The Warm Network Builds the Business. It Does Not Scale It.
There is a version of building a service business that works beautifully for about a decade.
You leave the job. You call the people who already trust you. You land your first handful of clients before you have a logo. Your reputation does the selling, and the work is good enough that the referrals keep arriving.
Lin Coughlin did exactly that. She left a 25 year corporate career, turned to her network, and had roughly six coaching assignments before she had really built anything. Twenty years later, eighty percent of her clients still come through referrals.
That number is not a warning. It is the whole point. A referral-led practice is a legitimate business model, and for a lot of one on one practitioners it is the only one they will ever need.
The interesting part is what happens the moment you want to build something that is not one on one.
What She Got Right in the First Twelve Months
Before any of the growth questions, there is a foundation question. Lin’s answer to it was unusually disciplined.
She did three things early, and they are the same three things I talk about with women in the first stage of their business.
She got specific about who she serves. Not “leaders.” Leaders at significant inflection points. New CEOs. Executives leaving corporate. People in transition. That level of precision is what let her build everything else.
She built a repeatable methodology instead of selling her time. Two phases. A deep discovery process covering strengths, weaknesses, values, and communication competencies. Then a purpose driven development plan. She still uses that structure two decades later, refined but intact.
She built proof into the business immediately. A website with testimonials, from the beginning. Not after she felt established. From the beginning.
Most founders do one of these three. Doing all three in the first year is why she was able to stand a business up quickly enough that it never really felt precarious.
The Blocker She Did Not Expect
Six to twelve months into coaching, Lin noticed something she had not planned for.
“Seventy percent of men and women leaders suffer from imposter syndrome.”
She now probes for it deliberately in her discovery process. It is close to the first thing she screens for, because she stopped treating it as something clients would eventually disclose and started treating it as something she should assume is present.
Two details in that are worth holding onto.
The first is that it is not a women’s problem. Lin’s experience is that it shows up in men and women at roughly the same rate. The story that this is a female affliction is, in her view, simply not what the data of her practice shows.
The second is what it actually costs. It is not a feeling problem. It is a decision problem. It is the reason capable people do not raise their hand for the big project, do not go for the expanded scope, do not put themselves in the room where the next thing gets decided.
If you are running your own business, the parallel is direct. It is the reason you have not raised your rates. It is the reason the group program is still a document and not a page.
The Ceiling Nobody Warns You About
Here is where the conversation turned.
Lin is building something new. Immersive leadership development experiences for high potential women leaders, including group coaching and peer to peer mentoring. Her first course is six one hour sessions on building high functioning cross-functional teams.
It is her first real move away from purely one on one delivery. And she named the problem before I had to.
The network that built the practice does not fill the program.
This is one of the most consistent patterns I see. A referral engine is built on high trust, low volume relationships. Someone who knows your work personally sends you one person, occasionally two. That is exactly the right mechanism for selling a high touch, high price, one on one engagement.
It is the wrong mechanism for filling a cohort.
A group program needs volume. It needs people who have not met you to arrive already convinced. Referrals cannot produce that, not because they are weak, but because they were never designed to.
What Actually Built Her Second Channel
Lin’s answer to this is worth studying, because it is slow and it is unglamorous and it works.
She posts consistently about leadership lessons. Publications focused on leadership find her online and approach her. Those features get published. She then clips and redistributes the coverage back across social.
Notice the sequence. Consistent original posting created the visibility. The visibility attracted the media. The media created the assets that made the next round of posting stronger.
She did not pitch her way into magazines. She published in public until publications came to her.
That is a compounding channel rather than a transactional one, and it is the thing referral-led founders most often skip, because it produces nothing for months and then produces everything.
She is now planning a podcast, on transitioning into new roles. Same logic, next surface.
Where This Applies to You
You do not need a C-suite client list for any of this to be relevant. The mechanics are identical at every scale.
Audit what your current pipeline can actually carry. If every client comes from someone who knows you, you have a channel that scales linearly with your relationships. That is a real ceiling and it arrives quietly.
Start the slow channel before you need it. The gap between starting to publish and seeing return is measured in quarters. If you begin when the launch date is set, you have already missed the window.
Screen for the internal blocker, not just the external one. Lin assumes imposter syndrome is in the room. It is a reasonable assumption to make about your own business too. If you have been sitting on a decision for six months and cannot name a strategic reason why, that is usually the reason.
