#WINNING
#WINNING
Turning Lemons into Lemonade: A Journey of Joy and Purpose with Kimberly Joy Evans
Who says joy can't be a lifestyle choice? Imagine turning adversity into an opportunity to bring joy and positivity to others. That's exactly what Kimberly Joy Evans has done. After learning her daughter had cystic fibrosis, Kimberly and her family started a lemonade stand that brought over 150 people to her front yard and a wave of community support. This unexpected turn of events ultimately shifted her career path and propelled her into her now passion: helping business owners live their life's purpose through their businesses.
Kimberly has truly turned lemons into lemonade, and she's here to share her secret ingredient: joy. As a successful business owner and award-winning host of the Joy Curator podcast, Kimberly walks us through her journey from event planning to advocacy. We dive deep into how the power of vulnerability, community support, and authenticity can be transformative, not just for business growth but also for personal development.
In this all-encompassing conversation, we also explore the nuts and bolts of creating systems for success and achieving work-life balance. Kimberly shares her nuggets of wisdom on how auditing our time and making intentional choices can align our actions with our values, leading to a joyful life. And for those struggling to find time for themselves amidst the hustle and bustle, Kimberly shares how taking an hour and a half for herself changed the trajectory of her entire week. Don't miss out on this enriching conversation, where life lessons and business insights intersect in a beautiful dance of joy and purpose.
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Winning is your guide to making it in business. Join our award-winning host and entrepreneur, Mackenzie Kilshaw, and special guests in casual conversations that will educate and inspire you on your business journey. Winning will help you learn the hard lessons the easy way, with guidance from celebrated entrepreneurs and business leaders. It's fun, it's informative, it's winning.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Hello, welcome to Winning. I'm your host, Mackenzie Kilshaw, and today's guest is Kimberly Joy Evans. Hi, Kimberly, how are you?
Kimberly Joy Evans:girl, I'm good, so lovely to be here.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Oh, like I was so pumped to have you on. Of course, we always talk before we record and we actually saw each other at an event a few days ago and we already prefaced this could be like a two-hour long conversation, so we really have to make sure it's not.
Kimberly Joy Evans:It's not anyone who knows both of us like of course you have a podcast, you love to talk, so when two podcasters align, what happens?
Mackenzie Kilshaw:It's great. I know it's dynamite, right. So Kimberly works with business owners. She is the host she said right of the Joy Curator podcast, which I was just on, so you got to listen to that because of your flip the scripts there. She's also the owner of Joy PR Studio, so she gets owners to help them share their story, to get seen, reach their goals, manage their time and run a business that matches their life's purpose, which we're going to talk a lot about Joy today, which I'm very excited. She has over 20 years of experience in events, marketing, consulting and PR, and her mission is to help business owners create authentic and powerful connections in their life and business. She's also a national advocate for cystic fibrosis, Canada, which I know. I don't know if we'll get into that or not, but such a cool thing to be a part of when it's so close to your heart. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so I know I just did like the book bio or the paper bio, but why don't you start off with telling the listeners who are you?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Oh, big, loaded question. I love it. Yeah, so business has been my jam for 20 years. Like you said, I started in the event planning industry 20 years ago when that was sort of not something that I was even sure could be a career. It was new in our city and it wasn't something that was sort of you know, when you're growing up, there's like all of the like regular professions that you get suggested to do when you grow up and that wasn't on the list.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:No, no, like it wasn't probably even a thing when we were young.
Kimberly Joy Evans:No, it wasn't. And you know, I remember, even as a child, like going way back, being in like junior high, high school, and even I mean I was a young, I like started at like 20 in this industry. But I remember always being the one that people came to for planning things, but in my mind, like I wasn't connecting the dots at that age at least, that oh wait, this could actually be something that could be a career, like I could get paid to do this. People actually need this as a service. But at the time I was like I just love doing this because I love being able to organize details and I like bringing people joy, Like all the things that I'm doing now were sort of already happening younger, but I wasn't. You know, retrospect is a fine thing.
Shauna Foster:But yeah so that's kind of how it's right.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:No, you didn't know right Like that. I feel that same way.
Kimberly Joy Evans:You just didn't even know it was a thing that you could do to make money 100% and I think I try so hard now to empower my daughters to just anything is possible. You know, I don't remember. I don't feel like I had people around me telling me that it wasn't possible, but I don't remember there there actually being words being like anything is possible. So it took me a while to kind of like realize that something that was maybe not quite so mainstream could in fact be something that I did for a living. So that's how I got in.
Kimberly Joy Evans:So I got into weddings and corporate events and did that for a decade and loved every second of it. It was super stressful, it was super high energy, it was a different day every day, and that was all of the things that I loved about working in that industry and then eventually owning a business in that industry and just being able to meet so many new people and be a part of just such monumentous and special occasions. Whether it be a wedding, whether it be just like a team building event, whether it be a big corporate gala, everything in between. It was fun to just be able to create experiences for people, to either try something new or to be able to gather with others, and it brought me immense joy.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:That's awesome and I love that. Something that you didn't even know you could do turned into your career that you loved, right, like that's the whole point of it, right? Yes?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah, absolutely, and so I ended up having some pretty pivotal life circumstances that came my way. My daughter, in 2012, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and it absolutely rocked me to my core. She was four at the time and I had a one year old at the time and I owned this business and I was in the throes of all of it and we know like life is full when things are going tickety-boo and you don't ever anticipate sort of these like lightning bolt circumstances that just come up around you. That kind of just changed the trajectory, and the only thing I can compare it to now is sort of what happened when the pandemic hit.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Where you know, like there was, it all of a sudden just struck and life as we knew it just instantly had to be very, very different, no matter where you were at or who you were or what you were into.
