Career Coaching Secrets

The Authentic Advantage: How Adelle Thompson Built Her Business on Being Herself

• Davis Nguyen

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In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Adelle Thompson, founder of AT&Rich. Adelle, a career change and confidence coach, shares her journey from HR and recruitment to building her own business in 2019 after a period of informally helping friends and family.

She specializes in helping women aged 25-40 who are seeking fulfilling, high-income career changes. Her coaching focuses on helping them "sell their value" by translating their existing skills to a new industry. Adelle's approach is unique because she still works part-time in corporate HR, which keeps her in touch with the current job market.

Adelle’s marketing relies on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, using short-form content to drive people to her podcast for deeper engagement. She advises new coaches against investing too early in platforms they don't need, instead highlighting the value of masterminds and community. Her main challenge is maintaining consistency and authenticity, which she believes is key to attracting the right clients.

Her final advice for coaches is to "not water yourself down" and to be fully authentic, as your genuine voice will attract your ideal clients.

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Adelle Thompson:

yeah not industry it's not industry specific I can help anyone in any industry I'm a career change coach so one of the things I'm able to do is look at what skills someone has and look at the industry they're trying to get into and help them to translate that information but I would say my ideal client, well, the clients I work with are basically usually women between the ages of 25 and 40. I have got clients older than that, and I have got clients younger than that. But the majority of my clients, I would say, fall between 25 and 40 years old, the highest portion being in their 30s. I feel like that's where people

Davis Nguyen:

start. 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 $100,000 a year I'll see you next time.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Adele Thompson, a career change strategist, confidence coach, and host of Five for Two Careers Podcast. With over 12 years of experience in HR and recruitment and her own inspiring journey from childcare to corporate success, Adele now helps ambitious women ditch self-doubt, clarify their next career move, and step into the roles they truly love. As the founder of AT&Rich, Adele empowers clients to design strategic career paths, boost their income, and build the confidence to show up with authority and purpose. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Adele.

Adelle Thompson:

Hi, thanks for having me.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you for coming. So I want to know how this all got started. What inspired you to become a coach, then start your own coaching business?

Adelle Thompson:

Okay, so I kind of fell into coaching, but in a very weird way. I As you mentioned, I was in childcare and then I moved into human resources and recruitment. I did that without going back and studying. I did it by just changing my CV, learning how to interview. Once I did that, I started helping people I know do the same thing, started helping friends and family. And then in 2019, well, before that, probably in like 2016, I was just helping people would recommend, like my friends would recommend people to me and I was helping them with their CVs and interview prep. That turned into, in 2019, me doing that online helping single mums that's how it all started and all the mums kept calling me coach they kept saying oh hey coach like and I was like coach I was like and then someone just said to me oh yeah you're a really good life coach and I was like what so I looked into it and went and did a course on coaching and realised that actually I do I help people with careers and confidence and I sort of niched down and decided from there I was like oh I've been coaching all this time because I was helping people negotiate salaries helping them do interviews but i just called it cvs and interview prep i didn't label it as coaching i didn't package it as coaching come 2019 packaged it as coaching a few months later came up with the name for my business and yes like i said i started off working with just single moms and then it evolved and i just started working with lots of other people but that's sort of how i got into the coaching industry cool

Rexhen Doda:

and how long has it been since you started the coaching

Adelle Thompson:

business 2019 I started August 2019 and we're in 2025. So like six, seven years, six years.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Amazing. And throughout these years of working with clients, which is that part of your coaching journey that you find most rewarding since you started doing this

Adelle Thompson:

i think when people realize they're much more capable than they think they are like when they realize the skill set they already have is valuable a lot of people are looking for more validation outside themselves so they think more qualifications i need to have more knowledge when actually the what they already have is good enough i love to see when a woman says to me oh my gosh i never thought i would be able to get paid more for this current skill set or I never thought I'd be able to change industry with this current kill set. So just being able to realize they can do so much more with what they already have. Like that's my favorite part.

Rexhen Doda:

Amazing. Who are these clients? How would you define your ideal client? then we'll also talk into how the transformation looks for them or what the program is so what is the ideal client does it fall into a specific industry or specific demographic

Adelle Thompson:

so yeah not industry it's not industry specific I can help anyone in any industry I'm a career change coach so one of the things I'm able to do is look at what skills someone has and look at the industry they're trying to get into and help them to translate that information but I would say my ideal client, well, the clients I work with are basically usually women between the ages of 25 and 40. I have got clients older than that and I have got clients younger than that. But the majority of my clients, I would say before between 25 and 40 years old, the highest portion being in their 30s. I feel like that's where people start to look at their career and really want to look at changing and doing something different. I predominantly work with women, but in the last year, some of my clients have recommended me to their husbands, their brothers and things like that. I've helped them with interviews with negotiation so I have worked with men in the last sort of 12 months but previous to that I was only working with women um because I know the struggle I know what it is to be a woman in corporate so it was always easier but yeah a lot of men also resonate with my message as well um just because I do talk a lot about how can we increase finances how can you then use those finances to better your life um and I feel like that appeals to every demographic like every demographic so yeah but my main demographic like I said is women aged 25 to 40 who are bored in their career or who have fallen into a career that isn't something they necessarily wanted to do. It's just something that they've fallen into. And now they want to do something that's way more fulfilling, but also pays them a lot more money.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Amazing. And how does the program look like for anyone who's enjoying that? How does it work, basically?

