The Psychology of Career Success with Dr. Cree Scott

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets our guest is Dr. Cree Scott, a distinguished consulting psychologist, ICF‑certified executive coach, Project Management Professional, and Forbes Coaches Council member, who brings over 15 years of experience in leadership development, executive coaching, and strategy-driven DEI and employee well‑being initiatives after serving in consulting roles at firms like Deloitte, she founded Serenity Psy Consulting to offer human-centered, behaviorally grounded coaching grounded in positive and cognitive psychology.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/creescott/
https://www.serenitypsyhealth.com/
Contact form: https://www.serenitypsyhealth.com/contact

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Dr. Cree Scott 0:00

People call what I do coach salting, which is a mixture of coaching and consulting. And that works really well for my clients because most of them tend to have some idea of where they want to go, but are really just looking for different perspectives to add to their repertoire. I think that if you are a mid-level leader or going all the way up to executive and it's something that you're interested in working with in terms of soft skills, then I am the person that you would be looking for.

Davis Nguyen 0:25

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built 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 $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.

Rexhan Doda 0:56

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Series podcast. I'm your host, Rejan, and today's guest is Dr. Cree Scott, an ICF certified executive coach, organizational consultant, and the founder of Serenity Psy Consulting. With over 20 years of experience in psychology and more than 14 years devoted to leadership development, Dr. Cree blends her expertise as licensed clinical psychologist with her strengths-based coaching approach to help leaders unlock their full potential. As a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, she's become a trusted voice on human-centered leadership, well-being, and organizational performance. Through executive coaching, leadership workshops, and team-building sessions, she equips leaders to uncover blind spots, navigate difficult conversations, psychologically save cultures, and lead with clarity and confidence. It's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Pri.

Dr. Cree Scott 1:52

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Rexhan Doda 1:54

It's a pleasure to have you on, so thank you for coming. I want wanted to ask you when it comes to your coaching business, your executive coaching business, first of all, or like Serenity Psy Consulting, it's been around five years and a half almost since you started, right?

Dr. Cree Scott 2:07

Yes. So I started this consulting business probably before I left my last job, but it was not necessarily used for consulting. It started off as a clinical practice where I was seeing veterans for disability evaluations. And then when I left my last employer, I decided to go into a pathway of leadership consulting. That's how it's been around for five and a half years. I would say that the majority of that time, however, starting in 2022 was executive coaching and leadership development.

Rexhan Doda 2:37

Cool. And when going through your coaching journey with your clients throughout these last years, what about it do you find most rewarding since you started doing this?

Dr. Cree Scott 2:45

I think that most of the time what I run into is that people are just looking for really nice thought partners to be able to think through some of the challenges that they've been experiencing and And I love most about this experience with my coaching practice is the idea that I can bring in outside perspectives to a conversation that maybe people are not thinking about. differently than they have already been doing them. So I think that's what I love the most is that I'm able to really get to that space pretty quickly, just based on my background, but also that people are coming to me as a thought partner.

Rexhan Doda 3:38

And how would you for the audience who's listening, and I didn't mention this to you earlier, but there's two groups of people that are typically listening to our podcast. One of them is coaches, either career coaches, executive coaches, leadership coaches, life coaches, mindset coaches, but there's also a group of people that are not coaches who typically come from the audiences of the coaches we've had on the podcast before. We might be reaching out to an audience with this podcast, or let's say there might be an audience who is listening to this podcast who might potentially find your coaching interesting, or there's people that are just looking for coaches. For them, for that part of the audience who is listening, how would you describe the ideal client profile? Is there a certain industry or a certain demographic or psychographic? Do they have some common goals or other commonalities? How would you describe your

Dr. Cree Scott 4:28

ideal time profile? people who are open to the idea of engaging from a thought partner or partnership tend to do better with coaching with me in particular, because I am one of those types of coaches that will bring in different perspectives based on my experience and based on experiences of other coaching clients. So it may not necessarily feel like pure coaching where I'm just sitting and asking questions, but I'm also offering some level of perspective. I have definitely heard people call what I do coach salting, which is a mixture of coaching and consulting. And And that works really well for my clients because most of them tend to have some idea of where they want to go, but are really just looking for different perspectives to add to their repertoire. I think that if you are a mid-level leader or going all the way up to executive and it's something that you're interested in working with in terms of soft skills, then I am the person that you would be looking for.

