Kiki Kirby A One of A Kind Coach!
I had the please of speaking with Kiki Kirby a few weeks back and every time I speak with her I leave the conversation thinking, I could talk to her for hours.
Kiki is a one of a kind coach that takes a holistic approach to coaching. It is not just about the business, it is about the person as a whole. I LOVE that. She has an incredible story to share with the world. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to chat with her on the podcast!
Coaching: www.kikikirbycoaching.com
Consultancy: www.kikikirbyconsultancy.com
Recruitment Mastermind: www.thehappyrecruiters.com
Kiki Kirby Coaching + Consultancy
Mobile: 07734469482
Email: kiki@kikikirby.co.uk
Coaching: www.kikikirbycoaching.com
Consultancy: www.kikikirbyconsultancy.com
Recruitment Mastermind: www.thehappyrecruiters.com
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Jamie: Hey Everyone it’s Jamie Palmer here with the O M G show. And I am super excited today because we have our guests, Kiki, Kiki. Welcome to the show.
Kiki: Hello, Jamie, and hello. All of your listeners.
Jamie: Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I’d love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Kiki: Oh, thank you. So I am Kiki and I am the owner and the founder and the director and the entrepreneur and the business owner as whatever you want to call, call it of Kiki, Kirby, coaching and consultancy. We’re based in the UK, in scientist, we’re in the Cotswolds and we work with heart-centered individuals and organizations, um, relating to everything around coaching wellbeing, consultancy people, calmness, and their lives, mindsets. Every everything work and life is what we help our clients with. So a lot of the clients that tend to come to us are very busy people who are doing lots of amazing things in the world, and they come to us in order to help them to slow down and to find more calmness in their lives.
So that’s just a bit of a snippet quick, quick, rapid introduct action.
Jamie: I love it. So how did, cause I totally agree with you. Like you have to kind of look at like the whole person, especially when you’re working with entrepreneurs. So how did you kind of get to that point where you’re like we have to address the whole person just versus sliver?
Kiki: Such a good question. Such a good question, Jamie. So my background was in HR and recruitment. That’s what I did predominantly my career. So left the school, ended up in recruitment, then progressed up and did HR recruitment. And then I had burnout eight years ago and I guess for me it was all work. Um, and my guess my personal life and my, the rest of my life, my life admin and emotions and all of those things never got attention up until eight years ago and I had burn out.
And when I had that burnout, it really made me take a look at the grief that I was at, had experienced from a young child. My mom died to cancer. It really got me to look at and evaluate my whole life as a whole. So my, my wellbeing, my career, my relationships, everything. And I think very often is we not taught how to do that, or it can feel really challenging to look at the whole aspect of your life because there will be certain things that you will, um, you will look at and actually see that you haven’t made the progress. So you might look at other things and say, do you know what I’ve done really well? And I’ve played hard and I’ve learnt really well, but what’s missing for me as a family or children or vice versa. Um, so that’s how I got on that journey eight years ago.
Jamie: That is super duper cool. And I think it’s, um, I think it’s so funny that you mentioned that. Cause I was, I don’t know when my first son was born, so it must’ve been like 2013 Ish and yeah, It was after he was born. So like the first six months I was like, okay, With my phone because I was taking care of him
And running my business. And like I had every year, The notification would come through and I’d like immediately And the respond and I totally crashed Because I was so Connected to the phone and then fast forward, I don’t know, four or five years, and my second son was born and one of the things that I made a priority was taking care of myself. Right. Like before everything else, it was like self care, like Meeting all that sort of stuff. And one of the biggest correlations that I noticed when I was super consistent with taking care of myself, my business had record breaking months.
Kiki: Yeah, absolutely.
Jamie: And so I’d love for you to kind of speak to that phenomenon because I think a lot of times entrepreneurs think, Oh, I don’t have time to take care of myself. I’m going to put that on the back burner because it’s not going to affect my bottom line of business.
Kiki: You know, such a great revelation that you had there about your phone and awareness. Cause I think, you know, so often we, so we’re very quick and very easy to go and invest in our size of how to work better and how to make more money and how to market ourselves more. But actually how do we invest in ourselves? How to rest more and how do we research more about how to slow down? When I think for me that started that eight years to go. But then, and also I had a very three years ago I had a cough, went to the doctor and I was diagnosed with cancer. I had stage four cancer, which I then thought my journey through.
