Unlocking Your Soul Shade: Kate Harrison’s Journey into Colour Therapy & Holistic Healing

0:02Using your voice kind of unapologetically for God, I think that's what that means is saying what you mean and what you feel and saying it with passion and conviction.

0:17Jeannette Linfoot:Today's guest is Kate Harrison, the UK's leading colour therapist and founder of Chromie, which is a revolutionary well-being practice that harnesses the ancient healing power of colour. for modern lives. You know, with a rich background in styling, creative consulting and holistic healing, Kate really does uniquely blend intuition and strategy to help people discover their soul shade, the personalised colours that support emotional, physical and spiritual balance. And Kate's work is transforming how individuals and brands understand and experience colour, showing us that colour is not just what we see but how we feel and her inspiring journey and innovative vision you know offers really profound lessons on alignment empowerment and the transformative potential of living life in its full spectrum a fascinating conversation let's get into the episode

1:21Jeannette Linfoot:welcome to brave bob brilliant i'm here today with the wonderful kate harrison all the way from up north. Kate, how are you? I am and it's not too grim up north today, you'll be glad to know. The sun is shining for me. Excellent, well we're going to be talking all about energy aren't we? So that's a great way to start the podcast. Now Kate, you are the founder of Crow Me, your business that you started actually, not that long ago, early 2025 you started the business, right? This version of it, yes, but as you know on this podcast you have entrepreneurs all the time and and this is an incarnation of something that's been going on for 20 years so this is a lifetimes as work um rolled into this whole new modality really excellent well isn't it i know you're so it's so interesting because you're right as an entrepreneur we start with one idea or area then it can sort of evolve and grow and that's a great joy about having your own business and being able to go in different directions um so i we're going to cover how you started how it's evolved but before we kind of get into all of the journey you've been on Kate can you just explain what chromotherapy is because we met not that long ago probably about a month ago now at Reset Summit with the wonderful Rick Moylan big shout out to Rick and we were both speaking we were both guest speakers at the at the conference and it was the first I'd ever heard of this myself and I was like wow we've got to get Kate on the podcast so chromotherapy what is it and why have we all been missing out for so long and it's one of those things that once you hear it you can't stop thinking about it that's kind of this was like an earworm that started for me 20 years ago really um so chromotherapy essentially is using color as a well-being tool so it's chromie is about color me so that's what that means um and chromotherapy is essentially using it's an energetic healing method if you like um it was sort of first introduced by the stoics ancient egypt actually was where it started they used to have little slats in the pyramid walls where they could put different colored crystals and they'd refract light through these crystals to create different colored rooms so um and they then put people in each different room depending on what their ailments were so they were essentially using colour as a healing tool and they started it and then we kind of forgot about it and now we live in this world full of colour and we're affected by it every single day and we're surrounded by it some more than others and and it affects us and affects our energy so really chromotherapy is that energetic healing method of using colour as a healing tool but there's super amounts of science behind it which I have spent years researching and it's really powerful stuff.

4:22Jeannette Linfoot:Well we're going to get into it because it is fascinating and I know when I heard you speak at Reset I was just like wow god this is like so much more than oh I like red or I like blue or I have a go-to kind of colour and so see i remember you explaining when we were at reset that colors everywhere colors energy so do you want to just explain about the rainbow if you like of colors that are all around us every single day even if we're not physically seeing them yeah that's it so if you imagine natural daylight to start off with okay so natural daylight contains every single color in the visible spectrum okay and we don't see it until it's refracted through something when we actually physically see a rainbow so what color is is the visualization of different energetic wavelengths so if we imagine um light to be classed as a color you need to be on the visible spectrum of light so what we're using here is the visible spectrum of light now in in well-being nowadays it's totally commonplace to use outside of that visible spectrum so we use infrared light you know we have infrared saunas and what have you to help you detoxify and to regenerate cells and all sorts of things clinically proven right so if it's infrared it's below the wavelength of red as we see it so that means it's outside of the human ability to be able to see so that's below the visible spectrum anything that's above the visible spectrum is ultraviolet so we're using this all the time as well more and more in things like face masks and all this kind of we use that uv rays so it's like somewhere along the line we decided or we forgot about the stuff we can actually see so these are visible wavelengths of light that we can physically see therefore we know they contain energy and it's harnessing the power of those every day because like you say we're surrounded by it every day it might be in our cushions it might be on our walls it might be going out into nature being surrounded by the green trees the blue sky the yellow sunshine it's literally everywhere it's in the food we eat you know it's in it's in what we wear so we have the opportunity to consciously use color every single day and once we understand how to use it and how that relates to us then it becomes a powerful well-being tool wow and and and is this It's now, like you say, once you hear about it, you almost get hooked.

