Ep 182: What Happens When You Stop Listening to Experts and Start Trusting The Full-Body Yes With Katie Pulsifer
Episode Summary
Have you ever wondered what might happen if you rejected expert advice and trusted an inner nudge about what to do in business — especially when the stakes feel high?
If you’ve ever second-guessed your instincts, felt glued to outside opinions, or worried that what you’re drawn to might be “too risky,” this conversation with my guest Katie Pulsifer will show you what it’s like when intuition takes the lead. Through a candid, behind-the-scenes look at real decisions — the scary ones, the messy ones, and the life-changing ones — you’ll hear how tuning inward can quietly reorient everything from identity to business strategy… without abandoning logic or responsibility.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
How trusting a full-body yes can completely redirect the course of your life — even when you can’t yet explain why it feels right
You'll learn specific ways Katie has overridden expert advice in her business, including transforming her business strategy,
The raw and real inner dialogue that blocks women from harnessing the power of their intuition, as well as the inner dialogue that supports it.
Press play to hear how Katie learned to honor the instincts that reshaped her business, her confidence, and her future — and get inspired to start trusting the yeses that are already calling you forward.
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Full Episode Transcript:
In this episode, you'll discover the power of trusting full-body yeses over expert advice in business, as experienced by my guest, Katie Pulsifer. Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high-achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the rulebook 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, leverage your unique genius, and scale with freedom. Let's dive in.
Welcome, welcome back to The Uncommon Way. You know when you hear someone going on and on about something that sounds kind of good, but you just really wish you could hear from other people as well, someone else who's doing that same thing? Well, that is why I'm so excited to bring Katie on today, because she embodies many of the principles that we value here, but she is not a client, she has nothing to do with me except friendship, so it's just an objective account of a powerful, successful woman who does business this way. The other reason I know you're going to love this episode is because she's the kind of entrepreneur who's so open about the good, the bad, and the ugly of her business journey, and that transparency is such a gift for normalizing how the path to success can look so different for different people, but ultimately is the greatest personal development tool for women, and I know you'll pick up on how she has really come into her own as you listen to her talk. So in this episode, you will hear about the first time she used this tool, this practice of searching for and listening to full-body yeses, how she used that in her life to make a decision that ended up completely reorienting her life path.
You'll learn specific ways Katie has overridden expert advice in her business, including transforming her business strategy, and you will get the raw and real inner dialogue that blocks women from harnessing the power of their intuition, as well as the inner dialogue that supports it. Katie Pulsifer is a Master Certified Life Coach, creator of the Golden Coaching Certification, and a trusted guide for GenX women who've outgrown the lives they spent years building. With over 13 years of experience and five years as an executive leader at the Life Coach School, Katie has trained thousands of coaches and supported countless clients with her heart-led approach, rooted in excellence, integrity, and meaningful results. She's known for a blend of warmth, precision, and deep compassion, and she helps high-achieving women move from overstretched and unfulfilled to grounded, clear, and genuinely excited about what's next. Whether they're launching something new, stepping back to recalibrate, or redefining success on their own terms, Katie is a mentor to women ready to create lives that truly fit. So a woman after my own heart. Before we get started, I have to let you know that I was so excited about reuniting with Katie that I completely forgot to plug my microphone in, and so my audio was coming straight off my laptop. You may notice a decline in audio, but trust me, this episode is so worth listening to until the very end. I hope you enjoy.
Katie, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. It's such a delight and one of my favorite topics. We've been talking already before this, but we're going to give everyone like the boost of confidence and also kind of the road map for how to really powerfully move into the stance where you can trust full-body yeses, even if those go against what the experts are telling you to do. So I'd love to just know like when can you tell us about the first time you remember this? Because if you're like me, I certainly wasn't taught to make decisions this way. And so the first time it started happening for me, there was internal conflict. What was your experience?
Oh, similarly, I kept looking around like, is someone going to tell me I'm not allowed to do this? Because I was really good at making, you know, appropriate decisions or well-researched decisions or getting a lot of consensus around things. And I also had evidence even when I was, I mean, as young as 17 and I decided to, I wasn't going to do my senior year of high school in my small town in Maine. And I wanted to live, I wanted to go to Barcelona for my senior year. That was a full-body yes at that time in my life that I was like, oh, this is in me also. So I had the duality of, and that's probably the most memorable first experience where I kind of
went against the grain, but it was so scary in the beginning. So scary when I was used to gathering consensus and seeking approval and making sure everyone else would be okay with my decisions. And that was the first one that I made where I was like, this is what I know is right for me.
