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Kristen Boss
I see you with brand new eyes no, I've never been so sure Take my head let's run into the unknown this is the beginning. You are listening to the Kristin Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I'm on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance, and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It's about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning. Hey friends, it has been a while, like a couple months and a lot has happened just this year in 2024. And maybe you've been following along on my social media, but it has been a year and this particular podcast episode has been a long time coming. I just wasn't sure when. And I think I kept waiting for the right time or for it to feel more cleaned up with how I wanted to share and talk about all my updates and all that stuff. And I just realized that it's never going to feel neat and perfectly tidy and perfectly curated. Oh, I'm getting emotional. I think this is going to be, these are going to be good, sweet episodes. So I'm pretty sure it's going to be in two parts because there's a lot to catch you up on. So where do we begin? I think we actually have to begin in 2020. When my business started and when I had first started, I saw a real need in the network marketing industry. I saw a need for teaching the industry lead generation in a way that wasn't being taught. I wanted to teach sustainable strategies that was primarily about attracting people to you instead of exhausting yourself in the chase. And as you know, I wrote a book, Pivot to Purpose, and that book is coming pretty close to home again, this idea of leaving toxic hustle culture, this idea of the never ending grind. And I really wanted to share about a different way of doing business. And so when I came onto the scene, like, you know, people were talking about niche, but not really the idea of giving away freebies, no one was talking about this in the business funnels. You know, all the things that you guys know me for, these were things that were being taught outside of network marketing that I was like, okay, the industry needs to learn how to build audiences, build a brand and monetize these networks and do lead generation and learn to sell and market. Those are, I believe, now More than ever, those are entrepreneurial life skills. Like if you know how to sell and market and write content or copy. Copy is something I teach inside the social selling academy or that is taught inside the social selling academy. You're never going to go hungry a day in your life. There is so much work available for you out there. And so I wanted to teach these tools because I didn't see them, you know, being taught and. But I also wanted to teach a different way of approaching this business and approaching it with. From a less scarce place. Not this 24, seven, you know, hustle grind. And when I came out on the scene with that picture, there was, you know, there was a lot of. There was a clear divide. There were people that loved the message and were ready for it. And then there were those that were like, are you telling my team to not work? And I totally hear that. You know, I look back, I'm like, yeah, I can totally see why people perceived that or were maybe fearful around that messaging, thinking, okay, well if you tell my team to not hustle, then nobody's going to work. And it almost like there was the message, the misunderstanding that, you know, it was going to. It was about anti hard work and really it was about working sustainably. And that's when I really pivoted into what does sustainable work in this industry look like? How do we do this? Well, and that became my focus. And then, you know, I continued to keep a pulse on the industry. But I will tell you, when I wrote my book and when I decided to like go all in on network marketing, I always had this thought in the back of my mind, it's not going to just be network marketing for me. Like, I will serve so long as I feel my assignment is, you know, so long as I feel that that's my assignment until I feel that chapter is done. I had no idea how long that was going to be. But I knew I wanted to serve and serve well. And I remember telling one of my mentors, like, hey, I want to work myself out of a job to the point where I'm not needed in the way I'm needed quite, quite now. You know, like I am now. And so after years of just creating so much content, I was actually reviewing it with my team. You know, five years of content. However many workbooks and some of you are OGs, and you've been with me since 2020 and you have every iteration of every workbook I have ever printed and it's thousands of pages. As I continued to observe the industry, observe Social media platforms, observe consumer behavior. I was just constantly observing, gathering data and teaching to my students, and it's really fulfilling. And, you know, I had my masterminds for a while and that was good and hard and learned amazing lessons from being able to mentor and care for, you know, high six and seven figure earners. And I will tell you what was interesting. When I was coaching in that space, that was what led to, you know, me creating the social selling leadership school. Because I was like, oh, the things that's coming up the most at this level is not about, you know, basic business skills anymore. This isn't about sales and marketing. Like, these girls know how to do this. What came up was self awareness. What came up was life. What came up was relationships and stress management and learning to delegate and outsource and lead people. It became a completely different set of skills, and those are skills I love teaching. And so we launched leadership school and, you know, under, like, hey, if we can just