Experimenting in business with Katy Peplin from ThrivePhD
Join Amy as she talks to past client, Dr. Katy Peplin, all about experimentation in business.
In this episode they talk about:
Running her business as a series of experiments.
The process of learning to trust her body’s messages and connecting to her intuition.
How she moved out of a success/failure binary and started to see more holographic growth in herself and her business.
How breathwork has played a role in her business.
What resulted after she trusted spirit-led messages that came through during breathwork, and how those results surprised her.
How they both have redefined what we consider ‘work.’
About Katy:
Katy Peplin (she/her) turned her difficulties in graduate school into a coaching business built around the idea that you can be a scholar and a human at the same time. Thrive PhD is a thriving community that has grown into courses, writing groups, one-on-one work, and workshops around the world. When she isn't working, she's often outside - gardening, hiking, or reading her porch.
You can find her at: thrive-phd.com and download her working more intentionally toolkit here.
Links and resources:
Join the Breathe Into Business Patreon to get access to the community Discord server, live events like group coworking, plus the private podcast feed with interviews, breathwork recordings, and more.
Record a question for us to answer here on the podcast!
Find transcripts to all my episodes here.
To learn more about Amy, head to amykuretsky.com
Try breathwork for 5 days and see how your business benefits
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[0:04] Welcome to Breathe Into Business, a podcast for folks who want to hear what it's really like to run an intuitive-led business. I'm your host, Amy Koretsky, a breathwork facilitator who helps,
service providers, course creators, and artists tap into their own inner knowing so that they can run,
businesses from a place of trust and self-confidence. I created this podcast to.
[0:27] Help folks like you who are disillusioned with the overculture of online small business building to permission yourself to follow a different path. In these episodes, you'll hear conversations that,
are direct, messy, and even a little bit scary at times. My biggest hope is that each of these,
episodes helps you feel even 10% more confident in leaning into what your intuition is sharing,
with you and doing business your own way. Now, let's take a breath and talk business.
Hey, y'all, welcome back to Breathe into Business. My name is Amy Koretsky and I'm here as your host. And today I've got a really great interview for you with one of my favorite people,
truly just like one of my favorite business owners, one of my favorite people in general, and that is Dr. Katie Peplin.
I'm gonna give you her professional bio in just a minute here.
But first, I'll just say that I first met Katie, gosh, it was a couple years ago now and it was probably at the very first iteration of what is now my Patreon community,
but was originally kind of a quarterly co-working space and community.
[1:45] And I immediately just felt so connected to how Katie shows up in her business with such a mindset of experimentation.
She comes from the academic field, so it's probably not that surprising that she really works with data and likes to run experiments.
I do think it's a...
[2:07] Really unique way that she shows up in her business and works with both the intuition that she holds and the way that she navigates data and kind of analyzes things and that more
strategic, more academic way. I've worked with Katie in lots of different ways. She's still part of our amazing Patreon community. And so I get to see her pretty often in our live events.
But she was also a member of the first iteration of the incubator that I ran last summer.
And just working with her and getting to know her more intimately in that smaller group setting was so inspiring. And I'm just really excited to introduce you to her work in general. In this
interview, we really talk about experimentation and how she's experimented in her business,
the mindset that she brings into her work in that way.
You know, we talk about all sorts of other things like how she's moved from this more binary way of thinking of success and failure and has turned into a more holographic,
view of seeing growth in both herself and her business.
[3:19] We talk about breathwork, obviously, and about how some of the messages that have come through during breath work have led her to some really interesting and surprising growth in her business.
And I'm excited for you to listen to that part because it's pretty great.
So yeah, let me tell you a little bit about Katie.
Katie Pepland turned her difficulties in grad school into a coaching business built all around the idea that you can be both a scholar and a human at the same time.
Her business is called Thrive PhD and it is a thriving community that has grown into courses, writing groups, one-on-one work, and workshops all around the world.
[3:59] When Katie isn't working, she's often outside, gardening, hiking, or reading on her porch. I'm excited for you all to listen to this interview and just enjoy.
[4:12] I'm so excited to be here with someone who I consider a friend, a community member, a past client, Dr. Katie Peplin. Katie, we've been kind of starting these episodes with by taking a
deep breath. You know, we're breathing into business here. So how do you feel about taking a big breath with me right now? Yeah, you got it. Okay, so let's just take in a deep breath and through our nose, expanding as big as we can, and then letting it out in a big sigh.
[4:44] All right, you feel ready? Yeah, I do. All right. So, Katie, do you want to just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Sure. Always a complicated question, but I am a PhD
student. So I got my degree, hence the doctor. It always feels so wild when people say it,
but also I earned it. So like say it away. I got that in 2016. And I have a degree in film and media studies. And for a lot of reasons, I knew early on in that program that the academic life, like the
professorial life probably wasn't going to be a fit for me because I was married and they're just,
I wasn't super game for the idea of moving every 18 months for like very insecure jobs.
[5:37] I wanted to have a family. I had a lot of other goals that weren't work. And so I planned really rigorously to be a teaching and learning consultant.
And so the whole time during my degree, I was working these extra jobs. I was doing extra research.
