Stop Hiding, Start Shining: How to Step Out of the Shadows & Build a Business That’s Profitable, Playful & Bold with Kimberly Crowe

[00:00:03] Welcome to The Lighten Up Project, the show that reminds us that healing doesn't have to be heavy. I'm Malcolm Grissom, the stand-up CEO and founder of the World Laughter Organization. Let's explore how humor, heart and play save the day and create spaces for healing and connection.

[00:00:33] So let's get ready to laugh, learn and lighten up! Hello my peeps and thank you very much for joining yet another Lighten Up Project.

[00:00:55] I am Malcolm Grissom, the stand-up CEO and founder of the World Laughter Organization. And today on the Lighten Up Project, we are so... I am... I am over the moon is what I am. I'm over the moon. I am. Because one, we are going to be talking about showing up in the world and how you show up in the world.

[00:01:25] Because really, hiding is exhausting. Dimming your light is... It's just terrible branding. And someone, someone that I know said, If no one can see you, then... You're doing a disservice to the world if no one gets to see your light.

[00:01:52] My guest today is... One of my mentors, one of my friends, one of the best people that I know in my life. She was actually... I actually have a story. She was actually the very first person that I met that got me on the road to entrepreneurship. She... Kimberly Crow is her name. Kimberly S. Crow.

[00:02:21] She is an international speaker and an entrepreneur. She's spoken on over 5,000 stages, including the TEDx Los Angeles, which is the Olympics of showing up, really. Kimberly S. Crowley. She is the creator of Ashman Entrepreneur's Rocket Fuel.

[00:02:45] By the way, she would also be the first to tell you, if you are going to name your business, please do not use the word entrepreneur. No, can't spell it! But Ashman Entrepreneur's Rocket Fuel, she's the co-host of Speakers Playhouse, where she literally hands people the mic. Hundreds and thousands of people.

[00:03:12] She is a co-producer of Podpalooza, the one-day podcasting extravaganza that turns visibility into a contact sport. Her motto is, if it's not fun, it's not worth doing.

[00:03:34] Kimberly helps speakers and entrepreneurs step up, step out of hiding, get visible, build businesses that are profitable, playful, and unapologetically bold.

[00:03:50] This conversation that we're going to have today is really about presence, it's about permission, it's about confidence, it's about showing up like you actually mean it. It's committing. So let's lighten up and let's welcome my dear friend, Kimberly Crow. Thank you so much for having me. What a delight to be here. What a great introduction!

[00:04:18] I'm inspired myself. Oh, Kimberly, Kimberly, Kimberly. Absolutely. So this is a very, very important question that I'm going to ask you. I've laid on me. The biggest, most important question of the entire night. What does the S stand for? Does it stand for sexy or sassy? Either one of those will do.

[00:04:47] I would say, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. I've never heard anybody introduce me as Kimberly Crow, although it is part of my like, yeah, it's in certain places. But yeah, somebody just talked about that yesterday. It's like, what does the S stand for? So it's two in a row, two in a row. So yeah, I'm going with sassy. I like that one. All right. Okay, I love that. Hey, Kimberly, can you do me a favor?

[00:05:12] Can you join me in 20 seconds of spontaneous laughter? Yes, I would be happy to. Yes. I love that. I can't believe it. Yes, let's do it. Okay. One, two, three. Laugh. Yeah. We're totally. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

[00:05:42] Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Oh, wow. So Kimberly, I know I love your motto. If it's not fun, it's not worth doing. Yeah.

[00:06:05] really it's true how can you tie having fun and happiness into deciding how you're gonna show up in the world oh yeah well my it is my motto if it's not fun it's not worth doing and it came uh somebody said were you always that way and i said no and they said how did you discover that i said because i wasn't i wasn't having fun i was in a place that was a very i mean we all go

[00:06:35] through phases in life and i was working at a corporate job i had uh been there for 17 years 15 of them were very good i really enjoyed it they did really well by me i had a lot of fun and the last two really were hard and i had climbed the corporate ladder and then i was in i felt like i was in golden handcuffs they say you're making so much money it doesn't make sense to quit but you don't love it anymore and i really didn't love it anymore i just was very very by the end i was

[00:07:04] very unhappy and i remember being at my desk at 10 o'clock at night and my kids were already in bed and i was still at work and i was like what am i doing and how do i get out of here and i i just i i remember that that was a big turning point for me and i thought i this is not fun anymore it was but it's not where did i get off the path and i thought you know everybody that is at my level i've

[00:07:29] been climbing this ladder for a really long time and i was an executive director and a fortune 1000 company and i was looking around at everybody at my level or above seemed to be unhappy mean to their employees they were on their third marriage they were you know like unhealthy that had heart attacks and i was like i don't want to grow out to be any of you like i don't want to be here i don't i don't

