IAM839- Founder Uses Her Frame of Mind Coaching Process to Help Leaders

Kim Ades (pronounced add-iss) is the President and Founder of Frame of Mind Coaching™ and JournalEngine™ Software. Recognized as an expert in the area of thought mastery and mental toughness, Kim uses her unique philosophy and quirky coaching style to help business owners and leaders identify their personal blind spots and shift their thinking in order to yield extraordinary results. Author, speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and mom of five, Kim's claim to fame is teaching her powerful Frame of Mind Coaching™ process to leaders, parents, and influencers worldwide.

• CEO Hack: Journaling provides insights that are accessible by no other means
• CEO Nugget: Ask yourself two questions and write down your responses: what do I really want? what is stopping me from getting it? Review the responses and you will get a tipping point of your beliefs.
• CEO Defined: Getting the chance to design a place, a system, a product, a service, a concept that is a complete reflection of my values, my priorities, my passions and having it trickling down to people who serve me and the people we serve

Website: http://www.frameofmindcoaching.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kimades
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimades
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FOMcoaching
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frameofmindcoaching
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeeJ8fSIjJNk5e8esyUTraQ

Book: https://tinyurl.com/What-You-Focus-On-Grows-Book

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Kim Addis of Frame of Mind Coaching. Kim, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:39 – Kim Ades

I am thrilled to be here. You have no idea. I'm so excited.

00:43 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on as well. And you're doing so many phenomenal things. I wanted to read a little bit more about Kim so you can hear about some of the awesome things that she's doing. Kim is the president and founder of FrameRomance Coaching and Journal Engine Software. Recognized as an expert in the area of thought mastery and mental toughness, Kim uses her unique philosophy and quirky coaching style to help business owners and leaders identify their blind spots and shift their thinking in order to yield extraordinary results. Author, speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and mama 5, Kim's claim to fame is teaching her powerful frame of mind coaching process to leaders, parents, and influencers worldwide. Kim, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:23 – Kim Ades

I am ready.

01:24 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, let's do it. And to kick everything off, I wanted to kind of rewind the clock a little bit on all the accomplishments that you have and hear how you guys started. Can you take us through your CEO story and let us get started with all the awesome things you're working on?

01:35 – Kim Ades

Sure. So I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur, you could say, ever since I was a kid. You know, I was that kid who went to the beach in Cape Cod with my family and all the friends and I used to sell massages on the beach for $2 a pop. 10 minutes, $2 at the time, I was like raking it in, right? As I got older, I kept on being seriously interested in businesses. The next business I owned, I was like 20-something years old, and I owned a balloon business. And we used to do balloon decorating for people's parties and weddings and things like that. The next business was a business called Upward Motion and we used to build simulation-based assessments to help companies make better hiring decisions.

And that made a big impact on me in terms of bringing me to where I am now. Because what we ended up doing was testing people to figure out who would be a top performer in any given industry in any given role. So we're looking at their IQ, we're looking at their personality traits, we're looking at their skillsets, we're looking at everything. And there was one key differentiator of top performance that kept surfacing over and above all other characteristics. And that was if a person had a high degree of emotional resilience, they would be much more likely to succeed. And so fast forward, I ended up selling the shares of that business many years ago, and I got hired by a coaching company right after that.

And I lasted with them for about 8 and a half, 9 months, because I'm not designed to work for other people. Think you could relate to that. And, in that time period, I got an opportunity to observe how other people do coaching. And I thought to myself, I think they're doing it wrong. I think there's a better way. I think they're missing the boat. And so that's when I decided to start framing my coaching and really bring forward a different approach, a different philosophy, a different style of coaching to the table. So here we are now, 16 years later, and I have a team of coaches in Canada and the US and we certify people in what I call the frame of mind coaching process or process for Americans.

03:51 – Gresham Harkless

There you go. Now, I absolutely love that. And I almost wonder if you would agree with this. I always say I'm a strong believer in binaries and that sometimes you have to experience the bad to know the good. And it kind of sounds like Craig, a man from wrong by having that experience where you were working in that business and made you understand that this is something that's not quite hitting the market can be a lot better. Had you not experienced that, maybe we wouldn't be here talking about at least this business now.

04:14 – Kim Ades

Well, I'm not, I agree with you. And I, I'm a big believer that all experiences lead to here, right? So even though you think the experience was irrelevant or a waste of time or exhausting or a loss, a failure, I don't look at things that way. I think that they all contribute to the here and now. And so, you know, I look back at it and think that even though it was actually a short period of time in the grand scheme of my career, it was very useful for me to experience that contrast to help me identify what I think it should be instead.

