Career Coaching Secrets

Edward Deason on Trading a Corporate Salary for a Purpose-Driven Business

Davis Nguyen

In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Edward Deason, a business coach and founder of Deason Coaching. With a background in corporate strategy, Edward transitioned to coaching full-time after being laid off, allowing him to prioritize family and a better work-life balance.

His clients are service-based founders and freelancers who have hit a revenue plateau. Edward helps them identify the business strategies needed to scale. His business relies on LinkedIn content that makes his ideal clients "feel seen," as well as referrals.

His main challenge is cutting through the noise on social media. His advice to other coaches is to get "crystal clear" on their niche, as generic messaging won't resonate with anyone and makes it harder to scale.

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Edward Deason:

My clients are typically, they've reached a plateau, right? So they're very good at the thing that they do, right? Whether that is copywriting, whether that is marketing, whether that is recruiting, they're fabulous at it. They're really skilled. And what's typically happened is they've hit a point where they go, I've done the thing that I do very, very well. And it's got me a lot of clients and I'm in a place where my revenue is pretty good, but I don't know how to scale to the next step. And where I suppose the value that I offer to my clients is that is the bit where

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 $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or 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 Series podcast. I'm your host, Regan, and today's guest is Ed Deason, a seasoned business coach, strategist, and the founder of Deason Coaching, where he helps founders and freelancers scale smarter, not harder. With over 15 years in corporate strategy and an MBA from Warwick Business School, Ed now brings big business thinking to entrepreneurs and small business owners, helping them boost revenue, work fewer hours, and finally gain clarity on the growth levers that actually move the needle. Known for his no-fluff practical style and his knack for simplifying the complex, he empowers clients to break through plateaus, refine their offers, and build profitable, purpose-driven businesses with more freedom and less overwhelm. And it's a pleasure for me to have him on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Ed. Likewise.

Edward Deason:

It's a pleasure

Rexhen Doda:

to be here, Russian. Thank you for coming. So I'd like to know how you got started in your coaching business. What inspired you to become a coach and then have a coaching business started?

Edward Deason:

Okay, so I kind of had the typical corporate career. I left college, started work and had that kind of very linear career. become a team leader, become a manager, become a head of department, that kind of process through my career. And over that time, I was a line manager from very, very early on. So I was coaching and mentoring throughout my corporate career. And I loved it. You know, it was probably the thing I enjoyed most in my corporate career was working with interested new people, helping them develop their careers, go on to do bigger and better things. And the opportunity came about later in my career to get a coaching qualification. It wasn't something that I'd sort of really been considering, but like I said, the opportunity kind of fell into my lap and I thought, well, I've kind of been doing this for the last 15 or so years. It would be nice to make it a bit more formal. So I got the coaching qualification, really enjoyed the process of getting that coaching qualification and kind of had in the back of my mind kind of, well, at some point when my corporate career is sort of settling down, I guess, is maybe move into coaching. And a couple of years after the qualification, unfortunately, the business I was working for at the time was part of a much bigger set of businesses. And ultimately, they went bust. And I was out of a job. I had a young son at the time, a little boy, just eight months old when I was made redundant. And I was kind of sat there going, I don't know if I want to go back to corporate right now, actually. I don't know if I want to jump back into another role that sees me working all of the hours and being away from home all the time. And I've been doing a little bit of coaching on the side alongside the corporate stuff. And I thought, you know, now maybe this is my opportunity. This is a sign to do something different, to kind of really step into coaching, embrace coaching and start my own business. It's like I said, I kind of I'd always wanted to start my own business. And I suppose this was kind of the the kick to go, oh yeah, okay, this feels like a good time in my life to make that change.

Rexhen Doda:

So it's been more than four years now since you've done this full-time?

Edward Deason:

What's it been? So it's probably been two and a half years now, sort of full-time, four years in total, kind of alongside corporate work. And like I said, really kind of 15 years on top of that coaching and mentoring in corporate roles.

Rexhen Doda:

It's interesting because I've had this conversation with other coaches before where they're doing the coaching on the side, but they just haven't figured out when to make that shift, when to actually go full in to coaching. So your story is interesting. And also I think for some people might be inspiring to take that step Often you just don't know because there's that security of getting the salary and you don't know when the time is going to be that you actually get that salary from your coaching business when you're getting started. How would you say, how long did it take you or do you feel like you are there at the corporate salary level with your coaching business right now?

Edward Deason:

Oh, I'm probably not quite at my corporate salary just yet, but not a million miles away. And that's okay, actually. The corporate salary is nice. But what's nicer is being able to spend Wednesday afternoons with my son and take him swimming on a Tuesday and spend time with my family on a Friday like that. I would happily take a pay cut to do those things. And in all honesty, I expect I'll probably match my corporate salary this year and still be able to do those things, if I'm perfectly honest. So it's a win as far as I'm concerned.