[00:07:55] want to do this forever and it's really hard to leave a position where you've worked your whole life so to speak to get there and you just didn't like it wasn't all that in a bag of chips when you got there and so i i really went on a some what would be called a spiritual journey slash breakdown as brene brown my favorite person on a 10x ever said that it's one of the things where you really

[00:08:21] have to figure out what what's this what what's next and i think a lot of us are in what we would call act two right we did that we did this and then we did this and maybe we're in act three now like this is like i got to do something else and my kids were getting older and growing up and i thought i need i need to do something that's joyful and so i actually my son inspired me and he he was

[00:08:50] frustrated because he didn't have a summer job yet he was too young to get a summer job and he felt like he was too old to go back to summer camp because he was 15 and a half and that's boring and stupid now and he knows everything right at 15 and a half we all knew everything and uh i said well why don't you uh why don't we create an entrepreneurship together why don't we create a business together where we just do something for fun and make money at it and his eyes

[00:09:15] lit up and he's like can we do that and we launched a business together and we had so much fun and i was like this this is what it's supposed to feel like this is what life is supposed to feel like this is what business is supposed to be like this is what relationship is supposed to feel like this is it and that's what i created the motto and to live by i mean i didn't like suddenly create it but it was like it's supposed to be fun like life is supposed to be fun and if it's not fun let's just not do that

[00:09:43] anymore so that's where my motto came from it's not but it's not worth doing right yeah yeah yeah okay so we're talking about showing up in the world and having fun doing it yeah but now let's go back to showing up in the world and often that is connected with the word commitment oh yeah yeah

[00:10:06] commitment how how people commit to showing up yeah so with commitment who do you think gets it because in in that story you just told it was very interesting dynamic between you and your son so who do you think gets the word commitment right oh wow like question yeah i think as long as

[00:10:35] commitment feels like a choice you're choosing over and over again then i think it's awesome right because i like i've i'm i resist the word commitment you know like if somebody it feels like at a car dealership right and they're like well you make a commitment to buy this car today if i can give you this price you know and you're like i don't know like i where can i wiggle out of that you know so it doesn't feel good when other people are pinning you down but if you're making a commitment

[00:11:01] to somebody whether it's in a marriage or a business partnership or to a client or to a child that you're choosing over and over again every day every week every month and you want to do it and you look forward to doing it and you're committed to doing it i think then that becomes very powerful and that can be in any aspect of your life it can be in your spiritual life you're committed to a church or a religious organization or you're committed to every morning

[00:11:27] doing yoga or you're committed to meditation or whatever it is that you're committed to it's because you are recommitting yourself to it every day and so i think that would be the right way to look at it yes okay so not only a commitment but a recommitment yeah yeah yeah i love that i love them yes okay

[00:11:50] so at what point did you i mean was was it that so your original story about your transition from corporate to being an entrepreneur was that the the first time that you actually chose how you were going to show up in the world or was there a time before that yeah i think i have i've loved being able to be on stage i've loved being able to share

[00:12:20] with people i've loved being able to tell stories and i've loved being able to help other people tell stories and and share their message with the world because we all have something important that other people out there in the world need they need your message they need to hear lighten up a little bit they need to hear uh laughter is good for us they need to hear you're not going to die when you get on stage or whatever the message or maybe it's a message from

[00:12:45] your minister or maybe it's a message from your spouse or whatever it is we need to hear other people and and be seen and heard in a bigger way and i think you you were alluding to it in that in the opening i do say if you're not being seen you're being overlooked if you're not being heard your message isn't getting out there and if you're not getting it out regularly on stages then it won't have the impact or the contribution you want it to have before you leave the planet and if you have

[00:13:15] a message that's inside you then you need to be confident that somebody out there needs to receive it and you're designed to be able to get out there so when did i first decide like being committed or do committing myself to what i really wanted to do i don't know i think we're good at it when we're kids and we get less good at it as we age right when we're kids we're like i'm not doing that that's not fun and uh you know if people aren't playing fair or whatever that we just leave the party and then

[00:13:45] the people who are playing fair are like wait wait wait let's play fair you know i think i think that's the that's the dynamic that we all were born with right that we knew what we were supposed to feel like and then i think it gets taught out of us and in school by our parents by our loved ones and and by our own commitments that we make right if we are committed to uh i know several of my friends were committed to being a certain religion at one time and then later in life they were like

[00:14:13] i don't think that's for me i think this is for me and leaving that commitment is so painful but also enlightening and also you know that that it what you're doing now isn't right anymore and that's that's how i felt not with religion but with with work it was good it was fun i loved it until i didn't and then i kept doing it for another two years even though i didn't love it anymore and

