Career Coaching Secrets

Building a Brand Early: Alicia Gunter's Journey to Success - Alicia Gunter

• Davis Nguyen

Share episode

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Kevin interviews Alicia Gunter, founder of Technically Blessed. Alicia shares her inspiring journey from losing her job to becoming a successful tech career coach. After a period of financial hardship, she found her calling in a tech sales course, quickly landing a six-figure job.

Her authentic story, shared on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, quickly drew a following and led to her coaching business. Alicia's marketing strategy is based on building her brand early, leveraging her personal story, and providing high-quality free content. She discusses her goal of scaling her business through group coaching and her biggest challenge of creating a steady income as an entrepreneur.

Alicia emphasizes that her best investment was hiring a coach, and her worst was an unvetted video editor. Her top advice for new coaches is to build a brand early, get a mentor, and start an email list immediately.

Connect with Alicia Gunter


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

Alicia Gunter:

start early as far as trying to build your brand. You do not need to wait until you feel like you're big enough. And that goes for any type of industry. You don't need to wait until you're big enough to feel like, oh, now is the right time to start a social media channel. No, you want to build your brand from the very beginning. You want those people to follow you and see your story and see you grow. So then you build that brand recognition and you build that emotional connection with your clients. So I would definitely start a channel early and I would just plan out in my Welcome to Career

Davis Nguyen:

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 that are doing over $100 million 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.

Kevin Yee:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Alicia Charisse. She is the founder of Technically Blessed, which is a play on words. She's actually a tech career coach, been in the game for about two years now. But anyways, Alicia, so great to have you on the podcast.

Alicia Gunter:

Thank you so much for having me. It is definitely an honor. Thank you so much.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah. Well, I definitely want to jump straight into it. I love understanding the origin story, the lore. And so to Tell me what made you want to become a coach and more importantly, make a business out of it.

Alicia Gunter:

Okay. Well, I guess if we're going to start at the beginning, we're going to have to go back to 2021 because honestly, I never wanted to be a tech coach. That was just never, I never wanted to be a coach. That was just not in my cards. It wasn't something that I was planning to do. In 2021, my husband and I, we purchased our first home and today is actually makes four years. since we've been in our home. So 2021 today, we closed on our home and we moved in about a week later. And then a month after we moved in, I ended up losing my job. After I lost my job, it was very hard for us financially. I lost my job a month after we moved in, which was just random, but it was stemming on the back of COVID and everything that had happened from that. So basically I did have a check that they ended up giving me, a severance package that lasted me to the end of 2021 After that, in 2022, things were really hard financially on my husband and I. I was door dashing, even had to, you know, even get on government assistance at some point because we were just, you know, that strapped for money. And then I was also in unemployment. And so that happened all of 2022. I'm a very, I'm very much into my faith. And so in 2023, in February, I ended up doing a Daniel fast, which is just a spiritual fast. And it's a 21 day fast. just to get closer to God, to ask for clarity. At that time, I just was, I didn't know what to do. And that was the last thing that I felt I needed to do. And God actually revealed to me the world of tech sales. I randomly saw this video on YouTube of people talking about a course that they took. And I was like, okay, I don't know anything about tech, number one. And number two, I'm like, you want me to spend money when I'm, you know, I really right now don't have it. And so he's like, yeah, God is like, yeah, do that. And so I ended up up paying for the course. I started the course and I finished the course in about a week, a week and a half. I finished the course, took the final exam. And then after I did that, I just kind of hit the ground running. I revamped my resume. I'm very good at doing resumes. I revamped my resume, you know, did my LinkedIn. I did everything. And then literally after I finished the course within 10 days, I had a job and it was a very high salary position. It was a six figure salary position. And I'm like literally a month before that, I was down to my last. And so I just did that for a while. I did that business. And then a lot of people, I started sharing my journey as I was going through the course, being very broad and real with my story. And a lot of people were just like, they were inspired and they were like, can you coach me? Can you show me what you did? How did you get through this program in such a short amount of time? Help me get a job, help me with my resume. And after I did that, I was like, okay, I don't even know how to be a coach. I'm literally just sitting here like, how am I going to help these people? And so I started doing research. I started taking more courses on how to be a coach. And that's pretty much how it actually got started. I was just kind of thrust into it. I never thought that I would be a coach, coaching anyone, especially not in a subject or field where I had no experience.

