Episode 74
E74: Make Business Personal: Align Your Work to Build Greater Purpose in Your Life with Kiley Peters
In our latest episode, I was thrilled to host Kiley Peters, visionary and founder of Rayne IX, where they personalize business strategies so you can have the life you want, make the money you want, and love the work you do.
We had a deep dive into the intersection of entrepreneurship, personal branding, and the evolving definitions of success.
🌟 3 Key Takeaways:
- **Customization vs. Sustainability:** Learn how Kiley transitioned from custom deliverables to focusing on IP and built Rain Nine, embracing a boutique consultancy approach that aligns with her life goals.
- **Defining Success for Yourself:** Erin and Kiley discuss the importance of personal branding and maintaining vulnerability while fostering professionalism in a world where success is not one-size-fits-all.
- **Unlearning Stress Culture:** Challenge the notion that stress equals success. Kiley reflects on the importance of introspection and balance, advocating for a healthier entrepreneurial mindset in 2024.
👉 Listen now to discover how Kiley's "dna of success" framework and her strategic shift toward autonomy could inspire you to rethink how your work fuels your life purposes.
Let's discuss: How does your business reflect your personal values and definitions of success?
Resources Mentioned:
Book Mentioned: Sell with Authority https://amzn.to/48jqBif
Link to Accelerator https://rayneix.com/accelerator/ Discount Code: H2EPODCAST
More About Our Guest:
Kiley Peters is a serial entrepreneur, small business strategist, executive coach, national speaker, and brand marketer with nearly 15 years of industry experience.
She is on a mission to help 1 million women build greater personal and financial wellness lives through RAYNE IX, her consultancy that helps executive women fast-track the launch of their consulting business so they can have greater flexibility, autonomy, and ownership of their lives–and The 100 Collective, a membership and directory for women service-based business owners who are committed to helping other women succeed.
She created The Starter Kit and The CEO Launchpad, two online courses to educate and support women launching their consulting businesses. She’s also the host of Welcome to Eloma, a podcast for visionaries, entrepreneurs, and business owners who want to become better leaders, people, and pioneers.
Connect with Kiley:
Charity Mentioned: https://womensfundmke.org/
Connect with Erin to learn how to use intellectual property to increase your income and impact. 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
Transcript
Hello, ladies.
Speaker:Welcome to the hourly to exit podcast.
Speaker:I am very excited about this week's guest, Kylie Peters, and welcome
Speaker:Thank you, Aaron.
Speaker:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker:Yeah, we have so
Speaker:much to talk about, but before we jump in, would you introduce
Speaker:yourself to the audience?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:well, hello all.
Speaker:I'm Kylie Peters.
Speaker:I'm the founder, executive coach and business advisor at RAINN9 and we are
Speaker:an executive consultancy and we help people develop the ownership mindsets
Speaker:they need to live the lives they love.
Speaker:And so this goes in two ways.
Speaker:So we really work a lot with women looking to.
Speaker:Make the leap into entrepreneurship and we help them guide them through that
Speaker:process, as well as women entrepreneurs who are looking to build better business
Speaker:backends, say that 10 times fast.
Speaker:And then we are also building training programs to bring to
Speaker:corporations and companies to help them develop entrepreneurial skillsets.
Speaker:So bringing the entrepreneurial skillsets and ownership mindset into organizations.
Speaker:I also have a podcast.
Speaker:Welcome to Eloma and I'm a speaker.
Speaker:So, you know, if you want to hang out, let me know.
Speaker:Yeah, you
Speaker:do a ton and I don't know how you do it all, frankly, I
Speaker:assume you have an amazing team.
Speaker:They're the best.
Speaker:If you had to say like, this is who I am primarily, how
Speaker:would you describe yourself?
Speaker:this is who I am?
Speaker:if you could
Speaker:only pick
Speaker:one.
Speaker:I am a...
Speaker:Fierce advocate of
Speaker:women.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:Well, this is the right place to be, here, we believe that putting more wealth than
Speaker:the hands of women can change the world.
Speaker:And, there's no better time than now to do that.
Speaker:And so, we talked earlier about, some things that.
Speaker:Parallels between the conversations that I have with my clients, and those that
Speaker:you have with your clients about how we think about our businesses, how we
Speaker:differentiate ourselves and some of the fears that we're having about, how we,
Speaker:inject more of ourselves and our humanity into our businesses.
Speaker:And I was watching a wonderful keynote speech that Kylie gave, , regarding
Speaker:differentiation and, all things you described accounting firms with all
Speaker:things being the same, you know, same offer, same prices, how do you
Speaker:differentiate in that environment?
