Ep #256: From Imposter Syndrome to Making 1/2 Million with Dr. Kimmy

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey, coaches, I have a really special episode here for you today. I’m so excited. I have one of my favorite people on the planet here to talk to you. One of our most successful students from the 200K Mastermind, who has really just forged a path for herself in this industry that is so exciting. I cannot wait for you to hear from her. Dr. Kimmy, what’s happening?

Dr. Kimmy: We made it. 

Stacey: We made it. So everyone listening, you have to know, we’ve had to do several reschedules, actual podcast attempt that was interrupted.

Dr. Kimmy: Because lightning struck my house.

Stacey: Wait, and lightning struck my house too.

Dr. Kimmy: You mentioned that.

Stacey: We’re going to freak them out. They’re going to be like, “What is happening?”

Dr. Kimmy: I guess you’d want lightning to strike your house. Maybe it’s a good thing. I don’t know.

Stacey: It’s so crazy. I think the lightning has been really wild this year and it just knocked your internet out.

Dr. Kimmy: Knocked my internet completely out.

Stacey: But you were fine?

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah, we’re good. We’re good. I mean I felt the jolt of electricity. It was the weirdest thing.

Stacey: Okay, you felt it too, okay, hold on. Let’s just not make the whole podcast about this, but I need to find out what was your experience because I felt it too. And it was so wild.

Dr. Kimmy: Number one, lightning and thunder don’t usually come together because light comes first and then the sound. So when it happened at the exact same moment, and then I felt the electricity coarse through me, I knew that the world was ending. I was like, “This is it, the apocalypse is now.”

Stacey: Did it hurt your body or did you just feel an electric charge?

Dr. Kimmy: I just felt like I guess what I would expect an electric charge to feel like, but it didn’t hurt and it went away very quickly for me. I don’t know about for you.

Stacey: Where were you standing in your house when this happened?

Dr. Kimmy: I was sitting at this desk. I was sitting right here working, yeah.

Stacey: Oh, my God, that’s so crazy. So I was standing, this happened for us at night. And we had just put Jackson to bed and he wasn’t feeling well. But I just told you he’s sick again. He didn’t get sick at all for one whole year and people were like, “What is happening?” And now he’s been sick three or four times in the last few months. But anyways, we had just put him to bed. He was not feeling well. And we were kind of talking about the storm. Our dog was really freaked out about it.

We had been hearing some really insane thunder and we’d had this whole conversation about whether we should go wake him and go to the basement. And I had actually been Googling on my couch, can electricity go through your roof especially on the top level because Jackson’s bedroom is on the top level. And we had had a 30 minute conversation about whether we wake him up and Googled all the things about lightning strikes.

We finally decide, no. And my husband’s like, “I’m going to our closet to do something.” Our room is on the main floor. And then the door to our basement is by our front door. And I was headed to our basement for some reason, maybe to clean up his room, I don’t remember, but it was the same thing. I thought war had actually broken out like a bomb had just dropped right outside of our door. It was so alarming, I can’t even describe it. 

It was like my body wanted to drop for cover but it didn’t because a full thing went through my body from my feet all the way up. But for me, it didn’t feel like electricity. It felt like immense pressure. You know how sometimes you think pressure is pushing you down? This felt like pressure climbing up my body. And I felt it in my back and my back hurt for days afterwards.

And our Wi-Fi didn’t go out but our garage stopped working. And when they came and looked at it, they said we had some kind of lightning surge protector in the garage and that had saved the rest of the house and kind of absorbed the shock of the electricity. But it definitely hit our garage. It was so wild and so scary. So I can’t believe that this, I talked about it on the podcast and now it’s happened to you.

We need to not manifest this. People had reached out and said similar stories had happened to them. So anyways, all of us life coaches need to be maybe more concerned about lightning than we are. They say it’s so rare. It’s really not. Protect yourself. Okay, so why don’t you start by just kind of introducing yourself and telling everyone who you are, what you do and then we’ll kind of take it from there.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. Perfect. So I’m Dr.. Kimmy. I am the CEO and founder of The Doctor Coach School where I help train women doctors, particularly women doctors of color. I help them start, grow and execute on their coaching businesses. By training, I am a pediatric hospitalist. So I would take care of the little babies and the children in the hospital when they were sick. And I absolutely loved being a hospitalist in terms of taking care of patients and all of that.

And I absolutely hated everything about medicine and the administration of medicine, and it was just terrible. And so I actually started my business in 2020 during the pandemic. And yeah, so it’s been a wild, wild ride ever since then.

Stacey: And do you care to share how much money that you’re making? Because it’s a lot.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah, I’m currently, I don’t mind at all. I am at half a million this year, going to do half a million, yeah.

Stacey: So good.

Dr. Kimmy: It is crazy.

Stacey: I love it. I was thinking about having you on and two of the things I wanted to acknowledge you for and see if I could have you talk about is number one, how just inspirational and what a light, a leading force, an example of what’s possible you have been for students in 200K. Every time you take the stage, just the questions you ask, I think the whole room still remembers when you raised your hand and asked about overselling and was willing to get coached in front of everyone. I just wanted to acknowledge you for that of what you’ve done for my community.

And also just wanted to ask you, I don’t know if you remember recording your before and afters, but your before and afters hit me emotionally in a way that I just got choked up thinking about them. Nothing has ever hit me in that way. And I think it’s because I just so deeply believe that this is what we’re here to do is bring people’s dreams to life. And you have a really important tie to that, a really important why or reason for doing what you do. And so can we just start, would you mind telling everyone your story?

