Building the Life and Career of Your Dreams with Kathleen Griffith

Published Jun 5, 2024, 7:01 AM

To follow her dreams, Kathleen Griffith first had to blow up her life. She’s an award-winning business strategist, entrepreneur, and the author of “Build Like a Woman: The Blueprint for Creating a Business and Life You Love.” From overcoming doubt to finding the courage to pursue your passion, Kathleen discusses the importance of taking the first step towards creating a meaningful life and gives actionable advice to that end. Plus, the Reese’s Book Club pick for June is “The Unwedding” by Ally Condie. We’ll have her on later this month, so send in your questions to hello@thebrightsidepodcast.com!

Hello Sunshine, Hey, fam Today, on the bright Side, entrepreneur, business strategist and author Kathleen Griffith is here to share her blueprint for creating a business and a life that you love. It's Wednesday, June fifth. I'm Simone Voice.

I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine.

Okay, Danielle, grab your bougie bookmark, grab your coffee or drink of choice, and get comfy. Okay, because the June Reese's Book Club pick has just been announced, so we are going to share it with y'all. Right now, Okay, this month's pick is The Unwedding by Ali Condy. Okay.

If you like thrillers, if you like suspense and murder mysteries like I do, please check.

Look check check check is right.

Please look no further, because I'm telling you this book is for you. It follows Ellery Wainwright, a recently divorced woman who finds herself alone at a luxurious resort at Broken Point in Big Sur, California.

I'm there, I'm already there in my mind.

It's giving big little lies. I'm not gonna lie. So she should have been celebrating her twentieth wedding anniversary.

But that's not happening.

And to add insult to injury, the resort is hosting a wedding and Ellery gets the surprise of her life when she discovers the groom's body floating in the resorts pool.

I just love a wedding thriller, a wedding murder mystery. There's something about the inherent chaos of a wedding, bridal parties, warring factions, because we all know that under the surface of a wedding is a whole lot of drama. So it makes sense that somebody has to die.

I don't know that yet, have not been married, but we'll see TBD.

This sounds so juicy. Ali's written a ton of books. You may know her as the author of the number one New York Times best selling Matched series. So good. Yeah, so maybe that was ringing a bell. She also started a nonprofit called the Write Out Foundation, and they run writing camps for rural teens. How cool is that? That is so cool and so important.

I'm not trying to get like all intents here, but I was just listening to a podcast about how important it is for kids, in particular to learn how to write because it allows them to express themselves and their emotions later, especially in relationships and at work.

Yes, that's so true. I'm not a rural teen, but hey, maybe there's a chance for me at one of these writing camps. It sounds amazing.

Well, you know, I love a thriller. I cannot wait to read this one. I'm also super interested in how authors craft a mystery. So stay tuned because we get Ali here with us. We're going to ask her all the questions, all the questions about our process. I'm picturing a Homeland style map that she has at home, with strings connecting the different characters and plot points, m index cards, a lot of post it notes.

You love post it notes. It's part of the lifestyle. It just it is what it is, all right, y'all. So up next, Kathleen Griffith shares her biggest piece of advice for people thinking about starting a business. This one's really good. Plus she tells us what it means to build like a woman. Build like a woman.

It's right after the break.

We are back talking about one of our favorite topics here on the bright side, entrepreneurship and how to build a business doing something that you truly love. But in order to do that, you've got to take that first step. Danielle, maybe you can relate to this, maybe you can't. But I've often felt like, man, I have all these great ideas, but I just get stuck, or we've been in a job sometimes, or we're not excited about it, and then we don't know how to go about creating something more meaningful.

Everything you said could not be more true. And our guest today is an expert in building, in building a life, and in building a business. Kathleen Griffith is an award winning entrepreneur, business strategist, and the author of the newly released book Build Like a Woman, The Blueprint for creating a business and a life you love. Kathleen, Welcome to the bright Side.

I'm so glad to be here because you know, I love building a bright life and i love building a big life.

So I've come to the right place. That's what we're going to talk about today. Big and bright.

Yes, let's get into your big and bright origin story because I think a lot of women can relate to what you were doing before you started your first company. You were working in marketing as a director for a big agency. So can you take us into your life before you broke off and founded your own marketing consultancy called Grace and Company.

