Career Coaching Secrets
Career Coaching Secrets is a podcast spotlighting the stories, strategies, and transformations created by today’s top career, leadership, and executive coaches.
Each episode dives into the real-world journeys behind coaching businesses—how they started, scaled, and succeeded—along with lessons learned, client success stories, and practical takeaways for aspiring or established coaches.
Whether you’re helping professionals pivot careers, grow as leaders, or step into entrepreneurship, this show offers an inside look at what it takes to build a purpose-driven, profitable coaching practice.
Career Coaching Secrets
Unlocking Authentic Leadership & Resilience with Suze Susan S.
In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Susan Shaner, founder and president of Sage Leadership Strategies, a seasoned executive coach, organizational development consultant, therapist-in-training, and wellness practitioner with over 30 years of experience working with Fortune 50 companies like IBM, GE, Accenture, and nonprofits such as the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Susan holds advanced degrees in expressive therapy and human resource education, certifications as a PCC coach and holistic health counselor, and is currently pursuing ordination as an interfaith minister . In our conversation we dive into her integrative approach, blending leadership strategy, mindfulness, expressive arts, and well‑being practices, to help professionals become more resilient, present, and aligned with their purpose.
You can find her on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanshaner/
Website: https://www.sagelead.com/
You can also watch this podcast on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/@CareerCoachingSecrets
If you are a career coach looking to grow your business you can find out more about Purple Circle at http://joinpurplecircle.com
Get Exclusive Access to Our In-Depth Analysis of 71 Successful Career Coaches, Learn exactly what worked (and what didn't) in the career coaching industry in 2024: https://joinpurplecircle.com/white-paper-replay
I am much more in touch with balancing between driving, driving, driving, and working from a place that comes from a deep well of internal motivation, energy, and excitement that's more generative versus depleting. So I'm giving you a long answer to your question. And I'm like, well, what would I have done differently?
SPEAKER_00: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. business.
SPEAKER_01:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today's guest is Susan, or as many call her Suze, a conscious leadership catalyst, C-suite advisor, and executive coach with a bold mission to bring humanity and sustainability back to the world. As the founder of Sage Leadership Strategies, Suze blends decades of experience in global leadership, organization development, and executive coaching with a deep commitment to personal well-being and resilience. As her philosophy is clear, resilient people create resilient organizations. That's the foundation for a thriving planet and healthy profits. In this episode, we are going to explore how conscious leadership can transform not just companies, but the people inside them. From stress management to strategic alignment, Suze shares what it really takes to lead with purpose and power, even when the world gets wobbly. Suze, welcome to the show. We're so grateful to have you here.
SPEAKER_02:Well, thank you so much for having me. And the world certainly is wobbly today. So we all need all the help we can get in terms of maintaining our clarity and stability.
SPEAKER_01:It's a pleasure to have you on. So tell me a little more about what inspired you to become a coach.
SPEAKER_02:My background, as you indicated, is actually broader. I'm a leadership and organizational effectiveness and development consultant. And coaching is one service that I deliver. And at the core of it, I love people. That's at the core of it. I love people. I love supporting people to develop and realize the greatest potential I mean that for me is my motivation in terms of the why why do I do this because I just really like helping people but helping people in ways that has grit and substance to
SPEAKER_01:it so you said coaching is not where the focus is mostly but part of what we do generally is going to be mostly focused on coaching when it comes to coaching you only do executive coaching is that correct
SPEAKER_02:yes I I consult leaders on, and typically leaders who are executives, exactly. And career is a component of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so career coaching is within the executive coaching as well. Tell me a little bit more about your journey from the moment you started your own business, which also includes executive coaching in it, to where you are at the day. How does that look like?