Dr. Kimmy: Absolutely. I do not mind at all. So my story, kind of big picture, I was raised by a single mom in Inglewood, California and she was a pediatric nurse and she was incredible. And I always knew I wanted to be a physician. And so I moved through the ranks of school and did that whole thing. But I always had, we would call it imposter syndrome. I always felt like at some moment someone’s going to walk in, in a long white coat and say, “Kimberly Reynolds, actually, we got something wrong, you are not supposed to be here.”

So I was a good student, but I always had this underlying sense of I don’t belong here. I’m not really supposed to be here. But the difference is in school when you’re working in school, you are sort of following a very prescribed path. And so you just kind of have to put one foot in front of the other and move along the path that somebody else has prescribed for you. I could somewhat mask the imposter syndrome. There were deadlines. So I can mask my procrastination. I mean, I would turn things in at the last minute but I got them in.

So I kind of did what I needed to do to get through school. And all of it came crashing down when I became what’s called an attending physician. So when I graduated from residency and now I’m practicing on my own and I’m the person they’re like, “Where’s the physician?” And I’m looking, where’s the physician? Oh, no, I’m the physician and I have to make the decisions. When I was at the bedside and with a patient and teaching the residents or the students, I was incredible. I could execute. I had great clinical acumen, great bedside manner. I was a great physician.

But as soon as I would step out of that room and go back to my office, I was riddled with just crippling overwhelm every single day. I couldn’t get things done. I felt like an imposter. I felt like a fraud. I felt again, like I did not belong. And so the way that manifested for me was just, I procrastinated on everything. And so I would have called myself a hot mess, just a walking a hot mess, just a ball of it. And I’ve heard your podcast where you talk about how, I think you would have called yourself a hot mess as well, a lot of things would happen to you, that was me.

Stacey: I would call myself a hot mess, but I would also let other people call me a hot mess. I’d be like, “Yes, obviously you’re correct.”

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. And I would interact with my superiors in that way and they just knew. I mean, I would get stuff done, but it would be late. It might be a little sloppy. I mean, that’s how I moved through life. And all of that compounded when my mom became ill. So this would have been in 2016. So I’m pregnant with my second child. So now I’m a pregnant hot mess. And I’m a pregnant hot mess with a sick mom and I’m the only physician in the family. So now I’m coordinating care, all of that. So things really, really went from bad to worse.

And I’ll just give you an example. There was one day I was sitting in my mom’s hospital room by her bedside. And I got a call from my hospital and they’re like, “Dr. Reynolds, where are you? You were supposed to start seeing patients two hours ago.” And I’m 45 minutes away at my mom’s hospital, I’m sprinting to try to get down there. So that was my life. And she passed away in the summer of 2017, and it was absolutely devastating.

And after someone passes away, one of the things you typically have to do is, you have to sort their affairs, figure out what you’re going to keep, what you’re going to throw away, are you going to sell the house. And so I was sitting in my mom’s home one day after she’d died maybe two or three weeks later. And I just had a pile of stuff around me, it was just a room full of stuff.

And I remember looking over and I saw a manila envelope and I used to tell this story and say it was this huge, big envelope and it was thick. That’s not true, Stacey. I actually just found the envelope and it’s really small. I don’t know why it stood out to me. It shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t have. But I looked over, I saw this envelope and I saw that my mom’s handwriting was on it. And so I opened the envelope and I’m flipping through the pages and I just see a stack of handwritten pages.

And at that moment, the realization of what I was holding in my hands hit me like a ton of bricks. And I felt like someone had punched me in my chest and I started sobbing because what I was holding was my mom had written a book by hand more than 20 years prior and never told anyone about it. She never told her siblings, she never told me.

Stacey: This makes me cry every time I hear this story.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. I can’t believe I’m telling it. I used to break down when I told this story. So I’m holding my mom’s manuscript and I just had a thought in that moment, my mom died without fully realizing her purpose. And that realization just was so devastating to me as her daughter. And I just wished, in that moment I just wanted to talk to her and just say, “Mom, I wish you would have told me. I would have helped you. We would have figured it out to get this into the world.”

And she wasn’t there. But I made a decision that day. I remember seeing this verbally and nobody was in the house but me, but I said, “I will walk in my purpose. I can’t live like this anymore.” And I didn’t know exactly what that meant and I didn’t know how I was going to do it. But I knew something needed to change because they say the richest place or the place with the most ideas in the world is in the cemeteries.

Stacey: And the graveyard, yeah.

Dr. Kimmy: And the graveyard, and that’s exactly what had happened. My mom had intellectual property. She had written a book about faith in weight loss. And I was first of all like, “First of all, I could have used this book, mom, hello, help me.” And I think I am going to publish it posthumously in her honor at some point one day. But I think it really would have helped so many people and it never made it into the world. And she just never realized that part of her purpose.

And so that kicked off a year and a half to two year journey of me, I wouldn’t have called it coaching, Stacey, because I didn’t know about coaching back then. I didn’t know that that’s what I was doing, but I was actually self-coaching. And I actually developed my own self-coaching tools. Again, I wouldn’t have called it that. I was just like, “I’m going to pull myself out of procrastination.”

And I started really slowly, just being able to wake up in the morning without snoozing. And then get my notes done on time, get my billing done on time. And I just noticed I would watch my brain, notice what I was thinking and feeling. And I was just a lot more intentional about that entire process. And two years later my life was completely different. I was now the person who could get things done. I would be tapped for speaking opportunities, keynote speeches.

