132 - Taking Control: Choosing Awareness over Victimhood with Crown Yourself Enterprises' Kimberly Spencer

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Kimberly Spencer, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder of Crown Yourself, found at crownyourself.com, and you are the CEO of Communication Queens, found at communicationqueens.com. .com, which is a PR and marketing firm for aspiring authors, CEOs, executives, and people who need to have their presence amplified in the world. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Doug. It's a pleasure.

So tell us a little bit about your backstory, which I think is pretty interesting.

Which lifetime do I start in?

Well, how far back do you want to go?

I mean, I was split— delay— we just mentioned— you just brought up that I was split testing price points at 5 cents $50 for glitter water when I was 5 years old. That was my first entrepreneurial venture. I have been an entrepreneur at heart. I was raised by two entrepreneurs. I saw my parents build a multimillion-dollar arborist company in LA from scratch over the course of 30 years while being, while my father was a functional alcoholic and drug addict for the entirety of that time. And so I said, if he could do that in 30, what could I do in 10? And so I started out, I initially saw my path in entertainment because the through line for every business that I have had has been storytelling. And I am in the business of transforming people's stories. At first it was on the screen. I ended up getting my first movie dream come true, produced, distributed by Lionsgate on Netflix called Bro starring Danny Trejo. And at 24, and I was there at the premiere wondering, why am I only 90% fulfilled? Ended up pivoting, going into being an e-commerce business owner, president of e-commerce company for 2 years, got it featured in major magazines, took this product to market, pitched it to the first round of Shark Tank auditions. I thought everything was going great. I had a business partner who was significantly older than I was. We had different beliefs as far as how the business was to be run. For example, he really wanted to get an office and I am more of the scrappy startup entrepreneur type. And so we had some differing beliefs on on how it should be run. Fast forward 2 years in, we're just having such internal difficulties with our values not aligning as to how we run and make decisions that he wants to buy me out. So I get bought out, sign the buyout agreement 3 weeks before I got married, fly off to Italy on my honeymoon and say, what do I do when I get back? And as you know, an entrepreneur does on their honeymoon, brainstorms. With their husband or partner. I was brainstorming and I leaped off the couch and I said, Crown Yourself. And my husband says, What's that? And I said, Well, it combines all my passions of writing and health, and it creates a model of holistic success so that we can coach and train people to rise into who they're supposed to become as leaders. So I became certified in NLP, timeline therapy, hypnosis, certified high performance coaching, somatic attachment theory, biodynamic breath release and trauma release. So I focus with leaders on a very holistic model of how I coach them and have been for the past 8 years, where it's not only top-down from the mindset, but it's also somatic, because a lot of the leaders that I work with have had or had to process either childhood trauma where they've been still basing their decisions from, where they base it off of fear-based model, running away from, not towards something. And so we pivot that, that decision-making model, which is what my TED Talk was about. And then Or we work from the bottom up. So the somatic approach, the body to the mind, and what can come through from that place of learning how to listen and understand your body. What are the cues, how to cue into your intuition a bit more so that you can make more intuitive decisions that sometimes may not seem or logical to the outside, but as you follow it, you'll be able to quantum leap. And so from there, We took the business, have been running it for 8 years, and my husband and I got stuck in Australia during the pandemic and, and got to live our dream life by the beach for 2 years. And it was beautiful. And I used to have live events and that was my main source of lead generation. And that, and that's when we pivoted into guest podcasting and guest podcasting leveraged a really nice ROI. I said, I have to teach this to people as to how to do it. And I started the second company, Communication Queens.

So when you talk about guest podcasting, what do you mean by that?

So guest podcasting is we operate from a 3-tier strategy where first we get our clients booked on podcasts that build their brand awareness and their authority. Typically, these types of podcasts will not necessarily convert into ROI, right? But then we go for the second tier, which is who— what are the podcasts that their ideal customer is listening to? And we target that. And then we have the third tier where we target their story. So what is it that's a part of their story that's unique, different, um, exciting, something that's, that can resonate. And we can speak to a blue ocean audience that maybe they're not looking for your marketing tips, but they do resonate with the fact that you're a domestic violence survivor and have come from that. And then suddenly they're a business owner who's struggling with leaving their domestic violence relationship, and they're like, oh, I really resonated with her story, I'm going to come into her marketing agency. So And our clients have gone on to get booked keynotes, get to speak at Google, Microsoft. So it's, it's been really amazing seeing not only that it works for me, but it works for my clients as well.

