Turning Expertise Into Impact: Robyn Hatcher on Standing Out as a Coach

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Rexhen sits down with keynote speaker and communication strategist Robyn Hatcher to explore how trust drives success in the coaching industry. Robyn shares how her 20+ year journey evolved from acting and ESL teaching into executive coaching, leadership communication, and keynote speaking. She explains why referrals remain her strongest client source, how embedded company partnerships fuel growth, and how her new group coaching program, The Impact Lab, helps leaders accelerate transformation.

They also discuss why podcasts are becoming powerful marketing tools for coaches—building credibility and connection before the first conversation. Robyn opens up about challenges in a saturated coaching market, the importance of demonstrating ROI, and the growing need to stand out through trust and thought leadership. She also shares impactful business investments, from AI note-taking to client platforms, that have streamlined her work.



Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robynhatcher/overlay/contact-info/
Website: https://robynhatcher.com/

Transcript

Robyn Hatcher: 0:00

Especially for coaching, like for the training, you can do a lot more outbound marketing. But for coaching, it you're right. It is about trust. And if somebody trusts you, they may hire you, but otherwise. And and then I just spoke to a friend who hired her coach because she listened to his podcast. So that's another marketing channel that I haven't explored. But I do know a lot of friends of mine who have podcasts are able to fill their coaching pipeline because people have listened to them and they feel like they trust you because they listen to you on a daily basis. So that's an also another great marketing tool.

Davis Nguyen : 0:36

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: 1:08

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Sewards Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Robin Hatcher, a high-energy keynote speaker and communication strategist who turns workplaces into raving fun cultures and professionals into superstar communicators. So I know for the editor, I'm going to read that again, just uh I made a mistake there. Again, today's guest is Robin Hatcher, a high-energy keynote speaker and communication strategist who turns workplaces into raving fun cultures and professionals into superstar communicators. A former soap opera writer and actor with a love for brain science, Robin blends storytelling with practical tools so even skeptical audiences lean in, laugh, and level up. Her mantra, own it while you own it, anchors her magnetic leader drama-free framework used by a hundred plus companies across 300 plus talks and trainings. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Robin.

Robyn Hatcher: 2:12

Thank you, Regin. Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Rexhen Doda: 2:15

It's a pleasure to have you on. I wanted to ask you about your beginnings. And in your business, I know it's not all about coaching. Our audience is, or let's say the the podcast that we do mostly do focus on coaching, but we can talk about the rest of the business as well. I know it's been closer to 23 years with Speak, etc. Wanted to ask you like initially, what inspired you to start this business and then later on also add coaching into it as as part of it.

Robyn Hatcher: 2:45

Yeah, yeah. Wow, 23 years, that's kind of scary. I I started this business because well, I started off teaching English as a second language as well. You know, as an actor, I wrote for soap operas, then I started teaching English as a second language. And what I realized is that I loved helping people communicate better, you know, and I was teaching English, but then I realized that I was teaching them grammar and all the sentence structure, but I really wasn't teaching them how to communicate. I wanted them to like feel comfortable going into a grocery store and ordering something or having a conversation with a with a native speaker. So I developed my own public speaking class that focused on them learning how to operate and role play and have job interviews and have debates. So and that was my start in teaching public speaking. Then I started teaching it to native speakers, then I started teaching it for leaders because I got involved with a leadership development company. And as I taught it to leaders, I started developing other other aspects of the communication lens, you know, how to be a better leader through communication, not just public speaking, but one-on-one interpersonal communication. So that led me to doing the workshops and the trainings that I developed, and then eventually the keynote speaking. And um the interesting part was as I would teach these workshops or do these keynotes, people would then say, Can you work with me one-on-one? So that's how all three of those pieces come together.

Rexhen Doda: 4:11

Cool. And when it comes to the people that you work with, how would you describe that ideal client profile? Is it of a certain industry or certain demographic or psychographic? Do they have some common goals or other commonalities?

Robyn Hatcher: 4:25

That's an interesting question. I don't I'm not, I'm sort of industry agnostic, although for the last 20 years I've been doing executive coaching for a city agency that deals with child welfare. So I deal with the managers and the assistant commissioners whose job it is to is to handle all these people that are dealing with the foster care system or dealing with abuse cases or dealing with all sorts of child welfare. So there's that aspect that I've cultivated a lot. So human services. But then I'm also doing higher level executives in other industries. Like I work for the electric company in my city, I work for a global industrial company doing one-on-one coaching. I work with some financial services individuals. And I feel like the most the common denominator, I think, is people who are very high potential, but have a challenge with interpersonal communication and leadership. So that's my sweet side. I have a reputation being for being able to actually turn people into this 180. You know, it's like you started off here having really poor communication skills, and I can take you to another level where people really enjoy being with you.

