What if the losses and detours that have left you feeling lost are actually helping God lead you toward the life you were made to live?

Episode Summary

What do you do when the life you thought you were building suddenly falls apart—and you don't have a backup plan?

Kate Ahl knows what it feels like to have no idea what comes next. After getting married and moving to Portland with her husband, Dave, who was serving as a youth pastor, Kate found herself struggling with depression, loneliness, and a lack of vision for her own life. She had assumed she would support her husband's calling, but she didn't yet know what her own calling was.

Then came one unexpected loss after another: Dave experienced a nervous breakdown and had to leave ministry, Kate experienced a miscarriage, they struggled with infertility, Dave lost jobs, and their family faced financial uncertainty. Through it all, Kate learned to repeat a simple truth: "God is a good God and I will obey and see goodness in His choices for me."

Eventually, those years of loss and uncertainty opened a door Kate never expected. What began as a small side hustle managing Pinterest accounts grew into Simple Pin Media, a successful woman-led business where Kate now leads a team of around 40 people.

In this honest conversation, Kate shares how God unfolded her calling one step at a time, how her business changed the dynamics of her marriage and family, and what she's learned about women, leadership, motherhood, and the pressure to do it all.

If you're feeling lost, stuck, or unsure what you're made to do, Kate's story will remind you that you don't need to see the whole path. You can keep walking in faith, give thanks in the middle of uncertainty, and trust that God can bring clarity and purpose from seasons you never would have chosen.

Meet Kate Ahl

Kate Ahl is the founder and CEO of Simple Pin Media, a Pinterest management company she built after a season of unexpected career changes, financial uncertainty, and searching for direction. Before launching her business, Kate worked in college and camp ministry, navigated life as a pastor's wife, and spent years as a stay-at-home mom.

Today, Kate leads a team of around 40 people and uses her leadership to invest in other women, helping them recognize strengths and gifts they may not yet see in themselves. She is passionate about servant leadership, generosity, developing women, and using the opportunities God has given her to create opportunities for others.

Key Takeaways

• When you don't know what you're called to do: Keep walking in faith instead of assuming you need the whole plan before you begin.
• When loss and disappointment keep piling up: Learn how giving thanks in difficult circumstances can help you continue trusting God's goodness.
• When you're tempted to compare your life to everyone else's: Remember that God's vision for your life doesn't have to look like anyone else's.
• When you're a woman trying to lead and care for your family: Give yourself permission to say no, ask for help, outsource what you can, and focus on what matters most.
• When the opportunity you've been praying for finally appears: Dream big, walk through the door, and step into what God has put in front of you with confidence.

How This Episode Will Encourage You

You may not have a clear vision for your life right now, and that's okay. Keep walking, keep giving thanks, and trust that God can unfold your path in ways you could never have planned for yourself.

Resources + Links

Simple Pin Media: simplepinmedia.com

Instagram: @simplepinmedia

I literally grieved before the Lord, and I remember dropping to the floor weeping, and I said, lord, will you just bless what I do in order to release Dave to do what he loves? Like, I want to see him do what he loves. So will you allow me to do that for this family?

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are.

So that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you, foreign.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast.

We're super old now, and she's been a woman that I have watched chase God's call on her life through a variety of seasons. I've seen her do college ministry, camp ministry, stay at home, mom life, married to a youth pastor at one point, and now she owns her own business.

She started Simple Pin Media, which is a Pinterest management company. Kate all is brilliant, creative, sharp. She's an amazing mom, wife, and business woman, and her heart to honor God with, all she does is astounding.

So, Kate, welcome to the we've had podcast. So glad we get to hang out.

I know. I am, too. That was like an honoring intro. Thank you for all of that. I feel like you summed it up perfectly right there.

Well, I'm glad we have known each other. Isn't it crazy to think we've worked together almost 20 years ago? Holy cow. We're like, now.

I know. I kind of pretend like I don't feel 42. Like I just feel like I'm still 28 or something. Like I. I'm still even. Like, it was not that long ago, right?

20 Years.

I know.

Like a blink of an.

I either still feel 27 or I'm in seventh grade and I have braces still and I want to have slumber.

Parties and you're doing swishies in the toilet.

Yeah. Torture everyone while they're sleeping, all that stuff. So after.

After we work together, you got married to Dave, and he Took a youth pastor position, and y' all moved to Portland, which I feel like that's where all the cool kids move. And he was doing his thing. Describe what that season of life was like for you.

Oh, man. That season of life. I think the biggest thing that describes that is kind of depression. And I've never experienced depression in my life.

But if I look back on that, I guess I would see that it almost feels like a little bit of a, like, swirling, like, not really knowing how to be a wife, not really knowing how to be a pastor's wife, and then not really knowing how to be me. There was a many different things.

