15 minute read
Karen Lum: You are Your Community
Story by Sydney Munteanu | images by Serena Gossack
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If you’ve ever been a part of one of Karen Lum’s monthly “Huddles,” the free business Zoom sessions she hosts on Monday mornings, or if you’ve been lucky enough to partake in one of her workshops, then you’d agree. Karen will share personal stories and be just as open about what’s going on in her life, even within the context of business. You get all of her. And that’s both remarkable and refreshing in a world where we as women often wear so many masks.
Karen Lum is a powerhouse of spirit. In my experience, she brings a pop of energy wherever she goes— even on a Zoom call. I was trying to come up with a way to describe Karen’s vibe and honestly, the image that kept popping up in mind was that of a spicy margarita. And I’m totally laughing about this, but it’s true! Karen’s energy is the kind you drink a little too fast because it’s just that good. Refreshing, exciting, and it perfectly hits the spot.
Spicy margarita-type Karen is the presence I’ve most experienced. But on the day we met to chat, I wasn’t sure if that was exactly what I was going to get. I knew she had just come home from 12 weeks unexpectedly spent in California taking care of her mom. Karen and her sister had become the primary caretakers after their mom experienced a massive cerebellum stroke. We would get to that part, I was sure. But how do you kick off a conversation with such a giant elephant in the room?
Karen showed up kind and maybe a little somber, but very open. Curious. I was curious too where this would go.
“I just got home two days ago, and it feels so good to be back,” Karen started. “On my urgent flight out to California, I was preparing to never hear my mom’s voice again. She had a brain bleed for six hours. But she woke up.”
It looks like we were going to just jump right in, because that’s where Karen was.
image by Serena Gossack
“My mom is a big part of my life. It was one of those completely, out of the blue, we never-saw-it-coming moments where life reminds you how precious it is. On September 13th, my mom experienced a massive stroke, and my life has taken a wild turn since that day. We were told to catch the first flight out and prepare to say goodbye to her. But by all sorts of miracles, she is here and is deep in recovery with her daughters by her side.” Karen continued, “The story and the fear I catch myself thinking is that I’m sacrificing my business. But in reality, my clients have been so kind and patient. I’m really grateful for how accommodating everyone has been. But right now, I’m excited to be home and getting back into work for a little bit.”
There she was. Unabashedly telling me that while she’s so focused on her mom and supporting her recovery, she’s also very excited to be selfish in doing her own life and schedule for a minute. A welcome break before she goes back to California again. Showing, by sharing, that both feelings are totally okay.
“There have been a lot of moments when I worry about my business.” Karen shares, “I am the main income provider in my household, and I also believe that we have to nurture our businesses to keep them thriving. But at the same time, these last several months have taught me if we’ve done good work, we have a foundation of people who will still be there. A community. It’s really about trusting that what you’ve built can endure. To really just show up where you are.”
As one of Montana’s top business coaches, I had originally thought to speak to Karen for a feature in Montana Woman’s January issue. Her advice, seemingly, might land well in the spirit of the new year and provide inspiring advice for all of us. But like so many things in life, timing has a funny way of showing us how it’s really meant to go. Sometimes overnight, as in Karen’s case, our world turns, or we read a line that resonates so deeply, or a message comes to us and serves us in ways we cannot predict. While our conversation did very much center around work, which I’m excited to share within the rest of this piece, the responding advice Karen gives to her clients is so much about meeting yourself where you are. She encourages individuals to work within your life and your dreams, as they are today. Showing up with all the aspects of yourself and how you are feeling in your current moment in time.
“I want you to rate, on a scale of one to four, how much emergent energy you are feeling right now.” Karen prompts in one of her recent Monday Huddles. A capacity check-in, she calls it. And goes on, “And now rate, on the same scale, how has the pace of your days been lately?” This is not an exercise to churn out more productivity. No, it’s about getting everyone to check in with where they are and what they are actually feeling moved to do with their current state of energy. Especially on the days that feel like a one.
