The Real Reason You Sabotage Your Next Level, With Katie Pulsifer

Welcome with your host and business guru, Nakisha King. This podcast is the ultimate destination for women creative entrepreneurs who want to break free from burnout.

If you are overwhelmed by client demands and feel like you're doing this all alone, you, my friend, are in the right place. Now let's dive in for steps to take back your time and some simplify your workflow. All right, Nikisha, take it away.

Welcome to the Iconic CEO podcast. Today we have a special guest, someone from my coaching journey that I love and admire.

Yes, master.

The creator of the golden coaching certification and a trusted guide guide for women who have built successful lives and are ready to build ones they actually love.

She has spent over 13 years training thousands of coaches, including myself, and helping high achieving women move from overstretched and unfulfilled to grounded, clear, and stepping boldly into what is next. Gift. Katie, welcome to Iconic CEO. It's a gift to have you with me today. Who would've even known this was possible? How are you?

I am doing so well. I am even better now that I am in your presence. I just love being in your energy. And so to have a conversation with you is amazing.

You've been 13 years teaching and helping women who have built what we consider successful lives on paper, meaning they're either leadership, C suite multimillionaires, doing great things in their life, but somehow these women who have done really things based on society, what success is.

Yes.

Still feel like something is missing. And that's not a shock. I feel like that's like happening a lot.

Yes.

What is actually happening underneath for most of them, what's that below the surface that we can't see?

Well, I mean, I always love starting with believing that everyone is doing the best they possibly can with what they have been given.

And so I know these women, if they are focused on being accommodating, pleasing, not making too much of a fuss, doing the safe thing, prioritizing everyone else's needs, basically executing a life that they were raised and socialized to want to live. And they accomplish all of those things. And it looks amazing on paper. Often, I mean, I've been through it myself. I can imagine you have as well.

It's like you peel back those layers and you realize what's underneath is A bit hollow or maybe empty.

It's almost like the house of cards is about to come down and there's nothing, there's no scaffolding underneath because it was built on what I thought I was supposed to want to want. Or lots of times I did want that as a 20 year old. I didn't know any better and I wanted that as a 30 year old.

But now at this particular phase for me, mid to late 50s, it's like, oh, those things don't matter anymore, anymore. And so instead of that hollowness or lack of scaffolding being a problem, it's like, what would I want to deliberately put inside of there?

How would I want to fill myself up and bolster myself, this version of me at this time in my life? We don't have to make it a problem. It's a beautiful opportunity. So that's, that's the conversation I love having with women.

It's like you haven't done anything wrong. In fact, I can bet that you've done anything, everything right? I straight A's all the way down the report card, all of it. You've done it.

You are amazing. But now what if you could choose? Would you want to build your life to look like?

I love what you said about the hollow part. And the thing about it, even if you gave us two options, it felt like they. When I say the same, the hollowness is not understanding self.

But the second part was you outgrew. Because when we're, we're in our 20s, we're discovering ourselves, we're still brand new, still have four years ahead of us than behind us.

So we are doing what we know and what we know comes from the people we love who wants to keep us safe and want to make sure that we can financially sustain ourselves. So we do the things that we think we need to do to make money. Because money is safety in the us, wherever you are, currency is safety.

And then as we do that, I believe the hollow, that hole starts to grow every day. When we go into that job, that feels draining to us, that chips away at our soul. So when you said that, I felt like I related to both.

And I only wish as much as in college, we have counselors. I've never ever seen one. I don't know why I didn't go, but I don't think it was because I was being rebellious.

I just think it was because I didn't know they were there to do that job, if that makes sense. So I love that below the surface, these are what Your clients and a lot of women.

And it doesn't have to only be the midlife older, but the younger ones too, because I don't think they know how to identify yet. You know what I mean?

But I think the people you work with and have been working with, like you say, success on paper, but in reality, man, oh man, are we struggling underneath. And it's a performance, but not a performance in not being ourselves. It's just we're discovering self, you know.

