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Shine On Success
Shine on Success is a dynamic, story-driven podcast where extraordinary entrepreneurs, visionary leaders, and resilient change-makers share their journeys to success, revealing both the challenges and the strategies that led to their breakthroughs. Each episode offers a unique blend of inspiring personal stories, practical business insights, and actionable advice, allowing our guests to connect with an engaged, growth-oriented audience ready to be motivated and uplifted. By joining us, you’ll not only have the opportunity to showcase your expertise and inspire listeners but also to be part of a powerful platform that celebrates ambition, innovation, and the courage to turn dreams into reality.
Shine On Success
Fuel Your Passion: Embrace Fun and Success
In this episode of Shine On Success, hosted by the vibrant and inspiring Dionne Malush, we dive deep into the exhilarating journey of Kimberly Crowe, a powerhouse in the world of public speaking and entrepreneurship. From her 17-year climb in the corporate world to her transformative leap into empowering others, Kimberly shares her wisdom on turning passion into profit and finding joy in the process. Discover how her motto, "If it's not fun, it's not worth doing," has guided her to create a life filled with purpose, excitement, and success.
Join us as we explore the importance of visibility, the power of storytelling, and the magic that happens when you follow what lights you up. Whether you're an entrepreneur, speaker, or someone looking to reignite your own spark, this episode is packed with insights that will leave you motivated to keep pushing forward with joy and determination.
Tune in for an episode filled with energy, inspiration, and the kind of advice that could change the way you approach your personal and professional life. Don't miss out on Kimberly's powerful story and learn how you too can shine on your path to success.
Connect with Kimberly here:
- Speakers Playhouse: https://speakersplayhouse.com/
- FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/entrepreneursrocketfuel
- Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel: https://entrepreneursrocketfuel.com/
- FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3936867803076694
Connect with Dionne Malush
- Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
- LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
- Website: www.dionnemalush.com
- Facebook: /dmalush
- LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dionnemalush
Welcome to Shine on Success, the podcast that celebrates trailblazers and thought leaders who inspire us to achieve great news. I'm your host, dionne Malish, and today we have an incredible guest who embodies the spirit of entrepreneurial success and fun. Kimberly Crowe is an award-winning international public speaker, keynote speaker, tedx speaker and a bestselling author. She's the vibrant personality behind the weekly online show Speakers Playhouse and the founder of Entrepreneur's Rocket Fuel. With a dynamic background that spans 17 years in the corporate world, kimberly has transformed her career into empowering entrepreneurs, coaches and business leaders with her high-energy practical programs. Get ready to be inspired as Kimberly shares her journey and insights on unlocking your full potential. Welcome to the show, kimberly. It's so nice to meet you.
Speaker 2:Dionne, thanks so much for having me. You're amazing. I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I'm so excited because I just recently joined National Speakers Association here in Pittsburgh and Toastmasters because I'm working on my speaking journey, so it couldn't be a more perfectly timed podcast. But the point of what I'm doing is helping people to push through adversity to get to the other side, and I don't know about you, but I've been through a little adversity Definitely. Haven't we all For sure. So let's talk about you.
Speaker 2:Tell me a little bit about what you're doing Awesome, so my passion is getting entrepreneurs, coaches, authors, speakers on stages so that they can share their message of passion with the world. I know that there are a lot of inspirational speakers out there. I am an international inspirational public speaker and there are so many people with inspiring stories to share, but they just don't get on the mic. As a matter of fact, I have a belief, perhaps a little misguided, but my belief is that if you went out and Googled right now and asked you know, to find inspirational speakers or motivational speakers or international inspirational public speakers, you'd get a whole bunch of white guys and like four other people. It's not that I'm not here to wave a banner or play a card or anything like that. I just believe that the rest of the people probably have good stories to share as well, and we just need to step up and grab the mic.
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:I'm all about making sure that people get an opportunity to do that because I believe if we're not being seen, we're being overlooked. If we're not being heard. Our message isn't getting out there, and if we're not continuously getting it out on stages and grabbing the mic, then it won't have the contribution it could have before we leave the planet.
Speaker 1:So crazy that we talked about this today. I was on a call with Jesse Itzler I don't know if you ever heard of him, but his wife is the owner of Spanx, the creator of it, and he is amazingly impressive and he was talking about public speaking today and he talked about the storytelling, how we all have our own stories Like nobody can ever take that away from us.
