Kathryn Binkley is a Business Strategist & Coach and the founder of Alyght Business Coaching.
Her passion is working to empower entrepreneurs like you to scale online businesses from $100k to $1m+. After building a successful career in marketing/business consulting for nearly a decade, she launched her very own dream business. She was able to use her experience growing businesses and her passion to help entrepreneurs reach their true potential.
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free guide “7 Steps to Fully Booked”
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Katie (00:01): Hi everybody. Thank you for tuning into the Hustlenomics Podcast. I’m your host Katie. And today I’m so excited to be talking with Kathryn Binkley. She is a business strategist and mindset coach on a mission to help female entrepreneurs live their best lives by creating wildly profitable businesses. So Kathryn, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Kathryn (00:18):Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited.
Katie (00:21):Me too. So I gave a little intro for you there, but do you mind diving in a little bit further and telling us more about who you are and everything that you do?
Kathryn (00:28):Oh yeah, absolutely. So I started my career back in full service marketing agencies and worked with a wide variety of clients from really small mom and pop shops all the way up to multi million and billion dollar businesses and handled their marketing strategy for them, meaning helped develop and implement a strategic marketing plan on their behalf. And after doing that for some time, I decided to shift gears and start my own business. So four and a half years ago, I actually transitioned, started my own thing, and now as you said, work with female entrepreneurs to help them build this life that lights them up, which is oftentimes through this profitable business. But it’s really the focus on building a business to support the life that you want.
Katie (01:16):Cool. Very cool. Well, I cannot wait to jump into that, but I’d love to go back a little bit. I’d love to learn about where you’re from and did you go to school to study marketing, all that? What’s your background?
Kathryn (01:26):Okay, got it. Yeah, so I went to school and actually studied psychology and that relates tremendously to marketing. It was a very easy transition to go from a background in psychology to literally two days after I graduated from college, starting in my first marketing role. Figuring out how people think, reason and feel plays such a part in marketing. So that was the background and it translated well. I’m from North Carolina. I live just below once in Salem with my husband. I have two kids and run this business right out of my own house.
Katie (02:02):Very cool. Well that’s awesome that your, your major kind of translated so well to actually what you ended up doing. I’ve talked to a lot of people who did not exactly have that and they had this pressure of like, Oh gosh, I just spent four years and not a lot of money on this degree and now I’m doing something different. Did you feel that anxiety even though it kind of did work out and merge well together?
Kathryn (02:23):Well, I did. At one point I thought about continuing to pursue psychology until I actually did an internship and realized I didn’t want to spend every single day doing that exactly. I, I had started to go down this path of working with families to deal with all the hard things, and I just didn’t want to spend every single day doing that. That internship showed that to me. It was crystal clear, and so right at that moment when I decided I didn’t want to pursue psychology further and wasn’t going to be going to grad school, I had that moment of, okay, Oh my goodness, how is this going to translate? What am I going to do? But it, as I already mentioned, already worked out beautifully.
Katie (03:05):Yeah, that’s awesome. I always say do an internship cause you’re right, it provides a lot of clarity for the real world. Yeah. And so like your psychology background, you definitely talked about the kind of psychological aspects of marketing. Did you have a lot of creative background or were you a creative person or is that something that you kind of cultivated when you went into marketing?
Kathryn (03:23):Yeah, I’ve always felt really creative maybe in different outlets. Not so much in the marketing space of course, but I’ve always had that side to me and it was a natural fit or flow. Also, I think more so than the creative aspect. I was the oldest of five kids and so I was able to see from just grown up with a bunch of kids, both you know, below me that I help take care of. Right. As the oldest, you help take care of them. I was able to see how they think and reason and fail and how that all plays a part into their every day. And it was interesting because so much of, I feel like psychology and marketing but also leadership really cross over. There’s this huge overlap between the three.
Katie (04:05):Absolutely. I agree 100% and so when you started in the corporate world, what was your experience like there? Was it good? Was it bad? I’ve heard mixed from everybody.
Kathryn (04:14):Yeah. Well I loved what I did, but when I first started out, my very first position was completely sink or swim. They said, here’s the position, just jump in. I didn’t get a lot of direction and it was on me to soak up everything and to make my way and to earn my way. And I did. And I quickly grew. I was promoted many, many times, even within the same year or two year span. And I mean all of this additional responsibility fell on my shoulders in a great way. It was perfect at the time. Over time, that became more than I wanted, if you will, because especially in the agency world, if you know anything about ad agencies, marketing agencies, there is this tendency to put in a lot of hours. And that wasn’t something that I knew I wanted longterm. Now I love to work and I work a lot. When I love what I do, but I like to do that on my own terms.
