PP 688: Setting A New Season, A New Reason
“We deserve to be able to have fun in everything that we’re doing.” – Kim Sutton
Welcome to the new season of Positive Productivity Podcast!
Thank you for tuning in for the past 600+ episodes and for being with us along this journey. Your support is greatly encouraging.
Like to many areas of our life, 2021 sees the Positive Productivity podcast evolving and adapting to the times.
In today’s episode, Kim shares her great reset and new changes to look forward to! If you are feeling tired, stressed out, or unhappy in your business, this podcast is for you. Like our past seasons, the focus is still on simplifying your business, so you can have more time to do the things that truly make you happy and feel alive. Jump in and let’s start the year with an inspiring topic to keep you motivated and find enjoyment in your work.
Highlights:
00:59 Cutting Back
05:49 Stop SHOULDING!
09:44 How To Play In Your Business
19:45 2021 New Themes
26:27 Exercises & Fitness
Inspirational Quotes:
04:52 “When it wasn’t coming from my heart, the people could feel it, the audience could feel it.” – Kim Sutton
07:03 “If your heart isn’t in it, it’s a waste of money.” – Kim Sutton
08:09 “We need to focus on what’s right for us and what’s right for us now.” – Kim Sutton
10:22 “We deserve to be able to have fun in everything that we’re doing.” – Kim Sutton
15:54 “It’s okay to pause and look at what you’re doing and determine if that’s the right path for you to be on anymore.” – Kim Sutton
21:54 “Don’t ever feel like you are not my equal… All of us are just people.” – Kim Sutton
29:38 “Let the rest go. There is nothing wrong with letting go of what’s not working for you.” – Kim Sutton
Meet Your Host!
Kim Sutton is a Business and Marketing Automation Mentor, Speaker, and Author. She is the host of the Positive Productivity Podcast. Having been through so much including depression, domestic violence, and lack of self-care, Kim’s mission is to help her clients be positively productive by empowering them to achieve success without the burnout. She believes that positive productivity stems from system+support+self-care. Positive productivity is not about perfection, it’s about having Prioritized Purposeful Actions. Today, Kim is out to help fellow entrepreneurs reclaim their lives and make their business work.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
Kim Sutton: How do you want to play in your business, Kim? That’s a question that my friend Richie Otey has been asking me for a couple years now. And it’s a question that I want you to think about not only now, but as you move through today, this week, this month and this year.
Welcome to a new season of Positive Productivity. If you’re new here, welcome. I’d love for you to stick around for a bit, hop on over to my website, let me know what you think of this episode. If you’ve been around for a while, welcome back. I hope you like what you’re about to hear.
I started the Positive Productivity Podcast over four years ago, and I jumped right in ridiculously with a daily show. Now, a lot of you know that in October of 2019? Yeah, 19, I cut it back to two days a week because not only was I getting burnt out, but my team was getting burnt out, and my listeners were as well. I can tell you, I know that for a fact. Because when I cut it back to two episodes a week, my downloads went up. And that was the craziest thing to me. Now, I was a lot about measuring my success based on the number of followers I had and the number of downloads I got. But I can tell you that this version of me, this new season of me, which I’m going to share more about later on this episode doesn’t really give two hoots about that stuff. Downloads, followers, likes and subscribers, those are just numbers and a lot of influencers by them. So I’m just gonna let that go. But when I cut back to two episodes a week, I saw my downloads go up and I was amazed. It was still too much for me, I have to say. There was a lot going on in my life right then, there was a lot going on in my business.
And in January of 2020, I cut back to one episode a week. Now, we all know that 2020 definitely didn’t go as anybody expected it to. Thankfully, I had a whole bunch of episodes already recorded before the quarantine happened and before my kids started hybrid learning, or else I don’t think anything would have gone out for this past year. I’m a mom of five, and as of this week, I am actually recording the night before this episode is going to go live. This week, my twins are turning six. I also have a seven year old, a 15 year old and an 18 year old. So let’s just say that it’s been donkey bonkers around this certain house for the past nine months, 10 months, I don’t know I’ve sort of lost count. I know today is Monday because the kids were in school. But for most of the past four to eight months, I haven’t really had a clue what day the week it was. Weekdays blended in with the weekends, weekends blended in with weekdays. And if it weren’t for reminders popping up in my inbox or my phone, a lot of what the kids needed to do and I needed to do what had just gone, that’s the best way I can put it.