Rexhan Doda 5:46

And how does the program work? Is there a certain program of a certain length that these clients go through? How would you describe the engagement you have with them?

Dr. Cree Scott 5:55

Yeah, so my My sessions usually go anywhere between three months and six months. I like to stop at the six month point as the longest sessions that I tend to run just simply because I like to check back in with people to make sure that we've either reached the goal or that we are considering other goals because within six months, you should be able to reach the goal that you're looking for. But I can also do as little as three months, which is about six sessions. So it's biweekly usually. And I start off with an intake and understanding what people are looking for. What are their goals? what is their background and learning a lot about the person. I also give a few assessments that I think make it much easier for me to be able to understand them quicker than just asking a lot of questions. And sometimes the intake doesn't necessarily give you all of that information. So I do some assessments and then we work together to devise a development plan together. And that is kind of like what I consider to be the map in terms of where we're going to focus our time in each of the sessions. The idea is to really help people understand what where they currently are and understand where they're going and where they need the most assistance in terms of enhancing their pathway towards their potential. I do a lot of uncovering with clients. So that could be asking questions, but also having them do activities outside so that there is some reflection time. Sometimes it's easier to reflect outside of coaching than it is to do so inside of coaching. And then also there are different resources that I provide in addition to the coaching and the homework there are resources that you can take a look at and learn from it as well. So and then it depends on where people are bringing me in, because sometimes I've also engaged with their manager, I also offer 360 assessments, where I'm talking to different people on their teams or different people that they interact with to help build that development plan as well.

Rexhan Doda 7:43

Cool. And thank you. Thanks so much for sharing that. And so right now, and this is a question that mostly coaches are going to find useful is when it comes to your clients finding you or you finding them, what marketing channel do find working really well for you right now?

Dr. Cree Scott 7:57

Yeah, that's a really great question. I am still figuring out the best marketing channels. So I will tell you that there's two things that I tend to do when it comes to executive coaching. One is that I have a pretty good leadership development workshop trainings. And most of the time, executive coaching through my business is as an add on to a workshop that I've done. So people will hire me to come in to do a workshop. And then I will say, okay, and I can also offer six executive coaching sessions in addition to your leader or something like that. So that's one way. Another way is for me to partner with people who are already inside of these organizations and they are looking to be, I guess I am on their bench, if you will. And so I'm a part of their faculty. And so I will go in as a member of that specific team, but I am definitely coaching through the coaching lens that I bring. So those are the main two ways that I tend to engage with coaching. LinkedIn is a really good way to kind of market yourself, but it doesn't always automatically lend itself to that coaching, I guess, in result of someone reaching out to say like, I want coaching from this. I would say that the things that really get me in the door are the relationships that I've built and referrals. So like other people who have been coached by me tend to refer me to other people. And then I will ask them to go through their organization to get coaching because I don't necessarily do a Most of the coaching that I do is B2B. If there is a way to get that paid for through your organization, that also gives them an opportunity to explore that with other people outside of just the one person who's asking for coaching.

Rexhan Doda 9:38

Cool. Actually has been the case with most coaches that I've interviewed is that it's either from referral network, which is where they get a good portion of their leads or their clients. And it's also LinkedIn. And LinkedIn, either there's some strategy that they're doing on LinkedIn or is mostly like connecting with people being on LinkedIn. I noticed you do post on LinkedIn too. Is there some sort of strategy that you're following on LinkedIn?

Dr. Cree Scott 10:04

Yes, definitely. So on LinkedIn, I am a LinkedIn learning instructor. So I have one course that's already out and one course that's coming out soon, but I also do a lot of posts. I try to post at least once a week, minimally, and sometimes twice. And my goal is to always share something that is going to be of value to the person that I believe is my audience, which is someone in the leadership, in in a leadership role sorry my goal is always to make sure that whatever I'm providing really helps the person on the receiving end and when I do that I think it does help people to understand what coaching might be like from my perspective and the other thing that I tend to do is LinkedIn live learning sometimes so it doesn't I haven't done that in a while but that has been one avenue that I've used in terms of getting people to understand my coaching style but also bringing in other coaches that do stuff in the same space that I do and having those conversations that way as well.

