Human-Centered Leadership for Career Success with Kelly Price

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets our guest is Kelly Price, a seasoned HR leader and career strategist who is passionate about helping professionals thrive in their careers through authentic leadership, people-focused strategies, and intentional career growth. With her extensive background in human resources and talent development, Kelly shares valuable insights on building fulfilling careers, navigating organizational change, and creating impactful connections in the workplace.

You can find her on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellypricethrivehr/

https://www.thrivehrkc.com/

Transcript

Kelly Price: 0:00

So like I said, there's a ton of coaching happening on a regular basis. And in these engagements, often I'm coaching multiple people. So I could have a consulting call with the CEO or a leader scheduled every two weeks because we're just touching base. What's going on? What do you need? What do you want me to work on? Here's what I'm finding, et cetera, et cetera. And then I get a phone call from the CFO. I get a phone call from the VP of Ops. I get a phone call from the HR manager. And we're just like kind of batting down problems and coaching through those moments and kind of helping them figure out what to do next.

Davis Nguyen: 0:32

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wynne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda: 1:03

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Kelly Price, a people operations and total rewards strategist, culture driver, and the founder of ThriveHR, where she helps small businesses grow by putting people at the heart of strategy. With years of experience leading HR, compensation, and people development initiatives, Kelly has seen firsthand how investing in employees directly fuels business performance. At ThriveHR, she partners with leaders to design bold modern HR and people strategies that elevate culture, improve retention, and turn the employee experience into a true competitive advantage. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Callie.

Kelly Price: 1:48

Thank you so much, Regin, for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Rexhen Doda: 1:51

Thank you for coming, Kelly. It's a pleasure for us to have you on. I wanted to learn a little bit more about your business. So ThriveHR. We were talking earlier. You mentioned that it also includes some part of it, is also coaching. So if we get to the beginning of it, first of all, what inspired you to start Thrive HR and then turn into the business that it is today?

Kelly Price: 2:11

So I worked in corporate HR for 15-ish years. I started my career in hospitality and was ready to exit that and got into recruiting. When I was doing that, I was finding a lot of joy in helping people find their next career, find livelihood for their families and for themselves. And it just kind of, as a lot of HR professionals' careers do, they start in recruiting and then advance, I would say, into HR. And then I moved into leadership positions in the HR space. And I always found that I was the most comfortable and had the most fun and found the most joy in my career when I was working with the leaders. And when we could have strategic conversations about putting people in the right seats or solving problems or helping them through something that they saw as a roadblock or something they were challenged with. And so that led me to leadership positions over and over again and leading teams and helping people solve problems. My hospitality background, I think that like love for service and helping others really helped in my HR career because I see it as something that I find joy in myself, and then I really love helping others. And I was working for a bank in 2020, and I started there in 2018, and obviously COVID occurred, and I just got frankly very, very, very burned out. It was a wonderful company, great experience, highly entrepreneurial. They were huge in the fintech incubator space. We did some really, really cool stuff at this bank and really sparked my creativity there. It's interesting to think a bank would be so forward-thinking, but it truly was. And people had mentioned to me in the past because the fact that I always found myself with the leadership team and kind of hanging with that consulting would be a good fit for me. And when I got burned out, I was ready to take a break and decided now's a good time to do this. So one day during COVID, walked across the hall to my husband's office and said, I'm gonna quit my job today. Thank God he said, okay. And I went and I quit my job. And then I just started networking, and it's truly been the best thing that I've done for myself and my family. And it's just, it's really, really awesome. I love it.

Rexhen Doda: 4:23

Interesting. And so it's been three years and a half since you quit your job, and then you started this Thrive HR business. So can you share a little bit more about like when it comes to the people that you work with? I know you mentioned working with leaders and you like working with leaders, but who would you say is your ideal client profile because we might have the right people listening?

Kelly Price: 4:42

Yeah, absolutely. Small businesses is really where I thrive, pun intended, I guess. But those founders, small business leaders, we have some clients that have a couple hundred employees. That's probably where we would cap it. I've done a few projects with very large organizations, and I feel that they're not as a good of a fit for me because the impact is just harder to make. They're great organizations with great people, but when you the larger you are, the more red tape and the longer it takes to make decisions and all of that. Where in the small business, you're working with the person often who had that passion and that excitement for what they're trying to sell or produce or or serve to their people, and sitting side by side with them and providing that partnership, that coaching, that business strategy and people strategy with them is really exciting. So small businesses, hundred or less really is where I would say my sweet spot is and our team's sweet spot is. Founders or leaders, and someone who either doesn't have an HR department or has an HR function, but they're just not sure if they're creating any impact. And that's not necessarily because the person who's doing the work doesn't have great talent, it's more because they don't understand whether it's that person because it's the accounting manager, which is very often, or the leadership doesn't really understand what HR could and should be doing to support the business. That's my ideal client. So we can really come in and coach and teach and help them understand how having a people strategy can elevate the business.

