Episode 193: How to Own a Room Without Performing with Kate Stinson
Episode Summary
Why do some leaders command respect the moment they walk into a room, without trying so hard to earn it?
Many women spend years building expertise, only to find themselves still questioning how they're being perceived, softening their message, or feeling pressure to fit a leadership mold that doesn't quite fit.
In this conversation, entrepreneur and CEO Kate Stinson shares the surprising lesson she learned after years in male-dominated industries, and why the thing most people think creates executive presence often gets in the way of it.
In this episode, you'll discover:
The unexpected shift that helped Kate stop performing and start leading with greater confidence and influence
Why some of the hardest setbacks become the catalyst for stronger leadership
What founders need to focus on when building something so new that most people don't immediately understand it
Listen now to discover what actually creates executive presence, and how to trust your vision when you're building something the world hasn't seen before.
Who This Episode Is For
Women entrepreneurs who are tired of feeling like they need to perform, emulate, or mirror someone else's leadership style in order to be taken seriously.
Founders who have achieved success but still find themselves questioning whether they can fully trust their own voice, presence, and way of leading.
Women who work (or have worked) in male-dominated industries and are navigating the tension between fitting in and leading authentically.
CEOs and business owners who want stronger executive presence without becoming more rigid, performative, or disconnected from who they are.
Entrepreneurs who are building businesses intentionally around lifestyle, values, and fulfillment, not just growth metrics and traditional definitions of success.
Leaders launching unconventional ideas who need the confidence to stay committed when others don't immediately understand the vision.
Core Concepts in This Episode
Power Consolidation in Scaling
Building influence and authority by grounding leadership in self-trust rather than seeking validation through performance, imitation, or external approval.
Leadership Capacity in Business
Expanding the ability to lead effectively by developing confidence, authenticity, self-awareness, and the willingness to make decisions from personal conviction.
Authentic Leadership Development
The shift from adopting borrowed leadership behaviors to discovering and trusting a leadership style that is aligned with one's own strengths, personality, and values.
Identity Evolution Through Adversity
How significant business setbacks and challenges can dismantle performative identities and create opportunities for more grounded, resilient leadership.
Business Design on Your Own Terms
Deliberately building companies, partnerships, and operating models that support desired ways of living and working rather than defaulting to conventional success structures.
Trusting Unconventional Vision
The capacity to pursue innovative ideas despite skepticism, misunderstanding, or lack of external validation, especially when creating something that doesn't fit existing models.
Key Takeaways
The unexpected shift that helped Kate stop performing and start leading with greater confidence and influence
Why some of the hardest setbacks become the catalyst for stronger leadership
What founders need to focus on when building something so new that most people don't immediately understand it
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome. Welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I had a great conversation that I wanted to share with you. It started out on one theme and then ended up touching several others that I know are so near to the heart and also to the attention of women founders and entrepreneurs. We are touching on everything from how to own the room without being performative, including in a male-dominated industry or if you've been in a male-dominated industry in the past, how current setbacks are actually facilitating your ability to do this more powerfully, and what to really stay focused on if you're creating a business unlike anything else out there.
My guest, Kate Stinson, is the co-founder and CEO of Chipin. It's a pioneering sports tech platform that transforms off-course golf into a powerful engine for philanthropy. With a deep background in golf innovation and technology, including scaling a prior gaming app called Pinseeker to a successful exit, Kate specializes in merging everyday consumer behavior with meaningful social impact.
Through Chipin and her venture, Benevolent Impact LLC, she is partnering with industry powerhouses to make giving an effortless, joyful part of everyday play, building one of the most ambitious social impact movements in modern sports. I know you'll enjoy this episode. Let’s welcome Kate.
In this episode, you'll discover how to own the room without being performative, and also what to focus on if you're starting a business that is unlike anything else out there. Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high-achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders ditch the rule book and design success on their own terms. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top-ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies, mindset mastery, and power moves to help you attract ideal clients while leverage your unique genius and scale with freedom. Let's dive in.
J: All right, so let's go ahead and dive in. Kate, thank you so much for coming.
