Career Coaching Secrets

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar on Prioritization and Growing with Intention

• Davis Nguyen

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In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Naa Amerley Asante-Armar, an employment legal and intuitive life coach. A lawyer for 20+ years, Naa Amerley Asante-Armar started coaching after a personal crisis, fusing her legal expertise with her passion for helping others.

Her ideal clients are professionals at a crossroads. Naa Amerley Asante-Armar's marketing is organic and relationship-based, driven by referrals and her communities. Her biggest challenge is increasing her visibility and delegating tasks.

She advises coaches that their most important investment is in themselves, as personal growth is the foundation for authentic coaching.

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Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

Yeah. So typically I will work with people for three months on a weekly basis. Sometimes that can be six months on a bi-weekly basis. And essentially, the first thing is to identify where they are right now. And there's an element of rediscovering who they are, because we can get to a stage in life where we've taken on so many labels, you know, maybe you've had so many promotions, just lots of different responsibilities. And what tends to happen is we lose connection with or stop doing the things that really...

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 Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Na Merle, an employment legal coach and intuitive life coach who's on a mission to help individuals navigate workplace challenges and personal transitions with confidence and clarity. She supports UK employees. through affordable legal coaching, while also creating transformative spaces like the Black Women Vending Room and Black Men Vending Room, safe, empowering circles for healing, reflection, and growth. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show now.

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

Thank you so much, Regine. An honor to be on the show. I'm looking forward to the discussion.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. And I want to know how... It got started. What's the story? What inspired you to become a legal coach and then start your own coaching business? How did you get started?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

So I would say my story is kind of maybe back to front. So I'm actually an employment lawyer. I've been qualified as a lawyer for over 20 years. So I was the lawyer first. Then I got into the coaching around 2016. And that was the back of a personal story where basically my marriage was breaking down. Personal things were going on and I was trying to find my way out of that. And through that, I got directed into coaching, thinking I didn't actually even know what life coaching was about. And through that personal journey of self-development, I was thinking, but this is who I am. You mean people get paid to do this? That's what got me to there. I just thought, well, if, you know, this has been such a help to me, then obviously there must be other people that I can help. So that's how that kind of got started.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And so how long has it been since you started moving to the coaching kind of industry?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

So, yeah, technically November 2016, I would say I officially started or even just started having my first clients and what have you. And that was specifically life coaching. You know, when you start out for some of us, we can be very general. So I was serving everybody, working it out as it were. And then the transition became I was working with everybody. Then I would work with women and then I would incorporate life and then career coaching. The legal coaching is the much more recent one where. I had the realization or found a space where I could fuse my legal experience with my coaching experience. So that's kind of my sweet spot.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. So it's been about nine years or so that you've been doing this. It's a while. Throughout these years of doing this, what's that one thing that you find most rewarding when you're going through a coaching journey with a client?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

For me, it's that time where I think the client themselves, they realize, first of all, they get very clear on what they want, whether or not they think it's possible, that it's like, no, this is what I want to do. Because usually when they start, they think either they don't know what they want to do, or they think that, I think I want to do something, but there's no, like, I've got no way. Where am I going to start? It's impossible for me. So it's the point where they may not have reached the goal yet, but they've committed to themselves. Like, that's what I want to do. I'm going to do that. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I'm going to do that.

Rexhen Doda:

And so what would you say, so for anyone listening and might fall into that profile, what is that ideal client profile for you look like?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

Sometimes it is somebody who, there may be a professional or somebody that's stayed in a specific industry for a long time and they're thinking of transitioning to a completely different area. At one point I fell out of love of the law and I thought I'm going to go into training and development and then I realised I just needed fulfilment in other areas of my life. So you may be looking to change your career, not sure how to do it, or you may just not want to change career but you know that where you are right now you've lost that sense of fulfilment and you're not sure what's next for you. So those kind of crossroads tend to be the And how

Rexhen Doda:

does the program look like? Is there a certain length that people get to work with you or is there a certain program that they go through? How does that look like?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

