Laura Kåmark
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold Make Waves Podcast, a show bringing you inspiring stories of women who are growing and scaling their business. I’m your host, Laura Kåmark, a website and tech integration specialist who works with online business owners who love their work and not their website. Join me as we have incredible conversations about business mindset, productivity, and of course, the website and tech behind the business. Let’s go ahead and dive in to this week’s episode.

Laura Kåmark
Hello, and welcome to the show today. For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is Laura Kåmark. I’m a website and tech integration specialist who works with coaches and consultants who love their work, but not their website. I am so excited for my guest today, Kiah Twisselman Burchett, who’s known as coach Kiah. Kiah is a cattle rancher turned a motivational speaker and life coach on a mission to empower others to love themselves deeper, care for themselves better and find joy in this messy, beautiful journey of life. After battling with her own weight and body image from a young age, she embarked on her own personal health journey, losing over 100 pounds. But more importantly, the mental weight she had been carrying with her for years. Her story has been shared in People Magazine. Good Morning America, the Kelly Clarkson show women’s health, and more as she uses her story to empower others to be the main characters of their own. Kiah, Thank you so much for being here today. Can you tell our listeners just a little more about who you are and what you do in this wonderful world?

Kiah Burchett
Yes, well, first of all, Laura, thank you so much for having me, it is such an honor to be on the show. I think that the bio covered a lot of it. But maybe some of the things that it didn’t include is that I really feel like I am a professional hype woman in all sorts of ways. I am the kind of person that when I get on stage, I will incite a dance party. And if you aren’t dancing with me, I might make you a little bit uncomfortable. But by the end of that, I promise we’ll be best friends. I have the incredible honor and privilege of working with women from all across the country through my coaching work in helping them rebuild their relationship with themselves and go after their big bold dreams when I’m not on stage or when I’m not coaching, you might find me karaoking I listen, I just love a good microphone, I guess in all sorts of ways. I also the podcasts of my own. So there you go. Another another microphone. And I love a good kitchen dance party. So that’s a little bit more about me.

Laura Kåmark
I love that I love all the dance party videos you post on Instagram, it is one of my favorite things to do every day is check out your Instagram and just watch you having a dance party because I find it very inspiring. And it brings me so much joy. So thank you for that.

Kiah Burchett
Of course I hope that you dance along with me.

Laura Kåmark
I think about it, but I don’t always

Kiah Burchett
you know Alex app OG. So that’s good. So I would love

Laura Kåmark
to go back a little bit and talk about your business journey in the online space. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into coaching?

