How To Unlock Your True Potential ft. Kasey Compton

Uriah
Hi, Kasey. Welcome back to the podcast. So glad that you're here today. For the audience members who don't know who you are, I would love for you to share a little bit about your story and your business journey before we get into talking about your amazing new book.

Kasey
Hey, Uriah. Thank you so much for having me again. It's truly my pleasure to be a guest on your podcast. My story came... It's ever evolving, like anyone, but I started Started in the mental health space back in 2019 as a brand new graduate from a master's program and a brand new business owner. I was one of those that started a business immediately. Obviously, most of you are probably thinking, Oh, that didn't work. There's no way that could work. And it didn't. The business part was fine, but just working with clients in that way, especially complex trauma and needs that I just truly wasn't prepared for clinically, caused me to, I don't know, change my mind and work for an agency for a while. I did that. About five years later, decided, Okay, now I'm ready. I opened a group practice and did that in 2015, and here we are, 2024. Now, I still have a group practice. I have a consulting firm, which I work with a lot of practice owners, and particularly on systems and profitability. Now I have a brand new pottery shop over here. I have bought some commercial buildings, so I have a property company and some rental. I have a place on the beach that I rent. Then also just started writing books, so I guess I can officially call myself an author.

Uriah
So your second book comes out this March. It's called In Search of You. First of all, I just wanted to say congratulations. I know that every book project is a labor of love, and maybe for you, this one even more than others. I'm slightly obsessed with subtitles, and I genuinely love yours, which is How to Find Joy When Doing More Isn't Doing It Anymore. It might seem obvious, but what does doing more look like for most people? I'm curious about that. Then also, what does that mean to you and how has it shown up in your life?

Kasey
This was subtitles because honestly, this book was very hard to subtitle because it encompasses so much. I knew that I had to touch on joy because that's really what I was searching for in a lot of ways. Doing more is really just targeting those... I don't want to say over. It just sounds so negative when I do that. But high functioning professional people or just high functioning adults in general. How to find joy when doing more isn't doing it anymore. And what that looked like for me was this super hypervigilance, hyper focus, just hell-bent on achieving my goals and being successful and proving people wrong and all of those things. And while I, thankfully, was able to do most of those things, I found that I lost a part of myself. And I don't want to say that I lost myself in that process because I think I had already lost myself before. But because I was so tunnel visioned and I had those blinders on and so focused on the outcome that I was working toward, I really just... I think I was telling myself that I didn't have the time or space or energy to feel things or to slow down and appreciate things. It was hard while I was working so hard and building businesses and doing all of the things that really did bring me joy. It just brought me a joy in a different way. The way I think I needed was more internal, more about self-love.

Uriah
I would love to know if you feel the same way about this, but for me, I've always found that my business has actually been my best life coach. I'm curious what lessons you've learned from your multiple businesses that apply to other areas of your life.

Kasey
My business being my best life coach. Yeah, I totally see that. I think the business in all senses of the word have taught me nearly everything, honestly. It's taught me... It's brought, one, it's brought to the surface a lot of untreated or ignored or un dealt with personal issues. For example, I realized as a business owner that in Employee resignations were extremely triggering to me, more so than I thought was healthy. I mean, of course, no business owner wants their employees to resign, but it took me down. It could easily take me down a spiral. Am I not good enough? Am I not doing enough? Can I do more? Should I have done more? All of these things are all directly related back to my upbringing, my self-worth, my own personal challenges through relationships. I think my business has taught me the most about interpersonal dynamics more than anything I could have ever done. It's really helped. I think I have more grit now than I've ever had in my life. You could ask my dad or my brother or anyone in my family, and they would tell you that I don't shy away from hard work. So, yeah, it has taught so much.

Uriah
In your book, In Search of You, you talk about unlocking one's true potential. Can you talk a little bit about some practical steps or exercises from your book that can help individuals overcome self-doubt and achieve their goals?

