Crystal Baran

The full conversation with Crystal Baran, transcribed. Lightly formatted for reading.

And how would you define burnout? I would define burnout as losing yourself. There are always gonna be multiple paths that you have the choice to take. You could take the right path, you can even take the wrong path.

The trick is knowing that you have the ability to turn around and walk back and choose another one. Now what's important to you, Kathy? Like if I asked you right now, tell me a personal goal that you have. But what are some of the steps somebody can take to start associating themselves with the identity that is linked to their business or to their job.

Failure is opportunity. It gives you the chance to be able to reflect, to look at what you've done, how you can do it differently, or do it again, because sometimes the first time just doesn't work. Crystal, it's a pleasure to finally meet you, and welcome to the Montreal Entrepreneur Podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Cathy.

I really appreciate being here. Beautiful space. I'm really— I'm honored. I'm honored as well.

So please introduce yourself and tell us what do you do. All right, well, my name is Crystal Beren. I'm a life coach. I actually specialize in stress and burnout.

I work with entrepreneurs, I work with executives, I work with mothers, fathers, pretty much anything on the spectrum. Majority of my clients are entrepreneurs, so I have the opportunity to be in that world as well as be in the world myself as an entrepreneur for the last 4 years. And how did you know this was your calling? Well, that's a long story, Kathy.

I I don't know how long we have today. Give us the short version. The short version, the abridged version: in 2017, I had a burnout. I was that person that actually didn't believe in burnouts.

I had teams, I had led teams before in the past, and I would see people going on burnout leave, and I didn't understand it because I was powered by stress, or I thought I was powered by stress. I had a pretty difficult childhood, difficult adolescence, difficult early years of my life, and with that, I felt like anybody can handle stress, you know, you just handle it, you take it and you move on with it. Until I was slapped in the face with it myself in 2017 where I couldn't work anymore. I could barely wake up in the morning.

It was, it was an utter disaster to the point where I was off work for almost 9 months. 9 months. 9 months of recovery. And I will say that I didn't recover after 9 months.

It took me about another year to fully recover. That's a long time. Almost 2 years. Almost 2 years.

But I mean, I was 37 years old, so if I've been doing this holding the stress from the time that I was probably 13, 13 years old. Okay. You know, doing things on stress and using stress as my fuel. When it did catch up with me, it was almost like it was too late.

I didn't see the signs. I didn't follow my intuition. I didn't follow my gut, which is kind of what ended up leading me here. Because throughout that transition, I made a lot of realizations.

I spent a lot of time in self-discovery, a lot of pain. You know, if anybody who's listening here has ever been through a burnout, it's not time off. You know, you're not off partying and, you know, having a good time. You still You can't produce like you normally would produce.

Waking up in the morning is difficult, making dinner is difficult, taking a shower is difficult because it's usually coupled with depression. Okay, that's what I was going to ask, similar characteristics, very similar characteristics. And they often, when they've manifested themselves to the point of a burnout, they're typically, they're almost aligned. They basically come on at the same time.

But now looking back, can you tell me what were the signs that preceded your burnout? Because back then you didn't realize that you were at the tipping point? First of all, I had no signs that I was going into burnout because it was really— I was completely resistant to that even possibility that I was actually going into burnout. Because I believe that makes us stronger, right?

I believe that stress is fuel. I remember going into interviews, you know, job interviews, and they would ask you what your strength is, and I would tell people that I thrive on stress. And it really— I thought it was my superpower, but unfortunately it was just masking a lot of trauma, masking a lot of my own personal insecurities, trying to push over things and not really looking internally. I spent a lot of time looking externally.

For things to fulfill me instead of having that inner fulfillment. And that's kind of what I realized coming out of the burnout. And like that year and 9 months, I would say almost 2 years, again, the reflection was like, it's not the external circumstances that are actually making you, you know, going into these things. It's how you relate to the things that are around you.

So I could have blamed the bank. I was working at a bank. I could have blamed the high-stress job. I could have blamed the demanding things that they had put on me.

But ultimately, at the end of the day, I had no boundaries. I said yes to everything. I didn't know who I was without the title of my job, and so I basically put everything that I could possibly put into the fact that I was that title. So you put too much on you?

Yeah, I put too much on me. And how would you define burnout? I would define burnout as losing yourself, because I remember waking up on that morning— I remember the day like it was yesterday. ' And I couldn't speak.

I just started crying. I didn't know why I was there. I didn't know why I was feeling that way. I completely lost who I was.

And that was when the process started of learning how to rebuild myself. Like, who is Crystal without the job? Who is Crystal without her husband and her family and her friends? Who is she at the core?

And I didn't have those answers. I had nothing. ' And you just started crying. I just started crying.

And then what did she say? ' And I remember telling her, I'm like, 'I just don't know. I don't know what I'm feeling. I I don't feel good.

I feel like everything is wrong. I just feel like I can't live like this. And I didn't know at the time that I was actually suicidal. That was something that actually came to me about 6 months into my burnout.

How come you not know that you were suicidal? Because I, I was in denial. I was in denial. I didn't want to live with anything that I had in my life anymore, but I never was able to put the words to it.

Again, being in denial, I didn't want to think about ending my life, but yet I was thinking about not being here. Okay, that's very interesting. So it could be very subtle. I know for me it was very subtle.

