Episode 3

[00:00:00] Hey, besties. Welcome to the Midwest Makers Podcast. I'm Kenna. I'm the co-founder of Midwest Fragrance Company and this is your biz bestie check-in. So grab your coffee, get comfy, and let's yap. Today, I really just wanted to push myself outside of my comfort zone and make an episode where I don't really have a topic and just kind of share things I'm thinking about for 2026, what lessons I've learned this week. I have no idea where this is gonna go, but buckle up my friends because we're in for a journey. If you've been following the podcast for the last two episodes, you've heard me talk about this mindset of figuring it out as I go, and I thought this would be a really good way to embody that and just push myself, like I said, outside of my comfort zone, not really have a plan and just see where it goes.

And hopefully you'll find something in here that you need, that speaks to you... that would be, bless my little heart so much. So I hope that is the case. I think I wanna start by [00:01:00] sharing things that I'm thinking about and just some Kenna insights and thoughts... I spent a lot of time reflecting on 2025 and on what worked for me and what didn't work for me and what I wanted to leave in this past year and what I really wanted to embody in 2026.

We put so much pressure on ourselves to set all these New Year's resolutions or these New Year's goals. And I wanna start by talking to you a little bit about how I am seeing that for myself and maybe it will resonate with you and you can maybe just take a little piece of it for yourself.

In the years past, I have always set goals, but this year I decided to break up with goals, and I don't mean that fully, but instead of setting goals, I'm starting to set focuses for myself.

I'm thinking of it more as directions that I want to move towards. I've learned in the past that setting rigid goals and plans and structures for myself doesn't fully suit me. I focus [00:02:00] way too much on the outcome, and I haven't really always enjoyed the journey . Also recognizing that, life has ebbs and flows and it moves you in different directions. And because I've always been so focused on that outcome. It was just always next. What's next? If I would achieve a goal, I'd be like, I can do better.

What's the next thing I can do? I just don't really, I don't think that serves me anymore. I think I just wanna leave that in the past. That got me to a certain point of where I am now. And now I can choose to let it go. So focuses are for me.

I wanted to share mine with you... maybe this can, like I said, inspire you. Okay, so my first guiding principle. I think that's another way to think about it, is this concept of anti burnout. Really, truly taking care of myself this year. I think I spoke about that in the last episode.

That was one of the biggest things that held me back this past year ... not taking care of myself, not taking breaks, not resting, just falling out of all the patterns of behavior that really supported me and helped me. I think everyone's different, but for me, I know that [00:03:00] these things are eating well, moving my body, yoga, getting enough sleep, going to bed early, waking up early, putting some boundaries in place around work, so I'm not immediately jumping up into the day and just starting work from the moment my eyeballs wake up or wake up, my eyeballs wake up the moment my eyeballs open. It's also about not being on my phone constantly.

Just having a little bit of me time having some rest and getting to explore what does rest mean to me in this season of my life. It doesn't always mean sitting on the couch rotting. It can be fun things, it can be creative things. Doing this podcast is a form of rest for me. I want to build my life this year so that I am taking care of myself so that I can show up for everyone else in my life.

And when I don't do that for myself, it's just not good. And it really just slowed me down this past year. And so I am vowing and I'm telling you to hold me accountable. I cannot do that. So I've already started implementing things in my life to [00:04:00] support this, and I'll talk about that in a bit.

Another one of my focuses for this year is being present, being intentional, and focusing on the good. It's a little bit long, but it's all of those things. I wanna have a heart that is full of gratitude for all these beautiful blessings that I have been given and that I've busted my butt for. I started following Tony Robbins and I did some of his courses like two years ago, and he had this saying and it just really stuck with me.

" Where focus goes, energy flows." And if you aren't careful, it's so easy to get sucked into seeing what's not working, what's wrong, how far you have left to go, not being present in the moment , not focusing on all of the great, wonderful things. I think that your perception is incredibly important and choosing. I feel like this past year, one of the words that just kept coming back to me was " choosing." I get to choose how I view certain things, and I want to focus on the good in my life. I want to slow down and be present and enjoy the [00:05:00] journey and enjoy all the lessons that I'm getting to learn and all the opportunities that I have.

