Permission to Kick Ass

When you build a business you hate with Cara Steinmann

September 04, 2024 • Angie Colee • Episode 185

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If I could sum this episode up, I'd tell you to let go of expectations and embrace experimentation. Fortunately, this episode with the incredible Cara Steinmann cannot be easily compartmentalized. Join us for an ADHD rabbit hole about energy management, recreating a job you hate (cleverly disguised as your business), trying to be what people expect, and more. If you've ever struggled with finding yourself or your "thing" in business, this one's for you.

Can't-Miss Moments:

  • Starting off strong with a good ol' fashioned Angie rant: YOU ARE NOT YOUR MONEY. YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR PEOPLE. You are worthy and awesome because you ARE, not because you DO.

  • Cara's "oh shit" moment that led her to burn down her business and start from scratch at 40 (and how to recognize if you're on the same path)...

  • One of my favorite show quotes ever comes courtesy of Cara: “Maybe I can just do whatever the fuck I want on those days…”

  • Choosing between rest and the to-do list: how Cara and I discovered our non-negotiables and developed the confidence to stick to them (even when it might disappoint clients and customers)...

  • What I did when I discovered a competitor had basically the exact same offer to the one I'd been secretly building for almost a year (my reaction might surprise you)...

Cara's bio:

Cara Steinmann helps women entrepreneurs build relationships that lead to more collaboration, visibility, and fun. Founder of the Ravel Collective and host of the Ravel Radio podcast, Cara inspires women to forge meaningful connections that positively impact their personal and professional lives.

She believes the collective power of women is the key to dismantling systems of oppression and has made it her mission to remove the obstacles that keep women separate, so they can build more wealth and amplify their impact together.

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine-figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my new friend, kara Steinman. Say hi, hi, thanks for having me. Oh, I'm excited for this one. We were just getting into talking a little bit too much before the show. I almost forgot to hit record. But anyway, before I go off the rails, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Cara Steinmann:

All right. So I'm Kara Steinman. I'm a Gallup certified strengths coach and I do women's leadership coaching for entrepreneurs, and I have an online community called Ravel and that is a networking community for women entrepreneurs. Everything I do is around women entrepreneurs. In case you're not catching that, it's a little bit of an obsession of mine helping women get into the business. They love build the business, they love build community around the business. They love Cause we can't do it alone. Even though society would like us to think that we should, we're not. We're not doing that here. So, yeah, so, and I have, I host a couple of masterminds. And then recently, this last year, this earlier this year, I hosted my first mastermind retreat, which was amazing, and I'm planning another one in Sedona for the fall. So that's kind of what I'm up to.

Angie Colee:

Ooh, that's awesome. I have so many questions. First, I wanted to know I took Gallup last year, Like that was my first assessment with that What'd you think? I was surprised, but not surprised. What is the activator? And strategic or strategy were my top two, and then when I read the definitions of those I went, oh yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

Cara Steinmann:

That tracks? Yeah, I have those in my top five too. I was doing CliftonStrengths was one of the assessments that I did. I'd done it years ago for some job but I don't even know if I ever saw the results. It was like the boss just wanted to see what I was all about or something. But when I did it for myself and I was looking at the results, it was kind of a game changer because I could see on on paper that I had zero of my top 10 strengths in executing. So I'm very much big, but that's not really helpful when you are built like you're you're. You grow up thinking you're supposed to produce and you're supposed to, you're supposed to do things a certain way. And it was always so hard for me working for other people and producing like repetitive things and anyway, I digress. Cliftonstrengths was a huge, huge game changer for me, just seeing that on paper and being like, oh, I'm not built like that, okay.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, no, I don't think that that's digress at all, like a digressing what is that word? Digression, digressing, whatever? Yeah, I don't know, you know what I mean.

Angie Colee:

It was not a diversion whatsoever, because I feel like this is happening a lot in the last couple of weeks and I even wrote a post about it recently. Like you are not the money in the bank, you are not what you can produce and what you can do for other people, and I'm getting sick and fucking tired of all of us tying our self-worth, our self-image, to like how much we can do, how much we can achieve. You deserve love, you deserve comfort, you deserve happiness and whatever your definition of success is by merit, of being a human on planet earth Like you exist and that's enough and I know that that's easier said than done to find the people that love you and respect you for who you are and see you on your down days. But like you're not your fucking money, you're not, you know what the trick is with that too.

Cara Steinmann:

The trickiest part with that is letting yourself be seen, and I you know from personal experience tried to hide my own, like probably authentic self for a long, long time. Growing up. I'm a neurodivergent. I didn't know that until I was 44. No, not 44. I was 41 when I officially got like diagnosed. They were like and thank you, tiktok. We were talking about TikTok offline. I was seeing all these posts online Like do you do this? You might not be an asshole, you might be ADHD. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I have been like thinking I was an asshole for all these years, like why can't I stop doing this? Why can't I stop doing that? Just be more this way, just be more that way. And then come to find out my brain just works a little bit differently and if I roll with it, life is so much easier. Yes, it's crazy.

Angie Colee:

Yes, I love that too. I had made jokes for years and years and years about being a little ADHD but, like I never really took it seriously. And then I grew up in an area where it's I don't know it seems passe almost to like judge other people for whatever right I've made the joke on the show before. I grew up thinking that meditation was hippy, dippy bullshit, because I'm from Texas and that's what we say about things right, and I thought that ADHD was just another like fad diagnosis until same thing as you I started talking to people with it. I had developed all these tools for years that I didn't realize was a coping and a masking mechanism, like I've shown people. Anybody that's watching the video get to see this. Check out my favorite little tool here, this little hexagon timer.

