Helping Professionals Navigate Career Transitions with Anika Fisher

 In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Rexhen sits down with Anika Fisher, learning and leadership strategist, DEI consultant, and certified career coach. Anika shares her path from education and HR into coaching, resume writing, and corporate training. With over 15 years of global experience and more than 3,000 hours of facilitation, she explains how she helps professionals—especially women and people of color—navigate career transitions, beat applicant tracking systems, and land roles in top companies. Anika also opens up about balancing her 9-to-5 with her coaching practice, the power of LinkedIn, making smart investments, and why clarity must come before scaling.


Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikafisher/

Transcript

ANIKA FISHER: 0:00

Absolutely. I think I was trying to figure out how to package a response to something like this. And it is clarity before scaling. But you have to understand you got to make a few mistakes and you got to try a few things before you know what clarity looks like. So kind of forgiving yourself as you were trying to determine. My example, like writing all these resumes, but except the thing is some people can write, they just don't know what to put. That took me so many hours of writing before I learned that. So a little bit of Welcome

Davis Nguyen: 0:31

to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevate Hey everyone,

Rexhen Doda: 1:02

welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regan, and today's guest is Anika Fischer, a learning and leadership strategist, DEI consultant, and certified career coach who built people-first, culture-forward programs that drive both business performance and meaningful change. With over 15 years of global experience, Anika has designed and facilitated more than 3,000 hours of training on emotional intelligence She has led enterprise-wide learning initiatives, AI strategies, and onboarding programs across sectors, building empathy and data to deliver measurable results. Anika is also a certified professional resume writer, competitive speaker, and accomplished facilitator who integrates emotional intelligence, cultural fluency, and strategic planning into everything she does. It's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Anika.

ANIKA FISHER: 2:04

Thank you so much. Again, send me that write-up that you did. I love the way you placed what matters and what I do.

Rexhen Doda: 2:12

It's out of your LinkedIn page, so I didn't make anything, but I'll send it your way. I just kind of gave it a spin for the podcast too. But I wanted to learn more about your beginnings as a coach. So it's been around six years and a half since You started

ANIKA FISHER: 2:35

your coaching business, right? facilitating the workshops that you're talking about and just found that those breaks in between the facilitated moments and the assigned work that people were asking me these questions. I've never been afraid to tell kind of my real story, regardless of what the work was. And so, yeah, it's a unique combination of kind of now this learning and development, DEI work, and then thinking of that even through the HR lens. A lot of people in my life, whether it is meeting them at the gym, meeting them intentionally for social gatherings and especially networking across the country. People want to know how I present the way that I do. And so it ends up being this coaching conversation. My official title at the time, the first time that I was named a coach was actually through a boot camp called General Assembly. So being able to work with someone for 12 weeks, whether they were a teacher or the gardening, the gardener, excuse me, at the Home Depot and now helping them be a X designer, but then placing them at Invesco or an Amazon within six months. So that was where I was able probably for the first time to really prove and not just under certification that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. So for sure, being identified on my own as someone who naturally does this, but then kind of getting that affirmation in pay that this is just a natural thing that you should be giving to the world. And so seeing everybody have their spark moment just from a conversation with me, that's one of those things that just And

Rexhen Doda: 4:32

is this right now something that you're focusing your full time or is it something that takes part of your time?

ANIKA FISHER: 4:39

Part of my time. I still definitely have a corporate nine to five job and definitely in the vein of what you have shared in my intro. I do regularly people facing work, anything that is building culture from changing what we offer, you know, inside of the building to making people feel accommodated in their work. remote work at home. And so I definitely would say it's a part-time thing. And a lot of people, a lot of times what happens in terms of how I get interaction in this way in the part-time side is that corporations will identify me through LinkedIn, or I'll have written a resume for someone and then they're telling someone else. And so most of the time, that's how I end up in a situation where part-time, five to nine is very important, just like my nine to five is.

Rexhen Doda: 5:29

Yeah. Interesting. And so I wanted to ask you when it comes to the ideal client profile, because we might have the right people listening as well, how would you describe it? Is there a certain industry or a certain specific market demographic or psychographic that you typically serve?

