Episode 383: Closing The Confidence Gap with Kelli Rae Thompson

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Kelly Rae Thompson. Her book, Closing the Confidence Gap, was named a must-read by the Next— the Next Big— sorry, let me go back over that. Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Kelly Thompson. Her book, Closing the Confidence Gap, was named a must-read by the Next Big Idea Club. You know, we have a lot of different authors and speakers on there, but when I saw that title, Closing the Confidence Gap, and I talk about why this idea of confidence in the episode, talk about why this resonates with me personally and kind of my framework and how some of her ideas and tools that she has in the book can really help you along your business and entrepreneurial journey. I think you're getting— you're— I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode with Kelly Rae Thompson. Kelly, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Excited to have you. Well, background and origin story, love hearing how people kind of go back. So take us back wherever you feel like is appropriate and bring us to present day.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. When I was growing up, I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, and growing up I always wanted to be the weather girl on TV. I was fascinated with weather. Like, I would watch the weather on TV and like read paper and look for the weather. And I just, to my mom's amiss, I would literally stand outside during storms. I've seen a tornado come down. I'm like, this is so cool. And, you know, I got into college and was a meteorology major, and it kind of dawned on me. I'm like, oh, like, I'm gonna have to work the 6 and 10 o'clock news every night. I'm like, I don't want to do that. Like, I want to be at home, you know? So I kind of like, well, what do I like to do? I'm like, well, this political science class is pretty cool, and I like the bank that I'm working at. So like, we'll just, we'll just wing it. We'll just go from there. So I actually ended up working in banking for almost almost 14 years, you know, after this moment I figured out I didn't want to work the 6 and 10 o'clock news. And what was really interesting about being in banking was I started in sales and went to sales training and then went to human resources. And as I accelerated in the organization, one of the things that I started to notice was I'm like, huh, like there's not a lot of women in leadership. In fact, almost all the men, you know, leading this organization, you know, are white males. And in banking and in finance, that's literally just the way it was. And so I kind of remember taking stock of that, thinking, okay, it might be challenging to advance. Um, I eventually left banking and went to work for a healthcare technology organization where I ran HR. And even in that organization, still remember, you know, sometimes being the only in a room and also having lots of conversations with women leaders. You know, they would see jobs on the posting board and they would come to me and they're like, oh, this job looks fascinating and I only meet 9 to 10 of the qualifications and I don't know if I should apply for it. If I apply for it, maybe I'll just ask for less money, all this sort of stuff. You know, where men just didn't really treat it that way. They kind of were like, hey, This job looks awesome. Who do I got to talk to? You know, then I went to go work for a leadership consulting firm and eventually went off on my own because I was doing a bunch of traveling, did not want to be traveling. And one of the things I had gotten into was leadership and executive coaching. You know, went to my boss and, you know, just said, hey, I want to get off the road. Is there any way I can just focus on leadership and executive coaching? And she said, you know, it's not the business I want to be in, but if you want to go off on your own, I will support you. Went off on my own. This is 2019. And, um, as any business owner knows, and you might giggle at this, is I pretty coached anybody who would pay me money. I'm like, oh, you're gonna give me money for my business? Great, I will coach you. I will do this leadership training. And then when COVID hit, I lost like, you know, 80 to 90% of my revenue overnight because corporate organizations cancel coaching contracts, they cancel speaking engagements. And so I went back and I thought to myself, well, if I would work for free, what would I do? Because I'm essentially working for free right now. Like, I thought back and flashed back to all those conversations I had with women when we worked in a male-dominated environment about confidence, about speaking up, about negotiating, asking for money. You know, being in human resources, I spent a lot of time talking about money, negotiating salary offers, encouraging folks to negotiate their salary offers, especially women. And I thought, you know, I would really focus my efforts on women. And so, um, when the pandemic kind of was continuing to go on, I was like, well, I have nothing to lose. So I started tweaking all my content to speak to women. And ever since then, you know, my mission is to help women advance to the rooms where decisions are made. And the business has just kind of grown and evolved from there. That's where my training programs came from. It's where my book came from. But I always joke that I find it ironic that I spend so much time talking about women and salaries and money and amongst other things is I went from the easiest topic there is to talk about, which is the weather, to sometimes talking about and equipping women to talk about some of the most difficult things there is to talk about, which is money. And so I've gone from, you know, opposite ends of the spectrum. But now I've been in my business 5 and a half years, and it's, it's really fun to be able to help women continue to advance, just to bring more, um, diversity to leadership teams and help, help organizations succeed.

