Healing Intergenerational Trauma: Katherine Dudtschak on Diversity Without Quotas

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The beauty of love is to be able to honor it in its fullness and slam your heart into the people and the places and the things that ignite your soul. That is entrepreneurship and life lesson number one and number 100 all at the same time.

Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. I can't, I, I mean, I just can't express how fun our conversation has already been. So listeners, viewers, I'm so excited to have for you today, Kathryn Ducek. Kathryn, thank you so much for coming on Your Brand Amplified. I cannot wait to see where we go.

I can't either. Thank you for inviting me and hello to all of you.

I wanna talk a little bit about your origin story. You grew up on a farm in rural Canada, but you also had parents who were German immigrants. They survived the war. Your father had been in prison camp. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how that environment shaped your early days, your work, your identity, and what it meant to earn your place in the world.

Yeah, great. Thanks. It's a perfect place to start because I think of each of us as whole and full and rich human beings. And I think it's important to understand the whole, somebody's whole lived experience. So yes, I grew up with two immigrant parents. My mother was a child refugee during the Second World War. My father was a Russian prisoner of war during the Second World War. Like most newcomers to a new country, you want a better life and you're trying to put trauma behind you. Yet in your nervous system, you're carrying that intergenerational trauma with you, which my, both of my parents did. They lost 3 of their 4 parents during the war. You know, my father woke up daily with people dead beside him in the prison camp. I talk about it in my book, Sincerely Catherine. He was skin and bones when he left the prison camp. My mother had to raise or helped raise her little sister in a child refugee camp and protect her from bullies. You know, when my mother was 8 years old and the last kind of punchline is my father went into— he was originally captured by Hitler, if you will, to learn how to fight at age 13, and then was captured by the Russian military at age 14 and was in prison camp till age 17. So I share that to make it graphic about how formative and how young they were when they experienced their horrific trauma. And my heart hurts for any human being that experiences the atrocities of war. So I grew up on a very humble farm. Mom and dad were not wealthy at all. We were poor or certainly very humble on our farm. We never took vacations because we had livestock. Ironically, it was a mink farm. So I grew up with the shame of parents raising mink, yet this love of the beauty of fur. And so, you know, we grew up with really humble means, with parents that work 7 days a week and parents that bore the stress of their trauma through fears of money and not having enough money, through fears of not being able to provide for their children. And if you study attachment theory, I had a mother that would coddle me when she could and love me deeply when she could. And then she would disappear for hours out to the farm. So I had this hot and cold relationship with love. And then my dad had a great sense of humor when he was relaxed. And yet he was quite explosive. His temper was high. So I grew up in this, you know, kind of high-stress pressure cooker with two loving, well-intended humans. And the other part, Anika, of my childhood that I think is really relatable is in school, I struggled in, you know, for the first 6, 7, 8 years of school, I struggled and they wanted to hold me back in grade 2. And, you know, in grade 2, the teacher thought I was so active in class and a bit, a bit mischievous that she thought rather than continuing to put me in the hall because I was missing so much class, she decided to put my desk in the corner. So here you are ostracized and set aside. In school and in reality, although I've never been physically tested, I'm dyslexic. Anybody that knows neurodiversity says, oh my God, you're dyslexic. And so here you've got this dyslexic child that thinks differently, sees the world differently, who carries a German last name with lots of post-World War II abuse and, you know, teasing and bullying going on, on a really humble farm with parents that are somewhat volatile at times. And so by the end of my teenage years, I started to become quite defiant that I was going to reject my childhood and I was going to prove to my parents and to the teachers that I could build a better life and that I was smart enough. And so at about age 13, 14, I quit working for my father on his farm and I went and worked for a pig farm next door and I started earning my own money. And by the time I was 18 or 19, I said, I am going to prove to you that I can build a better life, build a beautiful family, find the perfect partner, and nobody's gonna get in my way. And so that's how it manifested.