ANIKA FISHER: 5:44

No, I'll say that I typically attract like, right? So a lot of my clients will end up being women and of color and then folks who are transitioning. Because like I said, I went from being in education to moving into a nonprofit to facilitating into ed tech and now tech. And so I tell that story all the time. I mean, blue in the face. People know that I've changed my career on my own and in the industry more than three times and doubled my salary more than three times. And so I think once people hear that, they want to know. I can say based off of service, a lot of times people will reach out to me. A lot more males reach out to me for just the writing. A lot more females will reach out coaching, a lot more businesses find me because of the way that I present on LinkedIn.

Rexhen Doda: 6:34

And what is it like to work with you? How would you describe the engagement? Is there some sort of a program of a certain length? What is it that people go through with you? Is it one-on-one coaching or is there also group coaching?

ANIKA FISHER: 6:45

Yeah, so definitely one-on-one. And I should say, even when someone comes to me for the resume writing specifically, we're going to have a conversation. I find that some people believe that they are a little pony. Nothing's wrong with either one of those, but it's a good way for me to get a temperature. And so I would say even that becomes a coaching instance. And then that moves them into one-on-one coaching because I believe if I write for you, I need to show you how to use that document in the job search world. And that is exactly what I used in terms of the formula, the way that I situated numbers based off of disciplines, even at the general assembly space. And so what it's like to work with me is very high energy. I tend to ask people And most people are not expecting that very next question because we all just answer, right? We say, I'm fine. It's great. And so I really want to hear because that helps me understand where we're going with things today. And especially for folks that I end up doing writing versus a workshop for, what is the audience? What are you as the audience now as an individual going through? Are you having trouble with a difficult manager and you need to exit? Are you returning because you took some time off to care for a family member? That context helps me understand where we're going with things today. me know who I'm talking to. And so what energy to bring 100%. You've probably heard of StrengthsFinder. My top skill every single time, and I've tested multiple times, is the maximizer skill. You could not present to me just your name and a couple of bullets and we don't walk away with like the very best polished thing that there could be. Because I don't think it's about just having a document to get you through to the next thing. I think we need to look at this as like, how do we maximize your potential? And then just like I want to build a legacy for myself. I want this to be the next step and you build in yours.

Rexhen Doda: 8:33

And since we're at the resumes as well, what do you think is like a common mistake that people still make in their resumes that kind of like ruins it for them?

ANIKA FISHER: 8:43

The misunderstanding of what it is and who's going to be reading and writing it. I mean, right now, today, everyone needs to be able to beat the bot. And that does not mean that you are writing yourself exactly as whatever's in the job description, but you should know that you're letting going to be scanned. So I think it's the simple thing where if you were a teacher and you're looking to go into some corporate space, you probably shouldn't call them students. You should probably call them participants or clients. And so once people hear like, oh, this is just a reframing, then they feel a lot more confident that they actually have the skills to apply for more jobs. I would say that's probably the easiest misunderstanding and people don't tailor to the job. I also, in my role, I do talent acquisition. So if I'm looking for someone who is let's say in CS, if you're in customer success, but your resume doesn't say that to me over and over again, even if you beat the bot, now you're in front of a person. So how do you speak to a person through a resume or a cover letter or your LinkedIn? And so I think people sometimes misunderstand that it is very important to make sure that you see yourself as you would like them to see you as well. You're likely to move forward faster if you can create that alignment between all of the things.

Rexhen Doda: 9:58

So interesting. So the There's still people that struggle with the ATS, right? That's not something that has gone away, even though there's tons of templates out there. But actually, there can be also templates that put you more in trouble than actually do any good.

ANIKA FISHER: 10:12

Yeah, I still say as much as people love design. And by that, I mean, you know, purple curves and all of those things. That was such a good idea when we were handing resumes directly to people.

Rexhen Doda: 10:26

Mm-hmm.

ANIKA FISHER: 10:27

you're going to do much better with something that has got a good amount of white space, because again, it's going to visually present to a person at some point. And when you are not stuffing it, a lot of people don't like to let go of some of those bullets because they think, oh, this is so important. It was at that job.

Rexhen Doda: 10:43

And

ANIKA FISHER: 10:44

I think sometimes, you know, what people are missing is just that direct eye contact that people have when you put quantifiable data there, percentages, numbers, dollar signs that immediately move someone's eye across your document and that's truly what you want. I could guess if you wrote that you were a cashier what you did, but did you do something faster than everyone else? Did you do it in a different way that the company has never seen before? And so I just want, when I have the conversation about how to use the document and even to formulate it, that's what I'm after. It's like, tell me the story so that I can tell the story. And then if we're in the coaching space after getting your document ready, how do we talk about this story together?