I worked a ton with the intention of like, okay, wherever my husband gets a job, I'll be able to find a university in that town because he's a very specialized software engineer that does like roboticsy stuff. So I was like, okay, like, you can't do that without universities.
They'll all have teaching and learning centers. This will be great. And so the last six months of my PhD, he lost his job. He moved across state without me. I finished up alone and then was like, cool, I'm going to land in the city. There's three learning centers.
I know people at all of them. I've networked it perfectly.
And I failed all three interviews.
[6:28] I got all the way to the end and it just wasn't a good fit. And it was sort of like the straw that broke my Saturn return back, if that makes sense.
I had sort of like really pushed and I was lucky enough and privileged enough to take a little bit of a break, but I really didn't know what I wanted to do.
And alongside of that happening, we had had this sort of goal of like me trying to get pregnant. And so there's this really kind of like complicated story of the business where I was like, okay, I want, I was really good at teaching.
[7:04] I loved working with people to help get their work done. And I was like, I'm good at this. I could probably do it for a couple of friends. And what a perfect business because I could scale it up, I could scale it down, it could be really seasonal. And then that did not happen either.
[7:20] And so the business as it is today is my full-time job and I never intended it to be. And it's coaching in a world that I was super set on leaving. And it's the most fulfilling thing
that I could have never imagined, I guess. I love that phrase, the most fulfilling thing I could have never imagined. I mean, that's such a testament to one of the things that I think we,
both really believe in, which is kind of like trusting that the next step is going to like show up when it needs to. And even though we both kind of come from backgrounds where maybe we are very type A or goal setting or like look to the future.
And I see you like nodding your head extravagantly. And like both of us have really had to shift our mindsets away from like wanting to know what's gonna be happening five years in advance to just being like,
okay, what's gonna be happening like five days in advance right now.
If that, yeah. So, and I think that all of the things that I planned for.
[8:27] Didn't work out in the way that I wanted. And so like in that sort of interstitial period between like trying to figure out what I was gonna do and launching the coaching business, like I was like, okay, I love yoga.
Yoga is really important to me. I'm gonna start working at the studio. And so I started working at the studio and I was like, oh no, this is not necessarily what I wanna bring into this space.
And I learned so much. It was like the most education filled six months that I'd ever had. And so I feel like I've been doing all of these things where I'm like, okay, I have an idea.
What's a smaller scale version of that that I can try and learn with before committing to the whole thing?
Because that's the part that my planning gets me in trouble is I'm like, okay, well, here's the thing. And if I do this and all of these steps go perfectly, I'll never have to make a decision ever again.
And that sounds dreamy. Like it still sounds dreamy. And that's just not the way that it's worked out if I wanna be making spirit led data driven decisions which I try to do.
[9:28] I love that, that idea that like, it can be both spirit-led and also data-driven. Cause I think there's a misnomer out there
that intuitive or spirit-led businesses are just like 100% in one category and like don't allow for strategy or for data,
or for any sort of like more intellectualizing of the business versus like the opposite that, you know,
more strategic businesses are all 100% strategy and don't allow room for spirit at all.
And I think that there's room for both.
Yeah, at least I've bet a lot of my life on the idea that I can do both.
And so far it's worked, but it's, I feel like I'm constantly code switching between words, worlds sometimes, or like it's funny because this, we're recording this in my office.
And so clients meet with me and I can have the most like data-driven conversation with them about how they're going to collect their survey instruments and stuff.
And then all of a sudden I'll say something about the moon and they're like, wait, you're into the moon and like podcast viewers can't see this, but like there's a bunch of spiritual mystical art on the back and there's candles going in the floor.
There are hints everywhere to both sides of me. It's just that I can kind of choose the language that I need to be in a specific space.
Yeah. And I wonder...
[10:56] For I'm even thinking now about myself of like, do I kind of turn the volume down on one so the volume can go up on the other or do I kind of hear them at the same time because it's interesting to
hear you reflect that for you it feels a little bit more like you're in one and then it kind of hopscotch is over to the other and then hopscotch is like back and forth of it.
Yeah, it's more. I guess I wouldn't say that it hopscotch is both are definitely running through me at the same time and I can hear them really clearly. It's sort of like the difference between turning the volume up on the mic, what I'm receiving and what I'm transmitting. So like sometimes the speaker volume goes up, but my mic volume is pretty consistent.
That makes sense. Cool. So, you know, you talked about that you, you know, had been in the academic world and thought you were going to like leave it in different ways, didn't leave it, are very much still immersed in it. So tell everyone like who you help and how you help them right now.
Yeah, so I help a lot of people who are kind of in the academic world. So it's mostly grad students, but there's kind of a little bit of featheriness on the edges there. Sometimes I work with like master students who are a little bit earlier in their career and I sometimes bleed out and work into postdocs or earlier career scholars or sometimes even faculty. But most of the time,
I'm working with people who, for whatever reason, have reached the limit of their tools being able to work for them.
[12:24] So it's people who are in there like, gosh, Katie, I was so good at being an undergrad, like everything got turned in on time, my papers were great. And all of a sudden they said like, go research and write a book and come back in three years when it's done.
