#84: Scaling Your Resilience with Kelly Ruta, Founder & CEO of Kelly Ruta International
I’m about to drop a major truth bomb….
In the online space, if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing.
It’s important to always stand for something, or someone and show up in a way that is genuine to you.
And my guest today, Kelly Ruta, CEO of Kelly Ruta International, stands for a lot.
Kelly helps people overcome their inner blocks. But she didn't just take a weekend thousand dollar life coaching or mindset coaching certification. Her training includes a degree in psychology, a degree in clinical social work, post-grad work and thousands of hours of clinical practice supervision.
Today Kelly and I chat about the differences between:
Hiring a professional versus life coach
Transference and countertransference
Our conscious and conscious minds
So, if you want to hear about how to transform your life in a massive way, this episode is for you!
Learn more about Kelly here:https://kellyruta.com or follow her on Instagram here:https://www.instagram.com/kellysruta. .
Check out my new free training on www.yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:02):
So many entrepreneurs, dream of living a life of massive impact by creating a mega successful company, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. And when they do it is so often lacking the very joy and freedom that got them into entrepreneurship in the first place. So on this podcast, we speak authentically on what it actually takes to scale your business in a way that creates freedom and joy that works for you, your team, and the incredible impact that you are meant to make in the world as a visionary entrepreneur. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur wife, mom, to three. And I love talking all things business, especially digging into what it actually takes to scale joyfully to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond let's get started.
(01:00):
Hi everybody. I am here to share with you as special friend. This is Kelly Ruta. She is the CEO of Kelly Ruta international, and Kelly is what I like to call in the internet space a bad-ass. So I'm really excited for you to meet her and we're going to be speaking some truths. We just did a whole lot of laughing before we started this podcast. And I can't wait to include you into some of these fun conversations. So thank you Kelly, for being here.
Kelly (01:27):
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation. I'm excited to dive into the topics that we talked about for today and definitely dropping some truth bombs. So yeah.
Laura (01:39):
Truth bombs are kinda your thing, huh?
Kelly (01:41):
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I definitely identify as a disruptor, which is so funny because growing up, you know, such a negative thing. Oh, you're so opinionated. You're so outspoken you're so this, and now I realized, wait, this is something to be celebrated. So I just embrace it.
Laura (02:00):
Yeah. And I think particularly in the online space, I mean, if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing. And I know that there's a lot that you stand for, but really who you stand with is scaling entrepreneurs.
Kelly (02:11):
Yes. 100%, particularly women.
Laura (02:14):
Yeah. So you know, so many of us are scaling, we're growing our businesses, and I should probably preface this by that. You are not like a mindset coach just got like a life coaching degree last weekend. And then you decided that you're going to help people overcome their inner blocks. Right. So you've had like a little bit of professional experience going into this, right?
Kelly (02:35):
Yeah. A little bit. So I'm, I'm about 26 years in. Yes. I cringe when I hear about the weekend thousand dollar, you know, life coaching or mindset, coaching certification that so many people are being marketed and that they're buying and that they're deciding this, oh, yes. This is the level training required. My training includes a degree in psychology, a degree in clinical social work, post-grad work thousands and thousands of hours of clinical practice supervision. Post-grad, just goes on and on and on. And that's what I entered the space with six years ago, compared to sort of the standard in the industry, which is some sort of certification or even worse, I just went through something in life or business. So now I'm going to teach you how to do it.
Laura (03:36):
So let's say that I am a CEO, and I know you really help, particularly women scaling entrepreneurs. And a lot of times they get to a certain point where they're either plateauing and growth or they are not happy. They're just like straight up, not happy. And with your psychotherapy background, what is it that's different about hiring a professional versus hiring like a life coach? I mean, I know that's probably a question that is a little bit beneath you, but like, what is it? What, like, why would I, what should I expect from somebody with a clinical background and I wouldn't be able to get otherwise.
Kelly (04:12):
Yeah, that actually is a fabulous question. And it's one I wish more people would actually ask because there are distinct training differences. So I don't know that I can go into all of them today, but let me talk about the handful that are really most important. Number one is being clinically trained in identifying and working with transference and countertransference, which is very simply what is my stuff? What is your stuff? And how do I identify, tease that out and make sure I'm not projecting my stuff all over the client. And if the client is projecting her stuff on me, how do you clinically resolve that? Which is huge. It's absolutely huge. And it's not something you learn out of a book. It has to be something that is taught, practiced, challenged, supervised. And if not, if that's not done properly, it puts a client, whether you're a psychotherapy client or a coaching client, it really can put you in harm's way.
