Career Coaching Secrets

Mary Whitaker: Balancing Client Work with Business Growth as a Solopreneur

• Davis Nguyen

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Rexhen Doda interviews Mary Whitaker, CEO of RightCareer, a veteran coach. Mary's unplanned journey into coaching began after a health pivot from finance. She now primarily helps professionals over 45-50 navigate job transitions and modern hiring.

Clients come from referrals, Google, and LinkedIn articles. Mary advocates for strategic digital marketing over traditional ads and keeps website prices off to encourage direct conversations. Despite personal challenges, her goal is to increase profitability for retirement. She manages time with a paper planner and emphasizes a strong support network for sole proprietors. Mary advises coaches to find their niche, stay tech-current (AI), and understand the labor market.

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Mary Whitaker:

They don't make any sense to me. And so you have to be very cautious of that. So I really suggest that people need to invest in a very strong marketing firm so that they can help you figure out what social media platform to use that best fits your company, because they all are different. And depending on your, and even whether in coaching, who's your target market, who is your Welcome to Career

Davis Nguyen:

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 business myself and consulted with two career coaching businesses that are now doing over a hundred million dollars 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. Joining us today is Mary Whitaker, a new age career coach, CEO of RightCareers, and a beacon of encouragement for professionals ready to rewrite their career story. With a heart for empowerment and a strategy-first mindset, Mary helps job seekers take the stress out of the job hunt by offering hands-on one-on-one support with everything from resume writing and interview prep to LinkedIn revamps and confidence building. Mary is not just a coach. is a motivator, a cheerleader, and a partner in your career growth journey. She brings a fresh, intuitive approach that lends practical tools with mindset shifts, guiding her clients to think outside of the box, discover new career possibilities, and step into their next chapter with clarity and courage. In this conversation, Mary shares what it means to lead a career with intention, how to navigate transitions with confidence, and why trusting in your own values is the first step to job that's right for you. Mary, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you on.

Mary Whitaker:

Thank you very

Rexhen Doda:

much. You're more than welcome. Mary, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a career coach.

Mary Whitaker:

This was kind of a happenstance. And I got involved with it. Before I worked as an employment counselor career coach, I was actually working in payroll. I was one course away from becoming a payroll manager and then my health took a nosedive. And I had to think about what I could do that I really like doing. So I kind of looked at all the jobs that I've had and what I really like doing. And what I like doing was helping people go through their problems and helping find a solution. I did some career tests and some kinds of testing, and there was a gray area of becoming a career coach. I had always wanted to be a social worker, And so this was a great opportunity to help people in a different way that I never thought of. So becoming an employment counselor, it's focusing on helping people find the right path for them, a career that they're happy with, and a direction where they feel motivated to do their job and they want to get up and go to work every day. So I volunteered for an employment agency because I was a client. I got a job within three weeks of working in the program. So they asked me to be on their board to represent the clients. And then my health was really fragile. So I couldn't do the board meetings and work full time. So I asked them if I could volunteer during the daytime. And they said, well, you have to be either have a psychology degree or a social service worker diploma. And I told them, the executive director, that I had both. And she invited me in to meet with her, the manager of the employment counselors. And then I met with her. She said that I had a very intuitive way of talking to people and helping them. And she started, and I started volunteering with her. And then I was offered a job where I worked at another agency part-time and worked at that agency part-time. And that's how I became a career coach.

Rexhen Doda:

And how does the journey look like once you started your own career coaching business to where you are at today? So about 12 years, almost 13 years, 12 years and a half.

Mary Whitaker:

So again, becoming an independent sole proprietor was not my course of action. I had gotten laid off from the agency. Back in 2011, the government decided that there was too many employment counselors and they had to, every agency in the city of London had to decrease their number of staffing. And they made that announcement that our agency, we all had to reapply for our jobs. Then that Christmas, that December, November, Ford in Talbotville, who hired 5,000 people, had announced that they were closing Talbotville. So then they had to rehire people. And so I didn't get the job. I applied for the job, my job. I didn't get the job. I went and had interviews with all the other agencies in the city of London. I was not hired because at that time they were looking for male counselors. There was a rise of male counselors coming on board, going through some programs, and they wanted somebody who spoke different languages, which I didn't. Everybody that I talked to, and then I started talking to people in the private sector who were doing it privately. And they said, yes, you've got the skills and we can bring you in part-time. But everyone told me that, why don't I open my own business? So one day I just asked my husband who had been, he'd been in business for himself, partnerships for a long time, even when he was a teenager, he sold peppers off the farm or whatever. And he said, go for it. And I, went and talked to one of my coworkers and asked them how do I get into the small business self-employment program, which I knew how to do that because I had done applications for that. We did the application, went into the program, and then I started the program in July or August, September, and then took out my business license in September. And then in November, I was approved by the government to open my own business And here I am in that. So again, it was just a happen chance that fell in. Nothing that I had dreamed of or put out in play. It just kind of rolled into it and it happened. And I'm glad that it happened. It's just better neat than that. It's a very interesting journey because I never planned to be a sole provider. I had no idea that I would be in business this long. But once I got in business, I knew that there was a need for my services because the whole purpose of my business was to help the average working person, help them in their career path. Employment agencies were helping people who were unemployed or underemployed. And then there were people that were helping executive people or top management. And I wanted to help people who were just the average workers wanting to improve their careers or change jobs to help them find more satisfaction in their careers. And that's worked for me.

Rexhen Doda:

And who do you typically work with? What is the target audience that you are generally serving? What is the ideal client for you?

Mary Whitaker:

Well, I have worked over the last 12, 12 and a half years, I've worked with different clients from high school students running their first job to people in their 60s trying to reinvent themselves and into their 70s. And I have worked with people probably in every industry and wrote different resumes from entry level all the way up to vice presidents of different positions. And I've written a lot of different types of resumes. So I haven't focused on anything particularly. It kind of comes into my door and I can help them. But recently, over the last couple of years, the focus has tended to be shifting. I first thought I would focus on young professionals, but unfortunately they think that they know everything and that's not my focus. So my focus with my clients I'm getting is people who are probably in over 45, 50 to 60 who are either been laid off from working in a company for, I'm working with a guy who's been working with the company for 25 years, got let go, or people who are wanting to reinvent themselves. I worked with a gentleman who was working with the RCMP for 30 years and we worked together and he found another job in another company, another industry that he did very well in that transition. So I've been really good with helping people lately it's the older people and helping them through the understanding the LinkedIn processes and even helping them apply online for them because and they also have a lot of fears because when they started their career 30 years ago they were often was like I walked in the door in the office and I got hired within a day or two not this process that's happening now they don't have to go through all the intensive behavioral questions and everything. So the, the recruiting and hiring is all different. So people who are in their forties and fifties are really scared of that process. So I've been helping them and helping them go through it and it makes it easier for them.

Rexhen Doda:

And where do you find your clients? How do you connect with potential clients?

Mary Whitaker:

I get a lot of my clients. I have like over 22% of my clients are repeat clients who are coming to me, asking me for updated resumes, new letters, and that kind of thing, or just a different direction. I get a lot of referrals from my clients. I'm getting a lot of clients through Google. I have a really strong rating on my Google ratings, like four and a half out of five or whatever. And at one time, I didn't even know they were... was there until somebody told me he says oh you got around what is that so um most of my and i do i'm not i do not advertise i'm not advertised um i struggle with advertising i'm doing some marketing campaigns in the past um did some advertising with some community newspapers and that they didn't work that well. And I do a lot and I write a lot on LinkedIn. So I get LinkedIn and connected. And now I'm starting to do a mail campaign that's tied in with everything. So that's the only advertising that I've been doing. And I did when I first started, I did some advertising with a couple of local community newspapers. But I would think that most of my clients are coming, finding me through articles that I've written on LinkedIn and heard about me or heard about me through somebody else, like a third party. I'm working with a young lady now. I met a gentleman at a networking event last spring who gave her my card and I started working with her just over Christmas.

Rexhen Doda:

Looking to the future, do you have any goals in the near future? Any goals you're working towards in the next one to three years, maybe?

