Becoming A Warrior For Possibility With Kimberly Spencer

Interview Episode with Kimberly Spencer

Laurin: [: 00:00:00

[00:00:44] Hi, and welcome to Curiously Wise. We're here for another great conversation and today I have the awesome Kimberly Spencer. She is all kinds of wonderful things. For me she's been a business coach in the most wonderful way. I would not be doing these podcasts if it weren't for her. So I'm really, really excited to have her here with us today.

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[00:01:09] Kimberly: Yeah, So I'm a high-performance coach specifically for business women and founders. I typically work with women in the formative stages of their business doing anywhere between zero and 4 million. And so that is, that is my sweet spot range of really working with women in those stages, because I know what it's like in those stages.

[: 00:01:30

[00:01:48]And I also learned a very valuable lesson in business about building business based on mutually agreed upon values with you and your partner. And that one, once I was bought out of that company in 2014, that one was really the catalyst for me thinking, what am I going to do? Because I was bought out of that company three weeks before I got married and we signed the buyout agreement and I hopped on a plane to my honeymoon, six weeks in Italy.

[: 00:02:13

[00:02:32] I'd had an e-commerce startup, like I loved business. I loved the body. I'd healed myself from a ten year eating disorder. I'd found the love of my life after much trial and error. And I saw business as something that was holistic. That was holistic success. Cause that was the one thing that I didn't have with my e-commerce startup was holistic success.

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[00:03:36] And I've seen it consistently over the past five years, coaching high achieving women and a few men. And just being able to, to see that. And I had way too many espressos back in Italy in 2014. And I leaped off the couch and I said, Crown Yourself. And my husband says, what's that? And I said, that's the name of my company?

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[00:04:09] And I never really had like my full heart soul and passion into either my startup or, my Pilates. Cause they were both meant to be a means to an end, versus this felt very purposeful, very intentional, very like soul based. And it scared the crap out of me. And I had about a year and a half where I made no money in my business.

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[00:04:57] And then I found out that I was pregnant in 2016 and the version of me, who I had become by the habit of, productive procrastination was someone who was very negative. Who complaining constantly and who was blaming? I still blamed my former business partner for where I was financially. I knew it was a mindset piece. I knew that it was very similar. It was just a gut intuitive instinct that I knew that what I was struggling with was basically what I call financial bulimia or business bulimia, where I was consuming a lot of information, but just like puking it up and not actually doing anything with it.

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[00:05:49] And so I immediately hired a coach and I got certified in a process. I got certified in NLP, timeline therapy, and hypnosis, and that was the catalyst to me actually feeling comfortable with a process that I could sell. So, I started out doing mindset coaching for business owners, specifically only focusing on the subconscious mind.

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[00:06:24] And just living that vision, we had another baby and now we're back in LA. And onto our next transition, and, it's been a joy and a journey to coach such extraordinary women like Laurin, and just be able to see them grow and blossom and like really transform at the truest definition.

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[: 00:06:52

Kimberly: Yeah.

Laurin: Not trudging along anymore.

Kimberly: Yeah, it's it's never a new level, new devils. It's like new levels, same devil. So there's always a deepening to claiming your power. Especially as you grow and putting yourself in rooms with people that you're like, I don't know if I'm ready for those. So I thought I don't like all those insecurities and not feeling good enough or not feeling qualified enough.

Those all come up, no matter what level you're reaching for. The key is just to keep going and keep trusting the process.

Laurin: Yeah, it's nice when you have a little bit of success to sort of back up that trust, but lately I've been hearing from people, that we can borrow their belief in us, and I borrowed your belief in me and it's, it's working

so.

Kimberly: It's working, isn't it? Yeah,

Yeah.

[: 00:07:44

So Kim, as you can tell is a force of nature.

I always enjoy time with you, even when you're holding my feet to the fire. She's very good at doing that, but it's, it's done with kindness, but, she's not gonna let you off the hook.

And, I tried to wriggle off the hook a few times.

Kimberly: Oh, my gosh. I had a client trying to wriggle off the hook yesterday and it was funny. She was like, I can't scream in my, in my house cause sometimes we'll do emotional exercises. Cause that's a key piece is like to being a holistic business owner and to being a conscious leader.

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[00:08:49] She's like, you're not letting me off the hook. It was like, literally three minutes of like, I'm not, I wasn't backing back down when I know that it's something that's for your highest and best, because that's why you pay me. That's what my job is, is it's not to coddle to the excuses that like, while I believe there's a delicate balance between compassion and grace, there also are those moments of like, you got to do the dang thing.

Laurin: Suck it up and do it.