In quarter four of 2020, I felt something change in my heart and in my gut as far as my business was concerned. Somehow, I had managed to get through the summer recording five, sometimes I should say, sometimes five lives a week for YouTube, and three lives a week for Facebook. But I was doing it out of what I felt was an obligation, and it wasn’t an obligation to me. It wasn’t an obligation to my family. It wasn’t even an obligation to you. But it was an obligation because I felt like all these gurus out there were saying you need to go Live. You need to go Live. You should go Live consistently. You should go Live daily. Who cares about the –. When it wasn’t coming from my heart, the people could feel it, the audience could feel it. If you watched any of them, I’m sure you could feel it. I’ll never forget one day when I got feedback on a YouTube video that I had just put out. This lady said, I just got done watching this one video, and I admittedly had to turn it off because it was so dry. But I came to this one, I don’t even remember what the subject was about, and this was so obviously authentic YOU, I really enjoyed it. The difference between those two videos was that one had been from my heart and I had been called to do, and the other one was just, you should, I’m tired of the YOU SHOULD. Are you tired of the you shoulds in a past episode, or two, or dozen?
Guests and I have talked about how we need to stop shutting on ourselves. If you’ve never heard the story, I told my husband one night that I need to stop shooting. And I’m going to spell that out for you because I don’t want you to think I’m swearing, although I do swear a lot. You just probably haven’t heard it on here. But I am saying S-H-O-U-L-D I-N-D, should ind. I told my husband he needed to stop shoulding on himself because he was worrying and stressing about decisions he had made in his past. And he didn’t hear me say SHOULD, he heard me say another S-H word. And out of respect for any kids that might have around you right now, I’m not gonna say that. But you know exactly the word I’m talking about. He thought I was saying that. We all need to stop shoulding on ourselves. But we also need to stop doing it to ourselves right now, just because people are trying to sell you a program about how this platform or this visibility method is doing really well for them and their business does not guarantee that it’s going to do well on yours. And if your heart isn’t in it, it’s a waste of money. You can tell yourself that after you buy this brand new beautiful digital camera that you’re going to start going live five days a week, you can tell yourself that after you buy this live streaming course, you’re going to start doing live streams on a consistent basis. Or maybe it’s a blogging course, how to build a badass blog right away and get thousands of subscribers and tons of affiliate income. If your heart’s not in it though, it’s going to be a waste of money. I’m tired of buying programs and having my clients buy programs because they see the SHOULDS, and the big stars, and the emails. Look at the success my clients have been having, when in fact a lot of that success is not typical. Those are the outliers, and good for them for having those huge results, but we need to focus on what’s right for us and what’s right for us right now.
Over the past four years of this podcast, I realized that I’ve been focusing a lot on my guests. I love the guests that I’ve had on the podcast, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve also spent 10’s of thousands, if not $100,000 or more on producing this podcast, and I wasn’t the star. Do I need to be in the headlines and have all the attention on me all the time? Heck, no. I am an introvert, and I would like nothing more than to everyday, for the rest of my life be able to curl up in my chair and watch some baking show and being quiet. I do not need the spotlight on me. I prefer that it not be. But I’ve put all this effort into this podcast, and I think it’s about time that I share more from my heart what I’m inspired to share about not what I quote should share about. I love the guests that I’ve had, but it’s time that I stop spotlighting them and start spotlighting me. I know that could sound really selfish, but I have a lot of awesome to share. And what I’ve been constantly shining the spotlight on others, I haven’t been able to give my expertise, my value, the attention that they deserve.
