Kyshira Moffett, MBA was born and raised in Chicago and was at the very beginning of her journey through corporate America when she moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a job. While she was working full time, she began helping friends with their resumes, cover letters, and much more—helping others land six figure jobs.
Little did she know, her infectious drive with this small side-hustle would propel her into entrepreneurship to becoming a founder of her own six figure company.
Kyshira Moffett’s Website: https://www.thepowercollective.co/
Jessmyn:
Hi guys, and welcome back to the Creator Stories podcast for Interact. My name is Jessmyn Solana. If you didn’t catch on the last episode, I recently got to take over hosting for the podcast so I’m super excited to be here. You might’ve seen me around on different stuff that we do for social media, for marketing and all of that.
But enough about me, this isn’t about me today. I just wanted to quickly introduce our guest for this week, which is Kyshira Moffett. She is actually the CEO and owner of The Power Collective. She’s an author, business owner, and she’s actually decorated with multiple recognitions and awards, which I think is super awesome. Kyshira, thank you for coming on with us today.
Kyshira:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to talk with you. I’m a big fan of the software. I’ve been using it for a number of years now so this is really exciting.
Jessmyn:
Oh, I’m glad. I’m glad. Tell us a little bit about The Power Collective, what you do and kind of everything about you.
Kyshira:
Yeah, absolutely. So The Power Collective is an online coaching business where we specialize in helping coaches learn how to create their first high ticket offered, and that’s through our flagship program, the Founder Circle, and there we teach organic marketing strategy. So we teach packaging, messaging, sales, live streaming, things like that. Then we also help experienced coaches who hit that revenue wall and they can’t seem to move beyond a certain number learn how to scale their business through diverse and passive offering. That’s what our business does and I’ve been in business since 2013.
Jessmyn:
Oh wow.
Kyshira:
I’ve done a number of different types of businesses since then. There’s been a lot of pivots and we can talk about that. But through my experiences, I’ve become an author and I’ve published books about branding and starting a business and just sharing my experiences. We have a podcast as well called Brand Your Power show, a Facebook group. I actually used to host a conference every year. It was called Hustle Her Way, did it for a four years straight and then it turned into a retreat which unfortunately was rescheduled this year due to current events. This is my first time in a long time not having a major event, so that’s interesting.
I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’ve been here since 2013 as well. I moved here straight out of college for a job and just happened to stay. I’m originally from Chicago, so that’s where I was born and raised. People are always really interested to find that out. In my spare time, I like to binge watch YouTube vlogging and Netflix and planner videos is my new thing. I love planning and decorating and all of that stuff. Yeah, that’s the high level about me and my personal, you know …
Jessmyn:
I love that. I’ve been to Philadelphia before. My boyfriend’s actually from New Jersey so it’s kind of awesome. I love the East coast, but that all sounds awesome. I really love how it’s crazy. It’s like you hear all this stuff where people are like, oh, I do this, this and this. And it’s like, so how, how did you get there? What were you doing before this?
Kyshira:
Yeah, girl, it’s a journey. I studied business in college. I have an MBA. I was on the banking path and realized a little too late into my degree program that I didn’t actually want to be a banker. I was a people person and I wanted to be in HR, and I just so happened to get an HR job in banking. The bank I worked for was headquartered in Pittsburgh, which is why I’m here. From there I moved on to higher education, so I was in the career services department for an MBA program. While I was working full time, I was also freelancing outside of that, just for fun in the beginning with helping my friends with their resumes, cover letters, interview prep, and then ultimately a friend was like, you need to start charging for this, people who are getting crazy jobs, six figure jobs because of your help and this is going to turn into a lot of work for you.
I decided to start charging, but it was a nominal fee. The big thing was I decided to create a blog. Back in the day when there wasn’t a Squarespace yet, I was using Wix and I created a blog all about personal branding and career development because my big thing, even when I was working in my jobs was I would teach personal branding. I was asked to teach owning your career and standing out and all of those things. That was what I was known for in my jobs.
