In this episode of Career Spotlight, host Michael Bernzweig interviews Kim Ades, the president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and Journal Engine Software. They discuss Kim's entrepreneurial journey, the significance of resilience in personal and professional life, and the transformative power of coaching. Kim emphasizes the importance of perspective in overcoming adversity and shares insights on thought mastery, emotional resilience, and the unique approach of her coaching methodology. The conversation also touches on the pros and cons of traditional employment versus entrepreneurship, the role of journaling in coaching, and the balance between personal and professional life.
In this episode of Career Spotlight, host Michael Bernzweig interviews Kim Ades, the president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and Journal Engine Software. They discuss Kim's entrepreneurial journey, the significance of resilience in personal and professional life, and the transformative power of coaching. Kim emphasizes the importance of perspective in overcoming adversity and shares insights on thought mastery, emotional resilience, and the unique approach of her coaching methodology. The conversation also touches on the pros and cons of traditional employment versus entrepreneurship, the role of journaling in coaching, and the balance between personal and professional life.
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Michael Bernzweig (00:03.516)
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I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of the Career Spotlight. I am your host, Michael Bernzweig, founder of Software Oasis. And this week, we're actually joined live by Kim Ades She's the president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and the Journal Engine Software. So with that, welcome to the podcast, Kim.
Kim Ades (00:27.64)
Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here and looking forward to this conversation.
Michael Bernzweig (00:32.046)
Yeah, and I can tell I'll be honest with you as we're seeing the career spotlight hitting a note with a lot of the audience. We've actually had quite a few questions come in from the audience prior to the episode. I think a lot of people were excited to hear that you'll be with us. So we'll try to sprinkle some of those in, but I was hoping we could start for any of our listeners that
may not be familiar with either yourself or journal engine software or frame of mind coaching. If you could give us a little bit of context of your journey getting to where you are and a little bit about everything going on over there.
Kim Ades (01:14.958)
Absolutely. So I'll give you a little bit about my journey. I'm a serial entrepreneur, one might say. And before this company that I run now, Frame of Mind Coaching, I used to own an assessment company. And we used to build simulation-based assessments. And the purpose of those assessments was to help companies make better hiring decisions. And this was a long time ago. We were building assessments when simulations and the technology wasn't even in place yet.
So we were kind of on the leading edge of that, not quite as good as they are now, not even close, but at the time it was really kind of leading edge. And one of the things that we discovered when we tested really hundreds of thousands of individuals, we were looking at what is the key differentiator between top performers and other people? Like what makes one person really at the top of their chain in terms of performance compared to others?
Michael Bernzweig (01:44.626)
Wow.
Kim Ades (02:12.524)
And we discovered something very interesting is that it has nothing to do with their education. It has nothing to do with their experience. It has nothing to do with their age. But if a person had a higher degree of emotional resilience, they would be much more likely to succeed than other people. So that was very important finding in my history. So keep that in mind. I ended up selling my business. And right after I sold it, like within a few weeks, I got hired by a coaching company locally.
Michael Bernzweig (02:33.692)
Sure.
Kim Ades (02:41.818)
and they hired me to be their VP of marketing. And I honestly lasted about eight and a half, nine months. And the reason is that once you're an entrepreneur, it's super hard to work for other people. And the other reason is that I got an opportunity to observe what they do. It was a coaching company. And I felt after looking at what they do and just thinking about it, that they were missing something very important.
Michael Bernzweig (02:55.538)
Sure.
Kim Ades (03:10.934)
and they were missing key component in the coaching process and I felt that I could do a better job. And that's when I decided to go out on my own again and start frame of mind coaching. That's what I did.
Michael Bernzweig (03:24.932)
I love it. And this is so interesting because, you know, for anyone listening to the podcast, you know, thinking, hey, you know, I'm not where I want to be in my career or maybe things happen that weren't, I'm not where I expected to be or anything like that. You you mentioned resilience there. That's such an important component to, to anything that, that
is or happens in life and you've been on both sides. You've been on the employee end of things, you've been on the entrepreneurship end of things and you have some real frame of reference there. So talk a little bit more about resilience. How does that play into everything?