Rexhen Doda: 6:14

Interesting. And so just to dive a little bit deeper into that conversation that you have with your clients and how you work with them, how would you describe basically the engagement they have with you and what this engagement looks like? Is it one-on-one conversations? How would you describe basically the offers that you have?

Kelly Price: 6:31

Yeah, absolutely. So we like to start every engagement with an audit, Regin, so we can come in and really help them understand what is happening from an HR standpoint. I have everything from someone who has an HR manager, and we come in and we do the audit, and like compliance-wise, they're really pretty set. There's not a lot of holes, and the business is probably not going to get sued for anything like just straight up illegal from a business functioning standpoint. But then when you start to get a little bit deeper and looking into their hiring practices, their leadership structure, their performance management, that's kind of where they get into like, okay, we don't have a strategy here at all. We're just chucking these boxes because that's what we're supposed to do. But in reality, we're looking at the people that are in the seats and they're not being trained, they're not being integrated into the business. We have much higher turnover than we should be having. We have an executive team that's completely unaligned. So you can look at that baseline and say, oh, you're okay. But if you don't go, you know, 15 steps deeper, you don't really understand that your people function is not supporting your business strategy. So then we start having those conversations with the executive team, with the CEO. Like I said before, it's not what I would call a coaching relationship because it's not just me and that person. We go much broader than that, but we spend a lot of time, our consultants and these leadership teams and individuals having those one-on-one conversations to say, okay, what's your opinion on this? Because if you think it's total waste of time and total BS, then we need to have a conversation about why you think that and what you think would fix the problem. And then really understanding what's your past experience? Have you ever learned how to do this? A lot of people get promoted, especially in small business. This is a huge problem. People in small business get promoted because they're either a family member, a friend, or someone who does the job really well. It's the typical the best salesperson becomes the sales manager and fails problem. So they've never been trained on how to actually lead employees. And you can send them to leadership seminars, but in reality, you learn maybe three or four things in those seminars, and then you walk away. And sometimes you apply them, but the reality is you go back to doing what you were doing before, and just the minutiae of life gets in the way of it. So that constant coaching and that constant partnership where you can talk through, okay, Kelly, this happened. What do I do? All right, in real time, we're gonna talk about what to do. Tell me the scenario, tell me about the person. How are you gonna handle it? What do you want to do? What's the worst thing that could happen? You know, going through all those types of scenarios. So, like I said, there's a ton of coaching happening on a regular basis. And in these engagements, often I'm coaching multiple people. So I could have a consulting call with the CEO or a leader scheduled every two weeks because we're just touching base. What's going on? What do you need? What do you want me to work on? Here's what I'm finding, et cetera, et cetera. And then I get a phone call from the CFO, I get a phone call from the VP of ops, I get a phone call from the HR manager, and we're just like kind of batting down problems and coaching through those moments and kind of helping them figure out what to do next. I kind of sidelined your question, but we always start with the audit. From the audit, we then provide a three-tiered approach where you're compliance, where this is the stuff you're gonna get sued for, we need to figure this out, state, local, federal laws, guidelines, all that good stuff. Next is operational efficiency, like what HR systems are? Do you have an onboarding program? Do you have a recruiting program? Do you have performance management? Are you required to do FMLA and what's your process? All that good stuff. And then the next level is strategy. Again, looking at what are your beliefs and programs around people and how do you use the people's skills and talents and passions to create success in your organization and what is your plan? Do you have a succession plan? Do you use organizational development, et cetera, to be able to grow and elevate your business? And then from that, we then make a recommendation to either go into FlexHR, which is our offering where you probably have an HR department or a person who is doing HR often in a small business. It's a one-person shop, but you have someone doing the work and we more sit next to them and work maybe 20, 30, 40 hours a month. We'll have regular consulting calls, we're available as you need us, but we'll kind of start ticking through that list of things on our audit results to say, let's get this stuff fixed. I tell the clients, I'm gonna be all up in your cheese. I want to come to your leadership meetings, I want to be in your office or virtually in your office for 10 to 30 hours a week. I really want to get in there. I might even be doing interim HR director or leadership or CPO work to be able to really understand what's going on in your business and what we need to turn around and really help you get to that next level. And those clients are usually in a growth mode or in a mode of change. If you're kind of status quo, like we're happy, I can help, but that's not really we're going to create waves. And if you don't want waves, we're not the right partner for you because if you don't want change, then I can't help you, if that makes sense.