And I remember probably, like, eight months after we had moved down there, I think Dave just got frustrated with me, and he was like, I don't understand why you can't snap out of this. And in that moment, I was like, I don't know either. Like, I don't know what I'm doing.

And what I thought my life would look like is not what it looks like now. And, of course, I was pining for going back to Bellingham. I was, like, forever in this quest of, like, I need to get back to Bellingham.

I was on that quest, too. Come back.

Yes, come back. And I think that I just didn't know who to be. And I didn't, as a young new wife, know what any of it looked like.

And I didn't have anybody to tell me. And so I felt very much like on an island and the church that we were a part of, that we are actually still part of now. It wasn't very.

I don't know if welcoming is the right term, but it felt like everybody had their people, and I didn't have my people. So I didn't feel a sense of belonging, and. And it just felt sad. Like, I think that's kind of the best way to describe it. And I wasn't being led.

And so it was a good thing to look back on now to say to anybody who's young and newly married going into ministry to say, maybe hold off until you get some things figured out or have a really good support in place, because that just wasn't there for me. So I just felt like I was.

Did you feel like you were trying to fit into some sort of kind of box that you thought you had to be, or would you say you just didn't have a vision for what you felt called to do at that time?

Yeah, I would say, like, I just didn't have a vision because, you know, when we were When I was working at the inn, I think there with you, I think there was some good moments of clarity about who I was being.

Kind of worked out post college, but my whole intent was to do one year of ministry at the inn on staff and then go back to get my master's in teaching because I had a political science degree. So I was going to be a teacher, high school teacher of, like, civics, contemporary world problems.

And I thought, well, this will be kind of like that gap year. Well, that's when I met Dave. And so everything kind of, like, veered off course.

And so, because we were really pursuing his dream, and I just didn't know what my dream was anymore. Like, I was kind of working for him, and I thought, well, my gift is administration, because that's just what you sometimes think as a woman.

And I didn't know how to. I just didn't know what I was doing. So I just felt lost.

I didn't even have a vision or even know how to come up with a vision for who Kate was as in this time. And I think that's where you get, like, the swirling effect. Like, I just don't even know if I understood how to get my footing.

I. I feel like not only a swirling effect, but what I see in a lot of women is they long to have a vision of what they're called to do and who they're called to be.

And they long for doing something of meaning and purpose and really feeling like they're tapping into what they're made to do and when they can't see it and they don't know what it is. It's almost like not only a feeling of being lost, but they start to settle. Like, oh, well, maybe that isn't for me. Maybe there's not a calling.

Maybe there's not something I'm made to do. So I guess I'll just do this, you know?

Yeah. And a thing that just came to mind, you know, is I can't imagine doing. Feeling the way that I did then in today's culture, because we.

I didn't have social media back then.

I didn't have Instagram or Facebook or any of those pieces playing into the com, like that comparison trap or even feeding into what I thought I could be. So I imagine if you put me in now today's culture, it could have been even worse.

Like, the anxiety to be what I saw, the outside world being, which we now see so readily. Right. Like, it's at our fingertips all the time.

I imagine that that could have been a pretty big black hole for me, which I think that plays into just kind of an empathetic feeling of what women feel today in that place. Like, oh, everybody else is doing this and I'm not, or everybody else has this community, and I don't.

Man, I just feel like I'm kind of thankful that I didn't have it, you know, 16 years, 17 years ago now, almost 18, actually, because I was just left kind of alone with my own thoughts and the Lord.

Right.

Like, that's kind of all I had to draw. And there wasn't any outside resource. I didn't have community, which was kind of sad. But I had Dave. That was it.

And, I mean, I had some good friends, too, that I was starting to develop, you know, with our mutual friend Angela. You know, we were just. But they had already been established here, too. So, again, I didn't feel like I was even part of their community for a while.

Well, I definitely think you're right, that what social media has done in the negative sense is that there's all this comparison going on, and nothing squelches God's vision for your life more than you thinking it has to look like all these other people's vision for their life. You know, Tell us what took place in your guys's life. You moved down there. Dave became a youth pastor.

What took place that shifted your direction and what put you personally on a different path that you had never envisioned for yourself?

Hmm. Well, one word is breakdown. My husband had. He had a nervous breakdown, actually. We were in Bellingham. We had taken the kids on a retreat.

This is about almost a little over two years into our ministry.

And we had actually, I remember really well coming back from a mission trip in Montana in July, and we'd taken the kids there, and we were driving away from church after dropping everybody off, and I felt this moment of us going, man, we're in this good groove. We feel like we're getting our. Our feet wet. We're just. It's good. And I almost feel like that next week, things started to unravel in a.