Cara Steinmann:

What is that?

Angie Colee:

Oh, it's a timer, because I can just rotate it and the timer is set Right, and that's cool. It doesn't sound like a big deal, until you realize that my brain is the type that if I just tried to set a timer on my phone or like by opening up Google as a timer, well then I've just lost three or four hours. I'm so easily distractible.

Angie Colee:

So the ability to set a timer by just rotating this device saves me so much time and keeps me more focused. But anyway, like talk about an ADHD tangent, Like once my tools stopped working all at the same time a couple years ago. That was when I started really going okay, maybe, maybe it's time to stop joking about this and take this seriously. Maybe it's time to seek out and see if this is something that I'm struggling with. And now I love that we're having this conversation more and more because, I mean, I am not a scientist, I'm not a medical professional, but Angie's opinion on the matter of ADHD is that this is not going to be in the diagnostic manuals in the future. Like, we're just going to realize eventually that some people have a brain wired this way and some people have a brain wired this way and that's what makes society work.

Cara Steinmann:

And it's interesting if you look at it in terms of like personality tests and stuff my back my degrees in psychology and I've been obsessed with human behavior like my whole life, maybe because I felt different on some level and I just didn't really. I really wanted to understand why people were doing the things that they were doing, cause it maybe it didn't seem like I would do it that way or something, but anyway. So if you start looking at all of the assessments, like the strengths, clifton strengths and the disc assessment and even Myers-Briggs like Myers-Briggs was one of the tests I took several years ago when I was kind of melting down from building a business that I ended up hating and I was like what's wrong with me? I have this business, it makes money, I'm supposed to be happy. Like I thought working for other people was what was making me depressed and miserable and anxious. And now I'm still feeling that way working for myself and I was like something is definitely wrong with me and I basically like kind of burned it all down and was like I have to start from scratch and I don't know who I am or what I'm good at. Like I'm 40 and I'm lost. I don't even know who I am, and so so I bent back to the basics and I was like what can I prove here? What do I? So I take all the tests right and I started noticing these little trends, like in Myers-Briggs. It said something about how I love to gather information and go really deep in a topic and then I forget all about it Cause I don't care, I don't need to know anymore, I'm done. And that, like that's.

Cara Steinmann:

My husband's called me laser beam for years, like not in a not he's a kind man, but not in a kind way Like he.

Cara Steinmann:

It's been an annoying thing to him because I will pick up hobbies or do things like really intensely for a while and then just totally burn out on them while and then just totally burn out on them. And I remember seeing that in my personality, like written down as part of me and and having it framed in a different way, and I was like, oh my God, that's just part of my personality, I'm not just being a jerk, that's just part of my personality. And if you look in all of the different parts of people's personalities on disc and then the different strengths, you can kind of see how, like those things taken a little too far. Any strength taken a little too far can look a little out of out of control, right yeah? So a lot of it's just about managing and being self-aware of our strengths, because a lot of the things that come with this neurodivergent way of of being can be incredibly powerful as long as we're, as long as we're aware of them and framing them correctly.

Angie Colee:

Oh yeah, and then learning about it and sharing about. Well, I mean, like it wasn't an instant switch where I went and got the diagnosis and was like oh my God, now I'm going to share all about this. Like even telling people I got the diagnosis, I felt a lot of shame around that. Felt a lot of shame around needing quote unquote needing medication in order to function. But then if you look into the research and you realize if you're missing certain chemicals in your body, of course your body is misfiring and doing all kinds of wonky things. What is wrong with getting an external source of chemicals that your body needs to function? I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

Cara Steinmann:

We're still living in a society that wants us to function like a neuro quote, neurotypical person.

Cara Steinmann:

I'm not sure there is anyone who's actually neurotypical, I think I don't know if you follow Pasha Marlowe at all. I interviewed her on my podcast a while back and she talks about how, like everyone is, neuro, like neurodiverse is how humanity is and and we're all I like, have kind of come to think of it as a circle instead of like a spectrum, sort of insinuates a line like on one end or the other, but I've kind of started to think of it more as like a circle with a tiny, tiny little, almost almost impossible to see dot in the tiny in the middle and that's what everybody thinks everyone should be, which is neurotypical, and we're all fanned out somewhere on that spectrum outside of there, and those of us who are farther towards the edge have a harder time getting in that center. It's harder for us to act normal all the time. So if we're spending our time trying to be neurotypical and act like neurotypical people would like us to act, it gives us anxiety and depression and then we're really in trouble.

Angie Colee:

Oh yeah, Masking has been such a huge conversation with a lot of people that I know lately, because I find there's a lot of neurodiversity and ADHD inside entrepreneurship, like a lot more than the typical corporate sphere, Partly because we're all over the place and we're creatives and we don't really work in the typical environment.

Angie Colee:

Really well, when was I going with? Oh, I remembered Like I was like where was I going? And I instantly remembered I was talking with somebody on a mastermind call this morning where he talked about like 10 years ago. That was an exercise that we did, Like where were you 10 years ago and where are you going to be in 10 years which I love the visualization and he goes 10 years ago. You know, I'm being this person when I'm pitching over here because I know what they want to hear, and I'm being this version of myself over here because I know what they want to hear, and all I typed in the comments was like oh my God, that sounds exhausting, Like having to put on all these different identities, having to think so much about what you're saying and how you're presenting, instead of just like letting it happen as it is.