Kimberly Joy Evans:It affected every single human being across the globe, and that's kind of what this felt like for me, except nobody else was experiencing at the same time, so there was like a comfort in the pandemic where there was everybody doing it at the same time.
Kimberly Joy Evans:So, yeah, it really changed my world, and from one day to the next, I had to go from doing all of the things to, all of a sudden, my child needing hours a day of medical treatment and things that just were not in the plan that I had for her or my life, and I had to come to terms with how life was going to look different and how were these really dark, hard circumstances going to shape her life, my life, our family's life and everyone around us? And so I made the very difficult decision I did not make this decision lightly to get out of the business that I owned with my business partners, and it was one of the hardest decisions that I've had to make, because I had worked so hard in a career that I loved and I really saw myself there forever. And I know you and I chatted about this too just with your business, you know, like you just don't you love something so much, you just you aren't planning your exit strategy, you weren't looking at how it's going to go.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:No, and I think the thing too is for you like this is your child right? Like you will do anything for your child or your children, and you had to do that. You couldn't put those hours into that business and be with her when she needed you, right? 100%?
Kimberly Joy Evans:And I had told myself like event planning is actually listed on the top five most stressful professions. I know there's a million other things in the world that are stressful, but it is quite high stress and I loved it though. I thrived in the environment and I loved it, and there was a lot of hard days and a hard things around it too, don't get me wrong. But I always told myself from the very beginning I will do this until I don't love it, and if I don't love it, the stresses of what is all involved with all of these things won't be worth it anymore. And I remember a shift happening within weeks of her being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis where all of a sudden, I just didn't care and I say that lightly, I don't mean I didn't care. I still was like putting 150% into everything that I did. But all of a sudden, this person's color that they were trying to choose for their theme I didn't care, I didn't give a shit, I was like okay fine.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Choose those flowers. Okay, fine, go and do that. Like my brain just could not. It was like it was just on fire. I just couldn't put it together.
Kimberly Joy Evans:And so it was within the year after that that I officially exited out of the business, and it was really hard and I was sad for so many reasons and personally and professionally, and I just had to take the time and I just felt like I was being called to something more through this difficult time, and I could not see what that was yet because my heart was just so broken for her and for all of the things that I had like imagined, for what I thought her life was gonna look like. And so it took me a while, took me a few years, to kind of like get my bearings straight on figuring out how to add nurse, caregiver on top of being just a mom, to things. And I never dreamed of being a stay-at-home mom. That was not the the role that I had planned out for myself. But for a few years that was my role and it was what I needed and what she needed and what our family needed.
Kimberly Joy Evans:And so slowly people started tapping me on the shoulder hey, are you taking on any projects right now. You know I've been doing this for ten years already, so people knew me in certain ways and so, yeah, that's kind of what started bringing me back to life professionally. You know, she got older, we got more into a routine. You know, just kind of we're like renavigating what this new normal looked like for our life and slowly decided that I was ready to kind of dive back in and I felt a stirring of things that I wanted to get back into event planning, and so that was kind of back in 2017.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, and it's crazy how life circumstances just make you do a total turn right, like looking back, you would have probably never said I'm gonna leave my, my partners, I'm not gonna do this anymore. But you had to make that turn and be with your family at that time. But then you get to that point where you're like, okay, I'm ready to go. Did you just wake up one day and you're like I have to do something, or what did it build?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Well, you know, there was a very interesting thing that happened in our life. So, throughout this time of making the decision to stay home and get out of my business, I ended up. We ended up moving. So we lived in Moose j for a few years rather than Saskatoon. I am now back in Saskatoon, but live there for a few years and it was just sort of a. It just felt like this, like reset of a few years. That's what that felt like. It felt like, literally, we sold like 50% of our belongings, sold our house here, switched careers, got out of careers, pulled the kids into a new school Cassidy was just starting school, my little one was not in school yet moved to a different city, knew nobody, a couple people, you know. It was just this like. It's like what I would imagine, almost like a midlife. When people describe a midlife crisis, you know where you're, just like throw it all away, buy the motorcycle, whatever you know, yeah, yeah.
Kimberly Joy Evans:That's kind of what it felt like, but it felt very controlled, like it was very calculated and it was very like this is what needs to happen. It's like a strip everything away. How do you rebuild when you feel like that was actually the thing I feared the most in life as a parent was something happening to my child?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yes, of course, and absolute worst fear came true. And so what do you do when you're in a state of the worst possible thing you can imagine happening? The only choice was to sort of just rebuild. And so for me I am anyone who knows me, I am not a lay horizontal for a long period of time and like feel sorry for myself kind of person.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Take your moment and move on.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah, I probably should do that more, actually, because I maybe move on too quickly sometimes. But I was just like you know what this is happening. So in the meantime I knew that with what was going on with her health, and I started getting involved with cystic fibrosis Canada that is where I sort of was able to channel some of the things, because I couldn't control, I couldn't do anything about what she had been diagnosed with.
