Career Coaching Secrets

Automation & Adaptability: Matthew Jonas's Keys to Coaching Success

• Davis Nguyen

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Host Rexhen Doda interviews Matthew Jonas, an executive career coach and creator of the Six Figure Job Offer Framework. Matthew helps senior professionals secure higher-paying roles, often with 40% salary increases in 90 days, for clients from top companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

Matthew shares his transition to coaching after co-founding a successful startup and conducting over 1,100 interviews. He discusses shifting from passive LinkedIn leads to a proactive, targeted outreach strategy via LinkedIn Sales Navigator due to platform algorithm changes.

He aims for a boutique, high-end practice, focusing on scaling fees and improving referrals rather than building a large team. Matthew stresses investing in one's business, the importance of automation, and being adaptable when strategies change.

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Matthew Jonas:

Like I kind of feel like what I'm offering them is my expertise. And so I don't necessarily want to be, you know, doing things like that. So I'd rather curate my business where I can still, I have a limited number of clients I see every month, right? So I can guarantee them a high level of service. And I think I'd probably want to, you know, scale up my fees, but be able to maintain, you know, a manageable practice, you know, and without having to, you know, build a big.

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:

Hello, everyone. Welcome again to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today, my guest is Matthew Jonas, an executive career coach and creator of the Six Figure Job Offer Framework, known for helping senior professionals land higher paying roles, often with salaries. Salary increases up to 40% within just 90 days. With over a decade of experience and a background in scaling his own business, Matthew has built a thriving coaching practice, working with clients from top companies companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Disney. I'm excited to dive into how he built his coaching business, his client acquisition strategies, and what's worked for him in scaling a premium executive coaching offer. Welcome to the show, Matthew. Good to meet you. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to have you on. Matthew, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become an executive coach.

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, I appreciate the question. My background is I was a senior executive in an organization. I was a co-file founder of a startup company in Early 2000s, I started with two partners, a company called Catapult Marketing. And we were working at the time with major brands like Intel Computer, Mars, LVMH, big global brands. And we were lucky that we scaled our agency from 35 people to over 350 employees in under two years. We had about $100 million in revenue. And we were one of the largest independent agencies in the country at that time. And I was a big part of scaling that business and not both from a revenue standpoint, but also from building the team. And it was one of those situations where we were growing so fast we had to staff. But even still, we were very particular in who we hired. So in just a couple of years, I did over 1100 interviews with candidates and made offers to about 200 people. Eventually, we sold the business. And once I got out of it, I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to work for those big companies anymore because they frankly, I just never felt They valued me and what I was sacrificing to work for them in terms of compensation and rewards. What I decided to do was pivot and go into coaching. I thought about what could I take from that experience that would help me to help other people. One of the things I realized is all these people wanted jobs for me. Maybe what I learned from interviewing so many is to teach them how to interview more effectively and to get the roles they really want. So that's where the original system came into being. I started doing that work over 12 years ago and have been doing it ever since. And how has

Rexhen Doda:

the journey been once you started it to where you are at today?

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been that. And a lot of things have changed in the interim. Back in the day, I was one of the OG guys who got into the LinkedIn services program. So I was one of the, I don't know how many they admitted, but I was one of them. And so what was happening in the beginning was, you know, that was my source for all my leads. And in even in like the first two years, I got a ton of business off of that. Like even consulting projects and speaking engagements and all kinds of requests were coming in through LinkedIn. And this was probably like 2012 or maybe 2013, 14, something like that. And so that was a great reason And, you know, at that time they would get a request and they would only send it to five coaches or five service providers. So it was a bit of a race. You had to get in very quickly to respond. Otherwise you would just get shut out. Now, the good news was that the, you know, customers or the clients who were looking for services, they got only five proposals. So that was good. The bad news was if you weren't fast, you would miss out. So, you know, and at that point I was doing everything manually. So it was literally, you know, having to respond, you know, wherever I was, you know, stopping and on my phone or on my computer and having to send these proposals in and some would come in the middle of the night. Anyway, but it was working and I was getting, I was doing pretty well and I was getting a ton of requests. So there was a lot of stuff coming in and The challenge with it was, of course, not everybody was really interested in coaching. Some people were looky-loos or just curious or things like that. And not everybody was really in my target. And also LinkedIn had a limitation of where you lived mattered. So you would only get them from a certain area. So you're only really tapping into a portion of what the real market is out there. Anyway, I did that for a few years. After a while, I realized that automation would make things easier. So I engaged some partners who helped me automate responses. And that way I didn't have to, you know, I just could never had to worry about missing an opportunity. And, you know, so that helped. And then, you know, I would push people to book a call with me. And so I'd get them on my calendar. And, you know, then, you know, really just a matter of having those strategy calls and getting them to sign up for the program. And that was really the beginning. And it's really evolved from there. but that's how it started. How is it like today?