Right. I, as I'm listening to you speak, I was taken back in my own life to, you know, I was in corporate for 13 years and really successful.

The breadwinner in my first marriage and the 401k and the benefits and the, the mom and the, you know, holding everything together and for the job that I absolutely loved and couldn't wait to go to with enough changes in upper management and direction. And I was always put on the new team to do the new thing that had no staying power because no one really wanted the new thing for very long.

It turned out that hollowness is what I started feeling when I went into that office every day. It was just like, oh, there just has to be something more than this.

But all the messaging was like, you make the majority of the money, you have the 401k, you, you know, it's like, what do you mean? Like, just make it work. Go talk to hr. Take another, like one of those probably awesome little things. What are those things called?

Like, I don't know, Myers Briggs or.

Figure out personality test or something to see what aligns with you. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like, go, go, like take a test, read a book, figure it out, make it work. And it was like, oh, no, this on the inside, this isn't being fed anymore. And yeah, it took a while to like get my nervous system aligned.

It is a braved act and it's not an easy one. But talking about it sooner, like you said with younger women and helping them create their own safety, God, we could change everything.

If we could have those more of those conversations, what would you think that.

Conversation would look like? Because here's what I always contemplate and maybe you can help me. When I was younger, would I have been open to that conversation?

Would I even have felt the hole? Because am I in survival mode? When I'm younger, am I in this is how the world works. This is how it should be done.

I'm not listening to anything or like everything in our life marketing, we speak to specifically the people who are in tuned and feeling that way. You know what I mean? We. We put the message out and will attract the people who are like, yeah, I do feel a hole.

I feel like something's off, you know, and I don't want to go down this route, but I don't know what other route there is for me. So I think that might be the conversation. But tell me your take on that, too.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's meeting people that are open and curious already.

And I also think if you're listening and I know you are especially so attuned, there's a quality of dissatisfaction. It's like the way we're doing this thing called life is just not working.

I mean, I don't mean it to sound so bleak, but this way of being so reliant on what social media tells me that I should do or being so concerned about what the group is doing and feeling disconnected. And more and more people, young people that I'm speaking to are talking about like, I've got to take a break from social media.

I've got to get off of it. I want to reconnect with myself. I want to get outside in nature more. I want to read more books.

And so is there maybe, and this is a question for us, I guess, is there an opportunity to name that as this kind of disconnection that you have permission to just consider that you may want something a bit different? And could we provide like a safe landing space for those conversations?

I love that. It's one of the things that. How can I say?

First.

First time. And the way she sold me was what was my purpose. And it was still tied to that.

Yeah.

And it hasn't changed.

So when you speak about the young female out there and having an opportunity to help her understand you do have permission and giving her that safe space, it speaks to my soul in such a way. Because if you can help them, then what will they look like at 30, 40, and 50? Who will they become? Who can we see?

How can they show up in the world as women founders, as coaches, Even if you have a W2, you might show up so differently because who you are.

Right.

And as you and I know, yes, you may fall, but your fall might be a little bit different than our fall. Yeah.

Oh, you're definitely gonna fall. Oh, it's coming.

Yes, yes. So for our listeners right now, if you don't mind sharing, you and I experience our moments of falling.

When you think about falling, can you describe it to our audience so they can. And then share a little bit about your journey of falling and rising back up? And who did you become?

Because when you fall and you rise, your rise is not the person you were when you fell. So share a little bit, if you're open to that with our listeners.

Yeah, well, I mean, face planting, that's what I do. I've done it so many times. But I'll talk about my most recent time. So where you and I met, where you got trained as a coach at the Life Coach School.

And I was working there for five years. I thought I would have that career forever. Dream, dream, dream job.

The founder wanted to take her business in a different direction, which, of course she is entitled to do. Absolutely. And it left me without a job that I loved. And it was devastating, Absolutely devastating. And there was just such grief and sadness.

