Career Coaching Secrets

How Elena Armijo Transitioned From Opera Singer to 6-Figure Coach

• Davis Nguyen

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 In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, Rexhen interviews Elena Armijo—Master Certified Coach, Dare to Lead facilitator, and founder of both a thriving private coaching practice and The C-Suite Collective. Elena shares how she went from coaching for a $5 cup of coffee to building a $600K+ annual business, all through relationships and referrals. A former opera singer, Elena opens up about burnout, entrepreneurship, and how relentless self-development fueled her evolution as a coach. She also shares her philosophy on building sustainable coaching businesses rooted in community, trust, and service—not cold DMs or algorithms. 

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-armijo/
https://www.instagram.com/elena.armijo/
her website https://elenaarmijo.com/
and her podcast https://www.elenaarmijopodcast.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

Elena Armijo:

You know, I started coaching for $5 for a cup of coffee. I would say, let's have a cup of coffee. And if you can buy me a cup of coffee, I can count that as my hours that are paid towards the ICF. And I can learn and you can learn and we're learning together. And I really was transparent with people that I was in a learning phase of my journey as a coach. And people really appreciated that and were willing to meet me in that arena. And I think that's important because $5 of a cup of coffee ended up being, you know, $600,000 a year, 10 years later, as what I make as a coach privately.

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:

Welcome everyone to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today, my guest is Elena Armijo, a master certified coach and a certified Dare to Lead facilitator who helps high performers break barriers and achieve lives they truly want. She works with CEOs, professional athletes, policy leaders, entertainers, and artists, providing customized executive programs that empower them to reach milestones they once thought were unattainable. I'm excited to have you on the show. Welcome, Elena.

Elena Armijo:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you.

Rexhen:

I'm excited too. Tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a coach, an executive and a leadership coach.

Elena Armijo:

I am one of those stories where I never intended to become a coach. So I just want to own that from the very beginning. I fell into this industry. I was a professional opera singer for about... 10 years professionally in the world, but studied my whole life and my education in music. And so after a career in opera that was, I would say a medium level career, I was on the path to continuing the next 20, 30 years in opera. I was a very classic case of a performer, a high performer that was burned out. I was living a life that was not in alignment with what I wanted. I was working a lot. I was traveling a lot. I was meeting a lot of beautiful people around the world and being connected to cultures around the world. And I love singing. I love music. And I didn't necessarily love the business of music. And I was, I was having a real existential crisis at that time where I was doing the thing I loved and I was very unhappy. So I had to do some work to figure out what that was about. And so I hired a coach myself. I knew nothing about coaching. I thought life coaching and executive coaching and career coaching was kind of a joke. You know, I had a lot of judgments about it and even hiring a coach coming into this. I was like, well, I've tried everything else, so why not try this and see what happens? And after working with that coach for six months, I was really able to distinguish why I was unhappy and how I'd created this career from all of my wounds of proving my worth to the world and wanting to make my family proud in a lot of different places that just weren't going to serve me for a long time. So as high performers do, I thought, well, if coaching worked for me, I'm going to take a coach training program because then I can continue to fix myself at the highest level with all the tools and just get all the knowledge myself, which is the joke of my life. Because as I've learned over the past 10 years being a coach, the work never stops and there's nothing to fix. There's nothing actually wrong with me. And it's really just about falling in love with yourself and your passions and what you love in the world at a new level. And so about four or five months into my coach training program, it was like, wow, I really, really love coaching and I'm good at it and I want to do it. And I never found something that I love just as much as I love music. So this was the fire that was started in me to become a coach. And I launched my business in 2015 and that was 10 years ago.

Rexhen:

Great. So you received great coaching and then you kind of leaned into it. Can you tell me a little bit more about your journey? So this was the journey when you started. What about when you started coaching to where you are at today? How has that changed?

Elena Armijo:

Oh, that has been quite the journey because, you know, I knew I loved coaching. I knew that I was a pretty good entrepreneur, which I think is a big part of this conversation today, is this was my third business that I had started. So in high school, I became a real estate appraiser with my dad because it was a family business and it was a way to pay for school. So I got a lot of training about being an entrepreneur and a business person from my dad. And then as a singer, you are an entrepreneur. So I had to take care of my business from start to finish as a singer as well. So by the time I got to coaching and starting a coaching business, this really was my third business that I had in the world, which I think is important, an important part of the story, because some people go into coaching and they think that it's going to be easy. And there's a lot that comes with being an entrepreneur that I think really needs to be talked about as well as the love of coaching. Right. They go hand in hand. So I say that because I knew what it was going to take to be in this business and create it to where I am now. And so the first year of coaching, I really decided that I was going to coach anybody and everybody on anything. And the whole goal that first year was to get good at my craft. I wasn't concerned about making money. I wasn't concerned about my niche. I wasn't concerned about where I would land in the coaching world. Instead, I was hungry to learn the craft of coaching. And through coaching lots of different people, I was able to craft the path of where I am 10 years later, really in leadership and executive coaching and career coaching is where I've landed. But those early years, man, I coached, I coached People that were all over the map doing all kinds of things from life coaching to leadership coaching to health coaching, all types of different things just to explore what it was like and get to know what I liked and where I was effective. The other thing I think that's important about this story is I started coaching for $5 for a cup of coffee. I would say, let's have a cup of coffee. And if you can buy me a cup of coffee, I can count that as my hours that are paid towards the ICF. And I can learn and you can learn and we're learning together. And I really was transparent with people that I was in a learning phase of my journey as a coach. And people really appreciated that and were willing to meet me in that arena. And I think that's important because $5 of a cup of coffee ended up being, you know, $600,000 a year, 10 years later as what I make as a coach privately. So I think that's an important step as well of how I got here. I also think that another part of my journey in coaching to getting here is I always study. I love studying. And that's a spillover from being an opera singer. When you are an opera singer, you're constantly practicing or refining or looking at languages and getting really good at them. And the same thing is what I bring to my coaching practice. So I'm always taking a class. I'm always looking at the newest research. I'm always in spaces with other coaches to learn and develop and grow because i like the mastery of it and so i think that's one of the things that's made me successful is i don't ever stop in my own growth and therefore the business can keep thriving

Rexhen:

yeah so you never stop learning and you never stop also receiving coaching uh yourself as well where do you find your clients currently what is the main marketing channel that's working for you

Elena Armijo:

Yeah. So I'm going to say something that's really unpopular for most people in the marketing industry is I did it backwards. I really believe that coaching is a relationship first business. And what I mean by that is everything that I've built on my success has come from relationships and referrals. Do I think that's sustainable forever? Well, we're 10 years in and it's still working. So I don't know if I have the answer to that. I think there are some other things that can be built that support that, which we can talk about in a second. But the foundational piece here is that this business works on trust and relationships and developing those take time. And so my main way of finding clients has been referrals, which to me, a referral is the highest honor a coach can get because it means the work is working and that people are getting what they need in the world. So I really have been very fortunate to in those $5 cup of coffee has turned into an entire beautiful forest of trees that has supported my business through referrals. So that's number one, is I really think referrals are the key pillar to a really great coaching practice. I think things like programs and online sales, funnels, marketing techniques that are there, they're useful for a certain type of business. So I think as a coach, you've got to decide What kind of business do I want to have? I really love one-to-one coaching. I love being on coaching calls with people and being in a space with them directly. I also love coaching teams. So I love coaching groups of C-suite leaders or founders or people that are building businesses. But again, that comes from my love of building businesses, right? So you can hear in the way that I built my business, it's through my own passion that of what I love to do. Not every coach loves to be on calls with one-to-one with clients all the time. And they really love more larger workshops or presentations or keynotes. So I think those are some ways you can develop your business. And you got to start with what do you love and where do you want to be spending your time the most? Because that's going to shape the way you do marketing.

Rexhen:

And for anyone who has somewhat of a good network, but it's not generating enough. What are some tips you would say to, to like further expanding that referral network or building it?

Elena Armijo:

Yeah, that's a great question because if you have a lot of contacts, which is, which is an important thing because some people don't have access or contacts, right? So we can, we can look at that in a second, but if you have a lot of contacts and they're not generating anything for you, then I would look at the level of relationship you're in with them. Are you generating your own relationship? And what I mean by that is not a cold email asking for a referral, but saying, hey, I'd love to take you for a cup of coffee and share what I'm up to and share what I really believe in. And then see if there's anybody that you know that would be interested in that as well. So it's a bit old school in a digital world that we live in, but it really is about authenticity and connection. So any way, shape or form that you can get into relationship with your contacts is really important because. A LinkedIn email. I mean, I'll just be transparent. I get probably 20 emails a day from people on LinkedIn that I never read that are deleted. I don't even know the last time I've checked my LinkedIn inbox, if I'm being honest, because there's so much that comes through that inbox that it's overwhelming. It's not where I'm going to find my people. And so I trust relationships. I trust people that I know that come to me and say, Hey, I really think you need to talk to so-and-so because they're great at this or they know this person or they run this workshop. And I think you'd really like to be in community with them. That's going to get me more attention from me than any cold email in my inbox. And honestly, I'm probably not even going to open the email. So if that's me as a coach, imagine what your clients are doing, right? Because we're all in the same pool of generating business.

