Purpose Meets Profit: Lessons from Entrepreneur Trish Higgins

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Trish Higgins, Partner at Chenmark and a passionate advocate for building businesses that blend purpose with profit. Trish shares her journey as an entrepreneur and investor, leading a family of small businesses focused on long-term growth, people-centered leadership, and operational excellence. From navigating the challenges of scaling with intention to redefining what success looks like in modern entrepreneurship, Trish offers grounded, insightful advice for purpose-driven leaders.

You can find her on:

https://mtnlac.com/

trish.higgins@mtnlac.com 

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

Transcript

Trish Higgins: 0:00

It's more about what they need. It's not about what I need to tell them, what they need to work on that day. Every coaching process or a call that I have, I start off, tell me about what you are working on and where your biggest issue is. And then we dive in there to help them come up with the solution to be able to move forward in a productive and efficient way.

Davis Nguyen: 0:28

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.

Kevin Yee: 0:59

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Trish Higgins. She has been a coach for 10 plus years and is also the founder of Mountain Leadership Advisory and Consulting. Welcome to the show, Trish.

Trish Higgins: 1:13

Thanks, Kevin. Thank you for having me.

Kevin Yee: 1:16

Yeah, it's a pleasure. One of the things I'm just always really curious about are people's origin stories, the beginning, the lore. And so how did you get into coaching and turn it into a business?

Trish Higgins: 1:28

Way back in the 90s, I was actually focusing on I was a stockbroker and hated it. I ended up, I did not like the fact of starting over every month. I liked building relationships and realized that type of sales was not for me. I ended up then moving on to a retained search firm where what we did is we looked for people in investment banking. So I stayed into the same industry, but worked with everybody on Wall Street in mergers and acquisitions, private placements, asset back securities, and loved the environment. But once again, it was instead of the beginning of the month, I was always also starting over at the beginning of the quarter. And what I didn't like about retained search was you never were able to find out how the people were doing that you put into those jobs. The placement happened, you moved on. At that point, I went into HR, I started it within the tech.com, working for a firm, um leading recruitment, and found out within six months we couldn't pay our people. So I said, let me go to a bigger company. So I went to the biggest one out there, GE, at the time. It was early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s, and really was able to establish myself more in a corporate environment. And that's when I started seeing my wants come to life being on the corporate side of the house. And over the years, working in different areas of HR, if it was HR operations, talent acquisition, or even just doing generalist work, it was helping people be better in their roles, what they needed to do. Sometimes it's like, I'm sorry, but you need to leave. This is not your environment. Or they came to me before it was too late, and then it became a lot of fun talking about the development areas that they needed to work on to get to the next level. And now I'm working with a lot of directors, senior directors, sometimes even senior managers, to help them get to the VP level and how you need to change, because that's a really pivotal time, where only 6% of directors get to the VP level. So that's how it has morphed over the years. But it's always been about servant leadership and helping people do what they need to do and develop the areas they need to develop.

Kevin Yee: 4:22

That's really interesting. And how do these directors or senior directors like kind of find out about you and all that in the present day?

Trish Higgins: 4:30

Sometimes it's podcast LinkedIn. I do a lot of marketing that way. It's adjusting my marketing, finding out what's working. Something that was working this summer may not be working now. So it's always adjusting and moving and yeah.

Kevin Yee: 4:46

And for the LinkedIn side too, do you currently have a team, a social media team, or are you kind of solo on that?

Trish Higgins: 4:52

I'm solo. Uh my goal is to be able to build the clientele. I get I usually deal with about five clients per year right now. I want to move that to 10 to 15 so that I can then focus on it 100%.

Kevin Yee: 5:08

And as you reflect on your journey, what kind of like challenges or have you kind of noticed like either right now or previously when it comes to finding clients? Like what kind of challenges have you encountered?

Trish Higgins: 5:19

The economy is very interesting right now. Nobody knows what's going on. It's one of the hardest hiring economies. So people are being very careful in how they spend money and where they're going. Um, a lot of people are just desperate to keep their jobs where they're at now.