Kiah Burchett
Yeah, I mean, I think the the short version is completely by accident. That’s how I got into coaching in this space. It all happened very organically and unintentionally. Obviously, I have a little bit more intentionality behind it now. But my I guess my educational background is in human development and education, which ironically serves me really well in what I do at this point in my life. But after college, I was convinced it was going to be one of those degrees that I never would actually apply. Because my young professional career really started in the agricultural communications space. So as you mentioned in my bio, I grew up on a cattle ranch. My nieces are now the seventh generation on our family’s cattle ranch. And so agriculture is really just deeply a part of who I am at my core. And I’m so so passionate about agriculture. And what I realized was that my passion that’s even more than agriculture is in people and all sorts of people from all different walks of life. And so what that looked like in terms of my first quote unquote big kid job out of college, landed me a job at the Kentucky Beef Council. And I was the director of Consumer Affairs which essentially I was one of the people that was in charge of representing Kentucky’s 38,000 Plus cattle farmers through advertising campaigns through digital marketing through social media. I was the girl that was on the local news station whipping up recipes for Super Bowl that incorporating beef in two and a half minutes and all sorts of different ways of really communicating with non agricultural people about the benefits of beef, how beef was raised and all sorts of things and I love that job so much because it really wove together to My greatest passions and taught me so much about marketing and communications in so many different avenues. At that role, though, I’m from California originally. And so Kentucky was very far from home. And I realized in that position that I was really homesick. And while I really enjoyed my job, and I learned so much at it, I realized that I was really craving more freedom and flexibility in my life and in my career, and I knew deep down in my bones that a way for me to do that was by eventually creating my own business. And so what that looked like for me at the beginning, was taking some of those skills that I was learning in that field in marketing and communications match with some of my own just innate talents, which is creativity I love to create and all sorts of different ways. And I asked myself, okay, how can I create a side hustle as we like to call it, so that I can dip my toe in the water of what it might look like to have my own business before I decided this is really the direction that I wanted to go. And so my boyfriend, my now husband, but we were just dating at the time. He taught me in the evenings after our nine to five, how to use online design and software like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. And I realized that I had a lot of creative talents for art and, and creating logos and graphics. And I kind of stumbled upon this realization that I also had the skill set of doing watercolor illustration, which was very unexpected. Someone requested a logo that was watercolor, and I’m a bit of a Yes, girl. So I said, Sure, we’ll try it, why not? And what didn’t, you know, it ended up being something that I really loved and that my clients really gravitated towards. So watercolor illustration kind of became my niche in that business. That first business was called Burley and barley creative and editorial. And it was kind of a nod to my husband and my backgrounds. He grew up on a Burley tobacco farm, I grew up on a cattle ranch that also raised barley. And so it was a little bit of a nod to our ag roots. And most of our clients at the time, were farms and ranches and agricultural small businesses that we were really helping to support, not just with graphic and logo design, but I even did some basic website design, some copywriting, some social media consulting, some photography. As I mentioned, I was a Yes girl. So anything they needed. I said, Yeah, sure. I’ll try. I’ll give it a go. And oh, my gosh, was that learning curve? Let me tell you. And that was really the way that I first explored entrepreneurship. Obviously, that is not what I’m currently doing now. And that also kind of organically shifted to me to dive into how that happened. Yes. So we brilliant barley, things were going good. I was lots of growing pains and, and learning about business and taxes, and all that fun stuff that, you know, I honestly didn’t enjoy as much as the actual art piece. And there was a job that came open back in my hometown in California. And I was being recruited to apply and I thought, I’m not qualified nor interested. But I know a guy who was my husband at the time who happened to be not fully satisfied in his job. And so I like to think that I kind of snuck in in a sweet spot in pitching this idea to him, because let me tell you, it is hard to get a southern boy to leave the south. But he applied for this job, which was the executive director of our local slow County Farm Bureau, which actually is the office that I’m sitting in right now it gets better, better Wi Fi than the ranch. So there’s a little rural, rural problems for you. But it happened at a time where I really had to ask myself when we decided to move back to California, do I want to get another nine to five? Or do I want to go all in on this side hustle, because at the time, it wasn’t at the revenue goal that I wanted to before, I really felt fully confident and taking it full time. But when I sat and asked myself, it was okay, do I prolong building a business to be something that could be full time by continuing to do it in the evening hours? Or do I bet on myself and just go all in and trust that it will work out? And I will say that I was privileged in the fact that my husband gave me the financial freedom to be able to say, You know what, babe, I’ve got the rent for a while as you figure this out, why don’t you go ahead and give it a try. And I’m, I’m so so grateful for that. I know, maybe not everybody as they’re starting a small business has that freedom of flexibility. But I’m so grateful that I did and in that first year, I was really able to build that business to an incredible place that I was really proud of far surpassing my my annual salary at my previous job. But what I discovered in that journey was that working and doing art as my business made me kind of resent art a little bit and I found that it was really hard to create for someone else. You know, I had my own When I for art and what I thought looked good, but when you’re doing logo design