The first time I saw Kylie Hodges’ website, one of the things that stuck with me was how she described her work: she helps clients grow their businesses “while working with their ADHD, anxiety, or depression.”

No—she isn’t speaking from the perspective of a medical doctor. She coaches from the perspective of someone diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and depression, and acknowledging this had been pivotal to allowing her to do something revolutionary that serves others.

Kylie also emphasizes the importance of building community and connection in order to scale your business. In our conversation, we covered the following:

• Helping her clients navigate and run their businesses despite struggling with ADHD, Anxiety, or Depression
• What it means to be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult
• Finding the intersection between sales and serving the community 
• 360 degrees benefits of building community and community as a revenue model
• What creating micro brand ambassadors means
• Leveraging one’s business and the nuances of pricing
• Scalability and saleability of business and its connection to IP

There are so many lovely points Kylie shared in this podcast, so I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. We also touched on the topic of leveraging the business, building assets, and its relation to intellectual property. So, if you’re someone who’s looking to scale your business by leveraging your IP,  contact me. 

Other Resources Mentioned:

• Create Your Pathway to Profit

More About Our Guest:

Kylie Hodges is a business coach who helps ambitious community builders convert enthusiastic fans to paying clients by building and growing profitable businesses. Previous to entrepreneurship, Kylie has a background in marketing, sales, PR, digital content creation, tech, and TV production, giving her a unique approach to creating profitable businesses through a personal connection. She’s been featured on national media like CNN, AOL.com, and the TODAY show speaking on behalf of a Fortune 500 company, to interviewing celebrities on the red carpet. Now, she’s happily settled into making a big impact with her business. Outside of work, you can find her at a comedy show, yoga class, or on the couch giving her elderly dog belly scratches.

Connect with Kylie Hodges:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

Connect with Erin and find the resources mentioned in this episode at hourlytoexit.com/podcast.

Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/

Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos

Music credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music

A Team Dklutr production

Hello ladies.

Welcome to the Hourly to Exit podcast.

I am so excited for today's guest, Kylie Hodges.

Hi, Kylie.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having

me.

we have lots to talk about.

This is one of those episodes where there are a dozen things regarding

the hourly to exit journey that we could talk about, but we're gonna

try to narrow it down to a couple.

But before we get started, would you introduce yourself to the.

Of course, uh, my name is Kylie Hodges.

I help ambitious community builders convert enthusiastic fans to paying

clients by building profitable businesses.

So working with me, people learn how to utilize their natural

ability to attract community.

And create connections that actually convert.

they learn to structure and sell impactful offers and programs and they

learn how to grow while working with their A D H D anxiety or depression.

And the goal is so that they can make the kind of money and

impact that makes them wanna yell.

Hell yeah.

Well, I love that.

Well, thank you.

Why you mentioned the H adhd, anxiety and depression because those really stuck out,

they really popped for me on your website.

obviously it all is part of connection and community.

Yeah.

But in particular, how did you focus on that?

Have you found that the similarities.

Of that market are kind of psychographic, like Ramon of a certain age or more

psychographic, you know, they have these challenges and they need help with these

specific challenges.

Yeah, good question.

I, I say this to my clients, you can build what you can speak to,

and I can speak to that experience.

I'm someone who is diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety and depression, and

when I was diagnosed with those things as a, a chronic oversharer,

I learned that a lot more people could relate to me than I realized.

And so, yes, I'm a business coach, but if I wasn't acknowledging what was

going on with me internally, then I couldn't even apply my own practices,

and so it became a no-brainer that if I'm struggling with this, my clients

are certainly struggling with this too, and so let's do the revolutionary

thing and actually serve ourselves.

While we're serving others.

Excuse me.

that's, we both are coming at our businesses from similar

perspectives, where I, of course work with, experts to help them turn their

expertise in intellectual property and build scalable, scalable businesses.

And, you know, that hourly to exit journey.

I mean, is there any more hourly entrenched profession than lawyers?

And, building a business where I'm not just trading my time for money.

and our issues are our client's issues in so many ways.

Oh yeah.

But back to the A D H, adhd, I'm gonna stick with that for

a second because Yeah, yeah.

I feel like a D H D is one thing.

We think about that in children.

We don't think about it that much as adults and adults getting that diagnosis.