Kevin Yee:

Thank you for sharing that story. It's very... So many things I want to ask you. I could go down the religious route and the fasting, but since this is career coaching, I don't think the audience would be interested in that.

Alicia Gunter:

Some may.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah, maybe actually. But one of the interesting things was like you started talking about it on social media and people started asking you to coach them. Can you tell me about like how people typically find you and work with you, I guess? Like what does your marketing look like?

Alicia Gunter:

Yeah, so I started off on YouTube because during the time that I was doing the fast, you know, like I said, God told me to start a YouTube channel. And I had been wanting to start YouTube for a few years. to be on social media and I just couldn't get my rhythm going. But for some reason, when I started this channel, even with the little amount of followers that I had, there was so much engagement because people were in similar situations as me. And so my story was inspiring. And yeah, I started off on YouTube. People started reaching out. And then the company that I actually took the course from, which is Course Careers, they actually wanted me to start promoting the company as well, promoting the course. And so then I went to TikTok. I didn't have a TikTok, you know, at that time. And they were like, yeah, create a TikTok and we'll help you. And I just moved to TikTok. And so I was kind of, you know, back and forth between YouTube with the long form and then TikTok with the short form. And then once I did TikTok, it just kind of blew up. Like my videos were, I had so many viral videos just from me, you know, talking about my experience. And so in doing that, I said, okay, now I have my link in bio. Let me, you Mm-hmm. Interesting. And...

Kevin Yee:

It sounds like you had a pretty healthy flow of people who are interested and are probably still interested. Are you at the point where you're like turning down people or like, yeah, like what does that look like right now for you?

Alicia Gunter:

Yeah, honestly. So earlier, I would say actually, yeah, earlier this year, I had some other ventures that I was, you know, tapping into and I actually had to like shut my calendar down for like a whole month because I had other things that I needed to get to, but because people, you know, wanted me to coach, either coach them, do resumes, because again, I pivoted to not just doing coaching. I also was doing resume writing and then also helping people optimize their LinkedIn profiles. So that takes time. And I am not a person, you know, if I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability, 100%. And so I didn't want to shortchange people, especially for the amount they were paying me. And so at that point, I just shut, you know, some of my coaching and everything down for like a month because I had to focus on something else. But even now, I mean, from my old videos, like my very first, you know, few videos on YouTube, people are still commenting, how do I get into tech? What can I do? And I'm constantly, you know, like, hey, you know, check my link or do this, do that. But even when people randomly ask me questions, I try my hardest to answer their questions as fastly and as authentically as I can, efficiently, I should say, as I can, just because I will want someone to help me if I was in that situation.

Kevin Yee:

I see. How did you figure out your pricing?

Alicia Gunter:

So, well, first of all, I don't know if I would tell people to do this, but this I again, you know, this is coming from someone who had no coaching background. I first went to Google and I was like, OK, what are coaches in my field getting paid? And I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do. But again, it really just depends because there are some people who have 10 years experience and then I'm just coming in the game. So I can't just go and start charging people, you know, all this money. And they're just like, you don't even have that much experience. So for me, I tried to find a medium of someone who, you know, had a little, you know, I had a good amount of experience for what they were asking me for. And then I took that information and I just said, what, what kind of packages can I create for them? Now, initially I first started just doing coaching. That was, again, that was my thing. I just did one hour coaching and that I just, you know, came up with a number that I felt was fair because I had to also take into account the people that were going to be purchasing my course. If they were similar to my situation, they didn't have I have tons of money. But again, this is a business mindset. So you still have to take that into account because it does cost to run a business. And I learned that very quickly. So I just kind of took into account, again, my target client and then also my experience level and what the value of what they were going to be paying for. And I took that into account. I just created initially the first one hour course. Also, I will say what was driving more traffic as well was the company I worked for. I really do love the company because they did allow me to do free coaching on their platform. And then in the free coaching, which I would do like once a week, in that free coaching, after I would do that, it would drive people to my platform, my, you know, my paid course. So what I would tell people, yeah, my paid program. So what I would tell people is, you know, you may not have that same situation as me, but always start with a free offer. Start with something free that can draw people in and then, you know, allow them to get a taste of what it is that you can offer them and then lead them to whatever your paid offer is.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah. And it's interesting because I'm kind of interested in your containers, right? You mentioned that you used to do one hour calls. I know some other coaches, they like group coaching and stuff. What do your different coaching containers look like at this point in time?

