Landy Peek (00:36)
What if the story you keep brushing off as just ordinary is actually the very thing that makes people trust you, remember you, and connect with you? Welcome back to the Landy Peak podcast. I'm Landy Peak. And today we're talking about something that matters, whether you run a business, lead a family, or simply trying to show it more honestly in your own life. It's your story, not the polished version, not the inspiring wrap-up, the real story, the lived one.
The one that carries your perspective, your truth, and the things you have learned by actually living them. Because the truth is, people do not connect to perfection. They connect to what feels real. They connect to what helps them feel seen. So if you've ever wondered whether your story matters, whether it's worth sharing, or whether anyone would even care, this conversation is gonna shift that.
today I'm joined by Kelly Harris, feel stuck at a plateau in their business reposition their work so they can attract higher level clients without forcing growth or trying to become someone they're not. And what she teaches around storytelling is powerful because it is not about saying more, it's about saying what is true in a way that actually connects. This is an incredible conversation, I'm so excited for you to hear it.
So let's get to it.
speaker-0 (01:54)
Welcome Kelly Harris to the Landy Peak Podcast. Kelly, I'm so excited you're here. Can you share a little bit about yourself so the listener can get to know you?
speaker-1 (02:03)
Yeah, I am a mama for ⁓ and I help establish service based businesses, specifically women who've hit a plateau and they're repositioning to help them reposition their business to attract higher level clients so that growth feels focused and not forced.
speaker-0 (02:21)
I love the growth feels focused, not forced. I want to kind of bring in how this can support a woman who's not in business. Because a lot of my listeners are business humans, and we're entrepreneurs, and we're moms, and we're doing a lot of stuff. But there are listeners out there that don't have a business. So.
making sure that they are still like, yes, I want to listen to that conversation. Can you speak about stories? Because we're really diving into our stories and how we can share our stories, yes, for our business, but also for leadership. And leadership can be in anywhere in our lives.
speaker-1 (03:00)
Yes, absolutely. So first of all, if you're a mom, I don't even care if you're like a cat mom or a dog mom, if you're a mom, you have some form of leadership. As a woman, we have some form of leadership in our life because culturally, we're expected to do the invisible chores, we're expected to do all the things. And so whether you like it or not, you have some form of leadership in your life. And what I have learned is that using your story and your lived experiences,
really helps to attract the right people into your life and repel the wrong ones.
speaker-0 (03:32)
I love that. So talk to me more about that. How does our story and sharing our story and our lived experience attract the right people? We kind of hear that in other areas, but repel the wrong ones. Go into that a little deeper for me.
speaker-1 (03:47)
So I'm gonna actually step back and kind of start with the story. How I ended up on this was I ⁓ was a copywriter for a long time and then I moved a little bit into marketing and now I'm into the business growth side of things. But when I started, the thing that I kept hearing people say was like, talk about your secret sauce, talk about what makes you special. And I was like, I have no idea what that means. I have no idea what you're talking about. And it took about two years for me to realize like your-
your secret sauce, what makes you special is your lived experience and your perspective of that. And if you are willing to share that with someone, then what happens is you give somebody else permission to be seen, both in life and business. And when you do that, what happens just, you know, we all live in the world of internet. The trolls come out, the people that feel threatened that want you to stay small will come out and it becomes very easy to know, those are not my people.
we kind of need to repel or my messaging kind of repels that person. And there are other people that are gonna come to you and say, hey, I've been watching you for a while, but I've never felt so seen before. And the thing about story is that our brains are actually wired for story. If you really go back into history and you think about it, the verbal language is actually about 20,000 years older than the written language.
And so how we pass down tradition, how we pass down history, how we taught our kids was verbally. And so our brains are wired for a story. So if you tell a story and you get, like I have a framework I'll teach you here in a minute that's great for everybody. But if you can tell your story in a way that serves somebody else, that is how you're going to attract the right people and repel the wrong ones.
speaker-0 (05:33)
This is incredible. But really coming into, and I want the listener to hear how our own story, our lived experience, really is that special sauce. It is kind of how we're attracting, how we're repelling, yes, because we're having different experiences and we have people that we are drawn in by that story. But this is how we naturally normally learn and connect with people. There isn't an
speaker-1 (05:45)
L
speaker-0 (06:03)
that's like, special fancy, right? We all have lived experiences. And just by sharing those, we are allowing somebody else to say, ⁓ me too. And now maybe I'm safe to share, because I think a lot of women don't feel safe to share.
speaker-1 (06:21)
Yeah, I think that's actually something, I feel like that's very cultural. Our generation and maybe the generations that are following are lot more willing to share. They're willing to talk about the things that were taboo in the past, like perimenopause or mental health or things like that. Even how we raise our kids. You know, I laughingly tell my own kids like, ⁓ we'll see things happen in our own family. And I'm like, that's generational trauma right there. Like that was something we never talked about and we're never allowed to talk about. So let's talk about it.