[: 00:09:17

[00:09:33] And so one of the key points of evolving that identity, and that's a key point that I work with is, is evolving courage. It takes courage to scream inside your house when there's a whole bunch of people inside of it that's your team that like you pay, like it takes courage to, have to send out those emails to people saying that you've raised your prices.

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Laurin: Yeah, absolutely. Encourages is something that I was not. good at when I met you, but boy, I'm getting really good at it.

Kimberly: Yeah. I mean, I love the fact that you had a, what I would call a courageous conversation with your daughter on the podcast.

Laurin: Yes.

Kimberly: To be able to hold the space for curiosity about your daughter being non-binary and, a lesbian, like that's, amazing that your generation is doing that for the, is, are they gen Z is like, I'm a millennial.

they're millennials.

millennials. Okay. So like the, the millennials.

like gen Z's and like the COVID generation that's coming up.

Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. It's part of sharing of the wisdom

is,

Kimberly: Yeah.

[: 00:10:53

So you can go find it. And, I had so much joy talking with my adult daughter as two adults about something that can be a little tricky to talk about. So yeah, I've come a long way. Thanks to you.

Kimberly: That's. I mean, that's amazing. And just being able to have the courage to have those conversations and to be curious.

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[00:11:33] And we judge ourselves, we judge who we are. And as a business owner, we judge our businesses. We judge the amount of money we're making, and that prevents us from actually making progress. Progress is found through curiosity. If you're upset where you are financially judging yourself and beating yourself up is not going to move the needle forward.

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[00:12:12] What were the actions was I actively selling? Was I not promoting myself? What and how questions will give you strategy. And they will give you new opportunities to discover so long as you get curious, and you remove yourself from the judgmental identity piece of like, why do I suck, fail, make mistakes? We're all human. We're all gonna fail and make mistakes, but it's a part of the journey.

Laurin: Yeah.

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Kimberly: Oh, Yeah.

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[00:13:15] And we were talking with angel investors, and venture capital funds. I was like, oh my gosh, this is actually going to take off the two years of labor that I'd put in. And then suddenly bam, my business partner said he wanted to buy me out and we had a disagreement based on some values and some actions that I had taken in the business.

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[: 00:13:47

[00:14:07] I was a freight train, but this crushed me. And I'm so grateful for that experience now because it taught me the wisdom of building a business based on mutual values, especially a partnership. Because so often when you start a partnership-based business, you're starting it based off of passion. It's just like an intimate relationship where it's like, oh, he's hot.

[: 00:14:28

[00:14:47] Oh, I see it too. And there's that passion and that excitement, but unless you're matched on a spiritual level of values, when challenges come and they will say, when not if, and they will, it is your values in which you make the decisions from. And when you and your partner are not aligned, just like in a romantic relationship, when you and your partner are not aligned in mutual based values.

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[00:15:26] And fortunately, this has allowed me to help, some of my clients navigate. You know, buyouts in their own business and handle the loss of, losing a partner, losing a team member because of that lack of mutual values and really building a business that is based on those core values.

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[00:16:06] And she was able to attract new team members who actually elevated into that role that she had wanted her partner to be in, but he wasn't really because of the mismatch of values, he wasn't missing the mark. And these other team members didn't have the opportunity to shine because of the values mismatched, because their values didn't align with the partner, either.

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[00:17:16] Versus my opinion, as what evolved was, I believe that when you start a business, you start it small and scrappy. Rather than like, you can start it with, you know, hiring marketing teams and PR teams, but unless they're actually really delivering a serious ROI, you can be in for quite a substantial deficit in your initial capital,

Laurin: Yeah.

Kimberly: That if, if you hire a bunch of help and then it, you don't know what you're doing, it leading it.

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And I do not do that anymore. I also own a hundred percent of my company, so that also has helped to.

Laurin: Yeah.

That does, make a benefit. Well, that's really useful and you have, taught me that, values-based thing. That's how I hired my assistant. And she was the first one to ask for an interview, when I put up my values-based advertisement for help and it's working wonderfully.

So it works, but I never would've of leading values then saying what you were looking for as far as work goes. Totally aligned perfectly with someone else whose values were very similar. So

Kimberly: Yeah.

because you can teach any skill set, editing a podcast, answering emails, any of these like skill sets you can teach, you can teach someone how to clean your house, the way you like it cleaned, but if they don't have the value of having a growth mindset, they won't want to learn it.

If they don't have the value of attention to detail, then they aren't going to be, as it may be attentive as you may be to certain things.

So it does come down to being clear about what are those values that you really value. Any skill set that we have, we've learned that. We didn't know how to even walk as babies. We're born very, very average with our skill set. And

it's simply like being able to eat, poop and, sleep. Like that's it. Everything else is learned.

