Janine Bolon: Welcome to the Thriving Solopreneur. I cannot tell you how awesome it is our guest this week. So this is Janine Bolon and I love my job because I get to interview some of the most amazing business people and amazing solopreneurs who are out there, spreading their message, doing what they can to make the planet just a little bit nicer step at a time. I love the fact that I am in media where I can bring these incredible folks who work tirelessly it seems to share with people a message of hope and their spirituality and not only their spirituality but also their ability to help you move through life as a profitable business owner. Today is guest is Kym Glass and she is the author of Unshakeable Courage, basically face reality, release your fears, and live with power. As a business owner, we all could use a little less fear, and a lot more feelings of powerfulness. In addition to her 20 years of corporate experience and expertise where she supported over 3,500 employees in various aspects, Kym has built a seven-figure entrepreneurial business. Initially, it was started during her lunch hour and basically, she has built and connected with multiple communities by now. Created from her professional and personal experiences, she delivers three growth systems proven to give success to others, such as unshakeable courage, soft skills strategies for bottom-line results, and take your business and voice from a whisper to roar, which does not hurt anybody.
Her Unshakeable Courage book is on the national speaking and book tour kicked off in Washington DC at a CBS studio in October of 2019. Kym is excited to share her true story of her escape from a religious cult and vital message that gives others freedom because nobody should live in fear. Kym has selected from 250 applicants to share her break free from generational patterns to create your own unlimited future idea at the TEDxMatlockRoad event. Her presentation is now featured on the TED YouTube channel, where is selected as an idea worth sharing. In addition to her own book, Kym is featured in the bestselling books of how entrepreneurs lead and find success. One habit of women action takers, expert’s series from the Harvard Club of Boston, momentum 13 lessons from action takers who change the world. In momentum, Kym is featured alongside, Frank Shankwitz, Founder of Make-A-Wish-Foundation, Brian Smith, Founder of UGGS, Ron Klein, Inventor of the credit card magnetic strip, and more. She has been featured on numerous podcasts and in professional performance and inspiring lives magazines. Kym has been recognized as a finalist for Women in Technology, Best Business Connector, and an honoree and award recipient for the International Association of Women. She enjoys partnering and helping others in the areas of consulting, publishing, speaking, workshops, and retreats. As a natural connector, Kym is always passionate to learn more about you, your business, and how she can best support you. So Kym, thank you so much for being here and being on this podcast show helping Thriving Solopreneurs.
Kym Glass: I am excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Janine.
Janine: Yes. I am really glad our paths cross and the biggest thing of course is I am going to talk about the elephant in the room survived a spiritualist cult. Oh, my gosh. How about we talk just a little bit about that because, yes, we are going to talk about business and how you get over your fear and blah, blah, blah. Gee, you escaped talk to us a little bit about that and how you turn that into your message of brave.
Kym: Yes, that is true. I know what it feels like to live in fear and a lot of that came from my upbringing. Like you mentioned being born and raised in a religious cult, and not only that I was fourth generation. So a pattern that I knew very well and yet lived with so much fear because it is what I knew. I was born and raised in this cult and was in it for 35 years. I remember the time in the supermarket parking lot when I was 17, the cult leader had me in the car with her and my mom who I had been moved out of my home came walking out and the cult leader was taunting her that I was in the car with her and roll down the window so that my mom could visibly see me. My mom started screaming words that I had never heard come out of her mouth and quickly the cult leader rushed us out of that supermarket parking lot and 15 years later that same exact pattern started happening to me with my family and with my own daughter, and at that point, enough was enough. I knew that I could not allow this generational pattern that my family had suffered for to pass one more generation.
Janine: That breaking of the cycle is one of those things that happens a lot for people who are trying to improve their circumstances. Like, if you have always lived in a very impoverished way, trying to build your own business may seem absolutely impossible because of your generational mindset. I just wanted you to share just a little bit about that experience of breaking out of that cult because not an easy thing to do it 35 and a lot of times women will tolerate a lot, but then you start messing with their children and that brings about a whole different set of not only experiences but choices that actually surprise you that mother bear, that Mama Bear comes out and you are like, oh, this is done, the cabs were going to protect them. When it comes to helping people move out of those fear factors if you will that are generational. What do you recommend as like a good starting point? Okay, so we will set up the environment. It is 2 AM. I have woken up in the middle. I am indeed as business owner. I am sweating bullets because I do not know where the next bit of cash flow is going to come from. What are some things that you would recommend that you do to help calm that poor business owner? Because yes, I have been there. You know where I am trying to figure out how I am going to feed my family and pay my mortgage. I would love to hear your advice on such things.