The story doesn't feel particularly special in that I did all the right things or that I thought that I should do. I went and got the right job, I got the right home, and I was doing everything that I just felt like I was expected to do. You know, you work eighty hour weeks, you work nights and weekends, You walk into meetings where you know, you kind of pass your work off to someone else who invariably takes the credit for that work. And the more and more I kind of marched into that life, the more burned out I felt. You know, I knew I was underpaid for what I was contributing. And I remember I went to grab pizza with a friend one night in New York City. It was one of those rainy nights, and I was eating what's called the Shroomtown pizza, So it was four different types of mushrooms, and I had treffle sauce shmeared all of my face and they looked at me deadpan and said, like, you look kind of like a ghost. You just look so washed out. There's not a whole lot of life in you. I was kind of drowning myself in the pizza, which there's nothing wrong with the pizza, but for all the wrong reasons. And I decided, you know, instead of taking a cab to walk home that night, and the lights were just reflecting off the pavement and I walked I think it was something like forty blocks home, and I had this quote that just kept reverberating in my head, which was from Tamra Keeves.

She was a Harvard professor.

I'd just been to one of her workshops, and it was, if you are this successful doing what you don't love, imagine how successful you'd be doing what you do love. And that haunted me in the best possible way and did not leave my mind until I left that job, that relationship, those friends. I honestly left it all like I burned my whole life to the ground to start again, destruction as a means for creation. So it was painful. But here we are, Simone.

She did a bless We talk about blowing up your life on this show. It's just it's what the doctor orders every few months years. The actual time frame is up to you.

That's so right, and I think there are people who actually that is their creative process. There are those who it's not. But for those who it is, like, yep, you're going to keep destroying and creating and on and on. I call it breakdowns and breakthroughs. Like you break down, you break through, you break ground, You break down, you break through, you break downd Oh.

I like that, you break down, you break through, you break ground. So what gave you the confidence to know that there was a space for your ideas after you had that breakthrough?

The revelation I really had was if I was feeling this way and I happened to work in marketing, if I was feeling this invisible and unseen and burned out and like no one really spoke to me or saw me, that there had to be other women who felt the same way. And so initially my consultancy was focused on doing just that. We were going to help brands talk to women like they were actually people, not like a target that needed to be served, and not like a group that needed to be sold something. Because I just did not want to engineer more kind of insecurity. I wanted to be part of something that would ideally inspire women to take the reins of their own lives.

So you've helped fortune five hundred companies authentically market to women. Some of those brands were Nike, Correct any other brands that stick out to you.

We've worked across a lot of categories of Verizon, NBC Sports, Bacardi, Gray, Goose, Maserati, Google, Yeah, a lot of the big guys huge so gals.

Well, when you think about marketing to women authentically for people listening who are starting a business or have started a business, what do you say.

I would say the most important thing is to find an enemy. So, no matter how small you are as a brand, there needs to be something that you want to push up against in the world, something that you want to take on. So that could be, for example, you don't believe in toxic household products and you want to rid the world of that, or you believe that families should be able to connect more over conversation, whatever it might be. Finding really finding an enemy and then bravely calling that out in the world and pushing up against that is I think what takes you from a generic place to a wildly specific and intentional place.

I'm always kind of amazed by your vulnerability when it comes to talking about work because a lot of people in general, but particularly women, I think, have a hard time admitting a failure or they did something wrong because it's so much harder for us to fail and continue in society. You're big on failure. You say it loud, you say it proud. So in the spirit of failing big and proudly, is there something that you feel like you failed at that made you better, something you're grateful you experienced.

Yeah, I still think of myself as a novice in business, like who comes out of the womb and knows what to do and how to do it?

I was.

I don't have family who've done this before. I don't have a lot of friends or didn't at least when I started, who'd done it before. So I almost think of myself as like a baby who's driving a car, and like you wouldn't expect a baby to know what they're you know, I'm hitting fire hydrants, I'm like jumping the curb. The car is all dinged up. But like to expect perfectionism is which I did initially, is just it's so impossible. You're setting yourself up for this like impossible thing that's way too stressful on top of what is already a stressful situation. The biggest failure that I had was when I had to lay off my whole team. I was going through actually something in my personal life and I just couldn't hack it. I just had to shutter my doors for a minute because it was so consuming at the time. And that was a really low moment to look in their eyes and tell them I actually didn't have what it took to lead them in that moment.