And everything in my life has fallen apart. And that's the sort of sweet spot that I normally work in. I really love working with people who are neuro diverse, working with people that are just like.
[12:52] Feeling themselves left out of the conversations of what works for other people, because they think that the way that I approach things,
which is like, I don't know if this will work for you, but let's design an experiment and try, can be really empowering instead of being like, this is the way that this is supposed to feel, and if you can't do it this way, it's never going to work.
I love that you said the word experiment, and I want to talk about experiments with you because I think that's one of the things that you do so beautifully in your own business,
which is why I think you're able to share it so well with your clients, is to really come at your business with a mindset of experimentation.
So can you tell us a little bit, is that something that you feel like is an innate part of you, or did you have to kind of embrace this idea of experimentation or tell us more?
Yeah, I mean, thank you to Bill Nye the Science Guy, because that's honestly like as early as it started.
I have a very clear memory of being young, like maybe six or seven in an airport, and there was a delay.
And so we were stuck in the airport and I said to my parents, like, I want to run an experiment. And they were like, sure, whatever. Like, we're going to be here for hours. I don't really care.
And so I sat with like a notebook and I timed how long it took me to walk from one end to the other and like walking, carrying my suitcase and then going on the roller thing. And like.
[14:18] Oh my God, my heart is just like swelling for little Katie right now. I just, I'm a curious person. I'm curious about everything all of the time. Like all of my tabs are always like,
oh, here's a book that somebody opened. And so it's come more naturally to me is like, okay.
[14:34] Here's the question, how would I go about answering it? And all of the stuff in my business usually comes down to some sort of question. Do I enjoy all of the upfront work of making a course
if the payoff is that it's got a shelf life for two or three years and I don't have to run the the same workshop over and over again.
And what's really interesting about the experimentation method is that if the conditions of the experiment change, the outcomes can change.
And so it's never like, yes, I liked courses once and now that's what it's gonna be forever for my business, but in a different season, in a different life with a different brain, maybe I don't like it as much. And that doesn't mean that I'm wrong or the business is wrong. It just means that it changed.
And so the questions are different. It feels really permission giving.
[15:24] Yeah, it does. There is a very type A, very nervous to fail perfectionistic part of me, and this is my way of controlling.
Controlling is too harsh, but my way of putting a structure around things that feel really scary.
I don't know what to do next, or I don't know if this is going to work. This is like, okay, here's a collaborative process with me and the data, and my clients where I can get an answer to that.
Yeah. Do you have like a favorite experiment that you've run in your business so far?
[16:00] Um, the community is probably the biggest and like most long ranging and complex experiment I've ever run. So I started a community, um, for grad students. It was like the first thing that had the thrive PhD name. Um, and I think it'll be five years in January this year, which is wild. Um,
but I had been in similar type spaces before as a grad student, but was really frustrated by them for one reason or another. And this idea for a community came as I was waiting for my husband
to finish up work at our happy hour place on a Friday. And then like all of a sudden there was just this notebook and like, it's like I looked down and there was like a curriculum in there and like an idea for community. And I was like, cool. And so I looked at it at first and thought,
this is way too big. I think I need to have a partner to help me do it. And so I sort of reached out to a couple people and this person was really enthusiastic. And so we did a little
bit of the prep together and everything in my body and brain was like, no, this isn't the right fit. It's not the good time. And so I ended up making like a really snap decision or what felt like a snap decision to almost everybody that wasn't in this partnership,
that like we weren't going to sort of move forward. And one of the big disagreements was about how much it was going to cost because I felt really, really strongly that it needed to be like $5 a month or less.
[17:25] And so I ended up with a different pricing structure and it's gone through so many different iterations. But the beautiful thing about that community is that it grows and changes,
and I grow and change, and the people come in and out of it because they graduate or they leave or they don't need it anymore, they stop and they come back. And so it's been a model that like so
many of the other like business books that I read were like, this can't ever happen. Like you can't pivot this many times, you can't change the features this many times, you can't change the price, you can't change the market, you can't. And I was like, but I did. And so it was my way of,
balancing what I was reading and teaching myself and what I was feeling in the moment,
like in relationship with the people that I wanted to be serving.
[18:15] Yeah. And it sounds like, and also, you know, just from my own experience of like working with you and knowing your process, I feel like you have a really good sense of your body. And
I'm guessing that that was a long process that you've come to over the years. And we'll talk about that a little bit, because I know breath work has been a part of that journey,
but that you do have a really good sense of the messages that your body is sending you.
When something feels like a big no, it's like hard to ignore in different ways. And it sounds like that was like a big no for you.
Yeah, it's funny that you say that because it definitely wasn't the case. And like my body and I are in a long relationship.
Like my therapist used to lovingly call me brain forward, which is like the way I, and like that was her sweet way of saying like, disassociated as fuck most of the time.
And so I actually have really had to grow into learning what a no feels like. Like there are journals in this office that are just like pages and pages of me taking notes being like,
okay, like this has felt like a no or this felt like a no or trying to do some experiments to kind of discern it because it didn't at all come naturally to me.