Alicia Gunter:

So at this point, I am still doing the individual coaching. When I was doing the free coaching for the company I took the course with, that was group coaching. I will say I did enjoy group coaching and I am considering doing group coaching again. Number one, because as I grow as a coach, it is very time-consuming to do a lot of one-hour or 90-minute coaching sessions. So if I'm doing five one-hour or 90-minute coaching sessions a day, that's a lot, right? Versus if I had once a week or twice a week group coaching, that would definitely help people. And for those who want to pay a little more, then I could then take them on as a personal private client. So right now, again, I'm still just doing the one hour but I am definitely getting things in place to then go and do group coaching because I really did enjoy it and I feel like people get to answer their questions and again get a feel for what you can do and if they want to work with you and pay a little bit more then they have that option

Kevin Yee:

also I'm very curious about this because you mentioned wanting to do group coaching and kind of like scale I like almost multiply yourself I guess so I guess like where do you want this coaching business to take you in the next few years do you have any like secret dreams big ambitions no one knows about I

Alicia Gunter:

do. And I really do want this business to reach a lot of people. I mean, honestly, I was coaching people from the very beginning that were in other countries. So I could say right now, oh, I would love to work with people that, you know, are out of the United States, but I've already been doing that, which is amazing. I would love to reach people in more countries who maybe don't even know that taking a course or getting into tech is something that they can even do that can change their life financially. But I would say for me personally, or professionally, should I say, I would definitely want to scale the business a little more. Again, I want to expand with my packages. I want to offer group coaching. I do want to, and with that, there are going to be some increases in pricing because I am going to be adding more value to what the clients are going to be getting. But I would definitely love to, you know, be on a bigger platform, I guess, and reach more people. Yeah, if that makes sense. I definitely want to just kind of grow and expand and just reach more people. And I don't have to I'm not the type of person that feel like I have to be, you know, the next Tony Robbins or, you know, you know, all those people. I just want to make sure however big or small my community is that I am reaching my client. I want my client to find me and know that I'm here for them. So that's ultimately what it is. And however many people that is, I'm okay with that.

Kevin Yee:

Has the thought ever of hiring other coaches under your brand like ever crossed your mind or do you like to keep things pretty intimate with just You

Alicia Gunter:

know what? It's never crossed my mind for me to do that. I've seen so many other coaches do that. And I think it can work depending on what it is. For me, I think right now, just because this is kind of like my baby, I really don't want to go ahead and let other people come in just because I feel like right now, you know, people are gravitating towards me just because of my story. And I don't really know if I bring someone in, if they'll be able to authenticate that, you know, my actual story, because it's my story to tell. But not ruling it out, not ruling it out. You know, it just kind of depends on where the business goes. I mean, who knows, maybe next year, two years from now, that could be something. But right now, I think just because of the way my clients gravitate towards me, I think that they're looking for me to be the one to be able to coach them. And I'm okay with that right now.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah. And I guess in your season of your business right now, what are some challenges, bottlenecks that you're noticing right now that most people wouldn't know that you're going through?

Alicia Gunter:

I would definitely say that it's, I mean, no, business is all sunshine and rainbows, but definitely when you are an entrepreneur and this is my primary source of income, I make my money online. And I would definitely say there are a lot of highs and lows when it comes to the finances because there's no guaranteed income. One month, you may think you're doing everything right and you made no money. And then the next month, you switch up one thing and then all of a sudden, you're making double what you made. And so it's just for me trying to find that balance and trying to find that point where I'm like, okay, if I just consistently do this, you know, at least I'll know that I'll make a certain amount a month. Right now, I would say my biggest challenge is making sure that I'm making a certain amount a month, but I don't want that to, how should I say this? I don't want the finances to kind of override the emotion and everything behind what I stand for and what my business is for. But I definitely do, I will definitely tell people steady income, you're going to have to really work on that and make sure you're doing everything you're supposed to do to make sure you're at least hitting your bottom. Yeah,

Kevin Yee:

there's this famous Peter Drucker quote that I love, and it says, all profits derive from risk. And as a business owner, we take on the inherent risk of starting a business. And it's easy during those low revenue months to be like, oh my God, I wish I was still at my nine to five job. Well, the paycheck of a nine to five job. Right. It's just really interesting. Yeah. Let's move on to the next segment. I do like to play a game. I like to play a game. I'm always very curious about people's like it's called good investment, bad investment. And so I'm very curious about the best thing you spent your money on for your coaching business and the worst thing that you wish you could get your money back from from your coaching business as well. It could be coaching, training, team members, masterminds, anything that you spent. Yeah. But what is your best investment and worst investment?