And like you said, I think that there's so much more power in being willing to share your story. And the first few times you do it, I'll be 100 % honest with you. The first couple of times that you do it is so uncomfortable, but that's where the growth lies. The growth lies in that being uncomfortable and willing to take a half step out of your comfort zone.
speaker-0 (07:13)
And it is uncomfortable. And we do have the fear of like that deep fear of rejection and what are people gonna say and what are they gonna think about me? But as we share our story, at least in my experience, it does open up those conversations and that relatability where we are human and as business people, and I know for me, it has been like, I want to be seen as perfect and
early on in my business, sharing the imperfections, the stories, the struggles behind that felt so vulnerable that, and I had bought into that kind of pre-existing story of you need to be, and as a therapist, you need to be the professional, there needs to be some separation and detachment, and we don't want to show people the nitty gritty because if we don't have it all figured out, are they really going to want to work with us?
speaker-1 (08:09)
Now what's really interesting is we're actually starting to see a shift with that because of the AI that can pump out something that sounds so perfect. I can't tell you, I've probably had half a dozen clients come to me and say, I considered working with someone else, but when I looked at their website, their copy was too perfect. It was clearly written by AI and it made me question, could they actually get me the results that I wanted? I would rather see somebody that is showing me the journey that I feel like I can connect to on a human level.
than somebody who's going to be like, it's perfect. Okay, but perfect doesn't really exist. Perfect is in the moment.
speaker-0 (08:45)
And it's the nitty gritty that we connect with and we do want to see in other people. And as you say that, I'm like, yeah, I hadn't thought about that. But yes, I'm drawn in the same way. And full disclosure, I use AI in stuff to help me. But the way I'm using it is here's my verbal vomit, keep my language, and help me organize this into an email because, you know, here's my 20 minute thing that needs to be kind of pared down.
And we don't want to lose the humanness in it. We don't want to lose the nitty gritty. We want to share the struggle because if you're going from, I'm really, really struggling in perimenopause and midlife, and here's this idealistic person that gets to be at the end of the story, and that's kind what we want. We want that journey. But if you're jumping from, I'm struggling to here's perfect, you're going to lose.
the magic in there, because the magic is in the struggle, is in... is.
speaker-1 (09:48)
It
is the journey. Yeah. And the thing that I find so often is, I don't know if it's cultural or if us as women just want to do it, but we're like, I see that woman over there. That's like what I want and how I want to get there. But how did she get there? And then you have to spend all this time and research kind of like reverse engineering how we got there. And it's like, OK, there are steps involved that I couldn't see, that I didn't see because they didn't share them.
speaker-0 (10:16)
Right, so go into kind of how can we take our lived experience if it doesn't feel anything dramatic, right? We didn't have this big trauma or this big thing that we overcame. How can we use our lived experience to start telling our story, to create that connection?
speaker-1 (10:35)
So I'm gonna share a framework. This is something I use with all of my clients, especially when we're creating any kind of content, but it's called the MESS Framework. It's M-E-S-S, and I love it because there are times when we're all a little bit of a hot mess. so this actually stands for the moment, the motion, shift, and share. So the moment is what was happening. So it could be something super mundane. This is an example I've used several times. Maybe we're making cookies with the kids. We're making cookies with the kids, and...
I don't know about you, but I mean, I have four children ranging in age from two to almost 16. And ⁓ we all have an opinion of how this should be done properly. And it's just going to be a few minutes before our cookie making at some point will descend into some form of chaos. It just will because we also have, you know, very neurodivergent family. And so everybody just, everybody has that opinion. And at some point I am going to either be
we've messed up the recipe or the kids are fighting or something has happened. Or we've got the two-year-old eating all the chocolate chips out of the cookie dough, whatever that looks like. So that's the moment. What is happening? The emotion is how we're feeling about what's happening. Because there's a lot of takeaways on emotion. We could be getting frustrated. We could be soaking it all in because we know they're little and it's going to go by really fast. Or we could be a combination of multiple emotions.
Let's just take the example of the kids arguing. Well, the emotion is, yes, I'm frustrated, but also this is an opportunity because this is leadership happening. When they're starting to delegate, when they're learning how to work together, that's leadership. ⁓ And so the emotion is, hey, we were a little frustrated, but we got, now we're coworkers. We're all attacking this problem, which is the cookie dough, and we're all doing it differently and we're all open to these ideas.