and illustration for somebody else, what you think looks great does not matter. It’s about what they want. And I found that to be frustrating at that same time, it was so cool to be able to support so many of these small businesses and really be able to bring their visions to life. And I was just kind of still navigating those waters. Now, simultaneously, as all of this was happening, even before I left the job at the Kentucky Beef Council, I had started a health journey of my own. And I had no intention of this ever turning into anything that would really kickstart a business, which it has and what I’m currently doing today. It happened by accident a little bit. I’m someone who, as you mentioned in my bio have struggled with weight and body image for years and years and years. And it it wasn’t because I didn’t try, I tried all the things, all the fad diets, all the programs, and each one of them just left me feeling more hopeless than the last. But while I was in Kentucky, I got on a plane to go to a work trip in Arizona. And as I got on that flight, I squeezed my button to the seat. And it was the first time that I ever had to ask for a seat belt extender. And I remember in that moment being so flooded with shame and embarrassment about that. And I happened to buy a book that day from the airport bookstore, it was Rachel Hollis says, girl wash your face. And the only thing I could do to distract myself from bursting into tears in front of a fully packed plane was just to shove my face into that book. And you can call it coincidence, you can call it divine intervention. But there was a message in that book that I needed to see that day. And I was at a point in time, a moment in time that I was really ready to receive it. And the message had to do with ownership. It was this wake up call that I had really been playing a victim in my life in a big way. I had been playing a victim to my genetics saying, Well, I was born this way, there’s no way I can get healthier because it’s just the the handout was dealt, I played a victim to my job saying I don’t have the time or money or resources to afford the fancy gym memberships or the fancy weight loss programs. I blamed my partner saying if he doesn’t hop on the dieting bandwagon with me, then I can’t be successful. And I realized that I was giving all of my power to everyone outside of me. And it was a hard pill to swallow, but also the most freeing feeling in my life to realize if it was my choices that got me here, in a place where I’m unhappy, unhealthy, unfulfilled, unsatisfied with my career, and my life and my lifestyle, then it gets to be my choices. They get me somewhere else. And that moment really sparked it really was as catalysts for my personal development journey, but also my business journey. That’s also what really inspired me to start the side hustle in the first place. And I started really focusing on habit development and diving more into personal development, I finally started to listen to this podcast thing that everybody was talking about, I finally opened up the app on my phone and started following different coaches and entrepreneurs. And it opened up my eyes to just what’s possible in the world and made me realize the power, that mindset played in all of it. And so I really just kind of put my head down and did the work on myself. And fast forward a year happened to lose over 100 pounds in that first year of doing this work. And as I shared online about it just with friends and family with no with no really intention of doing anything, but telling people all the things that I was learning because I just wanted other people to know, I thought, gosh, if I would have known all this mindset stuff earlier, imagine how my life would change. I want to just scream it from the rooftops. And I started doing that. And wouldn’t you know it, people were really receptive of it. I started getting messages asking people asking me, Hey, like, you know, can I hire you as a coach? And I thought at the time, what me a coach, like, I’m qualified to do that. Like, I don’t have any fancy credentials or certifications, like what does a coach even do? But I’m a bit of a Yes, girl. And so I thought, You know what, if you’re willing to trust me to be your coach, I’m willing to try to be your coach, and we’ll just learn together and I fell in love with it. I had never felt more aligned in my entire life. And I just kind of followed that nudge and that urge and that desire, and the more people ask, the more that I served. And it wasn’t until the folks that work at beef, it’s what’s for dinner, the National cattle and beef Association approached me and said, Hey, Kai, we love your story. We love this health transformation that you’ve had. We know that you, you know you ate beef through the whole part of it. You happen to be media trained, can we pitch your story? And I said yes, unsurprisingly, and they happen to pitch my story to People Magazine, which picked it up in there June 2020 issue and then they pitched it to good Morning America, it was on Access Hollywood. And it turned into this flood of media coverage. Because let’s be honest, Laura, before and after pictures are sexy and get a lot of clicks. And so that story happened to get translated into over 40 languages that I’m aware of. And it flooded to the media and it reached 1.5 billion people that summer, that story alone. And of course, you know, as I translated, the stories, all of the story of it got misconstrued in lots of different ways. But what happened was, it made my Instagram platform blow up really overnight, in a kind of a crazy time of the world. It’s in the middle of a pandemic, but it gave me the opportunity to ask myself, do I want to continue doing my Burley and barley creative and editorial work, which has been really great, and I’m so proud of myself for building my business up to a very sustainable place? Or do I want to pivot and go all in on this coaching thing that’s just lighting my heart on fire, and I decided to say goodbye to all of my brilliant barley clients and dissolve that business. And I have been full time coaching ever since.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, my goodness, what a story. I I love that all so much. I love how you listen to the nudge. I think it can be so hard when we feel this kind of intuitive pole. Yeah, to to hear it when there’s a lot of noise going on the world. So I love that you leaned into that. And you were like, I’m loving this. And you started, you just went for it. I love that so much. So inspirational. And so now you are coaching women on finding their joy on becoming confident. Tell me a little more about what are some of the things that you help your clients with?