Do not abandon the referral engine. Eighty percent of Lin’s business still comes through it after twenty years. The goal is not to replace it. The goal is to stop asking it to do a job it was never built for.
The Honest Version
The uncomfortable truth in this conversation is that success in the first model can delay the work required for the second.
When referrals are working, there is no urgent reason to build anything else. The calendar is full. The revenue is fine. And then you decide to launch something that needs an audience rather than a relationship, and you discover you have twenty years of reputation and no distribution.
Lin is doing that work now, twenty years in, with a full practice and a strong name. She is candid that it is where her attention has gone.
If you are earlier than that, you have an advantage she did not have. You know it is coming.
Start the channel you will need in two years, this quarter.
Full Transcript
Christine: Welcome to FoundHer Rising, the podcast for women founders in wellness, coaching, and consulting who are ready to build businesses that create freedom, impact, and income. I’m your host, Christine Hakkola, business coach, former psychotherapist, and mentor to women scaling service-based businesses.
Lin: Thank you, Christine. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Christine: I’m so excited to have you and to hear more about what you do and what you’re building in your business. But let’s rewind, because you’ve been at this for a while. Can you say a little about what you do and how you got started in your own business?
Lin: Yes, of course. I’m an executive coach and I specialize with leaders who are at significant inflection points in their careers, primarily in the C-suite, but also high potential leaders. Examples would be new CEOs, new members to a C-suite, executives who are in the process of transitioning away from corporate America or from their roles as principals of their firms, those who are moving into new positions. My real specialty is significant transition.
And then I also work with the leadership teams of those CEOs or C-suite members to develop leadership architectures that position them for peak performance as a leadership team, enterprise focused.
Christine: So this is a really specific niche. How did you get into this in the first place?
Lin: I spent 25 years in corporate America.
Christine: So you were exposed to it firsthand.
Lin: Yes. The last 15 years I was in various operating roles in the C-suite that involved the leadership of big transformative change. For example, leading integrations, downsizing, turnarounds, significant growth opportunities. I grew to really enjoy and be stimulated by the whole art and science of leading transformative change. I still am today. I consider myself a student.
Christine: I feel like the best service providers always do.
Lin: I do keep learning, for sure. Every assignment I have, I learn a lot. I value that learning. And that’s what I do. I love my work. I’ve had a lot of board experience too, including chairing boards, for profit, not for profit, public, private.
Christine: It’s so clear to me how you came by the skill and the experience of doing the work that you do. What I want to hear more about is what prompted the shift. I know this is a while back now, because you’ve been at this for 20 years, but what prompted the shift from corporate America into your own business?
Lin: What prompted the shift was a big inflection point in the last role that I had, where I was leading the spin-off of four divisions of a $20 billion conglomerate to publicly held companies. We ended up selling one of those divisions and we spun off the other three. It was a massive project that lasted a couple of years.
At the end of all of that, I realized that this was a culmination of so much time I had spent as an operating executive leading transformative initiatives, and I decided that I wanted to go to the other side of the table and show others how to do it.
I’ve always been a coach and mentor. I was always a coach and mentor in my work in corporate America. I believe very strongly in the strategic investment into leadership team members and high potential leaders. I made it a point to surround myself with leaders who had the potential to do circles around me.
Christine: I love that.
Lin: That was part of my secret as a leader.
Christine: That’s how you grew so quickly and learned so much.
Lin: Exactly. I just knew it was time, Christine. I knew that I wanted to do this and I had a lot to bring to the fore.
Christine: So you had the calling. Like so many women I speak to who decide to build their own businesses, the primary driver with respect to the service itself is passion. They have a skill set for it. They go into it because they have this inner knowing that it’s aligned with the work they’re meant to do in the world.
My understanding from speaking with thousands of women is that being self-employed speaks to them because they can do that work the way they want to. We get the freedom of being an entrepreneur, we’re not bound to a nine to five. But what a lot of women don’t realize is everything that goes into growing your own business.
Talk about some of those early days. The first few years. What were some of the things you encountered as a business owner that you were either surprised by or hadn’t anticipated?
Lin: First, I had to stand this entity up. I was laser focused on business development. I turned to my network, all of the people I knew and cared about in corporate America and otherwise at that point in my life. I was able to garner maybe six assignments at the outset. Coaching assignments at the outset.
Christine: Just through high trust word of mouth referrals.
Lin: Yes, exactly. And I built a website, including testimonials, which is very important for those of you who are thinking about how to build your brand.
