We were lucky to catch up with Katie B. Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

My mission or “WHY” behind my work is to support in shifting the consciousness of the planet from one of fear to one of love. It takes each one of us to do this work internally and externally for this to happen. What I mean by that is in coaching we look at mindsets and beliefs that keep us in a box, stuck, thinking in a limited way. You could say we become aware of our blind spots or biases. This is true in the yoga and meditation I teach as well and in the dream tending work I do. In yoga and meditation we are shifting the beliefs in the subconscious mind and we are learning to live in a state with an open heart, healthy boundaries and right relationship with ourselves. In dream tending we are communicating in the language of the soul and looking to strengthen what our dreams are trying to make conscious to us that we are not seeing. All this work opens awareness and without opening awareness we can’t make change in how we think or how we behave.

So my mission is about serving humanity in getting out of their own way so that they can become congruent with who they really are not who society, culture or family tells them who they should be, Imagine a world where all of us are being true to ourselves and honoring that even if each of us are doing it differently – we are respecting, loving and trusting all those we interact with – this is true inclusion. The key is learning to be inclusive with ourselves first then it becomes easier to be inclusive of others.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have over 15 years of Executive Recruiting experience, working with business leaders to grow their company and their teams. I spent many years helping companies find top executives as an Executive Search consultant. My candidates would come back to me saying they were having problems with the CEO and I would coach them around what needed to shift in them to diffuse the problem. I realized these conversations where very fulfilling for me and making sustainable change in the organization.

This is what had me hire my own coach and explore what was the next iteration of my career, as I felt burned out with the recruiting scene. It was through that process that I decided to get certified as a coach and start my own business, That was 14 years ago and I could not be happier.

In 1990, I shifted my focus inward with a desire to redefine “success” in light of personal challenges, including raising a severely hearing impaired daughter. While teaching my daughter to speak and listen, I learned what it truly means to communicate with ourselves and others. During this time, I discovered the power of yoga and meditation to improve stress level and increase creative thinking and communication.

This led to creating a marketable and much-needed stress-management course for attorneys. I have worked nationally with corporations and individuals bringing awareness to the importance of achieving an integrated, balanced life.

I focus on helping business leaders and professionals to successfully navigate change, strengthen communication, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence and career transition while effectively growing their business and careers.

As a Leadership & Career Coach, I work with senior executives, managers, and professionals who want to:
 Become more productive in their current role.
 Want to become more inspiring leaders.
 Want to improve their work satisfaction by aligning their work more closely with their values.
 Want to seek more effective strategies for career navigation and transition.

I believe that seeking to uncover and align with our authentic selves is vital to our becoming the best leaders we can be to the teams and companies we lead. My clients often comment on my unique ability to help them identify tangible goals with personal and professional meaning, allowing them to experience more freedom, higher income, and greater peace of mind.

I am trained to observe my clients’ inner strengths and help them design actions that produce positive results. This unique and powerful approach helps my clients develop strategies to make their lives easier and more productive.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

How I show up is what has built my reputation. Showing up demonstrating high integrity, respect, being open, collaborative and supportive. I have continually done my own inner work to build my own internal infrastructure – working with professionals to support me in uncovering my blind spots, growth edges and anchoring in a strong internal narrative in my mind as this impacts my behavior.

It is also in the results my client achieve. My coaching starts with outlining the vision of where my clients want to be at the end of our engagement. Then we pull out the key goals that are critical for the vision to manifest and then the action items out of the goals. So we have a map from the very first coaching session with a stated intention/vision of what the client wants to achieve in partnering with me. This is a key component for me to be able to measure the coaching and see how we are doing throughout our work together.

How I show up in my life and my work is congruent to who I am. I have built trust in myself and what I believe. I have worked on what triggers me and how to manage my own emotions and learn to hold neutral space where no judgment is allowed with clients.

I have continually focused on growing my skills as a coach and working with others in my profession to stay current and future forward in how I run my business and how I coach.

With me you get the real deal. I am a collaborative partner that supports clients to achieve what they desire to achieve by providing accountability, structure and exploration and by demonstrating the ability to be neutral, collaborative, thought provoking and direct with sugar on top ( direct in a way that only brings value). It is crucial that I create safe, honest space with clients otherwise it is not serving the client’s best interest.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn the thinking that being vulnerable and asking for support was a weakness. I was in my early 30’s and living in the Bay Area and enrolled in a very deep transformative program. Part of the program was participating in a ropes course. We were in the middle of a redwood forest and we were asked to climb to the top of a redwood tree and stand on a 12 inch plate. I was incredibly scared as this was a very tall redwood tree.

I was all harnessed up and began climbing to the top, I reached the top and put one foot on the plate and then as I began to place the other foot on the plate I realized it was dead quiet. There was no one cheering me on from my colleagues below, all I could hear in my mind was my fearful thoughts and the feeling that I was going to fall.

Which of course, I did fall.

My take away was that if I asked for help in the beginning or even when I got to the top of the tree the crowd below would have begun cheering me on and those voices and messages could have helped me overcome the fearful thoughts and feelings I was experiencing.

I learned that asking for help and being vulnerable was a strength and not a weakness to succeeding. At the time in my life I was a single mom raising two kids on my own and it was incredibly challenging doing everything on my own. It was the perfect lesson I needed.

This learning helped me in my business by learning that I don’t need to do the things in my business that I don’t want or am not good at – it is okay to hire it out and to do only what I am best at – which is coaching. So early on I hired a virtual assistance that I still have today, I have hired marketing companies for my website, social media consultants, professional photographers, mentor coaches, healers and more.

Every good CEO surrounds themselves with key advisors that are experts in their field. It is essential for any leader to focus on what he/she/they are here to do and reach out to your circle of support when you need them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.katiebsmith.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiebsmithcoach/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiebsmith/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Katiebsmith
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXccQc9PL0jnadWrt2gM4bQ
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/katie-b-smith-and-associates-golden?osq=executive+coaching
• Other: Sound Cloud: https://soundcloud.com/katiebsmith Substack: https://substack.com/@theintegratedleader