Career Coaching Secrets

Caroline Keefe on Balancing an Oxford MBA and a Growing Coaching Business

• Davis Nguyen

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In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, Rexhen chats with Caroline Keefe—Oxford MBA candidate, former Salesforce leader, and founder of Caroline’s Coaching. What began as helping friends with essays has evolved into a global coaching business with 40+ clients ranging from 6-year-olds to 45-year-old professionals across the U.S., South Korea, and beyond.

Caroline shares how she’s grown her business through TikTok, Instagram, word-of-mouth referrals, and platforms like TopMate—all while balancing full-time studies at Oxford. From sales experience to educational passion, Caroline opens up about the realities of solopreneurship, building long-term client pipelines, and how she plans to scale post-graduation.


You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinekeefe100/
https://www.instagram.com/carolinexcoaching/
https://www.tiktok.com/@carolinexcoaching


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:

for coaches in a similar position to not forget is your love of working with students or just people in general if you're working with students or whoever that might be just don't forget that because there are definitely times I'm sure for everyone where you're working with people maybe they're not doing what they need to be doing to do their application or for whatever coaching business you're working on so don't forget your love of the people that you're working with because I think that's so important with just passion and staying excited every single day because obviously it's not going to be amazing every day you're going to have Welcome to Career Coaching

SPEAKER_02:

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_01:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Caroline Keith. She's an MBA candidate at Oxford Business School. She's a former Salesforce leader and the founder of Caroline's Coaching. With deep experience in tech and AI strategy, Caroline has worked with top names like Apple, Cisco, and NBC Universal. She's also an entrepreneur helping students of all ages stand out in all competitive admissions from D1 fencing at Duke to global humanitarian work. Carolyn's journey is an impressive as it is inspiring. Very happy to have you on the show. Welcome to the podcast, Carolyn. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much, Ryan. I appreciate

SPEAKER_01:

it. It's my pleasure. Carolyn, tell me a little bit more about What inspired you to become a career coach?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, first of all, I love working with students of all ages. So obviously, I'll talk about that a little bit more later. But honestly, a few years ago, people started kind of asking me for advice, for help with their resumes or for help applications. I mean, going to Duke, I think that helps. And you do kind of get a perspective on what it takes to apply using the Common App applications. But people just kind of kept asking me. And honestly, I really enjoyed kind of working with them on their goals and just being at Salesforce. I was in sales for about six years, and I loved it. It's definitely something I'm still continuing to do after I graduate. I was kind of looking to get something else to fulfill me outside my normal day-to-day job, and it was really just fulfilling and rewarding to work with students and to help them. Because sales, even though it's great, it's competitive, it's energetic, but you're really just kind of thinking about yourself every single day. You don't really get to spend a lot of time thinking about other people and helping other people. So it's something I find really just exciting and fun, and I love seeing people And how does

SPEAKER_01:

it look like? So it's been almost three years. How does it look like from that day you started it to where you are at today? And I know we talked a little bit about earlier that you're also doing this more in the part time. Tell me more about it.

SPEAKER_00:

So, I mean, right now, I mean, I have actually a pretty global set of clients ranging from a really wide set of ages too. So kind of when I initially started, people were more so asking me about resumes and essays. So they'd say, hey, can you help me with my essay? I'm writing for XYZ school or even sometimes like homework essays that they'd be needing help on. But it kind of evolved beyond essays to applications and the whole like holistic application for either elite high schools, like private, very difficult to get into high schools, ranging to universities, and then also, obviously, MBA candidates and other master's candidates. So it's really a very wide range. And I can talk about later how I'm kind of thinking about changing my business and moving it maybe more into MBA-focused applications and applicants. But initially, it kind of started as that. So I'm still working with a wide range of people. But when I started my program, Caroline's Coaching, I was working with people all the way from ages six to 45. For example, I was working with six year olds on their essays in school. And then I was also working with, for example, a 45 year old doctor based in Poland who was working on a master's application so he could move to the US to do a fellowship. So very, very wide kind of experiences, but they're all super different and helped me learn a lot about all these different application processes too.

SPEAKER_01:

That's quite interesting. So most of the time you'd say, while you have helped a large group of people, it has been mostly getting them or working with them in the education system.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, and where do you find your clients? So what marketing channel works for you right now?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so also a really, really wide range. I mean, LinkedIn, I am on LinkedIn, but I still, I would say it's mostly more for like corporate corporations. I'm not using it as much for referrals. Right now, I get a lot of word of mouth referrals, clients I'm already working with who say, hey, this other family that we're working with, we would love you to help us with our student who's applying to XYZ University. So there's that. Then I also work with TopMate. It's a platform that has links to book meetings with you via the platform. So I get a lot of meetings from Top Mate. And then beyond that, Instagram, TikTok. My website is currently under reconstruction, but also my website, I do get referrals and leads through contact me forms through that. And people honestly kind of just reach out to me on my email that I post on my LinkedIn. I post on my TikTok, my Instagram too. So it's public. People say, hey, can you help me with my application to this university. So, I mean, people are more than welcome to reach out to me there as well. But yeah, pretty much a wide range of different ways I'm getting referrals right now.

