Empowering Growth and Connection Through Coaching with Robyn Ireland

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Robyn Ireland, a seasoned leadership coach and organizational development expert passionate about helping leaders and teams unlock their full potential. Robyn shares her insights on building authentic connections, fostering workplace resilience, and aligning personal values with professional goals. With a rich background in leadership coaching and talent development, she offers practical strategies for cultivating self-awareness, driving meaningful change, and leading with purpose.

You can find her on:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robyn-ireland/

https://www.robynscouch.com/

Transcript

Robyn Ireland: 0:00

Like why spend years and years of banging your head and trying? Like if you could if you could work with a coach who can help tell you this is what you need to work on today to get there, and let's do it in two months instead of you spending, oh, I'll wait to next year's review. I'll give it another year and see if my boss likes me next year. Maybe I don't wait.

Davis Nguyen: 0:20

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 Wynne, 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 businesses 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.

Kevin Yee: 0:51

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcasts. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Robin Ireland. She is uh the founder of Career Coach Services, been in business for at least five years. Welcome to the show, Robin. Thanks, Kevin. It's great to be here. Yeah. You know, quite interesting. We're talking about your life and how you're going between both hemispheres right now. So I'm very curious about like your origin story, the lore. What made you want to become a coach and more importantly, turn it into a business?

Robyn Ireland: 1:19

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'd actually been working in corporate America first when I immigrated to the United States. And I kind of got tired of seeing companies making money for the sake of money or helping other people get richer in terms of just and they were doing great. And so I pivoted and I was actually working in the mental health industry and providing support services to therapists and helping therapists build their practices. And what I got to see is I was doing that. It didn't matter how good the therapists were, it didn't matter how robust, didn't matter how robust their services were. It was all about the work. So many Americans were drinking alcohol, taking drugs, video gaming, shopping, all of these addictions to deal with work-related stress. And I would tease the practice owners relentlessly, like, we need a career coach in the office. And ironically, we'd gone out for drinks and it was in Chicago with a drug and alcohol office. So ironically, drinks right before Thanksgiving of 2019. And the practice owner, she said, she was like, That's it, I'm done. I dare you to become our career coach. You're on. And so January 1st, 2020, I'd started Robin's Couch, get on mine to get off yours. And I was helping executives within the Chicago area that had been dealing with addictions to then find a better fit for their skill set that wasn't going to be so triggering to help them on their journey. So, like if they'd gone through that journey of recovery and then wanted to have a better job. But the rub is a lot of times at that executive level, how do I pivot when I have a family? I have children, I have a spouse or a partner who is quite used to that level of income that I've provided. And that fear of being able to pivot and to still maintain that income is huge to keep that security going. And so I was able to jump in, but it was all because of this dare and what I could see was really needed for a lot of people that were hurting across the United States.

Kevin Yee: 3:13

I never really thought about it, but you know, as an American, I definitely see like friends, my colleagues go through those like the video games, the alcohol, the drugs, all these things. It's never really talked about a lot. But it's really interesting how I never really thought about it, but a lot of it is actually due to work in due stream. It's really interesting to see how you get to the core issue of like finding a better job or career that's better for that skill set. As you're speaking, I was like, how do you do it?

Robyn Ireland: 3:44

I think it comes back to I do have a degree in psychology as well, so I use a lot of testing. So I'm really excited that we've just launched Trimetrics HD. And this is through a partnership with a company called TTI. TTI was the first company in the United States to take psychometric testing online. And using a lot of great research from Robert Hartman, we've launched an assessment called Trimetrics HD. And what that does, it really looks at five different types of assessments and they put it all into one. Like in many people have done like a disc assessment or something for, you know, assessment for a job or whatever, but it takes five of them. So it takes not just how you act and how what motivates you, it looks at why you do it. We talk about how you think. Then we also look at what's your actual capacity to do the things that you're going to be asked to do and what are your actual competencies. And I think that is a huge key to unlock that. So we've been piecemeal with lots of different assessments before, but this one assessment that we've just launched this year puts it all together in one. And it takes us about two hours to run through that, just the debrief alone. But what's really cool is we reveal your blind spots. And a lot of times I'll meet managers who are, you know, I want to get to that VP level, I want to move, or a VP who wants to get into C-suite and they're so stressed and can't figure out why I am getting passed over for promotion. Like it just hurts. Like if they see one more person get that corner office and it's not them and it's killing them, they go home and pour some whiskey at the end of the day, all of these things. And they don't know what their blind spots are. And a lot of times managers are great, but they don't always want to have those tough conversations about this is where you're not good and this is your blind spot. You know, I had a conversation with somebody yesterday who is very driven, but he's so driven that he doesn't always take into account how he impacts other people on his team. He doesn't even think about his team. And it was really hurting his leadership. And when we went through the assessment, I brought that up and I said, Have you ever had that situation at work? And like he rattled off this whole situation, and now he can see why he wasn't getting that promotion. And then we can have that conversation. What are we going to do about it? And we've worked out a development plan and we'll check in, you know, once a week for the next eight weeks or about half an hour, and we developed that development plan and he's off and running. And now he knows what he needs to do to lift his game to get to that next level. And that is just golden. Like it is that golden ticket to open those doors.