Rexhen Doda: 5:46

Cool. And um wanted to ask you, marketing-wise, have you seen any marketing channel work a little bit better than the others for you? Is there any primary marketing channel?

Robyn Hatcher: 5:56

Well, marketing-wise, unfortunately or fortunately, because a lot of my coaching is referral. I'm either in the company already and they choose me to work with their executives, or um, there are people that know me. And I was just, I mean, just so I and I also do a lot of LinkedIn marketing. But I was just at a conference where people were saying if you're relying on referral sources, you are relying on very unpaid, unsophisticated, untalented, untrained individuals because that's what you're doing. You're dealing with people who are not trained to be in sales. So those are referrals. But fortunately it's worked out for me at this level. But as far as the other marketing, sometimes I will do like a free session, a free executive forum to bring people in. I share things on LinkedIn, like I said, and all the other platforms. But yeah, that's that's the extent of my marketing at this point. Cool.

Rexhen Doda: 6:51

And it has actually, for many coaches that I've interviewed, has been the case where the referral network is been the main thing, the main channel where they've gotten people.

Robyn Hatcher: 7:02

Right.

Rexhen Doda: 7:03

Is because that conversion-wise is better because people that trust you are referring to someone else, so that person is most likely to work with you rather than someone that found you on uh online. Yeah.

Robyn Hatcher: 7:17

Exactly. Yeah, especially for coaching. Like for the training, you can do a lot more outbound marketing, but for coaching, it you're right. It is about trust. And if somebody trusts you, they may hire you, but otherwise. And and then I just spoke to a friend who hired her coach because she listened to his podcast. So that's another marketing channel that I haven't explored. But I do know a lot of friends of mine who have podcasts are able to fill their coaching pipeline because people have listened to them and they feel like they trust you because they listen to you on a daily basis. So that's an also another great marketing tool.

Rexhen Doda: 7:55

Absolutely. And for the next one to three years with your business, do you have any specific business goals that you're working towards though?

Robyn Hatcher: 8:03

Business goals. Yeah, one of the things I love, like I have a couple of companies, I said at least three, that I'm very embedded with. So I do coaching for them, I do training for them, I do some keynote speaking for them. So my goal is to add on several more organizations and companies so that I can really go deep into their workforce, you know, like do their trainings and then from the trainings do the coaching. And I just put together a group coaching program, which I am offering to organizations, which is a great way because a lot of times one-on-one coaching is terrific and I love it. And at the same time, what I noticed is that people can learn from each other. And so a group program that I'm um laying out called the Impact Lab, it will have cohorts of between six and fifteen. And I will give all of my great coaching, and at the same time, they can learn and and get inspired by their colleagues to uh and I feel like you can move faster that way sometimes.

Rexhen Doda: 9:03

Absolutely. Yeah. And so right now when when thinking about the growth and and these goals, what would you say is the main and again we focus on the coaching, but we could talk about the the rest of it as well. What would be the main challenge or bottleneck in that?

Robyn Hatcher: 9:20

The bottleneck is and always will be, I think, identifying the need that you actually are fulfilling so that you can get people where they recognize the need and then want to act on it. You know, because so many times uh that we know the value that we bring, but it's not always communicated in a way that shows that there is a return on the investment working with us. So that's is the challenge. It's always been the challenge, and another challenge is that the market is now very flooded, and so people's trust level is a little down, you know. Like how do I trust that I first of all they have to you have to identify that they need you, then they have to identify that they trust you enough, and that you have to identify that the investment is going to yield a result that is going to make a difference in their lives. So those are ongoing challenges, but it's there, yeah.

Rexhen Doda: 10:18

Yeah, especially as as the coaching industry continues to grow, there's gonna be more and more coaches. That is a challenge that um well and especially with coaches, there's a lot of trust required when working with a coach. Even after you've hired them, there's still that trust that is needed for the relationship. So it makes a lot of sense. I also wanted to ask you about investments over the last few years. What would you say have been some of the investments that you feel really good about, either you learned a lot or got a good return from? And what have been some investments that you don't feel so good about or you wish you had avoided? And these could be investments of time, money, or both.

