Corporate, Coaching, & Crumbling

So… I’ve been sitting on this one.

Because I wanted to say it perfectly, which, spoiler alert, is exactly the shit this episode is about.

I talk about the silent battle so many high-achieving women are fighting, chasing the promotion, the client, the income thinking it’ll finally be enough… and still feeling hollow AF after.

I share things about my career as an entrepreneur I have never said out loud. 

If you’ve ever had a “win” that made you want to cry instead of celebrate?

Yeah. You need to hear this one.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What's up you guys? Welcome back to the Dope Main Diaries Podcast. This is Coach Kate. Okay, I've been putting off making this episode because in my head I'm like, no, you have to like say it perfectly because it's such like an important message. And you know, typical perfectionism trap running really heavy on that. But um, the more I thought about it, the more I was like, you know what, Kate, just deliver it messy because it just needs to be said. And I think if you're listening to this, you will take from it what you need, maybe listen to it a couple times, maybe I'll listen to it and then reorganize my thoughts and re-record it a month from now. I don't know, but it definitely just needs to come out because one, I think this is a silent battle that definitely business owners, definitely online business owning coaches struggle with. It's a silent battle that um you know, quote unquote high achievers struggle with. I struggled with this throughout my entire corporate career. I see this play out all of the time. No matter what you do, what your career is, I see this play out. And I'm actually walking right now, and I'm gonna sit down for this because there's a lovely bench, and this just looks like a really nice spot to sit. Um, but I see this silent battle play out all of the time, and this silent battle is wanting your career or your business or whatever it is that you are setting goals around, whatever it is that you are working like tires tirelessly for and achieving and accomplishing, it's expecting that and wanting that to meet all of your needs and putting so much pressure on it to meet those needs, which if you know what I'm talking about, what that leads to is you having a really miserable experience in the journey. So I'm gonna use myself as an example, and this is where I was like, man, I really want to say this right, but I'm just gonna say it. So I have a 10-year corporate career, I did all types of things in corporate, all types of things. And when I got into corporate, I mean, my very first job, I think I made like 50k. And I did not come from a lot of money, so in my head, I was like, man, if I ever made six figures, I feel like that would like change my life. And the language that I used was that's gonna change my life, but the deeper feeling was if I can make a hundred thousand dollars in corporate with all of these men, well then I'm worthy enough, well then I'm good enough, and I didn't realize that the need underneath that like very tangible goal was actually like a deeper survival need. And so what happened? Work was very stressful. I put a lot of pressure on myself. There were many days where tears would happen and I would have absolute emotional breakdowns because I just you know, I'll never forget. Like, I worked at a company called CentOS, it's like a Fortune 500 company. I was in sales, and every quarter they would have these goals. Summit Club, I think is what it was called, and um yeah, it was Summit Club because you got four per year, and it was like a big deal, and like you were celebrated, you were validated, they put you up on a pedestal. So, of course, anyone that's competitive wants that. But honestly, I think people that are like hyper competitive have a deeper need of just being validated, but that's a probably a whole nother conversation. But that was me. I was on a sales team full of men, and I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this. I'm gonna get this because this will prove that I'm enough. This will prove that I'm enough. Now, at the same time in that career, I was in my first marriage. Wasn't a great marriage, just it just wasn't a great marriage, and so that was also fueling. Well, I don't feel loved, accepted, seen for who I am at home, so I'm gonna work my tail off to be loved, accepted, and seen for who I am in this job. And guys, spoiler alert, you can't source your deeper survival needs by things, by achievements, by money, or even by people. So, spoiler alert, it's not possible. It is a forever-moving goalpost, which is also why the silent battle that I see in people that are very career-driven, especially women, especially women, um, that are very like career-driven is they will do all of these things and they'll reach like the pinnacle and the peaks of their career, and they'll wake up and be like, I don't know, I just like I still feel so empty inside, and they didn't even enjoy the process to get there, right? How many of you guys, how many of you guys are listening to this like shit? That's me. That's literally me right now. I got a promotion last week and I fucking hate every bit of it. Yeah, like it's because you're not actually chasing the promotion. You are, but you aren't. You're chasing what that promotion means for you as a human being, and it goes so much deeper than just your career. It goes to the levels of am I good enough? Am I worthy enough? Can I meet myself in the needs that I have and honor those? No, I'm unwilling to do that. I'm unwilling to admit that I have needs outside of this plaque or trophy or bank account. I'm unwilling to do that, so I'm just going to assume that the more I accumulate from an accolades standpoint or from a money standpoint, one day that will be enough. And then, guys, I'm here to tell