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The Girlboss era is over. It's dead. And I am so here for it. Felt like your business is just running you. It's my kids. I said, you know what? I will. But how am I supposed to flourish when I feel like there's not enough of me to go around and loved and adored like I truly do? I want to be spoiled. I have created so many of my own problems in my own family, in my own relationships because I bought into the girl boss lie much does my business. Let me be there for my family and how can I make it let me be there? More comes from Jesus is found in Jesus because he is the one who gave me. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Cage show. It's episode 293 and this is my High Point market recap. Now, if you're not an interior designer, or if you are and you didn't go to High Point, please know that you should probably still listen to this episode because there are some juicy things that happened on that trip. And if you're up for a little bit of girl talk with a dash of business and life advice, then this is the episode for you. All right? So let's just get right into it. It was a lot of fun. I flew in the night before, actually. I got in at like 1 1:30 in the morning, got to my Airbnb in High Point, and that was because my flight got delayed. It was fine. Now, I was there to speak on a panel. I was invited by Andrea Libros, and she was hosting the event at the Point in High Point, which is a really cute pop up venue, and she was sponsoring it. I mean, this woman has invested so much of her time into creating this. It was such an honor to be invited on this panel. So the panelists were Andrea Leros, myself, and Whitney Runnenberg, who's an interior designer of Nested Spaces. And it was moderated by Luanne Nagara, which we all know, of course, was focused on changing your beliefs and your mindset. And I guess in a way, it still was like that. But we had an outline that we were hoping to follow for the conversation. And literally none of the outline was followed because the conversation just naturally took a different direction. And it ended up being the most beautiful, beautiful thing. But first of all, thank you to everyone who did show up because the room was packed, it was standing room only by the time the panel started. And we weren't expecting that. I was not expecting that. It was amazing. This is only the second speaking event I've ever Done my over decade long career. I've done a lot of virtual speaking events, obviously, but in person, this was just the second one and I wasn't sure what to expect. Quite a few of you did Send in your RSVPs. Thank you for, for that. So I knew, okay, there might be, you know, a couple dozen people there. We ended up having closer to a hundred people there. And wow. Wow, that was really, really great. And everyone was so kind and so inviting and authentic and transparent and even vulnerable. And the. The room was filled with mostly women, as it tends to go with interior design events, but there were some guys in there. And even though the conversation was primari, you know, women in design and business and whatnot, and I'll get into that in a second. The men in the room were also very, very encouraging and very supportive and very open about, no, I want to learn more, tell me more. How can we help? And it was just really cool. So aside from the fact that High Point itself feels a bit overwhelming because there's so much going on at any given moment, and the showrooms are beautiful, but they're set up like ikea. I mean, you walk in and it's like, how do I get out of here? Aside from all of that, the little hub of what was happening during that panel was just crazy. It was crazy. So let me get into what happened. Okay. So we were all sitting at the front of the room with our cute wallpaper backdrop and, like, the space was just adorable. It was so cute. And we were all in our. In our high chairs. What do they call those cocktail chairs? Bar height chairs? I don't know. I'm not a designer. We were all sitting up there and Luana Gar was doing her thing. You all know Luann, so she was diving right into it with veracity. And we were going to talk about the power of belief and how what we believe about ourselves and about our marketing and about our finances and about. About what our business is supposed to be and what success actually is or isn't, how that actually plays out in real time, in real life, and how that does impact our businesses. And it quickly turned into a conversation about how do I run a business while raising young children. And the best way I can describe this, guys, is the Girlboss era is over. It's dead, and I am so here for it. The Girlboss era said, prioritize your career. Don't worry about having a family. Men are dumb. You don't need them. Just do your own thing. You rock, girl. You go Girl. And that's toxic. It was toxic feminism. And the funny thing about feminism is that it always said women, you should try to be more like men or you should try to be better than them, whatever the heck that's supposed to mean. All it did was make women who are naturally feminine have to live more in their masculine. And that created this really unhealthy tension in our minds, in our emotions and our bodies. So that when we got out of work mode, we just weren't sure how to relate with other people in our lives. Like, okay, I'm a mother during these hours, but now I'm a business owner during these other hours and I have to be so much more masculine when all I really want is to be nurturing and to be nurtured and to be adored and to be loved and to be appreciated and, and in business it seems like those things aren't allowed. So we have all these women, more women than ever in the, in the workforce, who are living this out every day where they're basically having to deny who they are and who they were made to be biologically, like at the very core, down to a chromosomal level, which