Can be really revelatory, the things that they're so frustrated with.

How come I can't follow through?

How come I can't focus?

when did you get diagnosed and what did it look like before and after?

Whew.

Well, I got diagnosed, actually that's a good question.

I think it was in 20.

21.

No, it was, very early 2022.

However, I had spent about a year advocating for myself to get diagnosed.

and look, I'm not a medical doctor.

I can't speak to like, getting yourself diagnosed, but for me, and

what I've learned from other people or mostly other women identifying

folks is that, a couple of things.

It's not easy to get diagnosed as an adult.

Mainly because the medication link to it is addictive.

It usually results in getting medicated with Adderall, which

I do have a prescription for.

I've actually been trying to go off of it, but that's just

my own personal preference.

I'm trying to out how to work with my h d and not.

Medicate it, even though it has been really helpful at times.

The other thing is, um, in the medical textbooks, there's not any particular

thing about adult onset adhd.

It's a thing that you look for in kids, and then if you don't

get it as a kid, then it's like, well, they probably don't have it.

And I didn't have it as a kid, and I absolutely think Covid and the massive

life changes that happened to all of us during that year plus really messed

with me in a way that amplified whatever symptoms I had that were maybe a little

bit A D H D, they just skyrocketed.

So before I got diagnosed with A D H D, I struggled with really basic stuff

that I was really ashamed about being on time, getting out of bed, which is

also linked to depression, and anxiety.

Um, being able to listen, I really want to listen, but my mind would do me

dirty and take me in another direction.

overwhelming to-do lists.

So, I still do it, but I'm better at recognizing it.

But I have pages of to-do lists and in my mind it's like, yeah,

I can do all this in, an hour.

Of course, it's very all or nothing, black and white thinking.

And do I still struggle with this now after my diagnosis?

Yes.

However, getting diagnosed is like a relief because it just gives an

explanation for what's going on with me the biggest change I would say

is that I was able to identify, it's not an inherent flaw of who I am.

It is not who I am that I.

Struggle with organization in my business that somehow I'm always and everything

gets down to the last hour or minute.

it, it's just a symptom of a thing that I've got And now I just

need to acknowledge it, detach myself from identifying to it.

It's not who I am inherently.

Figure out how to work around it.

So I'm really blunt with my clients, like mm-hmm.

I don't do early morning stuff.

Mornings are just really hard for me.

I try to do everything that would be like, if I could press the easy button, how

can I make this happen in an easy way?

Because over complicating stuff is a symptom of h adhd.

And then, When you pile on depression and anxiety, it results

in, freezing and doing nothing.

Mm-hmm.

Which then amplifies depression and anxiety.

So to me, I found like asking myself, what is the easy button here?

Is the way to help me navigate running my business successfully, despite struggling

with A D H D and anxiety and depression.

Right.

I'm assuming that you work with mostly women.

Tell me Yes.

Tell

me if I'm wrong.

Most, most of my client base is women.

Um, I don't currently have any male clients, but I have in the past.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And so are people self-identifying and going, you know, I've.

These issues where I think I have these issues.

So let me go talk to Kylie cuz

she understands me.

You know what's funny is my most recent client who I got, she was like, I think

I have this and I think I have that.

And after she hired me it was, she just needed the

accountability and the gumption.

Or the validation from someone else to get herself to go speak with her, doctor.

So like, again, I'm not diagnosing people and I'm not like, if you think

you have h d, don't come to me first.

Just go to your doctor.

But what she was noticing was she was struggling with things in her business,

and yeah, she absolutely needed a tweak in her marketing strategy and sales strategy.

But first what she needed to do was take care of herself internally because.

She was allowing her behaviors, which it turns out she does have diagnosed

anxiety and A D H D, the way she was behaving with herself was resulting in.

Fractures in her business foundation.

And so we did a deep dive.

She made an agreement that she was gonna go talk to her doctor and also

start therapy and wouldn't she know it?

Once she did those things, then the ball started rolling and she could

finally show up and work for herself.

Right?

It's very common in that if there's someone who is struggling, they're like,

I just can't get myself to do this, or I can't seem to make a decision.

It might be you're confused.