And I hadn't created it, but I was the byproduct of that. Very different than going through the disillusion of my first marriage and, you know, different thing, but also.

But the grief, the weight of that was so, so, so heavy. And it took me a while to heal. But I came out of that knowing two things.

One, I never wanted to be at the mercy of someone else's business decisions if at all possible. I wanted to be able to create my own safety by creating my own business, which I had never felt before.

And I had been an entrepreneur before, but I had never felt that. So I was like, ooh, I know this time's going to be different.

But then I also knew that my identity as an outstanding employee was the wrong identity to be a founder.

So true.

Right? So the identity I held as an employee, I never wanted to have my own business. I never wanted to go create a coaching business before.

So I was never distracted from the job that I was paid to do as an executive at the Life Coach School. I was like all in on her business and what we were building there. That identity would not allow me to be successful.

So I had to like dismantle that identity, that. And build new belief and build belief that I was an entrepreneur. And I had to do that side by side with building a business. And it.

I gave literally 50% of my time to belief building.

And then 50% of my time just screwing around with, am I going to do webinars, am I going to do freebies, am I going to, you know, all that stuff that we do. Tactics. Right, tactics. But 50% of my time was taking myself on a walk and embodying this like, I am a founder, I am an owner, I am an entrepreneur.

I have no evidence I'll be good at this. It doesn't matter. But I can't only think of myself as an outstanding employee. To even answer your question, you did find a little bit of a.

No, you did.

Okay.

You told us how you face planted and how you roll your. You rise. Because when I think about it, that's the journey of every woman founder.

Yeah.

Especially if they come from a W2, which majority of us do. We have some people who are just straight up entrepreneurs because their family were.

But they don't realize they still employees because they worked for their family business with a specific target.

Right.

And now as a woman founder, you have to do some belief work. But a lot of them don't. They do 90% action work, 10% belief work, and they struggle with the identity of self.

You know, so you should definitely answer the question. And I think it's so good to notice that you did 50%, half and half and walking outside and coming into I am a founder.

The mantras, the constant remembering that. Because you know how we can tell when someone isn't remembering that when they say, I know I should be doing this, but I don't do that.

Yeah, they don't do the action.

Exactly.

No. Because everyone knows what they should be doing. But then the question is, why aren't you?

Right.

Why aren't you?

And if you could have, don't you think you would have done it by now if you're in your 40s, your 50s, like, what makes you think you've gotten this far and you've had the power all the time, but you've never used it? Get out of town.

You know, I honestly think, and I know for a fact from my experience and for many women that I speak with, we can't do it ourselves based on our being of spiritual connection. We're all connected, and we all need each other.

Mm.

We were never built to be individual, although it seems that way through society.

You're right. Exactly. Exactly.

No.

Yeah. So it's like leaning in, asking for advice, asking for help.

Yes.

Raising my hand. I literally do not know how to do this. I have never done it before.

And finding my safe spaces to get business advice from someone that I trust that's going to help me grow and solve things that I've never tried. Facebook ads.

I didn't.

What are you talking about? I don't know what that is. Teach me everything.

Yes.

But it's like, is it a skill gap or is it a belief gap? And I got really clear on. Okay, these. This is legit skill gaps. This is literally. I do not know how to do this. Teach me. Versus.

Oh.

This is me not believing in myself as a person that can figure it out, finish what I start, work when I'm bored. You know, all of these things that they don't tell you. It's in the fine print of entrepreneurship that you can't read.

Are you willing to be bored most of the time doing tasks to move your business forward? Right. Are you willing to feel uncomfortable, courageous, uncertain? I mean, pitching podcasts, sending it out, sending notes out?

You know, all these things. They don't. Yeah.

But you know what was interesting? That you find them to be two separate things. Yeah. And I go, they're not.

You know why? Tell me.

Listen to what you said. A skill or belief? You knew it was a skill when you had Facebook ads. I don't know how to do that. I need help.