Yeah, so typically I will work with people for three months on a weekly basis. Sometimes that can be six months on a bi-weekly basis. And essentially the first thing is to identify where they are right now. And there's an element of rediscovering who they are because we can get to a stage in life where we've taken on so many labels, you know, maybe you've had so many promotions, just lots of different responsibilities. And what tends to happen is we lose connection with or stop doing the things that really brought us passion. whether it's professionally or personally. So it's rediscovering what that thing is and then taking steps to identify, okay, how am I going to incorporate more of this in my life? Do I actually need to completely change what I'm doing or can I just add this to where I am at now? So a bit of discovery, a bit of And in that, it also involves reconnecting people to their intuition, because that's another thing that goes. We can become very stuck in doing things in a regimented way and we lose trust of our own instincts to do something.

Rexhen Doda:

And so about three months, if they're doing it every weekend and biweekly is about six months. when when you're working is it only one-to-one coaching or you also do group coaching

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

yeah so for me personally i just do one-to-one coaching i tend to have depending on uh the people that i'm working with i will have group communities but they're not specific for career coaching if you like they're general to support you know life what's what's going on with you but yeah one-to-one in that aspects i i do

Rexhen Doda:

thank you thanks so much for sharing that and does it also um for the ones that follow the program? Do they also get some education around any legal aspect of it that could be to their advantage?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

It really depends on the client. I mean, I have also the, if you like, the legal coaching and there are aspects of when you're helping an employee navigate, you know, current employee disputes, disputes with their employers. Some of them are in the place where they've maybe left their employment and they're thinking of either starting their own business or getting into something difference in their career so it doesn't touch so much on that

Rexhen Doda:

i see thank you thanks so much for sharing it and right now for any coach listening for other coaches what is the marketing strategy what marketing channel works best for you in terms of you finding clients or them finding you is there a certain marketing strategy that you're following

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

so yeah marketing is not my strong point I would say that's the, I'm very much somebody who tends to market to my audiences as in, in my spaces. It may not work for other people, but the people that I tend to work with, they've already experienced me somewhere. So usually they will be in my communities or somebody has referred them to me. There are a few times where maybe I've advertised, I'd say advertised, I've introduced myself maybe in Facebook groups, but it's usually something that resonates with my journey, not my professional things like my personal journey that resonates and then they come.

Rexhen Doda:

How do you see your coaching business maybe evolving or growing for the next one to three years? Do you have any specific goals in mind for the next one to three years?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

I think certainly, if not in the three years, but definitely in the coming year is to work on more visibility. I work a lot in my communities and the one to one. So I'm not somebody who typically does, you know, TikTok lives, Instagram lives, anything like that. But I think at this stage, I go through cycles. So this definitely is a stage where, yeah, it's more to be, you know, it's time to be present again and visible again and engaging with people. So that's my that's my focus at the moment.

Rexhen Doda:

So basically growing your audience even further than it is right now. Absolutely. What are some investments that you'd like to share in the coaching business or even in yourself?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

I would say the biggest investment is the one that I made. This would be back in 2016 that introduced me to coaching in the first place. And it was all about... self-development and learning super consciousness, which was fantastic for me. It wasn't geared to just me becoming a career coach, but it transformed every aspect of my life. And like I said, it even made me aware that, oh, coaching, that's something that I could do. And I don't know what people's rates are, but I would say in a period of maybe four or five years, I spent about £25,000, the best money I ever spent. I think it's still, everything else layered up on that, but it gave me such a good foundation into who I am, what I want to do. And then I could move from that. And then I went into, I think back in 2023 or so, I did some business focused, if you like, coaching and self development, which had some of its benefits. But then I think after maybe three or four months, I realized that it seemed quite maybe similar to things I'd done before. And because of the kind of person I am, like I'm always, I'm always looking for the lesson in whatever I'm doing. So even if somebody else would say, well, this was a train wreck, I can always find something that it's like, yeah, but I learned this and I can use this. So it was kind of that it wasn't the best investment. but I definitely got a return.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing it. It's always been actually what we've seen with coaches in general that I've interviewed is some of the best investments have been in having Maybe some other coach that have helped them or some of the worst investments have been sometimes some marketing company. Difficult to, and I think the marketing agents shouldn't take these clients because they don't understand their audience. So that is where usually where the miscommunication happens. is if you, you are the only one as a coach, you are the only one who knows your audience best. The marketing agency will not know it as good as you do. So it will not be able to target it as good as you would. So unless you have it like figured out exactly the ideal client profile, it will be very difficult to have a marketing agency figure it out for you if you haven't.