And again, I'm not a psychologist. I have done my own, you know, I've done studies, I've done research for myself especially. But it could be subtle, it could be— again, you feel like you're alone and lost. And again, I had a very fulfilling life because on paper, you know, I had the job, I had the career, I was the subject matter expert in my field, I was married, I have a husband that loves me more than anything in the whole world, I have family, sister, brother, mother, everybody.

And yet, and yet I couldn't show up and be me. I couldn't show up. I didn't feel like I was actually bringing any value to anybody in my life. I'm asking you those questions because maybe there's there's somebody out there listening.

Yeah. And they don't even know that they're on their way there to having a burnout. Or like what you just said, that you were suicidal, you didn't even know. Yeah, I never heard that before, actually.

That's the first time I've heard that. Yeah, I was in denial. I think my strength during my first part of my life was that I was in denial of a lot of things. I spent a lot of time being in denial that stress was not something that was fueling me and that it wasn't something that was actually causing me any pain.

Because if I look back on my life, all of the health issues that I had were undiagnosed. There was zero root cause. Okay. But looking back today, the root cause of pretty much every single symptom, every single illness that I had was stress.

But because you went through that, now you're in a better position to help your clients, especially in the context of entrepreneurship. It's a very stressful career, if let's say. Yeah, it is that way. We have Business Executive as well.

And burnout, maybe it's something that people don't talk about, or depression. They don't talk about it. Yeah. And what do you see when you speak with your clients?

I see a lot of people again that are in denial because of it. There's still a really huge stigma when it comes to mental health. People don't want to talk about how they can be struggling. I often say this is that employers don't want to talk about burnout for fear that their employers— their employees are going to go on burnout, and employees are fearful of saying that they're possibly going into a burnout for fear of losing their jobs.

Okay. And so it's catch-22. Nobody wants to talk about it because they fear it, but ultimately at the end of the day, we end up being in a position where everybody ends up going into it, whether it's the executive that owns the business or it's the employee that's actually facing those things. And emotionally, it's one thing we don't teach.

We don't teach people after being little kids how to manage their emotions and how to manage how they're feeling. And we hide them. We want to portray ourselves as strong. We want to portray ourselves as, you know, we can conquer it all.

We can do the— all the jobs, you know, as mothers. We can be the mother, we can be the entrepreneur, we can literally cook, clean, and take on all of the roles. And I mean, I'm talking to women right now, but it's the same thing for men. Because again, like I mentioned, uh, to you on a previous conversation, I work with a lot of men, and if I look at the struggles that both men and women, especially entrepreneurs, have, they're exactly the same struggles.

They just have very different ways of manifesting. Okay, elaborate on that. So women have been told for probably centuries that we're too emotional, right? I don't know, have you ever been told you're too emotional in, in the corporate world?

I— no, no, because I was not in the corporate world. Okay, so you've never had that opportunity, let's just say. But I was always told that I was too emotional for the corporate world, that emotions were not something that we should be bringing to the corporate table, that we shouldn't be showing our employees that we're emotional, that we connect with them. You know, there's this line that's wanted to create in the divide.

Women put those feelings on the side, even they bring it home with them and they put their emotions on the side, and then that creates this ripple effect in their relationships. Men, on the other hand, are taught that they have to be strong. They have to be strong, they have to provide, they have to take care of their family at all costs. Even when they're feeling bad.

So they have to hide that emotional side of themselves as well because they have to basically pick it up and just do it all as well. And so we're, we're all facing this, this beautiful box that we've been put in. So my goal is to get people out of that box, is to get them out of the box and allow them to shine and create the path that works for them. Because there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to people, you know.

I can't copy the next entrepreneur and figure that it's going to work for me. Yeah, I have to maybe try things But if it doesn't work, that's okay. I have the right and the choice to be able to try to do something differently. Exactly.

That fits you. That fits me. Exactly. And how do you help them?

What's the process? Let's say I come to you and what do we do? So when I'm talking to you before about being inside the box, I'm not in the box at all anymore. Literally, when I left my corporate career out the window, I, uh, burned the box.

I burned the freaking box. I burned it down. And that's the other thing too, energetics. Have you had conversations around energetics, masculine and feminine energetics.

Never heard that term before. So energetics— feminine energy is usually chalked up to women, and masculine energy is usually chalked up to men. And that's how we, we have been taught to see it, right? Women are feminine, they're flowy, and they're free.

And masculine are strong and dominant, and you know, they're the doers, and the women are the feelers. Okay. So when I burned down that box, I had spent so many years in the corporate world being in a masculine energy. Right?

Because it's all about getting things done and doing things and looking strong, looking strong, and not necessarily following your intuition. And that's where, when I got out of that box, I was like, all right, I'm going straight into my feminine. I'm not going to be a doer anymore. I'm going to think, I'm going to feel.

And so when you ask me about my business, there's still a very good balance because any great entrepreneur will know that they need to have both masculine and feminine energy. It's the yin to the yang. There has to be a balance of both because if you're not capable of feeling the intuition and feeling things inside of yourself, how are you expected to actually go out and do them? And then vice versa, if you just constantly do things and you don't feel them, how do you know if they're right?

Okay. Good point. So I spent the first year of my career as a life coach in my feminine energy. La la la.

Just like you went the opposite. I went the complete opposite. And I think I finally found a balance of the masculine and the feminine energy within my business. But that's Where I'm going with this, all that to say, is that my program is a very intuitive program.

