Career Coaching Secrets

How Krista Morris Built a Coaching Business After Getting Told to Quit

• Davis Nguyen

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 In this inspiring episode of Career Coaching Secrets, Rexhen interviews Krista Morris, founder of Virtuoso Resumes and Virtuoso Recruiting. What started with a $25 Craigslist ad turned into a multi-person coaching and resume writing business. After being told by a leading industry expert that she had “no future” in coaching, Krista leaned into her strengths—detail, empathy, and authenticity—and built a successful business that now attracts that same expert’s former clients. Tune in to hear Krista’s real-world advice on branding, systems, scaling, and how to protect your passion while growing a team. 


You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristamorris/
and her website https://virtuosoresumes.com/


You can also watch this podcast on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/@CareerCoachingSecrets

If you are a career coach looking to grow your business you can find out more about Purple Circle at http://joinpurplecircle.com

Get Exclusive Access to Our In-Depth Analysis of 71 Successful Career Coaches, Learn exactly what worked (and what didn't) in the career coaching industry in 2024: https://joinpurplecircle.com/white-paper-replay

Krista Morris:

I see a lot of new coaches spinning out, where do I find people? You have to invest in building a brand. In fact, here's the one message that I want to leave to somebody who's starting out a coaching business, is when I was very early on, one of the giants in my industry hired me as a subcontractor. After delivering what I needed to deliver to her, she told me that I had no future in this industry and that I was too slow and that I really should find some other way to make money. What I did with that message was I leaned into the fact that I really like detail. I leaned into the fact that I like one-on-one contact with clients. And I leaned into all of the things that she said that made me not suitable for this industry. And here we are today, three people working for me. And I regularly get her clients after they're unhappy.

Davis Nguyen:

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 Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. Before Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and consulted with two career coaching businesses that are now doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or just building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen:

Okay, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today, my guest is Krista Morris, a resume and job search expert, a CEO and founder of virtuoso resumes and virtuoso recruiting. I think that's kind of Italian in that name there, virtuoso. It is,

Krista Morris:

it is.

Rexhen:

For over a decade, so she has helped professionals worldwide making last first impressions with powerful resumes, CVs, and LinkedIn profiles. And I'm very grateful to have her on the show. Welcome to the show, Krista.

Krista Morris:

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk.

Rexhen:

Tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a career coach.

Krista Morris:

It's like the best things in life. It was completely by accident, frankly. I was helping people that were underemployed or unemployed and receiving government assistance and helping them beat the system by getting employment and get off the system in the US. At one point, I had three offices. I had 30 employees. I was a hiring manager. I had two job search centers. We had literally thousands, tens of thousands of clients that we were responsible for. So it wasn't a small operation. The budget was in the millions. We were running very large state programs. And this is a really challenging population to work with. But when I got pregnant with my second son, I could not go back to work. I was really sick. And my son was born, my youngest son, he was born five weeks premature. He was so small. He was itty bitty. He screamed nonstop. He was, you know, it was like the exorcist with, you know, it was just not great. And I was sick. Everybody was sick. It just wasn't a good time. And the HR guy calls me and he says to me, I have the best news for you, Krista. And I'm thinking, I'm exhausted. I'm covered in baby. It was not a good time in life. And he says, the best news. And I'm thinking, what? I got you your job back. Now, hold up. I didn't know I had lost my job. Nobody had told me that I was unemployed. So he says, you can have your job at a $7,000 pay cut. My edit button, you know, the edit button between your brain and your mouth, it was fully off at that point. And I told him where he could put his job. relatively respectfully, but very honestly and bluntly where he could put his job and his $7,000 pay cut. And I stayed home and I took care of the little kid, the baby. And he is a teenager now and he's mostly healthy and ready, almost ready to go to college. And in the process of dealing with all of his medical crises, I woke up one morning realizing that I had a skill that I could write resumes and teach people how to get jobs and do career coaching because I had done that. I had written thousands of resumes in my prior role, thousands. And I had coached thousands of people. I had done interview workshops. I had written curriculum. It was a really big job. And I woke up one morning realizing that I had a skill and that I could market that and I could do it at night and I could do it on the weekends. And I could still make sure that the people I loved who needed me were taken care of and that he is now 18. That was 18 years ago. And I haven't looked back since. It was the best time. decision that I could have possibly ever made. So it wasn't even necessarily a decision that I made. You know, you grow by necessity. Careers grow by necessity. Life happens. The best laid plans don't always work out. And sometimes you have to pivot on a dime. And that's exactly what I did.