Alicia Gunter:

OK, I'm going to say the the worst investment I would say was the worst investment was I didn't do enough research on an editor that I had hired to edit some of my videos because you know as we have a lot on your plate you want to start outsourcing and start delegating things and so I hired an editor and I he just randomly honestly found me through you know he sent me an email and I looked at the work that he sent me instead of actually doing more research and I hired him and I literally had a schedule of when my videos are supposed to go out everything and I sent him the videos and I'm literally waiting I'm waiting I'm waiting on the videos to be edited nothing's coming I'm like where are my videos, because at this point I'm now past the date that, you know, the people that are looking for me on YouTube, they're not seeing anything from me. And so it's kind of messing up, you know, my brand. And I would, I would definitely say that was the worst and not the fact that I hired an editor, but more so because I didn't do proper research. And again, this was in the very beginning when I started to get bigger and I was just like, I can't, I don't have the bandwidth to just, you know, record and edit all these videos. And basically I would just tell anybody, Do your research, okay? I don't care if it's the editor. I don't care what it is. Do your research. Make sure that they have the right credentials. Make sure that they have good reviews of other people that they've hired and then go from there. So I would say that was kind of the worst, but that was more so just my immature nature at that point because I had no experience. As far as the best purchase, I would say the best purchase is investing in a coach. The best purchase or the best, yeah, what I pay for, I would say what gave me a good return on my investment would definitely be hiring and a coach, hiring someone to teach me what they know and what, you know, they're where I want to be. So hiring someone that can teach you and help you get to their level, I will say is definitely, you know, expensive depending on who you're going with. But you have to, again, like you said, back to that quote, you know, you have to take those risks because, you know, I like to say scared money don't make money. So you're going to have to go ahead and spend something to be able to get something back. So I, from the very beginning, knew that I was going to be taking some of that money and definitely reinvesting into myself, that is the best money you could ever spend on yourself in a business is reinvesting into yourself and your business.

Kevin Yee:

Which leads me to the last question. I hope this doesn't happen to you, but let's say your business goes under. You have to start over tomorrow. Zero followers, zero clients, zero relationships that you kind of made through the business, but you have all the wisdom right now. What would you do in your first 90 days?

Alicia Gunter:

To become a coach again or to just get to where I am?

Kevin Yee:

Yeah. You have to rebuild your coaching business.

Alicia Gunter:

Rebuild everything. Okay. Well, Knowing everything that I know now, I would definitely do the same thing that I did in the beginning, which is start early as far as trying to build your brand. You do not need to wait until you feel like you're big enough. And that goes for any type of industry. You don't need to wait until you're big enough to feel like, oh, now is the right time to start a social media channel. No, you want to build your brand from the very beginning. You want those people to follow you and see your story and see you grow. So then you build that brand recognition and you build that emotional connection with your clients. So I would definitely start a channel early and I would just plan out and map out what it is that I'm going to talk about. But whatever you do, make sure you're being authentic to yourself and authentic to your brand. Even if you don't know what you're going to do, just start. That would be one of the first things I would do. The next thing I would definitely do is I would look for someone again to teach me. I would look for someone, I would take some money and I would invest in someone to teach me what I don't know. But because I already do know, if I was starting over, I would still go ahead and invest in someone because it literally is priceless. Although you're going to pay a price, it's priceless to have someone teach you everything that they know to get to the level that you want to be at. So paying someone a small percentage of what you're already going to make back, I definitely think is one of the best investments. Start your brand early. Go ahead and pay someone to help you get where they are. And then also start your email list immediately. Immediately. I don't care if you think that you... When I say immediately, I mean immediately. Like the very first day you start a YouTube or you start anything, you can literally go to Linktree and start it free, a free one now. And if you don't know what to create, think about what you're going to be offering, the type of information that you want your potential client to learn and go use ChatGPT. We have the information and we have the technology out there. Of course, you want it to be authentic, but use the help and the tools that we have now in this current year and definitely create a freebie, not anything paid from the very beginning, create a freebie, allow people to then be able to Get on your email list. And then when you are able to set yourself up properly and you have a paid offer, then you can start reaching out to them. I think a lot of people sleep on email lists and that is a lot of place. That is literally where you can make the most of your money on an email list, literally. And I would do those three things and I would let everything just kind of, you know, flow from there.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah, it's really interesting because you said a few things that were interesting. One, I think Alex Ramosi talked about he wished he built his brand a lot sooner of him sleeping on the gym floors and stuff like that you can only do that once in life you're not gonna be like I fucking made it and then go sleep on a freaking it doesn't work that way and it's not authentic so that's one thing the other thing too about hiring a coach it's really interesting because I started doing high ticket sales coaching the same way I started posting I took a course I kind of shared my experience I shared the highs and lows people came to me about like coaching and then what I realized is like a really good coach will help you pay off that ignorance tax that also Mosey talks about because you got to pay it somehow either through trials and tribulations your time energy or you pay it through money and so way less painful pay through money