And so the kind of like last stop for my body and my intuition is it shows up in my brain.
[19:41] And normally in the form of, here's the next step that you could take. And so one of the things that the incubators really helped me with is moving that curve,
back so I'm not listening to the final red alert last warning, changing stuff two minutes before it's supposed to go live and more like, ah, this feels out of alignment in a more gentle subtle way.
If we shape its creation instead of like...
[20:09] Quickly burning it down at the last minute to start afresh, which was definitely much more of my style. Which like is another way of still being a spirit-led business. Like let's just say that
not every spirit-led business is going to be like completely in alignment from the very first moment of conception. Like I have many, many times like shifted, pivoted, felt like things were very last minute or flaky or inconsistent in some way, but yet it's still just like the direction that it,
it needed to go in that moment.
And I just wanna like name the fact that you have had such a big evolution with feeling the yeses and nos in your body,
and what a testament that is for yourself and for other people that like,
it's a skill that we can actually learn.
It's not something where like, you're just born with it or that you don't have it and you're never going to have it.
Cause I think that's a big fear that a lot of people have. It's like they'll say, well, you're intuitive, but I'm not.
And it's like, well, at one point in time, I probably wasn't nearly as intuitive as I am now. And it has been a skill, like a muscle that I have flexed and used, and it has grown over time.
Yeah, I think that when I first sort of started to explore some of the more like intuitive parts of myself and of the way that I was living my life.
[21:29] I definitely was like, oh, well, even if I quote unquote got good at this, I'll never be that good because I learned it from a book and like other people were born with it and that's sort of a story that I've really had to like unlearn is that.
[21:43] The skill isn't mine because I taught it to myself or a teacher taught it to me and like other people they just like Have it inside of them and it was like they're.
[21:52] You know their God-given right to like be intuitive and it's more I've really come to kind of like unpick how harmful that is because it stopped me from from trying a lot of things I was drawn to because I was like,
Oh, if this doesn't immediately make sense to me.
[22:08] It's not for me. And that's not always true. Because you experimented. Because I experimented. Yeah. I love it.
Can you tell us a little bit about your first experimentation with breathwork?
Yes. So it was kind of funny because I went and looked up.
I had been aware of you and your practice because I'm a longtime student of Lindsay Maxx tarot courses. And like, they were a big part of my sort of like, first three years of living in the city and sort of coming to grips with things.
And I had actually like written a blog many, many moons ago,
I think when you and Lindsay launched Breathwork for the Underworld, there was a like a Tarot Daily Challenge where like you drew things and I was underemployed and out of work.
And so I wrote like blog posts every day as a response to those things. And like, I had looked up your website so that I could credit you.
[23:07] And like, it was just, it sat on a part of my blog that like wasn't public on the site for a long time.
And actually Finn found one of them the other day because he Googled like Lindsay Mack 10 of cups or something and like found this blog post that I had published. That's amazing. I love that. It's like, oh my gosh, you can't believe like this is you and what a synchronicity.
And so it took me four years probably to feel brave enough to try breathwork.
And my history with meditation tools in that very big umbrella is very storied because I've desperately wanted to be a person who was in control of their mind that way.
And for a lot of reasons, it never came naturally. And so it was a week after my birthday and I, for whatever reason, was like, I wonder if breath work is still a thing.
And I looked you up and I signed up for the breath work and business class. I did like all five of the email days in a row. And I was like, nothing has ever made me feel like this before.
This is the practice for me.
[24:10] And I think it's the practice for me for right now for a lot of reasons, but it's a tool that my body necessarily needs to be involved in. I have done a lot of seated meditations or yoga nidras
that my body just never got the invitation to the party. And they weren't unpleasant or they weren't useful. It wasn't that they weren't useful, but I've never had anything that helped me sync up these different parts of myself in a way as effectively as breathwork has. So my therapist...
My fun's fun. Yeah. And that's the part is that it hasn't always been fun. It's actually been really confronting. And I'm pretty open about the fact that I have a trauma diagnosis, I have CPTSD.
And so a lot of things are very difficult for me. And I had been doing breathwork and not telling my therapist about it for like two or three months. And all of a sudden she stopped and she was like,
in a session, she was like, are you doing something different? Like in your general practices?
She's like, because all of a sudden, like, you've never cried in a session before, you've never been able to like name a feeling before. She's like, I don't know what you're doing. But like, she's like, I don't need to know, I just need you to keep doing it.
And that has very much been my breath work journey, which is that like it invited my body to the party in a way that like really rippled out over the whole pond.
[25:40] Thank you for sharing that so much. I mean, I feel like that experience is so...
[25:49] So common among so many people. I mean, myself included, I am someone who I've been a practitioner of breathwork now for years and years.
But in the beginning, like same thing, I was someone who was very much like head and heart, very, very separate.
They didn't talk to each other and breathwork was the first thing that helped me really bring them together, which I think has then rippled out into my intuition at large into how I show up in my relationships, how I show up in my business.
You know, like it has so many different effects and how it goes out. And so I'm wondering like, you know, it obviously has had ripple effects for you in your personal life and how you relate in the world, but how has it had effects like in your business?
