E102: Aligned Doesn’t Mean Passive: How to Take Bold Action Without Burning Out

If you’re tired of running yourself into the ground while chasing your goals, this episode is your blueprint for building a business that works without the burnout. Learn how to take bold, intentional action that moves the needle—and still honors your energy.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why most entrepreneurs burn out (and how alignment prevents it)
• The truth about hustle culture vs. strategic action
• How to use the 3-2-1 Rule to plan your week with clarity
• Real-life examples of what misaligned action looks like
• Three red flags that signal your business is out of sync with your vision

Key Takeaways:
Aligned action isn’t passive—it’s powerful. When your moves are rooted in clarity, intention, and vision, growth becomes sustainable and success becomes repeatable. Kimberly shares how to avoid reactive decision-making, manage your energy as a CEO, and build a long-term plan that actually supports your life.

Watch the Free 10-Part YouTube Series:
If you’re a creative or culinary entrepreneur ready to beat burnout and regain clarity, don’t miss Kimberly’s Kitchen Table Dreams: Beyond the Hustle series.
✔️ Watch the full series here: https://kimberlyihouston.com/youtube
✔️ Or take the free mini-course version here: Beyond the Hustle

Join the Mastermind:
Build a six-figure business with aligned systems, consistent income, and a clear growth plan.
✔️ Learn more: https://teachmehowtobake.com/mastermind

Continue the Conversation:
Try the 3-2-1 Rule this week (3 priorities, 2 aligned actions, 1 reflection) and tag @kimberlyihouston on social media with your insights or wins. Kimberly is now on all platforms under her full name—no more Coach Chef Kim.

Subscribe for More:
✔️ Weekly podcast episodes on clarity, mindset, and aligned entrepreneurship
✔️ No-fluff strategies to grow your creative business with intention
✔️ Guest interviews, coaching insights, and real business talk

Visit https://nutrimill.com/KTD for $20.00 off your next purchase of a Bosch mixer or Nutrigrain Flour Mill

Transcript

 Kimberly Houston (00:01.304)

Hey friends, welcome back to the Kitchen Table Dreams podcast. I am your host, Chef Kimberly Houston, and I'm super excited that you are here with me. If you listened to last week's podcast, we talked about auditing your alignment.

And we are going to continue this week with discussing alignment as business owners, what that looks like for us and how do we make those things happen. Right. So for today's episode, I really want to like hone in on what it looks like taking bold action without burning out. One of the things that I want to go ahead and tell you now is that I launched a 10 part series on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, top of the year. So a couple of months ago,

Specifically for creative entrepreneurs, culinary entrepreneurs, those who work within the creative industry, right? And we are relying on Inspired Action to take us to the next step. I did a 10-part series. The videos are short, bite-sized to the point. And I'll make sure that I link that down below so that you can take that. also grabbed them and put them into this real cute little, like a little mini course. And you can take that for free.

but it helps you identify business fatigue and burnout because that is something that happens with a lot of people, right? Is that we burn out, we don't realize we're burnout and we can't really get a grip or a hold on why. And one of those reasons that we are experiencing burnout is because we are out of alignment. So let's talk about what that looks like. Alignment isn't about playing it safe. It's about playing it smart.

And in this episode, we're going to break down how to take decisive, bold action in your business without the hustle hangover. So if you've listened to any of the other podcasts, you already know I am not a hustle girly. I do not believe in hustling hard. I believe that we can build businesses and brands within full alignment and with ease. And so I'm going to give you pieces of my framework that are small and digestible that will help you do just that. So.

Kimberly Houston (02:11.994)

I don't want you to just take any action. I want you to take bold, focused moves that will not leave you fried, frazzled, or questioning your life choices because I've already been there. So one of the myths that I hear as a business strategist and alignment coach is that people are confusing alignment with being slow, cautious, or passive. Alignment is none of those things. It is the absent of effort.

Alignment is not the absence of effort. It is the presence of intention. Everything that I do, everything that I release, it is with intention. I am thinking about how it lands. I am thinking about who is listening. I am thinking about the impact that I want to come from the things that I'm doing.