Cara Steinmann:

It's exhausting. Well, we learned to do that growing up. We learned like like code, switching right. And as women it's even worse because we're not supposed to be leaders. We're supposed to, we're not, can't be bossy.

Cara Steinmann:

I have my own complicated relationship with the word leadership, like I've actually had to do a lot of work on owning that for myself and understanding what that really means, because I was told I was bossy and I talked too much and I have too many opinions and all these things growing up. But you know the way, sometimes the way that our brain works is a little bit different and we see things a little bit differently and different. People don't really love different. If they're on a path they don't want to be pulled off, even if it might be a shortcut, like it just causes a lot of conflict for us. So we learn to pretend and then I don't know like I don't know about you, but I hit like close to 40 and then the pandemic hit and all my coping coping mechanisms failed.

Cara Steinmann:

I had still I'm married, I have a child, I was still doing the second shift and all the unpaid labor and running a business that I hated and I basically was just like this is not where I'm supposed to be.

Cara Steinmann:

I don't know where I'm supposed to be, but this is not it. Like I felt like I was, like all of us were put on this planet when we jumped into our earth suits with some kind of amazing talents and gifts that we're supposed to use to make a difference. Like we've got a lot of problems in this world and I believe that we're all intelligent and motivated to change that and fix these problems. But we can't do it if we're not using the gifts and talents that we've been given. And I just knew I wasn't using them. I was like I'm doing marketing and I'm doing project management and all these things that I suck at. And I can tell I suck at them but it's what I somehow got into somehow. But the 10 years ago and the 10 years forward thing is interesting because I have the same experience as that guy. I was just masking all over the place, yep, and exhausted.

Angie Colee:

I compare it to. I don't know if you've ever learned a foreign language, especially like via immersion Not via immersion, no, I was in college. I thought this could be so funny. I don't know if I've ever actually admitted this on the show. I thought I was going to be a foreign service officer. I thought I was going to go into politics. I majored in French and minored in political science and part of my work, like I did, study abroad programs I did.

Angie Colee:

I lived in a language house in one college where we were speaking the language. When I went abroad it was usually living with host families and you were expected to speak the language all the time. And the funny thing is, like I got so good at everybody asks the same questions when you are starting to learn a language, right, like where are you from? Oh, how long have you been studying the language? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a job? Like they ask you all the same questions and if you get really good at answering them, like I did, they assume that you're a lot more fluent than you are.

Angie Colee:

So I remember living in one host situation where my host mom would just like rapid machine gun fire and I'd be like can you please slow down? I can't, I don't understand. And she was like you, big baby, I know that you're smarter than this. And I was like, no, I'm smart too, but I just can't understand you. I'm having trouble keeping up. But I remember how all this ties together to what we're talking about. At the end of the day and this is why I have a lot of respect for people who speak multiple languages it is a special kind of exhausting to put your brain into another language all day long and to think thoughts in another language. And I'm not just talking about thinking it in your language and then translating it over, which is also using energy, but like putting yourself into another language all day, like at the end of the night. All I wanted to do was speak a language I didn't have to think about.

Cara Steinmann:

Yeah, it's a really nice. It's a nice parallel because if you think about it, like when I when I think back to 10 years ago, we'll just stay on that train 10 years ago I was about to take a job working for someone who wanted me, wanted to. He wanted to hire. He reached out to me because he wanted to hire somebody to be like a marketing director in his dev company. He wanted to create a marketing arm where he could keep his dev clients on retainer for marketing. And I was in inbound marketing at the time and I was like, well, this is. He was coming to me as a friend, like what do we need to do here? And I said, well, you probably need some kind of marketing strategist or director here where who can do this, this and this. And I told him what he needed and he's all, would you, would you do it? And I was like it was twice as much as I was going to get, as I was getting paid, blah, blah. I'm like okay.

Cara Steinmann:

So I took the disc assessment and I remember reading the results. I came out as a high C, which is highly conscientious, and a low D, which is dominant. Um, and I re. I remember reading the results, thinking, hmm, I mean, that doesn't really feel like me, but I guess it could be me. Um, I burned out in 18 months at that job and I figured out later what I had like hardcore burned out, quit, like on the spot. It was a whole. There was a whole scene where I stood up and yelled the content fucking matters. Um, I think I blacked out a little bit. My friend told me I did that. It was the whole thing. She still works there so I get to hear updates on how awful that guy actually is.

Cara Steinmann:

But anyway, take fast forward to like four years ago. I take the disc again on my own as an entrepreneur, trying to figure out who I am and what I'm great at, and I just want I want work to feel easy, I want it to feel good, I want to be able to like cruise through life and make a big impact and feel good. You know and I'm a high I which is influence low D, so nearly on the opposite end of the spectrum here like I'm not conscientious. And I figured out what I did was I had known exactly what that guy needed and I wanted to. I wanted the job, I wanted the pay raise and it looked like a fun challenge which, as you know, we love. I love I can do anything. I put my mind to right, yep but sustainably acting like a different person who's highly conscientious and organized and structured and cares about details. For 18 months, what nearly killed me. I was so anxious and burned out and depressed, like I it just was. It was untenable and I still didn't figure it out.

Cara Steinmann:

after that, I still kept going in a direction that wasn't like me.

Angie Colee:

That's how well we're trained yeah, indoctrinated is more like it. I mean, especially here in the States. We're brought up to be good workers, to be good employees and to think that something is wrong with us if we're struggling and in some instances it might be true. Sometimes a struggle is a sign that something is broken and that you need to pay attention to it, but sometimes a struggle is just because you haven't been given information, you haven't been taught how to think.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, you don't know how to solve this problem because it's new and outside your comfort zone. That doesn't mean something is wrong with you, and I often tell people that I've worked with. You know like you got to be easy on yourself because you've been given an employee filter to look at all these problems through Right, and so you're going to solve it in a way that you know how. You knew how to solve it back when you did over here Right. I found this solution that worked when I was an employee. It's going to work over here in my business. Well, then you just wind up recreating a job where you have to do five times the work.