I was able to write a textbook in collaboration with the Harvard School of Medicine. I mean, my life completely changed and like so many women doctors and that’s why I do this work now, my first thought is always how can I help someone else do this? It started out with me, I just had a blog and I was really kind of inconsistent with the blog at first. And then it became one of those things where I was going to use my blog to show up and help someone see, even a recovering procrastinator can publish something consistently on her own with a blog.

And so I was just kind of sharing my tools and strategies and my story and helping people. And at first it was just me and a couple of my aunts that were reading the blog. But after time a few more people, and it wasn’t a lot, just a few more people would start commenting and say, “Hey, can you talk more about this? I’ve never heard anyone talk about this before in this way.” And that blog morphed into a podcast where I would just kind of show up, share my thoughts and ideas.

And then I got the thought, and by that time I had hired a coach of my own. And so I understood the coaching and the coaching industry. And I thought to myself, I wonder if I could help someone else overcome their procrastination so that they could live a life of purpose. And that was in 2020 was when I actually started coaching and didn’t know how to sell, didn’t know how to do any of that. I just wanted to help people and I was barely making any money.

And I found your podcast, so that would have been probably February or March of 2021, maybe later in the spring, maybe it was around April, I found your podcast. And that was when things really shifted for me and I joined 2K for 2K and then the 200K Mastermind and yeah, here we are.

Stacey: Here we are. Gosh, that story, I can never remember who tells that story about how, and we’re both saying it a little bit wrong. But the gist of it is the wealthiest place. That’s what it is, the wealthiest place, I think, in the world is the graveyard. There are so many ideas that go to people’s graves with them. And I have such a visual of that.

I love New Orleans. It’s one of my favorite places to visit. And I am really creepy and we go to the cemetery tours. But they talk about how New Orleans has more dead people in the city than alive because of the way they bury people. And it’s just very interesting. But I remember being there and hearing that saying at some point. It just really stuck with me.

And I had a similar moment of that of I don’t believe that there’s anyone besides maybe the kids in my family, generationally, that were living their purpose or their dreams or fulfilling things. Even my mom, she was a very young teen mom. And she would have made a fantastic nurse or doctor, fantastic. She’s always the one that is the caregiver for people in our family who are ill. She would have been fantastic, but she was a teen mom and had babies to take care of.

And all of my family members were blue collar workers of some degree, extreme poverty. My grandparents were so far below the poverty line, the fact that I’m standing here today. It’s so mind blowing I almost can’t understand it most of the time. My grandparents, I tell this story a lot, but they only ate if my dad went and killed food for them and butchered it for them. He would kill turkeys and deer, and that’s how they ate. That’s how extremely poor they were.

And so that really resonated with me. Is there anyone in my entire bloodline, lifeline, generational story that has lived a life on purpose and gotten to do something that they deeply love and made a mark in the world that feels good to them? Have they had that opportunity? And I don’t know. I’ve always just felt like it’s the luckiest opportunity in the world. It does feel like an opportunity. And it does feel a little bit like luck to find life coaching or to find some sort of coaching that gives you the opportunity to move towards that with intention.

I know that we’re supposed to honor ourselves. And I do, I do honor myself for clinging onto those. But I also consider myself extraordinarily lucky for having crossed paths with a life coach having crossed paths with The Life Coach School podcast. Having found those things, those resources because so many people don’t find those resources. And when I saw your before and after and that was, I don’t know how many years ago that was, two years ago maybe or a year ago.

When I saw that, I mean I was ugly crying, ugly crying at your video. And I just so deeply felt that. And so I feel like we share that. And I’m just so excited for you that you did that. And what a story you get to tell your children. And just the fact that you’re going to get to bring your mom’s purpose to life even after hers has ended. There’s so much goodness from what you’ve done with those moments and with your life, it just makes me so teary.

Dr. Kimmy: I know, I just got chills when you said that, especially when you said, “I get to show that to my children.” Wow. I feel very blessed that I found her manuscript. I feel blessed that I found coaching. I mean, you’re right, most people in the world, you say coaching and they don’t know what that is in terms of life coaching. They’re thinking, sports coaching. When we’re in the coaching world it seems like everyone is talking about coaching and the market is so saturated, all the things that we hear. It’s so not true.

We need more coaches. There’s not enough coaches and most people don’t know about coaching.

Stacey: I feel like I knew about personal development or self-help. I would always see them in the books in the grocery store. But in my family and social circle, that would get made fun of. If you went to see a therapist, if you went to see a coach it meant you were weak or that you were in la la land or whatever. There was just a negative connotation growing up with that self-help.

Actually, my first real boyfriend in high school, his mom was a therapist and I remember him telling my family in a real conversation, not joking. Sitting us down and being like, “You all need therapy. You’ve got some stuff happening in your family that is not normal, is not healthy. These dynamics are not supportive of wellness and you guys need therapy.” And it was just, “That’s not happening.” And so the people who do find it, some of them are working up against that.

And I think that’s even a smaller percentage of the people that just don’t know about it. But there are so many people who need coaching who have not been introduced to that idea still, millions and millions and millions. And so I just think it’s so important. And one of the things you said, I want to just kind of come back to this because I think everybody needs to kind of ingrain it in their brain. Something you said when you first started off is you weren’t trying to make a 100K, you weren’t trying to make 500K.

