Welcome to season two of Talk with Kristen with an E. This season, we're digging a little deeper into leadership, personal growth, and the courage it takes to follow your passion. Real conversations, honest reflections, because life isn't perfect and neither are we.

 Hey everybody. Welcome back. So how crazy is this? It's like the beginning and the end all at the same time because, it's like the first of something and the last of something. Not the last of something forever. But, we'll just get into it. So in case you forgot who I am, hi. I'm Kristen. I know it's been a minute since I've recorded or posted an episode, and I said this in the last one too, that, oh, it's been a minute, but we're finally back and then another three weeks passed.

So, we're gonna talk about that a little bit today, but. Also wanted to point out that I am recording video this time. Yes, this is new and exciting, and if you're just listening like you usually do on Apple or Spotify or Amazon, that's fine. You will still get everything out of this episode that you normally come to expect from an episode of mine.

But also, if you want to see me, you can go on YouTube and watch this episode if it works out. I'm recording it now. I could change my mind between now and then, or maybe it doesn't work. Who knows? We'll see. If you are seeing me though, very exciting here. Uh, those of you who know me in real life have seen you before.

Those of you who don't have seen me on like Instagram or Facebook, but I may look a little bit different in real life and to address the elephant in the room. There will be an episode on this in 2026, but I am going all natural with my hair. So we are growing out the grays, which started as just me not wanting to dye it.

And then as time went on and seeing other friends kind of going natural with their gray and silver and Facebook feeding it to me over and over again in my algorithm, I was like, you know what? Fine, we're gonna do it. So we are about nine months in now and I'm loving it. My husband hates it, but it's, we're trusting the process.

We're really gonna see how it works out. And I'm also going natural with my waves and curls too. We're just 20, 26 new me. We'll see. But that's not what this episode is about. So I wanted to share with you all that. This is going to be the last episode. Of season two. That was unexpected, right?

For you and me both. I wanna start by saying this is not an apology. I'm not saying I am sorry for season two, or I'm sorry, this season two is ending. I. A little bit because it definitely looks different than how I expected. There were fewer episodes, there were very long pauses in between the publishing of episodes.

And a lot of that was just because real life and everything that was going on behind the scenes that kind of put me in a place that made it harder to record where I wasn't feeling like I wanted to record. So first what I wanted to talk about was a little bit of what I had wanted for season two, and you hear at the beginning of every one of the season two episodes that we're talking about personal growth and leadership and following passions, and that really was what I had planned on doing for season two.

And I was so excited. I had new series that I wanted to launch into. I had new guests I was going to interview and talk with. I had. So much planned for it, and it just. Hadn't happened. Like there were so many episodes I'd even had, outlined or scripted out that I wanted to share.

Like, oh, by the way, I got a new job, that was unexpected and I was going to kind of share how that came about and what I learned from it because there were definitely personal growth leadership lessons there. I wanted to get into the whole what I had been calling L Woods era. If you've seen Legally Blonde, one of my favorite, favorite, favorite movies of all time, and I'd gone through this stage of my life partly with getting the new job where I really had that moment of, oh, you think I can't do something?

Like just watch me. And I felt very L Woods. Like when they tell her she can't go to Harvard and she's all like. What, like it's hard and then does it anyway and proves Warner wrong. Like I went through that whole thing and I, I had so much that I wanted to share about it, but it just never felt right. And the few times that I had tried recording it, it didn't seem right.

Like, it was something so much that I wanted to share, but I couldn't get it right, so I didn't. And that's kind of how it was. There were other stories that I wanted to tell people I wanted to interview. Like I said, there's this whole series of leader to leader that I wanted to have with, people that I'd gone through my leadership program at school.

My friend Greta, who she and I have these leader to leader talks, and it was gonna be so great to transition it to the podcast and share. And then when she was ready to record, I was like, oh, I'm not really ready. I can't do it. And it was just. It just didn't happen. And for that I feel bad. Like I feel like it felt short in the fear of letting people down.

Like I feel like I wasn't meeting my own expectations, which made me think that I wasn't meeting other people's expectations, which I realize is kind of crazy because. You all as listeners, probably don't have expectations. I mean, you're just like, yay, there's a new episode. That's so exciting. And it wasn't that you had all these expectations that I thought were in my head.

And if I keep saying that I'm a recovering people pleaser, even if people did have expectations, I shouldn't have cared about it and it needed to be more about me. And anyway, it that's, that's just kind of what happened. So I'd been beating myself up about it because every time a week went by and I didn't have a new episode to post, or I hadn't even been recording, my podcast studio basically became Christmas Central.