6:53Jeannette Linfoot:It's like when you see, I don't know, a particular car you're thinking about. You haven't seen any of them and then you see them everywhere, right? It's like your awareness, I guess, is heightened, right? It's seeing, you see the world in colour. And it is literally, you know, I say to people, it's a bit like landing in Oz. It was like, it was all a bit grey before. And then as soon as you either have a one-to-one or come and have a soul-shade session online, easy for me to say um it's it's like you flick a switch and you can switch it on and this also really resonated with me because I've got three children and 17 years ago when I had my first child it was like someone had taken the color away from my life and this was when I first started realizing oh my gosh like this is a feeling this feeling gray you know feeling flat feeling it's the same as going into um a day and it's gray and it's you know dark and it feels different to a blue sky sunshine day it was the same feeling and once you we can all lose color in our lives and i think this is what this is the chromie basis of chromie really was that those days or those times in our lives where we lose color for so many different reasons it could be like it was for me i had a baby I had sort of postnatal depression it could be through trauma it could be divorce it could be you know um death there are so many different reasons that we lose colour in our life what if we are able to actively introduce that colour again to our own lives and literally colour our own lives back in how we want them to look and how we want them to feel oh wow yeah so so so the people that you help um Kate will they often find you or come to you because they're not feeling great and their their well-being is awful their you know their mental kind of you know headspace is just a bit fuzzy or you know just not feeling themselves would they normally come to you because they're not feeling great or would they come to you because they're feeling pretty good actually but they just want more of something yeah is it like or is it that they're moving towards something new i don't know you know what so many different people for so many different reasons some people just totally intrigued like they've tried the ice baths you know they've done the sound healing they've been to a gong bath and now they're like what is this i've not heard of this before what is this and this color therapy can genuinely be a missing piece you know i get a lot of messages do a lot of stuff on instagram people going I just feel a bit, I'm just not 100 % sure what it is.

9:33But one thing's for sure is my house is beige, my wardrobe's black khaki and cream. And I'm just wondering if there's something in what you're saying. And generally, there is. People come for so many different reasons. You know, I've done a lot of stuff at big wellbeing festivals over the summer, Happy Place. I'm just about to go off to Carfest with Chris Evans to do some workshops for them. And sometimes it's just intrigue, because I think we all know, you know, colour affects our brains. The science of it is that colour affects our brains subconsciously. So we don't think about this. You know, we don't think, oh, there's a red stop sign.

10:07That's a powerful colour. That must stop me in my tracks. We just do it straight away. And brands know this. Brands know how to kind of, what to use for us to interpret it in different ways, which one's going to make us feel more trustworthy, which one's going to make us appear more friendly they're using it all the time so this is decoding that as well for individuals to be able to use to their own advantage um it's super interesting and like i say i use this with my kids as well so i i use color meditations with my kids pre-exams exam anxiety things like that because different colors can calm you different colors can energize you and it's like a little prescription knowing how it affects you your individual um personality and your individual energy and how you can almost paint by numbers within your life amazing and i

10:58Jeannette Linfoot:think it'll be really helpful actually kate to go through just some examples of the colors and the energies and the kind of emotions that come with that calming or energizing whatever it might be come to that because i know you've got this absolutely off the pack because you had us all choosing a go-to colour and then you took us all through it when we were at reset um but just coming back to happy place what a brilliant festival to be at so the wonderful fern cotton and i was listening to i was driving back from london um on saturday morning and i was listening to happy place the podcast with fern cotton and she was interviewing davina mccall and i think it was during the festival right so that's the same festival that you were at presumably yeah it was yeah it was at Gunnersbury Park um last month yes yeah yeah fantastic and they've got another one haven't they coming up in in yeah we are we're up at Tatton Park in Cheshire um at the end of this month yeah happy place has been amazing um again that's something that just came do you know I went as a punter I went because I went with my friend it's just right up my street anything to do with well-being and the Tatton Park one actually is about 10 minutes from my house so I went a few years back now and I sat in a teepee and I said to her I'm going to be here next year and she looked at me and went probably knowing you yes you will be and by some I always say but it's never by chance is it but I am a big big believer in the universe and you kind of get out what you put out so I shoved it on the old vision board and I started working towards it just in terms of building this kind of colour as a well-being brand because back then I was known as the soulful stylist so I still had this kind of stylist tag that I really struggled with dropping because people knew me as a stylist I'd had tv shows as a stylist you know this was what I did and if I wasn't that what was I and because what I'm doing is still very new there's a big education piece around it so I was really scared to drop that and and rebrand um but at the time someone had contacted me to do an event for a a shopping center which was actually sort of up um the other side of cheshire but this this events company was from london and so i started working for them they heard me talking about chromotherapy hadn't booked me to do that had booked me as a stylist to kind of talk about color but more color analysis and when i came off stage doing that they said oh gosh have you ever thought about doing hell happy place because this is like way more than just color analysis oh god you know that is on my vision board 100 they said well we book all the ask for happy place let's book you and I was like oh my gosh are you joking so it was just awesome so that was last year I did um Saturday and Sunday had two sellout um workshops at happy place and then this year they've welcomed me back to come to London as well so I did the London festival Saturday Sunday and now I'm doing Cheshire as well so it it's been awesome for me I've met some amazing people and the great thing is you all just you just become mates with them all all these like experts that are top of their game and I'm a person that loves to learn I will learn across the board you know I did a brilliant live last week with a lady called Sam Adams who's a breathwork coach and she was on the center stage doing breathwork and I think that's the amazing thing about colour it literally works with every single kind of well-being tool out there so it's never competing with it it just adds to whatever everybody else is doing yeah I saw that on Instagram and it made me smile because Sam