And it kind of rocked us, obviously. And so we were kind of in this weird phase of trying to. You know, I'd had it in May. We went on this mission trip, and we felt like, okay, we're good.

We're kind of Coming out of this grief. And then it just tumbled down in a way. I don't even know how to put the pieces together. But in September, Dave was leaving a retreat.

We were leaving the retreat up at Firwood, right? We brought our kids up there, and we were coming back, and. And something snapped. And it was like I looked at him, and I physically saw him crumble.

And he didn't speak. He didn't say anything. We drove all the way home from Bellingham. I'm pretty sure the kids in his van were completely freaked out.

And we got to church and dropped the kids off, and he still didn't say anything. He still didn't say anything. And. And he dropped off the rental car, and he came back, and it was like he was done. He just was done. And I had.

Done with his job.

Done with his job. Like, he and I couldn't even. Again, this part of being a young wife. I didn't know what to do. Like, I didn't know how to support him.

So I called our pastor, and I said, he's fallen apart. Like, he's literally. I think I saw him in the car, like, just weeping, right? And I was like, I don't know what to do.

And actually, our associate pastor had also had a breakdown five years previous. And so he was like, he knew what to do, having had his own breakdown.

And so the head pastor and the elders that everybody began to gather around him that next week. And we were.

I think he had tried to come to church, and he had a physical response where he was in the parking lot, and he was so overcome with anxiety, couldn't even walk in the door. And he wasn't able to articulate to me at this point, like, why he was falling apart. But I knew there had been some pressures from the kids.

There had been some pressures from the parents. It had basically been like a perfect storm where he couldn't really pinpoint one thing, but it was just like everything was falling apart.

And so friends of ours and mentors, Jodi May, who you've met, they had had what they called a kaboom in their ministry.

And so she came to us and she said, we want to have lunch with you and Dave, and we're committed to walking through this with you to restore you back to health. And at the time, I was like, I don't know what that means. Like, what. What's going on? I was still confused, I guess. And the head pastor, too, said.

And this was very significant for Dave because Dave's relationship with his father is Pretty horrible. So Dwight, our head pastor, had said to me, he said, I am committed to being his spiritual father and restoring him to health.

And so there was all these people that basically rallied in that moment to say, Dave is experiencing this really deep, dark part of his soul, and we want to help him overcome that. We don't really know why, but we're going to walk through it. And so the next September to November, we. They paid for our counseling. And because we.

We didn't know, as young, like, married couple, like, how to do that, right? Like, I didn't know him.

And that counseling, I will say that four to five months we spent in counseling was probably the greatest gift we could have ever been given, because what we learned in those moments in counseling has propelled us for a strong marriage now. Like things I would have never learned about Dave. And we wrestled through, like, do we stay? Do we push this through?

And finally, at the end of November, they just.

The elder board met and Dave met, and Dave just said, you know, I. I should also say during this time, he wrestled and had to make a strong decision whether or not he was still going to continue even in his faith. You know, did he even want a relationship with the Lord? And he just.

He slowly restored, I will say, got back onto his feet, wrestled with the Lord and made that story for him is amazing. But basically, we all made the decision that it wasn't wise for him to be a youth pastor. Like, it just was.

Even though it was his dream, it was a dream because he saw somebody else be a youth pastor. And he loved it. You know, he loved this person, but it wasn't really his calling.

And I think he was replicating kind of somebody else's dream a little bit, for lack of a better phrase.

Right.

So then in late November, the elder board made a decision that he would be done, and they would do three months severance, which would give us, you know, chance to get back on our feet.

But also say during this time, again, you know, my lessons with him, but Jody, the one who walked alongside us and said, we'll restore you, she was doing a Bible study at the time about ancient deception. So. And what are the things that the evil one will do to distract you away from your relationship with the Lord? What is his tactics?

And she had said, one of the things that you need to learn is giving thanks in all circumstances. And she said this phrase, and it was literally a phrase I had to repeat over and over.

And it was, God is a good God and I will obey and see goodness in his choices for me. And I literally had that every moment.

And there was even times as Dave was wrestling where I would be at home and I would be reading my Bible and he would come in and he would say, I know you're praying for me. I. And he would be angry. It would be so mad at me. It was almost like he was resentful that I was praying for him and I had to just cling to.

God is a good God and I'll obey and see goodness in these choices and what he's having us walk through. And it was probably the one thing that taught me how to be thankful in all circumstances. Like, there is goodness.

Like, I'm thankful for carpet, I'm thankful for rain. Like I'm. I mean, it had to be that granular in some moments because I didn't know what was going on.

And I should also say, like, I'm really dealing with the grief of a miscarriage and the grief of not being able to get pregnant, which was very odd because I had never struggled with fertility and never have since, but I could not get pregnant. But the moment they made the decision to let him go, I got pregnant the next month and had our first daughter, Eloise.

