Maximizing Potential Through Coaching with Kyle Collins

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Kyle Collins, an accomplished leadership coach and strategist dedicated to helping professionals maximize their potential and achieve meaningful career growth. Kyle shares practical insights on authentic leadership, team development, and cultivating a growth mindset, offering strategies to navigate challenges, enhance influence, and build stronger workplace relationships. With her deep experience in coaching and organizational development, Kyle provides actionable advice for both emerging and seasoned leaders.

You can find him on:

kyle23collins@gmail.com 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-c-a5274339/

https://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-There-Are-Time-Tested/

Transcript

Kyle Collins: 0:00

Yeah, so there's a huge differentiation between therapy and coaching, but I feel like there's a stigma around both. There's a stigma around having an outsider, a third-party perspective come in and try to help you get to the goals that you want. It's almost viewed like either I don't know what they do, I don't know they actually know what this is. There's a lot of misinformation. It's gonna be super expensive, I can't afford it. There's just a lot of misinformation out there that even to get people to an initial call, a vision call to figure out what they're about, and even if we're a good match together, even getting people to that call has been the hard part for me because I think the stigma not knowing what what to expect. Honestly, a lot of people not having the belief in themselves that they can actually do the hard work, the shadow work, the nitty gritty reflection to um yeah, people are scared of that. A lot of people are scared of that, so they don't even approach the first conversation.

Davis Nguyen: 0:47

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wynne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to a hundred thousand dollar years, a hundred thousand dollar months, and even a hundred thousand dollar weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself, and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, go discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Kevin Yee: 1:18

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Kyle Collins. He's been a coach for about eight months, and he is the founder of Kyle Collins Coaching. Welcome to the show, Kyle.

Kyle Collins: 1:31

Thanks, Kevin. So happy to be here.

Kevin Yee: 1:32

Now you have a very interesting back. You were a chiropractor, a practicing chiropractor at one point. And then you transitioned into coaching. I'm so curious. How did you make that transition? And more importantly, what made you want to start a business out of it?

Kyle Collins: 1:44

Interesting transition to say the least. So my wife is a brain cancer physician. She's been in uh grad school, fellowship, residency. We've moved a ton of times. So as a chiropractor, the reason I got into it is because I love to help people, I like to see them succeed. And that's not much different from the coaching space. So I was a trained chiropractor, practiced for three and a half years, had a lot of great patients, and then we moved. I got in a solar for six and a half years, and then was a consultant there. I've written a book, authored now in the coaching space. So I feel like all of my life experience to this point has prepared me really well to see a lot of different things. Also, being in a long distance relationship for 11 years, also a father of two young daughters. So there's just a lot of spaces I've learned. And now in this coaching space, I really love to show up and figure out the why behind what matters for people and how do we get you closer to that as fast as possible.

Kevin Yee: 2:29

Yeah. Now, you know a lot of people in coaching, right? When they're talking about coaching businesses and all that, they always talk about target audience, ideal client profiles, and all that. And so I guess how did you kind of decide who you wanted to help or who do you help right now?

Kyle Collins: 2:42

Yeah, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Ed Milette's probably one of my favorites, and he always talks about we are most equipped and most, yeah, most equipped to serve the people that we used to be. So I view my role as finding out what did I need, you know, 10, 15 years ago, and that's my ideal client profile. So right now I'm serving mid-career men a decade plus in their careers who are crushing it at work, but they're ultimately finding a lack of fulfillment, a lack of joy. They're not showing up as in fatherhood the way they want, they're not showing up for their own health care the way they want, they're not showing up with their spouse or significant other the way they want. So they're really good in the business space, not doing so great in the personal space.

Kevin Yee: 3:17

Why do you feel like that is? Are you noticing any like kind of themes and whatnot?

Kyle Collins: 3:20

Yeah, I think the themes are it's way easier to focus on metrics. I've got my business, I know exactly the inputs I need to take to get good outputs. Whereas in the other space is more ethereal, you know, showing up and being dedicated and disciplined in my workout regime, showing up and making sure I prioritize my wife like I used to when we were dating. Like it's way, you have way more intentionality and there's way more hard work in that space, in my mind, than just showing up and you know how to run a business, you've been successful, you've done it for a long time, and you're probably bored. Yeah.