Laurin: Yes.

Kimberly: And because everything else is learned that means that we can teach something that we're doing, a process, to anyone else so long as that person is aligned on the same values.

Laurin: So I'm going to shift gears, just sort of, not a full gear. You were on a TEDx talk and I know that goal. So, tell us a little bit about what the talks about and how you did that.

Kimberly: So, the talk is called becoming a warrior for possibility. And it was a hundred percent manifested to be honest. I did put in some work, but it was fully in alignment with my belief that it can be like surrendering the how and surrendering the timeframe. So, I've had the desire to have a Ted talk for three years now.

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And like in a birth, beautiful birthing center, it's on Netflix. It literally is on Netflix and a show called Being Dad. But

Laurin: About that. Yes.

Kimberly: Yeah. but the, the Ted talk came from, I was in Australia and we were in the part of Australia that wasn't severely locked down. You just didn't want to leave the state. But as long as you didn't leave the state, it was pretty much free as can be.

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[00:21:48] I saw one, I saw of unique positioning in the marketplace because in LA I'm one of them. 5 million people that wants to have a Ted talk versus in Australia, I'm the weird American who's living abroad. Who got stuck there in a pandemic I want to do a Ted talk. That's a unique value proposition right there. And so I just started looking at, Are there Ted talks and it just, I just Googled it. And I found a few, I reached out to a couple and then on the day that my son was born, yes, I checked my email 16 hours after I gave birth.

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Yeah, We'd love to meet with you. Okay, cool. I was, I was in the running. I was being considered and they checked out my stuff. But it took,

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[00:22:17] And I connected with him because he done some art and sculptures for Burning Man. And I was like, I've always wanted to go to Burning Man. So I, I connected. I said, you know, I'm from LA and here's my story. And we connected. And so on that day, when I went to meet with him, He said, there's one spot left.

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[00:23:17] And my one big idea is that we can all be warriors for possibility, and that your life is a testimony for what's possible, and people are watching and living into the vision of what I was at the time, living my dream, living, what Spike and I, my husband's Spike and I had envisioned for our relationship and for our children to live abroad to have our kids raised abroad to have them experience different cultures.

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[00:24:05] And I said, just a heads up. I think I may need your support. Keep your fingers crossed for me. And I tend to keep my goals pretty close to the chest. I'm not an outward projector of goals. I'm not the type that goes and blast goals out to the world because I feel like then I get a reflection back of things that I don't necessarily want to see that can dissuade me from that.

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[00:24:05] She helped me craft it. She'd been, a children's book author, actually. And she helped me craft that I use actually posts from when my dad was in the hospital. Writing was incredibly cathartic for me to be able to process through the healing. And so, some of the pieces, because I interweaved the decision-making strategy of being able to decide what it really means to decide that's what my and that making an actual decision is quite bad-ass because to decide means to literally cut down any other possibilities.

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[00:25:31] But, that story element and the learning lesson on top of it, I was able to weave in both and because I'd just been so used to going on podcasts, speaking about these experiences, I wasn't really nervous. Like I'd had the training in professional speaking. I've been doing professional speaking; I've done over 200 podcasts interviews on other people's podcasts.

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[00:26:06] On the last day, the day before the Ted talk was going to happen. My friend from Brisbane said she would come down and watch my kids, so my husband could be there to watch it with me, and to be there, to experience that moment with me. that's something that I. Brisbane to where I was living was basically two hours away, which is something people don't drive even 45 minutes to date someone across town in Los Angeles.

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[00:26:42] And it really came from that principle of learning to trust your intuition. Trust, to lean into the yes, when you really feel that desire within you and when it's a dream and a goal that is meant for you, that you have, I personally believe that your dreams were placed on your heart by the divine and that those dreams were given to you to create and enact so that you can become the person that version of you, who is the one who is leading that. Well, had I cowered or backed down from the opportunity, I wouldn't have been living into it and into who I was meant to be. And so it was a phenomenal experience. I've had teams come up to me back in LA, say like, oh my gosh, you're the Ted girl. I played that Ted talk for my team for like Monday mode.

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It's essential for achieving what it is that you want.

Laurin: Yeah, lovely. I'm so excited about that. I've watched it a couple of times. It's awesome. I highly recommend it. We will put a link in the show notes to that Ted talk because it's really fun to watch. And now you've got the backstory.

Kimberly: You got the backstory. Three weeks to a Ted talk.

Laurin: And now I know who to call when I need a coach. When I get to do a Ted talk,

Kimberly: Yes. Yeah. Rachel Rodriguez. She's amazing.

