From Consultant to Coach: How Amal Babar Built a 6-Figure Coaching Business

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Pedro sits down with Amal Babar to explore the journey of turning coaching into a real, scalable business.

Amal shares how her background in consulting and HR led to a powerful realization: most business problems aren’t systems issues—they’re people issues. From discovering her passion for coaching in 2017 to building a six-figure business through referrals, she breaks down what it really takes to grow in the coaching space.

They also dive into how to handle challenging client situations—including when the CEO might actually be the problem—and why asking the right questions is one of the most powerful tools a coach can use.

Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amalbabar/

Transcript

Amal Babar 0:00

Even in my HR consulting practice, my goal was to create ecosystems that didn't suck. So, like if you're coming to work and you're going, oh God, right? Then something's wrong. Right. I mean, we we'd all rather be on the beach, but at the end of the day, if there's something within the organization that's pulling, kind of pulling you there as opposed to you going willingly, that is usually a people problem. That is not a system problem.

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, go discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Pedro 1:00

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Dr. Amal Babar, someone who understands that most business problems aren't solved by strategy alone, but by the people actually carry it out. You know, with more than 20 years working across industries like law, logistics, manufacturing, fine dining, oil and gas, and healthcare, she's learned that behind every initiative are emotions, habits, and unspoken fears running the show. Through Helian Coaching and Flourish Forward, Amal helps leaders strengthen presence and design people's systems that work in real life. Her approach focuses on awareness rather than control, seeing how behavior, energy, and structure interact long before any policy or system does, creating the kind of change that actually lasts. Welcome to the show, Amal.

Amal Babar 2:03

Hey, glad to be here.

Pedro 2:05

Great to have you. Okay. And I love to rewind a bit because you could be doing a lot of different things right now. You know, you could be a chef, you could be a plumber, but you know, you chose coaching, and every coach has that moment, right? They look at their life and say, Yeah, I guess this is what I'm doing now. You know, so when was that for you?

Amal Babar 2:26

I think I think that moment came somewhere around um 2017 where I really started to go, you know what? I'm good at a lot of things, but I enjoy doing this. And this was the coaching aspect of the job that I I had as a consultant. Like I loved the coaching.

Pedro 2:48

Okay. And when did it shift, you know, from I'm helping people to I'm building a real business around this and around the coaching practice. You know, that shift. I'm not sure if it's the first invoice, I'm not sure if there's an aha moment where you're taking a hat and saying, putting that hat of coach slash business owner, you know, just trying to understand when that happened.

Amal Babar 3:08

Um, I would say that was maybe about four or five years ago at this point. And um, because I in 2017 I went to get a bunch of coaching certifications because that's around the time I said, you know what, I like this stuff. Let me go, let me go understand more about it. Um, because it is a different discipline than than HR where you use coaching, but it isn't the primary thing that we that you're doing. It's just a tool that you have within your toolbox. And so around that time, um, I'm like, you know, I was really into to health. And so I have health coaching certification, I have life coaching certification, and then a year later I was like mindfulness certification, and and um, and so the more I dove into it, the more I was like, you know what, no, I need to, I need I need to branch off. Like um, HR stuff is one thing, and then the coaching stuff being another. Um, so yeah, I would say that was about four or five years ago when I um when I started the name came later, but the idea for the coaching business um came around that time.

Pedro 4:21

Okay. So you had a pass in as a consultant, and I feel like it's very interesting. The the the pi I'm not not just gonna call pivot, but the the the understanding that you need something different, right? So can you walk me through it like you were a consultant and maybe you found the the the the big boss, right? The biggest challenge, which is people, right? So when did you realize okay, I need something more in my tool belt or I need to make a a shift in the way I do things because just implementing the systems is not necessarily solving the big issue, you know?