I love that. How did, how did the book— tell me about the genesis of the book itself, and specifically around the, the idea around confidence. So your book, Closing the Confidence Gap, and I've got some, a lot questions around that in general. Boost Your Peace, Your Potential, and Your Paycheck. Tell me about that specifically.

Yeah, I wanted to write a book from the time I was a little girl. Wanted to be a weather girl, and I was gonna write a book. But yeah, I always said I don't know what I'd write about. And I remember writing in the book, I had always said, even to my leader, I want to write a book someday, but I know it will never be a leadership book. And of course, the universe laughed, you know, because at the time— and it can— if you still Google best leadership books, you're going to get a lot of books written by men. I'm thinking like, I'm competing with Jack Welch, you know, I'm competing with Jim Collins who wrote Good to Great. I'm like, I can't be in that. So, you know, I still wanted to write this book. And come 2021, uh, 2021, I was out on my own. And dang it, wouldn't you know, at the end of every year, that book had not written itself. So like, I was finally sick of my own excuses. I was like, okay, this is the year that I need to write a book. And I kind of started to get this sense that I wanted to write a book for women in leadership wasn't exactly clear on the angle. So I hired a book coach, and, um, she had the audacity to make me write. She's like, you're going to turn in 5,000 words every month. And through just that writing and turn— in fact, I think the first 10,000 words I wrote never even made the book. But all of this clarity started to come that there was kind of this gap in the, um, book, I guess, industry in this topic a lot of books are written maybe for women on how to speak up or whatever. And there might be some books written by— about the systemic issues that happen, you know, with gender in the workplace. But I didn't feel like there was a solution that addressed the both/and. And the confidence gap specifically, I actually titled this book Closing the Confidence Gap before I knew that there was a study out of Wharton called The Confidence Gap. The Confidence Gap says What they— what the study was is they gave individuals, men and women, a standardized test. They did not tell them how they did on the test because they're trying to understand why is it that men just seem to have an easier job advocating for themselves than women. Take this test, they don't tell them how they did on the test, but, but based on how they thought they did on the test, they were supposed to go and advocate to these kind of hypothetical employers about getting a job and why they're the right candidate. Well, I think we all know who did a better job advocating. It was the men. But the women did a little bit better on the test. And so what the researchers at Wharton said, well, maybe if we just start telling women that they did better on the test, then their confidence will follow suit. And so my book is the answer to that, is actually that's not going to cut it, because to help women see themselves— or excuse me, show up with more confidence and show up in the rooms where decisions are made, they need to see more women in the rooms where decisions are made. So Closing the Confidence Gap really addresses some of the systemic issues in the workplace that aren't going to change overnight. They address the pay gap, gender likability biases, what's called the unpaid workload of women. And that's women tend to get more administrative tasks at work, like planning baby showers, taking meeting notes, those sorts of things than men do. So it talks a lot about some of these systemic issues that they face. But given that these aren't going to change overnight, here's some tools and strategies to show up. Clearly and confidently in spite of these issues. And you know what? This book isn't just for women. I've had male CEOs read this book and say that these are really great tools. I'm like, well, yeah, the tools are the tools are the tools to help folks really show up with more clarity and more confidence and more authenticity in their, in their leadership style so they can make the changes they want to make.

So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is, um, when I saw the title of the book, Closing the Confidence Gap. First of all, uh, you wouldn't know this until I shared this, but in my own— one of my frameworks is, uh, MIT, the most important thing. And there's actually a book out there that's more of an investing book that's called The Most Important Thing, and I think it was Keith Cunningham that recommended that book specifically. So I borrowed the title the concept of the application is totally different. And so one day I was, I was on a call with a client, and I thought, uh, somehow just came out of me, and I said, look, there's the most important thing you can do for yourself, the most important thing you can do for your team, and the most important thing you can do for the business. Well, I think the most important thing you can do for yourself is to protect your confidence. And so in my own, I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to have Kelly on to talk about this because there are some things that we can do. It's like, that's a good idea, but how do you actually do that? Like, how do you actually begin to protect it? But then also, how do you cultivate it, right?

Yeah.