You were like, “What if I could help one person stop procrastinating?” That is a masterclass in itself, what if I could just help one person? You weren’t like, “I need to be able to help 30 people to make my goals happen and make money. Could I maybe help one person stop procrastinating? And if I can, it would be worth it.” Tell me more about that mindset. Because that is, I think, the people who are extraordinarily successful, that’s what they’re focused on.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. Well part of it, I will be honest, part of it was because in the realm of medicine etc., we’re not really exposed to business. There’s people somewhere in the hospital somewhere that make the rules and they make the real, real money. I know doctors, we make good money, especially in terms of the average income in America. But in terms of administration, we’re looking at them like, can I get a little bit of that? So part of it was that.

But then also it really was for me, it was sheer altruism. I just wanted to help that one person and I didn’t even have the language or the understanding that this could be a business. But I think even when I did, one of the things that helped keep me going because that first year of business was, oh, my goodness, that was incredibly hard. And so when even after I had business goals and I decided I wanted to have a business, I just kept thinking about the next person that I could help, that one person.

And it helped me so much, I would actually, I gave her a name. I knew where she lived. I just made it up. I gave her a name. Her name was actually Dr. Kira, and she was an internal medicine physician in Atlanta. There probably is that person, but that was just the name, that helped.

Stacey: She’s going to write in.

Dr. Kimmy: I would picture her. This was really helpful. I would picture her sitting in her car, about to go into the clinic but she was hesitating because she didn’t want another day of overwhelm and procrastination and just kind of running on empty. And I would just kind of sit and visualize her and picture her. And so when I would record my podcast, I would think about her. And it really helped me to be able to talk to one person, because it’s just me and this microphone at this desk, just kind of, but it helped me to be able to talk to her.

And then when I would show up on social media, I would create content and I would be thinking about her. And then I would have so many people and so many is maybe five, but it was a lot to me at the time.

Stacey: I love when our brains do that.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah, I was thinking about one person and then five come. You’re like, “Oh, five people asked about this.” So five people would say, “I feel like you’re in my head, Dr. Kimmy. I feel like you understand me and you know me.” And it was because I was just thinking about that one person. Now, I didn’t realize that that was a really great marketing principle. When you speak to one person, it wasn’t that, it just helped me to stay in the moment of can I help Dr. Kira? And everything I’d do was from the lens of can I help Dr. Kira?

And it helped me on the days when I was hearing crickets, but I would still just speak to Dr. Kira. And the moments when I thought people would buy my offer and I would do a webinar. And I did a webinar one time, Stacey, and at the end I presented my offer. And I asked if anyone had any questions. And they wanted to know the folks in the webinar. They were like, “You cannot leave without telling us where you got your lipstick.”

Stacey: It’s exactly what you want to hear at the end of your webinar when you ask, “Does anyone have questions?” I get those too, “Where do you get your eyeliner?”

Dr. Kimmy: I think I asked you about your eyeliner one time.

Stacey: No. That was not at the end of a webinar, Dr. Kimmy, it’s fine.

Dr. Kimmy: It wasn’t.

Stacey: It was on an ask me anything thing.

Dr. Kimmy: I know, it was. But I was so embarrassed and I wanted to just crawl under this desk and just cry. But what kept me showing up was just thinking about Dr. Kira. So, yeah, I do think, if it’s helpful for anyone listening, thinking about that one person. And again I would give her a name and I would picture her. And what is she doing today? What is she struggling with today? What does she want to achieve? What is she Googling today?

And it helped me with continuing to show up and then also helped me with my marketing and really talking about her problems and how I could help her.

Stacey: So good. I do that a lot too. Once you get clients and you have lots of them, then what I like to do is when I’m writing my sales emails or doing marketing, I’m thinking of maybe one person. Not always, sometimes if I’m talking about a problem, I’ve heard this problem so many times from so many people that I’m going to talk about it. But I think about, I was just writing a 200K, a seven day pure just kind of value sequence of what it takes to make 200K.

And I was thinking about, I want this to be highly relevant. That’s what I kept thinking about is I want this to be highly relevant. So if it’s going to be highly relevant, let me pick out one person who currently works with me right now and what they might be struggling with. Or if I were going to write this email to them and make it valuable to them, what would I say? And it’s just another flavor of that where you’re just thinking of a real human.

I think that drops you into connection. And people can feel that when you’re writing, they can feel the connection. They can feel it when you’re talking on a podcast, when you’re doing a live stream, whatever it is, a webinar, they can feel that connection and that connection connects them to you. They’re like “I feel this. We are on the same wavelength.” And it’s so important.

Dr. Kimmy: Yes, I agree.

Stacey: So good. Your marketing has been killing it lately. I follow you and I’m like, “So good.” Tell everyone, what are all of your marketing secrets that are making your IG just blow up right now?

Dr. Kimmy: So that’s such an interesting question. So one of the things I do when I’m marketing, so again, I’m still thinking about that person. But now I did have clients. So I’m able to think about my clients. And I think one of the ways you make your marketing really hit is by thinking about the person who is ready for change now. And that’s really important for coaching. I think we often will market to where we were at our point A.

So for me, and so my point A was in bed, not able to get out of bed knowing that my day was going to be a hot mess. And especially with the clients I work with. We are physicians. We want to help people. Sometimes our brain goes to that person and I was like, “Well, I’m going to help her get out of bed and finally start taking steps.” But I actually teach my clients to picture someone at the edge of a cliff.

