learning to not be afraid of failing….
It’s interesting how frightening it can be to leave a well paid job and set up your own business, especially when you have never done it before! That was me back in 2007, when I left my comfortable Managerial Recruitment role and set up my first Life Coaching business which I called ‘Centricity Coaching’.
I had never appreciated all that goes into setting up your own business! Oh my goodness, what a baptism of fire it turned out to be. I had never realised the challenge of having to take on multiple roles that is required to run your own company - the new business person, the accountant, the sales person, the PA as well as the Coach! I was good at the coaching bit, but I found it so hard pitching myself to new business owners and negotiating fees and then delivering the coaching myself, it all felt messy and totally uncomfortable. It wasn’t until 15 years later that I realised I was aiming my coaching at totally the wrong target audience – middle aged men running SMEs. What on earth did I have in common with these gentlemen? Nothing really, other than I had delivered recruitment solutions for them in my last role.
I have felt imposter syndrome at several points in my life but never more acutely than when I was coaching these middle aged business owners. What could I offer these high flyers? What had I achieved that would make me credible to deliver business coaching to them? So, after 9 months, whilst I was successful enough and managed to continue paying the mortgage and my bills, I closed up shop and found a position, back in employment, working for one of my old Media Agency clients.
It was a hard decision to come to and one I procrastinated over several months. There was such a song and a dance when I left to set up my business, what would people now think of me? Probably the same as I thought of myself… a failure. But really what would have been the point to carry on? Other than to prove a point to myself that I was capable of setting up a business, but the trade off was that I was scared, miserable and it would have only become more burdensome. So, when people asked, what happened? I was honest and told them it was way harder than I thought. I shared my fears of not being capable to do all the elements required of me in running a business and that I wanted the security of being paid by someone else to do a job. You know what, people understood, very few of my friends had ventured off to set up on their own and very few have since. So I know I did the right thing.
15 years later as I set up Cecilia Garnett Coaching, I feel much more equipped to run my own business. I feel more confident as a person, more confident as a coach and more confident in my ability to ask the right questions. My fear has dissipated and like most new businesses, with time, if you are delivering something that people want and delivering it well, the recommendations will come. It’s taken me probably about 1 ½ years to get to this point.
I’m so eternally grateful for being able to follow my passion to help young people, school leavers and grads prepare for entering the competitive and sometimes confusing job market of today. Working with these young people led me to develop relationships with their mothers, who gradually turned to me, after their grown up children were securing roles in careers they were excited to start and requested that I help them, too, with returning to the job market after having taken time out to raise a family and, inevitably, that has meant a change in career. This natural evolution of my target audience has been inspiring, especially as I have met so many wonderful women, hard working mothers who all have possessed, in some way or form, a lack of self-confidence that is so wrong and so frustrating to witness because often it is this lack of self-confidence that has prevented them for moving forward or taking that next step. When you look back on your life, more people will say “I just wished I’d done that” or “been a bit more brave” or “just given it a go”. The fear of failure and what other people think can paralyse the best of us.
It is one of the greatest parts of my job working with these amazing women to help them reset and remind themselves what they have achieved so far in their lives, what new skills they have learned that should never be taken for granted and give them a chance to think about themselves and what it is they really want.
The way I coach has evolved too and I’ve learned that the best place to start when coaching someone about their career, is to begin from a place of ‘strength’. It is such an honour and a privilege to be let in to these women’s lives, have them share their vulnerabilities with me and me be able to help breathe back confidence into themselves by helping them identify their strengths and natural talents. Because, let’s face it, if we were 100% clear about our individual strengths and ended up doing more of what we are good at on a day to day basis, we’d be much happier, more productive and we’d enjoy our jobs more!
So, here’s a task for you….see if you can write a list of strengths that you possess? Think about your soft skills, your hard skills, what you enjoy, what you have heard people say you are good at? Think about coaches you’ve worked with, friends, family, clients, customers, team members and previous bosses. Flesh out that list and then highlight the ones that resonate with you most then, be brave, take that next step and find a job that needs those qualities and talents and go for it! There’s nothing to lose, just everything to gain!