From Linear to Quantum: The Systems That Create a Leap with Kalyca Zarich | Part 1 of 3

Summary: In Part 1, Katie sits down with her friend and colleague Kalyca Zarich, strategist, consultant and founder of High Impact, for a conversation about what it really takes to stop grinding and start growing exponentially.

Kalyca introduces her framework of two trajectories: the linear path, where results are directly tied to effort, and the quantum or exponential path, where that correlation breaks down entirely. She explains what lives at the point where those two lines diverge and why your system, both external and internal, is what determines which path you are on. She also shares a deeply personal story about a decade of ultra-marathon running, identity collapse, and the moment she asked her partner after missing a race cutoff: do you still love me?

Key Takeaways
→ There are two paths in business: the linear path where results equal effort, and the quantum path where exponential results become possible with far less effort.

→ Your system is what determines which path you are on. That system includes your people, your strategy and your operational engine, but also your internal operating system: your nervous system, beliefs and stories.

→ You become the limiter. On the linear path, if everything depends on your effort, zoom out far enough and you will always hit a ceiling because your capacity is finite.

→ You cannot program your GPS without a destination. Strategy, people and systems all require clarity on where you are going first.

→ When you get clear on your unique ability and purpose, doors open. Every single time Kalyca has helped a client anchor back into their true gifts, exponential things have followed.

→ Identity attached to results leads to catastrophic system failure. Kalyca ran 4,233 miles in a single year and not one of them made her feel like she had arrived. That pattern will always end the same way.

→ Your internal operating system is a huge limiter. The nervous system work Katie does is what bridges the gap between knowing what to do and actually being able to do it.

Where to find Kalyca
LinkedIn
Instagram
The Systems Clarity Scorecard
HighMpact Website

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:01)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect Podcast. I am so freaking excited to bring you today's episode. The person I am talking to today is someone near and dear to my heart. She has become a good friend through working together, and she is an absolute incredible human being. And I am so excited to introduce you to her. She is all about creating ease in the life of the entrepreneur. I have with me today Kalika Zarek.

She is a strategist consultant and the founder of Coleika's Eric Consulting and High Impact, an all-in-one platform for visionary entrepreneurs. I highly recommend it. We'll get into that later. She helps coaches, speakers, and founders replace chaos and clarity and trade. Well, let me try that again. She helps coaches, speakers, and founders replace chaos with clarity and trade hustle for high performance systems. She has an MS in organizational leadership.

In strategic change management from Colorado State University Global. She has a decade plus in operations leadership. She has coached multiple speakers through their TEDx talks, and she is currently developing her own. She is Phoenix-based and a lifelong ultra-marathon runner. I am so excited to dive in, Kalika. Welcome to the Catapult Effect Podcast.

Kalyca Zarich (01:15)
thank you so much, Katie. You are truly remarkable and it's such a blessing and gift to be here with you today.

Katie Wrigley (01:22)
thank you. Thank you. So we are going to be talking today about the systems that you need to be able to make a quantum leap in your business. And so Khalika and I had started to talk about this offline together. And it's like, you know what? This would be a fantastic podcast episode to do. So we started really noodling on this subject. I was listening to a free coaching or free private podcast that James Wedmore put together. And he had my

Attention in the first episode where he was talking about everybody's talking about making these quantum leaps, but no one talks about the months and the years of preparation to create that container for the quantum leap. And one of the things that you do with your work in high impact is you're giving us a container for that quantum leap. So I want to start there, Khalika, and talk about like what are some of the things that you've seen in your experience of working with entrepreneurs as well as in your own work yourself.

What is needed to create that container to even allow a quantum leap to occur?