I also realized very quickly that I needed to really zero in on my ideal client profile. I got very focused on that. I got very focused on a methodology that I still use today, that I’ve enhanced over the years, that has two phases to it. One is a discovery process where we go deep with regard to a leader’s strengths, weaknesses, values, leadership traits, communication skills and competencies. And the second phase involves building a purpose driven development plan.
Christine: Perfect. You’re naming all of the things. I’m nodding along here like, yes, yes, it makes so much sense why you were able to stand your business up so quickly. You did all the right things.
These are the things I talk about with women leaders who are early on in their journey. Getting clear about your offer. And you went so far as to develop this two prong methodology. You leveraged your warm referral network. You leaned into relationships where people knew you and trusted you. And you got clear about who you were serving.
Lin: That’s right. And even right now, as we speak, I’m taking a step back.
Christine: Okay, I want to get there. I’m so excited to hear about where you’re headed next. But what I want to tap into with you, Lin, is that you’ve been at this for almost 20 years. Those early days are where a lot of our listeners are, but there’s so much that comes after that.
Earlier on you identified your ideal client, you got clear on your methodology and your offer, you leveraged your warm network. But what happened in the years from then until now? What were some of the challenges, turning points, and lessons learned as you continued to grow your business beyond those early days?
Lin: One thing that I learned early on, maybe in the first six to twelve months of the coaching I was doing, was how prevalent imposter syndrome is.
To fast forward to today, I build into the discovery process probing for the presence of imposter syndrome. Seventy percent of men and women leaders suffer from imposter syndrome, which is the sense that you really are not worthy of expansions and responsibilities, of recognition in whatever form, and moreover, you worry that you’re going to be discovered as a fraud.
That really holds leaders back in terms of signing up for big audacious projects, going for expansions of responsibility, that kind of thing.
Christine: Lin, I have to ask. In your experience, does imposter syndrome affect men or women equally, or one more than the other?
Lin: Most people think it affects women more than men. My experience has been that it affects both. I have a couple of clients right now who have acknowledged their own imposter syndrome, and with whom I’m working through that issue to overcome it.
Christine: I’m telling myself a story here and I want to hear your thoughts on it. In corporate America, this is probably not an easy thing for folks to talk about. I imagine it’s vulnerable, and maybe some folks try to hide it, or maybe they’re not even aware of it themselves. How did you stumble upon this, and how do you get people to talk about a thing that’s so hard to talk about and name?
Lin: Number one, I like to believe that I can enlist the trust of prospects and clients very quickly. As I’m sure you know in the work that you do, trust is the critical factor around which you grow a relationship. You really want to get to the point with a client where that client is comfortable talking about, frankly, almost anything with you. So trust is extremely important.
One of the exercises that we go through at the outset of a relationship is something called a Strengths Report Card, where we go very deep on a leader’s strengths and weaknesses, to the point that we write it down. I interview them extensively, strength by strength, weakness by weakness, and we write it down. We end up with a strengths report card that’s very substantive.
Christine: That could be a natural entry point. Building that relationship, but also doing a real deep analysis.
Lin: And that’s where this whole issue of imposter syndrome started showing up, and showing up. I was attuned to it and one thing led to another. I’ve done a lot of writing about it and speaking about it. But it’s a real affliction.
Christine: How did this change your work? I’m imagining how your services might have looked when you started, with those first six clients. As you learned more about the struggles leaders were experiencing, and as you got more skillful and refined at how you support them, how did that change your business model, your offerings, how you operated the business?
Lin: One of the first things that I look for in a relationship is the presence of imposter syndrome. Lack of confidence. Hesitation to raise one’s hand and go for a big challenging assignment. That leads me to a conclusion that a leader may suffer from imposter syndrome. So it’s almost the first thing that I probe for.
Christine: Because you don’t wait anymore. You know that may be there for a lot of the folks we serve.
Lin: Seventy percent of leaders. It’s a huge blocker, Christine.
Christine: I believe it.
[Mid-roll]
Christine: If you’re listening to this and thinking, oh, I’m in that season right now, I’d love to talk to you. FoundHer Rising isn’t about polished success stories. It’s about real growth. Hiring decisions, the revenue plateaus, the identity shifts that happen when your business starts stretching you. If you’re building something meaningful in wellness, coaching, or consulting, and you’re willing to have an honest conversation about what scaling actually looks like, apply to be a guest. The link is in the show notes. I’d love to meet you. Okay, back to the episode.
