the people they love. And it just, it just built this fire in me to make sure.

You know, my dad lives in LA. I live on the East Coast, right? Like just doing that while managing my daughter's sugar. She's also a competitive dancer, right? My son's going to college in the middle of the, like, and we're getting divorced, like this whole, like, okay. I am so lucky right now that I can do my abundance academy once a week. I can give them feedback on their sites, their copy, I can do that. I can contribute to their lives and still manage this. That's unreal.

Sarah Walton (25:46.858)

That is unreal. And I was a senior, senior executive before I left corporate. There's no freaking way. They wouldn't have cared. They'd be like, whatever, you need to be here at 830. Not because they're jerks. That's the way that's run. And I'm out to change that. Because again, that's black and white thinking. No. So really, how did I triple the business is I decided to. I was like, come hell or high water, I am helping as many human beings as I can be able to manage their own 2022s and still make money.

Right? mean, my daughter, within two weeks of getting insulin, needed an entirely new wardrobe. Do know how rewarding it was to be able to just go pay for that? Like, not everybody could go do that. And I was like, wow, I made other people's lives better. And because I made their lives better, my daughter gets a whole new wardrobe. Like, my, it took me back to my prom dress. I'm like, talk about a win-win. Everybody's winning right now. And this is really hard.

Jennifer Kok (26:23.565)

Yeah.

Sarah Walton (26:42.343)

and I'm still feeling like I'm winning. Back to your idea that success can look like a lot of things. I would not wish that year on anybody else. And yet I'm profoundly, deeply, honestly grateful for what it showed me as far as what's possible. And I, yeah, I hope I answered your question.

Jennifer Kok (26:49.613)

No.

Jennifer Kok (27:03.595)

You live and breathe abundance. And I really respect that and admire that about you, because a lot of people would have been faced with what you were faced with and thought, building a business is too hard. I can't do this. my gosh, this is exhausting. And who am I to think I can do this? And instead, you went inward, and you said, you know what? I'm going to make this happen. And you did it.

Sarah Walton (27:06.665)

I don't.

Jennifer Kok (27:28.971)

Not only for yourself, but you also did it because, once again, heart-centered, wanted other women to see that it's possible.

Sarah Walton (27:35.111)

I did, I did, yeah. It was definitely an eat your own dog food year, right? Like if I'm gonna preach this, that there's both, there's never an either or, there's both. Let's see, let's see what I can do. And it just was really as tough as it was, it was really, really rewarding.

Jennifer Kok (27:50.988)

And so it's interesting how, for you, that year, you look back at it say that was one of my best years. And I look back at my 2008, 2009 recession story when my cookie business at the time was struggling because of the recession, and I ended up pivoting with the cupcake business, which ended up being the best thing that ever happened. And would I have done that without the recession? Probably not. I would have just been carrying on with my cookie business.

plugging along and enjoying the rewards of that and enjoying the success of that. But I ended up also tripling my business once I added that cupcake. So that's kind of interesting how we could dive into that another day. As entrepreneurs, sometimes when your feet are to the fire is when it's go time.

Sarah Walton (28:33.513)

You

Jennifer Kok (28:38.731)

I've seen it happen with women who had a side hustle and then they lost their job, their full-time job that was paying the bills and the benefits. And all of a sudden they will say a year later, I wish I would have done this sooner, gone all in on my business. So how can we help people get into that fire every day even when your feet aren't to the fire? That's our desire for women, right? Is to tap into that fire that's in there.

Sarah Walton (28:51.817)

Yep. Yep.

Yeah. Ugh. Heart percent.

Yeah, yeah, because it's there. And I think it really does come down to deciding. I don't think we do that enough. I think we're given so many outs, right? Like we have so many different ways we could do stuff. We don't decide that I will be successful at this on my own terms, whatever that is. To your point, Jennifer, I love the way that you always insist we understand that success is nobody else's business but yours, right? It's like, no, I don't care, right? What someone else's definition is. And I think...

I think if we look at our ability to do so many things, I think sometimes that gets in the way, right? We allow ourselves to be distracted. And I don't mean that in a hustle way because I'm not like the bro mentality of like, just hustle. I don't mean like that. It's like when we consistently don't choose ourselves as a business strategy, right? When it is, I have 59,000 things to do and I'm gonna do this first.

that kind of an energy and it doesn't have to be hustle and it doesn't have to be stressful. But the insistence that your dream, that your fire matters just as much as everybody else's. I think that's how we tap into that while staying sane.

Jennifer Kok (30:18.637)

while staying sane and also surrounding yourself with leaders like yourself that get it, have been there, done that and can help guide others to get there and also other women entrepreneurs and being real. You know, I always laugh that you'll go out to a networking group or something and you'll say to somebody, how's your business? And everybody gets this, it's great. And they're, you know, the tone goes up in their voice and they get that high pitch like, okay, is it?

