Navigating Change & Growth: Career Wisdom from Cynthia Martinez

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Cynthia P. Martinez, a Business Strategist & Fractional CMO for AEC Leaders who helps organizations align brand, messaging, marketing, and business development to improve win rates, project value, and market share. We explore her career journey, the strategies she uses to help firms strengthen their market position, and her practical insights for leaders looking to drive clarity, growth, and long-term impact. 

You can find her on:

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

https://renegadethinklab.com/

Email: hello@renegadethinklab.com

Transcript

Cynthia Martinez 0:00

Why are you doing this? Why are you saving? What's the purpose? And I didn't have an answer. And I think that really forced me to look inward and figure out what is my purpose? What do I want? What am I saving for? What am I working so hard for?

Davis Nguyen 0:19

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 0:55

She is the founder of and business strategist of the Red Technical Lab. Been in plus years, but been in the industry for over 12. Welcome to the show, Cynthia.

Cynthia Martinez 1:08

Thank you for having me.

Kevin Yee 1:09

It's my pleasure. One of the first things I'm very, very curious about is like you're telling me pre-podcast you were in the industry like 12 years, but quite recently, maybe over the last two, you made a full-time shift into your business. I'm kind of curious. What led up to this point? How did you become a coach and what made you want to turn into a business?

Cynthia Martinez 1:31

Yes, well, a little bit of clarification. I've been in my industry, which is the architecture, engineering, construction industry, for over 25 years. And I've been informally coaching other young designers and architects in their career development, I would say for about 12 plus years. And in fact, I they still keep coming back for advice. I've seen them grow up and develop in their careers. And so what shifted this, it's actually I blame COVID and becoming an empty nester. And what I mean by that is that right around when COVID hit, my daughter was also about to go off to college. And as a single parent, you know, it really it really left me feeling very lost and almost like a compass in a magnetic field. You know, my I I realized that my purpose had been so led by following her dreams and making sure she um she had some pretty high aspirations. And so I was so involved with trying to make that happen and helping her achieve those and making sure I provided a stable lifestyle that I forgot to have my own dreams. And and so when she left, it really left me, it really left me in a place where I didn't know what to do and without much of a purpose. And I was definitely at a point where I was completely burnt out from my career. You know, after 25 years in the industry, I was primarily in the seller doer role. And a seller doer role in an architecture firm involves not only are you business are you doing business development and uh marketing, but you're also doing project management, uh, sometimes design, sometimes uh the mentorship and the leadership. And so it left me unempty, to be perfectly honest. And so out of that stemmed just the feeling of emptiness and lost, and I really started looking at my life and the fact that I had uh given everything up for companies that didn't necessarily value me, and that I had missed out on a lot of family and friend events, a lot of personal, I sacrificed a lot of personal time to still feel empty at the end of it. And I think that was the part where you know I realized there's gotta be a better way. I was uh at the time I was 43, 43, and it's like I'm still young, I'm still, you know, I I've got a lot of life to to live, and is this the way that I want to do it? And I was like, no, there's a lot more adventure, there's a lot more people to meet. There, there's gotta be another way. And I started looking at, you know, good old social media that's always listening to you. I started looking at getting this feed from content creators that were digital nomads and traveling and claiming to have this like freedom lifestyle. And I guess my thought was these 20-somethings with a third of the experience that I have have figured this out, and how and how do I do that with the experience that I have? Because at the time I really could not see past my architectural background, I couldn't I couldn't see that. And that led me to it led me one to um joining a group called the Plagets, which is uh women education and financial money management and investment. And I thought that I was just gonna learn about money management because I figured, okay, the first thing I need to do is build up my savings. Well, I didn't expect that it the one of the first questions that Jen, who runs the Plagettes, was asking me was, Why are you doing this? Why are you saving? What's the purpose? And I didn't have an answer. And I think that really forced me to look inward and figure out what is my purpose, what do I want? What am I saving for? What am I working so hard for? And that's it started there, uh, to be honest. And that led me to, you know, I had studied abroad in college, I in Copenhagen, and I had always wanted to go back to Europe and live in Europe. Maybe, you know, I it didn't necessarily have to be Scandinavia, but I I wanted to relive that dream, and it was almost like a circling back to my younger self, right? And reawakening that spirit of adventure and learning and curiosity that I started exploring more. And eventually that led me to finding the Move Abroad coach who eventually also became my business coach. And I it was a I I took a $37 boot camp to to start, again, found it through social media, and uh best $37 I spent because again, it it was one of the initial questions was you know, it raised the country, erase the logistics, what do you envision your lifestyle to be? And what I realized during that exercise was that it wasn't just a change of address that I wanted, I just needed a different lifestyle. And I was craving the freedom and flexibility of being able to, you know, travel, but also if a friend is getting married, I could attend her wedding. If my daughter is graduating from college, I could attend her college, and I didn't have to worry about PTO and be counting the days. And so, with all of that, to give you that context, is to this whole process and all of these little programs that I joined made me really made me answer some really they should have been easy questions, but they were very, very hard for me because I didn't have an answer. I didn't have I was so preconditioned to my identity was wrapped around my career. So that's what inspired it. I had to look at what can I do that allow would allow me to build a business to be more flexible and to allow me that lifestyle.

