I was so excited to read about Sarah and her coaching journey. This is our first interview with a service-based business and there’s plenty of golden nuggets. Many of the challenges that Sarah identifies when it comes to our careers really resonated, mirroring circumstances I too went through - if only I had known about someone like Sarah at the time!

I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did …

Sarah Marshall Life Career Coach Interview With Tomorrow Today Founder Zara Speke — I’m Sarah, a Life and Career Coach.

I help women who are feeling stuck and lacking a sense of clarity and purpose in their career, to find fulfilment, direction and a passion for what they do, so that they can start living life authentically on their own terms.

In my previous career, I worked as a Business Analyst on transformation and change projects, so I bring a lot of my past experience into my role as a coach but translating it into personal transformation and change. I was on my own career change journey for a significant part of my 20s and early 30s so can completely empathise with people who come to me for coaching.

How did you discover coaching? And what was the trigger that made you want to train and pursue coaching?

I experienced coaching at the start of my own career change journey back in 2017 and gained so much from it. I signed up to do the training course as was recommended by someone I met at a breathwork festival who was on a similar path to me. He put me in touch with the Co-Founder of Mindful Talent, Alister Gray, and after speaking to him, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. I actually didn’t plan to become a Coach when I signed up to the course, I just wanted to learn the tools and apply them to myself and my own career change. However, the first time I experienced what it was like to coach someone, I completely fell in love with it and knew that it was what I wanted to do full time.

Starting your business, what was the very first step you took?

Once I had started the training, we were pushed outside of our comfort zones very early on to start coaching our peers and people outside of the course. The best way to apply your learnings is to start coaching, so there wasn’t too much time to think about it! I suppose the first step I took outside of the training was starting to tell people about it, which felt like a huge deal and I was terrified what people would think and say. When you tell people what you are doing it helps keep you accountable but can also feel really scary at first! Luckily everyone I told was really supportive.

How did you go about educating yourself on the coaching industry?

To be honest, I didn’t do a lot of research, I followed my intuition and had a strong gut feeling that Mindful Talent was where I wanted to train. The best decisions I have made in life, have always been quite spontaneous and come from a gut feel.

How did you find your coaching niche?

I think it’s quite common for coaches to find their niche based on their own personal experience and interests, and that was the case for me. Since I started my career in 2011, I never really felt like I was in the right job and was always in pursuit of something that I couldn’t quite find. I know how it feels to feel like you’re lacking purpose and that everyone else has it figured out, along with all the external pressures that society/family/friends put on your career (even if it’s subconsciously), let alone yourself. I have always been really fascinated with the career paths that we find ourselves on and how we have the power to change them if we are prepared to do it. However, more often than not people stay stuck and ‘accept their fate’. There are lots of reasons why we do that, but with the right mindset and support, you can literally do whatever you set your mind to! I have experimented with different side projects throughout my career and that has formed a big part of my 12-week programme where I use my experience from working in projects as a Business Analyst, plus my own personal experience to work with my clients to work on their own ideas.

Sarah Marshall Life & Career Coaching Interview With Tomorrow Today.png — *“it can feel like a really lonely journey when you’re doing it alone and that’s why I’m so passionate about working with other women to help them navigate that path”*

What were the first steps you took to set up your business?

I’ve always had the limiting belief that I’m not very arty/creative and as a result it used to stop me from launching ideas into the world as I didn’t have the perfect logo etc. So one afternoon I sat down on Canva (my go to free design tool) and made a very basic logo and just put it on Instagram and went with it! I will change it at some point, but for now it’ll do. Done is better than perfect is one of my favourite motos!

I built my website from scratch on Wix, it took me aaaages! At the time I was working with a business coach and I realised that waiting to launch my website was actually preventing me from doing lots of other things like promoting my services etc. as I wanted to have my website launched beforehand. So in a similar fashion, I worked till midnight after finishing my day job for 2 weeks and got it done. I’m quite proud of it as I’ve never created one before! Although my professional photos couldn’t happen because of Covid so my fiancé had to step in last minute! But again, you don’t need professional photos to launch a website, you can deal with all those things later on, it’s better just to put something out there and tweak it later.

What has been your favourite part of setting up your business? And what has been the most challenging part?

My favourite part has been seeing something I built from scratch become a real thing and people actually paying me for my services. I do feel very lucky to do what I do. The most challenging thing was putting myself out there to family and friends and fearing their judgement, but I know that was all in my mind and is incredibly common. I eventually realised that even if there was judgement, it wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I wanted to do, so I stopped worrying so much after that.

Is there anything from your pre-launch/first few months that you would do differently next time around?

