Ep 28: Ziggy Stardust Energy with Kathryn Morrison

Ready to break out of traditional corporate guidelines to create our own rules for authentic expression? Today, I'm super excited to be joined by Kathryn Morrison, so get ready for diving in to her flavor of design thinking and a little Ziggy Stardust Energy!

Together, we show you how to trust the creative process and how to bring an idea into reality, and trust your own feminine leadership intuition to illuminate your own path.

We also dive into the mechanics of manifestation and taking action toward moving from ideas and thinking and making them real things.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Trusting the creative flow state
How to embrace feminine leadership energy
David Bowie's influence in Kathryn and Marie's lives
The meaning of "failure tolerance"

Mentioned in this episode:

How to connect with Kathryn:

Kathryn is an ex-tech worker turned digital entrepreneur who explodes her corner of the internet with equal parts cosmic rainbows and super strategic business building guidance. People come to her to build businesses that are equal parts intuition and logic, structure and flow, creative and strategic. Think like if a yogi, Lady Gaga, and Warren Buffett had a baby. You can find her at www.kathrynmorrisoncoaching.com or on Instagram @kathrynmorrisoncoaching, or find her on her podcast "Ascension Through Entrepreneurship" on your favorite podcast platform.

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach, Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Hello everybody and welcome to The Bloom Your Mind Podcast. Today we have a very special guest, Kathryn Morrison is here to talk with us about feminine leadership. And whether you relate to that phrase or not, there's going to be lots of good stuff in here. So, tune in everybody. So, Kathryn, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. Yeah. Before I let Kathryn introduce herself, I am going to tell you a little bit about what attracted me to Kathryn, and then she's going to talk to you about what she's up to in the world. Kathryn, I met you when you were leading a group of coaches in a mastermind that I was participating in, and Kathryn was a leader for my group.

And I just want to share a few of the things that drew me to her and her thought leadership specifically. And she hasn't heard this yet, so this should be fun.

Kathryn: I know. I'm excited. I'm like, what's she going to say?

Marie: The first thing that I appreciated so much about you was what was already coming across in how you are on this podcast already was your total authenticity and that existed simultaneously.

With a very strong brand for yourself, and with your work in the world as a thought leader. And so, I feel like many of us try to create things to please the world in a way that leads us away from ourselves. And I was telling you, my husband is a musician and I'm a painter, and we always talk about how that is when you've put your first body of work out there, or you've released your first album.

And then instead of being in this echo chamber of your own creativity and your own work, all of a sudden you have all these other voices and opinions and an audience to please, in addition to just what's true for you. And so often, I think that leads us to create brands that feel like we're creating a brand or create projects that feel like we're trying to please everybody else or meet expectations.

Yeah, help people feel comfortable. So, Kathryn’s brand and her presence in her brand feels strong and attractive and fun and smart, but also totally authentic, like totally her. So, I love that you're impacting the world by helping other creatives and entrepreneurs to build businesses that feel like the best of them, but like the real them.

So that's the first thing. And two other quick things I'll say that drew me to Kathryn are a somewhat explosive and joy-filled laugh. And I mean that it really fills up the room.

Kathryn: Yeah.

Marie: I love it so much. And then lastly, we share a background in design thinking and more importantly, a deep love of David Bowie.

So, I have to tell you, when I was prepping for this interview, I have this shuffle on my phone that was in the background and Under Pressure came on in the middle of my prep and I was like, we are in the right place at the right time.

You’re just in the flow, David. So, thank you for being here and I'm so excited for my listeners, for all of you to listen into this conversation about leadership and specifically about bringing the feminine into our leadership.

So, Kathryn, I'd love for you to start by introducing yourself and telling us who you are and what you do in the world.

Kathryn: Hey everybody. I'm Kathryn Morrison. I have an explosive laugh. And I think one of the things that we have in common is we both have a background in tech, so that was my work in the world before I came into entrepreneurship, and then I worked in business strategy and development there for many years and decided that there were some things I liked about that, but there were other things I wanted to carve my own path with.

So since then, I have gone full in on digital entrepreneurship, this fun wild west of building online businesses and helping people figure out to, to like the point of what is your authentic expression in the world.

And we are like living in this world now where anybody can just take a phone under their pocket and start a business. But in our minds, so many of us are still living in this world of the corporate environment and who we're supposed to be. And it's breaking out of that box of there's actually no rules now.

And so how do we create our own rules, our own guidelines, and guardrails of what that looks like? And in particular, it’s interesting actually, that you said I help creatives and entrepreneurs, because that's something I haven't even intentionally fed into my marketing. But you are putting language to something that I see shifting in my world as well, which is very much like I'm helping a lot of people who are equal parts like creative and strategic, like intuition and logic, structure, and flow.

And so, the people that do very well in my containers are people that. Could do very well in corporate and did well with that linear logical thinking. But there's this bigger creative part of them that's really wanting to come out and express and how do you do that in an integrated way? And that's the stuff I love doing because that's what the path I had to walk myself.

Marie: I didn't know that wasn't an intentional thing you were calling in, but it's literally what called me to you. Because I've worked in strategy and I'm an entrepreneur, but I'm a creative, and for lots of coaches in the industry, you’re definitely striking that balance.