Robyn Hatcher: 11:03

Right, right, right. Uh well, I just came back from the conference that I mentioned. There's an organization, or is what is it? It's not an organization, it's a group called Bold House. And it's run by a woman named Angela Ruers. And what her whole program is about is helping coaches and consultants earn work in the corporate market. And she does an excellent job of that. So all of her conferences are just like full of really important, relevant on-time information. So that's always a huge investment. Just going to her conferences is enough to like fill your brain for a year and give you a year's worth of stuff to do. Um, I've also invested in I'm like one of those shiny object queens, you know. So I've invested in more software than you can name. But but one of the ones that I like is like for there's this coaching platform that I use called client.io. And so that gives me an opportunity to have all my coaching clients there. I can put my notes there and I can put downloads there, all this stuff. So after every session, then I can just send them an email from that system that tells you everything that I that I do. Uh the other thing that I can't live without now is that now that Zoom has does the the uh note taking, you know, the AI note taking, that's been a lifesaver because I'm a terrible note taker. So I would have these coaching sessions and I want to send them back like, oh, this is what we talked about, but I forget or I can't read my handwriting. So now having that has been a huge uh benefit to me. You know, it's like of course you have to read it for through first because every once in a while it'll make up something in the conversation that did not happen.

Rexhen Doda: 12:51

Yeah.

Robyn Hatcher: 12:52

So I have to realize that um I have to write that up. But that's been great because what I do is I take those notes, I read them through, especially because I give you the action items. I immediately send it off to my coaching client right after our session so they can read it through and understand what they need to do next. Yeah. And some of the other shiny object things I can't even remember because some of them like some of these video things. Okay, but yeah, those are the ones I would notice the most. Yeah. And and of course, ChatGPT has been a lifesaver.

Rexhen Doda: 13:25

Yeah, and I'm wondering when is it gonna be for me that I do a podcast episode where AI is not mentioned as well.

Robyn Hatcher: 13:31

You almost did it. I know, I know, but the big thing is AI is not going anywhere, you know.

Rexhen Doda: 13:37

It's just expanding.

Robyn Hatcher: 13:39

Yeah.

Rexhen Doda: 13:39

It's getting better and better, which is a good thing. Uh there's nothing wrong with AI. It's been helpful uh for so many things that we cannot do. Just like making notes, for example, you mentioned a very good point. There's no way that as humans you could do that better than the AI.

Robyn Hatcher: 13:56

Right.

Rexhen Doda: 13:56

It's just like you cannot be that fast, otherwise, you're not gonna focus on the conversation.

Robyn Hatcher: 14:00

So it's just like yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rexhen Doda: 14:02

It is a beautiful thing, yeah. And wanted to ask you, and this is the final question for the coaches who are listening that want to scale their impact. And in a way, you're also making a bigger impact with your speaking, with your coaching. Is there any advice you'd like to give to these coaches who want to scale their impact?

Robyn Hatcher: 14:21

Scale their impact, meaning in a way that they would bring in more clients or just have a bigger impact in general?

Rexhen Doda: 14:28

In general. Yeah, not just yeah, not just revenue, basically.

Robyn Hatcher: 14:31

Yeah. And I I feel like one of the things that's really important is to take yourself from being a coach to being a thought leader. You know, because I'm sure that everybody has their own methodology, their own passion behind it, and their own reason for doing it. And I feel like by leaning into that either it either by short videos that you're doing, articles that you're writing, newsletters that you're posting, all of that to be the thought leader that is talking about either the passion or your story behind it, I think is one of those ways that you set yourself apart from being just a coach to being a thought leader who is actually invested in helping people be better at life.

Rexhen Doda: 15:17

Thank you so much, Robin, and thank you so much for coming to our podcast. For anyone that wants to connect with you or find you, they can go into LinkedIn, look up Robin Hatcher, they'll be able to find your profile. And if I'm not mistaken, there's also the website RobinHatcher.

Robyn Hatcher: 15:35

Yes, and that's Robin with a Y if you're listening and not reading.

Rexhen Doda: 15:38

Robin with a Y. Yeah. We'll put that in the description as well so people can find that easily. But yeah, thank you so much, Robin. It was great to have you on the show.

Robyn Hatcher: 15:47

Yeah, great to be here. Thank you so much.

Davis Nguyen : 15:49

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. 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 join purplecircle.com.