Business Coach Betty Kempa

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. Today we have with us Betty Kempa with Betty Kempa Business Coaching. Welcome, Betty.

Betty Kempa: [00:00:43] Lee thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to tell us about your coaching practice, how you serve in folks.

Betty Kempa: [00:00:52] Sure. So I am a business coach very specifically. My specialty is really helping the corporate professional transition from that nine to five to really repackaging their genius into a six figure coaching practice using my signature methodology. So essentially, I’m helping people replace their corporate income with a coaching business and I’m really helping them with that transition.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:19] So how did you get into this line of work? What’s your back story?

Betty Kempa: [00:01:23] Sure. So, you know, most of us that our coaches were coaching some previous version of ourselves, and I’m I’m doing the same. I spent about a decade as a corporate communications leader at different Fortune 500 hundreds. I my career look successful on the outside. I was always shooting myself. I should be happy. Right. And it looks successful. But on the inside, I was really suffering from kind of like a square peg, round hole syndrome, always kind of feeling like something was kind of off with with where I was out with my job. I try to kind of silence that that little voice and what I would call white knuckle through my day and hold tight to, you know, in quotations the safe corporate job. But the truth was what I kind of came to realize is the only part of the day I really enjoyed at my corporate job was the part where I got to coach others. And I was really craving that freedom of time, freedom of energy and focus, which is really granted to you once you get to run your own business and kind of even above and beyond that. To be totally honest, I was exhausted from the stress and the toxicity of the corporate job, the crazy hours, the lack of work life balance.

Betty Kempa: [00:02:46] So that’s kind of what I was dealing with. I try to kind of talk that away. I’m a very logical person, so I try to kind of silence that until one day I got laid off. And, you know, when you get laid off, it’s it’s kind of an awakening. You kind of it’s a fork in the road and you get to kind of decide where you want to take your life next. And for me, I took that as a sign from the universe to go for it to start my own coaching business. So I went and got certified at IPAC, the Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching. I started out coaching career coaching because I wanted to help unfulfilled corporate women just like me, figure out what kind of career would make them happy. So that first year I devoted a lot of my time studying business and marketing and sales. And you know what I would say that happened? That was kind of cool. The magic really happened for me once I actually leaned into my expertize from my former corporate communications role. So in that job, I was creating content that would be compelling and engaging to the consumer and inspire them to take action so that expertize, ironically, from my corporate job allowed me to pivot my client attraction strategy to create a completely virtual content marketing.

Betty Kempa: [00:04:05] And once I leveraged my expertize in that way, I was able to stand up a six figure coaching business my first year. Over time, what I started to see was that more of my clients would come to me and they didn’t want another corporate job, right. They were coming to me saying, I’m unhappy, I don’t want to be in this job anymore. But they were saying, hey, how do I do what you did? How do I ditched the job and become a coach and replicate that system that you use to replace my corporate income? And that was really cool to me because business and marketing are my genius zone. So that’s how I really made the transition into business and marketing, helping corporate professionals make that same transition I did and build their own six figure coaching business. And today I’m helping all kinds of corporate professionals. I work with a lot of people from H.R. They make great coaches, but all kinds of corporate professionals, and they’re becoming career coaches, leadership coaches, health coaches. I work with spiritual coaches, all different types of coaches, and it’s been a blast.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:09] Now, let’s go back to when you were before college. And did you even consider being an entrepreneur at that point, or was it something that you’re like, I’m going to you’re focused on, OK, I’m going to, you know, follow the traditional path of getting a corporate gig and work my way up the corporate ladder? Like what was it that kind of told you that that was the right path? And then obviously, when she started doing it, there was a fork in the road. You decided to kind of now go down that entrepreneurial road. What but how did that kind of mindshift a. Her and since the beginning of that didn’t occur right when you started,

