Career Coaching Secrets

Leaving Corporate to Coach: Tathiana Machado on Growing with Purpose

• Davis Nguyen

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In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, Rexhen talks with Tathiana Machado—former McKinsey consultant, INSEAD MBA alum, and founder of MBM Coaching—to uncover how she built a thriving coaching practice in under a year. Tathiana opens up about her transition from the corporate world to coaching high-achieving women, how she balances motherhood and entrepreneurship, and why delivering insane value per hour is the foundation of her success.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tathianamachado
and her website https://mbmcoaching.org/


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

SPEAKER_00:

the key and the way i think about my business it's not the amount of hours but it's the value per hour right so this is this is the goal of all the coaches so you can only charge a high value per hour or per package or whatever the way you want to charge if you are delivering and insane value to the clients right and this can only come from training from working on yourself and from trying to improve after every single session

SPEAKER_01:

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.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today on the podcast, we're joined by Tatiana Machando, a former McKinsey consultant turned career and leadership coach, an INSEAD MBA alum, and the founder of MBM Coaching. After a decade navigating high-stakes strategy roles across four continents, Tatiana found herself at Crossroads, balancing ambition, motherhood, and the search for meaning in her career. her to where she is today, helping other women design careers that truly align with their values, purpose, and lifestyle. She now works with high achieving women who feel stuck in corporate careers, guiding them to rediscover what lights them up and helping them take practical steps towards roles that energize them rather than drain them. From career pivots and storytelling to life beyond consulting, Tatiana's approach blends strategy with soul. Tatiana, we're glad to have you here. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very excited for our conversation today.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a pleasure to have you on. Tell me a little bit more about What inspired you to become a career coach?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, my first contact with coaching was actually during NCIAD. It's part of the MBA program to have some coaching sessions every two or three months. And my sessions, they were so transformative. They really helped me to develop during that time. So back then, I developed my love and admiration for coaching. And since i came i ended my mba came back to the corporate world got pregnant and had my daughter i started to reflect uh what path i would like to take because i very quickly realized that the corporate world was not for me anymore and i was Being coached back then and I deep dive on this passion that I have for coaching and understand how I could use my time, my knowledge to help people facing all type of challenges and doubts on their careers. And then I decided to take this leap to career coaching and I am very happy that I did.

SPEAKER_02:

nice and how does the journey look like from the moment that you started your coaching business to where you are at today i know it hasn't been that long but potentially it might have changed from the moment that you started to now right

SPEAKER_00:

yeah it has been around the seven eight months and it was quite fast honestly the start when the moment i decided to do this i started my training as well for me it was always very important that i had the good training and a good background to be a coach that can actually deliver the impact and the value that I want to have in people's lives. So I started to merge training, then I started to build the business and I really started from zero. So the beginning was very intense and full of doubts. It took me a bit of time to really invest more of my attention on the business side. I was first focused more on the training side and on becoming a coach so it took me a bit of time to really put attention on the business side and once I did I realized that there are so many things that we need to take care that like I had no idea anything you know like when you are a solopreneur you are the marketing, you are legal, you are the HR, you deliver the value, you are everything. It was a journey, but now after seven months, seven, eight months, things are much more stable. So as of now, I finished my training. So I had confidence that I could really have a lot of good tools to deliver the value that I want to deliver. I am more established in my business. So I have the business set up. I have the website, the LinkedIn, all those like tiny things that are required. I have a system that is working well to get a pipeline of new clients. I have my dedicated time to keep on developing myself because this is very important for coaches to keep on developing yourself and also taking care of your mental health, and well-being to be present in the best way for your clients and I have of course as well my dedicated time to be in the sessions with my clients so now I feel that I am in a very good place with my business there are a lot of things that I want to do at the time my to-do list but I feel that the system that I built for myself today it's sustainable and it's making me excited

SPEAKER_02:

Nice, thank you for sharing it. Who do you work with and what transformation do you help women achieve? I know in the intro I talked a little bit about you helping women or high achieving women, but can you share more about that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, definitely. So I decided to focus on women, working women in general, but more specifically, I would say women in mid-career, so around my age, 30 to 40 to 45 years old, and I decided to to focus on this specific niche because it's the niche that I relate deeply because it was where I was until two years ago. I was a corporate, I was in the middle management, almost going to senior management, having to deal with a lot of pressure, a lot of expectations, struggling to balance personal life with motherhood. And like I said before, I met coaching during INSEAD and it was a great experience for me to have the support. But in all the other moments of my career, I had to deal with my doubts, my questions, my anxiety all alone without having someone to share, without having support without even like having a light in the end of the tunnel you know so when I decided to become a career coach I decided that I wanted to be this person I wanted to be this support for all the women facing the struggles I faced you know from how to juggle motherhood with a career with ambition if you feel stuck at work because you don't like what to do but it's the job that paid your bills and kept your lifestyle up to this point and you don't know what to do next. So I wanted to be this type of support for this type of women. So this is the niche that I decided to focus and it was the best decision I made, honestly, because With all the amazing women that I deal with, all my clients, they are so really, really inspiring. When I empower them, I empower myself as well, you know? So it's like it's a two-way road because their stories are so amazing. But at the same time, the struggles are so similar. So I feel that, you know, like it creates this sense of community, like me with all of them and all of the other women in the corporate world. Currently, unfortunately, the world is getting... I think even harder for women, for moms. There is not a lot of support for childcare. It's still, there is a lot of inequality in the corporate world between women and men. But at the same time, women are more and more ambitious and they want to have their careers. They want to be successful. but we are the generation that has the biggest challenge to just to like balance everything. So the type of transformation that I help them to achieve because it's a partnership, right? So they achieve and I'm just there with them. It's from even women that are completely lost and they don't know what they would like to do next. They just know they're not happy where they are. So just helping them to figure out what they would like to do help them to access their courage to go for it, because this is a big thing. A lot of people, they dip down, know what they want to do, but they are just afraid of this jump. You know, they are just scared of doing. So there is a big part of my work, which is just trying to understand what is blocking them and overcome those challenges. And to also even like help them in more, let's say, pragmatic things, just like helping to position their personal pitch, their LinkedIn, their networking skills to just get to the position they want. And so as of now, I had many clients that started their own business or got the positions they want, succeeded on the interviews, even improved the way they were feeling in their current job just by reframing some thoughts they had and learning how to position themselves in a different way. I am very happy to see all this difference that those women are doing in the world.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing it. And where do you find these women? What is the main way of connecting with your potential clients? What marketing channel works best?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so this was a big learning in this journey. I would say I have two main channels. Number one, it's LinkedIn because I am Brazilian. I live in Dubai. I studied in France. I am quite international and global. So LinkedIn is a very good channel for me because People from everywhere can see what I do and just reach out and we can talk. So what I do on LinkedIn, the way I use LinkedIn is I try to be very present to post at least once per week. Now I am starting to shift to three times per week. And what I learned that is very useful on LinkedIn is to post things to help your audience, right? is to help your audience for free. Let's say like this. So I share either articles or studies that might be interesting for my audience, which is women, mom or not mom, but there's a lot of moms in my client pool around this age. So I share articles, I share studies, I share... reflections and things that I hear from my sessions with my clients. Sometimes issues that I see that many clients are having and how we can think differently about them. In some situations, some questions should just so people can reflect and use this to try to unstuck themselves for their current situation. So I noticed that by sharing those things, my audience engaged with my post and a lot of clients reach out to me and said, I really saw your LinkedIn. I saw your posts. I can relate with what you said and I want to work with you. So I think for LinkedIn, Of course, there is the algorithm and there is the things that we're calling in. All of this is important. But what has worked for me so far is also to bring myself, my personal experience, my experience in my sessions, my personal life, of course, a bit. But whatever makes my audience really relate to me and feel that they know me and that they want to work with me, this has worked for me. very well and the second channel that i use it's not a channel but it's like where i can find my audience like so me i want to work with women and because i am a mom i am very connected to other moms to working moms moms in general so i reflected a lot how could i be more part of this community first as As a member of the community, not to just only offer my services, but just because it's the word that I want to work with, I want to be very present and engaged and understand what are all the issues and all the discussions that are happening in this universe. So I started to be part of several groups of women, forums, support groups for new moms. I started to insert myself actively in this type of environment. And by doing that, I started to create a lot of connections with other women. And then later on, when they realized that I work as a career coach, they started to reach out as a client. So I think this would be my biggest tip is to reflect where your niche is physically, let's say, or in the digital world and how you can be part of this universe first as a person. And then later on as someone trying to promote a service.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you for sharing that. So LinkedIn is mostly content, basically the posts that you are publishing about helping your potential clients. And the second one was related to communities that you are part of. but also your target audience is part of. So you naturally are able to connect with them and potentially share with them what you're doing. And that kind of also has helped you. So yeah, I really like that. That is an interesting approach. Do you have any goals you're working towards the next one to three years? I

