Why we're all waiting for proof of concept before we get brave — and why that's fucking backwards. Kat's back after nine months, and she's coming in hot: you can't wait for pErMiSIoN to be weird. The proof of concept comes after bravery, not before it. And if you're sanding down your edges to avoid judgment, you're not making yourself more hireable — you're making yourself forgettable. This episode is part confession, part strategic breakdown, part "wait did she just say she's taking business cues from tarot cards?" (Yes. She did. And it's working.)
The $300 decision that turned into a whole business epiphany
Kat went to a Prof concert in Montreal, had an existential crisis about why she was obsessed with a bald white guy who humps the air, and ended up doing a full psychological breakdown of her own buying behavior. The result? A clearer understanding of what actually drives purchase decisions — and why emotional environments matter more than perfect offers.
Why people rally around weird
The Prof concert wasn't full of people who looked the same. Face tattoos, little kids, ten-foot giants — all there for the same reason: proof of concept that you can be strange as fuck and still move people. Kat breaks down what that magnetism actually is and why we're all searching for it.
Leaving ops behind (for real this time)
After a year of self-directed curriculum in Emotional Economics — the psychology, sociology, and anthropology of buying — Kat finally named her last offer. Five minutes before the recording. By accident. Because she stopped trying to control it.
The courage to be weird (and why most people don't have it)
Rebecca drops the truth bomb: we all want to be Weird Al, but we're waiting for proof of concept before we're brave. The artists who make it? They knew the proof would come after the bravery.
Tarot cards as a business strategy (no really)
In January, Kat's daughter threw all her tarot cards on the floor. Eleven cards face-up. Eleven months ahead. One card per month to set the vibe for her business decisions ever since — and it's been the most successful strategic decision she's made in years.
Queens of Coin — Behavioral pricing diagnostic using the PPP framework (Primed, Priced, Positioned). Examines what your pricing is communicating emotionally, mathematically, and perceptually. [$997] → themainstage.ca/services
Reality Check — Energy and capacity planning. Are you writing checks your business can't cash? Internal offer focused on making your offers work for you. Coming summer 2026.
Lip Service — Brand perception diagnostic. Is what you think you're communicating actually landing on the other end? External offer examining price anchoring, buyer psychology, and whether your ideal client would realistically pay what you're asking. Coming summer 2026.
Rebecca Gunter (stonefruit.com) — Kat's ride-or-die of 5 years, co-founder of Stoned Fruit positioning and messaging agency, and co-host of Brandthropology newsletter on LinkedIn. Rebecca's the one who named the whole thing because that bish always knows before I do: "You're into people having the courage to be weird."
Kathleen Stewart: Hey there. I'm Kathleen Stewart, your host and resident weirdo. Welcome to the Digital Junk Drawer. This is the podcast where creative service-based businesses come together, bits and bobs, the tools and advice they need to piece together their online business. Grab a cup of something and settle in.
Okay, so. I'm actually excited to be back, but I think I put so much pressure on myself to do well and be myself and be helpful and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that it kind of like defeated the purpose of everything. I was gonna say, I'm going to be totally honest with you that I don't exactly know what this season.
Podcasting is really calling for me. I think that it's going to be heavily around like pricing and uh, brand perception and yeah, I think it's gonna be good regardless, whatever. I'm kind of like trying, I've recently given up control of how I'm doing things. It's been nine, like nine months since I last did this.
Um, I stopped podcasting mostly because of finances. It is not a free thing. It actually costs me a lot of money to do my podcast, which is not a complaint, it's a business expense. But quite frankly, I just didn't fucking have it. I did not have it. I'm actually not quite sure, um, if I still have it. But I am taking all of my business cues from a bunch of tarot cards, and it has actually gone so successfully so far, and I know that my sky daddies totally want me to use tarot, and they want me to use.
Speech, like talking the podcast to connect with the people. And I went through like this period recently where I'm like, I really think I'm fucking insane. Which, you know what? I might be, but that is okay. That is okay and we're just gonna roll with it because even if I am insane, you know what? I'm really fucking smart and I'm pretty like, I think I'm actually overqualified for what I'm doing, but I am loving it.