Kiah Burchett
Yeah. So when I first started coaching, the women that were approaching me were other women who wanted to lose weight, right, they saw this transformation. And they said, I want that too. And so I started kind of in that realm really working with women who wanted to lose weight. But what I realized was, is that what I wanted for my own self, and what all these other women wanted, when they came to me, they thought it was weight loss. And what I discovered in my own journey was that wasn’t necessarily weight loss that I wanted. It was what I thought weight loss would mean, in my life. What I wanted was more freedom. What I wanted was more energy. What I wanted was more self love, more self confidence. And all of these things that I realized I wanted that I thought weight loss would mean happened to be feelings and emotions. And what I learned was that feelings and emotions aren’t born of circumstance, they aren’t born of you getting on a scale and having certain numbers flashed on the screen. Those feelings and emotions that we create are born of thought. And what that meant was that I was able to start learning how to start giving myself those feelings and things that I wanted before losing a single pound. And so my my coaching journey kind of started by working with these women who wanted to lose weight. And what I discovered was, I don’t want to be a weight loss coach, I don’t want to help women lose weight. I think that there are so many more important things in this world than someone’s body mass and someone’s size and shape. What I wanted to help people in these women do was rebuild their relationships with themselves to tap back into what it looks like to love and accept yourself. Regardless of what you weigh, regardless of how your body will inevitably continue to change and evolve as you do. We are constantly changing and evolving beings, especially as women, we go through so many different things in our life as our body changes, if you navigate, you know, carrying a child and bringing life into this world through menopause through aging, and I realized I don’t want to teach women how to try to look a certain way. I want to teach them how to feel a certain way, regardless of how they look. And what I discovered was by helping these women rebuild that relationship with themselves, just like this happened for me. When you learn to love and accept yourself as you are, you start showing up and treating yourself as someone who loves and accepts themselves. And for some women, the result of that might be weight loss, and it might not be and that’s okay. And so what I do right now with women, is I realized I started with doing one on one coaching, and I loved it so much. But I hit a point where I said, Okay, if I want to grow my business, I cannot create more hours in the day. So my option is if I want to serve more women is to find ways that I can do that without trading dollars for hours. And so I created my first digital course as a result of that I knew I wanted to share these tools with as many women as possible. So how can I create these tools in a package that I can offer to more people? So I created my first digital course I went through Amy Porterfield stitch Joe course Academy, which was my first big investment in my business and full transparency, it scared the crap out of me at the time, I had never spent that much money on myself. And it was the best gift that I could have ever given myself and my business. So I started doing that it ended up evolving into this membership community with ongoing support. And recently, I’ve pivoted again in my business and realize that for me, and what honoring my own energy looks like, means that I need more whitespace in the calendar. And while the membership model is a beautiful model for so many people in so many businesses, I realized that I needed time in my calendar, where I wasn’t constantly creating, you’re constantly coaching. And so now I do a small group, almost like a mastermind, three month group coaching, where I really help these women tap into what is it that they want in their life, and a lot of the women that come to me now are usually in a transition period, maybe they want to start a business, maybe they are empty nesting, and they’re trying to figure out who they are, if they’re not a mom, maybe they are going through a divorce and wanting to find out who they are separate from being in that relationship. And what I really want to help women do is rediscover the power within them to tap back into their self worth, and really care for themselves in the way that they deserve while pursuing the things that are on their heart. And that’s going to look different for every single person.

