My Experience
Here are a few bullet points about my experience:
- 15 years experience as a business coach working with small business owners and entrepreneurs
- Founded and ran 3 successful businesses during those 15 years
- 15 years experience as a marriage counselor and individual therapist, with graduate degrees in counseling and organizational development
- Faculty member and Mentor Coach for the past 6 years in the N. C. Business Coach Certificate program at Duke University and North Carolina State University
- ICF Professional Certified Coach with extensive training through Coaches Training Institute and the Graduate School of Coaching
- Author of 2 books on marketing and business development (see details below)
Here’s more of my story:
As a business coach and consultant, I have worked with a few hundred smart and creative people.
They all wanted to accomplish or do something that they hadn’t quite been able to do before. Many of them wanted to grow their business or practice. Most wanted to be more effective in communicating with people, either one-on-one or in presentations. Many dreamed of creating a lifestyle or career where they did more of what they enjoyed and had more time for things they loved. And many wanted to create something–a product, project, book, film, charity, or business–that they had dreamed about for years. I understood my clients well because I was so much like them.
While working with me, most of my clients made significant progress toward their dreams. Some made real breakthroughs. I myself wrote my first book, a dream I had held, and failed at up till then, since my teens. But I kept noticing something.
Even though they and I really wanted the changes we yearned for and talked about, we often did not take the steps we needed until we committed to it in a way that we had resisted in the past. In part we need to find the approach that really fits who we are, and that requires doing inner work and focusing.
But there’s something more. My clients would often tell me that they managed to finish a project or a chapter because they didn’t want to face me empty-handed. Believe me, I am not a tough-minded ogre. In fact, I probably should be tougher with my clients at times. I finally finished my own book when I realized that I either had to finish the chapters I had been putting off, or I had to write my editor and say I was bailing out of the project. I came very close to doing that.
Making a commitment to someone else, even though it is for something we really want, can make the difference in whether we overcome our inertia and do it, or stay stuck in our inaction.
I also realized something else. Many of us do much of our work in a vacuum–in isolation. We don’t have many trusted, safe, and compatible people to talk things through with, brainstorm with, or get feedback or reactions from. We may spend hundreds of hours working on something before we get anybody else’s feedback. And working like that is not only difficult; it is also discouraging.
It’s easy to go in circles with our inner critic, without knowing whether our ideas are worth the time and effort needed to develop them. Most of us work very hard on things we throw out because we convince ourselves that it is no good. But maybe all it needed was some tweaking, a shift in direction, or an added element to become an outstanding success. But we didn’t have people who could help us see the possibility.
I became a business coach because I wanted to help people become more successful in their business or career, to find more fulfillment by creating a life they really want, and to have the thrill of making a difference in the world. Although I work with all kinds of business owners and executives, I especially enjoy working with couples who are in business together. I love helping my clients achieve the success they want by clarifying their vision, developing action plans, overcoming the real and imagined obstacles that have stopped them in the past, and discovering that they can create a life that they love.
My own background may shed light on why I’ve developed this unique approach to business coaching. I grew up in a family business, worked as an advertising and public relations writer after college, spent 13 years as a minister specializing in small group work (after getting a doctorate in group process and organizational change), and have enjoyed working as a therapist, marriage counselor, and business coach for the past 15 years, working with coaching clients ranging from therapists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to Fortune 500 executives. I am a graduate of the Coaches Training Institute which is the training program for Co-Active Coaching.
For the past few years I’ve been a faculty member and Mentor Coach for the Business Coaching Certificate program at Duke University and N. C. State University. I’ve taught “Marketing Your Services” and “How To Be Creative About Everything You Do” in the Communication Certificate program at Duke. I wrote one book and contributed to another: Speaking as a Professional: Enhance Your Therapy or Coaching Practice through Presentations, Workshops, and Seminars (W.W.Norton & Co.) and co-author with Brian Tracy, Mark Victor Hansen, et. al. of Create the Business Breakthrough You Want: Secrets and Strategies from the World’s Greatest Mentors. And I have learned everything I can about what makes it possible for people to do the things that really matter to them instead of shrinking back into resignation to the status quo.
What I’ve learned from all that experience is that when we are able to follow our vision and values, develop new perspectives about ourselves and our lives, and get the right kind of support for our journey toward true success, there’s nothing that can stop us.