167 Broke Ass to Badass: Kimi Morton and Pua Pakele And Cabot on How Entrepreneurs Can Dream and Live Big Without Burnout

Kimi Morton and Pua Pakele And Cabot are on a mission to help entrepreneurs fall in love with their businesses and their lives! Co-founders of the company Best Life Ever, Kimi and Pua share how they empower business owners to embrace both passion and productivity to achieve big dreams without burnout.

Melinda Wittstock:         Kimi and Pua, welcome to Wings.

Kimi Morton:                     Thank you so much for having us, we’re excited to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:         I am so excited to have you both as well, because honestly who doesn’t want to live the best life ever? I’m just going to start by asking you really how you two got together. I mean, you were both fitness trainers, and now you’re doing this incredible stuff, you’ve been working together as partners for a long time. How did all that happen?

Kimi Morton:                     Yes, we love our origin story, so thank you for asking. Yes, we did start as fitness coaches, we met at a gym where we were both teaching like boot camp-type classes, and so we started as friends and we really clicked and felt drawn to each other really by our shared interest and passion for problem solving. We were both problem solvers, life hackers, and as we would get together and talk about ways that we could help our gym clients to really improve their quality of life, especially in the world of health, we really found that there was so much more going on with people other than just the physical self.

Of course we know that, it’s like people would come to us for fitness consultations and they would end up talking about their job, their relationships, the business that they wanted to start but that they’re not because they feel so trapped in a job that they hate. We really were called to really address beyond the physical, the mental, the emotional, the spiritual things that might be getting in the way of somebody living their best life ever. We have always been big fans of podcasting as a way to get wonderful information, what a cool time that we live in and information is just so accessible. We got a lot of our information from podcasts, and we thought, “Well, wouldn’t it be fun to start a podcast together?”, really naïve kind of fun side hustle that then really turned into a beautiful business.

The more that we podcasted together, we actually, the podcast that we have now, Broke Ass to Bad Ass, is our second podcast, we had one before. That first podcast was really our opportunity to, well one, learn the tech, how to podcast, and really getting a feel for our voice. As we met each week and talked about what we were going to share on the podcast, which by the way, was just sort of like a mishmash of all things Kimi and Pua that we loved, we call it the sparkle barf era because we were just like, “Oh, let’s talk about this today, and then let’s talk about this,” but that was all part of the niche-ing down process for us, so that we could really, really identify what it was that we loved to talk about, what lit us up, and really it just helped us to find our voice.

We found ourselves talking very much a lot about productivity, creating more time and energy for whatever it is that you value most in your life, and that led us to spending quite a bit of time in the corporate world doing corporate productivity time management training. As we did that, we loved it, we spent quite some time in that field and in that world, but as we did that, our hearts really began calling us to work with entrepreneurs. As we helped people in corporate world to create time and energy for what they loved, we found that there were so many people with dreams in their hearts to create their own businesses, or to turn their side hustle into a thriving business that would then free them from this corporate job.

We’re like, “Oh my gosh, that lights us up, we could talk about that forever, this is really …” Because it’s what we did, is turn our side hustle into our dream job, our dream life. Now we joyously serve entrepreneurs and help them to create more freedom and their best life ever. We do that through digital media services and also our course which helps people to build online businesses from the ground up.

Melinda Wittstock:         Beautifully said, Kimi. I love that you started with the podcast, that’s so interesting. Most businesses start, and then they get a podcast, but the beauty of a podcast is you find your true tribe, and as you said, you found your voice. Which one of you, Pua, came up with the name Broke Ass to Bad Ass? I mean, that’s just such a great name.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       It’s so funny, I cannot tell you which one of us it was, I have no clue, but it’s funny because this is something that I actually do remember the conversation, however, and we were saying, “One day, we’re going to write a book, and it’s going to be called Broke Ass to Bad Ass.” We kind of were like, “Oh, that’s so funny, like let’s not forget that.” It was actually, as many things are, kind of borne out of a time where we were feeling very broke ass, like not only financially, of course that was present also, but there’s a lot of kind of broke ass thinking that happens.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Right?