Um, and I think, you know, what will happen is something will, something will be, will come into our life to affect our performance. Um, and let me tell you now is, is when it comes to health and your wellbeing, if you suffer something really significant, you’re not going to be worrying about how much money your business’s making. You’re going to be worrying about what could I have done better to take care of my health. So over the last three years, I’ve made significant changes and I’ve created and done so much since I’ve returned back to work. But what I would say is the things that I’ve created have been because I’ve slowed down my, you know, my morning routine, my evening routine, my lunchtime routine, my daily routine looks very different to how did many years ago I don’t do client facing things very early in the morning.
I have a very structured routine of when I do, I’m very focused. And um, you know, if this is an area you really want to really tap into, there are so many books out there, but it’s a journey. It’s a journey to say, do you know what I’m going to slow down? Um, and this is how I’m going to slow down. So, you know, gradually for me, it was stopping evening things. I used to do a lot of evening things. So I gradually stopped that. And that was over a period of time. But it’s about you working out what is, what is stealing your energy? And I know for me, it was evening stuff, always very, very early morning stuff. And it’s working out what are the things that are zapping your energy and how do you want to slow down? Because if you don’t slow down now, something, they will be somewhere along the line and your business journey where your house is going to come first. I, I know that because I coach many business owners who are experiencing that right now, their business is doing really well. And then they realize their health is at the breaks, exhausted. They tired and you can’t afford it. If you like that. We’ve both been there probably many times. I still do sometimes now. Um, if that, if that is, is, is how I’ve been able to do just inspire you and just those short few minutes,
Jamie: And I would love for you to, to almost, to, to speak to, cause I know for me, um, my, my second son, I had him a month early Vienna via an emergency C section. And I was not prepared to be off and in bed and all the kind of emotional stuff that came with that as well. And it just so happened to coincide with like my 98 year old Nana’s death literally happened All within like a week of, yeah, My son being born early and all this sort of stuff. And I remember in the months that followed that I would be really, really great at taking care of myself for a month or six weeks and then it would fall off and then it would come back again. Then it would fall off and I would give myself so much grief and like beat myself up, over, falling off. Cause I know how important it is Is to make sure that I’m taking care of myself. So I’d love for you to speak to life That fall off period. Cause I think that that’s something that consistency piece is something that we entrepreneur
Really struggle with.
Kiki: Yeah. And sorry to hear that. And you know, the reality is things will happen. You know, life will happen. People will get ill, people will pass away and business things will fall away in your business. Team. Members will go, a marketing campaign will, all of these things were happened that is not going to go away. But the reality is it’s it’s whether you are the strongest version of yourself to be able to cope through those times. And I think it comes down to very firstly is, is those routines that you’ve got it’s those habits. Um, and it’s making that commitment and being compassionate to yourself of, do you know why? Like I haven’t been able to do those, having my hot water in them and I’m not been able to do my gratitudes or whatever yours is, those hot water bath, or getting out in nature or exercise, whatever they are.
But from tomorrow, I am going to start again and it’s making that commitment to yourself, but also to those that you need to serve, because if you, if you are unwell in your business, you can’t, you can’t serve anybody else. And it’s, you’ve got to be a whole, a wholesome and healthy version of yourself. Um, and so it starts with just one thing. So it might be that you say, do you know what for the next week, I’m just going to make sure that I exercise 10 minutes, 10 minutes what’s 10 minutes. Yeah. And just start small. And that’s what I say to people just start small, but also like, forget about your past. If you haven’t done it, you last week, it doesn’t matter. You can start today and just be forgiving of yourself, but just know that you have to pay attention to those things, your health, your wellbeing, your you being happy version of yourself. And that consistency only comes. If you decide to be consistent, it’s simple. It’s a simple decision. It’s certainly simple. But just pick one thing, you know, say to yourself for the month of July, I am just going to make sure that I don’t have an alarm clock. I am just going to make sure that I drink less coffee. I’m going to make sure that I am off social media at eight o’clock at night. I’m going to make sure that I don’t have my phone in the bedroom, whatever, you know, whatever your stuff is. Um, but just do one thing I love that.
Jamie: I love that I’d love for you to speak to the, just like the simple decision to do. I think we get a lot of head trash around that.
Kiki: Yeah, we do. And I think we overcomplicate things and I think, you know, when there’s that there’s that, um, there’s that real in a, in a backlog or should be doing this and I must be doing this and I, I must, I have to do this. And you know, all of these, these have tos and these shirts and all these things, you just need to put it down on a piece of paper or just actually like physically say to yourself, I’m just going to put all of these shirts down. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to pick up the simple choice, um, whatever that choice is. And I’ll give you an example of what that, what that is now shortly, but it’s about you just being brave enough to, to just make that simple decision of, do you know what nothing nobody’s going to die if I don’t do this and I’ll give you an example.