At the beginning of this episode, I asked you, how do you want to play in your business? This is a question that my friend Richie Otey has been asking me for almost two years now and it took me a good 23 months to really understand what he was asking. Yes, it’s great to have our own business. But when our business and our clients start feeling more like employers than it does, like fun, there’s a problem. We deserve to be able to play. We deserve to be able to have fun in everything that we’re doing. We deserve to be able to go to bed stress free at night and wake up stress free in the morning. It’s taken me seven years to be able to get to that point, and I want to be able to share with you the journey that’s gotten me here so that you can avoid the mistakes that I’ve made, or recover from the mistakes that we have in common without having to spend as much time as I did recovering from them.
My family and I have been through repossession of a car, near foreclosure on our house. I’ve had to visit the food pantry numerous times since starting our business. We nearly were evicted from our house before we even had a chance to buy it. I missed all but one of my son’s soccer games one season because I was so wrapped up in building my clients businesses that I forgot about my family, and even worse than the soccer games was in the biggest speaking opportunity. The first, actually big and even worse than missing the soccer games is that when I was at the first speaking opportunity that I ever had something that I was looking forward to for months and months. There in the hotel room, my husband and I were talking about divorce. Our businesses should not drive us to that point. If they do, then the funds are not there. We should be able to have fun in our business so that we can have fun with our families.
This past year has been crazy, yes. But it’s been the most healing year that my family and I have ever shared together. Despite COVID, quarantine and stay home, I enjoyed all but one or two soccer games of my son’s this past season. Yes, the season did go on. And the only reason I missed those two was because there was a limit on the number of tickets. I’ve had more time to reconnect with my husband, and my little kids, and my oldest son who will be graduating High School in just a few short months. I’ve gotten back to knitting, I have admittedly gone through more seasons of more TV shows on Netflix than I have in the past eight years. But you know what? Rather than feel guilty about it, or like I was wasting my time, I finally feel relaxed.
I discovered in quarter four of 2020 that the obligations that I had put upon myself for my business had taken away any and all joy from my business that I could have. I love the clients that I’m working with and that I’ve been working with all through 2020. But what I found was that by putting all these extra obligations and expectations onto myself, I was taking the joy out of it. I would procrastinate on the simple tasks and they would take 10 times longer because I just didn’t see the joy in it anymore. By the time December 2020 rolled around, I was so stressed by my business that I needed to take a break. I could feel this necessary break coming on for some time, but I put it off because I felt an obligation to my family and to my clients and I forgot about the obligation that I had to myself. I couldn’t avoid the break any longer though, when in December, I started getting shooting pains down my arm and pain in my chest, I had headaches constantly, I was so irritable and I really didn’t want to do anything. I avoided my email like a plague, I got annoyed when I was receiving text messages and I just wanted to be left the heck alone. I felt ridiculously lost. I felt like a mouse going through a maze and not being able to find my way out, and I felt like I didn’t have a clue what my purpose was. I knew that if I didn’t take a break, it would be detrimental to my health and my family. And I, as far as we know, made it through 2020 without COVID.
But I knew that if I didn’t take a break in that moment, that the stress I was putting upon myself could be deadly. I’m sharing this all with you today because I know that some of you might be going through the same thing, and I know that I might be being long winded. But I’m hoping that out of my message, you will find hope, you will find some clarity. And most of all, you will find and give yourself permission to take a step back and say, PAUSE. It’s okay to pause your business, it’s okay to pause your obligations and take a look at what you’re doing and determine if that’s really the right path for you to be on anymore.
I’ve been doing marketing automation for clients since 2014. And while there are aspects of my job that I love, there are many times when it just feels outright heavy. I love seeing the pieces all come together. But what I realized at the end of 2020 is that, while I want to mastermind and be the grand strategist behind the automation, I don’t necessarily want to be building it anymore. There are amazing people out there who could build what I asked them to build. And while I get phenomenal highs out of my phone calls with my clients, working with my clients and giving them grand ideas about how they can build the business of their dreams, a business that they love, I don’t need to be stressing myself out figuring out how I’m going to build everything between client phone calls. It’s the building that prevents me from spending time with my husband and my kids. It’s the building that prevents me from spending time on my own self care. It’s the building that stresses me out while I’m sleeping. I don’t want this episode to be too heavy so I want you to know that while the stress from work has been eliminated from my sleep, I have sort of introduced a new stress, and I don’t want you to fall into this habit either.
