"From Burnout to Breakthrough: How Heidi Schalk Built a Six-Figure Coaching Business"

In this inspiring episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Kevin sits down with Heidi Schalk, a former stay-at-home mom turned six-figure entrepreneur and agency founder. Heidi opens up about her journey from burnout to breakthrough, sharing how she rebuilt her business through resilience, mindset, and purpose. She discusses the real struggles of coaches building visibility, the power of investing in yourself, and how she now helps others grow through her done-for-you visibility agency.

Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidischalkcoaching/
Website: https://heidischalk.com/

Transcript

Heidi Schalk: 0:00

A lot of our clients are actually coaches. It's interesting. We we we would be to be, but we have a lot of coaches that are clients. And one of her biggest struggles is her social media. You know, she can work with her clients, she can do well for them, but she has a really hard time getting visible and promoting herself. And us as an agency, we are all about visibility. But right now, since we're doing so much of the work ourselves, I think that's one of our biggest challenges is having the time carved out to create more visibility for us because we're so focused on making sure that we're fulfilling the promises we made to our clients. We're not one of those agencies that just are constantly like, you know, I think pipeline is huge. It's important to have a pipeline, but it's also important to make sure that you're fulfilling the promises that you made to your clients. And you're not always going to get it right, right? Clients are, you know, it's not always like even as coaches, we're not, as I remember as a coach, our goal is to get our clients results. But if they don't do the work, we can only do so much.

Davis Nguyen : 0:57

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: 1:28

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Heidi Schulk. She's been a coach for over seven years and is now doing a done for you agency. Welcome to the show, Heidi.

Heidi Schalk: 1:39

Thank you, Kevin, for having me. Excited to be here with you.

Kevin: 1:42

Tell me the origin story, the lore. How did you become a coach? And what made you like how did you turn into a business?

Heidi Schalk: 1:58

I found myself after almost, I don't know how many years of marriage, I found myself at the divorce table in 2017. I had previously been a stay-at-home mom. My husband uh at the time had made a great living, and my kids went to private school. I was uh part, I was homermom for both kids, co-chair of the auction committee for a few years. And now I found myself needing to create an income. So I happened to find someone on Facebook who was like, you can be a coach. And I'm like, I don't even know how to be a coach. So I ended up joining her, couldn't afford her, but joined her anyway, worked two jobs while I was building my business. Fast forward a little bit through the year, I ended up burning out hard. So I had to make a decision with everything, all the changes we were navigating in our world. My children were little, they were navigating schools and the separation, and I burned out. So I had to give something up and I chose to give up my business for a short period of time. I stepped away for about a year and a half. Then I came back, learned from my mistakes of what I had done. So I didn't rinse and repeat the burnout and relaunched my business. This time I moved into supporting women on goal setting. I was passionate about it. I was moving through that journey myself. So I started bringing on clients in that space. And as they were achieving their goals, they started wanting to start businesses. So my business then transformed and pivoted into business strategy. And I started working with those women and expanding my business into the business strategy space. Fast forward into 2024, we saw a big gap with the female entrepreneurs we were working with in the behind-the-scenes space as far as like helping them with tech. AI was now coming onto the scene. So we found this gap in the market for a done-for-you type of product. I have two podcasts. So we were doing producing our own podcasts. So I moved into visibility and more of a done-for-you agency space with lead gen podcast production and lead gen content creation and management, media placement. So that's kind of where we moved in 2024. And within 10 months, we created a six-figure plus business in that space, which we're really excited about. We coach our clients, but we're not specifically geared just toward coaching. So that's my journey in a nutshell. My why, I'll give you my why, Kevin, real quick. For those coaches that are wanting or building businesses, it's really important you keep connecting to your why. And that's what brought me back to my business after I burned out was I wanted to be home with my kids. As I shared, I was a stay-at-home mom. That was the main reason I started my business in the first place, is I wanted to find an avenue and a way to be home with them every day when they came home from school. I wanted to be able to drop them off, pick them up. Like I said, I did work two businesses because I needed to find a way to keep everything going. But that was the why that kept me going. Even when I burned out and stepped away, that kept pushing me to come back.