Adams whether she would remember me directly but I came across Sam during lockdown during Covid when Clubhouse which was a social media platform that exploded like an audio live kind of being in the studio and Sam was doing stuff on Clubhouse I was doing stuff on Clubhouse and when I saw I thought bloody hell small world it's very small and when you get down to it it's a very small world but all these people doing incredible things and I just love it and you know so many of us have kind of pivoted at midlife as well that that podcast that you were talking about with um Davina just exactly the same thing we are kind of coming into ourselves now and I think you're coming from this point of experience that for 20 years I've had umpteen different businesses worked around the styling around the color and it's only now at sort of 45 that I'm putting all those pieces together and going oh this is the one this is it this is what it's and it'll probably evolve again knowing me but um but yeah it's it's a great place to be happy place yeah fantastic well congratulations on that and it just shows you it's all about connections and network isn't it even if you're not sort of you know the word networking it can sound a bit like oh god really you know kind of like you know being a bit false and a bit just putting myself out there but it's not is it it's just about meaningful relationships meeting interesting people having cool conversations sometimes you click sometimes you don't but when you do that can lead to so many amazing kind of opportunities or relationships or you're just leading with value right to help people always and I think that's why with Chromie it feels really different for me because I never kind of imagined this was going to become a business this was more like a personal development learning journey for me I was just so interested and why people were feeling these colours the effect it was having on people I'd stand a woman there in the red dress and she'd look incredible and she'd know she'd look incredible you know but then three weeks later I think I've said this to you before I'd see her in Tesco in a grey tracksuit again and I'd be like what's happened and she said no the red looked amazing but it just didn't feel like me and that's what really after like the 17 ,000th time that people were saying this to me I was like there's this is a feeling this is a feeling and we all feel different to colour as well you know when I do the one-to-one this is very much people say why is it called therapy because this is about a connection colour connects people and it can connect you back to yourself and sometimes we exclude whole colours from our lives because something has happened in the past and we don't even it's not a conscious decision we're not going I shall never wear purple again because something has happened and it was in a purple room and it doesn't it's just our brain it's the brain it's the wiring of the brain so when someone and I had this the other day with a really well-known client um I'm not going to say her name but we we were talking about her soul shade it had come up that everyone has this soul shade so everyone will have a color that really represents who they are and it vibrates in their own energy so this is the color of the energy the visibility of the energy that you give out every single day and this lady came back as indigo so kind of on the higher spectrum quite purple and I then asked her a questionnaire and the one purple one color that she always avoided was purple ever since she was a child so she's like well this can't be right I can't this can't be my soul shade it just can't be I hate it so it took a bit of unpicking and it always does but that color basically had been associated with someone who had uh it was an outfit that someone had worn that was a uniform of someone that was bullying her as a child and the association was still there but the energy of her meant that she was almost hiding from being herself by not allowing this energy into her life and it was incredible when she i have a lot of people who cry and not because this is like a painful experience or anything just because it's wow I never thought of it like that and especially if you're quite a visual learner like I am I struggle sometimes you know I've done lots of different forms of therapy and coaching and if it's just the talking sometimes I can talk it and then I just let it go and it's a little bit like the reading I can read a book and I'll just have to keep rereading it but if someone hits me with something really visual and for her it was this indigo color then the tears just went and she was like oh my god I've abandoned myself because I thought that was her and not me and I'm like yeah that's the one and we worked from there then so everyone's very different but um the impact is always massive wow it's really powerful isn't it but yeah I mean you see I think well and your background is a stylist right so you start you you had a big career in the world fashion as well didn't you say earlier yeah I did uh yeah I've had a do you know what I was talking to my daughter about this she's like oh what did you do for your first job and I'm like let me think my degree was in retail marketing um so and throughout that time in Manchester always worked in shops as well in retail up and down you know King Street was the place then I worked for Armani I worked for Selfridges I worked for Flannel and was always I had really good sales but I would never have class myself as a salesperson because all I did was help people all I wanted to do was make people feel really good and walking into a shop like that you fully expected the shop assistants to be up their own bums and not want to talk to anyone I was like hiya what you were here for and they're like oh god I don't really know and I'm like well let's sort you out then and it was very much like let's see how we can make you feel better and it was all value and I think that's that always comes through with me I want to over deliver every time usually way too much and that's all linked to my soul shade I'll come back to you on that one um but yeah I did that and then I trained down in London as a stylist and that was very much there were some elements of fashion about it but there were also and I was really pushed down the fashion route especially through I had two tv series called fashion face off so that was using what was on the high street what's in fashion now creating different looks and for me that's never what set me alight what set me alight with the people I didn't love clothes I loved people and the more styling I did the more it was about how can we connect this person the inside of this person to the outside of this person because fashion is very much about being looking a certain way and wearing a certain thing or wearing a certain brand at the time certainly in the noughties I think now it's a lot more expressive you know you kind of more anyone can be anything but back then it really wasn't like that and I never really followed that path I always wanted I always saw this as a connector and color was always the bit that I was really drawn to not necessarily wandering around looking like a rainbow but oh these colors they're feeling them and how can I place them you know I would be styling people a lot corporate styling for you know talks and seminars and things how can I make this person feel amazing what do they need help with today how can we set their vibe for that day and that's how it all came about really yeah so it's so fascinating as you're talking it's like it's almost like it feels like you're exactly where you're meant to be right now okay but all these things even that very early kind of role that you had in retail and