The "Light Bulb Moment": Heidi Weber on Transformational Coaching

In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Heidi Weber, a professional coach and organizational development strategist. Heidi, who coaches part-time while pursuing her master's, helps ambitious female mid-to-senior leaders navigate career transitions by addressing mindset blocks.

Heidi finds client "light bulb moments" most rewarding. She works via six-session packages and aims to attract more direct clients in the future, with time constraints being her current challenge. Her advice for other part-time coaches is to find a mentor. The episode also touches on the diverse niches within coaching.

Connect with Heidi Weber:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-weber

Transcript

Heidi Weber 0:00

The majority of individuals I work with have been females. I would say like mid-senior leadership level professionals, so very ambitious individuals that are good at what they do and sometimes their minds get in their own way from where they are to where they want to go. A lot around mindset.

Rexhen Doda 0:27

Cool. So right now, when you're thinking about these...

Davis Nguyen 0:30

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over 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.

Rexhen Doda 1:02

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regan, and today's guest is Heidi Weber, a people and operations consultant, professional coach, and organizational development strategist who helps leaders and professionals navigate change with clarity and confidence. With a rich background in leadership development and a passion for creating intentional growth, Heidi partners with individuals and organizations to align purpose with action, whether they're facing complex transitions or simply ready for their next bold step. Currently advancing her expertise with a master's in leadership and organizational development and multiple certifications, Heidi brings powerful questions, active listening, and deep curiosity to every conversation. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Heidi.

Heidi Weber 1:54

Thank you.

Rexhen Doda 1:55

Thank you for coming, Heidi. So I wanted to ask you right now for every coach, other coach that is listening, Heidi is doing it part time. So I wanted to ask you when it comes to you starting this, starting this field in the career coaching industry. So it's been about, I guess, a year, more than a year that you started working part time.

Heidi Weber 2:16

Yes. Yeah.

Rexhen Doda 2:17

What actually inspired you to get into this field or like become a coach and start doing it. So

Heidi Weber 2:24

I got my undergrad, my bachelor's in psychology and I've always been pretty interested in psychology and just human development. Then I got, after graduating, I went to work in recruiting for about five years. So I worked with a lot of people on the job market continuously doing some business development as well. So helping with both aspects, candidate side and the hiring manager side. And then after tech took quite a bit of a hit and I wasn't wanting to really continue doing that forever, I got certified in neurolinguistic programming. And it's a mental-emotional release, so it's an integrative therapy approach. And there I learned a lot more about mindset, neuroscience, kind of the aspect of coaching where I got it lit me up and I followed what excited me and so then I ended up back in school to start to fill the gap and bridge between I guess that skill set that I had and where I wanted to take it and as I've been in the master's program for coming up on two years here almost done um The first year was a professional executive coaching program, and I loved that. So it's a nice tie between my strengths and what I already know, my passion for people enjoying the work that they do and living more of a full life, and psychology.

Rexhen Doda 4:04

Cool. And so right now, when you're working with your clients from... the company i i think that we don't have to mention it but when you're working with your clients going through your coaching journey which is that part what part of going through that coaching journey do you find the most rewarding since you started this doing coaching

Heidi Weber 4:25

yeah the most rewarding part of coaching is really when you are partnering with a client And they have the light bulb moment or the epiphany on how they maybe have been showing up or any other big insight or awareness that really you can see a physical shift. And I would say that's part of it. So just being able to be there for someone's like deep growth is amazing. truly like it's an honor

Rexhen Doda 5:05

absolutely so right now how would you describe the people that you're working with do they fit some sort of an industry or demographic what is that type of client that you're working with right now

Heidi Weber 5:18

yeah majority of individuals I work with have been females I would say like mid-senior leaders level professionals so very ambitious uh Individuals that are good at what they do and sometimes their minds get in their own way from where they are to where they want to go. A lot around mindset.

Rexhen Doda 5:47

Cool. So right now, when you're thinking about these types of clients, how would you... Like for anyone that wants to work with you and is listening to this podcast, how does it work? Is there a certain program? Obviously, they would have to get through Rich and Hired, but how does the program work? Is it of a certain length that they work with you? Or how would you explain that?

Heidi Weber 6:08

Yeah, so we can take two approaches. Through the program, that is a six-month program right now.

Rexhen Doda 6:17

Mm-hmm.

Heidi Weber 6:18

I would say it depends for me. I generally will on my own, I guess, individually. I also would do more of an engagement about six coaching sessions. And that can be through over a cadence of three months or it depends how close together you want to have your coaching sessions. I would say the closer together they are. the quicker the thought cycle is going to be. But with that extra week between, it does add a little extra room to implement some changes because it can take time. So I would say it varies in these two.

Rexhen Doda 6:53

And when it comes to marketing, I believe most of it right now is done by the company where you're working as a subcontractor. So mostly you're getting the clients from the company that you're working for, do you also happen to sometimes get clients that are coming directly to you?

Heidi Weber 7:11

Yes, I do work with a mental health organization as well. So I do some coaching there. And then I also have worked with previous peers and yeah, previous peers more. A little bit of word of mouth. No marketing.

Rexhen Doda 7:34

So right now, are you thinking that looking into the future, are you thinking that you want to expand? Like, how do you see the future goals for the next one to three years? Do you want to like go full time on it and start getting more clients independently? Or you just want to get more companies where you can be a subcontractor? How do you see that?

Heidi Weber 7:57

I have been... Right now, I would like to... Find my own clients in the future. Right now, as I'm finishing school, I'm not rushing to do that, though. I'd be open to some contracting as well as if someone asked me directly, I can do that as well. So I guess I'm leaving the door open right now.