So they’re at the edge of the cliff, that means they walked themselves to the edge of the cliff. And now they’re searching for that bridge. They’re searching for the bridge to the other side. And that, it seems subtle, but it’s a very slight shift from the person who’s just kind of completely down and out. And you will eventually help those people too, especially if you have a platform of some sort. They’ll keep listening. They’ll walk themselves to the edge of the cliff.

But in order to sell your coaching, now you have to really speak to the person, yes, they’re at the point A, but they’ve walked themselves to the edge of the cliff. They are not completely down and out and fully in despair. They’re seeking, they’re seeking. And so what do you say to that person? Your marketing completely shifts when you think to yourself, what do I say to that person who is at the edge of the cliff?

That’s when your content is able to show them what’s possible for them. And clear up any misconceptions that they might have about their ability to shift to that point B place where they want to be. But again, we spend so much time focusing on the point A, in the depths of despair versus the person who has walked themselves to the edge of that cliff.

Stacey: That’s so good. And I think that maybe this will be a helpful analogy to kind of add on is the reason those people that are not, you call them point A people, where they’re just at the depths of despair. And then point B people, it’s the people at the edge of the Cliff?

Dr. Kimmy: Well the point B is where they want to be after the transformation.

Stacey: So they’re not even to point A, they haven’t even walked themselves. So the people that you don’t talk to are the people that haven’t even walked themselves to point A?

Dr. Kimmy: Yes. They’re not even at the point A. Exactly.

Stacey: Okay. So if you consistently talk to the point A people enough, what happens, for everyone listening is the people who are not even there are just kind of watching a crowd of people at point A. That’s kind of what’s happening for them is they’re almost immersed with every time they engage with your marketing or your content, they’re immersed with the idea of the point A person.

And then they start thinking maybe I could be a point A person, some version of that. Even if they’re not anywhere close at the time, you get them there by speaking to the person who would be close. Not trying to bring them along on the journey. Yeah, that’s such a good tip.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. Really, again, the people who are ready now, they’re looking for that safety to know that they’re not going to fall to their death in the abyss that’s right beyond the cliff. So you help them and then again, the people who aren’t yet at the point A eventually.

I mean, there was a period of time when I was not Louis Vuitton’s client at all because I couldn’t afford Louis Vuitton at all. It just wasn’t going to happen. They never shifted their product suite or their SKUs or their marketing or anything to me. They just kept showing up for their person. And I kept seeing it and I kept desiring it. And so just slowly, over time now, I mean, I literally have a Louis bag sitting right next to me on the floor. Now I am their client, but I wasn’t always and that is okay. They got me. It’s been years and years and years, but they got me.

But what they did is they never stopped making money in the meantime, because they sold to the person who was ready now, who has the income or the finances in their account right now. And then my desire never changed. Maybe I didn’t believe I could do it. But the more I saw other people with it. Then my desire grew and then my ability to invest in that grew. And so now I am there. I am their customer. And kind of that helps with that kind of real world example.

Stacey: So good. One of the things I also feel like I’ve seen in your marketing and I don’t know if this is true or not. But it feels like there’s been a huge self-concept shift with you. There’s a confidence coming out of you, an assurance of who you are in the industry and what you do. I’m just thinking of a couple of photos I’ve even seen of you recently where I’m just like, “Whoa. Where did that come from? What’s that side of Dr. Kimmy?” It just feels so like you’re just standing 100% in all of your power, all of who you are with 100% assurance in yourself.

And I’m curious if you’ve been working on that, if that’s something that has compounded over time, if you know any of the self-concept shifts or thought shifts that you’ve had. Because I do think that’s a powerful piece of marketing. I also think there’s so many different levels to it. But as we come into our own self-confidence and step more into who we are, the more people we attract because people want that. They see that in us and they’re like, “Yes, I really want to be like that, not like her but I want to experience that. I want to have that.” So I’m just curious, I know I’m throwing you a little bit of a curveball.

Dr. Kimmy: No. That’s such a good question. I will say that the biggest thing between me and what I want to achieve in my business is my willingness to be exposed and exposure. So, Stacey, I would get in trouble as a little girl, most people get in trouble for talking too loud or too much. I would get in trouble for not talking enough or talking too quietly. The teacher would literally send notes home, “She needs to speak up. We can’t hear her, what’s going on?”

And I’m also, you’ve met me, so I’m 6’1. So I’ve always towered above everyone else. And I spent a lot of my time shrinking, physically, sometimes physically trying to shrink myself. I would take pictures and I would be cowering down, but then just energetically shrinking myself to not stand out from the crowd. And so one of the hardest things for me in running a business is that I am the face of the business. And I actually, I love speaking. I love teaching. I love sharing my thoughts, but I don’t when eyes are on me.

You know how some people are like, “I always wanted to be on TV or I always wanted eyes on me.” Not me at all, I just kind of wanted to fade into the background. So me showing up in that way is really me, number one, helping my clients to see that, because I am very candid with them about how I feel about exposure and the fact that it makes me feel very uncomfortable. And so that’s me really actively pushing back against my natural inclination, which is to stay small.

And so I do work on it every day. I’m not where I would want to be, but I do it with lots of discomfort in my body and lots of discomfort [crosstalk].

Stacey: That was the question I was about to ask is, so how are you getting yourself to do it?