Mary Whitaker:

I definitely want to increase my business. My business took a very hard hit in 2020 due to COVID. And then after that, my late husband, his health became worse. He passed away in 2022. I went through a longer grieving that I wasn't anticipating. And so it took me a long time. I've had some personal issues in 2024 with where I'm living, where I lived. And I had six floods in my apartment. So I've had a lot of personal challenges trying to get through things and balance things. And when he was in palliative care, Back in 2022, he was in home palliative care. That was a really hard challenge of trying to take care of him and run the business and put that all together. And so now I'm at the point where I want to build my business up so that it can be more profitable so that I can sell it to retire. And that's my goal in that way. And

Rexhen Doda:

in terms of investments, Throughout the years, what resources or support has been most valuable in you growing your coaching business? I know you have had struggles in 2020, but thinking back before that, what do you think has been most valuable for you? I

Mary Whitaker:

think I did a lot of networking before COVID, and that really helped my business, getting up and talking to people. Over the years and my age, and people don't realize it, I turned 74 earlier this year. So my health is also declining that I have arthritis and I can't go to networking events. But I think networking events are really important. I try to go to them as much as I can. And I'm starting to go to them hopefully again this April. I had a very bad asthma attack in February and early March that prevented me from walking long distances. So I really want, and I still want to, I use networking to connect with people. not to build my business but because you never know who's going to be there but i also want to do more on linkedin because i really believe in the power of linkedin and most people don't understand the power of linkedin and i'm doing currently now i'm working with a young um a gentleman who's who's helping me with to run a mailchimp campaign we just started yesterday to see how that works and we're going to tie in articles to my website and to the LinkedIn and it's all going to be tied together. So that is what I'm working on now. I would love to be able to get in the position where I can do some more digital advertising and that will come down the road.

Rexhen Doda:

Is there something you wish you had known first when you started scaling your coaching business? Is there like an unexpected lesson learned?

Mary Whitaker:

One of the things that I kind of learned very quickly is that a lot of people want to sell you things very quickly. I went through four or five web host persons before I found one that was reasonable. And I've actually changed because the last person that I had and that she was really good, she moved to the States. and which is great for her, but she wanted to charge me the U.S. prices, which was a little bit out of reach. And when I can find somebody in my area that can do it for half what she wanted to charge. And I also like supporting local businesses. So I have found a new company in London who actually was one of my clients who started his own business. So I'm working supporting that. I think when you first start out, it's really important to make sure that A lot of people will tell you to invest in websites and have a website, which is really critical. But it takes a long time for your website or company to get noticed on the internet. It took my company eight months. And during that time, I wrote a lot of blogs and I still write blogs on LinkedIn. But that timeframe, you may not need a full website. You may just only need a landing page. And the other thing that I tried to do was I... got off the bat and I did promotional items and stuff. Again, I spent a lot of money on doing something. I ended up little flash drives with my name on them. I don't think I needed to do that, but it was unnecessary expense. And when I invested in community newspapers, that was not necessary because I didn't really get a lot of clients from the investment of the local community newspapers. So I think people have to really be careful of what advertising and where they want to spend their advertising. There are all kinds of advertising, but in today's market, if you want to be noticed, you really have to tie it in your website to your LinkedIn, your social medias, excuse me. You also have to have the social media that will attract your clientele. because there's different social medias out there. There's social medias that are out there that I don't understand. I don't use them and they're not in my age group. And some of them are just, they don't make any sense to me. And so you have to be very cautious of that. So I really suggest that people need to invest in a very strong marketing firm so that they can help you figure out what social media platform to use that best fits your company because they all are different. And depending on your, and even whether in coaching, who's your target market, who is your target age group, and so that you can kind of design that to that. But you also have to have your, and I've just been doing it. Last fall, I had a student from university of British Columbia work on my website. So he kind of linked everything together because before it was just a little, it was there, but it wasn't linked together. So we linked it together and then it's linked together to my website and different things like that. I don't have my prices on my website. And I think there's an advantage to that because it makes people call you and then you have a conversation of what's going on. Because if you put the prices up, A lot of people are just shopping for prices. They don't understand the value that you bring to the table. So I don't put my prices on my website, and I probably will never do that. E-commerce is good if you can figure that out. I haven't figured that out yet. But again, I'm not selling a product. I'm selling a service. So services is based on impressing the value of what they're going to get from that service. It's not a product that they can see and they can shop around and see it. there's a lot of people that will will call me and well if they want to just automatically like know the price i know they're shopping around so it doesn't matter what i tell them they're not going to buy so i think for new coaches it's really important for you to invest with a marketing firm who can work with you and understand your challenges and i finally found one

Rexhen Doda:

and uh when it comes um to social media platforms. I would say even as part of my research has been one of the biggest ones. I'm also going to send you the research paper on your email so you can check it out and look into the research. And I'm going to share more about that also at the end of our podcast. But yeah, I think that's going to be helpful for you in knowing that maybe some of these other social media that you were thinking initially are just not the case or have not been a good platform, even for other coaches. I