So we’re going through quite significant change in our business at the moment, just really streamlining what we do. Um, and because I’ve got three aspects to our business and you know, for me, it’s, I love setting goals and having structure and strategy and all of these sorts of things. Um, but I’ve definitely noticed over the last couple of weeks that I just, I’m just wanting to just go with the flow a little bit more. And so, you know, at the beginning of this week for the last couple of weeks, I felt, you know, Monday comes and it’s like, what are the three things that have to happen this week? And so I’ve just taken the pressure off myself. Like I’m not going to have anything, no three things, no 10 things. I’m just going to go with whatever is urgent that needs to be done today.
And that’s what I’ve been doing. And I’m telling you the freeness that I feel, whether that’s even a word or not the calmness, the, just the pressure that’s been taken off. It’s just amazing. But it’s going away from what the world is saying. You need to do what, what you, you, you feel like you have to, or should do just do what you feel intuitively feels right to you. And we don’t check in enough with that. But if you’re so busy focusing on the clutter and the busy-ness, you’re not going to hear what’s important to you.
Jamie: Yeah. It’s so true. True. It’s so true because I literally wrote down the other day, I don’t know where it is on my desk, but I was cutting the grass of all things. And I had like this brilliant idea for a podcast. And I’m like, if I hadn’t done this, which is something I kind of enjoy. Yeah. I would have never thought of this. And I think, yeah, Oftentimes we think like work has to be like sitting at your desk and whatever, and it’s, it’s so much more than that. And when we give ourselves that To have And space and to be creative and to think outside the box. Yeah. I think it makes a massive difference.
Kiki: It really does. I’ve seen a quote and I don’t know if it’s a quote from anybody in particular, but it says the greatest things that you will create on those, on your, to do list. And so, you know, though that, you know, getting out in nature, going to, you know, having a boss and, you know, cooking, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of research recently into play and into boredom and into all of those sorts of things. So, you know, while you’re listening right now, I really encourage you to go away and write a list of 20 things that you do too, that you can do. And that you like to do to have fun and to play. I did this quite recently with, with some people, and I’ve got a community which is called the happy, healthy wellbeing community.
So definitely check, check it out. Um, and do you know what a lot of them, mostly professionals and business owners and entrepreneurs really struggle to compile a list of 20 things that they can do to have fun. Um, and that’s the thing we need to have fun we need, cause work is going to get all of our energy because we love our work. We do our work, we just, it’s fine. It’s good. But we also need to take care of all of the other aspects of our life, you know, the play, the fund, the board and the ideas, the simplicity of things. And, and, and there’s such pure joy and love and the simplicity and the calmness of that is just incredible. Yeah.
Jamie: Agreed completely. I wi I listened. It was listening to Renee. Brown’s imperfect gifts of parenting. And she also about play in there. And we did a similar activity. Only. We did it at home for everybody in my house. So then we found like, where does everybody’s play Overlap? So then we can figure out how to do those things together as a family. And, but I, it was, it was Interesting to go through that activity to be like, what are the things that I like to do or play? And I had not asked myself that in 25 years,
Kiki: Assuming I sort of, as adults have lost our way to play or to have fun. But if we don’t have that in our business, you know, then what economy be serious all the time. We’ve got to have plan, we’ve got our front and we’ve got to have creativity, but it’s about finding your own fund because it might be your fund. My friend and other people listening might be very different, but it’s about finding your player. I know what my players and what my fun is, but it’s about us. You know, you finding what yours is, but the only way you gonna find that out is if you slow down and create the simplicity in life and work out what simplicity is, and it’s a journey. I know simplicity has been a word that I had it as a word is a theme, I think probably about four years ago.
And I’d probably only say now a couple of years later, do I really feel like I can say, do you know what I, I do live in greed simplicity, and I’m still aiming to get way better at it, but I’m on a journey to get better, but I don’t beat myself up for what I haven’t done wrong, what I haven’t done. So if I have an exercise or haven’t drawn mine, or, you know, whatever that is, or if I’ve been on social media too late, I’m compassionate to myself. That’s the key self-compassion is where we heal, where we, um, where we really can, can nurture ourselves.