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. So I noticed the discomfort and I just name it and I literally will just sit with my little iPad and I’m writing and I’m like, “Okay, I’m about to go live and I feel butterflies in my stomach and I feel very uncomfortable.” And I think just noticing it takes some of the power away from the discomfort because my brain doesn’t want me to feel that because no, we don’t want to feel bad. We’re supposed to feel good all the time.

And so I think when I just kind of objectify it a little bit, it takes some of that power away. And so I’m just really tapped in. I have an internal dialogue now that’s much better than my prior internal dialogue when I was a procrastinator. But I’m just like, “ Yeah, I’m noticing that I’m very uncomfortable.” I do speak to myself and I try to lead with the emotion that is driving me forward, so leading with that. I’m compelled because I want to serve my clients.

So whether it’s service or a certainty, whatever the emotion is driving me forward. And I just allow that negative emotion to be there. I don’t make myself wrong for it. I don’t beat myself up about it. It’s just there. But it just gets to be there. And one of the things I tell my clients is, all of the people who are making the money that you want to make. So when I look at you, Stacey and you have been just an incredible mentor to me. I can’t even really imagine the amount of capacity you’ve had to build for discomfort over the years.

And that’s why you have an eight figure business. And so I want to have an eight figure business. I know that my work is to just allow that discomfort to be there. But you do that through action. You don’t do that through kind of sitting down and hoping and wishing and praying, you do it through action. So every time I do the photoshoot or I take the picture and I’m doing those actions, then I get to tell myself a new story of okay, I am the person that is moving forward.

And then I’m doing it with the discomfort, but it increases my capacity to feel it over time. So I can just imagine for you, you get a lot of no’s, I’m sure, a lot more no’s than I get and you can tolerate, no.

Stacey: Yeah. I get meaner no’s too. I don’t know if they’re bots. When you run ads, I don’t know if they’re bots, or they’re real humans. I like to think they’re bots.

Dr. Kimmery: I think a lot of times they are bots.

Stacey: Literally someone posted on one of my Facebook ads this week and it was a picture of a trash can with poop all in it. And posted that photo on my ads. It’s really uncomfortable. I’ve done a lot of work recently on other people’s words on the internet, don’t get to crawl into my bed at night. And they don’t get to come upstairs for bath time with me and my kid or go on a walk with us or be at dinnertime. And that is sometimes how it feels especially if it’s negative stuff.

I’m at dinner and this picture of a trash can with poop in it is at dinner with me. And so I have to be like, “This is just on the internet. It doesn’t get to come in.” But yeah, it’s a lot of discomfort. I was thinking when you were talking, I think people think that people who are, whether it’s you, me, other people who are much more successful than us. Sometimes I think we think that they’re totally comfortable with visibility and they’re totally comfortable in the light.

And I was the top salesperson in the entire industry in the United States for what I did when I was selling mops in Walmart or slicers, whatever it was. I always think about Olivia Vizacharo when she says, “Gag and go.” I had to do that. I did those shows, 10 shows a day every day for seven years straight. And the last week I did it, I would still be walking the store, pacing the store, trying to get up the courage to make the announcement. And sometimes my anxiety would be so high because you never know what you’re going to get.

You get the trash can photo, you get that in real life doing demos in Walmart. That’s just a real life version of it. And so I would know, you don’t know how these people are going to react to me and what they’re going to say and how they’re going to treat me when I get up to the show. And so I would be so extraordinarily anxious. I can’t even describe it. I wanted to puke.

And the thing that I would have to do sometimes, it would be an hour between shows, just me convincing myself to go up and do another one, which is ironic because they would go amazing, so many of them. And it didn’t matter if it was good or bad. I could sell 101 shows and still have that exact same experience. And so I would have to be like, “Okay, well, once I start the announcement I know that I won’t stop. I’m in it then.”

So l just have to get ladies and gentlemen out of my mouth and then I know because it would be more embarrassing to stop the show. So I’ve just got to dial in. And I would dial in and hang up and then I would dial in and hang up again. And then I’d be like, “You can do this, Stacey, you can do this.” So seven years, that never went away. And I still have those experiences where it just is such an intimate experience to sell yourself or sell a product in front of people and to expose yourself that way.

So I just want to offer to everyone, everything you said. And I do think I have a bigger capacity for it now. But I haven’t noticed that it necessarily goes away. It still feels intrusive when people, even if they’re bots, say crazy things. I’m just like, “They have to be bots. They can’t be real humans. No one would do that. No real human would do that.” Yeah, it’s so hard even on stage.

The last 200K live event I told everyone, it was the first time, I think maybe ever, where I actually walked on stage and felt so comfortable in my own skin. And was really just there and not in my head critiquing things that I said or the way that I said them or being anxious about some degree of people are watching me on stage. It was the first time ever. And I will say that was after 18 months of just kind of getting ripped apart online and I’m growing that capacity to love myself and be with myself and protect myself and create safety for myself, just over and over and over and over again.

I got on stage and was like, whoa, I feel this level, I’ve created a force around myself and I feel that for myself. So anyways, I know that’s a long rant, but just to say, it’s not easy, it’s so hard.

Dr. Kimmy: So hard, but it’s so worth it.

Stacey: It is, it is worth it. I always think about I play the game of I’m just going to quit and go and work at McDonald’s. I would never be able to work for anyone for any reason ever at this point. So I’ve better just figure it out.

Dr. Kimmy: You’ve got to figure it out. I let my license go in January of this year. I wanted to burn the boats and be all in on my business and I knew it would be really easy for me to just go back to the hospital. I can just get a hospital job and I cannot, nor will I work for anyone ever again. So I’ve just got to figure this thing out.