Beautiful. Very, very scary though. Very scary. Do you remember any of the inner dialogue at the time? Like you would maybe specifically, I don't know, disappoint your parents or that maybe you were fooling yourself or do you remember what your hesitation was? Yes. Well, I think it was not disappointing my parents as much as not being able to explain why I knew it was right for me. I remember that really vividly, not having language, not having a sophistication of knowing myself well enough to be able to articulate this is why this matters to me so much. And so I think in the early years of following my yeses, I was so afraid of being misunderstood. And so that's what I was really afraid of is like, I know this is right for me, but I don't think I'm going to be able to articulate it because the truth of the inner dialogue that was running in the background was I never believed I was very smart. I certainly wasn't as smart as everyone else. So that tripped me up when it came to explaining myself, rationalizing my decisions, fighting for something I wanted. I would second guess my intellect and then withhold and then be so afraid of being misunderstood.
And so sometimes it just became easier to not ask for what I want or not declare what I want because that run around I would go through in my brain was just almost more than I could handle, if that makes sense. Yeah, it was more painful to go through all of that than to just say nothing or just give up on your dreams. Right, right. Exactly. And you know, when you talk about this, I think it's so important for all of us to hear other strong, successful, powerful women talking about some of this internal dialogue, because we feel it at all levels. And the variety can be slightly different. And when you hear someone whose own personal flavor is slightly
different than yours, then it helps you really see it for what it is. But many women have been, you know, are carrying these stories about how they're crazy, right? Or they're, they're not logical, or they're not adulting, right? They're too young or too inexperienced. There's some variation of that, right? Or like you said, that they're not smart enough, or they're not worldly enough, right? There's a lot of this like, sit down, little lady, and let the people in charge make the decisions, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And also just like, what is this going to mean for your future? Like, in that specific example I gave, like, leave your senior year? Well, how are you supposed to apply to colleges if you're not here or take the SATs or do any of those things that were very important at that time for most people? Or how are you supposed to, oh, my grandmother, who's no longer here, but definitely had lots of thoughts about finding the right partner that would take care of you and things like that. So a lot of her advice was wrapped up in, well, you better find a husband that is want to be there to provide for you. So it's okay if you don't prioritize your education or things like that. So now tell us some of the great outcomes from doing that, from taking that step. Like, what happened specifically in Barcelona, but then how did you view yourself differently afterwards? Well, I think it began a pursuit of doing what I didn't expect of myself or wasn't maybe expected of me, which has created quite an adventure in my life, starting and stopping lots of things, which when I have now the hindsight of being 57 and looking back at all the things I've tried, the multiple careers, the different places I've lived, marriage number one, marriage number two, it's like, oh, I'm so grateful that I started and stopped lots of things and that not being afraid to take risks and follow my own intuition. I didn't follow it necessarily quickly. There have been lots of times that I've been very, very, very scared to deviate from the path that I thought I was on. I don't want to minimize that at all, but what I know now looking back is that I have far more resilience than I ever imagined was possible for me. And it turns out I'm way smarter than I thought it was too, right? I knew that was coming for sure. I already knew that. So I guess this would be an appropriate time to mention that actually Katie coached me when I was getting my coaching certification. So you were an executive at the Life Coach School and for some reason we got lucky enough that you came into our training room that day and were assisting all of us coaches. And you now have your own coaching certification, right? Do you want to tell us about that briefly? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So I have created a certification that helps women in two distinct ways. There is a part one that helps them learn the tools of self-coaching so that they can self-lead from an embodied, high integrity, thoughtful place with a lot more kindness and compassion for themselves. And then if they want to learn those skills and then learn how to apply them in coaching others, either on their teams or professionally as you and I do as life coaches, they can go through part two, which is the application, the learning how to ethically, safely coach other people. So beautiful. We've talked about the bigger picture, what this does for us in terms of our identity, in terms of our ability to start taking risks, in terms of life outcomes. But since this is a business podcast, I know that my entrepreneur listeners would love to hear about specific examples in your business where you maybe have cast off the advice of certain experts and followed that full body, yes, with a business tactic or strategy or decision. Yes. Yes. So I want to preface it by saying that I tried this business thing as a life coach back in 2015 and 2016 and 2017. And what fueled my business back then was pure passion. And that took me pretty far because it was just like, I'm going to try everything. I love this so much. I'm just going to try it all. And then I started to follow the experts and listen to the advice and learn things I didn't know in what felt like a responsible way at the time, but I think was actually at such a detriment to me because instead of following the advice I was given, I made everything that I had done previously wrong.
