We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kimberly Beer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kimberly below.

Kimberly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

The most defining moment on the path to where I am now happened, as many divinely timed things do, at the perfect moment in my life.

I began my business, Midnight Productions, Inc. (now branded as Be More Business), to escape corporate drudgery. I had found a measure of success after 14 years in business — and was very proud of where I had arrived. That said, I knew I had much more potential than what I had thus far realized. I was serving small business customers with great marketing materials and an added helping of consulting. I knew the experience I’d earned in my own entrepreneurial experience, was valuable and I wanted to do more. That “more” for me meant more consulting, at a higher level, with more impact and more educational/speaking/presenting opportunities. I tried over a couple of years to make this shift achievable, but I was struggling to gain traction.

Around this same time, I was contracted by a company founder in Colorado named Melisa Pearce to provide creative collateral for her newly established Equine Gestalt Certification program. As part of my work with her, I was flown to Virginia to film an Equine Gestalt session. Going in, I knew about equine assisted healing — I’d witnessed it many times as a volunteer for various handicapped riding programs in Kansas City, and celebrated the changes I saw in the riders I led around the arena. I observed the benefits in both the movement and presence of the horses. I’d also been on the receiving end of the loving energy of my own horses. I knew horses could shift your emotional state, yet, I was totally unprepared for what I witnessed watching Melisa’s process that day. To say there were tears would be an understatement. I cried for both the person she was working with — her trauma and her healing — and for myself in knowing that I had found something that could help me move toward realizing joy in my life.

Before this day, I had struggled immensely with depression. I had tried various therapies, but they had all fallen flat. I had come to the conclusion that I would just never feel the joy I saw others achieve. I had made a sort of peace with this notion and kept moving on with my depression in tow. I had built a successful business, had a good friend group, and was surviving life — I convinced myself that thriving was out of my reach and that was okay.

But it really wasn’t.

I immediately asked Melisa to work with me — and I chose to do so in front of her students because I was excited for them to learn how to bring Equine Gestalt and the healing magic of horses to a wider, larger audience, including those with chronic depression that did not respond to drug therapy. It took several sessions to start unpacking the trauma from my childhood. In the process, I discovered the root of my depression — and the various symptoms it had wrought across my life in ways I hadn’t recognized.

The best part of this outcome was how Gestalt and the horses not only shifted my internal life from one of surviving to thriving; it also shifted my business. All those things I was trying to accomplish and failing at started succeeding! The more I worked on myself, the deeper understanding I gained, the more I became successful in my business.

As I began to do more consulting work, I began to see similarities in the roadblocks and obstacles my client’s experienced in building their businesses. It became apparent to me, our life experience greatly impacts our entrepreneurial success. I signed up for Melisa’s certification program and became a Certified Equine Gestaltist myself so I could deeply help other entrepreneurs get out of their own way in both business and life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My main mission in life is to guide people out of their own way so they can achieve their goals and dreams. I have an fantasitc toolbox of skills that apply here: Gestalt and hypnosis chief among them. I also bring my gifts of ideation, communication, and creativity to every client with whom I work. And I have horses — horses that partner with me to support you in your desire to change.

Most people come to me wanting to achieve something specific in their business, art, or life, and finding themselves behind an obstacle they can’t quite identify or fully overcome. It feels like an invisible wall that they instinctively know shouldn’t be holding them back, yet it does. I am their guide on the journey to discover what is at the root of that obstacle and stand beside them as they dismantle it, or integrate it in a healthy way, so they can move on to success.

I have a very diverse background which gives me a rich history to pull on for my clients. I am a professional photographer and instructor; a national speaker on business and marketing; a published author; and the creator of a Tarot deck featuring horses. This means, not only do I have extensive training in Gestalt, hypnosis, and business development, I am also an artist, photographer, writer, and speaker. I understand the creative process and how it shows up (or doesn’t!) in our lives. I also have honed ways to amplify creativity so you can access it on an as needed basis.

Clients can work with me in small group settings or one to one with or without my horse partners. I also offer several workshops and retreats throughout the year for both those looking to explore their awareness of self or expand their photography skills.

For a taste of what I have to offer, I am the co-host of two podcasts: The Business Animal, for animal-based business owners seeking to expand their business skills and Cowgirls with Cameras, for equine and Western photography enthusiasts. I also have a book available on Amazon and my website at https://bemorebusiness.com titled “The Little Book of Big Sales Moves: The sales training you’ve always wanted, but could never find.”

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 the most difficult lessons I had to learn was that procrastination is a symptom and not a moral failing. I’ll tell you, once I got this lesson, it is probably one of the biggest shifts in my life.

From the time I was young, I was labelled as a procrastinator. Like many creatives, I was told the tendency to procrastinate was just “part of the territory.” (It’s not, by the way.) It always felt like people wrote me off as a procrastinator as if it were a permanent flaw.

Once I started doing my work in a Gestalt setting, which views us all as whole capable beings, I started to discover that procrastination was a symptom of more systemic problems — and what’s better, those problems had solutions if I was willing to work on them. I discovered my depression played a huge role in my procrastination and that my depression was tied deeply to childhood and ancestral trauma. I had also become very disconnected from my intuition and procrastination showed up as a symptom of this disconnection. Finally, procrastination showed up as a symptom of my creative self wanting to explore and my sense of responsibility not allowing that to happen nearly as often as needed.

Once I broke down these symptoms, I was able to start unraveling their effect on my life and procrastination took on a totally different appearance to me. It has become a harbinger to tell me to stop — the exact thing procrastinators are told NOT to do! — and be still with myself to feel into why and how the procrastination is showing up now and around whatever it is I’m procrastinating. Sometimes the answer is a simple, “I don’t want to do it!” More often it’s signaling an awareness of some kind — maybe I need to more keenly follow my intuition or maybe I need to explore further creatively to find the perfect solution.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

As an entrepreneur I think you have to get your hands dirty — get in there and work at it. There is only so much studying you can do and then you have to get in there and learn about what you don’t know yet. In other words, experience counts a lot in business. Every day I add new knowledge and awarenesses to my entrepreneurial tool kit.

As a creative, I think my ability to separate what people feel about my work and what I feel about my creations as two different things that don’t need to agree. Everyone’s life experience is different — truly different. When someone reads the words I’ve written, interacts with my art, or sees my photos, they bring their own history and uniqueness to the experience. In receiving their criticism, whether positive or negative, I always need to keep this in perspective because the foundation in me that created that piece of work is not the same as theirs — more importantly it is completely separate from mine. I should never internalize their experience. That is freeing honestly. I can allow someone to recoil at my work and not take it personally and conversely, I can enjoy someone who is moved by my work without hesitation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bemorebusiness.com and https://thebeerranch.com
• Instagram: @kimberlybeer and @thebeerranch
• Facebook: @bemorebiz and @thebeerranch
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/kimberlybeer
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/kimberlybeer

Image Credits
Photos of me in blue shirt are by Corey Brown Photography, Photo of me with the horse is Fasthorse Photography and then other two photos (lady with horse and horses running) are my photos.