And you did. I mean, you said, you know, you started working at 13 on the farm next door. You married your love. You had 4 children in 4 years. You built a 30-year career in banking, and that included leading 25,000 people, banks across 19 Caribbean countries, serving as CEO. You've done remarkable things. That nobody, even if they are put into the very best circumstance of loving parents and all of the, you know, money that they could want and all the love that they could want and care, most people in that situation won't reach what you've been able to accomplish either.

Yeah. I think this is a deeper conversation about leadership in what is an extractive and performative world. And so I think that people that strive for hierarchy and bigger and bigger responsibility have something in their childhood that kind of shaped their survival instinct. And so for me, it was a combination of my dyslexic mind, and dyslexic people have gifts. They're, they're not disabled by any definition. I'm a systems thinker. I'm a very visual, broad thinker, and then I come back to solve the problems. So I'm really good at seeing patterns and recognizing patterns. And it's dyslexic people also have generally have really good kind of cognitive and social skills and social reasoning skills and empathy skills. So my dyslexic ability kind of served me, which is kind of innate. And I actually think it's tied to my soul more than it is tied to anything. And then my lived experience and my epigenetics taught me how to survive and how to adapt. And it was the two of those combined that I think served me well in my more than 30-year corporate career.

So when we think about that, the things that helped serve you and thinking about what leadership feels like at that scale, what it demands of you as a human, right? Can you talk a little bit about that for us?

Yeah. Well, again, if you think of this current world that we live in, and I do believe consciousness is rising, and I do believe the stresses that exist in the world geopolitically, mental health, anxiety are all there to wake us up to a kinder, more inclusive, more sustainable, more harmonious way of being, being with self, with each other, with planet. It's a knowing that I feel deeply. Yet the world that we currently live in is still very performative. It is about extracting value from human beings. We call it productivity. We call extracting value from money, return on equity. We call it extracting value from planet and from nature. Whether it's energy or minerals. It's so, it is a society that we've built over thousands of years that is extractive and performative. And, you know, yet within it, there are a growing number of leaders that were taught more command and control, power-based, hierarchical leadership that awaken to a more inclusive, kinder, more collaborative form of leadership, a more heart-centered form of leadership. And I think it was because of my childhood, because of what I experienced in school, and because of my natural kind of human essence and wiring, I showed strong interpersonal skills at work. And by about year 2000 was when I really started to shift and open my heart as a leader. And I talk about it in my book. There was a colleague that I was doing a leadership review with, and he was quite risk-averse, and his peers were telling him in this leadership review that you're too cautious. And I have always, from childhood, had a fundamental curiosity about the human condition and the planet and the universe. And, and I just said to him, I said, you're— people are saying you're risk-averse. Where does that come from? And he immediately started to cry. And he was 10 to 15 years older than I was. And I idolized him. He was my mentor at one point, and I was now his executive. I was now his boss. And he goes, every time my parents took a risk, they, they lost it. They made a mistake. And I promised myself I would never make a mistake. And I started crying with him in the room. And through his— through my question about who he was at the core and his upbringing and his vulnerability and my opening of my own heart, we bonded. And from that moment on, we had a way of working together that when he became risk adverse, he would tell me, and I'd say, no, you're on the right track. I got your back. And we built this beautiful relationship working together. Anika Jackson was in that relationship and in that experience that I learned it was okay to cry at work. And I learned it was okay to really get to know the whole human being. And it was, and empathy was a superpower and vulnerability was a strength. And it was the beginning of embracing softer, yet harder leadership attributes. Like, it takes courage to open your heart to others and be curious about others. It takes courage to sit with their pain and not judge them. And it takes a level of empathy and being able to relate from your own life experiences. So that That was really the beginning of me shifting from kind of control-based, power-based leadership to more empathy-based, curiosity, kindness-based leadership. And, and beginning to embrace more feminine aspects of my own self that I had suppressed since childhood. And so what I will say about leadership is the world is ready for leaders that go on healing journeys and grieve and heal their own hurts and create more self-love for themselves and embody a better blend of more feminine and masculine characteristics, what I refer to as wholeness. And any regenerative society of the past, indigenous cultures are an example of, many indigenous cultures are an example of that. They embodied more integrated ways of being as human beings. They were not performative, they were coherent. So that was my beginning. Now at McDonald's, the Sausage McMuffin is only $1.50. So stop dreaming about breakfast sausage and go get it. Get more value on the under $3 menu. Limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery.

