Career Coaching Secrets

Luke Biddle: Rescuing Engineering Leaders from Operational Chaos

• Davis Nguyen

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Host Rexhen interviews Luke Biddle, co-founder of The Profit Duo, a business coach helping engineering leaders escape operational chaos and burnout.

Luke's coaching journey started with a Tony Robbins conference, leading him from a corporate marketing career to a passion for personal development. Inspired by his wife's "Hero Pete" father, he committed to helping business owners avoid burnout. He's now a senior leader for Tony Robbins' organization and applies his "Profit System" to engineering businesses, leveraging his own engineering background.

He uses LinkedIn (content & personalized outreach) and in-person networking for client acquisition, coaching globally from the UK. Luke and his wife, Sarah, aim to transform 1,000 businesses in three years, exploring group coaching and digital products.

Key investments include a Business Coaching Academy, continued Tony Robbins involvement, public speaking training (Toastmasters), and neurodiversity coaching. His main challenge is scaling impact without reducing one-on-one effectiveness, stressing context over content. Luke advises coaches to know their ideal client and solve bigger problems for greater impact.

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Luke Biddle:

In 2007, I attended my first Tony Robbins conference, and I was a mid-level marketing executive at the time. I did a firewalk. I was totally hooked on personal development. I'd already done a lot of reading, but that really inspired me that first time, and it really changed the path of my life, I think. And then I carried on in my corporate career. I did lots of executive coaching, senior executive leadership, all that kind of stuff. But really, I recognized I was in the 40-40-40 plan. You know, that's 40 hours a week.

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 I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars 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. us.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regan, and today's guest is Luke Bitto, a business coach on a mission to rescue engineering leaders from operational chaos. With decades of experience in marketing and leadership, Luke now runs The Profit Duo, helping engineering business owners streamline systems, build empowered teams, and grow without burnout. From FTSE 100 boardrooms to his own stand-up comedy debut, Luke brings equal parts strategy and heart. If you're feeling stuck in your business or overwhelmed by the day-to-day or just ready to scale smarter, this conversation is your blueprint for clarity, confidence, and control. So it's a pleasure for me to have him on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Luke.

Luke Biddle:

Thank you, Regine. And thank you for that wonderful intro. Just listening to that, I was thinking, wow, that sounds pretty cool.

Rexhen Doda:

Well, it's all information on your profile. So yeah. And yeah, Luke, I wanted to understand this. You are very niche compared to most people that i interview so you're focused on engineering business owners so engineers that are they have their own business how did this get started like what inspired you to become a coach start your own business and go this niche

Luke Biddle:

wow well uh which version do i give you i think if we got the long version then like until in 2007 i attended my first tony robbins conference and i was a mid-level marketing executive at the time i did a firewalk i was totally hooked on personal development. I'd already done a lot of reading, but that really inspired me that first time, and it really changed the path of my life, I think. And then I carried on in my corporate career. I did lots of executive coaching, senior executive leadership, all that kind of stuff. But really, I recognized I was in the 40-40-40 plan. That's 40 hours a week, 40 years, and 40% of your salary when you finish, which is what most jobs are, really. And I kind of wanted something more, but I didn't know how to get there, you know, and I often felt I'm creating millions in revenue for somebody else, you know, I would love to do it for myself and people always say, why don't you work for yourself? But I didn't know how to cross that chasm, if you like. And then during COVID, I was working from home and I got a call from my boss and I just knew something was different about the call. You know, you get those phone calls where it's like, uh-oh, something's different. You know, and he said to me, Luke, the world's changing, the business is changing and your role is changing. Like that 25 years marketing career, just over. And I was very tied to my identity as an employee and I didn't know what to do. You know, I just couldn't really makes sense of it. And I love running. So I just went straight out the door and just started running and it was pouring with rain and I'm running in the rain and I'm just thinking, oh my God, what am I going to do? This is the worst day of my life. And as I'm thinking that, I was thinking about my wife's worst day she'd shared with me, which was that her father, who ran a contracting company, electrical contracting company, he worked so hard that he had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass and she thought he was going to die. And, you know, that was a big moment for her. And as I thought about that moment, moment that was the worst moment for her I kind of realized that the reason why he had that quadruple bypass is because he was what I call now a hero Pete his name's Pete he's just that guy who does everything in the business like he solves this problem and that problem ah Pete there's got a problem with this oh let me solve it Pete we've got a problem with this let me solve it and in every business there's somebody usually the owner who's the hero Pete and whatever it takes whatever the hours are when everyone else gone home hero Pete's still there he's working at the weekend he's checking his phone he's checking his email and he's driving into the ground while he's missing out on the best parts of his life. Why did he want to build a business in the first place? So many times people like Pete, they start to build a dream business and they end up in a nightmare. And I wonder to myself, how many hero Pete's are out there who don't know what to do next. They don't know who to turn to. And they are driving themselves away from their family, away from their health. And in that moment, I just thought, I know what I'm going to do. And I decided that I was going to turn the worst day of my life into the best day of my life by deciding I was fine I'm finally going to follow my dream of being a business coach. And after that, I knew I couldn't do it on my own. I needed training. I needed a structure. I needed a system. And I found an amazing business coach academy, and I joined them, and I was all in. I did all of Tony Robbins' events all over again. And so I just pushed everything into becoming the best version of myself so that all of my skills and experience, coupled with actually understanding the skill of coaching, could help me to release hero peats all over the world from the positions that they were putting themselves in. And that's how I got started.