And so I want to kind of walk you through what that looks like for me. Like I'm going to pull the veil back on what it looks like to coach with me. All right. So when I am coaching with people, I'm very, very intentional about the time and the space that we have together. I know that one hour with me can change the trajectory of your life. And I know this because I have a degree in transformational leadership and coaching. I have been trained.

to get transformation quickly out of people. And there's a whole lot of things that I had to go through and a whole lot of things that I needed to learn psychology wise, about attachment styles, about how we show up, about limiting beliefs, about mind, body connection, about mind, body medicine, right? There are so many things that I have had to learn over the years in order to be able to very quickly listen to you, observe you.

I don't want to say diagnose, but kind of figure out what the actual root of the problem is and then solve the root of the problem, not treat the symptoms. Okay? And so that's what I do as an alignment coach is that sometimes I have to kind of like dig in there and pull out what's the root of our problem and let's deal with that because when we can transform the thought, when we can transform the belief, the actions will follow. Okay? So.

Kimberly Houston (04:27.916)

Let's talk about where the fear of action comes from. A lot of people hesitate to act boldly because we've been burned before, right? We've done zero dollar launches. That's what I have renamed them. That's what I call them. The reframe feels great in my body. We have launched things and nobody bought it.

We post on social media and we get crickets. We invested in something and we don't necessarily see the return on investment in the time that we thought we were going to see the return on investment. These are all things I have experienced in the last six months. These are all things that even as somebody with multiple degrees, multiple certifications, connected to millionaires, have a beautiful network, have wonderful outreach.

I too have launched things and got crickets. I've invested in coaching, I've invested in programs, I've invested in more education and did not see the return on investment in the timeframe that I thought I should receive it. And so a lot of times that puts us in our feelings, right? And so when we go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go,

We put ourselves into misalignment and we burn out.

The question I want you to think about when we are thinking about when we're in misalignment is what if that burnout wasn't about the action itself, but about the fact that the action wasn't aligned in the first place? Last week, we talked about when you're out of alignment, you don't just jump out of alignment.

Kimberly Houston (06:15.808)

Like you move out of alignment when you are saying yes to things you don't want to do. And so there are times where we keep saying yes to things we don't want to do and now we're doing actions that were misaligned and we're trying to figure out why we're so burnt out. Easy thing for me to relate this to is when I was running my bakery.

I kind of had like a secret menu. learned that Starbucks had a secret menu and so I created a secret menu and only my high profile celebrity clients knew that there were things you could order for me that were not on my website. And that one thing was cake pops. Now my cake pops are absolutely delicious. 10 out of 10, right? But I hated them things. And at one phase during my business, one of my clients was pregnant.

but five of her friends were pregnant. And guess what happened? I was worried about business. And so they all had these cake pops at one another's baby showers, right? Cause they all were using me. And so every baby shower got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I found myself having to make hundreds.

of cake pops and I absolutely hated those things. I hated the amount of time that it took to make these cake pops. I would have much rather just made them cupcakes, right? Hundreds of cupcakes would take me half the amount of time as hundreds of cake pops. And so because I kept saying yes and because I thought it was cute to say I have a secret menu because I thought that was fun, when that thing became out of alignment, I was so deep in it, I didn't know how to turn it off.

And so then I just had to be like, okay, listen, we don't offer this anymore. But by the time I got to that point, I was a burnout. I was legit burnout. And I want to say I stopped offering CakeBob's cold turkey and moved strictly into cookies. I even stopped offering cakes at one point and I only offered custom cookies, right? I was working 14 hour days.

Kimberly Houston (08:27.532)

to do cake pops for people and the cake pop will be gone in two seconds, right? In the digital world, what that can look like is working 14 hour days during a launch only to realize you're selling the wrong thing to the wrong people. Had I been in alignment, it would have saved me weeks, hours, months of energy.

if I had been paying attention to what was aligned with where my business was going. All right. So let's talk about what alignment, what aligned action actually looks like in your business. So last week we talked about this, but we're going go a little bit deeper. When we're talking about inspired action, the inspired action includes a three, two, one rule. And so...

Aligned action doesn't mean you're doing everything. It means you're doing the things that are going to move the needle forward with clarity. So what that looks like is you are doing three priorities every week, not 10. Pick three things that actually support your business goals.