[00:14:38] malcolm i knew like this isn't right i'm not supposed to be here and there are people who stick with the commitment and they're like i'm gonna do this i made my promise i'm gonna keep going and i look back now and i think if i'd been that person and i'd said i'm gonna stay here i'm gonna keep doing this and i'm gonna work through it for the rest of my life not just two years but i'm gonna keep going that all of this other stuff that i've done would never have been created

[00:15:04] like all of the people that i've helped wouldn't have gotten that help wouldn't have gotten that opportunity and if we can just realize that we need to commit to the right things instead of just for the sake of commitment i think that's a powerful change and a shift by the way peeps kimberly is the only person the only person that entrepreneur that i have committed myself to

[00:15:30] i've asked her to marry me more than one time i asked him just the other day he said i've got some bad news and i was like you asked somebody else to marry you didn't you know and he said no oh boy i love it i love it it's great so so anyway i i wanted you were what you were saying

[00:15:55] sparked me to just want to throw out that what the world laughter organization is really all about it's really all about that movement's all about bringing back play bringing back laughter especially in schools and especially with youth you know and let's keep that going so we don't

[00:16:22] beat it out of our children we don't have them you know learn something different yeah i think i think that's where it starts and i don't i don't want to blame the schools my mom was a teacher i don't think she did anything deliberately mean the kids or ever ever in her life but the structure of the school is to like for for all of us children whether we were noisy or you know whatever it was sit down be

[00:16:49] quiet pay attention and like either you are i i don't want to sit down or i i don't want to be quiet or i don't want to pay attention before you get into that classroom right and that's the direct like sit down be quiet pay attention and even the shy kids they're like i don't even want to pay attention i don't want anybody to see me right so it's so anti what we are what we are born with

[00:17:13] what our nature is and i wish i understand that teachers have a really tough job you know but i wish there was some other way than the institutionalized teaching that we have that we could make things happen and help people get to that next level but stay stay lightened up stay stay with the the laughter stay with the joy stay with the happiness stay with the fun yeah yeah yeah definitely

[00:17:41] so how can someone stay committed to our to how they want to show up in the world how can they stay committed to themselves and when life beats them down as we know it loves to do at times

[00:18:05] how can they stay committed without losing themselves and just burning out and just saying forget it yeah if you're in a really tough spot right now which i know many people are if you're having health challenges or if relationships are not going well or maybe you're really struggling financially or with your job that somebody that's happy go lucky like everything will be fine everything's fun is not going to

[00:18:33] float your boat right like they're they're they're not the person that you that can that can like light you up and immediately you switch so you really have to i'm a big fan of a person her name is abraham hicks her name is esther hicks and she channels the name abraham so she goes by abraham x and she teaches that you need to move yourself up the emotional scale slowly and not it doesn't have to be slowly but you

[00:18:59] can't just go from one to the other you can't go from really unhappy to like everything's fine without like really really switching gears so reach for the next thing that feels a little bit better so if you're feeling like i suck at money as soon as i get my hands on a dollar you know it slips through my hands i'm just terrible and i'll never be rich like if you're telling yourself that that's a rough place

[00:19:23] to be in right but if you can save yourself you know i've learned a lot about money over the years and i'm starting to gain a lot of financial sense in my world and i'm making better financial decisions than i've ever made before that's also true and it's not like i'm a millionaire everything works out for me but it's a little bit further along in the path of the lighten up and you know take a little bit of the burden off of yourself and be like i don't

[00:19:50] have to go from zero to 60 i can just go from zero to 10 today that's what i can do that's all i can do and it's better than zero right if you are feeling hopeless then feeling resentful is actually better than feeling hopeless if feeling angry feels good to you then it's better than feeling hopeless because the anger at least you have a little bit of control at least you're at least you're not giving up

[00:20:15] right so lightening up giving yourself a break a little bit uh as you're going through it malcolm none of us are going to get out of here alive right bad stuff happens to all of us and and we gotta we gotta take the you know blows are gonna happen and we've got to be able to give ourselves a break and say you know maybe i was in this relationship and it wasn't the one for me i thought it was i thought it was going to last forever and he didn't or she didn't or i didn't

[00:20:44] do the thing that i thought was going to happen and now i've got to look elsewhere that doesn't feel good but i know i know that being with somebody that's right is going to feel much better than being with somebody that i'm continuously frustrated with and this i know is so wherever it is if your health is struggling with you or you're struggling with your health or wherever your challenges just