(05:21):
Even though I've never met a coach, who's trying to put somebody in harm's way, right? You're, they're always doing this from a place of, of care and service, but this is not something that coaches are typically trained to handle. The second thing is being really well-trained in navigating human resistance to change successfully. That's why there is a lot of gaslighting in the coaching industry because when a client pushes back, because they feel triggered or stuck or overwhelmed or any one of a number of things, and the coach is not properly trained in navigating psychological resistance, the coach can get very triggered. And then gaslight the client, which is super traumatizing, really unethical, very, very harmful and very common and extremely common. And I don't even think a lot of coaches realize that's what they're doing really, to be quite honest. And the client might not even be familiar with that term or experience. They just know they feel awful as a result of the interaction.
Laura (06:39):
So interesting. So let's say again, using the example of I'm in a coaching program, I have a coach that is basically saying, in order to get the result, I need to get out of my own way. I need to spend more money on my leadership. I need to, not that there's any specific examples like that out there that I just don't believe hard enough or something like that. And really what the coach is probably nervous about is like, I don't want this person to not get a result. So I'm just going to Gaslight them exactly is what you're saying, which is that there are clinical best practices or somebody that's not getting a result. And the reason is not because of strategy.
Kelly (07:22):
Exactly. I, although I, what I will say is the way that I do CEO development is extremely strategic in nature. It's not vision boards and journaling, which no problem with either one of those things. I use them there they're wonderful tools, but they really are kind of the cherry on the icing, on the cake. You have to have the meat of the cake. And that's not something that most coaches are taught the skill set to successfully navigate. And again, that goes back to even transference and countertransference. What stuff is mine? What triggers are mine, what's the clients? And do I have the skills nominally to be aware of it and identify it, but to navigate it successfully. So the client gets results. I remain in integrity, which is the most important thing. And also to be able to identify, well, if this client isn't getting results in their work with me, then it's in her highest good. And my highest good to get her to somebody who has the skillset to navigate that with her. But instead, so many clients are triggered about the money and the, Oh, it's not going to look good for me and retention and all this other stuff that they continue to push the client in a way that's not healthy for anybody really.
Laura (08:53):
You know, it's so funny. That's actually why I love being a consultant. My hands are super clean. I'm like not a therapist. I'm not a clinician. I don't need to all I am as a business consultant. It's not that at all. I am as a business consult, but it keeps it very clean. Like there is no chance that there is going to be that transference that you're talking about. And it's less of a chance, right? It's a more about the numbers. Right?
Kelly (09:21):
I agree. And I think, I actually wish more people would step into a consulting role because consulting and I get this question a lot. What's the difference between a therapist, a coach and a consultant, and a coach should be acting like a co-creator and guide and a consultant. So in other words, my sort of guiding principle is that, you know yourself better than anybody on this planet, right? Occasionally parts of yourself are not, you're not able to access them. And my job is to help you access them. Now, along the way, I may teach you something new. I may model something new, but I really do believe you are the hero of your own story. And all heroes just need guides. Right? Joseph Campbell consultants. That's true. It's so true. He's so awesome about that. And a consultant you hired to tell you what to do literally to tell you here's what to do. Here's how to do it. Here's when to do it. Here's when not to do it. And it's a different relationship.
Laura (10:34):
It's so powerful and so clean. And it's like, if you don't like what I'm telling you to do, I don't care. Yes. Cool. Absolutely not going to tell you. I told you, so if you come back, I mean, not to you anyways.
Kelly (10:50):
I get it. And honestly, I don't have any for me. And a lot of coaches. This is the other thing. Just circling back to your question. When you are a trained therapist, if you've been trained properly, you are trained to understand the edges of your own ego and you are trained to work with other people's egos. And I don't mean ego in the sort of armchair psychology term. That just means massive arrogance. And you think so much of yourself, it's really truly understanding how the ego impacts your personality, your behavior, your reactivity, all of those things. So I need to know how to keep mine in check. I need to know when yours is showing up and that's not about shaming, somebody for having ego or getting you to try to kill your ego. I say this all over the internet. I'm like, why aren't you teaching that? That's bananas. That is so counterproductive. It's not a best practice. Go look just, if you think I'm joking, go look up #kill the ego or ego is the enemy. You'll be blown away at the numbers. You're not your enemy. You just don't know how to work with it properly. Right? You get someone who's not skilled in those handful of things. I just talked about. It's a recipe for absolute disaster.