Rexhen Doda: 11:23

Interesting. And that makes a have common bullet points that everybody has. You want to have something that makes you special and tells your story. And another thing that could be a myth, but I just wanted to confirm it with you is that a lot of people, and I don't know this because I haven't been in the market for a while, but when it comes to having the image or not having the image, is that actually a bad idea or a good idea for the bot?

ANIKA FISHER: 11:47

Bad idea. Your best bet is to start from something that's just, I mean, even tables could be trouble for it. And one way that people can tell this is when you submit and you know you have to go retype everything that's on your document if the bot doesn't place correctly what the content is then your document is telling it to do that it's probably because you have some table five columns of bullets that's too much for it to read and know how to put in different places so i say please don't put images at all unless it was requested that you design the document please don't do that because you're just you're missing your chances. If this were a submission where you know you're going to hand the document to a person, say large job fair or at your school or a big conference, like some tech conference. In that, yes, show a little design. But once you're submitting digitally, it's just dangerous because the bot cannot read those tables. It cannot read those.

Rexhen Doda: 12:48

Cool. Thank you. Thank you so much, Anika. And so right now, when looking at your coaching business, I know you're part-time, but looking to the future, for the next one to three years, do you have any specific goals in mind? Are you thinking of like maybe going full time or is that something?

ANIKA FISHER: 13:05

Yeah, for sure. It's in my head all the time. I would say in terms of what's next for me is most certainly a digital product. And I don't know exactly the direction, but it always feels like how do I get on paper the thing that I keep repeating some of that information. So one of the services that I offer, even on the resume side, if I believe that you are, a consummate and competent professional and that you can write this document. You just might not know what to write or what to change. I screen record and I talk through every single line of what I think you should do. I'll show you templates and all those things. So that's one way that I've kind of already advanced the resume writing side of my business. But on the coaching side, it is somewhat time consuming. I'm very much a teacher student in the one-on-one. So what I would like to happen next is to move into small group coaching so that I can have two or three people in the same room kind of going through my steps at the same time. And that is just borrowed from my experience being, of course, in the facilitation space, running fellowships and cohorts and things like that. And with General Assembly, I think people don't realize how much they learn from hearing someone else's story or hearing me give feedback to someone that they needed. And so I've seen that happen over and over where we might be talking about the resume spot or we may be on the LinkedIn portion of the coaching program. And I'll give the feedback on your resume live screen in the screen for everyone. And folks were like, I didn't even think of that. So I can just tell that it's yes, less time consuming for me, but it is also giving an impact that they wouldn't have had because it's just the one-on-one versus maybe a three to one or a five.

Rexhen Doda: 14:47

Interesting. And also wanted to ask you like right now, I think about the business in its own, you did mention some of the challenges as well with your your time, especially with the one-on-one. But what would you say is kind of like the main challenge that in a way right now is holding you a little bit back from going full-time or is that not, it has nothing to do with the actual career coaching business?

ANIKA FISHER: 15:11

Well, I am being recorded. Honestly, it's the nine to five. I think that people who are looking to transition completely out, you know, I was told to this by my own coach. You should see the people at your nine to five as funders. They're going to fund your dream. And so I think getting to a certain point that makes you comfortable, it's, you know, depending on your lifestyle, right? How many people live in your house? Are you the breadwinner? All those things matter. And so I think that is probably the thing for me personally in my life where I don't, I can't do it full time. But I have looked very seriously at how do I do this? And I did this at the top of the year, the first half, getting a virtual assistant. So very helpful with the outreach to get clients. I mean, there's the response time. And so I think once people know this is the best product, best of the products that I can offer or services, and then how to do that in a repeatable, scalable way that is not so taxing, I think that that's the genius. It seems safe to say, but let's go ahead and bring in AI. Folks who are looking to scale or looking to have some assistance on the side, if this is how they do it, it would be wild to me not to have some kind of AI involved in your processes, even if that's create the template that I use to do outreach for clients. If you do outreach, I'm having trouble with scheduling. Here's my schedule. Where are the best pockets for me based off of my own energy? And so I think once people realize what AI is and what it is not, you have an assistant right there. And so that's probably why I've been able to move some things so quickly in terms of just bleeding out an idea as opposed to just having it, writing it on paper, changing it, going to have the conversation. It's more, here's what I've come up with. How can I fine tune this? These are my goals. So I think once you learn that, then for me, like I said, it'll move things a lot faster.