Amal Babar 4:57

Right. I mean even in my HR consulting practice, my goal was to create ecosystems that didn't suck. So, like if you're coming to work and you're going, oh God, right, then something's wrong, right? I mean, we we'd all rather be on the beach, but at the end of the day, if there's something within the organization that's pulling, kind of pulling you there as opposed to you going willingly, that is usually a people problem. That is not a system problem. And um so, you know, I had a mentor um for my HR consulting business for a while, and I worked under him first, and um, you know, and and he helped kind of help me understand like these are the system things and these are the people things and how they interact. But, you know, I have a psychology degree and an MBA, and so I was always kind of interested in how those things interact. And and I think as I started to learn the consulting a little, and and you get, you know, you you get to a point where you're not necessarily struggling with it anymore, right? And then that's when you really get to play and understand what it is that you love to do. Um I don't know if that answers the question, but I think it does.

Pedro 6:15

And it shows your background in psychology too. So it's uh it's not something that was new to you. You were like, this actually makes sense, and maybe I need to do something different here in order to help these people. And you kind of knew what not exactly, but you kind of knew that there is more to it than systems and implementing the next, you know, framework. So what I want to understand for you is like after you got rolling, right? Who are the people that kept showing up? You know, the ones you realize, okay, these are the people I work best with, you know.

Amal Babar 6:45

I'm not sure that there was like a single type, like a archetype of a person that I worked best with, but typically it is um, you know, founders or business owners that understand that there is more going wrong than the acute problem they called me for. So a lot of times what would happen is that like I would go to a I would go to a sales meeting basically, and then you know they tell me their problem. And I'm sitting across from them and I can read them. So I know they're lying. And I'm like, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, you tell me your story, honey. It's all right. And then like I would be like, look, look, I, you know, and they would say, well, we just think that we need like, you know, like the handbook rewritten or something. And I'm like, you just called someone with an advanced degree and many, many years of experience to write your handbook at a consulting rate? What's really going on? And then they would go, Oh, you got me. And so and then they would tell you the culture issue that they have, or you know, the the internal strife that they have. For some reason, people are, I'm gonna use the word ashamed of this a lot of times. So they don't lead with that. Oh, and it makes sense, right? I'm a leader of this group, sock, you know, you know, you don't hear that, right? Ever. It's always behind some sort of tactical issue that they want to give you.

Pedro 8:12

Okay, that's interesting. Now let me ask you this, because I'm you probably face this, especially since you're working with teams, right? Were you ever in a in a position that you're let's say hired by the CEO or the, you know, top-ranked people, top tier, and you realize mid-work that it's like the problem is not really the team, the problem is really that person. It's a toxic culture and all that. So if you face that type of environment, how did you navigate a conversation with a client? Because at the end of the day, he has a client, right? So how do you navigate that and tell them, you know what, honey? I think you're the problem.

Amal Babar 8:50

You you do it by asking. It's actually where those coaching skills are actually really called upon because you do it with questions and you get this guy and you go almost lead him there, right? So you get this guy to start thinking about things a little bit differently, right? I think one of the bigger problems that I have seen is like the CEO thinks that everyone under him, especially in like the small business world, the CEO thinks that everyone under him should have the same passion, the same understanding, right? And I'm like, oh honey, their name's not on the door. So I think though those are the times in which, yeah, you really do call upon the the skills of being excellent at asking these questions that are very introspective and get people to where you want them to go, as opposed to calling them out and going, yeah, dude, no.

Pedro 9:47

Okay. Interesting. And now that was the that's the coaching side, okay. But now I want to talk about the part of nobody escapes, which is marketing, right?

Amal Babar 9:58

So, yeah.

Pedro 9:59

How do those founders, small business owners, you know, how do they the how do those people actually find you, you know, in the first place?

Amal Babar 10:06

Right. So most of my business, I I grew assist my business to being six figures before I started graduate school, but and it was based almost entirely on referrals. So because I was really into networking, and you know, where I live in Houston, Texas, it's pretty big, but it's also not. So there was a lot of, you know, going to BI meetings, like this is networking international, going to different networking meetings, especially being really close to people that are ancillary to selling in the HR space. And so that's how I did it. That's how I did it the first time. And now that I'm like rebuilding helium, I've come to the conclusion that I can't do everything myself anymore. And so I've actually hired somebody to to help with a lot.

Pedro 10:51

Okay. Now I want to talk business for a second, you know, the structure of your coaching business. Picture this, hey, I received a referral, like, hey, you should talk to Amal. She's pretty cool. I'm like looking at your stuff and your your online presence. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna hop on a call with her, right? Or her team, not sure. But I'm like, talked with you, did a discovery call, however you want to name it, and I felt like, hey, there's connection. I want to work with you. Okay. We ended up sealing a deal. So walk me through it, like from my perspective as a client, what that that would look like to work with you, you know?

