The Troll Comment That Started a Whole Conversation About Success

A troll comment on Instagram sent me down a rabbit hole, and honestly… I'm glad it did.

In this episode, I'm breaking down the comment that got people talking, responding to the real misunderstandings around follower count, coaching versus influencing, and what "being successful first" actually means.

But the part I really want you to sit with? There are two versions of success. Most of us are chasing the first one without ever questioning it. And once you hit it, you might realize it doesn't feel anything like you thought it would.

I've been there. Promotions, bonuses, raises, the apartment, the whole checklist. And I still felt empty.

This episode is for anyone who has ever felt disconnected from a life that looks great on paper. We're getting into what success actually means, how to define it for yourself, and why redefining it is not only allowed, it's necessary.

Here are the key topics covered in this episode:

• A troll comment on Instagram calling Katja an "influencer with a few thousand followers" and telling her to "be successful first" before coaching others, and why she decided to respond publicly instead of ignoring it.
• The abundance mindset practice of driving or walking through a wealthy neighborhood to normalize wealth and remind your brain that money and prosperity are real and accessible.
• The difference between influencers and coaches, specifically that influencers monetize their audience through brand deals while coaches sell their own transformation and don't need a large following to build a profitable business.
• Why follower count is irrelevant in the coaching world, and how Katja has made six figures every year without a massive or fast-growing audience by prioritizing relationships over reach.
• The two versions of success: external success (titles, salary, status, possessions, follower counts) versus internal success (alignment, freedom, joy, waking up excited for your day).