Cara Steinmann:

Yes, and you hate, you still hate. Yeah, You're still miserable. That's what I did and it's funny because, like you, we have to give ourselves permission as entrepreneurs to break the rules, to think differently about things. I struggle on Mondays and Fridays. I'm an extrovert technically, according to Myers-Briggs, but I am really sensitive to people and noise and stuff like that and I get peopled out. I love people, but everybody gets peopled out eventually, right?

Cara Steinmann:

And I finally figured out recently that I was so burned out on the weekends because I was not giving myself a break. And then my family would want to go hang out and we'd want to go do stuff with our friends and stuff. And my husband's like, well, you never want to go out Friday or Saturday or do anything, and I'm like I'm fucking tired and so I'm sitting here going wait a minute, I'm the boss. What if I don't want to work Mondays or Fridays or Wednesdays for that matter? Maybe those are my thinking days and I just do whatever the fuck I want on those days and maybe I do a little work, but it's on my terms and I can tell you. It like changed the whole vibe of my business when I just gave myself permission. Like who said we have to work on Monday. Mondays are hard for me. I absolutely agree. Who made that rule.

Angie Colee:

It's fucking stupid, it is bizarre, it is crazy pants, to think that you have to work five days a week, four days, like you don't have to do anything.

Cara Steinmann:

40 hours a week, like why?

Angie Colee:

is lunch at noon. No, noon is nap time for Angie Like and I get you on peopled out. It's funny, Like, okay. So here's a little bit of behind the scenes for people who are fans of the show. It's not a secret that I batch record. I've got four episodes today. This is the first, you know.

Angie Colee:

I have an internal rule for myself that I've never really articulated out loud before now I don't cook on podcast days. Good for you. I don't. I go out to eat or I just make myself a sandwich, like when I hit stop record on that very last call. I'm going to wait for that video to finish rendering, I'm going to send all of that stuff off to the editor with my notes and then I'm going to collapse into a puddle until tomorrow morning. This is taking all of my energy today to be able to connect with people. And it's so funny because, like we're sitting here with a couple of screens in between us, right, you would think that this isn't as much of a drain as being in a noisy environment, like you talked about. But I don't know. To me this is just and I don't want to say that I don't mean that in a bad sense it's just as draining as being around a whole bunch of people, but like it takes a lot of energy to connect with people.

Cara Steinmann:

It does. It does. It takes a lot of and it's easier for some people than others, but it still and especially if you're really highly empathetic, right, like you're picking up on cues, and I think I don't know if this is a neurodivergent thing like an ADHD thing, but we're a little more vigilant. I think we've had to learn to be a little more vigilant and that changed our biology, our nervous system, and made us more neurodivergent. Maybe it's just we're always on the lookout, watching signs and cues, and it's maybe either we started out really highly empathetic or it's made us more highly empathetic. But it is energy, not that that's a bad thing. I choose to give my energy to certain things, right, but that doesn't mean you don't have to fill it back up again.

Angie Colee:

Yes, absolutely have to fill it back up and to expect yourself to go, go, go all the time, without ever taking time to refill your cup, and I know that that's kind of like a cliche thing but, like so many of us, are out here trying to give to other people from an empty cup Like come on, come on. You deserve the same love and care that you would give someone that you love and respect.

Cara Steinmann:

Naps are amazing, Like I think everybody should nap. I think was it yesterday or the day before. I took a two and a half hour nap. I was tired, Delightful. Also, who says it's 20 minutes? Who says you have to take a 20 minute nap? I'm sure there's some biochemistry. Whatever person out there who's going to tell me it's going to sap you, but I felt really good after two and a half hours.

Angie Colee:

Oh, yeah, Well, and I mean most of the time I take like a 20 to 30 minute power nap, but sometimes when that alarm goes off, the body goes nope, need more. Okay, cool, I respect my body and my internal signals enough to give my body the rest that it needs. Like that actually happened several weeks ago I think I don't know if I mentioned it before I actually had a day where I had to cancel all of my podcast recordings because at some point in the night when I was sleeping, I managed to pinch a nerve in my shoulder and I don't know if you've ever had that Like.

Angie Colee:

It's an extreme, it's a radiating kind of pain, it's a no position is comfortable and I know that there are much more painful injuries out there like that, but nerve pain is just, oh it sucks. I didn't sleep well that night. I woke up the next morning. I'm still in pain and I just reached out to everybody and was like you know what I really hate to do this at the last minute, but I can't record today. I'm just I'm going to be sitting here grimacing every time I move wrong and it's not going to be that like distracted and in pain is not the energy I want to bring to the show. So can we please reschedule? Every single one of them was a lovely person, going absolutely Like if you can't show up, 100% go rest.

Cara Steinmann:

I guarantee you half of them were like, oh good, I was having a tough day too and I didn't feel like it. My girlfriend and I have a joke about that. Because you know how schadenfreude is, like the finding joy in someone else's misery, we coined the phrase abwesenfreude, which is like abwesen is abandon, like the joy of being abandoned on, like when someone flakes on a Zoom call or something and you're like, oh God, I really wanted a nap. I'm so happy I got abandoned today.

