In this episode of the ADHD-ish™ Podcast, host Diann Wingert sits down with client Kim Van Lue, an executive development coach, to discuss relaunching a business with intention. Many neurodivergent leaders struggle with generalist burnout and unstructured workflows. Kim shares how aligning with an effective ADHD business strategy and building sustainable entrepreneur accountability systems allowed her to transition from a generalist to a focused specialist.

By honoring her natural energy rhythms and leveraging tailored ADHD business coaching, she created a thriving, multi-six-figure business model. Discover how custom ADHD business operations can bring lasting clarity, efficiency, and sustainable success to your venture.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS & TIMESTAMPS:

‍[00:00] Intro & Kim's Background: Executive Development Work

‍[12:00] The Swiss Army Knife Problem: Why Generalists Can't Charge Premium Prices (The Niche Conversation)

‍[15:00] Four Tendencies Obliger Wiring: Building Accountability Systems That Actually Work

‍[21:30] Planned Pauses & Pivots: Restructuring Your Business Around Energetic Patterns (The 5th Pillar of the ADHD-ish Method)

‍[28:00] The 10-Year Planning Conversation That Changed Everything

‍[31:50] Moving Forward: Book, Speaking, Leadership Programs (Taking Steps Now)

‍[35:15] Advice for Listeners Standing Where Kim Was

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THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS: ‍

1. Niche Down, Even When It Feels Wrong: Kim went from offering many services to three core offers. It felt like leaving money on the table. Instead, it freed her to charge premium prices, attract better clients, and build a recognizable brand. ‍

2. Accept Your Wiring, Don't Fight It: As an Obliger with ADHD traits and justice sensitivity, Kim needs external accountability and clear boundaries. She stopped wrestling with who she isn't and built systems for who she actually is. ‍

3. Structure Your Business Around Energy Patterns, Not Just Targets Kim's energy dips in winter. Instead of pushing through, she restructured which offers she promotes seasonally. Result: a sustainable business that honors her natural rhythms. This is the 5th pillar of the ADHD-ish Method™—Planned Pauses & Pivots.

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MENTIONED DURING THIS EPISODE: ‍ ‍

Ep #267 ADHD & Justice Sensitivity: From Overwhelm to Advantage in Business

The Four Tendencies Guide

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ABOUT TODAY’S GUEST, KIM VAN LUE

‍Executive development coach specializing in board/leadership diagnosis, executive transitions, and team development across higher ed and mid-sized organizations. Currently writing a book, building her speaking platform, and designing signature leadership programs. ‍

CONNECT WITH KIM: Website | LinkedIn

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YOUR ADHD-ish™ HOST, DIANN WINGERT

‍Diann Wingert, a former psychotherapist turned ADHD-informed business strategist, coach, works with neurodivergent entrepreneurs who want to build a stand-out, sought-after, profitable business based on their unique brilliance.

‍The 5th Pillar in The ADHD-ish™ Method coaching framework is: “Planned Pauses & Pivots” and it made all the difference in reimagining Kim’s business. Is it time to experience the ADHD-ish Method in YOUR business? The first step is scheduling a free consultation to see if we’re a fit. Click here to book yours now.

‍Kim's story is just one example of what's possible when you accept yourself unconditionally and redesign everything around that acceptance. Need other examples of what’s possible? Check out more Client Success Stories episodes.

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WANT TO TRY ADHD-INFORMED BUSINESS COACHING FOR FREE ? Check out my digital clone, Di AI —personalized ADHD-informed business guidance on-demand.

If you love the show, please leave a comment on Spotify (I personally reply to each one) or leave a review so more ADHD-ish business owners can find THE podcast full of real talk and real solutions for neurodivgent business brains.

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© 2026 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops / Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.

H: So Kim, we are here today to recreate the story of how we work together and the decisions you made, the changes that you made, and where you are now. I think of your story as a play in 3 acts. First one I'm calling Stuck, the second act is Shift, and the third is Relaunch. So starting with Stuck, let's talk about what you do for a living, and because it's going to matter later, you coach senior executives through big transitions. And the irony of it is that you hired me to help you go through a big transition. Walk me through what your business looks like day to day.