So how did, how did you develop that, that fascinating business model? How did you develop it?

Uh, through a lot of trial and error over the pandemic. We had about 9 months, um, where we were looking for lead generation strategies, uh, for new leads. We were getting great consistent leads, uh, coming in from our existing community, from our own podcast. The Crown Yourself podcast, but it wasn't bringing in anybody new. And as you know, as a business owner, it's— you're 20 to 30% likely to convert a new client rather than 60 to 80% likely to convert an existing customer. So that piece of bringing in new business was challenging because I was stuck in a foreign country where I technically wasn't allowed to work or hold live events. And yet I still gave my TED Talk over there, which is really fun, but I didn't get paid to do that. And then the— and so my team just, we doubled down on guest podcasting because I remembered an interview that I had done in 2019 that had resulted in a $10,000 contract. And so we doubled and tripled down, found a strategy that worked, created an entire system and 7-step framework and system. And that's what we teach and work our leaders through.

Wow. So as you sit where you are today, I think you live in the Midwest, correct?

I do. Yeah, we moved 2 times in the past year.

Wow.

So what got you to move from California to the Midwest?

We moved from Australia to California back, uh, because my family— we lost 3 family members and 2 family friends, including my father, within the span of 1 year, where I also had a baby and then moved countries. So leading through grief was a theme, and learning and developing resilience and leaning on team was a huge aspect of these past couple of years. And so we packed up my mom and had to find— I mean, finalizing estates is like running a business per person in and of itself, just— and the government doesn't really give you much time for grief. It's like, did you get your paperwork in? So that's that. My mom was managing 3 estates at one time because it was her mother, her sister, and her husband that all passed.

That's a rough, that's a rough spot.

Yeah. So we got her a buyout in her business and then brought her with us, and now she's full-time granny for my kids.

Oh, she probably loves that.

She loves it. It's— she does. And she's getting back into pursuing her art, and, and it's, it's great to be able to, to see her thriving.

Oh, great. So what is it that gets you excited in the morning to get you out of bed and gets— oh boy, I can I get another day in front of me.

Creation. Like, it truly is creating and being able to be in that creative flow of how are we creating better systems to support our customers? How are we creating? I'm a writer by heart. Like, that's one of the things that is just a through line for everything. I still write all our copy. I love writing and the ability to shift perspectives, to open people up to new ideas, new opportunities, new possibilities that were already available to them. They just didn't see them because of their perspective blinders. That is what excites me through the act of creation. And how can we open up and see a greater scope of possibility?

Wow.

Yeah.

Did you write all the copy on your website?

I did.

Looked really good.

I did. That was, yeah, that was website was done back in like 2018. So I still haven't changed it for Crown Yourself just because I love it.

Yeah. I mean, if it works and it works, there you go. No, it was beautiful, beautiful website, beautiful copy. You've written a book. Tell me about that.

The Start Journey to Entrepreneurship, which became an Amazon bestseller back in 2016. Which was a great book baby to launch. It was a collaborative book effort with The Authority Alchemy Press, and we— it was multiple stories and journeys into entrepreneurship. It was still— it's— I'm working on a second one right now called Make Every Podcast Want You that I'm excited for because that's going to be our first— my first solo book release. The first collective book was— it's really interesting to look back because it was before I started my Crown Yourself Business. It was as I was starting my Crown Yourself Business. And building it, but I was still somewhat licking my wounds from the buyout. 2 years in, my mindset really was heavily negatively impacted by that experience, being exposed to dealing with lawyers, no offense, for the first time and 3 months of dealing with every fear and limiting belief that I'd ever had projected in my face as a way to get me to lower my price. Um, and facing that took a lot, built a lot of guts in me, and it was a good process to go through. But at the time, um, it— I was very much spiraled into a negative mindset where I was blaming, shaming, and complaining. And it took about a year after coming back from my honeymoon for me to actually do the work of building a business rather than do the fun work of building a hobby that's expensive with a nice logo and all the things because I was so scared of rejection. And but then I found out when I was pregnant and I was like, yeah, the business has got to be built. So yeah, so that, that was a big catalyst. But the, that experience of being able to share for the first time my story of and my journey of entrepreneurship was, was really interesting. And it's interesting to look back in hindsight and read it and say like, oh, how much I've grown in the past 8 years now from developing and growing and working with some extraordinary leaders who have just gone on to create amazing things in this world, from becoming the number one in their industry to achieving their one-year goals in 3 months to buying their planes or bringing their estranged children into their business, which is just like that. That is a mom for me. That's everything, right? Like, if we can get you firing on all cylinders so you're not just successful in business, but you're also successful in your life and you feel that holistic fulfillment, that means everything to me.