Kimberly Houston (00:01.76)

Aligned action doesn't mean doing everything. It means doing what moves the needle with clarity. And so the way that I like to explain this to people is through the 3-2-1 rule. pick three priorities for the week, not 10, just three. Three priorities for the week, not the day. Okay? Here's why I say this. So I use what is called a block schedule. So I block my days off in three hour increments.

and I commit to doing certain things within those three hours. But the things that I'm doing within those three hours are supporting my top three priorities for the week. One of those priorities absolutely every week is making money. I want to make money with the things that I'm doing. And so that means that whatever it is that I'm doing throughout the week, needs to be something that aids in me making money. It could be that I am updating old content for my academy.

It could be that I'm sending out an email and putting an offer in it. It could be that I spend three hours batch recording the podcast for the month so that I can make sure that everything is flowing, it's aligned, and I'm giving you the offers I need you to have during the month, right? That I'm not chasing a wheel, that I'm not chasing my success, and that it is all very strategic, very well planned out. So pick three priorities, not 10.

that actually support your goals and then everything that you're doing within that week is aligning to that. Two aligned actions. These are things that actually move your mission forward. So there are some things that we are doing in our businesses that are not moving the needle forward. Things like trying to get somebody to do your logo. Who cares? Who cares? If your business isn't making money, baby, you don't need a logo. Okay? I know, I know.

I remember when I first opened my bakery and I had a logo, I had colors, I had a tagline, I had all these things and no money. I had invested in my business to get those things done, but I wasn't making money. And the amount of time it took me to make money afterwards, it didn't matter. Here's the other thing. I changed my logo at least five times in 10 years. All right.

Kimberly Houston (02:25.882)

those are not things that are going to make you money. Yes, brand awareness, brand identity. But if no one knows you exist, there is no brand identity. Brand identity is what other people think of you. It is other people's perceptions of you. It is not what you were telling people. That's, that's not your brand identity. That's your messaging. And so when you are thinking about your brand identity, if you think that having a logo is going to be more important,

than you building your first offer, we have a problem. We have a problem. Okay. So three priorities, two aligned actions, and then one, reflect on what went well this week. Okay? So every Friday I'm reflecting on what went well. This does not have to be that everything I did this week was spectacular. Everything I did made me money, that we had a $10,000 week. No. What went well?

One of my mentors mentioned this about a week or so ago to a group of us that it was difficult for a lot of people to be in constant gratitude for things, right? I am a person who I live in abundance, right? I have reframed my thought patterns to I only do things that bring me joy. And so I'm always grateful because

I no longer say yes to things I don't want to do. I don't go places I don't want to go. I don't tell you I'm going to show up somewhere I don't want to be. And the reason that I did that, I explained it in the last episode, but just really quickly on this one, like I don't do those things anymore and it has served me well. And it also helps people understand that when I give them my yes, it's special, right? If you invite me somewhere and I show up, you know it's special. And the people in my life are very aware that it's special because they know I tell them no all the time, right?

So when I'm invited to things, when I'm invited to show up, when I'm invited to support, if I say, me check my schedule, I mean it. I'm checking my schedule to see if I can show up for you. And that might fall under what went well for me this week, right? Is that even if in my business, everything that I set out to do wasn't necessarily accomplished, but I showed up for somebody in their time of need that went well. And I write that down.

Kimberly Houston (04:45.506)

Right? And so it may not be your reflection of the week, may not be something that went well in your business. It just went well in your life. Were you able to prioritize yourself this week over others? Right? Did you say no to something that you really didn't want to do? That went well, even though it made you feel uncomfortable, even though you felt like, you know, maybe these people are going to be upset that I didn't do this or I didn't show up, but you prioritize yourself.

and in your body, your nervous system thanked you. It appreciated the fact that you didn't go do something you didn't want to do. That went well. And I want you to keep track of those things.

When we are asking ourselves this 3-2-1 process, right? Your three priorities, your two aligned actions, and your reflection. Track it. I have a tracker for mine. I just bought like a quad rule notebook. So this is like graph paper, think like back to high school, graph paper notebooks. I have one of those, and I just keep track of this every week so that I can go back and look at what went well. Sometimes those things that went well,

there may be areas of opportunity for me to learn a new skill. So even though it went well, my thought might be I should do more of that. I can give you this quick example. One of the things that I'm currently doing is having, I'm reaching out to 10 people a week and having conversations where I'm not selling them a thing, nothing at all. This is difficult. This is week three of connecting with 10 people.