Kimberly Joy Evans:If I could have taken it upon myself, I would have given her my lungs, I would have given her everything that I could do to like make this go away, but I couldn't. So as a parent, it's like your sole job is to like protect these little people. How do you protect them? And I felt like I couldn't in the ways that I wanted to. So I had to find ways that I could create change and I could do something. And so she decided she wanted to have a lemonade stand. We had already done it in Saskatoon and then when we moved to Moose j, I was like, okay, yeah, we can do it. And when I say lemonade stand, it was like little girl sitting on the driveway pouring lemonade out of a pitcher.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:She's like exactly.
Kimberly Joy Evans:That is exactly what she wanted. And so, with my event planning and whatever, I was like okay, like we can make this a little bit better, let's add a little like je ne sais quoi to the jazz.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:You jazzed it right up you like you talk. Tell us about it, because I know about what you did, but tell the listeners because it's amazing.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah. So this really honestly was sort of this light amid something so dark that I didn't again see coming. We had had a few lemonade stands, very small, like you just said 35 cents a glass in Saskatoon and then when we moved to Moose j I was like who's going to come to those little girls lemonade stand like we don't know anybody like?
Shauna Foster:okay we'll put it out there, sure.
Kimberly Joy Evans:So she was so excited about it that I was like I'm just all in, you don't have to ask me twice, we're just going to be all in, and if two people come, she's going to be pumped Like she doesn't know the difference. She was five at the time and so we did lemonade stand and she handed out little flyers to her class at school and her sister handed out little flyers to her preschool class at school, and we lived across the street from the school at the time in Moose j. And so the day the lemonade stand comes around and I'm like she's running home from school, she's so pumped, get out there, they're a little lemonade. And I'm like okay, please, lord, let a few people come, so come, yes, yeah.
Kimberly Joy Evans:So she's also not extra sad.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Anyone that's ever done an event, even an lemonade stand, you're like. Please, god, let people show up to this, let someone show up.
Kimberly Joy Evans:This cannot be an epic fail. And so she comes home and I'm making like lemonade and like one of those little like glass carafe, like you know, a lemonade lemonade you would make if you're having like a few friends over not event level lemonade. And I look out the window shortly after she gets home she came inside and she was like changing and getting ready to like go back and sit on her cute little lemonade stand on the driveway and I look out and there was like 150 people on my lawn. It's amazing. I almost hit the floor. A friend of mine was in my kitchen with me at the time and I was like, oh, we need reinforcements Like this is you need to get out and get more lemonade? Like a tiny little picture ever. I'm like this is not going to work.
Kimberly Joy Evans:However, that weekend happened and at the end of that weekend we had raised over $7,000. It's that's just like crazy. It was like nothing I could have ever anticipated. Found out later that a police officer in Moose Jaw had tweeted it out and that was sort of how so many people knew about it, but we did not know that at the time.
Kimberly Joy Evans:So that kind of propelled this whole movement of me, just feeling like these little miracles kind of kept happening, of how was I going to take this and shift this into something, to turn it into something positive, so that her life and her health and all of this was meaning more.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Then, just wow, we're feeling sad about the fact that this happened to us. Whoa is us, you know, like this happened, you know, and that was just not me and I didn't want that to be her story either. It's her story to share how she wishes now that she is a teenager, but we talk about it regularly, of what you know, like this whole, how this all evolved, and my piece of the story in this is that it completely changed and defined who I was as a human. I couldn't have anticipated how all of the things that I had learned through the event planning, industry and marketing and communications, and like all of the things that I did for clients every day for my job, now I was able to take those and turn it into a way to actually advocate for her, for the 4,000 Canadians who have cystic fibrosis for, and so that really propelled me to realize that my voice mattered and that is what I chose to put my energy towards mattered and that me as one person could actually do big things.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Oh, 100%. And I think your outlook and what you did with that is so admirable or, like I admire you for it because a lot of people would have went the opposite way, right, and would have like really gone into a really dark place and had a had a really hard time and not that you didn't have a hard time, but look what you've done with the situation that you were given.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Like amazing. It's a testament to the power of community and support. Like I will Say that for as long as I can live, I just the community and the way our people across the sketch one and Canada and the world came around us through the time and then have continued to support what we're doing.
Kimberly Joy Evans:That has been how these miracles have happened. I have I have rarely felt alone. There are a lot of pieces that feel really lonely about this, because not everyone can ever know what really feels like, but I have never felt alone in the experience of Feeling supported and cared for, perfect strangers wanting to do good things for us because they believe in what we're doing.
Kimberly Joy Evans:You know like that is humbling, to say the least, and asking for help was never something I was very good at, and there have been a lot of life lessons along the way in asking for help, in not letting your pride or your ego get in the way of what your purpose is, you know, just Having an open hands posture to to life and to just know that you can accept what is being given to you, because that is people just wanting to show their love and support.
