Career Coaching Secrets

The Authentic Leader: Cara Bell on Confidence & Impact in Retail

• Davis Nguyen

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Host Rexhen Doda interviews Cara Bell, an executive coach and retail consultant. Cara, founder of Biddley Retail, empowers leaders in the high-pressure retail world, sharing her journey from a 25-year retail career to dedicated coaching.

She focuses on retail leaders, helping high-potential managers and overwhelmed directors enhance resilience, performance, and leadership. Cara uses an eight-week accelerator and six-month one-to-one coaching.

LinkedIn is her top marketing channel, used for genuine connections and industry insights. She emphasizes investing in one's own coaching and community support for business growth. Cara's key advice: "know when to ask for help" and be kind to yourself when navigating the entrepreneurial path.

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Cara Bell:

I invested in a coaching programme for myself. I decided to work with a lady called Ellie Scarfe and she is a mentor and executive coach in her own right and she runs a great global community of like-minded coaches. So not only have I had the benefit of some of Ellie's expertise, but I've also been able to build some great relationships with some fellow coaches going through similar things.

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, Rejan, and today's guest is Cara Bell, an executive coach and retail consultant with over 25 years of experience helping retail leaders rise to the challenge of balancing performance, pace, and people. Through her coaching practice and consultancy, Biddley Retail, Cara empowers leaders and founders to lead with clarity, confidence, and resilience, whether that's turning around team dynamics, accelerating leadership impact, or improving commercial results in high-pressure environments. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Cara.

Cara Bell:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you for coming. It's a pleasure to have you on. I want to know more about how this all got started. Like what inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business?

Cara Bell:

Well, my journey into coaching wasn't necessarily a sudden leap, but a bit of more of a natural evolution and a bit of an organic journey. So, you know, straight out of uni, I I went into a buying head office role and really head office retail buying offices was where I stayed. And then in post-COVID times, I moved into retail consultancy. And I found that I was always kind of leaning towards that more coaching style of leadership. I found myself instinctively drawn to nurturing and developing teams around me. And then particularly when I was on the consultancy side, found myself more and more actively coaching the business founders and the teams that I was working in. And that kind of led me to more of an aha moment. I was like, well, hang on a minute, I'm actually coaching, you know, these great, great organizations. So I wanted to explore that a little bit more. How I came to leadership coaching was that I knew I'd lived and breathed the unique challenges of retail leadership in the retailers that I'd worked in. And I knew honestly how tough, how grueling and how relentless the pressure could be to be constantly performing on all fronts. But I also really believed that retail was more than just numbers and sales. It was really about the people in the businesses, the customers, and how everything came together to create the wonderful brands and the wonderful stores that we all love to shop in. So I really saw coaching as a bit of a powerful way to combine all of the great things about growing strategic abilities and building that self-awareness of the people that I was working with to see how they could, you know, perhaps change their behaviours, change their mindsets and ultimately change the outcomes and the results that they were seeing, you know, through going on a coaching journey. And I really realised that kind of coaching was that missing piece. And then when I, you know, had my own, I went down the journey of training to become a coach, I was like, oh God, I really wish I'd had this kind of coaching experience earlier on in my career. And I could really see, you know, how it could help people develop to be their best selves and get the most out of, let's face it, what's quite a tough environment to work in.

Rexhen Doda:

So it's been, would you say it's been about four years and a half since you started your own coaching practice full time?

Cara Bell:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly that. So I've kind of been juggling the coaching and the consulting together. And in some cases, I work with business founders and leaders in the business, and I'll be consulting as part of the business, but then also will have separate time for leadership coaching. And that's specifically for them as the person, as the driver, as the leader within the business, and how they can work with their team and build their team up to drive their business forward and scale it to what they want it to be

Rexhen Doda:

and when thinking throughout the years of like going through the coaching journey with your clients which part of it do you find the most rewarding since you started doing this

Cara Bell:

It's definitely kind of seeing their successes unfold and seeing them go from at the very beginning, the struggles to kind of the end of the coaching journey, the empowered ending. You know, when they go through, you know, they really lean into it and they put themselves in a vulnerable place and take themselves, you know, forward. And it's a bit like, you know, watching a light come on or that piece of the puzzle click into place. And my greatest joy comes from guiding them over those hurdles you know running alongside them to get where they want to be and it's through those coaching sessions you know they can be quite challenging sometimes it's about holding a mirror up it might not necessarily be the conversation that they want to be having but you know it's one that's coming from a place of support and actually helping them you know on their on their journey so that they can make those tangible movements for forward to you know perhaps see things differently and you start to see their perceived that thing that they thought was impossible that brick wall that was there in their way you start to see it come down you know brick by brick and that can be you know really amazing and I love it when my client says to me, well, Cora, that was a great question, or I hadn't thought about it like that before. You might have that as a podcast host, but I love it when I might be doing a virtual coaching session and my client will kind of say to me, oh, Cora, yeah, I'd never thought about it like that before. Let me just have a think. And they'll kind of look away from the screen and they'll kind of take a moment. And I know that in that moment that they're really kind of looking deeper and going a little bit beyond perhaps where they were at the beginning of the session and that's going to help them coming out of the session with a different perspective on what it is that they're working through and I love it when you see people's self-belief kind of grow and you get those aha moments and then you get those I did it moments like I can't believe that I've done this that's really powerful and it's not always bed of roses it's not always like aha moments like every five minutes but you know you take the time and you go through the process and they come, the aha moments come.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. I feel like we live in a world where the answers are cheap, but the questions are what actually has a lot of value. And I believe that coaches are in the business of asking the right questions at the right time to make people think and unlock these thoughts that they initially hadn't thought of. So yeah, I feel like asking the right questions is what right now has a lot more value than just just like knowing the answer. Because for any questions, like you can always work out the answer, especially now that we live in a world where there's AI, there's like so many places where you can find the answer. But just like sometimes if you didn't ask the question, there's these unknown unknowns that you might not be able to solve if you just like didn't think about it at all. So yeah, I feel like that's where the power of coaching comes from mostly. Just like asking the right questions at the right time. With me though, it's a little bit different because I ask questions questions that helped me with my research. So I'm not trying to unlock anything on you, but I found that a lot of coaches, when I make them just think about the journey of how they got started and what inspired them, they don't get to do that that often. They don't get to look at how they started. So it's always interesting for them sometimes, especially when it's been many, many years to just look back at how they got started. So that's the only thing that I've seen that coaches kind of like get a little bit passionate about just talking about their beginnings. So yeah. I also wanted to ask you, when it comes to the clients that you work with, we did mention also in the intro and you were talking about that, that the focus is also in retail. But would you say that when it comes to that ideal client profile that you're working with, how would you describe that? Is it only on retail? Is it a certain demographic? Or are there also other industries? How would you describe that?

Cara Bell:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I very much kind of position myself in the world of retail. So organizations, brands, creative companies, marketing agencies, even down to logistical organizations. And really my focus is on the leaders and their teams. So helping the leaders unlock their performance. Let's face it, we're not robots, we're humans. And we all bring to work our own perspective and our own lenses. And with that comes our own kind of assumptions on what we can and can't achieve and also you know different communication styles cultural beliefs all sorts of things in the mix which make us and define us in terms of our leadership style and what we bring to the table when we when we turn up for work so you know what i tend to focus on is resilience performance and leadership all with kind of the idea of bringing out the best um you know in the person i'm coaching that's going to have the best impact on them as a leader which is going to bring their you know team together and bring them, you know, forward on whatever it is the challenge is. So quite often, you know, what I tend to get is, you know, perhaps managers that have been identified in businesses as having high potential and, you know, potentially they've, you know, they're great at doing their job, they're confident doing their job, but perhaps where they don't necessarily have the full gambit of leadership ability. So it's about them receiving some staff for them to work on their leadership style so that they can then progress within the business. They're already great at their jobs. It's like, how do they take the next step, you know, to build up, to be more strategic, to be more forward-looking and to drive the business. I also work with, you know, directors who might be a little bit overwhelmed, who might be thinking, oh, hang on a minute, I'm just winning it. Someone's going to find out I'm not as good as, you know, they think I am, you know, those kinds of challenges. And so really working kind of on a deeper level of confidence and impact and about them getting you know that kind of control back but also allowing them to be true to themselves like you know I really believe that you know we're all different we'll bring different things to the table and there's a huge value you know in that being yourself and bringing yourself to work it's just going to give you so much more energy you're going to build your strengths lean into your strengths in so much more of a positive way that's you know really going to help you how you lead your team how you turn up to work which is going to impact your results right it's going to impact whatever it is you're focusing on in your business and then another way that I help people is there's a lot of change right now in the workplace isn't there structural changes role changes those kind of dynamics is particularly in the retail you know margins are really slim there's not much flesh on the bone we need to be agile as we can to deal with you know consumer requirements there's the whole supply chain that can be really really tough going. If you know it's all about just in time, the product availability that can be really time sensitive, that creates a really stressful place to work in. And also when you think about things like, you know, e-commerce, even the role of social media in the world of retail, there's so many challenges there and it's a real juggling act. So if you're a leader in a retail business or within the world of retail, you have to be, you know, on the ball and there's such a demand to be on the ball. So coaching, to really help you kind of cut through the noise and be your authentic self as much as you can and be happy and find your own bit of joy in your work and be fulfilled at the end of the day.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And so how would you, for any of these leaders and managers that are listening, how would you describe the experience of working with you? Is there a certain program of a certain length? How would you describe the engagement with you?

