July 25, 2024

Living the dream with international keynote speaker, award-winning author, and business menter Katrena Friel

Show Notes
Transcript

Send us a text

In this episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, host Curveball interviews Katrena Friel, an international keynote speaker, award-winning author, and business mentor with 25 years of experience. Katrena shares her insights on personal and professional development, emphasizing the importance of creating a personal brand and avoiding burnout. Discover how her unique program helps individuals transition from their current jobs to thriving personal brand businesses with multiple income streams. Katrena also delves into the signs of burnout, tips for maintaining work-life balance, and the significance of emotional intelligence in effective leadership.
Please be sure to follow, rate, review, and share to as many people as possible.

WEBVTT

00:00:00.560 --> 00:00:38.159
> Curtis Jackson>Welcome, to the living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve Chee Chee, welcome, to the living the dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by international keynote speaker, award winning author and business mentor, Katrina Friel.

00:00:38.460 --> 00:00:46.920
> Curtis Jackson>Katrina has 25 years of business mentor experience. She focuses on personal and professional development.

00:00:47.500 --> 00:00:57.359
> Curtis Jackson>She's very energetic. She brings thought provoking topics and subjects to, podcasts. So let's get into it. Katrina, thank you so much for joining me today.

00:00:57.859 --> 00:01:00.060
> Katrina Friel>It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:01:00.219 --> 00:01:03.399
> Curtis Jackson>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

00:01:04.180 --> 00:01:25.159
> Katrina Friel>Well, I've been in business for over 25 years now, and I have a business called becoming the expert. And it's usually people that are in their current jobs, they're really dreaming of something more, and we want to transition them into their own personal brand business. And we do that with seven streams of income.

00:01:25.459 --> 00:01:30.987
> Katrina Friel>And so my gifts or my job is to create their philosophy.

00:01:31.123 --> 00:01:47.000
> Katrina Friel>That philosophy turns into a book, the book turns into a keynote, and all of that turns into a signature program that they can sell, all based around their sort of their own philosophy of life, usually based on their story and experience.

00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:58.530
> Curtis Jackson>Well, I know you have a story to tell and you face burnout twice throughout your career, so let the listeners know about that.

00:01:59.590 --> 00:03:03.069
> Katrina Friel>Yeah, well, a lot of us, I suppose, are programmed, to have some sort of work ethic. And I think my work ethic on the shadow side meant that I was able to work and work and work and work and work. And back in my early days, when I was first sort of starting out, I, burnt out twice before I was 25. And I knew at that time, gosh, if this is what it's going to be like, I'm going to be dead by 40 if I don't sort this out. So what I realized was that working hard and burning yourself out for what, where does that really get you? It can take up to two. Well, it took me two years to recover from the burnouts. but for others who actually blow their adrenals, it can be much, much longer. So I haven't got time for that. So I really wanted to sort of find out how to be productive, efficient, and effective, but without the burnout and doing crazy hours and taking on too much. And so now I'm 55.

00:03:03.165 --> 00:03:09.062
> Katrina Friel>I did survive. And, now I teach others how to live a life that's on their own terms.

00:03:09.562 --> 00:03:51.641
> Katrina Friel>And one of the reasons why people aren't happy is the main reason, is because they don't have control over their day. And I think that's the shift away from corporate and the terrible hours with no purpose and no meaning and come and find your purpose and your meaning and start to take control over your own day. And when you can control your day, your time, people are just generally much more happier. yeah, so you can sort of enjoy life, but doing it with joy and happiness and find that balance between doing what you love and making more money than you ever would inside a corporate job.

00:03:54.662 --> 00:04:11.024
> Curtis Jackson>Okay, so talk. I know you kind of discussed you becoming an expert program, but kind of break it down to the listeners. If I came to you and said, hey, katrina, I heard about your program, I heard it was great, I want to join it. what could I expect if I joined it?

00:04:11.403 --> 00:04:16.593
> Katrina Friel>It's a twelve month program, but it's very different, from what else is out there.

