Tips and tricks for year-end reflection and new year practices

As we close the chapter on a year of achievements and look toward the horizon of new beginnings, join us for a heartfelt and insightful look back at the triumphs and trials that have shaped our journey. Celebrate with us as we share the diverse ways our team, including Emma's reflective practices and Jenna's action-driven ethos, have approached wrapping up the year. Get ready to be inspired by our tenacity checklist and 'rose, bud, thorns exercise, tools that have not only propelled our growth but could also amplify your own personal and professional development.

Our latest episode is like stepping into a family gathering, where stories of personal milestones and professional leaps are passed around like cherished photographs.  Discover how trust, psychological safety, and emotional intelligence have become the bedrock of our team's synergy, and feel the excitement we share for the promising avenues that lie ahead in 2024.

Finally, we raise a toast to future aspirations and invite you to our intimate setting where vision boards become our canvases, and guiding words serve as our north stars. This episode is a celebration of intention-setting, with personal accounts of how "alignment" and "elevate" are steering us into the future. Envision yourself participating in our New Year's traditions, and let it fuel your motivation to chart your own course towards fulfillment and success in the coming year.

Follow Catalyst Development on LinkedIn @catalystdevelopment, @drkatieervin, @jennascott

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Learn more about Supervisor 101 at www.cdleaders.com/supervisor101

Learn about LEADERs Institute at www.katieervin.com/leaders

Theme music by Emma Jo https://emmajo.rocks/

Transcript

Katie Ervin: 0:43

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Path to Leadership. I am really excited for this conversation. I guess I say this every time because I love doing the podcast so much, but on bonus, we have the whole team together. So, hey, emma, how are you? Good morning, I'm good. How are you doing? Great, great, well, and we're really good because Jenna is back from the tropics, from living the beach life. How are you, jenna?

Jenna Scott: 1:10

I'm good, you know, I'm back from the beach and it's still 80 degrees there, but it's 50 here, so I'll take it for now.

Katie Ervin: 1:19

Yeah, it's 50, but it's a little gloomy. But you have us, so that's always good.

Jenna Scott: 1:24

What a bright spot in my days. You know just to have my team back is great and it's good to get back to some routine. You know I was gone for 11 days, which is great, but at some point you're like OK, I'm just willy-nilly here. I mean, I need some structure in my life. So it's good to be back and be able to get back into a little bit of a habit.

Katie Ervin: 1:43

Yeah, it's always so fun like the thought of going, and then like we're like we're so excited for you. Emma and I are like yeah, go have fun. And then about week or day seven of the, at the end of the first week, we're like when she coming back we miss her.

Jenna Scott: 1:59

Like I'll come back every time. Take us with you. I think we should do that. I think we should just have a team like end of the year travel, and that's how we should just do. Reflection of each year is a travel.

Katie Ervin: 2:15

Yeah, I agree, I agree, Well, and we have spent the week doing a whole lot of wonder for the people who know are working geniuses. We've talked a lot about it. Wonder is really that you know top level, like reflection Emma's our Wonder Woman. She loves wonder, don't you.

Emma Blankenship: 2:35

Yeah, this is why I like this time of year, because, well, the both the end of the year and also the beginning of the year, when you're spending a lot of time wondering and thinking about what you want to do in the coming year. And that's really my jam. Like I love that time of year, I love thinking about it, I love journaling about it, and some people maybe not so much, but for me it's, it's my golden opportunity.

Katie Ervin: 3:01

Yeah, yeah. And that's what I love about the conversation we're going to have today because you love wonder, jenna loves to nasty like, get stuff done. Jenna and I are both frustrated by wonder. I love to nasty. So I'm right there in the middle Like I just want to make a decision and get people excited about it, and so we're going to talk just a little bit about how we all do it a little differently and how you know, closing up the year with a bow and opening the new year, how we kind of all do it.

Katie Ervin: 3:31

Yeah Well, so before we jump into 2024, we've got to wrap up 2023. And so for catalyst, we have been doing a lot of that this year and so, if you follow us on social media, we're going to be putting out our end of the year. It's kind of the year at the time of year where everyone does the wrapped. I think Spotify really started it and then everybody else has jumped on board. But so we we've been working on our wrapped and it's really cool because, looking at, we're speaking engagements in our facilitations and our leaders and all of that we have had 31 different engagements this year and we've had 1168 participants in those in person engagements, which is pretty cool number for for a one and a half year old company.

