E21: Podcast: Kim Ades on the mindset secrets of successful dentists
Hello and welcome to Ascent Dental Radio. A program dedicated to the balance between the clinical aspect of health care and the business of health care. And now here is your host, Dr. Kevin Coughlin.
Kevin: Good afternoon. You’re listening to Ascent Radio. This is Ascent-Dental-Solutions with a focus on knowledge, consultation, development and training. My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin and I’m excited to introduce you to our guest, Ms. Kim Ades. Kim is President and Founder of FOM, which stands for Frame of Mind Coaching.
Her focus is that she’s an author, a speaker, an entrepreneur, a coach and perhaps most important of all, a mother of five. Kim has been recognized as one of North American’s foremost experts on performance through thought mastery.
By using her unique process of integrating online journaling and her coaching, Kim will help the dental profession and health care profession in general improve not only their company, their personal lives, but their team members that support their company.
Kim, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with me. Can you tell us a little bit more about Frame of Mind and when you started it and why you started it?
Kim: I’ve been at this for about 11 years. I coach highly driven entrepreneurs, executives, professionals, that type of population, but I started it at the time because I found that there was a gap in the coaching industry.
I found that most coaching companies were focused on helping people achieve goals through the process of managing their behaviors or giving them a list of things to do or creating a strategic plan and then holding them accountable to that plan. And my feeling was that these professionals are pretty driven. They know what to do, but for some reason, something prevents them from doing the things they know that will help them achieve their goals.
And I realized that that has something to do with the way they think. Perhaps it has to do with their belief systems, their perspectives or their emotional resilience and I decided to create a company that focuses exclusively on helping people get past whatever it is that prevents them from achieving their goals. That’s where Frame of Mind Coaching started.
Kevin: I could tell you I would consider myself an expert in the field of dentistry. And as a wet thinker dentist myself, I could tell you that sometimes we’re so overwhelmed. We’re wearing so many hats; we’re businessmen and women, we’re health care providers, we’re psychologists with our staff, we’re emptying the trash. We’re doing a thousand things at one time and perhaps most difficult is running the business of dentistry, dealing with finances and insurance.
As I got more familiar with your company and with you, this mastery of your thought process, of using your mind and controlling your ambitions and your desires really struck a chord with me and I think it’s going to strike a chord with many of our listeners today. Can you explain a little bit about the importance of journaling and actually what does it mean and how does your company use it?
Kim: When we coach people, we start with a six-month process, but it’s the first ten weeks that are really paramount. Here’s what happens in the first ten weeks; there’s a call once a week and every call is recorded. We ask our clients to listen to the recording. The reason we do that is so that they can start to hear how they show up. The language they use, the speed at which they speak, the intonation, the stories they tell over and over again. And really they can start to become observers of their thinking and how their thinking sometimes holds them back and often times propels them forward.
So that’s part A, but part B is the journaling aspect which you asked me about. Every single day for those first ten weeks, we ask our clients to journal in an online journal. No days off, no weekends, no vacations. The reason we do that is because we want to see how our clients think across situations, across relationships, across environments.
Because the way you think in one place will transmit or transport to another place. And so we really want to examine how a person’s thinking affects them and their outcomes. And so we ask them to journal and share with us what’s going on for them. We ask specific questions and they respond. But they’re in contact with their coach — I have a team of coaches — every single day for those first ten weeks. So it’s profound.
What does journaling do? It allows us to get a big download of data that, for the coach, enables them to examine what are these patterns that get you tripped up, that cause problems for you. The philosophy is the way you think has more impact on everything that you touch, you see, you smell, on every outcome that you have than any other factor.
So if you want to change something about your life, before taking massive action, we want to examine the thinking that causes you to act and behave the way you do.
Kevin: Kim, I was particularly struck by Frame of Mind, I know you’re the president of the company, but the core values of your company. Could you just touch on what those core values are and what they mean to you as President and CEO of Frame of Mind?
Kim: Of course. We have five core values. We talk about them all the time with our team and they transmit into everything we do with our clients.
- Personal Growth: As coaches, we’re committed to our own personal growth, but as service providers, we’re committed to the personal growth of our clients. The philosophy there is that if we’re not growing as coaches, it’s very, very difficult to be of assistance to our clients. So personal growth is a huge value of ours.