Kevin Yee: 5:39

How have you been kind of dealing with it? Like have you been changing the topics that you talk about on LinkedIn? I'm kind of curious about that.

Trish Higgins: 5:45

Well, I've done webinars and then at the webinar end of the webinar is when you do the more of those sales calls. Since about August, though, the attraction to the webinars has been slower. So now I'm developing more of a product to download, where you download for free, and then the marketing comes in again to just set up a call for next steps.

Kevin Yee: 6:07

Okay, so you're doing things on LinkedIn, you're being on different podcasts, the senior directors are finding you. I'm sure people are raising their hands wanting to work with you. And so I guess, like, what does a current coaching engagement look like for you? Do you do mostly like one-on-ones? It sounds like it right now.

Trish Higgins: 6:23

I do. I focus more on the one-on-ones. I will do calls in the evenings, on the weekends, whatever works for the other person as well. With that, it's some of the focus areas that we focus into is influencing is a big one. Being able to communicate and read your audience, being able to storytell to the audience so that they will hear you and they won't turn you off. I mean, there's some people who just want high-level facts, and that's it. Let's move on and get it done. Another person may like a whole story that you really have to warm up to and express your vision on where you want to do, get them on the bus, and then drive away. It's almost like a longer sell, per se. And then other individuals, you need to come with your facts, your data, and everything else and get into that. And it's being able to recognize who you're speaking to and the storytelling that you need to do to be able to influence them.

Kevin Yee: 7:36

Sounds like this has been an iterative process over the last like 10 years or absolutely.

Trish Higgins: 7:42

It's always about learning, but what's more important is sharing with other people to make them better.

Kevin Yee: 7:49

When you actually work with these people too. You mentioned that you help them go through kind of people and you help them understand what they're doing. How is that not how exactly do you do that, but what's the typical methodology that you kind of bring people through a coaching process?

Trish Higgins: 8:04

It's more about what they need. It's not about what I need to tell them, it's what they need to work on that day. Every coaching process or a call that I have, I start off, tell me about what you are working on and where your biggest issue is. And then we dive in there to help them come up with the solution to be able to move forward in a productive and efficient way.

Kevin Yee: 8:32

And after doing this work with like several clients over the years, are there any stories that come to mind of major transformations that you've helped deliver?

Trish Higgins: 8:39

I'm working with the COO right now for a tech company. And she is in the capital raising phase of the business. But we talk about who she's going to be on the phone with. What do you know about them? What is their background? You've had calls with them before. What is your purpose for this call? Really prepping her for these capital call uh conversations. I've also helped her build out her senior leadership team. And with that, there was a situation where she didn't have the right person on her team. It was helping her recognize it, what the problem was, and how to influence her other partner and getting on the same page, they ended up moving on without this person. So that was huge.

Kevin Yee: 9:34

As you reflect on stories like this, what's the most rewarding part about this job for you?

Trish Higgins: 9:38

When somebody says to me, Oh my god, you are so much help to me. Thank you. That's it. It's making their life easier. So many have battled. You know, I battled on the way up. Just I had to figure it out on my own. And to be able to help somebody else out with my experiences, my knowledge, the research I've done over the years in leadership. And then you look back on what leaders you've had and how you would help them going forward if you had the opportunity. Because you know, there's so many bad leaders out there. People don't leave companies for title, for jobs, for money. They leave them because they're managers stink.

Speaker 4: 10:25

Period.

Trish Higgins: 10:25

They don't feel respected. So I've worked with managers and saying, hey, you have a new team. How are you getting to know your people? What are you doing to get them to the next level? What are your plans for them? And they're like, a lot of people go, I've never thought of it that way. Because if you help other people get recognized, they're gonna work harder for you.

Kevin Yee: 10:51

Yeah, I can definitely see that. And it's interesting because in the beginning of your story, you mentioned something about you didn't like the whole the transactional nature of your previous career, but you're really essentially helping these people like build better relationships with an entire organization.

