Below is the transcription for this episode:

Dave: Hey what's going on my friends? It's Dave Sharpe. Welcome to Wake Up Legendary and I'm waking up legendary just as we speak making my point about feeling great right about morning living and breathing a little compound our company our company and it's about our factory people from all different walks of life. And so this morning you're going to hear about working in the education industry and we can hear what she thinks about what we're up to.  

Kim: I'm good, Dave. Thank you. How are you?

Dave: You're so welcome. I'm fantastic. As I said on my second recruiting cup of coffee this morning when I saw Kevin Hart last night. So I got out of the house and did like a normal human activity instead of just staying isolated. Like we've been trained to break free from those, those societal norms but anyways, how are you?

Kim: I'm doing great today. I actually had two cups of coffee myself and now I'm trying to drink some water so I can hydrate a little bit.

Dave: Yeah. Are you a coffee drinker all throughout the day?

Kim: No, no, I have two cups in the morning and then that's it. That's that's as otherwise I'm just like, you know, pull me down off the ceiling because I just interferes with everything. But do I have to have it in the morning to have it stored? I like to periodically drink it throughout the day and I would say that I probably have a little bit of an unhealthy relationship with caffeine right now. But what do you need for you to be perfect and everything that you do in life? You know, I can't be nice, right?

Dave: That's my job. I'm not perfect and everywhere else but I try. So you're a 30 year education but tell us what you did. Before you started or what you're still doing. Tell us your Legendary story and a brief history of who you were before you started this.

Kim: Like you said I've been in education for 30 years. I was a classroom teacher. I taught art and technology, and then just kind of went into other areas. So I've more or less worked in education. And then I kind of kind of burned out and in osing or wasn't very long but it was about 6 weeks.

That happened and I was laid off for being non essential. And that was the real message to me. So in 2021 I decided that okay, you know, this can be taken away at any moment. I have family support. So I started looking around for something to do and I figured it's going to probably be an online job because I can't, you know, take on another, you know, full or part time job. So I thought you know, starting in business would be perfect, I didn't know what I was going to do. And then my daughter got me on TikTok, put the app on my phone and said, Mom, you gotta see this and she was already doing TikToks. So I started watching and, you know, one thing led to another and one day I started to hear oh, affiliate marketing and like, what is that I had never heard of before. I had done it years ago. I had done I was in a multilevel marketing company. And that really, like that wasn't for me. So I thought I hope that's it now but I kept going back and people were saying, you know, they were having great results. So I saved Stacy La. I saved her video and kept going back to it and finally decided okay, well it's only $7. If it's not great, then I will proceed. As an educator, I can tell you that way. I know a good curriculum. Engaging I know when and then the only thing so I did not know. I was a complete newbie. But I learned enough by the end of the challenge that I felt like Okay, I think I can do this and and then invested in additional education and went through through that went through the blueprints and then started putting everything together and by I think I started promoting in June. of 2021. And the rest is history.  I mean isn't that just a great example every day I just hope to be a shining example of how imperfect this this this needs to be. You know, it just needs to be imperfect. It needs to be imperfect. Actually, it can't be perfect. Not only does that not exist, but it couldn't be it looks weird but congrats on that. How does that feel to be an educator or in the education space for as long as you have been? And now to be taking part in, you know, global education what is that like? 

 

Kim: I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. This gets me excited. This gets me out of bed in the morning. I cannot wait to do this. This business. I do it before I start working. I'm fortunate because I can work from home most days. So I'll get up an hour earlier and I work and then the minute my day is done. I'm back at it like I'm every day I'm doing something new, and I you know learning something new. So I'm 62 and being able to learn something new and then they say keeps your brain sharp and all that. Yeah, that's been awesome. And not only that I've been successful. So you know putting that on top of learning new skills and being able to transfer everything is just Yeah, I can't I'm just I'm just amazed because you know having that necessary. 