The shift is what is the takeaway? Like what is the thing that I learned? It could be how we negotiate with, know, I lovingly say like sometimes how we negotiate with terrorists. Like how are we talking things down? How are we getting to the next step? Now that last S is share. So then you say, okay, here I had this mundane thing. We were doing cookies. The kids started arguing. ⁓ It was very emotionally.
You know, we had one kid screaming, one kid crying. We got back to our cookie dough, decided we didn't actually want cookies, but we just wanted the cookie dough. And the takeaway here is what I saw was the kids having leadership in real time over flour and chocolate chip. I like that. that moment, you can then turn around and share that with somebody else so that they don't have to go through that same thing.
speaker-0 (13:24)
Right. And if they're going through the same thing...
speaker-1 (13:27)
We can make it!
speaker-0 (13:29)
And I think that is so important in looking at there's lots of moments in our lives. Our day-to-day life is filled with those moments. A lot of times we're not seeing them past the struggle. We are getting trapped in, my gosh, I'm just trying to make cookies and the kids are screaming and hitting
speaker-1 (13:50)
Do it,
do it. We're gonna buy store-bought for the rest of our lives. Yes. Or we're never making gingerbread cookies again.
speaker-0 (13:59)
I'm done. I'm not experiencing this again. But then there's that moment that you're taking it farther and you're seeing, okay, so here's the struggle and we're living it and there's big emotions and then we are looking for
speaker-1 (14:16)
the opportunity.
speaker-0 (14:17)
Yes, the opportunity, that magic moment within it where it's like, ⁓ wait, we kind of stepped back. We figured out we don't want to bake the cookies. We want to eat the cookie dough. And we gave opportunities to see leadership where we wouldn't have seen leadership. We would have just said, like, here's a fight. Go to your rooms. We're done. Right.
speaker-1 (14:38)
cookie
dough goes in the trash, we're done.
speaker-0 (14:41)
Right, here's an opportunity. And so a lot of us as moms are creating those opportunities. We're seeing that, yes, we might be getting lost in the fight, and we're looking at how we can bring this in with our kiddos, how we can shift this, how we can use this as a teachable moment, but then it fades from there. But you're seeing, now let's share it.
speaker-1 (15:02)
Mm-hmm. Sure, because we tend to feel, especially if you're a mom in the online space, you tend to feel very alone. Yes. Even though we connect with hundreds of women internationally, we spend a lot of time in a room by ourselves with our computer. Yes. And so it's so easy to feel so alone, especially, I mean, there are other opportunities that you could take that same thing. We were making cookie doughs, tensions got heated. Now we have a lesson with the kids of K.
cool, you can be angry, how do we come back? How do we move forward? Because now we're teaching life skills for them when they're in business.
speaker-0 (15:39)
Yes, and the relational skills of let's repair. A lot of our generation didn't learn how to repair when we had ruptures in our relationship. And so we're bringing back in, now let's have opportunities for repair. And so just from that cookie dough experience, which is pretty normal, I'd say, for families to have that's within something that we're doing together, you're being able to tie it into so many different areas. So your business is about kiddos.
If your business is about leadership, if your business is about relationships, the same situation we can then tie in to, ⁓ this is how we can look at it and reframe it in a different sense.
speaker-1 (16:21)
Yeah, mean, you can even go further where you could say, cool, you're a marketer, so how do you market cookie dough? How do we talk about this in a way that other moms, other people, okay, I don't actually care about your cookies, but I'd like the cookie dough recipe.
speaker-0 (16:38)
Right? my gosh, yes. So then we're taking it in ways that we can. And so what I want the listener to hear and kind of that aha moment is these mundane daily life experiences we can use to support how we are in our professional lives in so many different facets. That yes, if you are a chef and it's just cookie dough, recipes and things that you're sharing, this experience is still valid in.
We came back and we learned around the Kukudoan. We're gonna share this amazing recipe that everybody was fighting over. Or we're doing it relationship-based, or we're doing it leadership-based, or there's so many different facets that you can take a mundane, frustrating experience, and we have those, into something that becomes a powerful way to share and learn.
speaker-1 (17:30)
Exactly. it becomes that it can very easily that mundane experience can become your keynote. That you're that that's the thing that you talk about when you because people go, you're the cookie lady. What? No, I'm a business growth strategist. No, you're the one who talks about the cookies, like among other things. That's so interesting what people they just need that that ability to hook onto it. Their brains need that to go.
