Episode 62: On A Journey Of Self-Discovery With Kyla Martin
It can be challenging to go against the idea that you have to fit yourself into traditional jobs you're not passionate about to be financially secure, but once you find the courage to do it, you might just find your way to the career and life of your dreams. In this interview with Amy Vetter, Kyla Martin, a career, dream, and life strategist, shares her self-discovery journey from her corporate life to entrepreneurship. Kyla explains how you can hack your brain and change your mindset to get out of the human box to become your higher self. If you feel in your gut that you're not where you're supposed to be, then this episode is for you. Learn from Kyla's life lessons on how to push past where you are stuck and achieve the life you desire.
---
Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
On A Journey Of Self-Discovery With Kyla Martin
Welcome to this episode where I interview Kyla Martin, career coach, and dream life strategist. She helps create the career and life that you imagined. This includes uncovering your career purpose while peacefully charting an action plan to pursue your flexible, freedom-based dream life. She believes that each of us already possesses what we need to create the life of our dreams. She teaches you how to access it. Prior to creating her coaching practice, she spent 25 years in Corporate America's top companies, helping others uncover their destiny. She coaches, teaches and speaks, and writes from around the world, living the life that she imagined. During my interview with Kyla, she shares her journey of self-discovery from her corporate life to entrepreneurship. Learn from Kyla's life lessons on how to push past where you are stuck and achieve the life you desire. I hope you enjoy this interview with Kyla. Please share it with your friends and colleagues if there's something in this show that can help others as well.
---
I'm here with Kyla Martin. Kyla, do you want to get started and talk a little bit about yourself?
Thank you so much for having me. I love your show because Breaking Beliefs is probably the reason that I'm here. It's something that was so much of the foundation of why I was living the life I was versus the life that I wanted, and many of which I wasn't even aware of. I thought I talk about that. My business is Kyla Martin Coaching and I coach primarily women to leave Corporate America and pursue the career and life that they want. I accidentally created a whole second group of clients, which are entrepreneurs who want to continue to break down beliefs, work on their mindset, and continue to create their life.
Thank you so much for being here. I’m looking forward to diving into your story. I always like to start at the beginning, where did you grow up, what did your parents do, that sort of thing.
I grew up primarily in Texas. My parents are both from Texas and I was born in Houston, and then we moved to Connecticut for about five years when I was younger. We settled outside of San Antonio and that's where I graduated from high school and where my parents lived until I was in college.
What did your parents do?
My dad was an art major and then couldn't get a job and had a wife and wanted children. He went into the insurance brokerage business. Placing insurance for large corporations and worked in that field. He still works in that field. He tried to retire about five times, and then my mother was mostly a stay-at-home mom. Both of my parents love antiques. They had a couple of different antique shops when I was growing up. My mom was a little bit of an entrepreneur. She did that probably through the time I was in high school.
Your dad was an art major. What was his specialty? Do you know?
He majored in graphic design and then he loves oil painting. It will be fun going back into that in retirement.
He gave it up all through his career and got back into it.
It's interesting, whenever we had to do a school art project, he was always magical. When I was in sixth grade, I made a Trojan Horse with him out of papier-mache. I remembered I got an A++ on it. I didn't even know it was that great.
What did you see from him as far as him changing careers like that? Did you ever see that he was disappointed he wasn't doing art? How did you see that affect him?
I remember being probably in junior high and starting to become passionate about different areas, and I said to him, "If you’re an art major, how did you end up working for an insurance brokerage house?" He told me the story, "I couldn’t get a job and was married and want to have kids. They were hiring and then I slowly became an expert in that field," and it's what he did. I remember being at the time thinking, "You have something you're passionate about or a hobby and you put that aside for financial security." That would come to be a belief that informs my lens for what career I chose, what major I chose, not even fully understanding I was doing this. It didn't occur to me until way later that I could create a career in my passion because I clean up a lot of those beliefs.
When you were younger, what were the things that you love to do?