[00:21:08] look for that next level 10 rather than zero you don't have to go all the way to 100 right lovely that's beautiful so what is the difference what is the difference between the commitment driven by fear and the commitment driven by purpose oh that's that's easy one feels good one feels not so good

[00:21:34] and uh it's all about the feeling right and then there's another fear i think that's in the middle there which is commitment because right commitment because you already promised commitment because it's just same old same old it's the it's the thing that you've always been doing so we should always keep doing it this way even though something better might be available to you and i'm not you know i'm not encouraging anybody to leave a marriage or a relationship or a religion or anything but if you

[00:22:02] know that it's not right for you and you're just doing it because you've always done it take a good hard look at that and decide whether or not it's feeding you we only have so many go-rounds on this planet we only have one life to live and if we're living it without joy then that is not why we were brought here we were brought here to have experienced joy to feel good to help other people to to love

[00:22:29] life and to love each other and if if you're living in despair or frustration or or you're hiding from whatever's coming at you i'm here for you i love you the world is better than than it than it's treating you right now trust that stepping forward it's gonna be okay yeah okay so that's a wonderful

[00:22:52] transition to ask what is one deal one small daily practice you would suggest that someone might use to choose how they show up more intentionally that's a great question every morning and i got this from somebody else she was on a summit of mine one time i wish i knew her name it was such a great piece of advice that i do this so in the morning when you wake up before your feet hit the floor before your

[00:23:21] feet hit the floor so you're awake maybe you're just starting to sneeze a little bit you're just waking up and you're about to get up to use the restroom or get up and start your day before your feet hit the floor think of three things that you want to do just for yourself that day three things that you just want to do just for yourself that day i want to do i want to go to yoga today or i want to

[00:23:45] you know eat a salad or i want to i i want to indulge in popcorn at a movie tonight or i want to get a massage or whatever it is that you want to do and it can be small it can be you know i want to clean out the refrigerator it can be anything that you want for you that day three small things that you could you want for yourself that day and give yourself a commitment that you will do them before the day

[00:24:09] ends and that advice has taken me so far because now i know that no matter what i'm doing for other people today no matter how i'm serving no matter what i've asked to do no matter what comes into my email or phone calls or you know drama happens in the day there are three things i can do for myself today and as long as i do them before bed i've accomplished something amazing

[00:24:33] i love it i love it kimberly i have all of your contact information and you know everything about podpalooza and speakers playhouse and all of that that's in our show notes but i'd like to give you an opportunity to actually verbalize some of these things how can people find out more about you how can

[00:24:57] people play with you and show up with you and connect with you well if you're ready for some high energy and something that is easily accessible you can come play with us at speakers playhouse you don't even have to come to the mic if it's a little if you're a little shy you can come and watch the first time it's on the zoo it's free to attend you go to speakersplayhouse.com we are live every thursday from 10 30 a.m to noon it is a pacific time zone so if you're in eastern that's

[00:25:27] 1 30 to 3 p.m eastern and if you're in spain you do the math it is a very good time and super fast pace we say that it's a little bit like mr toe's wild ride meets whose line is it anyway if you know that reference one friend of mine who did not know that reference said it's like that children's merry-go-round where it's that spinny ride you know and you get on and your friends are spinning you and you're going really fast and you're a little dizzy

[00:25:56] and it's super fun while you're on it and then you get off and you you kind of want to throw up and you kind of want to do it again that's what speakers playhouse is so i hope you come i hope you come play and i hope you enjoy the ride yes yes it's very fun very fun lots of energy speaking it's a great great way to meet people it's great way to be seen and just to show up

[00:26:23] kimberly finish this sentence for me yeah i choose to show up as someone who oh that's good i choose to show up as someone who helps other people with a message step up and shine and i'm the one to hand them the mic hmm i love that that is great kimberly do you have anything else

[00:26:50] that you'd like to share that would that was pretty nice closer right there anything else yes if you haven't already connected with malcolm grissom you are missing out his lighten up project is absolutely phenomenal i would take 20 seconds to laugh with him any day of any week of any year he's an absolute delight one of the handsomest men that i've ever met

[00:27:17] and he's an absolute delight one of the handsomest men that i've ever met him and i'm the one of the people who are not having a message that i'm the one of the people who are not having a message check's in the mail oh kimberly i love you so much thank you so much and thank you audience for tuning in

[00:27:38] once again to the lighten up project and keep coming back because we're gonna the guests are just gonna keep coming we're gonna keep having the great conversations that we've been having so far all right but until next week

[00:27:59] remember every smile can open a door every laugh can open a heart and every step can be a victory till next week see you later you've been listening to the lighten up project with malcolm grissom

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[00:29:40] against the heaviness of the world so keep shining keep showing up and when life gets heavy don't tough it out lighten up you you