Career Coaching Secrets

Russell Harvey: Quantifying Coaching Impact with 1100% ROI

• Davis Nguyen

Share episode

Host Regen interviews Russell Harvey, "The Resilience Coach," an expert in leadership and organizational development with 20+ years' experience. Russell's coaching, born from personal redundancy, helps business owners and "Head of/Director of" level professionals find clarity and thrive through incremental change.

He primarily attracts clients via his podcast, guest appearances, and consistent LinkedIn content. Russell emphasizes the importance of quantifying impact (achieving 1100% ROI for one client) and his personal mission to positively impact 100,000 people by 2025. He highlights AI integration as a key consideration for the coaching industry.

His top advice for scaling coaches: define "bigger impact" clearly, act decisively, and cultivate a strong support network.

Find Russell Harvey:


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

Russell Harvey:

More of my clients are female than male, and I have no idea why that is, essentially. However, ideal clients, so they're people that own businesses, and they're also anybody in any industry that's got the job titles of either head of or director of. Essentially, it doesn't doesn't mean what comes next. It's like they're at that level. Essentially, I've also coached a CEO as well.

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 $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, You'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

public speaker who's dedicated to helping people build confidence, clarity, and positive transformation in their work and their lives. With over 20 years of experience in learning, leadership, and organization development, Russell brings a strengths-based positive psychology approach to everything he does. Russell has coached thousands of individuals balancing pragmatism with creativity, support with challenge, and always focused on meaningful progress. His mission, to support, to positively impact 100,000 people by 2025, and he is well on his way. Beyond coaching, he volunteers with schools and young authors, fostering resilience and confidence in the next generation. I'm excited to dive into Russell, who helps leaders and teams thrive through resilience. Welcome to the show, Russell.

Russell Harvey:

Thank you, Regine. Brilliant introduction. I appreciate that. Thank you. It's always fascinating to hear those things being played back to you. You know, you write them down to go, this is who I am. And somebody says, oh, so this is Ruslan. It's a mixture of like, oh, is that me? All right. Okay.

Rexhen Doda:

It is. So thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to come today. And it's a pleasure for us always. So I wanted to talk to you about initially what got you to start your coaching business? What inspired you to become a coach and then to this as a business

Russell Harvey:

yeah so i've always been interested in human behavior since i can remember since i was a child and so i didn't know what that would become until a whole host of different factors essentially but i knew that i wanted to do something around um learning and development and people learning so i was traveling around the world for a year in 1996 and 1997 and 96 i was in hong kong doing a temporary job of teaching people off the streets like Hong Kong Chinese and magic was happening essentially which I realized was people learning light bulb moments and so that was something new and at the time I didn't know what to call it I didn't know what the job title was when I came back to the UK we go to recruitment agencies and go I think I want to be a business trainer and they would ask you know what are you qualified in and what do you know and at the time it was like nothing essentially I just know that's what I want to do but that's where my career went essentially I took a sales job because it was good with people when I returned from traveling but then I went to night school and did a certificate in training practice and then my whole career in learning and development and organizational development went from there and today I describe myself as a coach and a facilitator it's who I am and what I do and the resilience coach was born it's 10 years old next month that was born out of being made redundant over the course of my career so six times. And on the sixth time, it felt ready for me to set up my own business. So that's how it came about. And I'd been specializing in this word resilience prior to the final redundancy. So that's how all the things aligned into the Resilience Coach 10 years ago. And so

Rexhen Doda:

it's been about 10 years that you started your coaching business?

Russell Harvey:

Yeah, 10 years. It's 10 years old next month.

Rexhen Doda:

Oh, wow. Congratulations to that. Thank you. And so throughout these 10 years, which part of your coaching journey do you find the most rewarding since you started the coaching business

Russell Harvey:

so um there's hundreds of sort of rewarding moments with each individual client that has their light bulb moment their realization moment you know very very new one client uh just turned to me one day and said you've changed my life russell and it's like well that's very kind of you to say so i'm like you did it you know you used your circumstances but it was what our conversations which enabled it to happen so that that was a beautiful thing to have somebody say to you and the other proud thing is more in the facilitation sense so i run leadership development programs you know modular programs And for decades and decades ago, I had, you know, senior leaders sort of say to us like, we can never really quantify whether this learning development stuff has any value to the business, you know, essentially. And that and me, that properly frustrated me. So there's a few times in my career when I've been absolutely being able to nail and quantify that this leadership development program, which they spent money on, that actually gave lots of finances back to a recent one that I did with a well-known bakery in the United Kingdom. We gave them an 1100% return on investment. Provable, identifiable. So, and me proud to go, you gave me this money and I did loads of stuff with your people. And now in your bank, finance director of local bakery, you've got all of this return. And they're like, oh God, wow, it works. Right, this stuff, it works. Those are real proud moments.