Kalyca Zarich (02:27)
Yeah, man. So much, so much I could say. I know this is gonna be a fun conversation, just unpacking all of it. but what's been really alive for me recently, after decades, decades of working and coaching, working with and coaching impact-oriented entrepreneurs, and even in my own work, there is this pattern that exists for all of us where somehow, despite our best best efforts, we end up

On this trajectory that I call the linear trajectory, right? So this was true for me back when I was first starting my career. This was true for me when I was running ultra marathons, right? So what I want you to envision is almost like a graph. So if you picture a graph, right? We have our our y-axis and our x-axis, and I think what happens a lot of times is that we end up

Operating on this linear path without even really realizing it. And that linear path signifies that we are in a place where our results, which are what are on the the y-axis, our results are correlated directly to our effort. So like one unit of results costs one unit of effort. And the way that we hear about this in entrepreneurship is like people

Katie Wrigley (03:37)
Mm-hmm.

Kalyca Zarich (03:45)
Describe it as trading time for money, right? That is the linear path. If you've read the 10X is easier than 2X book by Dan Sullivan, that's what he's talking about. The 2X path is linear. It's like the amount of results you get is directly correlated to the amount of effort you put in. I think in our society, and how, you know, it's how we're raised, it's what we're accustomed to, it's like.

Katie Wrigley (03:48)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yes.

Kalyca Zarich (04:10)
Ever you everyone tells you hard work is how you create results, right? The harder you work, the more results you're gonna create. Well, what I've seen, especially recently, is that there is actually a completely alternate path that exists that does not require a one-to-one unit of results to create effort. And so I call this the like we we have the linear path, right? That's what we're all accustomed to. That's what we kind of end up

On by accident sometimes, if we're not paying attention. But the other path is like the quantum path or the exponential growth path. And you can call it a path, you can call it a trajectory. Either word really works to explain it. But what happens on that path is that all of a sudden our results are not correlated to our effort.

So our results are no longer correlated to our efforts. Therefore, we can achieve exponential results with minimal effort. But to answer your question, what does it take to get there? Right. So I almost picture it as like you're shifting from the linear to the exponential or to the quantum path. And what I've zoomed in on recently is like, well, what really does make the difference? There are a

Katie Wrigley (05:05)
Mm.

Kalyca Zarich (05:31)
There are there's a point, right? If you zoom in all the way to see where those two lines diger diverge, what you can find is that your system, your system is what is responsible for you going from the linear trajectory to the quantum trajectory. Now, system is a buzzword, right? We hear it all the time. Well, what does it actually mean?

Katie Wrigley (05:49)
Yes.

Kalyca Zarich (05:56)
I look at it as our system is made up of multiple different parts. Okay. So as a business owner, we have our external business operating system. And that is made up of our people, right? Our people or our who, our strategy, which is the what behind our business, right? And then our operational engine, which is like the software, the

Katie Wrigley (06:00)
Mm-hmm.

Kalyca Zarich (06:23)
The tech stack, the sales system, if you will. So that's kind of my wheelhouse, right? Is zooming in on those three things and helping people optimize them so they can go from that linear trajectory and find their way to an exponential trajectory. But where it gets really interesting is that there's more to the story. Okay. So what else is there in within our system? Well, our internal operating system.

Katie Wrigley (06:45)
Yes.

Kalyca Zarich (06:52)
And our internal operating system can be a huge limiter that keeps us almost stuck on that linear path, right? And that's where the work with you that I've done has been so transformational. And our nervous system, right? Which is what you are such an expert in. So yeah, this conversation is so fun because it's like, yeah, we can talk about the mechanics of your business.

And how that can be a limiter if it's not optimized for scaling or for quantum or for exponential, but also our internal system, which is our nervous system, our beliefs, our stories that we tell ourselves. and I I also want to unpack the whole part of this that's about identity. So yeah, that's like me explaining where all this has come from.

Katie Wrigley (07:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And

I I love that. That's a perfect place to pause because I I want to go back and mention something that you mentioned initially, like the one unit of effort equals one unit of results. Like that's if we're lucky. Sometimes it's 10, 20, 30, 40 units of effort to get one unit of results. And that is where the burnout comes in. That's where the exhaustion comes in. And even when you're doing one for one, when you get to a point where everything you do actually moves the needle.

you're still gonna run out of discipline, you're gonna run out of willpower. Like these are finite things. And so you want to have those systems, like you mentioned, the operational system, you want to have a good team, you want to be able to have a good strategy. Like if without any of those, you're not going anywhere. And I love the way people put the visual of like where you're going

Kalyca Zarich (08:32)
Right.