in styling etc you had that color element way back then with no vision that this was what it was going to become and yet all those dots get connected and here you are living your best life going wow I understand now I understand what the journey's been for even before that like colour so my dad was an art teacher right so in my house it was full of colour his paintings were everywhere they still are now he used to have like a tie rack with loads of different coloured silk ties and I just used to play in and out with that just surrounded by the colour so yeah it's I didn't think about it at the time but now I'm like yeah this is this is the one but I've kind of had to create a modality for it that I'm now having to explain to people because it's such a um color therapists exist and chromotherapists exist but in a very woo kind of state and when I did my training I was reams and reams of paper so much study so many so much science involved in it and my husband was like what the hell what are you studying for you becoming a doctor or something this is ridiculous why are you understanding about the eye and the brain and and the the nervous system and stuff but it was so in depth I thought there's so many barriers to entry with this if someone if this landed on someone's desk and they weren't as obsessed as I am with colour they wouldn't want to know about it I've got to make this super accessible because it is it doesn't have to be like that it doesn't have to be lots and lots of paper and scientific studies it also doesn't have to be lots of little tinctures and bottles and a lady in a big wafty caftan next to the sea casting spells this is something we can use every single day it's so practical so that's where chromie was kind of born out of that just me needing to get this message about color and energy and science out there without having to wear a floaty caftan being next to the sea which i'd quite like to be to be perfectly honest but you know it's not for everyone yeah yeah well i do find a sea here so i'm very lucky i look out on that's my ideal that is my ideal to be honest although actually i'm more of a green rolling countryside girl so a bit of both would be nice

24:16Jeannette Linfoot:so if you find kate's insights on leadership well-being and transformation inspiring please subscribe to brave bold brilliant your subscription supports our mission to really amplify powerful stories and provide tools that empower you to lead with courage clarity and confidence so come on join our community and be part of the movement that's changing how leadership is defined and experience well yeah well we have a bit of that down on the gower as well you know i will say but um it's interesting because you were talking and i i was thinking about kind of what you were saying and i think the the most probably mainstream perspective of color is go get your colorstone right and you know skin tone and you wear this color it's going to make you know bring whatever out oh don't wear that so that's sort of your more mainstream probably what most people would think of with colors and then like you say at the opposite end you've got your kind of woo woo let's float around smoking whatever and and having magic magic mushrooms and being really in touch with our inner being yeah but actually it's it's it's the in between isn't it like you were saying making it accessible and i'll just relay a short story but when i was in corporate i think i was the md of the emerging markets at tui at the time and you know i was i had a coach really i always have coaches and mentors at different stages of my career right well i'm one myself now for other people so always be very very wary of someone that's a mentor or coach that doesn't have one themselves that's what i say but um anyway so so at this time i had this great coach and i think i've had a promotion i've had a promotion it was a catalyst where you know i needed some extra kind of support in there to help me grow and they did this 360 kind of questionnaire so peers team bosses you know you name all all the different stakeholders that interacted with me oh those are great feedbacks lovely and obviously some bits where people were like quite scary one of the feedback was always in a suit you know and and always in a suit uh quite scary and very driven very focused all that kind of stuff and it came back and it really stopped me in my tracks because it made me think that I was dressing in a way that at the time I I felt I needed to do being the only woman in the boardroom right which was was often the case back then thankfully it shifted but I thought to myself actually I don't dress in black or grey outside of the office outside of work so why am I doing it that you know and it really made me not just change my style but really think about well why why am I doing that well I'm doing it to fit in an alpha male you know leadership world if you like but actually can't I bring my colorful femininity to a leadership role at board level and still do the job and do it fantastically well yes I can and it it made me change the way I was showing up actually and it was one tiny little bit of feedback in this whole kind of big long report but it really struck home and so it's not necessarily going as deep as you do but it was a catalyst for me to change so it's so powerful I've just been doing a piece of work with AO actually um with their leadership team um and I call it bring yourself to work day because people don't like they seem to park who they are at home and then come to work as someone different you know so I did a thing with all of their um it was their female leadership team senior leadership team and um so everyone was in black literally everyone was in black and and I I started off by asking them what their favorite color with and nobody said black and I was like well that's really interesting no one said black because black isn't actually a color it because it isn't um it's not on the visible spectrum of light it's actually an absence of light so it doesn't have a vibration so black is a really good way of becoming invisible and they all were like and it was in that in that instance because they just wanted to fit into that work and like you were saying you they want you wanted to fit in with the guys and all the rest of it they didn't necessarily want to be visible i said what would happen if you turned up in green they'd laugh everyone would be like oh so do you think they would would any of you or would you go you're blooming amazing in that so color is so important yes to you know kind of clothing wise and what we wear and I cover that as well and I still cover that because I think people are really interested in it that traditional color analysis side of it that's where I started and became massively frustrated quite quickly because it was putting people in boxes which really annoyed me so when I first did it I was a muted summer I was like oh muted it's not really I don't know I'm not really feeling the mutedness but and it suited me and it definitely suited me but some days and as I learned more about colour and studied the colour energetic side of things I learned that very bright or intense vibrant colours have more of an intense vibration so actually if i need a real kick up the arse one day i'm gonna go for a vibrant red i'm not going soft red you know it's not going to have the same effect so this for me was very much more about a feeling and it's interesting within the corporate environment because a lot of people do um like disc training and things like that have you ever done disc where you're giving you color personalities well i use i use um luminous spark which is a more progressed well it's not a version of insights it's different to insights yes