Katie (05:13):Yeah, yeah. Were you starting to feel out that burnout feeling, I’m guessing? Oh yeah.
Kathryn (05:17):Yeah, definitely. And some of that came when I got married and started having kids. That’s when I really had to make that decision and I didn’t like the fact that it felt like my career was going to be limited by wanting to spend time with my family and prioritize my family, but also that my career was going to be limited by the fact that I was a mom. I wasn’t okay with that. And I felt like I could have both and decided to make that happen.
Katie (05:45):I love that. I really do. And so when you just started to darker on business and go do your own thing, had that been something that you thought about before? Did you have other entrepreneurs around you that you kind of could look up to? What was that journey like?
Kathryn (05:57):Yeah. So at first, I can’t say that early in childhood or even through college, I thought that I would start my own thing. I remember talking about it maybe with a best friend once or twice, but not seriously. And as I started to step into the role that I was in as an account manager, serving clients at a strategic level, I was calling the shots for their marketing for multimillion dollar budgets and realized that I had everything and knew everything I needed to do this on my own. I was slaving away, if you will, working all of these hours for someone else and building their dream. And I started to realize that I could, I could do that for myself. And so that’s when I started to realize, okay, I can do this. I have everything I need. And I actually saw my mom step out on her own. And it wasn’t until, I’m trying to think of the timing, I may have been in college when she decided to step out of her corporate role and she started her own business. And so I saw that journey in that transition, saw that it went really well. And of course I look up to my mom and so she paved that way and showed me what was possible.
Katie (07:04):That’s awesome. I love hearing stories of like, you know, I’ve heard a lot of moms and daughters going into businesses, but I think it’s so cool to have women in your life that you can look up to and see them doing. That kind of gives you a little inspiration. And so starting a new business is obviously a very exciting, there’s a lot of big exciting things going on, but there’s also a lot of scary stuff as well. And that scary stuff tends to be what holds people back from doing it the first place. So what were some of those fears that you were feeling when you first started and how did you deal with them or end up overcoming them?
Kathryn (07:32):Oh my goodness, there. I’m sure there have been so many, but the one that really stands out right now was this idea of going from managing a team of people because I did manage a team in the agency world of highly skilled copywriters, designers developers, whatever position is needed to get something done. We had these people at, at my fingertips, either on staff or outsourced. I had this team to implement and all of a sudden I was going from having this incredible team to doing it all by myself. And mindset wise, that was really tough because I had to deal with all of these thoughts of well, what if all along the success that I got for my clients was really because of the team that I worked with and not so much due to my own, you know, strategy and background and experience. And it was just the things of course coming up in my own head, like I had the knowledge, I knew what I was talking about and that that would translate. But in those moments, you start to have those doubts.
Katie (08:34): Yeah. How’d it ended up dealing with that and kind of figuring out a way to make it work for yourself outside of that team environment?
Kathryn (08:41): The biggest thing was just starting to recognize those thoughts and stop them in their tracks and continue to move forward. At first, I let those thoughts really overwhelm me and stop me from moving forward in the sense of taking days or weeks to move forward on an idea or sometimes never moving forward at all, having this incredible idea for an offer and just holding myself back. It wasn’t until I actually hired a coach of my own, I think that was the turning point where instead of speaking to those around me who didn’t really understand the entrepreneurial space at all, I’m trying to talk to my husband who didn’t understand at all. I finally had someone who recognize what I was dealing with and I could speak to them and, and move beyond it.
Katie (09:31):Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of great things about hiring business coaches recently that was not really ever on my horizon until maybe a year ago. I just didn’t even like know what that was or you know, how they could help you. But it’s such an interesting world. I thought a lot of coaches on my show too and it’s, it’s really fascinating. So starting out, you’ve got all this exciting stuff in front of you and where you bring in clients from your old agency where you said me to start completely over. What was that like?