It might be you really don't know what a, helpful marketing funnel looks like

for you, but it also might be that you are treating the c e O of your business

really poorly and you need to give that person the health and the self-care that

they need in order to show up for work,

I often wonder how much of resistance is actually resistance.

you just don't wanna do it or whatever the barriers are.

Yeah.

Versus something like, brain fog or A D H D or something similar I think it's kind

of a continuum of things, but there are.

Many things that we need coaches to help us work through, not not medical

things, but some mindset issues, organization issues and clarity.

Let's put it that.

Yeah, put it that way.

So tell me about how you work with your clients to help them kind of move forward.

Great question.

So, like I said earlier about how can I hit the easy button?

I tried to apply that.

What is only the bare minimum information that my client needs to

hear right now in order to move forward?

My goal of working with my clients is to help them get out of the way of whatever

is stopping them and start taking action.

I'm always saying, what's the d plus effort here?

Mm-hmm.

D plus is bad enough.

Yeah.

Well, and so there's a lot of perfectionism that gets wrapped up in, a

lot of my clients, and that's also very much a symptom of all the things I listed.

when I was, my last semester, senior year of college, I was so ready to move.

I I already had a job lined up.

I was very lucky and I was like, get me outta here.

And my mantra became D'S get degrees.

Which again, if you're in college, maybe don't listen to that, but the

reason I share it with my clients now is because like we're going

for D plus effort here because your first effort is not gonna be an A.

We have to accept that.

Do the D plus work first, and then you can refine it to B, a

C, and then a B, and then an A.

To get yourself moving, we have to be okay with producing imperfect, messy firsts.

So to answer your question of like, how do I work with people?

How do I help them?

A lot of my clients have a natural ability where they attract people.

They're really good at connecting and creating a sense of community, and they

just haven't figured out how the heck.

To structure a business around it that's actually paying them well and going

deeper with how they wanna help people.

So I really help them focus on, okay, what are your offers or services or products

that are meeting people where they are?

And also taking you where you wanna be going in your business.

Like what is that happy intersection?

what is your sales process doing that's also serving your community for.

how can we flip that so that it's not, I'm feeling salesy, it's, I'm

actually creating a deeper sense of connection when I am selling.

And also it's your marketing.

How are you using your marketing as a way to help your community connect

with each other on a deeper level?

So I really focus on those three things, and it all ties back

to how can we give the business owner the life, the space, the.

The money and the impact that they really want.

yeah.

So do you work with them one-on-one or do you create community

with them, in a community?

what is your best way, your most effective

way?

Yeah, good question.

So I, will not work with people only one-on-one.

And it's because I know that there's so much value in.

Being in community even when you're learning.

Mm-hmm.

So while, my program is called the v i p Inner Circle, um,

and it is a hybrid program.

Yes, they get me as their private business coach, but also it's a mastermind format,

so it's a very intimate and small group.

and there's training, there's q and a, there's retreats, we

have accountability sessions or accountability and like co-working.

I do little micro boot camps on like, we're gonna practice sales today.

We're gonna practice building out our, marketing funnels today.

and the reason that I also strongly encourage my clients to never offer

just one-on-one is because you are depriving people of a sense

of connection and a sense of.

Community that can help them feel more glued to what you're creating.

Like you don't even need to be around necessarily, but when you

create a container or a space for people to do co-learning or even

just to develop relationships, that is strengthening the glue.

Your client's wanting to sign another contract.

it's the gift that keeps on giving, it gives them an opportunity

to learn a different way.

I compare it to, my mom was always telling me, put on sunscreen and I

was like, I don't wanna listen to you, mom, don't tell me what to do.

But then I go on Instagram and I listen to the beauty gurus.

I put on sunscreen and I.

Did you know we need to put on sunscreen?

I had no idea.

So sometimes clients just can't hear everything that comes outta

my mouth because, you know, I'm mommy dearest in this situation.

they need to just hear it another way from someone else.

And sometimes that means when they're, equals are in a space

with them learning as they go.

They can hear it better, they can hear it differently.

I

love that.

So there are two things that you mentioned.

So community as both an input, like helping feed you and your business,

helping you think about things differently, relieving some of the

loneliness of, what is now mostly a.

Primarily work from home environment

I'm sure many of your clients are working from home.

Yes.

If not all of them.

And then also it is an output as one of Yes.

The offerings as well.