Okay. I have no real structure. I have a structure, but not really a set-in-stone structure. Of course there are things that I'm gonna broach upon on a regular basis, you know, like when it comes to stress and burnout, how are you eating?

Are you moving? What are you doing for yourself? Like, what kind of things do you do on a regular basis that lights your passion? Those are the first and foremost things that we talk about, you know.

What are your goals? What do you want for your personal life? But what do you want for your professional life? Both sides.

Because again, it's the yin and the yang. We're not just entrepreneurs, we're human beings on the other side. So that if ever something happens and you choose that you don't want to be an entrepreneur anymore, you don't lose yourself. Losing themselves because their identity has a strong correlation with what they do.

I have a friend of mine actually who is a business broker, and he says that majority of his clients struggle with selling their businesses not because they want to just sell their business, right? They struggle with, if I sell my business, who am I after I sell my business? It's true. So they've built this incredible empire and they sell their business, then they're no longer their business.

So who are they? What do they like? Do they see themselves golfing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Because that's the other thing too, we have this false conception that retirement is like, we're gonna go and sit on a beach and drink Mai Tais and like play golf.

But ultimately, retirement could happen at 40 with the start of a new career. Retirement can happen at 50, and then you start doing something else that you're passionate about. So it's no longer this like line in the sand. But what are some of the steps somebody can take to start associating themselves with the identity that is linked to their business or to their job?

Self-reflection. So that's the first thing. That's probably a hard one for a lot of people because we don't know what we want anymore after so many years. You know, when I was a kid, I was a dancer.

I loved to dance. It was literally something that moved me, and it was something that brought me so much joy. And I lost it, you know, after I was 15 or 16 years old. I stopped doing it, and then I brought it back into my life in my late 20s, and then I lost it again because again my career took over.

And so I lost all the passions that were me. I would work out to only have the goal of, I don't know, losing weight, or I have to do it because everybody says you have to do it, instead of doing something that actually brings you joy. So the first thing I would say is like, find your passion and find a way to incorporate that in your life every single day. So then they have to sit down and try to remember maybe what those passions were, because losing it means that maybe you might forget.

What do I even like anymore? Yeah, so journaling is a, is a huge thing for me. Um, it's been a really big part of my process. I spent a lot of time writing Actually, today I don't write as much as I used to.

Okay. Because the process has changed for me. It's— now it flows in me. I'm able to take the information and process it pretty quickly, but when I started, I spent a lot of time writing things down, just allowing my brain to take that information and put it down somewhere else.

Brain dump, like they say. Brain dump. And people don't do that often enough, and I would say that's definitely another tip. Brain dumping is very important because when it comes to stress, a lot of the times we are holding everything inside of our heads.

Our heads. We're thinking about dinner, we're thinking about our kids, we're thinking about, you know, what's next on the, on the schedule, on the list. And if it's all in here, that removes space for your autonomic response system to be able to actually do what it's supposed to do. So instead it stays in fight or flight.

Yeah, as you're constantly trying to recall this information, recall this information, and so it puts your body in a state of stress naturally. And so getting it out of your head and putting it on paper is something that it's more important than— in one of our conversations previously, you mentioned that sometimes people forget how to live their lives, right? I thought that was pretty interesting because that happened to you, even if like on the outside you look like you had it all. Yeah, I forgot.

I forgot everything, which is why the burnout was so dramatic for me, because when I took away my job, I had nothing left. There was no Krystal left. It was just me, myself and I. And then I didn't know how to speak with myself.

I didn't know how to congratulate myself. I didn't know how to validate myself because I spent most of my time using external validation as my source of my propulsion into life. I wasn't ever able to give myself the pat on the back. And then for entrepreneurs, now, if I didn't learn that when, when I came into the entrepreneurship world, who was going to tell me that I was doing a good job?

I can't expect my clients to be the ones telling me and patting me on the back. And no, you can't really. Like, at the end of the day, you have to look at what you've created and celebrate yourself and give yourself that pat on the back, because nobody else is going to do it for you. And so that's another, that's another really big thing.

But can people do that on their own? Do you— I think that people can learn to do that on their own. I think that they sometimes— we need more help than we think, like, as just general human beings. I don't know where in the world we went from literally living in communities where it takes a village to raise a child to people feeling like they have to everything by themselves, which is why now the coaching industry is actually— I feel like it's exploding because it's a place to be able to walk hand in hand with somebody that's either struggled like you're struggling so that you can feel that you have a sense of belonging, right?

You're not alone. Definitely support. And also having somebody to help you cheerlead yourself. I have this tendency of not telling my clients that I'm proud of them.

I tell my clients that they should be proud of themselves. So you feel like they're not proud of themselves? Is that why? Enough?

I don't think they give themselves enough opportunity to celebrate themselves. And again, if we've come from that background where, you know, okay, here, let's break this even more down. What happens when you're— do you have children? 3.

All right, so you've got 3 children. What happens when they start walking or crawling? What do you do? Like, you're vigilant to make sure that they're, you know, they're not going to hurt themselves.

Yeah. But how do you encourage them to continue doing that? You clap. Yeah.

You smile. Yeah. You say, come, come. Exactly.

You you do all the things. You're like, oh my gosh, you did so good, I'm so proud of you. So we do all of this. We do this with our friends.

We do this, but we do this more when people are young. So our little people are being encouraged 24/7, you know. Do we ever tell a kid that when they picked— they stood up for the first time and they fell down, they're like, well, you're screwed, you're never gonna walk? No.