you cannot change, by the way. You cannot change what you were born as. Don't even get me started on all that crap. You were made to be feminine. If you were a woman, you were made to be feminine. And the girl boss era said, no, don't be be a girl who acts like a guy in business with a hard cutting. Just go get it. And just like, what is this? And the problem is what? When you then add into the fact that some of us actually do want to be wives and mothers on top of it. That's the thing, it was treated as a problem. Well, you're just going to have to get full time daycare. Well, your husband's just going to have to figure it out. Well, if he's not helping you enough at home, that's his problem. It shouldn't be rocket science. And it taught women to become terrible communicators. It taught us to stop expressing our desires, like our truly frivolous fun. Like, oh, this is what I really want, desires. Because we're like, well, that's not realistic. That's not going to happen. I don't have time for that. I don't have the funds for that. I don't have the bandwidth for that. I don't deserve that because I've got to just focus on this business. And, and that's so unhealthy. And it's so unrealistic. And when we accept the fact that, okay, we were created to be feminine no matter where we go, that means even in our businesses. And that means we can do very feminine things like become mothers and still run successful businesses. And then we have to look at what is success, actually. So this is something I shared during the panel. Someone had a question. She said, you know, I spent time building my business and now I have an 18 month old, and I really want to spend my mornings taking her on a walk and talking with her. You know, she's just so cute and so sweet. But. But, like, how does that make sense? I'm a business owner. I shouldn't be out walking the baby. I should be doing business things. And I was so glad that she asked that question. And I was like, hey, you know what? When my husband was driving me to the airport yesterday so that I could get here and I was crying cause I already missed my kids, I said, you know what? I will never regret this. I will never regret keeping my kids home with me until they're one and a half, two years old, even though I'm working at the same time. Because it's extremely hard. It's very hard. And even Linda Guerra piped in and she was like, yep, I've seen a lot of your babies on Zoom Calls. And I'm like, yes, you have. And it's not easy. Okay, it's not easy. You know how many times I've had to breastfeed a baby while on a very important, very professional Zoom call? I used to be worried about it, and I'm not. It's amazing what you can hide if you just tilt the camera up a little bit. But I'm like, this child needs me, not somebody else. He or she needs me. That's what I was chosen for. This child was given to me. And also this business was given to me. And they can both exist at the same time, and they can both flourish at the same time. And these women were in the panel like, I want this, I want both of these things, but how am I supposed to flourish when I feel like there's not enough of me to go around? There's not enough time in the day when this woman asked the question of, like, you know, I want to spend my mornings with my baby instead of doing my really great early morning self care routine and then diving straight into work. It's just, that's not a thing anymore. And I told her, the phase you're in right now is so short, and you will absolutely Never regret the time that you spent with this child, because this child, before you know it, will be in school, and you'll have a lot more time to work on your business. And it doesn't mean that you're not going to work on your business at all during this time. I mean, heck, I've pulled plenty of late nights, and that. That wasn't necessarily the best choice. So I try not to do it every night, obviously, but every couple months, there comes a time where I'm like, okay, I've got to work late tonight and tomorrow night, and it is what it is. But then I also try to take a nap. So my advice to her was, just because something feels really hard doesn't mean it was the wrong choice. And this is something that Andrea Leros really drilled into me when I was coaching with her. And she said that, you know, it's okay to do hard things. And she actually gave me a plaque that's now on my bookcase that says, you can do hard things. And we can. We're actually really good at doing hard things. I mean, have you ever given birth to a child that's super hard, no matter how you do it? But it seems that we. We make this harder than it has to be because we have a lot of internal dialogue as women around the shoulding. And this is another thing that Andrea brought up in the panel, which I thought was fantastic. She said we should ourselves, like, well, I should be working right now. And then when we're working, you're like, well, I should be with my kid right now. And sometimes you can do both things at the same time. And sometimes you have to have what she calls integration. So people were asking about work life balance. And we bro, we were all like, no such thing as balance. And she said, the teeter totter on a playground, a teeter totter is only balanced for about two or three seconds, maybe probably less than that. So what the heck is this balance we all keep talking about? We're looking for something that does not even exist. So she said, and I firmly agree, it's not about balance. It's about integration. So how are you integrating your business into your motherhood, into your marriage? Because here's the thing that I noticed, and this is why I said, the girl boss era is dead. These women were like, I want to prioritize my husband more. I want to be a present mother for my children while also running a business versus saying, I want to run a business, number one, while also being a wife and a mother. See, the Priorities have