Kathryn: I think it's interesting because actually, I've intentionally not used the word creatives yet because I think that my best person is a creative and they would recognize that from like growing up, but they wouldn't necessarily language themselves as a creative. And that's why I haven't said it in my marketing, but it's very interesting that you keyed in on it.

Marie: It's one of my questions actually. I'm just going to roll into that right now and then come back. So, one of the balances that I think you strike so beautifully and is really aligned with how I think and feel and try to lead my own coaching practice is that you work in real tangible strategy in like tactics and in energetics.

And my best friend and I, we call that the magic plus the logic. So maybe you could talk about that Venn diagram a little bit. How do you teach us, how do you guide people to live and create and lead in a way that's in tune with energy and intuition while staying strategic?

Kathryn: It's interesting because I think about this, we don't even need to go too far into the energetics in the woo to just get to, when you look at what any great artist in the world is doing, they don't even have to be spiritual. Like they're in the world of channeling something in that didn't exist before.

And so, I think if we're looking at anyone who's called to entrepreneurship, or if you're helping someone create a big project in the world, there's a creation of something that never existed before. And so, it's like, where does that come from?

There might be influences or things that seem like they pinged something, but it just seems to come out of nowhere and it wants to come through you. And that to me is I can't understand how that's not spiritual, right? Like when anyone creates anything that's like a business or a painting or you mentioned your husbands like a music artist, right?

And so that feels like to me the things that creativity sparks in. Is something that we then use our logic and our structure and our strategy to ground into the world, right? If we live too far into the world of like expression and like this wants to come through me, but we don't ask, how do we like link that up with what's already happening in the world then, we just have a lot of I don't know, like art sitting in studios. So, I think I've actually like I've now spoken, I'm like, wait, am I answering what was the original question? Cause I'm like coming. I'm, we're just in the world of creativity and logic.

Marie: No, you're on it. Okay. I always think about how when I am the most in the flow, I feel like a window that something is coming through me into the world, instead of this intense effort to try to create whatever it is. And I can pinpoint those moments in my life when that has been the case. When I've been a window and I always talk about that as my like flow state, and my goal is to be a window, right? Are questions that you ask yourself or that you guide people to ask themselves when they're feeling this glimmer?

I don't know if you ever read that book, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She talks about how ideas are like floating around in the world and she tells this amazing story about an idea being transferred in a kiss between her and her good friend. But let's say someone has an idea that feels really exciting and there's a lot of energy behind it.

Are there certain things that you teach people to ask themselves or that you ask yourself to see how that. Idea or that flow or that energy will fit into the reality of the world you're living in.

Kathryn: Yeah, I'm trying to think of what direction I would even go because I part of me would be like let's get specific what is the thing?

And so often it feels like when we're in the world of creativity, it's not we can put like timelines and structures around things. And there's just a feeling for me when I'm in like the creative process, I know if it's like. There's a thing that's marinating and it's like getting pregnant, right?

It's like getting pregnant with an idea. And I see people oftentimes when they're like allowing themselves to just become pregnant with what this thing wants to be in the world. If they get to in their head around let me logic it out and let me, do it. Like the baby just needs to cook, right?

There's just an idea inside of you that's wanting to grow and marinate. And if we were to just continue with this analogy, it's what could you do to make sure that the, it grows in a healthy way? And it's okay, are you taking care of yourself? Are you remaining open and curious?

Are you doing things that allow you to figure out exactly what it wants to be? And then as it feels a little bit more fully formed, it's oh, okay. Like why? Why does this want to come into the world? Who is this valuable to, I don't know. Like I think right now we're talking so conceptually, right?

We could be talking about a sculptor that just has a vision come into their mind and it's just I don't know, like where does this, if they just trust it, like has to come through. It could be they meet an art gallery director like two months from now that they didn't even know at the time. They got the idea that that was always meant to be in that art gallery.

Whereas if we try to be like I don't know if this makes sense. Then it's okay, maybe. And there are some things like if you're starting a, I don't know, like a tech company or like something like that, and it’s this marketable? I think there is an element of okay, like what is the market demand right now.

But I also think that's why for a lot of creative entrepreneurs you have to be really good at marketing and selling because you can learn to create demand where like there, there's not even an awareness of a need in society.

Marie: So good. So good. We talk about this in my programs about the before and the after.

So, when you have an idea that doesn't exist yet and then you put it against the rubric of the reality now. The rubric isn't going to match. It's going to tell you all of the reasons why it doesn't fit, and it won't work. And it's not a match because the world doesn't have it in it yet. But our brains don't see that mismatch.

Yeah. We're using the existing reality right now as the ruler to determine, to measure whether or not we have a viable idea. And what we're talking about here is you have to know, you have to have that trust is what I heard you describing with the sculptor, right? Not only on yourself to create.

The how and the why and the audience for it later, and to figure it out later, but also to trust that the world's going to wrap around. It almost is what it sounds like. Like the why is go is coming and you don't get to know.

Kathryn: And I think it is so interesting because it's so many people. If you go into, I can't tell you the number of times I hear people say I'm only willing to try it if I know it will work, or I'm only willing to try it if I know it's going to succeed.

And I like the number of beauty that doesn't exist in the world and innovation that doesn't exist in the world. And like all of the things versus when I think about, it's so interesting now we're just talking about artists, right? But if you just think about the number, I've thought about this with so many artists who like just to create and create.