Jenna Scott: 4:26

Awesome. I'm so like. I know we did a lot this year, but when you actually put that, you know 1100 people that we've helped with leadership development. That's such a cool number for me. And then I always like I'm curious, the ripple effect that has happened and how many of those people have, you know, shared a little wisdom or done a little bit of this or that, and and how far our reach really is, is pretty cool.

Katie Ervin: 4:49

Yeah, yeah, you know. And then I I got from Buzzsprout, you know kind of our numbers on the podcast, which has been really cool and all the different countries I mean like 31 different countries are listening to the podcast. Thank you, I've went around the world. We love you, we'd love to come visit you and do a podcast from your house. Is that creepy?

Emma Blankenship: 5:12

We love to travel, we're not creepy.

Jenna Scott: 5:14

Maybe not their house, but just you know from an area near them, local pub.

Katie Ervin: 5:22

And then looking at the book, I mean the book has sold on every continent other than Antarctica. I you know I need to look up exactly the number of countries, but that has been a really cool thing. That happened this year. It happened in April, so I've almost forgotten about it because it was just so long ago, which is ridiculous, because it really wasn't. But thank you everyone who bought the book and has recommended the book and Continues to support that. That's pretty cool, so I'm so for you all. You know, as you're thinking about reflecting on the year, so am I. I'm gonna start with you. How do you really reflect on the year? What do you do as you're wrapping up and and looking towards the future?

Emma Blankenship: 6:06

Well, all December long, I try to think about all the things I did this year and, like you said, things that you did in February, march, april. It's hard to kind of remember when you're just thinking about what did I do this year, you, we just have a recency bias and we only think about the things we did in the last few months. So it takes some intentional sitting down, looking at, you know, maybe your calendar, going backwards, looking at. One of the things I like to do is look through my phone camera roll, you know, and look at all the fun things I did, all the places that I went. You know I had an amazing trip To Asia this year. I did a lot of really cool traveling, went to Japan, thailand, vietnam. I also hit Sweden and the UK this year, and so it's it's really fun to look back through and see all of those memories. And, of course, I also had a big in November I released my album.

Emma Blankenship: 7:01

So the culmination of so much hard work. It's really important to think about that and reflect on it, because otherwise it's so easy to just move on to the next thing Okay, what's the next thing? Okay, what's the next thing. And so this is a built-in time of year and you can do it any time of year, but this is just a time when all of us are sort of thinking about it and being reflective. It's a built-in time of year for you to sit down and do that, to really give yourself credit for the things that you did and think about. You know All of the fun you had and all of the lessons that you learned and all of that. That's really important and it's it's hard to make time for it. So this is like the time when I do it.

Katie Ervin: 7:47

Yeah, yeah, I think that is so great. And you know, I do the same thing where I scroll back into my pictures and it's like, oh my gosh, this has been such a year and so you forget so much of that because you're just living in the the daily grind. Jenna, I know you do it two times, like you do it this time of year, but you also do it another special time, so can you talk about how you do it?

Jenna Scott: 8:11

Yeah. So the funny thing is for me you guys probably know by now I'm not a winter person. I don't like the winter. It's not my jam Like it's the. It's a hard time here and for me I'm such like a naturey person that I love going with more of what nature does, and so for me this time of year is reflective, but it's more of hibernation, right Like when you think about winter. It's a time of quiet, it's a time of you know. A lot of animals are sleeping, the rainforests and stuff are a little bit more down. But so I actually really like doing it around my birthday, because for me my birthday right around September is more of the first year. For me. That is what January 1st is.

Jenna Scott: 8:53

So I will go through and it's funny because you guys use pictures, I use a tenacity checklist, but I go back to my checklist that I've had over the year and I see all the things that it's funny because you guys are laughing at me, but we do it for catalyst too. So in our team meetings every single week we have what we call rosebud thorns and we go through and we talk about what was good that week, what was hard that week and what's a budding opportunity, and so I'm actually in the process of doing this. Now I go through our entire year of what we've done as a company and I pull that section of our team meeting out and I go in and I say like, oh look, this was our rose, this was the good things, this is what happened, these are the hard things. So pictures are a great way to do that too. Obviously, I had some fun travels this year. Emma and I had the same weekend as exciting for November.