Kevin Yee: 6:16

One of the things that really strikes me is how impactful your work is, right? And it's like you take these years and years of years of like frustration, maybe struggling. Like, there's a lot of different heavy emotions when it comes to like not getting that promotion and just providing that three, like that whole feedback. That's really interesting.

Robyn Ireland: 6:34

And also it just saves time, right? Like, why spend years and years of banging your head and trying? Like, if you could if you could work with a coach who can help tell you this is what you need to work on today to get there, and let's do it in two months instead of you spending, oh, I'll wait to next year's review, I'll give it another year and see if my boss likes me next year. Maybe I don't wait. That's yeah, yeah.

Kevin Yee: 6:57

And it sounds like the work that you do is like pretty intimate. You're telling me alone the assessment that you do takes two hours just to go over. So when you think about your client capacity, how do you kind of manage it? Do you have a team? Are you like I'm kind of curious?

Robyn Ireland: 7:13

I have a very small but mighty team. So we do work very closely. It is a very personal relationship that I have with the clients in terms of they need to feel safe in terms of digging out this is what I'm not good at. We're really good usually of telling people what we're great at and really overselling, and especially for those that come to a career coach, they've usually been struggling to find that position for themselves. They're struggling to get that promotion and they don't know why. So they're already feeling a little beat up. So we have to have that safe space for them to dig in and to be vulnerable. But I think the element of being able to know what you're doing, and also for me to be able to just time manage that out. I have clients that will join me that are at different stages. So, like once we've gotten through that assessment stage and we're working through how do you get there, what's the next step, it makes it a whole lot easier. Like we're just doing those 30-minute check-ins and they have me via email and all of those things in between. Once we get through that assessment, we're often running to the races. It makes things a whole lot easier.

Kevin Yee: 8:13

Something I'm also really interested in as well, because there's definitely I love your advice on this. One of the things that a lot of coaches struggle with is I have like pricing and pricing strategies. And especially in your line of work, there's such heavy emotional gravitas. And I always think, like, oh yeah, like value is kind of subjective sometimes. Of course, you don't have to give any hard numbers, but when you structure your pricing, how do you think about it? Is it project-based, go toward value-based or retainer? Like I'm kind of curious about the pricing models that you've leaned toward over the years.

Robyn Ireland: 8:45

Yeah, I think I really started out like many coaches, and you think it's product-based at the beginning. And because, and again, like everyone, right? When you're starting a business, you're doing something new, there's that hesitancy about what is the value that I'm bringing. But as I went through and realized I needed to adjust my pricing to be value-based. And what was really interesting, even when I raised my prices, pitching a client that was at the new level of the value-based pricing, and he wanted to talk to somebody else that I've worked with because you know it's an investment. So can I actually speak to a live person that you've actually worked with? And so I went back to one of my clients that I had worked at in terms of the project. And she said, Absolutely, I'll talk to him. Like you've been an absolute godsend in my life. I don't know what I would have done without you. And I said, Well, I want you to know I've actually tripled my prices. So if he asks you about the money, what I learned from working with you, it was that my work has a lot more value. And she said, Absolutely, I would have paid 10 times. If I'd known now when I started working with you and you told me 10 times the amount, I would have absolutely paid it. And now, as I'm working with this client, he actually told his wife recently, he said, You know what? If I had to pay Robin triple the amount that I'm paying her now, I absolutely would because I don't know how I would have navigated this transition without her experience. So I think that's very funny.

Kevin Yee: 10:08

Yeah, because you know, it's one thing to just talk about the actual what that transition looks like. But one thing that you're really good at is actually painting the emotional journey of what it's like transitioning as well. So man, that's so interesting. And so, like, I guess like one of the other questions I have is like, okay, let's kind of talk about the marketing for a second. Like, how are these people finding you? Is it like referral? Like, are you doing some sort of marketing campaigns? I'm very curious.