I wouldn’t be so hard on myself to try and achieve everything yesterday! Setting up a side business whilst doing a very demanding full-time job is a lot of work and it’s important to take breaks and rest at the weekend instead of working all hours. You can’t pour from an empty cup, especially when you’re a Coach, so focusing on self-care and balance is crucial in the early days so you don’t burn out.

From the idea to launch, how long did the process take?

It was quite iterative as I started coaching within weeks of starting my training and then shortly after graduating I was working with paid clients, so there wasn’t necessarily a launch date as such, it sort of happened organically and I was keen to keep up the momentum after graduating.

The one thing you wish you'd known when you started out?

It will all work out okay if you trust your intuition.

What has one of the biggest challenges from your first few months in business?

Finding clients is quite tough when you are new to an industry and especially when you are not keen on sales or promoting yourself like me, so that definitely took a bit of practice. I decided to be very transparent early on with my packages and my pricing on my website (transparency is one of my values) because I prefer people coming to me with an idea of what they are signing up to, rather than me performing a sales pitch each time I have a call, but that’s definitely a personal preference. I’m sure I’ll grow to love sales!

And what’s been the highlight of your first few months?

Getting my first paid client was an amazing moment, it felt like the hard work had definitely been worthwhile. Also hosting my first zoom workshop where 40 people signed up was amazing. It’s daunting putting yourself out there and I had visions of hosting it and just my mum turning up! But in the end I didn’t even need to call her in as a backup attendee!

How did you find your first client/couple of clients? And how do most people discover you (organic/paid social media, word of mouth etc.)?

So far it’s been a mixture, I’ve met clients through my training course community, via referrals, through social media and others have come via my website.

You’re moving into full-time coaching but what’s one of your biggest challenge(s) when it comes to balancing a full-time job and coaching/training?

The biggest challenge was managing my time and being really careful not to burn myself out. I really loved filling every evening and weekend with coaching, but it’s not sustainable long term with a full-time job and it took me a long time to find that balance.

In a way the lockdown helped as I didn’t have the commute so could work until 5.30pm and start coaching from 6pm. However taking away that commute also took away the downtime which meant I worked much longer hours. It’s definitely not sustainable long term as coaching takes a lot of energy when you’re holding space for a client, so you need to be able to compartmentalise your day job so that you’re not bringing that into your coaching sessions.

Day-to-day, what advice would you give when it comes to managing your coaching alongside a full-time job?

It definitely helps to have a steady income whilst you’re setting up, as it takes the pressure off finding paid clients (i.e. you can approach new clients from a place of ease rather than knowing you desperately need to work with them to pay the bills).

I would think about when you have the most energy in the day and see if you can use that to work on your coaching business. For example, I work really well first thing in the morning and then get a second wind later in the evening. So I’d pick a time and block out my diary for a set number of days a week and try and stick to using that time as if it were my working hours for my side business. I think it’s important to give your side business that structure and boundaries so you have a clear definition between chill time and work time.

What's been the best investment you've made for your business?

Aside from my training, I worked with a business coach for a few months when I was setting out and that helped enormously with keeping me accountable and pushing me out of my comfort zone to do things I would have put off doing until I thought I was “ready” or “had more experience”.

What are the apps you can’t live without?

I use Asana to help me manage all my coaching tasks and I love it. It’s also free which is a bonus. I use Later for posting on Instagram and Facebook and that works really well for me, as I can organise posts ahead of time, schedule them and then forget about them. Then Instagram would definitely be my third. I’ve enjoyed launching my IGTV series #SheCanDoIt on there this year and it’s such a great way to connect with a big audience.

Outside of coaching clients, what do you enjoy most when it comes to your business?

I love creating content for my programme. I recently launched my signature 12 week ‘Find Your Career Calling’ programme and I spent so much time researching and creating content for that. I could spend hours doing it! I also love learning so I’m always reading books to help deepen my knowledge on techniques that I can bring into my practice.

And what’s the least favourite part of your business/what do you least like doing as part of having your own business?

I haven’t found anything I dislike too much yet, but I suspect it will be my taxes!

From 2020 what has been your biggest learning?

My biggest learning has been the importance of slowing down to speed up. Which sounds contradictory but taking away all the distractions of a busy day to day life really helped me to make some significant progress in some big personal goals last year. I don’t think you necessarily need a national lockdown to do that! But 2020 taught me a valuable lesson about not being busy for the sake of being busy and allowing myself to be still and rest when I need it.

What’s been the best investment you've made in yourself for your business?

Definitely my training with Mindful Talent. The people I met there and those who trained me, are just the most wonderful people. It’s a really special community and I’m so grateful to be a part of it.

You can find Sarah at sarahmarshall.co or on Instagram @sarahmarshallcoach

Sarah Marshall, Life & Career Coach