Rexhen Doda:

How does Lucy leave business today?

Matthew Jonas:

Well, you know, one of the challenges of being dependent on, you know, a platform to provide leads is that the platform changes. Being, you know, about less than a year ago, I noticed that, well, a couple of things happened, but the first thing that happened is LinkedIn kind of opened up the program. So it wasn't just five people anymore. It was suddenly more people were getting the same, you know, opportunities. So clients on that platform were getting a little bit inundated by many proposals from all kinds of, you know, different services. And I'm a I'm a coach, so when I'm competing against a resume service or a resume writer, it's like apples and oranges. It's like a totally different kind of a program, different price points and everything. So you have to weed through that. So that made it a little bit complicated. But last year, in about May of last year, LinkedIn really changed their algorithm. So it went from, I was getting... you know, over 50 requests a month. And it literally overnight went down to like five. It's just like they went away. It was just like somebody just turned the spigot off and it was just, what's going on? And it took me about six weeks to figure out that I called LinkedIn. I have clients who work at LinkedIn. So I called them, I'm like, what's going on over there? They're like, nothing. And they were all about not saying anything. Nothing's changed, but something did change. They changed the whole program. In fact, another thing I noticed is at one point, I even changed my location on LinkedIn because I wanted to do work with more tech people. So I relocated to Seattle, you know, as for my base. So I was really tapping into all of the, you know, the fangs and everything. And, but I noticed that I was starting to get requests from North Carolina and other markets, not even the home base market. So that was another change in their algorithm. Anyway, what ultimately I finally got to somebody not part of LinkedIn who said, oh yeah, here's what happened. and they sort of blew up the program that I had been part of for seven or eight years and really changed the game. So I had to change my strategy. So instead of, and I still do that, I still use the LinkedIn portion, although it's probably the less effective portion of what I'm doing, which is when people make requests on LinkedIn, it gets funneled to me. But now what I'm doing is I have an outreach through LinkedIn where I'm targeting candidates who are demonstrated that they're in the job market. And so we qualify them a couple of different ways. And I am sending them an email, connecting with them on LinkedIn, and then it's much more effective and allows me to really target more effectively the kinds of candidates who are the right match for my services and, you know, the right sort of income levels and title levels and things like that. So that's working really well. Who are these types of clients? What is your ideal client? You know, I usually say it's mid to senior level candidates, right? Usually the person that the sweet spot for me is Somebody who is a senior manager, director, VP, maybe senior VP, probably just, you know, maybe wanting to get into the C-suite. They're making, you know, 180 to probably $350,000 a year. They've probably been at their job for four or more years. And so the reason they're the ideal person for me is they've been out of the job market, search market long enough that they, you know, it's changed a lot. And they've also probably not kept up with their income in the sense of, you know, salaries have gone up in the market, but as we know, we get the most money when we come in the door. Yeah, we get incremental raises and things like that, but it never matches what somebody new coming into that role would get, you know, based on what the market offers. Now, things have changed a lot obviously because of remote work and the pandemic and, you know, salary levels, depending on what state you live in. So a lot of things have changed on that basis, but that's the general, the general reason. And yeah, does that answer your question?

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It does answer the question. Where do you find, like you mentioned initially it was, you were working on LinkedIn and then that kind of changed the day. That's not the main one. So where do you, do you find your clients mostly? What is the marketing channel that's primary channel for

Matthew Jonas:

you? Yeah. No, it's still, LinkedIn, it's just how I'm using LinkedIn. So I'm not using LinkedIn. Well, I'm using LinkedIn two different ways. One is through the LinkedIn services that they offer, right? Which I would call it more of a passive approach. So in other words, candidates will reach out and say, I need help in my career and I'm interested in talking to a coach. So I have that. I also, separate from that, I have another program that I am using LinkedIn for. I'm not using, I'm using working with a third party on LinkedIn, where we are going after people, very specific people and targeting them through Sales Navigator to identify candidates who we verify are in a job search. And then I'm approaching them, you know, kind of, and they're like, oh, as a matter of fact, I am in a job search. Like they're not asking for the services, but I'm finding them in a way that I say, oh, maybe you need help with your job search. And they're like, yeah, that's funny. I just started looking. So we can identify them that way. And then we approach them. And quite frankly, that's more effective.

