443 Katie DePaola: Live in Possibility

Might the greatest, gravest challenge in your life … be your greatest opportunity? Sometimes life for some of us … has to get bad enough … for us to change course and live into our true purpose.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who turned her greatest challenge into her greatest opportunity.

Katie DePaola says her business saved her life. A survivor of the debilitating Lyme Disease – she built her business from the bathtub that soothed her pain, growing the company from a self-funded startup to a million-dollar business.

Katie is the founder of the Inner Glow Circle – an accredited training and certification company for women coaches, leaders and entrepreneurs. Launching a startup is never easy even in the best of times … and Katie lost her brother to an accidental overdose right as she was starting.

Katie DePaola will be here in just a moment, and first…

And first I have a special gift for you… if 2020 is the year you finally launch your podcast … or if you have a podcast and you want to make it profitable. Grab my 7 tips for profitable podcasting at wingspodcast.com/liftoff – that’s wingspodcast.com/liftoff.

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Now back to the inspiring Katie DePaola.

Katie knows what it’s like to bootstrap a business to million-dollar success – even when her world was falling apart all around her. A Lyme disease survivor who also lost her brother to an accidental overdose just as she was starting her business, she shares today why the toughest times are often the gift that allows us to find and grow into our true purpose … find fulfillment, and build our fortune.

DePaola is the founder of Inner Glow Circle, an accredited training and certification company for women coaches, leaders and entrepreneurs. She’s taught thousands of women how to find their purpose, live it and get paid. She has been featured in TIME Magazine, The Huffington Post, Elite Daily and more. Katie is also an author – In her first book, At Least You Look Good (2020), Katie shares her vulnerable (and often funny) reflections on how to deal with the hardest parts of life — and her best advice for how to “glow through what you go through.”

So are you ready to fly with Katie DePaola?

Melinda Wittstock:         Katie, welcome to Wings.

Katie DePaola:                  Hi, I’m so excited to be here, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, me too. I love your story, that you were creating a startup, which you were bootstrapping, as all this stuff was going on in your life. Recovering from a really debilitating disease, and then of course your brother, a terrible, terrible tragedy. How did you find the strength to get through that period and build a business?

Katie DePaola:                  Yeah, big question. So I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease after being sick for 10 years and not knowing what was wrong. Very soon after my diagnosis, my brother passed away from an accidental overdose, and that was after a few years of struggling with his mental health. That was really… It was the toughest experience of my entire life. The day I found out was obviously the worst day of my life. It’s extremely tough to even go back there now, even though it’s been, gosh, five years.

Katie DePaola:                  But a lot of people have experiences like that that are huge, huge setbacks. What I realized was I needed to talk about it because running a coaching school and a school for women entrepreneurs, I just… we’re constantly hearing stories of why women think they can’t. There were so many times where can’t seemed a lot better than can, you know what I mean?

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Katie DePaola:                  We all have those experiences. Being an entrepreneur is hard in and of itself, but it’s the best personal development you can ever do for yourself. But not everybody makes it. We’re five years old this year, we’re like grandma’s as far as age in the startup world. I feel like we’re just getting started, so that’s sort of a mind trip. But what kept me going was really my vision. I know that probably sounds like something people say all the time, but it was the only thing.

Katie DePaola:                  I’m sure that this is how people feel when they lose a partner or have something going on and they have children. I don’t have kids yet, but [inaudible] was my baby, Inner Glow Circle was what I was waking up for in the morning. The business saved my life. I say that a lot, but I really, really mean it. It gave me the hope to keep going in my darkest moments, and there were some really, really hard times in that period. So I think that I just… I have this mindset that I’ve developed over the years, and it’s really that my job is to always ask myself what’s possible. Not what’s probable or what’s likely or what’s happened in the past, but what’s possible.

Katie DePaola:                  There were just certain things that I knew were possible, like I knew it was possible to keep growing the business and have the business be really healthy and operating successfully and with a lot of ease. That’s a daily process. But the company has grown so much, and she’s sort of an entity in and of herself at this point. And then personally, I knew it was possible. 30 over 30 doctors told me it wasn’t, but I knew it was possible that I’d be able to get rid of my Lyme. As of the end of 2019, I’m two years Lyme-free and haven’t had any relapses or issues or anything.