Angie Colee:

Yes, that's actually happened a couple of times. I wasn't as annoyed as I would normally be by somebody who stands me up for a podcast recording, because I was like, oh God, I'm tired, yes, I'm going to go take a nap now. Yeah, exactly. Well, now that we've followed every shiny thread under the sun, let's get back to your business, right? So you got into coaching and you mentioned a little bit earlier about building a business that you hated. Tell me a little bit about getting into that and what discovering you hated.

Cara Steinmann:

It was like oh, so I started doing well. So I used to love to write and I kind of got into content marketing and digital marketing area. Through that. I was writing fitness content for a lot of years and it was really easy because I knew a lot of. I was a fitness trainer in a past life and I it was easy to write about and I cared about women's fitness and blah, blah, blah and so that.

Cara Steinmann:

But you know, as a curious person, that led to learning about SEO and learning about ads and learning all the things working for a couple of agencies and pretty soon I knew how to do a lot of things, but that didn't necessarily mean that I was really well-suited to them or good at them. But I really hated working for other people. I was. I'm not a good employee. I'm too entrepreneurial. I want my freedom. I want to make my own decisions and strategize in a way that makes sense to me. So finally, in 2017, after or 2018, after going to work for several other people, I created my own LLC and went back to work for myself writing, doing content, strategy and marketing for companies, small businesses and then after about two, two, three years, it was like right in the beginning of the pandemic. I was like I hate that, I'm miserable. I had my clients were all miserable. I hated all my clients I shouldn't say hated them. Some of the people were really nice but I wasn't like really well suited to it for I was just miserable. I found myself not like hoping clients wouldn't sign the contract and I'm like this isn't good. I'm making money but I don't want more like clients, what is happening here? And I didn't honestly know what was going on at first. I just knew that for some reason I was not loving what I was doing and I wasn't killing it Like I was. I was keeping my head above water. But I would say I was in my zone of competency not my zone of excellence and certainly not my zone of genius and I didn't know what it was. So I was like, okay, I I spent like six months pared down all my clients lived on savings, tried to figure out what the hell was going on with me, and it's still. It's been a long journey because I'm still not exactly sure where it's going.

Cara Steinmann:

And it's taken me this long to really lean into the coaching moniker because there are so many coaches out there and because it's a little saturated. It feels a little bit like, well, anyone can call themselves a coach, right, but I have been coaching people this whole time who I'm kind of like a come along, let's go, come with me, let's figure this out together type of person, and so I tend to share any of the knowledge that I have and it just it's turned into a business that is very experimental. I'm I've got my Ravel Collective, which is the community, online, and I love it, and it's all about referrals and networking. Like we say, come for the come for the referral, stay for the friendships. It's.

Cara Steinmann:

It's a very like people first kind of kind of space and it's safe. So everybody feels really good being themselves and yeah, I mean, I don't really know what else you want to know I'm. I'm just I'm so passionate about bringing women together because we've been pitted against each other in society and because we're we're all looking at each other on the outside of this glossy facade that we're putting on and seeing that it looks like everybody's got their shit together and God forbid like we don't know what we're doing and when you get like you get a bunch of women in a room who are, by any standard, even remotely successful, they still feel like they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Cara Steinmann:

We all and I feel like some of that is because we're so we try, we're focused on personal development and self-awareness and we're aware that we're always growing and changing and, like my business doesn't look today like it did a year ago or two years ago and it's going to be different in five years. And there's no like end point where we sit down and say, well, I figured it out, I have arrived and now I am a success.

Angie Colee:

That's just not how it works right, there's always another finish line to cross, and I'm fond of reminding people if you've got this mindset right, and it's sneaky because it just sits there as a belief until you articulate it out loud and realize that you're kind of being ridiculous. But, like I'm going to, I'm going to find that finish line that crosses me into happy land and then I can coast until the end of time. And, my friends, the finish line is is the final finish line. It's the one that you don't come back from, the one that we don't know what happens next. Right, like, so you got to practice putting a couple, couple extra lines between you and the final finish line and like, cross this one and be happy for a little bit and then remember oh yeah, there's another one over there, okay, here we go, I think.

Cara Steinmann:

I think for me it's more about like impact, like what's the impact that I can make with the work that I'm doing today and tomorrow and the next day? And, like you know, I feel like when you're just doing what you're built to do, it doesn't feel like work and the money just comes because you are the best at what you're doing. Like nobody's going to come to the table with the same gifts and talents and experience and passions that you are. There's just no way. I mean there's in just in the Clifton top five, there's like one in 34, almost 34 million chance someone will have the same top five as you. That's not even counting the 34. And we use them all in different degrees and different intensities.

Cara Steinmann:

And I think I think we did the math and it was like like maybe 20 people in the entire world will have the same 34 strengths in the same order, and that's just one assessment. Yeah, like you're, there's no I. I just I take issue with women being in competition with with each other in that way, like there's room for everybody. We can all. I love networking with people, with other coaches, with other people who do what it looks like I do because they're not doing it exactly the same way and not everybody's meant to be in my community, and I love being able to refer people who are a better fit for someone else's community or for some other coach Like absolutely I.

Angie Colee:

Actually I had an experience with that exact same thing yesterday on a different networking call. I had been working on this offer for a while where I combined like the interview skills I've developed as a podcast host and running marketing teams and stuff like that to help pull people's really awesome stories out, the stuff that they don't think is really great marketing content, and turn it into marketing. And so I'd been working on this offer and trying to find the right language around it and the right people for it and the right structure for it. Like this has been a nine month journey. And then I'm on a call yesterday with somebody who does pretty much the exact same process as me and she's got it all neatly lined out on her website and it's all the right language and I was like Jesus.

