Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is the president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and Journal Engine Software, Kim Ades. Kim uses journal-based coaching in her direct coaching style with clients; she tells Sara exactly what that is and how she came to develop it. Following a life-altering divorce, Kim’s focus became helping others build emotional resilience to thrive despite challenges. She and Sara discuss how introspection and writing can reframe experiences, and how that shift can impact client success.
Kim founded Frame of Mind Coaching to empower people to focus on their thought patterns instead of external behaviours. She developed a unique journaling software to facilitate a journaling-based coaching method that helps her reflect on client writing to aid in uncovering their limiting beliefs. Through this method, Kim finds she can go past typical performance metrics to target the root of thought processes. It’s in this way that sustainable growth and emotional intelligence are unlocked.
Sara and Kim talk about the value of self-awareness and emotional clarity. This especially applies to entrepreneurs and executives who are under constant pressure. Kim’s unique coaching philosophy highlights the idea that success is truly driven by mindset more than circumstances. Kim is a pivotal voice in the world of leadership development and personal transformation. She has a proven track record in helping clients overcome adversity, and she openly shares her philosophy and insights with Sara.
About Kim Ades:
Kim Ades, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur who, after a decade running a simulation-based assessment firm, sold her company and briefly worked for a local coaching company. She left after 8 months, believing she could offer better coaching. Kim felt the prevailing coaching model was flawed, intuitively realizing that driven leaders needed to understand the link between their thoughts and outcomes rather than being “held accountable.”
In 2004, Kim founded Frame of Mind Coaching®, focusing on helping leaders maximize their potential and live fulfilling lives. She also created the Frame of Mind Coaching® Certification program to teach leaders effective coaching techniques.
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:
Contact Kim Ades:
- Website: FrameOfMindCoaching.com
- Website: JournalEngine.com
- Email: kim@frameofmindcoaching.com
- Instagram: @coachkimades
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Transcript
Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there! I’m Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I am joined by Kim Ades. Kim is the president and founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and Journal Engine Software. Kim uses her unique process, philosophy and direct coaching style to help leaders identify their blind spots and learn to focus their thinking to achieve extraordinary results. Author, speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and mom of five, Kim is dedicated to teaching her powerful coaching process to other coaches, leaders, and entrepreneurs worldwide. Kim, welcome to the show.
Kim Ades: [00:00:51] Thank you so much for having me. I’m so happy to be talking to you today.
Sara Sheehan: [00:00:56] Excellent, I can’t wait to learn from you. Kim, everyone’s backstory is important to them because it’s what got you here. I would love to focus on how you created the Journal Engine software, if we can.
Kim Ades: [00:01:19] Let me give you a little bit of history about why ‘journaling’ in the first place. I have been coaching leaders, executives and entrepreneurs for the past 21 years, but when I first started, I had no experience and I was very insecure. I was really interested in two things, how do I get into the heads of my clients so I understand what’s really going on, and how do I deliver coaching that leaves a lifelong impact? I didn’t want to be a coach that was ‘one and done’. I didn’t want to be forgotten, I wanted to make a real difference in someone’s life, and one that was sustainable. I thought, how do we have really valuable conversations? If I could understand how they see the world, how they think, how they operate in their lives on a day to day basis, that would equip me to have those powerful conversations. So from the very beginning, I decided that if I asked them to journal, then I could see how they think. The premise was, if I asked them to journal daily and I give them some journaling questions to work with, and every time they journal then I would be on the other side of that journal reading and responding to that journal, kind of having a conversation with them. Imagine you’re writing in your journal, but now your journal is interacting with you. That was the idea in the very beginning. Then I thought, when I come to my coaching sessions, I will really have something to work with. So that was the idea. At the very beginning, so many years ago, there wasn’t any journaling software so I used the platform Blogger.
Kim Ades: [00:03:01] It was a little bit challenging because I was not technically oriented at all and I needed help. Every time I had a new client, I needed somebody else to set me up. But Blogger isn’t very secure. I was working with Blogger for about a year, and then I was coaching this man who was having a lot of trouble in his marriage. He wrote something pretty awful about his wife in his journal, and his wife, who happens to be IT proficient, found it and saw what he had written in his journal on Blogger. He came back and said, I think this is the beginning of the end of my marriage. I felt awful. I thought, oh my God, if it’s because of me, this could ruin my entire business, this could ruin my reputation. This can’t happen ever again, I need bank level security software. That’s when I hired a guy to come in. I said, here’s the product I want, here’s how it needs to work, here are all the bells and whistles I’m looking for. I hired him full time to sit in my office at the time to produce this piece of software. Super expensive, imagine hiring a professional IT person for years and years. He was with us for many years.