Rexhen Doda:

Why is it specific to engineering?

Luke Biddle:

So engineering, my original, I did two degrees when I was in university. I did commerce. I love marketing and commerce. I also did an engineering degree. And my main career was in the construction industry, but a lot of technical products and tools. So I've worked with people in the construction industry. I've worked in the property industry. I've worked with services industries. But right now, I believe that because I live in the West Midlands, it's a great opportunity to support engineering leaders and you know for any coaches out there that are broad spectrum coaches it can be a challenge because of course if you're a heart-centered coach you want to help as many people as possible but you know we've all heard it said if you try to help everyone you'll help nobody because you've got to know what you stand for you've got to know who you who you serve what problems you solve for them and you've got to go all in on being found so that you can help the people you want to help the most so right now for me it's engineering the profit duo as you mentioned my wife would disagree that i run the profit because we're partners in the business. I'm very, very lucky that I get to work with my wife. She's also an amazing business coach as well. Her background is in HR and people development, and she serves health and wellness communities. So those are our two focuses really. I'm focused on engineering companies. She's focused on health and wellness. Of course, we could help any business. And I think as you refine your offer and you learn more and you help more people, you start to recognize who do you love serving the most. So for me, I find that engineering business leaders tend to take an engineer's mindset with a very logical structure, but sometimes miss the heart-centered and the mindset shifts that sometimes it takes to really transform a business into the business that they wanted to create when they started the business, instead of having a job that is costing them their health.

Rexhen Doda:

And when it comes to these engineers, Is it limited to industries or it's just like as long as they're engineers it doesn't really matter?

Luke Biddle:

So I think the West Midlands where I live in the UK is a hotbed for engineering. I actually took my son to one of our engineering museums the other day and it reminded me of what a phenomenal hotbed of engineering talent the West Midlands has always been and it really reconfigured my passion for you know helping engineering business because it's it's a hot spot I think globally for engineers and that's why I think it's a really great niche to be in because I think we have a lot of technical skills that are world recognized. Although, as I said, any business can benefit from the system that I use, which is the profit system. I'm finding that applying it to engineering businesses is where I'm really enjoying my business coaching right now.

Rexhen Doda:

And since you come from a marketing background, the next question is that marketing one, which is where do you find your clients or what marketing channel is working well for you right now for any coach who's listening?

Luke Biddle:

Yeah, so I think there's a lot of everything centered around online or organic social content. As a business coach, LinkedIn is the obvious channel for me. And that's the channel that I've kind of grown up with in my coaching business because it has the most data in terms of being able to find the clients that are were able to help. However, I do think there is a lot of fatigue in the digital environment and it can be challenging to get cut through when there are so many people with so many different offers. So that is the baseline. More than just the content though, I think it's about personal outreach. I think it's about finding the people that you ideally want to work with and developing a wish list of the top 100 businesses that you would really love to work with. Whoever that is for you, it might be a bit like if you were trying to get a job, you'd think who are the 100 companies that I want to work for and using personal outreach to create a conversation and come from a place of, I want to understand your unique challenges so that I can help you. Because there's so much automation and the use of generative AI and tech in marketing these days. How do we create an authentic connection and really understand the client? Because you've really got to love your clients to serve your clients. And that's how I think as coaches, we create raving fans so that our Clients do the work for us with referrals and recommendations so that not everything is sat in front of a keyboard being, you know, a screen jockey trying to do thousands of outreach, giving the same message. So I think personalization, hyper personalization, if we could do it to a defined audience is a way to get clients that really serve you in the way that you want to serve them.

Rexhen Doda:

So the majority is coming from LinkedIn and the LinkedIn efforts are in the content side and on the outreach side. But when we say outreach right now, it's not an automated outreach, right?