I always loved to dance. In fact, my parents were very supportive. My sister was a cheerleader and she loves to do gymnastics and I love to dance. They turned this playroom we had upstairs into a dance studio. They then turned it into a gym and put up bars, mirrors, and equipment for my sister. I was passionate about dance.
How long did you do that for?
I had a minor in dance in college. I used to do it in college. I even performed with a dance company until my late twenties.
What was your major then?
I majored in Journalism. It's funny because looking back, I thought about majoring in Psychology. That first were there for me. Back then, I always loved personality tests. I was constantly reading What Color Is Your Parachute? Books that help you with vocation, but again here's another belief. One of my closest friends majored in Psychology and then couldn't get a job. The belief that was created is that psychology doesn't produce a financially secure career. You add to that, a dad who spent his whole career in insurance and the whole lens was safety and security. You’ve got to have insurance. You’ve got to have a plan. That did color a lot of the decisions that I made. I didn't even realize I was doing it.
What was it about Journalism that you went into? To me, Journalism would be risky.
Writing was easy to me. I excelled in English and I loved reading. I thought you can always get a job at a newspaper, and I was listening to your episode with Kim. I had the same lens where she thought, "Those poor people, they may not get a job." That's how I thought like, "Some of those poor people won't get a job, but I'll get a job." I knew that I could go into marketing or advertising. I felt like there were so many fields that I could use a Journalism degree. I already had several articles published when I was in high school, and so I thought that's a secure road to a job.
Where did you end up working out of college doing that?
Self Discovery: It always takes something dramatic to wake up from the human box.
What I found was that it wasn't a secure risk. I got out of college guns blazing, ready to take on the world, and this was early '90s, not a terrible economy. I studied abroad in college and then moved to DC with two of my roommates from London who were Americans. We thought it would be fun to live somewhere after college, and it was during an inaugural year. We thought DC would be fun. We went to DC, and promptly none of us can get jobs. I ended up temping for probably six months, and then I finally landed a job at this publication to Congressional Quarterly at a local government magazine called Governing. Mostly what I did was the admin work, but I occasionally got to work on a few real projects, and I quickly realized security is made up. There's no such thing.
Once you get into this, then you see what the world is, what decisions were you making? Did you feel disappointment? What shifts or transitions did you have to make?
Back then, I thought, "I need more education and then I can find success." I decided to go back to grad school, and in the meantime, moved back to Dallas and found a job as a marketing assistant, which again I’m still doing a lot of admin work. I got to do some marketing, but I was working for a technology company and they had an office in London. I decided that I was going to get them to create a job for me in their London office and I did. When you're 23, you're like, "Get them to create a job." Thinking about belief, I had a mother who taught me, "You can try anything you want. You can do anything you want. You can be successful at anything.”
It was an interesting dichotomy with a dad who was trying to instill a belief that would serve me. They were given to me with love and the best of intentions, but it was this interesting dynamic between my parents because it was security with the, "You can do anything you want and you should try all kinds of things." It was that part of me that thought, "I'll get them to create a job. I don't want to move to London without a job." That's my dad talking and my mom was like, "Of course, you can try this." I got them to create a job for me in London and I moved to their London office. I loved school. As I said, I loved books and reading growing up. I found a program that was very self-directed. It was Masters of Liberal Arts, and so I got to choose all kinds of different classes. I chose a lot in communications and psychology. My interest in what makes people tick and how to motivate humans always fascinated me. It was a way to continue learning, but then it also creates a belief that if I have a Masters, then I can take on the world.
It’s so interesting. We have this tool inside of us that keeps drawing us. We can keep fighting it, but it keeps drawing us back in some way. I had listened a long time ago to an interview with Brene Brown on a podcast. She had told her daughter she wasn't allowed to pick a degree in her first year. She had to take to any class that interests her. She wasn't allowed to talk about degrees or what it was going to be. It was the first time I had ever thought about that premise, but we go in already feeling like we have to make the decision, and sometimes we're going against our gut, our intuition, and then we're trying to make it fit.