Rexhen Doda: 17:08

Absolutely. And actually, we've also seen coaches that we had on the podcast that have utilized AI, for example, ChatGPT to create GPTs that are trained by the coach to do certain things so that the coach is not always responding to the clients for little things, right? Not actual one-on-one coaching, but like there's some back and forth that happens that AI could take care of and free up your time and you sell it together with your other package that you have. So yeah, packaging it, just like you said, is also very important because just like you mentioned, there's many things that you're doing in repeat that could actually be a package.

ANIKA FISHER: 17:49

I think that I had used it for was, I know my services and my pricing and all that, but it was like, I need to create a PDF that I can easily send out. I don't want it to be overdone. Maybe that's just the clean style that I prefer, but being able to use an AI to say, hey, here's all the information that you have of mine. I would like you to help me come up with a one pager that helps me sell this service versus this one versus another. Or I'm looking for a way to organize things with clients. Here are the ways that I use. This is my process right now, which between Notion or Trello or whatever the system is, do you think is better for what i do so i think having some kind of reflection and response in that way and you can't it's not a person you can't necessarily trust it doesn't have business insights but it can help the way you might be overthinking or overperforming and just help you simplify things so you can make the best deal for sure um ai helped me to see that i think it was above 70 percent of clients that i have are resume writing clients and this was last year So to know that, I thought, okay, I need to focus here. And then to also be able to say, no, this is how I want to spend my time. It can also help with a little bit of that, even identifying podcasts. If I wanted to find more podcasts, it would probably help me do that if you knew how to do it. I say AI as a partner. I absolutely say do not use AI to write your resume. Please don't do that. But I definitely think it can be a partner if you know how to use it and you're thoughtful about why you need some assistance if you can't necessarily do this well, even if you are doing it full time. I can still see it being a big partner. And you're right about the GPTs. I know people who've created some of those. And even in the folks that are my network on the talent acquisition side of what I do, we talk about it all the time. And so you're absolutely right that there's just so much utility to what it can do. And it can ease you into choosing the product that is best so that you're being fulfilled while helping others get to the next step.

Rexhen Doda: 19:54

Absolutely. And I want I wanted to change the topic just a little bit and go to the investment side of it. You mentioned that you've also had hired an assistant at some point, but when thinking about investments that you've done in your coaching business, even though part-time, what have been some investments that you feel were good investments you either learned a lot or got a good return from? Could be investments of money or time or both. And what have been investments that you would have preferred to have avoided if there's any of those?

ANIKA FISHER: 20:22

Yeah. Okay. So the good ones were was fortunate enough to get a grant. I know that that's not something folks naturally think of in terms of how do I fund, but I definitely got a grant that allowed for me to do my academic P&P work through Georgia Tech. And that was an investment that if I had come out of pocket would have been around 13K. The reason that that's important is because it helps me to see different aspects of my business as projects. So we may not be building a building, but we are building something that we need to know what is the true scope of this how much could this cost when we run into time challenges how do we meet those so I'll absolutely say that's one that was thumbs up I use it even for planning vacations so it helps in a lot of great ways the second thing would be the coaching and resume writing certification it gives people a way to trust you yes there are lots of folks who do these things that don't have certifications and I don't think you necessarily need it but it just creates buy-in for people automatically to know that you have done the work to get to that point. So I would say those, and then the networks inside of them is unmatched. There's too many people that you meet, too many LinkedIn groups and things like that. The challenging investments would honestly be when you attended maybe a conference that wasn't really as fruitful. You weren't meeting the right people. That's happened to me a few times. So I guess These are mostly time. I try to go to a networking event every other week at minimum. And so sometimes finding in those spaces, this is not necessarily the place for my skill or where I'm going to go and learn the things that I need to learn. Challenging investment would be also, you know, maybe paying for every 2.0 level of everything that you use. You might not need Calendly's paid version, but then you're paying for it. You might not need, you know, Linktree's paid version. But then you pay for it. And so I think, again, not knowing what you need to change to advance your business, but then paying for all of these types of subscriptions, that stuff adds up. And so I have found that to be challenging at certain points financially, where it's like, oh, wow, now I'm paying for this. I'm paying for Loom. I'm paying for all of these things that you don't necessarily need. But that was a very earlier, much earlier on when I was not as solid in what my services were.