⁓ you started talking about cookies and I started listening to that episode. But then I went back and I listened to other things and I saw other perspectives. And I saw that those everyday moments that happen every single day to me, I get a choice. I get a choice to choose. Do I want to be frustrated or do I want to look for the opportunity? I love that.
speaker-0 (18:19)
just general life, we can hang on to that frustration and or we can shift into looking for the opportunity and your opportunities are hidden and I think all of these different stress and struggles.
speaker-1 (18:32)
yeah.
speaker-0 (18:34)
I would love if you go a little bit more. Thank you, honey. Teasing out, we have this mundane, everyday stress and struggle. We've been able to take that little step back, look at kind of that learning opportunity inside that stress and struggle. We then share it or want to share it. But where do we come in that fine line of sharing and oversharing?
speaker-1 (18:50)
that
speaker-0 (19:02)
because they think a lot of us are afraid that A, we're going to overshare or we just overshare. But then there's a lot of information out there about our kids, about our family. How do we use it as something that is supportive to us and not just random stories that are coming out?
speaker-1 (19:19)
Right, good question. This is one of the questions I actually get asked the most is, what is the difference between sharing and trauma dumping? Because I think we do it a lot without realizing because we don't get to talk to each other very often. And so when we start to feel comfortable, we just kind of word vomit on what's happening in our life. And it can very easily get very overwhelming. And so I always tell people there's a couple things to note. If you are
processing while you're talking, you're probably trauma dumping. Because when we can share a takeaway, is usually, not always, but most of the time it is from the scar, not from the wound. Okay, and what I mean by that is, is we've moved through something, when you get on the other side of it, it's much easier to say, crossed the bridge, there's safety on the other side, you can make it through. And then there are some things like,
speaker-0 (20:04)
Okay.
speaker-1 (20:18)
disclosure, my mother passed away ⁓ in June of last year and I do talk about it a lot. One is because we're still kind of navigating what life looks like on the other side of that, but also I know I want people to know like you can still move forward while you're in it.
speaker-0 (20:35)
I am so sorry about your mom. ⁓ so I want to pause on that because I really want to honor it, but that is a huge, huge thing. But there is something powerful in what you just said. Share about it as we're moving through it because they think as a lot of entrepreneurs, we have this sense that we have to have a Ben all the way, had everything figured out and it is resolved.
speaker-1 (20:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, and life doesn't work like that.
speaker-0 (21:03)
No, it doesn't.
speaker-1 (21:05)
Like it really doesn't, I mean, but what I'm gonna say is, so what ended up happening is my mom fell at a garage sale. They actually thought that she bruised her hip. It turned out she broke her pelvis in two places. Two days later, she slipped into a coma and never woke up. And I was actually in the middle of writing a book. My very first book when that happened, because what I had done was I had told a friend, an entrepreneur friend,
I have a bunch of emails and I feel like they're meant for something more." And she said, stick them into AI and just see what it tells you. And it came back and it said, these emails are your entire business and your entire business is stories, the strategy, stories, the mirror and stories, the mic. And if you were to write a book, then here are chapter ideas and here's what email would go with each chapter. And I was two thirds of the way done with it when my mom fell. And so the last...
third of the book, I actually wrote some stories about mom and even I'd already planned to go back and do another revision at some point. And I look back at it now I'm like, I probably there might have been a little bit of trauma dumping there. Like I tried to do stories in a way to honor my mother, but I also was well into just going through it in the moment. And what I knew was I couldn't stop because if I stopped writing, if I stopped to fully grieve that
everything in my business would come to a grinding halt. And that's not what I wanted. And I knew that wasn't what my mom would have wanted for me.
speaker-0 (22:40)
It really sounds like there is this process of, you were honoring there was a trauma dump. I am processing this in...
speaker-1 (22:48)
Real time.
speaker-0 (22:50)
this is out, is real, this is hard, this is really deep. And then going back and really sitting with the material and saying, okay, but this was the trauma dumping. It's not that it's not valid, it's not that it's not meant to be in the book, we just probably need some reframing.
speaker-1 (23:08)
Yeah, I'm
sure there's probably some things that will need to be reframed. I'm sure there are some things that I'm like, ⁓ why did we write that that way? Yeah, okay.
speaker-0 (23:17)
is also part of the journey.
