Resume Writer/Coach Start Up & Growth Secrets

Start Up & Growth Secrets from Successfully Self-Employed Resume Writers & Career Coaches: Guest Beverly Smith

What happens when an award-winning staffing business owner sells her practice and starts a resume writing and career coaching business? Success that translates into great start up and growth secrets for career industry entrepreneurs!

My next guest, Beverly Smith, did just that, starting a 2nd career in resume writing and career coaching from the farm she and her husband moved to after selling the staffing business.

With her business know-how she recognized immediately that learning from an industry expert would be beneficial so she joined CDI, completed the Resume Business Roadmap program, and worked with me privately for business consulting.

The outcome is worth learning about, because she effectively side-stepped the pitfalls and challenges that befall most start-ups, including pricing too low, taking ownership of all projects and tasks no matter how unenjoyable, and losing prospects to ineffective consultations and lack of effective packaging.

In under two years Beverly has ramped up to success with TORI award-winning resume writing subcontractors so she could focus on business building and coaching services while structuring effective and enticing 4-figure job seeker packages.

In the interview Beverly answers:

When did you start your business?
Tell us a little about your business.
What did you do before you started your business?
What made you decide to start your business?
At what point in your business did you find CDI?
What role has CDI played in the success you’ve achieved and what has been most valuable about it? What has your membership made possible? Did CDI provide a pivotal turning point for you?
What has having your own business made possible for you in your life?
What’s one thing you wished you had known when you first started your business, or, If you were starting your business today, what’s one thing you would have done differently?
For those who are considering a career in this field, or who are struggling in their businesses right now, what are a few key pieces of advice you’d share with them?
Is there anything else you’d like our audience to know in terms of encouragement, lessons learned, or final thoughts around being a successful career industry professional?

Plus:

Is there anything else you’d add about the ROI of working with me 1-1 in my Career Business Profit Rocket Consulting program?

About Beverly:

Beverly Smith is the founder of Career Success Strategies which specializes in helping mid and senior level professionals with their resumes and job search strategies so that they can land the career of their dreams.

With over 25 years in the Staffing and Recruiting industry, Beverly knows what employers are looking for in job candidates and what job seekers must do to have a successful job search.

Known for building successful businesses, her staffing and recruiting firm was selected the 2022 Arkansas SBA Women-Owned business of the year and a finalist for Arkansas Business Publishing Group Staffing Business of the year in 2021.

Beverly and her husband, Michael, live on a farm in rural Arkansas where they raise chickens and Berkshire pigs using permaculture farming methods. She enjoys running, crocheting and spending time with her family.

Finally, I’ll remind you that her having owned a very successful, award-winning business before, Beverly understood the importance of not trying to succeed in a vacuum. She signed up for CDI’s resume business roadmap program, joined CDI, and then shortly after that engaged with me on 1-1 consulting. I’m pretty excited by what I’ve seen her achieve in such a short time. I know she’s going to likely talk more about it but I love that she avoided many of the pitfalls that take in new entrepreneurs such as underpricing services, not offering packages or not adopting an effective consultation strategy, and when she realized she was more interested in coaching vs resume writing, was able to connect with TORI-award winning resume writers I recommended.

Beverly’s 6 Start Up & Growth Secrets (with my added commentary)

Links to CDI resources can be found in the additional resources section at the bottom of the page.

“Don’t Wait to Start.

I wish that when I explored resume writing and found CDI a few years ago, that I would have known I could have outsourced the writing of the resumes to CDI members who are multi-certified and award-winning. I thought I had to have someone in house doing it and it would not have been cost effective for me or anyone currently on my team to do it.

What I’m saying is that I could have been building this business on the side and in conjunction with my other business. I see now how easy it would have been and not much extra effort.”

Beverly learned about how to make this work by engaging with me 1-1 on the structure of her unique career services business with my Career Business Profit Rocket Consulting.

