How to Lead with Confidence and Clarity with Hope Yin

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Hope Yin, a passionate career and leadership coach who helps professionals and leaders elevate their performance, navigate career transitions, and unlock their full potential. With a background spanning corporate leadership, coaching, and personal development, Hope shares her insights on building confidence, leading with authenticity, and creating meaningful impact in one’s career. Tune in as she discusses the power of self-awareness, effective communication, and intentional growth in shaping a successful professional journey.

You can find her on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hopeyanlingyin/ 

https://www.blueprint-coaching.com/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/blueprint-coaching-hope/ 

Transcript

Hope Yin: 0:00

Yeah, so in the beginning, as I mentioned, you are starting something new. It's never easy to take the first step. I remember that when I was first starting to coach people, I have an alarm on my phone. Every evening, eight o'clock on my local time, I would remind myself that I am a powerful executive coach.

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. 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, go discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Kevin Yee: 0:56

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Hope Ian. She's the founder of Blueprint Coaching. Been a coach for over six years. Welcome to the show, Hope.

Hope Yin: 1:07

Hi Kevin. Nice to be here with you.

Kevin Yee: 1:09

Yeah, it's great being here with you as well. One of the things that I'm very, very curious about is your origin story of how you became a coach and what made you want to turn it into a business.

Hope Yin: 1:20

Yes. For me, I have to say that it's almost like an accident. The reason I'm saying that is six years ago I was already a leader in a Fortune 25 company, but my friend Joy is attending a coaching school and she invited me as a guest to attend a weekend program for leadership development. As a leader, I'm always interested in leadership development programs. I was like, yeah, it's a weekend, it's in Chicago, it's free for me. Of course, I'm gonna spend some time with my best friend. I didn't know. After the first day of training, I'm like, this is the stuff that I've been looking for my whole life. I have to be in. I have to enjoy myself into this coaching program, which is eight months long. And I really found that attraction from the program. So my life got transformed through the eight months. While I was still in the middle of the eight month, I'm like, why is not everyone hearing this message? I want to share this methodology, the coaching benefits with other people. So I established my coaching business. But because I was still working as a leader in technology, so I was doing my coaching part-time during my evenings and weekends and never looked back. That was one of the best investments that I did to myself and in a way to the world.

Kevin Yee: 2:52

One of the things I'm very curious about is like the coaching experience was really, really great for you going through that coaching training. But everybody talks about target audience or ideal client profiles, right? After you did this training, how did you decide who you wanted to help and what do you help people with?

Hope Yin: 3:09

Oh yeah, so that would be a long story. As probably just as anyone else, in the beginning of the coaching business, I didn't know that I want to focus on just a group of people. I was like, everybody needs to know about this, right? But gradually I figured actually I want to coach the people who are change makers, they are driving, they are driven, they're career professionals, and they want to make an impact to the world. But gradually I settled down on coaching women in technology and allies. The reason that I chose that is because me myself belong to that persona. I worked in technology my whole career. So I have witnessed challenges, the obstacles, the frustrations for a woman to be successful in technology, which is still a very male-dominated industry. And the reason that I also include allies is because I know we can't do this alone. We need to work with everyone who advocates for us. So now, after a few years, actually, I settled down on women in technology and allies.

Kevin Yee: 4:26

I'm really curious too because I'm not a woman, right? And so I'm kind of curious what are some of those hidden challenges that maybe people like myself wouldn't be aware about for women in tech.

Hope Yin: 4:37

Oh, thank you, Kevin. I really love to share the unique challenges that we face. Let's set along that I am an immigrant. So the challenges I had was language, was cultural. Let's set that aside. Just say women in technology, it doesn't matter which your race, your age, first of all, majority of us, we may choose to have a family. Which means that we're going to do two full-time jobs. And to this day, we still have women doing more household chores than men on a daily basis, two hours. So if you think about you want to succeed at work, but also you want to raise great children or have a good family, and you kind of have that constant tension between the two. But also, if you think about in technology, if the senior leaders are men, guess who are around them? And we promote people who are close to us, who we trust, which is understandable. I do that too. But if we are not having access to the people who are at the table making decisions, then that's our challenges. So there are many other challenges as well, but those two things to me are the biggest challenges.

Kevin Yee: 5:54

And so I guess one of the things that I'm also very curious about is like, okay, if you're helping women and allies in tech, how do people typically find you? What kind of like marketing or like, yeah, how do people find out about your coaching services typically?