Kevin: 4:48

Tell me a little bit about your burnout. What did those kind of burnout days look like? What do you feel like contributed to burnout? I'd love to hear more about that.

Heidi Schalk: 4:55

It was rinsing and repeating the just the cycle of the day. My day would start with me getting up and taking the kids to school, running to my first job, leaving there about 1.30, picking the kids up, taking them to their activities, coming home, doing dinner homework, working the second second job, and still in between all of that, trying to build my business. They were navigating a lot of changes. We ended up, uh, my daughter was moving into fourth grade around the time of the divorce. Uh, we'd already gone through a separation. So we navigated that, but now she was moving into a different space. We pulled her from school and she ended up homeschooling with her ice skating coach. So that was a transition. My son was moving into public school, that was a transition. He was diagnosed with ADHD. That was a big transition and thing that we we got to navigate as a family. So compiling all those different areas that were happening in our life, I just hit a wall. And I hit a point where I was like, something has to give, or I'm just gonna fall over. And the only thing that could give at the time, the ADHD wasn't going away, the changing of the schools wasn't going away, the dropping them off at two different locations wasn't going away, the two jobs I needed to keep that wasn't going away. The only thing that I could put on pause was the business. And once I did that, it gave me space to breathe. And then I was able to, that why kept tugging at me. But every year and a half later, I was in a different mind space where I had I had put all the other pieces in line where I could now add something else on without feeling like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. And this time I looked back and I got to say to myself, what worked back then when you were running the business? What didn't work? And I got to play smarter. I got to work smarter, not harder. I immediately hired someone. I hired a VA right out of the gate this time, and that supported me. Could I afford it? I was very scared. Um, didn't know how I was gonna navigate that, but I knew in order to grow, I needed support. I couldn't do it all myself. And for me, I'm still a recovering lone wolfer. Hi, my name is ID. I'm a recovering perfectionist and a recovering lone wolfer. And that was hard to bring somebody on and ask for support. But it's and I always tell would tell my clients, you need to hire before you're ready. Is it scary? Absolutely. But when you walk through the fear and you do the scary things, that's when you grow.

Kevin: 7:14

Stole the question right from me. I was gonna ask you like, is there anything you would have changed? But you answered with the VA. I love it.

Heidi Schalk: 7:20

Yeah. The VA was a thing, was a key for me. Yeah. And we're navigating, I'll be honest with you, Kevin, we're navigating that in our business right now. Now that we're doing, we're added the agency space on, we need to hire. We're at a space where the financial piece of it is a little scary to bring somebody on, but we're running on full transparency. We're running to our full capacity right now, me and my business partner and I. It's hard to bring on new clients, but we need to in order to keep the grip business scaling. But the same time, decisions are made about when do we bring someone in? And we're at that point now where it's like we need to make that decision. And talking with you and looking back, it's like, okay, we need to bring bring that decision to bring on support, even though it's a little scary to do so with it with the financial piece. We're doing well, but to add another in payout onto someone else is a little scary.

Kevin: 8:13

What kind of hires are you thinking at this point in time?

Heidi Schalk: 8:15

We're looking for tech support, uh, video editing and things like that. Though that's the kind of support we're looking for because my business partner and her team do it, but we're we do it, we're heavily have a lot of clients that we do a lot of editing for, and I think that's the key spot where we need it. Also, content creation, things like that is where we're looking for. Probably be the biggest two places.

Kevin: 8:38

Let's talk about the marketing. How what's worked for you so far? How do people kind of find you?

Heidi Schalk: 8:43

People find us, um, I'll be, you know, it's interesting because we backed off Facebook and LinkedIn. So since we moved more, no, I'm sorry, we backed off Facebook and Instagram. So a lot of people find us through our podcasts and through LinkedIn right now. Because when we moved to the agency, we moved more B2B versus B2C. We're now coming back to Facebook and Instagram because with what we did with our agency, we now want to teach others to do it. We use our, I don't know if you use your podcast platform this way, but our podcast platform, we have two podcasts. One was I basically I did it because it was on my vision board and it was a passion project. It's called Bishi. It stands for Be Seen, Be Heard, Be Empowered, Geared Toward Female Entrepreneurs. The Business Growth Spotlight is more geared toward B2B. And we talk with CEOs, founders, executives who have a 10 plus larger uh employee company size company. And in that, it's the lead gen platform. So we get a lot of our clients through our podcast.