Katie DePaola:                  So I just held that possibility. I said, “There has to be a doctor that can cure me,” because Lyme is something that they say is not curable, and you can only put it into remission. I’m like, “If people cure cancer, they can cure Lyme disease. I just have to find the right doctor.” I searched and I searched I prayed and I prayed. And then with my brother, that was the hardest thing to make sense of. Death is really… especially a tragic, sudden death is really, really trippy. That took me the longest. But the belief that I held there was, “I know that it is possible for me to truly have peace around my brother’s passing.” People say, “Oh, we’re gathering to celebrate this person’s life.” I didn’t want to just celebrate my brother’s life, I wanted to really make sense of the fact that he had passed over and see even a purpose in that.

Katie DePaola:                  My family started a foundation when he passed away, we have a huge golf tournament every year and we raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the hospitals here in the DC area. It’s all around mental health awareness. Of course, I miss my brother every day, it’s extremely tough, but I know that… My belief now is that this was part of his greater purpose too. And that even though he only lived for 20 years, that was his plan the whole time and we just didn’t know. Maybe I sound silly or delusional, but that is the belief system that has gotten me through all of this. So I just try to see things on purpose, and I try to ask myself what’s possible every single day, many times throughout the day, whether it’s work related or a personal thing.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love that. It’s so inspiring to be in possibility. I often say to people that when you envision your life or you’re finding your purpose, or whatever, live in the vision of it, not in the current circumstance. We can often have our vision… This being 2020, all of us with perfect vision this year, we hope, right?

Katie DePaola:                  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         If we stay limited in our current circumstance, it’s really… it kind of limits our vision and it limits us from… I love this word, just being in possibility. What is possible for you? Because I don’t know about you, but with a lot of your… Because you’re in the coaching business, right?

Katie DePaola:                  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         So you work with a lot of women. Do they struggle with seeing the bigness of their possibility?

Katie DePaola:                  I think so. I think people get really stuck in what’s happening right now. [crosstalk 00:18:41]. I think future tripping too much, like going too far into the future, is sometimes-

Melinda Wittstock:         Then you’re just a dreamer, right?

Katie DePaola:                  Or it can produce a lot of anxiety. It’s like we’d have to also be in the moment, but I think if our eyes can be on the future too and we’re creating our vision from not who we are today, but who we’re going to be in a year or in 10 years.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. So interesting. I spent the latter part of the year in 2019 writing my three year vivid vision for my company and my life. It’s wonderful, because it’s amazing how many of these things actually become true. But you do have to-

Katie DePaola:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         But you do have to focus your action around it. Right?

Katie DePaola:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         For sure. But that’s a really lovely thing to do. So what was the spark? With all of that going on in your life, just suffering the Lyme’s disease and with everything with your brother, what was the spark that made you start the business?

Katie DePaola:                  In the very beginning, before I knew that I was sick… I kind of always knew something was not right. But before I got diagnosed, I just had that story that a lot of people have where I was… I graduated from college, I went to Vanderbilt, so I went to a great school, I moved right into New York city, which for me was like the dream. Living in New York, I worked a few different jobs, I worked at PR, I worked in fashion, I worked in consulting, I was in the marketing world, and I learned a lot. But I just felt so unfulfilled. That unfulfillment was actually what drove me the most.

Katie DePaola:                  I knew that if I was going to have a career, which I obviously wanted to have, I saw myself as a career woman, and if I was going to a career, it needed to be something that really felt purposeful and that really lit me up. I am very driven by knowing that my actions and my words make a difference. In those jobs in the city, I was just a number, and anybody could have been doing what I was doing, and that was really demotivating to me. So I was motivated by how de-motivated I was, and I eventually became fulfilled by realizing how unfulfilled I was.

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t that interesting? Entrepreneurship is such a cure for so many things. Because often, God, it’s so easy to fall into this trap, right? Because this is how we’re taught, to live a life of should’s, all the things that we should do; tick this box, tick that box, you should do this, you should go to this school, you should be that or you should… whatever, should. It’s not necessarily who we’re meant to be or what our true purpose is. So in finding your purpose, you’re helping other people find theirs, it seems, with what you do in your business. Is that true?

Katie DePaola:                  Absolutely. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t that funny how that works though? Like, the challenge that we have in our life and what we have to overcome is exactly what we should be teaching other people to overcome. That’s probably why we went through it to begin with.