Laura (12:20):
That's so interesting. So let's talk about what often happens when people are scaling. And I've been fascinated by this watching different people scaling because as a business consultant, my job right. Is to help them grow their business and I'm not bad at it. So a lot of times people are getting big revenue leaps, and then all of a sudden it's just like stuff is blowing up, right. Which sometimes it's just the business breaking on the backend, which is supposed to happen when you grow your revenue. And that's cool. Right? And there's really good operations folks out there that can help with that. But sometimes it is like such a, it is such a mind challenge for them. I don't want to say mindset because I don't want to misuse that word, but it's, there is so much resistance. Yes. That, and there's things that are very obvious to me from the outside, but I don't know how to put words to it. Like, I wouldn't even know how to explain it. So what happens when, why is that hard?
Kelly (13:30):
It's hard for a handful of very simple, but not always easy reasons. So number one, it's hard because the ego really is only interested in helping you maintain your status quo. And the interesting thing about the online space particularly is that you do see people make really tremendous leaps very quickly sometimes. And while you look at that and you look at the bank account and you look at the wonderful people you get to work with and all the opportunities to do your genius work, your ego is interpreting that leap as a direct threat to your safety and security. So instantaneously it throws up resistance, which can show up in a lot of forms. It can show up in an emotional form, like fear, anxiety, panic, overwhelm, those kinds of things. It can show up in thoughts. So lots of self doubt and questioning and inner criticism or criticism of team and other people, it can show up in forms of self-sabotage in your behavior, like being controlling and micro-managing, and acting out towards your team or acting out toward your clients or just not doing very basic things like being a good of your money or bringing the appropriate people on your team to support the growth that will sabotage your business instantly.
(14:58):
So that's one reason why it's hard. The second reason why it's hard is habit. You have habits of being that supported you, getting to where you were before you made that leap, or before you went to that next level, even gradually, those habits are hardwired in your brain. This is why working with the human brain is part of the work I do with people. Because if you don't get your brain on board with your business, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And what I mean by that is we have, you know, a gazillion, literally neurons and neural pathways, neuro connections in our brain. That just very simply are the way our brain cells communicate with each other. And when you have a habit, you have a set of those that act like a really well traveled highway. So your thoughts, your emotions, your behavior, the chemicals that your mind triggers your brain triggers in your body, they're all habituated and they're habituated for who you were, not who you need to become.
Kelly (16:01):
And so you can have Laura, I'm sure you've had this. We've all had these aha moments where we have this instantaneous perception shift. Oh my goodness. This is where my business is going. This is what's on the horizon, or this is what's here right now. But your brain does not rewire in this with the same speed that your perception can shift. So you have this aha moment, but your brain needs certain things to catch up with that new perception of your business, of your self, of your team. That takes a lot of very intentional repetition, messaging and just practice really practice. And then finally, the unconscious mind, which most coaches are not trained to work with in any sort of a science-based way. So the unconscious mind is really where most of what kind of feels magical happens. It's also where most of what feels hard happens because most people think and understandably, so think that your conscious awareness is kind of the captain of the ship.
(17:12):
Why? Because your self-awareness feels infinite. It feels immense. You're aware of your intellect of your judgment of your rational, thinking of your creativity. It's where your ideas come to life in your conscious mind. So it feels really vast because it is really fast. But the truth is that your unconscious mind is the captain of the ship. It's absolutely the captain of the ship. And rightfully so, mother, nature's brilliant in that it runs things like your breathing, your heart rate, your detoxification, your things you don't fortunately have to think about or make a decision about. Can you imagine if you had to think about that at any point during the day, is my heart pumping enough? Am I taking in enough oxygen? You come into the world with your unconscious mind programmed to do all those things without thought, but when it comes to beliefs, that's where we get in a lot of trouble.