Speaker:And you mentioned the human element.
Speaker:And so I'd love to use that as a jumping off point because, as an
Speaker:intellectual property lawyer, I am frequently getting questions.
Speaker:I should say about,
Speaker:How do I protect my ideas or how do I protect my methodology?
Speaker:course, and a lot of it is thinking that there's some magic in the
Speaker:ideas or in the methodology.
Speaker:It doesn't mean they're not effective, but somehow, if I can
Speaker:keep them from everybody else.
Speaker:Then that will be the key to my success.
Speaker:And rather than it's how you deliver that methodology, how you create
Speaker:transformation with that idea.
Speaker:I like to make the analogy between like a chef and a anyone can get access to the
Speaker:chef's recipes, but can you deliver the same, you know, Michelin star experiences
Speaker:that chef, or are you just going to try to put something on the table?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So it really is about what we bring to our ideas or to our methodology.
Speaker:And so I'd love for you to talk to us about how you help people bring that.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:Well, Aaron, I think you touched on something, really important
Speaker:and you, talked about experience because it really truly is that.
Speaker:And, the speech that you were talking about, one of the
Speaker:things that I really drill home.
Speaker:Is that we have to be willing to be human.
Speaker:We have to be willing to be vulnerable and put ourselves out there.
Speaker:Cause that's truly our, greatest differentiator.
Speaker:we could be identical to our competitor in the people that we
Speaker:serve in the problems that we solve in the productization of what we do.
Speaker:But it's how we firmly believe the work needs to be done.
Speaker:So one of the things that I talk about is, your true specs.
Speaker:And that is what you uniquely believe to be true and necessary for the work you do
Speaker:to be successful for the people you serve.
Speaker:And that has to come from within.
Speaker:But it's been my experience that when we...
Speaker:Forget about ourselves and we're like, Oh, it'll be fine.
Speaker:I'll be fine.
Speaker:It'll all be fine.
Speaker:Everything will be fine.
Speaker:We're just going to do the business thing.
Speaker:We're going to do the thing.
Speaker:It's going to be great.
Speaker:Everyone will win.
Speaker:It'll be a big win, right?
Speaker:No, it might be a temporary win, maybe, but the long term play is going to
Speaker:significantly suffer if we don't define success for ourselves as individuals.
Speaker:And so that's a lot of the focus of the work that we do.
Speaker:So we believe that in order to be successful in living
Speaker:the lives that we want.
Speaker:We have to look inward first, we have to define success for ourselves as
Speaker:human beings, and then we need to look at our work and align our work with
Speaker:our personal definition of success.
Speaker:Because our work takes up so much of our lives.
Speaker:I did some quick math the other day and it's like, over a hundred
Speaker:thousand hours, a minimum of over a hundred thousand hours of our lives.
Speaker:So, that, for anybody out there listening, Is like working 24, 7, 365 days a
Speaker:year, nonstop for 11 and a half years.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:So you can't tell me that 11 and a half years is no, like
Speaker:just chump change, right?
Speaker:that's a huge part of your life.
Speaker:So we really need to be clear on who we are and what we want out of life.
Speaker:So we can be leveraging our work to help.
Speaker:facilitate that right?
Speaker:we all go to work.
Speaker:We want to make a paycheck.
Speaker:We want to live our lives, but like, there's a huge opportunity
Speaker:to increase the meaning and the purpose and the fulfillment and
Speaker:the output of the work that we do so that we can live richer lives.
Speaker:And when I say richer, I don't mean like monetarily.
Speaker:I mean, maybe, maybe monetarily richer, like more fulfilled, true, big
Speaker:lives.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, there's many ways to define wealth.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And it's not just in money.
Speaker:And it also is in, impact and flexibility and wellness and connection.
Speaker:They're all sorts of dimensions to it.
Speaker:And I wonder if you find as someone who works primarily with
Speaker:women, do you find that they have.
Speaker:A more expansive definition.
Speaker:I'm just going to lead the witness here.
Speaker:Definition of wealth, then, maybe we traditionally think
Speaker:of that.
Speaker:that's a great question.
Speaker:And, it's been my experience in, in talking to women, one of my favorite
Speaker:questions is what do you want?
Speaker:And a lot of women don't know because no one's ever asked them.
Speaker:And then that breaks my heart a little bit and we dive in deeper
Speaker:and we figure it out, but it's almost never about the money.
Speaker:yeah, we need to make a certain amount of money so that we're
Speaker:not super stressed out about it.
Speaker:But it is always about autonomy over themselves, all aspects of their lives and
Speaker:their time because they almost always say that their family is what matters most.
Speaker:And they feel like in working for somebody else, that all they're doing is.
