We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katrina Klooster a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Katrina, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

There I sat in the doctor’s office listening to him explain to me that the pain I’d been experiencing was due to having shingles. I remember feeling so confused because at that time I was only 37. As he explained more about what shingles is and why people get shingles, he asked me to tell him a bit about what I had going on in my life. I rattled everything off like a daily to-do list: teacher, mom, farm wife, living in our house as we remodel it ourselves, in the middle of a master’s program, active PEO board member, a member of a local women’s group, a tutor for a local woman learning to speak English as a second language, and the list when on. Sharing these things didn’t phase me. This was my life. What stopped me in my tracks was when my doctor firmly suggested that I take some things off my plate. It actually felt like he was speaking a language I couldn’t understand. At first I was stunned, then confused, then frustrated, and finally scared. The tears came pouring down my face as my mind started racing.

What could I stop doing?
How could I stop doing any one of these?
I have to do all of these.
What would people think?
I would be letting people down if I quit any of these.
I have to figure out another way around this.

My conversation with my doctor continued and he connected me with a local therapist. (Which at the time I was frustrated by because meeting with her was going to add another thing to my plate.) After taking a few days off work and healing my shingles, I could start to think more clearly. And the truth of the situation was clear. I was doing too much. I knew I had said yes to too many things that weren’t right for me anymore. Taking care of myself and being able to show up fully in my life were really important to me. So I knew what I really wanted and the next step was building the courage to tell people what I was no longer available for. One person at a time, one conversation at a time, I learned how to take things off my plate by saying no.

Fast forward 9 years and I am now the queen of saying no to things I don’t really want to do. This experience and the years following taught me so much about the importance of knowing myself well, understanding my needs, and honoring my boundaries with my time and energy. With this new way of being I’m able to show up for myself and the things I really want to do in my life. I’m no longer connecting my productivity to my worth as a person and I’m not interested in putting my needs on the back burner in order to make everyone else happy even if it means I’m sacrificing my health. This experience significantly changed the relationship I have with myself which has positively impacted every other relationship I have too.

I don’t want other women to get to the point that they make themselves sick while giving all of themselves away to everyone else. Now I coach women who have lost themselves under all the obligations and shoulds they’ve placed on themselves. I help them get to know who they are when they take off the expectations of all the roles they play. I help them rediscover who they are and we deep dive into what they truly want. Then I help them create simple steps to redesign their lives so the way they want to feel and think and the things they want to do match what is happening in their real lives.

Katrina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Katrina Klooster, a life & mindset coach for women. Before becoming a life coach, I was an educator. I taught high school Spanish for most of my career but I also taught a few years at the upper elementary level and I was an instructional coach, a coach for teachers. Teaching was my passion. I absolutely loved my students. I loved creating a safe place for them to learn to believe in themselves, take risks, and excel. But after about 12 years of working as a teacher I had a bubbling up inside and a longing for more. I had no idea what else I wanted to do but I knew something more was on the horizon for me. I felt as if I’d plateaued in terms of my growth and impact and I wanted to see what more I was capable of. I loved teaching so much and I have a true belief that every single person has so much more potential than they realize. So I started looking for opportunities to grow on a more personal level, tap into my own greater potential, and help others do the same.

In this quest I found and hired a life coach. It was through working with her and diving deep into the rabbit hole of resources available on personal growth that I realized that coaching was the next step I was longing for. It allowed me to grow personally and use my teaching and counseling experiences and background to help others rise to the level of their potential. So I jumped in with both feet and started building my own life coaching business, Katrina Klooster Coaching.

I’m a life and mindset coach for women who have great lives. From the outside they look like they have it all together on the yet on the inside they’re longing for more. They have an internal desire for change but they’re unsure what they want or how to give themselves permission to listen to themselves and trust themselves enough to follow their dreams. I work one on one with my clients to help them get to know themselves again. Through our coaching sessions my clients learn who they are outside of the many roles they play. I help them uncover their interests and their quiet dreams that they often haven’t shared with anyone. And I help them understand how to overcome their fears, self doubt, and worries about what others will think of them if they make the changes they want to make. From there we create a personalized plan and I help my clients take action on their plan so the changes they want to make become their new reality.

The work that I do with my clients is so personal and intimate. It’s deep identity work that’s centered around helping them know themselves intimately, become more of the person they want to become, and show up in their lives more authentically. It’s deeply transformational work. One of the things that sets me apart from others in the coaching space is my ability to so easily see people’s unique gifts and potential. It feels as if I’ve been doing that my entire life. It’s what allows me to create such a safe space for my clients to open up and share so vulnerably who they are and what their greatest dreams are, but it’s also what helps me challenge them and help them rise to meet their potential.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I started building my business in person through word of mouth marketing. Then I took a class on how to market my business on Instagram and I folded social media marketing into my marketing plan. I did a lot of things that slowed me down when it came to social media marketing so I’ll share a few pieces of advice based on my mistakes.

1. Be yourself. Long gone are the days of showing up on social media with a plug and play template and thinking it’s going to create results. People are longing for connection and in order to hire you, they want to get to know you. One of the simplest ways to do that is to show up as your most authentic self. Notice if you’re filtering yourself and get curious about why. Pay attention to those moments when you start to share something and then you don’t. Get curious about what held you back. Anytime you’re filtering who you really are, your clients miss out on seeing and hearing the real you. You stop the scroll by showing up in your unique energy and sharing who you genuinely are. Nobody can replicate you so if you show up as your most authentic self, you’ll radiate out into the marketplace like nothing anyone has ever seen.

2. Instead of using the term social media, try using the term networking platform. Every social media platform is designed for you to be social. If you’re expecting to show up and share a quick video and then have clients come your way without doing anything else, think again. In order to build your community one of your jobs is to build relationships, genuine relationships. Spend time everyday focusing on connecting with people. Get to know them. Leave genuine comments. Care about them. People want to know that you care. When they do, they’ll begin to trust you and maybe someday they might hire you, refer you, or continue to support you by being active in your community.

3. Take messy action. Social media users are craving less of the perfectly curated feeds and more of the reality of who you are and what your unique message is. Instead of holding yourself back trying to get it all perfect, just jump in. Start building your confidence and thought leadership by doing.

4. Be helpful. Your community wants to get to know you but what they care about more is whether or not you can solve their problem. The more you can show up and be helpful, the more they’ll start to come to you for guidance in solving the problem they have. The more you show up and talk to them about the one problem you help them solve, the more they’ll trust that you’re knowledgeable about the problem they’re struggling with.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

There isn’t a right way to build a business. As a former educator this was one of the first lessons I had to unlearn.

I started my business when I was in my early 40’s. Up until that point I’d been working full time in a professional career that I was really good at. There was a right way to achieve the success I had created. I knew the rules and was able to follow them and create success rather easily.

But entrepreneurship is the wild. There isn’t a specific path to success. I learned the hard way that the promise of a 3 step program, a proven formula, or a plug and play template was all a facade was the idea of creating overnight success. There was nothing that was going to guarantee my success but me and a determination to never give up. Success in entrepreneurship required me to let go of my ego, get uncomfortable, and create my own method. Learning that was humbling. It’s not like education where there’s a right and wrong answer. Entrepreneurship doesn’t work that way. Instead it takes hard work, grit, perseverance, and a willingness to try new things and keep fine tuning them until they work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.katrinaklooster.com
• Instagram: @katrinaklooster
• Facebook: @katrinaklooster
• Linkedin: @katrinaklooster
• Other: Pinterest: katrinakloostercoaching