Kevin: 9:40

Yeah, how does that work? So people are listening to our podcast, they're probably raising their hands. Like, what does that sales process look like for Lee Gen?

Heidi Schalk: 9:48

So for our podcast specifically with the Business Growth Spotlight, we we talked to probably over 140, maybe 130 uh founders, CEOs, and executives since January of 2025. We're now in November. So we've talked to a lot over the last, say, 11, 10 months. We learn more about them, what they do, who they serve, what they're working for them marketing and visibility wise, what's not working for them marketing and visibility-wise. And if something that they're doing or not doing is something that we can support them with, and if we can support them, we we give them the whole plan and we tell them you can run with it. If you have a marketing team, take this and run with it. If not, if you want to know what it looks like to work with us, we'll be happy to share what that looks like. There's no pressure, there's no attachment to it. We want to help is serve as many businesses as possible, but we also want to have authentic conversations. That's the main goal of the podcast. The goal of the podcast is for the guests to share what's working for them and not working for them so our listeners can grow numbers. So that's why we bring the guests on.

Kevin: 10:50

What does a coaching engagement look like with uh your clients?

Heidi Schalk: 10:53

We still find that we're coaching our clients because they're gonna need some mindset work. I think everybody needs mindset, you know, help support at any time. There's times where they're gonna need support. And when they trust you and you build this relationship, the term relationship, which that's our goal. We really take pride in our fulfillment. Um, we're not here to work with 150 clients. We want a small handful of clients that we can truly serve and get results for. And they know when they reach out to us, they're gonna get a quick response. So, but there's we have a lot of trust with our clients. And there's times they'll come to us and they need coaching. And it's not something we charge more for, it's just something that's automatic. So we're here in every capacity to support them. We're we as in a typical agency, we consider ourselves a growth partner or a partner with our clients.

Kevin: 11:42

This question might be a little cheeky since you're not since you're not charging for coaching. Maybe we can get some insider secrets, right? What I find is a lot of coaches they struggle with things like uh pricing and pricing strategies and models, right? And so when you was a primary uh revenue model for you, how did you go about structuring your pricing and coming up with the pricing?

Heidi Schalk: 12:06

Well, first, it depends on where you're at in your business. If you're starting, then I started at a lower price point just to kind of because I didn't have those testimonials, I didn't have those case studies. So I would do, and I told my, I would share this with my clients, and we do this, we did this with the agency. Do a beta round, you know, do a start where you're you might charge less than your competitors do, but you're here to get results. That's your first round. So for me, when I was doing group coaching, I might start off at 300 or 500 a month, and that might be a beta round, or I might just charge one flat fee for the beta round in for testimonials. It's really important you're charging for a beta round or for your a quote unquote founder's round. I liked calling it a founder's round versus a beta. Maybe you charge less initially, but you're giving them lifetime access, or you're giving them something, you're giving them more one-on-one support that maybe the future people coming in won't get. So you want to make it really special and incentivizing for them. Um, then after that, you let everybody know if you don't get into the founder's round, the price will go up. And just hold to your word that price can go up. So if you start at say $500 a month, just for example, maybe it goes to $600 a month the next time you offer it. Then from there it goes to $700 a month after you offer it. Then the eight next time it goes to $800 a month. And you keep raising that price point, that investment level until you find that happy medium to where you know that's the ideal your ICP, your ideal client, will that's the price point they will pay. And that could be $997, it could be $1,297, it could be $2,000 a month. It really could be anything if you just define that. And don't compare yourself to other people. Like if somebody else is charging $800 a month, doesn't mean that your product, your service isn't $2,000 a month worthy. You just have to keep increasing it till you find that happy spot. And know your worth. That's I think what's really hard. And what I tell people too is when you first make that offer, make sure you believe it. You've got to believe the value of your service or your product because if you don't believe it, it will come through. So if you don't believe it's a $2,000 product yet, then don't offer that. Go because when you say that price point, you need to feel that you believe in your product just as much as you want them to believe in it.

