Redefining Success

Kate (00:00)

Welcome back to the Awakening Conversations podcast. My name is Kate. I am here with my cohost Amanda. And today we are being joined by Katie Corbin. Katie is a visionary who has been an entrepreneur since childhood. She started her first business 17 years ago, with zero money to her name, all from scratch and rose like a Phoenix. She has worked with entrepreneurs worldwide digging deep into their companies and hearts to pull out their authentic work and leadership skills to have a more significant impact and income. She serves as a strategic business mentor, aiding entrepreneurs in reaching influential positions or building their profit to their multimillion dollar vision in their respective industries. She now enjoys free time to spend with her kids while building the businesses of her dreams and creating a huge impact. Katie, welcome to the Awakening Conversations podcast.

Katie Corbin (00:57)

Thank you for having me.

Kate (00:58)

You’re welcome. So Katie, there’s so many places we can go in our conversation today. You’re a woman who sounds like she has multiple talents and multiple skills that she brings to the world through her own impact, helping others as well. But where we’d like to begin today is starting to understand your journey and your own awakening experience that happened for you when you were the tender age of 16. Would you like to share with us that part of your journey to begin?

Katie Corbin (01:30)

Yeah, absolutely. I guess my awakening part of it started really early. I mean, I guess maybe comparative to other people. When I was 16, I remember I was actually sitting in my living room and it was strange because there was just this reality shift in my reality where I was like, is everything really solid? Like what is happening here? And I remember sitting in living room sort of in a, in a panic almost, a fierce date going like, what just changed here in this moment? And I still can actually picture it to this day. I mean, I was in my house I grew up in and I was looking at the mantle and this like shift happened in me and it was spontaneous. It wasn’t forced. I had no idea. It wasn’t like my friends were talking about this. And when that shifted in me, I started to actually question a lot of things. I’ve always been a questioner. I remember my dad even he would always like encourage it. Yeah, go. I would always say like, why is that happening? Why is this? Why is that? You know, I’d always question like, why are people doing this. And I always was a questioner of life. Why is society the way it is? But it wasn’t until about my teenage years where I think my reality started to shift a little bit. And I was like, Yeah, why are things I actually started to question even more. And in that shift, it actually caused a lot of panic in me because I didn’t know what was happening. And I remember actually went through a series of panic attacks, like physiological panic attacks, having to run out of restaurants or having to, you know, sit through this, this, this intense feeling.

And through that experience, it actually led me to seek out it’s like that saying where when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And I actually started to seek out a mentor that could walk me through the process, like actually with a background in psychology. So it was really interesting when I landed in that mentor’s office. He was able to guide me through the process. Like, you’re not crazy. This is, you know, this is this is happening to you. It’s happening for you and to you. And this mentor was amazing, still in my life now, that was able to take me, that was, it took me a couple of years to find that wasn’t like he just landed right after I had that awakening process. It was it was years later. I would say like four years later, it actually landed in me like, my gosh. I sort of struggled it through it myself because also like my peers at the time and even my parents were always supportive, but they were sort of like, yeah, it’s just anxiety or it’s just this, you know, kind of categorize it in what they could understand. But when that actually, when he landed in my realm, it was very eye opening, like it allowed me to settle into that and sort of know what was happening, that it wasn’t, I wasn’t going crazy or it wasn’t a bad thing, you know, and he had gone through it himself too as well. So it was really beautiful as, you know, everything is divinely orchestrated, which I believe that’s true. Where I had that experience and then I couldn’t really understand it fully until I could understand it fully through the help of somebody else.

Amanda (05:09)

So how did your life change following that experience or that experience, those changes over in that moment and over some time, what shifted for you through going through this experience beyond having panic attacks, like what was it like before and then what was your experience afterwards? If that makes sense.

Katie Corbin (05:32)

Yeah, no, that definitely does. I feel like it actually set me on a path, which was kind of interesting because it was seemingly sort of uncomfortable. I don’t know if everybody’s awakening experience is super comfortable. Like, this is just beautiful. And on the other side, there’s these roses and, you know, petals and we just walk like we’re so awake. Mine was actually really painful.

So what it actually did was start to shift my mind. Even I landed more, I think in my body, I start, I actually was really sick as a kid. I had a lot of allergies and asthma and a lot of inflammatory kind of stuff. And it sent me on a path of health actually. So I started a research, like what are there other alternative types of therapies and how can I help myself with my diet? And how can I allow myself to be as healthy as possible without let’s say like covering it with medication or things that had been recommended to me, not that I didn’t have good doctors, but I went to a chiropractor. I started to actually set my path, that trajectory more towards like sort of like the question of like, is there anything better here? What else is here for me? What else is possible? And actually through that journey, which is really interesting that I started to heal internally, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And that led me onto my career path. My first career path, I went to Chinese medical school. I became an acupuncturist at 24. I actually started when I was 21, was sort of when this process was happening. And I mean, the process goes in waves. Some days it’s more heightened, other days for me it was like sort of in the background. It wasn’t like this slow elevation climb or whatever we want to call it. So that experience shifted, it’s almost turned the dial for me and it shifted a little bit for me to change. I think the way that I was doing things, I wasn’t gonna eat what the average American ate being in the United States. I wasn’t going to, you know my friends even picked on me. Like I wasn’t like painting my fingernails because it was like, that’s probably toxic. And my friends still pick on me to this day, not that I’ll never paint my fingernails, but it wasn’t something I included in my life because I was like, why would I do that? It’s societally, if you have, like I have no fingernail polish on nail, it’s like societally, that’s so normal to get your nails done. But I was like, well, what’s in the fingernail polish? So it led me on to that path of continuing to question, but it was almost like at a deeper, embodiment more like how am I living this and how am I going through this in my life?