SPEAKER_02:You know, I started up talent development, talent management functions at a few companies, you know, including GE, HealthNet, the Leukemia and Lymphoma FOMA Society. My last role, I was at IBM and I was part of an internal group of consultants who also coached. And I always knew that I would go out on my own, in my own practice. The time at which I did it is because I wanted to have, I've never used the term work-life balance. It's not really about that. I wanted to have more work-life integration and more choice around when and how I worked and the kinds of work that I did, as well as I wanted to be able to bring my skills, background, perspectives and capability to a broader range of organizations. When I first, because I had worked for like half a dozen companies at that point, and I had a lot of colleagues and a lot of different managers, really what I did at first was just call up my colleagues and friends and my former managers and said, hey, what are you working on? What are your goals and objectives? What are your greatest challenges? And just engage them in conversations. It was very, I want to say informal, but obviously I was looking for business. And the point at which I did it was a very brave time to do it as Well, because I was in the process, I was a single parent with a nine-year-old and I was in the process of getting remarried with two twin step-sons and their mother had just died two years earlier. So I had a lot going on. Let's just say that, but it was very organic. I would engage in conversations and they'd say, this is what I'm working on. I'm like, oh, I can help you with that. So it just sort of evolved. And I didn't even, I had work coming to me every time I had a conversation, not every time, but you know, I pretty high percentage, I would get work and I didn't want to have, so, you know, it's always the balance. point of getting enough work where you're kind of meeting your bills or whatever your goals and objectives are and not so much work that you're so stressed out. That was the whole reason why I did it. So I was very aware of working that I'm going to say lifestyle equation that the work that I did supported my livelihood so that I could stay in a creative and generative place versus a stressed out place. But anybody who's any kind of entrepreneur that tells you that they don't have stress moments is lying because That's part of the journey. So this was 19 years ago. So this was a long time ago. And then the markets flooded with coaches. So at that time, there were not a lot of people who had my experience and breadth and depth of coaching. So I didn't even have a website for the first, I think I launched my website like two and a half years into my business because I was like, well, I at least should have it, you know, even if it's at a calling card. So if I got referral, people would look me up online. I
SPEAKER_01:like what you said that you mentioned that it's not about workload. life balance, but it's just about controlling how much stress can come into your life by just like having control with your business. You mentioned you work with leaders and executives, but is there a specific industry or demographic that goes into it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm going to say more like, I'm going to use the term like a psychographic, meaning what is somebody's psychological makeup? Because I've worked in a whole range of industries, you know, from media to technology to financial services, nonprofit, pharmaceuticals, chemicals a wide range, even local governments. I've worked in a lot of different sectors. And yes, there are some nuances in terms of once you double click down in terms of unique challenges in their businesses and their marketplace and their strategies and how they need to align in terms of executing on the strategies. But at the end of the day, they're all people who have to lead other people. So the kind of psychographic, I'll call it, we could call it demographic psychographic, is somebody who is a really ambitious leader who really cares and strives to be authentic and wants to create engaged cultures of care and create and fosters a community. Those are kind of the leaders that I'm interested in working with. Now, the universe, I'm going to say, also tends to bring to me people sometimes who are going through multiple concurrent personal and professional challenges. So they have a complexity of different challenges that they're dealing with. I just find. And in a way I could say, who doesn't fall in that bucket today because of just, you know, the world's a little crazy today. And there's a lot of industries that are either dying or that have to completely rethink how they run their business, how they go to market, how they respond to the marketplace. So I typically work with, if you want to say organizationally, leaders, mid-level and senior leaders. So a lot of my clients might be, title-wise, the titles vary across organizations, director, senior director, vice president, and senior vice presidents, executive vice presidents, CEOs. I have a lot of clients who are CEOs. I do a lot of work with individual coaching and senior leadership teams in terms of getting them all aligned on executing on their strategies.