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s true.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       It’s kind of funny thinking about it now, but it can be a challenging road, this whole entrepreneurial journey. We’re thinking about what’s the smart move, what’s the next move, what should we be doing, what do business owners like us do to be successful, and we could get easily very discouraged by the starting point or where we are now or having to dip into our savings so drastically, or not knowing the right direction or not knowing the right next move. All of that, although natural, can be very defeating. For us, it was this moment where we were like, “We are true problem solvers, we do not let ourselves sit in the shit and feel crappy, it’s just not in our DNA.”

It was this moment for us where we were like, “Okay, this is it, like no more broke ass, what do we need to do, how do we need to feel, how do we need to act to really be bad asses in this time and beyond? How can us stepping into this badassery that we know that we are help us to serve our clients now and in the future?” We just kind of started more or less documenting, even if it’s just like in our minds and our hearts, this journey of not only what we did, but how we felt and how we can coach other entrepreneurs to navigate this time that feels really uncomfortable and kind of unstable, because it’s so worth it.

All three of us know now, like it’s so worth continuing on and doing what you need to do to get your gifts out into the world, and bridging the gap between the time where it’s an idea to the time where it’s a functioning service is really important. That’s kind of what that was all about.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes, it’s so interesting what you talk about with entrepreneurs, going through that, it’s been described as “refiner’s fire”, where we talk about a hero’s journey, or a “shero’s journey” in this case of this particular podcast, where the growth happens when you’re uncomfortable. Here’s the tricky thing, is identifying whether the discomfort is a positive discomfort that happens when you’re in alignment but you’re just getting out of your fear, or whether the discomfort is because you’ve built the wrong business or you’re in the wrong job or you’re going in the wrong direction or your business needs to pivot. How can you tell the difference between the two?

Kimi Morton:                     Wow, that’s a great question. You know, as you were asking this question, the first thing that came to mind for me is that I’ve had the most amazing hack at my disposal in my toolbox, and that is Pua. For us, having each other along this journey, and if you don’t have a business partner that you love and trust and feel really in alignment with, at least have people around you that are aligned with your vision and your vibe, your tribe, your people that get you, because being able to talk things out along the way and ask that question, you know from somebody that doesn’t have all your stuff, they’re not carrying around all your stuff, they’ve got their own stuff, and so just having Pua along this journey, this has been what we do for each other along the way every single day.

We talk about the stickiness. That’s what we always call it in our business culture, is if something feels sticky, we don’t move on it. Like it has to be a “hell yes” for both of us, and so when that discomfort surfaces, we lay it out on the table, we put it out there and we shine the light on it and we look at it together as problem solvers, as business partners, and we say, “Okay, what does this mean? Is this,” as you said, “An opportunity for us to step deeper into our badassery and embrace the discomfort because we know it’s part of the growth that needs to happen, or do we need to trust our intuition here? Is there something that is off, and where can we bring this into better alignment so that it does become a ‘hell yes, let’s move forward’ for both of us?”

That’s one of our favorite business partnership strategies to share with people, is to really make that a part of your partnership culture, that it has to be a “hell yes” for both of you, to trust the stickiness as it arises, and also to trust like the flip side, the excitement when both of you like, “Maybe it doesn’t make sense on paper, but it just feels right,” and you know that feeling. The more that you trust that feeling, it’s like a muscle that you develop, following that will also lead to an amazing, expansive experience for you. I think it’s a little bit of learning to train and trust the muscle, and also having people around you that can help you when the muscle doesn’t feel fully developed, maybe because you’re blocked by your own stuff, right?

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so true. We’re all on these journeys where we have all kinds of limiting beliefs and unconscious drivers, where we’ll sometimes set intentions and the intentions are consciously what we want, but they may not be unconsciously, I guess, what we want, right? When you bring two founders together, this becomes a really interesting dance, in a way. How do you guys complement each other? Wait, I’m just going to ask that again, I’m going to say … Hold on. How did you two figure out that dance, when you’re both growing and you’re both tackling, I’m just going to assume, this is true of everybody, I think, you know you’re both retiring old beliefs, you’re on this personal growth journey, but you’re growing together in a way. How do you two complement each other and help each other on that journey?