I think it's had some effects in my business because my body is more present at the party and it has a lot of things to say to me, like during the day.
And they didn't know that. Like I, I mean, I wrote a whole book and don't remember much of it.
And like, it exists, like it's real, I was there. But I have so much more of an understanding of where my effort is going.
Because like before I was just only ever interested in the final product and like, it didn't matter what it took to get there. So like, it didn't matter.
[27:09] I, two years ago, I would have rather walked on hot coals than cancel on a client.
And like two years ago, I was in like debilitating back pain for like a chronic illness that like I wasn't dealing with.
And I was just like, well, these people said yes, or like this course was supposed to go out, or like I had sent an email every Thursday and like, I really want to honor those commitments.
And then I was dealing with the bill at the end of the night. Like, and the bill was adding up.
And now I'm much, I'm not great at it. It's like very much a work in progress, but being able to sort of say like, okay.
[27:47] I have obviously reached the end of this particular capacity of mine, whether it is to like write or be with clients and like, I'm not doing anyone, them or me any good by staying here past this
point of efficacy. And that doesn't mean that I failed. It just means that like I ran out of gas that day. And I need to be able to move away from a very much like push crash, like huge burst,
huge recovery into something that like, I still have waves, like I'm never going to be a same thing every day kind of girl, but they're not coming at such a high cost on either end.
[28:25] Yeah. And do you feel like, do you feel like you've been able to kind of assess your capacity in advance now or like not like super far in advance, but like, as opposed to
being like, oh, I've passed that like three miles ago, but like, oh, I can see it coming up the road in three miles and I need to like deal with this. Yeah. So I think the thing, I still am not great
about doing it well in advance. I would say that if before I was driving the car until like smoke was billowing out of the engine and being like, now's a good time to stop. I am now stopping when,
when I hear like rattles, you know what I mean?
So like, I'm not necessarily, and part of that is that like I have a chronic illness and like breath work is an amazing tool, but like it's not gonna cure my endometriosis.
Like I will always have some like pains and flares. There's an ecosystem of my body that like there are supportive things I can do for it,
but I'm never going to be able to meditate or yoga or green juice my way into like a perfectly stable existence.
And so I'm getting better at noticing it earlier in the cycle and doing more things for the health of the ecosystem as opposed to like a one-to-one direct benefit.
[29:45] Yeah, I like that you think about it in terms of an ecosystem because that is really what it is.
I mean, that's such a tenant of mine that everything is interconnected, whether it's our life or our business or our health or any of those other things.
And so to really honor that in our capacity, instead of just being like, my capacity for work is this, and it's separate than my capacity for physical labor or something.
It's like, no, they're all interconnected in different ways. Yeah.
Which is frustrating, because my brain wants it to be, if I do this, then this always happens. that stability feels really safe to me.
[30:26] Because that's data. That's like experimentation data. You're like, I want it to fit into an experiment really easily. And anyone will tell you that like if you're experimenting with multiple variables that are active at the same time, like the data gets messier and more complex.
And that doesn't mean that it's wrong. It just means that like different levels of analysis are needed.
[30:45] Yeah. So speaking of mess, you're doing such a great job of just like leading me into these beautiful questions. They're within me. Yes.
So like, you know that embracing the mess is a really big part of the coaching framework that I use with clients because we've used it together.
But so like, tell me a little bit about how maybe your relationship to messiness in business, maybe before we worked together versus now or just like your evolution in general with feeling comfortable inside that messiness.
[31:18] I think it's interesting because being in an incubator, like that program, it allowed me to see where other people sort of like discomfort with it was.
And I am a messy person. Like anyone in my life will tell you that. I'm all over the place.
My stuff is all over everything. Like it's a good thing that my zoom camera can't show you my floor right now.
Like I am not a tidy person. And so a lot of the way that I coach is sort of being able to say, this is what it felt like for me, or this is what I, I'm very present,
and okay with sharing a lot of that mess with people.
And so when I saw that module, I was like, oh, I'm a mess already. Like, good, check it off. I don't need to do it.
And the thing that was really, really useful for me was being able to discern between the places where I was in process and this thing needed to be quiet for just me.
[32:19] And when things were like, Queen of Cups ready for me to be like sharing, you know what I mean?
Like that there was some mess that was just going to be subterranean sometimes, and that it wasn't for anyone but me.
And like, I have a lot of those things in my business where like, I don't necessarily share with clients or like in my branding messaging, I'm doing this because this thing is happening in my personal life.
And I don't mean it to be. A lot of it is like, here's a new idea that I have, like here are all of the benefits. And for a long time, I felt like I needed to justify why I was making changes that impacted clients with like a good enough reason.
Like I'm in so much pain that I can't do this anymore.
And that may or may not be true anymore.
But I also don't owe anyone my mess. Like I don't owe anyone a good enough reason to change.
I don't have to like show your work. If I think about like in math class where you have to like show your work instead of just like give the answer and then this it's like you don't have to show everyone all of the work. Absolutely.
And like I don't have to show.
[33:29] I can be authentic and not necessarily be full disclosure all of the time. Like I can be authentic and still have boundaries and I can be in relationship with my clients and still not have them know what I do on the weekends.