Laura Kåmark
Oh my gosh, I love that. And I think it’s such important work that you’re doing because it is like the self love. And it’s, it’s hard. That’s not something that’s really talked about a whole lot to be honest, self care is talked to a lot but not self love. So I love that you are going out and and kind of standing on the podium and saying this is what is important. And what we need to be focusing on because it can change everything.

Kiah Burchett
It’s so true. And I think we just live in a society where we’re so focused on or I think a lot of us fall prey to this, what I call the lie of once. And we all have our own flavor or iteration of what this lie of one sounds like. So for me for most of my young life, the lie of ones I was hearing was, I’ll finally be happy and love myself, once I lose the weight. That was my story. I was waiting to feel worthy of the things that I wanted until I looked a certain way. And this can have lots of different iterations. And I noticed this lie sneak back into my life. And I’m not managing my mind and where my headspace is at. And maybe it sounds like, I’ll finally feel successful. Once I reach a certain revenue point in my business, I’ll finally feel content, once I buy the house, once I live in that place, once I find the relationship once, whatever that thing is. And I call this alive once there’s actually a term for it in psychology called the arrival fallacy. And it’s a fallacy because we have all this belief that all of these things that we want on the other side of an achievement. And really, those achievements are just moments in time, when the truth is that those things that we want happiness, love success, fulfillment, like I mentioned earlier, don’t come from our circumstances. They come from our thinking from our thoughts from our beliefs that we have about us. And so instead of reserving or delaying the gratification that we are seeking, for once we achieved something, how can we create those emotions and feelings right now in our in our in our lives? My tagline for my coaching business is finding joy in the journey. And the reason that I say that is because I think that we get so fixated on reaching the destination of I use this mountain analogy a lot. And I think a lot of us have our eye on the peak of this mountain thinking that’s I’m just climbing to get to that peak. And once I get there, everything is going to change. But reaching the top of a mountain is one moment and a much longer journey. And that journey is where life happens. So how can we create space for us to actually enjoy that journey? Because if we don’t, we’re missing out on our lives and, and really being able to feel those things that we want, as we take baby steps along the way. And the other thing is, once you reach up that mountain, you’re going to look up and realize, dang it. This is a series of mountain ranges, there’s a lot more mountains that I have yet to climb.

Laura Kåmark
I love that analogy so much. I would like to know when you find yourself getting into that once gone. Is there anything that you do or that you can tell our audience to maybe tools they can use to help recognize it and then get themselves out of that?