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I want to talk a little bit about the signs that you've ignored, right? When you were going through this and you real— you had this epiphany perhaps that, wow, I'm at the top of my career, but something's missing. I feel like I'm dying inside.

Yeah, for sure. I'll give the punchline and then I'll unpack it. So that way everybody's not waiting in case they haven't already figured it out. I, um, firstly, I lived in a man's world for 50 years and when I was a child, so in addition to liking machines and systems, I also loved things that were pretty and beautiful and feminine, and I was deeply sensitive and deeply curious. And so, you know, I would spend hours in my mother's jewelry box and drawers and, you know, I'm like 10 or 12 years old with my sister's undergarments on with boy clothes over top playing in the sandbox with tractors. Like what a dichotomy based on traditional male, female, not masculine, feminine. They're different things. Masculine, feminine are energies within us. That are part of our essence. Male, female is body parts. And so I learned at a pretty young age that this female or feminine wiring inside of me was bad. And so my performative self that went on to prove to the world I could build a better life and a marriage and a family kept that feminine side of me suppressed for 50 years. Yet what happens with us as human beings, and we all develop because of the world that we live in, we all develop performative ways of being, performative ways of fitting into the system. And it's not uncommon at young ages, but certainly at midlife 40, 45, 50, 55. It's not uncommon for the parts of self, the deeper essence within you, that if you've been hiding something, that it gets louder and louder and louder. And that certainly happened for me. And what happened was the performative me started to burn out after hyper performance for 30 years, my children got older and didn't need me as much. My marriage matured and my job got intuitive. I was in a job. I picked a job rather than picking a job that I would prove to you I was smart enough. For the first time after 30 years, I picked a job that I knew I would intuitively be able to do because I knew I was beginning to burn out. I'd led a restructuring of a bank. In the Caribbean following the financial crisis, and it crushed my soul to have to go in after leaders that didn't play the long game and restructure the company and lay off thousands of people. I cried with 6,000 employees because they were fearful for their food on the table and for their families. And they wanted to know how many jobs were going to be lost. And I just started crying with them. And I said, I can't tell you that because I don't know. Yet what I promise you from the bottom of my heart is I will do everything in my power to save this bank and as many jobs as absolutely possible. And I will be honest with you as we go through this journey together. And the Business leaders are going, holy crap, in 24 months you led this restructuring. We've never seen anything like it. Employee engagement was like 30% and it was like 45% by the time we were done after 24 months, after thousands of people lost their jobs. But it crushed my soul because it showed me short-term leadership thinking can hurt humanity, can hurt human well-being. And I picked a job that was intuitive and my marriage matured and my children were older. And I had a, I had a life coach and a leadership coach give me feedback on my empathic leadership abilities, telling me he's never seen anything like it. And I said, yeah, but did they, did they tell you my finance skills were good? And did they tell me, you, my strategic thinking skills were good? Because I was trying to affirm my male or masculine characteristics. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I've never seen anything like this. And in that moment, Anika, I said for the first time, who would I be if I actually accepted these more heart-centered leadership and human attributes within me? And 9 months later, I dropped my daughter off at university and I saw this person assigned male at birth with a silk blouse like this with pearls in a poster. And the poster said, embrace gender variance. And I thought, and I didn't know what the word transgender was. I lived this proper life, this banker life. And it said, embrace gender variance. And the words that came to me intuitively would, were Could the world become so open that I could express all of me? And then I saw National Geographic, and then I heard about Caitlyn Jenner. Then my mother died, and I finally mustered up the courage to book a colleague for lunch that's an expert on LGBT. And I said, what the heck is transgender? And who the heck is Caitlyn Jenner? And is this just another reality TV show and she's going to undo it all in 5 years. I had no idea. I had lived such a sheltered life. And then I said, and how can Caitlin like girls? That's weird for me. And my colleague said, who you go to sleep as is your gender. How you feel on the inside, your wholeness as a human being is your identity, is your essence. And who you go to sleep with is your sexual orientation. They're two different things. And my colleague goes, Caitlyn Jenner's a lesbian. And you could have pushed me over with a feather. And my life turned upside down on August 25th, 2017. And I was leading 25,000 people and we were delivering record performance and within a year after trying to prove and disprove, my heart wanted it to be true because it felt so real to me. And my fear-based mind, my ego, didn't want it to be true because I didn't want to hurt my kids. I didn't want to hurt my spouse. And I didn't want to be homeless and rejected by the world. And so within a year, I was suicidal. I was ready for life to be over because I had built in materialistic terms, the perfect life. And a dear friend, Leanne, who's a psychiatric nurse or was a psychiatric nurse working with homeless people, she could read my signs, my depression, and some of the things I was saying. And she said, would you like me to send you the research on intergenerational trauma caused by suicide? And in that moment, my plan to say, protect my children was flawed. And within a few days, I wrote a letter of intention to myself. Parts of it is in my book, Sincerely Catherine. And I said, I'm going to find a way to face my truth, embrace all of who I am, and do it in my job. And I said, I'm in Canada, which is a good country, and I work for a good company, and I've got lots of beautiful people in my life. I should be able to find a way to do this in my job leading 25,000 people. And the important part of that is it wasn't 25,000 people for, for ego purposes. I, like, I feared losing my job because I was already experiencing depression. And if I'd lost my job, it could have pushed me over the edge. And the other thing that I feared was if my marriage didn't work out, that, you know, my spouse has had amazing career, yet I was the higher breadwinner and I was worried about their wellbeing. And I was also worried about finishing putting my kids through university. And so I said, I need to find a way to come out in this job in order to protect my own mental health and care for my children. And I did.