Creatives and we're putting it out, that first initial dump is going to have a lot of processing and a lot of stories woven in that we're going to go back and reframe and say, okay, but that came out in the moment, which then helped this next thing come out. But this particular way in the fleshed out story that it came out can be condensed a little bit because that is a little bit more process.
speaker-1 (23:43)
And I wanted to share the moment.
speaker-0 (23:45)
Yes, and I think that's really valid to hear because a lot of women I think end up kind of in this frozen space Where right they're not saying our stories or when we try to write our stories It feels too big too vulnerable too much and so that we stop it all from coming out because like whoa This is gonna be a big processing verbal vomit
speaker-1 (24:08)
Right, and somebody's going to judge me. That was the other thought. Someone's going to judge me. And even now, like I take no qualms. The whole reason I wrote my book was I wanted it to be, okay, you can't afford to work with me right now, but you want to know what I think? Here's an easy way to get access to what I think. That was the entire reason that I started writing it. And if I'm really, really honest, because if you know, like, why not? Let's be vulnerable. ⁓
speaker-0 (24:25)
I lo-
speaker-1 (24:35)
A lot of what I did and even the first probably six months after my mom passed away, it was more like she's gone on a trip and it's fine. Like we're fine. It's fine. Like it's not fine. Everything's on fire, but you know what? We're probably fine. Like I'll just keep moving forward and it'll be okay. And it has been okay. It really has been good. And I also knew that she would probably come back and haunt me if
speaker-0 (24:53)
and
speaker-1 (25:03)
If I was like, okay, forget it. Like I'm out. Like we're done with the business. We're done with all the things because it was actually one of the last things I said to her before she slipped into the coma was the day before we had been talking about things that I had sworn I would never tell her. Like I had gone and gotten tested for ADHD and I had a therapist on all of these things that I knew my boomer mother would not probably be okay with. ⁓ And I said, and by the way, I'm writing a book and I expected criticism just because that was.
their love language. And what ended up happening was she said, ⁓ interesting. I can't wait to read it.
speaker-0 (25:41)
I love that. And here's our little blessing. And it's really...
I'm pausing a lot because I want to honor her experience. don't want to just like the human part of me is just like, we can't just keep going in.
speaker-1 (25:58)
I
know somebody's gonna be like, my God, that too much.
speaker-0 (26:01)
Let's do it. And it's not even too much. It's just like, I can't just kind of like brush past it and go to-
speaker-1 (26:08)
And it is a lot. mean, that's the other thing too is part of the human experience is that it's a lot. But you have to understand that you're not going through it alone. I mean, at some point, we're probably all going to lose our parents and become orphans. Like that's just life is cyclical like that. And the other thing is, you know, if I kind of the other thing I was going to say is when I share, I always try to think about what's the point for my person listening.
If one person can get something from this, then it's worth sharing.
speaker-0 (26:44)
I love that because that just takes and that hit me very emotionally. I can feel it in my body. And that helps reframe kind of what we're sharing and how we are sharing and looking at what is this person getting out of this information? Is it just me processing and having it off my chest? Or is there something that's woven in that will help someone else in whatever way it's going to help them?
speaker-1 (27:12)
Right.
speaker-0 (27:13)
And it's incredible that you have this kind of awareness of how our day-to-day stories can be woven in ways that it's going to support, impact, change other people's lives. And they don't have to be big and dramatic. And they can be big and dramatic. things like a cookie dough story or like losing your parents, both are things that as humans,
we've probably experienced or will experience or have known somebody that's experienced, right? It comes in that emotional connection, and we can use that in a way that then opens up doors, opens up stories, opens up communication, opens connection. Go ahead.
speaker-1 (28:00)
in
a way that serves others.
speaker-0 (28:03)
And that's huge. And I would love you to speak to the woman who's sitting there and going, okay, but how? Sure, I have day-to-day experiences, but I'm so overwhelmed in life and business and things that I'm doing. Like, how do I take this day-to-day experience? Is anybody really going to want to hear about my life? I'm just somebody. I'm just a therapist or I'm just a somebody that's
Not famous, I'm not Mel Robbins, like, is anybody really going to want to hear my story?
speaker-1 (28:38)
I mean, if I was, so a lot of times there's a couple things I would say to that. One, whenever I speak and I tell a story or I share, even if it's something on social media, I always specifically frame it to one person. It is the person who is my ideal, I guess specifically she's my ideal client. She's also one of my best friends on the entrepreneur world. So I just pretend like I'm talking to Jen. I just know that like, what does Jen need to hear today? ⁓ And that has really helped me.
get out of my own head. Like, hey, we're having coffee. What does Jen need to hear? The other thing I would say is, you know, we, as humans, we compare ourselves and we're like, well, I'm not a Mel Robbins, but guess what? At some point, she was just average like everybody else. She didn't like just magically become, you know, the speaker and the podcaster and writing the books. like, those all happen when you start taking the baby steps.