Kevin Yee: 3:49

Yeah. And I feel like, especially as a male too, I feel like the masculinity and femininity dynamic has been like kind of disappearing uh in our society. And then what I've also noticed too is like honestly, a lot of guys they hate doing the shadow work stuff, like the stuff that they really think. That's the hard stuff that's hard stuff because I feel like us as men, we we all have easy stuff and we don't want to admit certain things as well. So that's uh at least my take on it.

Kyle Collins: 4:17

Uh I totally agree with you, Kevin. That is exactly what exactly right. That's perfect.

Kevin Yee: 4:21

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if you're targeting mid-career men who are crushing it in business, but not so much on the life and personal side. Let's talk about marketing. How do these people typically? What kind of marketing are you doing right now?

Kyle Collins: 4:33

Yeah, so it's been an interesting journey into this business for myself. I noticed all my first six clients were all people that I had known between five and twenty years. We've had an established relationship, we worked together, went to school together, whatever, lived together. And uh, so I started with those people, you know, building my skill set, and then those people have led me to others, they've referred me to friends in their network that I don't know. So it's really grown organically to this point where I'm just getting tons of referrals from people that I've already served. I've also identified a gap in my network personally. So now I I just paid my own coaching around LinkedIn to start being on that platform a bunch more to reach out to people I don't know.

Kevin Yee: 5:10

That's how I'm growing my business right now, is organically plus so it sounds like a bit of word of mouth referral in LinkedIn uh for your main social media platform. Yep. Is that right? Okay, cool. All right, and since you're like eight months in, what are some kind of challenges that you're notice when it comes to finding clients right now?

Kyle Collins: 5:25

Yeah, so there's a huge differentiation between therapy and coaching, but I feel like there's a stigma around both. There's a stigma around having an outsider, uh third-party perspective come in and try to help you get to the goals that you want. It's almost viewed like either I don't know what they do, I don't know actually know what this is. There's a lot of misinformation. It's gonna be super expensive, I can't afford it. There's just a lot of misinformation out there that even to get people to an initial call, a vision call to figure out what they're about, and even if we're a good match together, even getting people to that call has been the hard part for me because I think the stigma not knowing what what to expect, honestly, a lot of people not having the belief in themselves that they can actually do the hard work, shadow work, the the nitty gritty reflection to um yeah, people are scared of that. A lot of people are scared of that, so they don't even approach the first conversation.

Kevin Yee: 6:13

Yeah, I can't imagine. Like, I do a lot of jujitsu and combat sports and stuff too. So I can imagine, like, if I said shadow work, half the guy not even half, probably 80% of the guys would be like, what the f like the other 20 be like, ooh, interesting, right? They're gonna run the other one, I believe. I guess like what you mentioned the stigmas. What are those associated with like coaching and the work you do? Like, what are the most common things that you're noticing right now?

Kyle Collins: 6:35

I think since I serve men specifically right now, I think in their minds, in a lot of our minds, it comes back to the ego you talked about earlier. People, men specifically, have such a paradigm and a stigma around, hey, this is a weakness that I need help with. Like, I don't want to be viewed as weak in any capacity. So if I'm having a coach that helping me get to my goals, I view myself as weak for needing that assistance. And that's just something a lot of men don't want to even deal with. Like, I'm good, I got it. I can the weight of the world is on my shoulders and I can handle it, man. I just think it's an ego thing.

Kevin Yee: 7:05

Yeah, it's like driven men who are like really killing at business too. I can only imagine that as well. Yeah. And so, what are some ways that you've experimented with or thought about like, I don't know, not getting past the ego, but making people more open to like a coaching conversation and whatnot. What have you kind of noticed?

Kyle Collins: 7:23

I think it's very easy to start out the call. Hey, tell me all your highlights, tell me what you come alive, and most of the time it's going to be business related. They're gonna talk about their success, how many, how much money they're gonna talk about how long they've been in business and how much growth they've had and all of these metrics that they can point to as successful. And then I'll just ask them a simple conversation about like, oh, cool. That sounds amazing. Proud of you for that. Also, tell me what your kids are saying about you. Tell me your relationship with your spouse. Like, I can ask a couple very quick questions, or like, hey, let's do a deathbed exercise and say at age 95, you're gonna pass away. You know, what legacy do you want to be known for? Is it truly about this guy crushed it in business but has no relationship with any of his family because he was always at work? What do you actually what is your why? Simon Sinek always talked about, you know, what is your why? So when we get into that realm and that part of the conversation, people quickly identify, huh? Maybe I've only been prioritizing for this work stuff, and I've really let everything else slip by the wayside. So it's really it's questions for this, it's questions that illuminate. Wow, I've never thought about that. I see.