Kim Ades (03:53.155)
That's right.
Kim Ades (04:04.046)
That's right.
Kim Ades (04:09.048)
Well, so what is resilience? Resilience is, let's define it. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity with speed and agility and, the and part is important, and leverage the adversity in some capacity. So we all have negative experiences in life. It's part of life. You we all experience blows. We all experience disappointments and we all fall. And it's not about the falling. It's about how quickly do we recover from the fall? And then,
Do we leverage that experience and turn it into an advantage of any kind? If we have the ability to turn it into an advantage, our resilience is at the highest place. Now, a lot of people ask me, is resilience something that is inherent or is it something that can be learned? And I will tell you with absolute certainty, resilience is something that can be learned. It's a muscle, just like building your abs at the gym, you can learn to build that muscle over time.
Michael Bernzweig (05:10.062)
I love it. Do you think, and I agree with you, I mean, it's so important that not when, but if, but when you fall in life, how you get back up. And I think a lot of individuals, it's part of the whole.
healing process. A lot of people go through grieving, you whether it's loss of a spouse or a job or anything else significant in life. And I think a lot of people get to that next stage where they start to come out of it. And, you know, it's how they, you know, set their course and chart their course and take the next steps and replace what they've lost with something better than or equal to what
they lost and I think those are the individuals that thrive but unfortunately I'm not so sure that most people ever get back up. Now what do you find that some people do and some people don't? I don't know I mean I get the feeling that you know some people
Kim Ades (06:14.38)
Why do you say that? Why do you say that? What do mean? You're not sure if people get back up?
Michael Bernzweig (06:20.986)
you know, and maybe part of it is individual.
you know, individual, you know, not just the resilience, but, you know, something innate in each individual as to whether how they respond. Yeah, I think some people have a harder time getting getting back up.
Kim Ades (06:41.166)
So you're saying some people have a harder time getting back up. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Some people definitely have a harder time getting back up. And the reason for that is the way they process the event that took place and what they make it mean. Right. So I'll give you a very simple example. I, you know, my mother-in-law is a good example. She lost her husband 10 years ago and she still is very much struggling with that loss.
But I've seen other older women who have experienced a similar loss after a very long marriage, but they somehow figure out how to still live their lives in a robust, engaged fashion. So what is the difference between them? It's their perspective.
Michael Bernzweig (07:33.158)
That's the question. You took it out of, took the words right out of my mouth. What's the difference?
Kim Ades (07:37.29)
Yeah, what's the difference? It's their perspective. It's the way they process this loss. So in one case, it's a loss and they don't accept the loss. And in the other case, they accept the loss and they say, what do I do now? How do I turn whatever's left of my life into something worth living? What do I do? That's my mission. So it's about perspective and it's about, you know, also sometimes accepting
We have to accept what is. And once we accept what is, what do we do with it? Where do we go next? What are we reaching to? Life isn't over. There's still lots there in this world that's interesting and dynamic. Are we reaching for that or have we decided it's over? There's nothing worth reaching to. So there's a perspective.
Michael Bernzweig (08:25.81)
So for someone that gets to that point after loss, let's talk about a career for example. Having been on both ends, if you were to bullet point, kind of like the pros and cons of a career working in the workaday world versus a career in entrepreneurship, what do you see the pros and cons of each?
Kim Ades (08:52.064)
I mean, you know, some people really love the idea that having a career has stability, whereas you and I know that as an entrepreneur, there's not always stability, right? Like we, you know, it's a growth process. But at the same time, being an entrepreneur gives you certain freedoms to make decisions, to try things, to experiment, to manage your time in a way that is up to you. So there are lots of pros and cons of each.
Michael Bernzweig (09:03.186)
Right.
Michael Bernzweig (09:17.372)
Right.
Kim Ades (09:19.81)
but not everybody is built for each, right? So I am not built to go and work for someone. I mean, it's just like in the nine months.