Rexhen Doda:

And when it comes to the people you work with, is there a specific target audience or is there a specific industry or maybe demographic that you find yourself typically working with? The second part of this question is how transformation looks like for them.

Russell Harvey:

Yeah. So there's not any particular industry. There is a particular, you know, there are some ideal clients. And really curiously, when I looked at recently, more of my clients are female than male. And I have no idea why that is, essentially. However, ideal clients, so they're people that own businesses. And they're also anybody in any industry that's got the job titles of either head of or director of. Essentially, it doesn't doesn't mean what comes next. It's like they're at that level. Essentially, I've also coached a CEO as well in their first year in their role as a CEO and transformation. It's an interesting word, that one, because I'm not necessarily sure that we need to go down this like big transformational route because it's incremental transformation. It's small and it's incremental. Now, one person did transform their lives by completely changing the job role that they were doing, you know, an operations director in a firm. And they switched it to working in the Shetland Islands on conservation. essentially, which is a complete transformation of their lives. But how it looks for a behavior change is prior to working with me, when you ask an individual the job title of director of or head of, how are you? Currently, prior to working with me, they'll do a versionation of like, well, I'm all right. Or it could be better if, or my boss isn't great, or the team's not performing. So that's the language they use. And during and after they work with me, when you ask them, how are you? They literally, I'm really good. I've got clarity. I've got purpose. I understand what I'm doing. I understand what I need to do to enable my team to perform. None of the size of the scale of the challenges has changed. There's still these big problems, but how I view them, how I'm going to face into them, how I'm going to achieve them how I think and feel about life is completely shifted into a different place so in the resiliency world you know we use these words of surviving coping and thriving so the resilient individual thrives more often which is more often they can genuinely say I'm good even though there's a lot going on. That's the difference that it makes.

Rexhen Doda:

And where do you find your clients? What marketing channel is working best for you right now?

Russell Harvey:

So it's difficult to pinpoint the exact thing. I appreciate, you know, from a marketing point of view, it's like measure everything, no nail down exactly, you know, what comes from where. But I have my own podcast and I guest on podcasts and I get traction from that. I, you know, posting regularly on social media and I noticed that when I go to networking events as well. People, there's a familiarity. The brand is out there. They go, I know you. I've seen you. I know who you are. So it's like, okay, that's working. Word of mouth. You can't get away from word of mouth. That absolutely works as well. And the absolute sort of best one is when even in this lovely virtual world that we live in, when I am stood in front of a room of leaders doing a speech about resilience, then, you know, they come up afterwards and go, can I have a word? Essentially. And so all of those, that variety of those, they work perfectly. for me, essentially.

Rexhen Doda:

So a mix of networking, podcast, and maybe I noticed you don't or are not really focused too much right now on LinkedIn,

Russell Harvey:

right? Yeah, so I'm in social media, so I post almost every day on LinkedIn. essentially, you know, with particular consistency around the reason why that I'm doing it. So yeah, so I sort of, people know me from that, you know, it is really interesting. You don't know who's watching. So a few times when I've been networking, people say, gosh, yeah, you pop on my feed all the time, you know? Okay, well, so be it, you know? So yeah, LinkedIn is my main channel, essentially. That's where my clients are.

Rexhen Doda:

And when it comes to the content, is there a specific strategy that you're following to get people to engage with you?

Russell Harvey:

Yeah, there's a number of them. So it really is actually trying to speak to that ideal client. So those that right now, when you ask them this question about how's work, how's your job? going it's actually getting into those that aren't necessarily in the best of places they might feel like they're on a hamster wheel or they've got some version of overwhelm or they've got less energy for the job while they used to have or they're in their careers they might be thinking to themselves is this it you know it's surely there's more to work and life than this and it's that and obviously turning it around to go actually when you engage with your resilience this is how it'll get you so it's to be resilient leader so how to lead yourself and others really well in a full-on crazy always changing world that's my specialism so if anybody's like you know okay yeah i think i need some support with this like consistently changing world uh you know i'm your man cool

Rexhen Doda:

thank you thank you sharing that uh and yeah definitely i totally agree with you that um you'd have to like speak to your audience and trigger their thoughts. Even like the topics that you're going to write about are definitely going to appeal only to your target audience. So knowing your target audience is also key when it comes to marketing. And when it comes to