And I know all of that was interconnected with what was happening during that time, but. So, yeah, I would say, as painful as that was, it was a gift.

Right? The gift of a breakdown. Yeah, you. You got married and had this kind of idea yourself that you were going to be married to this youth pastor.

You know, that's what you thought he was called to do. You thought you were gonna have this family, you had this miscarriage, he lost his job. He only had three months worth of severance.

And you didn't have a vision for, for yourself, your own calling, your own job, your own. Who's Kate made to be. So how did you end up.

How did you end up coming out of that into now the Kate who is running Simple Pen Media and is blowing up?

Yes. That's crazy. Well, I will say after. So he got just a regular job after that. And I went on to have three kids very quickly. And coming out of.

I was pregnant with my, my son, which is our third. And two weeks before his due date, Dave lost his job. And it was like, oh, my word, I'm a stay at home mom. I'm 40 weeks pregnant.

Like, what in the world am I going to do? And that was probably the first. So I, I say all this to lead up to where I am now, but that, that was horrible.

But Again, we're back at the same place. It's the recession. There's no way he's going to get another job.

I'm going into, like, the food stamp office, hugely pregnant, like, completely humiliated. You know, we're just trying to survive. And had my son. And we did six months without a job.

And then he got another job, and it was at a design firm, and he was a production manager. And he's not a multitasker, so it was kind of like, not a good fit. Right.

But during this time, what started to surface for him again was this desire to. To preach and his falling in love with studying God's word and really teaching. Just. What is it? Exit. Exogenic. How do you say that? Exogenical.

Exogenic preaching.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the only big word you guys will ever hear me know, right? I can spell it for you if you want. Totally.

And during this time, at the same time, I started working for my friend Angela, and she had a blog, and this was kind of supplemental income for me, but I was learning kind of the online world and Facebook marketing and all of that kind of stuff. And I liked it. I enjoyed it. It was kind of the first time I had worked again, Right. Since having kids. And it was about this time a year.

And so I will no longer have a job in the next three weeks. And I was like, okay, like, we're getting really good at losing jobs. Like, amazing. And so he. In that moment, I felt relief.

And then I. I literally grieved before the Lord. And I remember dropping to the floor weeping. And I said, lord, will you just bless what I do in order to release Dave to do what he loves?

Like, I want to see him do what he loves. So will you allow me to do that for this family? And I sat with that. Like, I didn't tell anybody that Dave has lost his job. I literally grieved.

And I would say different than the losses we had had before, I would feel this angst. But I felt. And it's different. Angst and grief are really different, right?

And I felt grief just like, I'm going to grieve this loss, but I know that there's something greater. And I started working a little bit more for Angela to supplement. We got unemployment again, back to the food stamp office. And we just kind of.

We just started talking, what do we want? And during that time, some other friends were experiencing very similar things because the recession was still happening, right?

And one of the things we all kind of said was we've lost our ability to hope and we've lost our ability to dream big. And there's a proverb that says hope deferred makes the heart sick. And we don't want to defer hope.

So how do we dream big again and believe that the Lord has something greater for us? And there was a great proverb too, that came up at that time. I think it's Proverbs 16, 9.

It was like the man makes plans in their heart and the Lord determines his steps. And I wrote it on our board and I just was like, okay, you're gonna determine my steps.

And we tried a lot of things and basically we said we would walk through any door again. We would just walk through the doors that presented themselves because we didn't know what was gonna happen.

We did like advocare, because of course everybody turns to like multi level marketing because you're going to make a ton of money. That didn't obviously didn't work out. And then Dave got asked actually to help a guy at church who was doing fill in preaching.

And so he would fill in when a pastor was out of town and just preach and he would begin to do that. And Dave was like, oh, sure, I didn't even know that was possible. He started filling in and making a little income.

Like, I don't know what we're gonna do. It literally, we've exhausted all options. We've walked through every door, including Advocare in the nothing, right?

And she said, I think you should manage people's Pinterest pages because there was some shifting going on in the online world that we had seen, and people were moving from Facebook marketing to Pinterest marketing, and they really didn't know how to do it. And I was like, that's ridiculous. Like, no one is going to pay me for that. And she was like, well, what other options do you have?

And I was like, well, you're right. Like, I have nothing. So I asked her and a couple of her friends to do kind of like a beta test run.

And I said, let's just do this and let's see if this will work and if it doesn't, we'll just totally pretend it never existed. And I bought a domain, Simple Pen Media, and I decided, you know, this is kind of what I wanted.

People liked what I did and I started to make money and I thought, well, this is interesting.

And Dave also at that time started to do a little bit more preaching and he also got hired for a temp job at DHS in the foster care stuff, which was also another story that was kind of playing out in our lives. And we didn't know if that would be long term or if he was going to go down that road. But that's kind of how SimplePen was born.