SPEAKER_00:

have many goals. I think the first goal is to, I want to get my PhD PCC certification from ICF, which is the International Coaching Federation. And in order to get my PCC certification, I need to accumulate 500 hours of coaching and do a test, do an assessment and get this certification. So this is something that I want. Of course, I'm already working as a coach. I have a lot of hours, but I think it's important to have this external stamp. You know, most of my career, I had those stamps. I was in a big consulting firm. Then I did one of the best MBA in the world. So I want to just This is something that is important for me. And the second goal, it's a financial goal. It's not exactly because of the money, because definitely I am not a coach for the money. I am really a coach because I realized that this is my purpose, but it will make me feel very... happy and proud of myself uh once i reach a specific financial target that i think i can definitely reach in two years based on my calculations so once i reach this financial target i feel that i did it you know

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so thanks so much for sharing it. And in terms of investments, what investments or support has been most valuable for you growing your coaching business so far?

SPEAKER_00:

I think number one is... the training I did a very good and extensive training from Ericsson and I do believe that it's important to have a good training and to have a lot of practice and mentorship as a coach because it doesn't matter all the marketing tools that you try to use in your business but if you don't deliver the value to your clients I don't think you can grow your business and I think the key and the way I think about my business it's not the amount of hours but it's the value per hour right so this is this is the goal of all the coaches so you can only charge a high value per hour or per package or whatever the way you want to charge if you are delivering and insane value to the clients, right? And this can only come from training, from working on yourself, and from trying to improve after every single session. So I think this would be the number one thing, is the training. And inside the Top of Cuff training, having mentorship. So being mentored by coaches that have 10, 15, 20 years of experience, that have thousands and thousands of hours of coaching. can really, really, really change your perspective, can help you notice tiny things that you never noticed about yourself. So it's really, really helpful. And the second thing I would say is the investment. It's more investment in time. It's the investment to learn. everything related to your business. So it's to research what are the best ways to market yourself. It's to research how the LinkedIn algorithm works and how you can create a content that will help your audience, but also would give you the visibility you are looking for. It's to research the best way to pitch yourself, to communicate, to invest in your image. So all those tiny things, that are related to your business, that in my case, my business is me, right? So all those tiny things, I realized that I could not do only following my common sense or the things that I knew so far. I had to invest time and study and understand from people that know better than me and then apply this in my business. So yeah, I would say definitely those two things.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. And is there anything you wish you had known when you first started scaling your coaching business, like an unexpected lesson learned?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think one thing is that the amount of things that come together with having your business. Maybe I was too naive, but I thought it was like, yeah, okay, I do my training. I am a coach. We can do sessions on Zoom. That's it. But no there is a lot of things and a lot of admin work that comes with your business and those take a lot of time and not necessarily they are something that you try doing, you know, so not necessarily you'll be good in doing all the admin tasks or the invoices or, you know, or the content creation. So this is something that I didn't realize and it was quite of a shock for me. So for anyone else starting this journey, consider this and consider that you might need help. If you're not good in stuff, you might need the help of a copywriter to help you with content creation, or you might need the help of an accountant or, I don't know, consider this. And the second thing is that coaching, it's a relationship business and taking care of yourself is really important. So you cannot do 10 sessions per day. You need a bit of time in between. You need time to rest. You need time to relax and to empty your head. You cannot be extremely tired or extremely stressed. You need time to separate yourself from whatever is going on in your personal life and your coaching sessions. This was also something that I didn't realize. And when I started to have more and more clients, I was like... oh my God, I just like, I needed a bit of a no missing time, you know, to just like come back to myself and be grounded, to be present to my clients.