Hey everyone.
My name is Cindy Makita Dodd.
And in this video, I am going to share with you how I started and grew my career coaching
company to serve over 300 clients in under 12 months, hundreds of my clients being able
to land their dream jobs.
I wanna share with you, my lessons learned how I did it, what I would do differently.
If I started a game pretty much the entire journey.
I wanna share it with you in this video, bear with me.
I have never done a video like this before.
If you find value from this video, please give it a thumbs up so I can produce more
videos like these to help you all.
Whether you're an entrepreneur thinking of starting any kind of coaching career coaching,
life coaching type of business, maybe you are thinking of taking the leap from corporate
straight into entrepreneurship.
Maybe you are already a career coach, and you want to know how to get more clients.
This is the video for you.
So from the time I started as a career coach, I was recruited by LinkedIn as a LinkedIn
career expert.
I have been featured in media outlets like WGN TV, business talk radio, Fox news, and
more.
I have partnered with amazing brands like Lunchclub, Bacardi, WHotel, Credit Sesame,
and more.
I have a team of resume writers under me, five resume writers that are helping with
the day-to-day because the demand grew so much for our services and I'm helping hundreds
of people land amazing roles everyday.
I have trained and coached over 53,000 professionals across the globe from the time that I started
my career coaching business, and it's been a phenomenal journey.
So let's get straight into the lessons learned, how I did it, how I started, how I grew and
kind of where I'm at right now.
The first thing I did is that I focused on building my brand to be searchable online.
The truth is that there's so many platforms that you can branch out into and get started
on.
But what I focused on was being where my ideal customer already was hanging out online.
So I focused my presence on LinkedIn, which is a huge professional network where my ideal
customers and clients are everyday.
That's a platform that I focused on and then branched out into YouTube of course, and Instagram.
Um, but those are pretty much the three main platforms that I focused on building my presence
on being searchable on those platforms, making sure that my profiles had keywords that my
ideal customers were searching and looking for.
So as you can see on my LinkedIn profile, I have the keywords, career coach, resume
writer, LinkedIn writer on my Instagram, it's branded as career coach.
Those are all ways that I made my brand SEO-friendly or search engine optimized so that when people
were online, either on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, whatever Instagram, and they were
searching for career coach or resume writer, because my profiles were SEOed or keyword-optimized,
my profile would pop up.
So I would get messages from clients and still do almost every day of prospects of my ideal
clients, of people that are looking for my services.
Um, that naturally gravitates towards me because my profile is optimized and search-engine
optimized.
So that is one thing that I did very early on, making sure that I was searchable for
those people that already had the buying intent.
They were actually searching for a coach or a resume writer.
They would type in the keyword, my name or my profile would pop up and they would reach
out to me.
So I made sure that my brand was searchable.
I focused on building my presence on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube again, and from the
content that I would build on those platforms, I would then distribute to other social media
platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, um, and others.
So although I did have a multi-channel presence across multiple platforms, I focused on building
and crafting content on those three main platforms, which is where my ideal customers were and
then dispersed that content across the boards so I could have a lot of presence online.
My brand was, and is my number one arsenal.
It's that one thing that I can leverage and use to reach more people, to grow my audience,
to expand, um, and ultimately let more people know what I'm doing and how they can get in
contact with me.
So definitely building my brand was one of the main things I focused on from the very
start, um, when I started my coaching company and it's benefited me all the way up until
now, as it continues to do number two, I focused on sales and marketing.
You could have the best product or service on the market.
Maybe you're an amazing coach and you know that you have that passion to help people.
But if people don't know about you, they can't buy from you.
So one of the things that I did was focused on perfecting and getting better at my sales
and marketing ability.
Even more than that, I focused on how to close deals and for coach, and maybe somebody that
isn't familiar with the sales and marketing space, knowing how to sell on the phone, knowing
how to be a closer, knowing how to take a prospect from the point where they're interested,
you get them on the call, like a consultation call to the point where you actually close
them and they take action to purchasing your product or service.
Um, that's a whole process, right?
And knowing how to actually take that prospect from point A to point B the whole closing
and selling journey, I was able to perfect.
And I really focused on selling the benefit of running my own marketing and sales agency.
I know how important sales is.
And so for anybody that's starting on their entrepreneurship journey or thinking of becoming
a career coach, this is one of the things I would nail down on.
Make sure that you know how to sell.
I would get on the phone with a prospect, pitch my product or service and close them
on the phone for thousands of dollars for executive coaching or whatever coaching package
I was selling.
And I was confident in doing that because I knew the value I was bringing to the table.
I knew that I could help them get the transformation that they needed and I wanted them to take
action.
And so I had that confidence to close people on the phone, uh, because I focused on sales
and sales can sometimes be a very tricky, tricky part for some people.
But let me tell you, it is crucial if you want to start and grow a coaching business.
One of the quotes that I heard that resonates so much is that sales is service.
If you don't like sales, it means you don't like to service your client.