I laughingly tell people that I accidentally wrote a book last year because it wasn't on my bingo card for 2025. It was something that kind of fell into my lap. And it was something that it fell into my lap and I was like, okay, well, if I was going to do this, what would it look like? And it came together in about 45 minutes because I already had so much of the material. It became a way, a case of like, how do I string this together?
And it's written like a field guide, so there are questions at the end and like a mic drop and something for you to consider and be able to journal on. Because I wanted people to be able to go back to it at different points in their lives or different points in their journey and say, cool, this hits different now.
speaker-0 (30:15)
And I think if the listener can really get more comfortable with that in kind of coming back and circling back in things because I think a lot of us have that well, I've done that been there done that but the more you go through it the more that you sit with it the more it's like as I reread books and Re-gone through courses and things like that you get a different layer because you're sitting at a different place and
As we go through our own personal stories, you can be telling the same kind of life existence, right? But you're going deeper, you're going more. Go ahead.
speaker-1 (30:55)
What kind of came to mind when you said that was like the cookie story. There may be different lessons that you pull out at different seasons of your life.
speaker-0 (31:05)
Right.
speaker-1 (31:06)
And the one thing I will say too is you have to be brave enough to try. And it is the iterations, the, ⁓ had a friend who used to say it was the reps that help you get better to get where you need to be. Because the very first time that I ever did a Facebook live, people laugh at me to this day, I had a trash can right next to me because I was convinced that I was going to just blow chunks everywhere. Cause it was like,
Facebook Live, this is so scary, my God. Like somebody's gonna judge, it's gonna be horrible, I'm gonna throw up, this is really bad. And I literally got off my Facebook Live of like three minutes, was, So three minutes and I'm like, ⁓ God. I did the thing and then, like now, Facebook Lives don't bother me at all. And because I've done enough of them, that has actually led me to be able to be really comfortable enough to be able to launch a podcast.
Like it's those baby steps that lead us to where we're supposed to be.
speaker-0 (32:06)
Right. It's allowing our system to go, this is safe. This is OK. Like, no monsters came and ate me. Right. And then we get to try it again. And that reaffirms the new story of like, this is OK. But so many of our inner stories are keeping us from where we are destined to go.
speaker-1 (32:27)
Yes, we get so stuck and so in our heads. And so one thing I'm going to share with you, and this is another life story, but when my almost now 16 year old was 11, I took him to scout camp and I volunteered as one of the parents and we were very lucky because there were like four parents and four kids. So we got a lot of extra time with our children, but they, the scouts were scared. We were in a place where we live in Oklahoma and this particular scout camp offered
snow skiing as a merit badge. And what it involved was it was a hill that was basically covered in a Lego snap that was, and they taught the kids how to ski in the summer in 90 degrees, but like, taught them how to move, how to stop, how to do all the things. And it was really hard because you don't have snow to stop you or cushion your fall or anything. And so they were getting scraped up and all of them were like, this is hard. I don't want to do it. We're done.
I could die. And so the theme of that particular week has something that my own children know that if they say, I'm scared, this is scary, like my nervous system can't handle this, I'm always going to look at them and say, hey, when you come back, you know, I'm going to have a question for you. And the question will be, but did you die? Because that entire week of scout camp, the kids were doing rope climbing and
parasailing and all these things. And they were scared. And I got to the point where we know, us adults would say, when you come back, we have a question for you. And all four of the boys knew the question was going to be, but did you die? And all of them at some point in that week came and said, that was terrifying. My life flashed before my eyes. And that was amazing. I would do it again in a heartbeat. But they had to get out of that.
self-preservation to be able to get where they needed to be.
speaker-0 (34:27)
And that's a huge message because a lot of us are stuck in the worries, the fears, things that and in your situation, these are things that, feel big and scary and huge and and are in a supportive environment that are designed to keep you safe, right? If you one of your Boy Scouts, like that's a big deal if somebody actually dies. we're going in and there is a safety net.
This isn't, you're just throwing your kids into like, you know, survive. Here we go. Figure it out how to get home in three days. Right. But we have lives like that, right? We have safety nets. We have securities. We have systems and frames that do keep us safe. And we're still blocking ourselves because we are letting the fears kind of lead the way. It says, okay, what are my resources? What are my supports? Which you were giving your boys.