You recorded a video.

I did.

Right. That you shared with employees.

Yeah. I could have helped Brené Brown write about vulnerability. And I cannot wait to meet Brené. And I, it will happen one day. We share so much.

Absolutely.

And so I had learned what I was going to share with you about vulnerability and the videos. What I had learned in the restructuring of the bank in the Caribbean was that being honest with people about how you feel and being willing to cry alongside other human beings and being willing to empathize with their fears of losing their jobs. You know, being willing to anticipate what their questions might be and just be open and vulnerable alongside had taught me, had prepared me, and restructuring a bank in 19 countries prepared me to restructure my own life. And I wouldn't wish it on anybody, yet I knew that if I was going to preserve the trust of 25,000 people or 80,000 people where the video went to is I needed to bare my soul to them about my life story and answer questions they might have and really be ready to answer their questions and let them in. And so we recorded a video, 5 hours of recording for a 5, 6-minute video. That went out in June of 2000, June 17th, 2019 to 80,000 people. And yeah, there was a video.

And the, I mean, one thing that you did right is you created a safe space for people. And so in turn that created a safe space for you. And what I recall from my research is that The response was very positive. And that might have been a little unexpected. I mean, hopefully you expected that, but there's also the fear of the unknown.

I had the chair of the board of directors for the company take me for lunch before news went out. I was still living in a man's world. And she goes, you better be ready. And You know, this is really important about healing journeys. Intellectually, somebody can tell you, you don't need to be afraid. And, you know, you're gonna, like the CEO, when I first came out to him, he goes, you're going to be a hero. And I was like visceral. This is about saving my life and being there for my children. I don't want to be a hero. And the chair of the board was similar. She goes, you better be ready. Outpouring of love that you're going to receive is going to blow your mind. And I still, when that video went out the morning of June 17th, I still expected to be homeless. I still feared the worst because in my nervous system, through my parent, and this is why you asked me about my upbringing as a child, in my nervous system, this fear of abandonment and fear of rejection this fear of being alone in the world was so deeply ingrained into my cells of my body and my nervous system that I still thought I would be homeless. And then within minutes, the emails started to pour in and two-thirds of the emails were, oh my God, your bravery, your courage. You're inspiring. And then about a third of them were all of that. Plus, here's my story. Here's my aspect of identity, not LGBT identity, uh, like just aspects of self that the person had been hiding from the world since childhood because they were fearful. It's like, it's something simple. Like a white man who likes fashion and decorating more than his female spouse would never in a, in the world tell his male colleagues at work that aspect of himself. Pretty simple, pretty basic, but he's covering and he's hiding. So, you know, to women telling me, white blonde women telling me in their teenage life, they packed the car to get mother out of the house, away from the alcoholic father, to people from the Caribbean and, you know, African American individuals telling me that they grew up in environments where LGBT people were stoned to death and abused. To somebody from India telling me that his best friend was gay, but he ostracized his friend and his friend was put into an arranged marriage and later took his life, died by suicide, and how he carried guilt and shame for ostracizing his best friend. So I was met with courage and bravery, which I couldn't relate to. And what I've since learned is that courage or bravery is not moving forward in the absence of fear. It is moving forward in the presence of the deepest fear. And then these stories that people started telling me just kept coming and coming and coming. And Anika Jackson Jackson, that is the