And if you're like, what the fuck are you talking about, Kat? Um, I've been trying to explain it several times. I've redone several cuts of this, takes whatever the fuck they're called. And I'm pretty much two weeks late from the own deadline that I set for myself, which is probably why I don't fucking care.
But I actually asked Tony to set a deadline for me and he is like, Kay, the eighth. And here I am a week late because I've just been on a struggle bus with trying to articulate myself and I want things to make sense. So I had a really interesting, interesting, no, it's not even. Not even. I had a super fun meeting with my girl, Rebecca, over at The Stone Fruit.
For those of you that do not know, I am like co-founder, co-host, co. Everything over at Stone Fruit. It's a branding and messaging agency. We've been working behind the scenes on it for a very long time. I'm really proud of every single thing that we've built. I'm proud of the amount of experimenting that we've done.
We know what doesn't work. We're still working on trying to figure out what does work for our ideal clients over there. But yeah, if you're interested in getting any brand strategy done for me or my girl, Rebecca, please hit us up on LinkedIn. Right now we are just, um, honestly waiting on our website, but.
I'm gonna link it down below. I have a new newsletter that I do on LinkedIn. It's called Brand Anthropology. It is fucking sick as tits. I love everything about this fucking newsletter. It is my baby. It is my pride and joy. It is everything. So essentially, anthropology is the study of how brands are positioned.
Communicated and evolved, and Rebecca is just a queen at that and I'm so thankful that like she has taken the opportunity, she's taken the opportunity, she has given me the opportunity to be like a part of stone fruit and have a permanent place there. For those of you that don't know, I've been working with Rebecca.
For about like seven years now or something insane. So she is like my ride or die. I have my newsletter. Kay. Like what? That's super fun. I am telling stupid stories. I share half baked ideas, full form thoughts, you know how it goes. And then we're back here with this. So that's a lot of free shit. I'm really excited.
I am so excited to be able to spend my time to create these, these things for you. Like, yeah. So that's cool. Um, but I was really trying to figure out how do I explain my past nine months, not that I need to, of how I essentially decided to leave ops Ops in. In 2025 and leaning into the stuff that I actually really fucking enjoy and the things that I'm really good at.
So essentially I left ops behind, and like a year ago I started this like curriculum for myself called Emotional Economics. It started with the psychology of buying and why I buy, and of course like me. I needed to figure out the why from every single angle. So it's really turned into like the sociology of buying psychology, of buying anthropology, of buying.
Like it's a whole thing and I really love it, and I'm really proud of that work too. So I'm gonna be leaning into that and I am going to, well, all of my offers directly correlate with that, obviously, but. I'm gonna share with you the recording of my actual meeting with Rebecca. It's not the best sounding 'cause I didn't have like a microphone up my asshole while I was talking 'cause like apparently that's what you need.
And quite frankly, I was a little stoned, but I wanted you to hear how excited I was to share this information with Rebecca and. Hear how much I genuinely believe in myself and my offers and the difference that I know it's gonna make. I have decided to go full tits out. Controversial, I guess because my offers kind of go against a lot of the.
Surface level advice and encourage to dig deeper into like a psyche and settings when we're presenting our work to other people. So that's fucking kick ass, and I am gonna get you to hear it. I don't know, Tony, I don't know how to make a transition. Let's work on that.
Rebecca Gunter: We are so simpatico that we can go weeks without talking to each other and everything is running along as should be.
Kathleen Stewart: That's like really impressive for us.
Rebecca Gunter: No, it truly is. I mean that sincerely.
Kathleen Stewart: No, me too. Like a lot of people can't do that.
Rebecca Gunter: It's a testament to our relationship.
Kathleen Stewart: Fuck. Yeah. We're so good.
Rebecca Gunter: How's life? How's life listening?
Kathleen Stewart: I don't know. It's okay. It's not bad. There's no, I don't know. Mia's Mia, Mia's Mia. That's all I can really say.
Rebecca Gunter: Oh, in, in front of an audience?
Kathleen Stewart: Uh, no. Just like in general. She's fine. I actually think she's the best. She's been in a very long time. Um, but you know, she, that's still a lot.
Ryan is now going into his spring season, so that's cool. But he got a promotion thankfully, but now he's like, works more. So I've pretty much just been solo. Um. I definitely thought, and maybe I did go through like a very short depresses and then very manic episode.