Karen wasn’t always clear in wanting to become a business coach. It was something that drew her in over many life paths and through time. And mostly through working on teams and focusing on human experience in business culture. As a former dancer, Karen opened up a studio in Ennis in 2001 after moving there from Seattle to live near her future husband. She wanted to create something fun and expose the community to dance and movement. And she needed something fun with this life transition to a small town, coupled with getting laid off from a job working as a corporate trainer in the wake of 9/11. Ironically, it would be oneof her tap dancing students that gave her a connection a few years later, bringing her into the hospitality industry and ultimately giving her the catapult to launch her own business.
“I started K.Lum Consulting after almost a decade as an executive leader for the newly developed Moonlight Basin Resort,” Karen explains. “I was part of a start-up business doing huge things with a massive vision and working for an owner who hired young people and who encouraged thinking differently. We were designing unique, highend experiences in a stunning place, and that was amazing. Then we went from the high of growth and success to the very low of taking on a loan from Lehman Brothers during the 2008 recession. I ran a large team, and for 9 months straight I didn’t know if myself or my team would have a job each day when we went to work. And yet, it was in that very uncomfortable situation where I learned more about business and leadership. About people’s emotional dynamics. I would not be here without that experience.”
Karen shares, however, that she has always had a deep interest in group facilitation and understanding the dynamics between people and relationships. “I love helping people make the connection between great customer service and internal culture and business success,” she says. “It’s all ultimately rooted in human experience.”
Group facilitation is now a main focus of Karen’s work. As is holding space and support for people to pursue their dreams. Isn’t that what community is all about at the end of the day? “There is some purpose fulfilled for me in being that [community] for someone else. Sometimes being in community starts with just one person who has the capacity to be available for someone else,” Karen explains. “So I think that’s the crux of my coaching work. I want people to feel less alone in their professional journey. I want to normalizethat feeling of: Am I the only one? I want people to experience someone being their champion. And frankly, I want to normalize the messy middle.”
Community is certainly a big part of what I recognize in Karen’s work. I think, at first, it’s something you don’t quite understand. Something shiny that draws you in and perhaps gets you to sign up for a Huddle in the first place. But once you’re there and have had a taste of the experience, it’s seeing other entrepreneurs and creatives who are there for the same reasons as you. I’ve come to understand that this is Karen’s gift. That of making community very real.
“Although community can look many different ways. In my experience,” Karen states, “I believe that it serves everyone to have community. Being a “connector” or champion for community is one of those tools in my toolkit I pull out when I notice someone is feeling isolated. Or they need a resource.”
“We cannot possibly know what’s around the bend. And yet, I’ve realized, we uncover our strength and potential from the mountains we climb.”
image by Serena Gossack
When Karen began K.Lum Consulting in 2013, it was a slow and deliberate start. In part because she knew it needed to be. After so many years working for corporate cultures that left much to be desired, moving forward and creating something new would have to be built deliberately.
“One thing I work really hard at, in anything I create, is bringing authenticity. In particular to the business world. That piece is super intentional for me, and it was harder to do early in my career. I was often the youngest person in the company who took on a really important position. I was always an overachiever. I’ve always had a strong EQ (so I could get myself those positions I was, at first, underqualified for.) I was typically the onlywoman on the team or one of the few who were surrounded by men pretty much my entire career,” Karen explains. “So to that end, I spent a lot of my career navigating how everyone else wanted me to show up or expected me to show up.”
Karen reflects, “It was exhausting. And at one point, it was absolutely a contributing factor to the demise of my relationship. I was obsessed with being appreciated and included ‘at the table’ in business. And the truth is, on several occasions, it was futile. Because in those particular environments I was in, it was never going to happen as I envisioned. There was so much posturing and business politics. There was nothing I was going to do that was going to change it. That is when I realized how powerful leadership can be. Leaders set the tone for business culture. And that is the piece I want to work with people to improve and normalize in business: showing up authentically.”
