Career Coaching Secrets

Scaling with Purpose: Dr. Diana C. Stephens on Consistent Growth and Mindfulness

• Davis Nguyen

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Rexhen Doda interviews Dr. Diana C. Stephens, a career coach, author, and mindfulness strategist specializing in mid-to-late career professionals affected by downsizing and healthcare costs. Diana's "mindfulness job alignment path" combines strategy with emotional support, a concept stemming from her own career transitions. She primarily uses LinkedIn for client acquisition, including active engagement and hosting "Fresh Start Fridays" job seeker groups. Dr. Stephens is focused on scaling her business, planning a book ("A Mindful Approach to Job Search") and a 12-week accelerator course. She emphasizes the power of LinkedIn's "out-of-work" banner for visibility and the ongoing challenge of consistent lead generation and tech streamlining.

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Diana Stephens:

Well, my customer avatar is really the mid to late career professionals who are experiencing a lot of downsizing due to the fact that they're personally aging and the cost of health care benefits goes up. So that is a drawback. in the United States to employment because our health benefits are tied to the jobs. And as people age, they age themselves out of the health benefits. And so that's the first cohort. But my experience is in retail, CPG, market research, and tech software as a service, and then also project management in terms of my own personal career and what I work with. So those are really the verticals and the skills that I work best with and can help people with those industries especially since those are where I have networks, and so I can help them with networking as well.

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 Doda:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today, we're joined by Dr. Diana Stevens, a career coach, author and mindfulness-based strategist who empowers mid-to-late career professionals to land roles they really love with clarity and confidence. With a PhD, an MBA, and certifications in career strategy and emotional resilience, Diana blends the tactical and the transformational, helping job seekers align their careers with both their values and their vision. From resume rewrites to limiting belief breakthroughs, She's helped hundreds of professionals in retail, CPG, tech, market research, and more get unstuck and step into their next chapter. Her signature approach, the mindfulness job alignment path, combines body, mind, and strategy to guide job seekers through a practical, empowered job search journey, whether through one-on-one coaching or her upcoming 12-week accelerator Diana is on a mission to show people that job search doesn't have to hurt, and landing the right role can feel joyful, not stressful. Diana, we're thrilled to have you here. Welcome to the podcast.

Diana Stephens:

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here.

Rexhen Doda:

Diana, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a career coach.

Diana Stephens:

Well, really, this is an offshoot of my own personal journey. I've gone through multiple downsizings in my career, the bulk of which occurred between 2004 to 2014, and what I found during that time, three times through outplacement, that there was a wonderful focus on all the strategy and all the tactical steps that you needed to take to land a job. But what was missing was the emotional support, the stress-free techniques, the whole body-mind-spirit aspect of the job search. So that set me on a quest to go back to school and complete my PhD in holistic coaching, which I did in 2021. And then I always had wanted to start a business for my fourth quarter of my career. And I landed on career coaching and taking the emotional mindfulness side, using mindfulness techniques for calming and bring that into job search as a holistic package to help people. So that's how I got the idea for it and kept going and learning more and then launching the business a couple of years ago.

Rexhen Doda:

Thanks so much for sharing it. And how does the journey look like from the point that you started your coaching business to where you are at?

Diana Stephens:

I did a lot of research and took a lot of courses on how to start an online business. And I started it originally as a blog and providing information on my website about different jobs job search techniques, my philosophies. I'm infusing a lot of spiritual Eastern philosophies, Buddhist philosophies on life and on coping with transitions into my work. So I was really giving a lot of information away. And then eventually I knew that the next step on that was going to be connecting with clients and then getting my message out there in a more video oriented way. So I'm looking at digital courses to to do that. And actually in that process, I decided to do things more live on Zoom because I'm very comfortable using Zoom. So then I've been working into that lately. It's been about a three-year process. Well, first I had to build a website, get that launched, and then working, you're building marketing and building communities at the same time that you're managing all the tech. And mine was a do-it-yourself project. I didn't do a lot of hiring except for the website.