greatest gift of this human lifetime is the gift of the gentleman in year 2000 that told me about his childhood and his parents and why he was risk adverse. And these countless people in 2019 that started to tell me their stories of hurt and hardship. And here I was thinking it was only senior executives that have this Type A performative. I'm going to prove to you I'm good enough. And what I started to see was the suppression of aspects of self, of identity. And this fear of judgment and rejection is pervasive. And I consider it the greatest gift of my life. I could no longer lead command and control. It had to be from compassion. It had to be from empathy. It had to be from kind curiosity. It had to be that the teller who was serving customers had as much voice in the solution we were going to build as some executive would, maybe even more voice because he or she knew what the real answer was better than anybody else. And so, I could no longer lead hierarchically and through power. It had to be through compassion and curiosity and empathy and inclusivity relative to what I now call higher purpose, a world that is socially inclusive, economically inclusive, and a world where we live more harmoniously with self, each other, and the planet. And we went on to achieve record performance after I affirmed and gender.

Well, I think that's what's really important for people to understand is that by leading with empathy, by being your whole self and bringing your whole self into this environment, by really caring for people, giving them love and acceptance, women in senior leadership roles rose to 58% from 38%.

When I went into the job, there was like 30% women on the senior team. And when I received the Catalyst Award, or the team and I achieved the Catalyst Award, which is kind of women's advocacy firm. It's well known in the US. It's, it would be kind of the gold star of inclusivity. And yeah, women's representation was 58% as I left that role. And visible minority talent, which we would call BIPOC, I don't like acronyms, was like 30% or 35%. And LGBT, like doubled or tripled. And people go, well, how did you do that? How did you do that? And they go like, how did you set the numbers and the targets? And I go, we, we didn't set the numbers or targets. What we did is when we interviewed people for jobs, we didn't just look at the university they went to, or we didn't just look at their job experiences. Just like the gentleman in year 2000, I said, who are you and where do you come from? Like, help me get to know you and your family's story and only what you're comfortable telling me. And what you can't help but discover when you start to get to know the whole person is that women and visible minority talent and LGBT people, you know, or men that have experienced hardship are the richest, most deeply experienced human beings. And they bring a level of kindness and empathy and a level of resilience to the mission because they'd never want another human being to go through what they went through. And they learned to be resilient coming through their crisis, and they learned to be kind because they wouldn't want another person to experience the hurt that they did. So that's how the diversity numbers improved. It was again by being curious and kind and whole and in our thinking about humanity and human potential. And again, it built off of what I learned through my coming out was that when you really understand the fears that people are hiding, the fear of being judged and rejected, and you start to understand the aspects of lived experience or essence or identity that they're hiding, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there's exponential human potential, exponential human potential available to us if we start shifting from people fitting into boxes versus, yeah, we got something to do. We got a mission to solve. And I want to know all that you can bring to that mission. And it's the great, as I said, this, my coming out experience and seeing this side of humanity and then shifting the way I, going on my own healing journey. And being truly at peace with myself and then leading from compassion and curiosity and kindness and higher purpose. Like, it's the greatest gift in my life. I feel like the most blessed woman and human being on the planet.