Kym: Yes, and it is so true. We go through these growth spurts kind of like what you do when you are a child, you are going through a growth spurt and all of a sudden you shoot up a few inches. Yet as a business owner, those things still happen to us, but it is more on the awareness and the emotional level. I will tell you, yes, it took me 35 years to actually click my heels and walk away from that, but I had what I call whispers of information that came to me at different points and just for instance, my final wake-up call and it was not my first wake-up call but my final wake-up call was 9-11. As I saw what was happening on TV, at that exact moment, I thought life is too short to live in this much fear. I must do something different or nothing is going to change, and if I do not change this behavior and if I keep allowing this then it is going to pass to the next generation and so as a business owner, those things that keep you up at night. For me, I had to really train myself to stay in the present moment. By doing that, I could only focus on the things that I could control at that moment. What is it about your business that you have control of outside of the fear that you may be feeling, that is a bigger focus toward your goal instead of the worry, the doubt, the fear, that is keeping you up at 2 AM in the morning.
Janine: That is a very good point and you and I have talked before about how important vision boards are. Whether you– no matter how you put your vision up, it is important to have pictures to help you emote so you can walk yourself literally, emotionally pass those frightening points of fear. So when you are walking somebody through their fear whatever it happens to be, you have this little anagram or whatever of brave. You talk about brave a lot and it ties in beautifully with your book on courage. So if you do not mind walking us through a few of your systems on that, I think that would really help a lot of people out as they scroll to Amazon to buy your book, Unshakeable Courage. Go ahead.
Kym: Yes. The first piece that I had to come to grips with myself is I had to get brave. So the B, if you take the word brave, the B is I had to believe in myself. First and foremost, I could not allow the opinions of other people and what they wanted to put on me to rule and control my life, above my belief in myself. The R is for the roadmap. What steps can I take right now or in the near future? What are the pieces of that roadmap that I can take that will move me away from fear? Get really clear on what are those steps that you can take as a business owner? What do you need to be doing? How many reach outs do you need to do today? How many follow-ups do you need to do today? Who needs to know you? Who is a good referral? Who is a good connection for your business? All those pieces of the roadmap are critical as a business owner as well. A is abilities. I had to believe in my own abilities. I had over 35 years, right? Of some of my own abilities and yet there were also new abilities that I needed to learn along the way, and they were not all defined at one time. I had to get into the roadmap and start taking action and start taking the steps toward my goal for those new abilities to really start showing themselves to me. Then at that time, I was able to take that next small step and sometimes, yes, we want to take that biggest leap ever because we are here and we want to be there, but there is so much in the small steps that we take and we may feel like we are taking three or four steps forward and then we are being pulled back six steps, but I can assure you, once you get on the roadmap that those abilities will start opening up and showing themselves to you. From that, there is so much empowerment to keep you going, to keep you motivated, and more specially to keep you consistent toward your goal. The V is the view. The only view is to focus on your goal. What is that goal for your business? What is that goal for your life? Hey, what is that goal outside of all this fear that is entertaining your mind and holding you back because that is what your big focus is on? I do not think anyone on purpose surely looks at, oh, my gosh. Look at this fear. I want to sit here with it all day long and yet we get stuck in it because it becomes our focal point. So what is the view you are looking at today? What is that goal for your business? Where do you want to be in the next year, three years, and five years? So V is for view. Then the critical piece, I believe is expectations. E is for expectations. You have to truly forget about everyone else’s expectations for you, for your life, and even for your business, and focus on the expectations that you have. Remember if those people are not doing what your goal is for your business, their opinions are coming from a different place than where you are road mapping yourself to. So I think it is very important that the opinions of other people even if it is our friends and closest family members. We talked about out your family is going to hug you, your friends are going to cheer you on, and yet they have no clue and no idea what your goal is, and so they have a different perspective and I think it is important that we focus on the expectations that we have and get in touch with those people that are doing something similar, or that are so far ahead of where you want to be, so that that becomes kind of your view on what you are focusing on as you are building your business.
Janine: So I would like to go back to the B at the beginning of the brave where you are talking about really sit with yourself and be courageous for yourself, be brave for yourself. Because I know there are many times that as an entrepreneur or solopreneur, you feel very much alone. It is really tough to keep sitting at the desk, day after day, zoom call after zoom call, just trying to make things happen for yourself. What are some tips that you can give people on how to manage the low cost of control? You hear about that a lot in psychology that as long as you are thinking about what you have to offer from an internal view, you are fine, but as soon as you start to hopefully– soon as you start looking outside of yourself for affirmation, acknowledgment, all that kind of stuff, that is where things go awry. You and I talked about this but I would love to know more about your particular perspective on how you kind of navigate that bumpy trail. I mean some days it can be a little bumpy on that one.