SPEAKER_01:And sometimes I'm assuming when it comes to these executives, it's the company that kind of provides or facilitates the budget for you in that case.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's a good question. Typically, yes. Typically, coaching is part of an overall talent management, talent development strategy. And oftentimes it's tied to leaders at different levels in an organization go through a developmental process. Like somebody who's a first-time manager is going to have very different development needs, what they need to address being a leader than somebody is a manager of managers, somebody who's a manager of a function, or somebody who's a manager across the whole enterprise, the whole organization. And a really good reference for that is Drotter's Leader pipeline. I mean, that's a sort of seminal work published, I don't know, probably over 20 years ago, where it looks at what are the key challenges, the different kind of turns of the rung, if you will, going up the ladder of leadership development. Now, a lot of organizations strive to be flatter. It just means that there's different nuance and complexities with what their leadership challenges are. So yes, an organization will typically pay for it. And what I would say also is that at times I have leaders either want to continue their coaching engagement and might private pay me. So they're paying out of their own pocket, kind of continuing the work because obviously that speaks to they're finding value and they're going to pay for it out of their own pocket. Or this does happen too, where variety of reasons, they want to not have anybody know that they're getting coached. There's a lot of reasons, but it may be because there's a challenge inside their organization that they just want to do it on the QT, or it may be that they're looking looking to leave their organization. I mean, there's a variety of reasons why people do that. And I would say, I don't know what the percentage is, probably 70 to 80% of the time the organization's paying for it.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for sharing that. And where do you find your clients? What is marketing channel works best for you right now?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm going to break out marketing and business development because they're different. You know, marketing is an activity and a function under the broader umbrella of business development. Like how do I develop business and how do I feed my pipeline, right? So In terms of business development, a lot of it I do very organically because I've been kind of out here, meaning not inside an organization, but having my own firm for 19 years now. It's either former clients that want to expand their footprint inside a company or some of the individuals who are my contacts or my clients inside those organizations go to other organizations. So that's some of how I develop my business, which you could say is a combination of repeat business, referrals. And in terms of specific marketing, that's the bulk of it. I do a lot of it relationship based. In terms of specific marketing activities, I'm not a business that's out there on Instagram. I do have a presence on Facebook. I don't do a lot on Facebook with my firm. Mostly it's through LinkedIn, my newsletter, my blog. And for 17 years back in the day, that was on public access TV. And then I would just put the shows up on my YouTube channel. And I did that actually, I just stopped doing that a year ago. So I did it for 17 years because I wanted to have more flexibility with the process of the two things, the process of filming and also people just don't have the attention these days, unfortunately. I've experimented with different things. So I think being a learner and being open and creative and experimenting and trying different things is helpful. So I started doing these sage tidbits. They're one to four minute videos that I was on a schedule kind of producing those every week. I just stopped a couple months ago due to a variety of reasons. I'm just taking a pause in those, but I'd get those out there. I put them on my YouTube channel. I have some subscribers. So I never really did a lot on trying to solicit subscribers on that channel. Really how I've used that is either through my newsletter or referring a client based on what, so it's really like content for my existing clients. Like if somebody working on something, I might say, you know, watch this interview that I did with so-and-so because they speak to the very thing that you're working on.
SPEAKER_01:When it comes to business development, let's say a former client is moving to another company. How do you keep track of that? How do you know, or how do you like continuously, because this, it comes down to increasing that lifetime value of your customers. How do you manage that? And also wanted to ask you about the show, but I can ask you after, after this one.
SPEAKER_02:So your question is, how do I keep track of some of my clients as they move around to different organizations so that I am giving them value of my services over the lifetime of their career?