Stacey: Okay, so I’m so glad you said that because I was thinking, I know we’re running out of time but I was thinking that all of the doctors listening are going to kill me a little bit if I don’t ask you this question. I know the entire time they’re listening, they’ve been waiting for this question and they want the answer to this question. So I have been thinking about you all listening, and I know to ask this question which is, how did you build your business while also being in a very esteemed, I’m sure, demanding hospital job, teaching other people?

You had a career, so how do you do that? How do you balance the doctor career and build your business? And I know that could be an entire hour conversation, but I know if I don’t ask this, they’re going to be like, “Why didn’t you ask her this?”

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. No, I mean, this is the everything that I do. So I love talking about it. So I didn’t do a good job the first year at all. And I’m so grateful for that year because it taught me so much. But one of the things that shifted for me in 2021, that’s when I made $165,000 in 2021. So I was still working full-time and that’s when I first joined 2K and came into the 200K Mastermind.

So a couple of things, number one, I focused a lot on client results and getting my clients incredible results. And I did that by really thinking about, so intellectual property is a big thing for me. Because I help my doctors create it, mostly because of what happened with my mom and her not getting her intellectual property into the world. The picture I had of coaching was, especially if I’m charging $5,000 or $10,000, I’m going to be on call all the time for my clients.

They’re going to be hitting me up at all hours of the day or night. In addition to the residents who have questions about my patients. And I have kids at home. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to build a business. Now, when I started really developing and sharing with my clients my intellectual property that had gotten me results. Now the IP, so if we think about, and I have so much respect for nurses because my mom was one but nurses, their job is so highly valuable because they are with the patient at the bedside, administering the meds etc.

What if your intellectual property could be the nurse, [crosstalk], clients, with them helping them getting results. They don’t have to hit you up on Voxer at 2:00am and then you’re like, “I have to respond within an hour because my client needs me.” When you help them in that way, they can be getting results while you’re rounding with your patients or while you’re with your family. And so that really helped me.

I focused on the results, but I did not do it in a codependent way whereby they were needing me and I was needing them. I was empowering them to get results through the IP that I had created. So that was the first thing that really helped release me. And then the second thing was, honestly, I told you this one time, but I’m going to remind you of this. When I found you, and you talked about selling mops in Walmart. And I’d never met anyone who had sold mops in Walmart.

But you, it was so incredible because what you did was you took that experience and you figured out how to make it relevant to selling life coaching. And I was just like, “What? Who is this lady?” Mops in Walmart, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? And what does that have to do with selling me life coaching? I don’t get it. But the more and more I listened to you I was just like, “Whoa. So she is onto something here. She’s onto something.”

And I wonder if there’s something similar for me. Could I take my experience as being a physician and incorporate that into how I sell? And so when I sell on a sales call now I run it like a clinical encounter, which sounds crazy. So if the doctors are listening, they’ll hear. I take the history from the client. So what’s happening with them now, what’s going on? What are they struggling with? Where do they want to be?

And then I am also thinking about what the diagnosis is and I’m putting together a problem based plan. All of the things that we do, I used to do in the hospital all the time. That’s how I run my sales calls. And so I learned the way you did sales calls and how you did it, you adapted it from mops in Walmart. And I was just like, “There’s something to that. Let me adapt my own process to being a physician.” And that is when I started kind of really, my business took off.

I started closing my sales calls, signing my clients. And I just made so much money that it became that my job was keeping me from making even more and so I was able to quit. But for the first two years of my business, I’ve been in business for three and half years, the first two years in my business I did while working full-time. And it was from those things, so focusing on client results, having my IP be the nurse at the bedside with my clients. And then also taking what I know what’s already in my hand and adapting it and learning how to sell in that way.

Stacey: That’s so good. Okay, well, first I have to say this is the reason, I have to just tell everyone since you brought it up. The reason that the mops in Walmart thing has been so relevant in selling in the coaching industry is they would tell us that the way that they developed these shows, I know it’s this corny thing in the world. So I actually posted in 2K recently, they were in a Sam’s Club and saw someone doing a show and I died.

And I commented because there were carts everywhere and no one was up close and I was like, “Get those carts out of there. Tell them I’m on my way. I’ve got criticisms.” But they built the entire show around the psychology of why people buy and interacting with humans from all over the world really, all over the place. And so it’s really about the psychology of humans, which I bet if you, I don’t know, but I’m guessing that the way that doctors interact with patients also has to do with human psychology.

Dr. Kimmy: We’re selling treatment plans to patients who are sick. They have to adapt. They have to believe us and they have to buy into what we’re selling. So I tell doctors all the time, “You’re selling all day long.” You’re like, “I don’t know how to sell you.” Yes, you do.

Stacey: Yeah. I had a doctor, I don’t know if we have time for me to tell this story. But I had a doctor recently do this to me. I had an appointment with a stomach doctor. She was like, “You’ve got to get scoped. We need to do two stomach biopsies.” And I’m so terrified of going under now that I’m a new mom. And I’m crying. And I’m like, “I don’t want to do it.” And that’s an objection. And she just firmly just looked me straight in the eye and goes, “And you have to because what happened is a progression, and it could get worse. And if it gets worse, here’s what that will look like.”