00:04:17.134 --> 00:04:25.494
> Katrina Friel>I do it all for you, so it's a done for you program. So within 90 days, the whole business is set up for you.

00:04:25.613 --> 00:05:23.451
> Katrina Friel>What most people do is starting a business is really overwhelming. When you do it for the first time, you really don't know what comes before. What, so what I watched was people really just sort of struggle. they would do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and then they would be talked to about this and talk to about that, and everything builds up and up and up till they're just overwhelmed and they don't know where to start and what to do. So people buy me because they just want to get that bit sorted. Let's just get set up. Let's have my personal brand, the branding, the website, the social media, the book, the keynote, have all those assets built ready to go. And then within 90 days, that's all set up and handed over. And I start doing a little bit of training just so that you can maintain your website. You know, how to do this and that, but you're all, everything's bespoke, everything's customized just for you.

00:05:23.507 --> 00:05:50.923
> Katrina Friel>And all the training videos I do for you is, based on your website, your back end. So anyway, it all gets set up for you so that we spend the rest of the year. After that 90 days and the assets are all built. We spend the rest of the year, really having you get out there and I teach you how to fish so that you can, fish, bring in some fish and learn how to feed yourself.

00:05:52.024 --> 00:06:08.543
> Curtis Jackson>Okay? So I know you experienced two burnouts, so can you give the listeners some tips or, some signs on how to recognize burnout. And when they recognize, they could kind of implement some strategies to overcome it or prevent it.

00:06:09.324 --> 00:06:31.744
> Katrina Friel>Yeah. So the thing that shocked me is I'm an enthusiastic person. So when I lost my passion enthusiasm, you even become a little bit sort of tired and cranky. M that's when you know you're in burnout, you just haven't got any zest for life much anymore.

00:06:32.163 --> 00:07:37.374
> Katrina Friel>And that was the opposite of who I was, generally speaking. So it was very obvious to me something was very, very wrong when I just didn't care. The care factor had gone, the passion, enthusiasm, all gone. And you're just really flat now. It's very different from depression. Depression is a different feeling. to burnout. Burnout, I think, is a very flat feeling. And, yeah, so you've got to make some serious changes. So, if the environment that you're in is not going to change, then you're going to have to change it. So what I did was I left the role and went into a different role. And I remember the recruitment agency at the time saying, take a step back to step forward. And I think that was actually really good advice, is instead of going for a bigger role, and building my career, like the trajectory that I was on, I actually took this sort of role that wasn't very challenging.

00:07:37.834 --> 00:10:13.836
> Katrina Friel>And, I just did it to, recover from the burnout that I previously had. So it was really interesting just taking a step back. And then I grew my career inside that company, really, really well as I recovered. So it was really good, it was a good opportunity just to take a step back. what I recommend for people now that I'm much, much further along is that they take a step back from life in general and see, all the things that are giving them energy drains. so people are leaching energy all over the place and not doing some of the basics right. So some of the basics I like to check in with first is sleep hydration, nutrition and movement or exercise. And, those sort of four main pillars need to be looked at first just to see what are you doing there, because if you're not sleeping really well, your body's not healing, and so not healing properly. So we want to get the sleep, under control. But beyond all those hygiene factors, you've got to have a look at your lifestyle and the relationships that you're in and the work. And quite often the women I speak to and the men I speak to who are in jobs that they hate. And every year that passes, their energy gets drained more and more and more. And that's really just spiritually the universe saying, this role is over for you. You've learned what you needed to learn. It's time to move on. And what starts as a very. Just gets harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning. If you don't listen to that subtlety at the beginning, it just gets more and more louder while you don't listen to it. So you want to start listening at the very early stages of burnout and unhappiness and start to catch it early, be proactive with it. Whereas what most people do is they live with it. they learn to live with pain and energy drains, get worse and worse and worse as the years go by. And we've all met those people that are bitter, twisted, angry people who have just stayed in the job for 20 years. They don't know why, and now they're, you know, running out of time to do anything about it. So what I say to people is, just try and get it early. And the body whispers to you first, and then it screams at you if you ignore it as the years roll by. So that's, that's when it's gone too far. It's time to do something about it.

