One Life Live
From corporate HR to canine massage, and a few countries between: How I became a remote business and personal coach.
“Embrace the glorious mess that you are.”
Pushing my personal boundaries and growing through challenges was not new to me.
It’s fair to say that getting to where I am now as a Business & Personal Coach was not a straight and narrow path.
After finishing University I had little idea about what I wanted to do for a career. I spent time as an au pair in Milan — with no Italian, precious little understanding of children, no idea who I was going to live with, or exactly where. I worked for an advertising agency, and also tried my hand at sales. It was my best friend who suggested I move to London from my hometown of Bristol, and she helped me secure a role at an interdealer broker. I now know these early decisions stemmed from my need to push my personal boundaries, and grow through accepting challenge.
Landing my dream job in Human Resources...
My extremely brief stint as an Equities desk assistant convinced me that was not the job for me. Instead, I discovered my calling was in Human Resources.
Staying within financial services, I started in Graduate and MBA Recruitment and waited for an opportunity for a Business Partner role to open up. I eventually secured my dream job and loved it. Over time I worked for several companies, in both permanent and contract roles, and also did a spell on secondment in New York. I became a trusted advisor, helping and enabling leaders and managers develop themselves and their people. It was incredibly rewarding work and I enjoyed supporting and advising these focused and ambitious people in determining and implementing strategies for success. The variety of the work, together with the fast pace of the sector, kept me on my toes.
Winging it to our dream life in New Zealand…
In the back of my mind I held onto the idea of working and living somewhere else, overseas. It was when my husband and I were on honeymoon in the Cook Islands that we met a couple from New Zealand who completely sold the idea of the place to us. Two years later we were on the plane, heading out on our exciting new adventure. We knew no one aside from the couple we had met two years earlier. We didn’t have jobs. We were truly winging it.
Clearly we needed to find work and we were fortunate to both land good jobs very quickly. If ever there was a time to re-evaluate, however, to question our sense of purpose, this was it.
I left the corporate world to be an entrepreneur and work with clients I’d long felt passionate about: Dogs.
It took a while, but finally an opportunity presented itself for me in the form of a restructure and I decided to leave the corporate world to work with clients I’d long felt passionate about. Dogs.
Running my own business had never particularly appealed having grown up with my father running his, and seeing him called out at unsociable hours of the day and night to sort things out, however I didn’t really think about it like that. I wanted to do this particular job and by default I soon found myself being called an “entrepreneur”.
I had taken myself off to Chicago to do a month-long intensive programme and retrain in canine massage. Yes, you heard that right, dog massage! In New Zealand this was a very, very, unusual thing to do but the animal rehabilitation world was growing rapidly and so I started networking and building my knowledge in this brand-new industry and area.
One of the greatest challenges I ever faced back in my corporate life was public speaking. It would take me weeks to build up my confidence to give a presentation. I was utterly paralysed with fear, and yet here I was, running my own small business, giving lectures to students and standing up talking to rooms full of vets and the general public. The key lay in the fact that I was passionate about my subject. I had to be ready and able to talk to a crowd whenever I got the chance. I appeared on live radio (completely nerve-wracking), featured on TV (that was a very valuable lesson), in newspapers, and even one glossy magazine. My feelings of being an “imposter”, of being shown up as a fake, disappeared. Then came a book. I did say it wasn’t a straightforward path! 😉
Book cover for “Gone to the Dogs” by Helen Morphew
“Take every opportunity and don’t have regrets.”
After 12 years in NZ, the pull of family in the UK proved too great, so we found ourselves relocating to Spain to be closer. In the words of my grandfather, “Take every opportunity and don’t have regrets”.
There were distinct similarities to the previous move to NZ — we didn’t know anyone, and we barely knew the country, but this time we also had an extremely steep language learning curve to climb.
On moving to Spain, I already knew that I wanted to professionally train as a coach. Coaching had been part and parcel of my role in HR, but I had never done any formal training. Helping people explore their talents, identify their desires — all of which can get hidden under the baggage of day to day life — getting them moving forward rather than stagnating, had been a satisfying thread running throughout my career.
One of the things I had particularly enjoyed with my canine business was the huge variety of people that I encountered. Clearly the love and welfare of their canine companions created an initial connection, but more than that, I found myself during the fortnightly hour-long sessions often coaching my human clients. Coming to see me was a safe space and there was no judgement from me about anything they told me.
Covid taught me about coaching remotely. Animals taught me about coaching humans.
When we arrived in Spain I enrolled on a coaching course. I chose a course that offered face-to-face learning, so if you had told me I would complete my training 100% remotely, I would have vehemently disagreed with you and explained patiently how important face-to-face learning was. How things change!
I think I had one of the best learning experiences I have ever had. I had 14 classmates, whom I have never actually met or seen from the shoulders down. Remote coaching is absolutely possible.
My days now involve supporting people to achieve transition in their life, recognise and work with change, return to work, strike out on the road to self employment, improve their professional and sometimes personal lives through self-evaluation and goal recognition, to develop or adapt their leadership skills. I work with them to build their confidence, to help them realise their potential. To enable them to live their best lives.
When I reflect back upon my time working with dogs, I developed some valuable skills that transfer to my human work — “presence” and “patience”. By presence, I mean focusing solely on the current moment. With dogs, the risk of me thinking about what I was having for dinner, the last phone conversation or any other chatter in my head, meant that I could miss a signal that the dog was in pain and risk getting bitten. And patience; well you simply cannot tell a dog to lie down and keep still. They would get there in their own time, at their own pace. Both those skills are invaluable when working with humans, too. By not being fully present for a client I can miss the things that are not said, those vital cues that could be truly transformational. Patience is something that I have struggled with over the years! My “hurry up” driver is pretty strong, but through my work I have learned to keep it in check, to go at the pace of the human [or dog]. Just because I may feel like we should move faster doesn’t mean that the other person can or even wants to.
The most transformative aspects of my journey? New Zealand.
Our move to and time in New Zealand gave me a different perspective, and I’m not sure I would be where I am now without having that life experience. At the same time, it was one of the most challenging. I can still feel, hear and visualise everything around us when we arrived at Heathrow ready to board that plane to Auckland. It happened again when we moved to Spain. The wrench of leaving on both occasions was so intense it could take my breath away. Writing my book was also both challenging and rewarding. It really was big. It frequently makes me feel vulnerable, but I wouldn’t change it.
A few tips for anyone embarking on a similar career or lifestyle path:
Don’t underestimate the power of REAL – of being you. Of being authentic. There were times in my past career when my authenticity was challenged, and those times were when I felt most insecure and lacking in confidence.
One Life Live. That was the name of the exhibition Rob and I went to when we first started exploring the idea of moving to New Zealand. For me that title says it all.
Embrace change, embrace learning, and be courageous. In particular, be courageous in the face of change. My experiences are not the same as your experiences, but I have challenged myself, changed continents, started my own business, operated in areas outside the norm, studied and taken the risk of falling flat on my face. And I’m still here!
Finally, one of my favourite if somewhat unconventional quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert: “Embrace the glorious mess that you are”. Because at the end of the day, we’re all just human. Unless…. you’re a dog.
Helen Morphew, Canine Massage with a Leonburger
Helen Morphew, Canine Massage at Woofstock
