Melanie Coeshott: Empowering mid-lifers to take control

My coaching journey

Like many other coaches, I began my coaching journey by attending TCA's 2-day Event. This was back in March 2017. I subsequently got the ‘coaching bug’, signing up for the PPD and the Corporate & Executive Diploma (C&ED). I progressed these as promptly as I could, completing PPD in Nov-17, followed by C&ED in May 2018. In the meantime, I’d heard such amazing things about the Small Business Diploma and NLP, that I simply had to sign up for these too. Talk about Coaching FOMO (fear of missing out)!

By the end of 2018 - less than 2 years from my start date - I’d completed all 4 diplomas and clocked up over 200 hours of coaching. Not bad for someone still working full-time!

What got me here, won’t get me there

Much of my coaching in the first 18 months had been pro bono, mainly internal coaching through work, but also some with some friends and acquaintances. This allowed me to build up a respectable amount of coaching experience in a short space of time, not to mention the wonders it did to my confidence as a coach.

Through my coaching experience (and through being coached by others) I realised fairly early on that this was something I wanted to do more of. I set up my business Blue Diamond in the middle of last year and started taking on some paying clients. These were partly through networking and partly through referrals from others I’d coached.

Blue Diamond

My niche is mid-life career coaching: Blue Diamond empowers mid-lifers to take control of their lives from a work perspective

They say your ideal client is who you were several years ago. This is so true! I went through my own mini mid-life crisis a couple of years back, which had kind of led me to coaching in the first place.

I’m currently working notice in my job as an accountant – with an employer I’ve been with for almost 14 years, in a profession that I’ve been in for over 2 decades. I’m naturally a little apprehensive, but I now have so much clarity and focus!

Luckily, I enjoy the business side of things almost as much as the coaching, which is always helpful and will support my journey into full-time coaching.

In addition to 1:1 coaching, I also run workshops on topics such as Overwhelm, Imposter Syndrome, Confidence, Resilience, Assertiveness and Work Life Balance! These enable me to coach in a group situation, which was new to me. I find this really rewarding as it enables me to reach people who wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford to invest in coaching. I also love the open discussions that we have on these popular, yet thorny, topics. I’m constantly looking out for new relevant topics that I can create workshops on.

Every day’s a school day

I love learning at the best of times. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about my coaching journey to date is continuously learning new things. Going through the different diplomas was a steep, but enjoyable, learning curve. Since qualifying in each diploma, I’ve been testing out various tools and techniques I’ve learned along the way.

• PPD – great for building and honing my basic coaching skills, including all aspects of the GROW model – how many times have I simply ‘trusted the process’ when in doubt, ending up delivering a great coaching session?
• Corporate & Executive – this has been invaluable for internal coaching (covering Change, Leadership, and Career progression), but it’s also really useful for career discussions with my Blue Diamond clients
• Small Business – this has been really useful helping to coach some of my entrepreneurial clients, as well as helping me along the way with my own business
• NLP – this is universally valuable. I’m frequently dipping into NLP tools within my coaching, the workshops I run and my life in general!

Continuous Professional Development

But why stop here? I love learning and adopting new tools so much that I’ve been on a number of different TCA CPD days. Each one of these has been invaluable to my Blue Diamond coaching business:

• Sales & Marketing and Power Pitches – I went on these early last year and they were instrumental in helping me to identify my niche and to develop my message
• Holistic coaching – helping me to coach the whole person rather than simply on the area they bring to the table
• Financial – some of my coaching touches on financial topics and it has been great to have some tools to be able to explore this with them
• Mindfulness - helping me to be as mindful as possible in my daily life as well as in my coaching practice.

In addition to enhancing my learning, I love the support and encouragement I get from surrounding myself with other fabulous coaches.

Wrap-up

Overall, I can’t believe the amazing twists and turns that have happened over the last two years. My advice is to be curious and maintain a growth mindset, seize any opportunities that come your way with two hand and, of course, “trust the process”!

If you would like to learn more about coaching, join us for our FREE Foundation in Life Coaching course.