The Real Bottom Line

In this episode of The Real Bottom Line, I sit down with the fabulous Kim Skermer, who transitioned from a high-ranking corporate position to the world of entrepreneurship. Kim shares her unique story of being laid off during a Zoom call at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and how she turned that experience into a powerful journey of growth and learning.

Join us as we discuss:

The importance of gratitude and accountability in navigating career changes
How to determine if someone is coachable
The concept of finding calm in the chaos of entrepreneurship
The mindset shifts necessary for leaving corporate life and starting your own business
Kim's insights are invaluable for anyone considering a move to self-employment or looking to enhance their entrepreneurial journey. Don't miss this inspiring and informative conversation!

For more information on Kim Skermer and her coaching methods, visit The Approach Coaching Method.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, comment, and subscribe for more content on wealth management, financial planning, and entrepreneurship.

#Entrepreneurship #CareerTransition #BusinessCoaching #CorporateToEntrepreneur #MindsetMatters #FindingCalm #KimSkermer

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Creators & Guests

Host
Wendy Brookhouse
The Financial Planner for ambitious growth oriented Entrepreneurs
Editor
Shaun Whynacht
I’m the founder of Blue Cow Marketing and father of an amazing little boy. helping other business owners overcome challenges is my passion.

What is The Real Bottom Line?

Dive into the heart of success with Wendy Brookhouse, the Ultimate Wealth Amplifier, as she delves deep into the 8 pivotal drivers of business triumph. From financial acumen to customer satisfaction, every episode unravels a new secret to achieving unparalleled success. Welcome to Season 4, where we break down the core elements that shape prosperous businesses.


  • Financial Performance

  • Growth Potential

  • The Switzerland Structure

  • The Valuation Teeter-Totter

  • Recurring Revenue

  • Monopoly of Control

  • Customer Satisfaction

  • Hub & Spoke

Wendy: Hello and welcome to The Real Bottom Line. My guest today is the fabulous Kim Skirmer. And don't say LinkedIn doesn't work because that's how Kim and I met. And I'm so excited to have her as a guest because she is beautiful. Recently joined us in the ranks of entrepreneurship from corporate Kim, how did that happen?

Tell us your story

Kim: You know when we're recording this We're three days away from year four and and my story long but short was I was retired and that's the very nice corporate way of saying I was laid off and my division was sold.

Wendy: Oh, wow. Okay.

Kim: Right. And, and it was this really interesting understanding of where profits sit within business, what matters and what is scalable.

So me coming into year four and how it happened was I was like, go over zoom. It was June 30th, 2020. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're

Wendy: a COVID, you're a businesswoman.

Kim: We're COVID, right? So we're trying to deal with all these emotions. And so adding on that emotion of, I'm not sure if I would have been rather been called to a conference room in a hotel when the, when the corporate kiss off happens or over zoom.

And it was very interesting. I left my camera on. There was three other, two other of us in the room and I left my camera on, the others didn't, and I left my camera on because. I understood it.

Wendy: You knew it was coming?

Kim: I knew it was coming. I didn't know when or how or what it was going to look like. I just knew something was going to happen because I've always been really in touch and in tune with the background stuff, right?

And of course I had some grief and some, you know, upsetness and things like that. But it was this whole part of, thank you. And it was so weird. I left that camera on. Cause I wanted to smile and say, thank you. And that's really weird. Cause 99. 9 percent of our stories, when we leave corporate, there's some it's not a word that starts with a T it's a different word.

Right. With the U on the end. So it was really different and it's been. It's been incredible and I've learned so much, I've learned so much.

Wendy: Because you were pretty, pretty, uh, senior role. Like you were, were you in the C suite or kind of just below that?

Kim: Just below, just below the C suite. So in the, in the pecking order, I was number four within our division.

Oh my goodness. And there was a lot of responsibility and there was a lot of people that I was responsible for, and there was a lot of things on that plate. And, and so. Having that responsibility, being responsible for thousands and thousands of individuals and their business and then leading a division that led within coaching and business and development and creating the programs, training the wholesalers.

It's, it was a lot. There's a lot.

Wendy: Uh, do you think the way you handled that zoom call with the camera on and the thank you, did it make it easier to transition into self employment? Like, because you express gratitude versus. Uh, another emotion that might have been more negative?

Kim: It's my, it's actually led to my number one question to know if someone is coachable or not.