But the reality is that we often feel we don’t have the time or tools to go after our goals, so making time to join AND engage with member resources and opportunities like live events, tours, tip sheets, member to member support, and tutorials will make all the difference.

I’ve linked to VA resources, Resume Business Roadmap program, my consulting, and upcoming member-included live events below.

“Hire a Coach.

I think it’s really helpful to have a coach who can look at your business more broadly and objectively because they aren’t in the weeds and aren’t emotionally attached. What I struggle with may be completely different than what someone else does. So for example, if I had continued to write the resumes myself, I would not be as successful as I have been, and that was something Laura helped me see and figure out. For another person, it could be something completely different, like marketing.”

Want to ramp up (<2 years from startup) to not having to do it all yourself and instead utilize award-winning subcontractors while you close 4-figure packages like Beverly did?

As she states, it can be hard to figure out what will work for you, and what will resonate with you, without (1) trying it out and (2) having an objective third party guide you to how to avoid the pains and focus on what works for you.

It’s very easy to waste time thinking you have to do what everyone else is doing and that’s simply not the case!

You don’t have to figure it out on your own!

While I’m accessible in the Facebook community along with other supportive members, the best solutions for personalized strategy are my 1-1 Career Business Profit Rocket Consulting and the Career Industry Accelerator Coaching Club.

I’ll also link to several strategy and time management resources including the on-demand version of our highly rated, member-included Acceleration and Accountability event.

“Treat Your Business Like a Business and Show Up As You Would a Job.

The other piece of advice is that you have to treat it like a business. Even though you may have time freedom and flexibility, you need to exercise some discipline with that.

What made us successful in out staffing business, and now in this business, is that I show up and put in the work, even when there’s a lull in clients.

You have to market your business. At some point you may be able to live off referral business, but most likely not when starting out. People have to know what you do and who you serve so that they can refer business to you. We had a lot of referral business in the later years of our staffing business, but it didn’t start out that way.”

As Beverly said, marketing is crucial, even when you don’t want to, and focusing on existing clients as your ambassadors can pay off big time.

We found in our Critical Industry Analysis Survey that customer referrals are the #1 way that your peers grew their businesses last year! I’ve linked below to best practice tip sheets and replays where I’ve taken a deep dive into the how-to strategies as well as the #2 strategy of professional partnerships and referrals.

“Don’t Go at it Alone.

Build friendships with your industry peers. You can learn so much from them by having virtual coffee chats. I’ve become a published author as a result of networking with CDI members, I received referral fees from CDI members, and several have been guests on my livestream.”

As President of CDI, I see what Beverly writes here as repeatedly ringing true. With my personal involvement in each and every live, included member event, I see the serendipity that takes place for those who make the time to attend! Partnerships, publishing, subcontracting, referrals, friendships, and more come out of the built in 1-1 networking we include in EVERY program.

I’m sure it won’t surprise you that Beverly is a regular attendee at these events!

Since it’s included as a member benefit, it’s simply a no-brainer to make the time to attend the 1-3 live events each month and experience all the amazing gifts your colleagues are gaining.

While replays are great, in person networking and engagement can take you further faster than working head down at projects in isolation within your business.

I’ve linked below to the registration page for events currently scheduled through mid-Fall.

“Invest in Yourself and Your Business.

A CDI membership is a business expense. So are courses, certifications and business coaches. Be a student of the industry and any other pieces you need to make your business run smoothly.

One caveat, don’t be so busy taking courses that you are avoiding marketing your business.”

In today’s world there is an abundance of free advice available at your fingertips on how to start, build, and scale a profitable entrepreneurial venture.

But how do you know if someone else’s techniques will really work for you?

There’s often a cost that comes with free and that’s to the limits it plays on your success by following bad or poor strategies. (Like a job seeker writing their resume themselves or using a DIY template).

Knowing this is what allowed my recent guest, Beverly Smith, to scale to 4-figure packages and TORI award-winning resume writing subcontractors in less than two years.

So as Beverly says, invest in yourself but also be careful to avoid hiding under busy work, like learning, to avoid things you think you don’t love like marketing.