Sara Sheehan: [00:04:28] A software engineer, basically.
Kim Ades: [00:04:30] A software engineer in my office full time. So we got version one of Journal Engine Software. But eventually version one no longer was feasible, so he created version two. I started to realize this is a very expensive proposition. What if I outsource this? I found a team in the Ukraine to outsource it to, but then they wanted to recreate the product from scratch and they didn’t understand the application. It took so much longer than we expected, and hundreds of thousands of dollars more than we anticipated. We were working with them for years as well. Then finally, we wanted to get some government grants. We live in Canada, and we realized we can’t get government grants for the next version because we’re outsourcing it to Ukraine. We have to do it in-house. So we found a Canadian team to work with who created our fourth version, which is by far the simplest, easiest to work with. The team is amazing, very affordable, we love them, we love the product. We now license that software out to other coaches, speakers, trainers, chairs, all kinds of people who work in the capacity of coaching, mentoring, that kind of thing.
Sara Sheehan: [00:05:50] If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently considering the proliferation of application development out there today?
Kim Ades: [00:06:01] It’s tricky to say if I could do it all over again because the technology simply wasn’t as advanced at the time as it is now. Things weren’t as simple at the time as they are now. Would I do it any differently? I probably wouldn’t hire the Ukrainian team. That, for sure, I would have skipped. I think other than that, you live and learn. You do things as you do things. And you make mistakes, it’s part of owning a business. You figure it out as you go. Find me one business owner who hasn’t misspent money on a great idea.
Sara Sheehan: [00:06:38] Oh my goodness, everybody’s made mistakes.
Kim Ades: [00:06:40] Exactly, it’s part of running a business.
Sara Sheehan: [00:06:44] Totally part of running a business. Do you have a smartphone app in addition to a web interface?
Kim Ades: [00:06:51] Yeah, we do. But also, because it’s journaling, some people don’t like to sit and type. They want to do voice to text, so we make that happen. We also sometimes work with people who are visually impaired and they need special accommodations so we try to make that happen for them as well.
Sara Sheehan: [00:07:13] That’s tremendous. Is there an overlay in the software where you’re able to say ‘I’m visually impaired’? How does that work for the user experience?
Kim Ades: [00:07:28] We have dark mode, we have all the things that normal software has for people who need some help on that front. We basically have the microphone button where you can talk to text. It’s not a setting per se but it’s like, here are all the features that make it easier for you to work with.
Sara Sheehan: [00:07:51] I know that you’re currently using this from a coaching perspective, but I would think you could use this in consulting projects as well. Specifically strategic initiatives that may have some really specific business goals and outcomes.
Kim Ades: [00:08:12] Absolutely you can use it for project management. You can also use it for-we use it when we work with executive teams or senior leadership teams. They need to get on the same page. They don’t understand their colleagues’ workloads, their departments, or their challenges. There’s a senior leadership team, everybody has a different area of responsibility and they’re living in silos. What we do is we enable them to journal together as a group. We give them similar journaling prompts. And they learn about the other person’s, or the other team member’s, challenges, experiences, wins, etc. It brings teams together in a really interesting and fascinating way.
Sara Sheehan: [00:08:55] That’s incredible. You don’t share people’s journal entries, do you?
Kim Ades: [00:08:59] You can. We have different settings that we can have. For example, if I’m coaching a group of people, then they can either journal to the coach, and share with the coach, or they can journal so that the whole group sees it.
Sara Sheehan: [00:09:21] That’s really compelling.
Kim Ades: [00:09:23] It depends on your objectives, it depends on what you want to do. It also depends on the sensitivity of the group and what’s going on in that group. What I find is that a lot of times people will journal mostly with the group, and then sometimes they’ll say, this journal is only for my coach because there’s something that’s going on that I don’t feel comfortable sharing with the group but I do need support on. It could be something super personal, it could be some kind of drama that took place at work, something.
Sara Sheehan: [00:09:57] My wheels are turning thinking about the possibility when you have a team working together where the leader might even be able to pose a question to the team that the team collaborates on. I could see a lot of possibilities there.
Kim Ades: [00:10:15] It’s unbelievable. One of the groups also that we work with is individuals that facilitate groups. There are peer groups all over the world, and usually those peer groups are run by chairs. Those chairs need a way to keep the group connected in between meetings and keep them communicating with one another, but also keep communicating with the chair. So they use journaling as that methodology for keeping the conversation alive and going, and making sure people are still working on their tasks in between. Sometimes there’s, let’s keep track of goals, let’s see how progress is going. If challenges come up, to lean on one another in terms of peer group members. ‘I have a tax issue, does anybody have a solution for this?’ Or, I’m about to fire someone, what are the legal implications of XYZ? So they’re helping each other out that way.