Rexhen:

And I imagine with Big Network, you also have built your own emailing list as well. So kind of like your own newsletter or something like that, that you manage on your own? Or is it all in LinkedIn? It's

Elena Armijo:

a little bit of both. So I have a couple assets that I think are key. So number one is the newsletter. I send it monthly. I tend to write from a place of what tools or concepts or things might be needed or what my clients are currently talking about that the world might need to hear. So everything about my newsletter is about service. It's not about an offering or something to sign up for. It is straight. Just here's some knowledge. Here's some tools. Take it or leave it if you want it. And I found that that list grows more organically over the years because people really look for that knowledge that they can take for themselves. So it's got to be something that's useful. I would say otherwise don't spend time on it. And over the years, people have written back on the newsletter and said, wow, I really needed this today. Or, oh, my gosh, this was the one thing I needed to hear. And, you know, it's low lift. It doesn't take long to write. It's service-based in the world, which again generates connection. So I think that's number one. Number two, I have a podcast as well. So I invite leaders on the podcast to talk about what they're up to and how they're disrupting the world. There's a couple intentions here. Number one is service. Again, like people get to hear how other leaders are doing things in the world and get ideas from other leaders. That's number one. But number two, they get to hear how I think about the world as well. So they get to hear a little bit of my methodology or my mindset in the coaching world. And while I have never generated a client directly from the newsletter or the podcast, I have had many people come to me and say, Oh, I checked out your podcast. I read your newsletter. So the assets are the it's like the water that goes with the soil. It's already there. It just adds to what they're already curious about about you in the world. I think the last piece on social media is we do post on LinkedIn. We do post on Instagram. I don't find Facebook to be valuable anymore. So it really is just Instagram and LinkedIn. And honestly, we're getting ready to get rid of Instagram altogether and just do a LinkedIn first approach. And why? Because none of my clients come from Instagram. They just want to know about my personal life on Instagram. So a lot of people just want to connect human to human and see my partner and my dogs and who I am and how I live my life. Whereas LinkedIn, we still have a lot of industry leaders that are reading websites useful information. So again, it's never a post about what I can offer or what workshop I'm running. If people are really curious, they're going to come find that information on the websites. And so instead, it's all service. Like, here's what I'm thinking about. Try this out today in the world. Anything that you can provide for content people seem to really like.

Rexhen:

Thanks so much for sharing that. I wanted to ask you, is there any goals you're working towards for the next one, three years? How does that look like?

Elena Armijo:

Yeah. So as a private coach, I've been really, really busy for the last 10 years. And three years ago, I launched another business called the C-Suite Collective, which is a collective group of coaches that work together to What I found out really quickly in coaching is that, you know, you only have so many hours that you can do in a day of private coaching, right? So at some level as a business owner, once you've fulfilled that over and over, there's not much more you can do from a time perspective. So what I loved is how can we be of more service in the world with teams and C-suite leaders or career people that are transitioning careers from an organizational perspective? So we have a group of 20 coaches who get together who are a brain trust, and we go to organizations and help them shape their culture and do the deep internal work from the top down approach. So we work with C-suites first so that the trickle down into the organization can be felt, seen, and heard in the work that we do together. So my goals for the next one to three years is the collective is going to keep growing. It's a partnership model. It's a model where coaches can and be part of what is a collective but in business terms is more like a co-op with profit sharing and so you come to the table and you build out your own businesses but you have a brain trust to do in community the work that we're doing solo in the world i think that's desperately needed in the coaching world right now and so in the next three years i hope to see that really expand to um a business that is supporting a lot of organizations and a lot of coaches. Personally, in the next three years, I want to be doing more speaking in bigger arenas. So keynotes, yes, but more specifically, workshops that support these tools that I just talked about, like giving people the information that can instantly have an impact in their cultures or their lives. And then bringing that to the table privately if you still want to work one-to-one.

Rexhen:

And just so I understand this correctly, the second business and your own private coaching business are not related, right? The coaches here do not also help you with coaching in your own business? Correct.

Elena Armijo:

Not really. We all have our own businesses, but collectively we have contracts that we work on as a group. So whatever work is run through the collective is with the group mentality and the solo practice is still separate. And every coach that's part of the collective does their business that way.