Trish Higgins: 11:08

Exactly. It's about when you're in a leadership position, you always have to lead up if it's your CEO or if it's the board. You have to lead across, you have to be able to influence across. So if you are the I don't know, chief supply officer, you need to within operations, you need to work with the logistics, you need to work with those at the manufacturing level, and then you have to manage down as well, which is your own people, and you have to be the type of manager you want to be or you want, and everybody says, I want a hands-off manager. No, you don't. You want somebody who can lead you, give you kudos, get other people around to know what you have done, and that's what you have to do for your people.

Kevin Yee: 12:00

It seems like the work that you do is quite intimate. You're helping people navigate these conversations, and I think earlier you said that you take five clients per year. So, how do you think about your current client capacity? How do you manage it? I guess. I know you have a certain cap, but I guess like how have you uh thought about your client capacity over the years?

Trish Higgins: 12:21

The clients that I take on, and I should say, you know, when I said five, it's working with five at a time, not okay. So with that, I pick clients that want to improve that are dedicated to it, that want to put the time in and the investment in themselves. Not somebody that says, my boss says I need to get a coach. They're really not in, they're doing it to check a box, not because they really want to invest in themselves. I've also worked with companies that say we want you to coach this person. And my question is always, why? What's in it for you for me for you to pay for this? Well, we think we need to manage them out. I won't coach that person. It's already done. They've already made the decision. If they say to me, this is an up or come up and coming person, they have put together so many projects, but they're not very good at XYZ. Can you help them? Absolutely. Let me have a call with them and then I'll let you know if I will work with them. Because there's a lot of people that like to work in their little corners and they're happy in their corners.

Kevin Yee: 13:32

I think that's an important point about coaching because a lot of times, like, people think that they can just throw a coach at someone and things will just change. There has to be a bit of intrinsic motivation versus like extrinsic, like, if you don't do this, we'll fire you. No one likes that. No one wants it, makes a bad uh coaching relationship for everyone, it seems like. Now, I did want to ask you too. One of the things that a lot of coaches struggle with are things like pricing strategies and stuff like that. One of the special things about career coaching is like, since there's a promotion, there's usually a higher, like there's some sort of financial benefit, specifically in career coaching. Of course, you don't have to give any hard numbers, but how do you think about structuring your pricing? Have you kind of headed toward hourly packages, value-based, retain? There's so many different models out there of pricing. So, what have you kind of gravitated to only?

Trish Higgins: 14:25

So I know what I can bring to the table. I don't give it any guarantees ever, because if I was coaching you, Kevin, for example, if you don't do the work, it's not my problem, that's your problem. I do not do it by hourly. Um, it's always about the package itself and what they're trying to accomplish. For cost-wise, it depends on is a company paying for it, is an individual paying for it, where are they at in the food chain? Somebody who's a high pot or thinks they're a high pot, and once they're at the associate level or manager level, I'll coach them. It's not gonna be as much as if somebody were at the senior director level. My answer to you is it all depends.

Kevin Yee: 15:13

I see.

Trish Higgins: 15:13

You know, are they out of work? Are they looking for a job? I'm not gonna charge them as much. I try to get them a job, they get into a role, and hire me at the levels that I usually charge.

Kevin Yee: 15:27

How often do you take those clients? Like, uh meaning, like, let's say if they're in between jobs, right? Because I think some coaches would think like, oh, there's an opportunity cost of just finding like I talk to a lot of different coaches. Some are just like, I just look for the half the game is like client selection, right? And finding the like clients. But then I meet some other coaches who are a lot more phil uh I can't ever say this. Like kind of philanthropic? Yeah, philanthropic. Yeah.

Trish Higgins: 15:53

Well, again, it depends on the client itself. It depends on the type of job they're looking for. Are they looking for a job that I'll help them now if they can help me later? But if you're a manager and looking for another manager job, I see not that it's self-serving, but I'm looking to build a company and not give away freebies all the time. So right now working with somebody who's in the healthcare industry, it was a hostile takeover. They didn't give them any type of severance package, they didn't even help them with outsourcing or you know, any of that. She's a senior director who leads teams of a hundred. I helped her. She'd been in this role for 15 years, she hasn't looked for a job in 15 years. I helped her.