Sara Sheehan: [00:11:17] That is so powerful. How are you currently marketing your software?
Kim Ades: [00:11:26] Our software is not our main business, our software is our secondary business. Our primary business is executive coaching. How do we market Journal Engine? I do things like this. I’m on podcasts, I work in tandem with the coaching industry. We had a course certified by ICF, the International Coaching Federation, to promote journaling for coaches. I’m talking about the power of journaling. My belief, my philosophy is every single coach in the world would benefit from using a journal in their coaching because it would dramatically increase their impact. I’m talking about it all day, all night, every day. I can talk about it in my sleep.
Sara Sheehan: [00:12:15] There’s a lot of opportunity there to expand your, what I might call, subscriber base. I think you have a tremendous opportunity.
Kim Ades: [00:12:29] I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. I was on a podcast a few weeks back with coaching.com. Coaching.com is a massive coaching organization serving coaches. It’s education for coaches. Partnering with the right organizations is very useful and that’s what we do. But again, it’s something that we’re doing not necessarily as our full time focus. It’s an interesting conversation as we’re talking about it because I do have five kids and they’re not young anymore, they’re all professionals and they’re super smart. A group of them have approached me and said, you know what, we need to blow up this journal engine business. Can we take it and run with it? They’re in the middle of creating proposals and creating a strategy for taking it from us and running with it. So I’m excited about that. I also think that there’s huge potential for this. Unfortunately when you run a business and you only have so many hands and so many hours in a day, you need another team to take over and do something with it.
Sara Sheehan: [00:13:45] Of course, and there are some very simple things that you could do, like paid ads to focus your interest, your lead generation. You could also do some SEO work to make sure that people are finding you in search as quickly as possible.
Kim Ades: [00:14:10] There’s all this stuff that is possible that we could be doing. And I’m excited about it because I do think that there’s a huge opportunity here for this particular application.
Sara Sheehan: [00:14:25] That is so very exciting. Is there any help that you need where listeners with specific skills or offerings could help you make a big leap?
Kim Ades: [00:14:37] That’s really interesting. I’ll tell you another story and then we’ll see if it’s applicable here. I recently ventured into the world of training chairs, facilitators, and how to coach more effectively. It’s a huge need. They go in with all their heart and soul. They want to help people, but they were never given the coaching skills that they need to really make the difference they want to be making. So I created a training program. However, I wasn’t connected to the world of chairs. I met one gentleman who worked with me intimately. I said, I would really like to bring this to the world of chairs. He said, I’ll help you. I didn’t know he was an influencer. He was this superstar chair, an award winning chair who could spread the word for me. Who could say, ‘I’m taking this course, this is something you should really take, you should really consider. This is how it’s helped me.’ What I would love to find is one of those kinds of individuals who have a voice in their particular domain or in their field. That says, ‘I’ve been working with this journal engine software, here’s what it’s been doing for me. I’ve been working with Kim, I’ve learned how to apply it with my team, with my clients, with my senior executives. Here’s my experience, and I encourage you to look at this more closely.’ Someone who’s willing to take a leap and test things out, try things out, try it with their team. That’s what I’m really interested in, someone who has a voice in their industry.
Sara Sheehan: [00:16:27] Yes, using influencers is a great way to expand your reach and influence. I’m also thinking that once you have some of these stories of people that have had success using it, that’s a wonderful entry to success marketing. Where you can capture those stories on video and edit them and use them to your advantage in either paid or social and increase the awareness and understanding about what you’re doing.
Kim Ades: [00:17:12] Exactly. In this case, as I was talking to you about this one gentleman, he started using journaling with his membership, and then he had one-on-one coaching calls. They literally said, this was the best call we ever had with you, this is the best session. Because journaling allows you to go deep. It allows you to cover a wide span of much more important topics, allows you to see what patterns are existing, and it allows you to understand who you’re working with and how to work with them most effectively. It’s very powerful if you know what you’re looking for.
Sara Sheehan: [00:17:54] Definitely, I am a huge fan of journaling personally and in group situations where you’re trying to get the group to a new place. It does make a huge difference. What programs are you about to launch? Are there any cohorts that you’re putting together right now where you’re looking for additional participants?
