Building My Coaching Practice — Again

Building a coaching practice for the second time is teaching me something I thought I already knew: experience doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. Twenty years after first becoming an entrepreneur, I find myself building again — only this time, I’m not starting with an empty toolbox. I’m bringing years of coaching experience, thought leadership, perspective and a much clearer understanding of how I want to work and live. Still, some days it feels remarkably like starting from ground zero.

I first started my coaching practice in 2005 after spending a year planning my transition with the support of a government grant. At the time, I was leaving behind an established corporate career and stepping into an entirely different way of working.

That transition also gave me the opportunity to travel, creating some distance from my former corporate life while I began imagining how I wanted to work and live differently. The next two years were a period of fundamentals. I was completing my coach certification and building my ICF credentials through hours of paid personal coaching while also working part-time on a marketing consulting contract with a former corporate client.

Financially, it meant adjusting my lifestyle to a reduced income. Yet I remember feeling optimistic and revitalized. My passion, determination and eagerness to build something meaningful mattered more to me than the additional income I had enjoyed before.

Learning How to Build a Coaching Business

Becoming a coach and becoming an entrepreneur turned out to be two different learning curves.

One of my biggest lessons was patience.

Initially, I had unrealistic expectations about how quickly I could build a successful coaching business. I was taking action, but I also had to learn when to adapt, when to course correct and when to simply give something enough time to work.

Conversations with established entrepreneurs helped change my perspective. They reminded me that sustainable businesses rarely emerge fully formed.

Managing my expectations became a turning point.

Over time, the practice grew. So did I.

By 2020, I had created the kind of lifestyle business I once envisioned. I could work approximately half the time while earning what I had earned in my corporate career. More importantly, that freedom gave me room to continue investing in my own personal and professional development.

Along the way, I also had the privilege of partnering with talented people and seeing exceptional leadership programs designed and delivered across every level of organizations. Working with Fortune 500 and high-growth companies gave me an inside view of leadership and performance optimization that continued to deepen my own thinking.

Yet the part I valued most remained deeply human.

I loved witnessing breakthroughs with the leaders I coached. It was an honour to listen to their stories, help them connect dots they hadn’t connected before and watch those insights contribute to a more fulfilling personal and professional life.

When Life Asked Me to Pause

Sometimes we consciously change direction. Other times, life changes the conditions around us and asks us to reconsider what matters.

In the years leading up to 2020, I had continued running my business while going through treatment and recovery from early-stage breast cancer and simultaneously facing my father’s terminal illness and eventual death.

The flexibility I had created in my coaching practice helped me navigate those years. Nevertheless, by 2020 I was physically and emotionally exhausted.

I needed a pause.

As the world itself came to a standstill, something about that moment mirrored back what I already knew. I wrapped up my remaining client work and consciously chose to take a sabbatical.

Rather than immediately deciding what came next, I gave myself room to heal and recalibrate.

That space brought perspective. It brought lightness. It also made room for introspection and creativity in ways that continuing to push forward probably wouldn’t have allowed.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t need to know exactly what I was building next.

Reinvention Doesn’t Always Mean Becoming Someone Else

During my sabbatical, I explored other possibilities.

Interior decorating was one of them. I wondered whether I might take my experience in coaching and apply it in an entirely different direction. However, once I experienced the work more closely and spoke with people in the industry, I knew.

It didn’t align.

It simply didn’t feel right.

Sometimes discovering what doesn’t fit is just as valuable as discovering what does.

Eventually, I found myself being drawn back toward coaching — but not toward recreating the coaching practice I had before.

My questions had changed.

What did success look like now?

What did I want my life to feel like in this next chapter?

How did I want to use my time?

And how could I take the body of work I had already created and use it to reach and empower more people?

Those questions began shaping a very different vision.

Building an Online Coaching Business From the Ground Up

Today, I’m turning years of thought leadership and coaching experience into something designed to reach people more broadly and globally.

In some ways, I have tremendous experience behind me.

In other ways, I am a beginner again.

Building an online coaching business means learning different ways of communicating, creating and connecting. It means understanding social media, technology and AI. It also means discovering how to turn ideas, frameworks and intellectual property developed over many years into useful online experiences and products.

Perhaps the hardest part has been familiar: waiting for traction.

When you’re putting work into the world and the results aren’t immediate, it’s easy to wonder whether you’re doing the right things.

Then I have to remind myself of the lesson I learned the first time around.

Building takes time.

Course correcting is part of the process.

Experience hasn’t made me immune to impatience or uncertainty. Instead, it has given me evidence that I can move through both.

Building Differently This Time

What has surprised me most about this reinvention is how much creative possibility I see in it.

I don’t want to return to a calendar filled with in-person coaching sessions. Instead, I want greater space to create, write, speak, mentor and develop ideas and products that can continue working beyond the hours I personally spend delivering them.

Interestingly, different parts of my life are beginning to come together through this work.

Design. Wellness. Writing. Technology. Coaching.

Years ago, I tried to find a way to integrate coaching into design.

Now I’m integrating design into coaching.

That reversal makes me smile because this version of my business increasingly feels like an expression of me as a whole.

Perhaps that’s also why I hesitate to call this chapter semi-retirement. I’m not disengaging from work or life. If anything, I feel fully engaged in the vision. I’m simply choosing to use my time differently.

Success today isn’t about filling every available hour.

It’s about designing my life so that how I create, contribute and live reflects who I am as a whole.

Why I’m Building Again

There are still moments when I question why I’m doing all of this again, particularly when I’m waiting to see traction.

Then something reminds me.

Mentoring coaches going through certification has been one of those reminders. At this stage of my career, I want to help multiply the positive impact coaching can have.

I also want to creatively leverage the thought leadership I’ve accumulated over the years so it can reach more people than I could ever coach individually.

One allows me to help emerging coaches shine their own light and share their purpose.

The other allows me to share what I’ve learned.

Both feel worthwhile.

And both bring me back to something I’ve learned about reinvention: sometimes we explore other paths only to discover that we’re being called back to something we’ve known all along.

You can run, but perhaps you can’t hide from the essence of who you are.

Starting Again Is Not Starting Over

When I started my coaching practice in 2005, I had to learn patience, agility and the willingness to course correct.

Twenty years later, I’m learning them again.

The environment has changed. The tools have changed. I’ve changed.

Yet building something meaningful still requires the humility to experiment without knowing exactly how everything will unfold.

Starting again doesn’t erase what came before.

We carry the experience, wisdom, mistakes, successes and self-knowledge with us. At the same time, we have to remain willing to become beginners in unfamiliar territory.

Maybe that’s what reinvention really asks of us.

Not to discard who we’ve been, but to bring everything we’ve learned forward and allow it to take a new form.

If you’re navigating your own next chapter, you don’t necessarily need to know exactly where it will lead. Pay attention to what continues to call you forward, what no longer fits and what makes you feel more fully yourself.

Then take one aligned step.

Sometimes the path forward isn’t starting over at all.

It’s starting again — differently.

Reflecting on Your Own Next Chapter

If you’re navigating a transition of your own, you may be reconsidering what success, work and life look like for you now.

The LITE Up Alignment Quiz can help you reflect on where you feel aligned, where something may be asking for your attention, and what you may want to explore next.

Take the 2-minute LITE Up Alignment Quiz and discover where your energy is asking for attention.