Turning Pain into Purpose: A Journey of Resilience This episode explores resilience in the…
Coaching Thought Leader Entrepreneurs | Cara Macklin
Coaching and using thought leadership for message.
An interview with Cara Macklin about becoming a coach, disrupting an industry, and creating modalities that work.
Today’s guest is Cara Macklin, Founder of Caram. She is a Innovative Entrepreneur, and Success Coach helping entrepreneurs to do things differently. Cara helps entrepreneurs accelerate success, and create meaningful change.
Cara discusses her early work in her family business of healthcare and hospitality. She explains how she helped to more than double the size of the business, while training as a coach. And how it allowed her to understand and replicate processes and outcomes.
Furthermore, we discuss the type of clients Cara works with and how she finds them. She also discusses why you might be better off referring the client to someone else if the fit isn’t good.
Finally, we wrap up our conversation discussing how Cara has taken coaching and created a suite of modern offerings that allow her to serve clients one-on-one, create groups from various industries together, and finally a wide audience with an online course.
If you want a sample of the aid Cara can offer, check out this video just for listeners of our podcast!
Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:
- Learning to become a coach is one of the best ways to understand the processes of thought leadership and reliably replicate the outcomes.
- Your thought leadership isn’t going to be the right fit for every client. Passing on clients that don’t fit your offerings is better than failing them down the road.
- Having multiple modalities will allow your thought leadership to reach a variety of clients with multiple platforms.
If you would like help developing content for your thought leadership, contact Thought Leadership Leverage. We can assist you with everything from book launch strategies, research, marketing, branding, sales, and more.
Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Cara Macklin from the other side of the pond, the other side of the world. I don’t know if you’re in lockdown yet, but that’s something we’re all potentially looking forward to once again. Cara is fascinating. She’s a multi award winning businesswoman, an entrepreneur and a success coach. She’s done the Ted talks. She’s started a bunch of businesses. She’s been in family business. She’s now doing coaching. I’d rather talk to her directly than talk about her. So let’s just dive in here. Welcome aboard today. Cara, how are you?
Cara Macklin I’m great. Thank you so much for having me, Peter.
Peter Winick Great. So let’s talk a little bit about your journey because it’s an interesting one in terms of family business than leaving and then starting businesses and now sort of the chapter of thought leadership. So give us a quick overview, if you would.
Cara Macklin Sure. So when people ask me this question, I always say my journey started at five years old around the kitchen table and my family business. So I grew up in that and health care and hospitality. I went to London for a while where I worked in Marks and Spencers, which is a really high end food retailer in the UK and worked in their food trays. So that was very much around innovation thinking. I came back to the family business and was there for 15 years and unlike most family businesses, I did most jobs. So my first role was to write 320, and I stayed there for 15 years, as I say. And during that time we scaled. So it’s health care and hospitality business. We scaled the business from 200 employees and three sites to nearly 700 employees on seven sites. And I opened the businesses and I then got a scholarship in 2015 to do my MBA back in London. So I had a bike to London and got international experience there with a hotel group in China and different places and then came back to Northern Ireland in 2016. I really wanted to disrupt the elderly care market and I created the first ever lifestyle care home in Ireland, which I launched in 2018 with a team. And it was very successful with an amazing team around me.
Peter Winick So it wasn’t it wasn’t it wasn’t that you were looking for things to do to fill your days because they sound like they were incredibly busy. But what inspired you to sort of go down this path of thought leadership and the TEDTalks and coaching? Because you could have stayed, you know, nose to the grindstone and driving the revolution in elder care. But what drove you to sort of dive into this piece?
Cara Macklin So I trained professionally as a coach at the same time as I was disrupting the elderly care market because I didn’t have enough to do so. Right. Know, during that time I trained as a coach because I knew it was the best way to lead a team. You know, when you learn the principles of coaching, it shows you how to get the best out of people, which I’ve always been really interested in. And then in 2019, I realized if I could work with more entrepreneurs, you know, my clients are big thinking entrepreneurs, people who are going to have a real impact in the world. So because of the success I’ve had in terms of, you know, disrupting the care market, I knew after that that there was a lot that I could teach other people. I made a lot of mistakes along that journey. Yeah.
Peter Winick So let me ask you this, because I’ve seen and had clients and friends and colleagues at similar situation where they’ve had incredible success in business. Are you from what the numbers were, where you went from like 200 employees to 700? And then you go into coaching, which is really part of the reason many folks do that is to really understand this whole people thing better. So how much of what you learned in coaching were you able to sort of go back forensically and say, I’ve actually been doing a lot of things right? I didn’t know there was a word for it. And then maybe there was another bucket. You’re going, geez, this is why I always had these type of problems because I didn’t realize you’re going to intrinsically motivate people or whatever. How much of it fell into those two categories?
Cara Macklin And I suppose the first category, I mean, I was 24 managing a team of 120 staff, of which majority were a lot older than me. So early age I had to figure out how to get the best out of people. It’s a huge interest of mine anyway. But I think what the coaching brought, I just took it to a very different level of professionalism, understanding what you were doing. I think in a lot of things, probably right. But I didn’t understand, so I couldn’t necessarily replicate them because I knew what I was doing. And then, yes, like any leader, I start me at a young age and still do. You have made a lot of mistakes along the way. But the people that and highly intrinsically motivate people has always been, you know, because health care is people. Hospitality is people.