Katie Wrigley (08:39)
Into the picture, people like, I don't know, I just want to go big. It's like, well, where are you going to point the GPS? I love that GPS analogy for the which way you're going is like you can't program the GPS unless you have a destination. So you have to know where you want to go. That's really important. You can't create a strategy, you can't find the right people, you can't have the right system supporting you unless you know where you're going.

And I'm curious like what you've noticed along those lines before we we dive more into like the the the mix of our internal systems, the operating system, the nervous system with the external system. So what have you noticed as far as like what happens when people are clear on where they're going and what that driver is to get them there so they can at least program in the GPS to the right place.

Kalyca Zarich (09:32)
Amazing question. the truth is there's everything you just said, there's so much validity to. So one of the things I've seen over and over coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs at this point and taking them from that linear path to the exponential path, there the if you zoom out far enough when you're looking at that linear path, there's a drop-off that you don't realize it's there when you're on it. So

The limiter becomes you. You become the limiter, right? Because it's if it's all reliant upon your effort and your brute force, you pointed it out. Burnout is the word. That's the that is the path that you're on, right? And so I always say, like, okay, if you zoom out far enough, there's a point where that linear trajectory stops and it completely drops down in flat lines, right? Because that is when you're hitting your ceiling.

Katie Wrigley (10:04)
Mm-hmm.

Kalyca Zarich (10:26)
Of what you yourself are capable of. So I love the mention of programming your GPS and where is it that you are actually going? And honestly, what I've seen time and time and time again is that when we can get really clear on what your unique ability is, your God-given gifts, your actual purpose, when we can get really clear on that and

Anchor you as an entrepreneur into that and cultivate your vision around that, then we have the most beautiful clarity ever to know: okay, this is the thing, right? And every single time I have worked with someone and we have re-anchored them back into that.

Katie Wrigley (11:07)
Mm-hmm.

Kalyca Zarich (11:13)
Amazing exponential things have happened. Like the doors and the windows open and all these opportunities start to happen. And so there's something really amazing about that piece. And then when we're talking about your strategy, which is part of the the equation, right? Of getting you from that linear trajectory onto the exponential trajectory, your strategy is essential.

And if your strategy is not aligned for you and you are having to exert extra force, that is going to require what you were talking about, the 20 units of effort for one unit of result. Right. So oftentimes I think that can mean maybe there's some misalignment happening if we really strip it down and look at it. so yeah, I hope that answers your question. But

Katie Wrigley (12:03)
Yeah, it does. It does. And

thank you for going into that detail as well. my hopefully you can't hear my cat purring. He's his for people who are watching it, his tail is going back and forth as you were talking before Kalika. And he's just laying here quietly on the keyboard tray, like, I'm down, I'm down, talk about systems. So ⁓ and I took some notes here because I wanted to make sure that we talked about this. because like you and I when we get noodling on things, like it's like,

Kalyca Zarich (12:21)
He wants he wants to expand.

Katie Wrigley (12:31)
It gets very exciting. you know, but one of the things that we've talked about recently is that both of us are in quantum leaps. Like mine more recently began, and I'm seeing all this evidence every day, every week of of going from that time for effort no time, time for time for results versus or time for money. You whatever way you stated, it was perfect. No, I'm like thinking too much to getting into that almost vertical.

Exponential growth, you know, which is when you're not trading time time for dollars. There we go. not trading time for dollars anymore. And we're really getting the systems and the strategy to work towards us. And you had started to touch on the identity piece. And I was on a call earlier. I'm gonna go back into some of the things that they mentioned here so that we can talk about them. Cause it was like, but.

How important is that identity piece? Before we get into the nervous system and being able to touch it and everything, how important is that identity, Kalika? And how much can that identity hold us back if that identity isn't ready to be the person you need to be in order for that exponential growth?

