We're all called to show up and lead with our heart and soul, and bringing that to life changes everything in business. Click To Tweet

If we need to stand out amongst a hundred, we want people to stop, think, and act when they hear our message. A marketing message for the world will take you up a level. Click To Tweet

We can't be at our best if we're plain and small. We have to learn to get courageous and step into those uncomfortable places. We need to work with our mindset to keep it clear and clean. Click To Tweet

Kami Guildner believes women’s voices matter. She is a connector. A storyteller. A business coach for high vibe women entrepreneurs helping them #RaiseUP their Voice, Vision and Visibility for Impact and Business Growth.

Kami helps her clients build businesses they love with more time prosperity and more wealth prosperity. She weaves soulful-inspiration into mindful business strategies, and this Soul+Strategy™ approach to business helps her clients succeed in business and worldly impact.

Her clients scale and grow their businesses with a more feminine, abundant approach. Kami’s journey from corporate business exec to leader of women entrepreneurs was sparked by the breath of a horse over a decade ago. This magical epiphany moment led Kami to discover her purpose of leading high vibe entrepreneurs to give voice to their most important messages and grow wildly successful businesses.

Kami’s community of entrepreneurs is creating a new paradigm of entrepreneurship, helping each other raise up in a ripple effect of impact. Her clients have gone on to reach extraordinary heights as consultants, coaches, and leaders – achieving exponential revenue growth, landing on big stages, starting software companies, launching new professional organizations, transforming corporate cultures and transforming lives. They are influential and they are changemakers.

Kami is the founder of the Extraordinary Women Ignite Conference and host of the award-winning Extraordinary Women Radio™. She is the best-selling author of Firedancer: Your Spiral Journey to a Life of Passion and Purpose and was named to the 2020 Twenty-Five Most Powerful Women in Business List by the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce.

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In this episode, I'm looking forward to sharing another amazing industry expert with you. I am excited because the person who is on our show is somebody that I've known for a while, still not met in person but she inspires me. She's very soulful. We're going to talk about how to be soulful and strategic. That's our topic a little bit. Let me tell you a little bit about her.

Kami Guildner believes that women's voices matter. She's a connector, a storyteller, and a business coach for high-vibe women entrepreneurs, helping them to raise their voice, vision, and visibility for impact and business growth. She helps her clients build businesses they love with more time prosperity and wealth prosperity. She weaves soulful inspiration into mindful business strategies. This soul-plus strategy approach to business helps her clients succeed in business and worldly impact.

Her community of entrepreneurs is creating a new paradigm of entrepreneurship, helping each other raise a ripple effect of impact. Her clients have gone on to reach extraordinary heights as consultants, coaches, and leaders achieving exponential revenue growth, landing on big stages, starting software companies, launching new professional organizations, transforming corporate cultures, and transforming lives. They are influential and game changers.

Kami is the Founder of the Extraordinary Women Ignite Conference and the host of the award-winning Extraordinary Women Radio. She's a bestselling author of Firedancer: Your Spiral Journey to a Life of Passion and Purpose. She was named 2020’s 25 Most Powerful Women in Business List by the Colorado Women's Chamber of Commerce. We have a lot to talk about. You're going to understand exactly what I say when I say it's a soulful strategy. Welcome, Kami.

Patty, thank you for having me on. I'm thrilled to be here with you.

I'm so thrilled to have you too. I love this whole soulful strategy because I'm all about strategy but I do believe that as women, we do need to use our voice in a way that brings us joy and feeds our soul. That aligns with what you are sharing. Let's talk about that a little bit. We all know that we all have a journey. We didn't wake up one day and decide that this is what we were going to do.

There was a meandering role there a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your journey. Where did you get to the point where you know it wasn't just that you wanted to do strategy but it was about soulful strategy and the prosperity piece? Those things together are very unique as you are so I would love you to share it in your words.

My journey into my soulful work was truly a journey for me. Back in my corporate days, I left the corporate world many years ago but I had a good career in the corporate world before embarking on my entrepreneurial journey. I didn't have a soulful bone in my body at that point. I was all strategy. I was very linear. If you asked me if I was right-brained, I would've told you no. I was very left-brained. I've done since then tests that tell me otherwise that I am very right-brained. It's the stories we tell ourselves as we're building our careers.