SPEAKER_01:

And you mentioned Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. Is there a specific like maybe content strategy or are you posting in any specific way in these platforms that kind of gets attention?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So right now I'm really trying to build up my social media presence because before I was still mostly doing word of mouth referrals. Because as a single person running a business, you don't really have that much time to spend with hundreds and hundreds of clients. Right now, it's still just me working with all clients. I have about 40 clients right now globally, ranging from the US to Korea. So I actually have a lot of clients in South Korea right now. But really something I'm trying to focus on with building my social media presence. So I'm on Instagram, CarolineXCoaching. I'm on TikTok as well, CarolineXCoaching. And I've gotten a ton of leads and just so many support from people saying, hey, I saw your TikTok. Can you help me with XYZ? And I've also been trying to focus on Oxford MBA applications as well as more general MBA applications too. Since obviously right now I'm getting my MBA at Oxford. I started in September and I graduate this coming September. So I've kind of seen that as a really great way to, I mean, like use the Oxford network and people love the Oxford school is such a highly desired MBA program. And a ton of people have reached out to me through social media and then also through LinkedIn, just about my experience, help that I can give them for their resumes, for their applications. And so that all has really helped build my client base to the

SPEAKER_01:

past. And you would say that the content is mostly like informational on how to get into certain things. And yeah, all informational content, then they reach out to you. And then you set up a call and then they move forward. Okay, cool. Interesting. Interesting. You also mentioned South Korea. I'm currently in South Korea. I'm just working remotely here for just for these two weeks. And then I'll be back. Normally, I live in Albania in Europe, but yeah, currently here. So yeah, exciting. I wanted to ask you, with your coaching business, I know you're also at Oxford right now. How does it look like right after you finish that? Do you think you're going to go full in into your coaching business or into your sales? You mentioned you want to go back to your Salesforce job in sales. What are your goals for the next five years? one to three years.

SPEAKER_00:

So I think this is one of the main reasons that I got my MBA to begin with. I mean, obviously being in sales for total almost seven years, it made me want to try something new and explore different options. And I really wanted to explore entrepreneurship since obviously being in a corporate environment, you don't really get to explore that. So that was one of the reasons that I got my MBA to begin with, because we have an entrepreneurship center here at Oxford where they do a lot of work with helping you focus on your entrepreneurship projects. So I came in saying, okay, I want to work on my coaching business. I want to see how I can grow this and then also build up the social media presence while I'm here because Oxford is a great place to do that. And obviously I was doing it part-time on the side and I kind of started it, I mean, I think it's two and a half years. So not really like a COVID project. It was, I was thinking about it during COVID, like starting it or not starting it. And then I started it a little bit after COVID, but I started thinking about it during COVID. And then obviously been doing it part-time for many hours a week on top of my normal job. So I think ideally it would be awesome if the this exploded and became something that I could really grow into a strong community like Caroline's coaching, a broader coaching community, education community. I would love it to maybe be focused on helping women across different ages get into different programs of their choice or universities of their choice. It's something that's more of like a long-term goal. But I think in one to three years, I would love to see this grow. So potentially maybe leave corporate environment or at least just hire some additional people to join my team to focus more on social media, own different parts of the website, and working with more clients as well. So that's kind of like the long-term goal.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So this is, you'd say, something you enjoy more than the sales part that you're currently doing right now. Yeah, that's what I wanted to understand mostly. And When it comes to investments, have there been any coaching programs, masterminds or communities that you found valuable in growing your coaching business?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And I love sales. I think sales was such a huge part of my career. And I mean, it's something obviously that I would love to maybe grow or build into my career coaching business. But Sandler Sales Training was one that actually Salesforce paid for. So thank you, Salesforce. But it was an amazing program. And I think sales is such a big part of just like running your own business, it's so important. You have to know how to do sales. So you can have the mindset to do outreach, do cold calls, reach out to people on LinkedIn or send out cold emails to potential partners or clients to build your business. And for me, that means maybe partners or other companies I can be working with that can give me referrals, clients as well. So I think that is super helpful having those skills. So Sandler sales training was really helpful for me to grow my sales skills and learn how to take that to this coaching business too. So corporate or entrepreneur, I think you can definitely take advantage of it. And then BetterUp as well. It's actually a career coaching platform, but it's helped me build my business through working with an executive coach and a career coach. So that's also been helpful. It's kind of like a community, I would say. And then finally, the Oxford MBA community has been extremely, extremely helpful and just the broader Oxford community. I've gotten a lot of, I mean, just support and ideas, brainstorming i've worked with other founders of coaching businesses here and other businesses too not necessarily coaching but other more entrepreneurship type people or social media focused people like we have some influencers in our mba class who have like 500k plus following so it's been really helpful to learn from them so yeah i would say oxford has been super helpful for for learning

SPEAKER_01:

yeah it seems like the right decision in the right time for you is there something you wish you had known uh first when you started your coaching business Is there like an unexpected lesson learned?