Sarah Walton (30:20.103)

Yeah.

Sarah Walton (30:39.571)

Yeah.

Jennifer Kok (30:45.707)

you know, it's okay to say, know what, it's good, it's solid, but I wish this, this or this would be a little stronger. And so we need to get ourselves in groups with people that you can be transparent with, be willing to say, you know, yeah, I love my business, but I wish it would provide this.

Sarah Walton (30:48.425)

And a tough year.

Sarah Walton (31:02.589)

Yeah, yeah, I think that honesty is actually required. Because if we pretend like everything's fine all the time, there's nothing we can't, I can't get, like I say that to my clients all the time. I'm like, I can't get in there if you're I got nothing to support. what do you, like, how do I, what, what do you want next then if everything's perfect? Yeah, I think that honesty is just critical. And again, I feel like as women, you know, that keep it all together, look good all the time thing really can work against us.

Jennifer Kok (31:15.265)

Right, good.

Sarah Walton (31:32.266)

when we're looking to grow, whether financially or personally, we need to be able to tell the truth about what isn't working so we can learn about it, right? There might be like, oh my God, my revenue's down this year. Okay, well, let's, oh my God, that's so interesting. Let's look at what's happening. And I think sometimes we get scared to say that. We're like, no, no, no, everything's fine, everything's fine. And there's so many missed opportunities to really become an expert at why things go sideways.

Jennifer Kok (31:52.066)

Right.

Sarah Walton (32:00.68)

And it's also sometimes how you can find the coolest reinventions is when you get honest about something that didn't work the way you thought. It's like, wow, I wonder why. And the cool thing I teach people, I love this so much. I hope everybody takes this from today. Just please just take this and remember. Like I do a lot of work with like funnels and how do we get people into it? Like, know, the business-y stuff, Right, see? I know. You're like, I just make cupcakes.

Jennifer Kok (32:20.013)

The techie, the techie behind the scenes stuff that I had no idea about, let me just say, coming from a brick and mortar service business to an online. I'm like, holy moly, yeah, wow, okay. Yeah.

Sarah Walton (32:33.033)

But in just looking at it, know, sometimes we'll lay it out. It's like, okay, so someone meets you here. They get this, well, what do they need to know next? And what happens here, right? And we can look at it. And then what I love to say to my clients, I'm like, okay, so this is the funnel, quote unquote, like on paper. This is what it looks like. Where's the problem? And I won't say anything. And instinctually they'll go, it's in this step right here. I'm like, great, go work on that. And you know what? They're right every single time. And so it doesn't have to be this bro hustly grind grind.

You know where it is. You know where there's a piece of you missing in your funnel, if that's what you're working on. You know there's a part of you you haven't shared. You know there's something you want to say that you're scared to say. And admitting that something isn't going perfectly is where all that magic is. And it's so wonderful when you can find a group to be your imperfect self with because boy do you learn fast and it's fun and nobody's judging you. And I think that's just critical.

Jennifer Kok (33:31.885)

Well, on that note, how can women entrepreneurs who are listening learn more about you? I know you call yourself a sales expert and the abundance Academy. love all of that. And tell me a little bit about where we can find out more information about your programs.

Sarah Walton (33:47.762)

Yeah, well, come on over. Well, sarahwalton.com is my website. I hang out on Instagram, the sarahwalton, only because my name was taken, not because I am the sarahwalton. But there are many sarahwaltons. There are many of us. But yeah, so I'm over there on Instagram. And then Jennifer, you've appeared on my podcast. You're so amazing. We loved having you on. And that is the Game on Girlfriend podcast, because this is not your practice life. The game is on.

Jennifer Kok (33:57.741)

Well, you are. You are a D.

Jennifer Kok (34:14.585)

I love it. And I also, I love that you're giving us a freebie called the Freedom Calculator, which to me is really a cool tool. I encourage everyone to go on there and hop on it because it really talks about how much money do you need to make every month. And let's make a decision to go after it.

Sarah Walton (34:18.598)

yeah.

Sarah Walton (34:29.853)

Yeah, yeah, I love that freedom calculator. It really, I mean, don't we know this, right? It's kind of goes back to me saying, I make the decision, right? But like, if your brain has a number to focus on, it'll start to figure out how to get there. And I think so often when we're just like, I don't know, I wanna make money. It's like, okay, but how much is that a month? How much is that a week? What would you need to sell every day? Like you really get into that and then it's super cool.

Jennifer Kok (34:39.937)

Yeah. Exactly.

Jennifer Kok (34:53.101)

So awesome. Well, thank you, Sarah, for all your wisdom today. And of course, I just love chatting with you. And I look forward to that girls getaway one of these months.

Sarah Walton (35:02.025)

Dude, we're so doing that. I can't wait. Jennifer, thank you so much for having me at Spin of Joy.