Mary Whitaker:

truly believe in the power of LinkedIn. I do believe that it's a huge database that people don't access and doesn't utilize that. And I only know a little bit about it. I do my podcasts. I write blogs fairly frequently on it. unless I'm sick, and then your ratings can go way down, and then you have to kind of go back up and get them back up. But I'm not worried about the ratings. I just know that they'll come and come back and forth, and that the ratings on LinkedIn are very up and down. Last fall, I wrote an article about fear holding you back in your career jobs, and I had 2,400 hits in one day. I haven't got that since then. And then after I've been like really sick in February, then some weeks it's only like 200, 300, 900, but it's raising, it's coming up. But again, it's not just the LinkedIn. It's all about the presence in that. So you have to have a balance of things. LinkedIn is really, really super good for connecting with people and participating in the groups and the workshops is really good. But again, As a sole proprietor who does everything in her business, I don't always have time to do those things.

Rexhen Doda:

What are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in your coaching business right now?

Mary Whitaker:

I think the biggest challenge that I'm facing right now is helping people get over the fear of losing their jobs. The whole thing about the insecurity of the tariffs and the uncertainty of that. is affecting people's mobility of moving forward in their careers. However, people are, they want, and then last year, they didn't want to change jobs due to the interest rates that affected them. And the cost of groceries going up, when things are very expensive for people, the last thing that people invest in is themselves, career coaching or things like that. It's something there that, That whole thing about investing in themselves doesn't matter. And they will, people, a lot of people will stay in a job even if they hate that job. So it's helping them understand that now is a great time to move forward and moving forward with that. So I'm going to be probably writing some articles to addressing parents to help their children who are graduating from college or university that they need career coaches. very much so in their part of their career and i've been successful in that so i'm going to be focusing on that the next couple of months is getting that together but again it's trying to be aware of the topics that are relevant to what's going around in the the economic region the labor market um what's happening um manufacturing is going to be hit because of the tariffs You know, in my region, we already have like there's already companies that are closing or laying off people. But that doesn't mean the labor market is is not as closing. It just means that people have to rethink their jobs and where they want to go. And that's where a career coach can help them is rethink their jobs and where they can find it. And a lot of times, even when Ford closed, a lot of those people that I worked with, they ended up doing going back into things that they really like doing. They did it a lot, went back into doing a lot of the apprenticeship trades because they learned how to do these things, roofing, the flooring, the cement things that they did around their own houses. So they learned to do that. So they get into business that they want. The biggest challenge right now for me is helping get a new client and getting that coming in and having them believe that a resume is only one tool. If you want to do a job search, you need to know how to do a resume writing. You need how to do your interview. You need to improve your LinkedIn. You need to know how to do interview presence. You need to have that all combined. You need how to do networking and how to do that all together because all those little pieces help you become more successful. If you're only doing a resume, you're not hitting... rest of it you're missing a lot of pieces in the job search

Rexhen Doda:

what do you think when it comes to you handling so the question is more of like how do you handle the balance between delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side so how do you like You have a few clients that you're working with, but you still have time, let's say, to do the podcast with me and maybe also work on your business and try to do posts for your LinkedIn and for your website. How do you manage that balance, the time that you work on your business and the time that you work in your business?

Mary Whitaker:

Well, it's taken me a long time to figure that one out because when I worked in a business, all my paperwork done. So now I actually have, I've gone back to having a date book that I have beside my desk all the time. So I have it in my calendar, my online calendar, so people can know when I'm busy. But I have it right beside me now, a date book kind of thing that I'm putting everything in there. And when I'm scheduling time to do a resume or a podcast or my writing the blog that I haven't written down. And that really helps me keep focused. Because when I wasn't doing that, I would be spending more time on writing resumes and doing things for the clients. But now I'm saying, okay, I'm going to do this much. for the clients and then I have to do this much for that. So that going back to an old fashioned date calendar, a paper and pen has really helped me work better with helping me figure out what how much time I need to spend in and on my business.

Rexhen Doda:

And is there any aspect currently of running a coaching business that would figuratively keep you up at night or is there any worries?

