From Retail to HR to Career Coach: Reinventing Yourself with Christina Whitney

 In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Rexhen speaks with Christina Whitney, founder of Rise & Ignite Careers, a licensed career coach and strategic talent leader with a 100% placement rate within 45 days. Christina shares how she built her thriving coaching business from a COVID-era side hustle into a full-time success, helping professionals navigate career transitions with clarity and confidence. She discusses the power of networking, staying ahead of HR and resume trends, and why being hands-on with clients creates faster results. Christina also opens up about her next steps in scaling her business, lessons from good and bad investments, and how she balances high-level executive coaching with helping new professionals launch


Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-whitney75/overlay/contact-info/
Website: https://www.facebook.com/CWhitney75/

Transcript

Christina Whitney: 0:00

Networking has been really good for me. I I joined um a networking group just recently called uh P for P and it's people for people basically and it's a brand new networking group. Um actually volunteer to be a director, I'm not sure why I did that, but uh volunteer to be a director um with that particular networking group, but then also join the Chamber of Commerce and getting myself out there and meeting people. Uh when people meet you, shake your hand, look in your eyes, you can hand them a business card, they're more likely to call you. Now, I did recently do something with Google where when you search me, my I my name will pop up and so will my reviews.

Davis Nguyen : 0:34

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wynne, 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 businesses 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.

Rexhen Doda: 1:05

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Suez Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Christina Whitney, a licensed career coach and strategic talent leader who helps professionals navigate career transitions with clarity, confidence, and purpose. As a founder of Ryzen Ignite Careers, Christina supports clients in landing new opportunities quickly through tailored coaching on goal setting, networking, and interview preparation, maintaining an impressive 100% placement rate within 45 days. She also works with business owners and recruiters to expand their pipelines and strengthen client relationships while crafting resumes, personal brands, and executive bias that get noticed. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Christina.

Christina Whitney: 1:53

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Rexhen Doda: 1:55

Thank you for coming, Christina. It's a pleasure for us to have you on. I wanted to look into uh at the beginnings of your coaching business. So looking into Rise and Ignite careers been around for five years and a half right now. And wanted to ask you, like at the beginning of it, what inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business?

Christina Whitney: 2:17

It was by pure accident. It was COVID. So I worked for a company at the time who had ended up filing Chapter 11. And I actually was with that company a few years after that. They actually ended up filing Chapter 11 twice and eventually closing. But needless to say, there was a big need when they filed Chapter 11 the first time. A lot of the executives started jumping ship and came to me and asked me for advice, for coaching advice, for interview prep, redo the resumes, and so on and so forth. Because it really does not matter how intelligent you are or how good you are at your job. It is an art to write a resume, right? It is an art to really express what you do and get and get it out there in a tangible way where people can understand who you are as a leader or as a person. And so that's where I began is like people just came to me and was like, hey, can you help me with my resume? Can we do some mock interviews, things like that? And I'm like, yeah, of course. And so it literally, I did that through COVID. And then, you know, when we went back to work, I was still doing it part-time for folks. And then just word of mouth, people just started saying, hey, listen, if you are looking for a job transition or outplacement services, because I work with companies for outplacement services as well. Um, you know, reach out to Christina. She's great. She'll she'll be able to help you find your job as long as you do the steps that I tell you to do, it'll be a little bit easier for you, and so on and so forth. So, and the funny story is my company really did not have a name until just recently. Literally, it was just word of mouth. People would would call me off the cuff, people would you know, would ask for help. I'd assess what they needed and put a package together for them. And so when I decided to go ahead and do this full-time, I'm like, I should probably name my company. So I named my company at that point and when I decided to go full-time.

Rexhen Doda: 4:04

We have two groups of people. One group is other coaches, the other group is audiences of coaches who we've had on the show before because they've shared the podcast episode with their LinkedIn profile and their email list. So we've borrowed some of their audience too. Which means we might be reaching out to a group of people that could be a good fit to work with you. So, how would you describe your ideal client profile? Is there a certain industry, demographic, psychographic, or are there some other commonalities that you're seeing?