Oh! So we have all these conversations and everyone sits around the table all the time. How do you know somebody's coachable? And here it is. If they go through some crap, when they go through some crap, and through that experience, if they show up as a victim and they blame Wendy or Sean or Bob or whoever, they blame everyone else.

But their accountability on that situation, they're not coachable. So after me going through this situation and understanding and understanding what accountability I held within that situation and that experience

Wendy: and

Kim: where I can take that playback loop and that audit because every failure is a chance for us to audit of what we can do better next time.

Oh, it's a learning experience. Right? It's huge, it's huge. So me being able to learn of that part of what can I do with this and what do I own and how can I do this better next time.

Wendy: Mm hmm.

Kim: Was an incredible piece. And to this day, every strategy call I have with a first client is I asked that question of tell me about an absolute failure.

And then if they go off and blame everyone else, they're not ready to change yet. They're not ready to be an entrepreneur. They're not ready for coaching. They're not ready to do the big work you need to do to move forward. I

Wendy: have a friend of mine who's in the, um, employment assessment. Div, um, area. And he says one of the best questions he finds for whether to hire someone or not is to say, tell me something funny that happened to you.

And if they laugh at themselves, It's something that, you know what I mean? Versus something that someone else did that they found funny. Uh, the example he uses is the guy who talks about how he watched this person with a 60 inch screen TV try and put it on top of his car in the rain, thought that was really funny, is probably not someone he would hire.

Because it was, they were laughing at someone versus themselves.

Kim: Yeah, there, there was, uh, there's another really saying that I, that I love and I giggle out about all the time and it's, and it's kind of the, you know, my therapist and my response and then therapist, right? So the therapist, you know, says, tell me about your childhood trauma and, you know, I would respond, uh, well, it made me really damn funny and the therapist, therapist is like, no, not it.

But I'm like, it did, it made me really funny. It's a coping mechanism, isn't it?

Wendy: Humor is a deflection at times. It's

Kim: Yeah, it completely is. Yeah.

Wendy: So in three to four, did you say fourth year anniversary? So amazing. There was a lot of businesses started in COVID. I call them COVID babies. So, um, what have you learned in the first, uh, few years of your COVID baby?

Kim: I think the most important part of I learned out of all this is sharing with people and helping them understand that there really is a fundamental path within the development of a human being and the development of a business. There are all these misnomers out there, these misunderstandings, and it's these, what is popular out there and being shown.

So you have this comparative itis out there and you compare your day one to someone else's day 100. It's that part of this manic part that you show up of, can someone just listen to me when it's actually yourself, you need to pause and listen to first before anybody can hear you. And the biggest part is I never gave myself time to grief.

So even though I left on good terms, I was smiling. I was happy. I was thankful. Grief is about a loss. And so I lost the routine. I lost even benefits that part of it, right? I lost that routine of going in every day, co workers, the water talk that, you know, it's, it's grief. So everybody that I coach and talk to, I don't coach them in the beginning of the years.

That's the biggest waste of their money ever because they have to go grief. They have to go understand why they're doing this. They have to go screw up before they're ready. That was my biggest piece is grief.

Wendy: Interesting. Um, I always, I always grieve the loss of a regular paycheck every two weeks and IT and IT support.

Kim: I miss that a lot. I still stay connected to my old IT team. I still actually send them notes.

Wendy: As you should, as you should. Well, that's an interesting lesson to actually know that you need that space. from, um, you know, some level of trauma, if it's leaving a job or something happened, even now in your business, you need to sort through it before you're ready to, to, uh, coat be coached.

How would you recommend someone sort through something like that?

Kim: It's a big question. I've been asking myself for a very long time. So I've coached for over two decades and see through from the position I've been in as an employee, um, in athletics and now out of my own, with my own shingle out and looking at it all and trying to figure out, you know, how do you discover, what do you go through, where it is, where is it, where it is.

And it leaned into a lot of the tensions I felt, because when we feel a tension, it means that it's something that We either disagree with or that we're not doing ourselves.

Wendy: Can you give me an example of that, please?

Kim: Sure, sure. So I'll use my, my own personal situation that I actually had to work through last week.

Um, I see other coaches show up and I get really upset when I see the 10 X your business and just do my program and do this and do that. And I'm sitting there going, please stop being the false prophet. Can you please stop doing that? Cause that's not that simple. It's not that basic and stop just telling me, do this, do this, do that.