Rexhen Doda: 11:43

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So these are the two main offers, right?

Kelly Price: 11:47

Yes, correct.

Rexhen Doda: 11:48

Interesting. And when it comes to the engagement they have with you, is there like a minimal amount of time engagement in these offers?

Kelly Price: 11:55

Yeah, so the audit, depending on your size, can take anywhere from 30 to 90 days. So that's the first engagement. And then, I mean, if we were to come on as a flex partner, I would say a year at least, because you can't make major change very, very quickly, you can take the audit results and go use them for yourself. We give them to you. Obviously, we want to part help you make those changes, but we don't have to evolve. I have a couple of clients that I'm on year two and three with. And that's more because we've built that really strong relationship and they're fractional HR leader now. So I will come in once a month and go to their leadership meetings, or I will come do training for their executive team, or they'll just keep me on retainer to be able to call and provide any insight or help as needed. So, but I would say that evolve relationship, 18 months probably minimum. Because again, when you have major change to make, I don't have a magic wand. We're gonna have to one do it together and two, it takes time.

Rexhen Doda: 12:52

Absolutely. And this is a question that autocodes is gonna find interesting is when it comes to you finding your clients, is there some sort of like a marketing channel that works really well for you? Where do people find Thrive HR?

Kelly Price: 13:05

So we have a website, ThrivehrKC.com. We also have a self-assessment that you can take on there. If you go into resources and click on self-assessment, you can go in there and it'll give you an idea. If you answer most of those questions, no, that you know that you need to probably reach out to us or someone to help you get that stuff going. But honest to God, Regin, networking. I have tried paid advertisements on LinkedIn, I've done Google stuff, I've done blogs, I've done newsletters, I've done email blasts, I'm gonna use the word wasted thousands of dollars on trying to cold call and market people that don't know me and don't know us. And I just don't see it as a good use of time, to be honest, especially when you're dealing with coaching and getting to know people and trying to impact their lives, because even if you're doing business coaching, Regin, you and I both know this impacts their personal life. We spend more time at work than we do anywhere else. And statistics around how your manager and your coworkers have more effect on your mental health and your spouse are depressing and astounding. So if you're not putting yourself in a positive environment when you are working, it's really detrimental to your mental and physical health, honestly. So I think it's really to build relationships and then ask your clients and everyone that you know to share your information if they believe you're a good resource. I've also gone to brokers, they've been a really good resource. All of our dream is to get in with a private equity group. So I'm always knocking on those doors trying to get a private equity group to see the value in what we do and refer us to their clients. And then I join a bunch of chambers that's been really good as well, because everyone there is kind of trying to do the same thing and happy to refer. And then I joined Vestige this year as well, and then I just got accepted into the grand pursuit, which is a female mother focused, you have to have children less than 10 years old, a focused networking group and mastermind. Again, networking, networking, networking, networking.

Rexhen Doda: 15:12

So mostly networking and the referrals as well that you get from either past clients or from the network again. Interesting. So it has been actually the case with most coaches that I've interviewed that most of the time they do rely on the network and the referrals. So that has been the case. And right now, when looking at your business for the next like one to three years, do you have any specific business goals that you're working towards? How do you see the future?

Kelly Price: 15:37

Yeah, I do actually. I'm actually getting ready to relocate my family from Kansas City to just north of Fort Myers, Florida. So I'm really excited about that, and we're expanding our business into Florida. So we've primarily been in Kansas and Missouri, and it's Kansas City is a really fabulous town. And we take care of each other here. So the female business owner and leader market here is so supportive and so wonderful. And I'm hoping to find that same community down where I'm moving in South Florida. So expanding the business and growing it outside of Kansas City is really my biggest goal over the next several months. And then continuing to market that audit, enhance the audit, and bring as much value as I can to as many small businesses as we can.

Rexhen Doda: 16:25

That's beautiful. And the beauty about actually doing this type of work is that we're not really location dependent anymore, which is great. You can deliver most of your work without even being in the location most of the time, which is great, especially for coaches. But in your case, also you do a lot of coaching in it. It makes sense. And it's a lot of people are moving to Florida. It's a beautiful place, and so it makes sense. I'm excited for you. And so right now, I also wanted to talk about investments you've done. Even the movies, like in a way, an investment itself, too. But investments in the business in Thrive Ajar throughout the last three years and a half. What would you say have been some good investments that you feel really good about? You actually saw a good return or you learned a lot, and could be both investments of time and money, or either or. And what have been bad investments that you don't feel so good about? You wish you had avoided if there's any of those two.

