Build a Business That Grows With You, Not on You

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio and this will be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Business RadioX. If you’re a business coach or a business consultant who’s tired of being a best kept secret, set up a call with Stone Payton at bookstonephone.com to unlock your perpetual prospect pipeline. Today on the show, we have an executive coach with a company called The Trusted Edge, Kasia Hatcher. Welcome.

Speaker 3: Hi. Thank you. It’s nice to be here. Nice to meet you.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. I’m sure it wasn’t an accident, and I’m sure there’s a story behind it. But what is The Trusted Edge?

Speaker 3: So The Trusted Edge is your one stop shop for executive coaching and systems build. So basically I lead with the foundation of executive coaching. And then on top of that, I add in the AI optimization and automation and processes and systems that you need to build a great business. My primary audience is women founders and leaders who have outgrown doing it all on their own and are ready to build a business that grows with them, not on them, and they’re ready to do it on their own terms.

Lee Kantor: So what was kind of the thought process of naming it The Trusted Edge?

Speaker 3: So the name really came from what gives us our edge, what gives us our leadership edge, especially as women, and how do we kind of flip the script on its head when it comes to the systems that we navigate as women business owners and leaders. And yeah, how do we apply that edge?

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? What makes you the right person to be doing this kind of work?

Speaker 3: Thanks for that question. So I spent 20 plus years across 20 countries working in international development. So I’ve built processes and systems all over the world. I’ve gotten dropped to into country X, and with USAID or State Department or DoD, have helped to facilitate a country level strategy for a span of five years across all sectors, and then would be there to help roll that out and to put in processes and systems in place to measure progress towards success. I did a lot of work with the organizations that would actually be Implementing that work and building their capacities. So a lot of organizational development, organizational performance. And then later in my career, over the last five years, I did executive coaching for women leaders and political appointees, women at places at Google and Deloitte. And when international development went away in the United States as we know it, and USAID was eliminated last February, um, my career went away and I got really sad. And then I got really angry and I decided, I really want to put my power behind women leaders and founders who also navigate systems that are, that weren’t built for them to succeed in, in a lot of ways, uh, and, and wanted to help them to just build, build better and build in ways where they can breathe and they’re not drowning. Um, I think something like 48% of women of U.S. businesses are owned by women. Now, today, and only 3% employ like a majority of the workforce. And so, so for us to have such a large number of business owners, but where they employ so little of, of our workforce, I just started thinking more about that. And I’ve worked in scaling organizations that have built in really incredible ways where it’s been like an incredible place to work. And I’ve worked in places where it was just toxic and a horrible place to work. And I feel really passionate about the fact that honestly, we should it should be a right and not a privilege to work in a great place. So that’s where kind of all of that came from for me.

Lee Kantor: So now can you educate the listener when it comes to when you’re talking about an organization or organizational change, how are you seeing that and defining it? Because working, you know, in a country that may need water, as you know, or a nail salon that may need more customers? Uh, they’re both organizations. Um, you know, you could, some could say the stakes are higher in one area or the other, but there must be some similarities and there must be some differences. Can you just share with our listener kind of how you see an organization and, and some of the, the similarities and differences between a country versus a business?

Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, so I think the biggest difference is you said it is the stakes are a lot higher. And when the stakes are higher, what you need is systems and processes that pivot really quickly that are very agile. And I think as women leaders, we often, uh, just we wear many hats and we are the person that says, okay, I need to do it all. And we build really quickly and we become successful, but we still have to be a wife and a mother and, and wear other roles. And we have aging parents. And it is for any leader. It is very hard to transition from. I’m going to manage all the things and be that strategic leader and create that space for how to run things versus I’m going to do both and all of it, right. And so I think you see that in, in the places I’ve worked, you have a very small budget and a very high tall order of things you need to get done. And they need to be done in such a way that’s very agile. And so whether you are running a a purposeful business here in the United States, as a woman founder or leader, you are still trying to figure out the the.