Alicia Gunter:

exactly

Kevin Yee:

I wrote the last thing too but I can't oh email list that one's solid because yeah how many times have you heard of creators like oh pop off on the algo and then all of a sudden they can't reach their audience anymore so exactly that one's a really good one Right. Exactly. And

Alicia Gunter:

don't give them crap. Don't give them crap because I've definitely got them. You don't want to give them crap. You want them wanting more because you want them to be like, if they're giving me this for free, imagine what they're going to give me if I pay for something from them. Like give them good quality stuff. I promise they'll come back. I promise.

Kevin Yee:

The worst thing is like, oh yeah, I get my like PDF. I'm like, dude, I have enough fricking PDFs. I don't think I need another one. I can have ChatGPT generate one like in 10

Alicia Gunter:

seconds. Thank you. Yes. Like give me something solid.

Kevin Yee:

Yeah, exactly. Cool. How do people find you, connect with you and all that?

Alicia Gunter:

They can find me on YouTube and on LinkedIn. I was going to say Linktree. On YouTube and LinkedIn and also on TikTok at Technically Blessed.

Kevin Yee:

Nice.

Alicia Gunter:

I'm sorry.

Kevin Yee:

What?

Alicia Gunter:

I'm so sorry, actually, because it is Alicia Cherise because I did have to, you know, end up changing everything. But you can find me at Alicia Cherise. Everything is under there. YouTube, TikTok and Instagram or excuse me, not Instagram and Linktree. Alicia Charisse.

Kevin Yee:

Okay, cool. Yeah. And what are your free, you said you have some freebies and stuff for your email list. What are the things that you have? What are some of the freebies that you've created?

Alicia Gunter:

Yeah. So my freebies are, you know, again, they're for my clients. A lot of my clients are coming in trying to take the course that I took. And a lot of my freebies are helping them get through the course. So we have, you know, there's a final exam that we have to end up taking. So I literally gave them all of the tips and the information and things that they need to study to pass the final exam on the first try have that for free also in the course they do recommend specific books that you need to you know read and I have a list for them that's free where they can go and get the free PDFs online they don't even have to buy it if they don't want to but I also do have the link for them to go and buy it if they want to but I have the free audio versions for them so they can just listen to it and what else I also do have because I do resumes as well so I do have some free resume templates but then I also have the paid ones but I do just have some free ones for those who just want to get something, you know, and just hit the ground running. So, yeah.

Kevin Yee:

The reason why I said that, too, is because I found out our demo that listens to this podcast. You'd think it's all other coaches, but actually some people are looking for coaches, which is blowing my freaking mind. Yeah, so that's why I was like, you gotta drop that.

Alicia Gunter:

Yes, that's cool.

Kevin Yee:

Anyways, Yeah. Anyways, Alicia, so great having you on the podcast.

Alicia Gunter:

Thank you.

Kevin Yee:

Learned a lot, not only about coaching, but also like the marketing fundamentals and stuff is really refreshing seeing someone just do everything right straight from the beginning. So, and thank you for that initial story about like the fast and like talking to God and stuff like that. I think a lot of those stories are actually really needed as well. So thank you so

Alicia Gunter:

much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Kevin Yee:

Hopefully get you for a part two when you're like more I'm very curious about your next season of coaching. Yeah, I

Alicia Gunter:

think that would be great. Yeah, definitely. Part two coming soon, guys.

Davis Nguyen:

That's 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