04:47 – Kim Ades

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And Steve Jobs has his commencement speech where he says, sometimes you can't understand how things fit in alignment until you're looking backward and the dots start to connect. So I absolutely love that you've been able to create this business. So I know we touched on it a little bit. Could you take us through a little bit more on what that better way, the better mousetrap, so to speak, is and how exactly you're serving the clients you work with? So when I worked for this company, what they did was they worked with business owners and they helped them create a business plan. Sounds like a good idea, right?

So I help you create a business plan and in that business plan, we're going to break that down into manageable components. Again, sounds pretty reasonable. And as a coach, what I'm going to do is I'm going to hold you accountable to make sure that you get all the things done in order to reach your goals. Again, sounds perfectly reasonable, right? Except in my mind, I thought, what, people know how to create business plans. That's not the issue. The issue is that they don't do what's on the plan. Right? Some things get in the way, and they don't execute. And I'm interested in why they don't execute. It's not about the plan creation that's the big issue. It's about why don't they get the things done that they know will lead to their goals.

What's stopping them? What's getting in their way? And that's where I was coming from. I didn't think that I should have to hold other people accountable. Like I have 5 kids as it is, do I need more people to hold accountable? I thought that's not fun. And not to mention, I'm not the kind of person who likes to be accountable to others, right? That just didn't feel good to me. And I imagine that a lot of leaders, especially entrepreneurs who are extremely driven, don't want to answer to people. That's why they run their own businesses. Right? So now there's a funny problem, right?

If they're independently minded, and they want to do their own things and they have these goals that they want to achieve, but still something stopping them from reaching those goals, that's the problem I wanted to solve. And so what I figured out was that the thing that was stopping them from achieving their goals was not their abilities or their skill sets or their experiences, but it was the thinking that they had about these problems, about themselves. More specifically, the beliefs they had that were standing in the way of their success. And that's all completely 100% connected to emotional resilience.

And so I thought to myself if I could help people improve their emotional resilience and if I could help people identify the beliefs that were preventing them from taking those steps and kind of clearing the pathway. So imagine you're on a runway and there are all these obstacles in your way and I cleared the pathway. Now you can take off. And so my job wasn't so much to hold people accountable and create plans for them, but to remove those things, those barriers that they weren't even aware of that were in their way. And so that's how frame-of-mind coaching came into being.

07:37 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And I think that a lot of people that are listening to this, but Crowley resonates with them as you were talking about, you know, having that entrepreneurial spirit, not wanting to answer to people. And sometimes there's that, I guess, that tension. And sometimes you have to have to listen to those rules or listen to the way that things are done when in reality, that's not really what is stopping the execution. It's those blockages, those things that we may not be aware of. And I think that it sounds very empowering to me. And I imagine that you probably get the same kind of response from your clients as well.

08:09 – Kim Ades

Well, here's the thing as humans, just because we're human, we all have blind spots. And those blind spots really trip us up. The problem is because they're blind spots, we don't understand them, we can't see them, and all we feel is frustration, disappointment, anger, and confusion. Sometimes we have an emotional reaction to experiencing the blind spot, but because we can't see it, we don't know how to deal with it.

We don't know how to move it out of the way. And that's where coaching comes into play. Because again, I have a team of coaches, but I can clearly, easily, and quickly see somebody's blind spots. And so what does that do? It accelerates a person's progress, right? When you're working with someone who has experience in seeing what typically trips people up, what happens on the other end is like, oh, wow, I didn't see that, let's move through it quickly. And so I know that leaders like speed, I like speed too. So I wanna help them move fast.

09:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. One of the best ways to get there fast is to tap into the expertise of others, the experience of others, and you being able to kind of have that niche and ability to be able to see that superpower, so to speak, allows the people that work with you that really valuable opportunity to do that. So would you consider that to be your secret sauce or the thing you feel kind of sets you apart is that ability to kind of see that and help people to kind of move those things out of the way so that they can execute.

09:28 – Kim Ades

So I would say to you that I just have strong instincts. Yes. However, what ended up happening was once I started coaching people, the people I coached said, how do you do that? Like, what is it that you're doing exactly? Can you teach me? And again, look, looking back, you know, 15, 16 years ago, I'm like, I don't know, I'm just doing it. But then they pushed me to figure out what the heck I was doing, how I was doing, and why I was driving the results that we were getting with our clients. And it turned out that there's a logic to this, that there's a framework, that there's a process that I now teach other leaders who are interested in learning how to be more effective leaders by learning how to coach their team members.