Hope Yin: 6:10

Yeah, so in the beginning is like now you're building a new persona of not only your technology leader, but you're also a coach. So you got to let people know you're doing this. And so you start with your close circle, your own community, the people that you know that you're doing not only that, but also this. But I am also very active on LinkedIn because I want to share my journey, I want to share my lessons learned as a leader. So I share those articles and advice or suggestions so that I add value to other people. And once someone goes through my group coaching or one-one coaching, they would refer me to other people. And the other way I do is I intentionally networking through conferences. I speak at conferences so people know my services, and I also make connections just in general, organically, people know that's what I'm doing, and they will introduce me to their companies to speak to coach.

Kevin Yee: 7:18

As you reflect on your journey so far, what are some challenges that you have gone through and currently kind of go through when it comes to finding clients right now?

Hope Yin: 7:27

Yeah, so in the beginning, as I mentioned, you are starting something new. It's never easy to take the first step. I remember that when I was first starting to coach people, I have an alarm on my phone. Every evening, eight o'clock on my local time, I would remind myself that I am a powerful executive coach because I need that self-assurance that I have enough to coach other people. But once you overcome that hurdle that you are skillful, you truly need to think about coaching. It's not just oh one-one coaching, I'm gonna help you overcome your challenges and limiting beliefs. It is a business. When you think about business, what do you need to do? Kevin, as you mentioned, you need to go attract clients, right? So the challenges would be how could people know about you? What kind of brand do you have? How you are communicating your brand, who knows about your brand? And it takes time, it takes patience and takes strategy. But we know Rome is not built in one day, so we need to be patient as well as being intentional.

Kevin Yee: 8:44

What does a coaching engagement look like for you? Do you do mostly one-on-one coaching, group coaching, organizational trainings? Would love to hear kind of like your main offerings.

Hope Yin: 8:55

Yeah, all of the things you mentioned. So I do all of those as a part of the coaching funnel. I also do public speaking. Public speaking is more about information sharing, but also embed coaching questions and during the workshop. All the things you mentioned is going to the organization, coaching their leaders. I offer group coaching myself and people who are willing to sometimes pay out of their own pocket because they want to become a great leader and their companies may or may not pay for them. But it's an investment in yourself. And I also do one-on-one VIP coachings with the senior leaders.

Kevin Yee: 9:35

Now, I do want to go back to some of the challenges that you mentioned earlier, right? What is your methodology for helping some of those challenges that women are going through in tech that you mentioned earlier?

Hope Yin: 9:45

During the coaching conversation, you would be surprised at how many people would cry during our session. And I always tell them that sometimes they say, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm crying. I don't know why I don't do this in front of my own family, I don't do this in front of my coworkers, but I'm crying in front of you. It's because I offered a safe environment for them. It's because I wasn't judging them and by expressing the empathetic feeling, understanding of their challenges, and I led them to think about. Sometimes as women in technology were so analytical, we're solving problems, we're so data-driven, we forgot about what's in our heart, and we kind of suppressed those feelings. So a lot of times it's walking through and talking through, but I absolutely ask a lot of questions for them to think. During a one-one coaching is more about they are talking about what's in their mind, that spaghetti in their mind. When I asking questions, that spaghetti becomes more and more clear. And often there will be action atoms at the end. But I also ask them often what did you learn about yourself? And that question often gave them more awareness about their own abilities. They actually have all the answers. They just need someone to hold a mirror in front of them to say, hey, look, you do know the answer, but you know what? You do have broccoli in your teeth. So let's clean that up.

Kevin Yee: 11:22

And so when these women have like this mirror in front of them and they're able to kind of self-discover, like with your container, right? You guiding them, when they start to resolve these like challenges over time, what kind of results do you notice happen? Like what are some of the outcomes that you've noticed over time?

Hope Yin: 11:40

So a lot of the women, including other people, whether they're women or not, they have the sense of being stuck. We know a lot of times that we have to do what the company told them to do. Maybe they're working with some manager that they don't really love or like, but it's hard to find another job. I'm so stuck. So through the conversation, quite often they will realize that well, maybe I'm not in an ideal situation, but I have a choice to make myself happy. I have a choice to leverage strategies, I have a choice to work with other people, to build nice, kind, loving relationships. And other times it's about their own family, their relationship with their partners, their relationship with teenager children, which I went through all of that myself. Basically, really challenging as part of our life, right? How do you be mindful about what your choices are, how you're responding to the events happen to you, and open up their mind to see other choices.

