Mastering Your Leadership Voice & Speaking with Influence with Dr. Laura Sicola

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Dr. Laura Sicola, a renowned leadership communication and influence expert, keynote speaker, and executive coach with over 20 years of experience helping leaders master the art of strategic communication. As the founder of Vocal Impact Productions, Laura has worked with executives from Fortune 500 companies, TEDx speakers, and entrepreneurs worldwide, guiding them to speak with confidence, clarity, and authority. She is also the author of Speaking to Influence: Mastering Your Leadership Voice and a sought-after voice in leadership development.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlaurasicola/
https://laurasicola.com/

Transcript

Dr. Laura Sicola: 0:00

So one of the best tools that I have been very blessed to have for marketing purposes, which was not the intention originally, is my TED Talk. I have a TED Talk. I've done it three times, as a matter of fact, but my one main one has almost 7 million views. And that has really helped with Google searches over the years, as well as, of course, chat now. So it's called Want to Sound Like a Leader? Start by Saying Your Name Right.

Davis Nguyen: 0:24

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.

Kevin Yee: 0:55

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Dr. Laura Ciccola. Welcome to the show, Laura.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 1:03

Thank you so much. It's been great to be here.

Kevin Yee: 1:05

Yeah. Pre-podcast, we were talking, and you said that you had 17 years of coaching experience. So I'm so curious about what began your coaching journey, what made you want to do coaching, and more importantly, what made you want to turn into a business? I would love to start that.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 1:22

I am very much what one might call an accidental entrepreneur and a recovering academic. So I was a teacher at public schools for a few years, and then I moved into academia with the intention of being a university professor. So I did my PhD over at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I was teaching there for a while, and let's just say realized that the tenure track in university life was, A, not what the brochure said it was going to be, let's put it that way, and recognized that there were financial constraints as well, frankly, and a lot of career tracks you go someplace because you are passionate about it, only to realize afterwards that you need a little bit more than what they offer. And my motto became, I was never motivated by money until you told me I couldn't have any. And that was kind of the life of the new faculty member in the social sciences. And I just thought, okay, something's got to give. And when there was a serendipitous conversation that I had with somebody at a wedding reception, actually, and he asked about my research and I told him and he said, you know, I've always had an interest and an instinct, but I never had the data to back it up. And you have the data. It's relevant. Would you want to come into a training for my team? And it turned out he was a vice president of government programs at IBM. And that was my first foray into consulting and doing independent work. And that kind of gave me the bug. That was the taste for it. And the training led to other opportunities and spread out from there. So I stayed teaching part-time for about five years while exploring this world of entrepreneurship and saying, okay, I've got all this work in academia, work in research, work in education. How do I translate that to the corporate space? And it took about five years before I finally figured out what corporate calls it. What do they look for? What are they budget for that they're willing to spend? Because that's really important. It's one thing for us as coaches to say, here's what I'm great at. Here's the passion. Here's the skill. Here's what I can do for you. But if we don't label it right, they don't pay for it. It's just like with Google or with chat. or whatever else. You got to put the right labels on it or no one's going to find you, much less keep digging. So that was the beginning. And training and teaching are similar skills in many ways to coaching. And that's where it took off from there.

Kevin Yee: 3:40

I'm really curious because I'm sure it's changed over the last 17 years, but everyone talks about ICP and target audience. So I'm kind of curious, how did you decide who you wanted to help over the years?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 3:52