Speaker 1:It's our story, right, and it's interesting to everyone else. Like you, think it's not interesting because it was your story, but it is. So let's talk about something. I read something about your motto, something about if it's not fun, it's not worth doing. You like to have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:I do. I spent 17 years in corporate climbing my way up a corporate ladder, like perhaps many of your listeners and many of us do, right. We go, we get graduate from high school or college and we get a good job with health insurance, that's stable, right. And so we're out doing that and and that's great. There's nothing wrong with an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. And after about, I was there for 17 years, after 15, it just wasn't fun anymore, right? The first 15 years were pretty good.
Speaker 2:I had a pretty good run, but after that I sort of got to the top of the ladder and I looked behind the curtain and I thought you know, I see everybody that's at my level and above and they're angry and bitter and miserable and unhealthy and many of them were divorced and I know that I'm divorced.
Speaker 2:Many people are divorced. There's nothing wrong with that. But they were just so unhappy and I thought I don't want to be any of these people when I grow up. You know I don't, and so I thought it's. You know, if it's not fun, really, why am I doing this? And so I actually launched a business around what I was good at, around doing that. I sort of hung my own shingle and started doing what I had done at corporate for somebody else and thought that would make me happy, and my goal was to have a million dollar business, to build a business to a million dollars in revenue. And it took me about 18 months and I did it and I thought I'd be supremely happy and I wasn't, because just because we're good at something doesn't mean we should do it for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so it took a while for me to realize that wasn't happiness. And I had a bit of an existential crisis. I climbed to the top of a mountain to see if the answer was up there, and it wasn't. And it turned out that, really, the answer was just do what you love doing do what's fun, because what's fun for you is not fun for everybody.
Speaker 2:In fact, there's a really magnificent quote by Howard Thurman, who was a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr, and he said do not ask what the world needs. Ask what lights you up, because what the world needs are more people who are lit up.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. And here we are on, shine on Success, lighting people up. How perfect is that time.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. When I heard the name of your podcast, I was like absolutely.
Speaker 1:I love that and you know that's something I feel For the rest of my life. I need to spread my light, and it's been a crazy career for me too I've had. You know, I've been an entrepreneur pretty much since I was graduated out of art school and I tried a couple jobs in between there. But I'm like I cannot be told what to do, sorry like I have to be on my own.
Speaker 1:So I'm 56 and I've been an entrepreneur so long that I wouldn't even know what it yeah, so I'm loving this already, and so tell me a little bit about. You have a couple of things going on Speakers, playhouse and Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel. Can you tell us what that's all about? Sure, so Entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:Rocket Fuel is a company I founded to help entrepreneurs that are trying to be successful get successful, and I just read a brand new statistic. I know that there's lots of statistics about the failures of entrepreneurs and you know, one in five businesses is still successful after five years and the rest of them go by the wayside, and all that, but it actually turns out that more than 40% of millionaires are entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:They did not build their millions by you know. 3% did it by real estate, 3% did it by like health, you know, being involved in some sort of healthcare initiative or something, and 40 plus percent are entrepreneurs. They are the millionaires. So why is it that so many are failing along the way? And I think it's really just a matter of iteration, that there are plenty of things that we fail at before we become successful, and it's sort of that. Thomas Edison how many times did he fail at making a light bulb before he found a light bulb that worked really?
Speaker 2:well, and I think that's what it's all about is we do entrepreneurship until we come upon something that is successful and all those others sort of fall by the wayside. They're not really failures, they're just the next step to becoming successful.
Speaker 1:Right, and we learn something from every failure. So you have to fail before you succeed.
Speaker 2:There's no way you can get away from it.
Speaker 1:You have to fail. It's definitely part of it, and I love the Thomas Edison idea because a thousand times. Just think about it. How many people would do something a thousand times in today's world to get?
Speaker 2:to where I just don't know anyone.
Speaker 2:It's unbelievable. And giving up is really the thing that everybody ends up seeing as a failure, because if you just keep going, then you didn't fail, you know. You just kept building. So Entrepreneur's Rocket Fuel is about keeping that going right To keep, to just keep going until you are successful, right Like it's. You've got a passion, you want to do something, and even if that passion changes over time, that's fine. Just keep going right. And then you're not a failure until you give up, until you stop trying. So that's what that's all about. And then Speakers Playhouse is a product of that. Speakers Playhouse is a weekly online gamified show Very, very high energy.
Speaker 2:In fact, what my mom, some of us as entrepreneurs or podcasters or whatever, or speakers, even our parents don't really know what we do for a living and my mom's super supportive. But one day she comes in from talking to the neighbor and she says can you tell me again what you do, kimberly? Supportive. But one day she comes in from talking to the neighbor and she says can you tell me again what you do, kimberly? And I said I realized that she didn't really like she knows sort of what I do but, she just wanted to be able to explain to the neighbor what I did, right Like it was.