Kate (08:19)

And can I ask like just going back to that initial experience for you, like what was the first question? Like what was the first experience like that moment? Like, can you explain that and describe that for us?

Katie Corbin (08:32)

Yeah, I actually don’t. I didn’t have a question. I wasn’t thinking which was kind of interesting. It was literally like the room shifted or the frequency shifted or something happened where I wasn’t really thinking about much. I remember I was like, why didn’t, it was it was more like a perspective shift for me versus of, and a feeling internally versus me, like my brain was not really thinking anything at that time, or I couldn’t remember it to be.

Kate (09:04)

Yeah. I loved it when, when you first mentioned that I was like, I’m sure that’s what she meant because I have these moments in my waking reality now, sometimes where I even sort of on the verge of one today, I was in the supermarket and I was like, I live in Japan. So I was in a town where I was the only foreigner in that building and I’m standing in the checkout line and I just kind of, you just have those moments where you’re like, is this real? Is this where I really am? And I, I wait for that kind of like glitch in the system and like, you know, to see the, the things start to move. And like, I literally am waiting for that to happen to me. And I feel like you described that as your first experience where you’ve just kind of like, you know, this isn’t real.

Katie Corbin (09:51)

Yeah.

Kate (09:51)

I love that.

Amanda (09:52)

I just want to say, Kate, that I feel like I’m also a bit of an outsider in the culture where I am. And I have those moments too, where I’m just kind of looking at it from an observer perspective. I think it’s a lot easier to do that when it’s not your own culture and you’re not in it, integrated in it. so, yeah, it’s kind of weird to look at society from that lens of like the bird’s eye view of, it’s kind of like you’re watching a movie in a way where it kind of is like a movie. I don’t know. But as far as for you, Kate, that whole like frequency change or Kate, I’m sorry, did I say Kate, Katie, that frequency change. And I think a lot of times for us when we are not in our mind, that’s when these experiences are more likely to happen when the mind kind of goes offline where it’s like taking a nap and the right side of our brains can come online a little bit stronger and see things from a different reality, a different perspective. So that’s cool to hear how that happened for you. And then also another thing, I also have a background in natural health and this paradigm that one of my favorite teachers talked about was like healing the physical so then you can access the spiritual, but it’s like your spiritual came online in order for you to heal the physical. So it’s like, can happen in both directions where when one becomes more in alignment, we have access to the other part of like whole health. And so that’s cool to see where that both helped you on your trajectory of further questioning, but also optimizing your system. So then I’m sure that allowed you to go deeper with your spiritual

So do you want to dive deeper into maybe talking also about your grandma and other experiences that you’ve had since that first experience in terms of cultivating your connection with something maybe beyond this physical reality?

Katie Corbin (12:16)

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m sure my grandma’s here with us too as well. But so my grandmother was really interesting woman. She actually lived to be 98 years old. And she was very, I don’t know, just very sort of exploratory. I mean, she grew up in the Great Depression. She lived almost 100 years. And I remember in my grandma’s family, she had a lot of children and we were my mom was the youngest of all the children.

So my grandma actually was a grandmother to me. Cause a lot of the children being older, she couldn’t fully be a grandma cause she was still a mom. Cause the span was kind of long, the period that she had children. So I always saw my grandma as sort of like a wise woman or, you know, sort of like an elder where she carried this wisdom beyond even this lifetime. I remember my grandma and I and my mom actually, we used to go to some spiritual talks and people would be like, my grandma’s aura is like huge. They’d be like, you have a huge aura. What is with you? And she’d just smile and laugh because she just sort of knew, but she wasn’t like a practicing psychic or she never did anything in her career. She was more like a nurse or worked in a nursing home. And it was funny because like we knew, but like, she knew too, but it was funny when people would like reflect that back. So yeah, my grandma was actually, I call my grandma like my first spiritual teacher, even though she wasn’t, I mean, she didn’t like claim that title, but she was very open to spirituality. I mean, we grew up more in a Christian background, not like a, you know, a Bible belt Christian, but just like a faith in God and a higher power and you know, following some of the areas of the Bible, being biblical, right, the word of God ultimately. And we, but we, we didn’t have to be like so strict about it, like the strict way of being Christian. So it was more like an openness to what is, what is here for us? Like, what is our connection with God? And how do we, how do we define that for ourselves? So with my grandmother, she always sort of guided me in, in like, the realms I call it, right? So like the spiritual realm, like the connection to even the other realm, right? The other side, or we would say like heaven or, you know, wherever that veil sort of meets earth. And she would, I would watch her be like super highly intuitive where she knew things before things happened. And she would sense things before things happened.