Rexhen:

Yeah, that is a very powerful story. And compared to the other coaches that I've had on the podcast, so right now, We're on episode seven and I'm going to be launching soon. So you'll see also the other episodes. You'll see that naturally most coaches got into career coaching because they either had this skill from the previous role and they started helping some friends, some people that they knew and then started to move fully into it. your story is more powerful and more of like a stronger pivot. It certainly was

Krista Morris:

a pivot. The night before I woke up that morning, I had this dream. And have you seen the Harry Potter movies? Has anybody not seen the Harry Potter movies? There's that scene in that big cavern where Professor Dumbledore is, there's that big water and they're in the boat, right? Okay, so it was there. That was where my dream was set. And my son who started all of this, he was, there was a pier and he was flailing around in the water. He must've been two or three and he was drowning. And I am trying to get there as quickly as I can. And I am slogging through the water. And then I realized that I could stand up and the water was only up to my knees. And I walked and I skipped the baby. And the next morning I woke up realizing I could start a business.

Rexhen:

Well, it turned out much better than the job you realize you didn't have, right?

Krista Morris:

It did. It absolutely did. I'm so happy. I love

Rexhen:

what I do. Tell me a little bit more about the journey. So from when you started your coaching business to where you are right now.

Krista Morris:

Back then, the place where you could advertise a growing business like that was Craigslist. So I put out a free ad on Craigslist. I started at... I think it was $25 a resume and got my first client. And over time I got more and it just built. It just built from day number one from that very first Craigslist ad. I got myself a website and I made sure that I always put clients first, that they were the priority in my business and they realized it and they knew it and I treated them like that. And I still do.

Rexhen:

Is there a specific group of people that you work with, like a specific basically target audience that you're serving?

Krista Morris:

I love that question because the answer is no, I don't. I absolutely love the variety. I don't know if I'm a little bit ADHD. I don't know. But I really love to be able to work with, you know, a machinist one day and then a CEO the next. The variety really very much helps keep me engaged. I have seen where niches really are beneficial to the business, but it's not how I choose to, it doesn't spark my joy. So I would be so bored and I need my joy sparked. I need to be continually engaged and having the variety of all kinds of different clients that I work with does that.

Rexhen:

Cool. And where do you find your clients? What is the primary marketing channel that works out for you?

Krista Morris:

I rank pretty well locally on Google and I get a lot of clients on LinkedIn. So it's both organic search and LinkedIn. People find me on LinkedIn. I post regularly and referrals. I would say that a solid 50, 60% of my new clients are referrals.

Rexhen:

And When it comes to Google search, is there a specific term that people are finding?

Krista Morris:

Professional resume services and career coaching by location. So I do, I'm ranked in the top three in my local area and Phoenix is really a pretty big city. So it supports, you know, there's probably 20, 20 to 30 quality career folks in the Valley. And that's, you know, there's probably 5 million people. So it's big population to work with as far as Google search goes.

Rexhen:

And when it comes to them finding you, do you have like a Google, my business profile that they can do locally?

Krista Morris:

Yeah. So I have a Google, my business profile. I do post regularly because Google likes you to do those little status updates. So I do my little status updates when I remember. I blog regularly so that Google still captures regular content, fresh content, not recycled content. And it has over 10 years of blogs and content to sift through. So my site looks pretty authoritative, which I think is really important. And central to that is every single time i'm done working with a client i always send them a link to give me a google review every single time so i have a lot of templates that i use throughout the process at each stage and the very last one includes a link to uh both google and yelp so that clients can review me on both google and yelp

Rexhen:

since this is google locally do you also happen to meet clients locally or is it only on Zoom?

Krista Morris:

No, I used to meet clients locally, but the pandemic put a stop to that and it turns out that I'm a lot more productive on Zoom. I can get a lot more done when I'm not driving in circles.