So I moved into this period of shaming myself for not having my website on WordPress. I had it on Squarespace for not having done a webinar yet or having a free all the steps. So the shaming basically shuttered my own business because I couldn't keep up with the amount of you've done it wrong energy that I was creating in my life. So I went to work for another coach. I went to work with life coach school. I had a brilliant career there. So to come out of that experience all these years later, wiser, more with a, just like a more solid inner foundation and sense of self has helped me so much now follow the experts when I have a skill gap to fill, but not there's a personality flaw or I'm doing it the wrong way. So no expert told me to get on Substack. I just wanted to, and it's been phenomenal for me. So that would be a present example. Tell us how it's been phenomenal. Well, because I knew that I was not going to have a podcast myself, but I love to write. I've always loved to write. So I have my version of my writing in that I brought to life there on Substack, but in a way in an environment that just felt so safe and supportive and loving and kind. And so it's absolutely been the right place for me. So making that choice. Sorry, has it led to clients or different like cross promotional opportunities? Absolutely. And it's connected me with really incredible people that I admire and respect and can learn from. And they are contributing to my work as well. So those collaborations that have happened because of being on Substack are, have been amazing for me. Whereas the experts might've said, prioritize Instagram. Well, no, thank you. Yes. Or prioritize a podcast.
Right. Exactly. Yes. And we know the amazing thing is that we know so many people who are wildly successful with their podcast and other podcasters who've been grunting it out year after year with no increase in listenership. And the same is true for Instagram. Yes, exactly. And it's not the platform. Of course, it is the intentionality behind it, the full body. Yes. And that's the way I always felt. And I still do to this day being over on Substack and I haven't felt that way in other places. And so it's just been this beautiful reminder of like, the advice can keep coming. And then I get to filter it out very discerningly based on what I know is right for me. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So now when you think about this, you feel this nudge in one direction, right? You've heard the advice of the experts, but you're feeling a nudge in another direction. Now what's your internal dialogue like as you move through that? Well, it's so much more trusting, right? It's much kinder. And what I often now hear myself say is I wonder what this yes is going to lead me to. I wonder what this yes is going to produce. I wonder who I'm going to meet. I wonder what connection will be forged or which client is on its way to me because I'm saying yes over here. Like there's just such delight and wonder about it versus, oh, if I were to go back 10 years, I mean, it makes me tear up a little bit of just thinking how easy it was to be, because I was new to entrepreneurship, it was so easy to make myself wrong and assume the experts that I really admired and valued were right. And now it's like, oh, they get to be right for sure, but so do I. Oh, beautiful. Yes. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. So often, I don't know if you've experienced this, but when I hear other entrepreneurs talking about things they've been able to do or ways that they have a mindset around something that I don't have, I love to get really specific with how they think about it so that it doesn't even at a certain point occur to
me how to think about it in that way. And I really need that specificity to be able to start adopting it for myself. I agree. That's why it's so fun to have conversations like this where it's like, oh, I'm going to borrow that beautiful thought or that one belief that you just mentioned, because I think that could really help me out at this season in my life. Yeah. Right. Right. And I know there are so many people listening because I tend to attract people who are moving more into this kind of work. And yet they've come from a very background where they've wanted to achieve, achieve, achieve, and they've had a lot of success in their life by doing it, by following the rules, by doing the right things, by doing everything right, by doing more than everything right. But still, it can be really unmooring to kind of go to the dark side and believe that the power you have within is more than enough to guide you. And I think what we see, what I've seen for myself and what I see with my clients is really the act of like, how do we separate that from fears and biases that are potentially moving, swaying us in one direction or another? Like, how do we get true full body? Yes. True intuition. Yes. Yes. Well, I, in preparing for this conversation, I thought about it in a little bit of a new way because I realized another layer that had to peel