Kiah Burchett
Yes. Oh my gosh, yes. I think that the first step in any growth journey is always awareness. You can’t figure out how to get where you’re going if you don’t even know where you’re at. And the same is true when it comes to your mindset. And I don’t think a lot of us are taught how to be more mindful or even be aware of the thoughts that are happening in our brain. Humans have between 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. Odds are some of those are going to be crappy thoughts that don’t really They serve us. And about 80% of those thoughts are habitual. They’re ones that we brought with us to this day or yesterday from the day before, from the day before that. And there is this author that I love Jon Acuff, and he has a book called soundtracks that I highly, highly recommend. And he talks about a lot of these soundtracks are just these repetitive thoughts that we’ve had for a long time. And sometimes there are thoughts that aren’t true thoughts that tell us how we’re unworthy how we’re failures, how, you know, whatever, whatever that sound is for you. And I think that sometimes we think, Okay, I just want to get rid of and remove these thoughts. And I’m so sorry. But that’s not an option, because congratulations, you’re a human being. And that means that you can’t avoid negative thoughts ever. Right? They’re still going to be there. And so I think the the answer isn’t to try to remove them, but learning how to turn the dial down on those soundtracks and turn up the dial on the soundtracks that do serve us. So how the heck do we even do that? Well, tapping back to awareness, we first have to even get aware of what are the soundtracks? What are the repetitive thoughts that I even had going on in my brain, I have found in my own life, and in the lives of the women that I work with that an incredible tool to do this is through journaling. And I can already hear some people listening to this thing like journaling. Great. One more thing to add to my to do list. This is why I think journaling is so powerful. Journaling is a way for you to literally be able to take the thoughts from your mind, put them on paper and separate yourself from your thoughts. A lot of us get so caught up in our own stories, we identify with our thoughts, and we believe that they are true, but you are not your thoughts, you are simply an observer of your thoughts. And so if we can literally create this physical space between ourselves and our thoughts, and we can actually observe them on paper, we can get to the root of why we maybe feel a certain way, why we’re stuck, if we can get to the core of like, oh, I realize now that one of my core beliefs is that I am not successful or worthy until I make this certain amount of money, we can see that and change the story, we can we can tell ourselves a different story. But we can’t do that until we understand what is going on at first. And so I love using journaling as a place to brain dump, and to hold space with just no judgment and only compassionate curiosity for what’s going on, to just write down all the things and then filtering through and ask ourselves, is this true? Or does this just feel true? Because I’ve been telling myself for so long. I also find that journaling is really, really helpful when it comes to rewiring and reprogramming our brain. I think a lot of us believe that it’s it’s too late or too old. But there is science and research to show that we can create new synapses in our brain, which is great news. Because that means we can really start using this mindfulness work to, to really change the way that we think and to change these patterns. And one of the greatest ways to do this. And what I started as I started, my health journey, was beginning with gratitude. And I know it sounds so cheesy and overdone, but it’s not. It is scientifically proven that the more that we increase our gratitude, the more happiness and joy will discover in our life. There is this quote that I am going to see if I can find it. I just wrote it down yesterday. It is from a guy named Greg McAllen. And he said if you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. But if you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack. And just starting your day with something as simple as three things you’re grateful for will automatically put you in a mindset of more abundance instead of starting the day. Like I think a lot of us do and get caught in the spiral of which is oh my gosh, I have so much to do today I’m so behind on this my to do list is so long. If you start the day from that place, your brain is going to try to prove that belief true. It’s called confirmation bias. Our brains are literally hardwired to seek evidence to prove your thoughts and beliefs true. So if you begin your day believing it’s going to be a shitty day sorry to say that word on here and find your brain is gonna be like alright, today’s gonna be a crappy day. Let’s find all the evidence it that we see to prove that true. But if you begin your day, intentionally with gratitude, thinking oh my gosh, I am so blessed beyond measure guess what your brain is gonna go to work for you the rest of that day finding evidence to prove that thought

Laura Kåmark
and belief true. I love that so much and that it’s I think such a good reminder because I know that I have tried in the past to like do the morning gratitude journaling and I have not always been the best about staying on track with that so I think that’s such a good reminder and I love that and I love all the science behind it as well. That’s thank you for all that. Of course I I would also like to know like what would you say that you’re doing that’s make that’s you being bold in the industry, something you’re kind of doing look different than A lot of the other coaches in this space,

Kiah Burchett
who this is a great question. And I think there’s lots of other examples of people that are doing this really, really well, too. And it’s something that I really tried to embody. And that is allowing my humaneness and imperfection, to show and shine through everything that I do. I think that when we are in a space of maybe being a service provider, or being a coach like this, right, women literally hire me, to help guide them through some of the things that they’re struggling with. And I noticed when I first started coaching, I felt this pressure on myself of like, I have, I have to know the answers, I have to I have to do all the right things, I have to live perfectly in alignment with all the things I teach, because if not, I will be a fraud. And what I discovered in this work is that the more I allow my humaneness to show, the more that I allow myself to be vulnerable, vulnerable, and messy, the more I can actually connect with my clients, I had this idea that people would want to work with someone who was perfect, who was a perfect example of how to do all the right things. And that could not be farther from the truth. People want to work with someone they can connect with. People want to work with someone who, who is able and willing to show like, Hey, I don’t I don’t do everything right all the time. And this is what I’m going to do today to help get myself right on the right on track, right, they want to be able to see an example of someone who is showing up messy and imperfect and continuing to love themselves through that process. And so I never want to be someone who gets puts myself on this pedestal or becomes his high horse of thinking, I am an expert, all the things and I know exactly what you should do. And you should follow my lead, I want to be like, Guess what I woke up this morning, also in a bad headspace telling myself all these crappy things that I know aren’t true. And today just kind of stinks. But this is what I’m going to do. Anyways, I know that moving my body and he’s feeling better, I know that having a dance party makes me feel better, and tomorrow’s gonna be a better day. And if I can be more human, more real, more flawed and vulnerable. That is what actually creates true