Amal Babar 11:30

Okay. So I think what we would talk about in that discovery call and and where we would get to is I am two things. I am going to be the coach, but also there's a research part to this. So I have found, I have hired many coaches in my career, business coaches, life coaches, health coach, all the things, right? And what I've noticed is that too far too often it was a very expensive conversation. And then the next month you would have another conversation, but it might, it might not tie back to the one you had previously. And so there was no continuity between those sessions. And so my goal here was to create a coaching company that also kind of feeds my need to do research. So you and I are going to have whether you want to call them goals or intentions, we're gonna set those. And I don't care what you want to call them, but for the next three months, you and I are gonna, you know, and those can change and those can pivot, but we're going to have some kind of target that you're gonna hit. There's going to be a reason that you come here, and that reason is going to be more than you're whining to me about whatever it is that's upsetting you that day. And so, you know, there can be a place for that, but there also has to be a place for the reason that you walked in the door, right? Whether it's quantitatively or qualitatively. So you're gonna fill out like a survey for me.

Pedro 12:46

Okay. Interesting.

Amal Babar 12:48

A lot of them.

Pedro 12:49

Well, there's a lot of work to be done, obviously. And your work seems pretty hands-on, right? And you already hire someone to help you. Now, we're talking about discovery calls, we're talking about the coaching practice itself, and there's also business development. So, how do you think about capacity? So you don't stretch yourself too thin, for example.

Amal Babar 13:08

Right. So, I mean, I have a business plan that so I've already thought about capacity and how many, how many people I can handle and who are those people going to be, as well as um, I've already talked to other people that are coaches and to to kind of vet them, say, okay, once I hit capacity, or you know, if this is someone where like I have a discovery call from someone and they're not a fit for me, right? I have other people that I can go, okay, you know, you're not a fit for me, but I'm gonna assign you to someone else, and those people have agreed to um, you know, to work with me on a 1099 basis.

Pedro 13:45

Okay, interesting. Especially since you have already the clarity to put the plan in action and uh the scale plan. I would say that doesn't happen so often in the space we're in, in the coaching space, by talking with people all day all long about that. So I commend you in doing that. That hat of business owner is something that more I don't see a lot in the coaching practice. It's like they have the high the hat for the coach, but they forget about the CEO, you know, the business development and all of that. Now, I'm curious about where you're taking all this about, you know, looking ahead, where do you see the business going? Are you thinking about scaling, hiring, or is there a next step you're excited about, you know?

Amal Babar 14:27

Yeah, I mean, my goal is to kind of play with this and run it for the next 10 years, and then um at that point, kind of hand it off to one of my kids and to be like, here, have a have a have a company, right? Um, you know, and maybe that's 10 to 15 years, but that that's the goal, like to create this in a way where and to teach other people kind of what you're teaching them right now, is that yes, there's a coaching side to it, but there's also a business side to it. Because, you know, unlike psychology, where you can run it through an insurance program and pay 25 bucks because that's your copay, you know, coaching is a lot of times, you know, charged at a consulting rate, right? So if I'm gonna charge people a consulting rate for this, then I want to make sure that that business piece of it is there. And two, the people that are coming to me are quite serious about where they want to go. So, I mean, I have different levels, right? There's like the solopreneur, there's the person that owns the business and has a team of people, but it's still considered small, and then executives and then executives that want to be there, like they're paying for it, and then the executives where their boss sent them to me. Now that's a totally different situation.

Pedro 15:46

That's the one I want to ask. It's like, have you ever sat down in front of someone who's like, just my boss just told me to be here? How do you navigate that?

Amal Babar 15:55

Yeah, I mean, well, that's interesting. Why do you think he asked you to be here? Right? And so again, you can't like lean in with, oh yeah, he told me he sucked.

Pedro 16:07

I love that. No, it it's like it's aligned what you told me earlier, right? It's like you get into the the bottom of it, the real intention. Like, what what did you think your boss sent you here, right?