Jenna Scott: 9:42

So for me, I get to go back and look at bodybuilding photos and look at. I have a spreadsheet with my coach that shows all of the check-ins that we've done every single Friday since I started with her in April, and so I can literally visually see how my body changed over time and what looks different in that way. But around my birthday, I always just ask myself some big questions. This is the one time that I like wonder and I always ask myself like what went well this year, what was exciting, what was difficult and where can I grow? And then that's where I kind of look to the next year of OK, what opportunities for growth do I have and where can I put those in place.

Jenna Scott: 10:27

So I also love to look at all the books that I read and what my favorite book of the year was. So there's lots of little reflections. Instagram is also a really great place to go look at your stories that you posted in your archives because you can really see what things you were going through or feeling or searching for on Instagram, because the algorithm will tell you everything. Yeah.

Katie Ervin: 10:51

Yeah, I never thought of that. I wish LinkedIn did something like that. That would be really cool. Yeah, yeah, it's so funny because I mean I'm right there in the middle. I kind of do a mix of what you both talked about. Like I look at the pictures, I kind of scroll back through the year. That's always fun to see. But then also, as much as I hate numbers, I also love numbers. So going through my calendar or going through Honeybook, looking at our client engagements, things like that, putting together a spreadsheet makes me really happy. I love a good spreadsheet. So, business-wise and personally, just kind of doing that, that reflection all the way through.

Katie Ervin: 11:32

And you all talked about your highlights for the year. I just it's overwhelming. When I think about my highlights, I mean to finish our first really full calendar year, like we started in July of 2021. I'm sorry, 22. I can never remember when we sometimes I feel like we've been doing 30 years, Sometimes I feel like we just started yesterday. But to go through all of 2023, it's our first real calendar year. And so to go through that whole year, January to December.

Katie Ervin: 12:10

I mean there's so many ups and downs and peaks and valleys and success stories for the business but learning opportunities as well. I mean, we talked about this during our team meeting. I mean there's things that you think you know as a business owner but you have no clue, and so missteps and mistakes and apologies to people. I'm sorry I screwed that up and for me, when I reflect on the year, this is probably one of the biggest growth years I've had, because it's probably one of the hardest years I've had in a long time, Because it's going from what you know, going from work that I've been doing for 24 years to now taking my work and really putting out into the world with my name, my face, and so the stress of all of that has been crazy. So I will say personally, the growth this year has been huge but hard, and I always pride myself on not being the smartest person in the room, but this has been a real year of slapping the face, of sometimes you're real dumb, Like you really don't know, but it's OK. I mean that's the point of this podcast, that's the point of what we do is it's OK not to know everything, it's OK to not be the smartest person in the room, but sometimes it's really hard to come to that realization of oh boy. I need help, I need support, I don't know what I'm doing and I've always done that through my career, but more this year than ever I've had to do that because it's the unknown of what I'm doing.

Katie Ervin: 13:50

And then for our family it's been such an adventure with Abby down at college playing golf. In January through what April she had her championship season for golf and that was fantastic. So so much travel. I think I've seen every small town in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida and Georgia, which was fun. And my husband and I travel we don't fly, we drive, so that's an adventure as well. So that's been fun to watch her growth in the fall, her fall season. And then our son, who's just thriving at work, but he's a Gen Zer. So as we're doing our research on Gen Z the book research, the paper research I'm also kind of living this research in my house as his first career, his first job and maneuvering that. So it has just been a really fun roller coaster of learning and growth for all of the Irvins this year.

Jenna Scott: 14:59

Yeah, it's been really fun to watch you guys and watch. It's like we're all a big family here and so it's like we get to see Abby and Drew and all the fun things that are happening. And it's been really cool to just see how it's given us all opportunities, Even just like you being gone sometimes with Abby for golf season. It's been great for Emma and I because it's like no Katie go, We'll handle it. We've got this. Stop stressing, We've got it and it's giving us the opportunity to grow. At the same time that it's giving you the opportunity to create memories of your family.