Kevin: 14:19

I like the terminology that you use, founder's around. It actually brought me to a lot of uh software companies where they have like a founder's around and stuff, they'll give Lifetime access. But I really like this. You didn't use this term, but I was thinking in my head, it's like proof of concept that your coaching actually like works, air quotes, I guess, right? And I love the fact of sticking to your word that you're gonna increase the pricing. Something interesting that you said uh that I would love for you like to hear more about is like you said know your worth, right? How does one kind of figure that out? I hear it a lot.

Heidi Schalk: 14:53

Yeah, that's um that's a lot of mindset work that we need to do ourselves. So I think mindset work never ends. I was just literally like my it's interesting. Yesterday, my dad sent me this YouTube video and it was on from Napoleon Hill, and he talks about the 11 things that wealthy that really sucks, not even wealthy, successful people do, and they were all wealthy, but 11 things, phrases that they say. And just so you have to find your thing that works for you. But it's really important that I feel you start the day, and this is something I fell out of. I'll be honest. I fell out of it and I noticed when I fell out of this routine, my income went down, my mindset went down, I was falling being topped off the ledge a lot more, stress was piling up, and I was moving in anxious mode versus in um just relaxed mode. And I think when we make decisions coming from a calm place, we're gonna make better decisions. So, you know, they say successful people make quick decisions. They don't procrastinate on decisions, they make them fast. And because even if it's a wrong decision, at least they made that decision quickly and they can make a decision and make a change quickly. But when we sit on a decision too long, that's where we start floundering. That's one of those 11 pieces that you know was in the Napoleon Hill YouTube video. So this morning I wrote them all down. I sat there and I did walk through what he shared to walk through. I also what I used to do and what I just started picking up again is my gratitude journal. So that's something that I fell off of, but it's really key and important to me because when I do it, things show up for me. You start believing in yourself. You start, the universe starts to conspire and bring things to you that you want. So the way I do my gratitude is, and this is part of knowing your worth. It's it's you got to find the practice that works for you. But when I did my gratitude, I do what I'm grateful for in the moment, like what I have, the things I have that I'm grateful for now. Then I just do it from a stream of consciousness. And then I roll into what I'm grateful for that I don't already have. So the things that I want that I'm grateful for, because the universe, God, whatever it is you believe in, doesn't know whether you have it or not. Your subconscious doesn't know if you have it or not. So in the things that I've done in the past, like I wanted to work with someone, I didn't know how I was gonna work with them. They were a mentor of mine and I had them on like I thought of them like way up here. And I said, I'm grateful that I work with them, and then we became friends. Well, I ended up working with them. I ended up going to their wedding and we it was something I never thought possible. Another thing was I needed a new roof. And this was years ago. And I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna get this roof, but I'm grateful that I have a new roof and it's fully paid for. Well, six months later, I had a new roof and it was fully paid for. Um, and it's just like there's just those types of things, magic happens when you start doing those kinds of practices. So knowing your worth is just like be mindful of what you're listening to, be mindful of what you're reading, be mindful of the people that you have in your life and what they're saying, because all of that affects how you feel about yourself.

Kevin: 17:58

I definitely agree. There's something about that. Like I do the same thing. I like write down things I'm presently grateful for, and then I write down what I'm grateful for as if I have those things and the future things as in the present day. And there's something so magical about it because your reticular activity system starts looking for those things, right? As in psychocybernetics and all these classic books that people have always talked about throughout all time, right? And so it's you gotten a really good point here. Speaking about that. Let's talk about your future goals, right? I guess where do you want your not so much coaching uh business, but now you're done for you agency. Like, where do you want this business to take you in the next few years? Do you have any like secret dreams or ambitions no one knows about?