But how many entrepreneurs have you spoken with that tried to do something one time, they failed and they gave up. A lot of the times, yes. A lot of the time, because there's nobody behind them. Their mother or father is not there telling them, good job, you did so good.

So it's like, I feel like after elementary school we don't have that anymore, right? Because when we go to, we go to high school, and then high school, like, poof, all of a sudden, like, you have teachers telling you what to do. And that's why you have this huge identity crisis, because, you know, our creativity is gone. Creativity is gone.

There's like so many things that we lose because we've been so encouraged encouraged as children, and then all of a sudden again into the box. It would be so amazing for us as parents and as leaders and as other entrepreneurs to teach people, teach children, that they also have to be proud of the work that they're doing. When they draw their first incredible stick figure human being, right, asking them the question, are you proud of what you've created? I'll start implementing this tonight.

That's a good one. It's definitely a good one. But I think also with failure at school, you know, when you fail, it's a bad thing. Yeah, we're trying avoid failures, right?

So I think it comes from that. People don't want to fail, but failing— this is where you learn a lot from failures. Absolutely. I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't gone through everything that I've been through.

So I can't even look back and say I wish that this didn't happen because my life trajectory would have been completely different. Maybe I wouldn't be as successful as I am today. Maybe I would have had a different career path. Yeah, the what-ifs are absolutely endless.

This. So if we are able to start looking at the things that we've done in our lives as opportunity— failure is opportunity. It gives you the chance to be able to reflect, to look at what you've done, how you can do it differently, or do it again, because sometimes the first time just doesn't work. Sometimes my daughter would come to me and say, okay, Mommy, what do you think about this?

Which one should I choose? I said, I don't know, you, you make the decision. Teaching them to be able to make decisions on their own. If we go to a restaurant, they want me to choose.

No, you choose. Because I had that problem. I was raised in a way to be more of a people pleaser. Yes.

So if I go with my friends to a restaurant, they'll be like, okay, Kathy, what do you want? I'm like, oh no, whatever you want, I'll take. See? So the ability to make decisions, I think— hold that.

Yes, it's very crucial. That's, that's a really big one with children, giving them the opportunity to make their own choices. I am so glad that my father taught me that lesson really young, and he told me, Crystal, there are always going to be multiple paths that you have the choice to take. You could take the right path, you can even take the wrong path.

The trick is knowing that you have the ability to turn around and walk back and choose another one. I like that. It's never too late. And, you know, I, I thought it was too late for me at 37 years old when I was in my burnout.

I was like, what the heck am I gonna do? I'm coming to midlife. I felt like it was my midlife crisis. I was like, I've been doing this my whole adult life What the heck do I do?

I've just wasted 15 years of my life. That's what it felt like. I wasted 15 years of my life, and I was struggling to try to figure out a way to— how am I gonna bring that back? How am I gonna regain 15 years?

The answer is you can't regain 15 years, but what you can do is learn from every single experience. So I have no hard feelings to the work that I did within that banking career. Honestly, I actually have complete and utter appreciation for absolutely absolutely everything that I learned. I learned so much more of myself after the age of 37, looking back at my whole career.

I looked back at conversations that I had with other leaders, you know, when I was either being critiqued or criticized, and I realized that my own insecurities came up in every single one of those conversations. And again, let's go into manifestation, because you, you manifest what you believe. But what were they? Give me an example.

So that we understand. I didn't have a traditional education, so I finished high school, but while the whole 4 years of high school, I was working full-time and I was living on my own. Wow. So I worked at McDonald's, I worked in a couple call centers, I worked in cafe— like, I worked a lot of different jobs.

I was working full-time at night and going to high school. I graduated from high school, got really good grades. I don't know how I did it, but I did it, you know. That was something that I was like, I can't leave without getting a high school diploma.

So I got the high school diploma. Up, didn't know what I wanted to do. Because again, that's the other thing, like, we're 17 years old, who the heck knows what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life? I knew I wanted to help people, so I registered for college.

I took a program in college. I didn't finish the program in college. Then I started taking courses in university, didn't finish the courses. Like, I did all kinds of courses.

I did everything from social services to psychology classes to, like, you know, you're trying to figure it out. I was trying to figure it all out. And then I got the job at bank. Okay, so I got the job at the bank without a diploma, and traditionally most people that come into the banking industry had a finance degree or they were working towards their finance degree.

So I was still registered in school. That was my Achilles heel. I really, really believed that I would never be taken seriously if I didn't have a degree. And so every conversation that I would have with leaders, because I didn't believe in myself, I would come to the table with this— I guess it's an energy.

The only thing I can think, it's energy. Because even if I didn't say it out loud, that I felt like I was not good enough, or I don't have the diplomas but I still think I can do the job— even if I didn't say it, just me thinking it was what was being reflected back to me. And so what you believe about yourself is going to come back to you. So if you believe that you're not good enough, if you believe that you're not capable If you believe that you are capable and you believe that you can conquer the world, well, by all means, let me tell you, the universe, God, whatever it is that you believe in, is going to bring it to you.

And I'm not a specialist in manifestation, but whatever you believe, you attract, or you become, basically. Yeah, like in— Joe Dispenza talks about it in a book that he has, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, by Joe Dispenza. I know about him but not the book. Yeah, so that one, there was, there was a line in there about quantum physics, and I was like, never a science geek myself, but I understood it so profoundly when he related it to the energetics of the world.