What do you think was the learning from that?

The learning was that I am an incredibly resilient human and I during that time, Yeah, I discovered a lot of interesting things about yourself.

Yeah, Yeah, mostly that you could keep going.

Yeah, but I took a long pause that was longer than a sixty second clauset.

So there's a big piece of advice that you have for people considering starting a business, and it's to start with the heart test.

I've never heard of this. I think you made it up.

I sure did, and you certainly won't find it in business school. It is not something that you know. That is how we tend to create in our society, which is all about the head, right, everything's very rational very left brain, very cerebral. What's the white space and what's the potential? ROI but I love this because it is a way for you kind of put something in your heart. You've got an idea for a business. Right So for anyone who's listening right now, just imagine an idea, something that's just been sitting on your heart, and I want you to run it through your heart and it should do one of two things. It should either break your heart or it should light your heart on fire. Break your heart meaning it makes you just feel angry, frustrated, disappointed, your blood is kind of boiling over this particular idea. Or light your heart on fire in that you're so passionate about this idea, You're so excited, You've got heart palpitations, your heart is fluttering, you can't wait to drive after it. What is not a good idea and is not worth something or at least is something that you should then go back to the drawing board on is if you feel neutral or kind of ambivalent because you're just ultimately not going to be able to go the distance in your business. This requires heart above head.

Does what did your heart test tell you when you started Gracing company.

I was broken at that point, having worked in corporate. Now I'm this kind of broken shell of a person. Humpty dumpty on her back. How do I put myself together again? And so starting that business, my first business was really again just a desire for me to feel better, for more women to feel better. And I was really angry also at the time. You know the number one regret on people's desk beds.

Guess what it is.

I lived a life that others wanted for me instead of the one that I wanted for myself. And so here you are.

This.

How did I construct all of this with so much effort and energy? And it is absolutely not the suit I want to be wearing, not the life I want to lead.

Well, I love your hard tests. I think it's brilliant. And when I hear you say heart, I also hear purpose, I hear calling, and I think that that's something that comes from your soul as opposed to a cerebral place. So I couldn't agree more. All right, we've got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with the entrepreneur and strategist Kathleen Griffith.

And we're back with Kathleen Griffith. So, Kathleen, your book is called Build Like a Woman. I'm going to ask the most obvious question, what does that mean?

What does it mean to build like a woman? So to be a.

Builder, in my view, is to be a woman who has a vision, has a really distinct, clear vision for what you want to create, and it is someone who intentionally deliberately steps into realizing that vision as best they can every day.

You lay out what you call golden tools for entrepreneurs in your book. You've got the bacon take tests, you've got nailed it, risk and reward, hard hat hair, and the outrageous ask. I mean, first of all, names are incredible, love it so good? But can you break down one or two that most entrepreneurs tend to overlook?

Yeah, I mean we're grown women, we're having fun. Why not have some fun with us too? So the book is really broken into two pieces. It's half mindset and half skill set. So how do you get your mind right when you're going to construct a business? And then what are those tangible skills that you need to be really good at building a successful company? Sprinkled throughout or what you're talking about are golden tools, which are my favorite tried and true techniques kind of hacks to supercharge success. And I discovered them as I was building. I was kind of playing around and then you'd stumble upon something and be like, wow, this thing.

Really really works.