SPEAKER_00:

I guess I shouldn't say it's unexpected, but I feel like everyone warns people when you start your own business, you have to be super passionate about it or else you're not going to want to do it. It's true. I think before, I loved working with students. I love working with kids. I like teaching. I like doing these things that I didn't really normally have time to do, but if you're really trying to build a business, you need to spend a lot of time doing it. Frankly, we only have 24 hours in the day. I wish I had more time, but that's why it has definitely been challenging to do it on top of a normal job. So I guess the unexpected lesson is that you just have to be super passionate about it. You have to be willing to put in the extra hours, the extra time, even if you don't want to make the do the Instagram post or do the TikTok post or edit video that you're going to post on your website. All those things take time and extra hours. And there's been times where I've said, OK, well, I can't go to this event, the social gathering right now because I need to spend time editing this essay or this post that I need to post on my TikTok. So unfortunately, that's taken. time than I would have expected, but I should have listened to what people were telling me when I was starting this.

SPEAKER_01:

And you'd say that this time is mostly actual coaching or business operations of coaching?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, business operations, honestly, I think is bigger than coaching. Even though I work with about 40 clients right now, obviously that takes a lot of time, but it's really spread across a month. I'm not working with every single client every single day, of course. So I have consistent clients that I'm working with every week. We have set times every week that I'm working with them. So that itself is spread out, but then you need to also do follow-ups with them. You need to plan what you're going to talk about within the following week or in the next month. You need to help them with their application selves and their plan for their applications and follow up with them to make sure they, you know, got the recommendation from the professor. So there's, I think there's a lot that goes into the operations and the follow ups that you don't really see beyond just like the coaching every single day.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I agree with that. And you said 40 right now. And Maybe in the future, you could see that potentially growing. And actually, at the time that she's been on the business, it's also going to grow eventually once you're working full time in this. And one of the coaches that I've interviewed a couple of weeks ago said one of the bigger lessons that he learned was a lot of things that he could automate when it comes to his business operations. So I think maybe looking into that could potentially be helpful for you, especially when it comes to these follow-ups or things that could potentially be automated. Not always everything can be. automated, but I think that a good portion of that could. What would you say is the biggest challenge right now? Kind of like the bottleneck for you getting from the stages you are in right now to you being full-time in your coaching business and and feeling comfortable being there full time.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I think the main challenge for me is long-term clients because, and I think this is just, I mean, maybe this is just the education coaching business as a whole, but ultimately when you're trying to get someone into a university program or an MBA program, probably not going to do another master's, probably not going to need you for another application in the future. So once they get into that MBA program, it's amazing. It's obviously super exciting. But then after that, they probably don't need money. So it's finding the long-term clients after they get into those programs and then obviously like getting new clients once your clients that you're working with are done. So you have to be aware of when the clients you're working with are going to be in their programs. They're going to be done working with you and then obviously have kind of a plan B for outreach and getting new clients and setting those clients up with their success plan. So I think the long-term growth of clients is really important obviously to grow the business and I would love to see it with hundreds of clients. Obviously, I can't take that on myself. So that's why I would want to take on more people to help me. But yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

definitely long term, I think is the goal. have found that it is one of the challenges of this type of industry. Is there any advice you'd like to give to other career coaches who are like in your position right now, who are looking to scale their impact or looking to even maintain their coaching business while also having other projects they're working on? Is there any final advice you'd give to them?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think the first is obviously resilience. And I think that's something I learned in sales, but also obviously when you're running your own business, you learn it more over and over and over again. But I mean, just keep going, like spending the time on all these extra business operations things outside of your normal coaching or business or whatever you're doing. Spend the time, even if it's exhausting or even if you feel like you don't have time, because it's always going to end up leading to more success for you. And it's obviously very exciting to see the growth of your company, to see where you took it and where I've been able to take it from the last two, two and a half years to now. I I mean, when I started, I had zero clients and I didn't even think anyone was going to work with me. And then now the fact that I'm able to work with so many and just such a wide range of people and countries and backgrounds and experience, I think that's really exciting. And I think the other thing I would say for coaches in a similar position to not forget is your love of working with students or just people in general, if you're working with students or whoever that might be, just don't forget that because there are definitely times I'm sure for everyone where you're working with people, maybe they're not doing what they need to be doing to do their application or for whatever coaching business you're working on. So don't forget your love of the people that you're working with, because I think that's so important with just passion and staying excited every single day, because obviously it's not going to be amazing every day. You're going to have drudgery. You're going to have work that's not always the most fun, like administrative work, but staying resilient and staying excited.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Carolyn. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much, Regin. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

And for anyone who wants to find you and connect with you, they can find you on your LinkedIn at Caroline Keefe. And they could also find you on your social media, Instagram and TikTok as well, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Caroline X Coaching on Instagram and on TikTok.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much, Caroline. This is great having you on the show again.

SPEAKER_02:

Great.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you. Thank you.