Kevin Yee 9:07

Sorry to interrupt, but I'm curious. There's so many different modalities, right? What led you toward coaching specifically?

Cynthia Martinez 9:16

To coaching. Well, that that was precisely it. I had to I had to figure out like what can I do using my experience that I already had and create a business, actually design a business that would allow me that lifestyle that I wanted, that I craved. And I used that. Have you heard of Ikigai?

Kevin Yee 9:40

Yes. Yeah.

Cynthia Martinez 9:41

So I did a a little Ikigai exercise, and with that, it just brought to it brought to light for me that one of the things that people always came to me for was career advice. And that I actually had been doing this for several years, and that was the big thing that jumped out at me. That I was like, I could make a career. I that I could do, I enjoy it. They keep coming back here, you know, for the these many years. This is something to explore. So that's that's how I I started officially thinking about the coaching business.

Kevin Yee 10:26

Yeah, and as you've kind of like you know, you mentioned 12 of those years you were kind of doing unpaid coaching, and then the last two years have been full-time. I'm very curious who how how did you discover like or decide who you want to help and the problems that you help them with?

Cynthia Martinez 10:44

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so most of my ex or all of my professional experience has been in the architecture, engineering, and construction, as well as commercial real estate business. It's what I know very well, very intimately. And so I decided that that's where I could help. Now that doesn't mean that my boundary ends there. I have certainly been a consultant for the Minority Business Development Agency, helping their clients as well as other design creatives, but the bulk of my experience is in what we call the AEC industry.

Kevin Yee 11:30

Okay. What does AEC stand for, by the way?

Cynthia Martinez 11:33

Architecture, engineering, and construction.

Kevin Yee 11:38

Okay, got it, got it, got it. Okay.

Cynthia Martinez 11:45

It's okay, it's okay. Just ask.

Kevin Yee 11:48

There's there's always a lot of acronyms, so yeah, every single like business, uh, every single industry has their own acronyms. So I was like, oh interesting. Okay, yeah. And I'm kind of curious too. So you build up this practice, uh, you focus kind of on this domain. I guess like what are the common problems people are coming up to you for? Like when they're like, hey, I need help. What are they what are they kind of struggling with, your ideal clients?

Cynthia Martinez 12:18

Burnout, lack of clarity. Um, they are primarily leaders in their companies and they are doing the seller doer role. Uh, they have the best intentions of growing and having a strategy, but because they get caught up in the day-to-day putting out fires, you know, going to the job side, whatever it might be, they just don't really have the time to allow themselves the time to fully think and put a strategy together and do some research and then actually implement it.