Rebecca Gunter: Mm.
Kathleen Stewart: Um, so that was interesting and I don't think I would've ever noticed if I wasn't doing a personal study on myself. Actually.
Rebecca Gunter: Say more about that.
Kathleen Stewart: Um. So my whole business right now revolves around buying decisions and why people buy what they buy and how we have to set up like emotional environments for them to actually make the purchase. Like you could have the best offer in the whole entire world. Doesn't doesn the matter, but if that person is not in the right frame of mind, did not already get all the detail, everything is so.
So I'm really leaning into this topic. I've done redone my whole business around like brand perception through the lens of how we are setting everything up for them emotionally. So make it easier to get to the Yes. Which includes like if you're using language they would like, or is your pricing architecture fine?
Are you using tactics that actually make sense for this actual buyer? So Ron and I were at the Prof concert in Montreal, had the best fucking time of my life. Always have such a good time when I'm out. But the one thing I really noticed was this was a really weird group of people. So the line wasn't like the type of people that were there, it was more the psychological, like what they like about him.
No one fucking cares to go see a bald white guy dressed up and humped the air, but we all ecstatically paid for this. Why. None of us look the same. People fucking face tattoos, head tattoos, 10 foot fucking giants, little kids. So we all needed something, I really believe is something that we wanted to believe in and we saw, this is my collective opinion on it, is the proof of concept in this one independent artist who's fucking weird as shit.
Is some sort of proof of concept of something that we all collectively want. That was my end result of this trip. But what ended up happening is I got obsessed and I was like, what the actual fuck is wrong with me?
Rebecca Gunter: Obsessed with what?
Kathleen Stewart: This man.
Rebecca Gunter: Okay.
Kathleen Stewart: So I was like, oh my God. Like, what the fuck is mentally wrong with me? Because I'm like insanely attracted to this man. And I'm like, went. I was like, Kay, like what did you call,
Rebecca Gunter: why is there something wrong with you for that?
Kathleen Stewart: Because, well, one, because I'm married and two like
Rebecca Gunter: you're
Kathleen Stewart: not. Damn. Mostly I was like, this is wrong because it's just not a thing that I really have elsewhere. You know what I mean? So, and I don't like celebrities. I don't follow celebrity gossip. I don't give a shit, so this is very out of the norm. I also don't listen to music very often 'cause it like over puts my sensories to like wanting to kill myself. And I will listen to this man sing and rap nonsense fucking songs at the top of his lungs in my ears.
So everything this person embodies. It's everything. I can't fucking stand on my day to day. So now I'm like really peaked because now we, I've made Ryan go on a trip to go see him perform in Montreal, you know? So I'm like, why would I do that? It's just in Canada. I don't travel in Canada. I've only traveled twice for music and that was into the states and the music was the excuse that I used and it wasn't even fucking valid.
So I was like, what the hell is happening? So then I like went down this rabbit hole of like, okay, so I think this guy's really attractive, but I don't, 'cause I would never talk to this man. In a fucking grocery store. And then I compared it to two other people that are fictional that I have had like crushes on.
So then I had to get to the bottom of like, why do I like these people and why am I willing to spend like this money on this person? So he ended up doing a pre-order. For his music, obviously, but shipping from the States is really expensive, and one of the like packages that you can win is to go and see him at a hometown show, which would be the United States of America.
And then where is
Rebecca Gunter: this artist from? Who is this artist? What is their name again?
Kathleen Stewart: Uh, prof. He's from Minneapolis.
Rebecca Gunter: I love the name.
Kathleen Stewart: I know, I know. Me too. Everything crazy comes out from there. Like they're like people who are the fucking people.
Rebecca Gunter: Yeah.
Kathleen Stewart: And it's insane. Like it is like community and I love it so much. I was like, oh, maybe I have like a Midwestern thing that I find really attractive, which actually was aligned through. Interesting enough, but I thought I had a crush on this man. Because side note in brackets here, women aren't allowed to like, just like guys, we have to like wanna fuck them. So I had an existential crisis about that and I was like, no, that's not it.