Katie Ervin: 15:31

Yeah, yeah. And it's cool too because for the Thanksgiving cruise, well, and Rahm and I took just a random cruise in May, we're like, just go, we're see ya. And then our family cruise in November. I mean I really could, like Drew said, my son said this is the best family cruise we've ever had, and it's one because they're adults and the experiences are different and everything else but two. I will say this for the rest of my life I've never had more pressure, but I've never slept better and been less stressed in my life, and so, being able to be on the cruise and you all have everything under control, it's the first time I've really put the out of office on and truly, truly, truly been out of office, which is cool.

Emma Blankenship: 17:26

Which is funny because now you have a company with your name on it and you would think that that would make you more uptight or more controlling about it. But you are doing so well with like trusting Jenna and me and letting us do our thing while you're gone and just trusting that we have it under control.

Katie Ervin: 17:45

Yeah, and I think that's an important thing for leaders is hiring people that are capable and to have the skills and then fill your gaps and then areas are way smarter than you and, in other areas, still growing and learning and it's a perfect compliment. But I think when leaders feel like they have to be in control of everything is when we put that stress on us or when other people think that, as leaders, we have to have every answer. When I worked, when our last organization, when I worked in the corporate world, even when I was out of office, and be like, okay, my team can take care of it, still, people would reach out to me and it's like, no, literally, my team can take care of it.

Jenna Scott: 18:33

I think the thing that is super beneficial for us and this is something that leaders can work on with their team is even when I was gone. So I helped post a lot of our social media stuff and I sent Emma a message and asked her a question. She was like go away. And so it's having a team that can be like excuse me, no, no, you're not doing this right, even when we all are. Like I was like sitting on a porch doing nothing. I was like I can post something, no big deal. And Emma was like no, you can't and I know we've done that to you, katie, where it's like hey, let me know. Like no, no, you're on vacation, get out of here. And so I think that's a really important piece for teams is to be like somebody who can check you a little bit and not be afraid of like oh, you're the boss, I'm going to get in trouble for kind of giving you some attitude or the other way around. You know, it's nice to see that.

Katie Ervin: 19:24

Yeah, and it goes to everything we teach about psychological safety, emotional intelligence, healthy conflict, you know, being able to hold each other accountable. I mean to have a strong team in a healthy culture. You have to have all of those things. If you don't have those things, then there's going to be cracks. Well, let's talk about 2024. It is hard. I'm stunned that we're sitting in this chair talking about 2024, because I feel like in July we were like just get through July, just get through July, just get through. I guess it was June, get through June, let's get to July, let's be done, let's be done. And then, like July hit. We're like, come on, we got to go. And then all of a sudden it's like, holy moly, it is, it's almost January, so let's talk about 2024. It's going to be such a great year. So, emma, how do you go into the new year? Do you do a word? Do you do goals, like what do you do?

Emma Blankenship: 20:23

Oh, you know me, I do it all. It's my wonder times. I really lean into it and I have so much fun with it. So, in fact, next week I'm having a vision board party. All my friends, you guys, are invited, all my friends are coming over and we're doing. You know, I bought all the supplies for everyone to make a vision board Because I think it's just so important and I want to inspire other people to really hold themselves accountable in the new year for their own dreams and visions and goals, and so that is something that I started this year. I've done it a little bit before with just like one or two friends, but this is the first time I'm having a huge party for it, so it's going to be a lot of fun.

Emma Blankenship: 21:07

And, yeah, I pick a word of the year Next year. My word is alignment. The last two years, I feel like I've really been pushing, pushing, pushing. My words have been very forward driving, but this time I thought you know what I? You know, we just bought a house, we're about to move into it and my album is out, and so I really want to make sure that my actions are really aligned with my values this year and sort of just make sure, after all that driving and all of that accomplishment, that I'm staying in line with my values.

Emma Blankenship: 21:43

And so, yes, I use a word. I have goals and visions, of course, and I make sure that they're visible for me all the time, so that as I'm going through the year it's April and I have to make a decision about something I've offered some opportunity or whatever what I do is I look at my vision board and my goals and my dreams and I say Is this in line with what I said I wanted this year to look like? And that helps me. It gives me a barometer of how to make decisions for my own life.