My background was really originally working with with non-native English speakers, non-American born, highly professional, highly educated, highly experienced professionals, but the international community, because this was who I was working with in the public schools as well and who I was working with in my university research. So helping them where they would, it's a very common experience of being a quick hire, but then hitting what I call the linguistic glass ceiling and where they would rise to kind of a mid-level position in the corporate space, but then somehow just never be able to create a personal brand that said, I am a leader. There was a disconnect culturally, linguistically, etc. And so my work was in helping them. And then one thing led to another about 12 years ago or so. And it occurred, number one, in the way, again, that I was branding, there was not understanding truly the corporate lingo yet. There was a little bit of challenge because the powers that be who typically ended up being white, monolingual English, typically male, typically whatever else, kind of would look at what I was sharing and say, oh, so you're a tutor. Is there a medial? It's this, it's that. And I thought, no, all of the above. And so then I figured out that the label was really about leadership communication and executive presence. I didn't know the term executive presence. It's not something they talk about in academia. So once I figured out that These were the labels. And oh, yeah, here's a thought. Native speakers aren't really great communicators either. What a neat thought. So when I stripped away the niche of the market initially and said, look, I'm a linguist. I can help people find their voice literally and figuratively and use it well. That's where people went, oh, OK, well, that we definitely need help with. And so it became a broader piece, broader focus. And then people would say, oh, you know what? I also have this guy from India. I've got this guy from China. I've got this woman from Mexico, whatever else. Do you think you could help her too? And I went, matter of fact, well, yes, I can. I'm so glad you thought of that. So it's all about helping people. You got to learn to speak their language and then they understand. I

Kevin Yee: 6:09

love the iterations, like that whole journey that you walked us through, the iterations that you went through. And when you finally got that aha moment, like it was just much easier to get these engagements and all that too, which leads me to the next question. Tell me about your marketing. How do you people kind of like find out about you how do people kind of work with you what is that customer journey like

Dr. Laura Sicola: 6:31

you know the beauty is that i've been doing it long enough that now when people look for executive communication or leadership communication coaches that chat gpt often brings me up which is really nice to happen yeah that was a good one i actually asked chat the other day just like who are the top 10 people in space xyz and it gave me nine and then it my name was number 10. And it even said in parentheses, yes, you. So I thought that was kind of funny, but the couple of my best, it's kind of like they've got a chat's got a little sense of humor to it as well. But so one of the best tools that I have been very blessed to have for marketing purposes, which was not the intention originally is my Ted talk. I have a Ted talk. I've done it three times as a matter of fact, but my one main one has almost 7 million views. And that has really helped with Google searches over the years, as well as of course chat now so it's called want to sound like a leader start by saying your name right and it's just caught on which is kind of neat so a lot of people say I found I stumbled upon your TED talk and then kind of went down the rabbit hole to look you up

Kevin Yee: 7:41

no it's not crazy I think I've actually seen your TED talk like now it's sounding familiar the dots are connecting I need to rewatch again and remember exactly but it sounds very familiar it has

Dr. Laura Sicola: 7:51

been funny when every now and then I'll be at a conference someplace or an event And somebody will be talking to me and go, why do I feel like I know you? What is it? And I'll go, oh my gosh, I watched your TED Talk. And it's just random connections in the middle of some stage that I've, it's kind of fun. So the TED Talk has been very helpful. Speaking engagements are helpful. And frankly, referrals. Because once you have a client internal to a company, my ideal clients typically, aside from the career coaching piece, are corporate. So I work with Comcast, with Accenture, big companies like that. So once you're in, if they're happy with the work you do, it's not hard to spread out internally. So it's the internal referrals. But for career coaching and things, it's much more the external. Someone will say, oh, I know someone who could stand to work with you, and they make the introductions. So you can't be afraid to ask for introductions. That's a key piece.

Kevin Yee: 8:41

That's so interesting. When you reflect on your 17-year history of being a coach and running this coaching business, what are some of the challenges that you've noticed when it came to finding clients over the years?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 8:55

