BAAF Kristin Brabant
===
Steph: Welcome to Becoming Aligned AF, a podcast about redefining success, finding your flow, and building a life that actually fits who you are.
We're ditching the "shoulds" and getting down to what feels unapologetically right. This journey is all about clarity, confidence, and alignment so deep it makes you wonder why you ever settled for anything less.
Consider this your permission slip to do things on your terms, intentionally, unapologetically, and with a little fire. Because when you're aligned AF, you're unstoppable.
Hi. Hi. And welcome to Becoming Aligned AF. Today we are talking with a friend of mine who has been a business coach, a speaker at events that I've gone to, and just all around cheerleader since I met her we're talking to Kristin Brabant and she is a business strategist living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and she is hell bent on creating ways for ambitious service providers to be both rich and rested. She helps CEOs clarify what they are absolute best at and then redesign their businesses, offers, and calendars to position them in it. She's obsessed with answering, "how do you earn more money while working less and resting more?"
Her mission is to ensure women entrepreneurs have more money, more power, more influence, and more joy. Because when women win, everyone wins. So welcome, Kristen.
Kristin Brabant: What an intro. I mean, I wrote it, but Steph, you did it with just such like zhuzh and such energy and emphasis. It just hits different when you say it. Thank you, my dear.
Steph: I am so honored to have you on my podcast as one of my very first guests, because you were a very important part of my transition, funny enough, away from my business when you were my business coach.
Kristin Brabant: The irony, right?
Steph: But it was, I mean. the right thing to do. You helped me find and clarify what really I wanted in that moment and season of my life.
So we probably have known each other for eight years now and you were in such a different place when I met you.
You were just starting your business for business consulting. Tell us a little bit about that transition that you went through.
Kristin Brabant: What a great exercise to do in life in general. Think about where you were seven or eight years ago and how much your life has changed, how much you've evolved as a person. And you'll get it real quick that you can make a lot of big changes over the course of time.
So at any rate, my dear, yes. Eight years ago I was in nonprofit management and leadership, and I worked at a nonprofit that helped young adults who did not have a college degree to launch their careers in tech.
And I love parts of that job. I did not like other parts of that job. And that's what led to the transition. And that's been a big motivating factor for the multiple career pivots that I've made in my life.
I also quit grad school. Fun story. I thought I was born to be a teacher. Grandma was a teacher. Mom was a teacher. Aunt was a teacher. So I felt like I was a thoroughbred career teacher. And I taught. And then I went to get my master's in Boston to teach. And I was miserable. And uh, it was really terrifying to be in a graduate program and have uprooted my entire life, moved across the country, to go do the thing that my family praised and valued most, which was getting another degree. That is like the currency of the Brabant family. They love themselves a JD. An MD, a master's degree a PhD, and I dropped out and I had no plan B. So I had to figure out what in God's name I was going to do because I was dead set on "I will be an incredible educator."
I Just kept pushing harder to stay in that career until honestly my body couldn't take it anymore. My body was like. shutting down and we do not want this. I fought tooth and nail. It was so obvious this was not for me. But I certainly fought it because My old motto used to be just outwork everybody in the room, just work harder. That is how you will be successful. And no surprise, pick that up at home from like really wonderful, hardworking parents. In particular, my mom, she worked three jobs to support my brothers and I.
So I quit grad school But I tried that same strategy again in the next career. Just work harder. This is at the non profit now.
The same problems popped up again. I really get lit up and love pieces of this job. And it was consistent across the careers in teaching and in non profit management. The same things continue to light me up. The same things were where I excelled and shined. The same things were the things that I was brilliant at with ease and minimal effort.
And then to no one's surprise, the same things suck the life out of me, just in different contexts. But when you're young in your career and in your 20s, that's how you figure it out. By trying different things. And, feeling really lit up and in love with certain things and really miserable with others.
Steph: I hear that a lot, that the thing that really triggered someone to make a change was their body like saying, no, this is not right.
Like I'm going to force you to slow down.