Kevin Yee: 16:42

That makes a lot of sense.

Trish Higgins: 16:43

And I liked her. I really liked her. She was a super nice person, and I liked her. I wouldn't do that for somebody. I was like, meh.

Kevin Yee: 16:53

Yeah, that's the other part I was like, I was wondering about. It's like, oh, how do you make that deserve? And it sounds like, okay, uh, the personality match and all that as well. Something I also think about is okay, we've talked about the impact of your work and why this work means so much to people. I guess I'm curious about your future goals. Like, where do you kind of want this coaching business to take you in the next few years? I think you did mention earlier that you're thinking you wanted to grow up more, but do you have like desires to hire other coaches, secret dreams, big ambitions no one knows about, will love to hear about the future.

Trish Higgins: 17:28

When I was growing up, I was lucky enough to have a grandmother who gave me a full ride scholarship. My father actually passed away when I was in high school. I went to a private high school. I considered I continued going to that private high school. I went off to college. She gave me a full ride scholarship through that. When the time came around to, you know, get married. I was very clear with my husband. We're paying for our kids' schools. Period. End of story. When that time came around, the cost of schooling was a lot more.

Speaker 4: 18:06

Way more.

Trish Higgins: 18:07

Way more. I have two daughters. One went to University of Florida engineering, so she did not work during school. She was working during school. Didn't receive her engineering degree. She's a scientist now. She makes fabulous money. She's flying all over the world doing testing for completely biodegradable products that are gonna save the world. Did I know she'd end up there? But and then I have another child who went to school at University in Maryland and is now still at University in Marin, Maryland getting her law degree. She is paying for her own law degree. I said I would take care of the undergrad. You guys gotta figure out what you need to do to do what you want to do. But with that, it wiped us out. It really wiped us out. So, not that we're broke or anything, but our goals for our life and our retirement, that's where I'm focusing on, to tell you the truth. I want to be able to work around the world or wherever I am in the world and help people and continue doing what I'm doing on a full-time basis.

Kevin Yee: 19:21

Well, first of all, thank you for just sharing that and so one moment about that. I feel like these truths like people tend to shy away from, need to be need to be shared a lot more. And yeah, just thank you for sharing that.

Trish Higgins: 19:34

And by the way, yeah, while you know, we were able to pay for our kids' schools, I also went through stage four cancer, survived it, and have had to survive being out of work for five years in the middle of that, just trying to get back on my feet. So there's been a lot of outlays over the years.

Kevin Yee: 19:58

As you think about those like situations that have happened in your life, what are some big challenges that you're still facing now from those moments?

Trish Higgins: 20:06

I think the biggest challenge is, you know, the the medical ones were the worst. I did know I probably use my influencing skills more so in convincing their accounts receivable departments to that two days before I was supposed to start chemo and radiation, they told me I owed them X dollars paid up front because my insurance wasn't taken at this certain cancer center. So I've been influencing and dealing with change management for years, more so than other people. I was just given opportunities to do it, and I was lucky enough I had the skills to do it. I got through it. So I think one of my greatest strengths that I can pass on to other people because of all of these aspects is resilience and how in the morning when you don't feel like getting up, oh, get your butt up, get it done. People tell me I'm a really good cheerleader for other people. I can motivate very well.

Kevin Yee: 21:10

Which leads me to the thing too. Sure, there's a side, I can see the side of you where you do kind of want to build something for retirement as a lifestyle business, right? But is there also any desire there? And it's totally cool if the answer is no, but to build like more of an imp even a bigger impact by hiring, like, by hiring more and stuff.

Trish Higgins: 21:31

Or is that I already know who I will hire. I have a list of people that I will hire. I need to get the client list up first to be able to do that though. I will not have anybody stop what they're doing or focus on an area that will take them away from their current lifestyle per se. It's just a matter of building the business.

