Daemon Career Coach – Celebrating a Year

Birthing The Daemon Career Coach: Beltane 2015: One Year On. 

During an interview last week I was asked “who was actually part of my business?’. The simple answer is of course, that as a sole trader, this business entity is ‘Just Me’. The real answer however has so much more depth and breadth. My first year of trading has been successful in ways I could never have anticipated. I adore my work with clients. I am astounded that I get well paid to do work I love. I revel in my growing authority in my niche. It has taken me 43 years to become an overnight success. And I have not done this alone.

The Joy of Professional Development:

There is a much longer thread across time and experience that joins this career path together. There are large numbers of individuals and whole teams that underpin this career coaching practice: My love of empowering people began in my early twenties when I became a Team Leader for the Princes Trust. I witnessed, over and over, the profound impact that ‘opportunity’, presented compassionately to individuals, could have on lives. The challenges we confronted together enabled them see themselves from a totally new perspective. From this place literally anything was possible, both for Team Members and for me. The doors of opportunity flew open and these people went right through them out into the world to do extraordinary things. This was a taste of a juicy and satisfying fulfilling work I have never forgotten.

Unfulfilled Professional Potential:

Then we entered the frustrating fifteen years of my career. The years filled with what I felt were failures. The years where I quit roles that didn’t quite fit, keeping moving. The years where I felt my confidence being corroded in the corporate world as I sought over and over the role or organisation where I could feel satisfaction. This too fuels my coaching practice now, because now I know that with the right support, a career path does not have to be so painful. These people and places, these bruising or unsatisfying experiences were a process of elimination. A process where I was choosing what I did and did not want. Unbeknownst to me, this was the gaining of the skills I needed to take forward to my future. This was the process of my firmly jettisoning the working cultures and protocols that suffocated. My one wish was that there had been a way of knowing this bruising bit of the journey was productive. I needed something to help me realise during that time, just how valuable this process was. As someone who was told I ‘could do anything’, but, having no idea what that ‘thing’ was. I felt deeply distressed and inadequate as I saw my peers gain status and good wages whilst I felt I ‘wasted’ chances that came my way. I tried them and they weren’t my thing. How could I find my thing? I despaired. Little did I know I was working my way towards my real professional purpose.

All Change:

Late thirties, supported by my tolerant husband, I retrained as a Coach, had a family, added to my skills by qualifying as a Clinical Supervisor, did a business start-up course. Then I put everything to one side. Instead of having a long term goal, my usual way of working; “Plan where you will be and race towards the point, only to find it wasn’t what I wanted after all.”, I simply began to coach. I offered my services as a Coach and a Supervisor and was astounded at what happened. People with whom I had worked in other capacities, during the last 20 years, began to ask if they could work with me. Whilst individuals sought coaching for a wide variety of reasons, a pattern began to emerge. These individuals too were bright, were capable of ‘doing anything’, yet could not seem to find the career path that would satisfy them. These individuals too were bruised, and disheartened in their work experiences. These individuals too could not realise, or perhaps could no longer even recognise, the potential they had been told that they had. These people could not find their ‘Thing’! This is how I became The Daemon Career Coach. I could mirror people’s brilliance right back at them. I could enable them harness all their previous experiences, the skills they had gained, and, I could enable them refine just where they wanted to anchor this unique resource. Very swiftly, with the right support, each person’s past could inform the foundations of their very firm and productive professional future.

Gratitude:

This was the work I was seeking. I had found my “Thing” ! Suddenly I was launched into business. Suddenly I was not just associates of the past that were approaching me for career coaching, it was friends of theirs, it was people all over the country, it was individuals across the Atlantic. Suddenly I was designing websites, building business plans, seeking mentors, doing tax returns and marketing plans. I was tweeting and blogging and publishing and I was enthused. So it has not been ‘Just Me’ that is in this business. I have needed all the brilliant and patient and tolerant people who have educated me about all the other aspects of business that essentially leaves me free to practice. So thank you to all you experts who have so generously shared your expertise with me. You know who you are. Thank you to my amazing personal network. You have held my wobbles and celebrated successes. A very big thank you to all the businesses and experiences of the last 20 years that enabled me to identify that which I did not want to do. You have helped me refine just what it is that I do desire in my work.

What I do is I coach:

The work nourishes me as much as it nourishes my clients. together, we ‘still’ time in order to ensure it is all lining right up and that my client is really listening to themselves and what their past is telling them. This way we pause together so that they can hear also what pulls them forward to their authentic professional future. In this way individuals can swiftly get right back out into the world in order to realise their fulfilling career ambitions.
This was the birth of The Daemon Career Coach; The organic, joyous, collision of all that had gone before in my existence. It all came together in the blink of an eye and became purposeful; My professional development, in service of the professional development of others.
Rebecca can be found at www.daemoncareercoach.co.uk