As I stepped into the world of being an entrepreneur, there were some soulful breakthroughs for me when I was listening to nature. My horses were part of that journey that helped me find my way into entrepreneurship. I started to feel that and know for me that I was discovering something new about myself. I launched my business. I'm still staying pretty linear in the way I was doing my work.

At some point, I had a big shift where I was journaling one day and was like, "What does my business want to be?" What came back to me very clearly that day was I wanted it to be a spirit business. I'm like, "What is that about? I don't even know what that is." I had to start embracing more of the work that I was already doing for myself. I had been doing it in my business but started to share it with others.

It’s that journey of listening to that inner wisdom that we have inside of us and bringing that to life, listening to the passions, the purpose, and all that we're being called to do in this world. I believe that we're all being called to show up and lead with our hearts and soul. Bringing that to life changed everything in my business when I allowed that to come to the forefront.

That's powerful because sometimes we don't know how we were meant to serve. We think, "Here's what I'm passionate about and what I believe my purpose is." You were from corporate so you're trying to take all of those things and decide how you want to serve in that way. That's powerful in itself. I'm sure it has evolved along the way as well.

Many times.

That's what happens. We evolve but then the people we serve evolve to.

I started to discover this different side of me and let that come to life. It started to come to life in nature. It’s by going out for walks in nature, watching the baby birds learn to fly, and all the things like that. That started to ground me in a different space and pull back the layers of projection and the masks that I had worn in the corporate world. I started to just be me. What I do with my clients is bring them to the forefront and just be them. No one else can be like you if you're starting from that space. Nobody can have the same brand or the messaging that you have because you're unique.

One of the things that I love is how you weave a story. The story is so important. A lot of times, people don't even realize how to tell a story in a soulful and spiritual way that makes people get it and get you. If you can do it, there's almost like an art to it.

There's an art to storytelling.

Can we talk a little bit about that? It's an intricate element of your brand. How do you do that and tie it to the growth of your business?

When I'm starting with clients, we start with the essence of who you are. When we're digging into the essence of who you are, we're looking at your life stories, where you've been most on fire and most successful. What was it about that time? We uncover pieces, ideas, and themes around who you are. We then take that and build that into a brand of you.

As we start to do that, we've started to uncover different journeys and stories about your pathway to get you to this point. I believe that we've all gone through the journey from where we were to where we are now with all our life experiences. There's a reason why we've gone through all of that because it gives us a unique set of skills and talents. We also have the breakdowns, the things that are difficult. We learn from that. That becomes part of our story as well.

When I'm helping my clients discover their stories for their business, we start with, "Let's start making a list of stories that you've had in your life." They start saying, "When I graduated from college. When I got married. When I had kids. When I left that job. When I started this." They start having different life stories. Most of the stories are going to have a much better title than that. My favorite one is, "When the pilot fell out of the balloon and I had to land the hot air balloon by myself."

I find stories that are unique so we're looking for those kinds of stories. We're also tying that over to, "How are you serving your clients? What are the right stories that help them see you and help them see themselves in your journey?" We start picking from those stories. We can keep a journal of those story titles because you'd be amazed how you can find different ways to pull these little minute stories forward in your marketing.

What we do is when we're matching that story up to letting your ideal customer see you or see themselves in your story, that's where you're getting into, "This is an alignment." There's an arc way. There's this time when it's a difficult moment. You take that difficult moment in time and pick a moment in time versus telling all of the backstory.

You bring your audience in with that moment in time. There's something that happens that creates change in that moment. There's a journey to the breakthroughs that you get to. That's how I teach my clients to tell a story. It starts with that moment in time, bringing them in, and seeing themselves in that moment in time.

I know that when I first became a speaker several years ago. That was the biggest struggle for me. “What stories to tell? How much of my life should I share?” Sometimes people overshare on social especially. What is the purpose? The struggle then was, how do you tie that story into the story you want them to get? Yet, let them not be so specific that they can't see themselves in the story because now it's your story. You have to leave some space in there. For me, being in marketing, it's like, "How do I tie it to also the business principle or wherever it is that I want them to go?" That was a real struggle for me in the beginning.

