Carol Schultz
8x Return on Investment in 90 Days
About the Client
Carol Schultz is the founder and CEO of Vertical Elevation, where she works with CEOs who have become consumed by their businesses. With over 30 years as a professional headhunter and coaching training that began in 1998, Carol brings a rare combination of executive recruiting expertise and organizational strategy to her clients. Her sweet spot is companies with 10 or more employees generating between $5 million and $40 million in revenue. She works alongside CEOs for roughly 12 weeks using her proprietary Organizational Scaffold System, fixing internal dysfunction so leaders can step out of the weeds and back into their role.
Goals
Carol was making a deliberate pivot away from full-time search work and needed to build visibility and inbound leads for her coaching and organizational strategy services. Cold outreach had become increasingly difficult, and she wanted a marketing strategy that would put her in front of self-aware CEOs who were the right fit for her high-touch engagement model.
Strategy
Carol joined Interview Connections in late fall 2025 and began appearing as a guest on podcasts aligned with her target audience. She focused on storytelling as her primary approach, knowing that facts tell but stories sell. Rather than leading with credentials, she connected emotionally with audiences by sharing real examples of the transformation she creates for clients. She was present and genuine in every conversation, letting her personality and expertise speak for themselves.
Her call to action is clear and low friction: visit verticalelevation.com to download the first chapter of her book, schedule a call, or take a free organizational wellness diagnostic designed for companies with at least 10 employees.
Results
After just 3 podcast interviews, Carol received an inbound call from a CEO who had listened to her on the Grow My Accounting Practice podcast. He listened to the episode twice before reaching out. He scheduled a call directly through her website, shared his challenges openly, hired her for a long term coaching engagement resulting in a 733% return on her investment!
All of this happened within just 4 months of joining Interview Connections, with only 3 episodes live at the time of this case study.