So I created this blog and the goal was use the blog to get a new job. It was not about promoting a business. I had a little raggedy services page. It was not anything close to what you see today and it just said resumes with the different packages and PayPal buttons on it. But the rest of the site was like a blog. I had my resume on the site and that’s what I was doing. I started to brand myself on Twitter around personal brand and it started to get guest blogging opportunities and things like that.
I did ask a lot of people that I worked with to leave me reviews on LinkedIn for my work, and an entrepreneur reached out and said, hey, I have an event planning business. I’ve been doing it for a number of years. I really want to get into social media to start getting more clients. Can you help me with LinkedIn? I just happened to say, okay, sure. I’ll try it out. She saw great results and started to ask me to do other projects in her business around writing, which has always been a strong suit of mine and social media, and then she referred me to all her friends.
At this point, the online brand is growing. I created a Facebook group for my readers. My brand was called Her Movement at the time. It was very pink. I was also starting my conference at the time, which was all about bringing career women in, entrepreneurial women together. Because at this point in life in 2015, it was still like this divide where you felt like an imposter. If you were doing both the worlds, it wasn’t as receptive as it is today.
I realized at that point that I really loved working with entrepreneurs a lot more than the career work, and that’s what really set me on fire. It was scary to make that decision because career stuff was still bringing in the bulk of my side hustle revenue. Of course in my nine to five, I was starting to hate it and not find joy in it anymore and I had no desire to look for another job. I decided to go all in, in my business. I released the career stuff, started working only with entrepreneurs, of course, kept going deeper into my craft with revisiting my textbooks from school and doing more freelance work and then just continuing to study.
So rebranded, rebranded per usual. Over the years, what I found for me is I went from just kind of working with anybody who needed help with branding and social media, to then working with service providers to now only working with coaches. The core lesson from that is the first iteration of your business will not be the last, but you can’t really figure out your sweet spot until you start to try, right? There is nothing like experience that will teach you where you really are at your absolute best.
So that’s how we landed here today. I think one thing that helped me was saying yes to a lot of the things that scared me along the way. Yes to certain opportunities, whether it was speaking engagements or contracts or certain clients, just taking advantage of what came my way to get that experience.
Jessmyn:
Was there anything special or helpful I guess you could say that helped you to say yes to all those scary things? Was there anything that you did specifically if you were like, hmm, maybe not? Should I do it? I should say yes? Or how did that process go?
Kyshira:
My big, my favorite quote to this day is feel the fear, do it anyway so that was my mantra. I picked it up, I don’t remember where, but I held onto it just because I felt like when I was in college, I was very kind of fearful, which is why in my sophomore year when I really wasn’t feeling finance and accounting, I didn’t just pivot then. I stuck with it because I felt like I would be a quitter if I decided to go this other path and look at these other opportunities. I know what it feels like to have a little bit of regret. I know what it feels like to kind of do things because you think you should versus really taking the risk. I think for me, I already had that, I knew what that felt like.
I just always would ask when an opportunity presented itself, what’s the worst that could happen?
Jessmyn:
I love that.
Kyshira:
That typically is what led me to say yes to a lot of things. Now I’m not suggesting that you take on so much that you’re over capacity, but a lot of times we’re not saying no because of time, and I would even look at it as if this was a friend saying, can you come to this party versus can you come speak at this event? What would be my … And I was 23 at the time [inaudible 00:08:47] example, right? But that was kind of how I look at things, like the ROI of what I was saying yes to.
Jessmyn:
I love that. I think that’s awesome. While you’re saying yes and you’re in the middle of doing this new thing, what were some maybe obstacles that came about in any of them where maybe for a second you were like, oh, is this the right way to go, and how did you know to pivot or know what to do next?
Kyshira:
Yeah. I mean, huge obstacle I dealt with was the money factor of being comfortable actually charging for what I wanted to do. That was a obstacle that lasted for a number of years where it was so much for me to go from just doing it for free to charging these nominal fees and then going from nominal fees to slightly above nominal fees. I just felt really weird about that. I think most new entrepreneurs, we kind of struggle with having money conversations and putting a price tag on what you do.