SPEAKER_01:How do they become repeat clients, basically?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, you know, there's something called push and pull. There's something called chasing and attracting. And I've been out here a long time through a lot of cycles, ups and downs. There's times where I've had so much business that, you know, I've hired a dozen and consultants. I never sought out to grow my business. It was more like, you know, you make a decision. Do I want to turn work away? Do I want to refer other people to that work? Or do I want to take the work and figure out how to scale myself? So I have hired coaches and consultants and expanded and contracted as I needed to, to deliver value for the client. And there is times it's rare that I actually turn work away. I turn work away. Only very rarely have I done that either because I'm so at capacity or I do it because it's not Not a good fit. I don't want to do that kind of work. And I have such a great network that I can refer other people. How I keep track of people is some people are on my newsletter. They stay in touch with me and the value that I'm giving them. I keep track of people on LinkedIn. I see when they go to a new job. And this is the other thing that I do. I always offer my clients a check-in at the beginning of the year. Like check-in. Hey, how you doing? Just, you know, a 30 minute check-in. And sometimes it's just like, great. Good to hear. And other times what evolves in the conversation is something comes up. And actually this just happened last week. One of my clients who I coached over four years ago posted something on LinkedIn and I just reached out and I said, how are you? How have you been? And I said, I'm happy to have a check-in call. We really haven't connected in a while. And they said, yeah, I'd love to. And then we got in a conversation and this is an example of where they're hiring me themselves, but not through the company. Just how something evolved in the conversation that they said, you know what? I mean, yes, it's nice to feed my ego, but it's more like I didn't hear it in that way. It's more like that's good information for me. They said, you're often in my head. And I always think, what would Suze say? What would Suze do? And I said to myself, well, that shows me the value that they got from the work that we did. And it also, beyond that, it also tells me that they are a learner and they're ongoingly aware of how they are furthering their own awareness. and learning and development, which I fed right back to them. I go, wow, that's kudos to you. It's not about me. It's about you and how you're keeping the work that we did top of mind. So this is why I'm giving you this too, for illustrative purposes, because this is how and why either I keep in touch with people or they keep in touch with me because I don't know, they would be the judge of it, but I'm genuine. I really care. I really want to help people. And I'm really interested in how are they doing and how have they, I'm all about evolution. How have they evolved? That's when I say, what's the push? What's the pull? I'm not going to say there haven't been moments where I feel like I'm chasing people. Those are lessons learned from my own supervision to say, you know what? If they don't want to do the work, they're not ready. I've been there. It ends up being a nightmare in the long run. I'm like, you know what? I am not going to want the work more than my client does. If somebody wants to work really hard, I'll be right there in the mud with them, but I'm not going to chase them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. That gives me a lot of context because I can understand now that if they're keeping you at out of their mind, then there's really not a need to continuously keep up with them. And when it comes to your show, what was it about? Was it focused into a specific topic?
SPEAKER_02:That is a good question. Well, when I was doing the cable show, which I know that's old language, I shouldn't even use the word cable. Somebody said, you need to call it a podcast, whatever we want to call it, media. When I was doing the interview show for 17 years, it was all about interviewing leaders on essentially what do they do, how they do it, and essentially their lessons learned. I was very intentional 19 years ago to call my company Sage Leadership Strategies, meaning that it's not me. I'm not the sage. It's about helping leaders get in touch with their learnings, their wisdom, something that you can't Google, something that you know in your bones and you learn through being in the trenches and the challenge of meeting life's on life's terms. And so from all of that, what did you learn? What are you now going to do differently? such as I actually did a, one of my sage tidbits was watermeloning. It was a conversation I have with my stepson around watermeloning. And it was just like how to cut a watermelon. But we ended up using that for so many analogies in life. When you're feeling overwhelmed, how do you break it down into bite-sized pieces? And he ended up applying it the very next day. And so I am going to answer your question. Your question is, how do I know what are my topics? Well, my formal shows were interviews on leaders and lessons learned really to help other leaders gain insights and things that they can apply. My sage tidbits, I decided, What are tidbits? I was intentional about that. What's a quick little morsel that somebody could just zip on, look at for a few minutes? And so I wanted it to be like a dense, tasty morsel of a quick little story and something lessons learned. And so literally that one, I said, oh my God, this would be a great sage tidbit. So I tend to create the sage tidbits very much from either my personal life, like that interaction with my stepson. However, what I will say say is that is something common to the human condition so no matter you can say personal life professional life we can't break it out always that way meaning we are who we are we all have moments of being