K: Thanks for having me.
J: So I'd love for people just to get to know you a little bit first. Can you tell us where you are, a little bit about you, what you enjoy doing outside of business?
K: Sure, yes. So I am in Louisville, Kentucky today, which is where I spend most of my time. And in my free time, it's just anything with my kiddo.
J: Oh, nice.
J: Okay, so I have to just start off with what I read myself when you'd first reached out. And I thought it was so interesting and I knew immediately that my audience would also be interested. And it's really about owning the room without performing. So it says, having built her career across male-dominated industries, including gaming, startups, and golf, Kate has learned how to establish executive presence while staying grounded in her own voice and leadership style. I love that so much. I've worked with so many clients who either are in male-dominated industries or they came from a tech background or someplace engineering background where it was a male-dominated industry and maybe still have a few like little burns and stings from that environment. And so I know so many people can relate to it, but even people that haven't worked in a male-dominated industry have been in classrooms where there are a lot of men or where they've really wrestled with the desire to kind of perform or mirror versus finding out something that is their own way. But tell us a little bit about what you went through in the beginning or some places that you wrestled with this before you'd been able to now get to where you are.
K: Okay, great. Yeah, so I spent my 20s at a large hospitality group in Las Vegas, gaming hospitality, largely male-dominated, especially in the executive and C-suite levels. And luckily, I mean, these men were my counterparts, bosses, coworkers, and I got a lot of great opportunities. So frequently, I was the only female in the room. And you're figuring yourself out in your 20s and you don't have that innate confidence. And so I found myself emulating behaviors and just trying to be what I saw. And I think for men and women in business, the experience is so different. And unfortunately, people's expectations are so different. And so I really just tried to fit a certain mold that wasn't authentic to me. When I started to actually see a female executive, she was coming in right as I was going out, unfortunately, but she was so authentically herself, but she was funny and she had a big personality and she wasn't super serious. And she had a ton of respect from the team. And I thought, okay, she's being herself. I can be myself. And so getting a team under me and learning, well, what does that even mean to be authentic to myself and kind of figuring that out, slowly over time, I just gained the confidence to say, I don't need to emulate anybody else. I can be myself.
J: And I think there's something else as well that I've kind of read about in your bio is that there was a moment of a hardship or an obstacle that also helped you understand that even further. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
K: Yeah, so I think that when you're emulating males that you work with or other people that's not authentic to yourself, you kind of have this mask on. And when you go through something really hard, like we had a marketing agency with a ton of tourism clients over COVID and it killed the agency. And so when you're going through a hard time and you need help, you can't wear that confident mask or be that other person. I mean, you have to ask for help and build real relationships with people to kind of move through some of those harder times. So I think that situation almost kind of like broke that side of me and let me rebuild it stronger because I had the chance to say, okay, I just learned a lot and that was really, really hard but now I get to start over and I get to take everything that I've learned and I get to be this new version of myself. I get to shed anything I didn't like and kind of rebuild. And so even though at the time, you can't feel or see that looking back, it's something that was really hard at the time that probably was really beneficial for me as a leader in a female in business.
J: Yes, so good. So were there times on the road to where you are now where you stopped yourself and saw yourself falling back into old patterns or where you had to, you plan to go into a room one way and then you had to check yourself and kind of shake a little bit and then ground back into who you were reinventing yourself to be?
K: Yes, like for me personally, I love a reset. So I think something that's helped me not fall into bad habits was I have a female business partner that we started working together about five years ago and about two years ago, we started an equity group and said, we only wanna work on businesses that we have equity in. And so we do a lot of planning and it's not quarterly ROI goal planning. It's like, how am I showing up? Am I enjoying this? What does my life look like? And so we're a really good balance together to say like, bad habits, let's reset. How do we get back here? For instance, her and I were terrible at delegating and taking too much on ourselves. Then we are not showing up with our best self because we are stressed and we are overworked. So when we feel we're doing that or we see the other one doing that, we'll say like, time out, let's reset and avoid bad habits. So I think for me, that's been incredibly helpful to have other eyes and ears on me that can help me say, progressing forward.