Speaker 3: Okay. What systems and processes should I have in place so that when I build and when I grow, they will hold what I am building and growing without crushing me. And how do I build that in smart ways? And how do I build that now, not only in smart ways, but utilize AI to do it as well, right? So that’s where I think it’s the agility of the systems. It’s the practicality. It’s that it needs to hold when we leave, right? Like I’m not trying to be your advisor forever. I’m trying to be there and help you and then keep it moving and help you to also build the inner capacity to think about how you’re building differently and think about the systems and processes differently, because organizations are almost their own organisms and they breathe and they grow and they change. And if you’re constantly needing to bring someone in to update your systems or your processes, there’s something that was missed versus how can you build it in such a way where you’ll know when it’s time to shift and it shifts with you?

Lee Kantor: Now as part of your work, um, especially in the, in the countries that you worked in a lot of times, you were placed in kind of broken systems. Um, and in the business world, I would imagine, especially some of your coaching clients, there’s maybe no systems. Is there a difference between fixing a broken system or, you know, starting and building a foundation of systems that work at, at the start? Um, those seems like different challenges, but, um, so how do you help your clients kind of build those foundational systems and processes they need so that there are fewer broken systems later on.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. So one of the main questions I start with, with my clients is, what’s your biggest pain point right now? What is that thing that if we could automate it or, you know, someone could just, you know, wave a magic wand and it became easier, what would, what would that give back to you? What is that? What’s that primary, biggest pain point right now? And we start there because I think what’s and that is a question you ask. I would ask anywhere I go, uh, I think there are there have been places in the world that I’ve worked and companies that I worked for private and public that did this, um, overseas where there were systems, there were systems that worked for a while and then something would shift and they wouldn’t and we’d need to update them. Right. And then like you said, then there are, there are places where there are no systems, uh, for, for small business owners and founders. Sometimes a lot of the time what happens is a lot lives in your head because you are the one doing it. And it doesn’t translate into documented automated systems that, you know, God forbid something happened or something great happened, someone could someone step in and run this for you or would someone know how to do it like you do? When you grow and you want to hire someone to come in and help you, will you now be starting from scratch to have to download everything that’s in your head to them? And those are very real problems that happen everywhere. I think it’s, you know, you can go into a certain country and, or you can be in this one, you can walk into any room. I will say this very bold claim, any room in the world you can walk in and gather a handful of people and that are all passionate about a similar topic.

Speaker 3: Let’s say, Lee, we have you and maybe a couple of your colleagues, and we bring you into a room to talk about, you know, how do you make a really successful radio show and you’re all going to have a definition in your head of success and what that looks like. And so once we start to unpack what your version of success is versus somebody else’s, then you can start to work backwards to, okay, so how do we get there? But a lot of the time, whether you’re a solopreneur or you have a small team, we have these, these ideas that live in our heads that we, we, we think, oh, everyone knows when I say X, it means these things. This is the picture that comes up in my head. And that’s just not true. And so it’s unpacking them. And the other part of building systems honestly, is. So I’ll give you a very practical example. Pricing. Women are are notorious for underpricing what they what they offer and not pricing according to value. And so the, the coaching comes in and that foundational work comes in to, to help them to actually build the, the inner unpack what’s going on. The, the, as I call it, the operating system that runs you to kind of figure out, okay, what’s, what’s leading me to make these decisions? What’s leading me to price this way? What’s leading me to say yes to potential clients that I probably should be saying no to? Right. Because that also becomes part of your processes and systems that you build and how you build them.