Cara Bell:

Well, I mean, it really depends on where they're at and I have a couple of different kind of training options one of them is a leadership accelerator which is really an eight week program which combines elements of training around coaching conversations around feedback perhaps navigating some difficult conversations even kind of dealing with intergenerational if you let's face it there's a lot of generations in the workplace now isn't there and we all bring different levels of experience to the table and perhaps different outlooks so how to navigate that. And then that's woven into a series of coaching sessions to really reflect on the work that we've done in the training and then ultimately go on and take action and move themselves forward. So that's quite an intensive program. I also work, I usually recommend kind of a six month bucket of one-to-one executive coaching, which is kind of more bespoke coaching offer that I have, which is really for leaders who may have quite a complex scenario and there may be things that they want to specifically work on over a long period of time because sometimes these softer skills, they take a little bit of kind of working through and really, you know, obviously to get the relationship and understand, you know, really what's going on and give the client the space to perhaps do a bit of test and learn, you know, test out a few things and then see what feels comfortable and work the muscle, right? you know sometimes coaching can I think we all naturally avoid things I think being in our comfort zone it's a natural place to be right isn't it it's a happy place we're all in a nice comfort zone bubble but sometimes we know that the goal over there is we need to get out of our comfort zones you know sometimes it can take a little bit of time to take the baby steps to reach outside the comfort zone but obviously I'm here as a coach to support you to get beyond your comfort zone and take those leaps. So yeah, there's an element of that as well, but I'm always open, you know, if there's an organization that has a team and there might be multiple team members that require some coaching, you know, I've worked in those kinds of projects before. So very open to having discussion about what the specific requirements are, particularly if it's through a period of change or restructuring. Cool.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. When it comes to like leaders or usually your clients finding you and in terms of my which marketing channel do you see working best for you? And this is a question that potentially the coaches that are listening would be more interested in knowing.

Cara Bell:

Well, I find LinkedIn to be really helpful. It's taken me a bit of time to get used to it, you know, putting myself out there on a regular basis and, you know, ultimately talking about myself or things that I'm working on, projects, my perspectives, what I think, you know, a bit of value, like what I think is going to be of interest to people, you know, in the workplace. So I really have seen the value of LinkedIn and it really has meant that more people have come across me. I've been able to stay in touch with a wider group of people. It's meant that, you know, people who I worked with maybe 10 or 15 years ago, you know, who've been able to see, you know, my work and then had some subsequent conversations, which has led, you know, to business. So I found LinkedIn to be a really great platform. I mean, sometimes, you know, putting myself out there is probably one of my biggest challenges as a coach, you know, like finding my voice and that whole personal brand piece. But I have to say that I have, you know, been able to find my own pathway through it and I've definitely seen the benefits.

Rexhen Doda:

So when it comes to LinkedIn, generally you're posting, are you also like reaching out to potential people who would be a good fit? Is there a specific strategy

Cara Bell:

Yeah, I mean, I don't, I try not to do the old pitch slapping, you know what I mean? But absolutely, you know, I regularly, if I see someone who's got, you know, an interesting opinion about something, might be a fellow coach or a coach in another industry, actually, sometimes I can see that there's some parallels between their leadership coaching and my leadership coaching. I enjoy, you know, getting different perspectives on things and hearing about their experiences. So that's a real plus for me. But also I absolutely you know I've got one foot in retail from my consultancy kind of perspective so I always want to be hearing about you know what brand is doing what what store has had a great experience what's the latest launches what's working what's not what's driving people crazy like is it the heat wave is it um you know something that um has affected the global economy you know all of those kind of news stories it has an impact you know on us as consumers but all also, you know, as an industry within the work we do. So, you know, I love that as well. And I think it's also fascinating to see the strategies of big businesses that they talk about, you know, on LinkedIn, when you have the chief executive explaining a strategy or explaining their results or explaining a success. And I think there's a huge kind of learning opportunity there in the melting pot of also putting myself out there for potential clients.