Kathryn (09:57):Yeah, I started over completely. I am big on integrity and I didn’t want to pull any clients from my past employers. I wanted to, you know, if I were, if I was going to start a business, I wanted to do it with integrity. So the way that I actually started out so that there wasn’t any competition there at all was starting to do some work on this side geared towards nonprofits. Most of my clients had been corporations, companies, that kind of thing. For-Profits. Right. And while I had some nonprofit experience I decided I was going to transition and focus on that as I started to build my business. So right from the get go. I actually did a lot of nonprofit marketing work and consulting as I started to to build up a little bit of revenue. Just because of the results that I’d gotten with previous clients. I’ve gotten many referrals, so that was great. I started to work with for-profits through referrals and then I really niched down into female only owned businesses and focused on those service based businesses after some time. And that’s when I went full time.
Katie (11:06):Awesome. And when you’re first starting out, I’m sure this happened to me it’s like really easy to want to take everything just cause you’re like, Oh my gosh, I need work. So what made you decide to niche down into such a particular, you know, area and how has that been beneficial?
Kathryn (11:21):I guess I always knew that I needed to niche down marketing being my background. I’d seen people try to generalize and go after everything and be everything to everyone and it fell. And so I knew that wasn’t going to work. And I, I guess I just had that background and I’m very grateful for that because I know many, many people who learned that lesson the hard way, but at least I had that background and that insight to go ahead and, and focus in. And so from the very beginning I knew that I would focus, I tried a couple of different things, as I said, started out with the nonprofits just so that there wouldn’t be any competition while I was still working from other employer. But yeah, I guess I always knew that I needed to, that wasn’t a question that I ever had.
Katie (12:06):Yeah, that’s really important. I always say like do that as soon as possible because you, like you said, learning the hard way is no fun. And we’ve mentioned the word strategy and marketing strategy a couple of times now and I feel like that’s one of those buzzwords that you hear all the time and you’re like, yeah, I know I need that, but I don’t really know what that is. So for people who are listening or maybe just just barely into the online space or starting their own business or even people who’ve been there for awhile who don’t really know how to do a marketing strategy, can you kind of define what that means and what it goes into creating one? I know that’s such a broad question.
Kathryn (12:40):When I use the word strategy, it’s a very intentional use of the strategy and not this broad use that you hear. There’s a lot of, a lot of people will talk about strategies and they’re really talking about tactics. They’re talking about individual ways to market themselves. They’re talking about strategy, but using the word when it relates to growing their Instagram following or this and that little things. I’m talking about a big picture strategy, your entire approach for your business and marketing. And so there’s a very clear process that I work through to understand where you are now, where you want to be, and then to figure out this gap of how to get from here to there. And that’s all that the strategy is in a nutshell is figuring out how to get from where you are now to where you want to be, what that’s gonna look like. But looking at it in a big picture way and not just figuring out all the things that you can do, but the best approach, what’s going to get you the highest return on your investment from a marketing investment perspective to get there faster.
Katie (13:43):Right? And there’s so many different platforms out there from, you know, social media to email marketing, to podcasts and even how do you go about helping your clients figure out like, like you said, what is best for them.
Kathryn (13:55):So there’s, there’s an approach that I use that I refer to you as the impact versus effort analysis. And I like to take all of their ideas because as entrepreneurs, we’re all visionaries. We have a million ideas, all of these things that we want to do or that we’ve heard that someone else has done and has worked for them. And we want to try, or this would be fun or you know, let’s, let’s do all the things right, but we can’t do all the things. So what we do is we brainstorm all of those. Then we create a quadrant of impact, higher low impact and then effort, higher low effort impact relating to the goal that they’ve set. And success is different for everyone. So that’s relative to your own impact that you want to have in your business. Revenue, helping people, whatever that looks like. And then effort, meaning time, energy, money, all kinds of things, right?
Kathryn (14:46):Anything that you have to put in. And we look at the high and low impact in the high and low effort and start to map all of these ideas and the ones that we feel are going to create the highest impact with the least amount of effort are the ones to invest in or double down on right away. And the ones with the lowest impact, the lowest potential impact and are gonna take the highest effort are the ones who avoid. And really it starts to help, help frame which ones to focus on. And the interesting thing is that when you start, when you go through this process, the same exact strategy or tactic could be in a different quadrant for you than for someone else. And so when you look around and something worked for someone else to grow their business, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. And that’s what strategy really is all about, is figuring out what’s gonna work best for you. Because at the end of the day, you have different goals, different audience, a different message, different offers, price points, and the list goes on and on and on. And so different strategies are going to impact your business differently.