Kevin Yee 12:58

Okay. Interesting. And so one of the interesting things, one of the things I'm personally interested in as well, especially your last two years, you know, um, you're running a business, right? And part of business means business development, which means sales and marketing. And so, how are people kind of finding out about you? Like, what kind of marketing are you doing right now to get the word out?

Cynthia Martinez 13:22

Yeah, so I'm I'm actually in a transitional period. I started my business primarily um really through my network and referrals. Um it I was I'm based, I was based out of Denver. That's where the bulk of my network is, and that's how I started getting clients was really referrals. Now I am actually doing the digital nomad uh lifestyle, and so I'm transitioning into having been so referral-based, which is how I was able to build my business, to now I need to expand that network so that I can continue to get more clients that are not all um warm introductions or relationships I've already had, and not just in Denver, right? My goal is to have a global network and clients from everywhere. So I'm now shifting my strategy to become much more digital. So leveraging LinkedIn, leveraging Instagram, and I just launched a website as well. So really starting to shift that into a digital marketing.

Kevin Yee 14:40

I see. And they're making that transition into more of a global network, right? And going trying to be more digital, I guess. Are there any growing pains that you're noticing right now when it comes to finding clients outside of your referral network?

Cynthia Martinez 14:56

Yeah, I mean, there's figuring out social media on my own makes me feel old, I will say. It's uh there's been quite a few growing pains to do it myself. It is something that I will outsource as soon as I can. Um I think it it's it's really the technological piece. There's a lot of strategy and learning behind it that is not my it's not necessarily my expertise. So I see.

Kevin Yee 15:32

The other thing I'm really, really curious about too is like um when so okay, uh initially like a lot of your your uh clients were referrals, and now you're starting to expand out of that. I'm sure people are raising their hands and they're just like, hey Cynthia, like I want to work with you. Like, I'm kind of curious what do your coaching engagements kind of look like? I'm kind of curious about the different offerings that you have. All one-on-one, group trainings, group uh organizational trainings. There's so many different modalities. Which ones have you kind of gravitated to?

Cynthia Martinez 16:07

Yeah, so my business model is a little bit different. It's not just coaching. I actually am a hybrid consultant slash coach slash implementer. And what the process there looks like is my ideal client, we go through a four-phase process. The the first phase is a discovery phase, and that's the part where I start diving really deep into who's the company, what are their goals, what are their aspirations, both professionally and personally, how do they tie to back to business uh goals, culture, what do their operations and marketing look like, etc. So really getting to know the business and and its operations and where they want to grow and their ambitions. Then once I have that blueprint, I start actually doing research, marketing research into the markets, wants to grow into the hospitality market. I am looking at two things. One, I'm researching internally, do they have the portfolio and the talent and skills to support that type of project? And two, what is the hospitality market doing within their region? And does it support growing? Is it worth the investment to grow in that market, you know, in the following year to three years? That's the research phase. Then we go into actually designing the strategy. So I put the discovery, the research, I build a whole strategy together, breaking it down. Uh it's a 12-month strategy, break it down by quarters, and make it really tactical, tactile for them. And uh, and then we go into the implementation phase, which is I can do one of two things. I can hand you the the roadmap, I can hand you the 100-plus page report of everything of my work, and and you can try to do it on your own. Which, but where I really find one of the big pain points is that they don't make time to do it on their own. They might, you know, it's it's like buying a gym membership, right? Like you can go to the gym, you can you can buy the membership, but and you might go for the first month, but then you taper off and don't show up, right? You you just quit going. You lose motivation because you get busy with other things. It's the same thing in this case. I can hand you the strategy and you will have the best intention starting off, but then work takes over the day-to-day fires that you have to put out. And so the implementation phase, I do one of two things. I do two things. One, that's where my coaching really kicks in because I make them accountable. We have goals to hit every quarter, and two, I actually help take things off their plate. So that's where my fractional CMO services kick in. Because they some of my clients may not necessarily have a marketing team, and so it's something that I can take off their plate. You know, I can't do it all, I can't do it without their input. But I actually help them execute to make sure that we are meeting those goals.

