A Listening Life (Aly King-Smith)

I’m pleased to share my conversation with fellow Executive Coach Ginny Baillie. She’s one of Europe’s first Master Certified Coaches. With over 20 years’ experience as a full-time, qualified, professional coach and culture consultant, Ginny has coached over 2000 individuals, designed over 500 coaching programmes and mentored over 100 coaches. She’s played with having several business structures, from freelance solo, to early tech platforms and learned stacks of lessons on the way.

With a background in property and stockbroking Ginny always gives us a masterclass in authenticity, with a forthright and clear style which I appreciate so much. She talks straight; says things as they are. “You need to love the business of coaching as much as you love coaching” she says, as she generously shares experiences, tips and things to avoid.

Ginny tells the story of a business she grew with a friend, full of ideas and excitement – only to find it wasn’t actually cracking the market, and needed to stop. And she has some rich advice for coaches feeling lost for what to do next.

Ginny is a seasoned coach with a client base that spans pharma, finance, logistics ,tech, publishing, media, health and education and she now leads Drum, which brings groups of leaders together in collaborative coaching conversations. We hope our chat sparks some new thoughts for you in your coaching business. Please rate and subscribe to the podcast, to help more coaches find us too.

You can read more about Ginnie through her website - https://www.coachingfederation.org.uk/

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A welcome to the podcast from creator Aly King-Smith who describes why she felt compelled to create A Listening Life, as she heads into her fifties, and her ninth year of self-employment. Time to start passing it on.

If you’re feeling worn out building your coaching business, or you’re starting to think you should return to employment, this podcast was created just for you.

Many coaches enjoy helping more than they like selling. Making friends with some of the skills of ethical selling, marketing and account development can feel like a big stretch.

"Everything at A Listening Life has been designed to help Coaches feel better and find more 'flow' both financially and mentally as they grow their coaching practice and build a life in self-employment. This podcast is a chance to share some conversations with my successful peers, friend, colleagues and competitors who’ve cracked the code and managed to build “a listening life” that pays the bills.

Aly King-Smith is an Executive Coach and finally, a successful business owner with a background in sales. After many years of scrambling to find the confidence and skills to build a coaching business that is commercially sound, she's finally enjoying the process having learned some lessons along the way, that may be helpful to others.

In this podcast she invites successful peers, colleagues, friends and competitors to spill the beans on their top tips to a sustainable income from coaching.

Please follow the show - we hope you really find lots of gems and helpful tips to run your coaching practice.

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Pete Mosley is a postgraduate-qualified Coach and Coach Tutor whom I’ve known and admired for years. He’s the author of the wonderful books The Art of Shouting Quietly (2015) and A Quiet Person's Guide to Life & Work (2022).

Pete is someone who really walks the talk in finding his own strengths, purpose and sweet spots, and then building “a listening life” out of those. He combines his creativity with his coaching at every opportunity, and so has a reputation for doing authentic work of integrity. 

Pete chats with me about what it’s like to work with great clarity (including a specialist niche with personal significance) and how to gently test small ideas before putting great effort and budget behind them. 

Pete says his books are “aimed at those who are quiet themselves or who know quiet people, love them, and/or work with or manage them”. He identifies as a quiet person, here to support others that identify as quiet. He is an advocate for quiet inclusion and runs workshops to bring quiet people and those who lead/manage them into alignment. You can purchase Pete's books here - https://www.petemosley.com/shop-1

By noticing that there are so many people who tick (quietly) just like he does, Pete has been able to offer coaching services that are specialist and tailored; both to individuals and to their places of work. His insights are useful to any coach who’s thinking about their own speciality and unique offer for clients. 

I hope you enjoy this podcast and get lots of tips from Pete’s wisdom and warmth.

With my best,

Aly

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I’m delighted to share my conversation with Obi Abuchi who is the CEO of CORE Leaders International and author of Leading from Your Core. He is an NLP Practitioner, resilience coach, and a transformational speaker.

Obi talks in his upbeat style, about the path he’s taken from solo coach: evangelical about the wonders of coaching (but with a coaching practice that was sparse for clients..) to a successful business owner who communicates values and mastery in ways that mean people can understand what he does, and the value of working with him.