Christina Whitney: 4:34

That's a really good question. So I grew up in retail. I was in retail throughout school. First store manager, then district manager, then I worked my way up into the home office in HR. I found that I'm really good at um talking to people. I'm not shy. So recruiting was just a natural fit for me. Um and with that, I stayed close to the trends, meaning uh the trends of what resumes should look like now, the trends with um interviewing, whether, you know, whether it be development-based interviews or what they look like, whether it be assessments or what have you. So I always stayed really close to the HR trends. So I made sure I stayed ahead of the curve when it came to finding talent myself for whatever company that I was working with. I do executives a lot. I do, I do handle executive transitions a lot and also executives that are looking to possibly find their final job in their niche, but maybe be moving up a step, if that makes a sense. So, you know, I've been a VP for so long and I'm ready for a CEO or or, you know, whatever. So not only transition, but people that are ready to like move up in their career and maybe they're they've hit that glass ceiling, if that makes sense. But because I did grow up in teenager years and whatever in the field, I have a heart for folks that just really want to start a career. So um I work a lot with colleges. I work with um a lot with folks that are in industries like hospitality or retail to help them discover what their niche is, create the right resume, create the right cover letters, and then show them how to navigate LinkedIn to the best of their advantage to find the job. I go two ways, right? I go the high executive route and then, but I also, like I said, I my grassroots, I also do have that heart for that person that's in hospitality or in retail or what have you that I can help grow a career as well.

Rexhen Doda: 6:20

And so how how is it like for them working with you? Is there some sort of a program of a certain length that they go through? Is it mostly one-to-one coaching or do they also have group coaching?

Christina Whitney: 6:32

So I do group coachings when I do outplacement services sometimes. So when I um what outplacement services are is a company is laying people off or they have uh due to a reduction or they're closing down, and I'll come in and I'll help those folks with their resumes, I'll help them with their LinkedIn, I'll help them with their overall, their overall internet, you know, persona, because I'm telling you what, employers are looking at not only your LinkedIn, but your Facebook and your Twitter and everything else, just to make sure that everything is good and aligned with the story you want to tell about yourself. And so I have I do do groups, but generally speaking, when it comes to clients, I work one-on-one with the client and we create a package that makes sense for them, right? So if it is somebody who's in transition, they have a resume built, but it's outdated, or or you know, their LinkedIn is really shallow, it doesn't, it's not really an extension of their resume at all, then that package is gonna look really different than somebody that I'm starting from scratch. So what we do is I just sit down, we have what's called an intake meeting, I ask them a bunch of questions, we decide what functions and what what activities they want me to help them with. And I will go all the way to like looking for jobs if I need to. If they're really just not comfortable with, hey, how do I get my name out there in the market? What do I do when it comes to preparing to look for looking for jobs? I will actually start sending them jobs and help them apply as and walk them through the steps, not just hitting the apply button, but then what to do afterwards or the aftermath of that. So we just build that package just depending on what they want. And then sometimes what happens is we'll say, okay, I want you to do my LinkedIn, I want you to look at my social media and make sure it's good. I want you to do my resume and we'll and then that's it, right? So then that's the package. Well, then as we get further along and they start to apply, we start adding on services, just depending on, you know, their comfortability, how they're feeling, and things of that nature. And that's how I've been able to keep that 100% close rate within 45 days. It's just really being in tune with that client and speaking with them on sometimes on a daily basis, but at a very minimum a couple of times a week, checking in, hey, how are we doing? How many applications have you done? Where have you applied to? Hey, let me see what your cover letter looked like so we can go through that, things of that nature.

Rexhen Doda: 8:41

Interesting. And so this next question is mostly for coaches who are listening will find this interesting. When it comes to marketing yourself as a coach or for you to find new clients or for clients to find you, have you seen any certain marketing channel working better than the others?