Rexhen Doda:

You said you do this through a third party. So it's like a marketing agency that does this for you? Yeah. I see. Do you know specifically how do they do it? Do they filter about the people who are open to work that have that open to work tag?

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, it's sometimes that, but a lot of people don't use that tag because it's been shown not to be really very helpful, but it's also people, maybe they posted their resume somewhere else on a different site and we cross verify across, you know, so we look for people who posted a resume who just made an indication that they're starting to look. And so that's how we, that's how we target them. Yeah. Interesting.

Rexhen Doda:

And you'd say that right now, LinkedIn is the majority of like when it comes to lead generation for you.

Matthew Jonas:

Here's the thing. I mean, LinkedIn is a business platform. Although, you know, people argue it's changed and it's becoming more of like, you know, Facebook or something. But LinkedIn is a business platform. So it's the right context to find people. And also, again, targeting mid-senior level people. One of the biggest challenges, even on LinkedIn is, you know, I get requests every day from people I wish I could help, but I just, I can't afford to work with them and they can't afford to hire me. But, you know, they need help. And so I try to refer them out to other resources that are maybe in their price range. But, you know, it is a business platform. platform. So contextually, it feels like the right place to do it. Obviously, TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube are also great platforms, but it's very wide net. So one of the problems that I even noticed on LinkedIn before I was doing this targeting was, again, just getting requests from all different levels of people, which is just more work for me. to kind of filter them out, which I'd rather talk to prospects who are open to and willing to make an investment in their career and can afford to do that.

Rexhen Doda:

And I wanted to dive just a little bit deeper into this method. Once you basically figured out that this person is looking to, is in the job market. Then there's like a sequence that you send out to them to kind of get them to get in a call with you, or how does that work?

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, basically, I usually connect with them on LinkedIn. And then if they respond like, yeah, they'd be interested, you know, or like, you know, somebody says, yeah, this sounds interesting. Then I'll, I have a response that will say, great, you know, here's explains what I do. Would you like to set up a call? Here's a link. And we set up usually a 15 minute call, just a short call that we then, which can sometimes turn into a little bit longer call. It just depends where I, you know, get to know them. It's not a high pressure call, you know, but And I talk to them about what they're looking for. And it's really, I qualify them, but also let them know about what I provide. And it's, you know, helping identify what pain points they have and what my solutions are for that. And then, you know, from there, it sometimes goes direct to, let me send you an agreement and we'll get started. Or, you know, let's schedule a follow-up call and review the materials and the program in more detail. So either a strategy call or sometimes they're ready to go just right there.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing that. It's much more clear now and makes a lot of sense. actually. Matthew, what are your goals right now for the next one to three years? What is one of the biggest goals that you have for your coaching business?

Matthew Jonas:

Well, for the coaching business, you know, it's funny. I mean, I don't want to, I don't know if I'm ready to scale with like a team of people. And I feel very, I don't know, it just feels a little bit like a bait and switch. Like I kind of feel like what I'm offering them is my expertise. And so I don't necessarily want to be, you know, doing things So I'd rather curate my business where I can still– I have a limited number of clients I see every month, right? So I can guarantee them a high level of service. And I think I'd probably want to scale up my fees but be able to maintain a manageable practice and without having to– build a big team of people to manage. I mean, I've done that in the past. I've had a big team. That just creates other challenges in terms of running a business and an operation that I love doing the work. I love working with the people, but it would be great to just scale it in certain ways and really make it more of a higher end boutique for those senior level people. So that would be one thing. I think I could do better. I could do a better job in getting referrals from my existing clients. It does happen, but I don't have a program for developing that. And I wish I did. That's something I'd like to have as well, because I think I'm missing probably on some opportunities there. And I mean, but yeah, but that's it. That's it. You know, I like to, I have other things that I do. I run a nonprofit organization. I may have other projects that I'm involved in. So I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to get it to, you know, you said somebody in the intro about, you know, a million dollar business. I mean, I, you know, that would be way more than, would want to do at this point