And I'm curious for you to give us a, a tool to use or a framework about what that actually looks like, because for a long time it was just, I don't know, fake it till you make it, right? But there wasn't actually some things of, yeah, okay, well, I need to be more confident. I'm not very confident right now. I'm, I'm actually having some imposter syndrome feelings of like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing running this business. Okay. That kind of thing. So what are some things we can actually do, people listening to this podcast, to walk away and tomorrow or this evening actually begin to do to develop more confidence?

Well, I'm going to give you a couple ideas, and I first want to address the statement that you said, fake it until you make it, because, oh, it just makes my shoulders shudder. I'm actually giving a TED Talk in the fall, and one of the concepts behind this talk is we hear all the time, oh, just fake it until you make it, just be more confident. Well, I actually think that that's not great advice. Instead, But I tell folks, we need to stop overestimating others' intelligence and underestimating your own. I think too often we put people on a pedestal thinking that because they've run their business longer than me, because they have more letters behind their name than me, because maybe they have more followers than me, because maybe they've been a leader longer than me, then they must know best. And so sometimes we take unsolicited advice and we try to make it our own and it doesn't work for us. And putting people on a pedestal, it silences our intuition. We stop listening to ourselves and what we think we should be doing, what we should, you know, what we value, what matters to us. We silence our ideas because we go along sometimes with what other people think is best because, gosh, they, they look so happy and successful. This must be working, right? And so that's the first thing I really tell folks to stop underestimating yourself. The first thing that you can do is I want you to think about what are the 3 things that make you most excited at work? Like what makes you geek out? Mm-hmm. What are your unique talents? Because when we can really think about, like, when I wrote the book, oh my gosh, you talk about imposter syndrome and imposter syndrome even running my business. There's a million authors out there and I'm like, oh my gosh, what if my book is terrible and everybody finds out it's so bad? But I had to remember, nope. Like, this is the unique viewpoint, these unique skills, these unique talents that only I can offer the world. And I need to make sure that these are in these, this book, because it will make it different than anything else. So I want you to really think about what makes me unique and different from everyone else. Maybe it's your rock and pivot table. Tables that you know how to do and send out and analyze data. Maybe it's your ability to influence clients. But I really want you to think about what is that one thing, that one talent, that one unique point of view that only you can offer a room. We can start there. If we aren't even at the place where— and, and to be honest, some clients come to me and they're so overwhelmed, they're so burnt out, and their confidence is just killed. And they're like, Kelly, I don't even know. So then we start at an even simpler point. I'm like, all right, I know you maybe can't tell me what you want right now, but I bet you can tell me 2 or 3 things you don't want. And folks can usually immediately tell me 2 or 3 things they don't want. And the first place that we often start is, I want you to tell me something that's making you feel the most resentful right now. Hmm. Is it something you said yes to? Is it a meeting you're sitting in? Is it, is it a task? Is it a project? Is it having to spend time with a certain person? Because oftentimes what resentment shows us is it shows us where our values are being violated. And it is hard to build sustainable confidence if you are not living in alignment with your values. And I define values as those things that you stand for. And it is amazing that when I work with clients, and even in my own life— I talk about this in Chapter 1— I talked about my don't want list and the ability to recognize that the things that I was feeling resentful about were totally unaligned, not in alignment with my values. And so when I went and either got those things off my plate, or I said no to those things, it was like, oh, this is empowering. This is conscious and intentional. You know, it built a little bit of confidence because you're like, I finally said no to that thing that I've been dreading for a year because it's on my calendar. Like, that starts to feel good. Because what I tell folks is, so often we think that it's like, I have to feel confident before I do something. But actually, the opposite is true. It's the actions of confidence that come first. It's the feelings of confidence that come second. So confidence is a side effect of taking action. And so if you think about 3 things, number 1, I want you to think about what is your unique skills and talents? What's the only point of view that you can offer a room? What's on your don't want list? Think of your resentments. What can you say no to, to bring your life more in alignment with your values? And number 3, how can you get into action? Just your smallest, bravest, tiniest next step so that you can feel like that confidence feeling effect after you're done, even though you're doing it while feeling nervous.

