My own dream began to take shape, in waking hours, in the summer of 2002 while I was holidaying in France. We were staying in a lovely little house across the road from the owners, two Brits who had fled from Brighton and bought a place in France, thus acquiring their own dream. I fell into discussion with them about living the dream as I was floating in their pool beneath a cherry tree in full blossom.
Although I had already sold my accountancy business, I was tied to the UK for my income because I still had relationships with a relatively small number of clients who I felt a duty too. And although the conversation in France reminded me about something I already knew only too well, that virtual working was easily possibly, especially for an accountant, that wasn’t the way it worked with my clients. They liked me to come in. This came as no surprise to me as I’d seen that in action for the previous two decades. In fact, one of my colleagues used to send me emails which said – approximately – if you ever want to get out of here you must stop being so interesting. I brightened their days.
Nevertheless, my desire to escape and start living the dream was strong. What I really wanted was to earn my living in sterling, doing work I loved, and spend it in euros and dollars in sunny places I thought I might prefer to be living in. I did still enjoy accountancy, but post the sale of my biz I was on the lookout for my next career. I had been five years in the looking by that summer of 2002.
As luck would have it, no sooner had I returned to the UK than I heard about coaching and went to visit Thomas Leonard, the grandfather of coaching, at a venue which was walking distance from where I was living at the time, in London’s West End. It was a 2-day event put on my Coachville which TJL had moved onto from CoachU which he founded, and by the end of the two days in September 2002 I was signing up to learn how to become a coach. Of course, I don’t believe that was luck, it was synchronicity as my dream, now formed, started to take shape.
I knew this was it. I knew I could coach clients all around the world via Skype from anywhere that would work time-zone wise. I also knew I’d been coaching my accounting clients, that had been my special sauce, it was what they liked best about me. And yet initially I resisted that as my niche. After twenty years with small business owners and entrepreneurs, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend any more time with them. I knew their special needs.
So I started the coach training and by early the following year I was …
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