Katie DePaola:                  Right. Well that’s why they say we teach what we need to learn. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Katie DePaola:                  That’s an interesting thing because a lot of our students, I know a lot of entrepreneurs experience this across the board, but they suffer from “imposter syndrome”, feeling like, “Who am I to be talking about this? Who am I to be starting a business? Who am I to be helping other people start their businesses when I’m still figuring it out?” It’s like, the whole point is that you’re so dedicated to figuring it out, that you’re actually figuring it out. At least in the coaching industry or if you’re mentoring or consulting, you only need to be a few steps ahead of your ideal client. You don’t need to be 10 years ahead. In fact, that’s probably too much of a gap.

Katie DePaola:                  I think that we have to have this mindset, again, of, “I’m going through what I’m going through for a reason, and what can I learn from this and how can I use this to teach my clients or my team?” Or if you’re an author or a speaker, that’s part of the work that you do. My audience, right? So we’re always growing and learning. I think business is so much about evolution.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I can’t think of really doing anything else. I think all the personal growth that I’ve had has been as a result of being an entrepreneur, and the personal growth is also circular, it’s helped me in business.

Katie DePaola:                  Yeah. Certainly.

Melinda Wittstock:         What have been some of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned as you’ve gone from scaling? You mentioned that you created the business in your bathtub. Explain that little bit. I don’t know, I’m just trying to picture that, you’re soaking in the tub with a glass of wine thinking, “Yeah, I should do this.” What was that? What was building your business in your bathtub?

Katie DePaola:                  I was sick right? I had Lyme disease, and I just lived in a lot of pain. I was physically [crosstalk] so often, so I was taking Epsom salt bags and bringing my computer to the bathtub. There’s these things you can order online that are like bath desks, and they’re great. I should be an investor in one of those businesses. The point is, I did literally work from the bathtub, but the point more so is that I just didn’t buy my own excuses. So even like 2017 where we were, what, two to three years in business, I was… that’s when I finally found a Lyme doctor that could cure me. Every week, I was hooked up to an IV for hours and in the doctor’s office for hours.

Katie DePaola:                  There were periods of my life where I was at a doctor almost every single day. So a lot of people would say, “Well, I don’t really have time to work,” or, “I don’t really have space to work.” I just was like, “How do I work from the doctor’s office?” I just had this mindset of, not do I do this, but how do I do this? People talk a lot in the coaching industry, and I’m sort of edging into like the spiritual field and the field of mindset and things like that. People talk a lot about this idea that things shouldn’t be hard, and everything should feel good, and if you’re operating in alignment in your business, it should feel really good.

Katie DePaola:                  Nothing felt good when I was sick and nothing felt good when I lost my brother, so that messaging really did not resonate with me. So I had to create my own messaging. I was like, “Okay, I’m working towards a reality where things feel good, but no, my brother just overdosed. Nothing feels good. This feels horrible.” But [inaudible] relative. So talk about creating a business that brings you pleasure and joy. That was hard for me. Everything felt really, really difficult. Everything felt very uphill in the beginning. I don’t think that’s always how it is, but because I had so much personal stuff happening simultaneously, was starting this business that I had a very clear plan to scale, the whole thing felt uphill.

Katie DePaola:                  But I sort of decided like, “You know what? I’m going to find a way to have this feel good.” I created milestones for myself, and I got really great perspective on my progress, and I could see forward movement. Now I see that all that stuff paid off and I am living from a place of a lot more joy and pleasure and ease, and it’s a lot easier to take time off. I trust my team that I can walk away from the business for weeks or months if I had to. I feel really proud of myself for getting us to that place.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful. What was it like growing the team in the beginning? A lot of entrepreneurs struggle in that… In that place where you’re a solo entrepreneur, everyone has to begin with this kind of visionary, with this idea and you’re doing all of it, then you maybe hire your first person or an assistant or whatever, and then you’ve got to grow your team. A lot of women, I see, make the mistake of not hiring fast enough, not asking for help early enough, all of those things, and it really holds back a lot of businesses. What was it like for you in those moments of really adding to your team at the different stages of scaling your team?