Kristin Brabant: That's right. Yeah. And it says it in different ways. Mine was anxiety. I remember when I was in my master's program in Boston, I lived on the third floor of the high school I taught at. I actually have a sweatshirt that says "mi casa es tu escuela." My house is your school. Because I lived on the third floor of it. So there was no work life balance but I remember waking up every morning, the moment I had consciousness my heart was racing. My mind was going to this isn't right. This isn't right for you. We got to get out. What's our exit plan? When are we leaving? When are we quitting? You can't quit. If you quit, this is going to happen. You don't have another plan. You have to stay. Maybe if you just try harder and you pass these exams, then everything will get better.
And I actually tried those things. I did work harder and I did pass the exams and I still felt anxious and miserable. And then in the next career, it was also anxiety that told me not this. And I had to figure out what would be next. And it's not like I made that decision overnight, but I started to feel a lot of resistance in my body.
I was complaining a lot about my job. I was really frustrated that there was constant guardrails on my growth. Then I looked at what opportunities were available for me to grow, and I'm like I sure as shit don't want to live like her, the director of the organization, you look at somebody's life and you're like, Not for me!
Steph: if that's what success looks like, I don't want it.
Kristin Brabant: Amen. And I was having panic attacks on the way to work. I remember sending my boss a text message saying that I was sick and I try and make it in. But in reality, I was on, Geary street in San Francisco, pulled over on the side of the road, trying not to get hit by city buses, having a panic attack because everything in my body said not this and then all of my wiring and conditioning said, work harder. Thankfully I made the decision to just continue to focus on my zone of genius which was facilitation and coaching. And focus on like, how can I remove the things that suck the life out of me, make that less of my career and really make the whole basis of my career, my zone of genius.
And that's what led me to think about, I'd like to start my own coaching business. Like I said, it wasn't overnight. It was a year and a half of planning. It was getting my coaching certification on nights and weekends. It was hiring a business coach to help me actually learn how to run the business of a coaching business, which coaching certification programs don't teach you.
They teach you how to coach, but not how to run a business. And then it was also months of doubting myself, being super scared to leave a full time job and health benefits and a 401k. And a lot of conversations with my own coach about bucking up the courage to put my chips on me and go for my dream.
So not overnight, which I feel like is important to mention when we talk about these big pivot stories because I don't recommend that somebody just jump ship immediately because financial stability and your feeling of safety matters.
Steph: You didn't just jump into feeling anxiety every time you were on your way to work. It grew and grew. That's why it's so hard for people to look back and think, okay, something's wrong here because it came on so little by little.
It's like the frog in the boiling pot of water, right? It just slowly gets warmer and a little bit warmer and a little bit warmer and you adapt and you think "this is normal. Oh, now this is normal. Oh, this level of anxiety is normal." And we forget how joyful and lit up and Confident or carefree, we might have been years ago, and our tolerance for misery has just increased.
When you were talking about how your mom and your grandma and everyone was a teacher, I come from a family like that as well. And that was one of those things that looking back on, it felt like an easy thing that I was just going to become a teacher.
Steph: But one of the things that I love about having a community with such amazing women like you is that we get examples of people who are Taking that step back, figuring out what they want their work life to look like and then making it happen. I think that when we didn't have as many examples of possibilities, we feel so zoned in on, these are my options.
I can be a teacher. I can be a nurse. I can be a policeman. That's one of the things I love about having such a connected world now, that whatever you want to do and whatever really truly is your zone of genius, someone out there is going to need it.
Kristin Brabant: Yep. That's right. And it takes a tremendous amount of courage to make that kind of transition and sign up for something that, there's not maybe a graduate program to teach you how to do it and there's not a super prescriptive path to success or any kind of guarantee of a paycheck. It takes a tremendous amount of courage.
I think that we do live in a remarkable time and I don't want to downplay like with that comes a lot of responsibility to create your own path based on your zone of genius when it's not something that we grew up watching.
Steph: So before we get into what Kristen's amazing zone of genius is and how she changed my trajectory and my path so dramatically um, I told you that we were going to make you create a six word story. And if you haven't heard episode three about the six word stories, really it is a distilled version of what you are currently living, maybe what you want to live, and then being able to put that story into six words can be so powerful.
so I'd love it if you'd share with us your six word story.
Kristin Brabant: I would love to share. I love this exercise in general, like listening to your episode about the six word story, you gave so many great examples of six word stories. They were so diverse too, but they really helped me do this for myself. And so my six word story is And I cheated a little.