Rexhen:

Oh, okay, cool. And about your private coaching, have you thought of hiring other coaches to help you out with your own clients or you only do the coaching yourself, the marketing yourself?

Elena Armijo:

I have, but you know, I was, I was much more interested from a business perspective and having a community of coaches than me being the leader of my brand and building out just the people underneath me. I could do that, but, but it was way more fun to do it in partnership and community and have more impact exponentially than I would if it was just my private practice. Certainly that could be done. And it just still seemed like a very small game. compared to what we could be playing in the world as a group of people.

Rexhen:

So I wonder if the career coaches who are going to watch this are going to find it interesting. I'll link that other business here on the video as well if they wanted to. Yeah. So one other question is, what resources or support has been most valuable in you growing your own coaching business? Okay.

Elena Armijo:

Well, I think you hit on it earlier when we were speaking about support. I've never not had a coach in 10 years. So I think coaches that don't have coaches are are doing a huge disservice to themselves. Mainly because again, you're not growing, you're not working on your own edges, your own fear that comes up in owning a business. So it could be a business coach, but it could also just be a life coach or a spiritual coach. Anything that's going to support you to continue to grow the places you know you stop because you are the clearing for your clients. So I really firmly believe just like A doctor who doesn't go to the doctor and take care of themselves, probably not a great energy there, right? That you're going to be serving the world. And so I've always had a coach and I always will have a coach. I also have spiritual teachers. I have a therapist. I have business mentors, people that are in the business world, like in finance or have built other businesses that are completely outside of coaching. I find... those mentors to be really great with diversity of thought. And they have me come out of the coaching world for a little bit to have more visibility around the health of a system and what it looks like. I think you got to have a team like my team is incredible. I have an incredible business manager. I have an assistant who rocks, you know, she's just and again, all of that is built on relationship and a foundation of culture, which is what we we bring to the world as well. I think my financial team is awesome. I have a financial planner. I have a CPA who's amazing. I have a business lawyer who's amazing. So some of these key pieces that you have to set up. that are really support for this business. I think sometimes entrepreneurs get scared of spending money or investing in that. And it is a lot of time and it's a lot of money on the front end, but it sure will pay off if you have the team you really trust and love.

Rexhen:

What is something you wish you had known when you first started your coaching business? Obviously, now you are at a point that it has grown. What is something that at the beginning, if you had known that you would have had grown much faster? Is there one thing that you can think of? an unexpected lesson learned, basically.

Elena Armijo:

Yeah. I don't know if it's about going faster because I feel like I grew pretty fast. I feel like I'm one of the lucky ones that within a year of launching my business, I was making six figures. So I feel like that's pretty fast growth. But I think the thing that I would have done differently back then, I would have invited more coaches in earlier. I think the power of community... is pretty important in the coaching industry. I hear a lot of people talk about how lonely they are in this career as a solopreneur. And I think any business that you start where you're the solo entrepreneur running it is lonely. So I think I would have gathered community sooner. I think community support can't go without being said that that's just as important as your clients because otherwise you get siloed and you get tired and you get kind of with blinders on in a lane that doesn't necessarily support you long-term because this is a long-term game. So I would do that differently. I would surround myself with community.

Rexhen:

Yeah, and I think there's plenty of communities even locally or online that you can find like that that The next question is more of a challenge question. And we talked about this at the beginning. What are some of the biggest challenges that you face in scaling your coaching business? Even though it grew fast, like I said, in a year, it went to six figures. Is there a challenge that still remains even to this day?

Elena Armijo:

Yeah, I think it's challenging, again, that time piece, right? There's only an exponential amount of time that you're able to work as a coach. It's like... If you determine that you're working 40 hours a week, you get 40 hours a week. That's it. And you can keep raising your prices, which many coaches do. And I've done. But eventually, even that feels like a zero sum game, right? It's just like there's a ceiling and you're going to hit it. So I think one of the challenges of being a coach when you're successful is looking at diversification of your business. So can you invest in other businesses? Can you create things like the collective or other places where you are sharing your time with more value that's coming towards you? If you're playing a money game, that's only if you're playing a money game, right? Because eventually there is a cap at what you can make versus the time that you're spending. And again, I think there's a lot more that goes into that about what do you want and what do you need and what are you building towards? But eventually that ceiling is hit. So I continue to find that to be something that's challenging to look at. Not only again, from a spiritual perspective of what do I want and how much do I want to be working and what is enough money, right? At some point, instead of playing the more and more and more game. And then where do I want to have fun in diversifying? That's a conversation that most coaches can't have until they reach a certain amount of success. So that is something that will become challenging along the way. I think another challenge is education in the coaching space. There's still a lot of people in the world that don't actually know what coaching is. There's a lot of noise in the coaching landscape around people who are trained or untrained or what programs they came from and how good they are. There's a lot of people that are still giving advice in a coaching space, which is really consulting. And so I think that it is challenging to educate the mass general public around coaching and stand for the level of coaching in the world. So I think that's something that will probably be a part of my career forever. is that I'm going to continue to educate people around what it is and stand for a higher bar in the industry.