Michael Bernzweig (09:22.545)
Right.
Michael Bernzweig (09:28.082)
You'd rather work more hours and make less money and do it on your own or... Yeah.
Kim Ades (09:32.782)
100%. I mean, honestly, in the nine months that I was working for this company, like, I felt physically ill by the end. And when, you know, I had the conversation and we agreed to part ways, wow, the relief that lifted from my shoulders was immense. And I was just like, finally, I'm out of here.
Michael Bernzweig (09:41.607)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (09:50.667)
And that's funny, I'd agree with you on that. I've always owned my own business from the time I was a teenager, and I don't see myself ever hopping to the other side. But on the flip side of it, I've also had a career in the traditional workaday world, and I'm right there with you. But I think a lot of individuals over the years have
Kim Ades (10:01.505)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (10:19.804)
found themselves at different junctures in their career that may not be where they expected to be. And maybe, if nothing else, opportunities to test the waters on both sides. So really, really interesting. Now, I know you work with a lot of executives and a lot of leaders. And one of the concepts that I know you've spoken a lot about is thought mastering.
Can you talk a little bit about that for our audience and how that fits into the whole scheme?
Kim Ades (10:52.312)
So I'll put it into these terms. The people that achieve extraordinary goals in their lives have a huge amount of self-control. And what I mean by self-control is they have a high level of awareness about the relationship between the way they think and the outcomes they're getting in their lives. And they understand that relationship, and they manage that relationship at the highest level.
So let's make a parallel. Let's use another example. People who are physically fit are doing what? They exercise their bodies and they fuel their bodies with healthy nutrients, correct? So people with sharp minds are doing the same thing. They're fueling their brains with healthy nutrients, right? They're paying attention to what lifts them, what allows them to grow, what allows them to develop. And so...
Michael Bernzweig (11:36.646)
Thank you.
Kim Ades (11:51.382)
Right? They're fueling themselves and they're exercising their brains by consciously challenging their thinking and moving their thinking to a place that is aligned with their goals. So when you reflect, and lots of people don't spend any time reflecting, you'll realize that a lot of times your challenges or your obstacles are related to the way you think. So for example, if I wanted to
run an Olympic race. And I got to the front of the line and I looked at my competitor and I thought to myself, my God, he's so much better than me, I'll never win. That thinking will automatically play a role in my performance.
Michael Bernzweig (12:38.534)
makes a lot of sense.
Kim Ades (12:38.616)
So people who achieve extraordinary goals are conscious of the relationship between their thinking and their outcomes. And so the idea of exercising is really the idea of that consciousness, being aware of how your thinking impacts everything you do, everything you don't do, and then the results you're getting.
Michael Bernzweig (13:00.996)
Now, I know over a couple of decades of coaching, you've had some fairly impressive clients over the years. Can you give our listeners an example of, and whether it's a specific client or just an example of what was like life like before working with frame of mind coaching versus after like some of the transition or change that you were able to help enable?
Kim Ades (13:28.398)
I'll give you one really great example because it's still alive and kicking. Many, years ago, like maybe eight or nine years ago, I was working with a client and he said, I'd like you to coach a friend of mine. So I'm gonna make an introduction. used to get, and we still get a lot of referrals, but he made a referral. He said, but here's the thing. I want you to treat him with kid gloves. And I found that that was a very strange way of introducing someone because...
Michael Bernzweig (13:45.254)
shit
Michael Bernzweig (13:54.363)
Yeah.
Kim Ades (13:55.276)
I'm a very direct coach. I don't really wear gloves when I coach. And I thought, I asked him, said, why, why would you position it that way? And he said, well, he's a dear friend of mine. He's in his early thirties and he has stage four cancer. And I think he could really use your help. So I got on the phone with him and I asked him two questions and I said, first of all, tell me how long you, you believe how long you think you have left to live. And that's a really tough question to ask someone.
Michael Bernzweig (14:07.922)
Hmm. Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (14:22.532)
Yeah, sure.