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Building Her podcast. I'm your host, Kati Lillian. If you've been loving this podcast, go ahead and read the podcast Five Stars and DM me on Instagram when you do that, because I want to connect and personally thank you. If you are new here, hit that subscribe button. It really helps the podcast grow, and that way you will never miss an episode. Let's dive in. Hey, my name is Kati Lillian, and I am obsessed with all things mindset, personal development, and helping you build the best version of yourself. I'm a women's life and mindset coach and an entrepreneur who started a fun hobby of posting hashtag sweaty selfies, grew a successful side hustle, and now I run a six figure coaching business. I teach you the secret of building a life that aligns with your deepest values and one that you wake up excited for. This podcast is designed to expand your mind and. Challenge the status quo. So get ready to uplevel your life and let's start building her. I cannot believe it. We are coming up on the two year anniversary of building her. It's just insane. I was looking at the calendar Tuesday, April 28th is officially my two year anniversary of when I launched this podcast, and I can't believe I've shown up every single Friday for two years. Clearly, I love it. But yeah, so. If you're listening to this it's gonna show up next week, but follow me on Instagram if you don't already. My handle is at Katia, Lillian, and I'm gonna have a huge epic giveaway for my two year anniversary. All the details will be there on Instagram, uh, and a carousel post on my story. So definitely check it out on Tuesday, April 28th, so that you can see the details of entering the giveaway and what you can even win and all that. Stuff. So I'm really excited to offer that to the community, especially my ride or dies that show up for me every single Friday and listen to every fucking episode. I, I don't even know who you are, but the fact that you show up and you come back every single Friday to listen to me talk, like I could literally cry just thinking about that because. It, it just, it's such meaningful work. I don't get paid a dime from my podcast, but the fact that I get to impact and the fact that I have a platform to share my voice and the fact that I get to help someone with my story, my, my raw vulnerability, my tips, my tricks, my learnings, like anything, and if it truly helps you. And benefits you then, like I am. I'm good. I, I've done what I'm, what I came here to do. Truly, that's what I feel. So thank you so much for being here two years on Tuesday. Check it out on Instagram for all the details of my giveaway so for today's episode, I really wanted to dive into a recent post of mine, or I guess a few posts of mine on Instagram because. I don't know. It got people talking and I think it resonated with people. And so I felt like it deserved a deeper dive. This all started with a troll comment, let's call it on Instagram, and it was on a video where I talk about if you are stuck in a scarcity mindset, then you know, try this thing out. So, what I like to do when I feel like my relationship with money is low or poor or scarce, I go drive into this neighborhood that is close to me here and they have three, four four of. My dream homes, like any four of these, I could move in like yesterday and I'd be so happy with it. Um. They are huge homes and they're updated and they're modern, and it's this gorgeous neighborhood and it's right down the street from the water. And I just, I love it so much. If I don't drive there, it's usually part of my morning walks. And it just reminds me of how much wealth is in the world because if someone can have this type of house and this type of car and this type of lifestyle, then I can have it too. And it's always just a great reminder to get into this energy of abundance and reminding your brain essentially that wealth and money. Do exist out there for people and it really helps me. It's something that I heard in my mastermind. Another girl talks about it. And, um, Shelby Sap, if you follow her, I love following her sales. Tips and advice and stuff like that. But she also talks about it. She's like, if you live in, you know, the middle of Wyoming or Minnesota or any kind of Midwest state up there, no shade on those states. But if you live there, you're not. Probably surrounded by a lot of flashy wealth as if you were living in Los Angeles or New York or Miami. And so her point is, get out of your small hometown that you are used to it, you, you're in a bubble whether you like it or not. And leave and go to one of these rich cities where it has lots of rich people. Because you'll see Lamborghinis driving by and you'll see these huge ass mansions and you'll hear people talking about their crazy weekend stories. You know, going to a Ibiza or mine was an African safari, hanging out camping with the zebras. Like, I actually heard someone say that and, um, that reminds you in your brain, or not even reminds you, but it, you know, opens your world, it opens your perspective to real wealth out there. And people are living like that despite everything going on in the world. There are people who have these things and live like this and, um. It normalizes wealth for you. It, you know, and it's not about like wanting the Lamborghini or wanting the mansion, like again, I could actually care less about all those things. It's more so just knowing and recognizing that money surrounds us. Money is everywhere. Even if you look at your own place right now, whether it's your dream home or not. You do have to understand like you're living in your money, right? I own my home and I you know, sometimes we only think about money in our bank account, but if you look at like, oh no, I, like, I'm living in my money, it's just not liquid. It's in a house format. My house is another bank account. Right? Or the car that I drive, that's also. Money on wheels because if I need to or want to, I could sell it. And that's tens of thousands of dollars there. You know, like what you're using every day and what you're living in every day, and the things that you're using in your house and the clothes that you're putting on and the bags that you have. Like that is all money. Money is all around us. Money is energy and so you have to get around. More of it to remind your brain, that one, it's out there, and two, feel the feeling behind it. Get in the energy of abundance so that it becomes normalized to your brain. So that is what one reel was all about, and I gave that tip of like, go into a rich neighborhood and go walk around and go get a coffee and treat yourself and just like be in that energy. So I thought it was really helpful. A lot of other people thought it was helpful based off the metrics in terms of saves and shares. And then of course with any kind of reel that. You know, kind of pops off or goes mini viral or you know, gets more attention than others. There's gonna be some haters in the comments. And so there was this one, and of course it's a guy, no shade on guys, but usually the hate comments are from men. And he says, so after looking at the houses and the cars, you decided to become an influencer with a few thousand followers. Can you. Can we become successful first before preaching it to others? Now, normally when I get a hate comment like this, I ignore or I block, I really don't pay any attention to it. It drains my energy. And why would I want to give this guy any ounce of my time? However, like in the message I was like, this is so wrong. Like. And, and he's actually not the only one that thinks this