Rexhen Doda:

Great. Awesome. So... Yeah, I'm just like wanted to confirm that. Yeah, definitely coaching is not that get rich quick business type model. It's actually the growth on it is not that fast. So it happens gradually. Obviously, depending on how much you want to scale, it's still not going to be that quick growth in the business when it comes to coaching. Like, especially when it comes to marketing, for example, a lot of coaches that I've seen do rely on their referral network. So they've worked with a few clients and then eventually that referral network grows because more and more clients are going to refer you. Do you feel like that's been the case with you or initially you've utilized other marketing channels?

Edward Deason:

No. So yes, referrals have certainly helped. And I think any decent coach you should expect referrals, generally. It might depend very slightly on the type of coaching you offer, but for the most part, as long as you're a good coach and your clients come away and feel that it's been a success, you'd like to expect that referrals will become part of your growth process. For me, I primarily use social media to kind of find and engage with potential clients.

Rexhen Doda:

So when it comes to the clients that you're working with, if any of them is listening, so how do you break down the ideal client profile that you typically work with? How does that look like? Is there a specific industry, demographic, certain goals that unify them?

Edward Deason:

I love this because this is exactly the kind of question that I would ask my clients as well. So yeah, so my clients... You talked about it in the intro. My clients are founders and entrepreneurs, right? Small business owners. Pretty industry agnostic, but for the most part, they're service providers. So they might run marketing agencies. They might run recruitment agencies. They might be copywriters or have a team of copywriters working for them. So kind of typically service-based rather than specifically kind of a tangible product. They're not selling physical goods generally. Although I've worked with a few of those clients, engage with primarily on LinkedIn. Those are the kind of clients I typically work with.

Rexhen Doda:

How does your program work? Is there a certain length that your clients go through, a certain program that they follow? Are there different programs? How would you describe working with you?

Edward Deason:

Yeah, and actually probably to build on the previous question as well. So my clients are typically, they've reached the plateau, right? So they're very good at the thing that they do, right? Whether that is copywriting, whether that is marketing, whether that is recruiting, they're fabulous at it. really skilled. And what's typically happened is they've hit a point where they go, I've done the thing that I do very, very well. And it's got me a lot of clients and I'm in a place where my revenue is pretty good, but I don't know how to scale to the next step. And where I suppose the value that I offer to my clients is that is the bit where I can help. I can't help them be a better copywriter. I can't help them be a better SEO or a better marketer, right? But I can absolutely help them with the business growth side of things because I've spent 15 plus years in corporate roles, working on corporate strategy. And I've got an MBA from a top UK business school. Business strategy is the thing that I do and I have done exceptionally well. So that's where I sort of support them to work out, right, what are the levers that they need to pull to grow their business? What are the things that they need to focus on that are going to get them from that very skilled individual or small business owner to someone who can really scale their business?

Rexhen Doda:

Interesting. Do you find that they stay with you for a certain period of time or there's no such thing? It depends on until they scale.

Edward Deason:

So typically in a program with my clients, we will agree to work together for a year. Because kind of at that point I've just described, it's kind of transformational. And transform takes real time. It's not a simple thing of, okay, well, you need to go and change this or change that. And that's going to get them from this plateau to the next step of their business, right? Typically, real business growth, there's some mindset in there. There's some pricing in there. There's some ideal customer profiling in there. There's some business strategy, operations, processes. And all of those things are typically an individual coaching session on their own. So I tend to work with my clients for a year. We agree to work together for a year. You know, I'm very pleased to say that some of my clients roll off the program early, having achieved all of their goals. But generally, we would work together for at least a year.

Rexhen Doda:

And you said social media is what has been working well for you. How would you describe the strategy there? Are you generally posting content in any specific social media platform or are you doing outreach or?

Edward Deason:

A bit of everything. So LinkedIn is probably my primary platform. Like a lot of coaches, I post content regularly. And that content is really designed to kind of ideally have my ideal customers read it and go, oh, he's talking about me. I think that's the thing that is really bothering me today. Yeah. You know, there's nothing more satisfying when a client or when a potential customer writes a comment on a post that goes, I feel seen. Because that's the one that you go, okay, that was on the nose. That was the thing that made them go, oh, okay, you understand what it is that I'm feeling. You understand where it is that I'm at. So typically LinkedIn. And then generally I back my content up with conversations with people. I don't think you can be an effective coach unless you have lots of conversations with people. Whether they are potential clients or not, the best thing you can do is start interesting conversations, help people figure out where they're at, help people figure out if coaching is even a thing that's useful for them at the point they're at and helps solve problems. Yeah.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. So the content is very targeted basically towards your ideal client profile. And you said a little bit of everything. Are you also, when it comes to outreach, are you reaching out to people? Is there a specific strategy when it comes to outreach that you're utilizing?