Jamie: Yeah. And I’d love for you to speak to a little bit too, because my philosophy is, is always like, keep it simple. Like what’s the lowest common denominator. How can we eliminate the variables? Cause I think a lot of times, and I’ve seen a lot in our industry, like in the coaching industry, there’s like this tension To make things overly complicated. No real reason that I can see from a strategy perspective. Like if I’m just looking at it from a strategy perspective, other than to keep people with us, right. For an extended period of time, which is for me, I feel like it’s so unfortunate. Like it, I don’t like it. Um, so I’d love for you to speak to, like, why do you think That we as humans? And this is a big question. Why do you think we as humans tend to overcomplicate things so interesting.
Kiki: You say that because it’s something I’ve been reflecting on recently as we refining things. I think the very first thing is we are comparing ourselves to everybody else. Um, you know, firstly, I can’t compare myself to you and you’ve got two children. I don’t have children. You’ve not been through cancer. I have, you know, and we comparing ourselves everybody else, but, but we have to own our own journeys. We’ve got to own our own business. We’ve got to own our own what we want to do. And I think we don’t do that enough. And it’s really important to own what we, what we have. And I think what happens is we read all these amazing books, books, which are great, by the way, I love them.
So we read all these amazing things that other people have done. We look on social media and see all the amazing things that people have built and their business and, you know, eight figures in all sorts of businesses. But we don’t realize what we have to sacrifice. We have to do in order to create that. So then we go down this road and we’re like, right, I want to go create this and you go down the road and you actually realize, do you know what? I don’t want that actually what I want is X. And I think it’s just about really tapping into like, what do I want, what, how do I want to add value to people? What do I want in my business? What do I want to be known for? And getting really intimate with yourself and do you know what as people, we don’t want to do that because we’re so busy, it’s easier to be external than it is introverted, but that battle will continue until you start to look within because you won’t, you won’t be aligned.
You won’t be purposeful. You know, you might see other people creating masterminds or memberships. You might be like, I want to do that because it looks easy, but we don’t, we haven’t done the research or really realize is that what is right for my business or what I want. And I think it’s really tapping into, what’s the one thing that I want to be known for. What is the very one thing that if somebody said, who is Jamie, who is Kiki, this, somebody could say these, they are known for this. I think that that definitely helps. So the comparison getting intimate with yourself, you know, comparing yourself to, to X, Y, Z, and not, not really taking that time and to analyze, analyze what have you done? What are the results? Is it working? Is it not working? You know, sometimes you think it’s working in your mind pen to paper, it might be work, but, but when you actually get really deep, is it really working and then be brave enough to say, Nope, got to go, got it, got to start from scratch to where I’ve got to do this again and getting the help to do that. Cause you can’t do that. Yeah. That was such a deep question with me. Just thinking on the spot there.
Jamie: I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, but I was just like, it felt like such a natural fit for this conversation. And I think that was an excellent response and I just, I, I agree with you. Cause I also think too, the other thing that I see a lot, um, is that people also, they have these ideas that they know in their heart that they want to do, but yet they abandon them when they don’t always get the results that they want. And then they start fresh. Cause they’re told like, Oh, this is the marketing trend now, or this is the strategy now, or this is the whatever. And I think it comes back to exactly what you said, um, listening to yourself. Cause I know one thing for me, Um, I’ll speak on behalf of anybody else other than myself. But like I think that’s happened is that I have this idea, like, I don’t know, Three and a half years ago now when I was sitting in, literally when I was sitting, recovering from my sister Section was like, all right, so I’m going to have my low, okay. Barrier to entry, $67 a month membership. And I’m going to have my higher And done with you coaching program. And then I’ll have my one on one clients and that’s, I’m going to do. And along the way, simple, simple, by the way, super simple. Right? Super simple. And then along the way, somebody was like, no, you shouldn’t be doing that. That should be a quote, like the $67 a month. Isn’t a good idea. You should do a course. So we change it to a course. And then somebody said, Oh, there should be this way. And then we changed that strategy and you know, It’s kind of more back and forth for the past two years. Right. And it’s not nearly as successful As it would happen Then today, if I just simply trusted my gut and followed the path.
Kiki: Do you know? I’m so pleased that you meant to that because I think so often, you know, we know what we want to create in intuitively, you know, we wouldn’t be doing the work that we were doing as entrepreneurs or as business owners. However we name ourselves if we weren’t. But what happens is, you know, is free to think and to strategize about all of these things, it’s free. We can dream, we can create is free, but what costs us obviously financially. Yes. But secondly, it costs us in discipline and time and perseverance and confidence, all these things. And it’s very easy to just get rid of those things. But it’s about the perseverance. It’s about the consistency. And I think so often when we don’t see, which is what I love about faith is, you know, faith is about continuing and believing. Even when you do sit, you know, it’s like a mustard seed, it’s about continuing.