What are we're here. These are the resources. These are supports. This is how it's like.
speaker-1 (35:26)
fine, you'll be a little scratched up, it's gonna be okay, I promise. And to say you can do hard things, because we get so caught up in, ⁓ my god, I'm gonna launch a podcast, that feels really hard. Okay, cool, if that's what you feel is on your heart, what your next step is, you can do that. It's gonna take steps and it's gonna take time, but if you're willing to put in that time and effort, you can absolutely do it.
speaker-0 (35:53)
And I love how you distinguished if this is on your heart and your next steps, because we're not talking about go out and push yourself into anything and everything just to like freak yourself out, but looking at what is aligned. What do you know is your next steps? What is part of your next story? And you can get support, get resources so that you can step past that fear knowing it's gonna be scary, but you're not gonna die.
and you're going to be okay, but it is going to help lead you into a different experience. And then we get to come back and say, my gosh, that was awesome.
speaker-1 (36:29)
And you get to go back, here's the lesson I learned. I laugh because the last time my husband and I were in Jamaica, one of the guys, we're climbing up a side of a hill and there were cenotes and things like that. And he removes a board and he says, anybody want to jump 25 feet off the side of this cliff? It's totally fine. I'll do it if nobody else wants to do it. I said, yeah, I'll do it.
my husband's coming up the side of the hill. I didn't tell anybody I was gonna do this. I didn't even know I was gonna do this. So now I'm standing on the side of the hill and I looked down and I was like, ⁓ crap. He's like, there's no crap down there. I was like, there might be when I hit the ground, one problem at a time. And he was like, you don't have to do this. I said, no, I actually kind of do. And I jumped. And I remember thinking there was two thoughts. One was there was a good, fairly long chunk of time that I was completely free falling. And the second thing after I did it was,
my God, I did it. old Kelly, Kelly point 1.0 would never have done that. And what's really funny is I, my husband will tell the same story and he'll tell people he was walking up the side of the hill with his parents and the guy made the announcement about jumping off the side of the cliff. And he said, ain't happening. And my father-in-law said, well, there goes your wife. And my husband was like, crap.
now I have to do it. And so he also did it. And we talk a lot about like, okay, it was spontaneous and we're probably too old to do things like that now. And we were brave enough to do it. And by being brave enough to take that step, it's now one of those things that we talk about as a core memory.
speaker-0 (38:11)
And it's sometimes I love how you said the Kelly 1.0 wouldn't have done this because they think this midlife space especially is a lot of letting go of the old stories and saying, okay, that's who I was, but this is who I want to be and this is who I am. And what an incredible story to be able to share in like, I jumped off the cliff and all the things that can.
be woven into that in the power that you had, in the trust in yourself. There's a lot of deep resourcing that you can do from that story. But there's always like, and I look at like, am I going to regret not doing it?
speaker-1 (38:53)
100%. If I'm going to get one life.
speaker-0 (38:56)
If I'm gonna regret not doing it, then I'm probably going to do it. But it is a lot of self-trust in like, okay, because I can choose to not do it. You could have chosen to watch everybody else jump and that's okay. But you didn't. You said, this is Kelly 2.0 and I am jumping and look at where it got me. And I think a lot of life we need to go okay, big deep breath and weep knowing that
You know, we're not going to crash and plummet to our death, but this is going to give us an incredible ride.
speaker-1 (39:32)
Right. You don't want to look back when you're on your deathbed and say, I didn't do anything. I had one chance and I didn't do anything. The other thing that I really want to make sure that your listeners hear is that when we get to a certain point, usually around 35 to 40, when we realize that other people's opinions don't matter, because ultimately we are not responsible for what other people think of us, ⁓ and we can start to embrace that.
When it ends up happening is that we can safely, even though it's hard, start to iterate. And we're always iterating toward the end. What's the next thing that I need to do to get to the next version of me?
speaker-0 (40:15)
And that's big. What is the next thing I need to do to get to the next version of me? And that reframes like how we're looking at life. Instead of like, this is big and I can't, what is the next thing I need to do? And then it's step by step, but there can be big steps. They can be scary steps, but it is like, here's kind of that, as you talked about at the very beginning, when we're telling our story, what is that end point? What is that listener going to get out of our story?
speaker-1 (40:45)
Yeah, what's the shift and what's the share? What's in it for them?
speaker-0 (40:49)
Yes, and you're saying what's in it for us too, and like, here's our next level. And so as we're writing the stories, experiencing the life, we still have that kind of goal in mind of like, what is our next level? What is that next step I have to take to reach that next level? And that's such a cool reframe in how we're presenting our stories, but also living our life.
speaker-1 (41:11)
Yeah, and I love Thingly, you know, one of my children, I have three boys and one girl and the girl, she'll be seven soon, as in tomorrow. ⁓ But what's funny is we actually learned that the next right step from Frozen 2. Because there's an entire song when Anna talks about like, need to do the next right step. That's what you do in life and business. What's the next right step?