They're there all along, but we pushed them down. When I started looking back at my life, I realized that the whispers had been there all along. I’ve had a friend since sixth grade, and when she found out I was coaching, she was like, "Of course, that's what you're doing."
The other part that's interesting is your mom. Did she ever mention that she thought your dad to not given up art?
I think there was always part of her that was sad, but they both came from very blue-collar. To some degree, she had the same beliefs that, “That can’t make a living, so we should do that on the side.” She too wanted a family and a house, the American dream. Over the years, she encouraged him to get back into it and it's exciting to watch that come out. It came out in different ways when we were growing up through art projects. To this day, they love to dress up for Halloween or costume parties, and he would make part of our costumes, and he found some outlets.
He found ways to have it as hobbies.
It's been great to see him embrace it again later in life, and now he's very serious about it.
With your mom being a stay-at-home-mom, what was her push as far you going in a different direction? It’s interesting how she was giving you the confidence to do it and not necessarily telling you to go down the same path as her. What do you think created that?
My mother says she had this revelation in her 30s. She started reading books by Zig Ziglar and trying to find her own voice. She's the youngest of four and was always, "You're the little sister. What you say is not important." For her, it was finding her voice and personal development books and retreats helped her do that. She also became involved in Girl Scouts, starting in high school, which was very empowering for her. She eventually became not just a leader but a trainer for Girl Scouts. That built a lot of confidence that she gave to us. She didn't have a lot of choices. When she went to college, the options were you can be a nurse, secretary, or a teacher.
She definitely wanted to break this cycle with us. That's definitely where the “you can be anything you want” came from. You can try anything out and you can pass out things. You don't have to commit to something for the rest of your life. There were several things that I thought I was interested in high school and she would always encourage me to get an internship in that to see if I like it. I did a lot of internships and quickly found out that those aren’t the things I'm interested in. The psychology was never one of the options. It's probably because they didn't understand a clear path. That wasn't in their lens. It was more a traditional vocation.
That's where it's so important when you find people to follow outside their norm. That's why many people like in the CPA industry, when you ask, "Why did you become a CPA?" “My father was a CPA.” In my case, my grandfather was a CPA. My mom was an art teacher but she wanted me to go down the path her father had not. Doctors become doctors, and things like that because that's what you're used to in your life. That's very normal for you. It's how you go and seek and find what's going to align with you. At what point in your career did you start feeling out of alignment?
I moved to London, which was a ball. I always treat work as work. If you would find something that you were good at and you somewhat enjoy, there were definitely beliefs around that’s just work. I started feeling out of alignment pretty early into my career and I quickly moved into internal communications and speech writing, because there's a great intersection between communication and psychology. I was being drawn into what makes people tick and how can you talk to employees on behalf of an executive, and how can you coach an executive to be their more authentic self? None of us were conscious when I was doing it, but looking back, I kept seeing these pathways that allowed me to move more into the areas that I was passionate about.
Probably in my mid-30s, my sister one day said, "I know you're not thrilled in your career. Have you ever thought about being a coach?" I was like, "No, I'm good at what I do." That's when I was writing for Michael Dell. I was like, “I've hit the pinnacle. Why would I ‘start over go' and go back to school potentially?” She saw exactly what my path was supposed to be, like my friend from sixth grade. She saw something in me that made me a good fit to encourage others, and my passion for understanding the brain, and how we can hack our brains to get to our higher self, and be more of who we are. All of it was there.
It wasn't until 9/11 that I had a major epiphany. I remember being in my apartment and being scared to death like everyone else, watching the news. I wanted to get something out of my fridge and I caught sight of a magnet the famous quote by Thoreau, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined." I thought, "The reason I'm so scared right now is because I'm facing my mortality and I'm not living the life that I want." I went back to Corporate America. I think that if I find the right company, if I find the right manager, or if I find the right executive, then I'll be happy. For me, the final pinnacle moment, which unfortunately, it always takes something dramatic to wake up. I went to a conference with my now-husband, then-boyfriend. You were supposed to leave by the end of the weekend with a mission statement for your life.