I'm Livvy Dunn, all-American gymnast and Viori athlete. When you travel and train as much as I do, you find happiness where you are. On the mat or on the sand, movement and comfort are essential. That's why I live in performance joggers by Vuori, made from Dreamnet fabric that's made of 89% recycled materials, effortlessly soft and made to move as much as I do. My happiness starts here in the softest joggers on the planet. Get 20% off your first purchase at vuori.com/libby. That's vuori.com/libby. Exclusions apply. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on US orders over $75 and free returns. Go to viore.com/Livy and discover the full versatility of Viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

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I sold my car on Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.

So, what's the problem?

That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.

Maybe there's no catch.

That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

Wow, you need to relax.

I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?

I think it's laminate.

Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

Car selling without a catch.

Sell your car today on Carvana.

Pickup fees may apply. It's so beautiful. It really is. And just everything that you were able to pour into where you were at that time in your life and leave things better than they were. Because you did decide eventually to leave the corporate career, become an entrepreneur, and take a little break, right? You had a farm in France. You took a little break, a timeout from the bank, and you decided to have a shift in all of your life, not just your, you know, personal transformation.

Yeah, Anika, I'll, I'll share. It's again, context is important. I'm a storyteller. I'm dyslexic. So it's how I, It's how I help bring texture. It's because it's so easy to look at outcomes. It's more important to look at the journey and the why. And so I left the company that I'd been at for 37 and a half years in 2022. And part of it was they were making changes and there, there really wasn't a role that inspired me in the company. And I wanted another chapter of my professional career, my corporate career, where I was chosen as Catherine and people could meet me where I was at and I could meet them where they were at. And together we would go forward. And I wanted, I wanted to prove one more time that this more human-centered, heart-centered approach to leadership worked. And so I became a CEO of a bank. Helping aging people, people over the age of 55. And again, we went on to record performance and an inclusive culture, and it was beautiful. Yet in between these two companies, I went on a healing journey and it'll be my second book. So my, it's largely written and I went on a healing journey. I had not decompressed from my coming out. I had not decompressed from the countless stories. I had not decompressed my divorce or my children leaving home. I will say that my former spouse and I care about each other a lot. We were friends. My children and I have never been more close, but I hadn't decompressed my divorce and I hadn't healed my fears of rejection and abandonment and my fears of being alone. And so on that healing journey, I learned to meditate. I read Michael Singer's books, Untethered Soul. I read countless books. I studied synchronicities. I learned to be present. And as I traveled, and I was about 55 at the time, as I then chose to travel to prove to myself that I could be free in me in the world. I went to 10 countries in 4 months traveling solo and to just be present in the moment and see who, what I would meet and what experiences I would have. And I set an intention as I meditated to not only be free in me in the world, but also to live with my heart open, to be present. And to have faith that we are always where we're supposed to be. And I said, you know, my dream would be to own a family home again, where my children could come home to. And when I meet the person of my dreams, they'll likely have kids as well. And there'll be room for two families. And I would like a home that could double as a life transformation and leadership transformation retreat center. And I would also love a home that could double as almost an art gallery or a place, a place to showcase artists that have profound messages for humanity. And I believe or know that one of the things that's missing in leadership and in the world is the coming together of creatives and, you know, more masculine thinking ways with more feminine creative thinking ways. And I promised myself I would never retire without hobbies. So after about 18 months in the CEO job, as I was getting ready to release Sincerely Catherine, I was also like you beginning to think about a podcast where I interview people and uncover their stories of personal growth and personal transformation and service, servitude and service to humanity and the world. And everything in my creative life was flowing like water. And then the corporate job got heavy with governance and risk management and stuff. And I go, I'm going to turn 60 in March of 2026. And I said, you know, when am I going to embrace this creative side that I've set these intentions around, things that I've dreamt about my whole life? When am I going to embrace it? Like, it's kind of now or never. It's not never, but it's like, what are you waiting for? You know, I've got a pension. I think I can put food on the table till the day I die, which is more than many people can say. And so I decided to leave the corporate world and release Sincerely Catherine, the book, to the world, release the Sincerely Show, another podcast that where I interview people like you are with me on personal transformation stories and that. Is being released to the world shortly. And then there's an umbrella organization and platform called Sincerely that I've also given birth to. And, you know, Sincerely is a platform centered on story as sermon. And I don't mean sermon as religion in the traditional sense of the word religion. Sermon, and as you know, Anika Jackson Jackson, better than anyone, when human beings share stories from the deepest, most vulnerable places, their stories through hardship, through crisis, through finding parts of themselves that they've denied, integrating themselves, emerging more whole, more healed, it's not uncommon. It's more common than not that those people feel spared, that their lives could have been over. And it's more common than not that those people that feel spared end up emerging the other side where their stories and their lived experiences and their soul or their essence come together in the form of some act of service for humanity and the planet. And as I went through my darkest of days, Anika Jackson, and was suicidal, and I got to the other side, I said, there are way too many freaking human beings that are taking their life. And we're in the middle of a mental health pandemic and it's not going to go away anytime soon. And if I can help people tell their stories, showcase their stories, and the new lives that they've built coming out of crisis as a convener of story, as a convener of a judgment-free space that can help facilitate healing and grow through Story as Sermon. That would be really a beautiful way to spend the next period of my life. And that is the backstory of sincerelyinc.com and this chapter, this creative chapter of my life that has come into the world.