What I actually want is, I like the way that these people rally community and their proof of concept about like. Being so fucking out of the box gives you a different type of community. And it may not be as like glamorous and whatnot, but like, fuck these people hardcore believe in you. So I found out that's what I'm really attracted to.
So that's why I started the podcast again, that I haven't started, which I might steal this recording and get Tony to stitch together. Um. But it really boiled down to the fact that I was trying to make the decision of did I wanna spend $300, which is the number I talked to myself down to. To go against my values of over consumption.
I don't it. I don't need three CDs and a cassette and all of this stuff. I don't buy clothing brand new, but every pre-order of the vinyls and everything like that came with a scratch ticket and the scratch ticket. It's your like Willy Wonka chocolate factory ticket to getting to win those prizes that I so fucking desperately wanted.
So then I had to go through this whole rigamarole of do I want to support this person? $300 worth UFD outta my pocket plus shipping on a chance to meet this person? If I would, why would I do that? Here we are. I did buy some, not all of it. I settled on the CDs and a cassette, so I'll get four chances.
Nothing is replicated, so I'm not being wasteful. That is very in line with mine. So I got to support an artist, and then I took the rest of the money. And I am investing in someone to make the art for my, uh, my podcast cover. And, uh, yeah. So that's how that all happened, and that's how I am here now. And then like the other day, I was like, that's kind of crazy.
Who the fuck wants to be that self-aware?
Rebecca Gunter: What did, um, your name, strategist, what did you learn about the emotional journey, um, that was created for you to, uh, manufacture ideal buying conditions?
Kathleen Stewart: Uh, the one thing I've really learned from doing this project with myself, especially like over such a big one. Is that at any given moment, anything out, like everything is out of our control. We cannot do anything perfect for a buyer to eventually buy something, but we can definitely have enough touch points. That like we can kind of stay there, you know what I mean? Because I, I guess I would get the ads and I'd be like, oh, I wanna do that.
And then I'd go back and look at it and I'd be like, oh, but that goes against this value and like this, but the conditions, like you can't, I don't know, really create the conditions. But you know, you really would have to be like, I want people to buy this jewelry when they're feeling. Sad. Like, you know what I mean?
Like it really does have to be orchestrated for one person with like one kind of feeling or anything can really just fuck it up. It's so out of our control.
Rebecca Gunter: If you had a magic wand, just curious. You had a magic wand and could create conditions in which people would buy something from stone fruit, which they're not, by the way. No one is buying anything from us. Uh, what would they be? A
Kathleen Stewart: fucking website would be a good one.
Rebecca Gunter: Yeah,
Kathleen Stewart: no. Um, yeah, I think a website would be. A really good one to start with. It's really hard to ask for money when you don't even have a website. Like how do you do that? That doesn't even make sense.
Rebecca Gunter: Clearly you don't. Clearly you don't.
Kathleen Stewart: No, you don't. You really, really don't. But it's hard to assess without that because. There's nothing too.
Rebecca Gunter: Fair enough. Fair enough.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah. So, but I don't know what that episode was, but that was a thing that made me go, that's weird.
Rebecca Gunter: I mean, if you're thinking like, first of all you're thinking like, um, an autistic person, what are the systems? What are the circumstances? How do these dots all connect? And you're thinking like a brand strategist who is, uh, passionate about how you show up with your own business.
So that's how you do it. You should write about that.
Kathleen Stewart: Thank you.
Rebecca Gunter: Oh my God. You should write about it.
Kathleen Stewart: I know I'm going to, I haven't like kind of started like sketched out. I'm trying to find, I don't know. I like kind of think it's fucking crazy people stuff, but I'm trying to have the conversations that people aren't really talking about.
Like why did I think I was like really into like white guy culture? Do you ever see those videos that are like. Don't forget who you are, white boy. It's like popping monsters at skateboarding videos.
Rebecca Gunter: That's hysterical.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah, but I'm into it and I'm like, no, I am not. I would fucking punch that guy in the face. I like the nostalgia. I think
Rebecca Gunter: what're too, I think what you're into, from what I'm hearing from this story is what you're into is people having the courage to be weird.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah.
Rebecca Gunter: And then making that commercially viable and doing it through the vehicle of community, like that's what I think you like is 'cause it takes, okay.
