Kirsten Graham, tell me about your vision.
So as a business coach, one of the things I noticed was that clients struggled with lead generation
and female clients really struggled with the fact that they tried to do everything and they were
really beating themselves up because they couldn't get it all done. So one of my passions is really
helping entrepreneurs understand that they deserve support in their business and that marketing is
changing quickly every day. But if you show up authentically as yourself, which I feel like
video marketing, social media really allows a person to do, you're always going to have business.
If you share your expertise and your experience and people can see that you really care about
them through your content, they're going to connect with you. And it's really powerful,
I think, for a lot of our clients who've never had a team member to see them grow as a result of that.
So my vision is to have more business owners have the support that they deserve in their businesses.
I love that. Now, Kirsten, you could have put on sunglasses and you could have called your business
the 12-figure coaching program, and been all about the jets and the hype and the bro marketing
stuff and all that. You settled in and chose the six-figurebusinesscoaching.com, which I'm a big
fan of for a lot of reasons. Moving gears a little bit, how did you get started with the six-figure
business coaching program and also your other program? You've got the video marketing method.
Where did this all begin? Yeah. So one of my clients ages ago was Jeannie Wilson, and she
built an agency. And when she was one of my clients, I helped put together a focus group. And
I'm going to date us. This was back when Facebook first had fan pages. Remember that was like their
first business page? Yeah, right. And it was really when most businesses were starting to
utilize LinkedIn because they realized it wasn't just a resume site. Same thing with email marketing
and blogging. Those two things were really just coming on the scene for local businesses. Online
businesses had really already adapted, but local businesses often lagged behind. And so
we put together a focus group to find out what business owners knew about those four topics.
And then she taught classes. And that was fantastic. But what happened was a lot of those
business owners that took the classes realized they didn't want to do it themselves. So they
hired her agency. So she had a lot of growth really quickly. And again, I'm going to date myself.
This is before Zoom and before Skype and before all the easy tools that we have now.
I said to her, I've read a book about outsourcing overseas. Would you want to try that? And she said
sure. And so we went on this journey of building her agency with people from all around the world.
We like to say if it could be done wrong, we did it wrong more than once and just got knocked down
and got up and got knocked down and got up and ended up building a great team and just learned a
lot about who you have to be to really lead an offsite team. So it was really fun and powerful.
And then she and I decided to partner because again, like I said, marketing's changed so much.
And 16 years ago, 14, 15 years ago, I feel like you could have an agency create your content
because it could be somewhat generic in some ways, but that's just really changed. I think as a
business owner or a brand, you have to show up. They have to get to know you. They have to
see who you really are, what your brand's really about. I think that's getting harder and harder,
not impossible, but harder and harder for an agency to do.
I love the story. I disagree with the concept of it getting harder as well as that it was working
because statistics show that over the last 100 years, 96% of businesses have lost within 10
years. Exactly. 4% have survived and that has not changed. They have always lost with the generic
method. They have always lost with it was never right when they were doing it wrong. So, but I
think you're just acknowledging that way in a softer way than I am where I'm going head on at
the math and say, oh no, no, no, no, no, this has always been hard and always been almost impossible
and always been almost impossible for those who aren't doing it right. So at the same time,
we live in the here and the now and the present, right? And because of programs like what you set
up and what I'm trying to set up as well, more people can access greater formulas for success
as we continue to distribute the services that we offer. So I got to know, I'm going to make an
assumption here and move past the what's your why right into Kirsten, what's the story behind your
why and feel free to share your why at the same time. Yeah, I think the story really boils down to
just seeing so many clients, so many business owners beat themselves up because they can't do
it all. Or like you said, seeing people who have a great business idea, they're smart, they're
outgoing, they've got all the pieces to be successful except for the marketing. And sometimes that comes
from support. So for me, the story behind the why is helping business owners really understand
that they deserve support in their business and that getting their voice out and heard is what is
going to help them be one of that 4% that survives. And also innovating and changing. I think that's,
you know, the reason the 4% survive is because they do innovate, they do change, they are looking
at trends, they're not staying stagnant. That's hard to do if it's just you, right? Because it's
like drinking out of a fire hose trying to keep up with information. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so our goal,
you know, is just really to help the smaller business owners, the ones who maybe are just
too afraid to hire, you know, who are maybe too afraid to get on camera at first. So to help them
overcome those fears and realize that they can create incredible content just be in themselves,
and that they can be awesome bosses and leaders of their team, and that they can take their business
to new heights, often larger than what they imagined they could before they started working with us.
I love it. It's one of the hardest things to do. Literally, there's really not much harder of a
career than what you've chosen to do. And I again, I've looked at your materials that are actually
ahead of how long you've been at this game as well. And just because something's hard doesn't mean
it's not worth doing. In fact, I would say the opposite. It makes it all the more important to
dive in. In the upper echelons of entrepreneurship, solopreneurs are not called solopreneurs.
