Career Coaching Secrets

Mutiat Adebowale on Why Public Speaking is Her Top Marketing Secret

• Davis Nguyen

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In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Mutiat Adebowale, a leadership strategist. After overcoming her own shyness as a broadcaster, Mutiat Adebowale founded her business to help high-achieving women transition into entrepreneurship or elevated leadership.

Her most effective marketing channel is public speaking, which she does at live events and webinars. Mutiat Adebowale's main goal is to secure long-term organizational contracts.

She emphasizes that her best investments have been in herself, such as public speaking training. Her final advice to other coaches is to "just do it" and not be afraid to promote their services.

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Mutiat Adebowale:

My goal is to secure more of the organizational contracts that I do, working with organizations, having study organizations that I'm working with, and then I'm rolling that on maybe I'm doing retainer programs with them, or I'm stuck in like one to three years contracts with them, that sort of thing. Well, with business, as you know, the challenge would be being able to either retain Thanks.

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 a hundred million dollars 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. Hey,

Rexhen Doda:

everyone. Welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Series Podcast. I'm your host, Rajen. And today's guest is Mithiat, a transition and leadership strategist helping High-achieving professionals boldly move from corporate careers into purpose-driven entrepreneurship or elevated leadership. With over 15 years of experience coaching executives and designing transformation-focused leadership programs, Tiet empowers her clients, especially women, to lead with confidence, clarity, and intention. She's the creator of RIPE and RINE frameworks. And through her social enterprise, she's also helping marginalized women rebuild their futures. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast Thank you so

Mutiat Adebowale:

much, Rajen. Thank you. I'm pleased to be here with you today.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. And Mitya, I wanted to ask you, how did this all get started? What's the journey? What inspired you to become a coach and then start your own business?

Mutiat Adebowale:

It's actually a very long story. What inspired me to become a coach and particularly, you know, helping professional women in their spaces to lead confidently. So what inspired me was I got coaching myself and I think that inspired me because that helped me. I was a professional myself working nine to five, many years ago. My first point of call was being a broadcaster. a radio broadcaster and I was so timid. I wasn't that kind of broadcaster that could connect well. I was somewhat voiceless as a broadcaster. So I would read the news, I would do my presentation in the studio. And once that's done, once I'm out in the real world, I completely lost it. I couldn't really talk. I was a shy person. I wasn't making the most of what I was doing at the time. And I moved on from there. I went to another normal corporate environment and things didn't seem... I was shy. I was always overused. Got into burnout and went in hospital and all of those things. It wasn't just the best of things for me. And I was like, how can I help myself? I was writing because I used to write a lot and I was writing. I had a blog online and then I saw something about coaching, make the most of your life or something like that. And I was like, what's this about? So I clicked on it. It was a coaching kind of program for people to understand what coaching was. So I went for the program. It was so beautiful. It was a very safe space. I was able to come out, talk about myself and saw other people who was in the same kind of space like me who needed to be able to catch up on life, make the most of what they wanted to do, be themselves, speak out, be seen, make decisions that are bold in their lives. And me seeing that, I was like, oh, this is so beautiful. So long story short, I enrolled in the program and that was how I started as a life coach. And then I moved on. Being a life coach, I moved on. I did NLP and all of that. And then I couldn't really practice because I didn't know what it was like to practice at the time. But fortunately, I volunteered somewhere for professional women in charity. And then that was the moment that I said, this is something for me because then I could use my skills to help those women propel their profession to be better, speak better, be bold. And I was like, okay, this looks like something I can really pursue and make mine. So that was actually what inspired me into getting into coaching.

Rexhen Doda:

And how many years has it been since you started it?

Mutiat Adebowale:

It's about 10 years now.

Rexhen Doda:

15 years, that is quite a lot. Working with your clients, having them go through the coaching journey, what is the most rewarding thing about that?

Mutiat Adebowale:

It's the transformation they get, but that is on the long run. They want to accelerate, they want to change their lives, they want to achieve a better lifestyle, or they want to get promotion. On the long run, that is you know, the reward that, okay, they're able to achieve that. But what really catches me most of the time in my coaching session, even in 15 minutes laser coaching sessions, hearing people say, I never thought of it that way. You know, the shift in their thinking, their mindset, the shift in how in the perceived, the way they perceive things. And when we talk, they can quickly see the different way to see. That is always, it blows me away when, you know, you talk to somebody and say, oh, I never thought of it that way. You know, I really feel good when I hear things like that.

