hello this is coach Tim Campsall and I’m your host of the self-made is a myth make a difference together show where we are talking with successful business owners to hear their stories of building their business and because we know that success doesn’t happen in isolation we are taking time to recognize those folks who have helped us along the way giving them some shout outs and acknowledging the fact that we couldn’t do it on our own and today I’m excited to have a fellow business owner from Indiana with us today my guest has a a a very um eclectic background of experiences and interests so much so that it’s it’s too much for me to list here but uh we will have her share some of those with us here in a minute inner downtime she enjoys writing fantasy fiction and she’s most proud of winning a business pitch contest in 2020. it’s my pleasure to welcome Kara to the show today hello Cara hello happy to be here fantastic well hey let’s start with having you um introduce yourself tell us a little bit of your personal story where you were born where you live uh family and have some of those uh interests and hobbies that you have sure thing um okay so I was born in Irvington Indiana which is just outside well technically within Indianapolis but it’s in a little historical Community just east of Indianapolis proper and that’s actually where I am now um it’s kind of part of my story but um I live in my childhood home um in Irvington and um I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life uh kind of hopping around um I did go to um the school system in Greenwood Indiana um I was split between my parents they divorced when I was like two or something like that um and so I lived split between my dad um in Irvington and my mom and my stepdad in Greenwood and I went through the Greenwood school systems and uh that’s actually uh probably a large part of why I have um like so many instruments Greenwood has a really really good music program all the way from uh Elementary School all the way up through high school um so I started collecting instruments started uh singing when I was very little I’ve always been kind of obsessed with music um and uh and my both of my parents um had kind of a musical actually all three of my parents I should say that because my stepdad is musical too um but they all just kind of encouraged me in really like all of the various things that I was interested in which was like music and writing art sculpture I used to do like little um clay sculptures when I was very little and um I just had like a Natural Curiosity for just about everything and I still do and that has kind of fed into Natural Curiosity Natural Curiosity about uh people about life about how the mind works um about uh history I was not interested in history when I was in school but the older that I get the more uh and the more stories I hear um from an individual’s perspective the more that I really really get into history and it just kind of blows my mind um so yeah I think um I I would credit a lot of like kind of my personality and some of like my biggest uh successes when I was younger into like the marching band that I was in in high school um we won two uh championships state championships and then I was also in Winter percussion and we won a state state championship in there too um so they were just very disciplined and they they helped me kind of come out of my shell and learn um like I’m an introvert and um although I’m really great like one-on-one um I can be kind of uh shy in groups and in performance and they put me on Crash symbols which are naturally like a very very loud instrument and that really really helped me kind of like break out of that shell fantastic that is so cool

so all those instruments behind you do you play every one of them I do I don’t I don’t play them uh super often uh not all of them the the primary ones I love to sing um and then I would say probably behind that it’s uh my guitar and uh piano less so recently I want to get back into playing regularly um and then I also excuse me um if you see like the the thing that looks kind of like a spaceship back here that is my Lotus drum um and it’s a type of hand pan and in the business Community I’m actually probably most known for that because I take it with me uh to retreat sometimes to networking events um it’s very relaxing um it helps me with my anxiety it helps other people with their anxiety um so I just kind of take that um or I have a few uh kind of different uh hand pans and I’ll I usually take one of them wherever I go that’s awesome so Cara what’s a funny story that your family likes to tell about you that you’d be willing to share with us today okay um well I have I can think of maybe kind of two really quick ones off the top of my head one of them was when I was very very little it would have been like at this house in well I mean in the driveway um we’ve got a long gravel driveway um and sometimes like the the gravel in the driveway gets kind of like these divots in it and after a rain it collects and we get puddles and so I had to have been I think like I don’t know maybe two or three or something like that maybe even younger I’m not sure but my mom always tells the story of like she was outside with me and we were uh like I was sitting like really close to this puddle like basically in the puddle and I was taking my pacifier and dipping it in the water

yeah that’s just really really enjoying that puddle