It was a magical approach. They use a lot of StrengthsFinder philosophy, personality inventory, and they use spiritual strength. You did this uncovering throughout the whole weekend. By the end, my statement was so crystal clear, I could not ignore it anymore. My boyfriend, now husband had a similar awakening. We both said, "We've got to start moving in this direction." That's when I started creating some outcomes for my business and my life, and then continue studying brain psychology. I quickly realized that what stops us is that we stand where we are and try to create a plan and work toward it versus the Stephen Covey's style, start with the end.
We start with the end and reverse engineer, then our highest brain stays turned on and our lower brain that says, "You can't do that. Who do you think you are?" That will be quieted. Your higher brain gets a plan, and then you can execute from where you're standing, but you'll already have a lot of the answers, a lot of the milestones. That was what made the difference and why so many times before, I had these goals and passions and interests, but I would always stop myself. The fear became paralyzing and I couldn't figure out.
What was the fear?
It was two-fold, which I find with most of my clients nowadays, “I don't know how to do this. I don't have to do what I'm doing right now. I don't know how to create financial security for this.” Once I figured it out for myself, then I created a process that I now use with my clients because I had been that person. For many entrepreneurs, we're trying to solve our own problems. That was definitely a belief that once I realized that entrepreneurs weren't necessarily born, most of them are made, and the way that they were made was trying to solve their own problems, then I realized, "I could be that person too." I don't have to have come from a family of entrepreneurs. I don't have to know how to get from A to Z.
You said at the retreat, you created a statement that was crystal clear. What was that statement?
It basically said, "I exist to support and encourage women to uncover and activate their dream career," and that's now what I do.
You pictured the end, what types of things to take the risk or to take the leap from having a financially secure job to starting out in something completely new career, new business. What things were key for you in moving from the belief system of financial security to belief in yourself that you can do this?
Self Discovery: Entrepreneurs weren't necessarily born; most of them are made.
For me, I'm a big believer in building bridges. Our brains, if they have bridges, don't want to explode as much as they say, "I'm going to jump off the cliff." I started creating some consulting business first, and those were wholesale engagements for twenty hours a week indefinitely. That created some financial security and then it also kept me very closely connected to my coaching prospects, because so many of my clients are people in Corporate America who wants to leave, but don't know how or are scared. It kept me very connected to them, which was important to keep seeing what their pain points were and how I can help them overcome those.
Since I had some financial security with the consulting, then I could continue to take some risks as I built out the coaching practice. I didn't need a full slate of clients in the beginning because I had consulting money coming in. That let my brain calm down a little bit and continue to take risks with coaching and networking, putting myself out there authentically, telling more of my story, and knowing that there was still consulting business coming in. The consulting business then led to coaching clients, and I incorporated so much of the lens I was using in my coaching and my consulting. I felt finally confident and empowered enough to do that. Whereas I think when I worked in Corporate America, I hid a lot of that because I didn't fit in the box of what I was supposed to be doing.
When did you feel like you’ve got this?
The pivotal moment was when I wasn't looking for full-time jobs anymore because I got a consulting, building my coaching clients, but then I still had some job alerts turn on. I thought, "What am I doing? That's not what I'm doing anymore. Why am I putting that into my lens? Why am I giving it any energy?" It was the day that I turned off the full-time alert that I finally realized, "This is what I'm doing. I can't go back."
What you're talking about is so important where some people might start with side hustles or whatever, but it isn't jumping off the cliff with a business. You do need to test it, make sure that you know where you're going to have money to fund the other initiatives and how much of a risk it is. I've always talked about entrepreneurship as it's like gambling sometimes because you think tomorrow's going to be the big hit and so forth. If tomorrow's not the big hit, how are you going to fund each thing that you're doing? What are you willing to risk versus what do you want to make sure as a constant? Those are important decisions as you're moving through the business. When do you call it quits on certain initiatives that don't seem to be going the way that you had hoped?