Russell Harvey:

goals... It's interesting you say that, Reggie. I'm sorry to interrupt because it's like on my website, there's like 170 blogs on there but you know and not all of those are going to speak to my ideal client you know i'm literally uh just about to do a series on because it's it's part something that i'm reflecting upon about what on earth does this artificial intelligence human augmentation mean i'm like okay you know we i have a time with humans and you know i each time work with teams they their eyes for improvement around their team resilience So if you then factor in, in their current state, artificial intelligence, it's like the not very resilient is going to face into that in a particular way. But the team that's far more resilient is going to face into augmenting themselves with AI in a different, better way. So, you know, this is resilient teams, resilient organizations and resilient leaders. But I always turn around everywhere and go, right, resilient humans equals resilient organizations. Discourse. What? What? What do you mean? You know, and everybody starts a debate around it, essentially.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Yeah. Do you want

Russell Harvey:

to expand more on that? Well, so in my opinion, yes, they are. It's like we've fallen into the trap too much when we talk about resilient organizations to solely talk about that with how to survive cyber attacks. and how to make our processes resilient. That's a part of it, you know, business continuity management. And then I'm always sort of saying, well, actually, how am I being done to really understand, actually, are you creating the culture and the conditions for quality human performance in your organization? So this is why I talk about a strengths-based approach. So it's like how much of what you're doing is enabling your people to play to their strengths. So every business has got KPIs, targets, stuff, outcomes it needs to do. And it's humans. And I'm just not entirely sure if they mesh those together well enough. But resilient humans will equal a resilient organization, in my humble opinion. Absolutely. And

Rexhen Doda:

I also wanted to ask you about future goals. Do you have any goals that you are currently working towards for the next one to three years with your coaching

Russell Harvey:

business? So you said in my introduction that resilient people have a purpose, essentially, just where that comes from. If anybody asked me the question about how do I build my resilience, Russell, There's a resilience wheel, loads of research, seven aspects to it, essentially. So one of the dimensions being resilience, having a purpose. So my current purpose is by the year 2025, which we are in, I want to positively affect 100,000 people. And right now I'm up to 84,012-ish, essentially, in all the things that I do. So I need to complete that purpose. essentially, by the, you know, in the next few months, essentially. And then it is really reflecting on what's worked in the business over the last 10 years, what's really, you know, floated my boat, what's really inspired me. And actually, that'll inform the next goals, the next targets, you know, it really is the fact that there's one of me, So it is far more around actually how do I enable all of the things I do to be done more and is more scalable. That's something that I'm thinking about as well. So all of those will inform the next target. So the short answer to your question right now is that I don't have a specific one. I'll need a new purpose. Once I've completed this purpose, I'll need a new one, essentially. It is a

Rexhen Doda:

good purpose, like a big purpose. When you say impacting 100,000 lives, are these people that you have impacted or that you're thinking of impacting through directly? Or is there some sort of like even through your content, maybe through like the coach and then you coach them, the impact also ripples effect to the other people that they work with or their families? How does this expand?

Russell Harvey:

Yeah, so this is it. So, you know, I have to the research on actually how the numbers go in. So, but it's, it really is. It's so people listening to this, you know, of the podcast that I guest on. And my intention is to share something that is useful and worthwhile around resilience. And then somebody, you know, people messaging go, yeah, add me to the list, you know, yeah, you've done. And then, yeah, it was really, Brilliant. The first time that somebody said to when I was running a program and said, this is my purpose. Somebody said, well, by the way, you just that you're you're going to get there quicker and faster because you've positively impacted me, Russell. And I'm going to go away from here and I'm going to, you know, lead my people differently, better. And I love impacted them. So there's this ripple effect, essentially. And so it's a bit of direct. and then ripple effect, essentially.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. And what would you say have been some good investments that you made in your coaching business that you feel like actually have gotten a good positive return on it from? So has there been any coaching programs, masterminds, communities, or maybe investments in yourself that you feel like gotten a lot of value from?