shifted. It's a complete reorganization of what's important. Now women are saying, my family is the most important thing, and I am not willing to just put them on the back burner for the sake of my career, even though I really, really do love my business. And that is beautiful. God blesses that. Because we were not put on this earth just to be business owners and work ourselves into the grave. We were here to create legacies, and legacies are created when we pour into our families. So even if you don't have kids, even if you don't have a spouse, there are people around you who are your family, even if they are not related to you. So the true marker of success. This is what I got out of just talking to all these women at High Point. The true marker of success is how much does my business let me be there for my family, and how can I make it let me be there more? Because, again, one thing that Andrea said, and this is why she's such a good business coach, she was like, have you ever felt like your business is just running you? Your business is calling the shots? That doesn't. That's, like, upside down, backwards, and inside out. Wrong. It's not supposed to be that way. And the reason you feel so much angst and so much tension is because you're trying to live in a masculine version of yourself that was never supposed to exist. You don't have to be like a man. Let men be like men. We need men. I like men. I think they're great. Okay, I don't understand them most of the time, but they're great. And there is a reason we are created so differently now. Obviously, these are all my own thoughts and beliefs. I'm not saying that anyone else on the panel, Andrea, Louanne, or Whitney, were saying any of this. This is my own beliefs. Okay, I believe that. And I'm going to actually quote author and podcaster Laura Doyle on this one. She has a book called the Empowered Wife, and she also has a podcast by the same name. And in her book, which I was reading on my flights for this trip, she was saying that, you know, as a woman, you are not just a smaller, less hairy man. And for some reason, even in the medical industry, it's. For the longest time, that's how women were treated. That's why the science behind female hormones is so lacking and so misunderstood and so outdated, because we're being treated like, oh, they're. They're. You know, men and women are like, basically, you know, the same thing. We can treat their hormones the same way. It's no big deal. We're not even going to test your hormones because they would all just be all over the place anyway. Well, don't you think there's a reason for that? Maybe you should look into that medical industry. Sorry. I've had a lot of friends who have had so many fertility issues, and they're not being taken seriously. So that's where that comes from. Um, but we are not smaller, less hairy men. We're also not better than men just because we're women, and men aren't better than us just because they're men. Like, God created both of us with distinct roles and abilities and skill sets. Have you ever tried to watch a man deal with small children for a long period of time? Most men struggle with it, and that's because they weren't actually created for that. Okay? Men compartmentalize. They're not naturally nurturing. And sometimes women will look at that and say, see, he doesn't understand me. He doesn't help me. And, like, what the heck? I shouldn't have to spell it out for him. It should be obvious. This came up in the panel at High Point, okay? It was starting to get kind of icky in the room, and I piped up and said, hey, you know what? If the man doesn't know that he needs to go change the baby's diaper, it's not because he doesn't care. It's because, number one, we don't let them help. Number two, we don't ask for what we need. Number three, we don't even know what we need. Number four, we don't even know what we want anymore, okay? And that's the problem with women living in the masculine side for too long. We lose ourselves, and then we don't even know what makes us happy anymore. And it turns out our husbands really want us to be happy. Like, if you've married a good man or if you're dating a good man, like, he wants you to be happy, and he will pull out all the stops to make you happy once he knows what on earth will make this woman happy. And what I am working on right now, like, personally, this full transparency, I am working on becoming more feminine. And it's funny, because that's my natural state, but I have pushed it away for so long because it felt like weakness to me. And the only reason it felt like weakness to me is because I was buying into the lie that I could only be successful in business if I became more masculine, more Driven, more authoritative, more cutthroat. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I'm not meant to live that way. Long term, that doesn't translate well to how I want to be treated in my own home. Do I want to be treated like a hardcore businesswoman? No. I want to be cherished and loved and adored like I truly do. I want to be spoiled. When I got home from High Point, my husband brought me wine. He cuddled with me on the couch. He hugged me and told me how much he loved me. My little boy, who's three, kept giving me hug after hug after hug. And I'm like, this is what it's supposed to be. I need that soft place to land. And it's only there if I let it be there. If I came home from my trip and I kept acting like a businesswoman who bought into the Girl Boss Lie, I wouldn't have gotten the wine or the snuggles or the hugs or the kisses or anything like that because I would have been so unapproachable and honestly so unhappy within myself. I would have created unhappiness in those around me. And I say that because I have done that. I have created so many of my own problems in my own family, in my own relationships, because I bought into the Girl Boss Lie. So this panel yesterday was the culmination of so many