Christina Whitney: 8:56

So networking has been really good for me. I I joined um a networking group just recently called uh P for P and it's people for people, basically, and it's a brand new networking group. Um actually volunteered to be a director, I'm not sure why I did that, but uh volunteer to be a director um with that particular networking group, but then also join the Chamber of Commerce and getting myself out there and meeting people. Uh, when people meet you, shake your hand, look in your eyes, you can hand them a business card, they're more likely to call you. Now, I did recently do something with Google where when you search me, I I my name will pop up and so will my reviews. So I did that as well. Um, and then I think my next step at this point is probably gonna be creating, because I did this with companies that I've worked with in the past, is creating some kind of advertisement on Facebook or advertisement through Google that will hit things like Twitter or YouTube or whatever. So when people are scrolling, one of my ads might come up. But that will be my next step. I have not gone that far yet, just because just the networking piece alone and the Google has keeping me pretty busy.

Rexhen Doda: 9:58

And it actually has been the case for a lot of coaches that I've interviewed too, that networking events have seen been one of the, well, not say the main ways, but it's like just um at the beginning, especially, is a very effective way of connecting with people. And it's just like the conversion is much higher than just like the efforts you would put, let's say, in LinkedIn through content or outreach. So right now, when when looking into the future for your business for rise and ignite careers for the next one to three years, do you have any specific business goals that you're working towards?

Christina Whitney: 10:34

Well, so this is the funny thing is um when my business started to take off, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be an amazing retirement plan for me, right? I'm gonna just build it up and it, I'm just gonna do networking, and I'm it's gonna be a retirement plan for me. Well, I'm still 20 years from retirement probably at this point, and now I'm I'm diving into this full time. So um I would say one to three years, I want to, I want to have a client base of 150 plus that's continually like giving me new clients, right? So in the next three years. And so what that looks like for me is it's really just going to all those networking events, shaking the hands, and then getting those reviews in and word of mouth. And then probably in the next six months, two years when I'm gonna pro dive into probably the Facebook advertising and things of that nature. So I really want to have a rotating, every month I want a rotating 20 or so folks that I'm helping, either that or I'm concentrating on maybe an outplacement um for a company. The other thing that um I'm equipped to do is I also do trainings for companies. So I'll do sensitivity training, I will do HR training, I'll do interview training. So that just comes from my corporate background and something that I was able to kind of gain through there as well.

Rexhen Doda: 11:50

Cool. And now throughout these years of um running your coaching business, what would you say have been some investments that have been good investments, either you learned a lot or got a good return from? And what have been some investments that you would have preferred to have avoided if there's any bad investments as well?

Christina Whitney: 12:08

So I invested in um a group called Widen Women and Wealth. Um and so that was a really, really good start for me as I started to kind of pull away from the full-time job. Um, and it's basically just a group of ladies who all own their business and they spread the wealth, right? They spread the love. We meet once a month. Um, we talk about, hey, this is what's going on, this is what's challenging. Once a month, one of us will host the event, so we'll pay for the food and for all the other ladies. And it's just a really good networking event. I wasn't able to become a member of the Chamber of Commerce of Fourny. And then that, just those networking events, I go to all of those as well. I mean, I pick up a ton of clients. And I don't mean like networking events, they're meeting each other, shaking hands. I mean like galas and you know, they're raising money for somebody or something or whatever. And just in conversation, I'm able to pick up clients that way. So that's been a good investment in me. So joining the chambers, the different chambers, and then joining particular groups of people for people I can't really speak about yet because literally it's been two weeks and we we're not off the ground yet, not until October. But I did invest money into that as well. So we'll see how that goes. And bad investments. I have paid to be at a couple of career fairs that have not necessarily gone well for me. Being an employer at a career fair, right, with Cummings or Tuesday morning, I've always done really well. But being a career coach at a career fair seemed to be a little bit more challenging. And a lot of these folks, um, whether they be professionals or kiddos or or what have you, don't really understand what I do. And so those particular events did not really pan out.

Rexhen Doda: 13:45

When thinking of scaling your coaching business right now, at this point, where do you see the main bottleneck that you're trying to solve for? What is the main challenge?