All right, so, um, I, I love a lot of that. There's one thing I want you to help me try to square in my own, my own mind. So when I go back, similarly to when you started writing your book, you know, you, um, again, you didn't tell the entire story, but you, you got into action. You just started writing words, and sounds like you said, I wrote 10,000 words that didn't even make, make into the, into the book. And specifically around that, people have said, hey, the writing of a book has been a clarifying, forcing function for them to get clear on ideas and what they actually believe. And, you know, because it's a— you're actually having to get words down on paper. And I think about that similarly with the podcast, because if I had had this grand thing of like, okay, we're going to do this and we're going to have produced this many episodes and all that, I just got rolling. I had no idea what it was ultimately going to kind of begin, uh, to build, uh, 4 and a half years, uh, later. However, here's a question that I have around just getting started, but then there's this other idea that at times I've just been in motion, moving, and then finally something stops me and I look up and I realize, oh, wait a minute, this is not the path I wanted to go on at all. And so how— it's, it's, um, you know, I'll mess— butcher this analogy up, but like somehow, you know, you're climbing the ladder of success only to realize it's leaning on the wrong house or whatever that may be, you know. And so how do we square up? Yeah, that makes sense. I just got to get going. I got— just got to start doing the thing. But then at the same time making sure that I'm actually moving in the right direction. If I'm gonna try to make it to Omaha on a tricycle, I probably need to be heading from Alabama northwest, some, some which way, right? If I'm going southeast, I'm never going to get there no matter how much action I'm putting forth. Does that make sense?

Oh, it totally makes sense. And I think where folks get stuck is in perfectionism. So like when I'm working with clients, they are so scared to take that wrong step. And like you said beautifully, like, I had a hunch. I kind of knew what my book was gonna be about. I'm like, I kind of need to write the book I needed to read when I was in corporate. And I just got really messy and I sat down, I put all this time in writing these words and I'm like, oh, these don't fit. But I love how you said though, but that is the only way to get to clarity. And I think sometimes folks are so afraid to make a mistake or not to have their first effort be perfect that they just stall. And one of the things that I had to learn the hard way as a business owner is that stalling is expensive. You know, when you're in corporate, you get paid every 2 weeks and it's great. Like, you know, you kind of slack off a little bit, you have a slow week, right? You still get paid, right? But when you are an entrepreneur, one of the things I had to learn was, oh, stalling, being a perfectionist, not launching something until it's absolutely perfect, not socializing an idea until like I have like all my marketing language done. I call it procrastibranding, or I need to learn one more thing. I call it procrastilearning. Like it literally costs you money as an entrepreneur, you can't do it, you won't get paid. And so one of the mindset changes I had to have was switching from like, oh, I have to launch for perfection to a mindset of experimentation and learning. The Lean Startup does this beautifully. You don't need to read the book The Lean Startup. Go to YouTube, Google The Lean Startup summary, and they talk about how you need that experimenter's and learner's mindset. So how do we avoid climbing up that ladder and only realizing it's leaning against the wrong building, which is a quote I actually have in my book, is Sometimes you just have to do it and realize. But I think that the key is, is do you stop and look around and ask yourself, does this feel good? How does my energy feel doing this thing? Am I doing work that's aligned with my best skills and talents? Does the way that I'm living life and doing this work and the people that I'm working with, are they in alignment with my, my values and what I stand for? And ultimately, is this moving closer to the type of leader and business that I want to become? I don't know of a way yet, but if you can figure it out, like, I'll pay you some money on how we can avoid even climbing up a few steps of that ladder. I think that's just part of the process. I think it's part of that experimenter's and learner's mindset. I even think of, you know, those first two chapters that I wrote. It was up a couple rungs. Nope, this isn't it. We're going to climb back down. We're going to start over a couple products that I've launched in my business. You know, I launched them, climbed up a couple rungs of the ladder. I'm like, this doesn't feel right. We climb back down. I think it's more about that situational awareness, alignment with our skills, values, and talents, and making sure that we're checking in with our energy. Does this feel right? And really being aware of, am I continuing to head in the right direction? And am I continuing to head to that true north? Because I don't think there's anything wrong with climbing up a couple steps and going, this isn't it. I'm gonna climb back down and keep going. It's the perfectionism, I think, that, that's a bigger problem, the stalling.