And my mom also has this and I also have that gift too as well being intuitive. But it’s not like she taught me like this is the way that you do this. Like there wasn’t like a manual, but just witnessing her being able to do that and access those spaces allowed me to be like, wow, this is this is possible here. So it was interesting as she was always open and my grandma and I laugh because I don’t know if you remember remember when like Sylvia Brown was like on Montel I know Sylvia Brown has passed now but we would watch that that was like the only psychic show like like at the time you know so we would watch that even and we would read her books and we would talk about her because she was kind of the only psychic in I would say not the only but the most popular that was on television. You know, and my grandma, I mean, she grew up without a television. So television was like a really big deal for her as she, you know, as we got she got older. But it was really interesting because she helped to ground in this spirituality in me that allowed me to explore. Right. It’s almost like going from a place of curiosity versus this is the way it is or you only have to follow this path. So it was interesting because actually when she passed in 2021. And it was a big experience for me personally on it, because my grandma was like one of my favorite people. But on a spiritual level, actually almost like I felt even more connected to her while she was passing. And it was interesting because it was like the first not that nobody has passed around me, but I felt like when she was also passing in the process of awakening to is almost like I was walking between realms a little bit getting.

Well, as she was passing, I almost felt like I was sort of in the spiritual world, like non form, nonlinear, but then also being in my reality with my children and going through this experience. I feel like somewhat it deepened the awakening process for me and and allowed me to realize like, we’re really not totally solid. Like there’s something else here. Of course, I’m not going to say like, I know everything or I always question my questions, but it allowed me to have that experience between, I wanna say like life and death, not like a near death experience, because it wasn’t my experience, but watching her go through the process of dying was really an interesting and I mean, clearly very emotionally and sad for me, but also an interesting experience for me to watch that happen in

Amanda (17:51)

I wonder, and from your perspective, Katie, I think a lot of times people shut their gifts down in childhood and it sounds like you having your grandma and your mom almost support exploration allowed this awakening to happen at such an early age rather than these gifts being suppressed and then having them come out much later in life, which is what happens for a lot of people. So in terms of having that support there, maybe reflecting on that and then also, I don’t know if you’ve heard of shared death experiences, but it’s where someone still present has a, almost an awakening through being in, whether you’re in the space or you’re not in the space, a new experience, a little bit of what they experience in the crossing over because I can relate to what you’re saying in terms of being involved in someone so close to you passing over and how that facilitates a part of your awakening experience. So that’s, I learned about that term like a couple of years ago and it was like, that’s why this experience within my mom was so profound because I was in it with her. I experienced something on the other side. There was like this opening of her passing and then I something activated within me from being in that portal with her is how I see it. And then also how does, how are you working with your kids or like being with your kids as a result of the experience you’ve had with your grandma and your mom holding this space for you, whether consciously or unconsciously through your childhood and development.

Katie Corbin (19:41)

Yeah, so yeah, it’s really interesting. I never appreciated the development of humans until I had children and I watched them miraculously develop into their own selves and their own personalities. Now, my kids are still young, so they’re clearly still developing. But I do I want to say I do encourage it in my children. I don’t tell them like this is the way that you have to do to, know, whatever I know my son is very highly sensitive. So he’s sensitive to energy, he’s sensitive to things. He has that extra sensory. Now, my son was my first born too, as well, which I’m also the first born of my mother. And there was like this connection with my son where I would watch him process energy or process things and sort of encourage him like it’s okay or this is how we clear spaces or this is how we clear energy through us so we don’t also take on other people’s things right because that’s also like the energetic field we can take on energy of other people. So I didn’t know that as a child I mean I don’t even know if my grandma knew that where and obviously this goes into the field of energy work where how do we process what’s not ours ultimately. Maybe go into the grocery store, maybe we absorb something. And then how do we process that through and say, like, well, this isn’t ours. Clear and clear that energetically out. So I feel like for my children, it’s more of the encouragement versus like a teaching of this is the way that we are spiritual. Now, the other funny thing is that although being very spiritual and being sort of in that spiritual realm where we we question a lot of things like this religion or that religion. We’ve actually come back in, in my children versus going to, I’ve homeschooled my kids since they were really young, so that was sort of non -linear, but we’ve actually come back into more of a Christian tradition where they’re learning the Bible and they’re learning some of the basis of religion, but still questioning it. It’s not like, hmm, I asked them, do you like learning about God? And they’re like, yeah, like.

You know, so it’s really interesting to watch them in a period of exploration, not saying that this is right or this is wrong, but having the experience of understanding, like, how do we learn about a higher power and how do we learn about the experience of reality through even science? Right. How do we learn about how we interact and communicate? How do we learn about energy? So I tend to expose them to maybe different things than most people, right, we’ll put that in quotations, and then I almost allow them to, like, have their own experience within that versus me telling them this is the way that we actually do things.

Kate (22:45)

That sounds amazing. And I think, you know, I imagine if we were all given that option, that choice. And what I really feel like, you know, I’m hearing, as you say that about your children, there’s probably so much that they can teach us when they’re allowed to like fully have that experience for themselves. And we’re not saying it’s like this from our limited understanding, right? When we’ve come in and had to maybe even like expand our awareness from the container we might’ve been put into at the beginning. Whereas you’re giving them this opportunity to be like, just come in with it all and you tell me what’s going on and I’ll help you understand it. Like that’s so awesome. You almost make me want to have children just to do the same. Almost. Yeah. So awesome.