Yeah.

And your belief was, I went and got help.

Yes. Yes.

But people don't believe in themselves, so guess what? They won't pay for the help.

Right.

It stems from, I don't believe I can get what I need out of this. I don't believe I can do it, because that's. That's the. Below the surface.

Right.

If I like, all right. I believe I can do something. I will pay you, and I'll put all in. And I think you did that for everything.

Yes.

Where some people still have a belief challenge, so they know it's a skill problem, but they are going to say, I don't have. And it's not that they don't have. They don't believe they can get the outcome, so they don't invest in themselves.

You're absolutely right.

So I feel like both of those things are playing at the same time, because somewhere down the line, someone told them they're not going to make it.

Right. Right.

Somewhere down the line they've been conditioned to see people who haven't made it in their lives and they don't think it's possible for them.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And I'm like, oh my God. But it's so interesting, these dynamics that we experience. And I know it's as women founders, you have to understand it's.

It's not only our parents. We have, we have pain, we have big moments where slavery holocaust. There's big moments all of our lives. The Asians, there's culture issues.

And then come into a country that's like, well, taking your rights away. Right. So. And we had no say in that. We supposed to vote Haven. Right. So all of these things, we are, we're fighting.

And I honestly love that we women who have said, yes, I believe in me, I believe in you. And we're going to create an opportunity for you to borrow our belief.

Right.

So we can help you on your journey with your skill set and belief.

Yeah.

Now, you had also said something to me about identity. A lot of women entrepreneurs tie their identities so tightly to their business and they lose themselves, their business, their jobs.

And I want to know, how do you help a woman like, separate when who she is from what she does, especially when her business is her biggest source of pride. Tell me more about that.

Yeah.

Well, I love teaching both my private clients and my coaching students about this idea of believing that you are whole, wise and worthy and really working on that as a foundational belief. I wish I could say that we just snap our fingers and they believe it does not happen that way.

Of course, there's a lot of dismantling and unlearning that needs to be done.

But it's the idea that it's possible to believe that you are whole, just as you are wise, that the answers are within you and worthy of all that you desire. Because you again, are just here present, alive on this planet when that foundation is solid.

Relationships, business, economy, the world happens, fluctuates amazing, fluctuates terrible. All the things the customers love you. The customers aren't raving about you today. And you at your core are.

Okay, yes, you will feel emotions, elation, disappointment, but you are not gripping so tightly to the business, to the relationship, to the. To the money in the bank account to determine your worthiness. It's not easy to separate those two things.

And I want women to be exceedingly proud of what they create.

I want them to love their businesses, but there is a freedom that comes when you couldn't say, if I didn't have my business tomorrow, I would be totally okay.

So good, right?

Because then, yeah, it's like we just the. We don't grip as tightly. There's. There's some distance. And when there's a little distance, I think our perspective is a little.

Maybe more balanced because we're not so tied to the outcomes.

Yeah, it's so interesting. Guys, as you listen to this podcast, you don't know, but, like, my time with Katie is like, not a coaching moment, but like a revelation moment.

And she doesn't know this, right.

Like, her and I haven't spoken for a while and she's like, doing something and she doesn't realize it, but I'm hoping she's doing it for you as you're listening, because this is so good and it is so true when you learn how to release a little bit of the rain. And no matter what happens, yes, we all have feelings. I usually tell people, emotion is energy in motion. That's all that is vibration.

Right.

We have learned that. But when it's done, you're still who you are. You still love who you are, and you're still good. You're okay, you're safe. Safe.

That's the magic key or the key word. I want to know this next question.

This one is like my favorite one because there's people who are going through some things in their life right now where they're dependent on someone else. So when you think about independence is something women say they want, but a lot of them will quietly sabotage it.

From a coaching perspective, what is really going on when a woman holds herself back from moving into her next level?