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       We love this question. We actually just yesterday, in fact, spoke with a friend, she is an astrologist and just an amazing human. She had us take this test, and found that we were, what did she call us, mirror twins?

Melinda Wittstock:         Mirror twins, wow.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Innately we kind of have the same signs but they’re flip-flopped, so we actually like from an astrological standpoint, we actually do complement each other perfectly, we’re like in perfect balance, so it was actually kind of funny and also not surprising at all. I think starting out in the fitness space together; we ended up, as Kimi said earlier, kind of tackling these personal development challenges for our clients. Someone would say, “Oh, I’m not able to lose the weight that I wanted to lose, based on whatever you’ve told me to do. What’s going on?” We know that health and fitness and weight loss and all of that is so much more than just eat more protein and work out five times a week, and so we did a lot of digging into this space.

While we did that, while we started working together, while we decided, “Oh my gosh, this could be really fun to do a podcast together,” and all these things started happening all at once, we embarked on our own continuation of our personal development journey. We all work on ourselves throughout life, and before we met each other we had very, very, very different pasts, and our paths to each other aren’t similar at all, but it’s funny that once we did get together, we realized that we valued very similar things. Neither of us like to feel crappy, neither of us settle for mediocrity, and we don’t want that for anyone else.

In the pursuit of helping our clients both at the gym and then through our own business to achieve these lives, we were doing the research and have really been hacking our own challenges to do that for ourselves. In that way, that’s kind of been, like what we teach is really often something that we learn to scratch our own itch, if you will. We had our challenge, we fixed it, we solved it, and then we teach it to others. We’ve realized that the things that we value are very, very much in alignment with each other, and we also love to share that we physically fight.

Melinda Wittstock:         Really?

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       You know, get together and choke each other out and punch each other.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wow, that’s interesting.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       I’m just kidding, just kidding. We train Brazilian Jujitsu together.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, okay.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       For us, a big part of our culture in what we teach is to also, you want to put the work that you need to do for your business to function, but also unplug and find time to play and create those experiences that are very meditative and require you to be fully present. We found that jujitsu is one of the best ways to take yourself out of whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re working on, and really be in the moment, because it’s kind of like wrestling, it’s a martial art where if you aren’t present, if you aren’t paying attention, you get choked out or submitted.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, but I love this idea of being present and really being in the moment, because that’s where our power actually is. This is the interesting thing about martial arts and things like meditation, it puts you there in that present moment, because if we’re always thinking about the past, there’s no power there.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Or the future, right?

Melinda Wittstock:         Same thing with the future, because we’re creating the future right now in terms of our actions, but I love that approach, and I love that you have these mechanisms with each other that you’ve worked out. Like, obviously, you have very good communication with each other, and you don’t necessarily always see that on a founding team, but it’s absolutely critical to the success of the business, if you don’t have that on the founding team.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Right, and that’s kind of another one of our hacks, is our communication. We have great communication channels, we use Slack primarily, even though it’s just the two of us, we don’t ever text each other, so we know that when it’s a Slack notification, that it’s something related to our business, or sometimes it’s not, but I know it’s always King, and I always get excited. And we also have really firm boundaries also, so we don’t work on Mondays, sometimes we do, but it’s a secret. We try not to bother each other on Mondays, and we know each others schedules pretty well, so if King is spending quality time with her kids, I’m not going to call her and be like, oh my gosh, this big work emergency that just can’t wait came up.

First of all, that’s not a real thing, there’s nothing that needs to be done right this very second, ever. But it’s really a beautiful thing to be a part of this business culture where we care deeply about each other, and about our personal lives, and what brings each other joy. And that’s really the most important thing, to both of us, is that we’re always enjoying this journey, and we always want to hook each other up and surprise and delight each other so that we are able to see our business through a lens of joy, rather than a lens of obligation, and we both share that as well. So yeah, it works really well.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful. Well, I love that you have these boundaries around your time. All too often, people create businesses, and they end up serving … Sorry, I’m going to ask this again. People often end up creating a life around a business, rather than a business around a life, right? And without the kind of boundaries to really live fully, or live all in, have a really balanced, fulfilling life in all aspects of your life. So I know you work with a lot of your clients to figure out how to work smarter, so you don’t have to work as many hours. You can really focus in on leveraging the hours that you do spend. What are some of your best tips, I guess, for how to do that?