Rexhen Doda:

And is there a specific audience? What does their ideal client look like? What does your ideal client profile look like? For anyone who's listening and might fall into that profile, what does it look like and what's it like to work with you? How does your program work?

Mutiat Adebowale:

So in terms of leadership, career coaching, accelerating your career, so my ideal audience is the professional woman, the plus, who wants to accelerate their career. career, who wants to be seen, who wants to feel valued, be heard, wants to redefine the space for themselves to show that they're really worthy so that they can actually claim what belongs to them. They can claim on their worth. Okay. So anyone who feels like, yes, I want to get more out of this profession. I want to have my voice on my space, be more confident, lead the team and stop double guessing whether they're good enough or not. These are the type of people who I like to work with. Ambitious women who really wants to lead with confidence and make huge impact.

Rexhen Doda:

How does the engagement look like when they start working with you? Is it a certain program? Does it have a certain length? How do people generally work with you?

Mutiat Adebowale:

So it depends on where they're coming from. It depends on how we meet as well. So sometimes people can work with me one-on-one where they then get shifted into my premium program where I group coach them or I solo coach them depending on And then we have either a six-week program together where I coach them and then I take them through what it takes, where they are to where they want to be, or they do a 12-weeks program with me. Or sometimes I just have a one-to-one with somebody and then all they can, all they need is hopping on my course. I've got, you know, two distinct courses. One will take them quite long, the extended course, Leaders Compass. Or they have a shorter version of my course that's the corporate accelerator program. So it depends on their journey and what they really need.

Rexhen Doda:

So how do you find your clients or how do clients find you in terms of like marketing channels? What do you find that is working best for you, for any coach who's listening? and wants to know more about the marketing strategy of it.

Mutiat Adebowale:

So with the marketing strategy, as I said, when I first started, I didn't even know. I mean, for years, I just couldn't make money from coaching because what they teach you when you are going through these courses is how to be a coach, but not how to be a business owner running your coaching business. They don't teach you that. Well, until later. So it's so hard. So for me, it took time, it took experience, and it took a lot of investing in actually building a business. Okay. And over time, I have tried different things. And depending on you, your preference as an individual, different things will work for different people. So for me, in terms of marketing my programs and I find Connecting with people. Well, go into places where you can meet those who need your services. For example, go into conferences organized by organizations, industry conferences kind of thing. where you're going to meet professional women attending, where you're going to meet leaders attending. These sort of places allow me to, I do speaking. These sort of places allow me to showcase what I can do, what I have, and get people to come talk to me. I have my podcast that I do as well. And I talk to people who may be needing my services, understanding more about their problems, what they want to achieve. And of course, I have my email list that I've built over the years. And of course, online, social media platforms. These are other places that I get. people from and of course i invest in in marketing advertising so different areas and i'm a member of different directories where are people can look up and find me there as a leadership executive coach and things like that the most effective marketing channel for me is speaking speaking engagement that works the most because most of the time when i go and speak, I get people, a number of people, you could have like 10, 7, 15 people sign up, you know, to get to know you and then you nurture them from there. So yeah.

Rexhen Doda:

And speaking, you do this into like live events, local live events, or is it also maybe workshops on Zoom? How does that look like?

Mutiat Adebowale:

Yeah, live events, mostly, you know, local workshops. Events on Zoom, such as webinar, also work well.

Rexhen Doda:

I also wanted to dive just a little bit into understanding how your goals look like for the next one to three years. What are you focusing on achieving for these next one to three years with the coaching business?