Kim Ades: [00:18:16] I am launching a new one for chairs, June 9th is the start date. Then the other program that we have been thinking about, and looking to see if there’s an interest out there, is a course called ‘Great Leaders are Great Coaches’. The thinking behind that is, we find that leaders’ greatest challenge is usually somehow related to other people. It’s either working with their team, working with their subordinates, working with their peers. What we find is that when they have coaching skills, they are dramatically more equipped to have greater influence, to be more effective in moving everybody in the same direction, having everybody rowing together and addressing challenges. What we really want to do is help leaders acquire coaching skills that they could use immediately in their conversations and help people move forward in reaching their ultimate potential.
Sara Sheehan: [00:19:24] That’s incredibly powerful.
Kim Ades: [00:19:26] We’re putting something together probably in the next few months and looking to see if there’s an interest out there for something like that.
Sara Sheehan: [00:19:38] I definitely think there’s an interest and a true business need, because we need more leaders at more levels.
Kim Ades: [00:19:47] I agree. I’m amazed, actually, at how hard it is for leaders to have and be comfortable with coaching conversations. It’s remarkable to me.
Sara Sheehan: [00:19:58] Well, it gets personal really quick.
Kim Ades: [00:20:01] And it should be personal. We’re spending so many hours a day at work, that’s personal. It’s amazing to me that many leaders are so uncomfortable with personal stuff.
Sara Sheehan: [00:20:12] They’re definitely uncomfortable. There’s a great need for these skills and anything that we can do to help it be more accepted, that coaching is just part of how we do business, and it really is me demonstrating that I care about you.
Kim Ades: [00:20:39] I care about you and I want to help you bring your best to the table. And I want to help you live your best life. Those are not in conflict with one another.
Sara Sheehan: [00:20:51] They are not. They’re actually extremely supportive, and it creates a situation where literally all boats rise. Everyone benefits when we’re helping each other and supporting each other. What big goals and aspirations are you currently working on this year?
Kim Ades: [00:21:09] We’re growing the business. I just hired a business consultant to work with us to really take us to the next level. We’ve made a lot of changes, and it’s interesting because sometimes changes mean stopping the things that aren’t working. Just taking a minute and eliminating all the efforts you’re putting into things that aren’t really yielding results. It’s been fascinating to see what it feels like just to stop, sometimes you feel like you’re just walking or running on a treadmill going nowhere fast. So far, the first step is to stop all the stuff that’s not working. Secondly, double down on the things that are working. One of the things that works for me is that I do a lot of speaking. I speak all over the world, and every time we speak, it yields a very positive outcome. So we’re going to be increasing my speaking, traveling. I’m getting booked in 2026 already. It’s amazing. So just double down on that. Do what you do really well and focus on that. Sometimes you get distracted because you want to do all these other things too. The story of this year is, get rid of all the things that don’t work and really focus on those things that do work. For us this year, Kim’s going to be on the road, I’m going to be speaking. On a personal level, my husband and I are writing children’s books and we’re really hoping to get those published. So if any of your listeners are in the publishing business and can help us with that, I’d be thrilled.
Sara Sheehan: [00:22:55] That’s fantastic. And in that space, I feel like there’s such an opportunity to make a difference in children’s books, because there’s not a lot of good content out there.
Kim Ades: [00:23:12] I agree. We’re writing a series about a young, curly haired girl named ‘Whimsical Kimsical’ who is very energetic, very bubbly, and tends to get herself into a little trouble. And the question is, how does she get out of those little areas of trouble and solve problems?
Sara Sheehan: [00:23:32] That’s great. I hope you not only find your publisher, but that you are extremely successful with it as well. What are you learning right now?
Kim Ades: [00:23:43] I’m learning how to balance my life out a little bit. What I mean by that is, I noticed that ever since Covid took place, and we started working from home more, I’m sitting on my butt too much and that’s not super healthy. So what I’m learning is how to stand up more, how to walk around more, how to live a life that is healthy. As well as, I’m very driven, I’m very focused on growing the business, but you can’t do that if you’re not feeling great, if you have aches and pains. The challenge for me right now is doing both, making sure that I’m moving, exercising, walking, going to the gym, doing all that kind of stuff while running a business, feeling great about it and not sitting all day long.
Sara Sheehan: [00:24:37] I think that is a ticket to higher success. The more that we exercise and focus on our own personal health, it’s only going to make you more effective with others.
Kim Ades: [00:24:54] 100%. And sometimes you just don’t feel like it, but you got to go anyway. You got to do it.
Sara Sheehan: [00:25:00] You got to do it.
Kim Ades: [00:25:00] It’s just more movement and, for me, it’s not natural. So the lesson is, how do I create a system that makes it easier for me to do? And I’ll tell you, one of my secrets is that music helps me move. Put on the music. Sometimes the 30 minutes of exercise is just dancing, and it just feels good. Music lifts up my spirits. The question is, how do you live a life where you feel good mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, all that kind of stuff? And for me, movement, music, fresh air, journaling, all of those things are really critical.