Katie Corbin (23:37)

Yeah, it is. I was going to say it is an experience, right? I feel like even I always see like entrepreneurship. I know we haven’t talked about this yet, but entrepreneurship and parenting is a massive spiritual journey if you see it in that in that light.

Amanda (23:37)

Yeah, I was just gonna say real fast and then maybe we can go in that direction. That a lot of people that we speak to, they either have one extreme or the other with regards to something beyond. It’s either really strict, dogmatic religion or it’s atheism. There’s no God, whatever. And then later on in life, they either they reject the religion and they find something else or they, you know, don’t believe there’s anything and then they have an experience and realize, there’s something more.

So yeah, what if we didn’t have to heal from like that polarity of, you know, one side or the other and we could just kind of be in the middle and kind of exist between questioning, exploration, figuring it out for ourselves through inquiry, through what, you know, I feel for me, my connection has come from within having experienced sensing energy and my own exploration. And so imagine if more kids have that experience through their childhood, that’s part of their developmental process. Like, how cool would that be?

Like Kate said, it’s awesome that you’re doing it this way. And I imagine this generation of kids are a lot more sensitive than our generation, like what we were allowed to be in our generation in terms of being in touch with our emotions. So I have hope and faith that this sensitivity and parents cultivating it is going to shape our world in a new way.

Let’s go in the direction of entrepreneurship and maybe share a bit about your story and then also, talk about entrepreneurship as, a spiritual growth opportunity for our, for ourselves.

Katie Corbin (25:51)

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like entrepreneurship can be a vehicle, right? If we allow it to be a vehicle for ultimate growth and faith, because what is it without faith? Because there’s going to be moments where you feel like nothing is working. And there’s going to be moments where you feel like maybe I’ll live in a box. Who knows? You know, so I feel like when I started, I didn’t actually recognize this till I got into actual entrepreneurship. But when I was a kid, I used to try to sell things to people. And I used to sell these like special pencils for like 25 cents and whoever would buy them. I actually used to make, which is really funny, these like shows and I would sell tickets to the show. I made my sister, you know, I didn’t pay her. Of course she was my employee, but she was part of the show, you know and I would do garage sales with my grandma and I would help my grandma price things and say like, okay, so what are we selling this for? And I didn’t realize like that spirit was in me until I actually got into entrepreneurship. So I actually threw myself out into entrepreneurship at 24. I graduated with my master’s in acupuncture. This was before acupuncture was even known in the United States. I mean, I was still before it was on regular television when it first went on Dr. OZ which wasn’t on anything other than maybe like the Nutty Professor or, know, that’s that thing that kills people on Bruce Lee, right? That point. That’s all people in society knew about it in America anyways, not like the whole world, but in the United States where I did my training and started my practice. But when I was 24, I graduated. And the only options for me were to go to a big city and, you know, work in an established practice that probably had been there for a few years or go on a cruise line and do cruise ship acupuncture, which is such a weird thing. You’d be surprised how many people start acupuncture on a cruise ship. But I didn’t want to do either of those. I actually I was I was born and raised in upstate New York. And I I just threw myself out and said, figure it out, like open your own practice and see what happens. So, I started with no experience other than I knew that I knew what I was doing. I studied really hard in school. I wanted to know the art form and the science behind acupuncture. And I wanted to give a good service. And that’s really all I knew. So I rented a space and I just started entrepreneurship. And I remember this was even before like social media and I was in the yellow pages. I mean, that’s where I advertised, which is kind of funny now because that’s not even existent. Obviously, like there’s a yellow pages but not like it used to be. And I remember being like, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m just going to figure this out. So I did figure it out. And through that process actually of like figuring it out, not that I know everything to any degree, but I opened a practice, I actually sold that practice not long after. And then I actually moved down to the south of the United States.

And I opened another practice and I grew that practice and it’s still existent to this day too. I still practice. It’s part time, very part time and I still run that business. I, and what led me into this was when I started to be like, successful or whatever we deem to be successful in business. You know, running, running the business well or making money or doing the things, whatever it is, people started to ask me like, can you help me? And that’s actually how I got into coaching other entrepreneurs in business, which was really just kind of like a funny, funny evolution of, you know, my own journey where I saw the need and then I figured out how to fulfill that need to some degree. I don’t work with every entrepreneur in the world. I don’t know certain types of, you know, businesses, but I do know the business of medicine and the business of sort of spirituality and self help and development. So that’s actually sort of like a long, you know, short version of my long journey into doing helping other entrepreneurs really grow their companies in the way of, the way that they want to again, not like this box where we put this franchise on the business and say like, this is the rules, and this is the regulations and this is how we do business. It’s in the way that they want to grow their company, it is in the way that is authentic to them. It is in the way of like not having to have these crappy marketing tactics. So that’s really how I stepped into that.

