Career Coaching Secrets

What to Do When Clients Leave: Nicole McDonough’s Lessons on Staying Grounded and Growing

• Davis Nguyen

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In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, executive coach and conflict resolution expert Nicole McDonough shares how she helps high-impact leaders navigate complex interpersonal dynamics using emotional intelligence and the Enneagram. Nicole talks about how to stay calm during client turnover, what it means to lead tough conversations, and how to build a business rooted in curiosity, connection, and long-term impact.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoledianemcdonough/ 
https://nicolemcdonoughcoaching.com/
https://myleadershipsuperpowers.com/


You can also watch this podcast on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/@CareerCoachingSecrets

If you are a career coach looking to grow your business you can find out more about Purple Circle at http://joinpurplecircle.com

Get Exclusive Access to Our In-Depth Analysis of 71 Successful Career Coaches, Learn exactly what worked (and what didn't) in the career coaching industry in 2024: https://joinpurplecircle.com/white-paper-replay

Nicole McDonough:

So it's been an interesting pattern for me to notice. I no longer panic because whenever that does happen, sort of magically sometime in the next two to four weeks, I will have another couple of opportunities come in very strange ways, you know, out of the blue with a referral or something like that. So I used to kind of panic when that would happen. You know, I work high ticket one-on-one. At any given time, I'm probably not I'm working maybe with 10 one-on-one clients and four teams. So, you know, if somebody no longer is able to work together, it does make an impact. But I have found that continuing to stay curious and be generous and stay in the game and stay engaged means that I will have interesting and surprising opportunities kind of come out of the blue, which is a good reminder that while I could probably improve my systems and my lead generation system, there's really no need to panic because I'm not going to be noticing creative opportunities that are available to me if I'm in that kind of panic scarcity mode.

Davis Nguyen:

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 Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. Before Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and consulted with two career coaching businesses that are now doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or just building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Rexhen, and today's guest is Nicole McDonough. She is an executive coach, conflict resolution expert, and Enneagram consultant who empowers high-impact leaders and teams to communicate with clarity, lead with emotional intelligence, and resolve conflict with confidence. Drawing from her background in education and psychology, Nicole supports C-suite executives in corporate finance and education sectors to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics, align their leadership with their core values, and cultivate authentic, resilient relationships. Through emotionally responsive coaching, she helps clients transform challenges into growth opportunities. And it's my pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Nicole.

Nicole McDonough:

Thanks, Rexhen. It's great to be here.

Rexhen:

Nicole, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become an executive coach.

Nicole McDonough:

So it's interesting. I think my answer to this question is a little bit different every time, but I've always loved, from a very young age, I can remember being a teenager and being in a youth group or a family gathering and really appreciating the complex web of human dynamics. personalities and some of the invisible things happening when groups get together. So I would say from a young age, I was just very, very curious about different personality types and what happens when we all get together. And I did go on to get my master's degree in school leadership. And some of my favorite courses in that graduate program were around conflict resolution, qualitative research, interviewing like we're doing here, and really just understanding how complex things can get when you bring two or more people together in a room. So it was something I enjoyed learning about naturally, kind of on my own time, and also enjoyed learning about in a more formal sense. And I think I've also always been just a natural listener. People that I don't know that well will open up to me in sort of strange and bizarre surprising scenarios. So after my youngest child was ready to start kindergarten and I wanted to kind of formally recreate a career that would match the lifestyle and the time constraints I had and really be the best use of my time while my kids were at school. I knew that something that formalized my interest in human dynamics, personalities, communication, and really leveraging that skill as a good listener and a good question asker to help people you know, deal with complex situations could be really fun and could be a job that I enjoyed doing and felt like it was making an impact on a deep level, which is really important to me. I know that if I didn't enjoy it and I didn't feel like I was making an impact, it would be hard to stick with. So that's kind of, you know, the initial reasoning.

Rexhen:

So that kind of like that spark got you started coaching and then you started Nicole McDonald coaching business. How does that look like from the moment you like it's been six years now, but from the moment you started coaching business to where you are today? How does that look like?