I remember asking many speaking coaches in the beginning, "Which do I do first? The principal, and then find the story, or do the story and then attach it to this?" Everything I learned when I decided to become a speaker was probably the hardest because everybody kept saying that storytelling was a science and I believe it's an art. Maybe it's both.

I have had courses called The Art of Storytelling because I agree, it's not a science. If you get scientific about it, you get into your head. The beautiful thing about a story is it flows from us. We know our stories. We can bring ourselves into that moment. We can feel how we felt in that moment. What happens is that people can start to resonate. They feel what we feel.

Marketing Message: The beautiful thing about stories is that they flow from us. We know our stories, bring ourselves into that moment, and feel how we fail in that moment. Then, people will start to resonate.

They feel energetically like, "I know how she felt in that moment." That's what they're resonating with. It doesn't have to be the same storyline. They feel the feeling. They feel the frustrations and breakthroughs. If you're painting that arc way of the journey you went on after that breakthrough, that's where you're bringing in the services that you want people to connect to.

One of the things that is important when you're telling the story is looking at it where they can see themselves. I like to tell clients all the time, “You're not reinventing ice cream. You're just making your flavor.” Some people like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Some people want a waffle cone, nuts, and fruit. It's your story that lets them know what you are. I'm sure that there have been people who've thought of an idea that nobody else has ever thought of before. I don't even think it's about that. It's about how you serve them.

A story can bring you closer to that. That's what allows people to say, "I love your vibe. You get me. You're going to understand me." As a coach, not always but sometimes, people hire you to reach the clarity or whatever it is they're struggling with. They're hiring you to help them. They have to tell sometimes the good, the bad, and the ugly. They have somebody who can help them, hold space for that, walk alongside them, and understand the story. Sometimes it's even the stories we tell ourselves.

I love to talk about the stories we tell ourselves because those can pull us down if we're in the wrong stories. I love a story all day long but we have to pay attention to what kind of stories we're bringing into the mix of it. When I think about attracting clients to us, you want people to be able to resonate with you and see, "She's like me." You build some know, love, and trust with that kind of approach by simply sharing your stories.

I agree. People can overshare. When you're from a marketing perspective, what you want to do is tell a story from something that you've gotten yourself through. It's not that something that you're right in the heart of in the midst of this because that's not connecting it to selling into what you are offering. What you want to do is like, "This is a story of how I overcame this to get to where you want to go and this is how it worked for me."

It's not while we're in the mess but the transformation on the other side and how you can help them get there too. Kami, I have heard you say and talk about the one message for the world. Why does every entrepreneur need one? Can you talk a little bit about that?

There's so much noise out there. We're in between 6,000 to 10,000 marketing messages per day. We're getting hit with marketing messages continuously. We're only hearing about 100 of those. Still, if we need to stand out amongst 100, we want people to be able to stop, think, act, and do differently when they hear our message. That's what one message for the world is. It’s taking you up a level into thought leadership. It's your unique opinion and ideas.

If this is something that I'm passionate about, we have to have our marketing messages and we need to speak our client's love language. We have to have our brand message, which is at the core of it, and move to our marketing message. The one message for the world is the third level up. This is positioning you as a leader and getting people to say, "I never thought about it in that way." You're giving them something unique and different to think about. It takes work to get there.

Also, willingness to do the work.

Space in your business to be able to do the work. If you're going all day long at a crazy pace, you won't have space to think through, "What is it that I want to stand for?"

I love that you mentioned your client's love language. That is good. There's a lot of talk about the love language in our partner, even with our children. I have a communication process that I'm a part of and that I use but I do feel like it is speaking in their love language and how important that is. What would you say is the percentage, ratio, or odds, whichever one of those you want to pick, that if you know your clients' love language, it's like speaking to them in the language of those you want to serve? If you're doing that, what can that do for you as it equates to not just understanding and them vibing with you but also, how does it equate to getting them the results that they're hiring you for?

You're drawing the right people into your business then. If you are deep into their customer journey, you understand what are the stories they're telling themselves every day over and over again. What are they desiring? What are the challenges and problems? I like to play more on the desire side of things. I understand the problems. We have to understand the problems but I like to get into, "What are they desiring?"