Lee Kantor: Um, so what I’m hearing, and correct me if I’m wrong here, um, clarity and communication Is super important that if you don’t have kind of clarity around what you’re saying and what you mean, that’s going to bite you down the road. And if you and you might be self-sabotaging yourself for some reasons that maybe that’s internal to you, that maybe this is where a good coach can help, but to, um, to define what your worth is and what you might be doing that’s self-sabotaging, you kind of getting that worth from your clients. Those are areas that, um, sound like there’s opportunity for growth for a lot of folks out there.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And I would say it’s a little bit deeper than just the clarity and communication because those, those words, you just gotta unpack them. It’s we all make assumptions in our head, right? So for example, you know, I may make assumptions about when a client walks in the door. Here’s how they should experience my business. If I have a brick and mortar shop, right. They, um. I greet them and I say hello. And I know, you know, within ten minutes, like their daughters or nieces or cousins name and I, they have this type of experience, right? When they interact with me as the person representing the business. And oftentimes that’s, that’s a, that’s an assumption that we’re making. Like all of that is loaded into greet the person when they walk in the door and make them feel like family, right? And you that often doesn’t get translated into the job description of the person you want sitting at your front door later, um, or the sale, the sales contractor that comes in and tells you, yes, the job will be done. We can do this work in a day. It’ll be done in a day, and then the actual crew arrives and they’re like, oh yeah, we’ll, we’ll be here at least three days, right? And you already have a level of disgruntled potentially, uh, clients because there was an expectation set that wasn’t met right from jump. Uh, and those are some of the small things that, again, in, in a different context, have a lot higher consequences, but they have consequences for your business right here, uh, in, in, you know, your backyard.

Lee Kantor: So what are some ways that you help your clients, um, get clearer when it comes to communication so that everybody is on the same page? Are there some exercises or some tools you utilize so that, uh, you know, maybe it’s a survey and, and you just ask everybody, you know, what’s the mission of the company? Or what do we sell? Or, you know, how do we help people? And then just to see what everybody says, to see if at least they’re in the neighborhood of the same page.

Speaker 3: Yeah. So one of the tools that I’ve run for over two decades now is it’s, it’s really getting at a root cause it’s doing a root cause analysis. What is it? The actual, the actual problem that you’re trying to solve within your manageable interest within your scope? And then what is that? What is that solution look like? But then it’s uncovering, what are all these assumptions that we make on not just in, in that service or that product that we provide, but what is the bigger why? And then what are the assumptions we’re making along the way of what has to happen in order to get from from A to Z, from, from the concept and this, this vision to actual practical steps that, you know, someone gets to experience exactly what you want them to, or someone gets the product in, in not only the way you want it, but where your business is both effective and efficient in the delivery. And so there’s, there’s a bunch of processes that go into that. But then again, it starts with the foundation of, okay, how are you? How are you seeing yourself? What drives you? Look, I moved out of my house when I was 16 years old in New York City. I am a scrappy person, right? Like, there are things that drive me. And as I meet different women, every woman I’ve met is passionate about her business, wants it to succeed.

Speaker 3: And there’s a bigger why there. There’s something. There’s something so much bigger driving it. But there are also the things that we learned and we as women, we are a lot more likely to want to preserve relationship over being able to assert ourselves. There was a study, I think, in July that said that found that 90% of women versus 35% of men say women are judged more critically and 83% of women versus 28% of men say they must outperform men for the same success. So there is there’s that’s where there’s that’s systems, right? That’s systematic. There’s things happening whether you had a great childhood or not. So great one, um, there’s something along the way that where things come up that work against us that are running under the surface. There’s stories we’re telling ourselves, there’s identities we carry into every room. So every room we walk into, there’s things we want to project about ourselves and things we want to protect. And one of the questions I ask, and I can ask this of you, for example. So, Lee, what is one word that if if you are not in the room that you would want said about you in every room, one word that you know, if they know nothing else about you. If they view you in any other way that you would always want said about you in every room when you’re not in it.

Lee Kantor: Um, I would say for me, creative.

Speaker 3: Okay. And then what’s the one word you never once said ever, ever about you in any room?