So now we have a certification process. So, you know, yes, perhaps the secret sauce is just, you know, I have a strong sense for how to move people to a better place. But beyond that, I think it's taking that concept when it was just a concept when it was intangible, and making it tangible. So now if somebody says, like, what really makes you different from all other coaching programs, I say it's 4 things, right? It's the process that we use for coaching, it's the philosophy and our approach, it's our platform that we use, and it's the people. So every single one of our coaches started off by being a client first. They went through coaching, they had an extraordinary experience.

And then they said, how do I learn how to do this? That was unreal. How do I learn how to become a coach? Because I see the value. And so they went through, they literally invested time and money to get certified, to become experts at coaching.

11:07 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:19 – Kim Ades

Hands down, I do this myself but I tell every single client of mine like it's part of our process. Journaling provides insight that is accessible by no other means. So when you journal, you're writing down what you think, what you believe, and what your perspectives are, and in that process, you're able to see some of what you can't see otherwise.

11:43 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely love that hack. And I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or you hopped into a time machine. You might tell your younger business self.

11:55 – Kim Ades

Okay, so here's what I'm gonna do. And you can tell me if I'm allowed to do it, but I'm gonna give your audience an exercise. Is that cool?

12:01 – Gresham Harkless:

Go for it.

12:02 – Kim Ades:

Okay, so we talked about journaling. Here's your journaling assignment for the day. Okay, so grab a piece of paper and a pen, and write this down. Question number one, what do you really, really want more than anything? Now there are 2 really there on purpose, not just because I'm exuberant and enthusiastic, but because I want you to think about what you truly deeply want. Not something that is expected of you, not something that other people want for you, not what your parents have always thought you should have or do or be, but what is it that you truly deeply want? Question number 2, write this down. So what's stopping me from having it? What's getting in the way?

Write down all the reasons and then go back and read what you've written. Read what you want. Make sure that is what you want. Make sure that it's truly what you want, not just a surface-level what you want. And then look at all the reasons and start to understand that the reasons that you wrote down are the seed, are the tipping point of your beliefs. And that's actually what is getting in your way. Now, for those of you who are super bold, send me your responses and I will personally review them with you. And my email address is kim at frameofmindcoaching.com but only if you're bold.

13:16 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes, unquote CEOs on the show. So Kim, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:26 – Kim Ades

I mean, for me, being a CEO means getting the chance to design a place, a system, a product, a service, a concept that is a complete reflection of my values, my priorities, my passions, and having it trickle down to the people that serve with me and the people we serve.

13:49 – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get hold of you, listen to your awesome podcasts, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:02 – Kim Ades

Do they know that you were a guest on my awesome podcast? They will. The final word is this. Okay. So very often as leaders, there are things we get frustrated with, right? Like there are goals we want to reach that we're not really reaching, or there are people that work for us that aren't necessarily producing or we have things that we want to do that we don't have time to get to, whatever it is. When you feel a sense of frustration, annoyance, impatience, disappointment, whatever that negative feeling is, Typically what leaders do is they say, okay, well, whatever I'm doing now isn't working, I got to go do something different. I got to jump into action. And what I would suggest, again, a big concept is don't jump to action.

Slow down for a minute Before you go and change your action, ask yourself, what do I believe to be true about this problem, this situation, this person, this circumstance, and write it down. And what you will notice is that a lot of what you believe is actually not entirely true. We invent a lot of things and those inventions cause us to feel frustrated, impatient, and disappointed. And so before taking action make sure to realign your beliefs with the goals you have. If you try to take action from your existing set of beliefs, what happens is you bump into the same frustrations, disappointments, and anger down the road. So Don't take action from this thinking spot. Change your thinking spot. Look at your beliefs. Challenge them and then take action. That's my greatest piece of advice.

15:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I definitely appreciate that and for people that want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

15:47 – Kim Ades

So two things go to frame of mind coaching.com and look it up. We have a podcast we have all kinds of cool things on the website. But again to reach me it's Kim at frame of mind coaching.com and I am very responsive send me an email I'd be happy to chat.

16:02 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And we would definitely have those links and information in this show notes. And as Kim said, I've been a guest on the podcast. So I got some really phenomenal coaching and it's a phenomenal opportunity to kind of learn from the best how I can kind of level up and everything that I'm doing. So truly appreciate you, Kim, for all you're doing and the time you took with us today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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