Mary Whitaker:

I think for every sole proprietor, there's always worries about paying your bills because it's not regular income coming in. You have clients. I have had weeks in the past that you don't have any clients. This week, I seem to have a lot, but I also have a different attitude that let go of all those worries, things and helping them. But I think for sole proprietors, there's a, when my husband, late husband was alive, it was easier because his pension took care of the household expenses. When you're doing it all by yourself, It's hard to kind of juggle that off and which you have to pay. So the worry, the financial worry, the stress has really been challenging for me. And I think it is for a lot of people. And I think when you have a bad year, and I truly believe that sole proprietors have bad financial years. And sometimes we're not prepared for that financial year because I wasn't last year. So I'm still playing catch up from last year. I'm getting better at that. But that is my biggest worry about that. And when the next client is coming and like making sure that, and I'm very lucky that the people working with me, I have a team of people working with me that helped me generate leads and do this things and that for me on a volunteer basis. and that I have people like support me that can help me and I can talk to them. And I think that's very critical for a sole proprietor that you have a group of people that you can talk about difficulties within your business. I have a business coach. I have a marketing coach. I have a company that helps me with my website. I have my hosting company. I have somebody that I know that if I have any questions about computer stuff, issues or research, you can pull that in. I have somebody that can help me with videos. I have somebody that can help me with if a person is struggling with loss or grief in their jobs, I can roll that person in. So it's really nice to have other people around you that can help you as a professional. And it's also important for me to start going out to more networking events just to talk to people rather than talking to clients about their issues, because it's not in my business. It's not just about getting them a job. It's about what's doing in their lives, what's happening in their lives. And when they reschedule because something's wrong with their life, then what's going on? Sometimes we have to talk about what's going on in their lives before we can move on with their job search. And sometimes they have to put the job search on hold because of what's going on in their life.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Mary. And is there any... final advice you'd like to give to other career coaches who are going to be watching this podcast looking to scale their impact?

Mary Whitaker:

I think people, new coaches or coaches that have been around for a long time, for new coaches, you have to really figure out it's become very competitive. It's more competitive now than it was 12 years ago. There's more people trying to get into coaching, whether that's career coaching, life coaching, executive coaching. There seems to be more people who want to do it. And I think it's easy, but it can be very tough. And you have to figure out what your niche market is, not necessarily your target market, but what area you're going to focus on. I'm very lucky in my business because I do everything. Some people just focus on the resumes or LinkedIn profiles, maybe interviewing. But I do everything that a person needs to do in their career transition and that and trying to build that out. and just being available to help people more. I think the other thing is like, you've gotta become current with technology. AI is very good and can help any business. And if you don't understand it, you need to understand it. I don't use it a lot, But I can use it for research or job descriptions or something. If I don't understand, if I run into somebody that I've never had their kind of job before, I may use AI to figure out what kind of jobs and what kind of skills that they are looking for in that position or write a job description or whatever in that area. But it's also important to understand the new technologies that's happening around AI. I was at a seminar and there was an HR manager who was teaching how to use ATS and had no clue how to use that. How can you teach it? And she was just because she was an HR manager. But people have to understand the different technologies that we have. And that even goes now for applicants, job seekers, the online applications are becoming more difficult because they now have to answer pre-screened questions on the application. So you may have to give them advice of how to answer those questions if you don't know how to do that. And some of them are very difficult. And sometimes I've had to sit down with my client, especially an older client, to sit down with them on the computer and show them how to do it so they know how to do it next time or they come back and do it. You also have to be aware of the labor market, where the things are happening in the labor market. what sectors are growing and what sectors are not growing. And again, the different economic areas around Canada, because some of them are good in one area and one's not. And being in touch with company research so that you know where to tell your clients, where to do company research. You need to have those resources available so that you can help your client find the job that they need. You need to be able to do networking or tell your clients how to network and that. So because career coaching is a very extroverted kind of business, it takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of people business. So if you're not into people and you're not an extrovert, it may be more difficult for you to do that because you have to walk the walk to help your clients do it better than that.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Mary. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. For anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you, they can find you on LinkedIn at Mary Whitaker or they can find you on your website, rightcareers.ca and also in your email, mary at rightcareers.ca if they wanted to reach out to you and connect with you.

Mary Whitaker:

So it's just rightcareer, no S on that.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, rightcareer.ca, NCA for Canada, basically. Thank you so much, Mary.

Mary Whitaker:

You're welcome. Have a great day. Talk to you soon. Take care.

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.