overwhelmed and we're in our own stuff and we can't always see the forest from the trees and how do we get ourselves out of that whether you're talking about your personal life or your work it doesn't really matter because that's the nature of being human and then a lot of times I'll reflect on either something that I learned in an interaction with a client or something that a client's working on so the content of what I'm talking about about are things that I either think or I know because I've had that experience would be of value to my client in terms of, you know, either a current client or a potential client. And sometimes I will, like there was one, I was like, this is so great. Everything she's working on, everything she's unpacking. And I actually wrote it up because I usually write a blog. What I'll do is I'll videotape something, an idea. I usually work pretty much off the cuff and then I'll write it up into a blog post. And so I did that. And I sent it to my client and I said, this is based on a session that you and I had, which I don't use client names, confidentiality is strict, but I said, are you okay with me sharing this in a blog post, in a video? And they were like, yes, great, do it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, cool. What I wanted to understand is basically if this was also in a way, a method for you to connect with other people that have not worked with you yet and could have potentially get to know you without working with you. And then in a way, a passive lead generation machine but not with that intention. It just like also serves that purpose in the side.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, of course it is. Meaning it's for value for my current clients and it's also for value for anybody who doesn't know me, who hasn't worked with me. It's a way for them to get to know me. So sometimes people see my tidbits and then they will contact me or sometimes they are referred to me and then you know the way it goes. Somebody will go check out my website or they will, I might recommend And, you know, hey, if you're interested in kind of how I work, you know, check this out or check that out. And sometimes I will forward based upon an initial conversation that we might have on a discovery call, if you will. I might then forward them a recent newsletter or direct them to a show or a tidbit or a blog post, something that I think would be of value to them based on our conversation. So, yes, it works both ways.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks so much for sharing it. So moving a bit to the future, do you have any goals currently that you're working on for the next one to three years?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. The other thing that is nowhere on my website, although it's been in my newsletter and it's not on my LinkedIn yet, is I'm actually in seminary being an interfaith minister. So that is very different. I'm graduating in June. I'll be ordained in June. And it's to do life celebrations for people. So birthing, naming ceremonies, coming of age, weddings, funerals, all of Meaning I definitely will be doing that, but I am going to keep my core business and also integrating some of what I've learned in terms of nothing religious, what I've learned about rituals and ceremonies to help with teams to be more engaged, as well as with my individual clients in terms of I look at life as a continuum. Meaning if we look at it from a business perspective, people are always seeking to realize their potential. If we look at it from a personal growth standpoint, people may be healing from something. But either way, if we realize potential healing from something, it's all really one because life is about striving for something new and moving forward and inherent in that. Like many times when I coach somebody, an outcome may be, it's not a targeted outcome, but an outcome may be that they've healed something. And that could be as simple as, wow, they did something they never thought they could do because they had a certain mindset about themselves. And you know what? That mindset's gone.
SPEAKER_01:That's a very interesting approach. And I was thinking, when you do executive coaching, you also do work with their team kind of also on the side.
SPEAKER_02:Sometimes I do. Not always. Sometimes I do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Sometimes, yeah. When it comes to investment, what resources or support has been most valuable in you growing your business?
SPEAKER_02:The most valuable has been my reach-outs, my conversations, my being more disciplined about asking my clients for testimony testimonials about asking my clients for referrals. I would say it's the organic way. I'm somebody that could do spreadsheets and tracking. To be honest, I've never been really disciplined about all that and hiring people to do that. It's not where I've really realized the greatest return. I'm going to be really candid that there have been different efforts over the years to hire specific marketing support. There's a lot of noise out there with that. I found that I'm solicited every single day. Whenever I post any I am barraged, especially today, especially in the last two to three years with people trying to sell me something. And there are a number of times that I did hire people for marketing. And not only did I not get a return on my investment and what they promised they could do for me, but there were times where they didn't deliver. So I mean, at best, I didn't get the return. At worst, they didn't deliver. And so some hard lessons learned there. I'm being really candid. And so I think the greatest return on my investment is paying attention to what's happening on LinkedIn, periodically publishing content, my newsletter, reaching out to people and getting exposure in different ways, like speaking, going now, whenever you can. Of course, there's a lot of Zoom stuff going on, but going to live networking events, but being clear and targeted. What do I want to get out of these activities?