I felt that I know that that hindered me for so long because when you have a goal of replacing your income and you’re like charging a dollar. I’m just making this up. If you charge a dollar for every service you offer, it’s like, there’s no end in sight. You can’t even imagine your business bringing in the same thing you make at your job. For me, the big pivot point came when I was working with one of my very first coaches, and even then I had to … I made a very scary investment and it took a long time me to do it, but I knew that something needed to change. I just didn’t know what, and literally this coach took time out, it was group program. She was like, you know, listen, you don’t really need the content of what I’m teaching. You just need somebody to tell you to get out of your own way. She’s like, the reason why you aren’t where you want to be is because you refuse to charge for the value of your offering.
Even though that sounds simple when you listen to the story. For someone that was dealing with a lot of limiting beliefs, that was really powerful. It’s like somebody you admire literally saying you’re already equipped. You don’t need more learning. You just need to step it up in terms of how you’re choosing to position the value of what you do. After I made that change, trusting that process, things skyrocketed for me really, really fast.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. I will say working with partners, excuse me, I’m working with partners at Interact especially a lot of the times they’ll talk about their own quiz services and they’ll be like, what do I charge? How much should I charge for this? I’m like, for me, it’s like charge what you’re worth. Charge how much time you put in it, what your skill set is and all of that. I definitely agree that I think that’s super important, and I love that you kind of pointed that out as an obstacle that you went through, because I think it’s something that a lot of people resonate with and everyone goes through it, especially if they’re starting a business and they’re like, I don’t know what this should look like. Do you have any advice I guess on that point for someone where they’re like, okay, we’re talking about maybe charging more and nominal fees, but how do you know at what your skill set is or what level you’re at to charge?
Kyshira:
One easy thing is just getting online and doing some research just as if you were looking for a new job. If you were moving to a new city and looking for a new job, you’d probably look average salary of marketing in New York, and then average salary of marketing manager in New York and you start to pull some averages. You look to see what’s the low end, what’s the high end, what’s the middle. You don’t have to charge the average, but at least having a range now gives you an idea. In the online space, the beautiful thing is a lot of people are very transparent about their fees. A lot of people don’t hide what they’re charging, so you can even do some due diligence. I would say not only looking on Instagram, but what you’re researching through Google, research of local, state and national, and then even international. Then from there start to make some decisions.
Another thing I like to factor in is what’s your personal hourly rate? When you look at most corporations, you get a salary, but it’s still based on an hourly rate. Then what’s your hourly rate? What do you want to charge as a consultant or as a coach for your time? A really good book that helps with this is Profit First. I think that that book is really excellent on how to figure out how to ensure that your business is like actually generating profit. That’s another one that to take into consideration. Then depending on if you people listening in, if they’re working with coaches, a lot of coaches will give you pricing formulas and calculators.
You can Google things like this if you want like a free version. I know that if you type in salary calculator or something like that, if you put in even just how much money you want your business to make in a year. If you want to make $50,000, you can type that in and it’ll tell you what the hourly rate now needs to be, and then you can look at how long it takes for you to deliver each of your programs to figure out how much the program should be, how many clients do you need to hit this goal. That’s a really easy place to start. As you add more offers, obviously it gets more complex, but I feel like those tips is enough for you to just get started.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. I love that. That’s awesome. Thank you. Another thing that you mentioned earlier that I caught, but then forgot, I wanted to ask about it. You talked a little bit about having imposter syndrome and that’s even something that I know I for sure experienced myself and for a lot of people out there experience. I guess how did you overcome that and how did you take that and be able to go through and say all those yes’s and get to where you are today?
Kyshira:
Yeah. I actually just did a live stream on imposter syndrome two days ago because it’s so prevalent and it’s normal. The big thing for me with imposter syndrome was really, one, recognizing it and recognizing when was it happening, like that exact moment. One of the tips I gave in my video was kind of starting to document that. It doesn’t mean sit down and journal for two hours. If you notice it, recognize it and just put it in your phone or pull a piece of paper out so you could document when it’s happening, because imposter syndrome typically is triggered by something.