Angie Colee:

I had a moment where I was like this freaking sucks, somebody's already doing it. And then I came back to myself and went all right, no, you're a marketer. She's got this whole angle, which is really cool, because not many people would suspect that I'm a spa person, but I'm totally like, put me in one of those European style spas where I can hop from amenity to amenity all day long Angie's happy spot, but anyway, like she's got this whole spa aesthetic as part of her branding and like a cold plunge option and stuff like that. And so I actually found myself messaging her and going, hey, you know, I don't know if you remember me, but I would love to reconnect. I love everything that you're doing and I actually like I was checking it out and reading it and I was in awe because I'm actually doing something really similar.

Angie Colee:

If you're open to it, could I ask you a couple of questions about your process and what you're learning about all of this? Like, I'm really curious about this and the cool thing about it is the front-facing brands. Right, you're listening to Permission to Kick Ass. You know what the fuck I sound like? Right, I don't sound like a spa goer, even though I like being in the spa. I sound like somebody who kicks down the door and sets something on fire. So there's room for both of us to do the exact same thing, because different people are going to get different things out of working with each of us and there could conceivably be somebody that works with both of us, because they get value from that.

Cara Steinmann:

Exactly, and there's. You couldn't have said it better. It's so true.

Cara Steinmann:

And this is exactly why we have to show up as our own, like authenticity I think. Sometimes I'll say like authenticity is one of my core values freedom, authenticity and connection. And a lot of people are tired of the word authenticity. They think it's like a buzzword. But let me tell you, if you don't act authentic, you're gonna know and it's gonna be a problem. And if we all show up as ourselves, it's really easy to tell who you wanna gravitate towards. Like you can find your people.

Cara Steinmann:

One of the biggest problems with women entrepreneurs is we're fucking lonely. It's hard to build strong relationships remotely. A lot of us have kids. It's hard to build strong relationships remotely. A lot of us have kids. A lot of us have other stuff going on that kind of pulls us away. In the evenings we're not going out to networking events. It's difficult sometimes to build these relationships that really can carry us through and help support us in our business.

Cara Steinmann:

And having a bunch of women rally around you and support you, it feels amazing. And if you show up as yourself and you let people see the real you, it feels amazing. And if you show up as yourself and you let people see the real you, they're going to either gravitate towards you or away. They're not going to just stay stagnant. It's either coming towards you or away from you, and we don't want the people away from us. They need to go somewhere else and deal with other people. I don't care if somebody doesn't like me. Maybe 10 years ago I would have cared. I probably cared 10 years ago, but now I see the value in relaxing, being who I am, knowing who that is and letting people who appreciate that come closer.

Angie Colee:

Oh yes, I think that perspective for me changed when I realized, like I don't even know how it happened, but it just was one of those moments where it all clicked into place. Do I want to know 8 billion people and have all of them like me? Absolutely not. I don't even have space for like the several hundred to a couple thousand I already know. I can't keep in touch with all of those people regularly. So, like, if you're coming into my circle, into my world and being like you need to change who you are for me to be comfortable here, I go cool, go be comfortable somewhere else. Totally, yeah, I'm not changing.

Cara Steinmann:

I don't want to know all I don't there's. We can't. We can't be close to that many people and it's really about the depth of a relationship. We cannot be close and supportive and really know and care about that many people. I think 150 is the number. I forget the guy's name. I used to know it, but it's just not possible and for some people maybe they can carry more people in their head. I tend to be able to carry more information and detail about a lot of people in my head, but I'm not super close to all of those people.

Angie Colee:

And I wouldn't want to be. I wouldn't want to be either and, like the nature of ADHD too is like a lot of info, overwhelm, a lot of hyper fixation. And then the funny way my brain works, which I've discovered a lot of other people have a similar way of doing things. It's like if I thought about you and I went oh Kara, she's such an awesome person, my brain files that under just talk to Kara. And I can go for like five, 10 years that way over here in my own world doing my own thing, thinking awesome thoughts about you, talking awesome shit about you behind your back to other people.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, Not actually talking to you not actually registering that I'm not talking to you, and that's how I know that I can pick up the phone after five years and talk to somebody like no time has passed, Because in my brain it hasn't. I've been over here thinking awesome stuff about you the entire time instead of going. Why haven't I heard from her? Oh, my God and that's not to disparage anybody that thinks like that, it's just you know, you've got your life, I've got my life. We're all busy trying to do the best that we can. So trying to do the best that we can. So I'd rather just assume that you're out there going. It's been a while since I talked to Angie. I hope she's okay and then you go about your life and it's fine. We'll talk when we talk.

Cara Steinmann:

Yeah, see, I have. I have this. I have input at my number two in Clifton. So I tend to like collect information and I'm like a, my brain's like a Google, like I'm filing things away and I'm collecting things. But because of my number one being connectedness, I tend to collect people and information about people. So when that happens to me and I think, oh, angie, I wonder how she's doing, it'll be because I ran into a piece of information that reminded me of you and so I'll send you that information, or something like the impulsiveness that comes with the ADHD thing, I think, works out really well for me in that way, because I'll just reach out and be like, hey, I found this article, I thought you might like it, and you're like, oh my gosh, she was thinking about me, is?

Angie Colee:

that like pebbling, but for networking. That's fantastic.

Cara Steinmann:

Yeah, yeah, I heard that recently.