Katie DePaola:                  First, I just want to say I completely agree with you that that’s one of the areas where a lot of us don’t move fast enough. What I will add to that is like, one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is… I was just talking with someone about this the other day, but people just hire someone and they throw them into the gig and they’re like, “Figure it out.” It’s like a hope and a prayer that they’re going to know how to do the job that you haven’t really laid out for them. So training and mentoring and… There’s this really fine line between being involved and training your new team member and micromanaging.

Katie DePaola:                  I think a lot of us tend to be more naturally controlling, and a lot of us… Type A women entrepreneurs are very perfectionistic and so we’re like, “Well, I don’t want to be that way.” So then we do nothing, and we’re wondering why we want to fire our assistant in five minutes. It’s like, this is not The Devil Wears Prada, guys. So I think it’s really important to be involved with your team. I was very, very lucky, and also I’ll give myself some credit, I think I made a really smart move, and I think a lot of us can do this if we think about this strategically. But really early on, I, I guess, essentially, recruited one of my clients that I had worked with for years. She was very loyal client, and we had a good relationship. But it’s not like we were best friends right away. She was my client, we had a professional relationship.

Katie DePaola:                  But I saw that she had a skill set that I was missing. She was like the… She was a coach and when we started working together she was a teacher, and she was trying to get out of teaching and education and be fully an entrepreneur. But she was amazing at writing curriculum. She would write curriculums in her sleep. We would get on our weekly coaching sessions, and she’d be like, “I wrote another program, I wrote another curriculum. I built this whole..” And I’m thinking to myself like, “What is she doing with these? Is she selling them? Is she marketing them?” Because she was just building all this content.

Katie DePaola:                  I was really great at marketing and sales and branding and messaging, and I could tell the story, but I don’t have like a linear brain like that. I can write a curriculum. But anyways, long story short, the client that I’m talking about is now my business partner, Liv Chapman. Liv and I, we’ve got a really great compliment of skills. She’s our COO and I’m the CEO, and we both have a ton of involvement in the company, and it’s been really easy for us over the years. I think some of our listeners probably have business partners.

Katie DePaola:                  If you have a great business partner and you’ve got really great synergy or maybe you just have someone you’ve worked with for a really long time… In the business, Liv and I really knew what was hers to pick up and what was mine to pick up. So the challenge that we’ve had in scaling, scaling and growing to a team of 20 instead of a team of two is that we have to direct it a lot more. We’re trying to create this inside of our culture, and I think we have, to a large extent, especially with our middle management team, but… creating another culture, which is like a culture of knowing what your glow zone is, your glow zone being your zone of genius, the area where you operate the best, where you’re the sharpest and really understanding, what is each person on the team’s glow zone and making sure that they know to be assertive and sort of grab the things that are theirs, the things that are easiest for them.

Katie DePaola:                  Also, at the same time, being able to say, “You know what, that’s not my thing. I’m going to pass that to so-and-so because that’s really their expertise.” We also have a culture of like, everyone’s an overachiever in the company, so everyone tries to do it all, which means like by the end of the year… and this was us at the end of 2019, but by the end of the year, everyone’s burnt out. I’m like, “Guys, we have to all be more sustainable.” I’m not committed as a leader to creating a culture [inaudible 00:32:02]. That’s a lot of different answers to your question, but I think just to break it down and simplify it, you got to figure out what culture you’re building with your team, and you have to figure out ways to teach people how you think and then to also teach people how to think.

Katie DePaola:                  So we use a lot of like decision making trees inside of the company. So rather than me making this decision for you… For years, I was giving Liv different lenses to make decisions through, now she gives our program director lenses to make the decisions through, think of it this way, think of it this way, what’s in alignment with our values? Because you can’t scale your own brain. Your brain can’t be on literally everything. So you have to scale a mindset, and I think that’s the most effective thing you can do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, I love that, scaling a mindset, because… This comes from the executive team. We really need to be very clear about the vision and expectations. But the other tricky thing though, is being clear and aligned on vision but having a diversity of team members. So is this what you mean, really, about… Because everyone has to be in their respective glow zone, and they’re all different, but aligned on the culture and the mission. And [crosstalk 00:33:32]. All makes sense in theory, but it’s… I guess you break a few eggs getting there. What were some of the things that were the toughest? Was there anything that went wrong along that process that you really learned from, like someone being in the wrong seat or that kind of thing? Because this is such an area, I think, that so many people struggle with.