things. I did not expect it to go in this direction. I had people coming up to me after the panel. Um, some of them were very emotional. Some of them were just like, I. I am so shocked. Like, in the best of ways. Like, I have to give a shout out right now to Rick Campos of Design Biz Survival Guide. A lot of you already know who he is. He is a podcaster. He coaches interior designers. He puts on a really amazing retreat out there in California, Orange county area every year. I believe I've been out there. When he had it in Palm Springs, it truly like, he knows how to put on an amazing retreat. And I was talking to Rick afterward, and he said, you know, at my last retreat, so it would have been like, a couple weeks ago for him. He said this topic of being a mother and a business owner came up, and he said half the room was crying. And he said, I had no idea this was such an issue. And I was standing there with. With Portia Williams of the prototype, who shout out to Portia, she's amazing. We were both like, oh, yeah, that is a huge issue. And here's the thing that makes Rick so, like, an amazing human being. He. He leaned in and he's. He was basically like, tell me more. Like, I want to understand this because this is coming up a lot. And because the retreats that he runs are usually attended by females. You know, a lot of. I mean, the tears industry is female dominated. Understandable. It was important for him to understand this. He wanted to understand it. So Portia and I kind of looked at each other like, oh, boy, here we go. And basically, we're just like, yeah, there's so much tension because we're being told we need to act like a man, but we're actually a woman. So we start to get very, very angsty about how we're supposed to balance all of this. We start to lose who we are. And then I turned to him and I said, and basically, we feel like we are abandoning our children. And he was like, whoa. What? Like, genuine shock. And I appreciated that so much. I appreciated his genuine reaction because it made me realize the reason men don't know this is because we don't tell them. It's a communication issue on our part as women. And that's why when the male bashing started in the panel, which I was, oh, I'm like, this is not good, guys. We, like, it was just for a split second, and I don't know why it was headed in that direction. We course corrected very quickly. But when that started happening, I was like, the reason they don't change the dirty diaper is because we don't let them know that we need their help. What. What they see when they look at us is the girl boss who not only can do it all, but wants to do it all and doesn't want anyone to help because no one can do it right but her. It pushes away anyone who tries to help. That's why female business owners have such a hard time with delegation. You will see a solopreneur out there literally in business by herself, not even outsourcing anything. And one. And then wondering why she's so tired, why she's so upset, why she can't get ahead in her business because she's doing it all by herself. And it's not entirely her fault. We have been sold a big package of disgusting lies about what we should be doing. Again with the shoulds. You know, Andrea Lee Rose, you're a genius. Stop shoulding yourself. What should you be doing? What's in. Well, the better question is, like, what's important to you? And this is where I had an opportunity on the panel to share one of the biggest lessons I'VE learned in business. And that is that I cannot wrap up my identity in my business because then if I don't make my revenue goals for that year, or if I get too many difficult clients, or if too many projects fall through or whatever it is, my identity is dragged into the dirt along with that because I've just poured so much of myself into the business and I've lost who I am. I've been completely separated from my own identity because I was actually made to be a woman. And a woman is nurturing and loves to be nurtured and, and needs to be adored and needs to be spoiled. I mean, honestly, we do. We need to be spoiled. I don't know why. It's just how God made us. It's fine. Okay? And the thing is, he made men who love to spoil their women. And it was so important for me to realize my business cannot define me. It can't. It changes too much. It's like saying that my value as a person depends on the weather and the weather always changes and the meteorologists are always wrong. So that would be so silly, wouldn't it? Like here I am trying to be such a logical, statistic based business owner who is looking at the analytics and all the things and I'm doing something that is so silly, putting my value in equating it with my business. But here's the thing, our value does have to come from somewhere. So then the question becomes, well, if I'm not going to put my value and my self worth on the same level as my business, where does my value come from? Where does my identity come from? Because if I put it on anything else, anything else will change. I've put it on my feelings. If I put it on my, my inner goddess, as some people were saying, all of that changes. And all of it can be wrong. Some of it can be right sometimes, but never all the time. So that means my identity is never like really solid. It's just a loosey goosey thing that changes with so many factors that I can't control. Talk about making a person anxious. This is where in the panel in front of all 80 to 100 people, I said my identity comes from Jesus. It is found in Jesus because he is the one who gave me the business. He is the one who made me. And even if everything went south and fell apart in my business, I would know that I am still okay because of Him. Okay, you guys know High Point is not a religious event. It's not anti religious either. It's like it's like vanilla. And people generally just don't, like, talk about that stuff on High Point panels. And that's why I was so, so grateful that even though