Rexhen Doda:

And we were talking a little bit in the beginning as well, where you mentioned initially you were doing it on the side and then moved on to it full-time. How long has it been like that you've been doing it full-time?

Diana Stephens:

Really, it's been since last October. I've been in corporate America up through that time. I started it as a side hustle back in 2021 and then launched the website in 2023. And in between those different times, I've been downsized and I've landed again so that it gets put back as a side hustle. And the last downsizing was in October of last year. So I've been doing it full time ever

Rexhen Doda:

since. And you're not going back anymore. You're potentially

Diana Stephens:

going to stay. I am committed to scaling this and growing this because I think especially right now with the way the job market is and all the mass layoffs that we're seeing, I really think there's a role calling.

Rexhen Doda:

Right. Yeah, I agree. Is there a group of people that you typically work with and like what transformation do you help them achieve? What is your target audience or your ICP?

Diana Stephens:

Well, My customer avatar is really the mid to late career professionals who are experiencing a lot of downsizing due to the fact that they're personally aging and the cost of healthcare benefits goes up. So that is a drawback. in the United States to employment because our health benefits are tied to the jobs. And as people age, they age themselves out of the health benefits. And so that's the first cohort. But my experience is in retail, CPG, market research, And tech software is a service. And then also project management in terms of my own personal career and what I work with. So those are really the verticals and the skills that I work best with and can help people with those industries, especially since those are where I have networks. So I can help them with networking as well.

Rexhen Doda:

And where do you find your clients? So what marketing channel is working best for you right now?

Diana Stephens:

Really, LinkedIn is the best place to find clients. people. That's really where all the job seekers are focusing on in terms of a platform. And then also job seeker groups that would be local or else digital across the country to help out as a coach and help and support volunteer, support job seekers, and then hopefully work with people one-on-one from those experiences, but mainly LinkedIn. That's been LinkedIn based.

Rexhen Doda:

And is there a specific strategy you're following on LinkedIn to be able to generate

Diana Stephens:

Well, a couple different things. A couple different things, yes. I do watch for people who have the out-of-work banner. I am looking in the feeds every day. I am replying with tips to posts from people and helping them with certain aspects of their search and then reaching out to them and offering to connect and, of course, share any of my contacts with them that can help them in their search. I also host a biweekly job seeker group on Fridays. I call it Fresh Start Fridays because I do infuse a bit of meditation at the beginning of that job seeker meeting for relaxation for the weekend. And then typically the first Friday that I have it in the month, I will have a guest speaker come in. one of my colleagues or cohorts that comes in to speak on a piece of the job search process. And then the second meeting of the month is typically an open networking forum where everyone can bring their questions and we just do an open networking, open question and answer and I answer their questions. But it's a safe space for people to come and share and because of the relaxation component of it that I'm doing with the meditation at the beginning, it sets it apart from other job seekers.

Rexhen Doda:

And you published this, you mentioned on LinkedIn as well, right?

Diana Stephens:

The job seeker group? Yes. I'm listing it as an event before each group. I do it about 10 days out. to get it on the event calendar for LinkedIn. I do hold the meetings on Zoom. So there is a registration step that is required so that people will register and get the Zoom link.

Rexhen Doda:

Okay, cool. And... Is it mostly your audience that comes in or do you also reach some new people with this type of post?

Diana Stephens:

It's a little of both. It's my audience and then it's also some of the people who follow some of the guests that I've had. I've had some LinkedIn experts on. I've had A colleague of mine who writes resumes like I do, I work part-time for Lee Heck Harrison Outplacement. And so he came on one time and we both did a deep dive into resumes. And I have another career coach colleague of mine coming on on April 11th. She's a former recruiter in HR. professional, and she gives wonderful straight talk about the job search process. I think that's very important to know. So we're going to really focus on ghosting and follow-ups and the whole job search process and why it's taking so long on April 11th.

Rexhen Doda:

Okay, cool. So yeah, I was just thinking more in terms of strategy. It seems like the guests that you get on, they also share it on their profile, which means you get to have their audience in addition to your audience, which kind of creates an increase in the leads that go to you as well. Awesome. Amazing.