There's some things that become their best hits and there's some transmissions that like maybe are almost B-sides or things that most people don't hear about, but if you think that means it's a failure. Then I don't think we're looking at the right thing. I was listening to Macklemore.

Do you know Macklemore?

Marie: No.

Kathryn: He is a famous rapper, and I didn't realize this, I listened to him on a podcast, but he has struggled with addiction his whole life basically. And his whole thing is, can I stay sober enough to let the art move through me? And one of his things when he basically came out, I think it was coming out of rehab, there was a song that really wanted to come through him that was all about, I think it's called Other Side.

And he talks about it as the most meaningful piece of work he's ever put out. It's not commercially successful at all. It's not Thrift Shop or Can't Hold Us, right? All the things that has like the hundreds of millions of views on Spotify. But to him, that's his most meaningful piece of work because it's the thing that addicts come up to him after shows and say, this song saved my life.

And so, I think it's so interesting to think about if you're judging the value of a piece of creation on how commercially successful it is, like that's just one element, right? One facet of being able to judge a piece of creative work.

Marie: So good. Staying sober enough to let the art come through you, and then afterwards. Whatever the project, anybody out there can replace the word art or creativity with business or business idea or a strategy or whatever is coming through you. That's your idea. Or a change you want to make in your life, a change you want to make in the world, right?

It's all the same process that we're talking about here. Staying away, staying sober enough, right? To let the music come through him. We can change that out and stay awake enough, right? To let the ideas come through you. Stay present enough, stay conscious enough and in tune with ourselves enough to recognize the ideas.

And then we're also talking about the after, which is like measuring by other people's standards. Or measuring by your spirit and the meaning that you see afterwards and how your creations, or how the changes you make impact the people around you and your life and yourself and the world.

All right. Today we're here. We started out with the goal of talking about feminine leadership, and I want to contextualize that for you in two ways based on how I talked to my audience about it. So first, I have some brilliant men and non-binary listeners, so just inviting everyone to get what you want out of this conversation and really to think about it as bringing the feminine to leadership so anyone and everyone can find value for yourself in bringing.

The feminine into your leadership or in learning about this for the people around you who identify as female in your life. So just get what you want from it. And then secondly, Kathryn, we talk about leadership in three realms.

In my programs, you can think about them as concentric circles. So, there's ourselves, the self, which is like us interacting with other humans, whether that's in our family, our relationships, small communities, and then the world.

So, I want to really invite everybody to think about leadership. What we're talking about is leadership in any one of those realms that you're working in, whether you're working on an idea in your own life or in a small community or relationship, or out in the big world. That's where we're talking about bringing feminine energy into leadership in any of those capacities.

So, what do you find to be the biggest hurdles in bringing feminine energy into leadership?

Kathryn: I think it might actually even help to define that, right? Because I think every single person might define that differently. For me, I do actually take this from a very spiritual lens. So, when you talk about like masculine or feminine, it's like much less about gender and it's about there's, I don't know, we could talk about yin and yang.

Ida and Pala there's so many lineages over thousands of years that have identified these different types of energies that exist. It just so happens that oftentimes, yes, it's possible that people who present as, this is my gender and they're men. They might have these things, but I have a very strong masculine energy that doesn't make me any less of a woman, right?

So, I think it's like to just recognize that like no matter how you identify in terms of your gender, and this is from my perspective of how I would define this. Every single person has masculine and feminine energy. And actually, you mentioned in the beginning, one of the things that we have in common is David Bowie.

And David Bowie for me, is actually one of my biggest icons in terms of feminine energy. Creativity, intuition, moving through the world. And I would just start by saying that seems I important to define because I do think if we talk about this in terms of like corporate leadership or like what Cheryl Sandberg might be talking about, it's just like women are more cooperative or there's just so many different ways we could look at what that word even means. And so, it's so funny, my husband, listen, he's a philosophy major and he listens to a lot of Dan Harris and long podcasts where they like start for an hour on just defining what the word is before they get moving.

But especially just it feels important for us to just center on this for a couple minutes to be like, okay, if we're going to talk about feminine leadership, from what angle do you like? We need to agree on. This is what we're discussing. And so having said all that, is there a certain I'm glad you did.

Marie: That's exactly what I wanted to invite our listeners to understand.

Kathryn: Okay. Yeah. And so, I would then be carrying on with that, because you said, I think the question was like what, why do people struggle to bring it in? Bring more, bring it in.

Marie: Yeah. I feel like a lot of us as that identify as women tamper that part of ourselves in our leadership or apologize for it. And also, a lot of people that don't identify as women or as females then also struggle with like, where is the strength in feminine leadership? And so, where my question is really around what gets in our way of just adopting it, embracing it, and letting the patriarchy like wounded patriarchy, like wounded masculine energy.

Kathryn: We could dive into how this has looked in terms of what it has looked like. Domination over within religion, domination over within, there's, that's just when we look at the world over the past, I don't know, several thousand years we've been imprinted and modeled a certain type of leadership and while I don't think that is like by and large, I see we're moving in like a very different direction now. I would say that we haven't really come to terms with that. There's this whole other way of being that within this way for thousands of years that we've been operating, there's also been a repression of a lot of different types of.