Kalyca Zarich (13:43)
Well, this is perfect because I would love to share a story on this. And this kind of this really gets into the root of where all of this comes from for me. so I spent a good decade running ultra marathons. And it started as a passion, right? I got into running because it was honestly sort of like an escape for me. And

Katie Wrigley (13:47)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kalyca Zarich (14:05)
As I started running, I started running because it was a joyful experience, right? It was time outside. It was trying something new. It was testing my limit. It was feeling the, you know, endorphin rush from running. But over time, what happened was I got more and more into and more and more obsessed with the result, right?

Katie Wrigley (14:27)
Mm.

Kalyca Zarich (14:28)
I all of a sudden, instead of it being about the joy over time, it became more about the distance. And I almost made like the distance was the idol, right? Where I was like, okay, I want to push myself further. I want to push myself further. And of course, all the while doing these pursuits, I'm getting a lot of external validation for it, right? So that's another like confounding variable where it's like, okay, I'm putting in all this effort.

And I'm getting these results, right? I remember I ran my first 50 mile race and had that feeling of a high, right? Ooh, I did this thing I didn't think I could do, and I proved to myself I could do it. Then 50 miles, well, the next thing was like, well, can I go farther? Right? Like the 50 miles was no longer enough. So I'm testing my limits further and further and got to the point where I was starting to run the 100 mile races. Well

Fast forward a couple years, I had my first what you could call failure with ultra running. It was the first time ever that I could not finish one of these races. And that experience was like a crushing blow to me. I remember like

Katie Wrigley (15:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Kalyca Zarich (15:41)
Running up to my partner after I had missed the cutoff, which honestly, it was my body shutting down. It was my body saying, No more. We cannot go any further. Stop making us do this. Right. And I remember running up to my partner and saying, I failed. Do you still love me? And that moment became the moment of change, a catalyst for change. Because me sitting there and realizing, like, okay.

Katie Wrigley (15:57)
Mm.

Kalyca Zarich (16:09)
I put so much stake into this, and I literally put my entire identity into the results and the effort. Like I became addicted to the effort and the results. It was like this, they call it the hedonic treadmill, right? Where you're just like constantly striving for something. and I remember just thinking, like, how could I actually ask that?

question like what is going on with me internally and what is my relationship to running if that is the point in time that we've come to. And I I I tell the story like this. There was one year where I actually ran 4,233 miles in a calendar year, which would equate to an average of 11.5 miles per day for 365 days straight. And I always tell people I wanted

Katie Wrigley (16:49)
Even

God. ⁓

Kalyca Zarich (16:58)
just one of those miles to make me feel like I had arrived. And guess what? None of them did. And so the the correlation here is like I put my identity into the effort and the results. And that is what was keeping me stuck on that linear path, which like I said, eventually leads to catastrophic system failure.

Katie Wrigley (17:02)
Mm.

Kalyca Zarich (17:25)
Right. That was my body. Boom. No more. I couldn't run for weeks after that experience. I could not get off the couch. I had severe health issues that I had to address with a practitioner. Like, and that was my aha moment of going like, wait, I put my entire identity into these efforts the effort and the results. Right. Like, so there's something there that I'm, you know, work that I've worked through now.

But that's what I liken this too, right? Like we can get as entrepreneurs, we can get so caught up in the effort and the results that all of a sudden it's no longer about creating time freedom. It's no longer about creating joy and serving people and helping and making a difference in the world. All of a sudden, we've made it about how much money can we make? How can I reach this?

thing or this goal, right? We've made it about the effort and the results. When that's not really what it is about.

Katie Wrigley (18:24)
man.

man. This is a great way, place to wrap up part one. And thank you so much for listening today. Please come back again to part two later this week, where Khalik and I are going to dive more into the internal system work to help support these external systems, pivoting off of that story. I felt so many things. That's where we're going to pick it up as we come in again. So thank you for joining us. And until the next episode, please be well.

