How to Take Yourself from Chaos to Clarity with Meg King

Kathi: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me for the podcast again. I am with my girlfriend Meg King, and we are going to talk about chaos, clarity, how to get yourself together and really get your business fine-tuned. So Meg, thanks so much for joining me.

Meg: Thanks for having me, Kathi. I was so excited to be offered this opportunity and to spend some time with you.

Kathi: It's just so much fun, because we have very similar messaging. We're all about getting rid of the chaos and getting in clarity, so it's a perfect marriage for me and you on this podcast. So tell the people, for those who don't know Meg, a little bit about your journey and why you do what you do.

Meg: Well, my journey started out in the salon industry. I was that top technician, and I thought I knew how to be a business owner because I was a really good technician. So I opened up my own business, and yeah, I found myself in a fetal position on the floor, because I did not know what I didn't know about how to run a business. Shortly thereafter I hired a coach, and I was inspired by her. She really helped me to see that I didn't have to know it all, that I really needed to have the support and the network behind me, and that she was one of those people on my team. That really started me off in the coaching and consulting business, and now I've been doing that, wow, for 20-plus years.

She really helped me to see that I didn't have to know it all.

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Kathi: Yeah, long time. That's amazing. One of the chapters in my book is Masters Hire Masters, and that's exactly what we all do. Those of us who are in business, who are thriving in our business, count on other people to teach us what we don't know, because we don't know what we don't know.

Meg: Exactly.

Kathi: Just like you. You got into the salon business and you're like, uh-oh, there's all this and more that I have to do to run this business. What was your big takeaway from working with the coach? What was your main pain point at that point in time?

Meg: Well, my main pain point, as a child growing up and through my adult life, is that I'm very dyslexic. I'm dyslexic, and I have dyscalculia and dysgraphia. So it comes down to writing, arithmetic, reading and things like that. What happened was my coach was able to help me see that I actually knew what I needed to know inside of me. I knew a lot, but she was able to simplify some things for me and give me processes and resources to utilize. And the impact that had on me, not only in my business, but really truly, Kathi, the emotional impact of that was huge. It was really huge. And dyslexia was so undiagnosed back in the day. My sister had it, and everybody just thought, oh, she's just a C student. And she was so smart, and no one could figure out why she was a C student when she really had the capacity. She was an A student in reality.

Kathi: That's fantastic. What a good journey. So if you had to tell your younger self, at 18, what would be the advice that you would give her?

Meg: Do you know the company Spanx?

Kathi: Yes.

Meg: Okay. So Sara, I forget her last name, but Sara who owns Spanx, on the bottom of every Spanx bag she has a quote that I love, and it is: don't take yourself or the rules so seriously.

Kathi: Love it. Love it. It's so true.

Meg: And that's what I would tell my 18-year-old self, who was trying to prove how smart I was, who was trying to prove how valuable I was, who was trying to prove everything. Don't take it so seriously.

Kathi: Yeah.

Meg: Life's supposed to be fun and a journey, and I think we often forget that.

Kathi: Even if you told her at 18, I don't know if it would have really held water until you turned 30. Then you'd be like, oh, yeah, I was supposed to do that. I love Sara. I met her at a conference. She is just a fireball of energy. Just love that. That's fantastic. So right now, as you're helping clients with your coaching, what seems to be the pain point that most of your people are experiencing that you're guiding them through?

Meg: Well, what I like to say is that, besides going from chaos to clarity, I really like to help female entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, to be able to solve their pricey problems. Now, Kathi, you know what that means, but not everybody might know what that really means. Pricey problems in business could be making a decision like I did, where I trusted myself and didn't think I needed my attorney, and therefore it cost me my business.

Kathi: Yeah. That's a pricey problem.

Meg: That's a pricey problem. So I like to look at what those pain points are. What is really happening, and what is it costing them? It could be budgets. It could be time. It could be balance. There's no real balance; work-life balance is a fallacy. But there is a way to manage it in a better way. It could be mindset. Those things all pop up, and they're all different for everybody. There's no one cookie-cutter piece where I solved this problem. But I like to say, let's take the bowl of spaghetti, turn it upside down, and tease out the noodles and really see what's happening so that we can help solve that.

Let's take the bowl of spaghetti, turn it upside down, and tease out the noodles and really see what's happening.

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Kathi: I love that analogy. And that's what makes consulting and coaching so interesting for us, don't you think? Because no two people are alike. Everybody has that noodle that's crooked that should be straight, and they don't know why, because it's mixed up in the whole pot of pasta.

Meg: Exactly. And sometimes it's not about the why. Sometimes the why has nothing to do with it. It's: what's the end result that you're really looking for, and what's the cost and the payoff? And it is different for everybody.

Kathi: Yeah, I agree. Tell me a story about one of your clients that you helped guide through their bowl of noodles.

Meg: Well, coming from the background of the salon industry, I've worked with a lot of salons and spas and other entrepreneurs, but I have this one story. I met this young woman at a beauty show, and she had a salon, but she was very confused about how to be the leader. She really didn't know how to have those tough conversations. She knew that she wanted to change her compensation structure. She wanted to change the direction of how she was serving her clients. She wanted to change all of these different things. But the noodles were all tangled up, and she didn't know where to start. So by coming in, I really got her to focus: if we could solve one thing, one thing today, what would that be? For her, it was her compensation structure. So we had to start there and really map out a new compensation structure for her existing team that made sense for her business to be profitable, but on top of that, one where we weren't taking money away from the team.