I made sure to say these, these views are my own. I'm not speaking on behalf of the entire panel. The panel itself was so supportive. Not only were they. They weren't saying anything like, oh, you. We can't talk about God here. This is a business event. People were so grateful to hear that perspective, even if they don't agree with it. And that was beautiful. It was so beautiful. And judging by the number of teary eyes in the room at that point, I also think it was very necessary. Now, also, I have to say this. Some people told me afterward, like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe that you went that direction. And you said that. And they said that in a positive way, like, whoa. And they were trying to praise me for it. And I just kept pushing back, and I push back even now and say, guys, I don't want any sort of like, oh, wow, Kate's so brave. Kate's so bold. Kate's so vulnerable. Because that was coming up too. Like, you know, they were saying, oh, you're. You know, you guys are being so vulnerable. Make sure this room is a safe place for everyone. And it was like, okay, well, meaning, like audience, make sure that this is a safe place for the panelists who are being so vulnerable. That's what that meant. Sorry. The thing is, it's not about being vulnerable. It. Or. And it's not about being bold. It's about being in my situation. God wanted me to say that. I mean, I don't know if anyone can remember if they were at the panel. There was a certain moment where all of a sudden I turned my head to the left, and that's because I felt the tap on my shoulder. It was not Whitney sitting next to me tapping me on the shoulder, because Whitney was talking that it was the Holy Spirit. And he said, point them to me. Point them to me. And I was like, okay, but if you want me to do that, you need to give me an opportunity to say that. Because I can't just cut into this conversation and awkwardly be like, Jesus, haha. Because that wouldn't land well. That'd be so awkward. So, yeah, I was a little nervous and I said, okay, but you have to, like, you have to give me an in here so that this flows with the conversation and makes sense. And then you also need to give me the words to say, because I have no idea how to say what you're trying to tell me to say right now. And it turns out that God just has everything orchestrated, because not two minutes later, the moderator, Luanna Nagara herself turned to me and she said, kate, do you have anything you'd like to add? Anything that you've really learned from your, you know, or struggled with as a business owner? And I was like, okay, God, I get it. You're so funny. And I said, yes, actually, I wrapped up my identity in my business, and here's what I did instead. Wow. Okay, so that happened. It was amazing. It was amazing to be in a room full of women who prioritized their families, who wanted to be feminine again, who were done with the whole girl boss nonsense and wanted to be true professionals, not only in business, but in their own lives. And to make the main thing. The main thing, which is our families. Because the women in that room were not there to make a quick buck. They were there to create legacies. And like I said earlier, you don't create a legacy just by building a business, but by building the family around it. So it was so good. I was so sleep deprived, and that, like, gave me the energy booster that I needed. So thank you again to all of you who showed up for the event. It was spooky, spectacular. I got to meet so many of you in person, and it felt like a family reunion. It was. It was amazing. So. So that's the high point market recap. And that was my recap of just the one panel. Now, after that, we did go to a happy hour that was hosted by sunpan, and that was beautiful. And they had the most wonderful selection of wine and hors d' oeuvres and everything. And we had great conversations there as well. And then after that, I made an emergency Uber trip to Target. My Uber driver had no idea how important his job was at that moment, but I had to go there and get a new bump and get all the things straightened out. Wow. Yeah. I did not want to go to Target any sooner because I didn't want to miss the panel. I didn't want to miss the happy hour. That's literally what I flew across the country for. And based on what happened in that panel. Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad I was there. It was worth it. It was worth it to suffer through. And the panel itself was just beautiful. Was conducted so well. I was so grateful to be part of it. And it was such an honor to be up there with Andrea and Luanne and Whitney, because these women have so much more business experience and life experience than I do. And, you know, Luanne even pointed out during the panel, she's like, I've seen your journey in. In real time. I knew you when you were first getting started and you didn't have children, and then I saw you on all the zoom calls when you had your little babies. And she's like, I didn't even know you had a third baby. And like, yes, I did. He's four months old. And so she was just like, oh, my gosh. You know. You know how she is. She's so funny. So it is really cool to be able to look at that as a full circle moment. Like, these women took a chance on me. Luanne took a chance on me when I was brand new in business. I was on her podcast in 2018. I'd only been in business for two years. It still didn't really know what the heck I was doing, doing. Andrea took a chance on me, you know, not just as a coaching client, but she came on my podcast, she gave me this opportunity, and. And Whitney has so much more experience with being in business and multiple times and raising children, and it was just truly an honor. So, guys, that's my high point market recap. Next episode will be back to all things business related, but don't lose yourself in the process. Maybe I'll make that my new tagline. All right, guys, see you later.