Rexhen Doda: 22:53

And yeah, you could easily spend a lot of money on tools that you use maybe a week and

ANIKA FISHER: 22:58

then and the ones and even being very being able to evaluate like do you stop and then go look at what's important because you don't necessarily need and i love this service loan i love it i love that tool but if you have zoom it also screen records

Rexhen Doda: 23:15

yeah

ANIKA FISHER: 23:16

i think sometimes you know when you're very early on you don't have as much money to invest like if you're getting up and using that money to put right back in you're probably not making as much so i think learning that the hard way was probably where you know you thought you needed all of these like i said 2.0 3.0 paid versions of something and you really didn't so yeah and even subscriptions on tv people know this now you can have netflix hulu hbo prime and all these things and the next thing you know you're you're watching something and it's like oh this is available on prime and hulu and you have both subscriptions so just comparing that to your regular like you said the five to nine life and you can get caught up pretty fast

Rexhen Doda: 23:54

yeah because these things happen up eventually. They seem cheap at the beginning. You're like, I'm just spending $10 a month on this. It's not going to be a problem until you have a hundred of those. So yeah, thank you so much, Anika. The final question I wanted to ask is for coaches who are thinking of scaling their coaching business, and you probably will go to that stage as well when you move in full time. I'm thinking about coaches that are driven by impact too. So coach is who want to scale their impact. Is there any advice you'd like to give to these coaches? And it could be a future advice you give to yourself.

ANIKA FISHER: 24:32

Yes, absolutely. I think I was trying to figure out how to package a response to something like this. And it is clarity before scaling. But you have to understand you got to make a few mistakes and you got to try a few things before you know what clarity looks like. So kind of forgiving yourself as you were trying to determine. My example, like writing all these resumes, but except the thing is some people can write. They just don't know what to put. That took me so many hours of writing before I learned that. So a little bit of compassion, understanding that, again, clarity before scale, both of those things take a lot of energy and time. Try out the things, but sit there and evaluate whether this is the best you can offer. Like I say, while you're getting people to where they want to be, is it helping and fulfilling you? Knowing that it's always going to be a transformation, it's just not going to look the same. I can say that the writing, the resume writing and And the facilitation I was doing before the pandemic looked way different. I was even at a point of being scared to open my LinkedIn inbox because so many people were losing their jobs during the pandemic and needing help. And I felt like I couldn't help them all. So I think that those are some of the things we have to really be able to wrestle with. I would say collecting that client experience. And I know it's a strange thing for some people very early to ask, can you give me a statement or can you write me a review or something like that? But what they're saying about you is data and it should be able to tell you this is where you're having an impact on someone's life. And so I would say definitely investing in how you collect the client experience. A lot of people would say brand that that's really important, but I don't think that people understand brand doesn't necessarily mean just, you know, purple and lilac are my colors. Brand means like, what do people say about you when you come around? How many people remember you? How many referrals you're getting? Things like that. So being known for whether it's consistency or very insightful information, that's also part of your brand. And because the other stuff I think sometimes scares people like, oh, I don't have that. I don't have anyone writing, making one pagers and things like that for me. So I would say that and the repeatable system part that can take the energy out of what you do. It can remove passion very quickly. So I'd say be sure about the repeatable systems are that you use before you start experimenting. expanding and getting like really you know big know what you have to do on your own know what like we talked about an AI can do for you know what if you had a virtual assistant they could help you with and finally just like not chasing everything every opportunity is yes try and I said that in the beginning every single opportunity is not for you or it may not be worth um the prep that you're doing to get that you know speaking gig maybe you have to do so much prep to even get in front of them that now you've done the work and then they don't choose you. So I think it's being deeply sure about the opportunities that you take. And when you're not sure about something, being very open about what it could be later down the line.

Rexhen Doda: 27:38

Thank you. Thank you so much, Anika. Thank you for that amazing advice. And for anyone who wants to connect with you or find you, they can go into LinkedIn and look Anika Fisher. They will be able to find your profile. And is there any other way that people can connect with you?

ANIKA FISHER: 27:56

Yes, I have everything on my LinkedIn. So services, babes, Linktree is there. I do prefer that we schedule some time to chat. Not because whether you're my little pony or the unicorn, it's fine. But I like FaceTime. I think it's the easiest way to build a relationship or decide if you want one. So I would say definitely my LinkedIn, my email is there in public. So if anyone wants to contact me, I'm a regular checker of those.

Davis Nguyen: 28:22

Thank you. Thank you so much. That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit joinpurplecircle.com.