Energy or ways of being, right? Whether it's like we could look at this in terms of the school system and how in America, like lots of kids are like, is it A, B, C, or D? There's a right or a wrong answer and I just have to be, in my mind thinking my job and my worthiness is my ability to like track this and see what the right answer is versus wait, there's something that wants to come through me.

What does that seem like? It wants to be right, like we don't. Ask ourselves those kinds of questions. And I know for me, like on this journey, I realized, I started with my whole business is I work with people who have both of those energies very strongly. But as a kid I was taught that like my emotions were too big and that they were scary for the adults around me.

And I had intuitive knowings and people thought those were weird and I was super creative, and I was really artistic, but as I got bigger, that wasn't quote unquote practical, right? And so, as kids we get taught like of course, I want love from the big people around me and I seemed to get the most love when I was all of my super strategic thinking and I'm really good at testing on the standardized test, and I'm really good at doing all of these kinds of things, which goes to the point I was making before about like I think the people who are best suited for me are undercover creatives that it got squashed down from them and like they come to me to rehab it out of them because this was my work is I realized, what is my fullest expression talking about brand, right? What is my fullest expression? For me, it's I love style, I love sumptuous fabrics and aesthetics and beauty, and there's so many things, but like for me, working in tech with 95% dudes, they were like all in sweatshirts. They were like, what are you doing right? And so, I just think it makes perfect sense that for a lot of people, this is something that's been tamped down and underplayed for a really long time.

And so, because of that, it's suppressed in a lot of people. That doesn't mean that the potential isn't there, it's just not being activated.

Marie: And if you're not used to being able to recognize that suppressed energy, and you're so many of us, it's so muted in us, right? Or we're so unaccustomed to letting that expression out.

What are the first steps that you guide people to do to just tap into it or recognize it?

Kathryn: Whatever capacity. I think this is like going back to I won't try it unless it's a hundred percent going to be successful, or people are like when you've tamped it down for so long you don't even necessarily know exactly what is my fullest expression, exactly what exactly wants to come through me, right? And so, it's how do you eat an elephant? Like you start with the first bite, so you're just like, what do I know? What does seem to want to express through me?

When do I seem to come alive? I think those are really good questions to ask yourself. Like when do you come the most alive? And I think for me, I was pretty well known in the mindset coaching world, but it was all because I had a very strategic mind. I can track like a pattern.

But when I asked what made me come the most alive, it's like playing with my earrings and there's just so many interior design magazines just for fun. And so, I think it's just tracking.

Are there things that you like that make you come absolutely alive that, but maybe your brain tells you aren't quote unquote practical, and how might they be?

How could you start to blend those expressions into whatever creativity wants to come through you, whatever strategic project you're working on. And it probably is going to end up being your secret weapon.

Marie: I hear a lot of times when people come and they want to coach with me around how to turn an idea into a real thing, but they're like, I have I don't really know how to know what my ideas are, right?

This is that. It's like even understanding what I value versus what I think I'm supposed to value, or what my idea is and what I think a good idea is out in the world. It's so all mish mashed up that the first skill to develop or the first question to ask Is just what do I want? What do I hear?

And I love that. When do I feel most alive? When do I lose track of time? When do I feel most like myself? When does the line between work and play totally blend?

Kathryn: I love that. And where is my desire leading me? If you were to just follow, just not what you were taught to desire, but if you were just to key in on what do I just innately seem to really be drawn to and turned on by? What would happen?

And I just think it's like really interesting to consider. Actually, was just writing an email about Lady Gaga for my branding program. We're like launching soon. And I was thinking about how Lady Gaga she's such an amazing example of personal brand. Like she came out, she just decided, you know what I'm going to wear to the red carpet, like a meat suit.

Like she's worn the weirdest things, and she just decided I'm going to go all in on me and what my expression wants to be and what seems to want to come through me. And she's going to allow for the rest of the world to have whatever thoughts they have. And some people love it, and some people don't.

And because of that, she's been able to attract, like I was just reading, I think it was Dom Perignon, but they just signed her for a two-year deal where it's like they don't want her to be like, the sexy woman in a black dress drinking champagne to represent them. They're like no. We need meat dress, your unique expression, and we want you to help enliven like they're one of the most famous champagne houses in the world, but they want gaga energy to like really to help amplify the desire for their champagne by tying up right with the transmission of her unique energy.

And so, if she had been in the world like, this doesn't make sense. No one looks like me. No one's showing up like me. I probably shouldn't do this. She wouldn't have all of these multimillion-dollar brand deals coming in.

Marie: We talk about that a lot. About your unique expression is a combination of all of the lived experiences that you have had that has something unique to say that will never be the types of thoughts that you have, the type of expression that you can have in the world has never been here before and will never be here.

Knowing that we have that inside of us. But we're not Lady Gaga. So, there's maybe not so much of a safety net. How do you start to work with people to develop the comfort to try something for the first time?

Kathryn: Yeah, since we're talking about this, I was very proud of how I ended this email because I was like, you might be thinking, but I'm not Lady Gaga.

And so, I just looked up a, an image of her from two years before her first hit single. And she looked super New Jersey just like sitting in a diner with messy hair. And so, it was like so incredible because it's like, how did she go from that?

To just two years, or maybe it was three years later when just dance came out. And the expression of that was very different. So, I was like, what happened in a three-year period? I think it would be interesting to look at if we looked at who Lady Gaga was when she was just like with her like messy ponytail sitting in a diner to three years later with just dance, to now being on the Dom Perignon Champaign house.