And she, not in a mean way, but she just held so firm, that I was like, “Yes, okay, I’ve got to do this.” It’s so good. Okay, so I love this, your intellectual property is the bedside nurse that’s doing the work for you so you don’t have to be up at all hours of the night. And then you left your job, your career. It was costing you money not to. So good. And I’m sure, I’m curious if you have doctor clients who are on all sides of the spectrum where they leave at different times and in different comfort levels of what they need to do for them. It all works I think.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah, absolutely. And some people never want to leave and that’s also okay.

Stacey: Yeah, so good. Okay, so I know we’re running out of time. When you were thinking of being on the podcast, is there anything that we have not covered that you think all of the coaches need to hear or the doctor coaches need to hear? That you’re like, “I’ve got to tell them, this is my chance and they need to hear it?”

Dr. Kimmy: Yes. Okay. So I thought about that this morning because I know you ask folks this. So to all the folks who are listening, those of you who have a little inkling and you think you might want to maybe work with Stacey. And Stacey, I’m going to tell you this story. When I first heard your podcast, you triggered me.

Stacey: Oh, no.

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah, you did.

Stacey: When you guys tell me this it makes me so squeamish, I can’t even bear to hear it.

Dr. Kimmy: No, it’s the best thing ever, let me tell you why it’s the best thing ever. It’s the best thing ever.

Stacey: Okay, tell me how.

Dr. Kimmy: It’s the best thing ever. So I would have said, “I don’t like you”, but that’s not true. But what happened was you triggered me. But if you were telling me, all life coaches should dye their hair purple, would I have been triggered? No, I would have just been like, “That’s weird, okay, there’s a crazy lady online who’s telling me to dye my hair purple.” You triggered me because there was some truth to it. There was some truth to it.

Stacey: I’m so nervous. What was it?

Dr. Kimmy: And my brain, my brain, I don’t even remember what it was, but my brain was trying to integrate this new knowledge and it was cognitive dissonance. So I want to say to anyone who’s listening, if you have ever been triggered by Stacey, she probably should be your coach because there’s some truth. There’s some truth that your brain is trying to wrestle with, that is actually the best thing ever.

You’re going to get so much results. When I came in, you had ignited this fire under me. But I had to get past my own kind of, I don’t really know about that. Again, it was just cognitive dissonance. It’s not a problem. The people that trigger you should probably, you want to lean into that. Look into it more rather than kind of stepping away and saying , “Oh no, I’m going to run the other way.” Because when you get triggered, you go into a little fight or flight, not a problem, but just notice it.

I just want to say because I kept listening to the podcast. I kept showing up, so there was some truth. And then the next thing I know I’m the 2K. Next thing I know I’m the 200K. So I just want to say if that is happening to you, lean in, don’t lean out, lean in.

Stacey: It’s so good. My first coach triggered me so bad I used to yell at her. I’m not proud of it, but I would literally yell and freak out on our calls and hang up on her. And a couple of times she had to be like, “Stacey, I don’t allow people to speak to me this way. You’ve got to figure it out. If you want to keep coaching, you have to talk to me differently.” I was in such a fight or flight place all the time and she was constantly triggering me.

Every time she told me it was something in my life that I thought was someone else’s fault and she would bring it back to, it’s my responsibility. I would get so angry and then just be like, “You don’t understand my life. You don’t understand my situations.” And then I would calm down and then I would think about it. And I’m like, “Okay, she’s right.” Every time, and eventually that stopped happening.

So I will also just add to that, that there is a point if you move through the things and you’re willing to hear what the thing is that’s triggering you and you’re willing to understand it instead of the running away or the fighting or the freezing or whatever it is. Some people just ghost, I might say something to them in 2K that triggers them and then they never come back. Bye.

Whatever it is, if you can move through that, it will stop being so in your body and it’ll stop getting you so worked up and you’ll be able to approach. I just think it depends on where you start in coaching where it can really, some of it can be really, really triggering but if you move through that, it gets less and less. And now people say things to me, and even if I’m a little triggered, I’m like, “Alright, give me a couple days. I’ll be back.”

Dr. Kimmy: Exactly, 100%.

Stacey: How do people reach out to you if they want to know more about you and your work? If they’re a doctor coach and they’re like, “Kimmy can for sure help me, I’ve got to work with her”, how do they find you?

Dr. Kimmy: Yeah. So if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably like podcasts, so you can just hop on over to The Doctor Coach School podcast. We release episodes every Monday. Or you can go to the doctorcoachschool.com, sign up for any upcoming trainings or just get on my email list and get into my world.

Stacey: And on Instagram.

Dr. Kimmy: Instagram, yes, doctorkimmy_. So if you can’t remember, it’ll be on my website. But, Doctor Kimmy, if you just search, Doctor Kimmy, I will come up.

Stacey: And all of that will be linked up on our show notes as well if you go to my website. And this episode’s podcast, if you just click on podcast, you’ll be able to see this episode and everything will be linked up as well. But you’ve been so fun to follow. You’re in my feed all the time and I’ve been loving it. So thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing with my students and your journey and everything. I’m just, I’m so honored to be a part of your journey, to have you in my world, it’s such a pleasure.

Dr. Kimmy: Thank you for everything you do, Stacey. You are a light in this world. And I’m just so grateful for whoever the wonderful human was that introduced me to your podcast. I really appreciate all that you do, truly.

Stacey: You’re so welcome. Alright, I will talk to you soon.

Dr. Kimmy: Okay, take care. Bye.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first 2,000 the hardest part and then 200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk free, you either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.