Everything goes back to storytelling. I mean, the one thing that's been passed down throughout history, right, is the ability to tell stories and that's why they're so important. And it is important to talk about the deep stories, the real stories, the truth. Not just the fluff. And you have this amazing platform. You also have the Sincerely framework, which we haven't said in name, but it's underpinned every single thing we've talked about from building our identity around essential self, physical and inherited self, the lived experience self. So I hope that listeners can think about that because you've touched on all of these, right? Uh, your entire framework and the phases of transformation and where people are. And from that, you've built this platform, framework, book, podcast, physical space. So much of your essence has gone into this. So you're at an interesting moment where you're in this process of new and everything is starting to come out and emerge, right? And you also had a birthday. So for our listeners who are entrepreneurs, who are looking at stepping into something new, vulnerable, what would you give them as advice based on your own experience about taking the leap?

A couple of things, a couple of things. Firstly, it goes to the Three Selves Model, which is under the Sincerely Human, which is kind of the research publishing models aspect of Sincerely. The world we're raised in, this performative extractive world we are raised in, values your lived experience self, your university, your job experiences, what street you live on, what neighborhood you live in. And to some degree, too much, honestly, it values whether you're male or female or, and so part of your physical and inherited self. And it values whether you're English or Asian. And so the extractive and performative world values performance and values productivity. It suppresses, it doesn't, it ignores essence, your soul. And, you know, entrepreneurship is an act of creativity. Entrepreneurship is art. It's passion. And when we live, when we find our soul and our essence, and we learn to love ourselves and embrace all aspects of essence, and then we go looking for, well, what does— what experiences did my lived experience give me that I can combine with my essence and then move out further into the world. So if you're building as an entrepreneur from pure intellect, that's one thing, you know, you might have a brilliant idea and you might get seed capital, but when you build from your soul, so I describe my essence to give you context, what I mean by essence, I've come to accept, not just accept, embrace and love the fact that I am fiercely curious and I'm a meaning maker. I'm a puzzle builder. I'm a systems thinker. And I have been through my whole life. I remember myself at 2 years old with my dad visiting his friends going, why, why, why, why, why? Because I was building puzzles in my mind. As a systems thinker and a voraciously curious soul. And I also have this deep love of all things feminine, of natural beauty. And I love big. I feel big. I cry big. And so I have this deeply feminine side. I have a love of 8 billion people because I know what we're capable of doing when we work from heart, not from ego and fear. So I know for me to live healthy, a healthy life, I need to do things that are curious and systems building. And I also need to be able to live from my heart. And surround myself with feminine beauty. And I have this, and I, and across all of them, there's this voracious desire to understand human nature. That's my essence. My lived experience in leadership and banking and economics and my coming out and my parents' war trauma, you know, all added together have given me some skills at how to run a business or build a business or how to relate to people from all walks of life. It's the two of them together that have brought Sincerely Inc. and the things that you talked about, Anika Jackson Jackson, to life. So I think any entrepreneur, learn to love yourself, heal some of your trauma, and You know, make sure that you're coming from your deepest gifts, your deepest passions, as well as your intellect. Because when you come from essence and from your soul and you learn to love yourself, you become magnetic