Katie DePaola:                  Oh my God, was there anything that went wrong? Yes, there were so many things that went wrong, and there’s still things that go wrong. I think you’re right, definitely one of them is having someone in the wrong role. I think what we’re really trying to get better at is just hiring the right person for the right role from the beginning. What I will say is because we’re a compassion-driven company and because we hire people that we really enjoy working with, sometimes that’s really hard. I’m not the person who will say don’t hire your friends or don’t hire a family member. I grew up in a family business, and a quite successful family business. So I think that that has really helped me in my industry, because coaching is such a personal, sort of… not to poke fun at it all, I don’t say this in a negative way, but a touchy, feely industry.

Katie DePaola:                  We’ll be in a team meeting, and everyone’s sharing about their last therapy session. Like, okay guys, let’s get to business here. But we’re in the coaching world, these are the conversations people are having. There’s this line between personal and professional, and I have to sort of be the mama hen or Liv has to. But I think you’re right, getting people in the right seats. Addressing culture, so like saying, “Hey, I know this is how it’s gone.” There’s been a lot of space in the company for personal conversations. We want everyone to feel really loved and cared for in our company, and those words work for us. Everybody’s going to have their own version, inspired or whatever it is.

Katie DePaola:                  However, we want to make sure that that when we’re working, work is the number one priority, and here are other ways for you guys to connect offline, or… We have a completely virtual business, like my partner’s in Tampa, we have two of our most involved team members, one’s in Italy, one’s in Amsterdam, and they’re from the US, but that’s where they’re living now, and that’s a great luxury for them, that they’re able to do this work and also live there. They thank us for that all the time. But creating a really establishing culture when you have a virtual business. More and more businesses are moving to be predominantly online.

Katie DePaola:                  Culture is really important, and I think that it comes from communication. I think that’s the last tip that I’ll say, communication has been an area of growth for us. I’m a huge communicator, so I really need to talk about everything and understand the vision, very visual, I need to see a deck, I need to understand like what’s the plan for the marketing department? What does it look like? What does Q1 look like, what does Q4 look like? Liv is not that like that. She keeps so much in her head, she’s more internal.

Katie DePaola:                  When it was just us figuring things out, I could talk and she would give me the answers I needed to feel comfortable and we’d go from there. But now, because our team is bigger, we have to… We have big company-wide meetings every [inaudible] individually as needed. So getting the right structure together… Sometimes you’ll realize you’ve gotten certain weekly meetings on the calendar that you don’t need any more. Don’t be afraid to trash them, but make sure you what you need instead and really understanding, what does communication look like inside of our team?

Katie DePaola:                  We implemented Slack last year and made that our mean place of communication and drastically cut down on emails, and that made us a lot more efficient. So there’s tons of tools out there. Try different things, don’t be afraid to move on and trash something when it feels like it’s sort of expired inside of the business.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. That’s so important, being able to let go. I have a really good friend who’s a 10 times serial entrepreneur who has a trapeze in her back garden, she’s also a trapeze artist. She made me do this thing, it was a little bit terrifying. One of the things that’s so important about the trapeze relative to scaling is that you have to be able to let go of one bar to be able to grab the other bar. Right?

Katie DePaola:                  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         In context of the trapeze, and that’s true in business. So what’s working in a certain stage of business suddenly isn’t working anymore, you have to let that go and you’ve got to go onto the next thing, and that’s so hard because we get very… just our human psychology. We get very attached to what’s familiar and [crosstalk] what’s not, unless we’re just crazy entrepreneurs, which is probably me. I don’t mind a change. In fact, I like that. But most people are not necessarily like that.

Katie DePaola:                  I think we get more and more comfortable with it over the years. Only you could set the record straight here, but I would guess that you’ve gotten better and better at letting go and probably sharper at knowing when to let go and what to let go of and who to let go. I think these are sort of muscles that we build too.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. It’s kind of pattern recognition, I guess.

Katie DePaola:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right?

Katie DePaola:                  Yeah, that’s a great term.

Melinda Wittstock:         You just get so used to the being… You almost get comfortable being uncomfortable because they’re certain parts of growth, and knowing the difference when you’re uncomfortable because you’re growing or when you’re uncomfortable because you’re doing the wrong thing. That’s subtle, it can be subtle.

Katie DePaola:                  Right. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:         How do you advise your clients on that? Because that’s tricky. In all this stuff that you’re doing for women, which I think is amazing by the way, how could you assist them in knowing the difference between those two things?