Speaker 2:she was her. Her daughter is a lawyer in New York and she just wanted to be able to say what I did. Well, mom, you can tell her. I'm a broadcast personality with a weekly online show called Speakers Playhouse.
Speaker 1:And so that seemed to satisfy her and that's sort of that's how I introduce myself now.
Speaker 2:I'm a broadcast personality with the weekly online show.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think it's funny because I can even tell you my mom I don't think she understands that we have 200 people in our company.
Speaker 2:You know, it's a lot, it's a lot of people.
Speaker 1:You know I make it look so good on social media. It's all, but it's a lot every single day. I wouldn't want it any other way and you know, pushing through is something that I am really good at, and you know. But here's one thing like I can, I feel like I'm stuck a little bit, so I might need your help sometime, like getting to that next level, because I have worth this place and I just can't seem to push through. And I know it's coming. I have this feeling inside of me. Something so much bigger is coming and so amazing, but it's taken too long. I'm 56.
Speaker 1:I don't have, like I don't have 50 years left here, so I need to get this done. So tell me, how do you inspire people to stay with it when it's it is difficult? It's life is difficult, economy is difficult, election is difficult, everything is difficult right now. Real estate is difficult. How do you help them push?
Speaker 2:through. Well, I believe, if it's not fun, it's not worth doing so the whole push energy is part of the struggle right.
Speaker 1:And while failure.
Speaker 2:You want to keep pushing through failure you really just want to allow the next thing to come forward. Right, it's not necessarily like oh, I don't want to fail because you just got to keep going.
Speaker 2:Do what you love doing and stay in that energy of I want to do this. And what is that for you, is it? I want to keep having conversations with people, I want to keep inspiring other people, I want to keep building this business. I want to keep helping other people. That energy, rather than the push energy of I've got to make it work, has been the secret to my success and the multi-millions that I've gotten into. As opposed to trying to push and make it work, when I was at corporate, I was the make it work girl. You could bring me any problem and I would make it work. If there was a problem with a client or an employee, or a product or a program or a service, I could just make it work. But it was hard.
Speaker 1:It was hard work and it wasn't multi-millions it was.
Speaker 2:You know I was getting a regular paycheck to make it work and it was hard and until I got to the energy of, I want to allow it to work. I want the right things to come together to make that possible. That that sort of changed everything and that, knowing that there's something that's a bigger force than me at work whether that's the universe or God or spirituality, whatever you believe just I want to allow the things that need to come together for the perfection of this to work out exactly the way it's supposed to, and allowing me to be the conduit for that to happen, I think, is a much easier energy. So consider that do what you love doing, because the universe just adores it when we love what we're doing.
Speaker 1:So for me, I know one thing that I struggle with a lot is that I'm always trying to help everyone, even though they don't really want the help, and so I don't recognize it because I think they should want it, I think they should try this thing or do this thing. I think they should want to, you know, rethinking, grow rich with me and study mindset and all of this when they really don't. So I have to fix me before I can help the rest of them, right?
Speaker 1:If they don't want it and I'm trying to make them want it, and that's just that doesn't work like that. They have to want it for themselves, that's really interesting and I actually did.
Speaker 2:I was in a room full of about 150 people and I just did a quick survey in the room and I said cause they were all coaches and entrepreneurs and people like you that want to help others. So I said how many in this room just love helping other people? Just raise your hand If you love helping somebody else in the world and virtually everybody raised their hand.
Speaker 1:They were like me absolutely.
Speaker 2:I love helping people. I said awesome, now put your hands down, now raise your hand if you love, asking for help. And it was like crickets.
Speaker 1:I'm like, I'm down, right down.
Speaker 2:Nobody wants to ask for help.
Speaker 1:We all want to help other people, but nobody wants to ask for help, so where do?
Speaker 2:we go with that right, knowing that people don't necessarily want to ask for help because they want to believe that they can do it themselves. They shouldn't need help that they should need to. They don't want to pay for it, maybe, but also they shouldn't need the help right that they should be able to figure it out on their own. And how many times have we thought that like, oh, I should be able to figure this email system out on my own.
Speaker 2:Oh, I should be able to figure this website out on my own right, or this iPhone or whatever. The next thing is right, I should be able to figure that out on my own, and we don't want to ask for help. So I think that's the first thing is recognizing that people don't want to ask for help, but allowing them to come in and step into the help that they need and being of service to them. Then that's really the secret sauce, and I know that you've probably been in sales for many years and having a large organization. You must know that. You know it's not necessarily selling people what they need. It's selling people what they want and then offering them what they need as the service, right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, makes sense. So your coaching style is described as high energy and engaging, which I can see already. Can you give us a glimpse into what a coaching session with you looks like?