Obi has written several books, but the latest, Leading From Your Core was written in a way that purposely serves his business growth. Clients can work alone with the book, or engage with Obi inside their business. Interesting and helpful for any coach who’s growing a practice, to hear Obi's story and ponder on what they can learn from his process of writing that book. His step back into employment to hone the craft of consulting, before relaunching, is food for thought for anyone struggling to get their balance in freelancing.

Obi has coached, trained, and worked with leaders in corporate giants like Shell, Deutsche Post DHL, and Tesco. He says he uses his research to help leaders develop a stronger connection to their core, so they can "lead powerfully from the inside out".

We hope you gain lots from this conversation. Inspiration, ideas and practical examples that you can try out in your own coaching business.

Introducing the fabulous Obi Abuchi.

You can follow more on Obi here - https://www.obiabuchi.com/

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Jo Wright is co-founder and CEO of Coaching Culture, based in the UK. Helping organisations build a coaching culture is her mission and passion.

She knew early on in her career as a coach that she wanted to go big: to spread the benefit of coaching to more people more quickly. Hearing her describe the way this purpose has informed and inspired her business creation, is fascinating, and I hope really helpful to anyone thinking about their own coaching business. 

How can we let our passions really flow, to the extent that they help us form our business structure and purpose? Jo was always going to need a team, to achieve what she had in mind. She’s not a solo freelance coach, she’s a CEO, and this is great reflection for others. What are you trying to cause?

Jo now spends much of her time public speaking about the benefits of coaching and interviewing industry leaders for the Coaching Culture magazine and podcast series. I’m so grateful for Jo’s generosity with her time, and am delighted to share our conversation. Enoy!

 Find out more about Jo Wright here - https://www.jowright.com/

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I’ve been following the progress of Toby Mildon since before he took the plunge and started to build his diversity and inclusion consultancy in 2019. Prior to that he held roles at the BBC and Deloitte, so it was fascinating to follow his journey. Speaking to him recently though, I learned so much more about the complexity of his choices. Toby talks in the podcast about the scripts, fears and expectations that added so many layers to his decision to leave the big successful roles. 

Toby trained as a coach and used his coaching in his employed roles. Initially he found it difficult to establish a commercially sound business based on this generalised coaching approach alone, and decided to niche down further as a Diversity and Inclusion Architect. Since then, he has never looked back.

Toby is now a key note speaker, an author and a consultant who works with businesses to devise diversity and inclusion strategies. I felt so privileged to hear the story directly from Toby and hope we share lots of practical tips and ideas that anyone starting a consultancy can lift and use.

Read more about Toby here - https://www.mildon.co.uk/

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Elaine dela Cruz is the co-founder of Project 23, a culture and DEI consultancy, as well as Coaches of Colour, a coaching company whose goal is to offer Black and Brown people the opportunity to work with incredible and professional coaches of colour.

I have followed Elaine’s fantastic work for some time, both through my own interest and commitment to inclusive practice, and also as I’m struck by the clarity of Elaine’s messaging and branding.

In talking to Elaine I found several overlaps with my own experience – A qualified coach, a proud single mum with a sales background, as I was when I started working solo. As part of my journey building A Listening Life, I’m exploring which part of our sales training is still working for us now – and how can we share that information with more coaches, to dispel this dislike for the craft of purposeful, sales conversations.

Elaine is a smart, straight talker, encouraging straight talk in others and I was privileged to spend some time with her exploring commercial ideas that might help you too, if you’re in the business of building A Listening Life. Enjoy!

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Ask anyone who knows Gary Cole in the coaching community and they’ll tell you about a warm, generous and collaborative soul who’ll help anyone he can, in every way he can.

I’m sure his clients would also feel his fantastic support, both in the organisations he serves as founder and leader of the successful team at Archipelo Coaching, and with the individuals he still loves to coach. This is someone who’s a heart-led leader with a big commercial background.