It's not that easy. It's very unique. And the reason why I had such tension is because they're showing up. And spilling your thing and they're believing in what they are saying. Let it be right or wrong, or let me agree or not. They're showing up.

Wendy: Yes.

Kim: And it was at a point in time where I took a break and I'm in a transition and an evolution where I'm not showing up.

So it wasn't that do they suck? Well, maybe. I don't know. Who do I know? But what can I control? And it's, I'm not showing up.

Wendy: Well, thank you for showing up today because that's really interesting. So the thing that annoys you about something else that's going on you're seeing when you're comparing yourself could actually be a deficit in your own game.

Kim: Yes, yeah.

Wendy: Yeah.

Kim: We see, it's perception, right? We see, we see what's happening. hidden in our subconscious. We, we honestly, that's what we see. So what we surround with ourself consciously or subconsciously, it's, it's incredibly important. It's telling us a message.

Wendy: Is that where the, you should be, you're the sum total of the five people you hang out with?

Kim: Yeah, completely. Whenever I'm in bad, grouchy, I call them Kimmy pissy pants weeks, right? And so when I'm having that really bad week, I know that I'm not hanging around the right people or I'm not, I'm not feeding myself the right information, TV shows, media, whatever it may be. I know it's out of alignment.

I know it's out of alignment.

Wendy: So. Um, your business today. Tell me a bit about what you're doing, who you're serving, and what are some things that we could pass on to other entrepreneurs from what you do?

Kim: Whenever I asked of who's my ideal client, and I do this with everyone else, and it's always funny how when you have to do it for yourself.

And it's this part of I am the person for the high achieving individual, the driven individual who asks, how can I do this better?

Wendy: It's a

Kim: constant in their mind. So there's a difference between driven and high achieving of there's a hustle and then there's improvement. So it's that key part of how can I do this better?

Because you've got to go on this journey and I'm that coach, that fractional CEO standing for you at the gate of your path. And that's a big difference of you've got to go through that total piece and that part. And so where I am today and what a big conversation is about is for those individuals of how can I do this better?

Because they are and they've read the books and they've heard the stories. They understand the seven habits of highly successful people. They've, you know, the buy back your times, the atomic habits. They've gone through all that and they read it and going, Okay, I know, A plus B plus C equals, but how, how do I do that?

And that's that big part that we've forgotten about and not paused enough in thought leadership and thought for ourselves independently of how can I do this better uniquely. So it led me to a formula and a format of Find the Calm. Okay. And it's kind of very, very exciting.

Wendy: I love that you've differentiated between the what and the how, because that applies so much to my, my business as well, because I feel like the traditional financial plan is put a bunch of data into a software and it pumps out, here's what you have to do.

But there's no one saying, here's how you do it. And so I like to build plans that actually show you how to achieve those what's. So I think, I think there's a big disconnect and a lot of people in the consultant world fall short with just the showing you, yes, you should do this. Excellent. Okay. Now, how?

Great.

Kim: Awesome. I know.

Wendy: Yeah. Yeah, I know a lot of what,

Kim: it's the

Wendy: how, right? So,

Kim: yeah, yeah, I agree completely. There's a, there's a part, I coach people in advisory based businesses and a lot of my clientele are financial advisors because that's where I came from. So I love the industry. It's very, very dear to me.

Um, my parent company name, I laugh my head off every time. I say it because it's RST private planning group and it stands for really sucky things. Like that's the name of my parent company is really sucky things. The conversation about finance sucks, claiming sucks, you know, all those things. We need to have more humor again in the whole situation in life and be real because we've lost humor.

But there's one part I was working with a financial advisor down in the States and she was serving women. And I'm going, okay, that's great. Everyone's serving women. I don't give a rat's a goodie about women. Like who are they? What do they want? What do they want to overcome? And through that whole process, I thought it was one of the most magical pieces that came from it.

And it was women don't buy a financial plan. They buy more, more memories. more opportunities, more relationships, and more experiences. Right? That's what financial planners do. And by watching you, Wendy, when we first met, and why I've engaged with you too is, uh, you do it and you get it. Like you absolutely get it.

Don't give me money, shame. Don't do all that. Help me how? I know I've got the baggage.

Wendy: Help me how,

Kim: right?

Wendy: Yeah. And I think that's interesting because I think in some ways, if we can As we segue back into finding the calm, tell me more about what you do with your clients on that. And why is finding the calm important?