I just came off, I just came off a call with a two and a half hour call with Jill on her personal brand, very similar of like. Well, I told this story about Tony. Um, so, uh, Tony has, if he, if you use this for your podcast, he can hear the story again. But, um, Tony is a musician and has been one for, since mm-hmm.
High school and still performs every other week doing a live cover at this event. Uh, and I think his greatest pain in life is not being in a band anymore and would love to be in a band again. And so, uh, when I listened to recordings from Tony's high school days, his voice is very different than what it is now.
And it's not just maturity. He was unfettered and had a lot of freedom to be creative and be weird, and then he talked himself out of it, that it, no one's gonna like it. So now he sings in this like. Way that is not, you know, on paper, like bad per se, but it's not now that once you've heard his real voice, you know, that's like, that's not his real voice.
And uh, I think that he chose to kind of, uh. Just a kind of normal, um, make it more basic, I don't know the word. Yeah. Um, he chose to be more basic for more commercial appeal, but the result is that he doesn't have the commercial appeal he would have if he was weird. But it takes,
Kathleen Stewart: yeah.
Rebecca Gunter: So much courage.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah.
Rebecca Gunter: To be weird, like cringes, cringes, freedom really takes so much courage to be unconventional, to be out there, but it's the only thing we know people for. So like how did Lady Gaga, this is a great question. How did Lady Gaga like gather the courage? Maybe it was art school, maybe it was living in New York.
Maybe it was all her gay friends, like who knows to be weird. And then that could become her shtick. No, I think they're weirder people than Lady Gaga, but I'm using that as an example. 'cause she's been able to be weird and commercial at the same time. But you have to have the courage to be weird first.
And what people have the courage to do is be commercial first. And then they don't get known for anything. And then there's no rally because we're rallying around like the midline of what's expected. Um, and I think that that is what is an exciting to you is an artist, a business person, a brand. I mean, it's all brand, right?
Brand is culture. It's either Yeah, identity and culture. That's what it is. It's exciting to you with somebody bucking. The idea that the only way they'll make it is to reduce your voice, you know, reduce what makes you interesting or weird. Like no one's gonna buy that. Like, yeah, that's weird. We all want to be weirdo Yankovic, and none of us have the courage to stop putting out.
Original, like,
Kathleen Stewart: yeah,
Rebecca Gunter: you have to be so courageous to, uh, just market yourself that way because we all want proof of concept first in order for us to be brave and an artist like the one you're talking about new, that the proof of concept would come after bravery and we're all like waiting for proof of concept to be brave. Uh.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah, and that's why I fucking love it. That's why I get jazzed about it, is like literally it is the proof of concept that you can be so strange and you can like move people.
Rebecca Gunter: Yeah.
Kathleen Stewart: Like to me that is so amazing. Like whatever that essence is, when I see it. I just wanna like grab it and I wanna bottle it. I think it's the coolest fucking thing in the whole entire world
Rebecca Gunter: because people don't let it out. It's rare. It's unique. It's precious.
Kathleen Stewart: No, go on.
Rebecca Gunter: No, I was just gonna say it's, it's precious.
Kathleen Stewart: It is.
Rebecca Gunter: And we all wanna do it.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah. So I'm just gonna do it. You know, which is really insane for me because of, you know, where I started a couple years ago of being too scared to even get on whatever, and now I just don't care. I'm like, Hey, cool, let's have it like fucking tits out swearing. I'm totally comfortable. Like I just, it's so different.
Rebecca Gunter: It's liberation.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah. And honestly, one thing that's really changed my mind is if there are so many people who can like follow something bad, like, you know what I mean? I feel like there's just as many people, if not more. I really believe more that are looking for the something good and I strongly believe that I am that something good and I have to believe it for like I had to believe it first before asking other people to, I guess.
And it's just like
Rebecca Gunter: that is absolutely hardcore reality.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah. Like I can't, I can't ask people to be brave while I'm standing behind them and like, it's weird 'cause it's like, I guess like I think this is what people talk about when they mean like, stand in your authority or your leadership or that, and I think this, like, this like weird fucking manic episode I went on, took me on a spiritual slash.
Whatever business journey of essentially letting go of caring about what online thing, because I know I don't suck and I have literally seen a room full of people be moved by Weird,
Rebecca Gunter: be moved by. Weird is like you're in your tagline.