Angie Colee:

Absolutely yeah. For anybody that's unfamiliar with that concept, there's the five love languages of acts of service, words of affirmation, all that stuff. There's also kind of a long running joke, which to me is fairly accurate, about different behaviors for ADHD folks. One of them is like pebbling, which is this concept that derives from penguins. That's like hey, I found this cool thing. I'm picking up one of my travel coins and showing it on the. I found this cool thing and I thought you might like it here. Here's the thing. I'm giving it to you.

Cara Steinmann:

When your text messages consist of nothing but memes to your friends. I saw this and I thought of you. Memes are my love language.

Angie Colee:

Oh, absolutely, and I love it when people get it so like I'm getting to a point. I actually had somebody that recorded with me last week that was like and now that we've taken about eight shiny loops and I was like I honestly suspect that everybody that listens to the show is also very ADHD and this is just like it's tickling that great spot in the brain.

Cara Steinmann:

That goes, yes, it goes down the rabbit hole and goes. Well, that's another thing I used to really be hard on myself about was the rabbit hole thing. I would get lost in information and go I'd end up somewhere completely different. Just by one Google search that I was curious about, and pretty soon I'm at the library reading seven well, barnes and Nobles, probably buying like seven different books to like study about this thing, and then completely going somewhere else with it and I'm like man, I'm so random, but it's not random, and sometimes you find really amazing things when you're not so structured. And so I've come to really appreciate, just like letting myself have time to do that, like maybe my brain needs that.

Angie Colee:

That's always been my definition of creativity and that's probably why I see creativity as different from kind of mainstream traditional definitions of it. A lot of folks put creativity into a bucket or a box, and creativity creativity, on one hand loves boxes but also hate. Is Schrodinger's creativity. Do we love the box? Do we hate the box? We don't know. But to me creativity is being able to see a connection between two things.

Angie Colee:

That is not immediately obvious and I've done exercises like this at my own retreats to like find me a connection between a lamp and a lock, and people are like, oh, there's like that brief couple seconds of short circuit before they start going in. Oh, there's metal pieces, there's something that turns and maybe clicks Like you might find both, and then the creative ideas start. You might find both of these at a storage facility. Right, that's creativity is finding connections. And there are creative accountants, there are creative mechanics, there are creative mechanics, there are creative artists. Like. Everybody has this potential to be creative. If you allow yourself to be and stop putting these judgments on yourself for being random, we all get to be random.

Cara Steinmann:

I like to think about how creative entrepreneurs are just in the fact that they are entrepreneurs, like we are creating something out of thin air that didn't exist before. This business, this offer, this podcast, like this did not exist before, and now it has life and legs and we created that out of our mind.

Angie Colee:

Like that's just blows me away all the time I get sucked into those loops, Like just every once in a while I have that thought and I've said it several times on the show, but like it bears repeating. Do you know how many billions upon billions upon billions of things had to happen just so for us to be here right now having this conversation? If somebody turns left instead of right, maybe your parents didn't meet and one of us doesn't exist.

Cara Steinmann:

Crazy amounts of shit had to line up for this to happen, and every once in a while when that thought pops into my head, I just go, oh and wonder how crazy is this big old planet? Sometimes I get a lot of. I don't do a lot of like outreach anymore, but a lot of people introduce other people to me and so I'm like what if that person hadn't thought of that? Or what if I hadn't said a particular thing in a conversation that made them think they should introduce that person? And sometimes it ends up being such an amazing relationship and connection and I'm like man, I didn't, I had nothing to do with that, that just showed up on my doorstep somehow. It's magic.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, one of my friends talks about that. It's like. She calls it the concept of surrender and I like I like thinking of it as the concept of allow, like just allow things to happen, don't place artificial constraints and restrictions on things. It's an experiment. I actually wrote that down earlier at the beginning, because you mentioned that you were experimenting a lot and I was like that's what I like about problem solving If we can detach ourselves from the outcomes and just get curious, then that opens up a lot of space for us to go. I wonder what happens if and then we just get to experiment instead of going. I'm a failure. All these things I tried failed Newsflash. Every single entrepreneur ever in the history of mankind has failed much, much more than they've succeeded.

Cara Steinmann:

One of my favorite graphics is that X Y axis with the straight line that goes up to the corner the outside corner and it says what's what people think entrepreneurial success looks like. Right, and then the next one is what it actually looks like and it's like the line goes up and then it squiggles around and goes 10 different hundred or thousands of different directions in this tiny big giant knot and then at the end it's finally like up in the corner and it's that's very much what it feels like. But the reframe that I've adopted on this is what you said the experimenting. It was years and years ago a girlfriend of mine sent me a podcast about experimenting, why we should all experiment more, and I was like, okay, I'll listen to this and again like, why did she send it to me? But it completely changed my outlook on the way that I. I again like, why did she send it to me?

Cara Steinmann:

But it completely changed my outlook on the way that I I create offerings, the way that I sell stuff, everything in my business I look at as an experiment now, cause I also don't want to. I don't want to spend six weeks planning a launch for a product or some kind of course or some kind of something, and then find out, like what if it does sell? And I hate it, I hate doing it. So I'm a big fan of taking like small imperfect steps all the time, constantly and just seeing like how did that feel to me? Not, how does that look or how should that feel, because there's a lot of information out there about what our businesses should look like and how we should be creating offers and marketing them and everything like that. But like really checking in with myself, how does this feel with me and the way that I want to live and operate and do I want to do this again? Did people respond to it? Did I enjoy doing it? Should?