And I think going back to your question, Amanda, the big spiritual journey. I mean, I’ve been highs and lows. I’ve had questioned myself whether I can do this, whether I believe in myself, whether it’s going to work out. Right? Like there’s been so many dark places in my journey where I had to hang on to some type of spirituality. I had to go back into God and say, is this going to work out? Because I’m not really sure. So It’s like a strengthening of that faith muscle. And I still question it’s not like I’m just like this person on this high horse that I’m almighty and this person that knows everything. I still go through periods of, you know, highs and lows and the lows tend to be less low and the highs tend to be less high. It’s sort of more even versus like, I’m doing really good. I’m going to go homeless. I’m really good. I’m going to I’m going to be in a box. You know, so it’s more like this, this nicer, know, not this like drastic, you know, volatile business, but it’s true. I do think that that helps to cultivate our trust muscle and our faith because sometimes there’s no other choice in entrepreneurship.

Kate (32:01)

Yeah. I want to say, you know, I, I think I underestimate what I have done in my life. And I mean, one of the big things that we just undertook was buying a hotel in Japan in a ski region, never having ever operated a hotel and we built a cafe and a restaurant. I’ve served a beer or two before. But we opened all three of those and ran them for seven years. And, you know, you have these moments where you’ve put everything in it and you just have to strap in for the ride and you have to surrender and you have to trust so much in the process. And that, you know, there was a reason that you were guided to this thing that, you know, for us, this was such a, I felt like, I mean, people ask me, why’d you buy a hotel? And I’m like, it kind of just happened, but it was 100 % for us. Our life just kind of led us in this direction. The things happened, the people turned up and here we are. And we went through this massive transformation as people, as a, you know, my husband and I did this, did this together as a, as a couple. And you do, you, you have to meet the parts of yourself that get scared. Right. And you have to you know, go to all those dark places within yourself to become a version of you to like move you forward. And so, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s becoming that version of you who can, you know, help that business succeed while at the same time, that absolute trust and surrender. And like you said, like it’s faith that, you know, you, you’ve really got to take your hands off completely in some ways, but the more you can do that, the more you’re going to feel like, okay, you know, I can lean into that trust, but it’s not easy. It’s so not easy to like surrender and trust.

Katie Corbin (34:17)

Yeah, it’s not. And that’s the challenge. If it was easy, everyone would do it. If it was, you know, if it was like grasp, right, you can grasp it like sometimes you can’t sometimes you’re free falling, and you don’t know where it’s going to lead to. But then you have to trust in the process. It’s almost like hard to even fully explain in words sometimes what we feel internally when it comes to that stepping into that space and then figuring out in that space.

Amanda (34:49)

We talk a lot about on this podcast about the awakening process really being this opportunity for us to come more into alignment with who we are authentically, our soul had in mind for us in this lifetime. for me, entrepreneurship has really like, I don’t feel I could do a quote unquote normal path just feels like whenever I tried it, I’d get sick. And even with all the struggles and challenges that come with this path of uncertainty, it’s really for me, I see it as the like you said, a vehicle to facilitate me becoming more of who I’m meant to be. I don’t know if there’s just some of us that this is the path that we need to take in order to become our most realized, actualized selves. And some people, the nine to five job that’s been created for them. They don’t have to really, there’s that security. That’s more their path. But I think for some of us, we have to take this path. It feels like we’re not meant to take the other path because it does facilitate so much evolution for who we are and to really cultivate that sense of internal guidance that maybe we don’t need as much if we’re in a situation that’s more curated for us.

So what’s your experience been, with working with people and guiding

Katie Corbin (36:33)

Yeah, so in my experience, that there is like certain people are made for entrepreneurship. And I don’t really fully know why. I don’t know if it’s like innate like it’s astrological and it’s born within us, or it’s developed. I think it’s honestly like I think now that I’m saying it’s some of both. So I do think that people tend to set out on a path because there’s an urge there. There’s some kind of urge where it’s like either they don’t wanna do things the way, they rebel against society where we have a lot of maverick entrepreneurs if we talk about archetypes, where they rebel against society and say, I’m not gonna do it the way that you tell me to do it. And I’m maverick too as well. So that can sometimes drive us into that space of like, I’m not gonna do it the way that other people tell me to do it. Cause why is that right? So I think that that can drive us. The other thing is too, is sometimes it’s innately built meaning that maybe we have experienced in it, maybe our family were entrepreneurs, we saw it, we experienced it and we said like, God, there’s another way other than getting this nine to five job. And for a lot of people, the only way for them is also a nine to five job because it may be safety and security. It may be they’re, you know, they can’t really develop an entrepreneurship inside of their career or whatever it is, right? But I do think that a lot of it is instinctual.

But then a lot is built. So I do believe that the journey of entrepreneurship is a journey of deeper belief in oneself. And that is even oneself in or like the company, right, which is ultimately extension of the founder of the company. But it can be a balance. Like how much belief do we have in ourselves and in an authentic way, not in a narcissistic way, not in a way of superficiality and I’m doing this to look good. I mean, that is out there too as well. But in a way of deepening a sense of self and faith and trust in knowing that we don’t know what’s on the horizon. But the truth is, as entrepreneurs, the reality is always that.

