When the planets align
How Jenni Morgan finally found a career ticking everything on her wish list and more…
As a former fast-track graduate on the Mars trainee scheme, Jenni Morgan was introduced to coaching as a line-management style which left a lasting and positive impression on this young professional. Following 15 years, with Mars, she decided to take some time out of the corporate world.
“I strongly believe a good education can improve your chances in life. I was keen to help school kids make something of themselves by teaching them mathematics. I soon realised I wasn’t the right fit for academia and my skills were going to be better used elsewhere – but this wasn’t the first time I’d learned something valuable about myself.
“When I first went to university, I had chosen to study chemical engineering which took me to a work placement in the oil industry. I was put in front of a computer in an office on my own and felt the huge void of human interaction. It had been a nerve-wracking realisation at the time that I had chosen the wrong degree, but it gave me the opportunity to think again about my career. I decided to move into manufacturing instead.”
Jenni now had a good grasp of what she wanted out of her career going forward. She knew she was a people person with a genuine interest in business.
“My husband, Henry, and I were settled in London at the time. I was contemplating my next career move after my short spell tutoring when an old colleague from Mars. reached out to me. He’d been consulting for a company who now needed help with marketing.
“This was the first time I had worked with smaller companies including a couple of start-ups and a charity. Work with the charity led me further into coaching, in the main to be able to save them money. Rather than work with every person in their team, I coached one of them so she could pass on the learning to the rest. I had the third major realisation of my career that coaching was my opportunity to make a difference – the impact I hadn’t been able to effect in education.”
But London life was beginning to lose its appeal for the couple. Henry and Jenni decided to move away from the city and closer to their family in Yorkshire.
“I would have looked for a job that combined my skills with coaching when we moved to Wakefield but I didn’t have any business connections or a network of past colleagues. So, I decided to go for a job in marketing, knowing I could ace an interview. Sure enough, I landed Head of Marketing for a computer software company who specialised in educational learning needs.
“It was the first time I’d been employed in a SME. Each department of the business was in close proximity to marketing and I found myself wanting to share advice that could support the growth of the company in each of those departments. I knew I had to set myself a new challenge outside of this role and so, 18 months later, I decided to take some time off to re-group.”
In spring 2018, Jenni wrote out her wishlist for her future career. What did she enjoy, what were her skills and values? She knew success was linked to education and so working somewhere that valued ongoing professional development would be important.
“I thought I could find a job where I could help companies grow by coaching them. After extensive research, it turned out, there weren’t any jobs that did that – I would have to make my own job.
“In the past, I’d registered with a franchise search website and had been ignoring their daily emails advertising different franchise opportunities. I’d just finished formulating my wishlist when I decided to open one of these franchise-opportunity emails – it was ActionCOACH. It seemed to answer my coaching wish but I didn’t know enough about them to match anything else on my list. I decided to research similar franchises, shortlisted one other with ActionCOACH and registered for their discovery days.
“In June 2018, I made the trip down to Leicestershire for ActionCOACH’s discovery day. Ian Christelow, the UK Co-founder, entered the room to greet us with news hot off the press. He told us they had a new Firm Builder licence with access to exclusive territories and we would be the first new franchise partners to choose between this and the pre-existing single operator franchise.
“I now had the option of becoming the single business growth coach I had considered as my new job prospect or invest to build a firm of business growth coaches – for me, it wasn’t a tricky decision. Why wouldn’t I choose to grow a successful business when I would be coaching my clients to do exactly that?”
Jenni talked it over with Henry and her mind was made up. She would be the first new franchise partner to sign up to the exclusive territory Firm Builder licence with ActionCOACH. They spoke to NatWest about funding the franchise but decided to use a pension-led funding opportunity instead. It was then time to head to ActionCOACH University for the initial training week.
“September 2018 was a whirlwind. I had to complete the pre-training reading before spending a week of training with some of the best at ActionCOACH. Each session was led by experts from the UK team including long-term franchise partner, Andrew Kureishy, giving real-life examples of client coaching techniques and sales guru Jon Asquith from their exclusive client generation centre.
“With all the practical nuts and bolts in place, I was ready to launch my new business into space. All the planets had aligned to bring me to this point – the start of something big. In October 2018, ActionCOACH Wakefield was going to take everything I had made of myself so far and up the game so I could be the best I could possibly be. I’d spent four weeks rounding prospects up three of ActionCOACH’s recommended lead generation strategies and I had 30 people sat in my first 6-steps seminar. My coach’s coach, James Vincent, presented part of the seminar with me. It was a great confidence boost and, at the end of the seminar, I booked 12 follow-up appointments which resulted in one group coaching client and a one-to-one coaching client. Another invested in one-to-one coaching six months later after we stayed in touch.”
Jenni decided to stretch her first 12-month goals, planning to reach £100,000 in client income through a mixture of one-to-one and group coaching clients. She found a combination of 4 lead generation strategies brought in a good level of enquiries and led to a good conversion rate into paying clients.
“I employ the equivalent of one full-time marketer I also receive qualified leads from ActionCOACH’s client generation centre. This gives me a pipeline of prospects which puts the business in a good position to finish our first year and move in to the next. I plan to re-invest my year 1 profits back into the business to begin the expansion of my firm during the first quarter of 2020. Increasing the hours of my marketing team will up our number of prospects and genrate enough clients to keep my first employee coach busy.”
Jenni and Henry moved up to Yorkshire to improve their work-life balance, spending more time with friends and family. But starting a new business, even with the help of a dedicated franchise support team, takes a lot of time initially.
“I’m the sort of person who will put in the hours to make something successful and my new business has been no exception. If you speak to a few ActionCOACH franchise partners, you’ll find they all grow their businesses at different rates due to personal goals and motivators, so you don’t have to be exactly like me.
“I’m on a mission to get fit, clearing my diary for aqua aerobics and the gym several times a week. Henry and I got into scuba diving on holiday a few years ago, so we’ve added that to our annual vacation schedule on top of our usual ski trip. And we spend plenty of time with friends and family locally – last week we took our nephew to the local snowdome to introduce him to our love of skiing.
“What’s really important to me is that I’ve found a career which ticks everything on my wishlist and more. ActionCOACH’s 14 Points of Culture overlap with the values I wrote down back in spring 2018. They’re not just a list of phrases, you see them walking and talking every time you meet a franchise partner from any part of the world or catch up with someone from the franchise support team.
“I can go out to a networking event or speak to a prospect knowing ActionCOACH works because I have my own coach who has been instrumental in supporting the growth of my business. At my first ActionCOACH Christmas party, I explained to Ian, the man who gave me that first opportunity to build my own coaching firm, I felt like I had come home because ActionCOACH feels like a family.”