All right, so I have a question. Um, I think this is great. Uh, we've never— this is just a topic that hasn't come up on the podcast. I'm curious, as a male, what are the things that I can do for my team of, uh, both male and females? Okay, but I recognize that I have a bias because I'm not a female. Female. Okay, um, I'll never be a female, and so I won't have that understanding because I've had my experience. But what are the things that I can do to make sure that I am, uh, giving my, uh, the female and even male team members, giving them and pouring them in confidence, pushing them? But also at the same time, I recognize that As entrepreneurs in general, which is what I'm usually around, we tend to have a higher tolerance for ambiguity. We can step into the unknown and uncertainty, but oftentimes our team is very, to your point, fearful of that. Now, that is a very generalized statement, I get it, okay? But by and large entrepreneurs by their nature, the fact that they took the risk to do that. To your point, I'm not getting a paycheck every 2 weeks from a corporate entity. You know, you have to continue to, to, to push. But therefore there's a difference with our teams. Okay. And our team is not us as an example, right? They're not entrepreneurs. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, you asked me 2 questions and I'll address both. First one, what do I do to support women? And I just want to acknowledge that because you are even asking the You're coming in with a sense of curiosity, and I think that's where you start. And I think one of the, the, the great things I've seen leaders do, male leaders who, um, actually I've talked to, they've read the book, they scheduled a call with me and I'm like, you're already there. You're curious. You read the book. We're having this conversation. Okay, great. Now take that curiosity to the women in your organization and just ask, what's it like working here? Do you see equal opportunities? Do you feel like you're being delegated equal tasks? Because one of the things that we can tend to see is that men will tend to delegate more strategic things to males on their team. And this is just a very unconscious bias sometimes. And very unknowingly delegate more administrative things to women, like, hey, organize this fundraiser, plan this party. Hey, can you take the meeting notes? Can you do these more non-strategic projects because they're a little more administrative? I want you to also think about, am I giving equal feedback? To men and women without fear that there is like, oh, I'm being soft on, on someone. But I would say the final thing that folks can look at is I'm a huge fan of data. Let's just look at the data. Who are we hiring into the organization? Who is being retained in the organization? Who are we promoting in this organization? Where is regrettable turnover happening in this organization? Who are we sending to training? Who are we hiring coaches for? And so I really think with like this mix of curiosity listening, just a general sense of awareness and some data, like, you can make just really good leaps and bounds in terms of, you know, am I being, you know, equitable in terms of who I hire, who I promote, who I retain, how I'm delegating, who I'm delegating it to, am I paying folks equally, all those sorts of things. So I think that was the answer to your first question. The second question is, uh, as entrepreneurs, we are risk takers, and I love how you said it. Yes, we are more I'm not comfortable with ambiguity, but I recognize it as my reality that I must thrive in. So, you know, it's like that constant, like, tolerance for it. I just know it's going to be there, you know, whereas I think there are individuals and individuals primarily that I coach that have no desire to be an entrepreneur. They really don't. They enjoy the structure of having a boss, the structure of meeting established goals. And I really think that, you know, while there can be, and I'm thinking back to folks that I've led on my teams who have a more entrepreneurial mindset, you can have those folks on your team who are willing to thrive in ambiguity. But one of the, I think the tips that I would give folks and when I, when I work with leaders who are kind of, I would say have a lower risk tolerance is lots of times they're trying to take too big of steps. And so I really encourage them, like, well, let's break that step in half. I'm like, how do you feel comfort-wise of that? I don't know. Well, let's break it in half again. Because I think sometimes what happens is, is— and, and myself included— I would get paralyzed when I was trying to take too big of a step forward, make too big of a decision. And one of the things that was always helpful for me, and I know it's been helpful for my clients, is what would happen if we break that in half, break it in half again? Because that way we're kind of minimizing the steps into like too small to fail pieces. I wish I had a magic wand, but I think there are just individuals who are just better suited for responding to needs. And then there are folks who just have that higher risk tolerance, and that's oftentimes why they feel comfortable stepping out on their own.