I made one of them a compound word. Okay, so the first word is a compound word, folks. But my six word story is "good-girl grinded, quit, rich, rested, woman."
Steph: That tells such a story and one that I think a lot of people will be able to resonate with.
Kristin Brabant: I think it is yeah, I think this is A story that a lot of women in the history of women, and especially changing with our generation have experienced, and I think our generation was really one of the first generations to actually have the freedom and the opportunities to choose something other than grinding.
And what a privilege and an honor and also such a shit show it has been to figure out "what does it look like to create my version of success, my rich life without the grind and without always working harder to be good and good enough and to earn more and live my vision of success using rest as one of my secret weapons."
Steph: That reminds me of one of my very favorite quotes from when I was younger, I think I stumbled across it when I was in high school.
It was in a feminist book and it ends with "they told us we could do anything and we heard we have to do everything."
Kristin Brabant: Oh, god, ain't that it? Ain't that it? Do everything and be everything, right? No. Such a recipe to become an absolute phantom of yourself.
Steph: And completely burned out, until your body tells you nope, time to stop.
Kristin Brabant: Yeah, how many absolutely brilliant, world changing women have we lost in history due to them being shackled to everyone else's expectations and making everyone else happy? What a privilege to live at this time, where we can create alternative career pathways and businesses that don't require making everybody else happy to be rich. What a privilege.
Steph: And let's make it the norm, right?
Kristin Brabant: Yeah, that's what I'm here for. That's why I'm working, girl. Making this the norm. More and More and more rich and rested women. Nothing sexier.
Steph: This is a great transition into something that you taught me that really helped me to make the decisions in a way that I would end up where I wanted to be. And that was a values exercise. Sometimes when people are doing a values exercise, if they're in a group setting and everyone's like, okay, we're going to talk about your values. Everyone's like, Oh, great.
And I think that's because a lot of times we do these exercises and we go through the motions, but we don't actually really connect with what we're doing, but when we went through the values exercise, one of the most important things that you challenged me to do was to define and name the values that I was choosing. What does this really mean? Get the wording really right. It wasn't like a 20 minute exercise that we did.
We did this for a couple of weeks, at least, right? Like it was a process. And the other thing that I want to point out is like going into this values exercise it's really easy to think. Oh, all of these things are important. I want to give my whole effort into all of these things. If we're rating them and saying how much time are we spending on each of these things, it's easy to be like, I want to give that a 10.
And this is a 10 too. And this is a 10 too. And it's hard to give up some things sometimes because There are things that we enjoy about them. I'm sure that when you were teaching, you're saying that facilitating is your zone of genius, and you were feeling that sometimes.
Absolutely. My life was filled with tons of joyful moments and energy while teaching because I was already exercising multiple parts of my zone of genius. But there were some other aspects to the job that sucked the life out of me and the values exercise really helps you, I think, make decisions to align with greater amounts of energy, joy and satisfaction and fulfillment. When you are feeling low, when you are feeling off, when you are feeling crappy, it helps you immediately identify why and what can you do to gradually course correct back to, your most alive and expressed self.
And then it just becomes, at least for me, it did, it became part of my normal vernacular so like, my husband knows what my values are now. Because I say, oh, I'm not going to do that, because that's not really prioritizing the value that I want to prioritize, It became part of my language about how I talk about these things, and it really was so impactful for me.
Kristin Brabant: You're just the poster child for the values exercise, Steph. I love to hear that even your husband knows your top values. I love to hear that.
Steph: Really quickly, I'll have you explain how you think about the values exercise and how you led me through it.
Kristin Brabant: Absolutely. Yeah. So I agree with you. Values exercises are historically lame. The way that I do it differently, makes it one of the most useful life decision making tools, like you're having a conversation with your husband about plans for the weekend, to help you make these micro decisions about how you spend your Saturday in a way that actually adds energy to your life and joy and fulfillment versus you being a people pleaser and just saying yes to something that actually sucks the life out of you.
It helps you make decisions for, your highest benefit in the micro and on the macro. What are you going to do with your career and your business? The partner you choose, where you live, how you live. And the way I do the exercise is I give clients a list of, God only knows, but somewhere in the vein of 70 potential values.
They're written out in the list. And I also tell clients that If you recognize one of these words is not quite hitting on the thing you want to express inside of your body of what this value is, write it in different values. This is just to get the brain going.
