In this timely episode, Ken Kilday, Founder and Creator of the Leader’s Cut, reveals the secret to recognizing when it’s time to change the way you lead.
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello, and welcome. Welcome once again to the latest and greatest episode of the secrets of the high demand coach. And I’m here with yet another high demand coach. And that is the one and only can kill that. And Ken is a former executive leader and a current full time executive business coach, he uses the diversity and depth of his leadership experience, which we’re gonna get to hear about to help CEOs, business owners and executives, to become better leaders, to become better executives and to become better decision makers deliver better results, and do that all both personally and professionally. He’s also got an e book out, I’m sure we’ll get to talk about that a little bit later called the six silver bullets, you need to grow your business fast. I’m excited to explore that a little bit further. But before we get there, Ken, welcome to the show, I’d love for you to just share a little bit of how you got into coaching and why.
Ken Kilday
Thanks for having me, Scott. And the way that I got into coaching and the reason that I did it, I’d had a corporate career, more than one industry 20 years just in financial services. And I’d reached a stage where there were there were aspects about my role and my work and the firm that I worked for that I absolutely loved. But yeah, there were other elements of it, that were just a bit of a grind. And I’m sure people can relate. Not that entrepreneurship doesn’t have its own segment of the grind, so to speak, but, but by and large, I accomplished a lot work with some great teams and reached an inflection point where the decision what for me was either I get another challenge to tackle maybe at a different firm, maybe at the one I was at or take a step back. And it was in conversation with my husband that he guided me through the introspection of a what, what do I love about leading people. And the long story made short is I like the process of human development of helping people tap into their own native genius, unlocking their own leadership genius, as I like to call it, and using that for their own progress and the efforts of their business or their division, and so on. So in my husband said, Hey, you, you can form a business around that people, people will need your help. So that’s what I did. And that’s how I got into coaching.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. So tell us a little bit then about what that coaching looks like, what’s some of the, you’d say, the most important work that you do with your clients.
Ken Kilday
Some of the most important important work that I do with my clients is getting them to understand that, that a lot of the way they were able to form a business, which means they had a great idea. They worked their butts off, they were willing to, to do more and four more hours than most people were willing to do. That’s the sort of the formula for entrepreneurship. And that while that is important to get off the ground, getting into you know, the the jargon of scale, but But building out a team and starting to delegate and recognizing that other people can do some of the things that we were doing ourselves better. That’s what helps people really grow. So it’s getting all that stuff that’s up here, out on paper, so that other people can help them do that. I pictured as they cannot be the owner, the founder cannot be the one that tells the origin story forever. And they cannot be the one that that helps people understand what the core values are forever. That needs to be part of the common element. It needs to be memorialized, if you will, somebody’s got to write this down. Yeah. And then it has to work its way into the systems that help that business grow.
Scott Ritzheimer
Got it. When When do we cross that proverbial line, if you will, from like startup mode to, again, what we would very loosely call scale mode?
Ken Kilday
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a time period, per se, I think it’s a there’s a moment where whatever are right, if we’re 10 hour day, or 12 hour day people whatever that quantity is, we work a certain pattern and it works and it works and we get a lot of results. And then all of a sudden we stall and our effort is not less at all. Ammar enthusiasm, is it less, but it’s starting to wane because we’re not getting the results. That’s the moment that’s when you know, you’ve gone as far as you’re going to get. It’s that a the age old meme of what got you here won’t get you there. You’ve got as far as you’re getting with what you’re doing. And now it’s time to adjust.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. What would you say are some of the the beliefs because and I think you brought up a really interesting point, which is that these beliefs served the entrepreneur well at some point in time, right? So we’re not talking about just bad business. We’re actually talking about really, really good business decisions that maybe aren’t serving you well anymore. So what would you say are some of the top places where that pattern shows up?
Ken Kilday
Oh, for sure it’s going to come in. It’s going to come in aspects of communication. There, the last part is getting busier and busier. And there have that sense of, I’m telling my people, I’m telling them, I’m telling them. But it’s not. It’s not landing anymore, because there’s too many of them, right, they’ve hit that stage. The second component is the delegate, that they used to do everything because they had to do everything. They were likely a single shingle when they started. But they’re having a hard time letting go. Like, supposedly they’ve hired some people to help them but they’re not letting those people actually help. Right, they’re still hanging on to a lot of things. That aspect, if I let go for a second, something’s gonna fall apart. Right? And it’s a it’s a funny paradox intention. But that’s how that shows up.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good. And so someone’s there, and maybe they feel like they’ve stalled. So sometimes that language can get a little slippery for me, like, what does stalled look like? Isn’t did I have a bad day? You know, is it a bad week? Like, what are some of the things maybe even a story or two that you have of like, Hey, this is what it looks like, this is what it feels like. Because being an entrepreneur, there’s bad days, right? There’s bad weeks, there’s even bad months that aren’t necessarily existential. But then there are other times when it’s a lot more than a bad day, week or month. But we I think we haven’t, we’ve been through so many bad days, weeks and months that we have an opportunity to incorrectly diagnose it is just another one of those. So how do some of the challenges that you help folks overcome? How do they differentiate from kind of those momentary afflictions, if you will?