Kim: Calm is so many different things for so many different people at the beginning, right? And it's meditating for one person, it's sitting down by the water, another could be skydiving. And the best way to explain it is flow state of mind. Okay. Okay. Right? So when you are looking at that end goal of finding the calm, you want to find your flow state of mind

Wendy: and

Kim: to be able to be in that part of that position.

You have to accept and understand and do the fundamental things of what it takes to be whole as a person and to be whole as a business. So are you okay if I kind of talk on the personal side a little bit? Um, so on the personal side, there is a conversation around the psychology part of archetypes. So an archetype, if you don't know what an arc is, it's just a symbol to help you relate to a certain experience is probably the best way to say it.

So Carl Jung is one of the most famous, ones talking about archetypes. And so he has a basic philosophy of we go through four fundamental arcs in the human development. And the first one is a poet. So when we are first born, it's about wonderment, it's about creativity, it's about imagination, it's about innovation, right?

Then as we grow up a little bit more and we stop, you know, with our imaginary friends and building incredible things and wearing our superhero capes, we now become a soldier. So the fundamental behavioral part that we need to go through is to Take direction, to have structure, to be able to march in order to a greater cause, finding your peers, like minded people.

Right. And then when we do those things, we have our imagination, we have our wonderment. We've now have structure around it. We now go and can step into our wisdom, which is our sage that he talks about the archetype sage. So now we're sitting in sage, we're sharing our wisdom, we're sharing our information.

And then that's that last part of King. And that King is that whole part about ruling your reign. It's about showing up and really giving back and serving your community. in the best way that you can do it. And that is about bringing people in, bringing in a lines, bringing in teams, like think of monarchy,

Wendy: there

Kim: are certain different peoples that serve in the right way.

So that's that whole fundamental part of the archetypes of the business, or I'm sorry, the human development of a person of going from poet to soldier to sage and to King. So I've developed the same thing within business. Okay,

Wendy: so do people get stuck at certain parts of that development? Is that where we see that things that have happened to us could potentially stall us in one of those roles?

Kim: It's huge. So find the calm. Calm stands for create, align, connect. Lead and master.

Wendy: So it

Kim: mimics the exact same thing of the experience and the, the evolution of a human is the evolution of business, right? So you have to go create in your first couple of years. That's why I say don't ever have hire a business development coach because it's a waste of money.

Wendy: Right.

Kim: You're not gonna tell a 6-year-old that they can't have a lollipop at nine o'clock at night. And so you're not gonna tell a new business owner that their idea is dumb. Right? And they're not gonna listen to you. Right? They're gonna find a way. Yeah. So let them go. Have those screw ups, those important moments, right?

Align structure, right? Lead wisdom and mastery. That's your, that's your high niche, that's your expertise. And in life, we get stuck in structure. and in business we get stuck in structure. So when we look at those two elements in those pieces, if you are going to, and I'm, here's a disclaimer, I'm not a therapist, but I'm a big believer and proponent of therapy, and I do a lot of research on human behavioral and behavioral economics.

When you are looking at really successful entrepreneurs, They come from chaos, they come from trauma. They've had to go and ask that question of, how can I do this better?

Wendy: Yeah.

Kim: So when they were younger, they were lacking structure. They were lacking the soldier face.

Wendy: And that's

Kim: when you're younger, parents divorced, you know, low income family not being seen heard having to do it on their own, right?

And figure it out. The same thing happens in the business life. They forget about that whole alignment part, the structure part, the training, the things that want to do because they are so used to having to do it alone. So in the entrepreneurial world, that's the biggest work is in that whole part of alignment.

And where I say, Go talk to someone. Make sure you have someone on this side too on your personal side to help you through that structure. Part two.

Wendy: I think that the mindset piece, which is where I think we're, we're really talking about is so key. And, um, you can be a hundred percent firing on the work side on the calm side.

But I think if you're not moving along on the personal side as well, it can actually slow you down, cause self sabotage. all those pieces.

Kim: Yeah. It gets, it gets in the way and, and mindset has become, right? It's got this over, it's been overused so much or in the wrong context or, you know, I call them, there's gurus in my mind and there's experts in my mind and guru used to be a wonderful, wonderful world.

Word used to be a fantastic word. Um, and it's become a bit, excuse my language, but bastardized, right?

Wendy: So

Kim: now the gurus prey on that emotion that you wish to achieve and come. So they kind of understand what you're looking for, what it is, and they just prey on that. An expert helps you uncover that emotion that you are feeling and how to get there.