color and i use that at board level when I work with executive teams yeah well I might have a new one for you to try as well because Cramie has its own version of this as well which has been developed around that which has seven different colors and they're not just so within those um different modalities the colors are just kind of given the colors are just given to people um because these are just colors whereas within this one I've taken the vibration of those colors and how they um translate to the different personalities so actually it's more of understanding what makes a person tick which which those modalities also do but for me within the soul shade system so for example my soul shade is green i didn't know that until i had done years of study around this but what i can do now is take people um have them fill out a questionnaire fill them out this modality and it will show them their soul shade like I say sometimes it's what they is their favorite color sometimes it's not so I start with the person rather than start with the color for a start um because that is it's like bringing the inside out rather than coloring out coloring the outside and trying to bring that in we've got to work with who you are and your little zone of genius so when I learned that my soul shape was green that's all very linked to my kind of heart area so this is very much about empathy and nurturing and balance and if anybody knows me that is me you know I will put myself last I will say yes to everything usually end up burnt out on the floor and I kind of wore this as a badge of honor for quite a while I think I went for a Reiki session once and someone had said oh your aura is green and I'm like yes it is I'm very empathetic very caring she's like no this is really bad because life is about balance okay so you need to have all those colors in your system to be balanced and you've got you've only got one what's going on so the empath in me had taken over and I very much felt that in my life and when I learned about the soul shade side of things was god yeah I need to bring in all these other areas and all these other colors are just like tears kind of um you know uh pillars within coaching the different colors are just like the different pillars in coaching and you need to have all of them ticking over all of them nicely balanced to feel like you're in flow and I realized I only had one and it was the one that was intrinsically me so to be able to then balance that I needed to utilize the other colors and the first color that I then had to utilize was the most tricky one for me and that was red which I'm wearing today for you because red is my um is the polar opposite of that so it's what we call a magnetic pair within color healing we have our soul shade which is us what makes us us and then we have a healing pair a magnetic pair which is not us and won't feel like us but will be exactly what we need and it balances out the other so the red is actually what steps in to give me the boundaries to give me the confidence to give me that grounding rootedness that then allows me to be an empath but also for me to step in and have some boundaries so I don't end up on the floor so you can see how the two kind of interact from a coaching level from a personal development level from a color personality level all the way through um and if you implement this in your life even in your teams you know you know how important it is to have different color personalities within teams you can work out well they're actually a green soul shade so this person's a red person so they need each other to balance each other out but i know there might be a little bit of friction so who can we bring in there right slap bang in the middle with that different energy that can diffuse that a little bit so it's like painting by numbers for your life but also for business it's so it's so powerful yeah i mean whether it's insights or you know the the uh the tool that you use or you know um what did i just say luminous spark yeah he's really really powerful because when i use luminous spark and i work with a great organization called imaginative hr and the founder Clayton Glenn and we're operating at board level right so it's got to 100s, it's got to 250s but when we look at the team dynamics yes it's colour energy but there's a lot underneath that as you're very aware because everyone's unique right so everyone has a unique profile but what that does it also looks at your personality profile in terms of your every your your sort of underlying personality which is kind of when you're relaxed at home with friends blah blah blah your everyday so how you're showing up to the world and then your overextended which is when you're under pressure you're stressed you're up against it and then we look at one and individually obviously what about what that means and where are your blind spots where's your super strength but when we look as a team it becomes even more fascinating because we see is it a balanced team have we got some gaps have we got some really you know strong and presence in a certain area what happens when we're under pressure how do we shift as a team and also how do we link that to a business outcome because at the end of the day a business is there to make money right it's there to make money for its shareholders unless you're a charity or you know a CIC or whatever so it's fascinating because what starts off as a personality profile in a high level color it comes around well actually how do we deliver that strategic project of business transformation or how do we buy that new business how do we go into that new territory and you're like how did you get from red yellow blue green to a hard-nosed number that's going to deliver x to your ebitda 100 but it does and it really does and certainly with mine which is obviously seven seven different colors it it pinpoints it down so it's brilliant with the recruitment and things like that um but also brilliant with your team building um and also it's really good at identifying when someone's in a role that a different role they could be better at you know that is that's the magic you know i love when i go into corporates and i see that kind of um sort of transition across different different areas and how one person can just then completely flourish just because they didn't realize that actually what they were doing was going against what they're good at and that was why it was feeling hard and actually they've moved across sectors and wow it's like someone's just switched the lights on again i think that's what this feels like so color is the connector that can just help people to turn the lights on again which is really important it can also recharge people as well I think that's the other thing is that once you know what energy you're putting out every day you know what you need to replenish and then you also need you know if you're feeling a certain way so so for example mine's green and I give it out constantly I started to use I found meditation and mindfulness really hard I think I've never been diagnosed but I'm probably ADHD I think a lot of entrepreneurs are when you've got lots of different businesses and you're busy all the time my brain can process very very quickly find that difficult to turn off and actually I found that using the color visualization meditation helped me do that because again I'm a visual learner so um on the Chromia website I've now got a full suite of color visualization meditations that people can do even just five minute ones you know if you were going into a meeting and you needed a boost of whatever if you needed a boost of confidence or power you'd go for red if you needed a boost of communication you'd want to open up the blue area throw area you'd go for