Lee Kantor: Um, like someone who takes advantage of people.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Those are great words. And so those are two examples of identities that we try to project or protect. So I’ll give you an example that’s that’s a little bit different. So one woman founder, I worked with her, her word was I just, I never want to be seen as mean. I just want to be seen as kind. And it took her two years to fire someone. Another example is, is a leader within a company who just always she was like, I just want to be seen as competent. And so if she didn’t have all the data points to make her greater point. She wouldn’t speak in meetings that she really needed to speak in. And so there are these these identities that we carry where it’s not about not believing them anymore. It’s learning to carry them more loosely. And that informs how you then build a business, how you build relationships, how you run things. So if there’s a story of no one’s going to do this as well as I am, you can imagine what kind of systems and processes will be in place versus, I can’t do this on my own. And how do I translate how I think, how I want this to run, how I want my clients to feel to the people that are going to help me or to an, an AI automation that’s going to run some of this admin for me.

Lee Kantor: Right now, when you’re working with your clients, it sounds like you’re kind of Getting close to an area where it’s going from business coaching to almost therapy. How do you kind of bridge that or walk that line?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So there is so the main difference between coaching and therapy, there’s a couple. One therapy is think about like if you’re, you’re looking in the rear view mirror and you’re, you’re asking yourself, you know, um, what happened? How did I, how did I get here? What, what are these things that inform me in a therapist helps you unpack that, see your patterns and, you know, and sometimes advises you in that a coach, a coach always looks forward. So for a coach, pure coach, ICF certified, which I am coach who’s operating under an ethical boundary is looking at what are your goals and what are the actions that either align to get you there or not. It’s always forward looking. It’s not exploring the past. It is looking at identities. But I’m not going to be like, well, you know what? In your childhood or where did that come from? Right. Like, we’re not going to touch that, but we are going to kind of unlock is what are the things, where is your mind right now? And what are the things that are informing your worldview right now that may or may not be preventing you from reaching your goals? And the coaching part of my practice is pure coaching, meaning I’m not giving you advice. What I am doing is I’m creating a container through inquiry because I believe that the answers are already in you, and a coach helps you to breach that insight action gap. So the other way I think about it is, you know, you you read a book on on leadership and you know exactly what a phenomenal leader should look like. But in the moment, You can’t action that knowledge. Why not? And so through inquiry, I’m not going to sit there and tell you exactly what a book could tell you.

Speaker 3: That’s not going to help you. That’s not going to help you long term. Maybe that’ll give you an answer short term, but that that is not gonna that’s not gonna leave you empowered, trusting yourself more, changing how you think about situations. But if I ask you a handful of questions that help you to unpack. I’ll give you the kind example. Right? So if the person says, I want to be kind, I’m going to unpack that and ask them, tell me more about what kind looks like. What does that mean? Tell me more about your core values. And then I’m going to ask, okay, so if your core values are love and family and integrity and you, you know, and kindness is implementing those values, help me to understand. Tell me a little bit more about this conversation where someone’s showing up off and you know, you know what, what needs to happen. You’ve said X, Y, z and I’ll tell them their words back. What’s happening there? What, where, what does kindness look like? And they out of themselves say, well, actually, well, if I’m looking at it that way, that’s not kind. That’s just being nice. Right. I want to be nice and I can ask, okay, so tell me the difference between being nice and being kind. And they’ll unpack that. And on their own, they’re, they’re coming to insights and conclusions about, wow, kindness is telling someone the truth even when it’s hard. I can do that in a loving way, but that’s actually more loving than me not telling them at all. And they’re, they feel frustrated and, and they’re failing and I’m losing money and I feel like frustrated and I’m failing. Right. That is more likely to stick than me just telling you what to do.

Lee Kantor: And then a third area is a consultant, and that’s a person who is going to implement some of these ideas. So like you mentioned earlier, AI and creating systems and automations. Yeah. A consultant might be the one that rolls up their sleeves and builds out that AI for them to help them get the outcome they desire that you talked about with them.