A job can also disappear, a company can vanish. It’s almost like a false sense of safety and a false sense of security versus being secure and trusting in ourselves, right? Betting on ourselves each time is a very different feeling and a very different bet than betting on something externally outside of us.

Amanda (39:11)

As you were talking, I feel certain people have different pathways that they take to, that are their challenge, like for health. Health, for example, is one that I think a lot of people have. And so having a job where they don’t have to think about their job, how they’re going to make money, it gives them the ability to use health as a vehicle of their growth and expansion through a healing journey, for example.

So maybe for some people, it’s just like that just needs the money needs to be on autopilot. Just obviously there’s no guarantee, like you said.

Yeah, I think like you said, it’s like either, innately, or like there’s something, there’s something internal where it’s like, we crave this pathway and thinking back for myself, like as I, I’ve realized later in my life is that, like my dad, I think tried to go out on a different path with regards to, like, he did, like he went to culinary school and like, he tried to like, he tried to do things differently than like, you know, go get your degree and get a profession. You know, and he, kind of paved his own way, but it was so hard that like, he eventually went and worked for the same company as his older brother. And it was kind of like, I got, I got to hang up that dream hat and go be practical so I can support my family type situation with there’s nothing wrong with that. It was just like, I think there was something in him that wanted something different, but it’s like, it does take so much commitment and like cultivation of self to persist with it through those ups and downs and this cultivation of belief in oneself. And so I feel like the baton was kind of passed to me unconsciously of like, yeah, I have this in me to seek something, a different path, my own path. 

So, yeah, I think like there’s something to be said of like it coming from our family in some way or another, right? Our ancestry, which, you have a lot of, didn’t, we weren’t planning to talk about it, but as far as like ancestral healing, ancestral medicine, that’s part of your path as well, right?

Katie Corbin (41:36)

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And what I was going to say to Amanda as you’re talking that’s like the inner cultivation of the entrepreneur, but it can start in family lines. So it’s like maybe your dad kind of started that inner cultivation and obviously like things are passed down the line, good things and bad things, right? Whatever we want to cut it, trauma and talents.

They can be passed down the line. So sometimes we actually can see, right? We can see it. And then sometimes we don’t see it. We see like my grandmother, my dad’s mom actually had an antique shop and she was an antique dealer. And I remember as a child, I mean, she was, I think she was about seven when I passed, we would go to her space and she would have a shop literally in our garage and she would sell antiques. And I thought that that was interesting as a child because I had never, I’ve never seen that nobody else in my family was an entrepreneur. And the other thing is kind of interesting entrepreneurship now in this age is much more accessible than it was even in parents ages or grandparents ages because back then it required a lot more. Now you could literally start something on the internet with no money and grow that thing. You could, you know, start even join an MLM or a multi -level marketing company with barely any startup money and grow that thing. It’s not that you have to take out this massive loan and start a building and people have to come there. Like it’s much more accessible than it used to be prior. So that’s why I think people have that, that feeling of like, like the wanting to be an entrepreneur, like this like high perspective that entrepreneurship is like this glorified thing, like everybody does it because they got a YouTube channel, you know, type of thing. And then they don’t realize when they get into it, it’s just the same as it used to be. It requires even if you’re out and, you know, doing the Internet, like it requires a belief you could get, you know, slandered or, you know, there’s so many things that take place now with the accessibility of doing business all over the world versus that was really, that didn’t used to be available. So I think that it’s like the evolution, right? We’re talking about like the ancestral, right? Almost like the work around family lines and how that can change. And sometimes we can cultivate that or a family member can cultivate that up the line and it actually can start to cultivate within us. Where that comes from fully, it’s kind of hard to say. Is it made in our DNA? I don’t know. So that’s where that instinctual nature can come in going like, maybe it’s like living through, right? Like living through the line of the family, which is an interesting question to ask.

Kate (44:26)

Yeah, Katie, so, you know, your, your own spiritual awakening, how does that feed into the work that you do with your, with the people that you’re working with now? Because I have had look at your website and there’s some amazing things on there that have very spiritual flavor to them. So can you share with us how you brought all that together?

Katie Corbin (44:45)

Yeah, it’s kind of, it’s kind of interesting. So I never leave out spirituality. I don’t know if I even could where you can compartmentalize things even in marketing or even in, you know, like saying like, this is the demographic or this is my client avatar. Like, that can be so logistical and strategy oriented. But underneath that, right is is is almost like the spiritual or let’s even say like the unconscious realm of like the nature of being too as well, because why can one person go out and do the thing and the other person unconsciously has a barrier for some reason? So I feel like in the process of awakening for me, right, I was almost like even through my journey, I had awakened more to the unconscious nature of humans and the unconscious beliefs that are underneath, almost I call it in the etheric realm or in the energy realm where it’s like unpalpable, but why is this person in this cycle of self -sabotage, right? Why is this person not able, why are they procrastinating, right? It’s psychological, right? It’s within the mind, but what lives in the body lives in the mind, what lives in the spirit lives in the body, right? They’re all interconnected.