Katie Ervin: 22:15

Oh, I like that. Yeah, I usually do a word. I haven't picked my word yet, but I feel like it's going to be something along the lines of study or growth. You know. It's something along the lines of you know how do, how do I keep it maintained, and so, yeah, I love that and am going to the vision board party. For someone who doesn't like, wonder, I'm like don't worry.

Emma Blankenship: 22:40

It's going to be fun.

Katie Ervin: 22:45

I don't drink much. I may drink a lot that night, and my board will be fantastic. So, jenna, what do you do?

Jenna Scott: 22:53

So I actually have a Google Doc that I've used for like five years in a row now, and I think it's really nice to have something that is easy to find every single year, because sometimes I think we set these goals and they get shoved into a journal someplace or get lost on a piece of paper, and so I will go back, usually right around like next week, right around the last week of the year, and look at what I did last year for my goals, where I hit those goals. You know what I wanted, and I want to say I hit goals always. I usually set intentions. You know what I want the year to feel like, what I want the year to be part of, and I think for me that's that's easier, because I can find a way to hit the goal just with my tenacity brain. Like I break things down in that way.

Jenna Scott: 23:39

What I usually struggle with is like okay, now I need to pivot. Like one of my weaknesses I know this from years of myself is knowing when to quit, and so being able to like look at something, be like this goal I had here is great, but it's time to pivot away from it and be a little bit more agile or, you know, a little bit more resilient, whatever that might look like. So I go through and I set some intentions of how I want to feel in four or five different areas of my life. So that might be personal, professional, financially. You know relationships that I want to focus on for the year, and so I use those in my Google Docs and then I have a word. This year I usually don't set a word, it's not my thing, but this word has just like hit me in the face like 12 times over the last three or four months, and so for this year it's elevate.

Jenna Scott: 24:28

For me it's what's next? Because I think we're really figuring out what we want and where we're at. And even in my personal life it's like okay, like I know who I am, I know what I'm capable of, I know that I can grow more, I know that we can grow more, I know that we can do more. But, similar to what Emma saying, like it doesn't always have to be the grind side of things, it can be the okay, what's the next step? And is this aligned with what I want to do? Like I'm upping my level. So it's going to be hard, but this is the level I want to be at. So what am I doing to make sure that we're getting there?

Katie Ervin: 25:06

So oh, I love that. I love that, yeah, and I usually, you know, I'll usually pick the word and then, you know, set some I don't know if their intentions or goals or whatever, but just kind of affirmations or things that I'm going to work towards or work, you know, and then I'm a big believer in, and that's why we have the growth guide that we do, that we share with people, is, you know what is your big goal and then what are your? You know, monthly activities and weekly activities that inhabit that you're doing to get you to the goal. And, jenna, you talk about this all the time. It's like just saying you want to lose 30 pounds, like what does that even mean? And so breaking it down to this is what it means. It means eating better, meal prepping, walking, all of that kind of things which shout out to me.

Katie Ervin: 25:54

And there was that picture of me last year at this time that someone posted from the back and I'm like who is that person? And I'm like, oh my gosh. And so down. I think it's like 21 pounds from that picture. So sometimes those horrible pictures are like spurs you, spurs you on. Sorry, adhd, my digress back to the back to the point, but so that's really what I try to do is I try to break it down into weekly habits because if I just set that one word or that one goal, it will just just like strategic plans.

Katie Ervin: 26:31

You know, I've had so many conversations right now going to be facilitating a lot of strategic plans for companies, but a strategic plan is just a, you know, pretty low binder that we put on a shelf. It's it's that, patrick Lynch, you know, in rallying cry. What are we doing? How are we getting there? What's, what's the process? And I think that is way more important in this strategic plan. Some people need it for grants and further boards and everyone wants that. You know, 20 page document of statements that you may or may not get to. But it's those, those habits that you do, I think are way more important.