Dave: I brought this up, I think two days ago your fire number which is a formula that some folks use to determine what their retirement number is. And that's whatever your annual expenses will be in your retirement. Having 25 years of that saved up in and for example, some sort of an interest earning account and so an investment account in index funds or something right. And so, if you can live on you, that's one number and that's what the traditional kind of, I guess American has been taught because you it's still legitimate. It's valid, right? But what what's different about our industry, what's different about what we do is that for a lot of us when we fire our boss and we quit having to leave the house to go and work it all of a sudden it's almost semi retirement at home I mean one could could consider me being retired or semi retired because of my lifestyle. I am actually in both of the homes that I live in, our office home and our main home. There's retired individuals that live all around the My Home in my neighborhood, because you're in Florida. I'm in Florida. 

Kim: Yeah, and I'm here every day to work differently and you could get a new site on our already defined net. Which is nice doing for the last 30 years and now because I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, I always felt that there was an inner entrepreneur in me. But now being able to take, take that and do that full time is also going to allow me to do other things. So before I became an educator, I was an artist, I still am still an artist. And so this is going to give me a chance to be able to do that as well. So having, you know, the, the means to be able to, to do that, and at the level that I I've always wanted to so that yeah, so that's gonna allow me to have that more more of that time freedom to pursue what I want to pursue and travel and you know, do other things. But the beauty of doing this business is that you know, you do have that and so right now I'm putting in you know, 12 hour days every day. But that's okay, because I know what's coming. I know what the end result is going to be and I can't wait. You know, it's very exciting.

Dave: Well, the end result is you being the you having the ability to earn an income independently in from the internet, and not have to rely on your job that you're employed currently for income is that would that be fair to say that that's kind of the new definition of retirement in a sense is cutting ties with whatever the kind of job that we had or that we have to go to in, in in, it's almost like, it's almost like becoming an entrepreneur in working from home or working virtually. And especially if you're doing it for yourself has become the new retirement in a way.

Kim: I think that's true. I think that's true. When you look at the statistics right now, 54% of especially women, who are near retirement age, don't plan on retiring. 100 said they plan on continuing to work and in many cases are starting their own businesses. And that's and, you know, I say most of my clients are the same age as I am and they have the same goal as well. They want to retire with a nine to five, but they also kind of yeah, we just don't want to sit there watching Netflix, you know, and not doing anything else and one of the comedians laughs And I said, I went to the Kevin Hart comedy show in case I didn't mention that like, I'm sure I did, but still waking up still waking up legendary here. He was like, Yeah, watch Netflix. That was the joke like, you know, and it's true. I mean, gosh, what is there for us to do, especially if what happened in 2020, and we're all now locked in. I feel so bad for people who kind of like my grandfather. He had the same misfortune, but he passed away right at retirement. Age. And think about all the people who were affected by what happened or maybe even passed away in the past couple of years and, and had worked their whole life and this happens all the time. But I just think about what happened, how, you know, this most recent big Earth changing event and I'm just not seeing certain keywords, because I don't know if videos get flagged on it. I don't want warnings put down below the video so I can just not use those specific words. But that really changed so many of our lives. How did that impact you? How did we go through with the global event that happened? How did that impact you? And what do you know now? What is your outlook different now? And maybe how is there more urgency around it than there was before everything happened?

Kim: Oh, great question. So because I was laid off during the pandemic because of that, and I could see it coming like in January of 2020. I remember saying to a friend of mine, he's like, I don't like this , this is not good. This is going to change us. So this is gonna change the world. And that was January 2021. Sure enough. Yeah, now being laid off and then transitioning back to work. Work and you know, that's before I was able, you know, and now it's like, I've worked from home most of the time. So that changed and I have been very, very fortunate that no one in my family nor I have had COVID which you know, everyone, pretty much everyone I know has had it. You know, and it's gone through my entire office and I also tutor students at the local community. College and writing and been doing that for three years and pretty much everybody there has had it to at the community college so I've been very fortunate and I you know, I don't I I'm grateful every single day that I wake up healthy and you know, that's so it's it hasn't impacted me I don't think as much as as it has other people then again yet you know, you don't know what tomorrow is gonna bring. 