Rexhan Doda 10:57

Cool. And right now, when thinking about your future for your coaching business, for your coaching and consulting business for the next one to three years, do you have any specific goals that you're working towards?

Dr. Cree Scott 11:08

The biggest goal that I'm working towards right now is my book. So I am working on a book that is kind of like a leadership blueprint, if you will, in terms of how you can enhance your potential to reach a space of better decision making, more clarity, and just all Ultimately, like getting to that space of feeling peaceful in your role. And I know that it's a big, tall order, but hopefully that people will find when they read the book that they will get to that space if they do all of the things that I'm offering inside of the book. So my goal is to work and bring that book to life. I have a publisher that I'm working with, so it should be out next year. And then from there to build some masterminds around that so that people can get more of that peer coaching, me facilitating it, but also peer coaching so that there is an opportunity for robust discussions to happen based on their specific challenges and so forth. So that's the goal. We'll see what happens, but that is my goal.

Rexhan Doda 12:03

Cool. So it's coming out next year. So are you already in the progress with it when it comes to the content?

Dr. Cree Scott 12:09

The book is complete. If anyone has gone through the publishing process, it is like an 18 month runway, which who knew? And sometimes it can be shorter. Sometimes it can be 12 months, but it's definitely something that takes some time. So a lot of it is not just the editing process, but also like getting the covers and all kinds of other things that go on the back end of publishing that I wasn't aware of until going through this process myself. So it'll be out in April, but it can be pre-ordered probably in January or February time.

Rexhan Doda 12:38

Cool. I guess people that are going to listen to this episode, if they listen to this later on, I wonder where would they find it? But I guess you'll be publishing it on your LinkedIn as well.

Dr. Cree Scott 12:48

I was going to say, if you follow me on LinkedIn, I will start providing a lot more updates in the fall. I try not to, we're trying not to jump the gun too much and get it out there too early to lose so that people won't lose interest. But the idea is that probably starting in like October timeframe, October, November timeframe, I'll start telling people the name of the book itself so that making sure that it's, you know, that we have it already published in some way, as well as what it's about, giving free tidbits away, building a book launch team so that if people are interested in pre-ordering or being a part of the first group of people to receive the book, all of those fun things will start to take place in the

Rexhan Doda 13:26

fall cool great awesome looking forward to them and when thinking about the book and investments you've done over the last few years what have been some investments that you feel really good about either you learned a lot or got got a good return from and what have been some investments that you don't feel so good about or you feel like maybe you should have avoided them or something like that

Dr. Cree Scott 13:46

the biggest investment was definitely icf so becoming icf certified at first i wasn't sure if i was going to do that or not and that's probably because for me i am already a licensed clinical psychologist. And so in my mind, I was just like, I don't need that. But what I did, I did find it helpful. I will admit that I do feel like a lot of the things that come from ICF are all taken from psychology. So it's not that I learned a lot of new information or any new information, but it did kind of help me think about how to structure sessions differently than you do therapy. Right. And so I think that was probably the biggest key takeaway. And then just getting an opportunity to engage with other people who are on the same journey as myself. So that part was really a lot of fun, but also just really helpful to have those partnerships. I would say that that was the best investment that I made to become ICF certified. I don't necessarily know, and I wouldn't necessarily say that these were bad investments per se, but I had originally started thinking about additional assessment tools to add to my repertoire. So I did get some additional certifications and certain tools that I haven't used. And so So it's not a knock on those tools. It's a knock on the fact that I haven't marketed them in a way that has yielded success yet. I think you want to be careful about like where you're getting your certifications and what you're doing so that it's, if you're going to get a certification in something, make sure that you're marketing it so that your clients know and that you're pushing that so that you can start to see a return on your investment. Right now, I am not, but yet I still, you know, pay for it. And then the last thing that I would say is that there are some, I don't know what they're really called. But I would say some professional networks that will say like, oh, yeah, like we can introduce you to all of these people and that this is a type of network that's going to help you to grow in your business or and or to really meet other people who are who can help you and sponsor you and things of that sort. And honestly, like most of them that I have tried so far have not yielded the results that they are promising. So I would just be very like careful and more hesitant moving forward for myself. about the type of professional leadership groups that I'm joining these days, because a lot of them are claiming that they're going to introduce you to this great network. And then you get on there and no one is really doing what they say they're going to do. Everyone is kind of in your same boat where they're like, I need help. I'm trying to figure it out. And I find that sometimes I'm further along in my process than some of the people are. So again, there are some really great ones out there. I hear groups like Bold House and others are really good. And I didn't join Bold House, but I do know that there have been other business colleagues that have and have found that very, very helpful. But just be wary, I guess, of just joining some of those because they are expensive. And so you want to make sure that it's going to yield a return on your investment for sure.