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, totally. And I wanted to ask you about how do you handle, and you kind of leaned on this a little bit, how do you handle the balance between delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, honestly, this is a big, a big, big, challenge what i try to do i try to separate time in my calendar to do let's say business work and then a different time to do coaching sessions and personal work right which is i think it's part of of like this coaching mindset that we need to have and this is one thing and the second thing i prioritize always my clients so there are a few weeks that I have a lot of clients and I have a lot of sessions and I am feeling more drained. I need more time to recover. I do less for my business and That's it. You know, like we entrepreneurs, we can organize our schedules in the way that works better for us. So I always prioritize my well-being and my clients before working on the business, on the business growth. And of course, sometimes this slows down a bit the pace of growth and the things that I'm able to do. But I don't want to jeopardize the quality that I'm delivering to my clients. But since I started to have more clients, I I made this fix in my calendar that I need time to do things for myself. So either to study or to relax or to read, to do exercise, all of those things that are always important in our lives, but it became for me mandatory now that I work with people and I have to be in my best shape for them.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks a lot for sharing that. And I think all of it is true. Being able to maybe prioritize and have control of your time is very important when it comes to this. Is there any aspect of running your coaching business that would keep you up at night in quotation or worry you?

SPEAKER_00:

For now, it has been the uncertainty in terms of revenues, in part because I'm doing this for like less than a year, but You never know. The way I work with my clients, I work with packages. So whenever I have a new client, I know how much I will make from that client, from that package. But you never know how many clients you have next month or in three months or in six months. Doing this shift from corporate when you have every month your salary and you could plan ahead and if you want to buy a house, you know your salary and you can just do the calculations around it. Being a coach has this big level of uncertainty and this is very hard to manage as an anxious person that I am. So, yeah, a few months are great. A few months are more slow. And this is something that has keeping me up at night. I do believe, though, that in the future, I would understand a bit more decisionality and I would have more or less of an average salary that I have like in a year. And I will have more clarity on this. But as of now, this is something that is to keep me up at night.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I think so too. I think especially because you are in the first year that this might be a little bit more unpredictable. Is there any advice you would give to other career coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think I would give two advices. The number one is do the work to be a good coach. Don't just start and believe that is just like a conversation this is as simple as that really invest on yourself to be a good coach to to deliver value to people and once you deliver this value the clients will come and the second is understand really the audience that you want to work with and be close to them be part of this audience understand their struggles understand what they're talking about and be a member of of this universe that you want to help and this will also help you to create long-term relationships and the networking and the referrals in the future so this will also help to grow your business uh coaching business is not a business that you can grow from a night to a day like this it takes a bit of time it takes deep relationships with your clients

SPEAKER_02:

yeah absolutely uh thank you so much tatiana for coming to the podcast. It's been a pleasure to have you on. For anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you, they can find you at Tatiana Machando in LinkedIn, or they can also look into the website mbmcoaching.org. So Tatiana, it was a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Again, thank you for coming and sharing your insights.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much.