- Leadership Impact: Always, we look at it from two perspectives. We want to work with leaders who have a ripple effect on their communities, on their families, on their businesses, on their industry. So it’s who we work with that’s important, but as a coaching company, we want to play a very important role in the coaching world and provide a methodology, a philosophy that has a profound effect and really turns the coaching industry around. So we play in the role of leadership.
- Innovation: We like to be at the leading edge of innovation in terms of our perspective of coaching, in terms of our approach to coaching and the technical platform we use. We want to be innovative and we want to explore ideas that haven’t been explored before and also put things on the table that for most people they feel are challenging. We want to challenge status quo. And so we’re very eager to do that in an innovative way.
- Generosity: When I talk about generosity, it’s not only financial generosity, but we believe in generosity of time, generosity of spirit, and really as coaches, giving everything that we have to give to our clients. So if we have an expertise in something, let’s pretend it’s knitting, that we would share with our clients. But if our clients are in a desperate situation and they don’t have a call scheduled, we will give them our time generously. So that idea of generosity, give what we have to our clients.
- Intimacy: I think in many ways, this is one of the most important values. The philosophy is this, is that the relationship that exists between coach and client is critical for client movement, development and achievement. And only when the client can really trust the coach that that could happen. And so that intimate relationship is crucial. That is why our coaches and our clients are in contact every single day, that’s why they go deep, that’s why it’s a two-way relationship as opposed to an arm’s length relationship and that’s why intimacy is so important for our clients. But even internally as a company, that it’s a company that is here designed where coaches support one another and we’re growing together.
Kevin: When you mention the intimacy, I’m struck by it because you’re really creating an atmosphere of trust. You want to believe in these people, like these people and trust these people. What I call the BLT. And you’re sharing some secrets, not only about your business, but your personal life.
In your experience over the last 11 years of being the President of Frame of Mind Coaching, what do you find is the single strongest event that’s preventing your clients from getting from point A to point B?
Kim: It’s interesting that you ask what is the single strongest event and I would say it’s not an event because an event for you may have a different impact as it might have for me and it may be the same event. So it’s not so much what event has the biggest impact, but what belief has the strongest impact or what type of thinking prevents clients from moving forward to the greatest extent.
So what we find is that people have a set of beliefs they have maybe inherited or picked up or absorbed along the way and those beliefs severely inhibit their progress. It could be something like I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have the expertise. I don’t have the education. I’m not good looking enough. Who would trust me or who would give me their money, or whatever it is, but it’s usually around the idea of self-doubt; I’m not good enough, I’m not enough and I don’t deserve it. It’s around that.
That’s the biggest one that shows up over and over and over again. What we see is extensions of that, but that’s the core issue that keeps popping up.
Kevin: What do you think the root cause of that is, Kim? Is it the way we’re brought up, is it the environment, is it the circumstances that we’ve gone through in our personal and business life? In your expertise, is there something you can share with the audience and maybe some of our listeners will strike a chord and connect and get over these…?
Kim: It’s all of that. It’s the way you were brought up, it’s the experiences you have, it’s the relationships you have, it’s the messages you’ve receive. And really what it is it’s the meaning you assign to the experiences you have. But one of the things that I find over and over again, you talked about how you were brought up. Do you have children, by the way?
Kevin: Yes. I have three young adults now.
Kim: Young adults. But when your children were young, and I see a lot of parents right now with young children, when our children are young and perhaps you can remember when you were young as well, our parents they take pride in their ability to raise you right. And what they do is they influence you, they impart their wisdom, you could say. And how do they impart their wisdom?
By telling you what to do; go brush your teeth, go to bed, you need to get good sleep otherwise you won’t be able to function in the morning, you better eat your dinner before you have dessert. And so what do parents do? And again, their intentions are 100 percent pure and good. That they want to influence you in a positive way to be healthy, successful and well-adjusted human beings, but what parents do, inadvertently, is they give instruction for pretty much everything.
And so what do we actually want for our children? We want them to grow up to be great decision makers, to be contributing citizens, to be confident, to be successful, to have wonderful relationships. But as parents, we interfere in the process of allowing their confidence to develop, of allowing them to make their own decisions.