There's been an amplification of expression over time. But there, something had to shift when she was the person who was sitting in a diner, but was like, wait, this isn't me.

Marie: She's thinking in that diner, right?

Kathryn: And so, there had to be a point where she was just like, there's something else I want to be doing and I'm not allowing myself to express it because it looks very different than everything, I'm seeing in the diner around me.

But there has to be some break where you're just like, oh, okay, but like I'm going to go for it. And some people they go for it, and they run. And I don't know, maybe if we looked at and looked her up, she had an overnight change. Or maybe if we were to like study it, maybe the day after the diner picture, she wore a silver scrunchy and maybe the day after that she like changed her earrings.

Who knows? Maybe it was more gradual over time. But I do think it's just interesting, any sort of icon or person that we look at in terms of like really strong leadership of how they're showing up in the world. Just Google images of them before they were that.

Marie: So good. And which, and maybe it was a silver scrunchy that she felt really great in, she got through that day with a silver scrunchy, and she's dang, that felt good. Now I'm going to add on these earrings. And maybe not, maybe there were fails and flops and lots of things that she thought might feel like her and then didn't. And so, one of the things we talk a lot about on this podcast is failure tolerance. And what we call failing, like you mean it.

So really transitioning how we have been taught to think about failure and even the word, what is the word? Failure, right? But just trying things and having them not work and how devastatingly uncomfortable we are with that. But within, I'm wondering if there's anything specific related to the feminine in leadership or in expression or in ourselves related to failure that sort of being like, how have we have been taught to fear failure specifically, and in ending our self-expression?

What's your take on how we develop that tolerance?

Kathryn: Like I'm doing it wrong, is one of the most common thoughts I ever hear. And I don't know. I do think there is, I definitely track that in women much more strongly than men. But I do think it is just a sort of innate human thing. And it probably comes more from This, these power dynamics of like when you're in school and you raise your hand, and you say one thing wrong and then the class laughs.

I can't tell you the number of times I've talked to someone, and they can pull it back to a memory where it's like embarrassing that they got it wrong. And so, I do think it's what would it even mean? If we unpacked failure tolerance? There are certain things like if we're asking what one plus one equals.

Most of, I would say it's two. Then we could look out what if it's one cup of sand and one cup of water, then actually it doesn't usually go to two cups. So, there's so much nuance with what does that even mean? I do think when we're talking about expression though, how, what would it even mean to fail?

Like going back to the Lady Gaga example, the only thing for her would be like, is this me or is this not me? And if this doesn't feel quite right, then let me, maybe the first day it was a purple scrunchy and then she's I actually like the silver better. But then we could look at, it's oh, but people are like probably listening to this and they're like my expression doesn't pay the bills.

Or I'm guessing, right? A lot of people want something to actually transmit into society in a way where it's like met with validation. I don’t know if I want to claim success. Something like that.

Marie: Because failure could mean that someone looking at you weird because you're wearing that scrunchy. There's lots of different depth failure.

Kathryn: Yeah. And so, it is just interesting, like the concept of failure can be so big. And so, I'm like, what are we talking about? If it is just if you're going to wear a certain color scrunchy, if someone looks at you funny, then is it just maybe that's just not your person.

I don't know, I think about if I saw Lady Gaga walking in the street. I love how Lady Gaga has just become the center of this discussion, but I would be so turned on and so excited, whereas a lot of people would be like, that lady's real weird.

Marie: So, can everyone just listen to this?

Maybe that's not, that's just not your person. Like we, our last couple podcasts were about why do we care about what people think of us and why does that sort of make us defer, starting any action towards making our idea real? Whether someone else believes that it's realistic to do the idea whether they get it or not, right?

Maybe that's just not your person. What an incredible thought to just practice, no matter what level you're creating on just for yourself or for big things that are going to get big feedback out in the world.

Kathryn: I love that. So good. And then I would just say and then if you're thinking about maybe, it's just not my person, but then we're queuing it up with, but this does need to be transmitted to some people in the world for this to be a viable piece of art business.

I don't know, like I like whatever the thing is, but it's okay then who are the right people for this and how do I get them attention?

To me the answer is you amplify your expression. I can't tell you the number of people that changed this.

Art was a very, for the listeners, I have a nine-foot painting behind me that it's like a very bright, like rainbow painting. And I was just like, I want totems visually that I represent myself with that are very clear expressions that like you're going to see it and you're going to be like, that's.

Too much and I don't like it. Or you're going to be like, what's going on with that lady? That's super interesting. And so, for me, I was just like, rather than I was not like a go for the silver scrunchy person. I was like, I'm going to just see how big I can go to like repel people who aren't for me as quickly as possible, and then attract the attention of people that would be for me as quickly as possible.

And literally the number of people that like. Have commented on, like they see me walking out in the world and then they become aware of who I am, and they look me up later and then they buy my program, or they see my Zoom painting on Instagram, and they stop the scroll and right. It's and to me, I think this is where visuals and aesthetics matter so much because it's not just like, how do I package it to make the right impression?

That's like the wrong way to do it. If you're really like, I want to get the right people attracted to me as quickly as possible, just get super calibrated with how you're presenting yourself and recognize that your expression is going to draw them in.