We're magnets, we're essentially magnets. So anything that we think, anything that we feel, we will bring it to ourselves. The more depressed that we are, the sadder that we are, more we're attracting that energy, the friends that we have around us, right? So if you are a high-energy person and you believe in yourself, chances are the people that you're going to be surrounded by similar are are going to be similar.

You're not going to have somebody with a bad attitude that's gonna— that you're actually gonna let into your inner circle because they just don't want to be in that energy. Yeah, they don't want to be in that. It repels. It's repelled, right?

So if, if you look, you know how many times— you might not have had this, but like, I remember being in the banking career and having friends in the banking career, and all we would do is complain about our banking career. Well, guess what? All we had was people that were complaining all the time, and nobody was happy with their jobs. So the only way that I was able to see that was after I got out it because you're in it, you don't realize, you don't see it.

So sometimes having that extra person on the outside— so that's a lot of what I do with my clients. It's like basically their blind spot. I'm their mirror. Yeah, I get to see things that they don't see.

Um, it's different working with a coach as opposed to working with your friend, right? Because there's an emotional attachment, or your family, there's an emotional attachment, right? Like nobody— it's hard to, hard to do things with friends unless you guys have a very specific understanding that that you're able to turn off friend and turn on coach. Yes, I do it with my mom.

My mom tells me, I need my coach right now, I don't need my daughter. It's really cute. It's the cutest thing I've ever heard. I answered her last week and she's like, I just need my coach right now.

And I'm like, okay, let me go get her. That's coming on. And it's a different energy because at that point somebody is ready to receive information that their loved ones might not tell them because they're too afraid to tell them. And how can somebody— oh, an entrepreneur— how, how can they know that's what they need now?

How can they know it's what they need now, that they need a life coach? Maybe they don't even know that exists. They don't. Yes, they don't.

Um, I would say if you're feeling alone, if you're feeling alone in what you're doing, if you're feeling like you're struggling trying to get something off the ground and you need somebody, it could be a mentor, it could be a coach, um, it could be a good friend that you've— like I said, hat off, hat on— that you— somebody that you trust. I mean, listen, most coaches will do discovery calls to have conversations with you. And so it shouldn't be— it's funny because there's business coaches out there, they've been out there forever. Everybody knows Tony Robbins, he's a life coach.

Everybody knows Tony Robbins, but yet somehow they'll buy and they'll go to see Tony Robbins, which is great because, I mean, I've been to Tony Robbins, I've done his seminars, and they're phenomenal. But you don't know what you don't know. And so having that opportunity, like If you've seen somebody out there that inspires you, that motivates you, chances are you want to be in that world. Okay.

I've had multiple coaches. I still have multiple coaches, and I will not stop having coaches because I can't see what I can't see. Yeah, the awareness. The awareness.

Yeah, I like that. Because people might believe that, yes, business is hard, so it has to be this way. Oh, I'm struggling. This is just how it is.

It's so hard. Yeah, but that's how it is. They're just gonna keep on going that route. Sometimes somebody told me, I remember, her name is Haley.

She says you have to break it to fix it. Break it to fix it. Sometimes you have to break down everything that you believe about something, especially in your business, to be able to fix it and make it better again. So if you're constantly believing it's hard, you have to break that mindset.

You have to be able to break it, and you have to be able to try to do new things to be able to get yourself to the place that you want to be. You know, they say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same result. We will continue to do the same thing over and over again and get the same result and try to figure it out ourselves. But sometimes you need a lens from the outside to be able to say, hey, maybe that's not the best use of your time.

Or hey, when's the last time you booked a vacation? When's the last time you put yourself in your calendar before you put your clients in your calendar? And give me some techniques on that. Yeah, we talked about the calendar last time, so elaborate.

So if it's not in your calendar, it doesn't exist. I wrote book. It's not really a reading book, it's a planner. And the reason why I did this is because I myself had 3 or 4 planners.

I had 3 or 4 books that I would constantly be using. I'd have my notebook, I'd have like a page in my notebook for the day and all the notes that I wanted to take. Then I had a journal, and then I had a gratitude journal, and I had all of these things. Um, and then obviously you have your Google Calendar, right?

How do all these things come together? There had to be a better way. And for me I'm gonna create something. I'm gonna create something to make a better way.

Too many books. Too many books. Too many books. It was driving me crazy, and they were never the kind of book that I liked.

So I needed to create something that I was going to be able to get everything all in the same space. But the fundamental behind that was to help people prioritize the things that were important to them. Okay, now what's important to you, Kathy? Like, if I asked you right now, tell me a personal goal that you for yourself or for your family?

Or— well, family is, is very important to me. That's a priority. Then I have the business. My health is important.

These are the top 3. Perfect. So if I were to say that those were your 3 goals for the next quarter, what are you going to do to make those things happen? For my family, I would say maybe going out more with them, spend more time.

You know, summer's coming, and play. Health would keep at it, making those smoothies, those green smoothies. Yeah. Going to the gym.

Yeah. And the business its, uh, client acquisition and keep growing. Perfect. So how are you going to make that happen?

So per day, like, okay, now I see where you're going. So the thing is that we have goals, we have these beautiful goals. We come— especially January was a couple months ago— we have these resolutions that we want to do. But what happens is that we have this, we're like, resolution, I'm gonna get fit.