I have been watching the Great British baking show on Netflix. And before that, it was Orange Is The New Black and there were a couple other shows. I fell into a habit of watching them straight up to bed. What happens for me though is that, what I watch right before I sleep permeates my dreams. Last night, I was watching the Great British baking show practically right up top at a time. And when I slept last night, it was a mix between the baking show and The Incredibles. Then I was coming down and with all these mystical and magical powers was trying to steal my brilliant baking creations from me and I had to figure out how to escape. All night, my husband and I tossed and turned in bed because the dreams were stressing me out to the point that my ears were itching. Yes. If you ever see me itching my ears, it’s because I’m stressed. I was waking myself up in my sleep into my ears. Then I was waking my husband up, he would toss and turn, he would be kicking me. And this went back and forth, for no joke, six hours.
So the point of all this is, please, give yourself a break from screen time before you go to bed. I need to practice what I preach tonight, I will be doing this. Tonight, I will be resurrecting my own strategy of taking an hour break before bedtime. Reading, journaling, listening to podcasts, anything besides watching the screen or working. You shouldn’t be working right up until when you go to bed, just don’t do it.
This new season of Positive Productivity is going to be quite different from any season I’ve ever known. Only one episode a month, we’ll feature a guest and that guest will be an expert or somebody I greatly admire who can speak on the theme of the month. I’ve carefully thought out what the themes are for the next year, and I’ve already come up with a topic for each episode of each of the first seven months of 2021. I am really hoping that by giving myself a break in my business, by laying off the expectations of the podcasts, by creating content that my heart is truly into, that I will be able to put more of myself into my work when it’s actually work time and be able to enjoy my free time with more peace, pleasure and patience for my whole family. Trust me, patience has been waning for the past eight months. Patience has been waning for the past eight months, and I’m sure more than a few of you understand that sentiment.
Before we wrap up this episode today, I want to share a few other things that I’ve been working on or contemplating in hopes that you will be inspired. And if you are inspired, I welcome and invite you to head on over to my website at thekimsutton.com/pp688. Leave a comment down below telling me what you thought about this episode today. Let me know what you think about the new format, and what you would like me to talk about in the future. But I want to let you know a few of the things that I’ve been working on and thinking about so that you really get an idea that I’m human. I personally know that sometimes, it’s easy to be listening to podcasts and forget that the people on the other side of the microphone are our people too. Most of the people that I listened to have thousands of subscribers, if not 10’s of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. And it’s really easy to equate numbers like that with a belief that you are not equal. Don’t ever feel like you are not my equal. Do not ever feel like you are not an equal to the actors and actresses that you watch on TV, or movies, or rockstar, or the musicians that you listen to, or the podcasters that you listen to, youtubers you watch, any of the above. All of us are just people. Sure, some people earn more money. But money doesn’t necessarily equate to happiness. Trust me, I know.
I realized coming into 2021 that I really needed to get back to God. Yes, I’m bringing faith into my podcasts more this year because it’s my foundation. I didn’t discover my faith until I was 30. And I am 41 now, and there have been times where I have let my faith slip. There have been times when I went to worry instead of one to God. I can tell you that when I go to worry first, or when I go to stress first, then it only gets worse. So my faith and I are becoming reacquainted this year. And I realized that when I go to God first, I get the answers I’m looking for. Do they come immediately? Oh, heck, no. God’s got his own schedule.