Rexhen:

Yeah, that's so true. Cool. Yeah. The reason I asked that is because Google is so local. What about LinkedIn? What is your strategy that you're using on LinkedIn? Or is it mainly the same similar like posting just like you post on Google, you post on LinkedIn?

Krista Morris:

My posts on LinkedIn vary. So to keep content fresh, when I get a good review on Google, I post that on LinkedIn because that does influence people to hear what other people have said. I post tips and tricks. I do also post a random funny thing. I'm a little bit sarcastic. I'm very real. I'm authentic. So my voice, I think, is I'm not overly formal because I want people to know that I'm an actual human and not the sort of writer and coach that keeps people at arm's length. That's not... how i operate and i think that's one of the things that my clients really respond to for sure so my my posts vary between free advice reviews every time i post a blog i put a link and you know you're occasional

Rexhen:

thanks for sharing that i wanted to ask related to your girl journey do you have any goals that you're working on towards for for the next one to three years yes

Krista Morris:

There's a certification that I'd like to obtain. So I'm going to be working on that in the next year. And I very much would like to continue to grow my team. I now have three folks that work for me. And I would like to have enough volume to continue growing in that way. And have people that work for me that do business the way I do it.

Rexhen:

And within the team, do you also have other coaches or... resume writers?

Krista Morris:

Three resume writers. I do all the coaching. They write the resumes.

Rexhen:

Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, because your business model is divided between resume writing and coaching. It's not only coaching. And what resources or support have been most valuable for you in growing your business so far?

Krista Morris:

My gut. So there isn't necessarily a single resource. I have some tools that I use that I think have really helped me run the business and not necessarily be in the business 24-7. So those have been really critical. The templates, the automated invoicing, all of that stuff has been important. I keep a database of all my clients so I can tell who's who. And at the very top of that list is my gut because it has led me

Rexhen:

here. Mm-hmm. And you mentioned a certification. Which certification is this? Is it the ICF or? Yeah,

Krista Morris:

it's the ICF.

Rexhen:

ICF. Yeah, because the reason why I asked for that is after this podcast, I'm going to send you a white paper research where I've interviewed before about 71 coaches. That was not only career coaches, there was career coaches, exec coaches, leadership coaches, and certification was something that a lot of coaches had invested on. So you'll find that interesting in terms of the return on investment or even the other types of investment that they have chosen. I'll send that to you right after this podcast. We'll also link it to the video for anyone who's going to watch the podcast later on. So I've been waiting so much to ask this question because at the beginning of the podcast, you said that you have something to share about this. So what is something that you wish you had known when you first started scaling your coaching business? What is one unexpected lesson learned?

Krista Morris:

So hard my company name is to spell. My company name is Virtuoso and people cannot spell that word to save their lives. I spend a lot of my day spelling out my company name in email. If I could do it over, I would have chosen something a little bit simpler and not quite so complicated, but I'm locked in now. I've got a really pretty established brand. It made sense at the time. I'm actually a classically trained cellist. So my company name, Virtuoso, alludes to my musical nature and my musician side. My logo actually has a hidden note in it, by the way. Yeah, so if I had known, I would have chosen an easier word to spell that people knew. I can't even say it. See, you had trouble saying it.

Rexhen:

Well, initially, I wasn't sure if it's in Italian or if it's in English. So I was like, British, like her origin is from Italy or something. And then she later on has moved in the US and created this coaching business called Virtuoso. It's because

Krista Morris:

I'm a musician and music and Italy are so very entwined.

Rexhen:

Very close.

Krista Morris:

It's very close. Like all the words we use are Italian.

Rexhen:

So Next question to you is a challenge-focused question. And you talked a little bit about challenges at the beginning as well. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you face in scaling your coaching business? And even now you're trying to scale, right? Where you're trying to grow your team.