um and then gosh what was the other one I was thinking of oh I guess like this kind of pertains to my my personality and how I approach things but even as a little kid um I would take my um all of my toys and I would like line them up in like size order and like organize them like even when I was super super little I don’t know if that’s a sign of OCD or or what exactly but I do really enjoy organizing things um that’s and that is part of what I do in my business uh only with people’s memories instead of with toys fantastic so tell us how’d the business come about and at what point did you have the confidence that you could run your own business yeah um so this is kind of a wild story and I will do my best to kind of like summarize it because there’s so much that kind of went into it um for the longest time I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do and I was actually kind of terrified all from uh generalized anxiety disorder here so take this with a grain of salt I was worried about what I was gonna do after high school when I was in elementary school because I just didn’t know what I wanted to do um and as I again as I got older um into middle school and high school I kept hearing that all of my hobbies would lead me to being a starving artist and I didn’t really know I just didn’t know what I wanted to do and I didn’t want to commit to doing any one thing like just do writing or just do music or just do art um and so I really didn’t I didn’t really pick something but my mom was like pick a major and uh so I went to IUPUI and um I didn’t really pick anything for a year and then I found uh the music tech program so I went into that and um and then about three years in I was like oh I actually don’t really want to work in a recording studio I really don’t want to work as like a stagehand uh or like setting up equipment for presentations at hotels that would be through Marquis which I did work there for a bit um and I still just really wanted to figure out a way to combine all of the the different skills and interests that I had and um there’s also a part of this that definitely um I kind of skipped ahead a little bit but um there’s also like a set of soft skills that I had that I developed uh through my childhood unfortunately through a series of losses um when I was 12 years old my brother died uh very very unexpectedly less than a year later my dad died um and so it was to a rare disease called amyloidosis and so at that point um we kept this house but I moved in full time with my mom and stepdad and uh my aunt who is like my childhood hero she was one who really encouraged me in writing an art um she got sick with stage four breast cancer my grandma died when I was 17. um Aunt Pat died when I was 21 and I had lost my remaining two grandparents when I was 25 they were kind of back to back and it just seemed like every few years um and this really really contributed um in a lot of ways just kind of having the rug pulled out from you over and over and over I started feeling all this indecision I really just it just kind of compounded the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to do and um so in in college um I found a secondary degree um because you know if you don’t know I I did finish my first degree um kind of concurrently as I started my second degree uh that was in media arts and science I went into design um and uh really fell in love with like Photoshop and um and 3D modeling and um so at this point um when I was about 25 that was when my final grandparent had passed away and it was about that time that I started to kind of take inventory of what Memories I had of her of all the people that I lost and you know I expected to be able to kind of list them off I’m a very like I’m an organized person so I expected to be able to just list them off like almost chronologically and what I found is that I couldn’t really um or there there were all these gaps in like where I should have memories of them there was just they were blank I knew that there had been something there at one point but I had no idea what it was and the stories that I was positive that I would remember because they were important to me like all of these uh memories of my dad and I going camping at Camp Christina when I was little or all of the time that I spent with Aunt Pat all the the few times that I got to see my brother because he was like 12 years older than me so very different stages of life um but um and then of course like when my grandma was living with us um this would be my maternal grandma um she was from Italy and I wanted to hear some of the stories um from our heritage and I remember sitting with her on the couch and listening to these stories and thinking like wow like these are so amazing like I’m so happy that we’re doing this and a little voice said like maybe you should be recording this and I was like no I’ll remember like like I’m actively listening I’m present she’s important to me I love these stories like how could I forget them and then when she passed I was like this is unbelievable I I’ve forgotten them like I can’t I can’t retell them I can’t pass them down I can’t um I can’t tell other people about them and it like really really hit me but still at that point I was like not thinking of this like this is a problem that needs to be solved I was still in the mindset of like well that’s life like people die and when they die they take their experiences and memories and stories with them and you just have whatever you can remember and that’s what you get and if you’ve got a better memory then more power to you but my with ADHD and just like all of the the way that my brain works my memory is not that great so it was um another it would have been four years after that that I found myself um I had quit a very toxic job and I was still just searching like what am I going to do with my life um I had just joined like a transcription Academy because I thought like well this is something that I can do from home um I love listening to people I love stories I love I’m a writer so I have you know decent grammar skills and decent typing skills um and I get to learn stuff which I also love to do so that was kind of the stepping stone and then I found myself uh sitting with my husband’s family um his aunt had come into town and she wanted to record uh Uncle Al’s World War II stories Uncle Al I believe was like 95 at the time I believe and she needed help setting up the