There's no school for this. You can’t get an MBA in entrepreneurship. There's a lot of this that you figure out as you go. You listen to your gut and you pursue things that you are passionate about. I tell my clients all the time, "You want to be clear about which things you want to even focus on because that's why we created our own business." It’s easy to go after secure, a contractor, this business is always secure, or whatever we tell ourselves. In the beginning I thought, "I want to coach executives because that's what I spent my whole career doing." That's what I want to do. I want to help people who do what I'm doing. There are so many business coaches that fit right for executives. It's a very lucrative underworld and there are not enough people who do it. I quickly realize, that's not why I have my own business. It’s helping my avatar, which is most of us, a version of us years ago.
It's an important point and that's something that I've had to be cautious of in my business. There's some work that's easy to get, but if you take that work, it will take away from the time of the things you'd want to be doing, which is hard because it's money. To say no is hard, but you have to be very clear on your business plan and know if you have to go back to that, you do. Saying no is okay so that you have the space for the things that you want to be doing. You give it the time that you need to see if it will be successful as long as you can fund it.
A coach said to me a couple of years ago, "You're blocking the space by taking these other things, and then you don't have space to the flow to bring in the actual avatar."
Many people grew up the same way and I did too about making sure you chose a secure job. We have those things as we go through our life, but as you start getting more life lessons, it’s learning about how to trust yourself. If you're passionate about something, you'll most likely make a success out of it, as long as you have good business support on the other end if that's not your forte. Passion will lead to success, whether that's in a corporate job or as an entrepreneur, but when you try to fit yourself somewhere else, it's something that always feels off and you don't get that until later.
I was thinking about acquired state versus natural state. The bigger the gap, the more exhausted you are. If you can close that gap between your natural state and you don't have to do much of your acquired state, you can be in that flow so much more.
I like to close the interview with some rapid-fire questions. You pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
Spiritual.
That's one that I don't get a lot. Things or actions I don't have that I want as far as spirit.
We moved out to the 26-acres we bought on a lake. Where I feel most spiritually connected is when I'm in nature. I was thinking a lot about what that has brought me spiritually, and then still I want to be intentional about doing. I've gotten a little taste of that spiritual connection on our land. I want more of that. Being intentional about spending more time in nature and having that as some time block to be lying in the hammock and listening to birds or listening to water lapping at the shore, and being more intentional about creating that connection.
Things or actions I do have that I want.
My husband and I are good about taking walks on our land together. We always feel so grounded at the end of the day, being physically connected to the earth and seeing there’s a branch that fell or the leaves are changing, and being very aware of all the things we missed living in the city. Even though a lot of those were there, but we weren't connected to them. That is definitely something a practice that I want to continue. It's a great way for us to be connected to each other and with nature. He feels very connected spiritually in nature as well, so it's great.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want.
When we moved, I thought that I would want to go back and forth to the city a lot more. In fact, we even talked about, “Should we get an apartment?” Now I realize I don't have that and I don't want that, and that's been a surprise. The peace that we've gained from being out there has been wonderful.
Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want.
Spiritually, so much of our life, we're on autopilot, and so much of our actions are repeating, thoughts are repeating things that we've been doing. Being open to the spiritual practice that I had before, some of them I wanted to peacefully release and that's okay. It's going to be a new birth of my next spiritual journey. Whether if we are not in the groups we were in spiritually in our previous life, maybe spirituality takes on a more holistic dimension. I think it’s letting some of that go.
Is there anything that you want to make sure people take away from the conversation that we haven't covered?
Self Discovery: Just it figure out as you go, listen to your gut, and pursue things you are passionate about.