Christina Whitney: 13:54

What I want the main challenge to be is for me to have so many clients that I have to hire somebody to help me. That's what I want it to be. That's what I want the bottleneck to be.

Rexhen Doda: 14:01

A good problem to have.

Christina Whitney: 14:03

Yes, yes. That is what I'm looking for, right? But right now, it is my main bottleneck, is really nailing down the client. So what happens is they'll call me and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm desperate. I need a job. Or I have got to change jobs. Christina, I can't take this. I need you to help me. And I'm trying to hunt them down, right? I'll come to you. Let's meet at Starbucks, come to me. Hey, let's meet at this mutual office space, whatever the case may be. And because they do already, because they still have a job or whatever else, it's sometimes really hard to get them to act down. So I started doing virtual meetings for that purpose because um it can, if I'm having to chase you down and it takes me two weeks to to chase you down and get the intake meeting done and be able to understand what your wants, needs, and desires are so we can put your package together, then that's just two more weeks that you're in the position that you're in, two more weeks you're not looking for a job, and two more weeks that you're not equipped if somebody were to call you. So um, that would be the biggest following for me right now. Well, I do think that my business would grow a lot faster if I did invest in things like Facebook, but I'm just not financially willing to do that at this point. Um, so I do that's that's probably a challenge for me. I'm trying to do it organically versus putting myself out there. I have recently made friends with a radio host. So maybe trading services might be a thing to look for here in the future. So that might that might be of service to me, but just doing things like that where I can still get, you know, kind of organic customers without investing a ton of money at this point, at this stage, not until I am like I told you before, it's either fuse or famine, right? Either I've got 20 customer, 20 clients, and I'm trying to get them all done in a certain amount of time, or I've got two. And after I'm done, I'm kind of like, okay, so now what? I'm out networking, right? I would say that that's the main ordeal. Cool.

Rexhen Doda: 15:56

Uh well, thank you so much for sharing that, uh, Christina. And uh for um my final question is um when thinking about scaling, since that is something that you want to do too, you want to be able to uh further grow and scale within your business so that eventually you can retire from this business. And now for those coaches who want to scale their impact, is there any advice you'd like to give to them? And it could be an advice you give to yourself, essentially.

Christina Whitney: 16:25

So um number one, I would definitely invest in um getting certified, right? So get getting certified, it makes a huge impact on your on your business and on your um disability as well as your credibility. So I would say that that would be the number one investment that would impact your business for yourself. I mean, other other than that, uh stay ahead of the trends because if you're not ahead of the trends, because resumes change yearly. I'm telling you, one year they want it this way, the next year our recruiters are looking at this way. Now we we have AI. So what's happening is all these resumes are being run through um the artificial intelligence and all the and all the resumes with the buzzwords in them are floating to the top. And those are the ones that the employers are calling, and all the ones that are not properly put together, have or too complicated or don't have the are ATS friendly, those ones are buried, right? And so it's our job as coaches to make sure that they're that we invest in stuff that makes sure that their resumes are ATS friendly, which I did, which I have, and you know, fee even free things like chat GPT when you're first getting started is amazing. So if you can't afford to to invest in something that you where you can run a resume through an ATS system to see if it's an ATS friendly, chat GPT is free. Use that to try and help scale your business and and kind of impact the uh gravity of what you can do. But you've really got to stay ahead of the trends. You have to read like all the HR stuff that you have to kind of know what's going on and you have to know where to pivot and be able to pivot quickly when things change.

Rexhen Doda: 17:56

Thank you so much for coming to our podcast. For anyone who wants to connect with you or find you.

Christina Whitney: 18:01

So I'm in the process of building my website right now, but they can always email me at rise.atnight at gmail.com right now. And then that email address will change once my uh website is finished. So that would be another way that they can get a hold of me as well. And then, you know, via phone. If you go to LinkedIn, my phone number is visible. If you click contacts, my phone number is visible. Call me.

Rexhen Doda: 18:22

Thank you so much. Uh uh, for coming to our podcast. And yeah, it was a pleasure to have you on the show.

Christina Whitney: 18:28

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.