Robyn Ireland: 10:36

So, a lot of the leads that I get are through LinkedIn, and those leads come in fairly regularly. I do have a marketing team that will handle a lot of that for me, and I am so grateful for them. And I think that was probably one of my wisest decisions that I ever made was to outsource. A lot of career coaches think they have to do everything themselves and they have to be the expert at everything, and you don't. I know my lane. I'm a great coach. I hate the self-promotion element of parts of LinkedIn and it's me, me, me, me, me. That is not me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I am much more, even though I speak to people all day long, I am much more of what I would call an introvert. I am much more the analytical person. I am much quieter than that. So it's great to have somebody else to do that for me. And the number of people that have just seen the consistency of my content, have seen the testimonials from clients. And that gets tricky as well, though, because there's a lot of people in that career coaching don't necessarily want to say out loud, hey, Robin helped me get here. You know, that's like, oh, I needed to use a career coach. But the people that do, I'm so grateful for their testimonial in terms of making sure that we can get there. Absolutely.

Kevin Yee: 11:46

Yeah. The other thing I'm thinking about as well, because you've been in the business for five years and clearly your clients are very happy with the work that you're doing. Yes. Like you said, one of your clients was like, I'd be happy to pay you 10 times more if I knew what I knew now. But as you think about the next chapter of your business or the next season of your business, I guess where do you want this coaching business to take you? Do you have any like secret dreams, big ambitions that no one knows about?

Robyn Ireland: 12:14

Kind of cares that yeah, actually, the next step would be in terms of I'm really excited to be taking this back to Australia. I mean, we're in that process right now of right now, like seriously, emails exchanged right before I got on the call about negotiating on a home in Queensland, Australia. So just one of the most beautiful places in the entire world that anyone could live. And then taking this knowledge, taking this back to my home country and helping that Australian market. And then also what I'm really excited about doing is growing a coaching team within the Australian market and having a team of other coaches that can get out there and do it because what I see all of the time is that the need is greater. And as you mentioned, as you mentioned earlier, that there's just no way that when you're doing this quality of work that you can duplicate that in terms of that whole discussion. It's, you know, a lot of coaches come out with programs that you can scale. That debrief is so personalized, you can't that they can't be replaced by AI. That is not something that we could really do in terms of having that live conversation. And so we need more people, more coaches that can be just like me to go out and have those.

Kevin Yee: 13:23

As you're thinking about growing this team too, are there any, I don't want to say like challenges, but are there any like concerns that you have, like or late-night thoughts as you're thinking about growing this team in Australia?

Robyn Ireland: 13:36

Well, consistency and quality is absolutely that element, like ensuring those pieces. But I think from my industrial psychology background, so in terms of training and development, that is something that is my wheelhouse and my background as well. So I know that my systems that I have in place are really duplicatable. I am, I like to keep things simple. I am very much an Australian at heart. We're very low-key. We like to keep it simple. We we like to work and we like to achieve things. We're very ambitious. We don't like to be sought out as being like the me-me-me, like we in Australia we call it the tall poppy syndrome, where if you become that tall poppy, if you're standing out above the rest, the Australian nature is we will cut you down. We'll we'll cut down every tall poppy. It's just like don't you don't want to be that person. So we like to be that quiet, consistent worker and keep it low-key, but we're just quietly ambitious on the inside. So it's it's really fun though to be able to know that as we grow this team, what I tend to focus more on is the impact that we'll get to have within the Australian market. Because here's the other piece. When a company has somebody that's on their team, the gift is to that company. When they hire one of my clients who's been through this process, who's done that hard work of what are my gaps? This is how I address them. They've already learned how to have a tough conversation about gaps with me. So if they're managing and leading others, they are much better equipped at having those conversations with their team. They can talk to their bosses about some of those tough things, but they can actually strategize and plan their career in a very different way. And I think career coaching is really one of those secret sources in life that not everybody invests in, but those who do have that huge opportunity. And I'm really excited to bring that back to Australia because it's the productivity that the companies get from my clients is just amazing.

Kevin Yee: 15:24

Yeah, I can sense the impact being the driving factor for all this too. I'm curious though, like there's a lot of great things going for you, but are there any challenges that you're kind of experiencing as well, like as you're going through this? Like maybe some things that people might not be able to see outside looking in.