Speaker:Is working all these hours and working so hard to help make somebody else richer,
Speaker:but that the impact of their work.
Speaker:there's nothing there, right?
Speaker:So that's why a lot of women that I've worked with that do make
Speaker:that leap into entrepreneurship.
Speaker:Those are some of the factors and we did a research study on this as well.
Speaker:So it's ownership of time, autonomy, and flexibility.
Speaker:And they want to know that what.
Speaker:They're doing matters
Speaker:right?
Speaker:That was definitely played into the shift that I've made in my career.
Speaker:I made a career out of making big companies bigger.
Speaker:And, you do get to a point, where you're like, well, is this it?
Speaker:And it could be it for today.
Speaker:I don't know if that it, but for me, I did want to, see what other impacts I
Speaker:could have, essentially with working with women and helping them kind of realize
Speaker:their own dreams of wealth and even, you know, just talking strictly about
Speaker:money, we do know that, money talks and it carries a certain degree of influence.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and so to have that well, so it's supporting causes that we care about and,
Speaker:being able to support our communities and our children, our families.
Speaker:These are all things that we can only do when we pay attention
Speaker:to the bottom line to, like.
Speaker:Money is bad, you know, it's a bad rap, but they're all the good
Speaker:things that you can do with it as
Speaker:well.
Speaker:Yeah, there's so much good.
Speaker:And I firmly believe that as well, Erin, it's, we'd like to say that
Speaker:we believe that when women make more money, keep more of the money they
Speaker:make, and they're more educated and making smarter financial decisions,
Speaker:They invest more in themselves, their families and their communities, ultimately
Speaker:making the world a better place.
Speaker:So let's just get more money to the ladies, make sure that we also are sharing
Speaker:financial literacy so that they're being educated with the money that they have.
Speaker:And I think we start to see some positive impact.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I agree.
Speaker:Preaching to the choir here.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:So how do your clients know they need you?
Speaker:Like what are they experiencing?
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:so many things.
Speaker:things that I hear all the time are, it's not working and I just don't
Speaker:know why, or I'm stuck and I can't name it, or I don't love my business
Speaker:anymore and I don't know what to do, I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker:How do I get out?
Speaker:A whole lot of those things.
Speaker:It's a lot of questions.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, they're, big things, right?
Speaker:So a lot of the work that we do is helping people figure out what
Speaker:they want to do next and help them make that transition, especially
Speaker:in the world of entrepreneurship.
Speaker:and let me also just say, I love entrepreneurship and I'm totally
Speaker:biased towards it, but it's not the right path for everybody.
Speaker:And that's okay.
Speaker:That's okay.
Speaker:If you're sitting here and listening and you're like, I hate entrepreneurship,
Speaker:that's never going to be me.
Speaker:That's okay.
Speaker:That's okay.
Speaker:Then I'm going to implore you to be an intrapreneur within whatever organization
Speaker:you are, because either one means you have to adopt an ownership mindset and
Speaker:you have to take an ownership mindset over your life and your work because
Speaker:you spend so much of your life working.
Speaker:And if you're not taking ownership over it, Then who is?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:it reminds me of something I read recently.
Speaker:, I don't read a ton of stuff about being a lawyer, honestly,
Speaker:but I'm sure it's riveting.
Speaker:It is riveting, but there's been a lot of, scholarship about
Speaker:lawyers in house in particular becoming more executive focused.
Speaker:And, Becoming a, kind of integrated as part of the executive team and not
Speaker:just kind of an after thought, but how they bring more value to the table.
Speaker:And so they're increasing their own personal brand and learning how to
Speaker:become kind of an entrepreneur as a lawyer, and I think that is really
Speaker:important and, as certainly as.
Speaker:The world becomes more, intangible assets focused, lawyers
Speaker:become much more integrated.
Speaker:I mean, operations are essentially about intellectual property.
Speaker:A lot of them.
Speaker:I mean, that's where 90 percent of the value in the U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:Is an intellectual asset.
Speaker:and so we can't, we have to step up to the plate and be business people within
Speaker:our companies, even as, in house counsel.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:There's a lot of opportunity there as well.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:And so when you work with them, I know that you've mentioned some programs.
Speaker:Do you do one on one group?
Speaker:DIY.
Speaker:Like
Speaker:how do you, how do we do it?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:well, we've created a framework.
Speaker:We call the DNA of success, the definition and alignment of success.
Speaker:And basically we go through defining success for the individual first.
Speaker:And then we go through the same framework in aligning the business
Speaker:or the work that they do with that.
Speaker:So the four phases are purpose defining your purpose.