Speaker 2:Well, as a matter of fact, I always resisted the word coach. As a matter of fact, my mom was a teacher and my dad was a salesperson, and so when I was young, I always said oh, I don't want to teach because there's no money in that. You know, my mom didn't make very much as a teacher and in sales.
Speaker 1:You know like.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't want to be a salesperson.
Speaker 1:I, that's what I do for a living right, I teach people and I sell stuff.
Speaker 2:But I'm not actually a coach. I love doing trainings, I love helping people, but as a coach, I'm not here to help you, week after week, make incremental moves forward. I'm here to give you a stage so that you can share your methodology with a larger audience and help you get on stage and convert better. But that is really mostly teaching as opposed to coaching.
Speaker 1:So thank you for that explanation. Tell me about something that adverse that's happened in your life that you pushed through to get to the other side.
Speaker 2:There have been so many.
Speaker 2:I will tell you what analogy which was really fascinating. Two years ago, my daughter and I and my son and I they're both adults we walked across the country of Spain on what they call the Camino del Norte, and it's a pilgrimage that you can take, anybody can take it for any reason, whether it's a spiritual reason or not. You could just do it as an adventure. And you walk across Spain and they have what they call albergues, which are for those of us in the United States it's sort of like an upscale hostel.
Speaker 1:It's a little better than a hostel.
Speaker 2:It's not as nice as a hotel, but it's sort of right in the middle there and you go from Albergue to Albergue, and so you don't have to camp in a tent or anything, but you walk across the country of Spain. What's interesting is that it becomes a spiritual journey if you walk far enough, because after you get physically exhausted, then you get mentally exhausted, and then you get emotionally exhausted, and then you get emotionally exhausted and all that's left is spiritually. I think that was something that was an interesting thing that I will say I pushed through in order to get to the end because eventually, I mean, there were days where I was, it was longer than I thought it was going to be and my children were like, come on, it's just another five kilometers, and I was like taking off my backpack and throwing my sticks down and like I'm just gonna sit here.
Speaker 2:I'm not taking it out, I'm not going to take you to do it, that adventure was four weeks, so it was yeah, it was really really fun 800 kilometers which is 500 miles.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of miles, a lot of walking.
Speaker 2:How cool. That was really interesting. You did it with your kids, which I think is awesome how you did that.
Speaker 1:So talk to me about virtual summits. Yeah, is that something you're still doing?
Speaker 2:Yes, so virtual summits are like a conference that you would go to for a business purpose, if you were wanting to go to a conference on parenting or a conference on health or a conference on business or a conference on becoming an author.
Speaker 2:But instead of going to a hotel and booking a hotel room and going to the individual sessions, you actually go online. So it's like a conference where you would pick which speaker you're going to go see and what you're going to listen to and what you're going to gain from, but it's all online. So, virtual summit, I like to do them one day and we have multiple tracks so you can pick conference room A, b, c or D to go to, which talk you want to go to, and then you listen to the experts speak on their subject matter expertise, and then I invite speakers who speak in the different categories to come and share their virtual magic with our audience so you could come and speak on how to shine in your life and shine your true light out there in the world. On a personal growth and development session, for example.
Speaker 2:I have many of them that are going right now. One's called family matters, one's called entrepreneurs, for example. I have many of them that are going right now. One's called Family Matters, one's called Entrepreneurs, rocket Fuel, and then I have some that specialize in underserved communities. I have one called Voices of Women, which happens on International Women's Day, and I have one called Voices of Color, which happens on another day celebrating unity and diversity, and basically anybody with any subject of passion that they have that they want to speak about can speak on those stages and share for 25 minutes interview style with our audience about their subject.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. What a great idea. I love it. What's one of the most important lessons that you've learned in your adult life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think probably my motto it's not fun, it's not worth doing. I think that took me a really long time to learn right. I knew that and I think it's by design. If I look back in history, you can see that we train our kids to look for what the right answer is in a book or from the teacher or from the expert out there right? And we don't teach them to figure it out themselves or know what's true for them.
Speaker 2:I think that jumping through hoops for the letter grade of A is the way that we teach kids to do what we want them to do and follow our rules, rather than following their own internal guidance, and I think that's a mistake. I think that there should be a maybe not a hundred percent, but a lot more focus on what lights them up. For those of your audience that believe in spirituality and divine guidance, something brought you here to do something amazing in your own right, and it's not maybe in a book. Maybe it's never been in a book, maybe it's brand new because you came here to bring it to the planet.