Edward Deason:

Definitely. So, I mean, there's lots of strategies. It's the most important thing you can do is have a human conversation with, as coaches, it's all about relate everything we do is about relationships and connection so i don't have an automated dm strategy or cold email or anything like that i'm sure they work for some coaches that's not the approach that kind of feels that feels relevant to me i start personalized conversations with people particularly if they're engaging with my comment and saying something like i feel seen right well that's a great opportunity to go to them ask them a question privately and say like what resonated with you what was it that made you say that they're quite happy that quite often they're happy to have a conversation about it and then we can go from there

Rexhen Doda:

cool interesting cool that'd Makes sense. And so right now with your coaching business, is there, looking into the future, do you have any specific goals for like the next one to three years that you're working towards for your business coaching?

Edward Deason:

Yeah, absolutely. I think for me, it's all about increasing my impact, right? Being able to positively impact more founders, more entrepreneurs, more freelancers. and enable them to kind of build businesses they love. I speak to an awful lot of people who've built businesses that are, you know, financially very stable, but they are working all of the hours. They are stressed, they're burnt out. They don't feel like they can take holidays. They don't feel like they can spend time with their family because the business is this kind of weight around their neck and outwardly looks very successful. Those are the kinds of clients that I love helping because, you know, they can finish a program and go, I'm going on holiday next week and I haven't been on holiday in five years. And that's an absolute win. So in terms of the next one to three years, really, it probably looks like really growing my one-to-one coaching. And then like I imagine pretty much every coach says to you, it answers this question, probably looking at group courses to enable it to be my coaching to be available to more people. And then probably some form of kind of scalable online resource.

Rexhen Doda:

Interesting. So you're basically looking to expand the offers as well, not just do one-on-one coaching, future doing right now, but I also do group coaching. And that's actually a very traditional way of actually scaling the business where, like I said, most coaches would think about that as a method to scale. The other option would be, obviously, if you just want to do one-on-one, because you're limited by time, you'd have to have other coaches that can take clients for you and then scale by hiring more coaches externally. That's also one thing that has worked. In terms of like, for my research, this question, when it comes to investments that you've made, What are some good investments that you feel, oh, actually, that was a very good investment. I had a very good return on that. Or if not, what are some bad investments that you feel like I probably should have avoided that? Trying to look for what are the goods and bads in terms of investments.

Edward Deason:

So good investments.

Rexhen Doda:

Could be investments in yourself, investments in the coaching business, coaching. programs, masterminds, communities, whatever it is that you actually put money on.

Edward Deason:

One challenge that I see with a lot of kind of starting coaches is how professional their outward appearance, for want of a better term, is. Their online presence is maybe a better way of putting it. So a couple of things I've invested in is some real support with my website and work with a real specialist to kind of build a strategy for my website, get clear on what it is I'm trying to achieve with it, who it's targeted for, improve the messaging, that kind of thing. And what else has worked? I had something else, but it's gone now. You can skip this bit when it comes to the editing. And then something that didn't work for me quite early on, and I think I was too early in my business for this, was I invested in Google Ads, right? And I think Google Ads actually could be very effective, but at the point I was in my business, it was probably an unnecessary distraction. I just didn't find I got any sort of meaningful ROI from it.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, well, actually it has been the same for us in our career coaching business, in my consulting offer. When it comes to Google ads, we can make that really, really work. Oftentimes we'd be spending money. Oftentimes we just spend money on protecting our name so that others wouldn't use it for targeting. But apart from that, we haven't seen any any of that Google search working. Now we've seen some results with other Google ads, so not Google search, but like there was like Performance Max, which is kind of like AI, Google's AI using different spaces to put the ad and YouTube ads also has worked a little bit. But yeah, when it comes to Google search, we just couldn't figure that out. So we just kept it at a minimal budget just to protect our name because we saw that a lot of other people were just like targeting us. Yeah, that would be terrible just like to make money out of your names. So cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And right now for you to further go and scale your coaching business, what would you say is a challenge that you're noticing Or what is that bottleneck that you're trying to solve for next? Is it your time? Is it like maybe leads on top, sales? Is it just that you haven't gotten started to like create these new offers? What would you say is kind of like preventing you to get there right now?