Kym: So true. From my perspective the B and the belief in yourself, the reason that is so critical is that is what I believe is the foundation of where your confidence lies. If you are not building your confidence every single day or you are not tuning in the things whether it is music, a podcast, listening to something that motivates you, and keeps your confidence level up, it could even be a different way that you comb your hair. What is that thing that brings you confidence today even if you do not wake up feeling it, you can tap into it. So I think the B is so important because it is the foundation that all of these other things are built on. If you have confidence in yourself, you can push through doubt, fear, being stuck, a lot of those things I believe hinge around that confidence. If you are looking for someone’s opinion or someone’s view, or only to be liked by other people, it does hamper your confidence. So I think it is very important that your foundation is stable and that as you go you can build upon that.
Janine: Thanks for qualifying some of that for us because we hear that a lot of be confident in yourself, or believe in yourself, and I really like to get pretty specific on that because we hear a lot of general terms not only in the media, but on interviews like this and people are doing their best to transmit information that they think will be helpful, but a lot of times we get stuck on these generalities and unless we really drill down on what we are describing and it basically comes down to. I may not win all the time, but I know I am a winner. It is kind of that mentality and that can be a little upsetting to people because it almost sounds like it is arrogant and I encourage people you need to be more selfish. You need to be more selfish and follow what works for you, even if nobody else thinks it will work. You want to talk a little bit about that very good quality of selfishness, even though a lot of times were taught the exact opposite.
Kym: That is so true. Growing up in my incident, it was always somebody else’s belief in you and sometimes even as a business owner, other people’s opinions, we start taking those things on and often times, I always tell people, you just want to be on the road. It is really good if you are in the middle of the road, but if someone is opinion is pushing you off the road into the ditch it is probably not a good thing, right? So if you are at least on the road and you have that confidence, once you have that and I will tell you I did not have that for a lot of years in that one area of my life, but I thrived in my corporate work because it was something that I knew myself. I knew myself in that environment and I knew that I had the initiative and I knew that I wanted to help other people in my work and so that became my passion. So whatever that thing is, even if you are– you know in my case, I was born and raised in a religious cult, and yet I started out as a ten dollar an hour secretary and broke through the glass ceiling because I had ownership and I took self-ownership in that area of my life. We often talk about peeling the onion back, and the purpose of peeling that onion back is so that it strips away everybody else’s expectation, everybody else’s story whether it is really their story or you just interpreted it, right? So what happens is once you pull that onion away, you get to the core of that. I often tell people, once you know yourself, it is kind of like a tree that is planted by the water at the lake and it is rooted so deep down that there is nothing that will shake that tree because it knows, what it knows, what it knows, what it knows, and it cannot be moved. So for me, it is that same thing when you know without a doubt, who you are, what your great intentions are, and how you want to help other people, you stand on that and not ever be shaken from it. If you can get to that point as a business leader, even through all the ups and downs and whatever is going on in the environment, in the world, whatever is swirling around, if you can hold on to the belief that you know it is yourself, what your goal and your mission is, you cannot be moved or shaken from that. You may have to pivot, you may have to shift, you may have to go a little different direction for a little while, but you know who you are and to me, there is nothing so important as that, because it will sustain you through any change in your business.
Janine: One of the favorite stories I enjoyed reading, I read a lot of business books, especially about people who took the rags to riches type stories. I was fascinated with those because in America, I do not think a lot of people understand just how novel this country is in that you do have the ability to do that if you so desire, so I would read a lot of these stories. One of the things that I noticed over and over there were certain patterns and one of them was when the individual who I was reading about would break away from their coaches, their mentors, their societal influences, and they would actually break away from all that advice and they would go and do something that was considered wild crazy or just downright irresponsible by either family, friends, coach, what-have-you, mentor, and that was the thing, that was their identity, and that moves them forward. Do you have a similar part because you move from ten dollars an hour as a secretary and you are now running an over a six-figure business for yourself? I know that did not happen overnight, so I know that there were times– probably many times where you had to totally break away from everything you have been taught as the correct road and you had to follow your happiness factor, just so to speak. Would you like to embellish a little bit on that?
