We recently connected with Cait Finn and have shared our conversation below.

Cait, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

A big part of my business is just this. It’s teaching people and being the permission slip myself to do business differently. This doesnt mean doing it differently just for the sake of being different. It’s showing, teaching and creating evidence for others that it is okay to create their businesses, run their businesses, grow their businesses, live their lives, manage it all in a way that works for them. Teaching my clients to release all the “shoulds”, release what we see society telling us to do or ” industry standards” and really getting clear on what their why, is getting clear on prioritizing themselves and their joy, and using that as the foundation to grow successful businesses and lead fulfilled lived.

Cait, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I help multi-passionate business owners prioritize their joy through play, fine tune their leadership, hone their marketing and grow a successful business.

For over 20 years I’ve been coaching, mentoring and educating others in a variety of industries and roles: social work, higher education, athletics administration, metabolic health and the private business sector.

I am mama, artist, homesteader, retired national level weightlifter, national level weightlifting coach, former college strength coach and college football coach. All of these pivots and experinces have helped me develop a gift of dancing between play and strategy. I love showing others that you can be all of you, have a blast AND be really successful.

My favorite work is helping leaders coming back to who they are and are meant to be and get re-anchored into that. Helping them move from a space of burnout to joy. I do a lot of holding space for the business itself- identifying gaps in their current strategies, processes and offers and crafting new strategies and action maps for growth without self-sacrifice.

​Whether you’re an executive leading teams or a new mom ready to grow your business, I will meet you exactly where you are, helping you create the strategy to get to where you want to go, and empowers you to prioritize you.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of my biggest aha moments was just 3 years ago. I’ve been coaching, mentoring, and educating in various fields for almost 20 years. I’ve had my business on the side as a coach, a mentor, teacher, consultant, speaker for almost 20 years. I didn’t go all in on my business until about 2021.

I had been gearing up for it for years. I was burnt out and had switched industries a few times very intentionally, loved the switches, was feeling really energized by that, but still kept falling into those same patterns of burnout and overworking, people pleasing.

Naturally, my answer was to go all in on my business. I knew that there’d be some rough patches along the way, but I was a hard worker and wasn’t afraid to put in a lot of hours, wasn’t afraid to do the work and knew I could make it work. I had no doubts about that.

My why, which was also very clear for having my own business was freedom and flexibility to spend my days the way I wanted to spend them, to prioritize myself, to prioritize my new growing family and spend time with my then infant daughter.

Here I am, a year into my business full-time, making decent money. I’m paying myself, I’m doing well, but I am at the end of my rope. And I remember sitting at a coffee shop trying to work, feeling exhausted, melting down, and girlfriend happened to be in the area and she stopped in and saw me and came back to chat. I started venting to her and sharing a little bit of what was going on.

All of the sudden it hit me. I was the issue! I had carried over all of my old patterns of people pleasing, not holding boundaries with myself, saying yes to everything, not being able to say no, putting my work before myself, my family, and so much more. I carried all those patterns right into to running my business and created the same exact problem I had before. I was stuck in a corner with no freedom.

And while I think a lot of people in our industry teach those things, these ideas of gridning until you succeed, working crazy hours at all costs, rest when you get to the goal. I find them to be very counterproductive. Because if we as the leaders, the visionary, the business owner are constantly burning out, constantly self sacrificing, constantly exhausted – it creates so many issues: businesses closing, resenting, families falling apart, and so much more.

I had to do a lot of work, and this was work that I was teaching my clients to do already. I had to have a real honest conversation with myself and do a lot of work around my leadership, my why, my values, where I was prioritizing myself. I had to really flip the model on its head.

The process I teach my clients and work with them on first is learning to put ourselves first. And this is really hard for a lot of my clients, myself included, especially women that I work with. Learning to put ourselves first because we feel “selfish”. Or we’ve been told we are selfish. Then putting our families next. than our business admin our business operations, and then our clients. That seems so counterintuitive to the industry standard or what our society has taught for so long both business and corporate world.

But if we the leaders are exhausted, burnt out, constantly in that cycle – we’re never going to show up and give our best selves to our business and to our clients. If we can show up at a higher level our clients get more from us, our families get more for us, we get more from us.

That was one of the biggest things that i I had to unlearn. It’s really when my coaching shifted from just being straight up marketing, leadership, and business to play, prioritizing play and prioritizing joy. It’s a really big part of why I identify as a play-based, play-led business marketing and leadership mentor because we have to be able to play more and prioritize ourselves and prioritize our joy so we can show up for the business and our communities and our people.

So now I mentor business owners and leaders to find their joy AND also the strategy of growing their businesses.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I’ve worked in a lot of different markets and industries.- some related to one another and some not. Ive worked in industries that aren’t typical for women (college football coach and college strength coach). Im also a mom and a nurturer. The reason I have had success in each of these arenas – authenticity. The people I work with know that I care about them and what we are trying to achieve together. It’s this transparency, authenticity, and integrity that carriers across all the markets and industries Ive worked in. It’s why colleagues and clients from past industries seek me out now for mentorship. People want to know you care. People want to know you are energetically invested in them at the same level they are financially investing in your support. And that’s what I do. My clients get my all because I know give myself permission to get what I need first and then show up ready to show up fully for my clients and their businesses.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.caitfinn.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplybeingcait/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cait.hfinn
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cait-finn/

Image Credits

Nazareth College
Vito Grippi
Sota Creative