Career Coaching Secrets

Why You Don’t Need a Shiny Brand to Start Your Coaching Business with Kaylin Aarts

• Davis Nguyen

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In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, Kaylin Aarts shares how she built a thriving leadership coaching business without the pressure of flashy branding or full-scale entrepreneurship. With a holistic approach, Kaylin blends organizational development, one-on-one coaching, and partnerships to serve high-achieving leaders. Discover how to build a sustainable, values-driven practice on your own terms.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylinaarts/
https://www.kaylinaarts.com/
https://jointhenewhq.substack.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

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Kaylin Aarts:

But I think one of the misconceptions that I had before starting my own business was that you did have to have this shiny brand and you did have to be like Kaelin Arts Incorporated and build your team and have a company. And the longer that I have worked independently, I think a multi kind of modality approach has worked best for me. So I do have clients that come to me directly. I do get work through platforms. I do get work through partnerships. I do get work through referrals. And it's felt really organic and natural to me to continue building my business that way. Whereas prior to starting working for myself, I really would have thought, oh, it's so intimidating. I have to build a whole brand and I have to build a whole business. I think there's a way to do it, not necessarily that being the only path. And so that's part of what I'm working on now in the new HQ is just getting more people to think about what are the different ways to work independently. And I think if more people weren't as intimidated by the idea of working for yourself, they would be open to what that looks like.

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 Kaylin Aarts. Kaylin is a certified leadership coach and organizational development consultant who helps leaders and teams navigate complexity with clarity, creativity, and purpose. With a background in project management, marketing, and OD strategy, Kaylin brings a uniquely holistic lens to her coaching, balancing the personal with the organizational and the strategic with the human to She partners with executives and emerging leaders to uncover what's getting in the way, co-design smarter ways of working, and build more collaborative and resilient teams. And it's a pleasure for me to have you on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Kaylin.

Kaylin Aarts:

Thank you for having me.

Rexhen:

It's a pleasure for us. So, Kaylin, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a leadership coach.

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah. So when I was working full time more in the project management space, I had kind of an aha moment that led me to discover organization development and organization design. And I realized that that was kind of a path I really wanted to look into for the next stage of my career. And when I uncovered that the umbrella term O.D., is a lot of different things. One of kind of the pieces of it was coaching. And so I just kind of kept following that intuitively and realized that it was absolutely one of the services that I wanted to be doing in my

Rexhen:

career. And just for my information, I'm very ignorant in what OB means. What is OB strategy?

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah. So again, there's kind of organization design and then there's organization development. But for a long time, this has just been a catch-all for a lot of different things. And that's why the coaching is kind of a component of it. But you're talking about the people, processes, culture, operating model of an organization. All of those things are involved in the world of OD. And you could get really, really specific about org design versus org development, but that's a whole other podcast. Yeah.

Rexhen:

Cool. And I actually really like that you have a background in marketing, so similar to me. And it's been seven years and two months, according to LinkedIn, that you started your coaching business. So how does the journey look like from the moment that you started it to where you are at today?

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah. So like I said, while I was working full time, I realized that this whole world of OD was something I really wanted to learn more about, be involved in. I didn't know if I was going to go back to school. When I discovered that coaching was a component, I started doing research on different coaching programs. And at first I thought that coaching was just going to be kind of a tool in my tool belt. as a consultant, or even in any role that I would take within an organization as a manager, as a leader. But after being in my first session of this coaching program, I realized, oh, no, this is incredibly challenging and stimulating. And I would like to be doing this in addition to the other work that I do. So the journey has looked Very organic, very following what feels right and learning a whole lot along the way. And also dialing up and down my coaching practice based on my capacity and what other work I've been involved in.

Rexhen:

And currently, like we mentioned also in your intro, you're working with executives and their teams. Is there a specific target industry or demographic that you're going after generally, or it just happens to be broad?

Kaylin Aarts:

Great question. So one of the things I really like about this work is it's not specific to an industry or sector. I work across sectors. I do work with typically mid to senior level NC suite executives. So you need to have some career experience under your belt before typically a match to working together. Also just from a style and personality, it's typically very high achieving, sometimes kind of on the type A front people that I work with and yeah, delivering different types of coaching based on what their need is.

Rexhen:

And so you're working with the executive and then also their team. So you're doing one-on-one coaching, but also group coaching in a

Kaylin Aarts:

way. So I actually deliver only one-on-one coaching, but sometimes my relationships with my coaching clients are what I call sponsored relationship. So I might have a professional relationship with somebody in the C-suite from my consulting work. And they know that I also deliver coaching services and they'll say, I have a number two who I would really like to have the benefit of coaching and I would like them to work with you. And so we contract it such that the organization pays for the coaching and then it is a completely confidential partnership between me and that manager, even though I had an entry point through the C-suite executive. And then sometimes I do work with the C-suite executives directly, but oftentimes I'm kind of in that just underneath role.

Rexhen:

I see. So you're not really working with a full team under it, but it's just like maybe one manager or a couple managers?

Kaylin Aarts:

It's usually individuals. And if it feels like it's a good fit, that often leads to other individuals that are either peers or on different teams associated with that organization. And

Rexhen:

where do people currently find you or connect with you?

Kaylin Aarts:

A lot of it is through just referrals and my network and relationship building. I... Don't have a massive presence on LinkedIn or online in general, but I also deploy a partnership strategy. So one of my partners, for instance, who does have more of a marketing presence, I work under her team and she's another way that I find opportunities and we partner together to deliver the best work we can for clients.

Rexhen:

Cool. So it's mostly like 100% you would say referrals or there are also some that is coming from LinkedIn. I noticed you also do post a little bit on LinkedIn.

Kaylin Aarts:

so it's mostly referrals i do get some from linkedin yeah i guess i get a little bit from linkedin but it's mostly referrals it's certainly not from other social outlets besides linkedin i find it funny when people contact me through my website because that's probably where i get the least amount of leads but every now and then i get an email inbound just through the website and i'm like oh that's interesting but it's very rare

Rexhen:

I got a little bit excited at the beginning. I was like, oh, background in marketing. So let's look at this. When it comes to leads, you're a chef.

Kaylin Aarts:

I know, it's funny. While I do have a background in marketing, I was a project manager and operations and marketing. So I was more of an enablement partner to the creatives that I worked with. So me, myself, not putting myself out there from a marketing standpoint as much.

Rexhen:

Cool, great, interesting. Well, I really like that. And most of the coaches that I've interviewed, by the way, do get the referrals. The majority of them are referral-based when it comes to lead generation, and it's all through their network. Yeah. Coaches have strategies that are specific to either on LinkedIn, through posts or cold outreach on LinkedIn, or even doing ads on LinkedIn. There's a few stories that you can check out on the website. I think Zach was a guest that I had on the podcast that shares more about doing ads on LinkedIn. That was also an interesting method. So feel free to check that out. Yeah, cool. moving away from marketing and I wanted to talk about the future. Do you have any goals that you're working towards with your coaching business right now for like the next one to three years?

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah, I think one of the interesting things that I've been trying to gauge with coaching is right sizing my capacity to serve clients with coaching. So I know a lot of other coaches who have fill their roster so they have a lot of clients at a given time and they feel like they're back to back to back with calls and it's very engaging work it can also be a lot of emotional work it you know i feel very devoted to my clients and so figuring out the right number of clients where i am Feeling like I'm at the right capacity. I'm serving enough people and obviously producing enough that I need to for my business, but also making sure that I have enough energy in my tank to be able to really show up for my clients in the way that I want to. So I think in the next... year, one of the things that I've really been playing with, and then I want to continue trying to figure out is right sizing the number of clients that I serve at a given time within my coaching business. And all of that also goes hand in hand with the other work that I deliver outside of coaching.

Rexhen:

Interesting. So basically figuring out which capacity makes more sense in terms of like how much you can put in like coaching hours. Yeah,

Kaylin Aarts:

yeah. And how many clients I want to serve at a given time. You know, I've also played with all sorts of things as far as three months through six month engagements. So there's like a lot of experimentation that I've done with coaching. And I don't know that I'll ever land on the answer, which I like. But I've done it long enough now that I have a pretty good sense of what feels good and what doesn't. And so I want to just keep codifying what's working.

Rexhen:

So it's not just about the capacity. You mean you also want to kind of update the offer in a way and change how long people stay with you or how long the program is?

Kaylin Aarts:

Maybe. I think the capacity and the offer go hand in hand. And so figuring out what that right balance or ratio is, is something I really think about and I think is interesting.

Rexhen:

Cool. Thanks for sharing that. And currently, what does that look like?

Kaylin Aarts:

So I deliver a few different types of coaching. There's coaching that clients come to me through referrals, and sometimes we're designing something very bespoke. It really depends on what it is that that person is asking for, where they're coming from. I can tell them typically what a coaching engagement looks like, but I'm very open-minded as far as how we design the length of that relationship, the frequency of our calls, the expectation of deliverables. I'm open in that. On the other hand, I work with another organization and we deliver very specific productized coaching programs. So I deliver career coaching, which looks like seven sessions over the course of three months. We're going to do a lot of assessment work. We're going to do a lot of figuring out who you are, what you bring to your career. And then we're going to look at things like your resume and your LinkedIn, get really tactical about that. I also do performance coaching. So the context of that is more thinking about who you are. within your organizational structure, within your team, within your manager relationship. And so the nature of those conversations look different, even though the number of sessions and the length of sessions and the frequency of sessions is more or less the same, seven over three months. And then executive coaching, same thing. The structure and the number and the frequency is the same, but the topics or kind of the altitude of our conversations is much more relevant for executives who are dealing with their team, their organization, their board, all sorts of things that are different challenges for that level of the organization. Do

Rexhen:

you find that you enjoy one more than the other, meaning career coaching or executive coaching, or it doesn't matter as long as you're coaching?

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah, I'm really actually glad to have all three. I think it keeps me well informed on the different perspectives that different folks have are experiencing within an organization. And so I really enjoy the ability to have all three and even the fourth being the more flexible bespoke coaching that I offer. I don't have a preference.

Rexhen:

And so far throughout the years of experience with your coaching business, what would you say is or has been a very good investment in your coaching business that you're actually seeing growth from? when it comes to like even coaching programs, masterminds, communities, or whatever it is that you've actually invested money on that you've seen a return for anyone who wants to invest? What would you say has worked for you?

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah, I have three very clear answers to that. So I did the Coactive Training Institute, the largest kind of global training program. I remember when I was considering different coaching programs, talking to a few people that I reached out to cold on LinkedIn. And I learned from them how much they enjoyed the program. They were almost so energetic about it that I was immediately skeptical. Like, what is this Kool-Aid that these folks are drinking? And then I did the program and now I'm one of those people sharing the Kool-Aid. So CTI was a very good investment in my time, in my dollars. I, just as a quick aside, I remember going through the pandemic and when I was in my certification process with CTI. And so I had this unique opportunity at a time where we were all facing something very real for the first time to have a global pod that I was talking to every day and having coaching conversations every day. So it was like a great benefit to be a part of that community and that network, particularly during the pandemic. And then since then, I've still been able to tap into folks through the CTI network. I also belong to a Coaching Corner Slack community that if you look at my LinkedIn, you'll see I'm talking about it all the time because that has been invaluable just to have the connectivity to other coaches. It's just been a total game changer for me. And I think it feels really like a safe space for coaches to collaborate and connect with each other and referrals and partnership. That's just been really great. And then the third thing I would say is my partnership with Rework It. So one of the ways that I get clients is through another coach who has a great marketing funnel, has a great inbound. And we have a really strong relationship. I think we approach coaching very similarly. And so we have struck up a partnership that she's often referring clients to me as part of her coaching organization. And that has been invaluable. And I love delivering work with her.

Rexhen:

I see. So I also noticed that on your LinkedIn, how is the partnership? Is it you are just coaching the clients? So basically she does the sales and marketing and then sends clients your way? Or you just sometimes exchange clients?

Kaylin Aarts:

It's more the first that you described. However, while she was on maternity leave, I actually took over all of the sales and business development and some of the operational parts of the business. And so I was able to kind of cover for the organization while she was on leave. And then now that she's back, she can step back into that sales and marketing role and deliver for clients as well as refer clients to me. So it's just been a nice energy exchange of our work.

Rexhen:

Interesting. Well, I'd love to learn more. Maybe I could ask her to be on the podcast, too.

Kaylin Aarts:

I'm sure she would love to. I think you might have reached out to me through my Reworkit account. I'm not sure. I can't remember where this originally came to. But yeah, she's connected with Davis before, a long time back.

Rexhen:

Oh, cool. In that case, yeah, I'll double check. Just make sure that we also learn from her panels. She's

Kaylin Aarts:

a brilliant coach and a brilliant marketer. So I highly recommend her.

Rexhen:

Cool, thanks. And another question that I wanted to ask you is, throughout your coaching experience, has there been something that you wish you had known first when you got started that is kind of like an unexpected lesson learned that you learned along the way or maybe even an expected lesson learned throughout the experience of being a coach, having your own business?

Kaylin Aarts:

So... I say this to people a lot, and this is something that I'm actually working on with a friend, promoting what it means to work independently. I do have actually a Substack presence and the new HQ is the platform that we're building for people who work for themselves, whether in coaching or other avenues. But I think one of the misconceptions that I had before starting my own business was that you did have to have this shiny brand and you did have to be like Kaelin Arts Incorporated and build your team and have a company. The longer that I have worked independently, I think a multi kind of modality approach has worked best for me. So I do have clients that come to me directly. I do get work through platforms. I do get work through partnerships. I do get work through referrals. And it's felt really organic and natural to me to continue building my business that way. Whereas prior to starting working for myself, I really would have thought, oh, it's so intimidating. I have to build a whole brand and I have to build a whole business. I think there's a way to do it, not necessarily that being the only path. And so that's part of what I'm working on now in the new HQ is just getting more people to think about what are the different ways to work independently. And I think if more people weren't as intimidated by the idea of working for yourself, they would be open to what that looks like.

Rexhen:

You also have a good setup, meaning you're not all dependent on your clients. You also have the contract, for example, with Reworkit. I've seen also other coaches that I've interviewed that feel much more comfortable having that when they don't enjoy doing marketing or sales themselves. So that is one benefit.

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah, it's definitely strategic. I think diversifying where the different kind of inbound comes from is important. very much intentional on my part. I also kind of like sales and business development. For whatever reason, doing it as me, myself, and I was not as interesting to me. When I'm doing it on behalf of an organization or a team, it just feels better. And so I'm thrilled to be a part of sales conversations and to be doing business development when I'm aligned to the organization I'm working with. For whatever reason, I like to deploy that skill set of mine in more of kind of the organ partner space than for just me, myself and I.

Rexhen:

I've gotten that feedback again from other coaches where they find it difficult at the beginning to sell themselves or when they are kind of like the product in a way that they have to sell versus like selling the product of another company, which would feel... Even in the current setup that you have, what would you say is the biggest challenge that you're currently facing in further scaling your coaching business? Is there a bottleneck right now that is kind of like holding you back from getting to where you want to be?

