Client Name: Peter Duffy
Business Name: Connections Career Coaching
Business Website: https://connectionscareercoaching.com/
Industry: Professional Coaching
Location: Merrimack, NH
SBDC Advisor's Name: Julie Glosner
Peter Duffy, Career Coach and Owner of Connections Career Coaching enjoyed a robust career in the corporate arena prior to becoming a career coach. His 20+ year career working in the healthcare delivery, pharma, and insurer industries was a lucrative one. He gained expertise in business development, marketing, and media, but after all those years, to put it simply, he says, “I was kind of done with corporate. I’d had enough.”
The father of six always enjoyed coaching and had a love for mentoring. He liked getting to know people and helping them discover what they should be doing for their life’s work. He’d also witnessed many people over the course of his career who clearly were not in a field of work that truly suited them, and oftentimes, that person was him. Three and a half years ago, he left his corporate career to open his own career coaching business.
Connections Career Coaching is a strategic coaching practice where Peter provides clients with job search and job performance strategies that lead them to tangible results in under 120 days. Pulling from his robust career experience, he helps nursing, pharma, and marketing leaders improve their job performance, score a promotion, or transition to a new place of work.
Peter explains, “I opened Connections Career Coaching to help winners to connect with their real self and to do work that brings them meaning. I’m helping them to impact their world in the manner that that they were created to.”
His first client needed help with an interview, and with his experience in running multimillion dollar pitches, which he says are the same as interviews, he knew how to win. He coached that client on her big interview and sure enough, she won. “I said, ‘this is cool,’” says Peter. “And then the next client won, and the next client won, and the next client won, and it was just off to the races after that.”
But, as he worked to build Connections Career Coaching, Peter sought out some coaching for himself through the experts at NH SBDC and his Business Advisor, Julie Glosner. With Peter’s experience though, he didn’t need help with how to build a business or brand; what he was really looking for was the confidence that he could do it. He says, “I had all the structure. I knew how to build it. But I just needed to know that I could do it.” He describes NH SBDC as being like his fan club that was there to support him every week.
Peter appreciated the structure Julie provided in all their meetings where she’d be asking, “What is going on? Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?” Julie gave him ideas, and assistance in building a lean business plan. Each week they’d work on that business plan together, outlining all the things that come into play when building a business, like mission, vision, strategy, marketing, deliverables, etc.
NH SBDC provided him the reassurance he needed to keep going. “I think I just needed someone there to fan the flames, if you will,” says Peter. And, in 2022 specifically, NH SBDC provided Peter with the additional resources he needed to take his marketing to the next level through the FAME program.
As the Connections’ client base continues to grow, Peter is enjoying seeing his clients win. He explains, “It's exhilarating. I'm so happy for them because they did it on their terms. They are emancipated. They are proud. They're just on top of the moon. They really are. And that makes me happy.” Success seems to be the running theme for Peter’s clients, one of which recently earned a promotion to a position that will increase his salary by $40,000.
Like its clients, Connections Career Coaching appears to be on the road to success as well. Peter has worked mainly with individual clients, but his goal is to expand his character-based coaching strategies to leaders within NH health and tech companies. He wants to help them build deep connections with their people to retain and attract the best and brightest, so they continue to compete and win on the world stage.
Of working with NH SBDC, Peter says
“SBDC is a must have. It’s a nonnegotiable in my opinion. They are so kind. Julie Glosner is such a kind person, but she's so smart. And she always comes with an idea. She's always helping. She's always thinking. Oh my gosh what a great resource.”