Luke Biddle:

No, I mean, I use automation to a degree because it's just leverage. And we need to leverage our time effectively as coaches because we want to spend more time with clients, supporting them through whatever transformation they need, rather than more time trying to reach clients who may or may not become prospects. But I think once, in addition to the automation and to the leverage, we also need to be really focused on those clients that we believe we can help the most. So I think from a digital or strategy, that's the way to do it. From my own personal experience, on top of that, I've actually found that when I meet people IRL, as the kids say, in real life, in networking environments, when I'm doing speaking gigs, that's when I really connect with people. And it might be something that I've said that just causes a level of insight in somebody that they might want to ask a question. And then we can dig into, okay, so what's really going on? Because people will think they want something quite often. I think as coaches, people come to us for a transaction requirement and we need to recognize that's what they want but also know what is the transformational requirement that they need so that we can also serve them with that as well and for me in person works the best so i like to do in-person workshops and speaking events and networking because i often find that those connections are the ones that create the best fit with a client

Rexhen Doda:

absolutely and are you currently only trying to target your area around england not going across the country?

Luke Biddle:

So my focus is on the UK. However, I have clients in three continents. So I have a few clients in the US. I think culturally, I kind of grew up on BMXs and skateboard and bubblegum pop and MTV. I have a great affinity with the American culture. And I think probably spending a lot of time around Tony Robbins means that I have good rapport and I think understanding of the challenges of the US market. So I really enjoy working with American clients as well. I haven't looked at Australia at this time. So those are are really the key markets, and I don't feel I've reached saturation yet. There's a lot more people to help.

Rexhen Doda:

When it comes to Tony Robbins, so how is that? I believe it's a certain engagement to go to the seminars, right?

Luke Biddle:

Yeah, so I started actually attending all of Tony's seminars and being inspired and transforming myself. Then I started crewing for Tony's events years ago, and then I've now become a senior leader for Tony's organization. So I actually help to run the events, all of Tony's events, and to train the next leadership generation. And being in that environment, you know, Proximity is power. The people who show up and want to support Tony and his mission to end suffering are the people who are always looking for the next level. And when you surround yourself with great people that inspire you, you can't help but be drawn towards a brighter future. One of the reasons why people suffer is because they don't feel they have a compelling future because they don't have anyone surrounding them that's helping them on the journey. And I think that's the role that coaches play effectively well, giving them a third eye perspective and holding them to account to the things that they need to focus on the most.

Rexhen Doda:

That's interesting. In Albania, we have an expression which is like, tell me who you're spending your time with. I'll tell you who you are. I believe there's a similar one in English as well. Yeah,

Luke Biddle:

you are the sum of the five people you're closest to. That's kind of the UK version.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Interesting. I'll have to write that down just for curiosity. But I want to ask you about the future. So what are the goals right now with your coaching business? Where do you see this going in like the next one to three years?

Luke Biddle:

So great question. I started working with my wife in the last kind of 12 And when we first met 10 years ago, we actually had this dream vision that we would be relationship coaches. And we believe that relationships are the core of success, whether that is personal relationships, business relationships, any kind of relationships. And so when we work with couples in business, we get this kind of amplified effect because we work very hard on our relationship, having a sovereign relationship. And I feel we can add value not only to the business, but also to the leadership of that business. So we definitely want to work with more couples. And on the other side of things, our big vision is to transform and inspire 1,000 business owners and their teams in the next three years. So that's kind of our big aim for the future. I think whilst we love working one-on-one, one of our focus areas is also how do we leverage ourselves more? How do we build digital products out? How do we create group coaching structures? And how do we get the same level of impact that we get working one-on-one uniquely with a coach, with a client, from a more leveraged technical solution and group solution?

Rexhen Doda:

So right now there's no group coaching currently?

Luke Biddle:

We do group coaching on a kind of freemium level where we run sessions to support some of the various organizations that we're aligned with. But we don't have a group coaching program because right now we haven't found the sweet spot where we can have the same level of personal transformation within a group coaching context. But it's definitely one of the things that we're working on in stream with the coaching that we're doing.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And I also wanted to ask you about investment. So we have asked this question also when we did the research last year, which I mentioned to you in the beginning. And we also are asking if this is where coaches are spending their money, which is we're talking about things that you've invested that were actually good investments. So what are some good investments you've made in your coaching business that you feel like they actually had a good impact? And by that, we talked about the seminars. Apart from that, what are some other investments such as like maybe coaching programs, masterminds, communities, or things like that, or anything really that you feel like it was a very good investment for your coaching business?