G: Sure. I work mostly in the executive development and organizational development space, and I do that in 3 different ways. I work with CEOs and boards to help them diagnose when something isn't working, typically in the people space. It's often around leadership dynamics or team dynamics or things like that. I also do coach executives from a place of development and often am working with them on transitions.

You know, it could be changes; it could be a promotion; it could be any number of challenges. And then I do work with executive teams from more of a workshop or team development standpoint. And so day to day, my clients are across a variety of industries often they are in higher ed. I have spent several years working in higher ed, particularly in the advancement space but I also do work with some mid-sized businesses too.

H: I wanted to ask you that question in particular because I just wanted to hear how the offer suite, the 3 ways that one can work with Kim Van Lue, how they just now smoothly roll off your tongue because it was a lot of work getting us there so we're going to rewind. Before we started working together, you had already built a business once, and this is not at all unusual for folks with ADHD. Many of us start and stop multiple businesses before we land on the one that sticks. But in between building that business and shutting it down, you took a full-time role.

And I see this a lot too, like start a business, stop a business, take a job. Now think about another business. And we don't wanna keep starting over from scratch and making the same mistakes. But something also happened that was important as you figured out you were ADHD along the way. So what was happening that made you think, okay, something has to change, I think it's time to start my next business and you started looking for somebody to help you do that.

G: Yeah, I had stepped away from my consulting and coaching business, which looked a little different then than it does now. As you said, I took a full-time role in an organization and I think over the course of time, I just realized there was a lot about being my own boss that I really missed. I really missed kind of being in that driver's seat and having the autonomy to make a lot of those decisions or all of those decisions on my own. And at the same time, I was a little bit concerned about coming back into the business as it was, or as I had left it, because I also was battling maybe not always feeling challenged in the way that I wanted to feel challenged.

You know, some of the foundations of this work I've done for a long time, and I knew that I really wanted to redesign it with intention, and I needed somebody to help me do that. As you said, it probably had been a year-ish that I had been aware of my likely ADHD diagnosis, or as you like to say, ADHD-ish tendencies. And I really had been intentionally learning about those, but was looking for a coach who could kind help me dig into that with, you know, a certain level of expertise that I didn't feel like I had.

H: It's a really smart decision because you've had ADHD all your life. You've always known you were different, as we do, but being able to actually say, oh, okay, this makes sense. This makes sense why I like to do a bunch of different things, why I'm more than happy to change my mind and start things over. And we haven't always given ourselves permission to be who we already are, but in service to helping guide us, giving us the guidance, the support, the advisory capacity, the accountability, it's really useful to hire a coach, but it has to be the right coach. And most of us have some pretty horrific stories about working with the wrong one.

I think you are a gracious person in general, but in your own words, the previous coach that you had hired was pretty abrasive and may have actually done more damage than good. I wish I could say this is a rare experience, but the stories I hear really are shocking. What did that experience teach you about what you needed and how did you determine that I was the right fit? Because, Kim, plenty of people would just say, you know what, I got burned and I'm not working with another coach, I'll figure this out on my own.

G: Well, admittedly, because I am a coach, I probably have a bias toward coaching. You know, I do feel like it's a really valuable channel for our own personal growth and development. And to your earlier comments, it can be really damaging, I mean, to have a good coaching relationship, you really have to be able to be vulnerable with that person. And if you're going to be vulnerable with that person, and then they somehow respond in a way that doesn't feel, doesn't give you a sense of belonging or acceptance, that can be really damaging. Not that it has to all be rainbows and sunshine. I mean, I think a coach can be devil's advocate. I think they can nudge you and prod you along to the extent that you need that.