Heidi Schalk: 18:44

Well, yeah, I uh have a vision of where I want to be. And I'll one thing I'll say with the other question that you asked me, Kevin, was also give yourself grace. Forgive yourself. Don't don't be so hard on it. I think we can tend to be really hard on ourselves and also we can compare ourselves to other people. Comparasinitis can be a paralyzer when it comes to taking action and growing. So, you know, don't compare your chapter two to someone else's chapter 20. That's a big thing I had to learn as well. And when it came to, you know, understanding myself worth where I am now, just because somebody else may be further along or what's considered quote unquote further along doesn't mean that I'm less than because I'm not as far as them. We just started at different times or we're after different things. Somebody else may have much different goals than I have. I'm not one that can travel the world right now because of my circumstances with my children. They're in high school, I want to have to be settled. I want to make sure that they're settled and grounded. I can't be traveling the world. So my goals are gonna be different than someone else's. So I I want to make sure that's a key for people listening. When it comes to my goals, I have this and I live on a lake. So I have a lake outside my house. Um, but my goal is and I have this vision that I want to um want to walk out. I want to live on the water, like not a lake, but on the water. And I don't need a big house. I have a big house. I don't need a big house, I want a little cottage, like easy to maintain. I do want to travel once my kids are graduated from from school. So my goal is to have the freedom to travel, to do the things I want to do. Walk out onto my onto my dock, walk out onto my dock with my glass of wine or a cup of coffee in the morning, glass of wine at sundown with my person, because I'm, you know, not married again, but I haven't gotten married yet, with my person. And we just enjoy. That's peace to me. I want to have that. It doesn't sound very grand, but for me, that's where my vision is because it's gonna be expensive to do that. So that's where I want to see the business go, where my business partner and I can really just have the freedom because we work a lot. Our business, since we launched this, it's in infancy stages and we're doing a lot of the work ourselves. I would like to see us have a team. I don't need a big team, a team that runs it. We have a multi-million dollar business. And the team members that we have are also they're they're just employees, they're partners in some way too. Like they're invested in growing the business and they're benefited by the growth of the business. So not only are we partners with our clients, but I want our people that are on our team to be partners somehow in our business as well. What that looks like, I don't know yet, but that's what I would like to see.

Kevin: 21:16

As you are, I drew a bunch of pictures, really bad diagrams on my iPad, by the way. I drew a little wine glass over here. Actually, it looks like a martini glass. Anyways, as you're headed toward this like vision that you have, right, on this lake front and finding your partner and all that sort of stuff. What sort of challenges are you kind of noticing in your business right now? In this chapter of your business right now in life?

Heidi Schalk: 21:41

Well, I as I mentioned before, I think it's really just biting the bullet and bringing on some more help. That is the biggest challenge we have. It's not doing so much ourselves because I, you know, it's interesting we can do for others that we we able to do for ourselves. So, and many of the coaches that your your audience might might feel this way too. Like, and I I with a coach, she just became a new client. And a lot of our c clients are actually coaches. It's interesting. We would be to be, but we have a lot of coaches that are our clients. And one of her biggest struggles is her social media. You know, she can work with her clients, she can do well for them, but she has a really hard time getting visible and promoting herself. So, in us as an agency, we are all about visibility. But right now, since we're doing so much of the work ourselves, I think that's one of our biggest challenges is having the time carved out to create more visibility for us because we're so focused on making sure that we're fulfilling the promises we made to our clients. We're not one of those agencies that just are constantly like, you know, I think pipeline is huge. It's important to have a pipeline, but it's also important to make sure that you're fulfilling the promises that you made to your clients. And you're not always going to get it right, right? Clients are, you know, it's not always like even as coaches, we're not, as I remember as a coach, our goal is to get our clients results. But if they don't do the work, we can only do so much. Right. So I think that's where I think coming, you know, giving ourselves grace is important. But like I said, I think the biggest challenge for us right now is like just finding that support that we need to continue growing and scaling. Cause right now we're at that, we're at a over of six figure plus business that we built in the last seven, seven months, eight months, but we're still at that point where we need to take the leap to get to that next level.

Kevin: 23:26

All right, which brings me into our fur, well, our game segment type of thing. If you're open to it, I love to play this game. It's through the lens of business investments. You mentioned one of them, which is like as you know, coaches, entrepreneurs, we invest into things like coaching, training, marketing, team members, which you touched upon, infinite number of things that you can invest in. So, what I like to do is just like prompt you a phrase and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind. If there's a story associated with it, I love to hear it. It's kind of like when you're like I'm a psychologist and you're sitting and you're the patient just like sitting and just like telling me everything. So uh yeah, I'm gonna have four phrases and you just tell me what comes to mind, okay? First business investment you ever remember making.