Ken Kilday
There’s, there’s at least a pattern. So it’s not a one bad day, they have a moment of reflection, where they realize to your point of this is not one bad day, this is now a bad quarter. It’s actually a bad year. And it’s I have not grown, but I’ve never worked harder in my life. One of my clients, are there a partnership. And what they told me in retrospect, looking back at what’s the difference and working together, one element that that they picked out was they said, hey, you know, we communicate with each other so much better. I’m like, tell me, Well, what was it like before, and they said, We could not sit in a room for a period of time and talk about our business, the one we found it without screaming at each other. And that had not been their norm. That’s not how they started the business. It got to that. And then they sat back when they realized, this is not normal. I mean, it’s not our normal. And that’s, that’s what they, I had run into them at a networking event, and, and so on. And we’ve been working together for three years, but that was how that showed up for them.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. And there’s something that jumped out for me there. And that is that we tend to talk about and think about problems as absolute right, I’ve got a bad employee, I’ve got a partner who’s a pain in the butt, right? We don’t like working together, as if it’s kind of always that way and will always be that way. But I think what happens more often than not, you could have someone who’s a bad employee in one position, who’s a great employee and another or a bad employee and one you know, team or company who’s a great employee in another. You can have two people who love working together, right godfather of each other’s children, who end up one day in a screaming match and realize this is what we’ve done for the last three months. And, and so I think you bring up a really good point, which is helpful for folks to grab on to and that it’s not just, this is this is always wrong, or this is always right, or that that person is always better, always good, but the timing can have such a profound impact on that over time. And that’s fascinating question that comes up though, is what do folks try to do before they bring in someone like yourself with and how does that go?
Ken Kilday
You know, they what they try to do is they read all the current books, maybe some of the Golden Oldies and they try to diagnose themselves, but I, I believe that in our profession, what we bring is a subjective perspective. And you know, all the sports analogies really do work, in that if you look at any, any the listener, whatever your favorite sport is, whomever the champion is in your sport, they have had one if not multiple coaches to get there. And that’s because somebody has observed them playing and can see you know, in golf, move your elbow an inch and that can be the difference between winning and losing. It’s that subtle. And in business coaching, it’s that as well as have we come in objectively and we’re taking a look at. And I think what people get just really awfully wrong is if you new business are already felt that sense of overwhelm, like, I don’t know how I work in New harder, doing more of that is not going to solve it. Right, doing exactly what you’re doing that mania is not going to solve it. And chances are, you’re missing some of the clues that are in front of you, because you’re so busy reacting. That’s what I observed. That’s what I see.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And so much of what you’re talking about aligns so much with the different stages that we talked about with our audience. So that early struggle stage and it is it’s that entrepreneurial, like you got to figure out how to sell, you got to figure out how to get like the minimum viable thing out the door and go and go and go. And if you’re still doing that, as CEO, you know, 510 2050 employees later, we’ve got a really big problem on our hands, you can’t scale you, right? You can scale a business, but you can’t scale you. And I love the way that you you approach that and and what I think a lot of folks miss that, that you almost missed in in your answer, but you gave it was we try and say hey, what are the tactics? What are the five things that I need to be doing? And right out of the gate, you’re saying, hey, it’s not so much about the tactics, what you’re doing is what are you thinking? What are you believing? Right? And from that point, what are you doing? So why do you think? Why do you think even when confronted with it, right? The advice that you would give a client or you know, listening to a podcast and saying, Yeah, I recognize the pattern. Why is it so hard to change some of those behaviors and beliefs?
Ken Kilday
I think at least a core part of it is the the aspect that makes someone a successful entrepreneur, that grit that tenacity, the know how the work ethic, and then suddenly they have to say to themselves, Oh, I don’t have it all figured out. It’s almost a paradox. That confidence that made them a successful business owner in the first place, is the same thing that’s going to keep them from asking for some a little bit of additional help. Yeah. And sort of that well, what are you going to tell me kind of, it’s that Moxie that made them successful will kind of hold them back from getting a little bit of external help.
Scott Ritzheimer
All right we’ve been kind of leading up to this. And it’s always my favorite part of the show. I’m been looking forward to it in this conversation. And I know our audience as well, because they know it’s coming. But I’d love to ask you, what is the biggest secret that you’d want to share that you wish was not a secret? What’s that one thing that you wish every listener? Every entrepreneur, every business leader listening today knew or understood?
Ken Kilday
Yeah, it’s it’s the reality that time is the great equalizer. It’s the one resource that absolutely everybody has the exact same quantity there. Nobody has more or less time. And that’s usually one of the first objections I hear is I just don’t have any time I’m so busy. I’m out of time, I don’t have time. And yet we can find somebody in our profession, or in a similar business that that just uses it better. It’s really not time so much as its focus. So I wish people understood that if they can master that, it becomes a competitive advantage. Once they’ve done so they master that one. The rest fall in line.