So even on an awakening level, if we don’t awaken to the nature of us, like under the surface, what’s hidden under the surface, sometimes we don’t become successful. That’s quotations. Or sometimes we sabotage our success or sometimes we’re fear of success, right? Because success is so relative to a person and what defines success for one person might not define it for another. So I feel like in that process of awakening, deepening the awakening around human nature and the psychology of humans at a physiological and emotional level, but also like there’s no disconnection between that spiritual level within them. So I find it sort of is a it’s like I can’t separate them. I can’t take them apart. So sometimes in my work, I will walk people through maybe a strategy like this is the way that we do things. But there will be a moment where they start to resist that thing. And then it’s like, well, what’s underneath here? Like, what’s underneath here that needs to heal? Or what’s underneath here? Like even spiritually that’s coming through for them. That’s not spoken. It’s unspoken, right? The unspoken realm. That they need to witness, right? It needs to come up, kind of like awakening where we need to start to question and something bubbles up and we’re going like, huh, I wonder why I was doing that that way. Or so I feel like for me, in my work, I just, they’re just together. I don’t think I could ever separate them, especially with my past and knowing what I know.

Amanda (47:52)

What came up is how I think for a long time spiritual people have struggled with money. That’s not a 100 % statement, but stereotypically I would say that there’s been a wound, I would say, probably that a lot of people in the spiritual community, lack of a better, we’re not all one community, but as far as we’re all the same, stereotypically, spirituality and money, like there has seemed to be a divide or a disconnect, I would say, between being financially prosperous and also taking a spiritual path or doing spiritual work. But I feel really in order for us to manifest our highest potential, we need to have those financial needs taken care of and be somewhat secure and knowing that we are worthy of receiving financial compensation for our gifts. And so can you speak to that to some degree about receiving self -worth and just anything that comes to you around that?

Katie Corbin (49:15)

Yeah, absolutely. It is a big problem, I will say, in the spiritual realm. And sometimes it’s a pendulum where a lot of gurus even will get too much greed, right, like the greed part. They’ll go on the other end going like, I deserve everything. And I am, you know, so almost like a narcissistic spectrum. And then there’s the other side where you shouldn’t charge her anything. Everything comes from God. And well, this is the monetary way of exchange, ultimately.

So usually that I’ve seen this a lot and usually that money is just a projection. Underneath that is wounding, right? Wounding around persecution wounds, we’re gonna be persecuted for doing our gifts maybe in this lifetime or past lifetimes that we have. So a fear of being persecuted and then often it also can be a fear around rejection. So who will we be if we have money? Who won’t we be if we don’t have money? Like we can swing both ways and then belonging. So if you don’t belong to a group, right, a belonging wound, we wanna belong, that’s safety, security and belonging is the base of humanity. And without that belonging, we can feel like, well, my mom wasn’t really, what will she think? What about my friend? They probably won’t like me anymore when I have money. So we can actually project the inner woundings onto money. And it’s funny because it’s a mirror, right? It’s a mirror. So sometimes what we need to heal can really mirror, right? So if we’re spiritual people, we’re like, we’re really spiritual. We’re really awake. And then we’re mirrored with the reality of money, right? We’re mirrored in that space of like, okay, you think, know, like. Let’s try to apply that to this, right? We’re like challenged in that space. So I do find, and most of it is projection. Obviously money is neutral. It can be used for good and it can be used for evil. It can be used to pay our kids’ school and have them have an education and we can buy a handbag that’s luxurious because we wanna look good. So it depends on how we utilize. It’s just a tool. It’s just how we can drive your car. How do you want to drive your car? You want to drive your car speed limit? Do you want to go fast? Like it’s up to you. But it’s but I find that that tends to be like pure projection of an underlying wound that most of time that they haven’t touched yet or they’re not fully aware of where it’s coming from. So it’s easy to project on something in the third dimensional reality.

Kate (51:53)

That’s really interesting because I think, you know, my own experience, money has always been so charged, right? Like money, you say it’s neutral and my whole body just goes, you know, like has a hard time with that. Right. And I know I have my money, my, my wounds and like I wrote a whole bunch of notes just then I was like, I think I’ve got a few things I need to look at. But I mean, you know, that’s a big one, right? Like it is just a thing we’ve attached so much to it. And I guess our experiences project onto it and like become a block because I really like through what you’ve just said in my own experience of my entrepreneur journey and my own creating my own business, like, that’s one of the big ones, you know, and it’s an and what is it really, it’s energy that I have tied up in, you know, a story or a belief that just sort of does feel like something that stands in front of me.

And this just easy flow of a thing back and forth, right? Like, how does it get so complicated? You know, like, obviously there’s, there’s our past and there’s programming and there’s experiences, but it, that’s just blowing my mind in this moment, because it’s like, I love how you just like, it’s neutral. It’s like, I feel that as a truth. And then I feel my experience here. like, okay, I’ve got, I want to work on that. I want it to be neutral. Cause that feels like there’s just a beautiful flow then, right? Like what does it what does it feel like? I want to know what it feels like where I don’t have that charge and I don’t have that projection because that to me just feels like well then that just opens things up.

Katie Corbin (53:29)

Yeah, absolutely. And something else that has helped me too, as well, and that I teach is that not only is it neutral, but it also the clients and people aren’t really our supply, a higher power always is. So if we can take the transactional part of it, it’s like, OK, go back into faith, go back into trust. Like we were talking about in the during of entrepreneurship, money is just a part of that.