It's so interesting to me knowing you all these years and watching this unfold, but then also having you share this in short form for others today, because I'm hearing you talk about the gift of a breakdown. I'm hearing you talk about how loss, like the over and over again loss actually catapulted you into the place you're meant to be.

Yeah.

Which is so fascinating because that's not what any of us are looking for. We're not looking for. I'm so excited. I'm waiting for my breakdown to come.

I'm so excited to have to get food stamps and my husband lose jobs and not know how we're going to pay the bills and have miscarriages so I can further get to like, what I'm made to do. And now when I see you, you're doing what you're made to do and it's blowing up and you're so successful.

And I just think that's such a beautiful story of the way that you looked for God along the way and looked for what he was going to do out of this hard loss over and over again.

Yeah, definitely.

So did you ever picture yourself a CEO of a successful company that would grow like hotcakes? And I think your answer is no. I think you've already said that.

But like, how is you becoming the CEO of your own company changed the gender roles in your household?

Yeah, that's a big one. Well, I would say in that first year it was still Dave and I still viewed it as a side Hustle. We were still waiting for him to start working again.

But then Eloise was diagnosed with type one about eight months into that, and that created a massive shift in our life. And then in November of that year, somebody in the online community had recommended my business and my business blew up.

Like, literally, I was watching email notifications, like, contact forms come in, and I was, I went out to Dave and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is crazy. I. I mean, I literally looked at him as, like, I don't even know what to do. Like, I don't know what to do with this. I'm freaking out.

And we sat and we. We talked. You know, we kind of let it play out and I tried to see what I could do. And we talked and I said, are we gonna lean into this?

And it was in that moment I connected back the dots to my prayer because I had thought. I kind of forgotten about that prayer, to be honest.

And that you wanted to do what you can do to release Dave into what he loves to do. Exactly.

Yeah. Because I had. I didn't know what I was going to do, so I didn't. I hadn't seen that come to fruition.

And in that moment, I remembered it and I said to Dave, I was like, are we going to make this a business? And if we are, will you allow. Will you take more of the lead? Will you be, you know, lean into at home dad?

And also remember that, like, we had for two years now been a full time family.

And when you transition from like one person working or two people working to where you're both in the house together, there's a significant shift that happens, especially with little kids. And we had bumped into each other with parenting and discipline, and we're literally with each other all the time.

And our kids have never known their parents not being home. Like, literally we're here all the time.

And you guys were fostering.

Yeah. And that. Yeah, that added a whole other dimension.

And so when that was the second layer, so the first layer was like, hey, you gotta be more stay at home dad. And he was like, okay, I can do that. And then a full year later, when we stepped into fostering, we had to make another decision.

And I said to him, like, do you. Are you okay with this? And I had to be honest with him at some points.

Like, I would ask him to do the dishes and he would give me this, you know, disgruntled reply. And I assumed it was because he was like, the man and he thinks I should do it as a Woman.

And finally I said to him, do you think, are you, are you pissed off because you're a man? And he goes, no, I'm just pissed off because I don't want to do the dishes.

And I was like, amen to that. I'll clean a toilet over dishes any day, right?

And I was like, okay, so there's no sexist stuff going on here. He just doesn't like it. And I was like, okay, that clears the air.

And then I think that role as like, me being the stay at home, me being the full time income earner was also really hard for my parents.

And I think it was really hard for people to understand that Dave was still pursuing his passion of being a pastor because also during this time he was called to be the pastor for a short time, but it's actually turned into now five years at a church in Eugene, which is two hours south of here, south of Portland. And he was doing that.

And people couldn't see that he was spending so much of his week preparing for his sermons as, you know, like, preparing for a talk takes hours, right? Like, he probably spends 15 to 20 hours a week preparing for his sermon.

And so my parents, they would still buy us groceries every once in a while because they would be like, are you, are you guys okay? And I, I didn't at the time, but I kind of, I was making about, you know, high, almost a six figure salary.

And I told, I didn't want to tell my mom quite yet. Eventually I did tell them, but I was like, mom, we're, we're good. Like, I promise we're good. We're not on food stamps anymore. We're great.

But I think actually once everybody realized that the business was doing quite well and that I was thriving in my position of this, they started to see how Dave and I were partners in this and how we did that well together.

And it is strange, you know, you don't have many families where, you know, Dave and I can go out to lunch together anytime, or we're in the house together all the time, or it's just a very different life. But we now function differently because their kids are older now than when they were littles.

But we now just see it as if I am busy or am I traveling. So last year was a heavy travel year for me because I speak a lot.

We just are very clear about expectations of each other and trying to set each other up well. Whereas in the, in the beginning I think I did a lot more prep for him, like he needed help when I would leave. Now I just leave the house.