Heidi Schalk: 24:12

My VA support. That was when I came back and yeah, well, no, my first investment was coaching right out of the bat. And it was $9.97 a month. So it was like literally a thousand dollars a month. I just came out of a divorce. I didn't have that money. I didn't know how I was gonna get it. And it was a twelve thousand dollar program, and I'm like, okay, I'm in. And then not only did that happen, but I found out once I got in there, there was thousands of dollars more I had to invest in order to actually do fulfill the program and the things that I needed to do to get the results. So yeah, I learned learned a big lesson.

Kevin: 24:44

Who were some of those other things that you had to invest in?

Heidi Schalk: 24:47

Well, I it was about doing you know, summits. So when I joined coaching, it was building summits, and I had uh I had to hire a VA to run the summits because I didn't know the tech behind it. Then you had to purchase the tech in order for the VA to handle the so it was just more thousands of dollars. So when I went into coaching, that's one thing I wanted to make sure is that when they came to me, they knew up front this is my fee. These are the other obviously there are certain things you need. You need a CRM, you need an EL, you know, or at least an email campaign, something that's going to house your emails because you want to build an email list. So there's small fees, but I just wasn't aware of all these huge fees that were gonna go along with it. So yeah, it was a big, huge invest and scary investment.

Kevin: 25:29

Wow. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. We might touch upon that later. Okay, last business investment you made, most recent.

Heidi Schalk: 25:36

Okay, so while I'm in a program, so that was the last, it's like coaching, but it's also AI. There we're we have a lot of AI tools. So the that was probably the last big investment we made. We're in this community, which is fantastic. We love it. Other ones that we're investing is is little tools, like little AI tools that are supporting us and making things easier in our business day.

Kevin: 25:59

Okay, now we're gonna get into juicy stuff. Best business investment you made so far.

Heidi Schalk: 26:04

Best business investment I made so far. This last program that we joined was the best business investment that we made. It was ten thousand dollars. We jumped into that last December, and that's how we've made our six figure plus. Now that's where we launched our agency. We worked with a company to do it, and we've we were very happy with them. And now we just renewed, so now we're about a double. We're at like a twenty-four thousand dollar investment with them now.

Kevin: 26:33

Nice. Okay. Worst business investment that you kind of wish you got your money back from.

Heidi Schalk: 26:39

A program that I did, it it was a twenty thousand dollar program, and I wish I wouldn't have I wish I wouldn't have done it. Um, it was very vulnerable emotionally. It was more of a spiritual type program, and I just wish I didn't do it because I my feeling was not to, but I was very I was in a vulnerable state at that point as far as and it's not nobody's fault but mine. I just looking back, I wish I think the timing was off. It was a great program. I just think the timing was off for me.

Kevin: 27:08

As you're sharing these stories, I'm kind of curious how has your decision-making process changed in what to invest in and what not to invest in, if at all.

Heidi Schalk: 27:17

Now we're I there's a lot of shiny objects out there, and there's always an offer. Always an offer. You're going to be one of many offers, especially as a coach. You're gonna be one of many offers. One thing that I think one of my that my clients trusted me on when I was coaching, especially, was I would flat out say, you have many of many options. Make sure you're looking at every option. Don't let me be the only option. Make sure you're making the best decision that's right for you. Because at the end of the day, I it's mutual fit. It needs to be a mutual fit. They need to be willing to show up and do the work. I promise to show up and do the work. I want people that are that engaged and that and wanting their business that bad. I also want to make sure that we have the same values. And, you know, my core values are for our business are important to us. We want to make sure we're working with people with similar core values. And I would tell my clients, make sure that you are clear with your core values and you're working with coach, a coach that has those same core values. We may not be aligned and that's okay. And if we're not, I'm happy to help you find the right person for you because I just want, like I said at the beginning of this talking with you, my main goal is for just more business to succeed, whether that's working with me or not. At the end of the day, I know the right people will find me as long as I'm staying authentic and transparent with who I'm looking for to work with. And I've taken on clients that I knew I shouldn't work with and it's bit me. So now I really try as hard as I can to stay true to that.