Nicole McDonough:

Yeah, it looks a lot of different ways. I mean, for starters, I really feel like. I never have the experience like I'm working so hard and you know, what's the point? Or I'm not making an impact. Like it is a very, I always joke, there's no busy work and there's no small talk in this line of work. I go five minutes into the heart of the issue, five minutes into my day, I'm going to the heart of the issue, whether that's in something I'm doing, a workshop I'm leading or a complex problem that I'm coaching somebody through. So that keeps me really energized and engaged. And I think, you know, depending on the season, depending on my goals, my energy level and bandwidth at the time. It can look like meeting a lot one-on-one with clients on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis. It can look like in-person workshops or online workshops or doing bigger, more creative projects, researching and writing and kind of getting a feel for what are some of the bigger questions people are wrestling with right now and how do I get ahead of that? So variety is really important to me, but I definitely want to maintain that, you know, imagination and variety while staying, you know, under the bigger umbrella of, you know, the pillars of my business.

Rexhen:

We talk about in your intro that you're generally working with C-suite executives and that is in many different sectors such as finance, education. Is there a specific demographic that goes into that or is not really limited to demographic, meaning age or gender or like location?

Nicole McDonough:

I've looked for patterns in the demographic and I have not yet felt the need to narrow down. I do end up working with a lot of highly creative female directors, whether that's in the arts or in design or in nonprofit. And I work with a lot of men in finance and corporate, and I work with men and women in education. So I think the pattern I've noticed is these are smart people. who have to confidentially manage a lot of really intense challenges, whether that's the people they supervise, the decisions they're making financially or with funding, really complex things. And I think no matter what the field, the higher up the mountain you go in leadership, the lonelier it gets. So I would say that is a And I don't even say lonely in a negative sense, more just isolating. That's a unifying pattern that I see in a lot of the clients I work with is they are managing complex challenges and I might be one of the only people in their weekly cadence that they can share the full extent of those challenges with because they are delicate and the solution is not immediately clear. Otherwise, we wouldn't be working together.

Rexhen:

It's not as straightforward, right?

Nicole McDonough:

Yes, it's not a box to be checked.

Rexhen:

Absolutely. And I wanted to ask you with your coaching business right now, is there any goals you're working towards for the next one to three years?

Nicole McDonough:

Yeah, one of my goals is to launch my podcast. And it is about I have the first four to eight episodes recorded, I've got the cover designed and all the equipment. So I'm hoping to launch that this summer. And it's specifically on hard conversations, I find that a lot of people, whether they avoid them, or don't avoid them, but get really reactive and don't engage in the best way possible. Hard conversations and conflict. I just want to bring some more self-awareness into that and some tools that people can use. So I'm working on that. And my hope is that next steps will be either a book or, you know, more bigger stages. I really love public speaking. My background is in performance, so I do not get nervous at all. And I think that that's a really powerful way to inspire people and give them an experience that kind of stays with them long after the presentation. I also have a big heart for hosting and hospitality and retreats. So maybe in more of the five to 10 year goal, I would love to have an event, you know, home or kind of retreat center where people could come for a weekend or could rent it out for a weekend and have a really unique kind of clarifying and restful experience. But that's a bit more a bit more down the road from where I am right now.

Rexhen:

Cool, great. And what is the podcast called for anyone that wants to find it?

Nicole McDonough:

Yeah, be on the lookout. It's called Real and Bright.

Rexhen:

Real and Bright. Tough Conversations. Interesting, yeah. Tough Conversations. Once you have one, you're like, how many more of those could I have? Because it's so impactful.

Nicole McDonough:

I'm planning on launching it hopefully in July of this

Rexhen:

year. Oh, in July. Cool. So it's in the works.

Nicole McDonough:

Yeah, so stay tuned. It's worth coming.

Rexhen:

Cool. And you also mentioned retreats, which is funny because we just did a retreat with our coaches in Purple Circle. We did that in Mexico. So that was a very interesting experience. We're about to bring the materials of how that looked like soon. But yeah, if you needed any guidance on that, we're would be happy to send you some information on how we did it because even for us it was a little bit challenging in the beginning. So yeah, cool. Yeah,

Nicole McDonough:

that's great. And I didn't mention that when you asked how I got started, but you know, long before kind of my graduate work or even knowing that coaching was a field that someone could go into, I've always been heavily involved in just kind of spiritual or personal development retreats for women. That's just a very natural place for me, both attending and leading. And so I was able to take a lot of the pretty formative experiences i had during those retreats or weekends and kind of translate them into how would that type of environment support somebody who also needs that professionally so i'll be curious to hear hear what your bumps were you know what worked what did it you know down