But at the end of the day, what was important for me was someone who was going to really center me and my needs in the coaching relationship. And I think if the coach is centering their method or their approach or their style. I mean, maybe if your needs are really basic, that's fine. But generally, you know, we are all unique individuals and so finding someone who was really going to be able to see me for who I was I mean, I think you at one point even talked about, hey, I've got lots of tools and techniques that we will tap into, but we're not going to do that necessarily in an overly prescribed way. And that was really important too, because I needed to be able to kind of sort through various topics in a pace that made sense with me and a sequence that made sense with me so yeah, those were important things.

H: I think it's especially important when you are in the early stages of coming to terms with your ADHD identity, as I call it. You know, whether you say, yep, I'm ADHD, and now it becomes a major feature of your identity and how you experience yourself in the world, and you talk about it a lot and you can't wait to tell everybody, or if it's more of a quiet awareness that, okay, now this information is helping me make sense of some things that have maybe been a cause for concern or maybe made me struggle in ways that I didn't quite understand.

And because this is fairly new to you, I imagine you're gonna be continuing to discover and uncover this for quite some time. But when you think about the past decade of really feeling both satisfied and stuck in equal measure. How do you think the discovery of your ADHD-ish tendencies has shifted the way you think about yourself and how you think about yourself, especially as a consultant, a coach, and a business owner?

G: Gosh, you know, that's such an interesting question. It's been really enlightening. I think there's been a much greater sense of acceptance and even just lots of aha moments of, oh, not everybody's like that, which has really been interesting. It's helped me understand my reactions, for sure. I think, to the point of being stuck, there have been some things in my professional environments, there's been some things, you know, just in life more generally, that I've had really significant reactions to or responses to. And it's helped me better understand some of that. I think before we started working together, Diann, I was certainly one of your podcast listeners. And there was an episode where you said something about, I'm not going to remember the terminology, but it was something about this justice orientation.

H: Yeah, I knew you were gonna say that! Because we talked about this a lot.

G: Yes!

H: In one of our calls, it was the episode about justice sensitivity, we're going to link to that in the show notes for anyone that wants to listen to it or go back and listen to it. It was a big aha for me as well when I just thought it was me. I just thought that I was like Joan of Arc and I was always on some crusade to right the world's wrongs. I was a social worker for 20 years, that fits too. But I didn't realize that it was associated with ADHD and that was a big eye-opening moment for you too, because you also have a very strong sense of justice and a keen awareness when other people don't.

G: Well, and it was so funny. I mean, for literally the last 2 decades, I've often referred to myself as Captain Justice, like, here comes Captain Justice. And so I literally remember being in the car in a commute, and you're talking through that episode, and I'm like, wait, what? So that, again, there were lots of those moments that I just think really helped me even better understand why, in certain moments over the past decade, when I have felt stuck from time to time, why things felt so significant, when perhaps the people around me were just bopping along, happy as could be. And so that was all very illuminating, and I think really equips me so much better going into the future to just have intention around where I make choice and where I put energy and what feels OK to me and just to better help me be thoughtful about the activity in my life.

H: I love that so much. I think it's probably one of the most important pieces of self-awareness and self-acceptance that we have the opportunity to embrace. Instead of thinking, God, why do I make such a big deal out of stuff like this when other people clearly don't give a shit one way or the other? And they're like, oh, you're so passionate. I remember someone telling me, you're always so passionate and she did not say it in a good way. It was like, what kind of freaking weirdo are you that you just— wow, you know. But honestly, your life starts to improve and your business starts to improve immeasurably when you stop questioning and you stop fighting who you already are.

And actually, I think use it as a screening tool for finding the people that are meant to be in your life and kind of filtering out those that aren't. One of the biggest shifts I think that you made during our work together is, like me and many other people with ADHD, you like to have a lot of variety. You like to do a lot of different things and if you have the opportunity to help a potential client and they tell you what their needs are, we've talked about this. The immediate thought in your mind was, I could do that, you know, I could do this, I could do that, I could do anything. And in truth, in truth, let's be honest, if we put our mind to something and we genuinely want to do it, we will most definitely do it and we most definitely do it well, even if we've never done it before.