Kim Ades (14:23.03)
And he said, I really don't know. I've been on all these experimental drugs. And to be honest, I think I've lived more than longer than I've been like, than I meant to live. You know, I don't know how I'm still alive, but I'm guessing I have about a two year window ahead of me. And I said, okay, well, what I want to know is what is it that you'd like to achieve as a result of coaching? How can I help you? And he said, well, what I really, really want is I want you to help me increase my productivity.
Michael Bernzweig (14:32.261)
Yeah.
Kim Ades (14:53.324)
And I thought that was crazy, right? Like if I had two years left to live, would I be so concerned about my productivity? Not so much. I said, why is that important to you? He said, well, I'm an only child of a single mom and I want to grow my business and sell it so that I can leave her with some fun so she's in a good place after I'm gone. She's taken care of. I said, okay, let me ask you another question. I said, what do you really, really want? They said,
Michael Bernzweig (14:55.76)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (15:11.996)
See ya.
Kim Ades (15:22.136)
Well, what I really want is more time. And what I really want is I do want to grow my business and I do want to sell it so that I can make sure my mother's in a good place. But I want to travel and I want to take my mother on a great vacation and I want to buy a house and I want to be in a wonderful relationship and I want to run a marathon. And I said, well, why don't we do that? And we started working together and he was a very typical client type A personality.
Michael Bernzweig (15:36.85)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (15:51.612)
Sure.
Kim Ades (15:51.618)
He worked 14 hours a day. Every single, he owned like a financial services company. So every deal that came in the door, he was the one who brought it in. And every deal that went out the door, he had to make sure it was done properly, that every single project and every single evaluation was done according to his standards. And he was like working so hard. And in my mind, I thought my purpose is to help him lower his stress so that he could have a better fighting chance with these experimental drugs.
Michael Bernzweig (16:01.755)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (16:10.3)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (16:17.721)
Yeah.
Kim Ades (16:21.708)
And I said to him, you know, we should talk about hiring people. And he said, I can't afford to hire people. And I said, your life is at stake. You can't afford not to hire people. And we started to look at his thinking. His thinking was, nobody could do things as well as I can. I can't afford to hire people. I have a limitation of resources. There's only so much I can do here. And on and on and on. He had a whole set of beliefs that were keeping him trapped where he was.
Michael Bernzweig (16:33.19)
Right.
Kim Ades (16:51.096)
So he was putting in these long hours and he was the bottleneck in his company. Well, I challenged all of his beliefs and I showed him how it was really important for him to get out of the way and actually hire more people.
It's been like eight and a half, nine years later, he's still alive. And he sold half of his company and he took his mom on two great vacations. He got married, he bought a house, he renovated the house. He ran a marathon, he ran a triathlon and he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. And last year he had a baby.
Michael Bernzweig (17:09.806)
Wow, I love it.
Michael Bernzweig (17:14.319)
Okay.
Michael Bernzweig (17:19.428)
Nice. wow.
Michael Bernzweig (17:31.836)
That's amazing.
Kim Ades (17:32.8)
So he still has stage four cancer and now you know the question is whether or not a transplant will help him but but we got eight years and in those eight years he did a lot.
Michael Bernzweig (17:39.164)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (17:43.089)
Yeah, and it's absolutely. And at the end of the day, think clearly a lot of medical advances have happened, but I think that's a perfect example of you just need to live each day to its fullest and chart your course and achieve what's possible, even if it's the impossible, right?
Kim Ades (18:08.258)
Well, and to be honest, it's sometimes hard for us to live each day as though, you know, it's the last day of our lives and make the best out of it. Sometimes our mood isn't there. Sometimes our mindset isn't there. And in his case, and in all of our cases, he had a set of beliefs that said, there's only so much I can do. He had a set of beliefs that said, I have limitations. And each one of us has those beliefs. And my job is to find them and challenge them.
Michael Bernzweig (18:29.521)
Yeah.
Michael Bernzweig (18:32.902)
So that.