I'm not selling them anything. I am genuinely just interested in what are you doing at this phase of your life? One of the things that brought this on was one of my mentors mentioned it to me. The second thing that brought this on was people were DMing me and asking me about doing cakes and I have been retired for five years. My bakery closed in 2020 and I was like, interesting. Had you just taken a look?

Kimberly Houston (06:53.354)

at my social media, you would have realized that the reason you cannot find thecookiemporium.com is because it closed in 2020. And so I was like, huh, when I closed my business, I had a running list of people who were still doing cakes, cookies, cake pops, things of the sort. And when people would ask me who did I refer them to, as soon as they asked me for a cake, I'll be like, I don't do that anymore, but here's who I can recommend for you.

And then I started thinking about it and I was like, I wonder what those people are doing. Are those people still in business? And quite a few of them are not. And so while that's not surprising, you know, it's been five years, that's not surprising that people have moved on and they're doing other things. But now I'm genuinely interested in relationship building at this phase of my life, in this phase of my journey as a CEO of the Houston Collective.

As I am moving into direct alignment with the multi-million dollar corporation that I'm setting out to build right now, multi-million dollar CEOs have very wide networks, right? They can recommend people. These don't have to be friends, right? Like everybody doesn't have to be your friend.

But checking in with people and finding out what they're doing in their life and then really stopping and thinking about, how can I help this person get to that next level easier without me selling them anything? I'm not offering them coaching programs. I'm not selling them on a class. None of that. Right. We're just having a conversation. How is life? Where are you? How are the kids? How do things look differently? Right. It's been five years when people talk to me and they're like, how are your kids? And I'm like, well, one is 19 and one is 23.

No, we're not still homeschooling. My children are grown, right? And then people are like, my God, I remember when they were five and six, me too. But they're grown now, right? And so the same way my kids grew up, their kids grew up. And so we have those conversations on where are you in life? How are things going for you? And I keep track of this. I write down if I want to connect with them in a couple of months.

Kimberly Houston (09:15.322)

If I need to send an email that introduces them to someone else, people that may have been home bakers and now are becoming retail store bakers, well, I'm the engagement manager for the Retail Bakers Association of America, right? That puts me in a very different position than when I was just a bakery owner. I am now sitting on the corporate side of the baking industry. And there are connections that I have. There are people that I know.

And I'm like, well, you need to meet this person or you need to know this person. And so I'm able to help them without there being some sort of exchange as a client. And so for me, while some weeks that goes very well, the very first week was a lovely top tier of 10 out of 10. Last week drained me. Last week was difficult. And so this week I'm approaching it a little different, right?

broke down my what went well last week. The thing that went well is nine out of 10 people wanted to have a conversation with me. Well, the problem with that is nine out of 10 people wanted to have a conversation with me. And so that meant I now had to open up my schedule in order to be able to accommodate that, right? And so, but this is in direct alignment with where I see myself in the future. I am a people connector.

I am not the popular kid with all the friends. I am a people connector. I am a resource. And so being a resource means I have to have conversations to find out what resources are necessary, needed, missing, et cetera. So in your reflection, I don't want you to harp on yourself on what you haven't done. I really want you to think about what went well, write that down, track it, and then make sure that you're going back and reflecting on those things.

I mentioned this in last week's episode when we talked about chasing money. The more you chase it, the more it runs. Right? And so I want you to stop chasing and I want you to start leading. So what this looks like is hustling, in my opinion, is chasing.

Kimberly Houston (11:29.738)

Alignment is leading. Alignment is strategic. Alignment is non-reactive, right? When we are chasing money, we are reacting to whatever our current circumstances are. You don't have to outrun everybody. You just need to lead from your lane. So I want you to imagine if you're watching track stars run, how everybody needs to stay in their lane.

the track star will tell you that they have to keep their eyes in front of them. Right? Because if you look to the left or the right, if you've ever watched when they like start looking to the left or look to the right, a couple of things can happen. One, they can lose their balance and fall. Two, they can mentally psych themselves out and lose the momentum if they're looking at other people. Right? Like if someone passes them,

and they can lose that momentum instead of being focused that now I got to chase you. They're looking to the left or the right. And then the other thing is they could also veer off the path and move to the left or the right because you're going where your vision is. And so as entrepreneurs, we must stay in our lane, right? Like you need to be focused on where you are going. And for a really long time, I used to think that staying in your lane meant

only do whatever is in your niche. I don't think it means that. I think that staying in your lane means you are focused on your goal and the things that you are doing should be moving you towards that.

telling people to stay in their lane in a derogatory fashion, because that's how it used to come off to me. Telling people to stay in their lane like they don't know what they're talking about or they can't offer any advice or something like that. That one is a sign of immaturity. But two, I want us to really sit with that. If I'm staying in my lane and I'm looking at my end goal, the tracks are I must finish the race, even if they lose.