Now, that may be a way of creating a business, especially in coaching or consulting, where you're kind of a Swiss Army knife. Like you can do a lot of different things for a lot of different people, but that's not a great way to build a standout sought-after business where you can charge premium prices and create a stellar reputation. For that, and nobody wants to hear this, you didn't wanna hear it, I didn't wanna hear it, you need to kind of hone and refine and in fact niche down and curb your enthusiasm for saying yes to everything that you could do in favor of what you most want to do and what you are best suited to doing. You were a really good sport with the process. Some of my other clients, it's really painful for them. You got it, you went with it, but I wouldn't say it was easy. Put that process into words, in your own words, what was that like?

G: Yeah, I mean, I remember at some point me presenting, say, like, service offerings or, you know, products, however, whatever nomenclature you want to put to that. And I think you were like, yeah, like, we're gonna need to cut this in half or something, you know, of that variety. And I mean, that's part of the value of a coach, right, and a partner who's going to tell you the hard things. And do it from a place of looking out for your own happiness and success. And so even in that brief intro, to be able to really boil down my work into 3 different buckets, you know, in the past, I might have taken on projects that I could do, and I could do from a place of having many years of experience doing them. And they weren't necessarily things that I was excited about.

They weren't necessarily things that I felt like delivered the strategic value to my clients that aligned with the way I wanted to be engaged with my clients. And so I think your process of let's get it all out, and then let's refine and narrow and niche down was really, really helpful to me. And honestly, that was kind of the cornerstone of everything, because once we got to those 3 buckets, then I could look at my financials differently, and I could plan my year differently.

H: Yeah.

G: And, you know, it just opened up a lot of other, I would say like next level type of work that's been really valuable for me.

H: It honestly, it's the hardest part of the work that I do regardless of the client. You were no harder than most, in fact easier than many. You understood the reason for it. You didn't have a huge reaction to, but why? I want to keep, I want to be a Swiss Army knife. I don't want to be a strawberry fork. But it's, and part of this, Kim, I think is related to the fact that, and I like to do this, especially when I'm working with a new client who is new to their ADHD diagnosis or self-identification.

The Four Tendencies self-assessment we did very early on, and like many people, you are an obliger and God love the obligers cuz they make the world go around. But people who are obligers, and I will link to the Four Tendencies framework as well for anybody who's interested in figuring out which one they are. But the obliger is the person who is activated by meeting other people's needs and can't stand to break a promise to anyone else but themselves.

So the people who say, I'm gonna go on a diet, I'm gonna start exercising, I'm gonna take up a hobby, I'm gonna spend more time with my parents, whatever it is, and then we don't do it. But if it's for someone else, it's gonna get done even at our own expense. And, but it makes it really hard to set boundaries. It makes it really hard to identify what you most want to do because it's natural for you to show up for others. So how do you see your ongoing work with that tendency now? Because when I think about Obligers, it's, where do I get the accountability that I need? And how do I set the boundaries with myself and with others so I don't start spreading out and end up where I started.

G: Yeah. I mean, a couple, so yes and as soon as I saw that, I was like, yep, that's me. I mean, if I've had to get really serious about fitness, it's always been, well, I'm gonna have to get a personal trainer then.

H: Yes.

G: Because I have to have a person at the door waiting for me to show up for my appointment. It can't just be signed up for the class, because I might just still not show up to the class so yes, that is totally me, unfortunately. I do think that's where coaching has been really valuable, you know, having a coach partner. In fact, even though our engagement has concluded, I had a day a couple weeks ago where I was like, hmm, I wonder where how Diann is. It was a little bit of like, I might need my accountability partner on this. So that, just generally, coaching has been a really important vehicle. I would say also, and this may be a little counterintuitive, but sometimes I structure my client engagements intentionally to create that accountability with…

H: 100%!

G: Yeah, so we've got check-in points, and I know I have to show up at that check-in point with certain things. I create accountabilities at the start of the engagement around what we're all committing to. It allows me to add enough structure and to get enough people on the same page and then I will uphold that obligation. I will fervently make sure that I deliver on, you know, whatever expectation I've set in those, those kinds of mechanisms.