Kimberly Joy Evans:And so, yeah, it's been a lot of things, but, yeah, that kind of has propelled me to the next stage in my business, because I realized that that really was Impactful and the things that we were seeing notice happen across the sketch one and across Canada because of the work we were doing and the way people's lives with cystic fibrosis was like being changed, has just propelled me even more In my business to want to do the same thing for the women that I get to support in my business.
Kimberly Joy Evans:And so, yes, that really is where the Joy PR Studio was created from was just this idea that I wanted women to understand that their voice matters and that when you run a business, you can feel like so many days are just like it's an uphill trudging climb sometimes of trying to like get what you need to do, but being aligned personally with your professional, like values, and getting that all synced up is game-changing, and I want every human to be able to feel what that feels like, whether you own a business, whether you're just working in the workforce, whether you're at home with kids, whatever, it doesn't matter what you're doing. That sort of was the purpose, and so using my, that platform to help create systems for people to yes, you know, get them to be comfortable Sharing their story and be seen and let those hard parts show as a way to grow your business, rather than pretending that everything's okay all the time.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Oh, gosh, isn't that so true? It's like when you are vulnerable and you are authentic and you tell it how it actually is, you get so much further. Then everything's great, everything's fine, every you know unicorns and butterflies. Yes, it's not reality right?
Kimberly Joy Evans:No, it isn't. And the the motto I mean, besides Joy being my middle name.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, the motto really good, didn't it for you?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Well, you know what it really does work out. Sometimes you, some of you that in professions, you know where someone's like has a name that's exactly aligned with what they do and you're like, huh, like, does that just happen because of the name or where does this come from? Yeah, exactly, yeah, like. That really is the motto of what I've wanted to bring to the table and to me, joy isn't just a feeling, it's a lifestyle we choose. Yes, boy, we do not have it happen by accident and I can be simultaneously Frustrated, upset by something sad about something having a really bad day, and I can still choose joy.
Kimberly Joy Evans:It doesn't have to be one or the other and I don't see joy and happiness kind of being in the same thing. Like to me, those are different. Happiness is a feeling and feel happy, but joy to me is just like it's this inner peace of Feeling like you're living, aligned with, like what you want your life to look like, what you want your business or profession to look like. Just what do you want your day to look like when you wake up? Is it what where you're at right now, or is there room to kind of shift a few things around because You're feeling unsettled by what's happening in life. And, yeah, that for me is sort of where that choice comes in and I want that to be the forefront of everything that I do, because it's been so game-changing in my life to be able to work really hard on that. Being how I want it does not happen by accident.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:No, absolutely not. No, I think too, just like you said, you choose it. It's the same it, if you're miserable or you're joyful, right, you're choosing, yes, you're choosing to be in those states.
Kimberly Joy Evans:It's, it's what you're choosing to do yeah, and it doesn't negate how hard something is. I think that's a common misconception, like, oh well, if I'm experiencing joy, then nobody will know how hard this really is, or I need them to see how hard this really is because I'm suffering and I'm going through trauma and I'm going through all this stuff. Yes, those are very real things. That is not Something that you shouldn't be feeling.
Kimberly Joy Evans:But there is also a way to feel this too a M going through really hard things, and that to me, you look around anywhere like I don't know anybody who hasn't gone through some thing and whatever their hard thing is is their hard thing and we don't get to judge other people's as hard things. But I think there's also a way to like make choices, and I think it's who you surround yourself with, it's the choices that you make day to day in your life, it's the habits you create, it's the systems you create. It's like the way you show up in the world. That for me, for myself, has been the defining factor of whether I get out of bed in the morning and I'm just grumpy or Okay, like hello today. This is what we're gonna make this look like.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:I love how you said part of it is the systems you make and the things that you do. And I always find it interesting Is this totally like side topic here? But like I go to the gym in the morning? That's like I get up and go to the gym, I'm done, I've just done my activity and I don't think about it again. And when people say like, oh, it must be nice that you, that you can get up in the morning, go to the gym, I'm like well, you can too.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Like right, that's my absolute favorite passive aggressive line. Must be nice.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:I literally die. I'm like is there a reason why you can't? I like percent. I choose to do that, mm-hmm, and I have to lots of times change my life around to be able to do that, and some days it doesn't work out and that's that. But I just it. It's because that's this the We'll call the system or whatever. That's what I've put in place for my life. Yeah, and we all put our own things in place for our life.
Kimberly Joy Evans:It's under us right it is, and I think when I am, when I am consulting with women, it's very, and the reason I I meet with women it's not that I I love men, it's not that I don't want to work with men, like I have men that are people that I work with also, but the majority of people that I work with are women and it's because it's very different for us. Like I don't know Many and this is super stereotypical, I guess but I don't know many men whose personal family life really affects their career. They love them, they're good people, like that's not what I'm saying at all, but it really doesn't affect the day-to-day life if kids are sick or if something happens over here. Like, I don't know many people like this, and so for me, that was just my personal experience as well and it wasn't okay for me. Like I wanted to be able to have the life that works for me, so that I was showing up in a way where I'm showing my daughters how to live, in a way that feels aligned, rather than being upset and grumpy about the things that people are or are not doing that are making me upset or feeling, you know, resentful or whatever the case may be and you have to work through a lot of those things in order to get to that place, and to me, that's where the systems and the habits come in, and years ago, after reading Atomic Habits the book, that really was eye-opening for me. It wasn't I really was very aware of a lot of the systems and habits that I had, but it was eye-opening to me because I think so many people still think that they don't have the choice to do that. You know, just like what you said, like every single person and I will preface this by saying there is a lot of privilege that does come with this and it is figuring out where you come from and what your life looks like. But I believe that everybody can get themselves to a place with the right support and the right people and asking for help and being surrounded. This does, again, not happen by ourselves and it doesn't happen by accident To be able to get ourselves to a place where the what you want your life to look like.