And then I have different columns for your value rating and your action rating of the value? So I have my clients go through and identify five top values. Usually they identify 15 top values. So our first exercise is let's get this down to five. The next step once they've gotten it down to their top five is to give it a rating out of 1 to 10.
How important is this value in your life? And like you said, Steph, most people will write 10, 10, 10, 10, 10.
And those are my beloved anxious and paralyzed sisters from another mister. When everything is a 10 out of 10 of importance in your life, it is a great paralysis technique because if everything is important, you are crushed beneath never ending priorities, and you're never able to make a decision and you're going to feel damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I also have them give each of their top five values an action rating out of 1 to 10.
So how much do you walk the talk of this value in your life currently? And I have them define what the value means to them. That's a super critical part of the process because I can write the value family on that list or security. Or environmentalism or friendship. And that means something wildly different, I can promise you, to Steph Woods than it does to Kristen Brabant.
And we assume that everyone understands what, friendship is the same to you as it is to me. And it is not. Write down, really, what does this value mean to you? What does it look like? If you were to live this value fully expressed, what does it look like?
So you define the value, we give it an importance rating and an action rating. And then I look for, where is there a discrepancy? Where did you rate it a 9 out of 10 in importance? but your action rating is a five out of 10 or even a six out of 10. And we dig into that, like what does the five out of 10 look like for you?
And if you were to give it a two point boost, what would that look like in practice?
And now you've got a really clear roadmap of how you could start feeling more expressed, more alive, more fulfilled, more fully yourself by just making this two point boost. And not to all five values at once! My ambitious friends, but like the most important value to you, right?
Steph: That really, truly made me stop and think about which of the values really were my top priority.
Everything is important, but when everything is important, nothing's important. One of my values is delivering excellence. To me, that means being proud of what I'm putting out into the world.
Another of my values that we discovered. The perfect word for is called savoring and that was actually like a combination of multiple values that you'd see on values lists, right? It was joy. It was personal growth. I can't even remember all of the things that it was, but really truly I had to define it wasn't just joy.
It wasn't just personal growth. Savoring to me means to take the time to do the things that bring you joy and bring you enjoyment.
Kristin Brabant: Taking the time to enjoy the things that bring me joy. I have it right in front of me, all my notes from our coaching, my love, and that's exactly what it was. So beautifully said.
Steph: The decision that I had to make in my day to day: is it going to serve me better to prioritize savoring, or is it going to serve me better to continue prioritizing delivering excellence?
And because delivering excellence was so ingrained in me, I had the realization that like my a hundred percent was someone else's 150%. So if I Take two points off of delivering excellence and added those two points to savoring that was going to serve me better.
Kristin Brabant: What a brilliant recognition that was and process that you led yourself through too, because that's the uncomfortable work about, making these big life decisions that are very hard to make.
And so when you have a tool like this. To at least narrow it down to five factors. Your top five values, instead of all the permutations of things that you could do, career paths you could take. To narrow it down to five top values and to ask yourself which one's number one?
And then what is it really, if I were to really walk the talk of savoring, what would my life look like? What would my career look like? Now you're given the information and the clarity to make the most important decisions of your life.
Steph: I think there's a really important thing to point out in here is that when we're talking about making these decisions and making choices about our priorities These things aren't set in stone forever, they are the things that will serve you right now. One of the biggest things you gave me permission to do was make decisions for now.
Like we said those two words for now, over and over in our coaching calls I don't have to decide to prioritize savoring for the rest of my life, although it's pretty nice and I probably will continue doing that. But if I one day want to prioritize working on my career, working on my business, I can.
Right now I'm choosing the thing that serves me, but that thing that serves me could change in the future.
Kristin Brabant: Yeah. And this strategy works for a client like you, who is my futuristic future girl, my future tripper it's not the right strategy for every client, right? For the client who is always living in the, in the present or the past and doesn't have the clear plan forward, then perhaps not the best strategy, but you are my overachiever.
incredible, brilliant client. And it was important for you to get present and be in your body to make these decisions versus what looks nice five years from now, right? Or what sounds good three years from now. We needed to Make decisions that get you feeling good now and start getting feedback about what brings Steph peace.