Katie (15:50):Yeah, absolutely. And once they’ve kind of narrowed down that list of what they want to focus on, do you believe in the kind of trial and error of, you know, like trying certain things to see if they work or what’s your kind of process to find out that that happy medium of what’s gonna work for each client?
Kathryn (16:05):So I think there’s a healthy dose of testing in marketing. That’s the trial and error. But for the most part when we narrow down strategies, I truly am looking at that return on investment and before any client invest even a dollar into a certain strategy, I like to look at what the potential audience is, what their close rates are what the frequency would be that they would achieve all of these different measurements. There are a few and create a dashboard like an ROI waterfall if you will, of if you invest in this strategy, how is that going to impact your bottom line compared to a different strategy? You can put them side by side. The same investment in two different strategies is going to get you a different reach and ultimately different number of cells as you move all the way down this funnel. And so you can look at those side by side before ever doing anything to get a good feel for which is gonna more likely help you get, you know, get to where you want to go. Then within that strategy, that’s where the testing and tweaking comes in. Which ad copy, which landing page elements need to change, which imagery, all of that.
Katie (17:18):Okay. Cool. So as kind of a real life example, if you don’t mind, I’m sure you did this for yourself when you first started your own business, what, how did you decide what was good for you? Like a blog, a podcast, things like that, and how have you kind of tracked those as you’ve found along?
Kathryn (17:33):Okay, so when I first started out, a lot of my strategies related to my goals of starting out and gaining more awareness of myself, positioning myself as a thought leader. So I did start out by creating a lot of content, my budget lower because my income wasn’t where it would be eventually. When you’re just starting a business. So I was using a lot of content marketing and positioning myself as that expert by putting out free content, not necessarily teaching everything about the how, just talking about the what and the why and getting in front of people. And I used that and chose that path because of the lower effort, if you will, that had to go into it and the potential reach that was there compared to, you know, now things look a little bit different for me. I’m investing in more Facebook ads and things like that to drive people into a funnel that I’ve already created. And so over time that has evolved.
Katie (18:31):Interesting. And you’re a fellow podcast host, so what made you want to start a podcast? Do you have any background in audio?
Kathryn (18:39):I haven’t had any background myself in audio. I worked with teams recording radio spots and things like that, but not from the podcast stand point. I decided to start my own podcast just because it was another platform to get my message out to share helpful content. I like to talk, love to talk actually about marketing and mindset and I was already creating content in other ways and it was one more Avenue to spread that reach. I know that my particular target audience is often busy and on the go and they like to listen to content versus reading things or even sitting and watching videos all the time. So it felt like the right fit.
Katie (19:17):And what’s the kind of format? Do you interview guests or is it a solo show?
Kathryn (19:21):I actually have a mix of both. I started out as a solo show and just this year have started interviewing guests. And so right now it’s a mix and I’m sure it’s going to continue to be a mix over the course of this year.
Katie (19:33):So podcasts are such a big thing these days. I just don’t think people understand like what goes into creating one. I always find it’s interesting to talk to people and they’re like, Whoa, that sounds way harder than I realized. So did you have like a learning curve for in any of the editing or the recording, anything like that?
Kathryn (19:49):No, I hired a team member. So I am at the stage of my business where I recognize where my strengths are and I can learn things quickly, but I know that that’s not my best use. So I actually hired someone, I have a podcast producer, I’m on staff and all I do is show up in record and she handles everything else and it’s beautiful.
Katie (20:12):That’s awesome. That’s definitely something we’re thinking about down the road because it is a lot of work and you’re right, outsourcing can free you up for a lot of things. And you mentioned mindset, so that sounds like it’s a part of what you do in your brand and how does that kind of work with the whole marketing strategy and everything else that you do?
Kathryn (20:28):Well, I think that I decided to start focusing on mindset and I’ve gotten certifications and done extensive mindset work myself before just hopping in and offering that as a service. But I realized that with all of the knowledge that I had from a marketing background, I still held myself up and got in my own way. And it was all because of my own mindset. And so I knew that there are women that were going to come to me and telling them what to do and how to do it wasn’t enough because they were still going to have doubts and limiting beliefs and fears and we would need to address those. And with my psychology background, that made sense, but not until I experienced it for myself and realized how much I actually got in my own way at the beginning. Not until then did I realize that I needed to shift and focus on that. So I invested heavily, took the time to, to learn and consume a lot of content around that, hired mindset coaches for myself and started working with my clients on their mindsets as well.