Kevin Yee: 8:19

Yeah, and it probably helps that you're like also a husband and girl dad, according to your LinkedIn too. So I empathize with that as well. Like you're like, oh, what do your kids say about you? Like, I'm sure that hits that hits okay.

Kyle Collins: 8:31

Can I interject real quick? I just just before this podcast, I got off a call and I'm with a guy who's a financial advisor who's crushing it by every metric. He's been doing it a decade plus, doing really well for his family, making a lot of income. And we've had two months of conversations, it's been going really good, and he's finally got to the point where, like, you know what? I would love to just bring my wife on a call, and I want you to grill her about what she needs from me, what my three daughters, what she thinks our three daughters need from me. And uh, we just had that conversation, and it was very, very illuminating to hear actually from his wife, like, yeah, that's great. You're the provider, you're doing awesome at work. Here's the things you're really lacking in right now, and here's the things I would love to see from you. And it was, I think it's hard, right? That's that shadow work. That's like, I don't want to identify a weakness of my life, I want to focus on all of my strengths because I know I'm doing well there. It was uh as it occurs to me.

Kevin Yee: 9:22

That's pretty eye-opening too, and it's kind of like uh creating this like savy back space for the wife too, because she probably has been thinking these things for a while, but just never brought it up, you know?

Kyle Collins: 9:32

So yeah, and then what we did is we created like, okay, five years, your oldest twins, they're 12 years old. You've got five or six years until they're done from high school and leaving the next and going to college and whatever they do. Like, what do you want this next five years to look like? How do you want to show up as a dad in this space knowing you've got very limited time left with them? And like just getting him on those type of questions, deep reflection, I think is uh a new territory for him to enter. And he loved it, and also it's gonna be very hard work. I see.

Kevin Yee: 9:58

Yeah, you're having these conversations, right, with people, and people are finding out about you, and you're getting their wives on the calls too and stuff. That's hilarious. But I'm kind of curious, like, once people start working with you, right? What do your different coaching offers or modalities look like? Do you mostly do one-on-one coaching? Do you do like group coaching? Like, how do you think about your different offers?

Kyle Collins: 10:20

Yeah, as of right now, it is one-to-one coaching, and as my business grows in skills, my hope is to have cohorts of four to five men at a time because there's so much synergy when you hear from not just from me, your coach, but you hear from another man talking in their life what they're experiencing right now. So, my goal is in the next six to twelve months, I would love to have three or four of those cohorts operating as well, in addition to the one-to-one coaching. I just feel as when you get a group of four or five guys together and they're actually real and raw and can talk about their business and all the other ways they want to show up, there's just so much more power to that. Seeing, oh, there is other men who are vulnerable and who don't have it all together, there's a really powerful space to operate.

Kevin Yee: 10:57

And so it's like you want to do the cohort-based model in the future. One of the things I'm also curious about because the work you do, it's a bit esoteric, right? I personally see the value in it. But when you come from a solar background, right? So, like, you know, like with sales and marketing, there's a clear, tangible result with it. But with these esoteric kind of like valuable things, we know in our hearts it's very valuable, but how do you assign like pricing to it, right? Because a lot of coaches, they're in things like leadership or whatever, like on this podcast, and I think a lot of coaches struggle with pricing, and so you don't have to give any hard numbers, but I would love to kind of hear your thoughts about how you structure your pricing. Do you do like project-based, hourly, value-based retainers, subscriptions? Like, where have you kind of gravitated to so far?