you that that one day turns into 10 years, all 10 years of my entire corporate career, forever, a one long perpetual one day, and then even bleeding into the first four years, uh, yeah, first four years of my career as an entrepreneur. Same shit, different outfit. So let's talk about my experience as an entrepreneur because I know I have a lot of coaches um work with me, or not work with me, listen to this, but also work with me. I like joke, I'm like, I'm literally the coach that coaches hire because they're tired of like business, business coaches and the whole business world, but they're like, Can you just coach me? And like that will be good enough for my business. And yes, that's like that's what happens. But I know I have a lot of coaches like listen to this, and um let me talk about my experience as an online business owner for a second because I think this is one where every time I share this with other coaches, they are like flabbergasted. They're like, Oh my gosh, I just would have never known that you felt that way. I'm like, Yeah, this is like why would I talk about it, right? So, first five years of a coach, I'm gonna go to the very first year of coaching, 2020. I remember that every time a client would say yes, it would be this feeling of, ah, see, I'm good enough. They chose me. Like that would be my thought. And every time a client would say no, or even have very like logical reasons why they couldn't do it, I would understand, but it would hit me physically in such a disruptive way. I would feel kind of rejected, I would feel kind of abandoned, I would kind of question it, or anytime a client disagreed with me, or you know, came to me and said, Hey, I don't really, this really didn't meet my expectations, or hey, I want out of the contract. Oh my gosh, anytime that would happen, man, I'd be I'd be I'd be fucked up for days. I will never forget. I will never forget my very first year as a coach, and she was one of my very first clients. I highly doubt she listens to this, but if she does, hey girl, um, she was one of my very first clients, and um she went through the whole four months with me, and then at the end of the four months, she sent me this huge long email, and our four months together was great. It was it was a great time, like we had a great relationship, um, like a great working relationship. She made progress, she she seemed really excited, she learned a lot, like there were so many great things from that, and then she sent me a huge long email at the end of her contract, and she basically demanded a full refund, said all of these like incredibly hurtful things about me because it all came out that basically she did not like a couple memes or something that I shared online, or she did not like an opinion that I shared online or a stance that I like very publicly took back in 2020. Um, and I will never forget, I was sitting on the couch at my house in Columbus, and I got this email, and I'm like, oh, okay, you know, what's this? Like, our we just wrapped up like two days ago, and I read it, and I like froze. I froze. I was so like, I say the word dysregulated, but for people that don't know what the word dysregulated means, just think honestly, just think triggered, think like you went from zero to a hundred and one hundred being not okay, angry, confused, sad, you don't know what to do with your hands. Like it sent me there, and guys, it kept me there for a couple days. And even when I look back at my responses and her, they were not the most professional responses. I was hurt, and I was responding from a place of hurt, but I will never forget that moment. Like that moment is forever etched in my mind because from there on out, I was able to notice that like anytime something did not go the way that I wanted it to go within my business, it wouldn't just be like, oh, okay, well, you know, that's business. No, it was always like, no, this is personal, and I was never able to like fully separate that. And honestly, guys, if you're listening to this, like it takes a lot of balls for me to say this, but I know that a lot of coaches that listen to this, you guys experience the same things, you just don't talk about it, but you do you experience the same things. Like, this is the challenge with outsourcing your needs or placing all of your value in what you do, and not being able to get to a point where you can just kind of look at things as being very neutral. And I want to tell you this because if we fast forward in my coaching career the next couple years, I mean, business was fine, but man, like there it was just so hard. I will never forget just always feeling like, why is this so much harder on me emotionally than I think it needs to be? Or, you know, why am I so hung up on what the numbers are? Or why am I so hung up? Why do I feel like I can't turn my brain off at the end of the day? Why do I feel like these goals that I hit are never good enough? Why do I feel like this client transformation is never good enough? Why do I feel like I need to like over-deliver and over-communicate and like fall on the sword for every single client that I work with? Why do I feel like I want this more than them? Right? Like it was a lot of this, like, I mean, days where I would be so in my head, I wouldn't be able to get anything done, or I'd be comparing myself to someone, or I'd launch something and then it wouldn't go the way that I wanted it to go, so I would just burn it to the ground, or I would set a goal for something and be like, I want 10 people in this. And the whole mentality in that launch to get 10 people in it was this little voice in my head that said, if you don't get these 10 people, see you're fuck up, see you're not good enough. And it was never fun. And my whole like value and my worth and like my everything was reliant on that. And guys, I'll be honest with