Rexhen Doda:

Interesting. Interesting. Thanks for sharing all of this. Right now, where do you see your coaching business in the future? Let's say for the next one to three years, do you have any specific goals that you're working towards?

Cara Bell:

Yeah, I mean, right now it's all about my business development, right? So I'm all about building up my business and finding new projects to work on and new amazing clients to support, you know, as they want to grow. So that's a big focus for me. As a coach, I am a little bit addicted to learning. I will say I'm absolutely going to keep up my learning journey and I really want to be, you know, going more deeply into more specialisms, you know, particularly around resilience that's one of the things I'm really passionate about and also coaching conversations so you know as soon as I can those will be the things that I'll be you know really diving more deeply into I guess from a psychological aspect you know mainly as well and I'd love to you know when I was reflecting on this I would really love to perhaps look at doing my own research around retail leadership and the challenges that retail leaders are facing to really get under the hood of it all and understand perhaps how things are evolving, how things are changing. The problems today are different to the problems two, three years ago and how things are shaping up. So keeping my hand in about what's going on and how people and society are dealing with things because that's going to impact how we turn up at work. So I definitely want to be looking, perhaps in two years' time, looking at doing some research and with brands, which I think will be really exciting. But for now, it's all about business development and building my personal brand.

Rexhen Doda:

And do you see that in the future you could also build a team around yourself or do you already have a team?

Cara Bell:

I don't have a team. I'd love to have a team. I'd love to get some bigger projects and get some associate coaches together to really make an impact in bigger global organizations. That would be amazing to do that and to be working with, you know, really closely with like-minded people. I'm pretty lucky at the moment that I have some great colleagues, although, you know, we're not internally within my bubble of brand, but it would be great to have a, you know, a little mini team. Yeah, that would be awesome.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Great. Awesome. So what about investments? And this goes back to the research. What have been some good investments that you've made in your coaching business that you feel like, oh, that was actually a good investment or it had a good return on it? What have been maybe if not good investments, what have been some investments that you could have potentially avoided or not so good investments? And when we think about investments could be anything, investments in yourself, investments in coaching business, coaching programs, masterminds, communities, whatever you can think of as an investment that you feel like you'd like to share.

Cara Bell:

yeah absolutely um i invested in a coaching program for myself and i decided to work with a lady called ellie scarf and she is a mentor and executive coach in her in her own right and she runs a great global uh community of like-minded coaches so not only if i have had the benefit of some of ellie's expertise but i've also been able to you know build some great relationships with some fellow coaches going through similar things um And it's something that I, you know, well, most coaches, well, I'd like to say all coaches, you know, who've been through their training know the power of being coached and understand how it can be a springboard. I think one of the challenges is, is that it's almost like if you're building a coaching business, the coaching is the easy part, right? The business part is the harder part. So, yeah, I really recognize that I needed some support on that. And it's been really helpful to share the journey and walk alongside some really amazing coaches, not in the same field as me, not in the same industry as me, but very much sharing similar perspectives, values and outlooks and kind of working on our businesses together and then taking the learnings, right? You know, someone works on something over here and then comes back and says, this was great, this was less great, this was hard. And then it's almost like when you get to that stage, you're like, oh, I know that's going to be hard, but I know I can get through it or I'm not going to do that we're going to do this and that that's definitely been one of my best investments um you know for my business and it really kind of helped me normalize what I was finding really difficult and made me realize that I wasn't alone and it was normal to be finding these um you know bumps in the road and that was all completely normal

Rexhen Doda:

It's awesome that you also managed to meet some other people in their community as well. And maybe in the future, some of these connections could be very valuable, especially if you're thinking of working with associates or a lot of coaches that I know do collaborate with each other. Sometimes if you feel like the client might not be a good fit for you, it could be a good fit for another coach to just refer them or they refer other clients to you. So it's a very good relationship to have between coaches. And I found that between coaches, there's not really competition is morally more of like, collaboration than competition. So that's been a nice finding from the interviews that I've done mostly.

Cara Bell:

Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely agree 100%. And I think there's kind of the recognition that not every coach is right for every client. And that's okay. That's not any fault of anybody or someone being better or someone being worse. It's just what you bring and the lens and the perspective and the journey that you're on for the coach or the So yeah, absolutely. I've found pretty much all of the coaches that I've had the pleasure of coming across that have all been amazing. And I definitely think there's something in kind of shared value and shared values and valuing, I suppose, personal development and the coaching journey that you share, which means that, you know, you pretty much got an ally, whichever way you look.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So right now in your coaching business, What would you say, you did mention business development, one of the goals. What would you say is a challenge for you right now that you're trying to solve for next as you work on your business development?