Betty Kempa: [00:05:48] Yeah, that’s such a good question. So, you know, when I first started, you know, going way back to college, I mean, no, I didn’t have any idea that. I mean, I it never crossed my mind entrepreneurship. It never really crossed my mind. In fact, what I was trying to do back in the day when I first started my corporate career coming out of. Trying to kind of emulate my father’s corporate career, he was a successful H.R. executive I always thought would be so cool to work know making, you know, work in this big, tall building, doing a nine to five like my dad did. So it had never even crossed my mind. And then as I got further into my corporate. And I started to realize I’m unhappy, something’s off. Like, I can’t keep playing this game of the should, I should be happy. I should I should follow this path. I actually found a book called The Path Finder. It’s by an author, Nicholas Lau. And this book was meant to help you figure out your passion. So I took this. I read the book. I took all these assessments and my personality type, my strengths. And after kind of really doing a lot of soul searching on what my strengths are and my passion, all signs kept pointing to coaching, which I at that point I never had even heard of coaching. So it is really through a lot of deep introspection, figuring out my strengths and my passion that pointed me to, hey, you should consider this this new career path.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:18] So once you decided to go kind of this entrepreneur route, how was that transition? When you’re working for a big company like you were? There’s a lot of ecosystem built for you there that it’s easy to become kind of a cog in the machine and there’s a lot of resources available. But when you’re an entrepreneur, especially in the earliest stages, it’s kind of an island. You know, it’s a new what you kill. There’s all the you are all the resources a lot of times. How did you handle that kind of transition of being kind of surrounded by resources to kind of now you got to make everything happen on your own?

Betty Kempa: [00:07:56] Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things I would say. You know, again, for me, with the corporate job, I always felt very stifled. I always felt very micromanaged. I didn’t like being put in that box. So, you know, for me, kind of the freedom of, oh, you get to invent this however you want it to look was exciting. So I think that was the first piece of it. The perspective, instead of kind of viewing it as daunting, it felt exciting. My other strength is researching. I’m a bit I’m a big researcher. I like to do a lot of researching. So, you know, I found a coach training certification school that I thought would be great to go to based on my research. So that’s really the first thing I did was start to get certified while I was still at my corporate job. That’s the first piece of it, is just building my skill set. And and that’s not a non-negotiable you know, you don’t have to be certified to be a coach. But, you know, a lot of people want to be I certainly enjoyed it building my skill set that way. So that’s the first thing I did. The second thing that I did was get a business mentor.

Betty Kempa: [00:09:09] I’ve worked with business mentors my entire coaching career, even while I was still at the corporate job. So there was I’ve never had a time where I wasn’t working with some kind of a business mentor because there’s already people out there that have been there done that. There’s no really need to reinvent the wheel. So it was just hooking up with somebody who had a business strategy, sales and marketing and figuring it out that way. The other thing that I did was figure out my finances. Now, my my situation was different, right? Because I got laid off. And and what I tell people is you don’t have to go that route. Like, you can make it easier on yourself and work with your financial adviser, figure out what your budget is prior to taking the leap. And I do recommend people do that. You know, start working on what kind of startup cost you need to set aside, how much of your monthly household income needs to be paid off, work with your financial adviser and your business coach to figure out all of that from a financial perspective so it can be a smooth transition.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] Now, when you’re working with somebody that has a corporate gig in there, you know, thinking, OK, I can do this, or, you know, I didn’t know the steps. So they work with you to kind of understand the roadmap and what the terrain looks like ahead. What are some of their kind of initial fears? Is the fear about why would someone listen to me? Is the fear around I don’t know, like who am I to be a person to coach somebody else? Like where, where? What’s holding most people back to take the leap into kind of being number one, an entrepreneur or number two, coaching and giving advice to somebody else so that that person then is kind of relying on them to be successful?