Sara Sheehan: [00:25:45] It makes you feel a lot more balanced, doesn’t it?
Kim Ades: [00:25:48] It makes you feel like you can tackle more. It makes you feel like your bandwidth is bigger.
Sara Sheehan: [00:25:53] That is a wonderful thing to say. I think setting a goal for how many days a week you want exercise in your life and then trying to schedule it is a huge win.
Kim Ades: [00:26:09] Get up, do it first thing in the morning and then whatever else I can squeeze in in addition to that. Even going shopping, you’re walking, you’re moving, you’re putting things in your cart, you’re taking things out of your cart. All that stuff, it’s all extra, it’s all a bonus. So I try to do my exercise and then something else, some extra piece.
Sara Sheehan: [00:26:35] Excellent. Is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners?
Kim Ades: [00:26:40] Honestly, we’re talking about journaling today, and I think that there are a few things that are important to talk about with respect to journaling. The first thing is, if you are leading a group in any capacity and you want to get more out of them, you want to hear more from them, you want to go deeper with them, then journaling is an amazing tool to use if you are a leader of any capacity. On the flip side of that, if you’re just a human being and you have goals that you want to reach, and you sometimes feel like you’re struggling to reach those goals and you have no idea why, I can tell you why. It’s that something in your thinking is getting in the way, something’s stopping you. Perhaps it’s your beliefs, perhaps it’s what you believe to be true about yourself, maybe it’s your level of confidence, whatever it is. Journaling will help you understand and see what it is that is getting in your way, and help you move those things out of the way. Journaling is an extremely powerful and healthy tool to help you get to where you want to go, and sometimes help you deal with some of the challenges that are going on, some of the conflicts in your life, some of the struggles, whatever. Journaling is so powerful. Whether you’re a leader or any human being who wants to get to a new spot, really consider journaling.
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:00] It’s amazing what you can do when you take time to reflect.
Kim Ades: [00:28:07] It’s so powerful.
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:08] You can be more self-aware, and you can actually change how you interact with someone just based on having that reflection time.
Kim Ades: [00:28:18] It’s unbelievable because journaling allows you to see what’s in your brain. Because oftentimes we believe that what’s in our brain is just fact and it’s not. When we put it down, we can make more strategic decisions, decisions that are much more aligned with where we want to go. Oftentimes we’re going in a direction and we’re heading in the wrong direction. It’s kind of like being on a basketball court, grabbing the ball and just running, only to notice that you’re heading towards the wrong net. We’re doing that all the time. What journaling does is it allows us to grab the ball, hold it for a minute and say, where’s my net? Oh, there it is. And move in that direction.
Sara Sheehan: [00:29:01] Fantastic. How can our listeners find you?
Kim Ades: [00:29:06] The best way to find me is frameofmindcoaching.com. Also, you can just Google me, Kim Ades. I am all over the place so you can find me anywhere you want to find me. I’m happy to receive emails if anybody wants to reach out, I respond to pretty much everything. It’s kim@frameofmindcoaching.com.
Sara Sheehan: [00:29:27] The last name is spelled ‘Ades’. Excellent, thank you so much for your time today, Kim. I believe that you have a tremendous leap coming your way in your business.
Kim Ades: [00:29:47] I appreciate you saying that. I enjoyed this conversation because usually it’s me who gets super excited about what I’m doing. For the first time, I am talking to someone who has a vision that is almost bigger than mine when it comes to this thing. So I’m excited. I’m really grateful to have this conversation with you.
Sara Sheehan: [00:30:06] Absolutely, thanks so much for your time today, Kim.
Kim Ades: [00:30:09] Thank you for having me.
Sara Sheehan: [00:30:11] The top three takeaways for leaders and coaches. Journaling unlocks self-awareness and connection. Whether you’re coaching individuals or leading a team, journaling helps uncover blind spots and gets everyone thinking and moving in the right direction. Secure, user friendly tools matter. Kim’s drive to create bank-level, secure, accessible software arose from real world client needs. Protecting privacy and embracing features like voice-to-text can make journaling accessible to everyone. Leverage journaling to build stronger teams. With the right software, teams can journal together, develop empathy and break down silos, facilitating group learning and collaboration well beyond traditional meetings. If you’re a coach, leader, or facilitator, consider how journaling could amplify your impact. And for anyone building something new, Kim’s journey is a reminder that mistakes are just stepping stones. As always, subscribe and never miss an episode. I would love to hear from you in the comments. Take good care.