Cara Steinmann:

I do it again. I mean, that's kind of how the retreat went in April that I'd never thrown a retreat before and I wasn't really even sure I was going to enjoy it, because I get people out. You know, honestly, it was the first time I've ever gone anywhere with a group of people and not needed to sleep for a week. When I got home I was so jazzed when I got home we just had the best time. Somebody I was joking to somebody about it that was there and there were eight of us there at this in San Diego at this women's mastermind retreat and we just wanted to be cozy and comfy the whole time. I didn't wear any of the fancy clothes I brought. I mean, fancy for me is not very fancy anyway but I joked with somebody the last day. I was like I should have just called this the pajama party mastermind and somebody's like I would have signed up immediately, instantly.

Angie Colee:

Yes, instantly yes. And that's just further proof that, like, there's more than enough room for all of us. Because I remember when I had my first retreat idea, it was tied to this idea of I traveled a lot as a digital nomad. It was tied to this idea of I traveled a lot as a digital nomad and the beauty of doing that by myself meant that I got to try a bunch of things and go, okay, I've never done this before, let's see what happens. And so one of these crazy ideas I got was I wonder if I could get, I wonder if I could have some sort of business event where we drove bulldozers and I don't know exactly what the connection is yet, but it feels like there's something there about driving a big, scary machine and then like working on your business and a whole bunch of white space, cause I hate going to business conferences where there's like 40 speakers and I'm expected to make sense of all this information. Nope, it's not going to happen. I'm going to enjoy absorbing it while I'm there and I'm going to promptly yeet it out the window as soon as I'm back home.

Angie Colee:

No-transcript. And people were immediately in, just like. Sometimes the idea is so powerful that people are like, yes, and they're also experimenting. I'm going to go, let's see what happens.

Cara Steinmann:

That's what happens when you experiment and when you come from a place of like, genuinely, what do I like? That's kind of where it comes from for me, Not kind of. It is like I wanted a mastermind retreat where I could just go chill out. I wanted to go on vacation with a bunch of my business besties, because I've got like four best friends from high school and they're all gainfully employed Attorneys, nurses. I love them. They're amazing. But when we go on our yearly getaway, our golden girls getaway together, we don't talk about my I don't. I don't get to talk about my business or think about it for like five days because we're talking about our kids and we're talking about things that we all have in common and old times and good times and blah, blah, blah. But it's a totally different experiment experience when you get to go away with a bunch of women who have the same identity that you have as an entrepreneur.

Cara Steinmann:

And you get to sit and talk about your leadership skills and your fears and your concerns and your wins and your losses.

Cara Steinmann:

I mean, all of us cried at least once, like tears were shed in a good way.

Cara Steinmann:

And it was actually funny because at one point I had part of it catered and this guy kept coming in the room to clean up and one of the women was talking about some personal kind of stuff and she was teary and the rest of us were kind of like you know, tearing up with her and I kept looking over at this guy, like get the fuck out of here, like get your penis out of here.

Cara Steinmann:

What are you doing in here? Like so, so again, that was an experiment and I've decided that the next one I'm going to host it in the hospitality suite, the whole thing in the hospitality suite, so that I don't have to be, we don't have to be interrupted. Like I learned something the first time so that I can carry that into the next time and make it even better. But it's, it's just, it's powerful to be in in company, in collaboration with women, and I just am so in awe every time I turn around the women that I've been able to connect with and bring together are working together, building businesses together, like promoting each other, buying each other's books and telling everybody about it. It's like it's wild and I just don't think you see that everywhere.

Angie Colee:

You really don't, and I love that you're on this mission to help people just connect, collaborate, realize that we're not in competition. I like to tell people we are not competing for a slice of pie. We get to make all kinds of different pie a huge pie, a Guinness world record record breaking pie, a pizza pie. It doesn't have to be fruity pie or chocolate pie or whatever. Have I said pie enough in the last 30 seconds?

Cara Steinmann:

I want to read you my favorite quote speaking of which, so I actually put this. I had this little book made, this little Denick notebook made for the retreat, and on the inside cover I put my favorite quote as of late. It's Abby Wambach and she says maintaining the illusion of scarcity is how power keeps women competing for the singular seat at the old table instead of uniting and building a new, bigger table. Yes, and that's just like. I just love that because it's such an illusion of scarcity.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, there's plenty for everybody and you don't have to buy into it. The beauty of reality is it's not real. It's all made up and the points don't matter, and if you don't like your current reality, you can make another one, and it's a super success hack to know that women in collaboration makes business easier, Like when you get when.

Cara Steinmann:

When someone knows you really well and they like you, they're gonna refer you. If they know what you do and you do something really well, they're gonna talk about you to their friends. It's what we do. We lift each other up, we brag about each other and we can't help it. It's just how we are. Yes, man.

Angie Colee:

I wanna keep going for like two more hours, but I just realized we had time. So, speaking of all the women that you collaborate with and you help uplift, tell us more about your work and where we can learn about you.

Cara Steinmann:

Yeah, so I have a website ravelcollectivecom is the online community and then I host some masterminds. I'm actually in the middle of a kind of rework of my website to include, because the masterminds were kind of on the down low for a little bit. But you can learn about the retreats on the Ravel website. And then I love to connect with people on LinkedIn, where you can also find my personal website, karasteinmancom and by the time this airs, I think the website probably will be up to date and that's where you can find all the coaching, information and just ways to connect with me and become part of the community. I love that.

Angie Colee:

I love that. I'll make sure that there are clickable links in the show notes, along with all the resources that we mentioned. Thank you so much for being an awesome guest. I really appreciate you.

Cara Steinmann:

Thank you for having me on. I love this conversation so much.

Angie Colee:

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose of you Can Do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.