They're called wantrepreneurs. And, you know, while that's a little bit of a dig, you know, and a
disrespectful thing to say, the reality is it's very, very rare to see somebody who's trying to
do it by themselves, you know, and get it done. I've never seen it happen. I've seen people claim it.
They don't go very far when they limit respecting those who have helped them move along the way.
So the other thing that we'll talk about in this behind the scenes segment is a double-headed
question. I'm going to hit both at the same time as well. One is, why do you think leaders hide
from finding their vision? And this is a pointed question. So feel free to, it's a, what's that
word? It's a leading question. So if you disagree with it, feel free to. Why do leaders hide from
funding their vision? And how do leaders then lean into funding their vision? What can they do
to really build this dream or pipe dream that they've been, they've had the idea they want to
put out there? How do we guide more people to actually do that? Yeah. I think the first step is
they have to see themselves as leaders. And that I think can be a very big challenge to step into
that role of being CEO of your business, CEO of your life. So I think that is the first part of
that challenge is seeing yourself as a leader and knowing that you're capable of learning whatever
skills you need to learn in order to be the visionary. Again, you can't really be the visionary
of your business and dream big and create great things when you're so busy doing all the little
tasks in the background. And some people do those tasks because they're hiding from stepping into
leadership. And often I think they're scared of their vision, right? So who am I to make this come
true? Who am I to do this? You know, who do I think I am? Right? And so the first part is understanding
that if you are going to own a business, you are automatically putting on the CEO hat. And there
isn't anything that you can't learn about leadership and being a great leader. The second thing is
getting funding for your vision. You know, I think that people find money for what they find
important. And I over the years of what I like that quote a lot. We do we find money for things
we find important, right? Netflix, Amazon, alcohol, you name it. There's all sorts of things that
people find money cars, houses, boats. Yeah, I would literally live on ramen noodles and peanut
butter and jelly before I would give up my support team. Literally, you know, that's how important
they are. So yeah, we, we definitely find the money for what we find important. So part of me thinks
that we need to educate more people like having conversations like this. Because sometimes people
don't know what they're missing. They don't know that they're afraid to be leaders, or maybe they
don't know that in order to have time to be the visionary and to really create the business that
you want, you do have to fund it. You do have to find money to invest in your business. But from
one on one coaching over the years, I've seen business owners waste so much money on so many
things. And, you know, going out to dinner and writing it off. Well, that's great. You know,
going to a million conferences. Well, that's all great. So they often invest money in their
businesses in the wrong places, or just buying a tech solution, right that they they put on their
chief technology officer hat they've never worn in their life, right, decide to invest in this random
software, they got excited about it said conference, and come back and then tell their tech team,
Hey, I bought this software, I'm going to change the world, even though I'm not a doctor who knows
how to use it. Like, what are we doing? You know, I love your nurturing nature as you go about this.
You reminded me of a story too, of my business partner at restaurant connect, Adam Christopher,
the time he told me about when he was a sous chef at a James Beard award winning restaurant.
And he would go on the back when it was stressful without realizing he'd go and find onions to chop
because he knew they were going to run out of onions. And Carl Bergemeier, rest in peace,
came and shredded him and said, What are you doing back here chopping onions, we need you
guiding the front lines, right. And he destroyed him in the process, of course. And then Adam
politely turned that on me and said, Jackson, busy is broke. You need to produce results.
Yes, go do something productive. Stop looking at all this online stuff. Yes. I was like,
I printed out the word produce on the office vision of what I wanted my office to look like
and put it in front of my desk. And was like, Yep, he's right. I need to learn to do that.
Yeah, but sometimes that's harder than chopping those onions. It's harder than playing in camp,
playing in camp, creating all kinds of cool graphic designs. You know, it's, it's harder than going
to that conference and learning new things that you're not going to have time to implement, or
you can't implement fully because you know, you don't have the, you know, you don't have the skills.
I think that's another huge misconception. And our culture is, you know, I need to know how to do
everything in my business. Why? Like, I don't have to, I don't have to know how to edit a video
to give feedback on what I like or dislike about it. You know, I don't have to know how to log into
my Canva account and design a social media post to get feedback. I love this. I don't like that.
Change that color, please. You know, I can give constructive criticism and feedback and compliment
what they've done without knowing how to do something myself. And I think that's the other
thing is that smaller businesses or startups or solprenuers often feel like their self-worth
is tied up in them knowing how to do everything in their business. And there's some sort of level
of pride that comes with that. And that's something I'd like to change. I want to have a lot of pride
in the fact that there's a ton of stuff in my business that I can't do and that I don't want
to do because I would have produced. I want to do what I'm good at doing. And that's where I'm
going to have impact. Absolutely. I can't wait to dive in super deep on these thoughts even further
on how to incorporate virtual assistants in a way that does uplift the business. And it is very
evident from your leadership, the way you've gone about this conversation, that you have a ton of
wisdom to give us. So thank you for your time. You're so sweet. Thank you. Thank you for being here
today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing
your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.