Right, right. And he also. I realized this was actually an interesting point. I was texting him from somewhere that I was and he was like, I got it.

And I realized in that moment I would be really annoyed with him if I was a stay at home mom. And I had him texting me, trying to micromanage me. So I needed to give him that freedom to not have me micromanage his life. He's fine. He doesn't.

He's not babysitting my kids, he's parenting our kids.

Yeah, you were the one being sexist, Kate.

Come on.

I really was. It was kind of like, oh yeah, I would feel super upset if you were doing this to me.

Yeah, you've got it though, how you put it as we were a team in this and I think listening to your guys story and knowing Dave, I mean he's amazing with kids. He has such a heart for, for foster children. He loves preaching.

He was released because the Lord had provided this new calling that was kind of like so clearly what you were supposed to do.

And there was so much fruit coming from it and it was providing for your family that you have been like, God gave you this lane and was like, here, go run in it. And it also released him to be super great at what, what he is great at. I think it's interesting though because there's so much judgment from people.

Yeah, there's no judgment when a guy's a stay at home dad. People make assumptions about them and people make assumptions about the women.

And I hear about this from women who are, you know, they're bringing home the bacon. And you know, there's a lot of interesting, interesting experiences around it. Have you, have you guys experienced much judgment?

I would say yes. I would say Dave probably more so than me. It does. So Angela and Will are good friends that I talked about.

They are also kind of like a full time family. He's a contractor. But they kind of similar to us to where they can get up and go anytime. Right. They're not traditionally employed.

I think having them was a helpful resource because they understood it. But yeah, I would see people kind of at church like a little bit judgmental and you know, Dave's got a sugar mama.

Like all these kind of things that you say, but in joking but you're kind of a little bit serious about it. So for him, I think he felt it more than I did.

I think for me what I felt more was as a mom and the things that I was missing you know, especially if I was traveling. So I've missed.

I've missed spring conferences the last three years because I've been at a conference that is one of my pillar conferences I speak at every year. And it's like, man, I'm missing that.

But, you know, at the same time, Dave's going and Dave's asking good questions and he's having, you know, great conversations with our girls about certain things. And I. I think that when people don't understand how much time is being invested in our kids and.

And that's not even an important thing, I guess I would say they just don't understand it. Like, it's so outside traditional that that's. I think, where the judgment comes from is just a lack of understanding.

And, yeah, I would say, though, having word five and a half years into my business, everybody just knows that this is what it is and what it's like. I think for us, the tough part, Dave's coming upon ending. He'll end this church thing down in Eugene in the next six or seven months.

I think for us, the challenge will be what's he do next?

Right. But the same God who completely unfolded his vision for your life when you had no vision, he has a vision for Dave. Right.

And you can fall back on that because you've seen it. You've seen God do that. So, you know, God can do that for Dave. Right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I think one of the things, too, that just came to my mind a little bit about the judgment piece is because when the business was growing so significantly, we were fostering. There was, I think, less judgment on our life because we were doing that.

Not that that's a good reason to judge or not judge, but I think people were just thankful for us that what I was doing released us also to be able to do that.

Right, Right. So let's talk a little bit about what it's like to be a woman leader. You. You are an amazing leader.

And I'm wondering up to this day what's been your greatest leadership lesson.

Oh, man.

I think one of the biggest things is I connected the dots probably about a year and a half ago that when I was back in ninth grade, we had a family friend who wanted to send me through this Washington Student Leadership Conference. And I remember him saying to me, I think you have the gift of leadership.

And I didn't know what that meant at the time, and I didn't even think about. I went to those conferences up until, like, my freshman year in college, and I didn't connect it until a year and a half ago when I went.

When I use this gift of leadership, I feel like I'm thriving in exactly who I need to be. And that is, you know, like, some people will ask me, like, how do you do this within your company? Or, how do you lead a team?

Or, why did you build a team? You know, because I have a team of 40, so it's like, that doesn't intimidate me. That doesn't overwhelm me. That. That, like, jacks me up.

Like, I love leading team meetings. I love casting vision. And I think I realized that that's. That is my inherent gift, and I just do it really well.

But there's not a lot of conversation about women leaders, and there's not a lot of places to have discussion about women leadership, especially if you're just talking, like, just women leaders. You know, I've been to, like, a one conference, I think, but I don't know. I think the judgment.

If you're a mom, it goes back to what is pulling you away from being a mother. And that, I think, is a frustrating thing to battle. You know, like, it's that tension, right?

Like, I'm leading this company, I'm doing these great things, but sometimes people only recognize what I'm not doing for my family.

So, yeah, that's. I. Oh, that's hard. Yeah, that's a hard one. How do you model leadership after Jesus?