Adelle Thompson:

So with me, I do one-on-one. So I don't do group coaching, but I do one-on-one. And with me, when people join it sort of it depends on where they are in their journey because some people come to me they've already started the journey so they may want my shorter program which is like eight weeks and then I have a longer program which is like 16 weeks this current job market I haven't really been offering my shorter program because the job market right now in 2025 is chaotic doesn't matter where you live in the world it is very different to how it was like four years ago five years ago so yeah the way the program works is they come in we are going to look at their current skill set how best how they're marketing their skill set how their CV looks, how their interview conversations look, how their networking looks and then we're going to work on booking interviews in this new industry. We're going to work on finding out how they can get into that new industry. Like I said before, I was in childcare. I was a teacher. That's what I did. And I was able to translate that into human resources. And I've now been in human resources maybe 15 or 16 years. And I've worked all the way up to director level. Being able to do that without going back and getting a degree, without having to get requalified, I think that's what I try and teach people in my program, to utilize what they already have. It's great getting more, but if you can't sell what you already have, how are you going to sell the more that you go and get? So I think my biggest thing in my program I teach people how to sell what they already have. How do you market that in the corporate world? How do you utilize that to get the pay rise? How do you utilize that to add 50K to your salary, 60K to your salary? I've had clients that have tripled their salaries. They're doing that because they're understanding what the value is they currently have and how they can translate that. And also how they tell someone else about that value, because you can know your value, but not be able to sell your value. So I'm very much the program that teaches people how to sell their value, whether that's CV, interview, networking, I teach them how to connect the dots so they can get from A to B.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. And Where do people, and this is a question that coaches would probably like to know, where do you find your clients or what marketing channel works best for you right now?

Adelle Thompson:

So currently, most of my clients come from LinkedIn and Instagram. That's where, honestly, most of my, and referrals. Like I have a lot, where I've been doing this for so long, I have a lot of referrals, but majority of new clients come from LinkedIn and Instagram. However, I do use TikTok for lead generation. So what TikTok tends to do is it makes my videos kind of go a little bit viral, like mini viral, or it just has me everywhere because it's TikTok, it moves quite quickly. Those views translate to people then find me on Instagram and on LinkedIn and of course my podcast once people find me on LinkedIn they go and listen to my podcast once they've listened to my podcast they come over and work with me but yeah I would say that for me lead generation is definitely TikTok but Instagram and LinkedIn people go on there they can they look at my content listen to what I do listen to the podcast and I think that the message just if it resonates they book a call with me like a consultation call and then once we've had a chat we see if we're a good fit And then we sort of work together from that point on. So that's the main places I sort of market. It's a lot of writing content, sharing my voice and seeing where we go from there.

Rexhen Doda:

Interesting. So it's TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram together with the podcast. So What is the content strategy? Are you utilizing your podcast episodes, sharing them through all of these platforms, or let's say sharing advice that people would be interested in or your target audience would be interested in? into these platforms. I just want to learn a little bit more about the strategy.

Adelle Thompson:

Yeah. So I'm sharing like tips, like education, advice, opinion. I'm sharing what I've done. So stories, I'm sharing all that. Like I love storytelling. I love education pieces. I love advice. I'm sharing that through content. And then I'm using that content to drive people to my podcast to have a longer conversation. So a piece of content can only be a certain amount of time. So I might do a piece of content on increasing salary, how to get a 30k pay rise. I will then do a full episode on that on my podcast. So the content that I share will be, this is my advice. If you want to know more in depth, then head over to the podcast. So the podcast tends to be more detailed. I share my podcast on those platforms, but I tend to, the strategy is I write content, lots of different content about lots of different topics. I ask people, I ask my audience all the time, like, what do you need help with in your career? They let me know, I create the content and then that content I then also share in long form on my podcast. Or if I don't decide to do it on my podcast, I'll do it in video format. I'll just share a long video talking about like how to do things with some steps and some advice. Also sharing my story, sharing my client's stories, saying like how they got from A to B, that tends to resonate with people. And then again, like I said, that will push people to go over to the podcast.