That's right. I mean, in many ways, I mean, we, we do the same thing. We serve others and I serve others by helping them learn how to deal with the messiness in their lives, whether they're dealing with estranged children or a business partner. I mean, your story just is resonating because that's what I do, help business partners who have differing values and beliefs and how do they get along? Do they get along or do they get a divorce? Business leaders who have invested so much into their careers that they've lost intimacy with their family. How do they regain that intimacy?. And, uh, I get great— I get, like you, I get great joy out of watching people completely change their lives because they learn how to listen to emotions. Yeah.

Words. Yeah. And, and that's, I think that that's why it's so necessary that we do the work that we do, like, and that every single person who does similar work but we just do it differently.

Right.

And it allows for that opening. Like, I had one of my clients, she was a coach, and she was getting— building her coaching business. And she said, but Kim, like, why? Like, you're, you're already coaching me, and you're like, we kind of do the same thing. I said, yes. I said, but you are a registered RN nurse. I don't have that background. I cannot speak medical. And there will be some people out there who will look at me and will say, college dropout, not, not going to work with her. Yes, she spent the past 15 years building businesses and being an entrepreneur, but I don't have the track record that you do as a medical provider for 30 years. And thus the work that you do is going to attract and support a whole new realm of people that I probably wouldn't work with or resonate with because of my background. But I know that my background has worked and resonated for certain people too. And that's why I believe in just absolute abundance, right?

Yep. The universe is a place of abundance.

Amen.

Totally get that. What is it that you think that's unique about you that, that makes all this work?

I have developed a very— well, as Liam Neeson would say, a certain set of skills from the skill, from the skill set of growing up with a father that was an addict, where from a very early age, and I've heard this from many, many addict children of addicts, we are able to see and identify behavior before the small micro muscle movements, the awarenesses. So I am a, I like to say I'm a professional pattern recognizer, where I start to see patterns very early on with my clients, where I'm saying, oh, there's that pattern of self-sabotage, like let's Let's stop it before it starts. There's that pattern of, or when they're right before a breakthrough, when they then hold themselves back from actually feeling where they're— so I'm very skilled at recognizing both the tiny moment-to-moment patterns of behavioral shifts as well as the overarching patterns of like, where are the self-sabotage or fear or doubt creeping into your life again? It may not be in the same form, but I, As I like to say, it's not new level, new devils. It's new level, same damn devil. It's just in a different costume.

Right. Interesting. And I—

you've developed that unique skill as a survival mechanism because you come home as a child and what's— what monster lurks inside the house?

Which dad is coming home?

Yeah.

Yeah. And I would be able to tell by the moment he opened the door. And was it sober dad who was really cool and amazing and I would get to embrace and hug? Was it a whole alcoholic dad that I would have to be careful with who was abusive? Was it stoner pot dad who was just laid back and didn't want to do anything? Or was it the opioid addict where I'd be like, okay, what do you spend money on? Let's, let's, let's get ready.

Yeah, that's a, that's a hard way to, that's a hard way to grow up. You were, you were lucky. I mean, unfortunate to grow up in that kind of environment, but lucky also that you were able to figure it out. I've worked in prisons for the last 15 years training murderers to be peacemakers, and they all have stories of horrible abuse. I mean, murderers are bred, not born. Yeah. And, um, It's so interesting that the, the difference between somebody who's serving a life sentence in prison and their story versus somebody extraordinarily successful like yourself is like an nth degree of difference. But something just clicked and worked, and you ended up going on, on the path of light instead of on the path of darkness.