If we understand their journey, where they're at and what is top of mind for them, we know where they need to go. We're deep into that customer journey. It's like, "This is where they're at. This is where they need to go. These are the things they need to do to get there." We've done that. We've done our work. We know what that customer journey is with our clients.

The more we're upfront on our marketing messaging, speaking exactly to our ideal client or our sole client, we are bringing people in where they're at and we can help them because we know who they are. We've invited the right people into our business and we're helping them on this journey that we specialize in. That's how we get the results.

Marketing Message: The more we're up front in our marketing messages, speaking to our ideal and soul client, we are bringing people in where they're at, and we can help them.

A lot of times, I hear a lot of people, specifically a lot of marketers, talking about how you have to know your target market. That is true. It's the first baby step. I like to tell my clients, "How about if we work on communication and language so that we know who your target buyers are?" That is way more important. That gets to where you're getting an idea like a 1 and then get to 2.0. You have to know what is so important. It's one of the things that can help you to stand out among the noise.

The other part about that is if we're deep into their journey and we know what steps they're taking to get to this next phase, we can often understand what the next phase after that is which becomes another line of product for you. If you're focused on this single customer journey, we are simplifying our business from all the other things that we might be doing for other people who are our ideal clients. We stay focused. It simplifies our marketing and messaging and how we set up products to serve that group of clients. It's a lot. Where we can find more time prosperity and wealth prosperity in our businesses is by that simplification.

Clarity is such a beautiful thing. You like to talk about simplifying your business and how we scale our business. We're not all over the place. We can do that. What would you say is the single biggest factor that holds entrepreneurs back?

What I'm seeing is a lot of people get into their heads. It's like those stories that they're telling themselves and that makes them play small. The thing that is holding entrepreneurs back is the mindset. They start dancing around and all the things that get them playing smaller in their game. We can't be at our best if we're playing small. We have to learn to get courageous and step into our places that are uncomfortable. To do that, we have to work with our mindset to keep it clear and clean.

One of the things that I admire you for, and I find it very inspiring too, is the way that you have such a connected community and the way that you serve. It's one of the things that you do that I love and I have been a part of so I can speak from experience. It's this thing that you do on LinkedIn on Friday. What I love about it is there's randomness and intention. What I mean by that is how it seems to me, and then I'm going to give you the chance to say, "No, this is how I do it," or, "Yes, Patty, you get it," whichever that may be.

What I feel that you're sharing with us on Friday are people who have touched your life in some way that week, whether you've been on their podcast or they've been on yours. You had a meaningful conversation with them. Maybe there's somebody that went out of their way of service, either to you or somebody you know. You were privy to it in some way. They did something in the community. That's what I mean by the randomness of that. It's not like, "Here are five people." The spaciousness of it is that you don't just say, "This person because they were on my podcast."

You take the time to tell the story of why they made an impact. I follow you but I always read that Friday post. I look forward to it because it inspires me every single time. I've always thought the way you do that is such a beautiful, sincere, heartfelt, and soulful way. Maybe it is soulful and strategic. I don't know. I'm going to give you a chance to tell me but when I read it, it always inspires me to reflect on my week and be like, "Who showed up for me? Was I able to serve someone? What were the meaningful conversations I was able to have?"

Friday is such a good day to reflect on that. I find that practice so I want to know, do you keep track during the week? I want to go behind the scenes on this. Do you already know who it's going to be? How much time do you take on that? Go ahead and tell me about it. What made you decide to do it? What's your soulful strategy around it? What does it mean to you? I know what I take from it.

I love what you take from it. That's inspiring to me. When I was in Dallas, I didn't do it. There are some weeks that I miss it and I'm like, "I didn't do it." It would've been impossible to have done it because I met so many people at the conference. I'm excited for it. I've been thinking about it. I already have notes written down in my planner. As I've had meetings throughout the week, I jot down a few notes. “On Friday, I'm going to be doing that.” I'll sit down and say, "Who was on my podcast," and all those kinds of questions. I was going back and looking at my calendar and notes.

For me, it does a couple of things. I have always been a connector. Being a connector has been a core part of what's built my business. I built my Extraordinary Women Community because I was always connecting one great woman to another great woman. That's where I started hosting events and my podcast. It all started by creating these connections because I kept meeting these amazing women. I'm like, "You need to know this person." That's where it started. My Ignite Conference will be 10 years in 2023. That's where it was grounded.