camera and I came over and helped her helped her set up and you know adjusted the lighting and all of that and then we just sat and listened to His World War II stories and it was at that point that I started to be like wait we can do that anyone can do this why why isn’t everyone doing this why didn’t we do this with Grandma why didn’t we do this with my dad or Aunt Pat and it was just I think it would have been two months later um so I want to credit my husband um he was the one who kind of helped me truly connect the dots and uh we were planning our wedding at the same time that I started my business I would not recommend doing those things for anybody who might be considering that it’s a lot but uh so marriage was on his mind the wedding was on his mind um and he said like why don’t you like interview people and then record their stories and then transcribe those stories and then turn them into like a physical book that they can pass down in their family and have forever and as soon as he said it it was like fireworks went off in my head it had finally that was just the little Gap that was left between uh connecting all of my skills essentially into this thing that so far as I knew really didn’t exist um and the more that I thought about it the more that I couldn’t get it out of my head and it was like three days later that I went to a conference um and the very first person that I told about this and I actually went there as a transcriptionist and I my heart was not in that at all because my heart was now on this new idea and um and I was talking to this woman and I I just kind of blurted it out I was like I don’t even know why I’m telling you this because I don’t have this fully formed or anything it’s just an idea and she looked at me like that’s brilliant and how soon can you do this because I need this for my 80 year old mother like like in like two weeks yeah I think that was the moment that I realized like not only is this a good idea but like people do need this and so that was that was the push that connected me over the edge and uh with no business background no um in my mind no connections of course I had connections I just didn’t know um what like how to network or like I was not really aware of my network at that point um but like really just blindly made leap into becoming an entrepreneur in that moment um and I haven’t looked back since that is awesome tell us a little bit more about the company what what’s the name what do you guys do how do you help people yeah um so it’s called the memory Collective and right now it’s just me um and so essentially what I’m doing is I am helping individuals tell their life story on video or just on audio depending on what they what they want and I help them figure out like what stories are important to them what topics are important to them and then I help draw those stories out um just in a series of very very casual conversational interviews and I am holding space for them to be able to share like whatever they want and to reflect it’s kind of a combination of autobiographical and Memoir because we are we can focus in on a particular um area of their life like maybe their career maybe their family maybe if you’re a veteran it might be your military service but we can cover anything and everything that’s important to you anything that you’d want to pass down to Future Generations anything that you would want uh kids or grandkids to know and this is especially important when um like for instance in Uncle Al’s case you know he was 95 we don’t have kids um but if we have kids in the future you know he has since passed on they never could have met him right because we recorded his stories they will be able to know him and know his character and know like the Epic stories that he was able to share with us um and so that is essentially everything that I do at the memory Collective ties back to recorded oral storytelling um whether it’s on a very small scale whether I’m giving you the tools uh to be able to do this yourself for your family or whether I’m you know literally holding your hand through the whole process and doing essentially doing everything for you with the exception of I cannot tell the stories for you you do have to show up right to do that but I do everything else for you including wonderful um taking those um those recordings that we we create together and I then will organize those I chop them up into you know smaller uh smaller Clips those are labeled and then they’re organized based on the time period in your life um so it’s it’s very user friendly and much easier to digest future in the future or for future Generations what an awesome um opportunity for people to pass on their their stories and their legacy very cool I love how you you got to discover um all of your different talents and and passions to be able to come into one so tell us what’s your biggest learning as a business owner oh biggest learning um that’s I would say get comfortable being uncomfortable um meaning you have to kind of do what scares you a little bit um you can’t just be you can’t just be okay like not pushing yourself um and and there is a lot um there’s a lot of discomfort in business whether it’s just getting outside of your comfort zone or doing things that you’ve never done before I remember um like when I very first started again I’m an introvert I have social anxiety I do not like talking in front of people I’m getting better at that but um the idea of going uh leaving my house and going to a networking event where I knew really barely even one person like I was basically just said like you should go to this networking event like people will care about what you do and I was like you mean I just like go by myself and they’re like well they’ll have you stand up and you know you’ll say who you are and what you do and I mean I I was like you know in hives lime uh just so worried about just standing up and like in front of a group of