I am so blessed, and so I just wanna lean into that more this year. If you've been following the podcast, you won't be surprised by this next one, which is the "figure it out as I go" mindset. I wanna continue to have that be a guiding principle of focus for me. Really leaning into being a learner, being able to experiment and have that mindset, the test, fail, grow, repeat.

I really want that to just be embodied so that becomes second nature to me, and I don't have to have a plan. I don't have to have it all perfect. I can show up with a microphone and just yap at you and it's okay. It is okay to not know what I'm doing. It's okay to just experiment and have fun, so that's another one. Another thing I really wanna do this year is change my mindset around work and what it means to me. How I view work I think right now and how it's been for me in the last few years... it's always been overwhelming and it's a lot.

This kind of goes back to that focus on the good [00:06:00] mindset. If I choose to focus on how overwhelming all of this is and how there's so much. If I continue to choose that way of looking at it. I just don't know how that serves me.

So I want to focus on the good and I really wanna start to do some really deep work around what it means to me now, because I know that we're in a different season of our business and our lives. I want work for me to be something I'm passionate about.

Exactly. Again, coming back to the podcast, this is what I wanna do. This is what really lights me up, is being able to serve you guys and steward our business and it is such a blessing... I want to really connect with that part of it and the parts that really light me up and I get to choose this year, because we are working really hard over here at Midwest... we're trying to get out of, what we've been calling " the Founder's Trap", which is everything being solely relied on Doug and I to move anything forward and building up that team underneath us even more to support us in that so that our business isn't run off of two, three brains, but that we're all a part of this bigger [00:07:00] picture and working together to do it, which is so cool to be able to be a part of.

Another one that I wanna really focus on this year is behavior change, skill development. This started out for me as something that was focused on habits.... that's how it started. But then I found this girl who has her PhD in behavior change psychology, and I started doing some coaching...

and I've just been like, oh my goodness, there's this whole. I don't even know how to describe it yet, but it's something that I'm really passionate about, personal development, and I love that this is also the science behind behavior change as a skillset and how your brain really works. I'm just fascinated by it... it's helping me in so many different ways, so I'm really excited to continue to learn more about that.

I thought I was somewhat self-aware, and then I started working with this girl and I realized that I have so much more to uncover and so many different ways that I can learn to really manage my mind.

So those are some of my focuses for this upcoming [00:08:00] year, and I'm so excited to see where I end the year at.

Next, I think I'm gonna talk a little bit about what I've already started doing to embody these items and how it's already starting to transform for me. I wanna start with the anti burnout concept and taking care of myself because that feels like the ground level zero for me. So what I started doing was I added in an hour every single morning. That is a non-negotiable thing in my calendar where, it doesn't have any specific tasks that I need to do in that hour, but it's really a reminder for me not to immediately jump into work and get started on the day and do all the things, but just to take some me time. So some days it's looked like going to yoga or doing some stretching or doing some movement.

Other days it was going to a coffee shop, one day it was sleeping in... but it just allowed me to have a second for myself and be whatever I needed at that time and allowing me to just [00:09:00] listen to my body and listen to myself and kind of tune in versus just go, go, go. Another thing I started doing was I realized that I was staying up

late, and then I was struggling in the morning to get up early, go to yoga, do something for myself to move, because I was already behind. I started realizing that I thought it was coming maybe from my phone use. So I would go to bed and I would set my alarm on my phone, and then I would find myself scrolling at night, and then it was midnight, and it was just a whole cycle.

So I added some friction, and this is part of the things that I started learning from this behavior change, skill development side of things. I added in friction so that I wouldn't go on my phone at night, and I bought real alarm clocks for Doug and I, and we decided no more phones, and we put them outside of our bedroom.

And we go to bed now and we don't scroll on our phone till midnight and they have a home. And that little extra friction of having the phone not right there and having a real alarm clock. I am just like, oh my [00:10:00] goodness. So I'm starting to be like, okay, where else can I use this? I was going on my Kindle reading way too much.