Betty Kempa: [00:10:59] Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I think it’s a couple of things that I see as far as the fear, the fears that hold people back from making the leap. I do think the first one is, you know, people want to feel confident in their skill set as a coach. They want to feel confident that they they are skilled as a coach. And, you know, the cool thing is a lot of the clients I work with, they’re already coaching in their corporate nine to five. Most of these are corporately. They’re coaching teams of people, right, so a lot of these professionals think that there’s some kind of magical fairy dust to become a coach, but it’s kind of like Wizard of Oz with the red ruby slippers. They’re already wearing the slippers. They just need to click them. So these are natural coaches. I do think that’s the first bit of it, is is feeling confident in your skills as a coach. And, you know, a lot of that can be, you know, taken care of once you get certified. Right. You start to build that confidence like, wow. Yeah. This is you know, these are the different kind of ways that you can coach another human. It kind of puts up a system around that. So that’s the first one is just fear around. Am I am I good enough? Do I have the skills? Fear of failure is another big one.

Betty Kempa: [00:12:14] Right. I think, you know, people worry that, oh, my gosh, I’m going to put all my eggs in one basket and what if I fail? So I think that’s another piece of it. And you know what I what I work with people on is really redefining what failure means, right? Is, is failure staying stuck in a in a job that makes you miserable and never trying something new that you could be wildly passionate about? Or is failure trying something and it doesn’t work and then you have to kind of pivot and try it a new way. Right. Even the most successful coaches out there, business coaches, any anyone that’s successful in the universe has used failure as a stepping stone to get to where they want to be. It’s it’s a learning tool. So I think that’s the second thing, is that fear of failure. And then, you know, a lot of the clients I work with from the corporate world, we are used to systems and strategies and blueprints. Right. So when you’re kind of going into this blind, I think that’s another fear is like, well, what am I supposed to do today? What am I supposed to work on to stand this this business up? So it’s, you know, kind of that desire to have a blueprint, a proven formula that works and standing up a business.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:32] Now, can you talk about the beginning for you? Like you mentioned, that you’ve always had mentors and that’s been part of your career and that this is just kind of an extension or maybe a semantic change in how you’re framing what you’re doing. But when you went from having a job that was paying you to now having a coaching practice, that you got to build that kind of one at a time. Can you talk about how you said, OK, in order to do this, I’m going to make a roadmap and I’m going to plan? I’m going to have multiple revenue streams. I’m not going to rely on one type of kind of thing I do in order to make money. Can you talk about how you laid that all out and how that all comes together to help a person become a six figure coach?

Betty Kempa: [00:14:19] Yeah, and again, I took the hard path, right. Like, I, I went through a layoff. So what I would tell people is, is stay in your corporate job while you’re building the coaching business because that’s going to help fund the coaching business. The layoff was really a kick in the pants for me that I got to make this work. Now, what I what I did again, I went and got certified. That was really my first step. I actually took the severance from my layoff. And instead of kind of using it in a fearful way and saying, oh, I’m just going to kind of squirrel this away, I was like, no, I’m going to reinvest the severance and go get certified as a coach. So that’s the first thing I did for me. Again, I was laid off, so I didn’t want to kind of just sit around and wait to get my first client. So what I did is I took a bridge job. So, you know, if you’re a human that went through a layoff and you want to become a coach, there’s no shame in getting a bridge job. A bridge job is, you know, it’s it’s another nine to five. It’s something you’re already skilled at in probably the corporate world. It can be really it could be any kind of a job. The only point of a bridge job is, is to fund your coaching business startup cost. So that’s what I did. I grabbed a bridge job. It was not my dream. It was another corporate gig. But I you know, I took a step down. It wasn’t as intense, wasn’t as as many hours, but it helped me fund my building, my website, my branding, my photography, my getting my systems in my ops together. Right. So that was the other thing is, is taking not that that bridge job so I could fund myself.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:58] So that was to create cash flow. That’s right. And then you were using that cash, I guess, for your needs and to fund this future you that you were building.