(18:10):
So from birth to about six, we don't have self-awareness, we're kind of not online yet, really. And so everything we're exposed to repeatedly or with intense emotion goes directly into the unconscious mind as a belief or a program. And that means a lot of things that we learn help us survive from zero to six, we learn all about being in a family. We learn all about how to interact on the playground. We learn a lot of things that really help us increase our likelihood of survival, which is what your primal drive is to survive. The problem is that between zero and six, a lot of really not helpful things also go into the unconscious. So if you got messages about money, about safety, about your gender, about visibility, if you were exposed to trauma or violence or neglect, all of those things also go in as programs with zero resistance from six on, we continue to pick up programming based on repetition.
(19:22):
That's why marketing is such a powerful influence on our beliefs as business owners, entrepreneurs, CEOs. So if, for example, there's lots and lots of marketing to coaches, and it's always, it always begins with how do you make money as a coach? How to build your business as a coach, how to get your first client. I never see marketing that says, how did you know harm as a coach, right? That is not the first thing you're pitched online. And you see it over and over and over again, which has trained consumers to focus on how do you make money as a coach, not how do you lead with ethics as a coach, then learn how to get results and then learn how to make money. That's the order. It should be taught in, but it's not. So your unconscious mind will about 95 ish percent of the time override all of your positive thinking. That's why regular, everyday affirmations don't work all that well, they feel great. They're good. They're helpful. But if all you're doing, look, let's just be straight up. If all I had to do to lose 30 pounds was walking around all day long, going I'm 30 pounds thinner. I'm 30 pounds thinner. You best believe I would've dropped that 30 pounds already. I can't even call it baby weight. My baby's 14. So, I mean, I can't even say that anymore. Right? So if it was that easy and that's all it took, I would do it. Everybody would do it. It's not that easy.
(20:51):
You have to speak the language of the unconscious mind in order to reprogram the unconscious mind. And the language of the unconscious mind is emotion and imagery. The language of the conscious mind is language, it's language. So you have to know how to work with both. So that you're a fully integrated person. And every time you go to the next level and that kind of new level new devil thing happens, which happens to everybody, universally, that you have a set of tools to gracefully, navigate yourself through it, to get, to create an identity that matches where your business is going.
Laura (21:29):
Okay, This is really good. And I could talk to you all day and I'm like listening. And I'm like, where do I go? There's so much goodness here. So the first thing that I am like, when you said messages, I'm like, do you send yourself text messages? Do you send like your subconscious, like a Slack message, like get out of the gutter girl. So what does this look like? Like how do you like just one example, just one quick example. Cause I want to ask you another really important question about this too. Sure, sure.
Kelly (21:57):
So there are a couple of things. Number one, using conscious prompts, like a visual prompt is, is helpful because where your power lies in your conscious mind is with your attention and focus. This is why we call it going down the rabbit hole. You caught hold of one negative thought and you followed it all the way down. So the more you put your, you attend to a particular thought, the more likely it is to trigger, trigger, difficult emotions and self sabotaging behavior. But on the unconscious level, you have to constantly, and I have a whole process that I teach people basically how to learn, how to do this. But the core of it is you have to be retraining your focus on your brain to be looking for evidence every single day of the new belief, you are intentionally trying to program it.
(22:53):
So in other words, if you realize you believe on a deep level, that money is scarce. Even though consciously, you can look around you and know it, it isn't, you have to be looking everyday for evidence, but our brains are not wired. That way. Our brains are wired to look for evidence of what we already believe. So you're intentionally introducing confirmation by it and your brain is going to hate that hate that. That's why being in a program where there's coaching and accountability and things like that over a period of time can help you reprogram the unconscious mind and get your brain to rewire itself, to support the new beliefs. So gathering evidence every day of what you wish to believe. Not what you already believe is incredibly powerful.
Laura (23:47):
Okay. So good. So let's say that we don't do this. Let's say that we get to different levels and different devils and we just become a bowl in a China shop.
Kelly (23:58):
I've seen it too many times. People often come to me in that place. They're like, I'm at a million dollars and I'm miserable and I'm making everybody else miserable. So it happens all the time.
