Back to Blog

My Story Part 2

When I finally admitted to myself that I was done with the trades world, I didn’t know where to go next. I felt stuck, frustrated, and unsure of what the “right” next step was.So my coach asked me a simple question: “What are three things you’d actually want to do?”My answers surprised me — real estate, cars, and coaching.Real estate didn’t fit the lifestyle I wanted. Cars were better as a hobby than a business. But coaching… coaching felt different.It felt natural. It felt lik...

My Story, Part 1

There’s a moment in life where you look around and realise you’ve been doing everything “right”, working hard, providing, showing up, yet something inside you is quietly saying, this isn’t it anymore.My journey into coaching didn’t start with a grand plan. It started with a long, winding path through trades, sales, business ownership, personality discovery, and eventually… clarity.I grew up in Matamata and went straight from school into Polytech, then into welding, heavy manufactur...

The Quiet Loneliness of Small Business

If you’re a small business owner, self‑employed, or someone carrying the weight of “figuring it out” on your own, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when I say this: business can be lonely.Not because you don’t have people around you. Not because you don’t have friends, family, or even staff. But because the responsibility sits on your shoulders. The decisions, the ideas, the pressure, the uncertainty — it all lands with you. And when you’re trying to work through thi...

Setting Goals, Part 2

Finding the Approach That Fits How You ThinkToday I want to look at goals from a different angle — not the structured, SMART‑goal approach that many people talk about, but the broader, more intuitive ways of setting direction. Some people thrive with specific, measurable goals. Others, like me, think in bigger pictures, long‑term ideas, and the natural flow of thoughts that come and go.Neither way is wrong. What matters is understanding how you think and choosing a goal‑setting styl...

Setting Goals, Part 1

Simple Frameworks That Actually Help You Move ForwardToday I want to take a look at goals, not just the idea of having them, but the different ways we can set them, shape them, and use them to move forward. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Some people love structure, others prefer a freer, more open style. Wherever you sit on that spectrum, there’s a way to set goals that fits you.SMART Goals: A Clear, Structured Starting PointOne of the most common frameworks is the SMART goal: Specif...

Our Instant World

Slow Down to Move Forward: Why Instant Answers Aren’t Always the Best OnesWe live in a world that runs at full speed. Everything is instant; instant food, instant messages, instant entertainment, instant answers. You can order something online and expect it tomorrow. You can ask AI a question and get a full page of information in seconds. You can scroll through endless content without even thinking.But somewhere in the middle of all this convenience, we’ve lost something important: the abili...

It's hard to read a label when you're inside the jar.

Recently, a strategic business coach shared an idea with me that really stuck. They said, “When you’re looking at the label, you can’t see what the label is when you’re inside the jar.” It’s a simple picture, but it carries a lot of truth. When we look at ourselves, we’re looking from the inside out. We don’t see what others see. We think we know who we are, where we’re going, and what we’re doing, but sometimes there are things others notice that we simply can’t.When you�...

What mask are you wearing?

We all wear masks. Not the bright yellow, wild, cartoonish kind Jim Carrey throws on in The Mask, but the subtle, everyday ones we slip into without even noticing. In my podcast on Spotify, I describe how “a lot of us do walk around with a mask on… the idea that we have to be a certain person in front of certain people.” And it’s true — most of us have a version of ourselves for work, another for home, another for social settings, and sometimes one we don’t even realise we’ve creat...

You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

We’ve all heard the saying: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”It gets thrown around as if it’s a universal truth — the older we get, the harder it is to learn, and eventually we just stop being able to change. People say it about themselves, about others, and often as an excuse to stay stuck.But the truth is, that old saying doesn’t hold up. Not for dogs, and definitely not for us.For years, science told us that our brains stopped learning at a certain age. Once we hit that i...

AI Is Helpful, But...........

Artificial intelligence has become one of the big talking points of our time. Everywhere you look, someone is either excited about it, worried about it, or wondering what it means for the future. Many of us grew up with movies like Terminator, imagining robots taking over the world. “If you’re of that age you remember the Terminator… taking over the world.”But now we’re living in a world where AI isn’t science fiction anymore. It’s here, it’s powerful, and it’s woven into every...

Rethinking Introverts, Extroverts and the space in between

Today I want to touch on something simple but surprisingly misunderstood: introverts, extroverts, and the ambiverts who sit in the middle.My wife mentioned an article she read recently that described introverts as the people who show up to a party, hide in the corner, and don’t talk to anyone. She laughed because, as an introvert herself, that’s not her at all. She’ll go to a working bee and end up doing more talking than working. She loves catching up with people — she just recharges di...

The stone in your shoe. A simple lesson for navigating life's frustrations.

Walking the Hakarimata walkway is always a good challenge — steady climbs, beautiful bush, and the kind of quiet that gives your mind room to breathe. But if you’ve ever walked it, you’ll know there’s one small thing that can derail the whole experience: a stone in your shoe.It’s tiny. Almost nothing.But once it’s there, you feel it every step.And as I was walking recently, that little stone made me think about life.We all get “stones” in our shoesNot literal ones — but the sma...