Betty Kempa: [00:16:07] Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And now during that time, right. I’m taking all these business courses and I’m reading books on business and I’m leading on to a lot of my corporate communications background, which is really useful in marketing. So the first thing I did before I even engaged with a Web designer, because I know a lot of people are itching. When they when they decide they want to become a coach, it’s like, oh, let me build a website. But before I even went there, I got very, very clear on what I wanted my coaching me to be. So what the urgent problem that I wanted to solve would be what my ideal client avatar looked like, what kinds of pains and problems they were dealing with, what kind of results and outcomes they wanted. So part of that was researching, but part of that was speaking to humans, you know, the the humans that I actually wanted to work with and saying, hey, what kind of help do you need with this? So I could message my copy in a way that would resonate with them. So, again, before I even worried about a website, it was getting crystal clear on my niche, my messaging. I was looking at my competitors. I was trying to figure out how I could position myself in the market. Right. So that was really the next step for me before I even worried about the website.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:24] And that’s a great tip for folks, because a lot of times they don’t want to really dig deep on the on the niche that they’re going to serve. And sometimes you really have to narrow and focus because it makes it easier to kind of be a big fish in a small pond than to be a little fish in a huge pond that’s cluttered with lots of people that do kind of quote unquote, business coaching. It’s much more effective, especially when launching is to be my business coach for red headed fireman is a lot better than I’m a business coach.

Betty Kempa: [00:17:57] Yeah. Amen. Amen. So, so true. Yeah. And to that point, to, you know, even to give an example on that, you know, with with my form of there’s a couple of ways that I’ve narrowed down my niche. I’m working with corporate professionals who want to replace their six figure corporate income with a coaching business. So that’s a piece of it. And then the way I do that, which is very specific, is I’m helping people create a high ticket coaching package so that they can sell one or two per month and hit their financial goals versus some other methods out there that are more about like, hey, create a digital course. Right. And I’m not here to say one way is wrong or right. This is just an example of how I’m very specifically helping to solve a problem for my niche.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:45] And then let’s talk about this a little bit, because this is your signature methodology. And can you talk about the five C’s of building this kind of six figure coaching business? I’m sure you’re alluding to some of the CS there.

Betty Kempa: [00:18:58] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I can’t get away from those seats. And the first one we talked about. Right, it’s it’s the first C is is choose the right nesh. So this is figuring out, OK, who is the kind of human I want to work with before you even worry about the human you want to work with. It’s really what’s the problem you want to solve. Right? Because at the end of the day, a business is solving a problem, you know, whether it’s a coaching business or something else. So it’s what kind of a problem do I want to solve for people? And and you really need to pick something that’s going to make you want to rip the sheets off on a Monday morning because you can’t wait to coach on that topic. So you got to kind of find the sweet spot between I’m passionate about this topic. I want to coach on it. But I also need to validate the market. I got to make sure that this is something people want to pay for. And I got to figure out who would be willing to pay for this thing. Right. So step one is choose your nesh, do your research with your ideal client avatars, speak to those people out there that you potentially want to serve, get to the bottom of their pains and their dreams. Right. And from there, we can kind of craft your messaging in a way that’s going to resonate with your target market. Part to the second C is creating a killer package.

Betty Kempa: [00:20:15] And again, like, you know, this is for people that are familiar with the coaching world. You know, you don’t want to sell hourly coaching. Right? You want to create a coaching package. So the key here, it’s a couple of things. One is you want to create your own signature methodology. So the same way I have the five C’s of building a six figure coaching business, each of my coaches, whether they’re a relationship coach, a health coach, a leadership coach, they all have their own signature method of getting clients from pain to dream. So that’s part two is creating that. And then packaging it in a way so that it is worth multiple times what you’re actually charging. So if you’re creating a 10K K coaching package, the value of that, you need to be able to show your client the value is worth fifteen, twenty, twenty five K. Right. So that’s part two is creating a killer coaching package. Step three is curtains up, launched your brand. And this is all the key components that go into launching your business the right way. This is branding. This is your business tools. Now we get into the website copy. Now we create your lead magnet, your email, nurture sequence scripts. We’re really building the system here, right? We’re standing up the business and we want to launch the business in a way that’s going to excite people and bring them along for the ride with you. The fourth Sears client attraction system, this is the one everybody wants to skip to, but it’s really important to get those foundational elements locked in before you worry about client attraction.