Kimi Morton:                     Yes, we love this subject so much. I came from all the productivity time and energy training that we’ve done with clients for so many years, but certainly, when you work with entrepreneurs, when it comes to entrepreneurs, our time and energy issues are often different, right? Sometimes it’s knowing when not to work, that becomes work time.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh my God. It’s true, because, I mean, so many entrepreneurs work 80 hour weeks, and are broke, right?

Kimi Morton:                     Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right? And actually would do better in a 40 hour it job, right? And so that’s kind of not great. When we think about entrepreneurial burn-out, it’s when we don’t really know how to regulate ourselves, and regulate our work, or how to work smart. So what’s your definition of working smart?

Kimi Morton:                     Yes, well there’s many different definitions, and I think this brings up a lot of things, but just to speak first of all with scheduling, because I think that’s a really great place to start. And a really simple place to start with people, and when we work with clients, we begin our work with all of our clients in our program with that really strong foundation of first getting clear about what your ideal schedule looks like. And a lot of us, as you mention, we flip flop this, right? It’s like, we kind of open our calendar up completely, and we just let clients dictate then what our schedule looks like. And we just leave this wide open calendar, and then things start plugging in, and then all of a sudden, we’re working 80 hours, and we feel trapped by our own creation, which is the funniest thing, really, if we’re not laughing, we’re crying about it, right?

But really, it’s like, we have to remember as entrepreneurs that we set our own schedule, so if you don’t like your schedule, you have one person to blame. And we do like to take sort of a light, funny approach, and just shine the light on this, because there are many times, still, that we feel trapped by our own schedule, and we’re operating almost as if it was put there by some boss that is running us, and we have to laugh at ourselves. So we often will … What we do is, is we say okay, let’s just look at your schedule. Ideally, let’s start with how many days a week do you want to be working?

When do you work the best? Right? So a lot of working smarter, not harder, is knowing when you’re on for the specific type of work that you’re doing. So higher level, deeper work, you want to reserve that for times when your energy is the highest, when you’re in that, it’s much easier to get into a flow state. For many of us, that’s morning, not all of us. This is about really taking the time to know yourself and bring awareness to when you work the best. And then you want to put in your non-negotiables, right? What does it take for you to operate at your best?

When I’m operating at my best when I’ve had a lot of quiet time in the morning, when I’m working out regularly, when I make sure that I have quality time with my family. And it can feel kind of not intuitive to put all those things in first, especially I think for women, where we start feeling like, okay, I just want to … I’ll take care of everybody else first, and then I come last. That’s an old pattern that we can break by reminding ourselves that the more we take care of ourselves, the better we can serve, whether that be our families, our clients, anybody else that we are in service to.

So starting, again, working backwards, and then, when you design your calendar, so we use Calendly for our scheduler … Actually, we use Schedule Once now, we used to use Calendly, but there’s so many great scheduling tools, but once you have that great picture of your ideal schedule, then you open your calendar in the places where you want people to opt in. So it’s a life by design, not by default. You’re choosing. So then, when people do book on your calendar, it feels joyous, and you’re not in resentment or in resistance to the work that you’ve created for yourself, right? When somebody pops up on your calendar, you want to be excited about where they’re showing up in the week that you’ve designed for yourself.

So that’s a little tip that I think everybody can implement no matter where you are. Just taking that moment to take a step back, and visualize what your ideal schedule looks like.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, there are so many little hidden things too, that I’ve found, that I had to start putting in my schedule. Things like, driving the kids to school, or do my meditation, my yoga. So now, in my schedule, I actually have my miracle morning in the schedule. I have all those times where I have to drive or just eat.