Scott Ritzheimer
What would you say baby-step number one, right? For someone who’s looking and saying, hey, I want to have more focus, I want to make better use of my time, what would be something that they could implement today?
Ken Kilday
Oh, number one, carve out 30 minutes an hour if you can, if you can manage it psychologically, or carve out 30 minutes and shut absolutely everything off. And, and have a quiet conversation with yourself about your own business. In other words, get out of working in it and start working on it. If they can do that. Think about a plan that they want to execute for the day meaning what are they going to get done today? plot it out, plan it out, think about it, and then go do your day. It will change everything. Because a lot of very successful entrepreneurs they’ve slowly gotten into a habit of they are the the helpdesk for absolutely everyone in their organization. Everybody comes to them for the answer because they have them. So it’s the we need to teach them to fish not hand them the fish. And that starts with quiet time. Number one.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Excellent, excellent advice. It’s surprising to me or at least it was a President to me as I started bumping into it, how many high level CEOs and leaders have a ritual of sorts of talking to themselves of coaching themselves, right? And there’s all kinds of different frameworks and patterns for that. But that that moment to sit down and reflect and plan accordingly, I think as Yes, excellent advice. Another question that I have for you here, I’m going to have you jump into the ring with us take off your coaching consultant hat and put on your CEO hat and tell us a little bit about what growth looks like for you and your business in particular,
Ken Kilday
Growth for me next year, in particular, as I set the groundwork this year, is to bring in a few more independent coaches, people like me that would love to leave a corporate environment and do a little more of this hands on work, which is what they’ve enjoyed in their own careers much like my own, and helping them with a framework. In other words, they can come in and use the leaders cut framework, make it their own, put their own their own personality on top of it, and help people I that was part of a part of me starting a business was took a long time for me to set up all of my routines, etc. But I can help jumpstart them. So that’s what growth really looks like for me, I’ll continue to grow my my personal coaching business, but also bring on some additional coaches.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. I love that. Very, very exciting times. So I’d be remiss to not ask about the ebook that you’ve published. So the six silver bullets, you need to grow your business fast. Why don’t you give us just a quick bit on why we should grab a copy and where we can grab a copy.
Ken Kilday
Sure, this is part of the so remember, my my advice was a create at least 30 minutes for yourself this the 23 Minute read, yes, I timed it. And I’m not a I’m not a speed reader myself. The way my brain works is a lot of times I just need a frame. And then I can put my own stuff on top of it. And I feel like this really helps helps business owners start someplace of, hey, this is how you use the 30 minutes to get yourself organized. And it’s completely customizable. So, and part of this stems from you know, early in my financial services career, I was a financial planner, I maintain my financial planning designation because it was so hard to get. And that’s why I was I think it shocks people that you know, sort of silver bullet one that big mistake people make is you start with the end in mind, which is covey, but it’s also the way we we create financial plans for families are used to what are you going to do with this business? Are you going to pass it on to a family member? Do you want to sell it, you want to sell it to the employees? Having those things in mind helps us with a decision making process for growing it in the first place? Right? So that’s number one. And the rest flow from that. And strangely enough, I spent all the time talking about how time is differentiator, I actually put that last week, there are some other things that have to come before that. But you can think of the whole thing is more of a circle, right? Rather than a year or six things it’s going to circle. They all have to come together to form the core of the successful business.
Scott Ritzheimer
Perfect. And where can we get a copy?
Ken Kilday
Sure, it is available at my website, kenkilday.com. Um, anyone can go there, the ebook is available. There’s a banner, click the link, you’ll get it. You can also find me all my social is there, all the contact is there. My calendar is there. I tried to design or The Mountain Mojo Group, my marketing firm designed a site that tackle all the things that I get frustrated with when I go to a site. I don’t want everything there. Just something funny, a just a silly quirk is when I see like the link that says schedule on any website and I click schedule but it’s not an actual calendar. It’s a form. I always yell at the computer. Like that’s not a schedule. That’s a form. So everything is everything on my website. You can find me anywhere you want. And it’s all there.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. So for those of you listening, head on over to kenkilday.com and get a copy of the six silver bullets you need to grow your business fast and put it on your schedule for tomorrow morning. 8:30, 7:30, 5:30 Whenever it is that you you kick off your day, kick it off right with with Ken’s ebook and on a promise you won’t regret it. Ken, thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate it. Excellent. Yeah, I loved having you on it was a fantastic conversation. For those of you who are listening your time and attention mean the absolute world to us it’s such an honor that you spent your time here with us today I hope you got as much out of the conversation as I did and I can’t wait to see you next time take care.
Contact Ken Kilday
Ken is a former executive leader and current full-time Executive Business Coach. He uses the diversity and depth of his leadership experience to help CEOs, Business Owners, and Executives become better leaders, make better decisions, and deliver better results, both personally and professionally.
To learn more about Ken and his work at the Leader’s Cut or to download his powerful e-book “The Six Silver Bullets You Need to Grow Your Business Fast” visit kenkilday.com