Turning my hand to be an executive coach in 2013 was challenging since coaching was not as well known as it is today. The fact that I was only 22-years-old at the time did not help. I was telling myself that if I want to be a great coach at the age of 30, I must start now because things take time.

In a few days, I will turn 31 and here is my coaching story.

Before I got my first certificate in Sept 2013, I had to have an attendance of at least 80% of 10 monthly workshops, complete 3 research-based assignments, and have completed 30 hours of executive coaching with post-coaching reflective practice. The first coaching client of mine was found through a Gumtree ad, his wife was looking for furniture online, but she stumbled upon my invite to free coaching, and there he was. We had weekly sessions with a career and personal life focus. I was so excited / anxious that on one occasion when he did not confirm his attendance, I spent the hours before the scheduled session in the toilet. I had a near-death experience thinking he would not come. I managed to force myself to turn up to the meeting spot anyway, and my client was there. All happy for the session.

In 2013 I still had 1 year more at university, my dissertation was coaching-related and I tried to keep myself financially afloat by working in a local coffee shop. I did not know how to market myself, how to find clients, how to make my life’s work a paid work. I had good coaching foundations but not business foundations and I did not even know what I did not know. ‘Join Association for Coaching, volunteer, get involved’ - that was the encouragement from Dr. David Tee. He was my dissertation supervisor, coaching supervisor, mentor, and the instructor of the ILM7 course who let me shadow him. Dave is the person who opened the door to the coaching world to me. (Dave, I will be forever grateful).

Following his advice I joined the Association for Coaching Operations Team to help with organising the 5th International Conference,  ‘Journey to Coaching Mastery’, in Budapest (2014). That is how I started a wonderful friendship with Alex Szabo, got involved with some research activities for Acuity Coaching, joined coaching training by MOE foundation and volunteered as a coach for Good People Connect and Spark!’s project Giving Time. My life felt amazing, but financially I was struggling. I sold a few packages of coaching sessions here and there, delivered coaching ad-hoc and even coached other coaches, but I could not understand why nearly all of my chemistry meetings and first coaching conversations turn into ‘hey are you interested in me’ kind of meet ups with middle-aged men. I was too innocent and pure-hearted to recognise sexual attraction that resulted from the connecting, deep conversations about what is important to the person. I was telling myself that through our conversations they connect to their highest self, they feel understood, recognised and feel love within and since I am there physically, they unconsciously take those feelings and attribute them to me. I did not know what to do about that. I faced misunderstanding after misunderstanding, maybe because I was that young, passionate about coaching lady, making them feel great about themselves.

Turning coaching into a business turned out to be an unassailable challenge to me. I tried to find business mentors, however, as I was learning to untangle the types of appropriate relationships to have with mentors, I lost the relationships with those who could show me the way forward. The most epic fail was to listen to a fellow coach and disclose my infatuation to my mentor at the time, an accomplished sportsman, investor and a public figure. I felt defeated with the crushed dreams which added to my already overwhelming sense of disconnection with reality. Was that the NLP training I went through, books on the power of subconscious mind, energy and vibration related content I was immersed into and other so called woo-woo stuff that messed me up so much? Or maybe I was not grounded even before, until life kicked the woo-woo out of me? When I re-watch some of my early recordings on YouTube I hardly recognise myself. I was so high on life, so child-like that it makes me cringe. But that’s how I was. I believe that was the airy-fairy coaching journey stage that I had to go through.  I was not aware of me giving any reason to anyone to feel threatened. I think I was lacking recognition for adult relationships dynamics, I was still connecting to people at that innocent child-like level. Connecting like human to human, like two children on the beach who just met and connected with no regard to being a boy or a girl.

Eventually, I recovered. I used both coaching and therapy to reinvent myself, to derive learnings that empowered me as a coaching practitioner and I went back to self-employed coaching practice. In the meantime, I developed a passion for system and process improvements in a business setting and today I live and work in Norway, as a business analyst. Coaching remains my great passion. Maybe in the workplace, I will use my coaching skills more and more over time.

The idea of solo entrepreneurship is not as enticing as it was years ago; I think I have passed that stage. If I were to tell you what could work for a new coach on the market it would be:

• Write regular posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, create Snaps on Snapchat that tell others of your goal to gain hours of professional coaching so you have the foundation for further certification and perhaps accreditation (for recognition of your experience and presence in a professional coaching body directory, that builds credibility);

• Put a financial value to your coaching session, a symbolic £5 for a 60-90 min session. Just so that you get used to getting paid and learn to accept money. Explain that to your clients, transparency is key in building trust and if you are not trustworthy - I can’t help you;

• Organise the sessions with those who respond to your adverts (it is too early to say with whom you have great chemistry and with whom you don’t. You will need more experience to see how that translates into results and which type of coaching you resonate the most with so let go of niching (no specific clients, no specific problem that you help to solve, get experience to figure out the patterns later);

• With each coachee create a living coaching agreement in which they and you will state your expectations, boundaries, and terms of service - by that point I trust you follow the coaching ethics i.e. by Association for Coaching, EMCC, APECS or ICF;

• Give every client a link to a google form with feedback questions after every coaching session, ask in the online form what they liked and didn’t like, what is the take away for them, would they attend the next session, would they recommend you etc.;

• Reflect in writing after every session, reflect on what you did well and what you want to improve and why;

• Write posts in the channels mentioned in the first point, this time regarding supervision. Get a supervisor who is an experienced coach. Explain what you charge and how you work; there are plenty of certified coaches out there who do want to help you in your journey, just because they can. Idea for you, modify it as you need to: hold a session with a supervisor after every 5 sessions with the clients. Pay the supervisor £5 for each session just so that you get used to paying for the coaching supervision;

• Continue sessions, reflective practice, supervision, analysis of the feedback and collect testimonials from the form you get back from the clients. Keep posting those in your social media so more people can find you;

• Get a normal job or keep the job you have, let coaching be your creative outlet and not the source of income. Why? Because of the conflict of interests. If your income depends on the clients you get, you would not be willing to work yourself out of the coaching job because the point should be to help people to be self-sufficient and become the best coaches for themselves, to carry on without you. In the meantime, collect the experience in coaching and whenever possible incorporate your skills into your profession, make coaching part of your job.

I arrived at the version of the high-level action plan above only now, after years of being like a blind child in the fog. But currently, in practice, I am at the last bullet point, and it feels liberating.

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Magdalena Maggie Dobosz - ILM7 certified executive coach since 2013, accredited with Association for Coaching (2015-2019). NLP Practitioner with BSc Psychology and MBA degrees from UK universities. Creates personal development content for analytical deep thinkers. Lives near Stavanger, Norway.