Michael Bernzweig (18:38.45)
Yeah, and I think obviously you were able to do that. So as you're working with lots of highly driven leaders, from what it sounds like, how do you help them, and I don't know if there's a lot of commonalities between different highly driven executives that you're working with, but how do you help them overcome these different obstacles that are holding them back and these different beliefs?
Kim Ades (19:03.662)
So we coach in a very unusual way. It's not typical. What I'm looking for is I'm really looking to see how a person thinks, how they're wired, what their perspectives are, what their beliefs are, what their values are. I'm trying to understand how they think and how their brain is really operating and how their thinking impacts what they do and the outcomes they're getting. So what we do is we ask our clients to journal in a private and secure online journal.
every single day for the duration of their coaching period. At the beginning of their coaching, they get a journal in question or a prompt and they start journaling. Every time they journal, there's a coach on the other end of the journal. I have a team of coaches who reads and responds to the journal. imagine you're working with your coach every single day, just like in the Olympics, right? Athletes work with their coaches every single day. And so what we're doing is we're extracting a huge amount of data from these clients.
to really piece together their patterns, their patterns of behavior, their patterns of thought, their reactions, their interactions, all of that. And so that provides us with a great level of visibility into how they live their lives as leaders. And what happens is when we finally get to our coaching session, we're able to show them those patterns and we're able to show them how sometimes their behaviors and thoughts and
belief systems actually clash with their goals. And what we help them do is make tweaks to the way they think so that it becomes much easier for them to reach their goals.
Michael Bernzweig (20:44.854)
So it sounds like, know, obviously, as we talked about earlier, emotional resilience is key in a lot of this. How can you help leaders build emotional resilience, or do they need to come with emotional resilience?
Kim Ades (21:03.082)
we help them definitely build emotional resilience. And what we do is we have our clients tell us in writing or verbally the story of their lives. They're telling us, here's my life, here's what happened, here are the obstacles I faced, and here's how I've come back from those obstacles, and here are the obstacles I'm still challenged by. And what they're doing is in...
As they are telling us their story, they're telling us their beliefs around the story. They're telling us how they see it. They are telling us how they recovered or not. What we do is we help them see things differently. We help them see things in a way that allows them to grow and flourish quickly.
Michael Bernzweig (21:48.887)
So share with me, you know, if I'm right, I'm sensing that your perspective is that, you know, change alone does not lead to success. Does that?
Kim Ades (22:02.69)
Well, look, maybe you can relate to this. Let's say you're working on a project and it fails. Usually your first reaction is, what did I do wrong? What should I do differently? How do I fix this problem? And you're thinking about the actions you should take next, correct? So normally, normally when something doesn't go our way, we immediately think of our next steps.
Michael Bernzweig (22:14.802)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (22:22.674)
Exactly.
Kim Ades (22:30.336)
It's very focused on what to, what we should be doing. And what I'm suggesting is that action follows thought. First we think and then we do, even though sometimes it doesn't seem like we're thinking. But every action that we take, whether it's a small one or a big one, is filtered through a set of beliefs that we have. So for example, if I believe it's going to rain and I need to go out,
Michael Bernzweig (22:44.818)
Right.
Kim Ades (22:59.402)
I'm gonna wear one set of boots versus another because I believe it's gonna rain. If I don't believe it's gonna rain, I'm gonna wear a different set of shoes, right? So what I believe to be true influences everything I do here, smell, taste and touch. The issue is that when something goes wrong, most people don't go back to how am I looking at this? What are the beliefs that I have?
Michael Bernzweig (23:10.247)
Sure.
Kim Ades (23:27.19)
about this person, this problem, this situation, this project, whatever. They don't look at their thinking first.
They just right away jumped to what should I do to fix it?
Michael Bernzweig (23:40.026)
So what are some of the roles or positions the different executives that you might be coaching are working within?