Kevin: 28:40

I love that whole trusted advisor approach. I was just thinking about it. Like, you know, like it's kind of like, you know, sometimes when some of these business, some of these, especially in corporations, right? Like or bigger bit like corporations, they like force coaching on onto someone, and those engagements never work out because there's no intrinsic desire to actually get coaching and stuff like that, too. So I love how you revise you people, potential clients, and hey, look at many options, make sure that this is the right thing for you. I love that.

Heidi Schalk: 29:12

And I think every program has value, and that's it, because I mean, you could are there bad coaches out there? I guess, but at the end of the day, I think it's our responsibility when we sign up for something to do the work, to show up and do the work. Because when you a lot of people can say invest in a program or invest with a coach and go, it didn't work. Okay, well, did you do the work that you needed to do in order to get the result that they're telling you that they can get you? If you're not going to do the work, there's only so much they can do at the end of the day. And so I think that's a key piece too.

Kevin: 29:43

Just like sports, you know, you never see the coach get on the field and stuff like that. That's just weird, you know what I mean? Okay, cool. Last section. Uh, I like to call this overrated, underrated. As a business owner, you've probably gotten a lot of advice. Some of it good, some of it bad, some of it's solicited. Probably 99.9% of it unsolicited. So uh kind of curious from your point of view, what's the best, what's the most overrated piece of advice you've gotten, and what's the most underrated piece of advice you've gotten?

Heidi Schalk: 30:14

That's a good question. Overrated piece of advice, overrated piece of advice. I think there's a lot of good advice out there. It's just a matter of how it lands specifically for you in the moment, um, depending on what you're going through. I can't think of an overrated piece of advice. Once once stop talking, maybe I will, but I'm sorry, I don't have an answer to that. Uh overrated piece of advice.

Kevin: 30:34

For overrated, typically, I'll tell you the pattern.

Heidi Schalk: 30:37

Okay.

Kevin: 30:38

Typically, it's like a very cliche piece of advice that like really grinds you, like that really like bugs you. It's kind of like a pet peeve, like generalized advice that you're just like, man, I disagree with this.

Heidi Schalk: 30:50

Something I disagree with.

Kevin: 30:52

Kind of like a common piece of business advice that's like that you kind of disagree with.

Heidi Schalk: 30:56

Um I love this phrase, but at the same time it bugs me because I think it depends on where you are in the space of your business. Work smarter, not harder. I think we still need to work hard. I think there's value in working hard. I'm sorry, but any successful person has worked hard. Yes, there's way to ways to work smarter, but I also think that failure teaches us quote unquote failure. I don't believe in the word failure. I just think that every failure or things that didn't work is just just another way, um, is just showing us, giving us the opportunity to have another way for it to work. And like Thomas Edison, he failed hundreds of times and he never saw it as a failure. He's just like, I just found 10, 80,000 ways of how it didn't work. But he knit that him to the light bulb and that in that work. So working smarter, not harder, yes, I think we can get there, but especially when you're starting out, there is no secret sauce except hard work that's gonna get you to the success that you want. It's all about persistence and consistency.

Kevin: 31:58

How about underrated pieces of advice? Like a best kept secret that you wish more people knew. That's underrated.

Heidi Schalk: 32:04

I think um, I don't know, I can't think of a phrase, but I think mindset work is something that's some people consider woo-woo. I think it's highly underrated because you can create miracles and magic, just like we talked about earlier, Kevin. There's magic that can happen, but it it's hard work. Mindset work, I think people think is super easy, and it's not. It's probably one of the more hardest things that we can do in our business. And I think too many entrepreneurs and too many business people in business push that aside. And they do a lot of the doing. They're working so hard, right? They're not working smarter, they're working harder. So it's kind of like a catch 22 there, or they're trying to work smarter, but they're leaving out that big mindset piece of gratitude, of creating that morning ritual or that morning routine of making sure they're aware of what's coming into their mind, of who they're associating with, what they're listening to, you know, what those environmental factors are and places that they're putting themselves in. I think that's very unfair.