Christine: So speaking of blockers. What were the things you came across in your 20 years of being an entrepreneur that were difficult business challenges for you to solve? Did you have issues getting clients? Issues around hiring or systems? What have been the difficult things about building your business?
Lin: I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, but it’s very challenging to source new clients. Eighty percent of my clients come through referrals. They come through visibility that I get with exercises like this one, and it’s been a wonderful source of new business.
That said, I am in the process of really trying to strengthen my ability right now to build name recognition and my reputation as a thought leader.
But one of the big challenges that I face with clients, particularly at senior levels and when I’m working with leadership teams, is the presence of toxic work cultures. Situations where fellow colleagues have their own agendas first and foremost, and where the needs of the organization are not first and foremost. That creates very political environments, which I lived and breathed growing up in corporate America for 25 years and navigated for a very long time.
It is a very big challenge for many leaders. I would say the majority of leaders, not all leaders. And interestingly enough, I’ve discovered over the years that in entrepreneurial situations, the presence of toxic cultures is really much lower. There’s much more transparency. There’s much more mutual support. There’s much more willingness to be humble, to be vulnerable.
Christine: What has contributed to that shift? I’m pleased to hear it, and I also get curious about how it happened.
Lin: In larger organizations, almost by definition, a bureaucracy is created. There exists in larger organizations a lot of uncertainty, if not a lack of clarity, around the roles of different individuals. And assumptions get made around the roles of different individuals, particularly individuals who may be in similar roles to you. It makes for a really uncomfortable, competitive situation a lot of the time.
Christine: Do you feel that nowadays that’s happening less?
Lin: Not necessarily. Because in large organizations, Christine, the issues around role clarity and around strategic priority clarity are usually pretty significant.
Christine: Yeah, it makes sense.
Circling back, you mentioned a few minutes ago that one of the biggest challenges you’ve had is getting clients and growing that pipeline. I have a two pronged question here, so I’ll ask them one at a time.
We spoke before we started recording about additional offerings that you’re creating. You’ve mostly done one on one work, and now you’re expanding. First, say a little about what it is that you’re building.
Lin: Through the new leadership development track that is part of my organization, Great Circle Associates, I’m going to be offering immersive leadership development experiences targeted to high potential women leaders. That includes group coaching and peer to peer mentoring, which I will facilitate.
Christine: That’s so exciting.
Lin: It’s about to go live as we speak. It’ll be live by the time this episode airs. My first course is on how to build very high functioning cross-functional leadership teams. It’s six one hour sessions that folks will sign up for, and we will go deep into everything from challenges to lessons learned to best practices as it relates to building very high performing cross-functional teams.
Christine: That’s so exciting. I’m so glad to hear about that work coming into the world, and so excited for all the folks it’s going to touch.
As we spoke about earlier, and as I come across in my work with service providers growing and scaling their businesses, one of the difficult issues is often either getting clients, or, when we shift the offer, the marketing needs to change.
As you mentioned, a lot of your early clients came through word of mouth referrals and leveraging your network. Some service providers build a successful one on one practice through that alone and don’t need a lot of other channels. But most, if not all, service providers, when they start to build other offerings, whether it’s a program, a course, a community, or something like what you’re building, suddenly realize that leveraging the warm network isn’t enough and that more needs to happen.
Talk to us a little, both historically and today, about what has worked for you besides leveraging your one on one network, and what hasn’t, and where you’re getting stuck.
Lin: What’s working for me is already a lot of the work that I do, Christine, to build name recognition and awareness of me. For example, I’m on social media all the time with posts about leadership lessons.
Christine: Providing value, educating, being helpful.
Lin: I get featured in a lot of magazine articles. My work gets featured in a lot of magazine articles.
Christine: If you don’t mind saying, how do you do that? People listening are going to be wondering, how did she get featured in a magazine?
Lin: I get approached, primarily by publications that are focused on leadership.
Christine: And how do they find out about you?
Lin: Online.
Christine: So that’s a result of your posting online.
Lin: No question. It’s been a very rich and increasingly rich source of prospects. And of course, once these articles are published, it’s then followed by a lot of social media clips that I do, and exposure that way.
And finally, I’m making plans to start my own podcast.
Christine: That’s so exciting. You’ll have to let us know when it’s live.
Lin: I will. I think I’m going to focus on what it’s like to transition into a new role and all of the challenges and opportunities. Lessons learned, that kind of thing.
Christine: That makes so much sense. And you won’t lack for folks to interview from your extensive network and from all the folks who are hearing about you.
