Coaching isn't a 'proper job' - How I ended up here.

When I was 17, my best friend at the time took his life.?

He was a great lad and we were thick as thieves, but a change in job for his parents meant his family moved away. They started having problems and he became isolated, he struggled to make mates over there and it all got too much for a young man trying to figure out himself at the same time as a full family breakdown.?

I remember he got me to promise I would be a rockstar someday, although I think we both knew I didn’t have the voice.?

I still wonder what he would think if he saw I was coach!?

I wonder what a young ME would’ve thought.?

I mean it's not a “proper” job really, is it?

I don’t work the usual 9-5, I don’t answer to anyone else, I have had to build everything from a website, to a brand, to a deep knowledge of psychology and how and when to apply it.?

I have worked proper jobs, a lot of them. I can’t explain why but they always lacked the heart in life, the passion, the soul of what I was looking for.?

So I made a mad U-turn from a promising career in finance and set out to study psychotherapy and counselling, which eventually led me to study under Jay Shetty and start coaching.?

My drive? I thought it was to be the help that my friend and I needed at the time. When guys were at their loneliest and male stigmas and stereotypes meant they had to become an island and you were only a real man when you absorbed as much punishment as possible.?

The antidote to the ideas that cost me not just my best friend, but many others over my lifetime.?

As I have gotten older I see my drive isn’t to BE that myself but to have a space where I can help guys just be better for each other and themselves.

Where we don’t feel like we don’t have any ears to listen when our families struggle.

When we feel like we want to share our wins but no one would care, we have a group of guys cheering us on.?

Where we can learn from each other and become better husbands and partners.?

I always think about what I want my children to see in me as a man if I am to be an example for them or an example for their partners. Do I want them to see a man who just ploughed on in life? (which there is nothing wrong with)? Or do I want them to see someone who tried to make a real difference outside of himself? Who built something??

I can’t lie to you, being a coach is tough, brutal work.?

It is a lot of wanting to do good and balancing it with wanting to create a steady income.?

It is wanting to work every hour of the day with breaks to make sure you can show up mentally fully for your clients and your family.?

But it has allowed me to work with and under some of the most incredible people, it allows me to see the world in myself in new ways constantly.?

It has healed my relationship with myself and allowed me to love my family fully and enjoy everything life has to offer.?

It has introduced me to clients from all over the world, from millionaire CEOs and Lead NASA scientists to mates from school and war veterans

But more than anything when I see guys we have gotten to work with show up for each other, listen to their partners deeply and become incredible fathers.?

Yeah, I think my mate would get it.