Mutiat Adebowale:

My goal is to secure more of the organizational contracts that I do, working with organizations, having study organizations that I'm working with, and then I'm rolling that on. Maybe I'm doing retainer programs with them. or I'm stuck in like one to three years contracts with them, that sort of thing. Well, with business, as you know, the challenge would be being able to either retain the clients that you have or find new clients to replace them. So it's a thing whereby you're always in the business marketing yourself, showing up for yourself, showing up for your business. So you cannot guarantee that in the next one to three years, you know, I have this fixed number of clients that's going to be there for that length of time. The challenge is you have to consistently be visible, consistently be talking to the people that will hire your services, they'll take on your services, just show up. So it's a continuous cycle of marketing being visible and just showing up. So that's the challenge. I wish I could say, okay, I've got three contracts and I'm sure that in the next five years, I'm going to be able to retain them or they will be extended to that point. You cannot guarantee that. So you always have to be making sure that you are working to find clients or retain the ones that you have. And the thing is, building those systems and strategies that would allow you to meet up in the market. And as you know, things are changing in the market. Getting the consumer demands and catching people to work with you or catching your clients. There are a lot of shifts happening in business. So you have to be that marketer. You know, I mean, in business you have to, I learned sales in business. I learned marketing in business. So you have to be that marketer that is ensuring that you are staying on top of the trends so that you don't get swept away.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing that. Right now, you mentioned also investments. So you mentioned investments in advertising. What would you say are some investments that you've made in your coaching business that you feel like those were some of the best investments that you've gotten a very good return on? So what are some good investments? I'm always going after good investments whenever I do these interviews, looking to find what are good investments that you've done in your coaching business that you feel like they actually made a good impact? That could be coaching programs, masterminds, communities, like I said, even advertising or even investments in yourself.

Mutiat Adebowale:

Yes. I think the best investment I've made in my coaching business may not necessarily be the car marketing ones. but the ones that allow me to become a better coach. Two, better than that, a better business owner. Someone who is able to talk about their business. Someone who is able to sell their business. Someone who is able to show up for their business and understand the strategies that I need to be able to talk about my business. Like the investment in me becoming a public speaker, a professional speaker. You know, it was huge money, you know, but At the end of the day, I got it back because I'm able to do, you know, sell on stage, able to sell through webinar. I'm able to sell through, you know, talking to people, doing sales calls and all of those things, which are good. And I've also done some other investments like, you know, investing in marketing agencies for them to curate a webinar for you or for them to do podcasts, for them to, completely handle my marketing system and it flopped, you know, different things. So what I would say in terms of that is, I mean, one thing is, it's always good to invest in yourself because you are, you are the brand as a coach, you are the brand, you're the thing that, you know, your customers, your clients are buying. So the best investment is investing in yourself. So me taking other leadership courses, I invested, to become an MBTI practitioner is great because it's an upsell on my leadership, executive coaching. So those are the best investments. However, we still do need the marketing investment because you're not just going to sit in your office and say, okay, I'm a good coach. No one's going to know you. You've got to go out and people have to do this based on their preferences. Some people like maybe using social media. Some people like speaking. Some people like email, curating their email list, whatever. I also invested in things like that, email marketing and all of that. And yes, they all have advantages and disadvantages. And as I said, it's just about trying what works best for you. So for me, Obviously some of these have worked for me. Some of them have not worked for me and I'm sticking to the ones that have worked for me. For example, email marketing, building huge email lists, partnering with other people, doing webinars with other people, sharing client base and things like that. Those sort of things have worked for me and I'm holding onto them and I'm using them continuously.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. My final question for you today is for any coach who's listening to this, what advice would you give to them, coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

Mutiat Adebowale:

The advice I would give to them is please do not be afraid. I mean, it may be tough when you're starting, but you have to do it to fix the problems. You have to do it to grow. You have to do it to fall and to rise again. You have to do it to understand what needs to be tweaked, what needs to be changed, what needs improving or what you're good at that you want to keep improving on and being better at. So you have to do it if you don't practice if you don't tell people about what you're doing if you don't give them offers and say okay try what i'm doing see what you buy these things like that then no one will ever know you so it's about doing just do it and that's how you're going to be build it and be the best of a coach that you want to be and serve the people and as i say There is no one that can be you. There can be millions of coaches in the world. But the thing is, you are unique. Your ideal people are waiting for you and they will always need you. So it's a disservice you not giving out what you've got because there are people just for you.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Muthiat. And it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. For anyone who wants to find you or reach out to you, they can go into LinkedIn, search Muthiat. They'll be able to find you. There's also your website at muthiat.com. That's also where they can find you. And is there any other way people could reach out to you and connect with you? Well,

Mutiat Adebowale:

Instagram at mutatodeboily1 and my other website, igniteyourleadershipprowess.com. Thank you.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Mithiat. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast.

Mutiat Adebowale:

Thank you so much. Really nice being here.

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.