Yeah,
Rebecca Gunter: it's honesty, it's unmasked, it's, uh, courageous to watch. It's something you wanna follow because it's so precious, so few people actually do it.
Kathleen Stewart: Well, I am very scared. Um, not actually like shitting my pants scared or anything, but ironically. I remembered I don't have to be, because I made a really insane choice back in February, so I don't remember if I ever told you, or if you remember this, that one night Aurora threw all my tarot cards on the floor.
It was the end of January and all of the cards that were faced up. There was 11 of them, so obviously we're going into February. There's 11 cards. That's a card a month. So I picked them up in order and um, I pull, I use my card at the beginning of the month. And, um, I just get it to tell me like what kind of like vibe I should be going for.
And it has told me essentially to stop worrying about shit and start refining what I already have. Obviously, like I, I do tarot like all the time, but essentially I'm taking the cues at the beginning of the month about the vibe I should be taking for my business, and I'm not even kidding you. Like five minutes before this call, I fucking finally, after a year named my last offer.
By stumbling on something like having like by, like by accident. And I'm so excited 'cause now I can write my fucking website Copy. Yeah. I'm just so jazzed. Well, I'm just excited to write my,
Rebecca Gunter: what, what is the name? Are you gonna do I have to wait until the website's done to hear the name of your final offer?
Kathleen Stewart: Oh, so I have Queens of coin. Yeah. Which is my overarching one, and I think I took you through about like priming pricing and positioning about how like priming and positioning is really about like the optics of everything.
Rebecca Gunter: Mm-hmm.
Kathleen Stewart: So I cut it down to, that's like my audit, or sorry, my diagnosis. And then I have an internal offer and an external offer. Which is reality check. And reality check is about cashing checks or like whatever it's called, writing checks that you can't cash, and it's about energy planning, capacity planning, and then like making your business offers work for you. Oh, and then lip service. Yeah, it's so cute. I know it's really about brand perception and if what you, how you want your business to show up, if that's what's actually being perceived on the other end, based on different types of like price anchoring and buyer psychology and who their people actually are.
If they really would be willing, like it doesn't make relative sense to like this person's life to actually pay this. Like if this is who you wanna work with. And I just think it's so, I'm so excited. Like, where did this come from? Uh, my tarot cards? Well, like, no, obviously it was me, but so I, like, I stopped stressing about it. I just let cards decide my mood for the fun, and that's why I ended up obsessing, like realistically about this, but I did not expect to that extent, um, about my $300 purchase.
Rebecca Gunter: Probably you'll make $500 by, um, having this insight.
Kathleen Stewart: Yeah, I'm so excited. But it's been really interesting. I think next year I'll just throw them on the floor and be like, what do I get?
Rebecca Gunter: I mean, that is really neat. Yeah. I'm, I'm looking forward to when you turn it over for next month, share with me. I'd love to. I'd love to see where you're at.
Kathleen Stewart: So, yeah, that's really cool. Essentially, that's how I got where I am now. I'm going really full fores into this. I love it. I think it's the best thing ever and I find that this idea of using the tarot cards really interesting 'cause I am that s like I am like, ooh, could not leave that on the floor like that.
Well obviously like you have to picture it up, but I could never just like see 11 cards on the floor and not think that's symbolic. Yeah, so that's really cool. I'll probably do something with that later, but I don't know. Yeah, so I'm really excited to be back and I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to be a part of your week.
Again, if you are here listening, just know that I appreciate you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to share my knowledge with you, and I'm really looking forward to our new season of business. Please reach out if you have any questions about anything, or honestly, if you just wanna shoot the shit, have at her. 'cause I love fucking talking. Oh, sign up for my newsletter. Sign up for my newsletter, link and bio, or whatever they say.
Rebecca Gunter: Well, friends, that's all the digital odds and ends I've got for you today. If you're ready to turn your beautiful mess into strategic success, head
Kathleen Stewart: over to the mainstage.ca to see how we can make that happen. And if you want the totally un. Filtered behind the scenes tea about running a business. Come find me on threads@themainstage.ca, where I keep it pretty chaotic.
Until next time, keep creating your way, even if it means coloring outside of the lines.