Understanding the difference between the services that I offer that are intended to help people keep their job versus the ones that I've more recently been offering to help people find new ones, because one is corporate paid and one is out of pocket. And every now and then I have, of course, had executive coaches, excuse me, coaching clients who have found me on their own and they're saying, I don't want my company involved. I don't want, you know, I want this to be a personal investment. I realize that my communication skills are at a point where it's going to be a career derailer if I don't get better at this now. It's going to be a limiting factor. So I want to invest in myself privately. It's hard because since my typical clientele is Fortune 100 kind of companies, my prices are aligned with that. And most people don't want to pay that out of pocket. So I really am looking for the elite clients who recognize that, okay, you get the right kind of SVP, CXO role working with me, it's going to pay for itself very quickly in no small part because, A, I will help you shorten the transition window and get into the role you want faster, that is. And number two, I will help you negotiate your contract better. So by your first paycheck, this will pay for itself, plus then multiples with every paycheck from here into eternity. So people have to be willing to recognize an investment in themselves and measure an ROI. Otherwise, they're not going to do it. So marketing to the individual, I don't market to individuals, I market my services. And if the individual comes to me and says, I want to work with you myself, let's do this. Great. But I don't pitch to individuals, because they all are scared of making not all but most are too afraid to let go of the money, because they see it as a cost that may not Yeah, that's

Kevin Yee: 11:02

so interesting because I'm actually really fascinated about like the way coaching businesses structure their offers. And you mentioned a few ways of like lowering the risk on their side where, you know, you'll help them negotiate, you'll help them get faster. How do you like, I'm kind of curious how, like, I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this question. I guess, like, how do you lower the risk for those people looking for that transition? and I guess what are all the different ways that you've come up with if you're open to sharing that?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 11:30

I think what's most important is that during the initial onboarding call, the breakthrough session that we do, which is complimentary prior to confirming, got to get to know who they are, let them understand my system, et cetera. Number one, they have to be clear on the fact that I am not a placement agency. I don't have jobs in a file that I'm going to just dole out to them. They got to do that work. I will guide them through it but they have to commit to doing the work so and I tell them all the time see this it's a pen not a wand so it's not magic it's science and it's art together it's not the same thing so during that breakthrough session the key is to operationalize success because everybody that I have worked with in the career transition is on a different stages in the journey some are at the point of saying, I hate where I am. I'm burned out. I need something else. I just don't know what it is. Help me figure it out. And others are, you know, I've been out of work for a while. I need something. I need it fast. So how do I rise above the competition when there's a thousand applicants for every role? And, you know, two thirds of those applications aren't even real people. They're AI generated who knows what. So how do I stand out? How do I get seen? get noticed and get viewed as the obvious choice on top of it. So it really, and there's a lot in between those two extremes. So I need to know where you are and what you need to happen by the end of the, whether you do the three month or the six month transition package with me. So I need to know what assets you've put together. I need to know how comfortable you are with interviewing, with networking, with outreach. Are you like, sure, I'll talk to anybody any time. No problem. I've talked to a million people. Or is it, oh my God, the idea of having to reach out to somebody on LinkedIn makes me want to crawl under the table and hide. Okay. I have very different things to work with or to work on with those two people. So I need to meet them where they are and figure out what's a reasonable goal. What would make them happy? Understanding the one thing I cannot guarantee is that you will get a job because that's the reality of it. So what else would you need to feel this was a very successful and valuable investment.

Kevin Yee: 14:00

It seems like this is very intimate work, like a lot of one-on-one coaching.

Speaker 03: 14:05

Yes.

Kevin Yee: 14:06

And you coming from an academic background, it's really interesting because I hear coaches talk about, oh yeah, we do one-on-one, sometimes we do group coaching, sometimes we have organizational training. I'm kind of curious for your coaching business, what coaching modalities have you kind of leaned toward, experimented with? I'm so curious from your

Dr. Laura Sicola: 14:25

Well, for specifically the career transition coaching or the executive coaching overall?

Kevin Yee: 14:30

Actually interested in both, like whatever you feel like is appropriate.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 14:33

Coaching broadly for me has been one-on-one. Occasionally I have done groups when there has been a team that is pre-existing. So if a company wants me to work with half a dozen VPs or directors or something and really elevate the whole level worth of people, the communications internally, et cetera, great. Then we'll do a year together as we go. but it's typically one-on-one. You know, it's funny from a business perspective, I would love to do more group work, but I have never managed to figure out the secret sauce for creating cohorts and selling seats, whether it's rolling and people just join at whatever stage they are and it's month to month or a year versus the next cohort is going to launch in January. Let's fill the 10 seats now. I have not, man, I've attempted it. I've tried various programs and various, I've taken programs about how to scale coaching business. I just haven't managed. It hasn't taken root for me yet.