And then I do have some other solopreneur, entrepreneur friends that, you know, we more organically kind of come together every couple months to try to support one another. But it's a real challenge, honestly, it is important to be aware of, say, self-awareness is the first step, but then you got to figure out what are you going to do about it? And so, yeah, finding those different ways to create the outcomes that you need when you aren't necessarily able to do that on your own really easily.

H: It's why I now say the first stage of really coming to terms with having ADHD and owning a business. It used to be self-awareness, my model used to start with an emphasis on self-awareness and then move into self-acceptance. Now it starts with self-acceptance because I've come to realize with a foundation of self-acceptance, we can have the courage to really face the things about ourselves that we have struggled with and been uncomfortable with our whole lives. It's no longer negotiable. I accept myself unconditionally.

That doesn't mean I love everything about myself or I just leave it as is and I'm not gonna try to do anything about it. But that level of radical self-acceptance permits me to say, you know what? I love the idea of being an Upholder. I love the idea of just say I'm gonna do something, I'm fucking doing it, even if nobody holds me accountable but that's not who I am. I'm an Obliger. An Obliger needs someone else setting an expectation that I am loath to disappoint. I need that, that's who I am. I didn't decide to be that way and honestly, I don't really know that it can be changed. So why would I even expend the energy to wrestle with that? I'm just gonna get the personal trainer so I applaud you in that.

Know who you are, know what you need, and don't fight it, 'cause everything gets easier when you stop. Another inflection point we had, I think, was I think those are probably the biggest transformation that really made so many things just. I could literally see all the puzzle pieces that were still on the table just click into place in your mind and then you were like, go, go, go. When we started talking about the 5th pillar that I've added to the ADHD-ish Method, positioning, packaging, pricing, promoting, and it was partly because of my work with you that really made me realize, no, this has to officially come into my method and that is the planned pauses and pivots.

When we started talking about the fact that, you know what, it's not just the ADHD, it's your energy levels, it's seasonal variables to your mood, energy, and motivation. Why don't we bake that into your business model, to your offers, to your outreach so that you can kind of go with your own natural flow instead of just forcing yourself to push through those times of the year where it's 3 to 4 times as hard. When we started talking about setting your business goals to your personal needs, not just your financial targets, I literally think I saw your head explode on the Zoom screen.

G: Yeah, I mean, it was so interesting, Diann, because kind of back to me coming into restarting my own business and some of the fears I had about, you know, I've got to, I really want to make sure I design this with intention so that it can be sustainable for as long as I want it to be sustainable and that was a really big aha! We were, you know, we started working together late in the calendar year. And so we were kind of working through some of those products into the winter months and my energy always dips in the winter months.

I am in the Midwest, where we get months of gray skies, and it is just abysmal and I feel it. I definitely feel it and I was waking up and having conversations with my husband, like, huh, I feel my energy being really low. And I'm doing the things I need to be doing but I'm realizing that I might need to be thinking about my work differently in the middle of February versus the middle of July. And again, because we had done the work around the products, I was able to come in and talk to you about, what does this really mean for the planning phase of our work?

And how might I structure maybe, you know, January and February differently than I structure, you know, June, July, August? And that has been, even just feeling like, as a business owner, I have the freedom to seek out, you know, like, I'm not, you kind of back to that earlier comment about, there was a point in time where I was just taking all the engagements I could take because I felt like I could be the Swiss Army knife. And now the idea that, you're really in the driver's seat, right? You can structure your work in the way that's one of the advantages of having your own business, right and that was a really big moment.

H: Recognizing that even though you have your 3 offers, you don't have to offer all 3 of them all the time throughout the entire year in equal measure. Because once again, then we're putting our customers in the driver's seat instead of ourselves. It's really so interesting to me how many of us start our own business with ADHD because we really don't want to have a boss, but really coming to terms with the fact, well, bitch, you the boss now. Like, you got to be the boss of your damn self. And that really requires really looking at all the ways that we are conditioned to just make ourselves available.

