Community Highlights: Meet Kim Trathen of Kim Trathen Coaching

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Trathen.  

Hi Kim, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
Definitely! I’m obsessed with helping women become Rich, Confident and Happy. This dream began as a seedling thought during my 20 years in the actuarial field when I’d see far too few women in the financial industry and watch people work their whole lives to “finally” be able to enjoy it after they retired. Then, in 2010, I had a friend tragically murdered. I connected with our local domestic violence shelter (Safe Haven Ministries) and did some work for them. I learned so much and one thing became evident: women deserve more (more money, more time, more freedom, more choices, more impact, more love, more abundance…etc.).

Society loves to celebrate the young entrepreneurs, but I was almost 40 when I launched my business. I spent my last 5 years in corporate as head of marketing. So, I combined this corporate experience with my passion for supporting women, and just like that, Kim Trathen Coaching was born. My goal is to help as many women as possible scale their businesses to create the lives they dream of.

Although many people will tell you it’s impossible, I scaled my Coaching business to the 6-figure mark before I left my corporate job. Being married with 3 kids in sports, that meant a lot of late nights, early mornings, and weekends. But I knew that would be temporary. And it was. I became a full-time Coach in January 2021.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Whether or not a journey is smooth is incredibly subjective. Some people would hear I worked both my job and my business for 2.5 years and think that was so fast. Others would dread it’d take that long. What I will say is that the obstacles felt incredibly challenging in the moment. Especially my first year in business (2018). 

During that year, we endured a lot of personal struggles – family deaths and home/car repairs, and I ended the year by being hospitalized for 5 days with massive internal bleeding. Yes, I would say that year was tough. But it was also punctuated with some of my fondest business memories. I launched and signed my first clients, landed my first speaking events, and ran an online interview series where I interviewed women around the world about their businesses. I even had the privilege of interviewing one of Adele’s backup singers (yes, the Adele!). 

One of the greatest lessons I learned during that first year is that most business owners have the same struggles – they worry where the next sale will come from, they have difficulty shutting off their brains at night, and they question if they should raise rates and if they’re doing enough. 

The mental burden on entrepreneurs is incredibly different than that of an employee. These struggles are real. 

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Kim Trathen Coaching LLC?
I’m obsessed with helping women become Rich, Happy, and Confident, and your business is the gateway to this. Business growth is equal parts strategy and mindset. So, we talk about your sales and marketing, how your offer is selling and how much money you’re making; and then we go deeper. Given that women are 7x more likely to be raped than to receive VC funding for a new business, there is a lot of internalized societal programming that directs your decisions (like avoiding debt while men leverage it). And these decisions create your results. When we coach together, we may tweak your strategy, but we also peel back the layers to see what’s beneath. When you are willing to do this work in tandem, you create a business that fills with clients you love and allows you more time with your family. 

What are your plans for the future?
Right now, I’m looking forward to welcoming in more 1:1 clients. I haven’t decided yet if the future will hold a group or if I’ll stay with the deeper connected private clients. Either way – it’ll be an adventure. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kimthebusinesscoach.com/consult
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/kimthebusinesscoach
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/kimthebusinesscoach