Kevin Yee: 15:30

I see. Yeah.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 15:32

I

Kevin Yee: 15:35

mean, I was going to say, it seems like you know a lot about it, how it's structured and all that sort of stuff too. So it's interesting to see your perspective on this. Okay. Another thing I love your perspective on because a lot of career coaches struggle with like things like pricing strategies and pricing. And of course you don't need to give any hard numbers on this podcast, but I'm kind of curious what kind of pricing strategies do you use to structure? I know some coaches do a project-based, they have some sort of retainer or some sort of value-based type of models, but what have you kind of like, I can't think of the word, but kind of been drawn to, I guess?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 16:14

I think the most valuable piece of advice I ever received probably 12 to 15 years ago was you cannot charge by the hour, period. You have to value. You put a price on the value of the results that you are committed to helping the client get. You don't put a value on your time. Now, of course, it depends on who you are, what kind of coaching you're doing, who your clientele is, what you're, you know, are you doing succession packages or year-long things, or do you do retainers versus something else? There's many ways to do it. You know, if you're working with 20-somethings who are newly Mm-hmm. Yeah. bad about Walmart but if you're the Walmart of coaches then okay you'll take everybody but it's really minimal super thin margins and you're going to be working your butt off 25 hours a day just trying to make ends meet for me in my space I don't want to do I've got a PhD I've been doing this for 20 years almost etc so my packages start at five figures and there's I don't want people Thank you so much. And it's like, I'm not, it's not about the value of my time. It's about the results. I mean, if you could work with a trainer at the gym who could get you to the Olympic level in, you know, six months as opposed to five years, wouldn't you pay a whole lot more just because they can get that kind of results that much faster as opposed to saying, but that's only six months. I mean, you're only going to give me six months. What's wrong with that frame, right? So it's the result and the time, what you need. That's the value. And anybody who's going to argue the amount of the hourly rate, I always tell them, stop doing the math. You're doing the wrong calculation. You're trying to take my package rate and divide it by the number of sessions we're going to have. Wrong math. Stop doing that math because it's not about the value of my time.

Kevin Yee: 19:16

Yeah. I love where your mind's at because this is where I personally feel about pricing. I feel I've been on both sides. So like not necessarily, not necessarily for coaching, but hourly, I feel like, okay, coaches clearly hate hourly. Clients also hate hourly because they have to track the time and really trust the other person. It's just a bad experience for everyone. But something I really like about how you price things is people take consideration of the time that you spent all those years with your PhD. Yeah, they see that one moment, that one hour or whatever fixed amount of time that you spend with them, but then they correlate it with that one hour. And another interesting thing is you're not the first person where they're like, oh, my lawyer charges this much. And I feel like those things are mutually exclusive. They have nothing to each other. I pay my lawnmower like $10 an hour, like the kid down the street. You should go ask him to do it for you then.

Speaker 03: 20:11

Right,

Kevin Yee: 20:12

exactly. But we're on the same page. Thank you for that insight, by the way. One other question I'm really curious about is your future goals. And I'm kind of curious, where do you want this coaching business to take you in the next few years? Do you have any secret dreams, big ambitions? Would love to kind of hear that from you.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 20:30

I'm actually looking to get on more large stages. So I've done a number of conferences. I was doing a lot more before COVID. Been slow to get back into it, but would love to be on more national and international stages and speaking. I have had great experiences with that, both just I love being on the stage, but I also, it's a great way to get business development because if you can knock their socks off, I don't mean just, if they can hear me speak, I mean, you get up there and you give an audience an experience that knocks their socks off, that's when they're going to look you up. I did a talk at the Professional Business Women of California conference a couple of years ago, and I had 1,800 women in that room, literally on their chairs and cheering and screaming and whatnot. It was an amazing experience. And when I went to dinner that night at the hotel restaurant, just to kind of decompress, I sat down at a table and there was a table of four women next to me. And the one leans over and goes, you may not want to sit there. She hasn't stopped talking. about you for the last six hours. And I just burst out laughing. And they were like, you have no idea. It was so amazing what you did and watching you do the transformation, all that kind of stuff. So it turns out they were a team of leaders from Intel, which was great.