Kelly Price: 17:18

I'm gonna start with just kind of a generalization. The worst investments that I've made are from people telling me I should go do this because I'm a new business owner and admittedly have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, right? That's just the honest to cut truth. I'm making it up every single day and learning that my gut is what I should be listening to. And yes, I should always be learning and growing, but the noise filter, trying to figure out when to turn that on and when to turn it off, it is a skill that all of us business owners really have to learn. So I've made a lot of bad investments just because someone told me I should. Like a CRM when I have five clients. That's total waste of money. LinkedIn Navigator, total waste of a thousand dollars. It's a great product. I'm not don't LinkedIn don't come after me. Not that, you know, a huge target by any means, but you know, it's a great product. It wasn't the right fit for me. I got a virtual assistant because somebody told me I needed a virtual assistant. Total waste of money. The best investments I've made are the Grand Pursuit, which is a networking and mastermind of like-minded people. Vistage, I cannot say enough good things about. I myself have had an outstanding experience because of my leader and because of the people that he brought into our group. I really have exceptional people in there who I learn from constantly. But it's also because I'm trying to make a very conscious effort to spend time with people that I think and I know I can learn from who do different things than I do. I started a small group a couple of years ago of female business owners as well. And I spend only an hour a month with them. Well, probably more like two hours because we just sit and gab over coffee for a couple of hours once a month. But some of those people have become very close friends and partners to me as well. So I would say those have been the best investments, and honestly, they've also been the least financially impactful things. They cost money, but they're all things that I definitely get value out of. So, like if I'm giving advice to anybody who's starting a small business, if anybody says you should do this, you should tell them to go away.

Rexhen Doda: 19:42

That's a beautiful advice. No, thank you. So, right now, what would you say are kind of like the main challenges that you go through in your business? Like, as you mentioned, obviously a CRM would not make sense when you don't have that many clients with the type of work that you do potentially could be managed easily outside of any system. So, where do you see the challenges, or like what would be the bottleneck for you right now as you think about expanding, or even right now you're moving, but you're gonna expand in Florida.

Kelly Price: 20:12

Yeah, a couple things. When I first started my business, I started as a fractional HR person, doing HR on a part-team basis for multiple people. That's like the most basic way to explain it, right? Well, I don't do day-to-day work, that's not where my strengths are. I'm not good at it. You don't want me doing it. That's not where my talent really is. So when I got myself a couple of fractional clients, which wasn't that hard only because it's the world is kind of going that way. So there's tons and tons and tons of fractional work out there. I realized one, I hate this. Now I have five jobs instead of one, and that's not what I was trying to do. And two, I'm not even good at this. So I luckily was able to find a consulting partner and said, Hey, would you want some clients? So my thought there is one, I realized two, I don't have any way to differentiate myself when I say I'm a fractional person. I have 20 years of consulting experience or of HR experience. Well, so does every other fractional person out there. Not everybody has as much experience as I do, but most people do. So one, trying to differentiate yourself and really explain to people what you do is a huge challenge. And it can be a roadblock because people are like, oh, you do fractional HR. I'm like, well, I really don't. And then they're like, well, what do you mean? Oh, well, then I don't know you. I don't need you. I just need somebody to do fractional HR. And I'm like, no, no, no. Let me explain to you why you actually need me more. Because do you need somebody to do fractional HR? Or do you need a permanent person? And do you even know what that fractional HR person is doing? Or do you just think I need HR? So you plug somebody in the hole and you don't even know if that is supporting your business. So I would say that's definitely the first challenge is differentiating yourself because especially I would say coaching as well. Their coaches and fractional HR, unfortunately, are a dime a dozen. So making sure you're differentiating why what you do and what your program is is really important and can actually create impact in the business or the person's life. The economy, the first half of this year, was total garbage. I mean, I had lots of proposals out, very few of them came through. Thank God for my existing clients, or I would have been eating ramen every day. The economy's just in really, really challenging. And especially in my business and I and coaching in general, it's seen as a nice to have or an extra, not necessarily something that's critical. So that's been challenging. And then I would say the last thing really is getting in with people's time because we do want to talk to the executives. I don't want to talk to the executive assistant, or I don't want to talk even to the HR person often because that's not the person I'm technically evaluating their department. So often, even though I don't want to be a threat, I want to be a help, they see me as a threat. So getting to the CEO or getting to the CFO when it's a referral or someone told me to call them, or I see a business I'm interested in getting in with and I'm trying to do something a little more cold, just getting in with them. And even just time in general, I would say, because I have multiple clients or potential clients right now that have proposals out. One pushed back recently, one said, Yes, I'm so excited. I'm gonna sign the document, and that's been like two weeks. I'm like, everything okay? We're ready to get started, and just waiting on people because everyone is just so overloaded and so busy.