SPEAKER_01:When it comes to even us, actually, with my consulting offer, I've been a marketing manager for my consulting offer for about five years before I started working as a research analyst at Purple Circle and becoming also the host of this show, we found that we didn't have a lot of success with marketing agencies. So yeah, definitely something that has been an experience for us as well. Is there something you wish you had known first when you started scaling your coaching business that is like an unexpected lesson learned for you?
SPEAKER_02:Let me just say a couple of things. When I first started my business I was very intentional that I didn't want to offer a set of courses or a prescribed program and I want to say pretty much everything I do is customized and yet there's predictability about it meaning I'm not going to say this is the coaching program these are the steps but of course there are stages and steps but I'm not going to say this is where we're going to do this because I do an assessment with a leader and it's about what is going to be important and pertinent for them and they create a development plan, and then we work it that way. So I very much take my clients from where they're at. Now, in terms of your question, lesson learned, I don't know if it's a lesson learned. I often have thought about it. I could have started out with a set of courses. I wouldn't call it a mistake. It's a choice. The other thing that I would say, which is something that's ongoingly, is just to be really clear on your niche as a coach, like what makes you truly unique? What's your value proposition? How do you differentiate yourself in the market? And I say this because and i've been out here for 19 years that's a long time and in that time frame so much has happened in the global economy it's in the united states so much has happened in the field of coaching it's now much more a more mature industry with ethics and standards icf is 30 years old the international coaches federation becoming even more established and i didn't even become certified until 2016 because i was like do i do it do i not do it i work for GE and IBM, people will think I have, you know, do I even need to do it? And the only reason why I did it is because I saw the changing marketplace. I saw that it was changing and more and more people wanted people who were officially certified. Now I got great training and I had great experience up to that point. At that point, I had been coaching for 20 years. So like, do I go back? And I thought, yeah, I'll do it because there's so many people now, the market's becoming flooded and it's a screen for people. Nobody had ever asked me if I was certified before that, but I could see that it was coming. So I did have the foresight to see that. So I said, I'm just going to do it so I can check that box. And I had enough to be a master certified coach, but I couldn't document it all the time because I had to go back 20 years. So I said, okay, I'll get the PCC. That's fine. Maybe someday I'll do the MCC. So again, I don't know. I could have done it earlier. I never really scale my business. I could have set out to do that intentionally. There's different responsibilities and challenges. If you're a solopreneur, if you expand and contract, if you have people to N99s or if you have people as W2s, whatever your range, your employment arrangement is with people. The only thing I could have done really differently, I've never been disciplined about this, honestly, is measure the ROI on very specific activities. I have a very analytical mind. I can do spreadsheets and all of that. But really, I know this because I've done a gazillion assessments on everybody else and myself, is that I'm a right brain thinking person. And so I'm an artist. I I was originally trained as an expressive arts therapist. I have a very collective background and I'm an artist myself. I'm really an artist. I'm creative. I'm a big global strategic thinker. So I haven't been as disciplined about that as I could be. It's worked for me. I've been successful. I'm not somebody that needs, I've been there. I like to think of myself as a recovering overachiever, you know, at this point in my career in life, you know, I want to have it be, how does it fit in my overall life? And I look at the cycles of business, the seasons of of the year and the seasons of my life. I am much more in touch with balancing between driving, driving, driving, and working from a place that comes from a deep well. of internal motivation, energy, and excitement that's more generative versus depleting. So I'm giving you a long answer to your question and I'm like, well, what would I have done differently? I think it would be trusting myself, trusting the process more. And that's something as an entrepreneur, if anybody tells you differently, they're lying again, is that it's like an ongoing thing to have faith, have faith in yourself, have faith in your activities, have faith in what's going to give you the return on your investment in time and also measure it more. So it's like the right brain and the left brain. I don't know if that's too long of an answer.