It feels, and can feel really charged. Like, my gosh, like even somebody says like, my gosh, that’s so expensive, or my gosh, that’s so cheap. Or you know, like we we put these values upon it, because of course, like at the base of survival, we all need money to survive. Like there’s there’s it just doesn’t happen in this world without that. So it’s easy to feel, attach and I do find that if we tend to be in a survival mode too as well, sometimes we can be a little bit more charged around it I’ve been you know where we’re like, okay like oh we feeling like we’re surviving a little bit whether it’s health, whether it is money, whether it’s a relationship and you’re like I just had a fight with my friend and then everything else is charged so we can take that in in in almost like transmute it or transfer it on to something else.

Now, the truth is too as well around like the money piece is when we loosen our grip around it too as well, when we’re not like seeking the next sale or seeking the next thing, sometimes it’s like backs into trust too, right? It backs into trust in ourselves. Like I know it is coming because I’ve taken the actions and I’ve been a good steward, right? Being a good steward of money will also keep the good stewardship of ourselves too as well.

And I know that there’s a period in my life where I was not a good, I’m not always a good steward of everything. You know, like there’s been periods of we’re still that, that’s still human and we have to give ourselves grace about being human. We still have things to heal or we still have life to live. And even like what you’re saying, Kate too, is like sometimes it’s charged. Like you can give yourself grace around that because it’s like sometimes we’re just dang human and we just have to kind of laugh at ourselves a little bit and go like, yeah, look at me being this like human and just being you know, in my humanness of of who I am.

Kate (55:48)

Yeah. And I think too, like it’s, it’s the, it’s the trust piece too, but it is like, you know, and you’re journey really speaks to that is remembering we are this, this other part too, this bigger part, you know, there’s, there is the human that, you know, but there is this other part of us, this spiritual, this connected part that is, you know, part of that larger consciousness. And, you know, I think the game here really is, is, is beginning to have, hold more of that awareness so that we can kind of be that bigger part of ourselves rather than, you know, our limited human selves and, and give ourselves the grace when we get so stuck in that little tiny humanness. 

Katie Corbin (56:33)

Yes, Absolutely.

Amanda (56:36)

I work with the Gene Keys and I have 32 in my culture sphere and 32 is about fear of failure and that one has to do with money and our relationship to money. And so I feel, I’ve come to learn that my relationship with money is part of my path of working through the shadow of the fear of failure and like, what does that mean failing? And it’s connected to the fear of death and which I also have in my profile as well. And so it’s, what’s underlying a lot of times with our relationship with money is, are these underlying fears and money can also be one of those vehicles that help us address those underlying wounds and shadows that are, you know, a lot of times I feel mine’s ancestral, like it came from somewhere beyond me and before me. And so I’m here to work on this wound and to, I don’t want to say transcend it, to go beyond it. So for me, it’s been a good, of like, what happens when, you know, my bank account is running low and it cultivates something within me, a trust, a release, a relaxation, a surrender, and to see like, where’s this money going to come from and see what the universe wants to send my way and do that experience. It’s like, I’m always taken care of. There’s, you know, and that’s not to say that I’ve never been without. And so it’s this, through my ups and downs with money, it’s been this really good teacher and learning to trust that I’m supported in this lifetime. And, you know, I’d prefer not to have, prefer to have less ups and downs, of course, and to get more, have more mastery around my relationship with money.

So yeah, it’s been, I feel it’s one of those teachers for me as well in terms of, I’ve come to learn and money is like one of my biggest teachers in this lifetime and my relationship with money. And I used to have a lot of shame around my challenge with money and now it’s more neutral. That shame has, I’ve released that shame because I’m like, really, it’s just this, it’s part of my work that I’m here to do is to change my relationship with money. And so I don’t need to have that about whatever challenges that I have with it.

Kate (59:05)

So Katie, do you want to share with us some more about the work that you are doing with people and, you know, helping them to get out of these wounds, to have their successful businesses, to, you know, really step into the gifts and have an impact? Because I loved reading that, that you’re helping people have an impact.

Katie Corbin (59:22)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been doing that, like the coaching work for about seven years, but I really got into it the last two or three years, like more hardcore, where I’m taking on more clients and I’m helping more more companies. And really, the easiest way to find me is just through my website, katiecorbin.com.

And that’s sort of like my hub. I’m also very active on Facebook. If you find me at Katie Corbin on Facebook, I always am open. That’s my my most activity on social media that I do right now. So I always tell people to also find me there.

Kate (1:00:04)

Well, Katie, it’s been a wonderful conversation. I feel like there’s more we could dive into and, maybe down the track, we just have one totally on entrepreneurship and or I’ll just have a call with you and pick your brain because that was enlightening for me. I really appreciate what I heard and I’ve got some things to think about, but thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story today. And we’ll make sure to have all the links in the show notes for people to check out.

Amanda (1:00:30)

Katie, I enjoyed this conversation and like all the places we went with it. Thank you for sharing and being here and yeah, doing the work that you’re doing.

Katie Corbin (1:00:40)

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Kate (1:00:41)

You’re welcome. And we thank you for listening. We’ll join you in the next episode.