Kevin: 33:01

Yeah, you bring up a good point about mindset because, you know, it's really interesting because I've been actually personally going through this, right? Where it's like a lot of times things just happen, right? And we put a meaning to these things, right? So for example, one of my I'm in content, I do YouTube, my head editor recently quit. I was like, oh damn, like I have to search for another person. This is gonna suck, right? But then like I took some time to just think about how this is working for me, right? And it's really that reflection time where I'm like, hey, you know what? I get to refine, like, there's an opportunity to one, refine my leadership skills and refine my hiring process so that you know I can just not be bothered by this in the future, right? We have a system. If this happens again, we have a continuous system to rehire and stuff like that. And so I think like that's one of the hardest things for me personally is like, how do I take this like challenge and see the opportunity in it a lot of times? And that's where sometimes stuff kind of sucks sometimes on the surface, but then it's being able to take that and reframe it. So I really like your advice. Long way of saying I really like your advice on uh mindset, like being underrated. All right. Last question, Heidi, probably the hardest question of the night. No, just kidding. How can people find you and connect with you?

Heidi Schalk: 34:14

Oh, well, I am everywhere. I'm on LinkedIn for sure. We weeped a lot. Basically, my feed is covered with the business growth spotlight reels and posts for there. I like I said, our content is uh we we push as much out because we're we're doing it for our clients. So we'll be uh more we're very active there. Instagram, you can find me on Instagram too Heidi Shop Coaching and also on Facebook. And you can check out the Bishi podcast if you're a female entrepreneur that is geared specifically toward you or just someone who is wants to feel like they're not being seen and heard and wants to, you know, hear about other women's stories and journeys on how they are creating the dream life that they want, whether it's in their relationships, whether it's in their career, or whether it's in your their business. We talk about all of that on B She. It's really about just getting out of your comfort zone, walking through fear, and making and in, you know, and stepping into being seen and heard. And then we have the business growth spotlight, and that's where you can hear from CEOs, founders, executives on what's working for them in their business. How are they growing? Is it cold lead gen? Is it, you know, paid advertising? Is it partnerships? Is it networking? What's important for them? And I hear different answers from all of them. Um they share their big goals and what's next for them. So that's the business growth spotlight. So you can find us there as well.

Kevin: 35:26

Well, Heidi, there was just so much I took away. I think listening to your journey, how you started off the podcast, painting the journey, how things aren't always so linear. And I think we kind of glossed over it, but you stepped away for two years from your business, right? We always think that like things are always upward trajectory, but sometimes you have to take it back. And I really appreciated that story and how you reconnected with your why. I also want to to thank you for just like being so vulnerable about like, hey, you know what? We're kind of going through the stage where we actually need to hire, right? And having that awareness and sharing that um insider, like what's happening behind the scenes. And then also you're so generous just sharing like how you thought about pricing, how you grew your coaching uh business as well. Anyways, I just want to say thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for uh being so generous just sharing all your knowledge today. So I just want to say Heidi, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast.

Heidi Schalk: 36:24

Well, thank you, Kevin, for having me. And one thing I just want to share real quick is don't be afraid to pivot. I think too many people stay where they are. And you, if you're not happy doing what you're doing, don't be afraid to pivot because that could be the best decision you made. I know for us moving into agency space, we're still coaching. Um, and we're actually working, we're building a course for somebody who was on our podcast. She wants a course made for her certified coaches. So we're building out that course and we're gonna have to be coaching in that space. You know, partnerships matter, collaborations like you and Kevin, like Kevin and I are doing here, um, getting on podcasts, putting your message out there is really, really getting in front of other people's audience. Have fun in your business. You know, that's the main pink. People stress out so much. And if you don't have any, if you're not having fun along the way, what are you doing? What are we doing? Right, Kevin?

Kevin: 37:08

I love it. Yeah.

Heidi Schalk: 37:10

Thank you for this time with you know, for this conversation. I'm I'm grateful for you. And uh anything I can do to support you, please don't hesitate. Let me know.

Kevin: 37:18

That's so kind, Heidi. With that being said, we'll end the podcast here. Thank you again.

Davis Nguyen : 37:23

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.