So let’s talk about challenges. Usually I speak with entrepreneurs who have found somewhere between one and three sources for marketing and visibility, where their clients come through. But sometimes when we need to grow beyond that, we get a little bit blocked. What are things you’ve tried that haven’t worked, or where do you feel the biggest challenges are going to come in the next few months, or the next year?
Lin: One big challenge, although I think of it more like an opportunity, is of course the arrival of AI, which I’m on every single day. I use it for a variety of reasons, from planning to analysis to content creation to marketing. It makes it a lot easier to produce.
So I’ve really introduced into the learning experience for clients a lot of emphasis on how to use AI to elevate your presence and impact as a leader. It’s at once a challenge and an opportunity.
I have to say that my mantra, Christine, is once a client, always a friend.
Christine: Oh, I love that.
Lin: I can’t say that I’ve had much in the way of challenges in the actual experience of coaching or providing strategic advisory support to leadership teams. As we were saying before, this issue of political, toxic environments is a big one that we’ve got to work through. Imposter syndrome is another big one that we have to work through, and that’s of course related to self-confidence issues, and perfectionism. Those are some of the examples of challenges in the act of coaching individuals and nurturing leadership teams.
Christine: And what about your business, especially as you look into the future? You’re about to launch this new offering. I know you haven’t lived it yet, but when you look into the future, what are you anticipating being either a challenge or just your next growing edge?
Lin: I think that, first of all, executive coaching is going to be increasingly, I’m not going to say replaced, but supported by technology.
Christine: I like the word supported. I often hear, and I’m seeing, how it’s replacing some of the redundancy and repetitiveness that actually many folks are relieved to be able to offload, so that we can step up into a higher level strategic thinking role.
Lin: Exactly right. I think of AI as my thought partner.
Christine: Yes, I think of it the same way.
Lin: And I teach clients how to do the same. So the future is increasingly in the use of AI throughout the coaching experience. And I have to admit, I myself am on a learning curve right now.
Christine: Would you say that’s the piece most on your mind as you think about continuing to grow your business and launch your new offer? Questions around how you navigate the use of AI in your business, and how you’ll be in relationship with AI in the future?
Lin: Yes, that’s one big one. Another big one is the question of future leaders, the younger generation that’s coming behind. I have a real passion, and have for many years been involved with organizations that support the growth of women in business in some way. And I’m also very involved in figuring out how the world can produce a greater number of excellent change makers.
Thirty percent of change initiatives fail. And most organizations are going through at least one big change initiative every year now.
Christine: That’s a big issue for you to tackle and solve.
Lin: And there are not enough leaders who really know their way around how to lead enduring transformational change. There needs to be more.
So I have a theory that this is an opportunity to fill in the gaps for women, where, as you know, the advancement of women typically stops when they’re managers.
I have a special, I’m always spending time with, call it four to five younger, up and coming leaders who are smart, who are inspired, who really want to improve, who are not afraid to show their vulnerabilities, who are curious. I coach and mentor them at a significantly reduced fee, and every once in a while, sometimes for free, because I’m so inspired by their potential.
Christine: I so appreciate the work you’re doing in the world. Just to name, and I’m sure it’s going to sound obvious, you have your work cut out for you.
Lin: That’s for sure.
Christine: If you could name one thing that you’re most excited about as you look into the future, what would it be?
Lin: It’s the opportunity for me personally to make an increasingly big difference in leadership, and to help leaders and high potential leaders exceed not only their own expectations but the expectations of key stakeholders, internally and externally.
Christine: Isn’t that fantastic. Thank you so much. And I imagine there are folks listening here who want to learn more about you and the work you do. How do they get in touch?
Lin: There are a few ways. They can email me at [email protected]. They can go to my website at www.GreatCircleAssociates.com. And they can call me at 646-660-1787.
Christine: The old fashioned telephone. I love it.
Lin: I’ve actually had calls.
Christine: I believe it. I miss those days. I still call my friends sometimes, believe it or not.
Well, thank you so much for being on the show, and thank you for sharing your wisdom. It was lovely to have you.
Lin: You’re welcome. And thank you, Christine. It was a pleasure to join you.
Christine: Thank you, listener, for tuning in to FoundHer Rising. If today’s episode resonated with you, follow the show, share it with another founder, and leave a quick review. It helps more women find these conversations.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more at HakkolaHorizons.com. Until next time, keep rising and keep building the business that gives you freedom to live, lead, and create on your terms.