I should share this with more people, I'd start. Let's start with risk and reward. We can do two kind of fun light ones. So risk and reward is based on the idea that we are hard wired to work for reward, so our brains release the feel good neurotransmitter dopamine when we get a reward. We are pleasure seeking people and we want things that we can touch, taste, feel, smell, besides something that's intangible like money, which just goes into your bank account. And so what I like to do here is you tether a goal. So everyone right now can just think about a goal that they have something that's really important to youkay, and then you put something else on the line. This is you reward that you really want, and I'm talking really want, really really really want, like in your bones. It's going to motivate you. So for me, you know, one of one of my first goals just to share when I was starting my business was I wanted to land a seven figure client that was really important to me when I was just starting out, and I finally did, and the reward I told myself I would treat myself too at the time was this love bracelet, which I really wanted but I would never get for myself. I'd never splurge on it. And so when I landed this business, I was out in California doing some consulting. I flew my mom out spontaneously. I was like, Mom, get on a plane. We're going to Napa. And we drove around. We had bathrobes on. We were in this convertible just having the time of our lives rippen around. We ran into there was a cardier there got the bracelet. I told all the women in the store this story, and they were then sharing their dreams and what goals they were going to chase down. And it was the most electrifying experience because there's something that happens also when you're in the midst of celebrating your win. You kind of breathe these magical crystals of possibility into someone else's lungs, like you watch them light up through it.

And you said, there was one more that you wanted to do.

Yeah, this is my favorite you guys, this is so good.

Okay, I'm wondering where you're going. Is it hard hat hair? No, it's hard to say fast. I know you really can't write hard hat hair. Did a good job, but gun tripped up on that a few times. So this is called dundunta the outrageous ask.

So the outrageous ask is a basic ask, something that you want, ramped up to the tenth exponent. So you basically imagine something some ask that you want to make to someone and you Now, what makes it so interest indifferent is that you take it to this very extreme place, like you have to demonstrate to the person that you are willing to humiliate yourself, embarrass yourself, go to extreme efforts and time, you are willing to do whatever it takes to make this thing you want come true. You just need their participation. So it's an enrollment and it should do one of two things. When someone gets one, they should think to themselves, who does she think she is? Or is she crazy? Like you need to seem certifiably crazy when you send this thing out. So for me, just to give one example, I was watching I was on the plane coming home and I was watching Becoming Warren Buffett. Have you seen that movie?

Oh?

It's a must watch everyone, And so I sent his office. I just spontaneously send his office a message, and I asked if I could take Warren on his daily drive through. He gets an egg McMuffin every morning. I said, can I fly to Omaha, Nebraska and go with Warren through the drive through? And I got a respond and his assistant said, I shared this with mister Buffett and he got such a kick out of your hutzpah. And it's not a no, but it's just a not now. So I'm still following up on that one.

That's a great one has need a moment to appreciate that.

How fun? Right, So what's the purpose of the outrageous ask? Like, what do you think is the growth that comes from that?

This is based on the idea that one ask can change the trajectory of your business and life. Like getting one person to come on board or one brand to come on board and do whatever it is. It has the possibility to change your entire life. And that's the magic of it. Like when I started my interview series, no one wanted to do it at first, and I went out to Jessica Alba I asked her to do it, and she did, and then once she did it, everyone else wanted to do it. She kind of opened the door. And again that came from me just being willing to take outrageous action and make this request to the world's.

I love the spirit of this. It's just about getting outside of your comfort zone and being willing to take big swings and big risks. Yeah, the hope.

And intention for this book is something that I'm loving right now, which is watching more women ask themselves like what do I want? What do I want? Not what does Aunt Sally want? Not does what does my dad want? Or my husband or my kids? Like what do I want?

What is true to me?

And that then means this often kind of unconventional, unusual life because it's unique to them. Like, I really believe that we all have within ourselves the ability to create something powerful while we're here. And I just I love and I'm so excited by the fact that more and more women have stopped building other people's dreams and have started building their own.

I mean, that's a very bright side. Kathleen and cheers to nonlinear living Kathleen, thank you for sharing your time with us and teaching us that it's all possible to build and build like a woman.

Thank you and thanks for being such inspiring builders. I'm inspired by both of you and what you're building.

Kathleen Griffith is an award winning entrepreneur, business strategists, founder of the marketing consultancy Grayson Coe, and now the author of Build Like a Woman, The Blueprint for creating a business and a life you love. It's in bookstores now.

We'll be back tomorrow with Olympic hurdler and sprinter Queen Harrison Clay to talk all about this summer's Olympics, empowering young girls through sports, and we'll find out how Airbnb literally changed her life.

Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast Us, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Simone Boye. You can find me at Simone Boice on Instagram and TikTok.

I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.

That's r O b A. Y See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.

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