Gary was launching his consultancy at a similar time to me, so I’ve loved following his journey. An early cup of coffee at a coaching conference gave me the chance to get to know Gary a little – and what a privilege it is. Like me, Gary had a previous sales leadership career, so this conversation allows me to explore some of the ways that that background serves him today. Gary was head of online sales for telegraph.co.uk and online sales director at itv.com, so he knows all about launches, commercial strategy and building high performing cultures.

And then in wonderful balance, Gary also has undertaken the study and understanding of Conscious Leadership and Zen Buddhism which helps clients understand the value of vulnerability, courage and life purpose.

We hope you find this conversation useful and if you enjoy it, please leave a review and subscribe! It’s so helpful in letting other coaches know how to find the podcast.

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We’re excited to launch season two with an episode with the unique Catherine Stagg-Macey.

Catherine is an Executive and Team Coach like no other. Holding a line between a heavy hitting woman in tech with all the credentials and smarts – and a colourful creative force of nature who you may find working as a DJ and dance facilitator with 5 Rhythms. Kermit the Frog lives in her house and is sometimes part of her coaching conversations, while at the same time she’s a Coach I’d trust to walk in with me to the most fiery and scary senior lead team conversations where experience, poise and gravitas are the only way.

She shares practical real-life tools and ideas to help you move into freelance work from the big job. Something she did with plenty of wobbles and moments of exhaustion - but wow, is she flying now.

A natural stroy-teller, you can also find Catherine's own podcast Unsaid At Work - link below. Here she describes herself as the Wing Woman to midcareer leaders who are losing their mojo.

I’ve been extremely fortunate to travel along with Catherine, originally as my Coach Supervisor and now peer, thinking partner and friend. Catherine was the first coach I remember who was really able to navigate that challenging path between leadership coaching & therapeutic coaching in the same breath. She helped me to keep my wheels on, in a professional context as I negotiated personal loss while in a leadership role. A reminder of the massive impact of great coaching and supervision.

Since then, I’ve watched and listened as she’s evolved into next level Catherine – a digital presence, a podcast, writer of a regular hilarious newletter. This is a tiny dip into her amazing pool of wisdom as she shares some of her lessons learned and reflections that could be really useful to us all now as we build a coaching business. She’s open about the mistakes made in building her coaching business as well as some ways to make real progress commercially.

You can connect with Catherine on Instagram at @staggmacey and find her on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/staggmacey/ and find her exceptional podcast Unsaid At Work here: https://www.podpage.com/unsaid-at-work/

If you prefer the podcast to be transcribed, you can access that here: https://www.listening-life.co.uk/transcripts

If you enjoy this podcast you can help! Please tell another coach about us; share our content online or kindly leave a review. You can subscribe too, which will help us get found.

Thank you to the team at Psysoft who are supporting Season 2. You can contact them about their discount for coaches through A Listening Life on query@psysoft.com. All info contained within this episode, about 10%% off the certification programme for the EQi 2.0 Certification. Quote LISTEN10 on your email for 10% off.

Welcome back to A Listening Life as we kick off season two.

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Robbie Swale is a leadership coach, author and podcaster whose work focuses on creativity, leading with honour and the craft of coaching. Alongside his direct client work, he has run coaching, training and facilitation for organisations including Moonpig, Deutsche Bank, 64 Million Artists and the University of Edinburgh. He is the host of two podcasts – The Coach’s Journey Podcast and The 12-Minute Method Podcast – and the author of The 12-Minute Method series of books, including How to Start When You’re Stuck and How to Create the Conditions for Great Work.

Welcome to this conversation where I have the privilege of picking Robbie's brains about how he got going in his business, and how he continues to grow. Robbie is a prolific writer and producer of content and yet he says that content creation is a terrible way to grow a business. Have a listen to understand how he sees that - and what keeps him writing and recording.

I love Robbie's reframing of the proposals and pitching to "an opportunity to practice". Every pitch we submit is another chance to practice, he says. So let's get practicing. This is such a powerful way to chase away fear of selling.

Learn more about Robbie at www.robbieswale.com and www.thecoachsjourney.com.