Kyle Collins: 11:44

All of my clients I've had have been six-month um containers, and in that six months, it's based on the transformation they're looking for. So the the pricing structure is different based on how often they would like to meet and what they're actually up to in the world. If if someone's got a very, very clear goal, it's going to be super aspirational and it's gonna require a lot of work, that's gonna be more of a price point. And you're right, Kevin. You're so right. It's so hard. I'm not a career coach that can say, hey, come through my program, I'm gonna put you, we're gonna clarify your resume, I'm gonna get you so many interviews, I'm gonna prep you for these interviews, and you're going to have a transformational job. In this space, it's more about, hey, we're gonna create a light vision that you're gonna live into. We're going to create this is what this family stands for, this is what me personally stands for. I'm gonna have my own mission statement, how I show up in the world. I'm gonna talk about uh limiting beliefs, mindset shift, how am I what are the blind spots that I don't necessarily see that a coach can say, hey, did you realize you say this word all the time? Kevin, you're constantly saying the word me. You feel like there's so much judgment and shame, and you're not even noticing every single sentence you say. You feel like there's heaviness and weight and gravity to it. I can imagine that showing up in your marriage where your spouse just there's no levity, there's no lightness, there's no fun. So it's just a very fun. So in my coaching, it's a three-legged stool. We've got vision, we've got mindset, and then we have ultimately the strategy, the commitments we make every week that we have a session. What are the one of the two commitments we can take out of this to have that snowball of momentum moving forward? So to your question, it's very hard to have an outcome, a transformation guarantee. But what people will tell me, the referrals I've received, the recommendations I've gotten on LinkedIn has been like, hey, this is where I was. Basically, it was Groundhog's Day. I wasn't bored, I wasn't excited. And now I've got that passion, I've got that fire, I've got I've got it of waking up every day because I'm now pursuing greatness in a different pathway. Um, it is esoteric, but that's what we work through.

Kevin Yee: 13:28

Yeah, this is interesting because I can imagine. I always think about value, and value is always very, very subjective. What's valuable to one person is it might be valuable, not valuable to another person, but and then how do you quantify value, right? Like of that same thing. And so it's just really interesting. And I love I love the esoteric type of problems because they require like a very unconventional way to price these things and stuff too. And so yeah, I I love your experience there. With that being said, you did say something interesting about like eventually launching a future program and stuff. And so one of the things I'm also interested in are your future goals. And so, you know, you're kind of new in the business, but I guess like where do you kind of want this coaching business to take you in the next few years? Do you have any secret dreams, big ambitions, desires to scale, hire people? We'll love to hear.

Kyle Collins: 14:17

Yeah, you're right. I am newer in this. Eight months is not a long time to be doing something. And I think next three years, my my vision would be I would love to have a team where I've got such demand that I have a wait list. I've identified, you know, I'm I've got two daughters, my wife is pretty busy at work, I take care of a lot of the house stuff. So I've identified in my life working 20 to 25 hours a week is optimal for me to still do everything else that I want to do. And that means scaling, I need other people. I need VAs that are they're the ones, a lot of the lead gen. And then maybe the initial call is still with me. Maybe eventually I have coaches that I've trained up to now run some of these cohorts, and then you know, every third time I'm on that training call. Yeah, I would love to have a team. I also would love, I'm an author. I would also love to be a keynote speaker at some point and and turn this. Hey, I'm I'm going into and doing some of this work. I'm going into middle schools and high schools and doing some of this work. That would be the optimal vision. Probably not three years from now, but a little longer to my day from now.

Kevin Yee: 15:14

Yeah, I love that. Um, and in your current season business right now, what are some challenges that you're noticing? Maybe some challenges that people probably wouldn't expect.

Kyle Collins: 15:23

I've experienced this work myself and how transformational it is and how confident I am, just totally different version of myself than I was when I started this. I started on the personal development journey in 2018, so it's been seven years. And who I was then, the limiting beliefs I had, the scarcity mindset, all the things I dealt with internally and to where I am now, I'm a vastly different version of myself. And I thought, you know, introducing that to other people, it'd be easy. It's an easy conversation. People would love to have that. I'll be filled with vision calls nonstop. Like lead gen is gonna be easy. It hasn't been that way, and I think it comes back to the misinformation, a lot of people not wanting to do the work. So for me, the biggest issue I've had is that lead gen, getting people to that initial vision call. Once I have someone on that call and we can have an initial 45 to 60 minute conversation, at that point, people know, oh, this is what this is. I want this. Or I had I had one that came to a vision call. He's like, honestly, it was sad he told me this. He's like, Kyle, I don't think I'm worthy. I'm not a worthy person to even enter into this space right now of my life. The way I think about myself, I don't even view myself as someone in this growth mindset space. I was like, okay. So the lead gen has been the hardest thing for me, 100%.

Kevin Yee: 16:27

I see I see. Interesting, okay.