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

Absolutely. I completely resonate with that. I think I had the benefit of having a good mentor who was able to demonstrate for themselves personally that whether they spend whether they had an ad or a marketing budget of £1,000 or literally £10,000, they saw very little difference. And actually the significant thing, which you've just said, is that no one knows your product or your service better than you do. So nobody, but nobody's really going to do it justice as you can, because there's something unique about you. And it's really, I guess, whoever may help you successfully is that they've taken the time in really getting to know who you are even you are even before what it is that you're doing you know

Rexhen Doda:

yeah totally agree with that right now what would you say is a challenge on your coaching business that you're trying to solve for next what is a bottleneck or an issue that you feel like you solve that things will slightly get better

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

it's a very personal thing in the sense that i would Maybe say that I'm not the typical coach or as typical as in I'm not the kind of person who will do just one thing. You know, so, yes, I'm career coaching. I'm a life coach. I have my venting rooms. I'm a legal coach. And I've tried. But that literally is the way that I operate. So it really comes down to, for me, prioritization. And I try to work with, okay, so where is my focus now? Because I've seen that I do have cycles like, okay, this is where my energy is right now. So this is who I'm going to serve. So what do I need? What energy or what, I guess, strategy do I need for that part at that time? But I think, yeah, people would need patience with me because, yeah. It's not like I can have a, personally, I don't think I have a five-year roadmap for one thing. I think either I get bored or I don't know what it is, but it's trying to think of where I'm at right now, what is going to be the best, you know, what's going to be the best way to use my energy and my focus and everything to grow that part of the business. So like I said, with the coaching, I think for now, it's a lot about visibility and connecting with people again, before I see what the next step is.

Rexhen Doda:

Is there also... any uh challenge on a higher level such as like um let's say you wanted to grow more visibility what what's holding you from growing that visibility

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

i think it's just timing and uh strategy i think really it's structure and that's my major thing once the structure is well then everything else is well um probably at the stage And it's making that transition, you know, to delegating and letting things over so that I can focus.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thanks so much, Na. And my final question for you today is what advice would you give to other career coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

Okay. So the first thing I say is that although I'm a lawyer, I don't give advice. But that aside, I would say that the work that I think we can never underestimate and always keeps on giving is is the work that we do to sharpen our own skills, rediscover who we are and what we want to do. Because nothing speaks louder than the person, like who that person is. And that's why I see that people are so interested. You're doing a fantastic job doing your coaching and everything, but people are so interested in like, what does this person do on a daily basis like who is the person so it's like yeah so the investment in me or you will always keep on giving so we need to make time to do that

Rexhen Doda:

thank you thanks so much now great advice and for anyone listening uh who wants to connect with you or find you they can go into linkedin um and they can look up now merle and they'll find Your name is slightly longer, but apart from that, I'm going to let you pronounce the two other parts of the name just to make sure that I get it correctly.

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

No problem. So yeah, my full name is Naamele Asantiamar. So Asantiamar hyphenated, that actually is my last name or my surname. So yeah, I think that's the best way. You can either look for Naamele Asantiamar or you can even look for Power to Our Mothers. which is the name of my, if you like, my business underneath. And that should find me on LinkedIn.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Na. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast today. Thanks so much for coming.

Naa Amerley Asante-Armar:

My pleasure. It's been a great discussion.

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.