Then from there asking yourself, what evidence do you have that this is actually true? From there actually having to build a business case to yourself that this thought you have of not being good enough or smart enough or whatever it is, is actually evident. I actually told by a few years like per Harvard Business Review, the definition of imposter syndrome is really you feeling inadequate, despite evident success, right? I tell people, you have to nip this in the bud because there is no amount of growth revenue, sales, promotions that’s going to make it just go away.
As you continue to climb, it’s just going to get worse, so you have to start building up your own way of dealing with it and nipping it now, and that’s by recognizing, again, what’s causing it, documenting that so that you can see is there something need to cut out, is it just a mindset shift you need to make? Asking yourself, is this true? Is this real? Beginning to reframe in your mind where so if it’s an envy thing, like if you get online and you see everybody else talking about how much money they make, it’s reframing from I’ll never make that to it’s so awesome to see this. This is proof that I can do it too. Reframe it.
Even then reprogramming your mind what failure is to you and reprogramming where failure is now just new information, right? There is no failure. There is only information, and just work moving forward with that and knowing that this is not a one day process. This is not something you can just here today and tomorrow you’re fine. You have to build this habit, built this muscle, so that subconsciously there’s going to be a shift where this is no longer an issue for you.
Jessmyn:
I love that. I think that it’s something that we’re trying to do this year is really talk more about this type of stuff, right? Like, where’s that struggle and how do you overcome that struggle? I really love how you have an actual kind of coping mechanism to get through that. I think for me at least, I’ve realized that it’s also not something that you overcome for one part of your job and then when a new thing comes along, you’re automatically totally fine.
You do have to go through the same process again and really work your way up to where you’re like, okay, this is just my imposter syndrome. It’s not a big deal. It’s fine. No, yeah. I love that. I know we talked a little bit about you being an author. How did you go from starting your business online, working with clients, and then getting to a point where you did start writing books and then even speaking at conferences? You said you hold conferences as well, right?
Kyshira:
With the book writing, it was interesting because I’ve been a writer my entire life. When I was a kid, I used to do those young author competitions. But for some reason, as an adult, I really struggled with writer’s block and getting things out on paper. It was a goal of mine to write a book for so long. I’ve finally just like, you know what? We’re going to do it. We’re going to do it in 30 days. We’re just going to write the book. The easiest thing is just to start with the outline versus a blank page. Really just outlining what the book will be about, outlining your chapters and then just committing to a chapter per day really helps me. So that was that.
Then the other thing that also helps is if you’re a content creator and you already have a lot of videos and podcasts, some of that can become part of your book. Some of those things you can get transcribed and you can get an editor or you can edit it yourself, and those things can actually speed up the process. One of my books, All in Favor of Branding, was based on a webinar and the webinar audio was the first five chapters of that book.
Jessmyn:
Wow.
Kyshira:
That actually was one of those work smarter, not harder type of situations. I did self publish through Kindle direct publishing, which used to be called Create Space for those that are familiar with it, which made the process really simple because there was no order minimum. If you work with a local publisher, sometimes they’ll say you have to buy a thousand copies of this book. If you have no budget, that’s not feasible for you. Right? With Amazon Create Space, there’s actually no fee to publish your book.
The only fees come into play is if you want a copy of the proof, and even then they’re only charging you how much it costs to print the book and the shipping cost, but if you’re doing an ebook or Kindle book, it’s free.
Jessmyn:
Wow.
Kyshira:
Then Amazon will tell you, based on how much you want to charge for your book, how much you make and how much they’ll make, so you can even adjust those profit margins. That was really impactful for me. Like I said, I based my book on a lot of my blog posts, my webinars, things I already had, and it was nice because when I would go to conferences, I can actually have a table and I could actually sell things. I did try at one point in life the whole T-shirts. That’s just not my brand. It’s not my ministry so I just let that go.