Speaker 03: 21:39

So

Dr. Laura Sicola: 21:40

dinner landed a contract with Intel. But that's where you get the exposure. So if you are someone who can speak to audiences and not just get up there and yammer, but give them an experience that makes the audience go, oh my God, that's where you want to be make them compel them to seek you out so that's been useful for me would love to get an agent I've done some research got to get to a little bit of a different point but that would be a goal and I would also love to do more groups with the senior

Kevin Yee: 22:08

level

Dr. Laura Sicola: 22:10

to your earlier

Kevin Yee: 22:12

point yeah it seems like you're in really high demand especially with TED talk and the speaking and there's a lot of things that you're doing how do you balance everything ever think about like hiring or anything like that like additional coaches or like help for your organization

Dr. Laura Sicola: 22:30

well i have a team behind me so it's not just i mean i have about four or five contractors who are you know 1099s as opposed to full employees of sorts but one's been with me for five years one's been with me for two years you know they've been they've been loyal and everybody knows their lane so it's not just me doing all the legwork and all the admin and all the tech and all So it is very important, I think, to hire people to do that. And whether you use Upwork or you use whatever other programs are out there to find qualified people, you're going to have to do a little trial and error. Not everybody's going to work and not everybody's going to stick around. But when you find the right people, oh my gosh, what a difference that makes. As far as hiring somebody to do the delivery, I have looked into it. The first real step for that would be to hire someone to do the training component because the speaking engagements, coaching and training are the three service offerings that I have. And the training programs are things where they're preset. So I can train someone to deliver my material and let them go, especially for lower level organizations, maybe nonprofits or those that don't have as much of a budget. It's like, if you want, then there can be differences in pricing. So you want to work with me, you pay this. Do you want to work with my proxy? who's also amazing, but just not me, then you pay B instead. So that helps. So that would be the next stage.

Kevin Yee: 24:03

Yeah, interesting. Okay, I love that. Another question I have for you is like, in your season of your coaching business right now, what are some challenges and bottlenecks that you're noticing that most people wouldn't be able to see on the outside looking in?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 24:20

There's so many things that I like to do. I have a little bit of shiny object syndrome. So I love doing the relationship development. I love doing the outreach, whether it's LinkedIn or email and connecting with others. The picking just one project, one rock, as it were, if you, if anybody out there uses EOS or other, you know, quarterly kind of business management systems of sorts, it is picking the one thing and just focusing and saying, this is what I'm going to work on for this quarter. Here's the outcome that I want from it. I think it was steve jobs who said one of the challenges or the main challenge of leadership is saying no to the 90 percent of the things that you want to say yes to

Speaker 03: 25:04

yeah

Dr. Laura Sicola: 25:05

and i'm definitely you know i want to say yes to everything and i have learned the hard way over the years that you can't do that because then you end up saying yes to everything but not finishing anything and that's a total waste of everything time money energy resources etc so learning to very respectfully very sadly say no to an awful lot of people.

Kevin Yee: 25:31

Well, if you're open to it, what's one thing that you have to say no recently that kind of maybe not killed you, that's too strong a word, but secretly you're like, oh man, I wish I could do that still.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 25:45

I wish I could do that. I mean, I love doing more of these kinds of podcasts. My podcast was speaking to influence communication secrets of the C-suite, which is still available. And I ran it for four and a half years, 200 and something episodes, interviewed leaders from all over the world, which was an amazing experience. And I loved doing it, but it wasn't generating the revenue that I wanted it to generate. So it was with heavy heart that I finally decided, okay, I think I need to learn to leverage it better. And if there's a way I can do that or work with everything that I've created so far, and leverage that better for revenue purposes, find out better ways to monetize, et cetera, then I can either start it over again or perhaps start a new show and V2.0 as it were. But it was really hard to come to the decision to wind down the podcast.