Yeah. Um, as you were talking, um, I'm certainly not going to share who this, who this is. Um, But this is a true story. So a client that I've worked with, he's fairly new to entrepreneurship. I mean, you know, just a handful of years. He is a— he's a male, very like physically imposing in stature. I mean, he, you know, played football, has a really deep voice. I mean, very, very masculine man. Okay. And, you know, he's a hard-driving entrepreneur. And the business that he's in, a lot of the people there are going to be males, construction industry specifically. So you can imagine. But there have in some office roles have been some females and he was struggling very, very much so with the toggling back and forth from one extreme to the other. Okay. And so he was trying to— I know people can't necessarily see me, but like, he would go from one extreme, like, could just blurt out whatever he was thinking, and if he felt— he felt to a male that they could just take it. But then he would go to the other extreme and he would just bite his tongue on everything whenever it came to some females in the team. And he could not just regulate kind of where that needed to be. Does this make sense? Right? Oh, yeah. And, and I say that that's more representative even males to other males in these situations around coaching. And to your point earlier, it was the feedback comment that really is what I'm getting to is like wanting to be honest and transparent, yet at the same time not coming, coming down crushing, and at the same time just stripping the team member of confidence, right? What are your thoughts around that? And I'm sure you see that, that back and forth from one extreme to the other.

You know, yes, and I see it in women too, because they feel comfortable with maybe certain women and then not, you know, or even just certain team members. Let's go back to this analogy analogy of driving from Huntsville to Omaha. OK? When you know your leadership values, which you stand for as a leader, right? We can make some consistent progress forward on our trip from Huntsville to Alabama. Doesn't mean we're gonna take some pit stops and maybe go on some scenic routes to try something different. But what you just described, and if I was coaching this leader, is it sounds like this leader's on the interstate. It's like, oh, maybe I wanna take the highway. Nope. I'm gonna get back on the interstate. Nope. I'm gonna take this highway. Get back on the interstate. They're, they're, they're like toggling back and forth. And what I can think of is how stressful. And so if I were this leader, no matter the gender, because I have coached leaders who really struggle with this, instead let's define what we stand for as a leader. What are your core leadership values? That way, no matter who you are working with, how are you showing up and speaking and leading and communicating and deciding in a way that makes you feel good about who you are and aligns with the type of leader that you wanna become, the type of leader that you wanna be known as. So that way when you get into these environments, yeah, maybe you're making tiny tweaks because that's situational leadership. You should always, if you are human and you are healthy, I have no doubt that, you know, people and you're like, I need to make a tiny tweak with this person because I know the way they like to be communicated. All right. Like that's a tiny tweak and that's called emotional intelligence. But to have to make such big swings, my hunch is, is this individual lacks centering. And so where we would start is to just really define those leadership values and asking questions like, well, who do you admire as a leader? What are 3 words that describe this leader? 3 adjectives that describe this leader? Because who we admire usually tends to point to us what we want to cultivate in ourselves. I would ask these leaders, if you overheard your team talking about you, all the team, What are 3 common words that you would hope that your team would say? When you have to deliver hard news to your team, people are gonna disagree with it. It's just statistics. Somebody's gonna disagree. How do you wanna deliver this news in a way that you feel good about, even though you know people are gonna disagree with it? And so when we can start to get these common things that we stand for, like I stand for honest, like I'm not saying me, but maybe this leader stands for honesty, empathy, and creativity. You know, maybe they have a jovial personality and they like to be creative in how they lead. Great. How do I be honest and empathetic and creative with everybody that I work with? Yeah, I might make tiny tweaks because I'm an emotionally intelligent leader with who I'm talking to, but hopefully that provides some centering, some true north so that we can drive down the interstate. Not like, honestly, I bet it's exhausting toggling all day long between both groups. And so I would really encourage leaders to think about Who am I as a leader, no matter the circumstances that I'm in?

That was great. That's a huge— that, that's a— that we've talked about a lot of things. That's a super big takeaway and really a reminder. That was kind of the word that I didn't even realize I was searching for, but centering. Love that. That's fantastic. And I think that that would be in this particular case, but I think I'm just using that as an example to be representative of how I think a lot of people have been able to have is that— because I can look back at times and say I was I, I was so emotionally, uh, naive and immature at the— in many situations. And a lot of it is because I was not centered at all in the way that I handled that. Now, that doesn't mean that we, you know, that we have to be perfect, right? We have to be buttoned up all the time and we can't show some level of emotion. I think that's what makes us human, you know, for sure. But the wishy-washy, the back and forth of it, I think that's great. Yeah, this has been awesome. People want to connect with you, find out more about some of your programs, and obviously pick up the book. Where would you point them to?

Yeah, the book, I think folks' favorite place is Amazon. On Amazon, you can get the hardcover, the Kindle, or you can get the Audible, which I do read if you like the sound of my voice. Otherwise, you can find me at kellyraethompson.com. I'm Kelly with an I-R-A-E. I mostly hang out on LinkedIn. I'm /kellyraethompson, but I hang out on Instagram a little bit too, and I'd love to hear from you.