Rexhen:

the road so much to share there um well The thing is that one of the main learnings is that they are so powerful in comparison to meeting people on Zoom, like meeting people in real life and just having that group discussion in real time can be so powerful in comparison to like having webinars. So once you get to it, I feel like you'll find a lot of value into doing this. And are you thinking this for the next couple of years, five years? I

Nicole McDonough:

mean, I guess you raise an interesting point, which is that I mean, I'm very creative. I love to remodel and redesign and so in my head, I think until I can buy a second property, I can't have retreats. But now, you know, I know that that's not true. That's just the order I see it in my head. So I think if I wanted to, and I also live in a beautiful town on the water and I love sharing it with people when they come visit out of town. So I think if I'm thinking I need to own a property in order to host these retreats, it's a bit further. But if I'm thinking, you know, like many people do, you can rent a home or a hotel or whatever it may be, then it could probably definitely be in the next two to three years. It's just a matter of how many big projects can I maintain at once.

Rexhen:

Yeah, and we found resorts to be a very good option for that because they have the conference rooms and they have all the facilities you would need. But yeah, generally, you could just rent it because otherwise, if you're just like getting a whole property and then how many retreats, unless you're doing retreats every day, then it would be like a lot of money invested in something that's not being utilized to the maximum of its potential. But yeah, yeah. More of that we'll share with you at the end of this podcast. But I wanted to ask you in terms of like, investments has there been any investment in your coaching business that you feel like actually has made a good impact in the business growing that could be any like coaching program masterminds or communities or anything really that you invested money and then you feel like it actually made a difference is there anything like that you'd like to share with anyone who is looking to invest

Nicole McDonough:

Absolutely. So I wouldn't have this business if it weren't for my mastermind that I'm a member of. It's called Digital Insiders, and it is a mastermind that I've been in since the very beginning. And it has entrepreneurs in such a wide range of businesses. My sister is the leader of this mastermind, so I'm very lucky to be kind of in the inner circle. But as a result, so many of the rich relationships that I've had, the opportunities I've had, There's so much creativity and care paired with strategy and execution. And I also, I receive coaching and now coaching supervision from the head mindset coach in that mastermind. So not only do I have kind of the benefit of these I say it's like better than friends and colleagues put together. This group of people really feel most at home. We get together twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring. And those weeks are an absolute highlight kind of on every level, professionally, personally, you know, travel, creativity, laughter. You know, we laugh so hard because we understand the highs and lows of owning your own business. And we've been through, I guess, I joined in 2019. So it's been kind of a wild five or six years in terms of the economy that we have all weathered and are still standing but there's so many benefits not just in you know scaling and strategy and execution but on a deep human level especially if you are a solopreneur or you work primarily alone you really can't have a better setup than friends or colleagues who also understand the challenges of being an entrepreneur and running their own business. And my coach, who has now formally become my coaching supervisor, she's in Wales, and all of the huge life changes and aha moments and insights that have led me to take risks to shake things up and stop doing things that aren't working have come as a result of our work together. And I now have her supervision. So when I am brought with a very complex issue, In my coaching client privacy, I now have a supervisor that I can bring this issue to confidentially and she can help me look at it through the seven eyes of supervision and we can kind of analyze it and play with all the different issues that come up, boundaries and perspective and all of the stuff when you're dealing with really some more complex, delicate issues.

Rexhen:

Cool. I'm really glad you have that opportunity. And you mentioned that in this community, in this mastermind, your sister is also hosting retreats.

Nicole McDonough:

She has two businesses. This is one of her businesses. And then she has another business called Funnel Gorgeous, where she has, you know, thousands of students and software, and they teach people marketing and funnel building. But this mastermind come, you know, part of the yearly package is a fall destination live event, and a spring local here in Connecticut live event. And so they're both three to five days, everybody in the mastermind will come but they're not open to the public it's just folks who are in the community and some people live you know for for those weeks depending on what what the challenges they're dealing with and uh it's always sort of this herculean effort for everybody to leave their lives and fly across the country and get together uh but when we do it's always worth it on on many levels

Rexhen:

interesting the reason why i asked that is because you mentioned that you wanted to have a property. I was wondering, like, did your sister actually invest in a property

Nicole McDonough:

or something? She and I are very, we have very complementary skill sets. So she's, you know, big picture. I'm great with the details. She's the, you know, we work well together. So we've co-presented. She's handed off things to me at times that maybe aren't her strength or skill set. And so there's definitely been a lot of neat opportunities there.