SPEAKER_01:As you continue talking, it just got more clearer and clearer. You did talk a little bit about this beginning. You mentioned that there were points in your business where you had to hire other coaches to manage and deliver for your clients. So I wanted to ask you, has scaling been goal to a certain point and then it wasn't, or it was just for you to kind of deliver on a flow of clients that you didn't expect that you were getting, but you got them. So you want to make sure you deliver. Not that was not the goal was to scale at that point. And the reason why I asked that is because I have a follow-up question, which is like, what are some of the biggest challenges you faced in scaling your coaching business? Whenever that was a goal or if that is still a goal.
SPEAKER_02:It was the latter meaning I never sought out to scale and grow business. I really just wanted to do creative, interesting, high impact work and make a living at it. And so So as work came, I wanted to tap into and maximize those opportunities. And so I pride myself, my clients would be the judge of that, but on having integrity to deliver on what I commit to in a quality fashion. So when the work came to me, some of it unexpectedly, to your point, I wanted to make sure that I could deliver on it. There's things I could have said no to, but I'm like, hey, I'm going to make hay while the sun shines because the greatest challenge in general with any small all business. And especially today, and especially in the field of coaching that is increasingly becoming flooded, flush and crash, you know, the ups and downs. So how to try to have it be a little bit more stable because when it's up, it's like, Hey, you want to ride the wave and maximize it so that if it's down, you know, you have a cushion. So it's always kind of balancing short-term and long-term. And so when I had to scale and I needed to find coaches or consultants, where did I go? Well, because I have a good network, I would tap into people that I knew. And in some cases I still needed that were at the ready, like people that I know that I've worked with, that I trust. I know the quality of their work. It's a challenge because you're not working for a company. And sometimes people are out here and there's people that flake out on you that don't deliver. Like I did have a few instances, which was a real surprise to me. This happened to me a couple of times where somebody I knew for 30 years, that's a long time. And I hired them for something and they didn't come through. And it was a shocker to me. And not only that, fortunately, I had a good relationship with the client and I was able to deliver, but they kept me actually a product. It wasn't necessarily coaching, but it was something we were designing. And if it's just coaching, that's easier because there they're showing up for the client. It's coaching engagement. Either they click with the client or they don't, but this was one where they didn't come through and deliver what they had to do. So it actually ended up being the reverse where I was trying to save myself time because I was spread too thin and I actually had to pick up what they didn't do. And that stressed me out. It is a challenge, A, to find people, to find quality people. And then if you're talking specifically about a coaching engagement, making sure you're matching the right people. But the best practice in coaching, especially if you're scaling coaching, is to make sure that you give the coachee who's ever going to be being coached a choice. So you give them always like two or three bios and then they can, they're called chemistry meetings And then they can interview the coach because you could have a coachee who's motivated and and willing to be coached and excited about it. And you could have a coach who's very skilled and competent, but it's all about the relationship and they may not jive. Not everybody can coach anybody, you know? So it is about the chemistry. And ultimately, I always say to my clients, a successful coaching engagement is the openness and the learning mindset of the coachee, skill and competency of the coach, and the relationship and what they can co-create together.
SPEAKER_01:Right now, what is one of the biggest challenges you're facing today Well,
SPEAKER_02:I pulled back a little bit from my business because I was finishing seminary. That's a huge commitment in and of itself. So I was doing both at the same time. And I was like, you know what? I pulled back a little bit. And as I said, I'm graduating in June. And I've got a lot of deliverables to complete my seminary commitments literally in the next six weeks. So my challenge today is finishing that. And then I'll say, picking up my head, starting to re-plan populate my portfolio a little bit more, my book of business, because I was conscious about it. I scaled back a little bit. And then I'll have some space when I finish to take on some additional clients and projects and engagements.