Speaker 3: Exactly. And so once the coaching is in place, then there are moments where the coaching hat comes off and the consulting hat comes on. And then we say, okay, these are the solutions we can build in terms of the processes and the systems. So, you know, we unpack some of that identity work, but then, okay, you know, maybe there’s some stories around, around how we view money and we unpack that and what does that look like? And then what are your goals and what are the internal blocks to pricing? But then as your consultant, I bring in a tool and a framework that says, okay, I want you to load this to your AI of choice and ask it to interview you to right price, your, your products or your services based on that value. Right. So so some so they will, they will run that. That’s where I’m stepping in and consulting. Right? Um, where we look at, okay, what services do you or products you offer? Um, what are the prices there? What’s, you know, let’s, let’s do some, some digging and some strategy around this. What are there any gaps? What’s missing? Is there a product you can provide that’s a, that’s at a lower level, that’s more accessible. That becomes an entry point for your clients to then actually advance to this larger ticket item that you really want them to, where you know, they’ll get more, but you need something to establish trust first, right? And then there’s a part of how do you build relationships and do and, and, and do so in a way that’s not transactional and salesy because that is really where businesses thrive. And that’s where women business owners thrive now.

Lee Kantor: So, um, just to recap, the therapy part is kind of off the table. That’s not anything you do because that’s backwards looking. You’re looking at the present and forward, but sometimes your work does go into coaching and consulting, not just coaching.

Speaker 3: Correct. Yeah. It’s it’s, I basically, I’m your one stop shop. So you get the coaching. And then when, you know, when we have some of those foundational foundational things, consulting comes alongside and, and it’s, again, it’s the, I took the 20 plus years of experience that I had building systems, building processes, making organizations really agile. Then the last few years of learning AI for my own business, optimizing my own business using AI. Um, and I build frameworks that take someone 30 minutes to tailor and implement and build for themselves in AI, and then it takes them two minutes to run. It saves them 3 to 5 hours a week when they’re when they’re running. These things that I’ve created and I learned it, I repackaged it, and now I, now I teach it to others how to do it.

Lee Kantor: So now is there a story you can share that maybe illustrates what it’s like working with you? Don’t name the person, but maybe share the challenge they came to you with and how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Speaker 3: Yeah, sure. So, uh, one of my clients, um, is a, let’s see which client. Yeah, let’s go with, uh, one of my clients has her own, um, business. She does a lot of public relations and communications consulting. Uh, she has a number of different kinds of services, and she’s been in business for five years. And she was like, man, my business is doing really great. But I do feel like it’s starting to crush my soul a little bit, and I’m starting to feel overwhelmed. And I feel like maybe I feel like I, I could, I could probably benefit from, from your help to, to make it run a little bit more smoothly. I remember asking her, I was like, okay, well, tell me, um, tell me about your CRM. And she picked up sticky notes and showed them to me on her desk. And I was like, oh yeah, no, we’re not going to do that anymore. And so, um, you know, on that one hand, we, we, you know, I used, I sent her an AI, um, basically framework to help her build her, um, her, just her initial CRM as well as to price what CRMs are out there for where she’s at. So that was on that side of it. But then, um, on the other side of it, she’s like, okay, I have these clients and I have, you know, a number of clients that I love to work with and I’m trying to really lean into this type of work, this type of consulting with these type of clients. But then I also have these different kinds of 1 or 2 clients.

Speaker 3: One primarily is sourcing most of my business, but it’s not the client I really want to be working with long term. And so we started thinking, working through, okay, what are, what are the things that make that relationship difficult? Um, going back to your communication point and boundaries. And so what does that look like? Um, how do we, uh, set boundaries in place and how do we say yes versus no to certain things to manage a client like that, so that the work still gets delivered at an absolute high level of excellence. And you can, you’re not giving anything away for free. Um, you are within scope. You’re not, you know, and you have, you gain that time back that you were spending extra time on that client, you gain that time and that energy back to actually build that part of your business where, where you really want to see value. Um, my coaching, I, so I do two sessions a month, but I also offer unlimited, uh, support in terms of email, text and then one off. Right? I never want a client to come into a session and be like, let’s unpack this thing that didn’t go really well last week. So I’m like, if you’re going into a high stakes conversation in the next day or so, let’s, let’s get on a call and do a quick, you know, on the spot to help you be ready for it. So that same client, um, had a difficult conversation she needed to walk into. And she’s like, I’ve been putting this off for two weeks.