Marie: What I love about what you're saying, and by the way, this is one of the most common things that I hear from people with really successful brands and what I mean by successful is successful like communications of whatever their project or their expression or their business or themselves is out the world.

Like the package that they've put that in, that it is successful in the way that it resonates with them, deeply with them, and that it has reached a lot of people, right?

The thing that I hear so often is that the more they tried to turn off the wrong people and turn on the right people, the better it got and the more people they brought in, which is so counterintuitive to how I used to think about it.

That you want to reach all the people. And what I keep hearing is no. You want to turn people off. You want to turn people away because they're not your people. And the more what I hear Kathryn saying is the more you turn up that dial, just like it sounds like the bigger your volume gets, right?

Kathryn: And especially I do think about this, and I don't know what your people are creating in the world, so I do think there is levels for layers of nuance in this. But when it's like, when you're like, it's counterintuitive, I think, like where's that come from? And I think before the internet we were oftentimes right, like in just like our little bubbles.

This point of what things were and so, if you were like real far off from that, you might get a client or two, but the people would be like, what is Jodi doing over there with her whatever? Versus when you think about what the internet has opened us up to is that like you can reach billions of people with the top of a button, and because of that there's actually the desire for differentiation, more niche markets, all of that exists because your potential client base is billions of people, right?

And so, if people are doing something where it's like maybe they live in a small town of a hundred people and their thing is like super out there. Test it. You could test it and see does this pool of a hundred people want it?

But I do think that's where it's if you might just be living in the wrong town. And so, this is when you could we can start to have a conversation around Yeah, if we're on the internet and we attention is like, there's literally studies on how our attention span is like decreasing.

I just think our ability to amplify up our expression and be super clear, super quickly and differentiated, like it allows us to reach those people because we're not in a town of a hundred people anymore. We're in a sea of billions of people on the internet.

Marie: Love that, and I love that. That's a spectrum, right?

So, you're putting it on blast for the internet, right? But I love that there's a resonance whether you're sitting across a table from someone and having a conversation and that you, that's a brand that's on blast, if that's what your business is if your business is internet based, but that same.

Resonance is just that, do I feel lit up? Do I feel like myself? Do I feel like what I'm doing brings me joy? Do I feel it's the same language that we're speaking? So, my people turn ideas into reality by wanting to, it can be anything. I take the design thinking process and I help anybody who has an idea turn their idea into a real thing, whether that's an idea for something they want to change in their life or a business.

They want to create a book they want to write. A community they want to start, or a relationship change they want to make. But it's all using that design thinking process to have those same tenants that we use for all of those things.

Kathryn: Which I think it's what we're talking about here is like design iteration.

It's like you start from like in the realm of possibility. What is it? And then only after you've like really blasted out the realm of possibility, do you bring in the people who are like, okay the physics person that's actually gravity doesn't work that way. We might need to tweak this.

We only need to do these things. But if you start from the realm of possibility, you end up, like you will always end up with like further along than if you just go from your mind of what you think is quote unquote practical. Or quote unquote possible.

Marie: Use defining, practical, like what voice is defining practical in your head? And I love the phrase blasting out the realm of possibility. So good. And that could happen inside your head or on a piece of paper or out in the world.

But you're starting from what do I think the limits are and how can I erase those limits and think from this realm of anything is possible, instead of pacing the past on the future or instead of living into specific roles that we've been trained to do.

So, it's starting from this place of total openness and a blank slate in the future. So, I love that when I'm curious about whether, and I really want this to translate for people that are not building a brand right, but that are just creating, working on creating anything in their lives.

You work with people on creating images for themselves, that's really like from the, their fullest expression, right? And also, what I love about what I've seen in your work is they again, don't feel like they're trying too hard. So, I think that a lot of people, when they're coming up with what their idea is, they get a little bit in their head around, what is the fullest expression of this idea that I could bring into the world?

And what is me trying too hard to make it the biggest, craziest thing I could ever make it, right? So how, maybe you could speak from your experience in building brands. How do you unfetter, right? What holds us back from being ourselves without trying too hard to be our ultimate expression, such that it might take us back away from ourselves?

Does that make sense?

Kathryn: And I'll riff on it and then correct me if I'm like, if I'm not interpreting the question correctly, but it feels like when it feels like you're trying too hard, you haven't gone into expression if you're just allowing yourself to be, and it's coming from a place that is like the realm of possibility, it will feel like flow.

It will feel like following what makes you feel alive or like what's interesting. And then there's a point after you've created some, of course you need to bring in your like, strategic thinking and be like, and then how could we change the form of this? How could we tweak this?

What are the different ways we could package and iterate this? Or whatever the thing is. But oftentimes when people feel like they're trying too hard, it's like they actually aren't in the realm of possibility. They're in the realm of their like little human brain. And they see there’s an idea that wants to come through them, but they're actually not expanding themselves to recognize like I'm the conduit of the idea.

Marie: What do you mean by expanding themselves? What does that look like?

Kathryn: I think about this very specifically, and I call it brand, but for people here that are like, if that's not resonating for them, I just think no matter who you are, there's an individual and there's like a person who you are and what you represent in the world.

And so, we could even talk about this, like people that don't even run businesses, but if you just know someone and they're always 10 minutes late. If they're 10 minutes late, you're like, oh, it's on brand.