I think it really comes down to the power of awareness and conscious choice, and not always is that presented That's correct. People in that space. I mean, I certainly spent my fair share of my fair share of my teen years being in a space of blame, in a space of victimhood. And it wasn't until I was going through my own eating disorder recovery that I realized that I wanted my, my success in my own recovery to be mine. And that if I were to continue blaming, then it would be my father who would get the credit, which I didn't really want him to have. I kind of wanted myself to have the credit for my own recovery. And secondly, I had to realize that it was never him shoving his— my finger down my throat. That was me. And when I realized that, that it was— yes, there was abuse. Yes, there was multiple forms, um, but that I was choosing to continue to abuse myself, I had to recognize my own hand in it. And it was from that space of ownership and shifting my whole perspective as a, as a leader, as a person, from a to me to a for me, as they say in the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Once I started looking at it as everything happening for me, I started to see magic, absolute magic, and like gratitude for what I went through. I know that because of what I experienced as a child, I have now, like my father and I have been able to save a life. Like, literally, because I was able to share the story confidently of how my father molested me when I was 6 years old, um, that experience sharing that in a group of 2,000 people, I was able to spot somebody across the room and say, you need to be in our group. And we were all sharing about our stories of like the worst thing that we had to overcome. I shared mine, and I look at this guy, because of my, my spidey senses, and my Liam Neeson certain set of skills, I see that he's about to bullshit. And I'm like, I look at him and I just, I give him the mom look and, and suddenly he breaks down. 35-year-old man breaks down and he shares his story of how he was raped. And so me and another trauma-informed coach, we guide him out and we work with him through that process. And then years later, he and I, I didn't know it. I knew it then intuitively, but I didn't know it officially until he told me. But intuitively, I called my dad, who had then been sober 2 years since I'd staged his intervention off of alcohol, which was amazing. And it was one of his most proudest accomplishments that he stayed sober off of alcohol until the day he died. And I'm really proud of him for that. And I called him and I said, Dad, I know you still feel guilt and shame for what you did when I was a child. I said, you know, I've forgiven you. And I think that what happened is that from the magic of forgiveness, we've been able to save a life. And I heard him cry and I was crying and I felt so grateful for the fact that I had not— obviously not grateful that it happened, but grateful that I'd been able to turn that into an asset. Because later on I found out that that gentleman was trying, was planning like his suicide was planned that night.

Wow.

That never would have happened had it not been for me having the courage to share my story, which comes back to that through line that everything I do has always been about the power of story to convert and create change, right?

Hmm. We just sit on that for a minute because there's a lot of power in that. I think, you know, I think that we, we, um, the ability to take childhood challenges and use them as energy to move forward in the world is very powerful. I was born with a lot of disabilities. You wouldn't know it today, but, uh, I was born blind, partially blind, deaf, crippled, couldn't walk till I was 3 years old, and no emotional support for that. Loving parents, affluent, grew up in San Marino. You know where that is in Southern California?

Yep.

Yep. I grew up there. And, uh, but it was a, it was a tough childhood. My mother today, who I love dearly, my dad passed a few years ago, but she's 96 and she acknowledges today that it was really rough on me. But they didn't know, they didn't know what to do.

Yeah.

But I look at who I am today and just like you, I look and as miserable and difficult and challenging as it was, formed me into who I am today, and I'm able to do what I do today because of that. And I think, I think that's what you're saying too, is that it was pretty awful, but on the other hand, my calling was to serve and help, and I couldn't do that without having gone through all of that negative, difficult experience.

There's magic in the mess.

There's a magic in the mess. And it, you know, I think about my career in my life, how I've moved from being a trial lawyer to being a peacemaker to now showing people how never to have another fight or argument again in their lives. It's completely unnecessary.

Mm-hmm.

Um, that it's just interesting to watch how we evolve as people helping and serving others. What do you think the next step is for you?

Well, I am really excited to launch my first solo book baby.

I've done 4 of those, so I know what you're talking about.

I just gave my first coronation to a group of 6, 7, and 8-figure businesswomen, which was really exciting. So congratulations. Thank you. It was a very exciting experience to be able to serve at that capacity in a very fun, playful way, because I do believe that as leaders, especially— and this is what my kids are teaching me every day— is the value of play. And we can get so caught up in the seriousness of life that we forget that none of us are getting out of this life alive. And it's, what if, what is it all for if we're not having some level of deep, not just enjoyment on the surface level, but fulfillment from everything that we're doing? And so for me, it's a deepening of the level of fulfillment of creating events and spaces that allow for greater play, fun, energy, and learning. But also birthing those book babies that have been stirring inside of me for far too long. I've birthed my babies, so they're good.

But, right. I mean, for people who don't know, birthing a book is a process. Like I said, I've written 4. I probably have, I don't know if I'm motivated. I could probably write a couple more. I don't know if I'm motivated enough to do it. It's a lot of work.