Katie (21:30):Okay, cool. And I’ve heard in the mindset communities, you know, I’m sure you’ve heard this term too, the limiting beliefs and like you mentioned things that’s making you stop yourself from moving forward and achieving what you would like to do. Did you have any of those limiting beliefs that you had to overcome before you could move forward?
Kathryn (21:46):Oh yeah, and probably too many to possibly name limiting beliefs around just was I was I good enough? Was I enough? Did I know enough? So that was coming up. Also just fear of visibility, putting myself out there. I had been behind the scenes for some incredible brands, but I was always behind the scenes. Now all of a sudden I was the face of my brand. I was that business. I had to get in front of the camera, I had to show up. And so that was a process. That fear of visibility, that fear of being known and all the stuff related to my own body image. I mean women, I think in general across the board, if you ask a room full of a million women, if they’ve ever thought to themselves that they don’t like the way they look, I think all 1 million would stand up. I’m pretty sure something close to that, if not all would stand up and say, you know, there is something I don’t like. And so I remember early on not wanting to get on camera and being scared to go live on Facebook. And you know, just there are so many things that I face.
Katie (22:49):Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I struggle with that myself. I still have yet to do like the live Instagram labs or Facebook lives. It’s still at something I’m working up to, but I absolutely have felt that for myself. And have you surrounded yourself with like a community or what has helped you kind of become more confident In that sense?
Kathryn (23:06):Yes. I have surrounded myself with a community. I don’t think that that’s specifically what helped with the visibility piece. I think for me it was just a matter of action. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be. And the first time I actually sat down to go live on Facebook, I didn’t do it. I sat there and about like almost pressed the button to go live for probably half an hour and then it was too late because the kids were almost home from school. And of course I made up these excuses. Right? The next time I sat down and I just counted down and pushed the button and did it. And it didn’t matter how bad it sucked. I was like, I’m gonna just do it. And it just took that action. But back to the community aspect, I, I do have a community. I’ve surrounded myself both ways, paid coaches and mentors and then also a biz besties, if you will from other peers and the same kind of space who understanding and get what this is all about. And after doing that and building that community, I’ve seen how many others have struggled with this same exact thing. So it’s nice to have that. I almost wished that I’d had more of that community right when I was trying to go through some of these visibility challenges because I did face some of those on my own. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I definitely like utilize Facebook groups and things like that. And that’s been really helpful just to kind of know that other people are going through similar things.
Katie (24:30):And so do you have anything in the future coming up and your business or personal life or just anything that’s going on that you’re really excited about and looking forward to?
Kathryn (24:38):Well, a ton of things. I always like to look ahead to the future and I know that coming up here soon, I’m actually going to be relaunching a program of mine as a self study. So I’m really excited about that. I’ve got a lot in the works for this year and just getting bigger, going bigger and planning to do a live event and I don’t have any details about it quite yet. I’m still in the very early stages of planning, but I’m super excited just starting to dream about that and tasking some of my team to help put the framework around what that’s going to look like to, to implement. But those couple of things, specifically getting some self study options out there for my clients and then also creating some live experiences in person experiences. I’m really excited about those two.
Katie (25:23):Yeah, that does sound really exciting. Are there any resources out there like books or other podcasts or courses or anything that you found helpful that you would recommend to the listeners?
Kathryn (25:31):Yeah, I, I love to read and there are two favorite books and I’ve read a million and could recommend so many, but two very early in my career that were super helpful. One was or is called drive, it’s by Daniel pink and it’s all about motivating people and then start with why by Simon Sineck. And both of those will help you figure out your own motivation, your own drive for your business and your wife or your business. But also you can look at it from the perspective of leadership with motivating your team and also your marketing to help people really connect with your message. So I think if you take the time to reflect on the content from those three perspectives, then it can be really powerful for you and your business.
Katie (26:18):Awesome. I’ll definitely link to those in the show notes and I’m sure I’m gonna want to check out everything you’re doing and follow the exciting stuff you have going on in the future. So can you tell listeners how they can find you?
Kathryn (26:28):Yeah, absolutely. So you can join me over at the lit lady preneur podcast. I’d love for you to take a listen. I’m also on Instagram at a light a,L , Y, G, H T and I have a free guide, seven steps to fully booked. I’d love for all of you to take a look at and, and get your copy of that. If you are service based business owner and want to book in more clients, then I’ve got a free guide out there. So I’ll give you the link to that as well to share. That’d be great. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.