I’ll give you an example. How many times do we tell our children don’t eat too much candy? You should only eat X amount, and we don’t give our children a method to self-regulate and that ends up affecting them long, long into life.
Kevin: I could tell you through personal experience. My mom and dad, who are both alive and in their 80s, for as long as I can remember, they always said, “I’ll trust your judgment. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision and if you don’t, you’ll make the corrections to make a better decision.”
Once I had my own family, my wife and I, it’s very difficult, at least for me in particular, to not impart what I think they should be doing. Why they should be doing it. And I never realized how difficult a task it was, but by luck or happenstance, my parents had always done that and I think it’s helped me and my brother dramatically.
Kim, as far as Frame of Mind and your coaching, your participants, your clients, do they stay with the same coach or do you mix coaches up depending on particular aspects of your client’s desires? How does that work in your company?
Kim: No, they stay with the same coach the whole time and only if after they finish a minimum of six months, many times people go on for years and years, but after they finish their first six months, some of them choose to learn how to coach.
We train people in the Frame of Mind Coaching method and really equip leaders and parents and outgaining coaches how to incorporate critical coaching skills in their business and personal lives. And so they come for training and in that case, I do the training. So usually, they have their coach and then if they’re ready for certification and learning how to coach, again, not everybody wants to do that, but for those who do, I do the coaching.
Kevin: For our listeners, what’s the best way for them to contact Frame of Mind Coaching? Your website, maybe you can spend a little bit of time and go through that.
Kim: Best way to contact us is www.frameofmindcoaching.com. One of the most interesting things on that website is there’s an assessment. It allows you to assess your thinking at this point in time.
One of the things that I explain to people is that if you want to make massive change, before you start engaging in a big plan or start taking massive action, it’s super important to understand where your starting point is, what direction are you facing.
And so that assessment allows you to stop for a minute and take a snapshot of where you are right now in order for you to understand where you want to go and how to get there. So that Frame of Mind Coaching assessment is a really great exploratory tool, great beginning place for anyone who wants to visit.
Kevin: You know what I noticed about your website and about company in particular, and maybe you could comment on this, is that so many times the CEO or the CFO or the leader or the president, we look to these kind of experts such as yourself to help us.
But I’m wondering isn’t it just as beneficial to that leaders, president or CEO’s team members, their employees, to get engaged to help them get the proper mindset and the proper direction and if everything works out appropriately that has to be good for your company and has to be good for your team members and employees? Am I on the right track or would you disagree with that?
Kim: You’re 100 percent on the right track and I would even simplify it and kind of move it away from a business scenario; any person who really wants to live an extraordinary life, any person who wants to have great relationships, have great health and feel better and know that they are living passionately and in the right place, anyone like that is a candidate for Frame of Mind Coaching or coaching.
Smart CEOs understand that those people who come to work engaged and passionate and really turned on, those people are going to contribute a whole lot more. So smart CEOs say, “Yes, we need to get all our team engaged in all of this.”
Kevin: Kim, I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed communicating with you, learning about your business and how you can help people like me and companies like mine. And in the dental profession in particular where I think sometimes so many of us are wearing so many hats, we don’t take time to really understand where we’re going, why we’re going in that direction and how we can improve that journey. How do our listeners reach out? How do they get in touch? What’s your website, telephone number? How can people get in touch with you?
Kim: My email address is kim@frameofmindcoaching.com, the website is www.frameofmindcoaching.com and phone number is 416-747-6900 and if you want to reach me, that’s extension 221. I want to say that there’s lots and lots of information about us on our website, blogs, videos, testimonials, all kinds of things and so I’m happy, happy to share with anyone who wants to learn more and even give you some journaling questions to think about so that you can start your own Frame of Mind exploration.
Kevin: Thank you so much. I’m sure our listeners are thoroughly enjoying your expertise and the information you shared with us. My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin and you’re listening to Ascent Radio. This podcast along with others can be heard on www.ascent-dental-solutions.com.
I also want to give a plug to my podcast expert Mr. Doug Foresta. Without his expertise, his training and his help, none of these podcast would be available. Doug’s business is Stand Out and Be Heard: Podcast Production and Consulting and he can be contacted at dougforesta@gmail.com.
Thank you very much for listening and I look forward to speaking to you on our next podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show.
My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin.