Kasey
This is one of those moments where I'm actually looking around. Oh, I see it. Hold on. I'm looking around right now, trying to find a copy of the book. I don't actually have the real copy because they're in a box in my office, and I haven't did my official unboxing video yet, so I can't open those. But I would love to just open this printed one right here and talk a little bit more about unlocking that true potential. I think as a business owner, one of the things that it has done for me is it has helped me grow and develop true confidence. Confidence in business, but also just confidence in who I am as a woman, as a mother, as a daughter, as a friend, just confidence in all of those ways. There were a lot of times where I thought I had unlocked my true potential. I set out to do this thing. I did it. It went well. I'm good at this. But I think there was so much more So much more to me that I didn't even know was there until I went through the process that I share in the book of remembering. So one of the things, I don't know if other people experience this as much as I did, but I had a ton of blocked memories. There's a lot of things I just couldn't remember. And it took very intentional therapy, some EMDR, some regular communication, just having a lot of conversations about the past, which is not in my wheelhouse. I tend to just keep all that in. So saying some of those things out loud, allowing myself to remember, was a big first step in me getting to know my inner child or that little girl that I used to be. And I think that was a missing part. If you go all the way back to when I was a little girl and you look at my life now, there was definitely things about me as a child that were not necessarily represented in me as an adult. And one of the biggest things that I noticed when I was remembering was that joy that I felt from creating, from art, from painting, from planting, from gardening, from taking something from nothing and making something beautiful out of it, which in a lot of ways I had been doing, but I had been doing it in a business way. And remembering those times with my grandmother outside on the back porch making seashell jars, building things with my dad, that was something that I had really lost touch from. Again, I think it goes back to those blinders. I was just so focused on outcome, achievement that I told myself I didn't have time for joy. The first step really is that point of remembering. And from those memories, you gain a newfound sense of awareness. You start to notice things that are happening in your life now. And you're like, Oh, that makes a lot of sense, because when I was younger, this is how I would do this, or this how things would go. For me, that awareness that came from those memories was just transformational. And then, of course, when you have all this new awareness of yourself and your family and your strengths and all of this, then you're like, Okay, help me understand. Help me tie this together. What is the thread here? How am I going to do this? How am I going to understand myself enough so that I can actually love love myself. From that understanding comes change. I started to see myself transform and see myself change. As a result of that, it then became Joy became something that was integrated into my life in all aspects of my life. You'll read stories in the book about how I felt like I had to find joy or I had to escape to get joy. I had to leave my house to get joy. All of these little connections started to come full circle when I did those things.

Uriah
Mental health and overall well-being are such critical and crucial aspects of life. I would love to have you share some strategies or insights from your book that can help people promote their mental health, their resilience, and just their overall well-being.

Kasey
This is a good question. It's also really easy to answer, and it's also really hard, so that's what makes it good, I Promoting resilience is having the confidence or having the... I'm not sure the word. The courage. Maybe that's a better word. Having the courage to turn around and look back. For me, I'd always heard, Don't live in the past. Don't dwell in the past. And just look at the future. Go forward, go forward, go forward. And while I do believe that that's important, Some of us need to look back. They need to look at where we came from and how we were raised and how we show up in relationships, how we show up in our business. And what does that mean? I think that teaches us lessons of, Hey, look, I've been through worse, or, Hey, look, yeah, this really terrible thing has happened in my business. I've had 25% of my staff leave in the last six months, but that's happened before, and we're okay. If it's happened before, and we were okay, then we'll be okay again. If I was able to come back from it once, I can come back from it again. Through my book, I talk about one of the struggles that I went through for a couple of years while I was going through a divorce. I really had to remind myself that I started this business with nothing. I can rebuild this business from nothing. And that's really what I had to do. I started the business out of just pure dire desperation. I had a high-risk pregnancy. I tell the story in the book about the laundry basket baby. I lost everything I had, had to file bankruptcy, had my vehicle repossessed. I was at the lowest point I could possibly be. And It wasn't even like I had to take a big leap because I almost felt like I don't have any other choice but to start this business because what I'm doing right now is not working, and I have to do something differently. I have to prepare more for the future. Going from bankrupt to building a business that was in the multiple millions, and then losing it and then having to do it again. Talk about a mindfif. That was really hard. That took a lot of positive self-talk. That took a lot of digging down deep, a lot of grit, a lot of determination. It also caused me to look around at my circle. Who do I have in my corner? Who is supporting me? Who do I need to spend more time talking to? Who do I spend more time around? What communities do I need to be a part of to help me get back where I want to be? Here we are, three years later. My business is finally, this is the first time it's been in the positive profit margin since my divorce. I did that. I did that leading my team. They did a lot of the work, but I did that. It's not the first time. That does bring about a lot of, Oh, crap can happen, and I'll still be okay. I think that without having the opportunity to be in this type of position as an entrepreneur, those are lessons I might not have ever learned. And honestly, they're priceless.