Rexhan Doda 16:38

Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. And when it comes to the certifications, as you mentioned earlier, for what we've found based on our research that we did last year, it turned out that the certifications themselves were the investments that had kind of like the lowest return on investment, not maybe from the perspective of like learning, there is value there. But from the perspective of using it as a marketing tool, it didn't yield as much return compared to other investments that we've seen. Reason is most individuals that coaches are working with are not aware of ICF or are not aware of the certifications that ICF has and don't necessarily ask for it upfront or just don't know any better. There might be only some companies that actually require you to have that upfront. And that is the only case where it starts to pay for itself. But with individual clients, they just are not aware of it. Yeah, we always see that as something to be mindful of, like you might be going there for the learning, but it's not about the like the additional portion you add to your name on LinkedIn or marketing that comes with it, because there's not really a lot of return on that perspective.

Dr. Cree Scott 17:43

Absolutely. Yeah, I would definitely say that the only group that has ever asked me if I was ICF certified is government and a few consulting firms. But even in those cases, that's That wasn't a prerequisite. They just asked the question, but it wasn't, they weren't going to turn me away if I weren't. So I do agree that now what I would say about ICF is that I do recommend that if you have never done coaching or anything in that space to please get ICO certified because it does provide you with a great framework and some really great resources. But if you are already, you know, if that's something you've been doing in your business for a long time and you're certified and maybe a different place or maybe not even certified, but you really are good at it and you may not necessarily need that. And I agree that it's not necessarily something that is going to be a high return on investment.

Rexhan Doda 18:31

Cool. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Cree. And another question I wanted to ask you is when thinking about your goals and further growing your coaching business and working on your book, where do you see the bottleneck right now? What is the challenge you're trying to solve for next in your business?

Dr. Cree Scott 18:46

I think I am where everyone else is, including larger organizations, and that is the political climate is impacting a lot. What I am finding is that people are not necessarily saying no, but they're saying not yet. It will probably take me having to diversify a little bit more in terms of what I'm offering and what I'm doing to get through these times of uncertainty, because there's a lot of businesses that when it comes to coaching and even leadership development, it can be seen as a luxury for some. Others, they're going to keep moving because that's a part of their business plan. But for people who don't have it or organizations that do not have it as a part of their business plan, it probably feels like a luxury. And so that will be the first thing that they'll say like, well, not right now, but we'll come back to it and maybe Q1 of next year or something like that. So in the meantime, what do you do to really continue to make sure that you are able to stay really focused on what is needed at this time and also just offering other services that may offset your coaching practice and making sure that you can continue to thrive, I guess, in your business. So for me, the biggest bottleneck is is just the state of the world right now and trying to ensure that people just feel like they have the budget to really engage in coaching and leadership development. So what I've been doing is thinking of different avenues for me to offer my services in a different way. So I said before that I'm B2B, but maybe it's time to kind of think about what does B2C look like? I'm really kind of staying open. That's where the book even came about. I mean, I was writing a book anyway, but this gives me an opportunity to kind of think more more broadly about my audience and really consider ways to reimagine things. One of the things that I used to do a lot of is diversity, equity, and inclusion work. And it's not even that's the field or the area that I was focused on, but I will say that I was doing that work. And so when the political climate changed and it became taboo to talk about those things, or sometimes unlawful, I guess, you have to kind of think about like, how do you reimagine that? So how do you talk about it in terms of culture or psychological safety, things of that sort and some companies are still moving forward so it's been okay but there are other companies that again are kind of pivoting a little bit so just being very aware of your audience where they are right now as well and what are their needs and making sure that you're shifting as much as you can still staying authentic to who you are but shifting your business to match the current needs of your clients