And so I love that that, you know, kind of that 360 degrees of the

benefits of building community and community as a revenue model is

not something I hear very often.

Tell me how you help people work with that.

Okay, first of all, very good ear that you noticed

that community is a holistic thing.

We as humans need it.

We we come from people that would die if they weren't in it

way back in the caveman days.

Mm-hmm.

part of the struggle I've experienced with A D H D and anxiety and depression

was only amplified during Covid when I felt so isolated from community.

And there's absolutely parallel here in when we isolate ourselves

and our businesses with our clients, and also personally and

emotionally, we're restricting ourselves from what is possible.

And when we lean into community, internally in our businesses and

externally in the way we show up in the world, it's only growth

and expansion fulfillment and just being okay is what's possible.

So to get a little bit out of the like vague intangible feelings

part of it, and into the tangible stuff, what that looks like.

Is this the word leverage?

Like my favorite word in the world, Mevo.

Let's leverage what you've got so.

A lot of people hear community, like I said earlier, I help, ambitious community

builders convert enthusiastic fans.

Sometimes people hear that and think, oh, influencers, like, I don't have

thousands of people on my email list.

That's not me.

It's actually not true.

your community is just, who are the people you know, who are the people

that are right there in front of.

Or maybe not even the people you know, but the people who are following you on

Instagram, you might not know all of them.

So it's how can we leverage what we've got right now?

How can we leverage that in our marketing?

just, like I said earlier, when you create a sense of community internally

within your clients and that becomes the glue to keep them wanting more.

Let's apply that to your marketing.

When you're building out your marketing funnel, how can you have your community

develop a stronger sense of connection with each other and you every

step of the way along your funnel?

That way you're making a bigger impact in the world when you have.

A free offer of a free P D F, or a free Facebook group or whatever.

What can you do to help people develop a deeper sense of connection, not

only to your messaging, but also other human beings in the process?

That is a way to amplify your message, but also, make up a

greater impact on the world.

And a lot of the people that I work with are very message driven.

They're people, people, and so they're building a business because they have

either a, natural talent or a very strong skillset, but also they really care about.

Explaining the purpose of that message or that skillset globally.

And so how can we do that?

By creating little micro brand ambassadors every step of the way in your marketing.

And when you're having sales conversations, making it not about you,

but about the person you're talking to.

That right there is deepening a sense of connection with that person.

You're giving them a great gift, which is being heard, and then when they're

inside your business, How are you helping them go deeper with the transformation

they desire in terms of having them feel connected and plugged in to the other

people and the type of space that can help them live into their, best self,

for lack of a better term, I think that's everything I was gonna say.

I also forgot what I was gonna say.

Halfway through that answer.

We're

gonna make Anne work for this, this, so I'm gonna come back

to leverage cuz you and I Oh yes.

Love that.

But first I'm gonna go back to, what you said about brand ambassadors and Oh yes.

Connection and community.

I love that because it reminded me of my personal experience with.

I mentioned before we started recording that I live in a excerpts

of Washington, DC and anyone who knows this area, like, you know, you

don't go inside the beltway unless you the president's being inaugurated.

I mean, I you, otherwise I forget about it, right?

And so this is pre pandemic.

Like I never, so I.

I was out here, my little, home office doing my work.

there weren't really on a lot of online networking of opportunities.

You had to go into the city to go to lunches or go to things and, it

would take me longer to get into the city in the evening because

of the reverse traffic than it you know, if you left in the morning.

So I never did any stuff like that.

And then Covid comes along, worst thing ever.

But it did.

And suddenly there were all these opportunities to network online,

to build community online, and it frankly has been a game changer

for my business to be able to build community with so many people online.

And to create those little ambassadors.

Like these are things I never could have done without, the people who I match

your mind with, you know, that go out there and go, oh, you gotta talk to

Erin, or introducing me or be able to do, have conversations like this, that

just weren't really happening before.

community is a hundred percent, is absolutely essential to.

Sense of wellbeing, we just can't do this alone.

We really do need our community around us to help out.

may I say something about the brand ambassador term?

Yes.

I wanna just share a little bit about why I use that term and why it's so important.

My first adult job after graduating college was as the spokesperson and

driver of the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile.

Do you know what that is?

Yes.