Luke Biddle:

Yeah, so the first investment I made was a significant investment where I basically spent all of my redundancy package joining a Business Coaching Academy, which was put together by over 100 coaches. It's phenomenal. And it means that we have a nine step system that is really simple and effective to implement into any business and it works across any business. So that was the first investment that I made. And that is a continued investment in time and in fees to stay a part of a community. And as I said, you know, proximity is power. So being around other successful coaches, I think is as important as the knowledge and the skill that we acquire as coaches. I've mentioned Tony Rob being in his environment. That's absolutely phenomenal. He's one of my mentors and I get a lot out of that and it keeps sharpening the saw for my coaching skills as well. I joined a public speaking academy because I wanted to take my public speaking to the next level. And so I invested heavily there and I continue to work with actually the leader of that public speaking academy supporting because I want to give back to these communities as well as just taking from them in the same way. I also joined Toastmasters just over a year ago, which is a phenomenally great investment, a lot of time at a very small investment in your own personal brand and your ability to communicate with presence and empathy so you can get that know, like, and trust that is essential in onboarding a new client. And recently I did a neurodiversity coaching program to get certified in working with neurodivergent clients because I think that I see a lot more of that and actually understanding those nuances and applying that layer on top of a normal coaching program adds a lot of personalization and much better results for for a lot of people who perhaps wouldn't be able to follow a normalized coaching structure.

Rexhen Doda:

You mentioned Toastmasters. Just for my curiosity and anyone's listening who is not very informed on what that does, I don't know much about it. So how does that work?

Luke Biddle:

So Toastmasters is the world's largest leadership organization. What they are most known for is helping people to be better public speakers. Because, of course, you want to be a great leader, you've got to be a great communicator, and you've got to move from communicating one-to-one to one-to-many. So Toastmasters has bi-weekly meetings where people in a local community and there are a ton of them across the UK and Ireland, also across the world, very, very big in the USA and I think in Australia as well. And you go along and it's a very structured meeting. So we learn structure. We have a lot of process that keeps things moving right. But the biggest thing about Toastmasters is the feedback. It is an organization that thrives on feedback. So whenever you go up, even if it's your first time and you're like, 30 seconds and you're really nervous, people are going to share with you what you did great. They're going to share with you what you could do even better next time. It is a very, very safe environment. And here's the question that I ask is, when is the best time to prepare for a very important business meeting you've got to give at work or in your business? Is it A, the night before at 2 a.m. because you didn't practice it? Or is it B, every two weeks in a safe environment with people that you know that you learn from every time you show up? And that's what I think is phenomenal about it because it gives you a platform to practice and learn at the same time.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. That is very interesting indeed. And many coaches actually, who I've interviewed as well, have invested a lot in the improvement of their speaking and their ability to speak to audiences. And as a coach, I think that is a very good investment. Cool. I also wanted to ask you just to get to dive a little bit deeper into your program for any engineer who's listening. How does that work? So how do your offers work or your programs work for anyone who wants to join?

Luke Biddle:

Yeah, sure. So we provide one-on-one coaching and we use something that's called the profit system. And essentially it's three pillars, which breaks into nine different component parts. We start with an audit of the business to see where the gaps are. And then we look at building the vision because without a vision, the people perish. And the thing is, a lot of business owners that we see, they got a great business. They're going great guns. And all of the businesses focus on these transactional elements and the team are focused on targets, but not a purpose and a mission. So the vision layer is all about setting the mission, the vision, mission and values of the organization. It's about setting the planning timeframe And it's about getting to a 90-day planning cycle with a long-term planning framework. Sorry, that's velocity. So how fast the business grows. Once we put that pillar in, then we look at the value by looking at how do we measure the results? How do we set targets? How do we have financial controls in place? How do we grow our leadership team? How do we create a culture? So that the business then becomes a valuable asset instead of a job. And that's one that a business owner can then sell or move away from with somebody else running the business. And it continues to grow even when they're not there.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that. And what is the challenge right now with your coaching business? trying to solve for next?

Luke Biddle:

So I think it's about that impact. You know, we love working with clients. We absolutely love it when we get transformational shifts that create the results that our clients want in their business. But I think it's how do we impact more business owners more quickly without reducing the effectiveness and the efficiency of the way that we coach our program. And that's something that we spend a lot of time thinking about because we don't just want to go to a digital only route and we don't want to go to a mastermind where People just get the same information. Because what we believe is there's plenty of content out there, but people won't pay you for content. They'll pay you for context. And context comes down to that individual and the challenge that they have and their mindset towards it. The same thing said a different way. We can give people all the information that they want, but if we don't help them on the implementation and the accountability, then it's all for nothing. So I think it's how do we help more people by leveraging our skills and resources to create more impact to more business owners lives.