Kevin Yee 19:37

Yeah, I like the gym analogy that you had, and what came into my mind is like you can have the perfect like routines, you have the perfect uh diet plans for them, but you know, part of it means doing the work. But unlike fitness, you can't no one can work out, no one can work out for you, but in marketing, in marketing for sure, someone can do it for you, and that might be yourself and all that. Okay. Yes, something I am very curious about. Oh yes.

Cynthia Martinez 20:03

Oh, I'm sorry, I was gonna say yes, but you can only go so far without their input, right? So it's like Yes. If if you're gonna pay a personal trainer, you're more likely to show up to that gym and do the reps and cut out the carbs, right?

Kevin Yee 20:21

Yeah. That is that is true. One other thing I'm very, very curious about because you said you're just by yourself. And so when it comes to your client capacity, how do you manage it? I guess if you're all alone and whatnot.

Cynthia Martinez 20:37

Well, I'm not completely all alone. Um one of the first things that I've done is actually as I've started to grow, I started to outsource what I can, what's not my area of expertise. The first thing I was very, very happy to outsource was bookkeeping. The the second thing that I've been able to outsource was my web design and my social media uh templates and some of the branding. And I found somebody that really, really understood my brand, and we've been collaborating. I think we'll keep going. I have more projects for her. And then I was able to find an OBM, and so she's been helping me streamline my operations precisely as one of my paint points has been doing it all myself. How can I leverage technology, AI, and automate workflows, automate all my systems, streamline them so that I can save time?

Kevin Yee 21:44

So I do need what's an OBM, oh, what's an OBM uh really quickly?

Cynthia Martinez 21:50

Online business manager.

Kevin Yee 21:52

Business manager? Okay, I wasn't quite sure, but okay, I just want to make sure. Yeah. Um awesome. And sorry, what were you saying before I cut you off?

Cynthia Martinez 22:01

Oh, um, no, I was saying I'm I'm a one-woman show, but I also you know walk the talk in the sense of outsourcing what I can uh within my means. So I would love to be able to have both my OBM and my brand person like be more consistent at the moment is just on a project by project by project basis.

Kevin Yee 22:27

I see. The other thing I'm really curious about too is like okay, so you're two to two years kind of like full-time, and so kind of curious where do you want this coaching business to take you in the next few years? Do you have desires to scale more? Do you want to hire more? Do you have secret dreams that no one knows about? Kind of curious there.

Cynthia Martinez 22:49

Yes, yes, to all of that. Uh, I definitely I want my business to grow and I want it to grow sustainably. I I would like for it to not necessarily require more time from me. But I also have to be careful that I don't want to lose the high-touch customization that I do with every client and the quality of the product that I put out. You know, I I would like to bring in my OBM on a much more uh consistent basis and have her work for me at least at least part-time, uh, bring in on a VA, a virtual assistant to help with some of the admin tasks as well. And then the way that I'm looking at this is I've already identified other people in my network that I can collaborate with and we can help each other out. So being able to start outsourcing some of the higher level type of work uh so that I can continue to take on clients but not necessarily dilute the service that I provide.

Kevin Yee 24:02

I see. I see. So, like kind of increasing like the number number, like your your back-end systems and kind of the support help that you have, uh not necessarily the coaching aspect. Interesting. Okay. Something else I'm really interested about, because you're in a very unique position, right? Um, you're just kind of like you just made this transition. And so as you reflect on your last two years going full-time, what sort of like growing pains have you kind of noticed? Was there anything kind of unexpected, I guess, from your end?