Dave: So well how has it affected you mentally because that you know, you mentioned earlier in the show that you be you know, were deemed non essential by your employee. And so, you know, we're, the reason why I'm asking this question is because now we're settling back into a little bit more of normal life, even though maybe we're on the verge of recession. There's always something looming. By the way, by the way, I just want to tell everybody in all the years of me doing this business and being in this industry, not a single economic event has negatively impacted my business, meaning that the only thing that's impacted my business is my output and the reason why that is is because the internet has always been 12 years or bandwidth their patients that happened so for tuition problems mean, obviously the world is seen some of the places where social media can in the internet can negatively impact our children for example, right? And it can negatively impact us the same way our self esteem if we're not careful if we just use it to compare, but for the most part this industry in this business has always has always flourished through any sort of economic event in any sort of different markets. And this specific business model has flourished because it's completely independent of any supply chain, or manufacturing process. And so it's flourished even more so. And it's one of the reasons why we're in was it luck? I mean, no, it was just what I've always done, but when we went through this most recent event and all the ECOM guys and all the people were selling physical products on the internet, could no longer do that business but the information in the courses, coaching events and affiliate model continued to flourish. I was like, Look at this. We're in the right place. You know, people say you're lucky right well am I prepared just met opportunity. You know, preparation simply met opportunity and so we never know when our you know when our time is going to come but it's it's so great to be in position to capitalize and so, you know, now that you're in the internet business you're you have a you have a a business that is operational on the web, but there are many, much more scare and confidence is busy because there's a lot of people who don't know what it's gonna be like when they start the business. They've not done it before or they're, they're, they're negotiating with themselves right now. So would you talk to us a little bit about how you feel now, compared to how you felt? Like when you signed up and when you got started? How would you describe a little bit of that unsureness and that lack of confidence or some of the things that were coming up and use some of those limiting beliefs and then let us know how you feel now with those same pieces. That was problematic, maybe for you wouldn't get started.

Kim: So I was just thinking about this this morning. Like I said before, I've been working at the same job for a long time. And so just to give you some context, I have tried to advance in that. That space, and I've never been allowed to you know, and it's I mean, for various reasons I'm not you know, saying it's anybody's fault, but my own but I wanted to move into leadership and was never able to since I've been doing this this was when I first got started I wasn't sure where that was gonna take me or where any of this was gonna take me but I've discovered this leadership potential this leadership quality that I did not know I had. So it has changed so much like that But patience and all different you know, just just amazing. Then, you know that aspect of it.

Dave: I did not have I mean the Internet has has broken, yours has broken down boundaries has and in that sense, I think has changed all of us to the point where we've you know, it's just fluid we don't have you know, we don't have those restrictions anymore, because and there are downsides to that as well, obviously. But in terms of business, not a lot. No, in fact, if anything, it has improved dramatically. I mean, how I want to point out a couple of specific things that you said right there. You said a couple of very powerful things, but I just want to say that I mean, I think a lot of us realize that we like people a lot less than we thought we did, or at least the ones that we had to be around every day. It was like we got away from those and our life expectancy goes up 20 years for God's sake, you know, at least that's how we feel. But man, you said a couple of really important powerful things out there. One of them was how you took responsibility for you not moving forward in that company. I just wanted to point that out because you then went on to say I discovered a leadership quality inside myself. I didn't know I had it well. You just demonstrated exactly what I want to point out for everybody. But it because I started the decade and I'm not sure how you take accountability or anything, I mean, my wife is growing at her own rate and she's always proven to improve and make changes and grow and and I needed to just more focus on myself and where I needed to grow and stop pointing the finger because when you point the finger out you got three pointing back at yourself and that very long before I love it, very line that you said which was I take responsibility for that. You know, I don't blame anybody for that. That attitude Kim and everybody listening to the most important step that a human being will ever make in their entire life with their business. Their marriage, their children, everything. That one leadership quality, that one wonderful, beautiful human characteristic of humility and personal responsibility. Humility, meaning that I'm not right about everything. Now I got a lot to learn. I can learn a lot. I am wrong a lot. I need to grow. I need to change, right? Could you say more about how you have realized that you had this inner leadership quality about yourself that you did not know you had. The reason why I'm asking about this is because I've said this a lot. You will discover this in entrepreneurship and going to a leader as a potential inside of yourself that you did not know that you had in you just said that. Could you give us some examples and maybe you could tie it into kind of your routine or like what a day looks like for you like how did you discover that you have this leadership quality inside of yourself that you didn't know you had at? You said you were 62 You've already had a full career. And could you help us to understand how we too, can discover this awesome badass leader inside of ourselves that we did not know was there?