you, like, whether you realize this or not, if you're kind of like listening to this, like, man, like this kind of like I like relate to some of this, maybe not all of it, but some of it, you don't realize how much that bleeds into everything else in your life. Like, I've been distant from friendships because I felt like if I took that time away from my business, it would somehow deter me from having these needs of just being good enough met. Like it's impacted my personal life in deep ways, in deep ways. And if you're relating to any of this and you think to you think to yourself, ah, it doesn't really impact my personal life, but some of these things happen during the day or during your work. I'm here to tell you that it does. In the same way, my corporate career impacted every single ounce of my personal life. I didn't have a personal life. I put all of my time and energy into work because that's where I thought I'd be able to have all of my needs met and needs being, just feeling like I was good enough, separate from what I could achieve. And this is a really challenging one for people to people to kind of work on because like the high, the quote unquote high achiever wound, it's a really deep, it's a really deep wound. And I think it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of practice, um, and it takes a lot of awareness around where that's actually coming from. Like, I'll never forget I was talking to um someone that I um lean on for support, and I said to her, I was like, you know, I was just trying to unpack like when this shifted for me because it didn't used to always be this way. I didn't. There was a there was a shift. There was a shift. And the realization I came to was the shift happened for me in that first marriage, where suddenly, you know, before I got into that relationship, um, I was like pretty much meeting my needs. I was creative, I was doing things that were fun. I, you know, had a personal life, I had hobbies, and then I worked, but like work wasn't everything. Like, I'll never forget, you know, before I got into the corporate world and before I got into that first marriage and that relationship, I'll never forget, like, I worked really hard in my career. Uh like I was um, I like I sat for state testing. Um, I was a um certified, like dual certified optician. And at the time, the office that I was working at, they didn't even require. But like I remember I wanted it. I remember I like wanted that level of recognition and I wanted to know I could do it. And I actually failed the test the first time. Um, and then I retook it and then I passed it. But to that point, I didn't even need that license, like that licensure, and I still did it, but it didn't consume me because while also at that job, I remember I would take PTO days and literally just sit by the pool and do nothing. And I can vividly remember just like sitting there by the pool and like listening to music and being completely okay with being bored. Like I wanted the boredom. The boredom was like everything to me. I loved it, I craved it. Give me more PTO days. I don't want to do shit. And I think it's really easy as like burnout high achievers, people that have been very career-driven, even coaches, like business owners, to say, like, oh, I just never get time off. I work so hard, I just want to take a vacation. But then when push comes to shove, you take it and you don't actually give yourself the time off. Like you're not actually resting. And it's because the idea of like letting off of the gas like that feels like not a threat to your business, not a threat to your career. It's deeper than that. It feels like a threat to everything that you are as a human and your worth here on this planet. Like it's not that deep, but it is that deep. You know what I mean? Like, I know you guys know what I mean, but like I'll never forget like recognizing that balance of I'm driven, I'm still pushing for these goals, but I also don't give a fuck. And I'm gonna sit by the pool for nine hours and and fuck off and use my PTO. And the shift when that changed was when I got into that relationship that ultimately led to my first marriage. And it's very easy to kind of see it now. Very quickly, I was isolated, I was influenced, he wasn't the nicest. Um, I wasn't perfect either, but like it just was this relationship in this home life where absolutely none of my needs were being met by my partner, like needs of being loved and accepted and encouraged and seen. And so I stopped meeting my own needs as well because it felt like I could get them easier within my career. Oh, I could go make a sale. Oh, um, you know, I could be the top salesperson for the week. Well, that feels good enough, and it would feel good enough until it didn't. And it just created this vicious cycle of always chasing the next thing, the next accomplishment, the next thing to achieve to somehow fill that huge gaping hole of anything I do is never enough because it completely falls out of the bottom and I'm always left empty. That pattern has been my life since 2013 through corporate and through my career as an entrepreneur. That pattern has been my life probably up until the last two years. In a lot of ways, I have my daughter to thank for that because it's not that I found my worth and my value within her, but when I got pregnant and specifically postpartum, I did not have a choice. There was nothing that I could tangibly accomplish outside of just keeping her alive and healing myself postpartum. And that was both the most pivotal but the most challenging time of my life. But that's when I realized, that's when I realized that, like, wait a minute, this like high achiever in me, this like frustrating pattern that I always had as a coach and a business owner of like, man, why can't I just feel good enough? Or constantly checking like the business