Um, and, and just knowing that you’re going to take the action and having that excellent unwavering faith and effort. And I think, um, how our rod talks about that, doesn’t hear it. And if you haven’t read his book highly recommend, I’m sure you have. Yeah, I’m sure people have, but his book miracle morning is great. But then he’s written another one, which is all about unwavering faith and, and the effort that you put in. And we don’t push ourselves to the absolute ends of effort to make sure that you can say, do you know what, hands on heart, I did everything I could to make that a success.
Jamie: Yeah. I think oftentimes we give up before We, we abandoned, right. We abandoned our, our strategy and we abandoned our faith before we’ve given it away.
Kiki: And it’s a bit like, you know, as we’re talking, it just makes me think, you know, a little bit like a farmer, right? He goes out, he decides what he’s going to plant. He might plant sunflowers the sunflowers aren’t coming out. Cause the sun sun’s not been out. He’s not going to go and rip it all up busy. He’s gonna wait until the season comes. Isn’t he, you know, all of us right now. And, and as I’m speaking, I’m getting clarity on one or two things like we’ve just gotta be patient. We’ve got to, but we’ve gotta be consistent each week of putting the action in of what needs to be put in, but not over complicating. It it’s something that works align with your energy, with your, with your mindset, with your wellbeing and it all linked together. Wholesomely or you get that experience where you get that you outsource that talent to be able to help you sort of call.
Jamie: Yeah. Agreed completely. Oh my goodness. I love this conversation. I literally could talk to you all day About this stuff. Um, but I know we need to kind of wrap up our time together. I ask every guest on the podcast, if there’s any Ninja tips they’d like to leave our listeners with.
Kiki: Yeah, I like that. I like that. Okay. So, um, so I think the very important, the very first thing I want to say is about making sure that you create your really powerful habits in your personal life and in your work life. So I’ve got some amazing habit trackers that you could connect with on Kiki coaching.com. Um, I’m sure there’ll be some show notes here, but really, you know, really streamlined those habits in your personal life and your work life and really making sure that you have each and every day, you have got time for yourself and minimum of at least 30 minutes a day.
Ideally you need a couple of hours, even those of you that have been busy mums, you know, I’ve got other clients that I coach who I’ve made them get to a place where they do have the time for themselves, but not that time where it’s work time. So really making sure that you really create the time for your habits, um, being kind to yourself and compassionate, nurture yourself because we only have one life to live. And it’s about really making sure that you live that life. Um, and do you know what, if something in your business is training and zapping your energy digits, just ditch it and create space in order to find something that’s going to make you feel alive and purposeful. Um, and lastly, just be grateful for where you are on your business journey. Just be grateful for what you’re doing for how far you’ve come for the mistakes you’ve made for the learnings for all of it. Just be grateful and be really proud of yourself as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and just stop playing small and start playing big.
Jamie: I love that. I love that. So, um, tell us, I know you’ve got kind of like a new thing that you are offering, so I’d love to share that.
Kiki: Thank you. So we would love to have you, um, I have got to add, and I don’t think this is going to be, be on offer for forever. Um, but it’s called the wholesome life audit. It’s a 19 minute intense session with me where we look at everything in your life, your work, your health, everything, and we just take an audit of it and then create a plan of what you’re going to do moving forward. Um, and it’s a real zap laser focus in all of those key areas, relationship stuff, communication, work, finances, wellbeing, everything. Um, so I know there’s only a small select select number of ones I’m doing, but I just really recognize from, from a lot of the conversations I was having, lots of people are so many good things are going on for people, but also people are like, I really need to just sort out some of these areas. Um, so I’d love to support you on that. Um, and you know, Jamie, thank you. I love I’ve loved being connected with you and being honest business journey with you. I feel like we shared some great stuff and only known you such a short space of time. I know.
Jamie: Thank you so much for coming on the show and we will be served to put all this Links to connect with Kiki inside the show notes. So thank you Kiki for coming on the show. It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you. And I look forward to connecting with you all and Jamie, thank you. You’re doing amazing stuff. You inspire me. Buddha says I’m sure all of your listeners will agree. So thank you.
Kiki: Thank you so much. And thank you guys for listening and we will talk to you all soon.
