Hey, guys. What’s up? So I have a student in my Thirty More Mastermind. As you guys know, I often do these interviews with people to talk about their success in the mastermind. I usually just look at my numbers, and I try to figure out who has had a really great success story or a rags to riches story or an inspiring story or something that sticks out to me that makes me want to interview them on the podcast.

Now, this student contacted me instead, and she said, “Hey”. She said, literally, “I don’t usually invite myself to parties, but it would be absolutely insane if we did not get on a microphone and tell the world what has happened to me inside of Thirty More.” This girl has had so much success. 

Last year, she had a bit of a frump year. She was going through some personal stuff. She was dealing with a lot. She was trying to figure out who she was and where she was and where she wanted her business to be. Last year, she had a bit of a dip. She found me and she said, “I feel like I have lost my confidence. I feel like I’m not as outgoing as I used to be. I’m not as courageous as I once was. I’m not feeling as assured as I was at one point in my life. My numbers from last year showed it.”

So she came into this round of Thirty More. She popped in in January, and we have already seen a double in her monthly average sales. She went from having $3,400 a month on average in 2022 each month to now having $6,400 a month on average just since January. Guys, she turned the ship around real hard. 

This is Kim Trathen. She is the owner and the founder of the Small Business School AP Track. She is so funny. She is so sweet. She is so phenomenal. Honestly, I bet a lot of people in my audience know her already. So let’s give it up for Kim Trathen. This is episode number 102. I am your host, Becca Pike, and it is time for your weekly dose of Hell Yes Coaching. Let’s go.

Hey, guys. I’m Becca Pike and welcome to The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast, the number one show for entrepreneurs looking to create their first six-figure year. If you’ve got the drive and you know how to hustle but you’re not sure where to channel your energy, we’ve got the answers. Let’s dive into today’s show.

Becca Pike: Hello, Kim. How are you? 

Kim Trathen: I’m good. How are you Miss Becca?

Becca: You are fucking funny. Can I just say that? 

Kim: I think that’s why I like you because you appreciate my humor because you’re fucking funny as well. 

Becca: Thank you. Thank you so much. How are you doing today? 

Kim: I’m so good. We are living the dream over here. 

Becca: Yeah. So, just for anybody listening, we tried to record this an hour ago, but I don’t know how to do computers. So my computer was dead. We had to postpone it for an hour. But it was really a phenomenal choice because then we spent that hour in profound thought together, really solving the universe. 

Kim: Life changing, might I add. Life changing, profound conversation. 

Becca: Someone should have been recording us. Can you introduce yourself, please, for my audience? 

Kim: Happy to. I am Kim Trathen. I am a fellow business coach in this space. I’m a mom. I’m a wife. I have three amazing, highly injury prone ADHD boys. So life is always interesting.

Becca: Yeah, I love that. Can I just real quick tell you, I really love you, and I think that you are such a girl’s girl. You are so supportive. You know I had Beth over here this morning. She’s in your mastermind inside of Thirty More. So Kim is in Thirty More Mastermind, and Beth is one of my students. 

Beth was over here. She had bought a one on one package, and she told me at the end, she was leaving. She goes, “Oh, yeah, by the way, just feel like you should know that Kim, behind closed doors, says great things about you all the time. She’s always talking about how amazing you are.” I was like oh my gosh, that’s so nice. 

Then yesterday, I was on the phone with my one on one client, Doreen, and you know what she said? She said, “I think you should just know that Kim is always raving about your style of coaching and your mastermind.” So I just want to say thank you for being a girl’s girl and for being supportive and for just being that person that uplifts other women. You’re a baddie. 

Kim: Thank you. I love sharing all the goodness that you bring into the world and bring into the coaching space and bring into businesses. I am never one to hold back when I see great mentorship. So I love spreading the word to other people. 

Becca: Well, thank you so much. All right, so let’s talk about coaching. I have a lot of coach listeners and people that want to eventually be coaches, and I would love to pick your brain. You’re a successful coach. There are people out there that would absolutely die to be making the money that you’re making, to be running a company that you are running. So can you tell us a little bit about, first of all, what got you into this industry at all? 

Kim: So, my background, I was a stats major in college, which landed me in an incredibly boring career in the retirement plan industry. I eventually did make my way into a marketing position, which was so much better by leaps and bounds. But it just became really, really evident that I was not happy in the corporate world. I was not cut out to sit in gray cubicle walls or gray office walls all day, every day, working a job, talking about things, and spending my time on things that didn’t light me up. I was done with it. 