But what does getting fit mean to you? We haven't really broken down the goal. When you, when you have a goal, think of it as Mount forest. It's getting to the top of the, the mountain.

You don't start your journey at the base of the mountain. You start your journey maybe 6 months before. You don't even know the running shoes you need to buy, so you got to research the running shoes. You got to figure out which ones are the best ones to be able to climb that mountain.

Then you have to maybe talk to somebody else who's used those running shoes. Like, these are all little steps that go into actually achieving the goal. So if you have an idea, if you want to get fit, perfect. You want to lose 20 pounds, okay, Do you have an outfit for the gym?

Do you have running shoes? Did you sign up for the gym? Did you sign up for the gym? Have you researched the gyms?

Do you even know what kind of training program you're going to do? Are you going to walk into the gym and you're going to be confused with all the machines and not know what the heck is going on? So we're not planning enough. We're not actually structurizing.

We're not taking that goal and breaking it down into smaller steps. Really good book, by the way. It's called The One Thing. Yes, The One Thing.

You've read it? Do a lot of real estate entrepreneurs on here. I've heard a couple of them. But The One Thing by Gary Keller, that one for me was probably one of the most pivotal books in my entrepreneurship journey.

And I actually took a lot of that information that I brought into the book specifically because, again, we need to break down these things and put them into smaller, more bite-sized— yes— goals. You know, I have a client that I'm working with, and she's, she's a coach actually. She's building her coaching business. So like I said, I coach coaches, I coach all kinds of people.

And she's building her business and every week she comes to the table and she's done a whole bunch of things. And it's incredible because in the last couple of sessions she's realized how much work she's done in the last 3 or 4 months compared to if she was doing it alone, because she's able to take some of the examples of the things that I've done. Do they work for her? Maybe she could try them because you can hold her accountable.

I can hold her accountable. Accountability is huge. Yes. She comes back and she's like, hey, I did this.

Last week. And then my job is to say, hey, do you realize how much you accomplished? Did you celebrate yourself? Yeah.

Did you do a little happy dance around your table or whatever? Whatever it is that's going to be good for you. Like, it's 4 years into my journey, and every time I sign a new client, I scream at the top of my lungs like it's the first thing that— like it's the first time that it ever happened. I scream, I jump around, I'm like, yay, yay!

My neighbors are wondering what's happening. Exactly. My husband is like, man, again, you're nuts. But again, like all of these things, so it's like you don't end up 4 years into your career because you didn't take 4,000 steps.

Small steps, big wins. Yes. And we have to be able to acknowledge, acknowledge each and every one of those steps that you do to get to where you go, because you're going to look back a month from now, 6 months from now, a year from now, and you're going to be like, how the heck did I get here? No plan.

Yeah. Or However, sometimes even without the plan, if you look back 6 months ago, how far are you? You've accomplished a lot more than you probably ever thought that you could accomplish in 6 months. Best part about it is that if you have an opportunity to really follow your progress and then learn how to hold true— follow your progress, take a look back.

I mean, I look back at my last quarter and I actually accomplished all of my goals that I had set forth for myself. I think that's important to look back and and see like how far that you can come. Yes, like for example, my website. It's been years that I've been working on my website.

That thing's never like— but finally now, after years and years of work on it, it's coming to fruition. It's gonna be 100% what I want it to be. I'm going to be able to be proud of it and like show it to people and, and enjoy it. Now, it took 4,000 steps to get there.

I had to make mistakes. I had to transfer it to all kinds of different platforms. I to try to do it myself. I had to try to pay people to do it, never ending up being what— but look, try— I went through that, so I understand what you're saying.

But I don't think you will ever finish with the website though. It's a continuous, like, improvement. It is a continuous improvement, and I love that you just said that because that's exactly what life is all about. It never stops.

You don't end up waking, waking up one day and say, ah, I've accomplished everything. No, there's always going to be something more. And I think that's where people have this tendency of going wrong, is that they think that there's this end, there's a finish line to life. There is— the finish line to life is when you've died.

Yes. And your goal should be to live it every single day as if it's your last. Enjoy. Make sure that you're prioritizing the things that are important to you.

Like, how are you gonna bring your kids and your family into your life more? Are you blocking it in your calendar that you know that Saturday from 10 to 12, like, I'm just gonna play with my kids? Yeah, especially with technology these days, right? Yeah.

So I have, you know, I use my planner, I use my day planner, but every single task that I have, I book it. So if I know that this week my priority is to work on— I know I need to work on accounting, which has been my, the bane of my existence for the last 3 weeks because I've been learning a lot about accounting. Thank you, Mia. Yeah, but if I didn't put it in my calendar, how would I find the time?

Especially if you don't like doing it. I'll do it someday. Exactly. But it's something that's super important to your business and you have to get to it.

It's not in your calendar, it won't exist. And so if I know at the beginning of the week, which is how I prioritize my thing, I take a look at my quarterly goals and then I break it down into a smaller goal. So let's say getting my accounting up and running. Well, I need to do 12 months of reconciliation, so this week I plan on doing 3 3 months of reconciliation.

How am I supposed to do that 3 months? So my priority for this week is 3 months of reconciliation. How and where am I going to put that in my calendar? I open up my calendar, I take a look at my week of what's already booked, and then I strategically place time in my calendar to be able to get that priority done.