But one of the things that I often think about is like, when I have an idea, a project, something that wants to work through me recognizing that it's then my job for that thing to allow that thing to shape me. And so, if I think that who am I to have that? Or who am I to have this thing?

It’s here for a reason. This isn't like some mental, like I saw it was hot outside and I brought water, which I think there's plenty of place for those kinds of ideas in the world. Those are great. They line up immediate I see this thing and I bring it, but sometimes there's something that's on our heart that just feels like it wants to come through.

And then it just feels like the work is like I have to expand myself to belief in what's possible for me. Belief in certain character traits or qualities or recognizing my innate gifts in the world and why I am perfect for that thing to come through. So good. And when you do that work, then you're expanding the concept of the self.

I don't know if you ever talk to your people about like future self-work, but it's really going into who is my future self? And that future self is always big enough to be a conduit for the idea to come all the way through. We call it future tripping.

Marie: Okay. So, one of the things that we talk about is we're always talking about these different elements of the design thinking process and of the human brain and how we can be aware of how they interact with each other and help us or hurt us in make an ideal idea into a real thing, right?

What is the thing right now that is an idea that's in your mind that you're working hardest to bring out into the world, and where are you at in the process?

Kathryn: I don’t know if I'm at a. It's interesting. I almost feel like I need follow up questions. I had an immediate answer, but then you said that you're working on right now or you said working the hardest or something and for me, it feels like when I'm super, when there's like an immediate, I don't know, maybe a launch that's coming up for a program or something right.

Then it like that actually feels like sometimes that can feel like hard work. Because then you're in like the crafting of it, right? You're in the actual, tangible. Get it in, work on it, bring it out into the world and deliver it Which is different from where my mind immediately went. And I can't remember exactly what words you said, but I was like, oh, it's like I want to have a physical community.

I like to want to own a housing development that's like a higher consciousness community. But that's very much in the, like I am thinking about it, I've saved over almost a million dollars for it. I'm starting to meet developers and literally, the world is just like bringing me architects. I can't tell you; I've never met an architect in my life, and then in the past nine months, all of a sudden, I'm meeting all of these architects.

So, I think that's something where it's that's more in the like things are like the ingredients are coming together, but I'm not like, I'm in the dreaming part of that. It still feels really fun. Stay

Marie: We call it future trippin’. So yeah, it doesn't have to feel hard, right? It could be the dreaming part of it.

How much time do you focus on visualizing exactly what this community's going to be like? Like how much time do you spend thinking about it, and why is the world handing you architects? Is it when you really look at it? Is it something that you're focused on and you're recognizing opportunities to reach out to architects?

Is it something that you're thinking about a lot? Tell us a little bit about how you think this is happening?

Kathryn: For me, what my process has been it's it feels like a vision I received, and it won't stop coming.

And so, there was like a time period where I was just like, oh, I don't know how I get there. I literally have no idea how; it just seems like a thing. It's like a desire. But then as I started to get curious and I was like, what might it be and what could it look like? I just started to notice like it was like.

Two or three years ago, I went to a place out in like outside of Atlanta, Georgia called Serenbe which was like a restaurateur guy that like sold us 14 restaurants and then basically started a retreat center and they have events and then it's also like a whole community.

I had told my mom my dream. She was like, we're here. This guy did it. And so, I was like, oh, so I just put myself in the flow of what could this thing be? Things just start presenting themselves, right? So, like I became aware of that guy, then I'm like meeting people at different like retreat centers and spaces and architects, just my friend, my children become friends whose parents are architects. That's how they introduce themselves. So, this is something that like, it feels very much in the realm of manifestation of what's happening in terms of that. But then there is like my part of it, which is I have a financial plan and I'm putting away a lot of money.

That is Mama going to work and putting it into a high yield savings account, right?

Marie: So okay, there are two things I hear here. There's mama putting away the savings, right? But that came after the moment where you said out loud what the dream was, what the idea was, and then there's this cognitive bias cycle, right?

That happened between you and your mom, where your mom was like, I recognize that dream right here. And then that peaks your attention again. You're like, wait, I'm on the right track. And there's also this manifestation of, I'm thinking about this place and I'm starting to get energy behind it.

And then your friends have parents that are architects. But then there's the moment where there's the cognitive bias that kicks in where you're like, that's an architect. I'm interested in that. Where you're, your brain notes, the things that are in line with the vision that you've been holding. And I want to zoom in on that moment of what might it be?

What could it look like as like a keystone moment? And the idea turning into a real thing rather than, this isn't realistic. I don't know what I'm doing. All of the things that our brain, gives us when we have an idea that doesn't match the world that we're in now.

It's the moment, right? So, does that happen naturally for you now where you're like what might it be? What could it look like? Does your brain still give you the no way girl thoughts?

Kathryn: Like it presents them, but I think at this point I like really just feel like I'm in flow with the universe and if my brain ever offers me a thought, it's just I don't know.

I imagine it like it hits hooks in with its nails and I just untether them and I'm like, we're going this way. Thank you. Duly noted. But I do think it is also just like I've built such self-trust over time that I will show up for myself and I will show up for the creation. I will show up when I'm inspired.

I will show up when I'm not inspired, and then I'll do the work to get inspired. So, I think that amount of self-trust allows me to move forward into uncertainty and not really knowing the exact how. A lot easier than even just a few years ago. I still moved forward, but I had to take myself kicking and screaming.