I think one of the biggest thing is servant leadership. Like, I never. I went to a conference actually, in September, and I was talking to this woman, Connie Albers, and I was wrestling with this thing.

Like, how do I. How do I live into the confidence of the gift the Lord has given me in leadership, but not look like I'm cocky? Like, how do you do that? Right?

And she was like, never esteem yourself any higher than anybody else, but serve them in the best way that you can. And that is confident leadership. And I also wanted to bring that into my team to say we are servants first.

And I think that's the thing that Jesus models in that leadership for me is that serving.

Like, you know, he had these 12 disciples, and he was leading them for sure, but he was thinking, serving them at the same time, how do I serve the people on my team and equip and empower them to be great and allow them the. Allow them the credit that they deserve, but yet at the same time, not dismissing people when they give me compliments to accept those and to.

To go, yes, the Lord has equipped me in this way. And I'm going to take delight in that.

And the other piece that Connie had told me was make it so that when people spend time with you, they walk away like they've just had a fresh drink of water. Like they feel refreshed in your presence. And I think that's also another thing that I see Jesus doing is just this refreshing presence.

And I think that can happen in our business world, especially my online business world. There's this joke of like, bro marketing and being like, overly confident and talking about all the ways that you're awesome.

I want to shift that and just say, how can I help this person be awesome and lead them through that process?

I love that. That's awesome. What do you feel like you've had to sacrifice to say yes to being a woman leader?

That's a really good question. You know, to be honest, like, it's hard to think of some because I haven't felt. I haven't.

I can't pinpoint sacrifices besides the piece of feeling like there are some elements of missing things with my kids. But at the same time, I think it's good for them to.

To see their dad take those roles where I'm not there, and that further deepens their relationship with Dave. I think sometimes there's the sacrifice of when you go into like a full time schedule and I don't work full time. I work about 30 hours a week.

But when you kind of miss some community things with women or everybody goes out for like a morning breakfast or like a lunch, and I can't do that. Like, I have meetings. Right. But trying to find ways to build those in at other times I think is important. It's just different.

So, like, giving up Bible study. I went to Bible study and led it for a long time on Tuesday mornings. Tuesday mornings I have nonstop meetings. It's just not possible anymore.

But it doesn't necessarily feel like a sacrifice as much as it's just a shift. And I need to. I need to make sure that I'm not. I'm replacing that piece and I'm not just doing away with it.

Yeah. I still resonate with all those things because I'm thinking, like, part of that mom guilt stuff that we're feeling.

I don't know if this is how you feel, but I kind of feel like I have my foot in these different worlds and I don't ever fully feel like I'm doing an amazing job. And either because I'm like, oh, I want to be super mom, be fully engaged and present like be available and do all the things with them.

But then I also want to do be awesome at work and in my ministry. And you know, you, you go home and you're trying to be awesome with your kids and you're thinking of all the things you need.

Yes.

At your work. But then when you're at work, you're like, oh, but I need to be doing this, this and this for our family.

And so you kind of always feel like, oh, like I'm not fully being awesome at anything. And I think part of the sacrifice is that when you have full feet in one world.

At least when I did, I was a stay at home mom for eight years and wasn't working outside the home. At least I had two feet in one world.

And part of the sacrifice of, you know, moving into leadership and work outside the home is like, you really have, you know, you're playing Twister. Like you have an arm in this world and a foot in this world. And it really does come with a sacrifice.

And then what starts to be become limited or you have to start saying no to things like, you know, I'll get invited to like a women's weekend. I still want to go. And it sounds so fun. Or go out, you know, for drinks with the ladies or go do this.

And I can't because I already was gone for a collider treat. I was already gone for this and that.

And so I think that is part of the sacrifice is when you say yes to getting in your lane and doing something like what you feel called to do is that you can't do everything.

No. And that. Yeah, I agree.

Like, I, and you know, I think one of the pieces of judgment I think I had for myself actually in that in figuring out that I couldn't do everything is about a year ago I realized that the house was falling apart a little bit and I hired a housekeeper. And initially I felt so bad about that. Like, oh my gosh, I'm. Somebody's cleaning my house twice a week, which is amazing.

I felt, can you send her out?

Yeah, she's incredible. She deep cleans everything. But I felt this piece of like, I, these are my responsibilities.

Like, I need to be doing this and I need to be cleaning the house. And I realized, like, man, my, it's okay. It's okay for me to outsource. And you know what? This woman needs income too. This is her business.

So I get to use the money that I'm earning and invest in her. And this is her gift. She loves this. Right Like, I don't know, she loves cleaning but like that's her business.

And then I get to invest in another woman that maybe like wants to make meals. You know, like there's a young woman who made meals for us sometimes and she's struggling to generate income for her family. I get to invest in that.