00:10:13.868 --> 00:10:39.470
> Katrina Friel>Why do we sit in these jobs? Why do we sit in these relationships that are unhappy? I don't know. so the philosophy I have is that 10% of people are very proactive with their development, and I call them activated lifelong learners. The rest of the people are 90 percenters. They're lifelong learners. They are going to learn and grow, but they're reactive to their development.

00:10:40.570 --> 00:10:51.269
> Katrina Friel>Life happens to them, and they're not very proactive. So I want to be in the top 10% of the world, not 90 percenters, who the world happens to them.

00:10:51.929 --> 00:10:56.809
> Curtis Jackson>So talk about some characteristics for effective leadership.

00:10:59.470 --> 00:11:08.395
> Katrina Friel>So, in my work, I do a lot of corporate training as well, and executive coaching. And my signature program is the leadership management masterclass.

00:11:08.467 --> 00:13:41.299
> Katrina Friel>And it's sort of a two day experience, usually in a group, but it also can happen one on one if necessary. But the keys, for that are, is that the first one to think about is emotional intelligence. emotional intelligence is so key to how we're going to be successful in this world. the first thing with emotional intelligence is it's sort of all based around self awareness. Starts with self awareness. So we're on a journey to understand ourselves, clean up the past from our past traumas, whether that's in childhood or later on. But most trauma, you know, people need to look at is generally starts between naught and seven, and then it goes from there. But self awareness is really key. So understanding yourself, because you can't, if you don't understand yourself, you really won't understand the impact you have on others. The second thing to think about is self regulation and being able to manage yourself and manage your emotions and manage, just your behaviors. So that self regulation is to have a look at that and then your motivation. So the third thing is to think about your motivation. And, what we're looking for here is people that can self motivate. There's nothing really that can motivate you externally. If you can't motivate yourself, you're going to be, you know, really in a lot of trouble. The fourth thing is to think about is your empathy. So being able to step into the shoes of other people, it's really key. And then the final one is your social skills. Your social skills are really going to determine your success. The way you're able to meet people, relate to people, connect with people, and magnetize people to you. Just an incredible skill. And when you look across all those five things, if you added it all up and gave yourself a rating out of ten for all of the five things, you'll sort of see what are your strengths and what are your challenges moving forward. And when you're working with a coach or a mentor, they tend to look at those gaps, and we work on those sort of gaps and seeing what we can do to increase your self awareness, increase your ability to self regulate. What's your motivations? What's your why? How do you self motivate?

00:13:41.679 --> 00:13:56.509
> Katrina Friel>What's your empathy like, and, how you're going socially both inside and outside of your career. So I like to look at emotional intelligence first. There's so much more to it. But I think EQ is a nice little easy model to sort of refer to.

00:13:58.769 --> 00:14:08.990
> Curtis Jackson>Well, you also like to look at, people taking a heart and soul approach when it comes to business and even in their personal life. Explain what you mean by that.

00:14:09.450 --> 00:14:35.440
> Katrina Friel>Well, I'm sort of spiritually inclined. I don't call that religious. I'm not religious specifically, but I am spiritual. And spiritual means that your heart, your head and your gut are all talking together to co create your life. And you're down here for a very short time. It's a blink to the soul. This particular experience.

00:14:36.159 --> 00:14:44.330
> Katrina Friel>so it comes down to earth earth school and wants, to have an experience in this particular personality.

00:14:44.418 --> 00:15:03.587
> Katrina Friel>So, you know, if you look at myself, I'm going to be Katrina. I'm 55, so, you know, how long am I going to be Katrina for? But once I'm gone and dead, that's the end of that particular personality and that particular experience in that particular packaging.