Marie: How did you do that? You were just committed to whatever the idea was?

Kathryn: Yeah, that is a quality, that was a unique gift that I think I've always had, and it could work against me, but I've always just been like a really tenacious person.

And so actually it was this thing flipped where it was like I was really tenacious and I'm not going to believe, and I like, and I'm committed to being really negative about this. I used to complain and blame the world. I was really committed to that. And then I was like, oh wait, I don't like what I'm getting from that.

Marie: Y’all she was in the diner and she had her moment.

Kathryn: And so, what happens if I were to take that gift I have, which is I'm really tenacious and I were to put my tenacity towards moving forward to what I want.

Marie: So good, and I have to take this moment to talk to you or have Kathryn describe to you how she talks about, we talk about feelings and the feelings not coming through us and that being data and that we can, honor the feeling and understand the feeling and then decide to generate another feeling. And Kathryn talks about it sometimes. She talks about eating the feeling and metabolizing it and turning into something else. The words that you use to talk about these transmuting feelings, can you share a little bit with my audience about how you talk about like consuming the feelings that you get from your sort of untethered brain and then you like, It's like a little Petri dish in a lab.

You like add a different chemical and turn them into something else that totally serves you. Tell us how you talk about that.

Kathryn: I almost think of this. It's a little bit, and I do think it's like when you talk about like in the general world of like therapy or like what, and it's processed the emotion.

We have to process our human emotions. I tend to think of we're all spiritual beings having a human experience. So, when I tune into my spiritual being, She's pretty freaking cool and magical. And when I am tethered to that, when I genuinely believe there's just like something bigger inside of me and I'm tethered to that bigness, I think this is what, if you talk about it like future tripping, right?

I think a lot of people, you don't even have to come at it from a deeply spiritual angle. For me it does feel like very it feels like my soul incarnated here to do something very specific. And then when I am positioned as that, That I'm tethered to that in my consciousness, and then I have a human emotion like shame or angst, or anything come up.

It feels like I'm just eating it like I'm a dragon and I'm like, give it to me. And I will. I will eat it up and I'll consume it and I'll transmute it and I'll turn it into something to make me stronger. And that feels, Ooh, I'm like turned on right now just thinking about it.

Marie: I cannot get over how much I'm like a dragon and I'll eat my shame and turn it into something that I like better. Oh, I love it. Oh my gosh.

Okay. We're at the end of our time here, so is there anything else? I have one more question for you and then I'm going to ask if there's anything else you want the audience to know that you haven't said yet. Okay. But I do want to end with how David Bowie has influenced you in your life and your business.

Kathryn: Oh, my goodness. Greatly. It's so funny, actually, it's in my inside of the branding program I run. I talk about him in the style module. Like I pinned him so many times in my style work, and I think that was like, I’m going back to how do you get into the flow of what you want?

It's what am I drawn to that no one can explain? I always was very drawn to David Bowie and Bjork and like all of these things, and that to me was the signal when I looked at my little human and I was like, I see no expression of that anywhere. There's nowhere to be found. And so that was like a really good cue for me when I saw no one taught me to love David Bowie.

No one taught me to love Bjork. No one taught me to love Lady Gaga. That's just something that, like people, super avant-garde musicians are very appealing to me, and that taught me something about myself. It was my latent creative potential that I just wasn't allowing out of myself. And I think it's like, we could probably end it there, right?

I could tie it into like I wore brighter colors or I did this, but it was like really just that knowing of this person who was really big in the world and he was, I mean his style changed dramatically over his lifetime and he was never worried about oh, like people know me for this style of music now, so I have to keep producing that.

He was always just looking at what is the next thing that seems to want to move through me and I think that's another thing that I would say, like that's what made him an icon versus some musicians that you see, they're like a blip on the radar because they just shoved themselves into a box that made sense for a certain moment in time for society.

Whereas like David Bowie, he was like the Lady Gaga, right? He came into his fullest expression, and he just kept moving and he had some albums that were like huge commercial successes. And others that were like a little bit of flops maybe. But if he liked them, going back to the McLemore song, right?

Like his favorite piece that McLemore ever created is one that has never reached critical acclaim or massive success, right? And so, I think because David Bowie spent his creative life asking what pleased him, and he was also a showman that knew how to like work the marketplace and he recognized his power within it.

Those are all the way David Bowie has inspired me.

Marie: I have to tell you that I had created my mood board for the initial work on my brand and my website, and the only famous person on it was David Bowie, and then I went into your group program. This is good. I'm in the right place. I want y'all to remember this question.

She just asked yourself in whatever your process is in bringing ideas into reality, what pleases me, right? That's what. You just described David going through his entire career saying what pleased him. I love that. What resonates with me? What pleases me? Anything else you want the audience to know?

Kathryn: No, I think that's a pretty mic drop moment. I don't know where we go from there. It's there right.

Marie: there. Alright, I'm going to have Catherine linked in the show notes. Thank you so much for bringing all your bright colors and all your energy and your feeling eating dragon vibe.

Kathryn: It was so much fun to talk to you. So good. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for hanging out with me friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.

Bloom Your Mind

Ep 28: Ziggy Stardust Energy with Kathryn Morrison

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