Rexhen:

Cool. Amazing. I wanted to ask you right now with your coaching business, what would you say is the biggest challenge that you're facing or you're getting from where you are at now to where you want to be? If that's not scaling, which sometimes for most coaches is scaling, but if there's something else that you want to achieve, what would you say is the biggest challenge or bottleneck right now for you?

Nicole McDonough:

I mean, it's a tough question. I could kind of say like, if you put a different qualifier in front of the word challenge the answer might be different right so the biggest financial challenge versus the biggest internal challenge or you know challenge around time you know i have found a lot in the last year or two the individuals and agencies that i've worked with even though the work that we have done together has been you know in their words a lifesaver when revenue shifts and they need to cut costs. This same sort of couldn't have done this without you type relationship and investment is sometimes seen as peripheral. in meeting with their bookkeeper. And so I've noticed a pattern a lot in the last year or two that may be different compared to larger corporations who have a bigger professional development budget or that's more sustainable long-term in terms of six months or a year. But I have found that there's some disconnect where the value of the work that we have done together and the hurdles that they've overcome as a result of the work doesn't necessarily hold up on paper when Things shift with the economy or their revenue is down and they need to make sort of some impulsive cost cutting decisions. So it's been an interesting pattern for me to notice. I no longer panic because whenever that does happen, sort of magically sometime in the next two to four weeks, I will have another couple of opportunities come up. in very strange ways, you know, out of the blue with a referral or something like that. So I used to kind of panic when that would happen. You know, I work high ticket one-on-one at any given time. I'm probably not, I'm working maybe with 10 one-on-one clients and four teams. So, you know, if somebody no longer is able to work together, it does make an impact, but I have found that continuing to stay curious and be generous and and stay in the game and stay engaged means that I will have interesting and surprising opportunities kind of come out of the blue, which is a good reminder that while I could probably improve my systems and my lead generation system, there's really no need to panic because I'm not going to be noticing creative opportunities that are available to me if I'm in that kind of panic scarcity mode.

Rexhen:

Yeah, I really like that, that you are focusing in the right way when it comes to like not panicking because I had a podcast where I was talking to another executive coach. She also had noticed the same thing where she's feeling that because of how the economy is kind of shifting towards a recession or like a lot of these big firms have the need to make tough decisions when it comes to their investments. That could be cutting budgets or not necessarily cutting budget, but they have to make some tough decisions recently due to the economy, and due to like the current administration or like the changes that are happening in us so a lot of that has been seen also by other coaches and one of them i had in the podcast too and she also mentioned the same thing to not uh panic but just like prepare for this as this is something that something that has happened over time always is just like it feels a little bit strange uh right now is this something that you felt uh just recently or is it just like uh I think that you always have an issue when it comes to like client churn or things like that

Nicole McDonough:

I think it's picked up in the last two years I mean I started my business in 2019 I was one of the businesses that did really well during COVID so I know everybody has a different experience but for me in 2020 people were very stressed and they needed a lot of support so even though I had you know all of a sudden all five of us under one roof I was able to get creative and and continue to grow my coaching business throughout COVID. And in 2021, I created my first online course about the Enneagram. It's called the Enneagram Impact. And I know a lot of people in my entrepreneurial community experienced the buying trends of people during COVID in 2000, 2021 were kind of abnormal. So anybody who, you know, because we were all so stressed and isolated and needed something to look forward to. So, you know, whether it was buying pajamas or installing a pool or buying 10 online courses it doesn't really matter the industry but people were buying a lot and so i definitely experienced that peak in 2020 2021 and it's sort of in the years since then kind of stabilized a little bit so it's really given me the opportunity to be mindful and creative about what i'm engaging in where i'm putting my energy what i'm creating next so that i'm not Making assumptions that, okay, now I can put my feet up. I mean, I never put my feet up, metaphorically or literally. But making assumptions about the economy or the buying trends and things like that. Because I think it's always changing. And it's more fun to look for new opportunities and be creative than to kind of coast.

Rexhen:

I feel like in this challenge, would you say that also, not just the current trend, but overall... being able to increase lifetime value of the client is also kind of challenging a little bit, like having them stay longer, would you say, on average, not just recently? Have you seen that as an issue?