I had no idea what coaching was. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I originally thought well, maybe I’ll just start like an ecommerce business because I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I started looking into that. I stumbled into the world of coaching. I was like what? This sounds amazing. I can get paid to hang out with really cool people all day and give them advice. This was mind blowing to me. 

So I love numbers. I’m a self-proclaimed stats geek. So I sat down, and I really thought about I want to transition out of corporate into entrepreneurship. What is this going to look like? What are my best options? So I made a Venn diagram, and I had my passions on one side and my skills on the other. It doesn’t get much nerdier than this. Had my passions on one side, my skills on the other, and I looked for the overlap.

My top skill that I felt like was marketable was my marketing knowledge. I thought I know how to do marketing. This is something that I can sell. My top passion was supporting women. I had a friend that was murdered in an act of domestic violence back in 2010, and it literally changed the trajectory of my life. I became very ingrained in the domestic violence area. I did a part time job at our local domestic violence shelter where I did event planning and worked closely with their director of development. 

So supporting women, learning how prevalent domestic violence is, learning about all the different types of abuse, financial abuse, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse. There’s so many different forms. I did a lot of speaking, spoke to crowds from like 20 high school students up to 300 adults and business owners. I still am very passionate supporter of women and underprivileged people who maybe live in economies that aren’t as affluent and stable as the U.S. economy. 

So that’s why my top passion on the Venn diagram was supporting women. I looked at that and I thought okay, I had learned about coaching I knew about consulting. I thought I have two options. I can either offer women done for you services to do marketing for them and their businesses, or I can figure out what the heck this coaching world is, and I can coach them to learn how to do their marketing. 

So when I first launched my business, I launched as a marketing coach because that’s where my knowledge base was. That’s where my skill set was. Started getting clients, ran ads. I took a very different approach than a lot of people do with coaching. I ran ads, started off doing a group program, really focused on content creation, marketing emails, how to convert from ads into paid customers. Then over the last five years now, my business has just grown and evolved and morphed and transformed. Now I am a full on business coach, helping other people grow their businesses. 

Becca: I feel like if anyone should be a business coach, it’s you. It’s like you have the marketing knowledge. You’ve worked in corporate. You have the thankfulness and the gratitude of entrepreneurship because you worked a job that you didn’t necessarily want to work. You have the passion for people and the people skills, right? Like your EQ is high. Your sense of humor is even higher, and it’s like it all comes together. 

Sometimes it’s hard to, I don’t think everyone should be an entrepreneur. I’ve said this before. Sometimes people come to me, and they’re like I really want to be a coach, for instance. My first thought is no, don’t do it. Because I feel like you really have to have very specific qualities to be successful in coaching. I think that you mark off all of those boxes. 

Kim: Thank you. I take that as a huge compliment coming from you. It literally feels like I’m working my dream job. How is this possible that I get to sit with some of the most amazing people, whether I’m learning from them, learning alongside of them, or teaching them myself as the mentor? It feels like a dream that I didn’t know was possible in my younger years. 

My kids are 16, all boys. 16, 12, and 10 years old. It’s really fun when I meet my 16 year old, like different girls that go to his school and will be at sporting events. I love when they ask me what I do because the girls are more common to ask. The boys don’t usually ask, but the girls do. When I tell them I’m a coach, a business coach, they’re like what is that? I love that I get to share with this really young generation. My favorite thing is to sum it up and say, I basically get to hang out with the coolest people, talking with them all day, and I get paid to do this. They’re like what? 

Becca: I know, it’s so amazing. So tell me, what’s your favorite thing about hanging out with cool people? Like what is it? You’re sitting down and you are face to face with your clients and with your peers and with your mentors. Sometimes you have a mic in front of you. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you’re just in your pajamas. What is happening in your mind when you are sitting down with these people that brings you so much joy? 

Kim: Oh, my gosh, I love that question. I have this constant visualization. I like to geek out on neuroscience and the brain and what’s happening inside of the brain. Some of your audience aren’t aware, but when we have thoughts, we form neural pathways in our brain. So when we keep going back to old thoughts, it’s just because that’s like a really carved out path in our brain, right? It’s like once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. That neural pathway is really strong.

Every conversation that I have with somebody, I feel like you can sense this electricity that happens on both sides. It’s almost like you can feel the new neural pathways forming. You get to see and hear somebody else’s perspective. You can see and hear somebody else’s limiting beliefs way easier and way faster than we can normally spot our own. It is so fun. 