Kim: Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just take it back to and I've told people this before and I've mentioned it in my lives and this is 100% the truth. When I went through that 15 Day Challenge, one of the things that because I guess one of the things that I experienced, was it because I didn't know or I can do don't don't even think about this you know, I started you know, continuing to do that, but then I signed up for a coaching program with one of the most amazing humans in that I've met in this last year and a half and that was Barb McGowen, And she inspired me to bring that leadership quality out. Because I was still thinking, you know, back back at the non essential thing like Who, me? And she helped me to believe that that was possible. Could you tell people right now, how could you summarize how that happened? Could you describe that yourself, because the quality that's going to take your leadership to the next level is for you to be able to describe your transformation and put it into simple terms for others. So what could others do to inspire confidence in themselves? Because I think it's all about being willing to open your mind up. The truth is that we don't grow unless we embrace being uncomfortable and letting go of those fears and insecurities, you're still going to be afraid. But that's okay. Just lean into it. And, you know, that's when you discover who you really are, and what your potential is. We can do anything we want. Honestly, I mean, you know you want to make a million dollars, you could do it. I mean, if you want to run a marathon, I've ran two half marathons, never somebody would be able to do that. But the leadership thing is, that was a surprise to me. Yeah. When I had people say to me, you know, that you're a leader and I'm like, you know, really, you know, I'm looking over my shoulder like

Dave: Anybody can become a leader. I think there's also a, you know, what you are selling to our service that you're selling was one of the things that was understandable making sure your Acacia stores your mentor well. It wasn't the, you know, it wasn't the teacher that was unsure of themselves and kind of walked quietly and didn't want to make any noise or it was the teacher that made you feel confident that made you forget about time and just learn in the moment you were having fun. That is confidence, you know, and so this for me, one of the things that has helped my confidence is stopping believing everybody around me in all their disempowering limiting beliefs. I used to really go and, and I used to really, you know, I used to really think that a lot of people had things figured out that I didn't have figured out. And what I realized was they were figuring shit out as they were going just like I am and then I didn't end up on a pet. One of the things that gave was going with other people that I was putting I met him and I shook their hand and they holy crap this is a regular human beings like I am you know, and that's when I realize that success is in here. It's not just about what I do. And I'm telling you on the internet, it's deceiving because we put people up on a pedestal and we, we we you know, we're watching them on screens in our in our our we've always idolized people who are on our screens. And so we look at ourselves in our reality here at home, and we compare it to what we see somebody else doing on a screen. It's just a little snapshot of their life. Like when I hold up this phone, you're not seeing the big picture even right now you're only seeing a small square of my background, you're not seeing my whole life. And so those are some of the things that boosted my confidence and were actually also sticking around in the business and in the industry. People will something stupid or I'll you know, I'll say something Something will slip whatever, I'll make an ass of myself. Just you stick around long enough to just see it all the way through and see the full picture instead of just a snapshot. And when you do for me, that's kind of humanizing the process and that's given me more confidence. Another thing that's really helped me is getting clear, speaking clearly. And in, in, in striving for clarity, instead of complexity. You know, we always want to complicate our marketing, our funnels, our message content, but really we need to be striving for clarity. Is this clear? Is this clear? When somebody watches a 15 second video, when somebody lands on my landing page, are they clear about what I'm saying and what I want them to do or what they're going to get out of it? By being clear here, having the means if you put email with clearly, clearly that my confidence. The final thing that boosted my confidence was the fact that I started making money and I started to believe in myself. And that was one of the final things that boosted my confidence because like I heard Jay Leno say one time he's always told people if you want to be successful, don't worry about believing in yourself. Worry about getting other people to believe in you and your product. And if you worry about that, then your belief will build in yourself because the world will tell you that what you're now doing is a valuable contribution. So to any one of those things stand out or resonate with you more than the other about an experience that you had maybe with earning your first commission or how that boosts your confidence or anything else that I just listed out as far as those confidence boosters in my journey. I mean I was going to as I was like