Amal Babar 16:19

Right.

Pedro 16:20

So he starts to think, right? Like, maybe I did something or I didn't do something. You know, yeah, 100%. That's so interesting. Okay. Now, of course, whenever actually I'm gonna hit the brakes here because I I you mentioned something, you have such clarity on the scaling plan, and I I want to ask you about this because I see a lot of coaches struggling with it. And the part they struggle is like it's the fork for the scaling plan. It's like, do you and I'm gonna ask you, do you see scaling a coaching business more like one-on-one, which there's a capacity component tied to it, obviously, your hours of the day. Uh, one to many, and then we see a lot of people out there doing group coach and all that, or potentially even licensing. Like, for example, you teach someone to do your own way, you know? How do you see scaling from your point of view?

Amal Babar 17:13

Um, honestly, I think all three of those things, right? And, you know, I have a tendency to go, I want to do all of it, right? But at this stage in my life, I can't do all of it. So quite frankly, I probably never could. I just attempted to. And so that's the the person that I hired to help me do the marketing, the operations, all of that. She's also kind of the sounding board for me to go, okay, you can't do all of these things. So what I wanted to do was yes, the one-on-one coaching, and then the group coaching, and then the mentoring program, and and then the licensing deal, and and then one of those licensing things is, you know, I run the analytics for other people's coaching businesses. So, um, so if because if they're interested in also trying to track or kind of understand, you know, from a qualitative or quantitative way, then I certainly have the skill set to do that and um and I can teach it or I can do it. But that's why she's like, whoa, you can't do all the things.

Pedro 18:15

Take it easy.

Amal Babar 18:16

Take it easy. You can't do all the things at the same time.

Pedro 18:20

What are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

Amal Babar 18:24

So right now it's more like I call it self-management. Like we all have the same amount of time, right? So it isn't necessarily time management, it's more like self-management and prioritization. So um, you know, another one of her jobs is to help me prioritize where I need to spend my time. So I had to take an entire year off because I burnt myself out. So now how I spend my time and is really more important than it's ever been. And right now I'm still kind of like to me, it's not something that you, oh, okay, well, I'm gonna spend my time doing these things. It's kind of a trial and error thing, especially right now because I'm trying trying and erroring on the marketing side, right? You I'm trying to figure out what really works here. But um, yeah, so okay.

Pedro 19:12

You know, now some advice time. I love to do that because you're an entrepreneur from what, 20 years old, you told me, something like that.

Amal Babar 19:21

So I guess I started my business um in 2011, 2010, somewhere in there.

Pedro 19:26

Okay. Well, so that's a a long time. And I want to tap into your experience for a second, if you don't mind, because people listening can really benefit from this. You've been in the game long enough, like we just talked, and you've you were able to hear all sorts of business advice, right? Some are good, some are terrible. So what's one piece of business advice you hear all the time that you think that's overrated, you know, or misunderstood?

Amal Babar 19:51

I think the most I think I heard this in a in a seminar I was in a few weeks ago, where you know people like to think of it as a linear process, right? And it it doesn't look like that at all, right? It looks like I almost wish I could draw for you. It looks like squiggle, squiggle, squiggle, squiggle. Okay, I got this, I got this, I got this guy. Oh my god, I don't have this. Okay, and then okay, okay, I got this. That's what it looks like, right? It's not okay, I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna do that, and then I'm gonna do the third thing, and that's how we're gonna scale. When people think it works that way, and it doesn't because there's so many things that are outside of your control, right? And so, because there's so many things outside of your control, you really have to hone in on the things that are. And so I think sometimes people think about starting or owning a business as something that's as linear as we time is measured, and it it's just not like that.

Pedro 20:47

You just remind me of my brother, his like a PhD in biomolecular whatever, supernerdal. And we were talking about this right uh a few years ago. And I'm like, how do they eventually discover X, Y, and Z? And he explained to me it's way more organic in a way that it's not like they wake up a day and they're like, I want to discover something. It's like they get into a pitfall, a problem, and then they have to solve it and they move forward. And sometimes the forward is not like a straight line, it's like in the side, and they keep going forward. So you just reminded me, it's like something like you're you're trying to tell me, did I got the picture right?