Let me give you an example though. For the past four years, I have been wondering what the tagline really is meant to be for Positive Productivity. And pulling into my driveway this morning, yes, just this morning after I dropped my High Schoolers off at school, I heard clear day in my head, making small business simple, or simplifying small business. I looked up at the ceiling of my van and I said: “Good one God. That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.” I didn’t know how I could easily express to people what the Positive Productivity brand means to me, and what it should mean to them as well. Perhaps, I should add systems at the end. But that’s really what I’m trying to do is simplify small business systems. Our businesses shouldn’t be raking us over the coals. Our businesses should not be making us broke. Our businesses should not be making us stressed. But for too many of us, and for me for far too long, they become an overwhelming burden. I don’t want it to be that way, and I’m thinking that if you’re here, you don’t want it to be that way either.
So some of these new podcast episodes,we’ll be talking about strategies that I’m using. Some of them have worked, some of them have not. I’m going to be looking at emails that I receive and picking them apart. I’m going to be talking about authenticity and transparency, ways that we can be saving money. Not necessarily being frugal. I’m not wanting to talk about frugal, I don’t really understand it myself. I haven’t got a grasp on that myself, but ways that we can really connect with our people. I never want you to feel like I’m boosting, I never want you to feel like I’m trying to put myself on a pedestal in front of you because I’m not. I want you to understand that I’m human. I want you to understand that my business, my entrepreneurial journey has not been all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns, poop and glitter out of there butt. No, it’s been a big hot mess.
There’s an early episode where I was talking about starting a manure farm because that’s how my business was feeling to me at that time. I felt like that if I could sell poop, that I would be rich because that’s how a lot of days in my business really felt, like poop. It shouldn’t be that way. If your business is feeling like poop today, I want you to step back and reevaluate. Are you doing what you do in your business because you think that’s what you ought to be doing? Or are you doing what you are in your business because it’s what you want to be doing and is how you can play? Aside from being in the business, I’m getting back to my exercise and fitness. I am being more attentive to what I’m eating, I slipped back into eating bread and gluten. In 2020, I think a lot of people probably let their diet slip. I went nine months without drinking any alcohol or soda, and I slipped back there too. And at the end of 2020, I put on a ridiculous amount of weight. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone.
So I’m going to be talking about what’s working for me, as far as diet and exercise, especially when you have a big family. Getting my littles to eat the healthiest stuff can sometimes feel near impossible. And by the way, if you haven’t heard it already before, I don’t cook, I burn. But I have recently picked up baking. Is that good for my gluten intolerance? No, not at all. But it’s giving me another outlet for my creativity, and it gets me away from my business for some time. It also makes my house smell fantastically awesome. Which is great, because when you have athletes and messy kids, sometimes it really stinks around here. Hey, just being real. There’s going to be a lot of real coming up though, and I hope you are looking forward to it as much as I am.
In next week’s episode, I’m going to be talking about The Great Reset. I’m going to be sharing more about the activities which I’ve removed from my calendar, the acquaintances and the opportunities which I’ve turned down, and the routines that I’m setting up so that I can live my day with more peace. I don’t want to go through 2021 feeling stressed and short on time and patience. I want to get to the end of the day, sit back, put my legs up and know you did awesome today. So next week, again, I’m going to be talking about The Great Reset.
Before I let you go, I have one more ask of you. If you’re not already subscribed, would you do so on your favorite podcast listening platform. And I’d love for you to also connect with me on Instagram and YouTube. You can find me on Instagram at Kim Sutton. And on YouTube, you can also find me by searching for Kim Sutton. And I’m moving my Lives off of Facebook this year because I really enjoy going Live to YouTube. I enjoy the engagement that I get there, and I realized that I really don’t need to be everywhere all the time. So that’s where I’ll be focusing my efforts. I’ll share more about that journey in a later episode, but I want you to think about where you’re spreading yourself too thin.
Are you trying to be everywhere because gurus out there tell you that you should be? Could you focus on just one or two platforms and really make a huge difference and a huge splash there? If so, let the rest go. There is nothing wrong with letting go of what’s not working for you. Now is as good a time as any to say goodbye to those things.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this first episode of the second or fifth season of the Positive Productivity Podcast, and I look forward to connecting with you again next week.