I feel like in every conversation, I learn just as much from my clients as they’re learning from me because I get to see how they process, I get to see how they take it in, I get to see how they structure their work life with their families, what’s working, what isn’t working. It always opens up my eyes to something new going on that I haven’t considered yet myself. It is one of the most thrilling things to me. 

Becca: I love that. I’m really excited to ask this question because I almost want to compare notes. It’s pretty rare that I get to sit down with other women business coaches. I’ve always got people on the podcast, but they’re from all the industries on the planet, right. Some of my best friends that are coaches aren’t business coaches. So you coach business, you coach women. Do you only coach like online business owners or no?

Kim: Good question. This is something that’s evolved over the course of my business. I coach not just women any longer. I coach men and women. That is a relatively new change for me. I think last December I signed a male one on one client. I had worked with one man prior to that. So I kind of shifted, and I thought, to me, it’s not so much about gender. I just don’t want to be feeding into the patriarchy. I don’t believe the patriarchy of views serve anybody, men, women. I don’t believe it helps anybody. So it became less about gender to me and more about values. 

But I coach online and offline businesses. When I first started, though, I started only coaching women, and I started only coaching online service based female business owners. 

Becca: Okay, so here’s the question between online, offline, men, women, what is the most common problem that you see with business owners? What keeps coming up? I want to compare notes with you here. 

Kim: Yeah. So really broad. I think the most common thing across the board is everybody worries about where the next dollar is going to come from, or the next $10,000. Right? Like it’s just like okay well, I did this this month, but what about next month? 

Becca: Yeah, I would agree with that. I would say my number one that I see, if we’re talking the top umbrella, it’s confidence, right? But then if you shimmy down that umbrella, there’s so many different branches. So it could be I don’t believe that I’m worthy of this. I’ve got a fear of success, a fear of failure, fear of showing up on Instagram, fear of showing my face on video. A lot of times it shows up as I just don’t know how, or it shows up as confusion.

But the entire foundation of all of it is just actually believing. It sounds cliche because this is what every coach talks about. But if you guys are listening to this episode, please hear me. This is real. It always comes down to this foundation of not believing that mega success is possible. Because if anyone believed that $5 million was on the other side of the river, they would swim the fucking river. They would go to the other side, and they would get it. 

The only reason people aren’t jumping in fully clothed, swimming as fast as they can to the other side of the river is because they don’t know for sure if the $5 million is on the other side. To me, that’s just confidence. That’s just faith. That is believing in yourself. I always believed that the $5 million was on the other side. Guess what? It was, right? 

Kim: Yes. Because you didn’t give up. 

Becca: People don’t believe. They don’t go. They don’t find out. 

Kim: Yeah. I always think of, tell me if you don’t agree with this. I love these conversations. I feel like we see the same problem, but we’re describing it differently. Because I think most of my clients come to me so worried about where that next dollar is going to come from, but the driving thing behind that is because of their lack of confidence. They’re not confident that they can keep making. Right?

So it’s almost like I always think of the money we’re making is like the physical representation of how confident, calm, collected, like how at peace we feel and how confident we feel. Then the money is just the physical representation of that confidence.

Becca: Yeah, I agree. Did confidence or lack of confidence play a part in your business and building it? 

Kim: 110,000,000%, if we can just make up numbers.

Becca: That’s not a made up number. That’s got to be real. We don’t know how many decimals are in that, or how many zeros behind the decimal, but 110,000,000%, yes. Confidence has played a huge role, and it’s been really interesting to watch too as my business has grown and at the different levels of how that confidence or lack of confidence, like how it showed up for me. 

Because I think the common mistakes that people make, especially when they hear coaches talk about confidence and they’re not in the coaching industry, I think the common misconception that they have or the common mistake that they make is they think a lack of confidence is always going to show up like oh no, I don’t believe in myself. That’s not always how it shows up. Right? It might be like oh no, why didn’t that work? What if it doesn’t work again? They’re not making that connection that lack of confidence can show up in all different ways in our brains and then in our businesses. 

Becca: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that you can appear confident even to yourself, but there’s a sneaky little sub thought that’s happening. That it might even be a bold thought. It might even be a confident sounding thought, but it’s just disguised. 

Kim: Yeah. I want to share an example that I had with that very early in my coaching career is that I launched my business while I was still in corporate. So I did both 30 hours a week in corporate while I was launching my coaching business, and I did both of them for about three years.