Kimi Morton:                     Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Actually in my schedule. And when you do that, you realize you have less working time available to you than you actually think. And so, the prioritization of that time starts to become so much more important. Like what is the highest leverage thing that I can do today? Like if I do this one thing today, what kind of multiplier is there going to be on that time? How much benefit am I going to get as a result of doing this, as opposed to doing something else, I guess, that anyone else could do?

Kimi Morton:                     Absolutely.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Absolutely. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, there we go. There it is.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Yeah, and I think that’s also kind of … When we are doing something like starting a business, or running a business, we talked a little bit about just comfort in that earlier, and part of what feels really comfortable for us, as people in this modern society and also as women, quite frankly, is that feeling of being busy, and having that feel like a good thing, right? So it’s like I’m getting a lot of things done, I’m checking a lot of things off my list, and that feels like you’re doing the right thing, but what can be really beneficial, and I think you alluded to this, is the silence, is that meditation where you give yourself the time and space to reflect, and really think about what is that one thing? Or those three things that can really move things forward? And what can I let go of?

What little tasks do I spend my time doing every week that I just don’t need to be spending my time on? And if they do still need to get done, is there another way to accomplish them? Could I invest in an assistant? A VA? Could I outsource this somehow, leverage up work or fancy hands or something, right? There are so many options available to us, but there’s a sense of control, and a sense of comfort that we get from doing all the little things. And that’s another big one, right? As you said, when you’re non-negotiables are in your calendar, and your self-care is in there, the time that you have to actually work on your business is cut down significantly, which is great. That’s a good thing.

The game should be, how do you work? The least. We’ve been talking a lot about this. We’re trying to revolutionize the word lazy, and the lazy entrepreneur is really the smart entrepreneur, because they found a way to do as little as possible in their business, and maximize their impact, maximize their service, maximize their income. And still find more than enough time to enjoy life.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh gosh, but why is that so difficult for women?

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       I know.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’ve started to say that you can have it all, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do it all.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Right.

Kimi Morton:                     So true.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         And yet, we’re so … I don’t know whether we’ve just been acculturated, or socialized, or something, to think that not only do we have to do it all, but we have to do it all perfectly.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         And this would explain why only 3% of female founded, women owned businesses make it to a million dollars in revenue or more, because you can’t scale if you’re stuck doing it all.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Right. And there’s guilt. I think there’s a lot of weird guilt complexes that we have to work through. I know I did, right? You feel like you’re doing something wrong when you’re asking someone else to do something that you’re fully capable of doing. It kind of goes against what … My parents always told me, I shouldn’t ask them to do something that I can do myself, and that was ingrained so deeply in me, that then outsourcing and delegating, felt really wrong. And it’s those kinds of societal norms that we have to butt up against, and say hey, this doesn’t have to be truth. There’s another way.

Melinda Wittstock:         But I notice it even in my kids. So I have a 15 year old daughter, and I have a son who’s 11 who’s almost 12. And his approach is, who can do this for me?

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Yeah, that sounds like Kimi’s kids.

Melinda Wittstock:         And her approach is just to do it, right? And she gets kind of rewarded for that, because it’s like she’s the responsible, wow, thanks Sydney, for doing all that, right? But then it’s made me think about it, because it would be great if she was the one saying, hey, everybody else get this done for me. It’s interesting, in corporate America too, where a man will walk into a new job in a corporation, and say hey, who’s the person that I need to know here to advance my agenda? Who’s going to do the work? Who can I rely on?

And a woman is going to go in, and again, I’m generalizing, but more likely to go in, and say, God, if I just get my head down, and I work really hard, and I hit, I overachieve, I hit all my numbers, or whatever metric, right? Everyone is going to notice me.

And it doesn’t work out. And so, we do seem to have an issue about asking for help, getting mentors, making sure that we’re in really good networks that are supportive, and getting out of our own way, like when good enough is much, much better than perfect.

Kimi Morton:                     Yes. Yeah, I think it’s certainly society. I mean, if I think back to school, to corporate jobs I’ve had, we are conditioned to feel like the less I do, the lazier I am perceived to be, and that’s bad, right? That’s basically the thought process then, the mind set that we have to overcome, whether that as women, or men, right? Just as humans coming out of the school systems, the corporate world. And I think especially for women though, what can really help us, is when we bring it back to service.