Kevin Yee: 12:53

So much of the work that you do is very impactful. It's super, super impactful. It's the meaningful stuff that we feel in our hearts. But one of the things that a lot of coaches really struggle with, especially listening to this podcast, is like how do you price that? Because so much of that value is very subjective. And so, one of the things I would love to ask you is your thoughts about pricing strategy because this is where coaches struggle the most. And so when you think about pricing, you don't have to give any hard numbers by the way, but when you think about pricing, how do you go about pricing it? Do you think about like packages? Is it value-based? Do you do some sort of retainer or subscription? There's just so many different ways to package it. So, what are your thoughts about that? What have you gravitated to?

Hope Yin: 13:36

I was challenged by that as well because in the beginning, like I said, I had to set an alarm, telling myself I'm a great coach. So, how can you be confident about asking the price? So, in the beginning, my price was really low. It's like maybe I'd better go to do a cashier job. No, I'm just kidding, it's higher than that. But it's like undersell our services, right? But gradually, I also do research, I talk with other coaches how they are pressing, and then I realized you know, we're not selling our time because you cannot say this is my hourly charge. We're selling our wisdom, our experiences. It takes my whole life to accumulate such wisdom. So, pretty quickly, I was able to double my price, and now I'm asking for five times my initial price because my initial price was extremely low. I think in the end, it comes back to you want to do some research about what's the average market value for a coach, whatever your area is, and also think about how much experiences you have, right? You can't say, Wow, the highest price is this, so I'm gonna ask for that. Well, is it realistic? But also do not undersell your wisdom, your experience.

Kevin Yee: 15:00

Knowing what you know now, let's put this into a game, right? Since you are charging five times your initial price, is there anything that you would do differently to get to that 5x quicker? Or would you just start charging that 5x like off the bat? Is there any advice that you would give yourself?

Hope Yin: 15:15

I think it's a natural process. It's almost like Hansat 2020. But if I do it again, I probably would still not ask for the price I have now because for the past six years I practice my coaching skills, I get better and better, and I will continue to adjust my price tag. But I think it's a natural process to test the water to be comfortable about the value you're adding. But I would say that if you feel scary, probably that's the right price.

Kevin Yee: 15:52

So we kind of talked about kind of like the journey of your clients. But one of the things I'm also curious about are your personal future goals. And so I guess where do you want this coaching business to take you in the next few years? Do you have any like secret dreams, big ambitions no one knows about, desires to scale? We'd love to hear about that.

Hope Yin: 16:11

Well, I am an open book. I try to be an open book. So last year, when I retired from the corporate world, left my technology executive job, which paid me really well, to step into this coaching role full-time. I do have ambition. My goal for my life purpose is mission is to impact, supporting women in tech and allies. But I have that goal in front of me so I can see it every day. But I have more than that. Coaching and speaking in front of them. But also, I am in the middle of writing a book as a part of the periphery offering. And for the next three years, my immediate goal would be 10 times what I have done for 2025, which is my first year full-time. I want to be able to scale that 10 times with the support of other coaches, which I spent hundreds of hours for this year to build a scalable system.

Kevin Yee: 17:18

As you are thinking about, I think the word that you used was like 10 times what you're doing this year, right? As you are trying to scale your impact, what are some challenges that you're noticing in this season of your coaching business right now? What comes to mind?

Hope Yin: 17:33

Yes. So the challenge is when I think normally when the coach first started, it's a solo business, and I am transitioning from a solo preneur to hiring other people. I already have an assistant working for me. So I think a constant challenge for anyone would be to think about how you can delegate. How can you be intentional only doing the things only you can do? So if you look at your calendar, are you doing the things only you can do? If not, find ways to delegate the other task to other people.

Kevin Yee: 18:12

Okay, I think we're moving into our next segment. I would like to play a game with you, Hope, if you're open for it.

Hope Yin: 18:19

Alright, so let's have some fun.

Kevin Yee: 18:21

It's through the lens of business investments because as you know, a lot of coaches they invest into things like coaching for themselves, training, marketing, team members, a lot of different things, right? Like every other business owner. And so one of the things I love is just getting stories from people. So what I'm gonna do is ask you four different props, and you just tell me the first thing that comes to mind for you, okay?

