I’ve become something so much more
With the support of the TCI community, Kristy-Ann was able to share her story and open up to vulnerability.
She is now a #1 best selling author with a successful coaching and therapy business
With the support of the TCI community, Kristy-Ann was able to share her story and open up to vulnerability.
Through her learnings she has now built a sustainable coaching and therapy practice as well as become a #1 best selling author.
"I knew that if I surrounded myself with the right proximity that ‘I'm possible’. You are possible. We're all possible, with the right support and enablement around us"
How long have you been a student for at TCI?
I've been in the proximity since late 2017. I did my Foundations of Coaching Success in August, 2017.
Where were you at in your life when you decided I'm going to call up The Coaching Institute and I'm going to do a life coaching course.
I've been a certified coach since the end of 2014/2015. However I found that I was thriving or had thrived for several years in the achievement ambition driven corporate space.
I got to a point where it was just lacking, meaning and fulfillment. So I really started to explore, the feasibility of transitioning out of that corporate workspace into founding my own coaching and therapy practice.
Whilst I had qualifications, certifications, competency in and around my coaching and my therapy capabilities, I had no idea how to run or start a business.
A point of difference that TCI offered was both the coaching aspect and the business aspects that complimented it.
So in my mind, I felt that with those coaching aspects, I could consolidate and integrate the things I know and add more frameworks so I could really expand my repertoire.
But also learn how to build a sustainable coaching and therapy practice. So that was really the driver for connecting and reaching out to TCI.
Did you ever have a moment where you were doubting whether you could do it?
Yes, but then I had this innate knowingness, and I've actually just co-authored a book and my section is called ‘An Inner Knowingness’.
I knew that if I surrounded myself with the right proximity that ‘I'm possible’. You are possible. We're all possible, with the right support and enablement around us.
So I really did a lot of reflection. And what I identified was that I was naive to think that I had impact, that I had influence.
I was a leader in a team of nine in a department of 180 in an ASX listed company of 3,600 people. And my ripple effect in essence was actually quite small.
I was really linear in my thinking, in terms of the impact I could have. And even in joining TCI, i was quite linear to think that I'd have this one-on-one coaching and therapy practice and that I’d have the privilege of transforming lives, one conversation at a time.
There are so many vehicles now to make a difference, to create impact, and I've expanded that; doing the one-to-one coaching, the one to many book publication development of intellectual property.
There's infinite possibilities if you're open to exploring those and being vulnerable and taking risks.
What is it that you do at the moment?
So I have my coaching and therapy practice, which does a lot of introspection and transformational based coaching.
I also have a speaker coaching practice where I've worked with over 3000 participants. Where we home in and refine their message and amplify it with confidence and certainty. So they can deliver it with impact, with influence and authority.
Essentially our pitch for example, is a lead magnet. So if we can’t clearly and succinctly articulate who we are, what we do and the problem we solve in the world. That's a missed opportunity one conversation at a time. So I'm really passionate about that stuff.
I used to have a fear of public speaking, that social anxiety. I worked with leaders, executives, and their teams for many years but the change to it being about me and my story was very different. I had to learn and adjust.
So I'm really passionate about what I do in that speaker space, in that personal empowerment space.
From a coaching and therapy space, a lot of my clients come to me with unresolved negative emotion, with fears, trauma from their past.
I work with them to really remove those interferences and to build strategies and resources for sustainable change to manage their mindset, to become familiar with the triggers and the like. Cause awareness is 95% of the journey.
What’s been your before and after from this journey?
Wow. You know, I haven't become something else. I've become something so much more.
And what I mean by that is that 2018 was a profound year for me. It was the first time I shared my story in a public arena. It was so cathartic, it was so transformational and it made me realize the story that I'd been telling myself or the meaning I'd attached to that story was fuelled with grief, with loss, with pain, with shame, with sacrifice.
When I shared that story it was received as inspiring and empowering. It's kind of a ‘Huh’ moment and it made me realise the power of vulnerability.
Vulnerability creates relatability, vulnerability creates a likability. My coaching world opened up in that moment because people resonated with my story.
And now people say, if she can do it, I can do it too. If you've had this transformational change, this awakening, this growth. It really resonated with people.
What do you say to people who think they haven’t got their stuff together and use that as a reason not to pursue coaching?
You don't have to be an experienced coach to start, you don't have to have your stuff together. Where you are is perfect.
Something that was like a resounding message that I often shared back to myself in moments of doubt is that just starting from wherever you are, is perfect. The reality is that your needs, will be taken care of along the way.
I've had growth. I've had insights, learnings, and reflections through client sessions.
What would you say to someone who's sitting there thinking, I think I want to do this, I want to join the school, I want to become a coach?
Hands down don't ruminate for another moment. This is a community that are jumping in to support you.
There's the wow team, which is the student support team. And beyond that, the other coaches, facilitators and mentors, that have numbers of years of experience.
And the thing that I've loved about the journey is that there's always someone ahead of me. They are inspiring me to aspire to have what they have, to have achieved, what they have done.
You are never, ever alone. And with other schools it takes significantly longer even if you are resourceful, but the amount of resources here through the student online learning platform, the peers, the mentoring... for me, community is everything.
That is the thing that drives me, engages me most about TCI.
"Wow. You know, I haven't become something else. I've become something so much more"