Kevin Yee: 26:42

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. When you told me that to like pre-podcast, like you're telling me that you used to have a podcast, I was like really curious why you shut it down. But thank you for explaining that.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 26:51

You know, you can't just click record, click stop. and then hit post, there's so much work to be done in editing and making sure it's a really good episode and the quality of the assets you produce and ensuring that, and again, I hired somebody who's a terrific lover who does all of my social media promotion of podcasts. I'm happy to share this one, of course, but much time on a podcast, it really has to pay out an order of magnitude or it just isn't worth the investment if you're going to develop.

Kevin Yee: 27:22

Speaking about investments, Dr. Lor, All right. that you remember

Dr. Laura Sicola: 27:40

yeah I think the the very first one was hiring a bookkeeper that changed everything I am not a numbers person and I was really like I tried to learn QuickBooks and I spent probably a month doing online courses and speaking with this and hiring somebody to teach and a friend came over and sat down and I just cried I don't do numbers so I thought this is stupid why am I killing myself to learn this software when I can pay somebody else $35 an hour to do it. Again, what am I charging for my time, hourly or not? I'm killing a month trying to learn something that I hate. When there's somebody out there who's going, I would love to do that for you. What's wrong with me? The first hire by far was that and best decision I ever made.

Kevin Yee: 28:36

That's your first Well, I mean,

Dr. Laura Sicola: 28:40

there's, it was definitely an incredibly smart one. I think similar to that best decision was then to hire a business coach. Because trying to figure that kind of stuff out on your own, you know, the business coaches that I hired, I've had a number over the years, and they have all been incredibly valuable. And in literally in the sense that they helped me understand my value, because again, I came out of teaching, nobody has money in teaching. So you're still looking at it from the lens of, okay, well, what could I afford? I guess that's what I would charge. I can't imagine charging more than that. And it wasn't until I, my first major business coach that I hired who came out of the world of HR and she said, well, let me just give you some insight here. You know, it's not unusual. And we're talking 15 years ago now, but she said, it's not unusual for a team to hire a trainer to come in and do $10,000 for the day. And I went, what? I think I'm missing a zero on this well thank you for that insight and stomach bottomed out in some ways because you know with your heart and your throat going can I put a number that big on a proposal and she's going yeah you can and you should because they their view is you get what you pay for now you gotta deliver value of that size but if you say if they're looking to buy a Tesla and you're saying I have a Corolla look I've got Corolla pricing They're going to say, well, then I'm assuming I'm going to get Corolla experience driving this car. I don't want Corolla experience. I want Tesla experience. So you got to change this. And so that was massively valuable. So I think that the best decision was hiring my first business coach and honestly continuing to upgrade my coaching from there.

Kevin Yee: 30:30

Yeah, I love what you said. A good coach will always kind of open up your eyes of what else is possible. And I love that story that you told What

Dr. Laura Sicola: 30:41

was your last investment that you made?

Kevin Yee: 31:08

business investment?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 31:09

I mentioned earlier EOS, the Entrepreneur's Operating System. If you've read the book Traction or Scaling Up, which are similar, using that business system, there's a lot more to it. If you're still out there as an independent person, you aren't going to need all of it, but it's still good food for thought. And I've known about it for years. I've used some principles, but in January, I hired a fractional integrator to come in and take over sort of high-level operating and ensuring that all the people understood their roles, coordinated that better. We had those 90 day rocks. We had long-term goals and to make sure that the trains were running on time and it wasn't just keeping me, you know, helping me keep my blinders on, so to speak, so that my horse was running just in one straight line. That was key. So the fractional integrator and using 90 officially. 90.io is a platform that does EOS digitally.