Cynthia Martinez 24:37

Oh, there's been a lot of growing pains. I can tell you that I uh I wasn't quite ready to go full-time with this when it happened. It only happened because my my position was terminated at my company. So I have been thinking about this. I had uh registered my LLC, and literally a month later is when I learned my position was being terminated. So uh talk about putting something in the universe, and the universe came back and gave me the kick in the butt to go do it. So that was uh it put me in a crossroads position of like, do I really go after this and make this happen, or do I hit the easy button and just get another job? And I really couldn't physically even bring myself to put my resume together. You know, the the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right? And I wanted different results, so I went after my business, after building my business, and I didn't, I I did everything that you're advised not to do, right? In starting a business. All my savings had gone to my daughter's education, so she she went to jail, uh, so all my savings had gone there. I don't have a second income to depend on or rely on, and I didn't have a soft landing because I wasn't starting an architecture firm, I was starting a consulting business, and my ideal clients had been my competitors. So, you know, I think there was a lot to overcome there, but the hardest thing to overcome was really gaining clarity for myself and really understanding what it is that I was offering and who I was offering it to, and believing in myself. I mean, there was so much fear around, especially still as a single parent, my daughter still had one more semester to to graduate, and I had one foot in and one foot out, right? I had one foot in and to like trying to make this happen, and the other foot was looking for for a job and trying to, you know, interview, and I was not a hundred percent on either one, and I think that really reflected uh both when I was interviewing for jobs and what I was doing for my business. And I I think it just came to a point where after a few months I felt so drained, and I was like, am I in or am I out? Because this is not sustainable, I can't do both, I can't try to exist and uh look for a job at the same time. So, what do you want? And once I gained that clarity of like, I don't want to go back to corporate, I want to go, I want this lifestyle, I have this dream that I want to pursue. So I turned off my LinkedIn job alerts and I went all in and things started to happen.

Kevin Yee 28:16

That was beautiful, that's a beautiful story.

Cynthia Martinez 28:20

Yeah, so it's the clarity piece is big.

Kevin Yee 28:27

Which leads me to ask too, because you know, as a business owner, right? A lot of business owners, and especially coaches, we invest into things like training, marketing, team members, masterminds, there's a lot of different things that we can invest in, right? And I'm kind of curious, like during this transition time, did you make any investments? Because it sounded like everything was kind of like not so great financially for you. So I'm kind of curious, did you make any investments during that time?

Cynthia Martinez 28:58

I did. I think if there was one of the big things I've learned in my 25 plus years of experience was that don't try to do everything yourself. And the biggest challenge for me was trying to apply that to myself when you have no funds, right? When you're so tight on money, it's hard to swallow a chunk to pay a business coach or a marketing consultant or whatever it might be. And I again, once I went all in, it's like, well, I'll put it on the credit card and I just gotta believe this is gonna work. And I don't regret it. I hired I hired a business finance coach to start off with because one of the things I realized is a lot of entrepreneurs fail by not understanding their business finances, and that's Realize it, I mean, I know that was one of my weak points for sure, and I can't say that I'm an expert at it by any stretch of the imagination, but I got a much more I got a much better understanding of what I needed to be looking at and how to how to really start um holistically forecasting for my business and and expenses and plan for things. And so that was a really great investment. I also invested in business coaching for myself because one of the things I also realized, I've had a lot of realizations, yeah, was that I was trying to build my business as an architecture business. And I couldn't get it out of my head that I felt like I couldn't do things that people were telling me to do because I was so stuck in like building this business as an architecture business, and then eventually I had this aha moment like you're not an architecture firm, you're a consultant. You gotta think like a consultant, you gotta build your business model like a consultant, like a coach, and and that it seems like such a small thing, but that really was a big reframe in my mind, and immediately all the things my business coach was telling me started to just make much more sense, and started to I started to be able to apply that to the way I was proceeding. So making that investment was big, but it it took her a little while to get me there.