When you asked if I'd been to DC before, my first time was in the Wiener

Mobile on Pennsylvania of all places.

And it's a 27 foot long hotdog on wheels.

And my job for one year was to drive that thing all around the country

as the national spokesperson of it.

So while the really sexy highlights are, I was on the Today Show at CNN

and I got to close the be at the New York Stock Exchange, sexy, most of

the job was actually really unsexy.

It was standing in Walmart parking lots, handing out coupons and taking

pictures of people in front of it.

But here's the.

Whether I was on the Today Show, being seen by a million people, or standing

in a Walmart parking lot in Lexington, Kentucky talking to one person, my

message was always the same, and my goal was always the same, to show up

in a way that made people feel good and understood what I was doing.

And it wasn't a false sense of making people feel good, it was just give

people a moment of feeling heard and experiencing a little joy in their day.

So internally, as Hotdoggers, which was my job title, there were 12 of us, we were

trained to be the Disney of Oscar Meyer.

Give someone a delightful experience on their, random Tuesday afternoon,

picking up groceries when it's a really hectic work week.

And what I found, I was using the same talking points every day, all day, and we

would measure how many people we spoke to by how many wiener whistles we gave away,

which are those tiny little plastic toys.

So I spoke to anywhere from 500 to a thousand people a day, and what

would happen was I would have a really delightful conversation with.

How are you doing today?

You ever seen the Wiener mobile before?

Oh, you grew up, you grew up seeing it on tv.

That's so fun.

Would you like a picture with it?

Oh my gosh.

Tell me more about your neighbor who used to work for Oscar Meyer.

Really basic stuff, but that moment of connection, it made me feel good

because I was able to just bring a little joy to someone's day.

It's pretty easy to make someone smile when you're driving a giant hotdog car.

Yes.

But also because I understood that my messaging was getting through to them in

the way that I was instructed to do so.

But also it made them feel good because they would always say, Ugh, can you

take a picture of this in front of me?

I'm gonna show this to my grandkids.

They're gonna love this.

And I always try to channel that Now in my business, I

was a literal brand ambassador.

For a hotdog company.

Okay?

And I know that it's a lot easier to get people to wanna share about seeing

a 27-foot long hotdog car at Walmart than it is to run into a lady who's

a business coach and talking about marketing funnels and sales strategies.

However, I channel that in everything that I do, and I

tell my clients to do the same.

What can you do to evoke a stronger sense of joy or ease or whatever it is that you

are trying to create in your business?

And do that in tangible ways while connecting with people so that they

want to go out and be brand ambassadors.

And in the Wiener mobile.

How did I know that I was creating brand ambassadors?

Because people would post the picture I took of them on

social media and tag Oscar.

Or they would share it in the Oscar Meyer Facebook page and they would say,

I loved talking to catch up Kylie today.

So now I think about how can I measure the brand ambassador

impact in my own business?

Well, how many clicks am I getting on this link?

How many views or how many shares?

You know, it can translate however you need it to, but the purpose is

always the messaging and the way I'm showing up, actually making a tangible.

That's why I say let's create people who are brand ambassadors.

What can we do within ourselves to get our message across in a way that

activates people to take action?

Yeah, I like that.

And you know, it reminds me of, there's a couple of people, I

wanna say certainly Jonathan Stark, people have a Rolodex moment.

So when they think about, like someone says, you know, I'm looking for someone

to help me with strategy, or, you know, they immediately think of, Kylie or, and

so to be able to get there, I imagine that you help people get that type

of positioning you know, referability so that they can have a really tight

message for their intended audience.

Yeah.

And you know what's funny is I noticed that a lot of my clients

come to me thinking that it's like figuring out their messaging or their

branding is like a Rubik's cube.

They just haven't cracked the code yet.

the way I approach it, is, like, it doesn't have to be complicated,

it just has to be clear and.

And you have to be okay with it not being clear and concise right away.

Yeah.

But the more you try it on like an outfit, the more you see what fits and what works.

So Yes.

And it's a lot of just getting started and like seeing the feedback you get from

others to see if that messaging is working in the way you want it to work for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is tough to, out.

Dinner party or someplace and someone asks what you do and it could say,

well I'm a lawyer or whatever.

Versus, you know, saying I help experts, you know, turn their, you

know, build scalable and sell business.