This is where I was hiding gifts and then wrapping gifts, and then it was just kind of messy that I didn't wanna come in here, and it really was just all excuses. But I, I was on Instagram, which still struggling with social media, and that's something we will cover in 2026. But I saw this quote from Adam Grant and he said.

Also, you know how much I love Adam Grant because I've mentioned this multiple times. But he said, success is not about finishing everything you start. It's about knowing when to grit and when to quit. 235 studies. When people adjust their goals and plans in the face of challenges, they make more progress and feel less depressed and anxious.

The ultimate flex is flexibility and. That's what I had to do with this season because could I have just kept recording and putting episodes out and absolutely I could have done that, but it didn't feel right. Like I did publish an episode and then the next day unpublished it because it didn't feel right and it wasn't something that I needed to be sharing or should have been sharing.

It's still the material of that episode, like the underlying story was good and the lesson that I get to at the end was good, but how I shared the story was not how it should have been shared. We may come back around to that one sometime, but, it just, wasn't for season two. I learned through reading that quote of Adam Grant, that growth isn't always pushing harder and sometimes it is listening and pausing, and that's what I had to do.

There was a lot of pausing because I didn't want to force content and I didn't want to put something out just to check a box. Like, okay, well it's Wednesday, here's an episode. I couldn't put out something that I couldn't stand behind that I wasn't proud of, that didn't align with my values and the values that I've created for the podcast.

So that's kind of where we were at with that. And in my reflection of it, I've had to accept that it's not failure. It's trust in myself. And that's still been hard because, it does feel like failure and I don't know if you've ever had it, where like you're avoiding something or you're not doing something, and the longer it goes on.

The easier it is to avoid it and the harder to get back into it. Like I can't think of a really great example, but I feel like if you know, you know, and like you've had that kind of situation, that's kind of how it was like the longer I went, not recording an episode, it got easier because I got out of the habit of recording.

But also it got harder to get back into it because then it's like when I come back, then I have to. I don't wanna say like I have to make an excuse, but I almost feel like it has to be like acknowledging it, right? Like kind of I am today. Even like, Hmm. It's been a long time without an episode. Yeah, it has.

And I didn't wanna deal with that, like the mounting guilt of it all, which again, I realize is like. It made up in my head because nobody cares if I post an episode or not, but I cared and it got harder for me. So that's kind of what I expected from season two and how I felt during season two.

But when I look at what actually came from season two, as short as it was, there was so much gain from it and so much deeper than in season one and stuff that you all couldn't even see. I was able to actually connect with listeners, like I found people who wanted to talk to me about my podcast and it was so crazy because in many times these are people I didn't even know.

So there was this guy at work and I knew him. He knew me. I don't think he knew I had a podcast and I ran into him in the hall and he was like, Hey, can I tell you a crazy story? I was like, sure. Tell me a crazy story. And he says, well, you know, I was, searching for a very specific topic on a podcast and I actually found your podcast.

I was like, oh, okay. And he told me that he started listening to a couple episodes and really enjoyed it. And then he shared it with his partner and she really enjoyed it. And that now they were both listening to my podcast and I was like, wow, that's really cool.

Should I have asked him what he was searching for, like how he actually got to my podcast. And, so I, I don't know how that happened and he has since retired and I, I can't ask him that. But it was just a really cool story of having somebody like acknowledge that they came upon it and they enjoyed it.

And similarly, I was invited to a party about a month ago, and I was talking to my friend that was having the party and she's like, oh yeah, you know my friend, she's gonna be here. And I told her You were coming. And she was like, Kristen, with an E. And she was all excited because my friend had told her friend about my podcast months ago.

And I guess the friend had still been listening and was so excited to meet me. And it was one of those, like, I almost feel like a celebrity moment. It was one of those things where it was a little bit like, oh my gosh, somebody knows my podcast and wants to meet me.

That's so cool. But then the coolest part was I got to talk with this friend and she was just such a sweetheart and we, you know, we had just met, but the way we were talking and she shared with me. An episode or two that had really resonated with her and we got to talking more about that

but we had really good conversation, which was so cool. 'cause normally, you know, if you go to a party and you don't know a lot of people, you don't really get past surface stuff or small talk. And because she had listened to my podcast, it was kind of like she already knew me. And because I love talking, I was able to talk to her and get to know her more and kind of talk about more than just surface stuff, which I actually really enjoyed.

