Hi all! I'm Izzy 👋 - Here's My #NoFilter Career Coaching Journey

Hi all, I'm Izzy Piyale-Sheard, a career coach based in Toronto, Canada. I specialize in LinkedIn and resume transformations. And here's a bit about me and the bumpy start to my career coaching business.

ℹ️ A bit about me:

I'm Turkish/Canadian - based in Toronto
I speak 5 languages (3 fluent, 1 conversational, 1 basic conversational)
I'm a new dad looking stop trading time for money and build a better life

🤪 Quirky facts about me:

I opened the NASDAQ stock market in a giant pikachu costume
I was once quoted in a dutch magazine without knowing about it
I was mentioned in Inc.com for my satire on digital nomads
I once made an appearance on a Taiwanese gameshow

******

Here is my unfiltered career coaching journey:

⚫️ - 2016 - The Early Days

Launched a Free Job Search Support Community on Facebook that grew to 900+ members

Felt like nobody would ever pay ME for coaching and help
Did a lot of work/support for friends and colleagues for free

⚫️ - 2020 - My First Paid Program

==== MAY ====

Overcame imposter syndrome
Launched my first paid offering, $150 for a 6-week group coaching program - got 4 clients
Got my first badass testimonials for the program I designed - Person landed a job within 3 weeks after 12 months of job search black hole. 🎉

==== JULY ====

Launched several other cohorts, with mixed results. Some great successes, huge wins, huge salary jumps, and happy people. And others who didn't put in the work and didn't succeed.

⚫️ - 2021 - First $10K Month + Burnout

Had my best month ever, made $10K
Did 30+ cold sales calls from LinkedIn leads
Launched a 12 person cohort and made over $10K in one month
Felt a lot of burnout from all the selling, as well as clients not putting in the work

Got a promotion at my day job, and felt a lot of burnout from work overload
Got discouraged by negative judgemental career coaches on LinkedIn
Felt like an imposter and stopped coaching for nearly 2-years.

⚫️ - 2022 - Became a Dad - Everything Changed

My daughter was born in August, 2022.
Decided I wanted to dedicate my time to her and my family rather than my toxic job
Took an unpaid parental leave of 1 year, aiming to grow my business and not return to my job
Realized I left too soon, finances were tough. Wasn't earning what I needed to.
Struggled with balancing family needs and productive work

⚫️ - 2023 - Some Uptick - Growth - Not Enough

In January-March landed a few clients paying $1000 for 8 weeks of 1:1 for the first time,
Charged up to $2000 and got some great results with clients. Great jobs, big pay bumps!
Still struggled landing clients, and struggled with a good, concrete offer
Sales calls were challenging, and sometimes felt inauthentic to me

Helped my wife land her first Director-Level role, and boosted our family income by $30K/year. Something she never believed was possible and felt amazing about.
Started offering recorded resume review sessions for $80, using it as a lead gen source to do resume reviews for $500-600, landed 4-5 clients this way.
Started collecting tons of testimonials using Famewall (cheaper alternative to Testimonial.to)

⚫️ - 2024 - Learned How To Sell/Close 📈

Learned to get much better at selling/packaging/closing over a call.
Much better results than ever before.
Scaled up my price, and limited the offering to tangible things I had control over (resume and LinkedIn rebrands).

✔️ My $1200 resume + LinkedIn package took off, several people bought and had amazing results.

✔️ Launched a low-ticket ($50/mo) Circle community and got my first ever recurring revenue

✔️ Upped my package to $1400, then $1500, then $1800, now going to push for $2K+

*****

🔮 What's Next?

Now I'm looking to create better systems, better resources, better supports and offerings for my community and learn from some of the best career coaches on LinkedIn, which is why I'm here!

✅ How I can help or add value

↳ Tech and Implementations

↳ Notion & Email Writing

↳ Tools & Automations

↳ Advanced AI Prompting Techniques

↳ Design Work and Photography

Glad to be part of an incredible new community! Excited to help wherever I can!

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