give these tools to every leader. Because it was birthed from, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours spent with six and seven figure earners, pretty much consolidating all of the questions that they're always asking, like, hey, if my team member does this, what do I do if, you know, if this happens to my team volume, where people stop showing up, how do I get people to show up? Or how do I keep, you know, team culture strong? How do I talk to somebody that is discouraged and they checked out of the business? And so I realized I'm like, oh, what. What they need is they need coaching skills. Like, you know, they can't just talk at people. You've, you know, people learn in this business, just like with parenting, like, we can't talk at our kids and hope for change. We actually have to learn to speak to the heart of the child. And it's no different with leadership. It's like, how do I speak to the heart of the person? How do I speak to the root of what's actually showing up here? Because the behavior is actually symptomatic. The behavior of someone, you know, not doing the work that they say they want to do, not showing up consistently online, not following up with their customers, not doing content creation, not just not working their business. That's symptomatic to something that's going deeper within. And so I'm like, oh, well, if I could teach my leaders that. And so we developed leadership school and sort of in a coaching certification program that I'm so deeply proud of that I co wrote with a Psychotherapist. And with all the information I had been gathering with, working with trauma specialists, psychotherapists, therapists, psychologists, like, I literally collecting all of that. And what happened in that was people were like, well, I joined for my team. And the number one testimony we got from leadership school was that it was life changing for the individual. They're like. And just to share a couple stories, you know, this happened this summer. I went and spoke at a keynote, and, man, this year, I. I think I did, like, nine keynotes. I traveled a ton this year. And one of the keynotes I did, someone came up to me and gave me the tightest hug, and tears were running down her face. And she's like, I just want you to know that leadership school was life changing for me. And I was prepared for her to tell me, like, you know, her team tripled and whatever else, and her story shocked me, but I do think it was part of the catalyst to something I already knew. And she said, you know, I lost my husband. I'm a widow. I'm a. And my kids were devastated by the sudden loss of my husband. And what I learned in leadership school through that coaching certification kept my family intact. I was able to be present with my children as they grieved the loss of their father. She's like, you saved my family. And I don't want to be like, I'm. I'm not the savior here. I just provided the tools for her to be able to support herself and her children in the face of insurmountable loss and life crisis. And I wept because I was like, that is. That's more meaningful to me than someone telling me that their paycheck was up three times. And I thought that was interesting when I had that inflection. I'm like, that's more meaningful to me. And it happened again at my Live event in April earlier this year. My husband came for the end of it, and we were stopped over and over and over again about what this program did for families and for individuals, for people that struggled with mental health crisis, with family crisis, with life crisis, with how it changed, how they were doing conversations in their home. We just kept hearing about lives being changed. And at the time, I will tell you in full transparency, at the time, I remember feeling Frustra, but like. But, yeah, just. But also. Yes, that's great. That's great. But tell me what it did for your business. Yeah, I can't put that on a testimonial page. Tell me what it did for your business. And I Started realizing that the heartbeat of the people I were serving, I was serving were. They were telling me what mattered most. They're like my family, my wellness, my emotional being, my sense of self, my confidence, things that needed to be healed that I didn't know for years. And most people in our programs had never been to therapy or had maybe some therapy and didn't have good experiences. So they actually learned because we, we teach this a framework that's built on cognitive behavior therapy, and we teach emotional regulation and emotional self awareness in that program. And I had no idea I was giving tools to heal families and individuals. I just viewed it through the lens of leadership of like, what does a good leader do? Well, a good leader is emotionally regulated. A good, A good leader understands, like, when they need to pull back and stop and have a conversation with themselves first before they enter into a conversation with somebody else. But in that moment, I was blinded by my own biases of like, yeah, but that's not what I built the program for. And we kept seeing more and more and we kept, I kept hearing people, people kept messaging me and being like, okay, your programs are changing my life. And I'd be like, great, how's it helping your business? And people were like, swatting that away and being like, yeah, yeah, it helped my business. But let me tell you what it did for my life. And for a while I was thinking, this is a problem, not realizing that it was staring me in the face all this time, this lingering of, like, all right, what is my work in the world? And I knew when I came to social selling and served this industry, I knew that my work in the social selling space was like sustainability and teaching people, you know, sales tactics that hadn't been taught in the