Katie DePaola:                  We talk about it. Typically, at least in the beginning, we say, try to understand for yourself the difference between fear and intuition. Are you getting a no that’s really a warning sign or are you just scared shitless because you’ve never done this before? I think that’s a constant tapping in and sort of trial and error and understanding, looking backwards and saying, “Okay, how was I feeling when I made that call?” Or, “How was I feeling when I made that decision?” Trying not to make emotional decisions. I think it’s okay to let our emotions inform our decisions, but I find for myself, like I’m Italian and I can… I’m an emotional leader, and there’s benefits to that. And then there’s also areas where I need to grow because of that.

Katie DePaola:                  So I might say something in the heat of the moment that I didn’t mean to come out that way. I’m getting better and better at that because again, it’s really important for culture. So I think sometimes that comes from slowing down. I think that just slowing down and paying attention, saying, “Okay, let me take a minute here. Am I afraid? Is it more likely that I’m feeling this nervousness because I’m afraid, or is it more likely that I’m actually about to make this purchase that’s going to be a huge mistake.?” Sometimes you’re going to think it’s fear and it’s actually intuition, and sometimes you’re going to think it’s intuition and it’s actually fear.

Katie DePaola:                  I try to pay attention to my body too. This is very granular, but I noticed that I’ll feel like a tightness or attention or I’ll feel something physical. I try to pay attention to that and use that as a sign because God, we’re making show many decisions every single day that it’s impossible to do it perfectly.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, absolutely. Oh my goodness. So what is your vision for the company and where you are ultimately going to be in like five years, 10 years?

Katie DePaola:                  Yeah, great question. So I’m really, really passionate about making entrepreneurship more accessible for women. I really feel that our company has a very strong feminist agenda and that we, not just IGC, but all of us, me, you, all of our colleagues that are in similar fields, our listeners, that were really leading the fourth wave of feminism, and that entrepreneurship is the thing that is and will continue to set women free. We get to say how much we’re paid, we get to say when we work, we get to say if we want to be a mom and also be working, we get to say what that looks like, we get to say if we don’t want that. Right?

Katie DePaola:                  So I think that entrepreneurship gives us so much freedom, and I think there’s a lot of growth for us as women. There’s many areas that I see women being very afraid to touch. You talked about this, but hiring and scaling, some people are like, “Oh, I don’t want to get so big that I have to hire help.” And it’s like, why?

Melinda Wittstock:         Why not, why not?

Katie DePaola:                  [inaudible] fear and it’s lack of knowledge and information. My big, big vision and what I really, really intuitively see and have seen is that we’ll be putting this on television. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but I think that in order to reach the most people, and not just people who are online searching for a coach training program or who are on Facebook and getting targeted by our ads because they also like Tony Robbins or Oprah, I want to be reaching people who would never typically pick up a personal development book or aren’t “into spirituality.” I want to be reaching (silence) home cooking in the Midwest and don’t know that this is an option for them. A lot of our students still come from big cities and more metropolitan areas, and I just want to make this more mainstream and more accessible for everyone. Not that everybody’s going to be a coach or go through our coach training program, but…

Katie DePaola:                  For this year, for 2020, one of the things we’re doing is building out a suite of digital courses, because our signature course is… it’s online, but it’s live and it’s a really big and bigger investment for people, it’s school. We know that we want to have different tiers of access. So that’s really what I’m looking at, is like, how do we reach the most people? My gut is that it’s media, and specifically television, whether that’s traditional or a different form, and that we’re showing the behind the scenes. So I really want to be producing TV, like reality shows that show the behind the scenes of being a woman entrepreneur, and not just myself, but many. So that’s really what I see for the future future.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s just beautiful. So Katie, thank you so much. I want to make sure that people know how to find you and work with you so they can get their inner glow and really, really step up in business. Because I agree with you, entrepreneurship does set women free. So how can they find you?

Katie DePaola:                  So thank you so much, and thank you for creating this platform and getting so many women’s stories out and sharing your story. I think it’s so inspiring, and it’s so important for us as women to have role models, really. You can find us online at innerglowcircle.com, and you can find us on Instagram at @, at @innerglowcircle, and also at It’s Katie DePaola.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wonderful. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Katie DePaola:                  Thank you.