I'm such a passionate believer in identifying and understanding your beliefs. I encourage your readers to look at what's the next step they want to take and what do they believe about it. It's probably something that's leftover, probably something that they don't even believe anymore. Starting to take those out of our brain and put them on a table and look at them, decide what serves you, what doesn't, that has been the game-changer in my life. That's why I'm so excited to be in this show.
Thank you. It has been great and so aligned as well. I'm glad people find out about you too, for people that are on this journey. Thanks again for being on.
Thank you so much, Amy. It's been a pleasure.
-—
Now for my Mindful Moments on my interview with Kyla Martin. We started out talking about her upbringing with her dad being an art major and moving into an insurance brokerage business, and her mom being a stay-at-home mom. How both of their experiences and life lessons helped her in charting her path and her career, and the messages that it brought her. Sometimes we don't even realize when we start living out other people's beliefs and that it gets in our way of finding our own passions. It was a very interesting discussion about her understanding of her father giving up being an artist to go into the insurance brokerage business because that was a safer and more secure career.
That message that was embedded in her system as a belief system that was getting in the way of things that she was choosing as a young adult and in her career. She was very focused on that security. Oftentimes we have these beliefs that we don't even know where they come from. We need to step back sometimes and think about, are they my beliefs or are they somebody else's beliefs? When we feel out of alignment, that's our intuition of taking that internal look observation at our guts, how we're feeling, and when we feel off. We normally know that we feel off, but we might push past it, we might push it down because it doesn't align to an inherent belief. Those are the things that when we observe them, that creates the pause if we choose, to observe why we're feeling off and try to understand maybe the beliefs that are driving us in a certain direction that don't align with how our body feels.
It was an important point to that when she talks about not quieting the whispers. Often in our life, when we step back, and maybe when you close your eyes and you're thinking about this for yourself, there are whispers that are happening in your body when you're quiet. Maybe you're sitting in a car, on a plane, in your bed at night, there are thoughts or feelings that come up that we often push down for many reasons. Maybe they're not accessible at this point in our lives, and we know that we're waiting on certain things or that we have the fear of the unknown. That fear of the unknown drives us to stay status quo, and doesn't allow us to explore why we might be feeling the way that we did. She talked about a journey of how many pivots she made in her career, but still was trying to stay safe, and not coming back to what her true love was of psychology and how you use that in order to help others.
Everything happens at the right time in our lives. We should never look back and say, "I should have done this in my twenties," or "I should have done this in my 30s," or so forth. Whatever moment that we make those observations is the right time in our life. Our job is to not ignore the whisper. It is to create what we want to create in our lives, but do it in a safe way. Make sure that we have put our goals together, that we understand how much we're willing to gamble and risk in order to achieve those dreams. Sometimes it's everything and sometimes it's 10%. Getting ourselves comfortable on what that is can help us have what Kyla talked about building bridges versus jumping off the cliff with our eyes closed. This will help us in making sure that we are understanding those pivotal moments that happen in our lives, the messages that they're sending to us, and be able to start closing the gap on where we might be feeling off in our bodies and our lives. Understand that our belief systems are not always ours.
When we do the work to observe, it can help us in moving forward into the life that we desire. What you'll see in the episodes that are coming up on Thursdays is our V3 basic. These are the types of practices that we can implement in 2, 3, or 5 minutes where we can start doing some of this work, this practice, these observations on our life to make little shifts in our energy. To find where those openings are and expose them, and see what we can do and what's possible versus putting up fear and blocking ourselves along the way.
Important Links:
About Kyla Martin
Career Coach & Dream Life Strategist
I help you create the career and life that you imagined. This includes uncovering your career purpose while peacefully charting an action plan to pursue your flexible, freedom-based, dreamlife.
I believe that each of us already possesses what we need to create the life of our dreams.
I simply teach you how to access it. Prior to creating my coaching practice, I spent 25 years in corporate America's top companies helping others uncover their destiny.
Today I coach, teach, speak and write from around the world – Living the Life that I Imagined.
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join the Breaking Beliefs community today: