Career Coaching Secrets

Grant Sundbye: Why Collaboration, Not Competition, Scales Coaching

• Davis Nguyen

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Rexhen Doda interviews Grant Sundbye, founder of Grant Sundbye Career Coaching, who specializes in helping Korean professionals land international jobs. Grant's journey began teaching English in Seoul, evolving into a full Career Accelerator Program.

He targets single young professionals seeking global experience and older professionals looking for family opportunities abroad. His main client acquisition channels are LinkedIn (organic and referrals) and YouTube. Grant's long-term goal is to be the industry leader in his niche.

He emphasizes the importance of video content for building trust and advocates for collaboration over competition among coaches. His biggest challenge is time management and he prioritizes working only with highly committed clients.

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Grant Sundbye:

Yeah, something that I learned that is very similar to what you guys are doing right now with this podcast is the other people in your industry can be your biggest supporters. That's not necessarily something I expected when I started. I thought all the other coaches, especially the coaches that sell to my audience, they're my competition. I shouldn't collaborate with them. I should show what makes me better. But I've learned a lot of great tips from other coaches. I've had other coaches share my content, introduce me to leads. I've done the same for them.

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 Doda:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today my guest is Grant Sunbee, a standout business English and career coach helping Korean professionals land life-changing international jobs. He's the founder of Grant Sunbee Career Coaching, where he's on a mission to empower 10,000 Koreans to land fulfilling, high-paying careers around the world. With over 300 client success stories in 14 countries, Grant blends communication mastery with real-world job search So for any career coach who's going to be listening to this, especially those interested in international coaching, niche positioning, or building client success through personal branding and LinkedIn, this episode is packed with insights. Welcome to the show, Grant. Great to be here. Thank

Grant Sundbye:

you for inviting me.

Rexhen Doda:

It's a pleasure to have you on. Tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a career coach.

Grant Sundbye:

Absolutely. So I am one of those coaches with no real background in recruiting. I've never been in HR. I've never really even had a corporate job. This is not something I planned on doing when I was younger. But after graduating university, I moved to Seoul, South Korea in 2016 to teach business English. And it was actually my very first time living outside of the US. And it was a life changing experience for me. I was so impressed with the culture, with how welcoming people were, with how hardworking they are. And I saw while living in Seoul, way too many people who are talented, who have ambition, who have drive, stuck at jobs that really don't value them. They work extremely long hours. They have unpaid overtime. They have way too many responsibilities put on them for one person, a lot of stress. And I believe that they deserve a lot better. Initially, when I started my business after living in Seoul for a couple of years, I focused on business English because that's what my background was. I was a business English teacher while I lived there. And so a lot of my coaching was centered around people who are already working in international companies, helping them give better presentations, write better emails, and just make a more professional impression in the workplace. And that was great. I really enjoyed doing that. As I built my audience and built my reputation as a business English coach, I got more and more people who wanted help. writing their resumes or preparing for English interviews. And I consider that to be one of the most important things you could coach somebody on. If you're helping them prepare for an interview, you want to give them the best information possible because the results could change their life. It could change the life of their entire family. And so as I was getting these requests, I eventually felt like I don't want to just edit their english i i don't want to just give them some generic phrases they can say they deserve a lot more than that and so i started talking directly with recruiters and hiring managers across industries researching the job market learning everything i could about linkedin networking whatever i could do to provide a service that would add more value to their life and so finally in 2023 I premiered what I call my career accelerator program. It's a four month A to Z program that covers absolutely everything a Korean person would need to get an international job anywhere in the world. Whether that's with a large global company in Seoul or they're moving to a new country for the first time. We cover how to define your selling points, how to clearly figure out the type of role you're looking for, how to do more than just send a resume, how to make a portfolio, how to network with hiring managers, typing the exact messages you can send in every email, whatever they would need to get a job. I'm here with them every step of the way to make that happen.

Rexhen Doda:

And is there a specific industry or demographic when it comes to the people that you work with?

Grant Sundbye:

I don't really narrow down by industry. I've worked with kind of people all over the place. I got one guy right now who's a semiconductor engineer, several UI UX designers. I've had people in finance, people in sales and marketing. I would say my two ideal client profiles, one would be a Korean person who's probably single. They're in their late 20s to early 30s. They're in Seoul right now. And they've got maybe five-ish years of experience. They've never worked abroad. They really want to work abroad. They recognize right now I'm not married. I don't own a home. This is the best time in my life to do this. So that would be customer profile number one. Customer profile number two is a little bit older. They're probably in their late 30s, maybe early 40s. They are married. They probably have young children. And for them, it's not just for their own benefit going abroad. Maybe they recognize that Korea can be a pretty high pressure society. They don't wanna raise their kids there. They want their kids to have more opportunities to be kids and not spend their entire life studying. And so for them, it's more of a family decision. I wanna take my whole family abroad and provide for them that way. So those are the two most common groups of people I work with. And I also work with a lot of grad students who are maybe in the US. They're gonna graduate. They're gonna get their master's in three to four months. and they don't want to go back to Korea. They want to get a job here. So yeah, it's more based on career position and goal than it is industry.

Rexhen Doda:

Wow, that's amazing. Is this amazing, the impact that you're able to make in their lives? Thank you so much. Where do you find your clients? So it's like, what is the marketing channel that's working best for you right now?

Grant Sundbye:

I've tried a lot of stuff. When I first... created my business back in 2019, 2020, and I was more focused on English. I started with YouTube and partially I just didn't understand sales and marketing at all. But I found that attracted a lot of people who want help for free, not necessarily people who are looking for a paid service. For me, what's been best is LinkedIn. I found that a good LinkedIn connection is worth 10, maybe even 100 followers on a more mainstream platform. So a majority of my clientele come from LinkedIn, and it's mostly through organic activity. When I first started, I didn't really have that much of a reputation, so a lot of it was my outreach. I'd be sending connect requests every day, I'd be DMing people, sharing free content, and thankfully now I have a big enough reputation that a lot of people come to me. Maybe I'll get consultation, which is my version of like the clarity call. I get those booked with people that just find me organically in their feed from other Koreans they follow. And then eventually they join the program. So it's been mostly through LinkedIn organic and through referrals from clients that I still met through LinkedIn.

Rexhen Doda:

Wow, it's actually been the channel that most likely comes to career coaches naturally to find clients. What are some goals you're working towards for the next one to three years?

Grant Sundbye:

It's a difficult question for me to answer because I'm still a little bit unsure what my long-term career goals are. There's part of me that could see myself doing this long-term and maybe even moving back to Seoul. but I have a couple other entrepreneurial ideas that I might pursue. Assuming I do stay in this niche though, I would say that my number one goal is three, five, 10 years from now, I want to be known throughout Gangnam, which is like the main business district in Korea. I want people to know if you want the best international job possible, you work with Grant. There's nobody else. that has a program as high quality as his. If you want something cheap, if you want something generic, yeah, there's other stuff out there. But if you're really serious about your career, the only option is to work with Grant. He can help you more than anyone else. So that's my goal, to be known as the industry leader in this very specific niche I operate in.

Rexhen Doda:

I really like that, Bill. Did you enjoy the time in Korea?

Grant Sundbye:

I

Rexhen Doda:

did, man. It was a lot of fun.

Grant Sundbye:

Yeah.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, cool. So in terms of investments, what resource or support has been most valuable for you to grow this coaching business?

Grant Sundbye:

Sure. I imagine that When you ask other coaches this, you've probably heard a lot about maybe offer creation, sales, understanding marketing, all that. I thought I could go with a slightly different angle. For me, something that's been really valuable is learning and getting better at video production. Nowadays, you know, AI generated content is becoming so, so common. Anyone can get on chat BT and create a five industry secrets for resume writing, or, you know, three tips to make a good impression in an interview. What other people can't do is replicate you on video, show your passion, show your likability, show the human qualities that make you different from other coaches. And so both in terms of the speed, of creating quality video content in terms of my performance on camera, in terms of where I post the content, whether it's a short, whether it's something long on my YouTube channel. Because while I said a lot of my leads come from LinkedIn, I do still have a YouTube channel and I often share longer YouTube videos with leads on LinkedIn as a way to build more trust. And so that Getting better on camera and understanding quality video content, that's something I would highly recommend for coaches in 2025. Because I think seeing you talk, especially if it's you interacting with current and former clients, that's going to build more trust with prospects than just reading words on a page.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. And even things like this, like this podcast is not AI-able.

Grant Sundbye:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. And so... You're also using your YouTube channel, right, for people to get to know you and maybe build trust with you as well. What is something that you wish you had known when you first started scaling your coaching business? Is there any unexpected lesson learned?

Grant Sundbye:

Yeah, something that I learned that is very similar to what you guys are doing right now with this podcast is the other people in your industry can be your biggest supporters. That's not necessarily something I expected when I started. I thought all the other coaches, especially the coaches that sell to my audience, they're my competition. I shouldn't collaborate with them. I should show what makes me better. But I've learned a lot of great tips from other coaches. I've had other coaches share my content. Introduce me to leads. I've done the same for them. Especially if you have a smaller niche business like mine, it can be a big benefit to you to meet and collaborate with other coaches. So you need a unique selling point. You need something that shows why people should choose you over others. But don't see every other career coach as your enemy, as your competitor. they can turn out to be some of your biggest supporters.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, definitely. And it's more like collaboration versus competition in this case.

Grant Sundbye:

Totally, yeah, yeah.

Rexhen Doda:

What are some of the biggest challenges you faced in scaling your coaching business or that you're still facing?

Grant Sundbye:

Yeah, I'm a very independent person. I'm not a huge fan of leading a team. Maybe eventually I'll get there. But for me now, it's just myself and I have one assistant. And so I think a major challenge for any solopreneur, once you get your business off the ground, is time management. And so just trying to balance the 24 hours I have in a day with while also having other things in my life, because you don't want your business to become your whole life. It's very easy when you're working from home, when you have a one person company, when you have no set hours for work to just kind of encompass everything. So yeah, for me, finding that balance is something I'm always working on, becoming more productive, focusing on the more high impact tasks. But I think that's always going to be a challenge. for everyone. We only get 24 hours in the day.

Rexhen Doda:

Definitely. When we come to time management, this definitely leads to that next question that we've been talking about in the beginning. How do you handle that balance between delivering great client results and managing the business growth on the other side? How have you managed that?

Grant Sundbye:

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it kind of depends on the stage you're at as an entrepreneur, but something that I encourage people to do. I imagine... In Purple Circle, you guys talk about the same thing. Once you have an established business, you have proof of concept in your offer. Really only invest your time in quality leads and quality clients. The people that tend to be a headache, the people that waste your time are usually the ones that are just not that committed. And if you work with people like that, yes, you might get paid. but you're not gonna get a good testimonial. They're probably not gonna be a good source of referrals because they probably just know people like them. The chance of them getting success with your program is gonna be a lot lower than someone who's already bought in. It's just not good for your mental health. They're gonna ask a bunch of questions, they might complain. And so something that I focus on is if you wouldn't like in an imaginary world where you don't need money to live and them not paying wouldn't affect their motivation. They would be just as committed if they didn't pay. Would you work with them for free? And if the answer is no, they're probably not a good person. And I know not every coach has that luxury with starting out, but as soon as you're in a good position with your business, only work with people that you really are excited to work with and that seem committed and that's gonna be a much more valuable use of your time. Even if it ultimately results in you having less clients, the clients you have are gonna be quality and that extra time is gonna allow you to focus on other areas of your business. Something I do now is for any prospect that books a consultation with me, I have a private video on my website It's in a page that's not publicly available. And it's a video that basically breaks down, okay, here's everything you need to know about my background. Here's how I've developed this program. Here are a bunch of case studies proving it works. Here's the full process. And here's what we'll talk about when we meet. And so I send them that video. I say, hey, please watch this before our call. And after you're done watching it, send me a link with your LinkedIn profile and then whatever latest version of your resume you have. And I have never in the history of doing this had a person that did not watch the video, did not send me the resume in LinkedIn and ended up being a great client. The success stories are always the people that don't just do the thing you ask, but they are happy to do the thing you ask because they want this too. And so that's kind of a little hurdle I have in place now. If you don't watch the video and don't send me the link, I just canceled the call like a couple hours before. Because if you're unable to do that simple task, you're probably not going to be able to do what's in my program anyway.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, I really like that. So being able to say no to some of the clients that you potentially wouldn't work with for free, sometimes it also might come down to firing a client even midway. Has that

Grant Sundbye:

occurred to you? That's an uncomfortable conversation about that. has happened. Yeah.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate your time today. So it's been lovely to have you on this podcast for anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you. They can find you at grants and be in LinkedIn and grants and be.com on your website. Thank you so much for coming to the show, man. It's been lovely.

Grant Sundbye:

Absolutely. Appreciate this opportunity. Thanks.

Davis Nguyen:

Thank you. Thank you.