Kathi: Yeah.

Meg: And then, how could she present that as a confident leader? It was a great story, a great adventure for me. And in the end, what I want you to know is that her business is well over a million-dollar business now.

Kathi: Yay. Fantastic.

Meg: And she's confident and she's poised, and she knows that her people are getting paid what they deserve, and that, yes, she's making the money that she deserves. That's the main thing that I find with a lot of entrepreneurs. They don't pay themselves first.

Kathi: Exactly. I know. I was there. I didn't pay myself for years.

Meg: Yeah. Exactly.

Kathi: I just read this Profit First book. One of my co-coaches had turned me onto that, and I'm like, that's an interesting concept. So now I pay myself first every single week, and it feels good, and I don't feel like I'm taking money from the business. I feel like this is the way it should be. It took me this many years to figure that part out.

Meg: Right. And profits don't fall from the sky. You actually have to plan for them.

Profits don't fall from the sky. You actually have to plan for them.

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Kathi: Yeah. Exactly.

Meg: And the only way you do that is to pay yourself first, actually.

Kathi: Yes. So that you do have that fallback if you need it. We work so much as entrepreneurs that it makes sense for us to pay ourselves, but sometimes we think, oh, that's stealing from the company. But no, it's not.

Meg: Well, the other thing I find with entrepreneurs and paying themselves, just a real quick note here: when I talk to them about taking their pay, taking home a paycheck or some sort of income off of their business, and then I'm going through their expenses, I'm like, well, who's paying for the car payment? They're like, well, I'm putting it through the business. I said, that's your paycheck.

Kathi: Yeah.

Meg: Who's paying for that Costco run? Oh, well, the business.

Kathi: Right. But then half the time, unless they're a corporation, the company shouldn't be paying for the car anyhow. So, of course, back to that. We don't know what we don't know until we know and it's too late. Hence attorneys or fees or legal or any of that good stuff. So yeah, what you do is so important in the world, for sure. Now, I know that you have something that the audience can download, and I wanted to get everybody on board with this, to know what you're offering. So let's talk about that a little bit.

Meg: Yeah. So I have my downloadable ebook. It's a great little book, and it's right behind me right here: Connecting to Your Chaos.

Kathi: I like that we both have circles behind us. We are so in alignment, Meg. We have our circles. We have our books. I love your bird circle.

Meg: My book is called Connecting to Your Chaos: Reclaiming Your Power with Purpose. And it is with purpose that we have to go into our businesses and really reflect on them in a way that brings purpose to our life, that we are doing it intentionally. Let me put it that way. So we have intention and we have purpose, and I offer some great information there. And then I have some great tools that I can share if anybody would want to hop on my calendar and have a strategy session. I have a great planning tool that helps people to really separate out some of those thoughts easily and creates some movement in where they want to go.

Kathi: Yeah, that's very generous. I appreciate that. We'll put the link in the show notes. And even if you feel like you have a plan, I think it's always good to relook at your plan and see, is this where I still am? I'm reviewing that all the time. Is this really the good plan, or could this plan be made better or more succinct, or more in alignment with where I am in my life? Because here's the thing, I think, with what you do, Meg, that's so invaluable: we change all the time. And if we don't stop and notice where we are at the time, and whether we're still in alignment with where we thought we were going, that's a critical thing.

Meg: Yeah, for sure. I just had a conversation earlier with a group of women, and it was about really looking at your business plan. This is a great time of year to look at your business plan or your life plan. We have to look at both. This is a great time of year to start planning for the next year. But just because we write it down and we create our goals and we create some action steps and some milestones that we want to achieve doesn't mean that it's going to go exactly as planned, and that's okay. I hate the word pivot because of what the pandemic did to it, but we have to be flexible, and we do have to be able to pivot and know that it's okay. It's really okay. It's not written in stone.

It's really okay. It's not written in stone.

Kathi: Well, that's the beauty of plans, actually: they morph. And I always tell my people, if you don't know what you were going to do, you don't know what you didn't do. So at least have a plan, and it's going to change, because the one thing in life that's constant is change.

Meg: Change. Yes.

Kathi: But you need a path forward, some type of linear path forward that will change. It's guaranteed your plans are going to change.

Meg: Yes.

Kathi: But again, if you know where you're headed, you go off in the right direction. So I'm with you on that one.

Meg: Absolutely.

Kathi: Well, this has been a pleasure. It's so good to reconnect with you. We go back a ways, and I'm so happy to have you on the podcast, Meg. I wish you big success. And everybody, make sure and download what Meg's offering to you, because it's valuable and it doesn't cost you anything, just your time and your brain to figure out what you don't know that you thought you might know.

Meg: Absolutely. Thank you, Kathi, so much. I want to acknowledge you for really bringing this to light for people and helping them with getting organized, and for all of the things that you offer for people who are in the chaos.

Kathi: Yeah, there's a lot in chaos. I go into chaos from time to time. Thank you, that's appreciated. One more thing: is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn't, that you really wanted to talk about, or are we good?

Meg: I think we're good.

Kathi: Okay. Well, until next week, you guys, I will see you. Thanks for tuning in, and until then, I'll see you next time. And thanks, Meg.