We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Aarti Bhatnagar a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Aarti, thanks for joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

A problem I most commonly see in the coaching world is making this career sustainable for many years. Coaching is deeply needed in the world and unfortunately, even the best coaches end up shutting down their services OR supplementing their offerings by getting full-time jobs to make ends meet.

The business of coaching is not emphasized nearly enough in this industry.

Aarti, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Aarti Bhatnagar is the Founder of Cadence Operators, a one-stop-shop serving Operating Leaders (individuals who oversee and manage the operations of a business) through Executive Coaching, Executive Search, and Facilitation + Training.

Most recently, she was Chief of Staff at Guild Education for the Co-founder. Before that, she was Chief of Staff / Product Operations at Change.org for the Product Development team. She started her career in management consulting at PwC and has since worked for EdTech and social impact organizations like Guild Education, Change.org, and EducationSuperHighway. She has over 15 years of operations, program management, and people leadership experience.

Amongst all her career achievements, her greatest personal joy has come from supporting individuals to navigate and reach their career goals. She saw a deep gap in the Operating Leader space and created her business as a result.

The clients she supports are Chiefs of Staff, COOs, Early Stage Founders, Business Operations Leads, and Heads/VPs of Operations. Her clients come from places like Patreon, Airbnb, AgelessRx, Guild, KPMG, GitHub, Block, SandboxAQ, Fullscript, SF AIDS Foundation, Gigs, Crescent, and Kaizen Labs.

Learn more about her services here:https://cadence-operators.com/

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing my clientele has been defining and honing in on my ideal client profile. Rather than being an Executive Coach to everyone, I chose to niche myself. This has given me a clear focus on the type of content to produce, the type of communities to partner with, and the kinds of offerings that will most resonate with my audience.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn that I can’t be an entrepreneur. I have historically been the type of person who makes money through a steady and predictable paycheck. Entrepreneurship felt too scary and something that wasn’t meant for me. Even though I had great ideas and pride myself in executing, I couldn’t get myself to leap.

I am still not quite sure what did it for me, but I woke up one day with a desire to do something of my own. The notion of working for a company and a boss felt claustrophobic – rather than running away from entrepreneurship, I ran towards it at that moment.

It was the best decision I’ve made and I am grateful I finally leaped.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cadence-operators.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarti-bhatnagar-cpcc-22421021/

Image Credits

https://www.nakulbphoto.com/