industry yet. Teaching them lead generation, teaching people. Because eventually what really what I did was I took all the methodologies taught and used in paid traffic traditionally, so people that would run ads for large agencies, I'd be like, great, we're going to take the same principles and we're going to teach people how to apply that to their own networks without putting money behind ads. And it worked. And, you know, it was kind of like this first to market thing. And since then, since 2020, there has been as you know, an explosion of, I'm going to call them micro creators or micro coaches. People that, you know, understood the methodologies I was teaching and then went and started teaching other people, which I'm like, great, let's, let's give everyone in the world sales marketing mindset so that people show up better in the world. Great. If, if people show up better in the social science industry as a whole, everybody wins. It only serves everyone. And so suddenly now, you know, fast forward four years a, I'm hearing this feedback from my, my students in my community about how their lives are changing. I'm also noticing a shift in the community as a whole. We've also noticed, like this year we've had what, four, five companies now move to affiliate models. There's, there's been a lot of turmoil. It's just, it's been, it's been a, it's been a year. It's been a year, friends. And so I always knew, like, hey, my network marketing, it's going to be a chapter. I don't know how long the chapter is, but I'm like, am I going to be doing this for 20 years? I didn't know, but I was willing to. For as long as I felt called, I was going to stay. And, you know, I'm noticing this pull in me and I start fighting it. I start fighting this poll. Meanwhile, there's evidence coming my way of, I think, the pivot that I'm inevitably called to. But I gotta bring you up to some changes that was happening in the industry. So from 2020 to 2025, first, I'm bringing and teaching these concepts that are new. And now everyone, like, you can't scroll on Instagram or Facebook for longer than 10 minutes without someone teaching, you know, how to grow your email list, how to grow your following, how to go viral. Here's your hooks. Here's the thing. There's just a lot of noise out there. And I'm like, cool. We have all of our things that we've tested with tens of thousands of students that are proven to work. So long as you do the work. That's the thing, friends. It works. So long as you do the work. I don't sell a diet pill. I don't sell something where it's like, cool, you know, just buy this and all your problems go away. It's like, no, here's all the tools to actually ensure that you see results. But we have something called the human factor, and we have humans interacting with the education. And so. And this is, this is it. This is the crux, friends. So this is what I was noticing. Years and years of the tools, the frameworks, the systems, it all works. We have proven strategies. And then I've years and years and years of people, of humans being human, interacting with that education and seeing how wounds and how stories and trauma and mental health and life outside of business impacts business. I started to observe that being like, all right, well, here's the education and we know the frameworks work, but when we have somebody who has, you know, severe rejection and abandonment wounds, and every post on social media brings up a nervous system response that has them shutting down and going into fight, flight or freeze, it doesn't matter what the education teaches. If the human, if the person has trauma that's keeping them from taking the action, or they have a lifelong story that is so wound up in their identity or, you know, this is why I even started to dislike my own rhetoric of like, okay, just be consistent, just show up, just do it. And, and there is a place for that. Hear me, there is a place for that. There is a time for that. But how do I say show up and do the thing? To the person who is in a true life crisis, to the person who's dealing with a diagnosis, to the person who's dealing with a loss, losing someone to the person who's dealing with their fifth move in a short period of time. Like, if you were to look at trauma in all of its forms, friends, it's not just like we have such a misunderstanding around it of just like, oh, it's if you're hit or you grew up in a drug home or a substance abuse home, or you were actually physically abused. Like, trauma in its most pure form is just an injury done to the nervous system where if something happened too fast in a way where your brain couldn't take it in and couldn't integrate it, your body flooded with too much, shut down and was like, nope, we can't do it. And that can be transitions, changes in life, loss of job, loss of an individual, actual abuse, like loss of careers. It could be a global event. So let's just say we could all be walking around with these like bleeding nervous systems. And unless we have the tools to care for that, it doesn't matter what tools you have in business. That is the gap that started to become more and more and more clear to me. This business started so tactically for me. And then just with time, I was just like, but what about the person? What about the human? What about the person that's coping? What about mental health? Where does mental health and emotional regulation and self care and boundaries and being a human? Where is the intersection between being a high performer and mental health and boundaries and being a person and your wounds? Like, where is the intersection there? How is that? Because I'm just seeing and I See a huge divide. It's like you're over here, you know, only talk about mental health, or you're over here and you're a high performer. And