Kim: We compare ourselves to everyone and we see ourselves as lacking and the truth is like you just said, Everybody's human. So you're human if you have human flaws. You have human traits and you need to give yourself grace and forgive yourself. You know, one of the things that that I try to instill in my people that I work with my, my clients is that they're, you know, the first thing we do is we do a limiting beliefs exercise and, you know, we try to dispel that and I don't want to hear I don't want to hear people saying, you know, you know, I'm stupid or I you know, I failed at this or anything like that. Because the truth is, you don't fail at anything unless you quit and then that's when you know, self picked off the lead so I quit and it held me back and a lot of in a lot of ways, because I didn't finish that. So when I started this business, I said this, you're doing this and you are not with it are not going to stop you are going to do this. You're going to see this out. You're going to give yourself a year if nothing happens after that year, well then you can pivot but unfortunately, it's all worked out. Great. The other thing that you said that made me think about being able to laugh at yourself and I've always said that if you can laugh at yourself. There's a lot of good material there. That endless and so just getting on tick tock you know, showing your face showing that you're vulnerable showing that you are okay with putting all your all your dirty laundry right out there. You know make your mess in the park building you know and now I love to show my face. My first few videos were not showing my face and then I just said okay, well, you know, that's silly. Just do it. rip the band aid off.

Dave: Those are some wise words. And there are certain things that you fail or you lose competitions, races, things like that. But folks of the same race, the same race and that's why the only way to fail really is to quit and I do know people who have done this for significant periods of time and finally had a breakthrough and it's like that's not something you can say with a lot of things. It's like you know, with a job if you can't say that, you know, but isn't as you can say, like an infant. it so that your businesses the same way you only lose when you sell or quit. You know what I mean? And so as long as you don't quit, you have a chance for that business like a great stock. As long as you're going into a business that you know is a good business. And this is a good business. There's no doubt about that. This is this is not even something that I invented or that I I mean, this is something that's worldwide. It's something that is something that is the rest of the world is now catching on to and quite frankly it's funny because the rest of the world is now everybody's starting to be a lot more open about the fact that it's pretty realistic for an individual to even get ahead nowadays without a side hustle especially if we actually recession every time meet other humans becoming Upon a Dream conversation to have us there. We're calling it a side hustle. Because a second job is no longer something that people are. They don't know they don't have to go get a second job. You can have a second job. But there's other options now, in what I'm making the point that I'm making is that for a long time, and I want you to think about how times were different. I was listening to a Holocaust survivor. talk the other day. And we're talking about how as you know, as the Nazis were going from city to city, that people were telling them that it was happening, but they did not believe them. And that was 70 years. What was that? 1950 When exactly did that happen? Maybe strapping

 

It was early. Because we were safer. We don't have to just rely on what somebody is telling us in our local city or school. Another example that's not as extreme as the one that I just gave would be how, when we're growing up and we grew up in a town or a city or a school and they say what policy are you going to as if that's the only option? Right? Okay. Make it seem or they always made it seem maybe there has been less options up until that point. But now, kids in high school when somebody says what college are you going to? They got a lot more options, a lot more things. And they want to be YouTubers. They want to be influencers. They want to be affiliate marketers. They want to have side hustles they want to travel and work remotely lot times are great for because we hadn't warned you that Amazon was going to look at how much opportunity that we have today compared to previous generations and pebble in the past and so as we wrap up today, that's my kind of like plea to people is like look at the difference in the opportunity that we have compared to people and past it or maybe even that you thought you had before you found legendary and started listening to these conversations. What thought do you want to leave folks with this morning to ponder over the weekend? 