Like I'm weirdly private about what I do on the weekends and it's not for any specific reason.
I just, I don't wanna be in a place where like, I have to report to people what I did, even if it's in the spirit of like community giving.
And so I think it's been really helpful for me to be like, yeah, like not every mess needs to be fodder for the content farm.
And like not every lesson has to make it into every place. Yeah, it kind of makes me think about something
that you told me once with this idea of things being subterranean is that I think
you said something about previous successes in business felt like neon signs, or that was very visible, very almost tangible, and that now things feel a little bit more nuanced.
Or I think you used the word holographic, which I really loved. Can you expand on that like a little bit?
Yeah. So when I was like, I'm a learner. And so I can't tell you how many like business books I've read and how many different webinars I tried and like.
[34:50] I'm a goal person. I like goals. And so like I would set a goal and it would be like, okay, like here's a revenue goal or here's an enrollment goal. And even if I got like a little bit more
generous with myself and I'm like, here's a goal range, it was like, here's a number. Did you hit it? Yes or no. And I'm going to interact for a second. Like why were you choosing the numbers or the goals that you were choosing? It was depending on the framework of whatever book I felt like was the best teacher for me at that particular time.
Okay. Yeah, that's what I kind of assumed, but I just wanted to ask. Yeah. And so it was like, you know, if somebody gave a formula that was like,
here's your revenue goal, it should be 2X this and like minus that, like, here's an amazing, you know what I mean? That's your number. Like if you need this, like divide the number of people,
blah, blah, blah. Like the formulas were always changing, but I was following them and being like, okay, like this is my goal. And if I made it, it was like turning on a neon sign. Like, yeah,
like it was bright, it was shiny, like people could see it, I could see it, but it didn't.
[35:51] If it didn't happen, it just was total darkness, you know what I mean? Like there was no space.
It was like an all or nothing. Yes, and that is like my number one cognitive distortion is like either I'm going to do it, it or I'm not going to do it or I'm going to do it all the way.
And so.
[36:05] I have now, and part of it was, as I've grown and sort of like dealt with my own brains, like, of course, if you're not in your body at all, it's just a number on a page. It was like,
did I hit the school? Yes or no. And not like, was I a husk of a human afterwards, because like I sacrificed everybody and also everyone in my family and everyone who loves me,
it's like time and attention to get there. And so when I say that it means holographic, like, If you were a client looking in,
there's certain amounts of my business that you can see that it's growing, it's changing, it's evolving.
If you were me, there's certain perspective that you can see. I can see theirs and I can also see mine depending on how I'm looking at it. But it's also true for the people that I love and the people who are in my ecosystem.
Everyone can see it and none of those one views, It's not binary for anyone.
[37:04] That's so cool. Such an interesting way of thinking about it. And I appreciate you sharing that because I think that's gonna give a lot of people something to think about,
not just in terms of like how they set their own goals, but like how they respond to the ways,
they like move towards the goals that they do have.
Yeah, goals are so tricky, but they're useful. So that then leads me to this question where I know that recently you've had a pretty big expansion in your business.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
And was that based on a goal that you set or did that just kind of happen? or like, where do the more kind of strategic goals lay next to the more like intuitive nudges,
to result in what recently resulted for you?
Okay, so what recently resulted for me is that in the space of like three weeks, my newsletter list tripled.
[38:15] And you didn't have a small newsletter list to start with. It wasn't like it went from like 10 people to 30 people. No, it was like a thousand ish people to 3000 ish people.
[38:24] And I just want to say that like it did send me into a blanket cave for like, most of those three weeks, like two weeks after the whole thing happened. But every month or every year for the last four years, I've run a version of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo. And I do,
like an academic version of it called Acrimo. And for the last four years, it's been the like major way that people get onto my list. And so I had really worked through in the incubator over the summer this like.
[39:00] Deep tension in my business where I was like, in previous iterations, I've grown because I've made something new.
I introduced writing groups or I started doing one-on-one coaching and I grew because there was a new product.
I sat on my floor for breath work for two months and was like, okay, I'm ready for my new products now.
Tell me what I'm doing or come through or I have these ideas. I probably have five or six, 10 percent started projects, but they've never gotten any farther than that.
And like they've all sort of stalled. And so the message that did come through my sort of team tend to be very direct with me. It was like, no new things.
Like you're not making anything new. They were like, but new people.
[39:44] And I was like, well, that's horrifying. I did two or three more like breathwork sessions where I was like, okay, like qualify new people. Do you mean like new people to like work with to make new products? And they were like, no, you need new people.
And that's the sort of thing is that there are new grad students born every day in all sorts of places. And so- 100% true.
I was like, okay, for Akri Mo, I am both going to scale back the parts of it that felt really overwhelming to me last year.
Like last year I did like a lot of programming, just like here's a bunch of stuff to like really justify this thing I was giving away for free. And this year I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this in the most sustainable way that I can. I'm just gonna tell more people about it.
And so I don't even think I said it in like the incubator channel, but I made a goal of the first, like every day in October, I was going to email someone new and tell them like, here's this thing.