Jenna Scott: 27:06

That's what I was going to say, katie. This is a lot of what we do in our first session of any of our corporate leaders is we go through and we talk about these thematic goals and everybody sets these pretty goals and you have your values and your things, but you have to actually know what that means and that's where breaking it down we have the rallying grind. Then we have our thematic goals and then we have our objective goals and each one of those is breaking it down into your goal, your monthly check-ins, your daily habits. And that's how you have to break it down. Whether it's personal, professional, it doesn't really matter. You've got to break it down, otherwise what's the saying? It's a goal without a plan is just a wish. You've got to have a plan, otherwise you get pulled around from everything going on day to day, personally, professionally. We all have demands and if you don't have something to guide you, you're probably not going to hit that goal.

Katie Ervin: 27:58

Yeah, and depending on how you behave I mean, I'm obviously squirrel, like easily distracted, and because I hate tenacity, I will be like, well, that looks like a pretty path and so, yeah, that's so important, emma, what are your thoughts?

Emma Blankenship: 28:12

Well, there's just, you know, there's only so much time in a day, and so I think that people get caught up in the busy cycle.

Emma Blankenship: 28:19

You know, like I'm too busy to do this, I'm too busy to go to the gym, I'm too busy to work on this project. That's really important to me and it's, you know, I'm guilty of it too. Like it's very easy to say you know, there's only so much time in a day and I have a lot of stuff to do, and that's true. But having those goals and breaking them down into this is what I need to do each day in order to make that goal happen. It really keeps you on track of like, okay, actually, this is important enough for me to make time for it in my day, and usually there is time in a day. If you look at your screen time, you'll figure that out real quick. And so just having those goals and knowing what they are and having them, you know, visible or you know, present in a rallying cry or something in a business, is, you know, key to being able to make the time and put it into your schedule, because you know, otherwise you just get lost.

Katie Ervin: 29:17

Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, as we're wrapping up and as we're thinking about 2024, I cannot believe it. So, emma, is there anything you're already looking forward to? What is it personally, professionally, anything on the horizon? I'm?

Emma Blankenship: 29:34

looking forward to moving into my new house.

Katie Ervin: 29:38

We are too.

Emma Blankenship: 29:40

I'm sure you're tired of hearing about it Looking forward to moving to my new house and also, you know, every year my goal is to travel and do more travel and see more of the world and experience more things. And I think for Catalyst, we are settling into a rhythm, slowly but surely, where, you know, I'm able to do a lot of travel and have been, and it's been really nice that we. You know, oftentimes when I'm traveling I'm still working, and so I'm really curious to see how we are going to move forward as a company in getting settled into our sort of cycles and how do things work in the next year, because now that we've been through one full year, we kind of know a little bit about the cycles, of how it works for us and for us to grow into more of that. It's going to be really exciting to see.

Katie Ervin: 30:38

Yeah, I agree, and what's interesting too is for Catalyst, like we've settled in. But also, you know, for the first time we're really at capacity, like we limit our retainer clients and you know we have a spot for one more five hour a month retainer client, but other than that, we don't like we we cap it out, so we provide the best service and so we're full for retainer clients, which is awesome. But that's a new cadence that we started at the end of last year or this year, but we'll be going in. So, yeah, it's really exciting to see because we do such a good job of balancing our schedules and balancing our work and not feeling like we all have to be at everything together all the time. That was something we had to learn in our first six months was we had each other as a safety blanket to always be together, and it's like we can't all be together all the time because we have too much greatness going on. So, yeah, it's, it's going to be really cool.

Jenna Scott: 31:38

Jenna, what about you? I think I'm with Emma when it comes to like. Personally. It's really neat because anybody who knows me knows that my boyfriend and I just moved in together for the first time, and so seeing what combined resources can do is going to be neat for me. I've never lived with anybody before, so having somebody to share responsibility with is going to be nice. But that also means that there's more opportunities for more travels and more trips and more things like that.

Jenna Scott: 32:01

And then you guys know, I did a bodybuilding competition this last year and I was in prep basically all year last year and I'm still deciding what that looks like. But I get a little bit more freedom with that. Like I'm not going to be in prep, I know that for sure, but just getting to see like what things I get to experience. That's not just bodybuilding, because it is so life consuming. So that's my personal side.