Kim Ades (23:48.576)
we're usually coaching like C-suite, the owners of businesses, all, you know, the chief executive officer, chief marketing officer, chief financial officer, all the C's. But then we're also coaching VPs as well. We're coaching typically the senior leadership of organizations. And in the case of large companies, we coach the owners and their senior leadership team.
Michael Bernzweig (24:09.17)
So, so you've.
Michael Bernzweig (24:15.346)
So are a lot of these individuals in roles where they may have the technical expertise for that role, but a lot of the interpersonal or communication or other skills that are required for those roles may need to be developed? Or what do you find? Is there a commonality?
Kim Ades (24:36.408)
Here's what I find is I find that a lot of leaders don't have leadership skills. So right, so and one of the most important aspects, so they might have experience, they might have success in their roles, like in their tactical roles, they might understand the product, the competition, the nature of the business, they might be very strategic, but they're missing one key piece, which is how do I really...
Michael Bernzweig (24:41.456)
Okay, leadership skill.
Kim Ades (25:03.392)
maximize the productivity, the performance, and the impact that my team has. How do I do that? And so one thing that I find that oftentimes leaders are missing are fundamental coaching skills. So they have all these team members, but they don't know how to lift up or raise the team members to a highest level of performance. So the question is, how do we do that?
Michael Bernzweig (25:25.522)
So, yeah, so a lot of times going through the whole program, they'll come out the other end with a lot of the strategies and tools that they need to be more effective in that same role.
Kim Ades (25:39.734)
Exactly, so as we are coaching them for themselves, we're also showing them how to coach and how to lead. And so this dual approach is extremely impactful, very, very powerful.
Michael Bernzweig (25:54.235)
Now is the journaling software something that you find a lot of individuals that go through the program want to take with them after or is it?
Kim Ades (26:04.28)
So yeah, we use a journal engine as it's a program that we built in-house and we use that for our coaching. And we also license it out to other speakers, trainers, coaches, consultants, et cetera. And so when we go through our program with a client, what we do is we leave their, we allow them to take their journals with them, right? They're allowed to download all of their journals because they just spent all this time and effort.
Michael Bernzweig (26:10.834)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (26:17.018)
Sure.
Michael Bernzweig (26:25.54)
Nice.
Kim Ades (26:31.328)
writing out their whole story and there's a lot of rich content there so they want to download it. But a lot of times people leave it where it is and come back and continue coaching over time. So we preserve it for them for a period of time because what we find is clients come back. So they might go through a 10 week period and maybe six months later they have another challenge that they want to deal with. And sometimes people go through 10 weeks and they say, my God, that was life changing.
I'm not done yet. I still have more to do and they just carry on. They continue.
Michael Bernzweig (27:04.004)
I love it. So there's no one right route in terms of coaching. It's a journey and it can take you wherever it may.
Kim Ades (27:13.606)
Exactly, it's a journey, exactly. But if you think about it like as a business owner yourself, look at, we have all kinds of challenges, right? We have financial challenges, we have strategy challenges, et cetera. But the ones that seem to like circulate a lot is the people challenges we have. And so we wanna help leaders do a much better job of managing those people challenges as well.
Michael Bernzweig (27:16.398)
Interesting.
Michael Bernzweig (27:40.977)
Yeah, and I assume you dig in at some pretty deep topics in coaching. So a couple of other questions that came to mind. One is...
As you're working with a client or let me let me back up. So the first question is for anyone that's listening to this that may be saying to themselves, wow, obviously, it sounds like something I want to jump into, we're going to leave a link in the show notes for anybody that would like to reach out. But for someone that's thinking, hey, coaching may be a career that feels like it could be a fit for me.
Are there different considerations you'd throw out there that people should ask themselves if they're thinking about it as a career?
Kim Ades (28:29.42)
Yes, yes, I will say this and I've spoken to so many people throughout my career who were interested in a career in coaching. And so my biggest piece of advice for anyone who is considering a career in coaching is find yourself a phenomenal coach. That is probably the single most valuable thing you can do towards your career in coaching.
