Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kari Volen . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kari , appreciate you joining us today. Covid has brought about so many changes – has your business model changed?
As a pageant coach for about 10 years prior to covid, I used my business as a side hustle to supplement income from my full time career. I would do in person coaching with aspiring contestants on the weekends which left me with very little free time as I was working 7 days a week most weeks. Word of mouth spread and I started having clients travel from other states to work with me and was beginning to struggle with juggling both my coaching business and corporate job. Then covid hit and I wasn’t able to meet in person with clients due to social distancing regulations. Parents began looking for activities for their children to do online at home and I started getting so many requests for virtual coaching, something I never had done prior to covid. It took my awhile to adapt my coaching practices to an online platform but I began being busier than ever and was receiving inquiries from clients all over the country. I actually grew so much during covid that I was able to quit my full time corporate career in sales and marketing and now running my coaching business full time and am even looking to expand my time. I am grateful that covid normalized virtual coaching and that my clients and I were both willing to adapt as it is now such an effective tool and gives me so much more flexibility in my personal life and business,
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a pageant coach and entrepreneur who prepares girls from approx ages 4 – women ages 55 + for beauty pageants. I have worked with contestants who compete at Miss USA, Miss America and everything in between. There are literally hundreds of pageants out there. I provide walking and modeling instruction, interview prep, and styling services in addition to helping clients create speeches and hone their public speaking skills for these competitions. I was honored to be selected by the Pageant Planet as their Best Coach Recipient in 2018, 2019 and 2021. While this is now a very saturated industry, I try to include a lot of personal touches that I believe help me stand out – like remembering birthdays, checking in on competition weekend, giving social media shoutouts and providing excellent communication.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I definitely struggled early on in my business with blurring professional and personal lines. Since I act as a mentor of sorts to my clients and because we are often traveling to competitions together – I get to know my clients on a much more personal basis which often makes me feel we are “friends”. This has led to expectations, hurt feelings, people take advantage of me or just lack of professional boundaries on my part because sometimes I forget that these are not in fact my personal friends but rather business clients I am providing a service to that I happen to be friendly with. I have worked on unlearning the thought that my clients are my friends and I feel it has been a lesson well learned.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
My website definitely brings in a lot of traffic and also after big competitions, tagging and posting about the ladies I had competing and then them resharing my posts has brought me a lot of organic new inquiries. I have actually never paid for marketing. Early on in my career, it was a lot of attending events, talking to people face to face, sponsoring pageants for free just to get my name out there. Building these relationships with other industry professionals (pageant directors and other coaches) has helped me establish mutually beneficial relationships which has lead to increased leads. Also, being recognized by the Pageant Planet (which is the main source for info in the pageant community) significantly increased my traffic as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pageantcoachinganddesigns.org
- Instagram: pageantcoachinganddesigns
- Facebook: pageantcoachinganddesigns
Image Credits
Austin Ryde