Diana Stephens:

There's a lot of strength in community. And there's a wonderful career coaches on LinkedIn. And some people are collaborative and some people would prefer to go it alone. But those of us that do collaborate, we have a good group.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. So, yeah, with coaches from LinkedIn, what i've researched and what i've learned from interviewing many coaches that is not a competition is more of a collaboration between um all the coaches is uh yeah that's that's what i'm getting is that competition

Diana Stephens:

exactly

Rexhen Doda:

now i wanted to ask you uh what are some goals that you're working towards uh in the next one to three years be that goals uh that are uh financially related to the coaching business or goals around the coaching business or bills about you personally?

Diana Stephens:

Financially related, honestly, if I could reach $50,000 a month or even $25,000 a month doing this, I would be ecstatic. That said, I know there's a time and a ramp-up time for that, but that's what I have on my horizon. The other piece is that I'm in the process of writing a book based on my dissertation called A Mindful Approach to Job Search. I am working with a division of Hay House on that, and I'm hoping to get that published by the end of this year, get that up and running. And then I'm continuing to scale my business. I'm going to be launching a 12-week accelerator course where I'm going to lead it live once a week. And then we're going to have a job search accountability team interwoven into that. So it will be very interactive and very immersive for a small cohort of probably 15 people that will apply and be selected for that. And then I'm going to start at night so that that would be available to people who are working and perhaps want to make a career change, as well as job seekers who are in their career transition. Then I'll start up a second cohort during the day. with the same concept, the same immersion experience, and run that out for about 12 weeks. That'll give time for homework, homework review, the accountability factor. And then out of that, I'll probably start a community. of accountability groups where people are in the job search and they can come back each week with companies they're looking for, networking contacts they want, running it like a job, quote unquote, search work team, which is done from a lot of different job network communities around the country. But this will be virtual. And this will be people from all over the country that can come in, or for that matter, all over the world if they care to, if they speak English fluently. I'm open to that as well. So we're going to see where this leads, but that's my adventure. I'm going into end of the month.

Rexhen Doda:

And you're going to be launching this on LinkedIn, right?

Diana Stephens:

I'm going to be advertising on LinkedIn, yes. I'm launching it on LinkedIn. But I will conduct the meetings on Zoom.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool, looking forward to it. In terms of investments, what resources or support has been most valuable in you growing your business so far?

Diana Stephens:

Well, I would have to say one would be the website. designer that I have who's down in Austin, Texas. And I found her through a group, through the course I took. She was an affiliate. And then I would say it's been a mess. I've been finding certain platforms and certain supports that were easy to use and very direct and very concise. And then some that were more complicated. So of course I dropped off the ones that were more complicated and really didn't help as much. In terms of groups, I have found, I want to give a shout out to Brenda Miller from Miller Marketing. She is a LinkedIn expert and she runs a group on the first Friday of the month and she was working with job seekers and also with entrepreneurs on how to best use and leverage LinkedIn. She has a wonderful community and she's been instrumental in referrals and helping my business grow and that's where I've met some of the other career coaches. that are in the community of career coaches. She's a wonderful community and so I'm involved with her and looking for additional communities as well.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, thanks for that. And is there any particular thing that, so let's say from October where we started full-time to the end to today, is there something that you wish you had known first when you started scaling this coaching business that was like an unexpected lesson learned from you? Or you can even look back at it to the first day.