It is. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of solitude with your own thoughts. But yeah, we're very excited for the Make Every Podcast Want You book to come out. How to become so irresistible. You were— no, it's how to— we just changed the subtitles. How to become so radically interesting you'll hardly keep from interviewing yourself.

So I got a couple more questions. You just piqued my curiosity. Is your Is your Communication Queens, is that just all about helping people develop their business through podcast guesting?

We, it's a done for you service-based business. So we do all of it for our clients and we take them and we mold them and we give them the tools, we give them the strategy, we do everything from the research, recon, reach out. That's why when you ask, how do we, how did we find you? I said, my team's really good at finding podcasts that align. That's what we do. Okay, but we only book on the top 5% of podcasts. So we've created a narrowing down category of making sure that we're booking on podcasts that are in that top 5% quality, quality and have that caliber for our clients because we don't want to waste our clients' time, who are busy CEOs, executives running multimillion-dollar companies and sometimes multibillion-dollar franchises. We don't want to waste their time with a podcast that doesn't show up and constantly reschedules because that's annoying.

Well, I guess I'm honored that you found me.

Yes. Yes. You're in the top 5%, Doug.

I can't believe that. Because this podcast has only been going since January.

Yeah.

But I think you're in the 130s of my episodes.

I do a lot. Yeah. Yeah. You've distributed 122 so far as far as recording this episode. I did my research and you've produced—

I have a bunch in production ready to come out.

Yeah, you've got, you've produced consistently an episode every 90 days. And then you have reviews. So those, those combined.

Wow.

I mean, 10%, 90% of podcasters quit after 10 episodes.

I know. I don't even pay attention to that stuff. Yeah, I just like doing it. And so I find interesting people and we have a good conversation and then I let it, I'll let it go. It's all good.

One more question.

What's one thing about you, Kimberly, that we would never know about? Unless you revealed it to us.

I don't do it all. I definitely don't cook. Really? No, no, I do not. My husband, when we were living in Australia, um, because his industry completely shut down, it was all on me to, to bring home the bacon. So we started out a phrase, we said, I'll bring home the bacon, you just fry it up. I have never cooked in our relationship. My husband literally wrote the book on how to cook for your dates called Food Games: A Man's Ultimate Recipe for Dating Success. It's how he got me. He cooked for me on the first date, and I've been hooked ever since. And it's, um, yeah, I burn, I burn pans and commit alchemy with them. So he's, he's kindly requested that I stay out of the kitchen.

Well, I'm the cook in our family too.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's fun. And I've all— like, I told him just recently, I said, I didn't realize that my dream, one of my dreams, was to have a private chef.

Well, there you go.

There I go, manifested.

I think your husband will say, just like I do, that the beauty about cooking is that you get instant gratification. You put in 30 or 40 or 50 minutes work to prepare a meal, or longer if it's a dinner party, and there it is, it's all done. It's not like the other work I do where I may not see results for some time. And there's a trial where it was years before.

Yeah.

But like, it's instant gratification. Yeah. At many different points.

I love, I love that thought process. Yes, it is. Because, and certainly he, he is a stickler for it being eaten within that timeframe. Oh, absolutely.

It better, when it goes on the table, you better be sitting down and ready. 'Cause I do not tolerate cold food. And I'm not going to—

Yes.

My wife is slowly learning that. We've been married for 17 years. She knows, hey, when it's done, you can be out gardening or doing whatever you want. But I'm sitting down and I mean, if you're here, great. If you're not, I'm going to— I'm not eating a cold meal.

Yep. My, my husband, now that my mom is living with us, he had to like— I had to let her know. I was like, no, he's very serious about like when it's dinner time, like we are at the table. And he would, he would get offended if someone would eat his food cold because he didn't want them to think it was bad because of it being cold.

Exactly.

Yeah. And especially he puts so much heart and love and soul into it. And it was fun because we just did the Acton Children's Business Fair for our 6-year-old, and he created these gourmet sandwiches. My 6-year-old came up with this whole recipe for sandwiches. And they asked him in the judging, they said, who was your influence for creating the sandwiches? And he said, Daddy. And he said, who was your influence for starting a business? Mommy.

How cute. That's great. Well, thanks a lot, Kimberly. It's been a great conversation. Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to chat with me and my audience.

Thank you so much for having me, Doug. It's been a pleasure.

Absolutely.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.