For all of it, all the time, whether we're high energy, low energy, whether it's the time of the year where we'd much rather be on vacation or going to the beach or reading some books, and yet we're slogging through. It's like, oh my goodness, it's such a missed opportunity, Kim, when we don't realize that I can structure this business however I want. And if I don't wanna make this offer, which is like 12 weeks long, I don't want to start anybody in midwinter because then I'm going to be pushing through the most important part of the work when I am at my lowest for the whole year, yhat's not fair to anybody.

The client might not notice the difference, but you will feel it each and every day. So why not structure your business so that you've got the offers that work for them and for you? And you know what, it's not available at that time, they can be the first on the list for when your calendar for that offer opens up again. And the more you are focusing on your unique offers, your unique way of doing things, they will wait, that's just something we have to come to. And it feels really scary to make that decision, but I think your past experience in business really taught you, no, I really, I can do this and I need to do it now. You are very adaptable, that's something that I think is important to recognize.

It enables you to be able to take risks and to not be so afraid that something might not work out that you have a hard time pulling the trigger. To that point, you've made some big changes, not only starting a business, stepping away from it, taking a job, relaunching it. You also made a big move from a bigger city to a smaller one, moving from the South to the Midwest so you could be closer to family. But a lot of things have changed in your personal life since you made that decision. So your adaptability, your resourcefulness, your resiliency, and your willingness to give yourself permission to change your mind.

These are all traits that really help people succeed in entrepreneurship. Those that don't have those traits, it's a lot harder for them. But when you have rebuilt a business around where you are in your life and how it can fit so much better in your life, do you think it's like, are you, do you just think about this as your business or do you really look at this as an opportunity to redesign your life at the same time?

H: You're not very good at math either.

G: Oh, I mean, well, that's the math. That's the math, you were right. But I had this moment of like, oh my gosh, like, that sounds like it's 10 minutes away, right? Like, I mean, the 10 years isn't really all that long. And, that was great, like, to the point of, when I think about the last 10 years and all the changes that have happened in my life, and having a moment of looking into the future to the next 10 years, and what do I want to be building? What do I want to be positioning myself for in 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 years from now? A lot of the work that we were doing allowed me to think into the future in that way. So not just to solve for today, but to build something that really does have the legs. And it's been exciting to be able to do, start some work on some of the things that really will be seeding opportunities I think down the road that can allow my business to evolve in ways that I think will be important to me as I continue to have more birthdays, hopefully.

H: It was one of the things that was very exciting to me, Kim, about our work together is, you know, a lot of folks with ADHD, when you ask them about their future plans, they literally look shocked. And I know this is, we have time blindness, our relationship with time is, is very unique in many ways. I prefer to refer to it as time optimism because I always think I have more time than I actually do. And to the point where you're like, you knew you were turning 50, but you're like, I'll be 60 in 10 years, what the hell?

G: It was like, wait, what? Is that the math?

H: No, that's impossible, but I think our reaction to it is amusing. And it's, if you have any doubt that you have ADHD, if you have that reaction when someone says, so you're turning 50 and in 10 years you'll be 60 and they look at you like, the fuck I will. It's like, okay, gee, you should probably think about, you know, getting assessed or reading a book about ADHD because you probably qualify. But I do think it was super helpful, not in the way that a neurotypical business coach would ask where they say, so let's create your 10-year plan because we generally don't think that far into the future and I honestly don't think we need to.

In most cases, especially when you're relaunching a business, because a lot's going to change in the first couple of years. But what I loved about that question, first of all, your reaction was really funny and so relatable for me. I, every year when my kids would have a birthday, I'm like, oh my God, it feels like this had just happened, it's a birthday again, or even my own. But yeah, it gave you the opportunity in the safe respectful, supportive environment of this relationship to name and claim some things for your future that to me felt really empowering for you to share and to really bring that reality into focus.