Uriah
Almost everyone finds that embracing authenticity can be difficult in a world that just values so much conformity. What advice do you have for people looking to live authentically authentically and embrace their unique selves?

Kasey
You had to get me with this question, didn't you? I have always... This doesn't sound right. This doesn't sound like it's a real word. I want to say prided. I don't know that that's accurate. I have always had a lot of pride in myself and the fact that I am authentic, that I show up authentically, ask me a question, even I just told you in the last answer, my business has not been profitable. It's been rough. It's been rough. I don't feel ashamed when I do that. I just feel like that's just the way to be. I took authenticity to a whole new level as I was writing this book because I was going through a divorce. I thought at the time, if I looked around and took inventory in my life, that everything was authentic, that I was being authentic, that when someone asked me, Are you happy? Are things good? I said, Yeah. Yeah, everything's great. And I truly believed it at that time. Again, those blind leaders, outcome-driven, outcome-focused. Everything in my life was great, minus the emotional component, like that emotional safety, the need for love and intimacy and all of those things. But I don't know. It was just like I missed it. So I had always shown up authentic in my mind. And then When everything was happening through the divorce, and I started going to therapy, and I realized that the things that I thought, I felt felt was not actually accurate. Once I started going to therapy, and my therapist would ask me questions, like trying to understand, get to know, all those things. When I started hearing my answers out loud, it was like, holy shit, this is way worse than what I thought. This does not feel good. This has not made me happy. I don't even know what that is. I don't even know what joy is. I don't even know how much I love myself. I don't know. And so I think authenticity is important because it's the only thing that's sustainable. Going through life, living without emotion or living without showing up as your true self, that doesn't last long. Wrong, and you wake up feeling like you're searching for something, and you don't know what it is, and you might not even know who you are. I think if nothing else, we have to do the work to figure out who and what our authentic self is so that we can stay true to that and incorporate that into all aspects of our life, especially our business.

Uriah
Kasey, thanks so much for being on the podcast again. I appreciate you sharing all these insights. Again, congratulations on the book coming out in March. Where can people go to find out more about you, your products and services, and of course, your book?

Kasey
Thanks, Uriah. I can't express enough how thankful I am Just for your support and your friendship and everything else that you've given me over the years. The easiest thing to do, I guess, is just to find me online. It's kacycompton. Com. If you want to get an early copy of the book. If you go to the website and join one of our launch teams, you'll get a digital copy immediately. We are shooting for a big old goal of 10,000 books on launch day. So if you are interested in this topic and you think this would be beneficial to you or your practice in general or your clients, we would love for you to purchase a book on Amazon. It's in all major bookstores, distributors, all of those wonderful things. I appreciate you. I hope your listeners have enjoyed this conversation, and I hope that they helped share the topic of this book. I don't know. I just hope that we can reach people and help people to see that you can find joy without giving up your life, without focusing 100% on your business. You can have both, and you should have both, and you deserve both. So if you're not feeling joy, or if you feel like you're overworked, or if you feel like you're searching for something and you don't have that fulfillment, that's a good indication that this book is for you.