And so it's a muscle that you have to exercise cuz it's

super easy just to, kind of.

When I'm a marketer, I'm a accountant.

and kind of keep going.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

And what is that, thing you're telling yourself when your instinct

is, oh, I'm just a lawyer, right?

Yeah.

Like, it's like, oh, they don't actually wanna hear.

Yeah.

But again, creating a brand ambassador out of someone means

that you have to give them the enthusiasm that you want them to go.

I help statement you were about to give is so great.

People need to hear that.

To really understand lawyer can mean a lot of things.

Yes.

Lawyer can sound scary.

Yes.

But you're the opposite.

You're not scary.

You're helping.

Well, even worse,

Laura sounds like, Hey, I've got this problem with my landlord.

You know?

Right.

That

to me is like, that's, that's right.

Don't invite the wrong conversation.

You don't want in, and by being really strong in how you show

up in your messaging can really navigate the conversation.

Good.

Good point.

All right, so we're finally gonna get to leverage.

So our favorite, okay.

Yes, yes.

So, you know, hourly to Exit podcast, we talk about you.

Moving from hourly building scalable businesses that

hopefully we can sell some day.

And the key to that is creating leverage in our businesses.

I like to talk about it as know, decoupling our income from our time.

Tell me how you work with your clients to get leverage

in their business.

Well, first of all, yes, let's absolutely get out of that racket

of trading dollars for hours.

it doesn't make sense.

Mm-hmm.

Really?

if you're changing someone's life and you can do it in a half hour,

is that really only worth, $300?

so one of the things is actually that we're not trading dollar for hours.

We're pricing based on transformation and.

another way I help people leverage is always asking the

question, what can you do?

So whether that's creating a product or a service that you know, you can sell

right now without any required, refining.

So I encounter a lot, a lot, a lot of my clients are people who.

If they don't identify as perfectionists, they have perfection and behaviors,

and one of those looks like, oh, I just need to go get another certification,

or I just need to research a little bit more before I'm ready to do this thing.

I suspect lawyers might also be in that bucket because we

have to do things by the books.

We have to go get our proper permission slip before we can do this thing.

And the beauty of entrepreneurship.

of course, we're ethically selling what we know we can sell.

the permission slip lies within you, so you don't need to wait for anybody else.

So leveraging, what can I do now?

Who is in front of me?

Where else can I go?

And we apply that to building out what is the thing you're.

And if you're already selling something that's working well you're looking for

a higher earning ceiling, then okay, how can we leverage the thing that's

selling really well into making a lower priced offer that gives a little bit

of access to that thing that's selling really well at a more affordable rate.

That doesn't take any more time from you.

You might not even need to do anything extra.

It might actually save you time to sell it in this.

And the same applies to your marketing.

What do I have right in front of me?

Who do I know?

What kind of asks can I make in terms of sharing my offer

or sharing my free webinar?

inviting people to, grab my free P d F.

and then same with sales, leveraging.

In terms of who is someone that's complimentary to what I'm doing

that has access to more people I know I can help asking if there's

a collab potential in there.

a business can fully thrive from the Petri dish that is leveraged.

Yes,

absolutely.

So you mentioned pricing and pricing based on value as

opposed to ours or deliverables.

Yes.

And I imagine perfectionists.

I imagine they have a lot of trouble with that, you know, cause

there's a whole mindset thing.

but I know I can do it in an hour, so how am I gonna charge, you know, $20,000?

So something that I can do in my sleep, like, do you help them with,

get over those mindset issues or in

how?

Of course.

Of course.

you know, with pricing.

There's a lot of nuance in this conversation because it really

depends on where the entrepreneur is.

If they're someone who is not selling nearly enough, and they just need to

make more money, I'm actually less inclined to fight with them about

adjusting their pricing and more inclined to focus on what is the thing that

needs to change to get you to sell.

Because once you sell one or two at this rate that isn't good, you are going to

understand that you're gonna feel it.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And so then you're gonna be willing to make the change.

So I don't make people do anything.

And as someone who loves to control things, which is why I struggle

so much with all the other things internally life in general.

being a coach is like the ultimate practice of releasing and detaching

and helping people do the same with themselves and detaching from the

outcomes of what they're creating.

And when it comes to pricing, it's usually not going.