So the way that we can sort of get out of our own way is to flip that, and say that, it’s not the less I do, the lazier I am, the less I do, the more I can serve. And when we focus on the people that … Like, how this will allow us to serve more, and to show up as our best selves every single day, that can really help us to flip this. At least, it does for me, for sure. And yeah, I was laughing when you mentioned your kids, because one day I found my kids together, they’re 11 and 14, and my son was lounging back with his heads behind his head, and my daughter, the older one, my daughter, was reading to him.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, I have that same thing.

Kimi Morton:                     And I said, what’s happening here? And he had paid her, he had paid her ten bucks to read his homework to him. And I was like so proud and yet also, there was that thing of, I also wanted my daughter … My daughter, she’s like, well, I needed the money. And so yeah, it was certainly a teachable moment, and it was an opportunity to talk about working smarter, not harder, and celebrate that, but also, yes, making sure that it’s balanced, that both of my kids are able to see the value in that.

Melinda Wittstock:         That is so funny because I swear the exact same thing played out in my house. And it takes in various forms, where Sydney gets all kinds of money out of Finn that way, but he’s the one that’s offering, though. Can you do this? I’ll give you this. Can you do that? I’ll give you that. And that’s kind of how you scale a business. So, it’s funny watching these things and how early this starts in our lives. What were you two like as kids? Were you both entrepreneurial? Did you both have the proverbial lemonade stand?

Were you both entrepreneurial? Did you both have the proverbial lemonade stand? Did you know you wanted to be entrepreneurs?

Kimi Morton:                     Absolutely not. Well, and that’s part of it. Right? I was, quote unquote, “not that great of a student.” I almost got kicked out of my high school because I was on academic probation. I was perceived, even if it was self-perceived, as a failure, like I wasn’t going to amount to anything. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I spent so much of my young adult years trying to fit in. I was like a square peg fitting into a round hole. It was-

Melinda Wittstock:         But that’s such a predictor of being an entrepreneur.

Kimi Morton:                     Absolutely. I know, and now that I look back on it, it makes total sense. But navigating that at the time, it was kind of defeating. It was very overwhelming to try to figure out what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be when it looked like everyone around me had figured that out. It’s funny. No one asks us that question, and I don’t really think about it, but, yeah, it was very telling.

Melinda Wittstock:         You know it’s really funny. It reminds me of a experience that I had in one of my entrepreneurial networks several years ago where we had a facilitator come by and do this special talk for us. He asked us to do things. It started out very gentle questions at first. You know, “How many of you are right-handed?” “How many of you are left-handed?” How many of you this, or this, or that. He got to the point where it’s, “How many of you have been arrested?” Like, almost everybody. All the entrepreneurs had been arrested. We were all shocked. But most entrepreneurs had protested something, or organized something, or had not fit in in school, or just something.

I mean, we’d all been willing to think differently or see problems in a different way, or just, yeah, think about things in a new way with a different perspective, or combine things that aren’t normally combined, and really be much more willing to think outside the box.

Kimi Morton:                     Totally.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Yes.

Kimi Morton:                     Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         And, so, yeah, go ahead.

Kimi Morton:                     I was just going to add, too, it’s funny how we think that … like, I always just thought I was bad at school, [inaudible 00:34:34]. I thought I was bad at school. I thought when I couldn’t keep a steady job … like, I’d be at a job and I’d love it at first, and then I’d want something else, and then I’d find another thing and I always just thought I was bad at life. And then, I’m like, “No.” Now, looking back, you realize that it’s entrepreneurship.

It’s like wanting that constant change, wanting to constantly improve, wanting to fix systems. That would always be the thing for me is I would find myself in jobs and I could see a better way, and yet it’s often, people don’t want to hear it when you’re in a job that … I’m like, “Why don’t we try it this way?”, and there’s that status quo or that feeling of, “Well, no, this is the way we’ve always done it, so we’re just going to keep doing it this way because it’s working.” I think that’s often a sign of that entrepreneurial spirit, but I never recognized it at the time, I just thought I was a causer of problems, or something, or that I ask too many questions, or that I was rocking the boat always.