That was super cool. Then I had somebody else say that they listened to one of my episodes twice because she enjoyed it so much. There was someone who said that, while she was painting a room in her house, she'd been listening to my podcast and would actively talk back to her phone while it was playing.

And she was like I was talking with you and I was like, that's the point. I named it Talk with Kristen with an E so people would feel like they are talking. With me so that they feel seen or validated or like that they're not alone or that what they're thinking or feeling isn't crazy and that somebody else out there has thought that or felt that too and just makes them feel not so alone.

Like that's the whole reason why I started this podcast, and I don't say these stories to brag about like, yay me. That's not what it is. The podcast is bigger than just recordings and putting them out. It's building that connection and that community where people feel something and then meeting those people in real life or talking to people in real life about what I'm sharing too.

It just, it's so meaningful and I can't even find like what the word is other than like. Connection and that's really what I wanted. So while season two was not full of content, I felt that it did have the connection, which is really, I. More what I wanted to do anyway and more meaningful. And I know I said this, I think in one of the, previous episodes about how I stopped looking at the numbers or tried to stop looking at numbers.

'cause it's not about the listens or the downloads or whatever it's about. Reaching out to at least one person who needs to hear something. And I'm not an expert at anything by any means, but I have a lot of opinions and I like to think that I have experience and stories that may make an impact on somebody else.

And that's really what it's what it's all about and what I'm trying to do. So it's not about the volume or consistency. It really is about that connection. And that on its own, made me feel that season two was a success, even if it had less than 10 episodes, which I'm still struggling with. And I thought, you know, like, okay, well maybe we just keep.

Season two going, like season one I think had 28 or 29 episodes. A few bonus ones thrown in, like maybe I just stick with it and we keep pushing through and season two will get longer. But the truth is I think I need to end it and have a refresh, restart, and just accept season two. Was what it was, didn't live up to the hype that I'd hyped it up in my head, and that's okay.

And that we have to be okay with that because while I am breaking free from my people pleasing tendencies, I also need to break free from my perfectionist tendencies and realize that. Not everything is perfect. Not everything can be perfect. Not everything needs to be perfect. Not everything should be perfect, and that sometimes what it is is what it is and let it be at that.

So that's what we're doing. But what does this mean to you? I also want you to have that grace with yourself and give yourself the permission. Maybe 2025 did not live up to your hype. Maybe it didn't look the way you thought it would. Maybe you are leaving 2025 with grief and scars and hurt and you're not sure what's coming next.

That's fine. Like it's okay if it didn't meet your expectations. It's okay if it didn't turn out the way you thought it would, and it's okay if. You are sad or disappointed or frustrated, or, I mean, maybe 2024 was great for you and you are super happy and you're thrilled and you're great. That's great.

You guys, whatever stage of life you're in is fine, but I just wanna give you that, like to give yourself permission that if it doesn't feel okay or it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, then that's okay. It is what it is, and we're all gonna get past this because we're just going to, you don't need a reason for that.

So what does this mean? Now? Season two is ending. This will be the last episode I published for season two. I'm going to be recording some more episodes and kind of resetting myself in January. I do, and I'm not hyping this up, like to fail again. I didn't fail. Just what a different way.

There's lots of things that I do wanna cover in early 2026, but I also know that I have some work to do to get things in a place where it is ready to come out. So, throughout January, I'm just gonna be making sure I'm recording stuff, editing it, getting it ready. Maybe we'll do more video podcasts in 2026.

We're gonna see how this one turns out. So January is where we're gonna take a deep breath and kind of reset for what's next.

And then season three will come in February again, just like season one last year when I launched the podcast, it was in February. So we'll be doing that again. Season three will go live in February. We will have fresh energy, more clarity, and a lot of stories that I will finally be ready to tell.

So I look forward to season three being more, but before I go, I just wanted to thank you all. So thank you for hanging in there, for being there for listening, for reaching out, for just making this podcast something that I am proud of for. Building those connections and really kind of making this a shared space for us.

So it's not just a performance, it's a place where we can come together and feel crazy together or feel all the big emotions and get through it together. If this podcast has ever made you feel less alone than. I've done something good and you matter, and we'll keep doing this in 2026 and I look forward to getting to talk to even more of you and I can't wait to share what I already have in store.

So enjoy the rest of your 2025 bye guys.

That's a wrap for this week's episode. Thanks so much for spending time with me. Until next time, be honest with yourself. Ask the hard questions, and remember, you are not alone on this journey.