This week's Coach in the Spotlight is Randal Porter, an ex-detective turned life coach. Still focusing on helping people, Randal is now helping people with their migraines and spiritual growth, all the while building his business one ebook at a time. Enjoy his inspiring story!
What inspired you to enrol with The Coaching Academy?
Simply put, the Introduction to Life Coaching course. I had been considering a career change after struggling from the effects of burnout, stress and chronic migraine. After several episodes of poor health and my wife becoming seriously unwell, I started looking for a way of becoming self-employed working from home.
I attended the two-day course, and by the end of day one, I had made two decisions. Firstly that I want a Life Coach. Secondly, I was going to work towards changing my career and becoming a Life Coach. I achieved the latter within 20 months.
What was your profession before becoming a coach?
I was a police detective working on serious crime. During my service I spent three years on homicide and 4 years on Safeguarding, specialising in Child Protection.
What was the most rewarding part of your journey?
The feeling of progressing through the gears of development to the next levels. For example, taking the first practical assessment.
Then taking the first practical assessment that counted towards the Diploma.
Then introducing different tools into my sessions such as DISC profiling and BE - DO - HAVE, finding my first real-world person to coach during my training, and ultimately gaining my professional accreditation.
Then post-qualification, doing my first motivational video for YouTube, the first Facebook Live, through to gaining my first paying client. Then starting up my Live group on ZOOM for mindful-ness coaching.
How did you fit coach training into your busy life?
This was rather challenging when I first started the PPD course in July 2018 juggling unpredictable shifts. I remember that come September the wheels of progression had stopped turning and didn’t get rolling again until January 2019.
The game-changer for me, was when I negotiated a more flexible shift pattern with my former employers and was allowed every Tuesday off. I never looked back as I now had a day every week to devote to coaching.
These days it is a lot less taxing as I resigned from my full-time job last December so that I could concentrate on coaching. I qualified in February and I now have plenty of time to devote to coaching and developing my business.
Where are you now? How are you using your coaching skills?
Right now I am proactive in building my coaching business, but not yet at the stage where I can earn a sustainable income from coaching, so I divide my time between coaching and my work as a Regional Business Development Manager for an Insurance Broker.
The coaching is likely to take a couple of years to take off, but I’m busy building my contacts through networking. I have joined a business networking group and this has become the main focus for developing my business. This was after trying out lots of different things, to see what works.
I had a spell of placing motivational videos on YouTube but wasn’t getting significant results from what was essentially a lot of toil and effort. I have received some good results from an ebook I produced on Spiritual Coaching which was satisfying as writing is something that comes naturally to me.
I do see myself using my coaching experience and skills to write books and articles and develop online courses.
What is your coaching niche?
I am still deciding on a niche and have a couple of options. I recently completed a Diploma in Migraine Therapy and consequently, I am on the UK Therapist Register. Therefore I am considering niching as a Migraine Management Coach.
Migraine is something that has afflicted me since I was a child so it is close to my heart. It is a neurological brain condition that afflicts 6 million people in the UK alone and is estimated to cost the NHS £150 million every year.
I am also a writer and my first book, Evidence for Conviction (Christian Apologetics genre) will be published any day now, I signed the self-publishing deal in February, and this coupled with the traction I am beginning to see from my ebook Seven Keys for Spiritual Growth & Revival, could yet determine whether I end up working with Christian Professionals and/or Faith groups as a niche, so perhaps a Spiritual Growth Coaching / Personal Development for Christian Professionals.
What are your top tips for those studying or considering to study with TCA?
The PPD course has tremendous value, and even if I did not end up becoming a Coach, would still have been good value due to the positive impact my own coaching journey has had on my life.
The best bit of advice I received along the way was from my very first mentor session. “Get organised!” There is a lot to keep track of and plan for and without good administration, you can sink into overwhelm.
Another tip is to take the first Practical Assessment sooner rather than later. It is a free hit so it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes. The feedback will get your wheels of progression roll-ing. If the wheels aren’t turning you’re probably not learning!
Take your first step towards a rewarding & fulfilling Coaching career, just like Helen did, with our Introduction to Life Coaching online training.
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