Cara Bell:

I think it's visibility and personal brand. And I think I've really been working in the last six months about finding my own voice in the digital space and finding one that feels right for me. You know, not too shouty, not too salesy, not too, you know, I think it's a really difficult one And when you make the transition of leaving, you know, perhaps a corporate job, you know, a bigger business, and then you're working for yourself and you have to put yourself out there, that's when you get the kind of the high cringe factor of like, oh God, that's just awful. No, thank you. And I really do want to do that. But the reality is, is that you need to be putting yourself in front of people and you need to be able to talk confidently about the transformation, you know, about the impact that you have or want to be having about the people you're want to work with so that people know they can pick up the phone or they know they can send you an email and they know that you're going to be the right person for them. And I also recognize that when someone employs you as a coach, right, there's such a trust factor there. They've got to know you a little bit before they can put themselves in that place of vulnerability to say, this is what I need help with. You know, sometimes they need to see evidence that you've helped someone who might be further down the road on their journey than they are and then that gives them the confidence to get in touch with you so I really see the value of putting these things out there it's just the actually doing it you can always find something else to be doing and you need to prioritize it and make sure you get it done and that's where you know things like the community of coaches can give you that accountability like you can say that you will do it you will you know you will post and that's going to make you more likely to see it through or not see it as such a big deal and just get it done and you know, move on, feel, find, um, find a bit more, your kind of your own space where you can sit comfortably. So it doesn't feel so, so unnatural. So yes, that that's a big challenge. And I think also, you know, visibility, right? Like there's probably loads of people out there who might be looking for a coach like me, but it's finding them and making myself visible so that people can go, oh yeah, Cara, you're, you're the coach I want to work with. Um, I think you should really help me, you know, putting myself in that position to be visible and then you know if you want to be working with organisations as well sometimes organisations can be very slow you might have multiple stakeholders within an organisation and that can be a challenge you know navigating that because you're someone on the outside of the organisation trying to you know come in and I mean absolutely there are so many benefits of organisations working with external coaches you know don't get me started on that one but you know from a visibility and a trust perspective, I think there's a lot of onus on the coach to make sure that we're giving the right amount of information so that people can make the right decisions.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. I totally agree with that. And so right now, and this comes to the final question of the podcast is, what advice would you like to give to other coaches, just like yourself? So you can think of it as an advice for yourself. What advice would you give to these coaches that are looking to scale their impact?

Cara Bell:

I would say, know when to ask for help and don't be afraid to ask for help. I think that there's no coach out there who hasn't been through this process and who would recognize that how challenging it is and don't think that you know the people who may be more successful or further down the line of their coach business journey they've had to go through they've had to make the mistakes they've had to overcome the obstacles so you know no coach is going to tell you it's going to be easy and it's okay to ask for help and particularly on the business side of things you could be the best coach in the world if no one knows you've got business and no one knows you exist then you don't have a business just get out there and ask for help and find you know perhaps a group that's like minded people and you can share the journey yeah and get the right help in your business and sometimes you know you don't know what you don't know right that's the thing like ask questions and listen ask for help when you need it and don't wait don't leave it too long if you're worried about something you know or you're not sure there are loads of people you can ask for but it can feel a bit embarrassing and so don't let that obstacle standing in your way I think I'd also say you know be kind to yourself as well you know when you want to set up a coaching business you become an entrepreneur you know there's no way two ways about it and so it's going to be there's going to be some tough moments and I think that to stay the course you need to almost anticipate them expect some tougher moments but you know don't be too hard on yourself and make sure that you've got you know great people around you who are going to cheer you on and if asked for their help I'm sure that they would probably ask for your help in return and you can then you know get a nice a bit of momentum because of the community you've got around you but yeah be kind to yourself

Rexhen Doda:

thank you thank you so much Cara thank you for that wonderful advice and for anyone who wants to connect with you or find you they can go into your LinkedIn Cara Bell is where they will be able to find you yeah absolutely Also the website, bitterlyretail.com. They could also find more information there. We'll also put that in the description. Is there any other way they could reach out to you?

Cara Bell:

Email as well. You can find that on my website. It's Cara at bitterlyretail.com. Yeah, check out my website. Message me on LinkedIn. And I'm usually there or thereabouts. So yeah, never far away.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Cara. Thank you for coming to the show. It was a lovely experience. That's it

Davis Nguyen:

for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe Thank you.