Kyle Collins: 16:30

Which is funny because a lot of the coaches I talk to, they're just flooded all the time. They've got people coming in the door. Is it the way I'm marketing it? Is it the way I'm just feeling myself? What is it about the way I'm having these conversations that's not inviting people onto these initial calls?

Kevin Yee: 16:44

Through your perspective, what do you feel like is missing?

Kyle Collins: 16:46

I would what I think I've identified is the where I came from, most of the people I know. Very blue-collar. I love the work ethic, but investing in something like this, either time or money or even the believability of I'm worthy of something that's gonna transform my life, a lot of limiting beliefs around that. So for me, I've identified just getting in new network spaces, getting in new areas of of people that are already growth-minded, growth-oriented, newer network for myself. And that's not blame or judgment on those other people, they're great people. It's just a different way of being.

Kevin Yee: 17:15

It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Like I when I think of I mean, we've all like I've been there at least, like blue-collar type of stuff. Like your focus is on survival, right? On more of the survival lower needs, versus like shadow work and stuff. Like when typically when people do all shadow work, it's like when everything's taken care of, the middle mid-career people that you're talking about, they have all the needs, they have they're bringing in good income. They're like they're pretty, they don't have to worry about like a roof over their head most of the times and stuff like that, too, right? For the people to consider uh shadow work. So I think that's really interesting observation. And I would say that, Kevin, it is a privilege to do this work. Well, Kyle, let's play a game if you're open for it. Sure. As you know, a lot of coaches they tend to invest things, it could be like their oaching for themselves, marketing, team members, masterminds. There's a lot of different things people invest in, right? And so one of the things I'm always curious about are the stories behind these investments. So we're gonna play a little game I learned from a master storyteller, and there'll be four prompts. And I just want you to tell me the first thing that comes to mind. And if there's a story, I'd love to hear it. Okay, fun. First business investment you remember for myself.

Kyle Collins: 18:21

When I was in college between my freshman and sophomore years, I joined a uh sales organization called Cutco Knives. Vector Marketing, I sold Cutco Knives, and to be able to go out and demonstrate to others the product, I had to first invest in the product myself and buy something that I could take to other people's home. So I think it was about 500 bucks at that point, that season of life, that felt like $10,000. That was the first investment, but at some point it does take money to make money.

Kevin Yee: 18:47

The real question is do you still have those knives?

Kyle Collins: 18:49

I gave them to my mom. That's funny.

Kevin Yee: 18:51

I've always wondered, like I people actually told me they're actually really good knives, but I just like I wonder where they are. Like a lot of my friends in college, they were doing cut co and stuff like that. And I wonder where if people still have their cutko knives and all that to this day.

Kyle Collins: 19:04

Every person I know of that I sold them to still has them in operation today, and they still work amazingly. They're awesome. Yeah, they are expensive though, it's an investment. Yeah. I remember that then when I sold, I always went for this one. It was a thousand dollar knife set. Like it's a life guarantee. You get free sharpening for life, but that's a pretty heavy investment where I came from.

Kevin Yee: 19:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that was your first investment. Yeah, last business investment you made.

Kyle Collins: 19:27

Last business investment I made was seven weeks ago. I joined a LinkedIn training cohort for people that want to improve their LinkedIn messaging and figure out how to get clientele customers from LinkedIn. That was a five $5,000 investment.

Kevin Yee: 19:41

Nice. Now we're going to get into the juicy ones. Best investment you made.

Kyle Collins: 19:45

Two come to mind. The first one would honestly, it sounds corny, but investing in myself. So when I stopped being a chiropractor, I joined a startup solar company, 100% commission, and I had about 120,000 of student loans to pay. And with no guarantee of any income, and I was like, you know what? I will succeed in anything I try. And it was crazy, Kevin. I joined that company in February, and by Halloween, I had paid off all my student loans. So that was the first investment was self-fest investment. The second best investment I would say I made is actually investing in my own transformational life coach. Where I was like, hey, I'm doing really well. I've succeeded in business, I've seeded in everything I've tried, but I still feel like there's something out there that's not, I'm not ultimately fulfilled. And I invested in my own coach. I also paid 20k for a six-month program to just go through this work myself so I could understand it more. And as I went through it, I was like, I feel like everything in my life, all my experiences have led me to now know that this is what I want to do from here forward. So those two investments, and both of them were investing in my future growth.

Kevin Yee: 20:41

The next one is worst business investment that you kind of wish you got your money back from.