J: Love it. So if someone's listening to this and thinking, I would love to be authentic, but I don't exactly know how to do that or how to release the fear of being that way or being myself. What are maybe two or three things that you'd be able to suggest to help them over that hump? Like, what are some top suggestions?
K: I would say, number one, think about the feedback that you're getting that's maybe impeding you. So for me, I got feedback that was, she's intimidating. And I thought that's not necessarily a bad thing, but that's also not how I'm trying to show up so maybe how might I be leaning into that? And so I would read a lot of books about certain topics. For instance, I believe clarity is kindness on teams, but you also don't want to be brash. And so Radical Candor was, I thought, a great book for me of where's the line of honest and kind and leading everybody in the same way, for instance. So I would say, really take feedback, read books, find people that you feel are authentically themselves and spend more time with them, work with them, find a mentor. I mean, it's really hard because I think that version is different for everybody, that there's not one answer, I don't think. However, I think even just being mindful of it is like such a great first step. Do I like how I'm showing up? Am I showing up as my authentic self? And if not, why? And that's a great start.
J: Oh, those are great tips. So what about when you are trying to own the room, but you're coming up against some sort of adversity or some sort of friction as you're trying to do that, what do you recommend?
K: It's so funny, I've been in the room so many times where I'm the only female and I'm not the most junior, but if anybody has to, God forbid, take notes or schedule something, it's like all the eyes turn to me or getting spoken over. And so what I have found for me to help build my confidence and also not have to be reactive in the moment is I will pull that person aside and say, hey, we were putting hundreds of thousands of dollars of worth of business and when you speak over me, I don't think the optics are good. It doesn't say that you trust me, so why would they trust me? So I try to give real examples of not just, I don't like that behavior, but how is that behavior detrimental to the business? And one thing that's built my confidence is that I've never presented something like that to a colleague, especially a male colleague, and been met with anything other than, oh, I didn't even know I was doing that, or thank you so much, or you're so right. And that gives me confidence of, hey, they really value my opinion. I feel like I'm helping others on the team, especially women on the team. And then that's like one more step to building your confidence in the room. So that's something that I found helpful.
J: Okay, so now I would love to segue into talking about what you're doing right now because it's very on brand for the uncommon way. When I read about it, I'd never heard anything like it.
K: So at Chip In, what we have done is we have created Topgolf-style fun, quick virtual games that you can play anywhere via your iPhone and give money back to charity. So for instance, golf simulators, it used to be, you'd need a big piece of hardware and a lot of money and a lot of time. Well, now with technology and the iPhone, you can trace your golf shot from five feet behind you with your iPhone on the ground. So you can play in these fun games literally anywhere. So if you think about golf, golf is the most philanthropic sport. It raises $6 billion a year just through golf scrambles. So think about that, that's just on course. That's the 1% of golfers that can make it to those scrambles. What could we do if we unlocked everybody else? And so we created these fun games that you can have it stack on your practice. You can play with your family. You can raise money for really good nonprofits through these games. And so for me, that's really important because I've always been big into philanthropy. I spend all of my time and my effort focused on the foster community. So to have some of my favorite foster nonprofits be like our founding nonprofits is very just personally rewarding for me. We launched about a month ago. We are in our beta. And so hopefully, do you golf at all?
J: I don't, but I'm living in an area of a huge golf community.
K: Okay, great. So yeah, you'll have to try it out, but yeah, it's fun. And so it kind of blends tech, golf, philanthropy, and it's a very new technology. And so that's really exciting. And that also comes with its challenges because people are like, wait a minute, what is this? Because they've never seen it before, so.
J: Right, and I love that you're taking something that is recreational and it is a bit costly, but you're turning it into something that can be kind of competitive and fun that people can play. And then it's also serving a good cause, of course. But they too, the people playing have a chance to win prizes. Am I correct with that?
