How Laura Simms built a business around meaningful career change
Laura Simms is a Career Transition Strategist and Certified Equity-Centered Coach at Your Career Homecoming, which helps accomplished professionals choose work that fits the life they want. The conversation traces how her own career change shaped the business, how its focus emerged, and why a clear niche matters more than a large audience.
For a service-based business, define one person, one problem and one solution, then focus on reaching people who are ready to solve that problem. A large audience is less useful than a clear offer and the ability to deliver on its promises.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
After following my passion through an MFA program, I moved to Los Angeles and began a career as a working actor. Eventually I had a crisis of meaning. The thing I had loved so much and worked so hard toward no longer felt like it mattered enough, or like it would give me the kind of life I wanted. It wasn’t just a question of what I would do. It was a question of who I would be. I turned to career books, therapy and assessments, and none of them could help me answer the bigger questions. Who did I want to be? What kind of life did I want to live? How could I have work that would support that life and actually make a difference? Once I got clear on those things for myself, I decided to become the kind of support I had so desperately wanted. Now I help people who want meaningful work and a meaningful life figure out the right choice for them. That holistic perspective is what makes us different. We have a method for helping clients choose the right career that’s been tested over the course of 15 years. It helps people not just choose a career, but choose a career they can build a really beautiful life around.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
Most of my first clients came through regular guest blogging, referrals and Twitter. That was back in the day when people actually connected and had real conversations on Twitter, instead of just using it as a platform to publish opinions. Today most of our new business comes through paid advertising. I’m also active on Instagram and have a YouTube channel. We get referrals from our clients, and we’ve had a few clients find us through AI search.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
At first, I was helping creatives with the business side of their work as well as career transition clients. About a year in I felt I needed to pick a lane, and I thought that would be helping creatives in business. But I had that early business owner fear of turning clients away, so my big idea was to write an ebook about career change. That way I’d still have something to offer the people who came my way without them taking up much of my time. About 100 pages into that ebook, I realized I had a lot to say on the subject. Not only that, what I had to say about career change was more powerful and original than what I had to say about creative business. I wouldn’t be selling my little ebook at all. Career change would take center stage in my business. The mistake that taught me the most was hiring a contractor and taking them at their word about their level of competency instead of taking them through a full onboarding with gated training and skill testing. I found out quickly what a poor leadership decision that had been when the gaps in their skills showed up.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
There was a big coaching boom during the pandemic, so there are more service providers out there now, along with more ads, blogs, and information. More and more of our clients have had disappointing experiences with other coaches before they hire us, and that has made them more discerning in their buying decisions. We’ve adapted by making even more client case studies and interviews available, sharing more of what informs my perspective on Instagram, and publishing more thought leadership pieces, so people can see what makes our work distinctive and effective.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
I’d tell them what I teach all of my clients who are starting a service-based business: focus on one person, one problem, and one solution. Define your niche by the problem you solve, the person you solve it for and how you solve it. Get hyper-specific, and make sure you can deliver on your promises. Ignore the pressure to build a big audience. Follower counts are easy to measure, but they tell you very little about whether anyone is ready to work with you. Focus on reaching the people who already have the problem you solve and are ready to invest in solving it.
Thank you to Laura Simms and the team at Your Career Homecoming for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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