Speaker 2:And so if we're, always trying to please other people. There's pleaser disease that's just rampant out there for women especially, but guys have it too.
Speaker 2:Like we're here to please other people and get the A grade and make other people happy before we treat ourselves, and I think that's a shame that we teach that and coach that out of people the opportunity to be able to do what we love doing. We love it because it's divine guidance, because it's coming from somewhere else and we were brought here to bring that to the planet, and I think that needs to be listened to a lot more.
Speaker 1:I love that. So for me it is about a book called Thinking Grow Rich that I've been studying for years and I think if we could get that into seventh, eighth, ninth grade level and start teaching principles of success at that age, I mean I'd love to see it earlier, but it would be a little bit harder to understand. But if we could do that, we could change the world. There's so much to learn about being successful and what you just said. It makes so much sense. What is their passion? What is their love? It gets stuck in a job that they hate their whole lives, you know, and they can't get out of it. So many people can get their mindset shifted. So I would love to be a part of that movement for sure.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think you're so right and the term thinking grow rich. A lot of people think of it as monetary, which it is. It can be absolutely, and it's been hugely successful. But what about just a rich?
Speaker 1:life right.
Speaker 2:What about I love my rich life? That can be just absolutely powerful a shift and, yeah, I would love to see it in the schools as well.
Speaker 1:Me too. I think it would be incredible. I almost want to start it and just start getting the parents to send the kids, and I've been doing a Thinking Rich Mastermind for six and a half years. I do it once a week and at eight o'clock on Tuesday nights, so Tuesdays are my long days.
Speaker 1:They're long, but I enjoy it so much and I've seen dreams come true and people are just at one point we used to have like 30 or 40 people come to it. Now it's down to, I think, eight, but of which six of them are agents. So it's affecting them. I can see it. They're having their best years, they're happy, their lives are changing, they're believing in things and it's beautiful to watch.
Speaker 2:So I love that. Well, I have to say that I really see you light up when you talk about it. It must be something that's fun for you, that lights you up it.
Speaker 1:It is fun. I wish that I would do it more. I think maybe I'm going to do one during the day that helps the rest of the people and if they want, like I said, if they don't want to, they don't know until they come, and once they come they're like oh my gosh, this is life changing, you know? So what other question I want to talk to you about traveling.
Speaker 2:You do a lot of traveling. Yes, I travel full time.
Speaker 1:I can't even tell you I love it, I love going to new places, but I'm saying that I've been to Canada twice and Mexico. I've been to Dominican Republic and other than that I've never left the United States. So when I say traveling, I still haven't even ventured too far abroad, but what's your favorite place?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going back to Spain, so that's got to be in the top 10. I've been to Guatemala and Peru this year. I have been to Canada and Mexico this year, all over the United States, and we're going to Amsterdam. We're going to London, in England. Because my kids have never been to London. I'm like how is it possible?
Speaker 1:You've been all over the Europe and you've never been to London. So they're like cause. You say that every time. I've always I've been to.
Speaker 2:London and there's no need to go. So we're going to London, amsterdam and Berlin.
Speaker 1:Wow, so amazing. I love this. I'm going to come work with you, all right, so let's kind of wrap up. Where can they find you? Where can our audience find you?
Speaker 2:Awesome. So online, every single week we do Speakers Playhouse. It is live online and totally free, works just like a television show. We have fun, we have entertainment. Only you get to participate in the show and it's totally free. And then we have commercials. So well, the commercials are us talking about the programs that you can join, but for our partners or our joint venture partners or something so, but we would love for your audience to come check it out. It's Speakers, playhouse Speakers with two S's playhousecom.
Speaker 1:Can I share with my National Association of Pittsburgh family too? That'd be awesome. Yeah, that'd be kind of fun. We just created a page called Still City Speakers and I'll share it there and hopefully we get some people coming to check it out. So I mean, I hate for this to be over. I feel this amazing energy. We're having a happy hour for our company tonight, so that's where I'm heading after this.
Speaker 2:So it'll be a lot of fun. So thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1:It's been a pleasure having you on our show, sharing your wisdom and contagious enthusiasm. If you're inspired by Kimberly's journey, want to learn more about her, be sure to check out Speakers, playhouse and Entrepreneur's Rocket Fuel. Remember as Kimberly says, if it's not fun, it's not worth doing. So let's keep that spirit alive in our personal and professional lives. Until next time, keep shining and striving for success. I'm Dionne Malish and this is Shine on Success.