Michael Bernzweig (28:59.46)
I love it. I love it. And then the original question that I had kind of ties into that. Are there some boundaries that you and your team need to set in terms of coaching and coaching engagements in terms of what topics you can and can't cover in coaching and all of that or not so much?
Kim Ades (29:00.525)
Yeah.
Kim Ades (29:21.26)
Okay, so I'm gonna answer it in two ways. Number one is in a coaching relationship, nothing is off the table. So we wanna cover all the topics, the personal topics, the professional topics, the difficult topics, the dark.
ugly topics, we want to cover everything. So no, nothing is off the table. And coaching is the place to explore all those topics, the topics that you wouldn't normally feel comfortable talking to anybody else about. So that's what coaching is for. But I want to address a word you used. And because I think it's an interesting conversation, the word that you use is the word boundaries. Are there any boundaries that you set? So it's funny because there's a concept
Michael Bernzweig (30:03.76)
sure.
Kim Ades (30:06.784)
the concept is, hey, you need to create healthy boundaries, right? People talk about healthy boundaries. And I'm here to say that there is no such thing as a healthy boundaries, a healthy boundary. Boundaries aren't particularly healthy. And I'll explain why. And it's a bit shocking, right? Because we always think we need to create boundaries. But what is a boundary? A boundary is a line in the sand that you draw where you say you can't cross this line, correct? That's what a boundary is.
Michael Bernzweig (30:25.264)
Right, yeah, totally.
Michael Bernzweig (30:33.842)
Sure.
Kim Ades (30:34.508)
And so when you are creating boundaries, what you are typically doing is a trying to control another person's behavior, which is always a losing battle. So that's thing number one. Thing number two is when you are creating a boundary, you're focused on what you don't want as opposed to what you do want. And what we know is that whatever you focus on tends to grow or expand in your experience.
So it's the wrong place to focus. We don't want you to focus on what you don't want. We want you to focus on what you do want and go after that. So for lots of different reasons, boundaries is not something we wanna help anybody create.
Michael Bernzweig (31:13.947)
I love it.
Michael Bernzweig (31:19.314)
And then one question that came in several times in different ways from the audience, I'll end on this. Obviously as a successful entrepreneur, a mother, how do you balance all of the different aspects of life, personal, professional, business, everything in one?
Kim Ades (31:42.712)
So I'm going to answer that in two ways as well. I'll answer you with one easy answer, and then we're going to talk about balance for a second. My philosophy is be where you are. So if I'm here, the only thing that matters is you and me right now. And so I focus on exactly where I am. When I'm working with a coaching client, nothing else is going on around me. I'm just focused on that client. And when I'm with my kids, I focus on my kids. So I'm very much in favor of being where I am.
Michael Bernzweig (31:45.948)
Sure.
Kim Ades (32:12.44)
So that's an easy answer. But I think the concept of work-life balance is really overrated and I'll explain to you why.
You know, you go to a park and you see two kids on a seesaw, right? And what happens when they're in perfect balance? What happens when they're in absolute perfect balance? Nothing. Nothing happens. So this concept of trying to go after balance is, I think, misunderstood or misplaced, right? We don't actually want a life of perfect balance. What we really want is we like the ride, the highs and the lows on this seesaw. We like the bumps. We like the experience. That's why we're here.
Michael Bernzweig (32:29.81)
Sure.
Nothing. Nothing happens.
Kim Ades (32:55.67)
And the question isn't how do I create balance? The question is how do I enjoy this ride when it's a little bumpy at times? Right? So that's what we're trying to help people do. We're not trying to help them create balance. We're trying to help them ride the waves in a way that doesn't freak them out or make them sick.
Michael Bernzweig (33:04.078)
I love it. Well, one...
Michael Bernzweig (33:17.066)
I really appreciate all of the insight and perspective there. think that made for a great deep dive on this episode. Hopefully you heard a few questions you have not heard before, but we'll leave it at that. Kim Ades, president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and Journal Engine Software. Thanks for joining us on the Career Spotlight this week.
Kim Ades (33:41.912)
Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.