Kimberly Houston (13:39.246)

They still have to finish the race. You still have to cross the finish line, right? You might not have been first, but you still cross the finish line. If we think about the Olympics, these are the greatest athletes in the world, right? Superhuman strength. These are the greatest athletes in the world. They are the best of the best. They are the top 1 % of people in the world. That is the whole point of the Olympics.

whether they come in first, second or third, the goal is to finish. And as entrepreneurs, sometimes we lose sight of the goal. If you start looking left or looking right and you change the path, you change the trajectory of where you're going, what is your goal love? Like that's my question, right? And when you don't know what the goal is, you will...

begin to run towards whatever you're looking at, even if that's not what you actually want. The thing I want you to realize is alignment feels like ease. That doesn't mean it's easy, but it feels like ease. You may still be tired, but you'll be satisfied. So very quick example of this. For the past four weeks, I have completely revamped, reorganized, restructured, redone the teachmehowtobake.com website.

Coachefkim.com no longer exists. It will now lead you to KimberlyIHouston.com and all of the recipes that were on Coachefkim.com are now KitchenFunWithKids.com and I am having to rewrite all 200 plus recipes on KitchenFunWithKids.com in a way that aids parents

with supporting their kids in the kitchen. Okay? As someone who built an entire legacy, an entire business around working with kids in the kitchen, I cannot teach every child in the world how to cook or how to bake. However, I can provide a resource for their parents, for their educators, for the adults in their life. And so I know all of my recipes work.

Kimberly Houston (16:01.42)

They, as I did a content audit, we talked about content audits on previous episodes, I did a content audit in the end of February, beginning of March and realized that 90 % of the recipes that were on CoachefKim.com were all family friendly. The 10 % of them that were not were like really detailed, in-depth baking things and I moved them over to teach me how to bake. So if you're looking for baking recipes,

sourdough breads, know, cake decorating, cookie decorating, things of that sort that require a little more skill. All those things that I on teaching me how to bake. The things that are left on kitchen foam with kids, they're split up by age group. They're split up by skill set of children. And I, as an educator, know that your children can do things that you don't think they can do as a parent.

And so the website is now being restructured so that parents can look at a recipe and understand that their child at whatever age they are can do certain things. So even if it's something like there's a lot of egg roll recipes, it introduces you to bringing your kids in the kitchen regardless of age. And it tells you that the three to five year olds can do this.

that the six to eight year olds can do this, that the seven to 10 year olds can do this, that 10 can do this, that 13 plus can do this with or without supervision. And it tells you how to not be a helicopter parent in the kitchen. It also teaches you how to get your children to not be picky eaters. Now, the caveat is this, if you have a special needs child,

these things might not work for you, right? I have a child with autism and sometimes this doesn't work. But if you do not have a special needs child, you want to introduce them to cooking or exploring new things in the kitchen, I tell you how to do that, right? So I'll tell you within, you know, step one, if we're chopping up vegetables, have your kid taste it and let them explain it to you. Do you like the way it tastes? Is it sweet? Is it salty? Is it sour?

Kimberly Houston (18:25.262)

you know, how do you like that mouth feel? You can now learn what textures they like instead of having kids who were walking around saying, I don't like tomatoes, right? That's a big one. I don't like tomatoes. I don't like onions. Well, there's multiple kinds of onions, right? And so when I used to teach kids in the kitchen, we would have an onion day and we would have, you know, the purple onion. We would have a sweet onion. We would have shallots. And so then they would slice them.

and we would cook them and we would cook them in olive oil or cook them in butter or they would taste them raw. Right? Like I want you to understand that as you do different things to things, they taste different. But the only way for kids to know that is if they taste it. And so the new format on kitchen fun with kids.com is introducing parents how to introduce their children to foods in the kitchen and how to introduce them to cooking. Right. And so I did that because of a content audit.