I wanted my business to be scaled to a certain level before I felt that comfortable confidence to be able to leave the corporate job and know that we weren’t going to lose our dream home or we weren’t going to be able to pay for education for our kids. I wanted to make sure that I was going to be able to transition so that our lives weren’t impacted. 

But something I did in the very beginning is I did not want my employer to know that I was launching a business. I didn’t know how that would be received. I didn’t know if I would lose my job if they knew that I was launching a business. 

So I learned everything around automation that I possibly could. People did not know that I was working a corporate job. I patted myself on the back for that at the time. It wasn’t until about probably two years in where I was suddenly like oh, but I see now this is a version of lack of confidence because I was afraid of how it would be perceived. I was afraid of losing my job. So nobody knew. My clients, my one on one clients, did not even know that I had a nine to five job outside of my coaching business. 

I could see how that shaded or jaded. It changed how I showed up online. Like I specifically did not use LinkedIn when I started. Because I used LinkedIn, I was like the face of the marketing for our company, my corporate job, and we were on LinkedIn there. So I didn’t use LinkedIn for my business. I didn’t use my personal Facebook. 

Becca: You had a closet life. 

Kim: It’s like I had a closet life, and that was one of my driving forces. 

Becca: Anytime you guys have a closet life, you’re not confident in something. Just a heads up. It’s as hard as it gets when you’re in the closet.

Kim: Because you think there’s reasons. You think it’s validated. We all validate it in our own right. I was like oh, I’m being respectful to my employer. I don’t want to piss anybody off. I don’t want to look like I’m slinging their name through the mud. That they’ve paid my bills for almost 20 years. 

Becca: That’s so crazy. Okay, I’m having a download right now with you telling this story. It is making me realize my biggest lack of confidence and how it showed up very much like confidence, and it was so tricky. So a few years ago, I actually just made a podcast episode about this. It’s last week’s episode, which is funny to say, because in real time this episode, like me and you are talking, this episode hasn’t even aired yet. But it’s technically last week’s episode, even though I recorded it yesterday, but it doesn’t come out until two weeks from now. What is life? 

Kim: I think we’re in The Matrix right now. Is this a red pill, blue pill thing? 

Becca: We’re in the upside down. But in last week’s episode, I tell this whole story about some coaching that I got in Mexico and how I had this business that was making $500,000 a year. Coaching business that was making $500,000 a year, and it had five different offers, and they were all doing about $100,000. I had just started this company. So they were just beginning, and they were already successful. 

I wish I could go back and just pat myself on the back for doing such a good job. But instead, I was being coached by one of my mentors, and she wanted me to tear down all of them and only focus on one. I wanted success so bad, and I wanted to do it right. I wanted to do it the way that I was supposed to do it. So I did. 

It looked like I was the most confident person on the planet because I was willing to tear down $400,000 of offers to focus on one. No one else was courageous enough to do it. Everyone else that she told to do that, they were like I don’t know, or they drug their feet, or they didn’t want to, or whatever. I did it instantly. The week that I got back to Kentucky, I tore down my whole business because I was so courageous, right? 

But no, the truth was that I wasn’t confident in myself. I wasn’t confident that I actually had the answers. I wasn’t confident that I was actually building a business that was going to be hellaciously successful. I just believed that someone else had a better answer than me because they had made more money than me. So I was lacking so much confidence by doing this “confident” thing of just ripping my business apart and starting over. I wish I could go back and just hug myself and be like it’s okay. You’re doing a different business model, and this is a good one too.

Kim: There’s so many different business models out there. That’s similar to what I experienced with, I’ve been in other masterminds. I’ve learned from other mentors. I love and respect the most recent mentor I had before coming in here. I love and respect her. She’s amazing.

But what I found is I had so fully immersed myself in coaches that primarily focused on mindset that it’s like I lost a whole piece of myself that is strategy based. Like that numbers nerd, the give me the analytics, let’s talk about right. There are so many different business models out there. It’s not a one size fits all, and nobody has the one right solution. 

But I had, at no fault of my mentors, but I truly believe it was because that confidence wasn’t there, just like you were saying. It’s almost like the strategic side of me got muted way down and pushed way down, and I unintentionally started trying to force myself into this mindset mold of just focus on mindset like my mentors were doing. It’s like no. Just because they’re focusing on 100% mindset doesn’t mean that my strategic side is not valued or needed out in this world. 