it seems like mental health is neglected. And so I say that to see, like, I'm not. I started noticing all the changes and I always thought I would be like, oh, yeah, when the times come, I'll know. I'll be ready. Yeah, right. I think I knew my time, like, as far as this being the thing I was known for, I think I knew eventually I would know when it was time to pivot. Uh, but apparently God has to smack me across the head with a two by four. And my two by four was a, was a breakdown. And I don't say that lightly. My two by the two by four I had to be hit with was a complete breakdown. Was walking and feeling like I'm walking outside and suddenly feeling like I was breathing through a straw. I couldn't get enough air in. I couldn't talk. And sitting on a curb and having my first panic attack. That was my two by four. And what's hard is. And then what came in was just absolute denial. Being like, well, it's been a stressful year. It's been all these things. And then once denial was there, then there was massive shame being like, what's wrong with me? Why am I weak? Why am I here? Why could I not cope? What's wrong with me? Which, by the way, none of these serve. And so I continued, like in this, I guess, state of denial. And I learned a lot about myself and I learned that because what was happening was I suddenly felt this massive, like, oh my gosh, people can't know I'm having this breakdown. I'm Kristen Boss. Like, I get people can't know. And I'm like, okay, first of all, that's the most harmful story I can probably tell myself and tell others that, like, people can't know that I'm a human and that I can also have my days or months because let's think about it. Let's look at content creators out there. Do you see them talking about like, oh, I had a full blown meltdown? Not really. It just seems like they're constantly just churning out, doing great. And I'm like, okay, I can't, I can't. I'm not going to pretend. And the first thing I did was just start to slowly pull back and being like, all right, I, I have to do some reflection and some evaluating and some real self care. And the other thing Was like, okay, I had to actually differentiate between burnout and depression. Like, what's the difference? And, you know, maybe that's another podcast for another time. But I learned that I was in burnout. And then I had all these questions like, but I. But hold on. Isn't that a product of hustle? Isn't burnout a product of going too hard for too long? And aren't I the poster child for not hustle? Like, now I'm feeling all kinds of imposter syndrome. You can imagine why I'm having like a full blown panic attack on. On the sidewalk. Being like, something I'm so. I'm the biggest hypocrite there ever was. But then I actually learned something because then I did my inventory of like, okay, but am I actually hustling my work weeks? Not full, like 20 hours, if that. I had, like, really gotten my systems a team delegation. I had so much in place that I'm like, okay, it's not. Hours worked. Was I not sleeping? No sleeping. Great. What was my nutrition? Well, my nutrition's been on point. I'm walking, I'm exercising. So if I was to look at all of my old definitions of hustle, it's like, okay, am I burning the candle at both ends? No. Am I up late, not sleeping? Am I grinding? No. Okay, so then what is it? What is burnout? This is what I realized it was. Burnout is when you realized when you realize that you are out of alignment with yourself, when you are no longer operating in alignment with what your values and what is true to you and forcing yourself into a lane and a mold that you feel like you have to be in for everyone else. And that was the source of my burnout. Realizing that I was in a season of being realigned. And there was all these hints everywhere, coming from people being like, you know, I followed you for social selling, but now I'm here for this. Now I'm here for conversations about this. And also what was exacerbating my burnout was my social media content platform. I had my Instagram account and I had this. I started to feel like I was suffocating. Like, I started to feel like, okay, but I really want to talk about burnout. I really want to talk about boundaries. I really want to talk about codependency. I really want to talk about mental health. I want to talk about marriages and relationships and parenting and self care and, you know, emotional regulation and managing your nervous system. Like, there was so much I was wanting to talk about. And I would Go to talk, go to post about this. And immediately what came up for me was like, but that's not why people are following your account. You are Kristen Boss. You're here for social sellers, you're here for network marketers. And I was suddenly very constrained, my identity and my content. And I started to feel like I was dying. Being like, no, this is, this is why the world wants you. And realizing, but that's not what I want my work in the world to be fully, like, sure, that might be part of my work, but my greater work I started to resent because I felt like I couldn't talk about the things that were on my heart and that mattered so deeply to me because I saw people suffering. I saw people with business tool tools still suffering in their life and I was dying. I was like, okay, but the answer can't always be make more money. The answer can't always be become a millionaire. That can't always be the answer. Because what about the people who will never be millionaires? What about the people who are working really noble professions like, you know, nurses and teachers and of people who are first responders? What about those people? Like, are we supposed to tell them, like, oh, happiness is behind a six and seven figure incomes. Happiness is behind being an entrepreneur and