the the blue you know if you were going in having quite a tricky conversation with a um a colleague maybe you'd want to work on the green which is that empathetic side of thing go for the green so you can choose different areas to charge yourself up with as well and that's another kind of important tool within it all it's amazing there's so much to this isn't there i mean you're scratching the surface really obviously we couldn't talk so much on the podcast but you were also i mean i love my yoga i've an amazing yoga teacher who who's become a great friend actually caroline marie roth who has also been on the podcast with her amazing book yoga sex and happiness oh sounds great exactly shout out to caroline but she is she's wonderful and what started as me going for kind of you know yoga classes one-to-one has now become a great friendship all these years later but she was when you were talking when we were at reset you were talking about different chakras right in your body the energy energy points so can you just talk through that for us and how that relates to color as well and then as you're going through kate maybe just a little bit of a description of what you know each of the colors what kind of profile um or characteristics would someone have if that was where they had a leaning towards that particular color yeah sure so within chakras there's different things so chakras are just basically the energy flow of the body seven different points within the body that that resonate and if you've ever done um a sound bath they they use different frequencies of sound to stimulate the different points in your body and the color is exactly the same it's just using light waves rather than sound waves so these are just different wavelengths of color which again stimulate the different points in the body so the lowest frequency um light wave of light is um is red and that's your root chakra so that's very much linked into your confidence and you're rooted that's why a lot of people do struggle with this color especially if they are lacking in confidence that red might feel a bit too much and actually if someone's soul shade is red they may have been told somewhere down the line oh they're a bit much they're a bit scary I'm not 100 % sure maybe maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna send you a soul shades um thing after this because I want to know what it is exciting so red is very grounding and and I think the most important thing to say about all of these different colors is that you can't get it wrong like this is just who you are you know it's not you can't get being you wrong so never think oh god I'm a red oh I didn't want to be a red you know I did have a lady the other day her her soul shade was blue and she said oh i'll be happy as long as it's anything but blue when she came i was like oh sugar but it was just because that area was actually really blocked for her and once we unblocked it by using that color it absolutely made sense so so red is is confidence is power um is is that rooted energy moving up we move up to orange and that's linked to kind of our sacral chakra so it's all about gut learning to trust your gut instinct um again a color that a lot of people find quite tricky and usually it's because of the feeling that it gives them without them even thinking about it because leaning if you're quite good with leaning into your gut it's a very creative color orange as well um but i had a lady who wouldn't wear orange at all and and when we worked that back it was that i said this is a creative color you are creative she says no not at all I've not got a creative bone in my body and I thought those aren't even your words who's told you that she said my mum when I was little she always said you don't have a creative bone in your body but my sister had the creative bone I thought okay this is the one and she she looks incredible in orange as well she had bright red hair and she just looked fabulous so oranges is about that is sapral chakra that'll probably be quite a lot of creatives will generally have that as a soul shade and sometimes they'll be hidden creatives like that lady I was talking about before she actually was working within finance i'm really really unhappy she's actually moved into more of a creative role now and is super happy so that was almost hidden within her then we move up to yellow which is solar plexus this is very much about independence so it's a very independent color and it's joyful and it's light but it will kind of back away from confrontation it likes to kind of furrow its own path and so yellow is a brilliant color for kind clarity of thought and things like that so um in fact my mentor um has a yellow soul shade she genuinely thought she would be red when i was describing this she thought she'd be red but having seen her in operation um the when she when there's conflict she backs down straight away she's more about no i'll just go this way the independent way so it was that was so interesting to see then we move into green which is my soul shade which is kind of naturally more of an empathetic space so it's kind of linked here with the heart it's balanced so if we're looking at the chakra systems we have seven um and they kind of go from red orange yellow green slap bang in the middle it's number four so it's all about balance it's the color of nature so these people will be um naturally very caring you get quite a lot of kind of nurses caregivers within this space um sometimes therapists or sometimes we've moved up to blue for a therapist as well because the um the next color on the visible spectrum is blue and that's all linked to your throat chakra so you wore an amazing blue dress when i met you i still remember it and this is the thing you see we remember these colors um and you delivered on point which i know you do every single time you're a true professional um but blue is all linked to the throat okay so these people will genuinely be very good at communicating very good at process you know very they like the process they like to communicate um generally kind of more i see a lot of people within finance sort of within the blue area people who find that sort of thing really easy for them it's like the opposite of me pretty much then we move up to indigo this is all about intuition so these people very intuited very very in um in tune with their inner thoughts sometimes they might overthink things as well that they can get a little bit stuck in their head that that there's a lot going on a lot of the energy is up here and then when we move up to violet which is the highest visible spectrum these people we do see a lot within sort of spiritual kind of holistic therapy side of things they're generally more connected so they um they kind of see much bigger picture that actually we're very small fry in compared to what's going on outside of this they're really good at having that kind of 360 vision on things so when we're working in teams to have someone with that violet soul shade is really really important because they will be that voice of reason usually that comes from experience as well and and it's been so it's so interesting how our colors change as we get older never our soul shade because our soul shade is who we are intrinsically but our color preferences have been shown to change and actually move up that visible spectrum the older we get with that ability to to kind of just shrug off the small stuff because I think you know certainly as I've got older you just learn don't you that actually not everything requires your energy anymore well wisdom yeah wisdom if you think about what'll be a lot you know old sages and you can just spend and this is what pisses me off Kate actually as you were talking about how dismissive