“Anyone who works with me knows that I believe one of the superpowers we can cultivate is selfawareness. Self-awareness requires some depth. It requires stillness. You have to be willing to see the things you don’t want to see. To ask how you feel emotionally and in your body.” Karen explains, “I often am just holding the mirror up for my clients. Ultimately, we learn the most about ourselves in relation to others. I build relationships with everyone I work with, and through them, I learn about myself too. Everyone I work with is also a mirror to me.”
‘I feel like going to you is business therapy.’ Karen admits she hears that a lot. “I think it’s because I’m not afraid of hard topics. Or, I’m not afraid of crossing over into personal topics. Because what we contribute to this world has to come from all parts of us.”
“I have no desire to be one or two dimensional. It is my joy in life to have all these different aspects of me, and have room for all of them.”
“I’m hopeful that part of the impact I have is that I’m busting down some of the myths that perfect formulas exist for success in work and in our lives. We don’t have a lot of modeling in business for how to have authentic conversations. I think we’re posing a little bit in the spirit of being professional.” Karen explains, “It’s just what we’ve learned. It takes courage to not couch what we need to say and to trust that we’ll get a different response if we try something new.”
image by Serena Gossack
The anti-formula approach to business— and life— and what you really do is show up authentically, is something I’ve certainly gravitated to Karen for. I know I’m not the only one. Karen has a large and growing following (mostly women) who also find her message refreshing and real. They show up often. On her calls, at her in-person Bozeman events, and in her many interactive workshops.
“We learn the most about ourselves in relation to others,” Karen reiterates. “I’m very fueled by community, and I’m a bit of an extrovert in getting my energy this way. So I suppose, I’m naturally more energized and fulfilled when I’m learning from others. And frankly, I think I can make a bigger impact this way. I’ve experienced the benefits of community in so many ways, including helping me with some major transitions in my life. I don’t crave doing it all by myself.”
Karen goes a little further: “Community is my support. We need it so deeply. I have a precious personal women’s group, for example— we go by ‘Sacred World.’ It’s a group of women who have been meeting for 9+ years. We talk about things you can’t talk about over coffee— we witness, acknowledge, and lift each other up through all the deepest challenges in our lives. I believe that we need more of that as women. To powerfully hold space for each other.”
Where do we go from here as a community of women in Montana?
“There are so many ways in which what we are already doing and cultivating is all that we need to do,” Karen answers. “I want our successes to not change that. At least in regards to a mentality of abundance. This is what we have to keep our eye on. It’s a booming market now, but what is the next evolution of who we are as a female business community? How can we hold on to this abundance mentality and move forward together in community?”
“So many people who’ve newly moved here are reaching out and commenting, ‘Wow, there’s so much collaboration between women here versus the place I’ve come from.’ Community is already something we do
well. What I want is for us to not question it. And I also don’t want our successes in this booming market to change how we’re doing business together, and life together for that matter. I think that threat is a very real risk. As the tensions around the job market, and cost of living, keeping employees, etc., rises, it’s a lot of pressure being added to a community that operates with a certain sense of values and a certain sense of community. We have to keep that. And somehow not subscribe to the myths that this ‘next evolution’ of who we are as women in Montana and in the business community needs to somehow forgo the connection, the sharing, and the lifting up of others. Even with these pressures that we’re feeling. And truly, isn’t that an interesting test? Can we hold onto these values and not let future scarcity or pressures impact the quality of our community?”
I walked away from our call feeling as if I got my lesson for the day in community:
That how we show up in our life is what will create it.
SYDNEY MUNTEANU is a communications and branding strategist with a passion for storytelling. She grew up in Colorado and received her B.S. from the University of Colorado, Boulder and left in 2012 to pursue a marketing career in Los Angeles. After 5 years of city life, the call back to the mountains was too great and she found (and fell in love with) her new home in Whitefish, Montana. Sydney has a marketing consulting business working with food & beverage, wellness, and women’s brands. Connect and find her work at backlabelbranding.com
image by Serena Gossack
KAREN LUM: @klumconsulting | klumconsulting.com
SERENA GOSSACK: @gossackcreative | gossackcreative.com
