Eighty percent of her clients have come through referrals for twenty years. Now she is building a group program, and the network that built the practice cannot fill it.
Lin Coughlin spent 25 years in corporate America, including 15 years in C-suite operating roles leading integrations, turnarounds, and the spin-off of four divisions of a $20 billion conglomerate. She left to build her own executive coaching practice and stood it up in months using her warm network alone.
Twenty years later she is launching her first group offering, and running straight into the ceiling that almost every service based founder eventually hits. In this conversation with Christine Hakkola, Lin is candid about what referrals can and cannot do, why she now screens every client for imposter syndrome, and the slow visibility channel that took years to compound.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
👉🏻 A referral engine scales with your relationships, not with your offer. It is the right mechanism for high touch one on one work and the wrong one for filling a cohort, and the gap only becomes visible once you launch something new.
👉🏻 Imposter syndrome affects roughly 70% of leaders, and in Lin's experience men and women at similar rates. She stopped waiting for clients to raise it and built it into her discovery process as a default screening question.
👉🏻 Consistent public posting, not pitching, is what produced her media coverage. Leadership publications found her online and approached her, and those features then became the raw material for the next round of content.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 — Welcome and who Lin actually serves
06:15 — Standing up the business and the first six clients
12:18 — The Strengths Report Card and where imposter syndrome shows up
19:29 — Building the first group offer after 20 years of one on one
25:08 — Once a client always a friend, and the AI learning curve
30:26 — Where to find Lin
CONNECT WITH LIN COUGHLIN
Website: www.GreatCircleAssociates.com
Email: lin.coughlin@greatcircleassociates.com
Blog: https://greatcircleassociates.com/blog/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lincoughlin/
CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE HAKKOLA
Website: hakkolahorizons.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-hakkola
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