we are of older people and actually you know if you spend time my mum's in a care home um unfortunately and she's got vascular dementia she's 86 and she's had a wonderful life and we still very much love those moments you know those special moments and glimmers when when we're still there you know we're still connected and the next minute she could be talking about you know some crazy stuff but but the wisdom do you know what i mean if you spend time in a care home or around older people it is really it's such a privilege and i think we're so dismissive of kind of older generations and and i guess linking to color is also around um you know as we age you know especially as women you know there can be a lot of pressure can't there special social media you know so oh god you know i'm getting a bit wrinkly or how you how you look as you go oh you know we're quite negative about aging in general especially older generations you know we can be very dismissive on yet they've got all the wisdom so you want to spend time with these guys because you're going to learn schedule age right with the colors how you kind of evolve and change over time not your soul shade as you said does does that come with different um skills that maybe come out or different gifts that you uncover through your life do you think as you've mature and and what does it how does it impact your image outwardly and how you show up to the world you know because i guess some people can not feel great about themselves as they're getting older and maybe shrink into themselves and you know i think beauty at any age right look at alan mirren there's so many amazing women that are just gorgeous absolutely have you got like have you got a rinkle-free face you know it's so I think it's quite an interesting area I don't know if you ever touch on that yeah absolutely and I think and we crave different colors at different times in our lives as well you know a lady said to me the other week she said at one of my events she said I'm loving green at the moment she said I've never loved green where is this coming from I said well it's nurturing you know this is very much about are you giving out a lot of nurturing energy she said I had a baby six months ago so I was like you're just you're craving the energy you're putting out so it is we do see these things you know I think more and more now what I'm seeing is a lot of I see very few younger girls that and I see it in my own kids that when you when you are born you're born with all the colors right and and when I was pregnant and when I then have my children I gave my children all my colors there's a picture of me stood with a bright pink pram with a baby dressed in bright pink and purple and I'm stood there head to toe in black and I'm like oh my god this makes total sense when I look back at it I didn't know at the time but I gave my kids my color and that's what you do you you want to do that so um then it's like well it's a bit like flamingos who who literally do lose their pink you know that is the science of that is that they um their nutrition because they're regurgitating their food to feed their young they go white so they literally lose their pink but we see it in humans as well and what I want to do is try and help people colour that back in so when we're born we're full of the colours and we don't mind and we create very happily and we play happily and we don't think about what anyone else thinks of us but then something happens and the world starts to knock us and it could be someone saying something or it could be society in general you know not so much anymore but it was boys wear blue girls wear pink that's it and those associations of them made and then we move into teenage years and not everyone but a lot of people move into a phase where they wear black all the time because it's almost like a cocoon so as much as black isn't a color it's extremely powerful because it can block you know it can block vibrations so if you are you can you can become invisible very quickly and that's exactly what a lot of kids want when they're in teenage years and I know I'm going through it at the moment my daughter will not wear colour you know she's like mum don't come near me with any of that because she's still working out who she is she doesn't really know and she doesn't want to put that out there because that might not be her and we're not 100 % sure so we kind of and and we we fall not fall I think we we kind of elect to go into this lovely little cocoon of darkness sometimes and that can be because of a mental darkness that can be because we're not feeling well that can be um for so many different reasons but I think the idea here is that you can sit with that darkness but only for so long because in society now it's very easy for everything to be dark and for everything to be grey and life's too short to live in the shadows so what we want to do is try and find a pathway out of that however that looks for you however that feels great for you and the best way to start off is by just reconnecting with yourself understanding the color that you are and then work away from there amazing i always say when i work with teams when i work with boards whether i work with entrepreneurs it's always an inside job doesn't matter who you are doesn't matter the size of your business you could be running a multi-billion pound business global brand you could be doing a startup doesn't matter it's always starts with us right it's an inside job every time and that's the thing some people go oh I could that color's not for me or I can't I don't I can't wear yellow I'm like my god believe me like you have all these colors inside of you they're all different energies that you possess and it's all there we just need to work a way of getting it back out again I love this I could chat to you all day Kate I really could I think it's fascinating I bet when she was going through the colors people listeners this will be going oh i think i oh i think i'm happy orange oh no maybe i'm green so what they need to do is connect with you don't they kate get their soul shade done and then see how you could potentially help them going forward so where can people do that kate what's the best way for people to kind of track you down find out their soul shade see what's you know how you can help them so the best thing to do you can either um the best thing to do probably is just go to the website um and look up soul shades so discover your own soul shade and you can click on that that's an online service it will generate your soul shade for you once you've answered me some questions it'll also send you a full guide on your on your color and your magnetic healing pair as well and it'll give you a little um five minute meditation to do every single day to recharge your soul shade every day so it's great it's a great introduction into color therapy and how that can help and that is the best way to start and then to join my community i've got the chromie color club on facebook free community and we take you through step by step there so that's the online people can visit me um in person as well but i am up here in cheshire but generally the online is a brilliant way to start and um yeah start coloring your life amazing i love it we've only got one so we want to make it as colorful and bright and enjoyable as full experience as possible i'm 100 % agree with you i just realized i wear very i wear a very mint it's gorgeous i love that i don't know what that signifies it's hot today it is hot you are looking like you are very coastal as well you were saying oh we're near the sea here and it looks every inch that but green again very balanced and that's what we're looking at here isn't it we want that balance especially if it's very very