Peter Winick Sure.
Cara Macklin I’ve always had a real passion for that as well.
Peter Winick Excellent. Excellent. So it’s interesting what you said in terms of that. You did get a lot of things right, which obviously, but that there were it wasn’t replicate a bowl which comes to or wasn’t easily replicated. But the power of systems and processes and models in business is pretty obvious. But people tend to not really think the same way when it comes to management, leadership and people, right? So we know, you know, finance without systems would be total anarchy and chaos. You know, operations without systems would be would be horrible. But why do we, you know, often default to intuition or something? We’re not depend on the systems for the people piece.
Cara Macklin I think it’s much harder to put the people piece and the systems. But I agree with you. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing now, because I didn’t actually realize it was systems and things I was doing until I looked outside the business, worked outside the business, and people would have said to me, like, that’s not natural. Not everyone’s doing what you’re doing. And so I thought if I could put it into a system or a model, as you said, and teach and help other entrepreneurs, then they will accelerate their success quicker. And but people are much harder to put into systems and numbers, you know.
Peter Winick Yeah, I wanted and it’s not systems in a an absolute uniform way like a panel would be but it’s knowing which tools to use in which circumstances. So I want to pivot for a moment. So now you’re in the sort of coaching and people development space. And one of the things I find interesting there is there are a lot of amazingly talented people drawn to that for lots and lots of reasons, right? There are very few subset of those people that are coaches that are successful that have that had a previous career in actually driving business. So it was really interesting because entrepreneurs, I would say, appreciate the abstract or the theoretical, but there’s always a sense of, Yeah, but you don’t know what it’s like to not cover payroll and, you know, all the, you know, grow the market and drive the business and get people to deal with the vision piece. How powerful is it for you when working with clients that you’ve got the true empathy of saying, when I was in a similar situation, dot, dot, dot.
Cara Macklin Sure. I mean, you’re right, There’s a lot of amazing coaches who weren’t entrepreneurs before, but the my experience of who I work with is they work with me because I have both, you know, so I bring the mentoring piece in terms of business and advice in terms of how they can do things differently. My me, I think I’ve said before, is is very much creative thinking. And how do you. Look at it. Definitely a model piece around innovation and disrupting the entrepreneurs themselves in terms of their thinking and then the business, because I just think that’s what every business needs and they’re starting needs it right now. And then I bring the coaching piece in as well in terms of my training and how to help them think differently and their mindset. So that hire together is what has accelerated my success and that’s why I bring the two so and have the entrepreneurs who work with me. One of the key things is that I have had my own businesses and scale businesses know exactly what it is like so I can give them advice firsthand, not just from a book.
Peter Winick So no, thank you. That’s fantastic. If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple podcast and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.
Peter Winick So I want to talk about sort of the next piece. So oftentimes in professional services that are fairly personal, intimate, etc., like coaching, you’re getting into people’s stuff, right? A will to things. A There’s a self-selection process. I’ve got to find the right person. And for you as a business owner, you’ve got to find the right people you want to deal with. You might say, I don’t want to deal with whiners. I don’t want, you know, whatever. So it’s that self-selection piece. Let’s start there. How does that work for you in terms of finding your sweet spot in terms of I want to work with more people that have these issues and I don’t want to work with these type of people. Have you ever sort of gone through that a bit?
Cara Macklin Yes. I mean, not that’s the hardest part, actually, when you become a coach because you can help a lot of people. But my sweet spot on nature is exactly the type of people who want to do what I have done, which is they’re very ambitious. They’re big thinkers. They have been in business probably minimum five years, and they’re at a point now where they want to scale the business or they want to do something very different, either disrupt an industry or take their business in a different level. And that’s because that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. So firsthand. Exactly. The type of people who would not be drawn to me are very traditional businesses, people who want to keep doing the same thing, very systemize process that would not answer someone. I mean, I certainly every business has challenges, but my expertise would not be going in to sort out a major failing business or, you know, there’s coaches and mentors who are expert in that.
Peter Winick Start with you not doing the turnarounds. I think also bring the family business piece, which is a whole different level of, let’s say, psychology.
Cara Macklin Yes. Yeah, it definitely is.
Peter Winick Putting the fun and dysfunction in family businesses. But there’s a level of I think that people don’t really understand the depths of what goes on in family businesses and not that family businesses are bad. It’s just really, really different. I don’t think most people can imagine sitting around a table and everyone around them is related by blood and urine competition, and some people are doing a great job and some people not and genders and, you know, add office politics to, you know, Thanksgiving dinner table and voila. That’s another day of work, right?
Cara Macklin Yes. I mean, I don’t have a corporate background. So the politics that goes with corporates is not quite there. But yes, family businesses I know inside owned pork, different day and the dynamics of how the family part plays out in the business and vice versa. And there’s a lot of dynamics that goes on in a family business. And I don’t you know, my experience is there’s great expertise outside family businesses. Sure. But then they never quite understand because I’ve never been honest, they never quite understand nomics and a family business.