That was a huge shift that I’ve had being in Thirty More. It was almost like this weird, unwritten permission of oh, right. That side of me is important. I have that component for a reason, and all of me is what gets to be brought to my clients. 

Becca: Yeah. I love that you have had such a massive shift. So you had contacted me before the last Thirty More round, and you were telling me I feel like I’ve lost my confidence. This is how much money I used to make, but I haven’t been making that much money. Can you take us on a little journey of where you were before you had reached out to me? 

Kim: Yeah. So the prior year, I remember thinking to myself I think I broke my business. I couldn’t figure out what did I do? How did I break my business? Like the things that used to work weren’t working now. It was also, in full disclosure, a year that there was a lot of unearthing of emotional baggage that I had been carrying with me.

I remember when I reached out to you because some people will think I made the decision lightning fast to come into 30 More. On one hand, I did because I DM’d you, and you’re like basically get your ass in there. I was like okay, sounds good. Let’s do this. That was the extent of our DM conversation. But I already knew six months prior to that that you were my next mentor I was going to work with. 

Again, I’m very strategic. I had made the intentional choice that I’m going to do one more round with my current mentor and then I want to move into 30 More. Part of it is because of the strategy and action that you so openly talk about. I was starting to sense that that part of me was getting stifled due to my own self. The other part is that my other mentors, for people that are into masculine and feminine energy, I feel like you go to the side of the spectrum more toward the masculine. Like let’s get down to business. Yes. Biceps. 

Becca: I’m flexing on camera. You guys can’t see it right now. 

Kim: I should have taken a quick picture while we were doing that. My other mentors were very much toward that feminine energy. For listeners that aren’t familiar with this, it has nothing to do with what we wear, how we dress. Masculine and feminine. The masculine is very much the strategic side, and the feminine is very much the mindset side. I feel like I’m halfway in the spectrum. I feel like I sit in the middle of that masculine and feminine energy. 

So I was sensing I want to bring in some more of that masculine energy into the mentorship that I’m getting. So, I already knew when I sent you that DM that you were my next mentor. But then there was that lack of confidence of well, my business has not been great this year financially. You asked me the greatest question. 

You’re like, “Whatever, demand can change overnight.” I remember you said, “After unearthing all of this emotional baggage, do you feel like oh thank God. I just lost 100 pounds, and I can conquer the world? Or do you feel like oh no, everything is terrible?” I was like oh, that’s it. This is just like I released this. I released it and I get to be 100 pounds lighter now and just going full force in my business.

Becca: See, I don’t remember asking that. I don’t remember that. Yeah, that’s so interesting. 

Kim: If you go far enough back in our DMs, you’ll find it.

Becca: So were you apprehensive at all? It sounds like you just jumped right in, but it seems like you went through an apprehension about coming into 30 More.

Kim: I don’t know if I would call it apprehension. The only apprehension that was there right then is because my income had dipped so low last year compared to where I had been that I was like maybe you’re going to say, “Listen, I think you need to figure that shit out before you come into 30 More.” That was the only apprehension piece. 

Because, like I said, I had already decided. I get confused on the day. Whatever the round was prior to the round when I came in, I remember we DM’d, and you’re like you should just joined Thirty More. I was like I’m set with my current mentor, but I’ll be there next time. I just already knew. So the only apprehension that was lingering there was if you were to say to me, “Hey, if your business is in a wall right now, it’s not the greatest time for you to come in.”

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. So you said that you already knew that you wanted to come into 30 More, but why? So was it just that my Instagram was showing strategy more than mindset? 

Kim: You know what? If I had to distill it down to the tiniest, most granular thing that we could, I remember thinking I know at some point I’m going to be hiring people. Becca knows how to do that. She has run multiple businesses. She’s not still trying to figure out some of that stuff. She’s been running businesses for years. She’s done the brick and mortar. She’s hired and fired and done everything in between.

I had had a pull for quite a while of not really knowing what the future of my business was going to look like. One business model that I had thought about is so many coaches go from one to one to group and then they do, like high level group. Of course, that’s like the traditional trajectory that most coaches go on. 

Becca: Only in the sliver of universe that we’re a part of. 

Kim: Only in that sliver of universe that we’re a part of.

Becca: Because I ended up being a part of a different sliver. Nobody knows what the hell I’m talking about. Nobody over there does it like that. No one. They’re like, “Wait, what? No. Go straight to group. You start your business with group. This is how you do it. You have memberships. That’s it.” I realized how boxed in I had been for so long. Only the sliver does this way.