Laura Kåmark
connection. I love that so much. And I feel like that is something that I’ve had a conversation with many of my friends and colleagues in the in the online space. A lot of times when they’re talking about, like creating a training, and for a summit or something, and they talk about removing the arms. And I’ve told what my belief on that is, don’t remove the arms, don’t remove the mistakes. I mean, granted, my child comes in and like it completely interrupts me, I’m gonna cut that out. It’s not relevant. But little arms or imperfections that come through that makes you human. And that makes it so the audience can connect with you. So instead of again, trying to record the perfect quote unquote, real you know, replay workshop, the perfect recording, just be yourself. And so I love that so much. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we connect so well. For sure, because it’s, I know, I look up to you and see you as an inspiration for just being you. For sure.

Kiah Burchett
You. I think it’s I just said, um, I think it’s funny that that just happened, but

Laura Kåmark
perfect timing, didn’t even notice it. But

Kiah Burchett
she, I totally just had a brain fart. I had something really profound to say, Laura, just know that just know, I had something very profound to say, um, what was I gonna say? I can’t remember, Oh, I remember one of the things that I really pride myself on. And I think a signal to me, okay, this means I must be living in alignment with what I want to do, which is really embodying and embracing my humaneness with love and compassion, imperfectly. When I meet someone out in the wild for the first time, and they say, you’re just like, you seem online. That is such a compliment to me, because, and granted, I’m a human. And so of course, I don’t show all of my messy human stuff. Of course, I have things that are still private to me in my own life. And when I do share, I want it to be from a place of healing, like vulnerability, but I don’t want I want to allow myself the space to like process through things before I share about them, if that makes sense. But if someone comes up to me and says, you’re just like, you are online, I feel like we’re best friends and you’re the same person. Yes, that’s what I want. I want someone to be able to, to feel like I am being authentic to myself. And, and I will say, as an Enneagram. Three, I’ve gotten really into personality and like typing systems lately. I recognize that one of one of my gifts as an Enneagram three. For those who aren’t familiar, the Enneagram. The three is an achiever. We’re really motivated by success and other people seeing us as successful and one of my gifts is I’m able to walk into a room, read the people and know who to be in that space to connect with them and be the most successful. However, our strengths are also sometimes our weaknesses. And so one of my weaknesses as a three is I’m so good about being who I think other people want me to be, that it’s easy to lose who I am and separate from other people’s perceptions of me. And so my authenticity journey, and I’m not saying that I’m trying to be manipulative or not my authentic self. But I really just want to make sure that I’m always being who I am in whatever space that is, whether I’m sharing on Instagram, or whether I meet you at a coffee shop, or if I’m speaking to you on stage.

Laura Kåmark
Oh, my gosh, I love that so much. And thank you for explaining more about the Enneagram as well to our audience. I think that is so amazing. And something to really, that’s a huge compliment. Because I know, there’s some times where people have made comments to me about something. And they’re like, Oh, you make it look so easy. I’m like, I don’t want to make it look easy. Always like it’s not easy. It’s entrepreneurship is hard. There’s a lot of things like levers pull, I try to be so transparent with people and I am always tell everyone, like I’m an open book, ask me whatever you want to know, because I’m more than happy to share my journey. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to create this podcast is to really kind of pull back the curtain. Yeah, and so that people can just hear more about the journey, because I feel like so much. That’s what they see is what’s put out there on social media and not really seeing like the back end of, of the journey. So I love that so much. Thank you for sharing. We are getting close to our time. But I do have just a couple more questions that I do want to ask you, one of them being I am such a big fan of celebration, and I know you are as well. But I would love to hear if you can pick one thing that you have celebrated in your business in your journey. What would that be? Oh,