Speaker 3: I really need to have this conversation. I really don’t want to. Can we work through it? And we did. And not only did she end up feeling empowered and came to the conclusion of how to articulate and how to say no and retain the relationship, but then I put the consulting hat on and she realized, well, she needed to say no to this one potential client that was sort of a competitor of another existing client, but she was going to be providing services for them that she doesn’t provide for the existing client. So she was able to say no, but then she was able to turn around and create a proposal for the existing client for additional work. She earned my fee back and double in that one decision from that one conversation because she was able to kind of again, it’s the strategy. It’s the inner work and the external strategy and the it’s it’s all of it, right? I, I’ve come from a place where if you build, you can build the Mercedes, Mercedes Benz of system in a given country. But if people don’t know how to ride, what drive stick shift. It’s not gonna it’s not going to do you any good. You need the buy in, you need the inner work. And then it frees up the space not to do more work and burn yourself out, or be running at 47% all of the time, right? But it’s really to create that space so you can think more strategically for your business and make these decisions that really will have value for you.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, it sounds like you work with a wide variety of clients because on your website, there’s the biggest enterprise clients on the planet, as well as the example you just gave, which sounds like a entrepreneur or a small firm. Um, do you have a sweet spot in terms of ideal client profile, the ones that you do your best work for? Or is this kind of something that’s industry agnostic and you’ll work with anybody?

Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, so my, my primary audience is women founders and leaders that are scaling. Usually they’re making 100 K or more, um, consistently. They, you know, um, my, my best clients have been women founders and leaders who have run their business. I mean, one had been in business for 15 years and she had a brick and mortar, you know, business where she was building out, um, products. Um, and a team of five, uh, another that I described was a one one person show, right. Um, running multiple podcasts that were, you know, uh, financed and had sponsors, etc. and worked in a different space. Another client was a realtor, um, that worked with a very niche audience. And so I think what these, the biggest thing these clients have in common is they’re, they’re women that are passionate and are building something that they’re really passionate about. And it’s making a difference. And how they deliver those services makes a difference. I think that’s, there’s, there’s something about this work for me where, um, women, the women who, who I’m for Find Me. And there are, uh, those are, those are my ideal clients. It’s that. And, and I also do work with a handful of male clients. If you look at my LinkedIn, there’s, you know, there’s a couple male clients that have reviewed some of the work that I’ve done. And I will say for me, it’s about leveling the playing field. And that’s really what it comes down to. And in the systems that we’re operating in now, where a lot of people are stepping out or, you know, there’s mass unemployment and layoffs, and there’s so much fear around AI and AI taking jobs. And human centered design used to mean something completely different than what it means now because of the rise of AI. Um, really that’s, that is the, that’s the goal is how do I empower and how do I lend courage? And how do I equip women founders and leaders to build businesses that grow with them, not on them Um, because you can, you can live a whole life. And that’s where it’s like it’s a holistic approach.

Lee Kantor: So those are the clients you’ll say yes to. What are the types of clients you’ll say no to?

Speaker 3: Uh, clients that are purely profit driven, clients that are like, give me the, the gimmick, tell me what to do, give me the answer. Um, clients that like that come and say, build it for me, right? I just want you to build it for me. Um, those are, those are not my ideal clients. Um, yeah. Uh, I, I am a true believer. You know, it’s, you can, you can, there is more impact in teaching someone how to do the thing and get familiar with the thing and think differently than there is building something for someone and sending them off and them becoming reliant on you to constantly do the thing for them. Um, my job is to work myself out of a job. That’s what I did overseas that that’s still the heart of it. Uh, and it’s purpose and alignment around purpose and passion. Right. So that, so that good still gets done.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Speaker 3: thetrustededge.com, you can click on and um, schedule a discovery call. I’m Kasia kasia@thetrustededge.com. So either of those work.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well Kasia, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

Speaker 3: Thank you Lee, I appreciate you and I appreciate your vulnerability.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.