Rexhen Doda:

Is it right now just you as a coach or do you have also other coaches in your team that do the one-on-one coaching?

Luke Biddle:

So as I mentioned my beautiful and talented wife Sarah she is also a profit duo coach so it's the two of us together and sometimes we coach clients individually and sometimes we work together so when we're working with a larger business an enterprise level we do executive coaching and we will work across the teams and we'll work one-on-one with the individuals in the team we'll work as a to group with the team and we'll work with the business leader as well. So that's the area where we are finding that we can have impact in group sessions when we know the business already and we're coaching people from across the team to give them more effectiveness.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, so what I was thinking is one way to scale while maintaining the one-on-one is basically to have more coaches within your business that you could take more clients on doing one-on-one still. That's one thing that I was thinking of. Obviously, the next one would be either do smaller groups with more coaches if you hire more. And then eventually, yeah, I think that's one of the only ways unless you do all group coaching or what we've seen, especially with us in my consulting offer, we have many coaches that are working as contractor for us. So not full-time employees, but they're working as contractors depending on the clients that they take on. And there's a lot of coaches that are working, even that I've interviewed in this podcast that are working as contractors for other companies such as yours that could do that. So basically, they don't like to do the marketing and sales themselves, but they like to do the coaching. So they find a company where they can just do the coaching. That is also one way to look at it. And it's also a challenge that we've noticed that a lot of coaches find struggle in getting another coach in their business because, well, it's not that they feel like I'm the only one who can coach this way, but it's just that they want to make sure that the clients do get the results that they would have gotten working with them directly. So there's always a mindset shift that is required to do that. I don't know if you feel that way or not.

Luke Biddle:

No, that's a great suggestion. It's not one that I thought about because I guess timing is everything, particularly as they say in comedy, which I've learned recently. But I think it's about when is the right time to bring on another coach. And it's having that level of asset utilization in your business where you know that your bottleneck is resource rather than leads. And I think that And like all coaches, we all want to get more leads, but we want to get the right leads. I mean, I remember, I'm sure a lot of coaches will resonate with this. You start off, you'll take any client, like a homeless guy on the street. Hey, can I coach you? And then you become more discerning because you know the kind of clients you can get results with. So I think there is still more work for us to do in terms of acquisition of the right clients. But that's definitely something to consider maybe in the next sort of 18 to 24 months.

Rexhen Doda:

That makes a lot of sense. Cool. Now, this has been great. Is there any final advice you'd like to give to other coaches just like you? Because we also have within the community business coaches as well. So think of it as an advice you'd give to yourself. Do you have an advice for business coaches who are further looking to impact, to scale their impact?

Luke Biddle:

So I guess the most basic advice is know who your ideal client is. Know the problem that you solve for them, not the problem you need to solve for yourself. Because I sometimes see the problem I have is not enough leads, right? That's not the problem you're here to solve. The problem you're here to solve is the problem your client has. If you know who they are and you know the problem you solve, then the lead should take care of itself. And then I guess the other thing is to how do you create leverage in your own business? How do you use systems effectively? How do you use technology effectively? And how do you solve a bigger problem? Because I I think the key to survival in coaching long-term is how do you, what is a bigger problem that you can solve? So for example, we've thought about like, how can we solve the problem of education? Not as coaches because we want to go into education, but I think that when you're a coach, you think about problems in a different way and you think about what are the different paradigm shifts you need to solve a bigger problem. So some of our time we spend thinking about what are the bigger problems in the world that we solve? Obviously, everyone's wrestling with AI and I'm not saying that you figure out out how to coach people on AI. But what I'm saying is how do we contribute as coaches, as people who think differently, who care deeply about our clients and about the world? How do we solve bigger problems or use technology to help us to solve bigger problems? Because when you solve a bigger problem, then you create a bigger impact.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Luke. And for anyone who wants to connect with you or find you, they can go into your LinkedIn, Luke Biddle. They will be able to find you there. There's also your website, theprofit.com. Well, we have email addresses.

Luke Biddle:

It's luke at theprofitduo.co.uk and sarah at theprofitduo.co.uk. We're also on LinkedIn. We're also on Facebook, if anybody uses those platforms anymore. And it's at Luke Biddle and at Sarah Biddle. And, you know, we'd love to hear from anybody. We just love to have conversations. And if we can share one insight that we can share with people, we'd love to hear from anybody. leads to somebody having a shift in thinking or a transformation, that is enough. Even if we don't get to work with them, if we can give value, then we know that that's a part of our bigger mission. Thank

Rexhen Doda:

you.

Luke Biddle:

Thank

Rexhen Doda:

you so much for coming today. You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Reagan. 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.