Kim: I had started out in the opposite end where the first thing I launched was a group. Okay, well, the very first thing I did was I sold a one to one package in the DMs for like $750. That was the very first thing I did. I found the lead in a Facebook group and did that whole.

Becca: You’re like leave the money in an envelope on my doorstep. 

Kim: That’s basically it, right? 

Becca: I’ll meet you after my nine to five. Don’t tell anyone.

Kim: Don’t tell anybody. But the first real thing that I sold after that is I went right to group running from ads. So then when I came into this other world where it was like, I’m using air quotes, everybody. This is how you have to do it. Coaches go. Then I was like oh no, I did it wrong. I had that feeling and it’s like no, I didn’t do it wrong. That got me to where I am now. Again, there’s all different business models. 

But when I distilled it down, the fact that you have hired and fired because I didn’t know what direction, I wasn’t feeling a strong pull to be like oh, I want to go from one to one to group. I kept thinking do I actually want to start a coaching agency where I am hiring and training coaches and all of my clients have one to one coaching? They come in and then we match them up. I was even thinking like personality tests to match up the coach with the client. 

Like I didn’t know. It was so wide open to me of the possibilities that I thought I want to learn from Becca because she knows how to do all that shit if I were to decide that’s the direction I want to go. Fast forward now. I just launched my Small Business School, which is going to be a little bit different than the agency I was thinking of, but this is going to be, I plan on changing the world and changing the face of small business success rates through the school. So I will be hiring other instructors. Right? 

There’s going to be a hiring component. I just had no idea until I got that divine download from God is the only way I can explain it. The vision mapped out so clearly that it’s like oh, I know this is what I was meant to do. Like this was the bigger picture that I was meant to create.

Becca: That only could have come through if you had gotten your confidence back.

Kim: 100%. 

Becca: I’m reading this book right now. It’s called slow burn. It’s technically about running. It’s like a running coach, but I’m reading it because of the mindset stuff that’s in it. He’s talking about how he said that this happened over and over and over again where he would start coaching women on how to run. These were women that wanted to compete in marathons, and they wanted to do really well, and they were having a hard time running. They were having a hard time with the mindset of running. 

He was telling this story about this one girl, and basically she showed up to their very first appointment. He starts telling her that slow running is better, and that it’s not about the time. That, in fact, everyone on the planet is running wrong. He ended up being the most accredited running coach on the globe. But slow running is best, and you should barely be picking your feet up. You should be visualizing the world kind of rotating under your feet, and all you have to do is pick your feet up and just barely move. That you should be slow running, basically. I’m butchering this, but stick with me. 

So she starts crying on their first appointment, and he’s like, “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” She’s like, “Everyone that I’ve ever ran with told me I ran wrong because I’m a slow runner, and that’s the way it comes to me. That’s the way I enjoy it. So I’ve been doing it this way that I don’t enjoy for so many years. I’m pushing myself to go as fast as I possibly can, but my body doesn’t feel like it wants that. This whole time, I was doing it right, and I was just forcing myself.” When I’m reading this, I’m like oh me too. I’m like me too. That’s so true for like my business.

Kim: I feel that so deeply. 

Becca: I know. I agree. So she had just been told for so long by her friends, like, “You’re a slow runner, and that’s wrong.” Here finally fast forward two decades later, and she’s being trained by the most accredited running coach on the globe. He just brings her back to her original running pose. 

Kim: Yes. That gives me chills. I feel like there are so many times in my life where it’s like oh, I can see that was there. Even in corporate. I stuck out. Like what is that, like a sore thumb? I think that’s the saying. 

Becca: A green thumb? We stuck out like a gardener. 

Kim: I was too loud for them, too bubbly, too outgoing. This was a very conservative, small office. The prior president of the company, at my one year review told my manager, “Gosh, I can’t believe she made it.” She was like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “Well, she was a cheerleader.” Yes. Just like discounted the fact that I could make it in that industry. 

Becca: Oh, fuck him. 

Kim: Yeah. There are just so many times where, right, and especially I think most humans encounter this at point in time, but women encounter it so much because there’s such a mold set that women are supposed to cram themselves into and fit into. If we don’t look like that or sound like that, then we’re doing it wrong is the message that we’re given. 