Kimberly Joy Evans:I always ask my clients it's funny because so many women actually can't answer this question on the spot of what does a really wonderful, perfect day look like for you? If you were just waking up today and there was no to-do list and there was no job to go to. Or maybe you love your job so much that that would be what you choose. I hope so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever the case may be, but what does that look like for you?
Kimberly Joy Evans:And I mean specific, like what time are you waking up? What are you eating for breakfast? What are you doing after that? What are you having for lunch? Who are you hanging out with? Where are you going? What are you doing? What are you driving? What are you looking at? Where are you? You know, like all of those things, most people it is pretty specific and does take some time to think about. But if we don't know what we like and we don't know what brings us joy, we are going to continue this slog for the rest of our lives, thinking that we're running businesses and saving the world and trying to raise a family and doing all of this stuff. For what?
Shauna Foster:For what reason?
Kimberly Joy Evans:If you haven't actually gotten to enjoy the day to day things along the way because you don't actually know what makes you happy or joyful.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah and without joy. What's the point of being here, like, do you want to be that person that goes through your whole life unhappy and just going through the motions because you're like, well, this isn't my life like this, is it? Like no, we don't want to be those people.
Kimberly Joy Evans:And I think it's easy to spot it out when you see it in others. But we don't necessarily always have that awareness in ourselves. Right, like somebody who's maybe also quite negative or really isn't like living a life that feels like really good for them, can totally spot out somebody else who's like clearly not happy and everything's miserable and everything's never really going their way and you know, like all of those kinds of things. But I think we really need to and that's where sort of that ego and that pride and that humbleness and that whatever that I was referring to before kind of comes into, because it is hard work to peel back those layers in ourself and to even tell yourself You're like I'm not where I want to be and I feel scared saying that and it makes me uncomfortable because that means maybe I have to do something about it or you know, like all of the things that's to me the art of being a human is just going through all of that.
Kimberly Joy Evans:And I think when we can kind of take that lens and just do the work and recognize that having alignment and systems and habits for what works for you, there is not one right way. I don't have a magical formula that just works. It has to be what works for you. But that is where you start feeling that freedom and that's where most women in business that's what most at least the women that I know and speak to that is their number one value most of the time is that they want their business because it gives them the freedom and the flexibility to be able to manage other things that they have going on. They don't have to be as accountable to somebody else.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:They can kind of choose their schedule, whatever the reason is, and I don't believe that can happen without systems and habits that work for you, I agree, and I think most of those the systems, the habits, everything starts with a difficult either a difficult conversation or a difficult thing, and it's hard, right, but you have to face it.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:It's like, okay, this isn't working or whatever. It is right, I have to take some action steps here To figure this out. On your podcast, we talked about myself with one of my stores where, after COVID, I knew I couldn't reopen my store. Yeah, and I had to have a difficult conversation and I started with an email saying to my landlord I cannot open my store and I wanted to vomit when I was writing that email and sending it because I didn't know what was going to happen. Yeah, and in the end it worked out better than I could have ever imagined. Right, but it started out with something really hard and if you keep pushing those hard things away, like you're just kicking the can down the road, nothing is going to change.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yes, that's exactly it. Because it feels sometimes easier, because we're used to things being a certain way, so it's easier in our brain sometimes to compute. Well, we'll just keep doing it this way. And okay, it's not great, but okay it's not horrible. So we'll just keep doing it this way, when your insides are screaming at you to have the hard conversation or to do the thing that is actually going to take away this pain that you are experiencing of just keeping on moving it forward and kind of like delaying the inevitable. Yeah, it g the band aid.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Right.
Kimberly Joy Evans:It is yeah, and it's like listening to yourself about this and your insides don't lie. Whatever you're knowing, you're listening your truth. Whatever you want to call it, there's no wrong thing to call it, but whatever that is for you, it doesn't lie. It's sometimes us making the choice to not listen to what we know is supposed to be done. 99.9% of the time at least, in my experience, it means doing something really freaking, scary and difficult.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:I agree, I fully agree, because hard things are hard right. Nothing's easy.
Kimberly Joy Evans:No. And that's where the change comes from afterwards, because you're like whoa, look what I just came through.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yes, yes, exactly, and that's how you find it. You have to get through those difficult times and set yourself up for the joy 100% like again, it doesn't happen by accident, no. So is your finding joy in your business, growth of your business, whatever it is? If you're just starting out in your professional opinion, because you do this all the time, is it finding those systems and those habits that are going to get you there, or how do you find the joy?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Oh, good question. Yes, that is also what I get asked all of the time, because I think it's easy to look at others who have done a lot of work to get themselves to that place, but you're only kind of seeing the little golden snippets of it.