Kiah Burchett
this is so good. And yes, I’m a big believer in celebration, let’s do all the celebrating. One thing we’re celebrating right now in this season, is actually giving myself more space, to be introspective, to say no to things to stop doing things and give myself permission to change directions and pivot, which has been very, very scary. And one thing that I have experienced so far in entrepreneurship, and I think maybe you’ll relate Laura is I don’t think I anticipated how much self discovery and self work and like old wounds would come up through entrepreneurship as you navigate the messy parts of it. And I feel like I’m really, in this season of tapping back into myself into my own energy into what’s next for me and giving myself permission to kind of rebuild scratch some things. I went through a really hard season of burnout this last year. And so I’m giving myself space to kind of rework my business. And while that feels very scary, I’m so proud of myself for doing

Laura Kåmark
that. I love that. And it is okay for us to pivot and make changes. I mean, that’s all part of the growth. And that’s something I always say like, even like with websites, you know, I build websites for online entrepreneurs. And it’s not we build it in, it’s done. It’s gonna have different iterations because our businesses grow and they change and our offers change. And that’s okay.

Kiah Burchett
Yeah, I think it’s like reminding myself too, that I chose to be an entrepreneur for this reason for the flexibility for, you know, the freedom to be able to follow my joy. And sometimes I think I can forget that I can start operating a little bit like I’m back in a nine to five and I’m like, way, way, way, way, way, kind of take a step back. You’re the boss, and we get to decide what’s next. Now, I love that.

Laura Kåmark
Okay, my final question for you today that it’s something I asked everyone who comes on the show, what is one piece of advice you would give someone when they’re first starting out their business that would help them be bolder, be louder and make waves?

Kiah Burchett
I would say to fail your way forward. I think the thing that stops so many of us from trying anything new is this fear of failure, this fear of Well, I don’t know how to do it. Well, I don’t have all the pieces I don’t have those resources. And it’s so easy to look at the people that we admire doing the things that we want to do and think Yeah, but they must be more skilled at this than me they must have more access to resources than me they’ve been doing this for so long. And I think it’s important for us to remember that the people that are achieving the things that we want to do at levels that we could only ever dream of the reason that they got there is because they failed their freakin faces off and you every single failure you learn so so much and so I know we’ve heard it before but I I just want to reiterate it here is that you’ve got to start, but you have to be willing to start very, very messy. You cannot get really good at something unless you’re willing to be really bad at it first. And that can feel scary and vulnerable. Because we don’t want to seem incompetent. We don’t want other people to look at us and think, Who does she thinks she is. But so much of it is our own ego getting in our own way. And so, if you have not failed recently at something, this is your sign to go out there and start failing some more because I truly, truly believe that that’s how we create big, bold, beautiful things.

Laura Kåmark
I love that so much. And I think that is such an amazing advice for all of us to really follow. So thank you for that. Where tell the audience where can they find you? Where? Where do you hang out? How can everyone get a little more Kiah in their life?

Kiah Burchett
Yes, I’d love to hang out. I love me some people so I’d love to connect. On social media. My favorite place to hang out is on Instagram. I am Coach underscore Kiah. I’m also on Facebook, I’m kind of on Tik Tok. But Instagram is really my spot. Also LinkedIn, but again, Instagram, that’s where I’m at. I also have a podcast of my own. So assuming that you’re listening to this, you must be a podcast fan. My podcast is called climbing with Coach Kiah. And that is the best place to find me. You can visit CoachKiah.com and my website, you can sign up for my newsletter. I send out a weekly newsletter every Wednesday, with a little sunshine and a little joy. So you can find me over there.

Laura Kåmark
Wonderful. I will link all of that up in the show notes. Kiah, thank you so much for being on the show today. This was so much fun.

Kiah Burchett
Thank you so much for having me, Laura. I appreciate you.

Laura Kåmark
Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode. Be sure to check out the show notes at Laurakamark.com/podcast. And if you’re ready to grow and scale your business, and your current website is outdated and doesn’t reflect the magic you bring and the results you get for your clients. Go to Laurakamark.com To find out how I can help bring your vision to life. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week. By now!