What brings Steph connection to herself? What does success look like for you and not our mom and not our grandparents and not our boss who thinks we're destined to become the director of such and such, right? What does success look like and feel like for you? For you to get those answers, we needed to focus on the present and that for now mindset was really important.
Steph: We lose touch with what ease feels like as we complicate our lives and we have so many responsibilities and things we want to achieve.
Kristin Brabant: Yeah.
Steph: We distance ourselves from intuition of what feels right in our bodies.
Kristin Brabant: Absolutely.
Steph: And it's because we are told our entire lives don't give up. You're not a quitter. You can do whatever you set your mind to. But really, Ease is not the goal, it is the way.
So the things that feel ease, once you take that minute to reflect and step back, that's actually telling you the way to go. If something feels wrong, You can step back and say, okay why is this feeling wrong? What value is it threatening where is it not aligning with my current priorities?
Kristin Brabant: That's right. It's paying attention to where is there flow? And like you said, us ambitious gals we love to ignore our flow and just work our tails off. To hit the next milestone, it began with getting the a, then getting into the right college.
Then it was, work your tail off to get the such and such position. The work harder, perform better, be the best mindset, which, I still. I'm still a fan of being the best, but you're best, right? Not. Mom's best. That was normal to us, and man, kids know how to be in flow though, and we forget that body wisdom and that body intelligence and communication system as we fulfill other people's expectations of us.
And we start chasing what other people tell us will make us safe, worthy, and valuable, and successful, and fulfilled.
Paying attention to your body and where you light up. Where do you. Enter into the flow? Where do you delight? Where do you shine? Where do you create excellence with ease? Where are you working, but it actually feels like play? You don't feel like you're working. That's what we should be paying attention to.
Steph: Because that's when you're in your genius zone.
Kristin Brabant: That's right.
Steph: We've mentioning this idea of the zone of genius a couple times and maybe not everybody knows what that actually is. So What is your zone of genius?
Kristin Brabant: So this term comes from The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I'm not going to take credit for it.
That is Gay Hendrick's term. Who I think is a Stanford psychologist, I could be butchering that. But the way I think of it and use it with clients is, narrow it down to your top 3 skill sets where you create extraordinary results with ease. There's that word again. Ease is the way not the destination.
And your zone of genius. Typically people overlook it. People think everybody is good at that. So if there's a skill more often than not, when I'm honing in on a client's zone of genius with them, they go, everybody is good at that. And I'm like, Sister, I talk to a lot of people in my job and let me tell you, nobody is good at this or as good as this as you are in it.
We tend to downplay it because it comes to us naturally. So we think, ah, this isn't any big deal. But in reality, you are extraordinary in that capacity. Your zone of genius could be something like networking and building relationships with people. It could be something super technical coding or whatever, right?
It can be a hard skill, it could be a soft skill. It could be even an area of expertise. I had a client who was in a venture capital fund, part of her zone of genius, was like fossil fuel energy and climate change, this sort of thing. So it could even just be an area of expertise.
But at the end of the day, what we're aiming towards is that we position you in your zone of genius, 70 percent of the time. My work with my clients is to define your zone of genius, and then how do we adjust your role if they're in corporate or working for a company, or if they work for themselves and have a business, how do we adjust your business to really focus on and maximally leverage your zone of genius skill sets?
Because when you're there, you are unstoppable.
Think about if you were always on fire, if you were always shining, if you were always in that flow state, you are irresistible. Everyone wants to hire you. Everyone wants to work with you. Everyone is filled with life and inspiration being in your presence because you are lit up and you are emanating that energy. It's infectious.
So that's where you're going to be most successful, is if you are 70 percent of the time in your zone of genius, and we make your role, your calendar reflect that.
Steph: When you're in your zone of genius, you can tell. It just flows. It lights you up, like you said, you're on fire. And so that is why when you're in your zone of genius 70 percent of the time, the clients that you want are just going to come to you.
Kristin Brabant: They're just going to see that and see what you're doing and go, Hey, I want more of that.
When you're positioning yourself in your zone of genius, you're operating in it, your frequency is going to rise and like attracts like. So all of a sudden, opportunities resonating at that new elevated frequency are going to come knocking on your door.
Kristin Brabant: People are going to come knocking at your door who are at that elevated frequency. And more and more reasons to feel good and confident and alive, and like the expert that you are, are going to come knocking on your door.