That's a massive difference.

Wendy: And if

Kim: we actually slow down and took time to understand, okay, what am I truly looking for? And what am I looking to, to fix?

Wendy: Yeah.

Kim: COVID scares me when, you know, me being one of the businesses that started with COVID, there was so many businesses that happened. The great resignation that happened over 75 percent of the great resignation that happened were women resigning to go start their own businesses and for different reasons, whatever it may be.

And now we see so many businesses failing and not making it. and the debt out there and all these pieces and parts. If we actually understood the mindset and had deeper conversations, it would be fantastic, but it's just hard. It's hard to sort through the noise.

Wendy: Well, I also think entrepreneurship has been kind of put up on this pedestal as an ideal and quite frankly, not everybody is suited for it.

Kim: No, no. If, if you have to outwork yourself in corporate, at least 10 times more. Yeah. Right. When you're an entrepreneur and there are a lot of tough questions, it is that whole part of your first couple of years you're creating, you're now got to align some structure. You now have to lean your wisdom and be brave enough.

So it's not a corporate brand you're attached to. It's now your emotional fingerprint on your digital footprint. Yeah. That's hard to do.

Wendy: Well, and there's also this big mind shift that you have to make two inside of your mind because when you When you get a paycheck, let's say that's not commission based, like if, even if partial of your, uh, your pay packet is not commission based or bonused, Then you're rewarded for effort.

When you get into entrepreneurship, you're only rewarded on results. The entrepreneurial world actually doesn't care how hard you try.

Kim: They

Wendy: just care that someone said yes, and they give you some money.

Kim: Yeah, it, it, it, it's funny. I have a new trend right now is, you know, entrepreneurs grabbing their cameras and you know, filming themselves crying and, you know, and how hard this is and stuff like that.

I'm going. I'm like, Honey, if you knew how many times I've been in the fetal position, sucking my thumb in the corner, um, or downing a glass of wine, you know, all like, this is natural. You have to get ready to do this. Right. And, and it's, and it's very funny. Um, I write myself notes every morning and, and the note that I wrote myself about that part when I was having a hard time is pain is not optional.

It's not at all in business. Pain is not optional. The suffering is. That's what's optional. So when you understand that and you, and you work with people that help you through those pieces, and it's again, it's why I love what you do, right? When you become an entrepreneur, nobody's taking your taxes for you, right?

Your deductions aren't happening. You don't understand what it all looks like. It's, it's this really interesting piece of, What really takes in that switch in that mindset and that accountability in those first couple of years. So when all the gurus are out there saying, you know, take my program and do this and do that.

It's more to that. It's so much you should

Wendy: be able to do it all from a beach with a laptop,

Kim: a beach and you're, you know, you're flying all over the place and look at my beautiful office. No, that's not your office. That's a studio.

Wendy: And what I haven't, I asked you that you'd love to share.

Kim: I think the best part is.

If you are completely wanting to be an entrepreneur and going into business, I want you to be aware of the reason why you wanted to start the business, like truly, truly. And I mean, the why going down to the I, because that's the find the I, find the calm. The calmest place of a storm is in the eye of the storm.

So once you understand the I, you know where to navigate through that storm. So the reason why you start that business, the I, is going to be the reason also why you have a hard time selling it. or letting it go or transitioning it, exiting out of it. I want you to be really aware of that part of why you started it today is why you're going to have the hiccups when you go to transition.

So just ask lots of questions anywhere and anyone you're getting help from higher, slow and fire fast. That's my greatest advice.

Wendy: That's awesome. How do people reach out and get ahold of you, Kim?

Kim: I love being chatted to on either LinkedIn, where we met. Yes. I love that. Loving to LinkedIn. I'm very active there and Instagram.

So everything is either under Kim Skirmer. Um, my name and stuff will be in the notes or on my website. Uh, the approach coaching method dot C A.

Wendy: Awesome. This has been a delight. I can't believe 30 minutes went so quickly.

Kim: I just looked down. I heard, I heard that we have an old, um, uh, uh, boat in the shipyard right now.

And the, and the horn just went off. The lunch horn just went off. I'm like, Oh wow, that's fast.

Wendy: That went really fast. Yeah. So, and I think the real bottom line here and the line I'm taking away the most is Business pain is not optional. The suffering is. Thank you for coming today, Tim.

Kim: You're welcome. Thank you.