Kyle Collins: 20:46

I've got a great example of this. Worst business investment that I want my money back from is when I was writing my book. So I'm an author, I wrote a book that if a Chicago bus takes me out and I can't raise my daughters the way I want, I put into a book 14 different principles I live by that have made me successful and made me enjoy life. And initially, I started out writing that manuscript and was only gonna give it to my daughters. It wasn't gonna be a published book for anybody else. And then I saw something on Facebook about uh, you know, turn your book and into an investment of some sort and get it out to the world, get it on Amazon, all this stuff. I paid a bunch of money for an editor, for them to do marketing for me. It turned into a giant thing that at the end of the day I never wanted it to be. I paid over 15k for this book marketing service in twofold. Number one, I've never seen that return on investment. Number two is it got away from the book from what the book was initially about. That book was written from my heart to my daughters, and it became about this putting something out in the world to be known, to get on stages. Like it became something vastly different from what I wanted it to be. That was a bad investment.

Kevin Yee: 21:48

I really like the letters to your daughter. That one is too bad. But like I think about the classic books or letters I read. Like if you're into copywriting, there's this famous like boron letters. Basically, it was a letter to his son. And it's actually really great copywriting lessons in there, but it's a letter to his son while he's in prison. Apparently, he did unethical copywriting or something like that, landed in jail. But he's writing letters to his son and stuff, and it's a really great like life business and stuff. You can find them for free online, and then some people resell that book on like Amazon and stuff. But yeah, it just reminded me of like what you're talking about letters to your daughter and stuff like that, like very similar.

Kyle Collins: 22:25

So it's kind of kind of funny, just a mini-example. Chapter two is about forgiveness, and then I chronicle a story about how I had to forgive someone a family member who stole my credit. Someone in my family went to forgive them. Just so much, so a lot of my life story, the girls are getting not only these principles, but also stories wrapped around them, how they were applied in my life. Chapter one's about her mom and I journey of 11 years of long distance living in separate countries. How she was a foreign exchange student in his school, that's how we met, and then we've dated for a long time. So just it's kind of a fun way to make a boat ask down to them while also they're allowed to see how their parents lived a lot of their life.

Kevin Yee: 22:58

Speaking about all these investments, as we're sharing these stories, right? I guess how has your decision-making process changed and what to invest in?

Kyle Collins: 23:06

I used to be the guy, Kevin, that I would price tag everything. Literally, go to the grocery store and I would cost compare. I would go to the clothes store and say, Oh, this one's cheaper, so I'm gonna get that. I used to be the most frugal person and I would just go for the cheapest thing and then buy it over and over. The older I've gotten, I've recognized when you invest in some quality, whether it be clothes or whether it be something for your own personal growth, that the return on an investment is I'm not looking at a financial return on investment anymore. I'm more maximizing for if I get something really quality, I'm not gonna need to buy more and more and more of this thing. Or if I invest in something that really transforms the way I look at the world and the way I think and the way I interact and who I show up to be because of that thing, I don't care how much money I pay for it. It's more about who am I becoming through this investment.

Kevin Yee: 23:49

There's a really, I don't know why I know this saying, but there's a Bulgarian like saying, I can't afford to buy cheap or something like that. Paraphrasing, yeah. But uh, I learned it from this world-class Olympian like trainer, his name's Charles Poloquin. He passed away a few years ago, but he used to always say that and stuff like that too. So yeah, I think a lot of times we can get so caught up in the numbers and stuff like that that we forget about the transformation or the lifelong impact that we carry this throughout our lives and the energetics of it too. If it makes our lives so much easier, if it frees up this energetic block and we can think more creatively or think more strategically in our businesses, it'll pay like pay off 10x or however multiplier we want to quantify by. But yeah, love that. That's her.

Kyle Collins: 24:32

Yeah, okay. And you're noticing a theme here, is a lot of times for me, the way I structure and price my coaching and the way I invest in things, there's not always a I know exactly 3x I'm gonna return on my investment. It's more about this one thing I learned I can now use for the next 60 years. So I would argue that thing is I paid for it, but really I've got a lifelong knowledge that I now have for the rest of my life. So it's hard to quantify things. In my mind, a lot of times it can be hard to quantify things, the value that they're bringing. There's a cost and then there's value, and those are two very different things.