Speaker:Both as an individual and in your business or the work you do, time and energy.
Speaker:How are you spending your time and energy?
Speaker:How should you be spending your time and energy?
Speaker:What problems should you be solving and how do you go about it action,
Speaker:which is what do you want and how are you going to make it happen
Speaker:on both sides and then knowledge?
Speaker:What do you need and what do you need to know?
Speaker:And so we use this framework as a structure to do all
Speaker:of the work that we do.
Speaker:So We have done some one on one workshops.
Speaker:We're going to start petering that out a little bit.
Speaker:So if you're listening to this now, and you really want to one on one get in
Speaker:now, because we're going to start pulling those back, but we've integrated this
Speaker:framework into a 21 week program that we call the accelerator by brain nine.
Speaker:And this has.
Speaker:Everything I think that an entrepreneur needs to know to build a robust
Speaker:business and when I say that, I mean, we talk about defining success.
Speaker:We talk about your business model.
Speaker:We talk about aligning the work.
Speaker:You do.
Speaker:We talk about making sure that your business is working for you
Speaker:and that you can leverage it.
Speaker:Then we get into all of the tangible things like accounting and legal and
Speaker:marketing and sales and social media.
Speaker:And tax strategy and leadership skills and exit strategy and
Speaker:financial planning and operations and automations and all these things.
Speaker:And they're all taught by expert women, small business owners
Speaker:who own their own businesses.
Speaker:it's on demand content and then we have a live Q and a every week so we
Speaker:can actually ask tailored questions towards whoever delivered that content.
Speaker:We have a digital community, et cetera.
Speaker:We so we've built out all of that to support women entrepreneurs.
Speaker:We've also taken this framework and we've developed what we call the
Speaker:make business personal workshop.
Speaker:So we deliver Series of workshops, to help people align their
Speaker:company culture with, individual personal definitions of success.
Speaker:And then we're also utilizing this framework to inform a lot
Speaker:of the work we're doing with our intrapreneur training program that
Speaker:we're bringing to corporations.
Speaker:so workshops, I take on a couple of one on one clients, as in
Speaker:like coaching consulting type of engagements, but not many.
Speaker:The majority of it is the entrepreneur training program,
Speaker:my speaking and workshops, and then we have the accelerator.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So to pull
Speaker:the curtain back on how you've developed your business, were you always an agency?
Speaker:Did you start with partners?
Speaker:Did you start as a soloist and then had to figure out how to build and scale?
Speaker:How did you do that?
Speaker:Well, let me back it up to another life that I lived.
Speaker:so I used to own a digital content marketing agency.
Speaker:So I ran an agency called Brainchild Studios for six years.
Speaker:And so that was very much an agency model.
Speaker:We had full time employees, part time employees, and contractors.
Speaker:and what I realized, I'll give you the CliffNotes version of
Speaker:my learnings, because we could talk all day about that one.
Speaker:I thought I wanted to build a huge team and, turns out that it took me crashing
Speaker:and burning to realize I didn't want that.
Speaker:And I also went through the hard learning lessons of if you try to create custom
Speaker:deliverables for every single person, it makes it nearly impossible to function
Speaker:long term and the profit margin.
Speaker:Is really tiny.
Speaker:And sometimes you end up paying them to do the work.
Speaker:so those are some of the big learnings I took from that life.
Speaker:And as I built rain 9, a couple of the things that I really wanted to focus on
Speaker:was I really wanted to focus on my I.
Speaker:P.
Speaker:I wanted the whole company to built off of my brain because that's
Speaker:what people kept asking me for.
Speaker:But I needed to do it in a way.
Speaker:That could authentically be my IP, but I wasn't the only person
Speaker:that could ever deliver it.
Speaker:And so that's why we've built out these programs in the way that we have, so that
Speaker:I can still deliver that, at scale, but I say that loosely because I'm not trying to
Speaker:do this to 15 million people, it's like.
Speaker:Scale for a boutique consultancy, and that being said, I have a couple of people that
Speaker:help me deliver some of the workshops, but I mean, right now, we're a team of 3
Speaker:client facing individuals and we've got a team of like, 3 or 4 back end people
Speaker:that help to keep everything running.
Speaker:And I like it that way and if somebody else wants to build a
Speaker:giant company and team, like, great, good, you do that, go get it, girl.
Speaker:I learned the hard way for myself that that was just not what I wanted.
Speaker:and it was a hard learning lesson because so much of the information out there,
Speaker:especially for me at that time, and maybe I was just looking in the wrong places,
Speaker:who knows, but the, definition of success.
Speaker:Was bigger, more all of the things like bigger revenues, bigger clients, bigger
Speaker:teams, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:And so that's what I was driving towards.