K: Yes, you're correct. So let's say that you entered our closest to the pinn and you paid a $30 entry fee. We have prizes running down the leaderboard. So you could win a gift certificate to PGH or Superstore. We have elevated travel packages. We have lots of great prizes. So it's pretty win, win, win for the player and the nonprofit and then the sponsor, whoever sponsors the prizes.
J: Yeah, I can see that being, I mean, there are so many times where people are having to get together and they're thinking, okay, what could we do? We could go to, I don't know, go bowling, or we could go out and kind of let's all do a group yoga class or there are so many times where people are specifically looking. Like I know my girlfriends and I, we have kind of stopped going to get coffee and we just take walks and grab our water bottle and we'll just go walk around.
K: Exactly.
J: And there are so many times where people are looking for opportunities to move their body, but also do something that might earn them prizes and also serves a good cause. And so I never would have thought of layering those pieces together. And yet it's such an example of, I think, reverse engineering the business that you want.
K: Absolutely. Also too, I mean, golf is changing. People, you know, actually municipalities, if they have 18 holes in a nine course or a nine hole course, they're getting rid of their nine holes and they're replacing it with range face because the way that people are golfing is different. People don't have all day and they don't want to play all day. They want fun, shorter experiences. So with this, you can play this for 20 minutes and you can play this for two hours. You know, we made it really accessible. So if you and your kids or you and your spouse or your girlfriends or whoever want to get together and play, you can have a drink, do it for 30 minutes. You know, we wanted to make it really accessible and fun and then repeatable.
J: Yes, I love that. So how did you ideate this?
K: So this came from my founder thought of a golf app that we created and sold previously. We sold it in 2024 and that was very much, they're both game of skill, but that took on a much more kind of serious, almost turned into like a FinTech business. It had very serious golfers playing and it required hardware, but we always wanted to have a philanthropic component with that. Most of the businesses that my partner has done have had some large philanthropic component to them. And it just didn't go that direction. So we thought, you know what, let's kind of take a twist on that original idea and how do we build this for causes while remaining, obviously for profit and building a team and growing a business. And the funny thing is he does not even golf. He just watches golf and he thought about both of these.
J: Nice, so good. So last piece of advice that you might want to give people when they're thinking about launching something new that hasn't been done before.
K: I would say keep your eye on the prize. Most of the people that you talk to are not gonna get it. Most people are very risk averse. And if you start talking too early and talking to your mom or your friend that's been in corporate for 30 years, they're gonna go, you're nuts. And yeah, we are, or we wouldn't do this. So I would just say, you know, find a group that believes in you, find great co-founders, find great employees and just stick it out and don't let the risk of it or the adversity phase you.
J: I love it. Is there anything else that you want to make sure we know before we hop off other than where people can find you?
K: No, I don't think so, but I'd love to connect on LinkedIn, and then you can find us at chipin.golf. Wonderful, that was great having you on.
J: Have a great day.
K: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Find Kate:
CHIPIN: https://www.chipin.golf/
LinkedIn: Kate Stinson
Tiktok: @kate_chipin
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The Uncommon Way is a leadership and business podcast for ambitious women entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders who are scaling companies and expanding their influence.
Hosted by business and leadership coach Jenna Harrison, the show explores how power, authority, and leadership capacity shape business growth. Episodes focus on decision-making, founder leadership evolution, team stability, and the structural shifts that allow companies to scale without overwhelming the person leading them.
This podcast is especially relevant for women navigating:
• Business growth and scaling challenges
• Increasing leadership responsibility
• Team expansion and higher-stakes decisions
• Founder authority and executive presence
• Identity and leadership evolution during scaling
The Uncommon Way approaches growth differently.
Not through hustle, constant self-optimization, or endless inner work — but by upgrading leadership, strengthening decision structures, and expanding the capacity required to run the company you’re building.
Topics include:
• Founder leadership capacity expansion
• Decision-making at higher levels of responsibility
• Authority and power dynamics inside scaling businesses
• Structural business leadership
• Founder psychology and identity shifts during growth
• Sustainable scaling and operational clarity
Whether you’re an experienced founder, a rising leader, or building something that’s starting to matter at a bigger level, this podcast helps you access more power and lead accordingly.