I love roller skating, but if I don't put it in my calendar, I'm gonna do it. Yes, but where does somebody start, especially if they say, you know, Kathy, or I'm not— you know, some people, they're very organized, they have have everything, like, but some people are just not. Where do they start? That's a really good question.

I would have to understand exactly what it is that's happening. So as a life coach, I spend a lot of time breaking down beliefs that people hold. So if you would have talked to me a couple years ago, I would have believed that, you know, that I couldn't be an entrepreneur, that I couldn't be a business owner, because just a couple of years ago, I'm telling you, when I left the bank, I had the mindset about I'm good at running other people's businesses, I couldn't open up my own business. I even had my own business and I was saying that I didn't have— like, actually owned a cleaning company.

For like 3 years. I had major contracts and I still didn't believe I was an entrepreneur. So the reason why it didn't succeed was because I didn't believe that I was an entrepreneur. Self-sabotaging.

I self-sabotaged. And a lot of the times we self-sabotage ourselves. So does this person have a relationship to something in the past in their lives that they're maybe potentially rebelling against because it doesn't feel good? Because it maybe reflects, you know, a mother pushing them to have their schedule completely perfect?

Or— I know I did it. Like, sorry, Mom, I love you. But my mom was a clean freak. She loved things her way.

If you vacuumed, it had to be her way. You know, like it was just the way it was. And so when I went on my own, it's like, no way. I am not doing any of that.

So I didn't clean, I didn't cook, I didn't do any of those things. I hated it. It's like I completely went in the opposite direction. I did it my way.

Mm-hmm. And so again, that was like a version of trauma. And trauma comes in many different forms. So you think that was a version of it?

Oh, of course. Of course, rebelling against what somebody had pushed down on you. Yeah, of course, of course. And here's the thing about trauma: everybody processes trauma differently.

It doesn't have to be bad trauma. It could be a version of trauma that you've— beliefs are created. I was a perfectionist. And why was I perfectionist?

I had the opportunity to really go into myself and really figure that one out. And you don't have to figure out the root cause of all the little things. All you have to do is learn how to be aware that it's something that's actually stopping you. So my perfection was stopping me.

But where my perfection came from was when my sister was born. I was 3 years old, an only child for the first 3 years of my life. Um, I was so happy to have a little sister. It was like the best thing.

But my parents were so happy that they had me to be able to help out, and I was a good kid. So they would always tell me that, like, Crystal, you're so perfect. We love you so much. You're such a good little girl.

You're such a good big sister, blah blah blah. And I grew up with this beautiful, beautiful thought process, okay, about my parents telling me that I had to be perfect, that I was perfect. And somehow, some way, I turned it in that I had to be perfect in order to be loved. I had to be perfect in order to have friends.

I had to be perfect in order to have a good job. But did they use that word though? They used the word perfect. They used the word perfect.

But now, Kathy, there was nothing negative. Yeah, there was nothing negative about what they were talking about. They were literally praising their child for being such a good kid. As humans, we have the ability to take that information, put it into our brain The subconscious does a job.

It drops itself in there. It tries to either recreate something or stop you from doing something. So my brain was trying to recreate the idea of me being perfect. Okay.

Okay. It was trying to recreate the feeling of being loved. Okay. I'll remember that not to use that word.

I don't think I have, but, but, but, but, but that's not a bad word. Yes, I know. I know. And even again, you'll never know what your kids are gonna take away.

True. What you're gonna say. So you could tell them that they're perfect. Perfect because they are perfect, and every— God made them perfect, or whatever you believe in made us in, in perfection.

We were born perfect, we're gonna die perfect. The thing is, is that again, I'll take it back to another client of mine. She was 18 years old when she came to me, which is beautiful because if you're young enough to be able to know that you need guidance and accountability, and at 18 years old be able to take that upon yourself, like, by all means, you have a big life ahead of you. And she came to me, and the first year we were working together, she wanted to be a criminologist.

And I mean, great career, you know, like she talked about it. I, I helped her get to meet lawyers so that she was able to go to actual cases. And so she was exploring her career. She was really moving into there.

And then literally 4 months into our work together, she said, you know, I've always wanted to be a nurse. I was like, what? She's like, yeah, but I had this teacher that told me that I wasn't smart enough to be a nurse. Interesting.

Very interesting. Stories like that, teachers telling kids they can't be this or that. Yeah. So this is an example of a clear-cut person but one person who meant nothing to her.

Like, who is this teacher? They weren't your mother, they weren't your father. It could be anybody. And so that's where beliefs— beliefs are really important to understand that you— we have beliefs, and beliefs are capable of being changed.

Beliefs are not like values or morals that are like really ingrained in, like, ingrained in your culture and all that kind of stuff. Beliefs are actually created by internal and external circumstances. And so our parents have beliefs, and then they get deposited into our our brains. Our friends have beliefs, they get deposited into our brains.

They're not necessarily ours. Yes, but we operate with these beliefs because they feel right at the time, unknowingly. Sometimes, most of the time, it's unknowingly. And then when you're faced with a situation where this belief is actually stopping you from being able to live your best life, then and only then are you faced with the fact that you have to come back and say, all right, something's got to give here.

What does this come from? Where does this come from? Either where does it come from, or did somebody ever tell you that? And if— what do you believe about yourself?

And I believed that being perfect meant that I would be loved, and so if I wasn't perfect, I wouldn't be loved. So I had to go back. I had to really, again, break down that belief and really understand that. How long did that take?