Rexhen Doda 8:23

And you're like going through your degree right now. I'm just thinking the next question is more focused on challenges. With your degree, what is a challenge that you're trying to solve for next in the coaching business? By that, I mean, let's say... If the goal was to kind of get more people coming to you directly instead of from the company that you're a contractor for, what would you say it's holding you back from it? Or is it just that you need to finish your degree and everything will just flow naturally after that?

Heidi Weber 8:57

Yeah, I would say the time and energy to balance it all.

Rexhen Doda 9:01

This is mostly timing.

Heidi Weber 9:02

Yeah, yeah. Cool.

Rexhen Doda 9:05

Thank you. Thank you for that. And the final question is, When it comes to other coaches at your level right now that are doing it part-time, but also studying and getting their master's, what advice would you give to those coaches when they're looking to further scale their impact?

Heidi Weber 9:23

Further scale

Rexhen Doda 9:24

their impact. Yeah. So basically they want to, through their coaching, they want to touch more lives, make more impact. How would you, like, what advice would you give to them that are looking to scale this impact? When you think about impact, basically...

Heidi Weber 9:38

I'm thinking it through for a moment. I would say probably to find someone that is doing what they would like to be doing and kind of go from there. So finding a mentor or someone to, you know, showing that it's already done and that you can do it.

Rexhen Doda 10:03

So basically finding... Just like your coaching clients, you'd find a coach for you because a coach can also have a coach.

Heidi Weber 10:09

Yes, definitely.

Rexhen Doda 10:11

Cool. Thank you. Thanks so much, Heidi. And thank you so much for taking the time to come into our podcast today. And for anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you, they can go into our LinkedIn, Heidi Weber, they'll be able to find you there. Is there any other way that they could reach out to you or connect with you?

Heidi Weber 10:30

Yeah, on LinkedIn. And then I have my email as well as Heidi at FindingTheSolace.

Rexhen Doda 10:37

Cool. Thank you. Thank you so much, Heidi. It was a pleasure having you

Heidi Weber 10:40

on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Rexhen Doda 10:41

And a note for the editor, the podcast episode will end here. Heidi, let me know if there's any feedback overall on how I think the podcast went or if there's maybe anything you want to change, anything you shared you didn't want to share. I was not sure if we wanted to mention Rich and I was not sure if we wanted to. So I was just like, not sure. But if you don't want to have that, you might potentially always edit it out. Or anything else that you feel like you mentioned that you didn't want to mention, we can always edit that out. It's always an option that you have. You can always think about it because it's going to take about a week and a half to two weeks before the episode goes out. But if there's anything that you think shouldn't have gone into the podcast, we can always edit it.

Heidi Weber 11:24

Okay. I'm thinking about the rich and hired aspect just because it's not my coaching business.

Rexhen Doda 11:30

To

Heidi Weber 11:31

speak on it is hard.

Rexhen Doda 11:33

So you're not sure if you're supposed to mention? Yeah,

Heidi Weber 11:37

I think it's fine.

Rexhen Doda 11:38

Normally, you're just giving them free marketing if you think about it. Yeah, that's true. So I don't think there's a, we're not talking bad about them. We're just like mentioning them. Yeah. I feel like that's going to be okay. So as soon as the podcast goes out, I'll just email you with a link for Apple podcast, the link for Spotify and a YouTube one as well. So get that on your email in a week and a half to two weeks from now. But until then, thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Let me know if there's anything else that

Heidi Weber 12:11

comes to mind. Thanks for having me. This was a, a first for me so appreciate it i am curious what do you find as you are for you've been interviewing coaches for how long now

Rexhen Doda 12:25

uh three months and a half so it's not been that much but i've just done too many episodes for that period of time so i've done 160 podcast episodes so far within this period of time. So what was the question

Heidi Weber 12:40

again? What have you found maybe the most surprising or interesting as you've spoken with coaches across?

Rexhen Doda 12:47

Interesting as in like what they're doing?

Heidi Weber 12:51

Yeah, I guess because it's career coaching secrets.

Rexhen Doda 12:55

Yeah, so it's not just career coaches that I interview. So what I found interesting is that there are coaches that are doing very specific type of coaching. So I've had a coach in the podcast. His name was Tom. He was focused on helping men get back to having conversations with strangers outside. I was just like, think about before we had iPhones or before we had our phones, we would just potentially just talk with people. But now we kind of lost that. So I was trying to focus on bringing back the opportunity to just like break the ice with people and just talk with strangers comfortably. which is something that kind of rarely happens

Heidi Weber 13:37

nowadays.

Rexhen Doda 13:38

So that was an interesting and very specific type of coaching. I've also had coaches that were so specific, like, or they were niched down to just help software developers that were team managers get to the next level. So you can think about it. There's not that many people, but yeah, that was also interesting. There's been coaches that have been opera singers that turned into career coaches. And so, yeah. different beginnings. But yeah, always interesting conversations. I also wanted to ask you, when it comes to the people that you work with, do you find that they are of a specific industry or of a specific demographic? or have a specific goal, how would you define your ideal client profile?

Heidi Weber 14:19

My ideal client, or most of the clients that I've worked with, are at a point in their career that they are ready for more of a transition, whether it's into a new type of career or new industry, and really taking more of a strategic approach to how they can position themselves for a little bit bigger of a job.

Davis Nguyen 14:43

Cool. Thank you.

Heidi Weber 14:44

You too. That's

Davis Nguyen 14:46

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.