Well, I think, you know, it's quite similar to like, upper limit challenges, which I'm sure you of course know all about. But where that next level or that independence, our nervous system has determined that it's unsafe, right? It. It always comes down to that.

The unknown, the unfamiliar is dangerous. And our brains make that snap decision because, I mean, the truth is, they don't care. Our brains do not care about our fulfillment.

They do not care about our happiness. They do not care about our peace. They care about preservation of known, of familiar, of status quo.

So with going from dependence to independence is the. Is the change, even though we want it so badly, that unfamiliarity, the brain is going to lock it down.

And then our nervous system is going to not feel safe. And then what's even crazy too, is the brain's going to argue against It, Right. That's running in the background too. All the reasons.

Well, it might not work out. It might not be as great as you think it will be.

It's like the brain is not only saying it's not safe over there, but let me give you a hundred reasons why staying exactly as you are is better. So when you're not onto that, you fall for it. So self sabotaging can sometimes sound like we're blaming the woman. I don't think so.

I think she is listening to her brain that's trying to protect her. But with some tools and some new awareness and some understanding of, oh, of course my brain is going to fight me on this.

What do I want to do about that? She can get more in the driver's seat around creating that independence.

Such a great point. Such a great point. Because if you don't know the work we do and what we do, you're going to think you're being blamed for the sabotage. Yes.

You will take that on. You'll be, you'll be like, no, you're blaming me, but it's not you or it's not. It's not a blamed game. It's just a part of your, your physical.

The amygdala, we usually call it, that will keep you saf.

Yes.

And its job is to keep you safe. But what happens is your frontal cortex needs to be intentional, set on fire. Meaning you need to move from the everything that can go wrong.

But what if you have to challenge it? And that's where the frontal cortex comes into play. You have to challenge.

Because sometimes we think all the things is giving us that will go wrong is happening because you don't. The brain doesn't know past, present. It doesn't know anything happening. It creates stories and you feel like you're in it.

Your body's releasing cortisol, you about to like have a fit. But what you don't realize is that if you give it something else in your intentional.

Well, what if the opposite happened and this happens and that happened? You can get it to come along with you. Yes. You can get it to go. You know what? If that's the case, then go for. Can do that for you.

Yes.

And I've learned that in a way that in doing that and in practicing that, because I would have to stop the thought.

I used to say, stop, stop, disturb it, bring myself to present and give it the opposite to the point where I saw it when my husband was laid off, that's when I saw it. And I was like, oh, you finally. My subconscious finally got it. Because when he was laid off and he said it instead of my heart and my.

My soul and the inner voice going, oh, my God, what are we going to do, Nikisha? It's around Christmas time. It's. This is that. It was like, let me hug you. Finally you get to be at peace. Like, I was like, you're good.

Like, everything is going to be fine, you know, And I was like, let's coach you and let's get your criteria of where you want to go work next. What do you want to do? Yeah, but it. It stemmed from a place of working on it.

And I believe when you do work on it, we still can self sabotage, but you don't stay there for too long. You get an opportunity to be like, let me tiptoe on it. And then I can be like, oh, I got it. And you can move to the next level.

And sometimes it's so fun to be in the sabotage space. Let's be real, right? Like, it's so fun to have a pity party and feel badly for yourself. Oh, my gosh. And just like, indulge in.

Nothing's going right for me. Feel sorry for me. This is the, you know, we. Please, please, yes, have all of that.

And my indulgence.

I love myself a good pity party.

Yes. And my pity party, like Netflix and food. And food that I normally don't eat and drinks. I normally don't drink.

And then when I'm done, like, all right, I'm done.

Yeah, exactly. But it was knowing you have the choice. Right? And that's what.

That's the greatest gift a woman can have, is knowing you can hang here for as long as you want and you get to choose anytime you want to move into more agency and more driving the decisions. You are not at the mercy of your brain. It is not a runaway train that you just have to, like be on with.

No say, you know, but if you want to have a pity party. Yes, I'll bring. I'll bring the snacks.