Kimberly Joy Evans:You're like oh well again must be nice that this works out for them and I couldn't possibly do that but to me. So, where I start with every client who I'm working with when it comes to like consulting on their business, I don't believe your personal life can be left out of it. Mine is always a hybrid, like it has to be in my world, and I know everybody has their own system and practice of how they might coach or consult. But for me and the women that I work with, it has to be like a holistic kind of like approach where, like your personal and your professional life are fused together. And let's not pretend they're not and let's just be honest with ourselves. I die.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:I die when people are like well, this is my like after work and this is my work. Like you're one person, how can you separate? You're one person with one set of emotions and one brain and one. Like you cannot separate that, and the people that still say you do it just boggles me.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah, I feel like it will just forever be a struggle for those people and I don't wish that on anyone. So, yeah, I think the first step, the first step, is to be open to the idea that the way your life is currently running isn't working for you anymore, like just being open to even that idea. You don't have to have solutions, you don't have to know how this is all going to come together. I can just promise you that it will, and I'm not a I'm not a future teller, a fortune teller or anything like that. I can just promise you that it will, because where you put your energy towards things is where things start to happen.
Kimberly Joy Evans:And so, if you are willing to pause long enough to realize that every day, you are realizing that you were in a state of overwhelm and you are feeling frustrated and you are feeling like work doesn't feel good, and maybe certain parts feel good and certain parts don't. Your whole life doesn't have to feel like chaos in order for this process to work for you, but I think there's always at least one area usually at least a few that end up feeling like they're not working great, and so I always start by being an audit. I want to. I want you to be honest with yourself about what is and isn't working for you, and so often it's like even little things.
Kimberly Joy Evans:That'll come up where someone will say well, you know, my partner just really struggles to be by themselves with the kids and put them both to bed at the same time, so I really need to be there for that, and the kids are beyond old enough for this to not be a scenario you know like. So then we dive into that.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, it's not always huge things. No, people think they have to make a full circle turn like everything's got to change.
Kimberly Joy Evans:No, no, I think that's where people get stuck because then it feels so overwhelming to be like how am I possibly supposed to dissect my whole entire life, while I'm raising a family, while I'm running a business, while I'm doing whatever else? And for me, I feel like it's the timepiece, because one consistent thing all of us have in common across the whole entire world is we have 24 hours in a day.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:That's right. Yeah, I have no more time than you, yeah, you know Beyonce has in i.
Kimberly Joy Evans:She's killing it in the world. You know like, yeah, we all have 24 hours, so I feel like knowing the priorities of your life and what your what's important to you, to me, I generally, when I'm meeting with clients, we start with sleep. To me, sleep is like a non negotiable at least in my world. That is like a value that I hold very high is my sleep. I will not give that up lightly for any amount of money for any amount of anything.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:I need my same, same. I will actually not do things. Yeah, because I'm like I can't sleep for four hours, like this isn't happening 100% if I have to miss the gym or I have to. This can't happen tomorrow, it's got to happen next week.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Fine, yeah, I'm getting the sleep 100%, and maybe this is just me getting into my 40s, but I feel like I've always been this way. Like always, especially as a younger person, you're like, oh yeah, let's go out and party and like do whatever, sure, but even then I'd be like Nope, time to wrap it up. I got to get my 8.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Somebody once said to me, people that sleep in are lazy, and I like laughed and they're like, well, why are you laughing, like if you don't get up really early and whatever, I'm like, okay, but what if they worked late? Or what if that like for me, I one day on the weekend I sleep until I wake up, like I don't set an alarm, I don't, and it might be like nine o'clock, yeah, and you know what, don't care. Do you want that power? Rest and also get all my work done, and probably I'll get to more work because I'm rested. Imagine that 100%.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Like and that, to me, is such an empowering way to look at it, and those are literally the things that we talk through is like when you are doing a time audit, you have to look at every single place that you spend your time and I think a lot of the time, because we all are perpetually busy and our schedules are perpetually full and we all have so much stuff going on that we don't take the time to manage our time and then that becomes a perpetual cycle of Well, I just can't get out of this.
Kimberly Joy Evans:But you have to be willing to pause, you have to be willing to reset, and I don't mean taking a month off of your life in order to reorganize your life.
Kimberly Joy Evans:This can happen in really short amount of time, but you need to find make the time for that to happen so that you really get to look. And when I go through a time audit with clients, I do this with myself on a regular basis, also in different seasons where I do my own time audit, that I do on others, to myself. And even though I am so mindful of it because this is what I do with people and I'm conscious of it regularly I'm still shocked when I do this because different seasons bow different things. A year can pass and all of a sudden you're like okay, you know, like kids are in a different stage of life, business is in a different season. Whatever you have going on in your life, it just changes the dynamic of how your time is being spent. And it's shocking to me because most of us don't realize how much time is going to search in things, even if we think we're really aware about it.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, that's true. And do you think you know, when people say like, well, I don't have time to do that, well, I don't have time for that, I'd like to do that, but I don't have time for that, do you think it's really important then? Or?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Totally, it's not.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah, you're essentially saying this isn't important to me, and I think, when you haven't taken the time to figure out what is important to you that's where the problem lies Is because you wish to go to the gym every day, but you have made the choice to either sleep longer, which is also fair, like no wrong way to spend the time, but when you make those choice, that's the choice you're making.