Diana Stephens:

Sure. I would say that one of the lessons learned, and I'm actually still learning this, is what is the magic copywriting for a post that will get a lot of reactions and comments and people interacting and working with it? And I do... look at my statistics on LinkedIn for how the posts are doing. And what's interesting is when I did an experiment about a month ago that I put the out of work banner on myself and wrote up an entire paragraph about that, I wanted to see how fast I was going to get the spam emails and recruiters reaching out to me. And it didn't happen instantaneously, but I only had two or three of them. I didn't have the whole influx. And then I took the banner down within about a week. But the lesson learned on that post was that it's the most viral post that I've had in six months and it got the most reach. So what it tells me is there's a tremendously supportive community out in LinkedIn for people who put that out-of-work banner on. And those posts will get reposted and commented on and they will go viral. So for people who really are looking for work and really want to use that visual advertisement, I would say go ahead and do it and just be prepared for the spam that's going to come your way, but it's not that much. And in terms of my other newsletters and posts that I've done, the other one that's been really good is the one that I did on extended, how to cope with extended unemployment that goes beyond six months. that starts creeping up into a year, that one was the third best post that I've done when I devoted a whole newsletter to that. So that's more food for thought of what's really out there and what people are looking for to consume this content. So I want to get better with my hook lines at the top and have more people reading the posts and probably do more with the carousel posts as well. It's all about building leads through the posting.

Rexhen Doda:

Totally. This is mainly the strategy that you have, which is comes to posting and having good copy on it. So, yeah, I can see how that is something that would have some of these knowing them first would have helped you like scale faster. But it is a learning experience. journey and there's a learning curve still for everyone. I really like that. So I wanted to ask you also a challenge-focused question. What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced so far? And it could be even this one that you mentioned. You've faced in scaling your coaching business that you've overcome or challenges that you're still facing today

Diana Stephens:

now it's the challenge of scaling and having consistent revenue each month and having the content that will hook people in to have discovery calls and talk with you about what what what i offer that's ongoing i'm still refining i'm still learning that and then the best way i want to understand the best way to harness the linkedin lives with learning the platform and uh potentially moving off of Zoom because Zoom is an outside link. So there's a certain suppression that goes on with the algorithm if you're using outside links. So getting past that for the coverage, that's still a learning experience. I have that many ads. I tried one or two on Facebook, and I tried a couple on LinkedIn, but it was not there. For what I did. I did not spend a ton of money. But the ROI on the app was not there. So the organic growth. is what I'm really focusing on.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And when it comes to LinkedIn ads, you'll find that once we launch the podcast, there's going to be an episode where there's a person that, there's a career coach that speaks exactly on how he does lead generation using a lead gen ad on LinkedIn. So you might find that valuable just to see how he was approaching, how his approach was compared to maybe what you were doing and what expectations you could have doing that. Good idea. I wanted to ask you, now that you moved on it full-time, how do you currently handle the balance between delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side? So working on your business versus working in your business.

Diana Stephens:

The client meetings that i have are definitely scheduled in i do them in a block of time i am more of a night owl so i do more of my appointments late afternoon into the early evening that i'm doing one-on-one right now and when i do the accelerator program it will be at night to start it'll be an hour and a half so it's a concise period of time so then i do time blocking for the other for marketing for writing content for outreach to people, networking, to find additional people to collaborate with, speaking opportunities. I have that time as well. And then I have a part-time for an outplacement firm, so therefore I have that time blocked as well where I'm writing resumes and conducting a branding meeting twice a week. Those are scheduled, so I know when I'm on that. So it's all blocking. I'm not using a particular technique outside of just time blocking it on my Google Calendar.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, and I'll tell you, that has been the case with most coaches. So, yeah, that is how to go about it, making sure your time is protected for business growth and for having client meetings as well. I wanted to ask you, is there any aspect of running a coaching business right now that would figuratively keep you up at night?

Diana Stephens:

I really think it's the lead generation. with the clients who will pay for larger ticket coaching that's a long-term coaching process. And then the other piece of it is keeping up with the technology and which are the best platforms that are going to be the most streamlined to learn and to use and be able to set up in your business immediately. Right now, I have good structures for where I'm at in the business, but I'm always looking for ways to scale. And right now, what I'm working on is really understanding how to streamline the video piece and how to video edit quicker doing it myself. So I tend to not get involved in a lot of technology that I don't need. And I do really go in and immerse myself in a piece of technology to understand it. And it has to make my life easier and streamline it or else I won't get involved in it. And the piece of that is you start adding the technology pieces and it starts getting expensive. So I'm really mindful of that.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, for sharing that. And I think consistent lead generation is a worried that it has been a thing with a lot of coaches that I've interviewed. I did a research paper in the end of 2014. I talked with a little bit about this in the beginning. And again, lead generation assistant lead generation has been an issue that we have seen and hopefully we're trying to attack that issue in this podcast by just sharing different methods of lead generation and maybe different people can test on those because not all coaches suffer from this, but a good portion of coaches do. So yeah, I wanted to ask you also, Is there any final advice you'd have for other career coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