Amal Babar 21:26

Yeah, pretty, pretty much. It's uh, you know, because even even let's say, because you just said organic, and that's kind of what I'm talking about, like growing a business organically, but even if you're infused with money, right, by some VC, you might be going faster, but there's still it's still not necessarily a linear type process, always, because they're all there are still going to be things that you can't control. So kind of like what you just said, you you're gonna have to pivot, right? Always.

Pedro 21:56

Okay.

Amal Babar 21:56

Being very flexible is is very important.

Pedro 21:59

Interesting. And on the other side, like what's a piece of advice you wish more people actually took seriously?

Amal Babar 22:06

I think having going through this um sort of burnout experience, I I think what I kinda learned from that and that and what I wish people I wish I would have known maybe I did know, but I wasn't paying attention to it before is that you know you're still you still have to take care of you. Right. And the business is important and money is important and all of those things are important. If you have people working for you, yes, you have a responsibility you can't just check out. But you also have the responsibility of taking care of yourself first. And you know, and and some of that is like I wrote a my dissertation on mindfulness and leaderships, um you know, being aware of kind of your own self and where you are, and then you know, emotionally intelligent enough to be aware of what's going on outside of you too, and people don't think about those things as being like super important for running a business, but it's probably the most important thing.

Pedro 23:02

You know. Do you think that going through that burnout you mentioned helped you being a better coach today? You know, because you sometimes we have in the coaching space we advocate against against burnout, right? And all of that. So having skin in the game and and going through that, do you think that that made you be a better coach right now?

Amal Babar 23:22

I think it does because um like I understand things on a level now that I couldn't have understood them before. So um, because I you know, I d I got really sick and I had to take an entire year off. And going from like this hyper like type A person to that. You know, even my son, who's like 19, was like, Mom, did you ever think that maybe this was given to you? So yes, I I do think it it helps my coaching practice. I think it helps my level of empathy with people that are going through whatever it is that they're going through. And it helps me stop and like and be a little bit more aware, aware of where I'm at in that coaching space and where they are.

Pedro 24:03

Wow, 19, that was deep. I'm thinking about it. Like in a way, like that was given to you so you could realize what you've you know, you had a change or something like that, like an opportunity to have more awareness of where you're at and where you want to go, something like this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The kid. I love him. Okay. Yeah. I love that. Now, and if someone listening wants to connect with you or follow your work amount, where can people find you and connect with you?

Amal Babar 24:30

Um, they can find me on LinkedIn, probably the easiest place to find me. I'm on LinkedIn almost every day. And I'm having a new website built, and quite frankly, I don't even know if it's up yet. So it's like um they said two weeks to have it up, and so that should be this week, but but yeah, they haven't come back to be said it's done yet.

Pedro 24:52

You know, in our descrip uh description of the the all the the podcast we're gonna publish, yes, there it will contain all the links, so don't stress about it. Okay. Um, you know, there were a few things you shared today that I would say really stay with me, you know. First of all, when you mention about the origin story that you have to enjoy doing this, um, and also the the ecosystems bit that didn't suck, you know, the way you put it, it's like sometimes it's so simple, right? It's like we tell ourselves a lot of lies, a lot of a BS of oh, this is going to happen. It's that just how you need to have some fun doing this, or else it's gonna be a pain in the butt. Okay, so I love that reminder. When I throw you two curveballs, right, uh how to navigate the CEO and how to navigate the employee, it's the same answer. I love that. It's like asking the right questions about and and make them realize the reason they're stuck, but by themselves. If you start calling people out, this is just not gonna happen, not gonna end well, right? And I think that's a testament of a true coach, right? It's like someone who understands that it's like a guided experience, but it's not necessarily you providing answers, right? Which is completely different from a consultant in a way, you know, and um the self-manage instead of time management. That's a really cool quote because it is it it is about priority prioritization, you know, and all of that. We only we all have the 24 hours in the day. Um, we're on the same boat about that. Now, I'm out. This is my long-winded way of saying that I appreciate what you do, and I appreciate you being here and sharing so openly today, okay? It was great having you on.

Amal Babar 26:43

Thank you. This was fun.

Davis Nguyen 26:44

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.