Speaker:And I crashed hard.
Speaker:And this is why I do the work I do now because I realized, Oh, I
Speaker:didn't actually want any of that.
Speaker:I wanted to be successful.
Speaker:And I thought that's what was being told to me was the definition of success.
Speaker:But what I came to realize was.
Speaker:The only definition of success that actually matters is the one
Speaker:that we create for ourselves.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:Yeah, probably be no surprise to you that as a lawyer, I have trouble with
Speaker:that very thing of, standardizing services and not done everything.
Speaker:It's very hard to do.
Speaker:And so I've always had kind of the instinct of not dabbling, which is,
Speaker:Good practice to not, commit malpractice to only kind of stay in the rain.
Speaker:I would say so.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:if you can, I mean, people do have very broad practices.
Speaker:Like we'll have a business practice and that is a lot
Speaker:of stuff and they'll do that.
Speaker:But I've always gone like, This is what I do.
Speaker:I do commercial transactions, corporate commercial transactions.
Speaker:That's what I do.
Speaker:And, you know, that are IP, based and I've always really
Speaker:resisted going outside of it.
Speaker:But even within that, there can be a lot.
Speaker:Someone comes, Oh, I just need this, but not that.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And, so I'm struggling with that right now to kind of stake out my
Speaker:services and not deviate from them.
Speaker:Very hard to do.
Speaker:And the other thing I'm finding that is content because I
Speaker:make a lot of content and.
Speaker:Yeah, someone will say, Oh, can you come do a guest in my mastermind?
Speaker:I create something just that, and I now have.
Speaker:I don't know, 20 different library, a library of slightly tweaked presentations.
Speaker:And I'm like, okay, all
Speaker:right, Aaron, I can I give you some ideas?
Speaker:can I toss some ideas out there?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Here's a few starters.
Speaker:So in terms of your services.
Speaker:something to think about is create a menu I don't know why I'm using this example,
Speaker:but like a hot dog and you've got all the toppings you could put on it or not.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:you already know all the special things that people ask you.
Speaker:I bet if you were to go back and look at it, you'd say, these are
Speaker:the four or five things that people 90 percent of people ask for.
Speaker:Well, if you create those as just like add ons.
Speaker:Or tweaks, then it makes it a lot easier to standardize.
Speaker:You can create your contracts, et cetera, so that it's
Speaker:standardizes in that capacity.
Speaker:but that might be something to think about in terms of the tweaks,
Speaker:and then in terms of content.
Speaker:I can't take credit for this.
Speaker:this goes back to my friends, Drew McClellan and Steven Wessner, that
Speaker:I met through agency management Institute, but they wrote a book
Speaker:Sorry, I don't know that it, but it's something about authority.
Speaker:And, from a content marketing standpoint, and this is my recommendation, somebody
Speaker:who used to run a content marketing agency, create one big meaty piece
Speaker:of content and then slice and dice it and roll it out in small ways.
Speaker:So whether it's a podcast, whether it's a book, whether it's a research study,
Speaker:whether it's, maybe it's a really robust presentation, but then you pull it apart.
Speaker:And you put all those pieces out into the world in terms of social media and email
Speaker:and advertising PR and all of that to draw traffic back into your big piece of
Speaker:content that hopefully you have a strong call to action on and you're generating
Speaker:leads and then you amplify, such as.
Speaker:Guests on your podcast or people quoted in your book or wherever it is, right?
Speaker:Then you make sure you loop those people in So that's from like a content
Speaker:standpoint now if you're talking about 20 different versions of presentations
Speaker:one thing I would recommend is Just identify the key topics you want
Speaker:to talk on and just build those and just Do those, like those four or
Speaker:five or whatever it ends up being.
Speaker:And then you just are like, repeat, here we go.
Speaker:Maybe you put the logo, a new logo on it and it's like lipstick on a pig kind of
Speaker:thing, but it's like, here's the new logo.
Speaker:And here's the same presentation and now I can just not have to relearn everything.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I do do a little bit of that or I'll be like, okay, you
Speaker:want me to talk about that?
Speaker:And then I kind of just, that's the title that I talk about
Speaker:what I want to talk about.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, you know, I found two as a speaker.
Speaker:oftentimes people will say like, well, what are the topics you talk on?
Speaker:And so sometimes it's a gift to be able to say, well, 1, 2, 3, whatever it is.
Speaker:They're like, Oh, either that resonates or it doesn't resonate.
Speaker:Or could you also do this?
Speaker:And then that's worth, a conversation.