Hope Yin: 18:44

Okay. First of all, I am not good at playing games, but let's try it.

Kevin Yee: 18:50

It's a storytelling game. You can't mess up with it. So first business investment you remember.

Hope Yin: 18:56

Well, I think going to coaching school itself is a big investment for me. At the time, I was a single mother. I was raising two children all by myself. I was paying mortgage, car loan, and college tuition. So I have to make a decision. Do I invest this or not? And this is the investment I never regret.

Kevin Yee: 19:18

Last business investment you made.

Hope Yin: 19:20

Last business investment is actually a certification through giant worldwide platform. And this is once I certified, I can then have about a thousand other coaches speak the same language. That was allows me to scale. I'm very happy that in August I passed the certification. Now I can scale the business, so I'm very excited about that. So I think in summary, as coaches or any other professionals, we have to be intentional about continuous learning and investing in both our coaching skills as well as the business development.

Kevin Yee: 20:03

Best business investment you made. And these can overlap, by the way.

Hope Yin: 20:06

I think I am going to overlap. That coaching school is the best investment that ever.

Kevin Yee: 20:12

Yeah. You did allude to it earlier in the conversation too. So yeah, perfect.

Hope Yin: 20:17

You're smart.

Kevin Yee: 20:19

And worse business investment that you kind of wish you got your money back from.

Hope Yin: 20:24

I don't think I have a choice of that because for me, investment is return of investment, right? That's how we evaluate whether an investment is worth it or not. But I would say as long as the return is bigger than my investment, it's a good investment. Maybe not as big as my coaching school that it returns so much. So I don't really have any that I think is a bad investment, but will I do it again? Maybe not.

Kevin Yee: 20:55

As you're reflecting on all these investments, how has your decision-making process changed in what to invest in and what not to invest in over the years?

Hope Yin: 21:04

I love that question. I think in the beginning as a coach, I felt like, oh, I need to learn that skill. I need to learn that coaching skill. It's more about skill building, but then I have to intentionally remind myself I have enough coaching skills. After the eight months of coaching school, spent 500, 600 hours of learning and coaching and practicing. I have enough. But even after that, I enrolled other coaching programs to learn new skills until I realized that I need to transition my focus into more business development.

Kevin Yee: 21:42

Last game that we're gonna play, hope, is called overrated, underrated. As a business owner, you probably get a lot of both solicited advice and probably unsolicited advice over these last six years. And so I would love to hear what is the most overrated piece of advice that you've gotten and what's the most underrated piece of advice that you've gotten. I would love to hear about that.

Hope Yin: 22:04

As a coach, it's important to listen. A lot of people believe that as a coach, your main job is to asking empowerful questions, but to me it's more about listening and observing. If you have facial expression change, then I'm going to ask you, Kevin, I just noticed that your face all of a sudden becomes sad. So what happened? So I think observing your coaches' body language is equally important as asking powerful questions. So maybe that asking powerful questions is overrated. Underrated advice. I think this is a mixed message. Uh you hear people who say you gotta have a niche, you gotta be focused. You also hear people say you can be a journalist. And I tried both. In the beginning, I was a journalist. I want to coach everybody because I really care about everyone. But then gradually I focused on my niche of coaching women in tech and allies. From my personal experience, I feel the focus really allowed me to make decisions quicker and faster. So my personal opinion might be that I would recommend people to continuously find what gives them the most energy, which is finding that niche.

Kevin Yee: 23:36

How can people find you and connect with you?

Hope Yin: 23:39

So I am very active on LinkedIn. So if you go to LinkedIn, search for Hope In and PCC, you will find me. But also check out on my website blueprint-coaching.com. I have many resources such as AI list and books I read. I also maintain a blog on my website. Yeah, connect with me. I would love to have conversations with anyone.

Kevin Yee: 24:05

Yeah, thank you for today. I hope because some of the things that stood out to me were kind of like challenges that women and allies in tech that are happening at the moment. Your story about how you kind of 5x your price over time was really insightful. And also that last part, too, I think the overrated piece of advice that people talk about where it's like we should really observe or listen way more. It's not always about asking powerful questions, even though that is very impactful, but sometimes very, very underrated. So I just want to thank you today, Hope, just for coming in, sharing your experience, and sharing your wisdom in the work that you do. So thank you for coming on to the podcast hope.

Hope Yin: 24:48

Thank you, Kevin. You did a fantastic job.

Davis Nguyen: 24:51

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.