That's awesome. Well, the name of the podcast is Above the Business. What do you feel like that for entrepreneurs out there working above the business. What does that mean to you?

When I'm working above the business, I'll give you a very recent example. I actively make time for planning, strategy, and thinking. Mondays, I don't take any meetings. It's called my Marketing Monday, just my Mindset Monday. And I'm just asking myself what's happening in the news, what's going on in current events, what do my metrics look like, what does my pipeline look like? Have I communicated to, you know, the part-timers that work with me? I mean, just those sorts of things. And just most recently, I took off about a week and a half and I just dove into strategy. I just said, okay, what is happening in the political environment? What's happening in the economy? What's happening socially in the workplaces when it comes to the things that I talk about? Looking at some research about what's happening about women in leadership and coaching and training and education. And so I think being above the business is just the ability to look down on your business and ask yourself, is this moving me closer to achieving my mission? Am I doing all of the right things? Am I still moving in alignment with where the world is going? My market is going? How am I not being tone deaf? And I really spend intentional time every week making sure that that path aligns to bring back our point, to make sure that I don't get so far up a ladder only to get to the top and go, oh crap, what have I done? It's like really checking in with myself to be like, do I like where I'm going? Does this feel good? What's happening in the environment? What do I need to pay attention to? To, so I can correct a little bit easier.

Oh, what a beautiful example. I totally agree. I mean, thinking time, strategic, getting away, looking at the broader picture, looking or seeing around the corners— it's much easier to do that when you're at 30,000 feet. You can have a perspective. But I think the thing that you shared there is the intentionality of it. You have to intentionally do that and make that time. You can't really default into it. I love that. You know, um, some of my big takeaways really from, from today. I love the centering piece that obviously we talked about at the very end. And then I would just share with you, it was a reiteration around even if, even if indeed I am climbing up the wrong ladder, I will still go up a few rungs, and then I'm still making forward progress even if I have to come backwards. Because then whenever I am moving in the right direction, I actually think I'll speed up. I think I'll actually climb that ladder a little faster based on the knowledge that I've been able to gain. So that was a really great visual, uh, reference for me and something I'll, I'll take away. Kelly, great job. Enjoyed having you on the podcast. Hope to have you back in the future.

Thank you so much.

A big shout out to our podcast partners: Coach B Consulting, Autopilot Recruiting, Today App Pro, and Club Capital. You know, I was thinking about after that, this podcast with Kelly, and we spent a lot of time really talking around team. I think the most important, most finite asset in a business is the founder or founders' time, because it's just so limited. So where they decide to place that time matters a tremendous amount. But I would also share with you that I think the next one is obviously our team. Where do we— how do we find the best people? Autopilot Recruiting can help you to do that. And then how do we develop them ongoing development. Like, I think onboarding is really important. Most people are going to have a 30 or 90-day, uh, onboarding program. I think it's irrelevant what that length of time is, it's just to get a new team member up to speed. So you need to onboard well for sure, but then you got to continuously, uh, develop them once they're on board. And Coach B can help you to do that for you you and especially for your team. Go to coachpconsulting.com and autopilotrecruiting.com. You've heard me say this before, but in every business owner's tech stack, they're going to use a lot of different tools. We use Notion, we use Slack, we use Google Docs, we of course use Zoom, etc., and we use other pieces of software that are out Well, some of the pieces of software that you use may have been outdated or clunky, but that's not the experience you'll have with TodayUp. Go to todayapppro.com. See how you can consolidate some of the tools, maybe some old outdated Excel spreadsheets that are pretty manual, and be able to put that in a tool like TodayUp that's gonna make things so much more simple for you and for your team. It's gonna sync with your corporate-approved CRM. It's a beautiful experience and it's incredibly cost-effective. TodayAppPro.com. We wear a lot of hats as a business owner. One of the hats you don't have to wear is the hat of the CFO. But if you work with Club Capital, they can become the partner for you and wear that hat with you, or at least teach you how to be able to, to understand some of the financial statements that ultimately help you to have more information to make better decisions in the business. Go to club.capital and book a no-obligation demo. From time to time, I mentioned different assets and tools. Go to blueprintos.com/assets. Take a look at some of the free tools that I have for you on there. blueprintos.com/assets. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.