Now when I hold tables at events, I have books, so if people enjoy my talk, they can buy my book. They can learn more about me. My books serve as a marketing tool. I have a really active YouTube channel and I have a video about how books are like a secret weapon in marketing that people don’t really talk about. Then in terms of events, I have just been really fortunate where I’ve been consistently asked to speak at events. It was one of those things where I just said yes. In the beginning, I was not a fan of it, but I was talking to a friend really passionately about LinkedIn and someone who was on a board of a nonprofit happened to be nearby. They’re like, hey, can you come speak at our professional development conference? Then somebody in that audience said, could you come and speak at this other event?
I started to post pictures of that and short videos of that on social media, and then that led to out of town engagement, some paid, some not paid, but the more I did it I found that one engagement typically leads to another. Of course, there’s people who teach you how to pitch if you want to be active about it. I’ve been very fortunate where I haven’t really pitched for anything. People just have come to me. Then even with my own event, that was something I just scrapped. I was very scrappy with that because I didn’t have a huge budget at the time. I leveraged relationships. A lot of the speakers were friends of mine who from the online space who just spoke for free for me. I gave them tables to sell their stuff. The space was donated by a nonprofit that I worked with. Another nonprofit I worked with gave a little bit of funding.
It was one of those things where it just happened to … Once I put it out there that this is what I wanted and this is what I wanted to create, and there was good intentions behind it, things just started to work out where things just really fell into place for me with those events, and events I just feel like I’ve missed them. They’re just such a huge part of what I love about business, which is connecting with women who have these passions and these interests. I think people just underestimate the power of bringing like-minded people together. So many entrepreneurs feel alone.
I used to do a dinner tour called hashtags to bombshells, and I would basically look at where I was speaking across the country and I would just have a little dinner party. It was 20 bucks and I would give you a copy of one of my books and I buy appetizers for the group and we’d have dinner. I remember doing this in L.A., I had 20 women come and in a city like L.A., These women were all like, I came because I really enjoyed your content, but I also don’t have any business friends. I feel really lonely in my entrepreneurial journey. It was like the validation of it all. I’m really excited for just things to just hopefully go back to normal so that we can resume that in-person connection.
Jessmyn:
Yeah. I love that. That’s so inspiring. I think there’s something really powerful about just creating a community and having a community. I think for women especially it’s a huge thing because for the most part we’re still kind of in that spot where we’re a little more undervalued, right? And people might not look at us as much more because we’re a woman, and there’s something about coming together that really empowers what we can do and who we can be. I love that you do that. I think that’s awesome. Your story is so inspiring. Do you have any maybe last minute advice or something that you found really helpful while you were going through all these different processes?
Kyshira:
Yeah. I mean, a couple things. One, stay the course and recognize that no matter how smart and talented you are, there is always going to be obstacles, and so running into challenges does not mean give up. It doesn’t mean quit. It doesn’t mean something’s going wrong. It’s honestly just a part of the reality we live in. There is always going to be personal highs and lows, personal ups and downs. Just stay committed and stay the course.
Consistency matters. I know people feel like markets are saturated. Every market is saturated, but the consistency and the quality of you showing up in your content is going to be the thing that really, really keeps you top of mind. Lastly, I would just say innovative. I know we haven’t gotten a chance to talk about this, but that’s one of the things I like about your software is that quizzes are still like a new thing to be honest with you. When it comes to opt-ins, I feel like people … In the terms of the online quizzes. I think people have always looked at them as just something fun that you find on magazine websites, but really thinking about incorporating it into business.
It really gives you a chance to innovate and do something different than what everyone else is doing, so definitely looking for opportunities to just step outside of the box and recognize that if you have an idea of something that you haven’t seen before, that means you should do it.
Jessmyn:
I love that. Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for telling us your story and of course being with us here today. Before we do wrap up, I did want to ask, where can people find you online?
Kyshira:
Yeah [inaudible 00:25:00]. I am @Kyshira literally everywhere. My website is ThePowerCollective.co, which is dot C-O, and my podcast is called the Brand Your Power show and it is on every podcasting platform.
Jessmyn:
Awesome. No, that’s great. Well, thank you so much for being here. Everybody, we will post this on our website and you will have those links as well, and thanks guys.