I made a template email and Gmail. And like, it was always the last thing I did at the end of the day, because it was really scary, but like I would send it up.
And.
[40:46] Funnily enough, very few of those emails panned out, like, like lots of people ghosted me, like two or three people were like, sure.
And then they never did, or a couple of people did. But there was a person who had reached out to me over the summer and was like, Hey, can you do this free Twitter space with me? I'm trying to grow my business. And I was like, sure. You know, I'm always happy to help people.
And I was like, Hey, like Dr. Belal, like, would you be willing to tweet out this thing for me. I'm not really using Twitter anymore, but I know that you have, you know, really
grown your space there." And he was like, absolutely. And he made all of these threads about like academic writing and linked my stuff at the end of it. And all of a sudden,
like my Twitter following grew and there were like 2000 new people on my mailing list. And,
It was this really beautiful lesson to me that these people that I'm in an ecosystem with other business owners too, and with other people, and that I both have received requests in my email inbox and been like, this doesn't fit for me.
I've been on both sides of that coin, but that if things want to come out, they want to come out. And this wanted to come out.
And so it's been very exciting. It's been very overwhelming.
[42:12] But it's cool. Like, because there's, and it's, it's people in different parts of the world that I've never met, like people, it's, it's been a very cool, overwhelming, cool experience.
Well, it's such a great example of like a nonlinear type of growth. We're like, yes, you will first off, I love that your goal was based on an action that had full control of as opposed to a result that you had no control over.
And so like, I first want to name that for people who are struggling with having goals that they don't have control over and then feeling like there's either a win at the end of it or a failure at the end of it and having a hard time like finding the nuance in that.
I think that setting goals that are purely based on our own.
[43:01] Our own either thought processes or actions that we can take, things that we actually have control over, is such a great starting point.
So I love that your goal was to just reach out once a day to people, whether or not that was going to directly correlate to a sign up at the end. It was like, I'm just going to do this.
It was like the effort that you were putting out there was, I see it as telling spirit, like, hey, I heard your message.
You told me new people, and this is the only way that I can think of right now to like get new people. So, okay, I'll take that action.
And like, then spirit, then this like more nonlinear way of spirit being like, okay, well, great, we're glad that you're on board.
These aren't exactly the people that we want right now, but here, we're gonna give you all of these other people instead. And it's such a great example that it's not a one-to-one relationship always.
[43:56] Yeah, and I think that the thing that's been really helpful about like the incubator in general is that if this had happened six months ago, I wouldn't have been ready for it.
Like I didn't have the systems in place. I didn't have the nervous system care in place. I didn't have like a sense of what my own internal boundaries were and it was this feeling like I woke up October 29th.
So like two days before I was supposed to start delivering all this free content and I was like, I have to change everything. Like it's not good enough for 3000 people.
Like I really had a meltdown about it and spirit through a lot of people who love me in my life were like, you don't though. Like it's a free thing. You're going to be fine. And the, the kind of.
[44:42] I have spent so long, I'm not a sort of like watch everybody person, but like I've spent so long looking at other businesses and being like, well, how did they do that? Or where did they get it? or like asking curious questions or reading books.
And it's both so reassuring and so annoying to like my brain brain that like the answer is there's no other way to do it, with the way that you're going to do it.
[45:09] I love that. I'm going to say that again for you. There's no way to do it other than the way you're going to do it. Is that what you just said? Yeah. That's a great line. That's like a post-it note to put up on your computer screen sort of line. Yeah. Yeah. It feels very permission-giving,
which kind of leads me to my last, I don't know if it's a question, but it's more of a something that you do that I also do.
And I love that you do it because I feel like we both give each other lots of permission to do it. And that is considering actions that to the outside world might not look anything like work.
But to us, they are part of our process and therefore they are work.
[45:57] And tell me that that might feel really like cryptic to the people listening right now, but we're gonna go into it in a minute.
Yes. So Amy is referring to my habit of watching Grey's Anatomy on a loop, like most days when I'm like working at my desk or taking big breaks in the day to like jump on my trampoline and cry.
[46:19] And it's so funny that like you bring this up because I was really reflecting about it this week because we're reaching the sort of like two and a half year mark of my husband being home full time. Like he came home during the pandemic and sort of stayed home.
And I really had to both confront how I was not adhering to like a normal business day schedule and doing things in a different way, but then also being okay with doing things in a different way.
And that, yeah, like if you were to do the steps of like how Katie writes a newsletter, it's like, Katie listens to podcasts about astrology. We'll not be writing directly about astrology,
but we'll be thinking very deeply about conflict and what it means.
She'll have some sort of emotional reaction driven by Amelia Shepard on this fictional television show that very few people are watching live anymore. I'll bounce on my trampoline and cry about it and then the newsletter will come out in 15 minutes.
[47:20] And so it's less and like to other people, they're like, oh, how long do you spend on your newsletter? And I'm like, well, it's somewhere between 15 minutes and however long I've been watching Grey's Anatomy, which is most of my adult life. So it's very hard to quantify that, but I've really, and like, that's the part that like, I'm still actively unlearning,
is like every, I felt pre incubator sort of like pre different parts of my life that like unlearning was a singular process. Like you do it and you unlearn it and you never do it again.