Kevin Yee: 32:04

Yeah. So interesting. Yeah. Like I've definitely read traction. I've definitely like have that whole suite of books and all that. Really interesting that you're implementing that right now. Okay. Worst business investment that you kind of wish you got your money back from?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 32:19

Hmm. Worst business investment. Of course I took on how to, honestly, to create group coaching programs. A lot of good information, but it didn't yield. And I'm sure much of it was user error, but it was also, I didn't really realize until I got kind of three quarters of the way through the program that it was all about how to build the group program not about how to sell it so I was sort of in the end of this program but I invested a lot of money and we hadn't learned how to sell it yet and I thought oh that's the upsell I didn't really appreciate that it was a little not exactly bait and switch but it was not made transparently clear at the beginning so all this thing that I just spent how much money to build. Then I'd spend you more to do that. That felt disintegrous to me.

Kevin Yee: 33:16

Oh, I see. Do you think you have felt as much, I don't know if the word is resentment, but like if they were upfront about it?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 33:25

Yes, frankly. Here's what we teach you to build in level one and understand that it's, that helps you be ready for this part of level two. We expect clients to go into level two. Most of them do blah, blah, blah. Here's the big, picture. Here's how it works. Then you go into it making an intelligent, educated decision, not going and thinking you're getting one thing and going under blind assumption that it will entail something else. So whether or not I would have still purchased it, I don't know. It's hindsight. But I would have made a more educated decision, and I probably would have approached the program differently had I gone into it.

Kevin Yee: 34:08

Last Last question. Last bit of advice from you. Obviously, you've invested a lot. And like I mentioned, you've been in the industry for quite a while. And so I'm kind of curious, how has your decision making process about investments changed over the years? And how do you decide what to invest in nowadays?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 34:25

There's two major categories of investment that I do. One is personal development and growth. And then one is business, much more spreadsheet oriented. And Thank you so much. extent, but it still should be the same core values and the same ways that you treat people, the same standards that you hold for yourself and for others. So the personal development has made me, I think, also a better coach and a better leader of my team. So I have to feel like there's something that I'm crystal clear on what the value is going to be in that investment. And as far as the business investment is concerned, we have to be able to discuss the ROI right away. What are the deliverables? Read the contract, the proposal. Are they concrete in saying, here's what we will do for you? Not just here's how much time we will spend and we'll work on this stuff. I don't want to know how you're going to spend your time as the final outcome. I want to know what the result of that time that you spent is going to be. Because if that's not written out in black and white, then We get to the end, and we go, what did we get from that? So I don't want to be the one, and I've been there in the past, saying, well, I thought you guys were going to do this. And then going, well, no, that wasn't technically what we wrote. We wrote this. And I said, well, didn't it mean this? And they said, no. If it was going to mean that, then we would have written that. But OK, note to self. So be exceptionally clear on the deliverables from everybody and anything that you invest in. That's the key.

Kevin Yee: 36:38

Dr. Laura, how can people find you and connect with you? What's the best way?

Dr. Laura Sicola: 36:43

My website is full of information. Would love to connect. Feel free to reach out to me there, which is very cryptic. Ready? It's laurasacola.com. But otherwise, people can reach out on LinkedIn and connect with me there as well. And I will just ask that if people connect on LinkedIn, which I do definitely invite them to do, that they tell me that they heard me here on the show with you, Kevin, the Career Coaching Secrets. It helps me to know where to connect is coming from and then I'm happy to say yes

Kevin Yee: 37:11

yeah well Dr. Laura honestly I really enjoyed this conversation something that strikes me is like you are very very clear about your different containers your different boundaries everything from pricing to deliverables and all that and I think there's a lot of lessons that we can take away from this so I just want to say from the bottom of my heart thank you so much for just sharing all your years of experience just freely with us I personally really appreciate I know our audience will too. So thank you so much, Laura.

Dr. Laura Sicola: 37:41

It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Kevin.

Davis Nguyen: 37:44

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.

Unknown: 38:08

Thank you.