way. It's a very common misunderstanding, and so that's why I took the time to make a reel about it. I wanted to respond to this and actually dissect his comment to talk a little bit more about money and about followers and about. Success and how we all think it's one thing, but it actually can be very different. So the first part of his comment when he's talking about the influencer piece, I'm not teaching people how to become influencers. I'm teaching women how to build coaching businesses. It's, it's very different. So influencers, I don't need to define that, but that's basically people showing their life or whatever they choose to show. And building a personal brand from who they are. And brands, then reach out to them and collaborate and partner and pay them money to sell their own. Product. So the influencer doesn't have their own product. They're always selling the brand's products. Now, unless you're at a certain level, of course they can collab with a brand and make their own version of something, or they absolutely can create their own product. So yeah, that's the influencer game and I can't even speak too much on it because I'm not an influencer, but that's just my general knowledge of it. Coaching businesses, obviously that's. Very different because brands are not in the equation. If you decide to become a coach or you know, let's call it dabble in that career path, it just means that you have overcome or you have learned something in your life. So, arguably anybody can become a coach, right? Whether it's a life coach, which is the way I started business coach. If you've built your own business, you're just teaching others what you have gone through and what you have learned, right? What you've picked up along the way. And so for me, the reason why I started life coaching is because I had such a huge. Revelation and transformation after my Tony Robbins experience. And then it really bled into my health and wellness journey and losing the 10, 15 pounds and having such a different relationship with food and being consistent with my workouts, like truly was the fittest I was ever even after college tennis and women had naturally come up to me and just asked like. You know, what are you doing and what kind of fitness program are you doing? And just ask questions. And so that's where I started my life coaching journey. I never thought, oh, I wanna be a life coach, you know, back in high school or college. But it just kind of happened because of my own transformation. Right. And so as you're listening to this. You know that there's something, or some things that you have gone through and that you've overcome, or that you have learned, or you know, a different version of you now versus then that gap, right? That A to B transformation. That's what you can sell because others are still in the A area. When you're in the B area and you give your knowledge, you, you teach you. And whether that's a course or one-on-one coaching and a mastermind and another podcast, like whatever it is, that's what a coach is. And so. I help women identify what is the skill that they want to bring to the table, and then how do they sell it and how do they land clients, right? That is what I do. That is what I help other women build. Very, very different. Then he talks about the follower count. And this is what I really wanted to dive into because back when I was more influencing with brand work and stuff like that followers absolutely mattered because that's all that brands cared about. Now, this was back in the day. I don't know if it's changed or anything like that. But back in the day, they absolutely cared about follower count. They cared about engagement, they cared about every metric, likes, comments, share saves, right? And that felt so, uh, disempowering to me as a creative, as a, an entrepreneur because it was all outta my control. You post a really good piece of content. To you, right? In your opinion. And it could flop. And knowing that it could flop made me feel so uneasy, of course, with that career path, because I was like, oh my gosh, well there's my paycheck, there's my money, there's my brand deal. And so, um. So unless people really just popped off early on, or, you know, the algorithm liked them at a certain season, or there were different stages where, you know, TikTok really, uh, it was easy for you to grow on, or Instagram was really easy to grow on, then you won or, or you were winning. But now it's like, I've been in this entrepreneurial game for so long that. Every industry ebbs and flows. And right now I would actually argue influencing is actually going downhill because of ai. And brands are creating their own AI influencers. They don't even need influencers anymore, right? So there's just a lot of change. But my point is the followers. Yes, they mattered in the brand game and the influencer game. In the coaching game. It does not matter at all. It has nothing to do with how much money you make. Think deep, not wide, right? I've made over six figures in my business every single year. Every single year. Without a massive audience, my my following, if you guys have been following me for a while, my following has not grown. Like new people are always coming in, but old people are always going out, and so my following has kind of stayed the same for years now, but that doesn't impact my business at all because the new people that find me well. They're attracted to my work and perhaps they wanna become a coach or they wanna learn more, or they just wanna follow here from the podcast, like whatever it is. But I create relationships because I get into conversations with them, and if I have something that can serve them, great. If I don't, great. Stick around for free content and learn something, but I'm building. Relationships with actual human beings on the other side of the screen. I don't look at people just as followers where I don't engage, I don't DM them. I don't get to know them. What are we actually building in the first place, right? We're building community. How am I supposed to build community if I don't talk to you? Right? So followers doesn't matter. It just matters more about the relationship that you build with them, especially in this AI world. The last thing with his comment was about success, and that's where I wanna spend most of my time here because I think that is also a common misunderstanding. Probably the biggest misunderstanding that we in our society have. I think it's starting to change, but it's still so deeply rooted and woven into just the corporate structure and the workforce and, um. You know, I'll speak to my experience of how that actually carried over into my entrepreneurial journey. But he said, can we be successful first before I, you know, preach to others? The first thing I do whenever I hear success,'cause sometimes my clients say like, oh, I just wanna be successful. And it's like, well, what does successful even mean to you? Like, how do you define. Success because there are so many different versions of success that you can have. It also comes at different times in your life. Um, so there's lots of different versions and you might define it differently. I think the, the biggest distinction, it, it's like two parts, right? So the first version of success that is widely known and adopted and what we're told is success is. Always in like the more bucket. So you need to make more money, you need to have more titles. So think like more promotions, corporate ladder more status, more followers, more external validation. So it's what basically people see. Of your life from the outside looking in. So you've