Krista Morris:

Finding the balance between scaling... and how much we can handle the volume we can handle because I've constantly gotten stuck with more than i can personally do and then i do a little bit more and then i have to bring on one person so it's it's really kind of skating the difference between what we can do and then bringing on another person it's a very fine line between what makes that worth it and it's it's really critical i think in this business where we're dealing with people and their lives that you find the right people to sell your business with because one bad session can possibly ruin somebody's life like it's a really big responsibility really really really big so I think I've been a little bit hesitant at times to bring new people on as the volume has increased and told me that i should but it's sometimes taken me a little bit to find the right person that i can trust and won't you know ruin lives that's it's it's important it's a really weighty important thing that we do

Rexhen:

and you and you just mentioned the balance between handling the work and basically getting those great results and this just jumps to the next question which is like how do you currently handle that balance between delivering the great results to the clients and managing the operational side of the business. It's like growing the business on the other side. It seems like it's a challenge on its own because that's where you

Krista Morris:

put it. It is. I work a lot. I probably work 60 hours a week. I have my own clients. I have my coaching clients. I have the resume clients. I need to make sure that everybody has the right level of quality that everything is clean and dialed in at all points so i i take a pretty regimented approach to my day and i protect my time so the specific time that i work on you know the quickbooks um there's time there's a specific dedicated time that i use to do some of my own writing there's time i use to manage the website I'm very regimented in that and i think that if i were Less organized, I think it would have been a much bigger struggle. That's a challenge that I see many other entrepreneurs faced with, especially coaches, because a lot of us are creatives, that they really struggle with the business piece and allocating time properly. And I think without my structured approach, I think it would be even harder, for sure. I see a lot of new coaches spinning out, where do I find people? You have to invest in building your brand. In fact, here's the one message that I want to leave to somebody who's starting out a coaching business, is when I was very early on, one of the giants in my industry hired me as a subcontractor. after delivering what I needed to deliver to her, she told me that I had no future in this industry and that I was too slow and that I really should find some other way to make money. what i did with that message was i leaned into the fact that i really like detail i leaned into the fact that i like one-on-one contact with clients and i leaned into all of the things that she said that made me not suitable for this industry and here we are today three people working for me and i regularly get her clients after they're unhappy they find me

Rexhen:

well you're definitely a I would say a very strong business woman in that aspect. The next question to me is like, what aspect of running your coaching business, quotation, keep you up at night?

Krista Morris:

Taxes? She's taxing. Taxes. It's probably taxes. It's all taxes. No, I really hate QuickBooks and it's the financial part. It's not my bag at all. That's probably the one thing. It's not my service delivery. It's not how well my people are trained. It's not my clients. It's not the product. It's not the results that we're driving. It's all about the access and the financial reporting.

Rexhen:

Maybe if Trump removes that income tax, that might help a little bit with the process. We'll

Krista Morris:

see if he burns it all down first.

Rexhen:

Okay, cool. So... the last one is and you kind of shared already one advice uh but if you have any other advice that you would give to other career coaches uh looking to scale their impact what would that advice

Krista Morris:

be lean into whoever you are and whatever it is you do that's great because each of us has a special sauce each of us has something that that makes us and gives us our unique voices and our unique value propositions and that makes us us and when that industry professional told me to never pursue this career uh because i was too slow um i leaned in to the fact that i love talking to clients and i leaned into the fact that i really truly genuinely care and sometimes caring takes time and people aren't cookie cutters and when you treat them like cookie cutters they don't come back and i mean i've had clients that have been around with me for nearly all 18 years that i've had this business i in fact even had one call me after me giving them a quote 10 they waited 10 years after giving them a quote to call me and hire me and that's really truly because i leaned into the fact that i genuinely enjoy taking the time that i take with each and every client So whatever your special sauce is, lean in.

Rexhen:

Lean in, guys. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming to the podcast today. It was a pleasure speaking to you and learning from you, especially from your stories.

Krista Morris:

Thank you.

Rexhen:

Thank you so much, Krista. So for anyone who wants to find you, they can find you at virtuosoresumes.com. I'll link that link here on the video as well. And they can also find you on start or is on linkedin is there any other way that people would like to if they wanted to get in touch with you

Krista Morris:

those are the the two biggest platforms that i use linkedin and my own website and i respond to each and every person that sends me a message

Rexhen:

so guys feel free to reach out Krista uh if you want to know more about her systems that kept her going and everything else you can reach out to her yeah

Davis Nguyen:

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 joinpurplecircle.com.