Introduction to Chrysalis Coaching

A big welcome to all of you.

I am very excited to start blogging now that I have chosen to change my career in a very dynamic manner some thirty-plus years after finishing full-time education.

The purpose of this blog is to introduce myself to you and to spotlight a few considerations around a career change.

There have been a few quite sizeable challenges and considerations for me in making the very exciting conscious decision to become a coach.  A life coach, a business coach, and a career coach. 

What better way to highlight some of the deliberation areas in making a career change than to use me as an example?

As a consultant finance director at this point in time, it would have been very wrong of me to not weigh up the financial considerations.  Re-training at any point in your career is highly likely to create a dip in your disposable income for a while and perhaps permanently.

I chose to maintain an element of financial stability by continuing to offer finance director consultancy for approximately twenty-five hours per week.  That provided me with peace of mind and a guaranteed income every month and importantly helped to pay for the, not inconsequential, training costs of becoming a coach and yet gave me the space to embark on my new venture.

The training that I have undertaken has been amazing.  Do your homework and take the advice of others who are training or are qualified in the field that you wish to move into.  It saves a significant amount of time searching the web and you have faith and confidence in your education providers from day one. 

For myself, zoom training was professionally conducted by two course leaders from Co-Active Coaching whilst myself and approximately twenty-five other course attendees challenged ourselves and pushed our self-development further than we had pushed it in years and possibly ever.  The upsides were numerous.  There was the immense feeling of achievement as one topic after another progressed from feeling rather alien to something that I knew could bring positive change to many lives.  There was the closeness that grew between the new group of like-minded course attendees as we supported each other along the journey and the new knowledge that bought changes to my own life as well as being instrumental to my future coaching clients.

The next challenge for those of us who are not oozing with self-confidence i.e., most humans living on the planet, was the whole ‘selling yourself’ challenge.  Drawing upon all the self-esteem that you can muster and reaching out to the world to invite them to work with you can seem a little daunting.  Hold strong against any self-doubts as you launch yourself into a whole new area of work and push yourself to ask clients if they would like to continue on a paying basis after a sample session.  Now there’s a challenge in the early days!

Another challenge for my very structured mindset was having to arrive on a Zoom call with a client with literally NO structured preparation. No excel spreadsheets prepared in advance, no knowledge of what the topic would be, and the need to go with the flow 100% of the time and so now drawing upon my holistic skillset. Wow – that was odd for a while but for me personally it is a great way to work.

What I can say with confidence is that I am loving the challenges, celebrating the successes, and above all enjoying my work and looking forward to working with many new individuals.

Life isn’t long enough.  Let’s seize every moment and have fun along the way!

Angela