Not be like, yeah, one day I'm gonna, like, oh yeah, maybe, yeah, it would be nice if I so many people say, oh, it'd be nice if I did a TED Talk, or it'd be cool if I had a book, or yeah, I can imagine myself. Launching a podcast or being on stage or starting a nonprofit arm of this business or whatever. Most of the time we just toss those ideas off, most of the time we just, it's just talk. But I remember very distinctly that you had some very specific ideas for where this business could go and grow and how you could grow as a professional. Would you share a couple of those?

G: Yeah, sure. I've been toying with the idea of a book for a few years, and, you know, the time blindness or time optimism, which I do much prefer, it's such a real thing. I mean, I'm constantly like, oh, I have 8 hours, I could like build an entire country in 8 hours. Nope, probably can't, but it feels like I could and so yes, absolutely, I've been thinking about a book for a while. I have just started to take some baby steps toward actually moving that into being. And it's coming from a place of both a real passion about the subject, and I think there's a lot of opportunity for me to use that to align future endeavors with what I want, right? I think there's an opportunity for me to maybe move a little bit more into the speaking space and to design some particular leadership development programs linked to this research.

And so taking some steps toward really, you know, not just thinking about that, but really starting to execute that feels really exciting. And I do think that conversation about 10 years was pretty important to that, because it was suddenly like, OK, I can look back 10 years and, you know, that doesn't seem that far away. And yet, wow, that's only 10 years and I mean, I don't know, in 10 years, I'm not even really sure if I want to be still working at the same capacity that I'm working right now, right? And so it brought a lot of things into focus that I think created I don't know if I would say urgency, but it was certainly a nudge around, okay, you know, now's the time.

H: Now is the time and there's something to me magical about turning 50. I think especially for women, but really for all humans, there's something about that particular age that most of us have the reaction, well, I'm not a young adult anymore, but I'm not yet old either. It does create a certain sense of urgency, not the ADHD urgency where we wait till the last minute to do something important, but we're very familiar with that but this notion that if not now, when? Because I have literally been toying with this thing for a decade and I have nothing to show for it. Something about 50 and realizing 60 is right around the corner that you either kind of shit or get off the pot.

And you decided to make a commitment and to start taking steps, which I'm very happy to hear about because those 10 years are gonna come and go and they can come with you developing a speaking career and a book or without it. They're going to pass one way or the other so I love that it created a sense of awareness That time is not infinite and these are things that you can commit to now and start taking steps toward because they're not gonna happen on their own. So if anyone listening is standing like right where you are, close to it, kind of one foot in a safe job and one foot still holding onto the business or the path that they really, really want, what would you tell 'em?

G: I think I would really encourage them to look at their life holistically. You know, you kind of raised that topic earlier about, was I planning from a place of really just looking at my career or looking more holistically? And I do think that really looking at your life holistically and figuring out what do you really want and for many of us, that's really hard. And I think especially women, so much of our life is often, especially in the middle of your life, focused on you know, raising kids or supporting your spouse or being a community volunteer or helping your aging parents or whatever it is that—

H: All of the above, usually.

G: Right, all of the above, all at once. It's hard, sometimes it's really hard to even remember, like, is choice part of the equation for me? Because it doesn't, it feels like I'm just in autopilot mode all the time. So I think my advice would be step back, really look at your life holistically. Figure out what do you want and then identify what needs to happen. Like, what's the next step to help you figure out how to actually bring that into fruition? And that might be working with a coach; that might be having a conversation with your boss, right? Like, any number of things but really, you know, life is short, and just making the most of it, the opportunities that you have.

H: I love it. Kim, thank you for being here. Thank you for being such a wonderful client. Thank you for making such good use, not only of our time together for this client success story interview, but the 6 months we spent together weaving who you really are and what you really want into your new business. I will make sure that we link to it and you in the show notes, as well as the Four Tendencies and the Justice Sensitivity information. This was delightful my friend. Thank you so much.

G: Thank you. It was so great to thanks for having me, Diann. It was great to be here and, you know, big thanks to you. Like, I am super excited about where the business is headed. I've had a really good first half of the year and, you know, a big, no small part of that is due to my work with you. So I really, really appreciate you and just a lot of the advantages of our time together.

H: You're awesome.