Rexhen:

Yeah, I feel like that's slowly starting to change as well, the education around that. One question that I think will be very valuable for people to know, especially coming from you, is since you've built a team, you have two businesses, how do you handle the balance between delivering these great results to your clients and managing the business growth on the other side?

Elena Armijo:

It's really a beautiful question because you have to know what you want again, right? And this always points back to where do I want to be spending my time? I know that I want to spend about 50% of my time with my clients, right? right? Like interfacing with my clients, holding my clients, working with my clients, the other 50% of my time really on diversification of business or business building in some way. I used to think it was more like an 80-20 split, like 80% of my time with clients and 20% on business development. And I found that that wasn't balanced. I was working way too much and I was not grounded enough to provide the results with my clients and partnership, they weren't making as much progress. So I find for me, a little healthier balance is the 50-50 model at this stage of my life. But again, I don't have kids. I'm 44. So I'm entering the last 20 years of my career, which might be a very different place than somebody who's 25 or 30, who has children, young children, who is just starting out. So I think that you've got to look at all the markers in your life to decide what that balance looks like and then align that with your goals. Where do I want to be in three years? Where do I want to be in five years?

Rexhen:

All right. So 50-50. Interesting because the coaches that I interview have a different percentage always. And when you said 80-20, I had a coach just before you. it was doing 20% with clients and 80% on the business. So it's quite different, right? So if you would have like, what aspect, and this is a question on quotation, what aspects of the coaching business, quotation, keep you up at night, would keep you up at night?

Elena Armijo:

You know, what keeps me up at night is the heartbreak of coaching. I don't think anybody tells you that coaching You know, when you hear about becoming a coach, you hear about all the ways you're going to help the world and serve people and make an impact. And all of that is true. But they also don't tell you how many times you're going to be heartbroken. And I think that that is important because clients are going to break your heart. Sometimes they're going to do wonky stuff. They're going to get afraid. They're not going to meet their goals. It's going to be hard to stand for people and their stuff. And the world is still going to break your heart, right? There's still going to always be a need for coaching. So I think for those coaches that are idealistic or are looking because, you know, I don't know many people that enter the coaching industry that don't have a heart of service or in some way, shape or form want to help the world. And so I think you've really got to do a lot of work to balance that with what you see in the world, because it's not always the world's still going to world. And you got to still show up and do your job. So I think that's the thing that sometimes I have to do a lot of work around is the heartbreak of coaching and the heartbreak of being a business leader and making tough decisions and the heartbreak of supporting people who are also making tough decisions in the world. That part can be heavy. And if you're not doing your work and getting support around that, that can take you out.

Rexhen:

I feel like many coaches are going to resonate with that, even though to me is the first time that I hear that in an interview. Because I'm not a coach myself, so I wouldn't have known. So thank you for sharing that. What advice would you give to other, in this case, going to be career coaches listening to this, that are looking to scale their impact?

Elena Armijo:

Think about what you want. Where do you wanna be in five years? What's your ratio? How much do you wanna be working? How much do you not wanna be working? And what types of people do you love to work with? Do you like groups? Do you like one-to-one? Talk to other coaches about their pricing. I think gone are the days where coaches are not transparent. Anybody who knows me knows that I will gladly share what I charge and I share it not because I'm bragging, but because I think it's important to be transparent about what the market is doing so that you know what's possible for you, not only to set up your life and your business, but to know what clients are doing in the market as well so that you know where to price yourself and continue to learn. I can't say enough about that. Take more classes, take more trainings. It doesn't matter. I'm a master certified coach and I still am hungry to learn all the time. And I think that when you stop learning, that's going to stop your growth.

Rexhen:

Thank you so much, Alina. And for any of our listeners who want to connect with you, I'll be linking your website on the screen and also on the video. So elenaarmijo.com. They also can find you on your LinkedIn page. So thank you so much for being on the show. It was a great episode.

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.