I put my Kindle in a different room, so it was not like super accessible to me. Oh my goodness. Look at that. I am not going on my Kindle as much. Like I wanna do things, but I wanna read and I wanna go on my phone, of course. But I want it to be intentional, not just to doom scroll. That just doesn't feel good for me personally.

We're all different. Hear that with absolute, wherever you're at you, you do you. But for me, I just started realizing that I don't think it was making me feel super great. I also just ordered a little device called Brick, you tap your phone to it and it locks your phone out of all of your social media apps. And it counts the time for how long you're like bricked or whatever. I don't know. I'm just like, okay, I'm gonna try that because I don't know, I just, I want to be on my phone less and present more.

I started going back to the gym again. It had been a while. I had been doing yoga, which I love, and it's a core staple for me, but I pushed myself outta my comfort zone. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna take action and go to the gym. That's a part of that. Okay. I don't have to have it all figured out.

I can just go. That's helping me with my anti [00:11:00] burnout because I'm taking time for myself.

I started learning so much about the behavior change side of things, of why I was feeling all this resistance towards going to the gym because I had all these limiting beliefs and these things I was telling myself. And when you tell yourself something over and over, it becomes true for you.

I don't know, it's just wild. And I think that really just sums it up is just making a decision and then taking the action and then figuring it out as you go. And then I think that it comes down to what your expectations are around all of these new focuses or new goals or new whatever that you're setting.

And I think for me, my first week I was like, okay, I'm crushing this, like I'm doing all these things. This is awesome. Super. I don't know if you can relate to this, but I'll have weeks like that where it's okay I'm hitting things, I'm getting it, things are clicking.

I'm making some changes. Like things are feeling good. And then I have a week where everything feels off and I'm in a funk and things are weird and they're just not feeling great. [00:12:00] Maybe I'm having some things happen.

Lifewise, life be life- in. It's a hard time, a hard day, a hard week, and it can be really challenging, I think in those seasons. What I really started to understand the last few years is this idea that not every day is gonna be a hundred percent, you're gonna have times of life that are like that, and that's just a part of what life is.

It's a part of the growing process. Sometimes you need to have some integration time and for whatever reason, it doesn't feel super great. And I always thought growth was supposed to feel pretty and I just romanticized it so much that when I started to actually really grow and it was pushing me and it didn't feel super great, I was like, okay, I did not like this.

And I think that's why people sometimes struggle with it because I do think that it doesn't always feel the greatest. And again, I think I said that in like the last episode or the one before that is that doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong.

I started to change how I was assessing myself in those times that were hard. And this past week was that for me. I had a really [00:13:00] tough past few weeks, and Kenna six months ago would've crumbled and I would've just folded.

I wouldn't have been able to handle what I can handle now. And it just got me thinking about that I assess myself now, not on if I can do everything at a hundred percent, but whatever percentage I'm at this week, I'm not gonna lie it was 30%. That's where I'm at right now. But I'm giving all 30%, equals I'm giving all that I have.

That is all I could ask of myself. That's all I could ask of anyone. So I don't know, maybe you're having a hard week too, and maybe you needed to hear that. Okay, so this is just all my yapping and all my thoughts, but I hope that you really found something in here that resonates.

And you know what I always say, if it don't apply, my friend let it fly. I am so grateful that you choose to support Doug and I, that you are a part of our journey, that you have just

been a part of giving us this opportunity to impact so many people... It's just wild to me. [00:14:00] I am just blown away and I don't really have words for it, and I don't know that I ever will, but I hope you know just how special that you are and I wish I could just give you the biggest hug ever. Seriously.

I know life's tough sometimes and it can be hard, and running a business, creating a business from nothing is hard. But you're doing it and you're showing up, and that's what matters.

That's it for today, besties. This is just a little reminder to you, you're not behind, you're building. Thanks so much for spending time with me. We are cheering you on every single step of your maker journey. Okay, love you. Bye.