warm it's beautiful color i love that mint color it's stunning it also kind of matches the background as well that little that that bold bit in the background it looks gorgeous on you excellent well I love color I'm a if you look at my wardrobe it is like an array every color bright jackets dresses like you name it I love clothes I love color but I I have never been as so intentional you know as as what you're talking about so for me this is like opening my eyes I'm thinking wow you know how can I lean into this a lot more both in terms of you know personally professionally you know and what i do with business as well so i'm loving this kate absolutely so i'm going to come to a few last questions if you don't mind um so kate you will have had stacks of advice over the years um obviously you're an entrepreneur you've gone through different career reiterations you're a working mom as well you know you've got a lot going on in your world you're green you're giving out everything you're giving out everything to everyone um what's the best piece of advice that you've actually received yourself that's really worked for you over the years um I can't remember who told me this but when they first said it to me I'm like that's rubbish but it is something that I've already said I think in this interview um and it's you can't get being you wrong and it's remembering that because actually you've got to bring you into everything that you do and if you're in a place where you feel like you can't then you're probably in the wrong place and it's something that's kind of come up time and time again in my life that if it feels a bit off and i can't turn up as me who i really am then it's probably not the right place for me yeah isn't that great super simple but really grounding and just helps you check in yeah nothing's not right here but i love that yeah i always say we're all perfectly imperfect 100 100 i love that absolutely you can use that one thank you i'm writing a note down there you're welcome you're welcome so this year you've got a lot going on you have the obviously you've launched the business the next reiteration of the business with a fantastic new brand and it's a busy year for you if you could describe this year in one word what would it be Kate and why oh this year three words sorry breaks are off I think it is i've taken the handbrake off today you know i literally this year has been uh has been the year that i've stopped stalling i think because this has been because it's new being first to market on something's really hard i mean everyone goes oh my god that's amazing all the markets are saturated and i'm like oh mine isn't because people don't know they need it yet so it's it's saying yes and it's pushing it out there with the conviction that I know it deserves um but yeah firmly the brakes are off I love it you're changing lives Kate you really are isn't that a wonderful thing to do yeah it's changing my life that is for sure yeah and everyone around you know this is it I think sometimes when we we underestimate the impact we have and it could just be that someone's listened to something or it's a little bit of advice it's almost like dropping a pebble in a pond and that ripple that comes you never quite know how far that reaches but it honestly I think you're doing amazing stuff I'm so excited for it I think that the best is yet to come you've only just begun Kate and this has been 20 years in the making but you know the next 20 years who knows no limit I think that's the scary thing it's I think because I know it all um and it's all in here and it's now come out into processes and different modalities and stuff um it makes sense to me and it's I think it's taken me a long time to find my voice to be able to translate this into something tangible but I feel like this is the year we're doing it excellent well it's fantastic I'm so excited for you so Kate music as well as you know color and energy you know sound is a powerful force as well and we have a playlist at Brave Bold Brilliant so I always like to ask I guess what's your favorite song or artist um and if there's a little story to share as to why that's always nice as well but yeah what would be song you danced around the kitchen to last song before you die whatever you think of in terms of your kind of go-to track oh my goodness well it's a real oldie to be fair and it's from my childhood it's a zoom by fat larry's band right I don't know if you know it but it's my mum used to dance with me when I was little to that um and I remember it vividly remember it um her kind of dancing around the front room with me and I did it with all my babies too and I still do now even though they're like six foot three the boys they're like not this again they hear it and they run away I remember that zoom just one look again it just takes me that's when you know you're getting old in it but anyway now my children can run away from me when they do when they hear it as we say age age is a gift oh gosh so much so much fantastic so kate this podcast brave bold brilliant what does that mean to you i think it means using your voice kind of unapologetically for good I think that's what that means is is saying what you mean and what you feel and saying it with passion and conviction um I think brave is something that I've never really thought I am but I think this new chapter is a brave one leaving behind what I've done before in the past and taking it with me a little bit as well but I guess that is brave um but I just like people who are unapologetically themselves that's brave and brilliant and bold as well amazing what a way to end well Kate listen I have so enjoyed our conversation I think it's fascinating I really do and um yeah thank you for bringing colour into our lives in such a meaningful way.

58:21Jeannette Linfoot:I really, really do appreciate it, Kate. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it. And I'm really jealous that you're next to the coast as well. I'll be straight down into that sea after this. Excellent. Well, listen, maybe that's it. We should do a revisit of the second podcast interview with you down here where we could go surfing. Oh, yes, please. Yes, please. I'm holding you to that one. Excellent. Excellent. Then a glass of wine afterwards. Oh, even better. You've got me. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Kate. I really appreciate it. Thank you. See you soon.

58:56Jeannette Linfoot:Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your incredible journey. You know, the insights on the transformative power of colour have really opened up new ways for us to think about well-being, leadership and living authentically. so for everyone that's listening remember that the colours you choose every day are more than just aesthetic they really are a reflection of your energy and that pathway to deeper balance and empowerment you know so we really hope here that Kate's story inspires you to explore your own soul shade and to really embrace a life that's full of vibrant colour and of course please don't forget to subscribe to Brave Bold Brilliant, you know, staying connected with more inspiring leaders and stories that really challenge, empower and uplift us.

59:48Jeannette Linfoot:So until next time, lead boldly, live brilliantly and keep shining your true colours. I really hope you've enjoyed this episode of Brave Bold Brilliant. Remember, check out our new website, www.brave-bold-brilliant.com. You're going to find loads of resources on there that's to help you with your leadership journey and with the businesses that you're trying to scale up and grow so take care everyone and remember there are no limits to your growth but it is by being brave and bold that you're going to unlock your brilliance