this is the only way there. And I started to feel like I could no longer align myself with like that messaging of that being the only message because I care. And I felt like people were hurting, so got really emotional in that rant. So then I realized I'm like, all right, something's got to change. Something's got to give. But it's in all of this that I had my break. And with that is a massive, like, loss of identity. It's like, well, this is what I'm known for. This is what I'm doing. And if you. I'm an enneagram3, I'm a die hard. And our worth is often defined by what we do and what we put out in the world. And suddenly the question is like, well, if I'm not Kristen Boss, keynote speaker and the trainer for the network marketing industry, the question that came up for me is, well, who am I and what value do I have to the world? And that's not for you to answer. That's not for you to listen to this episode and send me a message and say, oh, you. Like, that was a question I had to answer for myself. Who am I when I'm not performing? Who am I when I'm not on a stage in front of thousands of people. Where is my worth when I'm not getting likes and going viral? What is that? And that is when I decided I need to go work on me. I gotta get back to me, who I am. And so this idea of, like. And I went away for four days on. @ this intensive retreat. I worked with a therapist for four days. Like, it was 12 hours a day. Maybe it was 10 hours. 10 hours a day of intensive, traumatic work. Not traumatic. It was not traumatic, intensive therapeutic work. Working on my identity, my stories, my fears, my own things, and realizing this is the work. And I'll never forget. I sat on a bench, and it was in rural Tennessee. All the leaves were changing. It was so beautiful outside, and it was quiet. We had to turn in all our. All our devices when we checked in. So I had no phone, no Internet, nothing. I was cut off from the world. And it was the best thing in the world. It was so amazing. And I sat down on this bench, and I'm looking out at the foliage and observing the fall colors. And my therapist, my guide, they call them guides. I called her my trauma sherpa. My Sherpa, my guide, she's like, what's coming up for you right now? And I was like, I'm very annoyed. I have to sit here because there's work we got to get to. Let's go. Let's go. Get to the work. There I am still in my performer state of being, still in my state of agitation of like, okay, let's, like, get to work now. And she's like, let's just sit here for a minute. And I'm noticing I'm getting incredibly agitated, restless, anxious, sitting there. I'm like, I. I didn't have my apple watch on me either. So I'm like, I'm starting to feel really antsy, and I enter into a conversation with myself. I'm like, well, Kristin, what. What's. What is the rush? And I'm like, well, I got to. I got to do the work. Okay, well, what's the work? And I realized what I was trying to do is escape whatever emotion was coming up when I was sitting on the bench. What actually came up for me was intense vulnerability, exposure of like, I. I have feelings. I can't have her see. I can't see. I can't name them. And all of a sudden, I felt a compulsion to cry. I. And you guys, I'm not. I'm not one to be like, I'm just going to sit and cry. No, I'm usually one that's like, I'm going to sit and do. I tend to be more of a human doing than I am a human being. And my work is to be a human being. That's all of our work. But I had made my work my worth, and if I wasn't working, what good am I? And I think that's what was coming up for me on the bench. It's like, I'm not working. We got to get to work. We need to be producing something. And it created such a state of chaos in my body that I started to cry. And then my guide was like, those tears are the work. And so in those four days, I recalibrated and my work became clear. And it's funny, I was. There was about, I don't know, 50 other people on the property. And it was so funny because I was cut off from all electronics devices. Not on my phone, scrolling. I still, ever since I came back, I don't scroll first thing in the morning. And I notice a significant difference in my mood. And I was joking with some people there. I was like, you guys, I feel like Spider Man. Like, I feel like all my other senses are heightened because I'm not on my phone. I'm like, do you smell that? What's that smell? Ooh, what are those sights and sounds? Like, I was so in love with the world around me. I looked up and everyone else around me do. I was beautiful. Everyone else was looking up and making eye contact. Everyone else was so present in conversation. Not a single person was hiding in their phone. And it's so funny, at the end of it, I was like, how can we burn down social media? Here I am teaching people, like, how to monetize social media, and I leave being like, can we burn this down? But I did some work in those four days, and I had a lot of thoughts of being like, how am I? How am I going to do this? Like, how does this not. And so much came up, like, how am I? How's my audience not going to feel abandoned? Like, I'm leaving them behind and blah, blah. And I was like, wait, hold on. My guide was like, are you leaving them behind? Are you shedding? Like, can they never listen to another podcast? I was like, no, I'm just expanding. She's like, then that's what you're doing. So this is where we're going to end part one. Stay tuned for part two of the Pivot. We'll catch you in the next episode. This is the beginning. That. That's a wrap for today's episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today's episode and shout us out on Instagram. We'll shout you right back out. If you'd like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristenboss.com. it starts right here.