And then this whole part gets edited out. I felt so many things in there. my God. So, all right, here we go back in. So I'll do another quick welcome. Welcome back to the Catapult Effect Podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. And in part one, Kalika Zarek and I were talking about the importance of creating external systems, creating the container to have a quantum leap be able to even happen, to go from that linear growth in your

business and what that looks like and shifting into an almost direct horizontal, not horizontal, vertical line upwards with an exponential or quantum leap growth. And yes, and we had left off with Kalika sharing this story that how it was making me feel so many things of her body just deciding it was done, which that looked very different for me when that happened, but doing one of your hundred mile races and the

missing the cutoff and running up to your partner and saying, I did I failed. Do you still love me? And then all of the health issues that came from that. And the first question I have you for you, Kalika, was like, did your partner say yes or no that he still loved you?

Kalyca Zarich (20:05)
my God. He wrapped

me up in the biggest hug ever and held me close and held me tight. And he held me up through the entire process that followed. And of course, of of course, like it then that's what honestly made it feel so ridiculous to me when I actually was out of that moment, that crushing blow moment of going like

Katie Wrigley (20:11)
Good.

Okay, good. 'Cause that support.

Kalyca Zarich (20:29)
This man loves me more than anything on earth and he worships the ground I walk on. So, like the fact that I was in that headspace to me was like the real raw aha moment of like, okay, you have put way too much of your identity into this thing. If that was the reaction you had to not finishing one of these races, right? Like, and at that time I had ran successfully completed.

a hundred miles like four or five times. I'd done dozens of 50 mile races. Like, and that's just part of it. Like they're in reality, there are so many variables with ultra running that like most people have like a 25 or even 30, 40% not finish rate. Right. Like I was just holding myself to this like ridiculously high standard, which was born out of a lot of, you know, nervous system patterns.

Which is what we're here to talk about.

Katie Wrigley (21:26)
That too, yes. And you know, and you talk about the catastrophic system failure and the way that that looked with me, like I wasn't doing ultra marathons, but I was like ultra marathon party or if I look back, like if we're gonna go along that. And it was the stress of that and the denial of that that led to my eventual disability, which was my body going into full catastrophic system failure and me going, holy shit.

Hell is this going to scale for the rest of my life? It hurts so bad to be alive now. I'm in my early 40s. How the hell am I going make it? Like what I'm doing isn't working. And as human beings, especially when we're high performers, I'm trying to get people to be more proactive, but chances are most of us aren't going to take another look at what we're doing until the pain level gets that high that you literally are blocked from doing anything else.

Because that's just that's just the way we are. It's like we we keep thinking if we do do do do do. And so, and that's something I still work through myself with the nervous system work that I do, et cetera, et cetera. But that is something that gets ingrained in us. And like you were mentioning that working hard and learning to trade time for dollars. Like the the call that I was on earlier today, this mindset call, it was one of the questions she asked. Let me find it was,

Who decided that earning looks what earning looks like? And when did I agree to that? And that was the question. And I can tell you the exact day I was in college. I was working, I think, three jobs at the time. It was in summer. So I wasn't actually in classes at that point, but I had one full time job and then two part-time jobs. I was living in Boston, so I couldn't afford shit. So and I'm making 10, 15 bucks an hour. So I needed to work a lot.

And I complained to my mom one day. And I love my parents. They're such a good model for so many things in those life. They're amazing people. But the thing that she said is like, I was like, I'm exhausted. And she laughed and she's like, get used to it, kid. Your dad and I haven't worked less than a 40 hour week and I don't know how long. And in that head, I was like, okay, need to work more than 40 hours to succeed. Got it. Let's go.

And then on we went. And that's what drove my corporate career. That was one of the reasons I was so successful. Like I had a conversation with my best friend a couple of weeks ago. And she's like, I get exhausted by a 50 hour week. I'm like, I'm thriving at a 50 hour week because I love what I'm doing. And I'm taking breaks throughout the day, which I never did before. But in my corporate days, I was working some because I include the travel time too that I'm there for work. I was, it's no joke, like working 80 to 100 hours a week.