Kimberly Joy Evans:You could look at your time and I challenge anyone listening to like look at your time. Look back to even just this past week. How did you, what did you do from Sunday to Saturday, whatever the case may be and look at your whole week and see where you spent your time and you, right there, will get an automatic list of your time. Doesn't lie, and that is spelling out for you what you are valuing. It might not be your values that you think or wish that you had, but it will spell out what you are showing your value by, by where you spend your time, because my time is my most precious commodity. You cannot pay me anything to give up hours of my time.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, and probably if there's things on your to-do list that you never get to, you should probably just get rid of those 100%.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Right, 100%, and you will notice that energy shifting in your life when you are spending time on the things that energize you. If you are going to a job every single day and Monday morning comes around and you feel sick to your stomach because you have to get out of bed to go to this job. And again, I understand that in the state of the world, there are often things we have to do that we are not like yay, let's go do that, I can't wait to clean my toilets this weekend and I can't wait like. There are things we just do because we are human beings and you have to just like function. That's not what I'm saying, but finding joy in that too. Crank some tunes on, get your kids to help out and be like yay, I'm cleaning toilet, like whatever. That's a silly example.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:But no, but it's reality. And the thing too is, and maybe you get to a spot where you're like you know what, I'm going to pay somebody to do that 100%, and I'm just spending this time doing whatever else, cause that's how you get rid of the things that aren't working for you.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yes, 100%, and it is a huge shift that has to be made. And a lot of the question that I get asked the most often is well, how am I supposed to afford to pay somebody to take this on when I'm trying to grow my business and like all of those things? And I was like you need? It's not going to happen overnight, but you first need to be aware of where you want to be putting your energy so that you know what direction we can move the needle in that. No, maybe today you can't afford a house cleaner to come in and take off the things that you wish you didn't have to do. But if we know that that is something that really drains your energy and you wish that that wasn't something you had on your list we start making the priorities of where we're shifting things so that, little by little, we're getting to a place where that is something that you're going to be able to do, and I promise you will.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, do you think, do you find, that time is one of the biggest things that overwhelms people? Or maybe they say the lack of time, like that, I don't have time. Is that a lot of what leads to the overwhelm feeling?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yes, and I think that it is also like the word overwhelmed is used way too much. I use it myself sometimes, because sometimes I just don't know how to describe how I'm feeling, because that is a real, true thing, but I do think that it's the unaware of where time is being spent that is what leads to the overwhelm. Because if we were being realistic in our life about what can fit into 24 hours and immediately like for me, everybody has their own sleep cycle, like whatever the case may be, but immediately for me, I cut eight hours off of that minimum because that's how much sleep I need. I don't function on seven or six or five. It needs to be eight plus in order for my life to function, which is why I have the capacity to do all of the other things that I'm doing, because I'm rusted, and so that leaves 16. That leaves 16 hours every day, and even if we want to be super patriarchal, like masculine society, we all work for eight hours a day.
Kimberly Joy Evans:If that's what we want to say then you got eight hours. Still eight. Hours.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Eight whole hours left in a day and I think when you break it down in those chunks and then can really start dissecting those chunks and looking at that, to me I can get a lot done in eight hours. That's a lifetime, it's a whole, another work day.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, technically, yeah, if you look at it like that, I love that breaking it down, because that's so true. And I think lots of times when you look at a list of things you have to do, you're like, oh my god, how am I ever going to get all of this done? But if you look at that before we started, you're like how's your day going? I'm like, good, I have a list of 20 five-minute jobs and I got 10 done and I was so excited. But that's what I did. I was like this is five minutes, this is 15 and whatever, and I can't get these all done today.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Well, and I think it's being gentle and graceful and realistic to ourselves in these things, because I think sometimes when people hear talk of time management, they immediately sort of think like they're being told that they should have a to-do list every day, and that is by no means what I am speaking about. It's just a matter of being kind of aware, because there are so many places that we could look at where time is just kind of being squandered as well, and there's nothing wrong. Like I think free time should be scheduled. For someone who has the personality like me, who go, go, go, go, go on a lot of different things I need to sometimes block in, and sometimes I just put stuff into my calendar for my own reference, because I use my calendar as like my go to of things during the day, but then my team isn't putting things into my calendar during that time either, because it's just blocked off.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah, it doesn't get disappear, it doesn't disappear. I started this ritual Well, my children had introduced me to this on TikTok, of all places, of course, and so I started this ritual of like self-care Sundays with these like everything showers they were calling them of like you just go and have like a long shower. I don't go for like an hour and a half, like these TikTokers are doing on their thing, because I don't have time for that.
Kimberly Joy Evans:You don't have that yeah, right, but I go in and have like maybe like a 30 minute shower rather than a eight minute shower in the morning, where it's like getting all the scrubs and getting all the whatever, and I do it every Sunday night. I'm a nighttime shower and every Sunday night the scrubs, the face masks, the hair conditioners, the double shampoo, like the dry scrub, like the whole regime.