Um, I did work with a coach, actually. I worked with a coach on that, uh, for a couple of months. But then from there, I was able to have the awareness myself so that when other beliefs came up and other things popped up in my psyche, or like, you know, the cleaning and stuff like that— now I can clean. I have no problem doing it the way that I want to do it, and I don't freak out anymore.

I don't feel like I have to do it to the expectations of others. It's my own thing. I, I've removed judgment from my life. I've— judgment of others and judgment of myself.

But do you think it's something that comes with age? Maybe when we're younger we think more about what other people think, and then as we get older we're like— I think it's twofold. Um, I think there's a part of us that we have to learn, but there's some people that actually can learn from others. They don't have to learn on their own.

There's different types of people who learn differently, and I can't remember the actual the actual turn, but I think it was, uh, but your stream of consciousness, your own personal consciousness, starts around early adolescence, like even prepubescent, so around 11 years old. And then all of a sudden things go crazy in your head because you've been living with other people's consciousness, other people's beliefs. And then all of a sudden, 11, 12 years— how old are your kids? 10, 6, and 3.

Okay, so have you started to notice that your 10-year-old is coming back and being like, coming back on you and saying things that like that they believe this and what you're saying is not necessarily what they believe anymore. Maybe not yet, a little bit, not, not quite, not yet. Maybe we're heading towards— there's, there's an actual stage that happens where consciousness is created, personal consciousness. And so that's when they start to be able to create their own beliefs.

That's why there's a lot of, you know, la crise de l'adolescence. Yeah, that's where it comes from. That's kind of where it comes from. And when I learned that, I was like, man, now everything makes sense, because all of a sudden everything that your parents were telling you, you don't believe it anymore, right?

They tell you don't cross the road because you're gonna get hit by a car. Well, I don't— I mean, I have never been hit by a car. Why should I believe, right? So it's like you create this whole thing.

So I really think that the more that we educate people on the personal development side of things, not just typical education— like, honestly, math is great, but we've got calculators to do a lot of stuff. And yeah, we do need people that are scientists that they need to do all that, you know, scientists and engineers, and they got to do that profound around mathematical equations and stuff like that, but to teach people actually how to regulate their emotions, to teach people how to, you know, understand what their— what beliefs are, how to create new beliefs, how to change their perception of self, how to be— all of that stuff. I mean, why can't we teach kids in high school those things? Why aren't we having more conversations around that?

That's a very good question. Yeah, it's the same thing with, uh, finances. There's a lot they don't teach you either, but That part, I, I didn't think about it as, as much, but you're right. There's so many things that we don't teach kids at early ages, and I think that we'd have the opportunity.

Yes, I learned it at 40 years old, 37 years old. It's never too late. It's never too late to learn. And I don't want anybody listening to this to think that, you know, you have to be 18 to start seeing a life coach, or, you know, there, there's no time.

There's absolutely no time. I saw my first coach, I think I was 30. 33 years old, um, and I haven't gone back. And for somebody who's listening, maybe that's not going to watch the full podcast, what would you want them to get out of it?

If there was a— if you want— if we were to summarize our conversation today? Wow, that's a really good question. Okay, think a little bit about it. What would you want them to know, to get out of it, like one nugget?

I would want them to know that awareness and personal self-reflection is the most powerful tool that you have as an entrepreneur, as an executive, as a mother, as a father, as a grandparent. You learn from the day you are born until the day that you die. There's no such thing as being too old to learn new tricks. That has got to go in the garbage.

That's got to go into the garbage. It's not the truth. It's a belief that we've been told. It's a belief that we've been told that's chalking humans up to animals.

They're completely different entities. They are sentient things, but they're not thinking like we think. They don't have the capacities like we do. How can we chalk our life up to not being able to learn because we get older?

Yeah, I love it. Now let's move on to the, uh, short answer questions. Okay. There's a book that you already mentioned that you liked.

Is there another book you would recommend? Another book that I would recommend: The Great Leap by Gay Hendricks. And I can't remember the other name of his book, but if you read one, you'll get the other one. But same Same author, yeah.

Um, and it's all about upper limit problems. We all have upper limit problems to the capacity to be able to be happy, and oftentimes we are our own saboteur when it comes to our happiness. So what is your capacity for happiness and how can we increase that capacity for happiness? What's your capacity for happiness?

And what does entrepreneurship mean to you? Excitement. Excitement. Entrepreneurship is excitement because it's different every day.

We don't know what's around the corner. It's opportunity. It's learning new things. And if you could go back a few years or a decade, whichever you choose, to speak to yourself again, what would you tell yourself?

I can do anything. I can do anything that I want to do. I'm not limited by time, by skill, by anything, because everything can be learned. And what do you like about the city of Montreal?

I love the fact that we have seasons, believe it or not. I know it's crazy, but I love the changing seasons. I might not like the cold, but I like the changing into winter when there's the first snowfall, when we get the first beautiful day of spring, when summer is just around the corner and you're ready to like go to the pool for the first time, and then when the first leaf on the tree changes colors. I find it's the most incredible thing.

You're the first person that talks about the season. I'm out of a different book. Well, Crystal, it was a pleasure to have you on the Montreal Entrepreneur Podcast. It was a very stimulating conversation.

Thank you, thank you. This was a lot of fun. I really appreciate you having me here today. Honestly, great conversation.

Thanks. Until next time. Until next time.