people um being there alone having no idea like what the protocol was or or anything but um I did it and uh had people immediately come over to me after I introduced myself and they wanted to know me and then and then it was easy you know I can talk to people after that but I like what you said about being comfortable being uncomfortable right and it it makes me think of the the idea that you know everything that we want in business and everything we want in life is the other on the other side of our comfort zone so we have to we it just it’s just a matter of fact right we have to embrace stepping outside of that yes 100 and um pying into that it’s it’s all about uh like your mindset like mindset is 80 of success or failure and um if you’re too scared or uncomfortable to do what you need uh like you know making a big investment speaking in front of people hiring a coach um maybe even just picking up the phone and calling a client right um you’re gonna you’re gonna hold yourself back and until you’re ready to face that discomfort very true yes hey um tell us um so we know that success doesn’t happen in isolation so what’s what’s one of the challenges that you had um in in getting to where you’re at today and maybe someone else a business owner or or you know some someone in the community that came alongside you and helped you get through that challenge yeah I mean there are um

for me my my biggest challenge has been my mindset and mental health um and I I actually just saw you um I think you sent out a an email talking about um like the mental health in entrepreneurs and business owners um and just how how high uh the mental health issues are among us um because it is just so stressful and there’s so much to manage um and if you already had that to begin with starting a business um it compounds it um so I definitely think for me um that has been probably one of my biggest issues um probably the second thing would be I have so many ideas and it’s very very difficult to focus on either just completing one thing or even just picking a niche like for me um I have the unique problem and benefit that I can work with just literally like anyone anyone that has a love one which I hope would be everyone um or they have kids um or grandkids or they want to just preserve their own memories for themselves for posterity um so I could literally work with anyone um that is not a good um target market for sure and so one of the things that has really helped me um I’m gonna credit um a coach that uh he so his name is David bear b-a-y-e-r and um so he has this year-long program um it started with his mindtact program and um that helped me with my mindset and um and in a lot of ways really helped me um I was watching that at the time that I was at that toxic job and it really helped motivate me to I didn’t know that I wanted to be an entrepreneur yet but I knew that I needed to get out of that place and into something that was like you know aligned with me um so I would credit uh David bear with and his business and his program everything about it just really aligned for me I mean I did I just completed his program um and and it was an incredible experience and they helped me you know hone in on uh an ideal client I still struggle with it I I I’ll be honest I do but I at least understand that I cannot say I help everyone yes well there’s an interesting um misnomer about having a niche market so the idea isn’t that we have to only have one target market at least this is the principle that we teach it’s that for each target market you have you have to have Clarity on who it is and what the message is that you’re going to send to them in your marketing so it’s okay to have you know five or six Target markets it’s just that you then have to have five or six different communities exactly yeah exactly and and that can be a lot to manage and juggle at the beginning um especially when you’re just trying to get started and you know even getting your first like you know uh email sequence set up like if you’re trying to manage like five or six sets of those uh everything becomes kind of exponentially like more work yes so yeah I’m gonna I’m gonna put you on the spot here if I was to ask you to pick three people that have been most uh you’re most grateful for in terms of your business owner journey and the growth that you’ve achieved who are those three people and how they help you yeah um well I could not could not move forward without thinking my husband first of all because um he’s just he’s been a rock um uh we took a huge leap of faith in me um when I quit my job and decided to do this um I could not be doing what I’m doing without his support and his love and his patience because it has definitely not moved forward as fast as I I’m very impatient so um it definitely hasn’t moved forward as fast as I want it to um but I know that it’s coming and I keep reassuring him like it it will happen but you know the rule of thumb is usually like five years and I’m at year four now um so um so definitely my husband and what’s his name uh Matt Matt awesome yeah there there’s a um there’s uh stats out there that says the majority of his new business owners significantly overestimate the the first five years and then underestimate the long term so it’s a normal thing right we think it’s going to be a whole lot easier than it is and then we’re like oh my goodness this is a whole lot harder than I thought it was and the folks who keep at it end up you know having a much bigger better business in the long term yes