[47:51] And I like regret to inform anybody listening that like, it's a lot more like an onion that like, there's just layers of it and I'm always finding more but the fact that I'm finding more means that,
I'm going into new areas too and that's satisfying in a different way.
Yeah. And I think that one of the places that you and I have really found camaraderie in is this place of redefining what work looks like. Because yeah, sure, I host this podcast and I do this
business about helping other people do business differently, but that doesn't mean that it just came easily to me either. I'm still working on unlearning a lot of things as I go. And,
one of them is the internal narratives around what work is supposed to look like or how many hours a day should be spent in work. And that's something where like you and I are always like,
all right, I just went for like an hour long walk, but that's like part of my work day right now, because like, that's where I process things like I very much am a internal processor through movement
in my body. And if like the energy or the chi in my body isn't moving, then I'm not like processing things at all. And so I can't sit at my desk for eight hours, or even six hours, or probably even even like four hours a day and like actually produce work.
[49:12] Yeah. And like science says that very few people can actually, like most, like the research suggests that it's four hours of deep focus a day, but that it's really broken up.
And I think one of the things that like deep focus for me often looks like distraction. If you were to look outside, you know what I mean?
Like if you were to peek into my office, people are like, oh, she is not working. She's petting a cat. She's watching Grey's Anatomy. She's eating six different snacks at the same time. But like, I am.
This is why I love you. Yeah. It doesn't matter necessarily.
[49:50] It matters so much more what it feels like for me than what it looks like.
[49:55] Well, and it matters like how your clients are receiving your work and the impact and the value that you are putting out there through your work,
which like if you can do that in only an hour or two at the desk with a lot of cat petting time and then some jumping on the trampoline and this and that,
like why wouldn't you?
Well, and it's funny because like I have a lot of friends who are body workers or healers or like working in different ways.
And we all talk about how you have to put other people's energy somewhere else sometimes.
You know what I mean? That like I meet with a lot of people and part of what makes me good at my job,
is that I'm fully present with those people, but it also means that I have to have a system for processing all of that.
It's a big- Yeah, I call it discharging. Yeah, I- Discharging that energy.
Yeah, and it's been, no one talked to me about that beforehand, and so, yeah, it's not work, work,
not work work, but it definitely is the work and I feel it, clients feel it, everyone feels it when I don't do it.
[51:05] A few haters out there. Grace and Ed, me for life.
[51:11] Oh, I'm so with you right there. Okay. So as we are getting close to running out of time here, I'm going to ask you one final question that I ask everyone. And then after that, why don't you tell people where they can find you and how they can work with you? So the question is this,
what does running a spirit or intuitive led business mean to you?
Running a spirit-led business to me means that I am a steward of an ecosystem, but I'm not the ruler of that ecosystem. And that that ecosystem has a lot of interactions that I can influence,
but that I can't control. And that the more that I can think about that as a collaborative process and a multifaceted process and a complex process and one that has a lot of space for magic,
like for lack of a better word, the more sustainability comes to that ecosystem.
[52:21] Yeah, what a sustainable and like beautiful way of looking at it. Thank you.
[52:28] So where can folks find you? How can they work with you? Folks can find me probably at my website the most easily. So that's thrive-phd.com. Like so many of us, I'm constantly renegotiating where I am on the rest of the internet. But that is my house that that I have built and I will always be there at the particular place.
But the website has all sorts of things ranging from like free99.com to like working with me individually.
[52:56] So people can decide what feels best to them and start from there.
You also have a podcast. I mean, we're listening to the podcast right now. So I'm just gonna like kind of push you into plugging your podcast. I do have a podcast called Grad School is Hard, but and you can find that on all of your major podcast players.
Yeah. And if folks are interested in kind of creating some of their own experiments, I know you have a little opt-in that can help them with that.
I do. It's called the Working and Not Working More Intentionally Toolkit, and it's got a whole bunch of resources all on a Notion page that you can organize and play with and experiment. There's
reflection questions and strategies and experiments to run. If you like that, you'll probably like working with me. It's as clear a distillation as I could get of the Thrive PhD experience.
[53:51] So if you were also a little kid who ran experiments during your free time at the airport, then this is probably something that you would really love. I love it. I really like it. And I'm not even a PhD student, but I found it helpful myself. So I recommend it for sure. Awesome.
So thank you so much for being here, Katie. I appreciate you enormously. And yeah, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
[54:20] Thanks so much for listening today. If you liked this episode, or even if it just got you to think about your business a little bit differently, I'd love for you to subscribe to the show and share it with a business bestie or a few of them. few of them. And if you're interested in breathing more into your own business, I made something just,
for you. It's a five-day breathwork challenge for business owners. Over five days, you'll learn how to use your breath to find deeper clarity and trust in yourself and in your business. You can.
[54:51] Find it at amykoretsky.com slash breathe. Breathe Into Business is recorded on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples. It is created by me, Amy Koretsky, with the production and help from Softer Sounds Studios.
Thanks again for listening and breathing into your business with.
