What inspired you to enrol with The Coaching Academy?
At the time, I had lived in London for a year, and that year had been a bit of a personal development journey to discovering what I really wanted to do for a career. I was trying a few different things entrepreneurially, but nothing was quite clicking. I saw an advert for a free weekend course to discover life coaching, went along because I didn’t have anything to lose, and it just clicked - that yes, this is what I want to do. It ticked a lot of the boxes I wanted for a career, so I enrolled.
What was/is your profession before becoming a coach?
I took a year off to work on my Diploma and get my business up and running, but before that, I was working in quality in the construction industry. Somewhat fell into that industry after university, but I had actually studied Environmental Policy and Chemistry degrees.
What was the most rewarding part of your training/journey?
Despite enjoying the entire process, an unexpected reward was the connections I made. It’s been 5 months since graduating and I still regularly speak to the other coaches I studied with along the way, keeping track of each others’ journeys and helping each other grow ourselves and our coaching businesses.
How did you fit coach training into your busy life?
I was fortunate enough to be in a position to take the time off from full-time work to focus on my coaching training.
Where are you now? How are you using your coaching skills?
I am currently experimenting with different business and marketing strategies to see which works best for me and my coaching business. I’ve collaborated with a yoga instructor and held a group coaching/yoga workshop, I’ve held a stand at The National Wedding Show to get the word out about my niche, and I’ve also written a book for my niche that is a hybrid of coaching and evidence-based advice-giving, that is under contract. A bit more time is needed to see conversion rates, but for one of my niches I’m finding group coaching may be a more viable option, so I’m working on developing my group coaching skills.
What is your coaching niche and why did you choose it?
I have 2 niches, both picked from personal experience.
As a woman, I want to encourage and build up other women because gender inequality still exists. I want to help young women aim for goals and achieve them with coaching, particularly those in their 20s and 30s.
My second more specialised niche, which is a niche within the above niche really, is bridal coaching. From experience, wedding planning can be very stressful, with particularly greater pressure on the bride. Wedding planning is perfectly suited to coaching; the goal is quite obvious. But there are so many elements to wedding planning, ranging from practical to the emotional, and this is something I’d like to offer brides-to-be. I knew when I got married I could’ve done with a bridal coach, but there isn’t anyone out there who does it. I don’t believe it exists, so there’s a hole in the industry there, and now I wish to fill it.
What are your top tips for:
People who are looking to become qualified as a professional coach?
Experience some coaching and be on the client end to fully grasp what it is. The first free weekend course was a great introduction and was in line with the rest of the Diploma, so trust that weekend. I also spoke to coaches of different schools to get a deeper understanding of the range of life coaching studies out there and where coaching can take me as a career.
I chose a Diploma with TCA because they are an accredited school, required both theoretical knowledge and regularly supervised practical experience over time, and provided me with professional certification. They’ve also made accessible opportunities for continual professional development. These are sound and trustworthy criteria for anyone looking to become a professional coach.
Those currently in training with TCA?
I found it very useful to consistently work on my training as this kept it at the forefront of my mind. Space the Accelerator Days, mentoring sessions and assessments out nice and evenly over a set amount of time (with a goal submission date of course!). Connect with several other coaches who are studying at a similar pace to you so you can go on the journey together, which always makes it more fun.
Don’t be afraid to have a go, make mistakes and tweak processes as you go along. It can be easy to not study or promote your business or test some novel strategy because it is scary, yes. But the most powerful question for me that I discovered in my training was, what if I don’t do it? Every time I feel I’m pushing my comfort zone, I ask myself this, and I know I need to do it. Also, the more opportunities taken to push your comfort zone, the more you get used to it and it becomes more fun. This goes for booking assessments, to launching a website, all the way to testing new business strategies that increase your exposure. Get used to being in your own spotlight!
If you're interested in finding out more about coaching, just like Juliet did, start by joining us in our interactive live webinar. Choose from available dates here.
The Coaching Academy was established in 1999, and is now the world's largest coaching school.
In that time we have trained over 14,000 people to become life coaches.
We are accredited by the International Coach Federation and the Association for Coaching, and we're rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