But again, I really look for opportunities now with my kids to reinforce that, if they’re seeing things in a different way, if they’re questioning authority, if they’re questioning the way things … like, “Can’t we do this a different way, or find an easier, better way to do it?”, I want to really encourage that because I don’t think we encourage it in youth.

Nowadays, I think we do more than definitely in the school setting that I was in, but that would be the only sign because I definitely never had a lemonade stand, or anything, growing up. But, now it makes sense looking back.

Melinda Wittstock:         How about you, Pua? What were you like as a kid?

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       I was shy. People are always kind of surprised to hear about that, and I was a people pleaser, for sure, but I never really wanted to be. Like, there is a little bit of a rebel in me that was like, “Ugh, okay, fine.” Like, “I want to do it this way.” “No, you need to do.” “Okay, okay, I will, sorry.” It’s that submissive, it always sort of killed me a little bit inside but I wasn’t really sure if I was able to do anything about it, and the more I discovered who I was and that I could be my own person, the more that I just wanted to shut that down so badly.

I always have to catch myself because I talk about people being employed as this negative thing, and I always have to remember that not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, and not everybody’s unhappy as an employee, and having employees is really, really important. If everyone in the world had their own business, then we’d all be working really, really hard. So, there’s that balance.

But, I did have that experience where I just did not like to follow rules and I didn’t want to do what other people told me to do, but I didn’t think that I had a choice. Looking back, thank God I figured it out because I don’t know who I would be today if I didn’t. I’d be very unhappy, that’s for one thing. And I think that’s common.

I think people will often go through life trying to please everybody, and feeling yucky about it, but not knowing what to do about it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes, it’s interesting, and a lot of people will go through life also not making the leap that you made. I mean, thinking that they have no right to do so, or they are surrounded by friends, family who, maybe are really well-meaning, but say things like, “Are you sure you should do that?”

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so, the sad thing is when you see so many people living lives of, I call them the sort of lives of should’s. And whenever you catch yourself saying, “I should do this” or, “I should do that.” That’s a really instructive thing that you’re not really on your path because why should you? I mean, right? What do you want to do? What makes your heart sing? What makes you feel great? How do you like spending your time? What are you doing when time disappears? What did you love to do as a kid?

And all of these things are so instructive. But, you’re right. Not everybody is suited to being an entrepreneur. I mean, not everybody wants to be carrying the weight of the, “Am I going to make payroll?” Right? All that kind of responsibility.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         As you grow and scale a business, and there are different paths to follow, but just really figuring out what it is in your heart that makes you happy. So, it’s so fascinating hearing people’s journeys and how they get to where they’re going.

And so, what’s next for you two? Because, I mean, you’re going around, helping people create these best lives, which is magnificent and wonderful work and so important what you’re doing. Where do you see yourselves in the future?

Kimi Morton:                     Well, my whole body lit up when you said, “What’s next for you?” I think that’s another sign, right?

Melinda Wittstock:         You’ve got lots of ideas, right? I’m sure, because you’re an entrepreneur, so yes.

Kimi Morton:                     Exactly. That’s another sign of that spirit, because that question is so exciting. While we have, certainly, visions and intentions for ways that we’re expanding. I mean, we’ve been in a period of time right now, in particular, where we’re having to do, what we like to refer to as, “eat our own dog food,” where all the productivity, outsourcing, time and energy hacks, it’s our turn now to really, really implement those at the next level because our business is expanding, and in order to hold space for all the clients that we have, all the people coming through our program, and the growth that we’re experiencing, it is required of us, then, to make sure that we’re outsourcing and that we’re able to do us, so that we can serve more.

So, it’s really been a fun time for us. So, yeah, we foresee more expansion. We’ve been looking … we’re always looking for ways to work less and creative more passive income streams and we just geek out on that stuff. We feel like it’s so fun, it’s so exciting for us, but the truth also is that we are so open to whatever is meant to emerge. So, as a company, we don’t do a lot of five-year, ten-year planning. I mean, we do intention-setting and big-visioning, but we don’t set these really, really concrete goals, necessarily, because we love to be open to expanding to whatever is meant to be.