00:15:03.772 --> 00:16:19.145
> Katrina Friel>So what we want to do is come down here to learn our lessons, so that we can learn and grow, not just in our lives, but at a soul level. So I like to sort of work with people that are a little bit aware of these things. So I like to work with people that are awakened and that are conscious, and those are people that are interested in personal and professional development. Those people have already started their work. They're already working on healing any traumas from the past. And I just find those people are much wider open to seek somebody out like me because they want to go to the next level. Like, what does that look like? And so, yeah, you don't want people that have, you know, not even aware that there's anything else, that would scare me. But I tell you what, I've seen a lot over the last 30 years of my career, and the world is a completely different place. And there's so many people now that are awakened, so many people now that are conscious of co creating with the universe, a life of their dreams, whatever that might look like for them.

00:16:21.605 --> 00:16:33.145
> Curtis Jackson>You also talk about how, as far as leadership goes, every interaction can trigger employee engagement. Explain what you mean by that.

00:16:33.806 --> 00:17:50.461
> Katrina Friel>So, in the corporate, world, I call myself the engagement switch. so what I say to leaders is that every single interaction that you're having with somebody is either turning them on or turning them off. And so they're either engaged at work or they're not engaged in work. And in my work, I've seen that about 75% of people are not engaged in their job, in their teams, in their companies, which means we're paying a lot of money for these people who are not engaged in what they're doing. They're dialing it in, they're waiting for something to happen. They're not proactive with their development, they're not proactive with their role and what they contribute. So they're kind of working at maybe 20% capacity because they just don't care. So 75% of people all around the world are working at that level. And that's why businesses are not doing as well as they could, because people are just not engaged so while this is a very, very complex issue, probably I could talk about engagement till the cows come home.

00:17:50.534 --> 00:18:18.970
> Katrina Friel>But from an individual point of view, I say to people, if you're not engaged, what would help you become engaged? And so I give them a whole bunch of, you know, tips and things to think about. And we do a lot of calibration and we do a lot of self awareness around what are we doing here. I also work with the leaders.

00:18:19.057 --> 00:18:41.036
> Katrina Friel>So I say to the leaders, look, a lot of the disengagement is really because of you and your communication skills, your leadership skills, your management skills. So I do what I can with whoever's in front of me at the time. That's the one that's going to take responsibility for their outcomes.

00:18:41.336 --> 00:19:01.220
> Katrina Friel>and, yeah, I just want people to be happy at jobs, and if they're not happy, then change it. You know, life's too short to be in something that you hate, and it's not fair for the other people that are in the job to be around your energy. That's disengaged.

00:19:01.347 --> 00:19:32.726
> Katrina Friel>So I think of work culture as a bell curve. You've got the 10% that are really down the bottom of the bell curve on the left, and they are dead wood, not contributing negative energy. They're the people you've got to get rid of real fast. And then there's all these people in the middle who are flipping between on and off, on and off, engaged in their role.

00:19:32.885 --> 00:20:18.018
> Katrina Friel>And we can do a lot of work with them, a lot of work to help them see what opportunity they've got in front of them. And then you've got the high performing people right up the other end of the scale. So the top 10%, the high performing, self managing people, these people are really hard to manage. And so while they're amazing to have on the team, they do only represent 10% and they've got options. They can go anywhere, they can do anything. They're working on their development, they are good to go. And when they're over it and when they're disengaged in what they're doing, they'll just be off, they will disappear as quick as anything. the deadwood sticks around because they don't have any options.

00:20:18.102 --> 00:20:20.778
> Katrina Friel>They've got nowhere to go, nobody wants to hire them.

00:20:20.961 --> 00:20:35.200
> Katrina Friel>So, you know, when you get rid of them, retrench them, sack them, do whatever you want with them. yeah, they're in big trouble. They're never going to work on themselves. They're just victims. They just want to whinge whine and who knows what will happen to them.

00:20:35.296 --> 00:21:17.682
> Katrina Friel>But the middle people, the 80% of staff who are good, they don't wake up in the morning going, oh, I can't wait to disappoint everyone, or I can't wait when I wake up in the morning, I can't wait to be crap at my job. That's not what it's about. It's about them looking at themselves and seeing what is it that they need now? Is it training? Is it coaching? Do they need to leave the industry or do they need to leave this particular role? Are they bored? Is it time to pitch themselves for something else? You know, they've just got to do something. You can't just sit there. And that's why they're turning on and off, engagement.