Peter Winick So let me ask you this then. So on the one hand, if you put your CEO business hat on, you’ve been you’ve grown businesses, you’ve built only fields, basically, and it’s about scale and growth. Now, you know, one of the things that’s always, I think, sort of ironic, if you will, about the coaching business it’s a god awful business model, totally unskillful. So why do you go this way in terms of, you know, if you were just looking objectively say the next business I get into has to have these criteria. You know scale probably would have been one, but for some reason it wasn’t. So what was the driver underneath that?
Cara Macklin Well, I mean, scale actually is in terms of my business model, I have to admit, is I work on a 1 to 1 with very, very high level clients who want to have access to me, One or the other model I use, there’s a it’s called C Mycology. My name’s Kyra. Martin So it’s change makers acceleration circle. So that’s where I bring together the best minds across different industries of this, these type of entrepreneurs. So what you find is a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders stay in the same industry. They all think the same. Whereas my success is common, my business, one of the key things is I’ve completely got out of my industry in terms of I always went to look for great leaders in other industries to learn from, because that’s one of the key elements of my system in terms of the creative thinking of people. Unless you’re mixing with different people and different thinkers, you will keep thinking the same. So I bring together, like health care, hospitality, finance, technology, and.
Peter Winick I’m like more of a mastermind model. So you’ve got to okay, so you’ve got no scale, but high ticket is you want on one moderate scale, moderate ticket is this mastermind piece and what’s the third?
Cara Macklin The next part then is I am working on updating the model of what I teach people. So I am selling not just as an online program. Got. So that stock.
Peter Winick Which is lower ticket, higher scale.
Cara Macklin Yes.
Peter Winick So I love that because a lot of what we do in the work with our clients is explore each of those paths, right? So one is, hey, if people want you and you’ve got your reputation and access, you’ve got to create a level of the velvet rope and scarcity and limit and price accordingly. And I think it’s having the courage to price somewhere between accordingly and obscenely to make a point that, no, I don’t, you know, I’m not a whatever hourly consultant or if it is hourly, it’s going to have a lot of zeros. And then moving from there in terms of different levels of scale at different price points, it’s hard, right? Is usually fairly easy to fill your own book of business if you want to. The scale part’s hard. How have you found or what challenges have you found as you move from this sort of 1 to 1 coaching to the more scalable elements of the business?
Cara Macklin I think one of the hardest things, as you and I talked about the first time I met you, was entrepreneurs don’t like systems and processes and don’t have methodologies together. I’m exactly like that. I’m very creative and innovative and, you know, drive on to the next thing. So just setting, design and putting my knowledge into a system and is hard. Once I do that, then the key thing for me is getting the right level of people in the group together. I mean, there’s clients who contact me to work with me and honestly, I say to them, I’m not the best person to work with them. I would never work with someone who I didn’t feel I was the best coach for them. And that’s exactly the same as the groups that I put together. It’s very, very important for me the quality of people and the right fit. That was probably the hardest bit. And then like any business mean you have to sell it and find the right. But that’s you know that’s just so.
Peter Winick What are the things that you look for because that’s really an interesting piece of I come to you yourself. I’ve heard wonderful things about you. We have a mutual friend and let’s jolly. Let’s go. And you, you’re making a determination of me. It’s almost a dating thing to go. Yeah, Yeah. He’s really eager. And I could clearly close him as a client, but it’s not a good fit. What it. So what are the. You’ve got your sort of spidey senses. How do you determine if someone would be a good fit for you? Because you don’t want to, you know, want to buy yourself a headache in 90 days, Right.
Cara Macklin No. And it’s not even that. You know what? Yes, it’s a headache for me, but I. I genuinely would not take money off someone if it was not going to be a good fit for them. I understand how hard it is not allowed to make money for profit. So it’s not good business for me to work with someone who is not going to succeed for them or me. And the key things for me is, one, they’ve already been in business and had a level of success. They’ve got a team and they’re a big thinker and they’re ambitious. So they’re certainly in this side of the pond. They’re thinking internationally in terms of their business. Are they’re already international in America, maybe not so much because you’ve got a huge market there. And they’re they want to be they want to do things differently. They don’t want to follow the crowd. You know, it’s like disruption, innovation. So that’s the business side of it. And then the people side of it. In terms of the person themselves, it’s the values piece, the integrity, the connection, then it needs to be more than just making money for them. You can you know, you can when you talk to people, you can just sense their passion for the business, their employees, their customers. That’s a huge part for me as well.
Peter Winick Excellent. Well, this has been fantastic. I appreciate you sharing with us your journey and your story, and I wish you the best. Thank you so much.
Cara Macklin Thanks. I have got one just that I can share with your listeners to help them. So I put it on my website. It’s just come to org UK and forward slash LeBron Leveraging Thought Leadership and there’s a free that they can download in terms of helping them in their business and get some advice.
Peter Winick Excellent. We’ll put that in the show notes as well. So thank you. Thanks. Thanks for sharing your time with us today. Appreciate it. Thanks. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.