Rexhen Doda:

yeah um when it comes to investments considering like you're over a decade into the business right now what what resources of support has been most valuable in you growing your business so far

Matthew Jonas:

yeah i mean there's tools that you know i mean obviously linkedin and navigator and things like that i've worked with different software platforms i've taken some trainings some have been really helpful some have been honestly not helpful and it was a complete waste of money. But I learned something. So, you know, you have to kind of think about it that way. Really, a lot of what I've got now is what, you know, I, you know, a few years ago paid for a training to try to create. They had a little different approach, but, you know, it just worked. This works a lot better. And it's more, you know, it's more of a targeted thing and so forth. So, You know, you just have to, but you do have to make investments. And that's just part of being a business. Last year when everything went away, there was like a, you know, holy crap moment. Like, what do I do now? And you know what? I figured out a solution and it's working and, you know, getting better every month and we're building it. So, but, you know, you have to make those payments. And I had to make an investment to do that. So I think just any business person needs to realize that, listen, when I talk to a candidate about a new job, one of the questions I ask them, are you willing to make an investment in your business? career well i can't ask them to do that if i'm not willing to make an investment in my business to make sure that i can provide the services and i can you know do everything i need to do right so it's the same thing it's just just just part of being in businesses sometimes you need to invest in your business to grow it to the next level

Rexhen Doda:

and i wanted to ask you what is something that you wish you had known when you first started scaling your coaching business like what is an unexpected lesson learned from you

Matthew Jonas:

well i mean the big thing was the automation Right? Automation is awesome. I even had somebody comment on, I reached out to them on LinkedIn. They're like, impressive automation skills. Like, I don't know how they just knew that, but they somehow knew that, you know, it wasn't an accident that I found them and I sent them a message. Although, you know, I do have, I do use people also. I mean, I have VAs and things like that that are doing some of the work. So it's not just like the same message to everybody. But yeah, automation is absolutely critical, especially if you're, you know, you know, a solopreneur and, you know, there's just, you can't do everything and you can't respond to everything in a timely manner. So building those automation, building those journeys so that you can, you know drip and all the messaging and things like that that really made a big difference and I wish I had started that earlier so that would be one thing

Rexhen Doda:

yeah and in terms of challenges what are some of the biggest challenges yet you either faced or still facing now regarding scaling your coaching business

Matthew Jonas:

you know I think that I think there's two things probably the biggest challenge that I have is managing the prospect calls, the client calls, and just, you know, the what I need to do in the business. I mean, it's just there's certain things I feel like get dropped out, probably my follow-up funnel is not where it should be in terms of, you know, there's a lot of people who say yes, and then some people are like a clear no, which is great, but there's a lot of people who are like, well, let me think about it or talk about it. And I could probably do a better job of following up with some of those people and trying to get them to, you know, to, to do the program. But again, I also manage how many clients I'm working with at one time. So sometimes I don't feel like I need to because, you know, it's been a good month, you know, and so it's like, you know, do I need to, and I don't want to, I really want to work with candidates who are excited about it. I want to convince somebody to do it. They're reluctant because they end up not being a good candidate and not being a good client and it's harder to get them results because that's important to me also is I want to work with people who I know are committed to this work because I can't They can't do it for them. Ultimately, it's up to them. So that would be one thing. And I guess the second, and to follow up on that, the second thing is getting those testimonials and getting the feedback from people who have had success with the program and updating it. That's like another job that has to be done that when you're busy, we're doing the front end of the business, it can take away from that. But those things are critical and important and people pay a lot of attention to those.

Rexhen Doda:

And you think like this is coming due to capacity constraints?

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, yeah. Capacity constraints and yeah, just having a system in place for it to do it and just, you know, making it part of the routine. But yeah, for me, yes.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. And another question I have for you today is how do you currently handle, and we talked a little bit about this because you mentioned the automations as well, but how do you currently handle the balance between delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side? So basically working on your business versus working in your business?