Kaylin Aarts:

I think, again, it's the capacity bottleneck, figuring out how far I can push it with how many clients I can take on or figuring out how to fill my tank, how to fill up more. And I don't have as much control over that. I can make projections. But one thing I always say is not everybody has to have coaching. They have to want to experience coaching. And so I want to be working with clients that are really excited and ready to go. And sometimes sales conversations just take a long time. Sometimes you have a great... conversation with somebody that is, you know, a chemistry call, so to speak, and then life gets in the way. And they just have things that they have to take care of before they can come back and revisit and sign up. And knowing when to hold that space in that window for a client, versus feeling like you need to follow up all the time, there's just kind of a dance there that sometimes is bottleneck, and it's just something to continue working out.

Rexhen:

Yeah, totally get that. And ways of dealing with that that have been presented to me from other coaches always has to do with automation and getting rid of some of these. Like sometimes, just like you said, you don't know when is the right time to follow up, but you can still get rid of some of the legwork through automations.

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah. So

Rexhen:

we

Kaylin Aarts:

do do that. We use Dubsado. We use some automated emails. And that works to a point, but At the end of the day, it's the human on the other side that needs to respond and be committed to doing the work. And so the automated emails help with just the lifting, but I think ultimately people have to just be ready to go.

Rexhen:

So yeah, they have to fit three criteria. They have to be interested, they have to have the budget, and they have to be the right audience that you want to serve. So I feel like, yeah, you don't know when they're interested and if they haven't replied, maybe they're just not the people you want to work with.

Kaylin Aarts:

I think the third thing is committed. Like they have to be interested. They have to be open, you know, from a budget standpoint, but they also have to be ready for a level of commitment because it is work to work with a coach. And so I think that's the part that people don't always know how committed they are, even if they're really interested or even if they can get over the budget hump, which sometimes is significant, but yeah.

Rexhen:

Yeah. So they have to be committed to get the results, obviously.

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah.

Rexhen:

So this has been great. Is there any final advice you'd like to give to other leadership executive coaches or career coaches who are going to watch this that are looking to scale their impact?

Kaylin Aarts:

The only thing I'll say is I am so grateful for the generosity of spirit of coaches and people in the coaching community. I really feel like with this work more is more. I don't get a competitive edge from other coaches. It feels like, especially in some of the communities that I'm fortunate to hang out in, we are quite supportive of each other. We all want to do great work. We all want to serve our clients best. And so I, I would say just more collaboration in the coaching space is always a good thing. And I've certainly reaped the benefits of that in my coaching business.

Rexhen:

Thank you. Thanks so much, Kaylin. And for anyone who wants to connect with you or find you, they can go to your LinkedIn, Kaylin Aarts. They can also visit your website, which is www.kaylinaarts.com. Is there any other way people can connect with you?

Kaylin Aarts:

Yeah, another great way to connect with me is to follow on Substack. I have a Substack account under The New HQ, which is the independent work community that I'm building. So it's called jointhenewhq.substack.com.

Rexhen:

Cool. And by the way, just a question when it comes to Substack, it has come into the podcast about three times and I don't know much about Substack. What is the benefit of like being in Substack as a coach?

Kaylin Aarts:

I think Substack is one of the newsletter locations that a lot of people are migrating to. But it also has a lot of built-in community and from the aspects of actually being able to push to socials like LinkedIn or Instagram, it kind of has some native ways to do that in the app and on the site to make that pretty easy and seamless. But it just seems like an interesting place to hang out and to be. It seems also like a community of makers and creators, and it's proven to be kind of fun figuring it out.

Rexhen:

Well, thank you so much, Kaylin. And again, have a wonderful time with figuring out your offer, optimizing your capacity, and maybe in a year, two years, we can get you on the podcast again and see where that has gone. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Davis Nguyen:

that's it for this episode of career coaching secrets if you enjoyed this conversation you can subscribe to youtube spotify apple podcast 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 join purple circle.com so