stripe account, or constantly freaking out if like someone, you know, if I assumed someone responded the whole way, like, or the wrong way to like what I offered them coaching-wise, or the algorithm, or the launch not going well, or the not sticking with things because it didn't feel like it was enough, or just all of these things, like the days where I just stared at my computer not knowing what to do, like all of those were a symptom, but they were a symptom of a much deeper problem. And that problem was not that my needs weren't being met by other people, but that I was unwilling to stop for a minute and admit that I have needs, that I have needs, and it's okay for me to have needs, and it's okay for me to also honor and meet those needs. And so the way I want to wrap this up is this some of you guys might be listening to this, like, okay, wow, this is like me, me as fuck. Um, but Kate, like, what did you do? Or how have you changed now? Or like what's um, you know, what's going on now that feels so different. And I I I will continue to sound like a broken record because that's just how it is. Um, first and foremost, I've put myself through HBA for over a year, and the re-exposure to some of the practices in there in that curriculum, the re-exposure of that in every season of my life that I've had in the last year, I have lived eight lives in the last year. Like eight lives, like most of you guys have. I've talked to a lot of people and you're like 2025 has been rough. Listen, the re-exposure of building awareness, pattern recognition, reflection, but in a way that like encourages such like the tiniest pieces of effort every day. Because the reality is if you're relating to this, anything that I've said in this podcast, you're not gonna be able to change this overnight. That would feel like a huge no-no to you. You wouldn't be able to do it. But you could do it by taking tiny little steps of action in a way that is digestible to your nervous system and your body and that feels safe to your brain. And that's exactly what HBA is. So the re-exposure of the practices, the tools, the buffers, and the curriculum in HBA, and just experiencing that curriculum and every season of life that I've had in the last year has been everything, first and foremost. But secondly, is deciding that there were things within my career that I had wanted to do or I had wanted to be bold and take up space in, but I was afraid to admit that that's what I wanted. I was afraid to honor that one and give myself that desire. And one of those things is getting very clear on who I want to serve. Believe it or not, it's gonna sound silly when I say this, but there's been a lot of fear around me outwardly saying this. But if you look at some of the things that I've either set in my email community or even posted on um my social media platforms, like the message is there. I'm like kind of looking at it like, Kate, you've been saying it, you just haven't been saying it. But um, you know, even back before I became a mother, one of the things that I would always say is like, man, I just like moms just work with me. Moms just come and they work with me, and I'm not even a mom yet, and I think that that's so cool. I always looked up to them and respected them so much, but I always had a client full of moms, always. I never had clients like me, like single in your 30s, career-driven. I actually never had those clients. Um, I did, like a few, but it was mostly moms. Um, and so that's always been a pattern. And I realized very quickly after I had my daughter and still was in my career, still cared about my career, and started to like refall in love with my career again, that happened because I allowed myself to say, Hey, I know that one of the things that I want to do, one of the things that would make me feel really satisfied, me feel really good in what I do, and me no longer feel like I have to chase this like validation and importance in every other vanity metric of business. I know that the thing that would probably start to absolve all of that and just make work in my career and coaching so much fun again, and like make it not feel like work, is working with working mothers. And so I'm saying that like very boldly, and some of you guys might be like this is not that big of a deal, but it is a big deal because you have to realize when you speak very like clearly around who you want to serve and what you are really good at, and like what your strengths are, there's always that possibility that people feel left out, and that is just a risk you have to take, and like that kind of brushes up against that old pattern of make everybody feel. Good or make everybody agree with or make uh make yourself agreeable with everybody, don't piss anybody off. Because if you piss somebody off, then it's gonna start to kind of like trigger that wound that you have of like, well, I just want to be accepted, well, I just want to be validated. And like for me, and this is really for the coaches that are listening to this, like, I think in the business world we hear all the time, like, get specific, get specific, and it's like fucking eye roll. If I have hear that one more time, and like we look at what we say and we're like, we are being specific. What the fuck do you mean? How do I get more specific? So, this is everything I'm about to say is not that. Like, I'm tired of the business shit, probably just as much as you are. But like, I chose to look at it as like if I could do anything in the world and actually feel so aligned with it, what would that alignment do for me outside of my career? One, it would make me stop chasing that feeling of alignment or that feeling of being good enough, or I don't really love how I coach, but maybe if I just get enough revenue in, that'll somehow make up for the fact. For me, it was no, I really want to admit