Rexhen Doda:

And now when it you invite into the podcast is it potential people that would potentially work with you or is it just industry experts or maybe like HR reps or recruiters that you uh kind of interview in the podcast?

Adelle Thompson:

So on the podcast, a lot of my episodes are just me. They're solo episodes. But when I do invite guests on, so I do have a lot of guest episodes, it will be people that I feel will resonate with my audience. So what does my audience currently need? So it might be like, I've done one recently where we were talking about having a nine to five and a side hustle. So I was talking to someone about that. And that resonates with my clients currently, because a lot of my clients will have a side hustle or a lot of my audience will also have a side hustle. It tends to be different. It's a variety of people. So I'll have, I've had HR people on there, HR experts. I've definitely got a few episodes of HR experts. I've got other coaches who come onto my podcast, other career coaches, especially leadership coaches, like just those type of coaches. I've got mindset coaches that come onto the podcast. I've had one of my own clients who was happy to share her journey. She was on the podcast with me. So it's a lot of different experts in different areas. So for instance, I'm not necessarily an expert in LinkedIn but I'll have someone who's a LinkedIn expert or someone who helps people to write great LinkedIn I've had someone like that come onto the podcast so it varies but it's usually expert HR people HR people tend to be great and anyone sort of in the corporate world who can give corporate insight so I love people that are currently in corporate that can give corporate insight so that they can tell the audience in real time this is what's going on in corporate I myself still work in corporate two days a week. So I do work part time in the corporate world, which I think is also really helpful. So a lot of my episodes are solo because I can still talk on the corporate experience because

Rexhen Doda:

I still do two days a week in corporate. Cool. You mean two days? So you have like a part time?

Adelle Thompson:

Yes, I work two days a week. I job share with someone, but they do three days. I do two days and I work in the corporate industry. So I'm still in sort of like the HR world. just part-time, which I really enjoy still. So yeah, that's what I do. So I work remotely, so I'm quite lucky. I work from home. I go to the office very rarely. But yeah, I always say to people, I'm an employee and I'm an entrepreneur. So I'm a part-time employee, full-time entrepreneur.

Rexhen Doda:

Interesting. So that also helps you to keep in touch of how the industry is going because you're in it

Adelle Thompson:

all the time. Absolutely. I'm in it. I see the issues. I see the problems. I'm speaking to people that are doing it every day. I myself changed jobs in 2023. So I can talk on my recent experience and explain to people that I'm not coming from something I did years ago, even though obviously years ago, I changed industry to get into HR. But I also have gone through this chaotic job market in 2023 when things started to get a bit more chaotic. I changed industry myself. I was able to put my own techniques, basically put myself through my own coaching program I use my own techniques to land a job and then I'm able to share with people. And also because I've done that, I'm able to understand what works and what doesn't work currently in the job market.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. How do you see the coaching business in the next one to three years? Are there any specific goals that you're working towards right now?

Adelle Thompson:

For me, right now, it's just about consistency. So my coaching business is quite busy right now. I'm enjoying where it's at so for me it's just quite keeping it consistent I think the coaching industry itself is changing because I think people want more from what like and not want more as far as like the programs itself but I think they want more upfront like marketing they want to understand more they want more detail before they commit to coaches so I think that's I'm definitely working on just making sure my message remains authentic. So really honing down on my authentic message, making sure that they're my opinions and A big thing for me that changed my business and made my business grow was when I stopped trying to speak in what I thought people wanted to hear and just spoke how I speak to my friends. Just gave advice like I would in real time. And that's what I'm really working on, continuing to make my message authentic. So if I have a thought, I tend to speak into my phone so that I have the context of what I want to write. And then I create the post because I know then that's my voice. I'm not... Because sometimes we clean things up, you know, like we... We make it tidy. We make it corporate. We make it shiny. And I don't think that's what people are looking for. People are looking for what's a bit different. Why? Why am I working with you? And I think it's just authenticity. So I'm very much over the next few years going to work more on just ensuring that it's very authentic and it's very me. It's very my voice. And

Rexhen Doda:

have you made

Adelle Thompson:

any

Rexhen Doda:

investments in the coaching business so far that you feel like have been good investments or have helped the business grow? That could be any investments, actually investments in yourself, investments in a coaching business, such as coaching programs, masterminds, communities, whatever it is that you feel like actually was a good investment to help you grow.