Kym: Sure, that all is so true and it also goes back to the roadmap. Whatever that thing is that you are doing in your business, it is your passion, right? We hope that it is your passion because that is what you are sharing with other people, that is how you are engaging with prospects, that is how you are winning customers, that is how you are getting your repeat customers. When you have the belief not only in yourself, but in your business, it is like a great two-sided sword so to speak. Because you know who you are, you know what your business is, and how you help other people. In my case, both times, I am such a life learner of self leadership because that is something I can own outside of anybody else’s opinion. I want to do my best work. I want to help as many people as I can, and so just echoing what you were saying about building a seven-figure business. That was something– I am an experienced learner, number one. I can do the book and the test, and that is all great and fine. Give me good old-fashioned on the job training, that is how I started out as a ten dollars an hour secretary, started taking classes, and to me for myself, that is how I learn. I want to experience that and along with all that experience, it opens up all these senses. All the senses, all the five senses that we have, to me, that comes through your experience and so, when I think about how I started this seven-figure business, I had a goal and my goal was to help other people in this specific business, helping them in their health and wellness.
I have been a connector for a lot of years. I have facilitated networking events, I was the go-to person for the executives and my corporate office to all the chamber events, and I have always built community just naturally, as a matter of fact, I just thought everybody did that for so many years until people started saying, “I do not know how you do that, or oh my gosh, how do you know these people.” For some kind of way or reason, I have been able to not only keep a database of connections but a really mental rolodex so I could help other people. When you talk about building a seven-figure business, that was something– that was a subset of my initial business, and yet they kind of work hand in hand. So when I first started, I was inexperienced to this product or service and then people started seeing me visible on social media, they started seeing me out networking, and they were like what all are you doing, right? Because as a business owner, most days we are not just doing one thing, we are doing multiple things and so how do you keep that all integrated with who you are and I know that anything that I have done in my work, first stance from who I am. So what I did when I started out on this subset business is I said, “You know what. I am pretty loaded already during the day, but I am going to schedule only my lunch hour, Monday through Friday, and I am going to see how I can grow this business.” Literally, this is what I did. On my lunch hour, I drove down to the local restaurant parking lot. I had my laptop with me. They had free Wi-Fi that I was able to access sitting in my car and that is how I started reaching out to people, catching up with my friends, talking to my family, being involved in networking that I had done for so many years, and just taking that first step. I will often say once you make a decision, things just start opening up. I cannot explain it. I just know for me it has happened and once I made that decision, every single day on my lunch hour regardless of what is going on, Monday through Friday, I am walking out of my home office, I am driving my car, I am going down the street two blocks to the restaurant. I am going to sit in their parking lot where I can log on to their Wi-Fi and I am going to start reaching out to people and within six months, I had built that into a seven-figure business and I was actually able to walk away from a client that really was not in alignment with the things that I loved for my business and although it was on great terms and that sort of thing, I was able to make a decision that I had gotten that client as far as I could. I was able to take on this other bigger project that was really in tune with what I love to do and what I am most passionate about. Yes, starting a business like that when you can make a decision and also get clarity, clear enough, sometimes we struggle with getting clarity on what to make a decision. Sometimes we have six or eight things going at a time that we are trying to get clarity for to make a decision, but that is exactly how that business started. That was almost seven years ago and it is still thriving like crazy and it was not even initially one of my service offerings. It just happened from again, having a great experience and knowing so many other people could benefit from it.
Janine: I agree. I have several businesses like yourself and one of my subsets that I only could work on Saturdays from 8 to noon. I was shocked, it went along for almost 18 months before any action happened with it and I was okay with that because I was having fun. That is the other thing. If I am not having fun, I do not do it. You and I have talked about this. You are very similar. If I do not have my happiness factor it is not going to happen, right? That occurred, right? So I would love to talk to you more. We are going to have to have you back on the show and I am sure we will, but I would like you to share with the viewers, where can they go, so that they can kind of connect with you, see your videos, get to learn more about you.
Kym: Yes. So I am at kymglass.com is my website and I spell my name a little bit differently, it is Kym, Y as in yellow, M, Glass as in a drinking glass.com and that is my website. I am also out on LinkedIn as Kym Glass. I am on Instagram as kym_glass, as well as Facebook. I would love to connect with you out there as well as, learn a little bit more about you and how I can help and support you as well.
Janine: So thanks so much for taking time with us today because I know you were one busy woman. I am grateful that you were able to give us at least 30 minutes of your time today. I appreciate the work that you have done not only with your writing but also the services that you provide and for those of you that are listening stay tuned. We will have Kym back in a couple of months. I will let you guys know when that is going to occur. Feel free to reach out to her on LinkedIn. She is very good at connecting on her social media, and if you want stop by at her website kymglass.com. This is Janine Bolon with the Thriving Solopreneur and I want you to keep your feet firmly grounded on Mother Earth, and do not stop reaching for those stars. We will talk to you in the next episode.
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