00:21:17.721 --> 00:21:20.500
> Katrina Friel>Because it's often time to make a change.

00:21:20.675 --> 00:22:39.711
> Katrina Friel>Our human bodies are not meant to just stay put. Our human bodies are, ah, an evolution machine and they're talking to us all the time in feelings. So the biofeedback machine of the body is telling us whether we're happy or not. And if we wake up in the morning, this is the test, is every time you wake up in the morning, check in and see is it hard to get out of bed or is it easy to get out of bed? If it's easy to get out of bed, then you're on the right track, you're on the right path, you're exactly where you should be. But if it's getting harder and harder each day to get out of bed, then that's a warning sign, a very early warning sign to listen to that and sort of say, oh, it's getting harder and harder. It's time for me to look around at ah, what else is available to me? What should I do next? What's my easy next step in my evolution? And I just want people to get really, really proactive with all of that. And yeah, if you're not happy, then go because you're upsetting the apple carts. And these businesses are hard enough to manage. Good business to feed all these people is hard enough without people dragging their asses around and not respecting the company that feeds their family.

00:22:42.092 --> 00:22:44.867
> Curtis Jackson>So you are also an award winning author.

00:22:44.940 --> 00:22:50.311
> Curtis Jackson>So tell us about your books and where we can get them and what we can expect when we read them.

00:22:51.332 --> 00:23:19.321
> Katrina Friel>Well, my first book, that's the award winning book. That one was my, it was looking at the sales process. I was really into sales in those days and I had a sales background. So when I wrote that book. I wanted to correlate the, the dating world, the relationships of humans, and, sort of put it up against, the sales process.

00:23:19.622 --> 00:24:46.021
> Katrina Friel>So it was just an interesting, fun way of looking at sales, like dating one night stands. you know, it was called sex sells is what I'm getting at. I don't want to be too risque. This book goes back a while, but I really love it. I still think it's got legs. I think it's just a sexy way of looking at sales and saying it's exactly the same as what it is to, building relationships. on the dating scene as sales is sometimes, a client might be a, one night stand will make it the best one night stand they've ever had from a sales perspective. And then it's some clients, you marry them and you have a long term relationship with them, and you live happily ever or after. And so I show people what that process is to start from the beginning of the dating process and go right through to a long term relationship. So it's just a bit of fun. So that was my first book. The next series I did was called, it was in my refresh your thinking series, and the first book was refresh your career, and then I did refresh your life and then refresh your business, refresh your, your sales. And, this was all about just my brand around refreshing your thinking on these things, and refresh your career is still going. I still use that as, a wonderful keynote.

00:24:46.150 --> 00:24:51.685
> Katrina Friel>And so after the keynote, everyone gets a copy of the book and takes my philosophy away.

00:24:51.741 --> 00:25:41.632
> Katrina Friel>And it's sort of like seven key things to success. And so now, I've since done a becoming the expert book, but that's not really a book people buy. It's the first day of my curriculum in my bigger program. So that's an interesting book that people only get when I do my program. And, we use that as sort of like a business plan template, and it sort of explains what we're building, why we're building it, where the money is, where the money isn't, and, lay it all out for them as to what I'm going to build for them, moving forward. And then I'm doing a magical book at the moment, a magical book about energy and business. And, yeah, just getting people to see it as a magical process.

00:25:42.102 --> 00:25:55.895
> Katrina Friel>to me, business is the best personal development program you'll ever do. It'll bring up all your triggers, it'll press all your buttons, and you have to really want it. It's not easy.

00:25:55.983 --> 00:26:27.392
> Katrina Friel>And as much as I try to make their journey much, much easier than it would have been without me, it still requires focus and you still have to really want to do it. So, business is amazing. and I love hanging around, talking to people about business, and that's who I like to surround myself with. People that just want to have more, do more, be more and more, you know, want to evolve, but through the lens of a business, through the lens of helping other people in this particular world.