Rexhen Doda: 23:34

Yeah, it's I'm definitely seeing a pattern when it comes to, especially for this last year and maybe the second half of like last year as well, and this year, first half. There's definitely a problem with especially big companies. I guess it's affecting also, as you mentioned, small businesses where they're seeing what they can cut off, and oftentimes anything similar to coaching or even coaching does fall off into that nice to have fuck it. Anything that is not like their core business revenue producing goes. Yeah, it's not generating revenue exactly. So I feel like that could be a temporary thing, but yeah, definitely differentiating yourself in the market does play a very strong role into that. So you're saying that you're also getting referrals oftentimes, but not all those referrals turn into business, right?

Kelly Price: 24:29

I think a lot of them, especially in the first half of the year, were yes, I need you, but not right now. So yes, and I even got several referrals that just went completely dark. I mean, just nothing. And they're from good, great people, but I got one referral, it's been a year ago, and they are just signing now. So, and they went dark at first, no response, and then they kind of went through their process and are are just signing now. So it's also patience is also a roadblock for most of us. Business owners, it's not a gift that God gave me. I don't have any of it, but it's something I have to practice on a regular basis because yeah, I'm ready, but they might not be ready. And certainly with coaching and consulting, they're not ready, you're not getting anywhere. You gotta you gotta let them be in the right headspace to be able to make any progress.

Rexhen Doda: 25:15

Absolutely. Well, I'm hoping that any of our listeners are gonna be much better than that. My final question to you is so is there any advice you'd like, any other advice? Because we've shared some of them already. Any other advice you'd like to give to coaches who are trying to scale their impact?

Kelly Price: 25:30

Yeah, I would say one, find your niche. And that doesn't mean you only focus on one thing because I'm industry agnostic. But like I said, I started out very broad where I said I'll just do fractional HR, and then I realized that doesn't make me special at all. I need to figure out what I am really good at, what type of business do I want to work at? Again, it's still very broad, but it's only small business, and then find those people. And the second thing that I'll tag into that that I think is even more important is when you get out there on your own, figure out what's important to you as a person. That was probably the hardest thing for me going out on my own, working for a corporation for so many years. They really tell you what to think and what's important. And they have to because you have to sell that product or service that they're selling. So especially in HR, you have to drink the Kool-Aid. And then when you get out on your own, you got to figure out, like, oh my gosh, no one's telling me what to think or feel. So I got to figure out those things on my own. And then go find clients that align with that. Because I don't want to compare it to finding a therapist because it's not exactly that. But it is similar to that in the way that if you have something that's someone that specializes in this, like if you need to meet to be, I can't, I wouldn't be a good fit for a coach or for a business partner, for someone who's highly, highly technical, very cerebral. Not that I'm not smart, but we're not gonna connect. That's not the type of person that I find the most joy and helpfulness with this. So you have to know too, not everyone is your client, and that's okay. And also build partnerships with other coaches and other business partners because you're gonna increase your value as a human and as a business when you can refer and say, you know what? I totally see what you're needing and what you're wanting. I am not that. This person would be a great fit. And then that person's gonna say, Oh my gosh, I know Kelly and she'd be a great fit for you. And that person might be your friend. You might meet someone who's really awesome and you can learn something from them, even though they may not be a good coaching or consulting client. So figure out what's important to you and then try to partner with people who are similar in those values so that you guys can grow together.

Rexhen Doda: 27:42

Absolutely. I totally agree with that. And I've seen that so often when you said, like, you refer someone that is not a good fit for you, might be a good fit for someone else, and that reciprocity comes back again because they might have someone who is not a good fit for them, but might be a good fit for you. So it's a very good collaboration between your network and again the power of networking that we talked about earlier on. So yeah, I totally agree. And thank you so much for the amazing advice, Kelly. Thank you for coming today in the podcast. For anyone who wants to connect with you and find you, they can go into LinkedIn, uh, look up Kelly Price, they'll be able to find your profile. They can also go into thriveharkc.com, which is the website, if I'm not mistaken.

Kelly Price: 28:29

Yes, correct. Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

Rexhen Doda: 28:31

We'll put that into the description as well. Yeah, this was lovely. Thank you so much, uh Kelly.

Davis Nguyen: 28:36

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community, and how we can help you grow your business, visit joinpurplecircle.com.