Kevin Yee: 21:52

Last question. It's kind of a fun segment. Tricia, I'm sure you've gotten a lot of advice throughout your business career. Some of it good, some of the bad, some of the solicited, probably a lot of it unsolicited. So this section is called overrated, underrated. I'm very curious about like what's the most overrated piece of business advice that you've gotten so far, and what's the most underrated piece of advice?

Trish Higgins: 22:13

I think the best piece of advice I received was keep learning. Never stop learning, never stop honing what you do or what you can do for people. And the most underrated is my inbox. I get emails every day from people I don't know that can promise clients. And no, they can't. I can build the list as easily as they can. I learn, like, for example, recent learning is how email marketing, building list, getting the list, getting warm people. Oh, I can get you that list right to your email box in two minutes. No, you can't, because you don't know what I do. And two minutes is don't tell me two minutes. No, you can't.

Kevin Yee: 23:02

You really say two minutes?

Speaker 2: 23:04

No, you can't. You don't know who I am. You're not doing any type of intake haul. You're just scamming off lists.

Kevin Yee: 23:11

When you say keep learning, let's draw a smaller circle for that. Meaning, like, what is one thing that you've learned that has really, I guess, like led to the 80-20 principle, the 20% that leads to 80% of the results? Like, what's one thing that comes to mind?

Trish Higgins: 23:27

It's not going on to Amazon and figuring out books you can read and do them, and that's a waste of time. It's making sure you're surrounding yourself with other people that are successful in what they do. And super successful people are always very good at giving tips. It's about listening. And so often they say, I read this book when I started. Or have you heard of this podcast? But surrounding yourselves with people that you want to be like and continue to look into what they think, if they're studying it, it probably means you need to as well. And I didn't say that very well. You can ask any successful person, what are you studying now? They'll tell you. Sometimes it's about cooking, really, who are you following? Where did you hear about them?

Kevin Yee: 24:26

Yeah, that is so underrated. Like, you know, when I was learning sales a long time ago, I used to ask some of the people I always looked that I looked up to. I was like, hey, who are the sales people that you look up to? It doesn't have to be sales. What are the influences that you have?

Speaker 4: 24:41

Right.

Kevin Yee: 24:42

One of the people I I went to, he was like saying that actually, Kevin, like I get a lot of my inspiration from therapy, like from therapy, actually, because they have to sometimes challenge without triggering the other person's ego and stuff like that.

Speaker 4: 24:57

Yeah.

Kevin Yee: 24:58

It's through those insights where like I get to learn the origins of their thinking and stuff and get closer and closer to first principles thinking. Trish, last question for you.

Trish Higgins: 25:07

Okay.

Kevin Yee: 25:08

How can people find you and connect with you?

Trish Higgins: 25:11

I have a website called, well, it's mtnlac.com, and my email is Trish.higgins at mtnlac.com. Please reach out to me. Consultation is always free. And it does include a coaching session.

Kevin Yee: 25:32

Trish, as I look at my really bad doctor handwriting, I used to be. There's a few different things that are sticking out to me. How we think our lives will play out typically takes a different turn, and that includes your children as well. And I see this theme of relationships too. Like of cultivating relationships, being developing really great listening skills and all that. Also, like your story about really pro like your grandmother providing for you in your school and continuing that tradition and how much you sacrificed. And it really pulls out the heartstrings. And it just makes sense that you're like back into coaching and why you want to like do the coaching that you do because of the impact. It really changes people's lives. Yeah, sure, you help them get better jobs, but it's a process of that transform to go. So Trisha, I just want to say thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for just coming on to the podcast and sharing your wisdom with me. So thank you for spending your time.

Trish Higgins: 26:30

Kevin, thank you for the time as well. It was really nice just answering your questions and moving through this time together.

Kevin Yee: 26:37

I appreciate you.

Davis Nguyen: 26:38

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 join purplecircle.com.