Speaker:if it's worth the conversation
Speaker:and that is all to the, you know, backend operations of having a really,
Speaker:firm process about when people ask, like I said, they're just like, sure.
Speaker:Then I'm like, well, this is what I do.
Speaker:How about one of these?
Speaker:And I, you know,
Speaker:but, you know, that's not an uncommon issue.
Speaker:I would say the majority of business owners, especially women
Speaker:business owners I've worked with and run into have similar issues.
Speaker:And part of that is.
Speaker:Finding the confidence to be able to say, This is what I do and then stop talking.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Right, because what we end up doing is, well, this is what I do.
Speaker:But, you know, if you need something else, I could probably make that work too.
Speaker:And like, oh, you don't want to pay full price?
Speaker:Well, okay, I can give you a 20 percent discount.
Speaker:that's fine.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then we don't run our numbers and we're like, Oh, wow.
Speaker:I'm paying this client to do this work with the amount of time and energy.
Speaker:It's taking me.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That is too true.
Speaker:I feel, I don't know if I feel seen or called out or both,
Speaker:not called out because I, this is something I still
Speaker:struggle with sometimes myself.
Speaker:It's easier said than done.
Speaker:And this is what I work with all of our clients on is like.
Speaker:Okay, honey, what do you want?
Speaker:What problems do you want to solve and for who?
Speaker:And how do you want to package it up?
Speaker:Cause you know how to solve that problem.
Speaker:How are you going to do it?
Speaker:And this goes back to the beginning of the conversation, right?
Speaker:how are you uniquely solving this problem and a way that you feel is
Speaker:necessary versus the person next door?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:And it's not going to be the right solution for everyone.
Speaker:And that's okay.
Speaker:We don't have the capacity to take on everyone.
Speaker:Just
Speaker:like who?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I wanted to mention that when you've mentioned, like, bring ourselves
Speaker:and sometimes it's very vulnerable.
Speaker:It certainly felt very vulnerable to me, having been, a big company
Speaker:lawyer where nothing, frankly, feels personal to being, out there.
Speaker:writing, speaking, here I am.
Speaker:that was a huge leap for me and I'm tough for a lot of people, yeah, to bring it
Speaker:and to not sound too much like a lawyer, but still be smart, but accessible, and so
Speaker:all that, I kind of figuring that out is,
Speaker:it's tough.
Speaker:I mean, I think that's one of the reasons we've seen such a rise in
Speaker:the concept of personal branding over the last few years, 10 years, maybe.
Speaker:Because it's like, we are all our greatest product and whether or not you like sales
Speaker:and I don't consider myself like, I don't think I like sales, but we're always
Speaker:selling ourselves, whether you're an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur or whoever.
Speaker:You're always selling yourself, but the question is.
Speaker:What is the sales pitch and how much do you let people see behind the curtain?
Speaker:Like how vulnerable do you get where people are like,
Speaker:Oh, wow, she's a real person.
Speaker:And I know and trust her versus like, wow, what a narcissist who
Speaker:can't stop talking about themselves.
Speaker:Like, that's a fine line sometimes.
Speaker:And it feels weird.
Speaker:For a lot of people and it takes a long time and maybe it never
Speaker:actually feels good, but it's tricky.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And the other thing I had to learn was that that people want to know you
Speaker:like, well, I just, I have a solution.
Speaker:So why do.
Speaker:You didn't know me.
Speaker:Like, I didn't know who you are.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:how can I trust you?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So
Speaker:that was, a learning process for me as well.
Speaker:So I'd like to talk about the trend you may be seeing in, this space, you know,
Speaker:we're coming to the end of the year.
Speaker:A lot of times we're kind of looking forward and making plans for 2024.
Speaker:what are you seeing when you look ahead?
Speaker:Oh boy, Aaron.
Speaker:well, I wish I had a crystal ball, but based off of my experience and
Speaker:what I'm hearing from people, for a lot of the small business owners in
Speaker:my sphere, 2023 has been a tough year.
Speaker:It's been a real challenge.
Speaker:And I think a lot of that has to do with the economy.
Speaker:we started the year, everyone was talking about this recession that
Speaker:we got into the year and everyone's like, are we in a recession?
Speaker:And then we're like at the end of the year and everyone's
Speaker:like, Oh, it's still coming.
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Still live in this, like, suspended purgatory.
Speaker:Please.
Speaker:Everybody's having a good time with that.
Speaker:and so I think what I'm seeing is a lot of mindset shift.
Speaker:Honestly, I think I'm seeing a lot of, like, okay, we do need to go internal,
Speaker:we need to figure out, why we're doing this and what I really want out of it.
Speaker:what are my real goals versus my aspirational goals?