Feel urgent to change their prices until they're burning themselves out

or they have a client that's not a good fit because pricing can help you.

get the right people in the door who are really committed mm-hmm.

To either making the change that they wanna make that you can help them with.

Yeah, getting the thing that you offer.

pricing allows entrepreneurs to play differently.

And I recently was talking with a client about like, how would you be

behaving if you were someone that charged a number that makes you wanna

throw up a thousand dollars an hour or something, or $10,000 an hour?

Would you be behaving the same way as you do now?

Mm-hmm.

So let's start acting like the woman who charges $10,000 an hour.

She's probably for ease, not charging by the hour and just creating a

lump sum right In working with her.

Mm-hmm.

I am straddling these worlds.

Being a lawyer, you where, and being referred business, that's someone's

looking for an IP lawyer and being referred as business and having to have

these conversations where they expect someone who's just gonna charge by the

hour and they have a general idea what it will be And having to push back

on, you know, I don't do that anymore.

I do these types of high impact things that would make sense for me

to work with those types of clients.

And it is, it takes, one, having confidence in your ability to do the

other stuff and to disappoint people.

cuz it's hard, it's hard for a lot of us to say no.

Right.

Even when we know this isn't a good.

But I could help them.

It'd be really easy for me to

help them.

Well, and also when someone is pushing back by getting nickel and diving on

the price, that's your opportunity as a business owner to, this is a lesson

I learned driving the Weer mobile.

it's bridging the topic to what is the bigger concern.

If they're nickel and diming you for the price, then let's go back

to, okay, why are they really.

And you can ask them, so wait, what do you really want?

Mm-hmm.

Why is this important to you?

Okay, so here's what it costs.

Mm-hmm.

Is it more important to you to pay a little less or to actually get

the thing that you're looking for?

That's great.

Usually you wanna say it a little nicer than that, but Yeah.

No, that makes sense.

Like understand sometimes not outcome, like we're not

talking about, The deliverable.

Yeah.

we're talking about the outcome, like what's the outcome you want

and what what's that worth to you?

And

now, yeah, like I always say, what is the desired transformation?

You know, like people wanna be on the other side of the rainbow, they

don't want just one step forward.

Mm-hmm.

And so do them the favor and sell them the thing that takes them all the

way to the other side of the rainbow.

Mm-hmm.

Which is probably less work for you.

Might cost them more, but we'll have them showing up to get to

the other side of the rainbow.

Mm-hmm.

And not playing small by just being like, well, what's the

next brick right in front of me?

It's like, help them lift their head up, open their eyes, and

look farther ahead mm-hmm.

And help them and push them.

Mm-hmm.

To the end of the rainbow.

Right.

Yeah.

And they may have incorrectly self-diagnose the problem as well.

Like they may think that this is what they Oh yes.

Right.

What they need as well.

So let's connect this to intellectual property, shall we?

Sure.

so you know, when I, talk to experts about kind of making that leverage

leap, we talk about, turning their expertise in an intellectual

property so that they have assets.

I mean, you need to have assets in order to build, something

that you can repurpose, make more efficient, perhaps sell separately.

A business that you could sell someday.

So when you're working with your clients, does intellectual property ever come in

part of the conversation or asset building or how, how does that conversation go?

Yes, and I always say, you gotta talk to a lawyer.

It's a good thing I got you here.

we talk about IP in terms of, you we need to be mindful of

always giving credit where it's.

and being intentional about, what are we saying?

Is it something that we've picked up from someone else or is it actually your own?

Yeah.

Ip.

Mm-hmm.

I know I've seen this on the consultant side where people

are getting certifications here and there and all these things,

and that's basically what they're offering is a compilation of different

certifications rather than having their own original kind of, materials.

And I imagine that happens in the coaching side as well.

A hundred percent.

I mean, even the way I work with people, you know, I'm not using

specific language with you that I, do use with my clients internally

because that language is not my ip.

I'm certified under a specific methodology, but it's not my own.

And so I will give credit when I'm.

Repeating it to my clients.

I say, that methodology and I really like it and I'm sharing it with you.

but I don't do it publicly and in marketing just because

it's not mine to share.

Right.

That is so smart because, when I talk to people about creating

licensing programs or other things like that, it has to be your stuff.