um I would also say um my he’s not an official business partner like legally speaking um but Maccabee Griffin um has become like a dear friend of mine he’s also a fellow entrepreneur um he’s so massively talented he actually has his own podcast that he started and he’s become very successful at that as well um it’s called beyond the pen and um so that is like where he’s interviewing um author like up-and-coming authors who just published but they have they don’t really have um they’re they’re unknown is what I’m trying to say yeah um so he talks to them about um their book and kind of the process um and journey of writing that book so that’s like Beyond uh beyond the pen um he has been just instrumental um over the years I’ve really only I think I met him I think I met him in 2020. um and he just fell in love with what I do he actually just sent me an email the other day saying he’s out trying to like you know connect me to people and even talking to investors and I’m like I I don’t know I’m just so grateful for for him for his support he’s somebody that I can call up and be like I’m stuck I don’t know what to do um and we just brainstorm or he he may not have the answer but he says like I’ve been there and I know that it sucks and we’ll get through this we’ll figure it out it’s all gonna be okay um so he’s definitely somebody um that I would credit with you know just I’m so incredibly grateful for him and honestly excuse me there there are so many people like I have a list but I’m like it’s like 10 people long and I could I could have kept going but I was like oh he’s he just wants three yeah that’s what I said I’m gonna put you on the spot it’s a tough yeah I mean yeah I’m gonna say I mean quick shout out to my score Mentor Mike crumbo because he’s been very very helpful um in just bouncing ideas and then I also would like to credit um my friend Austin he’s not an official entrepreneur yet but he has entrepreneur he has ideas um um he’s got a business called the fiction medic where he helps you like um if you are stuck in your story um this would be for fictional purposes typically not non-fiction but um if you’re stuck in building your world or creating characters Mac Maccabee uh also does that with um with creating characters but Austin is really really good at um like helping you like work through plot holes and he can hold like your entire story in his head which is an incredible skill yeah um but he has been extremely supportive in my business he became one of my clients um and I’ve been able to use his his dad passed away in 2020 very very suddenly of pancreatic cancer I believe it was pancreatic cancer and um and but we already had his stories recorded and then I was able to um put together like a memorial video for him which went over like I had never heard of doing a memorial video like this this is another service that I offer to people where we actually use a little bit of recorded oral storytelling to create this um this like basically like uh the memory Collective Twist on a on a memorial video where you get to tell like some of your favorite life stories your favorite memories um and even say like a few words to your friends and family to to comfort them um and that video would be played at your memorial service so you can record that in advance in this case we just took um videos from the archive that we had already built um and just picked some of our favorite stories from Paul’s life and then um and then I put those together and they absolutely loved it so yeah he’s been he’s been really really helpful and supportive and um just continuously Believes In Me and I you know that’s uh should not be undersold the value of that as you think about the next three to five years what are the biggest challenges that you see in hitting your goals and who are the types of people you’re going to need to help you solve those challenges yeah um I think my biggest goal for the next three to five years is to have a well one obviously to have like a consistent number of clients coming in and grow that amount um right now it’s still I would call kind of feaster famine um my like bringing in clients is not necessarily consistent yet um but it is increasing generally speaking it’s just still not consistent sure um so I would love to have a small team um that I can work with to help me as I bring in more clients to be able to help me with the various stages of that process um right now I am the bottleneck so even if I did have a hundred people knocking at my door to you know have this done I personally could not manage a hundred projects on my own um like probably even like 10 would be a lot because these there they can be time intensive um projects and um so all of that to say I would love to have a team that’s really really passionate about what I do what the company does and like they’re they’re on the same page about the the different values and importance of this um and so the people that I would want to connect with would be you know people who are seeing like the big picture of what this could be um who are passionate about stories and memories and Legacy and um and that have the you know the skills of like interviewing and um AV editing and project management um that like kind of those are the three skill sets that I would be looking for and of course you know I’m always wanting to connect um with business partners um who can you know help kind of get this idea out there like um for Funeral Directors who specifically deal with pre-planning um or like estate attorneys um elder law attorneys who are dealing with the the clientele who might really be in the frame of mind like yeah we need to do this when we need to do it like I’d like to take care of it earlier rather than uh later last question here is um Jim Rohn he says that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with so as you think about that quote what advice would you have for business owners who are trying to do it on their own for folks who don’t think that they need help and and aren’t inclined to to reach out to others