Edward Deason:

I don't know if there is anything sort of preventing me from getting there in the sense that I'm, you know, time management is working okay at the moment. I'm working. So I'm actually building a course at the moment. I'm doing it in combination with someone else who is, so we're working on a course around, one of the most common things my clients ask about is how to sell more effectively. So I'm working with a sales specialist to build out a course right now for typically a bit of an overlap of my audience and their audience to help them sell more effectively on social media. So it's all actually ticking along quite nicely at the moment. In an ideal world, I'd have a thousand more hours, I'd get it done, right? But realistically, I'm not in a place where I'm feeling kind of overstretched. I think one of the challenges for a lot of people will be that social media is quite crowded and it's probably becoming more crowded. So how to cut through more effectively and land your message most effectively. And I think that's probably where you're certain. I think you'll see kind of the bottom 20%, the ones that aren't able to really manage that disappearing from the platform. Yeah,

Rexhen Doda:

absolutely. And yeah. Even LinkedIn, what I've noticed from the interviews asking many coaches is that recently it's gotten less effective. Before, to compare it with a year and a half ago or two years, where a post would get more engagement than it gets today, somehow something went wrong. And one of the coaches that I asked, she said that it happened right after they made a very big layoff in LinkedIn and somehow just the algorithm kind of like didn't work as well. And I think they were working on improving it, but after that it was a big layoff and somehow something got messy. I feel like they haven't figured it out yet. But yeah, we're just forcing our way through it right now. It's not as effective as it used to be. So I do understand that. Cool. So what would you say right now? Actually, this is the final question. is when it comes to other career coaches, executive coaches, leadership coaches who are listening to this, what advice would you give to them when they're looking to scale their impact, just like you are, if there's any other advice? I think

Edward Deason:

get crystal clear on who it is that you're trying to serve. I think that the coaches that I see struggle the most are the ones who aren't able to really articulate who it is they work with. They try and they say yes to everyone or they try and say yes to everyone. And they try and kind of position themselves as being a coach that is suitable for everyone. But actually, if you can be the more clear you can be about who it is that you serve, the easier it will be to scale your business. Because it's exactly like that kind of example I gave. If you can put something out into the world that someone goes, he's talking about me. That is the thing that I feel right now. Right. That's the thing that's going to make someone engage in a conversation with you, you know, helping them feel seen, helping them feel heard. Those are the things as a coach that we're always trying to do with our clients. And those are the things that will help you scale your business. Everything you put out or everything you kind of talk about is generic because you don't want to kind of settle on because you want to say yes to everyone because you don't want to settle on a specific demographic or target or type of audience. then your marketing isn't going to resonate with people. They're not going to want to start having those conversations with you. And you're always going to find it hard to scale.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, absolutely. Especially with marketing. It just doesn't work as well when you're talking to everybody because even the ones that see the message, so he can help everyone. I don't feel like this is that good. Let's say you have two messages and you see one that is generic and one that's specially just for you. Which one would you actually react to? Yeah, totally agree with you. Would you say, just a question out of this, when you have clients that are just starting out, would you say that they have to start at the ideal client profile, just make sure that that is set and clear? Or do you think that That is something that could also be found later on. I'm wondering, like, I've always had this debate. Should you have that upfront? Do you find that out later? Or maybe you just start with one ideal profile. If you feel like that's not the right one, you just move to another one.

Edward Deason:

I mean, like every good question, the answer is probably it depends. Yeah, that's from my MBA, right? Okay, so there's probably a couple of answers to that, right? So one of them is if you come from a super, if you offer a super specific kind of coaching and you know going into it that you're offering a super specific kind of coaching So the consulting coaching is a great example, right? Presumably it's because they were an ex-consultant or they had contacts in the consulting space and that's why they were able to. So that is a super specific niche going into that, that that is the thing that you're going to offer. Equally, if you are a coach and you're not quite, and actually you could offer career coaching, you could offer corporate coaching, you could offer business coaching for a specific type of business. Perhaps you've come from a general business background. Yes, it's okay to be a little bit more general to start with and then actually find, right, is there a particular kind of client that I enjoy working with? Is there a particular kind of industry that actually resonates with me? Am I more effective in certain spaces? If the answer is yes to that, then that helps you narrow that focus down. But I would say don't take too long to work it out, right? Because the longer you spend being generic, the harder it's going to be to build a business.

Rexhen Doda:

Oh, yeah. Yeah, thanks. That actually makes a lot of sense. I really like that you say don't spend too much on it because you could just like keep getting generic clients when, well, generic might not be the right word, but you're just like getting clients from different spaces and it just like, you don't even want to let those clients go. So you kind of like have to keep that boat in different directions all the time. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So thank you so much, Ed. It's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. For anyone who wants to connect with you and reach out to you, they can go into LinkedIn at Decent. They will be finding you there. There's also the website, decentcoaching.com. They can go in there and they'll be able to find you there as well. Is there any other places they could go?

Edward Deason:

Those are probably the two best places. Take me out there.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ed. And yeah, thank you for taking the time to come to our podcast today.

Edward Deason:

Thank you very much, Reza.

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.