Kimberly Joy Evans:I feel like I walked off of Hollywood Boulevard, like that I'm like in the bougie spa and I've used my own whatever products, and I climb into bed that night and feel like a million bucks I was gonna say probably sleep like a baby. Oh, like that's night, and that's what kicks off my week, like it's Sunday night. So then the week just starts good and like. For me, that's been a new system I've recently implemented in the last couple months, but it just it's changed my outlook so much so I'm telling you about it.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, yeah, no, and I think too, things like that, like putting that into your calendar or just knowing you've got that time, really helps you avoid getting that burn out feeling or that overwhelm feeling, because you're refreshed, you're relaxed, you feel so much better and then you're able to do the things you need to do.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yes, like it sounds like common sense when we're saying it like this to each other.
Shauna Foster:Yeah, but it's not.
Kimberly Joy Evans:But I think when we're in the throes of that feeling of overwhelm and when you're feeling like everything is chaotic and derailed in your life, it's hard to kind of take that. What is that? One first, next right step to do one thing that feels like I'm not overwhelmed? And I think, if you take away anything from today for me and all of the things that I've like come through in my life and the circumstances that I didn't choose and the things that I would have never wished were happening in my life, it was when I took time to just be still and take a minute. I had an experience just this past week where I was feeling really overwhelmed. I was feeling really overwhelmed. A lot of things that were unexpected had popped up on one particular day. I wasn't feeling like I was getting the things done that I was hoping to get done that day. I had set an expectation of stuff. Everyone needed me. It was just a lot. I could feel my heart racing most of the day.
Kimberly Joy Evans:I didn't take time to like eat properly, like it was just all the things that were normally in my routine were not going well and I got to the end of the day and I was like I'm not even gonna be able to sleep because I am just feeling so overwhelmed I need to do something. And I ended up just taking an hour and a half, even though everything in my brain was saying you have so much to do, you can't take an hour and a half I was like I have to or I am going to crumble.
Kimberly Joy Evans:I took my journal. I sat in the park for a little while. I just was quiet. I did not have earbuds in, I was not listening to anything external, I was just being. I went for a super long walk. The whole rest of my week was on a completely different trajectory after doing those things. It cost me $0. I, you know, like it was nothing, while I didn't have to go do anything. I just had to listen to the fact that I am not okay right now and I am the only person that can do something about that. But this.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:I was just going to ask what's the most important lesson you can share, but I think you just submit it. Listen to yourself right, like when you need that time. Take it. It's going to go way farther than trying to work through that and I want to apologize for it.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yes or feel like guilty, I think there's a fine line sometimes I know there's through different generations and through how people do different things and whatever. There's a fine line between what is feeling like I'm being selfish by taking this time versus I'm taking care of myself, and I think sometimes it can get skewed in one direction or the other to the extreme, where then we're nervous to be like well, if I go and take a 40 minute shower, is everyone going to think that I'm just being super selfish or I'm not contributing to my family or whatever we tell ourselves. And I think it's just getting to the place and then being honest with the people around you. I had this conversation with my children. They know that on Sunday nights I'm having a long shower and nobody better come knocking on the door.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Knock on the door. Yeah, no, thank you.
Kimberly Joy Evans:We have multiple bathrooms, so there's no reason for them to come knocking on the door. But you know what I mean. Like it's just those types of things. You can't just expect people around you to know what you need. You have to be willing to have those hard conversations and ask for what you need and state that this is what you need to make you feel like yourself, and then figure out how that works for the people that need it to work for them too.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, I always at the end ask one thing you wish you had known. Also, I think you just said it.
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah, I, honestly, if I could. I'm not a could of what a should of like live in the past type of person, but if I could have learned earlier in life how to listen to that inside voice and recognizing that what is going around thoughts in my head is different than that knowing voice inside. I talk about it with my kids a lot because I want them to have more knowledge and awareness of it than I did, because it's taken me 41 years to get more clear on it. But you know like that would be what I would do Just listen, because it's always going to steer you in the right way, even if it feels confusing and hard in the moment.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Yeah, You're going to get there right. Thank you so much. We've been talking for almost an hour. I don't even know how this happens. It goes so fast. Kimberly, where can people find you? I tell them about the podcast. Where can they go to find out more about you?
Kimberly Joy Evans:Yeah, so my business, Joy PR Studio on Instagram. Joy Curator podcast you can find on Instagram o joyprstudiocom. My website has all the links. And then if we just want to hang out with me, Kimberly Joy Evans on Instagram is my own kind of just shenanigans of life and things going on too.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:Thank you so much for being on. It's honestly this is going to sound really lame, but like it is always such a joy when I see you talk to you, just really from the deepest part of my heart. You were such a fantastic person. So thank you for being on. I really appreciate it and for everybody listening.
Kimberly Joy Evans:What a pleasure Thank you.
Mackenzie Kilshaw:I'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening to winning. Be sure to subscribe to get all of our new episodes. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media and leave a rating and review wherever you listen to winning. To catch all of the latest from us, you can follow winning podcast on Instagram a winning underscore podcast, Facebook at Winning Podcast and on Twitter at @winning pod. Winning was created and is produced by me, Mackenzie Kilshaw Music, created by Summer Firby, editing by Seth Armstrong. Special thanks to Shauna Foster for voicing our opening and, of course, a huge thank you to this episode's guest. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.