Becca: Yeah, isn’t that interesting? Because the number one compliment that I get over and over and over and I have my whole life is almost like people are surprised because I’m a woman. That they’re like oh wow, you’re confident. I’m like what does that mean? Like just in my 30s, I finally started asking what do you mean? Because my whole life I’ve gotten this. I’m like what do you mean? They’re like, “You know, you like say things.”  I’m like wow. That’s your standard? 

Kim: Earth shattering. Earth shattering. 

Becca: If I was a guy, I would be an average joke. But because I’m a woman, people are like, “Wow, I’m so impressed.” That you’re not people pleasing constantly all the time. It’s just so interesting. 

Kim: It’s like a mind warp when you really start thinking about how backwards it is. 

Becca: Well, we are super proud to have your cheerleading ass in our group. We love having you. You finally have found your people. You found coaches, not just in 30 More, but like the coaching industry. You stumbled upon an industry, and you’ve got peers now and mentors and people that really get it. They understand that being happy and bubbly and successful and all of those things aren’t just some sort of act or something that was trained into you as a cheerleader. 

Kim: I want to say it’s ironic, but I think this does happen for a lot of people. It’s like the qualities that on some level I was shamed for when I was younger, right? Being too loud, being too bubbly, being too funny, laughing too much, all of those things. Those qualities are what I time and time hear again from my clients of why they hire me. They’re like, “I wanted some of your energy. I wanted some of that.”

Becca: Can you imagine people like being around laughy people? Now you’re laughing your ass all the way to the bank. How about that? How about that old boss? 

Kim: Counting dollar bills.

Becca: Just shooting your money gun in the air, living your best life. 

Kim: Yes. Popping bubbly and glitter.

Becca: So I want to ask this. You have been through several masterminds, and I know that you have had really good success in other masterminds and with other mentors. But you have told me a few different times that 30 More has been in a different league. What does that mean for you? What has your experience been like that has been different?

Kim: I think the two things come to mind instantly. The first one is that you’re so action based while still acknowledging the mindset. So what I find inside of 30 More is that people are too busy growing their businesses to get wrapped up in the crappy mindsets that hold them back. I feel like people work through the mind. It’s not that we ignore the mindset stuff, but we’re not overanalyzing every minute detail from a mindset perspective with every decision. It’s like if you’re ready to do this, let’s go. 

Becca: I’m trying so hard not to interrupt you, but I have got to say it. Listen, it is an epidemic in the coaching world. I had never seen anything like it. So I built Massage Strong, right? I followed other business owners that are building really big businesses, companies. I’ve read a lot of books. 

Then I was introduced to the coaching world. So I had all this knowledge before the coaching industry. Then I went into the coaching industry, and I don’t know. I thought I was just going to build a business like anybody, and I was going to join a mastermind, and I was going to learn about building a business. I was flabbergasted by how much time people spent talking about how they felt. 

I’m not saying it’s bad. You and I both know that I talk about mindset, but no other industry is doing that. People out there are making multi, multimillion dollar construction companies and painting companies and massage therapy places, and they are not wondering if because they don’t feel like it today if they have lost their alignment. Nobody’s fucking thinking that. They’re just like, “Yeah, I feel like shit today, and I’m going to take the day off, and I’ll get back to it tomorrow.” 

There is so much analyzation that happens in the coaching industry that just, I think, is completely unneeded. I’m like we don’t have to break down and examine every thought that we have and wonder why or how exactly it’s holding us back. I think that there’s a time and a place for that. But I think also, you just go into your fucking work. You just do the work. You just stop thinking so much, and you do the work.

Kim: I know for me, my personal experience is that when there’s really big things that are preventing you from doing the work, that’s when we need to analyze those. But that’s different than getting stuck in over-analyzation of every thought because then that just wastes time and holds you back. 

Becca: Yeah. So you should have seen me in some of the masterminds, where it was all mindset work. I was like oh, shit. What am I doing here? What happened? I didn’t mean to be here. 

Kim: Again. It was like the Matrix. 

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. So in your mind, 30 More is just like much more strategy based, action based, and not as much mindset. Yeah. 

KIM: Again, not that Mindset isn’t talked about in there, but I don’t know if you remember, I even posted in the 30 More group. It was after we got back from the live event, but I was finally like okay does anybody else in here have anxiety or is it just me? Then it was like a third of the group or half the group were like, “Oh, I do. I’m medicated. I’m medicated.” 

I was like okay. So I’m not the anomaly, but we’re just too busy working to just talk about that all the time. Right? It wasn’t in a bad way. It was like oh yeah, I am still surrounded by the people that get this and have their anxious moments. 