and say out loud that I want to work with working mothers. Man, I want to work with all of the working mothers, and I want working mothers, every single one of you guys listening to this, if you're on my page, I want you guys to come to me. I want to be the person that when a working mom is like, Man, I really need help, who do I go to? Anyone else is like, Coach Kate, that's her. I want to be known for that. I want to be known for that, and that's a need, and that's a need that I've been really afraid to say. But guess what happens the minute I say that need? One, just by saying it and admitting it and not hiding it, I suddenly feel good enough. And it doesn't matter if one person comes or five people come. I want to tell you guys that as someone that has spent a good chunk of her adult life chasing feeling good enough through tangible accomplishments, that for the first time in my life, I actually just feel like everything that I'm doing is fun. And I no longer find myself in these patterns of, oh, well, if so-and-so doesn't say yes to this, this is gonna ruin my whole day. I had someone say no to me yesterday, and I was like, okay, girly, no worries, I'll be here when you're ready. And I like checked in with myself about how it felt, and I was like almost waiting for it to feel bad. And I'm like, I like I'm still really happy, like, because her yes or her no doesn't change my bucket already being full. And guys, more than that, there are so many needs in my life outside of my career that are being met, and those are a bit more personal. I might do a whole different episode on that, but I've started really like chasing down all of these unmet needs in my personal life that I've ignored for a very long time, like, and honestly, that probably does need I don't think I'm ready to talk about some of those yet because they're they're just like really personal, but I think maybe I will soon. But even like from a career standpoint, there's been so many needs that I have as a business owner from a support aspect, but it's always felt really uncomfortable to admit that I needed support, or it's always been really uncomfortable to say, like, no, I actually can't do all of this on my own. I've hired people, bro. Bro, I literally just said bro, like I'm talking to my bestie with you guys. I hired people, I've hired people as someone that was very resistant to that. I have hired people and it has felt so good. And I'm hiring more people. I'm hiring someone else today, paying a fat invoice today. Um, because I realized that what she can do for me is absolutely a need. And I'm able to now look at this as not a like decision that I have to like force to make myself because I'm a in a place of scarcity, but I'm looking at it as like, man, this is a decision that I'm gonna make that makes me really, really happy. And sure it costs money, but the more I do things like this, the more that I realize money is safe. Money is safe for me to use. And then that also means that I stopped putting so much of my value and my worth around chasing it and feeling like no matter what I could make or how much I could accomplish, it's never gonna be enough. Of course, it was never enough. Of course, the multiple six figures in my corporate career was never enough. It never felt safe to me. I never spent any of it. I'd always look at my account and be like, no, I need more, no, I need more, no, this isn't enough. What if the world falls apart tomorrow? I need to make sure that I can, I don't know, buy a fucking ship. Like it was so unrealistic. But do you guys see how all of this is like connected? This is like getting to be a bit long for a podcast, but it's just necessary. I just really want to encourage you that you, if you are someone that is or finding yourself in this cycle of man, I can't seem to break out of this like pace of being so urgent in my business and so on and so unsatisfied. And it feels like no matter what I do, it's never enough. But I I like don't know what to do about that. Or if you're a coach or business owner that's like, dude, why is this so incredibly hard? Like, uh, this is suffocating me every single day. Or I always feel like I'm in scarcity, or I always feel like I'm doing the wrong thing, or I don't really know what to say. Like, if you guys, if you're a business owner and you find yourself, I don't know what to say, that's because you are unwilling to actually say what you want to say. You're unwilling to admit that you have needs and just say what those needs are within your business. That's what not knowing what type of content to make, I don't really know what to say on the internet today. Yes, you do, you just don't want to say it because it doesn't feel safe for you to admit that that's what you want to say. Period, point blank end of story. Like, I just want to encourage you that if that's in any way, shape, or form what you're feeling, that there is a way out of that. And whether it's HBA or whether it's you know getting and coaching with me one-on-one, do like, or maybe it's just listening to this podcast and asking yourself, when in my life did this change? Because you did not wake up, you were not born somebody that started chasing all of these external things to validate who you are and to make you feel good enough. Something shifted. Can you identify when that shift was? Because usually acknowledgement and awareness is one of the biggest and most healing first steps. So that is all I have today. I'm gonna wrap up. There will probably be multiple parts to this whole conversation. Um, but this is my very messy delivery of what's been maritating in my head for a while. Um, and yeah, let me know if it resonated, I guess. Slide into my DMs um and let me know if this hits. Let me know if this is you. Let me know if you see yourself in this. I love conversations around this. So, bye guys.