00:26:28.412 --> 00:26:37.662
> Katrina Friel>Yeah, but there's lots of books out there. I think I've done five and now I'm up to, Yeah, I'll be doing my 6th or 7th one shortly.

00:26:38.362 --> 00:26:38.761
> Curtis Jackson>Yeah.

00:26:38.801 --> 00:26:43.582
> Curtis Jackson>Speaking of that, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to know about.

00:26:46.372 --> 00:27:03.642
> Katrina Friel>Well, my project, at the moment is I'm trying to work out a way to consolidate my brands into one brand, into one particular name, one particular website.

00:27:03.942 --> 00:27:56.701
> Katrina Friel>And so it's a real challenge for me to do that because I've got different markets, different, markets that I work with and bring through into other parts of my business. So it's all interlinked as far as I can tell. But I'd really love a clever person to come in and sort of say, all right, we can do this, and under one roof put all my talents and all my gifts and all the ways that I help people. But in a real, you know, real consolidated one look, brand, I don't mind if there's various landing pages, for different things, but, which of course will probably happen, but I just really love this consolidation and every ten years, I think I always do consolidate and it's time now to do another consolidation. So that's what I'm working on, getting my head around, who's going to partner with me on that.

00:27:57.261 --> 00:28:17.210
> Katrina Friel>and I've realized I'm too close to it, so I really need an external helper, an external person that can strategize with me on that. I'm just too close to it, it's too precious. so that's one thing, but in terms of, reaching out and the main things that I like to work on is looking for speaking opportunities.

00:28:17.306 --> 00:28:56.541
> Katrina Friel>So I love going to speaking on the stage. So anyone that would love to have me come and help business people or corporate people to think about their thought leadership and how that could come together in a personal brand for them, I love to talk about that, whether it's a podcast, webinar, virtual summit or live events are coming back and I'm loving it. So yeah, they're my main projects is just speaking as often as I can and from there attracting and I building relationships with people that want to go to that next step.

00:28:58.402 --> 00:29:02.862
> Curtis Jackson>What though, I should contact info so people can keep up with everything that you're up to.

00:29:03.432 --> 00:29:12.059
> Katrina Friel>so jump on to becoming the expert.com dot au. Becomingthexpert.com dot au.

00:29:12.115 --> 00:29:42.471
> Katrina Friel>I'm located in Sydney, Australia, so I work with people all over the world, which is fantastic. And I was just in houston recently, which was fun, and I did my first Ted talk, so that was exciting. so yeah, jump onto the website and from there you can just book a free discovery session so that we can have a couple together and just talk through where you're at, what you're thinking, what your secret dreams are. I like to think that I'm the how you've been waiting for.

00:29:44.932 --> 00:29:45.836
> Curtis Jackson>Absolutely.

00:29:45.884 --> 00:29:52.872
> Curtis Jackson>Close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

00:29:54.311 --> 00:30:12.837
> Katrina Friel>I don't know. I think I've said absolutely everything I could possibly have wanted to. This has been a very unusual, interview because I've been able to talk about all my different projects and all the different ways I help people. So thank you so much for asking me all those great questions. Thank you.

00:30:13.538 --> 00:30:46.817
> Curtis Jackson>Absolutely. That's what it's all about. Letting my listeners hear how the guests can help them. Becoming an expert. Becomingthexpert au make sure you check out that website. Make sure you follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible. Drop on your favorite podcast app. Give us a review. Follow us. If you have any guests or suggestion topics, send them M to Curtis Jackson 1978 t.net dot thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Katrina, thank you so much for joining us today.

00:30:47.278 --> 00:30:49.319
> Katrina Friel>Oh, thank you, Curtis. It's been lovely.

00:30:49.980 --> 00:30:57.932
> Curtis Jackson>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

00:30:58.115 --> 00:31:02.859
> Curtis Jackson>until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.