Becca: We just aren’t having a powwow about it all the time. 

Kim: es. The other thing that I realized, and again, I believe this was truly a Kim Trathen thing. It’s not at the fault of my other mentors, but what I realized coming into 30 More and seeing the activity in that group and how it is so much more focused on, “Hey, I just hired this person, or I have to make this decision, or I think I want to expand, or I need to let somebody go.” Right. 

The conversations are so business focused that what I didn’t realize until I came into 30 More is that in the more mindset based groups, because there was so much conversation about every little thought we had and analyzing it, I found that I was actually reliant on posting in those other groups and getting other people’s feedback instead of just making the decisions on my own and moving forward. 

Becca: Oh, that’s interesting.

Kim: Yeah. I remember in 30 More, I don’t even remember what it was about, but I typed up a whole post for feedback. I was like this is fucking dumb. I don’t need feedback. I know what I need to do. I deleted the whole thing and just did it.

Becca: So you feel like being in a container that is more strategy based almost brings you more trust in your own strategy? 

Kim: Yes. It was almost like.

Becca: I mean, that actually makes a lot of sense. I feel like I just thought about it a little bit more, and that makes a lot of sense. That’s why I felt like, and I’ve talked about this very openly on my podcast before, but when you get into just a mindset container then you start to question if your mindset is right, which is silly because your mindset is your mindset is your mindset. It’s subjective. So you don’t know if the way that you’re thinking is appropriate. So you stop trusting yourself, and you start losing confidence that it’s not as black and white as the strategy.

Kim: I couldn’t see it in the moment. Again, I don’t think that’s really at the fault of my mentors. I think that was my experience and how I responded to that type of group, but I just didn’t even realize how reliant I had become on getting other people’s feedback and hearing do you think my mindset is right or not right? It’s not like I don’t ever ask for feedback in 30 More, but it’s done in such a different way. I’m not in there six times a day posting about every thought I have and wondering if this is the right thing or if I need to shift it or fix it or tweak it or choose a new thought. 

It’s like oh no. So when I came up with the Small Business School that I wanted to launch that. I posted in there and was like here’s why I’m thinking, here’s why, here’s what I want to do. Let me know what you think, Becca. Right. You were like, “Sounds good.”

Becca: That’s one of the best compliments, I think, to give to 30 More. Because at its core, 30 More is learn how to become a CEO. Learn how to switch to that next level. To me, a CEO is not someone that’s running a four, five, $6 million company isn’t plugging into their peers constantly to get permission. They are just trusting themselves, and they are making decisions a thousand times a day. Those decisions either are going to work out or they’re not, but the CEO is going to learn from them. So I think that’s just such a great testament to oh, it is working. 30 More is creating CEOs. 

Kim: Yes. 100% agree. 

Becca: That’s awesome. I love that. 

Kim: So fun. 

Becca: Oh my gosh. So good. 

Kim: That’s a sexy tagline. 

Becca: 30 More creating CEOs? Yeah, I agree. Everything’s sexy about it. All right. Could you give anyone advice? We’re getting ready to launch the next round. The deadline is May 5th. We are doing our kickoff party in Lake Tahoe, California. Holy shit. Going to be amazing. We’ve already got a few people that are signed up and coming, and we’re weeks before the deadline. So I am so excited to see who I was going to be there. There’s a lot of people that are listening to this podcast right now that are on the fence. What would you tell them?

Kim: I would tell them to make the decision from the place that they want to be six months from now, not where the place they are right now. So if they want to double their income then I would suggest they think to themselves what if I had already doubled my income? I’m guessing they would just sign up. 

Becca: Yeah. 

Kim: They would figure it out.

Becca: They would trust that the 5 million is on the other side of the river. 

Kim: Yeah. Then you figure it out real quick how to make it happen. 

Becca: Yeah. Successful people make decisions quickly. 

Kim: Yes. 

Becca: I love it. Thank you so much for being on today. I just love you. I love having you as a student. I love talking to you. So thank you for coming on. Can you tell my audience how they can find you if they want to work with you? 

Kim: Yeah. I’m on all the socials, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok for some fun. 

Becca: Oh, hey.

Kim: On all of them, they can find me using @KimtheBusinessCoach, and they can find me on my website, KimtheBusinessCoach.com. 

Becca: Love it. Thank you so much for being on. We’ll talk soon. 

Kim: Loved it. Thanks for having me. Bye. 

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