SPEAKER_01:How do you handle the balance between delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side? In your case, the reason why I say you have a good job is because a lot of coaches that I've interviewed, had challenges getting other people to help or trusting other people to coach. And you've done that and you've had some issues even doing that. Right now, you're also pursuing something that is also different, which is an addition to your business. So I wanted to ask, how do you balance that? So delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Yes. On your business versus in your business. And this is what I consult my clients on, especially clients that run small and mid-sized businesses, but a lot of my businesses, both small, mid-sized and large companies, but it's not easy. It's a dynamic process and it varies day to day, week to week, month to month. And you're constantly, like anything like that, like work-life balance, work-life integration, it's constantly being vigilant and clear about dynamic priorities so what's a priority today or tomorrow or next week or this morning or this afternoon and sometimes i do it really well and sometimes i don't do it really well i have leveraged resources to help me with that whether it's peer coaching like i have colleagues i call up and say hey can i pick your brain on something can i just talk out loud with you i've got my husband's a great support i'll be like let me just talk out loud i don't need any advice i just need to hear myself talk you know what i mean i have hired my own coach and as well I have supervision for the coaching services that I deliver. So it's definitely ongoing challenge, learning and discipline for me, no question. Like honestly, like, you know, like the end of the calendar year, with holidays and everything, I'm like, you know, I'm just going to deliver on whatever or I'll start doing some marketing activities for the beginning of the year. You know, so there are certain things like cyclically that I know I want to make sure I pay attention to. I hire supports as I need to. I mean, obviously I have a good team. I have my bookkeeping. I have my accountant. I have, you know, a lawyer that I use with contract. So you have your port functions, you know, that you have set up that kind of keep you on board. And yet the reality is I have a lot of discretion around how much time I do have a lot of discretion around how much time do I spend on marketing and business development activities? And what do I want that ratio to be? Do I want to be hiring more people to just delivering services? I love what I do. So I love delivering the services, but I don't want to just be somebody that hires coaches and they deliver the services. I could do that. And because I have such a broad range of interests, this is why I like having my fingers in a lot of pies. Like some people just want to do coaching and they don't want to do anything else. I do coaching. I do consulting. I do design development and delivery of different talks, workshops. And I love all that.
SPEAKER_01:Is there any final advice you'd give to, in this case, most people who are going to be watching this are going to be career or executive coaches. Is there any advice you'd give to them looking to scale their impact or anyone who's looking to scale their impact?
SPEAKER_02:The first thing I think I would say is get really clear. First, why do you want to do that. And that has to be connected in some way to your personal values, your vision for your life and your work and what you see as your purpose in your business or in your life or how the two are intertwined. So really answering Simon Sinek's, you know, big why it's not easy and you need to be really in touch with that. I say ongoingly because that's, what's going to be sustaining and generative for you. That's going to be the engine and the fuel that drives you. And with that comes, get really clear about, I'll say the psychographics or demographics or whatever of the kind of client that you love, that you want to work with, the kind of clients you don't want to work with. So that way you can be really clear on funneling and screening people out. So I think that that's really it. And then beyond that, of course, from a business perspective, clarity on how much revenue you want to generate and the numbers of what's going to get you to generating that and what we talked about in terms of what are the business development and marketing channels and methods that you're going to employ. And with that, what kind of supports and resources you need. Okay, I have one last thing. That's a lot. But one last thing is being realistic about time, money, and energy. What's it going to take? Because to make money, you do have to invest money. And being clear on where you invest your money and what's going to give you the return and how much Do you really need to invest to get the kind of return you want? But before you do any of that, that's all operational stuff. That's easier. The harder thing is, why do you want to do this? It can't just be about making money because that's not going to be sustainable. After you make so much money, then it becomes a grind.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks so much, Suze. Well, for anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you, they can find you at Suze Susan on LinkedIn and also on your website, SageLead.com. Is there any other way, other potential new business coaches to reach out to you and connect with you?
SPEAKER_02:They could send me an email. You know, my website is actually probably the best way and LinkedIn. Definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. So formal name is Susan Shainer Brodax and my nickname that I really go by is Suze, S-U-Z-E. So if you find me on LinkedIn there, connect with me, you can send me a message there and yes, check out my website so you could see kind of what my branding is, how I'm positioning myself.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, Suze. It was a pleasure having you. on the show. Thank you for coming and thank you for sharing so much.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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 joinpurplecircle.com.