Steph: You mean aligned opportunities are going to come towards you?
Kristin Brabant: Opportunities. I believe I do.
Steph: So how do you find your zone of genius? Help us out.
Kristin Brabant: Yeah. So I asked my clients five questions and I put those five questions inside of a workbook that I call Discover Your Genius. So I'm going to make that available to this crew. I'm sure it'll be in the show notes somewhere and people can go ahead and download that discover your genius workbook.
It's the same five questions that I asked my clients to help them narrow in on what are those top three skill sets or areas of expertise where you create extraordinary results with ease, where you come alive, where you enter into your flow state. And we should be focusing your career and your life to be positioning you in.
That's the juicy outcome of completing this itty bitty little workbook. And It is changed clients and non clients lives and total careers. You really take this seriously and it can spark clarity for an entirely new trajectory for your work, your business, your life.
Steph: Or just reinforce the trajectory that you're on. Sometimes when you do exercises like this, you really do say to yourself, wow. Okay, I am living in that. I am excited and turned on and lit up by what I'm doing.
Kristin Brabant: That's right. And to help make you aware of like micro decisions that you could be making. Maybe, it boosts your confidence that you're on the right track, but maybe it makes you hyper aware of some micro changes you could be making to your services, or your responsibilities, or the way you spend your time, to position you 5, 10 percent more in your genius, and do 5, 10 percent less of the stuff that sucks the life out of you, distracts you from your game changing work. Or just, doesn't return on the energetic investment. Like the juice ain't worth the squeeze.
I have lots of clients that spend lots of time being distracted on the stuff that doesn't move the needle in their career or satisfaction in life. But there are other people's fires, other people's emergencies, other people's urgencies, and it's certainly tantalizing to be the problem solver for everybody, right?
And to just, even if you're on the right track, but have these insights of, you know what? I want to be bolder in 2025 or next year and I want to focus myself 10 percent more in this thing that I know deep in my bones I am best at and 10 percent less of this child's play over here.
Steph: And sometimes that's really all it is. What do I need to be doing less of?
Kristin Brabant: Yeah. Right. Right.
Thank you soo much for having me. I loved getting to have this conversation with you and just reflect so much on our time working together.
It was such a gift for me. I absolutely loved working with you and It just feels like such a dessert, a treat, a decadence to get to review it all and see you so lit up, and see how like you made these really bold decisions for yourself, Steph, and it has totally paid off and I'm so proud of you and in awe of you. And I love seeing you doing this podcast to help more people tap into that transformation for themselves.
Steph: That's what lights me up. That's my zone of genius, right?
Kristin Brabant: Yeah, it is, my dear. It is.
Steph: Like Kristen said, we will put all of the links down in the show notes so you can reach out and you can get her Zone of Genius workbook. If someone is like, Kristen, I just want to work with you how do they get in touch with you?
Kristin Brabant: I think the best place to start is by checking out my website, old school. That's just where somebody can really learn about my coaching, the focus of my work. And also look at my case studies. Look at past clients. Do you see yourself in those people? Are their results, results that you want for your life or not? And that will help you make the best decision for you.
So my website is kristinbrabant. com. I offer a complimentary 90 minute goal clarifying consultation to help prospective clients, people who are thinking about working with me, help them really clarify what is your vision of professional and personal success over the next year. And what will it take to make that happen? So 90 minutes of free coaching for people that are really considering, if this is something they want to take seriously and invest in and, make this the best year in their business career and life that they've ever had.
Steph: If they want to be more rich and rested.
Kristin Brabant: That's what I'm here for, is making, really brilliant, collaborative, expert service providers, as well as corporate leaders more rich and more rested. That's what I want for everyone.
Steph: I am so honored to have had you with me today on our journey to Becoming Aligned AF. I hope that this episode sparked some clarity, made you think, or even inspired a small shift towards the life that actually fits you. Remember, alignment isn't a one time destination. It's a practice: a series of small, intentional moves that get you closer to your own version of success.
If you're loving these conversations, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if today's topic spoke to you, share it with a friend who could use a little nudge towards alignment too.
Alright, that's it for me. Catch you next time on Becoming Aligned AF. Until then, keep leaning into what lights you up.