Russell Harvey:

Yeah. So I've done a lot of investment in myself over the years. And then during the business, Actually, when I became qualified in the Psychometric Strength Scope, because I take a strengths-based approach. So I talk about strength so much because they build natural resilience and natural confidence, essentially. So that has just provided so much payback by being qualified in that. In terms of investment in the business, probably one of the best investments is when there's a gentleman called Paul who did my branding. So that branding. So, you know, that that was it was many years ago, but actually creating my brand and, you know, color schemes and really thinking about the avatars of who the ideal clients are and doing all of that, that that things for me and was really helpful and useful in realizing it wasn't just a website. I invest in marketing wise as well. There's a marketing company that I use that support me with all my social media and, you know, that they're giving me traction as well. So those are, you know, useful things. I've also investigated all sorts of, you know, people that can say, you know, I can make you rich and, you know, we can, you know, grow your business. But, you know, not never isn't like a silver bullet around that one, shall I say.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that. And what is a challenge right now? Moving on to challenges. What is a challenge right now that you're trying to solve for in your coaching business?

Russell Harvey:

So it's linking to the artificial intelligence piece so i wouldn't necessarily see it as a challenge it's it's just about how am i going to include it uh so i was on a um webinar myself this morning. So my business is a member of something called the Oxford Review, who are fabulous at doing research around all things learning and development and more. And the webinar this morning was on what's the difference between human thinking and artificial intelligence thinking. And short version of this amazing webinar is a lot. Okay. And we fall into the risk of people using, you know, AI coaches, things, you know, a thing talk to. And so, yeah, there'll be value and benefits in it. It's about, so alongside a client talking to me on a human to human level, you know, they could also talk to their AI coach in between our conversations. But at the same time, it's like, because we, our brains, that artificial intelligence is artificial. We're going to have to make sure that we have some real quality conversations about how people are talking to a robot, you know, under the misconception that it is human, essentially. And so that's just something that I'm considering talking with the coaches about, about how we'll augment, you know, AI into a human business, because coaching is literally about human development.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, absolutely. And actually, AI, if seen an assistant, could do a lot for you, especially if you get to train it to your knowledge, to your experience, and maybe try to have it solve some of the problems you would have naturally have to do on a one-on-one call, but not the big problems, maybe a smaller set of problems that you can train the AI to do for you.

Russell Harvey:

Yes. And that's the interesting stuff. It's about actually, it's such a massive gap between how AI learns in inverted commas and how humans learn. So yeah. And then it's about actually how come you're investing all of this time in trying to train something to do something you can't do. This is an awful lot to explore around that. There's total, there's validity absolutely in AI, but we need to get much better at understanding what it genuinely can't do and what it genuinely can do. And I think that's a challenge for the human race, essentially. Totally agree.

Rexhen Doda:

And this has been great so far, but I wanted to ask, the final question is, what advice would you like to give to other coaches who are looking to scale their impact? So we did talk about impact with the specific number when we talk about you trying to impact 100,000 people. Now, what advice would you give to other people who are trying to do the same or maybe make an even bigger impact?

Russell Harvey:

Yeah. So they absolutely need to nail what bigger impact means to them. You know, they absolutely need to understand that because if bigger impact is purely financial. Okay, cool. Great. Yeah. Loads more money in the bank. grand but actually what value are you adding what impact are you actually having so they they need you know i'll repeat it of like what does you know a bigger larger impact mean you know so without being arrogant you know the positively impact you know a hundred thousand people is you know it's it's imagine um this is nothing to do with my ego i promise somebody else said to this me a few years ago right so imagine that you're in a big football stadium russell and you're the hundred thousand people are in there and you're there and this is you looking in the eye and i'm going yeah Something has improved in me as a consequence of knowing you or interacting with you. And you go, yeah, that's what it's about. Absolutely. That's what it's about. So absolutely nail that. What do you mean by bigger impact? And then you've absolutely got to have total clarity on the things that you're going to do to make it happen, essentially. And the help you need the social sorry the support network that you need around this one of the dimensions of being resilient is cultivating our best support network and an interesting piece of research says that around our support network that we become behaviorally the sum of the five people we spend the most time with okay so this isn't about finding five it's just a case of all right, you know, who is five people I spend the most time with and are they being most useful and valuable to me right now? So those are the pieces of advice I'd give now.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Russell. And for anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, they can go into your LinkedIn and find you at Russell Harvey, or they can go into the website, theresiliencecoach.com. .co.uk and they will be able to find more details in your website. Is there any other way people could reach out to you or connect with you?

Russell Harvey:

No, so the website and LinkedIn. That's the easiest, essentially. Everything's on the website and everything's on LinkedIn. So that's the easiest way to do it.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for coming today, Russell. This was great.

Russell Harvey:

Thank you, Regine. I appreciate it. That's it

Davis Nguyen:

for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit joinpurplecircle.com.