got the flashy cars and you've got the big house and you've got the designer clothes and you've got all the money and you've, you know, you have a title of C level this or VP that, or I don't know, whatever it is. And, um, we assume that that person is successful. On paper and has it all figured out, right. In order to have all that, they must have it figured out. Also, internally, it's just something we assume like, wow, they're super successful, like how did they do it? And. It must be so nice and ah, good for them. Lucky for them. It's like, but why are we putting that type of success on a pedestal? Because we actually have no idea how that person feels. I remember I had this conversation a lot during the big shift, my group program. For personal development, and it was always about like body image. And um, you know, I'm so nervous to go to a new workout class by myself or I don't wanna put on this workout set because you know, there's so many other girls in there that are super skinny or fit and ah, they all look so cute and they have their workout sets and, you know, you, uh, immediately compare to them. But my first thought, when I see someone. Beautiful and fit and has a cute workout set is actually not about like, oh, they're better than me. Right? Or they must have it all figured out. It's more of like, what is she dealing with internally that nobody knows? That's my first thought. We're all human beings. None of us have it figured out, myself included. We all have emotions, we all have fear. We're all scared. We all have disbelief. We all have self-doubt. We all have an inner critic living in our heads. And so I think maybe because I know so much and and too much given my career path, no one really intimidates me. Anymore, you know, because I know like everything else is just a facade. I mean, good for you, for, you know, taking care of your health. And I mean, send me a link to that workout set because it's cute, but I'm not gonna compare myself like they're better than me, right? Because that doesn't do me any good at all. So I think we always have to recognize and remember the human being first, strip away. The clothes, the money, the cars, the houses. They're a human being. They're just like you. They're just like us, right? And so I think when we get lost in the chase and the version of success that is taught to us, once you get there, majority of people still feel empty. And, and I know this because I lived it not. You know, to a crazy level, but still within my own reality of success. I did climb the ladder in corporate America and I did hit the goals and I did check the boxes and I did get the promotions and I did get the raises. And so I was like doing everything by the book and everyone outside looking in was like, wow, kata, you're doing so good. And wow, you got a promotion. Wow. You got another bonus. And wow. You are able to get this new apartment and wow. You know, this was back early, mid twenties. And so it, it, it's almost like it's so deceiving because you're like, oh, I should be happy. I should be grateful. You know, why don't I love this? Because you're judging yourself.'cause everyone else is telling you good fucking job. But you feel internally disconnected, you feel misaligned, you feel exhausted. You feel burned out. Sad. You feel depressed, you feel anxious. It's like, ed did I really work so hard for this type of feeling? Like it's got to feel better, right? And so that sent me down this path and found the second version of success that unfortunately is not talked about enough. And that second version of success is called alignment, meaning. You pick something that you like because it lights you up, like you cannot shut up about this topic. You actually research it for fun. You would do it without getting paid, right? That is an aligned career path. I also define success as freedom. I get to control my schedule, my time. I'm, I'm not reporting to someone else, telling me when I can take a lunch break and when I can go on PTO. I have freedom. I also love my life. I love the house that I'm in. I love that I'm in Florida. I love my daughter. I love my body. I love my husband. I love my dogs. I, I literally love my life because I've built it by design with intentionality. And therefore I get to be more present. I get to serve. I get to pour into my client's cups and help them because my cup is full. I wake up and I'm excited for the day. I do not dread my day. That is success to me, regardless of the money in the bank account, regardless of the title, regardless of the status, regardless of the follower account, I feel whole. I feel complete. I feel like I'm living my purpose every single day. The dangerous part of the first version is that you will spend years, sometimes a lifetime chasing the first version, thinking it will give you the second, and that's how people lose themselves. That's why people suffer because you are on a, you are in the rat race. And you cannot get out because you're like, just one more promotion, just one more raise, just one more house, just one more car or different house or different car. You change all the external pieces of your life thinking. It will give you that second version of success when you actually have to look deep within you and be honest with yourself. Does this job, does this life make me happy? I quit my tech job, my six figure 401k match health insurance. Quit that at 30 years old to go all in and bet on myself on coaching. Do you know how fucking hard that was? It was probably the hardest decision I've made in my life besides getting pregnant and deliver and all that stuff. But in a work sense, that was the hardest part because I finally had to choose and stand for what I believe in. And it was going against the pack. It was going against what everyone else was telling me, what I should and shouldn't do. But I had to listen to my own heart and be like, no, no, no. This does not feel good for me and I don't want your life, so I'm actually not going to take your advice. And that was hard, but so liberating at the same time. Because I don't want a life that looks good on paper. I want that, but I also want it to feel good. So I think you listening to this before you. Tell yourself, I need to be successful. I need to build this business to be success. I need X amount of dollars. I need X amount of followers in order to be successful. I would actually invite you to dissect that word and define it for yourself. What does success look like for me? And that can change. Remember, this definition of success does not need to be set in stone. We can redefine success whenever we want to. But right now, in this season of my life as a mom of a 17 month old child, the version of success in my business, in my life, my freedom, my white space in my calendar, all of that is success to me. Now, will it feel successful 10 years from now? I don't know, but I know and I feel empowered enough to make that decision when that time comes. And I feel freedom to redefine what success looks like and means to me at that stage of my life. So we have to revisit what success means to us. Knowing and trusting. We can always redefine it whenever we want to. A month from now, a year from now, it needs to feel good. Because I want a life that looks good on the outside and also feels good on the inside. And so that was my rant. That was my reel that. I started this conversation and, um, I just feel like it's a huge misunderstanding and it's not the first time I've run into that. So I really, really hope this podcast episode served you. Thank you for being here as always, and I'll see you next week.