Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Katrina Widener. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Katrina, so great to be with you and I think a lot of folks are going to benefit from hearing your story and lessons and wisdom. Imposter Syndrome is something that we know how words to describe, but it’s something that has held people back forever and so we’re really interested to hear about your story and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is an incredibly hot topic in the entrepreneur world, but what I find so interesting is that so many people connect to other phrasing of the same topic so much more viscerally — self doubt, shame, embarrassment. low confidence, etc. My personal experience with imposter syndrome comes in two parts: how I have overcome it myself, and how I work with entrepreneurs to work through it in business coaching.
In my own personal journey, I realized that the moments when I was feeling the most self doubt came when I was either:
1) Trying to do something that wasn’t actually aligned with me, my clients, or my industry, or
2) Working through showing up for myself in a way I hadn’t been taught or trained to as of yet in my life.
When I started business coaching, I didn’t have a clear vision or understanding of my place in the industry. I was trying to look at my advisors or peers and recreate what I saw they were doing, but I didn’t know *why* or *how it worked for me*. I would show up on social media, in rooms with other business owners, in client meetings, or even in how I was setting up my services and offers all based off what others were doing and what I felt I *should* do to make it in my industry.
It wasn’t until I got crystal clear on who I am, how I operate, where I shine, and what I love doing most that things started to fall into place and frankly feel easy. When you have clarity, confidence follows so much more easily.
When it came to things I was doing that felt uncomfortable or unnatural to me and my conditioning though, it was really a practice of trusting myself to discern when something was worth the discomfort or not. I had to go through training to really get comfortable in my decision-making, I utilized therapy to work through my own blocks, and I relied on methods like journaling or meditation (cliches, I know — but they work!) to bring peace to my mind even when I was trying new things that felt out of my element.
I started my business seven years ago, and as I’ve grown and changed the areas that feel uncomfortable have grown and changed as well. But being able to build a strong foundation of clarity and a vast variety of tools to rely on have meant that even as new stretch areas arise I’m able to handle them more and more easily each time. I’ve built up my innate resilience and self-trust, so even when something doesn’t work the first time I know it either will the next or I’ll have the tools needed to course correct and shift into something that will work.
And now that I have trained and learned how to teach that clarity and resistance, I see it come into play with my clients as well. Feeling self doubt is easy when you don’t have the experience and certainty behind you to support you — it’s in gaining that certainty and understanding of what you’re doing and why that allows you to move forward with confidence.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
When I say the words business coach, I mean so much more than what the industry represents coaching as. I am passionate about two things in entrepreneurship:
1) a business that financially supports you without stress, fear, and burnout
2) a business that you’re excited to operate within and feels safe for your nervous system or operate within.
I use a combination of strategy, alignment, and community to get my clients real results. I volunteer for an entrepreneurial non-profit in a leadership role to expand my impact, and I really rely on the belief that no two business owners are the way and they deserve to be coached as such.
I do this through mastermind group coaching, one-on-one coaching, and sharing as much education as I can in free or DIY ways for anyone who isn’t ready to invest in larger packages yet.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
If I were to identify three things that had the largest impact in my entrepreneurial strategy, they would be alignment, resilience, and community.
Your business cannot thrive if you don’t have clarity on yourself, your audience, and your industry. Every piece of strategy from your pricing to your offers to your marketing has to be a robust combination of the three, and often I see people looking only at their industry or audience and completely missing looking at themselves. It takes strategic self understanding and clarity to know how to position yourself in the market and how to speak to your audience, and without this piece you will find resistance and low conversions time and time again. This is why I never coach an entrepreneur without working with them on often overlooked things like confident decision-making, personalized sales strategy and conversations, aligned marketing tactics, etc. This is where alignment is key.
When it comes to resilience, I don’t simply mean being able to withstand whatever comes your way. When I say you need resilience in business, I mean you need to be able to understand that when something doesn’t work the first time, your course of action is to review, audit, adjust, and try again. I don’t know of a single successful business owner who struck gold their first day, with their first offer, or with their first product,. I don’t know of a single business who has become successful who didn’t also stay that way without consistent evolution and innovation. The industry changes all the time — ten years ago social media wasn’t the behemoth it is today, five years ago TikTok didn’t exist, a few years ago AI wasn’t playing the role it is now. A business needs to be able to adjust and adapt to its surroundings, and that is where true resilience lies.
And community… community is how we stay human. It’s how we connect. It’s how we know we’re not alone when things get hard, and it’s how we celebrate when things go right. It’s how we learn, it’s how we grow, it’s how we expand our network and expand our impact. I would not be where I am in business without it. Entrepreneurship can be isolating and overwhelming, and it’s only when we come together that we’re truly able to find success.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
If there is a fact in life, it’s that none of us will ever know everything. We are built and wired differently from each other, we have our innate curiosities and passions, our natural tendencies and gifts. Like everything, self-improvement is a personal experience that is influenced by our unique needs, desires, situations, and circumstances. Learning and growing as a business owner is necessary and important, but it’s also important to do so with intention and strategy instead of just learning to learn.
For example, one of the ways business owners can work with me is in my mastermind group coaching program. We meet weekly for six months and every single client who goes through the program walks away with goals achieved, results gotten, and items crossed off their wish list. But our coaching approaches education in an intentional way. Any straight education we incorporate into the experience is catered to filling gaps in the knowledge of what the members are working toward. If someone wants to build a new website and their industry does well on Google, we’ll bring in SEO and advertising experts to educate in those specific and strategic areas. If someone is launching a new product, we’ll bring in copywriting and sales page experts to educate in those specific and strategic areas. If someone is rebranding their business, we’ll bring in a messaging and positioning expert to educate in those specific and strategic areas (do you see a theme??).
And not only are the topics intentional, but so is the teaching style. No presentations where members take notes and never look at them again. I only bring in hands-on, implementable workshops so things are achieved during the session and they already have the experience to replicate the actions on their own.
So many business owners get stuck in the learning stage — partially to feel more confident and comfortable offering their services, and partially because it’s easier to learn than to launch. But no amount of pure education can provide confidence if you don’t focus on growing that on its own, and educating instead of launching gets you stuck in the planning stage.
I don’t need to be a Google ads expert to be a highly effective coach. I can rely on my strengths and supplement where needed. But I also would never stop myself from learning a new skill or tool if I do feel it will greatly benefit me or my clients. It has to be a balance, and to know how to do that you need to really understand yourself and what is aligned with you and your audience.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.katrinawidener.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katrina.widener/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrinawidener/
Image Credits
Sarah Chacos Photography