I believe that businesses grow, expand, and step into a whole different realm when we're in that energy of connecting, supporting, and uplifting one another. I truly believe that one of our superpowers as women is that we are such amazing connectors. That's where it came from. I had a colleague who was doing Follow-Up Friday posts. I'm like, "Can I borrow this concept? It's so perfect for my business." She said, "Yeah." It wasn't my idea originally, the Follow-Up Friday post, but I love doing them and they're fun.

Have you gotten feedback?

Your feedback is beautiful, but I've gotten feedback from other people who are like, "This is amazing that you're recognizing that we had a meeting earlier this week and what you took away from it."

What's funny is the way that you do it and the way you tag the people. I love it because when you hover over it, you can see who they are. Maybe not every single person that you are shouting out or sharing is that person who's reading it who wants to know or needs to know.

Maybe it is.

For me, a lot of it is. I feel like, "Does she think we're stalking her?" When somebody that I admire and inspires me says, "You should meet these people," and then you tell us why, if your why resonates with me, I love doing it. Over the time that I've known you've done it, I've probably reached out to probably a dozen or so people. I will always say to them, "I want you to know that this was inspired." I always say that it was from your post and that you had me at whatever it was. They always love it too.

First of all, they always accept. They're like, "Thank you so much for sharing that. Isn't that lovely that Kami does that stuff though?" This is something you do consistently. A lot of times people do, not soulful strategies, but hit-and-miss things. I have seen you do it for a long time. You do it in a way that I can tell it comes through that you're speaking from your heart because you certainly don't need to do it. It's a beautiful thing. I wanted to acknowledge you for that and tell you how much I find that refreshing and reflective so thank you so much.

Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

You've shared so much already but what would you say if you had to narrow it down to one marketing media, money strategy, or something that you want to share, what would you say?

You can't outsource your leadership of thought. I was talking about this one thought leadership message. "What it is that you stand for?" That's got to be yours. You can't give that to somebody else to come up with that for you. It's such deep inside work. You can have thought partners around you to help you come up with that, which is helpful but it's got to come from your soul work. Often, I am working with my clients and helping them. They want to find those important things.

Outsource some of the things that can be done over and over again but look for ways that you can make space. What is it that you want to stand for? What is it in your work that you're doing that is a breakthrough that's different than what anybody else is doing? With that kind of stuff, you've got to make white space for it. Leave space on your calendars to have your CEO days and leadership of thought days to be able to think, "What is it that I stand for? Where's my work going from this point so that it's original, unique, and different?" Give yourself that kind of space.

You have so many wonderful things to share. For those of you who are reading, she has a podcast, book, community, conference, and all of these things. What I love is we can find them all in one place. She even has a gift too. Why don't you tell us how people can connect with you and where they can find all that juicy and soulful stuff?

Firedancer: Your Spiral Journey to a Life of Passion and Purpose

My website is KamiGuildner.com. When you get to that page, at the very top, there's a magenta color button that says Get Updates. I do free training almost every single month. I also do round tables. There's always something that you can step into of mine that can take you deeper into your journey. I have an Extraordinary Women Connect community that you can access on Facebook. That's the core place. Go to my homepage and click on the Get Updates button. That will connect you to my world.

Of all the social media platforms, is there one platform that you're more active on than others?

I dance a lot between Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I'm spending a lot of time on LinkedIn but I hit all three of them pretty equally.

Those are the three where I am too. Thank you so much, Kami, for being here and sharing your story. I love that you're so consistent, which we don't always see. This is your message and it shows up in so many places in your book, on your podcast, in your community, in the way that you serve, and in your post. You're consistent all across the board. That art of story ties it all together in such a beautiful way. Thank you so much for being here with me.

That means a lot coming from you, Patty. Thank you so much.

To the audience, thank you so much for being here with me. I love that you're here. If you enjoyed this episode, and I'm sure you did, please like, subscribe, and review the show on your favorite platform. Make sure to join us on Facebook in the Marketing, Media and Money Magazine, Podcast & Events Facebook Group. Until the next episode, I hope you have a phenomenal and profitable weekend and week. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.