Buy the 12-Minute Method Books at: https://geni.us/12minutemethodseries

Find him on Social Media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbieswale/

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Kirsty Lewis, creator of the School of Facilitation - the SOF Collective, a space for global facilitators and trainers to come together to connect, learn, share and inspire. Kirsty’s keen to point out that she’s not a coach, but I felt certain her story and brand has massive overlaps to the world of coaches and coach facilitators, so I hope you enjoy her take on things.

I’ve followed Kirsty online for quite some time and meeting her did not disappoint. She has so much wisdom to share about how to brand up and make our offers easier to find and buy. 

Kirsty' corporate background in PR & Marketing for a global drinks brand has served her well in bringing those skills to her School of Facilitation. She describes the brave steps she took with relatively little drama..(relative to my tentative steps, that is). This episode is particularly useful if you're imagining an associate style business, and if you're interested to think about brand, in your coaching practice. Look up her lovely brand and connect with her on Instagram. You'll find information about her own podcast and courses there too.

The School of Facilitation - Welcome to School of Facilitation

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schooloffacilitation

Linkedin - Kirsty Lewis - Founder - The School of Facilitation | LinkedIn

If you enjoy this podcast you can help! Please tell another coach about us; share our content online or kindly leave a review. You can subscribe too, which will help us get found.

Thank you to the team at Psysoft who are supporting Season 2. You can contact them about their discount for coaches through A Listening Life on query@psysoft.com. All info contained within this episode, for 10%% off the certification programme for the EQi 2.0 Certification and EQi Extra. Quote LISTEN10 on your email for 10% off.

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Lucy Widdowson is an accredited executive and team coach, director of Performance Edge, a lead tutor on team coaching at Henley Business School, a UK board member for team coaching for the ICF, and a published author. Lucy is what I would describe as a real grown-up, research-based, accredited, established organisational coaching professional. She writes books based in research and produces tools and data to back up her work.

She's a great example of a coach who goes first for the long-term quality of the coaching and the relationships, and this leads to business growth. The rigour and robust attachment to the calibre produces a deep competence and trust for her growing long -term business success.

Lucy focuses on doing a great job first, then the clients keep coming. Here she is, the fabulous Lucy Widowson.

Find Lucy online here:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7155875600581214208/

https://www.icfaustralasia.com/product/icf-australasia-southern-states-team-coaching/ 

https://ukicf.regfox.com/uk-icf-systemic-team-coaching-series

If you enjoy this podcast you can help! Please tell another coach about us; share our content online or kindly leave a review. You can subscribe too, which will help us get found.

Thank you to the team at Psysoft who are supporting Season 2 by offering 10% off the certification programme for the EQi 2.0 Certification and EQi Extra. Quote LISTEN10 on your email for 10% off. You can contact them about their discount for coaches on query@psysoft.com.

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Ngozi Weller is a distinguished mental health & wellbeing expert, an accredited coach and the founder and director of culture change consultancy, Aurora Inc. With a passion for promoting positive workplace wellbeing, Ngozi has dedicated the latter part of her career to empowering individuals on their journey to optimal mental health in the workplace. Through engaging talks and workshops, Ngozi inspires and encourages her audience to cultivate healthy changes in their work environment & unlock their full potential.

She talks with such warmth and openness about her own crisis moments that have led her tobuild atruly purpose-led business, aiming to stop other people having to suffer the same experience with burn out that she had. She talks about finding that purpose, and then finding exactly the right person to co-found with – a trusted cousin with a shared set of values. There’s also some lovely focus on perfectionism and its inherent risk in self-employment.

Thank you so much Ngozi and welcome to returning and new listeners. You can connect with Ngozi here:

Web www.aurorawellnessgroup.co.uk   

Email Ngozi@aurorawellnessgroup.co.uk

Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wellbeing-rebellion/id1675517581

Linkedin https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ngozi-weller-aurora

If you enjoy this podcast you can help! Please tell another coach about us; share our content online or kindly leave a review. You can subscribe too, which will help us get found.

Thank you to the team at Psysoft who are supporting Season 2 by offering 10% off the certification programme for the EQi 2.0 Certification and EQi Extra. Quote LISTEN10 on your email for 10% off. You can contact them about their discount for coaches on query@psysoft.com.