It’s true you might want to hire a coach/consultant, or even a VA, to help you ramp up on tasks that aren’t in your wheelhouse.

But definitely don’t make the mistake of going it alone or just trying to copy what you see or find for free. There REALLY is a difference in scaling when you learn from a resource known for helping others to scale to success.

I’ve got an interesting member blocker-buster 3-part article series and some free Forbes articles I’ll link to below on business owner or entrepreneur.

“Niche Your Business.

Don’t try to be all things to all people.

Figure out who your ideal client is and do everything you can to learn about who they are: their values, what keeps them up at night, what types of content do they consume, what resonates with them, and what repels them.

Understand how your services solve a problem for them and market to them accordingly.

Listen to them and pay attention to the questions that they ask you.

Then answer those questions in your marketing.

Create products and services around what they are asking for and what they need but maybe don’t know to ask for.

For example, one of the reasons I have changed up my packages and include more coaching is that it was what my clients were either telling me they wanted or were letting me know they were stalled in their job search.”

If you’re tired of trying to speak to everyone but being heard by no one in your marketing, niching will make all the difference.

As Beverly says, niching is critical but also is creating solutions that meet their needs, even if they aren’t asking for them.

That’s what you MUST know — most job seekers have no idea what they need to be successful so it’s up to you to educate them on complete packages that will both allow them to be successful, reduce dissatisfaction and chargebacks, and simultaneously allow you to earn more per client.

I’ve linked below to some great video tips on selling what prospects need and packaging as well as some deep dive member resources on the topics.

CDI and Beverly

Beverly has been a member of CDI since starting her business in the Fall of 2022. Her top four CDI favorite things are:

Replay & Next Livestream

Next week I hope you’ll join me again on Wed at 3:45 PM Eastern as we continue interviewing my former private clients of the Career Business Profit Rocket Program in our series on Start Up & Growth Secrets from Successfully Self-Employed Resume Writers & Career Coaches.

My next guest in this mini series is Emily Kapit of ReFresh Your Step, LLC.

She is a 3X-certified Master Resume Writer as well as an industry leading career strategist and career resilience expert. She is also the Founder of ReFresh Your Step, LLC, which is a career advisory firm with clients located nationally and internationally.

She and her team collaborate extensively with clients on The Kapitalize Process, an innovative methodology that addresses all facets of one’s career progression (internal & external) and resilience, including tactical career guidance, job search strategies, mock interviews, negotiation tactics, written professional assets, and more.

Emily’s insights and guidance have been published in Forbes, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Medium, HuffPost, and MindBodyGreen, among others. She is currently working on her first book, Sink or Swim: The Life-Changing Strategies for Career Resilience, due out in 2024.

In terms of claims to fame, she shares that she single-handedly grew her business, expanded the team, landed several lucrative contracts/relationships with recruiters and other coaches, and became a known entity in the industry – without really spending money on marketing. She also achieved that while embracing parenthood which included a 2-month period when she ran the business from a hospital bed on full bedrest. So she’s also got a lot of tips for the parents out there!

So be sure to mark your calendars and tune in next Wed at 3:45 PM Eastern.

I hope you’ll join me!

We’ve streaming on CDI’s LinkedIn page, YouTube channel, and in our Facebook group every Wednesday at 3:45 PM Eastern. And, don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe so you stay in the know!

Watch the Livestream Recording

Work with Me 1 to 1 to Grow & Position Your Business

Want results like Beverly, Cathy, and my other private consulting clients?

Check out my Career Business Profit Rocket 1-1 Consulting Program to learn more about working with me. There you’ll also see client testimonials around the exciting results I’ve helped your colleagues to attain.

I love finding ways for you to be more efficient, effective, profitable, and happy with your business!

WHATEVER your goal, I can help you to achieve it!

Note that I only work with four private clients at a time to ensure the greatest quality of service. I’m currently booking for spots opening in late May or June.