speaker-0 (41:35)
I use that too. like, I hadn't connected your words to Frozen 2, but we got it also for Frozen 2. My daughter who's 11 now, no longer into Frozen, but we watched it a lot. But it is, what is that next right step? And it takes a lot of pressure off of kind of this long-term, what is that next right step?
speaker-1 (41:41)
too.
it's not really our responsibility to know 100 % where we're going. Like we don't need to know what the end game is. We're not there yet. And you know, as long as we're in alignment with who we are supposed to be and we're doing the next right step to get to the next version of ourselves, I feel like that's enough to worry about.
speaker-0 (42:16)
great. my gosh, I agree so much. I would love you to kind of be able to kind of wrap this up for the listener in what do really want to share about sharing our own story, telling our stories so that I'm just leaving there. What do you want the listener to hear about sharing their own story?
speaker-1 (42:37)
Your story is super powerful. And the reason I say it's powerful is because it is uniquely yours. You could have someone who had the exact same experiences, but your perspectives are going to be totally different. And the truth of the matter is, is that you may have an experience and a perspective that someone else needs to hear. And if you're in business, that truth and that perspective could be the thing that gets you to the next level.
speaker-0 (43:04)
powerful. And as you're listening, if you're feeling that like hesitation of stories, just looking for the mundane. And then where can you kind of lead a client in as you've telling a client or just anyone because we use this in leadership, we lose some parenting rate. But being able to kind of look at that end goal and using your mess framework to kind of grew. And if we're using that mess framework,
It's a lot easier to say, okay, here's this cookie blow up, and this is kind of where we can share it and how we can share it in a meaningful way.
speaker-1 (43:40)
Right, we're not just telling people we had a cookie incident. No, we're sharing it in a meaningful way. And that's the other, I think, takeaway that I want people to really understand, is that stories give you the opportunity to create an experience that is both meaningful and memorable.
speaker-0 (43:57)
my gosh, that's powerful and an amazing way to end. I know that there are listeners that really want to connect with you. Kelly, can you share how people can continue the story with you?
speaker-1 (44:11)
Yeah, so I'm always looking for people who want, know, tell me what you thought. if you have ideas to share, can always email me at Kelly with a Y at KellyHarrisCreative.com. I actually have a podcast that is launching called From Invisible to In Demand, Using Story for Life and Leadership. And those are just little mini episodes, if you will, that are meant to just kind of meet you where you're at. And they're meant to be very, very tactical.
And you can also connect with me on Facebook and Instagram, Kelly Harris Creative. The book is called The Stories That Build Us, A Field Guide for Clarity, Connection, and Confidence in Life and Business. And it is actually broken up into three sections. ⁓ Story is the strategy, story is the mirror, and story is the mic. And what I love about it is that each, so each chapter has four main lessons and each lesson has at the very end a lesson, a mic drop, a check-in, and a mini prompt.
for journaling so that it is meant to be a field guide, something that you take with you and can go back and reference and hopefully the things hit differently if you're in a different season.
speaker-0 (45:19)
That sounds incredible and it is on Amazon. I will share the link down in the show notes. Thank you so much, Kelly.
speaker-1 (45:25)
Thank you.
Landy Peek (45:26)
Here's what I invite you to take from this. Your story is not something you earn the right to share later. It's the thing that creates connection now. Most people are waiting, waiting until it's clearer, waiting until it's more impressive, waiting until they feel more ready, until it feels complete. And that's exactly why they stay where they are. The shift is simple. Start using what's already here, those daily moments.
Because the woman who moves forward is not the one who has the best story. She's the one who's willing to share it. If this episode hit, don't just sit with it. Do something with it. Share it with a friend Share your own story in whatever way, shape or form feels good to you. And I want to let you know, because I don't think a lot of
women here how incredible they are. We are always saying it to other people, but you are smart and creative and talented and amazing. I love you and I like you. And I'm so grateful that you're here, that you're showing up, that you're doing something incredible for you and that you're here with me. I really appreciate that. I want to wish you all the happiness that today can bring and I will talk to you on the next episode.
Speaker 2 (46:39)
Hey, before you go, just a little bit of legal. This podcast is designed for educational purposes only. It is not to replace any expert advice from your doctors, therapists, coaches, or any other professional that you would work with. It's just a chat with a friend, me, where we get curious about ideas, thoughts, and things that are going on in our lives.
As we're talking about friends, if you know someone who would benefit from a conversation today, please share because I think the more that we open up these conversations, the more benefit we all get. So until next time, give yourself a big hug from me and stay curious because that's the fun in this world.