Diana Stephens:

I would say keep networking, keep meeting people, and work with the people who will be collaborative. Some career coaches are not. They're very protective of their business, their client list, and they don't want people poaching. from them, which is thoroughly understandable. But I think everybody brings a strength to the table and all of the strengths are very diverse and backgrounds are very diverse. And I think we can always learn from other people. And I would say that be realistic about where your niche is and where you can really help out and bring something. When I started out with the mindfulness piece, it really hadn't been thought of before. And infusing the two is a new concept, but it's starting to catch hold because most people are familiar with a gratitude practice, a meditation practice, some type of walking meditation for exercise, or a journaling practice. as a way of self-soothing, as a way of working through stress, as a way of really getting those ideas on paper and just doing a brain dump of creative ideas. When we get those creative streaks that come across, it's about having that pen and paper handy so you can really start writing things down. But I think that that can totally be applied to the job search process. And for so many years, it's been about resumes and how to apply and cover letters and ATS tracking systems and networking and the proper interview questions and the proper follow-up. And yes, all of that is 100% very, very important. That's all. Like I said, I call that the tactical side of job search, which is needed. But there is this entire other section because you know what? your life doesn't stop just because you're in a career transition, all right? And that career transition could come in on top of a divorce. It could come in on top of family serious illness. It could come on top of elder care for parents, which is what my personal situation was. It can come in on top of maybe your spouse is having financial reverses in their business and finances are very, very much up in the air, okay? So these types of transitions are not things that typically come in at a good time. And so there's this whole aspect of how to manage through that and the whole aspect of how to weave that in a work-life balance and to keep moving through because it is a journey. And what happens is, especially in the United States, we're taught about getting into that job and having that job for 30 years that's not how the market is anymore And so many people get into a job and they get lost in their job trying to get promoted, trying to just do a good job, get their paycheck, go home, raise their kids, watch the kids at soccer, you know, whatever that is, go about their daily life. And people aren't thinking about the what ifs. But if you understand the market, if you understand how companies think and you get into the headset of how The management of the company or the board of directors is thinking about the mission for the company and how they want to move it forward. But at the same time, you need money to do that. So the finance people become very, very important in running of the company. We've seen a lot of that since the big recession and crash in 2008 because the finance people have become a lot more involved in the decision process. And you layer in the health care benefits going up as people age. That is something that is completely beyond the control of any employee and most employees do not understand the numbers they only know what their contribution is but they don't know how much the company's paying for their benefits because that's usually not transparent so when you understand for people who work in the healthcare industry especially the healthcare insurance industry When you understand how all that goes up in price, then you understand better about why these things are happening. Therefore, people can then be in control of their own life and plan for it. And it's not such a shock. So that's one of the biggest things that I teach, because when people understand that better, they understand. And it's a big moment for them because they weren't thinking about it. And you layer that on top of the market conditions and how long people are out of work, especially middle management, director level and above, based on how much they were making. It's not a five month process. It's longer.

Rexhen Doda:

So.

Diana Stephens:

So many people are blindsided by that. And that's what I want to try to help elite is that unknowing and be able to be prepared and strategically plan their life out, you know, to help. So that's my mission.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Diana. And for anyone who wants to find you or reach out and connect with you, they can find you on LinkedIn at Diana Stevens, or they can also check out your website, which is mindfuljobalignment.com. Correct. So, yeah. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast, Diana. Thank you for coming and thank you for sharing everything with us.

Diana Stephens:

Thank you. I appreciate it.

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.