Robyn Ireland: 15:41

I think the greatest challenge is always maintaining that balance. Like I am I'm a mum first and foremost in my life. So I have two kids. My oldest just graduated college and is having a gap year and going back to do his PhD next year, and my youngest is a senior in college this year. So even though it's juggling that time, so I have aging parents in Australia as well. So it's taking care of my aging parents. I've got kids in college and bouncing back and forth between both hemispheres to be able to be there. I mean, my youngest is a dance major, so I'll be back for all of the dance performances because it's the joy being the dance mum. But I get to do that now. But it's always that element of what are the most important things that I need to get done today? Where do I need to be? Where does my energy need to be for this week? And how are we gonna make it happen?

Kevin Yee: 16:34

All right, Robin, I want to play a game with you now. As you know, it's through the lens of business investments, by the way. Because as you know, a lot of coaches they invest into things like coaching, marketing, like in your case, team members, a lot of different things, right? What I would like to do is just I'm gonna prompt you four different phrases, and you just tell me the first thing that comes to mind. Okay, your first business investment that you remember. My website. Do you remember where you got it from? Was it GoDaddy or something like that? Yeah, GoDaddy website. Last business investment you made. My business coach. Ooh. How did you go about making that investment for your business coach?

Robyn Ireland: 17:08

She was recommended, and so I work with Carrie Kaufman from Action Coaches, and Carrie's amazing. She was referred to me through a friend in terms of her experience in helping business owners. She doesn't just work with coaches, she works with all kinds of different businesses across. And what is amazing is I do this workshop with her every 90 days, and I get to partner with other businesses. And so it's sometimes it's other coaches, sometimes it's other career coaches, but it could be solopreneurs in like this week. There was an artist at AI Tech Startup. Like it can be all kinds of businesses. And as we work through and work on our 90-day plan together, we're sharing in like little breakout rooms what our challenges are, what we're working on. And we get to lean in on each other. And what's your experience? What's your advice? And that community that Carrie's created within Action Coach has just been amazing. And it helps give me to get over that challenge that I have of what is really important that I need to do. So working out that next 90-day plan with Carrie is just the best thing that I've that I've done. So we just had that a week ago.

Kevin Yee: 18:14

And these might overlap, by the way, but best business investment you made. I would say my marketing team.

Robyn Ireland: 18:21

It's just, it's a lot. It's a lot sometimes to be on LinkedIn. It's not my comfort zone. And outsourcing what you're not good at is, I think, the best gift to myself that I've ever done. And it's given me back time and space to really work on my clients, which is my passion, right? To give that impact. I don't want to be the self-promoter person. I understand that's part of the business, but it's not what I like to do. And it is probably 25% of my clients come from referrals. So it's definitely a big part of my business, is that impact and making sure that I'm taking care of my people so that I continue to get those referrals, or that I'd have somebody who's willing. Like, will you interrupt your busy executive C-suite level workday and have a conversation with a complete stranger and be vulnerable about the fact that you did have to employ me and what that process was like for you? That's a big deal.

Kevin Yee: 19:12

Big ass.

Robyn Ireland: 19:13

Yeah, to talk to a complete stranger and admit this is what we did together. And I like having that. I'd much rather have that than be, you know, working on my content on LinkedIn or doing any of those pieces as well.

Kevin Yee: 19:24

Yeah. Worst business advice or sorry, worst business investment you made that you kind of wish you got your money back on.

Robyn Ireland: 19:30

I would probably say starting a Kajabi website because I thought that I could make more money if I could have a coaching program and scale it and writing out my content and building out my Kajabi site and building out this content. But the biggest error that I made in that was a couple of things. I wasn't clear on my ideal client was, and I didn't understand at that time that my clients buy me just as much as the service that I provide. It is my experience, my ability to understand where they're at, the amount of responsibility and leadership that's on their shoulders. They carry that weight of the business, the financial responsibility, their teams that they're carrying. And I understand and I can appreciate and can help them pivot from that. I think it also goes back to when I was a junior in high school, my dad dared me to join the Royal Australian Navy, dating myself a little bit and giving away my age a little here. My dad's a Vietnam veteran. My grandfather is World War II, great-grandfather, World War I. I have two older sisters who could never be military clock. And I was, I'm the youngest, I'm probably my dad's last hope. And in a very Australian moment, it would be remiss of me to not include the fact that he'd had a couple of beers after dinner one night. And an ad came on the TV for the Royal Australian Navy, and he looked at me and he said, Bet you can't get in. And I didn't just join the Navy, I went to the equivalent of Annapolis here in the state. And so I went to the Australian Defense Force Academy. 110 people were accepted that year for the Australian Army, Air Force, and Navy. Only 10 women for all three branches were accepted that year. And I was one of those 10 women. So don't dare me to do things. But it's that experience of the leadership lessons, I think, that I learned, and that experience of serving in the military. And I understand and can carry the weight of some of the decisions that the people that I'm working with need to make as well. The good news is for most of them, no one's gonna die based on the decisions that they I guess in this modern day, yeah.