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Yannick Jacob is an Existential Life and Leadership Coach (MA), a Positive Psychologist (MSc), a Coach Trainer & Supervisor (DIP) and a Mediator (SPCP Dispute Resolution). He’s the Program Director of the Accredited Certificate in Integrative Coaching (ACIC) at the School of Positive Transformation (for which he’s gathered many of the world’s most influential coaches and pioneers) and he was the Programme Leader of the MSc Coaching Psychology at the University of East London (2015-18). Yannick is part of the teaching faculties at The School of Life, Animas Centre for Coaching and the International Centre for Coaching Supervision. His love for coaching, positive existential philosophy and personal development is contagious and he loves to challenge people to think, learn & grow, to explore the BIG questions and to appreciate the whole spectrum of what life has to offer.

It’s my great good fortune to have chance to chat to Yannick about his commercial journey in building his coaching practice. I’d love a whole second episode about the actual WORK of existential coaching, but for now, I’m grateful to be able to share this episode with you to enjoy. 

Thank you so much Yannick and welcome to returning and new listeners. You can connect with Yannick here:

Web https://gocoachinglab.com/

Book https://www.routledge.com/An-Introduction-to-Existential-Coaching-How-Philosophy-Can-Help-Your-Clients/Jacob/p/book/9780367139995

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannick-jacob-3524461a/

If you enjoy this podcast you can help! Please tell another coach about us; share our content online or kindly leave a review. You can subscribe too, which will help us get found.

Thank you to the team at Psysoft who are supporting Season 2 by offering 10% off the certification programme for the EQi 2.0 Certification and EQi Extra. Quote LISTEN10 on your email for 10% off. You can contact them about their discount for coaches on query@psysoft.com.

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Helen Isacke founded the Trusted Coach Directory and is the author of Soft Skills for Strong Leaders as well as a Master NLP practitioner, and has trained in a wide range of psychometric profiling tools. Helen is also a Leadership Coach and qualified Supervisor.

I'm really grateful to have Helen Isacke as our guest on the podcast to talk about all the great work she's doing to support the coach community. Helen's site provides stacks of development opportunities for members, so its benefit stretches way beyond an internet search. Visit www.trustedcoachdirectory.com for more information.

Thank you so much Helen and welcome to returning and new listeners. You can connect with Helen here:

Website: www.trustedcoachdirectory.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenisacke/

Mentioned resources within this podcast -

www.coachesofcolour.com

www.worktripp.com

https://www.lifecoach-directory.org.uk/

If you enjoy this podcast you can help! Please tell another coach about us; share our content online or kindly leave a review. You can subscribe too, which will help us get found.

Thank you to the team at Psysoft who are supporting Season 2 by offering 10% off the certification programme for the EQi 2.0 Certification and EQi Extra. Quote LISTEN10 on your email for 10% off. You can contact them about their discount for coaches on query@psysoft.com.

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Welcome to the final episode of A Listening Life for the time being.

This is my conversation with the awesome Annie Lee. A Coach, a supervisor and a tutor of coaches, I’ve enjoyed watching Annie step out of her successful corporate safety into a shining example of heart and purpose-led business building in running her coaching consultancy and also her business Nature’s blueprint.

Annie seems to become more whole, more colourful and more clear on what’s she here to do, with every year that goes by.

I loved this conversation about how to embrace and design your unique stance in the coaching world, whether some may call that niching or some may call it an approach.

I hope you really enjoy this final episode for now as I head off to build my own coaching stance as I head back to university for my own next chapter of stepping into my heart-led future on purpose. Thank you for listening so far, and see you in the next chapter, however that may look.

Find Annie on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/annie-lee-coach/ and on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/annielee_coach

If you enjoy this podcast you can help! Please tell another coach about us; share our content online or kindly leave a review. You can subscribe too, which will help us get found.

Thank you to the team at Psysoft who are supporting Season 2 by offering 10% off the certification programme for the EQi 2.0 Certification and EQi Extra. Quote LISTEN10 on your email for 10% off. You can contact them about their discount for coaches on query@psysoft.com.

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