When I was looking at the stuff and I was like, my God, kids could legit be in the kitchen doing these things. And the thing that sparked it for me is my babies who are now teenagers, right? They've been around me in the kitchen. It's been five years since I've taught in person in the kitchen. Well, those kids are teenagers now. And their parents have sent me photos of them on my website, making stuff off my blog.

And I was like, well, let me go do a little audit and see what's on here and see if I can create something for that. And so I did, right? That was a lot of work. Creating kimberlyahusen.com, kitchenfilmwithkids.com, and teachmehowtobake.com, a lot of work, a lot of work. Okay, not easy. A lot of work. And for the last four weeks, I was dedicated and I was devoted to making this happen. So while...

That was a lot of work. While it did require me to sit at my computer far more than I have in a very long time, while I was tired, it was a good tire. It was a satisfied tire. It was a successful tire. It was a, this is going to pay off in the end kind of tire. It wasn't, Kimberly's doing busy work that no one's ever gonna see. And a lot of people do busy work that people aren't gonna see, right? And so you have to align yourself with doing things that make the most sense.

Kimberly Houston (20:52.44)

for you and your business that are actually moving the needle forward and understanding that just because it's a lined action and feels like ease, it doesn't mean always that it's easy. Now, for those of you who are thinking about this and you're like, well, you know, I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure about this. Okay. Listen, let me give you three red flags because as you begin to adjust and change some things, some habits are hard to break. And I want to give you three red flags.

That's going to be a signal to you that this is not in alignment. Number one, you're doing a whole lot, but you're not getting any traction. Don't do a whole lot and there's no traction. Okay? That's the first thing. The second thing, you dread showing up even for the stuff you used to love doing. Friend, if it doesn't bring you joy anymore, it's out of alignment. It's out of alignment with who you are now, this version of you.

It might've been something that a past version of you love to do, but if it's out of alignment with who you are right now, don't try and force it. And then number three, you're always reacting instead of initiating. Plan your life, make it strategic. You should know when you're going to have your holiday specials. Get a calendar. You know when you should, here's the thing.

When we are running businesses, we should not be reactive to things, right? The way I like to think about this is when I ran my bakery, I knew that Mother's Day weekend in Atlanta was going to be full of college graduations. All right, so the first year I had my bakery, I had all these Mother's Day things up and ready to go. Boom, boom, boom. I got zero Mother's Day orders.

and I only had college graduation orders. That was it. Okay?

Kimberly Houston (22:44.374)

It was also prom in Atlanta. So here's what I want you to think about. It's graduation season, so all of our HBCUs are all graduating Mother's Day weekend. Traffic, traffic, traffic, traffic. At one point, I was catering proms. Imagine trying to take hundreds of cupcakes to a prom in the midst of college graduations in Atlanta. May is also peak.

wedding season. So once again, imagine trying to deliver wedding cakes in the midst of the chaos. All right. So it took me about three years to get into the pattern of knowing what May was going to look like. And so I had to adjust and I would start promoting graduation things in March, not April, maybe by April I am full. Okay. In March,

I knew how many weddings I was going to have to do in April, I mean in May, because most brides aren't waiting till the last minute. So my May weddings were already on the books by March. I knew how much time I had left. I knew how many orders I could spare. And in order for me to book out my calendar, I would go ahead and launch whatever my graduation bundle was going to be.

Kimberly Houston (24:06.616)

Having a bundle versus having a sale, two different things. I worked retail for 14 years and I understand the power of the bundle, right? As opposed to the power of the sale. The sale client versus the bundle client are two completely different people. I don't know if I can express that to you. Unless you've ever worked retail, you understand that the people who get the bundle, that's not the same client that's coming in always looking for a sale.

the bundle people will pay you more money, okay? Where it may be they get this one expensive thing on your menu, this one expensive thing on your menu, and they say $15, right? As opposed to the person who wants each individual thing at half off. Do you see the difference in how much money you're making, right? So I always had a graduation bundle, and I did not even offer Mother's Day things anymore because it wasn't what was happening. It wasn't the thing that was selling for me.