Kevin Yee 31:49

Yeah, I love that because you know you're right, you it's hard to do everything yourself, and I think there's a common saying, you can't do everything, you can't read um the label from inside the bottle, and just hearing your experience of taking that leap of faith and stuff, um, is really inspiring. Last question for you. You know, if you're do this all again, right? You've probably gotten a lot of great advice, some of it good, some of it bad, some solicited advice, and probably a lot of unsolicited advice as well. And so, um, if you were to go back in time and give yourself advice, I guess, what's what would you advise yourself like? What's the most overrated piece of business advice you've gotten so far, and what's the most underrated? Really cares there.

Cynthia Martinez 32:37

Oh I think the overrated piece of advice, although I know it's true, is that just believe in yourself and go after your dreams, you know? Or it's like, yeah, it's but I also gotta put food on the table. Yeah and and there's a lot of truth to that. Like I I said earlier, I had to really believe in myself, and but I had a I had a plan, right? Like I I took a leap of faith on myself, I believed strongly that it was gonna make it work because I was gonna work my butt off, and I was gonna hire a coach, and I was gonna do the things. So it wasn't completely blind. So I and it's been a lot of work and it's been a lot of tears, you know. It it hasn't been just like follow your dreams and rainbows and stars will appear. I wish. Yeah, the most underrated piece of advice, actually, that I think uh a lot of uh peers uh or people in my circle, I think when they say hire a business coach, there's a lot of eye rolling, like uh, everyone's a business coach. You know, is that really you don't really need a business coach, you know, you already know what you need to do. And for me it made a big difference, you know. It's it's not that I couldn't have figured it out, I'm smart enough. I'm pulling myself out of the rabbit hole and and having that objective point of view, so much of it was mind mindset. So to me, that made the biggest difference.

Kevin Yee 34:32

I really relate to that too, because if we take coaching, where else do we use the word coaching? Well, in like high performance sports and stuff or athletics. And it's like when you see these, like I watch a lot of UFC and MMA, so when you see these fighters come out, they're never by themselves, they always got their coach in their corner, right? And the coach is always reminding them certain things that they know already, but sometimes you just need an outside perspective just to prompt a question and just to remind you of these things. So um, I I heard this quote somewhere, but I think it's like we oftentimes we need to be reminded more than we need to be like lectured or taught or something like that. I forgot I'm butchering the quote somewhere, but yeah. Yeah, okay. Last question for you, Cynthia. How can people find you and connect with you?

Cynthia Martinez 35:23

Yes, so you can find me on LinkedIn as Cynthia P. Martinez. You can also find me on my newly launched website, renegathinklab.com. It's all one word. And um, those are the best ways to connect with me. You can also drop me a line via email at hello at renegathinklab.com.

Kevin Yee 35:52

Hmm. You know, Cynthia, after l listening to your story, it's it was really inspiring just to hear like how you didn't explicitly say this, but how you made your pivot into this world, you know, into this like industry and starting your own business. For so long, um, I I don't think people realize how painful it is, or how maybe pain is not the right word, but how unsettling it might be like when you've kind of outlived your first purpose and you're moving into your second uh purpose. There's this concept of the second mountain, right? Where the first mountain is our first career, but then the second mountain is like our next purpose, and I love the story about fulfilling your purpose with your daughter, and then really deciding um how you kind of want to live the rest of your life or the next mission of your life, um, through the Iggy guy exercise and all that as well. The other thing that really stood out to me too was like just um I think it was really interesting hearing you like break down your offers and stuff because you definitely have a very strategic mind as well, and you're breaking down the different phases and the evolution of this offer, and it wasn't just like overnight, like I like how you're just speaking and you're kind of like you know, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, this came through iterations and all that, and I think that's really really important too. Um, which which why I really like your overrated piece of advice, where it's like, oh yeah, just chase after dreams, but it doesn't happen overnight, and you still gotta put food on the table and whatnot. That's my really long way of saying, Cynthia. Thank you for coming on to this podcast. Uh, I appreciate your work. I appreciate you spending your time just to share your wisdom with me as well. So thank you so much, Cynthia.

Cynthia Martinez 37:42

Thank you so much, Kevin. I appreciate you having me on.

Davis Nguyen 37:46

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.