Kevin Yee: 21:27

You're right. Yeah, and it's funny because you mentioned the Kajabi thing, right? And given the gravitas of what people are kind of going through, these people, your clients look at look at you as the trusted advisor. And when I think about like a Kajabi self-paced course, it's like you can't really get a trusted advisor from that. So it's just really, really interesting hearing hearing that business. I love your focus on the impact of your clients and all that too. So yeah. All right, final advice. This is a game that I like to play. It's called Overrated, Underrated. As you know, as a business owner, you get so much advice out there. And so I'm kind of curious like, what's the most overrated piece of business advice that you've gotten, and what's the most underrated piece of business advice you've gotten?

Robyn Ireland: 22:09

I think the overrated advice would be to be like everybody else. Like, hey, this is do what this successful person has done. Like, oh, you have to be just like me or join this team. This is we're successful. You need to join us, and you need to do it just like us. You can do it your way and be passionate about doing it your way and be successful. Like if you have a thousand people painted a buck 99 and you want to focus and spend that time with clients and have that relationship, which is what most coaches want, do it your way. But you have to be very clear about how you're gonna make that happen. But I think trying to be like everybody else is bad, just be you.

Kevin Yee: 22:43

How about the underrated advice?

Robyn Ireland: 22:45

I think it's all of the your LinkedIn inbox. If all of the people are saying, hey, let me help you do this, or I'm a resume writer, I can write your resume, like do this, be me, pay me. You don't have to pay everybody. Again, it's making sure that the team that you do pick, like you can't do everything, absolutely, but making sure the team that you do hire to work with you understand you, the quality of what you do, and what your mission is, and that if you're not aligned with that person, if they're like, if they feel like a slimy just make a buck person, that's gonna leech over into your brand. And so you have to make sure, like if you're somebody who wants to focus on delivering impact, your team has to focus on delivering impact. And if they're just gonna be sending out spammy inbox messages to people on LinkedIn, hey, work with me, she's great. That's not what we want to have. Like, that's the actual opposite of what my business is. So, no, I don't want to work with you.

Kevin Yee: 23:37

That's so funny. I don't think there's been a single case where I've like responded to that and I actually worked with someone in the inbox most of the time like that. So it's pretty funny.

Robyn Ireland: 23:46

Or I always enjoy it when somebody says the things like, Oh, most coaches come to me because they're struggling with their sales message, their funnel, their leads, their conversion. Which one are you? And I really enjoy writing back going, none. I don't struggle with any of those elements, but thank you.

Kevin Yee: 24:01

Robin, it's been such a blast. So, how can people find you and connect with you?

Robyn Ireland: 24:07

So absolutely, they can go to Robin's Couch, so R-O-B-Y-N-S Couch. So.com, so RobinsCouch.com, or finding me on LinkedIn. So yeah, I started Robin's Couch back in 2020 and it was I met with Bob Britz, who had started career coach services back in 2006. And Bob's principle in terms of some of the content in career coaches and some of the content that I get to use was Bob's ideas. I have a DBA of doing business as career coach services of here in West Michigan and Career Coach Services in Brisbane, Australia. So it's it's a blast to be able to bring something that's such an amazing content and such great services to clients that's been around, that's been working. We've helped over 11,000 clients have been through the career coach system and found the work that they love. And so we we just love being able to, when you have something that works, use it and use it well.

Kevin Yee: 24:58

There's just so much I'm taking away from this podcast, by the way, Robin. Like I think a lot of times it's really easy to be like, oh, I do this, right? It's like I help executives get better jobs. But even as you're speaking, I'm like thinking about what is the actual impact, like the meaningful impact that we can actually feel. And it's pretty interesting. Everything from your pricing to like the value-based pricing to just the way you talk about your clients, to your clients, even your busy executive clients, like taking time out of their day, giving a recommendation to a referral they never even met. It shows a lot about how much attention, detail, and care and the transformation that you help people with. So I just want to say, Robin, thank you for doing the work that you do, and thank you for just sharing your experience on this podcast. I really appreciate it.

Robyn Ireland: 25:45

Thanks for having me, Kevin. It was a pleasure being here.

Kevin Yee: 25:47

Yeah, thank you.

Robyn Ireland: 25:48

Cool.

Davis Nguyen: 25:49

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