Speaker:How do I find better balance?
Speaker:And not burn myself out, sure, we'd all love to make a million dollars a year,
Speaker:but do I need to make a million dollars?
Speaker:Like, what feels actually good, and like, and is that good enough for now?
Speaker:And not that I'm saying that I feel like people are getting complacent.
Speaker:I don't want to be confused for that, I'm seeing people.
Speaker:Just start to reflect more on what really matters and how to find
Speaker:better balance integration, whatever word you want to use, to pave a
Speaker:more sustainable path towards.
Speaker:Those goals.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I agree.
Speaker:And I also think that, with a younger generation, you're significantly younger
Speaker:than I am, that there is a little more balance that people are looking for.
Speaker:Like I'm a gen XR and it was very much, the kind of, I started my career
Speaker:in the eighties or, money was King.
Speaker:I think it was at the term and that this.
Speaker:new wave of kids coming out of school, certainly, and who are absolutely
Speaker:seeking more balance in their lives.
Speaker:they, value their relationships.
Speaker:They value experiences, not particularly interested in owning homes, apparently,
Speaker:or, you know, and so they just really want to enjoy their lives.
Speaker:And I like it.
Speaker:I want that for my kid.
Speaker:I have a 17 year old.
Speaker:I'm glad that that's.
Speaker:the attitude that, they have, they're just a kinder generation I'm finding.
Speaker:So, yeah, we're happy about that.
Speaker:hope for the next generation that they encounter less stress, because I think,
Speaker:I'm a millennial stereotypically we look at boomers and we're in the same
Speaker:career for their whole lives and then Gen X started to change things up.
Speaker:Millennials.
Speaker:We were like, wait, wait, I have a lot of questions, right?
Speaker:we started questioning things and then everyone's like, well, nobody ever
Speaker:stays at a job for more than a year now.
Speaker:And it's like, okay, all right, be kind.
Speaker:we're all just trying to figure out what we're doing here.
Speaker:hold tight.
Speaker:but I think there's been this, what are the right words?
Speaker:There's been some kind of corrupt pride.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That these generations, I feel, have taken in the amount of stress
Speaker:that they can manage, especially when it comes to our careers.
Speaker:And I think that is messed up.
Speaker:And I think these younger generations are shedding light on that.
Speaker:And we are all now in this position of unlearning some really unhealthy
Speaker:habits, which just takes time.
Speaker:But the first step is to.
Speaker:Name it.
Speaker:Acknowledge it.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And then start to try to slowly decompress decades of built up stress that we've,
Speaker:in many cases, put on ourselves.
Speaker:In many other cases, society has put on us.
Speaker:It's just layers and layers.
Speaker:It's heavy.
Speaker:Yeah, it is.
Speaker:It can be.
Speaker:It can be for sure.
Speaker:Well, that kind of transitions us into, you know, this is a very meta podcast
Speaker:is about female founders of expertise based businesses that are growing their
Speaker:business to hopefully sell someday.
Speaker:And I know you are a serial entrepreneur, so you have grown and exited businesses.
Speaker:And so, you can tell us about your exit, but also with your current business.
Speaker:Are you thinking about selling it someday?
Speaker:How do you see that exit?
Speaker:And what would you think you would do next?
Speaker:What would the next chapter
Speaker:be for you?
Speaker:Yeah, well, I started my agency thinking it would be a lifestyle business.
Speaker:I never anticipated selling it, that's how a lot of business owners start.
Speaker:But to that end, I would say, start with the end of mind.
Speaker:I started rain 9 with the hopes that I could run this business until I decide
Speaker:I don't want to work anymore that I can have enough flexibility with it that.
Speaker:I can build it to be whatever I need and want it to be.
Speaker:and so.
Speaker:Honestly, at this point in time, I mean, yes, we all exit our business.
Speaker:At some point, I think I'm open, like, I think by the time I
Speaker:would be looking to stop working and I, really do love working.
Speaker:I love the work I do.
Speaker:So I anticipate that.
Speaker:So hopefully a ways off.
Speaker:hopefully my IP will be valuable enough.
Speaker:That, it could be saleable.
Speaker:I also want to launch some, like, certifications and licensing
Speaker:programs, which would be great passive revenue opportunities.
Speaker:So, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker:I don't have a great response right now.
Speaker:If, I'm being super honest, I really just want to leverage my
Speaker:business to help me live the life I want, and I'm not planning on.
Speaker:retiring off of the sale of the business because currently only
Speaker:about 30 percent of businesses that go to market actually sell.
Speaker:So I'm aware of that.
Speaker:and maybe someday, maybe somebody internally will want to take over,
Speaker:you know, and maybe I'm just the owner versus the operator as well.