A lot of times, we can spend so much time doing this really, really concrete goal setting, and set up all these things, but if we don’t take that time to really check in very frequently with what feels right, what feels right for us now, where is our heart and our soul calling us to next, we may end up building all of this infrastructure and pushing all of these people or followers to something that isn’t in alignment with us anymore.

So, while we do, as I said, a lot of big-visioning and feeling in to the future, we really like to stay open. We feel that that’s really important so that, again, you don’t get locked in to something that isn’t in alignment with where your heart is calling to you in the moment, if that makes sense.

Melinda Wittstock:         It makes sense completely, because often our egos of the left side of our brains unintentionally limit our horizons. We say, “Oh, I’ve got to get this,” and we start to think of how we’re going to get this, and we don’t know. But, living in that, kind of an intention. I’ve actually arrived at the point now where I just ask for inspiration.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Love that.

Melinda Wittstock:         And to recognize it, and to follow it. If you’re in alignment, then you start to get these really … does this happen to you, where you start to get these, kind of, synchronicities in your life, or like the right people show up at the right time?

Kimi Morton:                     Mmmm.

Melinda Wittstock:         Just being open to that, again, I think we already talked about this idea of being in the moment, but when you’re connected in that way, yes. I mean, miracles really do happen, and it’s lovely to see so many entrepreneurs thinking in this way at this intersection of personal growth and business growth, I guess.

Kimi Morton:                     Yes.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Totally.

And it never happens exactly how you think it will, either.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, never. Oh my God, no. No. In fact, no, it never does, and that’s part of the fun, though. So, I mean, you have to, I guess, like change or like the fact that you don’t know. If you’re the type of person who needs absolute certainty, this is certainly not the gig for you.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       That couldn’t be more true!

Melinda Wittstock:         Hey, so, Kimi and Pua, how can people find you and work with you? Tell me just a little bit, too, about your eight-week course and what people get in that and how they can find it.

Pua Pakele & Cabot:       Yeah, we are so excited. Every time we talk about this, we light up, which is also a really clear sign that it’s definitely the path we’re meant to be on right now. But, our eight-week course is called Broke-Ass To Badass, and you can learn all about that at BrokeAssToBadass.com. It’s geared specifically for entrepreneurs who are looking to grow and scale their businesses online, and to work less. It’s really what it is.

It’s eight weeks of … so, we start out with some pretty intense big-visioning, scheduling training, productivity training, because it’s important to us that you have the tools in place to successfully complete the course, and it’s a lot. So, we really guide you to create the time and energy to put into this course and everything that goes into it.

From there, we dig right in. We look at your vibe, your tribe, what your service is, how you want to serve, who you want to serve, and how to start communicating that to the world. We talk about social media, we talk about marketing, sales, website development. We create the offer for an online course or membership, if that’s the direction that you want to go. We walk you through that.

By the end of the eight weeks, our goal is to have you ready to fly, and really have everything that you need to serve, because we truly, truly believe that the time is now to bring your gifts to the world. People are out there suffering and praying for whatever it is that you do and whatever solution you hold. So, it means a lot to us to give you these tools, in a very short amount of time, to do that.

Beyond that, you can always go to our website, BLEDigital.com. We also have a variety of digital media services, either done for you or as a bonus through our course for a highly discounted rate, just to bring entrepreneurs in the online space and expand their service is also really important to us.

We have a free podcast called Broke-Ass To Badass and we also have a really awesome checklist on our website, a free download, Five Secrets To Creating A Badass Online Business. Everything you need is on our website. BLEDigital.com can get you to all of these places.

Oh, and we have a free tribe on Facebook, also. A Facebook group, and we love it there. We love to meet you guys and interact there, so that’s really where you can interact with us and hang out with our community. You can find that at Bit.ly/BLETribe.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wonderful. Thank you so much, Kimi and Pua, for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Kimi Morton:                     Thank you so much for having us. This has been really fun.