So instead of seeing it as something that like I can't do anymore because like I society says like that's my role, whatever. No, I'm investing in these women and they're helping our family too. So that's great.

And now I, now I can't imagine not doing it because it's taken so much time back for me that I do get to spend with my kids. Like, I'm not, you know, running. I work in my little shed.

So I'm not like running in the house and then trying to do all the cleaning and I'm distracted.

No, I'm running in the house at 2:30 when the kids come home and I'm just sitting with them and I'm not thinking about the toilets being cleaned because I don't do it anymore.

Right. So you have to kind of get really good at. I can't do everything.

So what are the most optimal things I should say yes to, which I think is a huge challenge. As a woman leader, how do you see God using this, calling this, this leadership in your life? How do you see him using it for good in this world?

That's such a great question. I think something I really reflected on over the last year, like number one, I would say giving.

Dave and I, well, Dave specifically has a strong, strong need to give like financially. And so one of the things we wanted to be very clear about with our business is it's, you know, a woman led business.

So we really wanted to get back in place with where we saw women investing in like third world countries or local organizations. So giving financially at least 20% is a big, big goal for us.

So I want to model that like giving back out of the abundance that we've received both from the business and then personally and then I think also just to, here's actually what jacks me up also like I love it is within my team and the leadership gift that I have. I also have kind of this gift of seeing what other women are good at before they see it.

And so I love the women, especially on I have an executive team, a leadership team and then my account specialists. Especially on my executive team, I get to see things and speak into them in a good way.

But I Also get to give them tough feedback sometimes that refines them. And I love it when it clicks for them and they go, oh, I never thought I was good at that. Or I never thought I loved that. And I was like, I did.

Like, I could see you headed in that direction.

And so for me, I feel like the investment in my clients is great, but the investment in my team to push them towards excellence for serving our clients is what I really, really see as the place where I get to lean in and be the good in this world and be that leadership piece of helping them develop who they are. And that's great because a lot of women who work for me have not worked outside the home, and maybe this is their first time.

They're kind of coming out of kids being younger, and they get to use their gifts in a unique way where they still work at home, they're still able to be flexible with their schedule, and. And they get to be part of a great team that is just a group of women that they love.

And we're all local, too, so we get to see each other a couple times a year. And that. That excites me.

Like, that's where the good I see can be coming down, is that if Simplepen Media busts in, like, two years, I will be able to walk away and say, I invested well into these women, and I hope that they get to use what they've learned in other areas in their life.

What a cool full circle story.

Because what you're doing for those women is you're speaking into their lives, helping them see what they're good at so that God's vision for their life unfolds in the way that you at one point needed that years ago and God gave it to you. That's just super cool.

If you could, you know, just in closing, share some advice for other aspiring women leaders who maybe are in the place that you were years ago where they couldn't figure out, what is it, what is the thing I'm made to do? And they're finding that. That place being pretty tough. Like, what. What's your advice for them, Kate?

I would say to just keep walking in faith that the path in which you're supposed to go will be provided for.

And even though we don't see it, and even in my case, there's a lot of loss and at moments, deep pain, that there will be a goodness and there will be a path that emerges. And sometimes it just takes patience. And that's not an easy answer, because in our world, it's like, you know, it's instant.

We want things to be instant.

But I think just walking and continually giving thanks, even in those tough moments, for what it is you see is not that's going to sustain you through it, but just to keep going.

And then once you see this thing that you can grab onto, dream big into it, don't hold back and don't, don't really do what I did, which was set myself up to fail, but lean into it and take joy in it and just. It's tough.

I mean, there's no easy way to say like, you know, to put a bow around it, but walk in it, give thanks in it, and the path will just emerge. And when it does, walk through it in confidence.

I love it. It's awesome. Hey, how can people connect with you, Kate?

So I have my site, which is simplepinmedia.com but honestly, I'm doing a little bit more on Instagram, which is implepenmedia. I do stories over there too, about like, business and more personal life stuff. A lot of the other stuff is like Pinterest marketing.

So if you really want to know about Pinterest marketing, I have a podcast and you can find everything on the the site. But if you want to get a little more connected with life, Instagram is probably the best way to connect with me over there.

And that's @simplepinmedia.

That's awesome. Check her out, everybody. And Kate, thank you for hanging out with me on the podcast.

You're Welcome.

I love you. Hey, guys. To keep up with us, you can find us on Instagram @WeCollide and on Facebook as Collide Women.

And you can also visit our website at wecollide.com to find out more about resources and our event information and blog posts, our podcast, etc. Etc.

We are so glad that you hung out with us today, and I hope that you feel encouraged to lean into what it is that God is unfolding in your life so that you can be used in this world to do amazing things. We'll catch you next week.