away for me was scarcity and lack energy clouding my intuition and being very discerning and very, very careful that a full body yes that underneath is fueled by scarcity may be disguised as a full body yes and may be disguised as powerful and embodied and it often isn't in my experience. Yeah. So it's that an example would be that late at night enrollment in someone's course. But you know you don't need. And we just passed Black Friday, but we're not going to talk about that. Right. But your defenses are down. There might've been a glass of wine involved. You're a little bit tired. It's Friday and it's like, I have to have it. Yes. And not, I mean, we're all going to do those. I'm for sure going to still do those in the future, but it was, it happened to me pretty recently. So it was like, oh, there was a quality to that full body yes that felt less powerful than others that I've made recently. And I can now really tell the difference. When it's more, there's more abundance in place. When I'm well nourished, when I'm well rested, when I feel really grounded in my body, there's not an absence of fear necessarily, but there's an absence of scarcity and lack behind it. Beautiful. Yeah. I've heard frequently, I've heard people say, well, you know, it's true for you if it feels light, if it feels like relief. And I'm like, that's not my experience because a lot of times if I'm afraid of something or moving away from something and I'm presented with an option where, oh good, now I don't have to do that thing I don't want to do. It feels wonderfully light and relieving. Yes, I am with you. I share that. I share that. I think for me it feels pretty expansive, like a heart opening, but there's a little discomfort with that too, but safe discomfort. Like of course I'm stepping into something unknown. Of course there's a lot of emotion that's going to come up, but I'm going to be okay. I've got me through this. Yes. What's yours though? I'm dying to know now. I want to know. It's so beautiful because I work with so many clients on this specifically. I've seen it described differently for so many different people and I love that. I love that there's no one unifying way that this is or is not your intuition. For me, it's actually not the sparkles and the shimmers. It's like a deep down knowing and it's like the very quiet, a smallest voice who's not boisterous in any way. It's the one that it's like, you know, this is what comes next. This is what comes next. It's very declarative language and she's very, very verbal with me. Wow. That's so cool. That's so beautiful. Yeah, but I do love that everyone's experience is so different and I love that when we start doing the work of untangling the things that might feel like intuition but aren't, we ultimately always come to a more powerful place for ourselves and have deeper self-knowledge. And what you were just talking about is so important because on the other side of making a decision is the having your back. And I describe that as emotional resiliency and mental toughness. I have a military background so I'm very comfortable with that language. I don't think of it in the way that a lot of people think of it, where you're just ignoring all of your needs and pushing through. I don't think of it that way. And when you do that, you do allow space for emotions like the uncertainty or fear that could come on the other side of this decision. But I'd love to bring it to one other thing you've told me about, if we can kind of segue. And that's being able to tolerate the emotion of boredom and actually choose it. Because I think there's a lot here, like when a lot of people hear people like us having a conversation about full body yes, they think that means that we avoid everything
that is discomfort in our business. And you and I know that's not the case. I think 50% to 60% of my week is discomfort. If I were to have to quantify it, so much discomfort. But it's still a full body yes to go into that discomfort. Exactly. And it's almost like, yes, this is what is required to have the yes. You know, this is the path to the yes. Discomfort as one, for me, that's visibility, that's promoting myself, still so, so, so, so, so uncomfortable with those things. And then it's a lot of repetitive tasks, or double checking things or editing or proofreading. So boring. So boring. I would much rather coach clients all day. Much rather, but in order to be able to get that ultimate yes of service and mentorship and guiding others to have extraordinary lives. I got to be visible. I've got to say what I think I have to put my writing in the world. I have to spell check it. I have to make sure it works. I mean, so boring. So it's always all of it. Katie is like pounding her forehead as we're talking. Her temples. So let us know if we want to find out more about you. Who are the people? Tell us what's going on in their life and why they would really be served working with you. Well, I am spending a lot of time these days with women who, they may happen to be a Gen Xer like myself, but they have some version of golden handcuffs that are keeping them stuck in a place in their lives, either in a marriage or in a career because it just looks so good from the outside and checks a lot of boxes that society says those boxes are so important to check and they can only be checked the way you're doing them. It turns out there's other ways to check those boxes or different boxes altogether. So I love helping women that just maybe have a beautiful life, but since there's something more, there's an internal yes that's wanting to be spoken aloud. There is a slightly different version, maybe just a one degree difference or maybe a radical change that they're hoping to step into safely, supportively on their terms their way. So I do that in one-on-one coaching, and then I teach a lot of those same tools and skills and my certification as well. Oh, that's beautiful. So where can we find you? On Substack. Yeah, so Katie Pulsifer coaching on Substack and my website katipulsifercoaching.com. I have private coaching information and my certification there as well. I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram also, so. Oh, beautiful. Well, and I can attest personally to the joys of being coached by Katie, so everyone really should give it a try. Everyone listening should give it a try. Oh, thank you. Katie, thank you for coming on. Thank you so much. I was delighted to be here because your podcast is one of my regulars and my go-tos in terms of reminding me that my way of doing things is my perfect way. So I get that message from you weekly. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