And so I was proactive, not reactive to the season. I was not burnout in May. There are a lot of people who get burnout in their busy season and I did not do that. I did the same thing again for the end of the year, right? The end of the year for me was corporate orders. So companies who need to spend money in their budget before their end of year happens, they would just place very large orders with me. And so I stopped doing

individual orders during Christmas and there were packages that you could purchase. There were no custom orders after Halloween that no longer existed. Everything looked a very certain way. I only used two, three cookie cutters, know, only offer certain flavors in order for me to be able to scale and grow and not face burnout. But those things didn't happen until I was no longer being reactive to the season and the time.

And you can do that in your business, whether that is something where you are selling direct to consumer or you're doing a digital product. I know when all of my launches are this year, right? And so that means I have the time to back it up six weeks and tell you that I'm launching something new. My entire focus during Q2 is going to be for creative entrepreneurs to join me in the baking your way to six figures mastermind. No, you don't have to be a baker.

Kimberly Houston (26:29.646)

It just worked because I'm a pastry chef and it's a cute pun, but it is for all creative entrepreneurs who want to audit their businesses, put systems in place, and grow their business to their first $100,000. And how do you do that sustainably? The research shows that 80 % of small businesses never hit the $100,000 a year mark and sustain it. I have processes that can help entrepreneurs do that.

And so that is my focus for Q2. That's the only offer you're going to hear me talking about from now through the end of the summer is how do you grow your business to six figures and keep it there sustainably. There are some very strategic things you can be doing in your business in order to do that, right? And so making your way to six figures or the kitchen table dreams mastermind, that's my offer. I'm not going to create another offer. I'm not creating another offer. That's it.

And the reason it is like that is because that's how I set my year up, right? And I might launch something different for Q4, just based off some past experiences, offering the emergence experience during the holidays seems to work really well to help people with emotional intelligence when it comes to dealing with their family of origin during the holiday season. But that's not till October. So from now it is March through September, probably. We're only talking about the kitchen table dreams mastermind.

where you are bringing your kitchen table dream to life and we're going to scale it to $100,000 and how do you continue to do that successfully year after year. And so that's my offer. That's the only thing I'm talking about, right? It's down in your show notes if you want to know more about it. If you want to go to teachmehowtobake.com backslash mastermind or go to kimberlyihusen.com, that's the only offer you see, friends. That's it. That's it.

I mean, you can book some one-on-one time with me, but the group offering is going to be that mastermind. And it's because that is the problem that I'm solving right now. Right? That is a thing that is in alignment for me in this season of my life. And so while I have offered photography classes, I have offered baking classes, I have offered cake decorating, cookie decorating, cupcake decorating, et cetera, that does not serve me in this season. And it's okay. It is okay. Right?

Kimberly Houston (28:51.246)

I want you to get to the point where everything that you're doing is moving the needle forward. You love the things that you are doing in your business. You do not dread showing up for yourself and your clients and that you are always prepared and you're not just throwing up sales and trying to fly by the seat of your pants. And as professor Steve from the last episodes, well, two episodes ago stated building your plane in the air, right? Planes fly better that are built on the ground.

And building on the ground means you put systems in place in order to keep that plane afloat. And so as we wrap this up, I want you to remember that aligned action is bold. It is intentional. And it is how you scale your business by keeping your sanity. It is how we avoid burnout. It is how we alleviate the pressure that we are putting on ourselves by trying to build these planes in the air instead of landing it.

grounding it and making a sustainable product that will soar. I would love to invite you to take heart to the 321 rule throughout this week, right? Test it out. Give it a couple of weeks. Test out the 321 rule. Three priorities for the week, not 10. Three priorities that support your goals, two aligned actions, and then one reflection. What went well? I want you to track it.

If you receive any type of like download or insight from that, please tag me on social media at Kimberly I Houston. All platforms, no longer code shift Kim, Kimberly I Houston across all platforms. Tag me. Let me know. Let's continue this conversation because this is the time for entrepreneurs to step up. I understand we might be headed into a recession, but let me tell you something. The same way people were thriving,

during COVID, right? The world was bleak, but there are people who are thriving. I made my first six figures during the pandemic. I understand what it looks like to thrive during economic downturn. That can still happen for you. That can be a part of your story. So tag me online. Let's continue this conversation. And until next time, stay sweet friends.