Jenna Scott: 32:24

And then I think professionally what I'm most looking forward to is just seeing what happens to our reach. So you know, we talked a little bit about the ripple effect in the beginning of this and I think it's really neat to see what happens from that ripple effect. I think we've really established who we are and people knew us because we all had decent networks before we started the company. But I think now they know who we are as a company and what we actually do and just some of the really cool feedback that we've gotten from our clients this year just of how much what we do impacted them individually as a company. I mean, we've seen some staggering numbers come back from those companies of how much their employees are now engaged and I really can't wait to see what reach we get from the next round of I'm going to guess more than 1,100 people going through our program.

Katie Ervin: 33:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah, as you're saying that, I'm just thinking about the feedback on self-awareness that we received from I mean, I think we've had over 100 people in the last month, you know do our post assessments and just their raising of self-awareness and all that impacts not just them and their career but those people around them when they, when they realize you know it might be an asshole, but it might not be my fault oh wait, it might be my fault. I might, I might need to do some things different. Yeah, that's been a really cool. I'm with you on that, you know, for me, I think it's continuing personally to just lean into family time and to I am just oh, okay, yeah, I almost got through the whole end of the year, wrap up without tears.

Jenna Scott: 34:06

I wondered, what that would happen.

Katie Ervin: 34:07

Yeah, gosh, dang it. I am just so wildly lucky I mean just to have, you know, a husband that's like, yeah, sure, let's take this crazy journey and let me help invest in this and let me help you grow it and let me support not just you, katie, and your crazy dreams, but let me make sure that you're taking care of Emma and Jenna and Lucas and Josh and you know we are a family. It's so important to us. So that's been really really cool. So just really leaning in even more to my family, my phenomenal kids, who just continue like, no matter how much I ask them to stop growing up, they just keep doing it, and so so watching that growth is really cool and just trying to continue to model the way for them and to give them the skills that I wish I would have had at 19 and 21. They are so wise, you know past their years and some of that is their generation, but some of that is, you know, the hard conversations that we've had in our house, like I don't shy away from being like, oh, what are you doing? And so I'm continuing to do that I think is so important and then, just for for Catalyst, it's yeah, continuing to try to find that study and to make sure that we you know, I've talked about this a lot lately because we've had a lot of people ask us like they want to buy our curriculum, and it's like no, because what's so important is the impact that we're making. The, you know, the feedback that we're receiving is the time that they spend with us on reflection and growth and self-awareness, and so I'm excited for 2024 as we figure out ways to increase our impact, but also staying very true to who we are.

Katie Ervin: 35:58

You know, jenna, when you were talking about, I think people know who we are. I think it's also important that I think people know our hearts and even if you know we, we don't always deliver what we want to deliver. People understand why we do what we do and how we do it. So making decisions to make sure that we're we're having impact is so important. So I agree, okay, well, before I start completely blubbering because I'm a softy, just as we wrap up, thank you, ladies, for a phenomenal year, phenomenal 18 months. It has just been so cool. Can't wait for 2024. I just feel like you know it's.

Katie Ervin: 36:43

We've talked about irons in the fire and I just feel like there's so much stuff bubbling, personally and professionally, for all of us and I'm excited for for that. I'm excited for people to be on this journey with us and I love hearing the feedback from everybody, as from their self-awareness and their growth. So please share with us as we go into 2024 with the podcast and the work we do. Let us know what you want to know, what your growth areas are, how we can help and support you. That's really why we do what we do.

Katie Ervin: 37:16

Everything we do is a love letter to leaders. I should also say one of the things I did this year totally out of my comfort zone Now on TikTok 47, almost 48. So the thought of TikTok like paralyzed in fear, and now I'm on there and so, anyways, I have a follow up catalyst development on TikTok and you should make my coffee and act like a fool. So thank you ladies, thank you for getting me out of my comfort zone, thank you for your investment in yourselves and me and the company. Truly, no hyperbole could not do it without you. I just really appreciate you.

Jenna Scott: 37:55

Anytime. Thanks for allowing us the opportunity to do so.

Emma Blankenship: 38:00

Yeah, thanks for bringing us on your journey Awesome.

Katie Ervin: 38:03

Well, everyone, have a awesome new year and we will see you in 2024. Bye everyone, bye, bye, bye.