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, well, I think you constantly need to look at, you know, first of all, I talk with other coaches and so I learn from them. You know, that's one of the ways and I learn about different strategies and looking at service offerings and looking at ways in which I can create value for my clients. That would also mean maybe being able to, you know, charge more, right? And, you know, I think that's a big problem for a lot of coaches who are starting out is they don't know what to charge and then And they, you know, I've had some people look at my program and say, you could be charging double, you know, but at the time I didn't have enough clients. I'm like, I can't even get people to buy it at this price. What are you talking about? So, you know, you have to get the confidence to be able to do that. And it's true that you can, you know, probably charge more. Many people can for their services, but you're good. You know, you may have to change your expectations about how many customers you have. I would say, well, wait, if you charge double and it happens many, you're still making the same amount of money and then you have more time to do other things, right? So there's, you know, but you have to be comfortable in doing that. So that is one thing is figuring out, you know, also, like I said to you before, you know, I really enjoy this work and I enjoy working with the candidates and helping them and hearing about the success that they have. So for me, it's, You know, it's managing the scale of the business while still being able to do most of the work, you know, myself, obviously some of the administrative stuff I outsource so that I can really be doing the coaching. I think quite honestly, yeah, if I could get somebody to come in and do the sales, that would be great because then, you know, that would free up a lot of my time to work with my clients more and focus on that. So that would probably be one thing, but I haven't really found that person. And also I feel like, you know, they're, they're hiring me as a coach. So they want to meet with me. They don't want to meet with, you know, a third, a third party.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. So, um, that, that all makes sense. And, um, it comes back to that capacity issue when it comes to sales. I also like, is there any aspect of running your coaching business right now that would, um, in quotation, keep you up at night figuratively?

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, I mean, it, doesn't really but i mean the thing that happened last year was pretty scary you know when the algorithm changed and suddenly i felt you know like i was really at the mercy of this one platform i feel i don't feel that way now because i'm using a platform but i'm not relying on it if that makes sense i mean in other words it's not you know i do have what LinkedIn is sending me, but then I'm using the platform of LinkedIn to target other people or prospects and executives. So from that perspective, I think this is kind of a game changer, but that is the thing. If you have any, all your business coming from one source, that's a scary place to be. And when I had my agency, if we had one client that was 80% of our revenue, that was a scary position to be in too, because Clients leave at some point. They always do, right? So it's just a matter of when. Then you're out of business. So you want to have more streams, if you will, or ways to get the kind of target audience you're looking for.

Rexhen Doda:

For lead generation, right? Yeah. Have you also built your own newsletter where you kind of like, once people are contacted by you and then they kind of go into...

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't have that. had a bunch of people booking calls with me who aren't qualified. You know, it's amazing to me. Some people just want to talk. They just want to talk to somebody. You know what I mean? So it's like, you have to be professional and polite, but I don't want to waste my time with people who aren't really, you know, and I ask qualifying questions before I take a call with people to see if they're, how serious they are. And if they give me an indication, like, yeah, they really need help, but you know, they can't afford it or they can't do this or they can't do that. You know, I'm not going to, I don't want to waste our time and do that. So I'd rather just be professional and polite and say, I don't think this is a good fit. Then, you know, get into, you know, talking to people who I can't help and they really are not a client for me.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Matthew. Is there any advice you'd give to other career or executive coaches who are going to be watching this that are looking to scale their impact?

Matthew Jonas:

I would just say that, listen, yeah, you've got to make an investment in yourself just like you're asking your clients to do in terms of getting the right systems for your business and figure out what works for you specifically. Not every career coaching business is the same. Everybody has a different approach and the results maybe are similar, but we go about it a certain way. So find your niche and brand yourself and just get out there and do it. A lot of people right now are looking for help and looking for work and yeah, put your systems in place and just stick with it and realize that you're going to have to make changes when it stops working and it will at some point stop working and you'll pivot and figure out what to do next.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Matthew. And for anyone who wants to find you or reach out to you, they can find you at Matthew Jonas on LinkedIn or they can also go into your website which is 6-figureexecutivecoaching.com and they can also connect with you there well it's been a pleasure having you on the show Matthew I really like the insights that we went through yeah lovely episode looking forward to meeting you again maybe in a few years things have changed again

Matthew Jonas:

Yeah, thanks for giving me the opportunity. It sounds like a great platform. And yeah, I'd love to continue the dialogue in any way I can contribute. One of the big things is helping other coaches and helping each other and supporting each other and learning from each other. That's been invaluable to me, not just in this part of my journey, but in my whole career journey. So I really value that aspect of it. So thanks for letting me contribute in this way. And hopefully somebody got something out of this that'd be helpful to them.

Rexhen Doda:

Well, thank you for contributing again to us and to the community. That's

Davis Nguyen:

it 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.