and your idea has a much bigger chance of sticking. And people have a much bigger chance of coming on the journey with you as an entrepreneur because you are coming from such a pure place of essence and love. And so that'd be the first. And then the second piece of advice is pretty logical. No entrepreneur does it alone. You better surround yourself with other thought leaders, with other advisors, with other coaches, with brand experts, with marketing experts, with website designer. Like, you've got to surround yourself with a small team of people that believe in you, unconditionally, but bring skills that you don't have. And, you know, those would be the two pieces of advice I would give to entrepreneurs. And, you know, and be patient would be the third. Be patient with yourself. How's that sound?

Sounds fantastic. Yeah, I co-sign on all of those. We're going to have further conversations, whether it's on this platform, other platforms that I have, on your platform. And I'm really excited, Catherine, and about the things to come. I'm really excited to see your journey continue to unfold and how you help so many people with this. So thank you for being here. Thank you for giving some time to me today and to my audience.

Anika, thank you. What you have built with Brand Amplified or your Brand Amplified and the related work that you are doing in the world is profound and beautiful. And I honor you for being curious and interested in me and my journey. And the world needs more love and the world needs more curiosity and the world needs more inclusivity. And human beings are capable of so much beauty. And there's not a problem humanity can't solve if we do it from a place of love and inclusivity and this purpose of a more harmonious world, harmony with self, harmony with each other, harmony with planet, we can do anything. And that's what you stand for. And thank you for your voice in the world.

Oh, thank you. It's hard to know what to say when, when somebody is giving you so many accolades on your own podcast. So we will have links to all of the good things for you, Catherine, for the platform, for people to find the podcast and the book and the community that you've built. And I just wanted to ask, do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto, one final wisp of words that you'd like to share with us today?

It's in my book. It's, and like 3 or 4 people have played it out to me. And I will read it to all of you. And I'm going to cry because it's my mantra. And it's, you'll know why. Modus vivendi, a rhythm and a way of being in the world. It is quite simple. Nothing that is meant for you will ever get away. Love deeply and without the need to possess or to own. Let beautiful connections pass through you without attachment. Slam your heart into the people and places and things that ignite something deep inside of your soul. And I promise, I promise, the right things will stay. You will never lose What is for you? I live by this. And I tell you, when you slam your heart into the people and the places and the things with faith that what's meant for you won't leave you, and without attachment, is vulnerable. Because when you love big, you feel that draw and that connection. Yet it would be wrong to attach. It would be wrong to want to possess and own any flower. The beauty of love is to be able to honor it in its fullness and slam your heart into the people and the places and the things that ignite your soul. That is entrepreneurship and life lesson number 1 and number 100 all at the same time.

It definitely is. I know that I have so much inspiration. I had chills several times in our conversation, and if I'm feeling inspired, then I know my audience is as well. So thank you to everybody who's watched this episode, who's listened to it, who's learned about Kathryn's story, who's heard what she advises you to do to pour into your work, into your world, into your life all at the same time, and take it to heart. Take that moment, step back and see how you can continue to be your real authentic self every day. And with that, I'll be back again with another amazing guest very soon. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

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