Love that. Love that. Now I want to know, how does golden coaching help?

Tell us a little bit more about your company, what you do, and how do you help these women? Like, give us a little bit of what they can expect from you and being with you. I would love to hear that.

Oh, thank you. Yes.

So I do one on one coaching for women, helping them with literally everything we talked about already on this podcast and many other things, but it's really the embodiment of the whole wise and worthy identity so they can create exactly the life they want. So filling in those hollow spaces that we talked about and maybe tearing lots of the exterior things down and rebuilding or maybe just subtle tweaks.

I also created a coaching certification program that helps women learn foundational self coaching skills because I really saw that as something missing in the market.

And all these years of training coaches, they come out with incredible theory and concepts and so many of them are such good students and they want to do it perfectly and do it right. Yes. And they, they strive to go put their coaching work into the world a particular way.

What I think can make a world of difference for a coach is to figure out what's your way of bringing your work to the world.

How do you so I love teaching ethical, safe, responsible coaching that is founded in I know how to coach myself first and then I'm going to work with all my past experience, what I most love and I'm going to put that into the soup pot with the coaching tools to figure out how I want to deploy coaching in my life.

Some people come to me to learn how to be better employers, better founders with that so they have richer conversations with their contractors and staff and teams. Some want to create coaching businesses and do one on one coaching.

Others just they're that person in their life that everyone comes to and everyone leans on and they want to be able to actually help on a deeper way in their families or in their volunteer work. So I love customizing the coaching experience to each person and their end use.

But they leave a training with me not trying to memorize a cookie cutter formula that that then they go out and beat themselves up that they're not doing it perfectly or they use the tools against themselves. It's like this gets to be whatever you want. It's a living, breathing practice that you will shape.

But let's make sure we know what you want as a coach and then I'll help you bring out your own superpowers, your own experience with the best coaching tools to make the greatest impact.

So good.

That's what I'm doing.

Thank you so much. I appreciate this so much. And I know I listen listeners does as well.

So if anyone want to find you, where's the best place they could find you and be part of your world.

So Katie pulsifercoaching.com is my website where I have information about the certification and private coaching. I also write a sub stack. You can find me Katie Pulsifer coaching over there. I'm a little bit on social media, not that much.

Really? That's good. You know where to go. You, you know your people, you know your places. Perfectly fine. And we'll have it in the show notes.

And before you go, what's a favorite book of yours that you would love to share with our audience?

Oh, my goodness. Oh, how are you going to make me pick just one, your top one,.

Then the one that has changed your life in a way you didn't know it was going to when you started reading it?

I love Anything by Isabella Yende.

Tell me what book she's wrote, because I don't know her as an author.

Oh, my gosh. This is where my brain is going.

Describe it to us. Tell us about it. You enjoy.

So she is.

She's from Latin America and she writes these gorgeous stories about the mix of historical fiction with strong female characters who have to overcome excruciating odds. And they are just these amazing heroines. Oh, my gosh.

We can search it. We'll search it and find it, but I haven't.

I mean, I've read everything she's written and I can't pick just one. So she is my favorite author. I hope you will let me get by with that.

I will let you get by with that. Yes. That's perfect. Thank you. Katie, thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for sharing such wisdom with us.

And I'm excited for everything you're doing and all of the success you're having. And just being a light in a world that sometimes we have pockets of darkness, it's not all dark. I know. It's so much light in the world.

Just have to find your people.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me. And I meant it when I said being in your presence is absolutely the most uplifting, beautiful experience. And this was such an honor. Thank you.

Thank you for listening today on the iconic CEO podcast. And I hope this podcast gave you something to think about today day. But here's two things I would love for you to do. One, hit the follow button.

And two, leave a review. I want the next female business owner who is growing her empire to have an option to listen in on something that can change her life.

Now, this next part, it's not for everyone. So anyone who is in a tri state area, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or you've been in business for two,.

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