Betty Kempa: [00:21:53] And this is really how to create a system so that clients are coming to you on autopilot. And, you know, especially with corporate professionals, I’m helping people step out of the role of employee. And it’s a different mindset step. Of CEO, of your business and learning what you have to be doing each day, week and month in order to get the most ROIC in your efforts so that you can attract clients, and then there are other elements of client attraction that you can delegate, automate, eliminate, streamline. So the client attraction system is going to be. Sure, of what you have to do is the CEO and then the elements you can outsource and automate and then a fifth C is closing a deal, right? So you’ve done all this work and you’ve got a human on the phone and you love to work with them as a client, but you have to learn how to conduct that conversation so you can transition somebody from, hey, I’m talking to you for the first time into becoming a client. And what I always tell people is if you’re doing all the heavy lifting on the discovery call, you’re waiting to get on a call to share with somebody who you are and what you do. You’re doing it wrong. So it’s important that you’re educating people and warming them up before you have that initial sales conversation with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:14] Yeah, I find that when I’m working with somebody new about closing, I tell them you’re not closing, you’re curating. You’re deciding if it’s the right fit. There used to be a thing called ABC always be closing. And to me it’s always be curating. You should be trying to see if the person’s a right fit for you. And I don’t. I personally feel I don’t like to be in the position of please pick me. I like to be the one choosing and I like to be the one that’s helping kind of make sure that this is going to be a symbiotic relationship where they’re going to they know what my superpower is and that I know what pain they have and that I can help alleviate or not. And maybe if it’s not the right fit, I can point them in the direction that will be the right fit for them.

Betty Kempa: [00:24:03] Hundred percent. Yeah, it’s kind of like a first date, right? You’re both sitting down at the table and getting a feel for the other person’s energy and and yeah. You know, with the corporate six figure coach academy, there are definitely some people which to your point, I’ll say, hey, like I it feels like you wouldn’t be the right fit for this program and then you happily refer them out to someone else. So it is really, really important. That’s the cool thing to write about. Owning your own business is you get to choose when you’re in a corporate nine to five, you can’t choose your boss or your coworkers. When you’re running your own business, you get to choose who you want to work with. And that’s really cool.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:41] Right? And that’s an important mindset shift that you don’t have to take just anybody. You can be as selective as you’d like to be.

Betty Kempa: [00:24:48] One hundred percent.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:50] So now are you talking to these people while they have their job usually, or is it that they’ve taken the leap or they were laid off and they’re kind of panicked and they’re like, hey, I better call Betty because I don’t know what I’m going to do next.

Betty Kempa: [00:25:03] You know, I get a mix for sure. I do get them right because I was one of the panicked lay off people. Right. So I definitely get a mix. I would say the majority of people I work with are still in their corporate job. A lot of them have started going after their coach certification. Some of them have already gotten the coach certification, but it’s kind of collecting dust while they’re still at the corporate job because they don’t understand how to make the transition. So to answer your question, the majority of people are still in their corporate job, but I do definitely every so often get people to say, hey, I made the leap, but I’m not getting any traction. Help me.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:40] Now, if somebody wanted to learn more about your practice and maybe kind of get some of the thought leadership you have on your website. What is the website for someone to find you?

Betty Kempa: [00:25:52] Yeah, it’s my name. So it’s Betty. Betty, T.Y. Kempo k e m as in Mary P isn’t Paul A Betty Kempo dotcom.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:01] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success, Betty. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Betty Kempa: [00:26:07] Thanks so much, Leigh.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:08] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see all next time on Coach the Coach radio.