Rexhan Doda 21:16

thank you thanks so much for that korea and actually i've noticed that come up as an issue from other coaches as well a good number of coaches have raised that as an issue like the actual political climate right now it is actually affecting the industry i wonder if that's just a temporary thing so yeah not much we can control over that but yeah so right now for the coaches who are listening and there's a good portion of coaches who are listening that want to scale their business want to scale their impact in a similar way i feel like you're trying to do the same because you're making your book you want to try to reach out to more people that you cannot reach throughout your hours of the day because you cannot get to everybody. So thinking about these coaches or thinking about yourself, what advice would you give to the coaches who are trying to scale their impact? It could be advice you'd give to yourself, basically.

Dr. Cree Scott 22:04

Yeah, I would tell people to get yourself out there as much as possible. Social media is definitely one way to do that. But you can also, if that's maybe not your thing, you can also do it in terms of making a newsletter or some type of outlet where people can receive information or you can push information to them. Other ways is to, again, partner with organizations or smaller businesses who are already kind of doing things that are similar to what you're doing that may have so much business that they can use your help, I guess. So I do a lot of that and I really enjoy partnering because being a solopreneur can be lonely. And then other ways is just kind of thinking about like speaking engagements. And so there are speaking bureaus that you can become a part of. You can apply to speak at conferences or other platforms that offer those types of things. And then when you just think of Thank you so much. specific area and then start to figure out ways to get exposure. So podcasts like this is definitely one way, but there are a ton of other ways by writing articles or becoming a contributor of sorts and for different groups like Harvard Business Advisory, Forbes Coaching Council, things of that sort. Those are all ways to really start to get yourself out there so that people know who you are. And I cannot really say enough about your network. I don't necessarily know if people recognize that in instead of selling people something to really just build good relationships with people. So I tend to make a note of speaking and touching base with at least six people a month, six different people a month, because I think it's really important that people, that I stay top of mind for people. So you can't just reach out to someone once and expect for work to come from that. They really do need to have a relationship with you. And most of the time, I would say that my business has grown because of my network. And just asking that one person and is there someone else that I should know, right? Like, and then you start to exponentially grow your network. But humans are the ones who hire other humans. It's not going to be Google calling you, right? It's going to be someone at Google saying like, oh, I should hire Cree. And so you have to build those relationships. And then once you get the work, you have to do a good job. So those are all the things that I would say in terms of what has made me successful and where I will continue looking and doing work as well.

Rexhan Doda 24:51

Thank you. Thank you so much, Cree. Thank you for that amazing advice. And Thank you so much for coming to our podcast today. For anyone who wants to connect with you or find you, they can go into LinkedIn and look up Dr. Chris Scott. They'll be able to find your profile. I think they can go also into the website, serenitypsyhealth.com. That's right. Cool. We'll put that in the description as well for people to find that easily. Is there any other way people could reach out to you?

Dr. Cree Scott 25:16

Those are the best ways. There's a contact us form on the www.serenitypsyhealth.com that people can put into their information and I'm happy to reach back out. And then, yeah, LinkedIn is the best way just because it comes right to my phone. And so I'm always on there, happy to connect with people. They can follow me and we can continue our conversation from there.

Rexhan Doda 25:39

Thank you. Thank you so much, Priya. And thank you so much for coming. It was a pleasure to have you on the show.

Dr. Cree Scott 25:43

Thank you. I appreciate it. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Davis Nguyen 25:47

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community and how we can help you grow your business, visit joinpurplecircle.com.