My Story

It started with music.

I love music and I worked hard at it, so hard that it became my first career. I toured the world for ten years enjoying the rock and roll dream of moderate success and all the trappings moderate success brings (warm lager, long drives in small vans, weekly showers…). Sadly, the music world is a cut throat one and unless you’re regularly bothering the Top 10, it can be hard to keep the lights on. After a decade, my friends and I packed up our instruments and with them, my first career.

I’d never had a Real Job before and wasn’t entirely sure where to start. I responded to a job ad so vague it didn’t even have a job title which was fine with me, because I didn’t even have a job. Turned out it was for a local start up who bought and sold electronic goods and I spent the next ten years learning everything there is to know about the world of online trading, eventually being asked to take control of a whole team. Before long I was managing teams across the globe for what had become one of the largest online retailers in the world.

It was in those years of leading teams, navigating pressure, and watching capable people get stuck inside their own heads, that I first understood what effective coaching and leadership development actually looked like in practice.

Adopting the growth mindset I’d gone from knowing nothing about the industry to having an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of electronic goods. But after ten long years I began to grow tired of what I was doing. I realised that I was miserable and thought of going into work each Monday made me feel awful. I was going nowhere fast….

About this time, a friend of mine had asked me if I wanted to go for a drink and help him with a work related problem he had. I agreed but warned him – given that he was the CEO of a very successful charity I wasn’t sure exactly how he expected me to help him. As the conversation (and drinks) flowed, I realised something. I didn’t need to know the answers, I just needed to help him find them. It was an incredible feeling the next day when he called me to tell me how much I’d helped. A lightbulb went off. This is what I’d been looking for.

Looking back I realise that I have always had a passion for helping people, whether that was helping my bandmates to be the best musicians they could be, or in more recent years to coach and support individuals at pivotal points in their lives. My passion and innate skill is now supported by extensive training, research and practice in my coaching programs, enabling my clients to make the changes they wish to see in their lives and careers.

What I discovered in that conversation with my CEO friend, and every conversation since, is that the most capable people often need someone to think alongside them, not someone to hand them answers. Today I work with business owners and founders who are good at what they do but carrying more than they should. Through one to one executive coaching, I help them lead more clearly, decide more confidently, and grow without losing themselves in the process.