Kalyca Zarich (24:08)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (24:09)
If you do the math, like a 40 hour week is five eight hour days. So an 80 hour week is five 16 hour days. So a hundred hour week, guess what? Like it's even worse than that. Like it's not that I'm working 24 hours straight, although it felt like it a couple of times. But you don't have that rest time anymore. And part of that gets the nervous system locked into that overperformance mode. Like that was what you were experiencing and running.

That's what I was experiencing in corporate. And I until you've told that story, Khalika, I never made that connection before. I'm like, my God, that was the same thing that just looked very different in two very different individuals that had two different life experiences. But this is the same thing people see over and over again, or they're going, going, going. Then they get a cancer diagnosis and boom, they stop. They do something differently. They survive the cancer. But these painful life experiences, these are usually what it takes to shift us.

Into a new pattern. And that identity piece. So I want to go back to your story with the running. So what did you do to start to come out of that piece where you had had your identity attached to the results and you didn't get the results? So what did you do at that point, Kalika, to start to shift into a new way of doing things for yourself?

Kalyca Zarich (25:30)
Yeah, I it was like rock bottom, right? Like you hear that phrase a lot and I think that's what you're describing too. And sometimes if we're not gonna make a conscious choice of something being rock bottom, our body will be the rock bottom, right? Just what you were saying with the health the health side of things. I mean, I was actually very fortunate. at the time when that happened, I had

Already started working with a transformational coach. So she was already in my life supporting me. and that was a huge catalyst for the change that started to happen. So I I really just went, I doubled down on healing, transforming, right? Like I recognized that I something had to change. And just like you said, that was my

Katie Wrigley (26:08)
Thanks.

Kalyca Zarich (26:21)
Okay, this has to something has to move here. This is not gonna be sustainable, the word that you used, right? and yeah, so I just went all in on that. And I worked with her for a couple years. And, you know, I think every it almost feels like these healer folks have been brought into my life at certain points in time where, which side note, anyone listening to this, if someone is in your life.

That comes into your life. It might even it's probably Katie, if you're listening to this podcast, and you have a sense or a feeling that, like, I think this person will help me heal something inside of myself. For the love of God, say yes. Say yes. Put yourself first. Because I have I'm like so grateful that I had somewhere this like intuitive knowing each time I've had multiple three real predominant healers come into my life.

Katie Wrigley (27:00)
Yes.

Kalyca Zarich (27:12)
And every time they've come in, I just had this knowing, this like internal compass almost that was like, you have to say yes to this. It doesn't even matter what the investment is, like you gotta figure it out and do it. And that has been the greatest reward that I could ever describe is like I worked with her for a couple of years. I've done I did therapy for a couple of years and now I'm working with you and doing cogno movement, which truly has been the missing piece.

And I say that, you know, even objectively, like doing the the transformational, that was a lot more like mindset. There was a spiritual aspect to it. doing the therapy, that was definitely more cognitive brain processing, rewiring. But like even after doing multiple years of that type of work to redefine my relationship to running achievement, success, external validation.

et cetera, et cetera, there was still something missing. And that's where I think it's like twenty percent of our experience is processed in our brain, 80% of our experience is processed in our body. So it's like I had all these things that were stored in my body. And it wasn't until I started working with you that I really was able to like start releasing that other 80% that was like stuck.

Katie Wrigley (28:37)
And I I love that. And I love that I've been able to to help you in those ways. So and it that support again, like you had the support from your partner, you had the support of a coach. I want to highlight that because we get a lot of what we're talking about, Kalika, like and what we talked about, the trading time for dollars, and the other thing that we're taught, the two big things that there's a lot that we're taught that really works against us as adult, but the two big things for this conversation that come to mind, one, don't ask for help.

Kalyca Zarich (28:38)
So

Katie Wrigley (29:05)
You need to do it on your own, or you're going to fail the test. In school, we're taught to work individually. And team projects usually are a giant pain in the ass with someone just being a huge pain to a point where like we don't want to work as teams. Like, this is better if I do this on my own. So we don't learn to reach for that support. And we almost feel not almost, a lot of us feel ashamed that we need support, but yet we cannot.

Grow a business to the vision that we're searching for if we're doing it on our own,