Kim: The fact that we have all these opportunities, you know, not just not just myself but my daughters are 19 So I have twin daughters. And they graduated from high school last year. And they both took a gap year because that last year was because the pandemic was really hard on them. But none of our like the you know, look we want we want what we're going to try to push them and they didn't want to go I was never going to push them in that direction because of the fact that they do have so many other opportunities and my daughter, one of my daughters wants to join me in my business she wants to be wants to help me. And I think that's awesome because she's seeing that potential and she's seeing mom doing something different than mom has ever done before and getting outside of my comfort zone and has you know, and she's seeing because when I first started doing this, of course they were like moms getting on TikTok oh my god, you know, we're so embarrassed to tell her friends and now it's like my mom has 109,000 followers on TikTok. So yeah, the artist who not only is starting agency sees this but she's thing that's wildly successful for fathers is a doctor and he's like, why aren't you going to college and she says I don't want to go to college. I don't have to. Because I'm doing this, you know, and I'm going to be way more successful at this than I ever could be by going to college. And by the way, I don't want to dissuade anyone from going to college if that is your path. If that's your path, by all means go because you're going to learn a lot. I have 14 years of post secondary education way more than anyone should ever have. But every single thing that I've learned, I can take that and apply those to other things. So you'll never see education, you'll ever have a big vision. You're going to always be able to learn that we have these big brains, right? We're smart monkeys. But you know, these big brains evolved so that we could have unlimited potential. So do it. You know, don't don't think that because you're in space or if you know that right now you're in this space that you don't have the potential to break out of that and to do more because you always have that option and you have that potential. Everybody does it no matter where they are in their lives. They always have that potential. And I'm seeing that business you know? Being, like you said, the Internet has changed us all but it's changed us in the sense that you know, we do have this vast ocean of opportunity No, and not take advantage of it. That's and that's I guess what I wanted to leave with everybody I wanted to tell you and uh, you and I have something in common that that I wanted to tell you about because you talk about your recovery. And, and I'm so inspired by that because you know, I've listened to you talk about it a number of times and you know, you changed your life because you wanted to get clean. I’m a recovering alcoholic and you have shown me why I want to stay sober. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but it made me make that decision that you know, I had to make that change in my life and it says it's been amazing as hell I've made all the difference.

Dave: Incredible. Thank you for sharing that. That's really cool. I have found it to be the most inspiring content if you will. Never never ceases to amaze me. Just how unique we all are from different walks of life. And this whole thing that's happened the last couple of years has pushed so many people into our world that we would have normally never got to be, you know, worked in all these legitimate industries like education and like you know, like, like, you know, accounting and law in the medical field we've had because of what's happened last couple of years. So many folks from other industries who had careers and other fields come into the space. And Kim is a fantastic example of that.Because that's when you have the motivation. So if you're excited right now, if you see the vision, clear about where you want to go with your life and what you can maybe do with this, just get started and don't stop. And you'll see how things will open up and what things begin to look like for you. Right, but you don't know yet. You only know your own struggle and you only know your current existence. So it's hard to imagine what it will be like, and that's why we're mostly motivated by our pain. But I challenge you all to think about what will empower the driver don't know how it's going to change you until you experience it. And Kim found this whole new set of confidence that she didn't know that she had. I wonder what you'll find. Stay Legendary. Have a great weekend and we'll see you on Monday.

Comments

comments