Speaker:and let me also just say, like, I think there's a lot of different
Speaker:ways to have a successful exit, but I think at the end of the day, it
Speaker:needs to be whatever you feel is good.
Speaker:it's not necessarily a sale.
Speaker:for me, when I exited my agency, it was really important to me to
Speaker:take as good of care of all of the people in my life as I could.
Speaker:And I felt like I did a good job of that.
Speaker:And that was good for me.
Speaker:we currently are seeing if our assets are of interest to anybody.
Speaker:And that might be an interesting asset sale.
Speaker:but that was what a successful exit looked like to me at that time.
Speaker:Yeah, that's
Speaker:great.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I, think a lot of people, if we are building, businesses, assuming
Speaker:we're building businesses that are, Okay.
Speaker:Impact oriented, and we want to continue to make that impact.
Speaker:that's not heavy for us.
Speaker:And so, so long as an expertise, we're not literally carrying stuff, you know,
Speaker:and so long as we are feeling good about it, we're making the impact that we
Speaker:want, and we're being compensated for it, is there this need to, like, get to
Speaker:65 or whatever the number is and retire?
Speaker:It's just.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not it's a different way of thinking about, what the next stage will be.
Speaker:And if there's a natural breaking point, somebody else wants to incorporate you and
Speaker:you don't want to be an employee there, then there's another challenge to go on
Speaker:to, to use our talents to make an impact.
Speaker:So I like that.
Speaker:Think of it that way.
Speaker:I think.
Speaker:what I should also add in is I think for me right now with rain 9, the
Speaker:way I think about an exit is more.
Speaker:So my role in active.
Speaker:Execution because I like to think of myself as a thought leader,
Speaker:like I want to keep speaking.
Speaker:I want to write books.
Speaker:I want to do all those things.
Speaker:And I know that the business sense is like that's smarter to do under an LLC, right?
Speaker:there's just a lot of business case for that.
Speaker:So it's like, just want to leverage my business to help me
Speaker:do all the things I want to do.
Speaker:And my role in the execution might.
Speaker:Exit at different stages and morph into something else.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I
Speaker:like that.
Speaker:I think that's exactly right.
Speaker:All So a couple of final questions, as we've mentioned, you know, wealth in
Speaker:the hands of women can change the world.
Speaker:And so we like to give shout outs and support organizations that help
Speaker:us create a more equitable society.
Speaker:And I think you have an organization that you support that you'd
Speaker:like to share with the audience.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So the women's fund of Milwaukee, I'm here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Speaker:they do a lot of great work for, specifically for women locally.
Speaker:And, we can continue to use all the help that we can get.
Speaker:Wonderful.
Speaker:we'll put The link to that in the show notes.
Speaker:Also, if we figure out the book you were talking about early about the authority,
Speaker:we'll put that in the show notes as well.
Speaker:I think
Speaker:it's selling with authority.
Speaker:That might be it.
Speaker:then I know that you mentioned your accelerator.
Speaker:I know you have, I'll have a launch coming up.
Speaker:Do you want to describe it and talk to the audience a little bit
Speaker:more about that?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:So the accelerator, we will be launching this cohort so that you get to go through
Speaker:this program with a group of other women.
Speaker:So you get to build that community and that support system.
Speaker:I will be launching it twice a year.
Speaker:So in January and in July, and, for listeners of this podcast, we would be
Speaker:happy to offer you a discount right now.
Speaker:We are selling this program at 4995, and this includes 3, 1 on 1
Speaker:coaching sessions with my colleague and co facilitator Tater Amanda.
Speaker:but we're happy to give you a 1000 dollars off.
Speaker:If you use the code H.
Speaker:Two as in the number two E podcast.
Speaker:So H2E podcast, and we'd ask that you register by January 5th, just so we make
Speaker:sure that we know everybody that's joining us for our January 16th kickoff date.
Speaker:That is wonderful.
Speaker:Incredibly generous.
Speaker:Thank you so much, Kylie.
Speaker:And I hope that we get a lot from that.
Speaker:So where can people find you?
Speaker:Oh, you know, the internet, you can learn more about me at Kylie peters.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:K I L E Y peters.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:Uh, you can learn more about my business at rain nine.
Speaker:R a Y N E I X.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:It's the Roman numeral nine.
Speaker:And you can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Speaker:That is wonderful.
Speaker:This has been a great conversation.
Speaker:Thank you so much for coming, sharing your wisdom, great insights, very
Speaker:generous offer, and for your time.
Speaker:Thank you, Kylie.
Speaker:Thank you so much for having me.