Adelle Thompson:

absolutely I've been in masterminds and stuff like that I'm currently in a group coaching program it's a lifetime program so I actually joined it in 2022 maybe yes 2022 and I'm still in it because it was a lifetime program I love my coaching program it is a great coaching program that I'm a part of it's a great group so it's a group coaching that I'm a part of and I can always dip in and out of the community to get support or ask questions I like that I like being able to bounce ideas off of other people and to understand what's working for some people and what's not also I'm able to connect with women all over the world um because coaching does work differently in different parts of the world so that's always really interesting to hear and understand so yeah I'm been in coaching programs and as far as investments in my business I have got the normal things like you know zoom calendly all that stuff I also have thinkific which is like a platform that I've used for my courses like because I have master classes that I've delivered and courses I would say that what that investment specifically, I invested way too early. So I did it right at the beginning of my business when I had no real business. Like when it had, it didn't start working for me until 2023. Wow. I invested in like probably 20, 2021. It didn't because I wasn't far enough into my business to need that level of system. Like I, I thought I needed a system, obviously my website and things like that. Like I've got a website and that, so that, that's a great investment. But yeah, some of my investments, I feel like I didn't necessarily need right at the beginning, but they have been great investments overall.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And yeah, it does make sense that when you're just getting started, you're right. You potentially don't need the course right at the beginning. And yeah, because basically you're just redefining your offer, working on your offer.

Adelle Thompson:

You haven't tested.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah.

Adelle Thompson:

You haven't tested outcomes. So I'm saying to them, oh, join this course, but I don't really know what the outcomes are because I think I know what they are, but I haven't tested it enough. At that point, I hadn't tested it on enough people. to be able to really... My message wasn't landing because I'm saying what I think it can do versus now I know what it does. So I think the message reads differently. So yeah, I definitely think testing... It's really important. I definitely started way too early, but now it's great having that platform. It's great being able to give people access to the courses and the programs and stuff like that.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing all of that. And what would you say is a challenge right now that you're trying to solve for next in the coaching business? We talked about you looking to be as more consistent as possible for the next year or so. What would you say is a challenge for you right now, if there is any?

Adelle Thompson:

I would probably say just what I talk about. Because sometimes it feels really repetitive. However, repetitive is good. Boring is good. I've learned that. Even if I think it's boring, it's not boring for my audience because they want to hear the same message. They want to hear it in different ways. I think for me, it's more just remembering to talk about the subjects in different ways, share them in different formats. So like video, long form, short form, just sharing the message, sharing the advice, I would say. That's what I'm sort of working on, how I share the advice. And yeah, consistency. I was really consistent with like TikTok before and then it kind of fell off so just being consistent as in like having a schedule of okay how many times am I posting on TikTok and it's not about posting every day because I'm not that type of coach but it is about if I'm going to show up every week even if it's one post a week make sure I'm consistent with that one post a week if I'm going to show up three times a week make sure I'm consistent with the three times a week so that's what I'm working on just making sure that I'm actually committed to being consistent and making sure the consistency works for me.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thanks so much for this. And what we'll just say right now is an advice you would give, you already shared a lot, but what advice would you give to other coaches, career coaches like yourself that are looking to scale their impact?

Adelle Thompson:

Oh, don't talk about the things that you truly believe. Don't water yourself down. I think that's really important. Like when I watered myself down, my business was really small. The minute I just was myself and spoke honestly and freely, it resonated with people. And when I say honestly and freely, you don't have to, like, you don't have to go against the grain. You don't have to be challenging. What do you really think? You will attract the people that agree with you or believe what you believe when you talk about what you truly believe, your real experiences. Like, don't look at what everyone else is doing. and think, oh, they spoke about this, so I should speak about this. No, speak about what's authentic to you. Like I said earlier on, I'm not a LinkedIn expert. People go on my page and they see that I'm a LinkedIn top voice and they're like, oh, she must be an expert. No, no, I'm not a LinkedIn expert. I might be a LinkedIn top voice and that's because I share authentically, but I'm not an expert in how to utilize LinkedIn. So I would tell someone, okay, this is what I've done on LinkedIn, but if you wanted to learn more, you should check out these people. So don't be afraid to share like, signpost people and actually say like i'm an expert in this but i'm not an expert in this and never water yourself down just be fully yourself no matter what that looks like whether you're shy whether you're loud whether you're quiet be you because your people will find you that way

Rexhen Doda:

thank you thank you so much adele and for anyone who wants to connect with you or find you they can go into linkedin and search adele thompson they'll be able to find you Is there any other way they could reach out to you? I believe there's also a website where they can go into.

Adelle Thompson:

So my website's atenrich.com. So that's atenrich.com. And they can just go on there and you can book a consultation call with me. You can reach out to me. You can send me an email. But LinkedIn's always, I'm always in LinkedIn. So send me a message on LinkedIn if you want to connect, if you want to network, if you want to work with me, any of those things. LinkedIn's a great place. But yeah, my website, atinrich.com. You can just book a consultation over there or yeah, send me an email.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thanks so much, Adele. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast.

Adelle Thompson:

Thank you. It was lovely being here. Thanks for having me.

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit joinpurplecircle.com.