September 25th, 2024

What is your area of expertise or focus and who do you help?

My areas of expertise and focus are working with first-time middle managers through the transition into management and beyond. I do that by using a coach learning dial that enables people to learn fundamental skills and how to apply them.

A lot of what I teach are basic skills that an individual would learn in any training program, but I focus on taking all those skills, training, and learning and implementing them into their day-to-day lives. I also use human design as a way of understanding somebody’s energetic makeup. I use that to enable them to become the manager that they’re designed to be rather than being forced into a management style that might not be natural to them. It also highlights areas of inconsistencies so that they can become more aware of how they can build a team around themselves. It makes them aware of how they show up every day and to be okay with that rather than having to fight themselves on it.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Since we’re speaking about human design, I’m a manifesting generator.

So, that means that I am multi-passionate and I am very eager for a quick start. I get very excited about things that I’m passionate about, but it also means that I favour working alone versus working in big groups. I really value the opportunity to work in big groups, get ideas, and get excited as a collective. However, I also really like to turn it into my own space to get super creative and not feel like I’m confined to any kind of constraints creatively, physically, or mentally.

I’ve also always been interested in horse riding and that was all I ever wanted to do when I was growing up. I went through high school and college, which in the UK, is just two years after high school. I chose not to go to university because there wasn’t any particular area of interest other than horse riding that I wanted to focus on at the time, and that level of education was a good fallback. Then, I went full-time into horse riding. I competed up to an international level in dressage, and I loved it. At the time, there was a lot of life that happened around the age of 19 so, I left riding full-time and went travelling to figure out what I wanted to do. I spent a lot of time focusing on my interests and hobbies. I came back and that’s when I started getting into the corporate space and fell into HR. I didn’t pick it as a topic for me to be interested in, I just started out doing a lot of recruitment. 

During this, I was also planning to move locations in the UK, so I moved from Southampton which was my hometown, to London. That’s when I got into a great company, an automotive company, and started pushing my HR interests. London is one of those places that you have to throw yourself into whether you like it or not. It’s a wonderful city but you have to let it consume you and that I did. I don’t think I ever had an evening of not doing something. The longest period that I was booked up for was 16 weeks in advance.

It was this running joke of constantly being on. I was there for five years and learned a lot about myself as a person and learned that I actually value the countryside over the city. I then left and moved to Canada on a complete whim. I was concerned that I was becoming too complacent in London and someone at work had mentioned Toronto. I was going to do two years, one year in Toronto, one year in Vancouver and then I would go back and figure out the next chapter of my life but I never went back. So I’ve been in Canada for nearly six years now.

My dream is for myself and my partner to eventually move out of the city into a small country village. Somewhere in Canada where they have a local pub that does nice roast dinners and proper Yorkshire puddings on a Sunday, and is close to the water but also has the kind of small village lifestyle. The dream is to have some sort of petting farm and be surrounded by wonderful animals. 

What do you find to be the most rewarding thing about being a coach?

So many things! The best reward is the realization that it doesn’t matter what part of your life you are getting approached in because they are all part of the same thing. They’re all part of your life in its entirety. So I’ve had managers who I’ve worked with who have gone through my 90-Day program, and they have messaged to say that they have used a technique that I have coached them on in their personal life and it has changed the way they are having conversations with their partners or with their children. That was something that I didn’t think would come from the coaching conversation about how to be a good manager. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense because essentially what I do is support people having conversations when it’s difficult. For example, for a manager giving feedback, there are lots of template structures, and there are great ways in which you would structure the feedback. So the feedback isn’t the problem because you’ve got the evidence, you’ve got the story, and you’ve got what you need to say. It’s saying it which is the tricky bit and with communication, I find that that tricky part is everywhere. It’s not just at work but, it’s having a conversation with your partner, your children, or a friend, it’s everywhere. You know what you want to say but you need help with how to say it. 

And so, having that feedback to say that they’ve used a technique that I’ve coached them on in a personal relationship felt really good because it felt like I was truly coaching the entire person and not just the work part of their life. 

What are some of your top tips for starting, running, and growing a coaching business?

Don’t expect to start right away. What I mean by that is you might quit your job and you might say, “Now I am a business owner and I do this type of work.” But, you have to first figure out who you are serving because a lot of the time you want to be able to help everybody and you truly and genuinely believe that you can. But, you’re not here to do that. You’re here to help a specific group of people based on your experience and your knowledge. So, when you start your business, spend time figuring out who that group is so that you can direct your communication to them. I wanted to do manager coaching, but I also know that I can do human design and personal coaching, but I didn’t feel that I could do both at the same time. I couldn’t advertise because it was too much. It took me time to figure out who I was serving. 

When you’re running a small business, you are doing everything and I think people expect to be paid big business money in a small business startup and that won’t happen. I have a bit of a different view on growing your business. Not everything you do has to scale and not everything you do has to scale to eventually be sold. There’s a lot of pressure and a lot of lingo around scalability, but if you’re happy making the money that you’re making, doing the thing that you’re doing, then stay with it. If you then start to get bored, change it. Do what you want to do, but there’s a lot of societal pressure out there that says you need to scale a business to make billions and billions. If you don’t want to do that, don’t do it. And if you do, seek help to get the structures in place because it’s not easy. It’s okay to be comfortable in what you’re doing and still stretch yourself. 

Where can people find you and your business? 

You can connect with me via my LinkedIn page and my Instagram. I also have a website and everything you need about one-on-one coaching and workshops is there and on my LinkedIn. If there are things that you want to talk about, just reach out!