How a Career Strategist Lost Her Story Fixing Everyone Else’s

CASE STUDY: PERSONAL BRAND OF A MID-LIFE CAREER COACH

FOCUS: BRAND MESSAGING DISCONNECT | AUDIENCE: EXPERTS WITH IGNORED BRANDS

I helped a career coach shift from mere CV tweaks to showing the real transformation arc that she taught clients.

The Brand Challenge

She had coached more than 150 professionals through turning points in their careers … from job loss and burnout to reinvention and purpose-led pivots. But her brand looked and sounded like it belonged to a document consultant. Her website emphasised CV rewrites, LinkedIn audits, and interview prep. Even though her real work was emotional, identity-deep, and life-changing, she appeared transactional and surface-level online.

Potential clients came through word of mouth but often assumed she was a resume fixer. Many didn’t understand why her rates were high. Her content barely scratched the surface of what she actually did: help people reimagine their self-worth at critical life junctures. Her brand lacked a clear before-and-after arc that mirrored what her clients experienced.

The Brand Insight

What she had overlooked was the emotional arc of her client stories. Every person she worked with had a moment of collapse, a hard reckoning, and eventually, a new clarity. But none of that was visible in her messaging. There were no markers of transformation. No tension, no release. Just service lists and testimonials that felt generic.

The missing ingredient was narrative structure. Not just in how she told her clients’ stories, but in how her brand told her story. A good career strategist doesn’t just rewrite bios … she helps people rewrite beliefs. Until her messaging captured that, she’d keep being mistaken for something far smaller than she was.

The Big Brand Idea

I reframed her brand around a single core premise: You don’t need a new job title. You need a new arc. This shift allowed us to make the transformation her clients lived into the centrepiece of her messaging. From stuck to seen. From fear to voice. From burnout to clarity. That was her real offer.

I built a messaging scaffold around emotional narrative beats: What breaks down. What turns. What rebuilds. Every part of her site and story had to showcase not just services, but shifts. I turned her brand into a mirror of the personal journeys she facilitated.

The Brand New Strategy

The first step was replacing the jargon-heavy service descriptions with emotionally grounded client arcs. I rewrote her homepage, about page, and service pages to follow the pattern: struggle, insight, shift. Instead of saying “LinkedIn profile development,” I said “Articulate the new story that will carry you forward.”

I also moved her brand visuals away from cold professionalism to warm resilience. Fewer icons, more faces. Instead of career ladders, I showed human turning points. Her content shifted from tips and templates to turning points and reframes. And the engagement soared.

10 New Content Directions

Here are 10 strategic ideas developed (and several executed) to support the new brand direction:

Client Arc Series: A blog series titled “The Turn” where anonymised client journeys are told in three acts: The Struggle, The Pivot, The Emergence.
Instagram Carousel Stories: Each slide reveals one stage of a transformation arc, ending with “Which stage are you in today?”
Homepage Video Reel: 90-second video montage using audio snippets from real clients describing their “before” and “after” mindsets.
LinkedIn Post Series: Weekly posts beginning with “I thought I needed a new job. What I needed was…” showcasing insight-led stories.
Interactive Assessment: A website quiz called “Where Are You In Your Arc?” with tailored content paths based on results.
Email Welcome Sequence: Five-part email flow titled “The Arc Ahead” that introduces the philosophy and builds trust through case examples.
Podcast Micro-Series: Short 15-minute episodes titled “Turning Point,” each one diving into one narrative beat in career change.
Pinterest Vision Boards: Curated visual boards showing identity shifts (e.g. “From Performer to Purpose-Driven”) with client-inspired themes.
Work With Me Page Rewrite: New layout structured as a journey map, not a service menu … from “Fog” to “Clarity”.
Digital Journal Template: A downloadable tool prompting clients to map their own arc, helping them see change before it starts.

Results Within 6 Months

Organic inquiries doubled through the site within three months.
Clients began referencing her “transformation arc” language during consultations.
Speaking invitations came in from mid-life reinvention podcasts and platforms.
Her average engagement time per site visit tripled.

CONFIDENTIALITY CAVEAT: This case study represents a confidential engagement. For privacy, specific brand identifiers, campaign names, and project phases have been withheld. It has been shared with permission while preserving client discretion.

Extra Tip for Broader Perspective

If you’re brand owner or manager seeking stronger brand performance, this Case Study Post I wrote could interest you: “How a Legacy Jewellery House Dimmed Its Founder’s Radiance.“

If you’re an investor seeking momentum for your portfolio brands, this Case Study Post I worked on may resonate: “How a Millet Snack Brand Bit Off More Variety Than It Could Swallow.“

Take your brand from stuck to full throttle − with one bold strategic shift

"One BIG IDEA can turn brand stagnation into unstoppable movement. Spots are limited each week ... book your breakthrough session now."

Shobha Ponnappa

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