And so the two go hand-in-hand, and it's one of the things that I feel like propelled and
accelerated my results.
Even just making offers online on my socials, letting people know, Hey, I have a resume
special click this link.
If you want to learn more, click this link if you wanna buy, like, Hey, I'm just launching
my coaching program.
I'm on my stories, in my social media, selling.
If you want to grow your business or any other business for that matter, you need to get
married to SAM and that's sales and marketing.
Number three, I got social proof early.
So social proof is things like testimonials, it's other people speaking about your work.
Did you get their results?
What are your clients saying about the way that you worked with them, how you interacted
with them, how the process, the journey the transformation was and how you were able to
get them from point A to point B, there is nothing more powerful than social proof.
And this is one of the things I focused on very early on in building my coaching business.
Because if I could show somebody that I could get a prospect or client from point A, where
they were lost and stuck in their career, they didn't know the next steps, two point
B, where they had clarity and they landed their dream job.
I could replicate that process for the person that was interested.
So I really focused on showing my customer journey on getting social proof and most of
all, getting testimonials as many as I could very early on.
So whenever I would service a client and I would help them get a result, I would ask
for a testimonial, I would screenshot the testimonial where I would get on a call with
them and record it on zoom.
There is nothing more powerful than social proof.
I have reviews on my LinkedIn profile on Trustpilot recommendations when other people are able
to speak on your work and are able to show the value that you bring to the table and
how you've been able to help them.
There's nothing more powerful.
And it gives a potential prospect or client confidence that you could help them achieve
that same transformation.
So I would use the social proof that I would get the screenshots, the graphics, the testimonials,
recommendations, etcetera.
In my landing pages, in my webinars, when I was on a presentation, I was showing slides
to a potential prospect.
I would use the testimonials in there as well, and that completely accelerated my results
because people would buy-in to whatever I was selling because I had proof of the transformation.
So make sure that you get social proof early and often, number four, I had a variety of
service offerings to meet my clients where they were at.
So I have digital downloads.
I have a webinar that then sells my online course.
I have one-on-one coaching that then transitioned into group coaching.
I have a resume and LinkedIn services.
And again, I have a team of resume writers because it got to a point where I couldn't
do one-on-one.
I couldn't do all of the resumes, but I had a process and a system that I was able to
service over 300 clients in that short amount of time, because I had so many product offerings,
um, available, right?
And so maybe somebody isn't interested in one-on-one coaching, but they would do great
with an online course.
I had that as an offering, or maybe somebody needed more in-depth coaching and they didn't
have clarity in their career.
I would point them to my group coaching program, where they would get more kind of hands-on
or touch points with me in that way.
And so having a variety of product offerings not only will help you get more revenue into
your business.
It also helps you meet your clients where they're at to anywhere from a $37 download,
a digital download all the way up until thousands of dollars of executive coaching.
You can meet your clients where they're at and have few and far between different pricings
of services that you offer.
And that's one thing that helped me not only get revenue in my business, but to also service
my clients the best way that I could.
Number five, I consistently showed up in building a brand in being seen as the go-to person
in your space in building influence, it all requires you to show up consistently.
I've been able to build my influence across platforms and build my followers, which also
generated more revenue into my business because I was consistent with how I showed up online.
So it's not just enough to have an online presence and to have a profile up, choose
a few platforms where you can be consistent, where you can add value to your ideal prospects
on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
So you are always top of mind for them.
You're building your brand, but you're also building your influence from weekly Instagram
lives to hosting webinars, free training.
Um, making sure that I'm showing up in my stories, posting YouTube videos on a regular
basis, making sure that I'm hitting and emailing my email list on a regular basis as well.
All of those things, just point to being consistent with nurturing prospects, being consistent
with how you show up.
And then also it builds trust, right?
Among you and your private prospect, because somebody may not buy from you the moment you
make an offer, but after you've built and cultivated that relationship over time, they
see you as the go-to person.
So when they are ready to purchase, you are the first person that they think about to
be consistent with how you show up.
There's nothing more powerful than consistency.
So that was it.
I hope that you learned something from this video, whether you are just starting out in
the entrepreneurship space, maybe you are thinking of starting a career coaching or
other coaching business.
Maybe you have a side hustle and you wanna grow it, whatever it looks like for you.
I really do hope that this video was useful.
If it was, please give it a like, and if you want to see more videos like these, let me
know in the comments, comments part two, and I would love to do more videos like these.
If you find them useful, not only was I able to do this for my coaching business, my husband
and I actually run a client's acquisition agency where we're helping other coaches,
consultants, and marketing agencies build their client base scale and generate revenue
on an ongoing basis without thinking about where their next client is coming from.
And I have a free download for you because you stayed right until the end.
I want you to click below to download a free resource.
That's going to show you exactly how we're helping hundreds of businesses on a monthly
basis, grow and scale their client base and be seen as the go-to people in their space.
So click the link right below this video for that free download on how you can accelerate
your client base and ultimately scale.
Thanks so much for watching.
Bye for now.