You you're getting something from a certification program or from some

training that you received, that is for you to use with your clients.

Mm-hmm.

It's not to train other people to use, that would be a sub license and

certainly that is restricted under the permissions that you have to use it.

So,

yeah.

the rule of thumb for me is If I'm in a place with people where I could be

selling something to them, don't use that language, don't use that methodology.

Wait until they're a client who signed a contract.

Yeah.

It's just safer that way.

Perfect.

And it's also a good exercise in figuring out like if I do work,

with people in a way that is using a methodology that I have a license

for, let's get into the practice.

Figuring out how we would talk about it ourselves.

Eventually, like 99.9% of my clients are gonna be in a place where

they want to have their own IP that they can then, license or at

least protect legally in some way.

So this is a good exercise in figuring out what the heck that even is, right?

Absolutely.

All right.

So this is a very meta podcast, as you know.

Female founders of expertise based businesses who are building them

to hopefully sell them someday.

So tell me, are you building your business to hopefully sell it someday?

Oh, oh, I thought you meant to sell something.

no.

The exit part of I was like, yeah, I'm selling things well,

I've been talking about sales.

That's a really interesting question that I don't think I've ever applied

to myself, and I've definitely listened to other episodes, but it hasn't

actually occurred to me right now.

Would I sell my business?

I actually don't know.

Is that, that is all your, that's a fair

answer.

That is a fair question.

But, I like to say you know, you don't have to be thinking about.

Exactly, because the same things that you do to help scale your business, to put

leverage in your business are the same things that create a saleable business.

So yeah, creating assets when you're creating independence from

you personally, providing the services, putting systems in place.

Yeah.

Those are

all for, I think, the build a business.

I think the answer is yes.

And My business currently is super personal.

I don't have any other coaches under me using my methodology.

Mm-hmm.

And I know that day will come where I'm going to wanna start outsourcing

people to work within my world.

And I think in a way I see that as selling when I've removed myself as

a touchpoint so that I can do other stuff, lean harder into my speaking

gigs and workshop opportunities.

I look at that as selling, even though it's still probably a business run by me.

So I'm gonna say yes.

That's the scale.

That's a scaling part on your way to building a business.

Yes.

Yes.

What a long answer to a yes or no question.

So as we wrap up here, I think beyond ip in the hourly, the

exit podcast, we believe in creating an economy that works for everyone.

And so we love to give shout outs to organizations and people who help

create a more equitable economy.

Do you have an organization that you'd like to

share?

I do.

I know that I mentioned the TIA Foundation.

Yes, she sure did.

Okay.

So, I know the founder, her name is Mauna.

Hussein Katan.

Oh Tia is all about creating communities of support and, organizes

access to economic opportunities for refugees or immigrants or

displaced indigenous communities.

TIA Foundation has a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Called flavors from afar and they hire immigrants and refugees.

They have chefs bringing in their own homeland, expertise cuisines, and it's a

wonderful place to just give people who have been displaced income so that they

can start their lives comfortably here.

So I'm a really big fan of Mamuna and the TIA Foundation.

Love that.

Love Ethiopian food.

And yes, next time I'm in LA I will make sure I check it out.

Cause that's, yeah.

I know that you have a offer for the audience.

Would you like to share

that?

Yes.

I have a mini course, totally free available.

It's called Create Your Pathway to Profit.

if you go to kylie hodges.com/free, you can grab it and you're gonna get

a workbook that you can sit down and crank out all at once if you want.

If you have a D h D and can't handle getting stuff done for more than

10 minutes, you will get seven videos over seven days that are five

minutes long, walking you through one section of the workbook at a time.

So you watch the five minute video, you spend five minutes on the

workbook, and in one week you will have created a whole plan to profit.

That is fantastic.

All of this thank you will be in the show notes, so, be easy to find.

And I, thank you for that.

That's very generous.

So thank you.

Thank you.

People

find you.

Oh, well, people can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn.

My name is Kylie Hodges on both.

you can also shoot me an email if you wanna start talking one-on-one.

I'm, I love connecting with people.

Of course.

As someone who talked about community for an hour, my email's Kylie.

Kylie is ready to take your questions.

Yeah, yeah.

You wanna talk about hotdogs or business?

I don't care.

it's Kylie, Kylie Hodges dot.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.