Laura (24:07):
It is a higher self-awareness I think, than most people have because I had, I've had people working for me. I was in brick and mortar before. A lot of times retail managers can be this way. I mean, that's a terrible stereotype, but, but I think many times in that traditional, you know, fast pace nights and weekends, it can be, you know, very intense. And sometimes that intensity can, can go throughout the whole organization. Yes. I struggled. Like I had a manager who threw something and I never found out until like three months later. So after I let her go. So, you know, that was a really, that was a good learning experience. But ultimately people do that, I think because of what you call resistance versus armor. Yes. Right. So when you see somebody who is acting out overly aggressive, beyond assertive in an unhealthy way, creating unhealthy relationships dynamics between themselves and the people around them, like how do you know when that starting to happen? How can you be aware of that? So that you can lean into the discomfort that comes with really not wanting your brain to change, right? Which is what we're talking about.
Kelly (25:26):
So a couple of things, and everything begins with a commitment to having a greater degree of self-awareness, which often requires entrepreneurs, business owners, to do the thing we hate to do the most, which is slow down. Everybody hates to slow down because I'm going to lose money and I'm going to miss an opportunity and all these other things, but really slowing down and becoming very self-aware. And sometimes the easiest point of entry for this is just becoming aware of how you feel at any given moment on any given day. One of the things I talk about in my program, and this did not come from me, I have to give props words do, which is Tara Brock, but she teaches you to practice what's called the sacred pause. The, my spin on this is you're learning to become the observer of your thoughts and your feelings and your resistance and your inner critic, rather than the collaborator with all of those things.
(26:22):
Most of us begin to negotiate with the ego. We argue with the ego where we try to numb it out with shopping or food or alcohol or drugs or whatever your thing is, right? Netflix, whatever your thing is. And so from a place of self-awareness combined with curiosity, you can shift what most of us do when we become aware is we immediately shift into judgment mode immediately, and judgment comes from the ego. So we start criticizing ourselves, putting ourselves down. We start criticizing other people and getting into blame mode. The ego wants you to try to control everything. I teach women how to ditch control and be in command. A commanding woman is a force of nature, a force of nature, because she is aware of herself. She is not sitting in judgment of herself. She understands to step back and to observe what's coming up and to really ask questions, like, what is this really all about here? You know what I mean? From creating just one step back, a little bit of space.
(27:36):
Because judgment self-judgment and curiosity, they can't, they're mutually exclusive. They can't operate in the same or occupied the same space. So when you create this as a habit, Laura, and you become somebody who is very self-aware observant and curiously observant, then you stop with the judging. When you stop with the judging, you don't feel the need to be criticizing yourself and everybody else, whether it's your team members or it's a strategic partner, or it's your own clients, or you just don't feel the need to do that anymore. And that is a profound shift because when you're in command, you can continue to go to whatever next level looks like for you, whether it's money or team or time off or whatever your definition is of that, you will be triggered every time, but you will no longer react. You will respond. That's very different.
Laura (28:30):
Oh wow. That's awesome. So I'm sad that we have to wrap up because it is a great conversation and just for, to leave our audience with one word, what is, what do you think the key is to breaking through your CEO ceiling?
Kelly (28:44):
Oh, there's so many, but I'll tell you my personal favorites. My personal favorite word for this journey is relentless. I am relentless. And by that, I mean, and I really take back ownership of that word because it's been used in a really uber toxic masculine way in the past, for me being relentless is about knowing that there's only two things, powerful enough to take me down in this world, in this journey. One of them is the thing that's going to end my life, whatever that is. And the other is me. That's it. There is no, no one else, nothing else on this planet that has my permission or the power to just completely knock me out of what I see as worthy of pursuing pursuit.
Laura (29:39):
That is powerful. So where can people find you to learn more and just connect with you?
Kelly (29:44):
Oh, thank you for asking. It's so easy to find me. So you can find me on my website, which is kellyruta.com. I am on Facebook. I am on Instagram. I am on YouTube. I am on LinkedIn, all the places, the only place I really don't hang out is Twitter. So anywhere else you can pretty much find me. Yeah, that sounds awesome. All right. Well, whatever your favorite platform is, Kelly's there and thank you so much for Kelly for being here. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation.
Laura (30:12):
Hey there: before you head out, I want to let you know about a free new training I have right on a brand new website called yournextmillion.me. It's yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses, to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. And I have to tell you, it is not what you think. So check it out at yournextmillion.me. And if you loved this show, will you subscribe to it and share it with a friend or just say something nice about it to someone, you know? I’d really appreciate it so much. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.