Laurin: there we go.

All right. Well, we're just about at, at the end of our time. So I have some rapid fire questions that I'm going to rapid-fire at you.

Kimberly: Bring Laurin.

Laurin: First thing on at the top of your head is what we need. So who is, or was the wisest person in your life?

Kimberly: Probably my dad.

Laurin: Okay. Is there a nugget of wisdom?

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And that was a big piece that served me very well and, and growing my business.

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[00:28:55] And then, the other piece was, very much generosity. Going through. I just recently this past weekend went through some of his stuff. And I found this drawer full of thank you notes from people that I'm like, who's this person, who's this person. Like one kid, he paid for some kid's education.

[: 00:29:21

And, that I hope is, is something that is, is honoring his memory.

Laurin: Yeah, that's lovely. That's lovely. What's your favorite self-care practice?

Kimberly: Working out, working out. I'm currently on the seventy-five-day hard challenge where you work out twice a week, twice a day, not twice a week, twice a day. And so that's, that's kicking my butt in a whole new way, but it's helping me work that skill set of discipline it becoming more disciplined. And it is that skill set is, is definitely evolving.

Other parts of my business that I'm very excited about.

Laurin: All right. Great. And what lights you up when you're feeling down?

Kimberly: Working out. my boys too. But like, like they, they definitely do. It depends on how I'm feeling down. Like if I'm feeling down and stressed out because I have a baby screaming in my face. Well, I love them, but it's generally not them. It's generally like I need to go for a run, honey. My husband, he is hysterical. He, he, he makes me laugh constantly every day.

I am very blessed to, to make sure that my, my laugh quotient is filled every single day, because he is just a funny, funny man

Laurin: He's a hoot. I in your coaching program I got one session with him and it was unforgettable.

Kimberly: Yeah, he's, he's quite humorous and he's, he's amazing. So it just depends on what is currently getting me down.

Laurin: Okay. And what's your favorite mantra or affirmation?

Kimberly: The one that I'm currently using that's I am fully supported. I am fully supported and just being able to really receive that support. That that's the key one, of every dream, every goal. Everything. Because so often we are so good at Trying to do it all on our own versus really enrolling the support of our angels, guides, universe, people around us, who we don't even know are supporting us, but that they are. And the more you recognize that you are totally supported. Like even if you are necessarily blessed to have a partner who understands your business.

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Laurin: That's awesome. Can you tell us the best place to find you online.

Kimberly: Crownyourself.com and at alltheplaces@crownyourself.now.

Laurin: .And she's got crown herself TV and, and the queen beat. I'm going to get the titles wrong. You've got a podcast.

Kimberly: We have the Princess and the B podcast. you love podcasts like this, that have stimulating conversations that are all about eradicating those self-limiting beliefs that are blocking you from becoming the queen bee of your life. That is what the Princess and the B is about, women on their rise to their reign.

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So we had all, we had all the different layers and levels.

Laurin: I'm getting there.

Kimberly: Yeah, if you like, if you like social media, we're on all the places at CrownYourself now. And if you love this conversation, just head on over to CrownYourself.com and I'd be more than happy to have a conversation with you.

Laurin: Yeah, it'd be great. And we'll have all of those links in the show notes. So you'll be able to find that pretty easily. It's been such a wonderful experience having here today, Kim. I love with you. And it's, it's so fun to just be able to really have a deep conversation with you without us being in a coaching situation.

Kimberly: With, without me having to kick your ass,

Laurin: Yeah.

Kimberly: it's nice to just have like a legit conversation instead of like a, like a Royal…

Laurin: It's like, oh, I got more stuff to work on. Right

Kimberly: the pleasure is completely mutual. It is such a joy to see you just standing in your power. And I know what your vision is and what you're creating, and you are becoming everyday more and more the, the, the woman who, who already has it. And I see it coming true. And it's beautiful.

Laurin: Thank you. Well, you, you are a massive part part of my support systems. So I appreciate that a lot. It's been wonderful. I want to thank our listeners for listening and joining us in this conversation. I hope you can feel the joy that Kim and I have , when we're in each other's company.

And from my heart to yours, I wish for you curiosity, joy, courage, and possibility.

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[00:34:56] If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future fabulous conversations. And if you had any ahas, please share them in a review so we can continue to pay forward the unique wisdom we all have. If you want to know more about me or my intuitive energy healing practice, please head over to my website www.heartlightjoy.com.

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[00:35:37] Please join me again next week for another episode of Curiously Wise. From my heart to yours, may your life be filled with love, light joy, and of course, curiosity.