Kevin Yee: 25:04

Thank you for differentiating those two things. I love it. Okay, last game. Business owner, you've probably gotten a lot of good advice, a lot of bad advice, right? So this next section is called underrated. So, what is the most underrated and what is the most overrated piece of advice you've gotten about business?

Kyle Collins: 25:19

That's a great question. I think the most underrated advice I've received is the fact that at the end of the day, most businesses revolve around the person that created it. So, my brand, the story I tell, the way I show up in the world, that is going to directly influence my business. I don't think I've put enough stock into that up until now. The most overrated advice I've been given, I think it would be the most overrated advice I've been given about business is something to the effect of what's the long-term game here? Like it could have been very easy for me to just say, hey, I'm gonna set up a factory and sell widgets, and that's going to make me super successful. The business advice I usually hear is like, find something where you're gonna be profitable and go and do that. And I'm at a stage now where I'm like, find something that's gonna light me up that I'm gonna love to do for the rest of my life. And if I make less money doing that, but I have way more fulfillment, that's okay. Most people in business are always talking about return on investment, profit margins, all of those things. And I think that's overrated. Because at the end of the day, we have one life. Time is something we will never make or create or get more of. And I'm optimizing for time and energy, efficiency, and fulfillment, not necessarily a return or profit.

Kevin Yee: 26:24

Cool. Thank you for those answers. Last question is the hardest one. I always ask every single podcast. But uh, how do people find you and connect with you?

Kyle Collins: 26:31

Is that the hardest? Good. Kyle Collins on LinkedIn. I'll even give you my email if someone wants to have a conversation over that, and then we could have a cell phone conversation. But Kyle23Collins at gmail.com. I'm on a lot of the social media platforms too, but I'm most active on LinkedIn and email.

Kevin Yee: 26:44

How about your book? Where do people find your book?

Kyle Collins: 26:46

Oh yeah, uh, wherever you go, there you are on Amazon, Kyle Collins. And what's really cool is I just I don't have the time right now to do audible, create my own audiobook, but Amazon emailed me and said there's an AI generation that I can utilize. So I just did that. It's so funny, Kevin. Throughout, so I've listened to the book, I've listened to the whole thing from AI generation, and they're reading everything in parentheses, they're reading it. Everything, like if I put a YouTube link in there for somebody to watch, it'll say H E P semicolons. It reads everything. It's the beta testing, but still, it's on Audible, which is cool.

Kevin Yee: 27:15

That's hilarious. Who do you feel like should read your book?

Kyle Collins: 27:18

I feel like it's the people in life that have identified very similar to my coach. It's people that have identified. I've done a lot of things really well. I've been successful in a lot of areas. Yet there's something deep down I feel that I'm missing. There's a lack of fulfillment, there's a lack of joy, and I know there's more. I'm capable of more. I just need to really self-reflect and find out what that is.

Kevin Yee: 27:38

Yeah, I love it. Thank you, Kyle, for coming on. Some things are sticking out to me. It's kind of like the impact of the work we you do. Sometimes I feel like inner work or deeper work or shadow work or these esoteric type of modalities get overshadowed, over profit, and like a lot of the business metrics that you were talking about before. And thank you, Kai, for sharing that story about like getting that. I forgot he's an investment banker or investment person or whatever. Financial advisor, and you got his wife on there. I thought that's hilarious, by the way. And uh, you know, sharing that cuckoo knives still work after like 10 plus years, too. That's pretty insane. But on a serious note, I really appreciate love the work that you do because it's very well needed in the world. So thank you, Kyle, for the work you do, and thank you for coming on to the podcast.

Kyle Collins: 28:22

Thanks so much for having me. This was a blast, and you've helped me identify like just hearing the things you took away from this conversation, Kevin, leads me to believe I'm in the right space, I'm doing it for the right reasons. And again, I realize I'm in such a privileged position to not have to worry. Income used to be my main driver. Now that we've had that settled, I've invested really well, we've made tons of money over my sales career. I don't need that's not my driver. Impact is my number one driver in life. If I can look in someone's eyes and watch them have an aha moment, that is what I'm optimizing for in my life right now.

Kevin Yee: 28:50

Love it. Thank you so much, Kyle, for coming on podcasts. Take care.

Kyle Collins: 28:54

Thank you. Cool.

Davis Nguyen: 28:55

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community, and how we can help you grow your business, visit join purplecircle.com.