Nicole McDonough:

I don't know how other coaches would describe it. I don't have an issue. I guess like the actual phrase would be like with churn. Because with people coming and going quickly, most of my clients I've worked with for over three years. And I kind of thought, I actually thought I had an issue if we worked together for a year. And then they were like, thank you so much. It's amazing. I got everything I needed. I thought, oh, no, you know, what happened? Until my coach was able to kind of point out, like, that's a fairly normal three, six, nine, 12 months period of time. And that was a helpful reference point for me because I do have... quite a long-standing relationship with many of my clients that is much longer than a year. It always sort of stands out to me when I only work with somebody for a year.

Rexhen:

Well, in that case, yeah, I feel like it's definitely something that a lot of coaches experience in What I've interviewed generally has also been three years from what I've learned. Because like I said, I'm not a coach myself, but I do interview a lot of coaches. So I've noticed that this has been the case for three years on average is what generally people work to. So it's not bad.

Nicole McDonough:

Yeah, no, it's nice. And I think when somebody's invested that much time and trust in a relationship. I mean, I've had people kind of pause and then come back, you know, like, okay, I'm ready for this new chapter. And then they kind of see what's out there and they're like, Ann, I think I want to bring you along with me because, you know, that's a pretty significant amount of time and trust built over time. And even if we're not formally working together, I always keep in touch with people just to let, you know, send things their way, ask how they're doing, because it is such a powerful relationship.

Rexhen:

Well, it's been lovely having you on the podcast so far. I wanted to ask, is there any final advice you'd like to give to other executive coaches who are trying to scale their impact or like an advice you'd give to yourself?

Nicole McDonough:

Yeah, I've had a lot of experiences really just in the past couple of months of this idea that you never know who's listening. And I've seen that in a good way, meaning if you get asked to lead a workshop or volunteer for something, to see every opportunity as a possibility because you never know who's listening. So I do lead monthly and weekly coaching in a few other programs, other people's programs, and I'll come in as the guest expert or the resident coach. And even on the days when I have felt tired, Or like, I don't, you know, maybe just lacking momentum. Almost always on a very regular basis, somebody who attends one of those group coaching or workshop experiences that I host will come back to me. It might not be for three months or it might not be for a year and a half, but I just had an opportunity to speak to an entire, you know, 1500 employees on the Enneagram because they were like, I, you know, was in your program. program two years ago, and now I'm in charge of finding guest speakers, and you were the first person that came to mind. So I've had a lot of that experience lately of kind of people popping out of the woodwork saying, this session that you led had such an impact on me, and now I want to invite you over into this. And it's just such a good reminder to me, one, to stop taking it all so seriously and really just focus on being uh being generous and and giving people something memorable that they can take with them because everybody is either you know a client or someone you could collaborate with or someone who could connect you to somebody else down the road and i've started to see some of those seeds that have been planted in the first five years of business come back in the last couple of months with some really cool and kind of surprising opportunities that I probably couldn't have drafted myself or wouldn't have sought out. But I enjoy working with a diverse range of people in different fields. And so I think it's just a good reminder. You never know who's listening.

Rexhen:

We don't generally know who's listening. I mean, generally it's going to be other coaches, but we found that there's also a mixed audience because like I mentioned in the beginning, a lot of coaches, when they share the podcast, now their audience also gets mixed up with our audience. So you never know. Thank you so much, Nicole, for coming to the podcast today. It's been lovely having you on the podcast. For anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you, they can find you on your LinkedIn at nicoledianemcdonough. They can also find you on your nicolemcdonoughcoaching.com/. There's also another link that you shared with me, which feel free to share some more information about. It's/myleadershipsuperpowers.com/. What was that about?

Nicole McDonough:

Yeah, this is actually, it's my free leadership guide for anybody who is a leader, but also wants to understand their Enneagram type, which is a personality blueprint that I specialize in. It's not, you know, I don't have to specialize in it, but it's kind of one of three main tools that I use with teams and leaders to understand themselves. So if you go to /myleadershipsuperpowers.com/, you put your email address in, so you get on my list and I only send you things that are funny, interesting, or helpful, but you also get this free guide. And you can learn a little bit about the different nine different personality types and the different strengths that they bring to leadership. And also some of the blind spots they bring in kind of what you can do if you enjoy learning about yourself and others and kind of understanding like where we started that invisible web of dynamics happens when we're in a room together so that you can be a more self-aware leader.

Rexhen:

Thank you so much, Nicole. We'll have that on the description as well, together with your website and your LinkedIn. So thank you so much for the podcast today. It was a lovely episode.

Nicole McDonough:

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Davis Nguyen:

Thank you.