isolating yourself um you you need a community of people um for me I found that in um the David bear program because we’re all entrepreneurs um and I think you know I just one of my friends um recently sent me an article that was talking about mental health in entrepreneurs and one of the tips that they gave was to surround yourself with uh other entrepreneurs business owners not necessarily in in this particular instance people that um like you pay money to or that they pay money to you um it’s more just like a you’re at the same level you’re all going through the same things and there’s somebody that you can um just call up and be like hey I’m struggling with this or I need help with this or who can you connect me to um now I will say um I fully stand by the idea of needing coaches I mean I and I I even say that plural um because there are going to be um like for instance there’s a woman that I know that specializes and she is like a mindset and um speaking public speaking coach like that is her her Niche I’m sure that she could help me in multiple Fields um but I love knowing that for her I can hire her to help me with my public speaking and things like that um whereas like maybe I want like a dedicated business coach that can help me figure out like where I’m uh I might feel stuck but I not might not know from my lack of experience um you know where exactly I’m stuck or what isn’t working um or maybe I’m not managing my time super well so like how can we audit that and then improve that process um but yeah I mean coaches and having a supportive uh community of people who understand where you’re in it I I would say it’s not enough to just have like supportive friends or family because they may not have a clue what it’s like yes be in your position um finding a community that you will line with I I think it’s critical to the success of business owners it can be very lonely at the top right when we’re employees we always have a manager that we can go to to you know to get input and advice when we’re the owner you know there’s nobody above us to go to so having that Network to be able to reach out to and bounce ideas off of and you know and even have somebody you know hold us accountable and right and ask us the tough questions that are you know again in the in the employee world that our boss would do if we don’t have that where we we can be a little less assertive and less productive because we don’t have the the people that are you know holding us to account and asking us those tough questions Yeah you mentioned uh you know the possibility to have it more than one coach I have three I’ve got a business go to mindset coach and a marketing coach because those are all different areas that I know that I need to to grow and develop to have the business achieve the the successes that I wanted to yeah so Cara it sounds like you’ve been blessed with some incredible people in your journey if they were all on the show here today what would you want to say to them uh um I’m just so thankful I’m like I when I really stop and think about the people that I’ve been connected with um I mean there was a time in my life where I would like if you had said uh Carey you’re gonna have to like network with people I would have been like absolutely not like I’m not gonna do that you’re crazy um but like it is honestly one of the most rewarding parts of being uh an entrepreneur um you know I still like you know I have social anxiety in certain situations and everything that that hasn’t gone away but it’s gotten better and I also go to networking events with this excitement because based on the people that I have met so far I mean they’re like there are too many to name and they’re all just massively inspiring to me and I I will give a shout out just really quickly to um Maria page um because she she was one of the first people that I got connected with I had I knew one one official person in my network and she connected me to Maria and Maria sat down with me at a Starbucks and I didn’t even know what an e intro was like I didn’t know that this was uh like a standard thing that you do when you’re networking um but she sat down with me and like listened to what I did and then was like I know like all of these people that you have to talk to I’m gonna I’m gonna make um an introduction to we’ll just start out with these like three people yeah and she wrote out these like beautiful emails um and introduced me and I like I said totally green I had no idea that that was even the thing that people did for each other other but I was so incredibly grateful she didn’t ask for anything in return she was literally just like let me let me help connect you to these people and that’s the spirit that I move forward with of I’m always wanting to help connect uh people to people who need to be connected um and not thinking of like you know a quid pro quo or anything like that I I just want to help and it’s in her spirit and all of the people who have helped me along the way that I I try to give back and pay it forward as much as I possibly can I love that um not asking for anything in return that’s the that’s the way the the game is played right the the awesome thing about it is um although it’s not intentional everybody then has a little bit of feels a little guilty and we always then want to help the person back who helped that so it is not being a beneficial yeah that’s exactly how I felt with Maria like I I just held it in my head like the moment that I’m able to help you I will be there like I don’t know exactly how I’m going to be able to help you because I’m just figuring this stuff out but the moment that you like ask for help and I can give it I will fantastic Cara it has been a pleasure speaking with you today thank you so much for being on the show yeah thank you so much for having me this is awesome I’m so happy to be here and to get connected with you as well to everyone who tuned in thanks for listening to the self-made as a myth show with your host coach Tim cancel be sure to help spread the movement by liking the show and posting about it on your social media and to join our movement go to bemadtogether.com all right folks that’s a wrap make sure to pay it forward and I’ll see you all next time take care